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Accursed Ones

Summary:

"Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him. Foul and corrupt are they who have taken His gift, and turned it against His children. They shall be named Maleficar, accursed ones. They shall find no rest in this world, or Beyond." Anders knew the verse. Every mage did. But Anders was a runner. He ran from the Circle. He ran from the Templars. He ran from relationships. So what did he care? He was never going to rest anyway.

Notes:

Hello new reader. This story is meant to connect Awakening Anders to DA:2 Anders. In Awakening, Anders could be specialized in Blood Magic and laugh about it, so I thought I would play with the forces that could have influenced (or corrupted) him. Unfortunately, not all events line up with WoT2, as I read WoT2 after starting this story, but for the most part there are not many differences.

Accursed Ones is a dark horror story, and includes gore, death, and many other things that are not tagged to avoid spoilers. If something is triggering for you and you would like to know if it is in this story, please feel free to ask and I will clarify. This story ends with Anders alive and well.

That aside, I sincerely appreciate bookmarks, subscriptions, and comments. Thank you for reading!

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1: Awakening

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 17 Ferventis Early Morning
In the Dungeons of Vigil's Keep

"Wake up, mage." Anders felt the words before he heard them. A force of malice and metal hit him upside the head, and he opened his eyes to a sea of spots, and Biff's ugly mug.

"Is it morning already?" Anders asked. His left ear was ringing from the kick, and the cold stone floor of his cell had left his back a mess of knots. All in all, an average morning. With a bit of struggling, Anders managed to sit up without the use of his hands. The noble lodgings and Biff's stellar bedside manner aside, Anders could have done without the manacles. "I'll have two eggs, over easy, a spot of ham, and a biscuit with honey." Anders said.

Biff was already holding a wooden bowl Anders guessed contained a much less flavorful breakfast. The templar looked at him, and then at the bowl, and then very purposefully dropped it. Half the contents splattered across the floor, and the other half across Anders' robes. It was oats. Again. How refreshing. "Oops," came Biff's belated apology.

"Don't worry about it." Anders said lightly, cleaning off his robes as best he was able, "Accidents happen, or you wouldn't be here."

Biff scowled; he was one of the unlucky templars who looked better with his helmet on. Big nose, big ears, small eyes, no chin. Anders figured he would be cross too if he had to wake up to that face every morning. The templar knelt, and Anders put on his most charming smile. He refused to give Biff the satisfaction of seeing his fear.

"You think you're really funny, don't you?" Biff asked. Anders pushed aside the memory of the holy smite Biff had brought down on him just two days ago when he'd been captured. In his mind, he made it so Biff wasn't a templar, or his jailor. Biff was just a bully, and Anders could make fun of bullies.

"I think I'm hilarious." Anders said, "I think it's your face that's funny."

Biff ignored him, "You know, you're lucky you're so funny, Anders. It's the only reason you're still alive. Everyone knows you're nothing but a joke. The First Enchanter knows it, the Knight Commander knows it, all the templars know it. We all know you're not a threat. You run away, you get caught, you run away again. You're like a fucking yo-yo, Anders. We take turns playing with you. Sending out the green recruits whenever you make another run, but I think it's getting old, don't you? How was that year in solitary huh? You want another?"

Anders tried to think of a retort, but all he could think of were four cramped walls, not even enough space to lie flat. A small food hatch just big enough for a cat to fit through, praying today the cat came so he wouldn't go mad talking to himself. Anders swallowed and said nothing.

Biff grinned. "That's what I thought. Now shut the fuck up and eat. I'm sick of listening to your shit." Shoving off the floor, Biff kicked the bowl into his lap and left his cell, locking the door behind him.

It wasn't that bad, all things considered. His cell made up the corner of a room, with plenty of space to stretch out. A wall of bars separated his cell from a rather cosy observation area where Biff was eating his own breakfast. There were windows, and plenty of wall sconces for light. It could be worse.

Anders picked up his bowl. The oats must have been thick, because more than a few spoonfuls were still inside. Not enough for a proper meal, but it was something. His last proper meal had been two days ago. Part of Anders didn't want to eat at all, but he knew he should. They were setting out again today, to bring him back to the Circle, and he didn't know when he'd get another chance for food.

Eating with manacles on was difficult, but Anders had a method. If he pinched the side of the bowl with one hand, and scooped food into his mouth with the other, he could eat without making too much of a mess. Not that it mattered now. His robes were going to stain. That was a shame. He liked these robes. At least his mantle was clean. Missing a few feathers, but clean.

Anders set the bowl down when he finished, rubbing his dirty fingers together with a disdainful grimace. What a mess. Everything was such a mess. His robes, the cell, his life. Sighing, Anders struggled to his feet and shuffled to the waste bucket in the corner of his cell for a piss.

He'd been so close. All he had to do was find Namaya, find out where the templars were keeping his phylactery, and destroy it. Freedom had been right there. It was probably still there, waiting for him in a tavern in Amaranthine, but here he was, celled and shackled at Vigil's Keep, calling it an achievement when he managed not to piss on his robes. Two days in captivity had certainly lowered his standards.

Shaking himself dry and fixing his robes, Anders wandered back to the other side of his cell and sat against the wall, watching Biff eat. How to escape this time. A sleep spell would have been his first choice, but the manacles were more than just a fashion accessory. Runes on the inside of them weakened his connection to the Fade. Wearing them made Anders feel fatigued, unfocused. Helpless. It wasn't a fun way to feel.

Anders thought he heard thunder. He blinked, and looked to his cell's window, but the skies outside were clear. "Did you hear that?" Anders asked.

"Shut up," Biff said.

The sound came again, louder. Biff looked up, and third rumble knocked a torch from its sconce on the wall, and set the furniture to dancing. Biff leapt from his chair and drew his sword from its scabbard, leveling it at him through the bars. "I swear to the Maker, Anders," Biff threatened him.

"You think I'm doing this?" Anders laughed, too incredulous to think twice about provoking the templar.

"You put these on me!" Anders shook his manacles at him, "You really think I can channel a full earthquake through these?"

Biff lowered his sword and brought up a sneer in its place. "Habit. I'm used to mages being dangerous."

"Words hurt, Biff." Anders said.

Biff ignored him. The rumbling continued, rattling doors on their hinges and even knocking over Anders' waste bucket. Repulsed despite the fact that he was on the other side of the cell, Anders stood up. He had to grab the bars to stay upright throughout the tremors, "Biff, let me out."

"Kiss my hairy ass, Anders," Biff said, grabbing the bars along with him.

"We can work up to that. Maybe start with dinner. Just let me out." Anders said.

"Shut up," Biff's beady little eyes glared daggers at him. They weathered the rest of the quake together in silence. When at last the tremors stopped, Biff gave him a questioning look.

"What, you still think I did it?" Anders frowned. "I don't know what just happened any more than you do. All I know is there's piss and shit all over the floor. Let me out, Biff."

"It's your piss and shit," Biff said, turning his back on him to start picking up the toppled furniture. "Stew in it."

"My mother was right about you," Anders quipped. Biff ignored him. The man had no sense of humor. Or basic human decency. Sighing, Anders stood in the clean corner of his cell, fighting back his gag reflex at the smell of feces mixed with Biff's breakfast of bacon and eggs. At least he had a clean corner to stand in. It could be worse.

"I'm going to go see what happened." Biff announced after he'd finished righting the furniture and picking his breakfast up off the floor. "Stay here."

"No promises," Anders said. Biff didn't laugh.

With Biff gone, there was nothing left for Anders to do but wait. He was standing in his cell, watching the clouds roll by through the window to pass the time, when he heard the shouting. It started far away, and he took it for no more than a scuffle in the courtyard.

But the shouting grew until it became a thunder to rival the earthquake, and Anders started to worry. The sounds of fighting followed, steel on steel, explosions, doors slamming, gates dropping. Anders even heard a few bellowed orders at one point, and hoped futilely someone would pass by his cell and take pity on him.

He had no such luck. Eventually Biff came back, his fellow templar with him. The young initiate was wide-eyed, his sword drawn and bloodied. "Monsters!" The initiate squealed; he couldn't have been a day over a twenty. Biff must not have been lying when he said they sent green recruits after him. "There are monsters out there!"

"Darkspawn." Biff corrected the boy, "Pull yourself together, man. You're a templar. You've faced demons."

"N-no I haven't," The initiate squeaked, his face ashen. "I've only been to one Harrowing and it was c-clean. Those monsters-they're coming out of the ground. And eating people! What do we do? What are we going to do?"

Biff slapped him. "We fight them."

"We can't! You weren't in the courtyard. You didn't see!" The initiate looked at his bloodied sword, and started as if he'd never seen it before. In a fit, he threw it away and it clattered against the floor. "The Grey Wardens fight darkspawn! Not templars, but the darkspawn killed all of them! We're going to die in here."

Biff knelt and picked up the boy's sword and thrust it back into his hands. Anders had to give him points for balls, but then dicks usually came with those. "We're not going to die. They closed the gates behind us. They'll hold for at least-"

An ominous thud sounded through the Keep. Another torch fell from its sconce on the wall, and a second thud followed the first. Then a third. The initiate fell to his knees and started sobbing, "Oh Maker, hear my cry: guide me through the blackest nights."

"Well that's helpful." Anders snorted.

"Shut up." Biff snapped.

The initiate abruptly stopped praying, and looked up at him with wild eyes. "The mage! He could help us! The Knight Commander, he said he wasn't dangerous! We could take his shackles off. He could fight them."

"His words, not mine," Anders said when Biff glared at him. "But if you ask me-"

"No one is asking you, mage." Biff cut him off. "Do you think I'm an idiot?"

"This is a trick question isn't it?" Anders asked.

"The second we let you out, you'll run." Biff said, "And if you do stay and fight, you'd only be in the way. You're not a battle mage, you're a spirit healer."

"See, the funny thing about that is-" Anders started to say.

"Shut up. Stay in there where it's safe. We," Biff grabbed the initiate by his collar, and wrenched him to his feet. "Will protect you. Because that's our job. Now ready yourself."

Somehow, the little initiate found his courage. He picked up his sword and raised his shield. The thuds had stopped.

If Anders had to hazard a guess, he'd guess they had been from a battering ram. The fact that they'd stopped could only mean there was nothing left to batter. The sounds of fighting drew nearer, until Anders could hear clearly what was happening in the hall.

It didn't sound good. The sound of metal on metal had stopped long ago, replaced with panicked screams and the thud of running footsteps, of doors slamming, of the initiate pissing himself and Biff's angry curse when the door burst open, and darkspawn poured in.

The initiate hesitated. A creature that might have been a man with the flesh peeled from his face took the boy's head off with a single stroke from his broadsword. The head bounced off the bars of Anders' cell, and the look of terror frozen on the boy's face was sure to haunt his nightmares.

Maker damn Biff. He wouldn't have run. He could have helped. Instead Anders watched from his cell as Biff ran the darkspawn through, and turned to face another. The second creature looked like a rat the size of a man, and it let out a piercing wail. Anders tried to cover his ears, but his manacles made it impossible. The sound was deafening, like a dagger being dragged down his spine. Biff flinched, and it undid him. The creature lashed out with bladed hands, and pierced his throat.

Biff gurgled, and blood rushed forth in a fount from his throat. The darkspawn that had killed him drank it, lapping at Biff's face and gnawing off his large nose. Anders dry heaved.

The darkspawn turned on him with another unholy wail. It threw itself against the bars and wailed in fury when it realized it couldn't reach him. Or at least, Anders assumed it was still making some sort of noise. The last wail had deafened him completely, and all he could hear was a dull ringing.

Think, Anders. He could still hear his own thoughts, which was a small comfort. Brain over brawn. Sure, it had never worked for him before, but maybe today was his lucky day. He couldn't do anything shackled. Biff had the keys to his manacles, but there was no reaching him with the darkspawn clawing through the bars beside his corpse. If he could kill it..

The initiate's sword was on the ground, near the bars. If he could pull it through, he could probably kill the darkspawn with it. Anders crept towards the sword, but as soon as he was near enough to reach it the darkspawn lunged at him. He needed to distract it. Looking around for inspiration, Anders eyes settled on his food bowl.

He threw the wooden thing through the bars, out towards the hall. The darkspawn screamed at him. "Okay. So you're not that stupid. Good to know." Anders said to himself. Something else then. He needed a spell, but he didn't know what he could cast wearing these accursed shackles.

His access to the Fade was so weak it may as well not have existed. With the mana they'd left him he'd be lucky to summon a simple light. Anders paused; a light actually sounded doable. Taking a deep breath, he fought past the runes that crippled him and conjured a small orb of light no bigger than his palm.

To his surprise and utter delight, the darkspawn screamed and recoiled. "Hoho! We don't like light do we?" Anders laughed, kneeling and grabbing the hilt of the initiate's sword. Twisting it so it fit through the bars, Anders stood up and gripped the sword as best he was able with his manacles.

"Andraste's knickers, this is heavy," Anders muttered. How did templars carry swords and shields about in full armor? Focus. Anders shook himself. It wouldn't be hard. All he had to do was hold the sword steady, and the darkspawn would impale itself on it. Hopefully.

Anders did a test lunge on a spot between the bars, and decided he could do it. If he couldn't... well, he didn't really need his arms anyway. Taking a deep breath, Anders let his orb of light go out. The darkspawn dove at him, and he trust the sword forward. It took the creature square in the chest, and took the sword right out of his hands. Anders leapt back, and was glad he did when the creature took one last, vengeful swipe at the spot he'd been standing in before toppling over.

"Alright," Anders let out the breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "Easy. Now... keys." Anders knelt beside Biff and gagged. He'd never understand romanticizing death. Biff was a mess. His big nose had been chewed down to a more reasonable size, his head lulled back unnaturally with his slit throat, and the smell. Maker's breath, Anders thought his kicked over waste bucket was bad.

Biff kept his keys at his waist, and Anders had to squeeze his arms together to fit them through the bars, and work the key ring off his belt. The struggle was a contortionist's nightmare, and getting his manacles off was even worse, but Anders managed. He kicked them into a pile of shit when they were off, feeling vindictive, but within minutes of unlocking his cell and letting himself out, he could feel the Fade again, the whispers of wisps and spirits, and felt better.

Compassion was there, just beyond the Veil, ready if he or any survivors were in need of healing. Anders hated being cut off from her. She was his spirit; the reason anyone called him a spirit healer. For the better part of his life, she had quite literally been the woman of his dreams. While he might not have been able to summon her for anything more than healing, he felt better knowing he could at least do something.

Admittedly, a spirit of Valor or Fortitude might have been a more helpful companion when a stout little darkspawn, almost like an evil dwarf, wandered down the hall outside his cell and spotted him through the open door. It cried out, a low, garbled thrum that sounded almost like words, and two more darkspawn appeared. "Please don't be too much like dwarves," Anders said to himself, drawing on the first element that came to him.

A cone of flame erupted from his hands, burning the creatures as they charged him. He heard decidedly more human shouts from the hall, and desperately hoped someone was coming to help him. Two of the darkspawn fell to the flames, but the third kept charging. Anders backed up, forcing more energy into the spell, and contemplated locking himself back in his cell for safety when the creature finally seemed to realize it was on fire, and act accordingly. It snarled in agony as it's skin began to slough off, and collapsed at his feet just as two warriors came charging into the room.

"Er," Anders said eloquently.

"Mhairi, the door," The first warrior ordered, ignoring Anders to barricade the far door while Mhairi barricaded the other door behind them.

"Unbelievable!" Mhairi gasped when the room was secure, taking off her helmet. She was a vision of loveliness beneath it, even with her hair tousled from her helmet. Eyes like the ocean spray, skin as clear as the sky on Summerday. Anders couldn't have imagined a more fortunate rescue. "The Keep has been completely overwhelmed!"

"The Wardens should be mounting a better defense," The warrior with her agreed, unlatching his own helmet and setting it on the table. A mess of black hair spilled out, and when he pushed it out of the way of his eyes, he finally spared Anders a glance. There was something familiar in them, the thin almond shape and russet color.

"I agree," Mhairi muttered. She pulled up a chair and eased herself into it, and Anders wondered if she was injured. "Where are they all? For the darkspawn to have ambushed the keep so effectively," Mhairi unbuckled her left boot, and pulled it off with a pained hiss. She was injured then. "I didn't know they were capable of such a thing."

"... Anders." The warrior startled him out of his skin. Anders jumped back a pace, wondering how he could possibly know his name. "You're a healer, aren't you?"

"I-" Anders hesitated, and suddenly it clicked. "That's it. I remember you from the Circle. The armor threw me off. Did you decide being a mage wasn't all it's cracked up to be?"

"Not exactly." The mage-turned-warrior said vaguely. "Can you see to her?"

"Of course. Hey, I know what they've been saying about me back at the Circle, but this," Anders gestured to the dead templars, "Not my doing. You know how it is, templars catch apostate, darkspawn catch templars."

"An apostate?" Mhairi said warily, "At Vigil's Keep?"

"You weren't here when we arrived," Anders gave her a little bow, "I'm sure I would have remembered such a lovely woman as yourself. Proper introductions, then? I am Anders. Apostate, yes, but I also happen to be a very talented healer. May I?" He waved a hand at her leg.

Mhairi nodded reluctantly, and Anders knelt to inspect the injury. Something had hamstringed her, and left a gaping wound the back of her leg. Anders set about healing it, "This is awkward," Anders said, with a glance to the other mage, "But I don't remember your name."

"Amell," Amell said.

"Warden-Commander Amell," Mhairi corrected him, squaring her shoulders proudly, "The Hero of Ferelden, new Arl to Amaranthine and Lord of Vigil's Keep."

"Oh. Well, congratulations." Anders said, unable to help his sarcasm given the current state of the Keep. It probably wasn't the smartest response he could have given, but Amell snorted. Well... good. He could stand to be around someone with a sense of humor again. He looked back at Mhairi, "And you are?"

"Mhairi. I was a knight in the King's service, but when the call came for volunteers to rebuild the Order..." She flushed a little, and looked to Amell, "You're a hero, Commander. I feel so honored to be fighting at your side."

"Well," Anders stood, feeling a little awkward interrupting the hero worship, "All healed."

Mhairi gave her leg an experimental kick and nodded before putting her boot back on. "Thank you, Ser Anders."

"Just Anders, my dear lady." Anders assured her. He wondered if Amell needed healing, but the man had wiped the sweat off his brow and was already putting his helmet back on. "So... I suppose you're off to fight darkspawn, being the Warden Commander and all?"

"Indeed." Mhairi answered for him. "We don't have a lot of time, and there may still be other survivors."

"I also don't suppose you'd be willing to let me go?" Anders hazarded, wishing he wasn't covered in oatmeal and blood if he was going to be begging favors, "I know they'll just send more templars after me. They always do, but..."

"They won't if I tell them you died." Amell said simply.

Anders rubbed at his ear. The darkspawn must have done a serious number on his hearing after all. But Mhairi was staring at her Commander, aghast, so he must have heard right. "You'd do that for me?" Anders asked. Amell nodded. "Well that's... rather marvelous of you, to be honest. So I'll just... slip out the way you came in? All clear?"

"You would just leave?" Mhairi demanded. "There are men in the yard who need healing, survivors who might need help-"

"Recruit." Amell interrupted her. "I'm going to need your help here." He gestured to the barricaded door that led deeper into the Keep.

Mhairi looked at her Commander, and then back to him with a glare, but Anders had been getting glares all his life. He gave her a winning smile in return, and she looked away in disgust. "Of course, Commander. You can count on me." Mhairi said, pushing the table out of the way of the door.

"Well... Good luck to you then." Anders said to Amell. "Have fun slaughtering the darkspawn. Maker knows they could use it."

Neither the Warden-Commander nor the Warden-Recruit answered him. They threw open the door, and charged forward into the fray, leaving Anders alone again. He heard the sounds of fighting in their wake, which was a welcome reprieve from panicked screams, the fall of running feet, and the wicked laughter of darkspawn. It was good someone was making a stand. Not him, but someone.

Anders turned around fled out the way they'd come in. His cell let out into a hall, which led out into the inner courtyard. It was largely abandoned by the living, but littered with corpses both human and darkspawn. Toppled carts, tables and chairs had been made into makeshift barricades. The signs of a lost battle were all around. Including a woman's screams.

On the opposite end of the courtyard was a young woman Anders hadn't noticed, who look to have to just come out of hiding. And at the entrance to the courtyard, two human-shaped darkspawn, who heard her screams and charged. "Another twenty steps, another batch of deaths. Today is not a good day," Anders muttered to himself, reaching into the Fade. "Here!" He yelled to the woman, "Over here!"

Fortunately, she heard him, and ran in his direction, putting him between her and the darkspawn. When she was safely past him, Anders loosed his spell, and his fingers erupted in a cone of frost. It was sloppily, without his staff to channel the spell through, but there were only two of the creatures. The frost ate at them, starting at their stomachs and spreading over their chests, down their thighs, and into their legs, until they were still as statues with only their eyes still moving.

"Get yourself to safety, quickly!" Anders ordered the woman, looking around for something to shatter the darkspawn with. He found a beam of wood about the length of his arm, and picked it up. It was a poor excuse for a staff, but it made an admirable bat. Planting his feet firmly, he drew back his make-shift weapon and struck the first darkspawn in the head. It shattered. Congealed blood, chunks of brain, and all manner of bits sprayed across his face. The smell was unbearable. Rot and waste, in his nose, on his lips, stuck in his hair. Anders doubled over and retched.

His oatmeal tasted no better going out than it had coming in, and he'd ruined his boots on top of everything. Today was not a good day at all, Anders thought, taking up his stance again and shattering the second darkspawn's head. It exploded again, and Anders threw up again. He couldn't begrudge the poor templar initiate his fear of darkspawn. The creatures looked like story book nightmares: vile and twisted versions of man, elf, and dwarf. Anders couldn't wait to be free of this place, but no sooner had he taken another step than he heard another scream.

It wasn't in the courtyard. The sound had come from somewhere up on the battlements, too far away for him to help. Shielding his eyes against the sun, Anders scanned the ramparts, and a moment later wished he hadn't A body fell over the edge, toppling end over end until it hit the ground on the opposite end of the courtyard. He hoped it was a darkspawn, but he knew it hadn't been.

It was tragic, but it wasn't his fight. He was free. For some indiscernible reason, Amell had promised to tell the templars he'd died. He might have been a mage, but he was also the Hero of Ferelden. Anders didn't think the templars would doubt him. He should run now, fast and far away. Go to Amaranthine, find Namaya, destroy his phylactery to be extra certain, and then take ship. Head to Rivain, or anywhere but Ferelden.

"You run away, you get caught, you run away," Biff had said of him, but Biff was dead. Anders didn't care what Biff thought. Anders didn't care what anyone thought. Anders cared about Anders, and Anders needed to get out of here. He took a step towards the gates. Behind him, people were screaming, fighting, dying. Was he really that much of a bastard to just leave? Yes, Anders thought, but for some reason he turned around, and decided to help.

Chapter 2: Nothing For It

Notes:

Apples and Apostates is a companion piece to Accursed Ones. It covers a variety of events within and without the story from the perspective of various characters, but contains spoilers if read in order. Chapters will be linked chronologically at the End Notes of each chapter if you're interested. :)

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, kudos, subscriptions, and bookmarks, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 17 Ferventis Afternoon

Vigil's Keep

Anders found himself wishing he had stayed with the Warden Commander and his recruit when he'd come across them. He had no staff, no armor, no potions, nothing but his rapier wit and dashing good looks, and only one of those things came in handy against the darkspawn. As to his looks, they were hardly dashing at the moment. Anders was a mess. His robes were bespeckled with blood and stale oats, he was sporting bits of brain as hair accessories, and he had vomit on his shoes. Then again, Anders thought, maybe his looks were useful. Looking like this, he could probably blend in with the darkspawn.

It wasn't a theory he wanted to test. Yes, he wanted to help, but he wasn't a fool. If he could find survivors without any darkspawn about, Anders would be happy. He was a healer, first and foremost. Anders knew enough primal magic to survive, but his bond with Compassion was what made him an exceptional mage.

The last he'd seen of the fighting had taken place on the ramparts, so that was where Anders headed. He took the stairs, hoping to avoid darkspawn while simultaneously hoping to encounter them. On the one hand, if he was fighting darkspawn, that meant they weren't chasing young damsels in distress, but on the other, he liked living. One or two darkspawn at a time would be doable.

He was never so lucky. On his way up the ramparts, Anders spotted a half dozen darkspawn. Definitely not the sort of thing he wanted to tangle with, but one of the darkspawn was dragging a woman along by her ankle, and judging from her screams she was still very much alive.

Anders didn't have to fight them. The darkspawn were out on the second story battlements, facing away from him. The stairs continued up. He could just keep going. After all, the Warden Commander had been headed to the third story. Anders could meet up with him, and pick smarter fights.

But how would he sleep at night, knowing Compassion would see his dreams, and that this poor woman would be in them? What would he say to her? What kind of healer was he?

A stupid one, Anders decided, reaching into the Fade. He conjured a sleep spell, and with a deep breath and a prayer, cast it in a wide net over the darkspawn. They dropped like stones, and Anders crept out from his hiding place. The woman had been caught in the spell as well, there was no helping that, but he could carry her out before the darkspawn woke.

She was an older woman dressed in a fine silk gown, with her long grey hair done up in braids that had doubtless been impeccable before the darkspawn attack. They were frazzled now; her gown was torn, and she bore cuts and bruises all along her face. Anders looped his arms under her knees and shoulders, and picked her up.

Maker save him, he was pathetic. Anders grit his teeth to keep from grunting with effort and potentially waking a darkspawn. Why was everything so bloody heavy? The little old lady couldn't have been more than eight or nine stones, but Anders' arms and lower back ached in protest. As soon as this was over, he was going to start doing presses. What kind of healer couldn't carry his patients?

Anders made it back to the relative safety of the stairwell and set the woman down. He still had to deal with the darkspawn. Fire had been effective so far, so Anders conjured a large swath of grease, and flung it over the sleeping darkspawn. His held his breath with a few of them twitched, but none woke. Calling forth a ball of flame, Anders held the spell until it swelled to the size of his torso, and loosed it at the darkspawn.

It was spectacular. The half dozen beasts woke, screaming in agony as the grease caught fire. Burning oil slid down their faces, their arms, dragging the skin along with. The smell of burning flesh filled the air, and reminded Anders of the bacon Biff had had for breakfast. His stomach rumbled, and then turned when Anders realized the smell of burning darkspawn was almost appetizing.

Fortunately, his stomach was empty, which meant no more vomiting. Anders watched to be sure none of the darkspawn survived his spell, and was about to turn away when one of the human-looking darkspawn toppled over the ramparts, and landed in the stables below. A gout of flame leapt up into the sky as the structure caught fire.

"I'm an idiot," Anders said. The structure collapsed a moment later, and from the wreckage burst a handful of burning darkspawn who must have been taking shelter in the stables. "I'm a genius." Anders revised.

Turning back to the woman he'd rescued, Anders dispelled the veil of sleep he'd cast over her. With a groan, she sat upright. Her eyes were a shade like warm brandy; Anders was glad he'd saved her, "What-? What happened? Who are you?"

"Your rescuer, my fair lady," Anders said.

"Fair lady," The old woman rolled her eyes, but Anders swore he saw a blush. "Too fair to be of any use, it seems. Maker's mercy, the Wardens... Those poor men. They were doing a demonstration in the yard when the darkspawn attacked. I saw Keenan dragged away... Tell me, Ser, do you know if any yet live?"

"I do indeed." Anders assured her, "The Warden Commander was alive last I saw. Sturdy looking fellow, I'm actually trying to get back to him. Strength in numbers and all that."

"I sincerely hope not, or we are doomed." The woman said grimly. "Should you find him, there was a darkspawn leading them, the likes of which I've never seen. I swear he spoke. Not the usual grunts and groans of darkspawn, but the common tongue. The Warden Commander must be warned."

"Talking?" Anders repeated, "Actually talking? 'Hello, I'm a darkspawn, how do you do?' and all that?"

"This is no laughing matter, young man." The old woman scowled at him. The frown wrinkled her features something fierce, which was a shame considering she had a rather pretty face.

"Oh no, I'm shaking in my knickers, trust me," Anders promised. The woman eyed him dubiously, but Anders didn't really care what she thought of him so long as she was safe. "The way back down is mostly clear. You should head to the outer courtyard; I heard there's more survivors there."

The old woman nodded, "Thank you, then, Ser. You may call me Mistress Woolsey. Should we both survive this, find me, and I will repay you for saving my life."

"Oh you don't need to-" Anders started to say, but the sprightly old gal was already running back down the stairs. "Do that." Anders finished anyway.

Well. On then. Standing from his crouch, Anders hurried up the stairs to the next level of the Keep. The third story ramparts were empty, for the moment. From where he was, two doors led into the Keep. Anders tried the one on his left, but it was barricaded from the other side. The door on right opened up into a hallway.

There were sounds of battle further on. Anders broke into a light jog, hoping to find either the Vigil's shoulders or the Warden Commander, and made a terrible mistake. The hall opened up into a small circular chamber with two other exits. The room's furniture had been stacked up against the exit furthest from Anders, but there must have been too many entries to barricade.

The room's inhabitants lay dead in the sunken seating area in the center of the room. The poor buggers had taken few darkspawn with them, but not all. Five darkspawn were still alive, and were eating the dead bodies of human and darkspawn alike. They looked up at his entrance and screamed.

The sound of fighting was still there. It was coming from down the hall. Anders could run for it and hope he met up with help, or he could stand and fight. Anders decided to stick to what he knew, and ran, flinging a sloppy fireball into the pit as he bolted past the feeding darkspawn. The smell of charred meat followed him, making his stomach rumble again. No more fire spells, Anders decided queasily.

He ran into more darkspawn, but at least this group was engaged with something other than eating. The Warden Commander and his recruit were there, fighting side by side with sword and shield, and a dwarf looked to have joined them. There were four darkspawn still standing, and Anders threw out a frost bolt at the one engaging the Warden Commander.

It froze, and a blow from the man's sword shattered it. Anders waved when Amell glanced at him, not quite daring to look over his shoulder to see if the darkspawn were following him. Amell sheathed his sword and ran to meet him, so Anders assumed they must not have been.

He guessed very wrong. Amell reached out and grabbed his arm, wrenching him forward. "Behind me," Amell ordered, as if Anders had a choice. Anders turned around in time to see the darkspawn that had been chasing him stop abruptly. Lifted off their feet, they started seizing and twitching erratically. Their veins grew twisted and bulbous, and then burst, blood gushing from their ears, their eyes, their every pore.

Anders... didn't know that spell. He took a cautious step back as Amell drew his sword and re-engaged them. To his right, a darkspawn went crashing through the wall, and reminded him there was still a battle going on. Redirecting his focus, Anders found Mhiari fending off two darkspawn, and froze one. She took down the remaining offender easily enough, and in a span of a few breaths the fight was over.

The hall was stuffed with dead darkspawn, and the blood was nearly up to Anders' ankles. They had to climb over more than a few bodies to regroup away from all the death. The dwarf in particular looked to be having trouble navigating the graveyard, stumbling over one of the larger corpses that blocked the hall. Anders gave him a helping hand, and immediately regretted it.

Sweat and blood could make anyone rank, but the dwarf smelled overwhelmingly of alcohol. Anders was glad he hadn't cast any fireballs. A match and the dwarf's breath could have brought down the whole Keep. The dwarf grunted his thanks, and Anders managed a light headed nod.

"Ser Mage," Mhairi spoke up, taking off her helmet to grace him with her pretty eyes, and a lovely smile, "I thought you had fled."

"I know, I know," Anders said, "I'm really bad at the whole 'fugitive from justice' thing, but you were right. I can't just leave without helping. And I can't help without killing darkspawn, so here we are."

"Well I for one appreciate your help," Mhairi said. She really was terribly pretty.

"Well, thank me later," Anders winked. "Trust me, you'll be mighty grateful I came back. I'm really good."

The dwarf laughed at him, taking off his own helmet. He was a walking stereotype. Bright red hair rolled off his head and tangled into a massive beard, and he carried a tankard at his hip and an axe on his back. Anders felt racist just looking at him. "Mage comedian, huh?" The dwarf said, pulling another flask out of his armor and taking a long swig, "That's a useful specialty, I'll bet."

"About as useful as smelling like whiskey vomit, I imagine," Anders shot back.

The dwarf threw back his head and let out a roar of laughter, elbowing Amell in the hips. "Oh, he's a keeper. Let's make him dance."

Amell looked at him for a long moment and Anders tried not to fidget under his stare. Amell still wore his helmet, but it made the scrutiny no less bearable. Anders wasn't a fan of helmets, especially full helms. Templars wore full helms, and in Anders' experience, the anonymity could lead men to do things that would make even monsters hesitate.

"Stay close," Amell said eventually, apparently accepting him.

"Try and stop me," Anders said lightly.

The three armored warriors re-donned their helmets and took the lead, which was just fine with Anders. He followed them down the hall and back into the circular room he'd fled from to reach them. The pit of bodies was still there, and the dwarf gave it an appreciative whistle. "I'm Oghren, by the way," The dwarf volunteered.

"Anders." Anders said back. Before the barricaded door, Amell had sheathed his sword and was lifting away the rubble and debris with telekinetic magic. That was a neat trick, Anders decided. He should probably be helping. He looked back to the dwarf instead. "Do you always smell like a brewery?"

"I'm not sharing, if that's where you're going with this." Oghren said.

"I was just wondering if it would be safe to cast any fire spells around you." Anders explained, "I'm a little worried your breath might make them explode."

"You and me, we're gonna be friends." Oghren decided, grinning at him. It was a horrid grin of yellowed teeth, knotted beard, and foul breath, but Anders returned it. This was definitely a marked improvement from running through the Keep alone.

Amell cleared the door, and they made their way into the next hall. As soon as they turned the corner, Mhairi screamed. "Rowland!"

On the ground before them was a soldier, or what was left of one. "Mhairi?" The man coughed, spittle and froth forming on his lips with the effort it took to speak. Standing would have been the end of him; a gash in his stomach had severed him nearly in two. The only thing keeping him alive was the hand he kept to the wound. Every few heart beats, a spurt of blood would spray from between his fingers.

"Rowland, I'm here," Mhairi fell to her knees beside the man, her hands hovering anxiously over his injury, "I'm here, Rowland. We have a healer. We can help you. Anders-you can heal him, can't you?"

Anders was a mage. Not a miracle worker. He could pull men from death's doorstep, but Rowland was already in the door and taking off his coat. "He's beyond healing magic," Anders said sadly, "Maybe a shot of whiskey for the pain?"

"I like the way you think," Oghren snorted. He pulled out his flask and even seemed ready to offer it when Mhairi yelled at them.

"Stop it! Both of you! This isn't funny!" She looked pleadingly to Amell, "Commander-please, we can do something, can't we?"

"The... the commander?" Rowland coughed again. It wasn't sounding good. Anders didn't give him more than a few minutes to live.

Amell knelt down beside Rowland. He took off his helmet, and set it on the floor beside him. "I'm here, Rowland."

"We only had a moment's warning before they were on us, Commander. The seneschal ordered a counter-attack, but they came out of nowhere. There's one with them, a darkspawn who talks; his magic is powerful. He took the seneschal-and I was-in pursuit-" Rowland coughed again, and another spurt of blood came from between his fingers.

"I met a woman who said something similar," Anders said. "She said a talking darkspawn led the attack. I'm not much of a gambler, but what do you suppose are the odds it's a coincidence?"

"Please, Commander, can't we do something for him?" Mhairi begged again.

"We can give him a clean death." Amell said.

"What!?" Mhairi stared at him, "No!"

"It's okay, Mhairi," Rowland smiled at her; there was nothing reassuring in his smile. A pink froth still painted his lips, and the pool of blood in his mouth overflowed and spilled down his chin when he spoke, "I'm not getting any better. It was an honor to meet you, Commander. I wish I could have fought at your side, just once."

Amell drew a dagger from his boot, and held it in his left hand. His right, he held out for Rowland to shake, "You still can, if that's what you want."

"Oh boy. Here we go," Oghren muttered.

Anders couldn't look away from what was unfolding. Rowland looked at the Commander's outstretched hand, and back up at his face, and seemed to slowly process he was offering some sort of deal. "It is," Rowland said, letting go of his stomach to shake Amell's hand.

Amell slit his throat. Anders didn't know what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn't that. The air around them grew cold, and Anders felt the pull of the Veil, heard the distant whispers of excited wisps, and watched in a mixture of horror and fascination as dark energy flowered from Amell's outstretched hand and into Rowland's body.

Oblivious to the fact that he had died rather recently, Rowland stood up. His guts spilled out when he did, and made a rather sickening splash when they hit the ground. Uncaring, Rowland picked up his sword and his shield, and stood ready to fight.

Mhairi was horrified."You-You! Blood mage! Maleficar! What have you done? What did you do to him!?"

"What he wanted." Amell said simply. He picked up his helmet and stood, "And this is necromancy, recruit, not blood magic. The two are different."

"This is unholy!" Mhairi screamed. "Let him go!"

"And replace him with what?" Amell asked, putting his helmet back on, "You've seen the bodies we've passed. Rowland was the first in any form to fight."

"Rowland is a man! He's not a corpse for your magic!"

"He is now." Amell said. Anders felt a sudden chill in the air. "This is the sort of magic I practice, recruit. I'm sorry no one warned you, but we have darkspawn to fight, and I'll use whatever I can against them."

Amell turned around, and continued down the hall with Rowland at his side. Mhairi sucked in a rickety breath, and dug the heels of the her palms into her eyes.

"It doesn't get any easier, kid." Oghren said to her. "Did you think it was gonna be rainbows and butterfly farts? That guy's a Warden. You think you know what that means, but you don't." Oghren took a long drink from his flask, and stuffed it securely back in his armor. "You really don't." He muttered, and followed Amell down the hall.

"If you need a shoulder to cry on-" Anders started to say. Mhairi scowled at him, and stormed down the hall after Oghren and Amell.

Anders followed her. On the one hand, he was horrified, but on the other, he was fascinated. Necromancy was spirit magic. Gruesome, disturbing, horrible spirit magic, but spirit magic none the less. It was also almost unheard of outside of Nevarra, and Anders would probably never get another chance to see it again when this was over. Which was honestly just fine with him, but he may as well sate his curiosity now.

Jogging up ahead, Anders fell into step beside Amell and tried to ignore the smell radiating off Rowland. "So... what kind of spirit is that?" Anders asked. Amell cocked his head at him, and said nothing. "Hello?" Anders joked, "Anyone home? Is the Warden-Commander in?"

"I'm sorry." Amell collected himself, "I thought I misheard you. I'm not used to that kind of reaction. It's a wisp, not a spirit. Why do you ask?"

"Well, I am a spirit healer." Anders said, "I'm sort of fond of them. Do you ever call on spirits?"

"Now isn't really the time to discuss magical theory, Anders," Amell pointed out. "But... I can tell you anything you want to know when we're done here, if you'd like."

Anders didn't plan to be around when they were done here, but he nodded rather than say as much to the Warden Commander. As they made their way deeper into the Keep, Anders understood why the man had been so keen on reanimating Rowland. It was impressive magic. A band of dark blue energy was twisted around Amell's shield arm and tied him to Rowland. The two fought together so well it was like having an extra sword of the living, breathing variety on their side.

Mhairi hated it. Anders could see it in the poor woman's face every time they paused. Anders felt sorry for her. Anders knew he wouldn't have been able to stand seeing any friend of his walking around moments after their death, but Amell was right. The way the dwarf fought, there were no suitable corpses left for a nercromancer. Every swing of his axe cleaved darkspawn into two or more pieces, and the ones Anders froze tended to shatter.

Mercifully, one the larger darkspawn ended up taking Rowland's head off, and Amell didn't bother trying to bring him back a second time. It didn't seem to be a spell he could employ off hand, the way Anders could with frost or fire, so they followed the darkspawn without any further necromancy taking place.

The trail of death and destruction, toppled barricades and mutilated bodies led further up through the Keep, and soon they were out on the ramparts again. They were on the fourth story, and the wind hit them something fierce. Anders had spent his life in the Circle tower, and had no problems with heights, but the dwarf took one look out at the courtyard below and wheezed.

"Wait, wait," Oghren said, standing with his back firmly planted against the Vigil's walls. "By the stones of my Ancestors, we're high up. Just-just give me a minute."

"I could use a rest as well," Mhairi said weakly.

"Catch up," Amell said. He continued out along the ramparts, and Anders decided to follow him. There was no reason for the dwarf to be afraid; a stone banister ran around the ramparts, and would keep all of them from an errant spill. Amell stopped where the wall ended, and held out a hand for Anders to stop as well.

There around the corner were four darkspawn, and a man. The man was on his knees, and a darkspawn stood behind him with a wicked looking sword to his throat. "What's the plan?" Anders whispered. No sooner had the words left his lips than the sound of a door slamming open drew his eyes to the opposite side of the ramparts, where a lone soldier appeared.

"Seneschal!" The solider yelled, running forward with his sword drawn. The first darkspawn the brave, stupid man encountered parried the blade so deftly it flew clear of his hands. The darkspawn picked the poor sod up by his collar and laughed.

"It has ended just as he foretold!" The darkspawn spoke. Actually spoke, actual words. The darkspawn sounded like he was gargling rocks, but Anders understood him. The darkspawn walked the soldier to the edge of the ramparts, and proved just how effective the banister was by throwing him clear over the edge.

Beside him, Amell drew his dagger from his boot, and set it to the inside his arm, where no armor was between skin and blade. He made a quick cut just above the inside of his elbow, and ruined what looked like a very fine tunic. Blood flowed from the wound, and formed into a fine mist that wrapped around Amell's fingers. "You will not mention this," Amell warned him.

Anders gave a quick shake of his head. He wasn't about to argue with a blood mage. Amell flung the spell towards the darkspawn holding the seneschal, but as Anders watched, nothing seemed to happen. "Protect the seneschal when the fighting starts," Amell ordered.

"I'll try," Anders promised. There was time to be terrified of Amell later. The darkspawn were worse. Probably.

"Be taking this one gently," The talking darkspawn said, gesturing to the captive seneschal, "We are wishing no more death than is necessary."

"Necessary?" The seneschal laughed. "As if your kind has ever done anything else."

A hand touched Ander's shoulder, and he jumped, almost screaming until he realized it was just Mhairi, crouched beside him and craning for a better look with Oghren at her side. They both nodded to the Warden-Commander, who had since sheathed his dagger and no longer looked so much the maleficar.

"You are thinking you know of our kind, human?" The darkspawn chortled, "It is understandable, but that will soon be changed."

"Others will come, creature!" The seneschal said fiercely. Balls a plenty on that one. Anders doubted the man would need his protection if someone could get a sword into his hand. "The Grey Wardens will stop you!"

"Is that our cue?" Anders wondered.

"Oghren, the alpha." Amell said.

The dwarf drew his axe from off his back, and seemed to forget his fear of heights at the prospect of battle. "Aye, I'll shut him up." Oghren grunted, charging out from behind the wall without any further warning. "Hey ugly!" He screamed as his battle cry.

Amell followed him, and Mhairi went with him. Anders thought it was a death sentence for the seneschal, until he finally saw what Amell's spell had done. The darkspawn holding the seneschal had quite inexplicably decided to let him go. Around Amell's arm was the same band of magic that had tied him to Rowland, only this one was a deep red instead of blue. The darkspawn under his thrall turned on his fellows, and Anders had a clear path to reach the seneschal, and pull him out of the fighting.

"Capture the Grey Warden!" The leader screamed, parrying a blow from Oghren's axe. "Kill these others!"

"Arm me," The seneschal demanded. Anders held out his arm, and the seneschal stared at him.

"All I've got, I'm afraid." Anders shrugged, "I think they've got it, though. Look,"

The leader was being forced back by Oghren's vicious onslaught. Mhairi was engaging one darkspawn, while Amell and his puppet quickly dispatched the last. Anders threw out another frost spell to help Mhairi, and the beast shattered beneath her sword. As soon as it did, Mhairi turned on Amell's puppet and lopped the thing's head clean off. Amell nodded his thanks at her, as if he hadn't had the creature safely under his thrall.

Anders supposed that was one obvious downside to necromancy and the sort of magic Amell apparently used. It made it hard to tell friend from foe. And it was against Chantry Law, and the Maker's will, and brought forth demons and all other manner of evil. Just a few things. Nothing trivial. Definitely no compelling reasons not to use it. Anders watched the rest of the battle play out, wondering if he should just run for it now.

Another suspicious spell from Amell made the darkspawn leader double over, and cough up blood. Oghren used the break in the creature's defense to cleave his axe up into its chest. A shower of black blood poured down on the dwarf, and the creature seized once, and then died. Oghren kicked it off his axe, and over the edge of the banister with a victorious laugh.

"Does anyone need healing?" Anders asked. The seneschal gave him a long look, and Anders regretted opening his mouth.

"I know you," The seneschal realized, "You're the apostate who was brought in yesterday. What became of the templars who brought you in?"

"He claims not to have killed them," Mhairi answered for him. Well. That would teach him to trust a pretty face. It wouldn't, Anders knew, but he may as well pretend he'd learned something.

"They are dead then," The seneschal deduced. Now that Anders had the chance to look at him, he decided he didn't like him. He had a grandfatherly look to him, grey hair and downturned eyes, and a know-it-all tone that reminded Anders a bit too much of the First Enchanter.

"It was tragic." Anders said flatly, knowing he should probably shut up, but his mouth wasn't listening, "Really. But I didn't do it."

"You were outside your cell when we came upon you." Mhairi said. Traitorous bitch. "Is it such a stretch to assume they might have freed you to help fight the darkspawn, before you turned on them?"

"Hey, look-" Anders began, not quite sure what he was about to say, but he doubted it was going to be pretty.

"I saw the wounds. They died to darkspawn." Amell said. "Which are still our concern at the moment. Seneschal-"

"Varel, Commander." The Seneschal introduced himself with a nod, "Thank you for your rescue. I owe you my life."

"Seneschal Varel, do you know where else the darkspawn might be concentrated?"

"In the yard, but you would have had to clear them to get this far." Varel paused to think, "Captain Garevel was gathering survivors in the throne room. I imagine you'd have had to fight your way through the Keep, but you're right, we should be certain. If we can regroup with Captain Garevel, we can have the surviving soldiers do a sweep of the Keep."

"Lead the way to the throne room, then," Amell said. Varel nodded, and turned towards the door his would-be rescuer had come through. The warriors all moved to follow, and Anders supposed there was nothing for it but to go with them, but it was getting harder and harder to picture himself escaping now.

"Commander," Anders said, drawing Amell's attention. Amell hung back, and Anders waited until the others were out of earshot to talk to him. "Thank you. I'm not used to people looking out for me. I-um..." Won't tell anyone you're a crazy blood mage? "I hope you know I'll return the favor."

Amell took off his helmet, and held it under his arm. He held out his hand, and Anders couldn't help but hesitate. The last time Amell shook hands with someone, he'd slit their throat. If nothing else, at least Amell hadn't done it under the veil of anonymity his helmet provided, the way a templar would. Amell had looked Rowland in the eye, as he looked Anders in the eye now.

What choice did he have, really? Anders shook his hand.

Notes:

Fanart
Chibi Amell

Apples and Apostates
I Need a Drink: The past two chapters from Amell's perspective.

Chapter 3: Conscription

Notes:

Thank you for reading.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 17 Ferventis Late Afternoon

Vigil's Keep Throne Room

The seneschal led them to throne room with no further darkspawn encounters. Crowded within were the survivors of Vigil's Keep, all ecstatic to hear the siege had been broken. Amell was promptly dragged to the front of the room, and a cheer started up in his name. It would have been the prime time to escape, but someone grabbed him and pushed him towards the front with Oghren and Mhairi, and hailed all of them as heroes.

It was probably the second most uncomfortable thing that had happened to Anders that day. He wanted nothing more than to slink away, and escape in all the pandemonium, but it wasn't happening. When the cheers died down, the captain of the guard came to speak to Amell and inform him that the darkspawn had started retreating as soon as their leader died.

That was the last of what Anders heard. There was a lot of talking going on. Consequently, Anders probably should have been doing a lot of listening, but he wasn't. He wanted to get out of here. Of all people, Oghren noticed his discomfort, and have his wrist a tug to get his attention. "Hey. You fought pretty well back there, for someone not doing any real fighting. I think you've earned a taste of Oghren's special brew."

"If that's a euphemism, I'm going to have to decline." Anders said, "Reluctantly, of course."

Oghren snorted, fishing his flask out from inside his armor. "You aren't going to want decline this, trust me. It puts hair on your face,"

"Is that what that is? I thought a wild animal was attached to your face." Anders joked.

"You think you're so funny don't you? Sparkle-fingers," Oghren said.

Oghren handed over his flask, and Anders took a drink. Maker knew he needed it after the day he'd had. Whatever Oghren's 'special brew' was, it didn't have a taste to it. It felt like swallowing fire, and burned the back of Anders' throat all the way down to his stomach. It made him cough like a fool, and went straight to his head. Anders loved it.

He also liked Oghren rather a lot. Sure, he was dirty, he had a nose that looked like it could break a brick, and he smelled like death incarnate, but looks weren't everything. Anyone who was good for a laugh was alright in Anders' book. "So, you and the Commander? Seems like there's some history there."

"Eh, you could say that." Oghren said. "Fought the Blight together, named the nugget after him, so I guess there's that. My turn for a question then. So, Circle mage. What's it like?"

"To have all this power at my fingertips?" Anders guessed.

"No," Oghern giggled, his voice pitching up several octaves at his own upcoming joke. "To always have to wear a skirt?"

"Oh, you don't know the story behind the robes?" Anders raised his eyebrows at him, "You know how strict things are in the Circle, right? Of course you do. Well, the robes make quick trysts in the corner easy. No laces or buttons. You're just.... well, you're done before the templars catch on."

"Really?" Oghren asked.

"Just ask anyone," Anders glanced at where Amell was still talking to his men; the other mage was wearing full armor, head to toe. "Well, maybe not him. Mind me asking what the story behind the armor is?"

"Piss if I know," Oghren snorted. He offered his flask again, and Anders took it. He didn't usually count himself a lightweight, but whatever Oghren was holding onto was vicious stuff. It probably wasn't a good idea to be drinking it on an empty stomach, but then Anders had never claimed to be smart. He took another drink and came up gasping.

"Not bad." Oghren said in approval, "Alright, lemme think. I guess it started about a year ago. We're in some elf ruin, right? And he finds this... mage thing. Little vial of blood."

"A phylactery?" Anders supplied for him.

"Sure. Anyway, he does some magic shit with it, and gets knocked flat on his ass. Out for hours. When he wakes up, he's babbling elf speak, and suddenly wants a sword and some armor. Starts asking everyone about how to fight like a real warrior should. Who was I to say no?" Oghren shrugged.

Amell's conversation with his men ended, and he came over to join them, carrying his helmet under his arm. It seemed such a hassle to wear, putting it on for every battle and taking it off for every conversation. And it mussed his hair something terrible. Anders didn't see the appeal.

"I basically taught him everything he knows." Oghren said at Amell's approach, offering the man his flask.

"It's true," Amell said, taking an easy drink and handing it back, "Anders, a word?"

"Knickerweasels?" Anders supplied. Amell exhaled hard through his nose; Anders thought he'd deserved a sensible chuckle, at least. "Sure." Anders said seriously. Amell gestured for him to walk with him, and led him out of the throne room.

The throne room was the only part of the Keep that had been relatively untouched by the darkspawn. As soon as they passed through the great doors, Anders was brought back to the jarring reality of the attack. There were still bodies, human and darkspawn, scattered throughout the main hall. Tapestries lining the walls had been burnt, statues had been knocked over, and there didn't seem to be a single piece of furniture that wasn't upside down and shoved against a door. It was downright depressing, really. Anders tried not to think about it.

"We need a healer." Amell said. No foreplay at all with this one. "The Vigil has a standing physician, but supplies are low. Bandages, poultices, and the like. Can you spare a few hours to see to the worst of the wounded?"

"Just like that?" Anders asked, "Not even going to butter me up first? No promise of a pony for little Anders if he stays?"

"I can spare a few sovereigns if you've need of them." Amell said seriously.

"It was a joke. I was kidding. Laugh." Anders said. Amell smiled. Close enough. "Of course I'll help. But I could use a few lyrium potions, and something to eat. I don't have anything in me but whatever Oghren was drinking, and it's burning a hole in my stomach."

"... Did the templars not feed you?" Amell asked, looking at him with an expression akin to pity. Well, that was new. Anders didn't know how to feel about that.

"Oh, you know, if you want to call a bowl of oatmeal a day fed." Anders shrugged. "I don't, but some people might. Very thin people, I imagine."

"I don't know how hard the kitchens were hit, but I'll find you something." Amell promised.

The right side of the outer courtyard held two buildings, and the blacksmith. A stairwell between the two buildings led up to the outer walls, but they didn't need to climb it for Anders to see that was where they were keeping the wounded. Men and women were littered all the way down the stairs, some bandaged, most not, all moaning in pain, begging for water, or praying for death.

"You weren't kidding," Anders said. He couldn't walk away from this. This was what magic was for; it was why the Maker had made him a mage. "This is bad. I'll do what I can."

"Thank you," Amell said. "I'll be right back with lyrium potions, and food. Do you need anything else?"

"Now that you mention it, I could do with a harem, a few bottles of wine, and that pony. But seriously, I'll be alright..." Unless he starved penniless on the streets of Amaranthine when he left, unable to afford a boat to escape Ferelden. But that wasn't Amell's problem, and Anders wasn't a beggar. He was, however, rather terrible at guarding his expressions, and Amell noticed his hesitation.

"Ask me," Amell said encouragingly.

"Were you serious? About those sovereigns?" Anders asked. "I mean, I'll help anyway; I'm not a bastard, but the templars took everything I had."

"I was," Amell assured him. "Does three sovereigns sound reasonable?"

"It sounds like you're terrible at haggling," Anders laughed, "Or you want me to do a lot more than just heal. I'm warning you right now, I don't do eye contact, and no kissing on the lips."

"I can work with that." Amell said easily, looking him over. Anders couldn't tell if he was joking. He had to be. Anders was a mess, and Amell soon left him with the injured, "Let me go get you those potions."

"And food!" Anders called out after him. "Food is important!"

Well then. Time to get to work. Anders stepped over a few of the wounded blocking the stairwell, and found the Vigil's physician on the wall, trying to get a patient to drink. He was an older looking fellow, stern faced, and he scowled at Anders' approach. "Oh no. If you can walk, you go to the barracks. Only the grievously wounded here."

"Well you're here, so I'm guessing that must be more of a guideline than a rule." Anders said. "Or healers are exempt. Which I am, but if you think you've got it under control-"

"What are your qualifications?" The physician demanded.

"Well I'm pretty and my voice is dreamy, so I've got pretty good bedside manner. Oh, and I can do this," Anders held up a hand and conjured a low flame about it.

"A mage." The physician said with a sneer. "Very well. The worst of the injured are down the way. If you can do anything for them, do it."

Lovely fellow. Very friendly. Anders left him to dribble more water down his patient's face, and crossed the wall to where the worst of the injured were lying, sprawled out on makeshift cots and gurneys, blankets, or in some cases nothing more than the cold hard stone.

He found a girl with a rather grievous looking head wound, and knelt to see to her. Head wounds always looked worse than they actually were, but that didn't mean they could be ignored. Anders reached for his magic, and spread it over the unconscious girl. He could sense that her skull was cracked, and her brain was swollen. Not the sort of thing he could tackle without Compassion.

The spirit was there, waiting just beyond the Veil. Anders called on her, and channeled her energy into a cleansing wave. It washed over the girl, and slowly brought down the swelling, before knitting the crack in her skull back together. It also took a great deal out of him. Anders sat down beside the unconscious girl, suddenly realizing how tired he was.

He'd been casting non-stop for hours. Anders liked to think he had a strong connection to the Fade, but everyone had their limits. Anders had heard rumors of mages killing themselves over-exerting their mana, and decided not to risk it. Leaving the rest of the wounded for later, Anders found an open spot at the base of the stairs, and sat down to wait.

He didn't have to wait long. Amell returned carrying a small crate full of lyrium potions under one arm, and a tray laden with bowls in the other. The crate Amell set at his feet, and the tray he handed to Anders before taking a seat beside him.

It was the most beautiful thing Anders had ever seen. There were two bowls full of a thick stew of beef, potatoes, and carrots, a whole loaf of bread, two dark green salads garnished with cranberries, two bowls of rice, and two tankards of ale. Keep it together, Anders. No tears. Don't let him see you cry.

"Will that work?" Amell asked.

"It's beautiful," Anders said. "There's no way I can eat all of this, but it's beautiful."

"I'll eat what you don't," Amell said, taking a spoon and one of the soup bowls off the tray, "I assumed you wouldn't mind if I ate with you."

"I honestly didn't think you'd have the time," Anders admitted, unable to decide where to start. The salad seemed safe. No reason to push his stomach. "Don't you have wardeny things to do?"

"I do, in fact, have wardeny things to do." Amell said, "But I also have to eat. Were you still interested in hearing about reanimation?"

"I am indeed." Anders tried a bite of his salad. It was delicious. There were crumbles of blue cheese and almonds, and he didn't have to eat it with his hands. Today was finally starting to turn up. "So the necromancy, you never call on spirits? Just wisps?"

"Just wisps," Amell said. "They're drawn to death. I can feel them beyond the Veil, waiting for it to thin so they can cross, and I bind them. I studied necromancy at the Circle, but it was all just theory and conjecture until the Wardens recruited me."

"Lucky you," Anders said.

"Lucky me." Amell agreed. "Should I assume you rely on spirits as a spirit healer? Do you use just one or...?"

"That's me, putting all my eggs in one basket." Anders grinned, ripping off a piece of bread to dip in his stew. The stew was also delicious. He was going to end up overeating and making himself sick. Well, there was no helping it. He certainly couldn't be expected to pace himself after the day he'd had, "You can see how well it's worked out for me so far,"

"Would it be too forward to ask what kind of spirit you rely on?" Amell asked.

"Compassion." Anders said.

Amell measured him for a moment, "I can see that." He decided.

"Well I mean, what else are your choices, really?" Anders shrugged, "What am I going to do, run around healing people with Justice and Faith?"

Amell said something in response that Anders didn't catch. A commotion in the courtyard distracted him. A rather large procession of important looking people had arrived, all in very official looking armor. The seneschal had come out to greet them, and of course, there was a templar with them. "Well that's... well shit." Anders sighed.

As was his luck, the seneschal gestured towards where they were sitting, and the whole procession trotted over. Amell stood up to receive them. Anders wondered if anyone would notice if he crawled away.

The man leading them was in gold and silver full plate, and stood with his hand on the pommel of an extravagant sword. Anders guessed he was someone terribly important, but he was more concerned with the templar he was with. Rylock. Why did it have to be her, of all people? Hadn't she gone ahead to Denerim the day he'd been caught? What was she doing back?

The man leading the procession started talking while Anders was tried to become one with the stairwell. "So... this isn't what I was expecting. I'd wanted to come and give the Orlesian Wardens a formal welcome, but I heard you were ambushed? Care to give me the full story?"

"If you heard we were ambushed, you heard the full story," Amell said.

"I suppose so," The man said, taking in the many wounded piled on the stairs behind them, "Seneschal Varel tells me the rest of the Wardens are unaccounted for, but I see you're still alive and well."

"Try not to sound so disappointed." Amell said.

"I'll get over it, I'm sure." The man grinned.

Keep talking, Anders prayed. Keep talking. Walk away. Go talk somewhere else. Don't look at me.

It didn't happen. The man turned to survey the destruction of the Keep, and once he moved, there was nothing keeping Anders out of Rylock's line of sight. The look on her face was terrifying. Surprise, but also malice, and beneath that, glee. "King Alistair! Your majesty, beware!" Rylock pushed to the front of procession, "This man is a dangerous criminal!"

"Oh, I don't know about that-" The King started to say.

With quick steps, Rylock strode past both the King and Amell and grabbed Anders by his arm, wrenching him up from the steps and knocking over the lovely tray of food Amell had brought him. The stew spilled on his boots, and rice went everywhere. "This is an apostate who we were in the process of bringing back to the Circle to face justice! Where are Biff and Harold? What did you do to them, murderer?"

"Murderer?" Anders repeated. He made a rather feeble effort to pull back from her, more for the show of it than anything else. Her grip was like a vice. This was what he got for staying to help. This was why Anders first concern should always be Anders. "We're jumping to that, are we?"

"I swear, if they are dead, I will see you hang." Rylock hissed. She reached for a pair of manacles hanging from her belt, and Anders sighed. Everyone was staring at him. The King. The Seneschal. The whole procession of soldiers... Amell.

"Your templars died to darkspawn, not Anders." Amell said in his defense. Anders knew he was wasting his breath, but he gave him a smile for trying.

"This is Chantry business, Warden. It's no concern of yours." Rylock snapped, shackling Anders' wrists behind his back.

"It's every concern of mine." Amell said. "This man was instrumental in saving the Vigil, and has been an asset to the Wardens."

Now he was just lying, Anders thought. Well.. it was sweet of him. No one had ever lied for him before. Not to a templar, at least.

"Maybe he should be shown a little mercy?" The King offered up.

"Aeonar will be a mercy to him, if he's not hung for his crimes." Rylock said. Anders felt sick. The Veil was thin in the mages' prison, and any mage with a strong connection to the Fade was found guilty when spirits and demons sought them out. A spirit healer's connection to the Fade was almost as strong as a blood mage, but.... no. No reason to think that far ahead. Think about something else. The stew had been good. He had that.

"You know nothing of mercy." Amell actually sounded angry. It really was sweet. "I hereby conscript this mage for the Wardens."

"What?" Anders said.

"What!?" Rylock screamed, giving his manacles a yank that pulled him away from Amell. "Never!"

"I believe the Grey Wardens still retain the Right of Conscription, no?" The King said. The King himself was speaking for him. Any minute now Anders was going to wake up from this dream and find himself back in his cell in solitary, going mad and arguing with Mr. Wiggums about the nuances of creation magic. "I will allow it."

"This-! I-!" Rylock sputtered. Her hand had such a fierce grip on his arm Anders winced.

"Get those shackles off my recruit," Amell glared. The King shrugged his deference to Amell, and Rylock finally yielded.

"If... if your Majesty feels it is best." She muttered. A moment later, and the shackles were off. Rylock gave him such a shove it sent Anders stumbling. Amell caught him and righted him as Rylock stormed away.

"Six months, Alistair." Amell said. Whatever significance there was to the number, Anders didn't know. He was still having trouble processing what had just happened. "This shouldn't still be happening. Anora promised us autonomy."

"And you promised me revenge." Alistair grinned ruefully, "I guess we're both pretty disappointed, aren't we? Ah... look. I can see we're not going to be sitting down for tea and crumpets any time soon. You've got a lot of work ahead of you, dealing with the vestiges of the blight, and I've got to deal with the throne. I won't stay.

"Ferelden's still relying on you. I don't know what's behind all this trouble in Amaranthine, but I'm sure you can handle it. I can't help you with the darkspawn, but you know where to find me, if you need me for... you know, king stuff. Good luck, Amell. May the Maker watch over you."

And just like that it was over. Anders watched the procession leave as quickly as it came, his head spinning. He definitely going to be sick. Locking his hands over his head, Anders took a deep breath and tried to relax.

"We have a new recruit then?" The seneschal spoke first in the awkward silence that followed the King's departure, "Excellent. The Wardens will need to replenish their numbers. Whenever you're ready to see the Joining, you can come and see me. I know where the Wardens kept their supplies."

"Thank you, Varel." Amell said, "You're dismissed."

"Commander." The seneschal nodded and left.

"So," Anders let out the breath he'd been holding, but felt no better. "That was a thing that just happened. Me, a Grey Warden, huh?"

"I need to talk to you." Amell said.

"Right. Sure." Anders mumbled, letting Amell lead him past the stairs, and into the house beside them. Apparently, it led down into the Keep's cellar. Which was a lot cozier than a cell, but Anders still had to wonder. "What are we doing in here?"

"We're talking." Amell said, reaching into a pouch on his belt. He pulled out three sovereigns and pressed them into Anders' hand. "If you're going to go, go now. While the Keep is still in disrepair and we're still searching for survivors. This is the only chance I can give you."

"Are you serious?" Anders asked. His life had turned around so many times in one day it was making him dizzy. "Is this some kind of test? Because I am terrible at tests."

"It's not a test." Amell promised, "I can't be expected to keep an eye on one apostate when the Vigil is like this, and I've got talking darkspawn to worry about."

"Why are you telling me this? Why are you doing all this for me?" Anders asked. "You don't even know me."

"It's not about you," Amell said. "It's about me. It's about every mage. We deserve a choice."

"A choice, huh?" Anders mumbled, staring down at the sovereigns Amell had pressed into his palm. "Can't say I've had many of those but... look. I'm not an idiot. I know, looks and brains, too good to be true, right? I know if I run, they'll just find me again. And you seem... well, you seem alright, honestly. If it's all the same to you, I think I'll have a go at being a Grey Warden."

"... even knowing what you know about me?" Amell asked hesitantly.

"Oh, you mean the whole," Anders mimed stabbing at his hand. "No, that's terrifying, and I'm shaking in my knickers just thinking about it, but you know. No one's perfect."

"I need your silence on this, Anders. Whether or not you stay."

"You have it. Really, you can trust me." Anders promised. "We shook hands on it, remember?" Anders couldn't tell if Amell trusted him. He had an impressively enigmatic face; Anders made a mental note never to play Wicked Grace with him.

"... thank you." Amell said eventually. There we go. Progress. Trust was the basis of any relationship, after all.

"So... do you want these back, or?" Anders tossed the coins in his hand.

Amell shook his head, "Keep them, in case you change your mind."

"Me? Change my mind about something at the last second? That doesn't sound like something I'd do." Anders joked, pocketing the coins. Amell made an amused sound. It was a sort of huff that didn't part his lips, and barely moved his head. Why was it so hard to get him to laugh? It was going to drive Anders mad until he managed it.

They left the entrance to the cellar, and waiting for them at the base of the stairs was the crate of lyrium potions, and tray of food Amell had brought him. Except the tray was upside down, rice scattered in the dirt, salad mixed with the grass, stew turning the dirt to mud, and his lovely loaf was being eaten by ants. Rylock's visits were always nice.

"I'll get us another." Amell promised, kneeling to pick up the mess.

Anders bent to help him. "Do you suppose recruiting me like that is going to get you in trouble with the Chantry?"

"Very probably." Amell shrugged. When everything was balanced on the tray, he carried it back to the Vigil. He passed Mhairi on his way in, and the recruit gave him a nod before heading straight to Anders.

"Ser mage, I hear congratulations are in order." Mhairi said, "Seneschal Varel announced you'd been recruited into the Wardens."

"Did he?" Anders asked, unable to help his icy tone. For all he'd helped her throughout the attack on the Vigil, the woman had jumped on the first chance she had to condemn him for a murderer. Maybe he was petty, but it was a little hard to forgive and forget.

"I was hoping to talk to you." Mhairi continued. Anders considered picking up the crate of potions and hiding from her in the make-shift infirmary. Surely that surly physician would chase her off if she tried to follow him, "I wanted to apologize for my earlier conduct. You fought admirably, and I fear I misjudged you."

"You-... wait, what?" Anders blinked.

"You have to understand, the term 'apostate' carries with it several connotations."

"Yes, mages who want a bit of freedom," Anders said glibly, "We're wicked things, I know."

"It's not that," Mhairi shook her head, brushing a few stray pieces of rice off from the bottom step and inviting herself to sit. "It's the way apostates are portrayed by the Chantry. Not as healers, but as evil. As blood mages... or necromancers. After Rowland... I was distraught. I couldn't place the blame where it really belonged, so I took it out on you. I shouldn't have, and I apologize."

What did he do here, Anders wondered. Did he jump nobly to Amell's defense, or did he avoid any and all conflict, accept her apology, and slink away as quickly and non-confrontationally as possible? It was a tough decision, really. "No harm done." Anders smiled.

"I just... I heard all the stories. When they speak of him... it's always as a hero. He united Ferelden. He brought together the dwarves, the elves, the mages. He won the Landsmeet, all through diplomacy. He wasn't supposed to be like this.

"I guess that's the trouble with stories, isn't it?" Mhairi sighed when Anders didn't answer. "No one says they have to be true."

Chapter 4: Joining

Notes:

Thank you for reading.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 18 Ferventis Sometime

Somewhere

The setting sun cast strange shadows throughout the Keep. Anders didn't give the sepia tones and far off floating spire in the sky much thought. He had patients to heal, after all, and Amell had wanted to stay to watch him summon Compassion. One woman on the infirmary-wall had need of such powerful healing; a darkspawn had scalped her, and she had third degree burns all along her arms. Anders healed her, while Amell knelt beside him and watched.

Anders remembered the woman had smelled of burnt flesh and rot the first time he'd healed her. She had no such smell now, which was a relief. No one ever stopped to think about the gritty side of being a healer. The way open wounds, burns, and a person who spent hours lying in their own sick could smell. The way your hands always ended up covered in blood, loose hair, and shit. What was that saying? The healers' hands were the bloodiest? Anders wondered how a blood mage would feel about that. Would he laugh?

Anders looked up from the woman. Off the in the distance, the rest of the courtyard was floating on an island. There were templars there, shaking their swords at him, unable to reach him across the chasm. "I'll tell them you died." Amell promised. "You can go."

Anders shook his head, "I have to help."

"I know," Amell smiled proudly. His eyes were the wrong color, Anders noticed. They weren't their usual russet, but a soft gold.

"Compassion." Anders realized. The scene from the infirmary melted away. The woman turned to smoke beneath his hands, the templars turned to demons, and all the structures turned to dust. He sat not up on the courtyard wall, but on the ground amidst a cluster of reeds. This was the Fade. He must have fallen asleep. "What are you doing?"

Amell gave himself a shake, and his form fell away. His hair was went from black to gold, his skin glowed white, his armor turned to flowing robes, and he was gone. Compassion sat in his place, looking as always a little like Anders' mother. She'd pulled that memory from his head years ago, but Anders didn't mind. His mother had been a lovely woman. Compassion suited her.

"I like him," Compassion explained. "He's been so kind to you. Not since Ferrenly have you dreamed of such a thing, and even Ferrenly never showed you true Compassion."

"That's not fair," Anders said, "Ferrenly was the first friend I made outside the Tower. He gave me an amulet for saving his life, remember?" Anders pulled the fox pendant out from under his robes and showed it to her. It wasn't really here, but his will could make it manifest. He was wearing it in the real world, after all. "I still wear it."

"You wear it as a warning. Not as a symbol." Compassion said, seeing into his heart, "To you, it's a reminder of the dangers of trust and friendship. He still turned you into the templars, after all you did for him. The man you were dreaming about kept you from them. He offered to let you go."

"His name is Amell," Anders told her.

"I like him." Compassion said, not for the first time.

"Should I be jealous?" Anders mused, "I feel like I should be jealous. You're not going to leave me for another mage, are you?"

"So long as you do not leave me for another spirit," Compassion teased. That was his doing, and Anders was proud of it. It had taken years for her to learn what a joke was. "We healed so many today. I'm glad their dreams will still shape the Fade."

"Me too." Anders smiled. "I'm not overtaxing you, am I? Amell gave me a crate of lyrium potions to work with, and I'm kind of making myself sick going through them. I can only imagine how you feel being channeled for hours."
"Compassion is limitless." Compassion said.

"I find that hard to believe." Anders admitted, thinking of the day he'd had. "What most people know of compassion could fit into a thimble."

"You know me," Compassion pointed out. "And I know you. Together we are limitless." She leaned forward and kissed his forehead, in the same loving way his mother had for twelve years. And then she smiled, and her face fell away, and the Fade along with it.

"Wake up, mage," Anders felt the words before he heard them. A force shook his shoulder roughly, and Anders jerked upright, bringing his hands up to protect his face.

No one kicked him. There weren't any shackles binding his wrists together. Anders was still on the outer walls, his back propped up against the banister. He'd fallen asleep beside a patient. The Vigil's physician was there, scowling down at him. Not a pretty sight to wake up to, but infinitely better than a templar, to be sure.

"Good morning to you too," Anders said. He guessed it was still morning. The sun was in the eastern sky behind the Keep, casting long shadows over the courtyard. Anders had never been very good at telling time, but it wasn't too hot out, so it couldn't have been afternoon yet.

"Nothing good about it," The physician muttered, holding out a bowl for him. Oats. Maker save him. Anders took it, hating everything. "We lost six in the night. Two are relapsing. Eat quickly, I need your help."

At least no one had thrown the bowl at him, Anders allotted, eating as quickly as he dared without upsetting his stomach. There was even a spoon for him, and the first bite revealed there was a touch of cinnamon to the oats. The kitchens must have splurged for warden-recruits; Anders was living like a king. He set the bowl up on the banister when he finished, and decided he needed a piss.

He found a spot to relieve himself over the wall, and was more or less relaxed until he decided to start thinking. What was he still doing here? Namaya was out there, somewhere in Amaranthine, looking into his phylactery for him. He couldn't really expect to be a Grey Warden and fight darkspawn all his life, but suppose Namaya never found his phylactery? Suppose he ran now, and Rylock was there waiting to take him to the hang man's noose, or worse, Aeonar.

He couldn't risk it, Anders decided, shaking himself off. It wouldn't be so bad. Amell was a swell sort of fellow, blood mage or not. And Compassion liked him. Anders could stay and fight darkspawn a while, and decide what came later... Later. Feeling better, Anders found the physician on the wall and healed the two patient's he was concerned about.

Afterwards, Anders busied himself doing the sort of tasks no one wanted to talk about. Sure, in the Circle everyone envied the healer all the pretty lasses ran to with their paper cuts, but outside it? No one envied the healer changing bandages and bed pans, moving the dead to make way for the living, bathing the sick, or turning them over so they didn't develop bed sores. It wasn't a wonder there were so few spirit healers.

Anders took a break around midday to stretch. He smelled about as bad as his patients. He hadn't bathed in three days, and his robes were shot. Working the makeshift infirmary left them stained with every bodily fluid imaginable, and Anders hands? It didn't matter how many times he dried them off or washed them between patients. The filth was there, under his nails, and Anders could smell it every time he scratched at the growing stubble on his face.

Anders was most certainly not feeling pretty when Amell came and found him. The Warden Commander had changed out of his armor and into a blue and silver Warden doublet with black trousers, and Anders felt more than a little unsightly in comparison. He must have been, because Amell commented on it when Anders met him at the base of the stairs. "Did you sleep out here?" Amell asked.

"Guilty." Anders said. He could have looked worse, he supposed. At least he had a tie to hold his hair back, "Seems I've been missing out on my beauty sleep a lot lately."

"We have quarters for you," Amell said. "Did no one tell you? I sent a messenger last night."

"Afraid not." Anders shrugged.

"I can show you where they are, then." Amell said, waving for him to follow, "We're going to see to the Joining soon, and you'll probably want to have a bath and change first."

"Into what? My small clothes?" Anders joked. He was wearing everything he owned. "It's that kind of joining, is it?"

Amell grinned. "One of the Orlesian Wardens might have something that could fit you. Or I might. I know I have a razor you can borrow."

"What, you don't like the unwashed apostate look?" Anders joked, as if he'd had any say in his hygiene for the past few days.

"I didn't say that." Amell said playfully. "I just thought you could use a chance to look your best before the Joining, in case... Just in case."

"In case what?" Anders wondered, "Anything I should know ahead of time? Any special way I should part my hair?"

"No," Amell mumbled. He seemed suddenly distant, which was a shame considering Anders thought they were getting on rather well. "Nothing like that."

The Warden's barracks were inside the Vigil proper, to the right of the throne room. They reminded Anders of the apprentice quarters in the Circle. There were three rows of bunks, each with their own clothes chests, armor and weapon stands. A few writing desks were pushed up against the walls, and a table took up the middle of the room. There weren't a lot of options for privacy, but it could have been worse. There could have been templars.

Amell pointed him towards a door on the far side of the room. "The wash room is through there. I'll bring you a razor and some clothes."

"Do you have anything in green or teal?" Anders asked, "I think it really compliments my complexion,"

"I'll see what I can do," Amell almost laughed. Anders could see it in the shake of his shoulders, and was thoroughly disappointed when the man left without so much as a chuckle.

The wash room was your typical sunken stone basin, big enough to fit four grown men, not that Anders ever wanted to try something like that. There was a cabinet filled with towels and soaps, and a few benches and a vanity. All in all, a great deal better than the wooden buckets apprentices were given. Anders would be happy if he never had to take another sponge bath sitting on a bench with five other apprentices ever again.

The basin was empty, but that wasn't a problem for a mage. Anders summoned the water for his bath, and heated it to a comfortable steam with his magic. Stripping out of his ruined robe, he took out his hair tie, removed his necklace and his earring, and grabbed himself a bar of soap before climbing into the bath.

If a proper meal made him want to cry, a proper bath made him want to moan. Anders actually did moan, quite a bit. The warm water on his aching muscles and dirt-caked skin was incredible. He would have welcomed drowning as a happy death. He was washing his hair when Amell came back, a bundle of clothes in one hand and a razor in the other.

"This is incredible," Anders said, "I can't tell you how much I love having a real bath and not just those old buckets. Did you hate those things as much as I did?"

Amell gave him such a queer look Anders wondered if he'd stepped on something sharp. "I'll leave these here for you. Come to the throne room when you're done." Amell set the clothes down on the bench and fled.

"Well. I guess we're done talking then." Anders said to himself. He felt much better after a long soak and a deep scrub. He found a brush in the vanity, and had a chance to do his hair properly, shave his face, and all in all look like a little less of a savage. The clothes Amell had brought him were a decent sort, except for the trousers.

Anders hated trousers. If ever there was an evil, it wasn't blood mages or magisters or darkspawn, it was trousers. There was nothing worse than having your manhood smashed up into a tight pair of pants or sticking to your thighs, and or the way the fabric chaffed something unmentionable whenever you sat down or bent the wrong way. Anders much preferred his robes, but if it was trousers or nothing, he guessed it was trousers.

They were rather spiffy, if nothing else. Black and woolen, they went well the green doublet Amell had found for him. The poor fellow was far too nice. Anders was willing to bet if he actually pressed him, Amell would have gone out and found him that pony. Tying back his hair and putting on his necklace and earring, Anders spent a few extra seconds admiring himself in the mirror before he went out to the throne room.

It was empty, save for Amell, Oghren, and Mhairi. They were gathered around a small end table, which held a silver chalice and several vials. Anders had been expecting a lot more pomp and fromp, just based on Amell's suggestion that he bathe and shave. Maybe the fromp came later, Anders decided, coming over to stand with them.

Amell gave him a small smile, and then turned to address all of them. "What happens here is a secret known only to Grey Wardens. One of many. You will tell no one." That sounded familiar, Anders thought. Amell uncorked one of the vials, and poured it into the chalice. Anders smelled blood, and rot. "This is-"

The door to the throne room creaked open. Amell set the vial down, and while his expression didn't change, Anders saw his hands clench. The seneschal poked his head into the throne room. "Forgive me, Commander,"

"I said no interruptions," Amell said.

"I know, Commander." The seneschal said, "Forgive me. I'd hoped you'd not yet started."

Amell let out a long breath, and seemed to deflate. "Touch nothing." Amell warned them, stepping around them to address the seneschal, "What is it, Varel?"

"The Howe is back." Varel explained, "I would have turned him away, but he's asking to speak with you. He claims he wants to be a Grey Warden. I thought if you were interested, it would save you the trouble of two Joinings."

"The who?" Anders asked.

"Send him in." Amell said.

"The Howe." Oghren repeated. "Rendon Howe's little blighter. While you were playing nurse maid last night, me and the Boss here paid the dungeon's a visit to see if we could find any more wayward mages. Instead, we find out this little bugger was sitting pretty in his cell during the whole attack. Turns out he was here to kill the Commander, so what does the Commander do?" Oghren frowned up at Amell. For whatever reason, the dwarf seemed to cheer Amell immensely. He was listening to the lecture with a smile. "He lets him go, free as a fart. If you're not careful, this guy is gonna go all Zevran on you, mark my words."

"You think so?" Amell wondered quietly, "He didn't seem the type, but maybe if I ask him nicely."

"What do you-wait-Ehehaha! No! I meant the trying to kill you part, not the-ah sod it," Oghren doubled over giggling.

Anders was hopelessly lost. Fortunately, Rendon Howe's little blighter was shown into the throne room a moment later. He was all angles and shadows, with a nose like a hawk, and a dark patch of stubble beneath his lip. He was in full leather armor, and while he carried no visible weapon, Anders was all for the assessment that the man was a killer.

"Nathaniel." Amell greeted him rather civilly for someone who'd apparently tried to kill him, "I heard you wanted to join us. Can I ask why?"

"If I can ask you a question first." Nathaniel said. His voice was all smoke. Anders didn't know what to make of him. "You set me free, despite what I said or what I might do. I want to know why."

"You're not your father, Nathaniel," Amell said. "What you do now is your own responsibility."

"That's just it. When you let me go... I didn't know what to do. I thought I was going to die in there. Maybe I even wanted to, but you're right. I need to do my part to fight the darkspawn. It's what my father should have done. Let me join you. Please, let me try. I-have nowhere else to go."

"There's no turning back from this," Amell warned him.

"I know." Nathaniel said, and apparently that was enough. Amell waved him to a spot beside Anders.

Out of all of them, Mhairi seemed the happiest at his inclusion. "Congratulations, ser,"

"Thank you, my lady." Nathaniel said.

"Are you always like this?" Anders asked Amell, "Forgive everything, trust everyone? I get mercy, but I'm sensing a knife in the back in your future. Just saying."

"This is not a mercy." Amell said. Anders felt a chill run up his spine. "We were just starting. We can start over. What happens here is a secret known only to Grey Wardens. One of many. You will tell no one."

Amell returned to the chalice, and uncorked a second vial. It was lyrium. Anders would know the tell-tale blue and minty smell anywhere. Mixed with the smell of blood and rot, it was almost unbearable. Amell poured the rest of the vials into the chalice, and Anders felt the sudden pull of the Fade as magic touched the air. The blood and lyrium mixture lifted up from the goblet and slowly wrapped itself around Amell's hand as he worked a spell the likes of which Anders had never seen before. Which didn't mean much, really, considering Anders had never seen blood magic before meeting Amell.

"This is darkspawn blood," Amell explained while he cast, "Drinking it prepared in this way... mastering the corruption in it, gives a Grey Warden the ability to sense darkspawn. From this moment on, you are all Grey Wardens... no matter what happens."

"Traditionally, these words are spoken before a Joining." Amell said when the spell finished, "Join us, brothers and sisters. Join us in the shadows where we stand vigilant. Join us as we carry the duty that cannot be forsworn. And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten. And that one day, we shall join you."

Amell picked up the goblet, and finally hesitated, as if he couldn't decide who to offer it to first.

"Give it here," Oghren saved him. "We gotta split this four ways, huh? Shouldn't have used the sampler size."

Amell handed him the chalice, and Oghren drank. He stumbled as he swallowed, but rather than catch him, Amell caught the goblet. Oghren's eyes rolled back into his head, and he coughed wretchedly, as if he'd swallowed a shot of spirits that was too strong for him. He beat a fist against his chest, hacking, and after a long minute of struggling, belched loudly.

"Eugh," Oghren groaned, "That it? That all you got?"

"That's it," Amell smiled, but Anders saw genuine relief in place of his usual enigmatic expression, and started to worry. If they were going in order of their lineup, Mhairi was next.

"Mhairi," Amell confirmed Anders' guess, holding out the goblet to her.

Mhairi nodded stoically, accepting the chalice and taking a long drink. She stumbled as Oghren had, clutching her head in her hands as she coughed. Anders saw the whites of her eyes as she looked around, blind, and her coughs turned ragged. She clutched at her throat, as if suffocating, and fell to her knees. A few breaths later, and she collapsed.

Amell knelt beside her, and set his fingers to her throat. He must not have found a pulse, because he sighed and closed her eyes.

Suddenly, Amell allowing him a hot a bath and a change of clothes made a great deal more sense. It was the sort of thing any decent person did for a man who might be about to die. "So, I'm guessing darkspawn blood isn't something you serve at dinner parties." Anders mumbled.

"It's not," Amell smiled; it was a reassuring smile, Anders thought, trying to let it reassure him. "Anders," Amell handed him the chalice.

Anders forced a grinned, feeling queasy. Part of that had to be the chalice. The mixture of darkspawn rot and lyrium was nauseating. "Bottoms up, then. If I wake up two weeks from now on a ship bound for Rivain in nothing but my small clothes with a tattoo on my forehead, I'm blaming you." Very clever. Anders wasn't even listening to what was coming out of his mouth at this point.

Pinching his nose against the smell, Anders tipped his head back, and drank.

He must have died. There was no other explanation for the feeling. Fire rotted his tongue, caught in his throat, and finally fell into his stomach. He saw Amell watching him, and then he saw nothing. He might have fallen. He wasn't sure. All he felt was pain, like every muscle in his body was seizing. Then he felt nothing.

The darkspawn were screaming. Deep beneath the earth, they wreathed and roiled, crawling over one another, bursting forth from thick sacks of flesh and blood. They were a number immeasurable, creatures of mindless hate and rage. Anders felt their essence like claws on the inside of his skull, digging ever deeper, chasing after a song too beautiful to comprehend. There was nothing in them but corruption, and it was eating away at him. Filling him up from the inside out until every part of him was wrong, black, and Void. Far away, he thought he heard Compassion crying.

Anders woke up screaming. Hands caught his shoulders, and they were neither malicious nor rough. The only explanation Anders had for that was that was he was still dreaming, and Compassion was with him. But when he opened his eyes, Amell was sitting beside him. "Anders. Wake up. It's over."

"Hey-you..." Anders managed. He was lying on one of the bunks in the warden barracks. The nice clothes Amell had lent him were completely soaked through with sweat. His stomach flipped over, and he swallowed down his breakfast before it tried to escape. "I'm mad at you."

"I know," Amell said, pressing a cup into his hand, "Here, have some water. Sit up slowly, and don't drink too fast."

Sitting up proved easier said than done. Anders felt like he was recovering from the worst hangover of his life. Pulling himself into some semblance of a sitting position, Anders brought the cup to his lips and took a drink. After his first sip, Anders was more likely to believe he was drinking the tears of Andraste than water. Water couldn't soothe his aching throat so easily, as if he hadn't just drank the very essence of darkness.

"You might have warned me, you know," Anders said; his voice was a mess. His throat felt scratchy and his tongue was swollen. He had no idea how Oghren hadn't passed out.

"I did give you a chance to run," Amell reminded him. "That was more than Duncan ever did."

"Who?" Anders took another drink, wondering how long his headache would last.

"The Warden who recruited me, and two others," Amell fished a necklace out from beneath his tunic; the small vial of blood looked suspiciously familiar. "The first recruit died. The second got scared, and tried to run. Duncan killed him to keep the Joining a secret."

"Cheery," Anders said.

"Very," Amell agreed. "Thank you for not running. This is yours," Amell pulled a matching pendant of blood from his pocket, and draped it around Ander's neck.

"Are we married now?" Anders asked.

"Not exactly," Amell said, "You can call me Brother if you want, but I'd rather you didn't."

"Ouch," Anders finished off his water, and handed the empty cup back to Amell, "I see how it is."

"I doubt that." Amell grinned, before speaking seriously, "The amulet contains some of the blood that was part of your ritual. It's meant to be remind us of the sacrifices we make in our eternal vigil against the darkspawn."

"Real cheery," Anders said, lifting the amulet to stare at it. It was a grim little thing; Anders could almost swear the blood was pulsing to the beat of his heart. It reminded him all too much of a phylactery. He stuffed it under his shirt so he didn't have to look at it. "Did the other recruit survive?"

"Nathaniel?" Amell supplied for him, "Yes. He woke about an hour before you. Oghren took him out for drinks."

"That's what I get for being a late bloomer," Anders sighed. "No free drinks for Anders. How long was I out for?"

"Around six hours. And I'd be more than willing to share a drink with you, if you want." Amell said. "There's a lot I need to tell you, now that you're officially a Warden."

"Well, I'm not about to pass up free drinks." Anders decided, standing up, and promptly sitting back down. Hangover was an excellent description of whatever he was dealing with at the moment. But everyone knew the cure for a hangover was to keep drinking, so Anders made an attempt to stand again. He managed it with a helping hand from Amell, and grinned. "Point the way, fearless leader."

"Are you hungry at all?" Amell asked, leading him out of the barracks and to the kitchens. They were just down the hall. Convenient, that.

"Starving, now that you mention it." Anders admitted. Amell smiled ruefully at him, "What's that look for?"

Amell shook his head, "Let's get that drink first."

"This isn't going to be pretty, is it?" Anders asked. Amell didn't answer, which Anders supposed was answer enough. The kitchens were busy with servants and cooks preparing dinner for the Vigil, but the Warden-Commander warranted special treatment. They were given a counter in the corner of the kitchen, and brought out a bottle of wine and a plate of fried something that Anders ate without tasting.

"So, do you want the good news or bad news first?" Amell asked.

"There's good news?" Anders asked, taking a drink of wine. He could feel his headache receding almost as soon as he swallowed.

"No." Amell said.

Anders laughed. He couldn't help it.

"I'm kidding. There is," Amell said. "Tempered, the corruption allows us to sense darkspawn, makes us immune to Blight sickness, and provides a sort of... natural stamina and endurance."

"I don't know about darkspawn, but I'm sensing a huge 'but' coming on," Anders noted.

"Not exactly." Amell assured him. "The hunger should stop eventually, but the nightmares are forever, and they only get worse as the corruption spreads."

"Corruption spreading sounds bad." Anders noted, reaching for another ball of fried meat and closing his fingers around thin air. He hadn't even realized he'd eaten them all. Amell noticed, and signaled for a servant to bring them another tray.

"It is." Amell said once the servant was gone. "Under normal circumstances, most Wardens only have ten to thirty years after their Joining before the corruption consumes them."

"And under abnormal circumstances?" Anders dared.

"You won't believe me," Amell warned him.

"Try me." Anders said.

"Two-hundred years." Amell said.

"You're right," Anders laughed, "I don't believe you. So. Nightmares. Insatiable hunger. A premature death. All in all, it could be worse. I suppose I could be tranquil, or locked away in Aeonar. Or I could dead. Dead's bad."

"Perspective is good," Amell said.

"If I didn't have perspective, I'd still be sitting in a templar dungeon drooling on my small clothes." Anders laughed to himself. Amell was quiet. Anders glanced at him, and found him staring at him with a sympathetic expression.

"Anders, for what it's worth, I am sorry." Amell said, "I know there was a lot of risk involved, but I hope you think it's worth it. After all, being a Warden is the closest thing to freedom a mage can hope for."

"You certainly don't seem afraid to exercise it," Anders blurted before he could help himself. Mercifully, Amell didn't seem to be offended, but he did check to see if anyone was listening before he spoke.

"The Wardens don't forbid blood magic, Anders. I could even teach you, if you wanted."

"Then why tell me not to tell anyone?" Anders asked.

"You know why," Amell frowned at him for the question, "The stereotypes, the prejudice. It's magic. Nothing more."

"So you're telling me you didn't deal with a demon to learn it?" Anders doubted the man had simply cut his hand and realized the power that lay within the blood. Even if he had, it wouldn't have taught him how to utilize it to cast some of the complex spells Anders had seen him use against the darkspawn.

"I never said that," Amell said, "And you never said if you wanted me to teach you."

"Let me think about it," Anders said flippantly. He knew he should have been more respectful whenever he was addressing the Warden-Commander, but he'd always had a problem with authority. Even if he didn't have a problem with Amell, it was a hard habit to break.

As usual, Amell didn't look offended. He took a drink of his wine, and his teeth were stained red when he smiled, "I'll wait."

Notes:

Fanart
Amell overseeing the Joining

Apples and Apostates
You Wanted More: A short from Amell's perspective on his past relationship with Zevran.

We All Died at Ostagar: A short from Daveth's perspective on Amell's Joining.

Chapter 5: It Comes From Beneath

Notes:

Thank you again for all your wonderful feedback. I really appreciate it, and it's definitely motivating.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 22 Ferventis Afternoon

Vigil's Keep Kitchens

Amell hadn't been kidding about the hunger. Anders was starving. More often than not, he found himself sneaking in and out of the kitchens for an extra biscuit, a few apples, a third helping of soup, and once an entire pie. So far, he hadn't been caught. Anders wasn't entirely sure whether or not there was anything to catch. A warden might have been allowed the extra rations, but it was easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission, so sneak he did.

He was out on one such thieving venture six days into his stay at Vigil's Keep, a handful of ill-gotten goods in his arms and a muffin stuffed into his mouth, when he was finally caught.

"There you are, young man,"  The stern voice reminded Anders of Senior Enchanter Leorah and made him jump. Anders bit off his mouthful of muffin and swallowed hastily before he turned.  It took him a minute to recognize the old woman frowning at him as Mistress Woolsey, the woman he'd saved on the battlements of Vigil's Keep.

"You know, the way you say that, you make me feel like a teenager," Anders said. Nevermind that he was sneaking food like one at this very moment. "I'm twenty-six, by the way. I'm not exactly young."

Mistress Woolsey laughed at him, "And I am sixty-three. Everyone is young to me,"

"Well, you know they say age is just a number." Anders said.

"I am this arling's treasurer. Numbers are my life," Woolsey said haughtily; she paused, and evaluated him with a frown, "... were you flirting with me just now?"

"Maybe a little," Anders grinned.

"Well stop." She was blushing. No one was immune. Anders was fairly confident he could charm anyone, templars excluded. "I'll have none of that nonsense. I'm far too old for it."

"Well that's just ridiculous. The only reason a lovely woman should stop hearing she's lovely is if she goes deaf," Anders said.

"You-" Woolsey shook her head bemusedly, "You are going to be trouble. I pity the poor ladies of the Vigil. In any case, if anyone is going deaf, it is you. I recall giving you specific instructions to seek me out when the battle was over for a reward."

"Oh, right. That." Anders went back to eating his muffin, relieved he wasn't in trouble, "It was nothing, really. I don't need a reward. Unless a kiss is on the table."

"A kiss on the forehead, perhaps. I am old enough to be your mother," Woolsey frowned, "Now listen. I spoke with the Commander, and I am told you lost everything to the templars. So I have spoken to Ambassador Cera, and I have commissioned a staff on your behalf. She should have it ready if you go and speak with her. You will need it, I suspect. I am told the workers have finished clearing away the rubble in the cellars, and you're to clear the Keep of the last of the darkspawn today."

Just what Anders wanted to hear. Honestly, who didn't look forward to fighting corruption given form, especially when said corruption haunted your dreams and terrified the spirit you'd been with for fourteen years into receding so deep into the Fade you hadn't spoken to her in days? Anders was just champing at the bit to fight more darkspawn, really. In fact, he'd probably eat the damn bit if it weren't an idiom just to stave off his ravenous hunger.

"That's so sweet of you." Anders said. Woolsey didn't need to hear him complain. He did need a staff, after all. "You shouldn't have."  

"I most certainly should have," Woolsey said, "We can't have our wardens going into battle unless they're outfitted for it. I should offer my congratulations on that, as well.  It is a high honor to be recruited into the wardens. Higher still to warrant conscription, before representatives of the Chantry and the King himself. I trust you deserve it."

"Oh, definitely not," Anders grinned to hide how startled he was by the praise. "Believe me, I'm as surprised as you are. It's going to be really embarrassing when everyone realizes I'm just making this up as I go."

"Well I for one have every confidence in you." Woolsey said. She turned to go, and hesitated a moment. Anders wondered if the old girl actually wanted a kiss when she tapped the corner of her lips. "You have crumbs on your face, ser. Just there."

Anders wiped his face off, which was rather redundant, considering he planned to keep eating. A stolen meal later, and he made his way through the walls of the Vigil to find Ambassador Cera. He hadn't actually met the Circle Ambassador yet,  and to be perfectly honest he wasn't eager to.  He didn't know the woman, but he knew his reputation as a troublemaker and escapee. The fact that Amell hadn't cared was a wonder; he doubted he would be so lucky twice.

The Circle Ambassador had a room on the second story of Vigil's Keep, beside the library. It smelled like the Tower. The cloying scent of lyrium mixed with the musty scent of old parchment was familiar in the worst of all possible ways. Anders wrinkled his nose, but promptly unwrinkled it when he saw the young beauty sitting behind the desk in the center of the room. She was an elf with fiery red hair and matching hazel eyes, and-ah yes. Of course. There it was. The glare that every Circle Mage he'd ever known donned when they met him. It just wouldn't be right without it, really.

"You must be Anders." Cera said. Her voice was tight and clipped. "Your staff is just there. You may take it and go."

Anders found the staff in question leaning against the wall in the corner of the room. It was a simple thing. Ashwood, with a leather grip, and an iron blade at its base. Set atop the staff was a basic amplifying rune. Anders gave the staff an experimental spin, and Cera's frown deepened.

"Not in here, if you please." Cera said.

"I like the balance," Anders said.

"How nice." Cera said flatly. "Please leave."

Anders should have left. He really should have. He knew it, and even as he opened his mouth he wondered what was wrong with him that he could never leave well enough alone. "I'm getting the feeling you don't like me much. It's a really sad feeling, you know. I think I might cry."

"I would never disrespect the Warden Commander by speaking ill of his recruits." Cera said. That was a yes.

"It could be our little secret." Anders said.

"... Very well." Cera set her quill aside and steepled her hands together. "No, Anders, I don't like you. You are irresponsible, inconsiderate, and wholly undeserving of the honor to serve the Wardens."

"Is that all?" Anders asked. "Whew. For a second there I was worried I'd done something wrong."

"You have no idea, do you?" Cera frowned. "It's tradition that the Wardens only recruit one mage from a Circle at a time. When the late Warden-Commander Duncan came to the Tower almost two years ago, everyone knew that mage would be Amell. He was Irving's own apprentice, a prodigy who mastered the summoning sciences at thirteen. He is undeniably exceptional, but you?

"You're the reason the lower levels of the tower are off limits without escort. You're the reason apprentices are no longer allowed outside for exercise and fresh air. Your ridiculous rumors and countless escape attempts have made the Tower a nightmare for the rest of us."

"I think you're confusing me with the templars." Anders said. "You know, the ones who made all those rules."

"Because of you!" Cera snapped. "You act as if your actions have no consequences, and they don't. Not for you. It's the rest of us who suffer for your arrogance. By all rights, you should be in Aeanor right now, but the Warden-Commander broke tradition and conscripted you. An apostate. I competed with five other enchanters for this position, but you?

"You have no idea how lucky you are. You didn't earn this. You don't deserve it. And I have no doubt you will squander it. So no, I do not like you. But I am the Circle Ambassador, and I will serve accordingly. If you need lyrium potions or enchantments, I will provide them. But otherwise, I have no wish to see you. Ever. Please leave."

"Well now you're just playing hard to get." Anders said. Cera scowled at him, so he gave her a flourishing bow and a mocking, "My lady," and left.

Anders didn't know why he bothered. He knew why she hated him before he asked, but he supposed it never hurt to be sure. After all, what if he'd broken the heart of one of her friends, or her heart back in the Circle? With the right sort of anger, the air could have been sizzling with chemistry, but it was the same thing it always was. Just once, Anders wanted to hear a pretty girl agree with him when he called the Circle an injustice.

At least Amell seemed to agree with him. That was something. Anders didn't think he could have buckled down and served a Warden Commander who didn't. Authority was bad enough. Authority you didn't agree with? Well that was no authority at all, if Anders had anything to say about it.

Anders found Amell out in the courtyard. He and the other Wardens were already waiting for him. Amell was speaking to a soldier, while Nathaniel stood off to the side, and Oghren sat on a crate, drinking. Anders wandered over, glad the courtyard was finally clear. Enough of the injured had finally been taken care of that there was room for everyone in the infirmary. It was summer, and warm enough, but sleeping outside never did anyone any good.

"Heyyyy, Sparkles." Oghren slurred at his approach.

"Getting started early, I see." Anders noted, picking a spot upwind, "Weren't we supposed to fight darkspawn today?"

"Oh aye." Oghren said.

"And you're going to do this drunk, are you?" Anders asked.

"You always ask stupid questions?" Oghren asked.

"Only when I'm expecting stupid answers," Anders said. Oghren laughed uproariously, and while it was a welcome reprieve from Amell's quiet huffs, Anders didn't think it had been quite that funny. He turned to Nathaniel when Oghren turned back to his drinks. "So. Nate. Can I call you Nate?"

"I would rather you didn't." Nathaniel said.

"So, Nate, you're a Howe." Anders said.

Nate sighed. "Do you have a point, Mage?"

"Hey, I'm fond of the Howes! I'm also fond of the Whos the Whys and the Whats." Anders joked. Oghren hooted, and laughed so hard he fell off the crate he was sitting on.

"How clever." Nate sounded thoroughly unamused, which was just plain rude considering how hard Anders had worked on that joke.

"It's shameful how long it took me to come up with that." Anders chuckled.

"Five days, apparently," Nate noted. "I hope your spells come to you quicker than your jokes."

"Why Nate, do my ears deceive me, or was that, in fact, a joke? Do you, perhaps, have a sense of humor?" Anders wondered.

"No." Nate said with so little inflection Anders honestly couldn't tell if he was serious. He decided to laugh, and swore he saw the shadow of a smile on Nate's face.

"Are all of you ready?" Amell interrupted them. "We'll be heading down into the cellars to clear out the last of the darkspawn. Sergeant Maverlies claims not to know how deep they go. Nathaniel, this was your home. Do you have any insight?"

Nate shook his head. "No. My mother always forbade us from playing in the wine cellars, and as we got older my brother was the one who frequented them."

"Fun fellow to have around then, your brother?" Oghren asked. He'd picked himself up off the ground at some point.

"He could find his fun almost anywhere," Nathaniel agreed. "And then he would vomit on your shoes."

"Ah, good times," Oghren chuckled, trotting ahead into the cellar. Amell followed him, along with Nate and Anders. Sergeant Maverlies, the solider Amell had been speaking to, took up the rear.

"You seem familiar," Anders said, trying to place her, but the brown hair and brown eyes were terribly nondescript. "I never forget a pretty face. How do I know you?"

"Ah, I am Sergeant Maverlies, ser mage." The solider nodded politely, never taking her eyes off Amell's back. "You healed my wrist, not two days prior, for which I am grateful."

"You're quite welcome, then. Are you going to be fighting with us?" Anders asked.

"No, ser." Maverlies shook her head. "I'm not to risk Blight sickness engaging the darkspawn. I'm here only to observe, unless any make it past you. In that case, I'll make sure they don't reach the surface."  She looked at Amell again, stars in her eyes, and Anders took the hint. "I'm sure none will."

The hall was a wreck where the rubble left over from the attack had been cleared away. The stairs had collapsed, and ladder had been put up in their place. The floor was littered with pebbles, dust, and other debris. The ceiling was sunken dangerously low in several places, the beams straining under the weight.

Not only that, but it was pitch black. The only light came from the torch Maverlies carried. She lit what torches they came across, but not every sconce was full. Amell had him summon a ball of mage light, and expected him to hold it. Possibly for hours. Anders felt decidedly unsafe.

In the very first room of the cellar, they came across several corpses and a collapsed mabari. The poor mutt's fur was covered with blood, most of it his own, and he looked terribly gaunt from nearly a week buried under the rubble with no food or water. The only explanation Anders had for his survival was the fact that one of the bodies had fallen in front of the door, barricading it against the darkspawn below.

Amell looked surprisingly stricken. He knelt beside the dog and scratched its ear, and the blood in the dog's fur seemed to melt away at his touch. A rather sentimental way to use blood magic, Anders thought. "I'm just guessing, but I don't think there's anything I can do for him."

"No," Amell said, still petting the dog, "He's tainted. There are some flowers, toxic to humans, that can help with recovery. They grow in the Korcari Wilds,"   

"Not exactly a stop next door, then," Anders said.

Amell ran his fingers beneath the dog's collar, and frowned. After a moment of fiddling, he retrieved a small piece of parchment rolled up in the collar. He unrolled it, and spent a moment reading before he looked up at Nathaniel. "Does the name Adria mean anything to you, Nathaniel?"

"She was my governess," Nathaniel said, taking the parchment from Amell. "She was like a mother to me. She claims to have taken refuge in the lower cellars... She could still be alive! We must save her."

"... You may not want to accompany us, then," Amell warned him.

"What are you talking about?" Nathaniel demanded, "I have to try to save her if she's down there."

Amell stared at him for a long moment, but ultimately turned away without explaining. He drew his blade from his boot, and hesitated. "Anders, could you put the dog to sleep for me?"

That was new. Amell hadn't asked for help with his mercy killings before. Anders cast the spell without any quips, and Amell slit the dog's throat once it was asleep. When he stood, he looked terribly upset, but said nothing. A telekinetic spell from him lifted the body blocking the door out of their way, and they proceeded deeper into the cellar.

Anders felt much safer with a staff in his hands, knowing they were going to be fighting darkspawn, but the cellars contained surprisingly few darkspawn. What they contained were a lot of were people. Or things that had been people once.

"Ghouls," Amell called them.

They were the stuff of nightmares. Blight sickness had twisted them. Their skin took on an unnatural pallor, and a multitude of sores gave them a blotchy look that made them seem half darkspawn. Their eyes were sunken into their skulls, and covered with a sort of cataracts, but they weren't completely empty, and that was perhaps the most terrifying part.

There was something human left in the ghouls they found in the cellars. The first group they came across were a cluster of men and women crowded about the corpse of a soldier. They were eating him, but when they look up from the body, Anders could see hints of who they once were in the fear and anger that lay in their eyes. When they screamed, it was almost in confusion, as if they couldn't understand what had happened to them or why.

For that first fight, Anders cast a protective ward, and little else. Nathaniel fired perhaps two shots. It was Amell and Oghren who fought for them, desensitized to the horror of it all. Mercifully, the ghouls weren't hard to fight. They were unarmed and unarmored. Amell grabbed the first ghoul that charged him by its throat. She was a woman, with brown hair, green eyes, and a pretty yellow dress.

Anders felt the Fade swell around them as Amell cast something that corrupted her skin outward from where his hand held her throat, engorging her veins until Anders was sure they were going to burst. Then Amell threw her back into the rest of the ghouls, and Oghren swung his axe and cleaved her in half through her shoulder, and down to her waist.   

She exploded. The corrosive blood and poison she'd been filled with splashed across the remaining ghouls, and melted their flesh from their bones. They ran in random directions, screaming in pain. Human screams. Sad sobs, terrified wails, enraged shouting. Oghren went through the survivors almost lazily, cutting off the heads of any that yet twitched with brutal efficiency.

"This is Blight sickness." Amell said when the last ghoul had fallen. "Everyone who comes into contact with darkspawn has a risk of catching it. We have it, in a lesser form, but this is what becomes of a Grey Warden if they hold off going to their Calling. Nathaniel... you don't have to come with us."

"Yes I do." Nathaniel said, resolute. That man had guts, Anders had to give him that. If it was his mother... Anders didn't want to think about it.

Anders did not like fighting ghouls, but somehow he managed. He was no Amell, lost in the thick of battle and a haze of corrosive blood magic, but he was there and he was helping. Anders laid down wards and barriers, and frost magic when it was needed. No fire. He knew better than to use fire.

Then they came across a scene that shook him. A level deeper, and the cellars became dungeons. Inside the cells were men and women, all dead. Starved to death, or more likely lost to thirst after nearly a week buried under ground. It could have been him, was all Anders could think. If the templars had decided he wasn't worth the trouble, and lumped him in with all the other prisoners, he'd be dead now too.

It could have also been Nate, if he hadn't been given a special cell for the trouble he'd caused. Anders couldn't tell if Nate had come to the same conclusion. His face was grim, but it had been since they'd found Adria's note. Then again, maybe that was just Nate's face. There was no need to be morbid, after all. Some people could live up to a week without food or water. Maybe Anders would have been fine.  Maybe it didn't matter because he was fine now. Yes, that was the spirit. Nevermind the could have beens.

Apparently, Amell didn't agree. "Sergeant, do you have the key to these cells?"

"No, ser," Maverlies said. "I did not even know prisoners were being kept down here."

Amell stood in front of the cells, and sheathed his hands in a deep blue magic. He held the spell for what seemed like an eternity to Anders, and finally wrenched his hands back. The cell door was ripped from its hinges by the telekinetic magic. "Anders," Amell said. He sounded winded. It was good to know there was a human man in there somewhere. "Come and see if any are alive."

Anders stepped over the bent metal of the ruined cell door and set about to the unpleasant task of checking the bodies. He hoped none of them were ghouls, lying in wait for him to roll them over so they could bite off his nose. He rather liked his nose.

"You know next time, you might just ask me to pick the lock." Nathaniel said quietly.

"I might just." Amell agreed, finding a stool for himself and sinking onto it.

"Eh, don't mind him." Oghren said. He fished a flask from his armor, and thrust it out at Amell. "He gets all uppity when he can't play the hero."

Amell took a long drink and said nothing.

"I'll see if I can find out who they were when we we get back to the Vigil, Commander." Sergeant Maverlies said.

"Thievin' dusters and men who murder little boys, prolly." Oghren said with a shake of his head. "Wouldn't bother. Ain't nobody gonna miss 'em."

"We're more than our crimes, Oghren." Amell said.

"Got one!" Anders yelled. Only one, but it was better than none.

He was a middle aged fellow, of a strapping sort. Magic was no substitute for food and water, but a bit of healing did wonders for the man. He recovered from his unconscious state and sat up with a groan, smacking his lips together. "What... are you?"

"It's a little early in the morning for an existential crisis, wouldn't you say?" Anders joked.

"Be careful, ser mage." Sergeant Maverlies said. "Starved or not, this man is a criminal."

"Was." Amell corrected her. "Give him a torch. Let him go out the way we came. Being buried alive is punishment enough for whatever he did."

The sergeant obeyed him. She must have been suffering from an advanced case of hero worship, because she did it without hesitation and without judgment. The prisoner looked appropriately stunned. "You're letting me go? They said they were going to flog me, they did... And then there was the earthquake..."

"That's the surfacer punishment for thieving, isn't it?" Oghren said. "He's no threat. Let him be."

"Go. Make smarter choices." Amell said.

"Ser, yes, ser," The little thief said, running off down the hall.

"Remember that knife I predicted in your back?" Anders asked, "I think it might just hit you in the face."

"You were in a cell when I met you, Anders." Amell said.

"Technically, I was standing just outside of it." Anders corrected him, "So you see I'm exempt to this rule that it's probably a bad idea to let prisoners go, no questions asked. No offense, Nate."

"Some taken." Nate said. "We should keep moving. I haven't seen Adria yet."

Keep moving they did. They fought their way through a patch of darkspawn, and a quick lecture from Amell taught Anders they had names. Not 'Joe' or 'Carol' type names, which would have been hilarious, but appropriately creepy ones. Hurlocks were the human type darkspawn, genlocks were the dwarf type darkspawn, and the shrieking type darkspawn were called, imaginatively, shrieks. There was a fourth type, ogres, which Anders hadn't encountered yet. To be perfectly honest, he could have done without ever doing so.

Deeper still into the cellar/dungeons, they found Adria. She was sitting in a small storage room, the back wall of which had collapsed and opened up into the Deep Roads. Nathaniel... Anders didn't have a joke that could have survived in the face of the poor man's grief.

The woman might have been fine, were it not for the purple sores on her face. And the fact that her jaw was broken, and hung limp at her neck when she screamed. It was a mindless scream, almost completely darkspawn. Her fingers... Maker's breath, she'd eaten them. The skin fell away where her knuckles ended, and all that was left was bone and sinew. She reached for Nathaniel with those horrible hands, and Amell did something that was becoming rather common place for him. He slit her throat.

It was fortunate that the small storage room dead ended into the Deep Roads. Boulders blocked them from going any further, but they were no barricade to the darkspawn given time. The Vigil's workers would have to clear the way so they could find a single entrance to block off.

But whatever the future held, they were  done with their little venture, and Nathaniel was free to mourn. They left him a torch for light, and Amell spoke with him for a few minutes, before they all decided to leave him alone with his foster-mother's body.

They waited in the next room over, milling about on crates. Anders didn't know what to say. Nothing felt appropriate. Maverlies filled the silence. "You hear stories about you and the Wardens... but nothing really compares to seeing it first hand."

"Did the other Grey Wardens not inspire you?" Amell asked.

"They did, of course. They took a slew of darkspawn with them when they were ambushed, but you? You're something else. I've never seen a man so skilled with magic or blade before. You're incredible." Maverlies said.

"I'm a Warden." Amell said.

"I think it's more than that." Maverlies said, looking Amell over. It was almost painful to watch, really. If only Amell would look up, he might notice all the flattery flying over his head. "You're a remarkable man, Commander. Could I convince you to... spar with me someday?" By her tone, Anders guessed 'spar' meant 'bend me over a table and fuck me silly.'

"Someday. If I have the time. Sergeant." Amell gave the woman a nod. On the opposite side of the room, Oghren was sitting on a crate drinking and Amell went to join him. Anders was all for the dwarf, but he never would have chosen him over such a lovely woman. However, seeing as the lovely woman had no eyes for him, Anders walked over to sit beside Amell.

"You are something else, you know that?" Anders said.

"Am I?" Amell raised an eyebrow at him. If he'd been half as receptive to the sergeant he might have already had the woman on her knees.

"Are you really that thick? You know if you'd given that lass the same look you're giving me now you'd-oooooh." Anders stopped himself when it suddenly clicked. Oghren started laughing. Amell smirked at him. "Well, my foot tastes lovely, thanks for asking."

"It's fine, Anders." Amell said.

"Well now I just feel silly," Anders said. "Here I thought you were just terribly oblivious. I was all set to take you under my wing and help you with the ladies."

"The day this guy hops borders is the day nugs fly." Oghren snorted.

"I'd never leave you, Oghren." Amell said.

"Hey, settle down." Oghren chuckled. "I like you, but not like that."

"He's in denial." Amell said. "Did he tell you he named his son after me?"

"Oh that's what he meant by nugget!" Anders snapped his fingers. "I thought... Well, better left unsaid. Wait a minute, if you have a son, that means you actually got a woman to touch you. How is that possible?"

"Hey, the ladies love Oghren. They pronounce my name Ooooh-gren." Oghren moaned.

Anders laughed, until he remembered they were three when they should have been four. "... Are we bastards? I'm all for levity, I just... Do you think Nate's going to be alright?"

"He's a tough son of a bitch. He'll live." Oghren said.

Amell nodded in agreement, and Anders remembered something that had made him curious.

"So, not to belittle what Nate's going through, but you seemed pretty upset over that dog." Anders said. "I know no one likes to see animals die, but is there a story there if you don't mind me asking?"

"Isn't there enough sad shit today without bringing the mutt into it?" Oghren said, hopping off the crate. "I'm gonna go see if that gal wants a taste of Oghren's special brew." He tossed his flask to Amell, who caught it. "Finish that off if you like, because that was a euphemism." Oghren chortled as he left.

"I had a mabari once." Amell explained, taking a drink.

"What was his name?" Anders asked.

"You have to promise not to laugh." Amell warned him.

Anders crossed his heart. "On my honor."

"Barkspawn." Amell said.

Keep it together, Anders. You promised. Crossed your heart and everything. A snort escaped him, despite his best efforts, and Anders bit his lip to keep it from becoming a guffaw.

"You can laugh." Amell said.

"Oh thank the Maker." Anders laughed. "So what happened to...?"

"Barkspawn?" Amell supplied. Anders giggled. "The King... requisitioned him for the kennels, after the Blight."

"Ah." Anders said knowingly, "I got the feeling there was some bad blood there. Me? I'm a cat person myself. I think that's the only thing I miss about the Tower, really. Do you remember that old mouser? Mr. Wiggums?"

"Vaguely," Amell said.

"There were days that damn cat was the only person I saw." Anders shook his head ruefully. Amell handed him the flask, and he took a drink. "Not that, you know, he was a person."

"What happened to you, Anders?" Amell asked. "At the Circle?"

"Oh, you know." Anders shrugged. He didn't want to think about that room. The cramped space. The horrible silence. The unbearable dark. Anders amplified his spell so the mage light he was conjuring burned a little brighter. "The usual apostate treatment, nothing trivial. I spent a year in solitary after my last escape attempt. It could have been worse."

Amell reached out and squeezed his hand. He was still wearing his gauntlets, so the contact was muted, but Anders rather liked the sympathy. "It could have been better."

Notes:

Fanart
Amell in Warden Armor

Apples and Apostates
Blighted Blood: Amell's recruitment into the Wardens, told from Duncan's perspective.

Chapter 6: Last of the Legion

Notes:

Thank you again everyone for all your wonderful kudos and comments. As always, I really appreciate it.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 1 Solis Mid-Morning

Knotwood Hills

"Stay alert," Nathaniel whispered, "Rock slides and sinkholes are common here."

Nathaniel had the lead, his steps light and soundless. His bow was in a case strapped to his back, but he had a pair of wicked looking knives on his belt if Amell warned them of darkspawn. Apparently, learning to sense darkspawn wasn't something that happened overnight, or even over a fortnight. For the new Wardens, sensing darkspawn was still a primitive tingle in their fingers, a shiver down their spine, a sudden unexplainable irritability. According to Amell, it "got better."

Amell heard the darkspawn whisper. Saw their shadows in the corners of his eyes. Felt their intent like it was his own. That didn't sound better to Anders. He wasn't looking forward to it happening to him, but worrying never did anyone any good. It was better to keep a positive outlook, and focus on the present. All in all, today...

Today was shit. Anders had had his robe washed and pressed, and gotten up at the crack of dawn to trudge halfway across the arling and ruin it. His skirt was constantly catching on brambles and thickets, or sharp rocks and jagged outcroppings. Nathaniel was having an easy go of it, but apparently the man had squired in the Free Marches, and was an accomplished hunter and tracker.

Even Amell and Oghren were faring better than Anders, and they were in full armor. Sure, Oghren had fallen flat on his face at least twice now, but Anders was tripping over every little bump in the metaphorical road. They were searching the craggy slopes of the Knotwood Hills for a darkspawn breeding ground, and of course the chasm they were searching for was well out of the way of any proper road, if the words of the two half-brained hunters who'd found it were to be trusted.

But that was Amell: taking everyone for their word and single-minded his pursuit of darkspawn. Sure, they had to get the bottom of the attack on Vigil's Keep, but there had to be better ways than wandering through a barren wasteland to find a crumbling chasm and climb down into it. Anders set his foot down on a loose rock, and the ground slipped out from underneath him. He pitched forward with a squeal both manly and dignified.

Amell caught him. Amell was practically carrying him, after two hours in these hills, which seemed a terrible burden considering Amell was already carrying his helmet. Anders would have used his staff to help him walk, but the bladed end made it terribly impractical if not dangerous, so he kept it strapped to his back. "Are we there yet?" Anders whined.

"Nathaniel!" Amell called ahead. "How much further?"

"Not long." Nathaniel said unhelpfully, checking his map. "Keep your voice down. We don't want to start any rock slides." He ranged on ahead, bounding nimbly over the rocky terrain until he was out of ear shot.

"So..." Anders lowered his voice, "How's he doing? You know, with what happened?"

"Why don't you ask him?" Amell asked.

"That's not really my thing," Anders picked a thicket out of his robes, "I'm good at the touchy part of relationships, not the feely."

"He's... coping," Amell said. "We had a few drinks and talked about his family. Adria meant a lot to him."

Anders thought of his own mother. "... They took my pillow."

"Your pillow?" Amell asked.

"My mother hand-embroidered a pillow for me. It was the only thing I was allowed to keep when I was sent to the Circle. Have you ever slept on an embroidered pillow? Bloody uncomfortable things. Horribly itchy. I just remembered the templars took it when they caught me. Sent it along to Denerim with Rylock and the rest of my things."

"I could write to the Circle and have them send it back," Amell offered.

"Oh, I wouldn't bother," Anders waved him off, "I doubt they'd give it to you anyway. Probably already threw it out now that I'm a Warden."

Amell let it drop, for which Anders was grateful. He didn't want to think about that damn pillow: his mother's lousy but heart-felt stitching of silly little patterns. It was better it was gone, really. It was always a little inconvenient to drag around wherever he was running from the templars.

"Well, now that you're a Warden, I should probably see about commissioning you some travel leathers." Amell said.

"Hey, I like my robes," Anders said, disregarding the fact that he'd been tripping over them for the past two hours. "They're Tevinter style, you know. The spaulders are made from crow feathers, and just look at this embroidery. I think they make me look rather fetching."

"I don't think the robes have anything to do with that." Amell said.

"And people call me a charmer." Anders laughed.

Amell smirked, and Anders belatedly recalled the man's preference for men. Well, what did he care? Anders knew he was attractive. If Amell felt like pointing it out, he wasn't about to argue.

"I'm not saying you can't wear them at the Keep," Amell continued, "But when we're out you could probably do with something more practical. And maybe a pair of gloves so you can pick all the rashvine nettle you keep staring at."

"Well aren't you observant," Anders said. "Can't keep your eyes off me, eh?"

"Not if you keep tripping." Amell grinned.

Anders laughed. And then he tripped. The ground was all gnarled roots and loose rocks, and as soon as Anders put his weight on the wrong one, it slipped out from under his heel. He hit his knees, and finally got something close to a laugh from Amell. It was closed-mouth, and restrained, but it was more than a little infectious. Anders couldn't help laughing when Amell pulled him to his feet.

"Definitely can't take my eyes off you." Amell said without releasing his arm.

He smelled nice, Anders couldn't help thinking. There was two hours of sweat from a march in full armor, sure, but beneath that was the clean scent of copper and the crisp touch of the Fade that clung to every mage. After a lifetime of quick trysts in the Circle Tower, it was a provocative scent that reminded Anders of dark corners, of hastily undone laces, of breathless moments free from the templars' prying eyes.

Nathaniel returned to find them like that. Anders cleared his throat, and Amell let go of his arm. "The chasm is just ahead, Commander."

"Thank you, Nathaniel." Amell said.

Anders wondered if he should say something to clarify he wasn't interested in men, but Amell was already walking on ahead. To be perfectly honest with himself, Anders wasn't sure if there was anything to clarify. He'd never been with a man before, so how could he really know if he was interested or not?

Anders turned his thoughts to the ground. There would probably be time to worry about Amell's apparent interest in him later. Watching where he put his feet, Anders followed the rest of the Wardens around a bend, and came upon the chasm. Anders would have called it a ravine. It was as wide as a river, and a bridge was spanning the length of the divide.

Within it were dwarven ruins. The stones and boulders that made up most of the ground of the Knotwood Hills gave way very suddenly to runic architecture; patterns in squares and triangles lined an expansive pathway that vanished deep below the ground. Leading down into it was a collapsed stairwell. The stairs led perhaps halfway down into the ravine before they became a sudden drop about ten feet high.

Nathaniel, Oghren, and Amell were already standing at the top of the stairs, staring down.

"I fell down a flight of stairs once, when I was a boy," Nathaniel mumbled. "They looked very much like this particular set of stairs."

Oghren put his hand on the small of Nathaniel's back and shoved. Nate stumbled and flailed, and twisted about to grab onto Amell in a panic. Amell helped him to his feet, though he didn't bother keeping hold of his arm once Nate was righted, Anders noticed.

Oghren roared with laughter. "You should have seen your face! Oh, Ancestors. I'm gonna piss myself!"

"Like you don't already." Anders said.

"Hilarious." Nathaniel muttered, looking frazzled.

Amell started down the stairs, and the rest of them followed him down to the final platform. "So, do we jump, or?" Anders asked, looking at the drop. "Because I think I'm going to be healing a broken ankles if that's the case."

"I'm not jumping." Oghren snorted, "No way, no how. Looks like this section of the Deep Roads fell in. Whole thing is probably unstable, this close to the surface."

"Push him," Anders whispered to Nathaniel. "Get even."

Oghren took a step back from the edge of the platform, scowling, "Funny story: dwarf attacks mage. Dwarf wins."

"Give me a few minutes." Amell said. An ethereal blue ensorcelled his hands, and several boulders, broken planks of stairwell, and other bits of debris lifted into the air. They floated to the base of the stairs, and stacked themselves in a jumbled heap of rock holding up plank and plank holding up rock.

Oghren spat over the edge of the stairs, eyeing the makeshift staircase Amell had created. "That... is a mess. Voldrik sure wasn't kidding about human architecture. I take it back. I'll jump. You can heal broken legs, right Sparkles?"

"I second jumping," Anders said.

"I'm sure it will hold." Nathaniel said.

Oghren snorted. "You keep kissing the Boss's ass and he's gonna get the wrong idea, boy."

"There's nothing wrong with having an admirer or two," Nathaniel said, testing his weight on the first plank. When it didn't snap under his foot, he climbed nimbly down and was waiting for them at the bottom in the span of a few seconds. Amell followed him, albeit at a much slower pace. Oghren eyed the boulders and planks dubiously. Anders was right there with him.

"Not even a handrail or two?" Anders asked.

Apparently coming to a decision, Oghren sat at the base of the stairs, and scooted all the way down the planks and boulders on his ass. It seemed like the right idea to Anders. Sitting down, he climbed down the boulders and planks backwards on his hands and knees.

"Easy." Anders said when he was safely on the ground.

"Stay on your guard ahead," Amell said. "The Deep Roads are a maze of underground tunnels. Some of them are lit with magma channels, but most are dark, and the darkspawn burrow to make their own tunnels we might have to go through. Anders, you're in charge of the light. Don't leave each other's sight."

"Right." Nathaniel said. Oghren grunted, and Anders nodded.

They all set about to rather dull business of unpacking. Nathaniel had to take his bow from its case and string it up. Oghren and Amell had helmets to put on, swords and axes to draw, shields to wear. Anders unstrapped his staff from his back, and untied the leather case that kept the blade secure. Reaching across the Veil, he found an eager wisp to hold a light spell for him, and let it hover about his staff.

"So are we just going to wander around underground until we stumble upon this darkspawn breeding ground? Is that the plan?" Anders asked.

"That's the plan." Amell agreed.

"Oh good. Just checking." Anders snorted. For all his sass, he didn't have a better plan. They stowed their empty cases on their backs, and set off down into the Deep Roads. Anders wouldn't have called them a maze just yet. The ravine had only the one path that led down underground, and they followed it for a time before the hall split off in two different directions.

Amell hesitated for a moment, and turned left. Anders guessed he could sense which direction the darkspawn were in, which was certainly something because Anders couldn't feel a thing. He didn't like the Deep Roads, Anders decided quickly. It felt like walking through a giant tomb, and as they passed further underground the sunlight became muted, and cast queer shadows in every corner. Anders ducked under a toppled pillar and collided with Amell's outstretched arm.

"Darkspawn." Amell warned them.

Weapons ready, they edged around the corner and found the darkspawn in question. There were at least a half dozen, dragging a dwarf by the heel. The little warrior was flailing madly to no avail, spewing a multitude of very colorful curses.

Amell cut the inside of his arm with his sword. There went another tunic, Anders thought, watching Amell weave a hasty spell and fling it at the hurlock holding the dwarf. The darkspawn's hand went slack, and the dwarf scrambled free. Surprised, the remaining darkspawn turned on the little warrior with shrieks of rage. Amell and Oghren put themselves between the darkspawn and the dwarf, and the fighting started.

Anders much preferred fighting with a team to being on his own. Laying down glyphs and wards and keeping up a cleansing aura was much easier than coming up with battle strategies on the fly and trying to finish a frost spell before a darkspawn overtook him. If he had to be part of a battle, he'd much rather have a supportive role than an offensive one. And it was always a little satisfying to see a darkspawn charge headlong at Nathaniel, walk over Anders' paralysis glyph, and promptly freeze for the archer to line up a perfect shot.

Biff could shove it, wherever in the Void he was. Anders was damned useful in a fight, and damned useful after it was over. The little dwarf they'd rescued was sitting with her back against a pillar, half-helm off to reveal two pretty pigtails, bright blue eyes, and a face covered in tattoos. "Well," She wheezed at their approach, "That was close."

Anders knelt next to her, "Do you need any help?"

"No, no..." She wheezed again, and sucked in a pained breath, "I'm fine. I just need to... catch my breath."

"I know I'm handsome, but I don't think it's me taking your breath away," Anders joked, "I'm a healer, why don't you let me see if anything's broken?"

"Yeah... alright." The dwarf agreed. Anders reached into the Fade and set about to sensing her injuries. She had a handful of cracked ribs, several abrasions, and a sprained shoulder.

"This shouldn't take more than a few minutes," Anders said, summoning Compassion across the veil and using her to channel a cleansing aura.

"Well. Thanks," The dwarf said, "For a moment there I thought I was really about to join the Legion of the Dead."

"The what?" Anders asked.

"Bunch of grim warrior-types," Oghren said, taking off his helmet and resting his bloodied axe up against the pillar. He pulled his flask from his armor and offered it to the girl, but she shook her head. He took a drink instead, "Single-minded darkspawn killers."

"We are warriors already dead to our people. We're sent into the Deep Roads to battle darkspawn till the Stone claims. Which it did-with great efficiency-today." The dwarf said. "My name is Sigrun. I... I was with my battalion, investigating Kal'Hirol. It's an old dwarven fortress not far from here. There's been so much darkspawn activity in the area lately, our Corporal thought they were breeding an army. I think... I think he was right.

"Kal'Hirol was more than a massacre for us. The darkspawn took some of the women in my battalion, and they've... changed, somehow. They're smarter, more dangerous. I swear I heard some of them talking."

"Well, good news is you're not crazy," Anders said. "Turns out they can do that now."

"Are you serious?" Sigrun asked. "Then I definitely have to go back and figure out what the darkspawn are doing. Scout out the place."

"So you're a scout?" Nathaniel asked, "That explains how you survived then."

"...No. It really doesn't." Sigrun said quietly. "When I saw my friends cut down in there...I got scared. I fled. I'm only alive because I'm a coward."

"And this is bad because...?" Anders asked. "Look on the bright side, at least you're still alive."

"I'm a member of the Legion of the Dead," Sigrun frowned, "Maybe the name is a little vague, but being alive is sort of the opposite of what we're going for. We're supposed to die out in the Deep Roads, unmourned and forgotten."

"Really? They let you do all that?" Anders joked. "I can see the appeal. Remind me to sign up next time I'm in Orzammar."

"It's not like the Wardens, Sparkles," Oghren said. "No one signs up to join the Legion."

"You're Wardens?" Sigrun asked excitedly. "Of course! That explains why you're here. You're looking for the darkspawn breeding ground, aren't you? The ancestors must have had a hand in this. I can show you where Kal'Hirol is. With you destroying the darkspawn nest might not be impossible... just... improbable!"

"Aren't you the optimist." Anders laughed. "All done. You can stand up now. Everything should be in working order."

Obediently, Sigrun stood, flexing her arms and legs. "That's amazing. Two minutes ago everything hurt, and now I feel incredible. Magic really is magic."

"You're welcome," Anders said.

"Thank you." Sigrun grinned, picking up her half-helm and stuffing her head back into it. "So how about it? Can I come with you?"

Everyone looked to Amell. "You'll need a weapon." Amell said.

"I had a pair of axes... I know where I dropped them. It's just a little ways down the hall." Sigrun said excitedly, and took off running down the hall.

"If you don't let that spicy little kumquat come with us I will never forgive you." Oghren said.

"I already said she could come, Oghren." Amell said.

"If you can get so much as a compliment out of her I will pick up your tab for a week." Anders said.

"You're on. Oh you're on." Oghren muttered, taking a long drink from his flask. He grinned lecherously at Sigrun when she came back, axes in hand. Anders wasn't terribly worried.

"Let's go then." Sigrun said.

"One minute," Amell said. He knelt next to one of the more intact darkspawn corpses, and channeled a spell that soon had it back on its feet and tethered to his will.

"Woah!" Sigrun said. "You're a mage too? And a... what is it called?"

"A necromancer." Amell supplied.

"Nice," Sigrun grinned, "Kind of creepy, but nice. May as well make the darkspawn good for something."

"Thank you." Amell said sincerely. "My name is Amell. This is Anders, Nathaniel, and Oghren."

"Yeah, but the ladies pronounce it Oooooh-gren." Oghren grinned.

"I... won't be doing that." Sigrun said, taking a spot next to Amell. "Kal'Hirol is this way," She said, leading them further into the Deep Roads. "I don't know much about it, except what the others from the Legion told me. It used to be important, a center of learning for the smith caste. When the fortress was lost, a lot of what the smiths had learned was lost with it. They've never built anything quite like Kal'Hirol since."

"Hopefully Orzammar's golems will help insure no more of your culture is lost." Amell said.

"Hopefully." Sigrun agreed.

Oghren was pouting. Anders nudged him, chuckling. "Cheer up. At least you still have a chance with your hand."

"Huh?" Oghren blinked. "What do you mean? Oh-right. The gal. Whatever."

"Something else wrong?" Anders asked.

"No. Nah. Nothing." Oghren pulled out his flask and took a long drink. "Stuff her." He muttered under his breath.

"Well that's a little harsh," Anders said. "To be fair, your pick-up lines are terrible."

"What? No. Not her. I was thinking about-nothing," Oghren put his helmet back on and shifted his axe on his shoulder, "Just-go away, Sparkles. Go walk with the Boss for a bit."

Well that was odd. Anders made a mental note of it, and skipped ahead to walk next to Amell. Amell glanced at him, but with his helmet on Anders had no idea what expression he was making. Troublesome things, helmets. On, off, on, off. No expressions. Bad hair. Anders was not wearing one if it came with the travel gear Amell wanted to commission for him.

They followed the road out into a massive underground cave. An underground waterfall roared off to their right, and poured into a river that divided the cave in two. Also off to their right was a dwarven city carved into the cave wall, and them with no way to reach it. The road had continued into a bridge at one point, but it had since collapsed into the river. "We head down here," Sigrun said, pointing to a steep decline to their left. "There's another bridge further on we can use to get into the city,"

Rather nimbly, Sigrun leapt off the road and onto the hill, sliding down. Nathaniel followed suit. "Not again," Anders sighed.

"Do you need a hand?" Amell offered.

"I'm a big boy. I can do it." Anders waved him off, climbing off the road and onto the hill. He took it at a crouch, one hand on the ground, the other holding his staff, and somehow managed to get to the bottom without tripping over his robes. "Easy." Anders said to himself, but he was feeling a little more open about that travel gear.

Oghren, Amell and his darkspawn followed him, and the six of them continued. They followed the river for a quarter hour before they found the bridge, and guarding it, a lone dwarf, near death.

"Jukka!" Sigrun yelled, running forward. The scene was all too familiar to Anders. The dwarf even had the injury in the same place. His armor was cleaved open at his stomach, and he was holding his guts in with one hand. The dirt beneath him was muddy with blood, and he'd sunken into it at least an inch. Draped over his legs was the body of a hurlock, a sword that must have been Jukka's protruding from its back.

"Sigrun?" Jukka coughed. Blood poured out of his mouth and painted his beard a deeper shade of red.

"Yes, it's me. Be still and try not to talk. I met a healer, Jukka. A real live mage! He can save you. He's magic." Sigrun glanced up at him hopefully, "You can save him can't you?"

Anders shook his head. "He's beyond healing." At least Amell already had a puppet at his command, so he probably wouldn't reanimate Jukka the way he had Rowland.

"Listen," Jukka grabbed Sigrun with his free hand, and pulled her closer, "The broodmothers... breeding. Saw... an army... stop them, and-beware the children."

"What?" Sigrun asked. "What children? Whose children?"

"Can't... talk..." Jukka wheezed, "Forgive me."

"Please," Sigrun looked up at him again, tears in her eyes. "Please, can't you just try? Try a little? Maybe... maybe it will work. It's magic after all."

"I'm sorry," Anders said.

Amell knelt beside her and drew the dagger he kept in his boot. Sigrun stared at it, and held out her hand. Amell handed it over. Jukka managed a nod, and Sigrun slit his throat. She handed the dagger back, tears running down her face. "Ancestors look kindly on you brother."

They continued, the mood noticeably more somber. Anders hated it. He wasn't a somber sort of person, but the Deep Roads were nothing if not that. Everything was dark and dull, and what little color there was was muted. The place seemed to forbid light and laughter, and no one spoke as they crossed the bridge and made their way into the city.

The darkspawn were there, and the fighting that followed was endless. They fought through alleyways, they fought up stairwells and down them, they fought through a market place, they fought through slums, and they fought through noble districts before they finally reached Kal'Hirol, and stood in the fortress' courtyard, and then they fought even more.

There they found the children Jukka had spoke of. They were horrid grubs the size of a man with the face of a child. For the most part they moved in a mindless crawl, until they were near enough to lunge. Anders watched one launch itself off the ground and onto Amell's shield, knocking him over. Anders froze the ugly blighter for him, and Amell threw the grub off him and climbed back onto his feet.

Anders was just glad it wasn't him. Not only was he not wearing armor, and not only did he not have a shield, but he was tired. So maybe he hadn't been doing the presses he'd told himself he'd start doing. And maybe running away from the Tower didn't always necessarily mean he was actually running. And maybe he could use a break in-between fighting endless hoards of darkspawn.

But Anders didn't get the break everyone else did when Amell called for a halt in the courtyard, and Sigrun ran off to look for a hidden side entrance so they didn't have to walk balls first through the front door. While Oghren got to drink from his hip flask, Anders got to drink a lyrium potion and a stamina draught from his pack, and heal everyone's various wounds and injuries.

And so it continued throughout the entire mission. They'd fight for an hour and rest for a few minutes, but Anders never got to participate in the 'rest' part. Someone was always sporting an open wound, a broken bone, or a crushed limb after every battle. After one hour, he was exhausted, but after two he was dead on his feet. After three, he felt like one of the golems Amell was so excited to find in Kal'Hirol, but no one had a hand on Anders' 'control rod', as it were, so there was really nothing to make up for how grueling the fighting was.

Apparently, one of the golems in Kal'Hirol still worked. One of the darkspawn had been holding its control rod, and now that that particular darkspawn was dead, they had their own personal golem. It was much needed, considering Amell's undead hurlock had fallen ages ago. The find made the fighting easier for the rest of them, Anders especially. With the golem taking the lead, there were less injuries for him to heal, and he could actually rest during their rest breaks.

It seemed especially important he rest, because the Veil was ridiculously thin in Kal'Hirol, and Anders did not want any demons coming through when he was this exhausted. Echoes of the last battle before the fall of Kal'Hirol were all around them, repeating over and over, brought to life by the memories of the dead and the spirits who mimicked them in the Fade. Sigrun called it 'the memories of the Stone,' and Anders wasn't about to correct her. Let her believe whatever made her happy; he was too tired for anything else.

The deeper they went into Kal'Hirol, the more obvious it became they were heading in the right direction. Corruption was everywhere. The floor and the walls were covered with what Anders could only describe as rotten meat, in one giant mass. The smell of it was everywhere, and it made the ground ridiculously unstable. It stuck to his boots as he walked, and seemed to undulate whenever they fought atop it. More than once he slipped and fell on the stuff, and he couldn't help throwing up the first time it happened.

If nothing else, he wasn't alone. Everyone was gagging, dry-heaving, and having a generally horrible time. Green gas filled the air, and one of the halls was even filled with queer white sacks, the size of grown men. Anders guessed there might actually be men inside, wrapped up in spider silk and being held for a snack by the horse-sized spiders they'd encountered, and had he mentioned he hated the Deep Roads? Because he did. A lot.

He hated them even more when one of the sacks blew up on him. Fetid vomit-colored liquid coated him from head to toe, and one of the children fell out of the sack with a squeal. Then all of the sacks exploded, and they were fighting again. Anders was fighting with his gag reflex. He didn't have time to throw up. He had to lay down a glyph of paralysis in front of Nate, he had to keep Sigrun sheathed in a offensive aura, he had to keep up a barrier on Amell and Oghren.

He had to pay attention. A darkspawn fell on him. Anders had no idea where it had come from, but it was on him, and it was heavy, and it had the face of a blubbering child. It wasn't one of the Children, except that it was. The thing was nearly twice the size of the grubs, with countless crab-like claws double the length of Anders' own arms that made up its arms and legs. It screamed at him, and it's face split open, jowls flapping away from two full sets of teeth.

Anders screamed back, terrified. He was lying on his back in a pile of rotten meat and ooze, with a giant darkspawn on top him. He grabbed the first element that came to him and cast without thinking. His fire spell ignited the green gas in the air around them momentarily, and the creature atop him howled in pain. It reared back, and in the seconds between seconds Anders hoped it would fall off him. Then it fell forward, claws thrashing into his chest, his shoulders, his legs. Anders screamed again, but in agony.

He lost his hold on the light he'd been conjuring, and the corridor plunged into darkness. Grabbing for where his staff had fallen, Anders fingers found the hardwood, and brought it up to protect his face. In the dark, the creature beat against his staff again and again. Anders arms buckled twice, and then the staff snapped in half in his hands. He brought up his arms in its place, trying to summon a barrier, a force field, anything. Compassion answered him when nothing else did, and a blinding white light pierced through the corridor.

The darkspawn atop him was momentarily stunned, but something was infinitely more important than that. Beneath the sounds of battle, the screams of darkspawn and Wardens, the clang of metal on carapace, the crunch of metal through bone, and the gush and spurt of spilt blood and trampled corruption, Anders heard a soft sound like the ripping of fabric. The Veil tore.

Notes:

Fanart
Amell

Chapter 7: Memories of the Stone

Notes:

Thank you again for all of the feedback. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 1 Solis Late Afternoon

Kal'Hirol, Somewhere in the Trade Quarters

Anders hastily conjured another ball of light. No one could save him if they couldn't see him, after all. The darkspawn atop him shrieked, and brought up a half dozen claws, either protect its eyes or to spear him to death. Anders never found out. The creature froze. It's face grew bulbous and swollen, the exposed veins on its body expanded, and its eyes bulged in its sockets. Then it exploded.

That... was not Compassion. Claws, blood, and flesh went everywhere. The only thing left of the creature was its massive carapace, weighing down Anders' chest. Someone grabbed the carapace and threw it off him. It was Amell, of course, his hands still sheathed in blue from his spell. Amell cast a second spell, and suddenly Anders couldn't move. He probably couldn't have moved anyway, but the telekinetic barrier around him  meant he couldn't even try. Anders watched the rest of the battle from the ground. Twice, a darkspawn dove on him, only to bounce off Amell's barrier and pick a new target. 

The barrier might have kept him safe, but it did nothing for the pain. Anders was in agony. His chest still felt like it was being crushed, and his leg had a pain as blinding as the light Compassion had summoned, and the less said of his shoulder the better. Amell came back to him when the fight with the children was over and dispelled the force field he'd cast. "Can you move?" Amell asked, kneeling next to him.

"I can try," Anders said. Sitting up sent a sharp pain through his shoulder and his leg. The leg bit made sense. There was a claw sticking out of his thigh, after all. Anders felt dizzy. "Well isn't that something."

"Hey," Amell took off his helmet. His hair was a mess, black strands sticking up in every direction. Anders chuckled. Amell grabbed his face. His dirty gauntlets smeared cold ooze and warm blood over Anders' cheeks. It felt awful. "Stay with me. I'm not a healer. Tell me what to do here. There's a claw in your leg and an open wound on your shoulder," Amell unbuckled one gauntlet and threw it on the ground to press his palm against Anders' forehead. "And you're cold. What does that mean?"

"Uh..." Anders blinked. Amell split into two people and came back together. "Um. I think-I'm going into shock? Don't take the claw out. Just... stop the bleeding. Keep pressure on the wound. Get a poultice for my shoulder-and... a lyrium potion. I'll take care of it."

"Boss... Demons." Oghren warned them.

"How many?" Amell asked.

"Three." Oghren said. "No, four. Looks like... just shades? And-oh nug shit."

"That-I did that," Anders said, laying or, more accurately, falling back down so he didn't pass out, "The Veil is so thin... and Compassion was right there. I shouldn't have summoned her."

"Boss..." Oghren said again.

"Damnit," Amell muttered. His dagger appeared his hand, and he rolled up his sleeve. One look at the scars on Amell's arm made Anders hope he was still seeing double. "Nathaniel, Sigrun, come and help Anders. Oghren, the shades. Leave her to me." Amell cut open an old scar, leaving an angry line of red in it's place. That must hurt, Anders thought as Amell stood and turned to face something Anders couldn't see.

"I have some bandages," Sigrun offered, dropping her pack and taking a spot beside his leg.

"I have a poultice," Nathaniel said. He rummaged through his own pack and knelt beside his shoulder.

"Don't-" Anders started to say. Nathaniel cut through the clasp on his spaulders before he could finish. "Goodbye feathers." Anders sighed. Similarly, Sigrun cut his robes around where the claw was embedded in his leg. As much as Anders might have needed armor, his robes had to be better than running around the Deep Roads half naked. Anders sighed again, willing the ceiling stop spinning while Sigrun wrapped his leg around the claw, and Nathaniel dealt with his shoulder.

Someone pushed a lyrium potion into his hands, and he drank it. The sickly sweet taste made him want to be sick again for how it mixed with the rot in the air, but Anders kept it down. His head felt a little clearer for it, and he could feel the pull of the Fade through the torn Veil once more. Anders channeled regenerative energies for a few seconds to get his bearings and recover from his shock.

Amell was back when Anders sat up. A tear in the Veil was nothing to scoff at, but it couldn't have been too serious if only a handful of shades made it through. Anders was relieved he hadn't bungled everything, until he noticed the demon swaying idly behind Amell.

"Andraste's holy knickers, what the shit." Anders said.

Amell followed his gaze to the demon. "It's fine," He said, "She's mine now. I can hold her for as long as it takes to get you on your feet."

"Mine..." The demon repeated, her sultry voice echoing through the corridor. She was a creature of desire and naked lust. Her skin was a dark lilac; lavender flames cracked through her skin and crowned her head in place of hair. She ran her hands over her naked body, humming softly to herself, and glanced at Amell with a smile as if enraptured with a lover and not bound by a mage.

"I'm..." Anders said.

"Yeah." Oghren agreed, ogling the demon unashamedly.

 "That's not at all what I meant," Anders said.

"S'what I meant." Oghren snorted. "So... you can make her fight, right? Can you make her, you know, do other stuff?"

"Maker's balls, man, really?" Anders asked.

"Hey, come on!" Oghren brought up his hands defensively, "We're all thinking it. Well, the Boss isn't, obviously, but it's not like she's... you know, real."

The desire demon paced a few feet and stopped beside Amell, trailing her clawed fingers over his shoulders, up his neck, and into hair. She seemed very much real to Anders. "She's as real as you are, Oghren," Amell said, "And she might not be the last. We need to move. Now what, Anders?"

"Now I need to heal this mess." Anders said. "Can you... get me somewhere not covered in flesh ornaments? It's going to take a while."

"We could make camp back at the forge." Sigrun said. "The golem there was defending it from intruders. With our golem, and this... thing," Sigrun flapped a hand at the demon ,"We should be safe for a while."

"That was back a corridor and up a flight of stairs," Nathaniel said. "Anders has a claw in his leg. How are we going to get him there?"

"She can carry him." Amell said. The demon looked to Anders, her eyes empty pools of black. The ghost of a smile traced her lips.

"I'd really rather she didn't." Anders laughed nervously.

"She won't hurt you, Anders." Amell said.

"Oh, no, I'm sure, and I hate to be picky, but I mean... Could we not do that?"

"Maybe the golem could carry him?" Sigrun suggested.

The walking boulder was so ancient it barely understood Amell when he ordered it to fight, even holding its control rod. Anders shook his head. "Not without jarring my leg."

Nathaniel and Amell could drag him, if they strung him up between them. Anders was about to suggest as much when Amell knelt and picked him up, arms under his knees and around his shoulders.

It was extraordinarily uncomfortable. Amell's chest armor jutted against Anders' side, and the one gauntlet he was still wearing was chafing something unmentionable against the back of Anders' knee. Granted, he wasn't a golem or demon, but he was no chariot either.

"Someone get my things," Amell said.

"Got 'em," Sigrun said, slinging Amell's shield over her shoulder and picking up the rest of his discarded things.

"Let's head back to the forge then." Nathaniel said.

Everyone was being terribly mature about the whole ordeal. Not a single quip about him needing to be carried. Anders supposed he could be mature too, until Oghren giggled. "Having fun there, princess?"

"Buckets." Anders said tartly.

"Leave him be, Oghren." Amell said.

"Fine, fine. Just trying to lighten the mood." Oghren muttered, falling back to walk with Nathaniel.

"Comfortable?" Amell ventured when Oghren had gone.

"No," Anders laughed. Laughing hurt. "Give it to me straight. Am I going to have to lay off the pies?"

"You're not that heavy." Amell said. Whatever alluring scent that had clung to him that morning was lost to the fetid stench of darkspawn. Ah well. There was nothing for it really. Anders was no basket of roses at the moment, either. "I don't mind carrying you."

"Are you sure you can handle the stairs when we get there?" Anders asked.

"If I can't, I'll cheat." Amell shrugged.

"Cheat how?" Anders asked.

"By channeling my magic inward to augment my strength." Amell said.

"By doing what now?" Anders asked.

"You didn't think I had any real martial prowess, did you?" Amell grinned down at him. "It's all magic, the way I fight."

"I've never heard of a Knight Enchanter using a real sword before." Anders said.

"I'm not one of those." Amell said disdainfully.

"No, I had a feeling 'Chantry Protectorate' wasn't really your style." Anders said.

"Back during the Blight, I found the phylactery of an ancient mage. He'd been bound to it in death, and was part of an order that used magic to augment their physical prowess. I made a deal with ... what was left of him, for his memories." Amell said. "He called himself an Arcane Warrior."

"Just like that?" Anders asked. "What if it hadn't been a spirit? What if it had been a demon in disguise?"

"It was a good deal." Amell said.

Well. That was totally reassuring. They reached the stairs, and Anders had to put a hand on Amell's shoulders to keep from toppling out of his arms. "Are you alright?" Amell asked.

"My bruises have bruises and even my teeth hurt, but I'm alive, so... thanks for that." Anders said.

"I didn't count on the children being able to climb like that. It was on the ceiling when it fell on you." Amell said. "I won't let anything that close again."

"Don't make promises you can't keep." Anders said.

"I never do." Amell said. "Did you not have time to summon a barrier?"

"I don't know if you noticed, but I'm exhausted, and you're kind of demanding." Anders did his best to look indignant. Not an easy task when he was being cradled like a babe, but at least he was an indignant babe. "Every break we've had, I've been busy healing someone and didn't get to rest."

"I didn't realize I was pushing you so hard." Amell said. "Tell me next time."

"That's a fine 'I'm sorry.'" Anders huffed.

"I'm sorry," Amell said obediently.

"Good." Anders said. "I forgive you. Anyway, on the bright side, at least it didn't get my face. Whether or not I end up crippled, at least I'm still pretty."

"There is that." Amell agreed.

They reached the forge without incident and Amell set him on the ground. The rest of them set about fortifying the room as best they were able so Anders would be safe to heal himself. The golem they stationed at the door, but the desire demon continued to float about Amell, touching his hands and playing with his hair. For the most part, he ignored her.

"What else do you need?" Amell asked.

"Clean water, if you can summon any. A clean rag, and more bandages. A rod, wood or metal, and a strip of leather or cloth. Another poultice and another potion. And two people to help me take the claw out of my leg. You and Nate, probably. And elevate my leg now so we can start with you have everything." Anders said.

They brought him everything he asked for, propping his leg up on an anvil while they went about fetching supplies. The water came in a spare bowl someone had found, the strip of leather was Nathaniel's belt, and the rod they'd picked was a poker from the forge. Anders stared at the claw in his leg, feeling dizzy all over again. He'd gone into shock when it had happened, and for all he knew it had hit an artery. "I'm going to scream a lot." Anders decided.

"Oh don't be such a piss baby." Oghren said. He unhooked his hip flask and thrust it out at him. Anders took a long drink. The hard liquor washed the taste of vomit out of his mouth and made him feel a little better. "Just grit your teeth and do it. We've all had worse."

"I haven't." Nate said.

"Me neither." Sigrun said.

"No one asked you." Oghren frowned. Anders handed him his flask back.

"Alright," Anders took a deep breath. "So. Nate, move my robes out the way, and loop the belt here, above the wound and around the poker. Now twist it until I tell you to stop."

Nate followed his instructions to the letter. The pressure of the tourniquet was almost unbearable, but Anders couldn't afford to pass out. None of them were healers. If he fell unconscious now, he might wake up with nerve damage in his leg, or no leg at all. It wasn't something Anders wanted to think about. "... Stop. Hold it like that. Amell, unwrap the bandages. Water-no, not for me, on the bloody hole in my leg! I don't want any of whatever this slime is getting in there. Alright... Now take the claw and just-be gentle about it."

Amell removed the claw.

Anders screamed. Quite a bit. The pain was worse than when the darkspawn had impaled him in the first place. The sound was even worse. The carapace sliding out of the muscles in his leg made a watery sucking sound, like a boot being pulled from mud. Followed by a loud crack. "Andraste's flaming-did it break?" Anders demanded.

"I have it. Wait." Amell said. Amell's hand glowed blue and Anders felt something moving his beneath his skin. Awful didn't begin to describe the sensation. Vomit crawled into his throat and he swallowed it back down. "There," Amell said, "It was a small piece. Now what?"

"Keep holding the tourniquet and give me the potion." Anders said. Amell handed it to him, and he drank it before he summoned Compassion. She came readily, and the Veil held. Anders let out the breath he'd been holding. "I have it. Give me a quarter hour. Don't let go of the tourniquet."

"I've got it." Nate assured him.

"Easy." Anders said to himself. Sure, there was a gaping hole in his leg, and his shoulder still felt like it had collapsed in its socket, and he couldn't breathe without hurting his ribs, but he wasn't dead. No one else was dead. All in all, today could have been worse.

"Something like this happened in my battalion once." Sigrun said. "It went kind of like this, only a mage wasn't there to heal him, and we had to cut off his arm. And we had to do it while fighting a hoard of darkspawn before the taint infected him, without any golems or demons protecting us, but it was kind of like this."

"Anders' leg is injured, not his arm. And we don't have to amputate anything." Nathaniel said.

"I said 'like' not 'exactly like'. Jeez. Is he always like this?" Sigrun asked.

"Sadly." Anders said.

"Speaking of demons." Oghren interrupted, eyeing the desire demon still floating around Amell. "How come these things are always gals? I mean, you figure there'd be a stud or two in the mix. Are they ever dudes?"

"Sometimes. If that's what you want them to be." Amell said.

"Uh-huh." Oghren grinned. "And you humans dream with these things in your Fade. Ever bang one?"

"Oh ew." Sigrun wrinkled her nose. "Really? It has horns."

"And tits out to here." Oghren held out his hands. "So come on, Boss. Fess up."

"Why do you ask?" Amell asked.

"That's a yes if I ever heard one." Oghren said. "You owe me ten silvers, archer boy."

"That's not what I heard." Nathaniel said. "I owe you nothing, dwarf."

"Oh for-" Anders rolled his eyes. "Anyone who's ever had a wet dream has banged some kind of spirit or demon."

"Aha!" Oghren laughed, "Fellow mage confirms it. Ten silvers. Paid in full when we get back to the Keep."

"That doesn't count." Nathaniel said.

"Nug shit it doesn't." Oghren said. "So what are we doing with her? Kill her now, or keep her around to fight darkspawn?"

The demon was still hanging off Amell. She would pace occasionally, but never more than a few feet away before she wandered back. Her hands where everywhere, in his hair, on his arms, sometimes even wrapped around his neck. Her bare breasts pressed against his arm or his back, and Amell just ignored it. Anders couldn't fathom it. The lurid display was so distracting Anders could barely focus on his healing his leg. At the same time, Anders felt like it was indecent of him to even be looking at her. But then again, even if she weren't bound, desire demons were notoriously shameless. And notoriously evil. She needed to die.

Amell stared at the demon for a long minute. She smiled back at him. "Keep her. She'll be useful."

"Keep her!?" Anders repeated in disbelief. "She's not a puppy, you know, she's a demon. The kind that possess mages like you and me. You can't be serious."

"Trust me, Anders. I know what I'm doing." Amell said. The famous last words of every blood mage.

"If you say so." Anders said warily.

Anders hadn't thought of Amell as a blood mage in weeks. Yes, he used a spell here and there to kill darkspawn, but Anders had never seen him use his magic to control a person. Or bind a demon. It was a rather uncomfortable reminder.

He shouldn't have forgotten in the first place, Anders thought as he finished healing his leg, and told Nate to take off the tourniquet. He should know better than to trust a pretty face, but more than that, he should know better than to trust a friendly one. What did he wear his old pendant for it not to remind himself that friendship was dangerous?

Friendship could be as blind as love. It made a man lose sight of himself. Anders couldn't afford to let that happen. A mage who got careless would end up no mage at all. Anders eyed the demon while he rubbed the feeling back into his leg as his circulation returned. When he could feel his toes again, Anders healed his other minor scrapes and contusions.

"The Veil is torn below." Amell said when their break was over, and Anders could walk again. "On the way back we might run into more demons. Be cautious,"

Anders couldn't afford to be anything less. He had no staff, and only half a robe left to his name. He stayed beside Nathaniel as they descended back into the lower reaches of Kal'Hirol, praying they ran into no more demons. He should have prayed a little harder.

Shades leapt forth from the shadows, angry wraiths seemed to spring forth from the dead bodies of darkspawn littered around them. One blow from their golem could disperse a shade, but the wraiths were annoyingly quick balls of light that darted overhead, shocking anyone who came too near. Anders dispelled them as best he was able with no staff to focus his magic, but Amell insisted they ignore them and keep moving, so they did.

They were almost to the end of the corridor when the ghost of a dwarf ran towards them. "This is my home!" The ghost yelled, "And I will kill all who threaten it!" He charged forward, and before Anders could dispel the magic forming in the air, a creature of molten hate burst forth from the ghost in a shower of flame.

The desire demon dove it with a screech. Her hands lit with purple flame, and she swiped at the rage demon's face. Bits of the rage demon fell off like clumps of molten lava as they fought. Anders summoned ice, and let it form into a lance he flung at the molten creature. It didn't quite freeze, but the lava that made up its 'legs' hardened, and rendered it immobile. The desire demon tore it to pieces.

She seemed almost proud of her victory, walking back to Amell's side with a noticeable sway in her hips. Anders hoped the man still had a firm hold over her as they continued.

Further into the lower reaches, and they came upon a corridor. It was a long corridor. Very long. So long they couldn't see it end. "Back in Kal'Hirol's day, long corridors were a status symbol." Oghren said, chuckling. "The longer the better, if you know what I mean."

"Size isn't everything." Sigrun quipped.

They all laughed, except Amell, who only grinned, but the camaraderie was short lived. When they realized the corridor echoed, they unanimously agreed to be quiet for fear of whatever lay ahead. "The suspense is killing me," Anders whispered when the exit was finally in sight; the hallway opened up into an extraordinarily well lit chamber, but aside from the light Anders could make nothing out.

As they drew closer, they heard voices. The harsh, guttural voices of darkspawn, and they were arguing.

"The Lost is a coward!" One darkspawn was screaming. "The Lost hides behind the man of metal! Face me! Face me!"

"It is the Architect who is a coward!" The other yelled back "He sends many but does not come himself! I will kill you and he will know that he has failed to destroy the Lost! He will know that the Mother will tear him apart!"

They reached the entryway to the chamber, and found the source of the light. It was a golem. And it put their sad little walking boulder to shame. Their golem was a chunk of misshapen stone barely taller than Nathaniel. The darkspawn's golem was a giant of metal, three times the size of their own. Fire shone through every crack in its armor and it dripped with molten lava, as if a rage demon lay within. In one hand, it held half a darkspawn.

One whole darkspawn was standing beside it. On the one hand, it held a staff, and Anders was envious. On the other hand, it held a control rod, and Anders was terrified.

"Who comes now!?" The darkspawn screamed at them.

With a furious screech, the desire demon ran forward. She didn't get two feet into the room before the inferno golem swatted her out of the air, and she died immediately in a puff of purple smoke. That was one problem solved, Anders supposed.

Beside him, Amell was already casting something from a cut in his arm. Anders hadn't noticed, but the darkspawn had. "No!" It screamed. "You will not have the mind of the Lost! The Lost is Awakened! The Man of Metal will protect me!" He darted behind the golem, and climbed up a ladder on its back, out of Amell's line of sight.

"It can't fit through the corridor. Why don't we just run?" Anders suggested.

"There will be no running!" The darkspawn yelled from the golem's back. With a wave of his staff, he summoned a wall of flame to block their exit.

"Nice going, idiot." Sigrun muttered.

"Get the control rod." Amell said, as if it were so simple. He drew his sword and put up his shield, and ran forward to fight a mountain. Well. It was nice knowing him.

Oghren charged with him, as did their own very pathetic golem. Nathaniel ran off as well, arrow notched to shoot the darkspawn down. This... This was suicide. They were all idiots. Anders didn't even have his staff to carve a proper glyph. He cast a quick frost incantation, and watched as it hit the golem's shoulder and promptly melted with all the strength of a snowball.

"How in the shit are we supposed to fight that sodding thing?" Sigrun asked what Anders was thinking. "Look. Their weapons are just bouncing off it, and that darkspawn is crouched so Nathaniel can't shoot him. What do we-"

She didn't get to finish. The golem thrust both its fists into the ground, and at first it seemed as if it had attempted to strike at Oghren and Amell and missed. A moment later, and a jet stream of flame and lava burst forth from the ground beneath Sigrun and burned her alive.

"No!" Anders screamed. A wave of protective magic burst forth from him, unfocused, but Sigrun was standing right next to him. Kneeling right next to him. On the floor right next to him, keening in agony.  The flames dispersed as quickly as they came, but her armor was bright red. Anders sheathed his hands in a quick barrier and tore it off piece by burning piece. Atop the golem, the darkspawn was howling with malicious laughter. 

He couldn't help her here. Dispelling the flames blocking the door, Anders grabbed her by her armpits and dragged her backwards into the corridor. "It hurts!" Sigrun sobbed. Thank the Maker she could still sob at all. Thank his own quick reflexes. "It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!"

"It's okay, it's okay, it's okay." Anders said, dragging her no more than a yard into the hall before he laid her down and dropped to his knees to heal her. Maker's mercy, the burns. Her small clothes had been burned away and her skin was red, everywhere. Her left breast and all down her left side was an ugly black. Focus. You can fix this.

Sigrun was still screaming, tears running down her face, her tiny body twitching erratically from the pain, "It hurts, it hurts, it hurts," Sigrun sobbed.

"It's okay, it's okay, it's okay." Anders said. He wove a hasty spell of sleep and cast it over her to spare her the pain, and her body relaxed. She was a dwarf, so it wouldn't last long, but it would last long enough to heal her. And then, even though the Veil had torn the last time he'd done it, Anders summoned his spirit.

The sound of fabric ripping came again, over the din of battle in the very next room. Anders almost expected Compassion to walk through the Veil and heal Sigrun herself, but she was there at his finger tips, as always, cooling Sigrun's skin, knitting it back together, washing away the burns. The little dwarf took all of Anders' focus, and he could only pray no darkspawn or demon came to threaten them.

When her burns were no longer life threatening, but still severe, Anders could finally hear what was what going on in the next room as he worked. It didn't sound good.

"Boss!" Oghren called out. "Demon! Big demon! Really sodding big demon!"

A laugh rumbled through the chamber and into the corridor, so deep and powerful the ground shook, and pebbles rained down from the ceiling. "I...am... free!" Something bellowed.

"Oghren! Nathaniel! I need your blood!" Amell yelled.

"Then sodding use it! I'm already bleeding!" Oghren yelled back.

"As am I!" Nathaniel yelled.

"Obey me!" Amell shouted.

"You would dare command me!?" The voice rumbled down the corridor, and rained more pebbles down on Anders' head. "I am immortal! I am eternal! I am Pride!"

"You are mine!" Amell yelled back at it. "Obey me! I am your master now! Fight the golem!"

There was a roar and another rumble, and the crackling sound of lightning joined the sounds of battle. Anders finished healing Sigrun as quickly as he dared. When her burns receded, he cast a life ward beneath her in case she relapsed, and then remembered she was naked. He couldn't very well cover her with his tunic if he didn't have one. His robes were all one piece, but they were mostly rags now. If he went up in flames, they wouldn't protect him. Anders shrugged out of his robes and draped them over Sigrun, and then ran back into the chamber in his smalls.

The first thing Anders saw was their golem, reduced to a pile of rocks by the entrance. The next thing he saw was the inferno golem, still dripping fire and lava, being assaulted by a pride demon with chains of lightning and electricity. The last thing he saw was Amell, his hands sheathed in dark red energies tethering him to Oghren and Nathaniel behind him, and the pride demon in front of him.

He was laughing. Anders suddenly understood why he did it so rarely. He sounded insane. That deep chuckle Anders had heard just that morning was gone. Amell's laugh was the wild cackle of a man mad with power. Power that came from the blood of his friends.

No. That wasn't fair. Amell was bleeding too. They were all bleeding. They'd been on the losing side of the battle until the pride demon tipped the scales in their favor. Oghren and Nathaniel had volunteered for the spell. They were standing just behind Amell, watching the fight, not lying on the ground in some ritualistic sacrifice. Anders was being too hard on him. So what if he had a creepy laugh?

Anders jogged over and took up a spot next to them, unsure of how he could help. Amell didn't seem to need his help. The pride demon was shredding through the golem's armor, tearing off chunk after chunk while the darkspawn atop it screamed in outrage.

"The Mage cheats! The Mage has allies we were not knowing about! The Mage-" A whip off electricity from the pride demon caught the darkspawn on the golem's back. Abruptly, it ceased talking, had a seizure, toppled off the golem and hit the floor, dead. Without the encouragement of its master, the golem went dormant mid fight.

"Kill this giant piece of nug shit." Oghren spat tiredly.

The pride demon twitched, and tiny bubbles formed beneath its grey skin. They skittered along the demon's veins, growing exponentially until it exploded in a cloud of green dust. Nathaniel let out an exuberant, if exhausted, cheer.

Amell unclasped his helmet and dropped it on the ground. Laughing wildly, he ran his blood soaked gauntlets through his hair and smoothed it back against his scalp. Blood dripped down his brow, and coated his arms to his elbows. Which was normal, Anders reminded himself. They'd just won a battle.

Amell spotted him and smirked, but before either of them could say anything Oghren grabbed Amell about the waist and spun him in a circle. "Hahaha! Fuck yeah! Stone fucking yeah!" Oghren roared, spinning them again, but on the second attempt he toppled over and they hit the floor together. Amell landed on him, and grabbed his face, planting a victorious kiss on the mouth Anders assumed Oghren had somewhere under his beard. Oghren spat on him in disgust, only to laugh a second later and headlock Amell, noogying him soundly. "Nice fucking job, you dirty little nug humper!"

"Nice job indeed." Nathaniel agreed. He'd also wound up on the floor at some point, and looked dangerously pale. They all did. Anders took in the cut on Nathaniel's arm, and wondered how much blood it had taken Amell to bind the pride demon.

A dangerous amount, Anders decided when both Amell and Oghren stayed on the ground rather than attempt to stand. They all bore a grisly pallor, but a cursory inspection with his magic reassured him it hadn't been enough to be life threatening for anyone. Anders knelt beside Amell first. He hadn't even called on any healing energies when Amell blinked at him.

"Sigrun?" Amell asked dizzily.

"Alive." Anders assured him. "Resting in the hallway."

"Good." Amell said.

"Aren't you even going to ask what happened to my clothes?" Anders wondered as he healed him.

Amell looked him over appreciatively for a few moments at the invitation. "No. I'm alright with this."

"Just alright?" Anders demanded. Whether or not he was serious about the flirting, he wasn't about to stand for such a low evaluation of his looks.

"You are undeniably the most attractive man I have ever seen, and I would kiss you right now if I weren't worried it would make you uncomfortable." Amell said, so studiously Anders felt his face heat up. When was the last time anyone had made him actually blush? Hadn't he judged Amell absolutely terrifying a few minutes ago and vowed not to trust him? "Is that better?"

"Much better." Anders said. "Thank you."

Notes:

Fanart
Amell carrying Anders

Chapter 8: A Night of Revelry

Notes:

Thank you for reading, and for all your wonderful comments/kudos/bookmarks. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

The song in this chapter is my adaptation of 'Blood on the Risers.'

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 5 Solis Early Evening
Vigil's Keep

All in all, their expedition into the Deep Roads had gone well. Ignoring the fact that Anders had been impaled, torn the Veil twice, lost his spaulders, had his robes ripped apart and subsequently donated to Sigrun, and came out of the whole ordeal in nothing but his boots and small clothes, it had gone well.

After the pride demon had taken care of the golem for them, they'd been able to reach the darkspawn nest it was guarding and destroy it. Going off of the rant they'd interrupted, it seemed the talking darkspawn were from two warring factions, and they'd already destroyed one. Of the three broodmothers they'd slain, it seemed reasonable to assume one was probably the Mother. So that was good.

What was even better was that Anders had a new staff. When the darkspawn had fallen from its perch atop the inferno golem, the thing's control rod had broken, but the darkspawn's staff had remained intact. It was a beautiful thing made from volcanic aurum, with no blade at it's base so it could actually double as a walking stick. A ruby was set atop it, so powerfully enchanted it put Anders' old staff to shame. Anders would have loved it, were it not so... wrong.

There was a corruption to the staff, after spending so much time in the hands of a darkspawn. It felt to Anders as if had been infused with Blight. The first time he'd touched it, it had slipped from his hand as if coated with a foul sort of oil. There was no grip to make holding it any easier, but Amell had promised him gloves, and Anders imagined they would serve well enough.

Despite its corruption, the staff was still a staff and Anders could use it to heal, so he had no complaints. Alright, so he had a few complaints, but they were minor. Having to walk back to the Vigil in nothing but his small clothes was definitely one of them.

It wasn't for modesty's sake that he'd minded. Anders was 'undeniably attractive' after all. He minded because it was the middle of summer, and the long walk had left him horribly sunburned until he'd had a chance to heal himself, without even the right to complain. Anders might not have given two figs what anyone thought of him, but complaining about a sunburn after Sigrun had gone full Andraste and been burned alive? Well that was just rude.

The little dwarf had decided to come with them and join the Wardens after they'd successfully avenged the Legion. A choice between being a Warden or dying alone in the Deep Roads didn't sound like much of a choice to Anders, but apparently Sigrun had labored over it. Anders had seen what happened when a person with doubt went through the Joining, so he was rather glad when Sigrun survived. He was even more glad when they collectively decided to celebrate her survival with drinks.

The only downside was that they were in the Vigil's dining hall, and it was crowded with civilians and soldiers in for the evening meal. When they'd returned from Kal'Hirol, everyone had welcomed them like conquering heroes. That probably had more to do with the gold they'd brought back from Kal'Hirol's Treasury than anything else, but Anders didn't like it. The attention made him uncomfortable. Attention from one person or a small group, Anders could handle and even enjoy, but hero worship? Anders didn't know how Amell did it. Even now, they had their own table, but people were staring. It was weird. And kind of creepy.

"Toasts!" Oghren shouted, breaking Anders' out of his thoughts.

"I'll go first," Sigrun said, standing up on the bench she was sitting on so they could all see her better. She held her snifter aloft. The glass looked like a tankard in her tiny hands. "My first official toast as a Warden is for the Legion. Rest well, brothers. I'll join you when my Calling comes."

"To the Legion!" Everyone said.

Anders didn't like drinking to the thought of dying, but he did like drinking. He knocked back a mouthful of his drink with everyone else. Amell had broken out a cask of West Hill Brandy for them, and Anders much preferred it to the fire Oghren usually drank. There were hints of blackcurrent, and the aftertaste was a pleasant honeysuckle. In other words, it tasted expensive.

"I'll go again." Sigrun said after she swallowed. "My second toast as a Warden is to Anders, for saving my life, but more importantly, for letting me borrow his dress."

"To Anders!" Everyone laughed.

Anders rolled his eyes and drank rather than argue the difference between a robe and a dress. 

"Your turn, Nate." Sigrun said, sitting back down.

"That's easy." Nate said, "My toast is to you, Sigrun. A remarkable fighter and welcome Sister."

"To Sigrun." Everyone said, drinking again.

"My turn then?" Oghren asked, "Alright. Gotta think up another one now, archer boy stole mine."

"We can skip you if thinking is too hard for you." Sigrun said. Anders liked her.

"Oh. She wounds me," Oghren swayed, putting a hand to his heart. "Rest assured, my spicy little kumquat, Oghren has a toast. An old classic: when from the blood of battle the Stone has fed, let heroes prevail and let the blighters lie dead. Well, here's to us blighters! We're not dead yet."

"We're not dead yet!" Everyone chorused.

"My turn?" Anders surmised, tracing the rim of his glass. He probably should have said something wardeny, but to the Void with that. It was his toast. "To freedom, pretty girls, and our fearless leader."

"Here sodding here!" Oghren slapped his knee, and jumped up on the bench to roar out at the hall. "You hear that, you flaming blighters? We're drinking to the Commander! Raise your cups and drown in 'em!"

A deafening cheer ran through the dining hall, and lasted for several long minutes before it died down enough for them to continue. Anders didn't know how Amell could stand it. Everyone loved him, but no one even knew him. It seemed... Well it seemed lonely.

"Your turn, Commander." Sigrun said.

"To drinking." Amell said simply. "Nothing burns like the first cup."

"To drinking!" Everyone agreed.

It was definitely a toast Anders could drink to. He was looking forward to being drunk. Sigrun had brought cards, and resolved to teach them all a dwarven card game called 'Diamondback.' Anders was terrible at it. He lost every hand, though he was hard pressed to care with an open tap. A minstrel was playing on the opposite end of the hall, and the mood was light enough that Anders forgot the crowded hall had ever bothered him.

"In Legion, we used to sing a lot," Sigrun said as she dealt another round. "Call songs, for when we were marching. Or eating. Or whenever we felt like it, to keep our spirits up. Do the Wardens have anything like that?"

"Not officially." Amell said.

"What about unofficially?" Sigrun asked.

"Unofficially, I only know one." Amell said.

"Let's hear it then." Oghren said.

"I can't sing." Amell said.

"Please?" Sigrun pleaded.

"I wouldn't mind a song or two." Nate chimed in.

"Why not?" Anders joined in on the peer pressure. "I wouldn't mind judging this singing voice of yours."

Amusingly, Anders noticed Amell didn't seem persuaded until Anders said something. Well, well, wasn't that interesting? Anders would use this newfound power for good. Only for good. He most certainly was not going to wheedle Amell into pampering him. Much. 

"Fine." Amell said, taking another shot of brandy before he stood. Anders wondered how drunk he was. Anders wondered how drunk Anders was. "The chorus is 'Gory, gory, what a wretched way to die,' repeated three times."

"This is a fun song, then." Anders guessed.

"I love it already." Sigrun said eagerly.

"It's called 'Blood on the Ramparts.'" Amell said, before launching into song.

Either Amell had decent singing voice, or Anders was too drunk to tell if he was awful. Maybe a bit of both. At the end of every verse, he signaled for them to sing the chorus, though Anders and Nate always had a slight delay. Maybe they were all awful at singing.

"He was mage and Warden both, and surely shook with fright,
for though he'd been in battle, he had never seen a Blight.
He had to sit and listen to those awful darkspawn roar.
You'll live not one day more!"

"Gory, gory, what a wretched way to die.
Gory, gory, what a wretched way to die.
Gory, gory, what a wretched way to die."

"'Is everybody ready?' Cried the Commander looking up.
Our hero feebly answered 'Yes' and then they stood him up.
He charged into the battle, he charged into the fray,
he charged with all his Brothers for they were of the Grey.
He'll live not one day more!"

"He fought long, and he fought hard; he fought with all the rest.
He felt the thrill of battle, and the sword that pierced his breast.
But as he fell, he rose again, and so he was possessed.
He'll live not one day more!"

"The darkspawn dove upon him, their swords did pierce his skin,
Their arrows flew, their maces struck, but still they could not win.
Until at last, that final blast, did finally take him down.
He'll live not one day more!"

"The days he lived and loved and laughed kept running through his mind.
He thought about the Circle girl, the one he'd left behind.
He thought about the templars, and wondered what they'd find.
He'll live not one day more!"

"The Wardens, they were on the spot. There were demons running wild.
The templars jumped and screamed with glee, they armed themselves and smiled,
For it had been at least a week since last a mage had failed.
He'll live not one day more."

"And as he fell, his scream was loud, his blood went splurting high.
His Brothers, they were heard to say, 'What a wretched way to die.'
He lay there rolling round, in the welter of his gore.
He'll live not one day more!"

"There was blood on the ramparts, there were brains upon the floor,
But of the darkspawn he had killed, they numbered twice a score.
And so it was that day they found, their victory in war.
He'll live not one day more!" 

A mad cheer went up through the dining hall when the song ended. Anders belatedly realized everyone had gone quiet to listen to Amell sing, and even felt a little guilty for pressuring him into it when the man flushed. Then again, he was drunk, or at least comfortably inebriated. His face might have been flushed whether or not he was embarrassed. Amell gave a small wave to the room and sat back down.

Sigrun was clapping madly. "I loved it! It was absolutely perfect. I can't believe you only know one! We have to learn more. Or maybe we could come up with our own."

"I also enjoyed it." Nathaniel said. What he'd actually said was more of a slush of vowels, but Anders understood him.

"This one of them self-fulfilling prophecies, this song of yours? Except for the bit about being afraid and liking girls, I mean." Oghren asked, gesturing empathetically with his snifter. Brandy sloshed out onto the table near Anders, and he scooted to the side to evade it before it waterfalled off the edge and into his lap.

He bumped thighs with Amell in the process. Amell stared at him for the contact; it took Amell at least a minute to process that Anders was dodging spilled brandy, and not just pressing against him for the sport of it. Amell made room for him, and then looked back at Oghren. "What?"

"What, what?" Oghren asked.

"You asked me something." Amell said.

"Did I? Don't remember," Oghren shrugged. "Let's have another song, eh! One less mud-lin."

"Less what?" Anders asked.

"Mud-lin. You know, sad and shit."

"Maudlin?" Nathaniel supplied.

"Whatever." Oghren said.

"Hm. Andraste's Mabari was always a favorite of mine." Nathaniel said. "We never heard it in the Free Marches."

"Well go on then!" Oghren ordered.

Nathaniel sang, and as it was a popular tavern song, half the dining hall joined in. Sigrun and Oghren sang the chorus as they learned it, and Amell...

Amell drank. Anders touched his shoulder to get his attention, and wasn't terribly surprised when Amell looked melancholy. He must have really missed his own mabari. "Hey. I know I said I was bad at the feely part of relationships, but do you want to talk about it?"

"Am I that obvious?" Amell wondered "I must be drunk."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Anders laughed. "So come on. Shoulder's right here if you need a cry."

"No, I-" Amell stopped short. "I forgot. I got you something. Come with me." Grabbing Anders' hand, Amell stood up and promptly sat back down, looking dizzy.

Anders laughed. "Maybe it can wait till we're sober?"

"No, I want you to have it now." Amell insisted. He stood again, much slower this time, and Anders followed suit. The whole dining hall spun. Anders leaned on the table until the room decided to behave.

"Alright." Anders said when he felt relatively confident he could walk.

"Where are you two going?" Sigrun asked.

"I'm borrowing Anders." Amell said. He grabbed his hand again and made towards the exit.

Oghren whistled.

"Oh for-he just wants to give me something." Anders said over his shoulder.

"Yeah! His dick!" Oghren yelled after them. The din of Oghren's laughter faded as Amell dragged Anders out into the hall.

It probably wasn't his dick. Anders doubted 'Andraste's Mabari' would suddenly remind anyone they wanted to have sex. And Amell wasn't being very sexy. He dragged Anders' through the halls of the Keep with a single-minded determination.

"Where are we going?" Anders laughed. They reached the stairs to the third story, and Anders had to take them at the speed of a crawl.

"My room." Amell said.

Or maybe it was his dick. "Why...?" Anders ventured.

"It's a surprise." Amell said.

Anders' face was hot on the rest of the walk to Amell's quarters. Amell didn't bunk with the rest of the plebs in the barracks; as the Arl and Commander, he had the best rooms in the Vigil. Rooms with plenty of privacy, Anders imagined.

Well... If he didn't like where the evening went, Anders would just blame it on the alcohol. That was the mature adult thing to do, after all. Anders let Amell drag him through the Keep and to his quarters, unable to help leaning on him while Amell fiddled drunkenly with the lock to his door. When he got it open, Amell pulled him inside.

Anders braced himself to be pushed back against a wall, or thrown onto a bed, or something equally tawdry. Nothing of the sort happened. Amell let go of him and stumbled forward, mumbling to himself. "Where is it...?"

"Where's what?" Anders asked.

Amell's quarters looked more like a library with a very out of place canopy bed than a bedroom. Fancy, Anders thought, stopping at the nearest bookshelf to read some of the titles. When that proved too difficult, he watched Amell rummage gracelessly under his bed. 

"Got you." Amell muttered, climbing out from under his bed and dragging along...

"Are you serious!?" Anders asked.

Amell pushed the yowling cat into his arms. Anders felt like crying. Gingerly, he cradled the little fellow in his arms and scratched its ear until it calmed down. "You got me a cat? How? When? Why?"

"I asked around, when we got back from Kal'Hirol. The Keep could use a mouser, and I thought..." Amell trailed off. "Do you like him?"

"I love him." Anders said. "He looks just like Mr. Wiggums! Oh, who's the prettiest tabby? You are! Yes you!" Anders sat on the edge of Amell's bed and set the cat in his lap. It promptly wandered off to sniff at the sheets, before it picked a pillow and started kneading it. "What should I call him, do you think?"

Amell shrugged and sat beside him to watch the cat. "Hurclaw?"

"Why is everything darkspawn with you?" Anders gave Amell's shoulder a shove. The little tabby dove onto a new pillow and started kneading again. "I know, how about Ser Pounce-a-Lot?"

"I liked Hurclaw." Amell said.

"I'm not calling him Hurclaw." Anders said. Anders leaned over to run his fingers down the cat's spine, and the little fellow thrummed adorably. "I can't believe you got me a cat."

"I want you to like being here." Amell said.

"I do like being here." Anders said. He looked back at Amell and found the man staring at him rather shamelessly. "Really. You don't have to try so hard. Anything beats sitting in a cell. I mean, being mauled half to death by darkspawn isn't my first choice for alternatives, but I try to keep an open mind."

"How open?" Amell asked. Amell set a hand on Anders' thigh, and Anders stared at it. It was just your average hand, really. It probably felt more or less the same as a woman's hand. Amell had held his hand the entire walk to his room, but for some Anders couldn't remember what it felt like. That was brandy for you.

"Um." Anders said tactfully.

Amell took his hand away. "I'm sorry-that's not why I got you the cat-I really do want you to be comfortable here."

"Hey, no, I get it," Anders said quickly. "We're not kids, right? You can want both. I'm having a grand time being a Warden, honest. And uh... I'll think about the other thing."

"Good to know." Amell said.

Ser Pounce wandered back over to walk across Anders' lap. Anders pet him. "So... that song was totally morbid."

"Wardens kind of are 'totally morbid,' Anders." Amell said.

"Well I mean, yeah, but don't we do anything other than fight darkspawn? Do we throw parties? Take over small kingdoms?"

"Arlings, but you were close." Amell said.

"I guess so," Anders laughed. "You know, this might sound silly, but I've never really thought about what I would do if I could do anything. Not seriously."

"That doesn't sound silly at all." Amell said. Ser Pounce wandered to Amell's lap, and the man fell back on the bed to give the cat free rein of his chest. "I understand. Back in the Circle... Freedom was just a fantasy. You can't think too seriously about it or you go mad."

"You get me." Anders said.

"I'm trying." Amell said.

Anders laughed. He definitely liked Amell, crazy blood mage or not. At least enough to bed him. If the man had been a woman, Anders would have taken him up on his offer in a heartbeat. It was a shame, really, but... Well, it wasn't like a bit of experimenting would kill him...

A knock at the door cut off Anders' train of thought.

"Enter!" Amell called out, and sat up.

It was Mistress Woolsey, of all people. A rather portly looking fellow was with her, red faced and dressed in a rather simple doublet and jerkin. Noble, but probably not too noble. "Commander." Woolsey bowed, all practicality despite the fact that the two of them were sitting on Amell's bed, playing with a cat. "I apologize for disturbing you, but-"

"But I insisted." The noble interrupted. "My name is Lord Edgar Bensley, Commander. I am a loyal vassal, and distant cousin to Lord Eddelbrek."

Spare me, Anders thought. Nobles could be ridiculously frumpy.

"I come to beg your help." Edgar continued. "My only daughter, my sweet Eileen, has been kidnapped by a gang of bandits which have plagued the arling of late. Their leader, a man named Mosley, is demanding thirty sovereigns for her release, to be delivered to the ruined Chantry by the Forlorn Cove by tonight, or he swears she will die.

"I haven't the means, Commander," Edgar explained, his eyes welling with tears. "If I sold everything I owned, I could deliver the ransom myself, but I could never find a buyer for old tapestries and family heirlooms in so short a time. I thought if I came to you, you could negotiate with the bandits in my stead... or pay my Eileen's ransom."

"My dear Lord Bensley, the Wardens sympathize with your plight, but thirty sovereigns for one girl of lesser standing is too obscene a sum." Woolsey said bluntly. "We simply cannot help you. What we can do is address these attacks. Young Lady Bensley was abducted along the Pilgrim's Path. Mosley is but one man, with a half dozen ruffians at his command, but he may answer to a greater threat that has been waylaying our caravans of late. The Warden-Commander would do better to speak with the Merchant Guild in Amaranthine to learn more, rather than walk blindly into this bandit's nest."

"But my Eileen." Edgar all but sobbed. "Please, Commander. It is as your treasurer says. He has only a half-dozen men. Surely... Surely that would be no trouble for the Hero of Ferelden? I've heard the stories-"

"Stories, my dear Lord Bensley, are stories." Woolsey said. "It is only in stories you will see one man live when pitted against six. And even were our Commander to prevail, it is highly unlikely your daughter would survive the encounter. Commander, if you would, could you please explain to Lord Bensley what he asks is impossible?"

Amell grabbed hold of the banister to his canopy bed and used it to pull himself to his feet. He swayed a little, and Anders thought it was obvious he wasn't completely sober. "Where is the cove?"

"Oh-oh-thank you, Commander!" Edgar sobbed. He ran forward and grabbed hold of Amell's hand, kissing his knuckles. "Maker preserve you! The cove is on the coast of the Amaranthine Ocean, following the North Road to Amaranthine. I have a map, and a locket here with a portrait of my sweet Eileen." He fished both things from a pack at his hip and pushed them into Amell's hands. "Please, Commander, we must make haste. I fear for Eileen's life should I delay."

"I'm going alone." Amell said.

"Mosley wanted for me to come in person, I have his ransom note," Edgar said, retrieving a roll of parchment from his pack. "Should I not be present, just to make it clear you speak on my behalf?"

"Commander, I too must question the amount of thought you appear to have given this decision." Mistress Woolsey said.

"Trust me." Amell said. He set the locket, map, and ransom note down on the bed, went to the armoire on the far side of his room. "You can go. I'll leave right away unless there's anything else you think I should know."

"No, Commander." Edgar said. "Thank you, Commander. I will await you here at the Vigil and pray for your safe return."

He bowed his way out of the room, but Mistress Woolsey stayed to scowl disapprovingly. "... Anders. I noticed you returned from the Deep Roads with a very fine new staff. Perhaps you might use it in defense of our Commander?" She bowed after the suggestion, muttering under her breath when she left. "Or to knock some sense into him."

"So... What's the plan?" Anders asked.

Amell waited until Woolsey had gone to start unbuttoning his doublet. "I'm going to go get that man's daughter."

"Oh, well. Look at you, story book hero, making a liar out of our fair Woolsey." Anders said. "Are you sure you can handle negotiating a hostage situation right now? Because if you had as much brandy as I did, you shouldn't be able to argue your way out of a paper bag."

"I'll sober up on the way there." Amell said. He took his doublet off, and reached into his armoire for a proper tunic to wear beneath his armor. Anders definitely needed to start doing presses. No 'physical prowess' indeed.

"But I mean, still, six bandits against one of you?" Anders asked. "I'm not that good at math, but last I checked six was a little bit more than one."

"I don't plan on fighting them, Anders." Amell said.

"So...?" Anders said.

"Can you help me with this?" Amell waved a hand at his armor stand rather than answer his question.

Anders moved Ser Pounce off his lap with a sigh and went to help. Standing only made the room sway now, as opposed to spin. Anders stared at the armor Amell wore as he put it on. "That's a lot of buckles. What do I do here?"

"Just tighten them, at the sides here." Amell said.

The man's aroma of copper and the Fade was back, mixed with West Hill Brandy and an underlying musk. Anders almost regretted not boffing him when Amell had offered. Then again, if he had, Woolsey's interruption would have been a great deal more awkward. "Do you want me to come with?" Anders asked, tightening the armor under his arms. "Two mages are better than one, and all that."

"I won't make you." Amell said.

"That's sweet, but I just offered, so I think you're good."

"Anders..." Amell turned so they were face to face. "I'm not going to fight. Or to negotiate. I'm going to go there, and I'm going to destroy a man's mind. Are you still sure you want to come?" His eyes were a deep russet, and reminded Anders rather aptly of dried blood. Anders stared at them for a while until he realized he was staring.

"Well it's not like I was expecting a picnic." Anders said.

"The other day in Kal'Hirol-" Amell started to say.

"That was different. That was a demon." Anders cut him off. "Look. I get it. You're a blood mage. Rawr, scary, but that doesn't make you immortal. As far as I know. I'd feel better coming - no, don't you dare laugh. Anyway, if you died, there'd be nothing stopping the templars from coming and taking me back to the Circle. So there."

"I'm glad you care." Amell said.

"I try," Anders said, checking the last strap on Amell's armor. "Are you good? I'm going to go get ready if you are. Do you mind if we keep Ser Pounce-a-Lot in here until I make a space for him in the barracks?"

"I don't mind. I'll meet you in the inner courtyard." Amell said.

Anders left Amell's room, and took the stairs back down to the Warden's barracks. On the way there, as the ground lurched under him and his head felt twice its usual weight, Anders wondered what he was doing. It wasn't just a joke; Amell was a story book hero. What were did bandits to a man who had bound a pride demon to his will? Anders should have let him run off on his own.

But apparently, Anders was too stupid. Anders had to help. Anders always had to help. Anders stumbled to his bunk, and changed into his boots, a pair of thick woolen trousers, and a rather plain tunic, all courtesy of one of the late Orlesian Wardens. Anders was looking forward to having his own clothes.

What sad standards he had, where socks for Satinalia sounded fantastic and an oily corrupted staff was a dream come true. Anders wrapped a bandage around his right hand as a makeshift grip, and picked up his staff. "I could be getting laid right now. Hypothetically. What's wrong with me?" Anders muttered to himself, hurrying to the courtyard.

Amell was waiting for him. "It's a half hour's march from the Vigil." Amell said, setting out.

The sun was already falling down behind the horizon. Anders hoped the girl's captures were patient men. He conjured a light for their benefit when they were on the road, "So. What should I be expecting here?"

"They have a leader. I'll convince him to give us the girl. When she's safe, we'll kill them." Amell said.

"Well I'm glad you have it all planned out." Anders said.

"I don't know any more than you do, Anders." Amell said.

"Oh, I don't know about that," Anders said. "I know I look the type, but I don't actually know a lot about blood magic. You know, aside from the basics: demons, mind control, virgin sacrifices."

"This would be the middle one." Amell said.

"But how does it work?" Anders asked. Curiosity killed the cat, and all that, but Anders thought he should at least know what to expect.

"It's a matter of willpower. Mine against whatever I'm enslaving. He'll do as I will him to, want what I want. In this case he'll want to give us the girl and let us go free." Amell said.

"What if he's... I don't know, more willful than you are? Or however you want to put it."

"He won't be." Amell said simply.

At least he was confident, Anders supposed. Confidence and will were probably more or less the same thing.

They walked the rest of the way in relative silence. The North Road was abandoned, being the roundabout way to Amaranthine. It split off towards the coast, and led straight to the ruined Chantry.

"Well," Anders rubbed his hands together, taking in the crumbling ruin and the rickety bridge leading up to it. Little remained of the old Chantry save for its walls. It had been built on an island, raised well above the surrounding sea, and framed in outcroppings of jagged rock. "I wouldn't build a summer home here, but the view is lovely." Anders joked. 

"Very." Amell agreed, taking off his gauntlet and handing it to Anders.

"Thanks... I guess." Anders said, putting it on. Amell snorted. "Why am I holding this?"

Amell knelt and drew the dagger from his boot. He sliced open his wrist, and wiped the blood off on his sleeve before sheathing it again.

"Maker's mercy, doesn't that hurt?" Anders asked. "Do you even feel pain?"

"I'm used to it." Amell said, holding out a hand for his gauntlet. Anders gave it back to him and watched him put it on over the cut.

"You're kind of creepy, you know that?" Anders said.

Amell grinned and donned his helmet.

They crossed bridge to the Chantry, the structure swaying gently in time with the waves below. It was deceptively peaceful, given what lay in wait on the other side. Within the ruins of the Chantry, the bandits were well entrenched. Three crossbowmen lingered off to the right under the cover of a few young trees, and yet more might have been hidden in the ruins. Their leader was well outfitted, picking at the dirt beneath his nails with a dagger. "What's all this piss?" Mosley spat. "Where's Bensley?"

"Not here." Amell said. "Where's Eileen?"

Mosley scowled, and bowed his head to press his knuckles against his temple as if warding off a headache. Anders chanced a glance at Amell. The fingers on his injured hand twitched, but there was no other indication of what he was doing. In a way, it was terrifying. One little headache as the only sign of blood magic? No wonder the Chantry and Templars feared it so.

"Boss?" One of the bandits, an ugly bloke to be sure, shuffled anxiously. "You alright?"

Mosley straightened. "I'm fine. Show them the girl,"

The girl they brought out looked nothing like her father. She had dark brown skin, and was terribly slender, not portly and pale. Her mother must have been from Rivain. "The girl first. Then the gold." Amell said.

"Send her over." Mosley parroted obediently.

"What? What if they ain't got the money?" One of the smarter bandits demanded.

"Do as I say." Mosley said.

"What you say is fucking stupid, boss. I thought we agreed we was gonna-wait a second. That fucker has a staff! I bet he's one of them blood mage types that makes your brain go stupid."

"He's a healer," Amell said, stepping in front of him when the crossbow men aimed at him. "That's all. Here for Eileen. If he makes you uncomfortable, he can leave with her. I have the gold anyway."

"See?" Mosley said. "You're paranoid, dumbass. Just give them the girl so we can get paid."

The girl's captor gave her a shove that sent her running into Anders' arms. "Wait for me across the bridge." Amell said.

"Are you sure-" Anders started to ask.

"Go." Amell said. He used his 'Warden-Commander' voice, so Anders went.

"Is he going to be alright?" Eileen asked when they were half way across the bridge.

"I certainly hope so." Anders said. "It would make for a rather shoddy ending if the Hero of Ferelden died to a handful of bandits in the middle of nowhere." A realistic ending, sure, but a shoddy one. Anders waited impatiently when they were across.

Sure enough, Amell followed him back across a few minutes later. Not covered in blood, or chased by bandits. Just walking, calm as you please. "Anders, can you summon a firestorm from here?"

"Can I what now?" Anders asked.

"Summon a firestorm from here. I'm not learned in long range magic."  Amell said.

"We weren't just going to... I don't know, head back?" Anders asked. "I mean, Eileen is safe."

"Kill them." Eileen said. "They were going to kill my father, after they had the money. And rape me. I don't know who you are, or how you convinced them to let us all go... but kill them."

"Anders?" Amell said.

"No... Uh. Right. I'll try." Anders said.

Anders took up a spot at the edge of the old bridge. With his staff and a great deal of effort, he could manage an inferno in an eight meter sphere. Nine if he was lucky. The old Chantry was slightly bigger than that, but nature had reclaimed much of the ruins. The few trees and foliage that had sprouted would serve well enough as kindling, Anders supposed. The poor sods would be burned alive unless they jumped into the surrounding sea, but the rocky shallows offered only a different kind of death. Anders shook himself.

Drawing on his connection to the Fade, Anders channeled the spell for ten seconds, and then twenty. Feeling woozy, he held it longer still, hearing the whispers of curious wisps and spirits across the Veil, drawn to his magic. When he was certain he had held the primal energies long enough to spread across eight meters, he released it. Anders stumbled, dizzy, but at least he finally had a staff to catch himself on. Perspective was good, after all.

A huge column of swirling flame crashed down from the sky, roaring through the ruined chantry, devouring trees, blacking the old stone columns. The heat of it carried across the bridge, and warmed his face almost pleasantly.

"Impressive." Amell said from beside him, voice soft with admiration. "That's ten meter in diameter, easily."

"You think so?" Anders asked.

"Mhm," Amell hummed agreeably. A wet sucking sound made Anders glance over in time to see Amell peeling off his gauntlet; his hand was stained a gory crimson from the amount of blood he'd let spill in his hold over Mosley. "Would you?"

Anders took hold of his hand and healed it, glad he had no need of Compassion for the spell. At the moment, he wasn't sure she'd come if he called.

Amell had soft hands, Anders was finally sober enough to note. It had been a sobering evening. They took the North Road back to the Vigil, and Anders slipped away during the congratulations to wander the Vigil. He wasn't terribly surprised when he wound up in the Chantry. It was empty, this late in the evening. Anders picked a pew near the front and sat. And to think, today had started out grand.

He felt nothing. No guilt. No remorse. No pride. Nothing. Anders wasn't sure how long he sat there, not praying, not really doing anything, but eventually Amell found him. Anders looked up at the sound of his footsteps. Amell sat beside him.

"... You've never killed someone before, have you?" Amell asked. "A person, not darkspawn or demons."

"What? No. I kill people all the time," Anders said flippantly. "'Anders the Angry,' they call me."

Amell didn't bother calling him out on his lie.  He sat beside him in companionable silence for several minutes, smelling of blood and metal and the Fade. Death. It was a little queer it was so soothing. "It gets easier." Amell said eventually.

"I'm not sure that's comforting." Anders said.

"I'm not sure it's supposed to be."

Chapter 9: Freedom for Anders

Notes:

Thank you so much for all your wonderful comments, bookmarks, kudos, and as always thank you for reading. I really love all the feedback you guys have given me. Enjoy.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 17 Solis Afternoon
Amaranthine

Anders loved the city. The sounds, the sights, the smell of dog shit. Amaranthine was known as the jewel of the north, and as far as Anders was concerned it was a city that earned the name. Once you got past endless the fields of wailing refugees locked outside the city proper, and the angry guards keeping them there, of course. It was no wonder the city had a smuggling problem. Getting in people was hard enough without worrying about getting in things.

And once you had those things, keeping them was even harder. There were cut purses everywhere. Anders had lost his coin pouch not three steps into the city. Fortunately, it was Sigrun who'd taken it. "It was me who took it this time, but next time it'll be someone else, and they won't give it back. Why don't you guys let me hold onto your coin for now?" Sigrun asked.

"Them casteless tats ain't for nothing, huh?" Oghren asked. "You ex-Carta?"

"Everyone who was ever born casteless is ex-Carta." Sigrun said.

"Can I have my coin back please?" Anders sighed.

"But you're just going to lose it," Sigrun protested.

"Sigrun, give it back. Anders, keep your coin in your boots." Amell said.

"Yes, Mother." Anders rolled his eyes. Sigrun handed him back his small coin pouch, and Anders stuffed it in his shoe. It was outrageously uncomfortable.

Oghren nudged him, "Don't you mean 'Yes, Daddy?'"

"You're gross, you know that?" Anders said. Each step kicked the pouch around in his boot, hard coins cutting against his foot. Did Amell carry his coin like this? No wonder he was so grumpy.

At least Anders didn't have a lot of coins. Apparently, being a Warden entitled Anders to a small stipend each month, but it was a very small stipend. Woolsey was far less generous than Amell with coin. The three gold sovereigns Amell had given him were like to be the last Anders ever saw, so if his foot hurt, at least it hurt from walking on gold. Perspective, Anders.

"I'll get us lodgings at the Pilgrim's Rest tonight," Amell said. "I know all of you want to see the city, but try to stay in groups of two, and don't cause any trouble with the guards. I'll be at the Merchant's Guild House in the market district for most of the afternoon, and at Bann Esmerelle's estate in the evening if you need me. If any templars harass Anders and my name isn't enough to scare them away, send someone to come and find me. I'll see you all later tonight." Amell left.

"So how about it, my hot little pomegranate?" Oghren leered at Sigrun. "You ready to partner up with Oghren?"

"Ew. No." Sigrun said flatly. "Nate?"

"My lady," Nate gave a tiny bow and held out his arm for her. Sigrun snatched it up, and stuck her tongue out at Oghren as they left.

"I knew the 'quiet and stoic' thing would get him all the action." Oghren muttered. "She's a feisty one. I'll have to up my game. Don't you forget that bet, Sparkles. You'll be paying my tab soon enough."

"I'm not worried," Anders said. "That probably just means you'll belch and fart at the same time now."

"I'm a man of many talents." Oghren snorted, hiking up his pants. "So where to first? I gotta find an apothecary or something for this... weird green rash on my-"

"Stop!" Anders plugged his ears. "Stop. Stop. No. No more. Let's just go find the apothecary. I could stand to pick up a few flasks myself."

"Heheh. Alright. Your loss. It looks kind of like-"

"Lalalala." Anders said loudly. He set off down the street to the market district at a brisk walk, and Oghren had to jog to catch up with him.

Anders' shoes were making an audible clink with every step. If someone did decide to mug him, it would be a rather simple affair of tackling him and running off with his boots. Anders did not want to walk through the streets of Amaranthine barefoot. Not only were they half paved in uneven cobblestone, but the drainage was questionable at best. The gutters were on the brink of overflowing, shit, piss, and dirty water congealed into puddles of brown sludge where they already had. But that was every city.

Once you got out of the housing district and into the market district, it was actually quite lovely. The drainage was a little better there, and smells of hot iron from the local forge mixed with the smells of fresh bread from bakers and wood shavings from carpenters. The streets were crowded, which meant the cut purses were worse, and Anders was jostled with every other step, but until someone knocked him over and stole his shoes, what did he care?

"So, Sparkles, after the apothecary what do you say we find this Pilgrim's Rest, a few foxy pilgrims, and drink till the sun comes up?" Oghren offered.

"I want to shop for a bit. I was hoping to get a collar and maybe a bell for Ser Pounce-a-Lot." Anders said.

"You and that cat." Oghren shook his head. "Out of all the things the Boss could have given you, pussy sure as shit is ironic."

"Why do you call him that?" Anders wondered.

"Well it's what he is, ain't it?" Oghren shrugged.

"Well why not Commander? Or Amell?"

"Oh! You mean him. Shit, I don't know." Oghren spat. "Cause he's always been the Boss, I guess. What, did you think King Pike-Twirler was the one doing all the work, saving the world from the Blight?"

"Well I figure he had a hand." Anders guessed. "I mean, I spent most of the Blight hiding in Harper's Ford, over in Highever, and it's not like there was some mage underground handing out newspapers every other week. I'm not really up on my current events."

"Well... Shit. Go ask the Boss about it then." Oghren shrugged, scratching at his ass. "Point is he's in charge and that's how it's always been."

Up ahead, one of the many buildings lining the streets had a sign with a rather crude drawing of elfroot on it. "Look. Apothecary. Let's go." Anders said.

The door chimed at their entrance, and Oghren went straight up to the poor shop keeper and dropped his trousers. Alright, so all he did was wrench them down his right thigh, but Anders doubted the shopkeeper wanted to see Oghren's hairy green leg any more than he did. "What do you got for this?" Oghren demanded.

Anders turned away from the exchange to browse the shelves. There wasn't much of a selection, but Anders hadn't been expecting an emporium from a tiny little hovel without a name on the door. Anders picked out a few flasks, along with some heatherum, foxite, and other herbs. By the time he was done Oghren was already paying for a salve.

"What are the flowers for?" Oghren asked as Anders emptied his boot onto the counter to pay. "You making a garland?"

"Poultices and potions. You know, for the next time a darkspawn bites off half my shoulder." Anders said.

"I thought that elf gal from the Circle handled all that?" Oghren asked.

"For you, maybe." Anders stuffed the wrapped parcel the shopkeep gave him under his arm, and put his shoe back on. "But since 'I'm a spirit healer' anything but lyrium potions is 'frivolous' and 'stealing from the Commander's stores.' We're great friends, elf gal and I."

"No shit?" Oghren asked.

"No shit." Anders agreed. They left the store, and continued through the market district, browsing shops and stands until Anders found one that made cat collars and other animal accessories. He got Ser Pounce-a-Lot a purple collar. Royal color, purple. Very fetching. Perfect for a tiny knight.

"We good now?" Oghren asked. "Ready for happy hour yet?"

"...I want to get him something." Anders decided. "The Commander, I mean."

"So get him something, what do I care?" Oghren asked.

"Well you're his friend." Anders said. "For some unfathomable reason. I thought maybe you'd have a suggestion. You know, for whatever he's into."

"The Boss?" Oghren snorted, holding up four sausage-shaped fingers and ticking them off one by one. "Easy. Four D's. Darkspawn, dogs, dicks, and drinks. Take your pick."

"Well I'll just wrangle up a genlock and a pretty bow, then. Thanks."

"Anytime." Oghren chuckled. "So, you and him rolling your oats, then?"

Anders shuddered. "Please don't mention oats. I hate oats. And anyway, no, but he got me a cat. Seems only decent I should get him something back."

"Yeah well good luck with that." Oghren said. "Come on. I don't want to leave you alone, but I am P-E-R-C-H-E-D."

"Perched?" Anders said. "You're perched? Like a bird? You're not going to shit on my head, are you?"

"Gah-Parched! I'm parched! I'm sodding thirsty! Let's just go find the tavern, and you can get the Boss some of their nicer swill. If I leave your delicate ass all alone the Boss' never let me hear the end of it. What if you broke a nail?"

"I'd file it, obviously." Anders said, inspecting his nails, but he waved Oghren on and they set off towards the tavern. "I have to stay pretty."

"You're always saying shit like that." Oghren noted. "Do humans actually think pale piss mopped skirt wearing ninnies are attractive?"

"Someone's jealous," Anders sang.

"You're wearing gal's jewelry for Stone's sake!" Oghren threw up his hands. "But whenever we're at the Keep some soldier gal is always throwing herself at you. What's that about?"

"I'm handsome, charming, funny, well dressed, I have great hair... Need I go on?" Anders said.

"I figured they were all a bunch of moss lickers and you were the first pretty gal they'd seen at the Vigil. You can bet my hairy ass if I got half as many offers as you do my bunk would be rocking like a baby's cradle." Oghren laughed.

"Ew." Anders said. "And anyway, the reason you don't get any 'offers' ... Okay, one of the many, many, many, many-"

"Alright, haha, you're not funny."

"-Many, many, many reasons, is because you think a few ladies thanking me for healing a sprained ankle or a paper cut is an offer to jump into bed. Women like to be wooed. How is it you have a son again?"

"And you're gonna woo all these women by buying the Boss gifts, is that it?" Oghren snorted. "So hey, if you're thinking of shit to get him, I'm guessing the honeymoon ain't over yet and you two are good. So what's up?"

"What's up what?" Anders asked.

"What's up with you?" Oghren elaborated. "You been all moody lately. I figured you were just on the rag, but it's been over a week now. Ever since you and the Boss rescued that hot noble lass. What happened?"

"Nothing happened." Anders lied. "And I haven't been moody. I've just been... You know, busy."

"If you say so." Oghren snorted.

Anders had been busy. He was the resident healer for Vigil's Keep, and wouldn't you know it, most people preferred to have their injuries washed away with magic to letting them heal naturally under a physician's bandages. The fact that he also wasn't sleeping well was irrelevant.

It wasn't as if Anders relished his choices there. On the one hand, he had horrible darkspawn nightmares. On the other, he had Compassion. The spirit was alternatively disappointed, confused, or scared any time he dreamed of her since he'd killed those half dozen bandits at the Forlorn Cove. Anders wasn't any better equipped to explain why their deaths had been necessary than Compassion was to understand.

Anders didn't like thinking about it. It had happened. It was over. They were dead. He'd killed them. The end. But he thought about it anyway. That wasn't him. He wasn't an executioner. He was a healer. He healed. Maybe, if he'd killed them in self-defense, it wouldn't have bothered him, but he hadn't. They were out, and Anders had killed them anyway. It bothered him that it didn't bother him more.

"Oi, there's our tavern." Oghren nudged him, pointing at the Pilgrim's Rest. It was your typical stone brick building, half-buried in a mound of dirt, and surrounded with empty barrels, broken bottles, and rubbish heaps. Homey, really. The inside was marginally better; it smelled like stale vomit and alcohol, but it was clean and his boots didn't stick to the floor, so what more could a man ask for really?

Oghren dragged him to the bar, and with a bit of struggling managed to climb up onto one of the open stools.

"Get you boys a drink?" The bartender offered.

"Well we're not here to fuck nugs," Oghren said.

"What's your poison?" The bartender asked, setting two tankards in front of them.

"House ale for me." Oghren said, pulling out his coin pouch-Maker's mercy, he kept it there?-and setting it on the table. "But this guy wants something special for someone special, if you know what I mean."

"Ah. Alright, we've got a pretty good selection." The bartender said, filling Oghren's glass before he knelt behind the counter. "The Bann orders all her wine from us, you know. We've got your standard Antivian Reds, your Orlesian Whites, what's your lady looking for?"

"Well, she's a he, and he's my Commanding Officer, so something a little stronger would probably be great." Anders said.

"Ah, alright, say no more. How about my very own single malt? I make the best whiskey in Amaranthine." The bartender said, pulling out a glass from under the bar, "Here, give it a try. On the house." He poured a small shot and pushed it towards them. Oghren snatched it up and downed it before Anders had a chance.

"By my ancestors!" Oghren exclaimed, "That is fine indeed! Smoother than elven baby-butt."

"I call it Mackay's Epic Single Malt." The bartender grinned. "I'm Mackay, obviously."

"Well Mackay, sod the Boss, I'm buying a bottle for myself." Oghren said.

"What's that?" Anders asked while Oghren paid for his whiskey, "Back there on the shelf, the blue bottle?"

"That?" Mackay looked over his shoulder. "That is Aqua Magus. One sip will make you think you're a templar. Spirits infused with a bit of lyrium. It'll run you eight silver a bottle."

"For a bottle that small?" Anders asked ."There's barely enough for three, maybe four shots."

"Anything more'll kill ya, and I'm not gonna be held accountable for dead drunks." Mackay said.

"Get him that." Oghren said.

"Alright, fine," Anders said. He picked up his leg and took off his shoe, and was counting out his coins when someone grabbed his shoulder and spun him around on the stool. Bright green eyes set in a sharp face were glaring at him from behind golden bangs. "Namaya?" Anders said in disbelief. "You're still here? But it's been a month!"

"Don't think I don't know it," Namaya snapped. "But unlike you, I keep my promises. Let's get a booth. We need to talk."

"Do I need to be worried about this broad?" Oghren wondered. "You two gonna play nice?"

"No, we're fine-I'll be right back," Anders said, putting his shoe back on and letting Namaya drag him to a dark corner of the tavern. His head was spinning. Namaya had waited for him. He still had a chance to destroy his phylactery. He still had a chance for freedom. He wouldn't have to hide in Amell's shadow for the rest of his life. He could choose his own fate.

Anders was getting ahead of himself. Namaya might not have found anything, but then why else would she wait for him? He could barely contain his excitement when he took a seat across from her.

"It's here," Namaya said with no preamble. "The templars are keeping the cache in a storehouse, but it's right beside the guardhouse in the market district. You'll know it when you see it. If you want to get in, you'll need to do it between guard shifts. Lucky for you, thanks to the smugglers in this city, they're overworked. It's not guarded the hour before sunset and the hour after. That's your window, and this," Namaya reached into a pocket and pulled out a brass key, "Is your ticket in. Five sovereigns. All up front."

"What?" Anders demanded. "When you agreed to help me, it was one sovereign, paid after my phylactery was destroyed." A sovereign Anders had never had, but at the time he was confident he could improvise. Namaya owed him, after all. He'd saved her life, healing her after she'd taken three crossbow bolts fleeing from the Bann's guards in Harper's Ford where they'd met.

"Yeah. That before your sorry ass made me wait a month in this Maker-forsaken city, holding onto a key that could get me killed and watching the very storehouse I stole it from to make sure the templars didn't move the cache!" Namaya snapped. "Now pay up. I know you've got coin on you, or you wouldn't have been over there haggling for fancy spirits."

"Haggling over eight silvers." Anders said, "I don't have five sovereigns."

Namaya's brow furrowed, and a knot formed in Anders' stomach. "Then you don't have this key." She said, standing.

"Wait!" Anders grabbed her hand, "Namaya, please. I have three sovereigns and ten silvers. That's all. You can have it. Please, this is my life."

Namaya glared at him. She owed him. She owed him her life. He couldn't have come this far to have his freedom walk away from him over two sovereigns. He could beg Oghren. Amell. Someone would loan him the extra gold. Namaya held out a hand, and Anders scrambled to take off his shoe and dump his coin pouch into her waiting hand. She opened it and counted them, glare never leaving her face. "Fine. Here." She threw the key on the table, and it clattered across the wood and slid off onto the floor. "But you and I are done."

Anders dove under the table for the key; by the time he had it safely stowed away in his shoe, Namaya was gone.

Freedom. No more looking over his shoulder. No more shackles. No more cells. No more running, knowing it was only a matter of time before the templars caught up with him, because he could never lose them. He'd destroy his phylactery, and those bloodhounds would never catch his scent again. He went back to sit at the stool beside Oghren.

"Old flame?" Oghren guessed.

"Something like that," Anders lied.

"Welcome back," Mackay grinned, "Get you that Aqua Magus now?"

"Ah-no... I don't-No." Anders said.

Oghren raised an eyebrow at him, but didn't pry. Anders rolled his fingers on the countertop, feeling increasingly anxious as time passed. He hadn't even any coin left to buy himself a drink to calm down, and he didn't want to explain to Oghren he'd given all his gold to Namaya for the key to his phylactery.

He had to destroy it, but could he do it alone? What if Namaya was wrong, and there were guards inside? Worse, what if there were templars inside? How would he get away from Oghren to do it? Would Oghren help him? ... Would Amell?

"Mackay," Anders called to the bartender. "Do you have any runners? Who can deliver a message to someone in the city?"

"I got a boy in the kitchen. It'll cost you ten copper, though." Mackay said.

Anders didn't even have that. "Oghren, could you spot me?"

"The fuck happened to your coin?" Oghren demanded, "Don't tell me that broad took it all. She weren't even that pretty. Maybe a six out of ten."

"Please?" Anders begged. He hated begging. "I really need to get a message to the commander. It's personal."

"Am I seriously paying for you to send love letters? Ack. Fine. Here." He stuffed a hand down his pants, and produced a silver he dropped on the counter. "Buy yourself a drink while you're at it. Your twitching is driving me nuts."

Mackay went to the kitchen, and came back with a torn piece of vellum, a quill, and a jar Anders assumed served as an inkwell. "There ya go. We were out of pounce, so I got the cook grinding up some bones. Might take a bit."

"Thanks," Anders said. He stared at the vellum, wondering what to write. Dear Commander, please leave your very important meeting with the Bann of Amaranthine to help me break into a templar cache and destroy my phylactery? Best not.

Commander,
I need your help with a personal problem, tonight an hour before sunset. If you have the chance to get back to Pilgrim's Rest before then, I would appreciate it.
Anders

There. That wasn't too desperate. Anders ordered himself a tankard of ale per Oghren's advice, and drank it while he waited for the cook to finish the pounce. It was too watered down for it to have much of a calming effect, and Anders was tapping his foot his stool by the time the kitchen boy came with the pounce. He sprinkled half a handful over the ink, folded up the letter, and handed it off to the boy. "This goes Bann Esmerelle's estate, to the Warden-Commander."

Anders couldn't calm down. He alternated between tapping, twitching, and occasionally pacing no matter how many drinks Oghren pushed at him. Eventually, the poor dwarf couldn't stand him, and ordered him back to the room Amell had rented for them for the night. Anders paced in there as well. He tried to meditate, to practice a few maneuvers with his staff, but nothing helped. His heart was in his throat and his stomach was upside down until someone finally knocked on the door.

Anders half-expected templars, but it was just Amell. "Anders?" Amell shut the door behind him, and took off his helmet, "I got your letter. Oghren said-... Well. Is everything alright?"

"Oh, no I'm peachy. I always pace like this," Anders joked, "I-ran into someone. A friend. Sort of. It's a long story. Maybe we should sit? You should sit. I'll keep pacing."

"Anders." Amell caught him mid-pace, just above his elbow. Amell gave his arms a gentle squeeze, and Anders almost resented how relaxing the scent of him was. He'd been anxious for hours; it wasn't natural Amell could calm him so quickly. "Whatever it is, I'll help. Relax."

"You can't just say that. What if I need you to bury a body?" Anders joked.

"I'm a necromancer. I'll make the body bury itself." Amell said.

"Ha-ah-okay," Anders ran his hands through his hair, "I'm alright. I'll sit." He took a seat on the only couch in the room, and Amell sat next to him. "The last time I escaped the tower, I hid in Harper's Ford, over in Highever. While I was there, I met someone. A thief, I guess you could call her. She was running from the local guards, and she'd taken three bolts in the back.

"I healed her, and we got to talking, and sort of arranged a deal for her to help find my phylactery. While you were fighting the Blight, Namaya and I found out that the templars had moved some of their stores of phylacteries from Denerim to Amaranthine. That's why I was at Vigil's Keep. The templars caught me in Amaranthine, but Namaya kept looking. My phylactery was one of the ones they moved, and it's still here, in the templar's storehouse.

"Namaya found out where the storehouse is located, and she got me the key." Anders took off his shoe, and shook out said key. "I have to destroy it. I know I'm a Grey Warden and everything, but what's to stop the Chantry from deciding mages in the Grey Wardens are apostate, too? I have to be sure they can't ever find me again. Ever. You could look for your phylactery too. They moved a lot of stores to Amaranthine, there's no reason yours might not to be there too. We could both be free."

Say yes. Please say yes. Amell stared at him, enigmatic as ever. It was maddening. Anders was shaking with the effort it took him not to fidget, which sort of defeated the point.

"The last time a friend asked me to help destroy their phylactery, we were ambushed by templars, I was conscripted to avoid execution, and my friend's lover was sent to Aeonar." Amell said eventually.

"But... did you destroy it?" Anders asked.

"At the expense of being betrayed by my best friend, yes," Amell said.

"What happened to him?" Anders asked.

"He escaped. He later changed his name, and decided to help refugees escape the Blight." Amell said. "... This friend of yours, do you trust her?"

"Yes?" Anders said.

"That sounded like a question." Amell said.

"I have to do this, Amell. I want out. Please." Anders begged. He was doing an awful lot of begging lately. "Namaya said the guards are busy with the smugglers lately, so it's not guarded an hour before and after sundown. We could sneak in, sneak out, be home in time for dinner."

"Alright," Amell said.

"You-you mean it?" Anders asked, "You'll help me?"

"Of course I'll help you, if this is what you want." Amell said. "No mage should live at the behest of the Chantry. While we're there, we should destroy the entire cache so no one suspects you."

That seemed like overkill to Anders, but then, Amell was a maleficar. He probably hated Chantry oversight as much as the next mage. "Alright. I'm not going to argue against giving a few extra mages a chance to escape the Circle."

"The sun was setting on my way here; do you want to leave now?" Amell asked.

"Yes," Anders jumped to his feet. "Maker yes, I'm going mad just sitting here."

They left the tavern, and were on their way to the warehouse when Amell spoke again. "When this is over, are you going to leave the Wardens?"

"What?" Anders asked. Amell had put his helmet back on, so there was no gauging his expression after the sudden question. "Leave? Who would take care of Ser Pounce-a-Lot?"

"There is that." Amell said.

"I just want the choice," Anders said, wondering why he felt the need to explain himself, "I mean, wasn't that the first thing you said when you recruited me? That mages don't get enough of them?"

"I did say that." Amell allotted. "If you did leave-"

"I'm not-"

"If you did leave, I'd understand," Amell said over him. "This isn't a life most people choose. Nathaniel, Oghren, Sigrun... they all chose this. You didn't. If you ever do leave, I won't send anyone after you."

Anders didn't know what to say that, so he said nothing. "There's the storehouse," Anders noted. The street was empty, save for the two of them. "We should hurry."

The key fit. Thank the Maker. Anders closed the door behind them, and took a look around the storehouse. It was filled with armoires, chests, shelves of various magical trinkets. An entire corner was filled with staves stacked like firewood. "This must be where they keep everything they confiscate from apostates. I wonder if my old staff is here. I wonder if my pillow is here."

"Phylactery first." Amell said.

"Right." Anders said. He pushed open the door to the next room of the storehouse, and someone grabbed his hand and wrenched him forward. His arm was twisted behind his back, and he was slammed face first into a wall. The crunch of his nose breaking deafened him, and he was thrown to the floor a second later.

His blood was on fire. The Fade was gone; Compassion was gone; there was Silence all around him, and it coupled with agony. Anders rolled over and threw up, the harsh burn of his alcoholic vomit curdling in his throat. He tried to sit up, but his arms were trembling. All the strength and magic had been sapped from him. Somewhere above him, a woman was laughing.

"And here I almost believed the infamous Anders wouldn't take the bait." It was Rylock. Of course it was Rylock. Anders could barely see through the pain. There were spots where her face should have been, and Amell...

Amell was also on the ground. He unclasped his helmet with shaking hands and threw it off, barely managing to do so in time before he too threw up.

"Commander," Rylock said, "Such a pleasure, seeing you again. Did you think the world would forget you were a mage if you did not dress like one?"

Amell groaned, and had a little more success than Anders getting onto his hands and knees. Anders took heart from his success and tried again, when someone stepped on the small of his back and knocked him back down. Hands grabbed his wrists, Anders felt the cold metal of shackles.

"We'll be taking Anders now." Rylock explained. "I'll make sure this murderer is never a bother to anyone again."

"Anders is mine," Amell hissed.

"Anders is no one's." Rylock corrected him, "He will never submit. Not to us, and not to you. And you... you are hardly surprising. The Grey Wardens have made you too bold, as freedom makes every mage bold. You would defy the Chantry, and impede us in our sacred duty to see apostates brought to justice. For that, I think only execution is suitable."

"You can't do that," Anders protested. "He's the Warden-Commander of Ferelden. You can't do this. King Alistair allowed my Conscription!"

"Silence this maleficar," Rylock said. For one ridiculous second, Anders thought she was ordering Amell killed, until he realized she meant him. Someone dragged him to his feet, and gagged him. "And smite him again, just in case. He killed two templars on his own."

Fire hit him again, burning through his veins, twisting around his heart, and Anders knees buckled under the pain. Anders started sobbing, unable to help himself.

Rylock drew her sword, and kicked Amell back down to the ground when he tried to stand. She stabbed down in one swift motion, piercing through Amell's side beneath his armpit, where no armor protected him. Blood flew high, and Amell screamed.

"That will have pierced your lung." Rylock said with a clinical detachment that would have made Anders see spots, if he weren't already seeing them, "I would give you not long to live, once the shock sets in. Perhaps ten or fifteen minutes."

"Anders-" Amell coughed; it was a wet, crackling noise, and Anders knew Rylock was right. He tried to talk around his gag, and failed. Amell was going to die. They were both going to die, and it was all Anders' fault. He should have known better than to trust a friend. He'd worn Ferrenly's pendant for eleven years for nothing.

"Say your goodbyes quickly, Commander," Rylock said.

"Anders..." Amell tried again, inhaling a rickety breath, "Is not the mage you should fear."

The air around Rylock began to sizzle, and a miasma of blood rose from Amell's injury. It sunk into Rylock's skins, into her face, her eyes, her nose, filled her mouth when she opened it to scream.

"Lieutenant!" The templar holding Anders dropped him.

"Maleficar!" A second templar, somewhere Anders couldn't see, screamed and drew his sword.

There were only the two, and Rylock. And she stood over Amell protectively, brandishing her sword while her eyes twitched spastically in her skull.

"Kill them," Amell whispered. For a brief second, Rylock hesitated. She twitched against the invisible confines of her own blood, and Anders could see the veins beneath her cheeks, on her forehead, bubbling as her blood revolted against her. Then she turned in broken clicks like a child's doll, and thrust her sword into her nearest templar brother's throat.

He'd been too stunned, too horrified to defend himself. The templar gurgled, and blood sprayed, but before it could hit the ground, it went flying into the second templar's face, where it sizzled like acid. The templar screamed, clawing at his eyes as they melted in their sockets, and Rylock cut his head off. His hands remained where they'd been, hovering over a face no longer there, and eventually tipped over.

Rylock turned back to Amell, and Anders was terrified his hold on her had waned.

"Now kill yourself," Amell ordered breathlessly. Bones crunched and muscle twisted, and before Rylock could obey, her insides revolted against their confines and splattered across the room. Brain, blood, and flesh hit Anders in the face. A bit of bone embedded itself in his arm from the force of the explosion.

Anders was still gagged and bound. Amell dragged his way to Rylock's armor, the only part of her left, and pulled her keys from her belt. Anders twisted around so Amell could unlock his shackles, and when they fell free Anders wrenched the gag out of his mouth.

"Heal me," Amell coughed. Blood gushed from his side at the act, and he held a hand to the wound. His breathing was rapid, and every inhale came with a dangerous crackle.

"I can't!" Anders called for the Fade, but it may as well not have existed. Blood was everywhere, soaking into his trousers, making him slip when he tried to stand. "I need a potion. I need lyrium. There has to be some in here somewhere."

Amell grabbed his wrist with one hand, and drew his dagger with the other. In a quick motion, he sliced open Anders' wrist.

"Andraste's ass, Amell, what the fuck!?" Anders demanded. Amell kept a vice grip on his wrist.

"Here is your lyrium," Amell hissed.

"I can't-I don't-I'm not a blood mage!" Anders yelled. He shouldn't have yelled. He should have been reassuring, like a healer was supposed to be, but he was terrified and panicking. "I don't know how to do this!"

Amell grabbed the collar of his shirt, and pulled him so close Anders could feel his breath on his face. There wasn't much of it. "I will not. Die to a templar's sword." Amell snarled. "Heal me."

"How?" Anders asked, "I don't know how. Tell me what to do."

"Don't-reach for the Fade." Amell said, "Call from your own life force. Your heart beat. Find it. Pull from it. You can turn it to mana, if you will it."

Anders tried to do as he said. His heart beat wasn't hard to find. It was fluttering madly in his chest, like a caged and crazed bird, but Anders couldn't feel any power in it. He didn't know what he was doing. He was just sitting here, staring at a cut on his wrist while Amell's grip on his arm grew weaker and weaker. He was going to die. Anders was going to kill him. Not with fire, or ice, or lightning, but through his own pathetic ineptitude. He was a joke. He was irresponsible. He was everything everyone said he was.

"Anders." Amell coughed, and walked his hand up his arm until it reached the back of his neck. "Look at me. Watch." Amell pulled a tendril of blood from Anders' wrist, and it took the shape of a small orb, floating in the air between them. It felt like it was being drawn out of Anders' chest, as opposed to the cut on his wrist. He could copy that, the way the drain had felt. "You can do this."

Anders set his hand on Amell's side, and took his eyes off the cut . It didn't come from the cut. The cut was just there, just gave him access. It was just like entropy, only mixed with creationism, and cast on himself. He could do this. Anders found his heartbeat and drew from it, and the spell cast, slowly inflating Amell's collapsed lung, draining the blood, knitting flesh and muscle back together. It made him sick to cast, weak and woozy from blood loss, but Anders had blood to spare. Amell didn't.

Anders healed him. He'd done it. Amell took his first breath fully healed, and it was long and deep, and he didn't cough.

"I-..." Anders looked back at the cut on his wrist as what he'd done, what he was, slowly began to sink in. "Did I just... Am I..."

Amell's hand on the back of his neck shifted from the limp clutch of a dying man to the firm grasp of one very much alive. Anders looked up at him, and Amell kissed him.

They'd both thrown up very recently, and were covered in blood, bone, and all manner of decay, but there was no tenderness in the firm press of Amell's lips, and Anders guessed it wasn't supposed to be romantic. Maybe just grateful, or victorious, but Anders couldn't quite process it. It just happened, and as quickly as it happened it was over. Amell let go of him, "Thank you,"

"You're welcome. I think." Anders said, looking at the mess that lay around them. One templar headless, one dead, one nothing but armor and a puddle of blood. "... What do we do? Do we-hide them? I don't... know what to do here."

"I guess you need me to bury a body after all," Amell said.

Notes:

Fanart
Amell

Chapter 10: Freedom for Anders Part Two

Notes:

Thanks for all your wonderful kudos/comments/bookmarks and as always, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 17 Solis Evening
Templar Storehouse

"I guess you need me to bury a body after all," Amell said. He scooted back through the blood, vomit, and bits of Rylock to prop himself up against the nearest wall.

Anders felt horrid. Healing Amell had exhausted him. Anders felt all the usual signs of blood loss: dizziness, fatigue, but his skin wasn't cold and his breathing was relatively normal, so he doubted he was going into any state of shock. There was a bit of bone still protruding from his arm (not his own), and his nose was most certainly broken, but since he could breathe through it Anders imagined it would heal straight. That was something to be grateful for at least. Anders liked his nose.

As to the rest... there was blood everywhere: dripping from Anders' wrist, his arms, drying in his nose. And Maker's breath, the smells. The rot of meat and intestines from Rylock's corroded insides, the shit and piss of the remaining templars as they'd lost control of their bowels in death, Anders' and Amell's own vomit after they'd been cut off from their connection to the Fade.

"Rylock doesn't even have a body to bury," Anders said, "I didn't want this. All I wanted was a chance to decide my own fate."

"She was going to kill us, Anders," Amell reminded him.

"I know that!" Anders snapped. "Don't you think I know that? This shouldn't have happened. Namaya... I knew it was too good to be true, but I believed her. I wanted to believe her. I wanted-" Anders dug under his shirt and with a hard yank, pulled Ferrenly's pendant off his neck and threw it spitefully across the room. "I wanted to trust her. I should have known better, and I almost got us killed because of it."

"We're more than our mistakes, Anders." Amell said. It wasn't comforting.

"Look at this," Ander waved his hand at the death all around them, "This isn't a mistake. Breaking a plate is a mistake. Spilling your drink is a mistake. This is three dead bodies someone is going to find in the morning."

"I'll take care of it." Amell said. "Necromancer, remember?"

"Not that I don't believe you, but Rylock is a puddle. Are you also a puddlemancer?" Anders asked sarcastically.

"I know how to hide bodies," Amell said, "Trust me." Of all the sentences Anders did not want to hear 'trust me' follow, 'I know how to hide bodies' was probably one of the top five.

"Not going to ask why you know that, but so what?" Anders laughed, feeling hysterical "Someone from the Chantry will come looking for her and then-"

"Anders," Amell squeezed his ankle, considering his arms were injured. "If Rylock was here, it couldn't have been at the behest of the Chantry. She saw you conscripted before the King. She was obsessed with you. Tell me I'm wrong."

Anders said nothing.

"So we don't even know if the Chantry will come looking for her," Amell said reassuringly, "And if they do, we'll tell them we haven't seen her since your conscription, and that she probably met her end at the hands of the darkspawn that have been running rampant in Amaranthine of late. Or that I killed her in self-defense, if it comes to that."

"What do you mean, 'I'?" Anders asked, taking note of the pronoun, "You mean 'we' killed her in self-defense."

"No, Anders, I mean 'I'." Amell told him. "You heard Rylock. The woman was mad, but she was right. They've already branded you a maleficar. Seven escape attempts. A year in solitary. If anyone knew you were a part of this, not even the Wardens could protect you. So yes, if it comes to it, I killed her."

Anders stared at him; Amell couldn't possibly be so fond of him after only a month of tentative flirting. Would he do the same for any Warden? For any mage? "I can't believe you're still standing by me after what just happened."

"It's not just about you," Amell said. Anders relaxed a little. He wouldn't have known how to react if Amell was only doing this because he liked him, "I would do the same for any mage. If I seemed hesitant... You're a friend, Anders. I'm tired of losing them."

"I told you I wasn't going to leave." Anders said.

"In any case, we need to handle this," Amell said, ignoring him. "You can't go back to the tavern like that. I'm sure the storehouse has confiscated more than a few robes. One won't be missed. And we need at least two lyrium potions, one to move the bodies and one so you can heal yourself."

"What about you?" Anders waved a hand at Amell's bloodied armor, "Are you just going wander back to the tavern like that?"

"Like what?" Amell glanced down at himself, "I always look like this. Don't leave your necklace here, we don't need anything leading back to you."

"Right." Anders said. He picked up his necklace and stuffed it in his pocket, and set about exploring the storehouse. It took him an age to find even a handful of lyrium potions, buried under a stack of chests containing all other manner of poultices. There wouldn't have been the time to search for them if he'd looked while Amell was injured. Anders brought them back to Amell, and Amell used his to reanimate the two templars who still had bodies left to animate. Anders used his to heal his nose and the cuts on his arm.

An armoire in the room they were in contained a wide selection of robes, several of them in the Tevinter style. Anders eyed the feathered spaulders longingly, but forced himself to grab a standard Circle robe in beige. The point was to not attract attention after all. Anders changed out of his bloodied doublet and cleaned himself off without any real thought, until he noticed Amell staring at him.

"Sorry," Amell cleared his throat and turned around.

"I get it, I'm irresistible." Anders joked. "It's the blood, right? Really brings out the color in my cheeks."

"Something like that." Amell said.

"This have anything to do with how you seem to get whenever you use blood magic?" Anders wondered, changing out his trousers and pulling on his new robe. It didn't quite fit, but that was what sashes were for.

"Something like that," Amell said again. "I should probably apologize for that."

"No need," Anders said, "It's not like you're the first patient who ever kissed me."

"I'm sure you have a story or two there. Are you changed?" Amell asked.

"Changed." Anders agreed. "So... not to critique your brilliance or anything, but..." Anders looked at the headless templar, holding said head under his arm as if it were a helmet. "Really?"

The templar put his head back on, and Anders nearly threw up again. Twice, the corpse missed trying to reattach its head to its spine, and the grind of bone against bone made Anders shudder. Eventually, it succeeded, and the head held on through some act of Amell's magic. The other corpse set about picking up Rylock's armor.

"And what about the blood?" Anders asked. "Do we just stay here and scrub the floors, or what?"

"It's blood," Amell said, channeling a rather simplistic spell that drew every last drop from the floor boards, and bloated his corpses with it. "It's like it never happened."

Anders wished it could have been that simple. Anders went back to the tavern, while Amell went Maker knew where with his 'templars.' Anders accepted a drink from Oghren that may as well have been water, drank, avoided his questions, and went to bed, but sleep wasn't waiting for him there. He lay abed, listening to the comings and goings of other patrons for one hour, and then an hour more before he got back up. The front room was deserted, save for the one tavern girl that worked the night shift. Anders gave her every borrowed coin he had left, and drank until the ale lost its flavor.

A half hour in, and the girl decided to stop ignoring him. A short conversation later, and she was in his lap, her milky breasts spilling from her bodice, her hands in his hair and her teeth on his ear, and Anders didn't have to think about being a maleficar or murderer or anything else. His hands were lost under her clothes, cupping her breast and pushing her down to grind against his cock when Amell finally came back.

The templars were gone, but Amell was a mess. The blood had all dried, but he still carried the helmet he'd thrown up on in one hand. His gauntlets and his greaves were covered in dirt, mud, and all manner of questionable sludge that made Anders wonder where he'd taken the bodies and what he'd done with them. Worse still, Amell had somehow earned a bruise on his jaw and a matching cut on his lip.

The barmaid covered her breasts with a giggle. Anders didn't even know her name. Amell took them in at a glance, and walked past them to his room without a word. And why did Anders care? Amell might not even care. It wasn't like Anders was courting the man. At best, Anders was considering having sex with him. It didn't mean Anders couldn't have sex with other people in the mean time.

"Ugh," The barmaid sighed when Amell had gone, lacing up her bodice. "He tracked in mud. Typical. I have to get this or Mackay will have my hide in the morning. My room is the second one behind the counter. Wanna wait for me, handsome?"

"I... should probably go to bed, actually." Anders lied, accepting the kiss the girl planted on his cheek. "I'm a terrible tease, I know."

"You know where I am if you change your mind," The barmaid said.

Anders first thought was to go find Amell, except he had no idea what he could say that wouldn't make him sound pathetic. 'I don't know what's going on and I don't feel like I have a say in my life anymore and I just want someone to hold me so I don't have to think about it.' No, that didn't sound pathetic at all. It wasn't like Anders had ever had a say in his life in the first place.

Anders went back to his room and lay abed, staring at the ceiling until the sun came up. In the morning, all of them went back to the Vigil, and not a word was said of Anders' and Amells' absence that evening, save for a few harmless quips from Oghren. Anders went and found Ser Pounce-a-Lot in the small cubby he'd made for him under his bunk, and dragged the cat with him to the Vigil's chapel.

Anders preferred the chapel in Vigil's Keep to the one at the Circle Tower. Not only were there less templars at Vigil's Keep, but there were less mages. Anders was an Andrastian, and a mage, but he remembered the sort of mages who had frequented the chapel at the Circe. Keili, Markus, and the others. Chantry apologists, all repenting their magic as though it were a curse of the Maker and not a gift from Him.

It was a gift. Anders was certain of it. And as a gift from the Maker, mages had an obligation to use magic in His service. Anders lived by the belief loosely enough. Barring the occasional electricity trick in bed, Anders didn't use magic for his own amusement. He didn't use it as a short cut. It seemed to Anders Andraste counseled men to seek their own path to the Maker, but how could that path be through blood magic?

How could it not be, when it had been right there? When it had saved Amell's life, so effortlessly, so easily? Where was the evil in that? Where was the evil in Amell? "What else could I have done?" Anders voiced the question aloud, more to Ser Pounce-a-Lot than the Maker, considering which one was more likely to give him an answer. His cat had nothing to say to him, preferring to purr and rub circles around his legs. The answer was nothing, of course.

Anders picked Ser Pounce back and put him in his lap, fishing the collar he'd gotten him out of his pocket. "Look what Daddy got you," Anders said. He tied the tiny collar with its tiny bell around Ser Pounce's neck, but even that did little to take his mind off the fact that he was a maleficar now. "Aren't you handsome?"

"Am I, now?" Amell's voice intruded on his thoughts.

"Amell," Anders leapt out of the pew he was sitting in, startled, and startled Ser Pounce-a-Lot in turn. His cat sprinted away, vanishing beneath the many tapestries lining the chapel walls, and Anders almost wanted to join him.

It was no wonder Amell had managed to sneak up on him. He was dressed in his formal Warden doublet, all blue and silver with a pair of black leather boots much quieter than his dragonscale greaves. His hair was even gelled back, though that likely had more to do with whatever important Arl-thing he was busy with than Anders.

"Am I interrupting?" Amell asked. He made his way through the pews, and stopped a little too close for comfort. Anders wanted him to go away almost as desperately as he wanted him to say. Amell still had the cut on his lip, liable to scar now that Anders hadn't healed it when it had happened. Looking at it made Anders feel guilty.

"No." Anders said. "Not exactly."

"I come bearing gifts, if that helps," Amell said.

"Not really," Anders sighed, and sat down. Amell sat beside him, leaving a polite inch between them. "That just reminds me I was going to get you something, until I gave Namaya every coin I had for that key."

"I don't mind loaning you more if you need it." Amell said.

"That's a good way to go broke." Anders laughed, "Were you there when we were playing Diamondbank? I'm pretty sure I still owe Sigrun fifty silver or more."

"Maybe, but I'm a rich man in case you hadn't noticed. I have an entire arling you can bleed dry." Gentle as the joke was, Anders wasn't sure he was ready to joke about blood magic so soon. His laugh was a little awkward as a result. "That was probably tasteless." Amell decided. It had been, but for some reason seeing Amell's awkward smile and being reminded he was human made up for it.

Amell handed him his gift.

"A book?" Anders noted astutely, "Who told you I could read?" He joked, flipping it over to read the title aloud, "Phylacteries: A history written in blood. You shouldn't have."

"I thought you might want to know a little more about what you're chasing after," Amell explained. "And just how 'forbidden' blood magic really is. The Chantry condones it, as long as they can use it to oppress mages."

"I like it," Anders confessed, though he wasn't sure if he shared Amell's opinion on blood magic. To Anders, phylacteries had always been a good example of the evils that were borne of blood magic. It was in the nature of blood magic to oppress and control. It made sense the Chantry would rely on it in their hypocrisy. "I'll read it."

"Good, I'm glad." Amell said. "Can I ask what you were praying for?"

"Oh, you know, the usual," Anders said glibly, "A harem, fresh apple pie, the collapse of the templar order."

"Anders..." Amell lifted a hand as if to touch him, and unable to decide what to do with it, put it back in his lap. "I know that you're 'touchy' not 'feely' but... I hope you know I'm here for you, or I'd like to be. I know you're not sleeping. I know what happened with Rylock upset you. And I know that not everyone at the Vigil has been entirely welcoming."

"Oghren told you about Cera," Anders guessed.

"Oghren doesn't keep a lot of secrets," Amell said. "I had a word with her. She won't deny you any more supplies."

Anders sighed, setting the book down on the pew beside him. A few yards away, Ser Pounce-a-Lot was playing with the tassels to a tapestry. Anders wished his own life were half so simple. "Look, I'm glad you care, I really am, but I'm rubbish at getting all weighty about things. That's not me, you know? You want to talk about magic, or witty one-liners, then I'm your guy, but the rest is just..."

The rest was why Anders wore Ferrenly's necklace, until he broke the clasp in a childish fit yesterday. Sharing is caring and all that, until you care too much, and think that just because you saved Namaya's life and had a grand time on the run with her for a few months, she wouldn't turn you into the templars the first chance she got. Amell wasn't Ferrenly, or Namaya, but...

"Do you remember when they used to let the apprentices out? At the Circle?" Anders asked. "They'd take us down to the shore for a few minutes of fresh air every other week."

"Vaguely," Amell allotted, accepting his change of topic without question. "I was ten or eleven when they stopped."

"Wait, seriously?" Anders stared at him, trying to do the math in his head. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-one," Amell said.

"Bullshit." Anders said. Amell was at least twenty-five, if not bordering on thirty. He certainly looked it. There was a permanent shadow to his almond eyes, and while he was rather lean, he didn't have the wiry frame of a boy just turned man. Nor the immaturity of one. If his hair had even a hint of grey, or his face any wrinkles, Anders might have believed he was forty.

"I was conscripted days after my Harrowing, Anders." Amell said.

"But you're so-I mean-" Anders floundered, "I can't recover from this, can I?"

"Keep trying." Amell grinned. "I'm sure there's a compliment in there somewhere."

"Mature?" Anders offered. "Wise beyond your years. There we go. Anyway, the first time I escaped, it was during that 'outdoor time.' I was thirteen. I jumped off the dock and into the lake, and just swam like mad. The first templar that jumped in after me forgot about his armor and sank like a rock. It was hilarious. So, I get to the other side, and there's Kester, that old ferryman, just laughing his ass off as I run past, soaking wet, robe dragging an extra five feet behind me.

"I get to the Imperial Highway, and just start running. I guess I had it in my thirteen year old head that I was going to make it all the way back to Tallo on foot. Looks, humor, brains, pick two, right? So I'm halfway to Gherlen's Pass when I run into a noble being held up by maybe five bandits. All his retainers are already dead. So I pick the first spell that comes to me, light my hands on fire, and run at them screaming I don't remember what. In retrospect... well it's a miracle I'm alive. They decided they didn't want to fight a mage and fled.

"The man I saved was Bann Ferrenly. He was on his way to the markets outside Orzammar. He brought me with, bought me a change of clothes... was the first real friend I ever made. He let me pick out a pendant for myself, complete with dwarven enchantments and made with real silver. He said it was a reward for my service and my friendship. A week later, he finds out he's not too fond of mages, and I find out I'm not too fond of nobles. Turned me into the templars after all that. That's kind of how I learned you can't put too much on people. You get too weighty, and you'll weigh too much, and they'll let you down.

Ser Pounce-a-Lot had come back, somewhere in the middle of his story, and Anders picked him up and put him in his lap. "Anyway," Anders said, "If I've been moody lately, I'll get over. I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself."

"I never said you couldn't." Amell said. "But I'm not Ferrenly, Anders. I'd hope by now you trust me. We shook hands, remember?"

"There is that." Anders said, and allowed himself a laugh. "You really want to know?"

"I really want to know." Amell promised.

"I think I did the right thing, in the storehouse," Anders said. "Healing you. Not getting you in that position in the first place, obviously. I know you're not much of a believer, but I am. Sort of. There are a lot of verses in the Chant of Light I don't agree with. I don't believe the magisters of Tevinter ever set foot in the Golden City. I don't believe darkspawn are the Maker's punishment for the pride of a few mages, but blood magic... It's demonic. It's evil. It corrupts. And I keep thinking it was the right thing to do."

"Do you want to know how I learned blood magic, Anders?" Amell asked.

"From a demon," Anders guessed.

"Are you going to steal every punch-line?" Amell asked, "Yes, from a demon. Do you remember the friend I told you about? The one who's phylactery I helped destroy?"

"If I don't, I've got a real bad memory," Anders chuckled, "That was yesterday."

"He didn't just escape, change his name, and start helping refugees," Amell said. "He was caught, and given a choice between poisoning an Arl and death. He got close to the Arl through the Arlessa. Her son was a mage, and she didn't want to lose him to the Circle, so my friend taught him in secret. He tried, but he wasn't very good at it. The boy became possessed by a demon.

"This demon... it destroyed the entire Arling. It summoned hoard after hoard of undead, and created veritable army at the disposal of just one mage. It enslaved the minds of countless men and women with ease. It was... remarkable," Amell trailed off, and Anders wasn't sure he cared for the look on his face. "It was everything the Chantry feared. An untrained mage, run rampant with power. We worked a ritual to send me into the Fade, and undo the boy's possession."

"Undo a possession?" Anders blinked at him, "I didn't even know that was possible."

"The Circle never likes to talk about it. It takes a lot of lyrium... or a lot of blood, and a lot of very specific circumstances, but it's possible. When I found the demon, we spoke. We sat together for what felt like an age, just talking. No fighting. No mind control. No sudden possession. I knew it had the power to defeat the Blight, and I knew could use it, so I made a deal, and I did. And I can't tell you how many times our victory hinged on me knowing what I know.

"I'm not going to deny that it's dangerous, that it attracts demons, and creates temptations, but that's all magic. Any harrowed mage can tell you that. Blood magic... is just a second harrowing." Amell said

"I'm still reeling from my first, to be perfectly honest," Anders said, "I don't know if I can handle a second."

"Then it's a good thing you're not a blood mage." Amell said.

"But I am a blood mage," Anders argued, and just admitting it put a sour taste in his mouth. Useful or not, blood magic could exploited. It corrupted, and it came from demons, which Compassion was not, "In the storehouse-"

"You cast a spell," Anders interrupted him. "It happened to involve blood. That doesn't make you a blood mage. At worst, you augmented a healing spell. Pray if you like, but the Maker is gone. He isn't going to punish you for saving my life. There's no one here but you and me, and I'm not about to judge you."

"It's not just the Maker I'm worried about." Anders said, and then his confession came tumbling out despite all his better judgment. "It's Compassion. Ever since my Joining... She's drawn to me, and my dreams shape her reality. But lately? All my dreams are nightmares of darkspawn. Can you imagine what that's like for a spirit of Compassion? And when they aren't of darkspawn, I dream of those bandits at the cove, and I can't explain to a spirit how killing someone now saves someone later. She's a spirit. She doesn't think that far ahead, she's incapable of it. And now, using blood magic? How do I explain that to her?"

"Easily," Amell said, "My friend was a blood mage for years, Anders. He became a spirit healer when he went on to help refugees, and as far as I know he never stopped practicing blood magic. Spirits don't care about blood magic. They care about how we use it. You're a good man. That's all that matters."

Anders wanted to believe him. Amell's smile had all the confidence of the man, and it wasn't often someone who knew him called him a good man. It was coming from a blood mage, but Amell was more than that. He was his friend.

Amell stood to leave him, and for some inexplicable reason Anders grabbed his hand.

"Amell," What was he going to say? 'I hope you don't think me making out with a barmaid means because I crave human contact when I'm stressed means I stopped thinking about your offer?' or maybe 'Hey I know you're the Warden Commander of Ferelden and Arl of Amaranthine, but do you want to come babysit me whenever being a Warden gets to be too much for me?'

"Thanks for talking with me." Anders said lamely.

"Anytime." Amell said.

Anders slept that night, though he couldn't say whether a purring cat on his chest, Amell's kind words, or sheer exhaustion drove him to it.

It didn't take him long to recognize the sepia tones, the emerald sky, and floating far off Black City as the Fade. He was dreaming of the Pilgrim's Rest, and that barmaid whose name he still didn't know. It was a welcome reprieve from darkspawn, from Compassion's tears, from cramped cells and too-tight shackles. He slid his hand under her shirt all the same, on the vain hope it was a shade, a wisp forming the memory, and he could enjoy it for what it was.

He couldn't remember the color of the barmaid's eyes, but he doubted they were gold. "Compassion," Anders sighed. No wet dreams then. Just his brain picked apart by his spirit. "Why this memory?"

"It confuses me." Compassion said, shaking off the barmaid's form. She stayed in her own for a moment, before shifting into Amell's. Anders was quite certain he had never seen Amell in a tunic that fell open at his chest, with form-fitting trousers that bunched tight around his crotch. "Why not him? You were scared, You wanted comfort. This other form, it meant nothing to you. You like him. I like him."

"Oh for-I didn't even have sex with her," Anders said.

"Because he came back. Because you felt guilty. Why do you look for Compassion in all the wrong places?"

"Can you not use his voice?" Anders asked, trying to decide whether or not to push Compassion off his lap. The tunic was surprisingly distracting. "And I don't want to find 'comfort' or 'compassion' or anything like that with Amell. I like him. He's my friend. I don't want to confuse things. That kiss was bad enough. If I went running off to him for sex in the mood I was in the other night after that, it would have meant something. I know you don't understand why that's bad, but it is. Whatever this is, it has to stay friendly."

"You're scared." Compassion said.

"Of course I'm bloody scared!" Anders snapped, and then immediately regretted it. Compassion only had one emotion: compassion. She wasn't mocking him. He hugged her in apology, and felt a little queer that she was still using Amell's form. At least she didn't have his smell right. "We just murdered three templars and hid their bodies Maker-knows-where. The second I step out from behind Amell's shadow, I'm a dead a man, and I'll have to run again. I'm an apostate, first and forever, Compassion. Do you see why me getting attached to people is a bad idea?"

"I don't understand," Compassion said, "I want you to be happy."

"I'd be happier if you would stop avoiding me in here." Anders said, "You're my only long term gal, you know."

"... there is a corruption in you." Compassion whispered, finally shifting back into her own form. The bar fell away, and they sat in a field of reeds. "Dark... and tainted. There is no Compassion there. I want to be with you, but it frightens me."

"The darkspawn taint?" Anders said. "It can't hurt you,"

"I am not afraid for myself. I am afraid for you. I see it like a seed in your soul, taking root, rotting you from the inside out, making you less of the man you were." Compassion cupped his cheek, and leaned forward to kiss him on his forehead, just like his mother always had. "That's why I want you to find Compassion in others, my poor, sweet mage. I fear you are losing it in yourself."

Notes:

Fanart
Amell

Chapter 11: The Righteous Path

Notes:

Thank you all for your wonderful comments/kudos/bookmarks, and as always thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 20 Solis Early Morning
The Pilgrim's Path Through the Wending Woods

"Not to belabor the point or anything, but I think this caravan was attacked," Anders said. The caravan in question was a smoldering ruin, blocking their way through the ravine, but the fact that it was smoldering at all proved the attack had happened recently.

"Thank you, Anders." Amell said.

"Hawk eyes on this one," Oghren snorted.

"Be nice, Oghren," Amell said, "We might have missed it."

"You're mean, you know that?" Anders said. Amell actually chuckled, so Anders supposed the teasing was worth it.

"I traveled these trade routes as a child, with my father." Nathaniel said, ignoring them and picking his way over the ruined caravan. "They were safer then."

"Riveting commentary, Archy," Oghren said, stepping on the same plank Nathaniel had stepped over, and breaking it in half. "Not that nostalgia isn't fun, but can we hurry this along? All this greenery is making my beard itch."

"Are you sure you that's not your rash?" Anders joked, reaching for the hem of his robe to hold it up as he climbed over the ruined caravan, until he remembered he wasn't wearing one. Old habits, and all that. He'd never get used to trousers.

Anders finally had his official Warden's outfit. He hated to admit it, but it was rather fetching. He had thin leather trousers and a matching leather chest piece, all in a slimming black. Atop the chestpiece were spaulders in brigandine, silver studs riveted to the thick woolen fabric in place of the feathers Anders preferred. Leather boots went up to his knees, and matching gloves went up to his elbows, both thick enough to pick up or step on anything from rashvine nettle to coal if he wanted. Add on a pretty warden tabard in a basic chainmail, and a belt complete with pouches and straps to carry his satchel, and Anders was set.

Fetching or not, nothing would beat the freedom of robes. Anders stepped over the broken plank and held out a hand for Sigrun.

"Thanks!" Sigrun said, grabbing his hand and vaulting over. "Everything is so big up here. And so bright!"

"Homesick?" Anders wondered.

"Not at all!" Sigrun grinned. "I grew up in Dust Town. That's like... a slum's slum. Compared to Dust Town, this is like a palace. An outdoor palace, strewn with broken carts, dead bodies, and ruined caravans, but I'm not picky."

"Tell me if you see a whole one." Amell said. Not creepy at all.

"A whole caravan?" Sigrun asked.

"He means a body." Anders said.

"Oh! Right. You're a neck...A neckeeee?" Sigrun floundered.

"Necromancer." Amell said. They came to a halt at a place where a pile of caravans and fallen trees blocked off the ravine the road traveled between. It looked like the perfect place for an ambush, Anders couldn't help thinking, clutching his slippery staff as tight as he dared.

"I know another way around," Nathaniel said.

Amell sheathed both his hands in sapphire, and the wreckage lifted, stacking itself into neat piles on either side of the ravine. In a few minutes, a path was clear. Nathaniel went through first.

"Show off," Anders said.

Amell glanced back at him, but with his helmet on Anders had no way of knowing if he was grinning. He probably was.

A moment later, and Nathaniel came back, "Bandits, ahead. Seven." He warned them. "They looked like scavengers. I doubt they caused all this damage."

"No way," Sigrun agreed. "Something big and angry came through here. If we were in the Deep Roads, I'd say a golem did this."

"Boss, here's an ugly one," Oghren said, kicking a corpse lying atop one of the piles Amell had made. It was a bandit, or had been. He'd been impaled by what looked like a tree branch.

"Thank you," Amell said. He knelt beside the corpse, and Anders felt the Fade swell as a wisp crossed, and was bound to the dead man.

"That is so cool." Sigrun said when the corpse stood up, tree branch still firmly stuck in its stomach.

"For a dead woman, you are remarkably perky." Nathaniel said.

"Oh come on, it's cool," Sigrun insisted, "Magic is cool! You humans take way too much for granted. The surface is fascinating."

"Nathaniel, did you see any cover for you and Anders?" Amell asked.

"I did." Nathaniel said, "I'll show him. The bandits are just around the bend, to the left."

"Everyone ready?" Amell asked. It seemed like a rhetorical question, because in the same breath Oghren and Amell were charging, Sigrun at their heels, and Nathaniel was dragging Anders with him.

It was decent cover. Nathaniel found a spot between two boulders and a tree, which seemed to serve him well enough as an archer's slit. Anders cast a protective glyph beneath them, and then focused on the battle. A glyph of warding for Sigrun and Oghren, enhancement magic for Amell and Nathaniel, barriers for whoever looked to be the focus of their enemies. There was a soothing sort of rhythm to fighting, without actually having to fight. Anders liked the detachment. He much preferred to think of himself as helping his friends, as opposed to killing anyone. Maybe it wasn't a healthy coping method, but it was the only one he had.

When the last bandit fell, Anders called out, "Does anyone need healing?"

"Sigrun," Amell called back.

The little dwarf trudged across the battlefield, and took a seat in the dirt beside Anders. "It's nothing." Sigrun argued, unbuckling her right boot and fighting with her greaves to show him where a bolt had hit her in between the two separate pieces of armor. "I don't even know how he noticed. I'm barely bleeding."

Anders could take a guess. There was an upside of blood magic, Anders supposed. It probably helped if a Commander could tell when his recruits were injured. "Well, nothing can turn into something pretty quick. This will hurt a little," Kneeling beside her, Anders pulled the bolt from her leg, and knit the flesh back together with his magic. "Didn't they teach you not to hide injuries in that Legion of yours?"

"Kind of the opposite, really," Sigrun shrugged, watching his magic in rapt fascination. "In the Legion, you never know when the fighting stop, so you just have to grin and bear it until you get back to base camp. It's not like we had a healer around to take care of us whenever something happened. Man, magic is so cool. Can you set that bush on fire?" She pointed to the foliage in question.

"Probably, but why would I want to?" Anders asked. "All done, you can put your shoe back on."

"Well can you freeze it?" Sigrun asked, putting her boot back on.

"Why do you want me to kill the bush?" Anders demanded.

"Because it's there! It's an evil bush! Do it!"

"Magic isn't for your amusement!" Anders stubbornly refused her. "Why don't I just do a little dance? Anders' Spicy Shimmy?"

"Oh, ew," Sigrun wrinkled her nose at him. "I'll pass. Thanks for healing in my leg."

"I'm game," Amell glanced back at them, and not two seconds later the bush went up in flame seemingly of its own accord. Sigrun squealed in delight.

"Really?" Anders sighed, dousing the bush with a quick ice spell before it set the whole forest aflame.

"It was an evil bush," Amell shrugged innocently. "There's a ruin in the distance. We should see if whatever is causing these attacks is holed up there." He'd lost his corpse in the fight, and went to find another among the dead.

"Disappointed, Anders?" Nathaniel wondered quietly, leaning back against the tree they'd taken shelter under throughout the fight.

"A little," Anders admitted. "I'm an excellent dancer, you know. Her loss."

"Ah. I was under the impression it wasn't her attention you wanted," Nathaniel nodded at Amell's back.

"Jealousy doesn't become you, Nate." Anders said. "I'm sure if you show a little skin, the Commander will pay attention to you too."

Nathaniel snorted; it sounded suspiciously close to a laugh, but that was impossible. Nathaniel was even more stoic than Amell. "You tell a lot of jokes, but-" Nathaniel coughed. His voice was normally deep, but when he coughed he sounded as if he was gargling gravel. The sound was cringe-worthy, and it came twice before the Howe doubled over, and a hot spray of his blood hit Anders in the face. A loud crack came next, followed by a deep rumbling, and a branch burst forth from Nathaniel's stomach.

"Nathaniel!" Anders heard someone scream, and only recognized the voice for his own when the tree Nathaniel had been leaning against lifted him up and flung him across the forest.

Reaching for the Fade, Anders hands erupted in a cone of frost, freezing the insane tree solid before it could cause any more damage. Without waiting to see if it thawed or shattered, Anders turned and sprinted in the direction Nathaniel had been thrown. "Nathaniel?" Anders called out, tearing through the underbrush to find his fellow Warden.

Another of Nathaniel's wicked coughs drew his attention, and Anders found him on the far side of a fallen log. Anders vaulted it, but hadn't counted on it hiding a small ditch. He tumbled down a small hill and nearly landed on Nathaniel when he hit the bottom. "Don't move!" Anders ordered, not even sure if Nathaniel was able.

"No worries there," Nathaniel wheezed from under a pile of branches. Anders breathed a sigh of relief that he was even still talking.

Throwing Nathaniel's tabard to the side, Anders sucked in a sharp breath. The hole went clear through him, right at his stomach. Anders summoned Compassion, and channeled as much of her benevolent energy as his connection to the Fade allowed. The healing was slow going.

"What was that?" Nathaniel asked, his lungs struggling to find the air to form the words.

"Don't talk." Anders ordered. "I don't know. Maybe nature magic? The Veil isn't thin here, I would have felt it. There shouldn't be any possessed trees or sylvans or whatever. The bandits in this area must have an apostate working for them."

Eventually, Anders had the damage undone, Nathaniel's stomach in one piece and no gaping holes in his body. His armor was beyond saving. Anders held out a hand to help him to stand, and Nathaniel toppled over the second he tried. His ankle must have been sprained in the fall. "You wasted enough time on me," Nathaniel said, giving him a shove, "Go help the others,"

"Stay put," Anders ordered, wondering if the archer even had a choice, but he wasn't on the verge of death, whereas the others might be. Climbing his way out of the ditch and using his slippery staff as a very bad walking stick, Anders struggled back to the main path to find Amell, Oghren, and Sigrun.

Possessed trees were everywhere. Anders counted five. The only one holding their own looked to be Oghren, his strength and his axe the only thing making a dent in the monsters. Sigrun was unarmed, and Anders spotted her smaller axes imbedded uselessly in one of the sylvan's legs. Her only defense was her speed, and the fact that she could roll away before the tree's could reach her. Amell's possessed corpse was back to being just a corpse after having its head chopped off, and Amell was struggling to keep two of the sylvans encased in cages of telekinetic force, but the creature looked about to break free from its crushing prison.

Anders couldn't understand why he was struggling at first, but after a few seconds it clicked. The sylvan's had no blood, and Amell was first and foremost a blood mage. That silly fire spell he'd used on the bush was probably the only one he knew, and his sword was no substitute for an axe.

Running to join them, Anders' hands erupted in an explosive ball of flame, and he sent it careening into the nearest sylvan's substitute for a face. The sylvan burst aflame, and kept fighting. A charred branch fell from the sylvan's canopy, sending sparks of flame licking through the grass, and after a moment the creature crumbled, it's legs giving out underneath it with a loud crack.

Sigrun and Amell spotted him, and ran through the possessed trees to his side. Once they were clear, Anders drew on the last of his reserves to summon an ice storm that froze and shattered the sylvan's chasing them. Oghren handled the remainder, and the battle was quickly over.

"Nathaniel?" Amell demanded.

"No, Anders, actually," Anders joked. Amell was still wearing his helmet, but for some reason Anders could feel him frowning. Anders cleared his throat and pointed towards the ditch, but by then Nathaniel had dragged himself out of it.

"Here," Nathaniel called out in answer, heavily favoring his left leg, but Anders didn't have the reserves of magic left to heal him. Nathaniel limped his way over, and eyed the nearby trees suspiciously before deciding to rest against a boulder instead.

"You're alright?" Amell eyed the hole in Nathaniel's armor suspiciously.

"He shouldn't be," Sigrun chimed in. "One of those tree things impaled him. I saw it."

"Fine, thanks to Anders," Nathaniel nodded in his direction, though Anders was willing to hazard a guess they were all fine thanks to Anders.

"Can you heal his leg?" Amell asked.

"Remember that time I said you were demanding?" Anders asked, "Because you're demanding,"

"It's my ankle," Nathaniel clarified. "I'll be fine, if no more trees attack us. We can wait until Anders has the mana to heal me."

Amell nodded, and wandered away from the rest of them to his own boulder, and collapsed against it. Anders decided to join him, considering Amell seemed like the type of person to hide an injury. Amell took off his helmet and set it on the ground beside him, and reached into his belt pocket for a lyrium draught. At Anders' approach, he held it out to him instead.

Well... wasn't that sweet of him. Anders drank it, and sat down beside him. "You're welcome, by the way."

"For what?" Amell blinked blearily at him, as if he hadn't exerted all his mana on complex telekinetic spells in lieu of any other way to defend himself.

"Oh, I don't know, saving your life?" Anders mused.

"You saved Nathaniel's life," Amell corrected him.

"No actually, I think I saved everyone's life there." Anders said.

"I take it you want a reward?" Amell guessed.

"It couldn't hurt," Anders said. "I'm thinking a medal, or maybe a trophy! The inscription could be 'Thedas' Greatest Healer,'"

"Why don't I just repay the favor by saving your life sometime?" Amell said, "Like say, a few weeks ago, when a darkspawn fell on you in Kal'Hirol? Or a few days ago when rogue templars were going to execute you?"

"Those don't count," Anders pouted.

"Why not?" Amell asked.

"Because that's no fun?" Anders said.

"Well..." Amell looked him over, and Anders was relieved to note whatever interest Amell had in him was still there. "Any time you want a 'fun' reward, just ask. I'd be more than happy to think of something."

Amell set a hand to his shoulder and squeezed as he stood. Anders tried to think of something imaginative as the man went to check on the rest of the group, but nothing came to him. He couldn't picture Amell on his knees, or in his lap the same way he could with a beautiful woman. He had no idea what being with him would be like, and it certainly didn't help his imagination that the man was so hard to read. Giving up, Anders stood and they continued their search.

They didn't have to search long. Amell had guessed right. Their trek to the top of the ruins found them an elven camp, with just one elf. The fierce little thing burst up from the ground in front of them in a shower of leaves and roots. Oghren screamed. Anders cast a quick barrier over all of them. Amell stepped in front of them all, and held out a placating hand.

"More scavengers here to prey on the misfortunes of others?" The elf woman hissed, taking in the five of them and their matching armor. "... No. You are too well armed. Here for me then. You will not drive me from these forests. The shem could not do it, the darkspawn could not do it, and you will fare no better!" The trees in her camp ripped up from the ground around them and stepped forth.

"No! We're not," Amell lied, so passionately Anders believed him, until he remembered stopping the attacks was exactly why they were here, "We are Grey Wardens," Amell tapped the griffon inscribed on his chest piece.

"Ah..." The elf seemed to relax. The trees around sunk back into the ground, and without the threat of imminent death, Anders had to admit the elf was quite the looker. Her eyes were an unnatural shade of green, and her robes split open at her chest to reveal a ridiculously generous amount of cleavage. Oghren's mouth was open, which was Oghren for you, but even Nathaniel was staring.

"You are here to battle the darkspawn, then?" The elf said, "Fair enough... they are rampant of late. If only they had killed the shems before the shems could kill my clan..."

"I'm sorry," Amell said. "You should know I can sense near a score of darkspawn in the area, but I'm sure you can take care of yourself."

"I can." The elf said. "Should you encounter any merchant caravans, tell them to release my sister, or more of their men will die. Now go, deal with your darkspawn. And stay away from here. This place is not for you." Roots erupted from the ground again, and swallowed the elf whole.

Amell ushered them out of the ruins, and they made their way back to the Pilgrim's Path before he called for a halt.

"It appears we have found our culprit," Nathaniel said.

"Yup." Oghren said, "That little elf caused about as much as damage as ol' Branka used to when she went on her monthly rampages. There a reason we didn't just kill her and be done with all this when we had the chance?"

"She's a very powerful mage, Oghren," Amell said, unabashed admiration in his voice.

"Hoho, you thinking about hoping borders after all?" Oghren said, "She was hot, not arguing that. Did you see those tits?"

"I was more interested in the three sylvans she summoned," Amell said, "We should search the caravans for survivors; perhaps someone will know something about her sister."

"Or perhaps the Merchant's Guild might," Nathaniel added. "I would not argue against finding a peaceful solution to this."

"The tits, right?" Oghren asked, "It's the tits."

"Honestly, Oghren," Sigrun sighed.

"Hey, that gal is the reason Archy here had a tree branch rammed through his stomach, and if you ask me, the only reason a guy forgets getting stuck like that is if he likes the one doing the sticking," Oghren said.

Amell snorted. Anders couldn't help laughing.

"Anyway," Sigrun said loudly, "Did you guys see her camp? There was blood everywhere, but not like the kind you see in a fight. It looked like someone just dumped bucket of bloods on everything, and the weapons? They were just scattered about. It didn't look right."

"Let's start with looking for survivors," Amell said. He went to search the caravans, and Anders followed him, given the other alternatives he had for partners. They went through caravan after ruined caravan, all along the road, checking abandoned bandit camps, trying to find a single living soul. It wasn't looking good.

"So... come here often?" Anders said to lighten the mood.

Amell made an amused sound, "I-... wait. Do you sense that?"

"Darkspawn?" Anders guessed. "Not yet. I mean, sort of, whenever they're really close-"

"No, something weaker." Amell said, "Stay close,"

"Oh, you can count on it." Anders said, "This place is a death trap. If I have to go into the bushes to answer nature's call, you're coming with me."

Amell led him over a hill to a cluster of trees. Anders bit back a childish whine, afraid any one of those trees might decide to spontaneously uproot and attack them, and followed Amell as he broke into a jog. There was a man under the trees, or what was left of one. His face was covered in welts, and his skin was more shades of purple than Anders knew existed. At their approach, the man scrambled backwards and hugged the nearest tree. "Don't look! Don't look at me!"

"He's a ghoul." Amell said, taking off his helmet to kneel beside the man. "Still coherent, though."

"They came," The man whimpered. His eyes were thick with cataracts, and completely blind, "They came from beneath... around, from shadows. We were ripped apart... biting claws and teeth from the darkness. And then... I woke? Flesh and bone and gristle under me... around me. Everyone dead... dead, soft meat melting into the ground. I ...I crawled away. Came here. Can't stand... to see it."

"So this... I mean... is this really what's going to happen to us?" Anders swallowed, unable to bring himself to kneel so close to the man, "Are we really going to end up like this? What was that alternative you mentioned, the two-hundred year option?"

"Later, Anders," Amell squeezed his leg, "I'll tell you later." Amell turned back to the man, "Do you know anything about the elf's sister?"

"Sister?" The man squeaked, "I... have a sister. Do I? Elf-sister... no! We did not take her. Probably dead. Or... eaten."

"Did you kill the elves?" Amell asked.

"No. No!" The man shook his head wildly. A welt burst. Anders swallowed back vomit, "Darkspawn came first. They slaughtered us... took our steel. Brought it to the elven camp. Tricked us. Tricked the elf. Now... she thinks we are to blame. Hunts all in her rage, while they watch..."

"So all these people died over a... misunderstanding?" Anders looked over his shoulder, back at where the river of caravans lay burning. "Maker... that's horrible! We have to stop her, tell her she's wrong! Do you think she's still back at her camp? We should try to find her."

"We will, Anders," Amell promised, looking back to the ghoul. "This disease you have, it's Blight-sickness. I can put an end to it."

"An end?" The man said. "Yes... an end. Please. Dead. Should be already dead. Make an end."

Amell drew his dagger, and slit the man's throat. For some reason, Anders watched as congealed black blood bubbled out of his throat and down his chest. The ghoul died smiling.

"Why could he still talk?" Anders asked, "Why was he still there? In the Vigil... in the cellars, none of them could talk..."

"Later, Anders." Amell cleaned off his dagger, sheathed it, and stood. "I promise. We need to get back to the others, there are a lot of darkspawn nearby." Amell set off at a jog, and Anders had no choice but to follow.

Back on the path, Oghren was standing with his back to a hill, Sigrun at his side. Nathaniel was crouched with his bow drawn nearby. "Aye, I feel 'em!" Oghren yelled when he saw them, "We got a lot of the Stone-cursed dusters coming! No offense, Sigrun."

"Stow it, Oghren," Sigrun spat. Good for her, Anders thought.

The darkspawn burst forth exactly as the ghoul had said. Well, not exactly. Anders wasn't half mad with blight sickness, so he could see some of the shrieks had been hiding in the trees, the genlocks behind boulders, the hurlocks under ruined caravans. But they weren't sylvans, and Amell had no trouble with any of them. Anders laid down his glyphs, Nathaniel had his arrows, Sigrun her axes, and Oghren... was Oghren. The fight was over quickly.

"The elf was tricked into thinking the humans killed her sister, and murdered her clan. The darkspawn set it up. Search the bodies for anything elven," Amell said.

"Uh... Commander, no offense, but your magic doesn't leave a lot of 'bodies' behind," Sigrun said. "And I have no idea what elven things look like."

"Leafy, flowery shit. You know, la de da de da, I'm a fairy." Oghren pranced a few feet to the nearest genlock, and started rooting through its armor. Everyone followed suit, and it was several minutes before Nathaniel finally spoke up.

"Is this elven?" Nathaniel asked, holding up a necklace.

Amell held out a hand for it, and turned it over to read the back of the pendant. "Ma emma samahl... You are my laughter. I'm not sure if it's her sisters, but it's obviously from her clan."

"You speak elvish?" Nathaniel asked.

"Not exactly." Amell said vaguely, "I'm going to go talk to her. I want the rest of you to wait for me. I don't want to alarm her."

"Wait, are you serious?" Anders asked, "Remember that bit I said about you not being immortal?"
"We spoke civilly once." Amell said, "There's no reason to suspect we couldn't do it again."

"Except that she's kind of terrifying, and can turn any tree into a walking killing machine," Anders reminded him, since he apparently needed reminding. "We're in the woods, you know. I don't know if you noticed, but there are kind of a lot of trees here."

"I'll be fine," Amell promised, "Wait for me here, and I'll be back."

"He's going to die, isn't he?" Anders sighed as Amell walked back towards the ruin alone.

"Naw." Oghren said. "Remember that blood vial mage shit thing I told you about?"

"The phylactery?" Anders said.

"Yeah. It was an elf mage thing," Oghren reminded him, "She's an elf mage thing. You see where I'm going with this."

"I really don't." Anders said.

"He likes mage shit. She's mage shit." Oghren said, taking a drink from his hip flask. "Wouldn't expect him back any time soon. Shit, if she were a he, I wouldn't expect him back at all."

Anders rolled his eyes. The main path was still littered with ruined caravans, and the corpses of darkspawn. It split off, about a yard down, into a second path that lead towards the ruin. A small broke ran through the path, and a wooden bridge spanned the length of it. Sigrun and Nathaniel were sitting on it, talking amicably. The ruins were completely overrun with trees, and several stories high. The camp was completely hidden behind them. If the elf did kill Amell, they'd have no way of knowing. It made Anders uncomfortable.

He started pacing, and didn't get two feet before Oghren punched him in the stomach with his flask. "Drink, Sparkles. He'll be fine. He's a tough son of a bitch. And besides, if she doesn't listen to reason... well, there's always... you know." Oghren made a gesture so vague Anders couldn't begin to guess what he was insinuating. He wiggled his fingers beside his temple.

"... his hair? There's always his hair?" Anders guessed, taking a drink, "I certainly hope not. Have you seen his helmet hair? It's ridiculous."

"Gah!" Oghren snapped, "Blood magic! There's always his blood magic."

"... you think he would do that? Just enslave her if she didn't agree with him?" Anders asked.

"Hey, I didn't say enslave." Oghren said quickly, "You're a mage. You know more about this shit than I do. You know, that thing where he makes people like him."

"... what?" Anders asked.

"You know, that blood magicy shit he does," Oghren shrugged, taking another drink, "The subtle shit. Gets under your skin, sneaks into your head, makes you think you like him, gets you to do what he wants."

"You mean... what do you mean?" Anders thought of Mosley, and his headache, "Does he do that a lot?"

"All the soddin' time," Oghren said. "I love the little thunderhumper and all, but he ain't right. Up here." Oghren tapped a greasy fist against his head. "Never seen a problem he didn't try to fix with blood magic. Back during the Blight-.... Eh. Whatever. Don't matter none. Point is he'll be fine."

Well wasn't that just dandy? Anders went back to pacing. Not long later, Amell came back down the hill, with the elf at his side. She was wearing the necklace they had found, the silver pendant dangling rather provocatively between her breasts. Oghren was so deep in his leer he was nearly drooling. Anders was embarrassed for him.

"There's an abandoned mine, to the north," Amell said by way of greeting. "The darkspawn causing the disturbances along the Pilgrim's Path are likely there. Everyone, this is Velanna. She's agreed to help us fight the darkspawn; in turn we're to look for her sister among them. Velanna, this Oghren, Anders, Nathaniel, and Sigrun,"

"So... can I stop being afraid of trees now... or?" Anders asked.

"Nice to meet you!" Sigrun said.

"Real nice," Oghren chuckled, and took another drink.

"A pleasure." Nathaniel bowed.

"So you travel with a coward, a lecher, a shem, and a durgen'len. Lovely," Velanna said flatly, scowling. "Can we get a move on? These darkspawn will not hunt themselves."

"Lead the way," Amell said. The two of them took the lead, breaking from the path to head deeper into the forest.

"So... she's friendly," Anders whispered to Oghren.

"Who gives a shit? She's sodding hot. Well, at least from the front. Look how bony that rump is."

"That... is a less than respectful way to speak of a lady." Nathaniel said.

"'Lady'" Oghren snorted. "That 'lady' butchered ten caravans, by my count. I'll speak however I want."

"I'm sure she regrets it. It was a mistake," Sigrun said. "... what's a durgen'len?"

"Elven word for dwarf." Oghren said.

"Durgen'len. Durrrrrgen'len. Durgenelelelen." Sigrun mumbled to herself. "I like it. It sounds fancy."

"Really?" Anders asked, "Durgenelelelelen sounds fancy to you?"

"Sounded a lot better than 'coward.'" Sigrun said.

"You don't know she meant me. She could have meant anyone." Anders said.

"She meant you," Sigrun and Nathaniel said in tandem. Everyone laughed, and Anders enjoyed how light the conversation was until they found the mine. It was a decrepit thing, long abandoned, and half buried in a hill half the size of a mountain. The stone door had collapsed before the entrance, but it had been trampled into tiny rocks by what Anders could only guess was the passage of darkspawn.

"So..." Anders stared into the black abyss, "This is it then?"

"This is it," Amell agreed. "Would you handle the light, Anders?"

Anders summoned a small wisp, and bound it to hover about his staff. He wasn't reassured by the scene it illuminated. The mine led down, so far down Anders couldn't see the bottom, and the stairs that lead down were ancient and rotted. It made Anders nervous, but Amell tackled them with the same confidence he tackled everything. More than a few of the steps creaked under his weight. Anders followed him, and everyone along with. "These are about as bad as the stairs the Boss made in Kal'Hirol, right?" Oghren joked to lighten the mood.

"You made stairs?" Sigrun asked.

"Of a fashion." Amell said, "With telekinetic energies, I can-"

The step under Amell collapsed. Anders dropped his staff and dove after him. The light went wild, shinning from a thousand different directions as Anders' staff clattered down the mine, but Anders caught him. Why, why, why hadn't Anders started doing presses? Amell was in full dragonscale armor, and holding onto his arm was like to rip Ander's own arm from its socket.

"I've got you," Anders said, "Someone-pull me up,"

"Not gonna work!" Oghren yelled. "This whole thing is cracking. Nobody move."

"Pull me up, or I swear to the Maker-" Anders said.

"Anders-" Amell said.

"I'm not going to drop you," Anders promised, and hoped he had the strength to keep said promise.

"Anders, let go," Amell said gently, "I'll cast a force field on myself. I'll be fine. Let go so the stairs don't-"

The stairwell collapsed.

Anders fell. Amell grabbed him, and Anders felt the Fade swell as Amell struggled to summon a force field around them. The spell never finished, and they hit the ground together. Anders blacked out.

When he woke up, he was in a cell.

Chapter 12: In Retreat, Panic

Notes:

Thank you for all your wonderful comments/kudos/bookmarks, and as always, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 20 Solis Sometime
Somewhere, In A Cell

It was dark. Painfully dark. In Anders' old cell, light had come in under the door, but only at night, when the templars kept the sconces lit in the hall. Time had been backwards for Anders, then. He'd slept during the day, unable to bear wasting that precious light. He'd prop open the food hatch, and sit with the light illuminating his legs and his waste bucket in the corner, reassured that he hadn't gone blind yet.

Then the patrol would come by, and find him with his arm outside the hatch, and a metal boot would grind down on his hand. Twice, his fingers had broken from it, and Anders had had to beg for a healer when the glyph of neutralization in the cell kept him from healing himself. It had been so hard to get the templars to listen, or even notice. They only came to his cell door once a day, in the middle of the day, when Anders was usually asleep. They gave him a bowl of food, and changed his waste bucket, and that was the extent of his human interaction for an entire year.

Two, maybe three months in, and that little cat had finally pranced past his cell. Anders had felt the fur on his finger tips, and wept. It was the first bit of Compassion Anders had experienced since he was locked in that awful room. He couldn't even dream of his spirit, when his connection to the Fade was so weak it kept his dreams a fog, and he woke without remembering them. If he even slept at all. Anders wasn't sure he could call the fitful rest he found in that room sleeping.

It had been so cramped. So painfully cramped. He could sit, but he couldn't stretch out his legs so they were straight. Falling asleep sitting up had always left him with the fear that he'd roll over in his sleep, and knock over his waste bucket, and spend the next eight, nine, or however many months he had left covered in shit. It had been so hard to keep track of time in that coffin.

Ten months in, and Anders had started screaming one day, certain it had been years, and the templars had just forgotten about him. Or more likely, they remembered, and just didn't care enough to let him out. He screamed himself hoarse, lost his voice, and only knew it had happened ten months in because a templar had come by to tell him to shut up, because he wasn't going to listen to him scream for the two months he had left.

It wasn't his first panic attack, or even his last. Somewhere around three months, maybe four, Anders had begged for a bit of fresh air, sunlight, to see a crack in the door for just a few seconds. At five months, or maybe six, he'd spent a week banging on the door until his hands bled, begging to be let out. Around eight months, he tried to kill himself, but he had nothing to work with. There were no sharp edges to slit his wrists, no rope or banister to hang himself from, nothing remotely dangerous or deadly.

He tried biting his tongue, on the hopes he'd drown in his own blood, but he was too weak to keep biting through the pain. He tried starving himself, and he made it four days with no food or water. The templars never said anything. They didn't try to persuade him to eat, lecture him, or mention it at all. They checked his bowl and cup, and seeing he hadn't eaten, just left them. There was no reason to waste getting him new food if he wasn't eating what he had, after all.

On the fifth day, the cat had come back. It snuck in through the open hatch, and curled up in his lap, purring. Anders didn't believe in signs, or miracles, or anything during that long year, but he loved that cat. He ate four day old oats and stale water just so he could see that cat again. He might not have bothered, with how little the templars fed him. He lost so much weight in that cell, the first time Anders had seen himself in a mirror, he'd started crying.

This cell wasn't that cell. This cell... this cell was worse. There was room to lie down, but it was so dark it was like he'd been locked away in the Void. And it was cold. So terribly cold. Anders touched his chest, and realized his clothes were gone. The spaulders, the pretty tabard, even his boots. Everything but his trousers was missing, and something on his arms. Anders touched them, and realized them for bandages. Why were there bandages on his arms?

Anders felt around in the dark, but there was only cold stone. His staff was gone, as was his satchel. "... Amell?" Anders ventured. "Oghren?... anyone?" Silence answered him. He was alone in here.

Anders stood up cautiously. His head ached, as did his back, but there were no templar shackles on him. He reached for the Fade, but felt nothing. Anders sucked in a deep breath, and tried to let it out slowly. There were any number of reasons his magic might not be able to reach him. There could be a glyph of neutralization in the room. Somewhere. Anders felt the walls, trying to find the door, but his hands came into contact with cold stone at every turn.

Calm down, Anders. Stay calm. Focus. Try to focus on something. Beyond the black, there were whispers. Quiet, guttural whispers that seemed to come from just outside his cell. The sound made Anders skin crawl, as if some fetid oil were wrapping itself around every inch of his naked skin. Breathe. Focus. Focus on something. Sing a song. What was that song Amell had sung?

Something about dying horribly and being possessed. Anders laughed, and quickly found himself unable to stop laughing. He ran out breath, just laughing, and collapsed on the floor. The pain wasn't just in his head, or his back, or his arms, it was everwhere. It was inside him, pressing on his chest, carving into his stomach. He couldn't breathe. He was going to die in here. He was going to die in this tiny cell, a prisoner just like he'd been for his entire life.

The panic never passed. Occasionally, it dwindled, only to flare back up again every time Anders looked into the abyss around him and heard the quiet whispers in the back of his head. He lost track of time, and lost track of himself, and alternated between hyperventilating, crying, or outright screaming. It might have minutes, it might have been hours, it might have been days, but eventually there came a click at the door to his cell. A key? Anders crouched, and listened to the heave of the stone door moving slowly off its hinges.

There was hardly any light on the other side, but that didn't matter. There was some, the faint orange crackle of a single torch, and as soon as the crack widened enough for him to fit through, Anders bolted out. He shoved the first thing he encountered aside, and was halfway down a hallway when something grabbed him around his waist and lifted him off his feet. Anders slammed his elbow backwards and was rewarded with a pained grunt, but the thing held on.

It was also talking, but what did Anders care? Templars could talk. Even darkspawn could talk now. Everyone could talk. Anders laughed hysterically and tried to struggle out of the thing's grasp, and was turned around and crushed against something warm and firm. It locked his arms against his side, and shoved his face forward into something equally warm.

The Fade was out here. It was the first thing Anders noticed, when he was capable of noticing anything. He grabbed for it, and while there was no healing what was wrong with him, it helped to have it there, to feel Compassion's reassuring essence just beyond the Veil, to be able to summon light and know he wasn't trapped in that damned eternal dark. Anders took a shallow breath, and inhaled copper, sweat, and the Fade.

Amell. Anders inhaled again, shakily, and finally realized Amell was holding him. More than just holding him, Amell had him crushed against his chest, one arm locked tight around his back, the other buried in his hair. Amell was also sporting nothing more than his trousers, and his lips were at Anders' ear, talking quietly.

"Anders, please calm down," Amell said, stroking his hair, "We can't stay here. You're okay. Breathe. It's okay. It's just me. We're getting out. It's over."

Anders took another breath, and slowly felt his senses return to him. Amell and Maker knew who else had freed him from his cell, and he'd taken off running like a magister out of the Black City, and continued his panic attack into a full blown tantrum. Amell had caught him, and kept him from running... where?

Anders looked around, but saw nothing helpful. They were standing in a hallway, with architecture similar to the ruins. All around them were more cell doors, several open, a handful not. Anders couldn't see whoever else was there to witness his panic attack. He guessed they were behind him. Probably everyone, with Anders' luck, but what did he care? Anders had never cared what anyone thought of him, and he wasn't about to start now. Amell wasn't judging him, so damn the rest.

Taking another breath, Anders wrapped his arms around Amell and hugged him back. A voice in his head was warning him against getting too feely, but Anders was tired of listening to the voices in his head, darkspawn or his own. He was tired, and he was terrified, and damned if he didn't need the damn hug.

"Hey," Amell said gently, relaxing his grip on Anders' back to rub his shoulders gently, "Are you back?"

Anders made a noise he hoped was affirmative.

"We're still in the mines," Amell explained without letting go of him, "The darkspawn set a trap, but Velanna's sister, Seranni, is helping us escape. Our things are in a store room, very far from where we are now. I need your help. You, Velanna, and I are the only ones who have any means of defending ourselves without weapons or armor. Are you alright? Can you fight?"

"Peachy," Anders said. His voice cracked. Another deep breath, and Anders felt comfortable pulling back from him. "Did I-... I punched you didn't I?"

"I'm sure I did something to deserve it," Amell said; his smile was reassuring. Amell reached up and touched Anders' ear. "At least they didn't take your earring. I might not have recognized you without it."

Anders tried to laugh. It came out as more of a wheeze.

"If you are quite finished coddling your man-child for his tantrum-" Velanna started to say.

Amell whirled on her, "Do not." Amell said threateningly. Velanna closed her mouth.

Anders finally had a chance to take in who was with Amell. Velanna was there, of course, but the darkspawn had taken her robes, and left her nothing but her lower smalls. Her arms were folded over her bare breasts, considering her robe had made it obvious she wore no bindings. Nathaniel was there in his trousers, holding a torch and making a very valiant effort to stare at the ceiling. All of them had bandages around their arms. Apparently they were all too afraid to take them off and see what the darkspawn had done to them.

"I thought you said Velanna's sister was helping us?" Anders asked.

"She ran after making sure Velanna and I were free." Amell said. "Stay near me. We need to search the rest of the cells for Sigrun and Oghren."

The first cell they checked was empty, but the second was filled with ghouls that attacked at the sight of them. Without a front line of armored warriors, the emaciated half-men were markedly more terrifying. Anders reached for ice, Amell for telekinetics, and Velanna for lightning. Casting the spell caused her to drop her arms. Anders was a healer, and seen far worse; he was more than capable of seeing a feminine form in a clinical light if he needed. Amell had no interest in women, so there was no issue there, but poor Nathaniel was a mess. His face turned purple, and he turned around as if he'd walked in on Velanna changing and not fighting a ghoul.

"Creators, a shem and a fool," Velanna muttered, "Are you going to turn your back every time I cast a spell? Regardless of the threats we face? Yes, I have breasts, human, and if you keep acting so carelessly, they are lack to be the last you ever see. Pay attention!"

"There are worse things to die for," Nathaniel said quietly, "But I'll endeavor to be less respectful in the future, my lady,"

Velanna made a face at him, but Anders couldn't help noticing the remark had her covering her breasts again in-between checking each cell. The next one had Sigrun. Unlike Velanna, she had a binder to wear with her trousers. Anders felt slightly less embarrassed over his panic attack when she ran out crying, and latched onto Amell's legs. Amell knelt and hugged her.

"Oh ancestors! Thank you! Thank you! A thousand times thank you, Commander!" Sigrun sobbed, "I thought-I thought I was done for! I thought they were going to turn me into one of those things! Birthing darkspawn for all eternity. I was going to kill myself, but I didn't have a weapon."

"I'll never let that happen," Amell promised, petting her hair. Her pigtails bounced when his hands ran over them, and Anders suddenly felt a great deal less special for his hug. "I promise I'll find you if we ever lose you in the Deep Roads, and I'll kill you myself if it comes to that."

That didn't sound reassuring to Anders, but it must have to Sigrun. She hugged Amell tighter, and even kissed his cheek. "Thank you. I'm ready to die fighting, but to live like that? I... I couldn't."

"Do you see now why we don't let women go to their Calling alone?" Amell asked, "I know you're eager for death, Sigrun, but promise me you won't forget how this feels when you think about going to yours."

"I-I promise, Commander," Sigrun nodded, taking a step back. Her arms were also bandaged. "Thank you."

The next cell held a man not a ghoul, but also not Oghren. He was a human, with dark red hair and a matching month old beard. He squinted at their intrusion and the light cast from Nathaniel's torch. "Who-are you? How did you get here?"

"You're a Grey Warden," Amell said, apparently sensing the taint where Anders couldn't, "One of the Orlesians, from Vigil's Keep? Garvan? Jarlath? Keenan?"

"Keenan." The man agreed, squinting at Amell. "Red eyes, black hair... You must be Warden-Commander Amell. It's an honor to meet you, Ser, though I had hoped you would avoid capture... would be luckier than the rest of us."

"It's been over a month since the attack on the Keep," Amell said, "How do you still live?"

"They keep me fed." Keenan said. "On what, I don't know. I'm not sure I want to know."

"Why?" Amell asked.

"They're using my blood, for what I cannot say." Keenan lifted an arm, bandaged in much the same way all of their arms were bandaged. "I see you have suffered the same fate. You must escape this place. I fear for what these darkspawn have planned for us all."

"We must escape this place," Amell corrected him.

Keenan shook his head, "No. I'll not walk again. I tried to escape, and a darkspawn with a wicked maul crushed my legs."

"Anders?" Amell asked.

Anders knelt beside him, but a cursory inspection of the man's legs confirmed his suspicion. 'Crushed' was an understatement. The man's bones were little more than dust. It was a wonder he was still alive. "This is too much. I can't heal this." Anders said.

"I know it. I'm resigned to it." Keenan said. "If you're escaping, I would ask something of you," Keenan removed a gold band from his hand, and held it out to Amell, "I have a wife, Nida, in Amaranthine. If you could tell her I died trying to make this world a better place, I would appreciate it."

Amell took the ring and put it on so as not to lose it. "And what of you? We could leave you, and come back better equipped, perhaps carry you out."

"No," Keenan said. "No. To what end? To life as a cripple? A burden on Nida, on the Wardens? Never able to meet my Calling with any dignity? That's not the life I want for myself."

Amell reached for his dagger, but he was barefoot. The dagger was gone. He frowned. "I need something sharp."

"Don't waste time on me, Commander," Keenan said.

"You're a Warden, not a waste. Consider this your Calling." Amell said, and unraveled the bandage on his arm. Anders flinched preemptively, unwilling to imagine the sort of cut a darkspawn might leave, bleeding someone. He looked anyway. It was a surgical cut, just beneath the bend in Amell's arm, and it was recent enough that Amell scratching it made it bleed anew. "I don't know how to make this painless." Amell warned him. Blood gathered from the cut to swarm around Amell's hand, waiting ominously.

"If this is my Calling, I'll meet it bravely, pain or not." Keenan said. "In peace, vigilance. In war, victory,"

Amell held out the hand he wasn't using for his spell. Keenan shook it. "In death, sacrifice." Amell said, and killed him.

It was horrible. The blood latched onto Keenan's face, seeping into his nose and his open mouth when he screamed. It looked as it had with Rylock, only instead of controlling Keenan, it suffocated him. A few breathless seconds later, and the blood was gone. Keenan seized, and died. Not from suffocation. It was too fast. Anders guessed Amell had stopped his heart.

Amell said nothing. He stood and went to the next cell as if the one they'd just checked had been empty.

"He wanted to make the world a better place." Velanna muttered, shaking her head. "What an insipid line. Is that really supposed to make his wife feel better about his death?"

"You must be so much fun at funerals," Anders said. "What do you think, Sigrun? Legion of the Dead material?"

"Oh, definitely. She'd fit right in. Except for the part where she's mostly naked. Why did they take all our clothes again?" Sigrun asked rhetorically. No one seemed to know.

"I imagine it made him feel better, believing he did not die in vain," Nathaniel offered up.

"All deaths are in vain," Velanna said.

"Oh yeah," Sigrun said, "She's perfect."

Amell rejoined them, his usual enigmatic expression gone, and replaced with a look so distraught Anders reached for the Fade, half-expecting an ogre to burst out of the cell behind him. "That was the last cell." Amell said. "Where's Oghren? Seranni said they were keeping us all down here,"

"Perhaps he did not fall into the mine with the rest of us?" Nathaniel said, "If I recall correctly, he was rather cautious on the stairs,"

"I'm sure we'll find him if we just follow the smell," Anders joked.

Amell glanced back and forth down the hall. There were only two exits: left and right. Amell turned left.

"Where are you going!?" Velanna demanded, grabbing Amell's arm. "Seranni said the exit was to the right. That darkspawn emissary, their leader, it brought you in from that direction! Are you so eager to die for that drunken durgen'len?"

"That drunken durgen'len is my best friend," Amell said, shaking free of her grasp. "Anders, protect Sigrun. Velanna, protect Nathaniel. Seranni said the darkspawn patrol here every half hour or so. Go quickly. Velanna, lead the way to the store room Seranni mentioned. I'll catch up."

"You are a fool." Velanna said, "Should we also tell your lover you died making the world a better place?"

"Dareth shiral, Velanna," Amell said, and left them.

"Ghilan'him banal'vhen," Velanna spat. "That shem would dare to use our words, to promise me-" Velanna bit back the rest of her curses, and turned right. Nathaniel followed her. Anders hesitated, and summoned his own mage light as the light from Nathaniel's torch faded. He trusted Amell, not Velanna, or anyone else in their group. Amell was their leader, why weren't they going with him?

Sigrun tugged his hand. "Come on. If I learned one thing in the Legion, it's that you follow every order your Commanding Officer gives you, whether or not you agree with them."

"You know, considering everyone in your battalion died, I don't know that that reassures me much." Anders said.

"Well, yeah, but... they died making the world a better place?" Sigrun shrugged.

"That's-you're horrible. I can't believe you're joking about that," Anders said, allowing her to lead him down the hall after Velanna, and away from Amell.

"Well... when your choices are laugh or cry, wouldn't you rather laugh?" Sigrun said. "I know that's kind of hypocritical, considering I came out of my cell bawling like a baby, but..."

"Hey, don't worry about it," Anders said, "When I came out of my cell, I was having such a panic attack I punched Amell in the stomach."

"Really?" Sigrun giggled. "Okay, well, that makes me feel a little better, so thanks."

"Anytime." Anders grinned.

The hallway opened up into overgrown Avvar ruins. There was no more need for Nathaniel's torch, or Anders' mage light when sconces filled with veilfire torches lined the walls. The ancient magic had likely been burning for an Age. Statues of warriors were all around them, holding up the ruins in place of pillars, and much of the stonework was overgrown with roots. The chamber they were in led down, where a large group of darkspawn were milling about aimlessly.

"This way," Nathaniel whispered, gesturing to hallway off to the right. "We should go around."

Everyone agreed. They took the hall down and around the darkspawn, holding their breath as they went, but they passed them with relative ease. The chamber emptied out into another hallway, and they followed that for a time as the ruins began to give way to the old mine. Silverite was all around them, sticking out of the stone. Barrel after barrel was full of the stuff. If the mine weren't filled with darkspawn, Anders imagined it would have been quite profitable.

"No, no, no," Velanna muttered. "Seranni said the storeroom was just before the mine, but there was nothing!"

"Maybe it's hidden?" Sigrun wondered. "Let's go back, check the walls for a switch. Us dwarves usually hide them in sconces."

They turned around, and sure enough the third sconce they pulled gave way with a click. Their equipment, and the equipment of countless other prisoners, was heaped carelessly within. Anders dug through chain and plate mail until he found the armor Amell had commissioned for him, and got dressed. Everyone else followed suit, though there was some confusion when they came across their Grey Warden pendants. There was nothing to distinguish one from the other, so they made their best guesses by the length of the necklaces.

"Should we wait here for the Commander and Oghren?" Sigrun wondered. "Or should we take their things now, and hope they find a way out?"

"You wish for us to carry around two sets of armor, a battle axe, a sword, and a shield?" Velanna asked, "And you expect us to fight darkspawn carrying these things?"

"What if they have to run?" Sigrun asked, "What if they don't have time to stop and get dressed like we do? The Commander's armor is made from real dragon scales. It just doesn't seem right to leave it."

"I can carry one set." Nathaniel said, "Help me find a sack."

"I'll get the other," Anders volunteered, "We're in the back anyway. It won't matter so much if we've got a few things to carry."

They had to look to some of the mining equipment to find the sacks and ropes necessary to rope all of Oghren and Amell's gear into backpacks. In the meantime, Sigrun picked through the pile for every ring, necklace, and trinket she could find, considering none of them knew which might belong to Amell or Oghren.

When they were set, Anders was pleasantly surprised to find Amell's armor wasn't too terribly heavy. Dragon scale was surprisingly light, but as for Nate... The poor archer was bent under the weight of Oghren's plate-mail and battle axe. He didn't need to be too terribly mobile, Anders supposed, as long as the rest of them could keep the darkspawn back and he could fire his arrows, and if worst came to worst, he could always drop the pack.

They continued through the mine, and then they found the miners. In a large chamber, countless men and women were strung up from the mine's support beams by their necks. In the center, a cluster of darkspawn looked to be celebrating.

"Perhaps either of you could dispatch them from afar?" Nathaniel suggested.

"Easily." Velanna said.

Anders called for fire, a little bemused to see Velanna picked the same element. They channelled their spells for several long seconds, and released them into the darkspawn. The flames caught, and seared the creates alive. The smell of cooked meat filled the air, and one of the beams caught fire. It crackled for a short while, until Anders threw a hasty frost spell at it to douse the flames, and keep the mine from collapsing on them. When the last darkspawn fell, they waited to see if any darkspawn had overheard them, but it seemed luck was on their sides.

"My fireballs are bigger than yours," Velanna said.

"It's not the size that counts," Anders said.

"Did your commander tell you that?" Velanna wondered, "He was trying not to hurt your feelings."

Sigrun giggled. Anders rolled his eyes. They went into the chamber, and from there it was a simple matter of picking the only tunnel they couldn't sense the darkspawn through. The tunnel dead ended into a pile of boulders, but above that pile, at about Velanna's height, the entrance to the mine lay above them, complete with the toppled stairwell. "And no Commander to make stairs," Nathaniel said.

"We'll just have to climb," Sigrun said. "Who wants to boost me?"

Anders volunteered himself, and the little dwarf was up and over in a single bound. Okay, so maybe it was three bounds, but Anders did it. They handed her their packs, and Velanna went second, followed by Anders, and finally Nate.

"I see what happened," Anders said, after a cursory look at the toppled stairwell, and the room around them. "There are glyphs all along the floor here. Glyphs for sleep, for neutralization. This room was a death trap."

"Maybe we shouldn't wait in here then?" Sigrun wondered. "We could wait just there, in the tunnel at this level for the Commander and Oghren."

"Far more like your Commander and his man are dead," Velanna said bluntly. "... but I have not seen my sister since she first freed us, so I will wait with you."

"What if she's dead?" Anders asked.

"Do not say such things!" Velanna snapped.

"Yeah, doesn't feel good, does it?" Anders glared at her. "That's my point. Let's go wait."

They stepped off the glyphs, and into the tunnel. It wasn't a mineshaft, but rather another hallway into the Avvar ruins, for a path they hadn't taken. They went down the hall until they reached a doorway, and voted unanimously to open it. The door opened up into a vast, empty chamber. Anders couldn't say what the original purpose of the room had been. Maybe a ball room. The vaulted ceiling went so high that where it had broken, sunlight streamed in. A small balcony ran along the inside the room near the ceiling, marking a second story, and countless corridors seemed to end here.

"Well... If they're going to get out, it's probably going to be through here." Sigrun said.

"Or through where we escaped." Nathaniel said.

"So, I guess we wait?" Sigrun asked.

"I guess we wait." Anders said.

Velanna paced. Nathaniel cleaned his armor, sharpened his blades, and fiddled with his arrows. Anders tried to take his mind off it all talking to Sigrun, and asking her every inane question about the Legion of the Dead that popped into his head.

They waited for the better part of an hour before some of them started to lose heart. "Perhaps... they did not make it? And were recaptured?" Nathaniel said, ever the optimistic pessimist.

"Maybe we should have left their gear," Sigrun said, "Do you think they would have found it?"

"Perhaps, maybe," Velanna repeated mockingly, "Stop mewling. They are either alive and fighting to reach us or they are dead. We can do nothing for either but wait."

"We could go back," Anders said.

"We would risk being captured again." Nathaniel said.

"The Commander said he'd always find me if I was ever lost." Sigrun said, standing up. "I should do the same. I don't like this waiting. It feels too much like running. We have our gear; we're Wardens. Let's go kill darkspawn."

"Can't believe I'm saying this, but yeah. Let's go be heroes." Anders said, picking up his staff and leaving Amell's things at the top the stairs. They had scarcely set foot on the first step before the sounds of battle reached them.

Then again, 'battle' was probably an overzealous description of the sounds they heard. There were darkspawn, screaming defiance in their guttural tongue. There were the roars of something both inhuman and indarkspawn. And there were the screams and curses of men. They seemed to be coming from the far door on the first floor. All four of them ran in that direction, but they didn't get halfway across the room before the door was flung open, and Amell and Oghren came running out.

Amell was bloodied beyond belief. The man had bruises that made him look a ghoul, and cuts too numerous to count. He left bloody footprints in his wake. A vicious looking burn marred the left side of his body; his right hand clutched a tattered satchel, and his left held onto Oghren and dragged him along.

Oghren... Oghren was stark naked. It was something Anders never wanted to see, but there it was. The man looked like he was wearing fleece, red hair covering his body from head to toe. He was just as wounded; half his beard had been signed off, and his chest and right shoulder were burned. "Run for your sodding lives!" Oghren yelled when he saw them. "Don't fucking fight! Just run! Run, you fuckers, run!"

Chasing them were scores of darkspawn. Giant spiders. An ogre. Drakes. And two very large dragons, the size of horses. One dragon stopped and reared its head back, its inhale loud enough to rival the sound of a fierce wind rushing through a canyon. Amell grabbed Oghren, and a force field flared to life around them just in time to block the flames, and Anders didn't have to guess how they'd earned the burns.

Everyone hesitated. "Run!" Amell yelled, and they stopped hesitating. Anders ran back up the stairs, and slung Amell's pack over his shoulder. Nathaniel grabbed Oghren's.

"The stairs in the mine shaft are still out!" Sigrun warned them.

"Cast-Wall-Behind us," Amell yelled, dragging Oghren up with him. "Barrier! Ice! Anything!" They ran into the corridor, and Nathaniel slammed the door shut behind them. Velanna cast a wall of electricity. Anders added a barrier. Amell kept running to the stairs, and hastily threw them back together with telekinetic magic. Oghren ran straight up them as they formed. "Go!" Amell yelled.

Everyone ran. They climbed the stairs, and reached the top of the mine and were out into the Wending Woods. It was nighttime, the only light illuminating them that of stars and the moons. "Velanna, help me collapse this!" Amell ordered.

"Seranni-" Velanna protested.

"Gone! I saw her leave, I swear it! Help me!" Amell said. Below, in the mine shaft, a dragon roared. Amell grabbed Velanna, and his force field flared around them as flames came shooting up and out of the shaft. No one else was close enough to be burned, but everyone felt the heat. The metal frame of the door glowed an angry red.

Velanna cast, and Amell with her. Together, their magic brought the ceiling of the mine shaft crumbling down, locking the darkspawn, dragons, and other beasts below. Velanna fell to her knees, and reached out to touch the barrier of rocks and boulders she'd created where the entrance to the mine had been. "Seranni..."

"Gone, Velanna. I swear," Amell wheezed, hands on his knees. "She left with the darkspawn emissary."

"Why?" Velanna asked, tears in her eyes. "Why is she with that monster? Where did she go?"

"Deep Roads," Amell said breathlessly. "Always Deep Roads. We'll come back. Clear the rubble. Kill them. But not... not today. Dragons. No armor."

"Come back?" Anders asked. "To fight all that? Are you mad?"

"Of course!" Velanna exclaimed. "You're Wardens. You always fight these monsters, and you can sense them, even deep beneath the earth. I would join you! Give me the ability to hunt these monsters in the Deep, that I may find Seranni among them!"

"The Joining could kill you," Amell said, collapsing onto his back.

"At the very least, it's hard to get the taste out of your mouth for a few hours," Anders said.

Velanna glared at him. Not a joker, that one. "I am not afraid of death! I will pledge my service to you in exchange for the powers your order can grant. What say you?"

"Ma nuvenin," Amell said.

"Ma serannas." Velanna said.

"You two wanna use proper words, or you just gonna speak flower all day?" Oghren asked, opting for a drink from his flask instead of putting his clothes back on.

"Will you also still teach me of the dirth'ena enasalin?" Velanna asked, ignoring Oghren. "This knowledge you have stolen from the elvhen, that taught you our tongue and lets you fight as you do?"

"Yes." Amell said.

"Then... I..." Velanna cleared her throat. "I misjudged you. Forgive me. Grief makes me hard."

"There's nothing to forgive, Velanna," Amell said. "Not from me, anyway. Anders...? Could you come heal Oghren and I?"

Maybe Anders was a little bias, or maybe he just didn't want anything to do with Oghren while he was naked, but he went to Amell first. The man lay in the grass, exhausted, burnt, bruised, and bloodied, but he managed a smirk when Anders knelt next to him.

"You're insane, you know that?" Anders said, setting his hands on Amell's bare chest and summoning Compassion. Amell was no Oghren, but he still had a decent amount of hair on his chest; it thinned out and led a trail down to his navel and vanished into his trousers. It felt soft under Anders' fingers. He hadn't noticed, hugging him. Amell had just felt warm. Firm. Soothing. "Are we really going to come back here and fight dragons?"

"That's the plan." Amell said.

"Did I mention you're insane?" Anders asked.

"I'll take that as a compliment," Amell decided.

"See, that's how I know you're insane." Anders said, "Sane people don't take 'insane' as a compliment."

"Well, you're touching me, and I know you don't need to do that to heal me, so I can't be that bad." Amell said. Anders took his hands off at being called out, but Amell caught his hand and pulled it back so it was splayed against his chest. "I just outran two dragons, five drakes, and more darkspawn than I can count. Just let me have this for a few seconds. It doesn't have to mean anything."

"Favor for a favor, I guess," Anders said, "I'm sorry... for that little incident when you got me out of that cell. Turns out me and cells don't really get on. Who knew, right?"

"Who knew," Amell agreed, letting go of Anders' hand. Though Anders was free to take his hands off then, he left them on until Amell was fully healed.

"All done," Anders said. Amell sat up and brushed dried blood and ash off himself. Anders probably should have gone to heal Oghren then, but there was no telling whether or not the dwarf had put his pants on yet, so he stayed next to Amell.

"Anders..." Amell pulled his knees up to his chest, and draped his arms over them. "About what happened. I've never spent a year in solitary, I won't pretend to know what it was like, but I remember the Circle. I won't let them take you back."

"That's... I don't know what to say to that." Anders admitted. Blood magic be damned, at this point. If that was what Amell was doing to make Anders' like him, he was doing it while saying everything Anders had ever wanted to hear.

"You don't have to say anything," Amell said. "I just wanted you to know."

"... you remember that bit, where you said I was the most attractive man you'd ever seen?" Anders mouth asked without permission from his brain. Amell raised an interested eyebrow. "You're not so bad yourself. Definitely a close second to a mirror," Anders joked.

"Thank you," Amell grinned, "And thank you for protecting everyone while I was gone."

"Oh I don't know that I really did anything," Anders said, "Nathaniel led us, and Velanna, you know, scary."

"You're an exceptional mage, Anders." Amell said. "You maintained a bond with a spirit of Compassion through the Taint, you learned a new type of magic under stress in the span of a few minutes, and you command primal energies like I've never seen."

"Stop, you're making me blush," Anders said. "I'm a healer, that's all. You're just sweet on me."

"I might be." Amell said. "It doesn't bother you, does it?"

"No," Sex was one thing, but Anders thought of Amell's hug and all his promises, the voice in his head telling him that feelings were dangerous. "No, it doesn't bother me at all."

Notes:

Elvish Translations
Ghilan'him banal'vhen - Arcane Warrior (Derogatory)
Dirth'ena enasalin - Arcane Warrior (Polite)
Ma nuvenin - As you wish
Ma serannas - Thank you
Derath shiral - Farewell

 

Fanart
Amell

Chapter 13: All Soul's Day

Notes:

Thank you for all your wonderful bookmarks, comments, kudos, and as always, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 1 Matrinalis Late Afternoon
Vigil's Keep Courtyard

Wouldn't you know it, Velanna wasn't the sort for camaraderie and revelry. After her Joining, she'd eaten an entire stuffed pheasant on her own, picked out a bunk for herself in the furthest corner the barracks, and gone to sleep. There'd been no drinks, no toasts, nothing beyond their ridiculously brief introduction in the woods.

For all intents and purposes, she reminded Anders of a feral cat. She'd eat the food you put out for her, sleep in the bed you gave her, but get anywhere near her and you were going to get clawed to pieces. Velanna refused to even look the part of a Warden. As long as they were at the Vigil, she persisted in wearing her dalish garb: barefoot, with a leafy robe that revealed far too much cleavage, and her sister's necklace. Anders never saw her wearing her Joining pendant. He wouldn't have been surprised if she'd thrown it out.

Away from the Vigil, Velanna at least looked the part. They all had matching Grey Warden armor for their 'expeditions' as Amell called them. Their first goal was to clear out and reclaim the Silverite Mine for the Vigil, so they had a steady supply of the metal to outfit their soldiers. Their second goal was clearing out a gorge Velanna had shown them in the Wending Wood which contained a generous supply of granite to rebuild the Vigil's walls. That was all well and good and responsible, but it was their third goal that was most exciting: lyrium smuggling.

Anders would have called it 'lyrium finding.' Amell didn't call it that, of course. Amell didn't call it anything. The lyrium crates they planned to bring back from Kal'Hirol would just be the spoils of their 'expeditions.' It was terribly exciting, and terribly illegal. Anders felt like a regular lyrium smuggler, and was all set to buy himself a dashing chapeau. A million months from now, when he could finally afford one on the paltry stipend Woolsey gave him.

Amell wanted it for 'compelling reasons.' Apparently, there was a vein of lyrium in the Silverite Mine their men would work in secret once the mine was clear, but there was no reason to ignore whole crates of the stuff just sitting around in Kal'Hirol in the mean time. Anders had to give Amell credit for balls. Anders certainly wouldn't have been first in line to defy the Chantry, but then they were planning on being relatively subtle about it. Outside of their little group of Wardens, the only people who knew about their little lyrium plot were the Vigil's dwarven contractors, and a handful of their trusted miners. All of them agreed the most important rule of the whole thing was 'Don't tell Cera.'

It was an easy rule to follow. Anders hated that Circle witch. He would have been more than happy to avoid her for the rest of his life, save that her quarters were right off the library, and Amell liked to read.

Oghren meant well, but Anders was willing to bet there was more to Amell than the four D's Oghren had mentioned. For starters, neither 'blood magic' nor 'ancient elven gibberish' started with a 'D'. In his free time, if Amell wasn't in the library, he was doing something arcane. Recently, that something always seemed to involve Velanna. Anders was not jealous.

Anders didn't want to learn how to be an Arcane Warrior or a Dirthenwhatever Velanna called it, but Amell at least might have offered. If nothing else, Anders probably would have done a better job learning than Velanna. The little elf could not seem to get a handle on what Amell was telling her, no matter how often they practiced.

Then again, Anders was an ass, and really couldn't blame her. No one wanted to pass up an opportunity to watch the Commander give a demonstration, and every time the two practiced, there were always at least a dozen soldiers watching. Under that kind of pressure, Anders would have been lucky to summon a snowflake, let alone 'channel his magic inward and let the Veil surround him' or 'step into the Fade,' but Velanna was stubborn.

"Ten coppers, she throws the training stick across the yard again," Anders whispered to Nate. He took a bite of his apple, comfortable watching the exchange so long as he wasn't in throwing range. He sat on a barrel, several yards away. The last time he'd watched, Anders had been sitting on the fence around the training ring. Velanna's staff had flown across the ring and knocked him flat.

"She's improving." Nathaniel said. "I'll take your bet."

Amell had allowed Velanna to use a staff in place of a sword and shield, which seemed like cheating to Anders. Without magic augmenting her physically, even knowing how to wield the weapon had yet to help Velanna against Amell. Ten free coppers for Anders.

"She hasn't managed to hit him once." Anders said.

"You never said she had to hit him." Nathaniel said. "You said she had to throw her staff. I think the loss of her clan made her unstable. The loss of my family drove me to a similar state... I think she's calmed down. Last night she agreed to have dinner with me."

The wooden thud of staff hitting practice  shield drew Anders' attention. Magic hummed within Amell, quickening his steps, strengthening his blows. Velanna had yet to manage the same trick. "You're shitting me. You're courting her? I mean, I know she's a looker, but aren't you scared she'll eat your head when she's done?"

"I'm not very familiar with elven customs." Nathaniel said. "Do you think that's something I should be concerned about?"

"I knew you had a sense of humor." Anders grinned.

"I'm not courting her." Nate clarified. "She just agreed to eat in the dining hall with me...I know she's a little...."

"Bitchy?" Anders supplied.

"I didn't say that." Nathaniel said, but didn't disagree, "I just think we should make more of an effort to include her."

"She'd have to want to be included first." Anders snorted. "I tried talking to her. I asked her if she wanted to discuss magic with me, and she said that humans steal elven ideas, and the only reason she was training with the Commander was to get back what should never have been lost."

"Knowing you, you probably said something insulting to provoke her." Nathaniel guessed.

"Well I wasn't calling her 'my lady' and bowing every other minute, if that's what you mean." Anders said.

"No. I'm well aware your interests lie elsewhere." Nathaniel said.

"Alright. Go ahead. Get it out of your system." Anders said.

"Get what out of my system?" Nathaniel asked.

"All the cracks you've been waiting to make about me and the Commander." Anders said. "Go on, I'll give it to you free this time, since you're going to owe me ten copper soon."

"I wasn't going to make any cracks." Nathaniel said.

"I don't believe you." Anders said.

"That sounds like a personal problem." Nathaniel said.

"Seriously? Nothing?" Anders asked.

"Only that I would question why you seem to think your relationship merits joking about." Nathaniel said. "Are you embarrassed?"

"Well now I am." Anders said. "You're really over thinking this. I just figured you'd have a pun or two saved up, but I guess Oghren already took all the good ones."

"The ones he said to you were good?" Nathaniel wondered. "I barely understood the ones he had saved up for me."

"Rolling your oats? Did you get that one?" Anders asked.

"Polishing the footstones?" Nathaniel shrugged. "I still don't-wait. No. I get it now."

Anders laughed. In the middle of the training grounds, Velanna was still trying to force the magic roaring off her into an internal expression of magic, and failing. Amell was offering encouragement, even as Velanna beat at his shield with her staff. It didn't appear to be making a dent, or tiring him in the slightest.

"There's nothing going on between us, you know." Anders said.

"That's surprising." Nathaniel said. "But it's also none of my business, so I won't pry."

"Look, session's over." Anders pointed. He finished his apple, and tossed the core behind him into the grass. "Get ready to pay up."

"This is impossible!" Velanna snapped. "Were it not for the memories of my ancestor imprinted in your mind, even you could not manage such magic!"

"It's not impossible, Velanna." Amell said. "I saw you bind those sylvans. You have a remarkable talent for spirit magic, and it can be hard to dissociate from spirits and the Fade to focus on physical magic, but this is your heritage. You told me you wanted this."

"I do not need my own words repeated back at me! I know what I want! Do you have any idea how unfair it is that you stumbled on an ancient artifact of the elvhen? Do you have any idea how rare, how precious this knowledge is? To be wasted on a shem!" Velanna clenched her staff, and Anders readied himself for the throw. "... Ir abelas. I am tired. I... I am going to rest. Ma serannas, for the lesson." Velanna muttered, leaving the training ground. She dropped her staff in the training barrel as she left.

"Ten coppers, was it?" Nathaniel said.

"Bastard." Anders sighed, handing over the coin.

"Thank you." Nathaniel said, pocketing it. He turned to leave, and Anders should have let him.

He didn't know who to blame for the words that tumbled out of him. "Nate. How are you?"

"How am I?" Nate asked. "Is this another joke? Some sort of play on my family name?"

"That... would actually be really clever, Howe am I, Howe you are. I'm kind of upset I didn't think of that now." Anders said.

"How sad for you." Nathaniel said.

Anders laughed, and Nate scowled at him and turned back around. "No, wait, I was serious."

"You're never serious." Nathaniel said, but he came back to stand next to him. "What was your question?"

"How are you?" Anders asked. "I just thought, today being today... And you with your family... If you wanted to skip all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, we could go get drinks. Keep things light."

"That's..." Nate stared at him askance, as if waiting for the punchline to come out and deck him in the face. Anders kept silent, and eventually Nate smiled a little. "Thank you, Anders, but I think I'm going to watch the ceremony, and spend some time in the chapel. I've had time to handle my father, and Adria... But since we met Velanna I keep thinking of my own sister. I still haven't really accepted it..."

"What was her name?" Anders asked. That seemed like the right sort of question to ask. A nice, neutral question. No jokes. Being feely wasn't so hard.

"Delilah." Nathaniel said. "... Do you have any siblings?"

"Not that I know of," Anders said. He supposed it was possible. He'd been twelve when the Templars had take him. There was no reason his parents might not have had another child to replace him. One without magic. One they could keep.

"They're awful." Nathaniel grinned. "Delilah used to put beetles in my blankets, and Thomas once put worms in my slippers. When I put them on in the morning, I woke the whole castle screaming."

"Call me crazy, but that doesn't sound awful." Anders said. "I can't tell you how many mages would kill for those memories."

"Would you?" Nathaniel asked.

"Me? No." Anders recalled the cove, and the bandits in the woods. He didn't even like killing in self-defense. "I'm a lover, not a fighter. But it still sounds nice."

"Worms and beetles sound nice?" Nathaniel laughed. "Alright. I'll call you crazy. Anyway... Thank you for the offer, Anders. Have you ever lost anyone?"

"Nope. Not me." Anders said, "Us Circle mages have that going for us at least. No family, no family to lose."

"Perhaps that's a loss in itself." Nathaniel said.

Alright. That was a little too heavy. Abandon ship, Anders. Quick, find an escape route. "Oh look, a thing." Anders said, hopping off the barrel. "I'll talk to you later, Nate."

Anders picked a random direction and strode off. Alright, so maybe it wasn't completely random. Amell was still in the training ring, sparring with two soldiers simultaneously. Anders wandered over and leaned on the fence to watch him. Amell's magic was definitely cheating. Even when he wasn't quick enough to dodge or block, the Veil wrapped around him, and the blows seemed to phase straight through him. It was definitely handy for a front line fighter, but Anders wasn't that.

A short while later, and Amell had knocked both the men over to a great deal of rowdy cheering from the crowd. He dropped off his sword and shield in the practice barrels, and finally noticed Anders watching him. Amell waved, and took off his padded training armor before walking over.

He was sweating like mad. It honestly didn't look half bad, once Amell had his tunic off. The sweat made his skin glisten, and once he ran his hand through his helmet hair it feathered out rather nicely. The only really noteworthy thing were the wraps around his arms and hands. Anders knew exactly what they were meant to hide.

Anders had seen the scars, when the darkspawn had taken Amell's tunic in the mines. Sure, the monsters had bound the cut they'd made to bleed Amell as they'd bled all of them, but that was one cut among dozens. Amell arms were a wreck. Vertical, diagonal, horizontal. They looked like they were cross-stitched together. It wasn't pretty, and it didn't leave much doubt as to what he was. In public, Anders never saw him with his arms uncovered.

"Not here to spar with me, are you?" Amell asked, wringing out his tunic.

"You'd lay me flat. I'll pass." Anders said.

"That's a shame." Amell said.

"Haha." Anders said. He walked right into that one. "I was actually wondering what you were doing tonight."

"You were?" Amell raised an eyebrow at him.

"Yeah." Anders followed him to the water trough, and watched Amell splash himself down before drying off with a nearby rag. "All Soul's Day kind of feels like All Sob's Day, if you know what I mean. Do you want to get a drink, and skip all that?"

"I would love to," Amell said. "But I'm expected to give a speech tonight, for the Wardens and for the men we lost in the attack on the Vigil."

"Well you're not going to talk all night, are you? What about after?" Anders asked.

"After works." Amell said. "It might be pretty late, though... If you want to wait for me to change, we could have a drink now, before all the sobbing starts."

"That works for me." Anders said.

"Alright." Amell said. "I'll meet you in the dining hall, in around a quarter hour?"

"See you in a bit." Anders agreed. Amell grinned, and picked up his training armor. He left carrying it all without putting his tunic back on. His back didn't look half bad either. Sure, there were no curves, but the lean musculature had its own appeal. And Anders' imagination finally had a few things to work with, remembering how Amell had held him, the way his chest had felt, Compassion's... depiction of Amell in his lap.

Anders went to wait for him in the dining hall. The kitchens only served the watered down ale for free, so that was what Anders' ordered. Amell showed up when he was halfway into his tankard, changed into his Grey Warden formal and carrying...

"Oh for fuck's sake." Anders said.

"What?" Amell stopped short.

"Are you kidding me right now? Is that Aqua Magus?" Anders asked.

"Yes?" Amell said, looking between the bottle in his hand and Anders. "I thought you might like it. Have you had it before?"

"That's exactly what I was going to buy you, before Namaya took every sovereign I had." Anders said. "There goes that idea."

"You were?" Amell asked, sitting across from him. He set two shot glasses alongside the bottle. "Well... Thank you, then. You have excellent taste."

"You're welcome." Anders sighed.

Amell grinned, and poured him a shot. It was bright blue, and had the soft glow of lyrium. "I honestly thought you would be all for All Soul's Day, being an Andrastian."

"If it was just about Andraste, sure, but then you throw in the whole mourning the dead bit, and it's just not my thing." Anders said, picking up his glass.

"Toast?" Amell asked.

"I've got nothing." Anders said.

"We killed two dragons last week, and you can't think of a toast?" Amell exhaled hard through his nose, that characteristic almost-laugh of his that so frustrated Anders whenever he couldn't get a real one out of him.

"You killed two dragons," Anders corrected him. "I hid behind a statue, covered head to toe with fire balm. Maker's balls, that was awful. My skin was sticky, my hair was a rock, and I have no idea how the servants ever managed to wash it out of my clothes. I'm not drinking to that."

"To drinking?" Amell offered instead.

"To drinking." Anders agreed. Maybe it was because he was a mage, but Aqua Magus tasted fantastic. There were hints of blueberry, the pleasant burn of strong spirits, and the sweet hint of lyrium that brought a small bit of the Fade into the mix. "That's incredible. Do you think we can get Cera to supply us with this, instead of our usual lyrium potions?"

"Doubtful." Amell grinned.

"So a speech, huh?" Anders asked as Amell poured him another shot. "Have you ever... you know, lost anyone?"

"Not to death." Amell said. "Have you?"

"Don't laugh." Anders warned him.

"I would never." Amell promised.

"A cat." Anders said. "When I was a kid, before the Circle. Her name was Princess. She was a calico. I know that sounds ridiculous, but there it is."

"It doesn't sound too ridiculous." Amell said. "My mabari isn't dead, but I still miss him."

"Most people never seem to care much about animals." Anders said. "I really do intend to get you something, you know. For getting me Ser Pounce-a-Lot."

"You don't owe me anything, Anders," Amell said. "I told you, I want you to like being here."

"And so I do," Anders drank his second shot. It made his fingers tingle. "I should still repay you, somehow. Any suggestions, since you stole my drink idea?" 

"A few." Amell grinned.

"Any that involve actually getting you something?" Anders asked.

"No." Amell admitted.

"Well you're no help." Anders said. "You don't mind if I skip out on listening to your speech, do you?"

"Not at all." Amell said. "Oghren's not a fan of the holiday either. You could probably have a few drinks with him if you get bored. Personally, I'm a lot more interested in what today used to be."

"Meaning?" Anders asked.

"Funalis, a day dedicated to Dumat. The archdemon of the First Blight, Old God of Silence, rumored to be the one who first taught Archon Thalsian the secrets of blood magic." Amell said, with just a little too much reverence in his voice.

"Okay, I still like you, but you're doing your creepy thing again." Anders said. "Please tell me you don't have an altar to an Old God or anything like that hidden away in your bedroom."

"That would be a little pointless, considering he's dead." Amell said. "I just think it's interesting, being what I am... I know you don't practice, but I appreciate being able to tell someone about things like this. Oghren knows, but he doesn't really care. Do you mind, me talking about it?"

"Hey, I'm always up for an intellectual discussion. As long as your not sacrificing any kittens or anything like that." Anders joked.

"That was one time." Amell said.

"That's... That's a joke, right?" Anders asked.

"Sure." Amell said. He had to be joking.

Anders squinted at him.

"It was possessed. It's a long story." Amell assured him, pouring them a third shot. That would be the last of the bottle.

"... Did you know that's how Mr. Wiggums died?" Anders asked. "The poor bugger. Wandered into the summoning circle while an apprentice was doing the summoning sciences, and got possessed by a rage demon."

"I heard about that." Amell said.

"To Mr. Wiggums," Anders said, drinking.

"To Mr. Wiggums," Amell said.

"Anyway, go ahead and tell me whatever you were going to tell me about Dumat and blood magic and whatever else you fancy." Anders said.

"There's not really much more I was going to say..." Amell said. "I'm told my sword and dagger are made from the bones of Dumat. They were gifts from Weisshaupt, when I was appointed Warden Commander. It's something I think about, whenever I use them."

"You've got dragon everything, and all I've got is my creepy darkspawn staff." Anders said. "I'm jealous."

"I can always commission you a new staff, if it bothers you." Amell offered.

"Will you stop offering to get me things?" Anders huffed. "You can't buy my love, you know. I'm not that easy."

"Maybe I just want to spoil you for my own sake." Amell said.

"I'll go rotten that way." Anders said. "And anyway, you're fine. I already think you're alright."

"Just alright?" Amell asked.

Anders decided to blame the Aqua Magus for his answer. He was barely tipsy. "And the picture of virile heroism. And a scholar. Better?"

"A little. I should go help set up for tonight. I'll come find you after the speech?"  Amell said, standing. "Did you just want to have more drinks and talk, or...?"

"Or...? Paint our toenails? Do our hair?" Anders joked.

"I can compromise, if that's what you want." Amell said.

"I'm kidding. I would never let you touch my hair. It's too perfect." Anders said.

"Just drinks, then?" Amell deduced. Anders wasn't entirely sure whether or not that was all he wanted. "I'll find you in here, or the barracks?"

"Wherever Oghren is, I suppose." Anders said.

Amell picked up his empty bottle and shot glasses, and hesitated. "Did you want me to teach you? The physical magic I use?"

"What?" Anders asked, wondering where that question had come from. He didn't want to learn, but it was nice Amell finally offered. "No. I mean it's great for you, but I'm not a front line fighter. Why?"

"I just noticed you come to watch, whenever Velanna and I are practicing." Amell said. "I thought you might be interested."

"Well, yeah, but not in the magic." Anders said.

"... I can't tell if you're teasing me." Amell said.

"A little." Anders admitted. "Sorry."

"I like it." Amell grinned. "I'll see you later tonight."

Anders left the dining hall to go find Oghren. He wasn't terribly hard to find. He was in the Warden's barracks, leaning dangerously far back in his chair, tankard in hand. Somehow, he'd procured an entire keg for himself and was using it as a footrest. "Hey Sparkles!" Oghren called out on seeing him. "Come and have a drink with me!"

"I thought you'd never ask." Anders grinned, grabbing a chair and dragging it over.

"Here, I grabbed an extra tankard in case anyone else wanna to get away from this cry baby 'holiday.'" Oghren said. He picked up said tankard from the floor, and filled it to the brim from the keg. Foamed sloshed over the edge and onto Anders' tunic when Oghren thrust the tankard into his chest.

"Thank you, thank you," Anders said, taking a long drink. It tasted like piss compared to the Aqua Magus. "So you're not a fan of All Soul's Day, either, I take it?"

"Ah, piss on your human holidays." Oghren said, taking a long drink. "Us dwarves have our own holidays, and we actually celebrate them. You know,  Provings, drinking, dancing, not all this solemn sobbing and staring at fires shit. Only holiday of yours I like is the Satin one, and only cause the Boss gives damn good gifts." 

"Satinalia." Anders said.

"Whatever." Oghren said. "So what's wrong with you? You're human. I think. Why aren't you out there mourning dead folk and starting fires?"

"Because that doesn't sound fun?" Anders guessed.

"Here sodding here." Oghren said, filling his tankard up and taking another drink. "We got enough sad shit without making a holiday out of it. Where are my cards? You wanna play Diamondback?"

"Wicked Grace?" Anders asked.

"Sure, why the fuck not." Oghren said, hoping down from his chair and heading to his bunk. He rummaged through his things for a few minutes before he came back with a deck of cards, and a bottle of hard liquor. Somehow, Anders wasn't surprised the backs of the cards had naked dwarven women on them.

"Seeing as we're both poor as dusters, let's play for shots." Oghren said.

"Does the winner drink, or does the loser?"  Anders asked.

"You." Oghren tapped the side of his bulbous nose with a finger, and then point at him. Anders had no idea what the gesture meant. "I like you. Let's go. Wicked Grace it is. Winner drinks, ya?"

Two hours later, and they were sloshed. It was a good call, making the winner drink. It meant neither of them could get very far ahead before alcohol caught up with them, and the other won. Add that to the fact that they were also drinking ale like water, and Anders was a mess.

Oghren was little better. "Don't like today. Don't like it one sodding bit."

"Fuck today!" Anders agreed, raising his glass.

"Fuck today!" Oghren chorused, drinking. "Day for the dead. Who's idea was that? Wasn't my damn fault the kid died. Blunted weapons still a sodding weapon."

"Who died?" Anders asked.

"Just some stupid kid." Oghren muttered. He missed his mouth and poured his next drink on his beard, but didn't seem to notice. "Fuck him. Fuck the caste. Fuck Orzammar. Fuck Branka, that moss licker. Fuck..." Oghren trailed off. He slapped a hand to his face, and dragged it down over his beard. He seemed to age a decade, in that simple motion, wrinkles showing at his eyes and his forehead when he frowned.

"What's wrong?" Anders asked.

"I didn't do right by them," Oghren muttered. "Fells. The nugget. He's gonna grow up knowing his da's nothing but a drunk. Little Amell, Big Amell. Both of 'em knowing I'm good for nothing."

"Hey, hey, no," Anders grabbed Oghren's meaty hand across the table. "You're good at stuff."

"He's done right by me and how'd I repay him?" Oghren demanded. "Almost got the thunderhumper killed, making him come back for my sorry ass in that mine."

"That wasn't your fault." Anders said. "Darkspawn did that. Fuck darkspawn."

"Fuck darkspawn!" Oghren shouted in agreement, swinging his tankard towards his mouth. He missed, and the ale flew out of the cup and over his shoulder. The wild swing leaned him back his chair, and he toppled back onto the floor. Oghren's feet flew up in the air, and all Anders could think was that it was hilarious. He laughed until his sides hurt, and only realized Oghren might have hurt himself when he ran out of breath.

"Hey, are you okay?" Anders asked, peering over the table. Oghren didn't answer. Anders cast a sloppy healing spell in his direction, and honestly couldn't tell if it did anything. Oghren let out a loud snore, and Anders relaxed. "You're okay."

"I see you decided not to wait for me." Amell said from the doorway.

"Hey, you." Anders grinned.

"Hey yourself." Amell said. Anders laughed. Amell glanced at Oghren on the floor, and seemingly unconcerned, pulled up a chair to sit next to Anders. He was all copper and the Fade, sweat with a hint of firewood leftover from the ceremony.

"You smell, really nice." Anders said.

"Do I?" Amell grinned. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Two. Four. Two? "This is a trick question." Anders said.

"How is this a trick question?" Amell laughed.

"Because I am very drunk." Anders said.

"Apparently not as drunk as Oghren. Where did he get that cask?" Amell asked.

Anders shrugged. "He fell backwards. You missed it. Hilarious."

"I'll bet." Amell said. "Do you want help getting to your bunk?"

"No, no!" Anders shoved him. "Get drunk with me. Come on. Catch up. I'll wait."

"Alright. I'll have a few drinks." Amell agreed. He always agreed. Anders loved it. "Where's the cup Oghren was using?"

"He dropped it." Anders giggled.

Amell stood and went to find said cup. Anders stared at his ass while he bent to retrieve it. He had a nice ass. Probably from working out. Why didn't Anders work out? Amell poured himself a drink from the cask and came back to sit next to him.

"You smell nice." Anders said.

"Thank you." Amell grinned.

"How was your- the talking thing?" Anders asked.

"The speech?" Amell asked.

"Yes!" Anders said.

"Boring. It wouldn't interest you. What were you two playing?" Amell asked.

"Wicked Grace. I'm very bad at it." Anders said. "Do you want to play?"

"I'd love to." Amell said. He reached for the cards scattered across the table, and his sleeve pulled up his wrist. Anders grabbed his hand, and rolled the sleeve up. A myriad of scars greeted him.

"I wish I could heal these." Anders said.

"... Do they bother you?" Amell asked.

"You have to hide them." Anders said. "It sucks, you know? It sucks that you have to hide them. You're not a bad guy. I mean, so what? Right?"

Amell squeezed his hand. "I'm glad they don't bother you."

"No. No, you know? They're just you, you know?" Anders asked.

Anders didn't remember anything after that. He woke up in his bunk with a massive hangover. On the stand beside his bunk, a glass of water and a glass of something green was waiting for him. Anders drank both, and wished hangovers were something healing magic could cure. He lay back down, and knocked a pillow off his bed.

Which was impossible, because Anders only had one pillow. Anders rolled over and stared down at the floor. His mother's poorly stitched pillow stared back up at him. He must have been dreaming. Anders picked it up and gave it an experimental squeeze. It felt real. The same itchy fabric and uncomfortable lace.

A lump formed in his throat. Anders swallowed it back down, and hugged the pillow to his chest. He fell back asleep, and woke again later with the pillow still there, and his hangover gone. Ser Pounce-a-Lot had curled up on his feet at some point, and Anders took care not to wake him when he got up.

No one else was in the barracks with him. Anders guessed it was sometime in the afternoon. He left his pillow on his bed, and went to bathe, shave, and change, and then went to find Amell.

Amell was alone in the library, reading. Anders made his way over to him, glad there was no one else about.

"Good morning." Amell said, setting down the tome he was holding. It was a tattered thing, the edges burnt as if it had been pulled from a fire at one point.

"Is it?" Anders asked, coming to stand next to the armchair Amell was sitting in. "I thought it was afternoon, at least."

"It's morning for you." Amell said.

"I guess so." Anders said.

"Sleep well?" Amell asked, sounding terribly smug. Anders wondered if that was because of the pillow, or something that had happened last night.

"I honestly don't remember." Anders admitted. "I don't suppose I missed anything important?"

"Such as?" Amell asked.

"Did I throw up? Profess my undying love? Go on an alcohol induced rampage?" Anders guessed, sitting on the arm of his chair.

"Not quite," Amell grinned. "We played cards for a bit, and then you sang your own rendition of 'Andraste's Mabari' only with Ser Pounce-a-Lot as the hero before passing out."

"And where does my pillow come into all this?" Anders wondered.

"I wrote to the Circle, when you told me about it." Amell said. "Your things arrived this morning. Your old staff, as well, so you don't have to use the 'creepy darkspawn' one anymore."

"Well I..." Anders felt the lump in his throat all over again, and choked it back down. "I mean... You... I definitely owe you."

"Anders-" Amell started.

"No, I definitely do." Anders said. "Except I'm poor as dirt, and even if I were rich, I couldn't afford what my mother's pillow means to me, so how about a kiss?"

"I'd settle for that." Amell said, standing slowly. "Right now?"

"Sure, why not?" Anders shrugged, standing up with him. It wasn't like Amell hadn't kissed him before, and nothing could be worse than that kiss. "But just one, and you can't mess up my hair."

"So many rules." Amell said quietly. "Anything else?"

"Your feelings can't be hurt if it turns out I'm not into it." Anders decided.

"Well I'll try to make it a good one then," Amell said. Amell set his hands on Anders' chest and walked him back a few feet to the wall behind him.

It was ... a very good start, Anders decided, resting his hands on Amell's waist. Amell ran his hands up his chest, over his shoulder, along his neck, and stopped at his jaw. "Hair," Anders warned him.

"I won't." Amell promised, and leaned in to kiss him.

It was just a kiss, really. Amell's lips were soft, and tasted faintly of cider. For some ridiculous reason, Anders had almost expected him to taste like blood. Amell's hands on his jaw kept firm control of the kiss, and stretched it out from one moment, into more. His tongue flicked over Anders' lips, and slid briefly over Anders' own, and there was nothing Anders' didn't like about it.

Amell's lips parted from his for a few seconds, and he inhaled briefly before trying to go back to him. Anders tilted his chin up, and the kiss landed there. "I said one." Anders teased.

"This is one." Amell protested.

Well. Anders liked it. Anders liked Amell. To the Void with the rest. Why over-think it? "Nope. The rest are mine." Anders bent his head and kissed Amell again, but Anders' hands had barely started wandering before a loud, rude cough interrupted them.

Amell broke off from him and glanced over his shoulder. His body was still firmly pressed against Anders' and he didn't seem keen on moving it. "Can I help you, Ambassador?" Amell snarled.

"Yes, actually." Cera said unapologetically. Anders peaked over Amell's shoulder and found the woman scowling at them. "I could use you help going over these figures for this month's requisitions from the Circle."

"You've never needed my help before," Amell said, not moving. "If this job is too overwhelming for you, let me know, and I'll have a new ambassador assigned." Amell threatened her.

Anders grinned. He couldn't help it. He found a rather snug place for his hands on Amell's thighs and looked straight at the furious little elf. She bowed and stormed out. "She really hates me." Anders said.

"The Void can take her." Amell said.

"Oh! Feisty. I don't think I've ever heard you hate on someone before." Anders said. Templars, maybe. "I kind of like it."

"She's cruel, and narrow-minded, and I'm tired of her speaking ill of you." Amell said.

"You just described most of Thedas, I think." Anders said. "Come on, we should separate before someone else comes in and decides to waggle a finger at us. I'm going to go have breakfast. You eat yet?"

"Hours ago." Amell said. "Would you mind picking up where we left off, later?"

"Maybe." Anders said. The answer was definitely yes, but Amell said he liked being teased, so who was Anders to fight him? "I'll think about it."

"Promise?" Amell called after him.

Anders laughed.

Notes:

Elvish Translations
Ir Abelas - I'm sorry
Ma Serranas - Thank you

Apples and Apostates
Mana Drain: The dragon-fight as told from Anders' perspective.
Shut Up and Kiss Me: The events of this chapter as told from Amell's perspective.

Fanart
Amell
Anders and Amell kissing

Chapter 14: The Dark Theurge

Notes:

Thank you all for your wonderful comments, kudos, subscriptions, bookmarks, and as always, thank you for reading.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 9 Matrinalis Afternoon

Vigil's Keep Infirmary

"Magic is so cool." Sigrun said. She was sitting on a stool by the supply cabinet and kicking her feet. Anders sometimes had trouble remembering she was a grown woman. Not only was Sigrun remarkably tiny, but she was remarkably upbeat. Definitely not the sort of person Anders would expect to be a part of something called the 'Legion of the Dead.'

"You want to give me a hand with this?" Anders asked, unable to move away from the unconscious man he was healing. Apparently, a beam from one of the scaffoldings in the courtyard had fallen on the poor sod and cracked his skull. Anders had been in the middle of lunch when a servant had come running.

It was a damn shame, really. It was a good lunch. Roast duck and cranberry sauce, with hot scones and apple cider. All cold now. Anders sighed. Sigrun had been having lunch with him, and followed him to the infirmary. Out of boredom, if Anders had to guess.

"Sure, what do you need?" Sigrun asked.

"Bandages, a poultice, and an ice balm. Bandages are right behind you, on top of the cabinet. Ice balm is on the top drawer on the left, poultice drawer just below it. And elfroot, those green leaves drying to your right. To your right. Your right. Your other right." Anders said.

Sigrun came back with everything and dumped it on the table next to him. Ideally, the Vigil's grumpy physician should have been helping him, but Maker knew where he was at the moment.

"So... What are you doing? With your hands?" Sigrun asked.

"I'm channeling a spirit of Compassion, and she's healing his injuries." Anders said.

"She? It's a she? What's she like?" Sigrun asked.

"Not exactly. I mean, technically it's an it, but it always appears as a she. And she's... Well she's compassionate, what do you want me to say?" Anders asked.

"Something interesting." Sigrun yawned, hopping back onto her chair. "You're supposed to be the funny one. If you're not careful I'll have to bump you down to fuck."

"Wait, what?" Anders asked.

"You know, marry, fuck, kill?" Sigrun asked, "The Commander and I were playing the other day."

"Maker's breath. Are you twelve?" Anders asked.

"Oh boo." Sigrun stuck her tongue out at him, "Fine, be a sour puss."

The silence that followed bothered Anders. The only sound was the hum of Compassion, the slow stitch of flesh as it knitted back together beneath his fingers, Sigrun's feet thudding on her stool. "Alright, fine," Anders said. "Nate, Oghren, Amell."

"Oh that is so easy," Sigrun said eagerly, "Kill Amell, fuck Nate, marry Oghren."

"Seriously?" Anders asked. "You're messing with me right? You'd kill Amell? 'You saved my life twice; Hold me when I'm scared; I'll never leave you behind, Commander,' Amell?"

"Hey," Sigrun held up her hands defensively, "Just because I like him doesn't mean I think he's attractive. The no beard really kills it for me. And it's mostly for his sake I'd kill him anyway; I know he's not into women."

"Alright, sure, but why not kill Nate?" Anders asked. "That bit of fluff on his chin is hardly a beard."

"Something's better than nothing. I know, I'm not too happy about that one either. Nate seems like a pushups kind of guy, you know what I mean? Up. Down. My lady." Sigrun joked.

Anders choked, and had to focus very intently to keep from botching his healing spell. "You are awful today. I love it."

"Heheh. I know. Don't tell Nate I said that. He's great, he really is, but I couldn't steal him from Velanna." Sigrun said.

"Oghren?" Anders definitely needed clarification there. "Marry? Really? I thought you couldn't stand him."

"... Honestly? Oghren's not a bad guy. Once you get past the smell, and the smell, and ancestors, the smell. I know he's gross, but you catch him sober, and he looks... So tired. I feel bad for him. He's been through two wives, and all he really has is the Commander." Sigrun shrugged. "Besides, it could be a sexless marriage. Most are, anyway."

Anders laughed. "Alright, I definitely wasn't expecting that."

"Don't... Don't tell Oghren I said that. Please. I get enough of his awful flirting as it is." Sigrun begged.

"My lips are sealed, believe me. I made him a bet I'd pay his tab for a week if you ever complimented him." Anders said.

"Why would you do that?" Sigrun asked. "That's like a noble saying he'll live the rest of his life as a duster if it ever rains in Orzammar. It'll never happen, but that's just not something you risk."

Anders snorted. He finished his spell, but the poor sod was left with an ugly pink line where the gash had been. It was definitely going to scar. Anders washed the blood from his patient's head, smeared on the poultice, and wrapped the wound in bandages.

Anders was still wrapping when another fellow came running into the infirmary. The man's hair was on backwards; he had a full beard and mustache, with not a single strand on his head. "Where is he? Out of my way, out of my way. Oh, my poor stupid Herren. Is he going to be alright? Tell me he's not going to be any more brain dead than usual."

"He'll be fine." Anders said. "As soon as I finish wrapping this I'm going to put him under a sleep spell that should last around ten hours. When he wakes up, make sure he keeps that ice balm there on his head and chews elfroot for the pain."

"As if he ever listens to me!" The bald man huffed.

"Aww," Sigrun said. "You're married."

"Shoo, shoo!" The bald man flapped his hands at her, and Sigrun hopped off the stool. The bald man snatched it up and dragged it over to the table where Anders' patient lay. "What else? Anything else?"

"Nothing else." Anders promised. He finished up, and cast his last sleep spell. "But really, it's going to be at last ten hours before he wakes up. You don't have to wait here the whole time."

"Yes I do." The bald man snapped. "Are you done? Go away. No, come back. I'm a blacksmith. Can I make you something for healing him? No, wait, you're a mage. A mage like the Commander maybe?"

"Nope." Anders said, cleaning up the workspace. He rolled up unused bandages, washed out the poultice jar, and dumped out dirty water. Sigrun helped him. "Just a mage. I don't need anything. This is just what I do."

The bald man made a dismissive noise, and Anders washed the blood off his hands in the infirmary basin. When he was finally finished, he left with Sigrun and they headed back to the dining hall.

"Couples are so cute." Sigrun said.

"What you call 'cute' I call 'crazy'. No amount of sex is worth getting that worked up over someone. Did you notice he was bald? I bet all his hair fell out fretting like that." Anders said.

"Well, I guess you sure are done channeling Compassion," Sigrun said. "Anyway, your turn. Same people. Oghren, Nate, Amell."

"Marry Oghren, fuck Amell, kill Nate." Anders said. "Next."

"Oh Stone no! Back up. What do you mean fuck Amell?" Sigrun protested. "You're supposed to marry him!"

"I've only known him for two months." Anders said.

"In the game, stupid. You marry him in the game." Sigrun said.

"I can marry whoever I want, and I want to marry Oghren." Anders said. It was pure coincidence Oghren was leaving the dining hall as he said it.

"Nope. Not touching it. Don't wanna know." Oghren muttered, striding quickly past them.

Sigrun laughed, and subsequently forgot her question, for which Anders was grateful. They found their trays where they'd left them, gone cold. Anders reheated them as best he was able with a very weak fire spell that overcooked his duck and burned Sigrun's scone. She was a terribly good sport about it, if nothing else.

"So you'd marry me, huh?" Anders asked, after spending an age chewing through his ruined duck. "Who was I against?"

"Velanna and Cera," Sigrun said. Well. There went that self esteem boast. It wasn't like Sigrun had much of a choice with those options. "We were doing mages."

"... Kill Cera?" Anders ventured.

"Kill Cera." Sigrun agreed.

"You're a good wife." Anders said.

"Oghren sort of told everyone she was shorting you. That kind of thing wouldn't fly in the Legion. Dead men don't hold grudges. You short someone out in the Deep, they die, and then you die when you've got no one to watch your back." Sigrun finished the half of her scone that was still edible, and tossed her utensils onto her tray. "Well, I've got your back, hubby."

"That is so sweet of you." Anders said, similarly picking up his own mess. "Really, I'm all a tingle. So what does my wife have planned for today?"

"I thought I would help out in the courtyard with the reconstruction on the walls. You?" Sigrun picked up her tray, and Anders followed suit.

"Nothing, if I can help it." Anders said. They dropped their trays off and left the dining hall. They lingered outside the door to finish their conversation, occasionally moving to one side or the other for passersby.

"Isn't sloth one of your demons?" Sigrun asked. "Didn't you tell me about them like... yesterday?"

"Hey, I'm not lazy." Anders said. "I'm the Vigil's resident healer. I just saved some fellow's life, probably."

"That took you half an hour. What else have you done today?" Sigrun folded her arms and stared up at him.

"Andraste's knickers you're demanding. I want a divorce." Anders joked. "Anyway, I'm probably just going to go... read."

"Right. 'Read'." Sigrun rolled her eyes. "Have fun slapping tongues with the Commander, then. I'll catch you later,"

"Later," Anders waved as she left.

So Anders didn't want to spend every day working himself into the ground. So what? Anders was still earning his keep at the Keep, and Amell's opinion was the only one that really mattered. And as far as Anders could tell, Amell seemed to think he could do no wrong.

Anders looped his thumbs in his belt, and wandered down the hall towards the second story stairwell. Aside from a spoiled lunch, today was rather swell. Most days were rather swell, recently. Funny how having someone to 'slap tongues' with could do that. Maybe he could find some other part of Amell to slap, if Amell wasn't busy for once.

It was damned frustrating how much work went into ruling an Arling. Not for Amell. Anders had no idea if it was frustrating for Amell, but it was frustrating for Anders. It felt like every time Anders got anywhere near the man, a servant would come running and drag Amell away to see to some crisis or another, but maybe today they'd have better luck.

Anders wandered up the stairs, whistling Amell's horrible song, and wandered straight into him. Anders would have counted it a sign from the Maker, if Velanna weren't right there with him. They were both carrying staves. Amell was holding a book in his free hand, and Velanna a small silver chest. Anders hadn't known Amell even owned a staff.

"Hamin, Velanna," Amell was saying.

"Emma hamin. Elgar'arla-" Velanna stopped short, seeing him.

"Ah yes, you better stop talking. I'll have you know I'm fluent in elvish as well sarcasm." Anders joked.

"Anders," Amell grinned.

"I didn't know you owned a staff. What else are you keeping from me?" Anders joked.

"Nathaniel dar mana." Velanna said.

"Ar dirth, hamin." Amell said. Amell turned back to him. "You weren't coming to find me, were you?"

"Something like that, but I can see you're apparently busy with the whole, dead elf person in your head thing so..." Anders trailed off. Velanna very clearly did not want Anders to be a part of whatever they were up to. She was scowling something fierce, and shifting impatiently from foot to foot. Whether or not Anders was curious, he did love to rattle her, and Amell had never said 'no' to him before... "Where are you off to?" Anders asked.

And there it was. Amell hesitated, and Velanna's face pinched up like a cat's butt. "We're-" Amell started to say, when the sound of footsteps stopped him.

The three of them moved to one side of the stairwell, and a servant carried a load of towels walked past them.

"We're-" Amell started again.

"You do not seriously intend to tell him, do you?" Velanna interrupted, apparently unable to contain herself. "I know you favor the man, but the sight of my sylvans alone had him cowering like a frightened animal. At the first sign of era'lin he will turn tail and flee, and then what will become of us?"

"Anders knows what I am, Velanna." Amell said.

"Oh, this is one of those things, then." Anders said. No surprise there. It was always blood magic with Amell.

"After a fashion." Amell said vaguely. "It's very... involved?"

"This is really one of those things, then." Anders said. Demons, maybe?

"Creators, see how he shrinks back? I am going to wait with Nathaniel for you." Velanna shouldered past them and left.

"Did you want to come with us?" Amell asked when the sound of Velanna's footsteps faded. "It is 'one of those things.' I didn't mention because I wasn't sure how you'd react, but if you did want to come..." Amell freed up a hand by shoving his book under his arm, and reached out to trace Anders' earring. It was... oddly affectionate. "I don't know how to say this nonchalantly."

"Well then say it chalantly, and we'll go from there." Anders said. As with most problems, Amell's affection went away when Anders ignored it.

"It would mean a lot to me." Amell said, "I'm not asking you to participate, but it would be nice to know I don't have to hold back around you."

"I feel like you just missed an opportunity for a euphemism in there, somewhere." Anders said.

"Probably." Amell agreed.

A staff, a book that was probably a grimoire or spellbound tome, and a mystery box. There was no way whatever Amell was up to didn't involve demons. Blood magic was one thing, but willful demon summoning? The smart thing for Anders to do here was probably to walk away. Preferably with his ears plugged, while humming.

"I understand if you're uncomfortable." Amell said when Anders hesitated. "We should be finished later this evening, if you were still interested in whatever you wanted me for."

"So all I have to do to make you happy is come, huh?" Anders joked.

"That's all." Amell grinned.

"Laugh, damn you." Anders shoved him, and they started down the stairs together. He was going to regret this.

"Haha." Amell said obediently.

"You're impossible, you know that?" Anders asked. "So what is this? What horrible demonic ritual of necromancy and blood magic are you up to now?"

"Maybe not in public?" Amell suggested.

They weren't exactly in the middle of a crowd, walking through the halls of the Vigil, but Anders kept silent. Amell led him out of the Keep and into the courtyard, and from there into the cellars, of all places.

"I thought we cleared these out?" Anders asked. "Are we just looking for a private place to be creepy, or is there something else down here?"

"An ancient Avvar crypt," Amell explained when they were alone, "You remember Nathaniel and I went to find his sister in Amaranthine, last Tuesday? She had a key, one of four passed down through her family. Nathaniel helped me find the rest among his families things, and we found the chamber they unlock last night, in one of the passages near the Deep Roads. There's a presence bound there. A shade, I would guess, hundreds of years old."

"And you... want to have a sit down with tea and crumpets, and learn about Avvar history from this thing?" Anders guessed.

"Something like that." Amell agreed.

"Oh, good," Anders said, "I'm totally reassured. This doesn't sound dangerous at all. Summoning demons is a lot safer than just picking up a history book. Those things give you paper cuts, you know."

"... I was hoping to have it augment my connection to the Fade by implanting its thought process into my head with blood magic." Amell said.

Anders did an abrupt about-face. "Well, I'm leaving."

"Anders, wait." Amell dropped the book he was holding to grab Anders' arm.

"You really are insane, you know that?" Anders shook off Amell's hand and glared at him. "I didn't know there was level past dragon hunting, but here we are. You're seriously going to invite a demon into your head? I don't want to stay here and watch you get possessed. The blood magic: fine, whatever, but this is mad."

"This is how I learned blood magic, Anders." Amell said, as if he was being perfectly reasonable, "Demons don't give lessons, they give thoughts. Thought patterns."

"Memories?" Anders felt the need to add.

"Maybe." Amell confessed. "Whatever was in the phylactery I found, it honored the bargain all the same. Words aren't wind with demons, Anders, they're will, and demons are bound by them. Stay. Please. Trust me."

"I don't suppose you'll at least teach me that little ritual to undo a possession before I go along with this?" Anders asked.

"There's no need," Amell said, "The demon is in a binding circle, and I intend to keep it there."

"Until you invite him into your head for an abominably good time." Anders said. Frustrated, Anders sighed and stuffed a stray strand of hair back behind his ear. Calm down, Anders. No reason to care so much. Amell protected him from being sent back to the Circle. That was all.

"Words aren't wind with me, either, Anders." Amell said softly. "When I say I know what I'm doing, I mean it. If I make you a promise, I'll keep it. Haven't I so far?"

It only took one. It didn't matter how experienced anyone was with demons; one mistake, and that was it. Anders didn't want to see Amell's russet eyes glowing purple or green, or watch his soft hands grow claws, or anything like that. Anders pinched the bridge of his nose to fight off a headache, wondering why he wasn't just walking away. "If you get possessed, I am going to kick your ass so hard the demon will fly out of your lying mouth."

"Then there's no losing here." Amell said. "The Circle would make you an honorary Senior Enchanter for discovering possessions can be undone with a good ass-kicking and never come after you again."

"Hey, I'm the joker here, not you." Anders warned him, "You stay on your side of the line where it's creepy."

"Sorry." Amell said. "So... are you staying?"

"Yes, I'm bloody staying. Come on, let's hurry up before I come to my senses." Anders said.

"Would you mind if I kissed you?" Amell asked.

"Ugh," Why was Anders going along with this? He didn't like Amell that much, did he? "Fine. Don't touch my hair."

"Ugh?" Amell said.

"I'm still mad at you. You can't just kiss it better." Anders said.

"What if it's a good kiss?" Amell asked.

"Oh for-" Anders grabbed Amell's face in his hands and kissed him. The stupid bastard. The stupid, overconfident, compassionate, charitable, ridiculously good-smelling, creepy bastard. Anders bit Amell's bottom lip, more in punishment than anything else, and wasn't expecting it to make Amell moan. He did it again, and sucked on the abused lip afterwards. Amell dropped his staff with an unceremonious clatter, and fisted both his hands in Anders' tunic. Suddenly, Amell no longer seemed quite the terrifying blood mage.

Anders wished they were near a wall so Anders could pin Amell against it. Amell gave him free rein with everything from his lips, to his hair, to any part of his body Anders put his hands on, and did nothing but moan in response. Anders should have taken Amell up on his countless offers ages ago. If Amell was this responsive to a kiss, Anders couldn't begin to picture him in bed. That was a lie. He could, and he did, and he had to stop himself before he forgot he was angry.

Anders broke off from him, listening to Amell's and his own heavy breathing. Why were they wasting time with demons again? "Don't fuck this up." Anders said, not sure if he was talking to Amell or himself.

"I... Uh..." Amell took a deep breath, mindlessly running his hands over Anders' chest. How old was he again? Twenty-one? Anders could believe that, if only for this one moment. "I won't."

Amell cleared his throat and took a step back. He picked up his scattered things and aged a decade, just in time for Velanna to come storming back up through the cellars. "Creators! What is keeping you?"

"Nothing. We're coming." Amell said.

Velanna made a disgusted noise and went back the way she came.

"Are we?" Anders asked. "Someone's overzealous."

Amell seemed too out of breath to laugh, or Anders imagined he would have. "Could we pick up where we left off later tonight? ... or right after this?"

"I'm still mad at you." Anders said.

"I'm okay with that, actually, if that's you mad." Amell said.

They took the cellars down into the dungeons, and from there headed down a stairwell that had been blocked off with rubble the last time they'd been through. At the bottom was the sort of door Anders pictured would lead into a crypt. It was a thick blackwood, covered in wrought iron, and a smattering of broken lock picks were on the floor beside it.

"I thought you said you had the keys to the crypt?" Anders asked.

"To the crypt," Amell clarified, "This is a burial chamber. The crypt is just beyond it."

Said burial chamber was appropriately creepy. They stepped out onto a balcony that ringed around the chamber, and stairs just before them lead down where Velanna and Nathaniel were waiting. Just past them, another door similar to the first waited, surrounded by four locks, all filled with keys. All along the walls, on both stories, Avvar sarcophagi were stuffed into inlets in the stone.

"Fancy meeting you two here," Anders said.

"I could say the same," Nathaniel said.

"How could you say the same?" Anders asked, "You're not even a mage. What do you want to do with summoning an ancient Avvar demon?"

Nathaniel shrugged, his eyes flicking briefly to Velanna. Well. That made two of them.

"How do you intend to counter the energy drain of this spirit?" Velanna asked Amell, ignoring the two of them. "Bound or not, after a hundred years, I refuse to believe this spirit weak of will."

"The ... spirits I have bound to my grimoire should give off more than enough magic to counter a single shade." Amell said.

"And the ritual?" Velanna demanded, "I want to hear of it. Ilshae deemed spirits too great a risk to be the specialization of a Keeper. She was never happy with my decision to utilize sylvans in defense of the clan."

"It might be easier to show than tell. Do you mind if I start, and you can ask any questions when we're finished?" Amell asked.

"Do you need my help in any way other than what we already discussed?" Velanna asked.

"Watch the glyphs, around the edge of the circle. Reinforce any that weaken." Amell said.

"Very well," Velanna nodded. "Let us make use of this spirit."

Inside the crypt, all around the walls were the statues of ancient Avvar warriors, staring down at a binding circle in the center of the room. A golden celestial globe stood in the middle, rotating leisurely. Anders picked a statue and sat down on stone base. Nathaniel joined him. Their presence was vital, really. No way Amell and Velanna could have handled this without them.

Amell rolled up his sleeve all the way to his shoulder, and drew the dagger he kept even in his formal boots. The cut he made on his arm wasn't his usual vertical slice across his forearm. It was long and horizontal, and bled horribly. The soft patter of blood hitting the stone floor made Anders wince; a healing incantation was on his lips before he even realized what he was doing, and Anders shook it away.

Velanna opened up the small silver chest she'd brought. Anders wasn't surprised to see it contained lyrium. She used it to reinforce the glyphs and the binding circle while Amell set his dagger aside, and picked up his book and staff in its place. The chant that followed was everything Anders expected from blood magic.

"By blood you were bound, by blood unbound," and all that sort of ruckus, read straight from Amell's grimoire. Anders didn't know whether or not to be reassured Amell didn't have it memorized. As he read, the globe spun faster and faster, until it was a blur of gold. As the spell finished, darkness fell over the chamber, and Anders instinctively summoned a wisp for light.

It didn't help. The darkness didn't respond to Anders' light the way shadows would. It condensed seemingly of its own accord, and took on the vague shape of a man standing in the center of the circle. "Kiveal!" It screamed, twisting around in its tiny prison. "Where are you? I told you nothing could hold me!"

"Dead," Amell said. "All who bound you here are dead. The Avvar are no more." It was sort of true. The Avvar at Vigil's Keep were dead, if nothing else.

"You lie! I will not be denied my vengeance!" The demon roared, charging straight for Amell. It hit the invisible barrier of its binding circle, and scattered into smoke and shadow for a few seconds before it reformed. "Why have you summoned me, augur?"

"To make a deal," Amell said.

"You are not of the Avvar?" It asked.

"No." Amell said.

"Then prove it." The demon said, throwing itself repeatedly against the invisible confines of its cage. Velanna cast a spell to strengthen the wards whenever the demon seemed to be making progress. "It was their magic that bound me here. I know this place. This crypt. In these same caves there was a shrine to the Mountain Father. Does it remain?"

"The room with the old statue, and the inactive golems?" Nathniel asked.

"Golems!" The demon snarled, "Gifts from the dwarves, children of the Mountain Father. Destroy them! Destroy it all. Bring me the head of this statue."

"Nathaniel, go and find Oghren," Amell said, "Have him handle the golems if activating them is tied to the shrine. Do not bring him into this room. Be quick."

Nathaniel stood up, and left the room at a brisk walk near a jog.

"What is this deal you want to make with me, augur?" The demon asked. "I have no need of your pathetic form. I am my own master."

"You have the ability to alter a human's psyche," Amell said.

"Yes." The demon said. "To drain. To drink. To change the mind, to make it mine. To make it more."

"I want you to augment my connection to the Fade, or my affinity for the arcane. In return, I'll free you from this prison." Amell said.

The demon stopped bashing itself against the walls of the binding circle. It stood still in the center, a faceless man of shadow like something out of Anders' nightmares, watching Amell with newfound fascination. "... There is too much of the Fade in you already." It said eventually. "I will enhance your attunement to magic, if you free me from this place. But first you must destroy the shrine."

And that was it. The only thing left to do was wait. Velanna circled the demon's containment circle, cautious and alert. The demon stood still, shadows and smoke rolling off the form of a faceless man who stared at Amell and nothing else. Amell held his book and his staff, blood still dripping from his arm. It had painted two splattered lines on the floor, one on either side of his arm where the drops of red were rolling off. Anders watched and tried to time it, but the drops were random, the soft pitter patter almost like rain. It bothered Anders for all the wrong reasons. It had to hurt.

Eventually, Nathaniel returned, carrying a rock. Or at least it looked like a rock to Anders. The demon laughed gleefully. "Defamed! Defiled! Desecrated! Your reward, augur!"

Anders didn't like what happened next. The demon couldn't affect them from inside the circle, so Amell stepped in with it. Shadows swarmed over him, and he was lifted off his feet and suspended mid-air. It looked all too much like the spells Amell cast on darkspawn. It lasted for less than three heartbeats, but that was enough for Anders to stand and reach for the Fade when the demon released Amell. Amell caught himself on his staff when he landed, and stumbled backwards out of the containment circle with a hand to his head.

"And now your end of the bargain! Free me!"

"Velanna," Amell said.

"Return to the Beyond, spirit," Velanna said, using the half chest of lyrium that remained to expel pure mana, and tear the shade apart, "Ar lasa mala revas."

Anders healed Amell's arm from a distance. Amell didn't seem to notice, still holding one hand to his head when Velanna came over to him. "I confess that was... terribly invigorating. I felt the Beyond surge when you stepped into the elgar'arla. How do you feel? This ritual you used, to summon the spirit while retaining the binding, I would appreciate the chance to read it."

'Terribly invigorating' wasn't how Anders would describe what had just happened. Maybe just 'terrible.' He started for the door.

"Of course," Amell mumbled. "Anders, are you leaving?"

"What? Me? I've got to use the little mage's room." Anders lied. "But this was swell. Really. I'll catch you later, alright?"

Anders didn't 'flee.' He just left. Very quickly. He walked out of the crypt, up the stairs out of the burial chamber, and back up into the dungeons. Oghren was there, waiting and drinking after he'd apparently helped Nathaniel destroy an ancient Avvar shrine. "Hey Sparkles," Oghren said, falling into step with him. "Slow down, eh? My legs aren't as long as yours. Where you headed?"

"Oh, you know," Anders shrugged, not slowing, "I thought I would go find a nice chamber pot to throw up in."

"You don't say," Oghren said. "You wanna talk about it?"

"No. Yes? I don't know." Anders stopped when they were in the cellars, and sat on the nearest upright cask of ale. Anders felt sick. There was a tight knot in the center of his chest, and a dull ache spread across his entire body. Stress, probably. Not a fun feeling, stress. "You weren't kidding, were you? About the Commander and blood magic."

"So that's what this is, huh? I shoulda figured." Oghren said, unhooking the flask he wore as a belt and holding it out. Anders took a drink, and felt a little better.

"Did Nate tell you what he was doing down there?" Anders asked.

"Naw," Oghren said, leaning against a nearby cask considering he was too short to sit on it without jumping. "Boss told me, last night. Apparently the thing had a grudge against dwarves, or I'd have helped. Was it one of them sexy ones? What'd he do, suck face with it in front of you?"

"I wish." Anders said. "It was a shade. A demon with no physical form. He just ... let it in. Practically hugged the damn thing. Andraste's knickerweasels, it looked like-" it was possessing him? Killing him? Anders took another drink.

"So... what? Did it finally dawn on you that donning the sausage hat with the Boss might not to be such a good idea? No bucking the forbidden horse with the forbidden mage?" Oghren chuckled.

"Please stop." Anders said.

"Well what do you want me to say, Sparkles?" Oghren asked, "I warned you, didn't I? I told you. He ain't right."

"You know that's really something coming from you, considering the other night you were practically in tears at the thought of disappointing him." Anders said.

"Okay, first," Oghren held up five fingers, and started counting down them, "Shove it. Second: Shove it harder. Third: So sodding what? I love the little fucker anyway. Fourth: Not a damn one of us that isn't fucked up some way or another. Archy's a thief, the elf is a bitch, Sig's suicidal, and you're a slack-jawed coward. I'm a drunk, and the Boss ain't all there up top. We're a merry little band of blighters."

"You're holding up five fingers. What's fifth?" Anders asked.

Oghren looked down at his hand, and seemed to start upon realizing he had a thumb. "Fifth is shove it."

"Thanks. I feel a lot better now." Anders lied, handing Oghren back his flask.

"Yep." Oghren said. "Go get drunk. Sleep it off. S'what I always do."

Anders took his advice. He got thoroughly sloshed, avoided Amell for the rest of the day, and passed out in the general vicinity of his bunk.

He woke up in a cell. The dark around him was like the Void, and Anders swore he could feel the shadows crawling over his skin. The cell was smaller than any cell he'd ever been in before, the walls slowly closing in around him. His knees were already bent, but the walls pushed at his feet, driving his legs further and further into his chest until each breath was an agony. Somewhere outside his cell, if there was an outside, people were singing. The chorus of Amell's horrible song, over and over while darkspawn laughed in the distance.

His cat was in his lap, somehow not crushed by his legs. It was the one bit of comfort left to him, and Anders tried to pet it. A band of red wrapped around Ander's wrist, and his hand caught fire. "No! No, not again! It was an accident!" Anders screamed. He couldn't stop his hand from moving, and petting the poor little thing. Princess, Mr. Wiggums, Ser Pounce-A-Lot, all three of them caught flame, and turned to ash in his lap, and he was alone again.

"Begone, demon!" Someone screamed. The cell fell away, the dark was driven back. Sepia tones and a far off Black Spire took over. The Fade. It was just the Fade. Just a nightmare. "This is our place!" Compassion was standing over him, looking as always like his mother. A short distance away, a demon of Fear cackled gleefully.

"This is your only defense? A spirit of Compassion? The weakest of them all?" The demon spat, its form shifting. It wore a templar's skirt, but the rest of it was a mess of claws and twisted flesh. Too many feet shown beneath its skirt, blue and bloated, like a hanging corpse, like those poor miners in the Wending Wood. "How is it no demon has claimed you yet, mage? Perhaps they think you too trifling to notice?"

Anders staggered to his feet, and found Compassion's hand. Fear demons were notoriously powerful, and Anders wanted nothing to do with one threatening Compassion. He could kill it. Probably. Maybe. "You heard her. Sod off."

"Fear rules you, as I should," The demon cackled. "Is there nothing in your life not bound by it? You Fear your templars. You Fear your would-be lover. Even your sad spirit Fears. You scare her. It is delicious."

"Yeah, well, so is cake, so something, something, go soak your head." Anders said. Nice one, Anders. The demon will be feeling that burn for days. "This is her demesne, not yours. Leave, or I'll kill you."

"You still Fear," The demon cackled, but it floated backwards obediently. "You Fear she will leave you, just your mother. I will be waiting when she does."

Anders sat back down when the demon had gone, feeling wretched. Compassion knelt next to him, and hugged him about his shoulders. It was a hug Anders needed. "I keep 'waking up' like this, and I'm never going to get any real sleep." Anders sighed.

"I could not let it gorge on your Fear," Compassion said. "I cannot stand when you have nightmares. Would you rather I had not intervened?"

"No, of course not." Anders squeezed her hand, "Any time you want to talk, I'm your guy."

"It lies," Compassion whispered, burying her face in his shoulder. "It's a demon and it lies. It is not you I Fear. It is that corruption. The demon... it comes so often, watching your nightmares. I wish that it were gone."

"That's my fault," Anders knew, "If I weren't such a coward, it wouldn't have any strength to bother you."

"You are very Brave," Compassion said.

"I'm glad you think so, but you're no spirit of Bravery, sweetheart." Anders said, "I think we know what my virtues are. On the bright side, that's what? Almost a fortnight with no nightmares?"

Compassion made a face at him. She couldn't follow time the way he could, and he knew it. "I'm getting better, is what I mean. I think I have a handle on the whole 'tainted' thing now. It helps if I don't go to bed stressed."

"I'm glad." Compassion said, "Perhaps with less nightmares, the demon will weaken, and leave us alone."

A thought occurred to Anders, and while he didn't like it, he liked demons threatening his spirit even less. "Well... hey, if it's really bothering you, Amell is doing these expeditions to Kal'Hirol, retrieving a lot of the abandoned lyrium there. Maybe he'd be willing to use some to go kill our little Fear demon for us?" Anders said.

"He is very kind to you," Compassion said. "I am sure he would."

"I'll ask him," Anders promised, planting a kiss on her forehead. "I don't like anyone threatening my girl."

"The demon, what it said... do you truly Fear him? Your Amell?"

"It's a demon," Anders said. He didn't want to think about it. "It lies."

Notes:

Elvish Translations
Hamin - Relax.
Emma hamin - I am relaxed.
Elgar'arala - Demon/Spirit Binding Circle.
Nathaniel dar mana - Nathaniel is waiting.
Ar dirth - I know.
Era'lin - Blood magic
Ar lasa mala revas - You are now free.

Fanart
Amell and his grimoire

Chapter 15: Paramour

Notes:

Thank for 1000 hits! Thank you so much for all your wonderful comments, kudos, bookmarks, subscriptions, and as always, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 13 Matrinalis Too Late to Still be in Bed

Vigil's Keep - Warden's Barracks

"What do you think, Ser Pounce-a-Lot?" Anders asked his cat as it walked circles on his chest, attempting to make itself comfortable. "Is Daddy crazy? Is Other Daddy crazy?"

The unhelpful little blighter had no answer for him. Anders sighed, and gave Ser Pounce a scratch he hadn't earned. "This is all your fault, you know that?"

Ser Pounce purred, leaning into the scratch, and let out a rather heartwarming "Meow."

"Yes. All your fault," Anders cooed, scratching his ears with both hands. "I didn't ask for a cat. Certainly not an adorable little tabby like you. I didn't ask for anything. Except a harem, and some apple pie. Where is my harem, anyway? 'I keep my promises' he says."  

More purring. It was like Ser Pounce wasn't even listening. What a rude cat. "I know, we have to go talk to him. We can't leave our girl in the lurch like that. Demons have no manners, you know? Why can't they just stick to their own demesnes?" No answer. Rude. "Probably because crazy blood mages keep summoning them."

Anders didn't care for reflecting on what had happened. The past was in the past, as the saying went, but his thoughts wandered traitorously. Ser Pounce bit his hand when Anders stopped petting him. "Ow." Anders lied. It hadn't hurt. He gave the tabby a hard tap on the nose. "That's no way to get what you want. But you're right. I can't just hide in here forever. "  

"What do you say? Do you want to come with me?" Anders asked, picking up Ser Pounce and setting him on the floor. His cat yowled, either in protest or agreement. "Come on then," Anders said, walking to the door of the barracks. "Come on," Anders called. Ser Pounce looked at him and blinked. "Come on. Let's go." Anders called again.

Miraculously, Ser Pounce decided to listen and trotted over, bell jingling. Anders led him out of the barracks and down the hall. Anders didn't quite make it to the stairwell before Ser Pounce sat down in defiance, apparently having walked as far as he wanted. "Little blighter." Anders said.

Anders climbed the stairs alone and went to the library first. Sigrun and Nathaniel were there, reading. No Amell. Anders climbed the floor to the third story on the off chance Amell was in his quarters. That seemed unlikely, given how busy 'the Arl of Amaranthine and Warden-Commander of Ferelden' always was, but Anders may as well try. It was that or ask for directions, after all. Anders would never stoop so low.

Anders gave Amell's door a knock, and waited. He heard a loud thud from inside a few seconds later, and muffled mutterings. "Wait!" Amell yelled from inside.

Anders waited. Eventually, the door opened, and Amell stood in front of him. He was wearing trousers, and what look to be a very recently donned tunic, to judge by the way it tangled up around his stomach. Long-sleeved, of course. The sleeves were probably the only reason Amell had put it on. "Anders," Amell said. He sounded surprised.

"That's me," Anders agreed, pushing down an irrational surge of guilt. "Do you have a minute?"

"As many as you want," Amell took a step back and waved him into his room. Anders half expected there to be a summoning circle on the floor, but there was nothing horrible and arcane going on anywhere that Anders could tell. The walls were lined with bookshelves, the bed was made, and the desk had an open book and a few bottles of what Anders guessed were the drinkable kind of spirits. Just a bedroom. Nothing creepy.

"Getting started early?" Anders joked, gesturing to the bottles on Amell's desk.

"It's Saturday." Amell said.

 "You're not sloshed, are you?" Anders asked.

"Not yet." Amell said. "Why?"

"Just wondering," Anders shrugged. He couldn't decide what to do with his hands, and stuffed his thumbs into his belt to keep them still. "What were you reading?"

Amell looked back at his desk. The book was vaguely familiar. Tattered and burnt. Anders had seen him reading it before. "... Sacrilege?" Amell said.

"Fun." Anders said.

"It's a different take on Andraste. As a mage, and not the Maker's Chosen." Amell elaborated, "I'm told it's what the Imperial Chantry believes. The Shaper of Orzammar gave it to me as a gift ages ago."

"How many ages are we talking?" Anders joked. "Storm? Steel?"

"Very funny," Amell grinned.

"Thank you," Ridiculously, Anders felt a little disappointed he hadn't managed to make him laugh. And awkwardly awkward. Time to find the point and get to it. "So... listen. I was wondering if I could ask you a favor."

"Ask away." Amell said.

"I was wondering if you'd mind summoning a demon for me." Anders said.

Amell stared at him, and his face went through a handful of contorted expressions before he burst out laughing. The wild cackle would have felt rewarding if Anders had been trying to make him laugh.

"I'm serious," Anders said.

"What?" Amell took a deep breath, and dragged a hand across his face, wiping his grin away. "Really? You're not just mocking me?"

"Okay, first: I'm a little concerned you find someone mocking you so funny, and second: No. I'm not." Anders wished they were sitting. This felt like a sit down conversation. Not a 'hover in the middle of the room because you fucked up avoiding him and you're probably going to run as soon as you're done talking' conversation. "You remember how I told you I rely on a single spirit of Compassion? Well, a demon has been threatening her demesne recently."

"What kind of demon?" Amell asked.
 
"Fear." Anders said. "I was hoping you could summon it? Or maybe fight it in the Fade? Something like a Harrowing, maybe?"

"Alright." Amell said. No hesitation. No stipulations. No comments about Anders avoiding him for the past few days. He just agreed. He always agreed. "Is it urgent? Velanna and I used the last of the lyrium on the shade in the cellars. The amount we'd need for a summoning or a Harrowing would require another expedition to Kal'Hirol unless I talked to Cera, and I don't trust her not to report this to the Circle as some sort of indication you're at risk for possession."

"I don't think it's that urgent," Anders said. The fear demon hadn't seemed willing to fight him, after all. Not yet, at least. "But the sooner we take care of it the sooner I'll feel better. Maybe sometime this month, or next month at the latest?"

"Alright." Amell said.

Well. That was easy. Anders rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, and chanced a glance at the door. He could leave now. Compassion was taken care of, he had all his affairs in order. One foot in front of the other, Anders.

"Aren't you going to ask me?" Anders asked rather than leave.

"Ask you what?" Amell asked.

"Why I've been avoiding you for the past few days?" Anders ventured.

"I... don't really think there's a need, do you?" Amell asked.

"You could pretend to be a little upset about it, at least." Anders said.

"I resigned myself to most people being afraid of me years ago, Anders." Amell said.

"I see how it is," Anders said, "Last month I'm an exceptional mage and the most attractive man you've ever seen, and now I'm 'most people.'"

"I didn't say that," Amell said. "I still think you're exceptional, and attractive, but I understand. You being afraid."

 "Will you stop saying that? I'm not afraid of you." Anders said.

"... You avoided me for days after the ritual, and now you're asking me to banish a Fear demon, but you're not afraid of me?" Amell asked.

"Oh yes, you pick that low hanging fruit. I bet it tastes great. Any type of demon could threaten my spirit, and I'd want it gone. The fact that it's Fear doesn't mean anything." Anders said.

"Except that demons are drawn to the emotions they reflect. Anders, I don't mind, really, I understand." Amell said.

"I'm not afraid of you!" Anders snapped. "You're not the only thing going on in my life, you know. I have more than enough nightmares for a Fear demon thanks to the Taint without adding you into the mess. So stop being so self-absorbed and ask me why I've been avoiding you."

"Why have you been avoiding me?" Amell asked obediently.

"Because you're crazy, and you're going to bleed to death someday summoning a demon to do Maker knows what, and it bothers me that that bothers me. You stepped right into that summoning circle. There was nothing keeping that demon from possessing you in there. It should have possessed you in there."

"But it didn't." Amell said. "It was a shade, Anders. They-"

"I know about shades," Anders interrupted him, "I know about demons, alright? I'm a mage too, in case you hadn't noticed. I know they don't need a host, but it was still a risk. A stupid risk." Amell didn't argue. It was frustrating. Anders wanted to argue. "Tell me I'm wrong," Anders said.

"You're not." Amell said. "I'm not going to argue with you, Anders. I know blood magic has risks. I think they're worth it. I was hoping if you saw the precautions I take and the control I have over my magic you'd understand."

"What precautions?" Anders asked, "Did you forget the part where you stepped into the circle, because I didn't."

"Velanna was there. You were there. If it did possess me, the circle would have kept me bound there, and I would have been easy to kill." Amell said. Like it was no big deal.

"See, you shouldn't even be thinking about that as an option. You can't die. Who would keep the templars away from me, then? Who would run the arling?"

"I don't care." Amell said. "I mean. I care about you," No. Bad. Don't say that. "The Wardens would protect you. I don't care about the arling."

"... You don't?" Anders asked. "I thought you liked being a Grey Warden."

"I do, but I didn't ask for this arling," Amell said bitterly, "I wrote to Weisshaupt after the Blight, and asked for appointment to Tevinter. They put me here instead. I don't doubt Alistair had something to do with that. Writing to Weisshaupt about how my 'proclivities' would make me a risk in Tevinter. How my 'preferences' would make me an embarrassment there. All his speculations on how I ended the Blight without Loghain or I dying to the archdemon. Taking my dog."

Amell stopped. He turned around and laced his hands together over his head. Anders had never seen him get worked up before. Not when he wasn't dying, or arguing with Cera. Amell went to his desk and took a drink from the open bottle there. "I'm sorry, what were you saying?"

"That you're obsessed with blood magic and going to die horribly," Anders said.

"Anything else?" Amell asked.

"No, that was about it." Anders said. Amell took another drink and leaned on his desk, and consciously or not, pulled his sleeves down further on both wrists. Anders felt guilty again. "So... Is that a good book?" Nice one, Anders. Don't ask him if he's unhappy ruling Amaranthine, or talk about his dog, or anything like that. No, let's focus on the book. That'll comfort him.

"It is." Amell said.

"Tevinter, huh?" Anders asked. "Not afraid of the Black Divine? The ritualistic virgin and kitten sacrifices? All the-"

"Blood mages?" Amell finished for him. "Not so much."

"You know they keep slaves there, right? I get not wanting to be judged just for being what you are, but Tevinter? That's like using a sledgehammer to crack open a nut." Anders said.

"Maybe I really like nuts." Amell said.

Anders laughed. Amell grinned at him, and Anders swore he could feel the tension defusing until Amell gave his sleeves another tug.

"Stop it." Anders said. Anders caught Amell's wrist, and rolled his sleeve up around his elbow. His arms were a mess. Line after line in every direction, the scars a shade lighter than the rest of his skin. But they were his mess.

"I don't care." Anders said. He ran his fingers up Amell's arm to prove it. The texture of so many scars was an odd combination of smooth and rough, with almost imperceptible indents that came from skin pulled back together and healed taut. It wasn't unpleasant. It just made Anders want to keep tracing the scars, so he did.

"Except that I'm apparently obsessed and going to die horribly." Amell reminded him.

"Look, I didn't mean it like that." Anders said. "You can be as creepy as you want, I would just rather you not die in the process."

Amell looked down at Anders' hand running over his arm. Anders stopped tracing his scars and took his hand back. He didn't know what to do with it afterwards.

"I think you like me a little." Amell said. His voice was soft, and he took the lost hand back and wove their fingers together. Well... Good. At least Amell believed him.

"Maybe a little." Anders said.

"I know what I'm doing." Amell said.

"Well it's a good thing one of us does." Anders snorted.

"I meant-" Amell started.

"Come on, I know what you meant." Anders interrupted. He shouldn't have brought it up in the first place. The whole conversation was too weighty for him. "I'm sorry, alright? Can we just stop talking now?"

"We can stop talking now." Amell agreed, but he didn't follow it up in the way Anders expected.

"Aren't you going to kiss me or something?" Anders asked.

"Or something?" Amell asked.

"You know, so it's clear you forgive me for avoiding you, and you and I are alright? 'Or something'." Anders said.

Amell took hold of Anders' belt and pulled him forward so Anders was straddling his leg. Anders fought back the urge to grind against his thigh, but the friction was right there, and Amell pushed his leg up to encourage him. The scent of him left Anders' thoughts clouded with hot metal and sweat and the tantalizing whispers of magic.

"Something like this?" Amell guessed.

The twitch of Anders' hips would have been imperceptible if they weren't pressed so close together. Amell's hand left his belt, and curled around the back of his thigh. Anders licked his lips, and watched Amell's eyes follow the path of his tongue. "Something like this," Anders agreed.

Amell cupped the back of his neck, and pulled Anders in for the kiss he'd asked for, but hadn't realized he so desperately craved. Amell tasted like whatever he'd been drinking. The flicks of his tongue came with fire and honey, and unashamed moans that hummed through Anders' mouth. Amell's hand slid up from Anders' thigh to his ass and squeezed, and their kiss swallowed Anders' needy whimper.

Amell locked Anders in his embrace, a hand in Anders' hair bending his head back for Amell to ravish his neck. He trailed a path of hot kisses down to Anders' collarbone, and sucked, swirling his tongue in a way that Anders hoped would leave a mark. Anders ground against him, chasing what little friction he could get on Amell's thigh. Amell's tongue carved a slick path back up to Anders' ear, and when Amell tugged on his earring with his teeth, Anders knew he was lost.

"Do you want me to fuck you?" Amell asked.

"Yes," Anders gasped, "Fuck, yes."

Amell leaned back to take off his belt and toss it at their feet. Anders felt pinned in place by his eyes. Amell didn't look away from him, even undressing, as if nothing else could be more important. Anders took off his own belt, and threw it behind him. Amell pulled Anders' tunic free of his trousers, and Anders lifted his arms for him to get it off. Amell dropped it on the floor beside them.

Amell's sharp exhale and the look on his face made Anders' toes curl. Amell dragged the pads of his fingers down Anders' chest, lingering on his nipples and over each rib. His eyes followed the path of his hands and Anders shivered. He wasn't used to the inspection. To the lack of a dark corner, frantic hands, and a few stolen moments.

"You're beautiful," Amell said, voice so low it was almost reverent. Amell caught his hips when he reached them, and pulled Anders back in for another kiss.

Anders fisted his hands in Amell's tunic, and turned Amell's tender kiss into something hot and desperate, "Say that again."

"You're beautiful," Amell said obediently, and picked Anders' up by his thighs. A sound of surprised spilled out of Anders' mouth and into Amell's when he set him on the desk. "What do you like?" Amell asked.

"What?" Anders asked, heart racing with how easy it was for Amell to lift him. His imagination conjured images of Amell pinning him to the wall, hands under his knees, dripping with sweat and fucking him till he screamed. "I-sex?"

"Where do you like to be touched?" Amell clarified. Anders felt the pull of the Fade, and the taste of lyrium on Amell's tongue when he kissed him again. "Can I use magic?"

"Yes," Anders drew on his own, and let static tingle between his fingers when he kneaded down Amell's shoulders. Amell groaned into his mouth, and Anders' proud grin ruined their kiss. Amell kissed his collarbone instead, the first breath of magic Anders felt from him was a rush of heat that seemed to pulse along his tongue.

"Oh-fuck," Anders cut off his spell to tangle his hands in Amell's hair. "Fuck that's good."

Amell exhaled a tiny breath, and the sudden switch to ice made Anders shiver. He bit his lip to stifle a gasp. Amell traced an aimless path over his chest, breath cooling the scorching path left by his tongue. All of it was interspersed with the drag of his teeth, a few sharp bites that went straight to Anders' cock. "Fuck-that's- fuck, Amell."

Amell flicked his tongue over Anders' nipple, and worried to a peak with his teeth and magic before he turned his attention to the other. Anders bit down a moan, hips jerking. The motion pulled his trousers taut and invented friction for his aching cock at the same time Amell's teeth pressed a faint circle around his nipple. "Holy shit," Anders smoothed the sweat on his brow back into his hair.

Amell groaned against his skin, tiny sparks of static dancing at his finger tips. He dragged his hands down Anders' back, still worshiping his chest with his mouth, and the tingle mixed with the ripples of pleasure stirred by his mouth. Anders broke and moaned, "Fuck. Just fuck me. You're being evil right now. Evil blood mage."

Amell muffled a laugh against Anders' chest, and snaked his fingers into the waistband of Anders' trousers. He stepped back, and Anders lifted his hips for Amell to drag them off with his smalls. Anders' cock was stiff and throbbing and leaking down his shaft, and Amell pulled his bottom lip between his teeth and sucked on it, his eyes so hot Anders thought they might melt him.

"No comment?" Anders asked.

"I have better things to do with my mouth," Amell licked his palm and sucked on his fingers. He spun the chair in front of Anders and sat, taking hold of his cock to run damp fingers up and down his shaft. Anders bit down a whine, desperate for real friction. Amell kissed the inside of his thigh, and leaned forward to drag his tongue along the underside of Anders' shaft.

Anders squirmed and clutched at Amell's shoulders, and hesitated reaching for his hair, "Can I-"

"Anything you want," Amell cut him off, licking the fluid leaking from Anders' cock. A shiver of pleasure ran through him, and Anders fisted his hands in Amell's hair. "As hard as you want," Amell added, breath warm on wet skin. Amell swept his tongue up and down Anders' length, tracing ridges, veins, mingling with the occasional kiss Anders decided not to think about.

Anders didn't need to think; he could feel. His shaft was smeared and dripping wet when Amell took him into his mouth, saliva glistening on his lips. The warm, wet embrace around the head of his cock made Anders' hips buck. "Fuck-sorry-fuck," Anders groaned, loosening his grip on Amell's hair so he could move. Amell took to him hungrily, his eager moans vibrating along Anders' cock and building bliss.

Anders felt the Fade, and the sweeps and swirls of Amell's tongue turned from warm to hot, and Anders felt it everywhere. Pleasure wound tight in his stomach, caught up in his chest, tingled in his feet and curled his fingers and toes. Anders bit down a wild moan, and scrabbled for some kind of purchase to keep himself from bucking mindless up for more. Amell pinned his legs under his arms, and wrapped his arms around the small of Anders' back. He sank low on Anders' cock, his tongue a bed of heat, and Anders whimpered, "Fuck-oh-fuck-yes-yes, don't stop."

Amell hummed encouragement around his cock, the subtle vibrations mingling with the slick, blazing friction. The sensations were so overwhelming they were almost too much to bear. Anders dissolved into shivers and desperate gasps, "Please-fuck-yes-please I'm right there," Amell hummed again, and Anders made the mistake of looking down. His cock was dripping wet, and the sight of it sliding between Amell's lips could have undone him on its own, but then Amell glanced up at him, eyes shadowed and shameless, and Anders came hard.

His climax felt hotter than Amell's tongue. It burned through him in mindless waves, and left him in a thick, white rush that filled Amell's mouth to overflowing. It spilled from the corners of his lips and stained Anders' cock as Amell kept moving, sucking and dragging his tongue until the aftershock was enough to make Anders whimper. He pushed feebly at Amell, and Amell broke from his cock with a wet pop.

Amell's chin was dripping wet, and he wiped his face off with a hand, sucking what he could off his fingers. Anders couldn't feel his toes. His left ear was ringing, and his whole body throbbed to the rapid beat of his heart. "Fuck," Anders gasped, pitching forward to hold onto his trembling thighs and catch his breath, "Fuck, you're good at that."

"I know," Amell grinned.

"Ass," Anders stumbled off the desk. He wasn't sure where he'd intended to go, but his knees buckled. Amell caught him before he could fall and pulled him into his lap. Maker, he smelled good. He felt good. The firm body beneath him offered all the support Anders could possibly ask for. Amell wrapped his arms around him in an embrace magic made warm.

"Your turn?" Anders asked.

"Whenever you're ready," Amell ran his nails along Anders' scalp. A happy hum escaped Anders, and Amell kissed his shoulder. Anders was hard pressed to care about blood magic or demons, but the affection scared him. He pulled back from it, and grabbed Amell's shirt to pull it up over his head. Amell raised his arms for him, and Anders tossed the shirt aside.

Maker's fucking mercy. Anders had seen Amell without his shirt more than once, but it didn't make him any less intimidating. Anders traced over the well-defined collarbones, and the sharp lines of muscle, static at his fingertips when Amell gave him a push to get him off his lap.

"Wait," Amell said.

"Where are you going?" Anders demanded.

"With my arms showing?" Amell glanced over his shoulder at him, latching and locking the door, "Nowhere. We forgot to lock the door."

"Oh now you care," Anders laughed when he came back, "Good thing you were thinking of me back there."

"I wasn't thinking of anything but you," Amell said, leaning on his desk to pull off his socks. Amell slid his thumbs into his trousers and pushed them down and off with his smalls. Anders caught Amell's waist before he turned around and ran his thumbs over the dimples in his back.

"I like these," Anders said.

"Yeah?" Amell leaned back against his chest, and the warm press of bare skin was something Anders desperately needed more of.

"Yeah," Anders slid an arm around Amell's waist, and stole a sweaty palm around his erection. The soft skin and firm length felt perfect beneath his fingers. Anders ran his thumb over his slit, loving the twitch of Amell's cock in his palm. Amell dropped his head back on his shoulder, breathy moans pitching up with the pace Anders' set.

Anders bit Amell's shoulder, and licked the taste of salt off his skin. He pulled through to the Fade, and let a whisper of electricity play over the hand he held against Amell's stomach. Anders let it gather past the tingle of static, and built it up into a shock before he released it. Amell cried out, and his legs buckled. Anders caught him before he slipped out of his arms and pulled him back against his chest.

"Too much?" Anders guessed.

"No-no-fuck-just-bed?" Amell managed, grabbing Anders' hand to drag him there. Amell threw himself down on the mattress and pulled Anders on top of him, cupping his face in his hands to kiss him, lips still slick from the time they'd spent on Anders' cock. Anders wrapped his hand around Amell's shaft, and broke off from his lips to kiss Amell's forearm.

"Subtle," Amell joked, hips bucking into his fist. "Ah-fuck."

"They look fine," Anders said.

"Liar," Amell said.

Anders let static gather into another shock, and let it sweep up Amell's thighs and ripple through his cock. A shout escaped Amell, and the bite of his nails on Anders' back was almost painful. Electric ecstasy made him tremble and his back arch. Anders climbed over him, and licked the taste of lyrium off his skin on his way down his chest, "They do," Anders said against his skin, "Whatever. They're just you."

Amell was still panting from Anders' spell when Anders reached his cock, and dragged his tongue up the sensitive underbelly. The heady taste clouded Anders' head. He held Amell's cock steady, his tongue slipping over his shaft and head, grazing his fingers and palm. Amell dug for purchase with his heels, but the sheets were rich and frictionless, and his legs were slipping in an eager scramble.

Anders stretched his lips around the head of Amell's cock and sucked. "Fuck, Anders, yes," Amell groaned, brushing his fingers over Anders' brow and the few loose wisps of gold that hung there. Anders reached behind his head and pulled out his tie, and his hair fell around his face. The strands swayed with every bob of his head, but weren't quite in the way, "Oh-fuck you look good," Amell said.

Anders chuckled around Amell's cock, and knew exactly what it felt like when Amell bit his lip. Saliva escaped around his straining lips, and spilled down Anders' chin to run down his neck. He tried for an experimental swirl of his tongue, and felt half a maleficar to make Amell moan so easily. Anders took hold of Amell's thighs to hold him steady, the warmth of the sweat between them as much as bliss as the way Amell tensed for his touch.

Amell ran his fingers through his hair, and Anders closed his eyes, lost to the rhythm, the taste, the sound of their mingled breath, and the wet slide of skin on skin. A few broken tremors ran through Amell, and he squeezed Anders' shoulder, voice hoarse when he spoke, "Can I come in your mouth?"

Anders debated stopping to say yes. He settled on a playful thumbs up. Amell made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a moan. Anders wasn't sure whether he liked Amell's expression or the sounds he made more when he came. The raw unfiltered passion of both was the most honest thing Anders had ever seen from him.

Heat hit the back Anders' throat, coated his tongue, filled his mouth and spilled down his chin. Anders swallowed, but his lips and face were still dripping onto Amell's cock when he pulled back and caught his breath. He cleared his throat and coughed, wiping off his face as best he was able with his hand. His jaw ached, but the ache was almost as pleasant as the one in his cock.

"Fuck," Amell said breathlessly.

Anders laughed and rolled out of the wet spot left between his legs, and stared up at the ceiling of the canopy bed. The terrifying thought that he could get used to this, wanted to get used to this, flitted through his head before Anders shut it out. Maker, Anders must have been the crazy one.

Now what? Anders couldn't help wondering. It wasn't as if they'd snuck into a closet for a quick tryst and were running out again as soon as they were finished. This was Amell's room. Amell's bed. Was he supposed to gather his clothes and leave? Did Amell want him to stay? Had Amell even enjoyed himself, or was Anders just giving himself too much credit? Anders didn't know and didn't know how to ask. Clothes then. Anders decided. He couldn't run away from his problem naked, after all.

"Have fun?" Amell spoke up when Anders shifted.

"Loads," Anders joked, relieved Amell had said something. "... Did you?"

Amell hummed affirmatively, and groped blindly across the bed until he found Anders' chest. Amell trailed his fingers lazily up and down his skin, and Anders tried to ignore how nice it felt. "Want to go again?"

"Right now?" Anders asked.

"Yes." Amell said.

"Yes." Anders laughed.

Anders lost an hour like that. Maybe more. They went three times before Anders gave up. His whole body felt like a bruise. A good bruise. 

"Quitter." Amell mumbled, laying with his arms folded over Anders' stomach. Anders let him. The whole bed felt like a wet spot at this point, and Amell the only warm thing left.

"How are you not exhausted?" Anders asked.

"I'm young." Amell said.

"You're only five years younger than me, you ass." Anders said. "You're cheating somehow."

"Blood magic." Amell said.

"Really?" Anders asked, sitting up a little. Amell grinned at him. "Liar." Anders decided.

"So ... This was good, I hope?" Amell asked.

"And people say I ask stupid questions." Anders said.

"I just don't want you to start avoiding me again." Amell said.

"Look... I ... I won't, alright?" Anders said, and hoped that would be the end of it.

"Alright." Amell said.

"So that book," Anders changed the topic. "Do you think I could borrow it, when you're done with it?"

"Didn't I already give you a book to read?" Amell wondered.

"I read it. Honest. I am thoroughly versed in Chantry-approved blood magic. But I mean, Andraste as a mage? When I was younger, I used to be a good little Andrastian. I said my prayers, repented my sins, all of it." Now he had sex with maleficars and had a borderline sacrilegious opinion on blood magic. What would his mother say? "I really believed, you know? Then the templars showed up and dragged me off without so much as a by-your-leave."

"How old were you?" Amell asked gently.

"Twelve," Anders flexed his fingers. He could still see his young self, clutching the pillow his mother had made for him to his chest around the handcuffs the bloody templars had slapped on a child.

Amell found his hand and squeezed it, banishing the memory.  "How old were you?" Anders asked.

"Seven." Amell said.

They sat in what seemed to Anders a companionable silence for a time. It was nice, being with a fellow mage: someone who understood, someone who could relate. "Anyway," Anders shook himself, forcing a smile, "What I was getting at was it would be nice to read something from a Chantry that doesn't try to collar mages just for being what we are."

"Of course you can borrow it," Amell assured him, "Just be careful with it. I think I've got the only copy outside of the Imperium."

"I will be." Anders promised.

"Anders, can I ask you something 'feely'?" Amell asked.

"Am I going to get in trouble if I say no?" Anders asked.

"No. Of course not." Amell said.

Amell lay on his stomach, not pressing him. Anders curiosity got the better of him. "What is it?" Anders asked.

"Did you mean it, or were you just trying to save face?" Amell asked. "When you said you weren't afraid of me?"

This was a bad question. Anders didn't like this question. He wasn't afraid of Amell. He was afraid for Amell. Neither of those options were appealing. "You're not that scary." Anders said.

"You call me creepy all the time." Amell said.

"Not the same thing. At this point it could be a nickname." Anders said.

"I like nicknames." Amell agreed. "Can I pick one for you?"

Anders was already a nickname. Anders didn't tell Amell that. He wasn't sure if he ever would. "Sure, but I get the final say. And Maker help you if it has anything to do with darkspawn."

"Nevermind then." Amell said.

Anders laughed. Amell chuckled a little. The levity made Anders feel better. It was light, and Anders much preferred it to anything weighty. He couldn't handle weighty. Amell climbed up his chest to kiss him, and Anders was just starting to think maybe he could go again after all when someone knocked on the door.

"Warden-Commander?" Someone yelled through the door.

Amell groaned and buried his face in Anders' shoulder. "Good thing you locked it." Anders whispered. Amell sighed and sat up.

"Wait! I'll be out in a minute!" Amell yelled through the door.

Amell climbed out of bed and hastily wiped himself down with his discarded tunic before heading to his armoire to change into something fresh. "You can use my washroom if you want. And borrow that book. I was just rereading it."

"Alright." Anders said. "I think we missed lunch, but I guess I'll see you at dinner?"

"Assuming whatever this is doesn't keep me." Amell said, buttoning up a blue and silver doublet.

"Commander!?" Whoever was at the door yelled again.

"I said wait!" Amell yelled back.

"You want to sneak out through the window, make a run for it? We could catch a boat for Tevinter and be gone before anyone suspects a thing." Anders joked.

"Yes." Amell said. He finished dressing and came back to the bed. Anders didn't need a goodbye kiss, but Amell gave him one. "I'll see you at dinner."

"See you." Anders agreed. Amell slipped out the door without giving whoever was at it a look inside. Anders wondered if he was a secret. If he was, he wasn't a very well kept one. Anders got up, and took an exceptionally long piss and an equally long bath before changing back into his clothes. He couldn't find his hair tie.

Anders went to Amell's desk, and gingerly picked up the damaged tome, when he noticed Amell's grimoire.

It was sitting on top of a pile of other books on a corner of the desk. It was bound in black leather, with a reservoir rune embossed in silver on the cover, and it radiated power. It felt like standing next to a cask of pure lyrium. Amell had claimed it a spelltome, bound with spirits, but the way he'd paused made Anders suspect otherwise.

It wasn't any of Anders' business. He had his tome, and his clothes, and his cue to leave. Curiosity killed the cat, after all, but then... What else were those nine lives for? Anders reached out to open it.

It screamed. A malevolent scream, of Anguish, of Agony, of Terror and Despair. The sound cut through Anders like a knife, and seemed to come from inside his own skull. The pain of it touched his soul and rent his heart. Anders covered his ears, but the screaming stopped as soon as he stopped touching the tome. They weren't spirits. They weren't spirits at all.

Anders had known before he ever touched it. There'd been no reason to touch it. He knew what Amell was. Anders took a deep breath, and realized he was shaking. He was just startled. That was all. He was fine.

He wasn't afraid.

Notes:

Fanart
Amell

Chapter 16: Ground Rules

Notes:

Thank you so much for all your wonderful comments subscriptions bookmarks and kudos, and as always, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 24 Matrinalis Afternoon

Vigil's Keep - Warden Barracks

Anders was awful at Wicked Grace. He was never dealt a good hand, and he never seemed to pick the right cards to play or discard. He had horrible smattering of suits, at the moment. A knight, an angel, two songs, and a serpent. To make things even worse, he'd played two daggers earlier, certain he would draw more later. All in all, it was a mess.

He wasn't dexterous enough to cheat, which was frustrating, considering both Sigrun and Nathaniel were. Even Oghren managed to palm a card or two, but Anders couldn't work out how to get his hand all the way across the table and back into his lap without anyone noticing.

He wasn't even a good bluffer. Whatever his tells were, they were obvious enough that everyone knew them, and raised whenever he got a particularly bad hand. Anders took to whistling Blood on the Ramparts to take his mind off how appalling his cards were, but he honestly couldn't say if it was helping him any.

"By the Stone, I can't take it anymore!" Oghren slammed his tankard down on the table. Ale sloshed over the edge, and Nathaniel scrambled to save the discard deck from getting wet. He probably stole a dozen cards in the process. "You keep whistling that sodding song I am going to ram your head so far up your ass the next time you whistle it'll be a fart!"

Anders' whistle tapered off into a sad wheeze.

"Gee Oghren," Sigrun giggled, playing her third knight. "That sounds pretty... gory,"

"No! Don't you start." Oghren said.

"What do you think, Nate?" Sigrun asked.

"I think that would be a wretched way to die." Nate said, playing his third serpent. This game was rigged.

"Nug humpers, all of you." Oghren said.

Anders laughed despite his luck. Sigrun took up the song in earnest just to annoy Oghren. Anders was ridiculously fond of the little dwarf. She'd quickly become one of his favorite companions to have around the Vigil, right next to Amell and Oghren. Anders took another look at his hand, and decided to cut his losses, "I'm out," Anders said. He dropped his horrid cards on the table, and left the barracks. Once he was in the hall, he stuffed his thumbs into his belt and started whistling again.

"Anders," A voice said from right behind him.

Anders did not scream. He just whistled. Loudly. With his mouth open. Anders whirled around and found Nate staring at him, evidently having followed him into the hall. "Maker's balls, Nate, you have got to learn how to make a little noise when you move. Cough, belch, fart, or something. I think you gave me a heart attack. Don't give me mouth to mouth if I faint. Go find Amell."

"Has anyone ever told you you startle easily?" Nate asked.

"You'd startle too if your shadow jumped off the ground and started asking you questions." Anders said. "What do you need?"

"I wanted your opinion on this," Nathaniel said, taking a pouch off his belt and emptying the contents into his hand. A large gemstone fell out, a greenstone or emerald or something. Nathaniel handed it to him.

Anders weighed the thing, but he wasn't a dwarf. It was a gem. "It's... very green?" Anders said.

"It's a malachite," Nathaniel explained. "Sigrun ... found it."

"Stole it." Anders said, handing it back. Nathaniel didn't argue.

"I was hoping to make it into a necklace." Nathaniel said.

"And the necklace is... for me?" Anders said.

"No." Nathaniel said. Anders pouted. "I know you courted a lot of women in the past, and I noticed you wear a lot of jewelry. I thought you might have some helpful insight. What type of setting I should use, the cut, the length of the chain, the type of clasp."

"Settle down there, lover boy," Anders said. "I woo, I don't court, and I don't wear a lot of jewelry."

Nathaniel raised an eyebrow at him. Anders glanced down at himself. Alright. So maybe he did wear a lot of jewelry, but that wasn't his fault. Amell hadn't been kidding about spoiling him. Amell had given him a new gold earring in place of his old brass one, a new chain and clasp to replace the one Anders had broken on Ferrenly's necklace, and a set of enchanted rings. Anders hadn't asked for any of it, but damned if he wasn't happy to have it.

"Alright. Fine. I wear a lot of jewelry." Anders found a nearby pillar to lean against. "So this is for Velanna? How's that working out?"

"I don't know that our relationship is really relevant to my question." Nathaniel said.

"It's completely relevant. There are levels to jewelry, you know. You can't go all out if you haven't gone 'all out.'" Mostly, Anders was just curious.

"I think I would call us friends, at this point," Nathaniel said cautiously. "I just want advice on the sort of necklace you would give any beautiful woman to express an interest."

"Alright," Anders said, thinking. "You want my advice? Don't give her a necklace. The only necklace she wears is her sister's, and if you gave her one she'd probably go on some crazy rant about erasing her sister's memory. Make it a bracelet. Everyone loves bracelets... unless they're some sort of symbol for shackles and humans enslaving the elven race, and you know what? Why don't you just give her the stone? That seems safe. It would go nice with the chip on her shoulder."

"Thank you." Nathaniel said flatly. "This was about as helpful as I expected it to be."

"Well why are you asking me?" Anders asked. "I just wear whatever Amell gives me. He's the one with the dead elf in his head. Why not ask him?"

"I didn't know that he would have any advice, considering." Nathaniel said.

"Considering...?" Anders said.

"Considering he has no interest in women." Nathaniel said.

"Yes, mysterious creatures, women," Anders rolled his eyes. "Everyone knows their secrets can only truly be unlocked by our manly man keys. He and Velanna are practically inseparable. Go ask him."

"I-hush." Nathaniel said.

"Well that's just rude," Anders folded his arms over his chest. "If you don't like my advice-"

"Your advice?"  Velanna interrupted. At least Anders didn't scream this time. He turned around and found her standing behind him in the hall. "Your advice on what?"

"Woah. She's talking to me. Voluntarily. Quick, run outside and check the sky for flying pigs." Anders said.

"Ugh." Velanna muttered, shouldering past him towards the barracks. Anders stared at her back, and his mouth slipped open. Nate shook his head. The temptation was too much.

"How do you feel about bracelets?" Anders asked.

Nate sighed.

"How do I feel about what?" Velanna demanded, coming back over. She set her hands on her hips and glared at them.

"Bracelets." Anders said again. "You know, jingle jangle bangle, bracelet. Wear them on your wrists?"

"I know what a bracelet is, you-" Velanna stopped and glanced at Nate. If anything, her glare darkened. Oh boy. Anders contemplated fleeing, but he didn't want to miss the show. "What are you hiding behind your back?"

"Nothing." Nathaniel lied.

Velanna held her hand out, palm up. Nathaniel sighed again and dropped the malachite into it without a fight. Just friends, huh? Anders saw through that lie. Velanna turned the gem over in her hands. "Where did you get this?"

"I ... Just...came across it." Nathaniel fumbled. Poor bastard. He really was smitten.

"This is beautiful." Velanna said. "Ilshae used to collect these stones for her aravel. See the swirls, here? They resemble the vallaslin of Sylaise. Ilshae used to give them to the children, whenever they needed healing. She would tell them her magic came from the stones. She called them 'Sylaise's Tears' and said the magic only worked if they rubbed the stones with their hands, because Sylaise so loves warmth. It took their minds off the pain. Isn't that ridiculous?"

"I take it you knew better?" Nathaniel asked.

"I did, but I thought Ilshae a fool. Even as a child. I rubbed the stone because I thought she believed, and didn't want to hurt her feelings. More the fool me." Velanna mumbled, toying with the gem. "Always the fool me... You intended this as a gift for me?"

"I did." Nathaniel said.

"And Anders' advice was to turn it to a bracelet? No wonder you did not like it. This is perfect as it is. Ma serannas, Nathaniel. I will find a place for it." Velanna said. She even smiled. Anders was tempted to run outside and check the sky for flying pigs after all. Velanna went into the barracks and left them out in the hall.

Nathaniel watched her walk away, grinning. It was sickeningly sweet, really.

"You owe me." Anders said.

"I don't owe you." Nathaniel said. He turned and followed Velanna into the barracks.

"You owe me!" Anders yelled after him.

Nathaniel definitely owed him. Anders chuckled to himself and headed to the stairwell. Amell was busy going over something or other with someone or other, but he'd claimed he'd be done by mid-afternoon. Losing hand after hand of Wicked Grace would be a lot more tolerable with Amell there. Or they could just have sex. That was always a fun option.

Anders checked the library first. Amell wasn't there, but Cera was. The elf was just leaving, and Anders almost ran right into her. She smelled like musty tomes and a life of imprisonment. Anders hated that smell.

"Anders," The fiery little elf glared up at him. Anders did not have good luck with elves. Namaya, Velanna, Cera. Amell liked him, and Amell had a dead elf in his head. Did that count? "Good. I need to talk to you."

"What a coincidence! Because I need to do literally anything else, so..." Anders turned around, and started towards the third story stairwell. Cera followed him. "Seriously?" Anders sighed and stopped.

"Why have you not turned in your staff for study? The one of volcanic aurum retrieved from the dwarven fortress of Kal'Hirol?" Cera asked.

"Because it's mine...?" Anders ventured.

"You have a replacement," Cera said. "I know the Warden Commander requisitioned your things from the Circle-" 

"Which, you know, you could have done," Anders interrupted her. "But you didn't, so... Go away?"

"By your own report, the staff appears Tainted," Cera continued as if she hadn't heard him. "You claim it 'slippery' with a prevailing aura of 'wrongness.' A crude assessment, but a fascinating one. The Blight is not known to affect inanimate objects. It warrants study, the kind which can only be carried out by the Circle. You should have turned it in. You still should."

"If Amell wants to study my staff, he's more than welcome to," Anders said. Shit. That was a good one. Remember that, Anders.

"His title is 'Warden Commander' and it is highly inappropriate for you to refer to him as anything else." Cera said haughtily.

If the little witch thought calling Amell 'Amell' was inappropriate she should have heard the hundreds of comebacks Anders was sitting on. 'You should hear what I call him bed' was probably one of his top three. "If Amell has a problem with me calling him Amell, then I'm sure Amell can tell me himself." Anders said.

"Are you at all aware of the significance of this arling?" Cera demanded. "The Wardens need to endear themselves to the local populace to prove they can be trusted with political standing in Ferelden. It is difficult enough for the nobility to accept a mage as their Arl, even the Hero of Ferelden, but a mage in a public relationship with a known apostate? Do you have any idea the resentment you are stirring?"

"Kind of hard to miss when it's standing right in front of me with its knickers in a twist." Anders said. "Jealous much?"

"Turn in your staff." Cera said.

"Blow me." Anders said.

Cera turned red. "You insolent, irresponsible, sad excuse for a-"

"Ambassador." A voice called out. Anders turned around, surprised. Not because someone had interrupted, but because anyone but Amell would be willing to defend him. Mistress Woolsey stood at the base of the third story stairwell, frowning at them. "I trust you have a reason for speaking to a Senior Warden in such a fashion?"

"Anders has been a Warden for scarcely two months." Cera said incredulously. "Calling him 'Senior'-"

"Is the truth." Woolsey said. Anders could have kissed the old girl. "Anders is one of the senior most wardens at the Vigil. He manages the infirmary, and has a physician and aid under his charge, and you are out of turn to speak to him in such a fashion. And Anders, while the Wardens keep their own council, I do not believe the Warden Commander would appreciate the Ambassador of one of his most formidable allies to be accorded with anything less than respect." 

"She started it." Anders said.

Cera said nothing. She trembled like an angry cat, all upturned hackles, and stormed away without a word. Woolsey descended the last of the stairs and came over to him.

"Thanks. I think." Anders said.

"She's right, you know." Woolsey said. "Not about the staff. The spoils of your expeditions are rightly yours, and I would not be so ready to turn them over to the Circle were I you. Your relationship with the Commander, however... Eyes are on us here in the arling. I have already spoken to the Commander about it. I will not pretend it is fair to either of you, but please, be discreet. For all our sakes." 

Woolsey left him standing in the middle of the hall. Anders felt a little queasy, but couldn't say why. Well... What did he care if they had to keep it a secret? It wasn't like the Circle had been any different. It wasn't like he didn't have practice.  No big deal. It was just sex anyway.

Anders turned to head up the stairs, but Amell was already heading down them. Fortuitous, that. No... Wait. Woolsey. Amell was meeting with Woolsey this morning. Something about trade. Anders should pay more attention when Amell was talking about the arling.

"Anders," Amell grinned, taking the last few steps at a jog. "Looking for me? I was just coming to find you." Amell stopped in front of him and leaned in for a kiss. Anders leaned back. Amell's confused expression combined with his puckered lips was more than a little hilarious.

No Anders. No laughing. Be serious. Behave. "Aren't we supposed to be some sort of dirty secret?" Anders asked.

"You ran into Mistress Woolsey on the way up." Amell guessed.

"Or she ran into me on the way down." Anders said.

"We're contrary today," Amell said.

"No, I'm contrary today." Anders said.

Amell grinned and tried to kiss him again. Well... When had Anders ever cared about rules? Anders caught Amell's hips and held him for a few seconds. Alright, so maybe it was more of a minute. It wasn't Anders' fault Amell smelled and tasted so intoxicating.

"We are. Supposed to be a secret." Amell said when they broke apart. He was doing a very poor job of keeping them one, Anders thought. "To be honest, I'm already half a secret. It's easy for everyone to forget I'm a mage under all the armor."

"So Rylock... wasn't just fucking with you? That's really why you wear it?" Anders asked.

"No, I wear it because I don't like being stabbed." Amell said.

"Doesn't seem to be helping a lot there, honestly." Anders said.

"It helps a lottle." Amell said.

"A lottle?"  Anders said.

"I... was going to say a lot but changed my mind and tried to say a little as a joke." Amell said.

"What did I tell you? You're Creepy, not funny." Anders said. "So, what's the plan? Do I just not look at you in public? Yes Ser Commander Ser?"

"That's ... No," Amell glanced around the hall. Anders imagined he wanted to sit down. Anders wanted to sit down. Anders grabbed Amell's hand and led him back up to his quarters. Anders lit a fire in the hearth with his magic and they sat down on the couch.

"Well?" Anders prompted him.

"We just can't touch in public, and you're supposed to call me Commander." Amell said.

"Not Creepy? I was getting fond of Creepy."  Anders said.

"You can call me anything you want when we're alone, or with the Wardens. But not in front of the soldiers, or the people, and never in court." Amell said. "... I'm sorry. I know this is a hassle-"

"Hey, whatever. Aside from having to call you Commander it's not like anything changed. I wasn't cuddled up in your lap on the throne calling you smoochie-kins or anything like that."  Anders said.

"I'm also supposed to stop 'showing obvious favor through excessive compensation'." Amell said.

"That means all the gifts right?" Anders asked.

"I wasn't going to listen to that one." Amell said. "Don't worry."

"You better not. My name-day is coming up. I expect a pony, by the way." Anders said.

"That's a little steep considering the darkspawn ate all of our horses." Amell said.

"No excuses." Anders said.

"Alright. I'll get you a pony." Amell said, "In the meantime, I have everything set up if you're ready to kill the Fear demon."

Anders hadn't seen any binding circles when he'd walked into Amell's room, but he imagined they could always use the one in the cellars. "So... You are going to kill it, right?" Anders asked. "No making crazy blood magic deals?" Or binding it to your grimoire? Anders wanted to ask but didn't.

"Of course I'm going to kill it," Amell said. "Fear demons are too primal to bargain. They don't have any traits to appeal to the way Desire and Pride demons do."

"Well you could promise to be extra creepy, but I see what you mean." Anders said.

"I don't think we should summon it." Amell continued. "The binding circle in the cellars is too weak to hold a Fear demon. Add that to how thin the Veil is down there, and it could summon Terror demons to follow it through, and we'd have a Tear beneath the Vigil."

"So a Harrowing then? Goody. I loved my Harrowing." Anders lied unconvincingly.

"With the two of us and your spirit having control of the demesne, it should be easy." Amell said.

"The two of us?" Anders asked. "Are you sure you need me there?"

"The Fear demon is drawn to you and your spirit, Anders. Without you there there's nothing to guarantee it would even show." Amell said.

"Are you sure we can't summon it?" Anders asked. "Demons are stronger in the Fade, after all."

"So are mages." Amell said.

"... You know I almost didn't finish my Harrowing?" The question tumbled out of Anders' mouth without his permission, and he braced himself for an incredulous snort. Amell reached over and held his hand. No judgment, just silent support, so Anders kept talking. "The First Enchanter rushed it, after my second escape attempt. Harrowed mages can't be made Tranquil, and the Knight Commander was considering Tranquility as a solution for the 'repeat offender'.

"I was sixteen. Sixteen. Can you believe that? I was sent to the Circle at twelve. They gave me four years of training, and threw me into the Fade to fight a demon. I didn't know what was going on, what I was doing. I latched onto the first thing that spoke to me, this... Spirit. I thought. It took the form of an apprentice. It told me it was an apprentice that died during its own Harrowing.

"It went on and on about how cruel the templars were, how unfair and unjust the Circle was to throw mages lives away, forcing them to fight demons or be made Tranquil. It told me it would help me escape, help me get away from them, from the Circle if I just let it in. And you know what I did? I said yes.

"Compassion saved me. She told me to open my eyes, said it was a demon playing me, trying to possess me. The demon was furious with her. It tried to kill her, and I tried to protect her. Just putting up a fight broke the spell, and I woke up with a templar's sword staring me straight in the face.

"I was taking too long, they said. That was it. I was sixteen and taking too long to fight a bloody Pride demon, so they were just going to stick me on the floor. Can you believe that?" Anders laughed, and rubbed the back of his neck. "... I don't know why I'm telling you this."

"Hopefully because you trust me." Amell said.

"Well yeah, but 'oh by the way last time I did this I almost got possessed' probably isn't the best thing to hear before we jump into the Fade." Anders said.

"That's not what I heard." Amell said. "I heard you stood up to a Pride demon with hardly any training and won. I don't think you even need my help with a Fear demon, but I'm happy to be here for you."

Anders hadn't ever looked at it that way. When you put it that way, it almost sounded brave. "I think I get why she likes you." Anders said.

"Why who-" Amell started to ask. Anders would tell him later. He caught Amell's face in his hands and kissed him, and quickly had Amell pinned beneath him. One hand under Amell's tunic to tease his nipple, one hand in his trousers to grab his ass, and Amell was a mess of unintelligible moans. Anders was getting pretty good at this. "Anders-we should probably-fight it now-while I have time before-before... fuck."

Anders let go of him, laughing. "Alright. You're right. The sooner we get this over with the better. I'll have to think of some way to show my gratitude after."

"You could fuck me." Amell said. No creativity with this one.

"You say that like I don't already." Anders said.

"No I meant actually fuck me," Amell wrapped his legs around Anders' waist. Anders caressed one thigh without thinking.

"Oh 'actually' fuck. Because we were only 'sort of' fucking before." Anders joked.

Amell didn't have a retort. Anders rolled his hips forward experimentally and decided he liked the way he fit between Amell's legs. Amell pushed back against him eagerly and Anders had to take a slow breath to settle down. "Is it weird that I kind of pictured this the other way around?" Anders asked.

"No." Amell said, "I'd love to fuck you, but unless you've gotten a lot of practice in without me it's not really something we can jump into."

"I take it you've had a lot of practice without me?" Anders asked.

"Yes. Well, not too recently." Amell reached up to play with Anders' earring. "I know you don't like to talk about things like this, but I sort of assumed we were exclusive?"

Fuck. Not this conversation. Anders had gone weeks without this conversation. Alright. Big boy knickers Anders. Tell him this is just casual sex. Tell him you don't like him like that. Anders tried. He opened his mouth to say it. No sound came out. Amell noticed his hesitation and put on what Anders thought was a very believable smile.

"Well that's my fault then," Amell said, dropping his hand. "It's fine, if you'd rather not be. Anyway-"

"You're seriously just going to let me get away with anything, aren't you?" Anders' mouth betrayed him. He had everything he wanted. Protection from templars, a good friend, good sex, no strings, and he had to open his stupid mouth.

"I don't mind if that's what you want," Amell said.

"Liar." Anders said.

"I don't mind enough to stop having sex with you." Amell clarified.

"Well I don't mind being exclusive, so..." Anders said.

"Liar." Amell said.

"Oh, come on." Anders said. "Who has time to fuck more than one person anyway? Unless it's a threesome. Which I am not into, by the way. So yes, you're the only one I'm fucking and I'd be happy to fuck you tonight."

"You're a romantic." Amell gave him a shove and rolled out from under him and off the couch. "I'm going to go use the washroom before I get Oghren then."

"So, remember how I just said I wasn't into threesomes?" Anders asked.

"Flames, Anders, not to fuck." Amell laughed. Anders was a little proud he managed to get a laugh out of him, even as an accident. "He's our 'templar.' Just as a precaution." Amell explained.

"You're going to tell Oghren I have a Fear demon harassing me? I'll never live that down." Anders said.

"Oghren already knows." Amell said.

"What?" Anders asked. "But he hasn't said anything. He hasn't given me any shit."

"It's important for you to be confident when we go into the Fade. I told Oghren not to rattle you." Amell said.

"And he listened?" Anders asked.

"Oghren is a good man when he needs to be," Amell said, and left for the washroom.

"But he hasn't given me any shit!" Anders yelled after him.

Amell didn't answer him. Anders stood up and paced a circle around his room. Anders liked Amell's room. Sure, it used to belong to Nate's dad, and that was a little weird, but it felt like the way the Circle should have. Arcane, without any mold or musk or templars. Anders wandered over to his desk.

The satchel Amell had found in the Silverite Mine was on the floor beside it. A few letters and a tome were on his desk, stained with some sort of fetid black liquid that looked like the Blight. A fresh parchment was beside them, half filled with notes for whatever Amell had been working on. Anders doubted anyone could forge that script. Amell had no slant at all to his letters. It was odd. Anders was right handed, so his letters went right. Maybe Amell was ambidextrous.

"What are you doing?" Amell asked when he came out of the washroom.

"Looking at your handwriting?" Anders said.

"Snooping is bad, Anders." Amell said.

"I have no self control." Anders said. "I thought that was obvious by now. So this looks creepy. You and Woolsey were up to no good this morning, I take it?"

"We were going over the renewed trade along the Pilgrim's Path. Remember I told you yesterday?" Amell asked.

"Yessss?" Anders said.

"You weren't listening." Amell said.

"I wasn't listening." Anders said. "What's all this, then?"

"This is what I was working on last night,"  Amell said, "I found the journal and the notes in the lab where Oghren was being held, back in the Silverite Mines. I think they belonged to the darkspawn emissary Velanna's sister Seranni was with. They're not very coherent, considering a darkspawn wrote them, but from what I can tell the darkspawn are using our blood to enhance themselves somehow, and that's why they can talk now. I was writing up what I knew to send to Avernus."

"Avernus your two-hundred year old blood mage pal?" Anders asked.

"You still don't believe me, do you?"  Amell asked.

"Honestly? I'm getting there. You think all this will help with the whole... not turning into a crazy ghoul and rotting away from the inside out thing?" Anders asked.

"I'm hoping." Amell said. "Avernus was already able to sustain himself off the Taint for two hundred years."

"But with blood magic, right?" Anders asked. "... Do you know how to do that?"

"Would you want me to teach you if I did?" Amell asked.

"Well, I kind of like living, and not being a ghoul, so assuming I don't have to sacrifice anyone in the process... I'm going to go with yes." Anders said.

"Then as soon as he teaches me, I'll teach you." Amell promised. "... I know some of the basics, if you wanted to learn. It's blood magic that draws directly from the Taint."

"And that sounds fascinating, but let's just stick to whatever spell makes me immortal for now and worry about being full fledged maleficars later." Anders said.

"If you change your mind, I'd love to teach you, but I won't press. Let me go find Oghren and we'll deal with your Fear demon." Amell caught his chin and planted a hard kiss on his cheek. "Don't snoop." Amell said and left.

Well now Anders had to snoop. Anders looked back at the desk when Amell left, but his letter was no fun. It was written in a cipher Anders couldn't possible hope to decipher, and the darkspawn's notes were so illegible Anders couldn't make them out. Amell's grimoire was still on the desk, but Anders had learned his lesson there.

What else was there, really? Amell had a journal he wrote in every night, but that was just low. And locked, in the drawer on his nightstand. Anders threw himself down on the bed and stared at the ceiling until Amell came back with Oghren.

The dwarf was fully outfitted in his platemail Warden armor, and carrying his helmet and his battleaxe. Calm down, Anders. It's just a precaution. Oghren's not a real templar. Real templars didn't belch and scratch their codpiece in front of you. "Hey, Sparkles." Oghren said, trundling over to sit on the edge of the bed. "Drink?" Oghren offered, holding out his hip flask.

Anders took it. Etched into it beside the mouth piece were the words 'One for the ditch.' Well. Wasn't that cheery? Anders took a drink and felt a little better for the fire it lit in his stomach. Liquid confidence was just as good as real confidence, right?

"Give me a few minutes to set up." Amell said. "Both of you play nice."

"So..." Anders said.

"Yep." Oghren said.

"Not going to make fun of me?" Anders asked.

"Nope." Oghren said. "Been in the Fade before. Been fucked with by demons before. Not gonna say shit. You do your thing, Sparkles. Boss'll sort it out."

"You've been in the Fade?" Anders asked. "But you're a dwarf. How have you been in the Fade?"

"No offense, Sparkles, but I don't really wanna talk about it. Ain't right, your Fade. Ain't sodding right. I know the drill. You two take a nap and I sit here in case you turn into one of them fleshy freaks. Then I split you like a melon." Oghren said.

"And you're okay with that?" Anders asked.

"Do I sodding look okay with that?" Oghren demanded.

"I don't know. Your face is kind of this mess." Anders waved a hand at Oghren's bushy eyebrows, bulbous nose, and tangled nest of a beard. "It's kind of hard for me to tell if you have an expression under all that."

"This is a frown." Oghren said helpfully.

"Do a smile." Anders said.

Oghren's mouth split open to reveal a set of yellowed teeth and rancid breath.

Anders recoiled. "Okay. Got it. Thanks. Not okay with this then."

"It helps that I'm pretty drunk right now. Wasn't just drinking during our card game for shits and giggles. Don't worry about it, though. Ain't nothing gonna happen," Oghren said reassuringly. "I just don't like mage shit."

"Anders, come and inscribe two paralysis glyphs here and here." Amell said.

"Why are we paralyzing ourselves exactly?" Anders asked.

Anders got up and looked at the set up Amell had made. It looked like your typical Harrowing, only a little more crude. There was no Harrowing Chamber, obviously, and the pedestal Anders remembered had been replaced with a simple silver bowl on the floor. Amell had even set down two pillows. How quaint.

"We're not." Amell said. "We can dispel them when we wake up. It's just a precaution."

"Alright." Anders cast the glyphs, and sat down on one of the pillows. "This is a lot better already, honestly. I never understood why they made us stand up just to pass out. I had a friend who broke his nose that way, you know. Fell flat on his face."

"Ready?" Amell asked.

"No." Anders said. He looked at the bowl of liquid lyrium sitting in front of him, and felt a little queasy. "So I just stick my hands in it like any old Harrowing?"

"Don't think of it as a Harrowing." Amell said.

"What should I think of it as then? A dream date?" Anders asked, and felt a little better for the shield sarcasm provided.

"Sure." Amell reached across the bowl and held Anders' hand. "Anything that helps you relax. You can think of it as introducing me to your spirit,"

"This is cute. Totally unrelated, but I'm gonna barf." Oghren said.

"Do you want to kiss me, just to fuck with him?" Anders asked.

"Barfing though. That's not gonna make your little ritual go tits up is it?" Oghren asked.

"If you want." Amell leaned across the bowl and kissed him.

"This would be so much better if you were two gals instead of two dudes." Oghren complained.

Anders barely heard him. He'd been bluffing. He wanted the kiss. Andraste preserve him, he needed it. He knew he needed to relax, but his nerves were shot to the Void and back at what was waiting for him on the other side of that damn bowl.

Amell helped. He always helped. His lips were soft and full of encouragement, and his free hand reached up to cradle Anders' jaw. There was a hint of soap underlying Amell's usual musk, and the combination was soothing. Anders was fine. He wasn't afraid. This would be easy.

Anders dunked their hands in the bowl together. Just like the first time Anders had done it, it felt like dying. The lyrium was cold as ice, and it swept up his arm and went straight to his heart. Relax. Relax. Relax. Anders sucked in a pained breath. It would stop. It would stop when he passed out.

"It's okay." Someone said when everything went dark. Amell or Compassion. "I'm here."

He woke up alone.

Notes:

Fanart
Amell and Anders

Chapter 17: Lost in Dreams

Notes:

Hello everyone! Thank you for all of your comments, kudos, bookmarks, subscriptions, and as always, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 24 Matrinalis Sometime

Somewhere

Anders woke up in a field of reeds. He sat up feeling groggy, and took in the barren landscape and muted light. The islands of other demesnes of other spirits and demons floated all around him, the Black City among them. The smell of the Fade reminded him of Amell, and he felt a little better for it.

A hand squeezed his shoulder. Anders reached up to squeeze it back, and touched leathery skin. "Lost your spirit, little mage?" Fear laughed at him.

Anders scrambled forward on his hands and knees and climbed to his feet. Willpower. It's all willpower. Anders summoned a staff and a barrier. The Fear demon clapped mockingly. "Where's Compassion?" Anders asked.

"Where indeed," The Fear demon circled him. Cautiously? Mockingly? "Such a fragile spirit, Compassion. Perhaps I killed your little spirit. Perhaps feeding off your Fear gave me the strength to make this demesne mine. Do you see your spirit anywhere, little mage?" Fear clenched its first, and demons of Terror burst out of the ground around it. They were lanky creatures of limb and ligament, their jaws broken off and hanging open down to their chest. "One of these, perhaps?"

"This is her demesne, not yours. Where is she?" Anders clenched his staff and counted. One, two... five Terror demons. He wasn't that much of a coward. The Fear demon had to have already have been strong before it noticed him.

The Fear demon laughed again. It was less a laugh, and more a chortle. It's whole body shook, bulbous and twisted, and the many bloated feet beneath its skirt swayed madly. Anders felt sick. He drew a repulsion glyph beneath his feet, but he had no idea if the magic would hold against six demons.

"So scared. So scared for one little spirit." A tongue flicked out of the Fear demon's mouth and licked its skinless lips. "Why? Perhaps because you Fear you'll never find another? Poor little spirit healer with no spirit. No virtues. Nothing to-" A bolt of spirit magic hit the Fear demon in the face. Anders wished he could say he'd done it.

The bolt struck one of the many tentacles on the demon's head. The magic seared through flesh and fat, and the tentacle fell off to flop among the reeds. The sickening smell of gristle filled the air, and the Fear demon screamed in outrage. All around Anders the Terror demons threw back their heads and wailed, broken jaws rattling on their chests.

Anders was right in the center of them, and the sound brought him to his knees. Sonic pulses bombarded him from all sides and turned the ground beneath him into pudding. Anders slipped and fell, but rather than take advantage how prone he was, the Terror demons dove into the ground and vanished.

The Fear demon noticed, and dove at him, only to bounce off his repulsion glyph. Anders picked himself up. Unable to reach him, the demon brought up its hands, and spindles of ice grew between its fingers like spider webs. Anders brought up a hasty spell shield, and the frost spell the demon cast at him diffused into the Fade around them.

"Coward!" The Fear demon screamed.

Alright Anders. Focus. You listened in some of your classes. Everything has a weakness. What are Fear demons weak against?

The demon threw another frost spell at him, and Anders deflected it with another shield. Not frost. Not fire. Electricity. That was it. Anders channeled the magic in air around him to form a bolt he flung at the demon. The Fear demon flickered, and vanished. The bolt flew through the space it had been standing in and continued out into the Void. The Fear demon reappeared a few feet to the left, cackling.

"I hope I don't kill Oghren." Anders said to himself. He threw bolt after bolt while the Fear demon phased in and out of existence around him. "Damn fucking shit. This is so not working. Mages are stronger in the Fade my ass."

A manic laugh from off to Anders' left put the Fear demon's cackling to shame. Anders dared a glance, and saw Amell had bound two of the three Terror demons and was forcing them to fight each other. The Fear demon turned away from Anders to scream. "No! You would dare! They are mine!"

Anders gathered for another bolt, held it until the voltage made his teeth rattle, and unleashed it into the Fear demon's back. The spell ripped a hole in the creature's side. A fountain of blood and intestines painted the reeds black and green, and the creature seized. One of its tentacles burst, and two of its spines fell off its back. Wailing in pain, the Fear demon turned back to him, still twitching with aftershocks from the spell.

Anders gathered for another bolt, but the Fear demon flickered, and vanished. The three Terror demons not bound to Amell threw back their heads and roared, hanging jaws rattling, and dove into the ground. The fighting stopped abruptly, and none of the demons reappeared.

"Well, we won." Anders said. "I think."

Amell limped over to him, and Anders belatedly realized Amell had been fighting five demons at once while Anders struggled with one. His two Terror demons came with him, threads of red miasma tethering them to Amell's hands.

They were aptly named. In place of eyes, the Terror demons had empty holes in their heads, from which pus oozed every few seconds. The pus poured into their open mouths, which contained row after endless row of teeth. On the bright side, unlike the Desire demon, they did absolutely nothing without direction when bound. Anders hoped that meant they were weak, or stupid, or both.

"Where did it go?" Anders asked. He looked around, and saw nothing but hills and reeds. "I don't think I killed it. Where's Compassion? This doesn't make sense. This is her demesne; she should shape it. It's usually littered with my memories, but this place looks empty. Maker, what if it actually killed her? She can't regenerate. She's not a spirit of Faith or anything strong like that."

"Anders, calm down." Amell said. "There's no reason to give the Fear demon any more of an advantage."

"No, you don't understand. I have to find her." Anders said. He tried to summon her, and felt an urgent pull to his right. Anders took off running. "This way!"

"Anders wait!" Amell called after him.

Amell could bloody well keep up. Anders didn't have time to wait. He ran through a field of reeds, and crested a hill. The other side fell off into the Void, but a curved path led down back under the island. Anders followed it into a cave, and found Compassion.

The Fear demon was there as well, along with its three remaining Terror demons. All of them were chasing her. Anders' mind could barely comprehend what he was watching. The landscape kept changing, walls would manifest and then vanish, the ground would fall away and reform as the spirit and demon fought for dominance over the tiny realm. Compassion looked little more than a ball of light, darting madly from corner to corner of the cave while Terror demons burst up in front of her at every turn. The Fear demon was too injured to chase, but it was watching and cackling gleefully.

"Get away from her!" Anders yelled, raising up his staff and channeling a storm. "You want Fear? I'll show you why mages are feared!"

Anders dropped the storm behind Compassion. Lightning struck, and arched between the Terror demons, and the Fear demon. It crashed against the ceiling, and brought half the cave down. Two of the Terror demons were crushed. The other was caught in a seizure. Anders channeled a second lightning spell, and let it loose between the Fear demon and its last minion.

Electricity arched between the two, and the Terror demon exploded. The Fear demon was burnt from the inside out, its eyes melted in its skull, every last tentacle on its head burst. Their corpses lingered for the span of a few breaths, and then faded into green dust.

"Anders!" Compassion phased out of the cave, and reappeared in front of him just outside it. Anders staff vanished. He didn't need it anymore. Compassion jumped into his arms. "I knew you would come. You care. You care so much."

Anders hugged her. "Hey sweetheart."

"It tried to steal you from me!" Compassion said. "It stole into your dreams, your memories. The year I lost you. It fed on so much. I couldn't stop it."

"Hey, it's okay," Anders kissed her forehead. "It's all over now. I told you I wouldn't let anything threaten my girl."

"I told you you didn't need me," Amell said from behind him. Anders turned around. Amell was leaning against the walled side of the path, a fair distance away. The two Terror demons were still standing behind him, idle and bound. "This is your spirit?"

"Who are you?" Compassion asked.

"What do you mean who is he?" Anders laughed. "Amell. You told me you liked him, remember? Said he was nice to me?"

"This isn't the Amell you dream of," Compassion said, shrinking back. "I don't like this Amell. He walks with demons."

"Well that's... I mean he had to bind them, to keep them from hurting us." Anders explained. Compassion flickered, and vanished to reappear behind Anders, visibly agitated. "Compassion?"

"I don't like him." Compassion said again. "Make him go away. He holds the demons here."

"The Terror demons are the last things threatening your spirit's demesne. As soon as we kill them we should wake. I can keep them bound, and wait at the top of the path if you want to take a minute." Amell said. He didn't seem at all surprised or affected by Compassion's response to him.

"No. No, hang on." Anders took Compassion's hand to keep her from flickering. "He isn't keeping the demon's here. He bound them. Okay? To protect us. He doesn't walk with them. He's going to banish them. He's helping keep you safe. Can't you tell? Can't you read his mind, the way you're always reading mine?"

"No," Compassion said.

"No?" Anders asked. "Well... Just trust me, then. He's the only reason I was able to come here and help you. You have to like him."

"Anders, it's fine." Amell said. "I don't know that a spirit can make the distinction between demons and someone using demon magic."

"No, she can. She's smart. I taught her jokes. She can learn, just give me a minute." Anders said. He let go of Compassion's hand and walked over to Amell. Anders patted Amell's face. "Look. See? Safe. Nice blood mage. He's not going to hurt you or me. You liked him. Come say hi or something."

Compassion flickered across her domain, and eventually settled a few nervous feet away from Amell.

"Sweets, he's actively sapping his will right now to keep those demons bound just so we can talk." Anders said. "Doesn't that count for something?"

"... You are very kind to help Anders." Compassion said eventually.

"You must have a very strong bond with him to be willing to speak to me." Amell said.

"Yes." Compassion said.

"... I haven't spoken to a spirit in almost three years now," Amell said.

"Cat got your tongue?" Anders asked.

"Something like that." Amell said. "... Do you prefer to be called she?"

"Yes." Compassion said.

"That's actually fascinating," Amell said. "Most Fade denizens don't have gender preferences that aren't shaped around dreamers' expectations."

"Yes." Compassion said.

"That makes sense, then," Amell said.

"What makes sense?" Anders asked. "Care to fill me in?"

"Your spirit prefers 'she' because you expect it to be a 'she.'" Amell said. "Which is still interesting I suppose. Is that form anyone in particular?" Alright. Maybe inviting Amell to talk to Compassion wasn't such a good idea after all.

"It's my form," Compassion said. Anders relaxed. Good girl. Nice vague answer.

"Can Anders channel anything but healing magic through you?" Amell asked.

"Yes." Compassion said. "Light. Energy. Aptitude. Auras. Anything I can give."

"And you... tell jokes?" Amell ventured.

"Anders likes jokes. They comfort him." Compassion said. Okay. Time to stop. Bad spirit. Oversharing.

"How did you meet him?" Amell asked.

No. No no no no.

"I heard him crying," Compassion said. "I wanted to help him. I filled his dreams with things I thought would comfort him, but I had very little experience with mortals, and my interference made him aware of me. We spoke. He was very kind."

That... could have been worse, Anders supposed. No mention of how it had happened when he was twelve, a fortnight into his stay at the Circle. No mention of how Compassion had taken the shape of his mother and he'd cried into her bosom for an hour. No mention of him still being a country bumpkin, barely able to write his own name let alone understand he was communing with a spirit. No mention of how he'd called her 'Mom' for a year until he'd figured it out.

"I have another question, but I think it would make both of you uncomfortable." Amell said.

"You're going to ask if we've had sex, aren't you?" Anders guessed.

"No, actually." Amell made a face at him, and looked back to Compassion. "I was going to ask if you would ever possess him, to save his life if he was badly injured or dying."

"No! No I would never." Compassion said fiercely. "I am no demon. What is this accusation?"

"I'm also going to go with 'What the fuck?' on this one." Anders said.

"It was just a question. Thank you for answering it. I have no more, if you wanted to ask me anything." Amell said.

"You are very kind to Anders. Do you care about him?" Compassion asked. Anders regretted everything about letting these two talk.

"Very much." Amell said.

"I have no other questions then. Thank you for helping us fight this demon." Compassion said.

"You're welcome." Amell said. "Thank you for talking to me. Anders, are you ready or do you want me to give you some time alone?"

"Maybe just a second? Are you alright holding those two?" Anders asked.

"I'm fine." Amell promised. "I'll wait at the top of the path."

Amell left. The Terror demons trailed listlessly after him.

"So hey, what was that?" Anders asked when he'd gone. "Is blood magic really that scary?"

"He reeks of demons." Compassion said, hugging herself in a gesture that looked painfully human.

"I think he smells nice." Anders said.

"He is kind to you," Compassion said. "And you care about him, but... Please be careful. Demons are not to be trusted."

"He's not a demon." Anders said.

"He is close." Compassion said.

Anders didn't know how to respond to that. "Alright, well... You stay safe, alright? And don't listen to any demons or anyone else's dreams. You're not a weak spirit. You shape the Fade with the best of them."

"Thank you, Anders." Compassion said. "I love you too."

"I didn't say that." Anders said.

"You thought it." Compassion said.

Anders gave her a hug. The path beneath him turned to stone, much like the spiral staircases of the Circle, and Anders followed it up to where Amell was waiting. The demesne was already looking better, frozen pieces of his past littered among the reeds. The smell of apple pie and cinnamon, the warmth of a fire place, and other little odds and ends of the mortal world filled up the barren landscape.

The only really out of place things were the Terror demons. They stood next to Amell while he drained a lyrium vein in the ground with a look near enough to ecstasy to make Anders skin heat up.

"All set." Anders said.

"Go ahead then." Amell said. "They won't fight back."

Anders channeled another lightning spell, and held it until the static made the hair on his arms stand up. He released it on both the Terror demons, and it tore through their lanky forms, burning skin and sinew. They didn't fight back, but they did scream. Not the aggressive howls from before, but a strange keening sound as if betrayed. They died in puffs of green smoke, and Anders woke up.

Anders was lying on the ground, with his finger stuffed up his nose and a hand shoved down Amell's trousers. Amell was lying under a chair Anders was relatively positive hadn't been there when they'd gone into the Fade. The chair had a bowl on top of it. That didn't seem good. Amell woke up, and instinctively sat up before Anders could warn him. He banged his head something fierce on the chair and knocked the bowl of some sort of liquid onto his chest. "Damnit Oghren," Amell moaned.

Amell rolled over in pain, and twisted Anders' wrist in the process. "Ow! Ow! Hand! Stop!" Anders protested, trying to free it from under Amell's belt.

Oghren was howling. "Hahaha! That's what you get, you little thunderhumper! Making me sit here waiting for some demon bullshit to jump out of your corpse and scare me shitless! Hahaha, good luck washing THAT out of your clothes!"

"Is this-what is this?" Amell shoved the chair back and sat up, peeling his wet tunic off his chest.

"Andraste's flaming knickers that's foul." Anders said, massaging his injured wrist. He dispelled the paralysis glyphs under them and scooted away from Amell. "You're taking at least three baths before you touch me. Seriously, what is that? Did you dump piss on him? There's no way piss smells that bad."

Oghren laughed, and took off his helmet. "Why don't you lick it and find out? Fuck this shit. I did my part. It took you chuckle-fucks till sundown to finish up in there. I'm gonna go drink myself into a coma. Use lye when you wash that, by the way. That shit stains." Oghren said, hopping off the bed and leaving.

"I have to bathe." Amell said, stripping out of his ruined clothes. "Damnit, I liked that shirt. Do you want to come with me?"

"Sure why not? I could use one considering Oghren touched me. And I think some of whatever that was got in my hair." Anders said.

Anders followed him to the washroom. Amell dropped his ruined clothes into his laundry basket. Anders hesitated doing the same. If they were supposed to be subtle, Anders probably shouldn't be leaving his clothes in Amell's laundry for the servants to find. Then again, could the servants really tell the difference? He and Amell were about the same size. Then again again, Anders didn't have any other clothes to change into, so he left his in a pile on the bench.

Amell was standing in front of his bath, channeling a fairly simple spell to fill it with water. Anders watched the way Amell's muscles played beneath his skin when he rolled his shoulders, and let his eyes wander south to where his thighs met his ass. "You should cast in the nude more often," Anders said.

"That sounds impractical." Amell said.

Anders walked over and set his hands on Amell's waist. "Well yeah, but you look-oh Maker that smell-nevermind. Bath first. Bath first."

"You're the one who came over here," Amell said.

"I take it back," Anders said. Anders heated the water with a modified fire spell, and grabbed a bar of soap from Amell's vanity before climbing into the bath. He found a seat for himself on the stone bench beneath the water. "Come here, you're rancid."

Amell dunked himself under water before coming over. "Where do you want me?" Amell asked.

"Don't give me that look. You still smell." Anders grabbed Amell's waist and sat him down on the bench facing away from him before attacking him with the soap. Anders probably should have been sensual about it, or something, but whatever Oghren had dumped on Amell was rank, and Anders wanted it gone.

"I love your hands," Amell sighed while Anders was washing his back.

"Don't start with that yet. At least not until I get your hair." Anders said.

"I can wash myself, you know," Amell said, leaning back into his hands. Anders stopped supporting him and Amell fell back into the bath. He came back up with a confused gasp.

"Well fine. Wash yourself. See if I ever I try to be nice again." Anders huffed, tossing the soap into water.

"I take it back-" Amell said.

"No. It's too late. My feelings are hurt." Anders said, folding his arms over his chest.

Amell straddled his lap and wrapped his arms around his neck. Anders liked him naked almost as much as he liked him wet. He liked everything from the way the water smoothed his hair back from his face, to the way it tamed the hair on his chest and arms, to the way it made his skin shine like the way it did when he was sweating and panting underneath him. "What was I saying?" Anders asked.

"I don't know," Amell said and kissed him. The smell was gone, thank the Maker. It had been mostly on his clothes. Amell just smelled like soap now. Anders parted his lips for Amell's tongue and grabbed his ass under the water, sliding his fingers through the crack in his backside. He pressed the pads of his fingers against his entrance and Amell moaned into his mouth.

"So I know this spell..." Anders said around Amell's eager lips. "... but it probably won't work under water."

"Is it the electricity one?" Amell asked, leaving Ander's mouth in favor of his jaw. "I know that one too."

"No it's a grease spell." Anders said.

"Have you ever had sex like this before?" Amell asked.

"Once. With a pirate. In a brothel." Anders said.

"That sounded like a joke." Amell said.

"I'm dead serious." Anders said, massaging Amell's thighs. "I don't even have a good follow up for that. Well I do but it's gross so I'm not going to say it."

"Oghren is my best friend, Anders, I think I can handle gross jokes." Amell said.

"No. I refuse. I'm an adult. I'm better than that." Anders said.

Conversation died. Amell kissed his neck, and sucked on the skin there while rolling his tongue. Anders shivered, and let slip a hard exhale at the soft bite of Amell's nails dragging down his chest. Amell splayed out his right hand, and traced slow circles over Anders' nipple with his thumb while his left hand drifted lower to follow the path of dark hair beneath his navel.

"Do you want to move to the bed?" Anders asked, and shivered at the gentle twist of Amell's thumb and forefinger over his nipple.

Amell ran his tongue up Anders' jaw, his breath heating the slick path he left on his way to Anders' ear. Amell's teeth closed over his earring and his hand closed around his cock. A tug of both had Anders' biting his lip to stifle a groan, "I want you to fuck me right here," Amell said.

"I can do that," Anders tangled a hand in Amell's hair and pulled his head back to expose his throat, and bent to kiss and worry at the soft skin. He felt Amell's shaky sigh against his tongue, and jerked his hips up into Amell's hand. Amell abandoned the nipple he'd worn stiff to grab the back of Anders' head and hold him to his throat.

Anders let his teeth graze him, and Amell's sharp gasp made his hip buck again, "You want the spell?" Anders asked.

"I want you," Amell punctuated his words with another pump of his hand. He ran the pad of his thumb over Anders' slit and a ripple of pleasure made Anders groan.

"Up," Anders grabbed Amell's thighs, and gave them a firm squeeze to encourage him out of the water. Amell put his hands on Anders' shoulders and half-knelt, half-stood on the bench, his cock stiff and rigid and at the perfect height for Anders' mouth. Anders licked down his shaft, heat and salt on his tongue, and won a breathless groan.

Anders licked back up, and parted his lips to take the swollen head into his mouth and suck. Amell's hand clenched hard on his shoulder, and Anders glanced up at him. He was staring down at him, panting, enraptured, red eyes like fire and blood. "Fuck, you're beautiful," Amell said. Anders chased the taste of him, and a swirl of his tongue made Amell bite his lip.

Anders pulled through to the Fade, and let a thin film of oil coat his fingers. "I felt that," Amell said.

Anders let his cock fall from his lips with a chuckle, licking spit off his lips, "That's the goal." Anders ran his fingers through the taut muscles of Amell's ass.

"No, I meant the Fa-fuck," Amell stuttered when Anders pressed the pad of his finger against his tight hole, "Fuck me."

Anders rested his forehead on Amell's hips and pushed an obedient finger inside him. Amell groaned, and Anders groaned with him, picturing the tight heat around his cock and not just his finger. He bit Amell's hip, and started shallow thrusts he couldn't help bucking his hips in time with. The water didn't offer him any friction, and Anders didn't dare find it in his hand. He wanted this to last.

Anders sucked on Amell's hip again, nipping and licking a path over the sharp v at his hips while Amell moaned for him. "You want another?" Anders asked.

"Fuck yes," Amell said.

Anders added a second finger into his tight heat, and the hand Amell kept on his shoulder clenched. Anders looked up to see him worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. "Good?" Anders asked.

"Perfect." Amell ran his hand through Anders' hair, dragging his nails over his scalp. Anders' heart raced a little faster at the thought of him fisting a hand in his hair and pulling his head back, Amell's thumb at his bottom lip to push his mouth open and-Maker Amell did it. A whine slipped out of Anders at the fantasy's fulfillment, and his hips bucked again into nothing.

He wanted friction, but he wanted whatever this was more. Anders licked the head of Amell's cock, and sank down on it in time with the thrusts of his fingers. His eyes fluttered shut, fluid dripping from the corners of his mouth, and Amell gave his hair a tug. "You look - so good like this," Amell groaned. "Fuck, Anders- I want you to fuck me."

Anders freed his fingers from him and broke from his cock, a tendril of spit still tethering them together. Anders was near gasping, and Amell had barely touched him. He felt the tension in his stomach like a knot, and grabbed for Amell to unravel it, pulling him back down under the water and onto his lap. Amell wrapped a hand around his cock, and Anders' hips jerked to chase the friction even knowing he only meant it for a guide.

Amell swept Anders' cock between taut muscle of his ass, and Anders clenched his fingers in Amell's thighs to keep from bucking up into him. Amell lowered himself onto him, no teasing, and an impassioned, 'Oh fuck,' tore from Anders' throat. The tight, hot sheath of Amell's ass around his cock was worth every fevered moan the Circle had ever made him swallow.

Amell sank down on him until his ass was snug against Anders thighs, and dropped his forehead onto Anders' shoulder, hard gasps spilling warm breath down Anders' chest. Anders ran his hands up Amell's chest, a swirl of his thumbs over his nipples making Amell writhe in his lap. Anders kept going, over his shoulders, and down to his scarred up arms. "Good?" Anders asked.

"Perfect," Amell choked out. He clasped Anders' jaw, fingers half buried in his hair, and turned his head to kiss him. It was a mess, wet lips and catching teeth, and tattered gasps when Amell started moving. Delicious friction sent pleasure rippling through Anders' cock, and built a fire in the pit of his stomach. Amell found a rhythm for them, fast but not frantic, and set a hand on Anders' knee to support himself when he leaned back.

Anders' eyes raked over his body. The mix of water and sweat that beaded on his brow, his soaked black hair that slapped against his neck with every bounce, the play of movement of his lean shoulders and the sharp but quivering muscles in his stomach. "You look-fucking-fantastic," Anders blurted.

"Yeah?" Amell asked in-between breaths.

"Yeah," Anders took hold of Amell's cock beneath the water and stroked it to the cadence they'd set.

"Fuck, Anders," Amell grabbed for his free hand, and set it to his face. Anders couldn't guess what he wanted, and slipped his fingers into his mouth. Amell moaned, and Anders held onto his jaw, loving every hot gasp that spilled over the back of his palm. Small waves crashed up against Anders' chest, and did nothing for the fevered flush on his skin.

Anders let go of Amell's cock to hold onto his ass. He dug his fingers into the taut muscle, and pulled Amell down hard to meet his every urgent thrust. Amell's gasps turned into groans, and twisted into shouts that sent shivers down Anders' spine and made the fire in his stomach burn even hotter. "Fuck, yes, I like loud." Anders decided, dragging blunt nails down Amell's thigh and jerking his hips up for another shout that sounded half a sob.

Amell dropped his free hand under the water, and the tremble that played out in his chest and his arm and marked his frantic strokes was so obscenely arousing Anders had to blink hard to see straight again, "Do it," Anders begged, driving harder and faster into that slick heat, desperate to feel it clench around him, "I want to feel it. I want to feel you."

Amell screamed around his hand. Anders dropped his fingers from his mouth, and locked them around the nape of Amell's neck, dragging him in close to feel him shudder against his chest and around his cock. Anders turned his face into Amell's hair and breathed in the few scents the water couldn't mask. Sweat, and the faintest hint of blood, the whisper from the Fade that burned in both of them.

Amell bit his earring; the sharp tug sent a shiver down Anders' spine and into his cock. Every rock of his hips made Amell tremble, and Anders felt Amell's lips move against his skin when he spoke, breathless but eager, "Come inside me. I want it. I want all of it. I want all of you." Amell licked his jaw down to his mouth, and grabbed Anders' face in his hands to pull his bottom lip between his teeth and suck hard.

Anders didn't scream. He couldn't. He moaned instead, the sound muffled against Amell's mouth. His climax felt electric, thrilling through his hands and feet. Waves of pleasure ravaged his body, and left it in thick, satisfying waves. Anders rode each one out with a sharp jerk of his hips and a broken gasp. Amell kissed him, worrying at his lips with sucks and tiny bites until they felt as blissfully used as the rest of Anders' body.

Anders eased him off his cock, and pulled him tight against his chest to hold him until the water went cold.

"We're going to fall asleep here." Amell said.

"I don't care." Anders said.

"You'll get pruny," Amell warned him.

"Okay, I care." Anders said.

Amell fell off him and crawled out of the bath for a new bar of soap. Lazy, Anders thought. The old one was under the water somewhere. He came back with it and they finished washing up. They climbed out, and Amell dried off and left the washroom. He went to his armoire for a clean change of clothes. "Do you want me to go get you dinner from the kitchens, and a change of clothes?" Amell asked from the other room. "I think some of whatever Oghren dumped on me got on you too."

"I'll never going to say no to you spoiling me." Anders said, ignoring his clothes pile and wrapping a towel around his waist instead. "I'm not putting pants on while you're gone though, so if someone walks in on me that's their problem."

Anders leaned against the doorframe to the washroom while Amell finished dressing.

"Alright," Amell hesitated when he finished dressing, and instead of heading for the door, came back over to him. Anders stomach knotted. Amell kissed him; that wasn't too bad. That was safe. "You're amazing." Amell said.

"I know." Anders joked.

"What do you want for dessert? Apple something?" Amell asked.

"Mmm, apple something." Anders said.

"Alright. I'll be right back." Amell said. "No snooping!" He called back as he left.

"I'm gonna snoop!" Anders yelled after him.

Anders was not going to snoop. There was nothing for him to snoop through. He cleaned up the ritual site while he waited for Amell to come back, letting towels soak up whatever kind of liquid Oghren had dumped on them. He wasn't going to pick them back up, though. Amell could do that. Or the servants could.

Anders lit a fire in the hearth and threw himself down on the couch. Amell came back with a bowl of stew, a bowl of mashed potatoes, a tankard of ale, and an apple something for him. It was an apple tart, more specifically. He also brought him a new change of clothes, but Anders was in no hurry to leave his towel. "So I have a question." Anders said as he tried the stew. It was beef stew with dumplings, and everything he never knew he needed.

"I have an answer," Amell said.

"What was with that question you asked Compassion? The one about possessing me?" Anders asked.

"It was just a question." Amell said.

"Yeah, but what kind of question is that?" Anders asked. "You don't seriously think a spirit of Compassion is going to possess anyone, do you?"

"Not violently," Amell said.

"Seriously?" Anders asked, "I really don't think you have any right to talk here."

"It was just a question." Amell said.

"But you had a reason to ask it." Anders said, "Do you think I'm that weak, or Compassion is that dangerous?"

"Neither. I think that spirits get attached to their spirit healers. I think some spirits have trouble letting go when their healer dies. I just wanted to hear yours say otherwise, and it-she did." Amell said. "I don't doubt you, Anders. I saw the storm you cast, and the bolt before it. I know you're more than capable. It was just a question."

"... Have you ever seen that happen?" Anders asked, "Did your spirit healer blood mage friend die and... get possessed?"

"Jowan? No. No he's fine. He has a new name. A new life. He's fine." Amell said.

"Someone else then?" Anders asked.

"It was just a question, Anders." Amell said.

Anders decided to let it go. He ate the rest of his dinner with Amell, and spoke of other things, and changed into his clothes when they finished. "I think it's too late for anyone to come after me," Amell said, "Do you want to play Wicked Grace?"

"I'm terrible at Wicked Grace," Anders said.

"Do you want to play strip Wicked Grace?" Amell asked.

Anders played, and lost, but he also ended up having sex, so really it was more of a win. It left him exhausted, and while he didn't remember falling asleep afterwards, but he must have because he woke up to the scratch of a quill moving over parchment, and the soft glow of mage light. Amell was sitting in bed next to him, writing in his journal. He stopped when he noticed he was awake.

"Morning," Amell said.

"Liar," Anders yawned. "How long was I out?"

"An hour, maybe," Amell said.

"Time for the old walk of shame then," Anders said, stretching. "Do you know where my smalls went?"

"Behind the headboard, I think." Amell said. "... you don't have to go you know."

"That's not very sneaky." Anders said. "You don't think me slinking out of your quarters in the morning is going to raise eyebrows?"

"I think the servants are going to gossip either way, and they're the only ones who will notice." Amell said. "... I'd like it if you stayed."

Staying sounded dangerous, but Anders didn't really want to get up now that he was lying down, and if it made Amell happy... "Then I guess I'm staying. But no cuddling."

Amell smiled at him and went back to writing in his journal. Anders laid back down, and listened to the scratch of his quill until he fell asleep.

He had only good dreams.

Notes:

Fanart
Anders and Compassion
Anders and Amell Intimate

 

 

 

Apples and Apostates
Just Let Him Have This - 9:31 Dragon 26 Matrinalis: A romantic moment in time told from Amell's perspective
Ma'Arlath - 9:31 Dragon 27 Matrinalis: An explicit moment in time told from Amell's perspective.
Just a Flame - 9:31 Dragon 28 Matrinalis: An explicit moment in time told from Amell's perspective.

Chapter 18: Far Afield

Notes:

Hello reader! Thank you so much for supporting this story. We hit 100 kudos! Thank you for all your comments, kudos, subscriptions, bookmarks, and as always, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 2 Parvulis Afternoon

The North Road - Near the Turnoble Estate

Anders did not like walking. Even in his very fine boots, with his not-so-fine staff for a walking stick, walking was the worst. His socks got sweaty, his feet hurt, and it was Kingsway, and it was cold. Anders did not like Kingsway. Sure, Amell had gotten him a thick woolen scarf, and his name-day was coming up, but nothing made a cold wind on a cold sweat any better.

Yet here he was. Walking. Sweating. Cold. Uncomfortable. About to fight a large horde of darkspawn marauding through the countryside. Amell had better make good on that pony.

"Are all humans so incompetent?" Velanna complained. She had a powerful stride: driving her staff into the dirt with every step and kicking up dust. It matched her temper, Anders thought. Nathaniel ranged ahead, as always, while Sigrun and Oghren trailed behind. "Why can this Eddelbrek not defend his own holdings?"

"Eddelbrek is a lord, not an arl, or even a bann." Amell explained, "He has men enough to defend his person and little more."

"Then his reach surpasses his grasp. How very human of him." Velanna said, her voice dripping with disdain. "Why do we care if he suffers for it?"

"Because he doesn't. The people do. The Wardens own these lands, and I own the Wardens." There was something terribly attractive about the possessive way Amell spoke, Anders thought to himself. "They're my responsibility."

"Then why have you not been responsible for them?" Velanna demanded. Maker's breath the woman was persistent. How did Nate stand it? "Why have your soldiers not already dealt with this threat?"

"My soldiers are not Grey Wardens." Amell said, "We are. Var vir shivanas nadas, Velanna." The elf thing, though. That was less attractive, and more just weird.

"Na vhenan'ara nuvenin revas, tel'shivanas." Velanna said.

"Ar dirth." Amell said, glancing at Anders.

"Is that me? Are we talking about me now?" Anders wondered.

"I called you a coward." Velanna said helpfully.

"She didn't say that." Amell promised.

"So what's that like?" Anders wondered. "You know living with a dead person inside your head and all?"

"Hard to explain," Amell said unhelpfully.

"Well give it your best shot." Anders said, shoving him. "Come on, I'm curious. You're not allowed to say no to me."

"Gee, Anders, that's no way to talk to your Commanding Officer." Sigrun teased.

"Oh go away. We're not at the Vigil, I can say whatever I want." Anders wove his arms through Amell's and leaned on him. "Can't I, smoochie-kins?"

"Anything you want, sweetie pie." Amell said.

"Well, here comes my breakfast. Hope it tastes better the second time around." Oghren said.

"I think it's cute!" Sigrun said, skipping ahead to walk next to Anders. "I hate that I never get to see you two be sweet together."

"I really hope you don't think we actually talk like that." Anders said, letting go of Amell.

"I bet you do." Sigrun said.

"We do." Amell said.

"We do not." Anders said. "Tell me about your dead elf thing."

"I'm not sure what there is to tell." Amell said. "The words are just there when I need them, and the magic feels innate. Like I've always had it. If I didn't know I wasn't an elf I wouldn't be able to tell you which parts were me and which were memories."

"Sounds creepy." Anders said. He didn't like the thought of not being the only person in his head.

"When I first made the deal, I spoke nothing but elvish for a week, except I didn't realize I was doing it. I couldn't make myself stop." Amell said. "It was a little disorienting."

"Fucking weird is what it was," Oghren said. "We had to stop in the middle of our mission and go sit in this Dalish flower power circle until Numb Nuts here learned how to talk again. You should have seen the way Prince Pike-Twirler was freaking out, thinking he'd have to lead us if the Boss never went back to normal. Heheh, he-..."

Oghren glanced at Amell and trailed off, taking a drink from his flask instead. "Well. Whatever. Nevermind."

"You can tell the story, Oghren. I don't mind." Amell said.

"Yeah, well, maybe I don't wanna think about him much either." Oghren said. "Ain't enough cheese in Orlais to go with that man's whine."

"Smoke ahead," Nathaniel came back from the front of their squad to tell them, "I think we've found our farmstead."

The Turnoble Estate was in a sad state when they came across it. The smoke had led them most of the way, so Anders wasn't surprised they found no survivors. The small fences that had kept in farm animals had done nothing to keep out darkspawn. The ground was ashen and blighted, the doors of every farmhouse they passed kicked in, or torn off their hinges. Before many of them, the men of the house, pitifully armed with pitchforks and torches, had made their last stand. The women of the house were nowhere to be seen.

It made Anders sick. Any of many tracks in the dirt and rubble could have been from one of the poor ladies, dragged to a fate worse than death. Nate would have known. He was their tracker. Anders glanced at him, but his expression was as grim as it always was. Anders recalled Amell's morbid promise to Sigrun in the Silverite Mines, and decided it wasn't so morbid after all.

"Do you think they're trying to... repopulate? After we destroyed their nest in Kal'Hirol?" Sigrun asked.

"It's possible." Amell said, putting on his helmet. Everyone who wore one did likewise.

Further on, beside a well in the middle of the small cluster of farmhouses they found the body of a templar. Just looking at him made Anders feel queasy. His armor was in shambles, the chest cavity caved in so the Sword of Mercy decorating the platemail was buried in his ribcage. The half of his face that Anders could see was a mess of bone, blood, and brain. Something had gnawed him into obscurity.

Amell knelt beside the corpse, "Ser Darrian," Amell found the man's name on a letter on his person. His hands glowed an ethereal blue, and Anders felt the swell of the Fade, and a moment later Ser Darrian stood, one eye rolling out of his socket and landing in a crevice in his armor, where it stayed. "He died recently," Amell gauged the corpse as it knelt to pick up its fallen sword and shield. "Be alert."

Take a deep breath, Anders told himself. Preferably upwind. He knew it was useful. Extraordinarily useful. Amell's control over his necromantic creations was parallel to having another sword of the living, breathing variety on their side. The fact that it was disgusting and just short of unholy was just an unfortunate side effect of very talented magic. There was a wisp in there somewhere. A nice wisp that might embody Valor or Fortitude or something. Think about that.

When he was sure the corpse wouldn't make him sick, Anders kept on. An undead templar was something out of his nightmares, and it was giving him chills. He could almost swear he heard the corpse breathing, whispering. His skin started to feel greasy and clammy all at once, and Anders realized too late it wasn't the corpse making him feel that way.

"Darkspawn," Amell warned them.

The darkspawn had laid a trap. Again. Anders tried not to let that thought sit, but sit it did. The darkspawn were talking, laying traps and ambushes, and exacting them with brutal efficiency. A dozen genlocks sprung up from the rocks and rubble, throwing smoke bombs that concealed half dozen shrieks, their shrill cries deafening the battle field. Ears ringing, Anders drew a repulsion glyph beneath his feet in time to catch the first shriek that came for him. Sigrun hadn't been so lucky.

A shriek had tackled her, bladed hands taking wild swipes at her face. Sigrun narrowly managed to block them with her arms, but the beast was shredding her armor fast. Drawing on his connection to the Fade, Anders built up a wave of ice in his hands. His fingers were numb when he released it, freezing the shriek atop Sigrun and two more behind it. The little legionnaire crawled out from her attacker, drew her axes, and promptly shattered it. She spared him a wave before engaging another.

It had all happened in the span of a few seconds. When those seconds were up, the horde grew, another dozen hurlocks bursting forth from the farmhouses like cockroaches. One of them looked to be wearing dragonbone armor, and he brandished a pollaxe above his head, screaming, "Kill them! Kill them for the Mother!"

"Oghren, Sigrun! Shrieks! Velanna, Nathaniel, genlocks!" Amell yelled, and the battle split apart. Amell left them to charge the hurlock commander, and the five hurlocks with him, while Ser Darrian charged for the remaining six. It left Anders with both everything and nothing. Amell never gave him a target; the entire battle field was his to manage.

Anders cast barriers for Sigrun, Oghren, and Amell, and looked around for Velanna and Nathaniel. They were in the fields behind a downed fence, a short distance away. Nathaniel was already on his knees, no doubt the work of the three genlock corpses surrounding him. He was still fighting, tough bastard, a line of arrows planted in the ground before him he drew and fired with alarming precision.

Velanna was standing in front him, her arms and legs wrapped in roots that lashed out wildly at the remaining genlocks who circled both of them, jeering. It took Anders longer than he would have liked to reach Nathaniel's side. The ground beneath him had turned to mud, soaking up every drop of spilled darkspawn blood, and Anders boots fought him when he tried to escape it. Once he was free, he still had get through a ring of genlocks.

Velanna cleared a path for him with a lash from one of the vines about her arms. Anders ran, and dropped a repulsion glyph underneath Nate before he knelt. The tiny darkspawn bastards had hamstrung him, Anders saw. Nathaniel's left boot was ruined, along with the ligaments in his ankle, and the back of his right leg had been cleaved open. Anders grimaced, a sympathy pain making his own legs hurt at the sight. Nathaniel should have been writhing in pain, not fighting from his knees. Tough bastard indeed.

Anders dropped a paralysis glyph between the three of them and the remaining genlocks, summoned Compassion. He'd only just started channeling her healing energy when the tremors started.

"Fenedhis," Velanna said.

Nathaniel lowered his bow, and stared at something over Anders' shoulder. A butterfly, maybe. Anders could dream. "Anders," Nate said.

"That's the name." Anders said, knitting the mangled muscle as quickly as he dared.

"Ogre!" Came Amell's warning from across the field. "Oghren! Ogre!"

"Kinda busy!" Oghren yelled back.

"Faster, Anders." Velanna said.

"Not helping." Anders barked at her.

"Anders," Nate said again, more urgently. "Stop. You're not going to get it in time. Get back to the Comannder, both of you. Maybe it won't notice me."

Anders shook his head. A few moments later, and he had to shout to be heard over the quakes of the ogre's footfalls, "I've almost got it."

Somewhere near, Anders heard Velanna swearing in elvhen, and the sound of boughs and branches breaking as the beast broke through her magic. When at last the wound closed beneath his fingers, Anders grabbed Nate's arm and dragged him to his feet. Behind them, Velanna screamed. Anders reached through to the Fade to grasp the essence of ice, weaving it about his fingers as he turned. The ogre was right on him; Anders released his spell half-formed in a panic.

It saved his life. The ogre's hands crashed down on the wall of ice, instead of his head. Sleet and icicles rained down on him as the ogre beat against his barrier, breaking it faster than Anders could reform it. Then the ogre broke through.

The ogre grabbed him in one hand, and lifted him off his feet. Anders dropped his staff, and tried to summon fire, lightning, ice, but he couldn't focus around the massive fingers crushing his chest. With startling clarity, Anders understood how Ser Darrian had died. Ser Darrian died how Anders was going to die. At least Nate was alright, Anders thought. A rather selfless last thought. Good for him.

The compression on his chest grew tighter, and Anders took what he was sure to be his final breath, when all at once the ogre stopped. The giant darkspawn was still staring at him, but the terrible malice was gone from its jet black eyes, and replaced with... nothing. With stiff, rigid movements, the ogre dropped him, turned around, and turned its wrath on its fellow darkspawn.

Amell. Anders grabbed his staff and picked himself up, casting a quick restorative spell to heal his bruised ribs. He turned around and found Amell a stone's throw away, his sword and shield abandoned for a dagger. Around one hand coiled the energy that tethered him to Ser Darrian, a grey-blue to match the corpse's frozen lips. The other was wreathed in an angry crimson, and tied him not only to the ogre, but to the half score of darkspawn he'd abandoned to come to Anders' aid.

They were seizing, caught in a miasma of red, and Anders didn't want to think about how much blood Amell had let to hold both spells. In the time it had taken Anders to heal Nathaniel, the darkspawn had become a multitude. Genlocks sprung from every rock, shrieks from every shadow, and the farmhouses held more hurlocks than they had humans. Everyone was struggling. Anders couldn't decide who to help, and cast a barrier in a wide net to protect all six of them.

The hurlock commander still lived, caught writhing in Amell's spell, but in the time Amell had taken to bind the ogre, it shook off the hold and charged with its weapon raised on high. Anders screamed. He didn't know what came out of his mouth, but Amell understood him. Anders cast a frost spell, and Amell turned in time to catch the darkspawn's pollaxe on his chest.

Anders' frost spell connected, and ice swept over the hurlock commander, so cold the air around it crystallized and turned to snow. The hurlock commander froze solid, a white statue on the battlefield, with Amell still impaled on its pollaxe. Anders broke into a run, summoning more frost to freeze the remaining darkspawn shaking free of Amell's miasma. Because it wore off. Because all spells wore off. Not because Amell was weak.

Amell hadn't moved by the time Anders reached him, pinned in place by the hurlock alpha's blade. Anders shattered the frozen darkspawn with a hard blow from his staff, but the pollaxe remained in place, axe embedded in Amell's chest piece. That was fine. He was fine. It was just stuck in the dragonscales. That was all.

Amell grabbed the pollaxe, and before Anders could tell him not to, wrenched it free of his armor with a strength that had to be amplified with magic. A spray of blood followed the extracted blade. Amell took two faulty steps backwards, and collapsed.

"No! Don't you dare!" Anders screamed, dropping onto his knees to catch Amell before he hit the ground.

Amell, as it turned out, didn't dare. He landed on his knees, and caught himself on his hands, both miraculously still encased in the dark energies that tied him to his servants. Amell took off his helmet, snarling in pain. Anders dropped his staff and held Amell's shoulders to keep him from falling over. Amell coughed up blood on him. "Alright. Okay. You're fine. I've got you," Anders said.

Amell's face bore a ghastly pallor Anders had only ever seen on the dead, and the undead. The rest of him was drenched in red. He looked as if he'd been drained of all the blood in his body, only to bathe in it. He was going to go into shock any second now. It was Anders' fault. It was all Anders' fault. The pride demon had taken blood from both Nathaniel and Oghren to bind, and an ogre was only slightly smaller than one.

The right side of Amell's chest piece was indented. His ribs were almost certainly broken, and his right lung had been bruised if his harsh breaths were any indication. Anders had heard the sound before. Had been the reason for the sound before. Anders shook himself.

He had to get Amell's armor off. He couldn't heal broken ribs with indented armor in the way. Damn this armor. Anders hated this fucking armor, and all of its fucking buckles, and the fact that it was fucking worthless and didn't help at all with not getting fucking stabbed. Anders drew the glyphs for a lifeward to keep Amell from dying on him, and a repulsion glyph overlaid with a glyph of warding to keep them safe, and then fought with Amell's armor.

He had it off in under a minute, but a minute was an eternity with injuries this bad. Anders ripped Amell's already ripped tunic off to give him a good look at the wound, and regretted it. His skin was split on the right side of his chest, pink muscle, red blood, white bone where there should have been tawny skin and black hair. Patient. Make him a patient. Make him not Amell. Anders summoned Compassion, but the healing magic he channeled washed over the gash on Amell's chest like oil on water.

Anders stared at his glowing hands, dumbfounded. She wouldn't. She wouldn't refuse to heal him. Compassion healed everyone. Not her. It wasn't her. Anders looked at Amell, and the sheath of blood on his arm. Tendrils of red still tied Amell to the ogre, and kept it bound. The same energies kept his wounds open, and flowing freely.

"Stop!" Anders took off his scarf and pressed it to Amell's wound to do what little he could to staunch the flow of blood without magic. "Amell, stop! Let go of the spell!"

Stubbornly, stupidly, Amell refused, and the idiot could barely manage that. Anders wouldn't have noticed the imperceptible shake of Amell's head if he wasn't kneeling right next to him.

Anders caught Amell's face in his hands to tear his eyes away from the battle, "Amell, let go or I can't heal you."

Amell opened his mouth to say something, but the sound that escaped him wasn't quite a word. Unable to speak, he pointed.

Anders followed his finger. Amell was pointing at the ogre. A horde of darkspawn, nearly two score, were struggling to take it down. Nathaniel was picking them off with his arrows, and Velanna her nature magic, but she was wounded, one arm hanging limp at her side. Less than a stone's throw away, Sigrun was barely holding her own against maybe two or three shrieks. On the other side of the field, Oghren looked too busy with three hurlocks to help. Amell's hold on the ogre was the only thing keeping the ambush from becoming a massacre.

It didn't matter. If Amell died, the ogre would be free anyway. Better he lived, and then they could think of something else. Try to retreat. "Amell please," Anders begged, "Let me heal you."

Amell sucked in a rickety breath and reached for him, clasping the back of his neck. Anders let Amell pull him forward to speak into his ear, expecting an order, or some sort of instruction. "I'm-sorry," Amell whispered.

"For what?" Anders asked. He could have thought of any number of things Amell had to be sorry for, but kissing him wasn't one of them.

It was easily the worst kiss of Anders' life, but he still didn't think Amell needed to be sorry for it. He tasted exclusively of blood. It was on his tongue, on his lips, in his mouth. The scent of it was overpowering, the texture like a gel that kept Anders from actually feeling him, and his timing was laughably terrible.

But Anders didn't laugh. Against his better judgment, sense of texture, taste, and smell, Anders kissed him back. Aside from their imminent deaths, there was no immediate danger. He could spare a second, if only a second, to reassure Amell he was here, and he was going to take care of him.

One second stretched into two, which stretched into three, and Anders found it hard to pull away. Hard to want to pull away. His head felt heavy, his thoughts sluggish. There was an urgency, wasn't there? For something... But it was so hard to think about anything but Amell. Amell was the only thing that mattered. Amell was the only thing he cared about. Anders would have done anything and everything for him.

Then, very suddenly, Amell didn't matter at all. The darkspawn mattered. Anders stood, amplifying his voice with his magic so it would carry across the battlefield. "Nathaniel, Sigrun, harry the darkspawn towards the templar! Oghren, kill the ogre now while it's enslaved then fall back! Velanna, flank them so I can call down a firestorm!" The words felt scripted, like he wasn't the one saying them, only repeating what someone was telling him. Anders couldn't explain how the strategy had come to him, but he also couldn't care.

Everyone obeyed. No one even questioned him. Anders didn't question himself. He was halfway through channeling his spell when he realized what had happened. By then, the ogre was dead, the remaining scores of darkspawn clustered about Ser Darrian, mindlessly attempting to kill a corpse without their hurlock commander to lead them. Anders released the inferno, and the pillar crashing down on the darkspawn and Ser Darrian, setting them all aflame. When the hardier darkspawn who survived the initial blast attempted to escape the firestorm, Velanna's magic was there to throw them back in. Nathaniel and the others were picking off the few survivors who refused to be herded, and within moments, the battle was over.

A splitting headache doubled Anders over. He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to fight it off. His throat was raw, and his tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth. He tried to talk on his own, but words wouldn't come to him. He couldn't think of anything to say. He couldn't think at all. Anders sucked in a breath, panicking, and let it out in a scream.

"Andraste's flaming knicker damned fucking shit fucker!" Anders choked out. Thank the Maker. He could talk. He could think. He hadn't completely lost his mind to whatever compulsion Amell had put him under. Anders put his hands on his knees and threw up, the numb, single-minded purpose he'd felt replaying over and over in his head.

"Anders!" Sigrun called.

Anders held up a hand to tell her to wait, and kept retching.

Sigrun grabbed his hand and tugged, unconcerned with the stream of vomit coming out of his mouth. "Anders, please hurry! Throw up later! Please!"

Later. Later was good. He could worry about what happened later. Anders wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand, and let her drag him back to where Amell was lying on the ground, unconscious. The lifeward underneath Amell was pulsing faintly to the rhythm of a heartbeat, and the only thing keeping him alive.

Oghren was hugging his battle axe. Nathaniel was kneeling next to Amell, keeping pressure on the wound with Anders' scarf. Velanna was pacing, still cradling a broken arm, her short quick steps taking her nowhere.

Anders ran over, and knelt next to Amell, but there was nothing left in him to summon Compassion with. After the firestorm, he hadn't the mana. Anders dug into his satchel for a potion, and hissed at the sudden sharp pain he met with. He pulled his hand out, and found it cut with broken glass, and dripping blood and lyrium. The ogre must have crushed his satchel and all his potions when it picked him up.

"Velanna, I need a potion. Lyrium," Anders said.

"I don't have any left," Velanna said, and glanced back at Amell. Realization lit her eyes. "No! Mala halani nadas! Do something! Heal him! Push yourself!" Her voice reached a fevered pitch, and she cut herself off. Velanna ran her good hand through her hair, and started pacing again.

"How? I don't have any-" Anders stopped. Idiot. He was an idiot. Anders pulled a shard of broken glass out of his hand. The cut was just there. It didn't come from the cut. Anders found his heartbeat and drew from it. He refreshed the lifeward with blood magic, and that alone felt draining. "I can't-I can't summon a spirit with this. I'll kill myself. I barely understand how blood magic works. He was conscious before, he walked me through it-it wasn't this bad!"

Oghren took off his gauntlet, and thrust his arm in his face. Nathaniel drew one of his daggers and held it out to him.

"I still don't know how to do this!" Anders yelled at them. "I've never used someone else's blood before. I'm not Amell! If I-"

"Shut the fuck up, and cast the fucking spell." Oghren said. He grabbed Nathaniel's dagger and cut his wrist like it was nothing. Blood founted messily onto Amell's unconscious face.

"What if I kill you?" Anders asked.

"Do I look like I give a shit?" Oghren asked.

"No. Stop it, why would you risk that? Try to do more than one person." Sigrun said. She took off her gauntlet, and thrust out her own arm, already bleeding from the damage the shrieks had done to her, "Amell casts lots of spells with his own blood. I don't know anything about magic, but both of us should be more than enough to summon a spirit. You can do it, Anders. I watch you heal all the time. You're a great healer."

"Wait." Velanna said. She sucked in a breath, calmed down enough to stop pacing, "Find both their heartbeats and tie them together before you cast the spell, or you won't pull from both."

"How do you-" Anders started to ask.

"He's been teaching me." Velanna said. She squared her good shoulder defiantly, but none of them were about to say anything. "I don't know any healing magic, but I know that's what you have to do to pull from more than one source at a time."

Anders did what she said. He found Oghren's heartbeat first, and Sigrun's second. Their hearts were both beating fast, though not in tandem. He wove the two heartbeats together, and waited until they were a single pulse to draw from them. To judge from Compassion's reaction to Amell, Anders guessed the man had been lying when he'd claimed spirits didn't care about blood magic. Anders hoped Compassion trusted him enough to answer.

She was there when Anders summoned her, just as she always was. Blood magic healing a blood mage, but she was there. Anders didn't allow himself a sigh of relief. He still had to finish channeling her without killing his friends. Anders focused the benevolent energy on Amell's chest wound, and watched the rent flesh slowly knit back together beneath his fingers. He kept an eye on Oghren and Sigrun as well, hoping the spell wouldn't take more than a pint of blood from either of them to finish.

He had no way of knowing. Their blood wasn't gathering in a bowl anywhere, it was swirling about his hands, mingling with Compassion's white glow, dissipating into the air around them as it was drained of its power. No one spoke. Anders channelled the spell for close to a quarter hour before Amell's wound finally closed. The fractured and broken ribs, the bruised lung, the full body inflammation and shock that had knocked him unconscious: Compassion erased all of it.

Anders stopped channeling her. Sigrun and Oghren sat down.

"Woo, boy am I dizzy." Sigrun said. She looked a little green, and held her head up with one hand, "Did it work? Is he okay? Why is he still asleep? Can you wake him up?"

"No. Not with the amount of blood he lost. He should keep sleeping." Anders said.

"This hardly seems the place," Nathaniel said. "We should get him into one of the houses. Barricade ourselves in and take refuge there until it's safe for us to travel again."

"Who's going to carry him?" Sigrun asked.

"Not you. And not Oghren." Anders said. "You two need to keep sitting, for at least another quarter hour."

"I could carry him, were my arm not broken." Velanna said. "I can channel my magic inward now, enough for a simple test of strength."

"... Anders, would you mind healing her with my blood?" Nathaniel asked.

"I-... you know what, sure. Fuck it." Anders said.

Nathaniel drew another dagger, and made a very precise cut on his forearm. Anders drew from him, and cast a simple regenerative spell that healed Velanna's arm. Her ribs were bruised on the same side, Anders could sense, but unlike Amell she hadn't suffered any contusions or fractures. Anders healed her bruises as well. Velanna gave her arm an experimental flex. "Ma serannas, both of you."

"Before we move him, we should do a sweep to make sure no more darkspawn are lurking." Nathaniel said. "I don't know why we didn't sense them sooner, but we should be cautious not to fall into the same trap twice."

"We kind of already did," Sigrun said.

"A quarter hour. Then you can all get up." Anders said.

With nothing else to do, they waited.

Notes:

Elvish Translations
Var vir shivanas nadas - Our way must be one of duty/It's our responsibility.
Na vhenan'ara nuvenin revas, tel'shivanas - Your boyfriend wants freedom, not duty/responsibilities.
Ar dirth - I know.
Fenedhis - Fuck (Or Equivalent Expletive)
Mala halani nadas! - You have to help him now/immediately.
Ma serannas - Thank you.

Fanart
Amell character sheet

Chapter 19: Far Afield Part Two

Notes:

The song in this chapter is my adapted version of "Somewhere There's a Mother." Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, kudos, subscriptions, bookmarks, and as always, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 2 Parvulis Late Afternoon

The Turnoble Estate

Anders was not happy. There were a lot of reasons for that, but the first and foremost reason was lying in the dirt in front of him in dragonscale greaves and a torn up tunic. Healed or not, Amell was a mess, and not just because of his horrible helmet hair. An ugly pink scar ran across the right side of his chest, a remnant of the battle Anders couldn't heal. It reminded Anders of his own chest, the ogre squeezing the life out of him, and how Amell had saved his life. He should be grateful, but he wasn't.

He may as well own up to being a maleficar now. They'd all joined in on the blood magic-merry-go round. After Anders had healed Velanna's broken arm, Velanna had offered up her blood to heal the lacerations the shrieks had left on Sigrun's arms. Now they were all sitting around an unconscious Amell, woozy and drinking and generally making poor choices. Anders needed a nap.

"Do you guys want to hear a song we used to sing in the Legion?" Sigrun offered to break the silence.

"Please." Velanna said.

"Go for it, hot stuff," Oghren said, taking a swig from his flask.

"Why not?" Nathaniel said.

Anders could have done without the song, but he didn't say anything. He wasn't in the mood to argue, or do anything but sit in the dirt and pick broken glass out of his hand while he tried not to think.

"Somewhere there's a mother,
Crying for her daughter.
She's a legionnaire,
They sent her out to slaughter.
But don't you cry for her,
She don't need your sympathy.
She's a legionnaire,
And that's the best that dust can be.

Somewhere there's a father,
Crying for his son.
His son's a legionnaire,
In a war that can't be won.
But don't you cry for him,
He don't need your sympathy.
He's a legionnaire,
And that's the best that dust can be.

Somewhere there's a husband,
Crying for his wife.
His wife's a legionnaire,
And she's fighting for her life.
But don't you cry for her,
She don't need your sympathy.
She's a legionnaire,
And that's the best that dust can be.

Somewhere there's a woman,
Crying all alone.
Her lover was a legionnaire,
And now he's lost to Stone.
But don't you cry for him,
He wouldn't want your sympathy.
He died a legionnaire,
And that's the best that dust can be."

Everyone clapped, except for Anders, and not just because his hand was a mess. Why did every song have to be so bloody depressing? Anders agreed with Oghren. Their lives were bad enough without adding in horrible holidays and mopey music.

"I always really liked that one." Sigrun said, accepting a drink from Oghren's flask when he offered it. "If you replace legionnaire with warden, it kind of works for us, don't you think?"

"You're more than just a duster, or a legionnaire, or a warden, Sigrun." Velanna said kindly. Anders looked up, but no pigs were flying over head, about to shit on him. That was good. Pig shit in his hair sounded awful. "You don't have to wear a meaningless title to prove yourself to anyone."

"I just... think it's a nice song." Sigrun mumbled, passing the flask to Nathaniel. She picked up Anders' discarded scarf, and wiped the blood off Amell's face with it, "Amell would have liked it."

"I liked it." Nathaniel promised, taking a drink and handing the flask to Velanna. "Thank you for sharing. And our titles aren't meaningless."

"Of course the human noble would say that." Velanna said. She took a drink with the rest of them. Anders was stunned. Maybe some people could change. Not Amell, but some people.

Nathaniel ignored the jab. "Being a Warden means something. It's fine to be proud of it. We may not have saved these people, but these darkspawn will threaten no one else. I counted almost two score, all dead."

"You keep track of how many darkspawn you kill?" Anders asked. Velanna handed him the flask, and he took a greedy gulp with the assumption he'd earned it. The fire running down his throat and into his stomach did nothing for him. "We should compete."

"Sparkles, every one of us would whip your ass." Oghren said, grabbing his flask back. "You're the healer, dumbass. You kill maybe one for our five, not counting that firestorm thing back there."

"Indeed. That was tactically brilliant, Anders," Nathaniel said.

Anders gave him a queasy smile and said nothing.

"It makes no difference how many we kill when they breed like rats beneath the earth." Velanna said. "Unless we strike preemptively, our efforts are in vain. This horde should have been scouted out sooner. Amell is making poor use of his soldiers, spreading them thin between the roads and the farmlands and the city. He should pick one and guard it well, not fail all three."

"Hey, shut up." Anders said. "He's trying, okay? This just ... went to shit. This whole thing was just shit."

"So Sparkles," Oghren said, draining the last of his hip flask and pulling a second flask out from inside his chest armor, "I got a question."

"Whatever it is, no." Anders said.

"That bit back there, where you grew balls and a brain, and came up with a plan to save our sorry hides," Oghren said, passing him the new flask. "The firestorm, the orders, 'harry this, flank that'? Since when do you know shit about strategy?"

Kittens. Puppies. Happy thoughts, Anders. He took a long drink from the flask. It tasted like nothing, not even fire at this point. Anders passed it off, "Since an hour or so ago, obviously," Anders said. Maker's mercy, please let him drop it.

"Nuh uh." Oghren said, waggling a sausage-shaped finger at him. No such luck. Anders never had any luck. "I looked over when you were yelling out orders. I saw the pretty red lipstick you were wearing. That wasn't you at all, was it?"

"What are you talking about?" Sigrun asked.

"I'm talking about how the Boss puts more than just his dick in Sparkles' mouth," Oghren said, "Those were the Boss's orders back there, I'd bet my balls on it. Seen him do it before. Use blood magic to steal someone's voice, make 'em say shit they wouldn't normally say."

"Is this true?" Velanna asked.

Everyone stared at him. Bile gathered like a rock in Anders' throat and made his throat muscles quiver. He swallowed twice to force it back down, and took a deep breath through his nose. "Funny story, I really don't want to talk about it." Anders said.

"He did." Velanna decided. "He held two blood slaves and one undead servant, all while grievously wounded. That's fairly impressive, considering he had complex commands for each minion."

"So hey, remember how Nate just said titles matter?" Anders asked. "Maybe we don't call me Amell's blood slave or minion anymore."

"Did he speak through you, or just put the will to fight in your head?" Velanna asked.

"What was it like?" Sigrun asked eagerly.

"Could have sworn I already said this, but I really don't want to talk about it." Anders said.

"Why not? Did it feel bad?" Sigrun asked. "Did it hurt?"

"The red lipstick Oghren mentioned, this was blood, correct?" Velanna asked. They weren't even listening to him. "Do you know if the blood had to be in your mouth for him to have control of your voice?"

"I don't want to fucking talk about it, okay!?" Anders yelled. It shut all of them up. Good. Anders shoved himself off the ground, ignoring their surprised expressions. "I'm going to go take a piss or something." Anders muttered.

Anders walked away from them. The battlefield was a mess to cross. The field they'd fought in was littered with the bodies of genlocks and shrieks, and enough blood had been spilled to turn the ground into a sludge of black and brown, sucking up his boots with every step and making his departure far less dramatic than it could have been. Past the field, in the center of the small cluster of farmhouses was the wreckage of Anders' firestorm.

The small stone well had been singed an angry black. In a ten meter circle all around the well, the ground was black, the bodies of darkspawn piled high. Hurlocks, genlocks, shrieks, all of them burnt to into crisp, unrecognizable lumps. The ogre was the one exception, it's corpse like a black boulder in their midst. The smell of charcoal and cooked flesh was in the air, but it hardly bothered Anders now. 

It had worked. They'd won. That was something, at least.

"Anders, wait," Nathaniel called after him, following him across the field and back to the farmhouses. "We shouldn't travel alone, not after that ambush. There might be more darkspawn about."

"Fine," Anders walked around one the farmhouses and leaned against a window sill. He freed his cock from his trousers to piss on the wall, and didn't really care what Nate did in the meantime. Anders was still pissing when he decided to look in the window, and saw the bodies. "Maker's mercy," Anders said.

He shook himself off in a hurry and fixed his trousers. Inside the house, the dark silhouettes of women were swaying idly from the rafters in the main room. There were two that Anders could see, and doubtless more in the other houses. "Nate, inside. Maker-they're-... they hung them. Just like in the mines."

"What?" Nate walked over to look in the window. Anders summoned a small ball of mage light, and sent it through the glass. It lit up the inside of the house, and illuminated the women. Their clothes were ripped, their bodies bruised and bloodied. Their faces were pale and bloated, their mouths open. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and purple.

"Ashes we were, and ashes we become. Maker give these women a place at your side." Nathaniel said quietly. "At least the darkspawn didn't take them. I'll cut them down and lay them out with the men. We can make a pyre later. Give me a hand?"

"Alright." Anders said. Anything was better dealing with the fact that he'd literally lost his mind an hour ago. Anders kept his light summoned, and followed Nate into the farmhouse. The smell hit him like a bad analogy. It was awful, basically. Burnt flesh and charcoal were far more preferable to the raw stench of death, which smelled like shit and rot. Nate found a chair, and set it between the two women.

"Do you want me to catch them...?" Anders asked.

"I'd appreciate it," Nathaniel said. "It feels disrespectful to just let them fall."  

"Alright," Anders took up a spot under the first woman, and Nathaniel drew a dagger from his hip. Anders listened to the rhythmic slice of his dagger sawing through the rope, the strands snapping one by one until the woman dropped down into his arms. She landed with a loud moan from the gases in her body expelling, and Nathaniel fell off the chair he was standing on with a high-pitched shriek.

"It's just gas," Anders said. He should have laughed. Ordinarily, Nate's reaction would have been hilarious, but he didn't have it in him today.

"Right," Nathaniel said, rubbing at his chest. "Just gas. Right. Okay. Can you get her outside or do you need me to take her?"

"I got her." Anders said, dragging the woman out by her armpits. He laid her down on the ground, and ignored the stain she left on his trousers. He went back inside and helped Nate with the second corpse. They went through the rest of the five farmhouses like that, and dragged out thirteen women in total, five of them young girls. They also found a genlock emissary, huddled over a bowl of blood and channeling a spell. Nathaniel killed it with a quick dagger to the back of its neck.

"Do you suppose that emissary was the reason we couldn't sense the darkspawn here?" Nathaniel asked.

"Probably. I don't know enough about blood magic to know if that's possible, but why else would it be in here casting with this?" Anders nudged the bowl of blood with his toe. 

"... Anders-" Nathaniel started, voice uncharacteristically soft.

"Don't." Anders interrupted him. "Whatever you're going to say, don't."

"Alright." Nathaniel said, kneeling to pick up the dead darkspawn by its armpits. His polite silence made Anders curious. It was Nate, after all. Nate didn't care about all the nuances of blood magic. He wasn't going to ask him anything that would make Anders have to think about what had happened.

"... What were you going to say?" Anders asked.

Nathaniel stopped, and dropped the darkspawn just beside the door. He straightened out and brushed off his hands on his knees. "I was going to say I'm sorry. I know our group is a little... dysfunctional, and we can be insensitive. I can't promise I'll know what to say, but if you need to talk about what just happened, I'll listen."

"... Thanks, Nate." Anders said. "I don't want to talk about it, but thanks."

"Anytime." Nathaniel said.

"Are we friends now?" Anders wondered.

"I wouldn't go that far." Nathaniel said, but he was grinning. Anders decided they were friends.

"So where are we shacking up?" Anders asked.

"What?" Nathaniel asked, startled.

"Where are we shaking up? You know, what house are we going to go barricade ourselves in until Amell wakes up." Anders said. "What did you think I meant?"

"Nothing." Nathaniel said, kneeling down to pick the darkspawn back up.

"Did you think I was hitting on you?" Anders asked.  

"No." Nathaniel said.

"You thought I was hitting on you." Anders said.

"You flirt with everything," Nathaniel said. "It was a safe assumption." He dragged the darkspawn over to the mess at the well, and heaved it into the pile. "I think we should take refuge in the third house we cleared, the one with the second story windows facing east, so we can wake with the sun and be ready to travel in the morning. Assuming you think Amell will be fit for travel."

"Not really," Anders said, "He should be on bed rest for at least three days, but we could probably get him back to the Vigil if someone helped him walk."

Anders followed Nate to the house he chose, and helped him barricade the windows and doors with pieces of furniture.

"Velanna could help him," Nathaniel said, dragging a bookshelf in front of a window. "She's gotten better at the Dalish magic Amell's been teaching her. She still can't step into the Fade like he can, but the other day I watched her lift ten stones with ease."

"And she's gotten better at blood magic, apparently." Anders said, doing the same to another window.

"Are you trying to bait me into a fight, Anders?" Nathaniel asked.

"Nope," Anders said, "Just wondering if you knew."

"No." Nathaniel said. "I suppose you were right when you said they were close. I haven't seen her that distraught since we met, and her sister was in danger."

They finished barricading the first story of the house, and Anders took a minute to stretch. "I'll throw down some paralysis glyphs on the windows to the second story, just in case. If the darkspawn can ambush us like this, they can probably figure out how to scale buildings."

"Thank you." Nathaniel said. "We should post a watch, while we're taking precautions. I'm going to go bring everyone inside. Would you mind checking the larder for food? I don't think any of us brought rations outside of water. This was supposed to be an easy skirmish."

"No problem." Anders said. Anything that got him away from everyone. Anders went into the kitchen, and found the larder. He rummaged through jars and cloth sacks for the ingredients he assumed went into a soup. Anders wasn't a cook, but he could throw together something edible if he was forced.

There was no need for mages to learn how to cook, when the templars were all too happy to use the Tranquil for the free labor they provided. That, and learning any sort of basic life skills would give mages the ability to survive on their own if they ever escaped the Circle. Fortunately, Anders was resourceful, and a quick study, and he'd figured out the basics during his many escape attempts. A little hot water and a few vegetables, whatever meat chunks he could find, and tada, soup.

Anders summoned water for the cauldron in the kitchen hearth, and lit a fire with his magic. He cut up the vegetables he'd found, and when the water was boiling, he tossed in what he had. Lentils, a few carrots, some garlic gloves, an onion. A handful of thyme. Unfortunately, there were no meat chunks for Anders to use, but he found a jar of jerky and chewed on a piece while he waited for his soup to cook.  

Cooking beans smelled horrible. Anders was leaning against the counter, watching the cauldron in the fireplace, thinking very determinedly of nothing when Sigrun came in. "Hey. Nate said you were making us all lunch? Or is it dinner now? Linner? Dunch?"

"Linner." Anders said.

"Nice," Sigrun clapped her hands together, and wandered over to the hearth to peer into the kettle. "Phew. Stinks. So um... I know you said you didn't want to talk about it, but-"

"Please don't." Anders said.

"Jeez. Alright, fine. Can I at least thank you for healing my arms?" Sigrun asked.

"Sure. No problem." Anders said.

Sigrun left him to stew with his stew. Anders hummed to himself to keep his mind blank, and rummaged through the kitchen for bowls and spoons. It would take the soup almost an hour to cook. Anders didn't know what to do with himself in the meantime. He went outside and cast his paralysis glyphs on the windows, he paced, he ate odds and ends out of the larder, and eventually found a bottle of moonshine in one of the cabinets in the kitchen.

It kept him busy, and it kept him numb, and when the soup was finished he got himself a bowl and went into the main room where everyone was talking to tell them linner was ready, and that he'd take last watch. He went to the second story to eat alone. There were three bedrooms, and Anders could guess how they were going to split them. Anders picked a room at random and pushed open the door, unsurprised he happened to pick the one with Amell in it. 

The people who'd lived here had been farmers, so their bedroom was nothing special. There was a bed, an armoire, a vanity with a stool, and a wash bucket and chamber pot in the corner. Amell was on the bed; Velanna had laid him out on the wrong side. Amell slept on the left, not the right. His armor was already off, all of it stacked neatly in the far corner of the room. Anders ate, shit, washed, and changed into his smalls and his tunic before climbing into bed, where he sat staring at Amell.

Amell had apologized. He'd looked him in the eyes and said he was sorry. Then he'd turned him into a puppet with no will of its own, no better than a Tranquil. Worse than a Tranquil. Amell had left him completely at risk for possession. Anders was a spirit healer; he attracted spirits and demons, and was the last sort of mage who should have been left with no guards on his mind whatsoever.

Anders had even felt Tranquil by the end of the spell, unable to speak or even think for a few minutes. The single-minded need to kill darkspawn had completely eroded Anders' sense of self in the middle of the spell, and at the start... The blind obsession. The way the world had fallen away, and it had seemed as if Amell was the only thing that existed. Anders had never been in love  before. He'd never had the chance, and never expected to have it, but he'd rather feel nothing than the pale mockery of the emotion blood magic left him with.

Sorry wasn't good enough. Anders slept on the floor, and had nightmares of darkspawn.

He was shaken violently awake what felt like minutes later. Anders batted away the meaty hand on his shoulder, and almost puked when Oghren belched into his face. "Wake up, Sparkles,"

"No," Anders whined. His head was splitting pain, and Oghren's breath would have made him sick with or without the hangover. "Give my watch to someone else."

"Sig already took it. Felt bad for your sorry ass for some reason," Oghren said, kicking him. It wasn't a templars' kick, but it was close. The metal boot thudded into Anders' ass, and Anders sat up, irrationally furious. It must have shown on his face, because Oghren took a step back. "So what happened? You fall off the bed?"

"Sure," Anders said, standing up and stumbling over to his clothes' pile to dress.

"Bitch Tits made breakfast," Oghren told him, "Some sort of weird nutty elf egg thing, but it's not half bad. Bring you a plate? Can the Boss eat?"

"He can eat, but he'll need fluids when he wakes up. I think the well is ruined, but if you bring me a glass, some salt and citrus I can summon some water and make him a drink." Anders said. "And anything you can get me to help with a hangover."

"I can get you another drink." Oghren snorted.

"Sure," Anders said.

"Glass, salt, citrus, drink. Alright," Oghren hesitated at the door, and Anders tensed, but the dwarf walked out without a comment and he relaxed.

Anders put on his leather chest piece, stepped into his trousers and threw on his tabard, belted both, and put on his spaulders, his boots, and his gloves. He stared at himself in the vanity mirror, but there was nothing to feel handsome about when every piece was covered in darkspawn blood and dirt. Anders tied his hair back and waited for Oghren to come back with his food and his drink.

He came back with everyone, and Anders had to awkwardly shovel food into his mouth under their impatient stares while they waited for him to wake up Amell.

Anders threw together the drink for Amell, and took two shots of moonshine for himself to kill his hangover, and went to sit next to Amell on the bed.

Alright, Anders. It never happened. Nothing's wrong. Avoid the problem. That was the safe way to cope. After all, it had worked for Anders so far. Sure, he had no lasting relationships aside from his spirit, but that was unrelated. Probably.

Anders dispelled the veil of his sleep spell from Amell, after which he was tempted to leave. It wasn't possible. Nathaniel was standing behind him, and Oghren beside him, and combined they blocked his exit. Velanna sat on the other side of the bed, and Sigrun on the foot of it.

Amell groaned. Anders swore he heard the whole room let out a collective sigh of relief. Amell lifted a hand to massage at his face, and pushed back a mop of hair from his blood-colored eyes before settling them on Anders. Anders couldn't read whatever was in them.

Amell struggled upright, and opened his mouth to talk. A wheezing gasp came out. Anders handed him his drink, and Amell drank. He set the empty cup back on the nightstand. "What happened?" Amell finally managed.

"We saved you," Sigrun said.

"You overestimated yourself," Velanna said.

"You fucked up," Oghren said.

"We won the fight, and spent the night barricaded in one of the farmhouses until it was safe to wake you," Nathaniel said, "We found an emissary we believe was shrouding the horde so we couldn't sense them until they were on us.

"The darkspawn hung the women, as they hung the miners. We think, now that they've become more intelligent, they've also become more malicious. Killing and torturing, instead of going with their base instincts to eat and breed. We also heard their commander mention 'the Mother' when the fight started. We think they have another nest somewhere, with this 'Mother' leading them."

"Thank you, Nathaniel," Amell said. "The emissary, it would have been using blood magic. Velanna, did you get a sense for the spell it was using?"

"I wasn't there." Velanna said. "But I see where you are going with this. If we are to infiltrate a nest, we would benefit from such a shroud. I would be happy to help you try to replicate such a spell."

"Thank you," Amell said.

Barely awake, and the first thing Amell cared about was blood magic. Anders didn't have it in him to be surprised. Anders stood up and slipped around Nate to pour himself another shot of moonshine.

"And we saved you," Sigrun said again. "Well, mostly Anders, but we all helped. Oghren and I donated our blood so he could summon his spirit and heal you! How do you do that every fight? I felt so dizzy afterwards, I almost threw up the dinner Anders made,"

"We all almost threw up the dinner Sparkles made," Oghren snorted.

"... Anders?" Amell asked.

"Guilty," Anders said, raising his glass. "I'm a terrible cook."

"Why did you need to use blood magic?" Amell asked. "Is Cera denying you supplies again?"

"Squish," Anders mimed the ogre crushing him by making a fist, "Remember? Ogre broke all my potions."

"I'm sorry," Amell said. Anders gave him a smile made mostly of moonshine and lies.

"Oh please," Velanna said, "It is no fault of yours Anders overestimated himself and took too long to heal Nathaniel's legs. Aside from being so foolish as to get yourself stabbed, you did decently. Enslaving that ogre turned the tide of the battle, and your firestorm plan was well executed. I would like to learn more of the spell you used to manage it, when you have the time."

Amell was still staring at him. Anders kept up his fake smile despite the fact he was sure Amell could see through it. Anders doubted Amell wanted to have this conversation in public, but he'd never won a gamble before, and didn't want to risk it. Anders changed the topic, "You'll have to take it slow for a few days. I'd say bed rest for at least three, once we get back to the Vigil."

"Returning to the Vigil sounds like the safest option, if you feel up to it," Nathaniel agreed, "I don't feel comfortable camping out here any longer than necessary."

"I can help you walk, or carry you if need be," Velanna said.

"I'm sure I can walk," Amell said, finally looking down at his chest. He traced over the scar on his breast, and glanced around the room. "... my armor?"

"Buggered." Oghren said, fetching the discarded chest piece from the corner of the room and tossing it into Amell's lap. "So much for dragonscale, eh? That fucker who did you in was wearing dragonbone, I shit you not. I bet that pollaxe he was using was made from the same stuff. Where the fuck does a darkspawn get dragonbone?"

Amell stared at the armor in his lap, and fingered the ruined scales with a look of such profound loss Anders almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

"Hey, buck up," Oghren said. "Maybe we'll get lucky, and this'll be another Blight with another Archdemon, and that piss baby Wade can make you another set."

"Maybe," Amell agreed with a wan smile. He dropped his legs over the edge of the bed and tried to stand, and promptly toppled forward. Anders caught him, trying to ignore the way Amell's hands clung to him for support and gently squeezed him in thanks.

"Easy," Anders said, sitting Amell back down. "Take it slow. You lost a lot of blood. You should probably eat something before you try going anywhere." Anders picked up the plate Oghren had brought Amell, and set it in his lap. "Velanna made it, so don't worry. Or, you know, do, but her cooking's a lot less bitter than she is."

"It's scrambled eggs, with spinach, pine nuts, and seeds." Velanna said, throwing a frown in Anders' direction, "It's normally served with halla cheese, but I made do with goat."

"It was delicious, Velanna, thank you," Nathaniel said. Everyone chorused him.

"Thank you." Amell agreed, eating slowly.

"Alright, you blighters, he's alive," Oghren said. "We don't need to sit here and spoon feed him. Let's go get our shit and get the fuck out of here."

"I'm glad you're okay, Commander." Sigrun said, giving Amell's foot a squeeze under the blanket before hopping off the bed.

"Someone still needs to help him walk," Velanna said.

"Anders," Amell said. "Would you mind staying?"

"Yeah, sure. No problem." Anders lied, ignoring the ache in his stomach. Everyone filed out, and Anders was left alone with Amell.

Traitors. Anders rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, and rubbed sweat off his palms on his trousers.

"Are you alright?" Amell asked, setting his plate aside.

"Me? Peachy." Anders lied again. "Just a few cuts on my hand, no big deal. What about you?"

"I'm alive," Amell allotted.

"Good to know," Anders said, "You're so pale I wasn't sure."

Amell's smile looked a little uncertain, "Flatterer."

"Actually, yes," Anders said, "If I knew any reanimation spells, right now I'd be worried I cast one. You really do look awful. Any trouble breathing? Chest pains? Anything?"

"Tired, and a little dizzy," Amell confessed.

"No surprise there. You lost a lot of blood and went into shock. So you know, you should eat." Anders gestured at Amell's abandoned plate, and took a few aimless steps around the room. Keep it together, Anders.

"Anders... I'm sorry. For the spell." Amell said.

"Hey, you know. Whatever." Anders shrugged, intending to stop there, but the rest of the words slipped out when they proved too bitter to swallow. "You're a blood mage. It's what you do."

"It's not." Amell said quickly. "Anders, if I thought I had any other-"

"So, I've got an idea." Anders interrupted him. "Let's just not do this, how's that sound? Just eat and get dressed, and I'll help you downstairs."

"I'm sorry." Amell said.

"Yeah, you said that already." Anders said.

"Anders, please talk to me." Amell begged.

"You don't want me to talk to you right now." Anders said. "Eat. Get dressed. I'll help you downstairs."

Amell spent a long minute looking at him. Anders held his stare, and was almost surprised when he won, and Amell broke off. Amell ate in silence, and dressed in silence, and Anders slid an arm around him and helped him stand in silence.

Amell still smelled like the Fade, like blood and sweat. He still felt the same, firm and familiar. Anders hated how much he'd grown to like him. The arrogant ass probably thought Anders didn't want to talk because he was afraid of him, or something like that.

"Anders-" Amell tried again when he was standing.

"No." Anders said.

They walked downstairs in silence, and Anders passed Amell off to Velanna. Everyone gathered their things went outside, where the bodies from the Turnoble estate were laid out atop a makeshift pyre the others must have put together last night. Broken tables and chairs from the other houses made up most of the kindling.

"Should we say something?" Sigrun asked.

"Why?" Velanna demanded. "We didn't know these people. Light the pyre and be done with it."

"Draw your last breath, my friends. Cross the Veil and the Fade and all the stars in the sky. Rest at the Maker's right hand, and be Forgiven." Nathaniel said.

Anders cast a fireball onto the pyre. Velanna cast a second, and the flames devoured the bodies. They left the estate behind them, and walked back to Vigil. Velanna supported Amell, and Nathaniel walked with her. Sigrun walked with Oghren.

Anders walked by himself, and ignored most of the conversation. The isolation didn't make him feel any better, but it also didn't make him feel any worse.

That was something, at least.

Chapter 20: Uprising

Notes:

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for supporting this story. Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, and as always, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 3 Parvulis Mid Morning

The North Road

Vigil's Keep loomed in the distance. Scaffolding encased the walls, and men crawled it across like ants, working to reinforce their defenses with the granite they'd found in the Wending Woods. In a way, it was reassuring. Anders didn't doubt the Keep would need protection with the darkspawn an ever increasing threat. Velanna was too hard on Amell, in that one respect. Amell was doing the best with what he had.

Anders still wasn't happy, but he lost his hold on his anger. When Amell stumbled and fell, Anders couldn't help but he a little concerned. Anders jogged over and knelt in the dirt beside him. Amell was on his knees, pale and sweating. He shouldn't have been walking at all.

"I can carry you the rest of the way." Velanna offered.

"No," Amell batted her hands away. "I have to walk in."

"You humans and your pride." Velanna huffed. "I should like to see you try."

Anders cast a simple rejuvenation spell, but there were limits to magic. He couldn't conjure any blood to replace what Amell had lost. Nathaniel dug into his pack and offered Amell a stamina draught.

"It's not his pride that matters, it's the people here," Nathaniel explained while Amell drank. "No one respects a weak ruler. My father never let anyone see him sick. He used to lock himself in his room for however long it took him to recover."

"Ridiculous," Velanna said. "Even leaders fall ill."

"That's what I'm always saying." Anders said. "You're not immortal. Let her carry you if you can't walk."

"I'm fine." Amell lied. "I just need someone's arm."

Anders was halfway to offering his arm when he remembered where they were. No touching allowed at the Vigil. The rule hadn't bothered Anders much before, but it bothered him now. What right did anyone have to tell him he couldn't be with someone just because he was a mage? What did Amell care what these people thought of him? They already thought less of him for being a mage. He was never going to win their respect.

Velanna had given Amell her arm again while Anders was bickering with himself. "Here. Now we'll just look pretentious fools, promenading about the courtyard. That is a human thing to do, yes?"

"If I was courting you, maybe." Amell said. "But it's a lot more subtle than leaning on anyone, so thank you."

"Velanna's a mage too, you know." Anders said, not jealous. "Why is it okay for you to walk with her like that?"

"Because everyone knows the Boss only buggers boys." Oghren said.

"Men, not boys, but yes, that." Amell said.

"How does everyone know that?" Anders asked. "How is that even anyone's business? I wouldn't have known if you hadn't told me."

"Okay," Oghren giggled and smoothed his hands over his beard, "Okay so this happened almost a year ago now, about a week or so before the whole coronation ceremony in Denerim. So-"

"Oghren. No." Amell said.

"Aw come on, it was fucking funny." Oghren protested, still giggling just thinking about his story.

"No." Amell said.

Oghren huffed. Amell kept on towards the Keep with Velanna, and Oghren grabbed Anders' wrist and dragged him to the back of their little group. "Okay," Oghren whispered. "So this happened almost year ago now, about a week or so before the whole coronation ceremony in Denerim."

Sigrun shoved in between them, whispering. "Me too. I want to hear this."

"So we're staying at the castle, yeah? And all these nobles blighters are fighting to get in good with the new Hero of Ferelden, throwing their daughters at the poor fucker left and right. You couldn't count the skirts. Dinner after dance after dinner, and the Boss's just got this look on his face the whole time, like he's trying to pass the biggest log you ever shit.

"So this one guy, what's-his-name, he gets it right away, and then he gets it right away, you know what I'm saying? And then-hehe-and then-hehehe," Oghren giggled uncontrollably.

"And then what?" Sigrun asked. "What happened?"

"Hoohoohoo-and then..." Oghren stopped, looking up. "What the fuck is going on?" They all stopped.

Passing under the gates of the Vigil's outer courtyard, they walked in on a mob. The courtyard was crowded with nearly two score of folk, brandishing pitchforks and torches, rakes and other farm tools made into crude weapons. They were clambering to be let into the inner courtyard, but the steps were barricaded by a score of the Vigil's soldiers. The Seneschal and the Captain of the Guard were in between both groups, apparently trying to keep the peace.

"Oh look, the peasants are revolting," Anders said lightly. "After everything we've done for them."

"They are also causing quite a scene in the yard." Velanna quipped.

Anders laughed his first real laugh since Amell had cast his spell on him, and felt infinitely better.

"I was gone for a day." Amell said in quiet disbelief.

"This way, behind the cellar," Nathaniel gestured, "We can go along the wall for a better view, and try to make sense of what's going on."

They squeezed between the cellar and the outer courtyard wall, and circled around towards the stairs. They found a spot in the shadows, between another building and the inner wall, close enough to hear the shouting. "Open your granaries!" "Bloody feed your people!" "There are darkspawn in the fields!" "What happened to the Turnobles?" "Where's the Commander?" Nothing surprising, really. 

The Guard Captain's reaction to the mob, on the other hand... "Damnit, Varel. Stop trying to reason with them." The Guard Captain snarled from the steps, hand on the hilt of his sword. "You don't coddle a revolt. You put it down. Give me the order."

"Maker, what an ass. Hurry up and get up there before-" Anders stopped. Amell had his dagger out. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to disperse them." Amell said calmly.

"And then you're going to cut up an apple to celebrate, right?" Anders asked.

"Sure," Amell said. He set the blade of his dagger to the inside of his arm, where armor didn't protect him. Anders grabbed his wrist before he could make the cut.

"Oh boy, here we go." Oghren mumbled.

"Andraste's ass, Amell. Sigrun has the death wish, not you." Anders said.

"Hey!" Sigrun huffed.

Anders ignored her, "You were hemorrhaging. You went into shock. You try to cast in the state you're in now, and you're going to kill yourself."

"Anders, they're rioting," Amell explained patiently, as if he were a child. Maker, the man could make it so hard to like him sometimes. "And Garevel is right, you don't coddle a revolt. How else do you want me to disperse them?"

"I don't know," Anders said, "But not like this. I'm telling you, as a healer, you can't lose any more blood. Just-... shout them down, or something."

"Anders, look at me." Anders did. Amell's skin was ashen, dark shadows cast beneath his blood shot eyes the only color on him. His hair was a mess; the black strands flew wildly about his face in the autumn wind. The upper half of his armor was loosely buckled to compensate for the indentation over his right breast. He was... well, Anders hadn't been lying before. Amell looked awful. "Do you think I can convince anyone to do anything without magic right now?"

"You could at least try," Anders hissed to keep himself from shouting, "What happened to giving everyone a choice?"

"There is no choice here. They disperse or they die." Amell said flatly. "Do you want me to kill them?"

"I don't want you to kill yourself. You can't spare the blood." Anders said.

"I'll do it." Sigrun interrupted them, taking off her gauntlet. "They're just scared and hungry, and it's making them stupid. If we can send them home without fighting, we should."

"I will as well." Nathaniel said, similarly reaching for his glove. "This was my family's land until recently. I owe it to these people."

"No. Okay? No," Anders said. "You all lost more than enough blood while I was healing everyone. Every single one of you did."

"You didn't." Velanna said.

"What?" Anders asked.

"All you did was refresh the lifeward," Velanna said. "Not that I care if these people die, but if you truly wanted them safe, and none of us at risk, you could do it."

"Anders wouldn't-" Amell started.

"Fine." Anders took off his glove and rolled up his sleeve. Anders held his arm out, and Amell stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "I told you I didn't care about your magic." Using it to turn him into a mindless thrall was completely different than convincing a mob to leave peacefully, Anders reasoned. He might have been a hypocrite. "If you didn't believe me that's your own damn fault."

Amell held his arm, and Anders ignored the brief caress  of his fingers. "It shouldn't take much." Amell promised, making a shallow cut on his wrist.  It stung something mad, but Anders wasn't going to wince or whine in front of everyone. He rolled his sleeve back down, and put his glove back on, and they walked out from behind the building.

The Seneschal spotted them. "Make way for the Commander!"

"We will not be-" One of the rioters yelled.

"Quiet! Let the Commander speak!" Yelled another.

Velanna walked Amell up the steps. It was a miracle he didn't fall over. Anders didn't know whether the state Amell was in made him more or less intimidating.

"What happened to the Turnobles!?" Someone yelled. "We saw flames last night! Why aren't you protecting your people?"

"Open the granaries! My son is starving!" Someone else yelled.

"Down with mages! Down with the Wardens! We're not going to take this tyranny!" Yet another someone yelled.

"Go back to your homes." Amell said. Anders felt dizzy. He put a hand on Sigrun's shoulder to keep himself upright.  "This is your only warning. Throw down your weapons and leave, or you and all your families will suffer."

That... was not what Anders expected him to say. He doubted Amell had needed blood magic. He delivered the lines so dispassionately even Anders thought he'd make good on the threat.

"You're bluffing!" Some brave bastard dared.

"Garavel, on my count." Amell said.

"Aye, Commander." Garavel said, fingering his sword hilt a little too eagerly for Anders' liking.

"Five." Amell said.

"They'll kill us!" Someone yelled. A hoe hit the ground. A rake followed. By the time Amell hit three, all of the peasants had disarmed.

"Go home. Do not come back." Amell said. "Garavel, have the men see them out. No incidents."

"You heard him, men." Garavel said.

The soldiers herded the peasants out.

"A timely arrival, Commander. You have my thanks." The Seneschal said. Anders still didn't like him. Anders could never remember his name, and there was just something unpleasant about his voice.

"Indeed." Garavel said. Anders didn't like him either. Anyone willing and waiting to butcher some poor farmers had to be an ass. "I gave similar threats before you arrival that went unheeded. I have no idea how you managed that."

"If the common folk just rose up on their own, I'll eat my boot," The Seneschal said. "I fear someone was behind this. Some conspiracy against you, or the Wardens."

"Or they were scared, and they were desperate." Garavel said. "You're paranoid, Varel. Commander, the Turnobles?"

"Dead." Amell said. "Darkspawn."

"They were well loved... Perhaps the people rose up for them." The Seneschal said. "That would be preferable to conspiracy."

"Can we meet for a full report?" Garavel asked. "My men should know what to look out for in the fields. Where they're coming from, their numbers, and the like."

"Of course," Amell said. He was still leaning on Velanna, unable to stand on his own, pale as death.

"No." Anders said. "Stop that. Maker, say no for once. Have you two even looked at him? He's dead on his feet."

Instead of looking at Amell, both men looked at him incredulously for speaking out. Well that was just too bloody bad. Anders was the healer here; he could say whatever he damn well pleased about anyone under his care. He looked back to Amell.

"You need to lie down, and stay lying down. Three days, at least. I'm not kidding." Anders said.

"Surely the Commander can spare an hour, before resting." Garavel said. Anders didn't like him at all. His freakishly large eyes and butt-shaped chin were bad enough without adding in a piss poor personality.

"No... No, Anders is right." Amell said. "We can meet in my quarters tomorrow, Garavel. I'll send for you. Dismissed."

"Commander." Garavel bowed, and walked back into the Keep.

"I would appreciate being present for this meeting as well. Commander." The Seneschal bowed and followed Garavel into the Keep.

"Say that again." Anders said.

"Say what again?" Amell asked.

"Anders is right." Anders said.

"Anders is right." Amell repeated obediently.

"Creators," Velanna rolled her eyes. "You take him, if you two are going to be like this."

"I'm not allowed to touch him, remember?" Anders said.

"I think it would be fine just this once, considering you're my healer and I'm injured." Amell said, sounding hopeful.

"There, see?" Velanna untangled her arm from Amell's and pushed him into Anders. "He's yours now. I'll come by when you're well again, and we can resume our lessons. Dareth, Amell."

"Ma serannas, Velanna." Amell said.

Velanna left, and the rest of the Wardens went with her. Anders felt abandoned.

Anders didn't want to take Amell back to his room. Anders wanted to be angry at Amell. Anders didn't want to wrap an arm around Amell's waist and bear half his weight through the Keep and up the stairs, lost in his scent and the memory of the forced obsession Anders had had with him.

Amell didn't say anything on the way up to his room, which was good. But he didn't walk like a patient, which was bad. Anders had to hold Amell's hand to keep his arm around Anders' shoulders, and Amell seemed to think it was an invitation to play with his fingers. They took a break on a bench in the second story hall. No one was about, save for the occasional servant.

They were alone in the hall when Anders took off his glove and rolled up his sleeve. The discomfort of dried blood peeling off his skin as the fabric pulled away made Anders hiss. He healed the cut with a simple spell, and Amell ran his fingers over where the cut had been.

"Why did you agree to do that?" Amell asked.

"You were going to do it one way or another." Anders said, rolling his sleeve back down. "You heard Velanna, I was the only one who could spare the blood."

"Thank you. For helping." Amell leaned on him, his head on Anders' shoulder. Amell obviously needed to lean on something, but it didn't have to be Anders. They were sitting, and the wall was right there.

Anders thought of shoving him off, but he didn't. Being enslaved had been horrifying, and Anders wanted someone to hug him or fuck him. The only person willing to do either was the same person who'd enslaved him in the first place. Anders turned his face into Amell's hair and inhaled, and swore he could feel the tension melt out of his shoulders. It was simultaneously soothing and frustrating.

Asshole.

"Ready to keep going?" Anders asked.

"Hmmnh?" Amell twitched, sitting up.

"Did you fall asleep on me?" Anders asked.

"No?" Amell lied, poorly.

"One more flight. Come on." Anders stood up and heaved Amell along with him.

They made it to the door and Amell handed him his keys to his room, unwilling or unable to unlock the door on his own. Anders got it open, and laid Amell down on the right side of his bed. The right side being the left side. Anders was helping Amell out of his boots when Amell finally broke the silence.

"Anders, can you talk to me yet?" Amell asked.

"No. I'm still mad at you." Anders said as much to remind himself as remind Amell.

"I'm sorry." Amell tried to hold his hand when Anders started unbuckling his greaves. Anders smacked him away.

"That word's not magic, you know. It doesn't undo what you did to me." Anders said.

"I know it doesn't." Amell said. "I just want you to believe me."

"Yeah, well. I want a pony." Anders said.

Amell stopped talking. Anders felt like an ass. Anders set Amell's greaves aside and reached for his gauntlets. Amell dodged him, rather feebly. "You can go. I can do the rest."

Amell moved like a snail taking off his gauntlets, but he moved. He could probably get out of rest of his armor on his own. "I'll go give the cooks a meal plan for you." Anders said. "Don't get out of bed unless you have to. The servants will bring you whatever you need, and I'll have my aide come check on you."

"Thank you." Amell said.

Amell got his second gauntlet off and set it on his nightstand. He didn't move after that, exhaustion in his every feature. Anders sighed and unbuckled his chest piece. "I can do it." Amell protested.

"Shut up." Anders said.

Anders undid the buckles and straps, and set the mess of dragonscale on the trunk at the foot of Amell's bed. Amell stared at him the entire time, not talking. Anders would have preferred a kicked puppy dog look to the one Amell was giving him. Amell didn't look wounded, or terribly depressed. Just resigned and tired.

Anders sat next to him. "You need anything else before I go?"

Amell put a hand on his shoulder. Anders stared at it, and after a brief moment of hesitation the hand became a hug. Anders let his frustration out in a hard exhale, and thought of prying Amell off him, but he wasn't that much of a bastard. Amell was trying, at least. Right now it was more than Anders was doing.

"I'm still mad at you," Anders said so they were clear. He wrapped his arms loosely around Amell's waist, and wasn't sure when he stopped allowing the hug and started enjoying it.

Not long later, Amell's grip went slack. Anders laid him down on the bed, and pulled the blankets over him. Anders pulled the keys Amell had given him out of his pocket, and went to leave them on the nightstand. His eyes drifted to the drawer, and the tiny key among Amell's set.

Don't be an ass, Anders.

Curiosity killed the cat. The last time Anders gone through Amell's things he hadn't liked what he'd found, and besides, there was no reason to snoop. It wasn't like Amell had had a chance to write about what they'd just been through. Anders had what? Seven lives left? He should save them for something worthwhile.

Anders was an ass.

He unlocked the drawer and picked up the journal, half expecting it to scream at him for the breach of privacy. It didn't. It was just a journal. Anders flipped it open, and the page it opened to had a sketch of the golem they'd fought in Kal'Hirol.

A pretty damn good sketch, actually. Anders didn't know Amell could draw. He turned a few more pages, and found other sketches between entries. There were awakened darkspawn, an elf that looked like Velanna and must have been her sister, the dragons they'd fought in the mines, Anders...

Anders stopped. One of the last filled pages in the journal had a sketch of him sleeping. It cut off at his stomach, where the blanket was tangled around his waist. Amell had imaginatively titled it 'Anders sleeping.' Anders flipped back through the journal, but there was just the one sketch of him.

Anders looked at the entry next to it, but it was completely unrelated notes about the state of the arling, recent tithes, a bit about the darkspawn sighting by the Turnobles. Nothing interesting. Anders closed the journal and put it back in the drawer. He locked it again, and left the keys on the nightstand before he left.

Anders went back downstairs, and left orders for a meal plan for Amell with the Vigil's cooks. He stole some milk from the kitchens while he was there for Ser Pounce-a-Lot before heading to the barracks.

He'd scarcely set foot in the door before he was promptly assaulted by Sigrun. "Is he okay?"

"Peachy. Why wouldn't he be?" Anders said. Ser Pounce-a-Lot emerged from under his bunk at the sound of his voice, and ran over meowing loudly. Anders set the bowl of milk down for him and heated it with his magic.

"Because a darkspawn stuck him like a warden-kabob?" Sigrun guessed.

"He's fine. He's had worse." Oghren said from where he was sitting over at the table. He'd changed out of everything but his trousers. Anders couldn't tell where his beard stopped and his chest hair began. "Stop fretting, my juicy little pomegranate. Come have a drink."

Oghren kicked out a chair for Sigrun, but instead of sliding expertly across the floor it toppled over. Sigrun rolled her eyes and picked it up. "I'm going to go help with the construction in the yard. You guys have fun."

"All work and no play makes for a shit sodding day,"  Oghren called after her. "What about you, Sparkles? Drink?"

"I'm going to change and get lunch, but then sure." Anders said.

Anders was glad Oghren didn't ask him anything about Amell when Anders finally joined him for drinks. Anders didn't want to think about Amell, and avoided him for the next two days. Anders sent his aide to check on Amell in his stead, wondering what he was even still doing here.

Anders could have on a boat to Rivain to enjoy the warm white beaches at Llomerynn by now. Instead he was freezing in Ferelden. This whole mess was a lot more complicated than Anders wanted it to be. All he wanted was a good friend and a good fuck. He didn't want all of whatever this was. The templars still had his phylactery, which meant the only safe place for him was with the Wardens, but at this rate Amell was going to get one or both of them killed anyway. What was even the point in staying?

On Anders' name-day, on the fifth of Kingsway, a servant came and found him while he was playing cards with everyone, and told him the Commander wanted to see him.

Anders climbed the stairs with a knot in his stomach. Oghren must have been rubbing off on him, because Anders felt far too sober for this conversation. The servant left him in front of Amell's room, and Anders was struck by the childish want to turn around and pretend he hadn't gotten the summons. He pushed open the door to Amell's room with a sigh instead.

Amell was in bed, and looked much better than he had two days ago. Instead of a ripped up tunic, he was in a Grey Warden doublet. The color was back in his face, and a strand of his hair was tamed into a braid and pushed back behind one ear. He looked nice.

"Feeling better?" Anders asked, picking a spot for himself next to Amell's bed. He couldn't decide what to do with his hands, and settled on fiddling with the corner of the blanket.

"A lottle," Amell said.

Anders smiled.

"...I just wanted to make sure you got your gift." Amell explained when he realized he wasn't getting more than the smile. He picked up a parcel from his nightstand, and slid it across the bed to him. It was about the length of Anders' forearm, and the width of his hand.

"This is pretty small for a pony."  Anders said, tossing the parcel back and forth between his hands. It had a decent weight to it. It could have been anything.

"I'm still working on the pony." Amell said. "Did you want to open it?"

Not really. Anders untied the strings keeping the plain brown wrapping in place. Silver stared up at him, an eagle motif engraved into a pair of very fine bracers. Anders started laughing. He couldn't help himself. It was too ironic.

"You got me shackles." Anders laughed. Something in him snapped. "Andraste's knickers, that's too much. The blood mage who enslaved me got me shackles."

"I didn't have a choice, Anders." Amell said.

"Really? You went down to the jewelers and they were fresh out of everything except a shiny new pair of shackles?" Anders laughed. "You could have gone with nothing if these were your only options, I'm just saying."

"I didn't have a choice about the spell," Amell said. "The bracers-"

"Don't give me that." Anders interrupted him. "You had a choice. You could have let go of the ogre and let me heal you. You could have just kept fighting with ogre enslaved. You chose to enslave me. You chose blood magic. You always choose blood magic."

"You said you didn't have a problem with it." Amell said. "You were perfectly willing to heal everyone and help me quell the rebellion with it."

"Surprise!" Anders raised his hands sarcastically, "I'm a hypocrite. I don't mind when you're not using it on me, and I'm sorry, but I think that's a pretty okay thing to be hypocritical about. Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? I'm a spirit healer. I draw spirits and demons like shit draws flies. You risked my life doing that to me."

"I risk your life every time I take you on a mission." Amell said.

"This was worse!" Anders snapped. "Do you even know what that felt like for me?"

"Yes." Amell said. "I've been mind controlled twice by demons, but never by a mage who cares about me. I know what it's like. I was hoping you'd come talk to me about it. I want to be here for you."

"I don't want you to be here for me." Anders said.

Amell didn't react. Anders was expecting him to look surprised or hurt, but he didn't look anything. Somehow that was worse. Anders thought of Amell's sketch, and wondered for a moment if he was wrong about him. Maybe Amell didn't like him as much as Anders thought he did. Anders thought of all his hugs, and little touches. No... No Amell definitely liked him. He was just good at guarding his expressions.

Anders pressed on. "You like me a lot more than I'm used to people liking me, and that scares the shit out of me. I'm having a hard enough time figuring out how I feel about you without blood magic fucking me up. I want to like you, okay? I really do, and that scares me too, but you just... I need some space. I'll talk to you later, alright?"

Anders didn't wait for his answer. He turned around and went to the door, and was almost surprised when Amell didn't call after him. It made Anders doubt himself all over again. He glanced over his shoulder half expecting Amell to be nose deep in a book, Anders' rant already forgotten.

Amell had his face buried in his hands. Well that answered that. Anders felt queasy, but he left anyway. It wasn't worth it. If Amell was willing to enslave him for an edge up against the darkspawn, who knew what else he was willing to do? How well did Anders really know him, when Amell was sitting on a grimoire of demons and Compassion couldn't read his mind?

It was a bad hand. Anders was better off cutting his losses now before he cared any more than he already did. Anders wandered back down to the Warden's barracks. Everyone was still playing cards. Sigrun was winning, unsurprisingly, but Velanna wasn't half bad once she finally consented to playing with them.

"You weren't gone long." Sigrun said. "What did Amell get you for your name day? No way it was sex."

"Nothing special," Anders lied. "Deal me in next hand?"

"Sure." Sigrun said.

Anders dug Ser Pounce-a-Lot out from under his bunk. The little tabby howled in protest, and refused to sit in his lap when Anders sat on the bed with him. Anders let him go, and wasn't surprised when the little fellow ran back under the bunk. Anders didn't want to spend time with Anders right now either.

"So did you ditch him?" Oghren asked. For someone who was drunk more than half the time, Oghren was remarkably perceptive.

"I don't know." Anders said. "Maybe."

"Wait, what?" Sigrun looked over at him. Anders watched Nathaniel palm card from the discard deck when Sigrun looked away. Velanna saw as well, and pinched Nathaniel, but didn't tell. Anders chuckled a little. "Why?" Sigrun asked.

"Don't really want to talk about it." Anders said.

"I figured as much." Oghren said. He dropped his cards on the table, despite having a fairly good hand. Three angels played, with one in his hand. "I'm out."

Oghren got up and went over to his bunk, where he dug up a bottle of something Anders guessed was alcoholic.

"Seriously?" Anders said. "He still needs fluids. He shouldn't be drinking. It'll dehydrate him."

"He's gonna drink anyway, Sparkles." Oghren said. "May as well be with me."

"Oh come on," Anders rolled his eyes. "I said maybe. And besides, aside from being a little down, I'm sure he's fine. He's barely known me a few months."

"You know, Sparkles, sometimes it's not about you." Oghren said, rummaging through the mess on his bunk for another bottle. He stuffed both bottles under his arm, and headed for the door. "Sometimes people are just fuck-ups, and they know it, and it gets 'em down. And when that happens, there ain't nothing you can do but drink until it goes away."

Notes:

Elvish Translations
Dareth - Be safe
Ma Serannas - Thank you

Apples and Apostates
You and Me: Amell and Oghren's conversation as told from Oghren's perspective.

 

Fanart
The Awakening Crew

Chapter 21: The Resolutionist and The Aequitarian

Notes:

Thank you so much for all of your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, kudos, and as always, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 13 Parvulis Afternoon

Amaranthine

"Ugh," Velanna wrinkled her nose. It had been a nice nose, pert and pretty, until her scowl narrowed her nostrils and pinched up her tattooed face. It was a shame, really. The little elf was gorgeous, right up until she opened her mouth. "So many humans in one place. Look at them crawling all over, like rats. The sight of it sickens me."

"You know, for someone who harps on humans all the time, you sure have a lot of human friends." Anders said.

"Do I?" Velanna asked. "This is news to me."

"Oh, ouch," Anders stumbled, and put a dramatic had to his chest. "That one hurt, and I already knew we weren't friends. You know they both heard you, right?"

"Ma tu ma'vhenan numin." Amell said.

"Suledin. Tel'abelas." Velanna said.

"Ma emma falon." Amell said.

Velanna rolled her eyes and looked away from him.

"Abelas... Abelas is sorry?" Nathaniel ventured. "Tel'abelas, is that not sorry?"

"It is." Velanna said, smiling. It lit up her face, and made her emerald eyes sparkle, and for a moment she almost looked like a person. Anders could almost see why Nate liked her. Almost.

"Oh I get it," Anders prodded Velanna with his elbow. "Nate doesn't count as a friend because he's bit more than that isn't he, my lady?"

Velanna turned positively red. Anders laughed, and Velanna smacked him in the stomach with her staff. Anders doubled over, wheezing, and Oghren hooted.

"Hoho!" Oghren chortled, "You got him good! Hit him again!"

"No hitting," Amell said.

"Wish you'd said that sooner," Anders pouted, rubbing the bruise on his stomach.

"I didn't know it was something that needed to be said." Amell said.

"It wouldn't need to be said if somebody could take a punch," Sigrun said. She drew back a menacing fist, and Anders darted to the other side of Amell.

"Mom," Anders whined.

"No hitting." Amell said again.

"Remind me why we are in this cesspool of a city again?" Velanna asked.

"Oh come on, it's not a cesspool," Anders said, stepping over a puddle of filth in the street, "Once you get past all the cesspools."

"This city was Kristoff's last known location." Amell explained.

"Because the last warden of yours we found proved so invaluable." Velanna snorted.

"Oh, hey, yeah!" Anders snapped his fingers, "How did that go with uh... Ken..."

"Keenan?" Amell supplied.

"Keenan! With his wife. How'd that go? " Anders asked.

"She was cheating on him." Amell said.

"Oh... well that's... pretty shit." Anders said.

"It was pretty shit." Amell agreed.

Anders laughed. Oghren had him worried last week, but Amell was fine, as far as Anders could tell. It was a much needed weight off Anders' conscience. Anders still wasn't sure if he could handle a relationship with Amell, but being friends was a lot better than being awkward acquaintances. Friends Anders could handle.

"What makes you think this Kristoff will prove any more useful? Or that he will know any more than we do?" Velanna demanded.

"Nothing and no one, but Varel claims he was investigating the darkspawn," Amell said. "If nothing else we can pick up where he left off. The ambush at the Turnoble Estate proved we didn't hit their main breeding ground in Kal'Hirol, and for now this is our best lead if we are ever to find your sister, Velanna."

"And you aim to find him in the markets?" Velanna asked.

Anders hadn't been paying attention to where they were going. The streets all tended to blur together. All the buildings were stone brick and a dreary grey, with mounds of dirt and rubbish heaps on every corner. The cobblestone that lined them had dirty water and feces for grout, and it took up most of Anders' attention just keeping the latter off his boots. Not that he was complaining.

The rest of the city was worth it, once you got to the markets. Right now, they were crowded with street vendors, pitching carts and tables of candies, trinkets, and baubles. Anders had maybe thirty silvers in his boots, and was more than happy for the chance to spend them.

"No," Amell said. "I'm going to search the local taverns. The rest of you are free for the day, so long as you stay in groups of two. We'll meet at the Pilgrim's Rest at sundown. Hopefully I'll have found whichever inn Kristoff was staying in by then, and we can spend the night there."

"Dibs!" Sigrun jumped forward and latched onto Amell's arm. "Can we do some shopping first? There are so many shinnies here it's making my fingers twitch. You have to buy me something before I lose my self-control."

"We're going to visit my sister," Nathaniel said, not bothering to specify who made up the 'we.' "I'm sure Delilah wouldn't mind if any of you wanted to visit as well. She lives just down that street, the third house on the right,"

Nathaniel left with Velanna down the street he'd gestured towards.

Oghren gave Anders a nudge. "Guess it's me and you, Sparkles."

"I could stand to look around for a bit," Anders said.

"What is it with gals and shopping?" Oghren asked.

"Well maybe if you'd buy me something nice for once I wouldn't have to shop for myself," Anders said.

Oghren rolled his eyes and stuffed his thumbs into his belt. He wandered over to where Amell was waiting for Sigrun, and struck up a conversation.

Anders gave the street a cursory scan before he picked the same table Sigrun was standing over. It was littered with baubles, statuettes, and other figurines. There was one in onyx that vaguely resembled a pride demon. Anders stared at it, wondering if Amell would like it.

Sigrun picked up a snow globe, "What is this? Who are the people inside supposed to be?"

"It's a snow globe." Anders said. "You shake it."

Sigrun gave it a shake and watched the flecks of 'snow' that fell around the figurines, enraptured.

"That's King Cailan and Queen Anora," The vendor said. He was also a dwarf, and a fairly decent looking one. Unlike Oghren, his beard was neatly kempt and his nose, while large, wasn't quite so misshapen.

"King Cailan... that's not the current king, is it?" Sigrun asked.

"It is not." The dwarf said. "The current king is King Alistair. King Cailan died at the battle of Ostagar."

"Okay, good," Sigrun said, "I don't want to offend the Commander or anything. How much is this?"

"Ordinarily, seven silvers, but for a lovely woman like yourself, I could do six." The dwarf offered.

"Seriously?" Sigrun asked, rubbing the casteless tattoo on her cheek. "Didn't you see the, you know..."

"The tabard?" The dwarf asked. "I certainly did, Warden."

Oh he was smooth. Anders looked back at Sigrun and swore he saw a blush. Sigrun bit her lip and dug through her pockets, turning up six silvers for the snow globe. The vendor parceled it and handed it over. "Thank you." Sigrun said. She left the dwarf's table for a different vendor, and Anders hurried after her.

"What are you doing?" Anders asked. "At least get his name."

"What?" Sigrun asked.

"The dwarf fellow back there," Anders said, "He was nice; he had a beard. You love beards."

"I do love beards..." Sigrun said, rubbing her chin.

"So go on. I'll back you up." Anders said.

"Haha, no." Sigrun laughed, "There'd be no point. I'm in the Legion of the Dead, Warden or not. Nothing would last between me and anyone. But that was nice, not being judged just because of my brand... I'm not used to that."

"I'm going to go get his name." Anders said, turning around.

"No don't!" Sigrun grabbed his hand. "Come on, stop it. If you're going to do anything, why don't you try not judging Amell just because of his magic?"

"Where'd that come from?" Anders asked. "Is that why you've been giving me dirty looks lately?"

"I just don't get how you could drop him like that, right after he saved you from that ogre." Sigrun said. "Look it's-... none of my business. Nevermind. Have fun with Oghren."

Sigrun headed towards another vendor, and Anders looked around for Oghren. He was still with Amell. They were standing by a cart selling candies, buying and eating a few while they waited. "Anders, apple something?" Amell offered when Anders came over.

"Sure," Anders said. Amell traded away a few coppers, and handed him a caramel apple. "Thanks."

"I better go follow her," Amell said as Sigrun moved further down the street. "I'll see you both later."

"See ya," Oghren said.

"Later," Anders agreed.

Amell walked away. His warden's tabard covered his ass, not that Anders would have stared if it didn't. Anders turned back Oghren. "So I'm surprised you haven't given me any shit since things between me and him hit the rocks."

"What, the Boss?" Oghren snorted, taking a vicious bite out of his own caramel apple. Anders teeth hurt just watching him. "He's a big boy, he can handle it. You done shopping? Ready for drinks?"

"Ready to drink you under the table," Anders said. "Just-give me a second, I want to buy something I saw back there."

"You're on," Oghren said, following him back to the dwarf's table. Anders coughed up ten of his thirty silver for the statuette. The vendor wrapped it, and handed it over. "That for You Know Who?"

"I never got him anything for getting me Ser Pounce-a-Lot." Anders reasoned. He stuffed the parcel under his arm and licked his caramel apple, instead of biting it, because he wasn't a savage.

"Honestly, Sparkles, I'm surprised you made it as far as you did," Oghren said, leading the way towards Pilgrim's Rest, "I bet you'd cheese it after he went all demon-summony, down in the cellars. Cost me ten silvers."

"Wait, seriously?" Anders asked, "You actually bet on how long we'd be a thing?"

"Yep." Oghren said.

"He's okay though, right?" Anders asked, "I mean, he doesn't care, does he?"

"Why you asking me?" Oghren demanded, taking another vicious bite out his apple. The caramel crunched and caught between his teeth. Anders shuddered.

"Because you're his friend?" Anders guessed.

"I mean, why do you give a shit?" Oghren clarified.

"Well I still like him. You know, when he's not... being insane." Anders said. It wasn't as if Amell had changed. Amell was still nice, still showered him with gifts, and still put up with his bullshit, even when Anders wasn't sleeping with him. After going from having sex every night to having no sex at all, Anders couldn't help admitting he missed having sex with Amell, or at least having sex with someone.

"Sparkles, I'm gonna tell you something, and then you're gonna forget I told you, deal?" Oghren asked. Oh boy. That didn't sound good. This was going to be some sort of story about how Amell had killed his last lover in some sort of demonic rage. Anders could smell it. Anders could smell something. Anders picked up his pace to make sure he was walking in front of Oghren, and not behind him.

"Alright. Go ahead." Anders said.

"So back during the Blight, the Boss was with this elf. Now I ain't into dudes, but this guy was something. High cheekbones, pouty lips, the works. We're talking so pretty at first I thought he was a gal. And this elf was one of them Crows. Assassin type, cold blooded killer, vicious as a bronto's fart. Archy's dad hired the elf to kill us, and the elf tried, but fucked it up, and the Boss recruited him.

"It was love at first sight. I'm telling you, it was gross. Every night, I gotta listen to these two fuck like nugs. But anyway, time goes by, and the Boss does his thing, and even the elf can't deal with it. They have it out in front of everyone, big fight about how the Boss is crazy, the Boss is gonna get himself killed or possessed, the elf can't take losing another lover, it's the elf or the blood magic.

"You can guess which one the Boss picked. So what I'm getting at here is if the Boss won't stop for a guy like that, and even a guy like that can't handle how fucking nug shit crazy the Boss is, you don't stand a fucking chance. I like ya, Sparkles, I like ya a lot, but if you can't handle the magic shit, you can't handle him, and I don't blame you one lick. So there you go. Forget I said anything. Let's go get drunk."

Drinks sounded nice. Anders finished his apple and tossed the core. He didn't catch Oghren doing the same, and wouldn't have been surprised if Oghren just ate it. Anders followed Oghren into the Pilgrim's Rest, and was greeted with the refreshing smell of whiskey vomit and feet. Mackay was working the counter, and remembered them when they found themselves stools. "Hey boys, get you some of my single malt again?"

"Damn straight," Oghren said, digging ten sweaty silvers out of his crotch and laying them on the counter. "Keep the drinks flowing, Mackay."

"You got it," Mackay said, pouring them both shots.

Anders drank enough to be comfortably tipsy, but kept himself from getting completely sloshed. They still had to regroup with everyone, and Anders didn't trust himself not to jump into bed with Amell if he got too drunk with how frustrated he was lately. Oghren had no such reservations, and was a drooling mess by the time Amell and Sigrun came and found them.

"We found where Kristoff was staying," Amell said by way of greeting, "Can you walk?"

"Me?" Anders asked, "I'm fine. Can't really say the same about him, though."

"You! There you are! I been thinkin' of you." Oghren slurred, pointing in-between Sigrun and Amell. Anders guessed he meant Sigrun, by his leer. "Where can I get some sauce to go with that rump roast?"

"Right here, you mad dwarven stallion." Amell said.

"Ew." Sigrun said.

Oghren broke into a fit of giggles and fell off his stool.

"... Hm." Amell said.

"I'm not helping you carry him," Sigrun said.

"I got feet to walk." Oghren said from the floor.

"Are Velanna and Nathaniel back yet?" Amell asked.

"No, but-Speak of the Maker," Anders said.

Amell glanced over his shoulder. The door to the tavern was closed.

"Gotcha." Anders said.

It opened a second later, and Velanna and Nathaniel walked in.

"Gotcha." Amell said.

Anders laughed. Amell grinned at him, and Anders pictured Amell wearing the same grin while Anders undressed him. It was a nice memory, one where Anders had knocked Amell down on the couch, and had him naked and sweating underneath him, one ankle on Ander's shoulder while Anders held Amell's leg to his chest and drove Amell into the couch with every thrust of his hips. A heartbeat later, and Anders pictured Amell enslaving him.

Anders really needed to go fuck himself now that they'd finally have private rooms for a night.

"Kristoff was staying at the Crown and Lion," Amell was explaining while Anders was reminiscing. "It's on the other side of the city, near the Guard House. I booked us rooms there for the night, but if you want to stay with your sister just make sure you're back at the Crown and Lion by mid-morning."

"No, she can't spare the space." Nathaniel said, glancing down at Oghren. "I see you two had a productive day."

"Eheheheh," Oghren said from the floor.

Amell knelt and helped Oghren up, and the six of them left the Pilgrim's Rest, and trekked across the city to the Crown and Lion. Oghren was in front, which was a miracle, because his legs were like noodles, and took him in every direction but forward. He all but crashed into the door of the Crown and Lion, and steadied himself on the handle. "Gotta get my buzz back," Oghren said to himself, stumbling into the inn. He didn't get two feet inside the door before he let out such a shout Anders jumped.

"Haha! Well shave my tits and suckle me dry! If It isn't Wynne!" Oghren squealed, running inside.

"Ugh," Anders groaned, leaning over to whisper in Amell's ear, "Now there's a mental picture I could do without."

Amell didn't laugh, which was very Amell of him, but he also didn't exhale through his nose, or even smile. Anders looked at him. Amell was staring fixedly forward, his shoulders visibly tense. He clenched and unclenched his fists, and took a calming breath before putting his enigmatic face back on. "The innkeeper should have your keys, just give him your names," Amell said, following Oghren inside.

Well that was weird.

Nathaniel, Velanna, and Sigrun all got themselves a table. Anders followed Amell, curious.

The Crown and Lion was a lot cleaner than the Pilgrim's Rest. It smelled like burning pine in place of stale vomit and feet, and a rug was in front of the door to catch mud and dirt. A small stone stage took up the right side of the common room, where a minstrel was playing Andraste's Mabari. Most of the tables were filled with patrons, but Oghren had run to the bar.

Oghren had clambered up onto a stool beside an older looking woman. Her hair was white, drawn up into a bun and accented with a golden headband set with rubies. She was wearing a very fine robe, and a very fine staff leaned against the bar beside her. She looked a little familiar. Anders had a name for the face, but it still wasn't clicking.

"Wynne old gal!" Oghren hooted. "How the fuck have you been!?"

"I've been well," Wynne said. "It's good to see you again, my friend."

Amell took up a spot behind Oghren, and a sneer wrinkled Wynne's features into something entirely unpleasant, and much more familiar. Anders knew he knew her from somewhere. It was right there on the tip of his tongue.

"Well if it isn't the man of the hour," Wynne said, directing her sneer at Amell. "You keep turning up like a bad rash."

"I've got some experience with those," Oghren chuckled drunkenly, waving the bartender over to pour him a drink. Anders took the stool next to him. Amell kept standing.

"Wynne." Amell said.

"That's it!" Anders exclaimed, "Wynne! As in Senior Enchanter Wynne. I had you as a teacher in some of my classes,"

"Hm?" Wynne forfeit her starring contest with Amell to look at him. Her expression became marginally less hostile. "I remember you. Anders, wasn't it? Should I take this to mean you are a Grey Warden now?"

"That's the word on the street," Anders said with a smile, a little surprised Wynne returned it. He'd never been a very good student, and spent most of his time drawing in the margins of his books instead of listening.

"Well then perhaps there's hope for the Order yet," Wynne said.

"What are you doing here, Wynne?" Amell asked.

"Not that it's any business of yours," Wynne looked down her nose at Amell, as if the man were a bug that was beneath her even to step on, "But the College of Magi is convening in Cumberland, and I am attending."

"Since when is Magi business not my business?" Amell asked.

The staring contest that followed made even Anders feel awkward.

"Oh, very well," Wynne broke with a sigh, "This is your doing anyway. What were you thinking, asking the crown for that ridiculous boon? 'Autonomy for the Circle' indeed. It's all anyone will talk about now. You'll no doubt be pleased to learn you've made the libertarians bold. They wish to pull away from the Chantry entirely, and if they get enough support..."

"Pull away entirely?" Anders interrupted, "But that's madness! I hate Chantry oversight as much as the next mage, but they can't just decide to leave. This is a recipe for disaster."

"Good." Amell said. "It's about time the mages freed themselves."

"The mages will never be free!" Wynne snapped, throwing up her hands. Anders got the feeling they'd had this argument before. Her shout drew more than a few stares. With a visible effort, Wynne pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath, lowering her voice. "The Chantry would never allow it. Our only hope for survival is to show them we can be trusted. Don't you remember what happened to the Circle here?"

"I remember I saved it." Amell said.

"Greagoir called for the Rite of Annulment!" Wynne hissed. "It was pure coincidence you showed up in time to do anything. Do you want to give the templars another excuse to call for the culling of all mages? This change cannot be forced."

"Then it will never come," Amell said, "Did you hear nothing Evelina said? We deserve freedom."

"Do not speak to me of that girl. She deserved to die for her crimes, and you recruited her. A maleficar." Wynne said tightly. She clenched her fists, angry blue veins straining against milky white skin. "This discussion will get us nowhere. I suppose I should at least be grateful you're finally traveling with a mage of some sense."

"Oh is that me?" Anders asked.

"It is," Wynne said, "At least you understand the madness of this plight."

"Have a little Faith, Wynne," Amell said. "The future might surprise you."

That sounded eerily ominous, Anders thought. Wynne glared at Amell, tight-lipped and seething. Anders could practically see the steam coming off of her. "Is there a reason we are still talking?"

"No. No reason. Take care, Enchanter." Amell said. Anders watched him leave the common room, and made a mental note of which room on the second story was his.

"Give him a break, old girl." Oghren said, "He did right by you."

"He did no such thing." Wynne said. Her glare melted away once Amell was gone, and she looked much more approachable when she looked at Anders. "How have you been, Anders? I haven't seen you in... over three years now, I believe."

"Oh, you know," Anders said flippantly, "I've been busy, moving from cell to cell. I should have written, I know, but they don't give you any paper in solitary."

"Yes, I had heard about that." Wynne said dispassionately, as if he'd actually been on vacation and not locked away. Anders decided he didn't care for her.

"We've all heard about that," Oghren said. "It's all Sparkles talks about. Circle this, freedom that. I missed you, old girl. Sparkles here can't hold his liquor for shit. You staying long?"

"Unfortunately, no," Wynne gave Oghren's hand an affectionate pat. "I have to be off to Nevarra soon, and I still have some preparations to make. In fact, I should probably head back to my room. That exchange was... very draining. Anders, would you be a dear and walk with me?"

Oh boy. This wasn't going to be good. More people telling him Amell was evil and crazy and going to kill everyone and everything with blood magic, probably. Anders was getting a little sick of it. Amell was reckless and dangerous, sure, but he meant well. He wasn't malicious. Anders picked up his staff and his parcel, and Wynne picked up her staff, and they left the common room and headed up the stairs.

"I do remember you, Anders," Wynne said as soon as they were out of earshot from Oghren, "You were a smart boy. Willful and impatient, but smart. What are you doing with him?"

"Who, Oghren?" Anders joked. "He's not so bad once you get past the smell."

Wynne kept silent until they were outside the door to her room on the third story. She waited for another tavern guest to leave the hall before she took Anders' hands and gave them an urgent squeeze. "The Grey Wardens are not your only option for freedom. Look at me, child. Do you see any templars looming over me? Come back to the Circle, follow the rules, and we will take care of you. I swear it."

"Take care of me?" Anders repeated incredulously. He pulled his hands free of her and wiped them off his trousers. He felt dirty. "Is that what you call it? Was the Circle taking care of me the year I spent locked away in solitary? Spending most of my days talking to a cat to stay sane, begging the templars for just one minute of sunlight?"

"You were a runner, Anders, and a repeat offender," Wynne said without apology, "But if you came back willingly, if you were to show them you could be trusted, they would provide for you. In a few years, you'd-"

"A few years?" Anders interrupted her with a bark of laughter, "I'm free now! Amell has done more for me in a few months than the Circle did in a decade,"

"That... man," Wynne spat the word, as if Amell was somehow less than that, "Has done nothing for anyone."

"Oh, except save the world," Anders sneered, "Maybe you hadn't heard, but there was this thing called the Blight? The last one took twelve years to stop, and he did it in twelve months."

Wynne opened her mouth to argue, and slowly closed it. She looked at him askance, and her alit with clarity, "Of course. I see it now. You're smitten with him. And love makes us blind. So very blind. That man is a monster, Anders, no better than the darkspawn. Make no mistake, if you stay with him, he'll make one of you too."

"How can you even say something like that?" Anders asked. "You're not a Grey Warden. You haven't seen what the darkspawn do to people. I am. I have. There isn't a fuckup so colossal anyone could ever make to be worse than them."

"It was no 'fuckup.' It was deliberate. It was..." Wynne stopped. "Anders, you must believe me. I have no reason to lie to you."

"Well, I don't." Anders said, wishing he had a little more confidence to back up his words. "It was nice talking with you, Senior Enchanter. Good luck in Cumberland."

Wynne stared at him unhappily. "Thank you, Anders. Maker watch over you."

Anders made his way back down to the common room of the inn, brooding. Wynne hating Amell, Anders could understand. He was a maleficar, he made deals with demons, he was reckless, and he wanted freedom for mages. But why did Amell hate her? Just because she hated him? And what was that 'Have a little Faith' snippet that had made Wynne so furious about? The way Amell had paused when he'd said it had made the word seem profound, almost threatening...

Wynne had been Anders' teacher in some of his classes. His spirit healing classes. Amell was worried about spirits getting too attached to their healers, and spirit healers could draw on spirits of Faith. And two plus two was four. Good job Anders.

Maker's mercy, it was her. Wynne was an abomination. Except she wasn't some bulbous mess of too many souls stuffed into one body. She was completely normal. She couldn't be an abomination. Amell just had a healthy bit of caution about spirits and spirit healers. ... Since when did Amell have a healthy bit of caution about anything? Wynne had to be an abomination.

Anders chewed on his lip, so lost in thought he nearly barreled into Sigrun when he reached the bottom of the stairs.

"There you are!" Sigrun grinned up at him, and pointed over her shoulder towards a table his fellow wardens were sitting around, "We're going to play a game of Wicked Grace. Want to join us?"

"No Amell?" Anders noticed.

"He's going through Kristoff's things again," Sigrun said with a shrug, "I don't know why. We already found out where Kristoff was headed. I guess he has a thing for dead people. Necromancers, right? Too bad I'm not a guy."

"He still doesn't have a beard, you know," Anders said.

"Don't get jealous," Sigrun said, "I'm still rooting for you two. So you in or out?"

"I'm in," Anders said. "Give me a minute to see if I can convince Amell."

"It only takes a minute, huh?" Sigrun waggled her eyebrows.

"Magic fingers," Anders joked. "Second door on the left, right?"

"That's the one," Sigrun said.

Anders went to Kristoff's room and knocked.

"It's not locked," Amell called back.

Anders let himself in. It was a fairly simple room: a stone basin to Anders' right, a chest of drawers to the left. A bed took up the far left corner, and a couch sat before a small low table on the right. Amell was sitting at it, surrounded by piles of parchment, maps and open books.

Amell glanced over his shoulder at his entrance, and Anders locked the door as an afterthought. Amell stood up so quickly it was almost comical.

"Don't get excited. I just want to talk," Anders said. Amell cleared a quick space for him on the couch. Anders sat. "What are you doing?"

"Going through Kristoff's things," Amell explained, sitting back down. "He had a wife. There's a letter here from her saying she was heading to Vigil's Keep to meet him, but it's dated back in Ferventis. Either she was delayed or she died on the journey-"

"Or she's cheating on him." Anders offered up.

"Or she's cheating on him. She has a sister in Jader. I was trying to find her sister's name in Kristoff's journal so I could write to her, and inquire about his wife." Amell said.

Not really the sort of thing a monster would be doing. "So... I have a question." Anders said.

"Ask." Amell said.

"Is Wynne an abomination?" Anders asked.

"No." Amell said. He didn't so much as blink.

"See, I feel like, if you were telling the truth here, my question would have surprised you a little." Anders said. Amell stared at him, unreadable as ever, but Anders decided to go with his gut. "She is, isn't she? That's why you asked if Compassion would ever possess me, because Faith possessed Wynne, right?"

"Anders, I need your silence on this." Amell said, confirming Anders' guess. "Wynne doesn't have the Wardens to fall back on. If anyone found out, the templars would kill her."

Anders was right. He gambled and he was actually right. Maybe his luck was finally turning up. Anders was suddenly looking forward to that game of Wicked Grace.

"Hey, I'm already keeping your secret, what's one more?" Anders said blithely, "But, just out of curiosity, why do you care? I mean you two didn't really seem to get on."

"That doesn't mean I want her dead." Amell said, frowning a little, "I'm not even sure if she can die, truth be told."

"So how...? I mean, she looks completely normal. No weird fleshy protrusions, unless that robe was doing some serious work. No echoy demon voice. How is that possible?" Anders asked.

"Because Wynne was willing, and reckless," Amell said.

"You're one to talk." Anders said.

"Anders, I'm sorry," Amell said. The word felt tired. Amell sounded tired.

"Look... I know, alright?" Anders said. "I know you're sorry. You don't have to keep saying it."

Amell rubbed his hands on his trousers, likely to get the sweat off his palms. Anders gave him a smile, and Amell continued. "... I don't know how familiar you are with abominations, but it's not what the Circle teaches. They aren't all mindless beasts."

"The Circle lied to me?" Anders joked, hand to his heart, "Andraste's sword, my world is falling apart."

Amell chuckled a little and said, "Possession doesn't always end in a monster. Entering the physical realm is overwhelming for most spirits and demons. It drives them mad, but the more powerful spirits and demons like Faith or Desire can adapt to the change, and keep the physical shape of their host. I've seen it... frequently, but Wynne is the only abomination I've met who holds a spirit."

"So that... I mean, what I just talked to, was that Wynne or a spirit of Faith?" Anders asked.

"Neither? Both?" Amell shrugged. "I can tell you what she told me, but I can't tell you if she was lying."

"... wow." Anders said. "Well that's... I don't know what to say to that. Why does she hate you? Why do you hate her?"

"A lot of reasons," Amell said unhelpfully. Anders wasn't sure if that counted as Amell saying no to him. Anders pouted, but Amell didn't elaborate.

"That bit back there, what you said about the Circles being free," Anders continued, "You just said it to rile her, right? You didn't actually mean all that, did you?"

"Every word." Amell said firmly. "I'm surprised you don't agree."

"I mean, it's a nice fantasy, isn't it?" Anders admitted, "No Chantry treating us like criminals, locking us away, forcing us to choose between Tranquility or fighting demons... but it's just a fantasy. Actually trying to break away? It would be chaos, if not outright civil war between mages and templars."

"Very probably." Amell agreed.

"So... you can see how that's bad, right?" Anders asked. "Thousands would die."

"Anders, do you know what happened back at the Circle?" Amell asked, "During the Blight, with Uldred, and the Rite of Annulment?"

"Sort of?" Anders shrugged, "I mean I heard there was a big mess with blood mages and abominations, and I know a lot of people died, but I was in Harper's Ford at the time. I haven't been back to the Circle in... over a year now."

"Before he became possessed, the mages following Uldred were fighting for freedom," Amell said, "The Circle was going to support Loghain, and he was going to work to free the mages of the Chantry."

"Is that why you didn't, you know, kill Loghain?" Anders asked.

"Yes." Amell said. "If Uldred hadn't lost himself to Pride, I would have put him forward over Irving. We're the lucky ones, Anders, and that's pathetic. Mages should be able to walk free without hiding behind a Warden's tabard. Wardens die in the Joining, or they die ten or twenty years later, and the years in-between are far from freedom.

"Avernus is trying, but mages shouldn't be forced to turn to the Wardens and then to blood magic just to spend the rest of their lives fighting darkspawn. I asked Anora to give the Circle autonomy, and with any luck this vote at Cumberland will pass, and that will be enough to start something."

"Well that's... definitely something I'd expect you to hope for," Anders said. "If it's all the same, I'll be cheering safely from the sidelines on this one. I've had enough fighting templars for one lifetime. And enough of all this weighty talk for one night. Here, I got you this."

Anders pushed the parcel he'd been carrying around all day at Amell. Amell raised a suspicious eyebrow at him. Anders kept his expression carefully neutral, and Amell unwrapped it. The onyx statuette fell out into his hands, and he turned it over curiously.

"It's... a pride demon." Amell said. "Is this you mocking me?"

"No," Anders said quickly. He hadn't even thought of it that way, but in retrospect buying Amell a pride demon statuette was about as rude as Amell buying him bracers. "I just thought you'd like it."

"I thought you'd like the bracers," Amell countered with a wan smile.

"Does that mean you don't like the statuette or...?" Anders asked.

"No, I like it," Amell promised, "It's not very subtle, but I like it."

"Look, about the bracers... If you wanted to try giving them to me again, I'll probably take them this time." Anders said.

"Probably?" Amell asked.

"No promises." Anders said. "So I know you're busy being all Warden Commandery, but we're going to play a game of Wicked Grace. Do you want to come join us?"

"Alright," Amell said, setting the statuette on the low table. Anders stood up and headed to the door. Amell followed him, and caught his hand when he reached for the lock. "Anders... do you forgive me yet?"

"I don't know." Anders said. "I'm trying, okay?"

"Okay." Amell said.

Notes:

Elvish Translations
Ma tu ma'vhenan numin - You make my heart weep.
Suledin. Tel'abelas - Endure. I'm not sorry. (Basically: Deal with it)
Ma emma falon - You are my friend.

Apples and Apostates
Close to the Heart: Amell and Zevran's breakup, as told from Sten's perspective.

Your Man: The start of Amell and Zevran's relationship, as told from Zevran's perspective.

Broken Circle: The incident at Kinloch Hold, as told from Amell's perspective.

Fanart
Amell

Chapter 22: Serpents High, Angels Low

Notes:

Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, and as always, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 13 Parvulis Evening
Crown and Lion Common Room

"Alright you blighters, we're playing Oghren style." Oghren said, shuffling his deck of naked dwarven women. "Serpents high, Angels low, fuck the in-between.  You draw the Angel of Death, you play that shit. I mean it, Archy, no holding onto the endgame card till you like your hand. There's cheating, and then there's cheating.

"We're playing for shots. Winner drinks, and you wanna drink. This is Golden Scythe, 4:90 Black." Oghren shoved a crystal flask to the center of the table. "They served this swill by the drop back in the army. We're talking so strong it'll make you shit your innards."

"Well when you put it like, who wouldn't want some?" Anders said.

"You'll die happy. Trust me, Sparkles," Oghren said, dealing.

Anders picked up his cards, and had to wipe grease off a few of them. His hand was rubbish, as usual. A knight, a dagger, a song, an angel, and a serpent. Sigrun was already moving cards in her hand, something that only made sense if she had more than one of the same suit. Unless she was bluffing. Anders had no idea. He was terrible at this game.

On his first turn, Anders discarded his angel, and drew another angel. It figured. He ate a handful of nuts from the bowl they were sharing, already resigned to his loss. "So do the Dalish have any card games?" Anders asked. "You know, like Wicked Grace or Diamondback?"

"Not in my clan." Velanna actually answered him. "We played with dice, and gambled our chores. I used to cast a bit of nature magic to stir the ground, and turn the dice in my favor. Seranni knew I cheated, but she could never figure out how. She would get so angry," Velanna smiled fondly. "She pushed me into an icy river for it. Twice."

"I like her already." Anders said.

"Seranni loved halla. She was training to be our halla keeper. I'm sure she would have liked you too." Velanna said. "You bleat incessantly and startle just as easily."

"I have a fire balm in my pack if you need it, Anders." Nathaniel said.

"Nice." Sigrun giggled, "What about songs? Do you know any Dalish songs we could hear?"

"They are mostly in Elvish." Velanna said.

"Most? So not all of them?" Sigrun asked.

"Not all, but I won't be singing anything, so put it out of your mind." Velanna said.

Two hours later, and Velanna still hadn't changed her mind, no matter how Sigrun pleaded. Oghren had enjoyed a winning streak that left him completely sloshed, and had passed out on the table, but they carried on without him. Anders hadn't won a single hand. No surprise there.

"Just sing one in elvish, then." Sigrun begged, for at least the fifth time that evening. "I hear you talk in Elvish all the time, and it sounds so pretty. I bet singing it would be even prettier."

"I said no." Velanna said. "Leave it be."

"But Amell sang a song. I sang one. We could all sing one. It could be our thing." Sigrun said eagerly.

"I don't want us to have a thing!" Velanna snapped, throwing her cards on the table. A damn shame, that. She had a good hand: two angels and two songs. "I joined this Order to find my sister, not to make friends, or to play this stupid card game, or to care about durgen'len or shemlen. Ma din lethallinen."

Velanna shoved back her chair and stood.

"Velanna-" Amell started.

"Leave me be." Velanna snapped. She stormed out of the common room and up the stairs to her room without a word.

"What did that mean?" Nathaniel asked.

"You are not my clan." Amell translated.

"Oh... man," Sigrun sighed. She folded up her cards and set them all down to rub her face. "Now I feel bad."

"Me too, and I'm not even friends with her." Anders said.

"No, ugh," Sigrun muttered. "I mean I feel bad because I pushed her. Most of her friends and family are dead, but she's alive. I know what that's like. Being with you guys, having fun like this... It makes you forget losing everyone, but when you remember... How do you not feel guilty?"

"Dying with them wouldn't have saved them, Sigrun." Amell said.

Sigrun ran her hands through her hair and tousled it. She took another look at her cards, set them back down, and stood up. "I'm out. Goodnight guys."

"As am I," Nathaniel said, leaving with her. "Goodnight, both of you."

Well. Game over. Which meant the Golden Scythe was fair game. Anders poured himself and Amell shot. "And that is why I hate All Soul's Day," Anders said when everyone but an unconscious Oghren was gone. "Who wants a whole holiday to celebrate feeling like that? If you ask me, the past is in the past, and the dead should stay dead."

"He said to the necromancer." Amell said.

"Excluding necromancy." Anders said as his toast.

"Excluding necromancy," Amell parroted.

Anders clicked drinks with him and knocked his back. It was like drinking sunlight; it burned his face, set his blood on fire, and it made his toes tingle. Anders coughed. "So hey. I know you were cheating on a few of those hands. There's no way you got four serpents that last round. I know because I discarded one of them. How did you manage to grab it?"

"Magic." Amell said.

"Haha. You're a riot." Anders gave Amell's chair a kick, "Come on, tell me. We both know I can keep a secret."

"Magic." Amell said again.

"Fine, be that way." Anders pouted. One of the many abandoned cards on the table stood up on its own. It floated midair for a few seconds, and then drifted leisurely across the table. Amell caught it, and rolled it over between his fingers.

Amell wore smug well. His smirk touched only the right side of his lips, and shadowed his eyes. It made Anders think of him on his knees, looking up. "You sneaky bastard." Anders said. "Telekinesis, right?"

"Mhm." Amell said, still with that painfully provocative look on his face.

Anders knew himself well enough to know Golden Scythe wasn't the only thing making his face hot. Amell set the card down, and made a come hither gesture with his hand. Anders hair fell down around his face, and his hair tie floated over to land in Amell's hand.

Okay. Bedtime Anders. Make smart choices.

"I've got to learn that one sometime," Anders said, forcing himself to stand up instead of doing any of the things his dick was telling him to do. "Anyway, do you need help getting Oghren back to his room, or are you good?"

"I'm good." Amell handed him back his hair tie without any silly finger brushing. Anders appreciated that. "Goodnight Anders."

"Night." Anders said.

Anders went back to his room and locked the door. Stripping impatiently out of his clothes, he threw himself down on his bed. Anders spit on his hand and slapped his cock against his thigh until he was hard. It didn't take long, thinking of Amell's smug grin, and how he always wore it on his knees. That look that always seemed to say he knew exactly how good he was with his tongue, and the ecstatic one that replaced it as if there was nothing more he wanted than Anders' cock in his warm, wet mouth.

"Fuck me," Anders hissed, cumming messily over his thigh and onto his stomach. He needed the release, but it was nothing compared to sex. Anders probably could have found someone, a barmaid here or at the Pilgrim's Rest, or a cheap prostitute if he was desperate, but he didn't want a stranger.

He wanted Amell. Amell was the one who'd protected him from templars, from demons, from darkspawn. Amell was his friend, and Anders didn't have many. Amell had said he was sorry, and Amell was always saying men were more than their mistakes.

Anders grabbed a handful of the sheets and cleaned himself off, and rolled out of the sweat spot he'd made. He was undeniably tired, but he lay awake anyway. Amell's room was right next door. Anders didn't have to sleep alone. Indecision kept him in bed, and Anders had almost fallen asleep when the walls rattled, and a door slammed.

Curious, Anders climbed out of bed, and threw on his trousers. He unlocked the door and poked his head out into the hall. Velanna was there, in full uniform and fighting to put on her boots. Anders could not imagine the soles of that poor woman's feet. It was sheer madness to him that Dalish didn't wear shoes.

The door to the room next to him opened as soon as Velanna won the battle with her boots. Nathaniel stumbled out shirtless, and still lacing up his trousers.

Oh. Oh boy.

"Velanna wait!" Nathaniel called. "Please don't go. Talk to me."

"Ir abelas." Velanna said, running out of the hall.

Anders blinked. Nathaniel ran after her without sparing him a glance. Poor sob. There was no winning with that woman. Out in the hall, Anders stared at Amell's door, indecision making lead of his feet. ... No. No, best not. Anders went back to his room and lay back down.

He'd been lying down for perhaps ten minutes when he heard someone knocking. Not on his door, but on the door to the next room over. Considering Nathaniel and Velanna had abandoned the room on Anders' left, it had to be someone looking for Amell.

Anders heard the sound of a door opening, and a muffled conversation. A short while later, and he heard the door close, followed by foot steps. Curiosity quickly got the better of him. Anders got out of bed again, and opened his door quietly.

The hall was empty, but Anders heard voices in the common room. Anders wandered out onto the second story gallery and peered down. The Crown and Lion was perfect for eavesdropping, really. A half wall on the second story meant Anders only had to sit to overhear everything going on below.

Not that Anders would do something like that. Anders respected the privacy of his friends. Whatever Nathaniel wanted to talk to Amell about was none of Anders' business. Anders should just go back to his room, beat another one out, and go to sleep.

Anders sat.

"Bottle of brandy. West Hill, if you have it," Amell was saying to the night bartender. "And ten silver for privacy."

"No West Hill," The bartender said. "We got White River, though. Privacy's free, just come knock on the door to the kitchens when you're done out here, Commander."

"Thank you." Amell said. Anders heard the clink of glasses, footsteps, a door closing.

"Thank you," Nathaniel said. The poor sob sounded wretched. "I'm sorry. I didn't know who else to talk to."

"It's fine, Nathaniel." Amell said, and poured them drinks. The sound reminded Anders he could use a piss. It was one of the many things he could have been doing instead of eavesdropping. Anders kept sitting. "I wasn't asleep anyway. Tell me what happened."

"I wish I knew." Nathaniel said. "I went to go talk to her, just to make sure she was alright but she was so distraught. About her clan, about her Keeper's death and what you learned about Seranni... I hugged her, and that turned into a kiss and one thing led to another...

"Maker, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't have any experience with this sort of thing. My time abroad wasn't spent chasing skirts. I've only been with one other woman, and it was a scandal that got me sent to the Free Marches in the first place.  Velanna and I, I thought we were close, but afterwards...

"She got dressed so fast. Told me it was a mistake, that it never should have happened. I'm not claiming any sort of magical sexual prowess, but I'm not that bad. She said ... I think 'I'm sorry', in Elvish, and ran away, and I can't track that root magic that lets her teleport.

"I tried so hard to show her that human doesn't mean evil, to court her like any man courts any woman, no matter the race. I never meant for this to happen. You're her friend. Before this, did she even like me? Did she talk about me? Do you think I ruined everything? What do I do here?" 

"Velanna tolerates me for the memories in my head, Nathaniel." Amell said. "You're the only person who's completely human she spends any time with, and I know she wouldn't do that if you didn't mean something to her. And she does talk about you. When she first came to the Vigil she asked me a handful of questions about you and no one else."

"... Really? What sort of questions?" Nathaniel asked.

"About your family, your past... Your favorite color, recently." Amell said. "I guessed black."

"It's black." Nathaniel said.

"Dalish don't court the way we do." Amell continued. "They have bonds, usually with someone they grow up with, and it's a lot more serious for them. No one ever did that with Velanna. The men in her clan were intimidated by her, and I only know that because she told me after you got her that malachite. For all I know you're the first man she's ever been with.

"She likes you, Nathaniel, but you have to understand the stigma Dalish have around humans. Being with you would mean exile for her, if she wasn't an exile already, and I don't know that Velanna has really accepted her exile. I know she wants to find her clan and apologize, but I don't know if she expects them to take her back, or if she wants to keep being a Grey Warden. I don't know if Velanna knows."

"So what do I do?" Nathaniel asked.

"Give her time." Amell said.

"That's it? I just wait? I don't know if I can just sit and do nothing without going mad." Nathaniel said.

"I could try talking to her, if you want me to," Amell said.

"I do. Thank you," Nathaniel said.

The two were silent for so long Anders decided it was time to slink back to his room. He started crawling away when Nathaniel spoke up.

"How are things with you and Anders?" Nathaniel asked.

Anders sat down so quickly he fell over.

"I don't know." Amell said. "We still talk, but I don't know if he'll ever forgive me."

"I can't say I blame him." Nathaniel said. Anders liked him. "You have to know what you did to him was a gross violation."

"I know what I am, Nathaniel." Amell said.

"I don't mean to say that there aren't merits to your magic, but some verses are in the Chant for a reason. Transfigurations 1:2. Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him." Nathaniel quoted piously, "I can't think of a more fitting verse here."

"I can. Threnodies 8:27. Andraste 7:12." Amell said. Anders had no idea what those verses said, but it probably wasn't 'blood magic is okay sometimes.' "When I say I know what I am, I don't mean a mage. I mean a Warden. I don't have the luxury of easy choices."

"But surely there was something." Nathaniel argued. "Some other way we could have come out of that encounter without putting Anders at risk."

"Of course there was," Amell said. "I've been working strategy for over two years, and I have the memories of a man from an ancient order of warriors. I know there were other ways, but I couldn't talk. I was going into shock. There wasn't time for me to sit down and discuss battle strategy, and if I had left it to all of you?

"You're a tracker, Nathaniel. An excellent tracker, but a tracker. You see one target, maybe a few more. Oghren is a berserker, and Velanna is painfully similar. They see what's in front of them. Sigrun is a soldier. She follows orders.

"Anders could have called down that firestorm on his own, but he doesn't think like that. He's a healer. He wanted to help me. I pointed to the battle. I tried to tell him, but I'm your Commander for a reason. I have to see the bigger picture. Sometimes that means risking one person to save four."

"There are five of us, besides Anders." Nathaniel did the math for him.

"I had no idea if the spell would kill me until I cast it. Anders is extraordinarily willful, and if he hadn't already been of a mind to help me at the time, with how much blood I let.. Do you want to know what I really should have done back there, Nathaniel?"

Maker, please say yes.

"I want to know what you think you should have done." Nathaniel said.

"I should have let the ogre kill him. He should have let the ogre kill you. We all got caught, and someone should have died. If I'd let the ogre kill him, I would have had time to finish off their commander and enslave the ogre safely. But I didn't. I panicked, and I'm sure you can guess why.

"Someone once told me a Warden's first priority has to be darkspawn, and that's why relationships inside the order are discouraged. I agree with that in theory, but in practice? I care about Anders. I care about all of you. I can't just let you die to win a fight, but I can and I will make choices that risk your lives. I have to.

"I don't expect you, or Anders, or anyone to understand that, but that's what being a Warden is." Amell said. "Vigilance, victory, sacrifice."

"I see what you're saying, and I agree, but I still feel like there had to be a better way." Nathaniel said. "I'm not claiming to be a strategist, but I squired under one. I understand choke points, key targets, the flow of battle. I don't know if this is out of line, but would you be willing to train with me?

"Strategy, I mean." Nathaniel clarified. "Not sword play. You should have a second, in the field. Someone you can rely on, so your first choice doesn't always have to be magic."

"... That's... No, it's not out of line at all. I'd be happy to, thank you, Nathaniel. If you take to it, and you're interested, I could see about having you appointed Warden Constable." Amell offered.

"I am, but do you think the Wardens or the King would allow that?" Nathaniel asked. "Given who I am, who my father was?"

"I think so. You're not Loghain. There's no reason to assume you'd abuse the power, and I know much of the nobility would be reassured to have a Howe in high places again." Amell said.

"Considering the kind of person I now know my father was, I'm not sure I want anything to do with the people who'd want anything to do with me," Nathaniel said, sounding rueful, "But I appreciate the offer and I'll consider it. ... What you said about relationships in the Wardens being discouraged, is that something I should be concerned about?" 

"If it is, I'm a hypocrite." Amell said. "Other Wardens in other countries might do it differently, but as long as I'm your Commander, you can court Oghren for all I care."

"Thank the Maker. I'd been waiting for your approval." Nathaniel joked. "Thank you for taking the time to talk to me, Amell. Are you heading back up?"

"No. I think I'll stay and finish off the bottle, and make sure Velanna comes back. I'll talk to her for you." Amell said.

"Thank you." The sound of a stool scooting across the floor sent Anders scurrying back to his room.

Anders slept, but didn't dream. Velanna was back by morning, but Anders didn't know her well enough to say if she was any more or less bitchy than usual. On the walk back to the Vigil, she walked with Amell instead of Nathaniel, the two of them speaking in Elvish or hushed tones.

It made Anders fidget. He liked Nate, and if Nate was brave enough to bed the harpy, then Anders was rooting for him, but Anders wanted to talk to Amell. He didn't know what he wanted to say, but he wanted to talk, and he probably wasn't going to get another chance for a while. After a brief stop at the Vigil, the six of them planned to head out to the Blackmarsh to search for Kristoff.

Sigrun nudged him out of his thoughts. "Hey, you had the other room next to Velanna, right?" Sigrun asked in a hushed whisper. "Did you hear those two last night? Those were definitely not push ups."

"What, really?" Anders feigned surprise. "No, I didn't hear anything. The wall on your side must have been thinner."

"Not to sound like Oghren, but they really were going at it like nugs. My whole wall was shaking, and Velanna? Screamer." Sigrun said.

"No kidding?" Anders said.

"About time, right?" Sigrun said happily. "The way she's always pretending not to smile around him is too cute."

"'Pretending not to smile.' Right." Anders rolled his eyes. "Is that what we're calling glares now? Pretend smiles?"

"No, for you, they're actually glares. Bet you wish you were a durgenlelelelen now, huh shemmy?" Sigrun asked.

Anders had a comeback, but someone was running their way on the road. A soldier from the Vigil, by the look of their armor. That couldn't have been good. "What do you think this is? Another attack?" Anders asked.

"I don't know." Sigrun said.

The six of them jogged up to meet the runner. It was a young woman, and she was out of breath when she reached them. "Warden Commander, Ser. Private Kallian Tabris. Seneschal Varel sent me to warn you."

"Report." Amell said.

"Templars arrived at the Vigil last night, Ser." Kallian said. "There are five in total, led by a Knight Lieutenant, and traveling with a Revered Mother of the Chantry. They've been asking question about Senior Warden Anders, and a templar named Rylock." 

And there it was. All Anders' fears laid bare. He never should have gotten comfortable here. His little freedom fantasy was over, and the templars were going to drag him back to the Circle, to Aeonar, to prison, to darkness. He couldn't breathe. Why hadn't he left? Why hadn't he ran when Amell had pushed three gold sovereigns into his hand and given him a chance and a choice?

"Private, this is important. The templars, the Knight Lieutenant in particular, did they have a pendant with them?" Amell asked. "A red vial, set in a circle like a compass? They'd be wearing it like a necklace."

"Yes, Ser," Kallian said. Anders laughed. "The Knight Lieutenant has it, Ser. He plays with it all the time." 

"What about a scroll?" Amell asked. "It would have gold handles. It wouldn't be with the rest of their things. One of the templars would be carrying it in a small gold chest."

"I don't remember any fancy scrolls or chests, Ser." Kallian said after a pause. "They have their trunks, so I can't say for certain, but all they carry around the Vigil are their weapons and armor."

"Thank you, Private. You can return to the Vigil. Don't mention us." Amell said.

"Yes, Ser." Kallian said. She bowed, and jogged back the way she came.

"Well. It was nice knowing most of you." Anders laughed, hysteria making his heart skip like a stone over water. He couldn't breathe. "But I think that's my cue to head for the hills, or whatever landform's closest. I think I'll go with ocean? Ocean sounds good. Pesky things, oceans. All sorts of brigands and pirates and water. Great templar deterrent, water. You wouldn't believe how fast those skirts rust, and brown with silver and purple? Well that's just a fashion crime. No templar would risk it. You guys will feed Ser Pounce-a-Lot, right?"

"Anders, calm down." Amell said.

"Calm down?" Anders laughed. He couldn't stop laughing, and started hyperventilating. Velanna slapped him. Anders managed a deep breath, and rubbed his stinging cheek.

"By the Dread Wolf, get a hold of yourself." Velanna said. "You are a mage! You have walked the Beyond. What are these templars to you?"

Anders scowled at her. Entitled bitch. Velanna was Dalish. Her clan had embraced her magic, even revered it. She had no idea what it was like to live in fear. In a cage. In solitude and darkness. "You don't have a fucking clue, do you?"

Velanna sneered. "I know you-"

"Mana. Tel'dirth." Amell said. "Anders, it'll be fine."

"'Fine'?" Anders scoffed. "How will it be fine? You don't send that many templars, a bloody Knight Lieutenant, and a Revered Mother for tea and crumpets. You heard her! They have my phylactery. You think they brought it just to give it back to me? Hey, congratulations! You're a Warden now; we don't need this anymore. Oh, and about those five templars we think you killed? Don't even worry about it. No hard feelings!"

Anders couldn't breathe again. A deep inhale won him a sliver of breath. He locked his hands over his head to help air into his lungs.

"Anders, trust me." Amell said. "I swore I wouldn't let them take you back. I meant it. I'll talk with them. They'll leave."

"Oh good. They'll leave." Anders repeated mockingly. "They have me pegged as a maleficar who murdered five templars, but you'll talk to them and they'll leave."

"Yes." Amell said.

"What are you going to say?" Anders demanded. "How can you possibly convince them to leave if they went far enough to bring my phylactery here? You can't just mind control a half dozen templars."

"Watch me." Amell said.

Maker's breath, he meant it. He took it like a dare. Anders could see it in his eyes, practically painted the color of Amell's obsession. This was suicide. This was insanity. "You're not serious."

"I doubt I'll need to, but if you think I won't, you're wrong." Amell said.

"If they got even a whiff of blood, they'd run you through before you could say knickerweasels," Anders said. "You're insane."

"Fine. Then I'm insane," Amell said. "But I made you a promise and I'll keep it. If you let them blame you for these deaths, they'll kill you, and if you run, they'll blame you. You'd rather risk that than trust me?"

Yes. No. Anders didn't know. It wasn't a choice he wanted to make. Amell had said it himself: Amell made the hard choices. Anders didn't make choices. Anders didn't have choices. He just ran.

"Anders?" Amell asked.

"What?" Anders asked.

"Are you staying or not?" Amell asked.

"Where would I even go if I left?" Anders asked.

"... There's an elf in Amaranthine named Alim. He stays at the Fisherman's Rest by the docks. I have five sovereigns on me. If you give him one, he'll get you on a boat to wherever you want to go." Amell said.

Anders stared at him, dumbfounded. It was right there. Freedom. Or a mockery of it. Where could Anders go the templars wouldn't follow? Especially now that they apparently blamed him for Rylock's death. Amell kept talking, some nonsense about something called the Mages' Collective that could help him.

No. No, it wasn't that simple. The templars still had his phylactery. As soon as Anders left Amell's shadow, he was a dead man. He had to stay. He wanted to stay. Amell bound Pride, Desire, Terror. He was right. Velanna was right. What were templars to a mage? They were feared for a reason.

"Anders, are you listening?" Amell's voice finally stopped sounding like it was coming through a film when Anders made a decision.

Anders grabbed Amell's face in his hands and kissed him roughly. It hurt like mad, and clicked their teeth together, but Anders didn't care. The kiss was a mess of teeth and tongue, of gasps half pained and half surprised.

Amell didn't react immediately, and Anders bit his lip for it. Anders wanted or needed Amell's confidence. Amell let slip a moan, and Anders changed his mind. Anders had his own confidence. It was confidence in Amell, but it bloody better count, because it was all Anders had.

Amell kissed back, and Anders lost himself in the moment. Hands clutched at his back, heated moans took up space between each desperate kiss, and Anders wasn't afraid of anything.

"Alright. Okay." Oghren said. "Glad you two got your shit sorted, but this is getting kind of gross." 

"Shut up! I love this." Sigrun said.

"Did I say kind of gross? I meant really gross. Hands don't go there." Oghren said.

"Guh." Velanna said.

Anders let go of Amell. Breath came easier, when it wasn't panic leaving him breathless.

"I have no idea what that was for." Amell said, face flushed. "Are you staying or leaving?"

"Staying." Anders said. "Staying, fuck it. Fuck templars. Let's go. Let's do this."

"Atta boy, Sparkles." Oghren said.

Amell ran an ineffectual hand through his hair. Anders had ruined it. He wasn't sorry.

"So... Uh," Amell cleared his throat. "I'm going to talk to them alone. Anders, stay with Oghren, and Velanna, stay with Nathaniel. Don't give the templars an excuse to notice you."

"I am not afraid of templars." Velanna said.

"Trust him, lass. You don't want none of that mess." Oghren said. "I've seen the shit they do to your like, and it ain't pretty. Ain't pretty at all."

Oghren unhooked his hip flask from his belt, and punched Anders in the stomach with it. "Thanks." Anders said.

The alcohol didn't help, but it also didn't hurt. The sun was still high in the sky, and there were no ominous shadows in the courtyard, but Anders felt uneasy. A templar approached them when they stepped into the inner courtyard, and Anders suddenly appreciated the Seneschal's warning. Templars obviously weren't the sort of guests who waited politely to be seen.

"Warden Commander Amell." The templar said with a bow. He was wearing a helmet, and his voice echoed queerly for it. "I am Ser Aedan, here with a small retinue of my fellows under the command of Knight Lieutenant Borris on Circle business. We request an audience at your earliest convenience. We also request the apostate Anders be present."

"There's no one here by that title." Amell said. "I have a Senior Warden by the name of Anders, and he will be addressed accordingly. Your audience will be with me and me alone."

"Very well, Commander." The templar agreed with no fuss. Anders wondered if that was blood magic. Why else would a templar be polite? "Ser Borris is waiting in the throne room. May I take you to him?"

"Lead on." Amell said.

Amell left, and it was over. Nathaniel and Velanna went to the kitchens with Sigrun. Oghren gave Anders a shove, and they walked back to the barracks.

"See? Simple shit. No fuss, no muss, no need to cuss." Oghren said when they were inside. He trundled over to his bunk, and disrobed down to his trousers before throwing himself down on his bed.

"You realize you just cussed, right?" Anders asked. Ser Pounce-a-Lot ran out from under Anders' bunk at his voice and circled his legs. Anders picked him up and buried his face in his fur. The smell and his purrs helped unravel the knot in Anders' stomach, if only by a strand.

"What? No I didn't." Oghren said, digging up a bottle of something from the mess on his bunk. It was strong enough Anders could smell it from where he stood.

"Are you sure you should be drinking?" Anders asked. "Shouldn't you, I don't know, be in full armor ready to protect me when the templars come crashing through the door?"

"Alright, Sparkles, come sit on Papa Oghren's lap and he'll tell you a story." Oghren suggested, patting the space beside him.

Oghren's bunk was covered in crumbs, stains, and dirty clothes. Anders wrinkled his nose, and set down Ser Pounce-a-Lot. He wouldn't force the poor tabby to suffer with him. Anders sat gingerly on the edge of the mattress, the frame of it biting into his ass.

"Did you ever ask the Boss about how he stopped the Blight?" Oghren asked, taking a drink.

"No." Anders shrugged. "I mean, I don't really care, honestly."

"Haha!" Oghren laughed, and wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand. "See, that's why I like you, Sparkles. When you're not pissing yourself over templars and mage bullshit, you know what's up. Laugh, drink, and eat, damn the rest and suck some teats.

"Anyway. Blight shit. Boss shit. You can untie your panties, because this isn't his first Proving. When I say he does this a lot, I mean a lot. All those stories about how the Boss brought everyone together to fight the Blight, batting his eye lashes and being some silver tongued dick sucker? Bullshit.

"Deshers in Orzammar? Blood magic. Nobles at the Landsmeet? Blood magic. You name it, blood magic. Those templars are gonna walk out of here, and they won't even remember your fuckin name. So have a drink, let's play some cards, and don't worry your pretty little head about it."

Anders took his advice. They played Diamondback, which Anders was rubbish at, ate lunch, and drank. Oghren even took a nap, but Anders wasn't about to sleep with templars in the Vigil.

Anders was sitting on his bunk, lost in his thoughts and petting Ser Pounce-a-Lot when Amell came and found him.

"Do you have a minute?" Amell asked.

"I thought you'd never ask." Anders swung his legs over the edge of his bunk, and hesitated. "Are they gone?"

"All gone." Amell promised. "Could we talk? Preferably in private?"

"Point the way, fearless leader." Anders said.

Amell led him through the Vigil and up to his quarters. When they reached them, Amell locked the door behind them. Anders missed the way his room smelled. Like Amell, with a hint of parchment and cedar. It was comfortable, but Anders wasn't quite confident enough to sit anywhere after the week they'd had.

"So, how'd it go?" Anders asked. "I mean they left, so I'm assuming it went well."

"It went fine." Amell said. "They were investigating Rylock's disappearance, and they had a few questions about you. I told them I didn't know anything and they left."

"And they believed you?" Anders asked.

"So I assume." Amell said.

"Just like that?" Anders asked. "You didn't have to bribe them with cookies, or cake, or blood magic, or anything?"

"... The Revered Mother was there as a mediator. I nudged her a little, and she spoke in your defense." Amell said.

"Right in front of the Knight Lieutenant?" Anders asked. "How did they not notice that?"

"It wasn't noticeable." Amell shrugged. "Without reciting the Litany of Adralla, there's... no real counter for it."

"The what now?" Anders asked.

"A spell, written in Tevene." Amell explained. "It counters blood magic, but something in the magic keeps it from being memorized. It's normally kept as a scroll, when templars expect to encounter maleficarum. I took what I believe is the only copy from Kinloch Hold, but it never hurts to be sure."

"Well that's... something." Anders said. "So... Look. I've been thinking, and I understand why you did what you did. Back at the Turnobles. I don't like it, but I understand. What I don't understand is how everything just keeps working out for you. You'd figure you'd fuck up at least once, just to spice it up a little, but you don't."

"Anders, I've fucked up almost every expedition we've had." Amell said. "I got us caught by darkspawn in the mines, and again in the fields, I pushed you too hard in Kal'Hirol-"

"No, I don't mean any of that," Anders interrupted him. "I mean the blood magic. You don't fuck up. I keep thinking you're crazy, and you're going to get us killed, but you don't. It just works, every time, and you're such a smug bastard about it, but you're right. You know what you're doing,"

"Do you really mean that?" Amell asked.

"You got me. I'm just fucking with you. I'm that evil." Anders joked. "Of course I mean it. This is the third time you've stood for me against templars, and I don't know, third time's the charm I guess."

"... What about us?" Amell asked.

"What about us?" Anders repeated.

"Do you still want there to be an us?" Amell asked.

"No, I came up here and said all that just so I could officially ditch you." Anders said.

"I'm... not fluent in sarcasm, Anders." Amell said. "Could you try being feely for me just this once?"

"Yes. Alright? I want to keep having sex with you." Anders said.

"You're so romantic." Amell said.

"You can swoon. I'll catch you." Anders promised.

Amell grinned, and crossed the space between them to cup the back of his neck. Anders put his hands on Amell's chest to stop him before he could kiss him.

"One more thing." Anders said. "What you did... was probably the worst thing that has ever happened to me, right up there with solitary and being taken to the Circle. I can't even tell you what I'll do to you if you ever do that to me again, but... I meant what I said. I understand why you did it.

"If you hadn't... we'd probably all have died back there. And I know I'd be in shackles right now if it wasn't for you. If I was alone, if I went with that Mage Collective thing you were talking about, and the templars caught up with me, I'd be dead. Once they cast that smite... That's it for me. I'm on the ground, I can't cast, and the shackles come out, and it's back to the Circle.

"That... scares the shit out of me. It always has. But you? With blood magic? You can actually fight back. You can defend yourself. You can defend me, without even fighting, and I..." Anders stopped.

Anders had been thinking about it all afternoon. He'd thought about it when he'd healed everyone at the estate. He'd thought about it when he'd healed Amell in the storehouse. He'd thought about it when Amell was with him in the Fade. He'd thought about it ever since Amell had offered to teach him blood magic his first night as a Warden.

"I want you to teach me." Anders said.

Notes:

Elvish translations
Mana. Tel'dirth - Stop. Shut up.

Apples and Apostates
Fool For a Day: The events of this chapter, as told from Nathaniel's perspective.

 

Fanart
Anders and Amell

Chapter 23: Malleus Maleficarum

Notes:

Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, kudos, and as always, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 14 Parvulis Late Afternoon

Vigil's Keep, in the Warden-Commander's Quarters

"You want me to what?" Amell asked.

"Teach me. Blood magic." Anders said again.

"Are you sure?" Amell asked, shifting his grip on the back of his neck to hold his jaw instead. Amell ran his thumb over Anders' cheek; the affection still made Anders a little nervous. "I will, but every time you've used it so far, you didn't have a choice, and you always go to the chapel afterwards..."

"Well, I have a choice now, don't I?" Anders asked. "Look, I've got fourteen-... fifteen years of Circle lies to get over. Until you told me I didn't even know 'nice abomination' was a thing. I've never even heard of the Litany of Adria-"

"Adralla." Amell corrected him.

"Right. Anyway," Anders should do something with his hands, beside keep them on Amell's chest. He held Amell's waist instead, "My point is I watch you do all this crazy, creepy shit and come out fine. I thought it was because you were lucky at first, but now I think it's because you know what you're doing. And I'm tired of being afraid of everything. Nothing scares you, and that's ... pretty unhealthy, honestly, but I think it's because you know you can get out of anything. I'd give anything to be that confident... why are you looking at me like that?"

Amell was grinning the rueful sort of a grin a person wore when they couldn't believe what they were hearing. Anders wasn't sure he'd said anything quite ridiculous enough to warrant such a look.

"This isn't how I pictured this," Amell said.

"Pictured what?" Anders asked.

"You, thinking I'm the confident one." Amell explained.

"Well, why wouldn't I?" Anders asked, "I mean, I know I'm a looker, and I'm hilarious, and all that, but there's a difference between knowing you're awesome and standing up to templars."

"You stand up to templars all the time." Amell said.

"Since when?" Anders laughed. "Did you miss the panic attack I had back there? Here, stop hugging me, let's go sit on the couch or something,"

Amell let go of him, and Anders dragged him over to his couch. Amell sat so close to him their thighs touched, but Anders felt better sitting casually than he did standing and swaying like lovebirds.

"You've been standing up to templars since you first ran from the Circle when you were thirteen." Amell continued, hand on Anders' thigh, "Thirteen. I can't imagine being that brave. When I was thirteen, I was terrified the templars would decide my interest in necromancy meant I was at risk for becoming a maleficar. I spent every night studying to make sure I got the highest marks in my classes just so I'd be too valuable to be made Tranquil."

"I don't think there wasn't anything brave about that," Anders said, "More like stupid. It's a miracle I wasn't made Tranquil, escaping before my Harrowing."

"And then you did it again. And again. And again." Amell said. "It was all anyone talked about. Anders' latest escape attempt, how long he'd be gone this time, how long until he escaped again. I had such a hopeless crush on you, and you're sitting here telling me I'm the brave one."

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait." Anders said. "Back up. You had a crush on me?"

"Um... no?" Amell said.

"How is this the first time I'm hearing about this?" Anders asked.

"I didn't want to creep you out." Amell shrugged.

"But that's what you do. I mean, you're Creepy, right?" Anders grinned. His ego was never going to recover from this. "I can't believe Irving's Star Pupil had a crush on the Repeat Apostate. That is seriously star-crossed. You should have said something! Back at the Circle. I couldn't even remember your name we met."

"I did, actually." Amell said, with a small smile. "I was... I think sixteen? Which would have made you twenty-one? I was chubby and covered in acne, and you were ... something else. I was in the main hall when the templars brought you in from your latest escape attempt. Your jaw was black and purple, your lip was cut, and the templars had you in shackles. They were dragging you, but you had this smirk on your face... Like you knew you were just going to try again, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop you.

"I couldn't decide if I wanted to be you or if I wanted to fuck you. I went and found you in the dining hall, a few days later, and tried to start a conversation. I got maybe a handful of words in when Surana sashayed over, her robe down to here." Amell pinched his doublet between his breasts, "She leaned over you and asked you for 'another healing lesson.' You said 'Nice talking to you, Apple,' and left me there with your tray."

"I did not." Anders said.

"You did." Amell said. "It was traumatizing."

"That's...hilarious," Anders laughed, "No, I'm sorry, that's terrible. I'm an ass. In my defense, I do remember Surana, and she was... really hot. I think she's the only elf I've ever met who didn't end up hating me. I was seriously depressed when she fell for that templar."

"Yes, very sad." Amell said flatly.

"Oh, come on, Apple, don't pout." Anders teased.

"That's not funny." Amell said.

"It's pretty funny." Anders said.

"It wasn't at the time." Amell said. "Jowan saw the whole thing, and thought it was hilarious. He called me 'Apple' for an entire year."

"Well, I won't steal someone else's joke, then." Anders said. "Comedians' Code."

"Technically, he stole it from you." Amell said.

"Are you asking me to call you Apple?" Anders asked.

"No." Amell said.

"Okay, Apple." Anders said.

"Stop." Amell said.

"Never." Anders grinned. "What am I supposed to do if I can't fuck with you?"

"I have an idea," Amell shifted so he was facing him, and ran his hand up Anders' thigh to slip his fingers into his belt, fingertips brushing his hip. "Anders... I don't know how you feel, and I don't expect you to tell me, but I've missed you."

"It's only been a week," Anders tried for a smirk. It had been more than a week, but teasing was easier than admitting he felt the same.

"It was a long week," Amell said; his voice was low, his eyes somewhere between warm and hungry. "I understand if you're not ready to trust me again yet, but-"

Anders slid an arm around Amell's thighs and tugged him into his lap. Amell went willingly, swinging his leg around to straddle him. Maker, Anders had missed that familiar weight. "We're good," Anders promised, massaging Amell's hips with his thumbs and asking himself why his hands worked up instead of down.

"Are you sure?" Amell traced along his brow and down the side of his face, as if he'd somehow forgotten the shape of it. Anders tried not to shiver. "I know what that spell felt like for you. If you need more time to decide how you feel, don't let me rush you."

"I said we're good." Anders walked his hands up Amell's sides, feeling Amell's breath quicken against his palms the longer they spent with their eyes locked. "I know you wouldn't use it for that," and somewhere, deep down, Anders knew Amell would never need to.

Amell ran blunt nails across Anders' brow and brushed a few loose strands of gold back from his eyes, "Can I kiss you?"

"You can do a lot more than that," Anders said, wetting his lips with a few eager flicks of his tongue. Amell tilted Anders' head back with a firm hand on his jaw, and Anders left his eyes open for far too long. Long enough that Amell's eyes flicked back to his when their noses brushed, and Amell pulled back to stare into them.

Whatever was in that stare terrified him. Anders couldn't do it. He grabbed Amell's face in his hands to hold him steady and kissed him hard. His were lips insistent, his teeth demanding, and thought died at the first shared groan that spilled between them. That was how Anders wanted it. Urgent, intense, physical. No feeling. No lingering looks.

Amell surrendered to it. Anders felt it in the rock of his hips, in the hitch in his breath, and the desperate moan that spilled into Anders' mouth. Anders swallowed it, and rocked his hips up to meet him when Amell ground against his lap. Anders stole a hand inside his trousers, squeezing his ass and pulling the two of them closer together. Amell's belt cut into his wrist, but it was worth it to feel the warmth of his skin and the way he tensed beneath his palm.

Amell broke from his lips and leaned back to pull apart Anders' doublet, fingers fumbling over one too many buttons. A hard yank ripped it open and sent them all scattering. The cold air hit Anders' bare chest and his nipples stiffened easily under Amell's exacting touch. "Fuck," Anders swallowed to battle back the eager shake in his voice.

"Buy you a new one," Amell promised, killing the words on Anders' lips in another kiss heavy with hunger. Anders' thrust up into him, and what little friction he could find in the fabric between them. It wasn't enough. It wasn't even close. Static sparked between Anders' fingers, and he swore he hadn't meant to call on the spell, but Amell begged for it, "Yes, fuck, please, Anders."

Anders made it into a current between his hands, and hesitated closing it, "Ready?"

"Yes," Amell rocked back against Anders' hand and forward on his cock. Anders closed his free hand around Amell's thigh, and closed the current. Amell threw his head back and a scream tore from his throat; his back arched, body trembling, and the sight made Anders' cock throb so hard it ached.

Anders cut off the spell, and Amell pitched forward against his chest. Anders freed his hand from Amell's trousers to run it through the his hair and the sudden sheen of sweat on his forehead. "Oh fuck," Amell gasped, "Fuck. Do that again."

"Can you take it again?" Anders asked. Amell shook his head, grinning, and a few damp strands of hair stuck to his forehead. Every breathless pant that spilled from his lips made Anders' hips jerk. Amell moved with him, the grind and rock of their hips a tease of pressure and friction.

Anders had no idea how he managed to keep his hands steady when they undid Amell's belt. The hiss of leather sliding free of cloth tangled together Amell's sharp inhale, and Anders lost the belt over his shoulder. Amell's lips sought his, hot and wet and still tingling with the aftershock of Anders' spell.

"Fuck me," Amell begged. Anders pulled Amell's lip between his teeth, and let a breath of static play between them. It hummed in Anders' teeth, and won a shaky gasp from Amell.

"Ask me nice," Anders said.

Amell leaned back from him and undid Anders' buckle without breaking eye-contact with him. Anders swallowed past a lump in his throat, and ignored the shiver he could feel tingling along his skin, begging for release. Amell tossed his belt aside and climbed off Anders' lap and onto his knees. Anders unlaced his trousers and half stood to push them and his smalls down his legs.

The air was cold, but Amell's mouth was warm and Anders was aching for it. His cock was stiff and leaking down his shaft, throbbing so hard it twitched. Amell kissed the inside of his thigh, strong hands kneading up and down his legs. Amell took hold of Anders' cock and set it to his lips, a slow sweep of his tongue mapping the head of Anders' cock.

Amell moaned around the lick, the heat of his breath mingling with the slick caress of his tongue. Anders fought to keep his hips from bucking, reduced to nothing more than the pulse in his cock, the tightness in his chest, the tension in the pit of his stomach. Amell's lips closed around his shaft with another eager moan, as if he'd never tasted anything better than the sweat and pearly fluid on Anders' skin.

Amell's mouth was hot and wet and every enthusiastic swipe of his tongue sent a shiver of pleasure through Anders. Anders ran his hands through his hair, raven locks slipping like silk through his fingers, and Anders gathered fistfuls of them while Amell worked his cock. His lips were stretched thin around his cock, and every pass was slicker than the last.

Amell sank low on his cock, his tongue smooth and flat and a perfect bed for Anders to fuck his mouth. The slow, deep swallow left Anders gasping, writhing with pleasure at the warm embrace and wet friction. "Fuck," Anders moaned, "Fuck Amell. Use that spell again, fuck the-... with your tongue."

Anders held his breath when he felt the pull of the Fade, and the first low pulse of heat along his cock sent pleasure cascading through him. "Maker yes," Anders gasped. He felt the second pulse in the pit of his stomach, the third in his feet, and then he was trembling, writhing, barely keeping himself from sliding off the couch with the sweat that built beneath him. "Stop-stop-"

Amell stopped, Anders' cock slipping from his mouth and falling heavy between his legs. Saliva was painted across his chin and down his neck, and Anders sucked in a sharp breath at the sight. Amell stripped out of his clothes and climbed back into Anders' lap, damp lips against his ear, "Did I ask nice enough?"

Anders inhaled a rickety breath of mana, and let it out in a pulse of creationism that coated his fingers with oil. Anders worked one finger into Amell's tight heat, his breathy moans deliciously loud against Anders' ear. Anders bit Amell's neck, sucking and worrying at the soft skin with his tongue. Amell pulled Anders' hair free of its tie and buried his fingers in it, gasping and jerking his hips back to fuck himself on Anders' hand.

Anders added a second finger, thrusting into him until he was slick and stretched around him. Adding a third made Amell whimper, shameless pleas of 'Anders' 'More' 'Yes' and 'Fuck' spilling together with gasps and moans. Anders dragged his nails down Amell's shoulders, and Amell arched back into the friction. Anders licked the sweat off Amell's chest and pulled his fingers from him.

Amell whined at the loss, and Anders pressed the head of his cock to Amell's worked entrance, and eased into him with a deliberate slowness that left both of them shaking and desperate for more. "Fuck," Anders gasped, tight heat clenched around his cock, pleasure choking him in its intensity, "Amell-you're-fuck-"

Amell grabbed his face in his hands and kissed him, shaking so hard his lips slipped, and his kiss spilled down Anders' jaw. Amell sank down on his cock, and Anders fisted his hands in the couch to keep his hips from jerking up into that tight heat. The rise and fall of Amell's hips set a rhythm that coiled heat in the pit of Anders' stomach, and left Anders' skin flushed and sweating.

Anders wrapped his arms around Amell, dragging the pads of his fingers down his back, sliding through sweat and over trembling muscle. Amell was so hot he felt feverish, and Anders kissed him eagerly, mouth slipping, teeth catching, trying to keep a hold on him despite how they pulled apart and crashed together in waves. "Fuck, Anders." Amell nearly sobbed, his voice hoarse, his hands tangled messily in Anders' hair.

The air between them crackled, and Anders couldn't tell whose magic it was, but he embraced it when it sent ripples of heat and static cascading over their skin. Amell bit down on his shoulder, muffling screams, and the sharp press of teeth didn't hurt nearly enough. The sensations were overwhelming, pleasure bordering on pain in its intensity, and Anders lost himself to it.

Ecstasy rushed through him, a surge and swell of mind-shattering bliss that left his thighs trembling and his hips jerking. Anders fell apart, broken gasps and blinding heat spilling out of him. He clung to Amell to survive it. His ears were ringing and his were feet numb when he fell down from his high, and Maker, he was too sensitive but Amell wasn't there yet, and every downward drive of his hips made Anders shudder.

Amell already had a hand around his cock, but Anders added his atop it, and Amell pawed at Anders' chest, up his neck, and grabbed his jaw. Amell's thumb slipped into Anders' mouth, and he pulled him forward for a sloppy kiss around it. It pushed Amell over, and Anders held him through his shaking release, and the screams he weathered it with.

Anders chest was sticky and dripping white, his ruined doublet hanging off his shoulders. His trousers were still tangled around his thighs, but he didn't care about any of it. He didn't need clothes, with Amell's warm weight in his lap, draped against his chest. Anders ran his fingers through Amell's damp hair, shivering at the kiss Amell landed on his jaw.

"Again?" Amell offered.

"You're insane," Anders tried for a laugh, but he was too exhausted to manage one.

"I know a spell," Amell explained.

"... seriously?" Anders asked. "Blood magic can really do that?"

"Mhm," Amell said.

"Teach me that," Anders laughed, "Later."

Anders didn't know how he managed a second time, even with the spell. They moved to the bed where the sex was slow and lazy, and there was absolutely no way Anders was capable of moving ever again. He lay atop Amell afterwards, his whole body aching in the best of all possible ways. Even the slightest brush of Amell's fingers made him shiver, and he pinned the man's arms above his head to keep him from running them down his back.

"Thanks," Anders managed.

"For what?" Amell suppressed a laugh, but Anders could feel it thrum in his chest lying on top of him.

"I don't know," Anders said. "That was nice. Thanks."

"You're welcome." Amell said. Anders could hear his heartbeat, with his head on his breast, and it was oddly comforting. Amell fought to free a hand, and trailed his fingers up Anders' wrist to hold onto his forearm. "I missed this."

Anders knew better, but Amell kissed his finger tips, he didn't have it in him to lie. He'd never been good at it anyway. "Yeah."

"Are you going to fall asleep on me?" Amell asked.

"I don't know." Anders said. "Maybe."

"I don't think the sun is even down yet." Amell said.

"Too bad. Not moving." Anders said.

"I need to use the wash," Amell said.

"Don't care," Anders said.

"Anders please," Amell whined.

"Fine." Anders groaned, rolling off him. Amell fled to the washroom. Anders climbed to the edge of the bed and found his ruined tunic on the floor. He kept a change of clothes in Amell's room, unless Amell had thrown them out during the week off. Anders doubted it. Anders dried himself off, and threw the ruined tunic back on the floor.

Amell came out of the washroom, and went straight to his armoire to put on a pair of smalls and trousers over them.

"What?" Anders asked. "Pants? Why pants? Do you really have something to do today?"

"I need to meet with Varel, and Woolsey, and send that letter to Jader." Amell said, getting dressed.

"Right now?" Anders whined.

"I should do it before dinner." Amell said. "But I'll be free after if you want to do anything."

"Like have more sex?" Anders asked.

"Like have more sex. Or we could do a quick lesson in blood magic. Or both." Amell said.

"Both works for me." Anders said.

"I like both, too," Amell grinned over his shoulder at him. He finished dressing and came back to the bed. Amell sat down on the edge of it, and reached out to caress Anders' ankle. "Anders, I know you don't like weighty, but... you understanding about the blood magic, forgiving me for using it on you, wanting to learn it... I've never been with a man willing to do that for me."

"What about a woman?" Anders joked.

It must not have been a funny joke. A shadow passed over Amell's face, and his hand froze on his ankle.

"Wait, have you actually been with a woman before?" Anders asked, sitting up. It was obviously a sore topic, but his curiosity got the better of him. Oghren and Amell had made it sound like Amell treated women like the plague, where sex was concerned.

"I... once. It-... I'm sorry. I can't-talk about this. I have to go see Varel." Amell said, standing quickly and all but bolting from the room.

That was weird. No, it wasn't weird, it was worrying. A reaction like that made Anders think he'd stumbled on some sort of horribly traumatic experience. ... rape, maybe? A templar? Anders felt queasy. No. No reason to jump to conclusions. It could have been anything. Anders pushed it from his mind and got out of bed.

Anders used Amell's wash for a piss and a bath, changed into his spare set of clothes, and dumped his old set in the laundry. He wandered back downstairs to the barracks, and tolerated a bit of jeering from Sigrun who rightly guessed where he'd been and what he'd been doing by the marks on his neck. Anders spent an hour playing dice with her, and then went to check on the infirmary. He did a quick count of the stores, and helped tidy up a bit after his two day absence, and then went to have dinner in the dining hall.

He ate with Nate and Oghren, and resisted the urge to comment on what he knew about Nate's strained relationship with Velanna. Afterwards, he stole a bit of milk from the kitchens for Ser Pounce-a-Lot, and then went to find Amell again. He had to pester three servants before someone pointed him to the war room, where he ran into the Seneschal leaving.

"Warden," The Seneschal said with a nod. "The Commander is still meeting with Mistress Woolsey, within. He shouldn't be much longer."

Anders looked him over again. He wasn't much like Irving, Anders supposed. He had warm brandy-colored eyes, and while his hair was grey, it wasn't shock with white. And he had the build of a warrior, instead of a doddering old fool. More importantly, he'd warned them about the templars.

"Good to know," Anders said. "Hey... so... can I talk to you, actually?"

"Of course," The Seneschal said, confusion wrinkling his brow. "What can I do for you, Warden?"

"Nothing, really, I was just wondering why you warned me. About the templars. When Ah-" Anders caught himself before he said 'Amell', "-the Commander, recruited me you didn't seem too happy about saving the bloodthirsty apostate who murders innocent templars."

"Ah." The Seneschal said, frowning. "True enough, and yet not quite. I still won't claim to know the truth surrounding the templars who brought you here, and I admit I made assumptions when we were introduced, but the moment the Commander recruited you, that no longer mattered.

"I have nothing but the utmost respect for the Order, and for the Commander. Whatever you were, whatever my feelings on your past crimes, you're a Warden, and you've served well. I hope to serve well in turn. I am for you, and the Wardens, and against any who are against you. Does that answer your question, Ser?"

Well damn. That was heavy. Anders really underestimated how far being a Warden could get him.

"Yep." Anders said.

"Take care then, Warden," The Seneschal said, nodding.

Anders thought of asking him his name, but that felt more than a little rude. He'd just ask Amell. Anders took up a spot in the hall, and had to wait a few minutes before Woolsey and Amell left the war room. Woolsey gave him a scolding frown for being so obvious, but Amell grinned, so really, who cared?

"Couldn't wait?" Amell asked.

"I got bored." Anders shrugged. "And it's past dinner. Did you eat?"

"Before the meeting," Amell said. "Ready for a lesson?"

"Is it a sexy lesson?" Anders asked.

"It could be." Amell grinned, leading him back up to his quarters.

Amell locked the door behind him, and changed out of his doublet into a casual beige tunic and brown trousers, and held out a similar banal outfit for Anders. "Here. You don't want to get blood on your nice clothes."

"Creepy." Anders whistled, accepting the change of clothes and changing into it. It fit well enough. Aside from the fact that Amell was taut, lean muscle where Anders was fluff, they were more or less the same size. Anders was a little taller. "So what are we doing?"

"Something simple." Amell said, fetching a pair of towels from his washroom. He laid them out on the floor in the center of his room, fetched his dagger from his weapon stand, and took a seat. Anders sat next to him.

"I know you already know the basics, but it doesn't hurt to cover it again. To tap into your life force, or anyone's life force, you have to draw from the source, at their heart. With time, and practice, you'll be able to use less blood to cast than you do now. I know you already know how to augment your own spells with it, so I won't go over that. There are other abilities, drawing from a sacrifice, from multiple sacrifices, draining the residual life force from the dead and the dying, blood poison, corruption, influence, or outright control.

"Drawing from the Taint, instead of just the blood, you can even realign your connection to the Fade, or sacrifice blood for an enhanced physical state. Speed, dexterity, strength. And you can cast outside the realm of demons, and make it impossible for them to resist you. But that's all advanced, and we can't practice any of the more extreme spells unless we're in the field. What we can practice is persuasion, which I think is what you're most interested in anyway.

"So," Amell tapped the flat of the blade on his wrist, "Horizontal, always, unless you need an extreme amount, which you shouldn't unless you're binding something like an ogre, or a strong demon. Pick a spot you can cover, and try to use just that one spot, or you'll end up looking like me. For persuasion, you want to plant the seed of an idea. It has to be something your target would have done anyway. The more indecisive the target, the easier the spell.

"Mosley was determined to kill us, so the spell didn't take easily, and it manifested in a headache. The Revered Mother was uncertain about you, so she was easily swayed without any physical manifestations of blood magic. Suggestion is different form outright mind control. You don't want to completely dominate a person's will. Draw from your life force, think about what you want the target to do, and weave that idea into the spell. Then you cast.

"Here." Amell handed him the dagger. "You can try with me."

"Wait... really?" Anders asked. "Are you serious?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Amell asked.

"Because... it's horrible?" Anders guessed.

"It's not mind control, Anders," Amell said. "At worst, you'll give me a headache."

"Are you sure I won't... you know, pop any blood vessels in your brain and accidentally kill you?" Anders asked.

"It doesn't work like that," Amell grinned, "If the spell doesn't take, it doesn't take. Remember how you said I knew what I was doing with blood magic? Trust me."

"If you say so," Anders said, staring at the dragonbone dagger. Anders bet Dumat was probably happy his bones were being used for blood magic, wherever in the Void the old god was. "So... what do should I make you do? Do a little dance? Get naked? Massage my feet?"

"Something I would be willing to do even without the influence of blood magic," Amell said. "So... any of those things work."

"Could you maybe give me something here?" Anders asked. "I really don't want to guess and do something horrible like accidentally mind control you or something."

"I'm considering kissing you to help you calm down, so why don't you try that?" Amell suggested.

"Alright." Anders said. A stolen kiss was fine, he supposed. Anders rolled up his sleeve, and set the dagger to his left arm, above the bend in his elbow. He made a shallow cut, and inhaled sharply at the sting, setting the bloody dagger on the edge of the towel. Resisting the urge to pull from the Fade for his spell, Anders reached for his heartbeat, and focused on the simple suggestion.

It wasn't hard to bring to mind the thought of Amell's lips against his: the soft press of skin against skin, the taste of cider with subtle undercurrents of salt, the heat of their breath mingling. When Anders was sure he had it, he cast the thought on Amell. Almost immediately, Amell leaned forward and kissed him.

Anders had been lost in thought, not quite looking at anything while he formed the spell, but his eyes snapped into focus at the kiss. A crimson haze hung about Amell's face, sliding into his ears, spilling out his nose, sealing shut his eyes. Anders snapped back from him in horror. The haze evaporated, and he lost the spell.

"Maker's breath, are you okay?" Anders sputtered, grabbing Amell's face in his hands. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Come back. Please wake up."

"I'm fine," Amell said, a dreamy lilt to his voice. He reached out and traced Anders' lips with a dazed expression, proving he was anything but. Anders contemplated slapping him when Amell shook off the spell and his eyes cleared. He blinked at Anders, a look of confusion replacing his old expression. "That was perfect, Anders. Why do you look so upset?"

"You looked-your face-You looked like Rylock. Like a cloud of blood was suffocating you- Andraste's flaming knickers, I thought-" Anders gave up trying to explain and hugged him. The blood on his arm stuck to Amell's back, and suctioned off when Anders moved his hands for a better grip.

Amell stiffened, but returned the hug after a moment's pause. He shifted so he was sitting in Anders' lap, and not leaning awkwardly over his knees. Anders was too concerned to appreciate having him there. "It was your first time, Anders. Of course the spell was going to have a physical manifestation," Amell said kindly, petting his hair. His words weren't comforting.

"Rylock exploded!" Anders said, "Remember? You made her explode. They can investigate her disappearance all they want, because you turned her into a puddle! I'm sorry, okay? It scared me. Just shut up and let me hug you."

Amell shut up. Anders ran his hands over Amell's shoulders, his fingers sticking when they passed over the smear of blood Anders had left on Amell's back. Anders wiped his fingers off on his sleeve as best he could, and cast a quick restorative spell to heal the cut on his arm. Anders turned his face into Amell's hair and inhaled his scent, and felt a little better.

Anders wasn't counting, but he guessed it took around a minute for his heartbeat to slow and his initial panic to fade. Amell was trailing his fingers up and down his back, and leaning against him, almost cuddling. "Sorry," Anders mumbled sheepishly.

"It's fine," Amell kissed his cheek, and Anders felt his lips move against his skin when he spoke. "This is fine."

Anders didn't know if he agreed. For Anders, the tender moment was almost as terrifying as the one that came before it, but... well. It wasn't hurting him. It wasn't like he had any real reason to be afraid. Amell had already proved he'd stand up to templars for him. No one was going to come and tear them apart. No one was going to use this against him.

"So, hey, this is kind of awkward, but it just occurred to me I don't know your name." Anders said.

Amell exhaled hard through his nose; the hot air tickled the hairs on the back of Anders' neck and he shivered. "It's Amell," Amell said.

"I mean your first name." Anders said. "Everyone just calls you Amell, or Commander, or Boss."

"I don't know your last name," Amell countered.

"... you don't know my first name," Anders confessed. Amell sat back in his lap, and frowned at him. "Anders. Anderfels. You never caught on?"

"I... no. I guess not." Amell said, leaning back into the hug. Anders appreciated that. This conversation was easier without eye-contact. "So what's your name?"

"Anders," Anders said unhelpfully. "I was named after my father."

"And his name was Anders, from the Anderfels?" Amell teased.

"No," Anders said, story tumbling out of him. "... I'm from the Anderfels, originally. My parents were farmers, near Tallo. I told you the templars came for me when I was twelve. Well, my magic manifested when I was a lot younger. When I was ten, I lit our barn on fire."

"The whole barn?" Amell repeated. He sounded impressed. He wouldn't be when Anders finished his story.

"The whole thing," Anders agreed. "One of the beams caught fire, and carried the flames straight into the hayloft, and burned the whole thing down. See, most of the other children in the village could tell I was different. They avoided me, so my mother got me a cat. Remember, I told you I had a cat named Princess, when I was younger? She was a calico. Adorable little thing.

"Well," Anders continued, "The other kids in the village saw me playing with her one day, so they took her. I was a twig. Hadn't hit puberty yet. I couldn't stop them, so I just followed them yelling for them to let her go. They took her all the way out to the old bridge and threw her in the river, just because I was different. That damn cat never did anything wrong. Kids, right?

"Anyway, I jumped in after her while all the other kids were just standing up on that bridge, watching and laughing. But I was a great swimmer. Still am, hence the whole swimming to freedom thing three years later. Anyway, I got that cat and ran all the way home with her. Made it back to our barn, and realized she was freezing. We both were. I was a kid; I didn't understand what I was doing. I just knew we needed a fire; we needed to be warm.

"Should have named her Andraste," Anders said ruefully, "I burned that damn cat alive. I tried shaking my hands to make the fire stop pouring out of them, and spread it everywhere. I probably should have died in that barn too, but my father came and dragged me out before it collapsed. But when he realized I did it? From the look on his face, you knew he wished he hadn't pulled me out in the first place.

"My mother tried. Sweetest woman I ever met. I still dream about her sometimes. For two years she hid me, tried to keep me safe, but there were more incidents, more accidents. My father turned me over to the templars when I was twelve. My mother was there, sobbing, begging. The last words I heard my father say were that he never wanted to see me again. So they put me on a boat, and shipped me all the way to Ferelden.

"My common tongue was terrible. I had the worst accent. Took me years to get over it. The other kids all called me Anders, so... there you go. I'm Anders. My father's name... I don't want that name. I hope it dies with him. But that cat... I never meant for that cat to die. Sorry. Seeing you like that... reminded me of the last time I accidentally killed something."

Amell ran his fingers through his hair, and kissed his cheek again. His touch was a lot more soothing than any words of comfort could have been. "Alright," Anders said, giving Amell a gentle push. "Legs are going numb. Get off."

Amell exhaled bemusedly and climbed off him. Anders wiped his bloody dagger off on the towel, and handed it back to him. Amell set it aside. "So... your turn." Anders said.

"My turn?" Amell repeated, "You're going to think I'm copying you."

"Well, what mage doesn't have a sob story?" Anders said, "I want to hear it anyway, if you don't mind."

"I don't mind," Amell promised. Anders stretched out legs, and set his feet in Amell's lap. Without asking, Amell started massaging them. Anders could definitely get used to this.

"Alright," Amell said, "I was seven when I was sent to the Circle, so I didn't learn most of this until later, but I'm from Kirkwall, in the Free Marches. My family was nobility there. My great uncle was in line for the position of Viscount, which is like a teryn, I suppose, until my brother was born. He was a mage, and so was the brother after him. By the time I was born, the family was 'tainted with magic.'

"They were also in debt, and desperate for an heir. I was their last chance for that. One mage child was unlucky, two was disgraceful, but three? Three ruined any family. My mother put all of her hopes on me. She named me after my grandfather, I think to get back in his favor. I don't remember her much, except that her name was Revka, and every night when she put me to bed, she'd say, 'Sleep light, no Fade dreams tonight.' I don't remember my father at all.

"My grandfather I remember. He always used to say the Maker was punishing us. He had my brothers sent to far away Circles, so he wouldn't have to bear the shame of having them nearby. He always used to whip me when he caught me doing... queer things. Braiding my hair, playing with dolls, but when I asked him about my brothers, he hit me so hard it knocked me flat. I remember he said, 'You have no brothers. You have no magic. You're going to be normal. You're going to marry the de Launcet girl, and you're going to save this family.'

"I didn't care about the magic part. Why would I? I was seven. Magic was just something everyone hated. But seven was old enough for me to know I didn't like girls, and I wasn't going to marry one. I already had a 'boyfriend', I guess. Some other noble boy I held hands with whose name I can't remember, but I cared at the time, so I said 'No.' I yelled it, put force behind it, and cast a mind blast that knocked my grandfather flat.

"He walked out of the room without a word, and the next day the templars took me away. The last thing he said to me was, 'You ruined this family.' I know now it was already ruined, but for a long time I thought if I was good enough, if I did everything the templars said, one day I could go home. Then I got old enough to understand how wrong I was, and the sort of person my grandfather was. So I stopped going by his name, but I kept the family name. As a joke, I guess. The last scion of House Amell, the same mage that ruined them."

It was a familiar story, Anders thought. Yet another family torn apart by magic and prejudice. At least no cats had died in Amell's story. "Your brothers. Do you know what Circles they were sent to? What happened to them?"

"Tranquil." Amell said tonelessly. "Both."

"Flames," Anders reached over for Amell's hand and squeezed it. "I'm sorry,"

"I never met them," Amell said. "It's fine."

"It's not fine!" Anders said hotly, "It's not right that they do this to mages. Your brothers may as well be dead, and for what crime? It shouldn't be like this. We shouldn't have these stories. You should remember your father. I should love mine." Anders was preaching to the choir. He took a slow breath and forced himself to stop ranting.

"Do you still think the vote in Cumberland is a bad idea?" Amell asked.

"I don't know," Anders admitted. "Maybe not. Someone should do something. Not me, but someone."

"Some people are doing something." Amell said vaguely.

"Because that's not ominous or anything," Anders frowned at him. "Care to elaborate? Does this have anything to do with that Mage Collective thing you mentioned?"

"It might," Amell said. "Do you really want to know?"

"No." Anders admitted, "It's not for me, but if you're a part of whatever that is, you know, that's grand. Can I ask you something?"

"Anything," Amell promised, lifting one of Anders' legs from his lap to kiss the sole of his foot. It tickled, and took every ounce of Anders' willpower to keep from kicking him in the face.

"Did you really know? About yourself, when you were seven?" Anders asked.

"Is that so strange?" Amell asked.

"I suppose not," Anders said, resisting the urge to ask about that one woman Amell had apparently been with. "I just spent my whole life liking the ladies until I met you. I'm still not even sure I'm into men, honestly, but you're... well. You know. You're alright."

"Thank you, Anders, that means a lot to me." Amell said flatly.

"Don't pout," Anders laughed, "Come on, you're bad at it. It makes you look like a caveman. Come here. I like you. Let Anders kiss it better. What hurts? Mouth? Dick?"

"Mouth," Amell decided, grabbing for him when he came near. Amell fell back and pulled Anders atop him. It wasn't the sort of kiss Anders had intended. Anders had planned on something passionate, but Amell's kiss was lyrium sweet, and lasted so long Anders forgot he cared.

Notes:

Fanart
Anders and Amell Intimate
Anders and Amell with blood magic

 

 

 

 

 

Apples and Apostates
Sun-Kissed Alabaster: A romantic moment in time as told from Anders' perspective.

Apples and Apostates: A short on Amell's crush on Anders in the Circle, as told from Jowan's perspective.

Chapter 24: Shadows of the Blackmarsh

Notes:

Hello everyone! The songs in this chapter are adapted versions of Tiny Bubbles, She Makes a Living, and Get a Line.

Thank you for 2,000 views! Thank you so much for supporting this story, and thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 17 Parvulis Afternoon

Somewhere in the Blackmarsh

"Figures the darkspawn would pick somewhere muddy and wet," Oghren muttered. "I better not lose a boot."

Anders felt sorry for the poor bastard. The marsh was awful enough for Anders. The ground had up and vanished a mile back. Mud, sludge, and slime took its place. The water was almost up to Anders' knees in some place, which meant Oghren and Sigrun were wading through it.

Oghren's braided beard reminded Anders of a paint brush. The red bristles were tipped with brown sludge. Oghren's armor was in a similar state, and he chose to hold his hip flask aloft in place of his battle axe. Poor Sigrun had fallen at some point, and looked more genlock than dwarf. She was covered in mud, and carried both her axes above her head, and had a waddle to her walk that swayed her like a tiny, dirty, deadly metronome.

"My people say this place used to beautiful, lush..." Velanna said. A gnarled root lifted up from the water to meet her bare foot, and kept her dry. She held her boots in one hand, and her staff in the other. On the one hand, Anders knew it was a gross waste of mana. On the other, he was green with envy. Literally. His trousers were covered with algae or moss or something. It was unbearably itchy. "Until some unnatural perversion occurred."

"My father used to tell me similar stories when I was young," Nathaniel said. He was taking the trek rather well. Too well, actually. Nathaniel's armor was an oily, mottled black, and it was far too easy to lose sight of the ranger in the shadows. Anders was trying very hard not to let Nathaniel's sudden disappearance and reappearances startle him. "He said evil magic killed everyone here. This was just before the rebellion, thirty years ago. It was a great mystery at the time. They never found out what happened. Once the monsters appeared, the marsh was abandoned,"

"Well I'm scared," Anders said, giving Amell a playful nudge. "Hold me?"

Amell seemed completely unaffected by the marsh, which was no real surprise. He was in full armor, marching like they weren't in knee high water and nothing was impeding him. He reached over and looped an obedient arm around Anders' waist. Anders laughed, and shoved Amell away not two steps later. It was hard enough for Anders to walk without being tangled up in someone.

On the bright side, they were definitely not going to fall into any darkspawn traps this time. They were ridiculously over prepared for this expedition. Everyone was carrying draughts, poultices, potions. Sigrun had a new crossbow to go with her axes. Amell's armor had been repaired with one of the scales from the dragons in the mines. Anders had a satchel full of balms for every element, and he had his bracers.

Not only were they fetching, they were practical. Anders should have let Amell finish talking about them when he'd first offered them. The eagle motif was a lovely bit of symbolism for freedom, but more importantly, the inside of the bracers were lined in reservoir runes. It was like wearing lyrium, and did wonders strengthening Anders' connection to the Fade. It also meant he was one step ahead of the templars. No one could slap a pair of shackles on him if he was already wearing some. It was delightfully ironic, really.

They had packs for pitching tents, rations for a week, and all of them were fairly decent at sensing darkspawn now. Amell had brought his grimoire, and read aloud from it every few minutes. The Tevene gibberish Amell was muttering would apparently keep any darkspawn emissaries from shrouding the horde with blood magic like they had at the Turnoble Estate.

That part didn't make sense to Anders. According to Amell, the Litany of Adralla was a counter to blood magic. The fact that it was in his grimoire at all seemed like an oxymoron, with emphasis on moron. Amell had bound Maker knew how many demons to the tome, and Anders would have figured two plus two equaled explosion in this case, but apparently that wasn't how it worked.

The Litany prevented blood magic from taking hold, but once blood magic was in full effect, there was nothing anyone could do. Amell reading it meant they wouldn't be ambushed again, but didn't affect his grimoire, so it was a win win, really. Everything was going swimmingly. Literally. Anders staff sunk into a pot hole in front of him, and he waded carefully around it. If nothing else, at least when they found Kristoff, or the darkspawn he was investigating, nothing would go wrong. Probably.

"When I was a boy, I used to dream about coming here and setting things right." Nathaniel continued. "But those were just little boy dreams. When I was in Kirkwall, I thought I would return home to take command of my father's garrison. Sitting a throne, parlaying with the nobility, judging the peasantry...

"But you got saddled with all that instead," Nathaniel said to Amell. "If someone would have told me things would turn out like this, I would have laughed at them. But here I am. Here we are. Grey Wardens, heroes of legend, fighting darkspawn, dragons, demons... Setting things right, just like I dreamed. Interesting, isn't it? The way time changes things."

"Definitely!" The little ball of mud that was Sigrun agreed. "This is so exciting. And this place is so creepy! It's the middle of the afternoon, but it's so dark and damp here. And those trees? They're so strange and twisted. What's wrong with this place?"

"This place is setheneran," Velanna said.

"The Veil is thin here." Anders said.

"That's what I said." Velanna said, glaring down at Anders from the root she was walking on.

"It's really not, sweetie." Sigrun said. "So the Veil, that's like... the wall between our world and your creepy human dream land, right?"

"There is no 'wall.'" Amell said. "The Veil is a concept we rely on to explain the divide between the Fade and our reality. When you accept its nonexistence, you can walk between the realms. Velanna, when we've dealt with the darkspawn, you and I should practice here."

Sigrun waded through the swamp to Anders' side and gave him a nudge with a muddy elbow. Anders bent down for her. "So it's like a wall, right?"

"It's exactly like a wall." Anders whispered. "Just sort of crumbling here, so it's easier for demons to crawl over. If you see any weird green bubbles, that's a demon trying to climb over. Give me a holler if that happens, and I can cast a spell that sort of shuts the door on them before they can come in."

"Magic is so cool." Sigrun grinned.

"It kind of is, isn't it?" Anders allotted.

"Can you light that bush on fire?" Sigrun asked.

"You need help." Anders said.

A screech pierced the air. Anders threw up a barrier around Sigrun and himself. It sounded like a shriek, but Anders hadn't sensed any darkspawn.

Nathaniel had his daggers out. Velanna had dropped her boots into the swamp, and was brandishing her staff, precariously balanced on her root. Amell had his shield up. Anders was half way through carving a glyph into the layer of slime atop the water when he realized the sound had been Oghren.

Oghren cleared his throat. "I... Uh. I thought I saw... I mean..."

"Stones, man. Really?" Sigrun sighed, lowering her axes.

Anders started laughing. Sigrun joined him a heartbeat later, and Nathaniel soon followed. Velanna lowered her staff and even managed a giggle, when a shadow burst out of the trees and tackled her off her root and into the murky water.

"Velanna!" Nathaniel screamed.

Water spouted high, and all Anders could see was a creature of darkness. It could have been anything. A darkspawn, a shade, he couldn't tell. Savage snarls mixed with elven curses as the thing and Velanna grappled with each other, and a tangled mess of roots shot out of the ground and swallowed both of them.

A mound of roots took the place of where both Velanna and the creature had been. A few seconds later, and Velanna burst out of the ground a few feet away. She was covered in mud, twigs, bits of bark, and panting. If she weren't holding her staff, Anders wouldn't have recognized her.

Velanna wheezed. Anders fought his way through the marsh to her side. He channeled an aura of healing energies, and conjured a small sphere of water he dumped over her head. Velanna went rigid, and hissed in shock. It was akin to dumping water on a cat, but she needed it. She had a handful of lacerations Anders didn't want filled with mud, and a respectable bruise where the thing had connected with her. He healed her.

"It is still in there." Velanna said, clutching her staff and shivering. Anders channeled a weak fire spell that was all warmth and no flame and dried her off.

True enough, the mound of roots was pulsating, an occasional thud sounding from within. "From the look of your wounds, I want to guess shriek, but shrieks don't bark, and wolves aren't that strong." Nathaniel said.

"A were or blight wolf." Amell said. "It's pack will be nearby. Velanna, you can let go."

Amell stood over the mound of roots. One by one the roots slipped back into the ground, and Anders heard savage snarls that ended with a swift downstroke from Amell's sword. All the roots slithered away, and a ... thing, was left on the ground. It looked like a man, covered in fur and hunchbacked.

"Relative of yours?" Anders asked Oghren.

"Har fucking har." Oghren said. He gave the thing a kick that rolled it over. Anders recoiled in disgust. The thing's face was a hideous mess of man and wolf, and a foot long tongue lulled out of it's massive jaw. Amell knelt over it, and pulled a spirit through the Fade to bind to its corpse. The thing climbed to its feet, and sat hunched in the water, two orbs of blue light replacing its eyes. "I knew I saw something. This little fucker's eyes peeping out of the shadows at me. Didn't we cure these werewolf guys?" Oghren asked. "The fuck is he doing, being all... not cured?"

"Most werewolves are just wolves, possessed by demons." Amell said. "They would abound anywhere the Veil is thin, and wolves exist. This one is blighted, as well. Kristoff must have been right about the darkspawn being here. Velanna, walk on the ground so you don't draw attention."

"Found 'em!" Sigrun said, holding up Velanna's boots. A dip in the swamp had turned them into little gravy boats, mud and sludge pouring out the top. Velanna wrinkled her nose, and Anders really couldn't blame her.

"Must I wear these?" Velanna demanded. "They inhibit my every step, and make it impossible to balance. I fail to see the point. The soles of my feet are as hard as any human leather."

"Bluh," Anders shuddered. "Imagery."

"Not if they're impeding you." Amell said. "But don't discard them. Tie them to your pack, in case you change your mind."

"I am not so fickle." Velanna huffed.

Anders snorted. He couldn't help himself. Velanna glared, and Anders did his best to look innocent. He really wasn't one to talk, but hypocrisy was always funny. As far as Anders knew, Velanna and Nate were still on the rocks. No one had told him anything, but she was still walking apart from Nate, which seemed a good clue.

Sigrun handed Velanna her shoes, and Velanna dumped them out before tying them to her pack. "How much further to this village?" Velanna demanded.

"Some time yet." Nathaniel said, after checking his map. "It would be easier going were the roads not in such disrepair."

"Stay quiet and alert." Amell said, his pet werewolf shambling after him. "It's pack is bound to be about."

They fell silent, or as silent as they could. There was no quieting the slosh of water and mud as they trudged through the marsh, but the marsh was noticeably creepier with no one talking. Frogs croaked in the distance, an autumn wind whistled, and ravens occasionally took flight from the blackened branches around them in a shower of black feathers and creaking bark. Nathaniel took to humming nervously, and Amell's hushed mumbling in Tevene wasn't helping anyone.

"Okay, this is freaking me the fuck out." Oghren said suddenly. "I'm pretty sure I pissed myself a while back. Come on, Boss, you gotta let us talk."

"Maybe a song would help?" Sigrun suggested hopefully.

"Yeah, sure." Oghren said quickly. "Singing's great. I know a few songs. Why the fuck not? Right Boss?"

"... Not too loud." Amell relented. "Nathaniel, stay sharp, and call out if you see any movement."

"I will." Nathaniel said.

"Alright, here we go, this one's a classic. S'called 'Makes Her Living.'" Oghren said.

"I know that song." Nathaniel said. "Are you sure it's entirely appropriate?"

"See that lady wearing brown? She makes her living going down." Oghren sang.

"Ancestors, really?" Sigrun sighed.

"Why do you know this song?" Velanna demanded of Nathaniel.

"She's a shoe shiner! A shoe shiner!" Oghren sang.

Anders started laughing.

"See that lady from the south? She makes her living with her mouth.
She's the town crier, the town crier!
See that lady wearing jet? She makes her living getting wet.
She's a fisherwoman, a fisherwoman!"

"Maker, stop. I can't breathe." Anders laughed.

"Yes, desist." Velanna said.

"Do you know any real songs?" Sigrun asked.

"That is a real song!" Oghren huffed. "Alright, fine, how about Tiny Bubbles?

"Tiny bubbles in my beer,
Make me happy and full of cheer!
Tiny bubbles in my wine,
Make me happy all the time!"

"I love you." Anders laughed. "You know I love you, right?"

"Come on, please?" Sigrun begged. "Don't you know any songs that aren't gross or about getting drunk?"

"You mean do I know any boring songs?" Oghren asked. "Fine, fine, just for you, my juicy little persimmon. How about 'You Get the Cards'? That work?"

"I don't know," Sigrun squinted at him. "I've never heard it, but I don't trust you now."

"Trust me." Oghren said. "This one'll get some hot blood pumping through those dead legionnaire veins."

"Oghren, I don't want anything to do with you where the words 'hot' and 'pumping' come into play." Sigrun said.

"I'll get through to you yet, lady." Oghren grinned. "Oghren'll keep ramming up against that armor of yours."

"Just... sing the song." Sigrun sighed. "Please. You're embarrassing."

"Alright, Alright. Here goes.

"You get the cards, and I'll get the dice
Honey, honey,
You get the cards, and I'll get the dice
Baby, baby,
You get the cards, and I'll get the dice
You and me, we can play real nice
I had a girl who lived down the street,
Honey, honey,
I had a girl who lived down the street,
Baby, baby,
I had a girl who lived down the street.
She was cute, and she was sweet.
I had a girl who looked good in blue,
Honey, honey,
I had a girl who looked good in blue,
Baby, baby,
I had a girl who looked good in blue,
She could make a fool out of you."

"Wow, Oghren," Sigrun said. "That was actually... pretty sweet."

"Heheh," Oghren chortled. "Stop by my bunk one of these days and I'll show you something else that's 'pretty sweet'."

"Ugh." Sigrun groaned.

Oghren giggled, and took a drink from his flask, but his expression quickly turned somber and he went quiet, falling back several paces. Sigrun started up a conversation with Velanna, and didn't seem to notice, but Anders did. He picked up his pace to walk with Amell and his werewolf.

"So... Hey." Anders whispered after Amell finished his latest read through of the Litany. "Who's Fells?"

"Who?" Amell asked. He was wearing his helmet, and his voice was tinny for it. Anders seriously hated helmets.

"Fells." Anders said again. "Oghren mentioned someone named Fells, a while ago. He said he didn't do right by them, or you, or his son. I mean, it was seriously a while ago, but..."

"... Fells. Felsi? His wife?" Amell asked, glancing over his shoulder at Oghren. "He hasn't said anything like that to me about her... Why would he say he didn't do right by me?"

"It was... I think a month ago at least," Anders said. "After the incident in the mines. I'm sorry, I'm an ass, I didn't even think about it afterwards."

"No, it's fine. Thank you for telling me." Amell gave Anders' hand a squeeze. "I'll talk to him."

"Alright. Good." Anders was glad that was settled. He liked Oghren, but he was rubbish at relationships and definitely not the person to go around offering advice on them. "So hey, I've got a good one. Three blood mages walk into a marsh-"

"I have to keep reciting the Litany, Anders." Amell interrupted him. "If I don't focus, the magic will keep me from remembering the words even while I'm reading them. I'm sorry." Amell gave his hand another squeeze. "We can talk later."

"Fine, fine," Anders pouted. "You owe me now though."

"Anything you want." Amell promised, and went back to reading.

That man was seriously going to get himself into trouble with how complacent he was. Anders fell back to walk with Nate, but he hadn't gotten two words in when the archer called out. "Movement to the northeast."

A wolf howled nearby. Everyone stopped.

"Anders, glyphs." Amell said.

Anders started casting. Nathaniel strung his bow.

"These beasts are unnatural," Velanna said. "Wolves are creatures of the night. They should not prowl during the day."

"Well I mean, it's kind of night here." Sigrun said.

"Light." Amell said.

"Right?" Sigrun said. "It's seriously dark for no reason. It's like the sky is broken."

"Anders, light," Amell clarified. Anders pulled a wisp across the Veil and bound it about his staff.

"Incoming." Nathaniel said.

A werewolf burst out of the trees and dove into their midst. Oghren caught it mid-flight with a downward stroke from his battle axe. His blade struck the beast between its shoulder blades, and sent it crashing down into the knee high water. The werewolf's spine broke with a loud crack, and severed arteries sent blood spraying high into the air. Red drops fell into the water like rain all around them, and a fight erupted.

Werewolf after werewolf dove into their little patch of light. The fight would have been easier if any of them could move, but mud caught Anders boots with every step, and everyone looked to be suffering the same fate. Anders' glyphs and Velanna's nature magic saved Nathaniel from being mauled twice, and Amell's blood magic did the same for Sigrun.

Anders couldn't spare the time to count how many were in the pack when he had to redraw glyph after glyph. He channeled Compassion for an aura of aptitude, and the knee high water ceased to be such a hamper on their movement. Sigrun seemed to benefit from it most, the little dwarf darting through the shallows to hamstring the werewolves.

She cut one down as it was charging him, and the beast hit the ground with a splash. Mud sprayed across Anders' chest, and got on his chin and in his hair. The werewolf continued to thrash and wail on the ground, snapping up water and moss in its futile efforts to reach him. Sigrun put an axe through the back of its head.

The audible thunk of her axe breaking through the werewolf's skull made Anders a little queasy, but for the most part he was desensitized to it all. The fight was over a few minutes later. "Score one for our heroes," Anders said brightly. "Does anyone need healing?"

"Not so fast, Sparkles." Oghren said. He was standing over a werewolf, encased in an oval of sapphire. The beast was still very much alive, it's eyes twitching in its skull as it surveyed them all with mindless malice. Oghren had his battle axe poised to strike. "Hey, Boss, you saving this for later or what?"

"Yes, actually." Amell said, hooking his shield onto his back and cleaning off his sword. "Velanna, Anders, do either of you want to try enslaving it?"

"Woah, what?" Sigrun asked. "You're learning blood magic too? That's so cool!"

"What?" Velanna scoffed, looking at Anders in disbelief. "You humans are such hypocrites. You show nothing but contempt for Amell's magic, but the second he uses it on your templars, you come begging for lessons."

"Oh please," Anders said. "Don't act like you know me. If you'd been paying any attention you'd have noticed I've been all for every spell he's ever cast except one."

"Yes, the one you would be learning now, and using on this creature." Velanna waved at the trapped werewolf. "Could you be any more hypocritical?"

"Do you have any idea how idiotic you sound right now?" Anders asked. "I know plenty of lightning spells I'm not afraid to use, but that doesn't mean I want to be electrocuted."

Amell snorted.

"You be quiet," Anders frowned at him. "That doesn't count."

"I seriously do not want to know." Oghren said.

"I kinda do." Sigrun said. "Wait, oh my gosh, are there like, dirty bedroom spells? There are! There so are! Oh I'm so jealous."

"Ugh. Enough." Velanna said. "I will make an effort. I need a knife."

"Are you sure the Veil here can take a lot of blood magic?" Anders asked. "I saw you cast a few spells already in the fight back there."

"It can't," Amell agreed. "But we should be fine as long as we don't make a concentrated effort to summon any demons, or expend too much mana in the same area. One enslavement spell won't tear the Veil. Velanna, do you remember what we discussed about binding?"

"I remember. I've commanded sylvans. One little wolf should not trouble me." Velanna held out her hand. Nathaniel handed her a knife. Velanna took off her glove, and made a brazen cut on her wrist that only long sleeves would cover.

"Oghren, be ready to kill it if the spell doesn't take." Amell said.

"Guh." Oghren muttered, flexing his meaty fingers around the hilt of his battle axe. "Alright, but I'm pretty twitchy. Might kill it either way."

"I am ready." Velanna said. A glove of red hovered menacingly around her hand, spell woven and waiting. Amell dispelled his force field, and Velanna cast.

The net of blood fell on the werewolf as it tensed to lunge. The beast seized violently, and Oghren took a cautious step back. Blood poured out of the werewolf's ears, and foamed in its mouth. It took two unsteady steps forward, and exploded.

Blood, fur, bone, and chunks of meat went everywhere. Water and mud sprayed over all of them with the force of the explosion. A chunk of fur-covered skin landed on Anders' face. It was disturbingly warm. "Oh Maker. I'm gonna barf." Anders gagged, peeling the bit of flesh off his cheek.

"I don't understand," Velanna said. Blood had dyed her hair a cherry blonde. "I did everything you said. I wove my will into the spell and aimed to dominate the creature's blood."

"And you did, for a few seconds." Amell said. "That was more than respectable for your first attempt, but you need to think of it as a channeled spell. Sylvans can act without direction because they have their own spirits, but you're tethering your target to your will with blood magic. Werewolves are weak of will, and with how much force you put into the spell, it was bound to explode when you let go."

Velanna nodded, and handed the dagger back to Nathaniel. Anders healed the cut on her arm.

"Bluh," Sigrun shuddered, wiping mud and gore off her face. "I think some got in my mouth. Ick. Next time you try that I am standing so far away. Like, so far."

"We probably shouldn't try any more with how thin the Veil is anyway." Amell said. "But that was good, Velanna. Don't get discouraged."

"I am not discouraged. Do not coddle me," Velanna huffed, putting her glove back on and striding forward. Everyone followed, and Amell went back to reading from his grimoire.

"Hey, look what I found back there," Sigrun nudged Anders, and held up a tooth the size of her palm. "No way this came out of a werewolf. What do you think it's from?"

Anders took it, and turned it over in his hands. "Someone with a serious sweet tooth?" Anders guessed.

"That's a dragon tooth." Nathaniel said. "I visited a traveling fair when I was a child that had a whole skeleton on exhibit."

"Neat!" Sigrun said. "Give it back. I want to keep it."

Anders handed it back.

"Anders," Nathaniel said quietly, "I know it's not my place to ask, but are you sure? About the blood magic?"

"Yep." Anders said.

"Alright then." Nathaniel said.

That was an easy conversation, Anders thought. The six of them kept on through the marsh, until the wetlands finally gave way to dry. The road reappeared, and led them to a strange stone circle with a pedestal in the center. Off in the distance, Anders could see the outline of the abandoned port city. "Finally." Anders said. "Can we take a break here and dry off?"

"Be careful. The Veil is thinner here." Amell said, but he stopped, and leaned against one of the many stone pillars.

"Anders!" Sigrun exclaimed, jumping in place and pointing off into the twisted tree line. "Green bubble! Green demon bubble!"

Anders ran towards it. Amell and Velanna went with him, but it wasn't a demon crossing. It was a Tear in the Veil. It floated like a cloud with the texture of glass, colored green and black. Looking through it, Anders could shapes and shadows moving on the other side. "Fascinating." Amell said.

"We must be wary." Velanna said. "Spirits will abound in this place."

"No kidding." Anders agreed, looking to Amell. "Do you know how to fix one of these?"

"Not without a very involved ritual, or entering the Fade and slaying the demon that controls the demesne for this Tear." Amell said. "Keep an eye out for demons crossing, both of you. Dispel what you can."

They went back to the stone circle and took a rest. Oghren wrung out his beard. Sigrun cleaned off her axes. Anders conjured a fire and Nathaniel passed out rations. Amell sat with his werewolf, still reading the Litany every so often. All of them cleaned mud off their armor.

"There are darkspawn nearby." Amell said. "Around a score, to the southwest. Not enough for a nest, but worth investigating."

"Hey, guys, look at this!" Sigrun called. Anders looked over, and found her tossing sticks and refuse aside to reveal a massive skull that had been hidden underneath. "Look! Look! Is this a dragon skull? It's huge! And busted! Look, it looks like someone kicked it in here. I wonder where this piece of its skull went."

"I am more curious about this stone circle." Velanna said, running her fingers over one of the stones. It was taller than Nathaniel, and thicker than Oghren. "The runework on them reminds me of an elgar'arla. A... Ah... A binding circle, for spirits."

"My tooth fits!" Sigrun exclaimed from over by the skull. "Oh man. Can we take this back to the Keep? Maybe hang it up in the barracks?"

"Sure," Amell agreed. "We can plan another expedition here, and try to find as many of the bones as we can. They make for exceptional weapons and armor."

"Oh I'm so excited!" Sigrun said.

"That fucker is about as big as the Archdemon." Oghren observed, nudging the dragon skull with the toe of his boot. "Now that was a fight. Remind me to tell you sobs about it sometime. Nothing gets your blood pumping like fighting a dragon on top of a fort, wind in your beard, whole army at your back, ballistas thrumming... Good times."

"Do we head towards the village, or the darkspawn first?" Nathaniel asked when they were rested.

"... Village." Amell decided. "Kristoff might have camped out there. The darkspawn aren't moving, for some reason."

"Another trap, perhaps." Velanna said.

"It's likely," Nathaniel agreed. "Perhaps they are lying in wait, believing themselves shrouded by blood magic."

"Dumb fucks." Oghren said.

Anders laughed. They set off towards the village.

It was a mess of moldy, rotten buildings. Cobwebs were strung up in the alleys, and rubbish and skeletons littered most of the corners. Oghren kicked the door to one of the houses, and it collapsed in a heap of rotten splinters. "Heheh," Oghren giggled. "Looks like no one's home."

"I am not surprised," Velanna said. "I don't expect us to find any trace of Kristoff in this graveyard."

"Oh come on, it's not a graveyard." Anders said, punting a skull down the street. It landed in a pile of bones beside a building that might have been a tavern once. "Aside from being ruined and haunted, it's kind of picturesque. And speaking of haunted, I think that skeleton is moving."

The skeleton was definitely moving. The little pile of bones apparently only needed a skull to pull itself together. Magic hummed in the air, and its joints cracked and clattered as it formed.

"I got it." Oghren said. He strode over and brought his battle axe down on the creature before it finished forming, and split several of the bones in half or into dust.

"There's another one!" Sigrun said, pointing. A skeleton shambled out of a building, and Velanna killed it with a vicious lash from one of her magic roots. "At least they kind of suck. This is fun. Like wack-a-nug, but with skeletons."

"Don't get complacent." Amell said. "These are wisps: mindless half formed thoughts. If a demon crosses and takes hold of a corpse, it will be far stronger."

"Okay Ser Frowns-a-Lot, I won't have fun." Sigrun said.

"I didn't say you couldn't have fun." Amell said. "And I don't frown a lot."

"You kind of do, sweetie." Sigrun said. "I mean you're not Nate, but you almost never laugh."

"I have a creepy laugh." Amell said.

"It's true, he does." Anders said.

"Here," Nathaniel called, emerging from one of the buildings still boasting a roof. "Kristoff camped here. Months ago, I'd say. There are old tracks in the dirt, but his camp is untouched save for an ancient blood stain on his cot. I think the darkspawn killed him in his sleep, and dragged his body somewhere."

"Time to go find the fuckers, then?" Oghren asked.

"Era'harel!" Velanna yelled.

Anders didn't need Amell to translate. A corpse was floating through the city square, radiating magic. It was a mangled thing of elongated limbs, with flesh like dried jerky, and dark pits of black in place of eyes. It clenched a fist, and three shades ripped through the gossamer thin strands of the Veil quicker than Anders could dispel them.

Velanna reached for fire, and the corpse waved a hand in her direction. It sent her crashing through the rotted walls of the nearest building. Anders ran after her, confident everyone else could handle the horror. He found her picking herself up out of a pile of rubble, a splinter the size of fingers cutting through where her armor was thin, in her upper arm. She pulled it loose with a hiss, and started when she saw him.

"No, I am fine," Velanna said, dusting dirt off her trousers and using her staff to climb to her feet. "Do not heal me. I want to try binding one of those shades."

"You know three blood mages is probably serious overkill," Anders said, healing her anyway with a simple rejuvenation spell. "Why don't you let Amell handle the blood magic here? Remember, he said no more enslaving things, because the Veil is thin, and a demon-possessed corpse just threw you through a wall? I know this was all ages ago, so it makes sense you don't remember, but..."

"Enough. Fine. Yes. You are right," Velanna said. How Anders loved hearing that. "Let us go help," Velanna strode past him, and back out into the fight.

Anders was feeling pretty good about himself when he rejoined the fight. He was a nice, responsible blood mage, and a spirit healer to boot. Take that, Circle. Admittedly, it put a bit of a damper on his confidence to see Amell had bound the shades anyway, but Amell knew what he was doing. Probably.

Anders surveyed the rest of the battlefield, and found Oghren caught in a prison of telekinetic magic. Anders dispelled it, and the resulting explosion knocked over Nathaniel who was standing nearby. Nathaniel stood back up quickly enough, and Oghren rushed to rejoin the fight in time to see Sigrun take the horror's head off. It crumpled to the ground, a harmless headless corpse.

"So... is that safe?" Anders asked, gesturing to the three shades.

"No," Amell admitted, "Not at all. Please kill them,"

Velanna and Anders dispelled raw mana and ripped the little things to shreds, sending them back into the Fade.

"So anyway," Oghren said. "Darkspawn now, ya?"

"Yes." Amell agreed.

Nathaniel led them back to Kristoff's camp, and from there they followed the tracks towards the darkspawn they could all sense now. The drag marks led out of the small coastal town, and up a hill, lined with white sacks identical to the ones they'd found in Kal'Hirol.

"Anders, cast a grease spell on the path down the hill," Amell said. "Velanna, ignite it when the darkspawn charge."

"Why would they charge?" Velanna asked.

"Because Anders is going to cast a chain of lightning through these sacks," Amell said.

"Oh is he?" Anders asked.

"I'd be surprised if the screams of their young didn't provoke them into fighting." Amell continued, ignoring him.

The simple little plan worked exactly as intended. The lightning made the sacks burst in explosions of white pus and green slime, and the children fell out screaming. Hurlocks and genlocks charged down the hill in response, and Anders' and Velanna's combined magic set them all ablaze. Only a handful made it down the hill, and Nathaniel's arrows and Oghren and Sigrun's axes dispatched them easily enough.

"Easy." Anders said.

"There are still a few left, atop the hill," Amell said, "Around a half dozen."

"Well let's go kill 'em." Oghren said.

Everyone agreed. It was a short climb up, and Anders kept a barrier channeled, but the darkspawn didn't use their elevated position to their advantage. The darkspawn didn't do anything. They crested the hill, and found a half dozen hurlocks waiting with the corpse of a man in Grey Warden armor, who must have been Kristoff.

"The Grey-" One of them started.

Velanna set them all ablaze with a well placed fireball. The darkspawn scattered, shrieking in pain. Oghren chortled. "Haha! Atta girl! Ain't got much to say now, do you, you blighters!?"

"Pathetic." Velanna said.

Five of the hurlocks collapsed, but the one who had spoken was still alive, if horribly charred from Velanna's spell. "The First may be dying," The monster coughed, scrambling backwards. "But the mother-she is never being wrong! This is her gift to you," The darkspawn lifted up a small green sphere, and crushed it in its hand with its final act.

The sphere exploded, but instead of being thrown backwards, all of them were wrenched forward. Anders lost his footing, and heard the soft sound of fabric ripping. He hit the ground, and fell through it. The world fell away, turned upside down and inside out, and all was black and pain.

He woke up in a field of reeds.

Notes:

Fanart
Amell

Chapter 25: The Blackmarsh Undying

Notes:

Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, and as always, thank you for reading!

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Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 17 Parvulis Sometime
Somewhere

Anders lay on the ground, staring up at the sky. It was a crystal clear blue, with rivets of emerald and black. Demesnes floated through the sky like clouds, crumbling islands dripping chains and rocks into the Void. Among them, as always, was the Black City, the twisted spires of the shadowy metropolis seemed to stretch off into forever. Around him were the faint smells of the sea, of magic and burning sugar, with a subtle undercurrent of decay.

"I hate the Fade," Anders sighed. "Don't get me wrong, gorgeous, I'm always happy to talk to you, but getting knocked out and waking up like this is seriously going to leave me with brain damage someday."

"Aw, that's so sweet," Sigrun cooed. Anders sat up with a start. Sigrun was sitting next to him, a glint of mirth and mischief in her bright blue eyes. "You really think I'm gorgeous?"

"Okay first, yes, you're lovely, but second, what are you doing here?" Anders asked.

"Beats me," Sigrun shrugged, snapping off a reed and tickling his nose with it. Anders bit back a sneeze and smacked it away. "I don't even know where 'here' is. It smells funny, and I think I must be high on something because everything is suddenly bright and floating. All the darkspawn we killed came back to life, even that ugly one that called itself the 'First'. They all ran away when we tried to kill them again.

"Oghren ... kind of had a freak out. He ran off after them, and Amell ran off after him. He told me to stay with you guys, which is great, because I'm kind of freaking out too. Please tell me you know what's going on. Nathaniel and Velanna are still unconscious, and Amell said I shouldn't try to wake anyone for some reason and that you guys had to do it on your own."

Anders looked around. This wasn't Compassion's demesne. For all intents and purposes, they were still in the Blackmarsh, on the very same hill where they'd found Kristoff and the darkspawn. If this was the Fade, it felt backwards. Where the real Blackmarsh was dark and haunted, this place looked peaceful. There was a chicken coop nearby, the sky was clear, and scattered memories floated all around. Fishing boats, favorite ales, and the like.

"Right. Dwarf. Okay." Anders said, "Well... I don't know what happened, but I guess we're in the Fade now? It's just like a reflection of the real world. A spirit or demon rules over this place, and all these things," Anders pulled a bottle of ale out of the air and handed it to Sigrun. She uncorked it and took an uncertain sniff, "Are the memories from the people that used to live here."

"So... we're in a dream of a forgotten place?" Sigrun asked, setting the bottle down. It floated away. "Wow... that's kind of profound. The darkspawn were here too though. What does that mean?"

"I don't know." Anders said. "Maybe they sent us here somehow? Like a forced Harrowing? I didn't know darkspawn had magic that powerful."

"Ugh," Velanna moaned. She was lying a few feet away from him, and crawled up onto her hands and knees, taking in their surroundings with a frown, "What is... where-... is this the Beyond? Creators... another trap. We are all such great fools."

"Hey sweetie, how are you doing?" Sigrun asked.

"Lovely." Velanna said flatly. She spotted Nathaniel lying next to her and crawled over to him.

"Amell said-" Sigrun started.

Velanna rolled Nathaniel over and slapped him. He jolted upright, panicked, "Get down! He has a bomb! I-... what happened?"

"Seriously, what is it with you and slapping people?" Anders asked.

"We are in the Beyond. We need our wits about us." Velanna said unapologetically. "Get up, all of you. Where are Amell and the dwarf?"

Velanna picked herself up, staff in hand. Anders had assumed he was in Compassion's demesne, but summoned his staff on learning otherwise. Sigrun shrieked when it appeared in his hand.

"Oh my gosh!" Sigrun squealed, "How did you do that!? How how how? You conjured that out of thin air!"

"Uh... I just..." Shit, how would Amell explain this? 'According to a Dissertation on the Fade as a Physical Manifestation by Senior Enchanter Who-Gives-a-Shit you can make your will manifest if you focus on Who Cares.' "... I needed a staff?"

"Can I do that?" Sigrun asked.

"Sure, why not?" Anders shrugged, "I mean I'm not positive, since you're not a mage, and you really shouldn't even be here right now, but if you think about a weapon or armor or something you need, it should just come to you."

Sigrun balled her fists and put on a look of such intense concentration it was almost comical.

"You are in full armor with your weapons ready," Velanna said, "What could you possibly-"

Sigrun's armor and weapons vanished. She wore a dress of gold and peach in their place, studded with sapphires and fire opals. A thick belt was clenched tight about her waist to flatter breasts her armor usually hid. Anders whistled. "Did it work?" Sigrun demanded, looking down at herself. She screamed. "It worked! It worked, I look just like her! Oh... Oh I want this so bad..."

Anders shook his staff away and held out his hand. "Can I have this dance, my lady?"

"Oh! Yes! Yes you may, Ser!" Sigrun giggled and grabbed his hand. Anders spun her, laughing.

"Stop that, both of you," Velanna said, "We are trapped in the beyond the Veil with no foreseeable means of escape by darkspawn magic. Amell and Oghren are missing. We need to be vigilant least we draw the attention of powerful spirits. This is hardly the time for you to be dancing without weapons or armor!"

Sigrun stopped mid-twirl and rubbed the back of her neck at the lecture, "Sorry. I'll um... try to think about wearing armor and stuff,"

"Oh will you shut up for once?" Anders demanded, "What do you want us to do? Charge out into the Fade and pick a fight with the first demon we see? We have to wait here for Amell to get back anyway. Let her wear a fancy dress and be happy for a few minutes, you heartless harpy."

"No, Velanna's right, I shouldn't be messing around." Sigrun said. Just like that, the dress was gone, and she was back to being a little legionnaire again. Sigrun wandered over to a boat floating a few feet off the ground, and hopped up into it. She sat there swinging her feet over the edge and dutifully watching the road down the hill.

Anders shot Velanna a glare and went to sit with Sigrun. "Hey there. This seat taken?" Anders asked after he'd already sat.

"It is now," Sigrun said. "So you come here every night when you dream?"

"Every night." Anders agreed.

"Creepy." Sigrun said with a grin.

"So hey, whose dress was that?" Anders asked.

"Oh... No one." Sigrun shrugged, "It was just a pretty dress I saw a noble lady wearing back in Orzammar once. I never had anything like that, back in Dust Town or the Legion. This seems nice. Being able to dream, and make yourself into anything you want."

"Why would you want to be anything else?" Anders asked.

"Why wouldn't I?" Sigrun snorted. "I'm-"

"An absolute looker already." Anders interrupted her, "I mean it, tattoos on women? Ridiculously attractive. And you with those axes? It's no wonder Oghren won't leave you alone. Who doesn't love powerful women?"

Sigrun rubbed the back of her neck again, a flush creeping onto her cheeks. "You're such a flirt," Sigrun mumbled, giving him a shove.

"You love it," Anders said, looping an arm around her shoulders. "Admit it,"

"You're a good husband," Sigrun said, leaning on him.

"So you're not bumping me down to fuck after all, huh?" Anders asked.

"Naw. What about you?" Sigrun asked, "You going to marry Amell yet?"

"Nope." Anders said.

They watched the road for several long minutes before Amell and Oghren finally came back. Amell had abandoned his armor in favor of a rather fanciful robe, which Anders was definitely going to give him shit over, but Oghren was wearing a scowl so fierce his whole beard seemed to droop. He stormed up the hill without a word and took a spot apart from everyone, clutching his battle axe like it was the only thing that was real, even though nothing was.

"Are mommy and daddy fighting again?" Anders asked.

"Everything's fine," Amell lied. "The Fade makes Oghren a little uncomfortable."

"A little," Sigrun snorted, and whispered to Anders, "That was a panic attack if I ever saw one. You should have heard the stuff he was screaming. I grew up in Dust Town and I think I learned a few new curse words."

"About time you returned. What has happened?" Velanna demanded.

"We're in the Fade," Amell said. "The darkspawn emissary sent us here with that sphere he had. A concentrated lyrium explosion, if I had to guess. The village is still here, a short ways off, and I think whatever controls this demesne lives there. We ran into a demon who mentioned a baroness, which is interesting, but there are also countless Tears scattered throughout the marsh. There are demons here keeping them open, from what I could tell, and I want us to kill them before we head to the village."

"Ain't fucking right," Oghren muttered.

"Do we not want these Tears open?" Nathaniel asked. "How are we to escape this place?"

"I'm not sure yet, but we can't cross Tears the way demons can," Amell said, "We need to close them,"

"What kind of demons?" Anders asked.

"Desire." Amell said. "At least at the Tear we passed. They were tethered to an apparatus of sorts which was weakening the Veil. A stronger demon might have bound them there, but I doubt it. It looked complicated, and deliberate. Something a mage might have done, a somniari possibly."

"Ain't fucking right," Oghren muttered again.

"Velanna, Anders, I know both of you already know this, but I need all of you to be extraordinarily careful in here," Amell continued, "Trust and talk to no one but each other. Let me talk to whatever we encounter. Every person or thing in here has the potential to be a demon or a spirit in disguise,"

"But... it's just a dream, right?" Sigrun asked, "I mean, nothing here can really hurt us, can it?"

"If you were actually dreaming, dying here would be... a shock, but not necessarily lethal. People dream about dying all the time, but you're aware right now. Your mind will accept death here as death in the real world." Amell said.

"Oh... goody." Sigrun said with a queasy smile, hopping off the boat. "Anything else?"

"Stay near Anders, Velanna, or myself always and you'll be fine. There's nothing in here that the three of us can't handle." Amell said. "Are you all alright and ready to set out?"

Everyone gave some form of agreement, and they set out. The Blackmarsh looked like a mirror opposite in the Fade. The swamp lands were gone, replaced with lush grass and reeds, and all the trees were straight and sturdy with vibrant green leaves. Elfroot and other herbs took the place of felandris weeds, and the roads were all repaired, and lined with silly copper lampposts shaped like fish. It was terribly deceptive.

Anders took a spot next to Amell, and plucked at the sleeve of his robe. "What happened to not getting stabbed?"

"Nothing here can stab me," Amell grinned, "Or you, for that matter. You know this is all just a matter of willpower."

"Sure, but I figure it helps a lot with my will if I'm not running around in my smalls when I know I'm going to be fighting demons." Anders said.

"I'm not in my smalls," Amell said.

"You may as well be, with how much armor you're usually wearing." Anders said.

"If I can't be a mage in here, where else can I be one?" Amell asked. "Why don't you wear those Tevinter robes you like so much? You know that leather isn't actually protecting you; it's just a manifestation of your will."

"You know, I knew you would say something like that." Anders said, pointing to a swath of green shadows lifting off the ground in the distance, "Is that our Tear?"

"That's it," Amell agreed.

They came to a small clearing, where three desire demons were clustered around what looked like a sacrificial table. They were tethered to it, their life-force being drained in slow drops, and painfully easy to kill. There was so little left of them to put up a fight Anders almost felt sorry for them. They found three such instances of Veil Tears, and sealed all of them before they set out to the village.

At some point, Anders decided he wanted to wear his Tevinter robes after all. Amell nudged him when he made the change. "You look handsome," Amell whispered.

"Like a regular magister, right?" Anders joked.

"Like sin incarnate." Amell said.

"That's good, right?" Anders asked.

"It's good," Amell said.

The gates to the city weren't the same rusted ruin they were in the real world. In the Fade, they were a polished silver, and the walls around the city were garnished with vines and rose bushes. Homey, really. There was a spirit or person standing before the gates, dressed as a city guard, and he started at their approach.

"Halt! Who enters the Blackmarsh?" The guard demanded.

"This isn't the Blackmarsh," Amell said.

"This... no. It's not. I don't know where this is," The guard admitted. "We've been here so long at her mercy, and never see any travelers. A spirit came here, before you, seeking to free us. Are you here to help him?"

"Her. You mean your baroness?" Amell asked.

"Yes... She is evil incarnate," The guard said with a shiver, "The countless evils I've seen her perpetrate... I'm too ashamed to recount them aloud. The spirit has been gathering the townsfolk in the village square. I don't know what you're doing here, travelers, but this is no place for anyone to be. Enter, if you like, but you should know no one has ever left."

"Thank you," Amell said. He walked readily through the gates, Oghren following so close behind him the dwarf smacked into him every time Amell stopped.

"So that wasn't ominous or anything," Anders said, "I guess we want to find this Baroness person? I think it's pretty obvious this is her demesne, whatever she is."

"I agree," Amell said.

"As do I," Velanna said.

The village was beautiful, compared to the rotten skeleton left behind in the real world. The houses were whitewashed walls with red brick corners, and pretty painted red shingles decorated every roof. Tiny plots of land were devoted to flowers and vegetable patches beside every house. It was also filled with spirits, or people, most of them trapped in the vicious loop of their own memories, but a few of them were aware and watched them with curious eyes as they walked past. Still, no one approached them until they passed the village square on their way to the manor in the center of the town.

A score of townsfolk had gathered there, some of them raving about their respective fates, but most of them were silent and listening to the spirit who stood on a small soapbox before them. Anders had it pegged for a spirit of Valor, or maybe Fortitude, considering it had taken the shape of a soldier. "Be wary, all spirits are dangerous, and this one has many under its thrall." Velanna said.

"Ignore it." Amell said, "It's an interloper; it doesn't control this demesne."

"You there!" The spirit called out in its echoing voice, spotting them. It flickered, and reappeared in front of them. Amell summoned a staff. "Hold. If you are not minions of the Baroness, I mean you no harm. Your faces are not familiar to me, and I have long watched this place and seethed at the wrongs visited on these poor folk. I am Justice, and I seek to aid these people, but they are no warriors. I see differently in you."

"What do you want?" Amell asked.

"Justice," The spirit said, as though it were obvious, "It is all that I am. The baroness has long tormented these helpless souls. They are dead, but their spirits remain trapped here by her vanity and pride. I am seeking help for a reckoning too long in coming. Will you aid us in this righteous task?"

"We have our own concerns," Amell said.

"Whatever your situation, you must see it underscores the need for these people to be avenged," The spirit pleaded, "Can I not persuade you to help us?"

"Vengeance avenges, not Justice," Amell said, "The time for these people is long past. Go back to your own demesne, spirit. You have no place here."

The spirit clenched a fist, and Anders drew on his well of mana. "My place is here, where there are wrongs to be righted. I am troubled by your refusal, mortal, but I understand it." The spirit flickered, and returned to proselytizing on its soapbox.

"Should we not have helped him?" Nathaniel asked. "I would think such a spirit would know the Fade. He might have been able to send us home."

"We have no quarrel with this baroness." Velanna said, "Why start one?"

"Said the Queen of Quarreling," Anders said.

"Spirits don't cross the Veil, Nathaniel." Amell said, "Blood mages and demons do. If we want to escape from this place, that's what we need to deal with, whether we like it or not. This baroness sounds like a blood mage, or a pride demon. Either would be able to help us."

"What he said," Anders said. "Besides, that guy seemed like a prick."

They continued through the town to the mansion at its heart. It was a beautiful work of Orlesian architecture, with white washed walls and stained glass windows, surrounded by high walls lined in rose bushes, with a wrought iron gate decorated in more roses.

"So..." Anders said.

Amell knocked.

"Aren't you polite," Anders said.

"The mistress says away!" A voice called from the other side of the gate. "Away with you, you hooligans! How dare you try to assault perfection!"

"I want to speak with your mistress," Amell called back.

"Have you come to hurl insults at the mistress, as that spirit has been doing? Because I won't allow it!" The man yelled back.

"No," Amell said, "I want to negotiate with her."

"Hmm, the Mistress isn't really one for negotiating. She likes things to be just as she likes them." The man mumbled.

"She sounds like my mother," Nathaniel said quietly.

Anders laughed.

"I'd at least like to speak with her," Amell said.

"She might deign to speak with you, I suppose. You seem marginally less reprehensible than the rabble out there," There was a pause, and the gate was unbarred and eased open. A guardsman with a chin three times too big for his body peered at them from the other side. "I'll leave it up to the Baroness to decide what's to be done with you, then. She'll know. She always knows. Come in, I'll take you to her."

They stepped into the courtyard, and the guardsman shut the gate behind them. The guardsman led them across the courtyard, and up the marble steps to the mansion. "Are you sure we'll be able to trust this Baroness?" Nathaniel asked.

"I'm a little worried, too. She seems kind of... you know, evil," Sigrun agreed.

"Well that's just mean," Anders said, "Nate just said she sounded like his mother,"

"I stand by it," Nathaniel said.

Anders snorted.

"Trust me," Amell said.

The guardsman led them through the mansion. The inside was markedly Orlesian. There was gold filigree on everything, marble pillars, golden statues of winged lions and other mythical beasts. Red tapestries lined the walls, interspaced with sconces lit with veilfire, and red carpets were laid out in every hall. The guardsman led them to a parlor room, where a gorgeous woman was reclining on a divan. She had black hair done up in a net of rubies, striking emerald eyes set in a sharp face, and she was wearing red Tevinter style robes Anders accidentally matched.

She also must have noticed, because she looked straight at him and smirked, "Now this is unexpected... I could have sworn I said that I was accepting no visitors, especially from out there."

"Many apologies, mistress!" The guardsman squealed, "These strangers have come to speak with you. I thought-"

The woman silenced him off with a single wave of her hand. "Hmm... You are all from the lands beyond the Veil, I see. How interesting. I will grant this audience,"

"Very good, mistress," The guard bowed, "I will return to my post,"

"May I?" Amell asked, with a wave to the chair closest to her.

"Of course," The baroness agreed. Amell sat, so Anders took a seat along with him. Everyone else kept standing. "So, what brings such powerful mages into my parlor, hmm? You seek my aid, perhaps?"

"We do," Amell said, "We need to return to the real world."

"You are trapped here, then?" The baroness asked, sitting up and leaning over to trace her lacquered nails down Amell's arm. "Yes, I can see the magic on you. How interesting... You realize, of course, if I am to help you, I will need someone from your world with an actual life force to plunder. It is no simple matter to tear the Veil, after all, especially when the magic that keeps you here makes it strong..." She looked up from Amell and surveyed the rest of them disinterestedly, "Did you have a sacrifice in mind?"

"I did," Amell said, "A darkspawn is trapped here with us. I'll find it and bring it to you for your spell."

"Excellent." The baroness smiled toothily. "But first, there is a loathsome spirit of justice that has wandered into my domain. Rid me of it, and any of the fools of that stand with it, and then I shall return you from whence you came."

"I'd also like to learn from you," Amell said, "Whatever you can teach me of blood magic; this ritual to wake from the Fade at will, for example,"

"Oh? Truly? How delicious. It has been so long since I encountered a kindred spirit. Very well, mortal. Succeed in dispersing this rabble for me, and I'm sure there will be blood enough to permit your wildest fantasies. That, and your freedom," The baroness held out her hand with her signet ring, like any ruler might. Her nails were painted an emerald to match her eyes, "Are we agreed?"

"Agreed," Amell promised, taking her hand and kissing her signet ring.

"Now go and serve well," The baroness said, "I think I will watch from my balcony. This is sure to be a delight,"

Amell stood up. Anders stood up with him, and they left the parlor.

"So... this feels kind of bad," Sigrun said.

"These people are already dead, Sigrun." Amell said. "Killing them would be freedom at best, or cause them to forget themselves at worst."

"What about the spirit?" Sigrun asked. "The Justice guy?"

"It's a spirit," Amell said, "If its pursuit of Justice is genuine, it will reform in its own demesne. If it's weak, it will disperse. Either way, we can't escape this place without help, and it can't provide that."

"And it's a prick," Anders said.

"That too." Amell said.

"He's just trying to help," Sigrun said.

"All spirits are dangerous, Sigrun." Velanna said. "That creature outside knows nothing of any other emotion. Not Compassion, nor Love, nor Mercy. Anything to excess is dangerous. Humans make a distinction between spirits and demons when there is none. They are all deadly, and not to be trusted."

"If you say so," Sigrun said. "So was that lady in there a demon or a blood mage?"

"I don't know," Amell said.

"Who gives a shit?" Oghren muttered, "Let's go kill these fucks and get the fuck out of here."

They'd made it out into the main hall when they heard the banging. Anders had heard it before, in Vigil's Keep, when the darkspawn had laid siege to the gates with a battering ram. "I guess somebody didn't want to wait." Anders said.

"I guess not," Amell agreed.

They jogged the rest of the way to the courtyard in time to see the spirit blast the gates apart with a burst of raw magic. The metal gates were bent by the force of the blast, and struck the poor ugly doorman when they were blown from their hinges. He was crushed, and evaporated in a puff of smoke. Justice stormed through the wreckage, an army of villagers and darkspawn behind him. Anders could barely process it. All the darkspawn they'd killed in the real world interspersed with the ghosts of the dead, and led by a spirit of Justice and an awakened darkspawn. That was not an alliance he saw coming.

"This is some surreal shit," Oghren said.

"Maker, spirits are stupid," Anders sighed. "No one tell Compassion I said that."

"This mansion will not protect you, fiend!" Justice bellowed, "Come out and face your crimes!"

Almost obediently, the balcony doors opened directly above them, and the baroness came out to lean lazily over the banister and watch them all.

"And there she is!" Justice yelled, "Now you answer for your crimes, witch!"

"Do I, now?" The baroness giggled, "Perhaps you haven't met my new protectors? Do say hello."

"You are not the only one who has sought allies from the mortal world, sorceress!" Justice yelled. "These creatures have agreed to stand against you and end your reign of terror! And you, fiends, it is a sad day when evil finds such ready accomplices!"

Amell started laughing. He grabbed Anders' shoulder to hold himself upright, cackling wildly. Unable to speak, he gestured between the spirit and the darkspawn.

"No, no, believe me, I'm with you," Anders laughed, "This is fucking hilarious. The irony is killing me,"

"Okay, you were right, your laugh is creepy," Sigrun said.

"Enough!" The First yelled, "The Grey Wardens are doing too much speaking! The battle must be done now!"

The darkspawn charged with a roar, and Amell's laughter cut off in an abrupt wheeze. He cast a quick spell, and the First was encased in a force field. It put a bit of a damper on the charge, Anders thought bemusedly. The darkspawn ghosts who had been about to follow the First stopped, and stared at their leader in confusion. The villagers looked at each other uneasily.

"This one is your sacrifice," Amell called up to the baroness.

"Indeed." The baroness called back. "Deal with the rest,"

"Take heart, good people!" Justice yelled. "We can defeat these monsters!"

"I want the fuck out of here!" Oghren roared suddenly, and charged down the steps with his battle axe raised high. He ran straight for Justice, who flickered, and vanished before the axe connected.

The darkspawn came to a decision even without their leader, and charged Oghren. One fell over with an arrow through its forehead, and vanished in a puff of smoke. Another was devoured by a mess of roots. Sigrun ran down the steps after Oghren. The villagers charged with the darkspawn, but they were ghosts. Stupid, stupid ghosts. Anders summoned ice, and froze a half dozen of them. Oghren tore through them like tissue paper, and they evaporated. It was admittedly disturbing to watch, but they weren't real. Both they and the darkspawn had died once already, and died easily again.

They had the high ground, they had an angry berserker, and they had blood magic. The fight was over almost before it started. Everything died with puffs of smoke, and there was no sign of battle aside from the ruined gates, and the lone darkspawn caught in a force field in the center of the courtyard. The so called 'First' really was ugly once Anders got a good look at it. The thing had a face like a skull; its eye-sockets were a mess of blood and muscle that stretched up its forehead and down into its cheek, and it had no nose. How any spirit could be dumb enough to side with it was beyond him.

"I will be right down, my little heroes," The baroness sang from the balcony, and went back inside.

"What happened to Justice?" Sigrun asked. "Where did he go?"

"It ran, I think." Amell said.

"After luring all these fools to their deaths." Velanna said.

"I thought you said they were just ghosts?" Sigrun asked.

"After luring these fools to having their essence dispersed throughout the Beyond," Velanna corrected herself.

"I still took no joy in that," Nathaniel said. "These people suffered in life, at the hands of this woman. I wish there was something we could have done for them in death."

"Killing her might have freed us, but it also might have left us trapped here forever," Amell said. "It wasn't worth the risk."

"Indeed," Velanna said, "We did not know these people. Why mourn them?"

"Someone should." Nathaniel said quietly. "Draw your last breath, my friends, cross the Veil and the Fade and all the stars in the sky. Rest at the Maker's right hand, and be Forgiven."

"Spare me," Velanna muttered. "Are you going to say that ridiculous prayer every time we stumble upon those already dead?"

"I know other prayers," Nathaniel said.

"Ugh." Velanna groaned.

The doors to the mansion opened, and the Baroness came out to join them in the courtyard. "Ugh. Look what they have done to my beautiful estate. How bothersome," She waved her hand, and the gates lifted from the ground and reformed as if Justice had never smashed them in in the first place. "It seems you were as good as your word, mortal. Now then, I did agree to a reward, did I not? This ritual, I think, is too much for a mortal, but perhaps there is something else I know that might interest you,"

Magic stirred between the baroness' fingers, and the dirt and dust around them swirled and took shape, forming into creatures of shadow. Their bodies were like massive jaws, lined in teeth and pulsating fire within. They had arms of twisted claw and sinew, and their heads were simple skulls made from shadow. They were obviously powerful shades, or a variant thereof. Anders didn't know if dust and dirt counted as a demon holding a physical form. "What do you think of these?" The baroness asked.

"I think they look extraordinarily useful." Amell said.

"Oh, you are delightful," The baroness giggled, "I trust you do not mind if I borrow your mind for a moment?"

"How else would you teach me?" Amell asked.

"How else indeed?" The baroness agreed. She set a finger with one long green nail under Amell's chin, and lifted him off his feet. Shadow engulfed him. It still made Anders sick with stress to watch. Knot after knot formed in his stomach, in his shoulders, until he felt like he might throw up, but a painfully long minute later, and the shadows receded. The baroness set Amell down. "So many memories, so few are yours. How many times have you done this, I wonder?"

"Many," Amell said, holding himself up on his staff.

"I am feeling generous," The baroness decided, looking Anders over, "Am I teaching any others today?"

"I'm good," Anders squeaked, a little embarrassed his voice decided to pitch so high.

"I am also content without receiving any knowledge in such a fashion," Velanna said.

"Thank you for helping us." Amell said.

"And thank you, for the lovely visit," The Baroness said.

Amell dispelled the force field he kept around the First. The darkspawn bolted. It slammed up against the newly re-formed gates, and banged futilely against them. "No! No! The First is no sacrifice for blood! I was not to even be in this place! The Mother, it is her deceit! Her doing!"

"It seems you have someone else to thank for your freedom, then, mortals," The Baroness giggled, magic swirling at her finger tips. The First seized, and was dragged back to the center of the courtyard. It was lifted up into the air, red and black energies swirling about its chest while it screamed in protest. "Farewell."

The magic condensed, then exploded. All of them were wrenched forward. Anders lost his footing, and heard the soft sound of fabric ripping. He hit the ground, and fell through it. The world fell away, turned upside down and inside out, and all was black and pain.

He woke up in the dirt, to a black sky with countless stars, no Black City, and two moons.

Notes:

Fanart
Amell in robes

Chapter 26: Pride Goes Before Destruction

Notes:

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, and most of all, thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 17 Parvulis Night
The Blackmarsh

The sky was beautiful at night. The winkings of a thousand stars and the dull glow of the moons was far preferable to the far off lurkings of the Black City and its absent Maker. The smell of rotten wood, mud, and death greeted Anders on his first inhale and couldn't have been more welcome. Thank the Maker that was over so easily.

Anders did not relish the idea of being trapped in the Fade forever. Especially when it wasn't the demesne of his spirit. Maybe if it was Compassion, Anders could stand it, but trapped forever with a self righteous spirit of justice and a terrifying, if ridiculously attractive, demon of pride? The Void sounded better.

"By my ancestors' hairy tits, thank the Stone, it's over." Oghren said from somewhere nearby. Anders rolled onto his side and found the dwarf on his hands and knees, kissing the ground or his beard when it got in the way. "Sweet, sweet reality. I could fuck this marsh right now. I've been in worse swamps, old gal, we can make it work."

Anders laughed, and sat up, summoning a small wisp for light. They were still on the hill, the charred corpses of darkspawn all around them. Everyone woke up, with varying degrees of groans. Anders crawled over to where Amell was sitting, a bit of blue magic at his fingers stirring the dust and dirt beside him in a small whirlwind. "So you going to try that spell she gave you?" Anders asked.

"Someday." Amell said, letting the dust fall back to the ground. "The Veil is already thin here, and thinner at night. Summoning wraiths would Tear it, but... Did you feel them, in the Fade? The strength of their auras? To summon something like that without a complicated ritual... I almost want to go back into the Fade and learn more from her. Imagine what else she's capable of."

"Killing all of us with a thought, probably." Anders said. "Don't get me wrong, powerful women are great and all that, but I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have been half as hospitable if that spirit hadn't been bothering her."

"Probably not," Amell sighed. "Still..."

"Uh, guys?" Sigrun said, taking a few cautious steps back from the pile of corpses she'd woken up beside. "Don't freak out, but I think... I think Kristoff is alive."

"That's impossible," Nathaniel said, "Over three months with no rations in this marsh? Even if he were alive, Velanna's fireball would have killed him."

"Well then that's weird cause he's totally moving." Sigrun said, drawing her axes. "Commander, please tell me you're doing this."

"I haven't cast any reanimation spells since I woke up." Amell said, standing.

Kristoff was very much moving, if not necessarily alive. The Warden had pulled himself up onto his knees, and had a hand to his head. He had to be dead. He had the pallor of a corpse, his skin was slack and stretched in all the wrong places, and he was horribly charred from Velanna's fireball. But he was moving. Talking. "What... Where am I?" Kristoff asked.

Kristoff rolled over, and landed on his ass. He stared up at all of them in confusion, his eyes bright pools of blue light. "What is happening?"

"That's not Kristoff," Anders said.

"You have an unprecedented talent for stating the obvious," Velanna said.

"You're a bitch," Anders said.

"... No!" Not-Kristoff screamed, standing unsteadily on legs wracked with rigor mortis. He stumbled away from them, panicked and pawing at his face. "This is the world of mortals, beyond the Veil! And this is a mortal body of flesh and I... I am trapped within."

"Ah, great," Oghren sighed. "Really, Boss?"

"I didn't do this!" Amell said. "The spirits I pull across Veil are bound to my will, not-"

"You!" Not-Kristoff interrupted, blue fire cracking through his withered flesh at his veins, his eyes radiating fury. "You did this! You sided with that foul sorceress, and now she has sundered the Veil! I have been sucked into this world against my will!"

"Justice?" Sigrun asked, "That's Justice trapped in Kristoff's body? That's... so sad. Can we help him? Maybe send him back? He looks so scared."

"Sure, I'll send him back," Oghren said, bouncing his battle axe on his shoulder.

"That might kill this spirit," Velanna said. "Not return it to the Beyond."

Justice surveyed them all, and the fire slowly died from his eyes. He held up a hand in truce and said, "Please, I have no wish to die."

"Hey, little guy, it's okay," Sigrun said gently, taking a few cautious steps forward, "We're not going to kill you, right guys? How do we send you back?"

"I... I do not know." Justice said, staring at his hands with a look of such profound sorrow Anders felt sorry for him. "I am confused. I feel trapped. I think... Wait. I sense the aura of something most foul nearby."

"Oh, uh... Sorry." Oghren said.

"The baroness must have returned to this realm as well!" Justice exclaimed. The spirit suddenly seemed to forget its fear, and glowed with righteous fury again. "Can you not feel it? Both she and the Tear are nearby. I can feel demons pouring into this world, likely at her beckon. She must be slain! This Tear must be closed! Mortal, tell me you at last see the injustice here, and you will aid me,"

"Not with the baroness," Amell said. "We spoke civilly once; I'm sure we can do it again."

"Because you were her ally when it was convenient?" Justice sneered. "Do not be a fool! The baroness is not mortal as you are, she is a creature of pride."

"That changes very little." Amell said. "Do you know how to close a Tear in the Veil from this side?"

"I am not sure..." Justice admitted. "But I must try. I might be able to drive back the Fade's magic."

"Where is the baroness and where is the Tear?" Amell asked.

"I sense both at her mansion," Justice said. "So you will aid me?"

"With the Tear." Amell said. "I want to try talking to her again."

"I doubt such a thing will be possible, but I accept this compromise for now." Justice said. "We should move quickly, mortal, before this Tear gets any worse."

"I agree," Amell said.

They set out.

Justice had the most comedic walk Anders had ever seen. The spirit marched stiffly forward, armor rattling queerly. Its joints barely bent, and it twitched erratically every so often. It looked like a very crude reanimation spell, reacting badly to the spirit inside. Considering Justice had already made it clear it had no wish to be in Kristoff's body, it made sense.

"So, corpse dude, no hard feelings, right?" Oghren asked. "Trying to kill you back in the Fade was nothing personal, there just wasn't any other way out of that shithole."

"It's true," Sigrun said, "Darkspawn trapped us in there, but the baroness sent us back home. Maybe she can send you back home, now that you're trapped."

"I am conflicted." Justice said stiffly. "The baroness is a vile creature, but if you sought to rectify an injustice against yourselves through your alliance with her, at least I understand your motives."

"That's fair I guess," Sigrun said. "But hey, don't worry, okay? I get that you're mad at us, but the Commander is a really strong mage, and he does a lot of stuff with spirits and demons. If the baroness lady won't help, I bet he can figure out a way to send you home."

"I would like that." Justice said quietly.

Anders walked to the front of their group and gave Amell a nudge. "So, hey, you sure about this? Talking to her, I mean?"

"It couldn't hurt to try," Amell said. "She seemed reasonable in the Fade."

"Alright, well..." Anders trailed off, not sure where he was going with this.

"I'll be careful, Anders," Amell promised, squeezing his hand. Anders wished Amell wasn't wearing his helmet. It made his voice metallic, ruined his hair, and meant he couldn't give Anders any reassuring smiles. "If she's unreasonable, we'll kill her."

"Well I'm glad the option's on the table." Anders said.

"It is. In fact... You're right. Hang on." Amell held up a hand to call for a halt.

"I love it when you say that." Anders said.

"Spirit, you're sure the baroness is a pride demon, and not just a blood mage?" Amell asked.

"I am certain." Justice said.

"Anders, how many grounding elixirs do you have?" Amell asked.

"Uh..." Anders opened his satchel. Maker what a mess. Bandages, poultices, way too many lyrium potions, felandris he'd picked on the walk through the marsh, a handful of balms and salves, and dust. So much dust. The lid to his incense must have been knocked off. Anders dug through it all until he found grounding elixirs. "Four. No, wait. Five."

"Give one to Sigrun, Nathaniel, and Oghren," Amell said. "The rest of us should be fine with spell shields. If it turns into a fight, drink them. Pride demons rely mostly on lightning."

"This is gonna taste like shit, ain't it?" Oghren asked, accepting the flask and promptly stuffing it down his pants for safe keeping.

"I made that myself you know," Anders said.

"In other words, yes." Oghren said.

"That hurt," Anders said. "I'm hurt now."

"Well I ain't kissing it better." Oghren snorted. "Go bug the Boss."

"I think you're just jealous I stole him from you." Anders said.

"I cry myself to sleep about it every night." Oghren agreed.

Anders could feel the Tear when they got to the village. The Veil was painfully thin, and Anders could hear the whispers of wisps and demons beyond the Veil. Magic crackled almost unbidden at his finger tips, and Anders felt like he could have reached through the Veil and held Compassion's hand if he wanted.

At the mansion, the baroness stood in the courtyard, surveying the crumbling ruin that had been her mansion once. She looked for all intents and purposes still a woman, and not a pride demon.

"The Veil Tear lies within her mansion." Justice said.

"Are you sure she's a demon?" Sigrun asked. "She looks pretty human to me."

"She is not." Justice said.

"Let me talk to her." Amell said.

They approached the mansion, and the baroness turned and smiled winningly, "There you are, pet. Come here,"

Amell walked over to stand beside her. Anders couldn't decide whether or not they were supposed to follow. No one else seemed to be able to make a decision either, and lingered uncertainly a few yards away.

"Look at what has become of my beautiful estate," The baroness complained. "And here I am, powerless to fix it. How very dull your world is, so immutable and unchanging. I confess, I had no idea my spell would send me into the mortal world with you. I was already working on my own way to cross, sacrificing demon after demon to weaken the Veil. It was so tiresome."

"I don't like this," Oghren whispered. "Boss's normally the one doing all the talking with these things."

"Had I known I could cross so easily..." The baroness trailed off. Amell continued to say nothing, standing idly next to her. Anders didn't like it either. "Ah, but I am here now, yes? You will want another reward, I think. As the first of my subjects, you deserve one,"

"You have no subjects, demon!" Justice yelled, drawing Kristoff's sword. It didn't come easily from it's scabbard, after months of neglect in a swamp. The sound of rusted metal pulling free was grating. "Release that mortal at once!"

Justice charged across the courtyard, and made it half way before he was lifted off his feet and caught in a crushing prison. Amell didn't so much as glance at him. Realization made Anders felt sick, and then it made him angry.

"You spirits, always so judgemental," The baroness sighed. "Where was I?"

"Let go of him, you bitch!" Anders screamed, conjuring ice and throwing it in a lance. It struck the baroness' shoulder, and scattered the black feathers on her spaulders. The ice caught, and spread down to her elbow.

Then it melted, and she glared at him. "How dare you. This was my favorite robe. It is mine. He is mine. You will all be mine!"

Anders was in the middle of conjuring another spell, but couldn't finish it before the baroness cast her own. It wasn't lightning at all, and the spell shield Anders brought up did nothing against it. His blood lit on fire, with all the agony of templar's smite, and he collapsed.

All around him, Anders heard his friends screaming as they suffered similar fates. Damn Justice. Damn Amell. Damn everything. This was blood magic, and if resisting it was a matter of will power, then Anders was a dead man. He couldn't move, and he could barely think past the pain in his veins.

A few yards away, the baroness forgot about them to talk to Amell. "Stop resisting, little mortal. You let me in once, what is one more time?"

Justice. Justice was a spirit. Justice could do something. Or Compassion could. Anders tried to summon her, but he couldn't focus past the pain.

"What was that, pet?" The baroness asked, but Anders hadn't heard Amell say anything. She could have been reading his thoughts, Anders guessed. "You want your book? This book?"

The baroness reached out to touch the grimoire hooked to Amell's belt. As soon as her fingers connected, she recoiled and clamped her hands over her ears. Anders could have warned her, if he didn't want her very, very dead. The shock of the grimoire's scream must have made the baroness lose her hold on all of them. The pain stopped immediately.

Amell fell to his knees. Oghren ran past Anders, screaming fury. A shower of dirt and bark exploded beside Amell, and Velanna burst out of the ground next to him. The baroness' hands glowed green, but no spell cast. Amell had his grimoire open, and was reading the Litany.

"How dare you!" The baroness screamed. A root burst out of the ground, and wrapped around her left leg, and then her right. She struggled for the two seconds it took Oghren to reach her and bury his axe in her chest. Her chest cavity split open, blood sprayed messily, and she fell backwards.

Anders dispelled the prison crushing Justice. The spirit hit the ground, and landed on his feet.

"Ow." Sigrun whined.

"Everyone still alive?" Anders asked.

"Take care, mortals!" Justice yelled. "The baroness yet lives!"

"My hairy ass she does." Oghren spat, wrenching his battle axe out of the baroness' chest.

"Oghren get back." Amell said, stumbling to his feet. "Get back now!"

Oghren bolted. Velanna grabbed Amell, and roots swallowed both of them. They reappeared a foot away from Anders. A pulse of green energy radiated out from the baroness' corpse, and shook the ground. "Elixirs," Amell ordered. Their three non-mages drank. "No blood magic. We'll make the Tear worse. Justice, can you get to it and close it?"

"I must slay this demon." Justice said.

The baroness' corpse pulsed again.

"If that Tear isn't closed she'll summon more demons through and overwhelm us, and then no one will slay her," Amell said. "Go. Close it. Quickly. Velanna, Sigrun, go with him to help with any demons crossing. Hurry back."

"Here, Sigrun, spirit," Velanna grabbed both their hands, and roots swallowed all of them. They reappeared just outside the steps to the mansion, and ran inside.

"Oghren, take her focus," Amell said. "I have to read the Litany. Anders, keep him up. Nathaniel, wear her down."

The corpse pulsed a third time, and exploded. The force of the blast sent them all staggering, even yards away. Shadows danced with dark emerald light, swirling to form a giant pillar that resembled a Veil Tear in its own right. It pulsed once more, and a vicious crack ripped through the ground, tearing a chasm all the way to the courtyard wall, where it split the stone and kept on past Anders' line of sight.

A pride demon burst out of it. It was massive, near the size of a small house. It stretched, and ran a massive hand over its head in a perverted mockery of the feminine form it had held until recently. "Much better." The pride demon purred, it's voice deep and echoing and not Orlesian at all. "It was so cramped in that form. Now, where is the dwarf I have to thank for this new one?"

"Right here, fugly!" Oghren bellowed and charged. The pride demon's hands glowed green, but no spell cast. Oghren swung his axe and cut a vicious gash through the demon's leg. The pride demon didn't even seem to feel it. Green blood oozed down its ankle, and it turned to look at Amell.

"Stop. Casting. That. Spell!" The pride demon roared, charging straight past Oghren for Amell. Three arrows peppered across its face, but they might have been gnats for how much the demon cared. Amell brought up his shield, but Anders doubted he could read and fend off a pride demon's assault at the same time.

Anders cast a barrier over Amell, and reinforced it with a spell shield. The pride demon took a vicious swipe at Amell, a chain of lightning six feet long forming in its hand and connecting with Amell's shield. It should have knocked him over, if not ripped him in half. Instead he was briefly staggered, and retreated several paces, still reading.

"Oghren!" Amell yelled in between incantations.

"I'm fucking trying!" Oghren yelled back, hacking madly at the demon's legs. The pride demon kicked him, and Oghren went toppling end over end through the courtyard. An arrow hit the pride demon in the eye, and it finally reeled, and focused on someone other than Amell.

Nate wasn't a better option. If anything Nate was a worse option. The archer took two uncertain steps backwards when the demon looked his way. Anders channeled aptitude through Compassion, and focused it at Nate. "Nate, run!" Anders yelled.

Nate ran. Anders summoned ice and cast it at the demon's feet when it charged him. The spell missed one foot, but hit the other, tethering the demon to the ground. The pride demon roared, ripped free, and looked at him. Anders channeled Compassion, and took the brunt of the pride demon's lightning whip with his spell shield, dispersing the magic into the air around him.

Amell yelled something. Anders looked over and found him with his dagger out. "Stop! You'll Tear the Veil! I can hold it!" Anders yelled and hoped the stubborn bastard listened. The pride demon drew back, and lashed at him again, and the magic dispersed again.

Anders didn't have it in him to focus on anything other than sustaining the magic holding up his barriers. An age seemed to pass, and Amell must have listened, because Anders blocked lash after lash. He drank a lyrium potion, in between blows, and hoped someone was trying to kill the damn thing.

Eventually the pride demon turned away from him. Anders stumbled back, and had to drink another potion before he could take stock of the battle. Somehow, it looked to have gotten worse while also getting better. The pride demon switched its focus to Justice, who must have closed the Tear, but not before two rage demons and three shades had climbed through.

Sigrun and Velanna were doing their best to handle them. Anders threw out another frost spell for one of the rage demons. The creature turned to hard rock, and Velanna smashed it in half with her nature magic. By then Sigrun had killed two of the shades, their drain completely negated by Amell's grimoire.

They killed the last of the demons together, and turned back to the pride demon. The beast was a mess. Nathaniel had emptied his quiver into it, and was relying on his daggers. Oghren had torn the beasts legs to shreds, and as far as Anders could tell it was completely immobilized. The pride demon was oozing green blood, and every so often it's hands would glow green with a failed spell.

After one such attempt, Justice stabbed his sword into the pride demon's chest, and an explosion of white light blinded Anders. His vision came back in spots, and the Pride demon was gone. Green motes of dust drifted through the air where it once stood.

"Does anyone need healing?" Anders called out.

"Yep." Oghren said.

"Me too." Sigrun said.

"As do I." Velanna said.

Anders made his way over to the ancient marble steps and took a seat. The injured joined him, while Amell went to talk with Justice. He was cradling his arm, despite not having said anything about needing healing. Anders frowned.

He had other concerns. Oghren had taken a serious beating and come out of the fight with eight broken bones, a contusion, and a mild concussion. The rage demons had left Sigrun and Velanna with second and third degree burns. Nathaniel came to sit with Velanna, exhausted but uninjured. Anders healed Oghren first, and was working on healing Sigrun when Amell and Justice came over.

"Mortals, I would like to take a moment to thank you," Justice said. "You helped me fulfill my vow, and with her death, the victims of that woman's madness should be able to rest in peace, wherever they have gone to now."

"Aw, you're welcome," Sigrun said. "I'm glad we got to help those ghost people after all. So what now? How do we send you home?"

"I do not know that I can go home." Justice admitted, looking down at himself. "I do not know how to return to the Fade, nor does your Commander know of a way to send me back. It appears I am trapped here in the body of this... Grey Warden.

There are memories within this poor man's mind. I understand now that he was murdered most ignobly by the darkspawn, the one called the First. The same creature I so foolishly allied with, and who was your pursuit when you were tricked into the Fade.

My actions have not been above reproach, and for that I am sorry. I know nothing of this world, nor what I will do here, but..."

"Why don't you come with us?" Sigrun asked. "You could fight darkspawn, like we do. Like Kristoff did. They're evil. You hate evil. It could be great."

"You mean continue this mortal's mission as a Grey Warden?" Justice asked. "I understand this 'Mother' who commanded the First yet lives... And avenging this man's death might be a worthwhile purpose, but... Your leader seems unconcerned with virtue. Whether or not I am too quick to judge, I know my presence is unwanted."

"What do you mean 'unwanted'?" Sigrun asked. "Can't we keep him, Commander? We can't just leave him here. How is he going to survive on his own? You heard him, he doesn't know anything about our world. And don't we kind of owe him for trying to kill him in the Fade?"

"Sigrun... I'm a necromancer," Amell said. "A well known one, and reanimation this advanced is something that can only be done with blood magic. I can't even imagine the kind of scrutiny that would fall on me for having a possessed corpse as an ally. And even if we could convince everyone I had no part in this, the Chantry would still brand this spirit a demon and call for its death because it possesses a corpse, willing or not."

"What if we just said he was Kristoff?" Sigrun asked. "He could keep his helmet on, and I bet we could do something for the smell. I mean, we keep Oghren around, and even let him sleep in the barracks, so next to that 'Kristoff' would be easy."

Oghren belched.

"I do not like deception." Justice said stiffly. "My name is not Kristoff. I have no name, only a virtue to which I aspire."

"Okay, sure, but I mean... Work with me, here," Sigrun said. Anders finished healing her, and moved onto Velanna. Sigrun took advantage of her newly healed state to give her argument standing. "It wouldn't be that hard. You never know. Your Chantry might not even care about him, and we can't just leave him. I'll take care of him."

"He's not a puppy, you know." Anders said.

"You get Ser Pounce-a-Lot," Sigrun said. "Why can't I have Ser Justice-Pants? Besides. He can close Veil Tears, and he ripped that Pride demon apart! Imagine what he could to darkspawn."

"I'm not denying it's useful, Sigrun." Amell said.

"Then come on! Let's keep him." Sigrun said. "I like him. He seems really nice."

"Thank you, mortal." Justice said.

"The 'mortal' thing needs work though." Sigrun said. "I'm Sigrun. This is Anders, Velanna, Nathaniel, Oghren, and Amell."

"I am pleased to make your acquaintances under better circumstances than our first meeting." Justice said.

"Oh he's so nice please let us keep him." Sigrun said.

"I'll... I'll think about it." Amell relented. "We should probably make camp for tonight before heading back to the Vigil anyway, but not here. The Veil is still thin, and I don't want us waking to another Tear."

"What about back at that stone circle, with the dragon skull?" Sigrun asked.

"I know this place of which you speak," Justice said. "The villagers in the Fade spoke often of the dragon, and how the baroness defeated it."

"That's fine," Amell said. "Whenever you're all ready."

"Not so fast," Anders said, giving Velanna a push when he finished healing her. "You come sit down. You're not fooling anyone with that arm."

Obediently, Amell came and sat. Anders dug through his satchel for another lyrium potion. Sigrun went to talk to Justice, and Velanna went with Nathaniel. Oghren stayed on the steps with them, drinking from his hip flask.

Anders took off Amell's left gauntlet, along with his chest armor. It was his shield arm, and the Pride demon's assault had broken it in multiple places. Anders would have been making a lot more of a fuss if he was Amell. "She really did a number on you, huh?" Anders asked, channeling Compassion.

"I'm fine." Amell said.

"Liar," Anders pinched him. "What was that back there?"

"What was what?" Amell asked.

"Don't play dumb. You're too smart for it," Anders said. "Before the fight, when you were just standing there."

"I was fighting off a mind control spell." Amell said. "It was... very difficult, considering she'd already had access to my mind before. I couldn't do much other than resist the command to kill all of you and mouth 'Help' about as soon as we walked into the courtyard."

"Well shit." Anders said.

"Well shit." Amell agreed.

"Are you okay?" Anders asked.

"I'm fine." Amell said. "Are you?"

"Peachy." Anders said. "So, not to get my hopes up or anything, but I don't suppose you learned anything from all this?"

"Aside from how to summon ash wraiths?" Amell asked.

"I was going for more along the lines of maybe we don't invite every demon we come across into our heads for tea and crumpets." Anders said.

"That doesn't sound like me." Amell said.

"Seriously?" Anders pinched him again. "Did you miss the part where it was a Pride demon that got the better of you? Are we going with coincidence on that?"

"It didn't get the better of me." Amell argued stubbornly. "I was resisting it, and given a few more seconds I'm sure I would have managed to break out of its hold."

"In a few more seconds we would have all died horribly to that spell it put the rest of us under." Anders said.

Amell didn't argue.

"So, I'm going to throw you a ladder so you can get out of this hole you dug yourself into," Anders said. "You're going to say, 'Anders is right. I fucked up,' and we'll be good."

"Good fucking luck, Sparkles." Oghren laughed.

"Anders is right. I fucked up." Amell said obediently.

Oghren jaw dropped so fast Anders heard it pop. "How the fuck."

"See," Anders said smugly. "That wasn't so hard, was it? If you take off that horrible helmet, I'll even give you a kiss."

Amell took his helmet off. His hair was a mess, as usual, but Anders didn't mind. It was almost endearing, really. Anders leaned over and gave him a quick peck. "Arm's all healed." Anders said.

"What the fuck, Boss," Oghren said. "There's no way Sparkles is that good in bed. Since when do you say no to blood magic?"

"Never?" Amell shrugged. "But I should have been reading the Litany when I walked into the courtyard. I had nothing to barter with, and she wasn't in a binding circle. It was a bad position to start from, but she was... so powerful. I wasn't thinking."

"Literally." Anders said. "You sure you're okay? Mind control is pretty awful."

"The spell never fully cast, Anders," Amell said. "Resisting gave me a migraine. That's all."

"Well... Good." Anders said.

"Thank you for healing me." Amell said.

"Thanks for listening to me," Anders' mouth said without any consent from his brain. Amell gave him a confused look. Well... Too late now. Anders braced himself and finished the thought. "Back there when the Pride demon was focusing me. I thought for sure you'd try to enslave it anyway and Tear the Veil."

"You said you could handle it." Amell said, setting a hand on his thigh. "I trust you, Anders."

That wasn't so bad. That could have been weightier. Anders managed a smile, and Amell gave him one back, and leaned forward to kiss him. The soft brush of his lips was slow, and soothing, and Anders enjoyed it for less than a minute before Oghren kicked Amell and knocked him off the steps.

"Pitch a tent." Oghren snorted.

"Oghren you know I still love you," Amell said, picking himself up off the ground. "Have I been neglecting you? Do you want a kiss too?"

"No. No!" Oghren shrieked when Amell moved towards him. "I will punch you in the nuts. Do not kiss me."

"Just one." Amell said. "Just a peck."

"No!" Oghren aimed a wild kick at Amell's legs.

Anders laughed. The exchange eventually landed Oghren with a kiss, and Amell with a black eye which Anders was not allowed to heal because 'the little thunderhumper deserved it.' Anders healed it anyway on the walk back to the stone circle. Sigrun had found another piece of bone she was certain fit in the skull, and ran to test the theory as soon as they reached the circle.

"You guys it fits!" Sigrun called over. "How cool is that?"

A ring of fire flared into life around one of the stone circles. A line of fire sped off towards the pedestal in the center of the stones, where another ring of fire encircled the pedestal. A second line shot off and encircled a second stone, and Anders barely managed to dart to the side as the flames sped past.

"Great. More magic shit." Oghren sighed.

The flames spread, encircling stone after stone until the entire circle was alight. The bowl atop the pedestal lit with veilfire when all six stones were lit, and a burst of magic knocked Anders off his feet. The dragon skull lifted off the ground, and floated to rest just above the pedestal.

"Oh... Oh no," Sigrun said, "What did I do?"

Bones seemed to manifest from all across the marsh, flying through the air to latch onto the skull, and form the skeleton of a dragon. Anders backed up to the edge of the binding circle, and bumped into an invisible barrier keeping them trapped inside the stone circle.

"Mythal protect us," Velanna whispered.

"I'm sorry!" Sigrun said, "I'm so sorry!"

"How do we fight a dragon?" Nathaniel asked.

"Maybe it's just here to chat?" Anders joked.

Lightning struck, and two eyes, bright lyrium blue, took shape in the skull's empty eye-sockets.

"Boss? Boss, what do we do here?" Oghren asked nervously.

"I... " Amell took an uncertain step back from the skull, and bumped into the barrier. Maker save them, for the first time since Anders had met him, he looked afraid. "I don't know."

Chapter 27: And a Haughty Spirit Before a Fall

Notes:

Hello everyone! Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 17 Parvulis Night

The Blackmarsh

"What the fuck do you mean you don't know?" Oghren demanded.

"I don't know!" Amell said. Above the pedestal, the dragon continued to form. Bone after bone built it up into the sky, as if it were mid dive. Lightning pulsed over its bones, and gathered in the dragon's chest cavity, where a heart might have lain in life. The barrier locking them inside the binding circle held strong whenever Anders tested it.

"Well fucking think!" Oghren yelled. "We killed the sodding Archdemon. This fucker should be nothing!"

"We had ballistas, we had an army!" Amell yelled back. "We weren't trapped in a binding circle! The Archdemon's wings were crippled! It had blood! I can't keep a dragon on the ground if it doesn't have blood!"

"I can." Justice said.

"What?" Amell asked.

"This creature is of the Fade," Justice said. "It is the memory of a dragon, created by the joining of a thousand wisps. I can draw their focus, as I drew the focus of the baroness."

"... Alright." Amell said. "Alright... Okay. We have to break this circle. Velanna, Anders, help me destroy the stones."

"Destructive forces of nature coming right up," Anders said, channeling for an earthquake. "Everyone brace yourselves."

Holding the magic it took for an earthquake made Anders feel like he was sinking into the ground. Bone after bone flew to shape the dragon while he channeled, and by the time he released the spell the only things missing were the dragon's wings and tail. The ground beneath them quaked and split, chasms ripping through the lines of flame and cutting through stone. Five out of six pillars crumbled. Velanna lifted a chunk of the broken ground with her magic, and flung it into the last stone.

The stone crumbled, and the flames died. The barrier around the circle fell, but the veilfire in the pedestal remained, as did the slowly forming dragon.

"We have to break it back apart," Amell said. "Nathaniel, Sigrun, I doubt your weapons will be able to affect it. Both of you stay back, unless we need your blood. Give Oghren both the grounding elixirs we have left."

Anders dug through his satchel for the potions, and handed both to Oghren. The dwarf stuffed one down his pants, and kept a tight hold on the other.

"Won't blood magic Tear the Veil?" Nathaniel asked.

"Yes, but if it turns out we don't have a choice, Justice can close the Tear." Amell said. "Stay to the sides, don't go near its tail, or anywhere in range of its breath. Anders, if you're going to support anyone, support Justice. If this dragon gets off the ground, we'll all die."

"No pressure or anything." Anders said.

The dragon's wings finished forming. Only its tail remained, bones flying in from all across the marsh to form a tail five, then ten, then fifteen feet long. It didn't inspire much confidence in their ability to stay out of range, Anders thought. Nathaniel and Sigrun fell back, and Oghren took a spot by the dragon's front leg.

Velanna and Amell stood together just outside the range of the dragon's wings. Anders stood with them. Justice stood directly in front of the skull, staring defiantly into it's lyrium blue eyes. No fear in that one. Then again, Justice was already dead, and not the brightest spirit in the Fade, so it was less inspiring than it could have been.

The dragon finished forming. Its heart pulsed, and electricity crackled outward to give the creature skin. It dropped to the ground with a thud as powerful as the tremors from Anders' earthquake. The dragon swung its head up into the sky, and roared. Anders flinched and covered his ears, but the sound deafened him anyway.

Anders' ears were ringing when the fighting started. True to the spirit's word, the dragon was fixated on Justice. Anders channeled aptitude for him, and the spirit was able to dodge the dragon's snapping jaws. Despite having its focus, Justice did no damage to the dragon with his weapons. Occasionally, a burst of white light would emanate off him, but it seemed to do little more than annoy the dragon.

Oghren managed to break a few toes, and Velanna was making a bit of a dent throwing the broken pieces of stone into the dragon. Anders cast whatever element came to him, but the magic washed ineffectually over the dragon's innate spell shield. Amell didn't look to be making much progress with spirit magic either.

The dragon roared again, spewing lightning from its skeletal jaws. It swung its long neck across the battlefield to spray all of them with its breath. The three of them brought up spell shields, and the magic washed over them, but Anders heard Nate scream behind him. The poor bastard should have stood farther away.

Before Anders could run to check on Nathaniel, a root wrapped around Anders' foot. Another grabbed his hand, and then a multitude swarmed over him and cast him into darkness. Cramped, tight, constricted, horrible darkness. Anders screamed, and lost his center of gravity. He felt upside down. He couldn't breathe. A second later and it was over, and he was standing over an unconscious Nathaniel. Velanna was standing next to him.

Anders grabbed her by her collar and pulled her so close all he could see was her bright green eyes, wide in surprise. "Never do that to me again," Anders said through grit teeth.

He gave her a shove that sent her staggering back, and knelt to heal Nathaniel. Anders felt sick, his every muscle tied into a knot. Movement came stiffly, and it was hard to focus past the rapid beat of his heart.

Later, Anders. Have a panic attack later. Anders summoned Compassion, and healed Nathaniel. The lightning had stopped Nathaniel's heart, and it took a concentrated effort to revive him. Anders kept his spell shield spread over both of them while he worked. It took near a quarter hour to get his heart beating, his burns healed, and get him conscious.

"Thank you," Nathaniel coughed when he could speak, massaging his heart.

"Stay back," Anders said.

Anders ran to rejoin the battle, and his heart sank at what he found. Oghren was lying against one of the stone pillars, not moving. Justice was between the dragon's jaws, and the beast was toying with him like a rabid dog with its food. Velanna must have taken a blow from the dragon's tail, because her stomach was ripped open, and Sigrun had run into the fight to drag her to safety.

"Amell, this isn't working!" Anders called.

"I know it's not!" Amell yelled back. He drew his dagger, threw off his gauntlet, and cut vertically down his arm. "Get Nathaniel and Sigrun!"

The dust and dirt kicked up from Anders' earthquake swirled to form an ash wraith. The creature was burning fire, teeth, and shadow. It turned towards the dragon, and stretched out a hand. Magic drained off the dragon, and was slowly sucked into the shade. It glowed brighter as it gorged. Anders ran to where Sigrun was hiding behind a stone pillar with Velanna.

"I got you, sweetie, it's okay," Sigrun said, tears streaming down her face. Copious amounts of blood made Velanna's stomach slippery, and Sigrun struggled to keep her hands from plunging into the wound while she kept pressure. "It's okay. We're gonna be fine. Oh, ancestors, I'm so sorry."

"I got her!" Anders grabbed Sigrun by her shoulders, and had to drag her to get her away from Velanna. "I got her! Get Nathaniel. Go to Amell. Hurry."

Sigrun nodded and ran. Anders summoned Compassion, and heard the soft rip of fabric. He ignored it, and focused on knitting Velanna's flesh back together. He didn't blame Sigrun her tears. Anders didn't even like the bitchy little elf, but the wound was familiar to him now, and he was tired of seeing it end in death.

"Anders..." Velanna said faintly. No blood spilled from her lips. That was a good sign.

"I got you. Nate's fine." Anders said. "Shut up."

Anders heard Amell's manic laugh in the distance while he healed Velanna and took heart. The wraiths must have been working. Another quarter hour, and he had Velanna back on her feet. He pushed a stamina draught into her hands, and moved on to where Oghren had collapsed.

Thank the Maker, the dwarf wasn't in the middle of a brush with death. He was just stuck. The dragon had kicked Oghren so hard he'd been imbedded the stone. He had a mild contusion, and matching concussion, but it was far less serious than it could have been. "Get me out of here, Sparkles." Oghren snarled, kicking his feet. He looked like a fussy baby put down for an early nap. Despite everything, Anders laughed. "Don't you fucking laugh you little nug humper! Get me the fuck out of here!"

Anders kept laughing. He healed Oghren easily, and shattered the rock with his magic to set him free. Oghren punched him in the stomach, picked up his battle axe, and ran back into the fight. Anders went with him.

Amell had three wraiths bound, and they were sucking the life force from the dragon. Nathaniel and Sigrun stood behind him, their arms with matching cuts that tethered the six of them together. Amell was laughing, as usual. The dragon had dropped Justice at some point, but the shades had rendered it too weak to catch the spirit a second time. Justice dodged the snapping jaws easily without any help from Anders' magic.

The dragon's electric skin seemed to melt away, and Oghren and Velanna had an easier time breaking its bones apart. Velanna's nature magic knocked the bones from their joints, and Oghren's axe chipped and fractured them. Anders summoned the magic for a fist of stone to help, when he heard a laugh not Amell's.

It was low and threatening, and Anders turned around. A rage demon slithered towards him, dripping molten lava. It lurched down a small cliff left by Anders' earthquake, and started the climb back up another. Anders let go of his spell, and channeled ice instead. He loosed it into the demon, and the lava hardened. A fist of stone shattered the demon.

The Tear was between two of the stone pillars. Anders watched it, and dispelled the demons he saw trying to cross while he waited for everyone to finish with the dragon. He didn't have to wait long. A short while later, and Anders heard the thud of the massive beast collapsing.

Cheering followed, but the Tear was still open. Anders dispelled another would be demon, when Justice joined him. The spirit walked up to the Tear and set both hands to it. He glowed white and blue, and if he weren't already a spirit, Anders would have guessed he was channeling one.

The Tear bubbled and rippled, expanding and contracting like a living, breathing thing. Justice stepped into it and exploded with white energy, and the Tear burst apart. Not even motes of dust took up the space it had occupied. The Tear was just gone, as if it had never been.

Anders turned back to the dragon. Its skeleton lay stretched out across the marsh. Its skull had been broken off from its spine and lay upside down in the mud, several yards away. The massive ribcage was as big as some of the homes in the village. The shades were gone; giant piles of dust blew away with the wind.

His friends were celebrating. Nathaniel had pulled Velanna into what looked like a very one sided dance. Oghren was pissing on the dragon's bones. Sigrun was hugging Amell, visibly shaken if not sobbing.

Anders couldn't tell if Amell was paying attention. He'd thrown off his helmet, and still looked caught up in the thrill of blood magic. He ran a hand through his hair, and the vicious cut on his arm painted dark red veins down his forearm. His eyes were wild, and Anders couldn't see past them when Amell looked his way.

"You are a very talented healer," Justice noted.

"Yeah sure, no problem." Anders said, quickly distancing himself from the possessed corpse. Anders jogged over, and Amell hastily disentangled himself from Sigrun. Amell met him at the dragon's ribcage near where Oghren was fixing his codpiece.

"Looks like we made it," Anders grinned, "So that was-"

Amell grabbed him about the waist and swung him in a wild circle, "Exhilarating!" Amell finished for him. Anders could still feel the pull of the Fade on him, the scent of blood, of sweat and battle. Amell hitched him further up on his waist and held him by his thighs.

Maker's breath he was strong. Or was it just his magic? Anders didn't know. Anders didn't care. He knew exactly what he'd been asking for running to him. Amell pinned him against the nearest dragon rib with his body, and the suddenness of it made Anders inhale sharply.

Amell was still in full armor, but the hard bite of dragonscale hurt in the best of all possible ways. Amell kissed him roughly, his teeth everywhere. On Anders' lips, at his jaw, on his ear and his neck. Anders wrapped his arms around Amell's shoulders and buried a frantic hand in his hair. Amell ran a hand up one of Anders' dangling leg to his ass and squeezed through the leather of Anders' trousers.

"The second I get you alone," Amell whispered in his ear, lips moving against his skin. Amell squeezed Anders' ass, and a low pulse of electricity coursed through Anders' veins and radiated pleasure through his whole body. Anders pitched forward and bit Amell's neck to keep from crying out. It didn't quite work, and a muffled moan slipped out of him. "Yeah?" Amell whispered, shocking him again.

Maker save him. Anders grabbed for purchase on Amell's armor, fighting back whimpers. He going to end up coming in his trousers like a troubled teenager if Amell didn't stop, but Anders didn't want him to. Andraste's grace, why wasn't he always like this? Why didn't he use excessive amounts of blood magic more often?

"Okay, settle down, or at least pitch a tent." Oghren said. "Why do you two always get gross around me?"

Amell set him down. A smug smirk, Anders might have been able to handle, but Amell gave him a look of such naked lust Anders grabbed his face in his hands and kissed him again. Anders felt drunk. His head was light, and he could barely think past his own arousal.

Amell's hands were on him again, and Anders couldn't care that one hand still wore a gauntlet. It just made his touch all the more firm and powerful, and Anders suddenly wanted nothing more than to know what Amell would feel like inside him. Why hadn't they done that yet? Anders wanted that same mindless pleasure that made Amell scream whenever Anders had him.

"Oh for fuck's sake, it's the elf all over again," Oghren complained. "I'm having flashbacks. Nightmarish flashbacks. I'm not getting any sleep tonight am I?"

"Woo! Get him!" Sigrun cheered. Tears had made her voice watery, "And then heal me because this cut on my arm really hurts."

Amell finally broke off from him. Anders kept his mouth closed. There were only two words on his tongue, and Anders didn't think 'Fuck me.' was applicable here. Okay maybe three or four words, but they were all just variants of the above, and weren't any better.

Anders cast a quick healing spell for both Amell and Sigrun and turned around. He leaned against the dragon bone with his forehead on his arm to catch his breath and battle down his erection.

"I really am sorry you guys." Sigrun said. "I had no idea that would happen."

"It's fine, Sigrun," Amell said; Amell's hard breathing wasn't helping Anders calm down any. "We're more than our mistakes. You had no way of knowing that could happen."

"I'm still really, really sorry." Sigrun said.

"Anders," Nathaniel's voice said from nearby. Anders lifted his head off his arm and looked for him. Nate was standing a foot away, holding out his sliced arm. "Would you mind healing me?"

Anders waved his hand and a simple spell knit the mangled flesh back together. Nate gave him a queer look, probably for his flushed face.

"Are you alright?" Nathaniel asked.

"Yep." Anders tried flexing a muscle to make his erection go away. It would have been easier if he had muscles. "Just... need to go use the little mage's room,"

Anders fled behind one of the broken stone pillars and trapped his erection under his belt, and made sure his tabard was doing work. What he wouldn't give to skip ahead an hour, when their tents were pitched and Amell was done being 'Commander' and went back to being Amell. Naked, sweating, panting Amell.

Frustrated, Anders rejoined the group.

"So we can keep him, right?" Sigrun was asking. "We're not really going to leave him after he helped us kill that dragon are we?"

"... That depends on if he still wants to stay." Amell said.

"You are referring to the dark magic you utilized in that fight to subjugate demons." Justice guessed.

"Yes." Amell said.

"I will refrain from passing judgment until I know more of your character." Justice said stiffly. "With how little I know of this world, perhaps it is not even my place to judge at all. For now I would be pleased to travel with you all, if you would have me."

"Of course we'll have you!" Sigrun exclaimed, latching onto one of Justice's arms. Anders half expected it to fall off, but the corpse held together. "Come on, I'll show you how to pitch your tent. Or... wait, do you need sleep?"

"I do not believe so, but I will help you with this task." Justice said, still stiff as a corpse. Anders didn't see the appeal. At least Compassion was a sweetheart.

Oghren sighed, watching Sigrun rummage through her pack and set up her tent with Justice. "Can't believe I'm losing to a dead guy."

"I can." Anders said.

Everyone unpacked, and pitched their respective tents. Velanna gathered rocks to contain their campfire, and Nathaniel passed out their kingly rations of jerky, hardtack, and water. Unsurprisingly, Justice didn't need to eat, and volunteered to take every watch. No one argued. With the day they'd had, everyone was exhausted.

Sigrun and Nathaniel didn't come back from their tents after they left to disarm and disarmor. Anders was exhausted, but the memory of Amell's magic burning in his veins kept him awake, and brought him back to the campfire in his tunic and trousers.

Anders was trying to think of a subtle approach to bedding him, like waiting until everyone else went to sleep, when Amell took his hand and led him back to his tent, no shame about it.

Anders had never had sex in a tent before. Not very roomy, tents. Especially with Amell's weapons and armor stacked on one side. And it was dark. Anders sat in the middle of Amell's bedroll, and conjured a sphere of light he let float free in the center of the tent.

"Did you need me to tell you a bed time story?" Anders joked when Amell tied the flaps closed behind them.

"Yes," Amell threw off his tunic, and reached for the laces to Anders' trousers. "Tell me the one about your dick in my mouth." Anders ran his fingers through Amell's disheveled hair, tracing over an ear and the faint scar of an old piercing.

"See, I would," Anders said, letting Amell drag his trousers off, "But I just spent a whole day marching and fighting and I like you too much to pretend that doesn't mean anything,"

"I could care less right now," Amell said, walking his hands up Anders' legs. Did Amell like his legs? He was always touching them. That seemed like a weird question to ask.

"Well I care," Anders said, and took off his tunic. "So thanks but no thanks. I was kind of thinking we could pick up where we left off outside."

"Did we leave off somewhere?" Amell lifted one eyebrow, fingers locked around Anders' smalls.

"Didn't we?" Anders lifted his hips for Amell to drag the final article of clothing off. Amell crawled up his legs, and his tongue carved a path through the sweat on Anders' skin on his way up his chest. Anders caught Amell's hips when they were in reach, and tugged his trousers and smalls down around his thighs.

"You taste fine," Amell said against his collarbone, the warmth of his breath making Anders shiver. "But if you're against it..." Amell rolled off his chest, and kicked his trousers the rest of the way off. He took a spot behind Anders, and Anders felt a pulse of mana from him. He tensed expecting another shock, but the magic must have been creationism. Amell set oiled hands to his shoulders, and Anders sank back against them. Maker, he loved being spoiled.

"What did you have in mind?" Amell asked, working the conjured oil into his shoulders. Knot after knot unraveled under his skilled hands and Anders suddenly wasn't sure if he wanted to have sex at all.

"Right now, this," Anders admitted. Primal magic warmed Amell's hands, and Anders bit his bottom lip to stifle a moan. It didn't quite work, especially when Amell's hands slipped up to his neck and worked behind his ears. "You know everyone is going to know we're having sex, right?" Anders asked.

"I think everyone already knows we have sex, Anders." Amell said, massaging back down his shoulders and the muscles in his arm, worn weary from his staff.

"Well yeah, but that doesn't mean they've ever heard it, or knew exactly when we were doing it." Anders said, leaning back against Amell's chest. Amell's thumbs melted tension Anders hadn't even realized he'd had in his hands. "Maker, where did you learn to do this?"

"It's an Antivan technique," Amell said, wringing oil back up Anders' arms. "I thought we agreed you deserved a reward whenever you save all our lives."

"Me?" Anders reached back to run a hand over Amell's thigh. "That was you, with the shades. You know you seemed-" Anders cleared his throat, "-more intense outside."

"Did you want intense?" Amell slid a hand around Anders to pull him flush against his chest, and teased his nipples with two oiled fingers.

"Yes," Anders said thickly, delighting in the crackle of static he felt on the hand Amell ran down his thigh. Breathless anticipation made him tense, and electricity burned through his veins a second later. Anders arched against Amell's chest with a wild moan, scrabbling to find Amell's hair and fist his hands in it.

"I wish you could see yourself when I do that," Amell said, a sudden shift in primal magic warming the fingers he ran along the inside of Anders' thigh. "The way you tense and shudder," His fingers slid up Anders' stomach, still flooded with creationism, and warm oil ran down Anders' skin through the thin path of hair beneath his navel to drip onto his aching cock. "It's like watching you come."

A second shock of electricity hit him, and Anders cried out. Anders barely had time to process the sharp jolt of pleasure before it was over and he was panting. Any more of it and it would be exactly like watching him come. Anders shook his head, panting and gasping, trying to force out words. Amell's tongue blazed a slick path up Anders' neck to his ear, "No more?"

"Fuck," Anders managed, chest heaving, hands still locked tight in Amell's hair over his shoulder. "Fuck me."

"Fuck you how?" Amell asked, dragging blunt nails down Anders' chest.

"Fuck me, fuck my ass, fuck me," Anders demanded inarticulately. Amell let out a hard breath against Anders' shoulder, and the thought that the fire that licked Anders' skin at Amell's exhale might not have been voluntary sent a shiver of excitement through him.

"Stop me if you change your mind," Amell shifted behind him, and set two fingers on either side of Anders' spine at the nape of his neck. Amell dragged them down through the sweat and oil on Anders' back with deliberate slowness.

"Oh, fuck, you're a bastard," Anders groaned, twisting to grab Amell's face in his hands and kiss him. Anders traced over Amell's lips with his tongue and sucked on the supple skin, anticipation making his heart race faster the lower Amell's fingers fell on his back. Amell wrapped his free hand around Anders' thigh, so close to his throbbing cock Anders whimpered urgently, "Touch me."

"I am touching you," Amell broke from his lips to flick Anders' earring with his tongue. He drew a path through the crack in his backside, and circled the tight muscle of his entrance, pressing faintly with the oil-slick pad of his finger. "Do you want me to keep touching you?"

"Yes," Anders said eagerly, and turned the word into a mantra Amell broke when he eased in a finger. A closed mouth moaned escaped him. It hardly felt of anything, but it was Amell, and he was inside him, and primal magic warmed the oil on his fingers, and as he slid in deeper Anders felt the warmth run straight to his cock.

Amell's arm slid up Anders' chest to hold onto his shoulder, "You can still tell me to stop."

"Don't you dare," Anders swallowed down a gasp. Amell pressed his lips against his shoulder, and crooked his finger. The surge of pleasure that followed turned Anders' gasp into a moan. Amell groaned against his skin, trailing kisses over his back broken by the drag of his teeth.

"You feel so good," Amell praised him, finger working in shallow thrusts. "Fuck, fuck Anders, you have no idea how long I've wanted this."

"How long?" Anders' voice sounded hoarse to his ears, and he tried to clear his throat, but it was too hard to focus on anything other than the rhythm Amell set, the way Anders' chest pressed against Amell's arm with every hard breath, the subtle, almost imperceptible friction of his scars whenever Amell shifted for a better grip.

Anders held onto the scarred arm Amell had locked around him with one hand and took hold of his aching cock with the other. Even the slight friction of his fingers curling around his shaft made him thrust into his fist, and moved him along Amell's finger, and built a fire in the pit of his stomach. "Too long," Amell said. "Do you want all of me tonight?"

"Fuck-yes," Anders said.

Amell's hand slipped off his shoulder to tap the arm of the hand Anders had wrapped around his cock. "Then don't come."

Fuck. A shiver ran up Anders' spine at the order, and he let go of his cock. He didn't know what else to do with his hand, and reached blindly behind him for some part of Amell to touch. His hand connected with bare skin, and he ran it up and down Amell's side in eager sweeps.

"Tell me when you can take more," Amell said; a low pulse from the Fade built more oil around the finger Amell worked inside him, and it ran warm down Anders' ass and the inside of his thigh. Shivers of ecstasy ran through Anders at every crook of Amell's finger, and more had never sounded better.

"More," Anders begged. Amell pulled from him, and set two fingers to his slick hole. The slow push of Amell easing back into him came with a pressure and fullness that bordered on bliss, and the slightest burn that tangled gasps and whimpers up in Anders' throat.

Anders clawed his way up Amell's arm to his shoulder, and grabbed a fistful of his hair to pull his head forward. Anders turned his head and Amell kissed him without asking. His heady taste clouded Anders' head, and Anders crushed their mouths together. Amell held his fingers steady, a subtle crook pressing at a part of Anders that wrung one hard gasp after the next from him and made him forget the burn had ever been.

"Fuck me," Anders gasped, wet lips sliding off Amell's mouth, "Amell fuck me."

"I am fucking you," Amell promised, pulling Anders' bottom lip between his teeth and sucking hard. Anders moaned, and didn't care that it was shameless. The first stroke of Amell's fingers made him moan again. The slow caress struck up a haze of pleasure that killed every thought in Anders' head. He couldn't imagine existing outside this one moment, and except to picture Amell's cock hitting that same bundle of nerves that set his skin aflame.

"Fuck me harder," Anders grabbed for Amell, his hands sliding for purchase on taut muscle damp with sweat. Amell already had an arm locked tight around his chest, but it wasn't nearly enough. Anders' cock was rigid and leaking down his flushed skin, fluid carving a path down the inside of his thigh with sweat and oil and driving him half mad with the desperate need for friction.

"Wait," Amell said, and the word tore a needy whine from Anders' throat. "I will. Fuck, I will, but wait," Amell kissed his shoulder, "I don't want to hurt you."

"Hurt me-fuck-I don't care," Anders choked out, "Amell-this-is driving me crazy."

"Do you want me to take your mind off it?" Amell offered.

"Yes, anything." Anders begged, "Bite me, spank me, anything, just touch me."

Amell let go of his chest and took his fingers from him, and the loss made Anders feel empty. Kneeling like this was starting to hurt Anders' knees, and his legs were sweating and sticking to themselves, but Anders didn't care about any of it. Amell brushed his fingers over Anders' ass, barely touching him, "Get on your hands and knees."

The order sent shudder up his spine, and it felt like Amell had pushed him when Anders pitched forward. Amell pressed the pads of his fingers to Anders' entrance, and Anders clutched at the bedroll beneath him, biting his lip to stifle the moan that escaped anyway when Amell eased back into him. The exquisite sensation of being filled took over him, and Anders lifted a hand to bite down on his knuckles when biting his lip wasn't enough.

Amell swept his fingers over his ass, squeezing gently, and another pulse from the Fade coated them with oil Amell worked into his skin. "You can still tell me to stop," Amell promised. Anders shook his head, not trusting himself to words. The first light smack of Amell's palm on his ass did nothing to take Anders' mind off the sensations Amell stirred inside him.

"Amell," Anders whined; if anything the gentle caress that followed and the slide of Amell's thumb over his ass made it all the more overwhelming. Amell smacked him again, and the sting was almost imperceptible but it was there, and Anders tried to focus on it to distract himself, but another caress followed it.

"Harder," Anders gasped, rocking back against Amell's hand to fuck himself on his fingers. It still wasn't enough; he wanted friction, he wanted Amell's cock, his thighs slapping against his ass with every powerful thrust, Amell's hand fisted in his hair and tugging his head back so all of Anders' shameless cries ran together with the sounds of their sex.

Amell slapped him again, and it stung. A blissful, distracting sting that took his mind off Amell's fingers stretching and loosening him for his cock. "Oh fuck, yes." Anders said. Amell crooked his fingers, and a hot wave of pleasure dropped Anders to his elbows. Another spank left him whimpering for more.

Anders dropped his head between his arms, panting. His cock hung heavy and aching between his legs, and swayed with every smack of Amell's hand, but Maker it didn't matter anymore. Amell squeezed his ass, a soft crackle of electricity playing out over the skin left sensitive by his hand. Sweat was falling down over Anders' eyebrows, and he smoothed it back into his hair, his hand catching on his ponytail. Anders dragged it out with the motion, and Amell rewarded him with another slap that brought him near tears.

Anders' whine was half a sob, and Amell ran a hand warm with primal magic over his aching flesh. "You're doing so well, Anders," Amell murmured, voice thick with praise, "Is this too much?"

"I-I don't-know," Anders choked. Anymore and he might cry, and Maker, a part of him wanted to. He wanted Amell to spank him until he sobbed and fuck him until he screamed.

"Three?" Amell asked, kneading the sting out of his ass before Anders could decide if he wanted it gone.

"Fuck, yes please," Anders begged.

Amell slid his fingers from him and shifted behind him. Anders felt the press of his lips against his ass, followed by a hot brush of his tongue, and a graze of his teeth that turned into a bite. It dropped Anders from his elbows to his shoulders, and left him whining into the bed roll. The gentle application of pressure from Amell's fingers working into him turned his whine into a groan.

Anders didn't feel anything but slightly sore and wonderfully stretched, desperate for Amell's fingers to reach deeper, for his cock to take their place and drain Anders of every drop of come in his body and fill him up with Amell's instead. Amell massaged his free hand up his back and over his sides, a tug on Anders' hips pulling him back against his fingers. "Are you okay?"

Anders nodded, a moan eating up the 'yes' he tried to give when Amell curled his fingers, and stroked the bundle of nerves inside him Anders had almost forgotten existed under Amell's spanks.

"You can heal yourself," Amell reminded him, another surge of magic adding another coat of oil to Amell's fingers. The excess spilled down Anders' cock and over his balls, and Amell reached around him to gather it in his hand. The gentle wring of his palm around his cock had Anders' thrusting into his fist even knowing he was supposed to be holding back. Amell ran his hand up Anders' shaft and brushed his thumb over his tip, and a shudder of pleasure ran through him.

"I don't-I don't want to," Anders choked out. "I like it."

Amell worked the excess of oil into Anders' ass. The aching muscle felt as sensitive as Anders' cock, and Amell's gentle touches left Anders shivering in a delicious blend of pressure and pleasure. Amell kissed him again, and Anders felt his lips move against his skin, "Do you want me to fuck you?"

"Yes," Anders begged, repeating the word until he lost all sense of its meaning. Amell eased out of him, and his oiled hands wrapped around Anders' chest and dragged him back up to his knees, thumbs swirling teasingly over Anders' nipples and working them into stiff peaks on his chest. Anders groped blindly over his shoulder and buried a hand in Amell's hair, desperate for any part of him he could hold onto.

Amell kept one hand on his hip; his cock dripped oil down Anders' ass when he guided it inside him. The stretch burned, and Anders half-gasped, half-hissed at the few seconds it took to pass. Amell massaged his hip, and the hot swath of licks and sucks he painted across Anders' shoulders helped him forget it. Anders arched his hips back, and the sensation of Amell sinking into him tore a wild moan from both their throats.

"Oh-fuck-me," Anders felt like he was on fire. Stretched and full and taken with every inch Amell lost inside him.

"Anders," Amell said his name like a dying man might a prayer. He kissed Anders' jaw, his lips locked, breath spilling hard and hot across his skin.

Anders dropped his hand from Amell's hair to wrap his arm around Amell's neck. Anders turned his head and Amell claimed his lips, the heat of their mingled breath the only thing that made up the kiss. Amell pulled him back against his hips, and Anders couldn't have named the sound he made if he tried. His cock was thick and rigid and perfect, and when it hit the right spot inside him the sensations made Anders so hot and flushed with pleasure he almost felt dizzy.

Amell held Anders' hips with one hand, and clung to his chest with the other. A shallow thrust made Anders see stars so bright they left his mind reeling. It was beyond overwhelming, and he didn't have any control over the sounds spilling out of his lips and into Amell's mouth. Anders was writhing and shaking in minutes, toes curling into thin air. He kept his arm locked tight around Amell's neck to keep himself from drowning in the pleasure of it all.

"Harder," Anders croaked.

"You have to-let go of me-a little first," Amell gasped against his neck, and Anders let his arm fall off him. Amell pulled out of him and wrung his hands in a brief massage on Anders' shoulders before he gave him an commanding push, "Down." Anders dropped willingly to his hands and knees. Amell's hands ran over his yielding body, guiding the arch in Anders' back before he pushed back inside him.

A devoted hand on Anders' hip held him steady. Anders barely heard the wet smack of Amell's hips hitting his ass around the sounds ripping from his throat. Maker save him, he wasn't screaming, but every gasping moan came close. Amell's thrusts drove him forward, and his hands brought him back, and Anders dropped his head into his clutching hands. He tangled them in his loose hair, and bit his arm to stifle his cries.

It didn't help. Anders gasped against his arm, teeth and lips rocking against his skin and leaving it slick with spit when Anders couldn't bring himself to close his mouth. "Fuck yes, Anders," Amell moaned, and Anders made some sort of sound in response. "You're so good at this. You look so beautiful taking it. The way you sound."

Anders tried for words, but they were impossible with the rising pleasure that had spread past the pit of his stomach and claimed his entire body. Pressure wound tight inside him, blinding and breath-taking, and begging for release. "I-I-fuck-I'm right-"

Anders moans fell apart into tattered gasps, and Amell gave his hip an encouraging squeeze. "Do it. I want to feel you come on my cock."

Amell's free hand took hold of Anders' leaking cock, and Anders lasted a handful of strokes before he came. He felt his climax everywhere; in his heart, in his toes, in his face, in his cock. It was mind-shattering, heart-stopping perfection, and it lasted so long Anders thought he might faint.

When the waves of pleasure died down, Anders remembered he was supposed to breathe. He managed a weak gasp, shuddered when Amell pulled out of him. He'd never felt so empty in his life. He collapsed on the ruined bedroll in front of him, exhausted. He heard Amell groan, felt the splatter of heat on his lower back, and Amell's hand smear shakily through it. Anders wanted to hug him, but that meant moving, and moving was definitely impossible.

Anders couldn't feel his face. Amell kissed the small of his back, and the hot swipe of his tongue made Anders shiver. Amell licked up his spine, and Anders made a sound he thought might have been a whimper. Amell reached his ear, and bit down on the lobe Anders didn't have pierced. Anders groped blindly for his head, and ran an tired hand through Amell's hair while Amell kissed along his jaw.

Amell slid an arm under his chest, and lifted his boneless body off the bedroll. Amell pulled back the covers and moved them both under them, pulling Anders onto his shoulder. Anders made a sound he hoped was grateful, too exhausted to think. Amell was warm and wet and wonderful, and Anders fell asleep wrapped up in his bed, his scent, and his sheltering arms.

Anders woke up to the caws of crows, and the thin stream of sunlight through the cracks in the tent flaps. He'd fallen asleep on his side, but he woke up lying on his back, tangled in Amell. He felt horrible. Anders' ass was aching, he was sticky with sweat and dried come, and his back was in knots from a night of sleeping on the ground. Anders groaned, and Amell stirred on his shoulder.

"Good morning," Amell mumbled without opening his eyes.

"No, no, bad morning," Anders groaned. "I did not sleep well at all. I hate camping. I hate you. I hate mornings."

"You hate me?" Amell asked, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

"Obviously," Anders kissed his forehead. "When does my ass stop hurting?"

"Never." Amell said.

"Oh good," Anders gave him a light shove, "Get off,"

"I already did," Amell said.

Anders laughed and shoved him off. They dressed awkwardly in the cramped tent. Amell grabbed Anders when he was dressed and pulled him back into his chest. Amell didn't say anything, but his tight hug and the way he buried his face in Anders' shoulder and inhaled his scent said enough. Anders didn't know how to react to it. He gave Amell's arms a tentative squeeze, and tried not to think too hard about it.

Amell let go of him, and Anders fled back to his own tent. Nathaniel was already awake, and raised an eyebrow when Anders slinked past, but said nothing. Anders put on his armor, and packed up his tent. Breakfast was jerky and hardtack, again, and everyone else woke, packed, and ate.

They went over their plans for Justice on the way back to the Vigil. For all intents and purpose, 'Justice' was 'Kristoff'. Sigrun volunteered to keep charge of him, but Amell didn't want her overburdened, so they were all going to have days where they more or less babysat the spirit. In the event that anyone did find out the truth about Justice, they'd come clean and hope for the best, but until then, Anders was rather fond of the 'deal with it later' approach.

They got back to the Vigil, and didn't make it past the outer courtyard before a messenger stopped them. It was Private Kallian again.

"Not again," Anders sighed. "Please tell me this isn't more templars."

"No, Ser. No templars, Ser," Kallian promised, "Warden-Commander, Seneschal Varel sent me with an urgent message for you as soon as you returned,"

"Report," Amell said.

"A man arrived at the Vigil last night, Ser," Kallian said, "He says he's your father."

Chapter 28: The Apple And The Tree

Summary:

Or: Everyone Needs Daddy Issues

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, kudos, and most of all, thank you for reading.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 18 Parvulis Late Morning
In the Courtyard of Vigil's Keep

"My what?" Amell asked.

"Your father, Ser," Kallian said again. "Arrived last night, he did."

"Nug shit." Oghren said, "Don't you buy this for a minute, Boss. I'd bet my balls this is just some fucker looking for sovereigns, trying to pull the wool over your eyes. Why else would he wait until you were Warden Commander to come calling? Even I ain't that bad a dad."

"I'm inclined to agree with Oghren." Nathaniel said.

"Did he say anything else?" Amell asked. Anders wished he could read him. He didn't know what kind of reaction was appropriate here, and Amell wasn't giving him any clues.

"No, Ser," Kallian said. "Not that I know of. Just that he's your father. The seneschal gave him one of the guest rooms, in case it were true."

"Thank you, Private," Amell said. "Have him meet me in the throne room."

"Yes, Ser." Kallian said and left.

"You're all dismissed," Amell said. "Sigrun, Kristoff, if anyone gives you any trouble come find me."

Amell strode away before any of them could say anything. Oghren ran after him. Anders hesitated. It wasn't any of his business, really. Amell's life was Amell's life. Anders' life was Anders' life. There was no reason to mix the two. Amell could tell him about it later if he really wanted.

"What are you doing?" Sigrun hissed at him. "Go with him! What kind of boyfriend are you?"

Anders shot her a frown. He wasn't Amell's boyfriend at all. He was just Amell's friend. A friend Amell fucked exclusively, and drew sketches of while Anders slept. Fuck. Fine. Anders was his boyfriend. Anders ran after Amell and Oghren, and caught up with them in the inner courtyard.

Amell glanced at him and said nothing.

"Oi, Sparkles, tell Numb Nuts here this guy ain't the guy he says he is," Oghren said.

"Well I mean, you said you don't remember him, so it's not like we really know one way or the other unless he can prove it." Anders said.

"Thank you, Anders." Amell said.

"Do you have any idea how many casteless brats show up in the noble district, looking for coin saying their dad is some noble or other with no way to prove it?" Oghren asked. "This is that, only backwards."

"It can't hurt to hear him out." Amell said.

"Uhuh. Sure." Oghren said.

They walked through the halls of the Keep, and headed for the stairwell instead of the throne room. "Where are we going?" Anders asked.

"I want to change before I meet him." Amell said.

"For fuck's sake." Oghren huffed, either because he was frustrated, or because his stumpy legs made the climb up the stairs a struggle. "You want this guy to be your long lost dad so bad, he's going to call you 'son' once and you're gonna believe him."

"I'm just going to hear him out." Amell said.

"So... I mean, nothing?" Anders asked. "You don't remember a thing about your father? Not even his name?"

"I was seven." Amell said.

They reached his quarters, and Amell unlocked the door to let them all in. Oghren trundled over to sit on the bed, grumbling to himself. He pulled out a flask from inside his chest armor and drank. Anders sat next to him, and Oghren offered him a drink. Anders would have thought Amell needed it more, but he wasn't about to turn down a shot.

Amell changed out his armor and rummaged through his armoire for so long Anders got up and went over to check on him.

"You alright?" Anders asked.

"No," Amell laughed; he sounded stricken. He pulled out two doublet and held both of them up. One was silver and blue, the other one was red and white. "What do you think?"

"You are way too worked up about this," Oghren said from the bed. "If this guy turns out to be some cock sucking swindler, which he will, I'm gonna kick his ass for you."

"Well that one's Warden." Anders noted, "What's the red and white one mean?"

"They were the colors for our house crest," Amell said.

"Your house crest," Oghren corrected him. "Don't play dress up for this fuck. Wear the blue one."

"I don't know, red might be nice." Anders said. "Goes well with your eyes."

Amell put on the red one.

"You are seriously not helping, Sparkles." Oghren said. "Honestly, Boss. The last time you wrote to Kirkwall, the only fuck who wrote back was some distant cousin trying to milk you for coin."

"That's not really relevant. Gamlen never mentioned my father." Amell said. He found a pair of white trousers to match and changed into them.

"Do you want help with your hair?" Anders couldn't help offering. "It's kind of a disaster."

"Yes." Amell all but begged.

Anders went and got a comb and a hair tie from Amell's vanity. He came back and found Amell sitting cross legged on his bed with Oghren, cradling the dwarf's flask like a lifeline. He looked young, and terribly vulnerable.

Anders was with Oghren. Amell's 'father' needed a serious ass-kicking if he was lying. Anders sat down behind Amell and brushed his hair.

"What do I say if he's actually my father?" Amell asked.

"Don't look at me." Anders said, fighting with a knot in the matted black strands. "The last thing I want is to see my father again."

"You and me both, Sparkles." Oghren said, leaning back on the bed. "That old man was always giving me shit. 'Oghren stop drinking.' 'Oghren put your pants back on.'"

"What an ass," Anders joked.

"No kidding," Oghren said, watching Anders fight with Amell's hair for a few minutes. His face fell. "This is gonna be my Amell some day, when his old dad finally comes to visit. Nugget ain't even gonna know my name."

"You have leave to visit your family whenever you want, Oghren." Amell said. 

Oghren grunted.

Anders finished brushing, and gathered a handful of Amell's hair to weave into a braid along the side of his head. He looked half decent when Anders was done with him. "Alright, go give it a look and see what you think." Anders said.

Amell handed Oghren back his flask and climbed off the bed. Anders handed Amell his comb to take back to the washroom, and Amell left to check his hair.

"I'm gonna fuck this fuck if he's fucking with that kid." Oghren muttered.

"You're such a softie," Anders said.

"Shut up, Sparkles," Oghren huffed.

"You mind if I watch when you do?" Anders asked.

"Nope," Oghren snorted.

Amell came back out of the washroom. Maybe it was the line of worry creasing his brow,  but he didn't look anything like the Warden Commander of Ferelden. He just looked like a lost young man in very fine clothes. "Alright?" Amell asked.

"Alright." Anders said.

"Yeah, yeah, pretty as a princess." Oghren said. "You ready or do you need your make up too?"

"I'm fine." Amell lied.

"You know I'm coming with, right?" Oghren asked.

"I was hoping." Amell said.

Alright Anders. Here we go. Relationships aren't hard. You're an adult. You can be supportive and emotional. Say something nice. Tell him you're here for him or something.

Anders took too long. Amell went to the door and unlocked it, and was on his way out with Oghren before Anders had come up with anything to say. Anders followed Amell out, and felt a little awkward for tagging along without asking until Amell found Anders' hand and gave it a squeeze.

Ha. There we go. Excellent job, Anders. Silent support was the best kind of support. Relationships were easy.

They stopped in front of the doors to the throne room. Amell took a deep breath that wiped away his expression. It was a trick Anders desperately wanted to learn. For Wicked Grave, if nothing else.  Oghren shoved Amell, and Amell shoved the doors, and the three of them went inside.

A massive fire pit occupied the center of the throne room. The Seneschal was standing before it with a man who must have been Amell's supposed 'father'. He certainly looked old enough. His hair was grey, with a few black strands peppered throughout, and his eyes were framed in crow's feet.

They were the right almond shape, if nothing else, but the sickly green color was wrong. His nose looked right, and he had the feeble build of a man who'd been naturally lean in youth, but hadn't put in any work to stay in shape as he got older. Anders doubted Amell would end up the same, but the stranger might have resembled him decades ago.

Amell might not have bothered dressing up. The stranger's garb wasn't noble at all. He was wearing a plain black tunic, and plainer trousers.  He smiled at their approach, and there was something horribly unnerving about it.

"Warden Commander," The seneschal said when they were standing in front of each other. "This is Quentin, formerly of Starkhaven. He claims to have some relation with you."

"That name means nothing to me." Amell said.

"I suppose it wouldn't." Quentin said. His voice was as creepy as his smile: wispy and willowy. "You used to call me papa."

"My family isn't from Starkhaven," Amell continued as if he hadn't heard him. Anders was glad he apparently had a bit of healthy doubt. "Why would you be from there?"

"Have you not heard? The Circle there burned down. It was a terrible... accident." Quentin held up a hand, and conjured a small ball of flame in his palm. "So many mages slipped through the cracks."

"You said nothing of being a mage when you first asked an audience." The seneschal scowled.

"Yes, imagine that." Quentin said carelessly. "Circles are terribly restrictive, and I have no wish to return to one. I risked a great deal coming here, but how could I stay away when I learned the necromancer who stopped the Blight was my own flesh and blood?"

"You haven't answered my question." Amell said.

"No, I suppose I haven't." Quentin agreed, still smiling that unnerving smile. "I was sent to Starkhaven's Circle when my magic was discovered. They didn't want me near the family, you see. A shame. We had such a grand estate in Kirkwall, just outside the Viscount's Keep. It was so much warmer there. Have the winters here been hard on you, dear boy?"

"Anyone who did any research would know the Amells are from Kirkwall." Amell said.

"You don't remember me," Quentin realized. His smile fled, and his face took on a look of pity. "Not even a little. I confess, I expected at least a whisper of recognition, but I suppose it was too much to hope for. You were so very young when the templars took you away. My poor little Fausten. Is there nothing you do remember?"

Amell made a noise that sounded half whine, half wheeze.

"Your brother Daylen? You were four when they took him away. You cried for days. Your grandfather, perhaps? He turned so cruel after cholera took his brother; surely you remember the bruises. The excuses your sweet mother made for him... She never could see evil, even when it was standing right in front of her.

"Do you at least remember her?" Quentin continued, "My poor Revka. How perfect she was. For years she kept my secret, even when they took our children away for the magic we shared..." Quentin took a step closer and caught Amell's chin in his hand, "You have her eyes. That deep red, so very rare..."

Amell made a keening sound and flung his arms around Quentin. The older man let out a surprised huff, and hugged him back. "There there, Fausten. No tears. It'll be better now. We can fix it. We can make things right."

"I... suppose he spoke in earnest?" The seneschal guessed.

Amell whined and flapped a hand to signal them out. The seneschal retreated with a bow. Oghren grunted and followed him.  Anders hesitated, but Amell had forgotten all about him. Anders left with Oghren.

"Well I'll be damned," Oghren said when the doors to the throne room closed behind them. "That freaky fuck is definitely the Boss's dad. They both got that creepy way about 'em, you know?"

"I don't know. Amell isn't that bad." Anders said. "That guy gave me chills. Should we be leaving them alone?"

"Eh, he'll be fine." Oghren said.

Oghren started towards the barracks. Anders followed him.

"So his name is Fausten?" Anders asked.

"His name's Amell, and don't you start calling him otherwise." Oghren waggled a menacing finger at him, "I only know his real name cause he got drunk and told me one time. He hates it, but yeah, it's Fausten."

"I've heard worse names," Anders said. His own name, for example.

Everyone else was relaxing in the barracks when Anders and Oghren got there, at the table or in their bunks. They had all changed into more comfortable clothes, save for Justice, who was still in full armor. He was sitting with Sigrun in her bunk, and it looked like the dwarf was trying to teach him how to play Diamondback. That definitely wasn't going to happen.  

"Hey!" Sigrun called at their entrance, "What happened? How'd it go?"

"It went." Oghren grunted. He waddled to his bunk and stripped down to his drawers, and then found a bottle to lose himself in.

"So was he really his dad?" Sigrun asked.

"Seems like," Anders said. Ser Pounce-a-lot meowed from under his bed. Anders went to his bunk and put up his staff and satchel, and changed out of his armor.

"Really?" Sigrun asked. "What was he like?"

"Honestly? Pretty creepy." Anders said. Ser Pounce-a-lot circled his feet, purring. Anders bent to pet him when he took off his boots. "We're barely in there two minutes when he's all 'You have your mother's eyes!' and petting Amell's face. It weirded me out, but hey, if Amell's happy."

"Well I'm jealous." Sigrun said. "A creepy dad has to be better than no dad. My mother was a noble hunter. My father would die before he recognized me."

"A noble hunter? How do you hunt nobles?" Anders asked, peeling off his socks. Maker, the smell. "Do you just lay out stinky cheeses and old wines under a net and wait or what?"

"A fancy prostitute, Sparkles." Oghren said.

"But yeah, that's basically how you do it." Sigrun said. She winked at him, "You should know. You caught one."

"Amell's a mage." Anders said. "It doesn't count."

"Unnerving or not, I'm sure his father could be no worse than mine," Nathaniel said from his bunk, where he was working over his weapons with a whetstone. "We all have our darker sides."

"I still cannot believe you not only forgave Amell murdering your father, but you went so far as to join the Order and befriend him." Velanna said. She was sitting at the table, and had her feet up on it. The soles of her feet looked like leather, and made Anders a little queasy.

"Are you trying to pick a fight, Velanna? Baiting me like this is juvenile," Nathaniel said.

"I was just wondering how you felt." Velanna said innocently.

"How do you feel knowing you murdered all those merchants because you were too arrogant to check your facts?" Nathaniel asked.

Wow. Trouble in paradise, apparently. Maybe Anders should mention how distraught Velanna had been when Nate had been injured.

"Warm and fuzzy," Velanna smiled.

Or maybe not.

"You're a terrible person," Nathaniel said. "And your ears are clownish."

"What!?" Velanna clamped her hands over her ears. "Now who's juvenile?"

"Aw, sweetie, they're not clownish," Sigrun said. "They're just really pointy. Can't you two play nice? What's that thing Amell's always saying... We're more than our mistakes. It's okay to forgive and forget."

"I would never forgive the shem who murdered my parents," Velanna said.

"You never told me humans killed your parents." Nathaniel said.

"And why would I?" Velanna demanded. "It was never relevant. I was nine, Seranni seven..."

"I'm sorry." Nathaniel said sincerely.

"I don't need your pity." Velanna snapped. "My point is that some things can't be forgiven or forgotten."

"You know, that's really something coming from you." Anders said.

"Why?" Velanna demanded. "Do you think I expect forgiveness for anything I've done? Do you think I want it? I know my clan will never take me back. We're not more than our mistakes; we are our mistakes. There is nothing for it but to own them."

"I like Amell's way better." Sigrun said quietly. "Some of the things I've done, I can't own. I always hoped when I joined the Legion, everyone I wronged would know I paid for my crimes, and forgive me."

"Why should you care what anyone else thinks of you?" Velanna asked.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with Velanna." Anders said.

"Because," Sigrun said. "Because otherwise... Doesn't it get lonely?"

No one said anything. Velanna stared very determinedly at her feet. Nathaniel cleaned up his bunk. Oghren drank. Anders picked up Ser Pounce-a-lot and set him on his bed. It was impossible to think weighty thoughts with a cat in your lap. He scratched the little tabby's ears, and thought of nothing while he listened to it purr.

Justice watched him and said, "Sigrun has told me you own this feline."

"It's more like he owns me. Isn't that right, Ser Pounce-a-lot?" Anders cooed, grateful for the change in topic.

"To enslave another creature does not seem just," Justice said.

Anders blinked at him. Justice was wearing a helmet, and his voice was flat, but he had to be joking. Except spirits didn't joke. "Are you serious right now? He's not a slave. He's a cat."

"A cat that lacks freedom." Justice said seriously.

"Ignore the mean spirit, Ser Pounce-a-lot," Anders said, taking his own advice and rummaging through his trunk for a change of clothes. He needed a bath. "They don't have pets in the Fade, apparently."

"Do you do anything besides ponder what is just and unjust?" Nathaniel wondered.

"It is not all I do." Justice said rigidly. "It does, however, define my being."

"So you were born just?" Nathaniel prodded. "A little, self-righteous baby of Justice crawling around the Fade?"

Anders snorted.

"I was not born." Justice said. "I simple am."

"Simply am annoying." Anders muttered under his breath, finding a pair of trousers and a doublet he liked.

"Leave him alone, you guys." Sigrun said.

Anders left for the wash. The wash room in the barracks wasn't much better or worse than the one in Amell's room, save for the fact that Anders couldn't wander out naked. Well, he could, but he wasn't Oghren. Anders still had a bit of shame. 

He conjured water for his bath, heated it with a fire spell, and stripped out of his two day old clothes. Anders sank into the water with a happy moan. He definitely needed a bath. Mud, sweat, cum, algae, blood, and Maker knew what else had done a number on him in the marsh. Anders didn't even want to look at his hair until he'd washed it at least twice.

What a nightmare. The last few days had been chaotic. Between templars and werewolves and demons and dragons, Anders could use a break. Add in spirits and blood magic and relationships, and he was ready for a week long nap.

On the one hand, Justice was definitely useful. For a group of three practicing blood mages, a spirit who could close Fade Tears was invaluable. On the other hand, Anders had never been fond of self-righteous pricks. Irving, nobles, Velanna. Anyone who thought they were better than you because they were older, or wealthier, or an elf. Add on the spirit's twisted preoccupation with a concept that didn't exist in the real world, and Anders was not a fan.

If Justice thought owning a pet was bad, the spirit was going to get a serious kick out of the Circle. Anders could already see the spirit causing trouble, trying to force justice into an unjust world. The fact that having it around was a huge risk to Amell also didn't earn it any points in Anders' book.

The poor fellow had enough to worry about without Justice on his plate. Anders couldn't imagine being in Amell's shoes. If Anders' father showed up at the Vigil, Anders would be more liable to throw a punch than burst into tears and hug the bastard. Twelve. Twelve fucking years, and it meant nothing, all because Anders was a mage.

Amell was bloody lucky. Quentin was luckier. How many mages got to know their fathers or their sons? Anders could count the ones he knew about on one hand. Even that little squirrel Finn only got letters from his family at the Circle. He didn't get to hug them. To live with them. To be normal.

His mother, Anders would have hugged. Maybe even cried over. He hadn't seen her outside of dreams in fourteen-no, fifteen years. He hadn't even heard from her. His father had said no contact, and that was good enough for the Circle to keep Anders from writing home. On the run, there'd been no point, but now that he was a Warden maybe it was something worth thinking about.

Anders finished washing, pulled the plug, and climbed out of the bath. He dried off and changed into his new clothes, and put all his jewelry back on before taking a spot in front of the vanity to shave and do his hair.

He looked damn good, as usual. Perfect skin, honey-colored eyes, sharp cheek bones, sharp nose, sharp clothes and sharper wit. Amell was damned lucky to have him. The Wardens were damned lucky to have him. Anders was awesome. His father could fuck himself.

Anders dumped his old clothes in the laundry and left the washroom. Oghren was lying down, snoring. Nathaniel and Velanna had left. Sigrun was still playing cards with Justice.

"Hey hubby," Sigrun called. "Want to come play cards us? You might actually have a chance against Justice."

On the one hand, Sigrun. On the other, Justice. Anders hesitated. Well, it wasn't like he couldn't leave if the spirit got annoying. He grabbed a chair from the table and dragged it over to Sigrun's bunk.

"What are we playing?" Anders asked.

"Diamondback." Sigrun said. Sigrun shuffled the deck, and held out the pile for each of them to draw a card. Anders drew a priest. Justice drew a king. Sigrun drew a priestess. "I deal," Sigrun said brightly, taking the cards back and shuffling the deck again.

Sigrun dealt, and Anders looked at his cards. Two priests. The lowest possible hand. What was with his luck?

"So it looks like Velanna's not the only screamer," Sigrun teased.

"I guess you heard last night, huh?" Anders asked. Somehow, his face didn't light on fire. It wasn't like they weren't all adults. Well... Adults and a spirit. "I wasn't screaming."

"What do you call it then?" Sigrun asked.

"Manly grunting." Anders said.

"Well that was some loud manly grunting then," Sigrun giggled, "I guess Amell's pretty good in bed, huh?"

"Eight out of ten," Anders said.

"That's an eight?" Sigrun asked. "Jeez. What's a ten, then?"

"I am, obviously," Anders said.

Sigrun laughed and flipped over one of her cards. A priestess. Again. Anders sighed. "Oh come on, at least try to bluff." Sigrun said.

"Sorry," Anders said.

"I believe it highly unlikely that the points assigned to my cards exceed the points assigned to yours, given the card you have shown." Justice said. "I fold."

"You guys are so bad at this." Sigrun sighed. "Okay, we're gonna do this again, and this time if your hand is bad, pretend it's not. Both of you."

"You speak of lies." Justice said.

"No. Ugh," Sigrun pinched the bridge of her nose. "It's pretend. We're pretending. Bluffing. It's part of the game. Aren't there any games in the Fade?"

"I apologize." Justice said. "Revelry is a difficult concept for me."

"I'm pretty sure everything that isn't 'Justice' is a difficult concept for you." Anders said.

"This is true." Justice said.

Sigrun shuffled for another hand. Anders drew the mage. His deal then. He took the cards and shuffled them.

"Does that not distract you?" Justice asked.

"Does what distract me?" Anders asked.

"Your ring," Justice said. "It sings beautifully... The sound awakens an ache I did not know I had."

"What, really?" Anders asked, spinning the silver band on his finger. "It's just a ring with a bit of lyrium infused in it. The Circle gives one to every mage who passes their Harrowing."

"These concepts are unfamiliar to me, but the lyrium is beautiful." Justice said. "Do you know if there is any way I might acquire such a ring?"

"Believe me, it's not worth it," Anders said. He dealt out their hands, and checked his cards. His hand was a little better than before. A king and a queen. He flipped over the king. "A Harrowing is when you take a mage barely over puberty and make him fight a demon or die trying."

"Why would anyone do such a thing?" Justice asked. He flipped over a queen. Bastard.

"Beats me." Anders shrugged.

Sigrun flipped over a priest. The game continued for a few rounds, until they all showed the cards. Sigrun had a priest and a queen. Anders and Justice had the same hand. It figured. The closest Anders could ever come to winning was a tie.

"I'm gonna grab lunch." Anders said. "Thanks for the game."

He left the barracks for the dining hall. The kitchens had just started serving, and none of his friends were about, but Anders spotted his infirmary aide at one of the tables. He grabbed a lunch of roast squash, roast chicken, and a cranberry salad along with a tankard of ale. Anything was better than hardtack and jerky.

Anders ate with his aide, and listened to the fellow tell him about what he'd missed at the Vigil while he'd been at the Blackmarsh. They went back to the infirmary together, and Anders busied himself with checking on the infirmary's three patients and taking stock, but that only took him an hour and a half.

He went back to the barracks and cleaned out Ser Pounce-a-Lot's litter box, and fetched the tabby some milk and chicken livers from the kitchen. He heated both with his magic, and took a nap until dinner. He ate with Oghren and Nathaniel, and then went to the library to read despite the risk of encountering Cera.

Luck was on his side, for once, and Anders made it through a few chapters of Spirit Personages before he got bored.  This late, and it seemed a safe guess that Amell was alone in his quarters, so that was where Anders went. He rattled out a little song on Amell's door and waited.

The door opened a short while later. Amell wasn't crying, so that was a step up from this morning. He was also still in his doublet, so at least he hadn't been asleep. "Hey," Anders grinned. "How'd it go with daddy dearest?"

"Still going, actually." Amell said. "We're having drinks, do you want to come in?"

No. No, absolutely not. Anders just wanted a bit of fun before bed. He was definitely not ready to be introduced to his lover's parents. Parent. No. Bad.

Amell was smiling. It touched his eyes, and reminded Anders of autumn. A warmth like being wrapped up in a blanket beside a fire. Damnit. "Sure." Anders said.

Amell pulled him inside, and led him over to the couch. Someone had found Quentin a change of clothes. He was wearing a fine doublet and trousers, and looked much more a noble than he had that morning. The wine glass probably had something to do with that.

"I remember you from this morning." Quentin said. "I never caught your name,"

And you never will, Anders thought.

"This is Anders," Amell introduced him. "He's a Senior Warden of mine, and our resident spirit healer. And I'm seeing him. Do you mind if he joins us?"

"Certainly not if you're seeing him." Quentin said. He held out his hand to shake. His nails needed a trim and his hand was alarmingly vascular. Anders forced himself to shake it. He expected it to be clammy and cold, but Quentin had a warm and firm grip. Well, no one could be all bad.

Amell gestured to his couch, and went to fetch a third wine glass from his liquor cabinet. Anders sat as far from Quentin as possible. "I remember you were fond of that Dumar boy when you were younger, but I can't remember his name." Quentin said.

"I can't either." Amell said. He came back with another glass and poured Anders a drink of whatever they were having. It tasted like all wines tasted to Anders: bitter.

Amell sat between him and Quentin. Anders was glad for the barrier.

"So you're a healer?" Quentin asked. "And mage as well?"

"That's the rumor." Anders said.

"I've always been fascinated by creationism," Quentin said. "The manipulation of natural forces has such an artistry to it. It takes far more finesse to save a life than reanimate one."

"I don't know, I think Amell's magic is pretty handy." Anders said.

"Oh no, you mistake me," Quentin said. "I was referring to myself. Necromancy is my focus as well."

"I guess I took after him." Amell grinned, or more accurately hadn't stopped grinning since Anders walked in. He look like someone had given him a puppy. It was a nice bit of change from the enigmatic face he usually wore.

"Would you mind if I observed you in your infirmary sometime?" Quentin asked. "It really is quite fascinating."

Yes.

"No problem." Anders said.

"Excellent." Quentin said. He took a long drink, and Amell refilled his glass. "I suppose I should ask how you met?"

Anders drank.

"Anders is an apostate too." Amell said. "Or he was. He was a captive here when darkspawn attacked the Vigil and killed the templars who captured him. He helped with the attack and I recruited him."

"Not going to tell him about how I called you Apple, huh?" Anders said.

"That never happened." Amell said.

Quentin grinned. "An apostate? I respect that. The Circles are so restrictive. I could never stand it."

"Well, I never burned one down, but yeah, not a fan." Anders said.

"Nor would I ever confess to doing something like that." Quentin grinned.

Amell snorted.

"So... Not to sound like a total ass, but can I ask why you waited until now to contact him?" Anders asked.

"I had no choice." Quentin said. "Revka and I were never told what Circles any of our sons were sent to, and I was an apostate myself, from Nevarra originally. Inquiring was dangerous, and few Circles answered.

"Fausten, my wife's father, was already suspicious of me. He died a few months after my Fausten," Quentin gave Amell's hand a pat. "Was taken, but not before reporting me. Starkhaven allowed me only one letter a year, and that went to my dear Revka."

"A lot of the Circle's phylacteries were destroyed when it burned down." Amell said. "Isn't that fantastic?"

"Terrific," Anders said. He set down his empty wine glass on the low table and stood up. "So, I should probably let you two get back to bonding, but it was good meeting you."

"And you." Quentin said.

"I'll walk you out." Amell said, getting up with him. Amell walked him out the door, and closed it behind them.

"So... I guess things are going good?" Anders asked.

"Fantastic," Amell said again, grinning. "He's a necromancer, he hates the Circles, he thinks my blood magic is extraordinary. He didn't even pause when I introduced you. This is... I don't know. It's perfect. I can't even believe it's real."

"Well, I'm happy you're happy then." Anders said.

"I've never been happier." Amell said. "I'm sorry we're still talking. Are you going to bed? If you're still up in a few hours, you could come back."

"I think I'm going to hit the sack. I'm seriously exhausted, but uh... You know." Nice one, Anders. Very touching.

"I think I do," Amell said, and kissed him.

Amell tasted like the wine he'd been drinking, and his hands were warm and firm on Anders' neck and at his jaw. Anders caught his waist and pulled him close, and spent a brief minute lost in his scent, the soft flicks of his tongue, and the brush of his fingers.

Amell broke off, smiling. "Goodnight Anders."

"Night." Anders said.

He spent another minute staring at the door to Amell's room after it closed. His feet took him back to the barracks, and Anders undressed and laid down in his bed. Ser Pounce-a-Lot climbed onto his chest and curled up into a ball of purrs. Anders lay awake in the dark for the better part of an hour, and didn't remember falling asleep.

He dreamed of flying, of cinnamon rolls and apple pies, of Amell and other wonderful things.

Chapter 29: Lullabies

Notes:

Hello everyone, welcome back! Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 18 Parvulis Middle of the Night

Vigil's Keep, Wardens' Barracks

"Wake up, mage!" Anders felt the words before he heard them. Hands were on his shoulders, shaking him violently awake. "Quickly! Now! Get up!"

Anders fought off the hands on his shoulders and wiped drool off his mouth, "What? What? Stop. Andraste's grace, I'm up,"

The barracks was lit with torches. The dull orange glow made Anders squint, and he rubbed crust from his eyes, his vision spotty. At least a half dozen servants and soldiers were crammed by the entrance in various states of undress.

The light woke Sigrun, who groaned, "What is it? What's going on?"

"Get back, all of you!" One of the torch bearers said. "Get the healer!" It was the Seneschal. Varel was barely dressed, save for a sloppy tunic and trousers, with a scabbard for a belt.

Anders sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bunk, his head still heavy with sleep. "What's going on?" He asked groggily.

"Are we under attack?" Sigrun asked, scrambling out of bed.

"What?" Oghren groaned from his bunk. "Attack?"

"Get up now!" Varel snarled.

"I'm up. I'm up." Anders grabbed his staff from where it was leaning against the wall. He was barefoot, in nothing but his tunic and his smalls, but whatever this was, it was apparently too urgent for anyone to care. A servant grabbed Anders by the hand, and pulled him out into the hall. Sigrun hurried after him, as did Oghren and the rest of the wardens.

The cold stone on Anders' barefeet was a shock that helped him wake up. The Keep was in chaos. Servants ran through the halls, lighting torches and setting them in sconces through the halls. Soldiers were everywhere, pulling on armor and running for weapons. Anders was dragged into the main hall, where the Guard Captain was giving orders.

"You find that bastard, Garavel," The Seneschal yelled to the Gaurd Captain as they hurried past. "Find him and bring him back alive."

"I'm on it, Varel." The Guard Captain promised. "I have the men mobilized. He can't have gotten far."

"Hurry, this way." Varel said, leading Anders towards the stairwell.

"Is anyone going to tell me what's going on?" Anders asked. "Who's injured? What happened?"

"The Commander," Varel said. Anders felt sick. "Keep moving."

"What the fuck happened to the Boss?" Oghren demanded, holding his trousers up as he hurried after them.

"The rest of you report to Garavel for assignment." Varel said over his shoulder. "There's crowd enough on the upper levels as it is."

"What has happened?" Velanna demanded. "We answer to our Commander. Not you."

"If you think I'm going anywhere but up there you've got another thing coming." Oghren said.

"Is the Commander okay? How hurt is he?" Sigrun asked.

"Report to Garavel," Varel said again.

True to his word, the third story stairwell was crowded. A bark from Varel cleared a path for them, and the Seneschal grabbed Anders' arm to lead him up the stairs. Anders wrenched away from him.

"I know where his fucking rooms are," Anders snapped. "What's going on?"

"I cannot say," Varel said. "Not in public."

Calm down, Anders. If they need you, he's alive, and if he's alive, it can't be that serious. Perspective. Perspective is good. Anders took a deep breath, and tried to force his rising panic to subside.

The corner wall at the top of the stairs to the third story was blown apart. Rubble littered the stairs and the floor, and a hole shown through to the broom closet on the other side. Another matching hole was in the wall just opposite them, and shown through to Woolsey's quarters.

"What is this?" Nathaniel asked, tracing over the damage with his fingers. "Was there a fight? What-"

A trail of dried blood painted one wall, at shoulder level. It was smattered with hand prints, as if someone had dragged themselves through the corridor. The floor was a carpet of red. Anders broke into a run. A crowd had gathered outside Amell's quarters, and a ring of soldiers was holding them back.

"Move! All of you!" Varel yelled. "Make way for the healer."

A path cleared for him. Anders bolted through it. The door to Amell's bedroom had been blown into a dozen different planks and innumerable splitters. Anders jumped them and ran inside. The room was a mess. The couch was upside down. The low table had been knocked into the fireplace, and the flames had eaten that entire corner of the room, turning two tapestry and an entire bookshelf into a blackened mess.

A smear of blood led the way to the washroom, as though someone had dragged a body inside. The door there was hanging from its top hinges, swaying unsteadily. Glass was strewn all across the floor. Woolsey was pacing in front of the washroom. The old girl was in her night frock, her grey hair still bedraggled from sleep. "Oh, Anders, thank the Maker," Woolsey said, "He's in there, do hurry,"

Anders ran inside. The washroom was a wreck; the towel cabinet had been knocked over, and several of the towels were scattered on the stone floor, soaking up blood. The vanity had been dragged across the room, as if someone had meant to barricade the door with it but given up half way through. The mirror had fallen off, and more glass was on the floor. Red food prints led to the corner, where Amell was on the ground.

He looked up at Anders' entrance. His face was so drenched with blood it was nearly black. A vicious gash was carved into his forehead, just above his left eyebrow, and his pretty red and white doublet had lost all its white. His trousers were just as bad, more black than red. He was kneeling over Quentin, one hand to the older man's side.

The older man was also a mess, his doublet singed and torn on one side, his hair in disarray. His eyes were half-closed, and Anders couldn't tell if he was breathing.

"Anders, hurry, my father," Amell said.

Anders picked his way across broken glass, blood, and scattered towels. He knelt next to them. "I thought-they said," Very loquacious, Anders. Try again. "You're alright?"

"I'm fine," Amell said. "Please help him,"

Anders summoned Compassion, and channeled her to heal the burns and stab wound in Quentin's side. He found other injuries as the first wave of healing energies rolled off him, the most alarming of which was poison. "Andraste's knickers, what is this? Magebane, and something else."

"Deathroot extract, I think. Concentrated," Amell guessed. Anders didn't know anything about poisons, outside of Magebane. Anders also didn't know how Amell knew, until he remembered Amell's last lover had been an assassin.

"Does this need an antidote, or should I keep trying to cleanse it?" Anders asked.

"You can cleanse it, I'm sure," Amell said. "Varel!"

Varel stepped into the washroom. Woolsey followed him. "Yes Commander?"

"Get Anders a lyrium potion," Amell said.

"Yes Commander," Varel said. He stepped back out of the washroom, and yelled out into the hall. "Lyrium potion, for the healer! Now!"

A thought occurred to Anders, and he pushed back the bangs that were stuck to the blood on Amell's forehead. "You have this too, don't you? Whatever this poison is."

"I'm fine," Amell said again, "My father, Anders, please. He's older. It'll take hold quicker."

Anders was tempted to ignore him. He didn't give a damn about Amell's creepy father, but Amell cared, and Amell was right. Anders kept his focus on the old man, a little reassured his cleansing aura would help Amell, even if the rest of the healing energies were focused on Quentin.

"What happened?" Woolsey asked, cautiously making her way over the broken glass, "One moment, I was asleep, the next I hear explosions, and come out into the hall to see you fighting that shadow, and all the blood..."

"An assassin," Amell said. "He must have scaled the Keep. He came in through the window, and knew what he'd be facing. He was laden with immunity runes and anti-magic wards. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was a Crow. I haven't seen anyone move that fast since..." Amell trailed off, "A long time ago."

"What makes you think he wasn't a Crow?" Woolsey asked.

"I have an agreement with them," Amell said, wiping some of the blood out of his face. "They swore not to accept any new contracts on me."

"What about an old one?" Woolsey pressed.

Amell glared thoughtfully at the floor for several long seconds. Varel returned, and handed Anders a lyrium potion. Anders drank it, and kept working on Quentin.

"No," Amell decided, "He wouldn't. It wasn't him."

"It wasn't who?" Varel asked.

"An assassin tried to kill our Commander, Varel, and nearly succeeded," Woolsey said, running her hands through her frazzled grey hair, "I told you. I told all of you. We needed to endear the nobility and the local populace to us, and we failed. Maker's breath, assassins," Woolsey sank onto the vanity stool and pressed her palms into her forehead. "In all my forty years with them, I have never before failed the Wardens."

"This arling is not a failure," Varel said. "If anything, the fault is mine. I knew the locals were disgruntled after the rebellion, and I did nothing. I'll speak with Garavel; we'll increase security, post sentries, change up patrols. If nothing else, it's clear we need guards posted outside the Commander's quarters."

"And how will guards help when assassins are coming in through the window, Varel!?" Woolsey demanded. "Are we to post guards on the window sills as well?"

"Bars, then," Varel said.

Woolsey whined unhappily into her hands.

"No doubt this was the work of one of the nobles in the arling," Varel continued optimistically, "Surely we can discover whoever was behind this conspiracy with a little effort. I've heard talk of a man called the Dark Wolf who knows much of the nobility, and destabilized Howe's reign during the Blight. We could try contacting him-"

"I'm the Dark Wolf, Varel," Amell said.

"I-didn't expect that," Varel said, fidgeting uncomfortably, "But ... I'm sure we can think of something..."

"Maker save us," Woolsey said miserably.

"Hostages," Quentin suggested, his voice a whisper; Compassion had returned much of the color to his face. Another few minutes and he'd be fine.

"What?" Varel asked.

"When the nobility is against you, you take hostages," Quentin said, a bit of strength returning to his voice. "A son here. A daughter there. The assassins will stop. Parents will do anything for their children."

"Is this what we've come to?" Woolsey wondered. "Is this how the Wardens must rule this arling? I wanted silver tongues, not iron fists."

"One from each House," Amell said. "Until we know who's behind this."

"I'll see it done, Commander." Varel said.

"You should be good." Anders said when he finished healing Quentin. "A few days of rest and lots of fluids,"

"Remarkable," Quentin said, flexing his fingers, "Without even an antidote. You must have a very powerful spirit at your beckon. Love? Perhaps Hope?"

"It's just a spirit." Anders said. He switched his focus to Amell, hand on Amell's forehead though he knew it didn't need to be there. Amell smiled woozily at him.

"This has been a terribly tiresome ordeal." Quentin said, picking at where the blade had pierced his doublet. "Fausten will be fine, I trust?"

"He's fine." Anders said.

"Good. If that blade had cut an inch lower, he would have lost his eyes," Quentin said, as if the thought were worse than Amell actually dying. "What a tragedy this could have been. Ward your windows, dear boy. I'll see you in the morning."

Quentin held out a hand. Amell grasped it firmly. "I'm sorry I got you involved in this, father."

'Father' already. Damn.

"Oh, no," Quentin cooed. "No, no, no. I got myself involved in this, dear boy, and I have been involved in worse. Much, much worse. We can speak more of my research in the morning, and forget this little incident ever happened."

Quentin stood up and wandered out of the washroom in his blood soaked clothes as if it were perfectly normal. "Excuse me," He said politely as he slipped around Varel.

Weird. Creepy. Creepy weird. Anders shuddered.

"Boss!?" Oghren bellowed from the other room, "Boss are you in there!? Get the fuck off me, you blighters! Boss! What the fuck is going on!?"

"I'm fine Oghren!" Amell yelled into the other room.

"...Alright! Fuck! Fine!" Oghren yelled, "You're fine! I'm going back to bed! Don't fucking die!"

"I love you too!" Amell yelled back.

Unsurprisingly, Oghren didn't respond.

"Commander... can I ask a delicate question?" Woolsey asked.

"Ask," Amell said.

"Your father is a mage as well, is he not?" Woolsey asked.

"He is," Amell said.

"And an apostate, if I am not mistaken," Woolsey said rhetorically. "Commander, your relationship with Anders is one thing, but you must know we cannot afford to keep an apostate at the Vigil. Especially not one known to be your father. The nobles are already sending assassins, but the backlash when word of this gets out? Templars will come for him, and may even decide to reopen their investigation into Anders, to place scrutiny on Velanna, or Maker forbid, 'Kristoff.'"

"You already told her, huh?" Anders asked.

"Secrets are not easily kept from me, Ser," Woolsey said, squaring her shoulders proudly. Well... good for her. Anders was rubbish at sleuthing. "I met Kristoff. He was a hard man, but also polite and sweet. Were he alive, he would have taken the time to speak with me and a few others after his long absence from the Vigil. Maker rest his soul."

"But Amell didn't do it." Anders blurted. He really wasn't kidding when he said he had no self control. How hard was it to call Amell 'Commander?' Probably about as hard as it would be to call him 'Fausten.'

"You know as well as I the Chantry will never believe us." Woolsey said. "They will brand the Commander a maleficar, and I think, with a little effort, they will find or invent proof. The common people will be up in arms, and we won't last a day before the Commander is reassigned. And when the Wardens put an Orlesian Warden in charge of this arling in the Commander's stead? We are doomed."

"But... I mean..." What was Anders going for here? He looked at Amell, but Amell was staring at the floor. Anders brushed a few bloody strands of hair out of his face. It wasn't fair. Anders didn't even like Quentin, but Amell deserved at least a little time with him.

"I'll make arrangements to get him out of Amaranthine," Amell said. "I can do it quietly. In the meantime, no one knows he's a mage except Varel, Anders, Oghren, and yourself. Unless you two have told anyone?"

"Nope. Not me," Anders said, "I don't think Oghren did either."

"Varel, send a servant, bring Oghren back up here." Amell said.

"Aye, Commander," Varel said, and left the washroom.

"Commander, I appreciate the precautions, but even were your father not a mage, the fact remains that you are one," Woolsey said patiently, "The Vigil is already abuzz with talk of the Commander's mysterious father. People will take him for a mage. They will talk. In this case, the talk will be true."

"A fortnight, Woolsey," Amell begged. "He'll be gone. I promise."

"... I wish that it were sooner, but I suppose a fortnight will have to do," Woolsey said. "Rumors spread like wildfire, Commander. They will reach Kinloch Hold quicker than you think." Woolsey stood up and brushed herself off. "... I suppose it is early enough to start the day. Perhaps with glass of wine. This could have been much worse, Commander. I trust you know how lucky you are. Anders, thank you for your swift response. Take care, both of you."

"I'm sorry about your wall, Mistress Woolsey," Amell said.

"A wall is a wall, Commander," Woolsey waved him off, "Be sorry you missed. Assassins are persistent."

"I know." Amell said.

Woolsey left.

"So..." Anders said.

"So?" Amell said.

"You're a mess," Anders said.

Amell snorted. Anders ran his thumb over where the gash on his forehead had been. A pink line remained, which was a welcome change from blood and gore, but it wasn't perfect. "That's going to scar. You're all healed, by the way,"

"Do you still think I'm pretty?" Amell asked.

"Definitely," Anders grinned, "Who doesn't love a good battle scar? I'm surprised you don't have more."

"I think I have plenty of scars, Anders," Amell said, with a meaningful tug on his sleeve.

"You know what I mean." Anders gave Amell's shoulder a shove and sat down. He was exhausted, but the mana he'd expended healing Amell and his father had nothing to do with it. "You know it's a good thing I'm a healer, because being with you is going to give me an ulcer. How is it you're always getting into trouble?"

"Maybe I like trouble." Amell smirked.

"You must," Anders shook his head, "Sticking with me through that mess with Rylock, and my Fear demon, and now with assassins..."

"You didn't have anything to do with this, Anders," Amell said.

"Really?" Anders snorted, "Because it sure seems like it. I mean, hasn't everyone been saying we shouldn't be together or else something like this will happen?"

"Who's everyone?" Amell asked, "Woolsey just said we should be subtle. Has that Circle bitch been bothering you again?"

"I think I just got chills," Anders joked, "Have you ever cursed before? Angry curse, not sexy curse. You must really hate her. I love it."

"You haven't heard the things she says about you," Amell muttered, running a hand over Anders' bare leg. "I... may or may not be intercepting her letters to the Circle."

"You are not," Anders gaped at him. Amell raised a bold eyebrow at him. "You cheeky bastard. Come here,"

Anders kissed Amell on the bloody washroom floor. The timing could have been better, and it was hard to find purchase on the blood-slick stone, but Anders didn't particularly care. He got what he wanted out of it: Amell's hands on him. Warm and firm and fine, not weak and feeble and battling for life. Anders had had the shit scared out of him, being woken up in the middle of the night like his very nice friend and lover was on the verge of death.

Amell rolled over and straddled one of Anders' legs. Anders squeezed his ass through the thin fabric of his trousers, "Don't tense," Anders mumbled around Amell's mouth. The kiss got better: a heady mix of blood, saliva, and warm breath that almost made Anders forget the world outside of it.

"Are you fucking with me right now?" Oghren's shout startled Anders out of his daze, "You call me back up here in the middle of the sodding night so I can watch Sparkles kneading your ass like a fucking baker with a ball of dough? What the fuck, Boss?"

Amell fell off him laughing. Oghren turned around and stormed out of the washroom, and Amell stumbled upright and ran after him, his boots crunching over broken glass, "Oghren, wait, we have to talk,"

"I have to wash my eyeballs is what I have to do," Oghren muttered from the other room. Anders picked himself up and inched his way around the broken glass to find one of the few towels still in the toppled cabinet and clean the blood off his hands.

Just one night. Just one damn night with no darkspawn, or demons, or templars, or assassins, or dragons. Was that really too much to ask? Anders dropped the bloody towel in the laundry. His hands were shaking.

Stop it, Anders. Amell's fine. Everyone's fine. Anders ran a hand through his hair, and pulled out a few strands when he encountered a tangle. Maker, it was happening. He was going bald at twenty-seven, stressed out and fretting because he let someone mean too much to him.

Anders supported himself on the laundry basket. No big deal. No big deal, Anders.

A hand squeezed his shoulder. Anders turned around and found Amell staring at him, his concerned expression ridiculously ironic considering which of them had just been attacked by an assassin. "I'm going to stay in one of the guest rooms for the rest of the night," Amell said. "The servants need to clean up the blood in here, and install new doors. Do you want to come with me?"

"Is that really a good idea?" Anders asked. "You know, considering people are trying to kill you for sleeping with me?"

Amell's hands were sticky with blood, and felt awful on Anders' cheeks, but for some reason Anders was glad to have them there. "This wasn't your fault, Anders," Amell said, "It wasn't either of our faults. We're mages. The rest of the world is always going to be against us. If you don't feel safe staying the night I understand, but the only person who's ever going to stop me from seeing you is you."

"Now you're just trying to give me cavities," Anders joked. Amell let go of his face, and Anders caught one of Amell's hands on its way down to his side. "Can we pretend I said something nice back?"

"How nice?" Amel asked, "Are my knees weak? Heart fluttering?"

"Racing, not fluttering, and your palms are sweaty," Anders decided.

"That works for me." Amell said. "I'm going to grab a few things. I think you still have a change of clothes in my armoire."

Anders followed Amell out into his bedroom. Servants were already pulling down the ruined tapestry, and doing their best to salvage any books that had survived the fire. Amell grabbed his grimoire, a change of clothes, and his journal, and double checked the lock on his trunk. Anders grabbed his green tunic and some plain brown trousers from the armoire, and followed Amell out of the room.

A few servants and guards shot them looks as they walked past. It made Anders nervous, imagining any one of them running to report to some pious noble about the evil maleficars who'd survived the assassination attempt, but Amell didn't seem to care. Amell led him three doors over, into much more modest lodgings. There was a four post bed and a stone bath, an armoire and a towel cabinet, and a hearth surrounded by couches and a low table. Mercifully, there was no window.

Anders cast a fire spell to light the hearth, and hung up his clothes in the empty armoire. "I really doubt I'm going to be able to fall asleep after that fiasco."

"I'm okay with that," Amell joked, putting away his things.

Anders forced a laugh, but the pathetic truth was that he'd rather get a hug out of Amell right now than sex.

"I could use a bath anyway," Amell said, more seriously. "Do you want to join me?"

"Yeah, sure," Anders agreed, sitting by the bath and letting water flow from his palms into the stone basin. Amell stripped out of his ruined clothes, the fine silks charred from whatever fire had taken place in his room. Ash, soot, and pieces of finery stuck to his tawny skin. Amell brushed them off like he might dirt from a day's hike.

Amell's hands glowed a faint crimson to match his eyes, and he warmed the water as Anders' conjured it. Anders thought of saying something about casting in the nude, but the joke slipped away from him. He looked at the blood caked on Amell's face and down to his neck, and couldn't find anything even remotely humorous in it.

Amell slid into the bath when it was full. Blood stained the water an angry pink almost immediately. Anders stripped and climbed in after him, submerging himself underwater. The caress of warm water slid over every inch of his skin, and did nothing for him. Anders massaged at his heart with the hope it would stop racing.

Amell found him under the water, and squeezed Anders' shoulder. Anders forced himself to break the surface, and told himself his shaky gasp was just for air. Amell slid his arms around him, the slight friction of his scars a familiar comfort when Amell pulled him back against his chest.

"You can hold your breath a long time," Amell said.

"Swimmer, remember?" Anders said.

Amell gathered up a handful of Anders' hair, and pulled it back behind his ear. Water ran down Anders' neck, and Amell kissed the path it followed. "I was expecting a joke," Amell said against his skin.

"What happened in there?" Anders struggled out of Amell's arms to take a seat on the stone bench. There wasn't a set-up good enough for Anders to take right now.

Amell took a seat next to him, finding Anders' hips under the water and turning him so Anders' back was to him. Amell set hands warm with primal magic to Anders' shoulders, and his thumbs worked out the tangled nest of knots all along Anders' spine. "Nothing, really."

"An assassin is nothing, huh?" Anders snorted, "What's something?"

"You're something," Amell said, planting a kiss on Anders' shoulders and following it up with a hot swipe of tongue that made Anders' shiver despite it all.

"Come on, stop it," Anders rolled his shoulder against Amell's mouth to fight him off. He was done letting Amell deflect everything, "I'm being serious."

"It was nothing, Anders, really," Amell's hand slid up his neck to massage behind his ears, "I've had assassins after me before."

"But what happened?" Anders demanded, twisting away from Amell's too-soothing touch and scooting back along the stone bench, water sloshing at the motion. "Look, I get woken up in the middle of the night, dragged through the Vigil in my smalls, I think you're dying, and I'm there to give you your last rites or something-... Just tell me what happened."

Amell leaned back with a sigh. He draped one arm over the edge of the basin, and ran the hand of the other through his hair. Droplets of water rained down on his shoulders and carved paths through spots of soot, catching in the dark hair on Amell's chest, still rising and falling at a slightly winded pace. Anders wasn't giving this up. "It's done, Anders, I'm fine."

"Do you know what magebane does to us?" Anders glared at him, "You almost weren't fine. Tell me what happened or I'm going back to the barracks."

Amell made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat, "He came in through the window," Amell said with palatable reluctance, "He threw a fire bomb, and it hit my liquor cabinet, and the explosion took out everything in the corner of the room. We managed barriers for the blast, but he closed in, and stabbed my father in the side before either of us could react. When he went for me, I stepped into the Fade before the sword connected.

"He dodged most of our spells, and the runes and wards on his armor ate up the rest until my father landed a corruption spell," Quentin was a blood mage too, then. Like father, like son, Anders supposed. "He started coughing up blood, and he ran. I chased him into the hall, and missed a few telekinetic blasts when he turned and his blade caught across my forehead.

"I guessed the sting for magebane and gave up chasing to check on my father. I found him in the washroom, bleeding out, and I kept pressure on his wound until you showed up." Amell finished the story with a tiny shrug, as if it were all inconsequential, and not a life-or-death struggle he'd barely survived. "I'm fine, Anders. I've had worse. You don't need to be worried."

"Did you miss the part where you almost died?" Anders demanded; a flush of primal magic rolled across his skin, heating the water and warranting a raised eyebrow from Amell. Anders ignored it, "Because I didn't. Don't you care someone probably sent this guy to kill you because you're running around cavorting with another mage in public?"

"I care enough to kill him when he tries again," Amell said. His own flare of primal magic coated his hand with ice, and shielded him when he took hold of Anders' bright red hand. Steam rose at the contact, and Anders took a deep breath to try and release the cantrip. "But otherwise, no. I don't give up that easy."

Anders wasn't half that brave. If he was in Amell's boots, Anders would have given himself the boot months ago. Nevermind assassins. With templars, with fights about blood magic, with demons... No one was worth that, in Anders' opinion, so why was Anders worth that? A few very probable reasons came to him. Anders pushed them away.

Their laced fingers left the room thick with steam; Anders pulled his hand away so they could let go of their cantrips. A sheath of telekinetic energies encased a bar of soap on the vanity, and pulled it into Amell's hand. Anders caught Amell's wrist, and stole the bar from him. Amell didn't comment when Anders turned him around to wash the soot off his back. Anders appreciated it.

Anders ran his hands over Amell's skin, sleek and smooth and wonderfully warm, broken only occasionally by an old burn or scar. Anders laid his palm flat against Amell's skin, and felt the shallow rise and fall of his shoulders that came with every breath. Anders shifted forward to wrap his arms around Amell, and run his fingers through the soft hair on his chest. He found his heartbeat, and felt it speed up, and felt a little better.

Amell leaned back against his chest with a relaxed hum Anders felt vibrate in his chest. Anders turned his face into Amell's neck and breathed him in deep. He smelled mostly of soap and ash, but the Fade was there, tangled together with copper and sweat. Amell ran his fingers through his hair, the gentle scrape of his nails on Anders' scalp soothing beyond measure, "Anders... I'm okay."

"Yeah," Anders cleared his throat, "You know, as long as you're not dead."

"I'm not dead," Amell promised.

"Prove it," Anders said.

Amell twisted in his lap and sought out his lips. Anders dropped the bar of soap and held to him tighter, wet hands digging for purchase on wet skin. Amell's lips were firm but soft, and every hot breath that spilled from them was wonderfully alive. Anders swung himself into Amell's lap, the water giving around him at the motion. Amell cradled his jaw in his hand, "Am I alive yet?"

"No," Anders tangled a hand in Amell's hair and pulled his lip between his teeth. Amell caught his hips and slid him forward on his thighs until Anders felt the press of his cock against his own. Anders sucked on Amell's lip, and set a hand to his chest to circle his thumb over his nipples. He won an animated gasp and a shiver for it.

"What do I have to do to be alive again?" Amell asked, a rock of his hips stirring delicious friction along Anders' cock.

"Fuck me," Anders told him.

Amell's hands slid down from Anders' hips to his ass, and a squeeze rocked Anders against his cock again. "Fuck you how?" Amell asked.

"Hard," Anders said.

"Did you want me to spank you again?" Amell asked. His smirk was proud and shameless, and Anders felt like he could have told him anything. Could have asked for anything. Amell would do it. Amell wouldn't judge him.

"... Only if you tie me down first." Anders said, throat dry, but he knew what he wanted. He wanted to be spanked until he sobbed and fucked until he screamed and Amell was the only person Anders could imagine trusting enough to give him that. More than that Anders wanted to feel Amell alive and well and in control again, especially of Anders' body.

"I'll have to find some rope," Amell massaged a hand warm with primal magic up Anders' thigh to knead at his hip, "Do you think you can wait?"

"Not if you keep doing that," Anders bit down a moan, and slid his hands through Amell's dripping hair, clenching them into fists to tilt his lover's head back and claim his lips. Amell hummed approval and rocked them together again, a tease of friction on Anders' burgeoning erection. "You're really-not going to say anything?"

Amell gave his bottom lip a gentle tug with his teeth, "I'll say anything you want me to."

"How are you okay with all of this?" Anders asked, aware he was moving the conversation somewhere dangerous, but he wanted to know more than just Amell's body.

Amell abandoned his lips to carve a path down Anders' jaw and over his neck. The drag of his teeth and hot swipes of tongue left Anders grinding mindlessly against him. "There's nothing you could ask me for I haven't already done," Amell chuckled against his neck, "... I just-no pain play. I couldn't do that to you."

"I don't want that," Anders promised quickly, raking his nails down Amell's back for the groan it provoked against his skin. Amell gave his hips a final hard squeeze and pushed him off his lap.

"I think I have some ropes in my room," Amell arched backwards to give his hair a final dunk under the water. Anders watched the stretch play out across the muscles on his chest and was still staring when Amell came back up, dripping water and smirking for his stare. Amell pinched his chin and gave him a hard kiss before climbing out of the water. "Finish bathing. I'll be right back."

Amell dried hastily, primal magic in one hand and a towel in the other, and pulled a fresh change of clothes onto still damp skin. Thought came back to Anders at the absence of Amell's mouth. The Warden Commander walking back into his quarters while servants were still cleaning them and grabbing a handful of ropes was bound to raise eyebrows. Anders didn't know which of them he preferred people think the ropes were for, but he wasn't about to call Amell back.

Anders kicked for the soap he'd lost on the floor of the basin, snagging it between his feet and tossing it back up into his hand. He scrubbed hastily at his skin and hair, resenting the latter for its length and the former for the time it took to get the blood out from underneath his nails. Amell came back with an coil of rope about one shoulder while Anders was still drying off and draped it over one bedpost.

"No gags," Amell said, watching Anders fumble in his haste to dry off, "At least not tonight. And you say 'Stop' whenever you need."

"What about 'don't stop'?" Anders asked, half-certain it was Amell's stare and not the primal magic on his hand that was making his skin heat up.

"If you think you'll say it on accident, you can pick another word," Amell shrugged.

"Apple?" Anders joked.

Amell frowned at him. Anders laughed and discarded his towel to the floor, grabbing a fistful of Amell's slightly-damp tunic and pulling him into a kiss. Amell grabbed his ass and picked him up with little more than a grunt, and the strain that played out in the muscles on his arms made Anders' heart thud madly in his chest. "I'd never say it," Anders mumbled around Amell's mouth.

Anders locked his legs around Amell's waist, thighs resting on the crook of his hips. Amell held him with one kneading hand on his ass, the other cradling the back of Anders' neck. Anders' back was braced against Amell's arm; copper clouded his thoughts and a hot mouth swallowed the handful of eager moans that escaped when Amell's hands warmed with magic. "I could fuck you like this," Amell groaned against his lips.

"Please," Anders blurted before he could help himself, running his hands over Amell's straining shoulders.

"I thought you wanted ropes," Amell mumbled, shifting his hips to grind Anders' ass against his trapped erection.

"Fuck, I don't know," Anders sucked and bit at Amell's lips, desperate for anything, even the faint friction of his cock sliding against Amell's tunic with every involuntary arch of his hips. "Just fuck me."

Amell walked backwards until the edge of the bed hit the back of his knees. He sat them down and rolled them over, a hand on Anders' hips hefting him up for Amell to rut against his ass. "What do you want?" Amell asked, "Just arms? Legs?"

"Everything," Anders stole his hands under Amell's tunic to rake his nails down his back. Amell arched against him with an eager gasp. He buried a hand in Anders' hair and ran his thumb over his cheek, and his heated stare made Anders' breath hitch.

"Fuck, you're beautiful," Amell said, pulling back from him to grab Anders' hips, and heave him further back on the bed. "Roll over."

Anders missed Amell's eyes the second he was on his stomach. Maker, they were gorgeous. Dark russet, like a burning log, and the rings got redder towards the center. Anders felt the mattress shift with Amell's weight when he knelt between Anders' legs. Hands locked around his hips and lifted him up, and Anders clumsily positioned himself on his hands and knees. Amell set a firm hand between his shoulders blades, and pushed Anders back down so his face stayed in the mattress. "I know how I want you," Amell said.

Anders fought back a shiver. Amell's hands commanded his body, and left him bent and exposed, his ass bared and pressed against Amell's stomach when Amell leaned forward to plant a kiss on his spine. Amell took his wrist and straightened his arm out along his leg. The coarse slide of the rope against Anders' skin as Amell tied the two limbs together sent an eager throb through Anders' cock. Amell gave the ropes holding the joint limbs together an experimental tug when he finished. "Too tight?"

"No," Anders croaked.

Amell kissed his backside, and involved teeth and tongue that made Anders whimper and writhe at the first hard suck. Amell swept his hands over the small of Anders' back and over his ass, squeezing worshipfully on their way down his thighs. A hand stole between Anders' legs, and briefly fondled Anders' cock where it hung heavy and dripping onto the sheets. Anders turned his face into the sheets to stifle a whine at the play of Amell's fingers, and the low ripples of pleasure they sent coursing through him.

"Amell," Anders whined.

Amell's lips broke off his ass with a wet pop and a chuckle, and the cold air over the spot of saliva left by his mouth made Anders shiver. Amell caught his unbound wrist and set it to his leg. The ropes slid around both limbs, and the wonderfully rough drag left Anders' heart racing by the time Amell finished. Another tug at the ropes moved Anders' legs slightly further apart. "Too tight?"

"Perfect," Anders said hoarsely.

Anders felt the pull of the Fade, and Amell set hands warm with primal magic and slick with creationism to his foot, massaging at the soles with his thumbs before working his way up Anders' leg and over his thigh. He spent an age working oil into Anders' ass, thumbs dipping playfully against his entrance, hands kneading softly when Anders wanted them sparking hard. Amell worked back down his opposite leg and ended the massage at his foot.

Amell squeezed his ass, fingers biting hard into eager flesh, and Anders sucked in a needy breath of anticipation. The first slap was hardly a slap, a gentle swat of Amell's palm that rippled the skin rather than sting it. Anders heart raced anyway at the thought of them building in intensity, until his skin was raw and aching, that blissful sting spreading up his spine and tearing out his throat in eager cries that turned to sobs Anders never let himself have in the Circle.

Amell wrapped his free hand around Anders' cock, rewarding him with a gentle tug between every sharp spank. The air filled with the sound of flesh cracking against flesh and Anders' hard gasps. He wanted to cry out, but the Circle held his tongue. Another smack of Amell's hand burned, and Anders hands strained against the ropes, fingers dancing in the air and clutching at his ankles while he panted into the sheets.

The spank that followed was searing, and Anders' broke with a reckless cry. Every hard smack that followed tore ecstatic shouts from his throat until he was screaming, nails biting into his ankles, tears stinging at his eyes and rolling down his face. Anders dissolved into sobs, and the tangle of relief and release that came with them was everything he'd ever needed. Maker, he'd never felt freer than when Amell untied the ropes from his arms and legs and pulled him into his waiting arms.

The breath of the Fade washed over him again, and Amell set a hand warm with primal magic and slick with oil to his aching backside. Anders rested his forehead against his chest, gasping for breath and shivering at the tender massage that melted away the sting. "Fuck," Anders choked. Amell pulled back his hair to kiss his temple, and Anders clutched at his back, "Fuck, that was-... fuck."

"Glad you liked it," Amell said softly, cradling the back of Anders' head in his free hand.

"Fuck," Anders said eloquently. His skin had never felt more sensitive. Every snap of Amell's hips was going to come with a sharp sting twisted with a jolt of pleasure when Amell fucked him, and Maker Anders wanted it. He untangled himself from Amell's arms and cleared his throat, dragging a hand down his face to wipe away his tears, "Fuck me."

"I think I can manage that," Amell grinned, shrugging out of his tunic. Anders lowered himself back down to the mattress on shaky arms while Amell fought his way out of his trousers. The bed shifted with his weight again, and Amell's hands slid up the backs of his thighs to squeeze his ass. Anders bit down a gasp at the tingle the gentle pressure provoked, but it slipped out at the wet swipe of Amell's tongue over his aching flesh.

Anders fought back the urge to toss his head at every brush of Amell's tongue. He failed miserably, whining when Amell spread him with his thumbs and licked down from the base of his spine, "Do you mind if-"

"No," Anders said so quickly the word twisted into a gasp. Hot wet ecstasy caressed tight muscle, and Anders bucked against the sheets with a whimpering moan for what little friction they afforded. Amell held his hips steady, every soft swipe of his tongue mingled with a moan that spilled hot breath on Anders' aching flesh. Anders writhed under the sensations, legs swimming in the sheets while his hands alternated between knotting in the sheets or his hair. "Fuck-oh fuck."

Amell's teeth pressed down on the skin left raw by his hand, and Anders let out a mewl, shaking and trying not to thrash. A breath of magic played out over his skin following the bite, ice cool and then blissfully warm, and Anders bit the sheets to keep from sobbing with pleasure. Anders felt the mattress shift, and the blunt pad of Amell's oiled finger against his slickened hole. Amell slid effortlessly inside him, palm flat against his ass when his finger curved and stroked that perfect chord inside him that made Anders unravel in a fit of gasping moans.

"Fuck," Anders whined, his shoulders arching when he buried his face in the sheets to stifle the sounds he couldn't help making. The frictionless glide of Amell's finger left Anders kicking his foot into the mattress, "Fuck, Amell-I don't-I don't know how-how long-"

"You come whenever you want," Amell murmured, running an attentive hand up his back and curling his finger again. "Two?"

"Yes-yes-fuck," Anders begged, tangling one hand in his hair and flailing the other behind him until Amell took it and laced their fingers together. Amell worked a second finger into him, and the stretch left Anders' worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, breath catching.

Amell's fingers thrust steadily into him until Anders was panting hard, gripping at Amell's hand and pulling his own hair to hold himself together. Anders bucked his hips against the sheets, and the slight friction bled together with the pleasure pooling in the pit of his stomach from Amell's touch. "Fu-ah-fuck me," Anders pleaded.

Amell's fingers slid from him, and he untangled their hands to climb over him. Anders felt the Fade breathe in Amell again, and the hot drip of oil on his ass as Amell worked the summon onto his cock. Anders sucked in an eager breath, and the felt glorious pressure against his loosened entrance in the same frantic heartbeat. Amell eased into him, and tore a wild cry from Anders' throat at the full, perfect stretch of his cock.

Amell's weight pressed down on his ass and the back of his thighs when his lover leaned over him. Amell slid an arm under Anders' shoulder, and his fingers sought out his mouth. Anders sucked on them eagerly, moaning around the salty taste and the first shallow roll of Amell's hips. Amell groaned against his skin, teeth catching on his shoulder, and Anders made a sound he hoped was eager.

Amell thrust into him, hips connecting with the sensitive skin of Anders' ass and mixing whimpers in with moans. Gasps and drool spilled out around Amell's fingers, and Anders jerked his hips against the sheets for friction he didn't need. He was already teetering on the edge of ecstasy. He felt in every hard ridge of Amell's thick cock, buried deep inside him and stroking that perfect bundle of nerves with every drive of his hips.

"Anders," Amell moaned, a lick of flames caressing Anders' shoulders, and Maker, he knew it wasn't on purpose. Anders fumbled for the hand Amell didn't have clutching his jaw. Amell grabbed his searching hand when he noticed it, and pressed it hard into the mattress to hold himself up.

"Fuck me," Anders whimpered with every hard snap of Amell's hips, "Fuck me, Amell, fuck me."

Pleasure built in Anders' veins and escaped to every part of his body, from his flushed face to his curling toes. He fell apart with a passionate sob, a drenched mess of sweat and searing heat, tight contractions, and desperate gasps. Maker, he shattered. His thoughts, his body, his every emotion, until there was nothing left of him but the frantic beat of his heart trying to pull the man he'd been back together.

He heard Amell praising him, felt his lips on the back of his neck, the continued thrust of his hips, all as if from far away. Anders let out a rickety breath and felt it shake through his whole body, every inch of skin so wonderfully, wonderfully sore.

Amell set a hand to his hip and pulled from him. Anders whined unhappily, and Amell rolled him onto his back. "Can I come on your face?" Amell asked breathlessly, and just the sight of his hand curled around his cock and pumping madly had Anders grabbing feebly for him, mouth open wide. Amell climbed over him, and a handful of desperate strokes ended him with a string of groans, white hot release coating Anders' chin, cheek, and lips.

Anders swallowed what little had landed in his mouth, and Amell ran a shaky hand over his face, "Oh fuck... fuck you look gorgeous," Amell said, a quake in his voice that had Anders grabbing for him. Amell slid down to reach his lips, and shared a wet kiss full of licks and sucks as they drank each other in.

Anders threw his arms around him, exhausted but desperate to stay awake. Seconds stretched into minutes which stretched into more, and Anders didn't remember rolling, but they must have at some point because he wound up on his side, the wet sheets kicked to the floor, Amell's arms tangled tightly around him.

Anders' lips felt swollen and bruised in the best of all possible ways when Amell finally gave up and found a spot on his shoulder. "We should..." Amell sucked in a deep breath, "We should dry off."

"Fuck it," Anders said.

"Okay," Amell yawned, arms locked so tight around him Anders would have to physically pry the man off if he wanted to move, but he didn't. Anders threw a lazy arm around Amell in turn, and buried his face in his hair. The dark strands were as soaked through as they had been after the bath, and sex ate up his scent, but Anders' didn't particularly mind.

Amell was asleep in minutes. Anders stared at him, his thoughts in a fog. He ran his fingers through his hair, and Amell mumbled drowsily and nuzzled his shoulder. Anders traced over the scar above his eyebrow, and down his jaw, and Amell twitched again, "What are you doing?" Amell slurred, "Tickles, stop it."

"Heh, sorry," Anders said. He managed to keep quiet and keep his hands to himself for a few minutes, but his thoughts kept turning over and back to Amell asking him what he liked during sex, and the quiet awe that he finally had an answer. "Hey Amell?"

"Hmm?" Amell mumbled.

Anders slid a finger under Amell's chin and tilted his head up for a kiss. Amell hummed happily into his mouth, and fell back asleep half-way through the kiss. Anders rested his chin on Amell's head, and ran his fingers over the scars on his arms until he fell asleep.

Anders slept well and deep, and dreamed of sitting with Amell in the Fade, alone in a field of reeds, and lost in his eyes.

Chapter 30: Fools Gold

Notes:

Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 30 Parvulis Early Afternoon
Vigil's Keep Infirmary

They found the assassin. Or, more accurately, they found his corpse. Whatever spell Quentin had cast, it had been gruesome. Considering Anders was used to Amell's magic, that was saying something. The scouts had found the assassin two days after the attempt on Amell's life, by the buzzards circling his corpse.

Quentin's curse had slowly drained the man of every drop of blood in his body. The emaciated carcass the soldiers had dragged into the infirmary looked like it had been dead for decades. Anders had had to put on a mask stuffed with potpourri so the smell didn't make him pass out. Amell wanted the corpse checked for a tattoo design, and Anders had found it on the jerky-textured skin of the corpse's thigh.

Apparently, the tattoo meant the man had been a Crow. Amell had thrown a fit. Which, for Amell, meant he'd gotten very quiet and locked himself in his quarters for a day, writing angry letters to Maker knew who. But aside from that one little incident, things at the Vigil were good.

The servants patched up the third story and Amell's room. The stone masons finished their work on the walls, and had the Keep swathed in granite. The blacksmith had the soldiers clad in silverite. They had a disgusting amount of lyrium smuggled from Kal'Hirol. They had a copious supply of dragon bones from the Blackmarsh, and perhaps most importantly, Anders was getting better at listening whenever Amell wanted to talk about the arling.

Anders had to admit he liked seeing Amell's quiet grin whenever Anders knew what he was talking about. While Anders still didn't really care about all of it, it was nice to be able to give Amell more than a blank stare and force Amell to repeat himself when the state of the arling came up. Anders' own life was far less complicated.

He had the infirmary, he had Ser Pounce-a-Lot, he had days filled with card games and drinking, and nights filled with amazing sex. Whoever said being a Warden was hard was either talking about their dick, or they hadn't given it a shot, because Anders' life was grand. The only bad days Anders ever had were the days he was saddled with 'Kristoff.'

Maker, Anders hated playing babysitter for Justice. The spirit was nothing like Compassion, and all Anders ever did with it was fight. They fought about blood magic, after Anders managed to enslave a werewolf on an expedition to the Blackmarsh. They fought about demons when Amell demonstrated summoning an ash wraith for Anders and Velanna. They even fought about whether or not Anders was enslaving his cat, for Maker's sake.

It was more than a little ridiculous, and Anders was getting more than a little sick of it. Anders wanted nothing to do with the spirit, and he wasn't the only one. Velanna couldn't stand Justice either, and Nathaniel was far from a fan. The spirit was a nag. It badgered Velanna about the need to atone for murdering the merchants in the Wending Wood, it pestered Nathaniel for the crimes of attempted theft and murder Amell had already forgiven him for, and it had next to no concept of 'forgiveness' or 'shutting the fuck up.'

But Sigrun and Nathaniel were always volunteering for some chore or other around the Vigil, Oghren was always drunk, and Velanna hiding, so Anders got saddled with 'Kristoff' more often than he would have liked. And more often than not, Anders solution to dealing with Kristoff was not dealing with him at all, and just telling the spirit to stay in the barracks. Anders was trying to behave today, and had let 'Kristoff' accompany him to the infirmary, but Maker if the spirit didn't make it hard to like him.

Anders confined Justice to a stool to ensure he stayed out of the way. The spirit sat in silence the entire time, his hands folded politely in his lap, in full Warden armor. It looked ridiculous, and a little intimidating. Unsurprisingly, Anders physician and aide had both decided to leave early. Which meant Anders was alone, cleaning up the infirmary for lunch, when the spirit started up.

"I have spoken to the Commander about the concepts you mentioned." Justice said. "Circles and Harrowings."

"Maker, here we go again," Anders muttered to himself.

"I am led to believe you struggle against oppression." Justice continued, his voice a metallic echo with his ever-present helmet. Had Anders mentioned he hated helmets?

"I avoid oppression," Anders said, losing his count on how many flasks he had left. He started over, annoyed. "Not quite the same thing."

"The Commander confided in me that he is part of an organization called 'The Mages Collective' which seeks to rectify the injustices of your Circle, but that you are not." Justice said. "Why do you not seek to strike a blow against your oppressors? Ensure they can do this to no one else?"

"Because that sounds difficult?" Anders guessed.

"The apathy of mortals gives rise to demons of sloth," Justice said, "It is a weakness."

"So is death," Anders shrugged, "I'm just saying."

Inwardly, Anders couldn't have been more annoyed. The damn spirit was so haughty and condescending Anders wanted to punch it. That would show it. One blow from Anders' noodle arms and the spirit would think twice before lecturing him. A few more months, and Anders might have sticks in place of noodles.

Anders had finally started doing those presses. The past week, he'd joined Nathaniel, Amell, and Sigrun for their early morning regimens. The fact that all three could run circles around him was a little disheartening, but he had to start somewhere.

Anders didn't know where he finally found the motivation. Maybe it was Amell, or maybe it was because carrying his patients was a struggle, or maybe he was just bored, but he'd found it. If nothing else, it was nice to spend time with his friends, and have a little more energy during the day.

Anders finished his count, and did another sweep of the infirmary before he decided he'd done everything there was to do. He picked up his staff, and tapped it against Justice's leg. "All done. Come on,"

"Fear is no excuse," Justice said when they were back out in the courtyard, and Anders had just started to hope it might shut up. "You have a responsibility to your fellow mages."

"Do you ever stop?" Anders asked. "Why don't you go direct all that self-righteousness at Velanna or someone who cares?"

"Velanna has her own sins to atone for," Justice said. "She defines herself by her race, you by your magic. You have seen oppression, and you are now free. You must act to free those who remain oppressed, as the Commander does."

"Or I could mind my own business, in case the Chantry comes knocking again." Anders said. He glanced over both shoulders, and lowered his voice. "Do you know what they do to maleficars? I've got enough on my plate making sure I can defend myself without worrying about anyone else."

"If your blood magic is a crutch, cast it aside," Justice said. "It is the magic of demons. It was a mistake for you to learn it in the first place."

"I think you're kind of missing the point of a crutch," Anders said. "People use one when they can't walk on their own. You can't just 'cast it aside'."

"You are walking just fine." Justice said.

"It's a metaphor you dim witted-" Anders stopped and took a deep breath. "The Chantry has me branded a maleficar anyway. It's what drove me to learn it in the first place. Believe me, the irony's not lost on me, but this is the only kind of magic that holds up against templars."

"Then you could use it to free your fellow mages," Justice said.

"Maker, it's like talking to a wall," Anders muttered. "I'm not Amell, okay? Anders worries about Anders. The end."

"But this is not right." Justice said. "You have an obligation,"

"Yeah, well," Anders shrugged, and spread his arms invitingly. "Welcome to the real world, 'Kristoff.'"

They reached the barracks and went inside. Anders put away his staff, and found Ser Pounce-a-Lot under his bunk. He gave the little tabby a few apologetic scratches, considering he hadn't been sleeping in his own bed of late. Maybe he could start bringing Ser Pounce-a-Lot up to Amell's quarters at night. Anders doubted Amell would mind.

"Does the spirit you channel for your healing magic condone your decision to neglect the plight of your fellow mages?" Justice asked.

"It's almost like you want me to hate you." Anders said, crawling out from under his bunk and dusting himself off.

"That is not my wish." Justice said. "Sigrun has counseled me to 'make friends' among the Wardens. It is an interesting concept which I am not averse to."

"Yeah, well, don't hold your breath on my account." Anders said.

"I do not need to breathe." Justice said.

Anders rolled his eyes. "I'm going to get lunch. You coming?"

"I am with you." Justice said.

"You're really not." Anders mumbled, heading for the dining hall.

Amell was eating with the rest of the Wardens today. It was a welcome rarity. Amell normally only joined them for dinner. Anders grabbed himself a tray of stuffed pheasant, herb baked bread, mixed vegetables, and a mug of ale, and went to join him.

Nathaniel was sitting on one side of Amell, Sigrun on the other. Both of them scooted to make room for him. As a compromising adult, Anders probably would have forced his way in if they hadn't. Anders sat between Amell and Sigrun, and won an immediate hand on his thigh from Amell when he did.

"Were there a lot of injured today?" Amell guessed. "You're never late for a meal."

"Not really," Anders said, shooting Justice a look when he sat down beside Sigrun. "Someone scared the knickers off my physician and my aide, so they took off early and I had to clean by myself."

"It was not my intent to intimidate them." Justice said stiffly. "Healing is a noble pursuit."

"I'm sure you didn't do anything wrong, sweetie." Sigrun said, giving Justice's hand a pat.

"What about you?" Anders asked. "What happened to daddy dearest?"

"Maybe I just felt like eating with all of you." Amell said.

"Old fart's asleep," Oghren said around a mouthful of pheasant.

"That too," Amell said.

"So does that mean you're free today?" Anders asked.

"It might," Amell grinned.

"Hey, hey. No flirting at the table," Oghren said. "I'm trying to keep food down over here."

"You are doing an excellent job of keeping most of it in your beard." Velanna said.

Oghren glanced down at himself and shrugged, "I'm saving some for later."

"You are saving all of it, at this rate." Velanna said. "Creators, will you at least turn your head? The fell cloud emanating from your gaping maw is like to end us all."

"Well, they didn't call me the ladykiller of Orzammar for nothing," Oghren chuckled.

"Don't get him started," Sigrun begged, "Please."

"So not that we're not pals or anything, but can someone else take 'Kristoff' for the rest of the day?" Anders asked.

"I've got dibs," Sigrun grinned, "I want to show him the garden we've been building. Oh, and that reminds me, here's your dagger back." Sigrun plucked said dagger off her belt, and slid it back into the sheath on 'Kristoff's belt.

"Did I drop this?" Justice wondered.

"Oh, no. I nicked it from your belt this morning," Sigrun shrugged, "Old habits die hard, you know. Kind of like all of us."

"So I'm missing one of the rings in my set..." Anders said.

"Well don't look at me." Sigrun held up both her hands, "Your rings weird me out. The enchantments make them feel wrong. Like hot and cold at the same time."

"I thought magic was cool?" Anders asked.

"It is cool," Sigrun said, "Most of the time."

"Stealing is wrong," Justice muttered.

"Only if you get caught, sweetie," Sigrun grinned, climbing off the bench. Anders had no idea how she put up with the spirit's constant lectures. Then again, compared to the spiels Justice gave Anders and Velanna, Sigrun's antics earned her little more than a slap on the wrist. She was so cute it was hard for Anders to be mad at her. Maybe the spirit felt the same way. "Come on, let me go show you the gardens."

Sigrun grabbed Justice's gauntlet-clad hand, and dragged him out of the dining hall. A few people gave the spirit curious stares as it left with Sigrun, Anders noticed. He couldn't help wondering how much longer they were going to get away with this.

"Your father leaves tomorrow morning, correct?" Nathaniel asked.

"He does." Amell said.

"That's unfortunate," Nathaniel said, "Do you have plans for him to visit in the future?"

"He promised to write, once he was settled," Amell said.

"... This probably isn't the time, but there's something I've been meaning to ask you," Nathaniel said, "With your father visiting like this, and how much it clearly means to you, I can't get the thought out of my head. That night in Denerim, when my father died... did he-I mean..."

"It was quick." Amell said.

Nathaniel swallowed and nodded. Anders swore his eyes were misted, "Thank you,"

"I'm sorry, Nathaniel," Amell said.

"It wasn't your fault," Nathaniel said. He picked up his tray and excused himself. Velanna followed him with her eyes, and set her hands on the bench as if to stand, only to hesitate.

"Ah, go on, gal," Oghren shoved her, and Velanna toppled off the bench, "You know you want him."

"I want no such thing!" Velanna hissed, and left in the opposite direction Nathaniel had gone.

"Now look what you did," Anders said.

"Hey, it ain't my sodding fault this group's got so much unresolved sexual tension," Oghren huffed.

"No, it's really not," Anders laughed.

"Nice of you to lie to Archy like that," Oghren said with a nod to Amell.

"Wait, that was a lie?" Anders asked, "So Nate's dad... I mean..."

"Death is never gentle, Anders," Amell said.

"... I guess not," Anders allotted, "Still, that sucks."

"It did suck," Amell agreed.

They finished eating. Oghren went back for seconds, and Anders left with Amell. Amell had gotten shameless ever since the assassination attempt, and didn't seem to have any qualms about where he put his hands or who saw them together. On the one hand, it was hard not to be a little unsettled knowing someone wanted Amell dead, but on the other, it was pretty hilarious the attempt to get mages out of the spotlight had backfired so hard.

"So what did you want to do today?" Amell asked. "We could go for a walk on the walls, or get in a few games of Wicked Grace or draughts..."

"Draughts sounds fun, provided it's in your room, and I can take my pants off," Anders said.

"I assumed that was a given," Amell grinned, and led him up through the Vigil.  

Anders took off his boots and his socks, and stripped out of his trousers the second the door to Amell's room closed. He gave the trousers a vindictive kick that sent them sliding under the couch. Amell took off his boots, but left the rest of his clothes on.

The room had recovered from the assassination attempt, for the most part. The liquor cabinet had been replaced, the stone had been scrubbed clean, new tapestries and a new low table replaced the ones eaten by the flames. Anders threw himself down on the couch and Amell went to fetch the board game from its place on one of the bookshelves.

Amell set up the board game on the couch, and sat on the floor. Probably to be closer to Anders than he would have been if he set up the game on the table.

"So don't get mad, but have you gotten a sort of creepy vibe from your dad at all?" Anders asked, nudging Amell with his foot.

"Creepy vibe?" Amell asked.

"Yeah," Anders said. "You know, he came down to watch me in the infirmary the other day, when I was stitching up a patient. Sat there for an hour and all he said when he left was 'You have steady hands,'"

"Well, you do have steady hands," Amell grinned.

"See from you, that's a sexy compliment." Anders said. "From your dad it's just weird."

"Maybe a little, but he's my father, Anders." Amell said it like it meant something. Anders envied him a bit.

"How are you doing?" Anders asked. "With him leaving tomorrow?"

"It's... a lot more difficult than I thought it would be," Amell admitted. "I made all the arrangements with Alim. He's leaving early in the morning, and we've more or less said our goodbyes but...

"I always tried not to think of having a father. It made it easier, growing up, if he didn't exist, or if he was like my grandfather, but he's not. He's everything I never hoped for. He knows so much about blood magic and necromancy... he studied under the Mortalitasi, back in Nevarra, before he came to Kirkwall and met my mother.

"To hear him talk, he gave up everything for her. I barely remember her, but I think I could tell you about every single hair on her head after listening to my father talk about her. I always used to think she hated magic, like my grandfather, because of what she used to say when she put me to bed. I never would have guessed she spent a decade harboring an apostate... she's dead now."

"I'm sorry," Anders said.

"I'm fine," Amell said. He reached out and caught Anders' ankle, and kissed the sole of his foot. "Thank you for asking."

"Yeah, well... you know," Anders said.

"I know," Amell grinned. He won the first game, and they set up another.

"I wrote to my mother." Anders blurted.

"You did?" Amell's hand froze over a game piece.

"I guess with your dad showing up, and being the man of your dreams and everything..." Anders shrugged. "I don't know, it got me thinking. The Circle never let me send any letters back home, considering my father said 'no contact.' And then on the run, what was the point? I could never stay in one place long enough to expect a letter back, but...

"When you recruited me, I didn't know what to expect. Honestly, I thought I was jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Trust the crazy maleficar, or trust the templars? But aside from the darkspawn, the crazy walking trees, the dragons, the darkspawn, the demons, the broodmothers, the golems, the darkspawn..."

"I think you said darkspawn already," Amell grinned.

"Well just in case I didn't, aside from the darkspawn, being a Warden is almost tolerable." Anders said. "And someday I'll have to pay you back for those three sovereigns, because this... well it works for me."

Amell wasn't paying any attention to the board game, which was great, because it meant Anders was crushing him. "It means a lot to hear you say that," Amell said.

"Good, because my follow up is me asking for a favor." Anders said.  

"Good thing I can't say no to you," Amell joked.

"Well, you might say no to this," Anders said, "I was wondering, if she writes back... Since you gave Oghren leave to see his family... maybe you'd be willing to give me leave to head up to Tallo? Spend a few months visiting there? Or let me borrow some coin to send to her so she could come down here?"

"Of course, Anders," Amell caught his hand and wove their fingers together, forcing Anders to use his left for the board game. "Why would I say no to that?"

"I don't know," Anders confessed, feeling a weight lift off his chest. "I thought maybe you'd think I wouldn't come back or something."

"If you didn't, then at least it would be your choice," Amell said.

"Alright, pants off," Anders shoved the board game away. He was two moves away from victory, but to the Void with it. Anders rolled onto the floor and on top of Amell. The suddenness of it won him a laugh, and it sounded lyrical. Anders had his face in Amell's crotch, and Amell's trousers halfway off when someone knocked on the door.

"Warden-Commander?" A servant called through the door.

"Ugh," Amell groaned.

"I have to put my pants back on, don't I?" Anders sighed.

"I think we both have to put our pants back on," Amell said. "Give me a minute!" Amell yelled at the door.

They dressed hastily, and Amell conjured a weak frost spell to kill his erection. The sight sent a sympathy pain through Anders' crotch. Anders settled on sitting on the couch, and crossing his legs when Amell got the door.

"What is it?" Amell asked whoever was at the door.

"There are two Grey Wardens here to see you, Commander." The servant said, "Warden Loghain Mac Tir and Warden Jean-Marc Stroud."

"Send them up," Amell said.

"Yes Ser," The servant said.

"Should I go?" Anders wondered.

"You don't have to," Amell said, leaning on the couch behind him, "Unless something confidential comes up. I'm not sure what this is, but Loghain is pretty succinct. I doubt we'll talk long."

"Well alright then." Anders said, "I guess I shouldn't pass up a chance to meet him. ...Is he staying here? Like with the rest of us?"

"I doubt it." Amell said. "He's been recruiting out of Denerim for the past nine months. Queen Anora wanted her father around, after the Blight."

"Doesn't everyone?" Anders asked.

"You don't." Amell gave his ear a playful tug.

"I don't," Anders agreed, chuckling.

Loghain and Jean-Marc were seen in moments later. Anders had never seen such a pair of frowns in his life.  Loghain was a black haired giant, with jowls that could put a mabari to shame and a nose so massive Anders wondered how he could even see around it.

Jean-Marc was little better. His eyes were two tiny beads of black beneath a heavy brow, and his mustache was so thick and heavy it drooped over his lips and had to cause problems when he ate or drank. Someday, Anders bet he would find another man half as attractive as Amell, but it definitely wasn't today.

"Warden-Commander Amell," Jean-Marc bowed, "It is an honor to make your acquaintance. I am Jean-Marc Stroud, formerly of Ansburg. I am to be reassigned to your command, with the intent of operating in the south western Free Marches, following the completion of my current assignment."

"Because of Amaranthine's proximity to Kirkwall and Ostwick?" Amell guessed.

"Just so," Jean-Marc smiled. Maybe. Anders wasn't sure. His mustache moved, and Anders guessed it was a smile. "A short boat ride is far preferable to crossing the Vimmark mountains every time I am to deliver my reports. I look forward to working with you, Commander."

"And what's your current assignment?" Amell asked.

"That would be me," Loghain said. Maker, what an awful voice. The man sounded like he was talking with a mouthful of marbles. "I have been commanded to join the Wardens at Montsimmard." Loghain huffed, as if extremely offended by the idea of anyone commanding him to do anything. "Apparently I am not trusted to remain in Ferelden. I'll interfere, I'm told.

"...They're probably right, but still, to send me to Orlais. I thought darkspawn blood would be the last poison I'd have to swallow... No offense, Stroud."

"None taken, my friend," Jean-Marc snorted. "I am based out of the Free Marches for a reason. My homeland is no home to me. I do not envy you."

"I could intervene on your behalf," Amell offered.

"I am afraid that is quite impossible,"  Jean-Marc said. "Our orders come from Weisshaupt itself."

"In any case, I did not come here to complain of my fate." Loghain said. "I see you have a guest, and we are interrupting."

"No, not at all," Amell lied. "Jean-Marc-"

"Stroud, please." Stroud interrupted. "I prefer it. I believe you can relate."

"Stroud," Amell corrected himself. "Loghain, this is Anders. He's one of my Senior most Wardens, and our resident spirit healer."

Anders waved.

"A pleasure to meet you, Serah." Stroud said. "I look forward to serving with you."

"Quite." Loghain said gruffly. Charming fellow, really. Loghain turned back to Amell. "I had heard you recruited five new wardens in the past four months. No surprise there, I suppose. You always were persuasive.

"Anora told me of the attack. Orlesian or not, the Wardens here did not deserve such a fate, nor did any of the young recruits I found for you. I found only one more since then, a rather bold elven girl. I sent her to the barracks. I trust you don't mind."

"Not at all." Amell said.

"How is life as the Commander of the Grey treating you?" Loghain asked.

"Well enough," Amell said. "It's good to see you again. Can I get either of you a drink?"

"I'll take a brandy," Anders said.

"Brandy would be wonderful." Stroud agreed. Anders wondered if they were going to be friends. He seemed nice enough.

"Nothing for me," Loghain said. "I'm old, I've had a long day, and I need a nap."

Amell went to his liquor cabinet to pour them all drinks. Stroud took a seat in an empty armchair.

"There's one other thing." Loghain said, still standing. "We cleared out the cache in Denerim, and brought all the supplies here, but I doubt you care about that. I spoke to Anora, and I called in a favor for you."

"You don't owe me any favors, Loghain." Amell said.

"You will not want to refuse this one, I think." Loghain said.

"You're going to want to put your glass down." Stroud suggested. Amell put his glass on the low table. 

Loghain opened the door to Amell's quarters, put two fingers in his mouth, and whistled an ear-splitting whistle.

"You're joking." Amell said.

"When am I ever?" Loghain asked.

Amell ran to the door and dropped into a crouch. "Barkspawn!"

A few seconds later, and a mass of brown charged through the door and tackled Amell, knocking him onto his back and sending him flying back a yard.

That...was not a dog. That was a small horse. The giant slathering mass of muscle was the size of three Amell's, and it's tongue was the size of his face. The mabari slobbered violently over Amell's face, alternatively barking and whining. Amell was laughing his manic laugh.

It was definitely gross, but... Anders couldn't help thinking it was nice to see him happy.

"Apparently, he didn't take well to the kennels." Loghain said. "I'm told exposure to the Taint made it hard for him to sire, and the cramped quarters made him too aggressive for most of the handlers."

"You and me both, dog." Anders said.

"Loghain, I could kiss you," Amell laughed.

"Then I shall consider it thanks enough if you refrain." Loghain said.

"I am familiar with Ferelden customs," Stroud said. "It seems most unusual such a revered beast was taken from you in the first place."

"The fault there is mine." Loghain said. "My son-in-law is surprisingly less than fond of me, and felt the need to punish our Commander here for sparing my life. Hopefully, with my leaving for Orlais, you'll have no more trouble on my account. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll retire to the barracks."

"Wait, wait," Amell protested from under his massive mabari. With a serious struggle, and what looked like magical help, he managed to escape out from under it. "Loghain, I can't thank you enough for this."

"A handshake will do," Loghain said, holding out a hand, "You are far too wet for a hug."

Amell shook his hand, grinning. Barkspawn circled his legs, licking at the hand Amell left dangling, "How long are you staying before you leave for Montsimmard?"

"A few days at most." Stroud said. "I should take my leave as well. I can see we have interrupted a rousing game of draughts. Black wins in two turns."

"I'm black," Anders grinned.

"To your victory," Stroud grinned and down the last of his brandy before standing. "Commander, thank you for the drink. Anders, Barkspawn." Stroud nodded to all of them.

Nice fellow. Definitely a possible friend. Shame about the mustache.

Stroud and Loghain left.

Amell dropped back onto the floor with Barkspawn, babbling to the dog about how much he missed it and how horrible the kennels must have been. Anders did not see the appeal of the slobbering, excessive affection. Anders watched the two rolling on the ground, and couldn't help noticing Barkspawn was decorated with cutting scars terribly similar to his master all along his haunches.

Did Amell use the dog's blood for his spells? Did the dog not mind? Mabari were supposedly smart, but the dog obviously didn't seem to be holding a grudge. Anders couldn't imagine hurting Ser Pounce-a-Lot, even for a good cause. Accidentally stepping on the tabby's tail brought Anders near to tears.

"So I guess we're not picking up where we left off." Anders joked, setting down his empty glass of brandy.

Amell crawled out from under Barkspawn, and rejoined him on the couch. "No, I'm sorry, we can, I just..."

"I was kidding." Anders said. "I'm glad you got your dog back."

Barkspawn trotted around the couch and sat down on the floor in front of him. The dog cocked its head at him, and Anders pulled his legs away.

Amell nudged him, "Say hi."

"Seriously?" Anders asked. "It's a dog."

Barkspawn growled at him.

"A very perceptive dog." Anders revised.

"He's a mabari," Amell said. "They understand a lot more than you think. You know Tevinter mages created them by enhancing them with blood magic."

"Everyone knows that," Anders said. "You know sometimes I wonder if you could use the same blood magic on a cat, but it probably wouldn't change much. They already get to eat and sleep all day."

Amell stared at him expectantly. Anders sighed, and looked at the dog. It was drooling. Ew.

"So you're okay with the name Barkspawn, huh?" Anders asked.

Barkspawn barked.

"I guess that's a yes?" Anders asked.

"It's a yes. See, ears forward, head up, eyes on you." Amell said.

Barkspawn barked again. Anders winced.

"Barkspawn, this is Anders. Be very nice to Anders. We like him." Amell grabbed Anders' face and kissed him. He smelled like dog. Maker, he even tasted like dog.

The kiss was horrible, in Anders opinion, but the dog loved it. It jumped back and forth, barking wildly, and leapt up into Anders' lap to slobber on his face. Anders wheezed. The thing weighed more than Amell. "No! No no no! Off! No jumping!"

Barkspawn climbed off with a whine.

"You're mean." Amell said.

"Too bad," Anders said, wiping fur and slobber off himself. "That thing has claws like a shriek and weighs more than you do."

"He's not a thing," Amell cooed, grabbing Barkspawn's face in his hands. The dog licked him. "Are you sure you want to pick up where we left off? How do you feel about drinks? Maybe some music, and a dance or something? Someone told me Anders' spicy shimmy is all the rage."

"You are in a seriously good mood, aren't you?" Anders asked.

"I love my mabari," Amell said unapologetically. Barkspawn barked. "Come downstairs with me. We can go find Stroud, and that new elven recruit, and everyone else and celebrate."

"I've got seriously bad luck with elves, but alright," Anders pushed himself up off the couch. "If you want a party, let's go party."

Amell grabbed his hand, and dragged him downstairs. It didn't take long to gather everyone into the dining hall, find the bards staying at the Vigil and clear a space for dancing, and get drinks flowing. The elven girl seemed overwhelmed by it all. Anders never caught her name, but she spent the entire ordeal hovering near Velanna. But save for the elves, everyone else was ecstatic for free drinks and good music.

The minstrels played Andraste's Mabari more times than Anders could count. They played Blood on the Ramparts, the Ballad of Ayesliegh, and a dozen other songs. Dinner was served around them, and soldiers and servants ended up joining in the revelry. Anders danced with everyone from Amell to Woolsey to Stroud to Sigrun, but mostly Amell.

At some point Amell's father showed up, and the two stood apart to talk for a time. Anders sat on a bench and stared at Amell, drunk and happy and a little horny. It was painfully fun tossing Amell around the dance floor and being tossed in turn, even if Amell did smell like dog. Anders was looking forward to doing the same in bed later.

The dog also smelled like dog. Anders wrinkled his nose when the massive mabari trudged over and sat at his feet. Barkspawn stared up at him happily, and Anders dared a scratch on its ear. The dog leaned into the pet, so Anders supposed it liked him. "So what do you think about me and him, huh?" Anders asked.

Barkspawn barked.

"That's a yes, right?" Anders guessed, "You're not so bad, I guess. Even if you stink. Kind of like Oghren. So am I better than the last guy Amell was with?"

Barkspawn cocked his head at him.

"You don't know, huh?" Anders guessed.

Anders wrapped an arm around Barkspawn and leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially. "What about that guy?" Anders asked, directing the dog's gaze towards Quentin.

Barkspawn growled.

"Ha." Anders said. He grabbed his drink off the table and knocked it back. "I knew it."

"Knew what?" Amell asked, appearing at his side. Anders jumped. He must have been sloshed. Last he'd checked Amell was half way across the dining hall.

"Your dog likes me," Anders grinned.

"Of course he does," Amell grinned back, face flush with drink. He grabbed Anders' hand to pull him back onto the dance floor. "He likes everyone who likes me."

Notes:

Fanart
Anders and Amell dancing
Amell
Amell and Barkspawn
Accursed Ones Fan-Playlist - Noxgold
Accursed Ones Fan-Playlist - The Southern Pansy

Inspired Works
Amell's Mabari: Barkspawn's opinion on the events of this chapter as written by Kyirah.

Chapter 31: Eyes of the Beholder

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back! I've been waiting to write this chapter for so long, you have no idea. Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 1 Frumentum Sometime
Somewhere

Anders tucked his scarf tighter around his neck. Kingsway was freezing, and Harvestmere was little better. The scarf was a nice start, but Anders definitely needed extra padding for any future expeditions, and thicker socks.

"Cold?" Amell asked, slipping an arm around his waist. He was delightfully warm, as always, and Anders leaned into him.

"Not anymore," Anders decided, turning his head for a kiss. He stopped abruptly when he noticed Amell's eyes were gold. Well. No harm in it. Anders gave Compassion a quick peck on the cheek. "Hey gorgeous. What are you doing?"

"... Nothing," Compassion shook off Amell's form, and glowed her usual white glow. "What made you aware of me? You've been dreaming so soundly."

"What? You mean you don't want to talk to me?" Anders pouted. He glanced around her demesne, relieved it looked peaceful. His memories floated through the air, and were imbedded in the ground, no demons in sight.

"I always want to talk with you. I love you, but I did not wake you." Compassion frowned a tiny frown, and ran her fingers down his arm. "... There is magic on you. A veil of sleep."

"Well that's... weird." Anders frowned, taking a seat in the reeds. He stared at his hands, but he wasn't a spirit. He couldn't see the magic. "Maybe I was snoring and Amell wanted me to be quiet? Does it look like his magic?"

Compassion sat with him, and took his hands to stare thoughtfully at magic Anders couldn't see. "I believe so." She said eventually.

"Well, mystery solved." Anders said brightly. "How've you been, sweets?"

"I am well." Compassion smiled. "No demons threaten me, and you dream often of wonderful things. Comforting foods, kind words, fond memories. Your nightmares are few, and the corruption... no longer frightens me so."

"Well good." Anders grinned. "I don't think I could do this Grey Warden thing without you."

"I could not be at all without you." Compassion said.

"Alright, it's not a contest," Anders teased.

"You think it is." Compassion said. "You worry caring for another will make me jealous, or that caring for others somehow makes our relationship mean less. It will not. It does not. Every person you care for is another instance of Compassion for me to draw from. I am happy for you and the friends you have made."

"You just can't stay out of my head, can you?" Anders asked. He picked up one slender hand of light and kissed Compassion's fingers. "Thanks, doll. You'll always be my favorite."

Compassion shifted closer to him to rest her head on his shoulder. Anders sat in the reed covered fields of her demesne, watching the islands of other spirits and demons drift through the green sky above and around them. His dream broken, it was no longer cold, but comfortably warm, as it should have been, considering Anders was actually lying under a thick woolen comforter and cotton sheets with Amell on his shoulder, back in the real world.

"Can I ask you something?" Anders asked.

"Of course." Compassion said.

"... Does it ever bother you, the way I am?" Anders asked.

"What do you mean?" Compassion asked.

"You know... the way I only care about myself." Anders said.

Compassion set a hand on his chest. Anders stared at it. It radiated warmth, and made his fingers and toes tingle. He felt impossibly and inexplicably loved. "This is a lie. You care about so much more than yourself. You care about me, about your mother, about your friends, about your lover. You care for your cat, for the mages you knew in the Circle, for every woman you ever took to bed and every person who ever did you a kindness.

"I was wrong, to think this corruption could ever make you lose your capacity for Compassion. You are so much stronger than it. I see that now. And I see this spirit of Justice, who has put this doubt in your head. Do not listen to it. It does not know you. I know you. It would challenge you to take on an impossible task because it cares not for your happiness or even your life."

"You always know just what to say, don't you?" Anders asked.

She needed a new form. Compassion was white light, in the shape of a woman in her thirties. Her eyes were gold, and matched golden locks that spilled in lovely curls down to her shoulders. She had soft features, a sweet button nose, and lips framed with laugh lines. She wore a plain white dress, and was always barefoot. She looked just like his mother, but she wasn't his mother. She was her own person. Or spirit. They'd have to think of some other form for her. 

"What about the blood magic?" Anders asked. "Are you okay with that?"

"I will not pretend to understand the world of mortals." Compassion said. "If there is magic you need that I cannot offer, then I trust you to use it wisely."

"You're too good to be true, you know that?" Anders asked. "I think I'm ready to wake up, though. Do you think you could dispel this sleep spell for me? I can't believe Amell didn't just kick me and tell me to roll over or something."

"He cares a great deal for you." Compassion said needlessly. "Perhaps he wished to let you rest."

"Probably," Anders said. "He's too nice for his own good."

"I like him." Compassion said.

"Change your mind again?" Anders grinned.

Compassion set her hands on his shoulders, and gave his forehead a kiss without answering him. The Fade fell away, and Anders woke to barking.

Anders had definitely guessed wrong. He was in no way ready to wake up. He had a splitting hangover from the night before, and the barking dog wasn't helping. Sex had left him sore, and he barely felt rested. It was still dark in Amell's room, and Anders wouldn't have been surprised if he'd only been asleep a few hours.

"Amell," Anders groaned, dragging his pillow over his head. "Dog."

The barking persisted. Maker, his head. At least Ser Pounce-a-Lot was quiet. Anders groped blindly for his cat, but couldn't find it. The damn dog had probably scared it under the bed.

"Amell, dog," Anders whined again, kicking at Amell's side of the bed. His leg connected with thin air. Anders dragged the pillow off his head, and pawed at where Amell should have been. Nothing. Probably taking a piss or something.

Anders sat up slowly. The room spun wildly, in one direction and then the other. Anders swallowed back vomit. His head felt like someone had cracked it. Anders had definitely had too much to drink last night, but Maker if it hadn't been worth it. Happy Amell was definitely an Amell Anders wanted to stay around. Anders was pretty sure he'd lost his tunic before he'd even made it to Amell's bedroom.

Anders rubbed sleep from the corner of his eyes, and wiped drool off his mouth. The dog was still barking. Anders groaned and looked around for it. The massive mabari was standing right at the edge of the bed, barking at Anders.

"What?" Anders demanded. "What do you want, you mangy monster?"

Barkspawn barked again.

"You're hungry?" Anders guessed. "You need to shit? What?"

Barkspawn barked, ran in a circle, and backed up a few feet to bark again.

"Alright, alright," Anders muttered, stumbling out of bed. He almost fell over. Anders grabbed for purchase on Amell's nightstand, and silently prayed for the room to stop spinning.

Barkspawn shoved him. Anders stumbled, and fell back on the bed. His hand landed on Amell's pillow. It felt sticky, and slightly tacky. Anders might have guessed it for sweat, if the texture of blood weren't so familiar to him. Anders woke up immediately. He snatched Amell's pillow, grabbed a wisp from across the Fade, and bound it to a ball of light.

The pillow was caked with blood. Hours old, if Anders had to guess. What... Anders dropped it and jumped up. The room was a mess. A candle stick and the pride demon statuette had been knocked off the nightstand on Amell's side of the bed. One red hand print stained the hardwood, another on the bedsheets beside where Amell's head usually lay. Another was even on Anders' chest. They were the right size for Amell's hands.

What.

What the fuck?

Had Amell tried to wake him? Amell had been the one to cast him into a deeper sleep. Compassion had said so. Anders thoughts fell out of his head. The window was barred, the door closed. What the fuck had happened? "Where is he?" Anders asked, unable to believe he was asking the dog.

Barkspawn ran to the door to the washroom. He barked again. Anders ran after him. There were more smears of blood on the door, scattered around the handle. Anders reached for the handle and stopped. Don't be stupid, Anders. That's hard for you, but give it a shot. Anders summoned a barrier and a spell shield, wondering how much either would help if he ran into trouble, considering he was naked. It was better than nothing. Anders opened the door.

Anders' heart was hammering madly in his chest, but no assassins leapt out at him. He wiped the sweat off his palms on his thighs. The towel cabinet was in shambles again. Both doors were open, and the towels had been knocked onto the floor. The stool to the vanity had been knocked over, and kicked into the stone tub.

Amell... Amell in the corner of the washroom again. A very vivid flashback froze Anders in place, and kept him from moving and even breathing until he saw Amell's shoulders move. He was fine. He was alive. Perspective, Anders.

Amell was on his knees, hunched in on himself and holding a towel to his face. The towel was dark red. Maybe he had a bad nose bleed. Or something. "Amell?" Anders called hesitantly. "Are you okay?"

Amell sobbed. Actually sobbed. Anders barely recognized the tortured sound when it came from Amell, so laced with pain and anguish it reminded Anders of his grimoire.

"What happened?" Anders asked. He crossed the room to touch Amell's shoulder, and the man's whole body shook with another wretched sob. "Can you talk? Do you need me to heal you?"

"Can you?" Amell choked out around his bloody towel. 

Anders knelt down next to him. The hard stone hurt his knees, but Anders barely noticed. "Of course I can. Thedas' greatest healer, remember?" Anders ran tentative fingers through Amell's hair, and summoned Compassion.

Anders stopped the bleeding; there was nothing else for him to do. For the most part, the wound was already clotted. All that remained was an ache and general soreness, behind Amell's eyes. Anders stared at him with a rising sense of dread.

"You can't, can you?" Amell sobbed, still making every effort to hold the towel in front of his face. Anders put one hand on Amell's shoulder. Amell flinched, but he was already in the corner. There was nowhere for him to go. Anders took hold of one of Amell's scarred arms with his free hand and tugged, but Amell was stronger than him. Amell's hands didn't budge. They didn't really need to.

"... Your eyes." Anders said.

Amell curled up to press his forehead into his knees. He stayed there, weeping, and did nothing else.

"Your fucking eyes," Anders said.

Anders wrapped his arms around Amell's shoulders, and pulled Amell against his chest. Amell fit against him as well as he always had. Anders ran his hand up and down Amell's back, but he couldn't tell if Amell noticed. Anders barely noticed.

Maker.

Andraste.

Fucking what the fuck?

Anders hugged Amell as tight as he was able. It didn't feel tight enough. Anders kissed his forehead, he kissed his hair, he held him tighter still. None of it mattered. Not to Anders, and not to Amell. None of it gave Amell his eyes back.

Barkspawn crept into the washroom to curl up against Amell's back, whining. Even Ser Pounce-a-Lot wandered in for a curious sniff. The towel fell away at some point, and Amell clung to him, his nails digging into Anders' back. Anders held him, his chest sticky with blood and tears, and his head empty.

It was over an hour before Anders found his voice. "Someone cast a sleep spell on me. I thought it was you. Compassion said it looked like your magic, but it wasn't, was it?"

Amell stiffened.

 "Maker, I should have known it wasn't," Anders said, a lump welling in his throat. "I didn't even think... I thought I was snoring, and you just didn't want to wake me or something. I'm so fucking stupid."

Anders ran a hand through Amell's hair, and kissed the top of his head again. He felt like crying, or screaming, but that felt selfish. He breathed in Amell's scent, but it didn't help soothe him any.

"Anders," Amell whispered.

"Yeah?" Anders asked.

"Will you get me the wraps I wear on my arms?" Amell asked, his voice hollow. "They're in the bottom drawer of my armoire, next to my smalls."

"... For your eyes?" Anders guessed. Amell didn't clarify. "You should let me bandage them properly. They could still get infected, and I don't know how bad the damage was unless you let me see what happened."

"No." Amell said.

"Amell-" Anders started.

"No." Amell said again. "Just get my wraps."

"Amell, you need to let me treat this properly." Anders said. "I'm your healer. Let me take care of you."

"I don't want you to take care of me." Amell said.

Anders knew he deserved it. He'd said near the same thing after Amell had mind controlled him. It still hurt. More than Anders expected it to.

"Well too fucking bad," Anders said. "Someone has to."

"The Vigil's physician can." Amell said.

"Seriously?" Anders cupped Amell's cheek, and tried to lift Amell's head off his chest. Amell didn't budge. "Amell,"

"Please don't make me beg, Anders," Amell said. "I don't want you to see me like this."

"... Bottom drawer, right?" Anders asked.

"Yes." Amell groped for the towel he'd dropped, and pressed it back into his face.

Anders untangled himself from Amell. His legs were numb, and buckled under him when he tried to stand. He staggered to his feet, and had scarcely taken a step when Amell's shoulders started shaking again.

Anders dropped back onto the floor and hugged him again. Anders eyes watered, and he took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. Amell didn't need him crying right now. Anders kissed Amell's forehead again and left the washroom.

Anders stood in front of the armoire without seeing it. What other mages were at the Vigil? What mage had magic that would resemble Amell's? What mage was obsessed with Amell's eyes and commented on them almost daily? Anders slammed his fists against the armoire.

The doors bounced open, and the bottom drawers slid out. Anders slammed his fists against it again and again. "Stupid fucking bastard!"  Anders yelled, not sure if he meant Quentin or himself.

Anders punched the door to the armoire. The hard wood hurt his knuckles, and the jolt of pain reminded him Amell was still waiting for him. Anders opened the bottom drawer and found one set of wraps neatly rolled up in the corner.

Amell hadn't moved.

"Do you want my help?" Anders asked, pressing the wraps into the hand Amell wasn't using to hold a towel to his face.

"No. I can do it." Amell said. He touched the wall with the hand holding the wraps, and turned so he was facing the corner. Amell set the towel aside and Anders watched him struggle trying to get the long strip of cloth around his eyes.

Amell managed eventually, wrapping the cloth around his eyes three times before he tied it off. The wraps were meant for his arms, and were ridiculously long, hanging down to the small of his back.

"I need to get dressed." Amell set his hands on the wall, and climbed unsteadily to his feet. There was blood crusted on Amell's eyebrows and on his cheeks, where the wraps cut off. Amell held onto the wall, and stumbled forward. He bumped into his vanity, and Anders took his arm to try to help him walk.

Amell shook him off. "I don't need help."

Amell definitely needed help. Anders watched him blunder around his vanity, and stagger out the door. Anders followed Amell into the bedroom, and watched him search ineffectually for his armoire. It made Anders sick to his stomach. Amell couldn't have looked more helpless, and utterly out of character. His hands were stretched out in front of him, and he took small, lost steps, his fingers never quite touching the piece of furniture.

After less than a minute of searching a wave of telekinetic force exploded off Amell. "Where the fuck is my armoire!?" Amell screamed. Barkspawn butted his head against Amell's ass, and knocked him forward a step into the piece of furniture in question. "Good boy." Amell mumbled, holding down a hand for the dog. Barkspawn licked it and whined.

"Maybe I could pick you out something to wear today?" Anders offered. "You know your fashion sense is kind of rubbish."

"Okay." Amell agreed, defeated.

Anders put a hand on Amell's shoulder and moved him a foot to the side so Anders could get into the armoire. He picked out a blue and silver Grey Warden outfit Amell had worn before, and pulled Amell over to his bed to sit him down. Anders pressed the pile of clothes into Amell's hands, with the assumption Amell would probably insist on dressing himself.

Anders found a gold doublet and a pair of brown trousers he kept in Amell's quarters for himself. Anders dressed. Amell was sitting on his bed with his doublet unbuttoned when Anders finished dressing. Anders buttoned it for him without saying anything, and redid Amell's belt when he noticed it wasn't notched properly.

"... Anders, can you get Varel, Garavel, and Woolsey?" Amell asked. "And the physician? And send them up here?"

"Yeah. Yeah, of course." Anders said. "Anyone else?"

"No," Amell said. "And tell no one what happened."

"Do you need anything?" Anders asked. "Do you want me to bring you breakfast... Or something?"

He needs his fucking eyes, Anders. An extra breakfast muffin isn't going to mean a damn right now.

"No," Amell said.

"... What about Quentin?" Anders asked.

"What about Quentin?" Amell asked.

"Should I tell someone to look for him or something?" Anders asked. "You know he did this. Don't tell me you don't know. An assassin wouldn't have done this."

"Quentin's gone, Anders." Amell said tonelessly. "I made arrangements for him to leave early today. He'll be halfway to Tevinter or Nevarra by now."

"Then we should fucking find him," Anders said. "Have your Mage Collective track him down and bring him back here."

"Why?" Amell asked.

"Because he fucking mutilated you, that's fucking why!" Anders yelled.

"Can you put my eyes back in if we get them back?" Amell asked.

"That's... I..." Anders sputtered.

"Then why do I care?" Amell said. "Please get my advisors, Anders. I have to talk to them."

Anders stared at him in disbelief. Amell stared at the floor. No... no he didn't. Amell didn't stare at anything because Amell couldn't fucking see because he didn't have any fucking eyes. Anders bit back a scream, and locked his hands over his head.

"Alright." Anders said when he collected himself. "Alright, I'll go tell them to come up here, and I'll send you my physician, and..." And what? What else was there to do? "And then what?"

"I'll send for you." Amell said.

"You'll send for me. Right. Okay. Can I just come back after I get everyone instead?" Anders asked.

"I need to talk to them, Anders." Amell said.

"You can't talk to them with me there?" Anders asked.

"Anders please. This will be a lot easier for me if you're not here." Amell said. It hurt. Anders didn't know why. "I'm sorry. I'll send for you. I promise."

"... Alright. Alright, okay, sure. You'll send for me." Anders caught Amell's face in his hands and tilted his head up to kiss him. Amell responded listlessly, his lips barely moving. Anders let go of him.

Anders went to the door and stopped. Amell didn't move from his spot on the bed. Why would he? He couldn't see to go anywhere. Somehow, Anders forced himself out of the room. Ser Pounce-a-Lot scampered out with him, but Barkspawn stayed curled up at Amell's feet. At least Amell had that.

Anders went to get his physician first. The surly old fellow was in the infirmary, smearing a salve on a soldier's backside when Anders came in. "There you are," The old man scowled. "Have you see that fool boy today? He had last night's shift. I've told him, time and again, to make sure the infirmary is clean before he leaves. I think that's a reasonable enough request to make of an aide, but instead I come in this morning and find a bloody scalpel left out on the counter! You'd think-where are you going?"

Anders slammed the door to the infirmary back open and threw up in the grass outside the door. His vomit was all alcohol from last night, and it seared up his throat and burned up his stomach. Anders coughed and gagged, and stumbled back into the infirmary to pour himself a glass of water. Anders gargled it and spat it out in the grass outside, coughing again to clear his throat.

"What in the Maker's name is wrong with you?" His physician asked when Anders came back inside.

Anders made up a bag of everything Amell would need. Gauze, bandages, salves, balms, and a handful of drinks that helped with maintaining fluid levels and fighting off infection. He pushed it into his physician's bewildered hands. "The Commander needs to see you." Anders said.

Anders couldn't say how he'd said it, but whatever his tone or the look on his face, his physician abandoned his current patient and bolted out the door with the bag. Anders finished dressing the rash on the patient's backside before he left the infirmary to find Amell's advisors.

Anders knew he got them all, and sent them all along to Amell, but he didn't remember doing it. His mind was in a fog, and he only emerged from it when Velanna slapped him.

Anders looked up, cheek stinging. He was sitting on his bunk in the Wardens barracks. Velanna was standing beside his bunk. Sigrun was sitting on his bed, a scant foot away. Nathaniel, Justice, and Oghren and the new elven girl were staring at him from the table. Loghain and Stroud were Maker knew where.

Anders rubbed his wounded cheek, "Really though, the slapping. Use your words. You know, the common ones, not the elvish ones."

"We were using our words, you fool," Velanna said, "Sigrun has been trying to talk to you for a quarter hour. Vapid is one thing, but you are near comatose. What is the matter with you?"

I woke up to my lover curled up on the floor in a puddle of blood sobbing because his father gouged out his eyes and I slept through the whole damn thing. You know, Tuesdays.

"I uh..." Anders said. Nothing came to him. He'd never been a good liar. "You know,"

"Sweetie, we really don't." Sigrun squeezed his hand. Anders barely felt it. "What happened? You look like you're in shock."

"Shock. Right. That's it," Anders said. Shock sounded trivial, all things considering. It wasn't as if it was circulatory shock, just emotional. "Yeah, I guess,"

"What happened?" Sigrun asked.
 
Anders stared at her eyes. They were a bright blue, vivid and expressive, framed in tattoos. They were lovely, but they had nothing on Amell's eyes. The dark russet could look like blood or fire in the right light. Anders thought of all the times Amell had been on his knees, staring up at him with passionate abandon, eye-contact never wavering while they had sex. So much for that.

So much for every glint of amusement when Amell bit back a creepy laugh, so much for every frustratingly enigmatic stare, so much for ever seeing Anders again, and telling him he looked handsome, or that his hair was smart today, or his eyes went well with whatever shirt he had on. So much for all of it.

Velanna slapped him again. Anders blinked at her. "What?" Anders asked.

"Anders, are you alright?" Nathaniel asked.

"Yep." Anders lied, trying for a queasy smile. Sigrun gave him one in return.

"Okay," Sigrun said, giving his hand another squeeze, "Whatever it was, I guess you're pretty shaken. Let me know if I can do anything, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Anders said, "Thanks Sigrun,"

There was nothing anyone could do, but Anders didn't bother telling her that. He spent the rest of the day in an unhappy daze, until well after dinner when he got sick of waiting for Amell to send for him.

Two guards were posted outside Amell's door when he went up, and Anders couldn't help wondering where the bastards had been last night. Probably knocked unconscious by a sleep spell, same as Anders.

"I'm sorry, Ser, but the Commander isn't receiving any visitors," One of the guards said when Anders tried to walk past him.

"I'm his healer." Anders said. "I think I'm an exception."

"I'm sorry Ser but the Commander was very explicit. No visitors. No exceptions." The guard said.

"I'm always an exception." Anders lied, and thought seriously of knocking both men out with a sleep spell, or convincing them to let him in with blood magic. "Go ask him. He'll tell you."

The guards glanced at each other. One of them shrugged. After a bit of hesitation, one knocked. Anders heard a thud from inside, followed by a curse, and winced.

"What is it?" Amell called through the door a while later.

"Warden Anders here for you, Ser." One of the guards explained.

Silence. Miserable, horrible silence.

Eventually, "Let him in."

One of the guards unlocked the door for him.  Anders went inside.

Amell was sitting on his couch, Barkspawn in his lap. The crude cloth wraps he'd had tied around his eyes had been replaced with a proper bandage. If Anders looked at him from behind, he could almost pretend it was a headband. Anders shooed Barkspawn off Amell and took a seat next to him.

Amell smelled like dog again. Anders didn't care. He wrapped his arms around around Amell's shoulders and pulled him into his chest. He didn't know what to say, or what to ask, and settled imaginatively on nothing. Eventually they both fell asleep on the couch.

Anders had nightmares of darkspawn. By his fitful sleep, Amell must have as well. Come morning Anders offered to bring him breakfast again. Amell turned him down, and sent him away with the excuse that he had to meet with his advisors again. It probably wasn't an excuse, but it felt like one. Anders spent the day drinking with Oghren, until a servant came by in the afternoon, and told Oghren the Commander wanted to see him.

It was fair enough. Oghren was Amell's best friend. He'd have to tell him eventually. Anders drank alone, and sat with Ser Pounce-a-Lot until Oghren came back a surprisingly short while later. Anders didn't think it had been much more than an hour. The way the dwarf slammed the door open as his entrance made everyone jump.

Oghren's face was as red as his beard. He grabbed his blunt training axe from beside his bunk, and stormed back out without a word. Anders followed him. Everyone followed Anders.

Oghren went out to the training yards, stripped off his tunic, and tore into a training dummy, screaming wordless screams.

"What..." Sigrun said.

"What indeed." Nathaniel said, glancing at him. "Anders, do you know what this is about?"

Anders shrugged, envious. Ignorance was bliss, after all. Wisdom... Anders didn't know what wisdom was. Wisdom was a knot in his stomach and a lump in his throat. A servant tapped Anders on the shoulder, and he didn't even jump. Someone should have gotten him a medal.

"The Commander wants to see you, Ser." The servant said.

Anders made it to the third story of the Keep despite the knot in his stomach and the lead in his feet. The guards let him into Amell's room without asking. Amell was sitting on his bed today, eyes still wrapped, Barkspawn at his feet. Mixing things up.

"Hey," Anders said, taking a seat next to him. He put a hand on Amell's thigh. "You're smiling. Smiling's good. I like smiling. Why are we smiling?"

"Are we smiling?" Amell asked. "I can't tell."

"Sure. We're smiling." Anders lied.

"I was just thinking you were right." Amell said.

"You know I always love hearing that, but what exactly am I right about?" Anders asked.

"Me. Trusting people. Ending up with a knife in the back. Or didn't you say it would hit me in the face? I think you might be a prophet." Amell exhaled once through his nose.

"... Don't take this personally but that's really not funny right now."  Anders said.

"Remember how Compassion said jokes comforted you?"  Amell asked, his smile faltering a little. "Maybe you could try faking it for me?"

"I never fake it." Anders joked obediently.

Amell exhaled quietly through his nose again. It was something, Anders supposed.

"So I guess Oghren is taking this pretty hard?" Anders asked.

"He'll be fine." Amell said. "Could you do me a favor?"

"Sure. Of course," Anders said quickly. "What do you need?"

"I need you to write a letter to the friend I told you about." Amell said. "Jowan, the other blood mage spirit healer."

"What, I'm not good enough for you anymore?" Anders joked.

Amell pawed for his hand and gave it a squeeze when he found it, smiling. "I'd have a scribe do it, but I don't trust anyone else knowing about Jowan."

"Yeah, sure. Of course." Anders said.

"He's staying in West Hill, under the name Levyn." Amell said.

"Hang on, let me get a quill," Anders said. He stood up and went over to Amell's desk, untouched for the past two days. His grimoire was sitting in the corner atop a stack of books, and a few scrolls were pushed up beside the stack. A requisition for materials from the blacksmith was laid out in the center of the desk. It seemed unfair that something so painfully boring had been the last thing Amell would ever read. Anders moved it aside. "Where do you keep your parchment?"

"Second drawer from the top on the left." Amell said.

Anders found it, along with pounce. He laid the parchment out, grabbed a quill, and opened the jar of ink on Amell's desk. "Alright, go ahead."

"Levyn, I need you to come to Vigil's Keep immediately. This counts as the favor you owe me. Amell." Anders said.

"That's it?" Anders asked.

"That's it." Amell said.

"Well that was easy," Anders said. He shook out a handful of pounce over the ink and waited for it to dry. "Where's your wax and your seal?"

"Top drawer on the left." Amell said.

"It's locked," Anders said. "Do you think I'm magic or something?"

"Right... I forgot. The key should be..." Amell stopped and frowned. He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to think. "I don't remember where I put my keys the other night. Just break the drawer. I don't care."

"Seriously?" Anders asked.

"Seriously. Go ahead. I don't care." Amell said.

"I'm going to look for your keys," Anders decided. He found them after a bit of searching, pushed under Amell's nightstand, and picked out the right key for Amell's desk on his second guess. Anders melted the stick of wax and pressed a blob onto the letter to seal it. He wrote the name and address on the front.

"So does your friend Jowan or Levyn know any sort of magic that could help here?" Anders asked.

"No." Amell said. "I just want to see him. Or you know. Not see him,"

Anders faked a laugh for Amell's sake and asked, "Who do I give this to?"

"Varel." Amell said. "He has a few trusted runners. Tell him it's urgent."

"Alright." Anders said. "I'll be right back."

Anders left with the letter, and after checking with two different servants on the first floor of the Vigil was sent all the way back up to the third. Varel was having tea with Mistress Woolsey, and didn't so much as question him when Anders gave him the letter and instructions. Both of them gave Anders looks of pity that made him feel queasy.

Anders went back to Amell's room. Amell  hadn't moved. No real surprise there. "Hey. Guess who's back?" Anders joked, taking a seat next to Amell and running his hand over his shoulder.

"Have I ever told you you smell nice?" Amell asked.

"I don't think so." Anders said. "I never forget a compliment."

"Well you do," Amell said. "It's this sort of warm clean smell. Like the way it smells to stand out in the sun in summer."

"Thanks." Anders said.

"There's something else I wanted to ask you." Amell said. "It's not a favor, exactly. More like an offer. I was wondering if you'd be interested in my grimoire."

Anders felt like he was drowning, only slowly. It got harder to breathe, and he had to shake himself to focus on what Amell was saying. "What do you mean? Like... to copy a few pages from it or something?"

"I mean to have it." Amell said. "I think I could bind it to you, even blind."

"But it's yours." Anders whined. He felt like a child.

"I don't need it anymore, Anders." Amell said patiently. "... Orlais is sending us reinforcements from Jader. Just a few, but they're Senior Wardens. Experienced men. They're expected to arrive at the Vigil towards the end of the month.

"When they get here, I'm appointing one of them Warden Constable, and Oghren and I are leaving for Soldier's Peak. We're going to see Avernus, and see if he knows any sort of ritual or magic that might be able to help me. ... If he doesn't then we're going to Orzammar, and I'm going to my Calling."

Chapter 32: Blame it on the Night

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back! I just want to take a quick minute to say I have this story tagged as "Horror" and "Dark" but that's pretty general. There are things we're going to cover that aren't tagged, because I don't want to give any spoilers, but they'll continue to fall under "dark" and "horror". Please consider this a warning that nothing is really off limits for this story.

With that out of the way, I appreciate all of you, and all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos. Thank you so much for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 2 Frumentum Late Afternoon

Vigil's Keep Warden Commander's Quarters

Anders felt a pain like a knife in his gut, or what he imagined such would feel like. It was sharp, and it was severe, and it stole his breath away in the worst of all possible ways.

Amell's head was tilted wrong, as if he was looking just past Anders and not at him. Amell wasn't actually looking anywhere, but it drove Anders mad. Anders caught Amell's jaw, and turned his head so he was facing him. Two days without shaving had left Amell's jaw with a shadow Anders might have found attractive under better circumstances.

"This is a joke." Anders said. "This is a bad joke, right? You're not seriously serious, are you?"

"I'm seriously serious." Amell said.

"No. Just-Maker no." Anders tore out his hair tie and scratched at his scalp. He felt wrong: itchy and tense. "You can't. You can't just kill yourself if some two hundred year old biddy doesn't know a spell to give you new eyes. There has to be something else. The Circle-"

"Knows nothing." Amell interrupted him. "Don't you remember Senior Enchanter Sweeney? There's no cure for bad eyes, or no eyes."

"I remember he was alive." Anders snapped. "Maker, you don't have to kill yourself just because you're blind."

"... Did you leave my keys on the desk?" Amell asked.

"What?" Anders asked. "I mean yes, but why?"

Amell stood up, and kept a hand on the edge of his bed while he walked slowly around it. He reached the corner post, and started forward with a hand stretched out until he connected with his desk. From there he felt blindly across the surface of the desk until his fingers touched the keys.

It was painfully slow going... but Amell had lost his eyes yesterday. Sweeney got around. Amell would get better. He'd get used to it. He didn't have to kill himself. The man had talked about using blood magic for immortality when Anders had met him, for Maker's sake. He couldn't just give up like this.

Amell found the key he was looking for, and stumbled back to his bed. He felt his way to his nightstand, and unlocked the drawer with a great deal of fumbling. Finding his journal, Amell walked back around the bed, free hand outstretched until he bumped into Anders' chest.

Anders took his hand and kissed his palm. Amell sat back down beside him, and pushed the journal into Anders' lap. "Open it." Amell said.

Anders felt like a bastard. He'd already gone through Amell's journal months ago. Obediently, Anders opened the book. The sketches were still there, between journal entries. Of darkspawn and dragons and golems, of Anders himself. There were three new sketches of Anders to join the one Anders had found the first time he'd gone through Amell's journal.

Two were of him sleeping, again, but the third was him sitting on Amell's couch, reading. Anders hadn't even noticed Amell had been sketching him at the time. "I like to draw." Amell explained. "...liked. Ever since I first opened a book back at the Circle, and saw all the diagrams illustrating different spells. I thought one day I'd write my own book about blood magic, for the Wardens, where it would be appreciated.

"I like drawing the monsters we fight. The people we meet. I like drawing you, when you're asleep and your hair is a mess... Do you really remember Sweeney? The way the apprentices used to laugh at him? How he was allowed to leave the tower, but never could? I'll never see Tevinter. I'll never fight again. I can't draw; I can't walk. I can barely find my chamber pot to take a piss. I can't live like this, Anders. Don't ask me to."

"You're just being melodramatic." Anders set the journal aside. Looking at Amell's sketches of him made his heart hurt. "You've only been blind a day. It'll get easier. You can find other hobbies, other things to live for. You could get reassigned to Weisshaupt, and give more lectures on blood magic and necromancy. They might even send you to Tevinter. Someone there might know something. Some way to help you. Amell, you can't." Anders grabbed Amell's hands; his voice caught and he had to clear his throat. "You can't just kill yourself."

"This is my choice, Anders." Amell said.

"Your choice is fucking stupid!" Anders shouted. He sucked in a deep breath, struggling to get a hold on himself. So what? What did Anders care if some man he'd barely known a few months wanted to off himself?

Anders cared so much it hurt. His breath came in staccato gasps, but Anders wasn't about to cry. Amell was fine. Anders could deal with it later, like he always did.

"I'm glad you care." Amell said.

"Of course I fucking care!" Anders yelled. So much for later. "You stupid fucking bastard, why the fuck wouldn't I care?"

Anders grabbed Amell and crushed him against his chest. Anders buried his face in Amell's shoulder, and sucked in a rickety breath full of blood and the Fade. Maker damn that intoxicating smell, that addictive taste, Amell's electric touch and those gorgeous, absent eyes.

"Anders, it's okay." Amell said, running his fingers through Anders' hair. Comforting when he should have been comforted, as usual. "I'm not dead yet. Avernus might know something, and if he doesn't... I'm okay. I got to escape the Circle, I got my dog back... I got you. How many people can say they ended up with their crush, even for a little while?"

"You are seriously not helping right now," Anders said, hating himself for the few tears that escaped him. "Since when do you just give up like this? Don't you remember the storehouse? What happened to that Amell? Grr, rawr, no templar can kill me? If a templar had done this to you, I bet you'd keep living just to spite them."

"Everyone has a limit, Anders," Amell said. "...This is mine. I'm sorry,"

"You're sorry," Anders repeated incredulously. He laughed, but felt miserable. "You better be sorry. What were you thinking, letting Quentin gouge your eyes out like that?"

"That he must have really wanted them?" Amell guessed.

"Fuck," Anders exhaled shakily and sat back, scrubbing his face clean with his sleeve. He felt like he was walking on a fault line, with every unsteady step risking shouts or sobs. He hated it. Caring might have made Compassion strong, but Anders had never felt weaker.

"... Did you want my grimoire?" Amell offered again.

"No, I don't want your fucking grimoire." Anders said. "I want you."

"I..." Amell reached out and found Anders' chest. He walked his hand up to Anders' shoulder, and up his neck. His fingers found Anders' earring and toyed with it before moving on to Anders' jaw and dancing over his lips. "I wish I could see you."

"I'll bet." Anders sniffed, taking his hand to tangle their fingers together. "I'm ridiculously handsome, you know. Swoon worthy."

Amell grinned. "You are, though."

"You say that like I don't know." Anders said.

"I can never tell if you're being serious." Amell confessed.

"I'm always serious about my looks." Anders said. "So... What now?"

"What now, what now?" Amell asked.

"I mean what now? What are we doing?" Anders asked.

"Well... I thought maybe I would sit here and stare at nothing until I fell asleep." Amell said.

"Riveting." Anders joked.

"I thought so." Amell said.

"Maker, Amell, I'm so sorry," Anders pulled Amell back into another fierce hug. "If I wasn't such an idiot I could have had Compassion wake me up right away. I could have done something. I could have stopped him."

"It wasn't your fault," Amell said.

"He took a scalpel from my infirmary." Anders said. "I don't know if he convinced my aide to give it to him, or if he broke in after my aide left, or how he got past your guards..."

"It wasn't your fault, Anders." Amell said. "It doesn't matter."

"Don't you even care?" Anders asked.

"It's done." Amell said.

"I guess." Anders said. "Are you going to tell everyone else? The other Wardens?"

"I will," Amell said. "Eventually. The rest of the Vigil can't know."

"I haven't told anyone." Anders promised.

"I know you haven't." Amell said. "I trust you."

They stayed that way for an age, arms around each other, legs tangled together, heads on each other's shoulders. It would have made Anders uncomfortable a month ago, but he didn't care anymore.

"I used to draw too, you know." Anders said eventually.

"Really?" Amell asked.

"In the margins of my textbooks." Anders said. "Horrible drawings by a horrible student. I never had an 'impress the templars' phase. I thought I knew everything right from the get go. I was a country bumpkin who could barely write his own name, but magic was easy for me, so I never really paid attention in any of my classes. Got held back a year for it."

"So you had even less than four years of training before your Harrowing, considering you were held back for one." Amell said. "That's even more impressive."

"I could tell you anything and you'd find some way to twist it to make me the hero, wouldn't you?" Anders asked.

"Probably." Amell said.

"When I first escaped the tower, when Ferrenly turned me over to the templars, they didn't bother with shackles. I was thirteen, and it was my first offense. We made camp, and that night I ran for it. One of templars hit me with a holy smite for the first time, and I literally pissed myself." Anders said.

"But you didn't pass out?" Amell asked. "That's remarkable for thirteen."

"Alright, we need to talk about this crush of yours." Anders joked.

"Go ahead." Amell said.

"What do you mean 'go ahead'?" Anders asked.

"I mean go ahead." Amell said. "... Avernus managed to retain his eye sight and the rest of his senses for two-hundred years, but keeping something you already have has to be easier than getting back something you've lost. I know you don't want to hear this, but odds are he can't help me. So if there's anything you want to talk about or anything you want to ask me... Go ahead. I don't mind."

Anders didn't like this offer. He'd only started exercising weeks ago; there was no way he could handle something this heavy. "I'll ask you whatever I want to ask you when you get back from Soldier's Peak," Anders said, voice thick.

"Alright." Amell let him have it. It was merciful of him, Anders thought.

"Are you hungry?" Anders asked. "Do you want me to grab you lunch?"

"And something strong to drink." Amell agreed.

"Brandy? Whiskey?" Anders asked.

"Anything," Amell said.

Anders caught Amell's chin and kissed him. Amell was already doing better, after a day. Amell answered him with parted lips and slightly quickened breath. Anders involved his tongue, and Amell responded to him with his own. His lips were soft and yielding, and Anders cupped the nape of his neck, the soft hairs under Anders' fingers a pleasant contrast to the bite of Amell's stubble.

Anders grazed his teeth over Amell's bottom lip. Amell whimpered and Anders felt the heat of his breath spill over his lips. In a quick motion, Anders pushed Amell back onto the bed and straddled him. Amell gasped, and Anders ravished his mouth, neck, and jaw with tongue, teeth, and lips.

Amell bucked his hips up into him, and Anders pushed back against him. "Fuck, Anders," Amell groaned, walking his hands up Anders' thighs to find his waist. Amell looped his fingers into Anders' belt, and slid them around to find his buckle.

"Please fuck Anders," Anders said, his heart in his throat and his pulse in his cock. Anders dragged down the collar of Amell's doublet to lick his collarbone, and won another gasp. Amell managed to get Anders' belt off without help, and shoved Anders' trousers as far down his thighs as they would go with Anders straddling him.

Anders caught Amell's face in his hands and held him steady for another kiss, and something in Amell snapped. He smacked Anders' hands away, almost violently, and shoved him hard. Anders fell back, and Amell rolled out from under him. He rolled too far, blind, and banged against the post of his canopy bed.

"Fuck," Amell swore, and sat up. He dug the heels of his palms into his bandages, and Anders winced knowing it must have hurt. "I can't. I can't. I'm sorry. Brandy. Or nothing. You don't have to get me anything."

Anders touched Amell's shoulder and almost expected him to flinch. He didn't. Anders hugged him. "I'll get you lunch, and a bottle of West Hill."

"Thank you." Amell said.

Anders stood up and fixed his trousers, not surprised by how quickly his erection died in the face of Amell's reaction to him. Amell pat the bed, and Barkspawn jumped up next to him. Anders went to the door, and chanced a glance back. Amell was hugging his dog.

Anders let himself out, and started down the hall. Ridiculously, he thought of Justice. The spirit should have died in a puff of smoke the second it set foot in the mortal world. Justice was a concept. It didn't exist in real life. The real world wasn't just. It wasn't fair. It wasn't anything but cruel and unusual and no one ever suffered who deserved it.

Just walking past the guards made Anders angry. What were they even there for? They hadn't helped Amell. They hadn't protected him. Quentin had walked right past them, probably without any magical help. The man could have just said he wanted to say goodbye to his son, and been let inside. The guards would have had no reason to expect such a monstrous betrayal. And if they hadn't let Quentin inside, one sleep spell was all it would have taken for Quentin to let himself in. Two guards without any sort of magical wards or magical abilities couldn't be expected to resist the magic of a talented maleficar. So really, what was the point?

Anders sighed, frustrated. It wasn't anyone's fault, but he wanted to blame someone. Someone within range. Someone whose neck he could wring. Maybe he could talk to the Seneschal or the Guard Captain and try to convince one of them Amell wasn't in the right frame of mind about his father. Someone had to find Quentin. Someone had to make to him answer for what he'd done.

Maybe Anders could head to Amaranthine, and talk to that Alim fellow. At the very least, he could probably learn where Quentin had gone. At the very most, maybe if Anders told the Collective about the bastard, some vigilante would come along and Quentin would turn up dead. Anders entertained a rather vivid fantasy of gouging Quentin's eyes out with a rusty spoon on his way to the dining hall.

Surprisingly, it didn't put him off eating at all.

Anders filled up a tray with roast squash, beef stew, and cranberry salad. He asked one of the kitchen scullions for two bottles of West Hill brandy with the assumption Amell wanted to drink himself silly. The minstrels were playing Andraste's Mabari again. Anders was starting to get tired of that song. That damn dog hadn't helped any either.

Anders was on his way out of the dining hall, laden tray and brandy in hand, when he ran into his aide. His aide was a young pockmarked boy named Edan. Edan was all limbs, and horribly clumsy, but he had a good heart. Anders put on a smile for him.

"Anders," Edan said, "I'm glad I found you. Torin won't listen to me."

No surprise there. The surly physician didn't listen to anyone.

"He's been lecturing me all day." Edan complained. "Over a scalpel! I tried to tell him you were the last one to use it, but he won't believe me. He called me a dirty liar because you always put your supplies away. I told him, 'everyone makes mistakes' but he wants to give me to the Seneschal for the day and put me on latrine duty!

"He said it would be a good lesson for me to put up with other people's shit because he's always putting up with mine. Could you talk to him for me? Tell him you just forgot to put it away, and it's no big deal? You're a Warden. Torin can't make you clean latrines."

Anders ears were ringing. His aide's voice faded in and out, and seemed to come at him from far away. "What?" Anders asked.

"What, what?" Edan asked.

"What did you just say?" Anders asked.

"Torin can't make you clean latrines?" Edan repeated himself.

"About the scalpel." Anders said.

"You were the last one to use it?" Edan said.

"I haven't used the scalpel since I cut that skin lesion off that soldier, weeks ago." Anders said.

"... You came by the infirmary two nights ago and took it with you. For an emergency procedure, you said." Edan said. "Don't you remember?"

"Okay, not funny," Anders said. "I was drunk, but I wasn't that drunk. I'd remember stopping by the infirmary."

"But you did," Edan said. "You grabbed the scalpel and some frostrocks and said it was an emergency. You seemed kind of distracted, and you weren't wearing a shirt, but it was pretty late. If you were drunk then fine, but could you at least tell Torin it wasn't me so he stops riding me about it?

"... Anders, are you okay? You look pale. Really pale. Shit. Okay. I know this. Here we go. Sit down. Hang on. Give me the tray. I'll get you a water. Don't move."

Edan sat Anders down on the nearest bench, and set his tray on the table, and ran to the kitchen. He came back a short while later and pushed a cup of water into Anders' hands.

His aide kept talking, but his words were noise. The bards had just finished playing the Girl in Red Crossing when Anders and Amell had stumbled out of the party together. They'd gone upstairs, had sex, and gone to bed. Had Anders gotten back up? He didn't remember getting back up.

Quentin was a talented blood mage. He could probably mix mind control and sleep walking to get Anders to steal the tools he needed for a crude surgery. That made sense. There'd been too much blood on the sheets for it to have all been from Amell. A little bit of blood magic made sense.

Anders drank his water, and cradled the cup in both his hands. He'd been asleep. He couldn't remember anything. Just his conversation with Compassion. Anders finished his water and set the cup on the table.

"Thanks for telling me. I'll talk to Torin for you." Anders picked up his tray and his drinks and left the dining hall.

So Quentin used him to steal some supplies. So what? No big deal. It wasn't like Anders hadn't been mind-controlled before. He didn't even remember the other night. It could have been worse. At least Quentin had apparently had Anders put on trousers before he puppeteered him through the Vigil. That was nice of him. And he'd let him take them back off before going back to bed. Or Anders had kicked them back off in his sleep.

Really, it could have been worse. Anders hated sleeping in trousers. And at least now Anders knew it wasn't just a hangover that had given him such a headache when he'd woken up. Amell had claimed he was 'extraordinarily willful' but apparently will didn't count when you were blackout drunk.

Anders made it back to Amell's room without incident. A bit of breather and he was fine. Anders was fine. It didn't matter. It was over. The guards unlocked the door and let him in. Amell hadn't moved from the bed.

"Guess who," Anders said.

"Whoever you are, your voice is sexy," Amell joked. Or was utterly serious. Anders was awesome, after all. He set the tray down on the low table, and shooed Barkspawn off the bed.

"I got you beef stew, roast squash, and some cranberry salad," Anders told him, taking Amell's arm to walk him over to the couch.

"And brandy?" Amell asked.

"And brandy." Anders said.

He sat Amell down on the couch. Amell's stomach rumbled. "I haven't eaten since the party," Amell confessed. "... I tried dinner, yesterday, and hit myself in the face with my fork."

"I promise to laugh if that happens again," Anders joked. It was probably tasteless, but it earned him a tiny grin. Anders set his own plate aside and picked up Amell's spoon, pressing it into the man's hand. He took Amell's free hand and made him touch the bowl holding his stew. "Spoon. Stew. Mouth." Anders said helpfully, mimicking one round of eating. "Easy."

"You say that, but close your eyes and try to eat." Amell said.

"You know what? Fine. I will." Anders picked up his own spoon, "You can't see but I am totally doing it, and if I can do it then you definitely can."

"He's lying, isn't he, boy?" Amell asked Barkspawn.

The dog stared at him. There went Anders' brilliant idea. Well, it was probably easy. Anders closed his eyes, and aimed for his bowl. He missed. Barkspawn barked happily.

"Tell me if he cheats," Amell said.

Anders frowned, found the bowl with his free hand, managed a scoop, and brought it up to his mouth. He smacked his lower lip once before the food got into his mouth. "Okay, so maybe it is a little tricky," Anders admitted.

Amell laughed. Anders liked hearing it, creepy cackle or not. He opened his eyes and wrapped an arm around Amell's shoulder. "Well that's enough of that for me. It's too bad they weren't serving sexy food or I could just feed you."

"Sexy food?" Amell asked.

"Yeah, you know, like grapes, or chocolate covered strawberries, or something," Anders said.

"I think I'd feel like an invalid no matter what you were feeding me," Amell said.

"I'm a healer," Anders said. "I deal with invalids all day long, and you know what they're not? Invalids. They're just people. When I was in Harper's Ford, I stayed with this family for a while. Their grandfather took a spill, and broke his leg, but they were poor and couldn't afford to do anything for him. So they risked harboring an apostate to treat him, and it was a damn good thing they did. He fell because his leg cramped up on him, because he'd come down with cholera. Have you ever seen cholera? It's awful. It's like a distant cousin to the Blight. Vomiting, diarrhea-"

"I'm glad you're telling me this right before we eat," Amell said.

"Shut up," Anders pinched him, "So anyway, he has it. I stayed out in the barn with him, not because they were trying to hide the apostate, but because it was so bad they couldn't keep him in the house. I poured fluids down his mouth for five days, and cleaned him up every time they came right back out. I fed him with one hand and wiped his ass with the other. It was a mess. He threw up, I threw up. No one was happy.

"But he got better. He got through it. He started keeping food down, and gained back the weight he lost, and started walking again. And when he was better, he shook my hand and thanked me, and that was it. He wasn't embarrassed, and he didn't need to be. People get sick. They get hurt. It happens. They're not less than people while they're ill.

"You're always saying you're fine and shoving off help, and I get that you have to do the Commander thing, but there's a limit. You're always saying we're more than our crimes, so why wouldn't we be more than our injuries?"

"I'm still not letting you feed me." Amell said.

"Fine, feed yourself," Anders gave him a playful shove. Amell didn't see it coming and didn't brace for it, and Anders couldn't help feeling a little guilty when Amell flailed and almost fell over, "As long as you're eating. You really think I care if you spill a bit? I think I've had like, three panic attacks in front of you so far, at least."

"I don't think that's exactly the same thing, but I appreciate what you're trying to say," Amell said. He ate leaning over the table, and got the hang of it after a few minutes.

It was fine. He was fine. They were fine. It would get better.

Anders poured him a drink after lunch, and pressed it into Amell's hand. Drinking was easier. Drinking they could definitely handle. Anders sat on the couch with Amell on his shoulder, his thoughts running between Harper's Ford, and Kinloch Hold, and Tallo, and Vigil's Keep. Maker, his life was a mess. Everything had been coming up Anders, and then this. Were things ever going to settle down for him?

Probably not. Definitely not, if Amell went through with his Calling. Anders tried to push the thought away, but it haunted him. Sure, he liked the Wardens, but he liked them because of Amell. However experienced the Senior Wardens coming in from Orlais, they hadn't conscripted him in the face of templars. They hadn't killed templars for him, or used blood magic to keep templars away from him. They hadn't sworn to keep him safe in every fight, promised to give him leave to see his mother, turned the Vigil into a home instead of a prison.

Amell shifted to drape his legs over Anders' lap. Amell kept his snifter in his lap with one hand, and idly caressed Anders' chest with the other. Anders stared at him, thinking of the bloody hand print Amell had left on his chest. Maker, why hadn't he woken up? Involuntarily, he pictured Amell shaking him, begging for help, blood dripping from his empty eye sockets while Anders slept like a rock. A bastard rock.

Except that didn't line up. There'd been just the one hand print on his chest. Nothing on his shoulders. No drops of blood on his chest. Why his chest? Why the middle of his chest, when Anders had woken up under the covers? Anders ran his fingers up and down Amell's arm, and gave him a squeeze. Amell hummed happily, and Anders toyed with his hair. After a few seconds, Anders stopped, and stared at his hand.

You have steady hands.

"Amell?" Anders said, unable to bring his voice about a whisper.

"Hm?" Amell mumbled.

"... were you conscious?" Anders asked, "When Quentin... took your eyes?"

"It's done, Anders," Amell said, "Don't worry about it."

That sounded like a yes. Maker, that was definitely a yes. Anders tried to remember the previous night. He couldn't. He got drunk. He had sex. He went to sleep. He talked to Compassion. He woke up.

Compassion had touched his chest, right where Amell had touched his chest. Anders remembered feeling powerfully loved when she had, and Compassion had to draw from somewhere. Had she drawn from Amell, when Amell touched him? Anders had woken up with one bloody hand print on his chest, as if Amell had tried to push him off or away, because someone as old as Quentin needed an assistant with steady hands.

Andraste's grace, Amell had been conscious. He'd seen all of it, until he couldn't see at all. Had Amell forgiven him right in the middle of it? Was that why Compassion liked him now, despite the demons, despite the blood magic, despite everything?

"I'm going to be sick," Anders said.

"What?" Amell asked.

Anders scrambled away from him and ran to the washroom. He didn't quite reach the chamber pot before his mouth filled with vomit. Anders fell to his knees and grabbed the chamber pot, and threw up beef, cranberries, brandy, and squash to the smell of fresh shit and piss. His throat burned, and his stomach roiled, and he couldn't help crying while retching. Maker's breath how could Amell still let Anders touch him? No wonder Amell couldn't bring himself to have sex with him.

"Fuck," Anders swore, gagging when his stomach was empty.

"Anders?" Amell called from the other room. "Anders, are you alright?"

"Maker, kill me," Anders dry heaved.

Barkspawn whined from the doorway. Anders glanced over and found Amell with his hand on the dog's head, using the mabari to help him find his way around. Because he had no fucking eyes. Because Anders carved them out of his fucking skull in his sleep.

"Is the food bad?" Amell asked, "Should I be expecting something like this in a few seconds?"

"I ran into my aide," Anders' throat was dry, and his voice was hoarse. "Downstairs. He said I took some things from the infirmary. Said I needed them, for an 'emergency procedure'. That was the magic Compassion saw on me. It was more than just sleep; it was blood magic. I thought... I thought maybe Quentin just used me to steal a few things...

"Maker, that's why he was so into me. Complimenting my steady hands, talking about how much finesse creationism takes... He used me to-remove your eyes, didn't he? You were conscious. You saw it. You saw me do it, some sleeping walking mind controlled-fuck. Maker-I-" Anders dry heaved again. He didn't have anything left to throw up.

"Anders, no he didn't," Amell said. He stumbled forward, and crashed into his vanity. "Fucking-" Amell swore, staggering around the vanity and towards Anders' voice. Barkspawn gave him a helpful nudge, and Amell hands hit Anders' shoulders. He knelt down and hugged him next to the rancid chamber pot. "No he didn't."

"You're lying." Anders said, tense and tempted to shove him away. How was Amell even touching him right now? "You're lying to me like you lied to Nate. You must have fought off whatever magic Quentin was using to hold you still. There was a hand print on my chest. Like you tried to shove me off, before Quentin restrained you again."

"That never happened," Amell said. Liar. "It never happened. You were asleep." Amell's hold was so fierce it was almost painful, an arm around the small of Anders' back and another around his shoulders. There was no reason for it to be, if he wasn't lying, "You were asleep."

"But I did it." Anders said. "Don't lie to me. How can you even-" Anders stopped himself before he said 'look at me right now?' Amell couldn't look at him right now. Amell couldn't look at him at all. "How can you even touch me right now? Maker, no wonder you couldn't stand to fuck me."

"Anders-That doesn't-No," Amell kissed his jaw; his stubble was a pleasant scratch that didn't help calm Anders any, "That was just me. That didn't have anything to do with you." Amell found his hair and ran a hand through it.

Anders' chest constricted. A shiver ran up his spine, and he bit back a sob. His shoulders shook anyway. "I'm sorry," Anders choked out.

"You didn't do it." Amell lied. "You were asleep. It wasn't you. It was Quentin."

"But I-" Anders tried again.

"It wasn't you." Amell walked a blind hand over Anders' face, found his mouth, and held his fingers to his lips. Amell bent his head and kissed him, despite the vomit, despite what Anders knew he'd done, no matter what Amell said. "It wasn't really you. It's okay. I knew it wasn't really you."

Notes:

Fanart
Amell blind-folded
Anders performing a magic trick
See No Evil

Apples and Apostates
O Children: Quentin's backstory as told from Quentin's perspective.

Chapter 33: White Lies, Red Eyes

Notes:

Hello everyone! We hit 3000 views! You guys are amazing, thank you so much for supporting this story! Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 3 Frumentum Early Morning

Vigil's Keep Warden Commander's Quarters

Amell was still asleep. Barkspawn was at the foot of the bed. Ser Pounce-a-Lot had stolen Anders' pillow at some point, which was fine considering Anders always had Amell's shoulder. He was lying on said shoulder at the moment, staring at Amell and thinking.

The bandage needed changing, the wound needed to be checked, and Amell needed glass eyes. Maker willing, if Amell was ever going to get new eyes, he needed glass eyes in the in-between to ensure the sockets and eyelids kept their shape. Anders didn't know if new eyes were possible, but he had to pretend they were. Pretending this wasn't permanent, that it was just another injury, was the only way Anders could cope with what he'd done.

Maybe Anders could cope with Amell being blind if only Amell could cope with it, but Anders couldn't stomach the thought of being the reason Amell went to his Calling. It didn't matter how many times Amell said it wasn't his fault. It didn't change the fact that Anders had been the one to cut out his eyes. Every time Anders pictured it, he thought he was going to be sick, and it was almost impossible to stop picturing it.

He wondered if Amell had pleaded with him to wake up. He wondered if Amell had refrained from violent magic for fear of hurting him. He wondered how much it had hurt, how long it had taken, how long Amell had lain paralyzed after Quentin had left with his eyes, and Anders had gone back to bed right next to him. More than anything he wondered how anyone could ever be so forgiving.

If not for his aide, Anders probably never would have learned what he'd done. Anders didn't doubt Amell would have kept up the lie forever. To hear Amell talk, it wasn't even a lie. The most Anders could get out of him was what it 'wasn't his fault' and it 'wasn't really him'.

Anders ran his fingers over the scar above Amell's eyebrow from the assassin, the one between his ribs from Rylock, the one on his chest from the Hurlock Commander. His fault. All of them were Anders' fault. Or Amell's fault, for being so damn infatuated with him he couldn't see that Anders was more trouble than he was worth.

Anders had no idea what he'd done to warrant such a crush. Anders hadn't been that impressive back at the Circle. If anything, Cera had been right about him. Anders had been a cocky bastard. Between his escape attempts, his constant trouble making and rule breaking, the women he bedded and the templars he riled, Anders had treated nothing sacred in the Circle.

It was all just a game to him. A game he knew he couldn't win, but he could at least do a little better at it each time he tried. And when he lost, someone else suffered the consequences. The other apprentices, the senior enchanters, the templars... and now Amell.

Anders traced over the scar on Amell's chest again. It cut through the dark hair on his chest, an impressive length and worrying width. Whatever he said to make Amell feel better, Anders wasn't naive enough to find it rugged or sexy. It was just upsetting. All of them were upsetting, except for the scars on Amell's arms.

They were the only scars that weren't from a brush with death. The only ones that weren't Anders' fault. Anders looked at his own scar on his forearm, just below the bend in his elbow. Justice could blow him. Blood magic wasn't evil. People were evil.

Eventually, all of Anders' touching woke Amell. Anders kissed him.

"Your breath smells." Amell yawned.

"You're no Prince Charming right now either, you know." Anders huffed. "Do you want help shaving? Your shadow is getting kind of scraggly."

"No," Amell said. Anders rolled his eyes, wondering why he'd bothered. "It's autumn. I'll just let it grow out."

"Okay, but you could at least let me trim up the edges so it looks clean." Anders said. "There's sexy stubble and then there's 'I haven't bathed in days' stubble. Guess which one you have."

"You tell me. I can't see." Amell said.

"You don't have to see. You're not the one who has to look at your face every day," Anders joked. He grinned to take the edge off, and then realized what an idiot he was. "It's the second one, by the way.

"And while we're on the topic of baths and being clean, your bandages need to be changed, and we should find a glassmith in Amaranthine, or ask your blacksmith to make you a pair of glass eyes. And your wounds probably need to be cleaned."

"I have a physician, Anders." Amell said, sitting up. He scratched at his bandages, and Anders had to fight back the urge to take them off and check on him. "I told you, I don't want you taking care of me."

"And I told you there's nothing wrong with letting people help you." Anders said.

"I said no," Amell said. He got out of bed, and started his slow blind shuffle towards his armoire.

Let it go, Anders. Don't be stupid. Keep your mouth closed for once in your life for the love of- "That's the best you've got? Because I said so? Have you met me? I don't really go for that kind of authority."

"I don't care." Amell said.

"Since when?" Anders asked. He got up and made it to the armoire while Amell was picking out a pair of trousers to go with his doublet. "Those don't match."

"Please stop." Amell said.

"Let me help you." Anders said.

"I don't want your help!" Amell snapped at him. "I'm not one of your patients, Anders. I'm not going to get better. You can't heal me. I'm blind. In a month, I'll be dead. Do you really think I want you remembering me like this?"

"Avernus might know something. You said you were going to see him," Anders reminded him. Amell grabbed for a different pair of trousers. "Those don't match either."

Amell threw his clothes on the ground. "I lied!" Amell sank to the ground next to his armoire, and leaned back against it. "I lied so you wouldn't.... I'm not. I'm not going. Avernus won't know anything. I'm just going to my Calling. Oghren knows. He agreed to take me. That's why he was so upset yesterday."

Anders heart had been hurt so many times in the past three days the pain had almost reached a numbing point. He couldn't think of anything to say. His chest ached, a dull and persistent throb that threatened tears with every heartbeat.

"... Can you head downstairs and get everyone?" Amell asked. "I should tell them. The Senior Wardens. And Loghain and Stroud if they're still here. Not the new recruit."

"You don't want my help, remember?" Anders swallowed back tears and sneered. "Do it yourself."

Anders grabbed his trousers off the floor and stepped into them on the way to the door. He snatched up his tunic as well, and damned his smalls to the Void. The guards didn't say anything when Anders stormed out, fighting his way into his tunic with his trousers half laced.

Anders made it all the way to the base of the stairwell before he turned back around, cursing himself for how pathetic he was. Anders did remember Sweeney. He remembered the laughs. He thought of Amell giving a solemn address in mismatched clothes, and thought of the looks and the giggles, and thought of Amell taking them to his grave.

The guards didn't say anything when Anders came back. Amell was where Anders had left him, sobbing into his knees. Ser Pounce-a-Lot was curled up on Amell's feet, apparently having chosen a side. Barkspawn was curled up next to him as well, and growled at Anders' approach.

"Oh shut up." Anders said.

"No, down," Amell mumbled, swatting blindly at his dog. His hand connected with its shoulder, and Barkspawn quieted.

Anders knelt down next to Amell and pulled him against his chest. Amell was still crying, and ruining his bandages. Anders throat closed up on him, and he wept into Amell's hair.

Anders never fully recovered. It might have been minutes or hours, but eventually they pulled themselves together enough to move. Amell stopped protesting against his help, and Anders picked out an outfit for him. He helped Amell dress, and dressed himself properly, then sat Amell down at his vanity to help him shave. Anders tucked a towel into Amell's collar, got out his straight edge, and lathered his face.

"You look nervous," Anders said to test his voice. He sounded awful. Watery and stuffy.

"A little." Amell said. He didn't sound any better.

"You'll let me practice blood magic on you, but you're scared of a shave?" Anders joked.

"No one ever accidentally cut themselves using blood magic," Amell said.

"Hey, don't worry about. Steady hands, remember?" Anders joked. It was too morbid, even for him, and his jaw quivered with the threat of tears. "Fuck." Anders swallowed to get a hold on himself. "Okay. Alright. I'm fine. Hold still."

If nothing else, the bastard had been right. Anders hands were ridiculously steady, and he cleaned up the frame of Amell's stubble in a few easy minutes. Amell cleaned off his face on his own when Anders finished and Anders wiped off the few spots he missed.

"Was that so hard?" Anders joked, cleaning up the washroom. "Can I check your eyes now?"

"Anders..." Amell sighed.

"Please." Anders begged. He hated begging. Not for the sake of his dignity, the way Amell hated help, but because in the Circle begging had never worked.

"Thank you for helping me shave," Amell said. He stood up, and stumbled blindly out of the wash.

Anders followed him, dragging his feet. Amell wasn't the same. This wasn't right. This wasn't him. He was so defeated Anders may as well have already killed him. Anders caught Amell in the middle of the room, and pulled him back into his chest. "Please change your mind."

"Anders," Amell sighed again.

"Please." Anders squeezed him. "You can't say no to me, remember?"

"I know I can't," Amell said. "Why do you think I suddenly don't want to sleep with you? I don't want you changing my mind about this. I don't want us getting into a routine where you help me with everything, and I get used to being like this. I'm not happy, Anders. I'll never be happy like this, and I know if you really pushed me I'd settle on being unhappy for you, so please don't."

"Avernus-" Anders said.

"Won't know anything." Amell said.

"At least ask him," Anders begged. "At least ask the Circle. I'm not asking you to live like this, but at least try to fix it." Amell didn't say anything, but at least he didn't say no.

"Look, the clothes and the shaving doesn't have to be a routine. You don't need me for that. You could have a servant help you. With your eyes... I did it. I know I can't undo it, but I'm better than any physician. I don't know why you want him and not me.

"I'm not going to judge you for something I did to you, and I can handle the gore, and it won't change the way-" I see you? I feel about you? "How I think about you. You're more than just a pair of eyes, and if you're trying to impress me with this machismo bullshit you can stop. I'm already impressed, okay? You impress me. I've been impressed for a long time."

Silence.

More silence.

Anders kissed Amell's neck and rested his forehead on his shoulder. He smelled like shaving cream and soap, with a hint of cedar on his clothes. Amell relaxed in his arms, and sighed after a few minutes. "Alright."

"Alright what?" Anders asked.

"Alright I'll try." Amell said. "You can pen a letter for me to Avernus, and make up a fake patient to write to the Circle about and see if either of them know anything."

"What about the Collective?" Anders asked eagerly, thinking mostly of Amell but also of Quentin and rusty spoons. "We can ask them too, can't we?"

"Alright." Amell said.

Anders kissed Amell's neck again. He locked his arms tighter around Amell's waist and tried to spin him. He got maybe a quarter of the way through a circle, and Amell snorted.

"Are you sure you don't want me to teach you physical magic?" Amell joked.

"Oh shut up." Anders laughed and wanted to cry.

Amell turned around in Anders' arms and found his waist. Amell picked him up easily and spun him once. Anders kissed him. He tasted wet, and salty. "I'll go get my bag from the infirmary, and we can take some measurements so we can get started on glass eyes."

"Anders wait," Amell said, pawing at the space Anders had recently occupied. Anders stepped back into it, and Amell grabbed his arm. "The letters are fine, and if someone knows something I'll go and give it a chance, but if no one does then I am going to my Calling."

Anders swallowed around a lump in his throat. It didn't go down. "As long as you try."

"I still don't want you to work on my eyes." Amell said. "Shaving, the rest of it... Fine, you can help me, but not with my eyes."

It sounded like a good deal, but Anders was rubbish at quitting while he was ahead. "Please?"

"Please don't beg me." Amell said. "Let me have this. Send your physician to handle the measurements and everything else, and when he's done get everyone and bring them up here."

"Alright." Anders relented. He was sure he'd bring it up again tomorrow, if not tonight, but he forced himself to settle for now. "I'll send him up with breakfast."

"And a glass of wine." Amell said.

"Alright." Anders wasn't about to argue against a drink. He wouldn't mind one for himself, right now. He took a step towards the door, and changed his mind. Anders pulled Amell into a hug that turned into a kiss before he left.

It was the third time Anders had walked past them, and the guards still didn't say anything. Anders couldn't imagine having that much restraint. He was on his way down the stairs when he ran into Cera coming up.

"Anders," The angry little elf apparently still had eyes. Good for her. "Good. I need a word."

"No," Anders said. "That word work for you?"

Cera blocked him from continuing down the stairs. Maker, he did not have the patience for this right now. Anders glared at her.

"We need to talk about your infirmary," Cera said. "You're overgenerous with your supplies, which lest you've forgotten are requisitioned from the Circle. I've been reviewing your notes, what little you keep, and they're absurd. Eight ounces of lyrium resin for a headache?"

Anders remembered that fellow, "Recurring headaches."

"Two frost and fire balms for cramps?" Cera demanded.

Anders definitely remembered that poor girl. "Recurring cramps."

"And you still have not turned over your staff for study." Cera said.

"For Maker's sake," Anders rubbed his temples to ward off an incoming headache. "I'm not doing this with you right now. Get out of my way and leave me alone."

Anders shoved past the tiny elf and kept on down the stairs.

"What were the frostrocks for?" Cera called after him.

Anders stopped.

"I had to talk to your aide this morning, seeing as you've been neglecting your post," Cera said. "He tells me you've been getting drunk and stealing supplies in the middle of the night. I can't say I'm surprised. Whatever ridiculous prank you used them for, I doubt it was worth the fifty silvers they cost."

Anders kept walking. It was the mature thing to do, after all. He took the stairs at a bit of a jog, and felt better when he hit the bottom. He just wasn't going to think about it. He walked through the main hall, and to the kitchens to grab breakfast and a bottle of wine.

From there Anders went to his infirmary, ignored his aide, and made up another bag for the physician. He gave the man the breakfast tray as well, and then stopped by the blacksmith. A short conversation later and Anders learned blacksmith did not equal glassmith.

That left Amaranthine. Anders could find someone there, and talk to that Alim fellow while he was at it. He'd get Amell glass eyes, find out the Collective could make him new eyes, and find Quentin and kill him for taking his old eyes. It would work out. Everything would be fine.

Anders went to the dining hall to break his own fast. The rest of the wardens were eating together, as usual. Stroud and Loghain were absent. They'd probably already left the Vigil, but the new elven recruit was there, sitting between Velanna and Sigrun. Oghren was absent. Anders backed out of the dining hall and went to the barracks instead.

"Hey, Sparkles," Oghren slurred from the floor beside his bunk. Maker's breath he was a mess. His bright red mane was tangled and damp with sweat, his face was flush, and he had on nothing but his trousers. He was sitting in a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor, a bottle of something in his hand. "Wasn't expectin' you back here. You ditch him again?"

"No, I didn't ditch him." Anders picked his way through the mess to sit on the edge of Oghren's bunk. "He changed his mind about his Calling. You can stop drinking. We're going to write to a lot of people, and see if anyone knows a way to help him."

"Uhuh," Oghren belched. "And then what?"

"And then he gets new eyes." Anders said. "Things go back to normal."

Oghren laughed. Massive amounts of muscle under massive amounts of fat made his whole body shake when he chortled. "You're fucking stupid, Sparkles."

"Hey, I'm serious." Anders said. "I've reattached severed fingers, and I've read accounts of spirit healers reattaching whole arms and legs. Eyes will be easy."

"Oh yeah?" Oghren asked, taking a long drink. "Then how come you don't already know how to do it? Where you gonna get new eyes? Stop thinking with your dick and open your eyes, Sparkles, while you still got em,"

"Look, you're a dwarf," Anders said. "You don't know. Magic can do a lot."

"I don't know." Oghren chuckled. "You think I don't know. What do you think the kid is to me, chopped nug liver? You think I don't know what magic can and can't do? Go fuck yourself, Sparkles."

"He told me-"

"He lied." Oghren interrupted him. "You ain't caught on yet? He lies. You wanna know how he gets new eyes? He steals a pair from another poor sod, and uses a blood magic ritual to make them fit. That's how. He already knows how to fix this. He fucking told me, but do you think he's gonna fucking do it?

"Look at us blighters. Look at the people he recruits. We got a mass murderer. We got an assassin. We got a fucking tyrant who damn near ruined this country. You bring that kid's dad back here, after what he did, that kid is gonna give him a hug, make him a Warden, and call it even. He ain't taking no one's eyes. Things aren't ever going back to normal. Go away, Sparkles. Let me drink."

"... He's going to tell everyone today. After breakfast." Anders said.

"Good for him," Oghren snorted.

"Are you coming?" Anders asked.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." Oghren said.

"Are you going to put a shirt on?" Anders asked.

"Sparkles, right now, you're lucky I got pants on." Oghren said.

"What are you drinking?" Anders asked.

"Dragon's piss." Oghren said.

"Mind if I share?" Anders asked.

"It'll burn your nose hairs off." Oghren warned him.

"Sounds perfect." Anders said. Oghren held out the bottle, and Anders took a drink. It burned going down, and it burned coming back up when Anders coughed. It was sour, with a bitter aftertaste, and one of the worst things he'd ever tasted, but it was definitely strong.

Anders drank with Oghren in place of having breakfast. Eventually, a few of the other Wardens trickled back into the barracks, followed by Anders' physician. Lorin wrinkled his nose at the sorry state of Oghren's bunk when he made his way over.

"I left the measurements with him," Lorin said, frowning. "I did what I could with the cleaning, but the right one looks infected. You'll have to heal him yourself."

"Thanks," Anders said.

"Thank me by remembering to put your tools away from now on." Lorin huffed. Anders stomach turned over. He forced a nod, and the physician left.

"He seems friendly," Sigrun joked, coming over to squat next to Anders and Oghren. "Hey, hubby. You feeling any better?"

"Not really," Anders grinned.

"Oh wow," Sigrun stared at him, wide-eyed. "A real answer. No joke. I'm scared. This must be serious. Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really, but here we are," Anders stood up from Oghren's bunk. Dragon's Piss was dizzying, but it helped loosen his tongue. "Amell wants to talk to all of you. Are Loghain and Stroud still at the Vigil? Do you know where Velanna is?"

"They left this morning." Nathaniel said. "Velanna was going to show Lyna the library. We could stop there on the way to Amell's quarters."

It sounded like a plan. Anders found a shirt, in the mess on Oghren's bunk, and pushed it at him. The dwarf dressed reluctantly, and stood unsteadily. The five of them left the barracks together.

"So who's Lyna?" Anders asked.

"The new recruit Loghain found." Sigrun said. "She's Dalish too."

"Oh good." Anders said. "Is she crazy too?"

"We don't have a verdict on that yet." Sigrun grinned. "She's pretty shy. She doesn't really talk to anyone but Velanna."

"She seemed of a perfectly sound mind." Justice said.

"No, sweetie, it was a joke." Sigrun said. "Anders was asking if Lyna is a bitch."

"She did not seem of a malevolent nature," Justice said. "She asked me the purpose of my helmet, and I claimed to be disfigured beneath and that my visage would unsettle her, as you suggested I should."

"Which isn't a lie, because you're a corpse." Sigrun said helpfully.

"She told me there is no physical ugliness a beautiful soul cannot overcome." Justice said.

"That's really sweet." Sigrun said.

"No kidding," Anders said. "What's she doing with Velanna?"

"Sounds like she was making a pass, if you ask me," Oghren snorted. "Way to go, 'Kristoff'. You gonna put that physical body to use? Does everything even still work? All the plumbing's good?"

"Oh, ew." Anders said.

"You are alluding to something." Justice said. "I do not know what."

"You can't be that stupid." Oghren said. "Come on, you've got Kristoff's memories, right?"

"Yes." Justice said.

"And Kristoff was married. You have memories of that, right?" Oghren asked.

"Yes." Justice said.

"Aha!" Oghren exclaimed. "So you must know what I'm talking about."

"Must I?" Justice asked.

"Don't be gross, Oghren." Sigrun said.

"Just saying, I know what I'd do if I suddenly became a complete man." Oghren said.

"They'll drop someday," Anders joked.

"Shut up, Sparkles." Oghren chuckled and gave him a shove. Anders shoved him back, and laughed.

"So what's this meeting for?" Sigrun asked.

Anders stopped laughing. Oghren took a drink out of the bottle he'd brought with him. "It's just... you know." Anders said.

They reached the library, and separated Velanna from Lyna. The little Dalish had a wiry build, with dark brown skin and darker hair, and intricate tattoos all across her face. Her eyes were dark amber, almost russet, and pained Anders to look at. She gave them all a polite nod when they stole Velanna from her.

From there it was up the stairs and down the hall to Amell's quarters. The guards didn't comment on the large entourage. Anders was beginning to suspect they were mute. One of them unlocked the door to let them in without being asked, so Amell must have told them they were coming.

Amell was sitting on his couch. From this angle, all anyone had was a profile of him, but Anders thought the bandage was rather hard to miss. "Guess who," Anders called. "I got everyone. Stroud and Loghain left for Montsimmard already."

Oghren stumbled straight to Amell's liquor cabinet, and started pouring drinks.

"You can all sit down. If you're not already." Amell said.

Velanna was apparently bravest. She walked over to the sitting area, took one look at Amell, and slapped a hand over her mouth. "Ma inan, tu melava suv?"

"Ir melava harel" Amell said.

"Elgar'nan. Who? Who did this to you?" Velanna asked, sitting on the low table in front of Amell.

Everyone else seem to take that as a cue to join her. Nathaniel hovered by the couch. Sigrun jumped up and sat next to Amell. Justice stayed by the door, with Barkspawn growling at him.

"No, hey." Anders frowned at the dog. "Bad dog. Sit. We like Justice. Sort of."

"Down, boy," Amell called.

Barkspawn whined, and wandered over to the sitting area to lie down on Amell's feet.

Justice took a seat in an armchair. Anders sat on the arm of the couch, next to Amell, and noticed he was sitting with his grimoire in his lap for some reason. It was handy, if nothing else. Anders siphoned some of the magic off of it for a cleansing aura to handle the infection in Amell's right eye. Oghren handed out drinks, and sat in the other armchair.

"So you're just... what's happening here?" Sigrun asked. "I mean, I see the bandages, but... how bad is it?"

"Take a wild guess," Oghren snorted.

"I'm blind," Amell said. "We're expecting three Senior Wardens in from Orlais by the end of the month. Nathaniel, I'm sorry, but I'm appointing one of them Warden-Constable. I'll request the Constable continue your training, but I can't promise anything. When they get here, I'm leaving to find a way to restore my sight, and if I can't then I'm going to my Calling. Oghren is coming with me, and if I don't come back with him, then that will be my official resignation to send along to Weisshaupt."

"Ancestors..." Sigrun said.

"... Are you sure that response isn't a bit... extreme?" Nathaniel asked. "I won't pretend to understand the trials and tribulations that accompany blindness, but-"

"Thank you," Amell interrupted him.

Nathaniel closed his mouth.

"Fenedhis," Velanna said, running her hands through her hair, "Tell us who has done this. Var shem'nan."

"Atisha, Velanna." Amell said, "Halam."

"Halam, ma halam?" Velanna said. It sounded like a question.

"Emma." Amell said.

"Banal!" Velanna said, "Mala suledin nadas. Din mala melana. Inan banal, lethallin. Ma dirthara ven tel'in."

"Lethallin?" Amell smiled.

Velanna stood up and stormed out.

"Did she leave?" Amell guessed when the door slammed.

"Yep." Oghren belched.

"Nathaniel, could you bring her back, please?" Amell asked, "I still need to talk to her."

"I'll be right back," Nathaniel said, jogging out after Velanna.

"Wow, Amell." Sigrun said, "I don't know what to say. Do you want me to come with you? When you go to your Calling? We could go together."

"No," Amell held out a hand. Sigrun caught it and squeezed it. "No, I don't want that. I want you to stay here, and take care of Justice, and deal with the vestiges of the Blight. The Architect is still out there somewhere with Velanna's sister, and the Mother is still breeding. You're an excellent soldier, Sigrun. The Wardens need you."

"I'm pretty sure the Wardens need you more, but I understand," Sigrun said, "You shouldn't have to live like this. Are you going to let a demon possess you? Like in your song?"

"Yes." Amell said.

"No," Anders said. "Can we stop talking like you're dying? Did you all miss the part where we're going to try to find a way to fix this?"

"This is a grave mistake," Justice said. "Such a thing would be abominable. Your final act should not be to allow a demon a foothold in this realm. You should seek retribution against those who have wronged you."

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with Justice," Anders said. "Can I tell them?"

"It doesn't matter. Both of you. It's done." Amell said.

"I can't believe you just want to let it go," Anders said.

"Revenge won't change anything," Amell said.

"It would change something," Anders said, "He'd be dead, for one thing, and I'd feel better, for another."

"All should answer for their transgressions," Justice said.

The door opened, and Nathaniel and Velanna rejoined them. Velanna stood off to the side, arms folded over her chest, her expression torn between outrage and despair. It was a rare day when Anders could relate to her so strongly.

"Why am I here?" Velanna demanded. "You are blind. In a month you are dead. What else is there to say?"

"Maybe dead," Anders said. "Probably not, actually."

"I need to talk to you and Anders about the new recruit." Amell said.

"Her name is Lyna," Nathaniel said.

"The two of you should learn the ritual for the Joining." Amell said. "I used the last of the first batch I prepared on Velanna's Joining, so one of you will need to learn the spell to make another, but you don't have to administer the Joining yourself. Anyone can do that. I'm sure you all remember the words."

"I would be comfortable with it." Nathaniel said.

"Thank you, Nathaniel." Amell said.

"Do you mind if I hang out, while you guys do your magic stuff?" Sigrun asked. "Now that I know we only have a month left together, I really don't want to waste it."

"I don't mind," Amell said. "I'll leave orders with the guards that any of you can come visit, but this needs to stay between all of us. The rest of the Vigil can't know."

"I'm glad you realize," Nathaniel said, "And I understand why you delayed telling us. If word got out, I don't doubt we'd see another attack by another assassin,"

"Oh my gosh, I totally forgot about that!" Sigrun exclaimed. "What if someone tries to kill you while you're like this?"

"Anders is staying with me, and I have guards outside my quarters," Amell said. "I'm fine."

"Least if someone kills you, it'll save me a trip to Orzammar." Oghren said.

"Fingers crossed," Amell said.

Oghren snorted.

Amell opened his grimoire, and slowly counted through the pages with his fingers. Anders watched the pages flip past, runes and inscriptions and diagrams containing all manner of arcane secrets, most of them blood magic. In Tevinter, Amell's grimoire might have been worth a fortune. In Ferelden, it was more like a death sentence. Amell stopped counting, and left the book open on a page with a rather detailed depiction of a woman transforming into a crow.

"Is there a picture of a chalice on this page?" Amell asked.

"No. There's a woman with a crow." Anders said.

"Maybe we could find it for you?" Sigrun offered, reaching out to touch the grimoire. Anders dove off the arm of the couch, leaning over Amell to grab Sigrun's hand before she could touch the book. "Woah!" Sigrun said.

"Don't touch it," Anders warned her. "Amell's the only one who can touch it,"

"Wow, okay," Sigrun said, taking her hand back. "Creepy."

Amell flipped back a page. A picture of a chalice was on the page. "You got it," Anders said.

"Velanna, come and read this with Anders." Amell said. "Ask me if you have any questions."

"I'll get out of your way, sweetie," Sigrun said, hopping off the couch so Velanna could sit beside Amell and read from the book in his lap.

Anders leaned on Amell's shoulder to read the ritual. From the look of it, there were two options. Either the corruption in darkspawn blood was amplified with energy and blood magic, or a drop of archdemon blood among darkspawn blood was used. In either case, the resulting blood was infused with lyrium.

"What are these numbers?" Anders asked, pointing. He realized he was an idiot a few seconds later. "In the margins. Ratios?"

"Page numbers, for advanced magic tied to the Joining," Amell said. "Disregard those."

"I think I've got it," Anders said. "This charm here, it's the same one the Chantry uses for phylacteries. So is this one, that keeps the blood from forming clots. I know both of these."

"Did you want to try the ritual first?" Amell asked.

"Sure." Anders said.

"Could you get my keys and unlock my trunk?" Amell asked. "You'll need the chalice, and there's a small maple box with plenty of vials of darkspawn and archdemon blood inside. There should be a few bottles of lyrium in there too."

Anders went and got Amell's keys, and unlocked his trunk. There was a lot more than just a chalice and a box inside. There were mage robes, and a handful of books, a few jars of what Anders guessed was kaddis, runes and crystals... a shield, white and red, with a heraldry Anders guessed belonged to Amell's family. There were two boxes. Anders open one. It was full of letters. He closed it, and grabbed the other along with the chalice.

Anders went back to the sitting area and laid out the supplies for the Joining ritual on the low table before a thought occurred to him. "So, this is blood magic, but I know you didn't cut yourself when I watched you cast it."

"Not all blood magic takes a cut, Anders," Amell said. "With enough practice, you can draw on your life force without drawing blood. I can only manage it for simple spells, like this one."

"So, should I use a cut for this, or...?" Anders asked.

"For your first time, I would," Amell said.

Nathaniel drew a blade from somewhere on his person and handed it to Anders. Anders cut his arm, and set the blade aside. He started casting.

"This is so cool," Sigrun said.

"Is there no other way to perform this ritual without blood magic?" Justice asked. "This tome you are holding, I can sense a great many evils within. Anguish. Agony. Terror. Despair. Desire. It is a terrible thing to behold."

"They're demons." Amell said. "I'm surprised you care."

"They were demons." Justice said. "They are something less, now. It is concerning."

"They're bound to me, Justice," Amell said. "The magic they give off is extraordinarily useful against other demons, or for augmenting magic. I'm not sure of the affect on a spirit, but Velanna or Anders could tell you their connection to the Fade is enhanced just having this book near and open."

"I can hear them screaming." Justice said. "It is disconcerting, and made only marginally more tolerable by the knowledge that they are demons and not spirits."

"You can leave, if it bothers you." Amell said.

"There are a great many things in the mortal world which unsettle me," Justice said, "I must weather them if I am ever to understand them."

"I'm glad you're willing to learn," Amell said.

Anders finished the spell. The Joined blood sat in the silver chalice in front of him, and Anders enchanted a few empty flasks to hold what Lyna didn't drink. "Got it," Anders said, and healed the cut on his arm. He started cleaning up everything and putting the unused supplies back in the trunk.

"Are we finished here?" Velanna demanded.

"We're finished." Amell said. "Ma serannas, lethallan."

Velanna grunted and left.

"Where should I hold Lyna's Joining?" Nathaniel asked. "In the throne room?"

"Traditionally," Amell said.

"I want to be there," Sigrun said. "Lyna's really sweet. You'll like her. When she's a full-fledged Warden, can we bring her up here and introduce her? I bet we could trust her to keep your eyes a secret."

"If you trust her," Amell said. The man had had his eyes gouged out for trusting people so readily, and hadn't learned a thing. Anders wasn't surprised.

"I would also like to attend her Joining," Justice said. "I do not enjoy maintaining this false identity. It will be a relief to speak the truth."

"Go get her, lover boy," Oghren chuckled.

Nathaniel picked up the chalice, and left with Sigrun and Justice.

"Is anyone still here?" Amell asked when the door closed.

"I'm here," Anders said, squeezing Amell's thigh.

"Same, so don't get gross," Oghren said.

"Neither of you wanted to be part of Lyna's Joining?" Amell asked.

"I'm an ass," Anders said.

"She ain't gonna make it," Oghren said. "It's been a while since you and I got proper drunk. What do you say we change that?"

"That's fine with me," Amell said.

"Same here," Anders grabbed Amell's shoulders, and moved him so Anders was sitting in the corner of the couch, with Amell in his lap. Oghren emptied out the liquor cabinet, and set all the bottles up on the low table in front of them before joining them on the couch. Apparently, Amell in his lap didn't count as 'gross' which was great because Anders wasn't letting him anywhere else.

The three of them got sloshed. Oghren did most of the talking for them, telling what Anders assumed were outrageously embellished stories about the Blight. Amell corrected him on occasion, but the occasions were rare. Anders did very little talking, and spent most of the time drinking, or running his hands over Amell, or burying his face in his hair.

It felt bittersweet. Anders wanted to be happy. He wanted to laugh at Oghren's impressions of werewolves and elves, and Amell's quiet one-liners. He wanted to tell his own stories, about everything from Harper's Ford to Kinloch Hold, but every time he tried his tongue felt thick and swollen and he couldn't find the words.

"You're quiet," Amell noticed eventually.

"No, I'm Anders," Anders joked.

"Everything alright?" Amell asked.

No.

"Yep," Anders said.

Amell found Anders' hand, and brought it to his lips for a sloppy if earnest kiss. It helped a little. Anders ran his fingers through Amell's hair, and kissed the top of his head, almost surprised when Oghren didn't comment. Anders supposed if there was ever a time for allowances, it was now.

A knock came at the door, and Nathaniel let himself in a few seconds later. "Lyna died." Nathaniel said.

"I told you." Oghren said.

"Thank you, Nathaniel," Amell said.

"I thought you should know," Nathaniel said, and let himself back out.

"... Do you think I did something wrong?" Anders asked. "With the spell?"

"No," Amell said, finding his hand to give him a reassuring kiss on his knuckles. "Not a lot of people survive the Joining... The spell you wove amplifies the corruption to a potency that's almost always fatal. It takes physical and mental fortitude to survive it.

"... I hated recruiting you. When you came back after I let you run, during the attack on the Vigil, I thought I was going to be sick. I knew you wouldn't have another chance to escape, and I thought I'd have to turn you over to the Circle. I recruited you in a panic when Rylock showed up, and I gave you those sovereigns hoping you'd run.

"When you stayed... I didn't know what to do. I thought I'd killed you. I sat next to your bed after the Joining, checking your pulse every few minutes, wishing I believed in the Maker just so I'd have someone to pray to."

Amell took a long drink. Anders traced a finger over Amell's ear and down his jaw, and Amell shivered. "You didn't even know me," Anders said.

"I know," Amell said. "But I thought I did. Have you ever been sweet on someone? You think you know them, just from watching them. It's vain, and a little creepy. You're not the man I imagined you were."

"Is that good or bad?" Anders asked.

"You're fucking him, Sparkles, what the fuck do you think?" Oghren snorted.

"Well I mean, what kind of person did you think I was?" Anders asked.

"A maleficar," Amell admitted, "A rebel. Bold and brazen and beautiful."

"Wait, back up," Anders huffed, "What do you mean I'm not that kind of person? I'm all of those things."

"You're one of those things," Oghren said.

Amell squeezed his hand, "You're all of those things and more."

Notes:

Elvish Translations
Ma inan, melava tu suv? - Your eyes, what caused this to happen?
Ir melava harel - I was betrayed
Fenedhis - Fuck
Var shem'nan - Our revenge will be swift
Atisha, Velanna. Halam. - Peace, Velanna. It's done.
Halam, ma halam? - It's done, or you're done?
Emma - I am
Banal! Mala suledin nadas. Din mala melana. Inan banal, lethallin. Ma dirthara ven tel'in. - No! You must endure. It's not your time. Eyes are nothing, cousin/clansman. You will learn to go without.
Ma serannas, lethallan - Thank you, cousin/clansman.

Fanart
Amell blind-folded

Chapter 34: Spirits and Demons

Notes:

Hello everyone, welcome back! Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 3 Frumentum Evening
Vigil's Keep, Warden Commander's Quarters

The rest of the Wardens had a funeral for Lyna. Oghren, Amell, and Anders had dinner in Amell's quarters. Anders felt a bit the bastard, but he hadn't known the little elf. The only thing Anders had known about her was that she had amber eyes, so close to Amell's old eyes it made  Anders' heart hurt to see. The fact that she was dead....

The fact that she was dead meant she didn't need them anymore.

"Lyna!" Anders exclaimed.

Oghren squealed and jumped. Amell stiffened a little and grabbed Anders' thigh.

"You little nug humper!" Oghren said, drying himself off after spilling ale down his shirt. "You scared the tits off me. What are you yelling for?"

"Lyna!" Anders said again. "Her eyes. They looked like your eyes. Not really, but they were close. We could use her eyes, for the ritual."

"What ritual?" Amell asked.

"What do you mean what ritual?" Anders laughed, "The one that gives you new eyes! We can use her eyes. She's dead. She doesn't need them."

"What are you talking about?" Amell asked.

"Oghren said you told him you knew a ritual that could give you new eyes," Anders said eagerly. "He said you just had to get a pair from someone first."

"What?" Amell asked.

"Hey, yeah," Oghren said. "That. Let's do that shit."

"I said a ritual like that might exist." Amell said. "I didn't say I knew it. And if it did exist it would probably require a human sacrifice... Neither of you have been listening to me at all, have you?"

"But... I thought...you knew..." Anders fumbled.

"Why would I know something like that?" Amell asked. "I know combat magic. Persuasion. Corruption. I told you, I'm not a healer."

Anders had never had his hopes raised and dashed so quickly before in his life. Oghren drank in shameful silence, but Anders didn't have it in him to be mad at the dwarf for misunderstanding. Anders didn't have it in him to be anything.

"Human sacrifice, what does that mean?" Anders asked. "Does someone just have to die near you for the spell to work? Because I mean... People die in the Joining all the time."

"Anders, I don't know how to fix this." Amell said. "If I did, I would."

"I'm just asking." Anders said.

"No." Amell said. "It means I'd have to voluntarily kill someone for the spell to take effect. I know a few spells that take a sacrifice, but nothing for my eyes."

"Are you sure?" Anders asked. "I mean you said so yourself, you're not a healer. Maybe I could get Lyna's eyes and we could try something. Like a reattachment, but with blood magic." 

"Blood magic isn't the sort of magic you 'try something' with, Anders." Amell said patiently. "There's a reason I have demons imprint their thought patterns into my head to learn my spells. Trying to come up with something on your own? The spell would be nothing like you intended. The consequences for doing something like that..."

Amell twisted his lap and ran his hands up Anders' chest to cradle his face in his hands. "Anders, promise me you'll never try to use blood magic to make your own spells."

Wouldn't you know it, it was a lot easier to lie when you didn't have to look someone in the eyes. "Alright, I promise."

"Thank you." Amell leaned forward and kissed him. He missed Anders' lips, and kissed his chin. After a bit of maneuvering, Amell found his lips and the kiss went better for it, right up until Oghren shoved Amell and knocked him forward. Their teeth clattered together painfully.

Anders swore. Amell laughed. Oghren laughed. Anders laughed. The night went easier, and Anders finally found it in himself to share a few animated stories. They stayed up well into the night, until Oghren fell asleep on the couch, and Anders and Amell moved to the bed.

Barkspawn slept with Oghren. Ser Pounce-a-Lot stole Amell's pillow, so Anders pulled him onto his shoulder. The warmth of his body made Anders forget it was autumn, and Amell fit against him so perfectly he felt like an extension of Anders' self. Anders ran his hands through Amell's hair and over his shoulders, almost surprised he couldn't feel his fingers through him.

"I'm sorry Oghren got your hopes up," Amell said. "He was distraught, when we last spoke. I'm not surprised he misheard me."

"Hey, whatever. We'll figure something out... You want one of my eyes?" Anders offered. "We could run away together, start new lives as pirates."

"Arrrr," Amell said sleepily.

Anders stared at Amell's outline in the dark. There had to be something. Amell just wasn't trying. Anders could find something.

"Amell?" Anders said.

"Hmm?" Amell yawned.

"... I changed my mind." Anders said. "I want your grimoire."

"Okay." Amell said. "I'll bind it to you in the morning."

"Thanks." Anders said.

Anders slept light, with no dreams, but also no nightmares.

Come morning, Oghren was still asleep. Anders helped Amell to the wash, where they had another fight about whether or not Anders was allowed see Amell without his bandages on. The answer was a resounding 'No' that eventually led to Anders taking half a bath with Amell and leaving so Amell could take off the bandage and wash his hair.

Anders comforted himself with the thought that Amell might change his mind once he had glass eyes in place of empty sockets. Eventually, Amell finished in the wash and they dressed before Oghren had ever woken up. Anders didn't blame the dwarf for oversleeping. Anders had a bit of a hangover himself, but it was nothing compared to the one he'd had the night of the party.

Anders left to get the three of them breakfast, and the smell woke Oghren, who locked himself in the washroom to be sick rather than eat. It was his loss, really. It was bacon and eggs, and it was delicious.

"Did you want my grimoire now?" Amell asked after they ate.

"How long do think this will take?" Anders asked. "I want to get those letters out, and go to Amaranthine today and talk to that Alim fellow about your eyes, and find a glassmith."

"Not long." Amell said. "A half hour, maybe."

"Alright," Anders said. "What do I need to do?"

Anders needed to do a lot. Oghren emerged from the washroom while they were setting up, and fled at the sight of 'more magic shit.' Anders donated Oghren's untouched breakfast to Barkspawn, and the dog took a rather obsessive liking to him afterwards. Anders drew a binding circle in the enter of Amell's room on his hands and knees, and the dog seemed to take it as an invitation to press its wet nose into Anders' face and try to lick him every few seconds.

"You need to stop." Anders frowned when the dog almost stepped on the wet paint of a glyph. "Daddy is working. Go bother Other Daddy."

Barkspawn whined.

"Come here, boy." Amell said. Barkspawn trotted over to where Amell was sitting on the floor against his bed, and laid down at his feet. "Don't mind him. He's mean."

"I am not." Anders said. "I've never set up a binding circle before. I'm trying to focus."

"What made you change your mind?" Amell asked.

Shit. Um. I want to look through your grimoire and see if there's any dangerous and morally questionable rituals I can twist to conjure you new eyes? No. No best not. "I just figure it would be a lot easier for me to learn blood magic if I could actually touch the manual I was learning from."

"I've been working on my grimoire for three years, now." Amell said thoughtfully, "There's a lot more than blood magic in there."

"Like demons?" Anders asked.

"Like demons." Amell agreed. "I'm glad you want it. Someone should have it, and I can't give it to the Wardens without binding it to someone."

"All done." Anders said.

"Good." Amell said, picking up his grimoire. "Alright, help me into the circle and don't let me step on any of the glyphs."

Anders took Amell's hand, and walked him into the circle. "Can I sit?" Amell asked.

"You're good." Anders said.

Amell sat. "Now you'll need five bottles of lyrium, and my dagger. It's over on my weapon rack, by my armor stand."

"Andraste's holy knickers. Five?" Anders asked.

"Five." Amell said. "I have five demons bound to this tome. We're going to unbind them from me, and bind them to you."

"I'm having some doubts." Anders said.

"It'll be fine," Amell said.

"If you say so." Anders said.

Anders found the bottles of lyrium in Amell's trunk, and retrieved his dagger from his weapon stand. Anders came back and sat with Amell in the circle he'd drawn. Amell opened his tome to the very first page, which contained a diagram of the binding circle Anders had just drawn. On the page opposite, there were details for the magic required to bind a spelltome.

"I guess all this makes your grimoire pretty hard to steal, huh?" Anders said.

"Your grimoire now, and yes." Amell said. "The demons won't answer to anyone else once you bind them." Amell set his fingers to the pages and flipped through the book until he stopped on a picture of a Terror demon. "Is there a broken circle on this page?" Amell asked.

"Terror demon." Anders said.

Amell flipped back a page.

"You got it." Anders said.

"I'll unbind them from me first," Amell said. "I need you to read this chant aloud, slowly, so I can repeat it. I don't have it memorized. Cut me," Amell said, holding out his arm.

Anders rolled up Amell's sleeve, kissed the myriad of scars on his forearm, and made a shallow cut. Amell put his free hand over his grimoire, and Anders read the chant with him. It was painfully similar to the one Amell had cast on the shade down in the cellars. 'By blood you were bound, by blood unbound,' and all that mess again. Only a few words were changed, but the spells were completely different.

The room grew dark, and Anders swore he saw a shadow pulled from Amell's chest and sucked into the book.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

A second shadow followed the first, and then another, until there were five in total. Almost immediately, Anders felt a shift in the room. It grew cold, and uncomfortably damp, and Anders swore he could hear whispering, like the sensing of darkspawn.

"Now you need to bind them." Amell said, turning back to the first page of the grimoire, where the original ritual lay. Anders wondered why the book didn't scream at him, if it wasn't bound to him anymore. Probably because it had no master for the moment. "Use the lyrium for the first half of the spell. For the seal, cut length wise down your arm."

Come on, Anders. No turning back now.

Anders steeled himself, opened the first bottle of lyrium, and started casting.

It was surprisingly simplistic. Each of the demons was neatly compartmentalized to a rune inside the tome, and binding them involved activating said rune with lyrium. When Anders had finished with all five, he made a deep cut along his left forearm, and bound the tome to him with a magical seal he doubted anyone could break.

The shadows withdrew, the cold was banished, and the sickly, clammy sensation was gone. Anders healed both of their arms. The whispers had stopped, but Anders did feel a very strong pull towards the tome and an overwhelming urge to pick it up. Well... What could it hurt? Anders braced himself and reached out to touch it.

No screams. Instead there were whispers. Blood. Anders picked up the tome and set it in his lap. Freedom. Anders flipped off through a few of the pages: ritual after ritual, chants, charms, incantations, enchantments, rune-bound demons. Kill him. Anders set the tome down and scrubbed his hands off on his knees. "So... hey, does it always do that? The whispering thing? That's supposed to be happening, right? I'm not going crazy?"

"No, it always does that." Amell said. "The demons are still alive, just stripped down to their base essences. You shouldn't be hearing more than a few disjointed words, at most."

"Cause that's not totally creepy or anything," Anders said.

"You get used to it," Amell said.

"Right. Okay." No big deal, Anders. Don't be a piss baby about it. "Alright, so I'll write your letter to Avernus and then I'll head to Amaranthine, and be back by tonight. Sound like a plan?"

"Sounds like a plan." Amell agreed.

Anders helped Amell up, and picked the tome up off the floor. Die. Anders set the tome on Amell's desk, and cleaned up the paint from the binding circle. He wrote out a letter to Avernus and the Circle, and Amell had him search through his armoire for a book strap that attached the grimoire to his belt. Practical or not, Anders didn't like the thought of his hand accidentally brushing against the tome when he walked, but he forced himself to deal with it.

Before he left, Amell had Anders fetch a smell crest from his trunk, and attach it to Anders' belt along with the grimorie. It had Amell's house crest on it, and apparently it would make the Collective more amiable to talking with him, as would the five sovereigns Amell lent him. And then Amell asked him to do something utterly and absolutely unthinkable.

"Bring Justice with you," Amell said.

"What?" Anders asked.

"Justice," Amell said again, "Bring him with you to Amaranthine, and see if the Collective knows of a way to send him back into the Fade."

"You hate me," Anders sighed.

"Don't pout," Amell said.

"I'm not pouting," Anders lied.

"You're pouting," Amell said.

"You can't prove anything," Anders said.

"Let me touch your face," Amell said. "I bet you're pouting."

"You don't trust me," Anders said, "I'm hurt."

"Come here," Amell ordered. The command in his voice made Anders shiver and brought him over to where Amell was sitting on the edge of his bed.

Anders touched his shoulder to let him know he was in front of him, and Amell reached out and found his thighs. He slid his hands up over Anders' ass, up his sides, and grabbed his tunic, giving Anders a tug that forced him down so Amell could touch his face.

Amell definitely did not care about whatever expression Anders was making. His hands kept to Anders' jaw, and traced his mouth, his thumb sliding along the inside of his bottom lip. Anders licked him, unable to help himself, and Amell pushed his thumb past his lips for Anders to suck on. "So uh..." Anders cleared his throat, "Before I go..."

"Yeah?" Amell asked.

Anders cupped Amell's jaw and ran his thumb over his cheek, enjoying the scratch of his stubble, "Are you still against sex or...?"

"You should leave now, if you want to get back by tonight." Amell said.

"You're such a tease," Anders said, trying to catch his breath. Amell was still touching him, tugging at his clothes, "You can't take your hands off me, but you don't want to have sex?"

"I do. I want you, I just..." Amell let go of him. "I'm sorry."

"You just what?" Anders asked. Amell didn't answer him. Well... fine. Anders was better at the touchy part of relationships anyway. He straddled Amell's right leg and kissed him, and coaxed his lips apart with a few impatient flicks of his tongue. Anders let his hands crackle with the static he knew Amell adored, and ran them along his shoulders, down his arms, over his chest.

It worked a little. Amell arched into his touch, but he didn't respond with any sort of reckless abandon. "I don't know if I can do this," Amell said.

"Why not?" Anders asked. "Just put your hands on me. We've had sex in the dark before. Just pretend it's a blindfold or something."

"Pretend it's a blindfold," Amell snorted.

"You've tied me up before," Anders reminded him, "Why can't I blindfold you?"

"... I guess you can." Amell allotted, mapping over Anders with his hands.

His hands felt the same to Anders, blind or not. They were still strong, and every firm squeeze on his ass or the backs of his thighs still left Anders sighing. Amell slid a hand beneath Anders' tunic, and traced over the trail of darker brown hair beneath Anders' navel to where it vanished into his trousers. Anders shivered, and Amell massaged his crotch. Anders pushed against his palm, eager for his belt to come off.

"I still think you should leave now," Amell said. "Alim doesn't like meeting with anyone in the evening."

Anders saw spots, "Are you fucking-"

"But if you want I'll suck you off before you go." Amell said.

"Fuck yes I want," Anders unbuckled his belt in a hurry. It was laden with Amell's grimoire and crest and dragged his trousers down his thighs, where they caught on Amell's leg Anders was still straddling. Their heights didn't quite work out like this. Anders gave Amell a light shove to knock him back onto his elbows, and knelt over him.

Amell lay on his elbows where Anders had left him, mouth open and trousers tented. Anders freed himself from his smalls and set the head of his cock on Amell's lips. Amell licked down his shaft and back up before taking him into his mouth. Anders missed the eye-contact, but he didn't need it. Anders ran a hand through Amell's hair, and closed his eyes, losing himself to the wet warmth of Amell's tongue.

Amell pleasured him eagerly, despite his earlier reservations, moaning like their positions were reversed. The gentle vibrations killed every thought in Anders' head, aside from how much he wanted this, needed this, craved this connection more than the euphoria that followed it. He came with Amell's name on his lips; intense spasms of pleasure left him shaking and gasping for air.

Reality came back to him slowly. Eventually Anders' eyes had to open, knowing Amell's couldn't. Anders wiped his cum off Amell's chin with his thumb, and Amell grabbed his wrist and sucked it off his fingers. Reality wasn't so bad. Amell seemed alright; he even grinned a little.

Anders took heart in it, and gave him a long and drawn out kiss, hands wandering shamelessly until Amell shoved him off. "Go see Alim. Bring Justice."

 For once, Anders did what he was told. He cleaned himself up, fixed his trousers, and left the room. He gave the letters to a messenger, and then went and got 'Kristoff' from the barracks and told him they were heading to Amaranthine together for what was bound to be a very uncomfortable time. If Anders could have ridden a horse to Amaranthine, it might have been quicker and therefore more tolerable, but the horses were due to arrive with the Orlesians, which meant Anders was walking. 

They'd barely started down the Pilgrim's Path when Justice started bothering him.

"The tome you carry is a reliquary for demons," Justice said. "It was bound to the Commander last I saw it, but I see the magic on you now."

"How about that?" Anders said, walking a little faster.

"This is a dangerous thing you have done." Justice said. "The demons within are somehow less than what they once were, and all the more deadly for it. They have been stripped of their identity, and clamor for yours instead."

"Yeah, I kind of already knew that." Anders said.

"Why would you risk such a thing?" Justice asked.

Anders was about to give him a snide reply when he stopped himself. Justice was staring at him, helmet on, but... Well, eye contact wasn't all that important. Justice had his head tilted curiously to once side. It was an innocent question, by an innocent spirit.

Anders sighed. Justice wasn't lecturing him. He just didn't understand. "Look, I don't like it either, but if there's a spell out there that can give someone new eyes, it's going to have something to do with blood magic. I have to start somewhere."

"This is an attempt on your part to heal the Commander, then?" Justice asked.

"You got it." Anders said.

"Then I question your methods, but I respect your intent." Justice said.

"You and me both." Anders said.

"This man we are meeting with. Alim, of the Mages' Collective. Am I correct in assuming I am accompanying you in the interests of finding a way to send me back to the Fade?" Justice asked.

"That's the plan." Anders said. "I could never stand the thought of being trapped anywhere either. I bet you're eager to get back."

"I... do not know if that is my wish anymore." Justice said. "I have had experiences here I cannot even begin to explain, and there is beauty in this world. Beauty we spirits often overlook."

"Like what? Dog shit and darkspawn?" Anders joked.

"The people." Justice said. "You mortals. You are complex creatures of virtues and vices, aspiring to many ideals in place of one."

"Well look at you, learning." Anders whistled. "Color me impressed,"

"I am trying." Justice said.

"Isn't everyone?" Anders said.

It was a while before Justice spoke again, "Lyna did not deserve her death."

"Not a lot of people do, Justice." Anders said.

"But it came at our hands." Justice said. "It was... a most aggrieving experience."

"... Did you like her?" Anders asked.

"I do not understand this question," Justice said. "She was innocent of any wrong doing. Her death was undeserved."

"I'll take that as a yes." Anders said. "You know it's okay to like people. Spirits seek out mages all the time to talk."

"You speak of demons." Justice said. "I am not a demon."

"You know Velanna thinks there's no distinction between spirits and demons." Anders said. "She thinks demons are just spirits with unique and sparkling personalities."

"This is wrong." Justice said. "Demons are spirits who have been perverted by their desires."

Well that sounded worrying. Anders chewed on his bottom lip, and touched the tome at his hip. Escape. Perverted spirits, huh? What kind of spirit turned into what kind of demon? "So... You're saying you could become a demon?"

"I said no such thing," Justice said.

"You just said demons were spirits perverted by their desires. Couldn't that happen to you?" Anders asked.

"No." Justice said. "I have no desires."

"You must have some desires." Anders said, thinking of the spirit's fascination with his ring and its affection for Lyna.

"I have none!" Justice barked. "Desist your questions!"

Okay there, Rage demon. Settle down.

Anders kept walking, wondering what kind of demon a spirit of Compassion could be corrupted into. He couldn't think of anything. Compassion was a sweetheart. She didn't have outbursts, or lust after anything. She was just compassionate.

She definitely wasn't a self righteous prick who couldn't handle a little bit of introspection.

"... Your commander, are the two of you in love?" Justice asked.

"That is ridiculously personal and totally out of nowhere." Anders said.

"I apologize." Justice said. "I was thinking about your question. This man I inhabit, Kristoff. He had a wife, and loved her dearly. His essence and the memories of their life together cling to his every possession like dust. It is beautiful... And at times I envy it. But envy is what a demon feels, a desire for something it cannot have... Do you truly think I could become such?"

"Not if you're asking me that." Anders said. "Look... I'm sorry Justice. I apologize. I didn't mean to suggest you could become a demon. ... This whole thing is probably pretty confusing for you, isn't it?"

"Very." Justice said.

Anders sighed. It was just a spirit. A spirit with one little concept it was used to pursuing in the Fade, where nothing was complicated and everything was separated into memories and ideas spirits could pick apart as they pleased.

"Look, I know you and Sigrun have kind of a thing going on, but if you get confused about something and you want to talk about it, you can talk to me," Anders offered. "I'm a spirit healer, and spirits kind of come with the territory, so maybe I could explain things a little better for you than Sigrun could."

"... I would greatly appreciate that. Thank you, Anders." Justice said.

"No problem." Anders said.

They reached Amaranthine towards the end of the afternoon, and Anders set about to finding a glassmith and giving him the measurements for Amell's eyes. He took Justice to the docks afterwards, and after a bit of searching found the Fisherman's Rest where Alim supposedly stayed.

Fish. Fish, fish, and more fish. The smell was everywhere. On the bright side, it made it a lot harder to notice the smell emanating from the corpse Anders was walking besides. The dockside tavern was wet, a greasy sheen on the floors, the tables, and even the walls. The wood that made up most of the furniture and the building itself was swollen and bulbous from the moisture and the humidity of the docks. There were dips and humps in the floor, and the ambiance was dark and terribly seedy.

Anders tried to picture Amell here, in full dragonscale armor, striding confidently through the crowds. No wonder the man kept his coin in his boots.

A boy bumped into Anders, and immediately leapt backwards, hands clamped over his ears. Anders touched the tome at his side. Kill. It was still firmly belted to his waist. Well, that would teach the little would be pickpocket. The boy stared at him wide eyed. Anders grinned, and the boy bolted out of the tavern.

Anders went to the bar, where a portly older woman with a mottled complexion was serving drinks. "Hey Wardens," The woman said after a glance at their tabards. "What can I get for you?"

"An ale would be grand. Nothing for my friend though." Anders fished out a few coppers from his boot and slid them across the counter. The woman poured him a drink. It tasted like fish and piss.

"I'm looking for someone named Alim." Anders said.

"Don't know anyone by that name." The woman said, and abandoned him to his drink.

Oh for Maker's sake. Not this game. Anders didn't want to sleuth through the seedy underbelly of Amaranthine, bribing and threatening every other person to find one elusive apostate.

"Alim is an elf, correct?" Justice asked.

"That doesn't really help us." Anders sighed. "There are at least a dozen elves in here."

"I see only one elf who is also a mage." Justice said. "That man there, in beige, in the booth beside the window."

Of course. Spirits could see magic. "I could kiss you right now," Anders grinned. "Come on, let's go have a chat."

Anders got up and walked over to the booth Justice had pointed out. The elf glanced up at their approach. He was...

Andraste's knickers he was hot. His eyes were a sparkling hazel, his skin was a dark and polished bronze, and his hair was black as ink and pulled back into a smart ponytail.

"Alim?" Anders cleared his throat and tried to stop staring. So much for not finding men attractive.

"Who's asking?" The ridiculously handsome elf asked.

"I'm not good at this sort of thing. That means yes, right?" Anders asked. "Can we pretend I know whatever secret password or handshake goes here and just talk like normal people?"

"That's Amell's crest." The elf, who must have been Alim, said with a nod to Anders' belt. "And his grimoire. Sit. We can talk. What's going on?"

Anders sat, scooting into the bunk to make room for Justice. The spirit sat, armor clunking against the misshapen booth. "So... I don't know how all this works-"

"I can see that." Alim said.

"Oh fine, tease the newbie." Anders said. "That's a brilliant recruitment strategy. No wonder I've never heard of you guys before." 

"Who says we're recruiting?" Alim asked. "Do you have a request to submit? Something from Amell?"

"Sure. Sort of," Anders said. "I need to know if you know any spells that can restore a person's sight."

"Elaborate." Alim said.

"New eyes. Following enucleation of the eyes." Anders said.

"... Two sovereigns. I'll inquire." Alim said. "No promises. One sovereign repaid if we come up with nothing."

"How long will inquiring take?" Anders asked. "I only have till the end of the month."

"Then you'll know by the end of the month." Alim said.

Anders took off his boot and fished out the coins. Alim pocketed them. "Is that all?" Alim asked.

"Not exactly," Anders said. "I don't suppose you know anything about unbound spirits involuntarily possessing corpses, do you?"

"Say that again." Alim said.

"That again." Anders said.

"... We have inquired on the Commander's behalf," Justice said. "Our purpose here is finished. Might we move on?"

"You seriously don't even want to know if there's a way for you to go home?" Anders asked.

"Kristoff has not yet been avenged. I have an obligation." Justice said.

"... Well alright. It's your life, I guess." Anders said, turning back to Alim. "There's one more thing. Quentin Amell, can you find him?"

"To what end?" Alim asked.

"To kill him? To blacklist him? He's the reason I'm here. Amell means something to your Collective, doesn't he? Well Quentin took his eyes." Anders said.

"That is a bold accusation. Do you have any proof?" Alim asked.

"I have a man with no eyes!" Anders hissed. "What more do you need?"

"Proof." Alim said. "A statement from Amell himself. Otherwise I can't help you."

Anders seethed. He told himself to be rational, but rational wasn't happening with his heart and his head in so much pain and so many pieces. He glared at Alim, and the elf stared impassively back. "Fine," Anders gave up. He'd find Quentin some other way. "I guess that's all. So how does this work? Do I come back in a month, do you come to the Vigil, do we meet in some dark alley at midnight?"

"We'll write." Alim said. "You're asking on behalf of Amell. We'll send the letter to him."

Lot of good that would do. It wasn't like Amell could do read it. Then again, with Amell's trust issues, he'd probably be fine with Anders reading his mail. "That works. Thanks."

Anders left with Justice.

"Are you sure about this?" Anders asked when they were out of the docks, and on their way back to the glassmith to pick up Amell's eyes, "Staying?"

"I have an obligation," Justice said. "'Join us as we carry the duty that cannot be forsworn. And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten.' It is not an oath I took, but it is one which resonates with me, and which mattered to Kristoff.

"These darkspawn are a cancer at the heart of this world. Eradicating them is a noble pursuit from which I cannot turn away, any more you could turn away from your Commander."

"Look, it's not like we're married. I just want to fix this. I have to fix this. It's... I..." Anders stared at his hands. It didn't matter what Amell said. Anders knew what he'd done. "It was my fault."

"Then you have an obligation to set things right," Justice said.

"I'm trying." Anders said.

"That is all that can be asked." Justice said.

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
See No Evil: An intimate chapter told from Amell's perspective.

Fuck Me Blind: An intimate chapter told from Anders' perspective.

Chapter 35: Love is Blind

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back. Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 20 Frumentum Afternoon
Vigil's Keep Warden Commander's Quarters

Nothing. A multitude of summonings and bindings. Dozens of corruption spells. Persuasion, control, mental manipulation, three pages in elvish. Detailed instructions and diagrams for physical magic, and stepping into the Fade. Five runes bound with demons, three runes as place holders for more demons. Instructions for a Harrowing, for a Joining, a ritual for preparing dragon blood.

Nothing for vision. Nothing for healing. Not a single spell remotely related to creationism. Hexes, curses, entropic spells and even how to drain the life force from the dead and the dying. Shapeshifting. Ways to utilize the Taint in place of blood. And Necromancy. Pages and pages of necromancy.

The necromancy was the only thing Anders found even remotely helpful. Amell had a few recent notes, hypothesizing rebuilding a corpse with telekinesis and binding a wisp to the result. When Anders realized why the notes were recent, he threw up. His imagination ran wild, thinking of Quentin's 'research' and what he had planned for Amell's eyes.

Anders pushed past it, and had a moment where he stood over Lyna's grave, and the small tree Velanna had planted for her, but the moment passed. He wasn't a grave robber. He didn't know enough to warrant mutilating the poor girl's corpse. He didn't know anything.

He requisitioned a handful of books on advanced spirit healing from the Circle, despite the fact that he had to talk to Cera to do so. He read Amell's grimoire, and he waited. He hated it. The days never felt normal. They sped or crawled past him, and all the while Anders felt like he was just waiting around for Amell to die.

The rest of the Wardens felt it too. They visited frequently. Queer visits, filled with drinking and reminiscing, forced smiles and awkward laughs. Amell got his glass eyes, and traded his bandage for a blindfold which never came off. For the most part, Amell seemed fine. He got better at maneuvering around his quarters, and learned to do most things on his own, but while they never talked about it, Anders knew he hadn't changed his mind about his Calling.

Sex was... different. Anders wasn't used to cuddling, but that was apparently a thing that they were doing and Anders honestly couldn't say which of them had started it. With Amell blind, the only positions he wanted to keep using were ones that left them tangled in each other, so Amell could find him easily. Anders hadn't decided how he felt about it, and preferred focusing on simple things, like the fact that Amell wore a beard well.

Jowan, or Levyn, or whatever his name was was nothing like Anders anticipated. A blood mage who betrayed his best friend to escape the Tower and later went on poison an Arl and destroy an arling seemed like an intimidating sort of fellow. Ten feet tall, with blood dripping out his sleeves, and an evil laugh worse than Amell's. Whatever Jowan was, it wasn't that.

Anders was sitting with Amell, playing chess with him as best they were able, considering Anders often had to remind him where the pieces were on the board, when Jowan finally arrived at the Vigil and was seen up to Amell's quarters. He was a squirrelly-looking fellow dressed in cheap, un-dyed wool, meekly clutching a satchel to his chest, with a furrow to his brow that made him look like a beaten dog. He had nappy black hair, a shadow of stubble, and he was about as thin as Anders expected an apostate to be.

That demeanor vanished when he saw Amell. Relief flooded over him, and he just looked like a normal man. "There you are!" Jowan said, throwing his satchel on an armchair and walking into the sitting area. "What were you thinking, making me come here? I think I had eight heart attacks just going up the stairs. You know I hate soldiers. And vague letters. What's going on?"

"Jowan?" Amell said. Anders moved the chess board out of his way so Amell could stand up, and stumble towards his friend's voice.

"Levyn, remember?" Jowan said, "I'm digging the blindfold. Very mysterious. You look like you're about to tell me my future."

"Where-" Amell frowned. He took another step and his hand connected with Jowan's chest. Amell grabbed him and pulled him into a hug.

Jowan patted at Amell's back with one hand, and waved at Anders with the other. Anders waved back. "So... this is a thing." Jowan said. "A thing that's starting to freak me out a little. What's going on? Why are we hugging so much?"

"Maybe I just missed you," Amell said.

"Oh boy," Jowan said. "That's not good. Are you dying? You're dying, aren't you?"

"He's not dying." Anders said.

"You look... really familiar." Jowan said.

Jowan seemed familiar too, but not in the sense that Anders had ever met him before. Amell must have had a type, and that type was apparently 'flippant shithead.' "I get that a lot." Anders said.

Amell finally let go of Jowan, and bumbled back towards the couch. "Is there room for him to sit?"

Anders scooted over. "There is now."

Amell accidentally sat on Ander's thigh. Anders moved Amell so he was next to him, and Jowan sat on the other side of him.

"You really don't remember Anders?" Amell asked.

"Anders? Wait, like, the Anders?" Jowan eyebrows vanished up into his bangs.

"I'm 'an' Anders. I don't if I'm 'the' Anders." Anders said.

"So are you two...?" Jowan said vaguely. Amell's shit-eating grin answered him before Anders could think of anything glib to say. "No way. You seriously turned him? Wow. I owe you that dessert after all. What was it that day? Was it an orange? I don't remember."

"It was an apple." Amell said.

"It was not." Jowan said.

"It was." Amell said.

Jowan laughed, a perfectly normal laugh, and held out a hand over Amell. Anders assumed it was for shaking, so he shook it. "Well hey that's... my condolences, Anders."

"Thanks," Anders said.

"So what am I doing here?" Jowan asked. "What's with the blindfold? Am I interrupting the naughty mage and the helpless recruit or something?"

"One of us would have to role-play a templar in that one, so definitely not." Anders said.

"I'm blind," Amell said.

"Taking off the blindfold might help with that," Jowan joked. Amell snorted. "So uh... did you want me to take a look at it? That wasn't a pun, I swear. Hope and I might be able to do something."

"No," Amell said. "I just want to talk. Catch up."

"Do you want me to leave you two alone?" Anders asked.

"If you're uncomfortable," Amell said.

"Hey, no, stick around," Jowan said. "That's the whole point of introducing friends to lovers, right? Seeing how uncomfortable we can make each other? You should have heard this ass when I introduced him to Lily."

Anders spent the rest of the day listening and trading stories. Aside from the part where Jowan's lover left him and was sent to Aeonar, Jowan sounded like he'd gotten Anders' dream life. The man lived in a small town in West Hill with a group of refugees he'd saved from the Blight. He was happy hedge mage who worked as the town's healer, and thanks to their history, none of the villagers were in any hurry to turn him over to the templars.

Amell set Jowan up in one of the guest rooms, and arranged for him to stay until the end of the month. It was well into the evening before the man actually retired to it, and Anders was alone with Amell again. They sat together on the couch, sharing a bottle of wine, and it felt deceptively domestic. Or, more appropriately, it felt like how Anders had always pictured domesticity.

"So Jowan seems familiar," Anders said.

"I'm not surprised," Amell said, "You probably ran into him a few times at the Circle."

"No, I mean he reminds me of someone," Anders said. "Did you ever have a crush on him too?"

"Jowan?" Amell snorted, "No. I'm not sure what he looks like now, but in the Circle, he never brushed his hair, and he was always forgetting to shave. We got there at around the same time, and just sort of found each other. He's like a brother to me."

"I kind of envy that, honestly." Anders said. "I didn't have anyone like that. Since the Circle expects magic to manifest early, there weren't a lot of accommodations for someone who didn't fit the mold. Most of my classes were with apprentices a lot younger than I was, until after my Harrowing, and by then everyone already had their cliques."

"I thought you were popular," Amell said.

"Well yeah, popular, sure," Anders shrugged. "I had plenty of friends, and plenty of 'friends' but no one I'd call a brother to me. Honestly, and don't laugh, the closest relationship I had back at the Circle was with one of my mentors."

"Anyone I know?" Amell asked.

"Maybe," Anders said, "Probably not. Did you ever meet Karl? Karl Thekla? He taught primal magic, and I know that's not really your thing."

"Of course I know Karl," Amell said, "He's a member of the Collective. They transferred him to Kirkwall, I think not long after the Blight. We needed it. We don't have much of a foothold there."

"No shit?" Anders asked.

"No shit," Amell said.

"Well... that explains a lot," Anders took a drink, "He never gave me any of the lectures the other senior mages did. You know, about following the rules and keeping my head down and all that. I knew he was a libertarian, but I never had him pegged for a member of a creepy shadow guild that operates outside the Chantry."

"Were you two close?" Amell asked.

"I mean... He was a friend," Anders shrugged. "We haven't spoken in a long time. I wouldn't mind hearing from him."

"You could write," Amell said, "Alim handles letters to members of the Collective. He could probably get something through for you."

"Yeah, but it would probably cost me a sovereign," Anders snorted, "That man is an extortionist." A very attractive extortionist, but an extortionist.

"The Collective handles personal letters for free," Amell said.

"Well... then I guess I'll send him one," Anders said.  

"Have you heard from your mother yet?" Amell asked.

"No," Anders said. "Tallo is a long ways off. I wouldn't be surprised if it took till Firstfall or Haring for me to get a letter back."

"I'll give orders to the Constable to approve your leave," Amell promised, finding Anders' hand after a bit of searching and giving it a squeeze. "And ten sovereigns, in case you want to bring her down here and you need anything when I'm gone."

"I really doubt I'll need ten sovereigns worth of anything." Anders said, "I could buy a piece of Andraste's shin-bone with that much coin."

"Her shin-bone?" Amell asked with a small smile.

"I hear they sell pretty well in the markets at Amaranthine," Anders said.

"You're ridiculous," Amell said.

"Don't pretend you don't love it," Anders grinned.

"I do," Amell reached for the low table to set his drink down. He managed eventually, and claimed a comfortable spot on Anders' shoulder. 

"You're getting better at that," Anders said.

"I guess." Amell said.

Anders wanted to ask him if he'd changed his mind about his Calling, but he was too afraid of the answer. "Anything on your mind?"

"A few things." Amell said. "You, mostly."

"That's my favorite topic," Anders said. "What about me?"

"Just you in general." Amell said unhelpfully. "... Tell me something I don't know about you."

"That's a little random." Anders said. "Like what? My favorite annum or something?"

"Satinalia?" Amell guessed.

"Nope." Anders said. "First Day. Don't get me wrong, I love getting presents, but I hate giving them. Apostate isn't the most lucrative lifestyle, and I could never afford to get anyone anything good."

"You get a stipend now," Amell reminded him. "And you got me my statuette, which I liked."

"That doesn't count. That was you." Anders said.

"What does that mean?" Amell asked.

"It means now that I have you figured out you're pretty easy to think up affordable presents for." Anders said.

"So if you were going to get me something right now what would it be?" Amell asked.

"Right now?" Anders asked. "Sex, probably."

"You're right, you do have me figured out." Amell said.

Anders laughed, and kissed the top of Amell's head, and inhaled soap, copper, and magic. "Is that what we're doing right now, then?" Anders asked.

"It could be." Amell said.

Anders didn't need much more encouragement than that. He set his drink down on the low table, and embraced Amell from behind. Anders started on Amell's doublet. Amell tried to push Anders' hands away when he heard the first button snap free. "I can do it."

"I want to," Anders kissed Amell's neck. Amell stopped protesting, and Anders took his time with the rest of the buttons. The doublet fell off, and Anders' own doublet soon joined it. Anders pulled Amell back against his chest, and unbuckled Amell's belt.

Anders loved the way Amell's cock felt beneath his fingers, and later tasted on his tongue. He loved the sounds Amell made for him and the way he sighed his name. Anders had never found a more perfect way to forget the rest of the world and its horrors than to lose himself in someone else.

Amell's soft skin was damp and dripping with sweat in minutes, and the firm muscle it covered looked all the more perfect when he tensed or trembled for Anders' touch. They lost the rest of their clothes, and Anders ended up on his back with Amell over him. Amell pushed two fingers inside him, and stroked him until the mounting pleasure of it almost made Anders queasy.

"Amell-just-" Anders moaned and couldn't finish.

Amell bit the leg Anders had draped over the back of the couch, and traded his fingers for his cock a few seconds later. A sound half a shout, half a moan ripped from Anders' throat, and a roll from Amell's hips made him see spots. "Fuck, Anders." Amell groaned.

Anders felt like he was on fire. His skin tingled and burned, and the sensations Amell stirred in him were so passionate and pleasurable they were almost unbearable. Choked with ecstasy, he watched Amell fuck him, his hair damp and dark and dripping beads of sweat on Anders' chest, his lips parted and spilling tattered breaths. 

"Harder," Anders begged, and begged again until Amell's hips connecting with his ass filled the room with wet slaps Anders barely heard over the rush of blood in his ears and the frantic beat of his heart. Anders' climax felt like falling off a cliff and plunging into an ocean, the wild currents dashing him against the cliff face until he was breathless and sore and utterly spent.

Anders were ears ringing. His cock throbbed, and all the feeling fled from his fingers and toes. Anders wiped his cum off his chest and fed it to Amell, who licked it greedily off his fingers. "Cum inside me,"

"Fuck, Anders, I-... I really-" Amell gasped.

"Do it." Anders said. Amell screamed, raw and deep and perfect. Anders felt him tremble, and felt the heat of him fill him up inside. Amell collapsed on top of him. Anders kissed him, and kissed him again, and kissed him even more. Anders' lips were swollen and bruised by the time he stopped, and stumbled to the washroom to clean himself up.

He came back and found Amell abed. Anders climbed over him, pulled him into his arms, and rolled over so Amell was lying on his chest.

"Anders?" Amell said.

"Hm?" Anders said. Amell kept silent. Anders ran his fingers down Amell's spine, wondering if he'd fallen asleep. It won him a shiver. "What is it?"

"Tell me something else I don't know about you." Amell said.

"This again." Anders tugged Amell's ear. "Why don't you just ask me whatever you want to ask me?"

"I don't have anything I want to ask," Amell said. "I just want to get to know you better."

"Come on. You already know me." Anders said. "I'm handsome, I'm funny, I like cats, and I've got a killer fashion sense. What else is there to know?"

"Favorite color?" Amell asked.

"Depends on the season and what the color is for, obviously." Anders said.

"Favorite season?" Amell asked.

"Spring." Anders said. "These questions are boring."

"... Do you have a perfect life?" Amell asked. "The one you imagine if everything had gone right for you, or if you'd been born as someone else?"

"Are you saying I'm not perfect already?" Anders asked.

"I'm not saying that at all." Amell said.

"... I mean, sure," Anders shrugged. "Who doesn't? I guess I used to picture the country cottage, the pretty plump wife and five kids under foot, same as everyone else."

"Five?" Amell asked.

"I like kids," Anders shrugged again. "You know, in another life. One where I wasn't born a mage, or templars didn't exist."

"I thought you hated kids," Amell said. "From how you talked about them when you were growing up, what they did to your cat."

"I hated those kids." Anders said. "Not all kids. Do you ever think about kids? I mean, I know that doesn't exactly mix with you, but..."

"I have a kid." Amell said.

"Is that some kind of joke about Oghren?" Anders asked.

"No," Amell said. "I told you I'd been with a woman. Once. It got her with child, and that child should be... a month or so old now, I think."

"Wow." Anders said. "Is she... I mean... What?"

"I've never told anyone that before." Amell said, exhaling bemusedly through his nose as if surprised by his own confession, "Oghren doesn't even know."

"... Did you, I mean did you want-you weren't-" Anders said.

"No, she didn't rape me. Thank you for asking." Amell said.

"Hey look-" Anders started.

"No, I'm serious. Thank you. I'm glad you know me well enough to ask," Amell found Anders' hair and ran his hands through it. "It was complicated. She was a friend. I guess you could say she wanted a child. We made a deal, and part of it was that I'd never see her or the child again."

"A deal? Like a blood magic deal? What did you get out of it?" Anders asked.

"A ritual that helped me defeat the Archdemon." Amell said.

"Sounds worth it" Anders said. "Not really how I'd want to go about having kids, but you play the hand you're dealt I guess."

"If you want kids, you should know it's rare for Grey Wardens to have children after the Joining." Amell said. "The Taint makes it hard to conceive or sire."

"...well I think it's extra hard in this case, but we can always keep trying." Anders joked.

Amell snorted, and the snort turned into a cackle. "I meant-" Amell wheezed, and laughed so hard he started coughing.

"Come on, I know what you meant," Anders laughed. "The kids thing was just something I used to think about. I'm good with the way things are. With what I've got right now." With you, Anders should have said, but didn't.

Anders wondered if Amell heard it, unspoken though it may have been. Amell toyed with Anders' hair and traced the features on his face, and Anders fell asleep never knowing.

A week passed. Jowan stayed at the Vigil, his visits intermingling with the other Wardens. Anders spent almost every moment with Amell, talking about things he'd never meant to talk about, and telling him things he'd never told anyone. Then the letters came. The Circle sent a guide cane and their condolences. The Collective sent back a sovereign.

Anders had a small panic attack. He locked himself in Amell's washroom for close to an hour, hyperventilating and crying until exhaustion and a headache forced him to get a hold on himself. It was almost impossible, with Amell's response. When Anders read the letters to him, all Amell had to say was that he 'expected as much' and that it was 'no big deal.'

There was still Avernus, but the Orlesians arrived before Avernus' letter did. The three Orlesians brought six horses with them, five Orlesian coursers and one Anderfel courser as a gift for Amell. They were a dwarf, an elf, and a human, but Anders was too distraught to catch their names.

Amell wanted to fill them in on the state of the arling as soon as they arrived. Anders went to the barracks to wait for him, and found Oghren drinking with Jowan and Sigrun. "Hey Sparkles, you drinking?"

"I think you can stop asking me that at this point." Anders said.

Anders took a seat at the table and caught the bottle Oghren shoved his way.  He uncorked it without bothering to ask after the contents. It tasted like alcohol, harsh and hot.

"So I guess this is it, right?" Jowan asked. "The Orlesian Wardens take over and he goes to his Calling?"

"Yep." Oghren said. "You heading back to West Hill, Greasy?"

"As soon as he leaves," Jowan agreed. "I know it sounds horrible but I kind of wish he hadn't asked me to come. It's a lot easier, not knowing. I didn't used to think that, but with some things, I think he's got the right idea. You know, lying."

"I should be going with him." Sigrun said. "I'm already dead. The Legion is waiting for me. He's the one who told me I shouldn't go to my Calling alone. Who else am I going to go with when all this is over?"

"Right. Great plan," Anders rolled his eyes. "I'm having a bad hair day. Is there room for me on the suicide bandwagon?"

"I think this is a little worse than a bad hair day, sweetie." Sigrun said.

"So he's blind! So what!?" Anders demanded. "It's not the end of the world."

"But it's the end of his world." Sigrun said. "You don't understand. I get it. I'm holding on to avenge the Legion, but if I didn't have that? None of you could stop me from going to my Calling."

"I'd still give it a shot." Oghren said.

"Wardens. Fun bunch." Jowan said.

"You're telling me." Anders said. "Look, you're his friend. Can you go talk to him? Convince him he's making a mistake?"

"I... don't think you know Amell that well." Jowan said. "No one convinces him to do anything."

"You did," Anders said. "You convinced him to destroy your phylactery. He said you were like a brother to him. I bet you could talk him out of this."

"That's really not what happened." Jowan said. "I mean, it was my idea, but we were going to destroy our phylacteries together. I didn't have to convince him to help me, he wanted to... and then everything just kind of fell apart.

"You know that thing we have in common?" Jowan asked, needlessly vague. There wasn't a soul among them who would say anything against his blood magic.

"Yes." Anders said.

"Well, I only taught myself how to do... that, because of who he was." Jowan said. "He was always something else. I could never keep up with him. I just wanted be as good at one thing as he was at everything. If he sees me as a brother, then it's a stupid little brother. There's nothing I can say that he'll hear.

"I don't know what your relationship with him is like, but jokes aside, he had a huge thing for you in the Circle. Whatever you've got going on, it probably means a lot to him. So you know... Thanks. I know what it's like, thinking you're going to die with a mountain of regrets, wishing you'd done things differently. I'm glad Amell's not going like that."

"He shouldn't be going at all!" Anders snapped. "How can you all just sit here, commiserating over something that hasn't even happened yet? That doesn't have to happen? This is so fucked."

"The world's fucked, Sparkles," Oghren said. "Get used to it."

"Fuck you." Anders stood up and left.

He went back upstairs, and spent a productive hour sitting outside Amell's quarters. Anders could have tried reading more of the tomes he'd requisitioned from the Circle, or reading Amell's grimoire, but he was worried his eyes would start misting if he tried.

Towards the end of the hour, the three Orlesian Wardens finally left Amell's quarters, and Anders went inside. Amell was still sitting on the couch. Anders sat next to him, and pulled Amell into a hug. "Promise me you'll wait for Avernus to write back." Anders begged.

"I'll wait," Amell promised.

It was something.

Two days later, the letter came. Anders read it aloud for Amell with his heart in his throat and sweat on his palms.

"Commander,

"You have my sincere condolences for your predicament. I might have a solution for you, but I cannot promise anything, except that you may find the methods unscrupulous. I am reluctant to commit my ideas to paper, given the circumstances. Come to Soldier's Peak at your earliest convenience, and we can discuss it.

"Avernus."

Anders set the letter down, laughing. "See? Didn't I tell you? Someone would know something. Avernus knows something! Just like you said he would. I mean you were lying at the time, but who cares? This works. This'll work."

"He said he might know something, Anders," Amell said. "And you don't know Avernus. If he thinks the methods are unscrupulous-"

"Who cares?" Anders interrupted him. "It's something. It's something, and you can go, and whatever it is, you can go and you can do it. And if whatever it is doesn't work, then you can come back, and we can find something else. This isn't the end of the world."

Amell smiled.

Anders kissed him, letting his head rest on Amell's forehead when he broke off. "So when are you going?"

"Tomorrow night." Amell said. "I don't want the Vigil to see me leave. I need my things packed and put into storage, and Oghren needs to do the same."

"Alright." Anders said. "Do you want me to go tell him?"

"Please." Amell said.

Anders fled downstairs to find Oghren. The dwarf wasn't in the barracks or the kitchen. After a bit of searching, Anders found him out at the training grounds. He was shirtless, with his hands wrapped, and doing his best to punch the stuffing out of a training dummy.

"Hope that's not me." Anders said over the thud of the dwarf's fists on the leather.

"What?" Oghren stopped punching, and turned around to frown at him. "It's a dummy, dummy. It ain't anyone."

"I'm sorry I snapped at you the other day," Anders said.

"Shit's hard. I get it," Oghren wiped his nose off on his fist. "What do you need, Sparkles? You come out here just to apologize? You wanna braid my beard or something? Go spend time with the Boss, while you still can."

"Will you stop saying things like that?" Anders asked. "Look, Avernus wrote back. He says he knows something. Amell wants you to pack your things. He says you two are leaving tomorrow night."

"Sparkles, do me a favor, yeah?" Oghren asked.

"What kind of favor?" Anders asked suspiciously.

"Let's pretend for a bit this ain't all gonna be rainbows and butterfly farts," Oghren said, unwrapping the bandages around his hand. "Say we go, and shit doesn't work out, yeah? What then, Sparkles?"

"Then you come back, and we find something else." Anders said.

"Yeah? Let's say we don't. Then what?" Oghren asked.

"Just pack your things, alright?" Anders made to leave.

"Sparkles." Oghren called after him. "I still got that favor to ask."

Anders stopped, frustrated. "What?"

"You know what I'm getting at," Oghren said. "I know you're in serious denial about this, but get it out now. Before he leaves. Just in case,"

There was nothing to get out. Anders left Oghren in the yard, and spent the rest of the day packing up Amell's things. Everyone said their goodbyes the next day. Anders didn't see the need. Amell would be back in a month. There was no reason for Amell to want to talk to him alone, the evening before he left, but Amell asked anyway.

The other Wardens were ushered out, and left the two of them alone. Anders stood in the center of Amell's packed up quarters, shuffling his feet and wringing his hands. Please don't say it. Please don't say it. Maker, please don't let him say it.

"Anders, could you do me a favor?" Amell asked.

Sweet merciful Maker, thank you.

"Of course I can," Anders said, relieved. "What do you need?"

"Can you take care of Barkspawn for me?" Amell asked.

"What do you mean?" Anders asked. "Just take him with you. Does he not like Avernus or something?"

"He's fine with Avernus, but I can't take him with me." Amell said.

"Why not?" Anders asked. "I get not wanting the Orlesians to go through your things while you're gone, but you're coming back. Just bring him."

"I'll ask Sigrun." Amell decided.

Amell started towards his door. It was clearly the end of the conversation,  but Anders wasn't about to let it end there. He grabbed Amell's arm. "You're coming back."

"Anders... I told you," Amell sighed, "If no one knows anything, I'm going to my Calling. Avernus might not-"

"There are other options!" Anders yelled. "Tevinter might know something. I might know something. You have to come back."

"Why would you know anything?" Amell asked.

"I can find something, okay? I'm an amazing healer. Just-... Just give me a few months to study your grimoire and the tomes I got from the Circle-"

"No." Amell interrupted him.

"What do you mean 'No'?" Anders demanded. "You can't say 'no' to me."

"No." Amell said. "I told you, you can't use blood magic to make your own spells. You have no idea how unpredictable and volatile it can be. Read my grimoire. Some of those spells, the difference is a single word. A single thought."

"I don't care!" Anders grabbed Amell's arms with both hands. Amell's neutral expression cracked, and he seemed torn between a smile and a frown. Anders had lost a long time ago, and his eyes were welling with tears that blinking made stream down his cheeks. "I don't care. I'll risk it. Please. We can risk it. You said so yourself, sometimes blood magic is worth the risks."

"Not this time." Amell set his hands on Anders' chest and slid them up cradle Anders' face in his hands. Anders let him, despite the fact that Amell would know he was crying. "I'm sorry, Anders. This is my choice. I'll keep my promise. I'll go to Soldier's Peak. I'll try.  But that's it."

"Why the fuck do you want to die so badly?" Anders demanded, smacking his hands off.

"My father used my lover to cut out my eyes and now my livelihood is ruined." Amell said, so dispassionately it scared Anders. "The only reason I even made it until the Orlesians got here is because I didn't want you to find my body and feel guilty."

"Fucking," Anders dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. "We can fix this. Just try. You're already getting better at being blind. You seem fine."

"I'm not." Amell said. "Will you take care of Barkspawn or should I ask Sigrun?"

"You should be less of a selfish stubborn bastard." Anders said.

"I'll ask Sigrun." Amell said.

Anders let him go. The door shut behind Amell, and the oak was heavy enough that Anders couldn't tell if everyone was talking outside or heading to the courtyard. It wasn't so bad. Avernus said he knew something. Amell would come back. No reason to be melodramatic.

Anders left Amell's quarters. The hall was empty, and lit only with sconces. Anders went downstairs, and out into the inner courtyard. Moon and starlight were dim, so Anders summoned a ball of mage light before heading to the outer courtyard. The rest of the wardens and Jowan were gathered by the stables, holding torches or mage light and saying their final farewells.

Sigrun had Barkspawn. Oghren had the Anderfel Courser by the reigns. It was white and russet, like someone had poured blood over an ordinary horse and left it to dry. Apt, as always. Oghren gave Amell a nudge, and said something to him. "Anders?" Amell asked. "Did you need a minute with me?"

"Just... Here to see you off." Anders said lamely.

Sigrun gave Amell another hug. Velanna called him an idiot. Nathaniel and Justice wished him luck. Jowan should have been Anders. He grabbed Amell and burst into tears, and everyone backed up to give them some space.

"You guys already get your goodbye in?" Sigrun asked, giving Barkspawn a pat on the head.

"Sure." Anders lied.

Eventually Jowan and Amell pulled apart. Oghren got on the horse first, with the aid of a stepping stool that looked akin to stairs. He held down a hand for Amell, who searched for it blindly. "Left. Left. Your other left, numb nuts."

Amell found it. Oghren heaved him onto the horse, and Amell wrapped his arms around him. Oghren set the horse to a trot. Anders felt like he should say something. Do something. No words could escape around the lump in his throat, and his feet were lead.

The damn dog was braver than Anders. Barkspawn bolted after the horse, barking happily. Sigrun ran after him. "No, boy! We have to stay!"

The dog ignored her. Oghren pulled on the reins, and the horse stopped. "Boss?" Oghren said.

"No, boy, stay." Amell said.

Barkspawn cocked his head at him. Oghren let the horse walk forward a few feet. Barkspawn followed it. "Yeah he ain't staying." Oghren said.

"Damnit." Amell swore and swung his leg over the horse. He fucked up, blind, and ended up falling off and onto his ass. A plume of dirt rose up around him with the fall, and Barkspawn ran over to lick Amell's face. "No!" Amell yelled. "No, you have to stay! Bad dog! Stay with Sigrun."

Barkspawn whined. Amell hugged him. Everyone looked uncomfortable.

Sigrun nudged Anders. Anders moved one leg, and then the other, and eventually made his way over to kneel next to Amell. "I'll cast a sleep spell on him." Anders offered. "I'll wake him up when you're gone."

"Thank you." Amell said.

Anders cast the spell. Barkspawn yawned and fell over with a heavy thud. Anders helped Amell up off the ground, but couldn't bring himself to let go of Amell's arm. Words tumbled out of him unbidden, and Anders pulled Amell into a hug to whisper them in Amell's ear.

"Amell, I'm begging you. Please. Please come back if it doesn't work. You can't say 'no' to me. I saw the sketches, I've heard everyone talking, I listen to everything you almost say. Can't I be reason enough? You love me, don't you?"

"... I wasn't going to say anything." Amell ran gentle hands over Anders' shoulders. "I know we haven't been together that long, and I thought it might be creepy."

"Fuck it." Anders said.

"Of course I love you." Amell pulled back from the hug to kiss him. Anders poured all his emotions into it before they could strangle him. He was rough, and he was soft, and everything in between. Amell clung to him, and Anders told himself to remember the way his hands felt on his shoulders, as if hanging on for dear life.

Eventually, he had to let go.

"Take care of yourself, Anders."

Notes:

Fanart
Amell Leaving - Cyanopsis
Amell Leaving - Matsuoske
Amell Leaving (GIF) - Matsuoske
Amell Leaving - Artysdeadermine
Wishful thinking

 

Apples and Apostates
Bound in Blood and Magic: Jowan's backstory as told from Jowan's perspective.

Feint: The events that follow as told from Oghren's perspective.

Chapter 36: Satinalia

Notes:

Hello everyone! We hit 200 kudos! Thank you so much for supporting this story, it really means a lot. Thank you all for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 1 Umbralis Morning
Vigil's Keep, Wardens Barracks

"Atrast vala, friends. My name is Eram Kader," The Orlesian dwarf said. He was a barrel of a man with a thick brown beard, and a bulbous if symmetrical nose. His skin was dark, and it contrasted nicely with his white teeth, seen often in his wide smile, "Warden Commander Amell has appointed me as Warden Constable in his absence.

"I'm sure you've all seen me and my comrades around the Vigil these past few days, but I wanted to wait until things had settled down to give official introductions. While we are from Orlais, I hope we can all agree that there are no borders within the Order. This is my second in command, Leonie Caron," Eram gestured to the human beside him.

The woman was a giant. Easily over six feet tall, she wore a sleeveless shirt with her tabard to show off her arms. They were thick ropes of muscle, and riddled with battle scars. She had brown hair tied into a bun at the back of her head, and ice blue eyes. Anders didn't doubt she could tie him into a pretzel if she tried.

"And this is Elyon Andras, a talented force mage." The dwarf gestured to the elf. Elyon was alarming short, barely taller than the dwarf. Half his face was tattooed green, and the other half was covered in freckles. Anders guessed that meant he was Dalish. Great.

"Aneth ara, lethallin." Velanna said. She had her bare feet up on the table they were all sitting around. Anders couldn't see her soles, so he didn't really care.

Elyon sneered at her.

Or maybe not Dalish.

"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintances," Eram continued. "Commander Amell told me of you all, but I prefer to know the men and women under my command personally. If you're all comfortable, I'd like us to go around and introduce ourselves. I'll start.

"As I said, my name is Eram Kader. I was of the Warrior Caste in Orzammar, so I have a great deal of field experience with darkspawn and consider myself a competent tactician. If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to ask me. You'll find me on the front line for all of our engagements. Why don't we go right from here?"

"Leonie Caron," The giant said. "Former chevalier. I fight as Eram's second."

Charming girl.

"Nathaniel Howe," Nathaniel said. "I'm our tracker, and forward scout. Amell was training me in strategy to be appointed Constable... before the incident."

"I was told of that." Eram said. "And I'd be more than happy to continue your training, and have you lead a few expeditions in the future."

"This is ridiculous." Velanna muttered to Anders while the others kept talking, and Sigrun had her turn. "We are not children. What is the point of this exercise? This man is to be our Commander but he thinks himself our hahren."

"Maybe you should slap him," Anders whispered.

"Maybe I should." Velanna muttered. Anders exhaled hard through his nose. One corner of Velanna's lips twitched up towards a grin.

Maker save him, Anders liked her a little.

Barkspawn nudged his hand, and Anders gave his ear a scratch. Despite the fact that Anders had knocked the poor boy unconscious, the dog seemed to have developed a fondness for him. He smelled rancid, he drooled excessively, and he was ridiculously overbearing, but he was Amell's.

Anders didn't mind so much, especially considering the dog got on with Ser Pounce-a-Lot. The dog sat next to his chair, while Ser Pounce-a-Lot sat in his lap. Anders felt like a regular ranger.

"My name is Velanna," Velanna said when it was her turn. "I am here for my sister,"

"The Commander mentioned," Eram said. "He also mentioned she seemed to have some form of blight sickness. I will do everything in my power to retrieve her alive, and see if we can't put her through the Joining to cure her,"

Velanna shifted in her seat, and uncrossed and crossed her feet, "... You have my thanks."

"Anders, at your service," Anders said when it was his turn, "I run the infirmary, and sometimes I do tricks." Like carve out my lover's eyes in my sleep. Or juggle.

"The Commander mentioned you were to be given leave to visit your family in Tallo." Eram said. "I would approve it, but I think we can all agree the Wardens find themselves in dire straits at the moment, caught between two warring factions of darkspawn, assassins, and open rebellion. A healer is invaluable in these dark times, and I can't in good conscience see you off until things in the arling settle down. I'm sure you understand."

Of course. Anders wasn't even surprised. "Sure." Anders said.

"I am conflicted," Justice said. "How do I proceed with my introduction?"

"Justice, isn't it? I was told of you," Eram said. "I agree with the decision to keep your identity a secret, but we're all Wardens here. You can tell the truth among us. I confess, I don't know or understand much of magic. I'd be reassured if you were always in the company of a mage."

"I refuse." Velanna said.

"Constable, this creature is more a risk to mages than anything else." Elyon said. "It still has the potential to possess us."

"Justice would never do that!" Sigrun exclaimed. "And besides, I'm already taking care of him. You don't have to worry."

"Such a thing would be abominable," Justice said. "It is for demons, of which I am not."

"All the same," Eram said.

"I'll watch him." Anders volunteered. "It's fine."

"Thank you." Eram said with a nod.

"My name is Eylon," The elf said when they reached him. "And I am not Dalish. These marks on my face are a mistake I joined the Wardens to atone for."

"How can you say such a thing?" Velanna demanded, dropping her feet off the table. "You wear the vallaslin of Elgar'nan, the All Father."

"God of vengeance." Elyon said disdainfully. "The Dalish are a vengeful people, and I believed in them once, but not now. You and I are not kin."

"At ease Eylon," Eram reprimanded the little elf, and planted his elbows on the table when he leaned forward. "As I said, and I'm sure you all know, these are dark times. I'm not sure how Commander Amell handled things, but under my command, you can expect transparency from me.

"First things first, we need to start recruiting. Heavily. We are eight Wardens against what sounds like the start of another Blight. We'll need to start weekly expeditions into the Deep Roads to search for this 'Architect' and 'Mother,' but we also need to address the state of this arling.

"It is my understanding that there is a contract of some sort on Commander Amell. Seneschal Varel and Mistress Woolsey believe the contract exists as a result of public fraternization between two mages flaunting their autonomy, and I'm inclined to agree. While I may not understand magic, I do understand surfacers have an unhealthy preoccupation with prejudice against it.

"As the Warden Commander is no longer here, I see no further need to keep hostages at the Vigil. This is an ugly bit of business that will not serve to win us the hearts and minds of the populace, which we as Orlesians so desperately need. I will be sending them back to their families, and will give a public address to the nobility in the interests of uniting them in common cause against our real enemy."

"A mistake." Leonie said. "This is bigger than the late Commander Amell-"

"Maybe late," Anders corrected her.

"The Game is afoot here, Constable," Leonie continued, ignoring him. "You play it poorly."

"Well, Leonie, when you're Constable, you can play it differently," Eram said. "My decision stands. Now, I know all of you have just lost your Commander and possible friend-"

"Maybe lost." Anders interrupted him.

"Just so." Eram allotted with a nod. "But I'd like for us to blow off the dust and find the vein of silver in all this. It's Satinalia, and if I've learned anything about you surfacers, it's that you love your holidays. While I haven't been here long enough to get to know any of you, and the sort of presents that might be appropriate, I think we can all agree on stiff drinks, good food, and loud music.

"We'll be holding a feast in the dining hall this evening. I understand if any of you would prefer mourn or pray, but I hope that you'll all attend, and we can get off on the right foot, as Brothers and Sisters. Atrast tunsha. Dismissed."

The dwarf stood, and gave a polite nod before departing. The giant got up from her chair and followed him.

"Would any of you be of a mind to give me a tour of the Vigil?" Eylon asked. "It is vast, and I am unfamiliar with Fereldan architecture."

Anders made a valiant effort to avoid eye contact. There wasn't really a need. He didn't doubt Sigrun would volunteer herself. An uncomfortably long moment past, with no volunteers. Nathaniel stood up. "I will."

The two left. Anders stayed in his chair, alternatively petting Ser Pounce-a-Lot or scratching Barkspawn's ears whenever the dog butted against the hand Anders left hanging.

"Wicked Grace?"  Anders offered.

"I'll get my cards," Sigrun said. She hopped off her chair and went to her bunk. It was against a wall with shelves for trinkets and baubles, snow globes and flowers, figurines, and statuettes. Anders wondered how many were from Amell.

Sigrun came back with her deck, shuffled, and dealt the four of them in. Anders picked up his cards: two daggers, a serpent, an angel, and a song. He discarded the angel.

"So, no tour?" Anders asked. "I thought you were supposed to be our perky little mascot."

"I guess I'm not feeling it today." Sigrun shrugged.

"You owe him nothing." Velanna said, playing a knight.

"You've just got your knickers twisted over him not being Dalish." Anders said.

"Kristoff has memories of your kind, Velanna," Justice said. "I understand that you are unwelcome in almost every land. Why is that?"

"Why do you care?" Velanna demanded.

"He's just asking, you know," Anders said. "He's a spirit. He doesn't understand. You don't have to get uppity every time he asks a question."

"What is there to understand?" Velanna huffed. "Humans hate my people. My people hate humans. We make our own path. We always have."

"The life of an outcast seems an odd one to choose." Justice said. "I find it strange that you mortals find so many differences to hate when you have so very much in common. To one such as I, it is difficult to tell you apart. Is it not preferable to rejoice in your similarities, than rage against your differences?"

"So we should all hold hands?" Velanna snorted, "Ridiculous. Do not speak of what you do not understand, spirit."

"Sweetie, he's trying. And his name is Justice, not spirit," Sigrun said patiently, drawing a card. "Angel of Death. Play your hands."

Everyone revealed. For once in his life, Anders won. His hand was three daggers and two serpents, and almost wished they were betting so he could have gotten something out of it. He took the cards from Sigrun to shuffle and deal. Ser Pounce-a-Lot abandoned him when Anders stopped petting him, the way a proper pet should, but the dog stayed.

"You are correct Velanna." Justice said. "I do not understand. Your world is confusing for me. Even the Fade was confusing for me, at times. My entire existence is spent seeking out wrongs to right. I know little else."

"You'll get the hang of it." Anders said. "I know it's hard for spirits to learn and retain things, but it's possible. You just have to try."

"Perhaps you are right," Justice said. "But what am I if not a seeker of justice?"

"You're our friend." Sigrun said.

"None of this changes the history between my kind and humans," Velanna said.

"Oh come off it," Anders said. "You like plenty of humans. You like Nate, you like Amell-"

"We all liked Amell," Sigrun said quietly.

"My point is obviously all humans aren't all bad, and you know it." Anders said.

"You have no idea how your kind has wronged mine." Velanna snapped.

"We can all of us be held accountable for only our own actions." Justice said. "Our own judgments. Is this not true of humans as well as elves?"

Velanna grunted.

They played for a few more rounds before lunch. Anders ate with both ladies while 'Kristoff' sat beside them, stoic as ever. Sigrun was unusually quiet, but Anders didn't think too much of it. He went to the kitchens afterwards to get some milk and gizzards for Ser Pounce-a-Lot, and a ham bone for Barkspawn. He went to the infirmary afterwards, wondering how he'd ever let Amell saddle him with so many responsibilities, and why he didn't mind so much.

The festivities started towards dinner, but Anders didn't have it in him to participate. He took The Search for the True Prophet with him to the chapel, and let Justice come with him if only because the spirit was quiet, and seemed to like Anders' company once Anders stopped being such an ass.

The chapel was deserted, with the upcoming feast. Anders walked past the many tapestries depicting scenes from the Chant without quite seeing them. He lit the sconces on the walls and the candle stands between the pews with a simple fire spell, and sat in a pew at the front. A marble statue of Andraste stared down at him. Anders wondered how blasphemous it would be if Compassion took her form.

Anders had already read the book, but he wasn't brave enough to pray. He re-read the first chapter, before the words started to slide off the page and blur together. Anders set it down, and looked at the armor clad spirit next to him, "Are you okay just sitting here?"

"I am not just sitting here." Justice said. "I was attempting to pray."

"Really?" Anders asked. "So... You're an Andrastian? You believe in all this?"

"Kristoff did." Justice said. "Some spirits... We believe a creator gave us life, and separated us from this world. I often wonder if we believe in the Maker only because we see him in the dreams of mortals.

"So much of the Fade is created by spirits desperate to emulate your kind. Many do not care about the possibility of a Maker. Demons live in the moment, but I wonder... Faith, it requires structure and belief. In the Fade there is neither, but here you can be certain what is has always been. I find that comforting. The events that occur, occur within context. There is a structure to this world I suspect you take for granted."

"Wrong." Anders said. "Spirit healer, remember? I spend a lot of time in the Fade. I know what it's like, but I think you're pretty unique to want something different. Most spirits and demons are driven mad when they cross the Veil."

"It was a most distressing experience," Justice agreed.

"... So do you believe in the Chant?" Anders asked.

"Kristoff did." Justice said.

"You're pretty cheeky, aren't you?" Anders grinned. "I bet you knew what Oghren was talking about when he asked about Kristoff being married."

"It was... as you said, 'ridiculously personal.'" Justice said.

Anders laughed.

"May I ask what it is you are reading?" Justice asked.

"It's a book Amell lent me," Anders said. "I don't know how much of the Chant you know, but mages kind of get the short end of the stick. The Chantry likes to blame us for just about everything.

"Black City? Mages. Darkspawn? Mages. Shoes too tight? Mages. This book tells it a little differently. It claims Andraste was a mage herself, and that the magisters of Tevinter weren't responsible for the creation of darkspawn."

"These things are irrelevant." Justice said. "You were not privy to these events. You are innocent of any wrong doing and do not deserve to share blame."

"Well... It's kind of like Velanna said, Justice," Anders shrugged. "The world doesn't work like that. One mage does something wrong, all mages get the blame."

"But this is wrong." Justice said. "You should teach others that your magic does not warrant condemnation."

"It's teaching now, huh?" Anders asked. "What happened to striking a blow against my oppressors?"

"You should do this as well." Justice said.

"You're demanding, you know that?" Anders joked. He made his heart sick for it, and stared at his hands, feeling wretched.

"You are contemplating the many injustices of your world, and you have chosen to do so rather than engage in revelry, which I am led to believe is important to you." Justice said. "I thought you might have reconsidered."

"Sorry to get your hopes up, then," Anders said. "I care about this stuff, but I'm just here because I don't know where else to be right now. You know I forgot all about today? With-... with everything, I didn't get anyone anything. I thought about it though, when you and I went to Amaranthine last month.

"One of street vendors in the market was peddling tomes. Blank tomes. I saw one with a mabari on the cover, and for a second I thought it would make a nice sketch book or something. For Amell. How stupid is that?" Anders laughed, and rubbed a kink out of the back of his neck.

"I also purchased no gifts for today." Justice said.

"That... actually makes me feel a little better." Anders said. "I'm sure no one expected you to, but it's nice not being the only one."

"Is it not permitted to attend the festivities without these gifts, then?" Justice asked.

"No it's permitted. You look like an ass, but it's permitted." Anders sighed, and slouched in the pew. "I'm just trying to deal with Amell being gone, Justice, that's all. I know what Constable Craven said but you don't have to sit here with me. You can go to the feast with everyone. I'm sure a mage or two will be there."

"I prefer your company." Justice said.

"Thanks." Anders said.

"It was good of you to attempt to atone for your crimes against him." Justice said. "Whether or not his venture proves successful, you have done all you could."

"That's not good enough. It's not even close... Maker, it's so hard to sleep without him." Anders' throat closed up on him, and he was grateful for it. He didn't trust himself to keep talking.

Anders didn't keep track of how long it took him to recover, but he did. "Still trying to pray?" Anders asked.

"I was listening to your ring." Justice said.

Anders stared down at his hands. He had an enchanted set of rings from Amell. He didn't need the one from the Circle. What had the Circle ever done for him, except lock him in solitary for a year, and send him their condolences and a guide cane?  Anders twisted the ring off his finger and held it out to Justice.

"Keep it," Anders said. "Happy Satinalia."

"Truly?" Justice asked, gingerly pinching the lyrium-infused ring between two gauntlet clad fingers. "This... is a beautiful gift. I do not know quite how to thank you. I shall keep it at my side as a reminder that even in misfortune, good can be found."

"You're welcome." Anders said.

Justice took off one gauntlet, and slid the ring onto a bony finger before putting his gauntlet back on. Well. That was disgusting. Definitely no taking it back now.

The sound of footsteps echoed against the vaulted ceiling. Anders glanced over his shoulder and was surprised to see Sigrun walk down the aisle to stand next to him.

"Change of faith?" Anders joked.

"Andraste could just be one of your human ancestors, if you really want to look at it that way," Sigrun shrugged. She looked tired, dark circles beneath her bright blue eyes. Anders wondered how late it was. "The feast is still going, but we were going to have our own little thing. Just the five of us. We're going to open presents now, and you still owe me a song. You coming?"

"I didn't get anyone anything." Anders said. 

"That's okay," Sigrun said. "People got you things, so you should still come."

"I don't think I have it in me right now, but thanks. Really." Anders said.

"... Do you think you're the only one upset about Amell?" Sigrun asked.

"What?" Anders asked.

"He was my friend too, you know," Sigrun said. "Next to Varlan he was the best friend I ever had. He never treated me like dirt or dust, he gave me a reason to keep fighting... Stones, he gave Mischa fifteen sovereigns for my ring just so I could keep it, so don't act like you're the only one he meant anything to. We've lost enough without losing each other, so just come open presents, or I'll bump you straight down to kill."

"You wouldn't dare." Anders said.

"I'll do it," Sigrun threatened. "I'll marry Cera. I'll marry Velanna. I'll marry a nug, I don't care."

"Alright, alright. I'm coming." Anders picked up his book and stood. Sigrun gave him a smile, and he managed one back.

"So... Eram, Eylon, Leonie." Sigrun said.

"Oh come on," Anders sighed.

"Come on yourself," Sigrun shoved him. "Either we keep our spirits up or we keep our spirits down. This way at least we don't wake up naked in the courtyard with our smalls over our heads."

"You say that like it's a bad thing." Anders said.

"You are referring to alcoholic beverages correct?" Justice asked. "I wish you would not call them spirits. It is a humiliating word for these drinks."

"Alright, alright. I guess... Marry Eylon, fuck Leonie, kill Eram." Anders said.

"What? No way." Sigrun held open the door to the chapel for them. Anders ducked out, and Justice followed. "That's totally backwards. Marry Eram, fuck Eylon, kill Leonie."

"You and beards," Anders said.

"Mmm beards." Sigrun said. "Don't get jealous, but I was giving Amell a couple of looks those last few days."

"Why would I get jealous?" Anders asked. "He was blind, who do you think styled his beard?"

"I never thought of that. Also, wow, you're really good at styling hair. Where's your beard?" Sigrun asked.

"In the Void, where it belongs," Anders said. "My hair does this thing where the curtains don't match the drapes. Head and chest are blonde, face is red and brown."

"I think that sounds kind of hot." Sigrun said, staring at him thoughtfully for so long Anders cleared his throat.

"I'm not a piece of meat, you know," Anders joked. "My eyes are up here."

"But your chin is down here." Sigrun teased.

"So did you get anyone anything?" Anders asked.

"Of course I did." Sigrun said. "I'm a nice person."

"Ow." Anders said.

"I'm teasing," Sigrun said. "We all knew you'd forget. It's okay."

They reached the barracks, and walked in on Velanna and Nate in a rather compromising position. The dark archer had the little elf pinned against a bed post, less than an inch between them while he whispered Maker knew what in her ear.

Well, good for him.

Velanna bolted out from under Nate's arm when they entered, face flush red beneath her tattoos. Anders snorted.

Drinks were set out on the table, along with cards and dice. Barkspawn was asleep in a corner. There were wrapped parcels on everyone's bunk. Ser Pounce-a-Lot had chewed through the wrapping on one of the parcels on Anders' bunk, and was still chewing. The tabby's eyes were scrunched up in concentration and facing different directions while he gnawed the paper to ribbons. Anders loved that stupid cat.

"We weren't expecting the three of you back so soon," Nate said, straightening imagined wrinkles on his tunic.

"We can leave and come back later if you want," Sigrun offered, waggling her eyebrows.

"Do not be ridiculous." Velanna huffed, grabbing a seat for herself. "We were only talking."

"Talking, huh?" Sigrun asked. "You and Amell did a lot of 'talking', didn't you Anders?"

"Oh yeah, we 'talked' all the time." Anders agreed. "Our jaws would get sore from all the 'talking'."

Sigrun laughed. Velanna turned even redder and glared at the floor. Nathaniel snorted, and took a seat next to her. Anders went to pry Ser Pounce-a-Lot off his presents and sit with him in his lap. Justice sat next to him.

"Someone pour drinks, I'll hand out presents?" Sigrun suggested. "Does anyone have a song?"

"Nope." Anders said.

"A song?" Justice asked.

"It's our thing." Sigrun explained. Nathaniel poured drinks for everyone but Justice. "Everyone sings a song that means something to them, you know, to keep... Uh... morale up. And get to know each other. It's fun. Do you want to go, Nate?"

"I already went." Nathaniel said. "I sang Andraste's Mabari, when Amell sang Blood on the Ramparts."

"That doesn't count," Sigrun pouted. "That wasn't personal."

"It was to me," Nate said. "It reminds me of home, it speaks of loyalty and bravery, and it encourages a healthy amount of doubt in the Chantry's teachings."

"I guess I'll let it slide," Sigrun said. She came back to the table with an armful of parcels, and passed them out to everyone. "These are all from me,"

Anders opened his. It was an earring. A tiny silver stud he guessed wasn't real silver, but was thoughtful anyway. He caught Sigrun with an outstretched arm when she walked past him to fetch more presents, and pulled her into a hug. "You're a real sweetheart, you know that?"

"Oh I know." Sigrun grinned, "You're lucky to have me."

Sigrun fetched more gifts for everyone from everyone, though the only other one Anders got was from Oghren. The bottle of Aqua Magus came with a note that was almost illegible chicken scratches, smeared with grease and Maker knew what else.

"Sparkles,

"This one's on me.

"Oghren."

"Well I'm going to cry." Anders said. "Who wants to hold me?"

"I cannot read this," Velanna frowned, glaring at the note that had come with her bottle from Oghren. Nathaniel held out a hand for the note, and Velanna passed it over to him.

"... You don't want to," Nate said after a pause.

"It is my gift." Velanna said. "Read it to me."

"Nice tits." Nathaniel said. Velanna turned purple. Anders choked on his drink laughing.

"Alright guys, last round." Sigrun said. She dumped a mountain of parcels on the table, and took a seat. "These are all from Amell."

No one moved. Every gift had a bit of parchment attached to it. Amell must have had a servant pen them. Eventually, Justice reached out and picked his up. He unwrapped a book, and spent a short while reading the note accompanying it. "... This is most thoughtful."

"Alright guys, they don't bite." Sigrun said, picking up her parcel and unwrapping it. A spyglass tumbled out into her hands. Sigrun put it to one eye and and stared at Anders with it. "Oh... Oh it's just like Varlan explained it to me..."

Nathaniel unwrapped a bow. Velanna a book. Anders didn't touch his. He didn't need to. It was obviously a staff.

"Oghren did say Amell gave 'damn good gifts,'" Nate said after reading his note. He cleared his throat, and traced over the crest of a bear engraved in the bow. "How did he even find this..."

"Speak for yourself." Velanna said. "This book is empty. What does he expect me to do with this useless object?" She tossed her book onto the table, and picked up the note accompanying it. Her hand leapt up to cover her mouth, and she snatched the book back up with tears in her eyes a few seconds later.

"Sweetie?" Sigrun nudged Anders with her foot under the table. "Are you going to open yours?"

"Maybe later." Anders said.

"... Well alright." Sigrun said mercifully. Nathaniel started picking up the scattered bits of parchment. Justice bent to help him. Anders stared at the wrapped staff on the table, and the note with it.

How bad could it be? Amell had already said he loved him. A note couldn't hurt.

The door to the barracks creaked open. Private Kallian poked her head inside. "Warden Anders, Ser?"

"Oh boy." Anders sighed. "What did I do now?"

"Nothing, Ser." Kallian said. "I couldn't find you this afternoon, and I have a few letters for you, along with some of the Commander's mail. I don't know who else to give it to for safe keeping. The Seneschal suggested you, since you've been handling his mail lately."

Anders pushed Ser Pounce-a-Lot off his lap and got up from the table. Drink made the room tip dangerously to one side, and Anders caught his chair. When the room righted, he went to the door and accepted the three letters Kallian handed him.

Anders set them on the night stand beside his bunk, and leaned his wrapped staff up against the wall. That made three now. Cera was going to kill him. Anders rejoined his friends for cards and dice and other games. The Orlesian Wardens trickled in throughout the night, even Eram, who was apparently willing to sleep with the rest of them despite his position as Constable. Anders might have been too hasty voting to kill him just because he didn't approve his leave.

Anders lay in his bunk later, animals all around him, unable to sleep. It wasn't the same without Amell's weight on his chest, or pressed tight against his shoulder. It was colder. Lonelier. Anders got up at some point, pulled on a pair of trousers, and picked up his letters and his wrapped staff. He left the barracks, and had barely started down the hall when a voice from behind made him shriek and drop everything.

"May I accompany you?" Justice asked.

Anders stumbled back against a pillar in the hall, and clutched his chest. His staff clattered noisily to the ground and his letters fluttered down around him. "Maker's breath, Justice. You scared the shit out of me."

"I apologize." Justice said. He was still in full armor. Anders wondered how lost in thought he must have been to miss the sound of his heavy metal footsteps. "This was not my intent. I do not require sleep, and I find nights are often uneventful,"

"Trust me, you don't want to see an eventful night around here." Anders said, picking up his scattered things. "I'm just going to go sit in the chapel and read my letters. It'll be pretty boring for you."

"If this is your intent, perhaps I could retrieve the book I was gifted and read with you by the light the chapel affords." Justice said.

"Sure," Anders said. "Go ahead and get it."

Anders waited in the hall for Justice to come back with his book. Anders went to the chapel with him, lit the sconces, and sat down in a pew. "... What did he get you?" Anders asked.

"A book of poetry, inspired by the Fade." Justice said. "... It is comforting to have something to remind me of my home."

Anders leaned his staff against the pew and opened the letters first. The first one in the stack was for Amell, but Anders had never respected his privacy before and didn't see a reason to start now. Anders warmed the wax with a fire spell and peeled it back to read the letter without breaking the seal.

"My poor stupid Warden,

"I warned you, did I not? We Crows are a dastardly sort. You should know better than to trust us, but blind trust was always a weakness of yours. How is it you are not dead yet? I cannot say why there is a new contract on you, and Ignacio went back on his word. We are on less than friendly terms these days.

"The Crows hunt me as well, you see, and I have my own battles to fight. I confess, I was surprised to receive your letter. I thought I had put you behind me, and not in the naughty way, but here we are. I expect the Guildmaster will agree to meet with me soon. Or perhaps I will kill him. In either case, I will do what I can for you. For old time's sake.

"Z."

Anders folded the letter and stuffed it back in the envelope. He had a very sudden and petty need to hear something from Amell, and unwrapped his staff next.

It was beyond exquisite. Intricate runes ran up and down the shimmering white staff, glowing blue with lyrium and radiating energy. The staff had been carved to make a cage out of its head, and a brilliant white crystal sang with power from within. Anders could hear it humming and crackling. It made the hair on his arms stand on end, and his fingers tingled from touching it.

Anders had sudden pang of guilt for ever having dropped it. He rested the staff gingerly against the pew in front of him, and opened Amell's letter. The script slanted left. Amell hadn't written it, but he'd obviously dictated it.

"Anders,"

"I'm sorry I never got you that pony, but I hope you enjoy the staff all the same. I had it commissioned for you from the dragon bones we retrieved in the Blackmarsh. To be honest I'm a little disappointed I never got to see the final product, but it feels as I intended it.

"I thought you could call it Vigilance. I know, more wardeny darkspawn names, but peace is all I ever wanted you to serve in. I also hope it reminds you to never try to make your own spells, whatever the reason. This isn't how I intended things, but I want you to know that I have no regrets.

"Yours always,
"Amell."

It was a long while before Anders stopped crying and was able to read the next letter. The letter was sealed with the emblem of the Circle of Magi, and Anders tore it open.

"Anders,"

"I can't tell you what it means to hear from you. We all say we'll write when we part ways from old friends, but it's a rare day when someone actually does. Life in Kirkwall has not been easy for me. They call it the City of Chains for a reason.

"I was ecstatic to hear you joined the Wardens. I always prayed your every escape attempt would be your last, despite the fact that it would mean we would likely never speak again. I hope freedom is treating you well. I am doing what I can here, but the templars are nothing if not vigilant.

"Should I take your letter to mean you have joined our ranks? I hope this is the case. I don't think I need to tell you how invaluable skilled healers are, and you were always passionate and driven. I know we would benefit greatly from your aid.

"Please keep in touch,
"Karl."

Anders set the letter down, and picked up the last. It was from Tallo. His palms were sweating too much to tear it open, and he had to dry them off on his trousers before the parchment would give. The letter was alarmingly short, and written in Ander. Anders wished he'd never opened it.

"Your mother is dead. Never write to me again."

Notes:

Fanart
Anders and Amell and Anders and Compassion
Amell

 

Apples and Apostates
Letters from Zevran: Letters Zevran sent Amell, after the first.

Chapter 37: Brothers and Sisters

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back! Thank you all for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

TW: Attempted Rape

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 14 Umbralis Sometime
Somewhere, in the Deep Roads

The lyrium was getting to him. Anders leaned heavily on his staff, and wrung the dragonbone between his hands. The friction made his gloves chafe against his palms, and was slightly soothing. Watching you. Anders blinked hard, and touched the grimoire at his side. Freedom. The voices were different. Which meant he was hearing voices. Which meant mana imbalance.

Twelve wardens was too much, especially when three of them were inexperienced. Eram was competent, but he wasn't Amell. They came out of every encounter with injured, and Anders was having trouble keeping up. His staff, his rings, the runes on his bracers... All of it helped, but it wasn't enough. Anders drank a lyrium potion with every skirmish, and sometimes one afterwards, and all he could think was that Amell had never pushed him this hard.

Anders. Even Kal'Hirol hadn't been this bad. Anders had been exhausted, sure, but he hadn't been drinking lyrium like water. If anything it had been more of a physical overestimation on Amell's part than a magical one. Amell understood magic. Amell knew his limits. Amell protected him. Eram didn't.

Anders. The dwarf fought in the front lines, with the other warriors. He gave orders before fights, and didn't keep track of them as they progressed. He wasn't ready and waiting with a dagger to save Anders from anything that might look his way, because Eram was just his Commander, and not his lover.

Anders. It wasn't until Amell was gone that Anders finally understood the difference he made in a fight. If the darkspawn hated anything, it was light, and most of Anders magic was comprised of bright, white, light. Anders frequently found himself the target of angry shrieks and enraged genlocks when they slipped through the cracks Amell had always kept sealed. Anders didn't know where he'd be if not for Barkspawn. The mabari hovered at his side, and mauled anything that threatened him.

"Anders!" Sigrun shouted. Anders jumped, and felt like his world turned upside down. Everything spun, he lost his balance, and he clung to his staff to keep upright. Dizzy in the Deep Roads was a recipe for disaster. Channels of magma kept the passage they were in illuminated and warm, but they also meant an errant spill could cost him his life.

Anders blinked Sigrun into focus. The dwarf was staring up at him from underneath her half helm, concern in her crystal blue eyes. "What?"

"Are you okay, sweetie?" Sigrun asked. "I know I'm short and hard to see, but it's usually a lot easier to get your attention."

"Peachy as a pie." Anders lied. Barkspawn whined and nudged him. Anders gave the dog a weary pat.

"Maybe if we're talking about your pupils I can see where you got pies from," Sigrun said. "You're pretty pale, and you're twitching so much it's getting hard to tell you and Justice apart."

"I'm the pretty one." Anders said, dragging a hand over his face. It wet his palm with sweat and he used it to smooth back the few strands of hair that had escaped his hair tie. His hands weren't shaking, at least. That was something.

"So remember how you told me not to hide injuries?" Sigrun asked, taking off her helmet and shaking out her pig tails. "What's going on?"

"It's..." In the shadows. Anders sucked in a sharp breath. "It's called mana imbalance. From all the potions. One too many on the rocks, I guess,"

"Do you need to take a break?" Sigrun asked. "How can I help?"

"Cut me off, I guess," Anders said. "But I'm the healer, so..."

"I always knew your drinking would tear us apart," Sigrun joked.

Anders grinned. He felt too sick to laugh. Velanna joined them; the sight of her bare feet on the blighted, fleshy ground made Anders a little queasy. "What is going on?" Velanna asked.

"Anders is sick." Sigrun said.

"Sick?" Velanna grabbed his chin in her hand and turned his head back and forth.

"Hey-" Anders protested feebly.

Velanna pried his eyes open side with two fingers, and frowned. "Taren souveri. You need to sleep."

"Thank you, Commander Obvious." Anders rolled his eyes. "And just how am I supposed to do that?"

"You lie down and close your eyes, fool." Velanna said.

Sigrun giggled.

"I will force a halt." Velanna said, and left towards the front of their procession.

"She's gotten a lot better, have you noticed?" Sigrun asked.

Anders shrugged, "Well, she didn't slap me, so..."

"Not just that." Sigrun said. "Ever since Lyna, she started wearing her warden pendant, and now with her and Nate back together she smiles a lot more. It's nice, you know? It makes me think we're going to be okay."

Gnawing flesh. Anders gripped his staff a little tighter. "Is that darkspawn or just me going crazy?"

"Kind of hard to say, sweetie. We're in the Deep Roads. There are darkspawn everywhere." Sigrun took one of his hands and gave him a tug to keep him walking. "Come on. We're falling behind. I'll keep an eye on you,"

Anders let her drag him along, Barkspawn following at his heels. The voices weren't so bad. He had Amell's grimoire, and he was getting used to the whispering, but the dizziness was making him sick.

Wait... What had Amell said... Something about using the Taint to realign your connection to the Fade... Anders freed his hand from Sigrun's to unhook the grimoire from his belt. Kill them.

"Oh shut up." Anders muttered.

"What?" Sigrun asked.

"Nothing." Anders flipped the tome open to the Joining ritual, and flipped back and forth between the pages numbers in the margins until he found the one he was looking for. Regenerates mana, realigns connection with the Fade, alleviates mana imbalance. "Can I borrow a knife or a dagger?"

"I've only got my axes." Sigrun said. "We really need to get you your own dagger though. Hang on, I'll go ask Nate."

Anders kept his finger on the page, a little surprised the grimoire stopped muttering once he told it to shut up. Maybe he had more control over it than he thought.

Anders did not like the Deep Roads. They were creepy and slippery enough without him dizzy and hearing voices. Magma channels ran along the floor, and the angle of the light cast long and queer shadows across the walls. The floor and the walls were coated with a layer of blight, a slimy mixture of flesh and muscle that pulsed and undulated and occasionally oozed out puss and rot.

The air was thick with green gases, and white sacks full of Children occasionally clogged the corridors. The tunnels made everything echo, and where there weren't darkspawn, there were giant spiders. Anders could hear them hissing and skittering as they followed their procession, attacking whenever someone made the mistake of tripping over their webs.

At least Amell's expeditions had goals. They cleared out mines and quarries,  they retrieved lyrium or gold from Kal'Hirol. They didn't wander aimlessly in the Deep for the sport of it.

Sigrun came back with Nate. The archer handed him a dagger so small it might have been a letter opener. "It's a spare," Nate explained. "You can keep it, as a late Satinalia present."

"Thanks," Anders pulled his sleeve out of his glove and bracer, and rolled it up around his elbow so he could make a cut in the same spot he always did. Barkspawn stared at him attentively, tail wagging. Blood magic must have reminded the poor thing of its real master.

"Velanna told me you have some kind of mage sickness? Is everything alright?" Nate asked.

"Anders called it mana imbalance but I don't know what that means." Sigrun said.

"It's from too much lyrium. Makes you crazy. Nothing trivial." Anders said.

"Well as long as it's not trivial." Nate said.

Anders focused on the spell. It reminded him of a regeneration spell, augmented by the darkspawn corruption inside him instead of his heartbeat. Finding the source of the corruption to pull from was another matter. Amell had a few helpful notes, suggesting trying to sense darkspawn and pulling from where that sense of wrongness lay within. It worked, and in minutes Anders felt infinitely better.

The voices stopped. He found his equilibrium, and he just felt sweaty, instead of achy and nauseous. Anders healed the cut on his arm and rubbed away the residual sting it left. "Thanks, Creepy."

"Did that help?" Sigrun asked.

"It helped," Anders said. "So where do I put this?"

"It goes in your sleeve." Nathaniel explained, taking the dagger back and cleaning it off before he sheathed it. He slipped it up his sleeve to demonstrate, and hesitated handing it back. "The bracers might be a problem though."

"Amell kept his in his boot." Sigrun suggested.

"The boots need to be tailored for that." Nathaniel said, handing Anders the dagger. "Your satchel for now, I suppose."

Anders dropped it in his satchel. "And there it goes, never to be seen again. Thanks again Nate."

"Of course." Nate said. "I suppose I never considered how much casting you actually do, healing everyone between fights. I know Amell gave us longer breaks but I never considered why."

"Well, now you know." Anders said, hooking Amell's grimoire back to his belt and fixing his sleeve.

"Velanna said she'd ask for a halt," Nathaniel said. "I wonder what's taking so long,"

"There she is," Sigrun pointed to Velanna, who shouldered past the rest of the Wardens to join them.

"'We'll stop when we stop.' Of all the ignorant pigheaded..." Velanna stopped and squinted at Anders' eyes. "... You look better. Why do you look better?"

"Magic." Anders joked.

"He used one of the spells in Amell's book." Sigrun explained.

"Amell knew a spell to counter an imbalance of mana?" Velanna asked, only to continue before anyone could answer, "Of course he did. And now thanks to his grimoire you know it. I would learn it as well, with how this durgen'len drives us. We should study from his grimoire together."

"You know, last time I asked if you wanted to discuss magic with me, you called it stealing." Anders reminded her, more to evade the question than anything else.

Amell's grimoire belonged to Anders, and Anders didn't want to share. Maybe it was petty, but he didn't care. Reading it was personal. Amell had written every word and drawn every diagram for someone to read someday, and Anders liked pretending he was that person. It was comforting, having some kind of connection to Amell while he was gone.

"Then we should steal from his grimoire together," Velanna said, undeterred.

Fate had it that the darkspawn chose that moment to attack, and save Anders from an uncomfortable conversation. Anders summoned Compassion, and channeled an aura of aptitude for the new recruits who so desperately needed it. Eram wasn't half as picky as Amell had been about recruiting. The day after his public address to the nobility, Eram had gone to the Amaranthine dungeons, and offered a chance at redemption to anyone who survived the Joining.

He won seven recruits that way, though only three lived. One was an elven pickpocket named Sidona who had decided to risk her life rather than lose her hands. Another was an old Dalish elf named Jacen who'd been caught poaching. The third was a mountain of a man named Gerod, whose crime Anders didn't know. As far as Anders could tell, only Jacen had any sort of skill in combat, but hunting deer was a far cry from hunting darkspawn, and he was wounded as often as the rest.

The forth recruit didn't come from the dungeons. He came from the Chantry. Rolan was a templar, and he'd volunteered to join the Wardens the second it became public knowledge that Amell was elsewhere. Anders hated him on principal at first, his personality second, and his nasally voice third. Amell never would have accepted a templar, but Eram wasn't Amell. He allowed Rolan a chance at the Joining despite Anders' protests, and Rolan survived despite Anders prayers. The templar bastard hadn't left Anders alone since.

Anders caught himself neglecting the man in fights, but Rolan didn't need his support. Not only was Rolan competent, as far as Anders could tell he was as fearless as Amell. He was undeniably invaluable, and Anders hated him for it. The man knew how to fight as a unit and how to fight alone. He killed darkspawn emissaries with alarming precision, and held his own against every other type of foe they encountered. It put the odds of him meeting his end at the hands of darkspawn depressingly low.

The fight came to a close, and Anders was left to handle the wounded. Jacen and Sidona limped his way, as did Nathaniel and Eylon. It wasn't an ideal spot to be treating anyone. The stone was soaked with blood; puddles of it splashed up on Anders' trousers with every step. Darkspawn bodies were piled high at both ends of the corridor, and each draft of wind that blew through the Deep Roads wafted death and rot his way. There was nowhere to sit, without sitting on pods of flesh or puddles of blood, which meant both Anders and his patients had to stand.

Jacen reached him first. The Dalish was old: his hair grey, his tattoos like bright red cobwebs on his wizened face, but he was nice, and it was hard to hate him despite how often he was injured.

"We've got to stop meeting like this," Anders joked, moving the elf's arm out of the way so he could inspect the damage a shriek had done to his side.

"I am sorry, da'len." Jacen said. "These old bones don't move as fast as they used to."

"They shouldn't have to move," Anders muttered. "Someone should be looking out for you out there."

Mass recruiting was a terrible idea. Their little group had worked. It had been perfect. Oghren and Amell had the front line, Sigrun and Velanna cleaned up the middle, and Anders and Nathaniel stayed in the back. The few fights they'd had with Justice, he went nicely with Amell and Oghren at the front. Eram was full of shit. He wasn't a competent tactician, and he didn't know his men well enough to know where they belonged on the battlefield.

Anders drank another lyrium potion. The cloying sweet taste was starting to make him sick, but after what he'd done to Amell, Anders doubted anything would be enough to make him throw up again. Anders finished healing Jacen, and moved onto the others. Nathaniel took his turn last, and came to him with a nasty gash down the side of his head. "Shriek," Nate explained.

"I can tell." Anders said.

"I didn't see it in time," Nathaniel explained. "It's... a lot more chaotic with this many people."

"It's a lot more chaotic without Amell." Anders said. "He was better at this."

"My understanding of the warrior caste from what Oghren told me is that they fight with other warriors," Nathaniel said. "Eram probably isn't used to having people of varying levels of experience at his side. And he said so himself that he doesn't understand magic."

"Maybe Amell should have just made you Constable." Anders said.

"I don't know that I would be doing any better." Nathaniel said. "I might have pushed you just as hard. I didn't even know about mana imbalance until today. Eram could be doing worse."

"He could be doing better." Anders said.

"Things went south with Amell in charge," Nate reminded him. "You were wounded in Kal'Hirol, we were captured in the Silverite Mines, and there was the ambush at the Turnobles..." 

"That was different." Anders said.

"Because it was Amell?" Nate guessed.

"Because aside from Kal'Hirol, those were ambushes. No one is ambushing us down here. We know exactly what we're walking into and we're still getting shit on." Anders conjured a bit of water to clean the blood off Nate's face. "Good as new."

"I'll admit we didn't have this much trouble with shrieks and hurlocks before but... It's only our second expedition. I'm sure we'll all learn to work together." Nathaniel said optimistically.

"I wouldn't count on it." Anders muttered, tossing a glare in Rolan's direction. Barkspawn followed his gaze and growled agreeably. What a good dog.

"... I've been trying to keep an eye on him." Nate said. "I don't like his timely arrival either. You and Velanna need to be careful. I'm not sure I believe his story about losing his chantry to the Blight inspiring him to join the Wardens. Why wait almost a year if that was the case?"

"Nate, everyone knows templars can't lie. Lying is a sin." Anders joked.

"I'm serious." Nate said.

"Well what do you want me to do?" Anders demanded. The procession set out, and Anders gave Nathaniel a shove to set them moving. "I can't just stop being mage. Magic's not magic you know."

"The blood magic," Nathaniel said. "I know Velanna is eager to learn more of it, but I don't know if that's the best idea right now."

"Why are you telling me, then?" Anders asked. "Tell her."

"Because I'm concerned." Nate said. "And you're a friend. Or perhaps I'm presuming too much?"

"Look, I'm glad you care, but I'm done letting templars push me around," Anders said. "I'm not afraid of Rolan, and I'm not going to play the guilty apostate or the complacent mage anymore. This is the whole reason I learned blood magic, and if Rolan wants to try something well then... I can't think of anything right now but whatever I do it won't be pretty."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Nate said. "Don't make a game of this, Anders. Please. Amell isn't here to spot you if you lose."

"The Wardens don't forbid blood magic, Nate." Anders reminded him.

"Amell didn't forbid blood magic," Nate said pointedly. "If these past two weeks have shown anything, it's that the two aren't always the same."

Anders didn't answer him. Nate let it drop. They fought another score of darkspawn before they finally came upon an alcove. It was far from what Anders would call cozy. Blight was on the walls, and oozed down into the magma channels, creating a constant aroma of burning flesh, and a massive cobweb occupied one corner of the alcove.

Eram called for them to make camp. Elyon, Velanna, and Anders burned away what they could of the blight and the webs. When they finished, and the walls were blackened char, everyone pitched their tents and passed out rations. It was hardtack, jerky, and water, and Anders was starting to hate it as much as he hated oatmeal.

Anders set up his tent in a cluster with his friends and ate with them, Barkspawn lying next to him and gnawing on a giant piece of jerky. The Orlesians and the prisoners they'd liberated made up their own group. If anything was going to convince Anders that Velanna had changed, it was the fact that she chose to stay with them, rather than join the other Dalish in the group. Anders hadn't asked the story behind why the two hadn't bonded. While he'd never admit it, he liked having Velanna around. It wouldn't have been the same without her bitching.

"I don't know about you guys, but I'm exhausted." Sigrun said, pulling out her pig tails and shaking her hair out. Anders followed suit. "The corruption is getting worse, though. I bet we're close to a broodmother."

"Goody." Anders said. "Because the first nest we found wasn't traumatizing enough."

"What are they like?" Velanna took her hair out of the tight bun she kept it in. Locks upon locks of gold fell about her shoulders.

"Big and ugly." Anders said, staring a little.

"And they smell really bad." Sigrun said.

"...Are you asking for Seranni?" Nathaniel asked, unbraiding his own hair. "Amell said she had a version of Blight sickness he'd never seen before. The progression was slow, almost deliberate, and the Architect seemed fond of her. I don't think they intend to turn her into one of those creatures."

"He guessed, as you are guessing now." Velanna said, pulling her knees up into her chest. "I want to know what I should expect."

No one volunteered anything.

Velanna scowled. "You have all faced broodmothers before. Tell me. I have a right to know. Do they... Do they look anything like the women they once were?"

"...yes." Sigrun said. "I was afraid to look at the nest we found... They were all... They still... They were my friends."

"Creators..." Velanna stared at her feet. Nathaniel's hand hovered over her shoulder and ultimately retreated. Anders gave Sigrun's shoulder a supportive squeeze and she smiled for it.

"... Can any of you sense other Wardens yet?" Sigrun asked.

"That's kind of random," Anders said.

"Is it?" Sigrun said meaningfully. It clicked for him a few seconds later.

"I can," Justice said.

"Oh sweetie, I wouldn't ask you." Sigrun gave Justice's gauntlet-clad hand a pat.

"I do not understand what you are all alluding to," Justice said.

"Darkspawn turn women into broodmothers." Sigrun explained. "Amell promised he would find me if the darkspawn ever took me captive down here, and kill me if I.... If they made me like them. Now that he's gone... I don't know. Did Amell promise you anything like that, Velanna?"

"We spoke of it." Velanna said into her knees. "I told him such a thing would never happen... I refused to even consider it. Now? I cannot say."

"Maybe we could ask Eram?" Sigrun suggested. "Do you think he would promise something like that?"

"I think him a fool who clearly cares naught for us," Velanna said.

"That's a little harsh," Nathaniel said. "I know he didn't call a halt for Anders, but that could just be attributed to having no safe place to rest until we came across this alcove."

"Then why did he recruit a templar?" Velanna demanded.

The word made Barkspawn growl around the jerky he was gnawing on. Anders scratched his ear in reward, and fished a bowl out from his pack to conjure the dog some water.

"You haven't talked to Rolan." Sigrun said. "He's not that bad, and besides, the Wardens are kind of like the Legion. We leave our old lives behind when we Join."

"Do we?" Velanna demanded.

"He's a templar," Anders said. "He can't leave his old life behind. They're addicted to lyrium, which means Eram is supplying him with some, which he's getting from an agreement with the Chantry or the Circle. Either way, someone wants him here."

"You see?" Velanna said.

"He still might agree to kill us if the darkspawn ever captured us." Sigrun said. "He agreed to help you find Seranni."

"Empty words. I do not trust him." Velanna said. "I trusted Amell."

Justice took off his helmet, revealing the rarely seen corpse beneath. It wasn't pretty. His skin was stretched thin over his skull, and peeling in several places. His veins were bloated, and Anders couldn't help wondering how much longer the corpse was going to hold out, especially with how hard Eram was pushing them.

"This thing you speak of, is it truly irreversible?" Justice asked.

"It would be like becoming a demon, Justice." Anders said.

"... And it would take a senior Grey Warden to find you if you were captured because Grey Wardens can sense each other," Justice said. "Yes, I understand. I will make this oath, then, if you wish it."

"Sweetie no," Sigrun cooed. "You're a nice spirit. Wouldn't that go against your code of justice?"

"The darkspawn are creatures of evil and hate," Justice said. "To live as one of them would be a fate worse than death, deserved of no living creature. I will not allow it to befall either of you for as long as we travel together."

"Thank you, sweetie." Sigrun said.

"... Your skin is peeling." Velanna said rather than thank the spirit.

"Really?" Justice asked, taking off a gauntlet to touch bony fingers to his mangled face. "I hadn't noticed."

"What will happen to you once Kristoff's body is fully decayed?" Velanna asked. "Will you remain here, bound to the tiny motes of dust that were once Kristoff?"

"That is... a disturbing thought." Justice said.

"I agree. Eylon mentioned you were still capable of possessing others. Perhaps you could switch bodies, before this one is little more than bones?" Nathaniel suggested.

"Such a thing would be abominable," Justice said. "I did not even wish to possess this one."

"Amell was a necromancer," Nathaniel said. "He frequently made use of the dead. It's not as if they need their bodies anymore, Justice."

"But I can feel the man who once lived. I know his life, his..." Justice stared at his hands, and flexed his fingers. Rigor mortis made them crack. "It is not just a body."

"Well that's... Good, I suppose," Nathaniel said. "I'm glad you feel that way, but the matter stands that Kristoff may not last much longer."

"I suppose this is true." Justice said.

"If you must kill me to spare me the fate of a broodmother, you will stay away from my body, you hear me?" Velanna said.

"Your objection is noted." Justice said.

"You can have my body if you want, Justice." Sigrun said. "Just make sure I'm dead first."

"I have no wish for you to die, but I appreciate your offer." Justice said.

"Not that this isn't a super fun topic, but does anyone want to change it?" Anders asked. "Maybe we could do a song or something?"

"That sounds fun." Sigrun agreed. "Does anyone have one?"

"While it is no song, there was a sonnet in the book I was gifted which resonated with me," Justice said. "I would be glad to read it to you."

"That would be great, sweetie." Sigrun said.

Justice swung his pack off his shoulder and into his lap and fished out his book. He had it in a leather satchel for safe keeping, and opened it to a page towards the middle.

"When first I summoned her, she was a rose,
Unwithering, unchanging, and unthorned,
A spirit of the purest love one knows,
Who never hated, coveted, or scorned.

"A second time I drew her 'cross the Veil,
And shared a walk, a dance, a stolen kiss;
With such a perfect beauty, pure and pale,
No woman could compare, no man resist.

"Then in my weakness I essayed a third,
Tho' magisters their warnings did impart.

"She broke my binding with a single word,
And said this smiling as she clutched my heart:
"Though love I was, your passion's changing fire,
Has forged this spirit into cruel Desire.""

"That was really sweet, Justice." Sigrun said. "Dwarven poems are a lot less... poetic."

"Ridiculous." Velanna said. "It is so very human to insist upon a distinction between spirits and demons."

"Why is it ridiculous?" Anders asked. "They clearly break down into different virtues and vices."

"They break down into concepts, and all concepts have their own virtues and vices about them." Velanna said.

"Why did you pick that poem, sweetie?" Sigrun asked.

"I do not understand demons," Justice said. "Such evil angers and confuses me.  I thought the sonnet an interesting insight on the influence of mortals over spirits, and where the perverted desires that morph them into demons might originate from." 

"Okay, but you know it was just a poem, right?" Anders asked. "It doesn't actually work like that. Trust me. I've been with Compassion for fifteen years, which means she was with me when I was fifteen. Have you met a fifteen year old before? Sure, mortals can influence spirits a lot, but you can pick and choose what to be influenced by."

"Are you sure?" Sigrun asked. "Maybe she just never lit your 'passion's changing fire'."

"Again, fifteen." Anders said. "My socks lit my 'passion's changing fire'."

"Oh ew," Sigrun said.

Nathaniel laughed. Velanna made a determined effort not to.

"Perhaps you are right. I cannot say." Justice said. "I thought the sonnet intriguing none the less."

Anders stayed up with his friends talking and debating for a while later. Eram didn't trust Justice to keep watch, and so had several of them assigned for different shifts throughout the night. Anders wasn't given a shift, which seemed as much a waste as not giving Justice all of them. He still wasn't sleeping well, even after two weeks to adjust.

The smell of dog and Barkspawn's itchy fur from the mabari curling up beside him kept him awake as much as his thoughts. Two weeks. Amell would be at Soldier's Peak by now. Anders wondered how long Avernus' ritual would take, whatever it was. He wondered if Amell would be back by First Day, what color his new eyes would be, what kind of speech he would give before assigning Rolan to serve in the Void.

Anders was thinking about his mother, and all the things he'd never had a chance to say to her when someone fought with the flaps to his tent. Anders sat up, and conjured a barrier and ball of mage light, but it was only Justice.

"What's up?" Anders asked.

"I am concerned," Justice said. "I do not mean to distrust our allies, but I can imagine no reason for Gerod to need to be alone with Sigrun, and I am led to believe him an immoral man. Would it be inappropriate to ask you to check on them?"

"What the fuck?" Anders fought his way out of his bedroll, "She's barely said two words to him. Where are they?"

"In her tent." Justice said. 

Anders crawled out of his tent and scrambled across the alcove to Sigrun's tent. Maybe if it was anyone else, Anders would have left well enough alone, but Sigrun wasn't interested in trysts. She wanted commitment, and only refrained from relationships because she was committed to dying. The muffled sounds of struggling didn't help either.

Anders shoved open the flaps to Sigrun's tent, and couldn't see anything around Gerod's ass, mercifully still clothed. The smell of sweat and feet nearly choked Anders. Gerod was a giant, comparable to Leonie. His body was a bulky combination of dark hair, rippling muscle, and thick fat that probably made him a beast to wrestle. Following a stroke of genius, Anders grabbed his shoulder. "What the fuck-"

Gerod whipped around, and Anders saw a glint of metal. Anders brought up his hands, and sliver flashed across his palms. A sharp pain followed seconds later, and warm blood poured down his wrists. Anders didn't think about it. He pulled from it, and flung it back at Gerod.

Stop. Yield. Slave. Gerod froze. His eyes twitched spastically in his skull, and blood trickled slowly from his nose. Sigrun scrambled out from behind him, and grabbed her axes from the pile in the corner of her room. Her tunic was torn across her shoulder, her lip was split, and her neck was cut. Gerod bore vicious claw marks, carved into his eyebrow and down his cheek. Good for her.

Anders grabbed Sigrun's hand and walked her backwards out of her tent. Gerod followed. Subservient. Silent. Bound.

"I guess now we know his crime." Sigrun spat out a mouthful of blood. "He said I looked like a little girl. Said he couldn't resist."

"I should make you kill yourself." Anders said to his blood thrall.

Gerod's eyes twitched frantically, but his body held still. It would be easy. He was still holding the dagger he'd pressed to Sigrun's throat.

Barkspawn growled. Anders glanced at the dog. It must have woken up at his absence. The mabari circled Gerod warily, teeth barred, apparently familiar with the spell. Justice followed Barkspawn out of Anders' tent, and walked over to them.

"You have subjugated him as the Commander did demons..." Justice observed. "This is... for a just cause, I hope? Was I right to suspect him of ill intent?"

"Not now, sweetie." Sigrun said.

"I'm going to kill him." Anders decided.

"You will do no such thing." Rolan's nasally voice whined at him. Anders glanced away from Gerod. Half the other wardens had woken up at the commotion, and Rolan wasn't the only one leveling a sword at him. "Stand down, maleficar, or I will cut you down."

Notes:

Elvish Translations
Taren Souveri - Weary/tired mind

Chapter 38: Score One for Our Heroes

Notes:

Thank you all for your lovely comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 14 Umbralis, Sometime

Somewhere, in the Deep Roads

"No!" Sigrun leapt in front of him, which might have actually made a difference if she were taller. Templars' abilities were similar to mages in that they only worked with a proper line of sight. "You're not touching Anders! I swear by my ancestors, if you even try..."

"Stupid.... Bitch...." Gerod choked out around Anders' spell.

"Try me with axes in my hands you piece of nug shit." Sigrun said, pointing an axe at Gerod.

"Are you seriously resisting?" Anders forced more will into the spell. "Get down on your knees."

Gerod fell obediently to his knees. The trickle of blood from his nose became a flow. It poured into his beard and weighed it down, dripping off the longest strand beneath his chin.

"Let him go, maleficar." Rolan ordered, not half as threatening as he could have been in his smalls, with only his sword and shield to protect him, "I won't say it again."

"It figures a templar would defend a rapist." Anders laughed. "Should I guess how many Tranquil you've raped? Or do you not count it because they can't say no?"

Leonie lowered her sword at the accusation. The giant woman looked between Gerod and Anders, disgust furrowing her heavy brow. "Rapists and maleficars? Andraste preserve us, are we truly so desperate? I do not know which is worse."

"Are you shitting me?" Anders asked.

"He's a maleficar." Eylon said, the tiny elf looking even tinier in just his trousers. He didn't have his staff, and probably didn't have practice casting without it, "Trust nothing he says. Rolan, smite him quickly."

"Peace, da'len, it is only magic." Jacen said, looking even older with no sleep.

"Shut up, old man." Eylon snapped. None of them were a threat to Anders. A half-naked templar and an ignorant Chantry-apologist were nothing to him.

A scuffle from Anders' left must have been Velanna or Nate waking up. The sound of bare feet followed and a moment later a hand was on his shoulder. Anders smelled dirt and grass. Velanna.

"What is going on?" Velanna asked. "Does this lyrium-addled shem finally think to test us? Why have you bound this other?"

Sigrun pointed her axe at Gerod again, "He tried to rape me."

"And he still breathes?" Velanna demanded. "Kill him. Anders is holding him for you. You deserve the final blow."

Sidona started crying from the entrance to her tent, the simple pickpocket apparently overwhelmed by everything she'd woken up to. Nathaniel joined them seconds later, and took a spot between Anders and Rolan without asking any questions.

"Let him go, maleficar!" Rolan ordered again, raising his shield.

"Make me." Anders said.

Barkspawn took one look at the silver sword of mercy on Rolan's shield and started barking. His lips curled back from vicious teeth, and saliva sprayed from his jowls. Anders wondered if the dog was going to tackle the templar. He had half a mind to let it.

"For the love of nugs and idiot children, what is going on out here?" Eram bellowed. The dwarf stormed his way out of his tent and took a spot between both groups, in little more than a tunic and his smalls. Somehow, he looked no less commanding than he did in full armor. "Shut that damn mutt up! Leonie, speak."

"... Gerod attempted to rape Sigrun," Leonie explained, over Barkspawn's wild barking. "Anders bound him with blood magic."

"Paragons have mercy," Eram sighed, rubbing at his face and tugging on his beard. "Rolan, stand down."

"Constable, this man is a maleficar." Eylon protested.

"I know he's a maleficar," Eram snapped, waving an accusatory hand in Anders' and Velanna's direction. "They're all maleficars! Why do you think I recruited Rolan? Stand down, man,"

"... Aye, Constable." Rolan said reluctantly, lowering his sword. Barkspawn finally quieted, and prowled in an angry circle around Anders, growling.

"Good." Eram said. "Anders, let go of Gerod."

"Did you know?" Anders demanded. "Did you know about him?"

"I knew," Eram confessed far too easily. "The Joining cleanses us of the sins of our past lives. Most Wardens learn from it. Some don't, and they will be made to answer for it. Let him go, and let him speak."

Anders looked at Sigrun instead. She flexed her fingers on the hilts of her axes, and glared at everyone and everything until she looked up at Anders. She gave a tight nod. Anders let go of the spell.

Gerod collapsed. He wheezed and coughed, and spat up blood. He clutched at his head, and Anders almost hoped he'd explode. No such luck. A long thread of blood hung from Gerod's nose. The giant of a man grabbed it and pulled, and wrenched out a three inch long clot which looked more or less a worm. Gerod took one look at it and threw up all over himself.

Sidona covered her own mouth. Sigrun spat on the floor again. Anders flexed his bleeding hands to be sure he still had feeling in them. Velanna folded her arms over her chest and scowled impatiently, and Nate kept his place between Anders and Rolan.

Anders didn't care or notice what anyone else did.

"I told you," Gerod managed eventually. "Told you I can't do kids. You said there wouldn't be any kids. But then she's here, looking just like one with those pigtails and that face... The way she giggles. The fuck was I supposed to do? I couldn't think of nothing but them tiny hands and that little mouth-"

"Maker, stop!" Sidona sobbed, covering her ears, "Make him stop! I can't listen to it! I'm just a cutpurse! I don't belong here with all of you sick freaks! They said the Wardens were noble warriors! I just didn't want to lose my hands! Why is this happening to me!?"

"... This creature is a disgrace to the Order." Leonie said, finally sheathing her sword. "He should never have been put through the Joining. The crying girl is the same."

"Who cares!?" Eylon demanded. "He can be punished. We are standing in front of a maleficar. Did none of you see what he did? He enslaved a man, as he could enslave any one of us. His hands yet bleed! He could be influencing your very thoughts as we speak!"

"You'd have to have thoughts for me to do that." Anders sneered. "You're definitely not Dalish. You spew the same Circle bullshit with the best of them."

"Sniveling coward." Velanna spat. "You call yourself a mage, but know nothing of magic."

"Heal those cuts, maleficar," Rolan ordered.

"What, don't you want to kiss them better?" Anders asked.

"Enough!" Eram bellowed. "All of you! Yes, we have maleficars in our ranks. No, nothing about that is going to change. We have rapists and thieves and murderers, and that's the way it's always been. Rolan is more than capable of handling any magic that gets out of control, but I'll be the one to decide where that line is.

"The Wardens are a second chance for all of us, and against the darkspawn, everything is permitted. Even blood magic. Eylon, Rolan, Leonie, get used to that. Gerod will be reassigned. We will not murder him in cold blood in the middle of the Deep Roads. Anders, Sigrun, Velanna, get used to that.

"Sidona. Sidona! Stop crying. You had to have both physical and mental fortitude to survive the Joining. Find it. We are Wardens! We all drank the same blood, and swore the same oath. That doesn't make us heroes. It makes us the lesser of two evils, and the greater evil will always be the darkspawn. Justice!"

"Constable?" Justice asked.

"You don't need sleep, correct?" Eram asked.

"This is true." Justice said.

"Then you will guard Gerod for the rest of the night," Eram said. "Watch will resume as assigned for tonight. In the future, Justice will always hold watch."

"Constable-!" Eylon protested.

"You would trust this creature!?" Rolan demanded.

"Enough!" Eram barked. "This creature is a corpse. It's not going to rape anyone, and after two weeks I think it's clear Justice is incapable of malice. I don't think I need to guess what happened. Gerod abandoned his watch to harass Sigrun, Justice saw, and got help from Anders. Am I wrong?"

"This is true." Justice said.

"In the future, if you see anything suspicious on watch, you will get me. Not Anders, or anyone else," Eram said. "Do you understand me?"

"I understand you." Justice said.

"Good," Eram rubbed at his face, "Ancestors, what a mess. All of you, go back to sleep. We resume our expedition in the morning. We're nearing on a nest, and we're not turning back over this."

"Are you serious?" Anders laughed. "One guard and a slap on the wrist? You're just inviting him to try again or run away!"

"If he does either you have my permission to kill him," Eram said. "Until then, he is under guard, and he will be reassigned upon returning to the Vigil."

"This is bullshit." Anders said.

"An unnecessary burden, Constable." Leonie agreed. "Gerod has proven himself a man without honor and a traitor to the Order. Only death is suitable."

"We aren't chevaliers, Leonie." Eram said. "We're Wardens. Honor is optional. All of you, go back to sleep."

Jacen was the first to obey, the old Dalish crawling wearily back into his tent. Sidona crawled back into hers, still sniffling.

"I had next watch." Nathaniel said.

Everyone slowly trickled back to their tents, until the only ones left in the alcove were their group, and Gerod. Justice took up a spot a few feet away from him, hand on the hilt of his sword. The child rapist went from kneeling to sitting on his ass and looking up at the spirit with a defiant sneer. Anders healed his hands reluctantly. They were a little stiff, but with a bit of flexing over the next few days and they'd be fine. Velanna grabbed his hand, heedless of the blood still coating it, and pulled him and Sigrun back to her tent. They sat inside with the flaps open, Nathaniel standing by the entrance to listen while still on watch.

Velanna stared at Gerod, who stared defiantly back. "I do not want him listening," Velanna said.

Gerod heard her and laughed, "Guess that's just too fucking bad, huh knife-ear?"

Anders looked at the bastard for a few seconds, and cast an easy creationism spell. "Go the fuck to sleep."

Gerod collapsed. Justice stared at him dispassionately for a few seconds, and then came over to kneel outside the entrance to Velanna's tent. "Is there still a need for me to watch him if he is under a veil of magical sleep?" Justice asked.

"No, sweetie." Sigrun said. "Anders is a great mage. He doesn't need help. Come here."

Justice scooted inside the tent. Sigrun crawled over and hugged the reeking suit of metal. "Thank you for looking out for me, salroka."

"I do not know this word, but you are most welcome." Justice said, stiffly patting Sigrun's back. She must have taught him how to hug at some point, "I would hate for any injustice to befall you."

"It's a special word. It means friend." Sigrun said, sitting back.

"Where's my hug?" Anders asked.

Sigrun elbowed him lightly in the stomach.

"Oh, you're cruel," Anders wheezed, and dragged her into a hug anyway. "I'm stealing one then, because that scared the shit out of me."

"Thank you, sweetie," Sigrun said, giving Anders' cheek a kiss before she shoved him off. "I'm glad you were there, I really am, but Justice is a spirit. I doubt he even knew what was going on,"

"I did not." Justice said. "I only sensed that it was wrong."

"'Wrong'." Velanna repeated mockingly. "Disgusting is what it was. I cannot believe we are allowing that piece of filth to live. If he had faced you on the battlefield and not in your sleep, he would be in pieces right now. I have seen that lummox wield a sword. His size is the only thing he has, and I doubt any where it counts."

Sigrun let out a tiny giggle. Nathaniel snorted. Anders managed a laugh.

"And now we are to be made to fight alongside him?" Velanna continued. "This is absurd. Mythal's mercy, the things he said of children..."

"It was disturbing, to say the least." Nathaniel agreed. "I know we all have our crimes, some worse than others, but we all have our excuses. I can't think of an excuse for this."

"Whatever his crimes, he must answer for them." Justice said.

Anders jutted a thumb at Justice, "What he said."

"Why not just kill him?" Velanna asked. "The dwarf said if he runs, he dies. Let us just say he ran."

"No," Sigrun squeezed her hand. "You heard what Eram said about Rolan. He recruited him to watch you and Anders. I don't want you two getting in trouble over this."

Velanna made a disgusted noise, and glanced at where Gerod still lay unconscious. "Fools. All of them. Instead of recruiting a templar to watch us, he should have been watching his own men."

"I wish I knew where he got off recruiting that piece of hurlock spew." Anders said.

"Gerod or Rolan?" Sigrun asked.

"Yes," Anders said. "And Sidona? Did you hear her crying? No wonder she's been injured almost every fight. The darkspawn probably scare the poor girl stiff. She's not Warden material."

"She must be, or she wouldn't have survived the Joining." Nathaniel said.

"That doesn't mean anything." Anders said. "It's blood magic. Who knows why she survived."

"We were scared, our first fights." Nathaniel said. "Do you remember the cellars? All the ghouls? Amell and Oghren cleared them out. You and I watched."

"Everybody's scared of darkspawn." Sigrun said. "Death is one thing, but darkspawn? I never told you guys, but after the Joining, with the nightmares? I've never been so scared in my life. It's still hard at night. I can feel them, crawling under my skin like ants, their filth all over me, their claws scratching at the inside of my skull...

"And the whole time I hear this song... It's so beautiful it makes me want to cry, and it almost makes me think the rest of it isn't so bad. Like I want it to corrupt me. It's so..." Sigrun shuddered. "It's terrifying."

"I have the same nightmares." Nathaniel said.

Velanna didn't say anything, but she nodded.

"It's easier if you don't go to bed stressed." Anders said. "For a while I didn't have them at all."

"You mentioned you have a bond with a spirit of Compassion." Justice said. "Perhaps this spirit shields you from the worst of the corruption. Kristoff has memories of these nightmares, and I am led to believe nothing can stem the tide of them."

"That's-no," Anders said. "Compassion... Could she even do that?"

"I would," Justice said.

"Lucky," Sigrun nudged Anders. "Either way, there's no way I'm not going to bed stressed now."

"Certainly not with these people as our companions," Velanna snorted. "Cravens and criminals led by a fool."

Anders laughed. He couldn't help himself.

"What?" Velanna demanded.

"You know that's exactly how you would have described us a few months ago?" Anders asked.

"It was as true then as it is now." Velanna said. "I just happen to be more accustomed to you than these others."

"'More accustomed'," Anders repeated teasingly. "You can say you like us, you know. Being nice for once in your life won't kill you."

"You have no proof of this." Velanna said.

Anders snorted. Velanna fought back a grin and looked away.

A silence settled, not uncomfortable. The Joining oath had been just words to Anders. Amell had spoken them; Anders hadn't really listened. Anders was all for casual friendships, and a bit of camaraderie and revelry, but he only really thought of himself as a Grey Warden when it was convenient. The thought of the Order as some big happy family of Brothers and Sisters was nothing short of absurd now, but the little circle of friends he had meant something to him.

"We should probably get some sleep if we're going to fight broodmothers tomorrow." Sigrun said.

A murmur of agreement sent Sigrun, Justice, and Anders out of Velanna's tent. Justice went back to resume his watch over Gerod. Nathaniel stayed where he was outside Velanna's tent, watching the entrance to their small alcove.

Anders paused with Sigrun outside her tent. Barkspawn wandered over sat down on Anders' bare feet. For once, the dog was welcome, if only because he was warm.

"Why do you suppose he likes you so much?" Sigrun asked.

"Jealous?" Anders teased.

"A little," Sigrun admitted. "You have him and Ser Pounce-a-Lot. All I ever had was a nug for about an hour before my uncle slaughtered him and ate him. I was just wondering if he likes you because you and Amell were together, or because of the blood magic, or something else."

"Beats me." Anders shrugged. "I'm a cat person. I don't know what I'm doing with a dog, or why he won't leave me alone... But Amell has him pretty well trained. Did you see the way he reacted to Rolan?"

Sigrun knelt down to pet Barkspawn, "... I know I'm supposed to follow orders, like it or not, but I really don't like it. In the Legion it was all okay, because if you got an order you didn't like, you could always remind yourself you'd probably be dead in a day. We even had a song for it."

"Well go on then," Anders said.

"Here we go again,
Same old stuff again
Making sure the Stone's been fed
Few more days and we'll be dead,
And I won't have to look at you,
So I'll be glad and so will you."

"That was about as morbid as I expected it to be," Anders said.

"I miss him." Sigrun said quietly. "I know it's stupid, and I know he's probably dead already, but I miss him. I even miss Oghren. I worry sometimes Oghren will go with him. To his Calling. Do you know why he joined the Wardens?"

"Free drinks?" Anders guessed.

"He dropped his son." Sigrun said. "Twice. All the drinking... He was even drunk when he told me. He joined us because leaving his family was the best thing he thought he could do for them... We're on such loose sand here, salroka. I feel like any second now, it's all going to fall apart."

"I get to be salroka too now, huh?" Anders asked.

"It means one at my side." Sigrun explained. She stopped petting Barkspawn and stood. "And well... That's where you are right now. If something happens with Rolan, I'll stand with you. We'll probably get kicked out of the Wardens or die for it, whatever it is, but I was a Legionnaire first. I can always go back to Kal'Hirol if things go bad."

Sigrun gave him a tight hug around his waist, and Anders knelt to better return it. "That's grand and all, but if you really want to do something for me, stop with all the suicide talk."

"I'll try," Sigrun said. "Goodnight Anders."

Anders wouldn't have been able to sleep alone in Sigrun's place, but the hardy little dwarf went back to her tent as if it were just another night. Anders spared Gerod a glance, but he was still unconscious. The spell would hold for a few hours yet, and Justice was watching him. Anders went back into his tent. Barkspawn crawled in beside him, and Anders resigned himself to smelling like dog. If nothing else, it was better than smelling like darkspawn.

This was what he got for Amell's generosity. Anders was never going to be free. Templars were always going to be a part of his life, no matter what he did to avoid them or prepare himself against them. The only thing that had ever worked for him was Amell. The Hero of Ferelden cast a long shadow, and it was easy to hide in. Anders retrieved Amell's grimoire from his stack of gear in the corner of his tent and flipped it open.

There wasn't anything he wanted to learn, and Anders flipped through the pages aimlessly until he landed on the spell he'd used to realign his connection to the Fade. It wasn't creationism, but it had been closer than anything he'd found. If he could regenerate mana with the Taint, how hard would actual regeneration be?

Anders read the notes Amell had taken from Quentin about reformation until he fell asleep.

Anders wasn't surprised to wake up to a field of reeds. He'd been more or less pissing lyrium thanks to Eram. Compassion sat across from him, wearing Amell's form as she had been ever since Anders had learned his mother was dead. The sight of his mother was too painful for him, and Andraste's form was too impersonal. Amell's helped more than it hurt.

The backwards light of the Fade caught in Compassion's raven hair and shadowed her golden eyes, and was impressively convincing. "Hey love." Anders said.

"You are nigh sick with mana," Compassion said, smoothing back his hair with a concerned hand. Her arms even had the scars right, "Your connection to the Fade is strong, but not this strong. What has happened?"

"You know me," Anders shrugged. "No self restraint. One too many lyrium potions but I'll be fine. I'm actually glad it gave me a chance to talk to you. I was wondering if there was any way you could talk to Amell for me."

"He would have to visit my demesne for me to speak with him." Compassion said. "You are my only visitor. You always have been."

"But you've met him. I dream of him plenty, and you said he was compassionate. Isn't that enough to pull him here?" Anders asked.

"I do not pull anyone here." Compassion said. "This is our place."

"Could you try?" Anders asked.

"I do not know how, just as I do not know how to restore his sight. You are the mage and healer between us. I have only energy and comfort to offer you," Compassion took his hand and squeezed it. "I am sorry."

"Hey, no big deal." Anders shrugged. "It's not your fault."

"Nor is it yours." Compassion said.

"You really pull that look off," Anders said dejectedly, "You look like him, and now you even sound like him."

"Your mother's form upset you, last I wore it." Compassion reminded him. "Would you prefer I returned to it?"

"No." Anders said quickly. "I don't want to see her. Or think about her. Or anything."

Compassion put an arm around him. Anders leaned against his spirit. She had the smell right. Copper and the fade, hints of soap. Anders had had too much lyrium to dream, and spent the rest of the night with Compassion, painfully aware of everything from Amell to his mother to Rolan, and woke up unrested.

The next day was awkward. Aside from Eram's instructions, hardly anyone spoke. All of the Orlesians and ex-prisoners avoided Anders and Velanna, save for the old Dalish Jacen who didn't seem at all perturbed by the blood magic revelation. Eram gave Gerod back his weapons and armor, and let the child rapist keep fighting with them. Anders ignored him the same way he ignored Rolan in fights. He wouldn't have shed a tear if either died.

They followed the corruption to a broodmother. The nest in Kal'Hirol had broodmothers that had been dwarven women once. The creatures gave birth to genlocks, owing to why such darkspawn so resembled dwarves. The creature they found must have been an elf once, because her layer was crawling with shrieks.

There Anders learned Amell wasn't the only one they so desperately needed in a fight. Against the nest in Kal'Hirol, Oghren had been invaluable. The broodmothers were immobile, giant creatures of rot and waste congealing into the corruption they spread. To compensate, they had tentacle-like appendages countless meters long. They moved them through the Blight on the floor and along the walls, and used them to strangle and lash out at anything that set foot in their layer.

Oghren had been able to take out the tentacles with a single sweep of his axe. No one in their new group compared. Gerod should have been able, but the bastard swung his bastard sword recklessly, and cleaved into the tentacles instead cutting them in half. Leonie and Eram used sword and shield, and neither had the heft of a battle axe to carve the tentacles apart.

The broodmother's nest was at a crossroads of sorts. One Deep Road's tunnel and two darkspawn-made tunnels intersected where she sat on the edge of a chasm. The walls were lined in thick white sacks that spewed out the occasional new born shriek. The broodmother herself was a horror, but her face was bare. She wasn't Seranni.

Anders felt wretched for taking comfort in it. Seranni or not, the thing had been an elven girl once, and didn't deserve her fate. Her body had swollen, a massive purple and red mound, covered in blight sores. Her torso emerged from it like a growth, and vestigial limbs protruded from her in every direction. She had countless sets of breasts, and they spilled down her distended body all the way into the blighted ground. A few shrieks were suckling on her.

The experienced warriors charged. The new recruits threw up. Nathaniel grabbed Anders hand and pulled him up a hill of flesh and Blight to an outcropping of bare rock. Barkspawn followed and Velanna ran to join them, and their small group stayed crouched where the tentacles found no purchase. The battle raged beneath them, and Anders kept an eye on Sigrun and Justice.

He channeled aptitude for them, kept a barrier over them, and did his best to freeze the shrieks that noticed them. From his narrow perspective, the battle was going well, until more darkspawn poured in from the tunnels and crawled up the chasm to help the broodmother.

Their small corner handled it. Barkspawn and Velanna's earth magic kept the darkspawn back, and left Anders and Nate free to support the rest of the Wardens, who so desperately needed it.

Justice, Sigrun, and Rolan struggled to hold off the incoming darkspawn while Leonie and Eram engaged the broodmother. Jacen and Eylon had their backs to a wall, with only Gerod's feeble defense keeping them from being overwhelmed. Sidona...

Anders didn't know where Sidona was. "Where's Sidona?" Anders asked.

"I lost track of her." Nathaniel said. "She was fighting the broodmother last I... There, at the edge of the chasm."

The simple pickpocket was in the process of being dragged over the edge of the chasm. Her mouth was open, but the many shrieks and their echoing cries drowned out her screams.

"Velanna, can you help her?" Nathaniel asked.

"I can't travel here. The stone is too thick." Velanna said.

A root broke out of the hard stone ceiling above Sidona, and wrapped tight around her arm to keep the girl on this side of the chasm.

"That is all I can do." Velanna said.

"... I think I have a shot." Nathaniel said, notching an arrow.

"What?" Anders asked. "No! Maker, don't kill her. I'll get to her. Hang on."

Anders shoved past them and slid down the flesh covered hill, a hand to the rot to keep him from slipping on his way down. He steadied himself on his staff when he reached the bottom, and Barkspawn charged down after him, his claws tearing up chunks of flesh and blood as he ran. It wasn't far to Sidona, in theory.

There were other mounds of flesh, shriek pods, and rocky outcropping between Anders and the chasm. The darkspawn were still swarming, mostly preoccupied with defending the broodmother, which Anders wasn't threatening. He started towards Sidona at a jog. Barkspawn leapt past him without warning, and tackled a shriek out of the air as it dove for him, seemingly out of nowhere.

Anders stumbled back a pace. Black blood sprayed into the air, and Barkspawn ripped the creature's throat out. The dog came back to Anders with blood and filth dripping from his jowls. The shriek had left lacerations on the mabari's shoulders, and Anders healed them.

Another ten paces, and another shriek noticed them. Anders froze it, the dog ate it, they continued. Anders dodged around one of the white sack, and it exploded on him. A newborn shriek fell out squealing and covered in pus. A tentacle shot up out of the ground to defend it, and struck Anders in the stomach.

He lost his footing, and his vision became a blur of red, white, and black. He went crashing through a darkspawn sack, and rolled several feet further before he came to a halt on the blighted ground, covered in blood, pus, and amniotic fluid. Anders climbed to his feet, dripping filth. It seemed a miracle he was alive. If the broodmother had been Awakened, she might had knocked him forward, and into the chasm.

Instead she'd knocked him backwards, towards the hill he'd just climbed down. It was inconvenient, and his ribs were definitely bruised or broken, but he was alive. How many lives did Anders have left? Six? Probably best not to keep count. Anders tried to run, and the pain in his chest nearly made him puke.

He healed himself before he continued, and the time it took him was long enough for Barkspawn to run back to his side. Anders was glad the dog was alright. He'd already cost Amell enough.

Anders ran to the edge of the chasm, where Velanna's root was still tethered to Sidona's arm and keeping her from falling over the edge. Anders cast a quick rejuvenation spell for her, and dropped to one knee to help her up. It was surprisingly easy to pull her back onto solid ground, and Anders belatedly realized it had nothing to do with the fact that he'd started exercising.

He'd wasted his time. And wasted his mana. Sidona was already dead. Anders pulled up a torso that must have been caught on the edge of the chasm. Sidona's lower half had been torn off. Her spine and her intestines oozed out from below her belt. She'd died with her eyes and mouth open, in the middle of a scream.

There was nothing for it. Anders ran back to the hill, and rejoined his friends.

"This isn't working." Nathaniel said when he showed up. "We're in a terrible position. The darkspawn can come at us from every direction. We need to retreat."

"Tell Eram that." Anders said.

"How? He is dead." Velanna pointed. Anders followed her finger.

The dwarf was a headless corpse; the tentacles that had ripped him in half were still twisted around his mangled body.

"Well now what?" Anders asked.

"We retreat." Nate said again. "I'm out of arrows, and I'll be no use down there with so many tentacles still functional."

"We three could, but the rest?" Velanna asked rhetorically, still casting what she could. "Look. They are surrounded. There is no retreating for them. We cannot leave Sigrun. Use his grimoire."

"How? You want me to throw it at them?" Anders demanded, throwing out a barrier for the wardens who were still alive. "It doesn't work like that. I'd have to pick a spell, and I don't even know where to start."

"Amell gave you that book for a reason. Do something." Velanna said.

Anders drank his last lyrium potion, and channeled a lightning spell. It arched through five darkspawn, and felled them all without making a dent in the horde. A tentacle burst out of the ground beside Eylon, wrapped around his arm, and ripped it off. The elf collapsed, screaming in agony. Jacen grabbed Eylon's good arm, and dragged him back into the Deep Road's tunnel they'd came in from. It was where they all should have been going.

"The broodmother!" Velanna said suddenly. "We can enslave her! Use her and those tentacles against the horde. Nathan, give me a knife."

Nathaniel handed her a dagger, and rolled up his sleeve to offer his arm. Anders wasn't surprised to see Barkspawn perk his ears up and sit beside them. Amell had definitely trained the dog for everything. Velanna ignored the mabari, or maybe didn't understand that it was willing to help, and cut vertically down her and Nathaniel's forearms.

"Don't blow it," Anders joked. "Use the dog too, if you need more blood. Amell trained him for it. I have to go help Eylon. Good luck,"

Velanna chose to concentrate on the spell rather than answer. Anders told Barkspawn to stay, and slid down the hill and ran along the wall back to the Deep Road's tunnel. He darted out of the nest, and followed the trail of blood to where Jacen had propped Eylon up against a wall, and was trying to help him. The younger elf was all red, from his hair to his freckles to the blood pouring out of his stump of an arm.

The older Dalish had a rag from his pack pressed to Eylon's shoulder, but it wasn't helping. He needed a tourniquet, and Anders didn't have any rope. Amell could have done it, with telekinesis, but Anders didn't know any telekinetic magic. "Da'len, thank the creators," Jacen said, "Please help, he won't hold still,"

"Stay away from me, maleficar!" Eylon snarled, attempting to scoot away. His glove and boots were soaked through, and it was impossible for him to find any purchase on the smooth stone. He flailed madly in one spot, slipping and sliding in his own blood.

Anders cast a sleep spell, and the wild elf slumped over, unconscious. "Jacen, do you have any rope?" Anders asked, carving out a lifeward beneath Eylon in case he went into shock.

"Yes, some," Jacen said.

Anders took Eylon from him, along with the ruined rag, and continued pressing it to Eylon's wound. Jacen searched through his pack and produced a cord of rope thicker than Anders would have liked. It was almost as thick as an elf's forearm, and obviously for scaling any small cliffs or ledges they might encounter in the Deep Roads. Eylon didn't have much of a stump left, but Anders took the rope and tied it around what was left of his arm anyway. It fit, if only just.

"Jacen, I know this sounds crazy, but I need you to go back in there and try to find his arm." Anders said. "I might be able to reattach it,"

"I have seen you heal, da'len. I would believe you capable of anything," Jacen said, picking his discarded bow back up, "I will try to find it."

The old Dalish ran back into the broodmother's nest. Anders felt better knowing he probably wasn't sending him to his death. With Velanna holding the broodmother, Jacen wouldn't have to worry about the tentacles tearing him apart.

Anders kept cleansing aura over Eylon, and waited.

He waited for a quarter hour. Every few minutes, a darkspawn would appear, either from the nest or from further down the Deep Roads. Anders froze them, and with his new staff, he didn't even have to get up to shatter them. The dragonbone and its many enchantments channeled his magic so efficiently the darkspawn shattered on their own. Eventually, the Wardens started trickling out of the nest to join Anders and Eylon in the corridor.

Gerod was the first one out. Anders hated that he was even still alive. Sigrun followed him, along with Justice, then Rolan. Nathaniel, Velanna, and Barkspawn came next, finally followed by Leonie. Jacen was last.

"Is he dead?" Leonie asked, kneeling wearily next to Eylon.

"He's not dead. He's just unconscious," Anders said.

"Because you are keeping him unconscious," Rolan said. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't smite you and force you to release him," The templar was limping, his left leg dragging behind him, and still had it in him to be an ass. Anders had to give him points for consistency, if nothing else.

"Because he'll go into shock and die in about fifteen minutes if you do." Anders said.

"That a good enough reason for you, bucket-head?" Sigrun asked, shoving past Rolan to flop down next to Anders.

"I couldn't find it," Jacen said.

"Well go look harder," Anders said. "All of you. Go look for Eylon's arm."

"No arm left," Gerod said, spitting into a magma channel. "Thing exploded right on my face when that tentacle ripped him in half,"

"He is left-handed," Leonie said levelly. "He will live. Do what you can with what is left."

"... we'd have to make camp," Anders said. "I need to amputate it properly so I can sew the skin back together."

"Then we will make camp." Leonie said. "Can Eylon be moved?"

"Carefully, but yes." Anders said.

"Then we move in five," Leonie said. "Pack up. We will head back to the alcove,"

Packs came down, rags and water came out. Weapons were cleaned and sheathed, bows unstrung, shields shouldered. Five minutes felt like five seconds. Leonie lifted Eylon effortlessly, and carried the unconscious elf as they set out. Anders fell back a pace to walk with Nathaniel and Velanna, and heal the casting cuts on their arms.

"So... it worked?" Anders asked. "We won?"

"It worked," Nathaniel said. "We won."

There was no celebrating.

Chapter 39: Out of Control

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back. I hope we're all still here and enjoying the ride. Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 19 Umbralis Afternoon
Chantry of our Lady Redeemer, Amaranthine

Healing Eylon's arm had been unpleasant, if only because very little of it was healing. The stump the elf had been left with had to be amputated properly. Healing it was a messy business of sawing through flesh and bone until Anders had enough skin to work with to sew the wound shut. Eylon had woken up screaming, sobbing, and blaming Anders for all of it. Anders let him, knowing it could have been worse. Eylon didn't need both arms to cast his spells, and the injury wasn't enough to send him to his Calling.

They returned to the Vigil short-handed, ten Wardens in place of twelve, only to suddenly become eleven.

Anders had broken into a run when the messenger told them a Warden had returned to the Vigil, and slammed open the door to the barracks to be greeted with a very confused Stroud, just back from Montsimmard.

Anders didn't have it in him to be embarrassed. He was just relieved it wasn't Oghren, back alone. Apparently, Stroud and Loghain had picked up horses in Jader, and it made the trip faster than they'd anticipated. Stroud had since agreed to stay with them for a time before heading to the Free Marches, owing to the state of the arling.

With Eram dead, Leonie stepped into his position as Warden-Constable. She hadn't held the position a day before there was another assassination attempt. Varel had been meeting with Leonie at the time, and somehow ended up taking a crossbow bolt for her. The assassin escaped, but Varel lived.

Less than an hour after the attempt, Leonie had the noble hostages brought back to the Vigil. She'd called a formal audience, and from what Anders had heard had more or less threatened to kill everyone and everything until someone came forward. Apparently, someone had, because Leonie had three nobles executed on the spot. The assassin hadn't returned, and a lovely young woman named Ser Tamra had been staying at the Vigil as Leonie's honored guest ever since.

Gerod hadn't been reassigned. Instead, Leonie had him castrated. Anders wished she'd killed him, or reassigned him, or chosen any sort of punishment that didn't mean Anders had to be the one to make sure the man healed properly after losing his testicles. The last thing Anders wanted to see was the man's mutilated crotch. Checking on the scars behind Gerod's dick made Anders so profoundly uncomfortable there wasn't an analogy disturbing enough to describe just how uncomfortable it actually made him.

Eylon was another regular visitor to the infirmary to make sure his shoulder was healing. Both men's visits were filled with frigid silence, which was really the only appropriate thing to fill them with. His physician could have handled it, but Anders was the only one with a cleansing aura at his command that could treat the infections that inevitably followed.

Leonie gave a completely different address than the one Eram had given. She sat them down and read through the Commandments of the Maker, and stated they should refer to Transfigurations 1 if they wanted advice on how to conduct themselves under her command. Everyone had one warning, in honor of Eram's memory, after which traitors to the Order would be executed. Gerod had already used his.

The only real bright side was that after Leonie read through Transfigurations 1:2, she concluded that there was nothing in the Commandments against using blood magic on darkspawn. Anders and Velanna were free to continue using such magic, provided they never used it on mankind. Anders and Velanna subsequently agreed it a ridiculously rule, considering they were more than likely to encounter bandits, brigands, and all other manner of evil not darkspawn.

Admittedly, they voiced their complaints to each other and not to Leonie, but it felt good to complain all the same. The only complaint Velanna voiced aloud was when Leonie stated there was to be absolutely no fraternization among the ranks, no exceptions. According to Leonie it created too many conflicts of interest. According to Velanna the shemlen bitch had no right to presume to tell them how to live.

The argument had escalated from there, until Leonie threatened to have Nathaniel reassigned, stating a pre-existing conflict of interest with the arling given his lineage. Velanna had stormed out, which was very Velanna of her. Nathaniel had given a quiet 'I understand,' which was very Nathaniel of him, and just like that it was over. Anders swore he'd heard Sigrun sniffling throughout the rest of Leonie's address.

According to Leonie, the arling was as important as the darkspawn, and both Amell and Eram had unjustly neglected it. She took them to Amaranthine to coordinate with the guards on combating smuggler activity, and, Anders learned only once they were standing inside Amaranthine's Chantry of Our Lady Redeemer, help the templars.

The Chantry was as grossly opulent as Anders expected it to be, given the hordes of refugees still trapped outside Amaranthine's high walls. The floors were covered with intricately patterned rugs, the walls with fanciful crimson tapestries. Stained glass windows illuminated mahogany pews with brilliantly colored light, and wrought iron chandeliers hung from the vaulted ceiling. The entrance was lined in flower beds, and ferns hung from arches cut into the walls.

Between the arches were offering tables and votive candle racks. A few of the arches opened up and led into small nooks containing bookcases filled with holy scripture, or marble statues, allowing for semi-private areas for reading or prayer. The Chantry was filled with refugees, those lucky few who had managed to make it into the city, and smelled overwhelmingly of incense used to mask the smell of too many people packed into one place.

Leonie and Rolan pushed through the crowd to find whatever templar representative they were here to see. Gerod followed them. Stroud and Jacen stayed in a corner, out of the way and talking to one another. Nathaniel and Eylon went to pray. Justice wandered among the refugees, asking anyone and everyone who so much as sniffled if there was anything he could do for them.

Anders went to one of the votive candle stands, and lit a candle for his mother. Sigrun and Velanna followed him. Velanna's steps were jittery and awkward, and had been ever since Leonie had started insisting she and Jacen wear their full Warden uniforms, boots included.

"We used to do something like this in Orzammar," Sigrun said, "There are statutes of Paragons throughout the city. You can light a candle at them and pray to the ancestors to watch over your loved ones, or pray for the Stone to find them worthy of joining the ancestors if they're dead.

"If they die and the Stone finds them unworthy, they become part of the gangue. The um... the corruption in the Stone. It was part of our job as the Legion of the Dead to keep the Stone pure. Is that for Amell?" Sigrun asked.

"Sidona," Anders lied.

"Can I light one?" Sigrun asked. "Or is it only okay if you're an Andrastian?"

"I couldn't give two bits what the Chantry says is okay," Anders snorted. "Light them all if you want,"

Sigrun took his place at the stand and lit one. After a quiet moment she turned to Velanna. "Do you want to light one too, sweetie? For Lyna?"

"Why?" Velanna demanded. "This is a human custom. We have our own prayers. We do not need to borrow theirs."

"I'll light one for her then." Sigrun said, lighting another.

"Who was the first one for?" Anders asked.

"Varlan." Sigrun said. "I'm kind of glad we came here. The statue of Andraste in the courtyard at the Vigil is covered in wax. There's not really room for any more candles, and it's not like there's a statue of a paragon for me anywhere. I always used to pray to Gherlon, the Blood-Risen. He was born casteless, but later became a Paragon and a King. His story always gave me hope, until I joined the Legion. I kind of stopped praying after that. No point if you're already dead, you know?"

"Wax is the least of it," Velanna said. "The bird droppings are practically desecrating that statue at this point."

"I'm surprised you care," Anders said. "Andraste was a human, you know."

"I can look past petty hatred when I have reason to," Velanna said.

"So you admit it's petty," Anders said, "Good to know."

"I respect Andraste," Velanna said, "She freed the elven slaves, and fought for freedom and justice. The fact that she fought a tyrannical empire only for her followers to become one themselves is amusingly ironic, but no reason to hate her personally."

"It's almost as if not all humans are the same," Anders mused.

"Perhaps they are not." Velanna said.

"I must have wax in my ear," Anders rubbed his ear. "What did you say?"

"Nothing." Velanna hummed.

"Wardens, outside." Leonie's order sounded through the Chantry. Stroud pushed open the massive twin doors to the Chantry, and everyone quickly moved out.  The Chantry of Our Lady Redeemer was situated on a hill, and looked out over the heart of Amaranthine.

The market sprawled out beneath them to the north, a plethora of colors and movement. It was a beautiful view, if you kept your eyes fixated there, and didn't look northeast towards the docks and the slums surrounding them, or west to the gates and guardhouses and remember the refugees trapped outside. Funny how Leonie didn't seem to care about that. Probably because the Bann didn't care about that.

Perspective was important after all.

Leonie stood next to the statue of Andraste in the center of the Chantry courtyard. Rolan took a spot next to her, along with yet another templar. Anders wondered if they were recruiting her too. She had hazel eyes, auburn hair, and a pretty face, all of it nullified by the Silver Sword of Mercy on her breast.

"This is Ser Rylien," Leonie introduced the templar. "We will be helping her with her investigation."

"Thank you, Warden Constable." Ser Rylien gave them all a small bow. "I am indeed fortunate the Wardens have taken an interest in this matter."

"Why is that again?" Anders mouth asked without any permission from his brain. "Are we combining Orders or something, because the whole vow of chastity thing really isn't going to work for me."

"Don't interrupt, mage," Rolan sneered at him.

"This is our arling." Leonie said. "It is for us to defend it from all threats. Ser Rylien, continue."

"Thank you, Constable," Ser Rylien said. "You are correct, ser mage. Ordinarily the Order would handle this matter ourselves, but most of my fellows have been recalled to Denerim, and I have only recently taken my vows. It was suggested that I bring the matter forward to Ser-... I mean, Warden Rolan, who brought it forward to the Constable.

"The issue at hand is that Amaranthine is a hotbed of maleficar activity of late. We've received a number of disturbing reports and accusations, and have narrowed our search to three suspects," Ser Rylien reached into her satchel and pulled out three sheaves of parchment. She passed them to Leonie, who passed them around the circle for everyone to see.

"I have worked with a sketch artist to record their likeness," Ser Rylien explained. "I would urge all of you to commit their appearances to memory. Our goal here is to apprehend these suspects, and bring them in for questioning. This must done quietly, or details of who they are and what they are about will undoubtedly get back to them."

The papers reached Anders, and Ser Rylien's voice faded away. Maker's mercy, it was Alim. The handsome elf smirked up at him from the parchment. Sharp nose, strong jaw, hazel eyes and golden brown skin. They even had his ponytail right. Anders passed the parchment off quickly and accepted the next. Anders didn't have a face fit for Wicked Grace. One look at him and Anders was sure everyone would know he knew.

The next suspect was another elf, who looked a female version of Alim. A sister maybe. Anders dared a glance up. Everyone was listening to Ser Rylien. No one was looking at him. The last suspect was a human male. The dumb bastard had a tattoo. It was a wave above his left brow, and two on his cheek on the same side. Idiot. The templars had it easy enough without mages branding themselves.

Anders passed the parchment off. His palms had left sweaty stains on the edges. These were members of the Collective. They weren't maleficarum, and even if they were, they'd have to be hypocrites to hunt them when their Order already harbored two. They couldn't just go along with this. Someone should say something. Someone should do something. Someone...

Anders was someone. He could do something. But what? How? He couldn't just inconspicuously excuse himself and run straight to the docks to warn Alim. Leonie and Rolan weren't that stupid, and they were already making plans for the hunt. Ser Rylien suggested they pair up in groups of two to scour the city.

Justice would help him, Anders knew, but the spirit wouldn't be much help clunking through the city in full armor. Rolan was already volunteering to search the docks with Eylon, given how many reports had come from that area. Nathaniel and Sigrun were quick and stealthy. They could get there first, but there was no way Alim would trust them. Anders had to be there, and pairing up with Nate or Sigrun wouldn't make Anders any faster or stealthier.

He was a mage. He wasn't a rogue. All he had was magic.

Magic.

Leonie called for the rest of them to separate into groups. Anders grabbed Velanna's hand. The elf shot him a confused frown, but as a testament to how much she'd changed, she didn't wrench away. Everyone else made their groups, Sigrun with Justice, Jacen with Stroud, Leonie with Nate, and Gerod with Rylien.

"You sure she's old enough to go with him?" Anders asked, trying to come up with a plan. The morbid quip won him a few snorts and sniffs from the rest of the Wardens.

"A valid concern," Leonie nodded at him. "Gerod, you will pair with me. Nathaniel, with Ser Rylien."

"Why is my age a concern?" Ser Rylien demanded. "I am a full fledged member of the Order, newly initiated or not."

"Nothing was meant by it, my lady." Nate assured her, gesturing to the winding stone stairs that led down from the Chantry courtyard and to the city. "Shall we?"

Velanna glared miserably at the pair as they left with the others. Anders sympathized, but he didn't have time to express it. Anders tugged on her hand and pulled Velanna down the stairs, the elf tripping over her boots the entire way down. "Amell never forced me to wear these accursed things." Velanna muttered.

Anders dragged Velanna into the Chantry's arbor at the bottom of the stairs, the small alcove of trees and trellises according them a little privacy. "We have to get to the docks." Anders said. "I know the elf. He's a member of the Collective. We have to warn them. You can get us there. Use your root magic."

"The same magic which so terrified you last I used it on you?" Velanna asked.

"Look I get it, I'm a coward. Small dark spaces terrify me, but I don't have a choice here. We have to do something. Fast. Here, we can leave our tabards here," Anders unbundled his belt and hastily took his off tabard. "We don't want people gossiping about a pair of Wardens running around the docks before Rolan and Eylon get there."

Velanna tore hers off, along with her boots. Anders took them and stuffed them behind a rose bush. "I need a line of sight to wherever I take us. Let us go back to the hill, and to the docks from there."

They rebuckled their belts, ran back up the stairs to the hill the Chantry sat upon. The docks were visible, but featureless: grey buildings, white sails, and brown piers walled off from the rest of the city. Anders couldn't make out any people from this distance.

"Can you teleport us that far?" Anders asked.

"It's not teleportation. I move through the earth. I can get us there, but it will be in bursts." Velanna explained.

"Don't be obvious." Anders said. "Keep us away from crowds. We can go on foot when we get to the docks."

"I will be." Velanna said, "Give me your hand," 

Velanna held out her hand. Anders stared at it. Velanna had long slender fingers, callused at the tips, and they were already glowing green with the pull of mana. On the other side of the spell was a tiny prison of roots, like rope and chain made into a cell. Anders took a deep breath, and grabbed her hand.

Darkness swallowed him. He felt upside down and inside out and backwards. The smell of earth and bark was everywhere, dirt and bits of small rock showered across his face, got in his boots, his hair, down his trousers and the back of his tunic. It was over quickly, and they were left standing in a patch of torn up dirt between two trees.

Darkness came again before Anders had a chance to appreciate the light. It took them four trips before they reached the docks, and it was too crowded for them to continue. Anders grabbed Velanna's hand and ran with her to the Fisherman's Rest. Without their tabards, they were nothing special. A human and an elf in black trousers and blue tunics, the former with too much jewelry and the latter with no shoes.

They ran across three piers, bumping into cutpurses and sailors, kicking up puddles of water, and dodging carts of fish and crates of trade goods. An ocean wind carried with it the scent of brine and fish, and mussed their hair as they ran. At one point, a loose barrel narrowly avoided crashing into them, and they both came to a skidding halt.

Velanna caught herself on him, laughing. Anders laughed with her. Anxiety was making a mess of him, but beneath that, this was almost exciting. "Which way now?" Velanna asked breathlessly.

"There," Anders pointed to the water-logged tavern. Fisherman's Rest was crowded in the afternoon, cheap ale mingled with the scent of the sea and one too many people. Alim was sitting in his usual booth, all but inviting someone to apprehend him. He was also meeting with someone.

Anders made his way across the wavy floor and around warped tables to Alim's booth. The elf glared up at him for the interruption. "We have to talk. Now. Emergency or whatever your code for that is. You're in danger."

That must have been the right code. Alim excused himself from his meeting and led Anders and Velanna to one of the tavern's guest rooms. It was far from glamorous. There was an armoire, a cot, a trunk, a tiny table, a small bathing area with a bucket and stool for washing and a chamber pot. Extortionist or not, Alim clearly didn't use any Collective coin for himself. Anders felt like an ass for judging him.

"What is it?" Alim demanded.

"The templars know your face," Anders said. "They're using Grey Wardens to search the city for you, and some are already on their way to the docks. Do you have a sister?"

"Are they looking for her?" Alim asked. "They are or you wouldn't ask. How many?"

"Ten." Anders said.

"I have to get to the Crown and Lion," Alim said. He opened his trunk and pulled out two ready-made packs with so little hesitation it made Anders angry. Alim had planned for the day templars came for him. He was a mage, which meant he wasn't welcome anywhere. Nothing he built would ever last. Nothing any of them built would ever last. It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. It wasn't just. "My sister is a scullion there. Do you know where your fellows are searching and if I'll run into them?"

"I can get you there," Velanna said.

"Thank you." Alim darted back out into the hall. Anders and Velanna followed him to the bar of all places. Alim smacked the counter to get the portly bartender's attention. "Whiskey with an apple chaser."

"I'll have it right out." The bartender promised.

"Is now really the time?" Anders asked.

Alim led them through the crowded tavern and into the kitchen. From there they took a backdoor out onto the docks.

"Oh it's a code." Anders realized when they were back out on the pier. "Chaser. Being chased. That's pretty clever."

"How do you intend to get us to the Crown and Lion?" Alim asked.

Velanna dragged both of them through the dockside district, moving further inland until they found a gatehouse that led back into Amaranthine. It was on slightly elevated ground, with a decent view of the city. "Give me your hands." Velanna said.

"This is going to suck." Anders warned Alim.

They took her hands. Roots swarmed over them and dragged them underground. They reemerged almost a quarter mile away from where they'd been, beside a nondescript house and a pile of rubbish. Alim doubled over and threw up.

"I warned you." Anders said.

"Creators," Velanna muttered.

Alim gagged and wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand, stumbling away from the puddle of vomit he left at his feet. "I'm sorry. We need to hurry. It's just down this street, we'll go in through the kitchen."

The back of the Crown and Lion was less grandiose than the front. Rubbish heaps and broken bottles of glass were strewn along the deserted street, along with the occasional refugee and afternoon lush. Alim ushered them in through the back.

His sister looked just like him, from the strong jaw to the sharp nose, to the same style ponytail. She was standing over a bucket, shelling shrimp, and looked anything but a dangerous maleficar. "Alim?" The girl asked. "What are you doing here-Oh my stars a Dalish."

"We are known, Melissa," Alim explained, forcing one of the pack's into his sister's back. "Get Sorcha to open the passage. We need to get out of the city."

"Guess you won't be finishing those shrimp then, huh?" The chef sighed. "Bloody templars."

"But you said they all went to Denerim!" Melissa protested, whipping her hands off on her trousers. "I found honest work. The Warden Commander promised we'd be safe here!"

"The Warden Commander is gone." Alim said, and turned back to them. "Thank you for your help friends. Maria, the bartender at the Fisherman's Rest, will know who the new liaison is when we get one."

"They were looking for one more," Anders said. "A man with blue eyes, blonde hair, and a tattoo on his face, like two waves on his left cheek and one above his brow. Do you know anyone like that?"

"Evon." Melissa said. "Oh no... He'll be at his stall in the markets. It's in plain sight. We can't just leave him, Alim. Strangers, I know it's a lot to ask, but could you get him out?"

"Well look, I'm Anders, and this is Velanna, so now we're not strangers, and it's not a lot to ask." Anders said. "Right?"

"Of course we will help." Velanna said. "These templars have no right to any of you."

The door to the kitchen open and a woman hurried in, with red hair, red eyes, and a pretty if plain red dress. She closed the door behind her hastily and ran to the back door to open it, "Lissa there are Wardens here asking questions about you! Hurry! Leave before they search the kitchen!"

Alim grabbed his sister's hand and the four of them ran back out into the alley. "What do we do now?" Melissa asked. "There are Wardens after us too?"

"They are working with the templars," Velanna explained. "Our new Constable has made mewling cravens of them all."

"This way," Alim urged them on. "We can use the smugglers' alleys,"

The four of them darted around corners and through shadowed alleys, and the occasional crowded street. The city sloped down towards the markets, and stairs were carved into the hill leading down. The four of them found a spot to the left of the stairs, overlooking the market. Melissa pointed a stall in the distance.

Evon apparently made a living selling candy. Someday Anders wanted to tell Leonie all about the dangerous criminals she and the templars were protecting the arling from. But preferably not right this second, the way he might have to with Leonie and Gerod combing through the markets some short ways from Evon's stall. The two giants weren't hard to spot, with how they towered over the crowds.

"Get him quick," Anders said. "Our Constable is right there."

"I'll never reach him before they do," Melissa protested.

"Just get him up here," Anders suggested, thinking fast. "We'll hide behind this house, and the second he reaches us Velanna can transport the five of us across the street. I see an alley there we can duck in."

"I cannot move five at a time." Velanna said.

"But you can move three." Alim said. "Anders, let's go now. You three can catch up with us."

"Right." Anders said.

Anders and Alim bolted across the street, Velanna back around the house, Melissa down the stairs. Anders didn't see what happened, but he heard Melissa screaming, and the sound of chaos from the markets. He and Alim kept running down the side street, and darted in a space between two building so thin Anders wouldn't have called it an alley. A short while later Velanna, Melissa, and the tattooed fellow name Evon appeared in a shower of roots outside it and leapt inside with them.

"Did they see you?" Anders asked.

"Ha!" Velanna snorted.

"They'll search the area, we have to move," Alim said, hurrying down the alley with the assumption they'd follow. The alley was so thin they could only go two at a time, but soon they were out, and onto a side street.

"Back to the Crown and Lion? Do you think the Wardens there are gone?" Melissa asked.

"It's our only way out of the city," Alim said, "They'll never find us in the refugee camps outside the walls. We can make for Highever when night falls."

"Or you could keep going to West Hill," Anders suggested. "There's a man there named Levyn who would probably help you, and if you go there I can send you a few sovereigns to get started somewhere else."

"And where will you find these few sovereigns now that Leonie has cut our stipends in half?" Velanna demanded.

"Amell left me some in case-" I wanted to bring my dead mother down to visit. "Just in case." Anders said.

"Who are you?" Evon asked, "Why are you helping us?"

"Oh, right," Anders looked over his shoulder and held out his hand. The tattooed fellow shook it warily. "I'm Anders. And... I don't know. Because someone should."

"A good reason, but rarely enough for anyone," Evon said suspiciously.

"Well it's all I've got." Anders said.

"Be quiet, Evon." Melissa said. "They're helping. Who cares why?"

"This isn't how it's done," Evon said. "We mark our homes with blood when something like this happens to let everyone know they need to run,"

"You weren't home, Evon. There wasn't time. The templars are getting smarter. They're using Grey Wardens now. Do you think any of us want to leave like this?" Melissa looked at Velanna, crestfallen, "I have so many questions for you, but I know there's not time to ask."

"There's the inn," Alim said. "One of us should check to see if the Wardens have gone and then let the rest of us in through the back."

"I'll do it." Anders said. "Stay out of sight."

Anders hurried across the street to the tavern while everyone else circled around the back. Anders let himself into the inn, and cleaned off his boots on the rug before the door while looking around. The common room of the Crown and Lion was comfortably warm, and smelled of fresh reeds and pine. A fire was crackling in the fireplace, and a minstrel was idly strumming her lute on the stone stage.

For the most part, the tavern was empty. It was a well to-do lodging for well to-do folk doing well to-do things in the middle of the day. Anders spotted the redhead from before wiping down one of the tables, and went over to her. She glanced up at him with an easy smile, "Looking to wet your whistle, stranger?"

"Sorcha, right?" Anders asked. "Melissa's friend? Are the Wardens gone?"

"They're gone," Sorcha squinted at him. "Who are you?"

"What you don't remember? We just met ten minutes ago. How could you forget this face?" Anders joked, "Everyone is waiting out back, is it safe for them to come through?"

"It is. Let me get the door." Sorcha stuffed the rag she was holding into her apron and hurried to the kitchen.

A few minutes later and she led the group of mages out of the kitchen and through the common room. Surprisingly, neither the barkeeper nor the innkeeper said so much as a word. "Upstairs," Sorcha said.

The barmaid led them up the stairs and down the hall to a room she unlocked with a set of keys from her belt. All of them crowded inside. The room was for storage, and packed with stacked furniture and rolled up rugs. Sorcha move a rug and a table aside to reveal a trap door underneath she unlocked for them. A ladder led down into darkness.

"This leads outside the city. There's a house a quarter mile to the north of the city gate, against the city walls. It's marked with a broken circle, if either of you ever need it." Alim fished out a coin from his pocket, with a broken Circle of Magi symbol on it. He gave it to Anders. "This will let the Collective know you hold a Most Trusted status with us. You both deserve one, but I only have one. We'll head to West Hill and try to find this Levyn. Thank you for everything."

Alim climbed down the ladder without another word. Evon followed him. Melissa gave Sorcha a fierce hug. "We'll see each other again someday."

"No we won't, but thanks for saying it," Sorcha said, giving Melissa a push towards the ladder. "Go on, get."

"It was an honor to meet you, Velanna." Melissa said. "Thank you, Anders."

She climbed down the ladder. Mage light battled back the darkness as the three apostates descended. Sorcha closed the trap door over them and locked it before moving the furniture back in place. Her eyes misted, and she smudged the kohl decorating them when she wiped away unshed tears. "Get you two a couple of drinks?" Sorcha offered. "On the house."

"We should get back and get our things before someone finds them, but I'll take you up on that someday." Anders pocketed the coin Alim had given him. He left the tavern with Velanna, and her root magic brought them back to the Chantry.

"We did it," Anders laughed. "I can't believe we actually did it. I mean, you did it, with your magic, but-"

"Your ideas saved those people." Velanna said.

"... They did, didn't they?" Anders allotted.

"I told you," Velanna grinned. "Templars are nothing to us. That fool woman should have known better than to ask our aid in this. What did she expect, asking us to turn against our own kind?"

"Probably that we'd be too scared to disobey after what she did to Gerod," Anders guessed. They went back inside the arbor, and found their tabards untouched behind the rose bush. Anders handed Velanna hers, along with her boots.

"Ha!" Velanna laughed while she dressed. "I am not afraid of her."

"I am, a little," Anders said, unbuckling his belt and pulling on his tabard. "But getting those people out right under her nose like that? Honestly, that was the most fun I've had in weeks."

"I had so missed this." Velanna said after she managed to get a foot into her boot.

"Missed what?" Anders asked.

"Feeling proud of myself." Velanna said.

"What?" Anders laughed. "You're the proudest person I know. You're radiating so much pride you're practically a demon."

"I am proud of my people. It is not the same." Velanna said quietly. "Enough of this! We saved those people. Let us go back to the Crown and Lion and make good on our reward."

"Finally, we're speaking the same language," Anders grinned.

Proud didn't begin to cover how Anders felt. He went back to the Crown and Lion with Velanna and they got themselves a table and drinks, and spent the next hour recounting everything that had only just happened. "Velanna? Thanks. For going along with all this. I wasn't sure if you would when I asked."

"Why wouldn't I?" Velanna demanded. "There is no one your Chantry does not oppress, mages or elves. If you wish to strike out against them, I am with you."

"I have to tell Justice about this," Anders said.

"What does that spirit have to do with anything?" Velanna asked.

"It was his idea," Anders said. "He said I should fight against my oppressors. The Circle, the Chantry. He said I had an obligation to free other mages, which at the time sounded like suicide, but I don't know... maybe he's right."

Chapter 40: Justice for Naught

Notes:

Alright! Welcome back everyone! We hit 4,000 views! Thank you so much for supporting this story! Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 25 Umbralis Early Afternoon
Vigil's Keep: Warden's Barracks

Anders,

I'm sure you already know this, but you were right about the potion. Adding heatherum and foxite made all the difference. I thought for certain I had the wrong ratio of elfroot and spindleweed. I guess this means the student has finally surpassed the master. Haha.

Things have been going better for me recently. First Enchanter Orsino managed to convince the Knight-Commander to allow the senior mages outside the Gallows once a week. Granted, we're only allowed to visit the Chantry, and only for a few hours under supervision, but the fresh air and sunlight make all the difference.

Naturally, it's done wonders for the Collective. I still can't tell you how proud I was to learn of what you did for us. If ever there was a man who deserved our Most Trusted status, it's you. I'll see what I can do about changing the name to 'Most Awesome' status, but I can't make any promises. Haha.

Things at Vigil's Keep sound difficult. Ser Rolan's recruitment is certainly suspicious, but King Alistair proves there is a precedent for cross-recruiting across the Orders. I think it's plausible Ser Rolan has been given a special assignment to watch over you. You were famous, after all.

I can see why the Circle might see the need to keep an eye on you, but I would be hesitant to blame Greagor. I know what you think of Kinloch Hold, but Greagor cared for us. I see that now. If you could see Knight-Commander Meredith, you would see it too. I think the fault may lie in Denerim.

Knight-Commander Tavish has all but driven us out of the capitol. With King Alistair approving your conscription, Tavish will have heard of you. It wouldn't be a stretch to assume the more outspoken members of the Order might have gone to him for help. I don't know what you can do with that information, but it's all I know.

Justice certainly sounds like a fascinating creature to encounter. I'm afraid I don't have any insight there, aside from the fact that creatures like him can die in this world. Whether or not he will die when his body decays is beyond me. You're the spirit healer between us, after all. I trust you'll be able to find some way to save him.

As always, it's wonderful to hear from you. My relationship with the Maker is complicated these days, but rest assured that you, your Commander, and your mother are in my prayers. I know it hurts now, but time heals all wounds when magic fails us. The only advice I have is to try to remember the years you had with her, and not the years you lost.

Your friend,
Karl

Anders lay in bed, propped up by his pillows, and hugging the one made by his mother to his side. Ser Pounce-a-Lot lay on his chest, Barkspawn at his feet. "What do you think, Ser Pounce-a-Lot?" Anders asked, waving the letter over the little tabby's head. "Do we go to Denerim and mind-control the Knight-Commander? Will that help?"

Ser Pounce-a-Lot curled up into a ball and wiggled predatorily. Anders lifted the letter when Ser Pounce-a-Lot dove for it, and the cat face-planted on the cot beside him. "Maybe I should train you to become a vicious attack kitten. What do you think?" Anders scooped the cat up and gave it a kiss between the ears. Ser Pounce-a-Lot crawled out from under his arm and paced circles on his chest.

"Mages created mabari hounds, after all," Anders mused, nudging Barkspawn with his foot. "I could probably make you just as smart as those stupid dogs."

Barkspawn looked up and growled. Anders gave him another nudge. "I'm kidding. You're not that stupid."

The door to the barracks open, and Anders tensed, given the odds it was someone he wanted to encounter. Stroud walked in. Anders relaxed a little. The Orlesian-turned-Free Marcher grinned at him. "I see you have a friend or two," Stroud observed.

"Who, these guys?" Anders gave Ser Pounce-a-Lot a playful swat with his letter. "We're more like frenemies."

"I am surprised the mabari obeys you," Stroud walked over to his bunk, and changed out of his tunic. His clothes were soaked with sweat, and Anders guessed he'd been out in the training yard, doing something productive. "It is my understanding that they imprint on one master for life. If Commander Amell has gone to his Calling, traditionally the mabari would go with him."

Barkspawn whined.

"Amell didn't want to risk it... and I don't know that he obeys me, really," Anders said, unable to help petting the dog with his foot at the mention of Amell and his Calling. "I think he just sort of protects me because Amell and I-...are friends."

Stroud snorted, "You can say lovers, serah. It is well known."

"Well you know, with the Constable," Anders shrugged.

"I believe the rank of Commander is higher," Stroud grinned, gathering up a change of clothes and heading for the wash. "I cannot say I approve of the decision to forbid fraternization. It makes far more sense to me find love within the Order as opposed to without. We are Brothers and Sisters, after all. Who do we have if not each other?"

Anders didn't have an answer to that. Stroud left him for the washroom. Anders stayed in bed, petting Ser Pounce-a-Lot with his hand and Barkspawn with his foot. The door opened again, and Velanna glanced inside. "Is anyone else about?" Velanna demanded.

"What, I'm not good enough for you anymore?" Anders joked. Velanna glared at him. "Stroud just went to the wash, otherwise it's just me."

Velanna slipped around the door and dragged Nathaniel in after her.

"Anders, do you mind if-" Nate began.

Velanna grabbed Nate by the front of his collar and slammed him back against the door. "There is no one here but us," Velanna pushed herself up to the balls of her feet and kissed Nate shamelessly.

Anders blinked, stunned. It wasn't hard to convince Nate of Anders' nonexistence, by the look of things. The man engulfed the tiny elf in his arms, and the stolen moment reminded Anders almost painfully of the Circle.

"Banal'shem tu mana var lath." Velanna said when their lips broke apart.

"I don't- again, in common?" Nathaniel begged.

"No." Velanna gave him a shove and walked to her bunk. Anders whistled. Velanna rolled her eyes at him.

"I don't suppose we could keep this between us?" Nate asked.

"Well I'm game if Velanna is." Anders joked.

Velanna made a disgusted noise and took off her boots. Nathaniel went to his own bunk, and the door opened again a few seconds later. Cutting it close, that. It was a servant, Anders guessed by the elf's meek demeanor.

"Warden Anders?" The servant looked at him, "Warden-Constable Caron wants to speak with you."

"Oh boy," Anders couldn't keep the sarcasm from dripping out of his voice. He set Ser Pounce-a-Lot aside and climbed out of his bunk. He headed out into the hall and through the Vigil to the third story. Leonie had moved herself into Amell's old quarters, and Anders didn't have words for how much her audacity riled him.

The guards outside unlocked the door for him, and Anders was shown inside.

Leonie had completely redecorated. Gone were the bookshelves filled with tomes and arcane trinkets, gone was the liquor cabinet, and everything that had made Amell's quarters Amell's. The only things Leonie kept were Amell's bed, his writing desk, and his armoire. The rest of the room was decorated in Andrastian paraphernalia.

Leonie had a votive candle rack with a prayer mat set before it, a table decorated with a map of the arling, and the walls were covered in symbols made from bronze and silver, bearing Andraste's flame or silver swords of mercy. A few urns, bearing depictions of lions and other Orlesian symbols took up space in the corners.

Leonie had lit incense, and everything about the room reminded Anders of templars and oppression. She was sitting in an arm chair, the sitting area rearranged so armchair faced the door, and the couch faced away from it. She looked like a regular inquisitor, a fire in the hearth to her left casting ominous shadows across her face that went well with her frown.

"Anders, sit." Leonie said.

Anders sat.

"You are not special." Leonie said.

"Oh ow, you're just-" Anders started.

"You are not being singled out." Leonie said over him. "I will address performance issues with everyone under my command. I have spoken with Ambassador Cera, Physician Torin, and Assistant Physician Edan. Upon reviewing the notes you keep for your infirmary, I have determined that they are unacceptable.

"Whether or not claims of your drunken debauchery have any basis in fact, there are several supplies that cannot be accounted for by the vague figures you have given. You will pay the Circle for these supplies, and keep more accurate records in the future. By my calculations you have eight sovereigns worth of supplies to answer for.

"As this was a pre-existing concern before my appointment to Constable, I will not hold it against you. However, you will maintain better relations with the Circle in the future. To start, you will turn in this 'Blighted Staff' retrieved from an Awakened darkspawn in Kal'Hirol for study."

"What... Who... How..." Anders vision went spotty, and circles of red and orange floated over Leonie's brutish face; her ice blue eyes shined through them. Anders' spine locked up, and his shoulders tensed.

"If you have questions for me, make sure they are coherent." Leonie said. "You will turn in your sovereigns when you turn in your staff."

"Back the fuck up," Anders said. Leonie raised an eyebrow at him. "Where do you get off? I don't owe the Circle anything. I kept those notes for me," Anders grabbed his tunic and shook it meaningfully, "Not for you or Cera. When Amell appointed me to that infirmary, he gave me full autonomy over everything."

"I am not Amell." Leonie said. "You will pay what is owed or the difference will be confiscated from your things and withheld from your stipend. I am led to believe you can afford it," Leonie gestured at him disinterestedly. "I am sure you have at least eight sovereigns worth in jewelry and other ornaments."

"These are mine," Anders shook his hands at her. The gold bangles he was wearing on his wrists jangled at her. "You can't just take them!"

"You are a Warden," Leonie said flatly. Justice had more emotion than the Orlesian bitch. "Your actions reflect upon the Order. You have indebted us to the Circle and you will be made to answer for it, regardless of your feelings on the matter. And you will get rid of your cat."

Anders burst out laughing. He laughed so hard his chest ached and he ran out of breath. He doubled over, clutching his stomach and spilling a few involuntary, hysterical tears. "Fuck you," Anders managed.

"For your sake, I will pretend not to have heard that." Leonie said. "The mabari-"

"If you think for a second-" Anders hissed.

"May be kept, as it proves an invaluable war asset, but it is not imprinted on you. The animal is wild and dangerous, and if you cannot keep it under control, it will be sent to the kennels in Denerim." Leonie said.

Anders started laughing again. There was nothing else for him to do.

"The cat is unsanitary, and embarrassing," Leonie went on to explain. "Litter is strewn beneath your bunk, its fur infests the barracks, and some members of the Order are allergic. Not only that, but it's clear the animal and the, shall we say, special treatment you received from the late Warden-Commander-"

"Maybe late!" Anders interrupted. "You don't know! When he gets back-"

"Warden-Commander Amell has made you soft." Leonie spoke over him. "You wasted invaluable time in the Deep Roads attempting to save a dead member of our Order, and you made no effort to search for maleficarum in Amaranthine.

"It has been almost a month since Warden Commander Amell left for Soldier's Peak, in the mountains of Highever. The journey would have taken a week, under the absolute worst of conditions. He has had more than enough time to make the round-way journey. The fact that he has not yet returned is a clear indication that he has gone on to Orzammar to meet his Calling."

"You don't know that!" Anders snapped.

"I do not need proof," Leonie said, "I was not his lover, and his death is not hard for me to accept."

"You can't do this." Anders said.

Leonie stared at him dispassionately.

"You can't make me get rid of my cat," Anders said. "He was a gift! What did that cat ever do to you?"

"I do not enjoy repeating myself, Warden." Leonie said. "Do you have any questions for me that I have not yet addressed?"

"What do you expect me to do with him?" Anders demanded, "He's a cat! He's mine! I can't just get rid of him."

"I will give you three days to make arrangements." Leonie said. "If you have not yet turned in your sovereigns and staff and gotten rid of your cat, I will make whatever decisions I see fit to address whatever issues remain. You are dismissed."

"You can't do this!" Anders protested. He might have been talking to a templar for all the acknowledgement Leonie gave him. "You can't say you're not singling me out and then do all this to me. You think I don't know what's going on here? You're working with the templars to punish me for escaping the Circle. I know Rolan is here to watch me. I know what all this is about."

"Warden Rolan was recruited by the late Warden-Constable Kader for reasons unknown to me. If there was some arrangement between him and the Circle, I was not privy to it, nor do I consider myself beholden to it." Leonie said. She so obviously cared so little Anders couldn't help but believe her. "I will not deny I consider his presence invaluable given your and Velanna's proclivities, but I expect you to answer only for what you have done as a Warden. Your life before your Joining is of no consequence to me."

"My life after my Joining is of no consequence to you!" Anders snarled. "If you gave two figs about me you'd know that cat is one of the only things that still makes me happy. You can't take him away from me."

"I do not need your happiness, only your obedience." Leone said. "You are dismissed. Do not make me say it again."

Anders stood up. He thought seriously of going downstairs to get Amell's grimoire and force Leonie to take back everything she'd said. He could probably do it now, grimoire or not. He knew the spell. Persuasion was easy for him. Blood magic was easy for him.

Leonie eyebrows knit together into a glare. Anders forced himself to leave. He didn't get far down the hall before he had to stop, and lean against the nearest wall. His legs were shaking, and it was suddenly hard to hold himself up. He couldn't breathe. Anders inhaled, and it felt like his throat was closed, blocking any air from getting into his lungs.

Maker, not here. Don't have a panic attack here. Not in front of her quarters. Not where the guards can see and tell her later. Don't give her the satisfaction.

Anders locked his arms over his head. He tried to breathe again. He couldn't. He was going to start wheezing soon. Anders shoved himself off the wall and hurried to the stairwell. He made it around the corner and down three steps he collapsed. Anders grabbed his chest, hyperventilating. Maker, where was Amell? Why was this happening to him?

Anders buried his face in his hands, and stayed sitting until he felt someone touch his knee. Anders glanced up, expecting a servant or soldier to tell him he was in the way, despite the fact that he was sitting on the far edge of the step, and not the center of it.

Sigrun was kneeling on the stair below him, staring at him. The concern in her bright blue eyes was a stark contrast to the cold disinterest in Leonie's. "Sweetie?" Sigrun asked. "What's the matter?"

Anders opened his mouth to say something glib. An unhappy whine spilled out of his lips.

"Oh sweetie," Sigrun sat on the stair above him and put an arm around his shoulders. She smelled like iron with a hint of lavender. It wasn't soothing. It was just a smell. "Is this about Leonie wanting to see all of us? I'm up next. What happened? What did she say to you?"

Anders made another miserable noise. He sucked in a deep breath, and tried to find his bearings. "I have to get rid of my cat." Anders said.

"What!?" Sigrun sat back. "Why!??"

Anders shrugged. "I guess she's a dog person."

"That doesn't-" Sigrun covered her mouth with her hand, and glared at the stairs. "But... there's no reason... You're not a Legionnaire. You're a Warden. Amell told me we were allowed to have things."

"Yeah," Anders said. "He told me that too."

"But you love Ser Pounce-a-Lot," Sigrun said. "I love Ser Pounce-a-Lot! I sneak him dried mackerel all the time... He's like our mascot. This is just mean. It isn't fair."

"You think we should tell Justice?" Anders joked.

"Oh sweetie..." Sigrun said.

"Maybe Nate's sister needs a mouser," Anders said.

"Maybe," Sigrun agreed unhappily, rubbing his back. Anders found her hand and gave it a grateful squeeze.

"I guess I'll go ask him." Anders said, climbing to his feet.

"Okay, sweetie," Sigrun stood, "I'll see you at lunch, okay?"

"Yeah." Anders agreed.

Anders wandered down the stairs. Everything felt heavy, from his head to his arms to his feet. He dragged himself back to the barracks, and found Nathaniel playing cards with Velanna and Justice. A few other wardens were in the barracks. Stroud was reading, and Gerod was in his bunk taking a nap.

Ser Pounce-a-Lot ran over meowing, and wove circles around Anders' feet, tripping him up on his way to Nate's bunk. Anders fought back the urge to pick him up, and swallowed down a lump in his throat.

"Anders," Nate grinned, "Do you want me to deal you in next hand?"

"Yeah, sure, can I talk to you though?" Anders asked, "You don't have to get up. Do you think Delilah and Albert would take Ser Pounce-a-Lot?"

"Take him?" Nate repeated, leaning out of his bunk to look down at the cat circling Anders' feet. "Why?"

"Leonie says I have to get rid of him." Anders explained.

"Asha'alas lath'din!" Velanna spat, throwing her cards on the bed. Stroud jumped. Gerod woke up with a snort, and Velanna lowered her voice to an angry hiss. "You are not serious?"

Anders put on a wan grin. He didn't know what else to do.

"I'm sure Delilah would be happy to have a cat," Nate said, wearing a weak smile of his own. "She used to put out milk for the mousers when she was younger."

"Would you mind going to Amaranthine with me tomorrow to give him to her?" Anders asked. "He could be a gift for or something, since she's expecting."

"Of course," Nate said.

"Thanks," Anders said.

"Fenedhis," Velanna muttered. Justice picked up her cards and neatly folded them before handing them back to her, "Dread wolf take that woman. I swear by the Creators if she pushes us much further."

Anders took a seat on the edge of the cot. It creaked under his weight, already supporting three people, one of them in full armor. Ser Pounce-a-Lot jumped up into his lap. Anders inhaled shakily. The little tabby butt impatiently against his hand for pets, and Anders pressed his fingers into his eyes to fight back tears.

The door to the barracks opened, and a servant poked their head in. "What!?" Velanna barked.

The servant shrank back. "A thousand apologies, Wardens. A visitor is here for Warden Kristoff. She says her name is Aura,"

"Aura?" Justice repeated, setting down his cards.

"Yes, Ser, Kristoff, Ser," The servant babbled, casting nervous glances in Velanna's direction, "She's waiting for you in the Main Hall,"

"Leave us," Velanna snapped.

The servant fled.

Justice stayed sitting, his helmet hiding his expression. "I have memories of this woman," Justice said quietly. "She was Kristoff's wife. She loved him a great deal, and he her..." Justice looked at Anders, "What do I do?"

Anders pushed Ser Pounce-a-Lot off his lap, grateful for the distraction. "You break it to her. Come on, I'll help you."

Anders stood up, and Justice followed him. They left the barracks and went down the hall to the Main Hall, where Aura was waiting for them. She was a beautiful woman, with a maturity to her that had Anders placing her around thirty. Her hair was blonde and braided, her nose petite and pert, and her eyes were brilliant sapphires that lit up in excitement at their approach.

She was wearing an elaborate dress of blue and gold, and it was easy to see that Kristoff had taken care of her, while he was alive. "Kristoff?" Aura guessed by Justice's armor, skipping across the divide between them to jump into Justice's arms. "What are you doing with your helmet on? I told you I didn't care about the scar; I bet it makes you look rugged."

"I fear you are mistaken, Aura," Justice said.

"Kristoff?" Aura took a step back. "Why are you...? What has happened?"

"I'm Anders," Anders held out a hand. Aura shook it cautiously, "I'm ... Kristoff's friend. Can we talk somewhere private? Just the three of us?"

"I-... I suppose," Aura said, glancing nervously between them. Anders waved her forward, and led them to the chapel. It seemed like the only appropriate place for this conversation.

"You were supposed to get here by Solis." Anders remembered, talking to keep the poor girl from glancing at Justice every two seconds. "Am-... The Warden Commander thought you might have run into trouble on the road."

"No, my sister took ill, and I had to stay in Jader to take care of her baby for a few extra months while she recovered. She and the baby are fine now," Aura explained, glancing back at Kristoff again, "I got a letter that said Kristoff had been missing for two months, but he is here. What is going on?"

"We should sit down first," Anders said. They reached the chapel, and Anders helped open the door to let both of them through. He was glad to see the chapel deserted, so close to lunch. Aura deserved the privacy. Anders led the three of them to a pew in the front row, and they sat down.

"What is going on?" Aura asked again.

Anders took her hands and put on the same face he wore whenever he had to tell a patient they had to lose a limb, or there was nothing magic could do for them, "I really don't know how to tell you this, but Kristoff is dead. He died to darkspawn, almost six months ago now."

"Dead?" Aura repeated, looking at Justice. "But he's right there. His voice is ... a little different, but I know his armor. I used to help him put it on, before he was called to Ferelden to help dispatch the last of the darkspawn. Tell me what is going on here!"

"Your husband is gone," Justice said. "I inhabit this body now, but his death will be avenged, I assure you."

"Inhabit? What-?" Aura scooted back from them on the bench.

"He's... a spirit," Anders said, "He's trapped inside Kristoff's body."

"What-" Aura said.

Justice took off his helmet. Anders wished he hadn't. There was nothing reassuring in the corpse's rotten face, his bloated veins and drawn back skin. Bright blue eyes made of magic and energy stared out at Aura. The poor woman covered her mouth, and went so pale she was nearly green. Anders half expected her to be sick all over the pew.

"You-you've desecrated his body!" Aura screamed "How dare you!"

"It was not intentional," Justice said. "There was-"

"Get away from me!" Aura screamed, bolting off the bench. Anders grabbed her hand before she got more than a few feet.

"Aura, wait," Anders begged. "It's not what you think. Please hear him out."

With a visible effort, Aura swallowed back vomit. She looked at Justice, agony in her eyes, and collapsed into a ball to sob into her knees.

Justice looked miserable. He climbed down onto the floor with Aura, and knelt a foot away from her. "Aura, please do not be alarmed," Justice begged, "I have no wish to frighten you."

"What are you?" Aura sobbed.

"I am a spirit of Justice," Justice said.

"I know it sounds crazy, but a demon trapped him in Kristoff's body," Anders explained. "He never would have done this on his own. He doesn't want this any more than you do."

"I know I have done you a great disservice, but it was unintentional. I meant your husband no harm," Justice said, his voice surprisingly soft. Anders felt bad for ever comparing him to Leonie. Justice might have been a person with how wide his range of emotions was. "I would ease your distress or assuage your pain had I the power."

Aura spent the next few minutes crying. Justice looked up at Anders, desperate and depressed. Anders shook his head. Aura needed the time to mourn. It wasn't something they could rush. Justice sat on his knees, hands in his lap, waiting. Eventually, Aura found her voice.

"I knew," Aura gasped, dragging her hands down her face, flush from her tears, "I knew when he left that this could happen. He told me it could. His father died a Grey Warden too... when the letter came, I was so afraid for him. I knew it meant he was dead, but I refused to believe it. When I saw him in the hall..."

"Tell me, is there anything I can do for you?" Justice asked, "Tell me, and I will do it."

"Can you bring him back?" Aura laughed.

Justice took it literally, as he took everything. He shook his head.

"Maker," Aura inhaled shakily, and reached out a trembling hand to trace over Kristoff's peeling face. "My poor Kristoff."

"I am so sorry," Justice said with so much sincerity the words themselves seemed to weep when the corpse's tear ducts no longer could, "The darkspawn who murdered him lies slain, but the one who commanded it yet lives. I have made it my mission to avenge his death."

Aura nodded. "You... you are a spirit. The first of the Maker's children. Do you know if he rests at the Maker's side?"

"I do not," Justice said, "We spirits know no more of death than you do. What lies beyond is obscured, even to us, but I pray for him. Every day."

"... avenge him," Aura decided eventually, "Whatever darkspawn or thing commanded that he should die... kill it. Kill it for him. Kill it for me. I will wait for his ashes a little longer, if it means that whoever or whatever did this to him will pay."

"I swear it," Justice said fervently.

Aura nodded again, and swallowed. "Thank you." She looked to Anders, where he was still sitting on the pew. "What you said before, were you truly Kristoff's friend? Or this spirit's friend?"

"I never met Kristoff," Anders confessed. "He was investigating the darkspawn on his own, and he was already dead when we found him. I'm sorry."

Aura stared at Justice for a long while, and reached up to touch him again. Her fingers dipped beneath his collar, and she pulled out a necklace. Not his Grey Warden pendant, but a locket. She flipped it open. There was a picture of her within.

"Still wearing it," Aura noted despondently. "Does this... does any of this mean anything to you?"

"I have his memories," Justice said. "His things mean more to me that words can say. His essence lingers on them like dust, fingerprints on top of fingerprints that let him linger long after death. It is a beautiful gift to know anything of his life... I know he wished to be relieved of his service here, so he could return home to you."

Aura bit back a sob, and let go of the locket. It fell against Justice's armor.

"I have his belongings, his mementos," Justice continued, "Would any of them help assuage your pain? We are given a stipend here, which I know Kristoff once sent to you. I have no need of coin or earthly possessions. I would gladly give it to you again."

Aura sobbed again.

"Justice," Anders said, "Just let her have a few minutes,"

Justice sat in silence, fidgeting uncomfortably every few seconds. Without his helmet on, it was almost startling how human he looked. He was more expressive than Anders gave him credit for, the spirit just couldn't show it while his identity was kept secret.

"I was going to stay here with him," Aura said when she collected herself. "... I don't know what to do now."

"I can talk to the Seneschal if you need a place to stay," Anders offered. "He's alright. I'm sure he'd find a place for you."

"That's very kind of you." Aura sniffed. "Thank you."

"Is there anything else I can do for you?" Justice asked.

"I do not need his things, spirit." Aura sighed, and dug the heels of her palms into her eyes. "I need him. I always used to tease him about how hopeless he was without me. He couldn't cook, or do laundry to-... to save his life, but I'm the hopeless one now."

"He knew you spoke in jest, but he felt the truth of your words in his heart," Justice said. "He loved you dearly."

"... do you suppose if I stayed here, we could spend time together?" Aura asked. "... I would appreciate talking to him... or ... his memories..."

"I would be honored." Justice said.

"Thank you." Aura sucked in a rickety breath and crawled to her feet. "I... I need to be alone. Thank you, both of you, for being honest with me."

Aura's feet seemed to carry her out of the chapel on their own, her steps wandering and almost blind. She found the door to the chapel and staggered out. Justice watched her go, crestfallen.

"Did I do the right thing?" Justice asked.

"I really wish I could tell you," Anders said. "I think so."

"Thank you for helping me..." Justice said. "This world is nothing like I thought it would be. I used to scoff at demons' lust to cross the Veil. I pitied mortals, I did not envy them. When I was forced here against my will, I thought you mortals beyond my reach, beyond help, but I was wrong about this world. There is so much beauty here... and it coexists with such great darkness. It is so confusing."

"It's confusing for us too, Justice," Anders said, holding down a hand to help the spirit off the floor. Justice took it, and rejoined him on the pew. He put his helmet back on, and stared at his hands in his lap.

"Mortals... they are worth saving," Justice said. "What you did for those mages in Amaranthine, I was glad to hear of it. Proud. It gave me hope, to see that you could change, to be given an example of something worthy in the mortal world. It was enlightening... inspiring. I wish this for myself. To be more. To accomplish more. For Aura. For Kristoff. For all mortals."

"Well that's... that's pretty marvelous, Justice. Thanks," Anders managed a smile, "I'm glad it meant something to you."

"It did. It still does," Justice said. "You have shown me an injustice greater than any I have faced in your Circle. I understand that Velanna proved more useful in your quest, but if you will allow it, I would fight this injustice by your side in the future."

"Well... the next time something happens with the Collective, I'll let you know," Anders promised.

"Thank you," Justice said. "The concept of friendship is still new to me, but I would be honored to consider you one."

"Thanks, Justice." Anders said. "Me too."

Notes:

Elvish Translations
Banal'shem tu mana var lath - No human will stop our love.
Asha'alas lath'din! - Dirty woman loved by no one!
Fenedhis - Fuck

Apples and Apostates
Not A Bad Thing: The events following this chapter as told from Justice's perspective.

Chapter 41: Here's to Us Blighters

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back! Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 1 Cassus Late Morning
Vigil's Keep

Anders didn't want to think about it.

He'd never liked the thought of being trapped anywhere, but with Amell gone, there was no other way for him to feel.

Anders had given his old staff and eight of the sovereigns Amell had left him to Cera. The elf had worn a smug smirk the whole time; her fingers had curled around the coins like spider legs and she'd gone so far as to count them out in front of him. The other two sovereigns had already gone to Alim and the others in West Hill. Anders was back where he started: with nothing. Not even his cat.

Delilah had been grateful for Ser Pounce-a-Lot, at least. Ser Pounce-a-Lot had taken to her after a few pieces of dried mackerel, and she'd promised to take care of him. Her husband Albert had promised they'd give Ser Pounce-a-Lot back if Amell ever came back to Vigil's Keep, and Anders was allowed to keep him again.

Anders didn't want to think about it. A month had passed with Amell gone, and Anders didn't know how much longer he could cling to the hope that Amell was ever coming back. Anders' mother was dead. Ser Pounce-a-Lot was gone. Vigil's Keep had long since stopped feeling like a home or haven to him.

Anders spent most of his days in his infirmary, taking meticulous notes on everything he and his assistants did so Leonie wouldn't try to confiscate any of his things. When he wasn't there, he was making copies of the tomes he'd borrowed from the Circle for the Collective, and when he wasn't doing that he was in the chapel.

He didn't pray. He didn't see the point. The chapel was a hideaway for him, and more often than not Justice came with him. They'd sit in the pews and talk about everything from the Fade to the Chantry to the Circle, and Anders had to wonder if spirits were drawn to spirit healers, or if it was the other way around.

Anders watched Barkspawn like a hawk. The dog wasn't imprinted on him, and the mabari had its own routine. It would wander around the courtyard chasing birds and peeing on everything, follow around other wardens between meals, beg in the kitchens, and at one point it broke into the larder. The chefs complained. Leonie threatened him.

Anders sat the dog down and begged it to behave. He felt like a fool for it, but he didn't know what else to do. Amell had loved that dumb dog, and if Leonie sent it back to the kennels Anders didn't know that he'd ever forgive himself. The mabari had cocked its head at him, and Anders hoped that whatever blood magic had originally invented the breed was strong enough that the dog actually understood him.

Anders was walking the grounds with Barkspawn and Justice when the commotion started. Soldiers and servants ran through the courtyard, and sergeants and captains took to the walls to start bellowing orders. A crowd of men rolling a ballista hurried past him.

"Wardens to the Main Hall!" A servant ran through the courtyard yelling.

"Now what?" Anders sighed.

"The army appears to be mobilizing," Justice said.

"Yeah, I know it's-nevermind. Come on," Anders dragged himself towards the inner courtyard. Barkspawn ran circles around them, excited by the commotion and barking happily. Anders wished he could steal some of that enthusiasm. He pushed open the doors to the main hall and was nearly barreled over by a servant.

Anders ducked out of the flow of traffic. The rest of the Wardens were crowded off to the right of the Main Hall, milling around a pillar. Anders went to join them, and took a spot near Sigrun.

"What's going on?" Anders asked.

"Darkspawn!" Sigrun said eagerly. "The horde was spotted in the field and they're mobilizing on Amaranthine! We're going on a forced march ahead of the army to try to save the city, just us Wardens! Isn't that exciting? The scouts say there were hundreds. Hundreds! This is certain death for sure."

"Oh. Well, I can see why you've got your chin up," Anders joked, feeling a very sudden stomach ache.

"I can't wait." Sigrun bounced on the balls of her feet. "I'm not running this time, and I don't have to worry about being turned into a broodmother," Sigrun's voice dropped to an excited whisper, "Do you remember the lyrium Amell had the miners smuggling out the mines in the Wending Woods? He and Dworkin and I were working on turning it into bombs. Lyrium bombs!

"I have a few, in case the darkspawn overwhelm us. You just throw them at your feet, and boom! They're super illegal, though, so don't tell anyone. Dworkin says the explosion will kill everything in a ten meter in diameter, at least. Do you want one in case we get separated, salroka? I know you don't have to worry about being turned into a broodmother, but you know, in case you get overwhelmed."

"Wardens!" Leonie's shout interrupted Sigrun. Leonie raised both hands for silence and the scattered conversations died down. "The enemy is out of hiding! The men are assembling, but our task force will be the first to reach Amaranthine. We are going to war. Gear up, and gather by the stables! We will go two to a horse. Eylon, you will stay behind."

"Commander-!" The one-armed mage started.

Anders forgot his anxiety at the title. Leonie wasn't their Commander. She was their Constable. Her clenched a fist and shot the elf a glare.

"You will stay behind." Leonie said again, in a tone that brokered no argument. "We march in ten minutes. Dismissed."

Everyone ran for the barracks. Anders stayed where he was; a few of the Wardens jostled his shoulders as they bolted past. Justice stayed with him. Sigrun looked up at Anders and grinned. "So do you-"

A hand grabbed Anders' shoulder and wrenched him around. The hall spun in a blur of brown and silver, and Eylon's crimson hair and freckled face came into view.

"This is your fault!" Eylon snarled. "Leonie never doubted me until you cost me my arm! I hope you die out there, maleficar!"

"Oh go fuck yourself," Anders shot back. "You only need one hand for that."

As it turned out, Eylon also only needed one hand to punch him. The tiny elf was a force mage, and the blow knocked Anders off his feet. Anders crashed back into the pillar behind him and landed on his ass.

"Hey!" Sigrun shouted, jumping in front of him. "Back off! If you've got a problem with Anders you've got a problem with me, and I'm a dwarf, buddy. Just try that magic crap on me."

"Fucking dog-lords," Eylon spat on the ground next to them and stormed away.

Anders jaw felt like it had been torn off. He raised a hand to it and gingerly felt at the joints, not surprised it had been partially dislocated. Maker, this was going to hurt. Anders set his hands to both sides of his jaw, and forced it back into place with a burst from Compassion. A snarl of pain escaped him, and just opening his mouth to make the sound hurt.

"Ouch," Sigrun said, kneeling in front of him. "That looked like it hurt."

"Me and my big mouth, right?" Anders joked, rubbing at his aching jaw.

"Eylon's loss of his arm was no fault of yours," Justice said, holding down a hand to help Anders' up, "His reaction was unwarranted,"

"Yeah, well," Anders took Justice's hand and climbed to his feet. He swore he heard a joint pop. Concern welled in him. Anders had no idea how much longer Kristoff's body was going to last, but he doubted it would be much longer. "That's what being a healer is, Justice. You do what you can and you get the blame when you can't do enough."

"It is most selfless of you." Justice said.

"I love seeing you two getting along," Sigrun said. "Do you want one of my bombs, sweetie?"

"I think I'm good without running into a warzone strapped down with explosives, but thanks," Anders said.

"I have three if you change your mind," Sigrun said, "I'm going to go see if Velanna wants one."

They all made for the barracks. Anders went to his bunk and changed out of his clothes and into his armor. He put on his leather trousers and leather chest piece, his brigandine spaulders and leather boots and gloves. He wore his silver bracers and chainmail tabard over them, and buckled his belt. He'd gotten a proper sheath for the dagger Nate had given him that attached to his belt, along with Amell's grimoire. He picked up his satchel and looped it over his shoulder, and fished out a jar of Amell's kaddis.

He whistled for Barkspawn, and the mabari trotted over to sit down in front of him. Anders didn't know what Amell had infused the kaddis with, but he could feel the magic on it. He painted a lifeward on the dog's forehead and a glyph of warding on its back, "You have to stay safe, alright?" Anders said. "Amell might come back some day, and we can't let Leonie send you back to the kennels."

Barkspawn licked him. It was disgusting. The dog's breath smelled like death and shit, it clung to his saliva. Anders gagged and wiped his face off on his sleeve. "Maker's breath that's foul. Yes, I'll stay safe too. No more licking."

Barkspawn barked. Anders put the lid back on the jar and stuffed it back into his satchel. He picked up his dragonbone staff and the electricity coiling within made the hairs on his arm stand on end. Velanna came to stand with him by his bunk, and Anders raised an eyebrow at the bomb strapped to her belt. "You sure about that?" Anders asked.

"I am not afraid of death," Velanna said, lifting her chin. "I will be the one to decide how I meet it."

"If you can throw a bomb, you're not dead yet," Anders said. "Are you sure you're not being premature about all this?"

"You know our deaths are a very real probability," Velanna said, "Why is the truth so hard for you to swallow?"

"I normally spit," Anders joked.

Velanna's face contorted. Anders laughed, and Velanna let slip a giggle. "You-... You are exasperating." Velanna said.

"I try," Anders said.

Justice rejoined them, along with Sigrun. Nathaniel came last, with how many daggers, arrows, traps, poisons, and other sharp odds and ends the archer carried. He looked a little frazzled, Anders noticed. His sister was in Amaranthine, after all. Anders wondered if he should say something supportive.

"Are you guys ready?" Sigrun asked.

"Are you?" Nathaniel asked.

"I'm already dead," Sigrun grinned, "I've got nothing to lose."

"That is certainly one way to look at it," Nathaniel said.

"We will cut down all darkspawn before us," Velanna said, "Your sister will not face the same fate as mine."

"We might still find Seranni, Velanna," Nathaniel said.

"Do you really believe that?" Velanna demanded angrily, "Sometimes I think you have more hope than I. Enough. I have no need of false hopes. The five of us are enough."

"You guys know I love you, right?" Sigrun asked.

"Can we not do this?" Anders asked. "The goodbyes and the final speeches? Why tempt fate? You don't know how this is going to go."

"Sure, sweetie." Sigrun grinned, "Wicked Grace later tonight?"

"I'm in," Nathaniel said.

"Yeah, sure," Anders said.

"I would love to join you," Justice said.

Velanna snorted and rolled her eyes. "... One hand, maybe."

"Then we're good." Sigrun said. "Let's go, you guys,"

The five of them left the barracks, other wardens ahead of and behind them. They all gathered by the stables, and divided up into pairs. Leonie rode with Rolan, Gerod with Stroud, Sigrun with Velanna, Nathaniel with Jacen, and Anders with Justice. Garavel was rallying a small task force to follow them to Amaranthine, with the barest of ballistas and other siege weapons.

The main army was forming slowly, but it would take hours if not all day to recall everyone from the fields and the roads. The ten of them road out alone, Barkspawn running alongside Anders' horse.

They pushed their horses to Amaranthine, but the city was a day's journey from the Vigil. Hours passed in silence. They saw the smoke long before they saw the city. Amaranthine slowly took shape, the high grey walls of brick and stone, the streaming flags and banners and the red and orange awnings and shingles that decorated them. The small wooden houses and fields outside the city, and...

Maker, the refugees. The camps were in ruins. Packs of darkspawn crawled among the ruined tents, through the fields, in and out of broken down homes. Children and genlocks and other darkspawn ran amuck, eating livestock and the dead, and setting fires. "There!" Leonie yelled, gesturing with her sword to a house surrounded by a ring of soldiers.

"We join the holdout!" Leonie yelled. They couldn't ride the full distance. The darkspawn riled the horses, and Sigrun and Velanna were thrown off theirs. Everyone dismounted. Some of the horses bolted back towards the Vigil. Leonie ordered the rest sent back, and they slapped the beasts haunches to send them off. The fighting started before they reached the holdout.

A dozen shrieks crossed the fields with alarming speed, the beasts taking too all fours to cut them off while they were separated. Barkspawn ran out to meet them, and tackled one out of the air. The warriors charged after the mabari. Anders channeled lightning, and sent it arching through the pack. Velanna called on fire. Jacen and Nathaniel did nothing. They had to unpack and string their bows before they could be of any use in the fighting.

The fight with the shrieks took long enough that the Children could catch up. The skittering baby-faced spider-like monsters were the most frequent in Anders' nightmares. He carved glyph after glyph of paralysis for Nate, Jacen, and himself, fairly confident Velanna could take care of herself. She was strongest out in the open, where the ground was soft and she could call on her nature magic with ease.

When the last of the Children were dispatched, they finally managed to join up with the holdout. City guardsmen, a few of the Vigil's soldiers, and Ser Rylien were defending the surviving refugees. Men and women were crowded into the farmhouse, spilling out the front door and crammed down into the cellar. One well placed fireball from an emissary would be the end of all of them.

"Rolan, Stroud, Jacen, reinforce the perimeter!" Leonie ordered. If there was anything to be said of the Orlesian bitch, she was a far better strategist than Eram had been, "Who is in charge here!?"

A man with cool brown skin and bright blonde hair stepped forward. His eyes were ringed with dark shadows, and he was limping. "My name is Constable Aidan, Warden," The man bowed, "I am grateful for your arrival, but I fear there is little that can be done now,"

"You look hurt, do you need healing?" Anders asked, taking a step forward.

Leonie slammed a muscular arm into his chest. "You will waste no mana outside of our company."

"But-" Anders said.

"I thank you, Warden, but I will survive," Aidan said, giving him a grateful nod.

"Report, Constable," Leonie ordered. "What happened here?"

"Incoming!" One of the soldiers on the perimeter yelled.

"They have emissaries!" Someone else yelled.

Aidan abandoned them, half staggering half running for the perimeter, where the young templar they'd met last month was standing. "Rylien, hurry! Don't let them get to the refugees!"

"Rolan! Aid her!" Leonie yelled.

The fight was long. Anders and Velanna took up spots on opposite sides of the farmhouse, and raised spellshields. It took all of Anders' focus to block the spells the emissaries loosed at the house. All he could do was watch as wave after wave of darkspawn crashed against the small circle of soldiers, and hope Rylien and Rolan could get to the emissaries.

A few men defending the perimeter were felled, and darkspawn swarmed in through the cracks. The injured fought them, men and women not fit to stand the perimeter but who could still hold a weapon, or couldn't fit in the farmhouse. Most of them died. Barkspawn stayed next to Anders and tore into any darkspawn that reached him. It all happened in the span of a few seconds, but it was enough to cost them at least a dozen lives.

When the few seconds were up, Stroud and Justice fell back from the perimeter to clean up the inner circle. The soldiers on the perimeter drew together, and the circle around the farmhouse shrunk. The smell of battle was in the air: shit, piss, blood, the Fade, burning wood. The sounds were there too, metal on metal, metal on bone and muscle and flesh. The cries of shrieks and wails of Children, the guttural noises of genlocks and hurlocks.

Anders hated it. They were already overwhelmed, and they hadn't even set foot in the city yet. Maybe they never would. Maybe Sigrun was right to bring the bombs.

It felt like an eternity, but the fighting finally stopped. The horde was still there, packs of darkspawn crawling like roaches among the houses and refugee camps in the distance. Anders couldn't begin to imagine what the inside of the city looked like. Garavel and his small task forced arrived just as the fight ended, and joined up with them. The soldiers were carrying bows and crossbows, rolling ballistas and dragging other packed up siege weapons. Anders hoped that would help.

Anders drank a lyrium potion, and regrouped with his friends. Sigrun had a sprained wrist, but everyone else he cared about was fine. He healed Sigrun, and then saw to the rest of the Wardens. Stroud and Rolan both needed healing. Stroud had taken an arrow in his thigh, and Rolan had a few contusions from fighting to reach the emissaries. Rolan kept his helmet on while Anders healed him, but Anders imagined he was glaring, so Anders glared back.

One of the refugees saw his healing magic, and bolted out of the house. She was a younger woman, in a torn up dress with blood on her hands. She ran straight for him, but Anders couldn't sense any injuries on her, "Healer! They have a healer! Ser please, my brother-"

Leonie caught the girl by her collar before she could get near him, and spun her around. She gave the woman a hard shove to send her back towards the house. "Get back," Leonie ordered.

"But my brother!" The woman wailed.

Another bold refugee crept out of the house, and took heart at the sight of reinforcements. "Wardens!" The older man cried out. "The wardens are here! Please! My family is still in the city! Please save my family!"

"Back inside, all of you!" Constable Aidan yelled. Not everyone obeyed.

Leonie ordered them away from the house, and they regrouped with the Constable and Garavel on the road to the city. Anders stared at the house, thinking of the woman's brother and all the blood on her hands.

"Where is the Warden Commander?" Aidan asked.

"I am the Warden Commander," Leonie said. Anders hated her. "Report. What happened here? You are in charge of the city's defenses, are you not?"

"I am," Aidan bowed his head, "I failed in my duty. Last night, a swarm of... of gruesome creatures emerged from beneath the city. They spread pestilence and destroyed everything they touched. Their corruption is so virulent at least a quarter of the city succumbed within the first few hours. Then at dawn, the other darkspawn attacked. I fear Amaranthine is lost."

Anders looked at Nathaniel. Nathaniel was looking at the city, his expression unreadable. Sigrun took Nate's hand and squeezed.

"Darkspawn!" A soldier yelled.

"Just one!" Yelled another.

Anders turned around. A lone darkspawn, a hurlock with no nose and whose skin peeled back from its skull, was walking down the road with both its clawed hands raised. Anders wondered if it was Awakened. An arrow took the creature in the shoulder, and the force of the shot spun the creature in a circle before sending it to its knees.

"Please! Do not be killing!" The darkspawn screamed. "I am bringing a message! Please do not be killing!"

"Maker's breath, is it talking?" Aidan asked.

"Hold!" Leonie yelled, raising a closed fist with the command. She stepped in front of all of them to receive the creature. "Speak, monster, before I gut you."

The darkspawn crawled to its feet, black blood oozing from the wound in its shoulder. It limped forward until it was about a yard away from them.

"That's far enough!" Garavel warned the creature.

The darkspawn stopped. Closer up, Anders could see its skinless lips, pointed teeth, and jet black eyes. It was wearing chainmail armor, and Anders couldn't help noticing the armor was decorated. It had a purple scarf wrapped around its neck, a few bits of bone and pieces of metal tied to its waist with string, a necklace wrapped around its wrist like a bracelet. The creature surveyed all of them and it almost looked afraid.

"Where is being the Commander?" The darkspawn asked, "The one with the special blood and eyes of red? We are to be speaking to him."

"You are speaking to me, creature," Leonie said, "Speak quickly."

"The Architect... he was wanting the trust of the other... We have been watching. We have been thinking he will understand," The darkspawn whined, wringing its clawed hands, "... We will be speaking with you instead. I am calling myself the Messenger. The Mother's army, it marches to Vigil's Keep. She attacks now! The Architect, he is sending me to warn you. You must save the Keep, then be finishing the Mother in her lair."

"You were right to want the late Commander Amell," Leonie said, "I do not trust you, creature. Garavel-"

"This is truth!" The darkspawn wailed. "If you do not go now, all is being lost! The Mother, she will win!" The darkspawn stormed forward, and Leonie leveled her sword at it. The creature kept walking and pressed his neck against the tip of the blade. A trickle of black blood ran down into his scarf, "If I lie, then kill me!"

Leonie glared at the darkspawn. Garavel coughed, and shifted uncomfortably.

"Constable, if I may?" Garavel asked.

"Speak," Leonie said.

"I can see no reason for this creature to lie to us," Garavel said, "We're mobilizing, but our forces are scattered between the roads and the fields. It will take time to get them all back to the Keep, and mount a defensive, especially with the standing order to head to Amaranthine. If we leave now, perhaps we can reach the Vigil before the darkspawn."

"Leave?" Constable Aidan asked, "But what about the darkspawn here?"

"Soon, they will be going to Vigil's Keep as well," The darkspawn said. "This city, it is nothing! You must be leaving it! The Mother, she is using it to distract. It is the Keep the mother is wanting utterly destroyed!"

"The darkspawn has a point," Garavel said. "We cannot leave with this other army hot on our heels. The Constable says the city is lost. I say we destroy it. Burn it, and all the darkspawn within."

"What?" Anders asked.

"I agree." Leonie said.

"You can't be serious," Anders said.

Leonie didn't bother turning around to acknowledge him. She sheathed her sword and the darkspawn breathed a sigh of relief. The rest of the Wardens started packing up to march. Garael signaled his men over.

"You can't be considering this!" Anders yelled, unable to restrain himself. Unable to want to restrain himself. "Burning a city that has stood for generation? The arling will collapse without Amaranthine!"

"It's a miracle you were never made Tranquil," Rolan sneered, "Know your place, for once in your life, and be silent."

Anders ignored him, and ran to force himself between Leonie and Garavel before they could make preparations. The giant glared down at him. "This is wrong! If there's even one innocent person in there we can't just-"

"I did not ask your opinion," Leonie said.

"Please listen to him!" Sigrun begged, running over to grab Anders hand. "Please! If you will not go to the aid of these people, send me! I will enter the city alone!"

"Destroying the city would mean murdering any survivors," Justice chimed in, "It is not justice. I cannot condone it. Reconsider, I beg you."

"All of you, don't," Nathaniel said, "I don't like it either, but someone has to make the hard decisions for the greater good."

"How can you say that!?" Velanna yelled at him. "Your sister is in there!"

"If we destroy this city we're no better than the darkspawn!" Anders said, "We have to try!"

"My family built that city!" Nathaniel yelled back at them. Anders had never heard him raise his voice before. It was a little frightening. "I don't want to see fire ravage these streets! Delilah.... it would take a miracle. If Leonie thinks this is best-"

"This shemlen bitch knows nothing!" Velanna snarled. That got everyone's attention. Leonie even turned around. "Amell built that Keep! You know it can stand on its own! Listen to yourselves! Look at what you're about to do!"

"That's enough!" Leonie barked. "I am your Commanding Officer, and you will do as I say! I have never seen such a disrespectful, disobedient, disgraceful assortment of Wardens in my entire life! I don't know what kind of twisted fantasy Amell created for the five of you, but he is gone! I do not care what you think! You do not get a say! You will fall in line, or suffer the consequences!"

"I didn't sign up for this!" Anders shouted.

"What do you know of consequences!?" Velanna demanded, unthreatened. Anders felt the pull of mana on her. Rolan must have felt it too. He took a defensive position next to Leonie. "You know nothing! I do not care about your orders, or your threats! I did not join the Wardens for you! I joined for Amell!"

Velanna turned to Nathaniel, grabbed a fistful of his tabard, and wrenched him down to her height. She kissed him hard in front of everyone, and shoved him back not a second later. "I stayed for you, and I will see no more innocent blood on my hands."

A root ripped out of the ground and wrapped around Velanna's foot. Another around her hand. A multitude swallowed her, and she vanished underground. She reappeared just outside the gates to the city. A tree ripped up out of the ground beside her, and the sylvan tore into the darkspawn around her. Velanna ran into the city alone.

"Velanna!" Nathaniel yelled after her.

"Sweetie no," Sigrun sobbed, knees buckling underneath her.

Leonie turned away from the sight. "Garavel, burn it down."

"Aye, Commander," Garavel nodded. He gave the signal, and the Vigil's soldiers started setting up the siege weapons.

"Maker forgive us for what we are about to do," Aidan said.

"No!" Nathaniel finally yelled. "No, damn you!" He tripped over himself in his haste, and took off down the street after Velanna.

Nate wasn't a mage. He was an archer. A tracker. He was one man, and Velanna was so far ahead of him she might not even know he was following her. He'd die on his own.

"If any more of you so much as think of deserting-!" Leonie began.

Anders didn't stay to hear the rest. He ran after Nathaniel without thinking. The damn dog ran with him, barking in blissful ignorance. Anders should have said his goodbyes after all. Damn all of them. Damn everything. "Nathaniel, wait for me!"

"Jacen!" Leonie screamed from behind him.

An arrow flew wide to Anders' right. Anders wondered if the old Dalish had missed on purpose.

"Anders!" Justice yelled after him. Anders heard the thud of metal on pavement, and held out a hand for when the spirit caught up. A surge from the Fade hastened both of them to catch up with Nathaniel.

"You can burn with the rest of the city!" Leonie screamed, her voice fading.

Anders caught up to Nathaniel, and ran past Velanna's rampaging sylvan and into the city with him. If the fields were bad, the city was worse. Darkspawn swarmed over the rooftops and through the streets like a tidal wave.

Velanna hadn't gotten far. She stood on the steps down to the markets, beside a burning building, surrounded by darkspawn. She fought from a nest of lashing vines and corrosive blood magic, while every sickly tree in the city tore out of the ground to fight with her.

Justice ran to join her, and shoved the half dozen darkspawn trying to overwhelm her back with a blast of raw magic torn straight from the Fade. Anders summoning lightning, and the resulting chain arched through six of the beasts. They exploded, and a space cleared around Velanna. Nathaniel ran through it and grabbed her.

"You think I'm the fool between us!?" Nate yelled at her, grabbing her face in his hands, "What are you thinking? We have to get out of here!"

Velanna glared at him. "I could not save my sister. I can save yours. I am not leaving."

"This city is going to burn!" Nate shouted.

"I am a mage," As if to prove it, Velanna put out the fire eating up the building beside her with a blast of ice magic. "I will not let it."

"We still can't stay here," Anders said, "One house, sure, but we can't save the whole city. We have to get to high ground. To the Chantry. There'll be survivors there, if they're anywhere. We can protect them, at least."

"I agree with this plan." Justice said.

"I want to find Delilah first," Velanna said, finally taking in the four of them, "... Sigrun?"

Anders looked over his shoulder, expecting the little dwarf to come running through the city gates behind them. They waited one second. Two. Three. More.

Sigrun didn't follow them.

She was a soldier, Amell had said.

She followed orders.

Chapter 42: Bold and Brazen and Beautiful

Notes:

Welcome back everyone! I hope all of you enjoy this chapter. Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 1 Cassus Afternoon
Amaranthine

Realization set in slowly for all of them. They looked at each other, and looked at the gates, and a wretched silence settled between them.

Nathaniel broke it, "We need to move,"

"Mythal halani Sigrun dareth." Velanna whispered.

Anders didn't need to know Evlish to know it was a prayer. He was glad someone had said one. Maker knew they needed them.

"Justice can take point," Nathaniel said, "Velanna can summon a sylvan whenever we come across a tree, and that should be enough to clear out the area. Anders, do you think you could use any of the spells Amell used to?"

"I can do corruption," Anders said. "I can't do it in as wide a net, but I can do it."

"Then we'll do a sweep of the city on the way to the Chantry," Nathaniel said, "The arrows should start any minute but the siege equipment will take time to set up. As long as the wind keeps blowing west I don't think the fires will spread past the markets and the front district, but we need to hurry."

Justice took point, and they ran down the stairs into the market. The streets were in ruins. Broken carts and torn down awnings filled up gutters, overflowing with refuse, feces, and blood. There were no bodies. Chewed up chunks of flesh and blood and bone littered the grout between the cobblestone. It didn't make Anders queasy anymore, just angry.

A swarm of Children burst out of one of the shops to their left. A burst of energy exploded from Justice, and the Children shrieked in outrage at the light. Justice really was fantastic at holding the focus of everything from darkspawn to demons. The Children dove for the corpse, and Barkspawn dove on the Children.

Anders rolled up his sleeve, drew his dagger, and cut his arm above the bend in his elbow. He cast a spell to boil the darkspawns' blood, and let it loose. It was infinitely more effective than lightning or any other element could have been. The Children exploded, leaving only claws and teeth and carapace behind.

Anders left his sleeve rolled up, and the cut flowing free. He wiped his dagger off before he sheathed it. He unhooked Amell's grimoire and held it in one hand with his staff in the other. The diffused magic of five demons radiated from the tome; Velanna felt it and glanced at him. "Keep that open."

"What do you think I'm doing?" Anders shot back.

They turned the corner and found another cluster of darkspawn, trying to force their way into an alley. Planted in the ground across the street was a pine tree, and Anders felt the Fade swell as Velanna forced a wisp across the Veil. Branches sprouted from the pine, and took the shape of gnarled arms. The sylvan ripped itself out of the ground, its roots tearing up cobblestone and flower pots.

A hurlock turned around, and let out a guttural cry of warning. The sylvan swung an arm and sent the creature flying down the street. It hit the cobblestone and rolled several feet before it finally came to rest a short yard away from them. Barkspawn dove on top of it and ripped its head off, shaking the skull between his teeth like a chew toy.

"Good dog," Anders said.

The rest of the darkspawn turned away from the alley, and started attacking the tree. Without them in the way, Anders could see the score of darkspawn had been held off by all of two guards. Anders and his group ran to join up with them, and pick off the darkspawn with the help of the sylvan.

The fighting went easier, with just the four of them. Justice excelled at keeping the darkspawn's focus, Nathaniel was sharp enough to spot any darkspawn who slipped past the spirit, and skilled enough with a bow to take them down before they reached Anders or Velanna. Amell should have left him in charge from the start.

When the last darkspawn died, Velanna sent the sylvan back the way they'd come to fight any darkspawn that wandered into the markets. The tree lumbered off, creaking and grumbling and making sounds that almost sounded like words. It was a poor substitute for the squad of guardsmen or wardens that should have been guarding the city, but it was all they had for now.

"Maker bless you, Wardens," One of the guards said, collapsing against the wall. He was bleeding profusely, from over a dozen different injuries. Anders jogged over, and summoned Compassion. He healed the man's contusions, sprains, cuts, and broken bones, Leonie be damned. It was what magic was for.

"What's your status here?" Nathaniel asked.

"On death's bloody door," The other guard said, gesturing to the alley behind him, "We've got a dozen citizens crammed back here. I haven't seen the Commander for a while; it's just the two of us against this damn horde. I thought we were done for back there."

Velanna darted around the guard and into the alley. It veered sharply right; the survivors must have been crammed into a nook Anders couldn't see. "Delilah?" Velanna yelled.

"Velanna!" A male voice answered. A man emerged from the alley, heavy set, with a red nose and curly brown hair. It was Albert. He pulled Velanna into a fierce hug. She didn't hug back, but she also didn't flinch. "Thank the Maker you've come," Albert said, letting go of her.

"Albert, where's Delilah?" Nathaniel asked.

"The Chantry, Maker willing," Albert said, taking in the four of them. "A small group of guards has been making trips between here and the Chantry, trying to get all the survivors together, but they can only take so many at a time. They're getting women and children first."

"Ridiculous. We will take all of you." Velanna said.

"We might bring the horde down on us, moving with this many at a time, but I don't think we have a choice," Nathaniel said. "They're going to burn down the city."

"What!?" The guard Anders was healing demanded. "They can't! We've still got survivors in here! I know the darkspawn hit us hard, but there have to be other pockets of survivors out there!"

"That's why we're here," Anders said, hauling the man to his feet when he finished healing him. "We need to get everyone moving, are there any injured back there?"

"A few," The guard said.

Anders hurried around the corner, and was greeted with a dozen wide-eyed and pallid faces. "Who's injured?" Anders asked.

A few hands came up. Anders started forward when one of the guards screamed. "Arrows!"

"Anders!" Nathaniel yelled.

Anders carved out a glyph of warding. A rain of arrows fell through the market place, but the glyph kept any from falling in the alley. Most clattered through the streets, some of them already extinguished by their flight. Others impaled themselves in the surrounding rooftops, and the oil and risen-soaked tows attached to them set fire to thatch and wood.

"I will put out what I can," Velanna said, running out of the alley and back through the market.

"Everyone who can move, move," Nathaniel said.

All but two of the survivors got up, and clustered at the front of the alley. Anders bent to heal the two who couldn't. The first was simple, a twisted ankle on an older fellow who thanked him profusely for his help. The second less so. The woman had a vicious gash from her hip to her ankle that had nearly torn her leg in two.

"I need a half hour for this," Anders said.

"We don't have a half hour," Nathaniel said.

"Please don't leave me here," The woman sobbed.

"We're not going to leave you," Anders promised.

He could quicken the spell somehow. Maybe in a burst. Hopefully without killing himself in the process. Anders gathered the mana for the spell, and held it to overflowing. Anders summoned Compassion, and forced the regenerative energies into the woman. The flesh knit together at a miraculous rate, but it was beyond draining.

It took him five minutes, in place of thirty. Anders was dizzy by the time he finished, and the world slipped out from underneath him when he tried to stand. He opened up his satchel for a lyrium potion. He only had five, and Velanna might need some for her sylvans. Anders drank one, and tried not to think about it.

Anders climbed to his feet, and left the alley. Velanna was back by the time he finished the healing the woman. "I did what I could," Velanna said.

"We need to hurry, the next volley will be any second," Nathaniel said.

Any second turned out to be this second. Anders cast a warding glyph, and everyone huddled around him while the second rain of arrows fell. Anders and Velanna put out the ones that landed within range.

"Don't waste the mana," Nathaniel said.

"But the city!" One of the guards protested.

"We can cast a blizzard later, together, over the market." Velanna suggested.

"I'm for that," Anders said.

The rain of arrows stopped.

"Everyone stay together. Anders, take the rear, Velanna, take point." Nathaniel said.

Their group of survivors made it out of the market, and picked up another group of guards in the process. That put them at five guards, four wardens, and a dozen citizens when the darkspawn attacked. The groups of hurlocks and genlocks were easy for them. The more humanoid darkspawn had to come at them from the ground, and that made choke points easy with a few glyphs and a half-circle of soldiers.

The shrieks and Children were the problem. The more bestial monsters crawled over the roof tops like a plague of locus, skittering and crawling and leaping off the surrounding buildings towards the vulnerable center of their group. Even when Nathaniel's arrows or Anders and Velanna's magic picked them off, their corpses were still a threat.

The shrieks were made of claws, and the Children had heavy carapaces. Most splattered on the cobblestone, resulting in little more than a mess or a few bruises from the resulting explosion. One landed on top one of the survivors, and knocked the woman unconscious. They didn't have time to stop and heal her. Velanna picked the woman up and slung her over her shoulder, and Anders wished he'd asked Amell to teach him physical magic.

They were heading for the center of the city, where most of the taverns and possibly more survivors would be when the tremors started.

"Ogre," Nathaniel said needlessly.

"The beast will take time to fight," Justice said. "Can we spare it?"

"No," Nathaniel said.

"Then we don't fight it," Velanna said.

"You wanna flip for it?" Anders joked.

"I think it should be you, Anders, if you can," Nathaniel said, "Velanna has the sylvans,"

"I need at least two people," Anders said.

Barkspawn barked at him.

"... I need at least one person." Anders revised.

"We need someone willing to bleed for a spell!" Nathaniel yelled.

Anders expected a riot. He couldn't think of a worse idea than telling a group of panicked men and women that they had a maleficar in their midst. Instead half the group came forward, and the rest only shifted nervously. Anders picked Albert, and another man with a build like Gerod who looked like he could spare the blood. Barkspawn barked at him again, but he'd rather the dog not bleed, if only because it was more useful in a fight than an unarmed citizen.

Anders stuffed Amell's grimoire under his arm and drew his knife. He cut down Albert's forearm, and wiped it off before he did the same to the other man. "Both of you have to stay near me, and tell me if you get tired." Anders warned them, tying their heartbeats together as the tremors grew worse.

"We will," Albert said.

"Aye," Said the other man. "Thank you, Warden."

Anders certainly wasn't expecting thanks for bleeding someone. He grinned, and pulled on the blood he'd need for the spell. "Where's it coming from?" Anders asked.

"There," Nathaniel pointed down the street.

Not a moment later, and the ogre came charging around the corner from behind the Pilgrim's Rest. It crashed through the corner of the tavern, and sent broken bricks and shattered wood flying. It had a child impaled on its horns, and crashing through the building knocked the poor boy loose and sent his body rolling through the street. The ogre roared, saliva spewing from its mouth along with an arm from whatever poor bastard it had just eaten. Anders flung the spell.

The ogre came to an abrupt halt. It stared at him, unblinking, black blood pouring out of its nose and ears. Anders wondered how long he could hold it. He glanced back at Albert and the other fellow bound to his spell, but they had a healthy color to their faces and no exhaustion in their features.

A few of the survivors cheered. Anders couldn't help a laugh. They kept on through the streets of Amaranthine, and found another holdout of survivors at the Crown and Lion, being swarmed by every manner of darkspawn imaginable. There were scores of them. They blackened the street as far as the eye could see.

They wreathed and roiled, crawling over one another, pulsing and undulating like a single mass. The cries of so many shrieks were deafening, and Anders couldn't hear whatever command Nathaniel or any of the city guardsmen might have given. Anders set the ogre on the darkspawn.

The ogre might have been charging through liquid. The path it cleared lasted only long enough for Anders to see the cobblestone was painted black with blood before it sealed up again with more darkspawn. There were three pine trees on this street, and Velanna made sylvans of all of them before she begged a potion from him. Anders gave it to her. He had three left.

Darkspawn swarmed over his ogre like ants, and tore it apart. They turned Velanna's sylvans to splinters, and they were still a multitude. The horde charged them, and Anders used the blood already flowing from his cut, from Albert and the other volunteer to cast a net of corruption as wide as he could. It measured ten meters, and barely made a dent.

Velanna brought up a wall of fire in front of them to cut the darkspawn off. Children came crashing to through it, their baby-faces charred an angry black. A burst of energy exploded off of Justice, and the darkspawn swarmed him. Anders lost sight of him, and panicked. He ran forward, lightning on his finger tips, when Nathaniel grabbed his arm, and yelled something in his face. Anders couldn't hear him. Nathaniel pointed up.

Anders carved a glyph of warding. He was almost too late. A hail of arrows rained down around them, and cleaved through the horde. Scores fell. Several survived, but they were a number more imaginable than before. Velanna cast a lightning storm over the surviving darkspawn, and the street was flooded with blood and bodies. It flowed towards the city gates, where the city slanted, and they had to wade through ankle high waters of red and black to reach the Crown and Lion.

It was burning. Velanna summoned a blizzard to put it out, and Anders did the same for the handful of buildings that surrounded the tavern. They both needed lyrium potions afterwards. Anders had one left.

"Commander!" One of the guards called to a soldier manning the front of the Crown and Lion. "Thank the Maker you survived!"

The title still hurt to hear.

The soldier in question was in dark green armor, with brown hair and a brown beard and more circles under his eyes than his cheeks had room for. They sagged as a result, and he dragged his way over to them. One of the guards clasped arms with him, and the Commander looked at them, "Wardens?" He asked rhetorically after a glance at their tabards, "When the arrows started falling I thought... Has the Constable not given up on the city after all?"

"I wouldn't go that far," Nathaniel said.

"I see," The Commander's face fell even further, if such a thing were possible. "The militia has set up a base of operations at the Chantry, and they were holding, last I knew. We're sending all the survivors there. My men and I have been searching the city for more, but you saw the horde. We've been pinned down for hours. I have twenty civilians in the tavern behind me, and only five men to guard them. We've searched the forward districts, but we haven't been to the docks yet, and there's been no word from the Bann's estate."

"We're heading for the Chantry," Nathaniel said.

"We can go to the docks after we get everyone to safety," Anders said.

"Then we'll join you," The Commander said. He threw open the door to the Crown and Lion and started shouting out orders. Anders leaned over to take a look inside the tavern. Twenty people took up a lot more space than he thought.

"Nate," Anders said.

"What is it?" Nathaniel asked.

"My glyph won't cover that many if another volley hits us." Anders said.

"... then we'll make a run for it." Nathaniel said.

The Commander finished giving orders and came back to them. "I have everyone packing. Are you ready to head out?"

"We need to hurry. The next volley will be any minute," Nathaniel said, "Tell your men to run,"

"Most of my men can't run," The Commander frowned. "I saw your group survive it."

"I'll stay with the injured," Anders said, "They'll fit in the glyph. You can take everyone who can run to the Chantry and come back for us."

"Alright," Nathaniel said. There wasn't really time to argue.

"Dareth, Anders," Velanna said.

"Still don't speak Elvish," Anders said.

"It means you're an idiot," Velanna said brightly.

"I figured," Anders grinned.

The group split. Everyone save for ten injured, three guardsmen, and Barkspawn went with Nathaniel to make a run for the Chantry.

Albert counted himself among the injured. "You might need me again," Albert explained, holding a hand to the cut on his arm. Anders had to fight his instinct to heal it.

"I just might," Anders said.

"Don't die," Nathaniel said, "Delilah will kill me if you do."

"Well, then at least we'd be even," Albert grinned. Anders rather liked him.

Anders watched the group of survivors and guardsmen sprint down the street to the Chantry. The Chantry of Our Lady Redeemer sat at the crest of a hill, and towered over Amaranthine. It was almost as high as the walls, and as far as Anders could tell none of the arrows could reach it. He didn't know what would happen when the ballistas and trebuchets were set up, but at least they'd found survivors. At least they were alive for now.

Perspective was good, after all.

"We'll watch the sky for the next volley or any darkspawn, Warden," One of the guardsmen said.

"Thanks," Anders said.

The injured sat in a huddle inside the entrance to the Crown and Lion. Anders bent to see to them. There were two with broken legs, one with a handful of broken ribs. Another had a concussion. Someone else had open wound on their side, another had one on their chest. Yet another had a fractured hip. Anders healed them, while Albert sat in a chair beside the door in case they need to run outside and bind another ogre.

"So I know this is really selfish of me, but do you know what happened to my cat?" Anders asked him. He drank his last lyrium potion halfway through healing the injured.

"Delilah took him with her when the guards brought her to the Chantry." Albert said. A smile touched his lips, and quickly faded. "She's twenty-six weeks... Do you know if it's safe? For her to be running, with all the smoke and the stress?"

Anders wished he could say he wasn't that kind of healer. He would have been happy to spend the rest of his life delivering children, but the only children he'd delivered had been ones born in the Circle. Nothing was worse than trying to console a grieving mage girl while under templar supervision, urging her to push when they both knew she'd never see or even hold the child she worked so hard to bring into this world.

"She'll be fine," Anders said.

"Warden! Survivors approaching!" One of the guardsmen called. "They've got darkspawn on their heels!"

Anders cut off the spell he was channeling and ran outside. Three women were running towards the inn. Anders recognized two of them. One was Rosalyn, the portly old bartender from the Fisherman's Rest. The other was Cerlais, their new contact for the Collective. She pushed the other two women in front of her while flinging fireball after ineffectual fireball into the horde behind her.

"Albert, I'm going to need you," Anders said.

Albert held out his arm. One little cut on Anders' arm wasn't going to cut it. There were at least a score of darkspawn chasing Cerlais. Anders guessed that meant the docks were lost. He drew his dagger and cut vertically down his forearm. The pain of it brought tears to his eyes, but he pushed through it. He wiped his dagger off on his trousers, sheathed it, and wove his heartbeat together with Albert's.

Anders grabbed Amell's grimoire and flipped it to the page bound with Desire, and used the demon's magic to amplify the spell while he channeled it through his dragonbone staff.

"What are you waiting for?" One of the guards demanded. "Do something!"

"I need a clean line of sight," Anders said; the patter of his blood hitting the ground was barely audible over the guttural moan of the encroaching horde, "I'll cast when they get past us,"

"Though all before me is shadow, Yet shall the Maker be my guide," One of the guards started praying. Anders didn't mind so much. If there was ever a time for it, it was now. "I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Beyond. For there is no darkness in the Maker's Light, and nothing that He has wrought shall be lost."

Cerlais and the others ran past them. Anders cast the spell. The darkspawn came to a seizing halt. The first row took the full brunt of the spell and exploded, bursting like overfull pustules, white and black and green fluids splattering across all of them. The second row hung suspended mid-air, caught in a miasma of blood while their eyes and veins swelled until they burst and blood pooled out of their ears and noses. Cerlais cast another fireball, and they dispatched the horde.

Anders healed his and Albert's arms, and wondered if Amell would have been proud of him.

"Anders," Cerlais gasped, breathless. She set her hands on her knees, and her hair spilled in front of her face. It was soaked through with sweat, and dyed a dark brown where it was normally blonde.

"Put your hands over your head," Anders said, "It helps air into the lungs."

Cerlais did as he said. "Darrian gave himself to demons so we could escape. The docks are overrun."

"Volley!" One of the guards yelled.

"Get over here!" Anders yelled, drawing a quick glyph of warding beneath his feet. The guards and the three women clustered around him, and the arrows fell. They clattered against the cobblestone, imbedded themselves in nearby fenceposts, rained down on the rooftop of the Crown and Lion. A few hit a small patch of grass and devoured it.

"Cerlais, can you put out the fire over the Crown and Lion?" Anders asked.

"I won't have any mana left if I do," Cerlais said.

"There are people in there." Anders said.

Cerlais cast a blizzard. The fires went out.

"Maker's breath, are they trying to burn down the city?" Rosalyn wheezed. "Don't they know we're still in here?"

"They know," Anders said, concern for the older woman welling in him. Rosalyn was old, and portly, and in no fit state to run. He cast a simple rejuvenation spell for her to help her heart recover, and knew he was pushing his connection to the Fade.

"Bastards," One of the guards said.

"How could the Constable abandon us like this?" Asked another.

"Our Constable ordered him to," Anders said.

"Bloody Orlesians," One of the guards muttered.

"We should get back inside," Anders said.

They went back inside the Crown and Lion, and Anders went back to healing the survivors until Velanna and Justice came back for him. The lack of Nathaniel made Anders' heart feel like it was falling into his stomach. For a moment he couldn't breathe.

"He is with the survivors at the Chantry," Velanna said before Anders could ask.

Anders wheezed, and kneaded at his chest to shove the ugly feeling away.

"We need to go now," Velanna continued. "Nathan says they'll have finished setting up the siege equipment by now. We have but minutes. I can take the worst of the injured underground."

"These two still can't walk," Anders gestured to an older man's whose foot had been crushed, and a young woman with a gaping wound in her thigh.

Velanna picked the girl up without a word. "Support yourself on my shoulder," She said to the man. Startled, probably by her strength, the older fellow obeyed and limped out of the Crown and Lion with her.

"I am glad to see you survived, my friend," Justice said.

"Thanks, Justice, me too," Anders joked. "Everyone, we're moving! Stay near me,"

No one needed any convincing. The previously-injured were so desperate to stay near their healer they were tripping over each other. They ran for the Chantry, and Anders wasn't surprised to see two sylvans milling about aimlessly at the base of the stairs. They urged the rest of the survivors up the stairs. The courtyard was filled with archers, picking off any darkspawn who appeared below the Chantry.

Nathaniel was with them. Anders went over to him. Velanna and Justice joined him.

"Do you think the siege weapons can reach us here?" Anders asked.

Nathaniel looked to the soldiers and survivors crowded within hearing range. His nod was little more than a raise of his eyebrows.

"What do we do?" Anders asked.

"Pray the Chantry holds," Nathaniel said quietly.

"Fenedhis," Velanna muttered. "More like we should go back out there now that we've saved all we can and end that foul woman."

"I'm up for it," Anders said.

Barkspawn barked. Anders scratched the dog's ears.

"Perhaps she will reconsider," Justice said hopefully.

"She's been firing on the city for almost half an hour, Justice, why would she reconsider?" Anders asked.

"It is never too late to right a wrong," Justice said.

"The market is burning." Velanna said.

Anders looked down at the city. Velanna was right. They'd put out the fires they could, but they were two mages against two armies. "Is the wind still blowing west?" Anders asked.

"For the moment," Nathaniel said.

Anders looked at the walls, waiting for the next volley that would come from ballistas and trebuchets, and burn down the rest of the city.

"... Does anyone have a song?" Anders asked.

"Not without Sigrun." Velanna said.

They waited in silence.

An age seemed to pass.

Then it happened.

An inferno appeared outside the city. The flames leapt up past the city walls, countless meters wide and even more meters high. It looked like the sort of storm only a mage could conjure, and Anders first thought was that an emissary had gotten to the refugee holdout.

Velanna thought something else. She touched the bomb on her belt, and looked out at the walls. "No... no... please..."

"She wouldn't." Anders said quickly. "She's a soldier. She follows orders. Amell said so."

"... wouldn't she?" Nathaniel asked. "If all she had to hit were the siege weapons... if she knows we're in here... Why else haven't they fired yet?"

Velanna collapsed. She fell back against the statue of Andraste, and buried her face into her knees to sob.

"Stop it!" Anders yelled. "You don't know what happened! Anything could have happened! If she did it, maybe she just threw it at the siege weapons. Maybe she threw it at darkspawn! She has two bombs on her, she could-"

Another inferno appeared. Velanna's sobs turned into anguished screams.

Anders fought back a sob. He started crying. He couldn't help it. He stumbled back and sank to the ground with Velanna, and she grabbed him to scream into his shoulder. Nathaniel turned away from the walls and kicked the offering bowl in front of the statue of Andraste so hard it shattered against the walls of the Chantry.

A half hour later, a scout came to report the Vigil's army was falling back. Their siege weapons had been turned to ash, apparently by one of the darkspawn emissaries.

The survivors cheered.

No one else knew what really happened.

A half hour after that, and another scout came to report a second wave of the darkspawn army had started towards the city as soon as they saw the Vigil's army falling back. Another came to say that there were darkspawn pouring out of the Crown and Lion. They would have come from the tunnel the Collective used to get mages in and out of the city. Apparently they were endless.

Nathaniel recovered first. He went with the Commander of the city guard to set up traps around the Chantry. Anders untangled himself from Velanna and forced himself to his feet. He stumbled to the edge of the courtyard, and leaned over the half-wall to look down at the city.

The market had burned down, but the flames hadn't spread much further. There were darkspawn everywhere. Pouring in through the gates, bursting at the seams of the Crown and Lion. He counted three ogres, far below, but not nearly far enough away.

Velanna and Justice joined him.

"Do you think we'll die making the world a better place?" Anders joked. His voice was rough and scratchy and it hurt to talk.

"I think this world is damned, and all of us with it," Velanna said.

"I think you're right." Anders said.

Nathaniel came to join them. "We're not going to hold."

"No, really?" Anders asked sarcastically.

"It's been an honor." Nathaniel said.

"... I have an idea." Justice said.

Everyone looked at him.

"... I have been thinking," Justice continued. "Kristoff's body will soon expire. I can feel disturbing wear and tear that leads me to believe I will not survive this fight, no matter the outcome. Several of you have made mention that it may be necessary for me to... switch bodies. A few days ago, Nathaniel mentioned I might find a living body to possess.

"... I thought this a thing for demons, but... Before he left, the Warden Commander and I spoke of the other spirits he had encountered in this world. He mentioned a woman named Wynne, a mage of unfathomable strength and unlimited potential who shared her body with a spirit of Faith. If we are to die here, I hope it will be with honor, but these innocents we are defending do not deserve to suffer at the hands of darkspawn.

"... Perhaps together we could do what we cannot do alone." Justice said.

"... Are you-offering to possess one of us?" Anders asked.

"I am offering to help." Justice said.

"Incoming!" One of the soldiers yelled, and spared them from having to consider the offer.

The darkspawn were a swarm. They surged through the streets like a tidal wave, and Velanna's sylvans charged out to meet them when they reached the base of the Chantry. An ogre was at the forefront of the darkspawn army, and grabbed the pine tree at its base. It used it like a club to swat the other sylvan aside.

The darkspawn ran over trip wires, over pressure plates. Scattered explosions felled small clusters of them, and the few archers they had rained fire down on them. It was barely making a dent.

Nathaniel grabbed Velanna's chin in his hand and turned her away from Justice to kiss her. "If you say yes, I will still love you, whatever you become." He said, and ran to join the archers on the walls.

"I refuse," Velanna said, and ran to the edge of the courtyard. She pulled her bomb from her belt, and flung it into the darkspawn below.

The cataclysmic explosion bought them minutes, at most.

Anders looked at Justice. At his friend. At one of the only friends he had left.

Amell was dead. Sigrun was dead. Anders was done lying to himself.

In a few short hours, they'd all be dead too.

Anders looked out at the darkspawn. Amell's song came to mind.

"He was a mage and Warden both, and surely shook with fright, for though he'd been in battle he had never seen a Blight..." Anders mumbled to himself. Barkspawn nudged his hand for the song. Anders stared at him, and cast a spell to put him to sleep. He made sure it would only last a few minutes.

"Anders?" Justice asked.

"Do you think we'll go mad?" Anders asked.

"I cannot say." Justice said.

"... Not by everyone," Anders said. "By the darkspawn."

Justice ran for the stairs. Anders ran after him. They ran into the street together, into the circle of char and ash and death left by Velanna's bomb. The darkspawn were already swarming towards them, down every street, every alley. "Thank you, for being my friend." Justice said.

"Thanks for being mine." Anders said.

Justice held out his hand.

Anders took it.

Notes:

Fanart
Sigrun
Anders and Justice joining

 

 

Apples and Apostates
The Best That Dust Can Be: The events of this chapter as told from Sigrun's perspective.

Justice for Anders: The events immediately following this chapter, as told from Justice's perspective.

Chapter 43: Monsters and Men

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back! I know some of you are curious about how we're going to be treating Justice in this story, and I just want to say that just because someone calls Justice a demon or a spirit does not necessarily mean that he is one. I hope you enjoy the chapter, and thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 3 Cassus Morning
In the Fields Outside the City of Amaranthine

A creature that might have been a man woke up in the fields outside the City of Amaranthine with no understanding of how it got there, no knowledge of what it is was, and no memory at all. Not even its name. It sat up and felt the grass beneath its finger tips, and noted that the feeling was wrong. It thought of the gentle brush of reeds, and the sway of their stalks.

It looked up at the sky, and noted that that too felt wrong. Above the creature, a sea of endless blue existed where the creature remembered green. Shapes of white and grey were painted across the blue sky, and the creature knew them for clouds. They were wrong as well. The creature thought instead of islands, of floating cities, of home.

Worst of all was the light. The creature had to squint against it. It was bright, and golden, and harsh, and from above. It remembered light as something soft, a whisper in the reeds and a breath in the air to battle back the Void. The Void in the Fade. Where the creature had spent so much of its life. The creature remembered it was a mage. A mage and a man. Or... no. Not a man. Not anything. Just a pursuit of an ideal.

"What am I?" The man asked himself. "I'm... Justice? No. No... I'm Anders."

Anders pressed his fingers into his forehead, trying to think. His thoughts were sluggish. His memories a jumble. His head was throbbing, a pain the likes of which he'd never felt before. Or had he? He suddenly wasn't sure. He breathed in a breath of mana, and exhaled, and the pain was gone. Had magic always been that easy for him?

Anders pulled himself up onto his knees, and looked around. He was in the field of a small farmhouse, outside Amaranthine. All around him was ruin. There were collapsed buildings, trampled fences, burnt fields, mangled tents, and bodies. So many bodies.

Most of them were darkspawn. Anders looked around, but there was no movement. Aside from himself and the bodies, the fields were deserted. What was he doing here? How had he gotten here?

"Thank you for being my friend." Justice had said.

"Thanks for being mine." Anders had said.

The memory was there. Both memories were there. They were both his. Anders couldn't decide what had happened, where he had been standing. He wasn't even sure who had said what anymore. They'd clasped hands, and then...

Light. Such a bright burst of light they'd been blinded by it. A powerful feeling like... love, or maybe righteous fury, and pain. So much pain. A searing pain like being burned from the inside out, like his blood was boiling, and the holy smites of a thousand different templars had crashed down on him. And then nothing.

No, that was wrong. The memories were there, under the pain of what had happened to him, but Anders wasn't sure he wanted to search for them. He tried anyway.

"I will cleanse this city in fire!" He'd screamed.

Why?

Darkspawn. They'd done this to fight darkspawn. Anders looked down at his hands, bound in leather gloves, and stained black with blood.

Was he still human?

Anders unlatched one of the silver bracers he wore over his gloves. Anders remembered it was important to him, but he couldn't remember why. It hurt to try, and he set the bracer in the grass beside him for the moment. He took off his glove with shaking hands, and looked down at the palm that greeted him.

It was a human hand. Five long fingers, pale, with a soft pink beneath his nails, and a smattering of blonde hair on his knuckles. Anders took off his boot, and the blood-soaked sock beneath it. His foot was a human foot. Five long toes, pale, with a smattering of brownish red hair, and a scar that twisted up over the side. He remembered it from a time he'd stepped on a rake as a boy.

He'd spent a lot of time in farms and fields in his youth. His parents had been farmers. He was from Tallo. The memories put themselves back together piece by tiny piece. Anders touched his face. He felt down his jaw, over the prominent bump in his neck, over his nose and his brow. Human. Still human.

He still looked human.

He wasn't human. He was an abomination.

He was Justice. He was Anders. He was neither and he was both.

Anders felt a pang in his heart. He put his clothes back on and crawled to his feet. He found his staff, Vigilance, a noble name, a short distance away in the grass. He picked it up. He checked his side for his grimoire. Vengeance. Justice. Vengeance. Anders snatched his hand away. Demons. The tome sickened him.

No it didn't. He needed it. It was all he had left of Amell.

Anders' head hurt. He wanted to talk to Justice. He wanted to talk to Anders. But he was Justice and he was Anders and he wasn't even sure what he wanted anymore, he just didn't want to be alone.

Anders looked at the city in front of him. There was no movement in the fields. He looked to the refugee holdout, but there was no ring of soldiers around the farmhouse, and there were no refugees inside that he could see. Anders took a step. His legs still worked. He let them carry him towards the farmhouse, and looked at the trampled ground from where the Vigil's army had come and then gone.

Sigrun.

Anders looked around. The siege weapons had been set up a few yards away, to judge by the two craters of black that stood on either side of the road to Amaranthine. There were no siege weapons now, just black circles. Anders walked over to one, and his boots crunched over the blackened remnants of what he assumed was a burnt trebuchet.

"Why did you give her those bombs?" Anders asked aloud, to a dead man. "You knew what she'd do with them. You knew."

Anders inhaled shakily and felt tears stream down his face. His vision blurred, and he raised an arm to wipe his face off on his sleeve when he realized he was covered in blood. He settled on blinking several times. He walked through the char and ash, easily ten meters in diameter, nudging over broken bits of wood with the butt of his staff. He didn't find anything, except charcoal, but there was still another circle.

Anders walked over to it, his chest tight and his stomach a tangled knot of hurt. He picked his way through the black, and finally found what he was looking for. A piece of metal, melted, but still in the vague shape of a griffon. Like the kind of emblem Anders wore on his shoulder. The kind that meant he was a Warden, a member of an order of warriors that lived and died fighting darkspawn.

Anders sank down to his knees and picked the piece of metal up. He cleared a spot, in the ash and char, and set it on the blackened ground. He combed through the rest of the area on his hands and knees, and found other pieces. A piece of metal with misshapen dwarven runes that might have been from her axe. A chunk of something that looked like it had been a shoulder piece. Her buckle. A tiny gauntlet.

Anders stopped, and started sobbing. His shoulders shook and his chest constricted, and he had to breathe in gasps between his sobs.

The tears stopped when he didn't have any left. Anders chest and throat hurt, and he massaged at his aching heart beneath his tabard.

At least it had been a noble death.

Anders didn't know why that comforted him.

Anders picked up all the pieces of Sigrun's armor that he could find, and stowed them in his satchel. There was none of her left. The explosion had been too powerful. He hoped it had been quick.

Anders choked on another sob.

Dwarves didn't burn their dead. They buried them in the Stone. Sigrun had told him that once. Twice? Anders sucked in a deep breath. She deserved a proper funeral. He could give her that. It was the right thing to do. Anders stumbled to his feet, and looked at the gates to the city.

Had it worked? Was anyone else alive?

Did he even want to know?

Yes. He was a healer. If there were survivors, they needed him. He had an obligation.

Anders started forward. His feet got heavier with every step he took towards the city, and no one came to man the gates. No scouts ran out to meet him. He didn't see anyone on the walls.

Later. Think about it later. That was what he always did.

There was a tree, uprooted and broken in half, just inside the city gates. Anders stepped over it, and looked down at it. Velanna. Velanna was his friend. She was alive, or had been. Anders didn't know if she still was. She summoned wisps from across the Veil, and bound them to the trees in the city so they could fight the darkspawn.

But trees didn't help when the Vigil's soldiers were trying to burn down the city. Anders stopped on the steps that led down to the market. There was no market left. It had been burned to the ground. Every shop, every cart, every beautiful awning and pretty patchwork tent. Countless people's livelihood, destroyed, because of one woman's refusal to help.

Anders felt livid. Fury burned inside of him, white and hot and blazing and righteous. How dare she. How many innocents had burned, or been felled by her rain of arrows while he protected only a handful? How many more might they have saved if she hadn't given into sloth, and stood idly by while darkspawn ravaged the city?

Anders blinked. He couldn't see straight. He blinked again, and pressed his fingers into his forehead to fight off what felt like a headache. Was he angry? Was Justice?

They both were.

Anders started down the steps to the market. He'd go to the Chantry last. The city was quiet, and it unnerved him. The sound had been uproarious-... before. Anders wasn't sure how long it had been since the battle. Hours? A day? More? He decided not to think about it.

"Hello?" Anders called out. "Is anyone still alive?"

Silence. Anders walked through the still city, no sound save for the quiet thud of his boots on the pavement, or crunching over char and ash. He stepped over the ashen corpses of darkspawn, the chewed up remnants of citizens, over rubble and refuse and ruin. "Is anyone alive?" Anders called every so often.

No one answered him. Anders left the market, and went towards the docks. The piers were destroyed. Several of them had collapsed into the ocean. Driftwood and bloated corpses floated in the water, and knocked up against the shore with every wave. Anders amplified his voice with a simple charm, and called out while he walked through the docks. "Is anyone alive?"

The soft lapping of waves and the quiet thud of bodies bumping up against what was left of the piers answered him. Anders nudged open the door of the Fisherman's Rest with his staff. "Darrian?" Anders called, "Darrian, are you still alive?"

The Collective mage didn't answer him. Anders went inside. The floor had been torn up, a path carved through the wavy planks that led back outside into the docks. Anders guessed that meant Darrian, or whatever he'd become, had left the inn. "Is anyone in here?" Anders called.

Silence. Anders left the inn, and looked at the path of ruin Darrian had left. He followed it through the dockside district, and eventually it led to the harbormaster's office. Anders nudged open the door with his staff. "Hello?" Anders called out.

There was no answer. Anders followed the path of torn up planks and char towards the back of the building. A pile of darkspawn bodies blocked the entrance to one of the backrooms. "Darrian?" Anders called again.

Anders finally heard something. A low murmur, like someone laughing. He looked at the bodies. He needed to move them somehow, but he didn't know any telekinetic magic.

Anders lifted his hand and blasted the pile of bodies across the room with a burst of raw energy torn straight from the Fade. He looked down at his palm in shock, but the laughter was audible now. Anders shook himself. He could worry about his magic later. "Darrian?" Anders edged around the entrance to the backroom. "Are you in here?"

Maker's breath.

Darrian was an abomination in the purest sense of the word. His body was mangled and mutilated; bulbous veins pushed up the left side of his neck, and twisted into a knot of muscle and flesh that ate up the left side of his face. The right side of his face was still Darrian: tawny skin with long black hair, and one good hazel eye that looked up at Anders.

His body was a contorted mess of muscle and bone; his skin was stretched and he barely seemed to fit within himself. His bones seemed to jut out of every joint in his body, turning into spikes and spines at his elbows, at his knees, all down his back.

"Darrian?" Anders ventured.

"No Darrian," Darrian laughed. He reached up with a clawed hand, and broke a spine off his jaw. Anders winced. "No Darrian. No. No. No. No more Darrian."

"Darrian, it's me, Anders, remember?" Anders crept around the pile of darkspawn in front of Darrian and knelt off to the side from him. "Do you remember me?"

Darrian laughed.

"I know you're in there somewhere," Anders said, summoning a soft breath of mana and letting the healing energy wash over the wound Darrian had inflicted on himself. "Talk to me. You're a mage. You work for the Collective. Remember?"

"A mage," Darrian tested the word, rolled it around in his mouth, and spat it back out. His eyes glowed, and bright red fire burned in his eye sockets, "No. Not a mage. More than that,"

A Rage demon. Anders felt a surge of righteous fury at the sight, and battled it down. It was Darrian. It was just Darrian, abomination or not. Anders wasn't any different.

Darrian was a little uglier.

"Anders?" Darrian ventured.

"That's right," Anders said encouragingly. "I'm Anders. You're Darrian. Keep trying. It'll come back to you."

Darrian blinked slowly and the fire in his eyes died down. Anders took heart in it. Darrian took a deep breath; muscle and sinew sealed the left half of his mouth shut and it stretched with a sickening sucking sound when he inhaled.

"I just wanted to help." Darrian said.

"You did," Anders took one of Darrian's meaty hands and squeezed. "You did help. Cerlais and a few others got out thanks to you."

"No," Darrian pulled away from him. He scooted back against the wall and his bulbous form shook and wobbled with the motion. "I let it in. I thought... I thought it would fight the darkspawn. And it did but... So many people, Anders. So many innocent people. I killed so many. I can't-control it."

Tears spilled down Darrian's mutilated face, "Kill me. Kill me while I'm me. While I can hold it back. Please."

"What?" Anders asked. A part of him agreed, and it scared him. "No. I'm not going to kill you. Look, I know you look... Okay you look awful, but the Collective can find a place for you. You just need to get a hold on this thing."

"I can't," Darrian said.

"Yes you can," Anders said. "You've got a hold on it right now. You're talking to me, aren't you?"

Darrian laughed. It was a throaty chuckle that shook his entire mass, and it got deeper and deeper until it reached an unnatural depth. Darrian looked at him and his eyes glowed red and lit on fire. "No, he is not. Darrian is gone. I am something more."

Darrian, or the thing he'd become, lifted himself off the ground with a breath of magic. He radiated energy, and Anders scrambled backwards. He picked himself up on his staff and held out a hand in front of him.

"Darrian, come on." Anders said. "You're in there somewhere."

"He is not." Darrian said. "You know it. You are just like me. I can smell it on you. What are you, brother? Pride? Fear? Come out. Let me see."

Fire crackled between Darrian's claws. Anders summoned a spell shield, and the fireball Darrian threw at him diffused into the air around them. Darrian laughed, and rushed him. He moved at a blinding speed through the air and crashed into Anders, burying his claws in Anders shoulders. Anders screamed, and Darrian picked him up and flung him out the door of the small backroom.

Anders crashed through the doorframe. He felt his shoulder crack, and he went rolling through the harbormaster's office and landed in a pile of darkspawn corpses. Anders lost his grip on his staff and didn't see where it landed. Anders forced himself to his knees and healed his shoulder.

He did it with little more than a breath of mana. It should have taken a full channel of Compassion, and several long minutes of concentrated focus. Anders rolled his shoulder; it had only taken him a few seconds.

"Desire? Hunger?" Darrian continued, floating out of the backroom. He threw another fireball, and Anders summoned another spell shield. Fire washed over him, little more than a pleasant warmth on his face.

"Darrian, come on," Anders begged. He felt something stir inside of him, but he didn't have time to name the feeling, "You're stronger than this. I don't want to kill you,"

"Don't you?" Darrian laughed, and rushed him again. Darrian tackled him to the ground, and slammed a fist into Anders' side. Darrian's clawed hand ripped through Anders' leather armor, and he charged it with a burst of lightning.

Anders screamed in agony. His whole body convulsed, and he seized, his muscles locking up.

"What are you? Rage?" Darrian guessed, "Come out!" He slashed a clawed hand across Anders' face and ripped open his cheek.

Anders screamed again, and something came over him. It was anger, but it was more than that. It was protective. Possessive. No one was allowed to hurt him.

Energy exploded off him: raw magic pulled straight from the Fade. The blast knocked Darrian off of him, and Anders leapt into a crouch.

"There you are," Darrian grinned.

Darrian rushed him again. Anders rolled to one side with a speed he'd never had before, and dodged him. He lashed out and grabbed Darrian out of the air, not with magic, but with something else. Something that was just him, an extension of himself. He caught Darrian by his leg and flung him down into the ground.

Darrian lay where Anders had thrown him, laughing his guttural laugh. Anders walked over to him, and the words seemed to speak themselves, "You are a foul creature of Rage and Hatred. Release your hold on this mage."

"It takes one to know one," Darrian said. He raised a bloated hand and a blast of fire and energy caught Anders in the stomach. The force of it should have sent him flying, but he only stumbled. His armor was on fire, but it didn't hurt him. It couldn't hurt him.

"I am no demon," Anders said.

"No. You're more than that," Darrian agreed.

"Release him." Anders said again.

"You first," Darrian laughed.

Darrian leapt off the ground and rushed him again. Anders knew he fought him, but it felt like he was only watching the fight. His body seemed to move on his own, his magic cast on its own. He saw his arms, when Darrian tore through his armor, and the blue fire cracking through his skin. It ran up and down his body like veins, it hummed and sang with all the power of the Fade, and eventually it brought Darrian to his knees.

Anders raised a hand to kill him. He felt the need for it, in every fiber of his being. Darrian was a monster, Darrian was evil, Darrian was gone. Darrian was sobbing.

Anders stopped himself. He let go of the magic gathered in his hands, and watched the fire cracking through his skin go out. A splitting headache doubled him over, but Anders felt like himself again. He wasn't an executioner. He was a healer.

"Darrian?" Anders dared, kneeling next to the man.

Darrian looked up at him. His eyes weren't on fire anymore. They were hazel again. "Anders, please,"

"I'm not going to kill you," Anders said.

"Please, please, please," Darrian sobbed, and clutched at his head.

Anders wasn't a killer. He wasn't. He could defend himself. He could kill bandits, brigands, rapists, fathers who stole their sons' eyes, and still live with himself, but he couldn't kill a man sobbing on his knees. He couldn't.

Amell could.

Amell had killed someone out of mercy on almost every expedition Anders had ever gone on with him. He'd found some way to live with himself afterwards.

Anders could too.

Anders was already bleeding. He used the blood flowing from his wounds to form a spell to stop Darrian's heart. Anders set a hand on Darrian's swollen chest. The other abomination looked up at him, and his eyes turned to fire.

"I'm sorry," Anders said, and cast.

Blood rushed out Darrian's nose, his ears, spilled from his eyes like tears. He slumped over, dead. Anders stood up, and went to find his staff.

He hadn't even needed it in the fight. Anders picked it up, and stared at the torn sleeve of his Warden armor. He remembered of the blue fire cracking through his skin, and the words that had poured out of him, unguided and unbidden. He looked at the cuts lacerating his body and inhaled mana. His flesh knit back together effortlessly.

Best not to think about it.

Anders looked back at the thing that had been Darrian. He doubted anyone who searched the city after him would bother with a funeral for him. They'd see an abomination, and throw it on the pyre with the rest of the darkspawn. Anders leaned his staff up against the door to the harbormaster's office, and picked Darrian up by his armpits to drag him out into the street.

It wasn't difficult. Anders never remembered being this strong. A few pushups and a jog around the Keep in the morning wouldn't have made him this strong. He brought Darrian into the center of the street, went back for his staff, and channeled a fire spell that turned Darrian to ashes.

He should have said a prayer, but nothing came to him. They'd never been very good at praying. Anders watched the ashes blow away, and continued his walk through the docks and back towards the city. He called out for survivors every few minutes, but no one answered him. Occasionally, he found a lone darkspawn. A Childer or a genlock eating the corpses that littered the gutters, and killed it with fire or ice, but for the most part the streets were deserted.

Anders forced himself to head for the Chantry. The streets were barricaded: trees and corpses and every bit of makeshift rubble imaginable blocked him from getting past the Crown and Lion. Anders took some heart in it. The barricade hadn't been there before. Whatever happened, the survivors had obviously gained some ground. "Hello?" Anders called. "Is anyone alive?"

A head popped up over the barricade. Anders breathed a sigh of relief and waved. "Warden?" The guardsman manning the barricade squeaked at the sight of his uniform.

"That's the rumor," Anders said. "How do I get to the Chantry? Are there any survivors there that need healing?"

"Dozens, Ser." The guardsman said. "You'll have to go round, through the back door of the Crown and Lion and come through the front. I'll let everyone know you're coming and not a threat."

Anders hoped that was true. The guard ducked back down behind the barricade, and Anders walked around the Crown and Lion to the back entrance. The inn was still standing, but the rush of so many darkspawn pouring out of it had done serious damage to the building. The back door was gone, and widened to twice it's normal size. Every window had suffered a similar fate, and rubble was piled up against the walls.

The inn was worse on the inside. Stampeding darkspawn had destroyed all of the furniture and toppled the stairs. Anders walked out the front of the inn, and was ridiculously grateful the guard had said something for him. A dozen crossbowmen were guarding the entrance to the Crown and Lion. A few of them mumbled as Anders walked past, and Anders wondered if they'd seen him merge with Justice.

He wondered if he'd killed anyone.

The fighting must have died down. Survivors spilled out of the Chantry, and littered its courtyard. Guards roamed the streets, just beneath the Chantry. A few of them looked at him with glares, others with awe. Most didn't look at him at all. Anders didn't know what to make of any of it. He was heading for the stairs to the Chantry when he saw Nathaniel and Velanna running down them.

Anders felt a surge of relief so profound he had to choke down a sob. Anders jogged over, but when they reached the bottom of the stairs Velanna grabbed Nathaniel's arm to keep him from running out to meet him. She took a spot in front of Nathaniel, and glared at him suspiciously. Anders felt the Fade swell around her.

Maker, what had he done?

"Stop," Velanna said when he was a yard away.

"Nice to see you too," Anders said.

"Anders?" Nathaniel asked, untangling himself from Velanna's retraining arm. He took a few cautious steps forward.

"That's the name," Anders said.

"It could be lying," Velanna said.

"Oh for-seriously?" Anders asked. "It's me. Or... us... I guess. And it's 'he', not 'it.'"

"The thing we saw was no man," Velanna said.

"That's a fine 'thank you,'" Anders frowned. "It looks like it bloody well worked! What's going on? What did I do?"

"Do you not remember?" Nathaniel asked.

"... did I kill anyone?" Anders asked, trying to ignore the rock that settled in his stomach.

"No," Nathaniel said. Anders felt a little better. "Velanna, I think he's fine. We should find somewhere private to talk about what happened."

Velanna squinted at him. Anders frowned at her. "... I suppose if Justice could enter this world without going mad... the two of you might be able to stay sane together... But we shouldn't be alone with him until we're certain. You saw what he did."

"I'm standing right here, you know," Anders said.

"We can talk in the Crown and Lion," Nathaniel said, "The guards could use a break anyway, and they won't be far away if something happens."

"Fine." Velanna said. She kept a wide berth around him, and it made Anders feel sick and unhappy. They went back to the Crown and Lion, and gave the guards a break so they could talk in the common room. There wasn't a lot of furniture left standing, so Anders took a seat on the bar. Nathaniel sat next to him, and Anders felt a little better for it. Velanna continued to stand a safe distance away.

"What happened?" Anders asked. "What did we do?"

"After the two of you went into the street together, there was an explosion of white light." Nathaniel said. "It was too bright to see past, for a while, but when the light dimmed you were in the street, fighting darkspawn, only... Your eyes were glowing, and your skin cracked open, like you were on fire from the inside.

"I'm not going to lie, Anders, it looked bad. We thought for certain you'd gone insane. Some of the guards on the stairs were near enough to hear you screaming, and you were raving about how the darkspawn were a cancer at the heart of the world and you were going to bathe the streets in blood and purify the city with fire.

"We told them you were just a powerful mage when they brought it up later, but I don't know how many of them believed us. But before that, you killed... at least a hundred darkspawn on your own. We ran out of arrows before you ran out of mana. We had to start bleeding a lot of the survivors so Velanna could help keep the darkspawn from overwhelming you.

"We lost a lot of people, all the same. A few of the survivors bled out without a healer. A lot of the guards died. When there was finally a break in the fighting, you took off. That was... the day before yesterday. We didn't have time to see where you went. We took everyone who could walk, and made trips to the guard house for all the pitch and oil we could carry. We came back to the Chantry, and when the darkspawn came back yesterday, we burned them.

"Right now, we're just holding out in case there's another wave. Constable Aidan came back into the city yesterday, and brought his refugees and the guards he had left to reinforce us. ... I know we already knew, but he confirmed it. About Sigrun. Apparently when the Vigil's soldiers finally finished setting up the siege equipment, she threw one of the bombs at one trebuchet, and stood under the other and threw it at her feet. I..." Nathaniel stopped, and his eyes watered. He took a deep breath and couldn't continue.

"... I know." Anders said. He opened his satchel, and fished out Sigrun's Grey Warden emblem.

Velanna finally abandoned her caution to come over to him. She took the metal griffon from him and stared at it, tears running down her face.

"I don't know why, but I was outside the city when I came to... I found what I could of her things. I thought... maybe we could have a funeral for her." Anders said. "You know, so she can be one with the Stone or whatever."

Velanna nodded.

"I don't know that you should," Nathaniel said.

"What do you mean you don't know if I should?" Anders glared at him, "She was my friend!"

"No-I know," Nathaniel said quickly, "It's just... Leonie left Rolan, with Constable Aidan, in case we managed to save the city. He's still in the Chantry, but he'll probably hear you're back soon, and I don't know... Is there any way he'll be able to tell? What you and Justice did?"

"... I don't know." Anders said.

"I don't either," Velanna said.

"... Anders, maybe you should leave." Nathaniel said. "Go to West Hill, or somewhere away from here. I don't... I don't know what they'll do to you if they find out what happened."

"What about you?" Anders asked. "We all deserted."

"I don't know," Nathaniel said. "Rolan hasn't said."

"The guards said there were injured." Anders said.

"There are," Nathaniel agreed, "There are a lot, but..."

"Then I need to help." Anders said.

"What if Rolan finds out?" Nathaniel asked. "What if he tries to kill you?"

"A hundred darkspawn." Nathaniel had said.

"I don't even know if she can die," Amell had said of Wynne.

"Not a mage. More than that." Darrian had said.

"He can try." Anders said.

Chapter 44: The Best Intentions

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back! Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 3 Cassus Afternoon
City of Amaranthine: Crown and Lion Common Room

"Good." Velanna said, her voice scratchy. She handed Sigrun's emblem back to Anders, and he stowed it in his satchel. "I cannot wait for this templar to test us."

"I don't know that I'm as eager." Nathaniel said.

"You saw what Anders became in the fight." Velanna said. "If he can control it there is nothing that can stand against us."

"Still right here, you know." Anders said.

"Well, then?" Velanna demanded.

"Well what?" Anders asked.

"Can you control it?" Velanna asked.

"It's not an it, you know, it's Justice," Anders said defensively. "I know you never liked him, but that doesn't make him an it. Or a monster. He's a spirit. And my friend. And ... me, I guess."

"That is no answer." Velanna said.

"What's there to control?" Anders asked. "When he's ever done anything wrong?"

"Have you forgotten how we met the spirit?" Velanna frowned. "He made every effort to kill us in the Fade, for the crime of trying to escape it."

"We were helping a demon," Anders said; the admission left a foul taste in his mouth for some reason.

"Exactly my point." Velanna said. "Justice has proven he does not understand the complexities of the world outside the Beyond. Who is to say he will not lash out at one of us if we do something that does not adhere to his warped sense of justice?"

"I am." Anders said. "Look, you never got to know him. He was learning."

"And now he is a part of you, and incapable of learning anything more." Velanna said. "Are you sure he learned enough that you would trust him with all the power you have gained?"

"Yes, okay?" Anders said. "Yes. I may not remember what happened with the darkspawn, but Nate said we didn't kill anyone. I'm not running around growing arms and lopping off any heads, am I?"

"Yet." Velanna said.

"Oh come off it." Anders said. "The only time I haven't really felt like myself since this happened is when I ran into an abomination that tried to kill me. And all I or Justice or we or whatever did when that happened was protect me."

"There was an abomination in the city?" Nathaniel asked.

"One sits before you now." Velanna said.

"Darrian." Anders said. "He was a Collective mage. He let in a Rage demon and it... overpowered him."

"As Justice might you." Velanna said. Anders scowled at her. "I am not being cruel; I am being cautious. Amell was the one who had experience with peaceful possession. The three... Or four of us do not know what we are dealing with here. This Wynne, is there anything about her in his grimoire?"

"I don't know." Anders said. "... Justice doesn't like touching it. Demons upset him. Which, you know, pretty big clue he's not one."

"Oh will you stop insisting on this ridiculous distinction between spirits and demons?" Velanna raised a frustrated hand to her brow, "There is no distinction. All spirits embody something, and all things to excess are dangerous, especially Justice."

"He's not dangerous," Anders said. "Okay? We're not dangerous. He's not even... It's not like he's just sitting in some corner of my mind waiting to take over. I mean sure I don't really feel... Whatever part of me is him very often, but that's still who he is. Who we are now.

"He was quiet, remember? He wasn't like me. He knew when to shut up and listen and he only said something when he had something to say. I still feel things, just walking around. Weird little thoughts about obligation and honor and that's it unless there's a threat because that's just who he is.

"I'm okay. I'm fine. Okay? Unless there's some swarm of darkspawn coming for us or something I don't think anything is going to happen."

"I agree with Anders." Nathaniel said. "But I also agree with Velanna. We should know more about this,"

"I'll ask around." Anders said.

"And the templar?" Velanna asked. "You know he intends to bring us back to the Wardens."

"I could always poison him," Nathaniel offered.

Anders laughed. Velanna snorted.

"See you're joking but I'm on board with this," Anders said.

Nathaniel sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Maker, maybe I should. If we go back to the Wardens I don't know what will happen."

"We saved this city." Anders said.

"We saved a handful of civilians and guards," Nathaniel said realistically. "The city? I think it will take at least a year to undo all the damage, and that's assuming we have the resources to rebuild, which we don't. Maybe if Amell were still in charge we could beg on other nations and the crown, but Leonie doesn't have that kind of influence.

"Castrating Gerod was what Leonie considered a mercy. We're deserters. By all rights we should hang. I don't know if what we achieved here will be enough to convince her otherwise. She wanted to burn the city down. She might have us imprisoned, or have the two of you sent to the Circle..."

"She might try," Velanna said.

Anders pointed at her in agreement. Velanna snorted, and grabbed his hand out of the air to squeeze it. Anders tugged her over to him and hugged her with one arm.

"... I never sang a song for her." Velanna said.

"Me neither," Anders said.

"... That's what funerals are for." Nathaniel said. "They're for us. Sigrun had hers when she joined the Legion."

They sat in a silence that didn't feel reverent. It just felt miserable. First Amell, now Sigrun, and when they went back to the Vigil probably all of them. Nathaniel found Anders' hand and squeezed it. Anders squeezed back.

"I need to go see to the wounded," Anders said eventually. He got down off the bar, and a thought suddenly occurred to him. "Barkspawn! Andraste's knickers, I forgot all about him. Is he alive?"

"He's fine." Nathaniel reassured him. "When you changed, he wouldn't go down the stairs and join the fighting. He stayed in the courtyard, and helped protect the archers from any darkspawn that climbed the hill to reach us. I think he's still there."

"Okay," Anders said. "Okay, good. What about Delilah? Did she make it to the Chantry?"

"She did," Nathaniel said. "And your cat, before you ask."

"Thanks," Anders laughed sheepishly, "Sorry. I really like that little shit."

"We feel the same way about you." Velanna teased.

"I'm glad you're alright, Anders," Nathaniel agreed. "You and Justice. I wasn't sure we'd ever see you again when you took off after the fight."

"Well... you know," Anders shrugged. "I'm glad we didn't go insane and kill everyone,"

"Yet." Velanna said.

"You know Oghren used to call you Bitch Tits, right?" Anders asked.

"His note for Satinalia just said Tits," Velanna said.

"It was hard to tell under all the grease," Nathaniel mused.

"Clearly my mood has lightened some." Velanna said.

"So this is Nice Velanna. Good to know." Anders said.

Velanna huffed and gave him a shove. Anders let the shove lead him into a step that led him into another and the three of them left the inn. The guards resumed their post watching the Crown and Lion, and the three of them headed up the stairs to the Chantry.

Barkspawn was in the courtyard, lying next to the statue of Andraste. His ears perked up at their approach and he cocked his head at Anders.

"Hey mangy," Anders said, relieved to see the dog wasn't injured.

He hadn't taken two steps towards the mabari to scratch its ears when Barkspawn started growling at him.

"Um..." Anders said.

Barkspawn kept growling. The mabari jumped to its feet and snarled, hackles up. Anders took a step towards the Chantry, and the dog barked savagely, slathering all over itself. It tensed as if to lunge and Anders cast a frantic spell to put it to sleep. Barkspawn collapsed, unconscious.

"... I will watch the mutt," Velanna offered in the awkward aftermath. "Nathan, you should stay with Anders in case the templar tries something."

"... Yeah... thanks," Anders said.

Nathaniel gave Velanna's cheek a kiss and her arm a caress, "Come and find me if Aidan needs anything or another wave appears,"

"I will," Velanna said, shoving him off her.

Maybe Anders was a selfish bastard, but the sweet exchange hurt his heart to watch. He missed Amell, and all the little touches Anders had never appreciated until it was too late.

And now Amell's dog hated him, or whatever he'd become. How was Anders supposed to watch Barkspawn if the dog instinctively wanted to kill Anders for being an abomination? Barkspawn wasn't half as interested in any of the other Wardens. At best, Velanna could force him to sleep when he became too much trouble. At worst, Leonie would send him back to the kennels.

Anders tried not to think about it.

Anders went into the Chantry with Nathaniel. The sight he saw was more than justification for what they'd done. The Chantry was packed with men, women, and children. There were so many people crammed into the building they were sitting on the pews, and between them on the floor. There were at least a hundred that he could see, and they hadn't even gotten into the back of the Chantry where Anders imagined the injured were being kept.

Granted, many of them were the refugees Aidan had brought in from the fields, but Anders didn't doubt at least half were from the city. The sight of them was heartbreaking. Most of them were clutching one or two possessions saved from the horde or the fires. A painting. A favorite book. A dress. A few people had lutes, drawers of silverware or jewelry, knitting needles, and other miscellaneous trinkets or pieces of their livelihood.

There was even a chicken or two running through the Chantry, and at one point Anders saw a goat. All of the children had some kind of doll or toy, and Maker, there were so many. They ran to the end of the pews to stare up at the Wardens in awe as they walked by, gawking shamelessly like only children could.

"Where's Delilah?" Anders asked.

"In the back, with the injured." Nathaniel said.

"What?" Anders asked, "Why didn't you say something?"

"It's not serious." Nathaniel explained, "She broke her ankle in the run to the Chantry. One of the guards carried her the rest of the way, but he died in the fighting."

"Maker's breath," Anders muttered.

They reached the backrooms of the Chantry, normally reserved storage and homing sisters and chanters. They'd been converted into a makeshift infirmary. All of the doors were open, and men and women and even some children were laid out in the six rooms in the back. Rugs had been thrown down, cots pushed together, blankets and other linens collected to form some feeble kind of comfort.

Two Chantry sisters, the Revered Mother, and Ser Rylien and Rolan were seeing to the wounded as best they could. Their best seemed to be little more than offering water, prayers, and a tourniquet or two. The Revered Mother approached them when they stepped into the hall, "Warden, do you need something? I understand your concern for your sister, but we are crowded enough at it is. I promise to send for you if her condition worsens."

"My fellow Warden is a healer," Nathaniel explained.

"I see," The Revered Mother turned to look at Anders and her face pinched up into an ugly sneer when she noticed his staff. The condemnation in her eyes made Anders' shoulders tense and his eye twitched.

"Great!" Anders said brightly, "Good for you. Not everyone can do that, you know. You mind?" He shoved past her and into the first room without waiting for an answer.

It was full of children. Most of them were lying on the floor with their heads in their parent's laps. One or two were with what looked like older siblings. A few didn't have anyone at all.

"I'll wait in the hall and keep Rolan from bothering you," Nathaniel said.

"Alright, thanks," Anders said.

Anders decided to start with the children who didn't have anyone. He sat down next to a little boy with messy black hair and auburn eyes who might have been Amell a dozen years ago. The boy was missing his leg, beneath his knee, and a tourniquet had been tied for him.

One of the Chantry sisters was sitting with him. She looked up from the boy and took in Anders' staff and his Warden uniform, and had a completely different reaction than the Revered Mother had. "Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadows. In their blood the Maker's will is written." The woman said with a smile.

The irony of saying something like that to a maleficar made Anders grin. That was certainly one way to interpret that verse, "Thanks. I think-you're not a Chanter are you?"

"Speak only the Word; sing only the Chant. Then the Golden City is thine," The woman said.

Great.

"Alright, sure," Anders said, "Look, I need um... a lot of things. Bandages, bowls of clean water, poultices, salves... do you have anything like that left?"

The woman gave him a sad smile. Anders supposed that was better than another verse. Anders sighed and got up to lean outside the door to the room. "Nate,"

"Yes?" Nathaniel asked.

"I need a bone-saw, and a rasp," Anders said. "Can you try to find both for me?"

"Alright. I'll see what I can do," Nathaniel said.

Anders went back inside to see to a girl with a broken arm and a boy with a concussion in the mean time, considering he couldn't amputate the boy's leg properly without a bone-saw. Both of the children would have required he summon Compassion in the past, but Justice had given him so much more potential. Anders inhaled mana and exhaled magic.

Even when it took a concentrated amount of focus, the energy Anders used for his spells came from within, like the Fade was a part of himself that he could draw on as easily as his own blood. It wasn't until Anders was halfway through the room he realized it wasn't his energy. He was pulling on Justice. Anders stopped in the middle of healing a girl with a torn ligament behind her knee and stared down at his hands.

Justice was a stronger spirit than Compassion. Of course healing was easier for Anders now. But he didn't want to pull on Justice. He wanted Compassion, whether or not that meant slow going with his spells. Anders tried to reach for her, across the Veil, but he couldn't feel her past the spirit inside him. Justice was blinding. Justice was overwhelming, so intertwined with Anders and his magic he couldn't feel anything else.

"Warden?" The mother of the girl he was healing prompted him. "Is my daughter going to be alright?"

"Sorry," Anders shook himself. Later. He'd deal with it later. That was what he always did. "She'll be fine," Anders went back to healing the girl, wondering when he'd need a lyrium potion. Maybe he never would. How strong of a connection to the Fade had Justice given him?

Nathaniel came back when Anders had finished with every child except the Amell-boy in the room. The children with guardians had left with them, but there were three without who hovered around the Chanter. Somehow, Nathaniel had found a saw and a rasp for him. Anders guessed the tools had come from the refugees, and went back to sit beside the little boy who looked like a young version of Amell. The Chanter was still sitting with him.

The boy looked at the saw with wide, terrified eyes and whined, fearful tears streaming down his face. The Chanter brushed them away, and whispered, "Though darkness comes upon me, I shall embrace the light. I shall weather the storm. I shall endure. What You have created, no one can tear asunder."

"Hey, I'm Anders," Anders set the tools off to the side to talk to the boy. "What's your name?"

"Austen," The boy said nervously.

Fuck.

The Maker sure had a sense of humor. Anders swallowed past a lump in his throat and smiled, "Look, I know this looks scary, but it's not. You've already been through the worst of it. I'm going to help you fall asleep, and when you wake up your leg will be all better, alright?"

"Really?" Austen asked, "I get my foot back?"

"... No, but it will be alright," Anders said.

Austen was a lot better at dealing with his injury than Fausten had been. The boy nodded bravely and Anders cast a spell that put him to sleep. Anders looked at the Chanter afterwards, "Can you take the kids out? They're probably not going to want to watch this."

The Chantry sister nodded. She was wearing your typical sunburst chantry robes, nothing special. She had a plain face, with plain black hair, and plain brown eyes, but she gave him a sweet smile when she stood, "Let Him take notice and shine upon thee, for thou has done His work on this day. And the stars stood still, the winds did quiet, and all animals of earth and air held their breath. And all was silent in prayer and thanks."

Anders couldn't help a chuckle. He reached to rub away a flush creeping up his neck, "Thanks. I um... that's nice to hear. Don't normally get that from the Chantry. You sure it's okay for you to be nice to a mage?"

"Though the lands suffer a thousand wrongs, the Maker yet notices the smallest of deeds," The sister said.

Guessing none of the kids spoke the Chant of Light, Anders looked at the little group of three and said, "You guys need to go with her now, alright?"

One of them was a boy of about five, with bright red hair and a face full of freckles. He'd had a broken rib and a contusion that had him crying relentlessly until Anders had healed him. The boy ran over and hugged him. Anders gave the boy's shoulder a squeeze, and bit back a wistful sigh.

No one was ever born hating magic.

The Chanter ushered the children out, babbling verses from the Chant. Anders re-tied the unconscious boy's tourniquet to a knot that would hold through the surgery, and sawed away the jagged ends of the bone that jutted out from lower half of the boy's leg.

The sound was always the worst. The steady grate of metal teeth sawing through bone made a scissoring noise, as it might with wood, only sharper. It wasn't something children would want to hear. Bone dust littered the ground beneath the boy when Anders finished, and he cut away the excess muscles with his knife to better shape the end of the limb.

Justice's energy made it possible for Anders to seal the wound shut, without having stitch it closed and let it heal it naturally. It was also the first thing that finally felt like a drain on his strength, and Anders was a little relieved to realize the potential Justice had given him wasn't limitless after all.

The rug the boy was lying on was a mess when Anders was finished. Bone dust, blood, and chunks of muscle and skin lay at his feet, and his hands were completely red. Bits from the surgery were caught under his nails, and he wiped them off on his trousers as best he was able. The boy's leg would be an aching mess of pain for a few weeks, but it was better than what it was. Anders untied the tourniquet and picked up his tools, and left the boy sleeping for now.

It was the only room in the back with children, mercifully, and Anders got through another dozen patients including Delilah before he finally tired. He was sitting with Nate in the hall, not really talking, when Rolan and Rylien left one of the backrooms, carrying bowls filled with bloody water. Rolan looked at him, and Anders was almost surprised to note he didn't sneer. Instead Rolan gave him a nod and said, "Mage,"

"Templar." Anders said.

Rolan and Rylien left the hall. Anders guessed that was probably the most civil conversation they were ever going to have.

"That's something, I guess," Nathaniel said. "If Leonie had something planned for us I think he might be a little more..."

"Of a smug asshole?" Anders guessed.

"Yes." Nathaniel said. "Do you need any lyrium? As much as I hate to say it, I think they might be our best options if we're going to find any."

"I'm not begging anything from a templar." Anders said.

"I'll ask for you," Nathaniel said.

Rolan and Rylien came back a short while later, carrying new bowls with new water.

"Rolan," Nathaniel said, shoving himself up off the floor to cut the two templars off, "Do you have any lyrium potions you could spare?"

"Not that I know of, Warden," Rylien answered instead. "The warehouse was raided, several months back. We've only the lyrium for ourselves, and it's not prepared for drinking."

"Thank you anyway," Nathaniel said.

"Thank you, for helping the city." Rylien said, and looked down at Anders. The Silver Sword of Mercy on her and Rolan's breasts made Anders irrationally angry, no matter how civil the conversation. Then again, what was irrational about being angry over a symbol of oppression that had haunted you your entire life? "And thank you, Ser Mage, for helping with the wounded."

"If you've expended the last of your mana, I need a word," Rolan whined in that nasally voice of his.

"Knickerweasels?" Anders supplied.

"Very funny," Rolan scowled, and looked like himself again. "This is serious,"

"Fine." Anders climbed to his feet.

"Anders..." Nathaniel started.

"Well come with me, then," Anders said.

Nathaniel accepted the compromise, and Rolan seemed to accept it as well. They went into the room with the sleeping child to talk. "I'm told you held back the horde alone." Rolan said. "How?"

"Magic, obviously," Anders said.

"One mage doesn't have that kind of power, maleficar or not." Rolan said.

"I'm special." Anders said.

Rolan glared at him. There was just something ugly about him. He wasn't a terrible unattractive man. He kept his hair slicked back, and he never had helmet hair as a result. His nose was rather ordinary, and his complexion was clear for the most part, if a little shiny. His eyes were a deep green, and while he never smiled his jowls hadn't been destroyed the way Loghain's had, but there was just something ugly about him.

"That all?" Anders asked.

"What did you do?" Rolan asked. "I've spoken to the soldiers. To the survivors. I know you bled many of them, but even with a limitless supply of blood two maleficars would have been overwhelmed by the horde. No demons were summoned, that anyone has mentioned, and I sincerely doubt you managed to convince hundreds of people to lie for you."

Anders spread his hands and shrugged.

"What happened to Justice?" Rolan asked.

"I told you, he died." Nathaniel said.

"I want to hear him say it." Rolan said.

"He's gone." Anders said. He didn't feel anything, saying it. It wasn't a lie. Justice was gone. Anders was gone. They were something more, now. "... we'll need to find his body for Aura."

"I did," Nathaniel said. "The darkspawn... tore off a few pieces. His arm and his head. We found the head, but not the arm."

"... At least Aura will be finally be able to have Kristoff's ashes." Anders said, not surprised by how much it meant to him. Aura had meant a lot to Justice. Her relationship with Kristoff left Justice craving the chance to experience love for himself, as himself. Anders stared down at his hands and felt wretched. He'd never have that chance now.

"What did you do, mage?" Rolan demanded.

"What the fuck do you want from me, Rolan?" Anders snapped.

"I want to know how a mage of no remarkable strength nor talent whose primary focus is and always has been creationism manage to stem the tide of a horde of darkspawn with nothing but a few pathetic militiamen and one maleficar to aid him!" Rolan said. "I can only imagine it was something unholy; there were rumors about the late Commander Amell-"

"Don't you bring him into this!" Anders shouted, "Don't you even say his name! You hear me?"

"Or what?" Rolan asked. "How else would one mage stand against an Archdemon and live were he not a maleficar? What did he teach you? What did you do?"

"Fuck you Rolan," Anders said. This was a mistake. There was nothing any templar had to say that was worth listening to. Anders started for the door when Rolan grabbed his arm. Anders whirled with the motion and slammed his fist into Rolan's face. The force of it knocked the templar back against the wall. Thanks for that, Justice.

Nathaniel grabbed Anders' arm and pressed a hand into his chest to hold him back. "Anders calm down."

Rolan must have bit his cheek. He spat out a mouthful of blood. Good. "How many people did you sacrifice for whatever unholy ritual you used, maleficar? What's in the tome?"

"Fuck you is in the tome." Anders said, wrenching his arm out of Nate's grasp to storm out of the room. Anders left the hall, and the Chantry altogether, and heard Nathaniel jogging after him. He shoved open the doors to the Chantry and stepped into the courtyard, and was greeted with a slathering, snarling Barkspawn.

"Go back to sleep!" Anders snapped, and cast a spell to force the dog to obey.

"What happened?" Velanna asked.

"Fuck all happened," Anders muttered, storming to the edge of the courtyard to lean over the banister and burry his hands in his hair. He pulled out his hair tie and gave the strands a therapeutic yank.

Velanna came to lean next to Anders on the banister. Nathaniel took a spot behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist. Anders looked at them and wondered how long that was going to last. Leonie had forbid relationships. Were they going to try to press their luck disobeying her after deserting? They already were, carrying on like this in front of Rolan.

"What are you two going to do?" Anders asked.

"What do you mean?" Nathaniel asked.

"I mean what are you going to do?" Anders asked. "About Leonie's rules?"

"Fuck her rules," Velanna said.

"That's what we're going to do," Nathaniel agreed.

Anders chuckled, and stared out at the city. The view from the Chantry was of the burnt down market, the ruined Crown and Lion, the blackened streets below and the bloodied ones far away. "What do I do about the dog?" Anders asked, "Someone's going to find out if he keeps acting like that around me. Rolan's not that stupid."

"... Maybe we could leave him with Delilah," Nathaniel suggested.

"A mabari that's not imprinted, when she's expecting?" Anders asked.

"I ... really don't know, Anders," Nathaniel said.

"... imprint on him." Velanna said.

"Mabari don't work like that," Nathaniel said. "Once they're imprinted, they're imprinted for life. He'll never answer to anyone but Amell."

"Won't he?" Velanna asked, rather ominously, Anders thought. "We are maleficarum. Can we not persuade him to accept Anders as he is now?"

"You want me to mind control the dog?" Anders asked.

"I am certainly suggesting it," Velanna said.

"I'm not taking Amell's dog," Anders said.

"You need not imprint on it, just persuade it that you are no threat," Velanna said. "You are the better at blood magic between us. I doubt the mind of a mongrel would be difficult for you to bend."

"He's not a mongrel." Anders said. Anders looked back at the unconscious dog, but he had to admit there was no taking Barkspawn with him now with the way the dog reacted to him. They had to do something, or leave him behind. "I shouldn't do it in front of everyone, but how are we going to move him?"

"Have I mentioned you are a fool?" Velanna asked. She walked over to the dog, who easily weighed as much as a person, and with a bit of maneuvering slung the mabari over her shoulder. She turned on her heel and started for the stairs, showing as much strain as she would carrying a pillow.

"Does that turn you on at all?" Anders asked.

Nathaniel looked at him and frowned, and followed her.

"No answer means yes," Anders called after him before he followed him.

They took Barkspawn down the stairs and to the larder of the Crown and Lion. Velanna set the dog down on the floor, and roots ripped from beneath the floor boards to hold him to the ground. Nathaniel took up a watchful spot at the door and Anders reached for Amell's grimoire.

Vengeance. Vengeance. He snatched his hand snatched from the tome. His head ached. Anders pressed his fingers into his temple, "Stop it. Come on. We have to do this for Amell," Anders muttered, and wondered what he was even doing. He was the one who didn't want to touch the tome. Damn spirits and demons, there wasn't any distinction between him and Justice.

"If you cannot even convince him to do a simple task, how are you ever to control him when we are in the field?" Velanna demanded.

"It's not-ugh," Anders scrubbed his hand off on his trousers. There was still blood from the surgery under his finger nails. He thought anxiously of Compassion, and pushed the thought away. "It's not like that. I don't want to touch it. It freaks me out."

"It did not used to," Velanna said. "Clearly it is not you who is bothered by it, it is Justice."

"I am Justice," Anders snapped at her.

Velanna looked taken aback, and Anders tried to get a hold on himself. He took a deep breath and grabbed the tome again. Vengeance. Vengeance. "Shut up!" Anders yelled at the tome. He forced himself to keep a hold on it, and ripped it off his hip. The tome kept quiet, but Anders could still feel the demons that lay within.

They were fractured. Fragmented. In eternal agony, devoid of purpose, devoid of reason. He felt them writhing beneath his fingers as he turned the pages, silent but still pulling for him. They wanted out. They wanted out. They wanted out.

Anders inhaled sharply and tried to focus. He stopped at the page Amell had kept for persuasion, and looked at the spell Amell had known to permanently alter a person's perception. It was for a person, and not a mabari, but the dogs were smart. Anders didn't think it would be too different. He drew his dagger and cut above the bend in his elbow, an easy task considering Darrian had shredded much of his armor.

He drew from his heartbeat, and followed through Amell's instructions as he formed the spell between his fingers. It tugged at the core of a person, altering their sense of self to one that accepted whatever ideal the blood mage who cast the spell focused on. Anders didn't want the dog imprinted on him. He just wanted the dog to stay calm around him.

Abominations are safe. Don't fight me.

It was a dog.

My smell is safe. Don't fight whatever I smell like.

Anders dispelled the sleep hanging over Barkspawn. The dog woke with a yawn and a whine, and blinked up at him. Almost immediately, the mabari thrashed against the roots Velanna had restrained it with. It snarled viciously, teeth snapping against the floor, claws scrabbling trying to reach him. Anders cast the spell.

Barkspawn whined. The haze of blood flowed from Anders to the mabari, and sank into its ears, into its eyes, its nose. The dog shrank back and flailed, thrashing his head madly from side to side. It whined, and whined, and dropped its head to the floor, smashing its paws over its muzzle and ears, and eventually lay on the ground, still and panting.

Anders took an uncertain step forward. Barkspawn's eyes flicked up at him, and the dog's nostrils flared. Anders knelt a cautious distance away, but Barkspawn didn't lunge at him. Anders held out a hand, a few inches from the dog's nose, and tensed to pull away in case the dog dove at him. Barkspawn sniffed him. He whined again.

"... I think it worked," Anders said. He reached out to scratch the dog's ears, and the dog didn't fight him. "... Do you like me again?"

Barkspawn whined, but he didn't try to eat him. It was something.

"I think you can let go of him," Anders said.

The roots shrank back into the ground, one after the other. The mabari stayed where it was. Anders kept scratching Barkspawn's ears. The lifeward on its head had long since faded, as had the glyph of warding on its back. It had come out of the fight alive, and Anders hoped whatever he'd done hadn't left the dog irreparably damaged.

"Are we good?" Anders asked. "You want to get up now?" Anders leaned back on his heels. The dog didn't move. "... can you get up?"

Barkspawn got up on wobbly legs. The dog circled around him, head down; its eyes darted meekly between Anders and the floor.

That... was really not what Anders had been going for.

"Hey," Anders caught the dog's face in his hands. "Look. It's me. Remember? Amell said you had to be nice to me."

Barkspawn whined, and licked his face. Anders scratched between his ears.

"Clearly it is fine," Velanna said.

"Does this really look normal to you?" Anders demanded.

"It looks like he is not attacking you, and that was our goal." Velanna said.

"You're okay right?" Anders asked the dog, petting down its side. "The spell was just to help you learn, okay? You're not broken, are you?"

It wasn't as if Barkspawn could answer.

Chapter 45: Blessed Are the Peacekeepers

Notes:

Thank you all so much for your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 10 Cassus Afternoon
Vigil's Keep

It took them three days of patrols and excursions into the city to safely say that they had cleared out the last remnants of the darkspawn, but the people were unconvinced. Anders overheard unhappy murmurings that Leonie's decision to abandon the city was part of an Orlasian plot to retake Ferelden. He heard grumblings of malcontent that the Wardens were after more influence at court, and had tried to burn down the city to eliminate the trade competition against the Vigil.

He overheard people talking about him. Some of them the very same people Anders remembered healing. Some people called him a mage with enough strength to rival the Hero of Ferelden. Other people called him a monster. Some guessed him for a maleficar. Some even rightly assumed that he was an abomination. Anders tried not to let it get to him.

Constable Aidan distributed everything he could find to the refugees. He raided the templar warehouse, again, he raided all the taverns in the city, he raided known smuggler hide outs, he raided his own guardsmen's provisions. He was a good man, that Anders could tell, and he never questioned how Anders had managed to fight off so many darkspawn on his own.

They regained contact with the Bann, and learned that much of the city's nobility had survived by cowering in her estate. Anders was glad there hadn't been any more death, but it was hard to feel sympathetic to a handful of frumpy fops who had high walls and a whole host of guards to defend them, while the rest of the city had to make a mad dash for what little protection the Chantry afforded them.

For two days, Anders slept at night but didn't dream. He closed his eyes, and he opened them hours later with no memory of the in-between, and every time he thought anxiously of Compassion. On the third day Anders had nightmares of darkspawn, and woke feeling inexplicably unhappy until he remembered what Justice had told him or what he had told Anders once, in the Deep Roads.

Justice had claimed he would keep nightmares of darkspawn at bay given the opportunity. Anders supposed the spirit was upset it had failed to do so, and wished there was some way to talk to Justice. It wasn't his fault. It wasn't either of their faults. The nightmares were as much a part of them as they were of each other and there was no escaping them. Anders guessed he'd been right when he assumed not going to bed stressed was what held the nightmares back.

Barkspawn no longer made any effort to attack him, or even growl at him. Anders was relieved to see the mabari seemed to get better, after a few days. The dog no longer slunk everywhere, and for the most part it acted the way it always did: pissing on, and chewing and digging up everything. Anders might have been relieved, save for the fact that the dog acted different around him now. It was meek, and timid, and flinched if Anders moved too fast.

He tried not to.

Come the fourth day, the Chantry and everything around it was rank. It smelled like sweat and body odor, like piss and shit, like blood and rot, and every manner of filth imaginable. Anders himself smelled much the same. Between rooting out pockets of darkspawn, healing the injured, and searching the city for food, there wasn't any time to worry about bathing.

Taking out his hair tie had been a horrible idea. After being spoiled with regular baths, a buildup of oil had turned Anders' hair into a greasy, itchy mess. He spent most of his time with one hand to head, scratching at his scalp or his ever growing stubble. There still wasn't time to worry about his hygiene, when the first three days were up.

The darkspawn might have been gone, but the dead remained. The long and ugly process of cleaning up the city took them three more days. They set up mass pyres, outside the city, and dragged corpse after corpse out to meet them. They burned the darkspawn en masse with no ceremony, but the people were a little more complicated.

It wasn't just that they needed to stack the bodies on onto a pyre. They had to learn their names and tell their families. It wasn't easy. The arling of Amaranthine was home to at least twenty thousand people, and the City of Amaranthine home to over two thousand. They'd only managed to save a few hundred. It was worth doing, and Anders didn't regret it, but he regretted not saving more.

On the seventh day, a small entourage from Vigil's Keep arrived. There was a riot. The scouts saw the troops approach from the walls, and the news spread like wildfire. The survivors made a mad dash for the walls and the gates, and threw everything from sticks to rocks to what little food they had at the soldiers. Anders heard petite women and old men and even children scream and wail and wish death on the Vigil's soldiers for what they'd done.

They were right to be angry.

The Vigil's Soldiers had to stop outside the city gates for their own safety. Rolan went out to meet them, and came back to tell them that the Constable had killed the Mother, returned to the Vigil, and wanted to talk to all of them. Anders supposed 'talk' meant 'kill' in this case, but the three of them agreed that they didn't have anywhere else to go.

Anders never liked the thought of feeling trapped somewhere.

They went back to the Vigil with Rolan and the small group of soldiers, and Anders wondered the entire trip if they were walking to their deaths. All it took was a walk through the courtyard to realize the Vigil had faired exceptionally well, compared to the city. Amell had the army wearing silverite, he had the walls rebuilt from granite, he had lyrium bombs. Amell had turned the crumbling ruin into a fortress, and Leonie had still managed to get the Seneschal killed.

Anders thought of how in step Leonie was with Garavel, and wondered if she had even tried to save the poor old man who'd been so faithful to the Wardens. He wondered what would happen to the Vigil with the two ruthless warriors in charge. He wondered what would happen to them.

Leonie met with them in Amell's quarters. Anders looked at the Andrastian paraphernalia and the Orlesian decorations, and the woman who condemned thousands to die, and felt so furious he couldn't see straight. He walked into her quarters, Amell's quarters, and walked immediately back out. He pressed an arm against the cold stone wall in the hall and pressed his head against his arm, trying to calm down. Velanna rubbed his back, and leaned in to whisper in his ear.

"You must calm yourself," Velanna hissed, "You are breaking. Your eyes glow."

"What do you think I'm trying to do?" Anders hissed back.

"You can do this," Velanna said. "You are stronger than Justice,"

Anders turned his head to the side to glare at her, "I am Justice."

Velanna slapped him. "You are Anders. Get a hold of yourself."

For some reason, the slap didn't bother him. Anders took a deep breath, and dug his knuckles into his eyes. He inhaled, counted to three, and exhaled before he looked back at her, "Better?" Anders asked. He honestly couldn't tell.

"Barely." Velanna allotted, and gave his arm a tug. "Come. You need not listen to her. We will tell you what she had to say later."

Anders let her lead him back into Amell's quarters. Leonie was sitting in her armchair, facing the couch where Nathaniel sat waiting for them, and a fire was going. She had her arm in a sling, and Anders didn't feel any particular urge to heal her. He sat in the corner of the couch closest to the door, and gripped the armrest so hard his knuckles turned white. Velanna sat in the middle, between him and Nate. She looked Leonie dead in the eye and set her hand on Nathaniel's thigh.

"The three of you should know the darkspawn calling itself the Messenger led us to Drake's Fall, in the Dragonbone Wastes. We killed it, and the creature which calls itself 'The Mother,' but found no evidence of the one calling itself 'The Architect.'" Leonie said.

"With all due respect, Constable, why bother telling us?" Nathaniel asked. "Are the three of us not going to hang for treason?"

"No." Leonie said stiffly. "As I said, everyone is allotted one instance of forgiveness in Eram's memory. You deliberately disobeyed a command from your superior officer, and in my opinion such a thing is worthy of death, but I can respect your intent. More than that, I can respect the sacrifice made by your former comrades, Sigrun and Justice.

"I was a chevalier. I understand honor. Whatever my feelings, what you did was nothing if not that. You will not hang. I will take no action against the three of you, but the next time you think to disobey my orders, I won't have Jacen shoot you down. I will run you through myself. Are we clear?"

Velanna folded one leg over her knee and kept her hand firmly on Nathaniel's thigh. Anders kept his hand locked tight to the arm of the couch.

"... Again, with all due respect, Constable, no." Nathaniel said. "There are orders of yours I don't agree with and I have no intent to follow, regardless of the consequences."

"... I suspected this might be your answer," Leonie said. "Very well. I have spoken with Ser Tamara over the state of the arling and she and several others are of a mind that your presence will be invaluable in the coming months to placate the nobility who were loyal to your father. You will remain at the Vigil. Velanna will be transferred to Ansburg, in the Free Marches."

"Will she?" Velanna asked.

"She will." Leonie said. "Under force and under guard, if need be."

"You do not have the means to force me to do anything," Velanna said.

"This is meant as practicality, not punishment," Leonie said as if she hadn't heard her. "Nathaniel's actions at the Gates of Amaranthine are a perfect example of why romantic entanglements have no place in the Order. If not for his feelings for you, I have no doubt he would have deferred to my command. His desertion led to Anders' desertion which led to Justice's desertion which ultimately culminated in Sigrun's death and the loss of siege equipment worth several hundred sovereigns."

"Amell was not half so blind and he had no eyes." Velanna said, "Open yours, you fool of a woman. What happened at Amaranthine was no one's fault but yours."

"These are my orders." Leonie said.

"Dread Wolf take your orders," Velanna said.

"You can go willingly, or you can go with a host of templars escorting you." Leonie said.

Anders broke the arm of the chair. It snapped off under his hand, and splintered into his palm, and took his entire side of the couch with it. The couch lurched, and Velanna thudded into his side with a surprised grunt.

"I will not stand idly by and watch you commit these grievous injustices on my friends," Anders growled; his voice dropped several octaves without any intent on his part. Velanna smashed an arm into his chest, and Nathaniel jumped off the couch to stand in front of him.

"Anders, calm down," Nathaniel said. "We'll discuss it. We'll reason with her."

"She would give your lover to templars!" Anders raged, "She would condemn you for a feeling of such pure beauty it brings the soul to tears! She is not worthy of reason! She is not worthy of anything! She sentenced a city of innocents to death and it weighs not on her conscience! We should not have come back to this accursed place! We will only be ordered to commit more atrocities under her command!"

Velanna dragged him off the couch and manhandled him out the door. Nathaniel stayed behind, and Anders was dimly aware of Nathaniel talking to Leonie as Velanna forced him into the hall.

"Is Warden Anders alright...?" One of the guards outside Leonie's door asked nervously.

"Fine," Velanna snapped, an iron grip on his arm leading him down the hall and into an empty guest room, where Velanna slapped him. "Get a hold of yourself! You are angry, I am angry, we are all angry! That is no excuse for this!"

"It is every excuse!" Anders shouted. "I will not see you or any mage suffer at the hands of templars ever again! I will have her, I will have Rolan, I will have all of them before I allow it!"

Velanna curled her hands into fists, but instead of punching him she fell forward and dragged him into a hug. "You are the most idiotic, simple-minded spirit I have ever had the misfortune of meeting. You never should have left the Beyond. What do you care for the fate of a murderer?"

"Whatever your crimes, you atoned for them." Anders said, staring down at her. His anger faded, and he felt confused. It was a hug. He knew how to hug. Sigrun had taught him how to hug. A sudden migraine made Anders stumble, and he clutched his head while Velanna supported him. He inhaled mana, breathed out magic, and the headache was gone.

Velanna grabbed his shoulders and shoved him back. She looked up at him and frowned, and Anders winced preemptively and closed his eyes. He eased one eye open a few seconds later when the slap never came, and Velanna slapped him then. "Bloody really!?" Anders demanded.

"Do you truly still think you and Justice one and the same?" Velanna snapped at him. "Do you even remember what just happened?"

"Of course I remember, I was there!" Anders said, "I know what I said, and I'd say it again, and if it took Justice to give me the courage to say it then maybe he's one of the best damn things that ever happened to me!"

"He is going to get you killed!" Velanna said. "You cannot be angry! Not anymore! You are no longer human. When you are angry, it shows. It cracks through your skin and glows in your eyes and all will know you for an abomination and then we will lose you the way we lost Amell, and Sigrun, and Seranni, and Illshae, and I will not allow that!"

Velanna covered her mouth with her hand and bit back a sob. Tears started in the corners of her eyes and overflowed to spill down her cheeks and off her tattooed chin. Anders felt sick and queasy, and pulled her back into a hug. Velanna swatted angrily at him, and for the most part Anders ignored it.

"... we should leave," Anders said. "We should just leave, just go. The Collective could help us."

"Where would we go?" Velanna asked.

"I don't know." Anders said. "Anywhere but here."

"Nathan would never leave his sister," Velanna said. "I will not leave him."

"What if Leonie sends you to Ansburg?" Anders asked.

"I will not go." Velanna said. Anders pulled back from her and scrubbed at his face. Velanna did the same, and snarled under her breath, "This would never have happened if Amell were here."

"Yeah and if the sun never set it would never be night." Anders said.

"What on earth does that mean?" Velanna demanded.

"It means no shit." Anders said.

Velanna looked at him and frowned. "You cannot control it, can you?"

"... You've seen me play Wicked Grace," Anders said. "I've got so many emotions on my sleeve I can't keep any cards up there. But I mean... I don't think... I still don't think I'm going to hurt anyone. Back there... I just wanted us to leave. I didn't want to hurt her."

"You said you would kill anyone who tried to give me over to templars," Velanna said.

"Well yeah but templars aren't people. They don't count." Anders joked. Velanna scowled at him. "Well what do you want me to say!? Yes, I'd probably kill a templar if they tried anything, but so what? I can't kill someone in self-defense now?"

A knock on the door interrupted them. Nathaniel let himself in a few seconds later. "The guards said you two went in here. Is Anders-... not... um..."

"No more glowy," Anders said.

"Right," Nathaniel said. "Leonie said she would consider reconsidering."

"Bullshit." Anders said.

"Since when do you know blood magic?" Velanna asked.

"I don't know that it means anything. I got the impression she was only agreeing to give us time to grieve, before having you relocated." Nathaniel cracked his knuckles and leaned back against the door with a sigh. "She also... definitely noticed Anders' skin cracking and lighting on fire."

"So...?" Anders asked.

"She didn't say anything, really," Nathaniel said. "I don't think she cared, or even understood what it meant."

"Rolan will." Velanna said.

"Fuck Rolan," Anders said.

"Kill Leonie, Marry Justice?" Nathaniel guessed.

Anders snorted. Velanna giggled.

"... Do you want to hold the funeral now?" Nathaniel asked. "Before things get any worse?"

"Why not?" Anders shrugged, "I haven't cried enough today."

"How are we to bury her?" Velanna asked.

"A stone cairn would work," Nathaniel said, "Or.... we could use the crypts, beneath the Vigil. They're Avvar, but a few of the sarcophagi are empty, and Sigrun told me that only nobles and Paragons are buried in crypts."

"Crypts," Anders said in time with Velanna. They smiled, but sadly.

"... I think we should tell some of the others," Nathaniel said. "Not Leonie or Rolan, obviously, but she got along with Stroud and Jacen."

They agreed, and the three of them went down to the barracks to find Stroud and Jacen. The Free-Marcher and the old Dalish both accepted their invitations. While they were there, they cleaned up Sigrun's bunk. They gathered all her trinkets and all her baubles and every little oddity she'd collected once she set foot on the surface.

The five of them went down to the crypts beneath the Vigil. They searched the walls for an empty sarcophagus, and Anders set the few pieces of metal from Sigrun's weapons and armor inside. He added her snow globe, the spyglass from Amell she'd loved so much, the few potted plants Velanna had helped her grow, the tiny toy chariot Nathaniel had painted for her and the little toy horse Oghren gave her to go with it.

He put in her favorite book, a painted skyball of polished black with a handful of constellations on it, the empty bottle of Aqua Magus she'd wanted because she thought the blue blown glass looked pretty. She had no jewelry, no pretty dress, no fancy headband: none of things Anders had seen her wear in the Fade but never thought to get her until just now.

"Anyone want to go first?" Anders asked.

"I don't know what to say," Nathaniel admitted. "They say the Maker didn't create dwarves, but I don't know any dwarven prayers."

"... If I may, Brothers and Sisters?" Stroud spoke up. "I have known a few dwarven Brothers and Sisters in my time, and I know the proper words for funeral rites."

"Please," Nathaniel said.

"Thank you." Velanna said.

Stroud cleared his throat, and took a spot next to the sarcophagus, "Atrast tunsha. Totarnia amgetol tavash aeduc."

"That's a mouthful," Anders said, "What's it mean?"

"I cannot say," Stroud admitted. "I only know the words."

"May I say something?" Jacen asked after a few moments of silence.

"No one else is," Anders said.

"I did not know the child long, but for one so young she was extraordinarily brave," Jacen said, "What happened at the shemlen city was a great tragedy. That she had the courage to give her life to stop it was one of the most noble things I have ever seen in my entire life, and I am very old."

Anders snorted, and gave the grey-haired Dalish a long look, remembering the orders Leonie had given him. "Back there. In Amaranthine. Did you miss on purpose, with me?"

"You deserved the chance to try, da'len." Jacen admitted. "... It would have been a terrible waste of life."

"... I want to sing a song for her." Velanna said.

Nathaniel squeezed her shoulders.

"Go ahead," Anders said.

Velanna took a spot by the sarcophagus and ran a hand over the stone lid. The song she sang was soft, and in Elvish, and it was anything but beautiful. Velanna's voice cracked, and she sang off key, and Anders didn't understand a word of it.

Sigrun would have loved it.

"What did that mean?" Nathaniel asked when she finished.

"It means she is gone, and we are not." Velanna said unhelpfully.

Nathaniel started talking, something about how Sigrun had always been fascinated with their religions and how he didn't think she would mind if they said a few prayers to their own gods for her. Anders didn't hear him. He heard the footsteps echoing through the crypt, and he saw Gerod in the doorway, and he saw red.

"You would dare!?" Anders raged, Velanna didn't bother holding him back. Anders stormed across the crypt and grabbed Gerod by his collar when the giant set foot in the crypt. He slammed Gerod back against the doorframe to the room, "You would dare walk on this hallowed ground and defame this holy ceremony and the reverence we bore for our Sister!? You are not welcome here! You will leave!"

"I will let him kill you," Velanna threatened Gerod from her spot by Sigrun's sarcophagus.

Gerod looked at him with tears streaming down his face. They meant nothing to Anders. "I just wanna leave her flowers. That's all. I just wanna leave her flowers, and I'll go."

"You will leave!" Anders ordered again, "Sigrun has no need of you!"

"Da'len, at least let him speak," Jacen urged.

Anders didn't know why he listened.

"I know what I did to her wasn't right," Gerod said. "I know I'm not right. I know. Kids fuck me up, but ever since the Constable cut my nuts off it ain't so bad. I don't want it so bad. Someone shoulda done it a long time ago. I just wanna leave her flowers. She weren't no kid. No kid's ever gonna do something like that."

Nathaniel appeared at Anders' side. Anders didn't feel the need to be surprised. Nathaniel took the sweaty mess of handpicked wildflowers with all their broken stems and missing petals out of Gerod's meaty hand. "Get out." Nathaniel said.

Anders let go. Gerod slunk out of the crypt. Nathaniel looked down at the flowers in his hand and flung them angrily against the wall after Gerod was gone. They scattered and ripped into pieces. "Fuck," Nathaniel muttered. "Where were we?"

"I believe you were suggesting we each say a prayer," Stroud said.

Nathaniel squeezed Anders' shoulder. "Come on, Anders."

Anders let Nathaniel urge him back towards the sarcophagus. Anders folded his arms over his chest and glared at the floor.

"Are you going to say that ridiculous prayer of yours?" Velanna asked.

"I had a different verse in mind, actually," Nathaniel said, "From the Canticle of Andraste. Let the blade pass through the flesh, let my blood touch the ground, let my cries touch their hearts. Let mine be the last sacrifice."

Stroud said his own verse. Jacen and Velanna said their own Dalish prayers. Anders didn't say anything. He didn't know what to say. They spoke a bit of Sigrun, and eventually Stroud and Jacen left the three of them to mourn. Velanna and Nathaniel shed a few tears, but eventually they too left. Anders stood in the crypt alone, staring down at the sarcophagus that was far too big for the body that didn't fill it.

"If we weren't us I bet we'd be talking about the Maker right now, and whether or not dwarves go to his side," Anders said to himself. "... Sigrun went into the Fade. It's not like it's not possible."

There was no one to answer him.

Anders sighed and looked around the crypt. There were the Avvar sarcophagi, the ruined flowers Gerod had brought, the passageway that led deeper into the crypt and to the binding circle Amell had used ages ago to summon a demon. Amell had stepped into it in case he became an abomination. Anders remembered being so angry with him; at the time, he couldn't think of anything worse that could happen to a mage besides Tranquility.

Anders sat down on the stone floor and leaned back against Sigrun's sarcophagus with a sigh. "I don't even know any songs," Anders said to himself. "It's not like we ever had a reason to sing in the Circle. What was there to sing about? You get a handful of mages together and you start up a chant and you're definitely going to bring the templars down on you."

Anders thudded his head against the tomb, trying to think. The only song that came to him wasn't even his.

"Somewhere there's a mother,
Crying for her daughter.
She's a legionnaire,
They sent her out to slaughter.
But don't you cry for her,
She don't need your sympathy.
She's a legionnaire,
And that's the best that dust can be.

Somewhere there's a father,
Crying for his son.
His son's a legionnaire,
In a war that can't be won.
But don't you cry for him,
He don't need your sympathy.
He's a legionnaire,
And that's the best that dust can be.

Somewhere there's a husband,
Crying for his wife.
His wife's a legionnaire,
And she's fighting for her life.
But don't you cry for her,
She don't need your sympathy.
She's a legionnaire,
And that's the best that dust can be.

Somewhere there's a woman,
Crying all alone.
Her lover was a legionnaire,
And now he's lost to Stone.
But don't you cry for him,
He wouldn't want your sympathy.
He died a legionnaire,
And that's the best that dust can be."

Anders sighed again and pulled his knees up to his chest and draped his arms around them. "... do you suppose that works?"

There was still no one to answer him.

"We really couldn't have picked a worse time to do this, huh?" Anders said to himself. "... everything upsets me lately. Gerod. Rolan. Leonie. Darrian... that poor kid and his foot... I guess it upsets you too, huh? Maker, I don't even know which one of us is talking anymore."

Anders got up eventually and left the crypt. He went to find Aura, and after a bit of asking got someone to point him towards the scullery. Aura was laundering clothes, and she stopped seeing him in the doorway. "Anders!" Aura said brightly, abandoning her workload to run over to him. "I'm so glad to see you safe! They-.... They are saying Kristoff died?"

"They are saying that." Anders agreed. "Could we talk? Maybe in the chapel?"

"It is crowded of late," Aura said. "Perhaps somewhere else? The servants' quarters are not terribly busy this time of day."

"Sure." Anders agreed, and let her lead him through the Vigil to the servants' quarters. They weren't much different from the Wardens' barracks. Rows of bunks were pushed up against the walls, with trunks at their feet and writing desks against the walls. The center of the room had the same few tables, and a door on either side of the room left to the servants' washrooms.

Aura led him to a bunk that must have been hers and sat perched on the edge of it. Anders sat down next to her.

"What happened?" Aura asked.

"A lot of darkspawn," Anders grinned weakly. "Justice made huge sacrifice for all of us and we won the fight, but he's... he's gone now."

"I am so sorry," Aura said, taking his hand and squeezing it. Her hand was soft, and the simple touch meant a startling amount to Anders. "I know he was a dear friend to you."

"Yeah, he really was." Anders said. "We managed to retrieve Kristoff's body when the fighting was over. We carted it back to the Vigil. It should still be in the courtyard waiting for you. I know you don't want to see him on a pyre, en masse with the rest of the soldiers. I can burn him for you, so you can have his ashes."

Aura sniffed once, and inhaled shakily. "That certainly is most kind of you. Thank you. Do you-... know what happened to Justice? If he returned to the Fade, or to the Maker's side?"

"... I know he wouldn't want you to be sad for him," Anders said.

"I have never spoken to a spirit before." Aura admitted, "It was... distressing, but he was very kind about everything."

"Yeah, he really was." Anders said.

"It's silly, you know." Aura said, "That a spirit of Justice possessed him, of all things. He used to be a bounty hunter before the Wardens recruited him. He was always so ashamed of his past, and so proud of his life as a Warden. He thought it was a chance to redeem himself. He really believed in your Order."

"Justice told me," Anders said.

"Do you have anything I could use? For his ashes?" Aura asked. "An urn, or maybe a box?"

"Yeah," Anders said quickly, "I can find you something. Do you want to meet me in the courtyard?"

"Alright," Aura agreed. "And-Anders... thank you. For everything. You have been so very kind and forthright with me. I can see why a spirit of Justice would befriend you."

Anders cleared his throat and gave her a smile. He left the servants' quarters and went to his infirmary, where he found a metal jar he normally used to hold incense of awareness. He dumped out what was left of the incense in the grass outside the infirmary, and then froze, staring at the pile of dust and what he'd done.

How much had that cost?

Anders shoved the thought away. Justice for Kristoff and Aura was what it cost. Anders stuffed the jar under his arm, and went out to the outer courtyard. The cart was where it had been, pushed off to the side of the front gates with Kristoff's body atop it. His head, still in its helmet, lulled down by his feet. It made Anders uncomfortable to look at. He felt like he was looking at his own corpse.

Aura joined him eventually, and Anders gave her an easy smile. "Did you want to have any kind of ceremony or anything?" Anders asked.

"Perhaps if you could say a prayer?" Aura asked.

"I uh-..." Anders rubbed at the back of his neck, "I don't have a lot of the Chant memorized."

"I can always have a service for him later." Aura said.

"Alright." Anders handed her the jar, and went picked up Kristoff under his arms. He dragged the headless corpse outside the Vigil's walls, and off to the side of the road before he went back for his head. The whole thing was unspeakably unsettling.

It wasn't him. It wasn't Anders, and it wasn't Justice. It was just a body. Anders set the corpse down, and inhaled mana to rip a chunk of earth from the ground and toss it aside. It was misshapen, and shallow, but it would fit a body. Anders set Kristoff in the small pit, and stepped back to stand off to the side with Aura.

Anders tried to think of what the Chanter had said to him. The prayers Nathaniel was always giving for the dead they stumbled across. Nothing came to him.

"You do not have to say anything," Aura assured him.

"Has anyone ever told you you're pretty perceptive?" Anders asked.

"Often, in fact," Aura smiled sadly.

"I just I think he deserves something." Anders said.

"He deserves to rest." Aura said.

Anders conjured fire between his fingers, and held it until he started to sweat. He cast the spell into the pit, and the flames devoured Kristoff.

Anders and Aura stood and watched.

"... Are you going to go back to Jader? With your sister?" Anders asked.

"I think so," Aura said. "There are too many unhappy memories here."

"Yeah," Anders said, "I know what you mean."

Chapter 46: Champions of the Just

Notes:

Thank you so much for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 15 Cassus Evening
Vigil's Keep

Five days after they returned to the Vigil and Anders decided he couldn't stand it anymore. Every evening he went to sleep, and every night he failed to dream, and every morning he woke, and every day he lived without Compassion. She was his spirit. She was the reason anyone had ever called him a spirit healer, and the closest thing he had left to a mother. Her very essence came from the life they built together, and Anders couldn't stand not knowing what had become of her.

He knew how to reach her. Amell had a Harrowing ritual in his grimoire, and it could be tailored to a demon, or tailored to time. With a little bit of preparation, Anders could set up a ritual to send him into the Fade for half an hour to talk to Compassion. All it would take was a small silver bowl, and lyrium. The lyrium was the only thing Anders had a problem with.

It took a special ritual to prepare, and lyrium already prepared for drinking was no substitute. Anders needed the lyrium Amell had smuggled from Kal'Hirol, or the lyrium he had mined from the Wending Woods. Anders could get it from wherever Amell kept it, or he could beg it from Dworkin and hope the dwarf didn't tell anyone. Anders was never fond of begging.

Anders went to Nathaniel, and asked him for his help breaking into the Vigil's storage rooms so he could go through Amell's things. Unsurprisingly, Nathaniel agreed with little more than a shrug. Even more unsurprisingly, Velanna overheard them, considering she was sitting against Nathaniel's side when Anders' asked, and wanted to participate in anything that was even the slightest bit of defiance against Leonie.

They agreed to wait until nightfall, and went sneaking through the Vigil together. Anders rather loved it. He loved it even more when Barkspawn woke and followed him, and didn't seem quite as terrified as he had been for the past few days. Anders guessed it took time to adjust when a maleficar wrenched at the core of your being and completely redefined it.

The storerooms were beneath the Vigil, and Amell's things were kept under lock, key, and ward. Anders handled the wards, Nathaniel the lock and key, and Velanna kept watch. It took them around five minutes of fiddling, but they managed to break in, and Anders darted around Nathaniel to go through the crates and trunks stacked in the small room. He found a handful of things, and all of them upset him.

Books, tomes, an assortment of crests, stamps, and even a shield with Amell's house's heraldry that made Anders think Amell was a damn liar when he said keeping his family name was 'just a joke.' He found the box of letters, again, and Amell's journal. He grabbed the journal, intending to go through it to find out what Amell had done with the lyrium, when he heard the singing.

It was a beautiful sound. Anders followed it to another trunk, and the source proved to be a small chest of silver with liquid lyrium inside. Anders sat on his knees, enraptured. It wasn't like the Call from his nightmares, but it was still beautiful. Anders didn't think any sound he'd heard yet could compare to it. He wished very suddenly that Kristoff's body hadn't lost its arm, and he'd been able to keep the ring the Circle had given him. That he had given Justice.

"Anders?" Nathaniel prompted him. "We shouldn't linger."

"No-I... you're right." Anders closed the chest and stuffed it under his arm. He found the silver bowl Amell had used when they'd fought the Fear demon together, and took it with him. "I have everything." Anders said.

They left the storage room. Nathaniel locked the door behind them, and Anders warded it, and it was like they'd never been there. They fled the lower levels of the Keep and went to the cellars, where they'd agreed to have the ritual. They picked a spot in the crypt near Sigrun's sarcophagus, and Anders set up the ritual on the cold stone floor.

"Remind me again of your intent?" Velanna asked.

"I'm going to go into the Fade and talk to Compassion." Anders said.

"But what is the need?" Velanna demanded, "Justice is more than capable of providing you with the energy needed for your spells, and you tell me he handles your connection to the Fade now."

"Look, sure, Justice is great, but I've been a spirit healer since I was twelve, and that whole time the only spirit I used was Compassion." Anders explained, "I need to be sure that whatever I did, she's alright. Spirits are just a reflection the mortal world, and for fifteen years Compassion reflected me. I don't know if she can pull on anything else. I don't know what will happen to her now that I can't reach her."

"Your old spirit will find something else to reflect, I am sure." Velanna said.

"... I think maybe Anders is right to be concerned," Nathaniel said from where he was leaning against Sigrun's sarcophagus, Barkspawn resting under one arm. "There hasn't been a lot of Compassion at the Vigil lately."

Velanna made a disgusted noise, "It does not work like that. Place and time are nothing in the Beyond. Concepts and symbols are important, and spirits can find them anywhere so long as they exist somewhere in the mortal world. A spirit of Pride might draw from someone in Ferelden and someone in Nevarra, and never know the distance between them."

"You didn't know her," Anders said. "She was shy. She didn't go searching for anything to fulfill her purpose. I did it for her."

"She sounds weak." Velanna said.

"So what?" Anders asked.

Velanna didn't have a retort.

Anders went back to setting up the ritual. He cast a charm on the silver bowl to ensure it could hold the magic, and used the instructions in Amell's grimoire to cast the ritual he needed to tie the lyrium to his soul and his spirit. He took a seat next to the bowl of silver, and flexed his hands, thinking of the pain that always came with the ritual, "I'll wake up in a half hour."

"We will be here," Velanna said.

"Good luck, Anders," Nathaniel said.

Anders took a deep breath, and wished he was holding someone's hand. Amell, Justice, Compassion, anyone, but he was alone. He dunked his hand into the bowl, and the lyrium swept up his arm. It was as cold and dark as the Void, and it sank into his heart with all the pain of a blade. It felt like dying, as always, but Anders thought of what merging with Justice had felt like, and knew some pains were worse than death.

The stars stood still, his heart and lungs seemed to freeze.

All was black and silent.

Anders didn't know how much time passed; time was meaningless. Anders sat up through no will of his own, and ran his fingers through the reeds springing up from the ground around him. "... It is good to feel the breath of the Fade again," Anders said to himself.

He hadn't thought the words. He hadn't meant to say them. His body stood up of its own accord and looked up to the emerald sky, and he felt a little homesick, but with no real desire to return home. "Anders?" He said to himself, and looked around the Fade.

No answer. Anders looked down at his hands involuntarily and noted the blue flames cracking through his skin. "Ah yes... Of course... I had hoped it might be different here." Anders said quietly.

He flexed his fingers experimentally and finally realized what had happened. They were reversed in the Fade. Justice was dominant here. Anders felt like he was watching everything the spirit did and said from behind his own eyes. It was disorienting, but...

He didn't mind that much.

"... I miss talking to you." Justice said quietly. Anders still felt tangled in him; he'd thought the same thing. He felt things Justice felt in the real world. Said things Justice wanted to say. It would probably work the same way here.

It wasn't as if Anders wanted to do much more than make sure Compassion was alright. Justice looked around the Fade and the memories that littered it. He pulled the memory of a thick woolen scarf from air and pressed the soft fabric against his face.

"I like this scarf." They said.

"What are you seeking here?" Compassion appeared beside him to ask. "Can I help you? I do not often see visitors,"

Justice looked up at her. She still wore Amell's form, and spoke with his voice. Messy black hair was strewn about her head and fell into her eyes, gold as always, but flecked with red for Anders' sake. Anders felt relieved. She was whole and well and fine. "Compassion." Justice said, and smiled.

Compassion stared at him, saw through him, and let loose such a shriek it sent a sharp pain up Anders' spine, "What have you done!? What have you done to him, you wretched demon!?"

"I am no demon," Justice said. "I am-"

Compassion dove on him, screaming fury. Her hands lit on fire and she tore into Justice's chest, digging and clawing as if to rip out his heart. "Get out! Get out of him! You will not have him!"

Justice shoved her off and darted backwards, but they were in her demesne. A wall formed behind him and he slammed into it trying to retreat. "I did nothing! He agreed!" Justice said.

"You lie!" Compassion shrieked.

No, no, no. Calm her down. Calm her down.

"Calm yourself!" Justice begged obediently. Thank the Maker. It worked. Their influence worked both ways. Compassion flickered and vanished. She reappeared beside Justice to take a vicious swipe at his face. Justice ducked and scrambled backwards. "Desist! Anders does not want this!"

"Get out! Get out of him!" Compassion screamed again. She flickered in and out of existence, and pursued Justice relentlessly. She dove for his throat, his chest, her hands radiating fire and fury. Her demesne reformed and reshaped itself around them, manifesting walls and spikes to cut off Justice's retreat.

Justice was infinitely stronger. Anders didn't doubt he could have killed her if he made the effort, but all he did was run and plead. "Compassion, calm yourself! Anders is fine! He is well! He was willing!"

"You lie!" Compassion shrieked. Her eyes burned brighter, hotter. Amell's form started to burn away, and her fingers bled slowly into claws.

"Cease this, I beg you!" Justice pleaded, dodging a chain of white lightning that seemed an extension of Compassion's arm. "Look at what you are becoming! Anders does not want this for you!"

"If you will not release him I will kill you both and it will be a Mercy!" Compassion threatened, her form falling apart with every hostile act she took. "I will not let him live as your prisoner, demon!"

This wasn't happening. Compassion didn't get angry. She didn't have outbursts. She was just compassionate. He had to stop her. Anders had never even heard of demons of Mercy, but he could see it happening in the claws shaping on the ends of her finger tips, in the fire burning in her eyes. Justice was right. Demons were just corrupted spirits, and now it was happening to Anders' spirit.

They had to do something. Anders couldn't lose another person he loved.

"Stop!" Justice roared. He caught Compassion when next she dove for him, and pinned her to the ground. "Look at yourself!" Justice ordered, grabbing Compassion's wrist and holding her clawed hand in front of her face. "Do not give into this perversion! Anders loves you! No injustice has befallen him! He made a willing sacrifice-" Justice fumbled.

Compassion. Appeal to Compassion, not Justice.

"A sacrifice to save hundreds!" Justice said at Anders' urging, "His aim was to help, as he would help you now were he able. He is no prisoner. He is still here. He just cannot touch the Fade, as I cannot touch the realm of mortals!"

"I do not believe you!" Compassion snarled, thrashing under him.

"You must!" Justice forced her back down. "I am Justice. I would not deceive you!"

"You possessed him!" Compassion screamed. "You possessed him! You possessed him!"

Anders let go of her shoulders to grab her face in his hands and kiss her. It was like kissing feathers, or cotton, or clouds. He could barely feel it, and couldn't hang onto it for more than a moment, but Compassion sobbed into his mouth. Justice let go of her. Compassion collapsed, weeping, and covered her face with her hands.

The claws seemed to recede, and the fire burning through her seemed to die down. Justice rolled off of her, and knelt unhappily beside her.

"Why?" Compassion struggled out.

"To save a city." Justice said.

"I cannot reach him," Compassion wept, "I cannot even feel him through you."

"Nor he you." Justice said. "Or I know he would call on you for his magic."

"Why would he do this?" Compassion asked, "We swore we would not be imprisoned ever again, and now you have made him a prisoner in his own skin."

"It is not so," Justice said. "He is himself, in the realm of mortals, as I am myself here. We are tangled tightly together, and it is... confusing, but we are no prisoners. I know that you have doubts, but when I speak it is as much with his voice as mine."

"It has been so quiet," Compassion said. She still hadn't moved from the ground, and lay with one arm over her chest. Justice reached out and took hold of it. "Is this you, or him?" Compassion asked.

"It is both of us," Justice said. "I feel his thoughts as my own, and I know you had a strong bond with him. I have done you a great disservice breaking it."

"... can you not let go of him?" Compassion asked.

"I cannot," Justice said. "I tried. When we first joined... I had never felt such completion. Anders is mana and magic, and the Fade seemed roar within him. I was at home, and yet I could still taste the mortal air, feel the caress of the cold winter wind on warm living skin, and it was nothing at all like the life I had lived in a dead man. I... I confess I lost myself to it for a time.

"Then I felt what I had done to him. Joining was effortless for me, but agony for him. The pain of it fractured his mind, and trying to reach him was like picking through pieces of broken glass. I fled the battle, and found a secluded place where I tried to let go of him. To return to the Fade, or to the air around me, or anything to free him. But a living host is far different from a dead one.

"Anders had been willing, and we were too tangled. I could not pull myself apart from him. It took me a day to find his memory of magic and learn to heal with it, so I could put his memories back together as best as I was able. Please believe me when I say I mean him no harm."

"Do you swear it?" Compassion asked.

"I aspire to Justice as much as you to do to Compassion," Justice said. "I would not lie to you."

"... I will never talk to him again, will I?" Compassion asked.

"I cannot say." Justice said. "I am sorry. I would let him if I understood how we speak through each other, but he feels quiet right now. Melancholic."

Compassion pulled a memory from the air around them, and Justice inhaled blood and magic and sweat. The scent meant very little to him and very much to Anders. Compassion might not even be able to continue existing without him, and she was still looking for ways to comfort him.

"He loves you very much," Justice said. "He wants you to find another to draw on."

"There is no one else," Compassion said.

"I can feel the magic that holds us here fading." Justice said. "... Anything you tell me you tell him."

Compassion sat up and crawled over to him. She climbed into Justice's lap and kissed him, and it tasted of light and warmth and feathers and finger tips. "Please take care of him for me."

The Fade fell away, and Anders woke up crying.

Anders rolled over and onto his ass, and sobbed into his hands. He could just imagine Velanna scoffing at him, and almost wished she'd slap him. Maker knew he needed it. He didn't want to think about what had just happened. He didn't want to think about anything. He grabbed hold of his collar and pulled it up around his face and wiped his face off on his tunic.

Anders wondered why Velanna and Nathaniel weren't saying anything. He cleared his throat and shoved his tunic back down and looked up.

Where was he?

Where were they?

Anders was still in the crypt, but he wasn't where he'd been. The room he was in was filled with statues of ancient Avvar warriors, glaring judgmentally down at where he sat in the very center of the room. Beside him was a golden celestial globe, and it rotated leisurely. The room was lit with the soft green glow of veilfire, and in front of him...

Anders looked up into the white griffon emblem of the Wardens on a plated chest piece. He looked up further still, into Rolan smiling face. The templar stood with one hand on his hip, leaning casually to one side. Beside him, the silver sword of mercy decorated Ser Rylien's armor. Eylon was there, leaning on his staff with his one good arm, and Cera as well. Four other templars Anders didn't recognize were with them.

Velanna, Nathaniel, and Barkspawn were nowhere that he could see.

"Well, well, look who's finally awake," Rolan said.

"Did I oversleep?" Anders joked, climbing slowly to his feet. He looked for his staff, but it was gone. He reached for his tome, but there was nothing at his hip.

"Missing a few things, are we?" Rolan mused.

"I'm sure they'll turn up," Anders said brightly. "If nothing else, I know Cera has a staff I can borrow."

"What are you waiting for, Rolan?" Eylon demanded. "Kill him."

"Not without proof." Ser Rylien said. "I will not consent."

"Step out of the circle, maleficar," Rolan ordered.

"What do you think I've been trying to do my whole life?" Anders joked.

"You still think this is a game," Rolan noted bemusedly. "You stand accused of consorting with demons. If you cannot leave the binding circle, you will be executed, and your fellow maleficar will be made Tranquil for harboring an abomination. If you can step out from the binding circle beneath you, you will be released. We will return your things, and never speak of this again,"

"Return them?" Eylon demanded. "Just moving that tome into this room drove Ser Borris mad."

"... The tome we can burn." Rolan agreed.

One of the four templars held Amell's grimorie aloft. He had his sword stabbed through Ander's belt, which Anders apparently was not wearing, and the grimorie dangled off it. The templar gave his sword a shake and Amell's grimorie toppled onto the floor and landed on its spine, opening up to a random page.

"Eylon." Rolan invited the one-armed mage to destroy one of the only things Amell had treasured.

"No!" Anders screamed, and rushed forward. The binding circle flared beneath him, a shimmer of white light rippled out from where he'd connected with the invisible confines of his prison.

"I knew it," Rolan said, his nasally voice vibrating with smug satisfaction.

Ser Rylien made a quick gesture with her hand over her heart, "Maker have mercy. It looks so human."

"It's not," Rolan said, "Eylon, burn the tome. The rest of you, kill this creature."

Anders felt the magic gathered around Eylon, and slammed his shoulder into his barrier. The barrier flared a second time, and held a second time. Rolan raised his sword, and fire crashed down on Anders. Agony buckled his knees, and he fell. A second smite followed the first, followed by a third, and a fourth.

Anders screamed until all the breath left his lungs. Fire took its place, and the searing pain reminded Anders of merging with Justice and having his mind torn to pieces. He was burning from the inside out. From the outside in. It was scorching, caustic; he felt like his skin was being torn off in strips, his blood not boiled but turned to steam that rose into his every muscle. The pain of it gave him a seizure, and he blacked out.

That seemed a mercy, but it was a brief one. No sooner had his eyes closed, than they opened again. Anders lashed out the binding circle, again and again, and the runes fractured under his onslaught. Amell's tome was slowly burning, despite all its protective enchantments. The page it was open to blackened and crinkled, and the reservoir rune which held a demon broke.

Anders felt a sharp pain in his heart as the binding to him broke, and a miasma of shadow rose from the tome. The tome screamed. Agony and Anguish, Terror and Despair. Not the one, brief scream Anders had heard when he had first touched it, but a long and drawn out cry. One of the templars fell on his own sword to stop the sound. A wave of energy exploded from the tome, and the binding circle holding Anders broke.

Anders rushed Rolan. He lashed out, and the silverite of Rolan's armor exploded in a shower of molten metal. Anders grabbed Rolan's face in his hand, and pumped fire down his throat and into his lungs. The templar's flesh melted off onto Anders' hand, a warm sticky mess that gave way to bone. Anders charred the templar's skull until it turned to ash in his hand and there was nothing left for him to hold onto.

What was left of Rolan collapsed. Anders ran a bloody hand through his hair and cast wild eyes around the room. There was a sword in Anders' stomach. He hadn't noticed it. The blade stuck out the front of him, and he could feel the hilt pressed into his back as an afterthought. There was no pain to it, and Anders reached behind his back to pull the sword out and drop it on the floor.

Anders could feel blood running down his legs, a distant warmth that didn't concern him. Eylon was floating. Shadow and fire poured out of his mouth, and Anders watched him swallow down a demon of Despair. The joining caused another explosion, and knocked Anders back into one of the Avvar statues. It fell over, and shattered the golden celestial orb rotating madly in the center of the room, trying to restore a circle Anders had already ruined.

Eylon screamed, a twisted scream of agony and ecstasy, and a new arm burst out from the stump at his shoulder in a shower of blood. The limb was thin and skinless and so long it hung down to his feet. Eylon lashed out with it, and plunged newly formed claws into Ser Rylien's throat. A blaze of white, righteous wrath crashed down from the ceiling as one of the surviving templars tried to smite Eylon. The abomination wailed, and a shock of lightning from Cera sent it fleeing from the crypt.

Anders chased it. Eylon ran out of the chamber and into the crypts, up into the dungeons. Other templars were there. Other soldiers from the Vigil. Other prisoners in their cells. A mabari was there as well, and it stared at the abomination curiously for a handful of seconds before a lash from Eylon's elongated hand killed it in an instant.

Anders dove on Eylon, and ripped into his back. His skin was like parchment beneath Anders' fingers, and he dug through flesh and muscle until his fingers hit bone and Eylon exploded with energy, throwing Anders backwards. Anders crashed into the bars of a cell, and one of the surviving templars took Eylon's head off with a vicious swipe of his sword.

A soldier in silverite armor charged him. Anders lashed out, and the metal of his armor melted. It felt like warm wax against Anders' skin. The blood like a summer rain. Every bit of bone and flesh and muscle that gave before him was little more than a pinprick of feeling in a haze of fury. Anders sought out every Silver Sword of Mercy and burned it from every breast and tore through any formless shape or shadow that got in his way.

Anders sat on his knees in the courtyard when it was over, under a starless sky on a moonless night. He was clutching Amell's tome beneath his fingers, but he didn't remember picking it up. It was burnt and tattered like the sacrilegious scripture Amell had given him months ago, and just as precious. His hands were more than bloody, and they stained it.

Anders stared down at the tome in his hands, and looked around him. There were no bodies in the courtyard. Only pieces. A leg. A gauntlet. Half a head. Ash and char and gore and Maker it wasn't possible that all of them were templars. Anders stumbled to his feet and ran back into the cellars, down into the dungeons. "Velanna!" Anders yelled.

He tripped, on blood slick piece of bone, running down the stairs, and crashed down the last five steps. He lost his grip on Amell's tome and it went sliding through ankle high waters of blood and the voided bowels of dead men. Anders ran after it and snatched it back up, and ran to the dungeons. "Nate!" Anders yelled.

He made it to the dungeons. His staff was sitting on a table, beside the cells. Anders grabbed it. The cells were destroyed. The bars were bent inward and melted through. Anders couldn't tell if any of the pieces in the dungeon were Velanna or Nathaniel. The only corpse with any form left to it was Barkspawn.

Anders ran to the mabari and pulled for Justice, but nothing answered him. He was exhausted, and the dog was dead. Dead because it hadn't seen Eylon as a threat after what Anders had done to it. Anders stumbled backwards, and slipped in blood, and combed mindlessly through the mess of muscle, melted metal, and burnt leather for any piece that looked even remotely like Velanna or Nathaniel.

There was nothing. It was too corrosive. Anders couldn't tell who or what any of the pieces had been. He ran back out of the dungeons, up into the cellars, and into the courtyard. "Velanna!? Nathaniel!?" Anders yelled. He summoned a ball of mage light and shot it off into the dark corners of the courtyard.

Nothing.

No one.

Anders ran into the inner courtyard and into the Keep. He went to the barracks, and for one ridiculous moment he thought he'd find his friends sitting at the table, playing cards or dice or draughts. Or lying in their bunks, fast asleep.

No one sat the table.

Their bunks were empty.

Anders stood in the center of the barracks, dripping blood. It was the only sound aside from Stroud's peaceful snoring.

Anders' heart fell into his stomach. He stumbled back out of the barracks and into the hallway. A passing night servant was carrying a handful of towels down the hall, and saw him. Her eyes widened and her pupils devoured whatever color her eyes had been. She dropped her load of towels and bolted back in the direction she'd come from.

Anders picked up a towel off the floor. His palm stained it red and black, when he pressed it to his face it came away soaking with blood. Anders ran a hand through his hair and his fingers brushed over chunks of flesh, ash, and metal shards. Anders exhaled shakily, and sank down to sit in the doorway to the Wardens' barracks. He ran his hands through his hair, and tried to pick through the memories of what had just happened.

Burning. Melting. Screaming. Ripping. Tearing.

Flashes of Sunbursts and Silver Swords of Mercy. White Griffins and Brown Bears and all manner of emblems and heraldry.

... How many people had been trying to kill him?

... How many people had he killed?

He tried to think of green eyes, of blonde hair, of pointed ears and tattoos like halla horns. He tried to think of grey eyes, of black hair, of a hooked nose and dark armor. Anders couldn't remember either of them. He thought of the cells and didn't remember melting the bars, but Velanna didn't have any sort of magic that powerful. It had to have been him.

Had he let them out?

Had he killed them?

Anders couldn't remember. He felt his heart beating against his ribcage like panicked hands on a cell door in a black room in Kinloch Hold, and burried his face in his knees. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think. His breath came in frantic, staccato gasps. Anders hugged himself, and his hands slipped over his shredded leather armor and blood-soaked brigandine shoulders. He tried to summon Justice again and managed a faint pulse of healing magic.

It didn't feel like Compassion. It wasn't warm. It wasn't soothing. It was crisp, and clear, and firm, and it reminded him he couldn't just sit here, covered in filth and crying until more templars came. Anders stumbled to his feet and went back into the barracks. He stripped out of his ruined leathers and changed into a uniform he hadn't torn to shreds, but left the tabard behind.

Anders put on more clothes over his armor, extra tunics, a second set of spaulders, feathered, and part of a Tevinter-style robe Amell had given him to replace the one he'd lost in Kal'Hirol. He wrapped two scarves around his neck; he put on a second set of gloves and a second set of socks, and grabbed his satchel and dumped out the supplies he usually kept in it.

He filled it with his books, his mother's pillow, his jewelry, and then without thinking about it ran to Justice's old bunk, and grabbed his books as well, and the playing cards Sigrun had given him. Anders grabbed the thirteen silvers he had to his name, and stuffed them into his left boot before running out of the barracks.

His first thought was to steal a horse from the stables, but the five that they had at the Vigil reared and whinnied and raged when he came near, beating against their stalls with their hooves at the scent of an abomination. Anders backed up from the stables, and the shouting started.

Anders drew his dagger, cut his palm, and picked a random horse.

Obey.

The horse quieted. Anders grabbed its reins and dragged it out of the stall, and saw the torches spilling out of the Keep and filling up the inner courtyard. He scrambled up onto the horse without bothering to saddle it.

Anders put his heels to the horse, and his back to the Keep.

Chapter 47: The Black City

Notes:

Hello everyone! I just want to take a minute to say that you guys are really what makes this story for me. I've had some of you wonderful, talented people create some amazing works of fan-art that have meant the world to me, and a great many more leave insightful, inspiring comments, and even more than that add this story as a quiet subscription, bookmark, or kudo, and every last one of you has gotten us to over 5,000 views, and that's just incredible to me. Thank you so much for reading, and hopefully enjoying, this story!

Welcome to Kirkwall, guys.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 15 Cassus; Well into the Night
The Pilgrim's Path

It started raining. Anders felt the first drop on his nose; the second landed in his eye. The third missed him and landed on the back of his blood-bound horse. Anders had reined it sloppily, and the ropes were sliding off the horse's head. He didn't need them, and when they unraveled Anders watched the horse trample over them as it galloped down the road.

The beast was bound. Anders didn't need reins, or any sort of riding experience. All he needed to do was hold on to the horse's neck and will it forward. The horse's spine knocked into him with every bounce, but Anders was only dimly aware of himself and any pain he felt.

He was more aware of the scratch of the horse's fur against his cheek. The sound of its hooves kicking up mud as the rain grew heavier, and turned to sleet and hail. The few chunks of ice that landed on his head, or caught in his scarves to melt against his neck. It was winter in Ferelden, and that meant rain and sleet more than it did snow. It was freezing, but Anders didn't feel terribly cold.

He didn't feel terribly anything.

Where was he going?

Away.

Away where?

Anders didn't know. The horse led him down the Pilgrim's Path towards Amaranthine, but Anders didn't know if that was where he wanted to go. The city lay in ruins. There were a handful of survivors scattered throughout the sprawling metropolis. There were no crowds for him to disappear in, and it was the first place anyone would look for him.

He couldn't go to Amaranthine, but where else was there for him?

Alim and Melissa had gone to West Hill, and were setting up a base of operation for the Collective there. Anders might have been able to join them, except Levyn was in West Hill. Anders had already killed Amell's dog. He wasn't going anywhere near Amell's best friend.

He shouldn't go anywhere near anyone. Anders thought of Velanna and Nathaniel and his stomach did a turn. He didn't belong near people. He didn't belong anywhere.

Anders turned his face into the horse's neck. It was a living, breathing creature with a beating heart pumping hot blood beneath its skin, but Anders might have been rubbing his face against a rug. He couldn't feel any warmth. He couldn't feel anything but alone.

Anders didn't know how it was possible to feel alone. He was tangled up in another person's soul, but it wasn't like Justice was sitting next to him. They weren't two people anymore. They couldn't hold a conversation. They couldn't talk about what they'd done. What they were.

Hail pelted Anders. Ice filled up the hollow of his scarf and caught in the grooves of his clothes and armor. His hair was soaked through, and it was numbingly cold, but at least it helped wash away the last of the blood.

Anders felt like he should be crying, but what was the point? He didn't have enough tears. It was better the sky wept for him. Or for Nathaniel and Velanna. Not for Anders. Anders didn't deserve it.

Maker, why did Eylon have to burn Amell's tome? Didn't they know the screams weren't just a protective enchantment, and there were demons inside? Couldn't they feel them? Why couldn't Rolan and the others have just killed him? That was their damned job, wasn't it? They were supposed to keep people safe from monsters like Anders.

But they didn't. They didn't protect the weak. They didn't defeat the strong. They oppressed both and helped neither and now they were dead. More than dead. Anders had torn them apart in a bloody abattoir of rent limbs, melted skin, and bones not broken but crushed to dust. Justice had never been that strong before. Anders had never been that strong before.

He wasn't a mage anymore. He was more than that. And he couldn't control it. Not enough to tell friend from enemy and keep himself from killing the only two friends he had left.

Anders didn't know how many templars had been set against him, but there had been at least five, and it hadn't mattered at all. Someone had plunged a sword straight through him, and Anders had pulled it out like a splinter.

Anders had to stop Darrian's heart with blood magic to kill him. A templar had to cut Eylon's head off after Anders had practically burrowed into his ribcage like some kind of wild animal or parasite. If a host of templars couldn't kill Anders what could?

... Anders could kill Anders.

It wasn't a new thought.

Anders thought it every time the templars ever caught up to him. He thought it in solitary. He thought it when Amell left, when his mother died, when Sigrun did. He thought it when he looked out at the horde and took Justice's hand, with no idea of what would happen to him.

He should have thought of the consequences, but Anders never thought of the consequences. Not when he came back to the Vigil after Amell let him go, not when he trusted Namaya, not when he used blood magic on Amell's dog, not when he took Justice's hand and changed their lives forever.

The horse reached Amaranthine as the sun was cresting the horizon. Anders willed it to stop, and pushed his sopping hair out of his eyes. He looked to the dilapidated farmhouses, and the high walls, and wondered where he could go. The Wardens wouldn't protect him now. The Wardens wanted him dead, like the templars wanted him dead. Anders had never destroyed his phylactery. There was nowhere he could hide.

He couldn't stay in Ferelden. Maybe Cerlais would be able to help him, but he shouldn't just ride in through the front gates. Someone would come searching for him, after what he'd done. There was no reason to make it easy for them. Anders urged the horse off the road, and through the farmhouses outside the city walls.

The houses were all dark. The muddy side roads were deserted. The only sound was the steady patter of hail hitting thatch roofs and cobblestone and clay shingles. Anders slid off his horse when he found the house with the broken Circle carved into the door frame. His boots hit mud, and he sank several inches.

For one powerful moment, Anders wanted to collapse. To let his knees hit the ground, and dig the heels of his palms into his eyes, and scream his throat raw, and let the hail pelt him into nonexistence. Let him stay where he was. Let the templars or the Wardens or anyone come find him and let them put an end to his miserable monstrous existence of running and running and running.

He didn't.

Anders didn't know what to do with the horse. It stood next to him, mindless and bound and probably just as irrevocably broken as Barkspawn. He let go of the spell, and the horse gave its head a violent shake. Its nostrils flared, and it looked at Anders, and its pupils grew alarmingly large. The beast whinnied and reared in a panic, and its hooves slipped in the mud.

The horse fell over. It thrashed madly on its side, spraying Anders with freezing mud before it righted itself and bolted off into the night. Anders watched it go. It was a good thing Leonie had made him get rid of Ser Pounce-a-Lot. Anders didn't want to picture the little tabby with its hackles up, hissing in fear any time Anders came near it.

Anders went to the shed of the abandoned house and opened it. The trapdoor was there, under a bag of feed that had been ripped open and spilled across the floor of the shed. Rain slipped in through the cracks in the shed and made sludge of it. Anders stepped through the mess and opened the trap door. It opened up into darkness. He needed a torch.

Anders first thought was to summon a wisp to hold onto a simple incantation for light. Before he'd finished the thought, his hand lit with fire born from the Veil. The soft green glow looked like the sky in the Fade and reminded Anders of home. Anders hadn't had a home since he was twelve. He shouldn't have known the feeling, but it was there, in the magic: comforting, soothing.

"... Thanks, Justice." Anders said to himself.

Anders climbed down into the tunnel. The soft glow of veilfire illuminated the passageway, and all the darkspawn bodies no one had cleared out. Anders picked his way over hurlocks and genlock, over shrieks and children. The tunnel led to a small underground cavern, where the Waking Sea had an inlet beneath the city. A small dock had been built, and the Collective had shared it with the smugglers in Amaranthine to get mages in and out of the city.

There was a small paddle boat docked. Anders stopped for a piss and stared at it. He doubted he could sail to Llomerryn in it. Anders shook himself off and followed the passageway the rest of the way to the Crown and Lion. He crawled out into the ruined tavern, half expectng to be greeted with a dozen templars or guardsmen. It was deserted, and Anders went through to check out the back door. The streets were empty, and Anders jogged to the docks.

There were a few people at the docks who'd risen with the sun. Sailors and a guard patrol, and one or two survivors. A few boats were docked at the few surviving piers. Relief in from Denerim or elsewhere if Anders had to guess. Or maybe just merchants who hadn't heard the news, or ship captains who had and guessed there was coin to be made helping refugees leave the city. Anders hoped it was the latter. Maybe he could book passage somewhere.

... With thirteen silvers.

Maybe the Collective would spot him.

Anders went to the Pilgrim's Rest and let himself inside. The torn up floor boards had been pulled out, but not replaced. The Pilgrim's Rest sat on an uneven foundation, and the missing floor boards revealed the blackened crawl space beneath the tavern. Anders watched his steps over the wavy floor boards on his way to the back of the empty inn. He checked the kitchens, and found Rosalyn struggling to light a fire in the hearth.

"I can get that," Anders offered.

Rosalyn stood up, and brushed her wrinkled hands off on her apron. "I imagine you can."

Anders lit the hearth with an easy fire spell.

"Shame the Maker didn't think I was worthy of that little gift," Rosalyn mused, "You want me to wake Cerlais for you?"

"That'd be great, Rosalyn, thanks," Anders said.

"Watch the fire, will you?" The portly old woman toddled out of the kitchen.

Anders sat down at the prepping table. Rosalyn had a few eggs, milk, butter, and flour set out. There was a bowl of blueberries as well. Anders stared at the fire and ate a few blueberries without tasting them while he waited, humming tunelessly to keep himself from thinking.

Rosalyn came back with Cerlais a short while later, and swatted him away from the blueberries. She set about to making breakfast, while his fellow mage-...

Anders wasn't a mage anymore. Cerlais sat next to him at the table. She was still dressed in her night-frock, and rubbed sleep from her eyes while stifling a yawn. She looked to him, and took in the assortment of clothes he was buried under.

"Cold out?" Cerlais asked cautiously.

"Freezing," Anders said.

Cerlais surveyed his four layers of clothes, his wet hair, his bloated satchel. Her face twisted in sympathy, and she said, "... I know a runner when I see one. How soon do you need to leave?"

"Now," Anders said.

"I can't," Cerlais tapped her fingers on the table, and shifted anxiously, "I've only got one boat leaving the city, and even if I could get you on it, it's not going anywhere you want to be,"

"Where I want to be is anywhere but here," Anders said.

"It's going to Kirkwall," Cerlais said. "You don't know how bad it is there, Anders. There was an influx of mages after the Starkhaven Circle burned down, and Kirkwall's Circle is overcrowded. The templars are cracking down more than ever: locking up mages just so they don't have to deal with them. I haven't heard from Thekla in almost a month."

"All the more reason to go, then," Anders said. "Someone should make sure Karl's alright, and as it turns out I'm someone,"

"Anders..." Cerlais sighed, and ran her hands through her hair. "I want to help you. I really do. I've got another mage who wants out of Amaranthine, but the captain wants five sovereigns for any mage he takes, and I just don't have that kind of coin. I can set you up here for a few days, and we can wait for another boat. One going to Rivain, or Antiva."

"I don't have a few days," Anders said. "People are going to come looking for me,"

Cerlais spread her hands and gave him an unhappy look.

Anders chewed on the inside of his cheek, thinking. He swung his satchel into his lap and dug through it for a few rings and bracelets, "Do you think he'll take five sovereigns in jewelry?"

"... I think we can ask," Cerlais allotted. "Give me a few minutes to change and I'll take you to him. They're due to ship out sometime this morning."

"Thanks," Anders said.

"No thanks," Cerlais said quickly, and squeezed his forearm. Anders couldn't feel it through how many layers he was wearing. "We shouldn't have to give thanks. It shouldn't be a favor to be free."

Cerlais left him at the kitchen table, and hurried off to change. Anders stared at the knots in the table, and traced over a few with his fingers. A plate slammed down in front of him, and Anders blinked up at Rosalyn.

"You don't have a canteen," Rosalyn said.

"... I don't have a what?" Anders asked.

"You kids," Rosalyn shook her head, "You never think when you have to run. You grab the jewelry, the keepsakes, every little thing you're afraid to lose, but don't need. You need clean water, food, and a way to cook it."

Rosalyn left him at the table and rummaged through one of the cupboards. She pulled out a leather satchel, and threw it on the table next to the plate she'd set out in front of him. Rosalyn grabbed one of the straps to the satchel, "Leather, good and sturdy, waxed so it doesn't soak through. You got that right at least," Rosalyn flipped open the satchel and pulled out a metal pot with a stand and a canteen. The metal pot was filled with hardtack and jerky. "I make these kits for the kids. There's enough food to last you a week, if you do a meal a day."

"You know I can conjure water, right?" Anders asked.

"And drink it out of your hands?" Rosalyn smacked the back of his head. The slap reminded Anders of Velanna, and at first he grinned, until he remembered he'd probably killed her. "Stay for breakfast. I'll make you some pancakes before you go."

"You don't have to do that," Anders said.

"I swear, every mage," Rosalyn rolled her eyes, and went back to squat beside the hearth. "'You don't have to do that' 'I don't need anything' 'You don't owe me anything.' You spend your lives being told you're nothing, so you think that's what you're worth. Well let me tell you something: the Maker wouldn't have made you a mage if that wasn't what He wanted you to be. Who are we to question His will?"

"Why do you care?" Anders asked. "You're not a mage. Why are you sticking your neck out like this?"

"My boy was one," Rosalyn said. "I kept him from the Circle for eighteen years, and then one day... well, you know how it goes. I didn't see him again for three years, and when I did... They made him Tranquil, and forced him to work as a proprietor for one of their shops in Gwaren. What the Chantry does to them... it's worse than slave labor. My boy died the day that brand touched his forehead. I made sure the Chantry couldn't keep desecrating his corpse. That's why I care."

"I'm sorry," Anders said.

Rosalyn stood up, and dumped a pancake off her skillet and onto his plate. "You don't need to be sorry. You just need to live. Eat your pancake."

Anders ate his pancake.

Cerlais came back dressed, and Anders slung his second satchel over his other shoulder. He thanked Rosalyn again, and left the inn with Cerlais. One of the few surviving piers had a ship docked, with the name Pride of Amaranthine painted in faded lettering across the side. A few sailors were rolling barrels up the plank and onto the deck. Cerlais jogged up to talk to the captain, while Anders took the steps at a crawl.

Cerlais was already at the stern when Anders got on deck, talking to a heavy set man with no shirt, windswept hair and mutton chops. She was gesturing emphatically, but whatever she was saying it apparently wasn't enough to erase the frown on the captain's face. He looked to Anders and his frown deepened. Anders headed over, and the man started down the steps to the deck. "Nice to-"

"My cabin," The captain interrupted him. "Let's see what you got."

"Well at least buy me dinner first," Anders joked.

No one laughed. Anders followed the captain and Cerlais to the captain's cabin. It was something less than lavish; a bolted down bed and a writing desk took up one side of the room, an armoire, a low table, and couch took up the other. The captain cleared a space on his writing desk. "Ante up." He said.

Anders dug into his satchel, and tried to decide what he could stand to lose. He pulled out the things he'd bought for himself: a set of golden bangles. His old brass earring. A silver bracelet. A few toe rings. An enameled brooch. Ferrenly's necklace. He doubted he could convince the captain the small pile added up to five sovereigns, but he tried anyway, "The necklace is dwarven made, and it's enchanted. It's worth three sovereigns on its own."

The captain squinted at him, and glanced between him and the pile. "Not gonna cut it."

"You know these are gold, right?" Anders demanded, picking up a bangle and shaking it at the captain.

"You think I can pay tolls and docking fees with jewelry?" The captain demanded, "I'll have to pawn all this shit, and there's no way I'm getting three sovereigns from any of my vendors for a beat up old fox pendant. Throw in that earring and those bracers you're wearing and we'll call it good."

The earring was from Sigrun. Anders was probably going to die wearing it. The bracers had been for his name-day, and Anders had only accepted them after he'd forgiven Amell for using blood magic on him. A vivid memory of Amell having sex with him while Anders wore the bracers and only the bracers came to mind. Anders clamped a hand over one, "No."

"Then get off my boat," The captain said.

"Wait, okay-" Anders fished through his satchel, and found a handful of gifts that weren't quite as important to him. The gold earring with emerald studs. The ring to his enchanted set, considering he'd lost the other one. "The ring is enchanted too. It's worth two sovereigns, easy. All of this is worth way more than five sovereigns."

The captain picked up the brooch and scratched at the enamel on it with his thumb nail.

"Okay, well not if you ruin it," Anders frowned.

"Fine." The captain said. "Below deck, with the rest of the refugees. We cast off in half an hour."

Anders left the captain's cabin with Cerlais. She gave him a wan smile, "I'm sorry you had to do that... I know how much my first necklace meant to me."

"Whatever," Anders said. "Thanks for getting me on the boat."

Cerlais grabbed his hands and gave them a squeeze, "Write when you get to Kirkwall."

"You got it," Anders said.

Cerlais let go of his hands and nodded. "Take care of yourself, Anders,"

Anders managed a pained grin. Cerlais walked down the plank, and Anders headed to the stairs that led below deck. The hold was packed with refugees. Men, women, and children who wanted out and away from the devastation the darkspawn had wrought on Amaranthine. Anders rolled his fingers over his staff, and walked a few feet through the hold. There wasn't any place for him to sit.

The hold was crammed; everyone sat shoulder to shoulder. It smelled damp, and sweaty, and it was uncomfortably humid compared to the sleet and hail Anders had sloughed through to get here. Anders looked for a corner to curl up in, but there was nothing. Anyone who could have made room for him saw his staff, and looked away hastily. They were all refugees. Survivors from the siege. Some of them had to know who he was.

So much for being a hero.

Someone whistled. Anders glanced over his shoulder. A man with curly brown hair and a smattering of unkempt stubble waved at him. His mouth looked far too big for his face, but he was grinning. Anders made his way over, stepping gingerly between a few folk to sit in the spot the stranger cleared for him. Anders swung both satchels into his lap and hugged his belongings to himself.

"Thanks," Anders said.

"Nice shoes," The frog-mouthed man said.

"What?" Anders asked.

"Nice shoes." The man said again, pointing down at Anders' feet. "What are they? Bear hide?"

"Tusket, actually," Anders said, shuffling a nervous inch to the side. "You're not going to try to steal my shoes, are you?"

"What? No, no, no. I'm a cobbler! It's the trade," The man wiped his hand off on his trousers and held it out to shake, "Name's Franke."

Anders shook it, "Anders."

... he probably should have lied.

"Are those silverite tips?" Franke the cobbler asked rhetorically and pressed on without waiting for an answer, "What are you doing for the lining? Lambswool?"

"Loden," Anders said.

"Nice shoes." Franke said again with an appreciative whistle. "Are you a noble or something?"

Anders frowned and jostled his staff on his shoulder, "You know this isn't just for walking, right?"

"Well, flames, I don't know," Franke laughed, "The old Warden-Commander was a mage. Times are changing, as they say. Anyway, I like your shoes."

"Thanks." Anders said.

"Not sure you'll need that loden lining up in the Free Marches," Franke said. "It's a lot less wet over there I hear. Hardly ever rains."

"That'll be nice." Anders said.

"No more sleet or slush. No more hail. Maker, the hail. Just clear skies and a warm sun," Franke said wistfully. "And no darkspawn."

"No darkspawn." Anders agreed.

"So I figure you won't be staying in Kirkwall?" Franke asked. "Not very mage friendly, I hear."

"I have a friend there." Anders said.

"Well that makes one of us." Franke laughed. "Me? Shop burned down. Bloody Orlesians, right? Lost everything I had, but I figure it's a sign from the Maker, telling me to start over somewhere new. You look like you got lucky. Carrying everything you own, but at least you're carrying something."

Anders didn't say anything.

"I'm talking too much." Franke decided.

"Sorry," Anders said. "It's been a long day."

"I hear that." Franke said. "With the darkspawn? Been a long month. A long couple a years, honestly."

"A long life," Anders mumbled.

"Here's hoping," Franke joked.

Anders exhaled hard through his nose. He didn't have the energy for anything else.

Franke kept talking. The man's big mouth was as figurative as it was literal. He rambled on about how he'd been spared from the worst of the Blight living in northern Ferelden, about how he'd made a respectable if not necessarily impressive living in Amaranthine, about how he had a bit of a fetish for feet. The boat cast off, and Anders had to swallow his pancake back down when he felt the ship lurch.

"It's worse on deck, trust me," Franke said. "I've actually been sailing a few times. The family lives down in Gwaren, you see. Blight did a number on them down there, with Teryn Loghain pulling all his troops out of the south during the Blight."

Franke kept talking. He went on about his family, and how he apparently hated them, but family was family. He babbled about Gwaren, and how he'd helped his family rebuild for a time before coming back to Amaranthine.

Anders fell asleep listening to him. He didn't remember doing it, but he must have, because the next thing he knew the darkspawn were there. He felt them crawling under his skin, pulsing and undulating deep beneath the earth, hissing and gnawing and biting and Anders was right there with them, digging into Eylon's back with his bare hands. The man's skin was under his nails, and his muscle felt like uncooked meat, and all Anders could hear was a song more beautiful than lyrium and all he wanted was to stay like this forever: clawing and digging and writhing in the welter of the gore he'd birthed.

"Hey! Hey! Wake up!" Someone shouted. Hands were on his shoulders, shaking violently, and Anders started awake.

"I'm up, I'm up. What is it? Who's hurt?" Anders asked, half way to standing before he realized where he was. Franke still had his hands on his shoulders, and half the hold was glaring at him. A child was crying somewhere.

"You, by the sound of it," Franke joked, "That must have been some nightmare."

"Sorry," Anders sat back down, and ran a weary hand through his hair.

"Darkspawn, right?" Franke guessed.

Anders snorted. "You have no idea."

"I get it," Franke said. "I had a few nightmares of my own after they attacked the city."

Franke went on to tell him every gory detail of said nightmares. Anders bit the inside of his cheek every so often to stay awake. No one should have to listen to him raving and wailing about darkspawn in his sleep. Long hours passed, with Franke talking, and talking, and talking. Anders listened to less than half of it, and still felt like he knew everything there was to know about the man, but somehow Franke kept talking.

He even talked in his sleep when he fell asleep. Anders shifted, and stretched as best he was able, considering he couldn't move without jostling the refugees next to him. Franke was mumbling about bread and lampposts. Anders stared at the fellow, and made a mental note to thank him when the ship finally docked at Kirkwall. It was impossible for Anders to think over the man's endless babbling. The last thing Anders wanted was to be alone with his thoughts.

Anders pulled himself into a ball, and listened to Franke mumble about toast-stealing darkspawn until he fell asleep. Mercifully, Anders didn't have any nightmares the second time around, or the third. The voyage across the Waking Sea took three days, during which none of them had any food or water. Anders had his canteen, and his hardtack and jerky, but he ran out of that on the first day when he offered Franke a bite, and ended up passing out what he had to everyone in the near vicinity.

By the third day, Anders was starving. His back and ass were the tightest knots on the ship, and his arms and legs were always asleep. He had horrible motion sickness every time he had to go above deck for a piss or a shit, and the vertigo usually made him throw up. The acrid taste of vomit was still in his mouth went word went out that they were approaching the city, and Franke dragged him above deck for a better look.

Maker's breath.

The first thing Anders saw was a wall of black rock. The cliff reached at least a hundred meters high, and the city of Kirkwall sat atop it, barely visible. What was visible were the dragons carved into the black rock, and the two massive bronze statues. They were almost as tall as the cliff. Naked, genderless humanoid figures, they stood with their faces buried in their hands, with massive chains about their necks that connected them to a fortress, which sat atop an island.

"Do you know what that fortress is?" Anders asked.

"The Gallows, if I had to guess," Franke said, eyeing his staff and giving him a worried look, "The Circle in Kirkwall. Is that where your friend is?"

Poor Karl.

No wonder Cerlais hadn't heard from him. It was a miracle Karl had ever managed to get any letters out to begin with. Why did every Circle have to be an impenetrable fortress in the middle of a lake or an ocean? Kirkwall wasn't even being subtle about it. The fortress was chained to two giant statues of sobbing slaves, for Maker's sake. Anders pushed down a surge of anger that bubbled inside of him.

"That's where my friend is," Anders said.

The cliff face split between the two sobbing statues. Their ship sailed slowly towards the chasm. Above it, massive bridges spanned the length of the divide, connecting one side of the city to the other. Anders craned his head, but he couldn't see much of the city from here. The docks were off in the distance, fast approaching, but Anders stared at the Gallows as the fortress faded into the distance.

"... Kind of reminds you of a prison, doesn't it?" Franke asked.

"Yeah, it really does," Anders said.

"Doesn't really seem right." Franke said.

"No, it really doesn't." Anders agreed.

Chapter 48: Rip Up Your Roots

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back! I hope you're all still enjoying this story. Thank you all for your wonderful comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 19 Cassus; Late Afternoon
Kirkwall Docks

The Pride of Amaranthine sailed through the split in the cliff face to make harbor at Kirkwall's docks. The city was carved into and out of the black-rock. Scattered throughout were buildings carved from sandstone, paler than Anders' flesh. From a distance, it made the city seem as though it was covered in freckles, and was almost beautiful.

The boat lurched to a halt sometime later, and up close the city was something else. The dock they chose was comprised of mostly white sandstone, weathered an ugly beige by the sea air. Instead of a balustrade or railing, the docks were lined in spikes. Gathered at the pier was a score of folk, held back by a handful of soldiers in orange uniforms.

Anders had seen a mob before. The crowd was jeering, but they were unorganized and unintelligible and the only real takeaway was that they were angry. "Feels like home already," Anders mused.

"Were you for the riots at the Vigil?" Franke guessed.

"Something like that," Anders said. The staff meant being outed as a mage was unavoidable, but there was no reason to go around broadcasting he was a Warden, too.

The plank fell, and the first brave sailor who disembarked took a handful of fish guts in the face.

"Fereldans go home!" Someone yelled.

"We don't want you dog lords here!" Screamed another. Some sort of rotten vegetable hit the side of the hull, and Anders watched it leave a streak of puke-green on its way down into the water.

"Too bad they didn't throw it a little higher, right?" Anders joked.

"I hear that," Franke laughed, making a playful grab for the next piece of rotten food that came flying their way. It fell into the ocean without ever reaching the boat, "I'm starving. Thanks for the meal the other day, by the way. You didn't have to share. I figure it's going to be harder for you than the rest of us."

Anders shrugged. It was going to be hard for all of them, at this rate. More folk were running to join the crowd gathered on the dock, and Anders doubted the five guards were going to be able to make any difference against the mob. A well dressed looking man Anders guessed for the harbormaster started towards the pier with two assistants at his side, saw the crowd, and hung back. It wasn't terrible reassuring.

A few more sailors disembarked, and someone in the mob threw a full chamber pot on one of them. The crowd cheered. "Guess they had enough of us Fereldans after the Blight," Franke said.

"Guess so," Anders said.

The rest of the refugees started spilling out of the hold. A brave few started down the plank, when one of the rioters broke through the line of guardsmen and charged forward. A guardswoman charged after him; she was alarmingly tall, and everything from her hair to her freckles to her uniform was bright orange. She looked like some sort of cross between Leonie and Oghren, and she knocked the offending rioter over before he reached the startled refugees.

She gave the fellow a hard kick that rolled him off the pier and into the ocean. Anders snorted. Franke laughed. "And that goes double for all of you!" The guardswoman threatened, "Disperse immediately!"

"Fuck you, Fereldan bitch!" One of the rioters yelled, and flung what looked like a rotten cabbage in the guardswoman's direction. She ducked it, but the second was a tomato and took her in the chest, painting her even redder than before. "Get out of our city!"

Anders' stomach rumbled. So much food, wasted. He leaned on the railing of the boat with a sigh. Franke joined him. Kirkwall wasn't mage friendly or Ferelden friendly, apparently. Poor Karl.

Another group appeared further down the sandstone streets, and made for the pier. They looked to be soldiers, albeit poorly outfitted. They were wearing an assortment of mismatched leather, and the only uniform thing about them were their masks: turbans, with strips of leather to cover their faces. "This day just keeps getting better," Anders said.

"I think so," Franke said, "Reminds me of a play or something, you know? It's exciting."

"I've had enough excitement for nine lifetimes," Anders said.

There were at least twenty of the masked group, and whoever they were, they made the mob uneasy. One of the men stepped forward and took his helmet off, and a mess of red hair fell out. His face was dirty and flushed red, and when he grinned it was with a mouthful of yellow.

"Cor Blimey," The tough guardswoman called out, "You are under arrest for racketeering, larceny, destruction of property, and being an all around ass. You and your men throw down your weapons,"

The new group laughed. "You hear that boys?" The leader who must have been Cor called out. "I'm under arrest! Guess we can't escort our fellow Fereldans past this rabble. I'm sure that's alright. Looks like the guards have it."

The group laughed again. Cor walked over to the guardswoman and held out both his wrists in a polite surrender, smiling sweetly.

Anders' couldn't see the guardswoman's expression from where he was stood, leaning over the railing on the ship deck. All he could see was the back of her head, and how it twisted to look between the mob and Cor.

"You rip up your roots, Vallen, and you ain't gonna have a tree," Cor said.

"Don't get used to this, Blimey," The guardswoman said. "As soon as I have the men."

"I'll leave the welcome mat out for you," Cor said.

"Let's go, men," The guardswoman called to her very small retinue of guardsmen, "Looks like our patrol's over,"

The guards left. The mob took one look at the gang Cor was leading, and dispersed in the way that only mobs could. They scattered like rats, dropping their assortment of rotten foods and chamber pots and running in every direction. A few of them slipped on the pier's wet planks, and went crashing into the harbor. Cor's gang laughed.

The sailors went about unloading with the mob gone, and the harbormaster finally approached to speak to the captain. The refugees all scuttled down the plank to gather on the pier, and Anders and Franke joined them. The docks smelled like brine and body odor and an acrid stench that must have been unique to Kirkwall.

"Welcome to Kirkwall!" Cor said brightly, spreading his hands wide, "Where the Marchers march, the guards guard, and the rest of us get crushed under foot! My name is Cor Blimey, and the only thing you lot need to know about me is I'm a right bastard, and the right bastard for all of you! We-" Cor gestured to his group of mismatched vagrants, "-are the Dog Lords, and anyone who smells like dog shit is welcome among us. I can tell you right now, you won't get a warmer welcome anywhere else.

"We're not the power in Kirkwall, but we are a power in Kirkwall, and that's more than most can say. You can try your luck in the city all you want, but unless you want to work in the mines, no one's hiring Fereldans, and you don't want to work in the mines. With me you get a place to sleep and foot to eat. With Kirkwall, you get to find out why they call it 'The City of Chains.'"

Cor clapped his hands, and rubbed them together with a grin, "So. Where are my takers?"

A handful of people came forward. Anders guessed it helped that most of them were starving.

Cor counted heads, and pushed them into the center of the group where they were passed around to clasp hands and backs, "Not bad for a start," Cor said, surveying the crowd of refugees that hadn't volunteered to join the Dog Lords. His eyes settled on Anders, and his staff, "Oi, Packmule, what's it take to get you to hop borders?"

"I'm a sucker for eyes," Anders quipped, and chuckled for his own sake.

"Oh yeah?" Cor maneuvered through the crowd to take a spot in front of Anders. His eyes reminded Anders rather appropriately of dog shit. "What do you think?"

"Really not doing it for me," Anders confessed.

"That's a damn shame, cause there ain't no one else in this city that's going to do it for you if you walk in here with that," Cor said, with a nod to Anders' staff.

"What, they don't like walking sticks in Kirkwall?" Anders joked.

"Ableist bastards, am I right?" Cor grinned his yellow grin. Dog shit in his eyes, dog piss in his mouth. Cor really wasn't fighting the stereotype.

"You need new shoes," Franke mumbled, staring at Cor's feet.

"Mages don't get far in this city," Cor continued. "Not alone. Be better for you with us than in the Gallows."

"And that's so sweet of you to offer, but I think I'll take my chances," Anders said, and decided to end the conversation. He adjusted his satchels on his shoulder, and made to side step around the dog lord. Cor stepped with him and cut him off.

"Let's try that again, yeah? I'm Cor," Cor held out a hand to shake.

"Anders," Anders said without taking his hand.

... He should have lied. The refugees who didn't want to join started to creep past the Dog Lords and slink off the pier with the gang's leader occupied. Anders watched them go, envious.

"Look, I'm not trying to piss in the wind here," Cor said, "You don't want to join, don't join, but you got a staff and I figure that means you got magic. I got a boy holed up with his guts spilling out, barely held together by my girl's piss-poor cross stitching, and there ain't shit we can do for him. Can you do anything with that 'walking stick' of yours?"

"Aren't you supposed to be a bastard?" Anders asked, "Shouldn't you be threatening to make me smell my own feet if I say no, or something?"

"Guts for garters, goes without saying," Cor joked. "Look, we're all Ferelden, yeah? You can't help him, fuck off and we're good, but if you can, I can make it worth your while. Five silvers, straight up."

Anders sighed. He didn't need the bribe; he couldn't have said no if he wanted to, "I can help him,"

"Good," Cor said, "Hold that staff down when you walk, by the way. You stick out like a Chasind at an Orlesian ball walking around with it up like that." Cor turned around and went back to address his men and all his new recruits.

Franke looked at Anders, "So I guess you'll be going with them, then?"

"I guess so," Anders said.

"Gangs aren't for me, but I'm guessing no one in this city wants a pair of shoes made by a Fereldan." Franke said. "You think you and me could stick together for a bit until we get our bearings? I understand if you'd rather go your own way, though. I know I've got a mouth on me. 'Franke, if you don't shut your mouth one day a spider is going to crawl in there and lay eggs,' my mother always used to say."

"I don't mind," Anders said. "Talk away,"

Anders couldn't have been more grateful. He'd only had a handful of thoughts since he'd set foot on the Pride of Amaranthine. Franke's chatter was endless, and it was more than enough to drown out both of the voices in Anders' head. Anders didn't want anything to do with himself, but Franke had to pause for breath eventually, and when he did things slipped in through the cracks.

Flashes of Biff, telling him he was no better than a yo-yo, and all he did with his life was run and get caught. Flashes of Rylock, telling him he was a murderer. Cera, and how she'd rightly predicted Anders was never the one to suffer the consequences of his actions. Oghren, telling him they were going to be friends and Anders being stupid enough to think he didn't need any.

Varel and how Anders hadn't given enough of a damn about anyone to even remember his name. Woolsey and all her well-meaning warnings Anders had never listened to because Anders never listened to anyone. Nathaniel, and how hard he'd tried to be the hero in Amell's stead, and how Anders never wanted to be a hero because it took too much work. Velanna, asking Anders if he could control himself and Anders thinking he could.

Anders wrung his fingers on his staff, and went back to using it to help him walk. He was afraid he would collapse without it.

Cor Blimey led the Dog Lords out of the docks, and into the city. Anders was distantly aware both Cor and Franke were talking, but it was getting harder and harder to listen. The Veil was thin in Kirkwall. Anders could hear the whispers of spirits, demons, and wisps in the Fade, almost clear enough to make out words. He didn't know if that was the city, or if that was Justice, but it was distracting.

It also didn't help his concentration that Kirkwall was a maze. The buildings were a medley of stone: blackrock, brick, sandstone, limestone, and other stones, bound together by cast-iron and copper. They went up and up through alley after twisted alley. Most were covered with tattered orange and red awnings, blocking out what little light the lower half of the city managed to get.

If Amaranthine had been a cesspool, Kirkwall was a cesspit. The only thing the city seemed to have going for it was a decent sewer system. Every mismatched street had a storm drain, but the roads were painted white with bird shit, and rubbish wasn't so much piled in the corners as it was scattered everywhere. Some of the buildings were crumbling, and rocks and dust mixed together with torn parchment, tattered cloth, broken pottery, half-eaten foods, and so many feathers.

The sky and ground were littered with them, and the culprits were apparently children. Anders watched a small group of five chase pigeons, crows, wild chickens, and other fowl come to feed on the refuse in the streets. Eventually two of the boys managed to corner a fatter pigeon, and pelt it to death with rocks.

"I get the wings!" One of the girls called.

"No way! You ate yesterday, it's my turn!" One of the boys said back.

Anders bumped into Franke watching them. The cobbler glanced at him, and then at the children that had distracted him, "Wonder if we can get them to share," Franke joked.

Anders didn't have it in him to laugh. The kids were dangerously thin and obviously starving, and it was freezing. To judge by the carve and cuts in the rock, the part of the city they were in might have been a quarry once, and the winter winds swept down old mineshafts and back up from the sewers, and created tiny dust devils of sleet in the streets. Anders was cold under four layers of clothes, but the kids were in rags.

"You got any kids?" Franke asked.

"No," Anders said, turning away and trying to put it out of his mind. "You?"

"Three," Franke said. "... Told the wife and kids to board up in the shop when the darkspawn came. I went out on my own to get help... made it to the Chantry when the arrows started falling."

"Andraste's knickerweasels, Franke, I'm sorry," Anders said.

"Orlesians, right?" Franke shrugged, and Anders couldn't help seeing him differently. Franke must have liked talking for the same reason Anders liked listening: it kept them both from thinking.

"Orlesians." Anders agreed, but what he thought was 'people.'

"Alright you mangy mongrels!" Cor yelled out, stopping in front of a nondescript building made mostly of blackrock, and patched up with brick. "Here we are," Cor shoved open a rusty iron door, and went inside the building.

Anders wasn't surprised to find it was a shanty. The front room had a stone floor, and the dirt and mud they tracked in made up the grout. The furniture was an assortment of boxes and planks of wood draped over stone. A stolen awning looked like it was being used as a rug for a small sitting area where a group of Dog Lords were placing dice. A metal barrel in the center of the room was filled with burning rubbish, and one of the Dog Lords was roasting a rat over it.

"Home shit home!" Cor laughed at the few dismayed faces in the crowd. "It's not quite Lowtown, but it's not quite Darktown either. Conall, you old fuck, where are you!?"

A man emerged from one of the side rooms. He looked a lot like the streets of Kirkwall: crooked and mismatched, old and falling apart. He took in the new recruits with a smile, "Well look at that. We got a few new pups."

"You lot need anything, you go to Conall. Hungry? Conall. Thirsty? Conall."

"Horny!" One of the Dog Lords yelled.

"Conall!" Cor agreed with a laugh. "Someone fucks with you? Conall. He'll take care of it. Go on. Fuck off. Go see Conall and get some food in you. We'll get you all outfitted later."

The new recruits shuffled over towards the old man. The Dog Lords that had accompanied Cor to the docks took off their helmets, and turned back into people. Pockmarked and pale Fereldans, all of them. Most of them thin, several with dark lines under their eyes, a handful with a sickly pallor that worried Anders, but they smiled and jostled one another with a playful sort of camaraderie that made Anders feel sick and queasy with regret.

Cor came over to him, scratching at his bright red side burns. Franke was in the middle of babbling about something when Cor interrupted him, "So look. I might have undersold it with my boy. He's good and proper fucked, so you better not be a fainter with blood."

Anders snorted, and choked on a wild laugh, "Shit, that's a good one. Where is he?"

"We're keeping him in the back," Cor explained, and looked at Franke, "What about you, Curly? You with him?"

"Love at first sight," Anders said.

"With your shoes, for sure," Franke grinned, "Don't worry, I talk a lot but I won't get in the way."

"Alright then, come on," Cor said. He led them down a hall to the right of the common room, and to a room with a piece of cloth nailed to the wall for a door. Anders could smell the man he was there to heal from the hall. It was an iconic smell: shit mixed with body odor and the acrid tinge of vomit. Cor pulled the cloth aside, and the smell hit them in full force.

Franke recoiled with a gag. "On second thought, I'll wait for you in the main room."

Anders went inside. The room was small, barely more than three square meters. It fit a small end table and a cot, and the man who lay on looked like he wasn't so much as knocking on death's door as he was crawling in through the window. Whatever his original colors had been, sick had left his skin ashen. His hair was black with sweat, and his body was drenched with it.

The droplets glistened on his skin, slid off him like rain, and soaked into his cot. The cot itself was dripping, sweat, blood, pus, and piss soaking through the thin fabric strung up between two four rickety posts. The wound was one Anders had seen before, but never this bad. The man's stomach had been torn open, and stitched crudely back together.

Rotten muscle shown through where his skin split. The wound had bloated into a potbelly with infection, and was oozing blood, pus, and all other manner of fluids. The man was completely naked, probably to handle the sweat, and a bed pan was beneath him, ineffectually attempting to catch everything escaping him. Anders stepped back out of the room.

"Too far gone, right?" Cor guessed.

Before Anders had merged with Justice, his only suggestion would have been to put the man out of misery. Anders looked down at his hand and let a well of mana form in his palm. It glowed a soft cerulean, and reminded Anders of the sky. It wasn't limitless, but it was close.

"I need two bowls of clean water, soap, a few towels, a needle and a scalpel, and maybe some bandages and thread," Anders said.

"Maybe?" Cor asked.

"I don't know if I'll have the mana to seal his wound after I cleanse the infection. I might just have to sew it shut properly." Anders explained.

"Right then, I'll get your shit." Cor said and left down the hall.

Anders looked back to the room. The smell was overpowering. Anders took off one of his scarves and tied it around his mouth and nose. He went back inside the wretched room and set his satchels on the end table. He took off his bracers and his gloves, and several layers of clothes so he could roll his sleeves up to his elbows. He was so laden down Cor came back with his supplies before he finished, a handful of Dog Lords there to help him carry everything.

Anders laid out what he needed and knelt next to the cot.The Dog Lords wished him luck and left. Anders still wasn't sure if he could pull the man off death's door, but he had to believe he could. What use was Justice without Mercy? The power they'd been given had to be good for something besides murder. Anders washed his hands, and just that took him an age. It had been four days, and the blood was still there beneath his fingernails.

Anders watched it paint the water pink. He remembered clawing and digging and clawing. The way his fingers had slipped through blood and muscle, the way the white hot fire splitting through his skin had melted fat and left the smell of burning gristle in the air. Anders broke out of the memory with a miserable gasp, and clenched his fists.

Don't think about it.

Anders channeled his mana through his staff and inscribed it into a lifeward beneath the man's cot. From there he cast an incantation to ensure the man stayed sleeping, and channeled a cleansing aura through Justice to fight back the infection. Then it was the bloody process of unraveling the stitching that held the man's inflamed skin together.

The thread came loose with a sickly hiss that persisted as Anders unraveled it. The infected flesh and muscle falling apart as the stitches came out, the pus, the blood, the faint pulse of the man's insides: none of it bothered him. Infection, cholera, gaping wounds, dismemberment, Anders could handle. He hadn't done it. It wasn't his fault. He could fix it. He could make it right.

Anders cleaned the wound as best he was able, cutting away as much dead tissue as he dared. It looked like a wet gangrene, the only cure for which should have been amputation. The whole area was unnaturally soft, as if it was just waiting to slough off. It was putrid, and rotten, and the fetid smell was suffocating even through Anders' scarf. When Anders had cleaned and drained what he could, he channeled Justice.

It shouldn't have been possible. The man was dead, he just didn't know it yet. The infection had spread to his blood and the site of the injury was a mess, but ever so slowly the swelling went down. The benevolent healing energies might have been turning back time for the effect they had on the man. Anders kept the channel going until his arms were heavy and his legs were numb.

Anders didn't know how long it took him. An hour, perhaps two, but eventually infection cleared, as if it had never been. The wound turned to a soft pink in place of a dark red, and Anders let go of the spell. Anders sat back, exhausted. He felt it in his bones, in the way he didn't feel anything. An ache settled in behind his eyes, and he wanted to curl up on the squalid floor and sleep for an age. He couldn't; the wound was still open.

Anders threaded the needle and took a better spot over the patient. It didn't matter how exhausted he was; Anders had been a spirit healer for fifteen years, and the wound was easy to sew shut and bandage up.

He could have done it in his sleep.

He cut the thread with a scalpel when he finished, and ran his fingers over the pink scar. At least he could still heal, and he could do it better than before. That had to count for something. That had to make up for being an abomination. Anders rubbed his thumb over the pink indent left in the tip of his fingers by the needle's press. How many more lives did he have to save to make up for what he'd done?

Too many. Anders tried to stand, but his legs didn't respond to him. Apparently he could slaughter a score of templars with ease, but saving one life was draining.

Maybe killing was more natural for him.

Anders pushed the thought away and washed his hands off a second time. He didn't have a name for the color the water turned. Anders grabbed his staff, and used it to help him crawl to his feet. The world spun when he stood, and he waited for the wave of vertigo to pass. It probably wasn't helping any that he'd only had one meal in the past three days, and his sleep had been fitful.

Anders dressed himself back up in all the layers he'd taken off to free up his hands enough to heal. He shouldered both satchels, and stumbled out of the room and into the hall. From the common room, he could hear people talking, laughing, making a life for themselves out of the squalor circumstance had forced them into as if nothing was wrong.

It was surreal. Anders couldn't close his eyes without seeing the burned down market in Amaranthine, Eylon's open back, Rolan's smug smirk, the flames from Sigrun's lyrium bombs, Barkspawn's corpse, Compassion's corrupted form, Amell's blind-folded face. But none of those things were here. They were in Ferelden. Anders was in Kirkwall. He just had to stop thinking about it.

There was a Dog Lord waiting for him in the hall. The fellow was bald, and terribly top heavy. His head was hidden away in his massive shoulders and reminded Anders of a turtle. Anders was so fatigued he didn't have it in him to restrain a giggle. "Manus?" The man asked.

"Is that his name?" Anders wondered. "He's fine. He needs to sleep for a day, but he's fine."

"Bullshit," Turtle said.

Anders managed a slow blink; it made his eyes burn, "You mean dog shit, right?"

Turtle ran into the room to check on Manus. Anders leaned back against the wall, and closed his eyes. They'd barely shut when a sweaty mass of muscle locked arms around him, four layers of clothes, satchels, staff and all, and lifted him off the ground in an exuberant embrace. "Holy fucking shit!" Turtle exclaimed, dropping him abruptly. "You're a fucking miracle worker, man!"

Turtle grabbed Anders' shoulders and half shoved, half carried him down the hall to fling him into the common room. The dog lords were still scattered throughout, cooking rats or pigeons, playing dice or eking out some kind of entertainment for themselves, "Cor! Bastard! Dogs! Guess who's a-fucking-live? Manus, that's fucking who!"

It earned a cheer, and a few excited folk ran down the hall to check.

"He needs to sleep!" Anders called after them.

"No shit?" Cor looked up from a game of dice he was playing with Franke and a few other dog lords. "This shit is why us Dog Lords will always beat these Marchers. Queen Anora's got it right, fighting to free you mage folk. Fuck Stannard! Where the fuck are our healers, huh!? Bitch sends her templars down to harass us refugees, and won't let any mages out of the Gallows to clean up the mess she makes?"

By the sound of it, most of the Dog Lords agreed. If not with mage rights, the chorus of 'fuck Stannard' was one that seemed to resonate with them. Cor gestured to the space between him and Franke, "Get your ass over here, Packmule."

Anders stumbled over and sat between Franke and Cor, if only because he was too exhausted to do anything else.

"Someone get this fuck some food, yeah?" Cor ordered.

A woman with a swath of dirty blonde hair and a face full of pockmarks got up from the burning barrel in the center of the room. She handed Anders the rotisserie rat she'd been cooking. There was no subtlety to it at all. It was a rat. Burnt and brown and complete with its tail and tiny head. Anders pinched the skewer between two fingers and wrinkled his nose. It smelled like piss.

He hadn't eaten in three days. His stomach rumbled for just thought of food. Anders took a nervous bite. It tasted pungent and gamey and reminded him of rabbit. It could have been worse, he supposed.

"So hey," Cor said, "Like I was telling your boy Franke, if you're not with us, then you want Lirene, higher up in Lowtown. Don't normally mention it, kills recruitment, but you did us a solid. Lirene runs an import shop, which is about as profitable as it sounds. Imports refugees and dog shit, but the bitch has teeth. If there's work in the city, she'll find it for you, and in the meantime she's got a warehouse where she houses the refugees."

"Sounds like a plan, right?" Franke asked.

"Sounds like a plan," Anders agreed.

Chapter 49: A Good Man

Notes:

Hello everyone! Thank you all for your wonderful comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:31 Dragon 21 Cassus Morning
Kirkwall Lowtown

Anders had been too exhausted to make the trip to Lirene's Ferelden Imports the same day he'd arrived in Kirkwall. Instead he had fallen asleep in one of the Dog Lords' backrooms, and was surprised to find he woke up with all of his things intact and not stolen. Saving Manus apparently counted for something among the Dog Lords, because no one seemed to protest his extended stay, even with his nightmares. Anders and Franke were given bread made from sawdust for breakfast.

It was food. It was more than he'd had before. Anders accepted it gratefully, and conjured water to fill a barrel for the Dog Lords in thanks. The clean water meant a surprising amount to them, and a few people even volunteered to escort Anders and Franke to Lirene's shop whenever they were ready to go. Anders would have gone that day, had a gang war not broken out in the streets.

A dozen men and women came limping back to the Dog Lords' hideout, and Anders spent the rest of the day healing them while Franke decided to explore the city. Lunch that day was nettle soup, and dinner was kelp the Dog Lords collected when it was thrown out from the hauls at the docks. It wasn't a three course meal served with the Warden Commander's finest brandy, but it was food. Anders ate.

Cor offered him the five silvers he'd promised for healing his men, and considering Anders only had thirteen silvers to his name he was tempted to take it, but he thought of one better. He showed Cor his coin from the Collective, and asked him if he'd ever seen a symbol like it anywhere in the city. Cor hadn't, but he promised to 'send the dogs sniffing for it' if Anders kept healing them. It seemed like a decent bargain, so Anders agreed.

Anders made the trip to Lirene's with Franke the day after the gang war, and listened to the Franke recount everything he'd done the day they'd spent apart. Apparently all he'd managed to do was get lost. Kirkwall was a maze, and if not for the two Dog Lords escorting them, Anders didn't doubt they would have gotten lost again. The Dog Lords did their best to explain Kirkwall's structure to them.

Lowtown had been a quarry, at some point. The district was collection of 'hexes' connected by corridors and caves carved into the blackrock. Most of Lowtown was stacked on-top of itself, multistory shantytowns and market blocks built around the occasional foundry. Mineshafts were everywhere, and the Dog Lords pointed out each in turn with a warning to steer clear of them.

Apparently, they lead to Darktown. Darktown was a massive mine, or a collection of mines, beneath the city dating back to the days of the Tevinter Imperium. The mines served as the city's sewers now, and housed all the Ferelden refugees who didn't join the Dog Lords, and who Lirene couldn't help. They were also thick with chokedamp, and the poisonous gas would occasionally spout up from the mineshafts into the city, hence the warning to steer clear.

"On second thought, maybe gang life is for me," Franke mumbled.

"You'll find something," Anders said, "Everyone needs shoes. Well, unless you're Dalish, I guess."

"Oh yeah?" Franke asked eagerly, "You ever met one?"

Anders shrugged unhelpfully, and wished he hadn't said anything. Mercifully, Franke let it drop, and filled the silence with chatter about the elves he'd met in his life until they reached the courtyard, or 'hex' where Lirene's shop was located. It was a step up from the corridor where the Dog Lord's holdout was located. For one, it was a hex, and not an alley street, which meant Anders could see the sky.

... in theory. Anders looked up at a black cloud of smog and sighed. There was a foundry in the hex, and ash and soot fell from the sky in flakes like snow. A few settled in Anders' hair, but most gathered in the awnings scattered throughout the crowded market district. The shops were little more than planks of wood with threadbare strips of cloth thrown over them to protect goods from the falling soot. Most were selling famine foods: beets, turnips, even bags of sawdust.

A few of the shanties were selling meat or fish, and the flies there were like a cloud. Anders watched a butcher pull down a pig's flank, covered in an undulating mass of black, and carve it for an unaffected patron. Then Anders remembered he'd eaten a rat and decided he couldn't judge. It wasn't as if the vermin weren't plentiful in Kirkwall; they ran along the edge of the buildings, and occasionally scurried underfoot in waves.

"Home shit home," Anders mumbled.

Every other person they passed shot the four of them glares, but Anders didn't know if that had more to do with his staff or with the Dog Lords. With the foundry, the crowds, the rats, Lowtown as a bustle of noise and pungent odors. More than a few people jostled Anders, and each time he couldn't help giving a mental thanks to Amell for telling him to keep his coin in his boots.

Anders watched the crowds despite knowing his coin was safe. He wasn't a fan of being jostled, or having people's hands stuffed down his clothes without invitation. Whether it was the soot, the lack of a restful sleep, or something else, something was going wrong with Anders' vision. A few people they passed had queer halos about them, and Anders had to blink a handful of times before he stopped seeing them.

Lirene's shop was stuffed into a corner. Unsurprisingly, the stone wall it was built into was painted over with graffiti. 'Fereldans go home' and 'Fuck Ferelden' were a few of the creative insults the locals had managed to come up with. There was even a rather crude painting of a mabari fucking a woman Anders guessed was meant to be Lirene with the words 'Fereldan bitch' scrawled above it.

Quaint.

They pushed open the door, after which there was little more they could do. The front room was packed with Fereldan refugees, all of them clamoring for the attention of the two women manning the shop.

"This is why you join the Dog Lords," One of their escorts said. "There ain't shit for work in this city."

"Cor will do you solid, Anders," Said the other, a young woman named Bree. She'd been the one to offer him her rat his first day in Kirkwall, and later Anders had healed her arm after she'd broken it in the gang war, "You should just come back with us, yeah? Where's Lirene gonna find work for a-... a man like you?"

"I don't know, maybe I fancy myself a cobbler," Anders joked.

"Sure, I could use an apprentice when I get my new shop started," Franke agreed, "I'm thinking I'll call it: Franke's Footwear. Of course I'll probably just have to have the sign with the shoe for the name again... Someday, I'll have a shop over in Hightown and all of my customers will be nobles who know how to read."

"Good luck with that," Their escort snorted.

"We're gonna head back to the Kennel," Bree said, "You two know how to get back if you need, yeah?"

"Yeah," Anders said. He might have been lying. The two Dog Lords left, and Anders and Franke took a spot at the back of the queue.

"I haven't eaten all day!" Someone in the crowd was complaining.

"Where do I find work?" Asked another. "I asked at thirty farms for work! No one is hiring Fereldans."

"I should have taken my chances with the Blight," One man muttered.

"Is there any flour?" Begged one woman, "We've been out for a week. The children are eating sawdust,"

"Them and us both, right?" Franke joked.

A man holding a bowl with a few bits in it stopped in front of them. His clothes were covered in soot, his hair was a ratty coal, and his eyes were two haunted beads of black, "Pardon. I know none of us got much, but my wife died yesterday... in the mines. Either of you spare a bit? I'm taking up a collection to afford the burning."

"Franke's got what Franke's got," Franke shrugged, turning out empty pockets.

"It costs something for a burning here?" Anders asked.

"Of course it does," The miner said. "Everything costs something in Kirkwall. None of those Chantry Sisters is gonna come down to Lowtown to give some Ferelden refugee a service when we're dying in droves in the mines... three others died with her."

"This is ridiculous," Anders said, "We were eating sticks yesterday and we're the lucky ones?"

"Looks like," Franke agreed.

"How much is a burning?" Anders asked.

"A silver," The widower said. And he had to beg for it.

Anders crouched down and took off his boot to fish out a sweaty silver for the man. He flicked it into the bowl and put his boot back on, and when he got back up the widower was staring at him with tears in his eyes. His shaking hands made the few bits and silver rattle in the bowl. Well... at least he wasn't lying.

"Maker bless you," The man sniffed. He palmed the coins and stuffed them into the rags he was wearing, and then he held out a blackened hand for Anders to shake.

Well, it wasn't like Anders wasn't wearing a glove. Anders shook his hand, and the widower pulled him into a sudden hug with a loud sob that drew the attention of the entire room. "Maker bless you," The widower said again, weeping, "There ain't no one done me a kindness since she died. That damn Orlesian wouldn't even give me her last stipend."

"Hey, no problem," Anders said, patting the man's back, "Really, it's nothing,"

"You got a staff," A woman in the crowd said, staring at him. Her clothes looked little more than grey rags, and she was so thin the sharp edges of her shoulders shone through the thin fabric.

"What, this?" Anders tossed Vigilance from one hand to the other behind the crying man's back, "Walking stick."

"Are you a mage?" The woman persisted, unconvinced. No one had a walking stick made out of dragonbone, set with a crystal, and glowing with runes. "I can't get my brother out of bed. The grippe's got him bad, and now he's got the shakes. You can help him, right?"

"Maker, Eireen, leave him alone and stop asking everyone with a walking stick if they're a mage," Someone else in the crowd said, "Mage don't mean healer anyway. Get back in line. Lirene'll get your brother a philter."

The woman turned around with a noticeable sag in her shoulders, and the crowd went back to clamoring for Lirene's attention. The widower untangled himself from Anders, thanked him again, and left the shop. Anders hoped he wasn't just an impressive conman, but the odds that he was telling the truth seemed worth the silver.

Anders stared at the back of the woman who'd claimed to have a sick brother.

Franke nudged him, "We should play Wicked Grace sometime, you and me. I bet you whatever else is in your shoe I'd win."

"I bet you're right," Anders said, "I'm going to go talk to her. Where do you want to catch up later?"

"I guess here, if Lirene can get me a room, or back at the Kennels," Franke said, "If that doesn't work... Same time tomorrow outside this shop?"

"Alright," Anders said, "I'll see you, Franke."

"See you, Anders," Franke said.

Anders maneuvered through the crowd until he reached Eireen. He gave her boney shoulder a squeeze, and she glanced back at him. Anders gestured towards the door with his head and the woman followed him. It wasn't exactly subtle, either way, considering the whole room had seen her accuse him for a mage. Anders was going to end up Tranquil by the end of the week at this rate.

"So can you help him?" Eireen asked excitedly when they were outside. "You're a mage and you can help him, right?"

"Yeah, I can help him," Anders said, "Lead the way."

"We have a small place in Darktown," Eireen said, grabbing Anders' gloved hand and leading him out of the hex and down an alley. "Maker bless you,"

Anders tried to keep track of where they were going, but it was a struggle with the awnings that stretched across the corridors and side streets. Eireen led him to a building with a caved in wall, and stepped over the rubble. Anders stepped in after her, and was greeted with a lift. The massive plank of wood took up most of the floor, chains from the ceiling leading down into the floor. A massive crank sat in the center, and Eireen climbed on.

Six? Was Anders at six lives now? Maybe it was five. He'd stopped keeping count. He stepped onto the lift, and the hollow sound made by his boots and the butt of his staff unnerved him. Eileen turned the crank, and the lift lurched down in sharp, jittery motions. "Thank you so much, Ser Mage," Eireen said while cranking. "It's so hard to stay warm in the winter in Darktown. It's been two days and my brother hasn't gotten up."

"I'll do what I can," Anders said. The lift lurched again, and the further it dropped the darker it became. Anders swallowed down a lump in his throat, and the lift lurched again. The shadows stretched. "So how far down are we going? I mean I know it's called Darktown, but that's just a metaphor, right?"

"No, it's dark," Eireen said. Another lurch. Fading light.

Anders' hand lit involuntarily with Veilfire. Cerulean flames cracked through his skin in his palm and the back of his hand, and crawled down his forearm to stop at his elbow. The soft emerald glow of the Fade illuminated the lift, and Anders stared at it, thinking of the comfort it was so obviously meant to give. The surge of mana was the only contact he had with Justice, and his only way of knowing how the spirit felt.

The fact that Justice wanted to comfort him didn't say much, but it said enough. For a few merciful moments Anders didn't feel quite so alone. He wondered how Justice felt about what they'd done. With the way they'd lost control. The flames in his arm receded and the Veilfire went out. Anders didn't know what it meant. He wished they could talk.

Eireen apparently cared too much about her brother to question the crazy mage lighting himself on fire in the dark. The lift came to a lurching halt and opened up into darkness. A single metal post held an oil lantern, and it was making a very feeble effort to battle back the black. Anders tried to summon the Veilfire on his own, and his hand lit with orange flames instead. Anders frowned.

"It's not so bad further on," Eireen said. "You shouldn't use your magic in the open down here. Stannard likes to send her templars to search the sewers for maleficar and escaped mages, but mostly all they do on their patrols is harass us refugees."

"Templars abusing their power? Color me shocked." Anders said.

"It wasn't like this in Ferelden." Eireen said.

"It was, you just didn't see it." Anders said.

"It's this way," Eireen said. "Thank you again for helping us. I know... I know what happens to mages in this city. I'm sorry I opened my mouth like that but-"

"Hey, it's whatever," Anders said. "Let's just go help your brother."

Eireen led him down a darkened corridor and into maze. Anders stopped at the threshold to the area, and wondered how anyone was ever supposed to find their way around Darktown. A flat of stone took up the space before them, and split off into a dozen different stairs and tunnels. It had been a mine once, and for the most part the area was open. Enough that if Anders looked down or up he could see more layers to Darktown, stacked one on top of the other.

Fires were scattered throughout the underground cavern like fireflies against a backdrop of black. Some were burning rubbish heaps, others were lit in barrels, yet more in oil lanterns. A handful came from bronze chandeliers hanging down from the stone ceiling. The scattered lighting cast a thousand different shadows, and they stretched liked claws across the floor, illuminating graffiti of various gang markings, of slaves, of templars stepping on or stabbing refugees.

Eireen led him along an old minecart path, the tracks rotted and rusted. Anders followed her past clusters of Darktown inhabitants gathered around the occasional fire. Their faces were shadowed, the cheeks sunken, and all of them were in rags. Many had sallow complexions that screamed of malnutrition. "Keep walking, Fereldans!" One of the groups threatened. "Can still smell the dog on you."

Anders couldn't smell anything but shit. Grooves were carved where the floors met the walls, where sewage flowed when it was abundant or sat when it wasn't. There were cockroaches everywhere. Anders stepped on a few following Eireen. It was obscene that anyone should be forced to live in such a place.

They were still Grey Wardens. They had an obligation to these poor folk. They had an oath. The Blight had brought these refugees to the shores of this wretched city and it was for them to battle it back in any form. The darkspawn were a cancer at the heart of the world and they had to be not only eradicated but undone. The sick and the wounded and the impoverished were but remnants of a greater pressing evil.

"No no no!" Eireen hissed, grabbing his hand and pulling him into a small nook in the blackrock. It pressed the two of them together and Anders stared down at her, perplexed by the closeness. "Put the light out. Stop glowing. I know it's dark but I know the way. I don't want someone to see you and get you in trouble for helping me."

Anders stared down at his hands, and the blue flame cracking through them. "I had not realized," Justice said quietly. He tried to let go. To come back. Anders. He was Anders.

He wasn't. Justice stared at Anders' gloves hands, and flexed them curiously. How fantastical the feeling. The cold wind on his face, the warmth and weight of Anders' clothes, the bite of the straps to his satchels on his shoulders, the bits of silver stacked beneath his foot, the sweat on his palms gathering in the lining of his gloves. No. No, he would not indulge this.

Anders was still there, behind his eyes, but the second Justice had pulled forth Anders had surrendered everything to him. Justice could feel the fragmented thoughts they shared and the ones that they didn't. The sudden, desperate desire to cease to be and leave his life in the hands of another wasn't Justice's thought at all.

"We need a moment alone." Justice said.

"I mean... Sure I guess if you need a minute," Eireen said. "I'll wait a bit down here, just please stop glowing."

Justice leaned Vigilance up against the wall and knelt down in the small nook. How to call him back? He had to pick through Anders' memories to find his capacity to heal and piece his mind back together the first time he had overwhelmed him, but Anders' mind was whole now. There was nothing to heal. Anders just didn't care enough to fight for any hold on himself.

"Anders..." Justice said. What could he say? What would move him?

Compassion might, but Justice didn't aspire to Compassion.

"You promised this woman your aid," Justice said.

Nothing.

"Staying this way might break your mind as it did before." Justice said.

Still nothing.

"... Please do not leave me alone in this world." Justice said.

Anders had a headache. He sat in a small crack in the blackrock, with his knees pulled up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them. Veilfire was on his fingers. He wasn't alone. He had Justice. He could keep going. Anders ran his hands through his hair and gave the dirty strands a cathartic yank. Don't think about Wardens. Don't think about Wardens.

Anders grabbed his staff and hoped Justice listened to him. He stumbled out of the crack in the rock and found Eireen pacing by an upturned minecart. "You alright?" Eireen asked.

"Just tired." Anders said. "Sorry. Is it much further?"

"Not much," Eireen said. "I'm sorry. I know it's dark, and damp, and all that. I bet being able to glow like that is pretty useful, yeah?"

"Yeah." Anders said.

Eireen led him to a small shack, built up against the blackrock out of discarded bits of timber and stolen awnings. Eireen had said she had a place in Darktown, but Anders wouldn't have called the heap of rubble a place. "There's not room for three people," Eireen said, kneeling next to the entrance and pulling aside the flap of cloth that made up the door.

A dozen templars didn't burst out, so Anders supposed he had that going for him, at least. "Aran, I found someone to help you," Eireen called.

Her brother answered her with a watery cough. Anders wrapped his scarf around his mouth and nose, and hoped it served against the grippe. He summoned a light for himself and crawled into the shack to kneel beside the man lying down inside. True to Eireen's words, Aran was shaking to the point where he struggled to keep his raggedy blanket over his shoulders. His face was a draining mess, and the eyes he blinked up at Anders were a bright red.

"I'm going to heal you, alright?" Anders said, gathering a well of mana in his hand with the hopes the man didn't panic at the sight of a mage.

Aran only nodded. There were broken capillaries all along his hands, and down his neck. Anders pulled the blanket down, and ran gloved fingers over Aran's inflamed joints. Aran was a mess. He must have been suffering for days. Anders released the mana he'd gathered in a wash of benevolent energy to manage the pain, and channeled an aura to cleanse the infection.

Justice felt different than Compassion. Anders let some of the magic wash over himself to fight back the ache in his muscles and the dull pain emanating from behind his eyes. It felt like a breath of fresh air, or a drink of cold water. Anders kept the channel open after Aran was long healed, and stared at his glowing hands. There had to be some other way they could communicate.

Justice was right there. He was a part of him. Anders felt a few of his thoughts, and recognized them for what they were, but it still felt so fractured and disjointed. He felt like one person, unable to really feel much of Justice until he retreated inside his own head and let Justice take control of him.

Anders had done it so readily. The second he recognized the thought for Justice Anders surrendered himself to it. He hadn't given any thought to what they'd done the last time they'd lost control. He couldn't think of Justice as some kind of abomination, but there'd been so much blood and Maker why couldn't he remember? Why couldn't he talk to Justice so Justice could tell him?

Did Justice even remember?

Maybe he didn't. Maybe Anders had broken him like he'd broken Barkspawn. Anders forced the thoughts out of his head. Eireen had managed to force her way into the small shack, and was sitting tangled in her brother and talking animatedly with him now that he'd recovered.

"Glad I could help," Anders said. He crawled out of the shack and back out into Darktown with the intent to find his way back to Lirene's shop when Eireen ran after him.

"Ser Mage, wait a minute," Eireen begged, darting in front of him, "Is there any way we can repay you? We don't have any coin but if you need a favor..."

"I'm good," Anders said, "Really, just glad I could help."

"I know you've already done so much and you probably have better things to do, but I have a friend who lives down by the docks," Eireen said, "She's twenty-two weeks, but she can't afford a midwife, and the other day there was blood on her smalls. I don't know if you know anything about birthing or pregnancies but I have to ask."

"Spotting is more common during the first trimester, not the second," Anders said, hating the Circle memories that leapt out at him when he thought of delivering children, "You want to take me to her?"

Eireen led him out of Darktown and to the docks. Kirkwall was split into east and west on either side of the chasm, but the distinction was less important than how high up a district was. The whole city was like an allegory for suffering. The Circle was in chains and the wealthy lived above the poor. The thought was a bitter one, but underneath that bitterness was something sweet, like delight. It was the sort of feeling Anders used to have when he talked to Amell, and knew someone understood him.

"... I guess we're of the same mind right now, is that it?" Anders joked to himself.

"What?" Eireen asked.

"Nothing," Anders said.

Eireen brought him to meet her friend in the docks, and passed a compound of qunari that was apparently staying in the city on the way there. Anders couldn't help noticing the compound wasn't covered in the same graffiti that covered everything even remotely Fereldan in Kirkwall. Trust bullies to only pick the fights they could win.

Eireen's friend wasn't suffering from anything serious. Her pregnancy was going well, aside from the usual complaints of backache and frequent urination. The spotting was from a cervical polyp, which Anders removed in an easy surgery. She laughed about it with her husband later when Anders warned both of them off sex until it healed.

They gave him lunch for it, and while the fried fishcakes weren't a feast they were probably the most substantial food Anders had eaten in days. He hadn't finished before the woman mentioned she had a distant relative with back problems that had confined them to their bed, and the husband mentioned he had a friend with a broken leg who was going to lose his house if he couldn't get back to work.

The man with a broken leg was just down the street, and Anders healed him before he made the trip to Lowtown with Eireen's friend to check on the relative with back problems. The man had a herniated disc, and a friend who'd started vomiting a lot recently. The friend had ulcers, and had a friend who had the grippe, who had a friend who had the yellow plague, who had another friend who had chest pains.

None of the people Anders had seen had any coin to spare, not that Anders asked, but most of them offered him something. Water, whatever food they had, a promised favor in the future. The man with ulcers had a daughter who'd even tried to give Anders her doll for healing her father. When he'd declined, she'd gone on to insist that the doll had the grippe and Anders had to heal it.

It was worth a smile, and worth his time. It was the dead of night by the time the chain of 'friends who had a friend' finally stopped. The last patient Anders seen was a man named Thom, who had a heart disease, and was all too happy to lead Anders back to Lirene's Import Shop when Anders healed him, considering it was apparently in the same hex in which Thom lived.

Anders hadn't even noticed. He didn't doubt he was going to end up lost more than a few times in the sprawling mess that was Kirkwall. Unless he was always with a refugee or a Dog Lord, dragging him from one patient to the next, Anders supposed. He could think of a worse existence. If nothing else, it was a relief to be busy and not have to think about anything but whoever needed his help next.

A few Dog Lords passed Anders and Thom in the starlit streets on their way to Lirene's shop, and approached with their hands on the hilt of their weapons only to stop when they recognized Anders. Their whole demeanor changed from desperate thugs to old friends, and they asked Anders when he was coming back to the Kennels (whenever they needed him), while also mentioning they were keeping an eye out for his 'weird symbol' but hadn't found anything yet (thanks for trying).

Anders gave them a wave when they left. Thom stared at him with his mouth agape.

"What?" Anders asked.

"You. That. The Dog Lords," Thom said, "I-shit. I'm tone deaf. I had no idea you were Fereldan... you know I'm a Marcher right?"

"You're pretty bad at it," Anders joked, "I thought we were just walking."

"You don't care?" Thom asked.

"Don't give two bits," Anders said. "Why would I?"

"Because the Dog Lords do," Thom said.

"I'm more of a cat person, myself," Anders joked.

"I don't know if that's a good thing," Thom said. "A mage in Stannard's city? You need a group. People looking out for you. I think the Dog Lords are dog shit, but you probably saved me a heart attack back there. Gang or not, you might want to stick with them."

"I'll think about it," Anders said when they reached Lirene's shop. "Thanks, Thom."

"No problem," Thom said. "Take care of yourself, Anders."

Anders really wished people would stop telling him that. He let himself into Lirene's shop, and was almost surprised to find it deserted. A middle-aged looking woman in a worn blue dress and a grey apron was tidying up the shelves, her hair bunned sloppily at the back of her head after a day of hard work. Another woman was with her, much younger, and much less affected. She was blonde and slender and humming to herself while she ran a rag over the scattered furniture.

The older woman glanced at him and scowled, "Lissa, didn't I tell you to lock the door? How many times do I have to remind you? Do you want the Coterie or the Redwaters walking in here in the middle of the night?"

"Sorry, Lirene," Lissa said sheepishly, stuffing her rag into her apron and hurrying to where Anders stood by the door, "I'm sorry, friend, but we're full up for the night. Do you have anywhere else to stay?"

"Not even a corner?" Anders asked wearily. The Dog Lords were fine as individuals, but as a gang they were still a gang, and not something Anders wanted to be a part of or come to rely on.

"Wait, you're the fellow with the staff," Lirene made her way around the counter, which was little more than a plank of wood thrown over two stones. "The one who gave a silver to Devin. You left with Eireen."

"Sure," Anders said.

Lirene glared up at him while her eyes searched his face. Anders remembered Cor had called her a bitch, but one of Anders' closest friends had been a bitch. He didn't mind so much, "Did you do anything for Aran?" Lirene asked.

"I guess that depends on who's asking," Anders said.

"What, you think I give a damn about those blighted templars?" Lirene demanded, "They've done nothing but harass us since the Blight drove us to this accursed city. I'm asking because I know folk. Good, innocent folk, who could use a healer. Are you one?"

"That's the rumor," Anders said. Gallows, here I come, Anders thought to himself. At least if he got himself caught he'd be able to see Karl again.

"I'll get you that corner," Lirene said.

Chapter 50: First Day

Notes:

Hello everyone. Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 1 Verimensis Late Morning
Kirkwall Lowtown: Lirene's Ferelden Imports

Anders wasn't sure he would call the planks of wood and strewn straw a bed, but it was there, and it was his. The bunks in Lirene's warehouse were stacked three high, and Anders had one on the middle row, between Franke and another displaced refugee. One of the refugees had brought in mites, a week back, and Anders had spent days combing through head after head with a fine toothed comb and washing ragged linens with Lissa.

That had been a nightmare on its own. Anders was forever in four layers of clothes, all of them infected. He'd had to wash mites from everything from his smalls to the feathers on his spaulders. If nothing else, it had also given him a chance to wash himself. Anders hated wash buckets with a passion. They reminded him of a thirteen year old boy, still fresh off the betrayal of his first friend.

That boy had sat on a bench under a templar's stare and cried while he ran a rag over his naked body. He'd ceased to be a person. He was just a risk, and risks weren't allowed privacy. Not even to take a shit least they find some way to crawl into the latrine and escape through the sewers, and Maker if it had been possible Anders would have done it.

In retrospect, he knew he didn't warrant the scrutiny. They could have given him five minutes to wash his cock in peace, they just wanted to humiliate him so he wouldn't be so rebellious, and it had worked. For a few months. After those months were up, Anders learned how to bottle it up, put on a grin, and piss on the boot of the templar assigned to him.

The black-eye had been worth it, and the First Enchanter had convinced the Knight-Commander to take the guard off him after that, but the memory stuck with Anders. He hated wash buckets ever since. They reminded him of degradation and humiliation and such a grievous injustice it boiled the blood to think that he had suffered it.

"It was a long time ago," Anders said to himself at the sudden flash of rage he was vaguely certain had been from Justice. Lirene had a few backrooms where the refugees could wash or shit in peace, and that alone made it better than the Circle had ever been. Anders sat on a bench with a bucket for washing and a bucket for shitting, doing his best to get the grime off his skin. It wasn't easy.

He'd had two baths, since he'd gotten to Kirkwall. One his first night at the warehouse, and that had been little more than a splash of water on his face, but Anders was counting it. The second was after the mites, and Anders had scrubbed every inch of his skin pink and raw with a piece of pumice. Anything made from rock was relatively inexpensive in Kirkwall, but it was far from luxury.

Anders missed when he'd been able to lose a bar of soap in the tub and grab another one from the Wardens' limitless supply. There was no soap for him now. It was a luxury Anders wasn't sure he could afford when he only had seven silvers left to his name. He's started with thirteen, and seemed to burn through one every other day. Someone needed the coin for a burning, someone else needed food, yet another needed swaddling clothes.

It was good work. Anders didn't know whether it was him or Justice that thought as much, but it was a good feeling. Anders wrung out a strand of his hair and watched the soiled water spill down his forearm and over his knee. It was a light brown with grime, dirt, and blood by the time it reached the floor and swirled down the drain into Darktown.

Anders fished out the cup floating in the bucket and dumped another round of water over his head. If nothing else, his magic meant it was warm, but it never stayed that way for long in winter. A chill cut through the warehouse, and it reached Anders' bones even under four layers of fabric. Sitting on a bench naked, he was freezing in-between each splash of water. Anders ran his nails along his scalp, and a few strands of hair caught on the uneven edges. He needed to file them, but Anders was too busy to do much of anything lately.

Anders loved it. He didn't have time to think, to worry, to reflect. There was always something to do. Someone to help. The fact that Anders could summon clean water at will seemed Maker-sent to the refugees. If Anders wasn't healing a break, or a contusion, or a cough, he was summoning water. He filled canteens, barrels, and buckets. He conjured fire that burned without tinder to help heat the warehouse during the day, and that meant Lirene could save the fuel for night.

He helped clean. He helped cook, albeit poorly. The refugees ate everything from sawdust to bark to rats to pigeons to whatever scraps they could dig up out of the trash. Today they were eating scrapple. Lissa had dragged Anders to the local butchers to beg for scraps and trimmings, and they'd mixed it into a mush with buckwheat and baked it. Of the score of refugees packed into Lirene's warehouse, everyone was to get a loaf the size of Anders' palm.

It was for a First Day feast, and Anders wanted no part in it. Lirene had even splurged for a cask of watered down ale, but Anders wasn't in a celebratory mood. He just wanted to keep busy, keep from thinking, keep from being. Anders felt something at the thought. A feeling like a crease in his brow and a tension in his shoulders, and Anders sighed. "I didn't mean it like that,"

Anders had been there, in the Fade. He'd felt himself behind his own eyes, able to watch every action Justice made with his body and little more. He'd been devoid of any sensation until he'd managed to push past the spirit to kiss Compassion, and that was it. Anders couldn't help wondering if it was the same for the spirit in the real world, sitting, watching, silent save for when he pushed for his thoughts to be heard.

Anders had to hope it was. He'd taken to talking to himself, with the hope that he was also talking to Justice, and they weren't quite so alone. "I don't know if you can tell, but lately I've been thinking maybe we could practice switching," Anders said, scrubbing his shoulders when there was nothing more he could do for his hair. "You know, like we did in Darktown.

"I heard what you said to-..." Anders swallowed down a lump in his throat and shut out the thought of Compassion's fading light, wracked with sobs and twisting into Mercy, "What you said in the Fade. About how you liked breathing, feeling. I don't know how it works for you, but when you're up front everything feels muted for me, and I could really use that right now. What do you think?"

Anders wrung out his rag and dunked it in the water bucket. He washed under his arms, trying to focus on himself, on his thoughts, but he'd never been very introspective. It was hard for him to understand what Justice felt. What he wanted. To even understand how much of a distinction there was between them.

Justice had. In the Fade, Justice had said everything Anders had wanted him to say and done everything Anders had wanted him to do. Anders sat washing himself, his thoughts turning over themselves, his every emotion in a tangled knot he didn't dare unravel for fear of what he'd find, and had no idea what the spirit felt. Anders sighed, and gave up. He finished washing and dried himself off with a fire spell before he dressed.

Anders was a mess of cotton, wool, and leather by the time he finished dressing. He had his smalls, and a base layer of cotton he wore under his black leather trousers. His elaborate belt with all its pouches, sheath for his dagger, bookstrap for his grimoire, strap for the canteen Rosalyn had given him, and a buckle made from silverite he could probably pawn if he got desperate.

Another base layer of cotton on his chest, black leather chest armor on top of that, two tunics on top of it, his brigandine spaulders, and the feathered spaulders on top of those. Two scarves he'd taken to tying around his chest and neck, two layers of socks beneath the boots Franke loved, his gloves and the silver bracers he wore over them.

Add in two satchels over either shoulder, and Cor's nickname was painfully accurate. Anders felt like a packmule. The clothes were heavy enough, but one of his satchels was filled with books, and the other with cookware. Anders knew he looked ridiculous, but he didn't see any other alternative. It wasn't as if there was anywhere he could leave his things, and he wasn't about to risk any of them being stolen.

Especially his staff. Vigilance was the most unsubtle thing Anders could have walked into Kirkwall with, and he knew it, but he couldn't bring himself to get rid of it. He'd already had a few close calls because of it. Patrols through Lowtown were mercifully rare, but they still happened. Whether it was orange guardsmen or silver templars, Anders had been forced to flee down the occasional side alley.

Once he'd gotten himself lost as a result, and hadn't made it back to Lirene's warehouse until well after dark. The reception when he came back was more than a little unexpected. Lirene was practically overwrought, and Anders had only known the woman around a week. More than a few of the refugees were awake, and pacing the common room waiting for him. Apparently, someone had seen the templar patrol, and lost sight of Anders, and assumed the worst.

It was a little jarring to realize how much he meant to them, but it wasn't as if they had anyone else. They had Lirene, and they had Cor, and now they Anders, and as far as Anders knew, there was no one else in the city looking out for Fereldan refugees. There were a few names that came up in conversation, Faj, Vallen, Hawke, and a handful of others, but they were just Fereldans doing well, and not actively helping.

He knew he should have done something with them for First Day, but the last thing Anders wanted to do was spend a day reflecting on the past year. The past was the past, and the dead should stay dead. That was what Anders had said.

'He said to the necromancer,' Amell had joked in response; drink had left his face flush, and when he'd smiled Anders could see the mirth sparkling in his eyes, when they were usually so enigmatic, so captivating, so red.

No. No, no, no. Anders had gone months without thinking about him. He wasn't going to start now. Anders ran an anxious hand through his hair, and his glove came away with a few blonde strands tangled around it. Not again. Anders hoped he never passed a looking glass. He didn't want to know how thin his hair was getting or how far back his hairline was now. Twenty-seven, and at this rate Anders wouldn't have been surprised if a few strands were grey.

He needed a hair tie. He needed a shave. Anders left the washroom and made his way through the warehouse. Refugees were clustered into small circles, and more than a few whistled and called for him to join them. Anders waved in answer, and slipped out of the warehouse and into the common room. Lirene was manning the shop, despite the lack of customers on the annum.

"I'm going out," Anders said.

"Anders, do you want to leave the staff?" Lirene asked, gesturing with her thumb to the cage in the back of the shop where she and Lissa slept and kept all their personal affects. "We'll keep a watch for you. Your satchels too, if you need,"

Anders thought about it, and ultimately shook his head. Everything he had meant everything to him. He didn't want to risk it, "I'll be alright,"

Anders left the shop, and stepped out into Lowtown. It was snowing. Ash and soot mixed with the snow and painted the sky a dismal grey. Anders untied one of his scarves and tied it around his head, and over his ears. He brushed his fingers over the silver stud in his right ear, and thought briefly of Sigrun before he pushed the thought away.

Anders left the shop to jog down Lowtown's steps and twisted alleys towards the docks. It was one of the few places in Kirkwall Anders could find on his own, mostly because all he had to do to find it was make sure he was heading down roads that slanted down. He passed a group of children kicking a leather ball back and forth, and kicked it back to them when it came his way.

Today wasn't so bad, Anders supposed, so long as today stayed today and didn't wander into yesterday. The kids followed him, either for his staff or for boredom, kicking their ball back and forth and generally getting in his way. "Spare a bit, messere?" One of the boys begged.

"Spare a bit!" One of the others chorused.

Anders lost twelve coppers to the little robbers. He had a smile by the time he reached the docks, and made his way through the crowds of sailors and dockworkers, and around piles of cargo and barrel after barrel of fish. He made it the eastern warehouse district, and climbed a set of stairs to an overlook of blackrock that stared out at the Waking Sea. Anders took a seat, and dangled his legs between the spikes that rimmed around the overlook.

The Gallows were there, in the distance, sitting atop a small island of blackrock. The fortress doubled as a lighthouse, and in the evenings a great beacon fire raged from the top of its ramparts. Anders didn't doubt it was a magical fire; the templars were always eager to make use of the mages they oppressed. Treating them like tools, or turning them into them with the Rite of Tranquility if they fought back.

The chains were there, hanging between the gallows and the massive bronze statues. Apparently they could be lowered to blockade the docks, but Anders didn't care for their practicality, only their symbolism. He came to this spot often to look out at the Gallows and think of Karl, and wonder how he was ever going to reach him.

He couldn't take a boat to the Gallows. Anders might not have been the brightest tack in the box, but he wasn't that stupid. The Collective could get them in touch, Anders was certain, but Cor's men had turned up no sign of the symbol in the city. Anders didn't know whether that was the truth, or just what Cor told him so Anders would keep healing his men. For all Anders knew the Dog Lords might not even be looking.

"What are we going to do?" Anders asked aloud, "Karl hasn't been in contact with the Collective for a month. He might be in trouble."

Justice wasn't sitting next to him. He didn't give an answer, but Anders did feel an overwhelming sense of certainty and urgency that something needed to be done. "Well that doesn't help us any," Anders muttered, "I know we have to do something. I'm asking what."

Nothing.

Anders sighed, and dropped back onto the blackrock to stare up at the sky. There was no foundry by the docks. Only snow was falling. Anders stirred a few with a breath of mana, and behind him someone chuckled.

Anders flung himself off the ground and flipped over with an unnatural alacrity. He held his staff out behind him for balance and energy and brought up a hand to channel whatever spell he needed. A man in plain garb wearing a hood stood in front of him, a wave tattoo above his left brow and on his cheek on the same side.

"Long time no see," The man said, "You want to put the light out before you get us both killed?"

Evon. The name came to Justice. He was familiar to Anders. Justice let go, and Anders stumbled to his feet. "Evon!" Anders exclaimed. "What are you doing here!?"

"Living, thanks to you," Evon said. He held out a hand and Anders hurried forward to take it. One of them turned it into a hug. Anders had met Evon for all of a few hours when Anders and Velanna had gotten him, Alim, and Melissa out of Amaranthine, but Evon might have been an old friend for how much it meant to Anders to see a familiar face.

"I thought you went to West Hill!" Anders said.

"Alim and Melissa went to West Hill," Evon said, pulling back from him and tugging his hood lower on his tattooed face. "I went here. Kirkwall needs help like you wouldn't believe. A little dog told me you've been looking for us. Come on, it's not safe to talk out in the open. Especially not with you holding a staff. You need to get rid of that."

Anders followed Evon down the stairs and to a back alley. Evon lifted open a storm drain, and waved Anders down into the blackened pit. Anders summoned a ball of magelight before he climbed down into the sewers. Anders hopped off the last three rungs of the latter and hit the ground with a splash. The sewage was little more than a thin film on the ground. It could have been worse. Evon followed him down the ladder, and led him through the vermin invested sewers for what felt like an age.

"Where are we going?" Anders asked.

"We've got a place in the same dock with the Qunari compound," Evon explained. "The templars and guardsmen don't patrol there as often. They're trying to keep the tensions down. I've only been here a month, but even I can see this city is coming apart at the seams. Selby is in charge of operations here."

"What happened to Karl?" Anders asked.

"Who?" Evon asked. Anders' stomach ached.

"Karl," Anders said. "Karl Thekla. He used to be the Collective's contact in the Gallows."

"The Collective doesn't have contacts in the Gallows anymore, Anders," Evon said. "Stannard is out of control. You don't understand. They're locking mages in their cells, refusing them appearances at court. The slightest crime will get you made Tranquil."

"I need to know what happened to Karl," Anders said. "He's a friend."

"I'll take you to Selby," Evon said, "Maybe she can help you."

Evon let him to a corner in the sewers, where light broke through the ceiling from another storm drain. They climbed up it, and out into a back alley, and Anders let his light go out. The street was painted with a thin layer of fallen snow, and the press of their boots melted it. Evon led him to a door cut into a wall of sandstone, and knocked three times. "Package delivery," Evon called.

A brute of a man opened the door. He looked like a dwarf the size of a human: thick at the waist, a barrel in the chest, and battering rams for arms. He looked down at them from under a mess of ratty brown hair, waved the two of them inside.

"Thanks, Donal," Evon said when they were inside. The building looked, surprisingly, like a packaging house. All around them were bulk shipments in from the docks, crates and barrels clustered and stacked into rows. A small desk sat off to the side of the entrance, where an older woman with a pallor as grey as Kirkwall's skies was sitting.

"Why always with the codes?" Anders asked. "You couldn't have come up with anything better? Why not a knock knock joke? I've got a good one, knock knock-"

"No." The woman behind the desk frowned.

"But it's a good one," Anders pouted. "I thought you were all for cloak and dagger phrases."

"You want a cloak and dagger phrase?" The woman asked, "How about the smart-mouthed Fereldan gets slapped across the face?"

"I wouldn't," Anders warned her, "I'm into that. I'll get the wrong idea."

"Selby, this is Anders," Evon introduced him in the humorless lull that followed, "He's the one that got me out of Amaranthine. He holds our Most Trusted status,"

"Well aren't you something," Selby decided, eyeing him over. "Alright, love, let's go over a few rules. The next time you come here: no staff. Three knocks, and you ask for a package delivery. We keep our special rates on a board in the back. Now, what can I do for you?"

"I need to get a letter to someone in the Gallows," Anders said.

"You got a friend there?" Selby asked.

"Karl Thekla," Anders said.

Selby nodded, "You and a handful of others. Stannard doesn't let the mages send letters out anymore. We had to get a girl in with the maidservants. You can find her at the Rusty Anchor, for two hours every day after dark. She wears a pink shawl and a rose bush brooch, and she's got cherry blonde hair with a face full of freckles. You can't miss her. You bring her your letter, and she'll handle it. No charge."

"Just like that?" Anders asked.

"Just like that," Selby said. "You know how it is, love. Personal letters are no charge. I'll be damned if I let Stannard change that."

"That's pretty marvelous of you," Anders said.

Selby smiled, "Anything else, love?"

Anders hesitated. He felt like there was something else he wanted to ask, but he couldn't find the words. There was nothing else. All he wanted was to get back in touch with Karl. Which must have meant Justice wanted something, but Anders couldn't imagine what.

"You looking for work?" Selby prodded.

"Yes," Anders' mouth betrayed him. He had plenty of work. They had plenty of work. "Stop it." Anders muttered.

"What?" Selby asked.

"Nothing, sorry," Anders said. Well... it wasn't as if Anders didn't want to stay busy, and if Justice wanted to help the Collective it wasn't like they couldn't use the coin. "Work would be great."

"Donal can show you," Selby said.

"Books are this way," The giant said with a nod towards the back of the packaging house.

Anders left Evon behind to follow the giant to a back room that looked like an office. It had a few bookshelves, a desk, and a chest. The giant pulled a set of keys out from inside his shirt and unlocked the top drawer of the desk to pull out a giant tome and drop it on the desk in front of Anders. The giant set a massive thumb in the middle of the book, and flipped it open towards the middle, where the most recent requests were written listed.

"Thanks," Anders said and flipped through them. There was a man missing a grimoire, a request for a satirical tome on the Chantry, a few missing persons, someone paying five silver for ten bundles of deep mushrooms. Anders could do that. It wasn't as if there hadn't been plenty of deep mushrooms in Darktown. "So... how do I accept, or whatever?" Anders asked.

"I stamp it, let everyone know someone else's doing it. You come back with the stuff, I stamp it again." Donal said.

"Well, stamp away," Anders said.

A bit of rifling through stationary and drawers later, and the request was stamped. Anders went back into the main room, and found Evon sitting and talking with Selby. "Do either of you know where I can get parchment in the city?"

"I can get you some, but it's not free," Selby said, with a twist to her lips that made Anders think she wished it could have been. "One silver for a bundle of twenty leaflets, five bits for the pounce to prep them and ten bits for a quill. Three silver for a jar of ink."

Anders took off his boot, dumped the coin into his palm, and started counting. He had two silver and seventy-three bits left. Anders exhaled heavily. He had to stop giving out his coin if he wanted to be able to keep in touch with Karl, and Maker did Anders want to talk to Karl. He would have paid anything if it gave him a friend.

Anders handed over the coin, Selby handed over the supplies. Anders fit them into the satchel that held his books, and had to do some rearranging and stuff his mother's pillow and one of his books into the satchel with his cookware. When he had everything settled, he exchanged thanks and goodbyes and left the packaging house.

It was still snowing, but a few tugs to adjust his scarf, and it didn't bother Anders. There was something beautiful in the crunch of the snow under his boots, the cloud of white fog that made up his breath, the cold wind on his skin. Anders leaned on his staff and looked out at the Gallows. Karl must hate it there. He'd craved the same freedom Anders craved, but he believed in it for all mages, when Anders had just believed in it for Anders.

Anders would write a letter today and bring it to the Rusty Anchor this evening. Satisfied with that plan, Anders took to the streets, and took to the stairs, and made his way back to Lowtown. He caught himself whistling half-way there. The world wasn't over. Anders' world wasn't over. He could get through this. He could start over.

Anders was on the street that led to the hex where Lirene's import shop was when someone grabbed his arm and wrenched him backwards into an alley darkened by one too many awnings. Justice whirled with the motion and pinned their assailant to the wall of blackrock with his staff. The dragonbone lay horizontal across a chest clad in leather, and their assailant panicked, "It's me! It's me! It's Bree! Anders it's me!"

"Bree?" Anders lowered his staff, and stared at the masked Dog Lord. "What are you doing? You scared the shit of me,"

"Templars," Bree hissed through her mask. "They're ransacking the Kennels and Lirene's shop looking for you! Lowtown is crawling with them. Too many people talked. Come on, we have to get you out of here. Conall knows a place."

Bree grabbed the hand not holding his staff, and ran him away from Lirene's hex. Anders let her drag him, satchels banging on his hips, "What do you mean ransacking? Is everyone okay? Did anyone get hurt?"

"We cleared out the Kennels when we saw them coming, but I don't know how Lirene's shop is doing," Bree said.

"Where are we going?" Anders asked.

"Darktown," Bree said, dragging him into a nondescript building at the end of the alley they were in. There was a lift inside. Anders stepped onto it, palms sweating into his gloves. Bree started the crank, "We've got a second base there. You can stay with us-"

"No," Anders said.

"The templars-" Bree started.

"Are fucking with you because of me!" Anders said, "I'm not staying with you. I shouldn't have stayed with Lirene. Why am I always so stupid? I should have known this would happen. I don't belong near people. If not the templars, then it will be the Wardens, and if it's not the Wardens, then it'll be me, and I can't-keep-hurting people like this,"

Anders pressed his thumbs into his eyes and wished he had a wall to bang his fist against, but the walls were sliding down around him with every lurch of the lift. He settled on banging his staff against his head instead. Why did he even still have this damn staff? What was he thinking traipsing around the most mage-hostile city in Thedas waving his staff about like a giant 'I'm a mage!' sign around his neck?

Yours always, Amell.

"Fuck," Anders sucked in a rickety breath. The lift stopped with a heavy thud that made him stumble, and opened up into a dimly lit courtyard of blackrock, strewn with refuse and refugees.

They stepped out onto the slab, and Bree looked up at him, "Anders, please come with us. The templars, it's whatever. You have no idea what kind of an edge you've given us against the Sharps, the Redwaters. A few more years of this and us Fereldans will finally have a place in this city, and it won't be down here."

"No," Anders said, "No, okay? Just no. I'm not doing it. I'm sick of people getting hurt because of me."

"More people are gonna get hurt without you," Bree said. "We need you."

"I-... fuck, I don't know," Anders shoved his scarf off his head to run a hand through his hair. "I'll go somewhere. I'll get my own place."

"Where?" Bree asked, "You're a Fereldan and a mage. The best a Fereldan can do in Kirkwall without a gang is Darktown."

"Then I'll stay in Darktown," Anders said.

"At least come talk to Conall," Bree said. "Maybe we can help you find better than a upside down mine cart, yeah?"

"Yeah, fine, alright," Anders sighed. Bree let him down a flight of stairs cared into the rock, and Anders wrung his staff between his hands. "Are you sure you should even bring me down here? Isn't everyone going to resent me for bringing the templars down on all of you?"

"Stannard brought the templars down on all of us," Bree said. "Fuck Stannard,"

"Fuck Stannard," Anders supposed.

Bree led him down a tunnel that opened up into an underground cavern. The Dog Lords were scattered throughout, looking no more worse for wear than they had in the Kennels. If not for the backdrop of blackrock, the two holdouts almost looked identical. They had the same makeshift furniture, the same familiar faces.

No one scowled at his entrance. A few people even got up to say they were glad he was alright. Bree brought him to Conall, who understood Anders' aversion to staying with them. The crooked old man led Anders to a mineshaft, a short walk away. Someone had given it a door; the shaft cut into the blackrock for perhaps ten meters before it dead-ended into nothing. There were already a few pieces of makeshift furniture scattered throughout. Upturned mine carts. Crates. A lantern hanging from the ceiling.

"Used to be our place, before the litter got too big and we had to move," Conall explained, "Home shit home?"

"It's not very clean," Anders said.

"I don't think you're going to find clean in Kirkwall," Conall laughed. "But I think this works as a place to squat and see a few folk. I know the dogs can find it when they need you."

"Maker, Conall, I don't know," Anders leaned back against the wall and banged his head against the stone. "The templars are just going to hear about this eventually, come down here, and clear me out again."

"Not if all you did was heal the dogs. We could keep it quiet," Conall said.

"I'm not doing that." Anders said.

"Then, shit. I don't know," Conall shrugged, "I guess you move again."

"How is anyone supposed to find me if I'm running around in the sewers?" Anders demanded. "This city is a maze. What am I supposed to do, put up a giant sign that says 'Apostate Healer Here'?"

"What about that symbol you had us sniff out?" Conall suggested.

"No, that's not-" Anders sighed and banged his head on the wall again. He wrung his hands on his staff, and both of them lit with Veilfire. Anders stared at it, and cast it into the lantern.

"That'd work, I guess," Conall said. "Never seen green fire before."

"... I guess it would." Anders said.

"So that's what we're telling the boys?" Conall asked, "Look for the lantern?"

"I guess so," Anders said.

"Well I guess that's squared then," Conall said, dusting imagery dust off his hands. "You wanna come back for a bit? Get you something to eat?"

"No," Anders said. "You should stay away from me unless you need healing."

"Hey. Look. Piss on Stannard," Conall spat, "She's been doing this long before you got here, yeah? You change your mind, you know where to find us, and I guess now we know where to find you."

Conall left him alone in his new hovel, and Anders sank to the ground to stare around the small mineshaft. It was a far cry from Lirene's warehouse. There'd been a bed for him there. A washroom. Company. People who were probably being harassed and threatened right now because of him.

Anders first thought was that he wanted to go back and check on everyone, but he knew that wasn't a safe option for him. He got up off the floor instead, and sat down at his new mine-cart table. He set his satchels on it, and pulled out the writing supplies he'd bought from Selby.

"Karl,"

Anders stared at the name, at his quill dripping ink. To the Void with it. Karl was his friend, and he was worried. He was done pretending he didn't need any.

"I think it's been a month or more since our last letter. I would have written sooner but I didn't know how to get a letter to you. I've heard rumors about what's going at the Gallows, but I'd rather hear it from you. I'd rather hear you're okay. I'm staying in Kirkwall for now, and while I know I can't come to the Gallows, I thought you might want to know that I'm here.

"I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm here. A lot has happened for me recently. I left the Wardens. I've been trying to help some of the refugees in the city, but I think I'm doing more harm than good. I took a job from the Collective, mostly for coin, but I know you wanted me to be more involved with them. I don't know if you know any of the members in the city, but if you do you should send me back gossip.

"From what I've seen the templars here are abusive. I know, surprise, but I mean more abusive than usual. I hope you're doing alright. If the Knight-Commander has them harassing refugees for fun I can't imagine what things in the Gallows are like. Please write back soon. And be safe.

"Your friend,
"Anders"

Anders folded the letter and set it in his satchel, and spent the rest of the day wandering through Darktown, picking deep mushrooms and filling his satchel with them. He stopped, come nightfall, and made his way to the Rusty Archor. The Collective contact was easy to find. Anders left his letter with her and left as quickly as possible, considering he still had his staff and he didn't feel comfortable leaving it in a shanty in Darktown, no matter the state of the city.

He brought the mushrooms to the Collective compound afterwards, and got an earful from a tired Selby about rules and ditching his staff, but he also got his coin. It put him up at seven silvers and seventy three coppers, and from there, despite his better judgment, his worse judgment, and his worst judgment, Anders went back to Lowtown.

He was sure a templar was going to skewer him, but it was night. The templars had up and gone, and left the streets to the thugs. It was like they were playing footbag with the refugees, and it made Anders frustrated, but not furious. He didn't have room for fury when he crept back to Lirene's shop, and knocked on the door when he found it locked.

"We're closed at night!" Lissa called from within.

"It's me," Anders called back.

The door opened. No templars rushed out. Anders supposed he'd earned some good luck. Lissa grabbed his hand and dragged him into the front room, and shut the door hastily behind him. Anders heart twisted with guilty. The front room had been trashed. The shelves were knocked over, the tables toppled, a few of the meager goods Lirene actually sold lay in pieces on floor and Lirene was sweeping them up when he walked in.

"Anders," Lirene said in surprise. "I thought-... they didn't get to you,"

"I guess they got you instead," Anders said, "Lirene, I'm so sorry about this. I don't know what they broke, but I'll pay you for it."

"Piss on it," Lirene said, resting her broom up on the wall, "We both know there's nothing in here worth anything but the people."

"Did anyone get hurt?" Anders asked.

"Franke," Lirene said. Anders took a deep breath to keep calm, and Lirene fished out a key ring from her apron, "Come on, I have him laying up in my room,"

Lirene unlocked the door to the backroom she shared with Lissa, and let Anders inside. Franke was lying on one of the cots. He had a rag in his hand which he'd obviously been pressing to his face at some point, but his hand has slid off his face in his sleep. A nasty gash that Anders guessed had come from a gauntlet had torn up the left side of his face and blackened his cheek.

Anders knelt next to Franke and gave his shoulder a squeeze to wake him. Franke woke with a noise that sounded like a frog's croak, and blinked up at Anders. "Hey!" Franke grinned a wide grin with his wide mouth, "You're alright."

"You're not," Anders inhaled mana, and breathed out magic, and the gash on Franke's head knit back together under his hand.

"What, this?" Franke snorted. "Nothing. I uh... I might have told a templar or two to shove Andraste's flaming sword up their flaming ass. Me and my big mouth, right?"

Anders exhaled hard through his nose.

"You two can just head to bed," Lirene said. "Lissa and I can finish cleaning up."

"I'm not staying," Anders said.

"... I suppose I can't fault you for leaving, but what do I tell Elissa?" Lirene asked, "She's expecting next month, and you said it wasn't going to be an easy birth."

"Tell her to go to Darktown and look for a green lantern," Anders said. "I'm not leaving the city. I'm just going where I can't hurt anyone."

"You didn't hurt anyone," Lirene said.

"People got hurt because of me," Anders said, "It's the same thing, and I'm tired of it. I'll be here if you need healing, but I'm not going to be the reason you need it."

Anders finished healing Franke, and helped Lirene finish sweeping and righting the furniture. He gave her a silver for the damage, and went back to Darktown alone. He made it to the lift, and no further. Justice found the way back to the small mineshaft they were to take up residence in. It was far from secure. The door had no lock, and Justice didn't feel comfortable with Anders sleeping alone in such a place.

He barricaded the door from the inside with the upturned minecart, rested Anders' things against the wall, and sat down on a pile of rotten straw that might have been a bed once. Justice had no need of sleep. It was Anders' mind that needed to rest, but Justice never knew what words would be a comfort to him.

Inadvertently or not, they had been responsible for the wrongs inflicted on those who had sheltered them. It was good of Anders to recognize it, but the wrong had been righted. They had healed and compensated all involved, and had sworn to act with more caution in the future.

Anders was still upset. Justice wished he could ask him why.

"You need to sleep," Justice said.

Anders didn't appear moved. Justice tried to pull on his memories, but they weren't fractured and disjointed as they had been before when his mind had broken. Before, they had been like something from the Fade, and Justice had understood them. What he pulled on now was a tangled knot of all the things that had moved Anders towards sleep in the past: exhaustion, intimacy, boredom, and the reasons he avoided it now: solitude, nightmares, darkness.

Justice could only fix one. He lit the lantern with veilfire, and Anders went to sleep.

Chapter 51: As The Crow Flies

Notes:

Thank you all for your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon The Month of Verimensis
A Collection of Letters Hidden Under a Mattress
A Second Collection Stuffed into a Satchel

A,

It means everything to hear from you. To be honest, and I'm not sure I have it in me to be anything else anymore, it means everything to hear from anyone. The Knight-Commander has confined me and the rest of the Libertarians to our quarters for 'dangerous proselytizing and inciting to riot.' We were talking in the library. I suppose we should have known better.

The templars gossip that there are qunari in the city, and that they sew their mages' lips shut. I can't help but wonder if they've been giving the Knight-Commander ideas. Did you know there was a vote in Cumberland, some months back? The Libertarians were aiming to pull away from the Chantry, and the Knight-Commander forbid the First Enchanter from attending! He had to mail in his vote.

I know if he had been there he would have been able to pull more of the First Enchanters to our side. Instead the Knight-Commander silenced his voice, and Senior Enchanter Wynne gave such a speech I'm told three First Enchanters changed their votes at the last second. It boggles the mind. A mage who turns against her own kind to ally with the templars? One whose Circle was nearly Annulled? I think I've spent the past few weeks beating my hands on the wall about it.

I'm sorry to be telling you all of this instead of just rejoicing at hearing from you, but there's been no one else to tell and the thoughts have been driving me mad. I don't dare write them in my journal, and my hands are shaking at just the thought of turning this letter over to the person who brought me yours. You have to know there's a chance the templars will intercept these.

Don't sign your name on your letters in the future. And don't write anything that could give away where you're staying. I'd say don't write at all, but I'm not nearly that strong. I have to talk to someone.

This room is starting to drive me mad. It's not solitary, and I would never think to compare the comfort of my quarters to the horrors you suffered, but there are days it feels close.When I found a letter under my tray with breakfast When I got your letter I almost started crying. This is embarrassing, but the first thing I did was run to my window to look out at the docks and imagine one of the far off shadows was you.

There are times it feels like a blessing and a curse I even have a window. On the one hand, it's fresh air and a view of the outside world, but on the other it's maddening to know it's all so out of reach. We had another jumper, a few months ago. I wasn't in my room at the time, so I didn't see it, but sometimes I look at that window and I know exactly why the Knight-Commander doesn't give us bars. I wonder if she keeps count.

I'm not surprised to hear you left the Wardens your old group. While I don't know the circumstances, I know you were never one for being tied down anywhere. I'm also not surprised to hear you're helping the refugees. You know the templars used to talk about you back in Kinloch? The other apostates made for the hills, the forests, and you always ran to the cities.

You never could resist helping anyone who needed it. I hope the refugees are looking out for you. This isn't a safe place for a mage to be, even in the Circle, but out there? I can't imagine it. The templars bring in more corpses than they do apostates. If you ask me, I think you should keep running. Go somewhere else. Rivain, the Anderfels, anywhere but Kirkwall.

At the same time I hope you stay here. There's obviously nothing I can do for the Collective our friends locked in this damn room, but knowing you're out there and you're helping with our plight means a lot to me. I know I'm not the only mage who could be doing better. They call our Circle the Gallows for a reason. I think the Knight-Commander would see us all hang if she could get away with it.

I know you said you wouldn't, but don't come to the Gallows, whatever you do. I would give anything to see you again, but the last thing I want is to see you in here. The Knight-Commander might let us out of our quarters someday, and when that happens I might be free to walk the grounds or even visit the Chantry again, but promise me you'll stay away and stay safe.

I know it's not my place to ask that of you, and this whole letter is a mess. I'm writing all of this and thinking to myself "What are you doing? You're going to scare him away," but I haven't spoken to anyone in over a month now. How did you survive solitary? What did you do? How did you pass the time? Those aren't rhetorical questions, please write back and tell me. I've spent the past few days sitting on my windowsill and I'm starting to scare myself.

Your friend,
K


K,

You're not going to scare me away. This past year My whole life I made the mistake of playing the aloof apostate and it's something I'll always regret. We're friends. If you want to tell me anything, tell me. I'm here and I'll listen. I'm not going anywhere. I don't think Ju a friend would let me leave even if I wanted to. The refugees here are suffering and we're the only ones who can help them.

Maker, I'm a refugee, and I'm suffering. I know everyone has it bad, but being a Warden what I am gives you an appetite. I didn't really notice it at the Vigil before. There was always something to eat, and the meals were three courses long. It's sticks and stones in Kirkwall. Literally. Have you ever eaten nettle soup? I had it one of my first nights here and it tastes like eating grass. With winter out in full I haven't had it since, but bark bread and rats aren't really an improvement.

I should probably strike that last paragraph. You don't need to hear me complain. Things could be a lot worse for me. I've got a place now. It's not pretty, but it keeps the draft out and it's nice to have somewhere to be. The refugees are looking out for me, for some reason. They helped me find this place, and they've been bringing me things. Food, blankets, buckets, you know, necessities.

I really hate the charity. No one here can afford to give anything away, but when I don't take it I end up tripping on it when they leave it outside my door. It's sad. They shouldn't be this grateful. I'm not even doing anything special. I'm just doing what someone should have been doing already.

I know I should have led with this, but I've been trying to work myself up to writing about it. Solitary... Maker, I don't know what to write. I didn't deal with it. I lost my mind and banged on the door for twelve months straight. The only thing that helped me was that cat. Whenever it wandered in through the food latch I'd have a bit of company. He wasn't a person but I could pretend he cared and understood.

Talk to me. Don't just wait to answer my letters. Write whatever you're thinking. Whatever you need to say. It's not going into the Void. I'm here. I'll listen.

Close your window,
A


A,

The window doesn't close, but I'll try to stay away from it. I suppose I shouldn't give the templars the satisfaction. We're not very good at being subtle, are we? Our letters are already full of so many scratched out words and phrases. I hate having to talk like this. Dancing around who we are because who we are is so shameful to the rest of the world.

I know you're already risking a lot getting these letters to me, but I wonder if I could ask you for a favor? Do you think you could send me something? Some piece of the outside world? A seashell, or flower, or anything? I'm sure you can understand why it would mean a lot to me to have something that doesn't reek of musky tomes and lyrium.

I don't know what you can do for food that isn't rats. I'd say take more jobs with our friends, but I understand if you're not interested in taking on that kind of risk. All the same, there are a lot of requests for ingredients, and the Planasene Forest and Vimmark Mountains are right next door. That you can go there at all gives you a huge advantage over the rest of us, and I think it would be worth more than a few silvers to some of us.

If you do go, please let me know what it's like out there. I've never set foot in a forest before, or climbed a mountain, or seen a river. There was the lake at Kinloch, the roads to Amaranthine, and then the Waking Sea, and there the list ends. You know I used to admire you? Your bravery, to escape as many times as you did. I imagine the outside world is far less a wonder to you now, but there are days I look out that window and I can scarcely imagine the rest of the world exists. It feels like such a fairy tale.

Is this something I should get used to? A letter every other day? It feels like too much to hope for. You said I should write anything, so I suppose I'll just fill the rest of this page. The food here is terrible. It's not rats and bark, but the templars certainly aren't of a mind to spoil me while I'm confined to my quarters. It's oats for every breakfast and stew for every dinner. The smell is starting to make me feel sick.

I noticed it's been snowing recently. This is an embarrassing question for a primal mage to ask, but what is that like? Any sort of frost incantation I would be familiar with, or something different? I remember a few winters where Lake Calenhad froze over. I always wanted the chance to walk on it, but it just never seemed to happen. I hope you're staying warm, wherever you are.

Your friend,
K


K,

I'm sorry I missed a day. I went down to the Wounded Coast and found you a seashell. Now I'm not a shell expert, but this thing is perfect. A ten out of ten, as far as shells go. It's smooth as glass, it's covered in these amber stripes, and it smells like brine and it's got that ocean whistle when you set it to your ear. And those curves? I have feelings about this shell.

Our friend wouldn't take it. They said only letters, and things that can fit in them, so I enclosed something else. I still have the shell. I'm tempted to head down to the Gallows and throw it up to your window. It's that pretty. I won't, don't panic, but it's still a tempting thought. I'll try to find you a flower or something for my next letter. Any preference? I don't know what kind of flora is in the Planasene Forest, but I'm guessing you've had enough of elfroot.

The coast is nice. It was good to get out of the city, so I'm glad you suggested it. Kirkwall starts to stink after a bit, and I think I needed the fresh air. There's a lot I really think you have to experience, and I can't just describe. The way sand gives beneath your feet, and the way the sea spray feels when it hits you and starts to itch later when it gets under your clothes because you're an idiot and didn't think about that.

There's elfroot everywhere, but it's winter so there aren't many other herbs growing. I don't know if our friends need it, but I know I do. I think I've started sort of a clinic in Kirkwall. I'm not sure I meant to, but there it is. People show up every day with some sort of ache or rash. Even more show up for water. I've even had a few who just want to come inside and sit by the fire I can keep going when they run out of things to burn.

Winter is hard on a lot of the refugees. The mineshafts mean the cold gets everywhere, and some of Darktown opens up over the cliffs. When the wind starts going in the chasm, you can hear it roaring through all of Darktown. I've healed more cases of the grippes than I can count, one fellow with pneumonia, and there are more people with joint pains in this city than there are cockroaches. (There are a lot of cockroaches).

You could conjure snow if you tried. You were fantastic at primal magic. It's not quite ice; you want it as granular as you can get, and with a sort of open structure without any of the pressure you usually put into a frost spell. When it's falling, you don't even notice it until it gets heavy, and it's more or less just wind. Walking through it though... that's definitely something I'd say you have to experience and I can't just describe.

It has a sort of crunch to it when you hit a clear patch, and there's just something about walking on it. Like you're a kid again and all you want to do is throw yourself in it. Don't get me wrong, but I hate that you have to ask me these questions. You don't have to stop, I just hate it. It's not fair. It's not right.

IT IS NOT JUST

Sorry,
A


A

Thank you for the feather. Most of our quills are made from pheasant feathers. A crow's feather is a nice bit of change, and I have to say it reminds me of you. I know you weren't terribly subtle about how much you loved Tevinter fashion. I might be off balance, but I'm guessing for you it's something that speaks of a place where you can be free.

It's an easy bit of symbolism, isn't it? Feathers have always made me think of freedom, but for a different reason. With the occasional seagull that lands on my windowsill, I always find myself thinking I'd give anything to be one. I've heard stories about Chasind hedge mages that could shapeshift into birds, or wolves, or any manner of beast. You can guess why the Circle doesn't teach us that kind of magic.

I don't suppose you could find any Andraste's Grace for me? It's a small white wildflower that grows in winter, with a touch of red in the center like a sunburst. I've read about it, and seen pictures, but I've never actually seen one, and it would be nice to have something that doesn't come straight out of the Botanical Compendium. Most flora just makes me think of a mortar and pestle and grinding for an age to make more potions for the Tranquil to sell in the templars' shops.

Something that just speaks of beauty for beauty's sake would be a nice change. The Wounded Coast sounds like a wonderful place. Strange that they call it that. I'm sure you could come up with a joke about it. I miss your jokes. It always felt a little more somber with you gone, and here you're likely be branded a maleficar just for smiling. I wish I'd never been transferred here.

I tried conjuring a bit of snow per your recommendations outside my window, and you're right, it was rather simple. I managed maybe a handful before it solidified into a block of ice the first time, but I've got it down now. I've considered filling my quarters with it, after reading what you said about what a joy it is to walk through, but I'm sure if I did the Knight-Commander would accuse me of creating a distraction as part of some elaborate conspiracy to overthrow the Order.

Maker knows I would if I could. You don't need to be sorry about being angry. I know it's hard to convey a lot of things through writing, but capitalization and underlying do wonders for conveying anger when an exclamation point just isn't enough, and there's plenty to be angry about.

Did you know the Knight-Commander made over a dozen mages Tranquil last year? A failed Harrowing was a rarity in Ferelden, but mages aren't even being given the chance to fail their Harrowings here. You should see the way the apprentices slink through the halls with their heads down, too terrified to linger under a templar's stare least they be accused of being 'at risk for blood magic.'

We shouldn't be imprisoned over an accident of birth. I shouldn't be locked in this damn room for talking to a few friends in the library. I swear it's like the Knight-Commander is trying to turn the Circle into a prison. I'm glad I have a friend out there who cares. I can't tell you what your letters mean to me. I'm not ashamed to say they're the only good thing going on in my life right now.

Your friend,
K


K,

Why should you be ashamed? I remember solitary. I'll never forget it. If there was anything I could do to get you out of there I would. I don't care if you've got all the luxuries of your quarters, social deprivation is sick. I know you were shy back in the Circle, but if there's anything I've learned in the past few weeks it's that there's a difference between being alone and being lonely.

You deserve to smile at passersby, to talk to your friends, to shake hands with people you meet. That's a thing that happens in the real world, you know. You don't see the same faces every day. You meet new people, and shake their hands, and learn their names, and you make a connection and it's new and exciting and it means something. The Circle is so fucked. Even if you're not in solitary, you're still trapped.

IT IS CRUEL AND ABUSIVE

I'm glad you liked the feather. I'll try to find Andraste's Grace somewhere. I haven't seen a flower like that in Kirkwall or on the Wounded Coast, but I'll make a trip out to the forest and try to find some. Interesting pick, by the way. Am I prying if I ask if it means anything? I know you said your relationship with the Maker was complicated the last time it came up.

Completely unrelated, but how do you press a flower? Asking for a friend.

I'm not sure I have anything for the Wounded Coast. It just seemed like a perfectly normal coast line next to the Injured Cliffs and the Limping Hills. That was bad. I feel bad for having written that. Here, I'll make up for it. Why couldn't the Fraternities agree on a vote in Cumberland?

This is a dramatic pause.

Because they kept arguing in Circles!

I'm not sorry for that one. It took me forever to come up with that. You better be laughing. I'm sure you are, you always used to laugh at my awful jokes. I don't know why you put up with my crap at the Circle. I don't think I took anything seriously back then. You would talk about the fraternities and the future, and I'd just sit there picking at my nails and nodding along.

It wasn't because I didn't believe in what you were saying. I really did. I admired you for having the wherewithal to put up a fight, and not just run from it all. You put up with the bullshit fraternity politics, with tiptoeing around the templars, with arguing with the First Enchanter. I never had the patience for that. It was all too much work. I just wanted out, and I couldn't see past that.

I'm sorry for that. It's not a fight anyone can fight alone. I should have been more supportive. Maker's breath, twelve? Really? A mage a month? And it's always blood magic they jump on when they need an excuse, isn't it? At risk, what does that even mean? Everyone is at risk to learn blood magic. It's blood; it's right there. Does the Knight-Commander pull out the brand every time an apprentice gets a paper cut or something?

Your letters mean a lot to me too. I've made a friend or two here, but it's just not the same. They don't really know me, and I can't tell them anything about my past or I'd just be inviting it to catch up with me. And they're not mages. I can't tell you how many people keep calling me out on every little quirk the Circle ever taught me. I know they mean well, but they just don't understand.

Your friend,
A


A,

Is it sad that I never realized that? When I was transferred to Kirkwall, I had to meet everyone here, and it was absolutely overwhelming for me. I shook a hundred hands and saw a hundred new faces and locked myself in my quarters for a week to unwind. I can't imagine meeting someone new every day. I know it would be overwhelming, but past that, you're right. It does sound exciting.

You're not prying. The Chantry was the only place the Knight-Commander was letting mages visit for a while, remember? I think you can only sit in the pews and listen to the proselytizing for so long before it starts to eat away at you. I can't help thinking about it, especially considering the Chant is the only thing the Knight-Commander lets us read when we're in solitary.

I've been reading a lot of the Canticles of Transfigurations and Andraste, trying to find the verse that says we deserve to be treated this way, but there's nothing. There's just that one verse, "Magic is meant to serve man and never to rule over him," and there are so many ways to twist it. That the Chantry decided to interpret it as "man is meant to rule over mages" boggles the mind.

And the rest of Transfigurations? Andraste spoke out against doing harm to a man's peace of mind. Where does removing a man's mind play into that? How can the Chantry possibly justify the rite of Tranquility? And the things the templars do to the Tranquil. You would not believe how bad they have it here. I went to speak to one, and the poor girl... Do you know what she told me?

She said she was grateful she was Tranquil, because she would never be able to handle the things that had been done to her otherwise. I'd rather be dead. I don't thank the Maker often, but I thank him for helping me pass my Harrowing. That's not a fate I'd wish on my worst enemy. They'd be better off dead, but the Chantry would never let go of the Tranquil. Not when they're such a convenient source of slave labor.

Why am I writing about this? I'm upsetting myself. Flower pressing. For your friend. You need the flower dry, two flat surfaces, and some parchment. Place the parchment on your flat surface, flower on top of it, another layer of parchment, and the second flat surface on top of that. Weigh it down with something and leave it for a week, change out the parchment every other day if you can.

Or you could just send me a crumpled flower with your next letter and I can do it. I definitely understand what you mean about it being difficult to relate to your friends when they're not mages. I feel like if I was talking to anyone else I'd be embarrassed asking for things like this, but I know you understand. It's so cloistered here, any little piece of the real world feels like a blessing.

Yes, I absolutely laughed at both of those jokes. I wasn't putting up with you back at the Circle, and you never gave me any 'crap.' You were a good friend, and you were more than supportive. I wasn't looking for you to take up arms and tear the Circle down around us, I was just looking for someone who understood, and you did. At the risk of making you uncomfortable, how I felt about you ran a bit deeper than admiration, and still does.

I don't suppose you ever considered anything like that with me? I know that's a ridiculous thing to ask, considering we'll never see each other again. At this rate I'll never see anyone again, but in my defense you are quite possibly the most compassionate man I've ever met, and you've been my only comfort in here since your letters started. I hope you don't fault me for asking.

Hopefully,
K


Karl

K,

I don't know what to say.

You should have said something back at the Circle. Maker, maybe you did. You wouldn't have been the first amazing man I was blind to in the past. No, I never considered anything like before, but I'm definitely considering it now. I meant it when I said I admired you. You stand up for your convictions and that's something that's always impressed me.

I wish it were just that simple. I met someone. Someone who meant a lot to me. And then I lost them, and I don't think I've really come to terms with that yet. I can't even bring myself to think about him. Just telling you this is I'm sorry. That's probably not what you wanted to hear. You're a good friend, and I could see you being more than that someday, but I need time.

You know if you could see me right now, you'd probably change your mind. I'm genuinely afraid to check a looking glass. I've been wearing the same clothes for weeks, I haven't shaved, I rarely get a chance to bathe and when I do it barely makes a difference. I keep my hair tied back just so I don't have to deal with it. And let's not even mention how little I've been eating. I know I've been losing weight. I'm probably going to have to change the notch on my belt soon. So, yes. Ridiculously handsome, as usual.

You probably don't care about any of that.

I haven't found your flower yet, but I'll keep looking for it. One of the florists in Hightown might have something, but there's no way I'd get past the guards with how I look right now. They'd kill me on principle for tracking in mud if they didn't mistake me for a darkspawn. Have I mentioned I'm a mess?

I found a feather I think is from a blue jay in the forest and enclosed it, so I hope that counts for something in the meantime. I thought it was beautiful but I have this... I guess condition lately where I think everything is beautiful, so I don't know if that means anything. Maybe if I find enough for you, you could make a set of spaulders out of them and we could match.

I've been thinking about visiting the Chantry, and just taking some time, but it's over in Hightown. I'd have to take a serious bath, frowns and all. More than that, I'd have to leave my staff and a lot of my things behind if I was going to be up there without attracting attention, and I don't know that my clinic is secure enough for me to feel comfortable doing that.

I don't mean to scare you, but the templars already caught wind of me once. I'd rather keep my things on me in case I have to move again. It's getting kind of exhausting. If I don't get at least a few muscles out of this I'm going to be seriously disappointed.

For now I've just been reading this book a friend gave me on Andraste. I might see if I can't find a copy of the Chant in the markets. I know there's nothing in there that justifies the Rite of Tranquility. I can't tell you how angry I was to read about that Tranquil girl. It's not right that they do this to us. If you hadn't passed your Harrowing, from the sound of it they might have made you Tranquil just for talking in the library.

I can't stand the thought of you being in there. I looked back at one of your old letters, and what you said about Chasind hedge mages, and it reminded me of something. I came across this grimoire a while ago, and there was a sort of depiction in it of a woman transforming into a crow. I didn't really think much about it at first, but lately I can't stop thinking about it.

I don't know how the magic works yet, but I got lucky and it didn't get burned with the rest of the pages. I think if I studied it and had some time to practice, I might be able to learn how it works. It helps a lot that I also have the journal of the mage it belonged to, and I can cross reference if anything confuses me. I don't want to promise anything yet, but if I managed to figure it out, you said you had a window.

I know we both agreed I shouldn't come to the Gallows, but I keep thinking about that damn window. If I'd had a window in solitary, I know I would have jumped. I tried. I tried more than once in that fucking room. If I could figure out a way to come see you, would you want me to?

A


A,

Yes

K

Chapter 52: Wintersend

Notes:

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(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 1 Pluitanis Afternoon
Kirkwall Docks

"What do you call sex in a cobbler's shop?" Franke asked.

"I don't know, what?" Anders asked.

"Head over heels," Franke said.

"I love that," Anders laughed, "Okay, why do templars go crazy if you take away their fix?"

"I don't know, why?" Franke asked.

"Because they're in a state of de-lyrium," Anders said.

Franke chortled and knocked tankards with him. They were sitting on barrels outside the Rusty Anchor, the tavern too crowded on the annum for them to go inside. The door was ever open, barmaids and waitresses flowing in and out of the tavern to take orders from crowds inside and out. Anders' drink was more saltwater than ale, but it was free, and he wasn't complaining.

"Thanks again for getting drinks, Franke," Anders said. "You didn't have to pay for me,"

Someone had to pay for Anders. Anders was out of coin. Anders was always out of coin. It didn't matter how many jobs he took for Collective, how hard he scavenged in the forest or along the coast. Anders could never keep up with what the refugees needed. Anders could barely keep up with what Anders needed.

The refugees seemed to have developed a complicated barter system to combat poverty. Anders healed the sick. Evelina watched the children. Lirene offered shelter. Cor offered protection. Most of the refugees scavenged, some worked the mines, a handful begged. It wasn't pretty, but it was working. Anders was always hungry, but he wasn't exactly starving.

"Hey, come on, it's Wintersend, and I am ready to send winter the fuck away, yeah?" Franke nudged him with his elbow. Franke did what Franke did best: he talked. Anders leaned back against the brine-crusted wall of the tavern, and rested his arm on the windowsill, half-listening. It was a nice day, all in all.

A wind blew in from the Waking Sea, crisp and cool with a touch of salt in the air. Anders had spent all morning at the docks, trying to relax, to let go of his thoughts and all the holds on his mind and let Justice come forth so he could feel it. 'Remember how you told me magic sings for you? Well it feels for me. The wind right now is sort of what you feel like.' Anders had said to himself.

It hadn't worked. Justice remained a quiet presence in the back of his mind, influencing the occasional thought, but not manifesting in any physical way. Anders had no idea what it took to make that happen. He was barely aware of it when it happened. Justice could bring a thought or word to the forefront, but the only times Anders lost complete control of himself seemed to be when his life was at stake, or when he was having a mental break down. Anders doubted he could learn to do either of those things at will.

It was still a nice day. Justice could see it, Anders assumed, even if he couldn't feel it. Karl could probably see the movement at the docks, if nothing else. Thinking of Karl made Anders rap his fingers on the windowsill. He shouldn't be sitting here. He should be researching Amell's grimoire. All of the demons had escaped in the fire. Anders hadn't even been aware of the fact originally, but when he'd touched the tome for the first time since Vigil's Keep, it had been silent.

Justice had no issues touching it now. Anders had read Amell's entry on shapeshifting five times over, and knew he'd have to open Amell's journal eventually if he wanted to learn anything more. The thought crippled him. The only time Anders had been able to accept Amell's death had been when Anders had taken Justice's hand and resigned himself to dying as well. The last thing he wanted to do was open that damn journal and look at every loving sketch Amell had ever drawn of him.

And what if he wasn't dead? The siege of Amaranthine was over. Anders wasn't on the verge of death. Amell had left the Vigil at the end of Harvestmere. Anders had left on the fifteenth of Haring. Everything had fallen apart so quickly. It had taken less than two months for the Orlesians to ruin everything Amell had built. What if Amell had come back only to find what Anders had done in his absence?

Anders took another drink of his salty ale. Franke was talking about one of the recent gang wars between the Undercuts and the Sharps. Anders didn't doubt a few of them would wander down to his clinic eventually. They might be there right now, bleeding out and looking for his lantern while Anders sat on his ass and drank ale he couldn't even taste. Anders breathed in a whisper of mana and let it slip over an anxious knot in his shoulders.

The magic was like a cool breeze on the back of his neck and helped Anders calm down. It was no wonder he couldn't bring Justice forward at will. He could barely keep his own thoughts in check, let alone decipher which were Justice. Anders rubbed away the prickling sensation Justice left in his fingertips. The spirit was still there, whether or not Anders could summon him at will. Anders was starting to get used to the way he felt, and the occasional breath of healing magic from Justice always seemed to help settle Anders' thoughts.

Alive or dead, the past was the past and that part of Anders' life was over. Karl and the Fereldan refugees were what mattered now. Anders had new obligations and he couldn't keep them sitting here. Anders finished off the last of his tasteless ale, and hopped off the barrel, "I think I'm going to head out, Franke," Anders said.

"Already?" Franke asked, face falling. He looked across the pier to where the impromptu theatre was still being pieced together with scattered crates and barrels, "They've only just started setting up. You not going to stay for the Adventures of the Black Fox?"

"I have some things I need to check on," Anders said.

"That coat, yeah?" Franke guessed, eyeing over Anders' mess of layers. "Winter's over. What do you even need that coat for?"

"Fashion," Anders said obviously.

"I hope not," Franke snorted. "Don't tell Lissa I said, but that coat is a mess."

"She's making it from scraps for me, of course it's a mess," Anders said, pressing himself against the wall of the tavern to make room for a passing patron. He should have been leaving, but he liked Franke. The cobbler had a great sense of humor, and if he talked a lot, at least he was aware of it. Franke had joked once his mouth was so big so he could fit his foot in it if he needed.

"That bad in Darktown?" Franke asked.

"Well it's not called Warmtown," Anders said.

"I suppose not," Franke agreed, "Stay safe, yeah?"

"You too," Anders said, "Enjoy the play."

The crowds were heavy at the docks on Wintersend, and staff or not, it was easy for Anders to get lost in them. A few people had recommended he bundle the staff up in firewood and carry it on his back, and while Anders had to admit it would be a good way to hide it, he also had to admit he was carrying more than enough already. He'd seen a handful of people with walking sticks since he'd come to Kirkwall. He wasn't as obvious as he could have been.

Anders made the climb up to Lowtown. Most everyone was heading for the docks. The Knight-Commander was going to have the mages put on a light show for Wintersend come nightfall, and Anders already knew he wasn't going to stay for that. Karl wasn't participating, and Anders was sure the mages who were had been forced into it. Mages were treated like pets in Kirkwall. The only time the templars seemed to let them out was to do tricks for the nobility in Hightown.

The Circle was a disgusting violation of all of the most basic of dignities. Freedom. Privacy. Self-worth. Intimacy. Sometimes thought and even life. Anders felt a wave of tension roll over him and tangle up in his shoulders, bunching his hands into fists around his staff. Anxiety coiled in the pit of his stomach, and Anders had a sudden urge to take action. To do something.

"Yeah I know," Anders said aloud, ignoring the few stares talking to Justice in public won him. "I know. We are. We're going to see Karl. You'll like him. He's kind of everything you were always telling me to be. He's always up for a spot of iconoclasm. I mean he's no-... he's no Amell but..."

Anders made the rest of the trip to Lirene's shop in silence. He walked through awning-covered alleys, and into the crowded Lowtown market. The flies were out in force with the start of spring, and the rats seemed to have doubled. Anders saw a few children chasing a rat the size of a cat through the streets, and tried to pull on the creature's heart. The rat kept running, unaffected. Anders still couldn't manage blood magic without a casting cut.

It wasn't worth slitting his wrist in public to give a few kids a meal, but Anders hoped he'd get the hang of it someday. He'd never be Nate, prowling through the Wending Woods and taking down a deer with a single shot for their dinner, but if Anders could pick off a rat now and then for himself he would have been happy. Food for thought for later, he supposed.

If nothing else Anders was relieved Justice made no arguments against blood magic as he did demons. Anders supposed it helped that the spirit could finally feel his intent every time Anders sought to use it. There hadn't been many opportunities of late. To be honest, Anders hoped there never would be, but a tiny heart attack was a subtler way to kill a rat or pigeon than a burst of fire or lightning that would have exposed him for a mage.

Anders reached Lirene's shop. Lirene and Lissa didn't celebrate Wintersend. Lirene had lost her husband to the Blight on Wintersend the year before last, and Lissa stayed in to be supportive. They were sitting together drinking when Anders let himself inside.

"Anders! I have your coat; let me get it." Lissa set her tankard down on the table, and vanished into the backroom. Anders came over to lean on the table and wait for her.

Lirene shook her head at him, "Over a month in this city, and the first thing you ask for is a coat made out of scrap leather. Don't you have any thought of coin?"

"If I do, I'm going about it all wrong," Anders said.

"You are at that," Lirene said. "How is Evelina doing?"

"Good," Anders said, "You know. It's hard for the kids in Darktown but it's better than giving them to the Chantry. I've only had one case so far, just a sprained ankle from playing too hard."

"Good," Lirene said. "You doing alright?"

"I'm alive," Anders said.

"Aren't we all?" Lirene agreed and took another drink.

Lissa came back with his coat and laid it out on the table. Maker, what a mess. The giant bundle was made from mismatched strips of leather in every shade of brown imaginable. The shoulders were made from the feathered spaulders that had been a part of Anders' robe once, and the sleeves had been pieced together from his old brigandine spaulders. The thread was beige, and blatantly topstitched, and didn't match the Warden blue.

"The Dogs scrounged up what they could from the tanners and the trash, but I ran out of fabric and had to use your brigandine for the sleeves," Lissa explained. "A lot of it is suede, too, so you're going to want to be careful in the sewers. It soaks up liquid like you wouldn't believe."

"That's fine," Anders said, "Do you mind if I try it on?"

"No, of course not, let's see it." Lissa said eagerly, taking a seat on the edge of the table. Anders set aside his staff and his satchels, and picked up the coat. It was alarmingly heavy, and ridiculously thick. Anders shrugged into it, and tied the few straps of leather that hung in the front. It went down to his knees, and covered everything he wanted it to cover.

"Perfect," Anders said.

"You almost work that," Lirene mused.

"You think so?" Anders asked.

"Give us a turn!" Lissa said.

Anders spun, and the coat spun with him. That was ten extra pounds for Anders to carry around. He had better be gaining some muscle to make up for all the weight he was losing.

"You really like it?" Lissa asked.

"I love it," Anders said, "You're a doll."

Lissa grinned, and Anders recognized the flush that spread over her cheeks. She brushed a strand of blonde hair back behind her ear with a closed-mouth giggled. Lirene shook her head and took another drink.

"I should go thank the Dogs too, but this is fantastic, Lissa, thanks for putting it together for me," Anders said, hoping to quash that crush before it blossomed into anything dangerous. "Let me know if you think of any way I can repay you."

"You don't have to do that," Lissa said.

"Damn straight he doesn't," Lirene agreed.

"You've been helping out a lot, especially with the water," Lissa said. "I'm glad we could finally do something for you."

Anders thanked both girls again and left them to their drinking. He made his way to the Kennels, and exchanged the same thanks with the Dog Lords he found celebrating there. Anders ended up allowing them to force him to sit and watch the fist-fighting competition they had going on. It helped that he was ravenous, and the Dog Lords were passing around roasted rat.

He watched for an hour before he made his way back to Darktown. A group of refugees called out when he passed by. "Healer, fire's out," One of them begged, gesturing to the pile of rotten wood they were standing around. Anders tossed a handful of fire onto it, and their thanks echoed behind him on his way back to the clinic.

Anders still had no lock, but so far no one had stolen from him. Anders didn't know how long that would last, but it was nice to come back and find none of his makeshift furniture had been taken away, especially now that one of the Sharp's gang had given him a stolen tapestry Anders had taken to using as a blanket. Anders left the lantern out, conjured a fire for himself, and set down his things inside.

It was a struggle for him to get the minecart in front of the door to barricade himself in. Justice had given him some strength, enough that Anders could drag Darrian's corpse without much difficulty, but it wasn't nearly as much as he gave him when Anders was channeling him. It took him close to five minutes of heaving and whining to block the door. When he finally got it, Anders sat down on the space he'd made his bed and went through his satchels.

Karl's letters were in the way of Amell's grimoire and journal. Anders took them out and stacked them carefully on the ground beside him. Depending on how long they kept writing Anders was going to end up needing another satchel. Anders got out Amell's grimoire, and opened it to the pages detailing shape-shifting.

It was a miracle Eylon hadn't burned them. So much of the tome had been lost to flames. It hurt Anders' heart to hold the charred leather in his hands and feel the occasional bit of ruined parchment break off under his fingers. There were four pages dedicated to shapeshifting, detailing the incantations necessary to transform into a crow, a wolf, a wild cat, a bear, a giant spider, even a swarm of insects.

The page Anders had focused on for the past fortnight was the charm necessary to make sure a caster's clothes transformed with them. Seeing it had won a raised eyebrow from Anders and an amused snort at the thought of flying into Karl's room completely naked. It would have been quite an entrance, Anders gave it that, but he wasn't up for making it.

The rest was there. The spells were laid out, but Anders knew there was more to them. Amell had even put in an annotation in the margins that listed the page of his journal covering shape-shifting in greater detail. Anders had just been putting off reading it. Anders supposed he had to stop that if he ever wanted to see Karl.

Anders picked up the journal and stared at it. It was embossed leather with the sigil for the school of entropy on the cover. Less than subtle, Anders thought. "I don't suppose you can read this for me?" Anders asked aloud.

Unsurprisingly, Justice didn't answer. Anders sighed, and opened the book to the page Amell had noted.


I was so close. I could feel the pinpricks of down sprouting through the skin on my back, my vision seemed sharper, and it felt as if my whole body was being crushed, my skin pulled taut, my muscles contracting and bones breaking and reforming. The pain was euphoric. I laughed through it, or perhaps it was more a scream or maybe a caw, but it was working. I was so close.

Then Alistair came charging through the underbrush looking for me. My focus broke. The spell fell apart. I snapped back into my own skin and the whiplash nearly blinded me. Morrigan was outraged. She screamed that Alistair had nearly killed me interrupting, but I don't think he heard a word. All he could do was stare at me and scream, "Why are you naked!?"

I don't know why he bothered asking. He didn't listen to a word of mine or Morrigan's explanation. It was in the magic. No article of clothing can be tethered to a form until a mage has it mastered, and even then what clothes could I use? I don't have time to make myself a covering of crow feathers and wolf leather and bear skin in the middle of a Blight.

Of course Alistair didn't listen. "You're sleeping with Morrigan!" "You can't sleep with Morrigan!" "She'll suck out your soul!" "I can't believe you would do this to Zevran!"

I have to stop coddling him. I didn't mind at first. A chance to lead and make my own rules? To be at no man's beckon? No templar's leash? I reveled in it, but that was a mistake on my part. Alistair can't be a follower. If today proved anything it's that I could die tomorrow, and if that happens I know Alistair won't be prepared to take my place.

He was coming to ask me where to dig the latrines, of all things. There's not a single choice he feels comfortable making without my approval. I can't fault him for his loyalty, but it's getting out of hand. His screaming drew the whole camp. I never thought I would have to stand in front of all of my friends, completely naked, and scream the words, "I'm not fucking Morrigan! I'm trying to turn into a crow!"

The look on Shale's face. I've never seen them look so betrayed. And of course Zevran just laughed. "You are going about it all wrong if that is the case," And then what did he call me... Amorta? Amira? I need to learn Antivan.


I haven't come half as close since. I've spent the past fortnight studying crows, drawing them in the pages here, collecting their feathers, watching the way they move and trying to decipher how they think. It's one spell to make the transformation, and the mage stays transformed until they decide to release their hold on the form. The transformation takes longer the more unfamiliar a mage is with the form, but I know it improves with practice.

I've seen Morrigan make the transformation to wolf or crow instantaneously. A bear still takes her close to a minute. A crow shouldn't take me a fortnight. I've spent hours sitting in the forest naked and leaving out carrion, trying to transform into a crow while Morrigan takes the form with little more than a breath and sits on my shoulder, pecking at me for my ignorance. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong.


This is absurd. I need this. How am I supposed to defeat the Archdemon if I can't match it in flight? If I could take the form of a crow I could land on the Archdemon's back and make the transformation back to a human, obviously with no weapons, but I think I could bite through my cheek, or cut myself on its scales. With enough blood let (two liters? two and a quarter?) I think I could burst the creature's heart. But I can't do that on the ground.

What am I missing? Is there some contrast of schools I'm not aware of? Like with how my studies of spirit and negation magic make primal and creation magic difficult for me? Is dirth'ena ensalin ara tel'halani? Ar nadas dirthara. Ar nadas halam banalhan. Damn the Circle. If not for their absurd restrictions this magic would be studied more. It would be studied at all. Morrigan has no idea why I can't make the transformation.


This is it. This is why all my jokes are terrible, and I can't come up with anything interesting to do during sex, and I rely on blood magic for everything. I have no imagination. I can't transform into a crow because I can't picture myself as a crow. There's a lack of inhibition to this incantation that I just don't have. I can't even bring myself to laugh in public, how am I supposed to relax enough to slip into another skin?

This is absurd. I can do this. I am Fausten Kieran Amell the Second and I will not be bested by a bird.


The next page contained a sketch of a golem, crushing birds beneath its feet and in its stone grasp. 'Fuck birds' was scrawled in a jagged script as the title. The next entry was completely unrelated to shape-shifting, as was the entry after that, and the one after that. Anders closed the journal laughing to himself, and looked up half-expecting to see Amell standing next to him.

He wasn't there, obviously. Anders was sitting in an abandoned mineshaft. He wasn't at Vigil's Keep. He didn't have a lover. He was alone with a journal, a grimoire, and a coat made out of leather scraps and feathers. Anders set the journal aside and forced himself to reflect on what he'd learned and not the man who'd written it.

Transforming hurt. Interrupting transforming could kill. Transforming took an inordinate amount of time for the inexperienced. Transforming took a vivid imagination, and maybe conflicted with the type of magic crazy dead elves who lived in your ex-lover's head used. "So how do you feel about all this?" Anders asked. "If Amell couldn't do it, do you think we can?"

Justice didn't answer.

Anders spent the next week watching crows in the streets. He doubtless looked insane doing it. An unwashed apostate crouched down in a corner clutching his staff and staring at crows, occasionally throwing them a cockroach he crushed underfoot to see how they'd react. They usually hopped forward to eat it, but they always left one of their group out as a sort of sentinel to watch the others.

It was the start of spring and they were nesting, paired off and gathering up bits of string and rubbish. They played frequently, and moved in hops when they ran, and awkward wobbles when they walked. They had a distinctive call, and when they took flight it was with a crouch to start and a few easy flaps of their wings.

Anders spent the week after that sitting naked in his clinic in the middle of the night, trying to imagine himself as one. It was an easy thought. Karl had the right of it when he said birds were reminiscent of freedom. Anders would have relished the ability to turn into a bird at will, and fly away from the Circles, the templars, and anything that bothered him. He was thinking as much, five days into his attempt, when he felt the pinpricks on his shoulders.

Anders bit back a delighted laugh and forced himself to keep concentrating. Anders took a deep breath and thought of crows, of flying, of escape. Nothing happened. There was no crushing weight on his chest, no sensation of his skin pulling taunt, no crack of his bones breaking. Anders looked down at his arms, and didn't see any hints of down breaking through his skin, but the pinpricks were still there.

It was an uncomfortable sort of tingling in his skin that got worse and made his palms sweat, his skin feel oily, his-

Darkspawn.

Anders scrambled up and threw on his clothes. He grabbed his trousers, his coat, his satchels and his staff before he decided not to bother with the rest and ran out of his clinic. He bolted towards the pull of them, the guttural whispers and tingling sensation that seemed to tug him down one flight of stairs after the next, until he could feel their malicious intent writhing in the back of his mind.

Rage and hunger and malevolence. An unnatural perversion that needed to be purged from the face of the world. Anders jumped down the last step and ran towards a group of refugees, sitting right on top of a storm drain that Anders could feel roiling with the filth of the creatures. "Get away!" Anders screamed. "Get away from the drain!"

Whether it was the fact that he was screaming, running, glowing blue, or half-naked, the refugees bolted. The storm drain birthed a geyser of darkspawn, their muscles cracking through their rotten flesh as much as flames cracked through Anders' own pale skin. The cry of a shriek pierced the air, but Anders' was through flinching for the ear-splitting sound.

His hands lit with lightning, and he let the spell snap off his fingers through the undulating mass of black. It crackled through them, and lit up their faces in the darker depths of the sewers. Their skin was carved from their skulls, peeling back from their lips, and sloughing off them in chunks from his spell. A shriek tackled him, and its jagged claws tore into Anders' bare chest.

The pain was sharp and sudden, and Anders screamed. Each rip of the shriek's claws left cracks for blue flames to burst forth from, and Anders reached for the channel of blood the shriek had opened and used it to boil the creature's blood. It exploded on top of him, and Justice leapt to his feet. He grabbed the genlock that rushed him and crushed its skull in his hand.

A second hand tore through the Veil, clad in a gauntlet of vibrant white light with size to rival an ogre's fist, and slammed the darkspawn back into the storm drain. Justice ran to the edge, and let Anders' magic roar between him, the Fade, and Vigilance. Anders' hand erupted in flame, every color between white and red, and Justice poured it into the drain after the darkspawn.

They burned, and left only charcoal and ash in their wake. Justice knelt, and leapt into the storm drain after the few survivors he could sense. He landed on the corpse of a hurlock, and the charred creature's corpse exploded beneath his bare feet. There were two darkspawn left. Justice lit the sewer with Veilfire, and a snap of lightning killed them.

Justice ran his free hand through the sweat on Anders' brow, and into the smooth strands of his hair before he faded with the feeling. Anders caught himself on his staff when he stumbled, a headache pulsing behind his eyes a breath of mana washed away. Anders climbed back up the storm drain, and into a crowd of wide-eyed refugees.

The refugees came to their own conclusions. Word spread like wildfire. In under a week there didn't seem to be a soul in Darktown who didn't know him for a Warden, and even more folk clustered around his clinic for healing and protection after that. Anders wished that gratitude had been there before he'd run to find the darkspawn. When he'd gotten back to his clinic, everything he hadn't taken with him had been stolen.

His silverite tipped boots. His tusket gloves. His chest armor, and all his tunics. The one scarf that hadn't been tied around the strap to his satchel. The beautiful silver bracers Amell had locked about his wrists before whispering 'You'll never wear their shackles again.' Anders had cried himself to sleep for the first time since he'd gotten to Kirkwall.

A few of the more compassionate refugees tried to replace what he'd lost. Thom heard and brought an old pair of gloves with a seam torn down the side. Conall gave him an oversized tunic. Franke brought him nothing. The cobbler turned up at his clinic one day not with new shoes, but with tears in his eyes.

Franke slammed open the door to Anders' clinic with enough force to send it bouncing back off the wall. "You're a Warden!?" Franke screamed.

Anders jumped, and felt Justice surge to the forefront of his mind. Anders had been reading the book of poetry Amell had given Justice, and not healing anyone, but if he had been he knew he would have lost the spell with how bad Franke startled him. "What?" Anders asked.

"You're one of them!" Franke screamed. "A Warden! A fucking Warden! You burned Amaranthine to the ground! You killed my wife! My little girls! You burned them alive in my fucking shop! And you knew! You knew what you did! For weeks! For months! You pretended to be my friend and you fucking knew what you did to my family!"

"Franke, no, I-" Anders started.

"You fucking bastard!" Franke screamed, and pulled a knife from his belt. Anders scrambled off his stool, and Franke took a wild swing at him.

"Franke stop! I didn't!" Anders stumbled backwards, and tripped over one of the railway tracks in the ground. Franke dove on him, and buried the knife in his shoulder. Pain sliced through Anders and lit his nerves on fire, but he'd had worse. Anders rolled them over with the knife still imbedded in his shoulder, and pinned Franke to the ground.

"I'll fucking kill you!" Franke screamed, thrashing so wildly Anders could barely hold onto him. A thought occurred to Anders, in the seconds between seconds, that he could force Franke to stop, with just a whisper of the blood rushing from his shoulder. Anders pushed past it.

"Franke stop!" Anders yelled at him, "Stop! Listen to me! I deserted! I'm a deserter! I'm not a Warden anymore!"

Franke bit back a snarl, his hands still fisted in Anders' tunic, but he heard him. He heard him without blood magic. Anders didn't need blood magic. Not for everything. Franke sucked in a sharp breath, and Anders heard his teeth grind together, "... before or after the city burned?" Franke asked.

"Before!" Anders said. "Before! You made it to the Chantry. Didn't you hear about the mage who defended it?"

Franke stared at him, wild eyes searching his face, chest still heaving. "... that was you?"

"That was me." Anders said. "I deserted. A lot of us deserted. One of my best friends died to stop the siege."

After a long minute spent staring Franke down, the man broke. He let out a sob, and let go of his hold on Anders' tunic to bury his face in his hands. Anders rolled off him, and Franke rolled over to sob into the tracks. Anders took a deep breath, and pulled the knife out of his shoulder. Pain flared through him, enough to make him snarl, but it was nothing besides the claw Amell had pulled from his leg in Kal'Hirol.

Anders healed the wound, grateful he hadn't been wearing his coat at the time Franke had stormed in. Anders set the knife aside, and the clatter of the rusty blade on the minecart broke Franke out of his sobs, "Fuck. Anders I-I'm so sorry-I thought-fuck-I..."

Anders slid an arm around Franke's shoulders and pulled him into some semblance of a sitting position. Franke gripped him in a tight embrace. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I thought-I thought you were one of them."

"I'm not," Anders promised and hugged him back. The truth of his next words cut deeper than any knife. "I'm not a Warden anymore."

Notes:

Elvish Translation
Is dirth'ena ensalin ara tel'halani? Ar nadas dirthara. Ar nadas halam banalhan -
Is the knowledge that leads to victory (arcane warrior specialization) not helping me? I have to learn (shapeshifting). I have to stop the Blight.

Chapter 53: Chasing the Sun

Notes:

Hello everyone! Thank you for all your wonderful comments, bookmarks, subscriptions and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 2 Nubulis Afternoon
The Wounded Coast

Anders pushed his feet into the sand, and watched the way the coarse grains ate up his toes and the smattering of ruddy brown hair on them. There were broken seashells and bits of kelp washed up on the shore; a few pieces of drift wood floated languidly in the shallows. He stood in the shade of a cypress tree, and the sands free of its shadow had been warmed by the sun.

There was more sun in the Free Marches than Ferelden. It took the height of summer to reach the rainy country, but in the Free Marches the sun was out in full come the start of spring. Anders didn't tan. He freckled, and failing that, he burned. The sun felt fantastic on his face, the wind even better on his hair. The scent of brine and bark were all around, mingled with the sounds of the tide and nesting birds.

All of it was beautiful. None of it was attainable. Not for Karl, or any other mage. Not even for Anders, once the templars or the Wardens caught up with him. Anders pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders against the breeze. He wore nothing beneath it. All of his things were locked up in Lirene's backroom, and Anders had to hope they were secure there.

He couldn't keep clinging to them. They were things. They weren't important. If they were stolen, they were stolen. People were important. Karl was important. "Are you ready?" Anders asked aloud.

Anders had stopped expecting an answer, and started trying to feel for one. He felt confident. Certain. Perhaps for the first time in months. Anders knew that had to be Justice.

They had this. Anders didn't know who had shaped the thought, but it had occurred to them to think of this as the Fade. It wasn't imagination, it was will. They could be anything they wanted not because they imagined it, but because they were limitless. It was no fantasy, it was real. They were a crow.

It was that thought that had nearly killed them in the sewers of Kirkwall. Anders had felt the pinpricks of feathers sprouting through his skin as an itch, and embraced it. The rest...

Anders couldn't help admiring Amell. The last thing Anders wanted to do when the transformation started was laugh. There was no euphoria. No feeling of elation. Just pain and panic as bone after bone snapped, collapsed, and hollowed out. His lungs had shrunk and yet somehow inflated, and for the long minute it had taken him to finish the channel Anders couldn't breathe and had nearly passed out.

Then it was over, and he was shorter. Alarmingly shorter. His vision was unnaturally sharp, and he'd spotted ants crawling along the corner of his clinic he hadn't noticed before, along with what looked like a weevil. Anders had started hopping towards it before he realized what he was doing. He'd spent an age staring at the grub, as ravenous as he had been as when he was a human.

Anders ultimately decided he couldn't do it. Besides, one little grub wouldn't fill his stomach, and it was that thought that broke his spell and snapped him back into his own skin in a shower of feathers. The feeling was like someone had laid him out on a torture rack and pulled him apart, or what Anders imagined that would feel like. His every muscle was sore, his skin felt freshly peeled from a sunburn, and there was an ache in his bones that made it impossible for him to do anything more than lie on the floor of his clinic and groan.

But he'd done it.

He did it again, a few days later when his body recovered. And again, and again. He walked around his clinic as a crow, talons scuffing through the dirt, trying to get a sense for the form. He had a new center of gravity and had to learn how to balance without pitching forward onto his beak. He practiced jumping up onto his furniture, and from there he tried to practice flying.

The room was too small. As a human, there was plenty of space for Anders to move, and plenty of light from his makeshift fire pit. As a crow, Anders felt like the walls were closing in. He flew in panicked circles, caged, contained, and always ended up crashing into a corner and snapping back into his human form.

Anders spent two days working charms into his coat. The charms were wrought with blood and it came as no surprise to Anders. The coat, his phylactery, Amell's grimoire. There was no binding anything to his soul without blood. It was in the nature of the magic. Every spell that utilized blood magic tugged at the core of a person, whether to persuade or corrupt or bind.

It came naturally to Anders, and Justice kept quiet. Anders wished he had a way to tell the spirit how much his trust meant to him. Saying as much aloud wasn't the same as being able to say it to Justice's face. But it was all they had, so they made do.

"Ready?" Anders asked again, and again he felt certain. He started the channel, and stared at his feet as they cracked and crunched into talons. Cerulean flames shone through where his skin split and pulled taut, and Anders wondered if Justice was helping him. Then he collapsed.

It never felt like shrinking. It felt like the world grew. A crow stood on the beach, and cocked its head to stare at the cypress it stood beneath. The branches looked welcoming. The crow crouched and launched itself off the ground, and with a few frantic flaps of its wings it reached the branches. Anders' first and last thought as a crow was to grab it with his hands.

Anders lost the spell and snapped back to his human form in an explosion of feathers. He crashed into the sand with a startled yelp and banged his shoulder on a root. "Andraste's fucking tits," Anders groaned, rolling over onto his knees and letting Justice heal his shoulder. "Can't you do this for me? You're the Fade spirit. You understand using your will to manipulate things."

Anders couldn't name the feeling that flitted through his head in response. Frustration or maybe impatience. Anders sighed and tried again. It took a minute of blinding pain, but he had it back. The crow looked at the tree and tried again, launching iteslf off the ground to flap over the branches. It grabbed for one with a talon, and with a bit of panicked scrambling and flapping of wings managed to land on it.

The crow folded its wings against its sides and paced back and forth on the branch. The crow was a crow, and being a crow was easy. The crow launched itself off the branch and took flight. Wings up, wings down, a frantic rhythm to start that leveled out when it gained altitude. Flying outside felt infinitely more natural than flying in the tiny cage of its roost.

The crow dipped a wing to practice turning. It dipped its head to practice diving. It mimicked the motions of other crows it had watched in the streets, and it flew. It could fly. It was free, and it felt amazing. The coast fell away beneath it, and the crow soared out over the ocean. It could go anywhere.

It struck a draft of wind, going in the opposite direction, and the force of the gale knocked it end over end. It flapped and fluttered in a mad attempt to right itself, saw the fast approaching ocean, and Anders lost his hold on the spell in a panic. He crashed into the ocean, and the weight of his coat dragged him down under the waves.

Everything was black. Anders lost track of himself in the darkness and couldn't find the surface. He crashed into something sharp, and the rough texture of whatever he'd struck tore open his leg. Salt water rushed into the wound, and Anders snarled in pain and sucked in seawater.

Panic wrapped itself around his heart, and the waters around him lit up with cerulean light. Anders had struck a jagged outcropping of rock. He grabbed for it, and a few of his uneven nails broke against the hard surface. Anders pushed the sting of his leg and his hands out of his mind and climbed.

The weight of his coat had doubled, if not tripled, and Anders shrugged out of it. He climbed hand over hand to break through the surface. His lungs were aflame, parchment burnt to ash in his chest and only held together by the frantic beat of his heart. Anders held onto the rock, struggling to breathe while his leg painted the water around him a light pink.

His coat. He had to get his coat. Anders looked around. He was near the shore, a minute's swim away. The tide must have dragged him in before he hit the rock. Maybe it would drag in his coat.

Anders took a deep breath and dove back under the water. There it was. Still caught on the rock, several feet below him. Anders swam down with one hand to the rock and grabbed it. He towed the extra weight behind him on his climb back up the rock, and flung his coat out of the water to drape it on the rock.

Maybe he could drag it back to shore, but not with his leg like this. Anders climbed up the rock and sat on flat surface barely big enough to fit his ass, and looked at his leg. The wound looked surreal. His skin was ripped open beneath his knee, the peeled flesh hanging off to both sides of the bright red muscle the wound exposed.

The rest of his leg was veined in blue flame. Anders looked down at his hands and saw the same. He knew what it signaled, but Anders didn't feel trapped behind his eyes, watching the spirit take action. "Justice?" Anders said aloud.

The word sounded lyrical. An expression of identity, of self, of something he'd never had before he'd left the Fade. Anders ran his fingers around the edge of his wound, and felt a mix of concern and an intense desire to set it right. "This is..." Anders searched for words, and never found them. He set his hands to his leg, and channeled his magic through his palm, Justice, the Fade.

"This is nice," Anders said quietly, smoothing the rent flesh back together. "It feels like you're here with me..."

It felt like more than that. Like the ocean spray and the sea breeze, like cold water running down his spine. The wound in Anders' leg healed, and his hypersensitivity seemed to fade with the fire breaking through his skin. "No, don't-" Anders grabbed at one of the veins on his arm as it closed. "Don't go! Just sit with me."

Anders was talking to himself. There was no one there. He was alone, and he couldn't keep relying on Justice for company. The spirit was there. It tried, but it wasn't the same as another person. Anders had his patients, but they weren't friends, and his relationship with Franke had been strained ever since their fight in the clinic.

Anders didn't know if Franke was ashamed or if Franke doubted what Anders had told him, but the visits slowed. Anders didn't want to head into Lowtown unless he had to after the templars' raid, and if the small party of darkspawn had taught Anders anything it was that just because the refugees needed him didn't mean they respected him.

He needed Karl. Anders shrugged into his soaking coat and channeled the spell. A drenched crow stood on an outcropping of rock along the Wounded Coast. It shook out its feathers and took flight, riding the wind back to Kirkwall. It flew along the blackrock cliffs, and veered into the chasm, searching for the cracks in the rock.

It found a split in the rock and flew inside. The cave was full of humans and elves, and gave way to mines and sewers. The crow flew towards the mines, and sought out a space it remembered as its roost. There were humans all around. Reflective men of metal and righteous fire. Predators. Templars.

One of the templars was holding a boy from the crow's murder. It was a tiny thing of red down and rags. Walter. That was the sound for the boy. Walter was struggling, keening for help in the templar's grasp. The crow dove at the templar with an angry caw, and pecked at the dark slit in the reflective metal of its helmet. The templar let go of its prey, and the boy fled. The crow flew away.

It flew from the cave and through the blackrock ravine to Lowtown. There it landed on a table with trinkets and was shooed away. It flew to an awning instead, and peered down at a small hole in the wall it remembered as a second roost. There might be more predators inside. The crow had no way of knowing. It flew away.

It flew to a dimly lit space between two walls of rock and landed on the ground. Anders let go of the spell, and pulled his coat tight around his body. The enchanted covering was damp, but not soaking. Anders supposed drying his feathers also meant drying off his coat. The charms in the grimoire hadn't mentioned that, but it was certainly useful. The coat was suede, and greedily soaked up any water it came into contact with.

Anders paced in the alley, trying to think of where he could go. Damn templars. Damn them all to the Void. They didn't care that they were ransacking a free clinic for downtrodden refugees. All they cared about was the magic. They were blind to anything else. They didn't even care that Anders hadn't been there at the time, all they cared about was that he'd been there once.

So they harassed anyone who made the mistake of getting close to him, whether or not they were only children. Whether or not they were sick, desperate, cold, or hungry. They were aiding and abetting an apostate, and that was enough. Anyone who was foolish enough to befriend a mage was at risk. Anders couldn't keep letting the refugees linger around wherever he set up his clinic. He'd heal, and then he'd send them away.

Anders ran his hands through his hair. He'd built that clinic. He had a bed, cots for patients, a bucket for washing, a pumice, two benches, his mine-cart writing desk. All of it was gone. There was no going back to Darktown yet, but he had to go back soon. What had happened to Walter? To the rest of the children? Where was Evelina? Wasn't she watching them? Had the templars taken her?

She was a mage. Anders had realized it a few days ago, when he finally understood what was going wrong with his vision. Anders wasn't seeing things. Justice was seeing things. A halo around a stranger was a mark of magic. Anders could see it if he looked for it: the soft pulse of the Fade inside Evelina, Evon, and a handful of other refugees he crossed paths with.

All the newfound talent did was worry Anders. Mages weren't safe in Kirkwall. Karl's warning that the templars brought in more corpses than apostates burned bright in Anders' memory, and every time he passed some poor haloed soul Anders wanted to run after them. He wanted to ask where they were staying, how they were doing, to point them towards the Collective, but he didn't. It felt like too much of a risk. The templars had it out for the renegade healer in Darktown. Getting in touch with other apostates would only bring them attention they didn't need.

Thom lived near Lirene's shop. Anders left the alley, and hurried barefoot through the streets of Lowtown to the Marcher's house. He could ask Thom to check Lirene's shop for templars, get his things, and then never ask anyone for anything again.

Anders couldn't keep relying on people to look out for him. He was just putting them at risk. He'd find a new place, leave his things there when he went to see Karl, and if someone stole them someone stole them. He had Justice. He didn't need his staff. He didn't need his cookware or his books. Amell's journal or his grimoire.

Anders knocked on Thom's door. His wife answered. The Beshcals were Marchers, and had the look of them. Their skin was tan, their hair was cropped short, their bodies were built thick for hard labor, but they weren't hard folk. Thom had a recurring heart condition, and the chokedamp wasn't helping him any. He visited the clinic often.

"Anders, thank goodness you're here," Thom's wife said, stepping back to usher Anders inside. Anders stepped in, and the dirt floor felt slightly more comfortable than stone on his bare feet. "I went down to your clinic this morning but the lantern was out. Thom's heart is giving him trouble again-" Thom's wife stopped short, hand on the handle to the backroom, "I haven't even asked why you're here."

"It can wait," Anders said.

Thom was in the back room of the small shack, laid up in bed. The fact that it was a bed at all and not a cot meant the Beshcals were better off than Anders. Anders bent to heal Thom. It was another clot, and there was only so much Anders could do for him. Thom needed to change his diet and start exercising. Anders told him as much, but Thom waved him off.

"Anders, not that I'm not grateful, but why are you here?" Thom asked. The Marcher pushed himself into a sitting position and rubbed at his aching heart, looking over Anders. He was still only wearing his coat. "Where are your shoes? Did your things get stolen again?"

"Maybe," Anders admitted. "I was going to ask if you could you check Lirene's place for me and see if there were any templars about, but you shouldn't be walking around."

"I'll do it," Thom's wife said. She planted a hard kiss on her husband's forehead, and gave Anders' arm a grateful squeeze through his brigandine sleeves, "We know what happens to mages in this town. It's not going to happen to you."

"Thank you," Anders said.

"I'll be right back," Thom's wife promised and left.

"Do you mind if I sit down?" Anders asked.

"No, of course not," Thom pulled his legs to one side, and Anders sat on the edge of the bed. "What's going on? Another raid?"

"They went after the kids," Anders explained, leaning back against the wall. He took a deep breath, and managed to get some air into his lungs. Thom's house wasn't like Anders' abandoned mineshaft. It was well ventilated, and the air wasn't too stale. Anders could breathe. Anders was alright. "Evelina's kids, all the orphans."

"That's Stannard for you," Thom said. "How much have you heard about her?"

"I know she's made the Gallows into a prison," Anders said. There was more than that, of course. The Knight-Commander was obsessed with order, in the most twisted sense of the word. The Gallows operated on a strict schedule and predictable routine, and what a blessing that knowledge had been. Karl got his meals at the same time every day, without fail. It would be easy to visit him without risk of being caught, now that Anders could fly into his window whenever wanted.

"She's made Kirkwall into a prison," Thom corrected him. "We've been at her mercy for ten years now, ever since she killed the last Viscount. Marlowe is a nobody. His family runs a shipping company. Stannard had him up-jumped, and she's been ruling over his shoulder ever since. At his coronation, she gave him this box, and his face went white as a sheet. No one knows what was in it, but I've heard rumors it was old Viscount Perrin's you-know-what."

"His dick?" Anders guessed.

"Yep," Thom said. "That's the rumor, and honestly I'd buy it. From Stannard a dick in a box is probably a dowry tradition."

Anders managed a hard exhale through his nose. He didn't have it in him to laugh right now. He kept thinking of Thom's wife, running into templars on his behalf. They weren't Fereldan refugees, so they'd have it easier, but the thought worried him all the same. "So are she and the Viscount...?"

"They may as well be," Thom said, "Stannard. Dumar. It's all the same thing. Marlowe never remarried so who knows, really?"

"Dumar?" Anders asked, wondering why the name sounded familiar.

"Marlowe Dumar," Thom said. "He's got a son, about twenty. Supposedly. No one ever sees him at court."

"I swear I've heard that name before." Anders said.

"Well probably. He's the Viscount," Thom said. "Not that his name means a damn down here. It's all about Strand, the Bastard, the Bleeder. Those are the real powers in Lowtown."

"Are the Dogs giving you any trouble?" Anders asked.

"Me and the wife keep off the streets at night, but we're on Strand's side of town," Thom explained. "A few bits a week and the Sharps gang leave us alone."

"What about the guards?" Anders asked. "Don't they care?"

"Guards," Thom snorted. "The day Captain Jeven gives a shit about anything but his coin purse is the day Stannard gives Marlowe back his."

Anders snorted, "Good one."

"Thanks," Thom grinned, and took another look at Anders' feet. His legs were bare up to his knees, where the mismatched leather of his coat tapered off, "Look, Anders, if you need it, I've got an extra pair of shoes. In the very least you shouldn't be barefoot."

"You don't have to do that," Anders said.

"Offer stands if you change your mind." Thom said.

"Thanks," Anders said.

"Food?" Thom offered. "You want to stay for dinner? It's the least we can do. We're having fish stew. It's just the catch of the day, but it's got to be better than whatever you get in Darktown."

"I'll have you know deep mushroom soup is considered a delicacy, but ... yeah, I don't think I can turn down dinner," Anders said.

Thom's wife returned with news that Lirene's shop was templar-free, and Anders left to fetch his things. He got dressed in Lirene's backroom and thanked her for watching over everything, and then went back to have dinner with Thom and his wife. Even thrown together from bottom feeders and shellfish, the stew was probably the best thing Anders had eaten all week.

Thom let Anders borrow his writing desk, and Anders penned out a letter to Karl to let him know he had a crow's form down. He told Karl to leave something reflective in his window, and let Anders know when he wanted him to visit. Anders went down to the Rusty Anchor and passed the letter off to the Collective contact, and then found a spot for himself at the docks where could watch the ships sail back to the Gallows, and know when it would be safe for him to go back to Darktown.

It could take hours. Anders had no idea what to do with himself in the meantime. He thought about reading one of the six books he was always carrying with him, but decided against it. He needed to keep his eyes open in case anyone saw him sitting on the pier and he had to run. The sun had been set for over an hour before a few boats finally sailed their way back to the Gallows, and Anders went back to Darktown.

Anders lit three different fires for three different groups of refugees, conjured a bucket of water for another, and cleansed a fellow who was suffering from gastro before someone pointed him to a small alcove in the blackrock where Evelina had taken the children. All of them were accounted for. Walter told him a story about how a crow had saved him from templars, and Anders healed the bruise the bastard had left on his arm.

Anders spent the rest of the evening wandering Darktown, trying to find a new place for his clinic, and ended up getting lost. He spent all night in the sewers, trying to find his way back up, and eventually crawled up a mineshaft and into a chamber that seemed Maker-sent. It must have been used for living quarters while Darktown was still being mined.

Two separate mineshafts opened up into the chamber, and from there two more doors opened up into the main expanse of blackrock that all of Darktown ultimately spilled into. It was against the ravine, the blackrock split open just outside the chamber. The view above was of Hightown, and the view below was of the strait that every ship had to sail on their way to the docks. Plenty of escapes, for a human or a crow.

Anders could have fit a score of patients in the chamber. A giant bronze chandelier hung from the ceiling for light, along with a storm drain that piped down the wall. All along where the floor met the walls were sewage drains. It would stink, but while the the drains took sewage they could also take dirty water or blood from patients. It was perfect. Anders didn't doubt he'd have to move in a month.

Anders searched through piles of rubble and discarded mining tools until he found a broken lantern, and hung it up outside the front doors. Justice lit it with Veilfire, and Anders started cleaning up. His first patient wandered in no more than an hour later. The next a half hour after that.

More trickled in as they saw the lantern, and then the Dogs came and brought him everything they could salvage from his old clinic. A cot, a bucket, a chair. They also brought him a half-dozen injured from another fight in the streets Anders was all too happy to heal in thanks. It could have been worse. The templars could break him if they wanted. Anders would find a way to put himself back together.

Anders went down to the docks that evening, exhausted from two sleepless nights and only a rat for lunch, but determined to hear from Karl. The letter was short: Karl let him know he'd put up a candle and a mirror to reflect it in his window, and asked him to come tonight. Anders hid his things in one of the mineshafts behind his new clinic, and hoped fervently that no one found them. There were proper doors to his new clinic. Anders imagined he could find a lock in the future, but Karl came first.

A crow escaped the depths of Darktown, and flew out along the cliff face of blackrock. It flew through the Twins of Kirkwall, and over the Waking Sea to the high towers of the Gallows. It circled the spires until a glint of light caught its eye. It tipped a wing, and veered towards the open window set into the stone. It was a long flight, and the crow hadn't slept in two days, and hadn't had much to eat, and its arms were getting tired.

Wings! Not arms, wings! He had wings! Anders lost the spell and crashed through the open window. He hit hard stone, and collided with an armoire with enough force to knock the doors open. Anders groaned and swallowed down a sob. His shoulder felt dislocated. "That gave my bruises bruises," Anders whined.

"Anders?" A familiar voice asked, deep and warm and full of wisdom. Karl's face came into focus over him, hooded eyes, a pinched nose, short grey hair and a close cropped beard. He looked like a mentor should. Clever and composed and-crying?

"Karl," Anders tried for a grin, "Sorry to just drop in like this."

Karl stumbled out of sight. Anders let a breath of healing magic wash over him, but his shoulder was definitely dislocated. He'd have to fix that. Anders grabbed at the armoire and pulled himself to his knees. Karl had a nice room, at least. He had the armoire, a writing desk, a vanity and a space for washing, and what looked like a respectable bed.

It didn't make up for solitary confinement.

Anders aligned himself with the wall and forced his shoulder back into place. He bit his lip to keep from screaming, and another surge from Justice took the pain away. Anders leaned against the wall, and locked his arms over his head to catch his breath.

Karl was sitting on his bed. His eyes were a bright blue, like ice, or the sky on a clear day. Anders hadn't been able to remember the color, and couldn't appreciate it now. Karl had a hand over his mouth, and his expression was pained.

"Not happy to see me?" Anders asked.

"I think I've gone round the bend," Karl said, tiny globes of clear water spilling down his cheeks and into his beard. His voice sounded hoarse from disuse, and it hurt to hear, "Are you really here?"

"I'm really here," Anders promised, with a glance to the door. He was surprised no one had heard his entrance, but no templars were storming in, swords drawn. Anders supposed that meant they were safe.

"I... don't..." Karl's voice cracked. Anders climbed to his feet, and sat next to him on the bed.

"How long has it been?" Anders asked.

"Three months," Karl said, running his hands over his knees, "I think? I didn't want to count."

"... do you want a hug?" Anders offered.

Karl nodded. Anders pulled him into a hug. Karl was wearing the robes of an enchanter, and had the soft build of a mage who'd never left the tower beneath them, but there was nothing soft in the desperate clutch of his hands on Anders' back. Anders didn't mind. He'd broken down crying the first time anyone had touched him after a year in solitary.

"You smell like freedom," Karl said into his shoulder.

"You smell like the Circle," Anders countered. It was an all too familiar scent of lyrium and parchment mixed with lye and soap, and held together with the sour musk of oppression. Anders hated it, but it wasn't Karl's fault.

"Sorry," Karl must have read his mind.

"Whatever," Anders said. "Did you like my entrance?"

"You always knew how to make one," Karl agreed. "Maker, you feel real."

"Why wouldn't I?" Anders asked.

"I might be hallucinating," Karl said.

"Would it help if I pinched you?" Anders offered.

Karl laughed unsteadily and pulled away from him. "It might. I... ah-I saved you my dinner. I know you said you were having trouble finding food, and they do feed me here, so..."

"You didn't have to do that," Anders squeezed Karl's forearm. He didn't feel thin, but Anders knew he was only allowed two meals a day. Anders wasn't about to take one.

"You didn't have to come," Karl countered.

"Yes I did." Anders said. "How are you holding up?"

"I'm not sure," Karl said. "I sleep a lot. I reread your letters. There's... not much else to do." Karl cleared his throat, and gestured at Anders chest, "So this is the coat you mentioned?"

"This is it," Anders agreed, shrugging the coat higher on his shoulders. He was starting to get used to the weight, which seemed important considering it was liable to be the only possession Anders would be able to keep.

"It's certainly colorful," Karl said.

"You hate it." Anders decided.

"No, no, I'm sure the magic is remarkable." Karl assured him.

"It's hideous." Anders guessed he meant.

"That too." Karl agreed.

Anders laughed; he felt it in his chest and his smile hurt his cheeks. It felt like it had been months since he'd had a reason to be happy about anything. Karl's laugh was a shy chuckle paired with a hand on the back of his neck. Anders sought out his free hand and squeezed it, and a flush ran up Karl's neck. It didn't bother Anders the way it had with Lissa. Karl was a mage. Karl had walked the Fade. Templars were nothing to him. To them. Anders could show him. Anders could save him.

"I'm going to get you out of here," Anders promised.

Chapter 54: Doubts and Revelations

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back. I'm glad you guys seem to like shape-shifter Anders! Thank you for all your wonderful comments, kudos, subscriptions, and bookmarks, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 3 Nubulis Night
The Gallows

Karl laughed, blue eyes fixed on their tangled hands. He ran his thumb over the back of Anders' palm, circling a freckle. He had soft hands, the same as every mage. Even Amell had soft hands. Anders forced that thought away. "That's an ambitious promise. I think you might need a form a bit bigger than a crow if you plan on carrying me out of here. Maybe a dragon."

"You're a mage too, Karl," Anders reminded him. Anders could even see it if he tiled his head right. A dim halo around Karl that seemed to pulse in time with a heartbeat. "I can teach you."

"... It's not as if I have anything else to do with my time, I suppose," Karl mused.

"Look, if it took me a month, you could probably learn it in a week," Anders said, "You taught me most of the primal magic I know. Just think of it as returning the favor."

"What of my phylactery?" Karl asked, tracing over an eyebrow with the fingers of his free hand. Anders had forgotten all about the old nervous habit, "I don't know if I have it in me to spend the rest of my life on the run, Anders. The things you've told me..."

"All lies," Anders lied. "It's easy."

"The nights you spent on the streets of Denerim sounded anything but easy," Karl said.

"Karl, you can't want to stay here," Anders said.

"I don't," Karl said quickly, "Maker save me, I don't," His voice dropped to a shamed whisper, "I just don't know anything else."

"I can teach you that too," Anders promised.

Karl smiled for him. It still hurt Anders' cheeks to smile back, but Maker knew he needed it. His face was probably going to ache by the time he left, and Anders already hated the thought of leaving. Karl's eyes slipped off his face and back to their hands; the flush on his neck had gone all the way up to his cheeks. It was kind of endearing.

"This is a lot harder in person," Karl mused.

"We could pass notes if you can spare the parchment," Anders joked. "I'm amazed they even give you any."

"I've been tearing out pages of my journal," Karl explained. "But that does sound easier. Maker, I still can't believe you're sitting here. And-holding my hand. Which you don't have to be doing. I know you said-in your letter-ah..."

"I said I need time, I didn't say no," Anders pointed out. He didn't know whether it was genuine affection or crushing loneliness, but Karl's flustered response to him was sweet. "Look, you're not doing me any favors here, Karl. I could use a friend right now."

"That's good to know," Karl said. "Not that I want you to be lonely, but-"

"I know what you meant," Anders said. "This path month I've been imagining so many things-not those things-but your quarters being dark or too small, the food not being enough, your magic cut off somehow with those fucking shackles."

"I'd gladly give up my magic if it meant getting out of here," Karl said ruefully, "I know it could be worse, my quarters are comfortable-"

"Fuck that, Karl, it could be better," Anders pulled Karl's hand to his chest and gave it a fierce squeeze.

"It could at that," Karl agreed. "... There are so many things I want to say to you, and it's so hard to find the words. Not just because I haven't been talking, but because this isn't something mages are allowed to talk about."

"I know," Anders said. Maker, he knew. Everything he'd left unspoken with Amell was still haunting him, even three months later. "We don't have to talk about it."

"Are you sure you don't want my dinner?" Karl asked. "I really am getting tired of oats and stew."

"No Karl, eat your food," Anders let go of his hand. Their palms were getting sweaty. Anders wasn't used to holding hands with anyone for very long, "I don't want you living off one meal a day."

"Isn't that what you're doing now?" Karl asked. "Let me do something for you. Please. You've have no idea how much you've already done for me."

"I never even found you your flower," Anders said.

"I have a sand coin hidden under my mattress right now thanks to you, and without it I'd never even know what sand feels like," Karl said, frowning, "Stop arguing with me."

"Woah. Scary Karl," Anders held up a placating hand, "Alright, I'll eat something. Half? That fair?"

"Knowing you, I won't get better," Karl said, and waved him towards his desk, where a bowl of stew sat going cold. Anders got off the bed, and heated it with a breath of mana. He pulled the desk chair over to the bed so he could sit next to Karl, and ate with the bowl in his lap.

"So you keep everything under your mattress?" Anders asked.

"For now," Karl agreed. "It's probably not the best hiding place, but I'm not sure where else I could keep everything."

"They don't search your room?" Anders asked.

"They haven't yet," Karl said.

"Take the bottom drawer of your armoire out, and put your things under there." Anders suggested.

"That's-... actually a much better spot," Karl allotted. He got up to follow Anders' advice, rolling back the top of his mattress to reveal a stack of letters, a sand coin, a pressed cyclamen, and several feathers, "How did you come up with that?"

"I started keeping my mother's pillow there," Anders explained. He didn't want to think about how said pillow was currently hidden in a satchel in a mineshaft, liable to be stolen at any moment, "Paranoia, I guess."

"Justified, I think," Karl said. He pulled out the bottom drawer of his armoire and set it aside. His letters and other trinkets went in on the floor, and the drawer went back in. "Possessions are the first things to go in the Gallows."

"This is a wretched place," Anders snarled into his spoon. He saw a glint of blue reflected in his soup. It was gone when he blinked and Karl stood up.

"I actually miss Kinloch," Karl said with a sigh. He came back to sit next to him, and Anders pushed the half-full bowl at him. Karl took it and ate. "The templars were less vigilant."

"We'll figure it out," Anders promised. "I'll need to review my notes for the transformation, but I'll make you a copy of everything. You'll be out of here before you know it."

"You were nothing if not determined," Karl allotted, "I'll try to believe it."

"You better," Anders said. "I didn't fly all the way out here to hear otherwise."

"What is that like?" Karl asked, "Flying?"

"Exhilarating... and kind of terrifying," Anders admitted, "I hit a gust of wind that knocked me out of the form and almost drowned yesterday." Karl's eyes seemed to pop, and Anders laughed. "It wasn't that bad. Really. I had-... a friend there to help me out." Anders doubted he could have swam his way out of that current if Justice hadn't been feeding his strength into him.

"Someone from the Collective?" Karl guessed.

"It's complicated." Anders said.

"I don't mean to pry-" Karl started.

"It's fine. I just-... don't know if I'm ready to talk about it yet." Anders said. Let him get Karl out first. Then he could worry about how Karl felt about him being an abomination. Anders didn't want to scare him into staying in the Circle. The thought that he might made something twist inside of him. A sick sort of feeling, that left stones in his stomach and a knot in his chest.

Karl finished his dinner and got up to set the bowl back on the desk. Anders watched him from the chair. Karl had been awkward and shy in the Circle. Anders wondered how long he'd been sitting on that crush, and where it had stemmed from. Some days he swore Cera was the only one who'd actually remembered what Anders was really like in the Circle.

Karl sat back on his bed. Anders hesitated. The bed was more comfortable, and the bed had Karl. Anders joined him and sat with his back to the wall. Karl sat with his hands folded his lap, and Anders stared at one for a while before he stole it.

Karl let out a nervous chuckle; it was nice to hear someone he cared about laughing. "Have you heard Senior Enchanter Bader's theory about why spirit healers attract spirits?" Karl asked.

"This is going to bore me, isn't it?" Anders joked.

"It might." Karl allotted, and said nothing. Anders thumped their hands against Karl's leg.

"Tell me Bader's theory," Anders said.

"It's in the Maker's First Children. I know Enchanter Mirdromel has the more popular breakdown in Beyond the Veil, but I think Bader gives a better extrapolation on Enchanter Brahm's categorization of demons. Um-" Karl cleared his throat. Anders didn't care if he was rambling. Isolation did things to a person. "So Bader claims the virtues and vices spirits embody are pulled from mortals out of a desire to regain the Maker's favor.

"So the theory goes that spirit healers are an embodiment of virtue, and spirits see a spark of the divine in them. So to a spirit, you would look like the Maker."

"That's a bit much, isn't it?" Anders asked, but something in him seized on Karl's words. For one impossible second, Anders loved himself. The feeling was so alien it was almost jarring, and Anders knew it wasn't him.

"I don't think so," Karl said. "It always made sense to me you drew Compassion. Whether or not I ever escape this place, I can't tell you what it means to see you."

"You don't have to," Anders assured him, a pain like a knife in his gut at the mention of Compassion. It was an accurate analogy, Anders finally knew, now that he'd actually felt a sword thrust through his stomach only to pull it out and toss it aside with the strength his new spirit had given him. "I remember solitary. If not for that cat..."

"Anders, there's something I've been meaning to tell you, but I didn't want to put it to paper," Karl let go of his hand and moved so they were facing each other on the bed and not sitting side by side.

"Uh oh, serious Karl," Anders said. "What is it?"

"I don't even know if I should tell you, but... the cat," Karl said meaningfully, "When did you start seeing it?"

"I don't know," Anders admitted. He didn't want to think about it. "A few months in, maybe. Why?"

"Kinloch never had a mouser named Mr. Wiggums, Anders," Karl said.

"What are you talking about?" Anders asked.

"Don't you remember all the spiders? The rats?" Karl asked, and with some hesitation, he managed to pick Anders' hand back up and squeeze it. "There weren't any cats in the tower. Cut off from the Fade, locked in that room... I think you were hallucinating."

Anders pulled his hand back and ran it through his hair. He gathered up a handful of the flaxen strands and yanked, but the pain wasn't nearly as cathartic as it normally was. He scooted back, from Karl and the thought. "No. No, he was real. He stepped into a binding circle and got possessed by a rage demon. Amell said he remembered. He said he heard about it. Everyone I talked to heard about it."

"Did anyone say they saw it?" Karl asked, a crease of sympathy in his forehead, "It was a rumor, Anders... one you started."

"No, I remember him." Anders pressed his fingers into his forehead, trying to summon the memory. "He was a tabby, and he would sneak in through the food latch. He was the only thing that kept me sane in there. I didn't- I wasn't-..."

Karl was still staring at him, still with that damned look of sympathy on his face. "We never said anything because of what you went through... and when we didn't, no one else did, and the rumor started... I'm sorry."

"Maker, I went mad," Anders laughed. The sound cut through his chest and tangled up in his lungs, stealing the air from them. Anders knew his hands belonged over his head, and he tried to keep them there, but he ran them through his hair instead, face half buried in them. "Everyone knew? You all just went along with it, and knew I was just-just crazy?"

"Anders-..." Karl shifted to set a hand on his shoulder. "It wasn't-... I wouldn't have said anything, but hearing you talk about it... It scares me to think you don't realize what they did to you and I keep wondering what else you might have repressed. When you came out of there... Do you even remember what you looked like? All the scars at your throat?"

"That wasn't them," Anders said.

"Anything you did to yourself in there was a templar forcing your hand." Karl said. "... I just didn't want you to keep living their lies."

Anders searched for Karl's hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. He wondered why Justice wasn't reacting to this. The spirit normally couldn't stand to hear anything of the Circle and its crimes against mages. Justice was so infuriated by most of it his voice would rip out of Anders' throat at the topic, or his hand would start scrawling out his ire in Anders' letters to Karl. Why not now?

Justice had to search through his memories to heal him after they'd joined. Maybe the spirit already knew. Maybe he'd already seen Anders' delusions in his memories and wasn't surprised by the revelation. Maybe everyone knew Anders was insane, and that's why all the templars and even the First Enchanter thought he was a joke. Anders swallowed down a pained whine.

So what? So he'd gone mad. He wasn't mad now. It was years ago. He didn't need to think about it.

"Thank you for telling me," Anders said.

"Are you sure I should have?" Karl asked.

"Yes," Anders said. "Yes. I won't let that happen to you. I'll get you out of here. I'll help you learn shapeshifting, and if that doesn't work we have the Collective. We'll find something, and you won't have to worry about hallucinating cats or crows or anything."

Time was a strange concept for Justice, but he knew it passed as Anders spoke with his fellow mage. If he pushed forward enough to feel, he could sense the fatigue in the ache across Anders' shoulders and in his thighs, in the extra weight that seemed to manifest in his arms as the muscles grew weary. More than anything, he could feel it in the way Anders seemed to slip from his mind and leave Justice to take his place.

Justice had long encouraged him to free his fellow mages who remained oppressed, but this was a decision Anders had reached on his own. He knew his fellow mage-Karl, names were important. A sense of identity was important-deserved to live free of the Gallows. A wretched name for a wretched place. It spoke of execution. Of judgment passed for no crime committed.

Karl was a start, but no mage deserved such a fate. Justice wished he had a way to push the thought on to Anders, but Anders was not, Justice had come to realize, an introspective person. Communicating with him was difficult, if not impossible. Anders could pick up on a feeling from him, and little more. Pride was a demon's indulgence, but Justice had no other name for the feeling Anders' actions stirred in him.

He let the emotion float free, with no real way of knowing if Anders picked up on it. Justice knew Anders tried. Anders spoke to him when they were alone, even knowing Justice couldn't answer. For all Justice had possessed him, Anders was still Compassion, and it meant a great deal.

Of all the things Justice had taken for granted, having his existence acknowledged was one of them. Karl seemed to notice him, as Anders hovered on the edge of sleep, liable to drag them both into the Fade at any moment. He stared at Anders' eyes, and Justice saw a flash of blue reflected on blue before Karl gave Anders' shoulder a shake, and Anders jolted back into wakefulness.

"What?" Anders asked, "I'm here. What's what? What were you saying?"

"You had a light to your eyes," Karl explained. "I think you were starting to drift off and maybe cast in your sleep. The sun is coming up, and the maid will bring breakfast soon. Are you going to be alright to-... fly back to Kirkwall?"

"I'm good," Anders stumbled off Karl's bed. Maker, what a bed. Straw felt like down after a month spent sleeping on blackrock. "I'll try to come back-three days?"

"Are you sure?" Karl asked, standing with him, "You look like you're carrying the Black City under your eyes right now. The transformation won't be too much of a strain?"

"I'll be fine," Anders said. "You know you can keep writing if you need, right?"

"I intended to," Karl admitted.

Anders grinned, and then wondered how they were supposed to say goodbye. A handshake felt like too little, and he wasn't sure if a hug was too much. Karl stood with his thumbs looped through his sash, shifting from foot to foot, and Anders decided a hug was fine. He pulled Karl into one, and inhaled the oppressive scent of the Circle. A week. Maybe a month. Then Karl would be out, and Anders wouldn't be so alone.

"I don't want you to go," Karl said into his shoulder.

"I'll come back," Anders promised.

A crow stood on the hard floor of another's roost. Karl. That was the sound for him. The crow couldn't make it, and cawed instead.

"Remarkable," Karl said, kneeling down beside him. He held out an uncertain hand, on which gleamed a silver ring. It had an attractive shine, and a beautiful call. The crow tapped it with its beak, and Karl twisted the ring on his finger. "... I noticed you weren't wearing yours. I think I'll wait until I'm out to take mine off."

The crow cawed again, and jumped up to the windowsill. It flew from the Gallows, and soared back towards the City of Chains, through the Twins of Kirkwall. Its flight was nothing short of erratic, a struggle against exhaustion the crow barely won in time to land on the windowsill of its own roost, and jump inside. Anders stumbled when he let go of the form, and a handful of feathers scattered at his feet, but he didn't collapse.

He was getting better. Anders staggered to the mineshaft behind his clinic, and let out a sigh of relief when he found his things. Luck. That's all it was. He needed locks. He needed security. He needed to sleep. Anders dressed, and crawled onto the lone cot that had been salvaged from his old clinic. He fished out his mother's pillow from his satchel, and slept better on the itchy fabric than he had in days.

It couldn't have been more than a few hours before someone found his clinic and woke him, despite the lack of a lantern. It was urgent. The poor man's leg had been scalded from an accident in the foundry, and his skin was sloughing off. Anders decided that was the end of his sleep for the day, and Justice must have agreed, because he lit the lantern in front of clinic for him.

Anders spent the rest of the day cleaning and setting up the clinic and treating the refugees who wandered in. He worked on copying the transformation spell in Amell's grimoire for Karl in his free minutes, and adding in what Anders had learned on his own or read from Amell's journal. He was too hungry to focus, towards the latter end of the day, and closed his clinic to go searching for something to eat.

Long sleeves were essential. A small cut on his wrist, and Anders could stop the heart of any pigeon or rat he stumbled upon without drawing any real suspicion. Justice never stirred. Anders desperately wanted to ask him why he didn't care, when he had seemed so against blood magic at the Vigil, but Justice wasn't with him to answer. Anders brought a pigeon back to his clinic, plucked it, and burnt it to an almost inedible husk trying to cook it.

He ate it anyway, and leaned over the break in the blackrock afterwards to piss into the strait. A vulgar gesture towards the Gallows did wonders for his mood, and Anders washed himself down with a rag afterwards for his bath. He was alright. He was doing well. Everything was alright. Anders went down to the docks that evening, handed off his letter and instructions for Karl, and was heading back towards Darktown when he felt a prickle across his shoulders.

Darkspawn. Again. Was there no end to the foul creatures?

No. Not darkspawn. There was only one, and that made no sense. Darkspawn always traveled in packs. They were a hive mind. They couldn't survive alone.

Which meant a Warden.

Anders followed the sensation to the piers, and felt the pull from one of the ships sailing in towards the docks. He jogged across the docks to head to a new pier with a better view, and wondered why he bothered. The Pride of Amaranthine was painted across the hull. A month. They'd given him a month to run, and Anders had wasted it like he'd wasted Amell's three sovereigns.

He couldn't run now. Not with Karl. But he couldn't stay, either. The Warden would sense him, seek him out, and drag him back to Ferelden, to Aeonar, to death. He would not allow it. Anders inhaled sharply and forced down the flames cracking through his skin. Cor. Cor could help him, but Anders had sworn to stop relying on people for help.

It wasn't help. Not really. The Dogs always came to receive any boats in from Ferelden. Anders could ask them to see where the Warden was staying, and Anders would just avoid that part of Kirkwall. It didn't have to be complicated. Anders jogged away from the pier, and waited towards the steps that led up to Lowtown.

Sure enough, not long later, the Dogs wandered down the steps to the docks, jostling one another with their usual playful camaraderie. At first the kinship had made Anders sick with regret, but now he could look past it, and see the way the citizens of Kirkwall carefully skirted around the gang. The Dogs were still dogs. The Bastard was still a bastard. The fact that they were friendly to Anders didn't change the fact that they were dangerous.

"Well if it isn't my favorite magicy mongrel," The man leading the Dogs said, albeit none too loudly. Anders recognized the bulk for Cor. He held out an arm and Anders clasped it because it was the safe thing to do. "What are you doing out, yeah?"

"Errands," Anders said, "Can I ask a favor?"

"You sure fucking can," Cor said.

"There's a boat in from Amaranthine with a Warden on it," Anders explained, "I need to know where they're staying."

"Yeah?" Cor asked, "That all? No bark, no bite?"

"No bark, no bite." Anders said.

"No big then," Cor said, "We'll sniff out your Warden, yeah? You just keep that clinic open."

"Heading back now," Anders promised.

According to the Dogs, the Warden was a man who looked vaguely Orlesian. He had "that noble highbrow, with a nose to break blackrock and a mustache you could hang a swing from." Anders knew that meant Stroud. Anders didn't know if that meant Stroud was here for him. Stroud was staying at The Flagon and Flask in Lowtown. It was on the east side of Kirkwall, while Lirene's shop was on the west. Anders could have easily avoided him, but the fact that he was here at all had him in a panic.

Stroud couldn't find him. Not now. Not with Karl. Anders had to know why he was here. Stroud might have sensed him coming into the docks. It would only take a bit of asking for him to make the connection between Darktown's renegade healer and the fugitive Warden. Anders couldn't ask anyone for help. The Wardens kept their own council. No one would be able to pry Stroud's secrets from him.

Anders was pacing to himself in his clinic when the idea finally came to him. Anders could find out why Stroud was here. He could turn into a crow to sneak into Stroud's room, and go through his things when he was out. And he could do it undetected, because there was a blood magic spell that could mask the Taint. Anders just had to find it.

Amell had started researching it with Velanna after the ambush at the Turnoble estate. He hadn't told Anders, but he might have found something. It wasn't as if they'd ever had the opportunity to use it if Amell had found it. Anders looked through his grimoire, but the pages towards the back had taken the brunt of Eylon's flame. The ritual for summoning ash wraiths, Quentin's notes on reanimation, and anything Amell might have learned from his research were all gone.

His journal wasn't. Anders sat in a corner of his clinic that night, a lantern of Veilfire beside him for comfort, and forced himself to open it. He flipped back through the pages, forcing himself not to read and telling himself not to look at any of the sketches. It had happened a few days before Anders' name-day, and Anders decided to start looking there, skimming over each page if it wasn't about blood magic.


9:31 Parvls 5? 6?
Fuk what day is it? Wy am I witing tis dow? To fuckni drunk for this fuck


9:31 Parvulis 7
I still have a hangover. Just the scratch of my quill is giving me a headache. I think Varel noticed, but I just had my chest ripped open. Literally and figuratively. I'm sure they'll make an allowance this once. If anything Woolsey should be rejoicing now that Anders and I


9:31 Parvulis 8
Oghren is right. I shouldn't have gotten attached. Maleficarum don't fall in love. It's so hard to see him walking through


9:31 Parvulis 9
Wrote to Avernus over what we learned at the Turnoble estate. I expect a letter back in a little under a fortnight. Voldrik says the walls should


9:31 19 Parvulis
The sounds he makes are some of the most beautiful


9:31 20 Parvulis
There are days I wake up and it's still hard for me to believe this isn't another fantasy. Anders lying


9:31 21 Parvulis
I wish Avernus knew more. The spell is useful for an ambush, but a stationary channel that takes blood from every Warden it's meant to mask isn't something I can utilize to infiltrate a nest. Or in combat. Or ever. Still, the implications are worrisome. The darkspawn are already using Grey Warden blood to Awaken themselves. If they recognize the power that lies in the Taint can be utilized for blood magic then the First Warden needs to know.


Nothing. Not a single damned thing that was any help to him. Anders had shifted through two dozen pages and all he'd gotten out of it was a face full of tears. Anders stuffed the journal into his pack and dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. Fine. He'd ask for help. The Dogs could watch the Flagon and Flask and let him know when Stroud left, and Anders could break in while he was gone.

Cor agreed. He even offered to do him one better, and send the Dogs in to go through the Stroud's things for him in case there were any locks that needed to be tackled. It almost surprised Anders Cor asked for nothing in return, until Anders remembered he was running a free clinic the Dogs visited with alarming frequency. It also meant Anders didn't have to risk losing his things, and while Anders had told himself they weren't important, he knew it for a lie.

Anders spent the next day pacing until Bree showed up at his clinic with an armful of papers. "No mention of you," Bree promised, handing over the small bundle of leaflets. "He has orders to lead an expedition here in a couple of months. We found some maps, and thought maybe you might want them. We figure you can't lead an expedition if you don't know where to go, yeah? Figure maybe this way he'll fuck off."

"You're sure?" Anders asked, looking at the maps. Worthless. He hated the Deep Roads. He was never going back. "Nothing at all? Was there any mention of investigating an incident in Amaranthine or Vigil's Keep?"

"Nothing at all," Bree assured him. "I mean, we could go back and get the whole bundle if you need, but there were just a couple of missives from the Warden-Commander. Nothing special. We ransacked the place a bit so it doesn't look too suspicious. That kind of thing happens a lot in Lowtown."

"I can't believe he's not here for me," Anders laughed, and set the maps aside.

"Why not?" Bree asked. "What'd you do that was so bad?"

"I'm a deserter," Anders said.

"So what?" Bree asked. "Are the Wardens really that uptight they'd send someone after you?"

If you ever do leave, I won't send anyone after you. Amell had promised, but Amell was dead.

Wasn't he?

"... I don't know," Anders said.

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
It's Fading: Anders visiting Karl after this chapter and before the next.

 

Fanart
Anders playing with Mr. Wiggums

 

Anders and Amell; Anders and Karl

Chapter 55: Birds of a Feather

Notes:

Here we are! Finally! The story is tagged for Anders and Hawke and it only took us fifty five chapters to introduce him! When I say slow build I mean slow build, haha.

Bit of a rambling Author's Note: I know according to World of Thedas, Karl was an apprentice with Anders and the same age, but we've already butchered the lore with him so much I don't mind twisting it a little more. When he was first introduced my assumption was he was older, so that's what we have here. Thank you for all your wonderful comments, kudos, bookmarks, and subscriptions, but most of all, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 29 Nubulis Just Before Sunrise
Kirkwall Gallows

"So Nate's still cradling his arm, and I say 'Looks like you broke your funny bone,'" Anders laughed, "And he doesn't so much as smile, because of course he doesn't, and he says 'Anders, this isn't funny,' so I say 'No, it's humerus.'"

"I don't think you can fault him," Karl chuckled, "I'm not sure I could laugh if my arm was broken."

"Nate had had worse by then," Anders explained. "We all had. Oghren was in stitches. Literally, after what that shriek did to him."

"Your stories are so fantastical," Karl said, still grinning. He had a nice grin; most of it showed in the lines in his cheeks above his beard. Anders had decided he liked beards, a few painful months ago. "It's like hearing about Dane and the Werewolf. I can't believe all of this happened to you in what? Six months?"

"Neither can I, honestly," Anders said. "It feels like I was a Warden for years. I think it was all the fighting, really. We had to trust each other with our lives every other day. It was... there's nothing like that in the Circle."

"Not unless you want to apply for special dispensation from the Chantry to be a Knight Enchanter or a Battlemage, I suppose." Karl said. "And even then you'd be fighting alongside templars."

"Fuck templars," Anders said.

"It's ridiculous to think I know all of this primal magic to no end," Karl complained, a crackle of electricity running between his fingers. "The Knight-Commander lets us provide 'magical entertainment' for the nobility and nothing else. Conjuring skating rinks for winter parties and summoning fireworks in the summer. It's humiliating. I've never gone, but I've heard stories from mages who have. The nobles point and whisper like you're just another part of the spectacle."

"No surprise there. I can't decide what's worse in Kirkwall, the rats or the people," Anders said. "I went up to Hightown the other day to visit the Chantry, and I think my coat made a few of the nobles faint."

"I don't think you can blame them there," Karl grinned.

"Oh shut it," Anders gave Karl's shoulder a playful shove. Karl chuckled and rubbed away a growing flush on his neck; his eyes danced over Anders' lips, and Anders wondered if he should pretend he hadn't noticed. It wasn't as if it was the first time it had happened this past month, and it wasn't as if he could really fault Karl.

Anders probably would have been thinking a few things if someone he was sweet on was sitting next to him on his bed. Especially if he was in solitary confinement at the time. The candlelight glow and silvery starlight probably weren't helping the mood any, and after a few hours of talking, Anders could almost forget they were sitting in a prison.

"So um..." Karl said.

"Um?" Anders grinned.

"I can't remember what we were saying." Karl said.

"I figured," Anders said.

"Sorry," Karl said sheepishly.

"I don't mind," Anders said.

"Still," Karl said, "You've only been here three months, and this is the first time you've spoken of the Wardens. Are you-I mean do you want to talk about-"

"No," Anders said quickly. "I'd rather talk about you. How's the transformation coming?"

"Horribly," Karl confessed, and a heavy sigh seemed to deflate him. "I don't know how you ever managed it. The whole process eludes me. I understand the premise, but willing myself into a bird? I look at the incantation and I don't even know where to start."

"The feathers, for me," Anders said.

"See I've tried that," Karl said, "I look at the feathers you sent me, I watch the seagulls outside my window, and I'm just not getting anywhere." Karl sighed and traced over a graying eyebrow. "We had another jumper yesterday. I heard the scream outside my window and when I looked out-"

"Why are you telling me this?" Anders grabbed Karl's wrist and pulled it out of the nervous habit, "You'll figure it out. You just need to keep practicing. If I can do it, you can do it."

"Why do you always speak so ill of yourself?" Karl asked. "This isn't easy magic, Anders, don't you realize you're exceptional?"

"No I'm not," Anders said. "There's no spark of the divine in me. I'm normal, and you're normal, and we're just people, and we deserve better than this. You can do this, Karl. You deserve to live as free as any man."

"Maker's breath, you have no idea how badly I want to kiss you when you talk like that," Karl confessed, in no more than a whisper.

"Fine, kiss me." Anders said.

"Do you mean that?" Karl asked; the flush was gone, the stuttering stopped. The consent gave him so much confidence Anders wondered if Karl had assumed Anders wasn't really considering anything with him.

"I said it, didn't I?" Anders ran his tongue over his top lip, and sucked on his bottom lip to wet it. Karl watched him for one enraptured moment before he leaned in to kiss him.

Maker, it felt good to kiss someone. The soft press of Karl's lips contrasted wonderfully with the scratch of his beard, and Anders clasped the back of his head to pull him closer when Karl wrapped his arms around his shoulders. "Watch the feathers," Anders mumbled around his mouth. Karl's hands fell obediently to the small of his back.

This was perfect. Anders didn't have words for how much he'd missed this. The scuff of short hair under his fingers, warm breath on his skin, the soft press of lips and the wet caress of a tongue, with a sweet tinge of lyrium and an undercurrent of salt. And no thinking. No thinking at all.

Anders shifted to better hold Karl. It was so easy to slip into life in the Circle. To stay soundless, even when Karl bit and sucked at his bottom lip, or when Anders clasped his jaw. "I thought-" Karl started, and Anders stopped to let him speak, "I thought you would think I was too old for you."

"How young do you think I am?" Anders asked.

"Younger than I am," Karl said.

"Well that settles it," Anders joked. Karl's eyes really were lovely, like shards of ice or blown blue glass. "Everyone knows you don't fall for a whole person and age is all that matters."

"Is that you saying you're falling for me?" Karl asked.

"I don't know, kiss me again," Anders said.

Karl did. He kissed his upper lip, pulled it between his teeth, and did the same to his bottom lip. Anders wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and as the minutes stretched they turned into a tangled mess of mingled breath, interlaced limbs, and searching hands. Static ran between Karl's fingers and they tingled wherever they touched, and Anders almost returned the gesture when he remembered where his magic came from.

Shit.

Anders broke off from Karl with a self-conscious laugh that had nothing to do with him. Karl didn't seem to mind. His face was flushed, and he was grinning.

"Would you believe it's been three years since I've kissed anyone?" Karl asked.

"Yes," Anders joked.

"No need to spare my feelings," Karl said.

"Kidding," Anders promised. "I'll talk to the Collective. Someone there might be able to help get you out of here if shape-shifting isn't your thing."

"I don't think it is," Karl admitted. "But I'll keep trying."

"Good," Anders said, with a glance to the window and the light creeping across the horizon. "Sun's almost up, so... three days?"

"Alright." Karl agreed, following him to the window. "Um-..."

"I'll come back," Anders promised.

"I know you will." Karl was back to shuffling from foot to foot again. Anders pulled him into a hug, and Karl mumbled, "This coat is so itchy."

"Get out of here and I won't have to wear it anymore." Anders said.

"I will," Karl said.

"Damn right you will," Anders said.

A crow flew from the Gallows across the Waking Sea and through the Twins of Kirkwall. It soared through the strait, and veered into a crack in the blackrock cliffs, where it landed on a window sill, and hopped down into a respectable looking roost. Anders landed on his feet, and didn't stumble. He retrieved his things from the mineshaft behind his clinic, less surprised they were still there ever since he'd gotten locks for the front doors.

"So..." Anders said while he dressed, "...I guess we never talked about this, did we? I know there wasn't time. I don't know about you, but I was pretty sure we were going to die in Amaranthine. I guess there was a lot we didn't talk about but this seems... pretty important. I'll be honest, I really don't know where I end and you begin, but I know there's some sort of divide between us, or you wouldn't be you in the Fade and I wouldn't be me here.

"So... look. Karl. This is sort of one of those 'ridiculously personal things' we used to talk about, but if you're not... I mean, if you're not okay with where this is going, you have to do something to tell me, alright?" Anders rolled up his sleeve, but he didn't see his veins turning to flame and cracking through his skin. "... preferably now," Anders clarified.

Nothing. Anders felt a little anxious, but he couldn't decide if he was the one who felt that way. He didn't feel any particular disgust or revulsion, so that was something. It probably helped that Karl was so vastly different from the last person Anders had been with that Anders didn't think about him at all when he was with him. Maker knew Anders didn't need to remember him right now. Or ever. Preferably ever.

Karl was shy and awkward and easily flustered, and while he had the same convictions his confidence was in the cause and not in himself. He didn't throw his shoulders back and stick out his chin and bleed the will out of anyone who stood in his way and-

Anders cut off the train of thought, and affixed the silver stud Sigrun had given him to his ear. One thing at a time. The stories were a good start, as long as he kept to good memories. He could tell Karl about Sigrun the next time he visited. Karl would like her.

Everyone had liked her.

A shudder tangled up in Anders' chest and he rubbed a handful of tears from his eyes. Or maybe not. Anders finished dressing, and Justice lit the lantern in front of his clinic. Anders saw a half dozen patients before afternoon rolled around, and closed up to go talk to Selby. He left his staff in his clinic and made the trip to Lowtown.

Someday Anders was going to have to learn the path through the sewers that lead to the Collective's packaging house, but walking down to Lowtown seemed a smidge less suspicious than bursting out of a storm drain in front of passersby. Flying was always an option, and but Anders felt better with his things about him. Leaving his staff behind was bad enough.

Anders passed by a few people with halos on his way to the packaging house, and did his best to ignore them. Karl came first. Anders reached the packaging house and knocked three times. "Knock knock!" Anders called.

Donal opened the door, and the man's massive bulk took its place. He raised an amused eyebrow at him, "Who's there?"

"Don't encourage him, Donal!" Selby called from inside.

"Orange," Anders said.

"Orange who?" Donal asked.

"Orange you going to let me in?" Anders asked.

"Close the door!" Selby yelled.

Donal let him in with a laugh. Selby was sitting at the front desk and frowning, but there were too many lines on the old girl's face to hide when she was fighting a smile. Anders grinned and held up both hands, "No staff. I'm behaving."

"You're never behaving," Selby shook her head, "What do you need, love? You know where the books are."

"Is anyone working on getting mages out of the Gallows?" Anders asked.

"You got a death wish, love?" Selby asked.

"Is that a yes or a no?" Anders asked.

Selby stood up, and shook out the lovely violet gown that marked her as one of the rare well-to-do folk in Lowtown. The packaging company wasn't just a front. Selby had inherited it from her family, and had run it with her sister until the latter was discovered for a mage. Selby had joined the Collective the day after her sister was taken away. "Let's not talk up front," Selby said, waving him towards the backrooms.

Anders followed her into a room crowded with bookshelves laden with scrolls and parchments Anders guessed had very little to do with packaging. Selby folded her arms over her chest and gave him such a critical look Anders tried not to fidget. "This is for Thekla?" Selby guessed.

"Yes." Anders said.

"I'll tell you what I told Bancroft: we just don't have the resources. We need more than a maidservant and a few mages in the Gallows working with us: we need the templars, and that's just not going to happen. No one will risk it. The last templar who defied Stannard was kicked from the Order just for passing notes. Helping a mage escape? It would be suicide.

"I'm sorry, love. I know that's not what you want to hear, but it's the truth. We'd need ships, raiders or fishermen or anyone who could ferry mages from the Gallows. We'd need an arrangement with the Coterie to move through the sewers undetected, and we're never going to have the coin to compete with what the templars pay them to smuggle lyrium.

"We're trying, love. We really are. There are a few in the Order who seem sympathetic, and we've been flirting a bit, but you have to take these things slow. Bancroft has been trying to arrange something with the Redwaters, and maybe in a year or two we'll get somewhere, but right now?" Selby smiled sadly, and gave his upper arm a squeeze. "You're going to have to make do with the letters."

"That's not good enough," Anders said, resisting the urge to pace.

"It never is," Selby agreed.

"Who's Bancroft?" Anders asked.

"Just a man," Selby said, "Bit like you. Thinks he can change the world in a day,"

"Do you know where I can find him?" Anders asked.

"Don't work like that, love," Selby frowned, "I'll let him know you asked about him, but if he wants to meet you, that's his business. I'll let you know next time he comes in what he says, fair?"

"What about the templar?" Anders asked, though the word put a foul taste in his mouth, "The one who got kicked from the Order?"

"Raleigh?" Selby supplied, "He's still out there, poor dear. Lyrium withdrawal. He helps, in his own way, but he doesn't come cheap. He'll get you passage out of Kirkwall if you need it, but he's in no more position to break Thekla out of the Gallows than we are."

Anders bit back a frustrated groan. He paced a few feet and sat on the first thing he could sit on, which happened to be a crate.

"I get it, love, I do," Selby said, "I haven't seen my sister in years. This is just the way it is."

"It's not the way it should be," Anders said.

"Few things are." Selby said.

"Do you think the Coterie needs a healer?" Anders asked.

"Don't you go there," Selby stabbed him in the chest with a stern finger, "Don't you even think it. The Coterie isn't anything like your Dog Lords. They're not a gang, they're a guild. If you let them get their claws in you, they'll tear you apart."

"I have to get Karl out of there," Anders said. "If it means healing a few more people I don't see the problem."

"You think it will stop there?" Selby asked. "It never stops with the Coterie. First it'll be healing them, then it'll be healing no one but them, then it won't just be healing. They'll have you fighting in their gang wars by Summerday. Let it go, love. Take what you can get."

Damn that. Anders was tired of settling. He was going to get what he could take. Anders stood up and flashed Selby a smile, "Thanks for letting me know where we're at."

"Anders," Selby called after him when he made for the door. "Be careful."

Anders stewed on Selby's advice for three long days before he made the flight back to the Gallows.

A crow landed on the windowsill of a place it recognized at the roost of a potential mate, only to find the room occupied by a young girl. The crow let out a furious caw, and the girl jumped.

"Oh my gosh," The girl exclaimed. She leapt from her desk to hover by the windowsill. The crow paced and bit at its own feathers. The pain felt soothing, "Hey there little guy... don't leave. I've never seen a bird before. Are you a raven? Or... a crow? There weren't any windows at Starkhaven's Circle."

The crow screamed at her.

"Noisy," The girl smiled. "Are you going to bite me if I try to pet you?"

The crow bit its own feathers again, and the girl reached out a shaky hand to run a finger over its head. There were no rings on her fingers. "Wow, feathers are soft. Please don't bite me. You're so pretty. I didn't know birds' eyes could glow like that."

The crow screamed again, and flew back to Kirkwall. Anders lost his hold on the form when he reached his window, and crashed into his clinic. He landed on a table, and went rolling off it onto the floor. A pillar stopped his momentum and knocked the wind out of him.

"Fuck," Anders snarled; He rolled into a ball and let a pulse of benevolent energy flow over him, unsurprised at the flames cracking through his arms. "Andraste's-fucking-flaming-fuck-fuck shit!"

Anders climbed to his knees and stayed there, head in his hands, a cerulean light illuminating the space around him. Think, Anders. Don't panic. So Karl wasn't in his room. That could mean anything. That could mean he'd been released from solitary. That was possible. He'd been given a new room, and Anders would get a letter from him any day telling him where in the Gallows it was.

The flames in his arms didn't go out. Anders couldn't feel them. He couldn't feel anything beyond his heart, which still felt as if it belonged in the body of a crow, the frantic pulse meant for a much smaller body. Anders massaged at his chest and took a deep breath. Karl was just out of solitary. That was all. Nevermind that there was no reason to give him a new room if that was the case.

Justice stared down at Anders' hands, unable to make sense of the fragmented thoughts that flashed through Anders' mind. One word seemed to repeat itself, and Justice seized it. Aeonar. It brought forth memories of chains, of cramped cells and tight shackles. A prison for those who already lived a life of imprisonment. Justice growled, and felt it rumble through Anders' chest. The anger felt good. Righteous. Vindicated. This would not stand.

"We will find this place and see him free from it, if he is there," Justice said. Anders was in no state to hear his words, but Justice hoped his intent made it through. It must have, because the response Justice felt from Anders was Fear. It was an alien feeling to Justice, but it seemed to resonate often with Anders. Justice didn't doubt his presence kept such demons at bay.

Flashes of silver came with the Fear. Swords. Flames. Templars. "I will not let them take him from you."

Anders fell forward onto his hands with a sharp sob. He inhaled shakily, and felt the air slowly fill his lungs. "Fuck, Justice, we have to find him first," Anders choked out. "Maker, no one even knows where Aeonar is." Anders buried his face in hands, and wrapped them around himself in a tight hug when that felt insufficient. "I'm okay. I'm okay. Karl's okay. We're okay."

He felt a wash of affection and of anger, and latched onto the latter. Damn them. Damn all of them. Rolan had an easy fate next to what Anders and Justice would do to Stannard if she'd sent Karl to Aeonar. Unable to sleep, Anders spent the night as a crow, and his thoughts were simpler and quieter.

The next day passed in a daze, and Anders jogged down to the docks the second the sun hit the horizon. He let himself into the Rusty Anchor and found the Collective contact, who shook her head at him. Anders sat down across from her, and she shook her head again, "I don't know where they moved him. I'll try to find him. Get up. You know I can't be seen with anyone."

It was three days before Anders finally got word. Anders bolted back to his clinic with the letter and ripped it open when he was alone. It was short. A brief explanation that Karl had been moved to smaller quarters to give more luxury to the mages in from Starkhaven. Karl didn't know where in the Gallows he was, but there was a window out into the hall, and he'd finally managed to shape-shift. He'd practiced flying in his room, and meet Anders in the Chantry three nights from now.

"This is a trap," Anders said together with Justice. Anders didn't see how that changed anything. If Karl was going to be there, that was where Anders needed to be. He didn't sleep that night, and come morning he was exhausted. He knew it was a mistake. If he was going to walk into a trap, he should at least do it with his eyes open.

He still had another day. Anders could sleep tonight, and meet Karl in the Chantry tomorrow night, and handle whatever trap the templars wanted to throw at him. They wouldn't bring enough men. If a score of templars and soldiers couldn't kill Anders when he was trapped inside a binding circle, the handful they sent to apprehend the apostate Karl was corresponding with would be nothing.

They were limitless. They could do this.

Unless they killed Karl in a mad frenzy like they might have killed Velanna and Nathaniel.

The thought made Anders sick. He pushed it back as best he was able, but it lingered in the back of his mind, growing like a gangrenous rot until Anders thought he might actually throw up. He was outside his clinic, leaning over the cliff and while his stomach roiled, when he heard someone shouting. Anders looked up, and saw Evelina running down the corridor of blackrock towards him, one of the kids in her arms.

"Anders!" Evelina screamed, with enough panic in her voice Anders hands cracked with flame when he grabbed his staff. He half expected to see her chased by the Coterie, but there were only a handful of children running after her. "Help! Chokedamp! Cricket! He's not breathing!"

Anders ran to meet her. Justice was still there under his finger tips, and it was easy to pull the Fade through the spirit and summon a cleansing aura. The first wave of healing energy washed over the boy like oil on water. "Get him inside. Lie him down. How long has he been unconscious?"

"I don't know!" Evelina ran Cricket to a table, and laid him out. The boy was limp; his limbs flopped bonelessly, and his chest didn't rise or fall, "I don't know, he was playing with Nika," Evelina gestured to one of the young girls following her, and closed the doors behind all of them. The girl looked the same age as Cricket, no more than five, and she was crying.

"We didn't see!" The little girl sobbed, "We didn't see the vent! I'm sorry! Cricket got too close!"

"A few minutes, maybe, I don't know," Evelina said, gathering the girl and a few of the other children in her arms.

Anders shut out the sounds of the children crying and his own nausea to go through the motions. He drew the interlocking circles of a lifeward with his staff, and sent a pulse of creation magic to seek out the thick coating of damp on the boy's lungs. A second surge of healing energies latched onto it, and Anders started a channel to draw it from his lungs.

Andraste preserve him, he should have slept. Every breath of damp he pulled from the boy seemed to sap at his strength, and by the time Cricket's lungs were clear, the vertigo almost made Anders fall over. It wasn't that simple. He couldn't pass out yet. Anders wove a breath of electricity through a swathe of restorative energies, and sent the pulse into the boy's heart. Once. Twice, and Cricket sat up with a gasp.

Anders found himself a chair and sat down. Anders blinked twice, and fell asleep. A fierce hug woke him seconds later. "I'm-what?" Anders started.

Evelina had her arms locked around him, breasts pressed against Anders' chest and auburn hair spilled into his face. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you." Evelina planted a hard kiss on his jaw despite the layer of stubble he couldn't shave properly without a straight edge and a mirror. "I thought he was dead."

"Not much for creationism?" Anders guessed, and it was only when Evelina froze that Anders realized no one had ever told him she was a mage. Maker, he was tired.

"How do you know?" Evelina whispered.

"I-...have some unique circumstances," Anders explained, "I can sense it. You didn't give yourself away, I swear."

"Don't tell the children," Evelina said.

"Promise," Anders said.

Evelina let go of him, and Anders wrung his hands on his staff. The kids were running circles around his clinic, rejoicing at Cricket's recovery. Anders managed a smile. "You know you can come see us whenever you want." Evelina said. "The kids love your magic."

"They'd love yours too," Anders whispered.

"No," Evelina said.

Anders heard shouting. Not the panicked screams of a woman desperate for help, but the wild roars of men locked in combat, followed by steel on steel, and boots on blackrock. "Damnit." Anders muttered. The children stopped playing. They looked at the doors to his clinic with wide eyes, and Anders stumbled to his feet. "I told them no fighting outside the clinic. They know I'm just going to heal everyone anyway."

The wall shook with a thunderous bang. Anders guessed someone had been thrown against the door to his clinic. Evelina gave him a nervous look. "Take the kids and wait in the mineshaft," Anders said. "I'll take care of it."

"This way, everyone," Evelina ushered the half dozen kids to the back of his clinic, "We're going to play hide and seek."

"This might be all you," Anders said to himself, rolling his fingers on his staff. He felt a surge of confidence, and threw open the door to his clinic. He let a snap of lightning roar off his staff with the hope it would break up the fighting. The lightning crackled across the ceiling and spilled out into the ravine.

Coterie. Anders recognized the uniforms: boiled leather in dark green, with masks to cover every face. The fight was over, for the most part. Anders counted a little less than a dozen corpses bleeding out onto the blackrock and spilling down the stairs, voided bowels filling the air with the scent of shit and piss. Anders looked to the group they'd been fighting.

A sword lined in flames and set in silver. Templar. Justice lashed out and shattered the shield in a shower of molten metal, "We have made this place of sanctum of healing and salvation, and you will not threaten it!" Justice bellowed, tearing through to the Fade and the limitless potential it offered them, when Anders forced him back. Anders bit down a sob, and collapsed against the doorframe.

Amell.

Five months, and he looked more gorgeous than ever. Tousled raven locks fell down around a square brow, straight and thick eyebrows that curved only just around his almond-shaped eyes and left him with a permanently enigmatic expression. And those damn red eyes Anders knew he had carved straight from their sockets, staring right at him and cutting into his heart.

Then Anders blinked, and it was gone. There was a line cut through his left eyebrow Amell didn't have. He was taller, his shoulders broader, his arms not lean but thick. His skin was a little darker, his nose not quite so round and his lips not quite so full, and his beard didn't grow quite the same way. He looked at Anders without the slightest spark of recognition in his eyes.

They were so red. Why did they have to be so red?

Someone grabbed a fistful of his coat and wrenched his eyes off the stranger. Anders blinked into face full of freckles. "That was Wesley's!" The woman snarled at him. A dog was barking somewhere nearby.

"What?" Anders asked.

"You shattered his shield!" The woman hissed.

"Aveline, stop! We need him!" The stranger said. His voice was a deep bass, not a baritone. Not Amell. It wasn't Amell. Amell wouldn't be holding a bow in one hand with a quiver on his hip.

"Then you deal with him!" Aveline shoved Anders back against the wall. Her uniform was orange and silver, not purple and silver. She was a guard, not a templar. Anders was too dazed to care.

Aside from her, there was a heavy set dwarf sitting on the steps, buried under a leather coat much richer than the one Anders' wore and holding a crossbow. A girl with skin and hair to match Not-Amell was wearing a chainmail shirt, and holding the collar of a slathering mabari who was barring its teeth at Anders.

"Tch!" Not-Amell hissed at the dog. There was a streak of red across his nose to match one painted across the muzzle of his dog. At his hiss, the mabari quieted and laid down on the ground.

"Aveline, you're bleeding!" The girl called after the redhead.

"I'll get a bandage at the barracks," Aveline snarled, slamming a gauntlet clad fist into the wall as she stormed away. Not-Amell took a handful of steps after her, and ran both hands through his hair.

When he turned back around, his face was twisted into a scowl that killed the last of the resemblance. "You're the Grey Warden? We need information about the Deep Roads."

"Hawke said aggressively," The dwarf mumbled.

"What?" Anders managed.

"Okay," The girl stopped the man with a hand on his chest before he reached Anders. "That was our mistake. We shouldn't have come down here with a templar's shield. Let's try this again, because despite what my brother would have you believe we weren't raised by a pack of rabid brontos. I'm Bethany Hawke, and this is my brother-..."

Bethany let go of her brother, and nodded towards Anders. She had a halo about her.

"Hawke," The man muttered. "Red Iron."

Anders looked at the armor he was wearing, and cleared his throat, "Looks more like Red Leather to me."

Hawke made a confused face at him, but the dwarf laughed from his place on the steps, "Good one, Blondie." With a grunt of effort, the dwarf pulled himself to his feet and staggered over, gingerly stepping over the corpse of a Coterie member. "Varric Tethras, at your service," He said with a sweeping bow that sent flaxen hair falling in front of his face. He tossed it back when he stood.

"May we?" Varric asked with a wave towards his clinic.

Anders thought of Evelina and the kids. "No."

"Okay," Varric held up two gloved hands, "Fair enough. We're interested in getting into the Deep Roads. Rumor has it you were a Warden. We were hoping you knew a way in, and some of us," Varric made an unsubtle gesture towards Hawke, "Were thinking you might want to join the expedition."

Anders choked on a laugh. "Was. Past tense. I will die a happy man if I never think about the blighted Deep Roads again. You can't imagine what I've come through to get here. Find someone else, I'm not interested."

"There is no one else," Hawke said.

"Please," Bethany said, "Any information you have could help saves lives."

"I said-" Anders stopped. Karl's life might need saving. If not from templars, then from Anders. "... Alright. Look. I have Warden maps of the depths in this area, but they're not free. Favor for a favor, does that sound like a fair deal? You help me, I'll help you?"

"What's the favor?" Hawke asked.

"I have-... a friend," Anders said, unable to help glancing at Bethany. They had an apostate with them. They'd known how to find him. There was no reason to assume they might not be sympathetic. "A mage. He's a prisoner in the Gallows, hopefully not for long. He asked me to meet him in the Chantry tomorrow night, but there might be templars with him. I need to free him from them, and I might need help. Help me bring him safely past them, and you'll have your maps."

"No," Hawke said quickly. "Absolutely not, forget it, we'll take our chances with the darkspawn," Hawke turned around and grabbed Bethany's arm to drag her down the stairs. Bethany smacked his chest with the back of her hand.

"You know we need this!" Bethany hissed. "Yes, it scares me, and I know we don't need to give the templars another reason to hunt us, but what choice do we have?"

Hawke made a strangled sound in the back of his throat and gestured between Bethany and Anders.

"Oh calm down, Garrett, he's an apostate too," Bethany said.

"That doesn't mean anything," Hawke said, "The whole point of this expedition is to keep templars away from you. As in not fighting them. As in the opposite of this. As in no."

Bethany frowned at him, and glanced back at Anders with a smile too sweet to be anything but fake, "Will you excuse us for a minute?" Bethany asked rhetorically, twisting out of her brother's grasp to grab his wrist instead and drag him down the stairs. The dog followed them, but the dwarf stayed.

"So," Varric said, kicking the corpse of one of the Coterie members out into the strait.

"So," Anders agreed, leaning on his staff and trying not to fall asleep.

"I'm sorry to hear about your friend," Varric said. "I'm sure we can do something to help."

"... Thank you," Anders said. "That's not the response I usually get."

"Oh, you'll get it with us, trust me," Varric said, "Hawke's just a little... overprotective of Sunshine."

"Sunshine?" Anders asked.

"Ah, excuse me," Varric rolled his hand in an apologetic gesture. "Bethany. I've a penchant for nicknames."

"Is that a dwarf thing?" Anders asked, unable to help thinking Oghren and Sigrun.

"I don't know about that, but it's definitely a Varric thing," Varric said with a grin.

Bethany came back dragging her brother, the dog still trotting obediently alongside him, seemingly unconcerned with the abomination in front of it after a word from its master. Anders wondered if it could have been that simple with Barkspawn.

"Favor for a favor," Hawke agreed stiffly, and held out a hand.

Anders shook it.

Notes:

Fanart
Hawke

Apples and Apostates
All Bark: The events of this chapter as told from Hawke's perspective.

Chapter 56: Snap

Notes:

Hello everyone! This chapter is... this chapter, but now that we've hit rock bottom there's nowhere to go but up! Thank you all for your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon Eluviesta 6 Late Afternoon
Kirkwall Darktown: Outside Anders' Clinic

Hawke's quick handshake was muted by the gloves the both of them wore. "You get me," Hawke pointed a thumb back at Bethany, "Not her. Varric?"

"Bianca's ready and willing," Varric said, thumping the crossbow he held against his thigh, "Maybe Daisy could help?"

"No," Hawke said quickly.

Varric pressed two gloved fingers into his forehead, "Look, Hawke, I know you don't like her, but you've got to admit she's pretty mean in a fight."

Hawke raised an eyebrow at the dwarf, and looked almost wounded, "I never said I didn't like her."

"Then why won't you ever let me go visit her?" Bethany demanded.

"Because she's a bad influence. That doesn't mean I'm going to throw her to the templars." Hawke said, and turned back to Anders. "What's your plan?"

"Plan?" Anders asked.

Hawke's eye twitched.

"In over your head, Blondie?" Varric guessed.

"No," Anders said, trying to stand up straight, but his arms felt so heavy they were dragging his shoulders down, "No, I'm just tired. I'll watch the Chantry tomorrow to see if any templars show up. I'll meet with him. I just need someone there to get him away from the fighting, if there is any."

"How many templars are you expecting?" Hawke asked.

"It won't matter," Anders said.

"Well shit," Varric whistled. "Maybe we're the ones in over our heads."

"Guess," Hawke said.

"A half dozen," Anders guessed.

"I think we can handle that," Varric said. "In the meantime, what do you say to drinks at the Hanged Man? If you're going to be working with us, we could stand to talk a little bit more about what we have planned for the expedition."

"I'm busy," Anders said, thinking of Evelina and the children still waiting for him, but mostly of how hard it was to look into those eyes and not see the adoration he'd taken for granted, "I'll meet you outside the Chantry tomorrow night, after dark."

"Tomorrow night," Hawke agreed. He left for the stairs, and a whistle brought his dog with him.

"I hope you save your friend," Bethany said, with a smile that touched her eyes. Unlike her brother, they were amber, and easier for Anders to look into, "He ought to have his own life, away from the shackles of the Circle. Everyone should."

"Thank you," Anders said.

"Bethany!" Hawke barked over his shoulder; his sister ran after him.

"You see why I call her Sunshine?" Varric asked.

"I can guess," Anders said. "What's her brother? Sunset?"

"Hawke?" Varric snorted, "Hawke is just Hawke, but if I had to pick, I've been thinking about going with Killer."

"Charming," Anders said.

"Not really." Varric laughed. "Ah, his heart's in the right place, at least."

"The left side of his chest?" Anders asked.

"Something like that," Varric grinned, and held out a hand. Anders gave it a shake. "Look forward to working with you, Blondie. Sorry about the mix up with the shield."

"Why did she even have that?" Anders asked.

"It was her husband's," Varric explained with a sad sort of smile, "I haven't heard much about him, but he died during the Blight. I-... wouldn't go anywhere near her for the rest of your life if I were you,"

"She married a templar?" Anders asked. "Is that even allowed?"

"Don't look at me," Varric shrugged. "Templars and mages? Not really my thing, but helping a guy in need? I can get behind that."

Varric rolled a nearby corpse over with his boot. His boots were dark black with gold chains, and Anders bit back an envious sigh. The shoes Anders had gotten to replace the ones that had been stolen from him were little more than a bundle of scrap leather tied together with twine. "So, about these guys. Seems a bit rude to just leave them on your doorstep."

"I'll take care of it," Anders said.

"Well alright then," Varric said. "Tomorrow night."

"It's a date," Anders agreed.

"Don't go there, Blondie, I'll break your heart," Varric grinned, and spared him a wave over his shoulder when he left.

Anders watched the dwarf waddle down the steps, and pause at the bottom for a deep breath and a stretch before he vanished into Darktown. Anders went back into his clinic. "All clear!" Anders called.

The kids ran out from the mineshaft, and Evelina followed them. "Templars?" Evelina asked.

"Just some folk who wanted a favor," Anders explained, thinking of the bodies and the children's reaction to them. "I'll show you the way out through the mineshaft so you don't have to wait for me next time."

Anders led them through the sewers, the magelight he conjured in the form of a crow for the kids' amusement. They chased it around Evelina and himself, running in slower circles than Anders' thoughts. Maker's breath, Hawke looked so much like Amell it hurt. Anders hated thinking about Amell, especially after a five minute conversation proved Hawke was nothing like him.

Amell wouldn't have hesitated to help him save Karl. Not for a favor, but just because it was the right thing to do. Karl... Karl was probably already on his way to Aeonar. Even as bait for Anders, the templars didn't need to keep Karl around. All they had to do was wait in the Chantry for Anders to show up, and Maker knew he would, whether or not he saw Karl. Anders had to cling to the slim hope that Karl would actually be there.

Anders thought of that stupid kiss and wondered what in the Void was wrong with him. Velanna, Nathaniel, Sigrun, Amell. If Sigrun was to be believed, even Oghren might be dead if he'd gone with Amell to his Calling. The list of people Anders cared about never got any longer because he kept losing every person he added to it. Karl didn't deserve Aeonar.

Karl didn't deserve anything but a chance to feel the sun on his skin and the wind in his hair. A chance to climb a mountain, or swim in the ocean, feel sand or snow or grass between his toes and underfoot. Or sit in his room reading one dry tome after the next, but to still know that the choice to do all of those things was out there, waiting for him, and no templar was keeping him from it. He deserved that stupid fucking flower Anders had never found.

Anders bid Evelina and the children goodbye and went back to his clinic. The bodies were still there, and the aroma of death was thicker than ever. Anders dragged all five into a pile, coins and daggers and other bits falling out of the pockets of the dead to frame the smears of blood and feces they left at being moved. Anders stared at the mess, and wondered how desperate he was.

Pretty desperate, Anders decided. He found twelve silver and fifty seven bits on the bodies, three daggers, a carving knife, a handful of lock picks, a wooden drinking flask, a kit of bandages, a signet ring, a necklace, dice, a pouch of marbles, a bundle of elfroot, a pouch of jerky, a pair of shoes and socks that fit him, and better fitted gloves.

The rest was armor and weapons, most broken or damaged by the fighting. Anders made a pile of it and burned the bodies. The smell of cooked flesh and gristle reminded him he was hungry without making him queasy. Anders watched the smoke billow out of the cavern and escape out into the ravine, and wondered what he was supposed to do with the armor.

The Dogs might want it, but wearing Coterie commission gear was a death sentence in Kirkwall. Anders supposed they could use it for scrap, and left it in a corner of his clinic. He covered the pile with a tarp, and went back outside. Anders was staring at the bloodstains outside his clinic and wishing he had a mop or a broom when Franke showed up.

The curly haired cobbler waved when he came into view. Anders tried to rein his surprise at the visit and waved back. Franke stepped over a streak of shit and blood and his face crinkled up in concern. "Do I want to know?" Franke asked.

"Probably not," Anders said. "Are you alright? Do you need a salve or anything...?"

"Right. Fair." Franke rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. "Fair guess. I know I haven't been the best friend lately. Do you suppose I could come in for a bit? Do what Franke does best?"

"Sure," Anders said cautiously, holding open the door to the clinic for him. Franke wandered in and dropped the pack he was carrying on the table. The table wobbled at the weight. Anders needed to find something to put under one of the uneven legs.

Franke shook out the pack and a pair of knee-high black boots tumbled onto the table. "I see you already found yourself a new pair, so I suppose these are a little late. They're no tusket, just your basic druffalo hide, but I figure they're better than the mess of twine you were wearing for a bit. I don't know what you got on now, but black goes with everything and the green you're wearing isn't really working with that coat, if you ask Franke."

Anders ran his fingers over one and stood it up on the table. The cheap leather flopped to one side instead of standing straight up the way the thick tusket had, but the gold trim did look fetching. They'd look ridiculous with the rags Anders was wearing, but they matched his leather Warden pants. "You didn't have to make me these."

"Well I had to do something." Franke said. "Don't know if you remember but I did sort of stab you."

"Only sort of," Anders grinned.

"I've been trying to take this day by day, you know?" Franke said. "When I heard you were a Warden, it all came back at once. The wife, the girls, the arrows, the fucking flames... I wasn't thinking. You were on one of the first boats out of Amaranthine, same as me. You're all for healing... I should have known you weren't for burning the city."

"You don't have to explain; I understand," Anders said. Maker, did Anders understand. Day by day was the only way he knew how to keep going.

"Well too late," Franke said with a shrug. "Already did," He ran an anxious hand through the mess of curls on his head, and put on a smile, "You feel like grabbing drinks? It'll just be dock swill, but we could catch up."

"Things are kind of hectic right now, Franke." Anders said, returning the smile to take the sting out of the refusal. "Maybe another day? Are you still staying with Lirene?"

"Still am," Franke said. "She found me some work over at the tanners, but lodgings are still a ways off. Hectic hectic or Franke you fucked up hectic?"

"Hectic hectic," Anders promised. "... You remember my friend at the Gallows?"

"Do now," Franke said.

"Well he might be in trouble and it might be my fault," It was definitely Anders' fault. "I'm a mess right now, Franke. I'm thinking about going to bed as soon as you leave."

No sooner did Anders say it than a refugee ran in, their hand bound in a bloody rag they clutched against their chest. Anders ended up spending the next half hour reattaching the refugee's severed finger, and Franke fled at the sight of blood. A few more refugees trickled in while Anders was working on the finger, and he ended up working in his clinic until well into the evening.

Anders almost resented night when it fell. The patients stop coming in, and Anders put out his lantern and put up his feet, but sleep eluded him. Anders lay in his cot in the back of his clinic, exhausted and tossing and turning with his thoughts. The dull green glow of Justice's Veilfire from the lamp Anders kept beside his cot did little to soothe him. Anders sat up and pulled his legs against his chest. A few bangs of his forehead against his knees did nothing to settle his nerves.

Anders got dressed and grabbed his staff, and locked up the clinic behind him. During the day, the staff attracted templars, but at night it repelled gangs. Anders made the walk to Hightown mostly undisturbed. A bit of lightning coiled around his fingers was enough to ward off the few gangs who thought about harassing him.

Hightown was a glitzy collection of mansions cut from marble and whitewashed stone. The disparity of wealth in Kirkwall was never more keen as when you stood on the top of the steps and looked down at medley of stone and smog that made up the quarries of Lowtown. Every street in Hightown was lined in wrought iron lamps kept lit throughout the night, the streets were tiled and framed in hedgerows and rosebushes, and beautiful vines crawled up trellises on every other building.

Every awning was a beautiful bit of embroidered cloth, and not a ratty tarp strung up over an alley. Banners hung still on the windless night, but there were many, and it was undeniably beautiful and opulent. There were fewer rats, and no cockroaches, and even a few nightly guard patrols Anders skirted quickly pasted on his way to the Chantry.

Anders had been to the Chantry a handful of times in the past three months he'd spent in Kirkwall. It was an imposing building of marble and stone that stretched high into the sky as if whoever had build it had thought to reach the Maker in the clouds instead of in the Fade. A staircase climbed up to meet it, framed in ferns and sunburst banners. Two massive bronze statues of watchful guardians stood on the roof on either side of the twin doors into the Chantry. They seemed to Anders a twisted parallel of the slaves set before the Gallows.

Everything in Kirkwall was rank to death with slavery and oppression. Karl wouldn't have wanted to meet here, but the letter was penned in his hand. Anders couldn't imagine what kind of threats the templars had made to get him to write it, but he knew it wasn't Karl's fault. Anders would tell him as much, assuming Hawke could keep Anders from killing him in the fight that was bound to come.

Anders found a place for his things under a hazel tree in the Chantry arbor, and tried and failed not to think of Velanna. He couldn't help remembering how giddy they'd been to run through the streets of Amaranthine together, snatching one apostate after the next out from under Leonie's nose. It had felt almost like a game, and the two of them cheating to win it. It didn't feel like that now. Anders took off everything but his coat, and dug his toes into the dirt beneath him. It was such a simple feeling, and Karl would never know it.

A crow sat in a hazel tree above a hidden nest of trinkets and baubles, never moving throughout the night and into the day that followed. It watched the passersby, and its thoughts were simple and quiet. Into the night of the day that followed, a hooded figure that the crow recognized as a potential mate made its way up the stairs, and into the Chantry. The crow waited, and waited longer still, but no predators followed it.

The crow jumped down from the tree, and Anders got dressed and picked up his staff. He left the arbor, and made his way back down the stairs. Waiting at the base and leaning against the wall were Hawke, his dog, and Varric. The former was dressed as he had been that morning: a crimson leather vest over a boiled leather chest piece with matching trousers. The latter was actually wearing armor, in place of the casual jacket and tunic he'd had on when meeting Anders.

Varric wore boiled leather to match Hawke, but it was accented with iron, and complete with a boiled leather half-helm. He was holding his crossbow, but had strapped on a few daggers and what looked like a bomb to his belt, and the gold-chained boots had been replaced with a pair with metal guards. Anders supposed it should have been reassuring they seemed prepared, but he had to wonder how much use two archers and a mabari were going to be if he and Justice decided to burn down the whole Chantry.

Anders jogged down the steps to meet them. The dog noticed him first, and looked up with a low growl. Hawke glanced at him, and hissed the dog into silence. "I saw Karl go inside a few minutes ago," Anders said, "No templars so far. Are you both ready?"

"Give me a moment," Hawke said. He slung a pack off his back and knelt to pull a bow from it.

"Still with the bow and arrow?" Anders asked. "You know we might be fighting templars in full plate, right?"

Hawke grunted in response and focused on stringing his bow.

"I've never seen someone wear their quiver on their hip before." Anders said.

"You want me to save your friend or teach you archery?" Hawke tossed his hair out of his face and scowled up at him. Anders swallowed down a sound of distress for how familiar his face was. Thank the Maker Hawke was an ass or Anders would have been an incoherent mess around him.

"Just making conversation." Anders said.

"That's not really one of his strong points." Varric snorted. "I'm the one who does all the talking. We know our stuff, Blondie, don't worry about it. Let's go save your friend."

Hawke finished and made a clicking noise that set his dog to following him, and jogged up the stairs.

Varric approached them with far less enthusiasm, "Stairs, my old nemesis, we meet again."

"Now that, I know, is a dwarf thing," Anders said.

Varric was huffing breathlessly when he reached the top of the stairs, "When I tell the story of my life I am leaving out the part about my weight. Give me a second, Blondie," Varric took a break to lean back against the wall of the Chantry, and looked at Hawke, "Next time I might just have you carry me."

"Bianca won't be jealous?" Hawke asked, sparing his mabari a pat and looking like a civil human being for all of a second.

"Hmm, good point." Varric mused, taking another deep breath and shoving off the wall. "Don't make that face, Blondie, it doesn't take a lot of muscle to pull a trigger."

"Just watch for templars and keep Karl out of the fighting if there is any," Anders said.

"Let's do this fast," Hawke said.

Anders pushed open the doors, and was immediately assaulted with the scent of incense and hot wax. Bronze statues of robbed figures lined the entry hall, and littered at their feet were red candles decorated with various symbols from sunbursts to the emblem of Kirkwall. The light they cast was faint, and Justice summoned a handful of Veilfire to help illuminate the corridor. It was reassuring to know the spirit was paying attention.

"Karl?" Anders called out, and met with silence.

"He didn't tell you where in the Chantry to meet him?" Hawke asked.

"Downstairs, in the basement, so we don't wake any of the Sisters," Anders said. "I just-haven't spent a lot of time here,"

"It's this way," Hawke said, taking the lead and pushing open the first door on the left hand side of the corridor. It opened up into a stairwell that led both up and down. Anders went down first, Veilfire lighting the way. The basement floor of the Chantry was filled with crates, bolts of cloth, chests of incense, and tapestries for different annums. Karl stood among them, no templars in sight, and Anders breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thank the Maker, Karl, you scared the shit out of me," Anders said, throwing the Veilfire into a nearby lamp and jogging over.

"Anders, I knew you would come," Karl said, in a painfully dull monotone, "I knew you would never give up."

"What's wrong?" Anders asked, "Why are you talking like-"

Karl turned around. Anders feet slipped out from under him and he fell hard, landing on his backside to stare up at Karl in shock, and the barely visible sunburst under his hood.

"No-" No. Karl was Harrowed. It was illegal. Aeonar-

"I was too rebellious," Karl explained, and it felt like looking at Hawke when Anders expected Amell. There was no affection in his ice blue eyes. No curve to his rose red lips. Not the slightest angle to the silver eyebrows he'd worn thin with worry. "Too much like you. The templars knew I had to be made an example of."

"No," Anders choked on the word. It twisted into a knot in his throat and it was all he could say, "No-no-no!"

"This is the only way we can master ourselves, Anders," Karl said. Empty. Emotionless. Gone. "This is freedom. You will understand, as soon as the templars show you."

"No, Karl-no-no-"

"This is the apostate," Karl said, and Anders saw the flashes of silver among the crates, saw the whispers of sunbursts, the echoes of swords.

Karl was Harrowed. He was Harrowed. He couldn't be made Tranquil. He couldn't. It wasn't possible. It wasn't happening. It wasn't real. Anders dug his blunt nails into his face and screamed into his hands, and the smite hit him.

His nerves lit with fire, and the agony of it corroded his thoughts to a blissful oblivion. Anders' scream turned to a roar, his skin cracked along his veins, and the breath he inhaled burned through his lungs and left his throat raw with the taste of mana. "You will never take another mage as you took him!"

Justice grabbed Vigilance, and brought them to their feet. A templar rushed them, all silverite and reflective metal, shield tilted to guard against the magic a mage might cast, but they were more than magic, and more than a mage. A gauntlet-clad hand ripped from the Veil, and caught the templar by his left shoulder. A second burst forth to catch him by his right.

The templar ripped in half in an explosion of silverite and blood and fire. Someone drove a sword into his back, and Justice spun. His hand locked onto the templar's helmet, and he clenched his fist, crushing metal, bone, and brain. Silverite bit through the thin leather of his gloves, and Anders' blood mingled with the blood of the templar. Justice flung the combination through the thin viser of another templar, where it boiled into his skin.

Anders' magic made the man explode within his armor. The templar collapsed into a dozen different pieces, gauntlets rolling away from greaves, chunks of pink muscle escaping to splatter on the ground, and all around them a river of blood. Another smite tore through their veins, and the blue flames that marked his presence flickered along Anders' arms. Justice tore into the templar who dared to cast it, and all that was left was feeling.

The cold touch of silverite, made blistering by magic and shattered in a burst of molten metal. The slick caress of blood as it trickled down Anders' arms and his brow. The warmth of the flames licking their skin and the tingle of lightning as it danced between their fingers. The natural harmony that was beating blood and working muscle, and man and might and such magic. Magic that sang with all the strength of the Fade until there was no silver left, and Justice let go.

Anders collapsed. His knees hit the ground, and landed in a puddle of blood that sent droplets of red cascading up into his face. Maker, why? Anders didn't want to come back. He didn't ever want to come back. "No! No, no, come back! Don't make me deal with this! I can't deal with this!"

"Anders!?" Karl's voice came to him, impossibly animated with surprise and concern and something just short of rapture.

Anders looked up. Karl had pulled down his hood, and Maker, his face. His eyebrows were raised, his eyes wide, his lips barely parted in something almost like a smile. Hawke and Varric were in a defensive position in front of him, their weapons trained on Anders. Karl pushed past them and ran to his side, skidding through the blood to hit his knees in front of him.

"How-?" Anders managed, tracing the expressive lines at the corners of Karl's eyes.

"I don't know, it's like a gateway to the Fade is glowing inside you, like a beacon or the sun." Karl said, "I'd already forgotten what it feels like... Maker's breath, Anders, you can't imagine it. All the color, all the music in the world, gone from the second-" Karl choked on a sob and grabbed Anders' hands despite the blood that slicked them.

"How did they get you?" Anders asked, "What happened?"

"I was writing you a letter," Karl explained. "I wasn't watching the hour. It wasn't your fault, Anders."

"It wasn't yours, either," Anders ran a hand through the short strands of Karl's hair, and smeared red through silver, "I know you weren't capable of caring for me anymore."

"Please-I don't know how you brought it back, but it's fading," Karl said, "Don't let me live as a templar's puppet."

"Karl-no," Anders dragged his sleeve over his eyes, angry at the tears that blurred his vision.

"Kill me before I forget again," Karl begged. "Please,"

"What? No," Hawke interrupted. Anders had forgotten anyone else was even here with them. "Whatever you did helped him. Don't kill him; maybe you can cure it."

"Can you cure a beheading!?" Anders snarled at him, "The dreams of Tranquil mages are severed. It takes away everything human inside you. There's nothing left to fix. If I was Tranquil-I would wish for a friend compassionate enough to kill me."

"Anders, please, it's fading fast," Karl grabbed a fistful of coat to win back his attention. Anders was already bleeding. The cuts on his palms were minor, and Justice apparently hadn't thought them worth healing. Anders shaped the spell with a painfully practiced ease, and set his hand over Karl's heart.

"I'm so sorry, Karl," Anders forced the words out around the sob caught in his throat. He leaned forward and kissed the sunburst on Karl's forehead, and felt the tingle of lyrium on his lips through the brand. He heard the song the lyrium sang, soft and sweet and somehow full of lamentation, and cast the spell. Karl shuddered in his arms, and then stilled.

Anders let his sob go, and buried his face in Karl's hair. He still smelled like the Circle. Like lyrium, and parchment, and oppression. Anders pulled back from him, and found Karl's hand despite the tears blinding him. He took off Karl's ring of study, and clenched it in his fist until the bite of metal hurt. "You can take it off now, Karl," Anders whispered, "You're out."

"Oh fuck," Anders kissed the top of Karl's head, and cradled him against his chest, rocking miserably back and forth. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

"Blondie-Anders." Varric said, and a hand closed down on his shoulder and squeezed, "We gotta go. You know someone heard all that. Come on. That's all you can do for him."

"Fuck," Anders laid Karl down, and stumbled up and away from his body. He all but ran up the stairs and out of the Chantry, and took the stairs down so fast he tripped and hit his knees at the bottom. Anders dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. "Come back. Please. Please come back, please Justice, please,"

The spirit didn't stir. Anders bit down on the heel of his palm until the sting was all he felt. He picked himself up, and it was his own legs that carried him out of Hightown. The streets were quiet, save for the patter of blood draining from his coat and the thud of his staff hitting the cobblestone. Anders didn't know or care if Hawke or Varric were following him. A comfortable sort of numbness settled over him, halfway through Lowtown, and by the time he set foot in his clinic, he felt just sort of Tranquil himself.

Anders glanced behind him. Hawke and his dog and Varric were all still following him. "Maps." Anders remembered. "I promised you maps." He took a step towards the back of his clinic, and realized his fist was still clenched tight around Karl's ring. Anders forced his palm open, the muscles in his hand stiff and aching. The silver ring was coated with blood. Anders dropped it on his table, metal chiming when it hit the wood.

Anders stared at his palms. They were still cut to pieces, and imbedded with shards of silverite. Pulling them out would start the bleeding back up, and Anders wasn't sure he had the strength to heal them. He stared at them in a daze until someone spoke up.

"The Chantry," Hawke said. "What happened to you in there?"

Anders blinked at him. "I killed my friend."

"You know what I mean." Hawke gestured at him, "The light cracking through your skin. The glow. Your voice and eyes changing."

"I-... do you really need me to explain?" Anders asked.

"I might," Varric said. "But maybe now's not the time?"

"I want to hear him say it," Hawke said.

"It's-not what you think." Anders said.

"Oh it's not?" Hawke asked.

"No. I-... this is hard to explain," Anders wondered why he was even explaining himself. He didn't care what some stranger thought of him, but talking about this was easier than thinking about what had just happened. "When I was a Warden I... had a friend. A spirit of Justice. He needed a host to live outside the Fade-"

"A host?" Hawke cut him off, "Call it what it is. You're an abomination."

"Yes, fine, I'm possessed!" Anders threw up his bloody hands, "Happy? But he's not the same as a demon. He's a spirit. A good one."

"That's what you call a good spirit?" Hawke asked. "Do you even have any idea what you did in there? That's why you needed us, wasn't it? It wasn't to keep your friend safe from templars, it was to keep him safe from you."

"Yes!" Anders snapped, "Obviously. It's a madness when he comes out. A frenzy. I only find out after what I might have done. I didn't want to risk Karl falling to that. To me. For all the damn good it did."

"And you don't think maybe we deserved to know that before hand?" Hawke demanded.

"I'm with Hawke on this one, Blondie." Varric agreed; he looked a little green, his smile queasy, "Maybe you just want to watch your word choice, but 'madness' and 'frenzy' don't really instill much confidence."

"Because I'm sure you would have been eager to help if you'd known," Anders sneered.

"... Good point," Varric said.

"How is that a good point?" Hawke snarled, and turned back to him. The look in his eyes cut straight to Anders' heart. He didn't care what Hawke thought, but those damn red eyes looking at him with a mixture of fear, condemnation, and anger were too much for Anders. Anders looked away from them, "You could have damn well killed us in there!"

"Hawke-" Varric started.

"No, he's right," Anders interrupted, looking at the floor instead. "I know I'm a danger. I can't control what I-what we've become. I just hoped Karl-... Let me get your maps."

Anders had left his satchels in the back of the clinic by his cot. Feeling came back to Anders slowly, and his palms were starting to ache. He found the maps, and held them gingerly aloft to keep from getting blood on them when he handed them to Hawke. He half expected the man to rip them from his hands, but Hawke took them without any particular force, even if he still looked uneasy.

"I understand if you changed your mind about me joining your expedition," Anders said with a rueful grin.

Hawke hesitated, maps in hand, and Anders raised an eyebrow at him, "... Your friend-"

"Don't." Anders said. "Just don't. If that's all, can you both please leave?"

Hawke left without a word, dog at his heels, but Varric lingered.

"Look... Blondie," Varric cleared his throat, "A lot of shit just went down, and it's gonna take me a while to wrap my head around it, but that guy in there? I know the difference between a friend and a friend. I've got a room at the Hanged Man, if you need to talk."

"Please just go," Anders said.

Varric left. Anders watched the door close behind him, and looked back down at his hands. He plucked out a shard of silverite, and hissed at the pain that lanced through him. His nerves seemed to come alive, his emotions along with them, and Anders choked on the intensity of it all. He crumpled to the floor, sobs wracking his bruised and bleeding body until his throat was raw and his chest was aflame. He ran out of air before the pain stopped, before the memory of Karl shuddering in his arms faded, if it ever would.

Anders fisted a hand around the hilt of his dagger and pulled it from his belt, shards of silverite digging into his palm, but the sting wasn't enough to make him forget. Nothing would be. Anders brought the dagger up, and cracks of flame as bright and blue and beautiful as Karl's eyes carved through the veins in his arm. Anders' hand threw the dagger across his clinic without his consent.

"Oh, now you come out!" Anders screamed into the night. "Now? Not when I beg!? Not when I'm screaming for you!? Now you stop me? Fuck you! I told you I couldn't deal with this! I told you!" Anders stumbled after his dagger, and a shock of something brought him to his knees before he reached it. "Let go of me! This is my choice! You'll just go back to the Fade! Let go! I can't do this! I can't! I can't keep running and running and losing everyone I care about! I can't do this, I can't fucking do this!"

His skin cracked open. Anders pressed his palms into his face, and saw the flash of blue behind his eyes. Sensation dulled, and it felt like a wave dragged him down into the dark depths of the Waking Sea where everything was muted. Anders was dimly aware of his clinic, of the sights and sounds around him, but he could ignore them. He turned away from it all, into the blissful oblivion of his own mind.

"Anders," Anders heard Justice say. Anders looked back despite himself, and saw the blue flames flickering on his arms. Justice was barely holding their body up on the shaking muscles. The spirit must have been exhausted. "I am here. We are here. You need not run. You can fight. Your Circle can be broken. We can tear it down. We can make an end to it. We can have justice. We can have vengeance. For Karl. For you. For every mage who ever suffered at their hands."

Justice let go, and Anders felt as if he fell back into his own body. He pressed the bloody heels of his palms into his eyes and sobbed.

"Maker, yes."

Notes:

Fanart
An animation of Accursed Ones up to this point, set to the song 'Let it Go.'
Anders crying
Amell and Anders

Apples and Apostates
See You Again: The events leading up to this chapter as told from Karl's perspective.
Eye to Eye: Hawke's perspective on the events in this chapter.

Chapter 57: Ray of Sunshine

Notes:

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Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon Eluviesta 12 Sometime
Somewhere

The darkspawn were screaming, not in the chasms deep beneath the earth, but in the ravine of Kirkwall. Their mindless climb up the blackrock painted the cliffs as black as the Void. They burst forth from the sewers in a geyser of rot and filth, dripping thick green embryonic and wearing the faces of children: Walter, Cricket, Nika.

They surged over one another in a tidal wave through the streets of Kirkwall, Amaranthine, Denerim, Harper's Ford, slipping and sliding and squealing. Anders felt the undulating mass of darkspawn on the inside of his skin, as warm and slick as the blood that coated him when he'd dug into Eylon, into Rolan, into templars. They wreathed inside him, corroding him from the inside out, and Maker he loved it.

They sang a song sweeter than lyrium, of such desperate, mind shattering ecstasy Anders would have pursued it to whatever end. He clawed Amell's eyes from his skull, he ripped through Karl's chest, he dug through Eylon's back and into Nathaniel, Velanna, and everyone he'd ever loved, but he loved the song more than all of them. How he wished he had sung it for Sigrun before the flames had taken her from him.

Strong hands locked around Anders' chest, and a caustic cold cut through him and seemed to seep the corruption from his veins. Anders watched it ooze from the cracks in his skin, and fought to push the blackened sludge back inside of himself.

"These nightmares will not avail you." A voice said, rippling with command. "You carry the torment afflicted on your noctivagant soul into your waking hours."

Anders was without words. There was nothing more to him than the song; it rent at his soul and sundered his body. There was no Chant of Light. There was only the Call. He fought the hands restraining him.

"Good," The voice said encouragingly, with no less command that before. It seemed to shake the very air. "Fight. Wake. Suffer in silence no longer."

Anders sat up with a gasp. His clinic was dark, save for the soft emerald glow of Veilfire that flickered in the bronze lamp beside him. It cast shifting patterns across the walls and pillars of his clinic, and reminded Anders of the Fade, of his home. No, not his home. Of Justice's home.

Anders ran his fingers along his scalp, and pulled handful of hair in front of his face. The long strands were soaked through, more brown than blonde. Anders was drenched. His tunic and trousers were stuck to his skin, and he was sitting in a puddle of his own sweat. Anders stripped off his tunic and draped it over the corner of his cot.

Anders looked down at himself and a sob rattled in his chest, but his throat closed on him before it could escape out his mouth. He was grateful for his lack of a looking glass, but Anders didn't need one to see his chest and the ribs framed against his freckled skin. Three months in this city, and Anders had lost over a stone in weight. He was nowhere close to what he'd been after solitary, but he was far from pretty. His hipbones pressed against his trousers, and the flat of his stomach left enough space for his fingers to fit against his skin without touching the fabric of his waistband.

Anders stripped out of his pants and his smalls, and draped all his sodden clothes over his makeshift drying rack. It was a bronze grate, and Maker if Anders knew what its original purpose had been. Most of the grates he'd seen in Kirkwall were round, but this one was a rectangle, and perfect for clothes. If one man's trash was another man's treasure, then Anders supposed he was living in a treasure trove.

Anders stretched and rubbed ineffectually at the knots in his shoulders. He couldn't reach them, and a breath of Justice's magic wouldn't unravel them, but it did soothe the ache. It was enough. Anders flexed his hands, and looked down at the scars still riddling them. Most of them would fade, but there was one that twisted around his left palm he was fairly certain was for life.

Anders had given Justice a lecture on it after the incident. Hands were important, especially for a healer. They took priority if they were injured. If the silverite had cut much deeper, Anders and all his patients would have suffered for it. His hands were stiff enough despite flexing them daily. Anders doubted any permanent damage had been done, but Justice's fixation getting his hands dirty was going to cost them someday.

Anders pissed into the drain along the walls of his clinic and sighed. One day at a time. One night at a time. Anders knocked his head against the wall of his clinic, gentle thuds that didn't get Justice's attention. The spirit had been on edge, ever since Anders had pulled a dagger on himself. Any sort of cathartic pain got Justice's attention. Pulling his hair, biting his cheek, any of his old habits indulged would make Anders flare with blue and stop abruptly.

It was infuriating, and the first time since Amaranthine Anders actually felt possessed. He needed something to stop the few reminiscent thoughts that wandered into his head, but Justice didn't understand that. Couldn't understand that. The spirit only understood pain, and the need to stop it. Anders had even gone so far as to explain aloud that sometimes pain was good, but talking to himself wasn't half as effective as actually talking to the spirit.

He couldn't answer any of Justice's questions. He wasn't even sure if the spirit had any. It was all just one complicated knot of feeling tangled in his head, and if some thoughts felt more intrusive than others Anders didn't know who to blame anymore. Justice wouldn't have conjured a twisted blend of Hawke and Amell, a sneer and the word 'Abomination' on their lips, but the thought was there: intrusive, unwanted.

Anders didn't trust any of his thoughts. Shape-shifting helped, but Anders couldn't live the rest of his life as a crow. Justice wouldn't let him. Anders was ever impatient to do something, whether it was healing the refugees or working with the Collective. Anders didn't particularly mind, especially if the work was enough to keep his mind blank. It usually was.

Anders conjured water for his bucket and retrieved the rag someone had gifted him to wash himself down. It never seemed to help. Anders could only get so clean without any soap, or pumice, or emery. The rag was thin and threadbare, and Anders ran it over his leg, watching the water run through the ruddy brown hair on his legs and over a smattering of freckles that started up in full force where his coat stopped.

It was spring, the Free Marches were already warming up. Anders had a handful of requests from the Collective for resources from the Planasene Forest and the Wounded Coast, and wished he'd taken a copy of the Botanical Compendium and the Alchemist's Encyclopedia with him from Vigil's Keep instead of Justice's poetry book and Amell's journal. Most of the requests were simple. Elfroot, deep mushrooms, and spindleweed, but some were things Anders had never heard of like glitterdust and orichalcum.

Anders had given up on his hair over a month ago. He tied the long locks into a knot at the back of his head and scratched at the uneven covering of russet on his jaw, and there ended his morning routine. Anders pulled from the Fade and let a wash of heat dry out his clothes. He got dressed, left his coat on his cot, and Justice lit his lantern.

It was a day. It was always a day. There was a lull in the refugees towards midday, and Anders got caught in a loop of washing his hands until they were raw, and Justice forced him back from the bowl when the spirit noticed. Anders felt the pinpricks of irritation crawl up his spine, and shook the sensation away. "I wasn't paying attention. It wasn't on purpose."

"What wasn't on purpose?" A voice too spirited for Darktown asked. Anders looked up from his pink hands and blinked.

Hawke's sister was standing in the entrance to his clinic. She looked out of place in Darktown. The girl had a healthy sheen to her wavy black hair and a complexion fair enough to be nobility. She walked into his clinic on leather boots fine enough to warrant a mugging, and stopped a few feet away from him with a smile that lit up her whole face, from her lips to her cheeks to her eyes. Sweet, merciful amber eyes without a single fleck of red.

"It's still Anders, isn't it?" The girl asked, "I'm Bethany Hawke, in case you forgot my name. I know we didn't talk long last week."

"No, I remember," Anders lied, rolling down his sleeves. All he could remember was that Varric had called her Sunshine, "What can I do for you?"

"Oh no, I'm not injured or anything," Bethany said, "I was actually just hoping to talk to you."

"Talk?" Anders said.

"It's this silly thing people do sometimes when they want to get to know someone," Bethany explained, still grinning. "Do you mind if I sit down?"

"... if you can find somewhere clean," Anders said.

Bethany ran her fingers over his table, void of any chairs, and Anders took a quick step to stop her, "No-It wobbles. Here, let me get a stool or something,"

Maker, did he even have any stools? Anders looked around his clinic, and found a few crates to drag together. Bethany sat on the edge of one. She really did look ridiculously out of place. The white tunic wouldn't have held its original shape and color after a few days in Darktown. "I heard about your friend. I'm so sorry."

"I'd rather not talk about it," Anders tapped his fingers along his knee, uncomfortable sitting but not quite willing to pace. This was a lot further than he expected a conversation with anyone who knew he was an abomination to go.

"That's fair," Bethany said. "Aveline is always saying we choose our own ways to mourn. I really am sorry about how we met. With the shield. That was stupid. Have you been an apostate your whole life?"

"Can I ask you something first actually?" Anders stood up, and took a few cautious steps back, "How much did your brother tell you about what happened? With my friend?"

"Just that he was Tranquil... and that you had to kill him," Bethany's eyebrows drew together, and her smile turned strained, "It really was a noble thing you did. I'm so sorry you had to go through that."

"... That's it?" Anders asked, "He didn't say anything else?"

"Oh, I suppose he did, but just the usual Garrett things," Bethany shrugged, "That you're a danger and I shouldn't go anywhere near you, but he says that about everyone. Really. One time he even said it about our tailor."

"You know, in this case, it might actually be true," Anders said, wondering why Hawke would neglect to mention the abomination rampaging through Darktown.

"Why?" Bethany asked, "Because you're an apostate? I-"

The door to his clinic opened, and two elven refugees stumbled in, one dragging the other. The girl being dragged left a trail of blood behind her. Anders ran over and caught her free arm, looping it around his shoulder, "Table," Anders gestured to the table that was more of a plank he used for operations. "What happened?"

"Stepped on piece of scrap metal," The man carrying her explained, helping Anders sit the elf down on the table and scoot her back. Anders picked up her foot by her ankle and exhaled hard through his nose. There was a jagged piece of metal embedded between the elf's big toe. It went halfway down her foot, and cleaved off to the side.

Anders had no idea what type of metal it was. There was too much blood for him to tell the color. Anders rolled his sleeves back up, "Alright, I'm going to have to remove this, and it's going to sting. If you want, I can make it so you sleep through it."

"Please," The girl agreed tearfully.

"Lie down," Anders said.

The girl did, and Anders wove the net of sleep and cast it over her. Anders rummaged through his shelves for the uneven tongs a blacksmith had forged for him last month in exchange for healing a burn injury his forge had left him with, and belatedly remembered he had a visitor. It was a weird thing to have.

"You should probably go if you're squeamish with blood," Anders said over his shoulder. "It's in and out all the time with patients."

"Can I watch? I mean, if you don't mind," Bethany said.

"I wasn't expecting that, but sure," Anders said, dragging his crate over to its place beside his makeshift operating table. "Can you bring me that bowl of water, and the empty one beside it?"

Both bowls appeared on the operating table beside the elven girl's feet. Anders washed his hands off in the bowl of water, ignoring the surge of concern and suspicion from Justice with how raw his hands already were, and set the empty bowl at his feet. Anders flexed the stiffness out of his hands, and pulled the shards of metal from the girls foot, dropping each into the bowl at his feet.

"You have steady hands," Bethany said.

Anders flinched, and nearly stabbed a piece of metal back into the poor elf's foot.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I won't talk," Bethany said quickly.

"It's-Thank you," Anders finished emptying the girl's foot of the shards he could see, and ran a hand over her foot, tendrils of creationism reaching through flesh and muscle until they collided with shrapnel and stopped. Maker's breath that was deep. Anders hands were nothing but red when he had it out. A stream of regenerative energy knit the rent muscle and tendons back together.

"Oh that's so extraordinary," Bethany said. "I mean, I've heard of spirit healers, but I've never actually seen or felt the energy a spirit gives off when it's being channeled-Oh I'm sorry, I said I wouldn't talk."

"It's fine," Anders said, "I'm mostly done, I just need to hold this for a few minutes."

"Can I ask what kind of spirit you use?" Bethany asked.

"Justice," Anders said, feeling a tingle in his fingers at invoking the spirit's name. Anders bit back a smile.

"Wouldn't that be nice," Bethany said with a wistful sort of sigh.

Anders finished the channel, and the skin on the sole of the elf's foot knit back together, leaving an ugly pink scar in the pale flesh. Anders pulled back the veil of sleep he'd cast over her, and the elf sat up. "Oh, Maker, it still hurts," The girl groaned.

"It's healed, that's what's important," Said the man who'd brought her in.

"Hang on, I'll get you a salve that should help with the pain," Anders did his best to wash his hands off in his bowl of water, but blood was bloody stubborn. Anders gave up and wiped what was left off on his trousers. "You'll need to stay off it for a few days."

Anders found the pouch of elfroot he'd taken off a Coterie corpse and the small kit of bandages, and came back with both. He didn't have a mortar and pestle, or anything remotely close, and resigned himself to squeezing what juice he could from the roots onto the bandage when Bethany spoke up.

"I could help with that," Bethany offered, "Getting the juice. My schools are spirit and creationism."

Anders raised an eyebrow at her and handed the elfroot and bandages over. Anders felt the pull of the Fade, and Bethany's brow furrowed, and a small cage of telekinetic magic closed over the root and crushed every last drop of liquid from it. Anders took the damp bandage back and wrapped it around the elf's foot. "Better?" Anders asked.

"Much, thank you," The elf grinned, "Both of you."

"Thank you, healer," The man agreed, and the two left, one still carrying the other.

Bethany bounced on the balls of her feet until the door to Anders' clinic closed behind them, and let out a delighted giggle. "Oh, I've always wanted to try that. Doing something real with my magic, not just hiding in a corner and keeping up a few auras for everyone. Thank you for letting me help."

"Sure," Anders said. "... Your brother doesn't know you're here, does he?"

"Garrett?" Bethany snorted, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, "He'd lose his mind. Don't worry, Mother's covering for me. He won't find out. I just really wanted to meet you, and get a chance to talk to another mage, and see the kind of magic that has half the city talking about you."

"Half the city?" Anders repeated, "Maker, I hope not. I've got enough templars on my doorstep as it is."

"Well, everyone in Lowtown, it feels like," Bethany said. "All of the Dog Lords, every Fereldan refugee." Bethany dragged her crate across the room and sat down across from him again. "You know when we heard about what you've been doing, even Garrett was impressed. He said you sounded unbelievably selfless. I don't know what exactly changed his mind. I'm sure he made an ass of himself somehow."

Abomination.

Anders left Bethany sitting on the crate, and moved the leftover elfroot and bandages to his actual table. "...Something like that, but that doesn't mean he's wrong. You probably shouldn't stay here. It's dangerous to be around me." Anders picked up the bowl of bloody shards, and rinsed them over the drain along the walls of his clinic with conjured water.

"The last thing I need is another lesson about the dangers of magic," Bethany groaned, "It's dangerous everywhere in Kirkwall, but I'll go mad if I spend the rest of my life in that filth-hole in Lowtown."

Anders had to laugh at that. It was harsh sort of snort, and it hurt the back of his throat to make the sound, but he needed it. He waved a hand around his trash heap of a clinic, "You think this is better?"

"I think this is yours," Bethany said.

"Home shit home, I guess," Anders said, "Until the templars come knocking,"

"You have no idea how lucky you are to have your own place," Bethany sighed. "We're staying with our uncle right now, and it's just awful. You never answered my question. About you being an apostate. Or-am I bothering you? We're a real pair, Garrett and I. I talk too much, he doesn't talk at all. I know it can get annoying."

Anders finished washing the shards, and tossed them into the pile of scrap metal he was keeping to go with the scrap leather. The Dogs came by, now and again, to pick it all up. Anders looked back at Bethany, tilting his head to catch the whisper of the Fade that breathed across her skin. Hawke was right to be protective of her. Every mage deserved someone to keep them safe from templars. Anders should have told her to leave, but her hopeful smile restrained him.

"... You're not bothering me," Anders said. If Franke couldn't, no one could. At least not just from talking. Anders conjured another stream of water over his hands to clean the blood dried beneath his finger nails. "No. I was raised in the Circle. I escaped seven times before the Wardens recruited me."

"Maker's breath, seven?" Bethany asked, voice pitching up in awe. "I wouldn't be brave enough to try even once."

"I take it you've been an apostate your whole life?" Anders guessed.

"That's me," Bethany agreed. "I never had to work for anything... It was always other people, taking the risks to keep me free. My magic manifested when I was nine. We were living outside Amaranthine at the time, and there was this bully. Not my bully, Carver's. He-was my twin. He died during the Blight."

"I'm sorry," Anders finished washing his hands, picked the last flecks of blood out from beneath his nails before conjuring more water to wash off his operation table. The plank was cracked, and tilted towards the center, and the water and blood slid off together to pool in a bucket he kept at the base of the table.

"Everyone's lost someone, right?" Bethany shrugged one shoulder, "It's probably for the better. Carver would have hated it here. All the sneering nobles, he would have gotten himself arrested on the first day. What was I saying?"

"A bully," Anders reminded her, searching for a rag to wipe the last of the damp from the table.

"Right," Bethany snapped her fingers, "A bully. Carver's bully. I just got so mad, I was so sick of it. I threw him across the field without even touching him. Just a natural for telekinetics, I guess. We had to leave town the same day and only take what we could carry, and everyone just did it. Carver, Garrett, Mother and Father. We just ran. Like it was normal."

"It's always like that," Anders said. "It's the fucking bloody templars."

"There shouldn't be any templars," Bethany agreed. It felt good to finally hear someone agree with him. "If I could just wish them away I would."

"They don't see us as people. They don't care that your someone's daughter. Someone's sister," Anders pressed his hand into his knee to keep his leg from tapping. Maker, it made him angry just to think about, and the anger felt good. "If you're born with magic they hear about it. They search your little rat spit village, and find you. And if you run away, they hunt you down. Again, and again, and again."

"Is that what happened to you?" Bethany asked.

"That's what happened to me," Anders agreed.

The door opened again. A refugee stumbled in gasping, and hit his knees in the threshold. Anders bolted over and slung the man's arm around his shoulder. Flames cracked through his lower back and his legs, and Justice helped him lift the man and bring him to the table. "What happened?" Anders asked, brushing damp bangs aside to feel the man's forehead. Anders set his free hand on the man's neck. No fever, but he was sweating and wheezing. "Where are you hurt?"

The refugee pawed at his chest and coughed up blood onto Anders' shirt. Lungs. Anders dragged the man's shirt off, unsurprised by the massive black and purple bruised painted along his ribs. The man spat up blood again, and it splashed across Anders' collarbone. His hand came up to cover his mouth, and Anders pulled it back down. "It's okay. You want to cough. You don't want any of that staying in your lungs. Breathe deep and slow."

Anders summoned Justice for a cleansing aura to reduce the swelling in his lungs, and the bruises on his chest and ribs. The stains of black and purple receded, giving way to a dark Marcher tan. Anders finished healing him before the fellow managed to clear his lungs with his coughs. "I'm going to draw the rest of the fluid out of your lungs, alright?" Anders asked. "It's going to feel awful."

The man nodded, and Anders drew the last of the fluids from his lungs and the man vomited them up onto the floor. "Maker, I'm sorry," The refugee wheezed, kneading at his chest. "I couldn't-not-"

"It's fine," Anders said, "We wanted that to happen, remember? You all good?"

"All good." The man agreed, voice hoarse. "Thank the Maker my cousin broke his ankle last week and heard of you. I thought it was just a bruise. A little chest pain and some coughing but it got worse today and I just couldn't breathe."

"A little something can always turn into a big something," Anders said. "Don't ignore it next time."

The man nodded, and stumbled off the table, his feet splashing in his own vomit. "Maker, should I-Do I need to-"

"No, it's fine," Anders said. "You're good. Bethany-can you hand me that pouch of elfroot?"

Bethany fetched it. Anders took out a piece and handed it over to the man, "Chew this. It'll help with the pain in your throat."

"Thank you, healer," The man said and left. Anders stared at the mess of vomit and blood, and went to find a rag. He really needed a mop.

"Can I-... ask you something personal?" Bethany asked hesitantly.

"Sure, why not?" Anders shrugged, coming back with a rag and getting down on his hands and knees to wipe the mess towards the drains in the walls.

"Your eyes glow sometimes," Bethany said. "I saw it before when you were talking, and when we first came to visit your clinic. What is that?"

"Oh, shit did they?" Anders hadn't even noticed. Well... at least Justice would always agree with him. Anders didn't need anyone else. There was no one else who was safe with him. Time for Bethany to run from his clinic like a bat out of the Void, Anders supposed. "That's just uh... That's just Justice."

"Your spirit?" Bethany asked. "He's... inside you?"

Anders snorted, "Well don't make it sound dirty."

"You're possessed?" Bethany asked.

"Guilty," Anders shrugged, glancing up from the floor for her reaction.

Bethany stared at him with wide eyes, and wet her lips several times as if to speak, but no words escaped her. "How?" She managed eventually.

No condemnation. No fear. No anger.

No wonder Hawke told her to stay away from him. Bethany was as trusting as Amell.

"You'd have to ask him," Anders shrugged. He finished moving what he could of the mess, and draped the dripping rag over his drying rack. He needed to change his trousers and tunic, but he had nothing else to change into. He came back to sit on the crate beside Bethany, a little amazed she was even still here.

"There was ... a battle," Anders said, "A war, almost, when I was still a Warden, and I don't know how much you know of the Order but victory in war is kind of a big thing for them. The two of us... we did what we couldn't do alone. He's not a demon. He's a spirit. He doesn't take anything from me, he just gives." Anders felt an odd sort of affection for himself he knew wasn't any thought of his at the confession, "He was trapped outside the Fade at the time. In a corpse. It was complicated, but I think if I hadn't agreed he would have died."

Died. Gone back to the Fade. Anders didn't know for certain. He thought of the dagger he'd raised against himself and a sudden surge of guilt nearly drowned him.

"And now he helps you heal?" Bethany asked rhetorically, "That all sounds so brave. Trying to help a friend, surely no harm could come of that."

"We meant well," Anders said, and only realized he was smiling when he felt the pain in his cheeks.

"And you seem like you're doing well," Bethany said, "... Does Garrett know?"

"He knows," Anders said.

"Well no wonder he told me to stay away from you," Bethany waved a hand as if her brother were standing next to her and could be brushed aside as easily as a gnat, "He's not a mage. He doesn't understand. I know there's a difference between spirits and demons."

"Not to be rude, but... how?" Anders asked. "If you've been an apostate your whole life, where did you manage to learn your magic? I-... hate isn't a strong enough word for how I feel about the Circle, but it's usually the only decent a training a mage can get."

"Our father was a mage," Bethany explained. "It's why we were used to running, even before my magic manifested. He was in the Circle here, if you can believe it... He met my mother at this fancy banquet, where 'arcane representatives' were sent to provide 'magical entertainment' for the nobility. They fell in love in a day, and eloped a few months later. Can you imagine that? Falling in love so fast and so deep? It was so romantic. I never get tired of that story."

"Yeah that's uh-..." Anders cleared his throat. He bit the inside of his cheek, and was relieved when Justice didn't stop him. The sting killed where his thoughts had been going. "How does anyone escape the Gallows?"

"A templar helped him," Bethany grinned. "He destroyed Father's phylactery and everything. I know, that sounds even more unbelievable, doesn't it? But it's true. Mother left her old life here behind, and they fled to Ferelden, and Father started working as a mercenary. He died... five years ago now. He took ill, and I-we focused in creationism. Auras. Aptitude. But not healing."

Bethany shrugged, and wiped at the corners of her eyes with her thumb.

"You're lucky, you know," Anders said. "I don't think you even know how lucky. To have someone who loved you and could help you. Most mages would kill for that. I had a friend who-... well, he would have done anything for that."

"I know I am." Bethany said. "I do. It's wonderful, even with Carver and Father gone, and Uncle Gamlen being Uncle Gamlen. Mother and Garrett are there for me... but they're not mages." Bethany rubbed her palms on her thighs and sat up straighter to look him in the eyes, "You've already been so nice, letting me talk to you about all this, but that's not why I came here.

"Well it is, but it's not the only reason. I really am tired of hiding away that hovel, watching my mother eat herself up inside over Carver while Garrett does all the work. I can tell you get a lot of patients, and I know running a free clinic must be a lot of work alone. I want to help. You look like you could use an aide, and I could help with poultices, or cleaning, and maybe if you had time you could teach me a bit of magic?"

"I'm not alone. I have Justice," Anders said, "And I don't think your brother would approve of you being here."

"I don't think I care." Bethany said. "I love Garrett, I really do. He means well, he does, and I know he's just trying to protect me, but he's suffocating me. I can't do it anymore. I want friends. I want a life. If I could choose, I'd choose to be normal, but I'm not. I never will be, and Garrett has to learn that someday. Please say yes. You have no idea what it would mean to me to spend time with another mage. Someone who understands."

... Hawke was going to kill him.

"When do you want to start?"

Chapter 58: Oopsy Daisy

Notes:

I hope you all like the chapter! Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon Eluviesta 19 Just Before Sunrise
Kirkwall Docks: Smetty's Fish Guttery

Smetty's Fish Guttery smelled, shockingly, of fish guts. Anders sat on a barrel, idly thumping his heels against the bowed wood. Anders lifted a leg to admire the boot running up to his knee. The black was slimming, and while Anders didn't need to be any slimmer, they were rather fetching. The gold trim made him feel half a noble. He felt a little uncomfortable wearing them in Darktown, but crime at the docks was virtually nonexistent.

The qunari probably had something to do with that, but as far as Anders was concerned the grey giants were worse than the Chantry with what they did to their mages. It made sense to meet here, but just because it made sense didn't mean Anders had to like it. Anders palmed the grimoire latched to his belt, and met with silence. The spelltome was just a tome now. There were no demons within, radiating diffused magic and distributing energy to every mage in the area, but it was still comforting to have when he couldn't bring his staff into the city.

Anders went back to kicking his feet. Workers trickled in slowly, primarily elves. They paid little mind to the human in the ugly coat, sitting on a barrel in the corner. Anders kept waiting for one of them to approach him, growing more anxious as time passed. He knew he was early, but it seemed like the courteous thing to be when being late might mean he was dead or captured.

Eventually the door opened and a man dressed in a heavy cloak with the hood pulled up over his head came inside. Anders gave him a tentative wave and the man came over. "Bancroft?" Anders guessed.

"Anders?" The man countered, pushing down his hood. He was branded. Anders recoiled, and slipped off the barrel. He toppled over and hit the stack of crates behind him, and the entire stack wobbled precariously.

"They would dare!? Again!?" Anders snarled, scrambling to his feet. He felt his skin crack, a tingling sensation that flickered like static up and down his arms, and embraced it. "We will burn every last-"

"Whoa, whoa, stop!" Bancroft grabbed him by his collar and dragged him away from the workers. The flames on Anders' arms lit up the corner of the guttery, but they faded when Anders noticed Bancroft's furrowed brow and frustrated expression.

Expression. Emotion. Again. Had Anders-had Justice-... was Hawke right? Could they really heal Tranquility? Maker, had he killed Karl for nothing?

"It's fake," Bancroft insisted, tapping the sunburst between his eyes.

Anders let out the breath tangled up in his chest, and sank back against the wall in relief. "Fake?"

"It's just a brand," Bancroft explained, "No lyrium."

"Why?" Anders asked.

"The Tranquil are the only mages that move unseen in this city," Bancroft said, fingers tracing over raised skin on his forehead. "I had a friend forge the brand for me. Stung for a month, but I can go anywhere now. Gallows. Darktown. Hightown. No one pays the Tranquil any mind."

"How have you not gone mad waking up to that mark every day?" Anders asked. He couldn't even keep eye-contact with the man. His eyes kept drifting up to the sunburst set on his forehead and picturing Karl.

"It reminds me why I'm doing this. I heard about Thekla," Bancroft's eyebrows drew together, in anger and not sympathy. Anders liked that. Anger was easier. "Selby said you wanted to help start our underground for getting mages out of the Gallows. I'll tell you what I've got so far.

"We need safe passage. There's no point getting our brethren out of the Gallows and into the city. They won't survive in Kirkwall. Samson wants fifty silver a mage, and we'll never have that kind of coin. I've been in talks with the Redwaters, but their captain Leech doesn't want to make any moves until they're more established in Kirkwall. There's also the Crimson Weavers, but their captain Jakeson wants two sovereigns before he'll do anything.

"They're both maleficarum, if you can believe it, and sympathetic, but it will be a while, whoever we go with. In the meantime, we can make the trip over land to Ostwick or Cumberland, but that's a week's journey in either direction, probably more with how unaccustomed most of our brethren are to travel. Are you willing to be one of our escorts?"

"Whatever you need," Anders said earnestly, and could almost feel his spirit resonate in agreement with him.

... was that how he thought of Justice now? His spirit?

"Good." Bancroft nodded, "Good. Selby said you had some ideas about the Coterie, and the tunnels under the city?"

"I need someone to get me in touch with them first, but I know the Coterie has a lot of surface dwarves in their guild. I don't know if they have any apostates working with them, or if they need a healer, but I have experience healing through their magical resistance." Anders pushed away the memory of Sigrun screaming in his arms, her skin burnt an ugly black and coming loose beneath his fingers as he dragged her away from fight in Kal'Hirol. "It seems like a fair trade for letting us use the same passages they use for lyrium smuggling." Anders thought of the fight he'd interrupted outside his clinic, "I think they tried to get in contact with me already, but that didn't work out."

"Brilliant," Bancroft said. "I'll press on my contacts, try to get you in touch with them again, then. Let them know you're willing. Look for the green lantern in Darktown, right?"

"That's the rumor," Anders agreed.

"Good," Bancroft said again, "Good, this could work. We still need someone in the Order, but I have a few friends on the inside who have a few ideas. There are two templars so far who seem like they might be willing to help. Ser Thrask and Ser Bardel. Would you be willing to meet with either of them if we could arrange something?"

Anders felt an itch between his shoulder blades he guessed was Justice. He tried to send some kind of reassurance back, but Anders didn't know how to send emotions at himself. It was a strange thing to even attempt, "Maybe," Anders allotted. "It depends on how far they're willing to go to free mages."

"Bardel, then, maybe," Bancroft said. "He seems more disillusioned than Thrask, from what I've heard. He's been trying to get in touch with us, but it might be a trap. We're not sure. I can't afford to risk meeting with him, and neither can Selby. Evon isn't interested, but if you're willing we can try to arrange something."

"Alright," Anders agreed, despite the tension agreeing put in his shoulders. "I'll be fine if it's a trap, but we have to meet alone. No innocents nearby."

"I'll tell Jake." Bancroft said. "He's been in contact with Bardel. We'll see if we can't arrange something. Stannard keeps the Templars on a strict schedule. It might be hard for him to get away."

"Alright," Anders said.

"Good. Then we're good, unless you need anything from me?" Bancroft asked.

"The name of the templar that made Karl Tranquil," Anders said, remembering the promise Justice had made him in his clinic. "The one who gave the order and the one who held the brand."

"I'll see what I can find," Bancroft promised. "Same time same place next week?"

"I'll see you then," Anders agreed.

Bancroft pulled up his hood and left. Anders made his way back to Darktown, and killed two rats for himself with blood magic on the way. Anders had them skewered and cooking over a fire in his clinic when the door to his clinic opened.

"Knock, knock," Bethany called.

"Who's there?" Anders asked.

"Bethany," Bethany said, ready with a grin when Anders looked over. She'd finally taken Anders' advice and started wearing an apron, rather than risk having to explain why all her tunics were covered with blood and vomit by the end of the day. She found a stool for herself and pulled it over to join him by the fire.

"Bethany who?" Anders asked.

"Hawke...? Oh! You're joking, um- Bethany thing you weren't expecting me to recover from that." Bethany said.

Anders laughed, and couldn't help but feel relieved when it didn't hurt his face. Franke was always good for a laugh, but Anders felt guilty neglecting his patients, and Franke was squeamish with blood. Bethany wasn't, and she was just as good company.

Bethany wrinkled her nose at his rats and pulled her satchel into her lap. "I know the lantern wasn't lit but the door wasn't locked. Garrett went out hunting yesterday, and I convinced him to take me with. I wanted to see if I could find any of the herbs you said we needed. I'm not sure if I got the right kinds but I tried to go off how you described them."

"Give me a second for these to cook and we can go over to the table," Anders said.

Bethany eyed the roasting vermin dubiously, "It really can't be healthy for you to be eating rats and pigeons every day."

"Well it's not like there are carrots and cranberries running through the gutters," Anders pointed out. The thought was beyond appetizing, all the same. The smell of roast rat suddenly made him feel queasy by comparison, "I'm making do."

Bethany made an unhappy noise and chewed on her bottom lip.

"I'm fine, Beth, you don't need to worry about me." Anders insisted. He retrieved his rotisserie rats from the fire and stood, waving the kabob towards the table, "Show me what you found."

Bethany upended her satchel over the table and a medley of herbs and weeds fell out. Anders started sorting them in between bites of rat, each bite a little more nauseating than the last. Anders did his best to ignore it and picked up a vine to move into a 'useless' pile.

"Elfroot?" Bethany asked hopefully.

"Close," Anders grinned, "Grapevine."

"Oh, Maker," Bethany covered her face with a hand. "Did I get anything useful?"

"Embrium," Anders noted, moving a bundle of red flowers into a 'useful' pile. "The pollen is perfect for fighting respiratory problems, and we get a lot of that sort of thing down here with the chokedamp."

"I thought that was heatherum," Bethany confessed.

"This is heatherum," Anders moved a different flower to the 'useful' pile. "But we need foxite to go with it if we're going to distill any concentrating agents for a proper philter."

"I thought this was foxite," Bethany picked up a plant Anders hadn't sorted and pushed it towards him.

"That's a weed." Anders said.

Bethany groaned and dropped her elbows onto the table and her head into her hands.

"Elfroot looks a lot like a weed, it's fair you overlooked it," Anders laughed, "You got a lot of embrium and there's some spindleweed here we could use."

"This is spindleweed?" Bethany asked, rolling the coral leaves between her fingers, "I thought-oh nevermind. So it's not that bad?"

"No, it's great, Beth, this helps a lot. Really." Anders assured her. "You don't need to be embarrassed. I've got some-" Members of an underground resistance who work in secret apart from the Chantry and the Circle at the risk of all our lives if we're discovered? "-friends who want a lot of alchemical components unique to the Free Marches and I feel just as lost when I'm looking for them."

"Really?" Bethany asked, looking up at him from between her fingers. "Like what?"

"Glitterdust and orichalcum." Anders said.

"Oh, I know what glitterdust is," Bethany said eagerly, standing up straight, "It's a type of rock on the Wounded Coast. You turn into a powder. It was a fad among the noble ladies in Hightown until they realized it caused a rash and coughing fits. And it's flammable. Mother went to a party once where a friend tried to use it despite the risks and ended up burning her eyebrows off. Everyone gossiped it was for the best because she was so bad at plucking them anyway."

"That's horrible," Anders snorted.

"I know," Bethany grinned, "The name is pretty self-explanatory, but it glitters and looks like silver or lead if you ever go looking for it again." She looked down at his 'useless' pile and sighed, "So these are all trash?"

"It never hurts to have a bit of kindling in Darktown but... yeah, those are all trash." Anders said.

"Well, at least I know for next time," Bethany said.

"So, that's not the first time you've mentioned your family used to be nobility," Anders said, cupping all of the useless herbs in his hands and burning them down to ash with a contained breath of fire from the Fade. He dumped the ashes in the gutter and dusted his hands off on his trousers, "What happened? Why aren't you still up in Hightown, hobnobbing?"

"Oh, I can just see that," Bethany shook her head, "Silk dresses for me and the family broadsword for Garrett. Carver, jealous as always... We had an estate, you know. I go look at it sometimes and try to imagine living there. Growing up here. Mother was engaged to the Comte de Launcet," Bethany said frumpily, "Before she eloped with Father. If she'd stayed married to him... She probably wouldn't have had the courage to keep me from the templars. My whole family would just be a list of names the Circle kept in my file.

"I would hate that, but I wish the estate was still ours. Uncle Gamlen pissed away the family fortune after Mother left. Sold the whole thing to settle a debt. Maker, I can't believe it sometimes. No, I can believe it, and that's the worst part. He still goes out binging at the Blooming Rose every other week. Garrett's always dragging him back and paying his tab... At this rate we'll never be able to afford our expedition."

"How much do you need to invest?" Anders asked.

"Fifty sovereigns." Bethany said.

Anders choked on his last bite of rat.

Bethany laughed and dragged a hand through her hair, "I know. I know. It sounds so impossible. Garrett's out there every day doing odd jobs for the Red Iron and the guard, and we're not even close. He insists it's not safe for me to help, and Mother... I've tried to get her to find work, but she just sits at home all day and mourns.

"She was never meant for this kind of life. I remember she used to work, when we still lived outside Amaranthine. She used to do needlework, mending torn clothes. It couldn't have paid more than a few bits. She stopped when we moved to Lothering. Garrett was... sixteen by then? He started working as a mercenary and sent back his stipend, and Mother never worked a day after. Carver couldn't wait to join him. I remember-... I'm rambling, aren't I?" Bethany said.

"I don't mind," Anders said. "It's nice to hear about a mage with a family." Bethany really had no idea how lucky she was. She was luckier than Anders. Her father had never sent her to another country just to keep from ever seeing her again; her mother was still alive.

"It's just... I don't think it's healthy to talk about Carver with Mother still mourning, and I don't want to burden Garrett, but I miss him. We were twins. We were always together... it's so strange, not having him here. I keep expecting to wake up with my braid nailed to the bed. He was such an ass. Always jealous of Garrett and I for the stupidest little things..." Bethany let out a sigh and pushed the pile of useful herbs towards Anders, "Anyway, how do I prepare all of these?"

"Let me light the lantern and I'll walk you through it between patients," Anders said.

Bethany was a quick learner, not that Anders could say he was a good teacher. He was no Karl and he was no Amell, but he made the attempt all the same. It surprised him that he actually enjoyed it. Anders had hated the thought of taking on an apprentice in the Circle, and blown off the few who'd been assigned to him, or with Surana just faked lessons while they ran off to have sex.

Now that he was out of the Circle, teaching was almost tolerable. Bethany learned by demonstration, which was perfect for Anders, considering he was rubbish at explaining himself. Bethany sat and watched, and only asked the occasional question. She wasn't a spirit healer, but creationism wasn't limited to spirit healers, and she seemed to have the finesse for it after a childhood spent learning needlepoint from her mother.

Herbalism was a little more difficult. Anders didn't have an alembic, or a retort, or even a mortar and pestle. All he had was his cookware and a few cups and bowls, but the rudimentary tools were enough for a few basic philters, and Bethany's telekinetic magic was a huge boon. Having someone else to help clean was another huge boon, but it was the teaching Anders really enjoyed. Watching Beth's face light up when she managed a spell or proper bit of alchemy felt infinitely more rewarding than a stamp on a book in the back of the Colletive's packaging house.

So Anders couldn't help starting when Varric wandered into his clinic late that afternoon and saw Bethany there with him. A Dalish wandered in behind him, bundled up in furs and leathers and too many scarves. The tattoos on her face reminded Anders of Velanna, but she didn't have the same walk. She looked at the ceiling instead of where she put her feet, and stepped in a puddle of blood Anders hadn't had a chance to mop.

"Oh my, it's very dirty, isn't it?" The Dalish mumbled, looking at her bare foot in surprise. She jumped a few feet, and rubbed her foot against the leathers on her leg to dry it.

"It's Darktown, Daisy," Varric said, raising an interested eyebrow at Bethany. "Sunshine."

"Please don't tell Garrett," Bethany said, frozen over the operating table she'd been wiping down.

"Sunshine..." Varric sighed, pressing his fingers into his forehead, "Hawke and I have to trust each other for this expedition to work. You know if I saw you here, I'd have no choice but to tell him."

"Varric-" Bethany started.

"So it's a good thing I didn't see you." Varric said. "And since I didn't see you, I can't tell you that Hawke finished up early today and was having a drink with Broody before heading home," Varric gave Bethany what Anders thought was a rather meaningful look, "One drink."

"Shite!" Bethany dropped the rag she was holding and snatched up her satchel. She jumped the puddle and bolted out the door, throwing a panicked, "See you tomorrow, Anders!" over her shoulder.

Anders watched her go, and looked back to his visitors. 'Daisy' was walking circles around Anders' clinic, picking up and toying with everything she came into contact with. She stopped at the shelves Anders had made from planks set between cinderblocks, and toyed with a vial that held the embrium pollen Anders had taught Bethany how to collect.

"Can you-stop touching everything?" Anders asked.

Daisy jumped and set the vial down. It went rolling off the uneven shelves, and she dove after it in a mad scramble that bounced the vial from hand to hand before setting it down more carefully. She looked appropriately sheepish when she turned around. She buried a hand in her messy black hair, and green eyes slid off Anders' face and down to the dirty floor of his clinic, "Oh I'm sorry. I wasn't stealing anything, I swear," Daisy held up two empty hands. "I was just looking... And I guess touching. Which you told me not to do. Um."

"Blondie, Daisy. Daisy, Blondie." Varric said, gesturing to both of them in turn, "Hope we're not intruding; Daisy wanted to meet you."

"My name is Merrill, actually," Merrill said with a little bow.

"Why...?" Anders asked, fetching the mop he'd finally gotten as a gift from Lirene for the puddle Merrill had stepped in.

"Well I suppose my parents liked the name. It derives from old Elvish and it means bright, which I think-" Merrill stopped, "Oh you mean why did I want to meet you. Um..."

"It's a mage thing, I think," Varric said, gesturing to a stool and waiting for Anders' shrug to sit. It took him a bit of fussing with his coat to sit comfortably, and he pulled out a sheaf of parchment and a bit of graphite and started writing on his thigh. "Don't mind me. I'm just here to chaperone. Daisy gets lost easy, and someone has to be there to help her find her way back home."

"So you wanted to meet me because...?" Anders asked.

"It never hurts to make more friends," Merrill shrugged, wandering in curious circles around his clinic. Her hands rose and fell several times without quite touching anything. "At least, I don't think it does. Everyone has been talking about you and I was so curious. If you're busy- I don't want to be a bother."

"It's fine," Anders said. "If you're both going to stay just make sure you don't get in the way of any patients that come in. ... Why is everyone talking about me?"

"I might have talked you and your friend up a bit." Varric confessed. "Still working on a nickname for him. So far I've got Glowy, Sparky, and Big Blue. Any suggestions?"

"I'd really rather you didn't go around telling everyone about him," Anders frowned, and wrung out his bloody mop over the drains. "My patients are scared enough with the threat of templars without knowing their healer is possessed."

"Blondie, you wound me. I've been keeping your secretly strictly between..." Varric looked down at his hand and started counting on his fingers. When he went past five he gave up, "... a few close friends."

Anders leaned his mop up against the wall and wiped his hands off on his trousers. Varric went back to writing on his thigh, and Merrill was rocking back and forth on barefeet and staring at him. Anders had no idea how to handle visitors that weren't bleeding out or throwing up on him. Bethany was easier. She handled herself and did all the talking.

"Um... Do you want to sit?" Anders offered.

"Oh! Yes, I suppose," Merrill clambered up onto a crate and sat cross-legged. She held onto her feet, and tapped painted nails on her toes. She didn't remind Anders of Velanna in the slightest, but Anders couldn't help thinking of her anyway. He missed her bitching, "I'm sorry. I'm not used to visiting people."

"I'm not used to having visitors," Anders said, finding a spot for himself against a pillar to watch the door for patients.

"This shit is cute," Varric shoved a handful of blond hair back behind his ear, and scribbled down what Anders assumed was what they'd just said, "Do you mind if I write this down? Too late."

"I like your coat," Merrill said. "It's very lively. Like a crow in the middle of anting."

"That's... that's great, thanks," Anders said.

"You know I was wondering about that," Varric said, "Are the feathered pauldrons an essential part of the whole... moody rebel mage persona you've got going here?"

"It's just a coat." Anders lied.

"Well I like it." Merrill said. "But um, I was actually sort of hoping maybe I could talk to your friend? Your spirit. The Keeper talked a lot about... abominations, I suppose? Not that I think you are one, though! She said they warp and change, but you look normal. For a human. I think."

"Thanks," Anders tried and failed not to cringe.

"I said something wrong, didn't I?" Merrill asked.

"A few things, Daisy," Varric said.

"I don't actually know how to let you talk to him," Anders said. "He only seems to come forward when I've lost all control over myself. I don't think he likes-... controlling me? I guess?"

"Well that's polite of him I suppose." Merrill said. "I have my own spirit, but he's-... well um, our relationship is strictly platonic. What little I've heard about yours just sounds so fascinating, but it was only a little. I'd love to hear you talk about him if you don't mind."

"No, I..." Anders felt a whisper of static make the hair on his arms stand on end and brush against the inside of his sleeves. "... We don't mind. We met in Amaranthine. He's a spirit of Justice and he... I don't know. He likes poetry and lyrium, and he seems to think everything from dog shit to butterflies is beautiful. What did you want to know?"

"How old is he?" Merrill asked.

"I-... have no idea." Anders realized, "You know, a friend asked him something like that once, and Justice just said he existed. Like he always had."

"Oh, no, they age." Merrill said. "My spirit is from the time of Arlathan, when the Elvhenan fought the Tevinter Imperium. I suppose the better question is when did he come into being?"

"I don't know," Anders admitted.

"Oh," Merrill said, worrying at her bottom lip. "I guess I just assumed, if you let him inside you..."

"Why does everyone insist on making this sound dirty?" Anders demanded.

"Good one, Daisy," Varric snorted, still scribbling.

"Why are you writing this down?" Anders asked.

"I'm writing an epic poem," Varric explained, "About a hopelessly romantic apostate waging an epic struggle against templars and mercantilism and other forces he can't possibly defeat."

"Mercantilism?" Anders asked.

"A free clinic, Blondie?" Varric raised an eyebrow, pocketing the graphite and rolling up the parchment. He stowed it away in the case he kept on his hip. "That's not a sound business practice at all, and yet here you are. It's definitely poem-worthy, but you know it's only a good story if the hero dies. And you are definitely going to die. Hawke is going to kill you. On a scale of what the shit to what the fuck, what are you doing with Sunshine?"

"I'm not doing anything with her." Anders said.

"Mhm," Varric said.

"I'm not," Anders said. "She wanted to help with the clinic and learn a bit of magic. I don't see what's wrong with that."

"I bet Hawke could think of a few things," Varric said.

"That's not really my problem," Anders said.

"Oh it will be," Varric said. "I get it, you've got Blue. You're not scared of him. But maybe you should be scared of an arrow in your throat? Hawke's pretty mean with that bow. Actually Hawke's just... pretty mean. Especially when Sunshine is involved."

"Well unless he's insane, I don't think he's going to kill me for spending time with his sister," Anders said.

"I'm a writer, I like exaggerating, but my point still stands," Varric said. "There's nothing Hawke cares about more than Sunshine, and he's not going to be happy about your little arrangement."

"I still don't see how that's my problem," Anders said.

"Would it help if I drew you a picture?" Varric asked. "Do you really want fourteen stones of muscle busting down the door to your clinic and scaring off all your patients? I once saw Hawke bark at a guy just for looking at Sunshine wrong. Look, Blondie, I get it. A free clinic probably takes a lot of work, and I'm sure Sunshine is a lot of help, but I think literally anyone else in Kirkwall would be a better idea."

"Oh, I would love to help," Merrill said eagerly. "Not in the clinic. Not really. But I saw you had heatherum with no foxite, and almost no elfroot. I could help you look for herbs. If that's something you do. It would be nice to get out of the city now and then. Do you think we could be friends? Is that-is that a normal way to make friends? Can I just ask?"

"That's a great way to make friends, Daisy," Varric said.

"I-... go out for herbs sometimes," Anders said.

"Could I come with you when you do?" Merrill asked.

"I suppose," Anders said.

"Oh, that's lovely!" Merrill grinned, "Oh-but-should I mention... um... Well. Hawke doesn't really like me spending time with Bethany. Maybe we could go with just us?"

"Maker's breath, how much of an ass can one man be?" Anders demanded.

"I think everyone just has one ass, don't they?" Merrill asked.

Varric slapped a hand over his mouth and turned away, laughing. "Never change, Daisy."

"Oh you meant Hawke is an ass!" Merrill exclaimed. "No one seems to like him, but I think he's nice. He visits me all the time, and he got me my house in the Alienage. The roof leaks sometimes, and it's hard to keep it all clean, but it's better than... well... living down here. Oh dear, that was a mean thing to say, wasn't it? It's just so dark and dreary. It would be so much nicer if they opened it up to get some sunlight. Of course I guess Kirkwall would collapse, then, but-... I'm babbling."

"Wait, wait, wait," Varric said, "Daisy, back up. I thought the rest of elves helped you find a place. You know, as a kind of communal thing. Is Hawke paying your rent?"

"What's rent?" Merrill blinked at him.

"Ancestors..." Varric sighed and pressed his forehead into his palm, "We're never getting those fifty sovereigns."

"Why would he do that if he won't even let you near his sister?" Anders asked.

Merrill shrugged, "I guess he doesn't want her around the blood magic. I don't know why. It's not contagious."

Anders' mouth moved uselessly while he struggled for words. It was a miracle the templars hadn't gotten to the poor girl yet.

"... Oh dear, I shouldn't have said that." Merrill realized.

"Okay, Daisy, maybe change a little," Varric sighed.

"No it's - uh," Anders gave his sleeve an involuntary tug, "It's fine. I don't mind."

"Really?" Merrill's eyes lit up, "Oh, that's so nice to hear. Everyone I've met is so twitchy about it. Even my Keeper didn't believe in me, but I know what I'm doing."

"I believe you, but you might want to be a little more careful about who you tell," Anders said. "It's not really something a lot of people are understanding about."

"I'll try to do that," Merrill said. "I just ramble. A lot. I'm not very good at talking to people."

"It just takes practice, Daisy," Varric said, "You're getting better already."

The door to Anders' clinic chose that minute to open, and Anders went to help a fellow bowed over with a cough.

"We'll get out of your hair," Varric said. "Daisy, wait outside for me a second, will you? Don't wander."

"I won't," Merrill hopped off the crate, "It was nice to meet you, Anders. I'll try to come back sometime when Bethany isn't here. I'll probably get lost but-"

"I'll help you, Daisy, don't worry." Varric said.

"Oh, that's very kind of you," Merrill grinned, and skipped away to wait outside. She couldn't have been much more than twenty.

Anders shook his head and channeled Justice for his patient to cleanse the soot coated to his lungs from too much foundry work.

Varric lingered, and Anders spared him a glance. The dwarf was staring at him so intently it made Anders want to fidget. "You might wanna work on your tells, Blondie," Varric said. "Hawke finding out about you and Sunshine is one thing. Finding out about you and Sunshine, and how much you and Daisy have in common? I might not be exaggerating with that arrow."

Notes:

Fanart
Anders in Kirkwall

Chapter 59: Pretty Reckless

Notes:

Hello everyone, welcome back! Lots of yelling in this chapter. I'm sure no one is surprised. Thank you for all your wonderful comments, kudos, subscriptions, and bookmarks, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 29 Eluviesta Early Morning
Kirkwall Hightown

The peal of the Chantry bells sent a flock of birds winging from the trees and into the sky. Anders thought of following them. A crow in the rafters went unnoticed during the Chantry's morning service, but a Darktown vagabond drew eyes. Anders had taken to attending services as a crow once he'd learned the form, but as he looked up at the blood red banners fluttering in the wind, the golden sunbursts snapping in and out focus, all he could see was Karl.

Anders could barely look at the building. The alabaster stone reminded him of the waxen skin of the dead, and the vines that climbed them were more reminiscent of chains than growth. The holy symbols looked garish, not gilded. The decorations gaudy, not glittering. After four months in Kirkwall, Anders had never seen a Chantry Sister brave the caverns of Darktown. He had never even seen one walk the streets of Lowtown.

The stained glass windows weren't for the beautiful patterns looking out, they were to keep anyone from looking in. The bronze statues weren't watchful guardians, they were vengeful jailors. The incense was as oppressive as their teachings. Anders was never setting foot in that Chantry again, but he still wanted to hear the Chant. He wanted to light a candle for Karl. He wanted to find his own path through the Maker that didn't damn him to the Void.

Anders spent the last of his ill-gotten Coterie coin on a used, unillustrated copy of the Chant of Light from one of the vendors in Hightown before he went back to the sunless sewers where he belonged. Breakfast had been a pigeon. Dinner would likely be a rat. Lunch he knew he'd forget like he so often did. Anders unlocked his clinic and Justice lit their lantern.

Anders sat in his chair. It was a real chair with a back, and armrests, and a deflated cushion. One of the refugees had found it for him and Anders didn't doubt it was stolen, but he was hard pressed to care. Anders looked down at the leather-bound tome in his hands. The cloth page marker was torn, the binding worn, and the corners weathered. It should have been free, but ten silver could have bought him worse.

Anders wasn't interested in creation of the world and the invention of sin, in the blame the Chant placed on mages for the Blight. He didn't want a history lesson. He flipped passed cosmogenesis, past the first sin, past the Blight and the sections on Andraste. He stopped at the hymns, and imagined the Chanters were singing them in Hightown for the benefit of those who already had more than the Maker had given most.

Anders read Trials to himself, and then quietly aloud when felt the tingle he'd come to associate with Justice at his fingertips. Anders knew Justice believed in the Maker without believing in the Chant. Anders had no idea how the spirit felt about being read to, but it was nice to remember he wasn't alone. "You have grieved as I have, You who made worlds out of nothing. We are alike in sorrow, sculptor and clay, comforting each other in our art."

"I like that verse," Bethany said from the entrance to his clinic. "It helped me a lot, after Carver. Do you always read like that?"

"Like what?" Anders asked, and belatedly realized he was twisted around his chair, a leg draped over one armrest and his ribs digging into the other.

"Nothing," Bethany shook her head and tossed her satchel onto the table. "I bet it's especially true for you. If anything was going to be a comfort to the Maker, it would probably be healing."

"Thanks," Anders said, untangling himself from his chair to set the book down.

"You don't have to stop reading," Bethany said, taking a seat on a crate, "I miss hearing more of the Chant. I used to visit the Lothering Chantry all the time, to sit in meditation or just listen to Sister Leliana tell stories when the templars weren't around."

"I guess if you want to listen," Anders shrugged, picking the book back up and finding where he'd left off, "Do not grieve for me, Maker of All. Though all others may forget You, Your name is etched into my every step. I will not forsake You, even if I forget myself."

"I love Trials," Bethany said, "There's no blame in it."

"Exactly!" Anders kept his place with a finger, "Most of Andraste's teachings are just praise for the Maker, not condemnation for mages, but I'll bet you anything the Sisters up in Hightown are going over Transfigurations 1:2 over and over. I can't even look at those sunbursts anymore."

"It's disgusting they use them for the Tranquil," Bethany said.

"That's the whole problem, isn't it?" Anders demanded, "If they didn't have the Rite of Tranquility to hold over us, mages would have so many more options."

"Right!" Bethany said emphatically, "Apostates like us who just want to live, mages like your friend who just want to engage in intelligent debate, they make sure we can't do it."

"Karl was a good mage. He was a good man. It goes against all Chantry law to make him Tranquil." Anders muttered, and Maker just saying his name hurt. Anders had never learned how to mourn. "The Knight-Commander doesn't even care anymore. She's forcing our hands."

"Whose hands?" Bethany said.

"No one," Anders sighed, trying not to think of how unproductive his last meeting with Bancroft had been. No luck with the Coterie. No luck with Bardel. No word on the templar who'd branded Karl. Just more waiting.

"You can't say that," Bethany kicked at him, "Now I'm curious."

"Just some friends," Anders said. "People who understand things have to change. It's Tranquility or death for mages who don't toe the line. There's no reasoning with templars because they just take away your ability to reason."

Anders tried to picture it. Stealing mages from the Gallows, oversea and underland. It reminded him of Velanna and twisted like a knife in his gut, but he held the thought. Anders forced himself to remember sitting across from her at the Crown and Lion, laughing over their exploits. Velanna's fierce promise of aid when they spoke of defying the Chantry. He pushed the memory back even further to Amell in that same inn, hoping the vote in Cumberland would change things, and how Anders had laughed him off and promised to cheer from the sidelines.

Anders wanted to pretend they'd be proud of how far he'd come, but for all he knew he'd killed them both.

It wasn't until Bethany pushed a kerchief into his hand Anders realized he was crying. "Fuck, sorry," Anders said, scrubbing his face clean.

"You know when we were first looking for you, we went to this Ferelden Import Shop, run by this woman named Lirene," Bethany said. "She said she'd never met a man who carried more sorrows. I thought she was exaggerating."

"I'm fine," Anders lied, handing her kerchief back.

"If you ever want to talk about it, I'm here." Bethany said.

"Thanks Beth," Anders said.

The clinic door eased open, and a refugee carrying a bucket poked their head inside. "Healer, water?"

Anders got up to see the trickle of refugees that filed in every morning for water and warmth. Bethany helped where she was able, and it was a day like any other, made slightly better for the company. It was past midday when the first trauma patient showed up, and it might not have even registered with Anders as noteworthy if the man weren't tattooed and familiar.

Evon hung off Donal's shoulder, the giant Marcher dragging the small Fereldan. Evon had all the tell-tale signs of a mage who'd suffered a smite without a spirit inside them to suffer the brunt of the shock. His chin was crusted with vomit, his eyes were rolling in his skull, a grisly pallor on his face and nigh violent tremors wracked his body. If that weren't enough, two arrows jutted from his shoulders, twitching in time with Evon's shudders.

"Evon!" Anders dropped the bucket he was in the middle of dumping down the drain and ran over to take his free arm, "Donal, what happened?"

"Templars," Donal said what Anders already knew, propping Evon up on Anders operating table.

"Bethany, knife," Anders said, and a hilt pressed into the palm of his outstretched hand a few seconds later. Anders cut away Evon's ruined shirt to get to the arrows imbedded in his back. Anders' thoughts churned in his head like a storm, Justice's anger bleeding into his own, "How did they get to him?"

"Saw his face," Donal explained, accepting a kerchief from Bethany to wipe the vomit off Evon's chin. "Fucking tattoos. Sky opened up over him, and this white pillar came down, and they burned him like Andraste. Stupid fuck. Stupid fucking fuck." Donal grabbed Evon's lulling head in his hands and forced him up to meet his eyes. "You're a stupid fuck."

Evon slumped forward and Anders scrambled half onto the operating table to hold him upright, Justice cracking through the palm of his right hand while Anders channeled him. "Lancet," Anders said. Bethany handed him one, and hovered over his shoulder. Anders made a cut to enlarge the wound around the arrow in Evon's left shoulder. Franke would have already fainted.

"Please don't be in the bone, please don't be in the bone," Anders mumbled, following the shaft with his finger. A searing pain shot up his arm, and Anders snapped his hand back, "Andraste's flaming sword, they're tipped with magebane."

"Maker's breath," Bethany said.

"What does that mean?" Donal asked.

"I need my staff," Anders said. "And tongs or forceps," Bethany ran to fetch both, and Anders drew the glyphs for a lifeward under Evon.

"What does that mean!?" Donal asked.

"Nothing," Bethany said, "It doesn't mean anything. Right, Anders?"

"Right," Anders gave the shaft a twirl instead of trying to follow it. It wasn't stuck. Anders cut the wound large enough to make the extraction and pulled out the first arrow. "Don't touch that," Anders warned, a surge of regenerative energies pulled from the Fade through Justice knitting the first wound closed. He was making the cut for the second when Walter ran into his clinic.

"Anders! Templars!" The boy exclaimed, "It's a raid! They almost got Evelina! They're shooting at anyone who runs!"

"Fucking fuck, we led them here," Donal swore.

"Go out the left mineshaft," Anders said, forcing his hands steady while he finished the cut for the second arrow, "Keep straight. The first storm drain leads up into a hex in East Lowtown."

"Okay!" Walter bolted.

"Evon?" Donal asked.

"I'll get him," Anders promised. "Both of you go."

"I'm not leaving you here!" Bethany said, "We all need to get out of here." Anders knew he didn't deserve that kind of loyalty, but he didn't have time to argue against it. Anders hoped Justice could protect her if it came to it. It seemed a vain hope, but they hadn't hurt Karl. They'd just killed him.

"I gotta stay." Donal said. "Selby'll kill me if I come back without Evon anyway."

Anders set a hand to Evon's shoulder to hold him steady and pulled out the second poisoned arrow. "How many were there?"

"A whole patrol," Donal said. "Fucking fuck, Anders, I'm sorry. Evon-"

"-would be dead if you hadn't brought him," Anders said, holding a cleansing aura to pull the magebane from Evon's system. The bright pink poison trickled out of the wound on Evon's back as it was drawn from his bloodstream and left angry red burns down his skin. "Rag-someone,"

Donal took his shirt off and thrust it at him. Anders wiped up the poison before it burned through Evon's skin and poisoned him all over again.

"Can't feel my face," Evon slurred, drool escaping out of the corner of his mouth, but at least he could finally talk.

"You'll feel a lot less than that in a minute, you stupid fuck," Donal said. "A mage should know better than to go and get tattoos."

"Dad's Chasind," Evon slurred, "My tribe... not gonna-templars-fucking... my life."

The patrol reached his clinic. Anders could hear the screaming outside, high-pitched shrieks mingled with sobs and bellowed orders. The crash of make-shift shelters being overturned, what few belongings the refugees of Darktown had broken or destroyed by the patrol. Beneath that, the metallic laughter of men indulging the most base of their vices when they could belie themselves into thinking anonymity absolved them of sin.

"Maybe I can lead them away?" Donal offered. "They'll run us down if we all run together. Evon's not moving fast any time soon."

Such corruption did not contend with the Blight, it outmatched it. These were not monsters born from the bellies of women whose minds had been corroded by the Taint; these were men. Living, breathing, thinking men who looked upon the weak and powerless not as patients to be provided for but as prey. They would suffer such no longer. Not for themselves, and not for these mages that had entrusted themselves to their care.

"Anders?" Bethany asked. "You're glowing-are you okay?"

"We are well," Anders said, and heard the echo of Justice in his voice and tasted mana on his tongue. He felt the spirit coiled tight around his thoughts, cracking through his skin, in such a perfect harmony they couldn't tell which of them spoke. "Leave. All of you. None will get past us."

Justice picked up Vigilance and Anders drew a glyph of paralysis before the door of his clinic. They heard the shuffle of Evon stumbling off the operating table, and the door burst open. They waited for the flash of silver, that sword that made a mockery of mercy, and let the Fade embrace them. Flames burned through the cracks in the palm of their hand, and washed up over interlocked shields. An arrow struck him in the shoulder, and the agony it wrought broke Anders.

Justice flung himself up off the ground when Anders collapsed, and the gauntlet-clad fist that had always been his burst through the Veil and continued through the chest of the first templar he saw. Anders had memories of passion, of exuberance, but Justice knew no better than this. This was an evil he could cleanse, a purpose he could fulfill. A templar thrust forward with a spear. Justice whirled with such fluidity of movement it brought to life memories of Anders dancing.

He lashed out with Vigilance, and the spear snapped in half. He lashed out with his hand, and the shield shattered. Justice recalled Anders' warnings about their hands, and grabbed the shocked templar by his throat instead of his helmet. Justice clenched his fist, and tore through throat and muscle, stopping when he encountered bone. He swung the templar by his spine and used his body to catch the second spear thrust towards them.

There was still euphoria in feeling, but agony broke through it. Justice could feel the poison in their veins even as they fought. The templars commanded lyrium-gifted fire, and each smite tore through him and seemed to pull him further from the Fade. A wave of negative energy crashed down on him, and shut him out completely. Justice ripped the head off the templar who cast it through strength alone, and the remaining four broke and fled into Darktown.

Justice breathed deep, felt the cold air fell Anders' lungs, and thought of letting go. He could still feel the magebane twisting through Anders' veins with the Taint, a persistent burn that seemed to tear at his lungs and his every muscle. If Justice stepped back, Anders would suffer. He hesitated, and then ran in pursuit of the fleeing templars. He could weather the pain if it came in pursuit of purpose. His mortal could rest.

Anders woke to darkness, and Justice didn't breathe Veilfire into his fingers to drive it back. Anders grabbed for the Fade, and the mana slipped through his fingers like water. Anders sucked in a panicked breath and scrambled backwards, and his hand slipped in something slick. He fell back on hard stone, and the sharp scent of ammonia and feces filled his nostrils.

Sewers. Not a cell. Not a cell. He wasn't in a cell. Anders scrambled to his feet, hit his head on a low ceiling, and tripped over something on his first step. He fell hard, smashed his chin on the floor, and bit his tongue. The taste of copper filled his mouth, and Anders let out a sob of pain, scrabbling for whatever he'd tripped over. His hands came into contact with hard bone, and static flicked over his palms.

Anders grabbed Vigilance and clutched it to his chest. The elaborate runework augmented his connection to the Fade, and Anders pulled on enough mana to activate the crystal set in the dragonbone. The sewer lit up around him, a small stream of fetid water running along the floor. It was a tube, with not enough space to stand. Anders mouth went dry, and he sucked in a wheezing gasp. He couldn't be here. It was too tight. It was too cramped. It was too dark.

Anders scrambled back up to his feet, the crystal on his staff a flickering white light. His whole body felt like a bruise, the ache a persistent throb Anders felt everywhere from his toes to his gums. Anders half ran, half stumbled through the sewer, his heart hammering in his chest, and came to a dead end.

Worse than a dead end, he came upon a grate. All Anders could see past it was blackrock, but light trickled in through the bars, tauntingly out of reach. Anders heart beat so fast his chest seemed to tighten to contain it. He fell over, stuffed his head between his knees, and laced his hands over his head. "It's not a cell it's not a cell it's not a cell."

Anders lost time, and came back to himself still in the sewers. He stumbled forward, and the sewer eventually dumped him out into Darktown. Anders didn't recognize whatever section of the old mine he was in, and followed the railways until he encountered a group of refugees who pointed him back towards his clinic.

Anders probably shouldn't have gone back, but he'd left all his things in the clinic. He used his staff as a crutch and dragged himself back. He felt queasy and dizzy, and there was an ache in his bones that permeated through his muscles. Magebane. The arrows had been tipped with magebane. Anders felt like he'd been pulled back from the brink of death, and taken a punch in the stomach for good measure.

The smell of feces clung to his clothes from his crawl through the sewers, and halfway to his clinic Anders stumbled to a ledge and retched over it. Anders watched the vomit fall down a level of the mine and splatter along the wall. It was mostly bile. He'd remembered lunch today. He'd eaten a rat. It shouldn't have been bile.

Unless today wasn't today.

Anders ran a hand through his hair and his fingers caught. The strands were stuck together with dried something. Blood or piss. Anders tried not to think about it, and finally came upon the small refugee camp a short distance from his clinic. The makeshift tents had been pitched again, the bits of rubble that made up their furniture pieced back together. Had it been a day? Two?

One of the doors to his clinic had been shattered into splinters and sawdust. The other was broken in half, and hanging off its hinges. Anders stepped inside, tense for a fight, but the clinic was abandoned. It was also in shambles. His furniture was broken and strewn about the room, the walls were covered in scorch marks, stone had broken off from the pillars and rubble littered the floor.

There were no bodies. There were never any bodies. It looked more a slaughterhouse than a battlefield, and Anders picked his way through rent limbs, bent armor, broken weapons and shattered shields. His boots squelched through blood and over bits of pink skin and dark red muscle. Anders didn't know whether the smell or the sight had kept anyone from coming into the clinic, but his things were untouched. Anders tangled himself up in his satchels, one for personal effects, and one for all his medical and cooking supplies.

He kept telling himself to get rid of the former, and never did. Anders cot was intact in the back of the clinic. Anders curled up on it without thinking. However many days had passed, he could spare one more before he found somewhere else to stay. He couldn't have taken another step if he tried. Anders made a nest of his elbow, unwilling to ruin his mother's pillow while he was covered in shit, and fell asleep.

His nightmares woke him. They left him with a cold sweat, and Anders almost felt grateful for how the damp felt on his flushed skin. He conjured frost between his fingers, and dragged them over his forehead to ease back the headache that had come with his fever. Another hour and he'd try healing himself. Anders rested on that thought until he heard shouting outside his clinic.

"No more templars," Anders whined, rolling off his cot and onto the floor. It felt like falling off a cliff, and for a long minute Anders didn't move, but the raised voices forced him to his feet. Vigilance helped, and Anders stumbled into his clinic not entirely sure what he intended to do if he encountered a threat.

Apparently nothing, Anders' exhausted body decided when Hawke stormed into his clinic and grabbed him by the front of his coat. Maker, his eyes were unfair. What Anders wouldn't have given for five minutes in Amell's arms right now. Hawke slammed him back against the nearest pillar, and the sudden shock was enough to wake Anders up.

Hawke snarled into his face, "You brought templars down on my sister!"

Anders shoved him back, but his arms were leaden, and Hawke didn't so much as blink. "Get your hands off me."

"You think I want my hands on you, you filthy fucking sewer rat?" Hawke sneered, "Do you have any idea how much I'm holding back right now?"

"Don't you threaten me, boy," Anders tried to pull on Justice, and felt the spirit flicker faintly over his skin. They were both too exhausted for this, "Do you even know what I am?"

"I know exactly what you are," Hawke kept one hand fisted on Anders' coat, and dug the other under his leather vest to fish out a Chantry amulet and thrust the sunburst into Anders' face, "Go on! Attack me just for wearing it like you attacked Aveline. Maybe then my sister will finally realize you're dangerous."

"Garrett stop!" Bethany yelled. Anders looked away from Hawke to see her leap over a pile of rubble and run into his clinic after her brother, "It wasn't his fault!" Bethany grappled ineffectually with one of Hawke's massive arms to try to pry it off Anders, "It was my fault!"

"It wasn't anyone's fault but the templars," Anders said.

"You're the abomination who decided hunting them was more important than saving my sister's life!" Hawke gave him a shake, "And you call yourself a healer?"

"Stop it, Garrett! Stop it!" Bethany beat her fists on Hawke's shoulder. "Don't talk about him like that! He's not an abomination, he's my friend."

"Your friend?" Hawke let out a bark of laughter, "He almost got you killed! You almost died last night!"

"It wasn't his fault! You weren't there!" Bethany insisted, "It's not his fault I got hurt!"

"Wait, what?" Anders attempted, and failed, to push Hawke aside so he could look at Bethany, "Beth, you got hurt?"

"Don't remember? What a surprise," Hawke sneered, "My sister stumbles home in the dead of night with an arrow in her lungs, magebane in her veins, collapses half dead in my arms and you don't remember what happened to her."

Anders stared at Bethany. She met his eyes and her mouth opened and closed several times with no sound escaping before she found words. "I wasn't-It just... they came in shooting. It wasn't your fault. I saw you get hit too. I'm fine. Evon and Donal are fine. They brought me home."

"You're fine now!" Hawke snapped at her, and turned back to Anders, "Varric had to press every contact he had to rush her a healer from the Gallows, while you were doing fuck all in the sewers! Do you have any idea what it cost me to break a mage out of the Gallows in under an hour?" Hawke gave him a moment to guess. Anders was still trying to process the fact that Bethany had taken an arrow and he hadn't noticed, "Twenty fucking sovereigns is what it cost me! I was going to invest in our expedition and get the coin to get her away from the Templars, and you led them right to her!"

Hawke shook him again and Bethany all but leapt on his arm, "Garrett stop! It's not his fault! I'm an adult. I can make my own choices. It was my mistake. It was my fault. Leave him alone. Let him go. If you want to be angry at someone be angry at me."

"I am angry at you!" Hawke barked.

"Then yell at me!" Bethany yelled at him. "Leave Anders out of this."

Hawke stared at him, and Anders almost wished he'd punch him. Maker knew he deserved it. Anders knew he was dangerous. He'd known better than to let Bethany spend time with him in his clinic. He'd known it from the moment she'd set foot in clinic. He didn't let refugees stay near his clinic, but for some reason he thought it was alright to risk another apostate just because he wanted a friend. It was selfish. Anders was selfish. He never thought of anyone else until it was too late.

Hawke let go of him, and took a handful of angry steps back. He scratched viciously at the side of his head, and reminded Anders of a dog, "Damnit, Beth, what were you thinking? I told you to stay away from him."

"You tell me to stay away from everyone!" Bethany shot back. "I'm tired of it, Garrett!"

"I don't care if you're tired!" Hawke snapped, "You're safe! I'm trying to protect you and you just-"

"Protect me!?" Bethany interrupted him, "By locking me up in that filth hole day and night? How is that any different from the Circle?"

"I'll tell you how! I'm not about to make you Tranquil! Damnit, Beth, you didn't see it," Hawke waved an angry hand at Anders, "His lover didn't even recognize him!"

"At least he had a lover!" Bethany said, "At least he had a friend! Why can't I have that?"

"You have friends!" Hawke snapped.

"You know what I mean!" Bethany said.

"That's what you want now?" Hawke dragged both hands through his hair, "You want more friends at the cost of all this!? What happened to the normal life you begged me for? The home you wanted? I'm trying to take care of you."

"That doesn't mean you should decide who I can be friends with, Garrett!" Bethany argued, "You're not our father!"

"Neither is he!" Hawke waved a hand at Anders again. Anders was too tired to manage much more than a surprised blink, "You think I don't know why you've been sneaking down here? You think I don't know you want someone to teach you magic again? You think I don't wish I could give that to you?"

"Well you can't, Garrett!" Bethany shouted, "Anders can!"

"Anders is an abomination!" Hawke snarled. The word still hurt. Anders wished they'd leave and fight somewhere else, "He's going to live the rest of his life hunted by Templars. You can't be near him. He's going to get you killed. Do you have any idea what that would do to Mother after Carver? Do you have any idea what that would do to me?"

Anders watched the siblings stare at each other for a few seconds before Hawke grabbed Bethany and engulfed her in his arms, hunching to match her height and bury his face in her hair. Bethany hugged him back, and mouthed 'I'm sorry,' over his shoulder to Anders.

Anders shrugged. He wanted to sleep.

Eventually Bethany untangled herself from her brother, and gave Hawke a push that seemed to encourage him to stand a few feet away. He locked his hands over his head, and faced away from them, and Anders couldn't help thinking the breathing exercise looked painfully familiar.

Bethany sighed loudly and ran both hands through her hair in a mirror of what her brother had done earlier, "I'm so sorry about all this, Anders."

"Beth, if I'd known you'd gotten hit I swear I would have done something. Justice would have done something," Anders promised, propping himself up on his staff, "I just-we're not ourselves when we see templars. We both get so angry and it feels like we're just fueling each other until we can't see straight. Andraste's knickers, your expedition..."

"It wasn't your fault," Bethany said. "I'm the one who didn't want to leave you there. I'm so tired of everyone making sacrifices for me, and you did anyway. I saw you get hit-... I think we probably owe you a few bits for making you air out our dirty laundry. Is it too awkward after all that to ask for a hug?"

"I smell like shit," Anders warned her. "Literally. Justice left me in a sewer. Thanks for that, by the way." Anders said to his spirit.

"Well... tell him I said thank you for protecting me," Bethany said.

"It doesn't work like that," Anders said, "It's not like we can have a conversation. He's part of me. I don't think anyone could tell you where I end and he begins, but... I think he can hear you, so he probably knows you said thanks."

Anders could barely feel Justice's presence in his mind. The spirit was as exhausted as he was, but it seemed like a decent guess Justice was still paying attention, by the flicker the spirit had managed when Hawke had shoved him.

"Do you want help cleaning up?" Bethany asked.

"No, I need to find a new place to set up," Anders said. "It isn't safe here for my patients now that the templars know this location, and I don't think some of these stains are ever coming out."

"You're going to keep doing this?" Hawke interrupted, somehow lifting one eyebrow out of his scowl to turn it to a sneer that seemed more bewildered than angry, "After you both almost died?"

"If I don't, who will?" Anders asked.

"You're insane," Hawke said.

It took more energy than he had to spare, but somehow Anders laughed, "I'll take that as a compliment."

Notes:

Fanart
Hawke and Anders

Chapter 60: Let's Try This Again

Notes:

Alright, alright! You guys wanted him to take a bath and get some food. I hope you're all happy because literally nothing else happens in this chapter. Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 3 Molioris Morning
Kirkwall Darktown

Anders watched the flames licking up around the edge of his pot. He didn't have any kindling, and so held his hand in the space beneath the pot and the floor. The stand meant he could keep a small flame conjured in his palm to heat the water for his stew, but it was cramping his wrist. He wished magic was a substitute for time, and the water would just boil instantly.

Anders wished he could thank Rosalyn again for the forethought to give him the cookware. Maker knew Anders had never had any. Forethought. Cookware too. A letter was out of the question. Anders didn't have the coin to buy the parchment, the ink, and the pounce he'd need to write back to Ferelden. The Collective could manage letters to the Gallows, on good days, but things in Kirkwall were so bad there was no writing out of the city without paying for postage.

Anders leaned his head back against the wall of his new clinic and sighed. He couldn't wait to get up off the floor and get into his chair, and couldn't have been more grateful the thing had been salvaged from his old clinic. The small chamber cut into the blackrock that made up his new clinic didn't have the space for everything from his old one. Anders supposed that was no great loss considering he hadn't salvaged everything from his old clinic.

Anders had spent the past three days healing himself through a bout of dysentery after Justice had left them lying in a sewer, riddled with cuts from arrows and spears and Maker knew what else, wounds ripe for the fetid waters. Anders had sat himself down afterwards and had a very long and one-sided conversation about leaving them in dark, cramped spaces, and met with a feeling of disquiet in response he couldn't possibly hope to translate.

Summerday had come and gone. The wind in the ravine had swallowed up the hymns sung through Hightown, and Anders hadn't heard a word. He hadn't seen the grand procession of boys and girls coming of age and heading to the Chantry. He didn't care. The beginning of summer was supposed to recognized as a time for joy and marriage and neither of those things seemed like they'd be happening in Anders' life any time soon.

The door to his clinic opened, and Anders looked up at the echo of Amell that stood in the doorway. Maker's breath, he was beautiful, and it wasn't just his eyes. It was everything from his strong chin to the way his hair fell recklessly over his brow. Then Anders blinked, and it was just Hawke, and Hawke was an ass. "You need healing?" Anders guessed, cutting off the stream of flame pouring from his palm.

"No," Hawke said, hovering in the doorway with a thumb in his belt, "This your new clinic?"

"Is there a green lantern outside?" Anders asked sarcastically, calling the flames back to finish boiling his water if he didn't have to heal anyone.

Hawke ignored him, "What are you making?"

"Stew," Anders frowned, wondering what in the name of Andraste the man could possibly want with him now, "Or water, depending on your standards."

Hawke didn't laugh. He didn't so much as exhale hard through his nose.

"You're the funny sibling, I see," Anders said.

"Sorry," Hawke said stiffly, taking a few steps into Anders' clinic and letting the door close behind him. Maker why? "I guess I just don't like joking about people starving to death."

"Oh so now I'm people?" Anders sneered, "What happened to 'abomination' or 'filthy fucking sewer rat'?"

"You are a filthy fucking sewer rat," Hawke said.

"Thank the Maker you came," Anders said flatly. "My self-esteem was getting too high."

"My mistake," Hawke said, "I didn't know 'covered in shit' was part of your look."

"Please go away," Anders said.

Hawke growled at him. Actually growled. Anders blinked, and Hawke scratched at the side of his head, "Look-I'm sorry."

"What?" Anders asked.

Hawke dropped a pack he was carrying on Anders' table, "I have this condition where I open my mouth and I'm an asshole."

"See, I'm a healer, so I'm pretty sure that's not a condition." Anders said, eyeing the pack warily and half-expecting a templar to burst out of it. "I think you might just be an asshole."

"Fair," Hawke said; he didn't make eye-contact often. Anders appreciated that, "Beth told me you turned her away yesterday?"

"I know what I am," Anders said, trying not to think of the poor girl and how upset she'd been, but it was for the best. "I don't need you reminding me again. You can go. I'll leave your sister alone."

"Good," Hawke paced a few feet, but not towards the door.

"I don't have any coin, if you're waiting for me to repay you," Anders said. "If you need healing, or help with your expedition-"

"I'm not here for that," Hawke interrupted. "Look, you look like vultures ate your corpse and shit you out into a pile of shit-"

"Hawke, are you flirting with me?" Anders asked.

"-and I know you could use a bath. Food." Hawke waved a hand at Anders' water stew, "I bought you a room at the Hanged Man for a night. Close your clinic for the day and come with me."

"This is a trap," Anders guessed. "You've got the whole Templar Order waiting for me to walk outside, don't you?" Hawke frowned. Anders tilted his head to one side and waited for an answer. "That's a real question."

"I don't want you near Beth," Hawke said, apparently ignoring the question, "You're staying away from Beth. Let me buy you food."

"I cost you twenty sovereigns, and now you want to feed me?" Anders asked.

"I want my sister safe," Hawke dragged his hands through his hair. "She can't help in your clinic. I don't want her near you in the city, but she needs friends, and I'm not-...-It's-I'm-... fuck. Hang on." Hawke walked out of his clinic. Anders blinked, and his eyes drifted to the pack Hawke had left on the table.

Curiosity killed the cat, Anders.

Anders cut off the flames from his palm. He dumped a few chunks of snake meat and deep mushroom into the boiling water and stood up. Anders dusted off his hands, and Hawke came back in before Anders had a chance to do anything stupid.

"Nature's call?" Anders guessed.

"Needed air. I'm not good at to talking people," Hawke said. "Not when it matters."

"What? No! You?" Anders put on a shocked expression, "I had no idea."

"You heard Beth," Hawke was good at ignoring Anders' barbs. Anders supposed that was for the best, "She's miserable. I don't want that for her. I do a lot of patrols along the coast for the guard, and other odd jobs outside the city where the templars aren't. You're her friend. You want to spend time with her, come with us."

"Look, I know I owe you, and I'll try to find some way to repay you, but I don't know how I feel about neglecting my patients," Or being anywhere near you. Anders sat back down on the floor to keep the fire going under his stew.

"Neglecting yourself is definitely the healthy alternative," Hawke said.

"Because I'm sure you care," Anders sneered. "Why would you want your sister near an abomination if you won't even let her near a blood mage?"

"Because I think you're bullshitting yourself when you say you're dangerous," Hawke said.

"What?" Anders laughed so hard he knocked his pot on accident and burnt his hand on the heated metal, "That's all you've been saying about me for the past month!"

"Beth said you talked to her." Hawke gestured vaguely at him, "Your thing. Demon. Spirit. Whatever. She said it talked to her, and it promised to protect her, and if you were fighting and didn't see the arrow then it's not your fault, and I need to learn how to play nice with everyone or everyone will stop playing with me."

"Beth's a smart girl," Anders said. Whether or not she was worth tolerating her brother's company was another matter altogether. Anders thought back on Varric's warning about blood magic, "What about Merrill?"

"What about Merrill?" Hawke asked.

"She's a friend," Anders said, "She wants more friends. Does she get to come on these little soirées outside the city?"

"Fine," Hawke shrugged. "Sure."

"What happened to her being a bad influence?" Anders asked.

"She is a bad influence," Hawke said, and Anders couldn't help bristling, "But the same thing goes. The templars don't patrol the coast. If you want to bring her, bring her."

"Are you really paying her rent?" Anders asked.

"Who told you that?" Hawke asked.

"That sounds like a yes," Anders said.

"Not your business." Hawke said.

"You're really friendly," Anders said. "Really. What's in the bag?"

"Things." Hawke said unhelpfully. "For you. But I'm not letting you touch them until you've had a bath. Are you coming with me to the Hanged Man or am I carrying you there?"

"Those are my choices?" Anders asked.

"Those are your choices." Hawke agreed.

"You know I've got food on, right?" Anders asked.

"No you don't," Hawke said.

"What do you call this?" Anders gestured to his stew.

"Not food." Hawke said.

"Fine, but you're walking with an apostate," Anders warned him. He dumped his food down the drain he'd come to decide was an essential thing to have anywhere he setup his clinic. He picked up a rag and wiped the pot down, "I'm not leaving my things here. I don't have a lock yet."

"Fine." Hawke said.

"You're really going to waste more coin on me just because I'm Beth's friend?" Anders asked, stowing the pot and its stand away in his satchel when both were cool and dry.

"'I love my sister' isn't a good enough reason for you?" Hawke demanded, picking the pack back up. Anders wondered how heavy it was that he'd bothered to take it off.

"Not really," Anders said. "I mean, abomination, remember?"

"I feel sorry for you." Hawke said.

That wasn't something Anders expected to hear. Definitely not from someone who called him a dangerous abomination and a sewer rat covered in shit. Anders hated taking charity. His patients were refugees, and they didn't have anything they could spare. Hawke wasn't any better. He was trying to get together enough coin to invest in an expedition that could get his sister into Hightown, and out of the templars' reach. Anders couldn't take that from Bethany, but if Hawke could afford to pay for Merrill's rent, a night at a cheap Lowtown inn wouldn't kill him.

Anders didn't want the pity, but Maker, he needed it.

"... I guess that works." Anders allotted.

Hawke left the clinic, and Anders wandered out after him, half expecting a magebane-tipped arrow to hit him in the face. It didn't. Hawke's dog was waiting outside the clinic, and bounded over to walk next to its master with little more than a sniff in Anders' direction. Anders dispelled the Veilfire in the lantern outside his clinic, and let the crystal set in his staff hold a light for him.

"Why doesn't your dog bark at me?" Anders asked, taking a spot on the opposite side of Hawke from the mabari.

"I told him not to," Hawke said.

"That's it?" Anders asked, "It's that easy?"

"Why wouldn't it be?" Hawke asked.

"Because I'm possessed?" Anders guessed.

"He's mine," Hawke said. "He'd let me use him for target practice if I wanted."

The dog let out a woof of agreement, and Hawke ruffled its head.

"Just because he's imprinted?" Anders asked. Hawke grunted in agreement. Anders looked at the mabari and felt miserable. "What's his name?"

"Dog." Hawke said.

"You named your mabari Dog?" Anders asked.

"He's a dog." Hawke said. "His name is Dog. What do you want?"

"A little bit of creativity never hurt," Anders mused.

They stepped out into one of the larger caverns of Darktown, where shanties and hovels were stacked up against one another, and bleary-eyed refugees stared out at them from underneath moth-eaten shawls. "Healer!" One fellow called, gesturing to the rubbish they'd stacked in a circle of rocks, "Fire's out."

Anders tossed a handful of flame onto the pile and made it a pyre. He passed another group that begged for water and stopped to conjure it, and a third that called, "Healer, ache's back!" Before he gave up.

"Look, thanks, but I have to be here." Anders said, turning off the tracks that led towards the lifts and heading for the group that had called him, "I hope you get your coin back for the room."

"I'll wait," Hawke followed him, and hovered off to the side, arms folded over his chest. He was going to be waiting a while.

Anders knelt to a shanty cobbled together from broken mine carts and stolen tarps, and summoned Justice for the refugee who'd called him. He was a middle-aged fellow, red faced and pot bellied, with a weak stomach and recurring ulcers. "I told you we can't keep meeting like this, Mark," Anders joked. "You need to stop drinking."

"No other way to live down here," Mark said.

Anders healed him, and ended up getting pulled away to heal another fellow with a sprained ankle, and one with a cough that turned out to be the onset of the grippe before he managed to get away and onto the lift with Hawke. Hawke didn't comment on any of it, and handled the crank when they were finally on the lift. The dog shoved itself between Hawke's legs, whining.

"Something wrong?" Anders asked.

"He doesn't like closed spaces," Hawke said.

"You and me both, Dog," Anders said. The lift jolted under foot as it rose and Anders steadied himself on his staff. The dog whined. Hawke cranked silently, "Really not much of a talker, are you?"

"You want to talk, talk," Hawke said.

"Weather's wonderful lately," Anders ventured.

Hawke made a confused face at him.

"Really?" Anders asked, "No sense of humor? At all?"

"Maybe I just don't think you're funny." Hawke said.

"We're going to be good friends," Anders guessed. "I can tell."

Hawke's laugh was a bark. Anders didn't know why he was surprised. It made Anders jump, and Hawke stare very determinedly at the floor of the lift. "I must be a little funny," Anders said, unable to stand someone who looked so much like Amell being ashamed of their laugh, no matter how much of an ass they were.

The lift rose up into one of the transitional buildings in Lowtown. The dog bolted as soon as it was stable, off the lift and out of the building completely. Anders had never felt so much kinship with a dog before. Hawke's whistle brought the mabari back, and Anders dispelled the light in his staff before he followed him out into Lowtown.

"So what exactly is the plan here?" Anders asked. "I just get a room for a day...?"

"You get a room." Hawke said. "Bathe. Shit. Sleep. I don't care. Norah will do your clothes. Corff has you on my tab for the night so you can eat whatever you want. You can stay in the room or you can come have drinks with me and Varric."

Anders stopped, and leaned back against the wall of the alley they were walking through. A shudder caught in his chest, and he let it out slowly. The dog came back to stare at him, and so did the mabari.

"What?" Hawke asked.

"Nothing," Anders lied, but it had been a persistent pain in the back of his mind for the past four months. Anders massaged his jaw and the mess of uneven stubble that lined it, and dragged his hand up his face and into his unkempt hair, and the words fell out of him despite his best efforts to keep them in, "I'm just so hungry," Anders fought back another shudder, "I don't even think about it anymore."

"Then why are you standing here for?" Hawke demanded, "Come eat."

"Yeah," Anders managed, pushing the butt of his staff on the wall to give him the momentum to keep moving again. Anders cleared his throat, hating himself for the slip in his composure, "How far did I set you back? With your expedition? I mean I know Beth's healer cost twenty sovereigns but how much do you still need?"

"Not your business," Hawke said.

Anders didn't feel like arguing. Hawke led him out of the alley and into the hex. The Hanged Man was a massive multistory inn, carved from sandstone or granite and held together with what looked like wrought iron and will. Spikes decorated every outcropping to ward off birds, and the telltale signs of them, but it was far from aesthetically pleasing. The metal was rusted, and the outside was littered with so much broken glass their boots crunched on the trek to the door.

Hawke pushed the door open, and led Anders inside. It looked like the rest of Lowtown. A patchwork combination of stone, rusted iron, and old wood. Bronze chandeliers hung from the ceiling, a fire roared in a hearth off to Anders' right, and every table was littered with candles melting wax onto the discolored wood. The walls were lined with a mix of graffiti and ratty tapestries, and it was crowded.

Anders clutched his satchels to himself, and Hawke led him past a bar fight, over blood-stained floors, and up sunken stairs to a room on the second story. The building was crumbling like the rest of Kirkwall. Rubble and dirt filled up the corners. Hawke unlocked a door and stepped inside to drop his pack on a table. "That's yours. Quilt is from Mother. She thinks you and Bethany are together. Don't tell me if you are-"

"We aren't," Anders said quickly.

"Good. Don't. There's a straight edge, and a looking glass, and a few other things for you. Varric's room is on the right. Visit if you want, but bathe first. You smell like shit. Norah's downstairs. Give her your clothes. There's something for you to change into in the meantime." Hawke left the pack and the key to the room on the table and stepped around him to leave.

"Hawke-wait-" Anders' mouth decided to betray him. Hawke stopped next to him, and Anders smelled Ferelden: sweat, wet dirt, and dog, before Hawke took a step back and gave them both more space. "I don't know why you did all this, but thank you."

"Told you why. Don't need your thanks," Hawke muttered and ducked out of the room, dragging the door closed behind him.

Anders stared at it for a moment, and turned back to the pack. His hands left a smear of soot on the cloth when he reached for it, and Hawke's suggestion that he bathe before touching it suddenly seemed like a sound idea. Anders looked around the room. Two windows set high in the ceiling let in light and fresh air, and a fire was crackling in the hearth and filled the room with the crisp scent of pine and charcoal.

Aside from the table with the pack, there was another with food already set out for him, surrounded by real, high-backed cushioned chairs. There was bowl of nuts, a loaf of bread, and some cheese slices to go with a pitcher of ale. Anders picked up a piece of cheese despite the smear left by his fingers and bit into it.

A sob slipped out of him, and Anders wouldn't have cared enough to restrain it even if he wasn't alone. It was sharp and peppery, moist and crumbling, and the best thing Anders had ever had in his mouth in his entire life. Cocks and cunts suddenly couldn't compare to cheese. Anders dropped his satchels onto the ground and sank into the chair. The cushion was stuffed with down, and impossibly soft, and it didn't hurt his backside to sit.

Anders doubled over the table and sobbed around another bite. A harsh undercurrent of salt and soot from his fingers cut into it, and hardly registered with him. Anders bit into the loaf of bread. Chewing through the hard crust made his teeth hurt, but it was worth it for the way the wheat melted on his tongue. Anders swallowed it down with a whine and a mouthful of ale. He felt like he'd never eaten anything that wasn't rat before.

"Fuck," Anders propped his elbows up on the table and buried his forehead in his hands, "Fuck, I'm crying. Maker... do you want any of this? You don't need to eat. Right. Fuck." Anders took another bite of bread and choked on it, and even coughing it back up was better than the pungent gamey taste of rat or the few bites of dark meat he could peel from a pigeon.

Anders forced himself to stop eating before he made himself sick. He was a healer; he knew better. He hadn't been eating right. He couldn't dive into a three course meal with what living in Kirkwall had done to his stomach, but Maker, he wanted to. Anders pushed himself back up onto his feet and propped his staff up against the wall. He locked and latched the door to his room, and walked around the divider in the center of the room to the bedroom.

It was a real bath, a wooden tub straining against warped and rusted bilge hoops, but big enough for him to sit with his legs only slightly bent. There was a stand attached with soap and salts, pumice and emery. The water was already drawn, and a weak fire spell left it steaming. Anders shrugged out of his coat, and unbuckled his boots. His belt hit the floor with a heavy thud, and his tunic had to be peeled off his chest. Anders shimmied out of his trousers and smalls and climbed into the bath.

A bath had never felt so decadent before. The water slid up his ankles and over his thighs, warmed his ass and embraced his hips like the torrid caress of a lover. Anders dropped his head back on the rim of the tub and wrapped an instinctive hand around his sudden and needful erection. He didn't feel clean enough for the contact yet, but he was impatient, and thought of nothing but the warmth of the water on his aching muscles and begrimed skin.

Anders set a slow cadence to the strokes of his hand and the buck of his hips that left the surface of the water rippling. He lost himself to heat and friction and the coiling tension in his stomach, pushing his feet against one side of the bath and digging his shoulders into the other. Anders bit his lip to stifle a moan, ripples of pleasure flaring brighter and brighter until they almost burned.

Anders let his hand slip lower, and pressed the pad of a finger against his entrance. Unbidden, all of the jokes he'd heard over the past month about having another man inside him came back to him. Anders groan turned into a gasp, and he sat up, hands snapping out to grab the rim of the tub. "Fuck-I-" Anders swallowed; his skin was hot enough to make the water feel cold and his thoughts still felt sluggish.

"Fuck-I forgot," Anders exhaled hard, "How did I forget? Justice? Shit, I'm sorry, I didn't even think-... Are you okay?" Anders stared at his hands, his thoughts still a tangle of arousal and the desperate need for release. "... Are you even here? I mean-you seemed okay with Karl, and where that was going-but I never-I mean recently things have been so awful for us my mind hasn't been-..."

Anders flexed his hands, and watched the droplets of water caught in the ruddy hair on his arms slide into the water and ripple on the surface. It was fascinating to watch. Anders ran two fingers down the inside of his arm and the light caress was enough to make him shiver. "This is weird... I should just take a bath. My Rage is bad enough, I don't want you corrupted with Desire and every other demon I've got haunting me..."

"Fuck, I want to get off so bad." Maker's breath, Anders was pathetic. Warm water turned him on. That was how far he'd fallen. He was going to pervert a spirit of Justice over a bath. Anders pulled his bottom lip between his teeth and bit down, but it didn't distract him. It just made him think of two mouths coming together, biting and sucking and licking in a moment of wild abandon.

Anders bit his knuckles, but that didn't help either. He was so aroused the taste of the salt on his skin made his cock ache and throb. The sharp press of his teeth into his hand stung, and Anders tasted mana, and spat his hand out. "Alright, I get it, you don't want me hurting myself, but-... fuck it. I know you can stop me if you want."

Anders rolled onto his knees and wrapped his hand around his cock. He grabbed the rim of the bath to steady himself and thrust into his fist, thinking of nothing but the heat still coiled tight in the pit of his stomach. Anders tightened his grip and let his magic heat his palm and slick his fingers. Thought left him, and feeling took over, and the quick, almost frantic rhythm he set found him a fast end.

It was release; a shiver of pleasure rippled through his cock and down his spine, curling his toes and leaving him gasping and shuddering against the side of the tub. Anders let out a shaky breath, and felt for a moment nothing but comfortably numb in a way that was finally healthy. He watched his hair drip water onto the floor. The arrhythmic pitter patter of the droplets staining the wood was almost worth a giggle.

Anders rolled back into the bath and sank under the water, shaking his hands through his hair and dislodging months' worth of oil and grime. He came back up and shook his head, flaxen strands slapping his face and sticking, and let the giggle slip. Anders dragged uneven nails down his leg, and dyed the waters a darker shade with the dirt he dislodged. "We're going to marry this bath." Anders decided.

In the past four months Anders felt like he'd known filth to beggar the Blight. He wasn't sure if the stain would ever wash out, but he couldn't have been more eager to try. He attacked his skin and hair with salts and soaps, his nails with emery, his skin with pumice. He had to reheat the water twice, and was glad he couldn't see the color beneath the suds left by the soap. Anders crawled out of the tub after he'd worn his skin bright pink. The sting was enough to set Justice on edge.

Anders grabbed at the sensations: concern, confusion, mild irritation, a prickling up his spine. "We needed it. We were disgusting." Anders told him. "Are you okay? With me-I guess there's no good way to put this: getting off? I mean... Hunger is a demon too, but you don't seem to mind when I eat, so..."

Anders couldn't make sense of an answer, which he supposed might mean contentment, and decided to settle. He grabbed himself a towel and wrapped it around his hair, far too long now, and another around his waist before he went back to the pack Hawke had left him. His hands finally looked human. Nails even, no blood beneath them, no dirt caked into the lines on his palm. Anders shook out the pack.

A plain woolen tunic, no dye, with matching trousers and a cord for a belt. A straight edge, scissors and a looking glass. The quilt. A cloak. Maker's sweet saving grace, a comb. Empty flasks and vials. Andraste's knickers, food. Two sacks of tubers and citrus, and one sack of rice. "I take it back," Anders said, "We're going to marry Hawke. Fuck the bath. Kill templars."

Anders propped the looking glass up against the wall, and pulled over a chair to shave his face. He tried not to look too hard at the dark rings around his eyes, and the way his brow furrowed even when he thought his expression was neutral. His face felt blissfully colder free of stubble, and Anders twisted his hair over his shoulder to brush and cut off what he could of the split ends. It hung about his shoulders when he finished. Not perfect, but not noticeably uneven either.

A dusting with his towels cleaned him of the hair that fallen onto his shoulders, and Anders pulled on the gifted trousers. The waist was too wide and they hung awkwardly at his ankles, which he supposed shouldn't surprise him. They probably belonged to Hawke. Anders tied them off with the cord, and threw on the tunic. It was ridiculously oversized, and slipped off his shoulders, but it was clean. The wool might have been satin for how it felt on his skin.

Anders ate another piece of cheese and a handful of nuts, and swallowed them down with a moan. He put on Sigrun's earring, his Warden necklace, and Karl's ring, and bundled up his old clothes in his coat. Anders wasn't sure how he felt about letting anyone clean his coat, but he couldn't deny the suede had seen better days. Anders grabbed his room key, padded barefoot out into the hall. No socks had come with the outfit, and even sticky with ale, Anders was willing to bet the floor was cleaner than his boots.

Anders locked the door behind him and made for the first story, and bumped into Varric coming up. "Oh, pardon me," Varric stepped around him, and continued up the stairs while Anders went down. "Wait a second!" Anders glanced over his shoulder. Varric gawked at him, "Blondie!?"

"Yes...?" Anders ventured.

"Holy shit," Varric raised the two tankards he was holding towards him in something of a toast. "You clean up."

Anders grinned, "Don't go there. I'll break your heart."

"Oh, consider it broken," Varric pressed one tankard over his heart, "You're coming up for drinks, right? Get yours from Corff. Bartender. Norah's good for the clothes, but she'll never get your order right."

"I'll do that, thanks." Anders said.

Anders made his way downstairs, feet cold but clean on the planks, and talked to Corff who identified Norah. Anders felt slightly guilty for having anyone do his laundry, which seemed ridiculous considering he'd had no problems with the Tranquil in the Circle, or the servants at the Keep. Four months in a sewer had done wonders for helping him realize how privileged his life had been, even on the run.

Corff gave him a choice between roast boar and roast chicken, and Anders picked boar and was promised it delivered to Varric's quarters. He ordered himself an apple ale in the meantime, and carried it back up the stairs. The door was open, and Anders knocked on the frame rather than walk in. What he could see from the doorway reminded him of Kal'Hirol. Stone furniture with knotted dwarven runework.

Varric was visible from the doorway, both the table and the chair he sat in low to the floor. Varric waved him in, and Anders wandered over to the table, "Take a seat," Varric said encouragingly, "Hawke, you recognize this guy?"

Hawke's back had been to the door. Anders fidgeted when the russet eyes swept over him in little more than a cursory glance. Hawke shook his head.

"I can translate, that was a compliment," Varric said helpfully.

Anders took a seat between them, grinning, "I figured. Thanks again for all this."

"Still don't need your thanks," Hawke said.

Somehow, Anders thought that made it mean a little more.

Chapter 61: A Preoccupation with Spirits

Notes:

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Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 3 Molioris Afternoon
Kirkwall Lowtown: The Hanged Man

Anders had to swallow a moan when he sank into the chair. It was carved from stone, but Maker, it was covered with velvet blankets and pillows stuffed with down. It was preposterously low to the ground, and Anders' knees were in his ears until he spread them out under the table, bumping what he assumed was Hawke in the process by the man's awkward grumble and the suddenness of which he shifted.

Anders took his first drink of ale. A hint of apple mingled with spirits ran warm down his throat, and Anders dropped his head back against the chair, cradling the tankard to his chest. He could have fallen asleep here if someone let him, but Varric spoke up.

"I'll level with you, Blondie, we might have to do something about the nickname," Varric said.

"I told you not to name it," Hawke said gruffly, "Now you'll want to keep it."

If Anders didn't know better, he'd almost guess it for a joke. "I like 'Blondie' more than 'filthy fucking sewer rat'," Anders shot Hawke a challenging grin, but the man made a very determined effort not to make eye-contact with anyone. Anders had met friendlier folk.

Varric laughed at least, "You're making the mistake of thinking this is bad guard, good guard," Varric gestured between Hawke and himself, "No, no, no, my friend, this is bad guard, worse guard. See when I picked Blondie, I was going for irony. Whatever color your hair was? Not blonde."

Anders snorted, "There's so much love for me in this room."

"More than you think," Varric grinned, pushing him a bowl full of assorted cheeses. Anders ate a piece that tasted delightfully smoky and went well with his ale. "You gotta admit you needed this, Blondie."

"Not arguing that," Anders said. He was still suppressing sighs at every taste and texture, "I think it's been at least four months since I've had a proper bath or meal."

"You're tugging at my heart strings, here," Varric said, kicking a boot up onto the table and bouncing the cutlery, "Come on, Hawke, let me keep him."

"You'll have to feed him," Hawke pointed out, scratching Dog's ear where the mabari lay at his feet, "Take him for walks."

"Deal with my shit," Anders added.

"Deal with his shit," Hawke agreed, raising his tankard towards him in the first half-civil gesture Anders had seen from him.

"Oh please," Varric huffed, "A guy who runs a free clinic under the city for the desperate and the downtrodden? You only hear about that kind of selflessness in the same stories with magic beans."

"You know there's probably a reason for that," Anders said. "If someone handed me magic beans right now, I'd probably just eat them."

"I'm gonna keep him," Varric decided. "So now that we're getting off on the right foot here, maybe we can try introductions again? What's your story, Blondie?"

"My story?" Anders asked.

"Where are you from? What are you for?" Varric suggested helpfully, "What's the deal with Blue? What's your goal with the clinic?"

"Oh, you know, I thought I'd turn it into a hospice," Anders shrugged, picking the easiest question to avoid. "I petitioned the Viscount for the right to set up shop. I'm expecting an answer back any day now."

"Sounds exciting," Varric grinned. "I imagine things won't be dull with you around."

"I hope not," Anders said, "Don't know if you noticed, but I'm not a fan of when things get Tranquil."

Varric made a grab for his heart, "That was dark, Blondie."

"Gallows humor, I guess," Anders said. Varric laughed and cringed, and Anders even won a bark of laughter from Hawke. Anders shot him a grin and wasn't terribly surprised when Hawke looked away. Anders shrugged and fiddled with his earring, "Ah, I had a friend who told me if your choices are laugh or cry, you should pick laugh."

"Words to live by," Varric tipped his drink at him.

"I'm trying," Anders said, taking another drink.

"So what's the verdict, Blondie?" Varric asked, "You going to be part of our Deep Roads expedition after all?"

"Blight, dampness, festering darkness filled with tainted rats..." Anders mused, "I can't wait. Sounds fun."

"No, you're not thinking big enough here," Varric said eagerly, "There's only a short window after a Blight where the Deep Roads are empty, and word is lately they've been quieter than ever. These old thaigs are littered with treasures the old noble families will pay a fortune for. Bartrand's got it on good information the one we're heading for is one that could set us all up for life."

"I hope you're right," Anders said. The last thing he wanted was to have anything to do with anything that reminded him of the Wardens, but he owed Beth, and Hawke by extension. "The whole thing gets old after a while, you know? Darkspawn this. Darkspawn that. Taint taint taint taint-"

"Stop." Hawke said.

"Taint." Anders grinned. "I'm here though, if you need help with your expedition. It's the least I can do. I knew better with Beth, and if I owe you one sovereign or twenty, I should help. It would probably be a good idea for you to have a Warden along anyway. I can sense darkspawn, and heal, and-" run into Stroud and his expedition if by some impossible stretch of luck yours is at the same time? Finally find out how many of my friends are dead by my hand? "You know. Help."

"Be glad to have you, Blondie," Varric said sincerely, "Right Hawke?"

Hawke grunted what Anders assumed was an affirmative grunt.

"So close," Varric joked. "So close to words."

"You need a speech every time I open my mouth?" Hawke demanded.

"You didn't actually open your mouth there, Hawke," Varric pointed out.

"He's got a point," Anders agreed, "And considering what you've said of me so far..."

"Yes, a warden and a healer would be invaluable," Hawke said curtly. "Do you need me to tell you the sky is blue next?"

"You know after four months in Darktown the reminder couldn't hurt," Anders mused.

"The sky is blue," Hawke said.

"Aw, Beth said you had a soft heart under that scruffy exterior," Anders joked.

"She lied," Hawke said. "What are the Deep Roads like?"

"Dark," Anders recalled, "Cramped... The deeper you get the worse the corruption gets. That's a thing by the way. Corruption. Rotten flesh and muscle that grows on the floor and the walls in the Deep Roads... It's always bleeding and undulating and it's impossible to keep your balance. We had these boots with special grooves cut into the soles, but it just wasn't enough.

"You always fall, and then for a second you think maybe the rot smells better than the gas. It's in the air down there and it stagnates, a thick green damp that's so flammable you can't carry torches. You can feel it in your lungs when you breathe..."

"Oh, come on Hawke, don't make that face," Varric said. "Sure, we've all heard the stories of legions of darkspawn, cave-ins, ravenous beasts... but let's just think of this as an adventure."

"An adventure," Hawke rolled his eyes and took another drink. "Great."

"So what's your story?" Anders asked.

"Who are you asking?" Varric asked, "Who am I kidding? Let's just go with who will answer. Me? I'm a younger brother. It's a difficult and dangerous profession, and a lot of us die of boredom. You'll get a chance to meet my brother Bartrand on the expedition, and let me just apologize in advance. Most of my job is cleaning up after him.

"My family came from Orzammar. Noble house Tethras, until my father got caught fixing Provings, and he and our whole House got exiled. It's no huge loss, really. I was born up here, and sunshine suits me just fine, when it gets through the foundry smog. I'm a businessman, a storyteller, and sometimes, I shoot people."

"Sounds like you're living the life," Anders said, eating another piece of cheese.

"I'm living one of them," Varric agreed, grinning. "You want to share, Hawke?"

"No," Hawke said.

"I suppose you already know most of the story from Sunshine," Varric told Hawke's story for him, "Did she tell you Hawke here killed an ogre escaping the Blight? I suppose that's not much for a Warden, but for the rest of us mortals, it's kind of an achievement. I have been dying to know what was going through his head at the time."

"It ripped Carver in half in front of me," Hawke said. "What do you think was going through my head?"

"Shit, Hawke," Varric set his drink down. He wrung his hands together and spent a few seconds searching for words, "Sunshine never mentioned-I... Shit. Sorry."

"...It's fine." Hawke looked down at his tankard and stood up, "Refills?"

"Sure," Varric said sadly.

"Still working on mine," Anders said. "But I won't argue against another," Maker, eating was hard. His stomach had to be the size of a walnut at this point. Anders had eaten half a loaf of bread and a few pieces of cheese, and was caught in a strange state where the Taint insisted he was still hungry, but his body said otherwise. Anders thought of the boar he'd ordered and felt a little queasy.

"I have had a day." A voice said from the doorway. A painfully familiar woman sauntered in, all thick thighs and long legs in a thin white dress that barely covered her breasts - and Anders was staring. The dog ran over to her, and the woman spared it a fond pat.

"Hey, Rivaini," Varric called.

"You know I hate it when you call me that," 'Rivaini wrinkled her nose at the dwarf.

"That's why I call you that," Varric laughed.

'Rivaini' stopped Hawke on his way out to refill their drinks with a hand on his chest. "Well if it isn't my favorite mercenary." She purred, "When are you going to give me that 'Red Iron' hm?"

"Isabela," Hawke said stiffly. "Drink?"

"Love one, pet." Isabela looked over his shoulder, and her eyes raked over Anders so shamelessly he couldn't help grinning. "Who. Is. This? Hawke, you've been holding out on me."

"Ask him yourself," Hawke said, escaping out from under her hand and into the hall, dog trailing at his heels.

"Oh I plan to," Isabela agreed. Maker, but she was familiar. Something in her voice, in the way her hips moved when she walked and leaned on his chair to look down at him. The motion swayed the gold coins in her ears and spilled dark chocolate hair over her breasts. "Here I thought the men in this place were all besotted fools who couldn't hoist the mainsail. When did you sneak in?"

"I'm hoping for besotted later, actually," Anders grinned, and that was enough, but his mouth kept going, "But if you're staying here, I think I might get there sooner."

"Aren't you clever? And lanky. I do like lanky." Isabela ran a finger gloved finger along the collar of his borrowed shirt, barely brushing skin in the process. She frowned, and twisted the fabric around her finger, "Is this Hawke's shirt?"

"Er..." Anders said

Isabela took a step quick step back and held up both hands, "I didn't touch him."

"It's really not like that," Anders said, but the dark-skinned beauty had already abandoned him to take a seat next to Varric. The dwarf laughed, and Isabela threw her feet up on the table next to Varric's feet. Her boots went all the way up her thighs, and with the way she was sitting Anders suddenly couldn't tell if she was wearing anything under the dress.

Anders shook himself. Just because she was gorgeous didn't mean he should have been thinking anything. That part of his life was over. Karl hadn't been safe with him. Bethany hadn't been safe with him. No one was safe with him. He shouldn't be thinking that way about anyone. Besides, he couldn't do that to the bath.

"Rivaini, Blondie," Varric gestured between them, "Blondie, Rivaini."

"It's Isabela," Isabela said, making a rolling motion with her hand reminiscent of a bow, "Previously 'Captain' Isabela, but sadly without my ship the title rings a bit hollow." She gave Anders another long look, "Where are you from? You've got the Fereldan accent, but those delicious little freckles are from somewhere else."

"No, you got it right," Anders said, far from interested in telling his origin story. "I'm Fereldan. And it's Anders."

"I love Fereldans," Isabela grinned, "I was in Denerim during the Blight, you know. I even met the Hero of Ferelden, once."

"You did?" Anders' hand slipped on his tankard, and it nearly went spilling into his lap. He shoved it onto the table and sat forward. "When? What?"

"I didn't meet him meet him," Isabela laughed, "No need to get excited. Believe me, though, I tried. The hands on that man... you could just tell they could do things to a person. We met... the same way I met Hawke, actually. After a bar-fight. He was traveling with an old friend of mine. The three of us had a long chat, and played a bit of cards. He was mean at Wicked Grace, and that's about all I know about him."

"What about you, Blondie?" Varric asked. "You were a Warden. You ever meet him?"

"Yeah," Anders took a long drink, and ale helped push the lump in his throat back down to his stomach. "I met him."

"Any opinion?" Varric asked. "I'm always curious about the people behind the legends."

Anders shrugged. Another bite of cheese helped. "Same as the stories. Ten feet tall with fire in his eyes."

"You can say that again," Isabela shivered. "I remember those eyes. I just wanted to pluck them out and keep them as a necklace."

"You okay there, Blondie?" Varric asked. "You look a little green."

Anders swallowed down the vomit that had crawled up into his throat, and chased away the taste with the last of his ale. "I just haven't eaten any dairy in a while. I think it's upsetting my stomach."

"Then stop eating it," Hawke said from the doorway, a tray piled high with food and drink balanced on his arm. He dropped Anders' plate of roast boar in front of him, and the rich smell suddenly made Anders wish he'd ordered something mild.

Hawke passed out drinks, and fell back into his seat. Anders eyes lingered on him longer than they needed to, but he doubted Hawke would notice. The man rarely looked up from his drink, and when he did it was only for Varric. He sat with one leg draped over his dog, and seemed more or less lost in thought.

He couldn't have been that bad. He took care of Merrill. He even took care of Anders, apparently. If he turned into an ass when he opened his mouth at least he was aware of it. Anders couldn't really fault him for being protective of his sister. Every mage needed someone like that to look out for them.

"So Hawke, tell me everything about you and..." Isabela looked at Anders, "What did you say your name was again?"

"Anders," Anders said. The hunk of boar was surrounded with assorted vegetables, and Anders started with a potato. It slid in half on his fork and melted in his mouth. No tears, Anders. Don't let them see you cry.

"Nothing to tell." Hawke said.

"Nothing? What about that time you had your hands all over me in my clinic?" Anders joked.

"Oh this I have to hear," Isabela said eagerly. "Did he grey your warden?"

"You mean did we buck the forbidden horse?" Anders joked.

"Explore your Deep Roads?" Isabela countered.

"Forge the moaning statue?" Anders grinned.

"Master your taint?" Isabela joked.

Anders laughed, and Varric was wheezing.

"Stop. Both of you," Hawke ordered.

"So he's fair game?" Isabela grinned a predatory grin.

"You'd have to ask Beth." Hawke said.

"I told you, there's nothing going on there." Anders said.

"I haven't given you any reason to tell me the truth if there is," Hawke said. "Mother seems to think so. She's already naming the grandchildren."

"I might have to tell her a few things about the Taint in that case," Anders mused.

"What's she come up with so far?" Varrice asked.

"Astride and Malcolm for boys, Miriam for a girl." Hawke said.

"Maker's breath, you're serious," Varric laughed.

"The poor girl needs some love, still a virgin at twenty," Isabela waggled her eyebrows at Anders. "Or maybe not anymore?"

"I'm not touching that." Anders said and drank instead.

"Stop," Hawke said. "Please."

"Oh Hawke, you know I'd cut his balls off if he hurt her." Isabela nudged Hawke's arm with her boot. "Don't be such a prude."

"New topic," Hawke ordered.

"Messere Hawke?" Norah called from the doorway.

Hawke climbed out of his chair, "What is it?"

"The clothes," Norah explained. "I don't think there's any salvaging them. It might just be better to burn them."

"No!" Anders bolted out of his chair, and didn't move more than a step before Hawke's hand closed on his shoulder and shoved him back down into his seat.

"Calm down. No one's burning your clothes," Hawke said. "I'll get them, Norah."

"Drinks, Norah?" Varric asked.

"I'll keep them coming," Norah agreed.

Hawke left with the barmaid. Anders' head was swimming. "Is he seriously going to go wash my clothes?"

"Oh sweetie," Isabela raised her tankard at him, "Get ready to be pampered."

"I'm getting a lot of mixed signals here," Anders said. "Half of you act like Hawke is a monster and the other half act like he's annointed."

"Why not both?" Isabela shrugged. "Wicked Grace? What do you two say?"

"I'm game," Varric said.

"Alright, but I don't have any coin to bet." Anders said.

"With you and Varric? I'm good for strip Wicked Grace," Isabela grinned.

"Riviani, how many times must I remind you I'm spoken for?" Varric sighed.

Isabela pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, and Anders swore her knew her. "But the chest hair..."

"I'll let you run your fingers through it if you win," Varric offered.

"Oh, Varric, stop!" Isabela squirmed in her chair, "You're making me quiver."

"You know you want to," Varric grinned.

"Oh, I do... I can't resist you," Isabela walked her fingers across the table and up Varric's arm. "No one can."

"I know. It's a terrible burden," Varric stood with a dramatic sigh, "Let me get my cards."

Anders stared at Isabela across the table. The woman was dripping with jewelry, a giant gold choker at her neck set with turquoise, piercings everywhere, bracelets cascading up her arms. Anders was as attracted as he was envious. Isabela grinned at the attention and blew a kiss at him.

"I know I know you," Anders said. "I never forget a pretty face."

"You noticed my face?" Isabela huffed and threw her chest forward, "I'm insulted."

Anders laughed.

"You're Fereldan, you said." Isabela mused. "Ever spend any time at the Pearl? The boys and I use to dock there a lot."

The memory came back in a rush. She hadn't had quite so many piercings, and her hair had been shorter. She'd been wearing armor at the time, and later nothing, and Maker Anders couldn't believe he'd forgotten her. "That's it! You were going to let me join your crew, but the templars caught up with me before you were ready to ship out."

"Oh!" Isabela dropped her feet off the table and leaned forward eagerly, "I remember you! You were the runaway mage who could do that electricity thing. That was nice..."

"I don't think I need to know this about either of you," Varric said, taking his seat back and shuffling his cards.

"I'm glad you got away, sweet thing," Isabela put her feet back up on the table, and collected the cards as Varric dealt them. "I was seriously depressed about that for a few days. Did I mention the electricity thing was nice?"

Anders laughed, and lost. He and Justice had never been good at Wicked Grace, and Anders wasn't expecting to win, but the company was welcome. Anders doubted he'd have allowed himself it if Hawke hadn't forced him into it. The boar was exquisite; the meat was dark and marinated, the vegetables cooked to perfection, and the ale was bottomless. Varric hadn't been wrong; Anders needed it.

Most of Varric's stories centered around Hawke, while Isabela's centered around her time as a ship captain. Anders kept most of his stories to himself. His past wasn't a place he wanted to revisit, and the present was limited to stories of cleansing the grippe and joint pain. The three of them drank ale like water, and Anders knew himself well enough to know that being sloshed meant he should have been crawling into the nearest lap, but Isabela's lap stayed empty.

Anders didn't laugh at every joke. He didn't tell his own. He felt the spirits cloud his head, and could only guess they clashed with his spirit when he felt a mixture disquiet, discomfort, and confusion. Underlying it all was a sense of frustration tinted with fear. Anders knew he never would have felt that way on his own. Which meant Justice must have hated them drunk.

... Well that was just too bloody bad. Anders wanted to be free of everything for one night. He'd damn well earned it. The grief, the nightmares, the hunger, the loneliness, the stress. He was done with it. Maker knew he wasn't getting laid, which left drink if he wanted to forget himself.

Except it wasn't working with Justice's emotions bleeding into his own. Anders had never been an unhappy drunk before, but he was certainly one now. He was too stubborn to stop, and his spirit was too drunk to exert any influence to stop him. Anders didn't even know it was possible to get a spirit drunk.

The thought that he might actually end up hurting Justice was what finally convinced him to put his drink down. Hawke returned when he did, and was dealt in with no comment. His hands were a shade lighter from however hard he had worked to get the stains out of Anders' clothes. Anders spent the entire game staring at him, and trying to think of an appropriate way to thank him. Nothing came to him. All he could think was that he looked like Amell.

"What?" Hawke demanded eventually, when he apparently got sick of Anders' staring.

"What, what?" Anders asked.

"Why are you staring at me for?" Hawke demanded.

"It's the beard," Isabela whispered, and burst into a fit of giggles. At least Anders wasn't the only one sloshed. Varric was little better.

"I like your eyes," Anders said.

"Great," Hawke said stiffly.

"Where'd you get them?" Anders asked, momentarily forgetting who he was talking to.

"... Runs in the family." Hawke said.

Anders laughed. It was more of a manic giggle. Justice felt like a storm raging inside his head, but it was easy to drown him out looking into those eyes. It wasn't as if Anders could do anything about the state they were in now. Justice was just going to have to weather it.

"You're drunk," Hawke said.

"Maybe," Anders grinned. "You're a looker."

"What's he looking at?" Isabela asked.

Anders laughed and set his elbows on the table to prop his head up in his hands. Maker, he was going to be sick. An angry spirit in his head felt worse than being on a ship in a storm. "Shut up," Anders muttered, digging the pads of his fingers into his forehead. "Shut up. I can't undo it."

"You okay, Blondie?" Varric asked.

"This will not be permitted again," Anders snarled, and groaned at the flash of blue that reflected on the table.

"Or... Blue?" Varric ventured.

"Fine," Anders groaned, "I'm fine. I just-I should go." Anders pushed himself to his feet. The room spun wildly, and Anders slipped. He scrambled for the table, and caught himself before he hit his knees at the cost of digging his ribs into the edge.

"You do that," Hawke said.

Anders tried, and got nowhere. An arm locked around his waist, and a hand around his wrist, and before he knew what was happening Hawke heaved him to his feet. He still smelled like Ferelden: dog and dirt and wet.

"I can walk," Anders lied.

"I'll be back, Varric," Hawke said, dragging him out the door.

"Touch his butt for me!" Isabela called after them.

"Fuck, he's going to make me throw up." Anders groaned.

"Your weird shit?" Hawke guessed.

"His name is Justice," Anders said.

"Give me your key," Hawke ordered, holding him up outside the door to his room. Anders fished for it in his pocket, and eventually managed to take hold of the metal and shove it at Hawke's chest. Hawke had to pry it out of his clenched fist. His hands were rough and calloused and Anders probably shouldn't have noticed.

"You can let go now," Anders slurred. "I should go back to the clinic. I shouldn't be here. I can't control us."

"Shut up." Hawke said, dragging him into his room and closing the door behind them. "Can you stand?" Hawke asked, setting him in the middle of his room and loosening his grip. Anders pitched forward, and Hawke grabbed him and heaved him back onto his shoulder.

"I'm going to be sick," Anders said.

Anders didn't remember being moved to his bed, but he was suddenly sitting on the edge of it. Hawke pushed a chamber pot into his hands, and the smell was enough to push Anders into throwing up into it. Anders sobbed despite himself, not for the feel of his lunch being torn back up his throat, but just for the knowledge that he'd lost the first meal he'd had in months. The bed shifted and Anders felt calloused fingers on his scalp, and his hair was drawn back from his face.

"Fuck, I'm sorry," Anders groaned. His head was still reeling, and his throat shuddered, and he threw up again. "Maker-shit."

"Uncle's a sot," Hawke said, "I'm used to it."

"I'm not a sot," Anders snapped.

"Not what I meant," Hawke muttered.

A shudder ran up Anders' spine, and he reached feebly for the floor to set the pot down. Hawke took it from him and traded it for a rag. "I'm not," Anders wiped off his face, "I didn't even have that much."

"You don't need that much," Hawke said, letting go of his hair, "My sister weighs more than you and can't drink half as much."

"I don't-" Anders bit down another sob, "I don't know why he won't let me drink."

"He's in your head, and you don't know what he's thinking?" Hawke asked.

"I can't-talk to him," Anders explained. "I just feel things... Maker, I miss him so much." Anders dropped the rag and buried his face in his hands, thoughts bleeding between Amell and Justice. He wept remembering both, and wasn't sure how long it took him to come up from his hands, but Hawke was still sitting next to him.

The man had propped up a leg and draped his arm over his knee, and was staring off into the distance, paying next to no mind to Anders weeping next to him. He glanced over when the sobbing stopped, and held out a fresh rag.

"I'm sorry," Anders dragged the cloth over his eyes and pinched it at his nose.

"Don't care," Hawke said. "Just don't expect me to know what to say."

"Why are you doing all this for me?" Anders asked. "Why do you even care?"

"I told you why," Hawke said.

"I don't want your pity," Anders tried for a sneer, and imagined it looked ugly with how red his face must be. The anger came easy; Anders didn't doubt half of it was from Justice and directed at him, but it was hard to decipher which emotions were his when it all bled together into a pounding mess in Anders' head.

"Yes you do," Hawke said.

"You don't know me," Anders said.

"You're an apostate." Hawke said. "Don't need to know more than that."

"What does that mean?" Anders asked.

"It means you're alone," Hawke said. "No friends. No family. No home. I know that life. I can't fault you and Beth for wanting something more."

Anders decided liked the hard set to Hawke's eyebrows. It made him look hard, but it also made him look true. Like no matter what he said or who he was saying it to, he'd be honest. "Beth was right. You do have a soft heart."

"I just-... I think-... that's not-..." Hawke stuttered.

Maker's breath, was he shy? Was that it?

"I'm making you uncomfortable," Anders guessed.

"Yes." Hawke said quickly. "I mean-... yes. But.. it's- it's fine."

"... even though I'm a filthy fucking sewer rat?" Anders asked.

"You were filthy." Hawke said.

"I guess I was," Anders allotted; he still felt the same chaos of emotion in his head, unsettled and angry when he wanted to feel anything else. He settled on it when he couldn't escape it, "Abomination?"

"Scares the shit out of me," Hawke said.

"Seriously?" Anders asked.

"Go to sleep." Hawke said.

"I'm not tired," Anders said.

"You're drunk," Hawke stood up, and picked up the rancid chamber pot and ruined rags, "Go to sleep anyway. I'll bring your clothes and get you when I've got a job outside the city."

"Hawke," Anders called after him. "Thank you. For my clothes. You didn't have to do that, or any of this after what happened to Beth because of me. I know I don't deserve it, but- I..." Maker, what was he even trying to say?

"I told you not to thank me," Hawke said.

"I'm thanking you anyway," Anders said.

"... you're welcome."

Notes:

Fanart
Hawke washing Anders' clothes / Anders and Amell

 

Apples and Apostates
Poor Bastard: The past past two chapters told from Hawke's perspective.

Tell Me About Carver: A conversation between Hawke and Varric following the exchange in this chapter.

Chapter 62: Meetings

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back. Thank you all for your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 6 Molioris Early Morning
Kirkwall Docks: Sewers

Anders' boots scuffed across the water-worn floor of the sewers, dislodging rocks and refuse. He knew he needed to stop pacing, but his anxiety was coiled around his spine like a snake, clenching tighter and tighter as every minute passed. What was he doing? Maker, he knew better.

The second they saw that flash of silver, that ironic sword, those cleansing flames, they were going to go mad. The bloody bastard wasn't going to survive his change of heart because Anders was going to rip it out of his chest whether he wanted to or not. Anders felt something keener than hatred for templars, but a templar willing to risk his life for the cause of mages? That was what the Order should have been. Protectors, not purifiers. Anders didn't want to kill him.

Anders breathed life into the flames of the torch illuminating his small space in the sewers so they burned a little brighter. The underground cavern was expansive, but dark. He hoped this wasn't a trap. He didn't want to wake up in another cramped sewer, covered in shit, with no memory of how he'd spent the past few hours. Especially not now that his clothes were clean.

Anders bit down a fond smile. Clean. Maker, what a feeling. Anders ran his hands up his arms beneath his sleeves, relishing in the smooth texture of his own skin. It was one of a few good things to come out of his night at the Hanged Man. Once Anders had stopped being such a sot, he'd come to the sober conclusion that overeating on a weak stomach and overdrinking on a weak body had as much to do with him being ill as Justice.

He still had no idea why his spirit disapproved of drinking, but Anders wasn't about to subject himself to that nightmare again. He was finally full, and that was all that mattered. Hawke had bought him breakfast to replace the dinner he'd lost, and Varric had offered to put him on his tab provided Anders didn't abuse the allowance. Anders hadn't touched it. He could scarcely believe anyone could be so generous.

The two of them were damned liars. It wasn't bad guard, worse guard, it was good guard, better guard, and damned if Anders couldn't tell which was which. Anders kicked a rock across the sewers, and listened to the echo as it fled down a darkened corridor. He had to go to the Deep Roads with them. Even if he didn't owe Hawke for Bethany, he owed them for the kindness.

"Serah?" A voice echoed through the sewers, low and uncertain. Just knowing it for a templar made Anders' shoulders tense and his stomach knot. He took a deep breath when he turned, and let it out in relief. The man wasn't wearing his armor. Thank the Maker.

"Bardel?" Anders guessed.

"I am," Bardel agreed, pulling down his hood and stepping forward into the torch-light. He was a decent enough looking fellow. Close cropped black hair, and a goatee peppered with grey. His brow was heavy with worry lines, and for some reason that reassured Anders. No templar should walk away from the atrocities of the Circle unscathed. "You must be Anders."

"That's the rumor," Anders said.

"I come unarmed," Bardel spread out both arms, cloak billowing out behind him at the motion. "I realize I can do nothing for the lyrium in my veins, but neither can you do anything for the magic in yours. I hope we stand on even footing."

"Close enough," Anders agreed, if only for the cut he'd already made above the bend in his elbow. It was tied off with a bandage, but the blood was there, waiting if he needed it. "You wanted to meet with us?"

"I wanted to meet with you," Bardel said, dragging his fingers through his short hair. "I owe it to Thekla. This is not a conversation to have standing..."

"Well give it a shot," Anders said around the lump in his throat at the mention of Karl.

"I was the one who found him writing to you," Bardel explained, eyes sliding off Anders' face and to the floor. "I reported it. I should have known better after Maddox, but I thought surely-... Thekla's blood will forever be on my hands. The blood of my brothers sent to ambush you. Everything that happened. "

Static rolled over Anders' skin. His hands were burning, and his only thought was crushing the templar's head in his hand. The broken bones of his skull imbedded in Anders' palm, that carthatic pain and the warmth of his blood like a shock of cold compared to the fire in Anders' stomach. Anders took a deep breath and locked his hands over his head. "Why are you here?"

"For Thekla. For myself. ... Maker save me, for every mage at Alrik's mercy. He's a sadist." Bardel started pacing, hands alternating between his hair and his hips. "It was his idea. Make an example of the Libertarian, nevermind that Thekla was an Enchanter, decorated, Harrowed. He ordered Thekla Tranquil, and I can't anymore.

"This isn't why I joined the Order. My own brother was a mage; I joined to stay close and take care of him. When the Knight-Commander had him moved to Ostwick... I begged for Thekla. I swear it, but Alrik wouldn't hear me. I asked for reassignment. Alrik drove the brand into Thekla's forehead himself, and the Knight-Commander allowed it.

"I need to know you know what happened to him. We don't know enough of the Tranquil. We don't want to, the way they shuffle through the halls like the walking dead. It's easier to ignore them, but there is something left of them, locked away in there by that brand. I swear there is. Thekla cared for you, in his own way, even then.

"I spoke with him. He told me he wanted you Tranquil, and I know how that sounds, but you didn't hear his reason. He said what happened to him would hurt you, and he didn't want you to suffer. If there was nothing left of him, he wouldn't care. If he was emotionless-"

"Why are you telling me this!?" Anders interrupted, his words broken between a sob and a shout. He smeared away the tears forming at the corners of his eyes and blinked Bardel back into focus. "He's dead. I killed him. Don't tell me he was still in there!"

"I think the Order has told enough lies, don't you?" Bardel asked. "If you killed him, it was a mercy. I won't deny that. An echo of a man isn't a man, but it still stands that you obviously meant something to him. The last letter was a lie. Alrik had him write it while he was Tranquil. I have the one we confiscated. The one that got him caught, that he never sent."

Bardel reached into a pocket on his cloak and pulled out a piece of torn parchment and the sand coin Anders had picked up off the coast for Karl. It was charred black. Anders dragged his sleeve over his eyes and snatched both from Bardel's hand.

"When we found him... he burnt the rest of the letters and what I assume were gifts from you," Bardel said. "The coin was the only thing the flames didn't consume. Alrik was furious. He had him interrogated and Maker, forgive me, but you and the rest of your brethren need to know what kind of man he is. Alrik likes to see how far he can push mages before they break. Thekla suffered, but he kept silent.

"After he was branded, he answered their questions. They know that you're an apostate in the city who can shape-shift. They know your name is Anders, and they've sent to the other Circles for your phylactery, but they haven't gotten word back. I'm willing to hazard a guess you don't have one, or your name isn't Anders, or both.

"They haven't made the connection between you and the renegade healer in Darktown. I have, and I have to say again, the Tranquil are more than they appear. Thekla didn't volunteer that information to Alrik, but he told me when I asked after you. The templars aren't too concerned with the apostate in the sewers. They don't think you're a threat.

"The Darktown raids are twice a month, on the second day of the second week of the month, and the second to last day of the month. They search the refugee camps, but they send the greens. Something to get them accustomed to exerting their power and influence. I've tried to pretend otherwise. That it's a decent training exercise, and we don't know how many apostates are in from Ferelden, but I can't keep making excuses for the Order.

"I know the shifts in the Gallows. Who sleeps, who drinks, who plays dice, and who stays vigilant. I can get a mage out through the cracks, but I can't do more than that. If I make a hand off, it has to be in the tunnels beneath the Gallows or at the docks. It's not safe for mages in the Gallows anymore. Not with Alrik running loose."

"That all?" Anders leaned back against a dirty pillar and tilted his head back to keep any tears from falling. There was moss and mold on the ceiling above him and the occasional cockroach scuttled past. For some reason, it was easier to look at than the templar.

"It is," Bardel agreed. "I'm ready whenever you are."

"We're there not yet," Anders said.

"Jake told me," Bardel said. "But I thought you deserved to know about Thekla. Do you need anything from me?"

"Connection with the Coterie," Anders said. "We need access to their tunnels."

"I'm no addict." Bardel said. "At least no more than the next templar. I've seen what lyrium can do to a man. I don't have any ties to the Coterie but... There's a man. Raleigh Samson. He's sympathetic to mages and he was expelled from the Order for it, but he's as addicted as they come. I hear he spends his nights in East Lowtown, in the foundry hex. He might be able to get you in touch with his old contacts."

Anders nodded, and stared down at the crumpled parchment in his hand. "... You swear you tried to save him?"

"I tried to reason with Alrik. With the Knight-Commander," Bardel said. "... No one heard me. If your friends can spare even one mage Thekla's fate, I'll do whatever's needed. It's my responsibility as a templar."

"We'll be in touch," Anders said.

Bardel gave him a small bow, pulled up his hood, and left. Anders stayed in the sewer, staring at the letter in his hand, trying and failing not to think of some part of Karl surviving Tranquility. Karl had begged for death. However much of him was left, it wasn't enough. Anders took a deep breath and stored the letter and the burnt coin in his satchel.

Anders pulled up his own gifted cloak, healed the precaution cut on his arm, and went back to his clinic. He'd meet with Selby when he was sure he wasn't being followed. Anders doubted Bardel was lying, but it never hurt to be safe with templars. Bardel might have told him everything just for an excuse to get to the Collective headquarters. Justice lit their lantern, Anders unlocked his clinic. He set down his satchel and took out the letter and the burnt sand coin.

Anders picked up the coin. The texture felt the same, rough and grainy beneath his thumb. It was just a coin. It felt like sand. There was nothing special to it, but Karl had been so happy to have it. Anders set it on his shelf with the seashell he'd never been able to give Karl. He'd tried carrying it as a crow, but it was too heavy.

Anders stared at the letter. He made himself a pot of rice and dusted his furniture. He swept the floors and then mopped them. He beat dust out of his quilt and tarps. He ate his rice. The letter stayed on the table.

How long could he avoid it for?

"Cloak's the right length?" A hard voice asked from the door. Anders breathed a sigh of relief for the distraction and stowed the letter away with the others.

Hawke was clad in dark leather with a red sash wrapped around his waist Anders guessed had something to do with the Red Iron. He had his quiver on his hip and his bow on his back, and Anders guessed they were going somewhere. He managed a smile, "Right at the ankles. Good guess."

"Got a job to kill drakes," Hawke explained. "Interested?"

"Drakes?" Anders asked, "Really? Well, no wonder they call this the Dragon Age. The bloody things are everywhere. Where at?"

"The Bone Pits," Hawke said.

"The Bone Pits?" Anders repeated. "You're working for that Orlesian bastard? Half my patients are from the Bone Pits. The tracks are old and the carts are always toppling over, and Hubert won't splurge for any safety equipment. That place is a bloody death trap. You should let the drakes keep it."

"Drakes aren't offering three sovereigns and half the mine," Hawke said.

"How do you know?" Anders asked. "Have you asked them?"

Anders decided to count the hard exhale and scoff as a laugh. "Are you coming or not? Beth wants to see you."

"Alright," Anders stored his things beneath his cot and grabbed his staff. He locked the door to his clinic behind him. Dog growled when Anders stepped out into Darktown. Hawke flicked its ear and the growling stopped.

"I'm serious about the mine though," Anders said, taking a spot opposite the mabari on their walk through Darktown. "I get needing the coin, but partnering with him? Are you sure about that?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Hawke asked.

"Because I didn't think you'd be in favor of perpetuating abusive labor practices against Fereldans?" Anders guessed.

"I'm not," Hawke said.

"Care to explain then?" Anders prodded.

"If it's mine I can fix it," Hawke said.

"I didn't think of it that way," Anders mused. "I doubt you'll turn much of a profit cleaning up Hubert's mess, though." Hawke didn't comment. "So what do they even mine over there?"

"Iron. Drakestone. Glitterdust and stone." Hawke said. "Whatever they find a vein for."

"So he can afford to pay for safety equipment is what you're saying." Anders said.

"Yes," Hawke said.

"Well then I guess it's good the workers will have you looking out for them," Anders said, stepping onto the lift with him. Dog whined and crawled across the floor to stuff itself between Hawke's legs while he started cranking. "... That's a thing you do, isn't it? Look out for people?"

Hawke tossed his hair out of his face to stare up at him while cranked; Maker's breath that wasn't fair at all. The way his jet blank hair fell around his brow and his beard framed his confused frown, the raised eyebrow over those damned eyes, "Why are you pestering me for?"

"Just trying to figure you out," Anders felt his throat dry up on him and shrugged. "Am I making you uncomfortable again?"

"... I take care of what's mine." Hawke said.

"I like that." Anders said. "You know? I respect it. It's good Beth has you."

"I-" Hawke cleared his throat, and his eyes mercifully slipped away, "The other day- with you- I shouldn't have-..."

"Picked me up and shook me like a rag doll?" Anders guessed.

"... That." Hawke agreed.

"You could try words next time, I'm just saying," Anders said.

"I'm not good at words," Hawke said.

"I noticed," Anders said.

The lift stopped, and Dog ran off and out of the building. A whistle brought him back, and Anders and Hawke got off the lift. Anders followed Hawke through Lowtown to the gates that led from the city, distantly aware he shouldn't be thinking any of the things he was thinking. Then again, it wasn't as if Hawke would notice Anders' eyes on him. The man was staring fixedly forward, uninterested in eye-contact.

It was easier to look at him if Anders didn't have to see his eyes. There was nothing familiar in the rest of Hawke. His dark leather armor was covered with metal guards at the joints, and reminded Anders more of Nathaniel than Amell. The stride was all Velanna, impatient and clipped short for Anders to keep pace with him, but the thighs were definitely Hawke. Anders might have stared more if his mantle didn't extend down past his knees.

"So is the butt cape part of the ensem or something?" Anders asked.

"What?" Hawke half turned, half tripped to face him.

"The butt cape," Anders waved a hand at the flap of leather smacking Hawke in the back of his knees. "What's the point?"

"What's the point of your coat?" Hawke countered.

"It's fashionable," Anders said.

Hawke let out a bark of laughter, and considering Anders had been hoping for it he managed not to jump, "It was my father's."

"Bethany said he used to be a mercenary?" Anders asked.

"Crimson Oars," Hawke gave the red sash a tug.

"The Red Iron doesn't mind you wearing another band's uniform?" Anders asked.

"Armor's busted," Hawke explained.

Anders hummed. It seemed like decent progress. No barking. No biting. Semi-complete sentences. He couldn't think of how to continue the conversation and settled on walking in an almost-companionable silence, broken by the bustle of the city and the butt of Anders' staff hitting the ground every few steps.

"I'm not violent," Hawke said suddenly.

"What?" Anders glanced at him, and wondered why he bothered. Hawke wasn't looking at him.

"I'm not violent." Hawke said again, "With people. Beth... The arrow... It took all night to heal her. She had a seizure somewhere in the middle of it and I thought..."

"Hey, I get it." Anders said. "Look, my best friend in this city stabbed me. Actually stabbed me. Got the bloody blade buried to the hilt in my shoulder. I think if I can take that I can take you roughing me up a little. You had a right to be angry. I knew better."

"... I'm sorry." Hawke said.

"I said it's okay." Anders said.

"No, I mean I'm sorry for you." Hawke elaborated. "For being a mage. If you were normal I wouldn't stop you and Beth from spending time together."

"If I were normal!?" Anders demanded, tension sweeping up his back, "Where do you get off? First it's abomination and now how the Maker created me isn't normal?"

"That's not- I meant-" Hawke looked at him, and then quickly away. He ran his hands through his hair, and gesturing down the street. "Nevermind. West Gate's this way. Come or don't."

Hawke left him behind. Anders' flash of anger faded when he was gone. "Well shit," Anders sighed. He knew what Hawke had meant. It didn't make it any better, but Anders supposed he should get used to it. Hawke's sister was a mage, and the Chantry had it so engrained that magic was evil his tongue still slipped.

At least Bethany would be there. Anders picked up his pace and hurried after Hawke. It was a mercy Kirkwall was crowded. The streets were teeming with citizens and refugees, gangs and cutpurses, and the guards were overworked. Even with a staff, Anders could hold it at a slant beneath his cloak, and blend in with the crowds passing through the city gates. He found Hawke down the road, on the path that led up into the Vimmark Mountains.

Merrill was there, dressed up in leather and leaves and cradling a staff against her chest that looked more a piece of driftwood than a mage's weapon. She was rocking back and forth on the broken down half wall that lined the road, and died off into rubble further down. She waved when she saw Anders, and made the rest of the group look over.

Bethany was still in her chainmail; her staff tapered off into a blade and could easily be taken for a partisan. Anders had no such luck. His staff was a staff, through and through. Engraved with runes and set with a crystal, there was no mistaking the dragonbone for anything other than a mage's weapon. Anders thought it was a little ridiculous that life as a Grey Warden was simpler than where he was now.

The guard was there, to Anders' immense dismay. The shield Anders had shattered had been replaced with standard guard issue equipment, the Kirkwall insignia red and dripping on the iron. Anders couldn't see her expression from a distance, but he doubted it was friendly. She slammed a helmet down on her head before Anders reached them.

The last was a soldier. Short, if not elven. Their armor was silverite, dark crow feathers sprouting out from their vambraces and greaves in a style that seemed reminiscent of Tevinter. Their full helm was in the vague shape of a wolf, and they were leaning on a great sword talking to Hawke.

"Hello Anders," Merrill said when Anders stopped by her and Bethany. "Hello Justice. We're going to kill drakes! Isn't that exciting?"

"Hi Merrill," Anders said.

"Anders," Beth grinned wide enough to bunch up her cheeks, "Do I get a hug yet?"

"Sure," Anders shrugged and held out an arm. Bethany switched her staff to her opposite hand and hugged him in an awkward tangle of chainmail and feathers. She smelled like her brother, with the added breath of the Fade.

"You look so much better!" Bethany pulled back to grin. "Doesn't he look better, Merrill?"

"Better how?" Merrill asked, eyes darting over Anders' coat. "Did I miss something?"

"Nothing, Merrill," Anders grinned.

"Do you feel better?" Bethany asked him. "You must. Thank you for coming with us. I know it must be hard to leave the clinic."

"It is, but I could stand to get out of the city." Anders shrugged. "And it's good to see you."

"We're setting out," Hawke interrupted.

Anders jumped and dropped his staff, and made a mad scramble after it before it hit the ground. The man was standing right over his shoulder and had gotten there without a sound. Anders spun, but Hawke was already walking off.

"So, hey," Anders called after him. "Drakes? Do you have a plan for this? Fire balms? A way to keep a dragon on the ground if we find one?"

"Beth has the balms," Hawke said. "Merrill says she can keep any dragons on the ground. We can talk more at the mines, away from the city."

Hawke rejoined the guard and the soldier, and set out down the road. Merrill hopped off the half-wall, and took a spot beside Bethany. Anders was glad the two had finally had a chance to spend together. Anders picked a spot next to Bethany, and surveyed the small group ahead of them. An archer, two warriors, and three mages. Not counting the mabari, right up until they'd recruited Justice, it was a painfully familiar combination.

"Did you like the quilt?" Bethany asked, carrying her staff on her shoulder, "And the cloak? You must. You're wearing it."

"It's marvelous Beth, thanks for thinking of me," Anders said.

"Oh no, that was all Garrett." Bethany said. "I helped a little with the quilt but that's all."

"You could just take the thanks." Anders said, but he supposed he wasn't one to talk.

"I kind of like Garrett getting all the credit for everything." Bethany said. "The bigger shadow he casts the easier it is for me to hide in it."

"I know that feeling." Anders said. "Nice staff."

"Thank you," Bethany grinned, wringing her hands on the leather grip. The staff looked made from ashwood and set with a fire crystal. Anders guessed the blade was red steel. "It's a family heirloom. I don't have the upper body strength to use it like a polearm but it's a good disguise. My father gave it to me. He had another he carved for himself, but it was more like yours. Shameless. Proud. I couldn't carry that around in Kirkwall."

"Why not?" Merrill asked.

"Templars, Merrill." Bethany said.

"Oh! Right," Merrill said. "I suppose that was a silly question."

"You never had to worry about any," Bethany said. "I wish they were something I could forget."

It set the conversation down a dark path Anders didn't want to follow. He nodded his head towards Hawke's companions, "So who are they?"

"You met Aveline," Bethany said. "Fenris is.... my brother's friend, for some reason."

"He's very cross," Merrill said brightly. "And not very fond of... well... anything."

"He hates mages, or, I'm sorry," Bethany rolled her eyes, "'Magic.' Can we not talk about him?"

"What should we talk about instead?" Merrill asked.

"Is your staff sylvanwood?" Anders guessed.

"Oh! Yes!" Merrill exclaimed, pushing the tangled knot of driftwood at him, "How did you know? Here! You can feel the forest in it."

A prickle like bramble or nettle ran over Anders' fingers touching the wood. He gave it an experimental spin, but the balance was wild, and not meant for melee combat. The power was there, though, an entropic pull that reminded Anders of the handful of times he'd touched Amell's staff.

"I like it," Anders said.

Merrill beamed. "Can I try yours?"

Anders hesitated, and felt a bit of a bastard for it. "Alright but-... be careful with it, it means a lot to me."

Merrill took the dragonbone gingerly, and shivered running her hands over it. "Elgar'nan, it feels like holding lightning." Merrill set her fingers to the crystal and pulled them back, arcs of electricity tethering her to the staff. "It sings... This is ancient."

"Merrill, maybe not until we're off the road?" Bethany begged.

Merrill cut off the spell, face flushing pink beneath her tattoos, "Oh. I'm sorry. You're right." Merrill traded back staffs with him. "It is lovely though. Where did you get it? Oh dear, is that an okay thing for me to ask? It's not rude, is it?"

"Perks of being a Warden," Anders said.

"Could I?" Bethany asked.

Anders shrugged and traded staffs with her. The ashwood felt like coal beneath his fingers, wisps of smoke breaking out around his palm. If he focused, he could almost hear the fire crystal crackling, or maybe Justice could.

"This makes the hair on my arm stand on end," Bethany laughed, fingers sparking on their way down the dragonbone. "How do you stand this?"

"It comforts us," Anders traded back for his staff and rolled his fingers over the runework. The familiar tingle ran up his spine, and felt as soothing as it always did.

Merrill giggled. "You said us!"

"Did I? Well..." Anders shrugged. "I guess Justice likes it too then."

"Are you getting any better at letting him step forward?" Merrill asked.

"No," Anders admitted. "I thinks he's kind of mad at me right now. Turns out he's not much of a drinker. I remember once Oghren, a friend, let him try brandy, but all of Kristoff's- Justice's old body's taste buds were gone by then, and Justice couldn't really experience it. He was always fascinated with sensations, though. I don't know why he didn't like it."

"I know I don't," Bethany said. "I hate feeling like I'm not in control of myself. It scares me."

"You know that... might actually be it, Beth, thanks." Anders mused. "Do you mind giving me a minute?"

Both girls shrugged allowance, and Anders walked a pace apart. It was always a struggle to make sense of how he felt. He was still dreading Karl's letter, simultaneously grateful to and frustrated with Hawke, happy for Bethany... Trying to find Justice under all of that was a mess. Anders ran his nails along his scalp, wondering how much sensation the spirit was capable of taking away from him when he was locked away behind Anders' eyes. Obviously enough to get drunk.

"Justice," Anders said. The word sounded comforting, familiar. Anders supposed that meant his spirit was listening. "I should have asked. With the drinks. I don't know why I thought it wouldn't affect you."

Nothing. Maker, Anders was bad at this. Anders sighed and rejoined Beth and Merrill, and spent the rest of the walk to the Bone Pits speaking of magic, and all its nuances. Anders did need to get out of the city. Not just because of the smell, though that was a huge influence, but it helped to remember he was a man and a mage every now and then, and not just a renegade healer.

It was a slow climb into the Vimmark Mountains. The sun was high in the sky and beat down on them mercilessly, and Anders was sweating under his coat. He should have left it behind, but he'd grown partial to wearing it to replace the weight he'd lost. The path to the Bone Pits was lined with pine and ferns, and the scent was as overwhelming as it was refreshing. Justice would have liked it here, with so many sensations, especially when Anders felt the Veil thin as they neared the mines.

"Lethallin!" Merrill called, jogging ahead to Hawke's side. The archer fell back for her, "Be careful, this place is setheneran."

"Common, Merrill," Hawke said.

"Oh! Um..." Merrill hesitated.

"She said the Veil is thin," Anders said; he couldn't forget that word if he tried with how many arguments he and Velanna had had over spirits and demons. "And she called you her clan."

"Do you speak Elvish?" Bethany asked.

"No, but I-... I had some friends who did," Anders explained. "I know a word or two."

"Fenris! Aveline!" Hawke called, and the two warriors rejoined the group. Both of them were still wearing their helmets, and Anders had no real gauge of either.

"Hawke?" The giant mass of orange armor that was Aveline said.

"I'm going to scout ahead," Hawke explained, unpacking and stringing up his bow.

"Have a care," The silver wolf that was Fenris said; his voice was a deep growl that seemed to fit the theme of his armor, "This ground is cursed. Many slaves died here... their cries linger in the stone."

"Wait, you can feel the Veil?" Anders asked.

"What I can and cannot do is no concern of yours, mage," Fenris said.

"Here I thought you said he was cross," Anders joked.

Hawke smeared a vial of kaddis over himself and his dog and stood up.

"Are you sure you have enough arrows if you run into a drake?" Anders asked.

"Yes," Hawke said. "All of you wait here for me. Beth, balms."

Bethany handed her brother two balms from her satchel, one Anders imagined was for the dog. Instead of following the path, Hawke vaulted up the side of the hill it was set against. His mabari followed him with a running leap, and both of them vanished into the tree line.

"So you said he was a mercenary," Anders recalled, while Bethany handed out balms to the rest of them, "Any experience leading?"

"He was a sergeant at Ostagar." Aveline volunteered. "He's competent, and that's more than can be said of most."

Anders held up both hands to ward the woman off. Everyone in this ragtag group was overprotective of everyone. Bethany handed Anders his balm, and he unscrewed the lid to frown at watery golden liquid. "This isn't concentrated,"

"We can't afford concentrated," Bethany explained. "Elegant-or, Maker, Lady Elegant," Bethany rolled her eyes, "Gives my brother a discount, but each balm is still thirty silver."

"Wait," Anders struggled to do the math in his head, "So you're making less than a sovereign off this job?"

"Not exactly," Bethany said, her strained smile more a cringe, "Garrett has a friend in the Gallows who's willing to buy whatever we can carve off the drakes. We might get three sovereigns out of this, depending on how intact the bodies are, but even if we don't it's an investment in the mine... so..."

"And if you never manage to afford your expedition?" Fenris asked. "What then?"

"We'll get there." Bethany said.

"Is the Circle here truly so terrible an option?" Fenris asked.

"Do you really have to ask that?" Bethany snapped.

"You would be kept safe from others as well as yourself, and they would be kept safe from you," Fenris said.

"I think you just set a record," Anders mused, "Three sentences, and I already hate you."

"I could say the same," Aveline said.

"Agreed," Fenris said.

"That cloud there looks a bit like a butterfly," Merrill interjected.

"It does, doesn't it?" Bethany agreed.

The five of them stood in an uncomfortable silence until Hawke came back. He stayed on the hill rather than climb back down to the path, "Looters," Hawke said. "Around the bend. The Reining Men, by the armor. A dozen. Aveline, you lead. Beth, stay safe."

Hawke and his dog vanished back into the tree-line. "That's inspiring," Anders mumbled, "Nothing like a leader not leading the charge."

Aveline turned her head towards him, and Anders imagined the she was scowling. He held up his hands again and stored his balm in his satchel for later. Aveline drew her sword and led them around the bend, Fenris at her side. The looters were scattered throughout the mining camps, picking over charred corpses and through abandoned chests.

Anders carved out glyphs of repulsion and warding for himself, Bethany, and Merrill. It was an easy routine, engrained in Anders over six long months and not forgotten in four. He felt the Fade swell as Bethany channeled an aura of aptitude, and Aveline charged the nearest cluster of looters, Fenris at her side. Aveline was unremarkable: a soldier with a shield, but Fenris was terrifying.

He wasn't anything like Oghren. He held his great sword aloft, and moved with a fluidity that reminded Anders of dancing. He glowed through the cracks in his armor, an ethereal blue of spirit fire Anders had seen so many times reflected, but never in person. Maker's breath, was he possessed too? Was that why Anders hadn't noticed a halo, but Fenris could feel the Fade?

Anders only broke out of his trance when an arrow flew wide to his right, and his warding glyph hummed beneath his feet. He looked for the looter who cast it, and pulled on the mana for a frost spell, when an arrow took the man in the throat. In the span of the same heartbeat, Hawke reached the looter, grabbed hold of the shaft in his neck, and ripped it free in a spray of blood. He fired it again not a moment later, and went chasing after it.

That... was not how archers fought. There was no way Anders was going to be able to support him. Supporting Nate had been easy; a glyph of paralysis at Nate's feet, and they were set, but Hawke was too mobile, and Bethany was already channeling aptitude for him. The Fade swelled again, and a haze of entropic magic from Merrill swallowed up three of the looters. One escaped from the dark cloud, and Anders threw a handful of ice at his feet. He watched it eat up the man's legs and hold him in place for Aveline to cut his head off, and the fight was over.

"Does anyone need healing?" Anders asked.

No one volunteered anything, but Anders could feel the frantic, post-battle pulse of Fenris' heart within reach of his fingers. Anders stared at him, wondering how to make it clear he knew the man was injured without outing himself for a maleficar, when Merrill saved him.

"Fenris does," Merrill said.

"Fasta vass," Fenris muttered, "I am fine."

"You're bleeding," Merrill said. "I can feel it."

"Watch yourself, witch," Fenris said. "It's a scratch. I've no need of magic."

"Stop whining," Hawke said, grabbing a toppled stool from one of the mining tents and setting it down next to Fenris. "Let Anders heal you."

Fenris sat with an obedience Anders honestly hadn't expected. The warrior took off his left greave and rolled up a brown pant leg to reveal where an arrow had grazed his thigh beneath his tasset. It was more than a scratch. Anders could tell from a distance by the amount of blood, and the bright red muscle contrasting with dark brown skin. Anders knelt next to him and drew on the mana for a surge of regenerative energies.

He sounded beautiful. Anders could hear the Fade singing through him, like a lost hymn to the Chant of Light. It felt like the chorus of creation, as fluid as his motions when he fought, with all the desperate yearning of the Call. Anders let go of the spell, and Justice stared at the small armored mortal before them. "You sound beautiful."

Chapter 63: Acquainted

Notes:

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(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 6 Molioris Afternoon
The Bone Pits

"Kaffas!" The mortal screamed, falling off the stool and scrambling backwards through the dirt on all fours. With a breath, he strengthened the song inside him, and glowed with all the fire of the Fade. Justice stayed kneeling, listening. He was radiant. It was so rare for a mortal to understand him, but here he had mentioned the music and the mortal had made it louder.

"You said he could control it!" The mortal screamed at Hawke.

"I thought he could!" Hawke screamed back. Justice had yet to form an opinion on him. "Look, Beth said it's not dangerous-"

"It's a demon!" The singing mortal snarled, "Of course it's dangerous!"

"I am no demon," Justice said, "Who are you to dare label me such?" He was halfway to standing when another mortal leapt in front of him. It was small and Fade-born, and summoned a handful of veilfire that breathed like the Fade and conjured memories of purpose.

"Here, Justice." The tiny mortal took one of Anders' hands, and pulled him away from the song. "Come away, you're scaring them."

"That was not my intent," Justice said, flicking his eyes back to the soul Anders had so recently healed. He couldn't decipher what might signal fear in the way the mortal held itself.

"No, of course not," The small mortal walked him back several paces, where the song was not so loud. "Of course not. Do you recognize me? I'm Merrill. Anders and I are friends. We pick flowers together."

She looked different through Justice's eyes; blood perverted the pulse of the Fade within her, but it was far from terrible. She had proven herself a friend of Anders. Able-bodied and willing to help their cause. "Yes," Justice said.

"Are you okay?" Merrill asked, "It's not too confusing for you to be out here?"

"I spent a great deal of time in the mortal world before joining with Anders," Justice said. They were fond memories, but incomparable to the sensations that a mortal body could bring out in him. The sun warmed Anders' skin and beads of sweat trickling down his spine. His clothes were loose and bunched up against his skin beneath his coat. Without any threat of danger and the chance to appreciate such sensations, they were almost overwhelming.

"Is Anders okay?" Merrill asked, "It's not hurting him to be switched with you?"

"He is... surprised, but not discontent," Justice said; he knew himself, his purpose. It was a simple matter to determine what his mortal was feeling, but far less simple to determine why. "It is my understanding he wanted this for me for many months."

"He did," Merrill said. "We were trying to practice but nothing was working."

"... I am uncertain whether or not this is safe for him. I have no wish to rule this form unless Anders is need of protection, but he sings so sweetly..." Justice glanced back to the mortal beside Hawke, unable to remember his name, and lamenting the loss of the song. Anders wore Karl's Ring of Study for him, but it didn't compare to the purity in what he'd just heard.

A handful of veilfire blocked his view of the other mortal. Justice looked back at Merrill. "Magic frightens Fenris, lethallin."

"I would not harm him," Justice said.

"No, of course not." Merrill said, a change in the pitch of her voice Justice couldn't make sense of. "But it still frightens him. I think it would be better if you stayed with me. I have so many questions for you."

"Merrill," Hawke interrupted. Justice glanced over at them; the rest of Anders' companions were keeping their distance from him. Distance was significant in the mortal world, for some reason. Anders had often pressed a hand into Justice's chest armor, and kept them an arm's length apart for 'space' during their talks, "Anders? It just said this might not be safe for him."

"Oh, I'm sure he'd never hurt Anders," Merrill said. "They're friends."

"I have caused him great distress in the past," Justice confessed, and the moments were numerous. Anders mind shattered at Amaranthine. His heart broken at Vigil's Keep. His will in Kirkwall. "Inadvertently or not, it is not something I wish to repeat."

The force of being thrown back into his body knocked Anders to his knees. His staff clattered to the ground next to him, and a crushing migraine replaced the blissful numbness he'd been enjoying behind his own eyes. Anders sucked in a breath of mana and let a wash of creationism seep from his fingers into his aching head, "Maker's breath, Justice, everyone knows you don't pull out that fast."

"Oh dear, that looked like it hurt," Merrill knelt beside him and handed him back his staff. "So self-defense and lyrium can call him? What do you suppose would happen if you drank a lyrium potion?"

"What does lyrium have to do with anything?" Anders asked, taking a deep breath to collect himself.

"Oh-um..." Merrill said.

"Fenris has lyrium markings," Bethany explained. "They-"

"Were carved into my flesh against my will, in a ritual I remember only for the agony it caused me. They curse me with the ability to reach into a man and tear out his insides," Fenris interrupted. "I do not want them romanticized. You and your demon will keep away from me."

Anders climbed to his feet, glad to feel Justice's brief infatuation fading fast, "He's not a demon."

"Of course!" Fenris scoffed, keeping a tight grip on his sword, "I'm sure you're harmless! A harmless abomination who would never harm someone!"

"What has Anders ever done to you?" Merrill demanded.

"Nothing yet," Fenris turned away from them to look at Hawke, "He harbors a demon. There is no controlling that. He is already lost. Power corrupts, and a mage has power enough already. An abomination?"

"Stop calling him that!" Bethany interrupted. "Why is Fenris even here, Garrett?"

"It's what he is, isn't it?" Aveline asked over any answer Hawke might have given, "We can't just pretend he's mage like any other. He's two people."

"That's not exactly it," Anders said.

"Isn't it?" Aveline said, "You're obviously of two minds."

"Like most people aren't," Anders sneered.

"Most people are dead set on ending badly," Aveline countered, "If you can't control your 'impulses' it's clear you're going to end up the same way."

"My impulses?" Anders laughed, and gestured to Hawke, "Like some of you are any different."

"That's not fair, Aveline," Merrill said, "Justice is just a spirit. Spirits don't have the same boundaries people do with their desires. He wasn't trying to scare anyone."

"No offense, Merrill, but I'm not sure I trust you as an expert on these things," Aveline said.

"Of course the blood mage defends the demon," Fenris scoffed.

"Everyone shut up!" Hawke interrupted. "Maker's fucking mercy, I told you both he was an abomination. If you can't deal with that, leave."

"Yes, please," Bethany agreed, glaring at Fenris, "No one is stopping you from moving on, you know."

"That's not what I meant," Hawke said quickly. "Fenris?" Hawke gestured away from their group, and the two walked out of earshot to talk.

"Maker, the idiocy. I can't stand him sometimes." Bethany sighed. Her finger tips glowed with crystalline touch of ice magic, and she ran them over her neck and through her hair.

"I don't know, I thought he was charming," Anders joked, adjusting his trousers and shaking out his tunic beneath his cloak and coat. He was resenting the heavy suede more and more with every minute that passed in the summer sun. He conjured a film of ice on his palm and ran it over the back of his neck.

"I wish I knew why Garrett kept him around," Bethany muttered.

"Fenris is a good man," Aveline said.

"Of course you would say that," Bethany snapped.

Aveline took off her helmet; her face was flushed beneath her freckles, down her brow and along her neck. Anders knew armor was murder in summer. He had a sudden involuntary memory of Oghren and Amell stripping for an impromptu swim in the Hafter, and pushed it away.

"Where is all this hostility coming from, Bethany?" Aveline asked. "We're friends."

Bethany sat down on the stool Fenris had abandoned and buried her hands in her hair. "I'm sorry, Aveline. I just can't take this right now. I-Oh, Maker, I'm making this about me. Are you alright, Anders? Justice-... I guess taking over, that didn't hurt did it?"

"Just a headache," Anders brushed the concern off, "Thanks, Merrill. For being there. Justice needs someone who understands spirits looking out for him. You were really good with him there; the veilfire was brilliant."

"Oh!" Merrill ducked her head and twisted her foot into the ground, "I just um... you know... I-... Spirits are my thing."

"Anders is right," Bethany said, "You were so quick on your feet. Like you could have done it blind-folded."

"You're both too kind," Merrill mumbled. "All I did was talk to him. Fenris could have done that if he wasn't so frightened."

"Well I'm glad he didn't," Anders snorted, "I am definitely not into that, but Justice is really into lyrium. It's a good thing all that talk of demons was such a huge turn off. I think he's pouting right now."

"Oh no," Merrill giggled, "That's adorable. And sad. Do you think we could try using lyrium to summon him? Have you had a lyrium potion since you joined?"

"... I haven't, actually." Anders realized. "Ever since Justice, it feels like my connection to the Fade is limitless. I know it's not, and we can still get tired, but it's not like I could get a potion even if I needed one."

"Why not?" Merrill asked.

"Because even if the Circle did sell them to the public, buying one would be a pretty good way to out yourself for a mage," Anders said.

"We can get some," Bethany said. "Garrett has a few contacts in the Red Iron. We never made use of them before because we could never afford it, but maybe after the expedition-"

"You can summon a demon?" Aveline finished for her. "Are you sure that's a risk you want to take? Anders has already proven his restraint is less than admirable."

"Codswallop," Bethany snapped.

"Are you really throwing stones after you brought a templar's shield to an apostate's clinic?" Anders asked incredulously.

"Aveline, can we just have a moment, please?" Bethany begged.

"A moment it is," Aveline allotted, backing out to join Hawke and Fenris.

"I'm sorry," Bethany sighed when she was gone, "I just don't need that right now. We get enough 'mages are evil' preaching every day without hearing it from our friends."

"I don't really mind it," Merrill admitted. "I'm used to people not believing in me. My clan never did..."

"You should mind," Anders said. "This kind of ignorance is something we should be fighting."

"I thought we were fighting drakes," Merrill said lightly.

"I'm serious," Anders said. "The Circle, the Chantry, the Order. All of it has to change, but it's not a war we can fight alone. More people need to understand our plight."

People who weren't mages. People like Bardel, and Donal, and Selby. People like Franke, and Thom, and Lirene. People like Lissa and Rosalyn, Cor and Conall and Bree. They already had the framework of a network; Anders just needed to get in touch with the Coterie, and then things would be different.

"Sometimes, you sound so much like him it hurts," Bethany said with a rueful shake of her head.

"So much like who?" Anders asked.

"My father," Bethany rubbed away the flush that crawled up her neck. "He was so passionate about all of it. Everyone who met him said he was an example of everything a mage should be, even templars."

"I really doubt any templars are saying that about me," Anders said. "Not good ones, at least."

"Then maybe there shouldn't be any templars," Bethany said.

"I've always said so," Anders agreed.

"It would certainly make life easier for my people, knowing our Keepers weren't being hunted," Merrill said.

"It's bigger than that," Anders said. "It's not just about us, or our clans, or our friends. It's about every mage. We deserve a choice, but the Circle doesn't give us any."

Bethany looked about to answer, but her eyes slipped off his face and focused on a point past his shoulder. A short second later, and Hawke rejoined the three of them, "We still have a job to do. Are the two of you staying?"

"Aren't there three of us?" Merrill asked.

"My brother isn't asking me, Merrill," Bethany said.

"Oh! I suppose he wouldn't," Merrill said, "Why wouldn't we?"

"Anders?" Hawke asked.

"Oh, is that me?" Anders wondered, "Sorry, I only answer to abomination or sewer rat these days."

"Garrett didn't mean it, Anders," Bethany said gently.

Hawke certainly didn't look as if he'd meant it. He stood one with one hand on his belt and the other buried in his hair, pushing his head down to stare at the ground. Anders wished he wasn't half so expressive. It made it hard to stay mad at him, and Anders rather liked the warmth of anger of late.

"No, I know," Anders sighed.

"Garrett, maybe try 'possessed' instead of 'abomination'?" Bethany suggested.

"It's fine," Anders said. "I'm just twitchy. You've been great, really. I'm in."

"Mine entrance is this way," Hawke led them all along a pair of tracks that led away from the mining camp, and into the mountain side. The mine was everything Anders had come to expect after treating scores of refugees who had fallen prey to it. The rails were rusty, the planks were rotten, and they were laid out unevenly over the ground, half buried in the dirt in some places and precariously tilted in others.

Broken pieces of mine carts were pushed up against the sides of the mountain, and all of it spoke of neglect. Merrill balanced on one rusty rail, blind to all of it. Anders envied her. The skip in her step, the light in her heart, the stars in her eyes. He'd lost all that months ago. Anders climbed up onto the rail opposite her and Merrill grabbed his hand for balance. They made it all of three steps before they toppled off, and Anders let himself laugh.

"I didn't know you could do that," Merrill said.

"Some days I forget," Anders admitted.

Anders and Bethany conjured light for their staffs and Merrill drew on a handful of veilfire to light their way down into the mines. The stairs were a rickety, rotten wood that reminded Anders of the Silverite Mines in the Wending Woods, without the excuse of being ancient and untended for years. The stairs followed the tracks down into the cave, and the stone reflected the city it had built. White bled into grey and brown and red and black.

A deeper descent led down into a cavern, where a drake lay nestled up with dragonlings, and surrounded by charred mining equipment. Hawke called for a halt at the top of the stairs before the dragons noticed them, "Baby dragons," Bethany whispered, crouching next her brother and peering over the edge, "I hope their mother isn't around."

"Balms," Hawke said, taking his out of his pouch and working the watery liquid into his dog's coat. Anders would have felt more confident if it was concentrated. He didn't doubt he was going to be healing a few burns by the time this was over. Anders unscrewed the lid to his balm and bit back a sigh at the thought of using it.

Even when they weren't concentrated, fire balms were expensive. They were made from a distillation of heatherum and foxite, mixed with shards of lifestone and infused with magic. Anders had never thought to consider how ridiculously privileged the Wardens had been to be able to afford the concentrated versions of the salves. Lifestones only formed from stone in close proximity to lyrium, and they'd managed to find a lyrium mine in the Wending Woods.

Thirty silver seemed cheap for a box the size of Anders' fists. The liquid glowed bright like the sun, and had the same golden tint. Not only were they expensive, they were horrid. The liquid solidified into a mask over skin and clothes and kept both safe from extreme heat, but was absolutely impossible to get off. The servants at Vigil's Keep had taken care of Anders' clothes the last time he'd used a fire balm, but getting the casing off his skin had taken Anders all night even with a proper bath to work from.

"Ready, Hawke," Aveline said.

"As am I," Fenris agreed.

"Me too," Merrill said, "This is exciting."

"Destructive forces of nature, ready and waiting," Anders agreed, fighting the urge to rub the balm off his skin as it hardened.

"Let's go, brother." Bethany said.

"Aveline," Hawke said. The warrior took the stairs at a jog, and charged the small nest when she hit the bottom, shield raised to block the first gout of flame the drake spat at her. The tilt to her shield was a technique templars used fighting mages, and the sight of it made Anders uncomfortable.

The drake clawed at her, powerful hands biting down into her shield, and the dragonlings ran past her. The mabari tackled one, and Hawke loosed an arrow into another. Merrill caught three in a haze of corrosive blood magic, and Anders froze the fourth. Fenris' great sword was as effective against the drake as Oghren's axe would have been, and the small cluster of dragons fell without much difficulty.

"Healing?" Anders asked.

"Dog," Hawke said. The dragonling had raked down the mabari's haunches, and the dog had its head on Hawke's knee. It was whining faintly. A breath of creationism knit the rent flesh back together, and the whining stopped. Hawke smacked the mabari's thigh, left a smeared hand print in the blood. "Thank you."

"No problem," Anders said.

The next cavern had been worked dry, and was overgrown with moss and deep mushrooms. Another group of dragonlings were guarded by another drake, and Anders managed to find a rhythm with the group. Combined, Merrill and Aveline managed a replacement for Amell, and Fenris was as useful as Oghren. Hawke was an even better archer than Nathaniel, and Bethany managed the auras Anders was used to channeling. He limited himself to glyphs, and more primal magic than he was used to using in fights.

Velanna has always been the offensive mage between them, but someone had to be there with a wall of ice to cut off the few dragonlings that made it past Aveline and Fenris. Anders couldn't complain; one frost spell after the next helped fight off the stifling summer heat, made all the more uncomfortable by being trapped underground with dragons breathing fire and filling up the corridors with smoke.

Despite all his flaws, Hawke was nothing if not painfully conscientious of the mages in his group. They stopped after every encounter, and only moved on when Bethany was comfortable and realigned with the Fade. They cleared out three chambers without anything Anders would consider an incident after his time in the Wardens. Aveline and Fenris had their armor dented and scratched, Hawke had his greaves torn, and all of them bore a few burns and lacerations, but aside from armor it was nothing Anders couldn't heal.

Most of the mining equipment they passed had been torn apart or burnt, and some of the tracks had been ripped up. There were no corpses, but there were a handful of dried blood stains. Anders guessed most of the miners had been eaten whole. After the third chamber, they ran into their first survivors. Anders felt the pull of blood, behind a corridor blocked off with an overturned minecart.

Merrill felt it too, and saved him outing himself as a maleficar again, "Someone's alive through here! I can feel a heartbeat,"

"That is incredibly disturbing," Fenris muttered.

"Aveline, help me with this," Hawke said, setting his bow aside to set his back to the minecart.

Aveline set her sword and shield aside, and joined him on the opposite side. "On three?"

"One, two, three," Hawke said. The two heaved, and lifted the toppled cart away from the corridor, and out of the way. It would have been far easier with telekinetic magic, but Bethany didn't have the experience Amell did, and wasn't capable of clearing rubble, building stairs, or cheating at Wicked Grace.

Anders cut off his train of thought and jogged through the corridor. The survivor was propped up against the wall, a makeshift tourniquet tied around a bloody thigh. He was stained with coal and soot, with any man's guess if it was from mining or dragons. His hair was so red it was nearly orange, matching side burns stretching out over his ears and contrasting starkly with his pale face, made paler by blood loss. Anders recognized him.

"Anders?" Jansen's jaw dropped.

"That's the rumor," Anders grinned, kneeling next to him and channeling Justice to heal Jansen's leg and the burns he found on the man's back.

"Praise Andraste you came along," Jansen breathed a sigh of relief, "I thought I was going to bleed to death in here. How do you always know when and where someone's injured?"

"I'm magic," Anders joked, and nodded to where Hawke lingered in the doorway. "Hawke here brought me alone."

Jansen managed a pained laugh, "Well thanks for the rescue, then, heroes. Maker's ass, I can't believe I went from supplying half the eggplant in South Reach to running from dragons with my ass on fire. Some of the boys ran for the surface, do you know if any made it? Hubert sent you right?"

"They made it," Hawke said. "Less than a dozen."

"Fucking shit," Jansen groaned.

"What happened here?" Hawke asked.

"We was mining a new tunnel when the wall collapsed and the dragons came through," Jansen explained. "It was a bloody slaughter. Scared out of my damn wits, running like my ass was on fire, only it actually was. Went the wrong way, and ended up trapped in here. I can't wait to get out of this blight hole.

"Maker, I hope Lirene can find me something," Jansen sighed, "That bastard Hubert is the only one hiring Fereldans, but I need my own dinner, not to be one for some dragon."

"See what I told you?" Anders said, "This place is a bloody deathtrap," Anders untied Jansen's makeshift tourniquet. "You're all healed, Jansen."

"Hubert's giving me half the mine for this," Hawke said, "So expect some changes."

"Really?" Jansen asked, "Well, shit. Be nice to work for one of our own. I mean if you don't give us a fair shake who would? But you're not going to live long enough to give it. There was a huge dragon chased me in here. Did you see it? Did you kill it?"

"Just drakes," Hawke said. "Get a move on. Get out of here."

"Don't have to tell me twice," Jansen said, "But uh... I weren't joking. Damn dragon burned my ass, and straight through my clothes. I stand up, they'll slide right off."

"Here," Anders took off his cloak and handed it to Jansen. "You shouldn't stay. The way back out is clear."

Jansen leaned forward to warp the cloak around his shoulders, and tied it off in the front. He stumbled to his feet, and true to his words his trousers and tunic slid off under the cloak without his burns to keep the fabric stuck to his skin, "Thanks, Anders. I'll give it back next time one of these damn cart turns over on me, yeah?"

"Don't worry about it," Anders said.

Jansen bolted, tossing out his thanks to everyone he passed on his way out of the mine.

Hawke was staring at him. Anders stood up and brushed dirt off his knees, "What?"

"Just wondering if you always give your things away like that," Hawke said.

"Look, he needed it, alright?" Anders said, more than ready to defend sparing a man his dignity at the cost of cloak he didn't need in summer anyway.

"Didn't say he didn't," Hawke said, "Dragon up ahead," Hawke said over his shoulder to the others. "Big."

"Are we going to fight it?" Merrill asked eagerly, skipping ahead with Bethany. "I've never seen a big dragon before today. Or a little dragon. Or a drake. I hope we're going to fight it."

"Glad you're having fun," Hawke said flatly.

"Oh, I am!" Merrill agreed. "This is all so exciting."

"I think that was sarcasm," Anders said from behind his hand, purposefully loud.

Hawke shot him a confused frown, "No?"

"My brother's not much for sarcasm," Bethany said, bumping Hawke with her shoulder. "Or laughing. Or smiling."

"I laugh," Hawke said.

"You do not." Bethany pinched him, "You bark."

"That's how I laugh," Hawke muttered.

Bethany snorted, and stopped when they came to the end of the corridor. The mine shaft opened up out into the main quarry, far too small for a dragon and owing to how Jansen managed to escape. Aveline and Fenris took the lead, followed by Hawke and Merrill, and then Bethany and Anders. The stepped out onto a plateau, just a handful of feet off the floor of the quarry.

The Veil was painfully thin at the bottom of the quarry. Anders felt as if he could reach through it and pull across a spirit across if he tried, even without any specialization in the magic. The cause was one of the most disturbing things Anders had ever seen. The quarry was filled with skeletons. Bones upon bones were piled high, pressed up against the edge of the mountain as if purposefully left on display.

They were a number uncountable. The very sight was obscene, enough to twist Anders' stomach and lend credence to every rumor that the Bone Pits were haunted, and give new and terrible meaning to the name. The ruins of Tevinter's time in Kirkwall lay all around. Broken pillars topped with carvings of dragon heads and inlaid with stacked skulls were scattered across the quarry floor, apparently pushed down from the lip of the quarry at some point in the past.

"By the Dread Wolf..." Merrill mumbled. "This place is so dismal."

"It is at that," Aveline agreed, "On your guard."

"Is this what the Veil feels like, thin?" Bethany asked. "I feel like I'm breathing mana."

"This is what it feels like," Anders agreed. "Be careful with your spells. Don't expend too much mana in one area. We don't want to deal with a tear in the Veil."

"No blood magic," Merrill agreed.

"There should never be any blood magic," Fenris growled.

"There," Hawke interrupted, pointing down into the quarry to where a dragon lay nestled in a pile of bones. "Back me up." Hawke slid down the plateau and onto the floor of the quarry and was off before Anders knew what was happening. Aveline and Dog were at his heels, and Fenris reacted immediately after, but all three mages took a handful of seconds to collect themselves.

"Oh dear," Merrill slammed her staff into the ground, and a cage of roots burst forth from the stone to swallow her whole, and spit her back out behind the warriors. Anders slid down the plateau and ran after the group, and heard the scattered gravel that marked Bethany following him.

They caught up in time for the dragon to notice them charging, and stand up on its nest of bones. The motion sent femurs, skulls, and spines clattering down the hill. The dragon turned and its head reared back, and Anders recognized the motion from the dragon in the Blackmarsh. He threw up a spell shield over Bethany and himself.

Aveline had her shield, and Anders had to hope the fire balm would be enough for the rest. A wash of flame blinded him, and felt like staring into the sun. Anders brought up an arm to save his eyes, and surveyed the battle field when it past. Hawke and his Dog were nowhere to be seen. Fenris looked unscathed, without even the telltale steam of flames licking over fire balm. Merrill was on the opposite side of the battle field, a hole in the ground where she'd stood previously.

Anders didn't have an explanation for half of it. The dragon dove for Aveline, and the force of its claws raking across her shield sent her staggering back. From the look of it she barely managed to keep from toppling. The beasts' head snapped down like a viper, and locked her around her shield. Aveline twisted out of it before the dragon could rip her arm off. The shield went flying with a toss of the dragon's head.

Anders aimed concentrated frost spells for the dragon's legs as Aveline fell back, and kept it from pursuing her. Arrows shredded the hide on the dragon's left wing, further ruining the creature's capacity for flight. A haze of entropic magic closed around the creature's head, blinding it. A swing from Fenris' great sword decapitated the dragon's thrashing neck, and blood founted messily onto Aveline, painting her orange armor red.

The head went flopping across the quarry, twitching spastically and sending the dragon's long neck spiraling in wild circles in the air, the white of its spine outlined against the dark red muscle. The dragon's body collapsed with a heady thud that scattered dust and boned, and the head stilled after a few mad flops. It was surprisingly simplistic compared to fighting a giant dragon made from a thousand wisps while trapped inside a binding circle.

"That's it?" Merrill asked. "My goodness, that was exciting!"

"It was, wasn't it?" Bethany agreed.

"Does anyone need healing?" Anders called across the battlefield to the warriors, and where he assumed Hawke was.

"Here," Aveline said. She approached him and held out her shield arm, and a few searching tendrils of creationism helped Anders determined the limb was wrenched. He healed it with an easy pulse of regenerative energies, and Aveline nodded her thanks. Anders thought he'd deserved at least a word or two, but apparently with this group he shouldn't be holding out hope.

Aveline went searching for her shield. Fenris sat down on a pile of bones, and took off his wolf helmet to drink from a canteen at his hip. He wasn't just short. He was an elf. Anders wasn't surprised. He never had good luck with elves, until Velanna and apparently Merrill. Maybe Dalish were his exception. Fenris' hair was blindingly white, and there was little else Anders could make out from a distance.

He didn't care to close the distance, and sat on the ground in a circle with Bethany and Merrill, drinking from their canteens and making small talk on each other's magic until Hawke appeared. He set them all out on another sweep of the mines which found no more dragons, drakes, or dragonlings. The six of them stopped at the entrance to the mines after the sweep.

"Beth and I are staying to carve," Hawke said.

"Thank you all so much for helping us," Bethany said.

"Not bad, Hawke," Aveline said, "You think you'll be ready for raiders tomorrow?"

"Always," Hawke said.

"Then I'll see you then. Bethany," Aveline nodded to both siblings and set out.

"Drinks tonight?" Fenris asked.

"I'll be there," Hawke promised.

"This was lots of fun, lethallinen," Merrill said, "Thank you for bringing me along. I better hurry and follow them before I get lost. Take care, both of you!"

"Anders, can I have a word?" Hawke asked.

"I wouldn't expect more than one," Anders joked.

"Play nice," Bethany ordered her brother, leaning up to plant a kiss on his beard before heading back to the mines to give them privacy.

"Well?" Anders asked.

"The shit I say," Hawke said, unable to decide on a place for his hands. They went on his brow, into his hair, on the back of his neck. It was a little ridiculous, and Anders had to fight back a grin, "When I open my mouth. Whatever you are, you're obviously not an abomination. And I don't think you're not-... you know... normal."

"Thanks," Anders said.

Hawke cleared his throat, and gave him a clipped nod before turning back to the mine.

"... hey Hawke?" Anders called after him. Hawke glanced over his shoulder, and Anders knew better than to expect him to say anything. "Do you want help? You and Beth, with carving?"

"... what about your clinic?" Hawke asked.

Anders thought of Karl's letter and shrugged, "It can wait."

Notes:

Fanart
Anders and Hawke

Chapter 64: Bloodline Part One

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back. Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, subcriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 20 Molioris Morning
Kirkwall Darktown

Maybe it was because Hawke looked so much like Amell, or maybe it was because Hawke was embarrassed by his laugh like Amell, or maybe it was because Hawke made an effort to take care of Anders when Anders was always forgetting to take care of himself, or maybe it was because he reminded Anders to get out of his clinic and live his life, or maybe it was just because Anders was living in a sewer now, so that was where his mind was, but Anders liked him.

Once you got passed the metaphorical bite and less than metaphorical bark, Hawke was decent company. Hawke dragged Anders out of his clinic for a job outside the city once a week. So far the jobs had been simple: a patrol along the coast and a band of raiders the guard didn't have the men to deal with. Aside from the jobs, there was also the weekly trip to the Planasene Forest while Hawke went hunting and left Anders with Merrill and Bethany to pick herbs for his clinic, and then Tuesday nights were Wicked Grace at the Hanged Man.

Varric hosted. If the man had a talent for anything, it was nicknames. Bethany was nothing if not a ray of sunshine, and Merrill was as lovely as any patch of daisies. Isabela might not have liked 'Rivaini' but Anders couldn't think of anything better for the dusky pirate beauty. Fenris was 'Broody' and damned if that wasn't the most accurate thing Anders had ever heard. Fenris' sneer was such a permanent feature on his face sometimes Anders wondered if the elf had suffered a stroke.

Aveline didn't have a nickname. Anders couldn't help thinking that was appropriate, considering the woman seemed apart from the rest of the group. In a way, Aveline almost reminded Anders of his initial impression of Justice, but Aveline didn't have the excuse of a spirit's innocence. She took her post as a guardsman far too seriously, and it had only gotten worse since Hawke had helped her expose the previous Captain of the Guard's corruption.

Aveline had been appointed interim Captain of the Guard until the paperwork was finalized. On the one hand, Anders was glad people like Thom and Lirene might finally have the guardsmen looking out for them, but on the other, he couldn't stand her. Aveline nettled and needled everyone about their goings-on in Kirkwall. Varric got the worst of it, but he gave as good as he got. The dwarf's tongue was so sharp Anders thought it was a marvel he hadn't cut himself on it yet.

The odd six seemed to be Hawke's main group of friends, and certainly the only ones with any talent for fighting to accompany him on the odd jobs he was always taking. Anders wondered about the jobs a lot more than he cared to admit to himself. Twenty sovereigns was more coin than Anders had ever had in his entire life, and Hawke had lost in a night. The kind of work Hawke did didn't seem to be nearly enough to recover it.

Anders had asked Bethany, but Hawke handled the family funds, and any inquiries met with a curt 'Not your business.' Anders doubted the man had coin to spare. Hawke took mercenary work, for mercenary pay, and had to worry about supplies for each mission, repairs for his armor, his uncle's constant tab, Merrill's rent, food for his family, and Maker knew what else Hawke was doing for the rest of his friends. Anders still got bags of food from the man on occasion, despite the fact that Anders argued against it.

Anders had never had any self-control, and the food never lasted. Maker save him, but Anders couldn't help himself. He had blood magic. He could catch all the rats and pigeons he needed. The rest of the refugees weren't half so lucky, and Anders wasn't half a bastard to let them starve in his clinic while he made a pot of rice for himself. Word got out, the way word always did, and Anders never held onto a bag of food for more than a day.

Anders hitched the newest sack of food higher on his shoulder, torn between guilty and determined on his walk through Darktown. He made his way through two mineshafts, down a twisted stairwell, and across a cavern before he found the small alcove where Evelina lived with the kids. He'd taken to checking on them ever since the close call with the templars' raids. Half of the room had been cut into the blackrock, the other pieced together with cheap pinewood rotting away in the damp. The poor ventilation and lack of proper drainage had Anders guessing it had been used for storage when the mines were still mines.

Anders knocked on the door, a bit of rusted bronze tilted on its hinges, and it eked open a moment later, the metal grating and sparking across the stone. A young face poked out, torn somewhere between boy and man, still doe-eyed with heavy cheeks, but with a hard brow and too-large nose, "Anders!" The boy's voice broke half-way through his name.

"Hey Pryce," Anders said. "You just going to leave me out here in the rain?"

"What rain?" Pryce asked, setting his shoulders to the door and scrabbling to heave it the rest of the way open. The sharp screech of metal on stone made Anders wince, and inside a child started crying.

Anders pointed to a storm drain set in the cavern ceiling behind him. An arrhythmic drip had worn a small bowl in the blackrock beneath it. "That rain."

"That's piss," Pryce said.

"Language!" Evelina yelled from inside.

Pryce ducked his head, and Anders stifled a laugh at the boy's expense. Adolescence was enough of a bitch without anyone adding to it. Anders still had nightmares of being all legs at the Circle, caught at an unfortunate height where his choice of robes either hung well above his ankles or dragged at his heels.

"Are you still working for Athenril?" Anders asked.

"Yeah," Pryce said. "Few bits a job. I'm helping."

"I'll bet," Anders stepped inside the small shanty.

It wasn't much. Nothing in Darktown was, but it was big enough to fit all of the kids. Pryce and his two sisters, Nika, Cricket, and Walter. There was next to nothing by way of furniture, but Evelina had done work with bedding. Piles of straw were covered with tarps and laden with blankets, and if there was one thing Anders had never healed the kids for, it was the grippe. The small horde of small children ran at him, and trapped him before he got more than three steps inside.

"Anders!" "What's in the bag!?" "Is it food?" "I'm hungry!" "Do the bird trick!" "No, do the cat!"

"Let him breathe, you little monsters," Evelina set her hands on two small heads of scruffy hair and parted the circle. Anders escaped.

"So what's our vote?" Anders asked, pulling through to the Fade and letting the mana form beneath his fingers, "Cat? Bird?"

"Cat!" "Bird!" "Shut up Cricket!" "Do the bird!"

"Both?" Anders let the sphere of magic in his hand bloom into the shape of crow, held together with strands of light and ripples of arcane energy. He formed a cat to match, primal energies pulling pebbles, dust, and dirt from the floor to give the summon a little more substance. He released both, and the cat chased the crow in circles around the room to the delighted shrieks of children.

"You really are magic," Evelina shook her head, and offered him a gracious seat on the floor by the wall. Anders took it. Evelina gathered up her skirt and sat beside him while Anders emptied his cookware out of his satchel. "Where do you keep getting all this food?"

"Magic," Anders joked.

"Magic can't do this," Evelina said, setting the small cook-pot up on its stand.

"How would you know?" Anders countered, raising an eyebrow.

Evelina's eyes darted to the children. Anders had learned a few things about her in the months he'd spent healing sprained ankles and runny noses. Evelina was from Kinloch, and had escaped during the Blight. Anders didn't know the circumstances, but whatever they were Evelina seemed ashamed of them. Anders couldn't imagine any other reason she might be reluctant to mark herself for a mage.

The children loved magic. Admittedly, they were still children, and children were prone to chatter. They might end up telling the wrong people about their magical caretaker, and that might mean risking the templars' wrath, but Anders got the sense that Evelina's concerns ran deeper than that. Anders could just hear Hawke's curt, 'Not your business,' at his badgering.

Anders backed off, "You're really going to look a gift-mage in the mouth?"

"That reminds me, Cricket lost another tooth," Evelina said quickly, obviously eager for the change in topic. She glanced to the redhead boy chasing the small conjured cat in circles around the room. "I don't think it's anything, but he was saying his mouth hurt, and I noticed it looked like he had a cold sore?"

"Maybe an abscess," Anders said, laying out the half-empty sack of rice and setting aside the wrapped and carved rabbit Hawke had given him from his last hunting trip. "I'll look at it after I get the rice started."

"How do you do it?" Evelina asked, letting him conjure water for the pot despite the fact that Anders knew she was more than capable of doing it herself.

"Look this good?" Anders guessed, belatedly aware the cheeky quip might not be as ironic as he meant it. Being an abomination might not have made him 'warp and change' as Merrill had said, but the bath certainly had. It had been a few weeks, but Maker knew Anders still looked better than most of the Darktown refugees.

"Keep your spirits up," Evelina elaborated.

Anders snorted gracelessly. It was too bad he'd never had a chance to teach Justice humor. The spirit had no idea what it was missing. Anders conjured a miniaturized wall of fire to heat the water without kindling, and without the need for him to hold his hand beneath the pot. It was a tiny improvement, but even a tiny bit of help meant a lot in Darktown.

"The kids don't help with that?" Anders asked.

Evelina shook her head and leaned back against the wall. She looked like every other Darktown refugee: brown. Her eyes, her hair, her skin, her clothes. Everything that wasn't naturally brown the mines had painted that way. Anders was lucky to look anything else, however long it lasted. Lucky for a bath. Five months in Kirkwall had certainly lowered his standards.

Evelina's eyes followed the children following the summons, and she spoke softly. "I did things back in Kinloch. I spent eight years in that prison... Do you remember Uldred?"

"Never knew him," Anders said, involuntary memories of Karl and Amell colliding and blending together in his head. "... I had a few friends who looked up to him, though."

"I did." Evelina said. "He knew how to find us, somehow. Those of us who used-...with darker talents." Blood magic. That was easy. Anders could do cloak and dagger after all. He'd have to tell Selby. "He found me, and others. He told us about his arrangement with Teyrn Loghain. Help with the Blight and be free of the -... be free. So many supported him, but then...

"That woman. That Aequitarian," Evelina said the word like a curse, "Wynne. She convinced the rest of the Senior Enchanters to back down, after what the Teyrn did at Ostagar, but we couldn't let it go. We thought someone always has to take the first step. Force a change, no matter the cost. But then Uldred went mad... and there was so much death and destruction... I never meant for it.

"Amell saved me. The Hero of Ferelden," Evelina said. A pained whine coiled tight in Anders' throat and he barely kept it from escaping. Why, of all the people in Thedas, did it have to be Amell? Why was it always Amell? There was no man behind the myth. Amell had been everywhere. Amell had touched everyone. Anders was never going to escape him. There was always going to be some little mention, some little memory, even an ocean away.

"I don't know if you knew him," Evelina continued, "He told me that I was more than my mistakes, and I swore I would do something good with my life. He got me out of the- he got me out, and I went to Amaranthine. I found all the children orphaned by the Blight, and I brought them here to keep them safe and try to make up for what I did, but...

"You're always smiling," Evelina glanced at him, "How do you do it?"

The last thing any mention of Amell made Anders want to do was smile. Andraste preserve him, Anders could see it. Amell's helmet under one arm, the other extending a gauntlet-clad hand for Evelina to shake. The blood magic wouldn't have meant anything to him. It wasn't blood magic Anders ever should have been worried about, it was Amell's blind faith in everyone he met.

Anders tried to force the thought away, but it persisted. He smiled falsely through it, and threw the rice into the boiling water rice, aware it should be washed but without the means to do so.

"I like kids," Anders said. "Believe me, if you could see me when I'm not here you wouldn't recognize me."

"They like you, too," Evelina said, pulling back a leg when Nika nearly tripped over it chasing Anders' cat. "You should visit more often. Not just when you have food."

"You know why that's not safe for any of us," Anders said, refusing to even imagine it. He was just here to make sure the kids ate. He wasn't here to spend time with them. To get attached to them. To pretend they were ever something he could ever have in his life.

"... Aren't you going to say anything?" Evelina asked. "About Uldred?"

"Like what?" Anders asked, twisting his spell so the crow started shifting through a small color spectrum. Inattentive, he could manage three colors, but any more took real focus. The crow turned at his direction and dove at the kids chasing it, and they scattered with delighted shrieks.

"You know what," Evelina said.

"Not sure I do," Anders said. "Trying to change things, taking that first step, whatever it takes, whatever the cost... I'm only sorry it didn't work. Uldred had the right idea, before he went crazy. We need someone like that. A leader to tell the world we won't be punished any longer for our Maker-given gifts."

"I don't think I've ever heard magic called that before," Evelina noted, an impressed lilt to her voice. "Are you sure that leader's not you?"

'Yes' and 'No' fought so passionately in Anders' head the dichotomy gave him a headache. "Yes," Anders exhaled a breath of mana to soothe the ache behind his eyes he guessed came from Justice. "Yes, I'm sure it's not me, I mean."

Anders stood up while the rice cooked, and caught Cricket on a run around the room with an outstretched arm. The boy let out a shriek in protest and flailed, kicking legs throwing him almost horizontal in Anders' arms. "Is this why you call him Cricket?" Anders asked over the boy's laughter, barely able to hold him up.

"That's why," Evelina grinned.

"Alright, you, let me see that tooth," Anders set Cricket down, and set a hand on his shoulder kept him from running off.

Cricket shoved his fingers into his mouth and opened it wide, "Caa oou hee ehh?"

"Fingers out," Anders said, and Cricket dropped them obediently. Anders tilted the boy's head back with a hand on his jaw and conjured a light on his own fingers to see better. He knelt to look for the abscess, and the motion swung his Warden necklace out of his tunic and left it swaying in front of him.

"Wow!" Cricket spoke, ruining Anders' view of his gums, "Is that blood?"

"Yes," Anders said, "No talking. Evelina, top or bottom?"

"Top right," Evelina said.

Anders found the missing tooth, and the small pimple on the gum beneath it. A light press of his finger made Cricket whine. "That's an abscess," Anders let the boy go back to playing, and stuffed his necklace back under his tunic. "I need to drain it after he eats. He won't want to afterwards. I don't think it's going to affect any of his adult teeth, but it was good thing you noticed it early."

Anders spent the morning entertaining the kids with magic while the rice and rabbit cooked. He conjured fresh water for them for the rest of the day, and saw to Cricket after the boy had eaten. A net of sleep put the boy under, and made it a simple matter for Anders to lance and drain the abscess, wash away the pus, and heal the small cut in his gums. Cricket would be sore but little else when he woke. Anders lingered long enough for the kids and Evelina to thank him, before his guilt forced him back to his clinic.

They were good kids. Pryce and Walter were the oldest, awkward adolescents forced too fast into adulthood to support the other four kids as best they and Evelina were able. Darktown was no more a place for kids than the Circle, but if Anders had a choice, and he had a lot of those lately, he'd have picked Darktown. He'd take freedom at a struggle over slavery at a stroll any day.

Anders made it back to the clinic, and Justice lit their lantern. Anders stuffed his satchel under his cot alongside the other. It was full of everything Anders forced himself not to think about, but couldn't bring himself to let go of. Amell's journal, his mother's pillow, Karl's letters. All of them remained an unspoken presence in the back of his mind, as inescapable as Justice, and Andraste help him, Anders didn't know what to do for any of them.

So Anders did what had always worked for him in the past, and put on a smile he hoped no one could see through. If he wore it long enough, eventually he started believing in it, and that was almost good enough. Anders was cleaning vomit off the floor of his clinic when Hawke came and found him, and proved as welcome a distraction as he always did of late.

"Got a job," Hawke said from the door to his clinic. He was dressed in his Red Iron leathers again, quiver ready on his hip, bow strapped to his back. An array of throwing knives ran down his opposite leg. That was new. Anders stared at the thick muscle straining beneath the taut leather a little too long, "Coming?"

"I'm not even breathing hard," Anders joked.

Hawke's face pinched up into an expression Anders didn't have a name for. His thinned but curved lips looked torn between exasperated and reluctantly amused. Anders would take it.

"Give me minute here, then sure." Anders shrugged. He pulled on the Fade and a geyser erupted from his free hand to soak the floor and help him mop the vomit into the gutters.

Anders wasn't about it to call it recoiling, but Hawke's head drew back at the casual display of magic. Anders supposed Hawke wouldn't have been used to it with how reserved Bethany was with her own magic.

"Move fast," Hawke said, eyes on the mop instead of Anders. "Reward out for the Viscount's son. Winters say they found him on the coast. I need him first."

"Winters?" Anders wrung his mop out over the gutter. Water and vomit rained down, and half of it hit the floor and splattered over Anders' boots. Anders sighed and balanced awkwardly on one leg and then the other, conjuring water from his palm to clean off his shoes.

"Mercenary band," Hawke explained, "In from Nevarra. Meeran doesn't like the competition."

"Who's Meeran?" Anders asked, shaking his boots dry with every other step on his way to his cot.

"A pain in the ass," Hawke said, hooking a thumb in his belt while he waited and worrying it between his fingers.

"Well that's not always a bad thing," Anders said, buckling on his belt and latching his grimoire to it. Hawke barked, and Anders grinned at the floor for the small victory.

"He leads the Red Iron," Hawke explained. "He's a friend."

"I'd hate to hear how you describe your enemies," Anders joked, throwing his satchel over his shoulder, shrugging into his coat, and picking up his staff.

Hawke eyed the mottled suede, frowning, "Aren't you hot?"

"I don't know, am I?" Anders' mouth blurted before he could help himself. Hawke finally looked at him, but Anders was no better at reading red eyes than he'd ever been. The man's mouth opened only to immediately close, and he lost a hand in his wild hair.

Hawke cleared his throat, "It's summer."

Anders couldn't help the quips. Not since Hawke's awkward but well-meant apology at the Bone Pits. Anders had never had any self-control, and it was hard not to throw them out with Hawke taking pains to provide for him. Especially considering Anders had nothing else to give the man in return, but for the most part all they seemed to do was make Hawke uncomfortable.

"I'm alright." Anders said, waving to let Hawke know he was ready.

Anders followed Hawke out of his clinic, locking up behind him and dispelling the veilfire in his lantern. Dog was there, as always, and walked on the other side of Hawke through the narrow caverns and dimly lit mineshafts. The silence felt awkward, and Anders struggled to conjure an elegant apology to fill it. He failed miserably, and settled on a joke, "Maybe the Qunari have the right idea sewing mages' lips shut."

Hawke shot him a scowl, "That's not funny."

"Just trying to lighten the mood," Anders said.

"Mood's fine," Hawke said.

'Fine' wasn't the word Anders would have picked to describe the strained silence, but Beth had made it clear her brother wasn't one for sarcasm. And if he was being honest with himself, Anders rather liked that Hawke didn't joke about abuse or suffering. Hawke glanced at him and Anders threw up a smile that made Hawke bury a hand in his hair and look away. Anders guessed that meant they were alright.

"You say a lot for someone who doesn't say much," Anders said.

"I just um..." Hawke cleared his throat.

"Um?" Anders teased.

Anders supposed he shouldn't have been surprised when his teasing didn't get a reaction from Hawke. They reached the lift, and the ancient wood platform held steady between its brass bindings when they climbed onto it. The mabari hesitated following. It paced back and forth on the blackrock, whimpering and pawing uncertainly at the lift. Anders still couldn't get over how much he could relate to it.

"Come on," Hawke ordered, and Dog crawled across the platform on its belly to wedge itself between Hawke's legs.

"Does that ever get old for you?" Anders asked when Hawke knelt to crank the lift into motion.

"He's scared," Hawke said simply.

"Well yeah, but you'd figure most people would get tired of dealing with it," Anders said. The lift lurched beneath his feet, and Anders steadied himself on his staff as the blackrock ate away Darktown, and the dim light of its torches. Anders conjured a dim light for his crystal, ready to dispel it when they reached Lowtown. "But I guess you're not most people."

"Do you want a drink?" Hawke asked so suddenly Anders first thought was that he must have been talking to the dog.

"What?" Anders asked.

"A drink," Hawke said, a furrow of concentration in his brow while he cranked, but little other cues to help Anders process what was happening. "Not liquor, I know you can't."

"I thought we were in a hurry," Anders said, his throat drying up and his thoughts slowing to a crawl. That would teach him to tease. It wouldn't, but Anders could dream.

"Later," Hawke clarified. "After."

"... are you accosting me?" Anders asked. The lift stuttered to a halt in Lowtown, and Anders stumbled when he forgot to brace himself, the light on his staff going out. Hawke stood up, and for one painfully mesmerizing moment, held eye-contact with him. Anders felt a desperate need to break it. "Is that what's happening here?"

The mabari bolted off the lift, and out of the small building in Lowtown containing it. Hawke actually hesitated calling him back, and Anders decided that was definitely what was happening here. The mabari slunk back in at his whistle, and Anders wrung nervous hands on his staff.

"I thought you were the one doing that... I'm not blind," Hawke said, and Maker's mercy, how it hurt. "Or deaf... was this all just nothing? You keep saying all this shit and staring at me, and I don't-I-shouldn't have opened my mouth."

"No-you're right," Anders had to admit, his mouth rambling on without his consent, "I know what I'm doing, I just- we've hardly met but I feel like I know you..."

No. Maker, no he didn't. It was just a memory. Anders was never going to look at Hawke and see anything but an echo of Amell. Even Anders was just an echo of the man he used to be. He was two people now, and neither of them were in any state to be with anyone. They weren't safe. They weren't normal.

... But Hawke knew that, and Hawke wasn't running.

"Do you want to get drinks?" Hawke asked again.

Half of Anders was howling refusal. It thrashed against the confines of his skull and clawed at the backs of his eyes, and Anders pressed the pads of fingers to his brow as if Justice were a physical thing he could restrain.

The other half was lonely.

It was just Hawke. It was just a drink. If Justice didn't have a problem with Karl there was no reason for him to care now. And if he was sweet on Fenris, he really didn't have room to talk. Or feel. Or whatever, but Anders' spirit's protests were giving him a headache. Anders did his best to block them out. It wasn't liquor. It wasn't anything. Justice couldn't take this from him.

"Cider?" Anders asked.

"If you want," Hawke said, a visible bit of tension melting out of his shoulders. Hawke stepped off the lift, and quick steps carried him out into Lowtown. Anders jogged to catch up, and walked a little closer to him, a smile spreading slowly over his face.

This wasn't so bad. People could change. This was what Justice had wanted for him. Justice had wanted him to weed out ignorance, to teach people that magic wasn't something to be feared. Hawke was a good start. Hawke knew he was dangerous. Hawke could take care of himself. Hawke took precautions to keep Anders and the rest of the mages in their group safe. This could work.

Without the winter winds to blow feathers and debris, Kirkwall's streets were still, the only movement the citizens that milled in them. Half-naked children ran through the crowds, half of them cut-purses, all of them thin. The afternoon sun warmed the Lowtown quarry, baking stone and casting a rippling haze on the ground that distorted Anders already distorted vision. A thick, musky smell ran stale in the air from refuse left to cook in the heat, and the hiss of cicadas was a constant chorus to the bustle of the city.

Hawke was right, Anders was hot, but however unlikely it was that his clinic might be broken into, there were some things he wasn't about to risk. His coat. His staff. His grimoire. His mother's pillow. If it meant melting under an extra stone of trimmings and trappings it was worth it. Hawke...

Anders had no idea what Hawke was worth, but the harder Justice raged against the idea, the more Anders wanted to find out. He'd never been very good with being told what to do, and he couldn't imagine a reason Justice would be so against just having a drink with Hawke. It wasn't as if it would hurt either of them.

"So..." Anders said over the spirit protesting in his head. "Should I just check a looking glass more often, or is there something more to this?"

"What?" Hawke asked.

"The drinks," Anders clarified. The streets slanted down towards the East Gate, and Anders had to take them at a bit of a skip that kept his mood light no matter the storm in his head. "What's the point?" Anders asked, belatedly aware of how harsh the question was, and even more belatedly aware Hawke probably wouldn't take it that way.

"I just-think you're worth knowing," Hawke explained, a glance in his direction landing on his feathered pauldrons instead of his face.

"Since when?" Anders asked, unable to his sarcasm. He hoped Hawke didn't notice it.

"Since Lirene," Hawke said.

"She's a doll," Anders said. "... What'd she say about me?"

"The truth," Hawke shrugged, "That you just want a chance at freedom, but now that you have it you don't use it on yourself. That you don't think about coin, or favors, or anything other than who needs healing... You only had that cloak a few days."

"Jansen needed it," Anders argued.

"So?" Hawke raised an eyebrow at him.

"What do you mean, so?" Anders bristled, "I'm not about to let a man run naked through the Vimmark Mountains and half of Kirkwall just because I'm too proud to give up one measly possession."

"All of your possessions are measly," Hawke said.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Anders demanded, "If it helps-.... Oh, I see what's happening here."

Hawke's sharp and sudden laugh wasn't anything Anders would have called flattering, but it was real, and Anders didn't want it stifled or restrained.

"... Any comment on my better half?" Anders asked.

"Still scares the shit out of me," Hawke said, idly worrying at his belt with his fingers.

"Well it's nice you're not running away, then," Anders said. There was more Anders wanted to say, it was so hard to hold onto the words with Justice fighting him. "... You probably should, though. Everything you've been doing for me-it all means the world to me, and I don't want you hurt just for knowing me."

"Won't happen," Hawke said, and Anders believed him.

Chapter 65: Bloodline Part Two

Notes:

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(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 20 Molioris Afternoon
Kirkwall Lowtown

"Won't happen," Hawke said firmly; red eyes swept over him in a glance that lasted less than a heartbeat, but it was enough to speed Anders' up.

Anders shifted his grip on his staff and held it at a slant to keep it from striking the stone on every step. His mana was overflowing into his fingers and sparking out the end of his staff at the contact with the ground. Anders' staff was overt enough without it crackling with lightning, but he couldn't help it. The static rebounded without a break in the current, and made the hair on Ander's arm and the back of his neck stand up.

Anders needed to discharge it somehow, but save for shocking Hawke, there were no real options for him until they were out of the city. Andraste's grace, Anders was pathetic, but something actually felt like it was going right for him for once. Justice's vehement disapproval made it bittersweet, but Anders would take it after how long he'd spent with just bitter.

"Are you sure?" Anders asked to take his mind off the very literal spark he felt with Hawke, "What if people start talking about seeing you with an apostate? Aren't you scared that will come back on Beth?"

"It's not the Gallows-" Hawke said.

"Good thing too, or we'd both be swinging from them," Anders cut in with a joke.

"-It's just the Hanged Man," Hawke continued as if he hadn't heard him. "I already let Beth come on Tuesday. I'm trying not to be paranoid about this."

"Paranoia's not always a bad thing," Anders said.

"Do you want drinks or not?" Hawke demanded.

"I want drinks," Anders said quickly, "I just... you know, I want her to be safe."

An almost imperceptible smile turned up one corner of Hawke's lips when he glanced at him, and Maker save him, the man had never looked more attractive. Anders ran a hand through his hair, suddenly desperate for a tie, and forgot the static charging his fingers. His hair leapt into his palm, wisps of gold tangling around his wrist, and Anders made a vain attempt to pat them back down.

"What are you doing?" Hawke asked, a shake of laughter in his voice that didn't help Anders' predicament any.

"Oh, you know," Anders shrugged and gave up on his hair. A snap of his fingers against his chest let him discharge some of the static into his coat, "I just thought I felt a spark."

Hawke snorted and looked away from him, and but Anders swore the man's smile broadened. Anders barely knew him and he already liked being the cause of it, "So how is Beth handling the breakup?" Anders joked.

"What?" Hawke asked, a hitch in his step almost tripping him. His quiver rattled against his hip, and Hawke set a hand to it to hold the arrows steady. Anders wondered if he'd want feathers for fletching.

"You seemed pretty certain we had something going on for a while," Anders grinned at Hawke's accusatory frown, "What changed your mind?"

"I asked Beth," Hawke said.

"That doesn't really answer my question," Anders said, dodging up against the wall of the Lowtown alley to make way for a passing fruit cart. The wheels rattled over the uneven cobblestone and an orange went bouncing off the cart and into the street. Anders snatched it up and started peeling it.

"Hungry?" Hawke raised an eyebrow at him.

"No reason to waste it," Anders countered. Funny he could still manage to lie, possessed by a spirit of Justice, "Don't avoid the question. I notice when people do that, you know. You asked Beth before and said we might be lying."

"I think Beth would have said something in this case," Hawke said.

"What, did you tell her you were going to accost me or something?" Anders asked, popping a piece of orange into his mouth and swallowing it down along with a hum at the tangy zest. Anders needed to eat more fruit or he was going to end up with scurvy. He needed to eat more everything. Hawke didn't answer, and Anders glanced over at him. "Wait, seriously, did you?"

"You were staring," Hawke shrugged and ran a hand through his hair, "It bothered me."

"You could just tell me stop," Anders pointed out around another bite of his orange.

"... I don't mind that it bothers me," Hawke told the ground, which seemed a shame, considering Anders wouldn't have minded hearing it.

"How's your mother taking it?" Anders asked, "Is she already mourning-... what did she name the kids again?"

"Astride, Malcolm, and Mirriam," Hawke supplied.

"Why do you even remember that?" Anders laughed.

"My parents liked naming us after other people," Hawke explained. "Astride was my grandfather, Malcolm was my father, Mirriam was the Village Elder in Lothering and my mother's best friend."

"Who was Bethany?" Anders asked.

"My grandmother," Hawke said.

"Garrett?" Anders asked.

"Captain of the Crimson Oars," Hawke said, "Married my parents on his ship, on the voyage from Kirkwall to Amaranthine, and gave my father his first job as a mercenary."

"... Carver?" Anders asked hesitantly. "Or is that not my business?

"... templar," Hawke said, "Helped my father escape the Circle here."

"Beth talks about him all the time," Anders said, tossing the remains of his orange in the gutter and wiping sticky hands off on his trousers. "He sounded like a special person."

"He was an ass," Hawke said, but he kept his smile. He looked good with one, "... He got it from me. Idiot always wanted to be like me. Even did his hair the same..."

"I'm sorry," Anders said sincerely.

They walked the rest of the walk to the East Gates in silence. Anders was glad for it. He wasn't sure how much longer he could hold a conversation with Justice protesting tirelessly inside his skull. Anders looked for something to take his spirit's mind off Hawke's offer, and glanced up at the bronze statues framing the gate as they passed beneath them.

Two slaves on their knees, arms raised in front of their faces. A chain wrapped around their wrists connected them together and made up the arch. Anders didn't care for the sight any more than Justice did, but it was nice to have something else to be angry about. Injustice was everywhere in Kirkwall, whether it was directed at mages, elves, or Fereldan refugees...

"... So what do you think of this city?" Anders asked.

"I'd rather be in Ferelden," Hawke admitted, "You?"

"Same," Anders said, "Something about this place doesn't feel right. Aside from the crumbling Veil and crippling oppression I mean."

"Not enough dog shit?" Hawke guessed.

"Definitely not enough dog shit." Anders grinned.

"Ever going back?" Hawke asked.

"Can't." Anders said. "You?"

"Can't." Hawke said.

"Well we've got that in common at least," Anders said, glad Justice kept quiet through the casual conversation. There was something slightly terrifying about being in a state of dichotomy with Justice. Anders wasn't a stranger to intrusive thoughts or demonic whisperings, but possessed it was worse. Anders felt everything Justice felt, and making the distinction between them was one of the most difficult things Anders had ever done.

It wasn't as if Justice was standing beside him, arms folded over the glittering griffon on his silverite armor, the words "Mortal, I disapprove of your actions," ringing through his helmet. It was just a feeling. A sudden, inexplicable need to run when Hawke mentioned drinks. A burning frustration and tension in his shoulders when Anders didn't. All of it tangled together with Anders' own giddy delight at the thought this part of his life might not be over after all.

It was exhausting, emotionally and physically, and coupled together with Anders' empty stomach and the Summer sun, and Anders was already ready for a nap. He discharged his lingering static into the air around them once they were out of the city; the simple cantrip wasn't tiring, if nothing else. Dog whined, and Hawke eyed the wild sparks warily, but he didn't comment or recoil.

The road from Kirkwall veered north towards the Vimmark Mountains, and then east through the plains to Ostwick. Hawke led him off the road to the southeast, and down a well worn footpath in the cliff face. Eventually the stone and blackrock gave way to dirt, which gave way to ferns and thistle, which gave way to the distant coast line.

Anders couldn't help his sigh when he noticed Fenris was with the group Hawke had brought with for this mission. The Tevinter was in his silverite armor, the point of his great sword imbedded in the sand, wolf-helmet under his arm. Isabela leaning on a cypress beside him, wearing leather armor that seemed to cup and caress every curve on her body but must have been murder in the heat. Bethany and Varric were across from them, sitting on an outcropping of rock in their respective chainmail and boiled leather, and laughing together.

It was always strange to see Hawke's group gathered. They were nothing like the Wardens. No uniforms, no order, no strategy. The crew was as motley as the city they lived in, but Aveline hadn't been lying. Hawke was competent, and somehow he made it work.

"No Merrill?" Anders asked.

"Don't want the Viscount's son noticing her magic," Hawke explained, "Or yours. Nothing flashy."

"I live for flashy," Anders pouted. "What is magic for if not to shoot lightning at fools?"

"No," Hawke frowned.

"Fine, fine," Anders sighed. "Heals only. I get it. What about Aveline?"

"Viscount doesn't want the guard involved," Hawke said. "Thought you'd be glad."

"Well... yeah," Anders said.

Bethany waved at him. Anders waved back. Beth hopped off the rock she was sitting on, and kicked up sand on her jog over. "Anders. Is Garrett playing nice?"

"I always play nice," Hawke muttered.

"He always plays nice," Anders agreed.

"Viscount's boy was seen a league east of here," Hawke said to the entire group, "Ginnis has a dozen men on this."

"And how many men in the Winters to avenge her when word of her death gets out?" Fenris asked, shouldering his great sword.

"Not your business," Hawke said. "Red Iron'll take the blame."

"You mean you," Fenris deduced. "You should not be so quick to be hunted."

"You know why we need this," Hawke said, and set off down the coast with his dog at his side.

Isabela and Fenris followed him, though not before the latter shot a disdainful sneer in Anders' direction. Anders gave him a smile back, and was delighted to see a coil in the elf's spine as his hackles went up.

"Blondie," Varric struggled off the rock and dusted himself off at Anders' approach. Varric grinned when he had himself righted, and the three of them made up the rear of their small procession across the coast. Whatever their goal, it was a nice walk. Hot sand gave beneath Anders' boots, and an ocean breeze drifted in from the Waking Sea. Sunlight reflected on the foamy waters, and gulls, albatross, and shearwaters, circled overhead, their cries mingling with the sounds of cicadas that filled each cypress tree they passed.

Anders tilted his head back to watch the birds, and imagined joining them. He'd hadn't been flying in weeks. It never felt like there was time, between his patients, Hawke, and the Collective. If Anders was doing requisition work along the coast, or the mountains, or the forest, it wasn't as if he could fly there. He still had to carry the supplies back, and he couldn't do that as a crow.

"Big sigh, Blondie," Varric noted, smoothing back blonde hair frizzing in the heat. "What's on your mind?"

"Garrett, I'll bet," Bethany said with a grin, shifting her partisan staff on her shoulder. "Don't think I don't know. He would have been pouting if you'd turned him down."

"Now, Sunshine, nothing's confirmed until it's confirmed," Varric said. "It's confirmed though, right, Blondie?"

"We're just having drinks," Anders said, relatively certain the agitation he felt was Justice bothered by Hawke, and not Anders bothered by the questions. That wasn't him. Anders loved talking about Anders.

"Speaking of drinks, why haven't I seen you at the Hanged Man more often?" Varric prodded. "I would have thought you'd have run up at least a few silvers by now."

"Justice doesn't let me drink anymore, remember?" Anders said. "You were there. You saw our little lover's quarrel."

"You know, Blondie, for someone who's always telling everyone not to make you and Blue sound dirty, you do a pretty good job of it all on your own." Varric teased.

"It doesn't count if I do it," Anders said.

"Still," Varric said, "You could stop by now and then, get some food, get a room, get a bath. You keep avoiding me like this and I'll start to think you don't like me."

"I'm there every Tuesday for Wicked Grace," Anders said. "It's not like it's personal. I just need to be there for my patients."

Varric hummed, and Anders didn't trust it at all. The dwarf gave him such a knowing look if Anders didn't know better he'd swear Varric knew Anders gave away most of the food Hawke gave him.

"I think it's wonderful," Bethany said.

"Sunshine, you think everything is wonderful," Varric said.

"Most things are," Bethany said.

"So what's going on here?" Anders asked. "We're rescuing the Viscount's son from a gang of mercenaries who kidnapped him? Is that it?"

"Not quite," Varric said. "The Viscount's son has a history of escaping the Keep. Most of the time the guards bring him back after a few days, but this time it's a little more serious. Now, I didn't hear it from anyone and you didn't hear it from me, but apparently the Viscount's son is a friend of the Qunari. The scandal, right? From what I could gather, we're not rescuing him from anything more than a romantic stroll on the beach."

"I don't think so," Bethany said. "Qunari are dangerous. One of them murdered my best friend back in Lothering. Saemus isn't safe with them."

"No one is," Anders agreed. "I thought the Chantry silenced and collared us, but the Qunari go the distance. Have you seen their mages yet? I have. I was at the docks the other day and one of their bloody handlers was dragging five of them along by their leashes. All of them with their hands chained behind their backs, masks on their faces..."

Anders had nearly lost his mind. The sight was so distressing, so infuriating, he'd taken off like a magister out of the Black City, and had to find himself an alley to pace in and practice breathing until he and Justice managed to calm down.

"Maker..." Bethany ran a hand through her hair. "I had no idea... Garrett doesn't let me go down to the docks... I thought it was just another one of his things."

"It's not," Anders said, unhooking his canteen from his belt for a drink. A league of walking - Maker save him - in the middle of the day, in summer, in a coat. Hawke didn't need to warn him off flashy magic. Anders was going to be too exhausted for any magic by the time they found Saemus.

"Sweet thing," Isabela fell back to coo at Bethany, "That big brother of yours wants to talk to you."

Bethany hurried ahead, boots crunching over a few bits of driftwood scattered along the coast. Isabela sidled up next to Anders. The sun was kinder to the Rivaini than the rest of them. It played in her raven hair rather than frizz it, and set a glow to her skin rather leave it sweating.

Isabela gave him a playful nudge, and yelled in his ear, "Is Anders in there? Can I speak to Anders?"

"You can stop yelling," Anders frowned, "It's always me." Except when it wasn't, he supposed.

"That's not what I heard," Isabela grinned, golden earrings catching in the sun. "I heard a certain someone is sweet on a certain someone else."

"Andraste's knickers, are you really still on about this?" Anders sighed. "Does it have to come up every time we talk?"

"We're just talking, sweet thing," Isabela nudged his shoulder again, "If 'it' comes up, that's not my fault."

"You're wicked, Rivaini," Varric laughed. Anders smothered his laugh with a hard exhale that turned into a scoff.

"I know, I know I keep bringing it up, but I can't stop thinking about it," Isabela said with a shiver, "The two of them together, glowing, glistening, you in here," Isabela tapped her fingers on the side of his head, "Watching. I've even got some of it written down."

"Please tell me you're joking," Anders said.

"Did you bring it?" Varric asked eagerly.

"Of course I brought it," Isabela opened a small pack on her belt and pulled out a folded up piece of parchment to hand to Varric.

"Why?" Anders sighed.

"It's friend fiction!" Isabela said. "I do it out of love."

"'It was a breathless battle, every hard thrust met with an eager parry as their tongues fought for dominance,'" Varric chortled and choked, "'Their blades-Haha-their blades straining to be drawn from their sheaths-hahaha!'"

"Stop," Anders begged, "Maker, I'm never getting that image out of my head."

"That's not the only thing, I'll bet," Isabela said, "What's it like, by the way? Having him buried deep, deep inside you? Is it hard? Mmm, I bet it's hard."

"I'm walking away from you now," Anders decided, picking up his pace to walk apart from Isabela and Varric. Their laughter followed him. Anders felt torn between a groan and a laugh, and unhooked his canteen for another drink. He fell back a few minutes later, despite himself, and the conversation turned to other things. A league was a long walk, even at a brisk pace, it took them near a half hour to reach the stretch of coastland where Saemus had apparently been sighted.

Hawke came back from the front of their procession and waved them off the sand dunes that made up the shoreline, and up into the outcroppings of rock, cypress trees, and thistle. There were a natural passageway between two hills, and Anders guessed it led into an alcove. Hawke didn't take it, and urged them up the hills instead. Anders knew the vantage point was sensible, but he was exhausted, and his staff did most of the climbing for him.

Anders was clawing his way up the hill by the time they reached the top. Hawke was crouched at the ledge with the others, and Anders dragged himself over to peer into the alcove below. It was barely a dozen feet below. Anders felt like the climb had been longer. The alcove was obviously a campsite, owing to how Saemus had been found. A fire pit and a latrine had been dug, a tent sent up, and none it spoke of a kidnapping.

Saemus wasn't hard to find. He looked the part of a noble. His clothes were dyed a rich teal and fancifully layered, and he carried himself with the same proud set to his shoulders Amell had. He was standing behind a lone Qunari, who was arguing with a woman Anders guessed was Ginnis. The Winters were milling about behind her, able-bodied looking men dressed in uniform boiled leather and brigandine, half with bow and arrow, the other half with swords and shields.

It wasn't an ideal position. If anyone looked up and paid mind to the hilltop, they'd be bound to notice them. The high ground would help more than walking through the choke point between two hills, but Anders still wasn't looking forward to the fight. Saemus had his back to them, perhaps a stone's throw away, and their words carried faintly.

"Last chance, qunari," Ginnis was saying, "Hand over the Viscount's brat."

"I told you, I'm not going," Saemus said. The horned qunari stood firmly in front of him, a tower of grey muscle painted red. Even Anders had to admit he looked less than threatening. The qunari had nothing by way of weapons, and had a satchel at his side stuffed with rolls of parchments. "You can go and tell my father that."

"What's the plan, Hawke?" Varric whispered.

"Isabela's in charge of Saemus," Hawke whispered.

"You're going whether you like it or not, you little shit," Ginnis said, "Your father has five sovereigns out on your head, and I aim to get it, even if it means that's all I bring him."

"Varric, you cover her," Hawke whispered in tandem with Ginnis, "Fenris leads, Anders, Beth, whatever you can do with little flare."

"Move, qunari," Ginnis ordered.

"Sataareth kadan kass-toh issala ebasit," The qunari said, and did not move.

Ginnis laughed, and turned around to pace, dragging an frustrated hand down her face.

"Ready-" Hawke started to say, when Ginnis' hand dropped to her hip and grabbed a throwing dagger. She turned in a whirl and buried it in the qunari's throat. The qunari went stumbling to its knees, choking on its own blood.

"You vashedan bitch!" Saemus screamed, scrabbling for a dagger at his hip that had to have been ceremonial. He ran at Ginnis with it anyway, and the two fell into a grapple.

"Fuck," Hawke snarled, "Varric, can you?"

"I don't have a shot, either, Hawke." Varric said.

"Shit," Isabela swore.

Anders drew his own dagger, yanked up his sleeve, and slit his wrist. Fenris snarled and recoiled.

"Anders, what-?" Bethany stuttered while Anders formed the incantation for a blood binding.

"Go," Anders didn't want to bother worrying about their reactions. They suffered Merrill. They'd suffer him. "I'll hold her. Go save him."

"Fenris," Hawke ordered. The elf flung himself over the edge of the hill, still snarling, and Hawke and his mabari ran down after him. Anders loosed the spell, and Ginnis froze, eyes twitching spastically in her skull. Saemus buried his dagger in her throat, screaming without words. The rest of the mercenaries reacted, scrambling to their feet, struggling to string their bows or draw their swords. Anders heard a loud snap to his left, and a crossbow bolt buried itself in one mercenary's eye and knocked the man off his feet.

Isabela slid down the hill and grabbed Saemus, dragging the boy kicking and screaming off Ginnis' corpse. The Winters rushed them, and were intercepted by Fenris. He was grossly outnumbered, but the range his greatsword gave him made him impossible to engage. He drove back two assailants, and when a third tried to flank him, he spun with an unnatural fluidity and made a dance of it, switching between both fronts with broad sweeps of his greatsword.

Anders tore his eyes off him. Fenris didn't need help. The mabari had tackled one of the Winters and was tearing into its throat. A second mercenary looked poised to bring a sword down on the dog's head. Anders corroded his blood, and the man's sword fell out of his hand. He doubled over, vomiting blood. It wasn't half as flashy as a fireball would have been, and it served. A crossbow bolt took the mercenary in the side of the head a few seconds later, and he collapsed.

They were still out-numbered. The rest of the Winters collected themselves before Hawke and Fenris managed to kill the men they were already engaging. There had been a dozen men to start. There were eight left, and four of them overwhelmed Fenris, one man managing to land a blow against his back. The elf spun, flaring like a sapphire sun, and dove his fist through the man's chest. He ripped out the mercenary's still-beating heart, and the man's ribcage inverted.

Rows of glistening white bone twisted around the mercenary's chest in a macabre embrace. His chest cavity hung open, splotchy pink lungs inflating and deflating with his last gasping breath before he collapsed. The rest of the mercenaries circling Fenris retreated. Hawke wasn't half so lucky. The archer and his mabari were all offense, able only to dodge to spare themselves otherwise fatal blows. Bethany's auras helped keep them mobile, but there was only so much magic could do before it reached the physical limitations of a man's body.

Hawke killed two, and then took a sword through the arm from a man who already had an arrow in his shoulder. The limb fell dead at Hawke's side, and his bow clattered to the ground. The mercenary charged him, blood gushing from the kink in his armor, and drove his sword into Hawke's side. Bethany slid down the hill shrieking, staff raised, and the mercenary lifted off the ground. A cage of telekinetic magic crushed the man into mutilated mass of leather, muscle, and bone.

A cube fell from the sky, and hit the sand, where it splattered into an unidentifiable mass of red and brown chunks. Bethany hit her knees next to Hawke, hands glowing a vibrant white with what little creationism magic Anders had had a chance to teach her over the past month. So much for subtle. Anders half-slid, half-stumbled down the hill after her, catching the last Winters that rushed Beth and Hawke in a net of corrosive blood magic. A crossbow bolt killed the stationary target, and Anders turned to Fenris. The elf was still fighting, though only two men were left.

A quick frost incantation froze one man from the chest out, and Fenris's greatsword shattered him. The elf continued the motion into a spin to drive back into the last surviving Winter, and cleaved through his shoulder, down into his side, and came out at his hip. The man slid in half, his torso toppling one way while his legs took a final few faulty steps in the other.

Anders went to Hawke. He was sitting on his knees in the ground, and looked more annoyed than injured, cradling his wounded arm. Bethany had managed to knit the wound on Hawke's side to half its size, but she had no experience with internal bleeding or bones. Anders set a hand on her shoulder and gave her a tug, "I got him," Anders said.

Bethany cut off her channel, and scooted back in the sand. Anders knelt in her place, threads of creationism seeking out the handful of internal wounds Hawke had borne from the sword. Curative energies stopped the bleeding, and the rent flesh knit back together as if sewn by some ethereal hand. Anders shifted to Hawke's arm afterwards, ignoring the sudden vertigo that followed the spell.

The blow to Hawke's arm had cut through to bone and fractured it. His magic wrapped around the shattered bone and pieced it back together, and an infusion of emollient energies restored torn ligaments, cleaved muscle, and ripped flesh. Anders' connection to the Fade was tethered to Justice. His mana was nigh limitless. The spell shouldn't have exhausted him, but the vertigo rebounded, and the whole world seemed to spin. Anders looked up into sandy skies, seeping with blood, and down to the crystal clear ground, and wanted to throw up.

Anders curled in on himself and buried his face in his hands. A league's walk in the sun and a handful of spells, and Anders was ready to pass out. Passing out sounded fantastic. The sand was soaked with blood and loosened bowels, but Anders was more than willing to curl up in it. He unhooked his canteen form his belt and forced himself to take a drink instead. Maker, his arm was still bleeding. Just the thought of healing it made him tired.

"You alright?" Hawke asked; Bethany had pressed herself up against his side, and was hugging him fiercely. Her arms barely made the stretch around Hawke's broad shoulders, and Hawke gave her forearm a reassuring squeeze.

"Peachy," Anders said.

"You look like shit," Hawke said.

"You're such a flirt," Anders mumbled, cradling his canteen to his chest.

Varric joined them, the heavy-set dwarf breathing and moving at a slow shuffle. He collapsed into the sand next to him, and Anders was relieved to note he wasn't the only one exhausted by the trek across the coast. Then again, Varric was so overweight he looked like a sphere. Anders didn't have that excuse.

"Well shit," Varric said breathlessly. "What are you going to do now, Hawke? I don't think Junior is in the mood to be granting any favors."

Varric nodded, and Anders followed the tilt of his head across the alcove. The qunari was dead; choked to death on his own blood in the middle of the fight. Anders probably could have saved him if that was where his mind had been, and the thought made him a little sick. Saemus was kneeling next to his corpse, doubled over and sobbing into the sand. Fenris and Isabela hovered awkward nearby, both of them at a complete loss for how to comfort the boy.

"He'll have to," Hawke said.

"Maybe bringing him back will be enough?" Bethany asked, "We could ask for an audience with a Viscount in place of the reward."

"You weren't there, Sunshine," Varric said, "Apparently the Viscount is a 'busy man.'"

"Varric, can you talk to Saemus?" Hawke asked.

"I could try," Varric said.

"...I'll talk to him," Bethany decided, pushing herself to her feet. "Mother has to get that audience. The estate's ours. Gamlen had no right to hand it over to slavers. I don't want to spend one more minute in that filth-hole with him."

"Good luck, Sunshine," Varric said, "Or is it Lady Amell now?"

Bethany snorted and walked away. Anders felt his heart fall into his stomach. Hawke's mouth was moving, it was all just noise, and Anders couldn't make any sense of it. "What did you just say?"

"It's Hawke," Hawke repeated for him. "Not Amell. That name is dead."

Anders inhaled through his nose, and the air caught his throat and fled back out his mouth without ever reaching his lungs, "What?"

"What, no one ever told you?" Varric asked, "Hawke here is nobility. The scion of the famous Amell line. He has a whole estate up in Hightown his uncle-"

"Amell?" Anders interrupted; choking on the name. "Warden Commander Amell?"

"Cousin," Hawke said. "Why?"

"Cousin?" Anders repeated.

"... Second cousin, through my mother's cousin Revka," Hawke clarified.

"Cousin," Anders said again, "You're his cousin." A snort escaped him, and Anders used his staff to climb to his feet. "You're his fucking cousin." Anders giggled, and broke into a fit of hysterical laughter. He staggered out of the alcove, so dizzy he felt blind, and wandered up the cost until he found a cypress tree to collapse under.

Anders pulled his legs up against his chest and buried his face in his knees, hysterical laughter giving way to hysterical sobs. It wasn't fair. Maker, it wasn't fair. Anders wrapped his arms around his chest beneath his coat and hugged himself, his palms sliding over his pronounced ribs and reminding him of the man whose heart Fenris had ripped out. Anders had never related to anything so keenly before in his entire life.

"Blondie?" Varric called, what felt like an eternity later. The crunch of the dwarf's boots in the sand drew Anders' head up out of his knees. Anders freed one arm from under his coat and wiped off his face, for all the good it did him. His hand came away sticky with tears and snot; his nose was draining and his lashes were so heavy with tears he couldn't see. Varric found him behind his tree, and Anders managed a miserable smile.

"Oh boy," Varric sighed, easing himself down into the sand beside him. "Okay, Blondie, give me the story."

Sounds Anders wouldn't have called words spilled out of his mouth. Anders grabbed the collar of his tunic and dried his face off as best he was able. "I miss him so much," Anders sobbed into the wool.

"... can I take a guess?" Varric said. "You and this guy were together?"

Anders' 'yes' came out as more of a whine.

"... Damn, Blondie." Varric exhaled heavily. "... seriously? You and Warden Commander 'Raised an army of the dead at Denerim' Amell?"

"I can't-" Anders choked on a wheezing gasp. "I can't get away from him. I just want to forget about him, and I've been trying so hard not to think about it, but it's like he's haunting me. I see him everywhere, in everything... I can't be in my clinic and not think about him and my old infirmary. I'll heal someone with some ridiculous injury and think about telling him later before I remember-fuck-I... I still have days where I wake up and he's not there-"

Anders shoved his face back into his shirt and battled down a sob.

"... Look, Blondie, I know I don't know you that well, but I think it's pretty obvious you need to talk to someone about the shit you've been through," Varric said gently, "Come to the Hanged Man. Have a drink. Talk about it. Get it out of your system."

"Why do you even care?" Anders hissed into the soaked cotton of his tunic.

"I'd be lying if I said I'm not interested in hearing about the guy," Varric admitted, "But there's just some part of me can't stand to see a human cry. Specifically one with such an intense martyr complex he'll starve himself to death to keep other people fed."

"I'm not-" Anders started.

"Blondie, don't lie, you're bad at it," Varric interrupted him. "I know everything that goes on in this city. You think the refugees aren't going to talk about the miracle healer feeding them? I figure if I can get you to come to the Hanged Man, I can sit you down and watch you actually eat something, and feel a little better about myself. In exchange, you talk."

"That's not me," Anders dropped his shirt to drag his hands over his face and through his hair, "I don't do that. I don't talk about things."

"Maybe that's the problem," Varric said. "It can't be healthy for you to bottle all this shit up. I think you need to talk about it, and I think you need someone to listen. So you change your mind, you want to tell your story, I want to hear it."

"Why?" Anders snorted, "It's obviously not happy."

"That doesn't mean it's not good," Varric countered, "But it's more than that. There's a catharsis in stories, Blondie. You can make it all mean something. That rank pit you live in? That's just the setting. All the terrible shit that happens to you? That's just character development."

"What's my lover going to an early Calling because his father used blood magic to force me to cut out his eyes?" Anders asked.

"... fucked up."

Notes:

Qunlat Translation
Sataareth kadan kass-toh issala ebasit - It is my purpose to do what I must for those I consider important / I'm not moving.
Vashedan - Trash

Fanart
Blood Mage Anders

Chapter 66: Trail of Love

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back. Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 28 Molioris Afternoon
The Hanged Man

"No, listen," Anders snorted, clearing his throat to force the cider down, "Listen-I'm serious. The note says, 'You are my hen, the mistress of my flock. You nourish my body, and tend to my-"

"Cock?" Franke guessed with a giggle.

"Rooster," Anders said.

Varric shook his head, but his amber eyes were sparkling with mirth and his shoulders shook. "Now you're just fucking with us, Blondie."

"So what then, yeah?" Franke asked, fisherman's soup growing cold while he listened to the story. Anders had already finished his. Because his refined palate was particular to pig entrails and rotten river fish, and not because he was ravenous.

"So Sigrun says we should have a contest," Anders continued, worrying her earring between his fingers until the lobe was irritated, but the words came out. "All of us coming up with our own little bits of poetry, to see if any of us can do any better."

"What's the uh-...." Franke's face scrunched up and he snapped his fingers, "The dwarf..."

"I'm getting there," Anders kicked him under the table with the boots Franke had made for him. "So Oghren volunteers to go first, and right away we all know this is going to be bad. Sigrun's already got her fingers in her ears, going 'I take it back, I take it back.' But Oghren goes anyway, and his was - hang on I remember this - his was, 'I'll be the meat pie, you be the oven, stick it on in and give you some lovin.'"

"Oh," Varric groaned, covering his mouth, "Oh that's awful."

"That's brilliant," Franke laughed.

"Can't remember what Nate's was," Anders gave his empty soup bowl an accusatory frown for the lapse in his memories, "Some bit about Velanna's eyes, I think."

"What about your guy?" Franke asked.

Anders swallowed down a lump in his throat at the possessive. It was just a harmless question. This was what he was supposed to be working up towards. "He uh... His was... Sun-kissed alabaster, with no sun to be had, never wants for gold, no matter what he's clad."

"This guy was the right apple in your eye, yeah?" Franke said.

"Maker, please don't call him that," Anders whined. He couldn't even count the ways the phrase upset him.

"I'm with Cobbles," Varric chimed in, "Sounds like Creepy really put the romance in necromancer."

"I guess," Anders shrugged, and took another drink of his cider; there wasn't a drop of liquor in it, but apple had always been his favorite flavor, "Made me feel a bit shit. I went first, and mine was some joke about staffs I can't even remember."

"Ah, don't feel too bad, yeah?" Franke took a sip of soup, gone cold, and grimaced. "Maker knows Franke couldn't have cobbled together a bit better than that."

Varric snorted and lifted his tankard towards the wide-mouthed cobbler, "That's good. He's good. I like your taste in friends, Blondie."

"Did you just compliment yourself?" Anders asked, leaning over the table to grab Franke's bowl and reheat it with a wash of primal magic before he pushed it back.

"Thanks, yeah?" Franke took another sip of his soup, grimace-free.

"You have to when you look this good," Varric gave his tunic a tug that pulled his plunging neckline even lower on his chest. Anders envied him. Summer in Kirkwall warranted the sort of garb Varric wore: loose and breathy, but Anders didn't dare stray far from his coat. Draping it over the back of his chair was as far as he parted from it.

Anders had lost track of how many times he'd shifted in the carved stone chair. He couldn't find a place for his legs with how low it was to the ground, alternatively throwing them over the armrest or shoving them up against his chest. Varric didn't seem to have any advice for him, save for the occasional bemused snort, and the suggestion that they change his nickname to 'Legs.'

"So where'd the trail end up leading?" Varric asked.

"Oh-that, right," Anders halted his windmilling limbs in their search for space, "We finished the treasure hunt because why not, I guess? The Vigil's soldiers were busy loading up the dragonbones, and there wasn't anything else for us to do. Turns out the guy killed himself. Found his skeleton still clutching the poison bottle and a letter from his lover leaving him."

"Maker's breath, Blondie," Varric said, "Don't you have any happy stories?"

"That was a happy story," Anders laughed. "Remind me to tell you about Keenan sometime."

"Shit, you got something to top the Blackmarsh?" Franke asked around a slurp of carp.

"Who even goes to a place named the Blackmarsh on purpose?" Varric asked. He took another drink of his cider, which unlike Anders' had liquor in it, and wiped his mouth off on his sleeve, "Now if they called it Beermarsh... no, still doesn't work."

"It's the marsh bit, yeah?" Franke guessed, taking a drink of his own alcoholic cider. Anders tried not to resent them for it.

"Kind of cancels out anything else," Anders agreed, groping for an alternative. "Flowermarsh? Kittenmarsh?"

"Not cutting it," Varric said sadly.

"Well, it wasn't as if we had a choice," Anders said, shaking a hand through his hair. The comb and looking glass Hawke had gifted him helped, but Anders hadn't had another bath in close to a month. His hair was laden with oil again, regardless of whether or not it was knotted. There was just no winning for him. "We had to save Kristoff."

"How's he doing, by the way?" Varric asked; the sly dwarf was quickly winning a soft spot in Anders' heart. They were easy to find considering it was riddled with bruises, but Anders couldn't help noticing he seemed to have good luck with dwarves, where he generally had bad luck with elves.

"Well, he's not mad at me anymore," Anders shrugged. His spirit had been quiet ever since Anders had made the decision not to have drinks with Hawke. Fortunately, the awkwardness was at a minimum considering it seemed to be a mutual arrangement once Anders had outted himself for a blood mage.

"I ever get to meet the guy?" Franke asked, finishing off the last of his drink.

Anders snorted into his cider, "Probably not. He's pretty shy. But you know, we're talked about you, and he..." Anders searched for some kind of emotion from Justice and found none, "He thinks you're alright."

"Well alright's alright," Franke chuckled, giving the tankard a spin when he set it down. "Right handy trick that, with the flames, yeah?"

"I've got the touch," Anders agreed, wiggling fingers red with primal magic. Anders glanced at Varric, "So uh... how are things with him, by the way?"

"Gonna have to be more specific, Blondie," Varric said. "I know a lot of him's. You mean Killer?"

"Yeah," Anders said, despite the uneasy roil behind his eyes. "You know, with the Viscount and the expedition."

"You could just ask him yourself, you know," Varric pointed out with a tip of his tankard, "He doesn't bite. ... Well, okay, he bites, but most of it's bark.... or, well-"

"Look, I know he's an ass, but I'm kind of into that." Varric held up a restraining hand to forestall details Anders wasn't about to give, and Anders snorted, "I just... you know, it's not a good time for me, and besides I think he's still mad about last week."

"Couldn't tell you, Blondie," Varric admitted, "I thought he'd lose the last of his marbles when Sunshine got hurt, but here you are, fed, washed, a part of the group." Varric shrugged one shoulder, "Man's a mystery. He's paying Daisy's rent; which - I know the girl needs it, and I've got her groceries - but at this rate we're never going to get those fifty sovereigns."

"Is he paying for anything else?" Anders asked.

"What isn't Hawke paying for?" Varric snorted, planting an elbow on the table and splaying his fingers out to count them down with the thumb of the opposite hand. "Daisy's rent, Uncle Greasy's tab, half of Uncle Greasy's rent, family's food, armor repairs," Varric switched hands and started counting down the other, "Mission supplies, Broody gets a cut to buy his own food, you get food you're giving away to half of Darktown...

"I've been trying to keep track, but honestly? I think those twenty sovereigns were all he had. Which is no good for us. I've been pressing every contact I have for work, but the business with Sunshine and everything else... I don't see us making the cut. We're due to set out on the first of Solace, and I have no idea how Hawke is going to turn up fifty sovereigns in a month. We wait any longer, and the Deep Roads will be crawling with darkspawn again.

"... I wouldn't worry your head about it though, Blondie," Varric finished with a dismissive wave. "Hawke's as much a problem solver as he is a problem starter. He'll figure something out. In the meantime, I know he's expecting five sovereigns for the job he's on now, so that's something."

"Damn shame blood's my squick," Franke joked, "Sounds like merc life's the way to go, with that kind of pay."

"Not for me. I can't keep up with that life, and I don't want to. And nature?" Varric let an exaggerated shiver play through him; his face scrunched up in revulsion and his tongue lulled briefly, "Never touch the stuff. It's not natural."

"Nature ain't natural?" Franke repeated.

"Not at all," Varric said firmly. "Give me four walls and a roof over my head, and I'll pick it over allergies, thistle on my coat, and sand in my ass any day, Cobbles."

"You say that, but try living your whole life in a prison," Anders said, a final mouthful of cider emptying his tankard. He set it on the table with a spin, and magic kept it spinning, "I guarantee anything in your ass will be a welcome change."

Franke snorted and choked on his soup. Varric held up both hands, shoulders quaking madly, "You're killing me, Blondie."

"I'm just saying," Anders grinned.

Franke kept choking. Anders eyed him when it didn't stop, and Franke's face reddened. Franke stood up to hack and cough over the table.

"Shit," Varric said with a glance at Anders, "You're killing one of us. You wanna take over here, Blondie?"

"No, he's alright," Anders found his legs and stood, hasty steps walking him around the table. He put an encouraging hand on Franke's back. "Come on, you got it. Probably just a bit of fish. Keep coughing."

Franke grabbed at his throat and shook his head. His coughs stops, and his eyes lit with panic. "Alright, I got you," Anders took a spot behind him and wrapped his arms around Franke's waist, "Arms down, touch your belly button." Franke dropped his arms, and Anders formed a fist and set his curled thumb against Franke's abdomen above his navel. He closed his opposite hand over it, "Ready? Here we go, you're fine." Anders thrust his hands in and up, hard, twice, and Franke retched a chunk of fish across the table.

Franke collapsed against the table with a gasp. Anders ran an idle hand over Franke's back while he caught his breath. Varric was staring at him wide-eyed and open-mouthed. "... What?" Anders asked.

"Fuck, I don't know," Varric ran a hand through his loose blond hair, "That was terrifying?"

"He's fine," Anders said, patting Franke's back, "You're fine. My jokes aren't that deadly."

Franke snorted feebly, and twisted around to sit on the edge of the table. A few deep breaths left his chest rising and falling at a steady rate.

"Good?" Anders asked.

"Yeah, Franke's alright," Franke managed, giving Anders' forearm a grateful squeeze, "Thanks, yeah?"

"No problem," Anders squeezed back. He grabbed a napkin off the table and went to find the piece of fish Franke had launched across the room. Anders found it on the floor and scooped it up, dropping it and the rag in his empty soup bowl before he took his seat. His legs flopped awkwardly over the stone, and Anders found a place for them eventually.

"Me and my big mouth, yeah?" Franke joked, eyeing his soup suspiciously after its betrayal.

"That was a little close for my taste," Varric said, rolling kinks out of his shoulders and the back of his neck, "Glad you were here, Blondie. You always that calm when a guy is turning into a grape?"

"What should I do instead? Light my hair on fire?" Anders asked, summoning a sphere of flame to dance in the center of his palm, "Because I can do that, you know."

"Very funny," Varric exhaled hard.

"What, you can bury a bolt in a man's throat but you can't watch one choke?" Anders snorted, crushing the flame in his palm. It died in wisps of smoke that escaped out between Anders' fingers.

"Never said I watched the others, either," Varric shook his head. "Besides, combat, that's different. You've got the scene set, adrenaline pumping, you're not removed from it, but it's mechanical. A guy choking to death in my room? Not something I want to see. Glad you're alright, Cobbles."

"Yeah, Franke's alright," Franke agreed, nudging his soup away with a distrustful finger and standing. He walked around the table to shake Varric's hand. "But Franke better get back to the tanners before they tan Franke. Good to meet you, Varric," He spared Anders his whole arm, and pulled him up into a quick hug. "Anders, owe you again. Get you some gloves this time, yeah?"

"You don't owe me anything, Franke," Anders promised.

"Yeah, yeah," Franke waved him off and left. Anders sat back down and adjusted a few throw pillows on the carved stone chair so his ribs weren't biting into the armrest.

"So what do you think, Blondie?" Varric asked, standing to refill both their tankards, albeit from separate pitchers. "These lunches helping you any?"

"Well, I'm eating more," Anders allotted, accepting the proffered tankard and taking a drink. He rolled the crisp taste over his tongue before he swallowed, grateful for any flavor that wasn't conjured water. Varric was still waiting for a real answer when Anders looked up. "It's good to see Franke, too. Thanks for letting him come."

"Hey, as long as you don't bring a circus through here without asking me first, you can invite whoever you want," Varric said, sinking back into his own chair and actually fitting in it. "My door's always open. What about you-know-who? Helping any there?"

"I honestly have no idea," Anders said, cradling his tankard against chest and drawing up his knees. "I don't mourn. Last All Soul's Day, I got drunk. Didn't give a two bits about it all. Said the past was in the past, and the dead should stay dead, but they don't. They haunt you. Shit, half of them, I don't even know if they're dead. You have no idea how many familiar faces I see in every Tainted nightmare...."

"Any you wanna talk about?" Varric asked.

Anders shrugged and took a drink of the nonalcoholic beverage, keeping the mug warm with a low flush of primal magic on his palms. He could barely bring himself to think about his mother. Maker, about Compassion.

"That earring from anyone special?" Varric asked.

"Sigrun. For Satinalia..." Anders ticked out the months with his fingers against his tankard, unable to believe he needed both hands to do it, "Shit... half a year ago now," Andraste preserve him, Anders couldn't decide if it felt like it had been decades or days. Anders ran a hand through his hair, lamenting his lack of a tie as he always did, and bit down a whine when a few flaxen strands came loose. His hairline was receding. He knew it was. "Maker, what the fuck have I been doing?"

"Making yourself one of the most wanted apostates in Kirkwall, and the backbone of all of Undercity," Varric said with a toast of his tankard. "By my count, half a hundred refugees must owe you their lives or at least their spleens by now. How's it feel to be a hero?"

"You'd have to ask a hero," Anders said.

"The self-confidence thing must be a part of the martyr complex," Varric mused, rubbing his chin between thumb and forefinger. He waved dismissively, "Ah, don't worry, I'm sure we can find a way to write it in. Can I guess it played a part in why we missed you Tuesday?"

"Right," Anders snorted, "I'm sure everyone missed the hobo apostate from the sewers who drags in shit and smells like death."

"Sunshine did," Varric told him after another drink of cider. "Something come up?"

Anders shrugged one shoulder, "I just figure things are awkward enough for me with Fenris and Aveline without adding Hawke into the mix."

"You don't know what to say to him," Varric guessed.

"I don't know what to say to him," Anders agreed, shifting in his chair, "It's not really a topic you broach, you know? 'By the way, you look almost exactly like my last lover who also happens to be your cousin, and oh also, do you mind me being a maleficar?' I can just see that working."

"Seemed to work there," Varric noted. "Why don't you give it a shot?"

Anders raised an eyebrow at him, "What happened to that arrow in my neck?"

"Look, Blondie, I'm not fond of rewrites, but if Killer hasn't kicked you out yet, I think it's safe to say the two of you are good." Varric said reassuringly, "I doubt he's happy with the blood magic, but if he puts up with Daisy I don't see why you would be any different."

"It's not just that," Anders said. "Now that I know, I just... I don't know how to be around him."

"Maker's breath, Blondie, how close is this resemblance?" Varric asked.

"Close," Anders set his tankard down to think. "Hawke's more..." Anders waved a hand over his upper arm to imply size, "Phwaa."

"Phwaa?" Varric chortled.

"Well what do you want me to call it?" Anders demanded, unable to help snorting. "Ah, I should get back to the clinic... Thanks for doing all this for me, Varric. So... twice a week? Is that what we're doing?"

"That works for me," Varric agreed. "Still think you should come Tuesdays, though, Blondie. Daisy's got Rivaini when you're gone, but Sunshine just stares at the door. It's some seriously sad shit."

"Fine, fine, if Beth cares," Anders groaned and stood, waving a hand at their scattered bowls and plates, "You need me to get any of this?"

"Ah, no, don't bother," Varric waved him off and stood with him. "Norah'll be up in a bit."

"So I'll see you..." Anders shrugged back into his coat and tried to think.

"Three days?" Varric supplied.

"Three days," Anders agreed; he shook Varric's hand, and left his room unsure whether or not he felt better.

Anders walked through the crumbling hall, and Isabela caught him on his way down the stairs. She was dressed in her dress and glittering with all her jewels. Anders loved watching her move. The woman was a wave. She was always arched, curled, or coiled about something or someone. When she tossed her hair, Anders could practically see her standing on the deck of a ship, one leg propped up, shoulders thrown back, a score of eager men at her command.

And then she opened her mouth and was absolutely ridiculous, and Anders liked her even more. Isabela hadn't bat an eyelash over the blood magic. According to her, she trusted him and Merrill, or 'Kitten', to know what they were doing. Anders hadn't had an opportunity to talk to anyone else about it, considering his self-imposed isolation, but Isabela had chanced upon him on his first lunch with Varric.

Isabela twisted them out of the flow of traffic and practically pinned him to the tavern wall. "Hey there, Sparky," She grinned, "Long time no see. You missed a whole chapter of Love and Lyrium last Tuesday."

"Love and Lyrium?" Anders groaned, "Really? That's what you're going with?"

"Someone sounds interested," Isabela grinned. "Do you want a private reading?"

"I have to get back to my clinic," Anders said.

"You are such a bore now," Isabela sighed. "Don't you ever have fun anymore?"

"I'm loads of fun," Anders said.

"Loads. Love it," Isabela snorted, "But you can't fool me. I was there for that little outburst last week. You know they say the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else."

"Who says that?" Anders demanded.

"I did, just now," Isabela grinned.

"Look, believe me, I appreciate the offer-"

"Who said I was offering?" Isabela interrupted.

"Well then I appreciate the thought, but I'm-" Anders chuckled, when the door to the tavern opened and a host of guardsmen marched in, "-shit."

"Boring maybe, but I wouldn't go that far," Isabela stared at him, and followed his eyes over her shoulder. "They're just guards, sweet thing. Not templars," Isabela caught his pale hand in her dark one and gave it a tug, "Here, come on, I'll walk you out."

Isabela led him across the crowded tavern floor, away from the guards and where they found their table. They made it past the hearth and around a group of besotted patrons, and out the door without incident. Lowtown welcomed him with a searing afternoon sun, and Anders shielded his eyes against it. "See?" Isabela said. "No problem."

Anders heard the slam of a door behind them, and glanced over his shoulder to see Aveline approaching them. "You were saying?" Anders sighed.

"Anders," Aveline's long stride overtook them, and she cut them off before they'd gotten far. One look at her face, sun-flushed and scowling, was enough to make Anders want to fly away from it all. "We need to talk."

"Well if it isn't the new 'Captain,'" Isabela purred; Anders appreciated the step she took in front of him, "Can I call you captain? You can call me captain."

"I won't be doing that," Aveline said.

"Neither will I," Isabela said brightly, "Because you're a guard captain. No real authority. Something to remember, big girl."

Aveline ignored her and looked to Anders, "I need to know if you're a threat."

"That's a bit vague," Anders mused, taking a step back with serious thoughts of bolting out of the hex. "A threat to what? Darkspawn? Templars? Pretty girls' hearts?"

"That last one, definitely," Isabela grinned toothily.

"This city," Aveline said. "Fenris told me what you did on the coast," No surprise there, Anders supposed. "Your 'condition' was one thing when I thought it was well meant, but I don't know that I believe that anymore. You're reckless and obviously stupid, and if I find out you're dangerous, if you ever get Hawke or Bethany hurt, I'll turn you over to the templars myself."

"He is just the naughtiest little healer, isn't he?" Isabela said before Anders could force out words around the anger burning his throat. "Does it get you hot and bothered thinking of him all tied up? It gets me hot and bothered, but my version probably involves more whipped cream than yours."

"Shut up, whore," Aveline snapped at her.

"Where do you get off?" Anders demanded, ignoring the fact he'd already gotten Bethany hurt. He wasn't mad for his sake.

"Nowhere, apparently," Isabela snorted.

"I know you're always prepared for a sudden random phallus, but for once shut your mouth," Aveline glared. "This isn't about you, whore."

"You shut yours," Anders stepped out from behind Isabela, "You think I'm going to stand here and listen to you talk shit about someone just because they get more sex than you? You're damn right I'm a threat, I-"

"Shhh," Isabela covered his mouth with a hand and leaned over to plant a kiss on his cheek, "Settle down, sweet thing. I don't need you going all white knight and riding in on your spirit to protect me. She doesn't know me. I know me. Come on, walk me back to this clinic of yours so I know how to find it if I need you."

Isabela tangled an arm in his and dragged him away from the Hanged Man. They walked out of the Hanged Man's courtyard, down a flight of stairs, and were half-way out of the hex before Anders realized they were going the wrong way. Anders took the lead, and led her through the alleys. Isabela stayed on his arm; she smelled like the sea, and her eyes scanned the streets ahead of them with such an easy smile Anders couldn't help relaxing.

"So that was a reaction," Isabela noted, giving his arm a squeeze when Anders stopped tensing it. "I'm sensing a story."

"I guess," Anders sighed, not sure he wanted to go there. Lunch with Varric was hard enough. "... I had a friend-my best friend for a while, actually. Sigrun. Her mother was a noble hunter which is, I don't know, this dwarf thing where their castes go down through gender, and noble hunters try to have a son so they can be noble. But Sigrun's mother - Her name was Jena, I think? No, Jana - Anyway, she had Sigrun instead and it ruined her.

"She had to move back in with her brother, and got a job unloading brontos, but she never resented Sigrun for it. She sounded like a special woman, you know? And I can't tell you how many girls I get in from the Rose. It's not always one of those diseases; sometimes it's bruises from their clients and they just laugh it off when I ask because they're 'just whores.' It's just an ugly word."

"Like abomination?" Isabela guessed.

"Yeah," Anders said.

"Well don't go fighting with the big girl over it," Isabela nudged him when they stepped onto the lift to Darktown. "I give her plenty of shit; she can give me some back."

"No promises," Anders said.

"Gentleman cranks," Isabela gave him a shove, and Anders bent to crank and send the lift down into Darktown. "You get too worked about things, Sparky. You seriously need to unwind a little. You're coming next Tuesday, right?"

"Well if you're offering," Anders joked.

"I like you." Isabela grinned.

"I like you too," Anders grinned back, pulling on a breath of mana for light when the lift fell into darkness. It slid through blackrock, and eventually emerged into the damp mines of Darktown.

Isabela leapt off the lift and over a puddle. She turned in a circle to survey the graffitied cavern walls, dripping sewage, and scattered refugees making nests of refuse and rubbish. "Oh, it's lovely."

"Half of Ferelden is packed into this stinking place," Anders followed her off the lift, and gestured down towards the mineshaft that lead to his clinic. "They'd have done better to fight the darkspawn."

"Said the Grey Warden," Isabela mused, drawing more than a few stares either for her beauty or for the gold dripping from her piercings. Or both. "You know there's one thing I can't wrap my head around with you and your Commander."

"What?" Anders asked, amazed with himself he'd even managed that. Maybe Varric was right. Maybe talking helped.

"Remember how I said I met him?" Isabela asked, "How he was traveling with a friend of mine? His name was Zevran, and the two of them did a lot more than travel together. There's a lot of history with me and Zevran, and I've never known him to turn down sex, but with your Commander... I just... I don't know, I guess I'm worried about him. Do you know what happened to him?"

Anders made the climb up the final flight of stairs that led to his clinic and stopped. He leaned back against the dirt-crusted stone, and forced himself to dredge up the memories, "He left him. During the Blight. I didn't really-" Care? Want to know? Want to care? "-get a lot of the details. I know he's alive, though. He sent Amell a letter saying he was in Antiva, last Satinalia, and he was being hunted by the Crows. I don't know anything more than that."

"Well, as long as he's not dead," Isabela said.

"The whole, hunted by a league of assassins bit doesn't worry you?" Anders asked, searching for his key in his belt pouches.

"Zevran can take care of himself." Isabela said, "I'm not worried about that. I was just worried he might have gotten eaten by the Archdemon or something. Anyway, sweet thing, thanks for showing me your place. With Hawke's death toll approaching natural disaster, you never know when you might need a healer."

"Well if you do," Justice lit the Veilfire for their lantern, and Anders gestured to it, "Look for the lantern. I move a lot, whenever the templars catch on. The refugees can probably point you in the right direction, if you have trouble finding it."

"Aren't you clever?" Isabela grinned, sparing him a wave over her shoulder when she left. "Take care, Sparky. Don't push yourself too hard."

"You too," Anders let himself into his clinic and hung up his coat. The coat rack was a bent bronze rod, propped up with stones, and his latest little attention to the clinic. On the one hand, it was almost cozy, but on the other Anders knew he was going to have to leave it all behind once the templars caught on. He tossed his satchel onto his table, and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows.

It didn't usually take long for the patients to start trickling in, but there was always some down time. Anders usually spent it reading the Chant or cleaning. He went to his shelves to fetch a bowl for water to wash his hands in, and stared at the seashell he'd never had a chance to give Karl. It was a thing of beauty. One of few or many in this world depending on which part of Anders you asked.

Karl would have liked it, but Karl was gone, like everyone else was gone, and sooner or later Anders was going to have to accept it. He set the bowl down on the table for later, and opened his satchel. The letters were still there, resting alongside Amell's journal, his mother's pillow, and everything else Anders couldn't face.

Anders found Karl's last letter, and took a seat with it. His chest felt suddenly and inexplicably tight, and Anders kept the parchment folded in half over one finger. Memories of Karl's lips and his last shudder tangled together in Anders' thoughts. Anders' shoulders shook, threatening sobs, but he had to deal with it someday.

The door to his clinic opened, and a patient walked in. Anders let out the breath he'd been holding, and left the letter on the table, for someday.

Chapter 67: Rude Awakening

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back. Thank you for all your wonderful comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 30 Molioris Morning
Kirkwall Darktown

Anders jerked awake with a strangled gasp, his heart racing his lungs, an ache in his ribcage from the frantic pace set by both. His legs were shaking when he dragged them off the cot, and let them fall heavy to the floor. Anders pitched forward, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, his breath spilling broken between his fingers. Why? Why, in the name of the Maker, had possession stolen his dreams, but not his nightmares?

Anders peeled his sweat-soaked tunic off his skin and dragged it over his head, catching a few strands of hair in the process. It was cold and damp, but not quite to the point of wringing. Anders tossed it at his drying rack, relieved when the cotton caught and held to the bronze grate by a sleeve. It didn't belong on the floor of his clinic. Damp was one thing, but dirty was another.

Anders didn't own a washboard, and had no real means of cleaning his clothes save to beat at them with a makeshift washing beetle and hope for the best. A cockroach scuttled across his bare foot and Anders wrinkled his nose, kicking the vermin across the clinic with a jerk of his still-trembling leg. It toppled end over end and went scuttling down into the gutters where it belonged. His feet didn't even belong on the floor of his clinic.

Anders wiped the sweat off the back of his neck and smoothed it back through his sodden hair. The nightmares weren't every night. Most nights were peaceful, after a fashion. Anders laid down, closed his eyes, and an indeterminate amount of time later he opened them again feeling relatively rested. For whatever reason the Fade was lost to him, but the darkspawn hivemind remained.

It was always the same in that writhing mass: gnawing through chewy muscle and hard bone, burrowing into flesh and slipping through blood. If it were just a haze of carnage, Anders could have weathered it, but fate was never so merciful. It was always the same: dead faces of friends and family made up his victims, and Anders would have killed them all twice if it meant hearing that Call for just one more second.

Anders wished he'd talked to Amell more about the Calling and what was waiting for him, but that wasn't like him. Anders could deal with it later, like he always did. Ten to thirty years. That was what Amell had said. The nightmares were here to stay. Anders would get used to them someday. He had no choice. His necklace proved that.

The vial of blood hung like a noose about Anders' neck, cold as death against his racing heart. The Taint was there, in his veins and his amulet, and it had claimed Mhairi, Lyna, and a half dozen more. One day it would claim Anders too, and he'd go to his Calling, but Anders didn't know what that meant for him. More than that, he didn't know what it meant for Justice.

One day, someday, Anders would be just another Kristoff. Justice was immortal. He'd need a new host, or he'd need to return to the Fade, and Anders didn't know how to grant his poor friend either. Anders rubbed at his chest, and wondered what Justice thought of his nightmares. He swore his spirit had pulled him from a few, but that made no sense. Justice wasn't tied to the darkspawn hivemind. Anders shoved the thoughts away, and gripped the rickety edge of his cot. He pushed himself to standing, and left his anxieties abed. It was just a day, like any other.

Anders went to his shelves, where the scent of dried elfroot and embrium was heavy enough to mask the pervading stench of the sewers. They hung from a line of thread against the wall with heatherum and foxite, gathered with Merrill and Bethany on their trips with Hawke to the Planasene Forest. They were vital for his patients, but not for the Collective. Black and blue cohosh were always in demand, to the point where Merrill had started growing the herbs for him in small flower boxes at her home in the alienage.

Maker save him, Anders had asked her to do it. He hated it. He was a healer. He knew better, but what choice did the poor girls have? Anders could follow up with the girls at the Rose, but the girls at the Gallows? Anders left them to chance, and he refused to believe he hadn't already killed someone in the past few months he'd started securing the requisition.

Few things were quite as dangerous as an unsupervised abortion. The girls might retain tissue and placenta, and suffer internal infections. They might suffer kidney or liver damage. They might hemorrhage. The assortment of herbs might not work at all, but Anders went and got them anyway. He prepared them anyway. He handed the small vials off to their girl at the Rusty Anchor, and tried to pretend he was helping and not making it worse.

He found ginger for nausea for the girls who didn't want their children aborted. After Bardel told him disciplined mages weren't being allowed healers, Anders started collecting basil as a muscle relaxer to help recover from smites. He gathered peppermint for indigestion for the mages in solitary who suffered from horrible diets, and to help regulate blood flow after a smite. Feverfew for inflammation, butterbur for headaches, willow for pain and fevers, and whatever else he could think of.

The requisitions didn't always ask for it all, but Anders gathered it anyway. Selby never turned it down, and after a few days, there was always someone in the Gallows who had need of it. It was something, but it wasn't enough. Anders didn't want to make life in the Gallows tolerable. He wanted to make life outside the Gallows possible. He needed to get in touch with the Coterie, but there'd been nothing ever since Hawke had killed the small group outside his clinic.

Anders pulled down the few herbs that had finished drying and stored them in the handful of boxes and jars he'd managed to collect over the month. He would have killed for a proper alembic, quite literally if templars were an option, but he managed well enough with pots and pans, assorted bowls, a round stone that served well enough as a pestle. The clinic was a far cry from his old infirmary, but it served, and so did Anders.

Anders went through his quick morning routine, and was washed, relieved, and dressed, if not necessarily fed when Justice lit their lantern. He hadn't been in his clinic for much more than a few minutes when his first patient walked in. The tanned-skinned marcher with sun-bleached hair looked in no way injured, but Anders had been a healer long enough to know how little that meant.

"What hurts?" Anders asked, hurrying over to the young woman's side. He held out a steadying hand the woman stepped briskly away from. She took a turn about his clinic, boiled leather armor creaking with every step, and was far from reminiscent of Merrill doing the same. Her eyes skimmed over the shelves and operating tables disinterestedly before they settled on him.

They were a sickly green, and Anders didn't care for them, "Nice little place you got here," The woman said, "You looking to keep it?"

"Is that a threat?" Anders asked, "Because I'm busy."

"Feisty," The woman bent her lips back into something almost like a smile, "Careful with that. A little bird told me you'd been looking for us, and we wouldn't want to get off on the wrong foot, now would we?"

"Are you Coterie?" Anders asked eagerly, a hard push of arcane energies swinging the door to his clinic shut. "Thank the Maker, I thought I'd never get in touch with you."

"Yeah?" The woman asked, with a wary glance to the door. "Funny, considering the last time we tried to get in touch with you our boys wound up missing."

"That wasn't me," Anders said quickly, resenting Hawke for what he'd done, however well meant.

"Well lucky you, then, Harlan said to give it another go. Name's Lilley," Lilley said, idly and unnecessarily fingering the hilt at her waist. It would take a lot more than a throwing dagger to kill him. "What's your poison?"

"I want access to your tunnels," Anders explained, trying to decide on a place for his hands. He ended up folding them over his chest. "The ones between the Gallows and Kirkwall you use to smuggle lyrium to the templars."

"The tunnels?" Lilley snorted, "You couldn't afford them. We go forty sovereigns at a discount, and you are not getting a discount."

"Look, I know I don't have the coin, but I've got better," Anders let a ripple of static play over his fingers, bright blue and crackling like spider webs. "You have a lot of surface dwarves in the Coterie, right? I can heal through their innate resistance to magic. Can you imagine how much coin you'll save on poultices, bandages, salves? Give me a few months, and I'll be worth a lot more than forty sovereigns to you."

Lilley ran her tongue over her teeth while she stared at him. It was outrageously unattractive. "I'll talk to Harlan." Lilley decided after a pause. "But you better be legit."

"I am," Anders said quickly, letting the spell taper off, "But I won't be here for Solace. Mid-August, I might be back."

"Works," Lilley said, hand moving from her hilt to her hip. "Harlan gives the go ahead, and we'll put you through the paces in Justinian, sleep on it for Solace, and let you know by August. You better make good on this, though. Once you're in, you stay."

"I know," Anders said; he felt the word resonate in his chest, a certainty from Justice that rebounded eagerly between them. Finally. Finally, they could stop wasting away in this vermin-invested clinic, healing one injustice after another but never preventing them in a vicious cycle that was more depressing than fulfilling.

"Good," Lilley's lips peeled back for another toothy grin, "I think we'll work well together." Lilley rifled through the pouches on her belt, and pulled out a small vial, no bigger than her pinky, glowing a bright and entrancing blue. She tossed it to him, and Anders snapped out a hand to catch it, a ripple of matching blue light playing over the back of his palm. "In good faith, healer. We'll be in touch."

Anders barely heard the door to his clinic open and close as Lilley left. He couldn't see magic, and the way the Fade pulsed within a person. He couldn't use bursts of spirit energy to affect the world around him. He couldn't hear lyrium, as though Andraste herself were whispering the Chant in his ear, but Justice could, and Anders could through him.

Lyrium. The sapphire liquid was distilled, and encased in glass, but Maker, the song. Anders could feel it like the brush of a feather running up and down his spine. The threnody pulled at him, aching, and he caught himself swaying in time to nothing before he realized what he was doing and shook himself.

"Not yet," Anders said aloud, watching the subtle ripples of blue swimming through his veins beneath freckled skin, "We'll try soon. With Merrill. Somewhere safe."

The blue receded, and Anders grinned. Merrill was right. They just needed a bit of lyrium, and Justice would get over his reluctance to control their body. Theirs. It was theirs. Justice was a part of him, and Anders wasn't going to leave him locked in the back of his mind like some kind of twisted mental solitary. Anders stowed the vial in a way in his satchel for later and went back to his clinic.

He saw to a boy with an infection in his foot from stepping on a stray fishhook, healed another ulcer with Mark, and treated a woman with a gaping thigh wound, before Hawke was back in his clinic. Anders bit down a sigh. Maker, he didn't need this right now. He was having a difficult enough time coming to terms with the loss of the Wardens. He didn't need Amell's echo haunting him.

But there Hawke was anyway, hair as black as the Void tousled about his face, framing all too familiar features set in an unfamiliar posture. Shoulders hunched, thumb in his belt beside his quiver, hand in his hair, feet kicking up dust while his eyes fixed on the floor. Anders supposed it was fine if they stayed there.

"Job?" Anders guessed, wringing a bloodied cloth over his hands to clean them. He wished the man would just wait for their next hunting trip or game of Wicked Grace to bother him.

"Band of qunari deserters on the coast," Hawke explained, "We're setting out this evening. You coming?"

"And we're going to .... have tea with them?" Anders guessed, the air around him drying out while his hands overflowed with water. He poured it into the rag, and wrung it out over the gutters.

"Yes or no?" Hawke asked; he was frowning when Anders glanced over at him, unsurprisingly.

"We've really got to work on that sense of humor, because this definitely sounds like a joke," Anders said, trading his rag for his mop to clean up the streak of blood the refugee with the thigh-injury had left. "Why would I ever want to kill Tal'Vashoth? That's what they're called right? The people who leave the Qun and decide to think for themselves? I'm serious about the tea. I might even throw in a slice of cake."

"They're bandits," Hawke said unapologetically.

"Oh, well, that changes everything," Anders said sarcastically. He spent every day healing gang members, cutpurses, and other criminals who only took to crime because they had no other option. Anders didn't see what made the Tal'Vashoth any different. "Have they actually hurt anyone, or is that just what people call them?"

"Aveline's been having trouble with the whole lot. They've been raiding caravans for weeks, a score strong," Hawke said, taking a few aimless steps about his clinic. "Tintop's offering fifty silver a head."

"If someone offered me fifty silver for head I'd have a lot nicer place," Anders snorted. Hawke laughed, and hastily smothered it with a cough, "Who's Tintop and why does he care so much?"

"A dwarf," Hawke cleared his throat, "They've got a bomb he wants."

"A balm?" Anders asked. "Who pays that much for a balm?"

"A bomb," Hawke said again, louder.

"Has anyone ever told you you mumble?" Anders asked, wringing his mop out over the gutter when he finished cleaning up.

"No," Hawke said stiffly.

Anders raised a challenging eyebrow at him, and felt ridiculously proud when Hawke dragged his thumb over his lips to wipe away a grin. Then he felt anxious and uncomfortable, and couldn't decide whether the emotions belonged to him or Justice. "... Um-"

"I-" Hawke started with him, and halted abruptly. "Go ahead."

"I'm sorry," Anders leaned his mop up in the corner, and wandered over to stand a few feet away from Hawke; it was hard to get the words out, but the lack of eye-contact helped, "About that drink. What were you going to say?"

"Just-... the same," Hawke said.

"So, a bomb?" Anders asked, battling down the queasy sensation that knotted up in his stomach at turning Hawke down. He probably should have explained himself, but the words weren't coming out, and Hawke wasn't asking, "I think I've heard of that. It's why their ships are so feared, right? We had a dwarf back at the Vigil obsessed with explosives. Every other day his experiments would leave the whole Keep shaking," Or Amaranthine shaking, when your best friend sacrificed herself, and you were so much of a bastard you thought she'd abandoned you. "He used lyrium sand for most of it, I think."

"Tintop says it's not lyrium," Hawke said. "Just a mix of sands and ores anyone can use, not just dwarves."

Anders spent an awkward moment wondering whether to keep the conversation going or get his things. "So-"

"Do-" Hawke started with him again. "Go ahead."

Anders laughed, and felt tension uncoil from his shoulders. He rolled down his sleeves and fetched his coat to shrug into."So the Wounded Coast again, huh?" Anders asked, adjusting his bunched up sleeves under the heavy suede, "At this rate they should probably be calling it the Bloody Coast."

"Anders, what the fuck?" Hawke asked suddenly.

"What the fuck, what, what the fuck?" Anders shot Hawke a bewildered look over his shoulder, and was surprised to find the man actually looking at him.

"Blood magic?" Hawke asked without preamble, "What were you thinking?"

"'I should do something to save the Viscount's son,' maybe?" Anders supplied, adjusting his collar so the feathers weren't pressed against his neck, "Just at a guess?"

"So you go for blood magic?" Hawke asked. "What could possibly possess you to think that's a good idea?"

"Word choice," Anders forced a grin, tempted to order the man out of his clinic on the spot. Hawke looked nothing like Amell in that instant, and looking at him made Anders' face hot in the worst of all possible ways. "Are you really complaining? I saved him, didn't I?"

"That doesn't excuse it," Hawke said. "Magic exists to serve to serve man, and never-"

"Oh don't quote Transfigurations at me," Anders sneered, "You don't think I know that verse? You don't think I have it memorized?"

"No," Hawke scoffed, "I don't think you do, or you'd-"

The door to Anders' clinic swung open, and a refugee came staggering in, cradling their hand to their chest. Their fingers were brutally mangled, twisted off in different directions, and bleeding profusely in the few places bone broke through skin. "Healer-hammer-forge-" The refugee whined, tears spilling down their face, nose draining over their quivering lips.

"Over here," Anders took off his coat and rolled his sleeves back up. He caught the refugee by their shoulders and guided them to sit on a stool set before one of his operating tables. "Put your hand on the table."

"It hurts," The refugee blubbered, hand trembling forward. They barely moved it a few inches of their chest before they broke into a sob. A wedding ring gleamed on one swollen finger, causing the poor fellow even more undue pain.

"I know it does," Anders said, looking over his shoulder to the shelves Hawke was standing beside, "Hawke, give me that towel, and the bowl there. There's a spool of thread on the shelf I need, and the elfroot."

Hawke brought him all four items, and laid them out the operating table without question. Anders took the refugee's quaking wrist and held it over the bowl. A handful of mana took the form of water in Anders' palm, and washed the dirt and blood from the mangled hand. The refugee sniffled, and Anders handed him the elfroot, "Chew this, it'll help with the pain."

Two of the five fingers had bone jutting forth at odd angles, while his thumb was merely sporting a gash that shone through with white. His pinky looked indented, and the ring finger was likely only fractured. Anders cut off the flow of water when the wounds were clean, and picked up the towel. A breath of primal magic coated his hand with ice, safe through the towel, and cooled the swollen digits.

Anders wove threads of creationism through the poor blighter's thumb and knit the split flesh back together. Blood gathered in the towel, escaping from the rent digits with every heartbeat while Anders worked, despite the elevation. Anders conjured one tendril of creationism after the next, and the regenerative energies healed all but the two fingers with bone jutting for them.

Anders realigned them, mumbling a reassuring, "I know," in response to the refugee's many pained whimpers. When he had the wounds sealed, the breaks mended, and the fractures healed, Anders picked up the thread and worked it between swollen flesh and cold metal. He wound the thread about the stuck wedding ring, and pulled the thread from the opposite end when he finished. It was a painfully slow process, but the refugee breathed a sigh of relief when it was off.

Anders handed it to him, and the man pocketed it with his good hand. The refugee gave him a strained smile, his teeth stained green with elfroot, "Thank you, healer."

"You shouldn't need a splint, but I don't want you using that hand for at least two weeks," Anders warned him, surprised to find Hawke hadn't left, and was leaning quietly against the wall beside his shelves, "Hawke, can you get him more elfroot? One of the packets on the second shelf."

The refugee took his packet, and thanked them both again profusely before he left. Anders picked up the bowl of bloody water, and dumped it out in the gutter. He brought it back to the operating table and snatched up a rag. A roll of Anders' hand refilled the bowl with clean water for him to wash away the blood. "Thanks for helping there," Anders said.

"You need an aide," Hawke said.

"I had an aide," Anders reminded him bitterly.

"Not Beth," Hawke clarified with an unapologetic frown, picking up the bloody towel Anders had abandoned. He folded it, and dunked it into the bowl to scrub out the blood stain.

"Are you volunteering?" Anders couldn't help asking at the sight.

"No, but I'm here now," Hawke said.

"What is with you?" Anders asked, fighting with a particular stubborn stain from his previous patient caught in a groove in the table. "I've never heard you get on Merrill's case about blood magic."

"Merrill's Dalish," Hawke said, "She doesn't know any better."

"What?" Anders laughed in disbelief, "Merrill's a bloody genius. She knows exactly what she's doing and so do I."

"Merrill doesn't know the Chant!" Hawke argued, "You do! You grew up in the Circle. How can you possibly justify using blood magic?"

"How can you not?" Anders demanded, forgetting the table to scowl at the man across from him, "Don't talk to me about the Circle. You've spent your whole life keeping Beth from that. You of all people should understand the need to stand against templars."

"So blood magic is your answer?" Hawke scoffed, abandoning the towel to gesture at the faint scar on Anders' wrist from the week prior, "The same magic that led to the Maker turning His gaze away from us? Are you sure you know Transfigurations?"

"What does that verse even have to do with blood magic!?" Anders demanded. "It's a work of its time. It's about despots, and tyrants. You don't need blood magic to make those things. Just look at the bloody Knight-Commander!"

"The Knight-Commander can't mind control anyone!" Hawke shot back.

"Really?" Anders laughed mirthlessly, "Because she seems to be doing a damn good job with the Viscount."

"The Viscount can think for himself," Hawke said, "His mistakes are his own damn fault. No one is mind-controlling him. A mage using blood magic strips a man of his will. It's no better than the Rite of Tranquility. You can't sit there and tell me it isn't evil."

"Don't compare Tranquility to mind-control," Anders snarled, thrusting a thumb smoking with primal magic to his heart. "I've been mind-controlled, and the mage who did it never wanted to rule anything! It's just magic! Nothing more."

"Magic hated and accursed by the Maker," Hawke said with so much blind piety Anders sneered again, "Magic that leads mages to fall prey to demons!"

"And this is a threat to me how?" Anders laughed, "All magic is dangerous. All magic attracts demons, creates temptations. Any mage could tell you that. How is corrupting a man's blood any worse than burning him alive with a fireball?"

"You're just arguing in circles now," Hawke said.

"Well I'm sorry, but they're kind of hard to escape!" Anders snapped. "Do you even know anything about the Circle!? Do you know what would happen to Beth if she went to one? The templars would hold her down while another mage slit her wrist and bled her for her phylactery. They'd cast a charm on her blood, and use it to track her anywhere if she ever tried to escape. Your bloody Chantry condones blood magic, as long as they can use it to oppress mages."

"That doesn't justify it," Hawke said. "Don't talk to me like I agree with what the Chantry's done with the Circle. This isn't about the fucking Circle. This is about blood magic. The same magic used by the magisters Andraste fought against. You think she'd approve of any mage using it?"

"Andraste fought against oppression!" Anders gripped his hips to keep from gesturing wildly. His hands were steaming against his trousers, "The fact that the oppressors of the time were blood mages is irrelevant-"

"Except that blood mages Blackened the Golden City!" Hawke interrupted him. "'You have brought Sin to heaven, and doom upon all the world.'-"

"Maker, now it's Threnodies," Anders rolled his eyes.

"You were a Warden!" Hawke snapped, "How can you condone the very magic that led to the creation of the first darkspawn?"

"Threnodies was written by the first Divine, two hundred years after Andraste!" Anders argued, "It's bloody codswallop! You don't think it's a coincidence the people the Chantry blames are the same ones they're trying to oppress?"

"What?" Hawke let out a bark of laughter.

"The darkspawn live in the Deep Roads!" Anders told him, "They breed on their own! They respond to the call of the Old Gods. Why would they have anything to do with mages-or the Maker-at all?"

"What, and the Wardens-" Hawke stopped short. Anders glared at him, and didn't smell the smoke until Hawke grabbed the bowl of bloody water and threw it on his crotch. Anders yelped and brought his hands up, and belated realized they were burning. Anders glanced down at himself, and sank down onto a stool with an unhappy whine.

He'd burned holes in his trousers, all along where his fingers had been digging into his hips. Anders ran the pads of his fingers over the pale skin exposed by his magic, and hated himself for letting his anger get the better of him. His anger was always getting the better of him lately. Anders pitched forward, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. "Damnit," Anders whined into his fingers, "These are my only fucking pair."

Anders didn't hear Hawke move, but he saw the dark leather boots stop in front of him, quickly obscured by the feathered coat Hawke thrust into his chest. "Come on, I'll buy you new ones."

"What do you care?" Anders demanded, snatching his coat out of Hawke's hands. He glared up at the man, and hated the sympathetic expression Hawke gave him in turn.

"I told you I feel sorry for you," Hawke said.

"Fuck your sorry," Anders snapped. "I don't need you getting the wicked maleficar into your debt so you can set him on some path to redemption. I know what I believe." It had taken him months of prayer, of conversation, of debates, of canticle after canticle, but Anders believed it, and no one was going to change his mind.

"I didn't fucking say that, did I?" Hawke demanded. "I said I don't like blood magic."

"I am a blood mage," Anders said fiercely, unashamedly, and Maker how he wished Amell could have heard him, and not just the echo of the man that stood before him. Hawke looked less and less like Amell with every passing day. Right now, the only part of Amell in him was his eyes.

"So is Merrill, and I like her plenty." Hawke ran a hand through his hair and scratched furiously at his scalp.

"Maker's sweet saving grace, do you have lice or something?" Anders asked.

"It's a tic-just-let it go," Hawke said.

That sounded even worse, "Well if it's ticks I can-"

"Not that kind of tic," Hawke interrupted him. "If the Maker can forgive Hessarian He can forgive anyone. Do what you want just-... don't be stupid. Let me buy you new pants."

"Did you seriously just compare to me Hessarian?" Anders asked indignantly, "The man who had Andraste burned-"

"Not what I meant," Hawke cut him off, "I meant your blood magic is between you and the Maker."

"The Maker is gone," Anders shouldn't have had to remind a man keen on spouting canticles from memory, "He's not going to punish me for saving that boy's life. There's no one here but you and me, and you're the only one judging me."

"I'm judging blood magic," Hawke said. "Not you. You want to hear me judge you? That poor bastard wouldn't have his hand if you hadn't been here. After last week, I wouldn't have my fucking arm. Maker fucking knows how many other poor bastards owe you their life or some random body part. I think you're a damned good man and it was damned upsetting to see you using blood magic.

"You're right. I don't know the Circle, but I know magic. I understand how it works. Beth burned Carver a dozen times a day when he was being a tit. Calling it an accident was probably dog shit, but those holes are obviously my fault, and I think you deserve a new pair of pants. Can I buy you them or not?"

"I don't owe you anything if I say yes," Anders warned him.

"Never said you did," Hawke said.

Anders shrugged into his coat, and the weight settled comfortably on his shoulders. His pants weren't completely ruined. They were thin between the holes left by his fingers, and still clinging together, but given a few days Anders had no doubt they'd rip to the point of indecency. His coat covered the damage when he stood, but they were nice pants. Leather. Old Warden gear. Costly to replace.

"... how close are you to affording your expedition?" Anders asked.

"Not your business," Hawke said, and took a step for the door.

Anders grabbed Hawke's arm, and forced himself to look into his eyes, "The blood magic? Not yours."

Chapter 68: Safe Harbors

Notes:

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for the feedback, it makes the story worth it for me. Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 30 Molioris Night
Kirkwall Lowtown

Anders was exhausted. There was a weight about his shoulders his coat couldn't claim, and it pulled them down to press against his dragonbone staff with every dragging step. The Tal'Vashoth camp had been more than a score. Hawke had managed to goad a Tal'Vashoth deserter into helping them, and knowing the layout of the camp had helped them plan an ambush, but it hadn't made it easy.

There were nearly a score and a half of Tal'Vashoth set up along the Wounded Coast. Hawke had brought everyone, and it still hardly felt like enough. Varric and Hawke had brought an assortment of bombs and traps that gave them something of a defensible position when they made their assault. Anders had summoned a firestorm. Merrill had conjured an entropic cloud. Both of them had done what they could with blood magic, and it was still a struggle.

Bethany had her auras, and that had helped, but there were some things magical adrenaline couldn't compensate for. Size, for example. Even Aveline, a veritable human battering ram, couldn't compare to a qunari. The massive horned race were two heads taller than humans and twice as thick. It gave them such a significant advantage few in their group had come away uninjured.

Something about qunari skin made it hard as metal. On more than one occasion a bolt or arrow Anders swore should have gone straight through merely embedded in the Tal-Vashoth instead. Isabela suffered the most for it. The nimble pirate fought with sword and buckler, the latter of which was far from beneficial against qunari great swords, battle axes, and polearms. At one point she'd taken a spear through the thigh, and Bethany had dragged her out of the fight.

Anders hadn't been able to take his eyes off the woman since. These weren't Wardens, afflicted with the Taint and benefiting from supernatural strength and stamina. They were people, and their lungs and legs had limits. Anders would have to learn them all over again if he was going to support them all properly. Isabela bumped into him on the slog through the dark alleys of Lowtown, and Anders spared her a steadying hand.

Her armor was in shambles. The spear had shredded her greaves, a few glancing blows had done a number on her cuirass, and a strap to her pauldrons had broken. She clutched them in one hand, the straps whipping at Anders' knees with how close they were walking. At every alley juncture, the wind would hit them, and the scent of the sea would wash over Anders. It was a soothing scent, and Anders didn't mind stumbling along at her side.

The rest of their company was little better. Fenris was practically crawling under the weight of his great sword. Aveline moved with all the speed and grace of a sleeping walking druffalo. Varric tipped backwards at every slanted alley, and Merrill was constantly pushing him forward, half draped over the dwarf's shoulders. Hawke was more or less carrying Bethany, his mabari bumping sleepily against his legs with every other step.

They split up in one of the many hexes that lead to Hightown. Kirkwall was no Amaranthine. There was no town center, no clear-cut districts. It was a disorienting, sprawling maze of alley after alley and as exhausted as they were, Anders didn't doubt some of them were going to end up lost. Aveline and Fenris left for Hightown, and the rest of them continued on towards the Hanged Man.

Anders stopped when they passed by one of the handful of the buildings that housed a still-functional lift down into Darktown. The thought of hunching down on that uneven plank and cranking it down to the depths of the city had Anders resting his head against his staff and closing his eyes. Static played across the dragonbone and its many flickering runes, dancing down his skin and doing less than he'd like to invigorate him.

Isabela nudged him, and Anders tipped precariously to one side. "You look like you could use a hand, sweet thing," Isabela said; fatigue had stolen the purr from her sultry voice, and Anders was surprised to find he didn't miss it. She sounded genuinely concerned without it.

"A few, probably," Anders agreed, surprised the pirate had stayed after he'd given his goodbyes.

"Come on, I'll crank for you," Isabela gave him a push that nearly sent him careening face first into the blackrock. Anders stumbled forward at an involuntary sprint before he found his footing.

"You don't have to do that," Anders said out of habit. The thought of help was more than welcome right now, especially coming from Isabela. Talking to her and Varric, to Merrill and Bethany was refreshing after a brief afternoon with Hawke. Maker save him, the man meant well, but Anders didn't have the patience.

It wasn't even about Hawke. Hawke was the brother and son of a mage, but he was a devout Andrastian. The Chantry had their hooks in him the way they had their hooks in every man. If anything, Hawke was the best Anders could hope to expect from a man who wasn't a mage, and didn't live his life in a state of blithe disregard the way Varric and Isabela did. The thought of trying to change Hawke's mind, and the minds of people like him, or worse than him, was daunting to the point of exhaustion.

Anders couldn't stop thinking about it. Hawke's pious rant turned over and over in Anders' head, and mingled with his memories of Justice, and their many talks when they were still two people. Justice wanted him to strike a blow at his oppressors, and Anders was trying, but he'd also wanted him to teach the world that magic didn't warrant condemnation. Anders didn't know if he could.

Maker, Hawke had only been against the blood magic, and Anders had still burned holes through his trousers. Anders couldn't imagine trying to change the mind of someone who was actually for the Circle, and all its evils. He could barely trade two words with Fenris before they were screaming at each other. Worse, Fenris held to the popular opinions of magic. Anders was going to have to spend the rest of his life facing copies of Fenris, and there was no way he could manage a logical argument with how angry it got him.

With Bethany, with Merrill, Anders could keep a clear head, but he was only preaching to the choir with his friends. They weren't the ones he needed to teach. The people he did need to teach were bigots, fanatics, the masses at the Chantry, and Anders doubted the Grand Cleric was going to offer him a pulpit to give speeches from at every service. Talking to anyone personally was out of the question. Anders wouldn't get two words out before a score of templars were dragging him off to the Gallows, which left... what?

A loud whistle cut off through his thoughts. Anders faltered and caught himself on his staff. The lift had reached Darktown; a bronze chandelier cast scattered light through the threshold, and set shadows to dancing along the blackrock. Isabela blocked most of it, standing in front of him. Her sunset eyes were half-lidded with fatigue but sparkling with mirth, "Hang in there, handsome, you're not home yet."

"Carry me?" Anders joked, stepping off the lift and onto the stable stone. A yawn escaped him, and Anders pressed a hand to the small of his back and stretched. "You heading back up?"

"I could do that," Isabela allotted, a hand on her hip while she looked him over, "Or I could head down."

Anders stared at her, stupefied, "... what?"

"Sex, sweet thing," Isabela clarified, smiling bemusedly at him as if he was still a man in silks and silver, and not just another unwashed refugee. "Do you want to have sex?"

"I-... really?" Anders walked his hands up his staff, and stood a little straighter. "With you?"

Isabela laughed and rolled her eyes, "I wouldn't mind hearing a few naughty fantasies if you had someone else in mind. Look at you. Are you blushing?"

"I-no? Am I? Maybe?" Anders bit down a laugh, eyes slipping traitorously down to the breasts Isabela's armor kept hidden, "Why?"

"Because it sounds fun?" Isabela guessed, taking a step forward to walk her fingers up his chest. "Because I am just dying to see if that little electricity trick is as good as I remember? Because I think you need to relax, and your hands look good on my thighs? Is that good enough? Because I'd rather stroke something other than your ego right now."

"You don't owe me for that," Anders said, wringing his hands tight around his staff and wishing his eyes would stop dropping down to Isabela's lips. They were full and lush, and one of the few thoughts left in his head was whether they tasted as good as they looked.

Isabela dropped her hand off his chest with a groan. "See, this is exactly why you need a good lay. You think owing you is the only reason someone would want to have sex with you? You've been through a storm, and you need to get to know you again. Have fun. Relax. Let loose. Get fucked. I could help with both!" Isabela finished the passionate speech with a grin and a giggle, and such a shameless leer Anders almost felt good about himself. "What do you say? One night, no strings?"

"Well..." Anders cleared his throat, a little embarrassed by the shake in his voice, "Yes?"

Isabela walked backwards towards the entrance to Darktown. She might have held him by a leash for how quickly Anders stumbled after her. Isabela smirked and turned, a sway in her hip Anders didn't feel guilty following with his eyes. The shameless sashay helped keep the mood she'd made alive despite the choking damp of the mines and pervading stench of the sewers.

"This feels like a dream, but I don't have those anymore," Anders said.

"Oh, shit, that's right," Isabela snapped her fingers and raised a wicked eyebrow at him, "Threesome?"

"Please don't call it that," Anders begged, "It's not like that. Justice-..." Anders tried to find his spirit beneath the scent of sea and sand, beneath his own flushed skin and quickening pulse. There was nothing. Nothing but a giddy ripple of excitement and a low murmur of disbelief. "-... doesn't really have an opinion here."

"So I shouldn't expect him to come out and play?" Isabela stuck out her bottom lip with a huff. Anders thought of biting down on it and nearly tripped on his way down a flight of stairs.

"I wouldn't count on it," Anders said.

"I suppose you'll do," Isabela sighed, "I was really hoping for some inspiration for my next chapter of Love and Lyrium."

"You're ruining this for me," Anders frowned.

"Let me make it up to you," Isabela fisted a gloved hand in his tunic, swinging him around to thud hard against the wall of the mineshaft. The suddenness drew a grunt from him, and Anders' heart raced a little faster when Isabela planted a thick thigh between his legs. A mischievous grin later and her lips were on him. She tasted like fire and spice, but Anders couldn't hold back a grin long enough to enjoy it.

"Now who's ruining this for who?" Isabela demanded, a matching grin on her face when she stepped back and waved him on. "Hurry up, before I change my mind."

Anders grabbed her hand and set off at a jog. He'd meant it for a joke, but Isabela laughed and took off at a run with him. The woman was exactly like the ocean, and Anders wanted to drown in her. Her laughter, her taste, her heat. Maker's breath, Anders envied her. She was untamed and carefree and selfish. She had the life Anders longed for but couldn't bring himself to live.

Anders stumbled to a halt in front of the door to his clinic and fumbled for his key. One night wouldn't hurt. One night wouldn't risk anything. One night was safe. He could be a man and not a mage for just one night. "I don't really have a bed," Anders warned her, trying to imagine his cot holding up with two people atop it.

"I don't really need one," Isabela laughed.

Anders forced the door to his clinic open, and hastily put up his staff and his coat, closing the door behind them. Isabela dropped her pauldrons and assorted weapons onto his table, and leaned against it when she turned around. A 'come-hither' roll of her fingers brought Anders across the clinic in a few quick strides, previous exhaustion forgotten.

Andraste preserve him, Isabela was gorgeous, even clad in armor. Her body was beautiful and she knew it, carrying herself in a way that flattered every feature. The toss of her shoulders and the waves in her hair, the arch in her back and the length in her legs. Anders lived in the sewers, and dressed in mottled leathers and unwashed wool. He smelled like death, and more often than not of late he looked like it. Isabela shouldn't have wanted anything to do with him.

But then her hands were fisted in his tunic, and her lips were firm and insistent on his mouth, and 'should have' didn't matter. Isabela swept him up in a storm, and left her armor scattered like driftwood across the floor of his clinic. Anders wound up in a chair, Isabela in his lap; her tunic was nigh transparent, soaked with sweat, and revealed full breasts and stiff nipples Anders moaned to have his hands on.

Then Isabela reached for his tunic, and the cold grip of reality closed around Anders' heart and spread out along his ribs. Anders snapped a hand down to catch her wrist, and wished excuses were magic he could conjure. "Probably-shouldn't," Anders said around a dry throat, "Best laid plans and all that."

Isabela let go, and ran her hands up his chest instead, and Anders realized he was an idiot. Isabela was in his lap. She could feel his hips against her thighs, see his wrists where his sleeves spilled down his arms, feel the hollows between his ribs and the sharp cut of his collarbone all the way up to his shoulders, where her hands squeezed and she grinned. "I like lanky."

Anders' tunic came off, and Isabela's followed. The woman was all dusky curves Anders' vague memories couldn't begin to compare to. She stretched her arms above her head for him, lithe and limber and lovely, from her slender shoulders, to the dark hair beneath her arms, to the whisper of muscle in the flat of her stomach. Anders bent to lave teeth and tongue across pert nipples and pendant breasts, drinking in the salty taste of the sea.

After an age, Isabela laughed at him. "Are you ever coming back up?"

"Do I have to?" Anders asked her magnificent cleavage, surprised by the chuckle that shook his shoulders.

"No," Isabela tangled her hands in his hair with a giggle. The drag of her nails on his scalp helped Anders forget all about the matted strands they ran through.

Anders' grin thinned his lips and made it impossible to make use of his mouth. He settled on another laugh instead, and it lingered in his chest when the rest of their clothes fell away. Anders filled her with his fingers, with his magic, with his cock, with every part of himself he was tired of living with until the only thing left of him was the sweat on his thighs and the fantastic pleasure burning just beneath every inch of his flushed skin.

Their push and pull was like a tidal wave, and the chair wasn't made for it. Every rise and fall of Isabela's hips made the wood creak, and the thought that the chair might break under them had them both laughing nervously. Anders rocked his hips up into the tight embrace of her cunt, moaning and all too eager to unravel under the gorgeous, generous, giggling woman in his lap.

Isabela slid off him at his urging, and sat back on his knees with a silly and sated grin. Anders kneaded at her ample hips with one hand, and pumped a frantic fist about his cock with the other. Isabela arched in his lap, dragging her hands through the sheen of sweat on her skin, and down through the damp patch of curls and the folds of her sex. Anders worried his bottom lip between his teeth, and the sight sent him over the edge.

His climax hit him like the tide, flaring and fading with every unsteady jerk of his hips that painted his stomach white as sea foam. Anders came with a curse, drowning in an ocean of ecstasy for a breathless moment that sent heat cascading out from the pit of his stomach and into his legs, his arms, his fingers and toes, burning up on his face and escaping out his mouth in a moan turned ragged laugh.

Anders slouched in his chair, enjoying the aftershocks that rippled through him and kept his skin flush, his muscles weak and trembling, his body even more exhausted than it had been after their battle on the coast. Isabela climbed off him, and ruffled his sweat-soaked hair before she went to gather up her clothes. "See, sweet thing?" Isabela chuckled, shimmying into her smalls and snapping them against her hips. "A little fun never hurt anyone."

Isabela pulled her tunic over her head, and Anders watched her shake out her raven hair and tie her scarf back about the curls. Gorgeous. The thought came with an uncomfortable knot about his stomach Anders didn't understand. "It might have hurt my chair," Anders said when he found his breath. "I'm afraid if I get up it's going to fall apart."

"You too, it looks like," Isabela grinned over her shoulder at him, snatching up her trousers. She threw herself down on his table, and rolled them onto her long legs. It was playful, and carefree, and something Anders doubted he'd tire of easily. The knot about his stomach tightened, and Anders sat up. The air felt chill on his skin, still dripping with sweat and come. Anders stumbled over to his supply shelves to find a rag and dry himself off.

"So this was a onetime thing?" Anders asked, inexplicably ill at ease despite having the best time of his brief stay in Kirkwall.

"Don't go bringing feelings into this, sweet thing," Isabela warned him, looking up from the boot she was wedging her foot into.

"I wasn't," Anders said quickly, but it felt a lie, and the anxiety persisted, and then suddenly clicked.

Feelings. Anders looked down at his hands, and turned them over to stare at the faint outline of his veins at his wrists. Justice didn't care about sex. He cared about feelings. The realization made Anders feel sick for no discernible reason. He knew it wasn't safe to get attached to anyone. Maker, the last time it had happened, Anders had tried to kill himself, and yet...

It didn't matter. That part of his life was over. Justice was right. Anders picked up his scattered clothes, and was lacing up his trousers by the time Isabela had finished dressing. She twirled her pauldrons around her finger by their broken strap, dark thighs an attractive accent to the black leather of her armor through her torn greaves. "That's what I like to see," Isabela grinned, "Flushed face, heaving bosom, sappy smiles. It's a good look for you. You should keep it."

"Bosom?" Anders repeated, kneading self-consciously at his chest, "Really? That's what you're going with? You couldn't have picked... I don't know, chest or something?"

"Bosom's a good word!" Isabela argued unapologetically. "Right up there with busty and buxom."

"I guess it could be worse," Anders allotted.

"That's the spirit," Isabela winked, "Speaking of, he enjoy the show?"

"I'm not answering that," Anders said, if only because he couldn't. Justice's lack of a response to sex didn't necessarily mean he didn't have any feelings on it, but that didn't mean Anders could ask him.

"Bored now," Isabela faked a yawn, her face still split with a smile, "Be good to you, Sparky. I'll see you around."

Isabela left. Anders locked up behind her, and finished collecting and shrugging into his clothes. He dragged his exhausted self over to his cot and climbed into bed, but despite aching muscles and weary bones sleep didn't claim him immediately. Anders lay abed, his mother's pillow a comforting scratch on his cheek, Leandra's quilt draped over him, and thought of Justice.

Anders didn't regret it. Maker, he didn't. Ever since Justice had brought up the plight of mages, Anders hadn't been able to get the cause out of his head. Justice was justice. He was the literal embodiment of the ideal. If he disapproved of something, it was wrong. Anders trusted him wholeheartedly, and he knew that whatever Justice pushed him towards was the right thing for them to do.

And then Anders thought of Justice's anxiety clutching at him when Anders' eyes lingered a little too long on Hawke or Isabela. Justice was right. Anders knew he was right. Anders had lost enough. Just the loss of his pants this afternoon had driven Anders near to tears. Losing another person he let himself care for would ruin him.

It wasn't anything new. Anders' love life had been one shallow encounter after the next in the Circle. He could live that way again. Anders closed his eyes and took a steadying breath, and fell asleep resenting things he'd never said, and would never again have the chance to say.

A dip into darkness later, and Anders woke rested. There was a pleasant ache in his back and legs, and stretching was so obscenely pleasurable Anders moaned. Last night had been worth it. Immensely, absolutely, irrevocably worth it. Anders pushed the ruminations of the previous night away, and brought to mind a handful of memories of Isabela squirming in his lap, gold glittering on her neck, sweat running down the cleft between her breasts, and grinned.

Anders was alright. He was okay. He had a purpose, and thanks to the Coterie he had a means of fulfilling it. Anders climbed out of his creaking cot, and went about his day. Morning took him to the Collective, where he told Selby of Lilley, and the possibility of securing access to the templars' lyrium tunnels. Selby promised to get him back in touch with Bancroft, and from there it was more waiting. Lunch was with Varric, and the rest of the day was reserved for his patients until evening rolled around, and Anders packed up to head to the Hanged Man for Wicked Grace.

A palm full of fire lit the caverns of Darktown, and led Anders to the lift, where a steady crank dragged him up into Lowtown. Not for the first time, Anders hated that the downtrodden in Kirkwall were literally trodden upon. It wasn't just that the city's many statues didn't so much as speak of oppression as shout it at the top of their metaphorical lungs. It was that Kirkwall had been built to enslave. The layout was purposefully confusing and disorienting; it was meant to inspire fear in the populace, and it worked.

Anders swore there were times he could hear whispers. Generations of slaves who had suffered under Tevinter's rule: their echoes lingering like dust upon the stone and crying out for justice. Dust motes hung in the rays of silver cast by the moons, and only seemed to confirm Anders' thoughts. He held a hand out to catch the light from Luna and Satina, and thought the play of silver over his paled skin was nothing if not an exquisite-

"Justice?" Anders said aloud, and felt the thoughts subside. He grinned. The lyrium was tucked safely away in his satchel, distilled and bound in glass, but still enough to draw Justice's eyes towards the mortal world. "You can stay, you know. I like feeling what you're thinking."

Anders felt inexplicably anxious, and pinpointed the emotion to his spirit. "It doesn't make you a demon, Justice," Anders guessed that had to be part of his fear, considering how concerned Justice had seemed with the possibility before. "I'm offering. We can talk with Merrill, but I don't think you're hurting me by being in control of my-our body. This is us, Justice. It's not me anymore. It's not you anymore. We're never going to figure this out if we don't work together."

Anders swore Justice grumbled. He didn't have any other explanation for the odd shudder that played across his shoulder and set Anders rolling them to chase away the sensation. Anders laughed to himself, and made the rest of the trip to the Hanged Man feeling better.

The truth of Varric's words cut Anders surprisingly deep when he walked into Varric's room at the Hanged Man and found Bethany staring wistfully at the door. Her face lit up at his entrance, and she shoved back the chair beside her for him. It was where Anders always sat. Varric sat at the front of the table, Hawke at his right, Isabela at his left. On Isabela's side, there was Fenris, an empty chair for Aveline, and on Hawke's side there was Bethany, and Anders. An empty chair for Merrill sat at the opposite head.

Everyone but Aveline and Merrill had already arrived. Isabela and Varric were talking, and Hawke seemed as included in the conversation as Hawke could get. Anders looped his satchel over the back of his chair, and did the same with his coat before he took a seat. Bethany grinned and shifted in her chair to face him. "We were worried you weren't going to show."

"Speak for yourself," Fenris muttered.

"No one asked you," Bethany hissed, leaning forward on the table to frown at the elf, "I can't believe you told Aveline about Anders' blood magic. He was saving Saemus."

"Mages will always find an excuse to justify their need for power," Fenris said. "Sooner or later, it will lead to ruin."

"There are mages who go their whole lives without ever falling prey to a demon," Bethany said. "Many of them, in fact."

"I see only one," Fenris said.

"Justice is not a demon," Anders said.

"Keep telling yourself that," Fenris snorted, "You're convincing no one else."

"What do you know?" Bethany demanded. "You're not a mage. I think we can tell the difference between spirits and demons better than you can. And that's beside the point. You saw how he used it. You know he's not like the magisters you saw in Tevinter."

"He is but one step away," Fenris said, and looked back to Anders. "You should have lived in Tevinter. You'd be happier there."

"You're probably right," Anders snorted, thought involuntarily of Amell, and forced himself to end the conversation. He grabbed a mug off the center of the table, and interrupted Varric's conversation with Isabela, "Varric?" Anders gestured at the pitchers set out on the table. "Which one?"

"The one on your left-you got it." Varric said. "Peach this time, hope that's alright."

"It's fine," Anders poured himself a drink of the non-alcoholic cider. It wasn't his favorite flavor but it was free, and Anders wasn't complaining. Aveline wandered in, and stole Fenris' focus, which made the evening more bearable. Norah came up to take their orders for the evening, and was serving food a half-hour later when Merrill finally stumbled in.

"Creators!" Merrill exclaimed, bare feet padding across the wood floor on her way to her chair. "Am I late? Oh I hope I'm not late. I got lost."

"Right on time, Daisy," Varric assured her.

Varric shuffled, cut, and dealt. Anders was, always had been, and likely always would be, rubbish at Wicked Grace. He picked up his cards, and organized the mixed suits at random in his hand. He had the Angels of truth and charity, the Knight of sacrifice, a Serpent of sadness, and a Dagger of war. Anders discarded the Dagger, drew another in its place, and sighed.

Isabela flashed him a grin across the table for the tell. Despite himself, Anders grinned back. Out of all of them, Isabela was undeniably the best at Wicked Grace. The woman had no sleeves to her dress, but there was no doubt in Anders' mind she managed to cheat in spite of the fact. Varric had the benefit of his coat, and Anders knew a few cards had to lose themselves in the dwarf's massive cuffs, but he was never quick enough to catch him, or anyone.

Hawke doubtless would have been as good as Isabela, if not for Bethany. The man's face was slate, his fingers were fast, and his hands were always inexplicably good. But for a man with so many tics, he had none in Wicked Grace, and the only one who could read him was his sister. It made it easier for the rest of them to use Beth as a gauge for what kind of hand Hawke had. Unfortunately, Bethany was almost as rubbish at Wicked Grace as Anders, and was always out early, unable to help them in later rounds.

Fenris had the face for Wicked Grace. The fact that he didn't seem to care if he won or lost only made reading him worse. The only upside was that Fenris didn't have the dexterity for the game. His hands were random, though generally better than Anders' if only because the elf seemed to be better at accounting for the randomness of the deck. Aveline paid more attention to trying to catch the others at cheating than her own hand and suffered for it.

Merrill very clearly had only the vaguest grasp of the game, and was constantly asking for reminders on the rules, but managed to do surprisingly well. Anders couldn't help wondering if she was a fast learner and a convincing liar, or just obscenely lucky. In despite of Aveline and Fenris, Anders liked Tuesdays nights at the Hanged Man. Isabela and Varric were good friends, he adored Beth, and Merrill was a treasure. Hawke was Hawke, and after yesterday afternoon, Anders still wasn't in the mood for him.

Beth was out first, as usual. She'd done a decent job ruining her brother beforehand, and Hawke was out next. Anders probably should have cut his losses, but he kept on even after Fenris folded. Isabela followed him, no doubt on some cue from Varric. Anders quit then, down five bits, and focused on his food while the survivors hashed it out. Merrill was still in the game, and Anders couldn't help hoping she folded soon. He wanted to talk to her about Justice before she got too tipsy to consider the proposal seriously.

Anders finished his meal before the rest finished the game. Aveline folded after him, and Merrill and Varric kept playing until the Angel of Death was drawn. Merrill won, on a handful of Daggers over Varric's mix of Songs and Serpents. Varric gathered up the cards for another round, and everyone stood to stretch. Anders grabbed his satchel, and pulled Merrill away from the table to talk in the hall. The tiny Dalish was a mess of giddy giggles, and did her best to hide them behind her hand.

"Oh no, what are we talking about?" Merrill asked, a hand on his arm keeping her upright, "Is it a secret?"

"A bit," Anders said, "It's about Justice."

Merrill sobered enough to stand up straight without his help, even if her wide green eyes were still blinking hard and slow. "Is everything alright?"

"Fine, it's fine. I just..." Anders reached into his satchel and pulled out the small vial of lyrium the Coterie had given him. "I could use your help."

"Oh!" Merrill clamped her hands over her mouth, and Anders dropped the vial back into satchel. "Of course! Oh, no one ever wants my help. Not ever. Not even my clan. Of course I'll help! Of course I will."

Her exclamation drew Bethany out of the room, and had the girl raising a curious eyebrow at Merrill's ramble. She stole in between them and frowned at him. "Help with what?"

"Justice," Merrill blurted.

"Shhh," Anders hissed, "You know how the others feel about him. I don't need people talking about this."

"You're really going to do it, then?" Bethany asked. "Summon him?"

"I'm going to try," Anders said.

Bethany glanced over her shoulder at the door, but no one else followed. "... I want to help."

Chapter 69: The Best Laid Plans

Notes:

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Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 6 Ferventis Early Afternoon
Kirkwall Darktown; Anders' Clinic

Anders' clinic had never been more crowded. The Coterie was everywhere, and they wanted him to heal everyone. The cut-throat cult was nothing like the Dog Lords. Andraste preserve him, Anders liked the flea ridden gang. He liked every ridiculous pun Bree and Manus and all the others were so fond of using, whether they were sniffing, barking, or marking.

There was an 'in' about it. A camaraderie that reminded Anders of the Wardens that Hawke's motley crew didn't have. He liked spending a day at the Kennels after a gang war broke out in the streets. He liked healing everyone and listening to Cor regale him with outrageously exaggerated stories while Conall filled in the blanks with a few kibbles of truth.

He liked being welcome somewhere. Wholeheartedly: without judgment, sidelong looks, or wary whispers, no matter how he'd earned them. The Dog Lords didn't know him for a maleficar or an abomination, and Anders didn't doubt they'd treat him differently if they did, but as long as it was unspoken he could pretend. So he did. And he liked them. And they liked him.

It was an easy alliance, and not at all like what Anders had with the Coterie. Lilley had spoken to Harlan, who was apparently in charge of the decision, and the Coterie had agreed to work with him. The sudden influx of patients had been overwhelming. It wasn't anything like the Dog Lords. Aside from the gang wars, Anders wasn't just treating injuries with the Dog Lords, he was treating poverty. He healed the grippe, cholera, dysentery, malnutrition, food poisoning, and all the other struggles that came from a life lived in the sewers.

With the Coterie, Anders was treating affluence. He healed the gout, venereal diseases, overnutrition, anemia, cirrhosis, and the all the other things a man might be more susceptible to after a life of excess. Worse, the Coterie didn't limit themselves to gang wars. They were always fighting, to the death in Darktown, to the pain in Lowtown, to first blood in Hightown, and always injured. Anders tried to remember their faces, but there were more than he could count.

They were like a swarm. Old men, young women, children, humans, elves, and dwarves: all at the Coterie's debt or disposal, and Anders wasn't any different. It was exhausting, but it was worth it. It was for the cause. No more running. No more living in fear. No more of the words that had always felt synonymous with 'apostate' to him. Anders was more than that now.

Maleficar. Abomination. They were weighted terms, and as far as Anders was concerned he was the only one allowed to use them. To own them. From anyone else, they were a condemnation, not an acknowledgment of vigilance, of victory, of sacrifice.

Justice had promised. They could fight. They could make a difference. For Karl. For Anders. For every mage that had ever suffered at a templar's hands. No more careless dismissals of injustice, accepting it as the norm or waiting for someone else to do something. Anders was someone. Anders could do something, but Maker, he couldn't do it alone.

He needed Justice. He needed the spirit's iron in his spine and the veilfire in his eyes. The sense of purpose and direction that kept Anders from running to the docks and to a boat to Llomerryn, where he wouldn't have to think of Karl, or Amell's brothers, or the girls taking his cohosh at the Gallows, or Selby's sister, or Bardel's brother, or Evon's heritage, or Evelina's regrets, or Rosalyn's son, or Darrian's sacrifice, or Alim and Melissa's escape, or Cerlais' struggle, or anyone but Anders.

Anders had thought of Anders enough. He'd spent his whole life thinking of nothing but, and it hadn't made a difference. Biff had been right about him. Anders had lived his life on a yoyo, thinking he was making progress when each escape attempt got him a little further before he was snapped back to the Circle. Anders was done with it. Rylock was right about him, too. He'd never submit again. Justice wouldn't let him.

Anders rolled down the sleeves of his plain woolen tunic over slender wrists and a handful of scars from Amaranthine and the Wounded Coast. Anders had tried to follow Amell's advice. He'd tried to keep a single casting scar above the bend in his elbow, but the reality of it was far from simple. If Anders was just after dinner in Darktown he could do it, but there hadn't been time to worry about the aesthetics of his forearms in Amaranthine, or with Saemus' life on the line. Anders shrugged into his coat, and comforted himself with the thought that no one would know the man beneath it.

Anders had spent a month in his new clinic, and couldn't help thinking he was pushing his luck. According to Bardel the raids were twice a month, on the second day of the second week, and the second to last day of the month. Anders had missed last months' raids, but the next was due in three days. Anders closed his clinic when the templars came to Darktown. His lantern would have drawn them like moths to flame.

He tried to spend those days gathering herbs in the forest, on the mountain side, along the coast, and not thinking of the refugees suffering under the templars' routine 'practice drills' for their green recruits. Failing that, Anders spent those days in flight and tempting fate in the Gallows. The tunnels weren't enough. Anders and Bancroft agreed. They needed a framework. A system. An underground.

Where they disagreed was on how to form the framework. Anders wanted the mages kept within the Collective. Bancroft wanted them kept outside it. To hear Bancroft tell it, the Collective risked enough getting letters in and out of the Gallows. Selby owned the packaging company. If they left a trail that led back to it, Selby would hang for helping apostates, and Maker only knew the fate her sister Elsa would suffer if Meredith decided to find her guilty by association.

The company was the only reason the Collective in Kirkwall had access to their allies in other countries. It was their only steady source of income. Without it and Selby, everything would fall apart. There was nowhere else for apostates to gather or visit without attracting attention. It was too invaluable to risk. Anders agreed, for the most part, but that didn't mean he wanted to put his patients at risk instead.

They couldn't run freed mages straight from the Gallows to Ostwick or Cumberland. They'd needed supplies. Some of the mages might be weak from being 'disciplined' by the templars. They might need days or even weeks to rest and recuperate before they'd be fit for travel. They'd need shelter. They'd need someone to give it to them, and Bancroft suggested the many patients Anders had indebted to him throughout his stay in Kirkwall.

Anders wasn't inclined to agree. His patients were refugees. The worst of them were barely scraping by in Darktown, and the best of them were barely doing the same in Lowtown. They didn't have the coin, the space, or even the courage to help apostates, and when the penalty was hanging, Anders couldn't blame them. Anders didn't have patients from Hightown. The closest he ever saw were the girls from the Rose and the Coterie, and neither of them were about to join the underground.

In the argument with Bancroft that had ensued, Anders had thought of Lirene and Cor. They were the only two in all of Kirkwall who might have the means and the inclination to shelter apostates. They already had a history with Anders, but Anders had no idea where their generosity ended, and a part of him was afraid to ask. They weren't just resources. They were his friends. Damn that, they'd been his rescuers his first few weeks in Kirkwall.

Anders had promised to think about it, and had walked out on the conversation. They didn't have access to the tunnels yet. There was still all of Justinian and Solace for the Collective to find other resources. If Bancroft could make inroads with the Crimson Weavers or the Redwaters, they wouldn't have to worry about apostates staying in Kirkwall. They could recover in the hold of a ship. And if not them, there was still Samson, assuming anyone could find the man.

Anders had spent an entire night wandering East Lowtown, searching one foundry hex after the next, to no avail. He'd asked Bardel and Selby about it again, and they insisted Samson was there, but the man kept a low profile. The rumor was that Samson was in debt to the Coterie for supplying his lyrium addiction, and Anders could understand the need to stay hidden, but damned if it wasn't frustrating.

Anders had to hope he'd get in contact with Samson eventually. They needed all the help they could get. The Collective in Kirkwall made a mockery of the word. They weren't a collective at all; they were a smattering of desperate apostates and sympathizers Anders could count on his hands, scurrying like rats at the first sight of templars. The extent of their defiance to the Chantry was limited to passing notes and smuggling tinctures and poultices.

They'd hang for it all the same. The thought angered Anders, but it infuriated Justice. Anders could feel him like a fire in his chest, a weight to his thoughts and in his head that was almost disorienting in its intensity, but he couldn't talk to him. He couldn't ask his opinion. He couldn't share his own. For a spirit so obsessed with justice, Justice didn't seem to care about the injustices he'd suffered from their joining, but Anders did.

Anders made the walk to Lowtown with the thought cemented firmly in the forefront of his mind. His satchel bounced against his hip with every step across the wildly slanting streets and alleys of the crooked city. The lyrium vial was nestled in with everything else that was important to Anders, but unlike the letters, the journal, the pillow, this he could face. This he could fix.

The trip to the alienage took Anders through rubbish-ridden alleys where children and cutpurses and child cutpurses spent their days, through fly-invested markets thick with the pungent scent of rotting fish, through crowded courtyards bustling with swindlers loudly peddled their wares in carts that rattled over the uneven stone streets. There was a feel to Lowtown, one of filth and chaos and passive poverty.

The city and its citizens were resigned to their lot in life. Anders hated that he could relate. He yearned for that lackadaisical life as much as he resented ever having lived it. Anders slid the chain of his Warden's pendant between his fingers; that man was as dead as Mhairi, and Lyna, and Sidona, and Sigrun. Anders could mourn him with all the rest, when he was ready.

Anders walked down the crumbling steps to the Kirkwall Alienage, and couldn't help smiling. There was beauty here Anders didn't need Justice to be able to see. It wasn't in the dilapidated apartments, so filthy they looked Tainted, crammed and stacked together and vanishing up into the sky. It wasn't in the pinched and haggard elven faces, their reflective eyes following him across the courtyard at his intrusion. It was in the tree.

Anders didn't know the name of it, and could just imagine Amell or Velanna giving him a long-winded lecture on elven lore. He didn't need to know the name to know that it was beautiful. The truck was massive, bigger than some of the hovels in the alienage, and the elves had painted the burnished bark in red and white and green and all manner of fanciful colors. Littered at the base were candles and incense and all manner of offerings. The canopy of the tree covered the alienage almost entirely; the sun caught in the leaves, and the light that cast through the alienage was tinted emerald and almost reminiscent of the Fade.

Anders thought it was fitting considering one elf in particular. He made his way to an apartment complex in the back of the alienage, and let himself into the foyer through a bronze door inlaid with iron leaves. A group of adolescent elves stopped in the middle of their conversation and eyed him warily when he made his way to the stairwell, their eyes glinting in the light of the sconces that lined the walls. Anders could feel the Fade breathing in it, and couldn't help but feel a little proud of Merrill for daring to offer it.

Anders made the climb up five flights of creaking wooden stairs to the top floor. Merrill's apartment was wedged into the back of complex, a knotted wooden door marked by a painting of a halla and a few wandering vines. Anders knocked, and listened bemusedly to the stumblings and startled shouts from within before Merrill heaved the door open with a wide grin. "You're here! Come in! I'll find something relatively clean for you to sit on."

The little elf hurried back inside, tripped over a book left lying on the floor, and went stumbling into her living room with a startled yelp. She picked herself up easily enough, straightening her scarf and fixing a few strands of her wild raven hair. Anders followed her inside, dodging a rumpled rug, a scurrying rat, and a stack of books. Barring the clutter, Merrill's apartment was beautiful. The elf was an artist, and it showed.

Her walls were lined with watercolor paintings of Sundermount and Ferelden, of halla and elven aravels. Taking up the entire desk before the fireplace was a work in progress of the tree Anders had seen in the center of the alienage. Assorted paints and all the tools to make them occupied the table to Anders' left, joined with brushes and palettes and parchment that waterfalled off the table and scattered across the floor.

A bronze chandelier humming with Veilfire cast the room in a watery emerald light, and contrasted sharply with the wood-born fire crackling in the fireplace. To Anders' right were crates and barrels he wasn't even going to begin to guess the contents of, and stacked up against the walls were bookshelves overflowing with every little book and knickknack Merrill had brought with her to Kirkwall.

The back of the living room held the table and shelves that made up Merrill's kitchen. A few windows were set high in the wall, filled with flower pots growing cohosh and other herbs for Anders' clinic. A ladder was pressed up against the wall, a small watering can beside it, and the entire apartment smelled faintly of burnt pine and fresh soil. A final table sat across the kitchen, surrounded by assortment of chairs that boasted real padding.

A sheath of cerulean encased Merrill's hand, and she pulled out a chair for him with a tug of telekinetic energies. "Can I get you something to eat or drink?" Merrill asked, winding and unwinding the emerald scarf at her neck, "I have..." Merrill glanced at the table that made up her kitchen. Empty. She let a ripple of elemental magic play across her palm and shrugged, "Water?"

"I'm good," Anders set his satchel on the table, and draped his coat over the back of his chair.

"I'm sorry about the rats," Merrill said, with a nervous tap of her foot on the knotwood floors. "I thought I'd gotten all of their hidey holes."

"Merrill, I live in Darktown," Anders reminded her. "Remember?"

"Oh, I know," Merrill tugged at her scarf again, "I just-Elgar'nan it's such a mess in here. It's clean sometimes, I swear."

"Dark. Town." Anders said again, leaning back against with the table with a laugh.

"I know, I know," Merrill wrung her hands together, "I just-I'm still not used to hosting people. I know I should be but-I'm babbling. Bethany is already here, she's using the washroom. I... um... did you bring the lyrium?"

"Yep," Anders flipped open his satchel and rummaged through it.

A bit of movement to his right marked Bethany appearing at the threshold to Merrill's backroom. "You made it," Bethany said with a smile, taking a chair for herself and sitting down at the table. "I was talking to Merrill about her paintings before you got here. Aren't they beautiful? I feel like they should be hanging up in the Viscount's Keep."

"Oh, no, I wouldn't want them there," Merrill said quickly. "I wouldn't be able to look at them then. The guards get angry when I wander up to Hightown."

"They're marvelous, Merrill," Anders said, retrieving the small blue vial. A crackle of blue ran over the back of his palm when he handed it over. "That fire downstairs was brilliant, too. The rest of the elves are alright with you?"

"I don't know, I suppose," Merrill shrugged, wringing her scarf in one hand and spinning the lyrium vial in the other, "How do you know something like that?"

"No one's turned you over to the templars, yet," Bethany pointed out, a small surge of elemental magic refilling the empty cup in front of her. She took a drink of the conjured water and grinned, "That has to count for something."

"I'm trying to be careful," Merrill said, only taking a seat for herself when Anders pulled out a chair for her and waved her to it. "The Keepers know not to work magic around sh-human villages... but it's hard to remember sometimes. No ice when it gets too hot. No light when it gets dark. I'm always forgetting little things."

"Oh, I envy you sometimes," Bethany sighed, planting one elbow on the table and draping her head in her hand, "No Circle... it sounds so nice."

"Magic is a gift of the Creators, why wouldn't we use it?" Merrill blinked wide green eyes at the thought. "It just seems so wasteful that humans lock their mages away where they can't do any good. We could help so much if only they would let us..." Merrill trailed off, rubbing her thumb nail against the cork in the vial with a faraway look in her eyes.

"You get away from your brother alright?" Anders asked Bethany, taking his own seat and turning his happy moan into a hard exhale. Cushioned chairs were Maker-sent. Or Creators-sent. Anders wasn't feeling terribly picky at the moment.

"He's on a job," Bethany explained.

"How close are you to affording your expedition?" Anders asked.

Bethany snorted, and her face scrunched up into a frown, her voice pitching down several octaves, "Not your business."

Anders laughed so hard he snorted and choked. "That was spot on."

The joke went over Merrill's head, and she blinked confusedly between them.

"He's-" Bethany giggled, and raised a hand to cover her mouth, "I'm mean. Garrett's just fine, really. He stopped trying to keep me locked up with Gamlen and Mother after our fight, but he still doesn't like it if I stay out after dark. This shouldn't take that long, should it? I mean we're just going to sit down and talk with Justice, right?"

"That's the plan," Anders reached back into his satchel to find the list he'd made for Merrill. "So... before we do anything crazy, if this works, just try to be careful with him. He's not dangerous, but he's pretty sensitive. I have a list of things I want you to ask him. They're sort of ridiculously personal, but I really need to know, and I don't know how many chances I'm going to get."

Anders handed Merrill the list; the bright red of her lacquered nails was a sharp contrast to the mottled brown parchment. "... Sex... relationships... Collective..." Merrill mumbled while she read, her face impressively enigmatic. She stopped and looked up at him, "Who are Nathaniel and Velanna?"

Friends I trusted with my life, whose lives I probably took. "Just... friends," Anders said with a tiny shrug.

"Oh, right, personal," Merrill set the list down on the table, and ran her thumb up the vial to pop off the cork. The cloying scent of lyrium reached him, and Anders felt a shiver run up his spine in response. The song was there, as faint as Chantry bells in Darktown, but he heard it. Merrill sniffed it, "It's not very concentrated. If not for what happened with Fenris, I wouldn't expect this to summon anything... I don't think this would even be enough to help me dream again."

"What do you mean help you dream again?" Anders asked, sitting upright.

"You know," Merrill shrugged, "With the blood magic."

"No, I don't," Anders felt a cold knot growing in the pit of his stomach, "What?"

"It takes away your dreams," Merrill explained. "Makes it harder to enter the Beyond. I have a theory that a vial of lyrium before bed could augment my connection to the Beyond and let me dream again, but it's just a theory. The Keeper never let me test it. 'Da'len you walk a dangerous path, and there will be consequences'. She didn't understand. I would sacrifice anything for the People, even my dreams."

"I can't imagine giving that up," Bethany said with a shiver. "My dreams? The Fade? It sounds too much like Tranquility."

"Are you serious?" Anders demanded, an involuntary hand falling to where Amell's grimoire was latched to his hip. Andraste's knickers, what else hadn't Anders had a chance to learn about blood magic? "You're telling me blood magic is why I haven't been dreaming?"

"I don't know, but I would think so," Merrill pushed the cork back into the vial and set it aside for later, "How long have you been practicing?"

"Flames, I don't know," Anders pressed his fingers into his forehead and tried to think, "... Nine or ten months?"

"I don't think so, then," Merrill said after a moment's consideration, "It took me a year of heavy use before my dreams started fading. Maybe this is something else?" Merrill stood up, barefeet padding across the hardwood floors to her bookshelves, "When did it start?"

"After Justice," Anders recalled, with a miserable thought of Compassion and the dreams he missed sharing with her. "... Maker, I can't believe it's been nine months. Justice and I should be expecting our demon baby any day now." Anders joked, and won a giggle from Bethany.

"I think the excess of mana in your blood would mean your children would be mages, but I don't think they would have any special connection to spirits," Merrill said over her shoulder while going through the tomes on her shelf.

"It was a joke Merrill." Anders explained.

"Oh!" Merrill ran a sheepish hand through her sable hair, "That makes more sense I suppose. I'm sorry. I'm always missing things."

"No, you know, it's a good thing to bring up." Anders reassured her. "I'd want to know, you know, if kids were a thing I could have."

"Mages can have families," Bethany said with an unexpected fire. "My father proved that. It's hard, but you don't have to act like it's impossible."

"No, I meant they're literally not a thing I can have." Anders explained. "Warden blood and all that. Makes you sterile. And doomed to an early death, ravenous hunger, and regular night terrors, but the uniforms are snazzy. So you know. Not all bad."

"I'm so sorry," Bethany said sincerely.

"Oh I'm not complaining," Anders shrugged. "Much. So hey... I'm surprised you don't agree with your brother about the blood magic."

Bethany cradled her cup in her hands, a hard exhale spilling from her lips, "I do."

"Wait what?" Anders asked, suddenly sickened. An involuntary memory of Velanna's reaction to him after he'd joined with Justice came to mind. They were mages. They were supposed to understand.

"I'm sorry," Bethany said quickly, "Both of you. I really am, but I think it's dangerous and a sin in the eyes of the Maker. But so are so many other things! I think the Maker is merciful and He sees what's in our hearts. As long as your intentions are good I think He'll forgive anything."

"I don't want the Maker's forgiveness," Anders said hotly. "If anything the Maker should want mine. It's not a sin to want the same freedoms as any other man and go to any lengths to obtain them."

Bethany groaned and set down her cup to run her hands through her hair, "Oh, I don't want to fight about this, please. I'm not judging you, Anders. I think you're good person."

"No, see, this is exactly what your brother was saying," Anders told himself to let it go. He didn't have many friends to begin with, and even fewer mage friends. He shouldn't have been driving a wedge between them, but he couldn't stop himself. "You can't just separate me from my blood magic. It's part of who I am. If you don't like it, you don't like me."

Bethany kept a hand in her hair and sighed at the table, "I don't know what you want me to say, Anders. We're friends. I don't want this coming between us."

Anders didn't want it coming between them either, but it festered. It felt no better than someone claiming to accept him as a man but not a mage. It wasn't a part of himself Anders wanted ignored, and he couldn't help running his thumb over the spine of Amell's grimoire. Maker, it must have been lonely for him. He forced out a smile all the same, "Right. Me neither."

Anders felt a shiver run up his spine for the lie and rolled it out of his shoulder. Merrill came back with a massive tome the length of her chest and the width of Isabela's and set it on the table with a heavy thud. "I think this is it," Merrill said, heaving open the metal cover. The fall of the pages at its opening reminded Anders of a flutter of wings, and Merrill caught them in the middle. "Here. The awakening of spirits from reformed wisps, wandering the Void before they find their place in the Beyond."

"What does that even mean?" Anders asked.

"You said Justice filters your connection to the Beyond. That you two are one in both realms," Merrill tapped the yellowed parchment with a red nail, singling in on a depiction of a ball of light in a vast expanse of black. "You should wake to his realm if that's true, I think. It's a theory. You said it took a ritual to send you to the Beyond after your joining, but that you went to another spirit's realm.

I think maybe, it's a theory, that the reason you can't dream is because Justice has no place to wake to in the Beyond. You did say you met him in the realm of a spirit of Pride. He should have his own realm, with his own purpose, but I don't think he did. I think he found his way out of the Void seeking injustice, and found purpose in another spirit's realm without enough memories to shape his own. Which would make him a young spirit. Very young."

"Are you saying..." Anders sat back, trying to make sense of himself and the two minds coiled together in his head, "... Maker, are you saying Nate was right?" Anders choked on a chuckle, "A little self-righteous baby of Justice crawling around the Fade? No wonder your knickers were in such a twist when he said that! Andraste's tits, haha, that's-...Maker, that's horrible..."

Anders cut off his callous laughter and stared down at his calloused hands. A young spirit. They'd ripped a young spirit of Justice out of the Fade before he'd had even found his own cause to champion, twisted and influenced him, and then Anders had joined with him and afflicted countless horrors on a spirit without even enough memories to shape its own realm. Maker's sweet saving grace, Compassion had been with Anders for most of his life and had barely been able to handle the Taint. What had he done to Justice?

Bethany squeezed his upper arm, and Anders looked up into her amber eyes, crinkled in concern. "Anders? Why is it horrible? Spirits aren't like humans. They're ideals. Their age doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters!" Anders shook her off. "He's not just an ideal. He's a person! Maker, he's a bloody child, and we kidnapped him from the Fade and his home... I think I might sick. I feel like a bloody templar."

"What!?" Bethany's cup clattered out of her hands, and she caught it before setting it aside. "What are you talking about? That wasn't you. You told me the Pride demon bound him outside the Fade. You've been good to him! You're his friend, and I bet he appreciated having one."

A sudden realization dropped Anders elbows to the table and buried his face in his hands, "Andraste's holy knickerweasels, I had sex with a child in my head. I'm no better than Gerod."

"Who?" Merrill blinked.

"Stop that!" Bethany shoved him, and a corresponding rumble coiled around Anders' spine. "It's different! You know it is! Merrill, tell him it's different."

"Oh, absolutely different!" Merrill agreed eagerly, flipping back a page. Her nails scratched down the page to a passage Anders didn't bother trying to read. "I think, it's a theory, but spirits form from wisps. Expressions of thought and ideals gathered over eons. So you see even if he awakened recently he would have a full understanding of his purpose, just not how to pursue it. Spirits have no memories. That's what their realms are for. They can't really grow, they just find a place for themselves. And Justice has that with you! So really you're like his realm. I think. Maybe."

"You see?" Bethany said.

Anders threw himself back in his chair with a groan. His shoulders were tense and his stomach was turning, and Anders couldn't make sense of any of it. He felt wretched.

"Stop it," Bethany pinched the arm Anders left dangling over the chair. "You're overreacting. Look, that's what we're here for, right? We'll just ask him. It'll be fine."

"That reminds me!" Merrill abandoned the book to head for her desk, "Are we setting up a binding circle as a precaution or-"

"No!" Anders jerked upright and tasted mana in his throat at the shout. Maker, no. Never again would they suffer such injustice. They wouldn't be controlled. They wouldn't be contained. They wouldn't be bound. There was nothing and no one that would hold them. That could hold them. That should hold them.

Merrill was staring at him, emerald eyes wide and reflecting with veilfire. Anders took a deep breath rolled the tension from his shoulders. "No. I'm sorry, Merrill, I didn't mean to shout. Justice doesn't need anything like that. He'll be fine, I promise."

"He's been fine the few times we've met him," Bethany said soothingly. "I think the veilfire in here will help keep him calm, after what we saw at the Bone Pits. Did you set that up just for this, Merrill?"

"Oh!" Merrill twisted a foot into the floorboards, "Yes, I suppose. Um... Well alright, I think I can keep him calm. There's not enough lyrium for a proper ritual of any sort, so..." Merrill picked up the vial and flicked it before handing it over to him.

"What?" Anders snorted, unable to help noticing the flicker of blue on the back of his palm when he took it, "You just want me to drink it? Just like that? You think it will be that easy?"

"All he had to do was be near Fenris," Merrill said. "Lyrium and well, blood, have always been able to summon spirits. It might not work in the future, but I think for now, considering you haven't had any since you joined, and Justice has never experienced it, it should work. I don't know, really. The spirits I work with are in the Beyond, or bound to runes and idols, not people. It's all theories, but I think the lyrium will probably be overwhelming for him."

Anders swirled the lyrium into a small whirlpool in the vial, the brilliant sapphire singing as softly as it always did since he'd joined with Justice. He knew the saccharine taste and the whisper of static it left in its wake, and had tasted it on more than one occasion when Justice spoke with their voice. He could feel it now at just the thought of drinking it, and see the whispers of sapphire that played through his veins pulled to the surface as he brought the vial to his lips.

This would work. It had to work. Anders took a deep breath, and forced a smile, "Well... bottoms up."

Chapter 70: Oft Go Awry

Notes:

Hello everyone. Welcome back! Thank you for all your wonderful comments, kudos, subscriptions, and bookmarks, but most of all, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 6 Ferventis Afternoon
Kirkwall Alienage; Merrill's Apartment

The vial was cold against his lips and on the tip of his tongue. The lyrium slid down the glass tube with the texture of syrup, thick and grainy, and it fell heavy on his tongue with sparks of static that shivered through his teeth, and coated the inside of his mouth with ice. The sickly sweet taste was almost nauseating in its intensity, but it was nothing beside the song. It sang his veins at the first swallow, burning him up from the inside out.

It was a cold burn; his bones felt frozen, his lungs thick with sleet, his every muscle contracting at the chill and dropping him to his knees. His chair pitched over with a clatter Anders barely heard over the song. This was his Calling, that inalienable part of himself Anders would follow to his grave. It wasn't the taint in his blood, it was the lyrium, singing in his throat with all the strength of the Chant as if it alone could turn the Maker's gaze back to man.

It was beyond exquisite, beyond beauty; it was the splendor of the Fade contained in one tiny thimble, and he ached for it. He ached for it as he had never ached for anything, not freedom nor love nor purpose. Justice lost himself to it with a moan he did not even comprehend why he made. It was a sound for mortals, but the lyrium brought him low and he felt indistinguishable from one in that ecstatic moment before he came back to himself.

Justice stared at the floor where he'd fallen; intricate knotwood patterns in the plank before him held to the whisper of the oak it once was. Fainter still was memory of two lovers carving out their initials in the bark, in defiance of an injustice that would later tear them apart, but there in the dust on the wood was one moment where they had hid from the world and all its troubles, and their love was pure.

It was louder here.

Justice sat up, trying to filter sound, sight, and sensation. Kristoff had been simpler. Kristoff had been dead. Justice had not felt the dull ache in his knees, the kinks in his neck, the dirt beneath his nails, the oil on his scalp, the sweat on his brow, the friction of his clothes and the caress of still air on his skin. He had not tasted it in his lungs. He had not felt the sting of light in his eyes. He had not lived the life of a mortal, and he did not want to do so now.

The mortals were there, singing with the same magic he recalled from his last involuntary step forward into their world. Justice knew their names from Anders' time with them, and the echoes of conversations that filtered through when Justice deigned to listen. Bethany's magic was muted, almost apart from the mortal entirely, but the Fade pulsed in Merrill. Perverted and dark, thick and cloying and queerly comforting, as was the veilfire in her hand.

"Hello again, Justice. We're sorry we called you like this. I know it's a lot to take in at once," Merrill said, a lilt to her voice Justice didn't understand the significance of but recognized as apart from her normal speech patterns, "Try to focus on one thing. Rocking back and forth helps me."

"I told Anders I had no wish to wield this form," Justice stood on Anders' legs, and felt one joint crack, the woolen fabric shift against his skin, the slight rush of air against his face at the motion. He did not need to rock. Justice set a hand on the back of Anders' chair where his coat lay draped, the feathered pauldrons a gentle abrasion against his fingers, and pulled his hand away.

... Pacing he may not be averse to.

"We know," Bethany said, while Justice walked the length of the apartment, eyes on the veilfire chandelier and not the many mortal eccentricities scattered about the room. He missed the thrill of combat and the call of lyrium, and the way both could steal his focus from himself. From Anders' self. "Believe me, we know. I feel the same way about my magic, but we don't always have a choice."

"Why would you say such a thing?" Justice demanded, halting his stride to look closer at the mage and the subtlety of her magic. It was not locked away in lyrium, severed from the Fade and weeping free at his touch. It was there, and yet not. "To wield magic is to touch the Fade at a whim. You shape this realm as my kind might the Fade. It is beautiful. It is a gift. It is not the same as what Anders and I have become."

"But neither of us have a choice about what we are," Bethany stood up, but made no effort to walk towards him. Rules of mortal engagement were still so strange. "Hiding from it isn't healthy."

"Controlling this form is not healthy for Anders," Justice argued stubbornly, and turned to Merrill where she stood holding the veilfire and rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. "I can still feel the lyrium in our veins holding me here. I do not want this. Fix it that I might release him, I beg you."

"Maybe I could try to see if you're hurting him, first?" Merrill offered in compromise, "I want to help. I really do."

"And Anders really wanted this for you," Bethany added, picking up a parchment from off the table. He was no forgotten presence in the back of Anders' mind. Justice had seen Anders write it, but he had not deigned to pay attention to the words, too unsettled by Anders' plans for them. "He has a lot of questions for you. Don't you want to answer them? To reassure him?"

"I broke his mind," Justice snarled for the memory, and for whatever reason Bethany took a step back. "My presence overwhelmed him, memories shattered like the shards of a broken mirror, reflected into eternity. I will not subject him to the same injustice again just to assuage whatever concerns he may have for me. I am no demon."

"You're a spirit of Justice," Merrill said with the same lilt from before. Justice wondered if it was meant to be soothing. She crossed the room to stand in front of him, though Justice couldn't make much sense of her features. Mortals all looked the same to him, but he appreciated the unique pull of the Fade and the breath of veilfire in Merrill. "Nothing will change that. Can I look at the spirit fire on your skin?"

"It is Anders' skin." Justice said stiffly. He could barely feel Anders beneath the lyrium coating his throat and lingering on his tongue, a sheet of ice in his stomach and a song woven through his pulse. "... but I do not believe he would be averse to contact."

"What about you?" Merrill persisted, dispelling the veilfire from her palm. It was a fascinating display of magic, the dismissal of her old spell characterized by a certainty and strength of will reminiscent of Velanna. "It's your body too."

"I am not averse to further sensation if it will help determine if I am harming Anders." Justice held out Anders' left arm. Merrill took it, her thumb against his palm and her fingers against the back of his hand. The touch was simultaneously warm and soft, and decidedly pleasant. It seemed mortals should hold hands more often.

Merrill rolled Anders' sleeve up to his shoulder, and traced over Anders' veins where the lyrium in his blood burned bright with Justice's presence. Merrill hummed quietly and turned his arm over, glancing up at his face and the spirit fire that burned in his eyes. "Do you mind if I draw some of your blood?"

"To what end?" Justice asked.

"To see how Anders' is processing the lyrium in his blood with you here, and determine whether your presence and the increased capacity for magic is giving Anders mana imbalance, and whether or not he's at risk for any of this poisoning him." Merrill explained.

"I do not mind," Justice assured her, turning his arm back over and clenching his fist to pull Anders' veins to the surface as Anders so often did for his own magic.

Merrill drew a dagger from her hip, a pull of flame at her finger tips sterilizing the edge and a breath of ice cooling it. It was always fascinating to see how mortal mages differed in their expressions of magic. There was an edge to Merril's magic, one that cut through the Veil and left wisps wary of clinging to her spells. It was nothing beside the artistry of Anders' magic, but it was beautiful in its own right.

"Do you not mind?" Bethany spoke up, and drew Justice's gaze away from his arm. "I know it's not my place to ask - it's not on Anders' list - but you're one of the Maker's first children. I thought maybe you might not approve of blood magic."

"I can feel Anders' intent with every spell cast," Justice said, glancing down at the sting of the blade at Merrill's shallow cut. Their blood ran warm over the edge of Anders' clenched arm, the lyrium's glow diminished as it fled from their veins and left a trail of red through dark gold freckles. "He cannot lie to me as he does to himself. I trust him. I am him."

"But... The Chant teaches it's a sin in the eyes of the Maker," Bethany said; the crinkle Justice felt in his brow and the harsh edge to his next breath surprised him. It made him conscious of his own breathing, and made the next few breaths a struggle. Breath came naturally for mortals, and had to Justice in Anders' form, but there were nuances to living bodies, and on occasion he would irritate Anders' eyes forgetting to blink. "Are you okay with that?"

"Anders believes in the Chant," Justice said, while Merrill worked a spell with his blood, muttering beneath her breath in Elvish. It was an uncommon language to find in the Fade, and neither Anders nor Kristoff had known it, and thus neither did Justice. "I do not. The Chantry is a corrupt institution built upon the abuse of marginalized peoples. It encourages a tyranny of the masses and faults the oppressed for their oppression. If there is a Maker calling us to a higher purpose, it is not this."

Merrill abandoned his arm to vanish into the backroom of her apartment. Justice relaxed his arm and held it steady, watching the way the blood slid over Anders' skin, a thick crimson gel that tickled at the hairs on his forearm before dripping down to the floor. Merrill returned quickly enough, a roll of bandages clutched in her hand.

"Oh, I can get it," Bethany said, hurrying over to him. She closed her hand over the wound, and sang unsteadily with healing magic. The Fade was more threnody than melody in her; Bethany plucked her spells from across the Veil. The magic was certain, but the mana wasn't, and it aggrieved him to see a mage untouched by the Chantry shaped by it still.

There was no light in the Chant. Justice placed no faith in it, nor would he ever. It was a thing of wickedness, and Anders would have done better to write his own song to turn the Maker's gaze back to the realm of mortals if he so ardently believed such a thing to be possible. If not that, then the Chant and all its shackles would be better cast aside. Yet Anders clung to all the things that caused him pain. Justice did not understand it.

"There we go," Bethany said, squeezing his arm. The scar was faint and fresh; she was an inexperienced healer, but an earnest one.

"Thank you," Justice said. "I can draw on Anders' magic, but I am no healer."

"Oh, that's alright," Merrill set down the bundle of unused bandages on her table. "We all have our own talents. I can't heal either. It gets so messy sometimes. It's nice to have Anders around to help. And he seems fine, by the way. The transition looks a little overwhelming, and that might be a strain to go through, but as long as you're not... switching? - Is that what I should call it? Elgar'nan, why don't we know more about these things? - Well, as long as you're not switching too often he should be fine.

"I think the spirit fire you give off is discharging any excess lyrium or mana from his blood, and that's why it follows your veins," Merrill explained, taking his hand back to turn it palm up, where the veins were more pronounced against Anders' pale skin, "You see? It's not much, but you can feel it standing near you. The diffused magic, I mean. Can't you, Bethany?"

"Oh!" A flush rose to Bethany's face when she looked between them, "Yes-I-didn't know what it was. I thought it was just because Justice is a spirit, I didn't think anything about the implications. You really are brilliant, Merrill."

"Oh, no, no I-... they're just theories," Merrill cleared her throat, "I think Fenris might work the same way, with his markings. Discharging lyrium, I mean, but he won't let me test the theory. For you, I thought that might be it with the dust? When you manifested, you see, you sort of gave off a bit of something like lyrium dust - it's really very pretty. It's burnt, though, so I can't use it and I'll probably need to sweep it up... Where did my broom go..."

"You are sure of this?" Justice asked; Anders trusted both mages, and Anders did not trust easily, but Justice worried all the same. "Existing in this fashion will not harm Anders? I cannot feel him well beneath the lyrium... it is disconcerting."

"That was our fault, but we had to talk to you somehow." Bethany set her hands to Anders' chair and pulled it out from the table. "Anders has a lot of questions for you. Do you mind if we ask them?"

Justice knew little of either mortal, but they seemed earnest enough, and Anders had trusted him with them. More than that, Anders had wanted this experience for him almost as much as Justice wanted it for himself. If it made him no demon... "I do not mind."

Justice sat in the chair he was offered. Both mages sat with him, and Justice pulled the sleeve of Anders' coat into his lap to worry the suede with his fingers and narrow his focus. He was glad to have found a new cause with Anders. One worthy of them both. It was far simpler to delve into the Deep Roads and fight evil made manifest than it was to cleanse it from the hearts and minds of men. It was a noble struggle, and a righteous cause to champion, and yet...

They had not even begun such a fight in Kirkwall, and already Justice missed being able to experience the mortal world. They had both sacrificed for this, Anders perhaps more so, and Justice could allow a day of rest while their alliances took time to come to fruition. Time was one of the few mortal constructs Justice had found he did not care for. The time it took to build friendship and establish alliances felt wasteful, if not exploitive, but mortals did not have the ability to look into each other's minds and know the truth of their purpose. It had to be proven, and it was ridiculously inefficient.

Merrill picked up the parchment from off the table and cleared her throat. "Alright... um... So, I'm just going to read it how he wrote it, so pretend you're talking to him. Does that make sense?"

"Sigrun explained this concept to me," Justice said, with a flare of pride for her memory and the valor of her sacrifice, "I cannot lie, but I can make an attempt to follow along."

"Really?" Bethany asked. "You can't lie? Not even a little white lie?"

"No," Justice said.

"So-alright-um..." Merrill shifted in her chair, "This isn't me-this is just Anders- how do you feel about us having sex?"

"I do not understand Anders' preoccupation with this subject," Justice said. "It is a need of his body no different from hunger or sleep, with the same potential to give rise to demons if overindulged in, but Anders has shown commendable restraint in each of these things."

"I don't think I would call that restraint, Justice," Bethany said; for whatever reason her face was flushed again. "You can tell he doesn't eat or sleep well just looking at him. His eyes are always so red and shadowed, and he's so thin..."

"Nightmares inflicted by the Taint keep his rest short, but the same corruption is capable of sustaining him indefinitely without food," Justice said. "I-... confess I do not know what is normal for a mortal for sustenance or sleep."

"Well... eight hours, normally," Bethany said, "For sleep. And three meals a day for food."

"This is far less than what Anders allows himself," Justice decided after a moment's consideration. Their form did feel noticeably weaker than it had in Amaranthine, or the few fights with templars Anders had encountered in Kirkwall, but Justice had assumed it came from a lack of adrenaline in combat. "I will make an effort to encourage him to take better care of himself."

"How do you feel about relationships?" Merrill asked.

"I do not understand the question," Justice said.

"Oh dear, um..." Merrill worried at her bottom lip with her teeth.

"I think I know what he means," Bethany said, "Is it okay with you if Anders is with anyone? Romantically?"

"No," Justice said.

"Well that's... kind of horrible," Bethany said. "Why would you say something like that?"

"Our cause places us and anyone close to Anders at risk," Justice explained, grateful for the block the lyrium had placed between them. A part of him feared even making mention of what his mortal had lost, knowing what lengths Anders went to to avoid such memories. "His allies understand this risk, and Anders is prepared to lose them. He is not prepared to lose another lover. Grief makes Anders irrational, in more ways than one.

"He is easily taken advantage of when he is aggrieved; I realize now this is something I did to him in Amaranthine, unintentionally or not. I do not think Anders would have agreed to possession had Sigrun not sacrificed herself. Nor do I believe he would have attempted suicide and self harm had he not lost Karl. It is a necessary sacrifice. I take no issues with Anders seeking companionship, but he loves too deeply, and hurts too easily, and I cannot condone it."

"What's our-" Merrill started.

"What do you mean you can't condone it?" Bethany interrupted, "That's a terrible thing to say! Everyone needs some kind of support, and Anders doesn't have any family. It's not fair to tell him he can't be with whoever he wants."

"Anders agreed to this cause," Justice said, recalling the way Anders had held them through the night, their minds tangled together in such a perfect harmony their tears had burned with lyrium after Karl's death. Never again, not for any mage. They had sworn. "He is aware of the injustices the Chantry has subjected upon all mages and I believe he will make whatever sacrifices are necessary to ensure they are not repeated."

Bethany's mouth moved soundlessly, and Justice couldn't make sense of it. Merrill asked, "What's our goal with the Collective?"

"To see an end to the Circle," Justice said.

"Are you happy?" Merrill asked.

"It is not a question of happiness, it is a question of whether or not I am able to fulfill my purpose," Justice said. "Anders has granted me many opportunities through our work in his clinic and with the Collective."

"I'll just count that as a yes," Merrill mumbled, folding the parchment over her fingers as she worked further down the list, "What happened to Nathaniel and Velanna?"

"... I had anticipated this question," Justice stared down at Anders' hands, and the bleed of memory that clung to them. The way the abomination's mutilated muscle had felt giving beneath his fingers, the way the templar's face had melted in his hand, the hot thrill of battle interlaced with the agony of their mana burning in their veins as smite after smite crashed down on them. "I have no memory of them. I can recall only the pain of Anders' seizure and the battle that ensued in its wake."

"Seizure..." Bethany whispered. "Maker, suicide attempt. What else has he been through?"

"Much," Justice said.

"We talked about two more questions, but there's a little bit here I'll just read first," Merrill said, folding the parchment further, "Thank you for saving me. I don't know if you can feel me thinking about Compassion, but it doesn't mean I don't want you with me. I know that a lot has changed for us, but I'm still a spirit healer. I know you don't have a choice anymore, but I hope you want to be my spirit. I'll try to take care of you either way."

"I... do not know quite how to respond..." Justice let go of the sleeve to Anders' coat, and though the words were warm and well meant, they were twisted with sorrow. He could feel Anders' intent, and hear his words when the man spoke aloud to him, but Anders had never come even remotely close to offering such a bond. They'd made their sacrifices. They were what they were. Anders was right, they had no choice in the matter, but to offer it anyway...

"May I see the parchment?" Justice held out a hand for it, and Merrill handed it over to him. Anders had not handled it long. The memories were muted, but Justice could feel them all the same if he focused. A sweaty palm pressing the parchment into the uneven surface of the table at their clinic while a quill scratched carefully across it. Have to get it right. Justice set the parchment down, and lamented that he hadn't paid attention when Anders had wrote it.

"Of course," Justice said when he found the words. "I would not leave him even had I the option."

"Two more questions, then," Merrill said with a ready smile, "Do you not have a realm in the Beyond?"

"I do not," Justice said. "My existence in the Fade was spent seeking out wrongs to right. I could not achieve this by giving into sloth and forming my own realm from the memories of mortals."

"But you and Anders work together now," Bethany said. "You can right wrongs in our world. Do you think maybe you could try forming a realm so Anders has a place to dream?"

"I will consider this," Justice allotted. Anders had encountered more than enough injustice for Justice to shape an entire realm from his experiences. Compassion had done so, after all. "I do not think it just his noctivagant soul has nothing but nightmares to retire to."

"Alright, last question," Merrill said, "Age is of no real consequence to spirits, especially without a realm to store memories but-"

An explosion rocked the entire complex. Books leapt off the shelves and clattered to the floor, a scroll hit the ground and unraveled across the kitchen. Paintings rattled on the walls, jars of paint danced across the far table, and a stray rat went scurrying along the wall to vanish beneath the floorboards. Dust fell from the ceiling to settle on the table, and Bethany and Merrill leapt to their feet.

"What was that?" Bethany pushed in her chair and stepped back against the wall, "Do you think it's an earthquake?"

"I'll check," Merrill darted across the living room, barefeet slapping at the floorboards. She ducked outside, and closed the door behind her.

"I doubt it was an earthquake," Justice stood up, and eyed the door, "Anders has cast many and I am familiar with them."

"Maker save us, then, what?" Bethany asked, tugging her scarf out of her collar to wipe sweat off her brow. The small bit of fabric was red; a passionate color, reminiscent of eyes or blood or fire. The things a mage should be, but that Bethany could not be so long as the Circle stood.

"A bomb, I believe," Justice guessed. "Whatever the cause, I will not allow harm to come to you. You need not be afraid."

Merrill sprinted back inside and slammed the door behind her. Her magic cut through to the Fade, and encased her hands in a brilliant sapphire to match the lyrium in his veins. "Mythal, emma isala halani. Ma ghilani dareth." Merrill rambled while she cast, telekinetic energies ripping out boards in the wall to her bedroom. The wall cavity that should have been filled with insulation had been hollowed out. Book after scroll after book leapt from her shelves, and hid themselves away.

"Merrill?" Bethany asked, "What's going on?"

"Oh-I-just- I have to hide these, they're all magic," Merrill's tongue twisted on the words, and they came out in a jumble, "They're downstairs-I saw the silver-we'll be fine. We'll be fine, I just have to hide these."

"Templars?" Bethany's voice cracked, "Here? Why? Is there another way out? Tell me there's another way out."

"It'll be alright," Merrill promised, "I can do this. I'll do what I do with the guards. Everyone already thinks I'm stupid. Maybe you two can hide in the back?"

"I will do no such thing," Justice rumbled; the mere sight of templars was enough to send a powerful blood mage into a frenzy. The mention was enough to leave another mage shaking and crumpling in on herself against the wall. The templars did not seek out criminals, they sought out victims, and they would seek no more. "They will not touch you. I will not allow it."

Justice stepped past Merrill, and the books flying from her shelves to bury themselves in the wall cavity. This was not the way of things. He had laid witness to the darktown raids, and would not stand to see them spread throughout the rest of the accursed city. The abused and the oppressed deserved someone to champion them.

He didn't reach the door before he heard the clatter of Merrill's books hitting the floor, her spell abandoned. She bolted in front of him, a handful of veilfire doing very little to distract him. He had heard Anders' fears. He was no child to be swayed by colorful baubles. Veilfire reminded him of home and was a comfort, nothing more.

"Justice, you have to stay here," Merrill said, "Please, go hide in the back with Bethany."

"They are searching for magic," Justice said. "I would have them find it."

"No-no, don't you see, that's the opposite of what we want to happen," Merrill said, her voice taking on a frantic pitch, "They can't find anything. If we just play stupid they'll go away."

Another explosion threw Merrill forward, and she collided with his chest. A vial of paint toppled off the table and shattered on the floor, red splattered on knotted brown. Justice righted Merrill to the sounds of chaos on the floor below. He felt heat through the floorboards, and a crash that sounded like a door being kicked in. Bellowed orders and the pull of the Fade that marked another mage, hidden in the complex, and exposed by the templars' raid. Screams of fear, pleas for mercy, cries for justice that he would answer. Justice pushed past the small elf and reached for the door when her scream and the magic laced through it stopped him.

"No!" Merrill ordered, and the word was sacrosanct. Justice felt it in his veins, mingled with blood and lyrium and taint, cutting through to his core. He halted and felt the act resonate with him and all that he was. He turned back around to see Merrill with her upper arm sliced open, dagger still in hand; blood rained down to join paint, the two shades of red an imperfect harmony on the knotwood floors.

"This way," Merrill led him to her backroom, and a pull of telekinetic energy moved a dresser to reveal a small nook in the wall. She ordered him in, and Justice sat. Bethany followed them, hovering behind Merrill and watching them with wide eyes, black eating up amber in her fear, which no longer concerned him so, "Beth, sit with him. He won't do anything. I have to hide everything."

"Won't they see your arm?" Bethany asked, scooting in nervously beside him.

"No, I have a shawl," Merrill abandoned them, and vanished back into the main room only to return a moment later and dump Anders' coat, satchel, and the parchment with its promise on him. Another pull of telekinetic energy moved the dresser back in front of them, and all was dark and quiet save for the glow of veilfire and the rapid breath of the young woman crouched beside him.

"Maker, my enemies are abundant," Bethany whispered, and Justice turned his head to watch her pull her knees up to her chest and hug her arms about them, "Many are those who rise up against me, but my faith sustains me; I shall not fear the legion, should they set themselves against me.... Maker, Garrett, I'm so sorry, you were right, I should have stayed home."

Justice sat. Bethany prayed under her breath. Time was irrelevant, but it passed, and eventually the dresser was encased in sapphire, and pulled away. Red and orange light filtered in from the living room, shadowed by where Merrill stood before it, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. "You can come out, it's safe."

"What happened?" Bethany croaked, stumbling to her feet and creeping out into bedroom. Justice put on Anders' coat and satchel at Merrill's urging, picked up the parchment, and followed her out.

"They left," Merrill explained. "... I think maybe they were searching for someone else. The other mage downstairs... Creators, the screams. I watched them take him away from the window, but you could see the blood... I don't-I didn't even know his name. Or that he was a mage at all. I don't think he'll make it to the Gallows."

"Maker..." Bethany let out a long breath and ran her hands through her hair. "But they're all gone? They left?"

"I think so," Merrill said, a slight sway in her step and a pallor to her skin when she walked them out into the living room, "I don't know. I think so."

"What now?" Bethany asked.

"Now... I have to let go of this spell," Merrill said, holding onto the table to keep herself upright. "Elgar'nan, I've never bound an abomination before. I think I might be sick. It takes so much blood for just one order. It's like binding two minds at once."

"Is it-..." Bethany walked around Justice to pull out a chair for Merrill help her into it, rather than use the telekinetic energies she had at her disposal, "Are you going to be okay? Are they?"

"I hope so," Merrill said, and let go of the spell.

The pain Justice experienced was worse than the mana boiling in his veins from a templar's smite. It was a soul-crushing agony that shattered his mind as he had shattered Anders', ripping at his core and pulling him apart. It felt as if his heart exploded, as if his skull imploded. It was pain in its purest form, and he collapsed, a roar muffled into his knees as he struggled to find purpose and pull himself together.

Justice. Justice. He was Justice. He was not a summon. A slave. A spell. He was Justice, and he was Anders, and he was not a demon to be bound to a maleficar's whim. "I am no demon for your bindings," Justice snarled brokenly into his knees, arms shaking in his vain efforts to climb to his feet. "You would stand idly by and watch as your fellow mages are abducted and tortured! You would see me corrupted from my purpose for your cowardice, and deny others the freedom you so desperately pray for!"

Justice didn't hear the excuses they threw at him over the agony in his skull. Blood and pain had taken the place of lyrium, and beneath it all Justice could finally feel Anders' panic reach him. Anders knew. He knew what they had risked. Of course he knew. Justice was a spirit. Spirits were not bound. It was not done. It corrupted. Perverted. Amell had sworn, in some of his first words to him, never to turn his magic against him, and those Anders would call friends had done it on their second meeting.

Justice tried to stand again. He couldn't. It hurt. It took everything just to hold onto himself through the pain, the pull of blood, the wrongness of it. Anders urged him back into the comforting embrace of his own mind, where things were simpler, quieter, and Justice curled up in the darkness of his own choosing, and no blood mage's command.

Anders fell into himself with a choking gasp. His throat ached with the cold burn of lyrium and the pain in his head was split between blood magic and his transition with Justice. He felt a hand on his shoulder, and smacked it off without ever looking up to see who it was. "What the bloody fuck is wrong with you!?" Anders screamed at both of them.

"Anders-" Bethany started.

"No!" Anders grabbed onto his chair to drag himself to his feet. It toppled to the ground with a clatter, but Anders managed to stumble up anyway. His stupid parchment with all its stupid questions crumpled in his fist when he pointed a finger at Merrill. "No, what the bloody fuck is wrong with you!? You're supposed to be an expert on spirits! You know better than to bind them! You think fighting templars is bad!? Have you ever seen a full-fledged abomination before!? Do you have any idea what you could have turned him into!? You haven't seen a real abomination before! I have! We could have destroyed this entire alienage! We could have-Maker-I-you-..." Anders wheezed, fear and anger choking him.

His friends were staring at him, fear in their every feature, from their wide eyes to their cautiously outstretched hands. Maker, what had he been thinking? What had any of them been thinking? He wasn't safe. They weren't safe. How many lessons did he need before he learned?

Anders turned and ran.

Chapter 71: All New, Faded For Him

Notes:

Hello everyone, welcome back! Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 6 Ferventis Late Afternoon
Kirkwall Alienage

Anders bolted from the room and collided with the railing, the entire stairwell creaking dangerously. If his friends were calling after him, Anders couldn't hear them over his pulse, like the rush of rapids in his ears and his spirit the roar of a waterfall. Maker, it felt like their own personal Harrowing. Anders took the stairs at a sprint, crashing into walls to halt his momentum on his way down. They couldn't be here.

Justice felt splintered, pieces of the spirit digging into the inside of Anders' skull and crying out in such profound confusion Anders felt disoriented. He could barely hold onto where he was; the walls seemed fold inward while the ground rolled up to meet him. There was such a chaos in his mind he might have been in the Fade. Anders tripped himself on his way out of the apartment complex, barely conscious of what he was doing or where he was going.

A dozen pairs of reflective eyes turned to watch him when he shot from the complex. Anders staggered, and caught himself on the mottled stone of the building, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Mana came easily, even through the pain, and Anders wove it into a pulse of creationism that did very little to ease Justice's distress. Maker, how could he fix this? He had to fix this. Justice had fixed him when his mind had broken. This wasn't any different. There had to be a way.

Anders started forward, and stopped. There could still be templars in the alienage, waiting to catch any other mages who might decided to run at the first sign of their departure. A human in the alienage was already a rare sight, but one running from it immediately after a raid? Anders leaned back against the wall of the complex and locked his hands above his head, forcing himself to breathe. To focus.

Elves. There were only elves in the courtyard. Elves wouldn't be working with the templars. Anders inhaled and held the scent of elfroot and stale foundry smoke in his lungs for several counts. They were just elves. He was being paranoid. The templars wouldn't have any elves working as spies, waiting to rat each other out. They were a close knit community.

So close knit Merrill hadn't even known the elf the floor below was a mage. A shrill sound of fury twisted inside Anders' skull at the thought, and Anders doubled over. "Justice, stop," Anders begged, face in his hands, but the bite of his nails wasn't nearly cathartic enough to take his focus from the spirit breaking apart behind his eyes. "Stop. I know what she did. I know. Just-just stop-I'll fix it, I swear. Just let me get back to the clinic."

The howling subsided, even if the anger and confusion remained. Anders forced himself to move. He must have looked mad. Maker, he felt mad, jumping at shadows and clutching his satchel to his chest as he crossed the courtyard, the ground rolling up to meet his every step and the scent of bark so thick it was suffocating. Some insane part of him went so far as to insist it was there to mask the scent of lyrium he might have caught from a templar.

It made no sense. The templars didn't raid the alienage. Meredith didn't have the influence to harass all of Kirkwall with abandon, though Maker knew she was close. The templars raided Darktown. They harassed refugees and criminals who couldn't bring their complaints to the city guard and the viscount. They couldn't reach Lowtown and its alienage. They couldn't. Bardel would have warned him.

Raids weren't even scheduled for today. The second day of the second week. Bardel had told him. Anders staggered up the stairs from the alienage, clutching his head and breathing creationism to try to hold Justice together. He clung to the anger, the confusion, anything that spoke of his spirit and tangled them together to keep them from breaking. They were supposed to have three days left to prepare for another raid. Everything had gone wrong.

Merrill knew better. They twisted their hands in their shoulder strap and swallowed down snarls, or maybe sobs. They weren't bound. It wasn't done. It twisted them from their purpose and corrupted them into something lesser, something broken, something wrong. "You're okay," The part of them that was Anders said; the whisper echoed, and they stumbled into an alley to keep from being overheard. "You're okay. You're not broken."

They made a blind path through Lowtown, clutching at crumbling stone and rusted bronze supports, stumbling down stairs, and weaving away from crowds. They couldn't go straight back to their clinic. The templars might have followed them from the alienage, and they had no way of knowing with Kirkwall falling apart beneath them like the demesne of a half-mad demon. They must have looked like a tosspot. They prayed they looked like a tosspot, toppling over themselves in Kirkwall's slanted streets.

Not the lift. Walking was safer. Walking gave them time to decide whether or not they were being followed. The sun made the descent to Darktown with them, casting long shadows through the Lowtown quarries as it slid past the horizon. Anders took a stairwell down into darkness and blackrock, and had to stop on the steps before he could force himself into the dimly lit passageway. It was too dark. It was too cramped. They were too broken.

Broken and bound and blind, perverted from purpose, lost and locked away and forgotten. Screaming for Mercy and watching her fall apart beneath their hands, going mad as they'd gone mad, Compassion little more than a hallucination of reflective eyes in that unbearable dark, and it was too late for Justice but they could still have Vengeance. Anders crumpled on the steps, head between their knees, breath coming in shallow gasps. Not them. Not them. Breathe. Not them. It wasn't them.

"I can fix it," The part of them that was Anders promised, grasping fingers chasing the flicker of azure that ran through their veins, flaring at the surface every few frantic heartbeats, "I can fix it, just let me get back to the clinic. We can fix it. We'll be okay. You saved Compassion. You can do this. If I could get through this you can get through this. You're Justice. You're not Vengeance."

They had suffered such a corruption of purpose before. Boots sinking into a blood soaked field, hands still hot with the vestiges of an inferno they had never meant to cast, lover's light and life fading as they lay forgotten in aftermath of the slaughter. Not them. It hadn't been them. They didn't leave the dying for dead; they healed. They'd healed then and they'd heal now. Anders got them back on their feet, and let Justice cling to the memory of recovery.

They faltered but they walked, through one dark passage after another. They slipped down stone steps worn smooth by the passage of slaves and refugees, sloughed through puddles without the energy to jump them, ducked under low beams in crumbling mineshafts, and eventually found their way back to their clinic. They walked past it, and found a spot on a stairwell a few yards away to wait and watch.

The minutes stretched, and no one followed them. Paranoid. They were just paranoid, caught up in the chaos of their fractured mind, but if they couldn't trust their friends to keep them safe how could they trust the city? Kirkwall was no friend. It was a sprawling metropolis of oppression and it would make slaves of them if they let it. Slaves to the templars. Slaves to their friends. Slaves to fear.

Anders pushed the panic down, and went to his clinic. The door was nestled in the blackrock, rotten wood held together by greening bronze panels and protected by one rusty lock. The lantern hung beside it, fragments of broken glass clinging to an old iron frame, with no wick nor candle nor oil burner. It was too obvious. The lantern was only good for holding magic. Anders dug his key out from his coat pocket and unlocked the door, snatching the lantern off its hook on his way inside.

Anders shoved the door closed behind him, and let the lantern fall from his grasp. It hit the ground with a clatter, glass breaking from the iron casing to shatter into dust on the floor. Anders ignored it, fighting out of his coat and missing the coat rack when he tossed the hefty suede towards the bronze hook. He shrugged off his satchel and it hit the ground with a heavy thud that scattered dirt and vermin, and let the key hit the ground beside it.

Anders crawled onto his cot with no memory of crossing the room to reach it. The canvas sank at his weight, and Anders knocked off the quilt Leandra had made for him rolling onto his back. He pillow was still in his satchel, not that Anders could have slept if he tried. The woven hemp felt rough through the thin fabric of his tunic and unyielding against his shoulder blades. His boots were still on, the laces too tight and the socks too damp with sweat, his belt cutting into his waist and catching on his hip bones.

He was too sensitive to all of it. He'd tangled himself in Justice and didn't dare to let the spirit go, despite how it overwhelmed him. His spirit was scrabbling at the inside of his skull, each rake of its ethereal claws dislodging a torrent of scattered thoughts and feelings. They could barely find themselves under it all: fear and fury, dismay and despair. Anders buried his hands in his hair, tangled strands cold and grounding against his fingers.

Anders heard the whispers of demons reaching through the Veil and ignored them, infusing mana with Justice and channeling the spirit's own energy inward. The abrupt whiplash at the spell was agonizing. Anders bit down a scream and felt like his neck had snapped; he clutched for his spine in a mad panic, but the pain stopped the second he released the spell. Anders choked on a sob, unable to tell if Justice had fought him or if he couldn't call on him at all.

"Okay," Anders rolled onto his side and fisted his hands in his hair; Maker, it was a struggle to even remember his name. A person could recover from blood magic; people were complex, people were multifaceted. Parts of them could be rewritten without destroying who they were at their core. Spirits weren't the same. They weren't even close. "It's okay. It's okay. Justice, it's me. It's just me. We've done this before. Let me heal you. It's not a binding. It's just us. You know you can trust me."

It might have been a mistake, but Anders reached for Justice again, and siphoning the spirit's benevolent energy and potential for restorative magics and filtering it inward. Justice had managed to mend his broken mind after their joining; it had to be possible for Anders to do the same. There was no whiplash on his second attempt, but Maker, it hurt. It felt like dragging his hands through the broken glass of his lantern, but Anders held onto the spell, and Justice let him cast it.

The pain turned numbing after a point. Anders wasn't sure whether or not the spell was helping, but he didn't know what else to do. It had to work. They had to fix this. Anders didn't want to see them as some twisted mirror of Darrian. The man had rampaged through the docks, killing the very people he set out to save, and Anders hated that he could picture the same for himself in Darktown. Worse still, Anders didn't want to see Justice as a twisted mirror of Compassion, falling apart at the loss of her purpose.

Unable to decide what else to do, Anders started talking, "... So remember how we talked about some things being ridiculously personal? Me trying to end it all after Karl, kind of one of those things," Anders forced a laugh for his own sake, unsure whether or not Justice could even hear him right now through the pain of his splintered mind, "I know you couldn't feel me back there, with the lyrium, but I heard all of it. Kind of surprised I forgot to mention the blood magic... It never felt like you had a problem with it, but it was nice to hear it. You know, out loud, that you trust me... Maker, I hope this is working."

"I remember back at the Vigil you were never for it," Anders said, willing himself to move now that he'd numbed to the pain. His fingers were stiff when Anders relinquished their grip on his hair, and lowered them in front of his face. Four red crescents were pressed into each palm, tendons visibly stiff and straining beneath dry skin. Anders flexed his hands experimentally, cobalt light playing over the veins on his palm through the channel.

Anders traced one line down his palm and over his wrist, across the few pale white scars on his forearm to where the vein vanished at the bend in his arm. "You're okay," Anders reassured them both, "Heh.... You remember back at the Vigil when you tore open that hole in your side? And I had to stitch it back together because there's no healing the dead? That was a mess worse than this. We're okay. It'll be alright. Dandy, even. Thedas' greatest healer over here. Still waiting on that trophy, though..."

Anders dragged his thumb back up the incandescent vein, nail a gentle abrasion over his skin. The sensation didn't bother him quite as much as the coarse scratch of his tunic or the stiff embrace of his canvas. "You're alright," Anders mumbled at the slow recession of his migraine, "You're a spirit. A virtue. Just... think about Justice-y things. Killing templars, saving mages, healthy spots of iconoclasm, freeing enslaved cats from wicked apostates."

The whisper of a shiver played out over Anders' shoulders, and he didn't have anything else to liken it to but an exhausted grumble. Anders chuckled; it was drained and forced and his voice cracked with nerves, but he chuckled. Anders focused the spell from his left hand, and a crackle of spirit fire broke out along the veins in his palm. He ran his fingers over them in a gentle trace, broken by the occasional brush against Karl's ring of study.

He couldn't feel the touch in his left hand, but he felt it in his right: the spirit fire was cool without being cold, and felt familiar to him after months spent casting with Justice as his spirit. "I miss that stupid cat. Isn't that ridiculous? You'd think I'd have more important things to worry about, but every time Hawke comes by with that damn dog I think about that cat and what he'd do if he could see me now, after Barkspawn and that horse.

"That was a bloody mess, wasn't it?" Anders joked, to what felt like another exhausted grumble for his ill-timed humor. "Sure, pretend all you like, but I remember that cheeky bastard back at the Vigil. No white lies, maybe, but no one said anything about lies of omission."

Anders massaged knots of tension from his palm with his thumb, fingers rolling and catching on the skin on the back of his palm, letting his mouth ramble with his thoughts with the assumption Justice could follow, "Maker, when did everything get so complicated? Maybe that's what helped you when the Baroness trapped you here, you know? It was simple. Kristoff was dead; you didn't have to deal with any of the sensations that normally overwhelm spirits. Not until me, but you had a chance to adjust to our world by then...

"Is this helping?" Anders pressed down faintly on one vein, and watched the way the flames licked around his thumb, "Maybe we could practice with little things to help you get used to sensations. You know, like just my hand-haha-Maker that sounded bad-I mean... well, you're me, you know what I mean."

Anders couldn't decipher an answer, but no part of him was insisting it was a bad idea. His migraine had dulled to a headache, and Anders had a better handle on himself and his memories and could only hope Justice felt the same. "You know when someone came up with the term 'spirit healer' I bet this wasn't what they had in mind."

Justice ignored him. Anders kept up the spell until the ache in his head subsided. A bone deep exhaustion took its place, his connection to the Fade drained to the last drop of mana. Anders collapsed back on his cot, quilt and pillow still discarded, boots still on, but too weary to do anything about it.

"Mind blowing day, right?" Anders joked, and Justice grumbled. They slept, but didn't dream.

Banging woke Anders an indefinite amount of time later. He rolled out of bed with a whine and a "Wait!" and hit the floor with a thud that startled a nearby cricket. Anders crawled across his clinic on his hands and knees until his body folded upright of its own accord. He collided with the door when he reached it, and reached for the lock when something stopped him.

Caution. Paranoia. Anders didn't know or care. He wrapped his hand around the hilt of his dagger and eased the door open, but it was only Hawke. His arms were folded, foot tapping, a smear of kaddis over the bridge of his nose and bags big enough to smuggle lyrium under his eyes.

"No lantern," Hawke noted, "Thought you moved. Things alright?"

The exact opposite, actually. "You need healing?" Anders asked.

"No," Hawke shifted his weight from one foot to the other and rattled the quiver on his hip. "Just want to talk."

"Who are you and what have you done with Hawke?" Anders joked, letting his hand fall off the dagger. He pushed the door open, and the archer strode in, leather creaking, hands lost between hip and hair.

"I'm loving the new look, by the way," Anders joked, with a wave at Hawke's face, "The eyeshadow really brings out the color in your eyes. You sure you don't need healing?" Anders pressed, not sure why he even offered. He didn't have the mana to help if Hawke needed it.

"You look like dog shit yourself," Hawke said.

"Is that better or worse than vulture shit?" Anders asked.

"Better," Hawke allotted, "Barely. What happened to you?"

"Not your business," Anders joked, a traitorous grin touching his lips at Hawke's bark of laughter. "You want to sit?"

"On what?" Hawke asked.

Anders gestured to one of the crates surrounding his table. "That's a chair."

Hawke sat. Anders slid in across from him, tempted to curl up on his table and go straight back to sleep. "What happened to you?" Anders asked.

"Job," Hawke said. "Huge cock up with a Chantry sister."

Anders snorted and rested his head in his hand to keep it from sliding down to the table, "Details. I've never boffed a Sister. Are they all as dirty as they seem?"

"A fuck up, not a fuck," Hawke clarified with a laugh more chuff than bark, and to Anders' absolute shock a smile lingered after it, "Chantry was offering work. A Sister found one of those Qunari mages, still in chains with his lips sewn shut..." Hawke paused to roll a shudder out of one shoulder, his face twisted in disgust, "Said she wanted to free him, bring him to those Tal'Vashoth you like so much. Took him through the warrens, and straight into a group of qunari... templars? Fuck, I don't know.

"Anyway, they're all dead, and I have something for you," Hawke said, unhooking a leather pouch from his belt.

"Wait, what?" Anders sat up, and even Justice stirred at the mention of warrens, and mages, and freedom. "Back up, what happened? To the mage? To their templars? You can't just tell me all that and end it with 'anyway.'"

Hawke set the pouch on the table, red eyes flicking briefly up to meet Anders' own. "Anyway's better than what happened. Dumb bastard burned himself alive. Killed every last templar to the man, and he says he has to die because he spent a damn day off his leash. Said he might be possessed." Hawke finished with a morbid laugh.

"Are you shitting me?" Anders demanded, and felt Justice roiling in an angry accord, "Just like that? Freedom was right there and he killed himself over that?"

"Didn't even want freedom," Hawke shrugged, "Pulled the stitches out of his mouth, and the first he does is tell us we were wrong to try to save him. Said he'd rather die in the Qun than live without it. We tried to tell him we might be able to tell if he was possessed, but he didn't give a shit." Hawke flicked all his fingers off his thumb, mimicking an explosion, and blew out a hard breath to go with it.

"Of all the ridiculous, spineless, mind-controlled, senseless piece of shit arguments I've ever heard," Anders dragged his hands through his hair, indignation spilling between him and Justice until it boiled over. "That's disgusting. Maker, I haven't given nearly enough thought to the plight of mages under the Qun. And I thought Chantry indoctrination was bad."

"Circle indoctrination," Hawke corrected him.

Maker, there it was. Anders rolled his eyes so hard they hurt, "Who do you think runs the bloody Circles?"

"I'm not arguing the Chantry's in the right with magic-" Hawke started.

"Then what are you arguing?" Anders interrupted, "You can't condone things in bits and pieces-"

"Why not?" Hawke shot back, "I don't have to love the fact that my uncle blows his rent on booze and vomits it all back up on my boots to love him. Everything is bits and pieces. The Chantry's wrong about the Circle. That doesn't mean they're wrong about everything."

"It doesn't matter!" Anders snapped, "You can't just ignore that they're a-" Shit, what had Justice said? Corrupt institution that... Something. Why wasn't Anders that loquacious? "You can't just ignore the systematic abuse and imprisonment of an entire people because you don't like it. The Chantry you love so much would see Beth locked away if they had the chance."

"You believe in the Chant," Hawke said as if the Chant had anything to do with the Chantry. "Aren't you doing the exact same thing? The Chantry does good things. If not for the Lothering Chantry, my family wouldn't have made it after my father died. They take care of widows and orphans-"

"Take care of them?" Anders scoffed, "That's what you call it? Those orphans are raised to be Brothers and Sisters and templars. Mage hunters. They're not taking care of anyone but their own interests indoctrinating people young."

"What, you want them starving on the streets instead?" Hawke asked.

"Yes," Anders laughed, "I would rather fight for freedom than submit to slavery; is that really so hard to believe? There are orphans living on the streets right now the Chantry up in Hightown doesn't give a damn about, and yes, I think they're better off."

"They're only better off because you've been giving them everything I've been giving you," Hawke shot back. So much for Varric keeping secrets, "If you weren't here to take care of them, they'd have to go to the Chantry."

"And why wouldn't I be here?" Anders countered, "If the templars caught me, right? And who do you think controls them? Who do you think is letting them walk around making Harrowed mages Tranquil!?" Anders hissed, voice cracking at just the thought of Karl, "Funny everything is full circle with the Chantry, isn't it?"

Anders was expecting a counterargument. Something to encourage the faint whisper of static on his hands and the lyrium in his throat, even as exhausted as he and Justice were. Hawke didn't give him one. He ran a hand through his jet black hair down to his beard, where his hand clamped over his mouth and muffled whatever his immediate response would have been. When Hawke took his hand away, he even managed to hold his gaze. "I'm sorry about Karl."

"Sorry isn't good enough," Anders wasn't letting go of his anger that easily.

"Didn't say it was," Hawke said, shifting on the crate that served as his chair, "Look, the Sister. The cock up. She set me up. I'm Meeran's man and people know the name Hawke, and she thought if I died trying to free a mage from the Qun it would start something between the Chantry and the Qunari. I'm trying to get an audience with the Grand Cleric, and if I get one I'll tell her about what the Knight-Commander did to Karl."

Anders snorted, "You think that will make a difference?"

"Why wouldn't it?" Hawke asked, "She's the Grand Cleric. Policing the Knight-Commander is her job."

"Because she's been doing it so well for the past dozen years," Anders said. "Are you even paying attention?"

"The Knight-Commander wasn't making Harrowed mages Tranquil for the past dozen years," Hawke said. "What, you want me to let it go?"

"... No," Anders admitted; he still couldn't even bring himself to look at the letter Karl had never had a chance to send him. Anders would see himself or that bastard Alrik dead before he ever let it go. "... No. Thank you."

"Welcome," Hawke cracked his knuckles, not quite meeting his eyes, but at least he wasn't looking at floor. Maker, Anders couldn't make sense of the man. He'd never understand how a family of apostates had managed to live their lives on the run while dragging the chains of Chantry dogma behind them. "...That's for you," Hawke said again, with a nod to the small pouch on the table.

"Is it the Knight-Commanders head on a pike?" Anders asked hopefully, picking up the pouch and tossing it into his hand.

"That small?" Hawke asked.

"It's not like she needs room for a brain," Anders joked, unlacing the pouch and tipping it upside down into his palm. A necklace tumbled out, a bit of black on a leather cord. "You shouldn't have," Anders said with false levity; Maker, Hawke really shouldn't have. Anders chewed on how to turn the man down when Hawke spoke up.

"The qunari gave it to me," Hawke explained, "The mage. Figured you'd get more use out of it than I would."

"You don't know what it is," Anders guessed.

"Not a clue," Hawke said.

"So this could be nug shit for all you know and your first thought was to give it to me," Anders said.

"Figured it was magic nug shit," Hawke shrugged.

"I'm touched," Anders joked, "Really."

"You don't want it, give it back," Hawke frowned.

"No, it's mine!" Anders cradled the necklace against his breast before he even realized what he was doing. Maker, Hawke was going to be the death of him. He'd been arguing theology with the man not five minutes prior and one look into those eyes and Anders was back to flirting. "I mean-it's a gift, right? I don't owe you for it?"

"Not a bit," Hawke promised. "My fences won't take anything enchanted anyway. Why, is it worth anything?"

"I'm not telling," Anders huffed, and won another rare smile from the man. Anders couldn't help returning it, clinging to the necklace like a starving man clung to food.

It was just a bit of black. Onyx, if Anders had to guess, with an uneven polish and the hint of a piece of bone at the gem's core. It was beyond alluring, and seemed to pull at the darker corners of Anders' mind where Justice feared to tread. Blood magic. Anders could feel the pulse on the necklace, writhing beneath his fingertips and slowing to match his own the longer he held onto it. Looking at it for too long made Anders' face hot.

"... Thank the Maker you didn't take this to anyone else," Anders said, rubbing the onyx beneath his fingers and trying to get a sense for the enchantment. "It's not worth anything but the hangman's noose. Your qunari mage was a maleficar... Do the qunari allow that?"

"Doubt it," Hawke said, "He said it was a secret."

"Maker, maybe that's why he killed himself," Anders looked back down at the necklace, "If he went back, they'd find out."

"Doubt it," Hawke said again. "They were set to kill him anyway."

"Then what the fuck!?" Anders snarled, clenching his thigh with his free hand to keep from slamming his fist on anything, "Andraste's holy knickers, I can't believe someone would throw their life away like that. Of all the ungrateful, selfish, garbage things to do. There are so many things worse than death, and he escaped all of them. Maker, it's as bad as the apprentices who ask to be made Tranquil. You know they do that, right? Your precious Chantry uses the Chant to teach mages their very existence is a sign of the Maker's hatred."

"Then they're teaching it wrong," Hawke said.

"That might be the most sensible thing I've ever heard you say," Anders said.

"More sensible than admitting I'm an ass?" Hawke raised an eyebrow at him.

"... close second," Anders changed his mind; biting the inside of his cheek didn't help him hide his smile as much as he wished it had. Hawke ran a hand through his hair and used it to push his head down, and when he glanced back at up at him he almost looked coy. A grumble from Justice helped Anders get a handle on himself. "So-hey. Listen, what you said before, about warrens? The ones you used to get the mage out of the city?"

"What of them?" Hawke asked.

"Do you think you could show me?" Anders asked, and Justice kept silent when the lie spilled out of him, "You know, in case the templars get too uppity with me and I need to duck out for a bit?"

"Alright," Hawke said with a shrug, hands on his knees prepping him to stand, "Right now?"

"Right now works," Anders agreed, glancing at the necklace in his hand when Hawke went for the door. He was already wearing one, but Anders slipped it on anyway, the onyx settling in beside his warden necklace against his heart when he followed Hawke out of his clinic.

Chapter 72: A Year Ago Today

Notes:

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Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 17 Ferventis Early Morning
In the Undercity of Kirkwall

It wasn't easy. Between the Coterie and the Collective and the riven spirit in his head, Justinian was working out to be Anders' least favorite month. It was rat for breakfast, again, and the pungent meat was a close second to oats on Anders' most hated list. If anything, oats might have been a reprieve after six months in Kirkwall. Anders spent more time chewing the gamy fare than he did cooking it, but it was food, and it was free.

Free. There was a word. Anders loved that word. Justice loved that word. It was a damn good word, right up there with buttermilk, biscuit, and iconoclasm, and two out of four wasn't bad. A decent meal was something Anders could only find at the Hanged Man now. Hawke's generosity had finally found an end, though Anders suspected the man didn't have a choice in the matter.

Solace was creeping up, the way creepy things did. Hawke had to get his fifty sovereigns somewhere, and Anders doubted he was going to get them giving them all away. It would have been a neat trick, if nothing else. Anders stretched out his left leg until the muscle tensed and shook, sitting on the floor of his clinic with his back braced against the wall. The crates were well and good, but they were murder on his posture, and recently Anders rather liked the new perspective.

Things were working out. They might not have been working out quite right, but they were working out. The Coterie was working with him. The Collective was counting on him. The Deep Roads were waiting for him. Justice was healing with him. A roach made a break for his boot, and Anders cut it off with a shock of primal magic that sent the bug flying through the air several paces. "And he wins the toss," Anders cheered under his breath with another bite of rat.

Anders pulled his left leg up to his chest and stretched out the other. A game of queek didn't sound half bad right now, not that Anders had anything but roaches and the spirit in his head to play it with. Anders would have won those games more often if not for Amell cheating. Anders knew the smug bastard had used telekinesis for everything, and not just Wicked Grace. Anders allowed himself another bite of rat in lieu of the fond smile he couldn't quite conjure. Magic had its limits, after all.

One year. A whole bloody year since Anders had woken up to Biff's ugly mug and half a bowl of oats, and thought all his problems ended there. A whole bloody year since he'd broken out of his cell and decided to tackle darkspawn with nothing but a rapier made of wit and a shield made of sarcasm. A whole bloody year since the only thing Anders had claimed to want was freedom, when what he really needed was a pair of silver shackles. A whole bloody year of blood and sweat and tears, and Anders was back where he started: with nothing, and the only difference now was he was okay with it.

Now it meant something. Now it was about more than just Anders. Anders was one mage, and one mage or even two were nothing in the face of templars. Rylock had shown him that. The only way to change things, to stop going in circles, was to think about every mage. The vote in Cumberland had failed. Queen Anora had failed, but Anders refused. He would face the Maker and walk backwards into the Void before he walked away from the cause.

It was thinking about every mage that had Anders sitting on the floor of his clinic with the rats and the roaches. It wasn't enough just to free them. Anders knew that; Biff had known that; Rylock and Rolan had known that; Amell had known that. Something had to be done to make sure they stayed free, but even if he knew the spell, Anders wasn't sitting on a silver chalice, the Rite of Conscription, and a full flask of Tainted blood.

That was what it always boiled down to: blood. The Taint in the blood of a Warden that kept them safe from Chantry law. The mana in the blood of a Circle mage that kept them bound to it. The spell a maleficar had to cast to give rise to either. It was always blood, and no mage Anders freed was going anywhere while the templars still had a hold on theirs. Their phylacteries had to be destroyed, and the Collective had to find a way to do it.

Apprentices would still have their phylacteries at the Gallows, but according to Bardel Harrowed mages had theirs sent to the Chantry. Anders wondered why they even bothered. With Harrowed mages made Tranquil on a bit, the templars obviously didn't care about the distinction between them and apprentices. Anders embraced the surge of righteous indignation from Justice at the thought, as relieved his spirit was feeling up to it as he was to feel something other than grief.

"So hey, I've got a good one. How many templars does it take to light a torch?" Anders joked, reaching up to set the copper wire his rat had been roasted on on a nearby crate now that he was finished. Justice didn't answer in the interim, "Two. One to light the torch and the other to accuse the first of being an apostate." Anders chuckled to himself, basking in the warmth of Justice's anger like he might the sun. "I hate them too, buddy."

Maker, did Anders hate them, but until Justice he'd never done anything productive with that hatred. He'd never had the means and it made him into a craven, with fear enough to bleed through to the Fade and summon demons Anders couldn't face. It had to be Amell, fighting demons and templars for him, thoughtlessly and selflessly defending him at every turn, and it still hadn't been enough. The templars still had his phylactery.

Anders didn't know how many lives he had left, but once Kinloch Hold sent his phylactery to Kirkwall, he was liable to lose them all. It felt like too much to hope they'd send a routine patrol like they had to the Vigil. A half dozen templars would be nothing to Justice. He'd see them all burn, and pry Anders' phylactery from their lieutenant's cold dead fingers. He'd see it shattered, the blood of Anders' old life before the Taint had taken him just one more drop of red in the river they'd leave behind them.

Anders pulled himself out of the mental picture with a hard shake of his head that rattled his brain in his skull and made Justice grumble. "Maker's breath, man, settle down." Anders tasted the mana of his spirit's refusal and chuckled. "I wish it was that easy, Justice, I really do, but it won't be like that. With Alrik asking after me, word will eventually get back to the Wardens, and Leonie will tell them what we are if she knows. They'll send scores. We can't fight that many."

Anders felt for Justice's response, and if he had to put the feeling to words, he'd swear Justice would have said, "Watch me." A good natured roll of his eyes made Justice grumble, and Anders shoved the thoughts of his own phylactery away. It was the Gallows' mages' phylactery he needed to be worrying about. A crow might go unnoticed on the ramparts of the Gallows or the rafters of the Chantry, but wandering through the halls it was bound to attract attention.

Rats, on the other hand, were everywhere. Anders watched a pair scuttling in the far corner of his clinic, and knew one would go unnoticed in the Gallows. The Chantry was another matter. Hightown had its rats, but they were far from unnoticed. The last thing Anders needed was some noble fop pointing a finger at his transformed self, shrieking bloody murder and siccing the dogs on him. Anders didn't know what he could use for that scenario, but the rats were a start.

Except Amell didn't have a page in his grimoire dedicated to the nuances of shapeshifting into a rat. There was the crow, the wolf, the wild cat, the bear, the giant spider, and the swarm of insects, and nothing more. Aside from the swarm of insects, which was obscenely complicated, most of the incantations had only minor alterations based on the form, and those were primarily centered around the size and shape of the creature. Anders had to reason it would be possible for him to assume other forms, so long as he followed the guidelines Morrigan had told Amell.

Or he would mutate into a horrible wererat abomination, but Anders was an optimist. So the filthy sewer rat sat on the floor watching the rest of the filthy sewer rats, and doing his best to picture himself with matted fur, oil-slick skin, a long nose, beady red eyes, and a tail. All in all, three out of five was a good start. Once he had it down, Anders would be able to travel as safely as Bancroft could in the Gallows.

From Anders' extensive experience, Circle repositories where apprentices' phylacteries were kept were the same across Thedas. All of them were guarded by the Victim's Door, and if that wasn't bloody accurate Anders didn't know what was. There was no way past the wards save for a mage and a templar to enter together. A templar had to speak a password to prime the door's ward, and a mage had to touch the ward with mana to release it. Bardel was their templar, but either Anders or Bancroft could be their mage.

The repositories at the Chantry were less secure, after a fashion. Anders had been able to walk into the Chantry in the middle of the night to meet with Karl, though the more he thought on that night, the more Anders decided everything about it had been a carefully laid trap. He doubted the undercroft would be unguarded under normal circumstances had the templars not wanted to find him there, and after Anders had killed all of them, security was bound to be tight.

There was no Victim's Door there, though considering the kind of people that turned to the Chantry, there damn well should have been. Anders thought of Hawke's adamant defense of the Chantry, and somehow managed to do so without lighting his pants on fire. Anders understood better than most the need to turn to the Maker's light when life was dark, but Hawke and his family had taken it a step too far. The prayers of the desperate were just the sort of the thing the Chantry preyed upon.

Anders bit back a sigh and a grumble from Justice, thinking of Bethany. The Circle had never touched the poor girl, but they'd clearly touched her father, and it showed in how he'd raised his daughter, as much as Dalish teachings showed with Merrill. Anders tried not to blame them for what had happened, but he wasn't half as good a man as he aimed to be. There was no forgiving and forgetting the night he'd spent tangled in his spirit, answering every anguished howl with a surge of creationism and a random reassuring remark until exhaustion had claimed them.

Anders had tried. He'd gone with Hawke on their usual hunting trip to the Planasene Forest, and he'd done what Anders did best when something was bothering him: he ignored it. He'd put on his coat and put on a smile and hadn't gotten two steps out of the city before Merrill was pestering him about Justice, without even the faintest imaginings of what she'd almost done to his spirit. What she'd almost done to both of them.

One screaming match about the distinction between spirits and demons later and Anders was back in his clinic, his boots wearing a new cavern into the blackrock for his pacing. Maker, Anders should have known better. He'd spent months arguing with Velanna about the clear breakdown of spirits and demons into virtues and vices, while Velanna had kept on with her ridiculous insistence that all spirits were a dangerous spectrum.

There was no grey with spirits. There was good, and there was evil. There was whole, and there was broken. Justice had said so himself. Demons were spirits perverted by their desires, or in some cases corrupted by blood mages whose magic prevented them from pursuing their purpose. It was easier to forgive Beth. She hadn't bound them. She didn't approve of blood magic. She'd done nothing but curl into a ball and pray when the templars had raided the alienage.

It was what most mages did in the face of templars. The memory, even through Justice's eyes, still made Anders' blood boil. The poor girl had feigned ignorance the entire fight in front of Hawke, and Anders didn't blame her. No one should have to hear their sister had come so close to death, to a life of imprisonment, to tranquility, to whatever the templars were in the mood for that day. If they could save even one mage from that fate, their time in Kirkwall would be worth it.

What a time it was. Anders stretched out his legs and leaned back against the wall of his free clinic, watching roaches parade through the gutters. One brave fool scuttled free of the drain and across the floor, and another shock of lightning launched it across mage's clinic. The roaches were always worse in the mornings, when everyone high and low in Kirkwall was dumping their pisspots into the dark. The roaches weren't the sort of fools Anders had originally pictured unleashing his lightning on, but they served well enough in lieu of templars.

When you got right down to it there wasn't much of a difference, Anders thought with a chuckle, save that the little blighters weren't running around in skirts. Amell had been right: killing got easier. Anders didn't doubt that had something to do with Justice, coloring Anders' every reflection on the templars they'd killed with righteous anger. Anders didn't know whether or not to be grateful for it. A part of him worried what it said about him that he didn't think at all about the families or loved ones the templars left behind.

The other part of him didn't care that he didn't care. Anders watched the slow trickle of filth running through the drains along his walls, and coated himself with primal magic to kill the smell. A layer of stone and rock formed on his skin, dust and dirt taking to the air with the scent of freshly fallen rain. It helped, albeit only a little. Anders had never thought the phrase, "Don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining," would be something he'd take so literally.

Less literally, it was all Anders could think whenever he heard the Circle or the Chantry justified. It made him feel slightly less guilty about his lack of guilt over killing templars. The templars knew what they were doing. They were the sort of folk who signed on to use and abuse mages, and if any one of them was worth a damn they'd be like Bardel and working with the Collective, or like Samson and thrown out of the Order entirely.

If Anders had to kill them to see mages freed then Anders would kill them. Maker knew Amell had certainly never hesitated. Anders thought back on his panic over the death of Rylock and her two conspirators in the Amaranthine warehouse and wanted to laugh. He'd left a slew of bodies in his wake since then, and hadn't given the disposal of any a single thought. It was just the way Darktown was to hear Varric tell it. The most expensive real estate in Kirkwall: paid for in body parts. If a patrol went missing here and there, a patrol went missing here and there.

Anders still didn't know what Amell had done with those bodies. The corpse's morbid struggle to mount his severed head back on his spine had been horrifying at the time, but Anders could only look back on the whole ordeal with a grin and a giggle. What did Anders care now if someone stumbled on the bodies of a few dead templars? Better they take it for a warning, and leave the refugees alone, but that kind of logic was too much to hope for from Meredith's lackeys.

Anders could learn what had happened if he wanted, he supposed. He had Amell's journal, and the man had kept it well enough. It was getting easier to think about him, to talk about him, to do more than just break down at the memory. And if he could get over Amell, he could get over Sigrun, and Karl, and his mother, and Compassion. He just had to start. Anders set a hand to the wall behind him and heaved himself to standing.

The journal was in Anders' satchel, always. Anders retrieved it from where it was nestled in with Karl's letters, and brought it back to his cot. A sigil for entropy was embossed in ram leather, dyed the same deep russet that was and always had been Amell. Anders rolled onto his stomach and opened the journal, letting the pages flip past his thumb with no real thought to what he wanted to read.

Ferventis blurred past him, and Anders stopped and flipped back to one year ago today.


9:31 17 Ferventis

Glavonak's explosions blocked off the cellars. Sergeant Maverlies says they'll take a week to clear. I can't believe I have to handle this sober. The kitchens were spared, but the few casks of ale are so watered down I wouldn't call them ale anymore. Oghren threw in a handful of dirt when we shared a drink to serve it Tapster style, and I honestly think it tasted better.

Urthemiel met his end at Oghren's axe. His blood will be nothing for him. His blood has to be nothing for him. He has the strongest physical and mental fortitude of any man I've ever met. I won't lose him to my own incantation. Oghren would find a way to survive just to spare me the guilt. Anders

Damnit he's going to die. I'm going to hand him the chalice and he's going to drink it with a smirk and wink and die by my hand. I told him to run. I told him twice. I gave him every opportunity and he's still

He'll be fine. Any man who can defy the templars like he can has the mental fortitude to withstand the Taint, and he was capable enough to hold his own when we fought. He'll be fine. but fine isn't good enough. Three sovereigns could have gotten him to Tevinter, well outside the reach of any templar. He deserves better than the life of a Warden, death at thirty-six or fifty-six answering Razikale and Lusacan's Call.

I shouldn't have had to conscript him at all. I was offered I was promised autonomy for the Circle. Anora looked me in the eye while Alistair looked away. Let it be known that Ferelden's mages have earned the right to watch over themselves. The tower shall be restored and returned to the Circle. To hear those words as the Queen's decree, to the horror of all gathered...

I can still hear the silence. Every bann and arl who gave me their vote and their voice at the Landsmeet cast their eyes away and coughed. They forgot me for a mage and they were ashamed to be reminded. I let them forget. Damn me, I followed Eamon's advice and I came before them as a Warden. I fought Loghain on even footing, with sword and shield, because I respected the man. I should have known better.

One crushing prison. One breath of blood. I already had half of them ensorcelled; it would have made no difference what armor I wore. If the vote at the Landsmeet had been cast for a mage, if a mage had their respect, if mage had their fear, I might have had their voice at the post-coronation ceremony. Instead, a silence so profound I swear I could have used it to raise Dumat himself from the grave, the same way I rose Denerim's armies.

So many sacrifices...

They were so ready to forget. Dastards. Because it was ugly? Because it was forbidden? Because it was magic? It worked. Damn them all. War comes with sacrifices, as many sacrifices as are needed. Most of them were dying of the Taint already. All of them were willing. None of it could have been done without magic, but they'd name me Hero just so they didn't have to call me Mage.

You will guard them and they will hate you for it. Whenever there is not a Blight actively crawling over the surface, humanity will do its best to forget how much they need you. Riordan gave us the same speech Fontaine gave him, that the rest of the late Warden-Commanders gave her, and I don't think the man realized how true the words rang not just for Wardens but for mages. Freedom shouldn't be a boon. I shouldn't have to ask.

Kinloch is mine. Damn the Chantry and damn Irving and damn Greagior and damn the lot and damn me. I could fill Lake Calenhad with what I bled for the Circle. Thirty five abominations dead by my hand. Twenty-one templars, and more demons and undead that I'd dared to count. I cleansed the tower when Greagoir and his templars abandoned it. I saved scores while they waited for the Rite. They'd see us dead before they risked their lives to save ours and these are the men the Chantry entrusts us to.

Anora told me the Chantry wouldn't concede to giving the Circle autonomy, but we shouldn't need their concession. A mage shouldn't have to earn their freedom. The Chantry would point to Tevinter and claim they act in the greater good to prevent such horrors, as if they know anything of either. The Divine would choke on the first drop from the chalice. Tevinter has their slaves, but the Chantry solves nothing enslaving mages instead.

I saved the Circle. I saved Ferelden. I saved Thedas. I earned everything as a mage, and the Chantry turned a blind eye to all of it. Making me an arl won't change anything. I never asked for this. I could have demanded lands, a title, riches, anything, but I asked for freedom and no one listened. I'll be damned before I let their platitudes silence me. I've had enough of templars silencing me. The dastards think they can bribe the magic out of me.

Six months. Six months spent as an advisor to the crown, working with Anora to bring a little stability back to the country while Alistair sulked and I rued the day I ever put him on the throne. Damn the man. Damn him. He knew what taking Barkspawn would do to me. I told him what it was like it in the Circle. I told him what they do to us. I told him

I let him. I gave him the right. I put a templar on the throne, and he did exactly what a templar would. He took the only thing I had left. He took the only damn thing in this whole damn world that ever loved me and he locked it in a fucking cell. Damn him damn him damn him. Harellan'alas tu melava var falonan halam. Harellan tu ar u'him la ar tel'las abelas. Emma souveri suledin. Ar nuvenin enasal.

Fenedhis lasa. Ar melava halam banalhan la ar tel'abelas ar tel'dirthavaren da'nan. Emma melava banal'lin la ar tu suv enasalin. Sahlin ar era la eraen isala revas. Tel'atisha lasa revas; mien'harel lasa revas vir lin la numin la mien la Damnit, I did it again. Get a hold on yourself, Fausten. I can just imagine Anders' face if I launch into Elvish on a bit. He'll think I'm mad. I'm not sure whether that would be better or worse than him remembering me from the Circle. At least he didn't call me Apple this time.

I hope he killed those templars outside his cell. They're the last that will ever set foot in this Vigil so long as I have a say about it. If they won't respect autonomy for mages they'll respect autonomy for Wardens. The second the chalice touches his lips Anders and any other mage I recruit is mine, and I'll boil the blood of any templars that come for them before I let them lay their shackles on him again. I should march down to Kinloch and conscript the lot.

He's still so beautiful. He's not even a maleficar, and he still came back. He said he couldn't leave without helping, and I wanted to scream at him almost as much as I wanted to kiss him. He can't always have been that brave. I hope he's still not that brave. Lusacan please take him. Please don't let him be here in the morning. I don't want to risk him to the Joining. I don't want to hand him that chalice. I don't. I don't.

What am I saying? The Wardens are the closest thing to freedom a mage can hope for, and freedom is all Anders has ever wanted. He has a right to the risk no matter my feelings. Maybe I can offer him a post as a recruiter after the darkspawn here are dealt with. Recruiters are free to travel... assuming Anders even wants to travel, and doesn't just want to settle down somewhere as a freeman. I have no idea. I don't know anything about him.

I'll have to assign him to the infirmary in the meantime, if I haven't already. He didn't even ask for anything for healing the wounded. Just lunch. The bastards didn't even feed him. He was so optimistic about it all. The darkspawn, the blood magic, the wardens. I don't understand how he has it in him. It's like the sun shines inside him. In every golden freckle, every flaxen strand, those gorgeous amber eyes...

He's too good for this accursed world. He deserves better. All mages do. Anora won't go back on her word. She's her father's daughter. I just have to wait and work with the Collective for now. In peace, vigilance, and they gave me a Vigil.


Anders had started reading lying on his stomach, and wasn't sure how he ended up on his back with his legs braced against the wall, but if nothing else it made it easier to read through his tears. A handful of droplets clung to his lashes and the ink blurred and bled when he blinked, but they weren't a river. He wasn't sobbing, and every time a shudder played through his chest it came paired with a ripple of sapphire on his hands.

The part of him that was Justice would manifest as a deep breath that left Anders tasting mana, and kept him calm. Anders wiped his eyes off on a sleeve darktown had stained, and skimmed the entry for a while longer before he set the journal aside. Maker, what a mess. Anders couldn't help wondering if he would be better off pretending Amell had never existed. Everything he learned about the man just made Anders miss him more.

The worst of the whole thing had been Amell claiming not to know him, when in twenty-seven years no one had known Anders better. There'd been no judgments. No defense of the Chantry. No arguments about blood magic that Anders didn't start. There'd been no debts. No bindings that weren't absolutely necessary, and apologized for time and again until the word lost all meaning. They'd had their fights, but they'd had so much more than that.

Anders couldn't think of anyone or anything who had ever done more for him, and asked for nothing in return. Three fights with templars, freedom offered at every turn, his every fear embraced and understood or overturned. For five short months Anders had everything he'd ever wanted: a pretty lover, a decent meal, and the right to use his magic at will. Bethany was right. It didn't seem possible to fall for someone so hard and so fast, and maybe there was a reason for it: it hurt.

When Anders pushed past that, he thought about what he'd read, and wondered what in Thedas he thought he was doing. Amell was more than Anders would ever be. He'd saved everyone from the Blight, and it still wasn't enough to make a difference with the Chantry. The Chantry was never going to accept mages as equal. An abomination running a free clinic in the sewers of the City of Chains wasn't going to change that.

He and Justice might save one, or a dozen, or even a score of mages, and in the grand scheme of things it wouldn't make any difference. The Chantry was never going to stop. Velanna was right about them, and it was bloody ironic. Andraste had fought a tyrannical empire only for her followers to become one themselves. The Chantry was inherently flawed, its laws based on fear of an empire that crumbled a thousand years ago.

Something had to be done. Justice wanted an end to the Circles, but Anders didn't know where to start. He doubted Hawke asking the Grand Cleric's audience would make any difference, but it was a pleasant fantasy. A Chantry that didn't blame mages for the sins of magisters, a Chantry that held templars accountable for their actions, a Chantry that was good, a Chantry that was just. It was a pleasant fantasy, but a fantasy all the same.

The Divine wasn't a mouthpiece for the Maker. She was a demented old crone who had never cared for mages to begin with, and had been the one to put the templars in their place of power in Kirkwall in the first place. Thom had told Anders the story of Viscount Threnhold, and how Divine Beatrix III had turned the templars on him. The late Knight-Commander had died, and Grand Cleric Elthina had appointed Stannard in his stead.

If Stannard was making Harrowed mages Tranquil, it was with Elthina's consent. Begging that old biddy would get Hawke nowhere. Change wasn't going to come in increments. Maker, change might not come at all. Anders stumbled out of bed and Justice's fire pushed the thoughts away. They would make a difference someday. It just took time. Time and sweat and blood and tears.

A whole bloody year. Anders unhooked his canteen from his hip and poured it into the gutter; the grime clung stubbornly to the rusted piping, and the waterfall changed nothing, but the man had. "Happy anniversary, Creepy."

Notes:

Elvish Translation
That dirty traitor made an end to our friendship. He's the reason I'm alone and I will not forgive him. I am tired of enduring. I want to be happy. Fuck it. I ended the blight and I'm not sorry I broke my promise to him for his petty vengeance. I was a warden and I won. Now I am a mage and mages need freedom. Freedom will not come from peace, it will come from revolution, through blood and tears and swords and

Fanart
Anders killing roaches
Anders

Apples and Apostates
All the King's Horses and all the King's Men: The Battle of Denerim as referenced by Amell in his journal, told from Oghren's perspective.

Chapter 73: Friends in Low Places

Notes:

Hello everyone, welcome back. Thank you for all your comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 28 Ferventis Afternoon
Kirkwall Lowtown

Anders did his best to keep out of the way whenever he was out. He may have been a lark in the Circle, grandstanding at every occasion, but he'd still been a mage. He knew when to duck his head and fall in line. It was never safe for a mage to be alone in the Circle and if Anders insisted everyone know his name, or what passed for it, it was only because he wanted them to notice when he was gone.

Granted, in the Circle, gone could mean anything. Maybe it meant a mage had escaped. Maybe it meant they'd been killed. Maybe it meant they'd been moved to another Circle. Maybe it meant they were in solitary. The First Enchanter never said, and the templars weren't liable to go around assuaging any fears. They'd rather everyone assume missing meant dead so mages didn't get any ideas about missing meaning free and give it a go.

Bunks just turned up empty. Apprentices. Mages. Even enchanters. It was the way of it and no one stopped to think it wasn't normal. That people just didn't up and vanish out in the real world. Hardly anyone even said anything about it. Failed his Harrowing, if it was an apprentice. Broke out last night, if it was a mage. Got sent away, if it was an enchanter. No curiosity, no questions, not when the templars were watching.

So Anders went out of his way to make sure that everyone knew him, that no one would forget him, that someone would ask about him. It hadn't mattered. He'd spent a year in solitary anyway. Lenient, Irving had said, when the standard punishment was three. Lenient, Irving had said, when the templars dragged him in from every escape attempt because he was too weak to walk. Lenient, Irving had said, that all they did was boil the mana in his blood to catch him.

Discipline, Irving had said, when the templars turned their fists against him on every journey back to the Circle. Discipline, Irving had said, when they had assigned a templar to his every waking hour and denied him any modesty. Discipline, Irving had said, when Anders had learned to go without it and been beaten for his insolence. Discipline, Irving had said, when they'd left him to starve on one meal a day, and Anders had been too big a coward to make it stop.

So Anders made a scene. He made a joke of it. He made it mean something. He made it his own when it was the only thing he could have, but it hadn't changed anything. They'd thrown him in solitary anyway. He was a mage, and when it came right down to it, that was all that mattered. When he was out on his own, when he was free (or near enough) Anders kept his head down. He kept his eyes open. He kept his things close. He kept out of the way.

It worked, right up until Anders wanted to talk to someone, or someone wanted to talk to Anders. It was too engrained in him: the need to make noise, to be heard, to be noticed before it was too late. In the past, if he could get another mage to stand with him, suddenly he wasn't worth the trouble, and he was sent back to his quarters instead of his cell. There was nothing like that now, nor had there been for years, and Anders knew it was a habit that needed breaking. A mage on the defensive in Kirkwall was a recipe for disaster, and Anders should have known better than to let anything ruffle his feathers.

But Anders couldn't help himself. So he burned off his pants, he gave impromptu speeches to any refugees that would listen, he slaughtered templar patrols in the dark, he gave away dangerous artifacts enchanted by unknown maleficarum to his patients, and somehow no one had caught him yet. Instead everyone else suffered for him, just as Cera had predicted, but Anders was determined not to learn from his mistakes.

So Anders sat on the chair Thom had offered him, his hands on the man's arm, feeding tendrils of creationism through his veins while a cut on the man's wrist gave him access to his pulse: blood magic right out in the open. The necklace helped. The qunari mage must have had a similar heart condition, because the enchantment served to regulate blood flow. It served better making sure Thom stayed healthy than it did making sure Anders felt pretty, so Anders gave it to Thom.

"You're good," Anders said after a quick check of the man's humors. His blood wasn't putting as much pressure on his veins, and there was a strength about it that would have made it a better medium for magic if Anders had used it to cast anything. "No heart murmurs? Dizziness? Memory loss? Fatigue? Anything irregular?"

"Nothing," Thom promised, "Been a great two weeks. Easier to breathe, no heartburn, no cramps."

"It's perfect," Thom's wife Abigail promised, setting a bowl of fish stew in front of him. "You're a life saver, Anders."

"That's the goal," Anders said, a final pulse of creationism knitting the cut on Thom's arm back together. It was blood magic, no two ways about it, but Anders had been delighted to learn it. There was no other way to treat an illness like Thom's. It was in his blood, and the strength of it was something only a blood mage could gauge. "I don't think the necklace is overcorrecting. You should be safe to wear it while I'm gone."

"He will," Abigail said firmly, setting down a second bowl for Thom. "Won't he?"

"Yes, yes, he will," Thom sighed, rolling down his sleeve and dragging his bowl over, "Anders knows I'm grateful, but I don't think it's unreasonable for me to be a little wary."

"Wary's good," Anders assured him. "You need to be wary. No one can ever know about the necklace, Thom. If a templar found you wearing it, you'd hang."

"And the wife too, no doubt," Thom pulled the necklace out from under his shirt, and ran his thumb over the onyx with a thoughtful frown on his face.

"The wife can take care of herself," Abigail said firmly, "We need this, Thom. You remember your last heart attack. If Bill hadn't gotten you to the Gallows-"

"I was there, woman, I know what happened," Thom sighed.

"Then put that back in your shirt and leave well enough alone," Abigail ordered, and turned a warm smile on Anders. "We love it, Anders, thank you. You're a treasure, and a thin one. Eat your stew."

"Eating," Anders promised, picking up his spoon to go fishing for the chunks of shellfish in the catch of the day.

"So this necklace I'm going to be wearing for the rest of my life," Thom said, "How does it work? I know it's blood magic, but I've never heard of blood magic purifying anything."

"There's nothing inherently evil about blood magic," Anders said. "It's magic, like any other."

Anders was going to get himself killed one of these days, but there was no denying the necklace. Thom needed it, he needed to be warned about it, and he'd already seen more than enough of Anders healing him to guess at the magic. He doubted Thom was going to turn him over for it, but that didn't mean the next patient with a heart problem wouldn't.

It was easier not to think about it.

"There's no other way to treat what you have, Thom," Anders said. "The problem is that that enchantment is advanced. There's no way anyone with the cursory understanding of blood magic the Chantry approves of could make it. You need an in-depth understanding of blood and the way it moves through the body, of eldritch magic and how to shape it, and either lyrium or blood to hold the enchantment.

On a maleficar, less impurities in the blood means less blood for spells. It's a weapon, but it doesn't have to be. For you it's just a way to keep your heart healthy, but the Chantry won't care about that if they catch you wearing it."

"They won't," Abigail said.

"And you made this for me?" Thom asked.

"Found it, if you can believe it," Anders said. There was no reason to bring Hawke into this after all. "But I'd like to learn how to make it for anyone else with a heart problem like yours. I have a few ideas, but I need to keep studying it. I can do that on these checkups. No reason you should go without it if it can help you now."

"You'll want to be careful with that, I imagine," Thom said. "I don't know how many people will be as understanding about it."

"Doesn't mean I shouldn't try." Anders said.

Anders finished eating and had bid the Beshcals goodbye when Thom's wife stopped him at the door. "Anders, wait a minute," Abigail begged, closing the door behind them to talk to him on the doorstep.

"If this is about my things-" Anders guessed.

"What? No, don't be ridiculous," Abigail said, with a quick glance to ensure they were alone. "We can hold onto a few letters for you while you're off on your expedition. It's no trouble. I just wanted to ask if you're sure about what you said last week? If blood magic can help Thom's heart maybe it can do something for me."

"I'm sorry, Abby," Anders put on what he hoped was a comforting smile, "If there is a spell like that I don't know it." The closest thing Anders knew to a spell for conception was one that forced erections, and it wasn't as if the Beshcals weren't trying. Abigail was just barren.

"It would be too good to be true, wouldn't it?" Abigail sighed.

"I know how you feel, believe me," Anders felt his smile twist, and tried to keep it in his eyes. "Being around the kids- ... Actually, Abby, maybe there is something. Have you and Thom ever thought about adopting?"

"Adopt who?" Abigail asked, leaning back against the doorframe. There was a resigned sort of lethargy about her that depressed him just to see, "The Chantry takes in all the orphans."

"Not all of them," Anders said. "I know a few kids who could use a good home, if you're interested."

Abigail pushed herself off the door and wrung her hands together thoughtfully for several long seconds, "... Any boys?"

"A few, yeah," Anders said.

"... I'll talk to Thom." Abigail decided, a smile touching her lips, "Maybe we could go meet them when you're back from your expedition?"

"I'll have to talk to their guardian, but it's a date," Anders agreed.

Anders didn't doubt Evelina wouldn't mind the Beshcals adopting one of the boys. Pryce wouldn't go without his sisters, but Cricket or Walter would be fine on their own. Evelina was attached to them, enough to keep them from the Chantry, but she'd want to see them go to good homes. Maker knew it would be better for them than living in the sewers. Anders recalled Aveline's callous remark last week at Wicked Grace and bristled.

"Why you and the rest of the refugees choose to live down there is beyond me," Aveline had said, as if anyone would choose to spend their days slogging through shit and their nights plagued with chokedamp. The woman couldn't open her mouth without making Anders hate her more. Anders relit a few fires on his way back to his clinic to the gratitude of a few refugees, who would have been anywhere else if they had the choice, because it was bloody common sense no one wanted to freeze to death in the dark.

Anders let himself into his clinic and lit his lantern, feeling a little lighter without his satchel. He'd taken care of everything. The Beshcals had agreed to watch his things, with Lirene's shop and the Dog's Kennels facing too much traffic and regular raids by the guards or the templars. The Coterie knew in advance he was leaving, and he'd gathered up as many supplies as he could for the Collective in his absence.

Anders was dreading the Deep Roads, but he didn't see a choice in the matter. He'd risked Bethany's life twice, and the least he could do for the girl was protect her brother and the rest of the fools determined to risk their lives for the mad underground venture. Anders could already picture himself covered in filth and knee-deep in blood, in the dark, with nothing but the light of a wisp fighting back the black in those caverns. It wasn't a terribly pretty picture.

Then again, Darktown wasn't much better. Anders saw to a half dozen patients before evening, before hunger and Justice forced him to dispel the light from his lantern. The spirit didn't always recognize hunger, drifting between his thoughts and the dark recesses of his mind, but when Anders was healing, and Justice was at his fingertips, the spirit noticed the pangs of hunger Anders had learned to ignore.

He manifested in a kink in Anders' neck, a disassociation to his thoughts, an odd and urgent need to move that left Anders pacing restlessly between patients until he recognized the feeling for Justice trying to force him into finding food. It was harder than it had been, ever since Anders had stopped using blood magic to hunt rats, but he didn't see a choice. He needed to dream. He needed a way to talk to Justice.

If blood magic took that from him, it wasn't a price Anders was willing to pay, which meant using it sparingly. For patients, and nothing else, Anders had decided shortly after the revelation and so far he'd managed to hold to it. Anders cleaned up his clinic, and was reaching for his coat when Hawke knocked on his door.

There was no mistaking the man; the way his fist pounded on the door as if he intended to break it down, and the impatient, "Anders!" that accompanied the ruckus.

Anders left his coat on the hook, and stopped in front of his door to bang loudly back. "Hawke!"

The pounding stopped. Anders chuckled, and opened the door with a grin Hawke met with a frown. Hawke broke eye-contact with him a heartbeat later to snort and wave at the lantern hanging from hook beside the door, "Fire's out."

"I was just about to head out to find dinner," Anders explained, taking a step back to wave the man inside.

"Find it for you, for a favor," Hawke offered.

"Let's be more specific," Anders waved him to a crate, and took one for himself. "I don't do anything involving children or animals."

"Where do drunken sots fall on your list?" Hawke asked.

"Something happen with your uncle?" Anders guessed, trying to keep his eyes off the man's thighs, but it was near impossible with Hawke running his hands over them and squeezing idly at the leather.

"Threw out his back," Hawke explained, "Don't have the coin to support him while I'm gone, and he can't work laid up in bed."

"That's right, he uh..." Eyes up, Anders. What were they even talking about again? Thank the Maker Hawke rarely made eye-contact, so he rarely saw when Anders failed to do the same.

"Works the cocks," Hawke couldn't have said, but that's what Anders heard.

Anders snorted, and broke into a fit of hysterical laughter. "What?"

"Docks," Hawke enunciated loudly, "Docks. He works the docks." Anders bit his knuckles to contain his laughter, and it didn't help him any when Hawke started chuckling, "Though with the time he spends at the Rose I wouldn't be surprised."

"That would be a good way to go, though, wouldn't it?" Anders snorted, rolling his shoulder at the prickle of static he knew came from Justice. Maker, man, I don't need a chaperone, Anders thought to himself, with the hope Justice could pick up on his intent, if nothing else. "Of course I'll come help, though you know that means you'd have another apostate in your home. Not worried for Beth?"

"I'm always worried for Beth," Hawke said. "I can't leave her and mother to listen to Gamlen's bitching for an entire month. They'd be better off with the darkspawn."

"Thanks for trusting me with that, by the way," Anders said. "You don't want her in the Deep Roads. All it takes is one bite, or a bit of a blood in an open wound, and you're tainted. Ghouls... Maker, you don't want to see them."

"I wasn't going to bring her along anyway," Hawke said. "Seen enough darkspawn to know I'm not letting my family anywhere near them again."

"Look um... Carver-"

"-is dead." Hawke interrupted him. "Leave him that way."

"Where'd that come from?" Anders demanded, remembering how fondly Hawke had spoken of his younger brother just weeks ago before he corrected himself, "No-I'm sorry-you're right, it's on you if you want that left alone."

Hawke growled his way through a sigh and scratched at his scalp, "Thanks. It's a bad week... I don't know if I can talk about him right now, but go ahead."

"I was just going to say it's probably going to be hard to be around so many darkspawn, after what happened to him." Anders said.

"So long as I can kill them," Hawke said.

"What happened this week?" Anders asked. "Anything I can help with?"

"Just work." Hawke said unhelpfully. "You got everything squared for the trip?"

"If I had to pick a shape, sure," Anders shrugged.

"Well I know you're not going with Circle," Hawke... joked? Anders snickered, and won a grin. Andraste's grace, it was a joke.

"So how did you get the coin together?" Anders prodded, "Or-let me guess-it's not my business?" Hawke grinned, and Anders flicked a bit of grit off the table towards him, "Come on, at least aim for a little creativity there. Magic, or a wizard did it, or something."

"A wizard did something," Hawke said, "Thanks for helping pick the entrance for the trip."

"You know if you really wanted to thank me you could leave Fenris behind," Anders said.

"You just don't know him," Hawke said, "He's got a good heart."

"Right, I bet he keeps it in a jar," Anders snorted. "Ah, you ready to head out? Probably shouldn't keep your uncle waiting."

Anders locked up the clinic when they left, and shrugged his coat up on his shoulders on the walk through Darktown. "Seriously though, Fenris?" Anders asked, following Hawke over one of the many rickety bridges that spanned the divides in Darktown. "I'm beginning to think you hate me. You couldn't bring anyone else?"

"Aveline has the guard and I need her here to look over Beth and Mother, Isabela's claustrophobic and thinks she has a lead on her relic and Merrill wants to stay to help her. Meeran's got Gustav working, and no one else in this city knows a blade from a butter knife."

"One of them's pointier, right?" Anders guessed, holding his breath over another bridge that passed over a sewage drain.

"One of them's pointier," Hawke agreed. He was wearing his father's old armor again, for whatever reason, and the switch of his mantle was distracting, but it also reminded Anders his assorted rags didn't count much for armor. He thought of the darkspawn claw that had pierced his leg in Kal'Hirol, and rubbed a phantom pain from his thigh for the memory. Maker, this expedition was going to be a mess.

"So your uncle's back," Anders asked, "How bad is it?"

"How bad do I think it is or how bad does Gamlen act like it is?" Hawke asked.

"Both," Anders shrugged, jogging a few feet to catch up with the bridges behind them, and space enough to walk side by side again.

"I think Gamlen could get a job in a cattle barn with how hard he's milking this," Hawke said. "But he didn't end up in a ditch on his way home and that's better than he usually does."

"I have vague memories of you claiming to love this fellow," Anders mused.

"I do love him," Hawke said, stepping onto the lift and taking to the crank when Anders followed. "But Gamlen can't say 'good morning' without lying twice. Just ignore the shit that comes out of his mouth when we get there."

"Reminds me a bit of someone." Anders joked, rocking back and forth on his feet in the lift to the sound of rattling chains and grating metal as it eked its way into Lowtown. "It's you," Anders said in a loud whisper when Hawke didn't respond.

"Not a liar," Hawke said, but he snorted.

Anders grinned, "So I take it I finally get to meet your mother? It'll be nice to have a chance to thank her for the quilt."

"Just-... don't let her get to you," Hawke said.

"That's not ominous or anything," Anders noted, "I thought I was her favorite son-in-law."

"'Favorite' doesn't mean what you think it means with my mother." Hawke said as the lift lurched to a halt in Lowtown. The roof of the building the lift was in had caved in in one corner, rock and rubble strew along the edge of the platform, and a sickly light broke through the foundry fog. Whether it was chokedamp or smog, the air was never clean in Kirkwall, but there was no sense complaining about it when it was all there was to breathe.

"She doesn't know what happened to Beth last month," Hawke warned him when they stepped out into Lowtown. "Don't tell her."

"How can she possibly not know?" Anders asked, "Evon and Donal carried her home."

"In the middle of the night," Hawke said. "She's a heavy sleeper. I took Beth to the Hanged Man, and we waited for the healer there."

"I'm sorry," Anders said.

"It's done," Hawke said.

Bright red and orange awnings decorated the alleys that led to the hex Hawke and his family lived in, all of them ripped and laden with pigeon crap in the traditional Lowtown style. A summer haze clung to the cobblestone, and the piles of filth that had been left to marinade in the sun buzzed with flies and swarmed with roaches. It wasn't quite as bad on the main streets, and Anders managed to snatch a kiwi off a fruit cart as it trundled past to cool down on their way to Hawke's home.

The courtyard had been a quarry like the rest of the Lowtown, and still had scaffolding rotting away against the walls from when it had been built. Hawke's house was stuffed into the corner block of apartments, on the second story and held together by red and rusted metalwork. The door was iron, or near enough, and graffitied with the words "PAY UP" that someone had worked in vain to wash away.

"Friendly neighbors?" Anders guessed.

"Gamlen's friends," Hawke stopped at the door and made no moves to open it.

"Downright sporting, from the looks of it," Anders mused, "Are we waiting for something?"

"... Try to forget what you hear in here," Hawke sighed, knocking three times before he shoved the door open. The house seemed a house like any other on the inside. It looked much like all of Lowtown, walls of mottled wood and stone, held together with rusted metalwork and covered by ratty tarps and tapestries. Light cast through a few windows set high in the wall, and a fireplace across the room in front of which Bethany sat with a woman who looked like an older version of her.

Her hair was grey, but done in the same style, tied off just at the base of her neck, and she wore a dress in place of Bethany's trousers, the light beige of undyed wool tied off with a brown leather corset and a pretty blue sash. She looked up at their entrance with a smile that crumpled into a frown, "Sweetheart. You're back. Is this-...?"

"Anders, to the rescue," Anders introduced himself, dodging out of the way when a blur of brown came rushing past to slam Hawke into the door and slather all over his face.

"Off!" Hawke ordered, and Dog dropped off his chest. The mabari paced in a circle, whining, and threw itself down in the middle of the living room with a huff.

"That better be the bloody healer!" A raspy voice yelled from the room over.

"Shut it!" Bethany yelled back, leaving her chair to come greet him. Anders felt a flicker of irritation from Justice, and ignored it to return the hug Bethany offered him. "Anders! It's so good to see you. It feels like we never get a chance anymore now that you don't come on our hunting trips."

"Sorry," Anders said, "Busy. You know how it is."

"I know," Bethany smiled sadly, and a loud cough from Hawke's mother interrupted them.

"Do I get an introduction?" The older woman asked, dusting off her dress and standing to look him over with such a critical eye Anders couldn't help fidgeting.

"Mother, this is Anders," Bethany introduced them, while Hawke left his boots on a rack by the door, "Anders, this is my mother, Leandra Amell."

"Bethany mentioned you've been teaching her healing magic," Leandra noted; her voice was light and airy and everything Anders would have expected from a noble. Her posture matched it, her back ram-rod straight and her hands entwined delicately at her waist. At least Hawke and Bethany hadn't inherited that air of aristocracy, not that Anders was sure Bethany's cowardice or Hawke's aggression was any better.

"Here and there," Anders agreed, trying not to wince at the surname.

"So when did you and Bethany start courting?" Leandra asked.

Anders choked, Hawke snorted, and Bethany turned beat red. "Mother!" Bethany hissed. "I told you we're just friends."

"I'm not so old I don't remember what that means," Leandra said with an absolutely uncalled for twinkle in her eyes. "Like mother like daughter, after all."

"Mother," Bethany whined.

"It's not like that, really," Anders said.

"Sweetheart, you don't need to be embarrassed," Leandra said, "Of course, I am a little concerned you might end up living the same life as your father and I, but-"

"Is that the fucking healer or not!?" The raspy voice yelled again.

"I said shut it!" Bethany yelled back.

"So-that reminds me actually of why I'm here, so..." Anders pointed to one of the two doors in the small hovel as a guess and raised an eyebrow.

"He's in there," Hawke said, and Anders skirted past the group to the back room.

Anders wasn't about to call it a mess, but it was certainly cluttered. The room had been divided down the middle and it wasn't hard to guess which side belonged to Hawke. There was a blanket covered with dog hair thrown down beside the cot, and a hook above it that held his bow in a quiver. Three armor stands encircled a small space littered with feathers, bits of wood, and a carving knife. There was a lute leaning on the cot, and a copy of the Chant of Light on the canvas.

The other half of the room very clearly belonged to his uncle, and not just because the man was laid up in bed. A wallop mallet hung on the wall, empty bottles were strewn along the floor, and in the center of it all was a table holding a stained mug, dice, and cards that had yet to be put away, if there was even any place to put them with how the armoire spilled out onto the floor.

Anders picked his way across the room and grabbed a chair to drag across the floor and set beside Hawke's uncle's cot. "Gamlen, isn't it?" Anders asked; there was less resemblance to the man than the rest of his family. Varric hadn't picked wrong with his nickname. There was such a shine to Gamlen's complex Anders could have used it as a mirror, with enough grease in his hair the candle on his nightstand made Anders nervous.

He was built like a Marcher, sturdy and stocky save for the stomach one too many ales had given him. "My nephew bring you to heal me or not?" Gamlen snarled.

"Charmed." Anders decided, holding a hand a few inches over the man to send tendrils of creationism down his spine until he found the problem in his lower back. It was a protrusion on his spinal cord, between the discs, and Anders channeled a cleansing aura to bring down the inflammation. It set off the magic in his veins, and cast the faint blue light that was Justice throughout the room.

Gamlen frowned at him, "Noisy shit's gonna get you caught one day, boy."

"Probably," Anders agreed. "Sweet you care."

"Girl's always going on about you," Gamlen muttered. "Couldn't have taught her enough for her to do this shit on her own?"

"A mage can't sustain a cleansing aura without a spirit to back it, and Bethany's not a spirit healer," Anders said. "You've got a tear between the discs in your spine that's inflamed. If you didn't have a spirit healer it would take three months of you in bed to heal on its own, if it healed at all."

"Well aren't you a special snowflake," Gamlen said.

"I think so," Anders grinned.

"... Back feels better already," Gamlen noted.

"That's the plan," Anders said.

"And you do this shit for free?" Gamlen asked, "Damn waste. You could be making a killing."

"Healer, remember?" Anders wiggled the fingers of his free hand at the man, and his veins flared with magic at his beckon. "Killing is kind of the opposite of what I'm going for."

"You're as bad as my nephew," Gamlen muttered. "When can I get up?"

"Not for a day, at least," Anders said, "I'm still not done."

Gamlen grunted and grumbled when Anders finished cleansing the inflammation about how ridiculous it was he had to stay lying down when nothing was wrong with him, but he stayed in his cot, which was all Anders asked. If nothing else, at least Gamlen was sympathetic enough to care about the possibility of Anders getting caught. All in all he could have been worse.

Anders saw himself out, and into the main room where Bethany and Hawke were working at the counter that made up their kitchen on what Anders assumed was dinner. Leandra was setting the table with what looked to be wooden cutlery, and looked up at his entrance. "You are staying for dinner, aren't you, Anders? Did you want to have a bath first?"

"Mother!" Bethany hissed.

"I'd love one, actually," Anders said, grinning at how aghast Bethany looked at the suggestion.

"The wash is just through there," Leandra said with a nod towards the room Anders hadn't been in. Anders went with a wave of thanks, and wasn't terribly surprised to see the room was a mirror of the one Hawke shared with Gamlen. Bethany's side of the room was littered with books and tomes, and an assorted collection of herbs with a proper alchemy set. Her staff hung on the wall, with a set of oils on the desk beneath it for maintenance.

Leandra's side had yarn, thread, and needles laid out for needlepoint and knitting on her cot. A small desk was littered with pressed or pressing flowers, a diary, and a much neater armoire than her brother's was set against the wall. A divider in the center of the room hid the wash, where a real wooden tub and a vanity were waiting.

Anders' quick bath did nothing for his clothes, but wonders for his hair and his mood. It was like to be his last for an entire month, with the Deep Roads waiting for him, and Anders appreciated the offer no matter how Leandra had meant it. His hair was still wet when he came back into the living room in time for dinner.

"Thanks for the offer Leandra," Anders said, taking the only seat left at the table, which happened to be opposite the woman. Bethany and Leandra smiled at him, while Hawke glowered at his plate as if it had personally insulted him. Anders couldn't imagine how. Dinner looked to be an inoffensive salted venison and roasted potatoes. "I probably needed it."

"Oh it's not your fault, poor thing," Leandra said, to another hissed 'Mother!' from Bethany, "Living in the sewers! Maker, I can't imagine it. Sometimes I forget what Gamlen spared us. I can't say I approve of Bethany being involved in any sort of mage business and risking the eye of the Circle, but it is so dear of you to do what you do, and I've heard only good things about you."

"Really?" Anders raised an eyebrow at Hawke the man missed in his staring contest with his dinner. Not going into details about Beth was one thing, but Anders would have assumed the man would voice an opinion or two considering the debt Anders owed him.

"Leandra!" Gamlen whined from the other room, "Where's my dinner?"

"Maker's breath," Bethany muttered, "Please tell me he'll be on his feet by tomorrow."

"He'll be up on his feet by tomorrow," Anders promised.

"I can't believe you're leaving me here with him, brother," Bethany said.

"It's safer for you here," Hawke said.

"Is this dwarven venture truly the only way?" Leandra asked, "I hate to think of you going willingly into the darkspawn's grasp."

"We have a Warden with us," Hawke pointed out, finally looking up from his plate to spare Anders a long look that made his face heat up and his throat dry out, "We'll be fine."

Chapter 74: No Turning Back

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back! The song in this chapter is an adaptation of The Circle by Blackmore's Night. Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 3 Solis Early Morning
Free Marches - Southeastern side of the Vimmark Mountains

The entrance to the Deep Roads was a cave anyone might have mistaken for something belonging to a bear, nestled in the southeastern side of the Vimmark Mountans, north of the road between Kirkwall and Ostwick. There were four throughout the Free Marches that Anders had been able to make out on the map the Dogs had stolen from Stroud, well back in Drakonis. The man had been planning his own expedition into the Deep Roads, though Anders couldn't say if there was a chance it would line up with the one Bartrand was leading on Hawke's mysterious and very likely ill-gotten coin.

The more Anders learned about the expedition, the less he liked it. Bartrand was going on dwarven hearsay of a thaig supposedly buried a week below the surface, rumors of which had apparently abounded since the Third Blight. The thaig was rumored to be from before the time of the First Blight, and the original source of lyrium to every dwarven city throughout Thedas, the name of which was lost to legend. Orzammar would pay for a fortune for the location alone, presuming they ever found it, and didn't just die a few days into the mad venture.

The expedition was a half-score of workers, a score of hired muscle, and a few miscellaneous tagalongs. Anders was expecting to lose more than half of them. The same scrapes and bruises the Wardens bore with a bandage would blight a normal man. The more muscle Bartrand hired just meant more blood to taint, and knowing the ritual for the Joining didn't mean Anders had the lyrium or enchanted chalice to cast it. It also didn't do much for Anders' confidence that the muscle Bartrand had hired wasn't exactly keen on defending their little trio.

If nothing else, the Winters were certainly living up to their name. Anders had never had such a cold reception in his entire life, and he'd spent twenty-six years at the mercy of templars. At just the sight of Hawke, half of them had walked out, and the other half had threatened to kill the man on the spot. Coin won out, the way coin often did, but for summer the air was noticeably chilly, and the looks were nothing if not icy.

"I told you this would come back on you," Fenris had muttered after the shouting war had ended in something like a truce. As far as Anders was concerned, it was the most civil thing to come out of the elf's mouth the entire two days it had taken them to make the journey to the Deep Road's entrance. Next to a character like Fenris, Hawke looked like rainbows and butterfly farts, and considering he was often with Varric, it was where Anders gravitated more often than not.

It wasn't to say there wasn't other company for him in the expedition. The Winters might have hated him out of association, but the workers had nothing against him. They were Fereldans, the lot of them, and as desperate for coin in unforgiving Kirkwall as Hawke. Anders had met two blokes worth the time of day, and no doubt the time of night when they lost the sun and moons beneath the earth. Ralf was a blond giant with mutton chops that were a sheep's envy, and Miles looked like something someone might have pulled out of the supply carts: ladder-tall with braid enough it could have served for rope in a pinch.

As to the supply carts themselves... Anders could have done without. A fellow by the name of Bodahn Feddic was supplying the expedition, and while he might have manifested a set of cheap leather armor for Anders out of his ass, it didn't make his company any more tolerable. There was nothing wrong with the man, per se, though his overbearing enthusiasm for the Deep Roads was a little grating. It was his history and Varric's incessant need to hear it that drove Anders away.

Of course, he was from Ferelden. And of course, he'd been there during the Blight. And of course, he knew the Hero of Ferelden. And of course, he hadn't just met him, he'd spent the entire year traveling with him. And of course, he had stories, but you folk wouldn't be interested in-oh you were? Well then, of course, he could tell you all about Amell and his every fantastical adventure and this reminded him of the time that - Maker, make it fucking stop.

The taint might have given Anders an insatiable hunger, but it was his own fault he was a glutton for punishment. There was no other explanation for why he kept drifting over to Varric and Bodahn to listen the occasional story on those two long days to the Deep Roads. Apparently, Amell, and the King himself, and one of them great grand qunari, and a very intimidating wilder girl, and a lovely young songstress had saved Bodahn and his son Sandal from the darkspawn.

They'd spent the rest of the Blight trailing along behind them, scavenging the dead and picking up every odd trinket left behind to sell in the cities. Before then, Bodahn had lived in Orzammar and made a living scavenging abandoned thaigs, but nobles could be so sensitive about those sorts of things and a little disagreement over the definition of stealing had led to his exile. The brief history lesson explained the man's completely unwarranted enthusiasm for the Deep Roads, if nothing else. Apparently, he'd left a wife behind in Denerim just to be part of Bartrand's venture.

Anders couldn't imagine it. If he had a wife and a happy life, he'd never had left them for the blighted Deep Roads, even for a month. The torches were lit when they reached the cave, and Anders let out a sigh that felt strong enough to put them right back out. "Maker, why are we doing this again?"

"Because I have to look after Bartrand, and you think Hawke is cute," Varric gestured to where the archer was walking at the head of the procession with Bartrand. "That wasn't a serious question, was it, Blondie?"

"He is pretty cute," Anders allotted, waving away the torch one of the workers offered him. He summoned a light to radiate through the crystal set in his staff, and the worker offered it to Varric instead, who took it with a word of thanks.

"Getting any easier to look at him without seeing your guy?" Varric asked.

"A lottle," Anders said.

"A what?" Varric asked.

"A lottle," Anders said again, "You know, a little and a lot."

Varric shook his head, and the light died above them as they passed beneath the cave, "So this Warden business. How does it work? You get some kind of voice in your head - another voice in your head - that says 'Look out! A dozen darkspawn ahead!' or a muscle spasm that makes you point in the right direction, or what?"

"I'd have a seizure with that last one," Anders snorted, "It's the Deep Roads. There are darkspawn everywhere. It's... I don't know how to explain it. It's a hive mind. I can feel them when we're close to them. It's like being outside of your body, and knowing there's you, but however far away, there's them. Like a bird's eye view on it all, I guess. Supposedly makes strategy a little easier, because you can't not picture the battlefield in your mind."

"Battlefield," Varric repeated, "That's definitely something I want to think about before heading into a cramped, dark cave."

"Tell me about it," Anders sighed. It was already uncomfortable, though not unbearably so. The cave was a cave, like any other. The walls were grey, the ground was brown, and there were weeds caught between the two. There was space enough for their procession to walk five abreast, though Anders didn't doubt the carts and the donkeys dragging them would run into trouble the further down they went.

More often than not, Varric spent his time on the back of one of said carts. By his own admission, he was built for rolling, not walking, and even his blisters had blisters with how much walking they'd done already. Anders couldn't go anywhere near them, no matter how tired his feet were, or the even-tempered beasts of burden would go mad, reeling in their yokes and braying at the top of their lungs.

"Don't you worry about it, messere," Bodahn had assured him the first time Anders had forgotten, and set the donkeys off. "Mages'll do that sometimes, I'm afraid. The Hero traveled with one of the sweetest women I've ever met, an enchanter from the Circle I believe, but my old ass at the time wouldn't have none of it. A bad smell, I think. You need anything from the supply carts, let me know, and I'll get it for you." The dwarf was nice. It wasn't his fault he'd known Amell. At this rate, there wasn't a soul in all of Thedas who didn't.

The cave changed, the further back they traveled. It was an entrance utilized by the Wardens, one of only four, and it showed. The ground was worn smooth, the walls had been chiseled wide, the ceilings beamed high. Hooks were imbedded in the stone every few yards, fit to hold lanterns that must have been removed at some point. Anders guessed that meant this entrance was currently in a state of disuse, and hope it meant they wouldn't run into any Wardens asking questions about why and how they were here.

The last thing Anders wanted was to run into Stroud down here. He could just picture the man's mustache drooped with disappointment or outrage at the sight of him, hear the man's accented accusations and anger for Maker knew how many men Anders and Justice killed in their escape from the Vigil. The thought of Velanna and Nathaniel put a physical ache in his chest, and as much as Anders wanted closure, he didn't want the only kind of closure he could imagine getting.

"You've got that look again, Blondie," Varric noted. "Trying your best Broody impression? Your face is going to get stuck that way if you're not careful."

"Have a care with your words, dwarf," Fenris' low voice rumbled quite suddenly from behind them. Anders made a sound that didn't bear repeating in civilized company, and even Varric squealed.

"Maker's breath, Broody," Varric wheezed, pawing at his chest where his low neckline left it exposed, "Put your armor on, cough, fart, sing or something. How are you so quiet?"

"Shall I do all of these things at once, or in any particular order?" Fenris wondered, his bare feet moving soundlessly over the dirt when he took a spot beside Varric. He was dressed in his leotard, the mottled emerald decorated with feathers at the joints, and covered with a matching vest clinched tight with a belt laden with pouches Anders had come to learn contained everything he owned.

"With the darkspawn, I'd start with the armor," Anders suggested.

"Already?" Fenris asked.

"Well, we're underground, so I'm going to go with yes," Anders said. "You know a small scouting party made it into Kirkwall, on Wintersend? Burst right up through a bloody storm drain like cockroaches."

"I imagine you were there to stop them," Fenris said.

"Well they weren't there to chat," Anders said. "... not this time at least."

"I'm still not sure I'm buying that, Blondie," Varric said. "Talking darkspawn? What's next? Talking dogs?"

"Mabari come pretty close," Anders mused.

"As well they should," Fenris said, "The magisters bred them. It's said the-"

"Maker. Fucking. Save me," Anders interrupted with a groan, "Is everything about magisters with you?"

"No more so than everything is about templars with you," Fenris sneered. "I was merely going to say the breed is remarkably intelligent."

"Really?" Anders demanded, "That's all?"

"That, and that they were said to defect during the Imperium's invasion of Ferelden because they found the barbarians more palatable than the mages. Merely a tale, but you can see a bit of the truth of it before us," Fenris waved to where Hawke was still walking up ahead with Bartrand and Dog.

"That's what I thought," Anders rolled his eyes. "Are you ever going to stop harping on mages?"

"No," Fenris said.

"We're not all what you saw in Tevinter, you know." Anders argued. It had taken him an age to finally learn the man's history, but when he'd heard it, he couldn't help his sympathy and wasn't even sure how much of it came from Justice. Anders had learned it the same time he'd learned Isabela had freed an entire ship full of slaves, and that that was what had landed her in debt with the Raiders of the Waking Sea, and led to her mad hunt for a mysterious relic to erase said debt.

Apparently Fenris had been the slave of a powerful magister by the name of Danarius, who was the same man who'd carved the lyrium markings into his flesh and cost him his memories. Danarius had kept him as a bodyguard and a symbol of his magical prowess for years, until Fenris had finally escaped under circumstances the elf wasn't keen to share with him.

As much as Anders knew the man had suffered, he would have thought he would take that suffering and use it to help free others from oppression, as opposed to blaming the actions of one man on an entire group of peoples, but apparently that was giving Fenris too much credit. "The moment they are free, mages will make themselves magisters."

"They're slaves!" Anders snapped, and tasted mana with his words, "You should want to help them!"

"I don't," Fenris sneered.

"Now, now, boys," Varric raised two large gloved hands above his head and into their line of sight. "Play nice. Try to think of things you have in common! Like, um... good hair?"

"That's a joke, right?" Anders guessed.

"It's absolutely a joke," Varric laughed. "Ancestors, look at you two. Broody cuts his hair with a knife, and you style yours with piss and shit. You look horrible! But the important thing is you look horrible together."

"You're right, I feel so much closer to him already," Anders cooed.

"I don't use a knife," Fenris muttered.

"What do you use then, Broody?" Varric asked, "Your hands?"

"Yes, I endure the agony of activating my lyrium markings purely for the sake of my morning ritual," Fenris said flatly.

"Beauty is pain," Anders hummed.

"Life is pain," Fenris said.

"That's it," Varric sighed, "I'm getting you a lute, and you two can put this shit into a song, because there's no other way I'm taking it seriously."

"I get to sing," Anders said.

"Not unless I'm writing the lyrics," Fenris said.

"Can I guess?" Anders mused, "Mages are bad, mages are mean. Mages are evil, they make me scream."

"Nevermind," Fenris decided, "You can write the lyrics."

"The last line's the best, because you can kind of take it as a sexy sort of thing," Anders said.

Fenris made a disgusted noise and rolled eyes. With the torches lighting their descent into the caves beneath the Vimmark Mountains, his eyes were a bright green, and glinting along with Varric's hazel, but not quite glowing in the dark. Anders wasn't sure if he was ready for that nightmare just yet. He could still remember all the times Velanna, Sigrun, and Oghren had him shrieking and shaking in his knickers, and he wasn't looking forward to more anxiety in the Deep Roads.

"I think it has promise," Varric said.

"Thank you," Anders grinned. "I wouldn't mind or song or two to lighten things up, to be honest. Maker knows it's all downhill from here."

"Nice one," Varric snorted.

"You speak of disliking the Deep Roads a great deal," Fenris noted; wonder of wonders, apparently the man listened to a few things that came out of Anders' mouth, "Why?"

"Besides the obvious, you mean?" Anders asked.

"It's a dangerous place. The darkspawn are another charming gift from the magisters, but they're less of a threat to a Grey Warden." Anders rolled his eyes so hard they hurt at the mention of the Chantry's nonsensical magister propaganda when Fenris continued, "If not for you, this expedition might not have even the slightest chance at success."

"Why, Fenris, was that a compliment?" Anders asked.

"It was an observation, nothing more," Fenris said.

"What's there to like?" Anders demanded; once Leonie had taken charge, everything had gone to shit. "They're the Deep Roads. They're filled with darkspawn and taint, and I had more than enough of them the first time I went. When I left the Wardens, I thought I'd never spend another minute in the Deep Roads."

"'Left' sounds like it was a mutual arrangement." Fenris noted.

"Fine, I ran away," Anders snapped. "This may shock you, but even the Taint Brigade draws the line at abominations. What's it to you?"

"Ran away from the Circle, ran away from the Wardens... it sounds like a habit," Fenris shrugged.

"And you ran away from Danarius," Anders said, when a thought occurred to him, "Maybe we're more alike than you think."

"I've always said so," Varric agreed. "Bad hair, a love of freedom, you both glow blue. You're practically brothers!"

"Considering the relationship you have with your brother, I'm almost inclined to agree," Fenris mused.

"Sure, why not?" Anders shrugged, "But you know that means the templars will just take you away from me someday. I'm already tearing up about it."

Fenris made a disgusted noise and stormed away from him to walk with Hawke.

"I think that's a new record," Varric noted. "Five minutes of talking, just about? I'm going to mark it on my calendar. Nine thirty-two, third of Solace, Blondie and Broody were sort of civil."

"We should make it an annum," Anders agreed.

"What do we call it?" Varric asked. "Courtdayous? Dayplomatic?"

"Accomodayting?" Anders shrugged. "Genteelia?"

"Oh, I like that," Varric said, "Kind of dirty, too. Suits you, 'Blondie.'"

"I know, I'm a filthy little mage," Anders snorted. "My mind's always in the gutter."

"That's so dark I don't think I should be laughing," Varric chuckled.

"Deep Roads dark, or Void dark?" Anders asked.

"Which is worse?" Varric asked, and after a pause, said in tandem with him, "Deep Roads."

"And we're not even there yet," Anders noted. "You're not going to like me in a few days."

"Ah, Blondie, I'm sure there's no amount of bitching that could make me hate you," Varric assured him, "Trust me, I'm right there with you."

Anders assumed it was night when the expedition stopped at the Warden's first base camp. It was long abandoned, but it had the markings of being inhabited once. A firepit had been dug in the stone in the center of the alcove, along with several latrines a fair distance from camp. Hooks were nailed along the cave wall for lanterns, and there were rotten wooden beams strewn about for pitching tents. They weren't any good for anything but firewood at this point, but they had their supply carts, and the means to pitch their own.

The expedition split off into their own cliques when Bodahn passed out rations. Anders' small group of four and a half sat in their own cluster about the fire. Hawke and Varric laid on opposite sides of Dog, who looked all too happy to be used as a pillow, while Fenris sat on his legs, back straight, hands on his knees, his toes bent in the most uncomfortable position Anders had ever seen. "How can you stand to sit like that?" Anders asked, leaning back on his hands with his familiar dinner of hardtack and jerky in his lap.

"What? Is the way I sit oppressing you?" Fenris demanded.

"It's making me a little uncomfortable," Anders said. "So sure, why not?"

Hawke reached out with a foot and knocked Fenris off balance, "Stop oppressing him."

Varric broke. The poor dwarf practically exploded, his entire body wracked with laughter so violent Anders thought he might hurt himself, and Maker, he wasn't much better. Anders rolled onto his side and knocked his dinner onto the dirt, and laughed so hard he snorted. Fenris spent a few bewildered seconds on his ass before he chuckled, and pulled his legs up to his chest instead.

"I still don't see what's wrong with me sitting that way," Fenris mumbled, and took a bite of his hardtack.

"That the way slaves sit?" Hawke guessed.

"... What of it?" That was a yes if Anders ever heard one, and damned if it didn't shock him. He hadn't even considered Fenris' posture would mean anything, but with how it put his body on display, it made sense. Just because the man was cross and whined about life being pain didn't mean he wanted it that way.

"There's something wrong with it," Hawke said.

Killer was a damned good nickname for Hawke. He didn't just kill everyone he met, he killed the mood. A somber silence passed over the four of them, broken only by the crackle of the fire and conversations just distant enough that Anders could only make out the occasional word or phrase. Pieced together, they were nonsense, and not even the funny kind. "... anyone have a song?" Anders asked.

"Sure, Blondie," Varric allotted, wiping crumbs off on his trousers, "What kind of song are you in the mood for?"

"Something cheery," Anders said.

"Alright, sure," Varric dug through the inside pockets of his coat, and dug out what looked like two strips of white, "I always carry a few bones on me."

"Those aren't actual bones, are they?" Fenris asked.

"Druffalo bones, Broody," Varric grinned, reaching for his cup and a long drink of water to clear his throat, "Great for improv. How about a traditional Free Marches song? I bet everyone here will appreciate it."

"Sounds great," Anders agreed.

"I've been here for a thousand years,
Through the joy, through the tears
But when I am gone, we will march on,
Because we're Marchers, marching free.

"I saw the quarries carved from stone,
I saw this city built on bones
The shackles locked, the passage blocked,
But we were Marchers, marching free

"I was here for Andraste's charge,
When Black Cadre was still at large,
The Orlesians' fall, and through it all
Cried we're Marchers, marching free

"I was here when Tevinter fled
When qunari and the darkspawn spread
Maker turned his back, the sky went black
But we were Marchers, marching free

"So lock us up or chain us down
We'll take your rules and tear them down
The moons still shine, the stars align
And we're Marchers, marching free

"That's how the story goes, my friend
Oppression always meets its end
Whether not they learn, or if they return
We'll be Marchers, marching free."

The rest of the expedition quieted to listen, but none of them joined in with the song. The Winters were from Nevarra, and the workers were from Ferelden, which left Varric the only born and raised Kirkwaller among them. Anders loved it, and was clapping madly at its end. Fenris muttered a quiet, "Well sung," drowned out by the rest of the group clapping, and throwing out requests for more songs from Varric once they heard his singing voice.

Anders listened through Dane and the Werewolf and Andraste's Mabari before he decided to call it a night. Anders heaved himself to his feet and stopped on the way back to his tent when he heard the thudding footfalls of someone jogging after him. He turned around into a face full of Hawke and grinned. "Yes?" Anders drawled.

"I um-" Hawke cleared his throat. Maker, the poor bastard was painfully shy. His eyes hit the ground and his hand went into his hair and Anders had to fight back the urge to laugh. "You. How are you doing?"

"How am I what?" Anders asked.

"With the caves and shit," Hawke explained. "I know you hate the Deep Roads."

"Aw, you do care," Anders teased, and a rumble curdled in his throat from one very displeased spirit. Anders swallowed it down, "I'm good, thanks. You know? It's shit, I hate it, and I hate you a little for bringing me, but I'm good. As long as there's light and the passages aren't too cramped. I'm a big boy; I can pull up my knickers when I need to."

"Good," Hawke shuffled from foot to foot, and didn't go anywhere.

"Yes?" Anders drawled again.

"Thank you for doing this," Hawke said.

"Yeah," Anders shrugged, "You know. I owe you."

"You still could have told me to piss off," Hawke pointed out.

"That's true, I could have," Anders mused, "Why didn't I do that? Then I wouldn't have to be in the blighted Deep Roads."

"Too nice for your own good, probably," Hawke guessed.

"Probably," Anders agreed.

"Right... well," Hawke cleared his throat, and gave him a clipped nod, "Goodnight."

"What, no kiss?" Anders joked at Hawke's back. The man stopped and looked back at him with a bark of laughter, and walked away with a bewildered shake of his head. "Your loss!"

Anders crawled into his tent and out of his armor, and went to sleep. He had nightmares of darkspawn, this close to the hivemind, and did every day of the journey that followed. The first day had been uneventful, as was the second, though with the depth they were at, Anders ordered everyone into their armor. The Winters kept watch without his guidance, though Anders couldn't help wondering what good it did.

Darkspawn were notorious for attacking from the shadows, and Anders doubted there was a way the Winters would notice their mottled armor against the black before it was too late. Their worries didn't even end with the darkspawn. True enough, air was never a problem, no matter how deep they dove beneath the ground. The dwarves had built the Deep Roads with complicated air ducts that gave them cleaner air than Kirkwall, and magma passages that gave them better light.

But the Deep Roads still had cave beetles, deepstalkers, spiders, glowing slimes, spiders, and other horrors. Travel was dangerous enough with every little bit of seismic activity throughout the ages wrecking havoc on the tunnels, and littering them with rock and rumble without adding in the constant threat of attack. The atmosphere changed, at the shift from caverns to Deep Roads, filling the air with the sickly sweet scent of lyrium and death.

The first hints of the blight came on the third day, slime on the floor and char along the walls, the occasional piece of discarded darkspawn weaponry or armaments. Their first attack came on the third night, when setting up camp disturbed a nest of cave beetles that devoured a man's foot before one of the Winters managed to hack it off in time for Anders to reach the commotion and light the creatures aflame.

The second attack came on the fourth day, when the passages took them too close to an old lyrium mine, and one of the Winters had the skin on their face melted off by a glowing slime. The poor blighter died of shock in the time it took them to think to get Anders instead of trying to scrape the slime off his face with their knives, which consequently also resulted in two of them burning the skin off their fingers and palms. Anders healed it as best he could, but the Deep Roads were no place for him to worry about skin grafts, and bandages had to serve in the meantime.

The third attack came later during the fourth day, when Anders finally sensed darkspawn. He gave the warning, and the expedition collapsed in on itself, workers huddling together in and around the supply carts while the Winters formed a defensive perimeter around them. Anders did everything that he could thing to do. He dropped paralysis glyphs before their ranged warriors and glyphs of warding for all of them, he channeled an aura of aptitude through Justice, he imbued Fenris' sword with flames, he bound a wisp above them all to radiate white light and blind the shrieks that came for them.

It didn't matter. The Winters weren't Wardens. They didn't have the strength, the stamina, the skill, or the speed to stand against darkspawn. Anders thought of Sidona and Eram, and Maker, even Wardens didn't have the ability to stand against darkspawn. Hurlocks fired bolts into their group from the shadows, and genlocks threw out smoke bombs to fight back the light for shrieks, which came in shrieking.

A handful of men and women dropped their weapons outright to cover their ears. They died to the first charge, and the group barely recovered in time to fight off the second. Anders' hands erupted with a cone of frost, and froze the darkspawn that charged his side of the caravan solid. Hawke's dog tore into them with claw alone at the archer's instructions, and the rest of them turned to join the Winters in their struggle.

And it was a struggle. There was no other word for it. Darkspawn kept fighting long after normal men would have died, or succumb to shock. Anders saw a few men make the mistake of turning from them after a single stab from their sword, only for the darkspawn they were facing to sink their teeth into their neck the second they turned. Fenris was one of the few who didn't make that mistake.

The elf fared exceptionally well, taking all of Anders' advice to heart, wherever he kept it and whoever's chest he'd ripped it from. His lyrium markings flared whenever a darkspawn closed on him, and he stepped out of existence and into the Fade to spare himself any contact with them. Mercifully, Hawke and Varric didn't have the same problem as archers, but Anders wasn't worried for them so much as he was worried for the workers.

When the Winters fell, there was no one left to defend Ralf and Miles and the handful of other fellows who might not have been his patients but felt near enough. It wasn't just for Bethany, but for what Bethany had said that he'd joined the expedition. He was here to keep these people safe, and damned if he wasn't going to do it. Anders vaulted onto the cart, where Miles holding a genlock back with a shovel, and threw a handful of ice that froze the blighter for the refugee to shatter.

The sounds of battle echoed through the Deep Roads; the darkspawn's guttural murmurs and hoarse cackles sounded almost like talking. It put a terror colder than his spells in Anders' gut at the thought that the Awakened had stretched their reach this far, or might someday come to do so if the Wardens didn't discover what was behind their newfound intelligence, but battle wasn't the time to think about what that might mean.

Anders conjured lightning between his fingers and held it until it crackled; he loosed it through a pack of shrieks hanging back for fear of his light with the smoke balms dissipated, and watched five of them explode. The rest screamed in outrage for the electrical burns that turned their black skin grey. One of the darkspawn wailed at the sight, and dropped its rusty sword before it turned tail and fled, quickly followed by its fellows.

Just like that, the fight was over. Varric, Hawke, and a few of the Winters archers managed to pick off a half-dozen of the retreating darkspawn, but numbers were nothing when the monsters bread like rats beneath the earth. Anders climbed down off the cart, mumbling acknowledgement at the few refugees who reached out to paw at his coat in thanks. "I need everyone injured!" Anders called out, and winced at the line that formed before him.

He had them all strip to go over every joint and crack in armor, and search for the slightest paper cut. Maker, this venture was mad. Five of the Winters were dead. Three of them injured, not counting the two who had burned off their hands, or the one who had lost his foot, and there was no telling if any of them were blighted without time, and it was only the fourth day.

Anders found a spot for himself against the cavern wall when he finished and propped up his staff. The Winters handled their dead while the expedition set up a hasty camp. His mana exhausted, Anders was too tired to think much of anything when Hawke knelt down beside him. "Holding up?"

"Sitting down, actually," Anders joked, and gestured to the dead man being dragged into an ever-growing pile on the side of the cavern. "That could have been you, you know."

"It wasn't," Hawke said. "Don't borrow trouble."

"I don't need to borrow it," Anders snorted, running hands still chilled by his spells over his battle-flushed skin, "We'll get enough of it down here, just wait. Three of those Winters might be ghouls in the next few days. Maker, I hate being down here. Brings back memories."

"No turning back now," Hawke said.

"There never is."

Chapter 75: Senior Warden Anders

Notes:

Hello everyone, welcome back! Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 9 Solis Sometime
The Deep Roads

"What's that smell?" Ralf asked, scratching irritably at his majestic sideburns.

"Don't look at me," Miles snorted.

"Smells like sulfur," Ralf noted. "... Are we in a volcano?"

"Probably," Anders shrugged, his boots and his staff crunching over red sand. Anything was an improvement over the thick stench of damp and rot that pervaded most of the Deep Roads. Their expedition had been forced to deviate into the side passages the darkspawn dug after they'd found the main route sealed off. Anders wasn't even surprised Bartrand subscribed to the belief that two tons of metal barred and welded shut meant "Just go around," and not "Stop, stop, for the love of all that's holy, stop!"

"What if it... you know, goes off while we're in here?" Ralf asked.

"No idea, but I lava good surprise," Anders joked.

Ralf's face wrinkled up into an unamused frown, but Miles chortled, "Ain't no active volcanoes this close to Kirkwall, Ralf, ya git."

"Well who says we're still close to Kirkwall?" Ralf demanded, "We been down here a week. We could be at Ostwick by now."

"Ain't no active volcanoes close to Ostwick neither," Miles said.

"That ain't the point, Miles," Ralf snapped, "The point is it's a bleeding volcano. What if it blows with us inside?"

"At this point, I'm not sure I care," Varric grumbled, "I am getting truly sick of looking at stalagmites... or are they stalactites? Shit, I don't know. Punch one for me, would you, Hawke?"

"First one I can reach," Hawke promised.

"I'm not healing your hand when you break it," Anders warned him.

"If I break it," Hawke corrected him.

"You'll break it," Fenris said. "I could manage it, activating my markings to punch through the rock and then discharging the lyrium to shatter it."

"You'd do that for me, Broody?" Varric asked.

"Well, you are my favorite dwarf," Fenris mused.

"You don't know any other dwarves, do you?" Hawke asked.

"I do not," Fenris agreed, to a round of chuckles.

"Bartrand doesn't count?" Anders asked.

"Not past ten," Varric quipped. Anders shook his head, chortling, and Hawke's bark of laughter startled Ralf and Miles.

"How long are we supposed to be down here, again?" Ralf asked.

"Three weeks, boys," Varric said, his feet dragging unhappily through the sand with every step. "A third of the way through."

"Maker," Ralf muttered, "Two more weeks of this? We're all going to catch the blight. I just know it. That Winter fellow yesterday-"

"Oh, shut it, Ralf," Miles interrupted, "Why ya gotta bring that shit up?"

"He peeled off his own fuckin' face!" Ralf exclaimed, startling a few nearby groups of workers and Winters into glancing their way. Miles elbowed him, and Ralf lowered his voice, "Buried his bloody fingers in his eyes and ripped his cheeks right off! I can still see the strips... wibbling..."

"A lovely image," Fenris said flatly.

"Well it fuckin' happened, didn't it?" Ralf demanded.

"Not to you," Hawke said.

"Not yet," Ralf muttered.

"We're fine," Anders assured him, "There aren't any darkspawn nearby, and assuming we don't run into any deepstalkers, spiders, cave beetles, rampaging bronto, glowing slimes-"

"The fuck are those shits?" Ralf interrupted. "I mean - sorry, Warden - What are those things, anyway?"

"What are whats?" Anders asked.

"The slime things that ate that Winter guy's face a few days back," Ralf clarified.

"Dropping like flies, they are," Miles muttered.

"Mold," Anders explained, reiterating what Sigrun had told him months upon months ago, "Mold that grows too close to lyrium veins. It leeches off the lyrium, the way lifestones do, and sort of mutates. We're fine so long as we have a line of salt around the camp at night, and no one else tries to stick their face into it again."

"Thought darkspawn would be all there was to worry about down here," Ralf muttered.

"Trust me, it could be worse," Anders snorted.

"That is not disturbing in the slightest," Fenris mused. "Clearly dwarves are insane to live down here."

"You can say that again," Varric muttered as the procession slowed to a halt. "Oh, ancestors, what now?"

They'd finally left the volcanic passages to head back into the Deep Roads, only to come to an abrupt halt. A few quick steps vaulted Hawke up onto a nearby chunk of rock, and gave him a vantage point from which to frown towards the front of expedition. Dog barked at him, and the corridor carried an echo that sounded almost like "Run." By Ralf's quaking, Anders couldn't have been the only one who heard it.

"Bridge is out." Hawke declared.

"Of course it is," Fenris grunted.

"Think we need to turn around?" Ralf asked.

"Let's hope not, or Bartrand will beat us within an inch of our lives if we do," Miles said.

"Not our fuckin' fault!" Ralf argued.

"Well he can't beat the bridge if it ain't there, can he?" Miles demanded.

"Ugh," Varric grumbled, toddling and waddling around carts and crowds to the front of the procession, where Bartrand was screaming at one of the scouts. Ralf and Miles abandoned them to rejoin the workers, and Anders took a seat on the rock Hawke was still standing on. The archer climbed down and went off after Varric, and Fenris came to sit beside him.

The elf kicked his heels against the rock, silverite ringing on stone, and draped his hands over his knees. It was getting a little easier to tolerate his company, though Anders didn't doubt that was due in part to the forced proximity, limited options, and Justice's continued fascination with the way the man's skin seemed to sing.

"Come up with any new lyrics?" Fenris asked. The dry humor and the fact that he was kind of cute didn't hurt, either.

"A few," Anders grinned, "One mage was evil, so the rest are bad too, I hate all logic but love Chantry spew."

"You think I need the Chantry to tell me mages are dangerous?" Fenris snorted.

"Well you buy into their magister bullshit," Anders pointed out. "Didn't seem like a stretch."

"So I must believe the rest?" Fenris demanded. "The Maker abandoned us all. I'll not pray to him nor any god."

"I don't know whether or not that reassures me," Anders said.

"I'm not here to reassure you," Fenris said.

"But you're doing such a bang up job!" Anders joked. "Here I was worried it might just be the brain-washed Chantry types that would be hard to convince to join the cause. Good to know I have my work cut out for me."

"Don't hold your breath on my account," Fenris said. "... On second thought, do."

"You know holding your breath can't kill you," Anders said. "You pass out first."

"I never claimed to want you dead," Fenris said.

"Aw, I love you too," Anders joked.

"Pardon me, messeres," Bodahn interrupted, the sprightly dwarf toting a bag of rations over his shoulder. "Word is we're making camp. Just making sure everyone gets fed." Bodahn produced hardtack and jerky for both of them. "Oh, and Master Anders, when you have a moment, the water barrel could use some refilling. No hurries, though! Enjoy your dinner."

"My thanks," Fenris said.

"I'll get it, Bodahn, thanks," Anders assured him.

"Don't you be thanking me," Bodahn laughed, "You have no idea what you saved me on this venture. Three carts worth of just water barrels and an ass for each, down to a single cart and one ass with you here to refill the water."

"I count two," Fenris mumbled before biting into his hardtack.

"Oh, I get it," Anders grinned, "Because I'm a card, right? Cart, card? Good one."

Fenris rolled his eyes and Bodahn moved onto the rest of the expedition. "How is it anything can live down here?" Fenris asked, watching the stocky blonde pass out more rations, "We have only crossed one pack of deepstalkers in near a week. What do the darkspawn feed on?"

"They don't eat," Anders said, when a vivid memory of a darkspawn biting off Biff's nose had him correcting himself, "Unless it's for sport. The taint sustains them."

"Hmph," Fenris snorted, "Perfect. And this taint sustains you as well?"

"It can," Anders said, filling their canteens with conjured water. "I don't think it's good for me to starve myself, but it can."

Hawke returned when Anders had finished his jerky, Dog and Varric trotting along behind him. "I still don't see why we can't just leave the cart if the thaig isn't more than a day's journey from here," Hawke was saying.

"What are we doing now?" Anders asked.

Varric trundled out from behind Hawke, and shooed Fenris from his spot on the rock with a few waves of his hand and threat of his ass that had Fenris scrambling out of the way before Varric sat on him. "We're going to try to find another way around through the side passages."

"Yay," Anders drawled unhappily.

"There's more than enough of the bridge left to cross," Hawke muttered.

"Maybe for you, Twinkle-Toes," Varric unhooked his canteen from his belt and took a long drink, "Blondie, do me a favor, and make sure Killer here didn't give me a heart attack walking out over a river of magma on a beam the size of my pinky finger."

"You did what now?" Anders asked.

"He's exaggerating," Hawke said, "It's what he does."

"Oh good, because I was not looking forward to getting lost in the blighted Deep Roads," Anders joked unhappily, knowing full well he had no choice. "So what are we really doing? Waiting until the workers build a better bridge?"

"You wish, Blondie," Varric sighed. "I'm sure there's a way around. From the look of it, we just need to find another darkspawn passage somewhere on the east side of this corridor and head north until we come out on the other side of the bridge up ahead."

"Is your dwarven Stone Sense telling you that?" Anders wondered.

"My dwarven 'Kick you in the Stone' sense is telling me that," Varric nudged him with his elbow. "It's hard enough for me to get around Kirkwall, and I've lived there my entire life. I'm counting on your Wardeny Powers to see us through this, Blondie."

"Don't look at me," Anders snorted, "Nate handled the maps on the surface, and Oghren and Sig kept track underground. They just kept me around to look pretty."

"I'm sure you had other uses," Hawke said.

"Oh, ow," Anders set a wounded hand to his chest, "Are you saying I'm not pretty?"

"Just saying you have other uses," Hawke mumbled.

Fenris saved him before Hawke could wedge his foot too far up his mouth, "I know the way north."

"Well sure, Broody, right now," Varric said, "I'm talking when we're in those caves, walking in circles through one identical cavern after the next until we don't know left from right."

"I always know the way north," Fenris said. "A life spent on the run isn't a long one without a good sense of direction."

"I beg to differ," Anders grinned, "I figure if I don't know where I'm going, there's no way the templars do."

"Anyone see Bodahn?" Varric asked. "I could use a last meal before we run headlong into death."

"I don't plan on hardtack and jerky being my last meal," Hawke said, vaulting onto the rock with a steadying hand on Varric's shoulder. "He's just there."

"That's not vague at all," Anders joked.

"Left just there or right just there?" Varric asked.

"I'll get him," Hawke muttered, hopping off the rock and heading across the cavern. There was something terribly attractive about the way the man moved. He was all leather, and it creaked and clung to powerful thighs and a limber form. It was a nice distraction from the rot and festering dark, alongside Varric's humor and the soft song from Fenris' markings.

This long in the Deep Roads, and Anders might have gone mad if not for the company. The irony of it wasn't lost on him, considering the same company drove him mad on the surface more often than not. Hawke returned a short while later, with news that Bodahn's boy had wandered off, because of course he had. And of course, no one had seen him wander off. And of course, now they had to search the tunnels for him and a way across the bridge. And of course, the Winters weren't inclined to help.

Hawke had the right of it with his callous prediction that the boy was as good as dead. Anders wasn't even sure he could call it callous. It was just plain realistic. They had to double back through the Deep Roads to find a crack in the corridor, where the darkspawn had dug through or old seismic activity had split the stone. Not five minutes into the passage, and they were attacked by darkspawn, which put the boy's odds of survival prodigiously low.

It put their odds of survival prodigiously low, Anders revised, when they crossed a lone shriek who managed half a cry before Hawke put an arrow through its throat. It was enough to summon half a dozen more from a nearby chasm, and their echoing cries deafened them all. Hurlocks came running through the passages in answer, and Anders hadn't quite finished carving out a paralysis glyph with his staff when one tackled him.

Anders hit the ground, and Vigilance flew from his grasp to clatter somewhere out of sight. The hurlock pinned him by his shoulders, and Anders summoned an unfocused burst of elemental magic. His fingers slipped through a thick film of rot as he struggled to get the darkspawn off him, its skin blackened by his spell and melting off the bone. The creature screamed, brown teeth crooked and cracked in its bleeding gums, spit strung between each fang and spraying onto Anders' face.

A glowing hand burst through the darkspawn's rotten ribcage, spraying filth over Anders' chest and face. The hurlock convulsed, foul fat and muscle smeared across one lyrium-branded fist, and collapsed atop him. The weight of its gnarled body and rusted armor was suffocating, until the same hand flung it off him, and heaved him to his feet. Anders didn't have time to thank Fenris for his rescue before a shriek was rushing them, and a wild blast of ice from Anders' palms froze it for Dog to tackle.

The first sound Anders heard that wasn't the ringing the shrieks had left in his ears was the rhythmic thud of Varric's crossbow, and the underlying hum of Fenris' lyrium. Anders spotted Vigilance, the crystal set in the dragonbone reflecting off the light of the wisp he'd conjured to walk the passages. He ran for it, unfocused primal magic crackling up his arms for the two hurlocks who got between him and his staff.

He couldn't have unleashed it if he were anywhere near his companions. The magic went wild, ricocheting off walks, burning through the darkspawn and superheating their armor. Anders heard the snap and crack of the magic, and the darkspawn's wails as their bodies spasmed in a macabre dance. They collapsed not black but grey, bodies maimed by the electrical onslaughter. Anders darted around them and snatched up his staff to turn back to the battle.

It could have been worse. It could have been better. Fenris fared the best, as Fenris so often seemed to fare. Varric was making a steady retreat, caltrops and elemental mines scattered before him. The occasional shriek tried to brave the field with a leap that resulted in a grisly explosion of black blood and twisted limbs, but the darkspawn were slowly clearing a path for themselves Anders shored up with a glyph of paralysis.

Hawke was fine. The archer was living up to his nickname, arrows finding easy kinks in the rusted wrought iron armor. The darkspawn pieced it all together from the spoils of their kills, or forged it from ore they ripped from the stone with their bare and bleeding hands. It was no silverite, and it offered only the most base of protection. Hawke had an easy time of it. There was a dexterity in his every motion that kept the darkspawn from him, a quick roll and a quicker dodge that left him untouched despite the swarms.

It was the damn dog that needed looking out for. The mabari couldn't warp the Veil and phase its existence into the Fade when a darkspawn dove it. It wore a small set of armor, a mix of plate and lames that protected it from stray claws or gnashing teeth, but Anders couldn't help his paranoia. Barkspawn had been a Warden in his own right. Amell had Joined the poor fellow with the help of a flower that could be distilled into a special tincture for canines, but it only grew in the Kokari Wilds. If Dog wound up with the Taint, the mabari wouldn't last the week it would take them to get back to the surface, let alone to Ferelden.

Anders hated Hawke for bringing the mabari, but the man was imprinted on it, and there was no leaving it behind. If nothing else, Dog was smart enough to understand Hawke's firm order of "No biting," that had held throughout their week in the Deep Roads. In lieu of the proper front line the warriors in the Wardens had formed, the dog served well enough, but Anders was still nervous. He channeled an aura of aptitude through Justice, and kept adrenaline pumping through their veins; it kept them agile, and ultimately it kept them alive.

The aftermath was carnage. The air was hot with the fetid stench of excrement, char, and vomit, and the passage was clogged with the eviscerated bodies of hurlocks, shrieks, and genlocks. The stone seemed to weep with blood and shit, and each step came with a squelching sound that made Anders especially grateful Bodahn had been able to spare him a set of leather armor so he didn't have to ruin Franke's boots trekking through the Deep Roads in them.

"Is everyone still alive?" Anders asked, pulling for the life-force of the three and a half men around him, and relieved to find no answer. No access to blood meant no cuts, but it didn't mean no injuries, or no swallowed blood.

"I think that's the last of them," Hawke said, with so much blood on his face Anders could barely make out the kaddis he smeared across the bridge of his nose.

"Nobody wander off," Varric called out, picking up the few scattered caltrops and elemental mines that hadn't been set off by the darkspawn.

"So many darkspawn... do they ever rest?" Fenris took off his helmet and hooked it under his arm, and for once in his life Anders approved of it. There was no blood on the elf's tattooed face, despite how much of it was painted across his armor.

"Never," Anders stepped over a dead shriek to Hawke's side, and waved him towards an outcropping of rock, "Sit down, you don't want this on your face."

Obediently, Hawke sat. There was more of the blood in his beard, in his hair, on his gloves. One careless swipe of his hand would be the death of him. "Head back, eyes closed," Anders ordered, letting mana well in his palm and shape into water. He poured it over Hawke's upturned face, scrubbing his gloved fingers through the man's mustache and beard. The water ran off worryingly black, and Anders had to hope he hadn't licked his lips at all in the fight.

Hawke shook his head to dry himself off when Anders finished. It vaguely reminded Anders of a dog, but the way the black strands whipped across his dusky skin was ridiculously attractive. Focus, Anders. Darkspawn bad. Grrr. Warden business. Pay no mind to the attractive man who let you run your fingers through his beard. He's just a patient. He's Amell's cousin. He called you dog shit. He's for the Chantry.

The last one saved him. Anders abandoned Hawke to turn to Varric, "Your turn, Scribbles."

"Scribbles?" Varric repeated indignantly, double checking the pouches on his belt before trundling over. "Come on, Blondie, you can do better than that. What about Chesty or Heartbreaker or-"

A shrill shriek interrupted them. Hawke launched himself off the rock he'd been sitting on, smacking at his shoulders and his chest, violent splashes of blood following his feet as he danced in a wild circle.

"What?" Anders demanded, summoning a breath of elemental magic to coat his hand, "Cave beetle? Slime? What is it? Bloody hold still! What is it?"

Fenris grabbed Hawke's shoulder to put a stop to his flailing. The man's pupils were blown, black overtaking red, his hands still smacking at his armor. "What is the matter?" Fenris demanded.

"I-fuck-where did it go?" Hawke asked, scraping at his arms like they were covered in slime.

"Settle down, Killer, where did what go?" Varric asked, "Please tell me we're not sitting on another nest of cave beetles."

"No-no-fuck," Hawke wheezed, and ran a hand through his hair, "Fucking-spiders."

"Spiders," Anders repeated, letting his mana disperse, "Seriously?"

"A deadly foe," Fenris chuckled into his hand.

Varric snorted, "Really, Hawke?"

"It fucking fell on me," Hawke scratched madly at his shoulder where the little arachnid had allegedly landed.

"This is too easy," Varric shook his head, and launched into song, "So young Ser Hawke, sat on a rock, all around death and decay, along came a spider, who fell down beside Ser, and frightened Ser Hawke away."

"That's not funny," Hawke muttered.

"No, it's fucking hilarious," Anders laughed so hard he wheezed.

"I hate all of you," Hawke mumbled, and went about collecting his arrows. He grumbled to himself the entire time, Dog trotting along happily beside him and nipping playfully at his master's fingers as if trying to cheer him. It made it all the more amusing, and Anders washed off Varric's face still chuckling. The dwarf went about collecting the bolts to his crossbow afterwards while Anders healed a few bruises Fenris had borne before they were on their way again.

The northerly passages took them past no further darkspawn, which Anders counted a mercy, until they ended at a crossroads. North was an impasse. The cavern was coated with lyrium veins, throbbing in time to a song that left Justice tingling just beneath his skin, and had Anders stepping back a pace.

"Shit," Varric whistled, "We must be getting close to Bartrand's thaig. Look at that. Just one of those veins could set a man up for life."

"A magister would pay a fortune," Fenris agreed.

"Not that way," Anders said.

"Something wrong, Blondie?" Varric asked.

"It's lyrium," Anders said. Of course something was bloody wrong. He didn't want to bloody die. At Varric's blank expression, Anders belatedly recalled he was the only mage among them. "Raw lyrium. I go anywhere near that, I'm a dead man. A seriously dead man. Raw lyrium kills mages."

"What about the rest of us?" Hawke asked.

"What, you planning on leaving the Warden behind?" Anders joked; it wouldn't have been a disaster. He could always leave his things on Bodahn's cart, transform into a crow, and fly across the downed bridge to meet up with everyone on the other side, but no one knew him for a shapeshifter, and Anders wasn't sure he wanted to play that card just yet. "Varric would be fine if he didn't touch it, and Fenris must have some kind of natural resistance by now, but you'd feel nauseous the whole way through and probably end up demented."

"We still haven't found Bodahn's boy," Varric pointed out, "What if he went this way?"

"At this rate, the only thing we'll find is his body," Hawke said. "We'll go around."

They doubled back, and shadows seemed to skitter away in the face of the luminescence from the crystal set in Anders' staff. Hawke was a mess. The poor man kept scratching at his arms and shoulders, and jumping at every bit of black. Anders tried for a bit of sympathy, but it was far easier to laugh at Hawke's phobia than acknowledge any of his own. Like the fact that if not for his magic the caverns would be pitch black, and the narrow passageways forced them to walk in pairs.

The passageway opened up into a chamber with the same volcanic sand that floored most of the caves, and Anders summoned a wisp from across the Veil to hold the incantation for light. He cast out into the sunken cavern, and it traveled through the black, illuminating a tangled web of white so thick Anders couldn't see through it. An angry chorus of hissing and skittering came at the light, and it stopped in the center of the chamber to reveal it had a northern exit.

Apparently, Hawke didn't care. The man did an abrupt about-face, and started back towards the passageway. "No."

"Come on, Hawke," Varric chuckled, "I don't like it either, but we need to get to the other side of the bridge. Ideally without going mad from lyrium poisoning, but I'm not feeling too picky right now."

"We can find another way around," Hawke argued.

"Where?" Fenris demanded, "These are the only passages that run north."

"Well-fucking... damnit," Hawke glared at the hissing, writhing mass of cobwebs in the distance as if he could set it on fire with his eyes.

... Actually, that idea wasn't half bad. "I've got a plan," Anders said.

"Does it involve spiders?" Hawke asked.

"It involves killing spiders," Anders grinned.

"I'm for it," Hawke decided, with no apparent need to hear the plan in detail, but Anders told him anyway.

"I'll summon a grease slick, and set fire to it," Anders explained, trying to forget why he knew the spell combination, "The whole nest should go up, and we'll have dead spiders."

"Or flaming ones," Fenris said.

"Great," Hawke said. "Go for it."

Anders pulled through the Veil and welled the magic for a grease slick in his hands. He loosed it when the oil started seeping up to his wrist, and it ran down into the sunken chamber like a river welled into a lake. Anders followed it up with a weak fireball that did little more than warm his palms, and the resulting explosion brought everyone's hands up to cover their faces.

The nest screamed. The gigantic arachnids sounded close to shrieks in their intensity; spider after spider fell from the ceiling, the size of mabari, and landed twitching and blackened on the ground. The entire chamber was teeming with them, and several ran for one of the two exits to the chamber. Close to a half dozen crazed, flaming spiders rushed them and even without a phobia the sight was terrifying.

Fenris rushed to meet them, great sword cleaving through one of the creatures and carving it in half. Blood and poison burst from the spider's body, its mandibles still twitching when it collapsed. A second tackled Fenris, and the elf struggled under the convulsing mass before glowing blue and tearing the spider apart. Bolts and arrows embedded themselves into the many-eyed faces of the remaining spiders, and Anders summoned a swath of lightning to kill off the survivors.

Fenris dragged himself out from under the corpse of the spider he'd torn apart, swearing under his breath in Tevene. "You injured?" Anders guessed, eyeing the nest for more spiders.

"That was most unpleasant," Fenris muttered, sticky with blood and venom and strips of furred skin. "My armor bore the worst."

Anders offered him a hand to help him up Fenris took, and cast a cursory rejuvenation spell on him to handle any bruises. Varric trundled to the edge of the sunken chamber, and surveyed the ash raining down from the ceiling onto the multitude of spider corpses that made a graveyard of it. He whistled appreciatively, "Damn, Blondie, you do get results."

"Well, you don't really come out of the Wardens without knowing a bit of strategy," Anders shrugged.

"Nicely done," Hawke said.

"Indeed," Fenris said. "You carried the day."

"Stop it, you two, you're making me blush," Anders joked, starting down into the chamber at a skip. He nudged the occasionally spider corpse with the butt of his staff, but none of them flipped back onto their feet and tackled him, so Anders counted it a victory. Hawke practically sprinted across the chamber and to the opposite exit, and Anders couldn't help laughing at him.

It could have been worse. They had this. This deep underground, they weren't like to run into too many darkspawn. The blight had stopped two days back, which meant no broodmothers, which meant the only darkspawn they would encounter were roaming bands. Slime was a constant risk with lyrium so near, and would only get worse the closer they got to the thaig, but it was easy to look out for.

They left the chamber and headed north, and eventually emerged on the opposite side of the bridge. Anders sent across a small firework to win the expedition's attention, and heard cheers echo back across the chasm. Their small group turned back around, and only stopped when they came upon the crossroads where the lyrium veins sprouted up through the rock.

"I gotta check," Varric sighed. "It'll haunt me if I don't."

"Uh-uh," Anders said, "Bad idea. I don't sense any darkspawn, but lyrium veins mean slimes. You remember what happened to the mercenary? No face seems like a bad look for you."

"I could work it," Varric tugged at the collar to his armor, "No one's looking at my face anyway when the chest hair comes out."

"I'm serious, Varric," Anders said, "You don't want Bianca to end up a widow, do you?"

"Who is Bianca?" Fenris asked.

"My crossbow," Varric explained, lifting said weapon from its latch on his back and holding it out for inspection, "Say hello, Bianca."

"But why Bianca?" Fenris asked, "You must have named her after someone."

"Nope," Varric shrugged, petting his crossbow, "Mirabelle was taken."

Fenris grunted, "The way you fondle your weapon is disturbing."

"Hey, I'm a perfect gentleman," Varric huffed, "In public. And besides, Bianca's at no risk of becoming a widow any time soon. She can look after me. I'm just going to walk the corridor a bit, and see if I can find Bodahn's boy. Give me... shit, I don't know. A quarter hour. If I come running back, screaming, you'll know not going this way was the right decision."

"I'll accompany you," Fenris said. "Lyrium has little effect on me these days."

"You two are going to get yourselves killed," Hawke said.

"Shed a tear for me, then, will you, Hawke?" Varric joked, and set off towards the passageway with Fenris at his side.

Anders watched them go, neither man flinching at the lyrium that would have killed a mage to cross paths with. Maker, he felt sick just a few yards away. Anders backed up a few paces, and leaned on his staff. Hawke knelt down to check Dog's armor and ruffle the mabari's ears before he came to join him, thumbs in his belt and eyes on the passageway.

"Five bits they come back screaming?" Anders joked.

"Five bits they don't come back at all," Hawke said.

Notes:

Fanart
Hawke fighting darkspawn

Chapter 76: Bodies So Maimed

Notes:

Hello everyone! We hit 600 kudos, which is absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for supporting this story with all your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 11 Solis Sometime
The Deep Roads

Wouldn't you know it, everything turned out grand. By some miracle of the Maker, Varric and Fenris returned with Bodahn's boy between them, and the walk back to the expedition was uneventful. Anders didn't like it. It was too simple. Any second now, the ground was going to rumble and there would be a cave-in, a volcanic eruption, a horde of darkspawn. Nothing in his life was ever this easy, and he didn't trust it to last.

Yet last it did. Bodahn was delighted to have his son returned, and even Bartrand seemed slightly more tolerable for their good fortune. The expedition moved through the tunnels with no encounters of darkspawn, deep stalkers, slime, or spiders, and the mood was all the better for it. Everyone looked on in awe of the lyrium veins, and chatter started up knowing they were nearing the thaig.

The entrance to the thaig was a massive chamber carved with ancient dwarven runes not a man among them could read. It was framed with inert golems to which no control rods could be found, without a single swath of blight. There was no dragon guarding it, no inferno golem, no pride demon, no horde of rampaging bronto or other monstrosities. It wasn't barred, locked, or sealed shut. It was just there, forgotten in the dark.

Bartrand was ecstatic; to hear him talk, he believed the dwarves who once lived where they stood were unique. There were no statues of paragons, no contemporary dwarven runes, not even any familiar architecture. The thaig was nothing like Kal'Hirol. The underground city seemed carved from onyx, claws ripping up from the ground as if a dragon the size of a mountain were trying to rip its way to the surface. According to Fenris, they were Tevinter in style, and no one had an explanation for it.

Scattered all around were statues the like of which Anders had never seen. They were winged things, almost like locusts, or man-made-locust, and eerie to look upon. All along the walls, in place of magma, small cases like windows were set in the stone to give light to the city. They held what looked to be lyrium, but it was wrong. It was red, and it sang backwards, and listening to it made Anders feel hollow.

"Bartrand sure seems taken by this place," Ralf said, spinning in a circle to gawk up at sprawling metropolis when they made camp.

"Why?" Miles asked, "I don't get it. Looks like the rest of the Deep Roads to me."

"Says he's never seen anything like it," Ralf explained, "Says it might be some kind of forgotten city."

"The dwarves forget stuff like this?" Miles asked, casting a dubious eye on one of the red lyrium lamps.

"I guess so," Ralf said.

"This is what you all were looking for, right?" Miles asked.

"I sure hope so," Varric said.

"Bartrand's far more enthralled with this place than you are," Hawke noted.

"Well, unlike Bartrand, I wasn't born in Orzammar," Varric muttered. "I wouldn't even be down here if there wasn't profit in it. This entire place gives me the chills. Let's hope it's worth it."

"I'm going to have a look around," Hawke said, "See if there's a vault somewhere with something useful in it."

"Don't go too far," Anders warned him, "I can't sense the whole city."

"I'll come back for you if I find something," Hawke promised, and set off down the street with Dog on his heels.

Varric went to spend what Anders imagined was quality time with his brother, while Fenris found a spot for himself to clean his weapons and armor. Anders went to see to the last of the mercenaries who had been injured in the darkspawn attack. The first Winter had ripped off his face when the taint took him. The second had chewed off her own fingers just like poor Nate's governess. Anders had done for them what a healer did best: he stopped the pain.

The third and final man was still clinging stubbornly to the pale mockery of life that was left him. The poor bastard was shitting blood, his skin inflamed and weeping, welts sprouting all across his face, but he was sane, or as sane as any ghoul could be. He still spoke, though with no particular grandiloquence or verbosity. He pleaded for life whenever Anders offered him death, and Anders didn't have the heart to force it on him.

Anders hated himself for it. The blighter, the literal blighter, was suffering. His body was falling apart; every muscle slowly slipping out of place until he was a mess of deformed bulges and slackened skin. He was sobbing when Anders came to check on him, whispering with the hivemind and the same Call that haunted Anders' nightmares. "Rip, rip, gnawing gnawing, eat them little maggot strips, don't want to eat them, don't want to listen, no no no."

"Hey there, Eli," Anders said, not surprised to find the man sitting alone by himself in a darkened alley. The rest of the Winters had given up on their old comrades the day they'd been injured. It was for the best. Anyone else who came near Eli was greeted with a wild shriek, and the man's mad scramble to distance himself from them. Anders, Eli could handle, when they were both of them blighters.

"Eli," Eli repeated, "Name... My name?" The ghoul dragged his nails down his face and burst a welt. Fetid liquid dripped down his skeletal fingers, but six months with the Wardens had won Anders a tolerance for gore that far surpassed the worst of what he'd seen as a healer.

"That's right, that's your name," Anders assured him, taking a seat next to the ghoul.

Eli scooted closer to him, his eyes thick with cataracts and blinking fiercely to focus on his face. "Anders?"

"That's me," Anders said. "How are we today?"

"Dark and dripping deep inside," Eli rambled, his voice a gargling rasp. "Soft meat and marrow calling, melting... don't want to eat it," The ghoul twitched and hugged himself. "Don't need to eat it."

"That's just the Call, remember?" Anders said. "That's not you. You're Eli. You're a Winter. You've got a girl back in Nevarra. You keep her picture in a locket on your necklace, remember? Her name is Sidony."

"Sidony," Eli repeated, his knuckles cracking far louder than knuckles should when he slammed his hands together, "Girl. My girl. Likes the dead things. Eli-... Eli is a dead thing?"

"Close," Anders said, and Maker how he wished he'd made himself talk to Amell about why some ghouls fared better than others. "You've got the Taint. It's a slow death. I know you're in pain right now. I can give you a quick death if you want."

"No," Eli shuffled backwards, the same way he did every time Anders offered, his half-blind eyes twitching and sunken in their sockets, "No, no, no. No death. No pain. No light. Don't miss the light. Don't miss it. Dark is bad, but Eli is good. Anders is good. Grey. Grey like stone, guard against the dark."

"That's right," Anders said. "I'm a Grey Warden... What do you mean you're not in pain?" Maker's mercy, Anders was in pain just looking at the man. "You're looking pretty... not pretty, right now."

"Newer. Better. Darker," Eli insisted with a furious shake of his head, and the few wispy strands of hair still clinging to it. "Dark master's love sings low and coils, knotting round the spine: crack, crack, crack."

"You can't want to live like this, Eli," Anders said. "You're resisting right now, but what if this gets worse? What if you end up hurting someone?"

"No! Wouldn't hurt. Wouldn't eat. Wouldn't gnaw: chew the tendons, suck the marrow, crunch the bones." Eli shivered and hugged himself tighter. "Just want to be. Just want to listen. Burrow deep in the song and hide in the rotten ribs. Do you... hear it? Quieter here... Too deep... The blood is too loud."

"You're right, it is," Anders agreed, though he wasn't sure what to blame. They'd past the point of darkspawn, and by extension Archdemons. The Call was muted here, overrode by the hollowing hum of red lyrium and the whispers of demons beyond the Veil. It was alarmingly thin, and yet another worry, "Maker, Eli, what am I supposed to do for you?"

"Eli... Eli can go away," The ghoul suggested, scrambling forward eagerly, "No killing. No eating. Anders is Grey, but Eli is Black. Can go away. Down in the dark with the dead."

"Anders?" Hawke's voice called out, and startled Eli back into the shadows. Anders glanced up to see the archer stalking towards him, his eyes a reflection of the red lyrium that pulsed in time to the beat of a heart all around them, "We found what looks like a temple. There are bound to be a few offerings and vaults in the district. Ready to set out?"

"I-uh," Anders glanced back into the alley. Eli had vanished. "... Sure." Anders stood up, and followed the man through the blackened city. He thanked the Maker the red lyrium was either not actually lyrium, or prepared in such a way that it wasn't in its raw form. Aside from the hollowing sound, the substance didn't seem to hurt him.

"So..." Anders followed Hawke and his mabari through the streets, passed idle Winters and wandering workers. His thoughts turned to Sigrun, and he worried at his earring, "A temple, huh? To a Paragon, or...?"

"Bartrand doesn't think so," Hawke said. "He says it looks like a temple to a god of some kind, but we weren't going in without you."

"Smart," Anders grinned, "No reason to start the Sixth Blight early."

"How are you holding up?" Hawke asked.

"Peachy as a pie," Anders said. "Why?"

"You know, with how you had to put down the Winters," Hawke explained, daring a glance back at him. Anders swore he saw a hint of concern in his eyes, buried as deep as the thaig they were in.

"You said it," Anders shrugged, "Had to be done."

"Still," Hawke said.

"This isn't my first Harrowing," Anders felt a frown pull on the corners of his mouth. After Karl, there wasn't a man alive Anders couldn't kill, provided the man wanted death, or was asking for it. "I killed Tal'Vashoth with you, didn't I?"

"Doesn't mean you had to like it," Hawke said, but let it die. The streets took them to a district lined in pulsing lyrium pillars, strange effigies with gem-incrusted skulls and glowing orbs, inert golems, and dragonic statues with eyes that seemed to follow them. Whispers from the Fade echoed through the gossamer strands of the Veil, demons or spirits or wisps, and Anders caught himself bumping into Hawke on more than one occasion with how it distracted him.

They reached the temple Hawke had mentioned, a massive structure of onyx and marble in the shape of a dragon's head rearing up from the stone. A descent had to be made between the creature's jaws, its lulling tongue a carpet of red granite framed in magma that cast eerie shadows over the dragon's marble teeth. Fenris and Varric were waiting at the entrance, Bartrand pacing impatiently beside them.

"Oh good, reinforcements," Anders joked, nudging Hawke with his elbow and jutting his chin at Bartrand.

"He wants to be there to assess whatever we find," Hawke explained.

"Right," Anders drawled sarcastically. "More like he found the thaig, so he gets to find whatever's in it. Remind me how there's profit in this for you again?"

"We're splitting it three-ways," Hawke said.

Nearing their companions cut off their conversation. The temple might have been obscene in its opulence once; the eyes of its statues were cut from rubies and it was plain to see where there might have been offering bowls once, but it was falling apart. Seismic activity had ripped the temple in half. Lyrium, red and blue, sprouted up from various corridors and cut off travel where the stone wasn't crumbling. Eventually, they stumbled upon a vault, sealed shut.

It looked like it was opened with a key in the shape of a claw, and they doubled back to find it set neatly atop a desk in what Anders imagined were the quarters of the High Priest of the temple. There was something terribly unnerving about the whole thaig, as if everything had been neatly put away, and its inhabitants had simply vanished. Aside the red lyrium and whatever seismic activity had demolished half the city, it was almost peaceful.

Set in the lock and twisted, the vault door swung open to reveal a massive chamber devoid of any furniture or treasures save for a pedestal in the center, atop which a lone idol rested. It beat like a heart, even from a distance, deep red and pulsing with the same hollowing sound that sang from the rest of the lyrium in the thaig. Anders came as close to it as he dared, and taking a cue from him, Hawke stayed at his side rather than approach the idol.

"You seeing what I'm seeing?" Varric asked, the dwarves and the lyrium-infused elf more comfortable approaching the dangerous substance.

"Is that lyrium?" Hawke asked; Dog whined at the sight, and hid behind Hawke.

"Definitely," Anders decided, "And not the good kind."

"It feels different," Fenris reached out and tapped the claws of his gauntlets on the idol before daring to pick it up and turn it over in his hands. "Hotter, stronger..." The idol depicted a woman, emaciated and looking to the sky, her arms wrapped around an equally emaciated man who clung to her as if trying to save himself from drowning or death. Tangled around them were veins of red lyrium, which glowed a little brighter for Fenris' touch, rippling with static that climbed up his markings and had him hastily abandoning it to the pedestal and backpedaling to stand beside Anders and Hawke.

"Yikes," Varric whistled, flipping the idol over so the two figures were face up again, "These are humans, right? Or maybe elves?"

"Why would the dwarves who used to live here worship humans or elves?" Bartrand asked.

"Who cares?" Varric shrugged, "It's pure lyrium, from the look of it. It's got to be worth a fortune."

"Be careful handling that," Anders cautioned, "We don't know what's wrong with the lyrium, or what exposure to it might do to any of us."

"It reacted to my markings..." Fenris mumbled, massaging at his arms through his vambraces.

"I'll have the workers put it in a case," Bartrand said, picking up the idol. The red lyrium pulsed against his palm, static rippling up his arm and following the path of his veins. The dwarf massaged at his temples as if fighting back a headache, and shook his head, "Excellent find."

"... I think I'm with Blondie," Varric decided, "I'll walk you back in case this thing makes you pass out."

"We'll take a look around and see if there's anything further in," Hawke said.

"You do that," Bartrand agreed.

There was only one path from the prayer chamber. A hallway led further into the temple, and they'd barely started towards it when Varric and Bartrand started shouting. Anders glanced over his shoulder in time to see the brothers fighting at the entrance to the chamber. An uppercut and a hard kick from Bartrand sent Varric sprawling, and before Anders could process what was happening the older dwarf bolted from the chamber to rip the key from the lock. Varric scrambled to his feet and ran for the door in time for it to close on his hand.

Blood as red as lyrium founted onto the door, and Varric collapsed. The dwarf hit his knees, screaming wordlessly and doubled over. Anders ran across the chamber and skidded to a halt when he reached Varric, and took in the damage. Andraste's sword, his hand was mutilated. Varric clutched his wrist with his left hand, the feeble tourniquet doing nothing to staunch the flow of blood from his right hand. He must have made a grab for the door at a slant, because only his pointer finger and thumb remained.

There was no reattaching them. The digits were gone, lost on the other side of the door, sealed shut from Bartrand's betrayal. Varric was still screaming when Anders knelt next to him, his every breath a tortured sob. The dwarf pressed his head against the door, smearing blood through his blonde hair, and wept, "Fuck-fuck-Maker-fucking-fuck-fuck!"

Hawke and Fenris jogged over to join them; Fenris took in Varric's mangled hand and cursed in Tevene before he fell to pacing. Hawke ran both hands through his hair, and snarled, "What the fuck just happened?"

Varric's answer was a closed-mouthed scream, and a bang of his head on the door. Anders grabbed the dwarf's shoulder and squeezed to win his attention, "Varric, I'm going to put you to sleep so I can heal this, alright?"

Varric hissed, spit spraying from between his grit teeth and tears still streaming down his face when he nodded. Anders wove a veil of sleep and amplified it to combat the dwarf's natural resistant to magic. Varric slumped against the door when Anders cast the spell, both hands falling slack. "Hawke, help me prop him against the door," Anders ordered.

Hawke rearranged Varric so he sat with his back against the door and his hands in his lap, and swore, "What the fuck."

"I don't know," Anders said, peeling the dwarf's torn glove off his mutilated hand.

"What the fuck," Hawke said at the sight.

Varric's hand was a bloody mess. A nub remained of his middle finger, nothing of his ring finger, and his pinky had been cut off past the knuckle. Anders rummaged through his satchel, and dug out a proper tourniquet to tie around Varric's arm. Anders wound it as tight as he dared, and glanced up at the archer, "Hold this for me."

"What the fuck," Hawke muttered, kneeling to hold the tourniquet in place while Anders found a file to shave down the few bits of jutting bone.

"Venhedis," Fenris snarled. "That dwarf has trapped us here. You were a fool to trust him."

Trapped. Anders froze as the word settled in. They were trapped: locked away, abandoned, forgotten, doomed to darkness. Lost to light and life and even the Call of the Archdemon this far beneath the Deep Roads. They were going to starve to death. Except Anders couldn't starve to death. The Taint wouldn't let him. It would hold him until he was little better than Eli, a ghoul in a gilded cage, imprisoned forever in this ancient temple.

"Anders!" Hawke shouted, giving his shoulder a violent shake.

"What-what?" Anders jerked, and looked down at Varric's hand. Thank the Maker he hadn't sawed mindlessly away at the poor man's hand. He'd simply stopped filing. "Sorry-I've got it."

Anders finished shortening the bones jutting from Varric's severed fingers, and summoned Justice to close the wounds. The regenerative magic took effect quickly, leaving behind little more than a white scar where the skin knit together. Anders washed away the blood with conjured water, and cleaned what was left of Varric's glove the same way before sliding it back onto the dwarf's hand.

Hawke unwound the tourniquet, and Anders pulled back the veil of sleep he'd cast on Varric. The dwarf woke with a jolt. "Bartrand, you bastard-!" Varric gasped, and cut himself off when he saw them. He moved as if to bury his face in his hands, when the sight of his ripped glove stopped him. "... Damnit. Damnit, damnit, damnit! I swear I will find that son of a bitch - sorry mother - and I will kill him! Damnit, Bartrand!"

"What happened?" Hawke asked.

"He screwed us all over for a lousy idol!" Varric snarled, "Started ranting about how he was the head of the house and shouldn't have to split anything with us, and attacked me when I tried to talk him down. ... Damnit, how am I supposed to hold Bianca now?"

"We'll kill the bastard," Hawke said, "There has to be another way out of this temple."

"A back entrance, surely," Fenris agreed.

"Damnit," Varric muttered, flexing the two fingers still left on his right hand, "Writing... I can still write, it'll just be more pressure on my thumb... Damnit, it's not enough to brace against the stock, I need those fingers to support Bianca through the recoil and balance out the weight. Fuck. Damnit Bartrand."

"We'll get you a prosthetic," Anders said. "I'm not the best at making them, but we can have someone in Kirkwall carve a few wooden fingers and I can make ... it's sort of like a glove. You can wear it under your actual glove. It should be fine for supporting your crossbow if I put in a few wires."

"Yeah..." Varric sucked in a deep breath, "Yeah, okay... Good idea, Blondie. Fuck... okay, let's get the fuck out of here." Varric climbed to his feet and flexed his hand again, "Shit, I can still feel them. That's fucking weird. When does that stop?"

"It'll get easier," Anders promised.

Hawke gave the door an ineffectual yank, and Anders couldn't blame him for trying. When the door didn't budge, the four of them made their way into the hallway that led deeper into the temple, checking what side rooms and passages weren't blocked off with rubble or lyrium for an exit that Anders had to believe existed.

"So Blondie," Varric said, flexing his remaining fingers, "You sure I'll stop feeling them? I mean, you deal with this kind of shit a lot, right?"

"Sort of," Anders said, "I mean, I get a lot of patients in from the Bone Pits who've lost a finger or two. It wasn't a common injury in the Circle, so I don't have as much experience with it as I could, but-..." Maker, no. Don't think about him. Don't think about him scratching at that damn blindfold, that soft smile and sheepish shrug, 'It's nothing, Anders. They just itch sometimes.' "I know it happens."

"It's fucking weird," Varric muttered, "... Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Hawke asked. Dog started barking, and there was no chance of Anders hearing anything, but he felt it. The Veil was thinned, and Anders didn't doubt the abundance of lyrium, red and blue, had something to do with it. It warped, the further into the temple they traveled, and he could feel demons pressing eagerly upon it.

"This place is cursed," Fenris warned.

"The Veil is thin," Anders corrected him. "We might run into demons down here. Be careful."

Not a dozen steps further, and the demons were on them, though the attack came as no surprise. The mabari was half-mad, slathering and scrabbling at the door to one of the temple's rooms before Hawke called it back just in time for the door to melt under a rage demon's assault. Anders called on a breath of winter, and the magma turned to stone at his spell. Fenris shattered the creature, and then they were a multitude.

For the most part, they were shades. Barely corporeal beings of shadow, torn asunder by Fenris' great sword or Anders' magic. Their mere presence was draining, and if not for an aura of aptitude from Justice, they would have been quickly overwhelmed. Anders discharged a raw burst of mana whenever he saw a new shade attempting to cross, but the temple was invested. Dog was as useful as Fenris, but Hawke's arrows went straight through the creatures unless they hit dead center, and Varric was in no position to aim.

The dwarf tried, and it was a disaster. The first bolt he loosed caused a kickback his missing fingers couldn't support, and the crossbow jerked. The bolt went sailing, and embedded itself in Fenris' calf. Fenris' leg gave out underneath him, and the shades he was fighting dove on him. The air burned with the scent of lyrium as the elf struggled to fight back, but the markings weren't nearly enough. Hawke abandoned his bow to rush the shades with a pair of daggers, and cut through them in bursts of dust and shadow on his way to Fenris.

Anders couldn't help them. Varric was sitting bait, and the shades seemed to recognize the dwarf had no means of defending himself, especially when there wasn't enough substance to them to activate any of his caltrops or elemental mines. Anders burned through the half dozen that surged him with lightning and ice, and dodged round the minefield to hold a spot beside the dwarf until the last of the shades were cleared. The aftermath was a mess.

Fenris was still on the ground, and all of them were exhausted. The shades had drained through Justice's aura, and Anders had expended too much mana maintaining it. He still had enough to heal Fenris, and so made his way across the hallway to kneel beside the wounded elf. The bolted had pierced through the back of his greaves, where only leather protected him, and Anders winced at how deep it went.

Fenris took off his helmet with a curse; his hair was heavy with sweat, and his face was flushed, and when he spoke it came paired with a spray of spittle, "You will not put me to sleep with your magic, mage."

"Right," Anders rolled his eyes. So much for all the progress they'd made, "Because I'm sure you want to be awake when I rip a bolt out of your leg."

"I can weather it," Fenris said.

"Fuck, Brood-Fenris, I'm so sorry," Varric said, Bianca dangling from his left hand. "I swear-I never miss like that-"

"Kevesh," Fenris interrupted him, "It is done. Give me something to bite down on."

Hawke reached for his belt and Varric for his ripped glove. The dwarf was quicker, and Fenris shoved the mangled bit of leather between his teeth with a scowl Anders was sure he didn't deserve. He ignored it, and set about unclasping the man's greave. He peeled the ruined leather away from the entry wound and set the bloody silverite aside.

The markings were everywhere, lyrium brands weaving patterns down Fenris' calf all the way to his foot and tapering off in his toes. They still sang: a song that was soothing when all around them was the backwards hum of red lyrium. Anders drew his blade for a small incision to widen the point of entry, and followed the shaft with his finger, warm blood and muscle pulsing against his finger until it connected with bone, and Anders swore.

"Fenris, you need to be unconscious for this," Anders said.

Fenris ripped Varric's glove from his mouth, and sneered at him, "Do not tell me what I need, mage. I have endured pain the likes of which you cannot imagine. Pull out the bolt and let us be done with this."

"The bolt is imbedded in bone," Anders told him, "I'm going to have to yank it out."

"Then yank it out," Fenris said, stuffing the glove back into his mouth and ending the conversation.

More machismo bullshit. The dumb bastard was going to be unconscious in a minute either way with how much this was going to hurt. Anders braced one hand against Fenris' leg to hold him steady, and grabbed the other around the shaft. The first yank got him nowhere, nor did the second, but the third came paired with a burst of strength from Justice that helped him wrench the bolt from bone. Fenris screamed through the leather, but to Anders' surprise stayed conscious and didn't collapse.

That probably had something to do with Hawke holding the elf upright, but it was impressive all the same. Anders set the bloody bolt aside, and benevolent energies from his spirit helped mend the split in Fenris' bone, muscle, and flesh. A white scar lingered against Fenris' dusky skin, out of place amidst the deliberate elegance of his marking, but considering how Fenris hated them, Anders wouldn't have been surprised if he preferred the scar. Anders handed the elf back his greave, and Fenris spat out the glove borrowed from Varric. His teeth had indented it, and left a crescent slick with spit in the leather.

Varric retrieved it, along with the bloodied bolt. They couldn't afford to waste resources when there was no telling how long they'd be trapped down here. Anders forced the thought from his mind, and picked himself up on his staff. He was exhausted, but he didn't dare call for a break. He wanted out of here. He could rest when they were safely back in the city, underground or in Kirkwall, Anders didn't care at this point. Anywhere but this temple.

Hawke gathered up his arrows, and Varric his scattered mines and caltrops, and they continued. There were more shades, though they'd learned their lesson fighting them. Varric and Hawke kept to their daggers, and Fenris and Dog took point. Anders did what he could with his magic, which wasn't much at this point, but it was something. Healing bone was something only a spirit healer could manage, and it still wasn't recommended with how draining it was.

They made their descent into the undercroft, and stumbled upon what looked like possessed stone, almost reminiscent of sylvans. They were vaguely humanoid in their shape, or perhaps dwarven, with clear heads, and ribcages of pulsing arcane magic that held them together. Lyrium was everywhere, red veins bursting up from the ground and crawling up the walls, and the stone creatures were feeding on it. They clung to the veins, siphoning the color from them, and only stopped at their intrusion.

The creatures attacked them, and the most unnerving thing about it all was that they were soundless. They didn't scream or laugh like demons or growl or gargle like darkspawn. They just moved, their stone feet like pebbles pattering across the ground, and barely audible above Anders' heartbeat in his ears at being surrounded by so much lyrium. Arrows bounced off rock, but the creatures were slow moving, and it was easy enough for daggers to cut through the threads of arcane magic that seemed to hold them together.

"Bloody flames," Varric muttered when the last of them collapsed in a tiny avalanche under their melee party's onslaught. "What were those things?"

"Magic," Fenris said.

"Rocks," Hawke said.

"Magic rocks," Varric deduced, "Great."

Anders was sure they kept talking, but he didn't hear any of it. Maker, this was it. This was the only way out of this blighted place, and it was covered in lyrium. The rest of them might be able to push through the nausea, the fatigue, the deafness and dementia, but Anders was doomed. He was mage. There was no going forward for him. He was trapped. Trapped in this tiny temple of lyrium for the rest of his natural and unnatural life.

He wasn't going to die here. He wasn't going to die ever. He was going to live as a ghoul, gnawing off his own fingers while his imprisonment prevented Justice from ever fulfilling his purpose and the poor spirit went mad and it was all Anders' fault because he didn't have the good sense to turn Bethany away when she offered to be his aide because he was so damned desperate for companionship even knowing it only ever hurt the ones he cared about and now he was bound to Hawke and his debt and this damned temple.

Hawke was talking to him. Anders could tell. The man's mouth was moving, but the words were nonsense. All Anders could hear was the rush of his pulse in his ears and the whisper of demons from across the Veil, pulling at his fear and feeding from it, and Maker if he wasn't already possessed he would be now. It wouldn't take much. A hand across the Veil to take it all away, to put the breath back in his lungs, to offer him that blissful oblivion that waited in the back of his mind.

Then all at once, Anders felt it. Like arms encircling his waist, pulling him away from the lyrium hollowing him from the inside out, breathing life into his lungs and tearing down the bars to his cell, illuminating that insufferable dark in a burst of blinding blue light that faded to black, and peace.

Chapter 77: Down in the Dark with the Dead

Notes:

Hello everyone! Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 11 Solis Sometime
Primeval Thaig

Anders was right to be cautious. The lyrium was wrong. It sang sick music, and settled like an oily film on the inside of his skull, wreathing and twisting just beneath the skin. If not for the comfort of Karl's ring - a gift so generous Justice had no words for it - it would have been a torment. Anders' companion and the lyrium beneath his skin was another mercy, though the reception he gave was no better than their first meeting.

"Kaffas!" Fenris snarled, "Again? As if we did not have enough problems down here without the mage losing control of himself."

The mabari was barking, the beast as averse to his presence as Barkspawn had been. Hawke silenced it with a hiss, but he'd put a great deal more distance between them than he had between himself and Anders.

"Hey Blue..." Varric said, taking a tentative step forward, "How's it going?"

"Let go of Anders," Hawke ordered. "You said yourself it's not safe for him for you to take control like this."

"We have learned otherwise," Justice said, with a modicum of contempt for the mortal's implication that he had done anything Anders did not wish. "You have been trapped in this foul place against your will, and Anders cannot continue in the face of lyrium. I believe I might be more resistant to its effects."

"Great idea, Blue," Varric said. He seemed reasonable, and he had suffered the most with the injustice his brother had thrust upon them. "Right, Hawke? Weren't you just saying we'd have to go find another way around otherwise? Which is a great idea on paper, but we're kind of at the 'been there, done that' point with this temple."

Fenris scoffed, "We would do better to leave him at this rate."

"We're not leaving him," Hawke said. "... you're sure you can be near lyrium? Anders said it would kill him."

"It would," Justice had no doubt. The substance was dangerous to mortal bodies, but they were something slightly more than that. The lyrium that bled through the cracks in Anders' veins when he was forward might very well negate the red lyrium, but Justice wasn't completely certain. He searched for Anders, in the back of their mind, and found him curled up with memories of his mother, of Compassion, of Amell and Karl. His mortal didn't waver when he neared a vein of lyrium, nor could Justice sense any discomfort in their form. "We are well. Come, we should not linger in this wretched place."

Wretched it was. There was nothing sacrosanct about the temple; the lyrium had consumed it, turned into a desecrated and profane thing, assuming it had not been constructed as such. The shoals of dust and the memories that lay within them had been eroded by the lyrium, and whatever had tainted it. It was a dark place, empty, void, and Justice would be glad to have Anders gone from it.

He made a quick descent through the undercroft, Vigilance propped beneath his arm. Justice preferred the sword and shield Kristoff had utilized, but Vigilance served. The dragonbone was sturdy, even if it lacked a blade, and could crack a darkspawn's skull with enough application of force. That, and it served as a perfect channel for Anders' magic. Healing escaped him, but the raw pull of the Fade had always been there at Justice's command.

"Blue!" Varric called after him. "Blue, wait up!"

Justice glanced over his shoulder, and found the mortals lagging several paces behind. Curious. He was not accustomed to overtaking his companions, but then he had only ever fought beside Grey Wardens, and all mortals were unique. "We should not tarry," Justice said.

"Okay, but-" Varric wheezed.

"Are your lungs injured?" Justice asked.

"Sure, I'll take it," Varric huffed. "Ancestors, do we have to sprint? Hawke, roll me the rest of the way will you?"

"I don't know how long Anders... or Justice, or whatever can be down here," Hawke said, "If he needs to sprint, let him sprint."

"Spirits on their own are not affected by lyrium," Fenris said. "Many are kept in the Imperium as slaves for the task of transporting and working with it."

"Then they are no longer spirits," Justice fought back his horror at the revelation, and wished Anders were here to help explain how such an atrocity could ever be permitted. "Bound against their will, they would be corrupted into demons."

"... None are quite as animate as you." Fenris said. "But they are as you say."

Amell's grimoire felt heavy at his hip. It was a disturbing thought that such spell tomes might contain spirits elsewhere, enslaved to the will of another. "And you were one such slave, before you freed yourself," Justice knew from the many conversations he'd overheard when he deigned to listen to Anders speaking with his companions."... An inspiring tale. Perhaps there is hope for my brethren in this Imperium of yours."

"It is no Imperium of mine," Fenris snapped, "And I am no spirit."

"Is slavery not the same across all races?" Justice asked, "To be stripped of a sense of self, and reduced to a mechanical exercise?"

Fenris had no answer for him. Justice supposed the end in discourse meant he agreed, but couldn't say for certain, and Anders wasn't present to help him decipher the behavior of the mortals around him. He was still tangled up in his memories, in the closest semblance of peace the world had to offer him, and it was far too great a risk to turn his attention back to the mortal world when they walked between walls of red.

"Blue," Varric huffed, "Blue, you're going a little fast again."

Justice stopped, frustration making his muscles tense. "This is the pace that is set on a march. Anders had no trouble maintaining it before our joining."

"Okay," Varric wheezed, while the mabari nudging the dwarf along, "Sure, but- Blondie? Warden. Us? Not Wardens. Just-shit, come on, don't leave me here."

"No one's leaving you." Hawke said firmly.

"It is not my intent to abandon any of you," Justice said. "But we should make haste. Veil is thin here, and proximity to lyrium places you in jeopardy."

Justice made an effort to set a slower pace, tapping an impatient foot on the floor beneath him when he was made to wait. It was a bright red sand, not unlike that which shored the beaches outside Kirkwall and Anders so loved to feel between his toes. Justice dug his heel into the ground and watched the way the grains shifted before resuming his march.

"So you think he's a spirit now?" Hawke asked.

"He is dangerous," Fenris said. "Naught else matters."

"You guys just gonna do this with him standing right here?" Varric asked.

"I am no danger to any of you," Justice said.

"So you claim," Fenris said, "The temple will have ended, just there. Wherever we are is beyond. Catacombs beneath the city, perhaps?"

"They'll lead back out somewhere, then," Hawke said.

"I sense magic ahead," Justice warned them. The passageway made a sudden descent, lyrium veins coiling through the walls like hand railings, and the sand stopped to give way to a set of properly carved steps. The dichotomy of volcano and city would have been a thing of beauty if not for the lyrium corrupting it, Justice thought with a tinge of melancholy.

The hallway opened up onto a dais with an altar set at its center. All around were pillars of red lyrium, drained to a dull pink, and far less dangerous than the interior of the temple. Their song was little more than a whisper, the pulse of the lyrium weak and fluttering. Even knowing the music sang wrong, hollowing the soul and sickening the mind, there was something heart-wrenching in its death.

The creatures feeding from it attacked at their approach. There was something of the Fade in them, humming their core and illuminating the skeleton of a mortal. It was a curious construct, one Justice had never seen dreamed of in the Fade nor encountered in the mortal world. Its like was absent from Kristoff and Anders' memories, and Justice knew nothing of the magic that might work best against it.

He settled on a charge, vaulting the steps from the dais to knock the head from the first construct of rock with a hard blow from Vigilance. Dragonbone won out over rock, and the head was severed. It flew across the chamber, arcane magic in the creature dying out. Three that had been rushing the stairs changed course, and focused on him instead. A burst of energies drawn from across the Veil staggered them, and another sweep of Vigilance cleared through the ribcage of one, and left it little more than a pile of rubble.

The two constructs approached him at separate angles, whirling what looked like small boulders tethered by strands of arcane magic. The makeshift maces spun at a blur, and the first that struck out at him shattered against Vigilance, and Justice's iron grip, but the second collided with his side, and sent him crashing back into the wall behind him. The blow had broken three of Anders' ribs, even through the leather of his armor, and Justice felt the resultant rasp of breath on his first inhale.

Hawke was down the stairs after him first, while the others looked to be fighting with their own cluster of constructs. He cut down the arcane tethers holding one construct together with his daggers, and it crumbled into pebbles and dust, but the second whirled on him. The mace swung out, and Hawke dodged what was like to have been his death without Anders' present to heal him, but his arm connected with a lyrium vein on the jump back. He wrenched away, and promptly collapsed, retching violently.

The mabari was down the steps after him, leaping onto the construct and latching its teeth onto the spine that showed between the various bits of rock that made up its form. It wrenched once and hard, and the bone snapped beneath its massive jaws. The construct collapsed, and the mabari backed up to hover in front of Hawke, snarling and slathering at every bit of rubble, animate or not. Justice climbed to his feet, regenerating as quickly as he always had since joining with Anders.

Justice couldn't heal, but Anders had a natural inclination. He was born to heal, and infused with more mana than a mortal could bear, it was what his magic did whether Justice willed it or not. His form regenerated naturally when Justice was forward, the excessive of lyrium that burned in his veins closing wounds left from arrows, swords, maces, no matter how deep their enemies drove them. The potential wasn't limitless, but it felt as much.

Justice jogged back up the stairs, a burst of energy from the fade knocking back the constructs swarming Varric. The dwarf's minefield had a limited effect. The caltrops did nothing, but the elemental mines could blow off a leg, which only lasted as long as it took the constructs to reform, their arms or maces sliding over tendrils of arcane magic to reshape at their feet, which carried them over more rubble that seemed magnetized to their forms.

Fenris fared better for the distance the blast of energy afforded him, and cut through two constructs in quick succession. Justice crossed the battlefield and swung Vigilance through the neck of the nearest construct. The weaker bone cracked against that of a dragon, shattering at the spine in a ripple of white dust and arcane magic that diffused over the runework on the shaft. Justice carried through with the motion as the creature fell apart, falling on one construct after the next until all that remained where bones and rocks.

"I'll just call that bunch 'enemies' and footnote it later..." Varric decided, punting a skull across the room. He looked down at his mangled hand, a dagger clutched in his left, and sighed. "Where's Hawke?"

"He came in contact with the lyrium," Justice said.

"Fasta vass!" Fenris snarled, bolting down the stairs with Varric on his heels. Justice followed them at no particular haste. He was no healer. There was nothing he could do for the mortal, and he was led to believe the contact would not be fatal to a non-mage.

Hawke seemed to be faring well enough. The archer had rummaged through the many pouches on his belt and retrieved a poultice. Thus far, he had managed to smear half of it on a roll of gauze with one hand, teeth, and willpower. He was in the process of wrapping it around his injured arm, where the skin was visibly blistered. He pinched it down when he finished, and an order of "Bite!" at his mabari cut off the remaining half of the bandage.

Hawke rolled it up and stashed it away along with what remained of the poultice, and blinked at their approach. One of his pupils was dilated, the other shrunken, and his skin had visibly blanched. "... Where are we?"

"Shit," Varric swore.

"The Deep Roads, on your ill-fated venture," Fenris said.

"What are those?" Hawke jutted his chin towards the corpse of one of the constructs.

"Magic rocks," Varric sighed, shuffling over to fall down into a semblance of a sitting position next to Hawke, and far from the puddle of vomit he'd left.

"Demons?" Hawke guessed, retrieving a kerchief for himself to clean off his face and his beard before stuffing it back into his pouch.

"They are something else," Justice said. "I would sense any of my kin that lingered within."

"... Where's the rest of the expedition?" Hawke asked.

"Bartrand screwed us," Varric lifted his right hand, and wiggled his two remaining fingers.

"I'll kill the bastard," Hawke snarled at the sight, stumbling to his feet with a helping hand on his mabari's head.

"That's my Killer," Varric grinned. "That's what you said the first time, too. You came into contact with a bit of lyrium. Memories are gonna be jumbled for a bit. We should probably take a rest for now. I'm already sitting, but since you're up, you wanna go get my traps, just up the stairs there?"

"Right," Hawke stumbled towards the stairs and stopped short to frown at Justice. There was something significant in the expression, Justice had no doubt. "... Why are you glowing?"

"Just get the traps, Killer," Varric called from the floor, picking pebbles out of his boots, "Would be a pain in the ass to try to explain the past few couple of days. Just chalk it up to weird shit and wait for it to come back to you."

"Weird shit," Hawke mumbled, continuing up the stairs, "Great."

Fenris found a spot for himself, and unhooked his helmet. He unslung his pack and a retrieved a rag and a bottle of oil to tend to his weapon, and Justice took a spot what he felt was equidistance from both mortals. He rather missed the ritual of having a blade to care for; Kristoff's sword had been rusted beyond repair, but the Commander had provided him with a replacement.

It had been a fine blade: crafted from metal that fell from the heavens, with lyrium veins glistening down its length. It had been a marvelous gift, the Commander's old longsword, and for a brief time Justice had felt a kinship to it and the glacial enchantments that seemed to give off the same dusting of blue as he did. Caring for it had been soothing in its simplicity, but it along with Anders' ring of study had been one of the many things he'd sacrificed for Amaranthine.

He didn't regret the loss, but it was a strange thing to come to treasure possessions, when in the Fade there were no such things. There were manifestations of thought born from the memories of mortals, which did not outlive the spirit that created them. Yet in the mortal world objects laid witness to beings long dead with fingerprints on top of fingerprints. His sword had sang with memory of stardust, and the calloused hands of the blacksmith who forged it. Memories he would never hear again.

It was beautiful, yet tragic how easily such possessions could be lost. Justice wrung his fingers on his staff, the chaff of the woolen lining on Anders' palms a comforting distraction from the many overwhelming sensations in the mortal world. The wool had come from an ewe in a fertile land with many farmsteads, and a giant lake, sheared by a boy who longed to be his father, cleaned and scoured by a woman who resented her mother, and spun and woven by man with no love for his son.

Time might have been a meaningless construct in the Fade, but in the mortal world, Justice was slowly coming to realize it bittered. Hawke returned with Varric's traps carefully arranged in his arms, and sat down to hand them over to the dwarf. The mortals resumed tending to their weapons and armaments, Fenris pausing in cleaning off his armor to raise an eyebrow at Hawke. "You are taking your memory loss rather well."

"You want me to take it worse?" Hawke asked.

"Merely an observation," Fenris said.

"He's right though, Killer, you don't seem too distraught about the whole thing," Varric agreed.

"I get enough maudlin at home," Hawke said, and frowned. "I think..."

"Oh boy," Varric whistled, "Memories jumbled that far back? What's your full name?" Varric wiggled the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Too damn few," Hawke muttered.

Varric snorted, "Come on, Killer, I'm serious. Humor me here. Full name."

Hawke rolled his eyes, but acquiesced, "Garrett Florian Hawke."

"What did you join this expedition for?" Varric asked.

"Bethany," Hawke said.

"And who are the handsome gentlemen traveling with you, starting with yours truly?" Varric asked.

"Varric, the only thing I can't remember is this expedition," Hawke wrapped an arm around his mabari and pulled the beast against him. It went willingly, tongue lulling, a stark contrast to its reaction to both Justice and the rock constructs. "We need to get out of here - all this lyrium is making me sick - and we can’t do that sitting here.”

“Killer, I think touching all this lyrium made you sick,” Varric chuckled.

“I agree,” Justice said. “The lyrium here is muted-“

“The lyrium is stronger,” Fenris interrupted. “I could feel it in my hand, burning like a coal against my palm and igniting the brands across my skin…”

“It sings for you because you sing back to it,” Justice explained, “The Fade is in you, burning as a beacon, and it resonates with the lyrium and all things magic.”

“Keep your distance creature,” Fenris said.

“I have not moved since we took our reprieve,” Justice tilted his head to one side, Anders hair spilling unhelpfully in front of his face. This could not continue. His host was in desperate need of some semblance of control over his life. The hair would serve to start. “And I am led to believe that the lyrium in here is in fact less potent than that outside.”

“How do you figured, Blue?” Varric asked.

“It is not only that the veins here have been drained of their color by these constructs, but also that the excess of lyrium that bleeds from our veins is no longer as pronounced as when we first trespassed these halls,” Justice ran a hand through his hair, and shook out the dusting of lyrium the formed at the ethereal flames cracking through his skin.

“Magic dandruff,” Varric noted, “Gross.”

“It is lyrium powder,” Fenris said, “Danarius used to have the servants prepare it in lines for his guests. Though burnt, I suspect its value is diminished, if not nullified entirely.”

“No party like a Danarius party,” Varric snorted, “I bet this shit literally burns your nose hairs off.”

“Frequently,” Fenris said. “I would not recommend it.”

“Well damn, there goes that plan,” Varric swung his right hand across his chest, his thumb jutting out into nothing and his pointer finger sliding along it. He stared down at the hand his brother had rent in inglorious battle, and let it fall, picking up his left. He snapped a handful times, chuckling quietly, “Well-uh-… well damn there goes… two plans, I guess.”

“Do you not use a similar tactic to keep your mortal body from succumbing to lyrium poisoning?” Justice asked.

“My mortal body is none of your business,” Fenris said.

“Both of you shut it,” Hawke said, rolling forward onto his knees and back onto his feet in one fluid motion. “-… Justice?”

“You will have it,” Justice said.

“No, you-“ Hawke frowned, “You, the spirit thing, Justice-“

“Alleged spirit thing,” Fenris muttered.

“-You’re not hurting Anders like this?” Hawke asked.

“Covered it, Killer,” Varric said. “Doesn’t hurt Blondie. Lyrium does. That’s why Blue’s out… Blue’s out, move out? I kind of like that; I mean it’s not like Blue’s ever here to stop and smell the embrium.”

“I have done this,” Justice recalled Anders lingering over the remains of the various herbs gathered for his clinic, a vial of red pollen between his fingers when he relaxed his mind, and sank into his own thoughts. Justice had manifested for a single inhale, the pollen rushing through Anders’ lungs and inflating veins choked thin with damp. Anders had laughed, and spoken for a long while in an emptiness not quite so empty in their clinic. “But I agree with your initial decision. We should move out.”

Justice struck out towards the exit far end of the altar room. The light dimmed as the lyrium’s glow dulled, and if not for the spirit fire that cracked through his veins the corridor would have been dark. The further into the passageway, the more the light fled from them, until all that lingered of it was his flames. The mabari whined, long and low in its throat, and Hawke called for a halt.

"We need a torch," Hawke said, stopping beside him with a hand to the hilt of his dagger. It was an effective against the constructs, but against darkspawn it would fair poorly. Strength and range were tantamount in such fights. "If the darkspawn catch us like this we're dead." 

"Sure, Hawke, but how?" Varric asked. "We traded our torches for Blondie here. Freed up my leg for an extra dagger and yours for a few more bombs, Fenris-"

"I have a torch," Fenris assured him. 

"Does this help?" Justice asked, summoning Veilfire to coat his free hand. The cavern lit up in emerald light, watery swaths of green dancing over stalagmites and stalactites. The spell rippled across the Veil, like the landing of a fly in a web, to the wakening of spiders. 

"It helps," Hawke said.

"Ready yourselves," Justice cautioned, "More of the fiends abound in this place."

"Good to know," Varric said, spinning in place to look around the cavern. 

"And when he is unable to hold the spell in combat?" Fenris demanded.

"... Well, at least we won't have to see those." Varric sighed, pointing up. The cavern had a high vaulted ceiling like that of a grand chantry, drained lyrium veins arched across like rafters, and constructs nestled in them like sleeping spiders. The ground quaked beneath their feet, and they descended.

It was no gentle descent, nor no gentle quake. The ground lurched and bucked, dust and pebbles rained from the ceiling, and the first construct to fall landed on its skull and immediately shattered it. Justice widened his stance, Vigilance clutched for balance, and Fenris did the same with his great sword. Varric lost his footing and was knocked off his feet. Hawke joined him, albeit willingly, kneeling over his whining mabari as the constructs rained down around them.

The first construct charged before the tremors stopped. It hit the ground in a splatter of rock and bone, and pulled itself back together with a ripple of arcane energy. It made itself a mace from the corpse of its fallen comrade, the pieces snapping up into place as the skeletal rock rolled over them. Whatever magic magnetized it to itself also held it to the ground, and gave it an unnatural advantage. There was no dodging nor fairly engaging it, and so Justice turned his palm to the beast and a blast of raw energies from the Fade knocked it back

"Is the lyrium corrupting these things, or are they corrupting the lyrium?" Varric asked over the rumblings of the earth.

"You want to do this now?" Hawke demanded.

"I want to get the story straight!" Varric said. 

"Why not both?" Fenris asked.

"... These creatures were not always thus." Justice tilted his head to listen to the echo whispering through the dust as the next construct came for them, and was thrown back by his magic. "They were forgotten by their people. Abandoned. Locked away. Their cries for justice went unheard, and so they stopped crying. Their silence is a cry in and of itself. We would do well to end such suffering." 

The quake stopped, and the battle was joined. Justice lost himself to it, the flowing movements of his body, the slight breeze it conjured in his hair, strain in his muscles, the Veil warping and snapping every time he pushed through it for the energies that lay beyond. As much as he appreciated Anders efforts to show him the mortal world, this was the part of it he belonged in most.

"Enough!" Came a loud cry that resonated at the very core of his being, igniting passion, thoughts of hunger, memories of home. "You have proven your mettle. I would not see these creatures harmed without need."

Another construct pushed forward, past the bodies of its fellows. In place of the arcane, it seemed held together with magma-like veins, hardening and softening at every pulse of the ethereal heart between its ribcage. It twisted its skeletal head, as if to bask within the light of the Veilfire, and Justice felt warmth from it when it spoke. "Hello brother."

"Keep your distance, fiend," Justice snapped, with an involuntary memory of a time when he had been naive enough to trust in demons to remember something more than what was base in them.

"This thing is a demon?" Hawke asked at his side.

"I am only a visitor," The construct said, and said it with warmth. The surviving constructs pulled themselves together and rolled across the cavern to cluster around the one that spoke. "The profane have lingered in this place for ages beyond memory, feeding on the magic stones until the need is all that they know. I am not as they are, but they hear me. They will not assault you further without my permission."

"Yeah we kind of noticed the lyrium eating," Varric said. "Doesn't seem like it worked out too well long term."

"Do not converse with this creature," Fenris said, "Kill it."

"Justice?" Hawke asked.

"These creatures knew more than hunger once," Justice could hear as much in the shifting sands beneath his feet, in the dust that lingered in the air, in each ripple of the arcane that played across the Veil when they creatures breathed. "They yearned for freedom. They cried out for justice. They suffered in the absence of compassion. Any number of spirits could have answered them. This a demon, come to feed, and not to be trusted. Do not entreat with it."

"Do not be rash," The demon rolled backwards, and a handful of profane moved protectively before it. "We can come to an agreement. I would not see my feast end, and you would not see yourself trapped here. I can sense your desire, and I know you seek to leave this place. You will need my aide to do so, least you and up another lost soul, feasting on the magic rocks to survive, and as you can see there is little left."

"Call off your pets," Hawke ordered.

The demon's heart pulsed, magma flaring in its veins and the cooling to burn only in its eyes. The profane retreated. Hawke hissed a quiet 'Stay' at his mabari, and crossed the cavern to stand in front of the construct.

"Do not listen to this creature!" Justice snarled, recalling a memory of the Warden Commander before the Baroness from two different sets of eyes. "It will ensnare your mind, no matter how strong your resolve!"

"Just tell me your offer." Hawke ordered.

"They hunger," The demon said simply. "Leave us the one among you with the magic rocks stowed beneath their skin, and I will guide you out."

"What!?" Fenris exclaimed.

"Holy shit," Varric mumbled. "Now what?"

"Now I give it my answer," Hawke stepped into the demon's embrace, locked an arm around its spine, and snapped off its skull. An explosion of arcane energy sent the archer flying back.

"Ahh! Foolish!" The demon wailed, a shade ripping free of the broken form. Justice rushed it, a snap of spirit fire bursting from his finger tips to catch the shade in the chest. Magma leaked from its wounds as it struggled to manifest into a stronger form, and the profane charged them.

There were perhaps a dozen of the profane who had gathered about the demon, but they were not worth Justice's focus. The demon - hunger - was the true threat. Justice snapped the taut coils that formed in the Veil as the demon attempted to reform itself. A shade was little more than shadow, and spirit fire burned it back. A fully formed demon of hunger was something more, gaping jaws of pure magma, and this time no innocents would suffer for his hesitation to strike at something he might call kin.

Justice struck out with Vigilance, and as the crystal passed through shadow and shade, he called on Anders' mana. Amplified through the bones of an ancient dragon, it burst forth in a burst of sapphire. Raw and unrestrained, it consumed the demon from within like lightning in its veins, illuminating the nothingness that passed for its soul. The demon ripped apart and imploded, its energy sucked through the Veil, and dispersed into the cries of a hundred wisps scattered through the Fade.

Vindicated in its demise, Justice turned back to his companions. The light had followed him, emerald and sapphire radiating through the cavern where he stood alone. A fair distance off, a single torch of dripping orange marked the others. Varric held it, while Hawke and Fenris and the mabari fought in his defense, the dwarf too mangled by his brother's betrayal to serve as the fighter he once had. Justice rejoined them, the profane whittled down to seven, and took out one with a hard crack of his staff through its spine.

Six. Fenris spun, a haze of red sand and dust about his feet as they danced across the battlefield, and his sword connected with a construct. Five. The mabari dove past his back, tackling a profane and latching onto its spine to rip out what served for its jugular. Four. Hawke dodged round a whirling mace to drive his dagger into the back of the same profane's skull. Three. Staves came up, blades came down, claws latched, and then there were none. The cavern echoed with panted breath, crackling torchlight, and the shuffle of feet through sand in the aftermath.

"I'm getting too old for this shit," Varric sighed, kneeling to dig a hole in the loose sand to plant his torch.

"You're barely a day past thirty," Hawke said, taking a seat on what was once the back of a profane, but now served as little more than a small boulder to drink from his canteen.

"I'm getting too old for this shit," Varric said again, sitting down when the light had lowered and reaching for his own canteen. He unscrewed it, and tipped it back to his lips, to be met with nothing. "Damnit... spot me anything, Hawke?"

"Was going to water Dog..." Hawke sighed, but handed over his canteen all the same.

"Perhaps we could simply eat the dog," Fenris suggested. "I cannot imagine how else we are to survive down here, with no supplies."

"You're not eating my dog," Hawke scowled, grabbing the mabari about the chest and dragging it to his side.

"It was a jest," Fenris explained, crossing the battlefield to stop at the skull of the hunger demon, when it had still possessed a profane. He unshouldered his pack, and retrieved a bit of twine to loop through the sockets and tie the skull to his belt.

"Trophy?" Hawke asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I was thinking I might shore up the sockets and make it into a wine glass, assuming we ever escape this place," Fenris explained. "For irony's sake."

"It did want to eat you," Varric mused.

"You're welcome," Hawke snorted.

"Anders can refill your canteens," Justice said, "Once I am certain it is safe and he will encounter no more lyrium. In times of desperation, the Wardens would sustain themselves on deepstalkers, cave beetles, nugs, and various fungi when expeditions lasted longer than supplies."

"Good to know, Blue," Varric said. "So, Hawke, how's your head?"

"Still on my shoulders," Hawke said. "... The rest is coming around. We have more important things to worry about."

"Like how we are to escape this place without our friend to lead us," Fenris joked, bouncing the skull in his hand. He took a seat beside them, and took off his helmet to drink from his own canteen.

"Blue?" Varric prompted him, "You want to sit?"

"I have no wish to linger here," Justice said. "Anders is a Grey Warden. The corruption in his veins gives him an endurance beyond that of most mortals. His body does not yet require rest."

"It couldn't hurt though, could it?" Varric asked. "Come on, you're making me tired standing up all ram rod like that. Humor me."

"I would fail to amuse you if I made the attempt," Justice frowned, "Levity is a difficult concept for me."

"No-" Varric groaned, "I mean sit down. Please."

Justice sat, draping Anders' staff over his crossed legs. The resting position made him acutely aware of the various aches and pains Anders' body suffered. There was naught Justice could do for him now, but Anders would be more than capable of caring for himself once they were free of the lyrium. Justice turned his attention away from his companions' conversation to focus inward. Anders was lost to a memory of autumn, lying atop his Commander's chest as they shared a hammock and words not meant for him. Justice left him to it and stood. "Come, we tarry too long."

Hawke stood with him, as did Fenris, though Varric took more time that Justice felt necessary even with his injury righting himself and retrieving the torch. They continued through the passageway, until they came upon a massive door, clutched tight in the onyx grasp of a dragon's claws. The door called for the same lock that had resulted in their betrayal, but it was broken, shattered down the center with the pieces cobbling the floor at their feet. "Great." Hawke muttered. "Can't end worse than last time."

"Hey!" Varric exclaimed, "There you go, Killer. Coming back to you finally?"

"Unfortunately," Hawke said.

"No this is bound to go better," Varric decided, "Look at the detail on the door. It looks like a vault. I bet whatever's in here will be worth way more than Bartrand's stupid idol."

"Have a caution," Justice said, "I sense magic within."

"Of course," Fenris grunted.

"Guess I spoke too soon," Varric sighed.

Justice stepped over one shattered panel depicting half a rearing dragon, and stepped into the vault. The others followed him, by the thud of leather and silverite on onyx that reached his ears. Within the vault, massive pillars carved to look as though they were decorated with dragon scales lined the room. There were no lyrium veins cleaving to the walls or breaking through the ceiling or the floor, though the room looked to have suffered from some kind of seismic activity all the same. Massive boulders and rocks were scattered all around the floor, and lined in the walls were rows upon rows of reliquaries. All of them were filled with various idols, plaques, tomes, and other pieces of dwarven lore that sang in their antiquity.

"Would you look at that," Varric whistled.

"Don't touch anything red," Hawke cautioned.

"No shit," Varric snorted.

They passed through the vault, when they stumbled upon the skeleton at its center. The creature's eyes alit with flame at their encroachment, and the skeleton soared into the air with a furious pulse of arcane magic that knocked them all back. The rocks and boulders scattered through the vault raised from the ground, and leapt to take shape around the skeleton, cracking open to reveal bright, blinding geodes of red lyrium. "Oh that can't be good," Varric sighed.

The skeleton was set too high in the air for Hawke or Fenris to reach. Justice gathered Anders' mana and let it amplify through his staff, releasing it in an explosion of energy meant to knock the skeleton to the ground. It washed harmlessly over whatever innate spellshield the creature possessed in a ripple of violet, and did nothing. "Oh that's bad," Varric said. The construct finished forming, a creature of such immense size it dwarfed the vault, and stood hunchbacked against the ceiling. Energy rippled, coiling and snapping along ethereal veins between the rocks, throbbing ever brighter in the red lyrium nodes that made up the creature. "Oh that's definitely bad." Varric whined.

"Where's the other exit?" Hawke asked.

"There!" Fenris pointed across the chamber, where a much smaller door made from a dark metal and lined in runes served as a back exit. The five of them ran for it, kicking up the red sand scattered across the floor of the vault, but didn't reach it before the profane exploded with eldritch magics. Arcane energy amplified through the raw lyrium, and burned up every exposed part of the vault, from the more fragile pieces in the reliquaries, to their very skin before they managed to throw themselves down behind the nearest pillar. The spell was deafening, like that of a dragon's roar, and though the mortals around him spoke, Justice heard nothing, and knew nothing of complex magic to negate the construct's channel.

The ground beneath them trembled, and Justice didn't know enough of the mortal world to accredit it to the profane's magic, or another quake. It grew in intensity, thrusting the five of them together and knocking them against the pillar. Fissures split along the ground, cascading up the walls in jagged rivers to crack across the ceiling. Pebbles rained down throughout the vault, and immediately burnt to dust under the profane's onslaught. The violent earthquake blurred vision, tore apart the vault, and ultimately broke it. The ceiling shattered, a massive slab at the center and smaller chunks breaking apart further in. The spell ceased, though the quake continued, and sound remained a high pitched hum caught in Justice's ears.

It persisted. Hawke crouched with one arm wrapped around his mabari in his lap, the other locked around Varric. Fenris' gauntlets were locked about Justice's bicep and Varric's hand, while Justice braced himself against the wall, an arm for both Hawke and Fenris. The lyrium engraved in the elf's skin pulled at him, even through the leather and silverite of his armor. Justice could feel its song tingling in his teeth, warming his veins, wrapping tight around his spine, even if he couldn't hear it for how the profane had deafened him. The combination of the song, and the world around him breaking apart, was one of the most comforting experiences Justice had yet had in the mortal world. It felt like the Fade, a reforming of reality, and when it ended he stood delighted to see what had become of the world around them.

The profane had been crushed by the slab, and no magic called to Justice from within its tomb. The lyrium had dulled with its death, though it still pulsed as all lyrium did to the time of some ethereal heart. The room had been split down the center, creating a parallelism beautiful in its imperfection. Justice walked the length of the fissure while Varric and the others crawled out from behind the pillar. "... That's it?" Hawke asked, setting a foot on the slab of ceiling.

"It seems you have won the day," Fenris snorted, "Well done."

"I'm going to have to embellish on this part a bit," Varric decided, "Something about you taking it out with an arrow through the heart after several grueling hours of battle."

"That would be a dishonest retelling," Justice said, running his gloved fingers over the rivets the tremors had left in the wall. A natural earthquake was different from a mage's spell. Where a mage's spell focused on a specific location, a natural earthquake was aimless: raw and visceral, tearing through everything and anything without direction. There was a beauty to the destruction, the chaos, the strength. Assuming he was guessing correctly at the nature of the tremors, "This was an earthquake, correct?"

"Honestly, Blue?" Varric shrugged, "I'm thinking maybe we have our little volcano to thank for this. I just hope wherever are, whatever blew out of it doesn't reach Kirkwall. Maker knows that city has enough smog and ash as it is. Or should I be invoking the Stone after this? Shit, I don't know. Let's load up on everything we can carry in this vault and get the fuck out of here."

The mortals busied themselves with the tasks. Justice accepted a few of the filled satchels and packs to carry, impatient to be off and away from the lyrium so that Anders could be himself again. The burdens seemed impractical, especially considering the many threats that lurked in the Deep Roads, but he understood the expedition had been launched for profit, and that Anders had entered into an agreement with Hawke over it, and didn't protest. He did, however, repeatedly practice shrugging the packs from his shoulders and dropping into a fighting stance to be sure they would be no hinder to Anders.

Then they were off, venturing out into the back exit to the vault, and following it out into the eternal dark of the deep. The exit led them out into caverns, some natural, some dwarven made, none of them providing them with a clear passage back to the city. Fenris claimed to know the way north, but his sense of direction was of little aid to them when the caverns twisted so that starting north often meant ending up heading south, and being forced to double back. They took a rest in cavern floored with red sand, and lined with so many jagged outcroppings that could hold an ambush it made Justice nervous, even without sensing any darkspawn.

Neither darkspawn nor lyrium had hindered them in the confusing sprawl of passages and chambers, however, and Justice was inclined to believe they had faced the last of it. While the others spoke among themselves on their rest, Justice gathered Anders from a memory of apple pie. It had been stolen from the window sill of his old home, and eaten on the fence of the farmstead with the company of a cat. The warm Anderfels winters were not without wind that blew through the free hair of a boy no more than nine. Anders fell from the memory, as if falling backwards off the fence, and into his own body with a startled gasp.

"Andraste's holy knickerweasels," Anders swore, scowling up at the blackrock ceiling that welcomed him back to the land of the living.

"That you, Blondie?" Varric guessed.

"No, it's the Queen of Antiva, who do you think it is?" Anders snapped, dragging himself into some semblance of a sitting position to find everyone staring at him. They were in a cave of some sort. Big surprise there, really. "... Are we still trapped?"

"Not exactly," Varric drawled.

"Meaning yes," Anders groaned, shrugging out of a tangle of straps to satchels and packs he had no idea why he was carrying. "What's going on?"

"We're lost,' Hawke explained.

"How are we lost?" Anders demanded, "What happened to our mystical elven guide over there?"

"I know which passages lead north," Fenris scowled at him, "How am I to tell which ones stay heading north?"

"Great," Anders muttered, stumbling to feet, "Just great."

"Where are you going?" Hawke called after him when he stormed away from the group.

"To take a piss!" Anders shot back, picking a random outcropping of rock and heading for it. He left the group's line of sight, and broke into a jog until he was halfway across the cavern, where two identical passages split off into Maker knew where because there were no maps for anything this deep underground. Anders picked a wall to bang his head against while he pissed, "Any time you want to come back would be great, Justice."

Unsurprisingly, his stubborn bastard of a spirit ignored him. Anders groaned, and stared at the identical passages, the word "lost" repeating over and over in his head until it was synonymous with 'trapped.' His chest tightened, but before Anders could give into it he felt a familiar pull at the core of his being.

Darkspawn. Of course it was darkspawn. Just one, no doubt a scout, about to stumble into the chamber and shriek bloody murder to bring its horde down on them. Anders fastened his trousers and drew on his mana, forming a lance of ice he clutched between his fingertips. "We're all going to die to here," Anders muttered, holding the lance over his shoulder and tensing to throw when a deformed creature scuttled into out into view, neither man nor darkspawn. It turned murky white eyes on him and blinked. "... Eli?"

"Eli," The ghoul repeated, voice rasping and body cracking. Its skinless lips split open to reveal a grin of broken teeth, and it moved on three limbs when it shuffled over to him. "Name.... my name?"

"That's right," Anders said in a daze, letting the spell disperse, "That's your name... I'm Anders. Eli, what are you doing here?"

"Went away," Eli explained, "Anders-went away too?"

"Yes," Anders said, "I mean no. How did you find me?"

"Felt," Eli said, tilting his head so far to one side to look at him his neck cracked, and should have broken, "Found. Felt the Grey. Guard against the dark."

"Right. Right, okay, sure, it goes both ways," Anders rubbed his hands together to battle back the chill his spell had left with them, "Eli, listen, do you know how to get back to the thaig from here?" Eli chewed on his answer for so long Anders' heart started racing, but the ghoul ultimately bobbed its head. "Oh, sweet, fucking, Maker," Anders laughed, dragging his hands through his hair, "Eli, if you had lips, I would kiss you. Listen, I need you to take me back to the thaig, alright? Can you do that for me, Eli?"

"Back?" Eli glanced over his shoulder, "Go back? Back to chew, to gnaw, to rip... No, no no. Back, yes, can go back. Down in the dark with the dead?"

"Yeah," Anders said, "Down in the dark with the dead."

Chapter 78: Up in the Light with the Life

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back. The song in this chapter is an adaption of Lady in Black by Blackmore's Night. Thank you for all your wonderful comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 11 Solis Sometime
Somewhere

Anders was insane. There were no two ways about it. He'd run back to the group at a slant in his haste, body pitching forward and fingers nearly skimming the ground to tell everyone that he'd found a way out. Hawke and the others had leapt to their feet, and Anders had led them back to the corner of the cavern where he'd found Eli, or Eli had found him. There in the dark, there'd been nothing. Nothing but the sickly white pallor of the light he'd conjured, and the stale scent of his piss drying on the blackrock.

"The mage is mad," Fenris had snorted, and Anders believed him.

There was no other explanation for it. Whether it was the red lyrium addling him, or whether existing solely inside his own mind had the potential to break it, or whether being lost and locked away was too much for him, Anders had obviously gone insane. There was no ghoul that he could sense once he was back in the company of his companions, and there was no way Eli would have been able to move fast enough for Anders to lose track of him so fast.

Which meant Eli had never been there in first place. Eli was just another hallucination, batting playfully at what was left of Anders' sanity as it unraveled like a ball of twine for a cat that didn't exist. Eli was just another Mr. Wiggums, only this time Karl wasn't here to smile and nod through Anders' mental breakdown. Anders prayed fervently for Justice to take his place so he didn't have to have it in front of his companions, but his spirit didn't listen.

Varric's sympathy hadn't helped. Anders didn't want it. He kept to the back of the group when they set out, trying to find their way through endless caverns and caves and back to the thaig. He knew a panic attack when he had one. The cold sweat, the constriction in his chest, the racing of his heart, a feeling almost like falling as he lost one sensation after the next, from hearing to sight to feeling, until the world around him was a murmured blur and time lost all meaning.

Anders only real thought was that he wanted Justice back. In the space behind his eyes, Anders didn't have to exist. Sensation dulled, and when he wasn't reliving his memories or watching the world around him, he was adrift in a blissful oblivion. It was the closest thing to dreaming he could still experience, and Maker, he needed it right now. He would have given anything to crawl into a hammock with Amell, to have his mother braid his hair, to lie in Compassion's arms, to sit and talk under the stairs with Karl.

Instead he walked. And walked. And walked, barely breathing, unable to focus, meeting any queries with blank stares until his companions ultimately gave up talking to him. Later, they gave up all together, and decided to make camp in a reasonably defensible cavern. Anders sat alone, hugging a pile of treasure-packed satchels in his lap, feeling the occasional ripple of static run up his arms or coil around his spine that told him Justice was with him and cared, but refused to take control for whatever reason.

Varric fell straight to sleep, and Fenris took first watch. Hawke came and sat with him, and Anders was amazed he could hear the man at all when he deigned to speak. "You know it's the lyrium, right?" Hawke asked; he looked at him when he said it, his crimson eyes reflecting the fire, and however reassuring the words they were wasted. Hawke had no idea Anders had a history with hallucinations. Maker, until Karl had told him, even Anders didn't know he had a history with hallucinations.

"Sure," Anders said.

"You're not mad," Hawke said.

"You just don't know me," Anders snorted, dragging his hands through his hair, and the words tumbled out without his consent. "It's not like this is the first of my delusions." Hawke didn't say anything, which was very Hawke of him, and Anders glanced up at him through his hands. The archer was sitting in front of him, weapons and cuirass discarded, one leg drawn up with his arm draped over it as if this were just another fireside chat.

"Your spirit have anything to do with that?" Hawke guessed.

"Justice doesn't have anything to do with this," Anders scowled at him, "Maker, if anything, he's the only reason I wasn't chasing pink druffalo through Darktown the day after I arrived-" Anders cut himself off at the flare of spirit fire that broke out across his wrist with his first angry gesture. "-... Look, I-don't want to put all this on you. I'm fine. You don't have to worry about me going crazy-more crazy-and putting us at risk. I'll make sure everyone else sees what I see from now on before I say anything."

"I'm not worried about that," Hawke said. "Anders-... Look, are we friends? Because I don't know where we stand right now, but I'm not an idiot. I know you're the only one making a difference on this damn expedition, and you were the only one making a difference in that shithole of a city. I don't think you deserve any of the shit that's happened to you, and-..."

"And what?" Anders asked.

"And it's just the lyrium," Hawke finished. He had warm eyes, when they were actually looking his way. There was a slight crease to his brow, as if pained by the eye-contact, but he weathered it through the silence Anders let stretch. Hawke wasn't so bad. He cared enough to come and talk to him, to try to reassure him, but...

"I don't want to be crazy," Anders whispered, and almost hoped Hawke didn't hear him.

"You're not crazy," Hawke said firmly.

"Yes I am," Anders let slip a laugh that twisted into a whine while his hands twisted in his hair, "I'm crazy. It's not just that I saw Eli down here; it's that I believed it was possible. If it was just the hallucinations-... But it's not. After solitary-... Maker, I'll believe anything. You don't understand. I swore they'd never take my mind. I swore I'd kill myself first. But they did. They did and I'm crazy and I'm-I-I'm-" Tears strung at the corners of his eyes, and escaped to carve guilty lines down his cheeks and catch upon his stubble. Anders wiped off his jaw with one hand and cleared his throat. "I'm fine."

"It's just the lyrium," Hawke said with a certainty Anders didn't share. "I barely grazed it and I lost a week. With that much lyrium everywhere, I could barely hold onto my own name, and I'm not even a mage. By all rights, you should have died. You don't think it's possible the lyrium made you hallucinate a few things, even with your spirit controlling you?"

"His name is Justice," Anders said.

"Alright, you don't think it's possible the lyrium made you hallucinate a few things, even with Justice controlling you?" Hawke asked.

"Maker, I don't know," Anders dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. "I don't know. I swear I talked to him."

"So maybe you talked to him," Hawke shrugged, "Maybe he fucked off. Maybe lyrium is magic. Maybe there are plenty of explanations that don't have to mean you're crazy."

"Maybe..." Anders shifted to hug himself and rub warmth into his arms, "I don't know. I can't think down here, in this blighted dark. I hate the bloody Deep Roads. I've always hated them."

"You were a Warden," Hawke reminded him, "You managed. How?"

I had Amell, Anders thought but didn't say. He tried for something like a smile instead, "Not your business."

"Fair," Hawke grinned, "I'm just saying, we could try to recreate whatever worked for you before."

Anders laughed, and sent himself into a coughing fit. "Thanks. I needed that... Who knows, you know?" Anders winked for his own sake, and the bewildered expression it put on Hawke's face, "I'll be fine as soon as we get out of here. Once we're back in the thaig it won't be so bad."

Anders hoped that was the case, and kept hoping it the three days they spent lost in the caverns far below the Vimmark Mountains. They had water. Anders could conjure it. A man could go up to three weeks with no food, but no matter how Anders tried to settle his mind, he kept thinking of the poor bastards they'd found trapped beneath the Vigil. Anders would be fine: one of the wild ghouls he and the Wardens had found outside the cells, but the others were doomed.

To hear Varric talk, and no one had a choice about hearing Varric talk, the man was basically the walking dead already. He spoke endlessly about everything from the blisters on his feet, to the phantom feeling in his fingers, to the ache in his stomach, to the crackle in his head. It would have been a pleasant distraction, but where Franke spoke of anything and everything pleasant, Varric spoke of anything and everything miserable, and by the end of the third day they were all feeling that way.

They ran into a pack of deepstalkers at the end of the third day. The result was an acid burn, a half-dozen scratches, and food that didn't keep. Hawke carved the corpses and Anders cooked them. They ate what they could and carried what they couldn't, and suffered the entire time. The deepstalker meat was murder on their stomachs, and everyone down to the dog spent half of the fourth day shitting out their insides.

The fifth day they lost three hours chasing a nug. Everyone screamed bloody murder at everyone else when it escaped, and didn't speak to each other for the next five hours. The sixth day a swarm of cave beetles fell on Anders and ripped out a chunk of his shoulder before he managed to set himself aflame. He didn't remember passing out afterwards, but Hawke carried him on his back until they made camp again. The seventh day Varric broke down in tears, Anders had another panic attack, and Hawke and Fenris got into a shouting match over something Anders couldn't recall.

The eighth day they stumbled across a spider nest, and the resultant meat was gentler on their stomachs than the deepstalkers and more filling than the cave beetles. By a miracle of the Maker, a cavern connected to the spiders' nest, and led back towards the thaig. It was the end of the eighth day when they finally reemerged into the underground city, to find it as deserted as it had been when they'd arrived. Varric kissed the ground with tears in his eyes, and Anders was almost inclined to join him.

Somehow, they found themselves on the opposite side of the thaig, near what looked to be another entrance into the Deep Roads. The only difference between where they stood, and where the expedition had originally arrived, was that the great doors were sealed shut. Not far from the massive gates was a grand estate, the likes of which Varric guessed belonged to the ruling noble house. It was untouched, along with the rest of the thaig, as if Bartrand had simply taken the idol and ran.

It was there in the estate they found the name of the thaig, inscribed on a tablet set beside a staff. No one had any explanation for it. There was no reason for dwarves to have staves, when dwarves claimed no mages, yet it rested on a pedestal in the foyer of the estate, on clear display for the first visitors to the thaig. According to the tablet, the thaig was named for House Valdasine, and the staff was the only thing left when it was abandoned. It was inscribed with the same red lyrium that had made up the idol, and everyone was leery about touching it.

Varric ultimately took a tracing of the tablet, and they agreed to leave both the slab of metal and the staff it was set beside behind. There was no sign of the expedition in the city, and it was easy for them to find their original entrance, and follow it back to the surface. It was another week ahead of them, but it was a week they wouldn't spend lost. Varric was looking forward to stumbling across Bartand's corpse on the way back, but Anders couldn't help thinking Bartrand's wouldn't be the only corpse they would find.

Bodahn might have the rations for the Winters and the workers, but he didn't have the water. Hardtack, jerky, and dried fruits were far from hydrating, and made an adequate water supply all the more tantamount to their survival. Bodahn been counting on having a mage along, and Bartrand's betrayal had damned more than just the four of them. Worse still, he'd been counting on having a Warden along. Darkspawn weren't a concern in the thaig. It was too deep, but Anders had no doubt they'd encounter stragglers and scouting parties once they were back in the Deep Roads.

Fenris was sympathetic and Varric was furious when Anders made mention of the expedition's likely fate. Hawke told him not to borrow trouble, and focus on making it to the surface alive. It was sound advice, but Anders couldn't take it. He wondered and he worried about everyone from Eli to Bodahn to Sandal to Ralf to Miles. The Winters wouldn't be able to protect them from a darkspawn scouting party. Not without a Warden there to sense their approach.

The only thing that reassured him was the lack of darkspawn their group encountered on the journey back. Two days out from the thaig, and they were back in the Deep Roads, and Anders sensed nothing. A pack of nugs Dog had successfully wrangled marked their dinner, and it was easier to find optimism on a full stomach. They camped out at the Warden base camp the expedition had used when they'd made their descent, their spirits lighter for the progress.

The fire was conjured; there was no crackle to mark the flames when there was nothing for them to devour. It danced quietly atop the ashes in the firepit, and Anders entertained himself summoning two men from the flames to dance circles around it. The figures were formless, scarcely bigger than the size of his forearm, and having a grander time than the rest of them.

Fenris flicked a pebble through one, but Varric whistled, "Neat trick, Blondie."

"I try," Anders said.

"You use that for the kids?" Hawke asked.

"What kids?" Anders asked.

"The kids," Hawke said again, "You said you've got a friend who takes care of orphans."

The man had been listening after all. Anders grinned, "Close. They prefer animals." Anders pulled on a breath of mana, and gathered up scattered pebbles and dust to shape into a cat. Ripples of arcane magic formed into a crow, and the two summons fell into their natural state of chasing each other in circles around the camp fire.

Fenris scowled, and swatted the crow out of the air with a flare of lyrium over the back of his palm. "Why am I not surprised to learn you're so careless with your magic as to delude children into thinking it harmless?"

"I don't know, Fenris, why aren't you surprised?" Anders snapped, sending the cat crashing into him in an explosion of dust that left the elf coughing. "Maybe because it's actually harmless?"

Ignorant bloody blighter. Anders was the first to argue magic was meant to be used responsibly. He couldn't count how many bushes he'd refused to set on fire at Sigrun's beckon, but there was a difference between burning down a forest and a little light show to take kids' minds off the fact that they were living in a sewer. As far as Anders was concerned, the summons weren't any different from healing magic. The kids needed something to remember they were still kids, when half of them were already working or begging on street corners.

"Yes, I'm sure teaching children-" Fenris started when the dust cleared.

"Stop," Hawke said loudly. "Both of you."

Anders bristled, and shot the man a glare. He hadn't done anything other than defend himself. Hawke met it with a bewildered arch to one eyebrow, and Anders rolled his eyes. Bloody typical.

"Thank you," Varric said wearily, using a sack of treasure as a pillow. "Maker's breath, aren't you two tired of fighting yet? We've been at each other's throats for a week. Shit, at least I think it's been a week. Not like we have sundials down here, or any crazy dwarven clocks."

"Varric, you're a dwarf," Hawke said.

"I'm a surface dwarf," Varric said, "It's different."

"Different in the sense that surface dwarves grow their beards on their chests?" Fenris guessed.

"Oh-ho!" Varric and Hawke laughed, while Anders made a determined effort not to do the same, "Broody tells a joke. I'll mark it on my calendar, right next to-what did we agree to call our annum, Blondie?"

"Genteelia, I think," Anders allowed himself a grin.

"I don't want to know," Hawke said.

"Different in the sense that we're a little less crazy, Broody," Varric explained. "I have no idea why in the blazes anyone would willingly live down here."

"Oh, come on, it's not so bad," Anders joked. "Clean the taint off the floor, hang a few pictures, and it could be almost cozy."

"Compared to your current digs, Blondie, anything is cozy," Varric said.

"No, I think I'd prefer the sewers to the Deep Roads any day," Anders said, "I swear by Andraste and the Maker, I am never coming back down here again."

"Seconded," Hawke said.

"Thirded," Varric snorted.

"Fourthed." Fenris agreed.

"Well hey, if nothing else, at least it's brought us all closer together," Varric said.

"Closer to strangling each other, maybe," Anders snorted, not trusting himself to keep the conversation going without turning it around on someone with how frayed his nerves were after two weeks underground. "Do you have any other songs?"

"I've always got a song, Blondie," Varric said, digging through his coat pockets for the druffalo bones he kept in them. The slick instrument slid out from between his thumb and pointer finger to clatter on the stone, and Varric sighed. "... shit."

"... Perhaps you could use your left hand?" Fenris suggested.

"I can't keep a fast tempo with my left," Varric mumbled, retrieving the bones and staring at them for so long Anders felt guilty for asking. "... anyone wanna talk about Bartrand? My neck gets so tight when I think about him I could strum it like a lute."

"Lady Redeemer, no bones," Hawke said, "You mind, Varric?"

"No, no, go ahead, Killer," Varric said, stuffing the bones back into his coat pocket.

Hawke's voice was all smoke when he sang, low and deep in his throat and echoing through the cave. Anders would have enjoyed it more, but the damn dog joined in when Hawke started singing, howling in time with him on every drawn out note.

"She came to me one morning
One lonely day of mourning
Tears her face adorning
Andraste, Maker's bride

By light of flame she found me
For in the darkness I was walking
And the Void lay all around me
Without the Maker's light

She asked me sing his praise then
I said teach me the words then
To find my way to his side
Be it chant or song or hymn

And I begged her give me lyrics
To find that Golden City
So eager was my passion
To find meaning in this life

And so she taught me words that
Shaped the Chant of Light
So easy to begin
And yet weeks it took to end

Lady Redeemer of all men
Counseled me so wisely then
That I'd not walk alone again
But by the Maker's side

Oh, Maker, lend your hand outright
And let me rest here at your side
I'll sing your praise unending
You fill my heart with life."

"Not bad, Killer," Varric said. "Though I can't say I've ever heard Lady Redeemer as a duet before."

Hawke threw an arm around his mabari, and ruffled its head with an affectionate fist. "He always does that, any song."

"I can't imagine why," Fenris joked.

"Blondie, you want to heal that burn?" Varric joked.

Anders chuckled, but he was more concerned with the lyrics than the vocals, "Actually, do you mind if I ask you something? No judgment, just genuinely curious."

"Uh-oh," Varric said, shuffling to his feet and dragging his treasure pillow away from the fire, "I know where this is going, and I'm going to bed."

"As am I," Fenris declared, following him, "I'll take last watch."

"Oh for Maker's sake," Anders muttered; Hawke chuckled, to Anders' surprise, and even spared him a grin. The firelight played over his features, but if Anders was being honest, none of them looked like princes. Save for Fenris, who was spared by his race, two weeks of untamed facial hair had laid claim to their jaws. Their armor was crusted with blood and grime, and Maker, the smell. Anders made himself sick stagnating, but there was nothing to be done but grin and bear it, so he grinned back

"What is it?" Hawke asked.

"I just don't understand how a family of apostates could ever approve of the Chantry," Anders said. "The Maker, Andraste, that's grand, but the rest? I know you said the Chantry was there for you when your father passed but-... It's none of my business."

"You're right, it's not," Hawke said.

Well. That was a productive conversation. Good job, Anders. Varric had the right idea going to bed. Anders pressed his palm to the floor to stand when Hawke sighed. "I wasn't around when my father died. My family needed help, and the Chantry was there to give it to them. There's more than just templars in the Chantry; we knew every bastard in Amaranthine and Lothering, and knew when to run, but there's the Sisters, the Brothers, the Revered Mother, the Chanters...

"Most of their services come free and when they don't, there's the Chanters' Board for work. The Brothers were always there to take confession, some of the Sisters served as healers and were there to deliver Beth and Carver and perform the rites for Father. They taught histories, the Chant, told stories... Sister Leliana always used to spend time with Beth. She gave singing and lute lessons... There are good people in the Chantry."

"What happened?" Anders asked. "With your father. Beth said he took ill?"

"Darkspawn," Hawke said. "Three years before the Blight started. He was working with the Blackstone Irregulars, and they had a job to clear out a pocket of the bastards. Sword caught him, just there," Hawke set a hand to his side, just beneath his ribs, "Nothing serious. Healed up clean, then the infection set in. Gangrene and sepsis hit him, and he was gone. Just like that."

"I'm sorry you didn't get to be with him when it happened," Anders said.

"My own fault," Hawke shrugged, "It's done. At least Carver can't complain Father doesn't spend enough time with him anymore.... Your father?"

"Bastard," Anders snorted, shifting so he sat comfortably with his arms draped over his knees, "... You and Beth are so lucky to have any fond memories of the Chantry. My father was an Andrastian too, you know. He was an Anders, so not much choice there. When my magic manifested, he tried every Chantry-sanctioned remedy he could think of to 'cure' me. Stuffed my pillow full of embrium, put so many leeches on me to 'get the magic out of my blood' I was anemic for a year, and when all that failed, he drowned me."

"What?" Hawke sat up so quickly Anders laughed at him.

"What, you don't know?" Anders snorted, "You never read 'The Art of Parenting for the Good Andrastian?' If your child has magic, all you have to do is drown them. The magic dies before they do. He took me out to the river one day, to go fishing he said, and held me under the water until I passed out. I woke up to my mother pounding on my chest, breathing down my throat, screaming bloody murder and every prayer you could name.

"One of the Chantry Sisters, she helped. With all of it. Whatever it took to cure the curse. Couldn't have me bringing bad luck to the whole village. They tried for two years before they gave up and gave me to the templars, and that's all the Chantry's ever done for me or any mage. Beth... I don't know how she got away from all that."

"My father would never stand for that," Hawke said, with such a scowl it put a pleasant tingle in Anders' fingers.

"What was he like?" Anders asked.

"Strict," Hawke said. "High expectations. If you didn't meet them, you heard about it."

"You know you're the only person I've met with a mage parent you actually remember?" Anders asked, "If more mages were allowed to keep their families, people would learn not to fear them so much." Hawke made a sound of agreement, and Anders only realized he was smiling when he felt the pain of it in his cheeks. His face flushed when Hawke returned it, and Anders cleared his throat, patting the treasure he was leaning against, "So what are you going to buy when we get back to Kirkwall?"

"Drinks," Hawke said.

"I'm for it," Anders swallowed down the cloying taste of mana on his tongue, "Andraste's tits, Justice, I think I've earned it."

"Cider for you?" Hawke guessed.

"No, no," Anders said hotly, scowling at the blue veins at his wrist, despite their lack of a glow, "If I can't get hung after all this, I may as well hang myself." A tangle of tension tied up between his shoulder blades, and Anders clenched his fist until his nails dug into the heel of his palm, but it didn't help him understand Justice any.

"I'm guessing Justice doesn't approve," Hawke said.

"I hate not being able to talk to him," Anders muttered, dragging his nails along his scalp. "He's there, but he's not, and I don't understand half of what he wants from me."

"Your talk with Merrill didn't help?" Hawke asked.

"I forgot to ask about drinking," Anders sighed.

"You'll live," Hawke said. "Good food should be good enough."

"I'm so tired of good enough," Anders shifted to lean back against his stack of satchels and packs, "... Never mind me. I'm not sitting in a cell. I should be smiling. You have first watch?"

"Sure," Hawke stood, and left him to nightmares of darkspawn.

Anders was tainted. No sane man would dream the things he dreamed. His noctivagant soul was part of a hivemind, consumed by the Call and dead to the Fade. His father held him down while darkspawn spewed bile into his open mouth. Cave beetles wearing the faces of children burrowed beneath his skin. Glowing slimes pushed up his fingernails to crawl beneath them and into his blood stream. If he wasn't mad, he was near enough.

Hawke crawled out of Dog's unhinged jaw, and Fenris burst from both their chests. Anders gnawed off Varric's fingers, and spat them into Isabela's mouth. She grew into a broodmother, birthing ghouls, and Amell among them. He stared at Anders with milky white eyes and whispered of dead things until Anders screamed himself awake.

A cold sweat and three bleary eyed glares were there to greet him. The night terrors were a constant. They were worse underground, and there was nothing for Anders to do but weather them. He suffered. His companions suffered. Everyone was miserable. All in all, it was everything Anders had come to expect from the Deep Roads.

The days bled together until they stumbled upon what remained of the expedition. There at the Warden base camp a handful of darkspawn roamed aimlessly in the company of ghouls. Genlocks picked apart the Winters' corpses for their weapons and armaments, hunched over and gargling to one another in sounds too close to words for comfort. Arrows ended most, where the dwarven-born-darkspawn resisted magic, but there were still the ghouls and what remained of the men they'd been.

The ghouls clustered around the shattered remnants of the cart, half-submerged in the blight and slowly being overgrown with rotting flesh. All of them were men, and Anders wasn't naive enough to think the women had managed to escape. He counted a half dozen workers, and just as many Winters: none of them Eli. No one else had spoken with Eli, and Anders was starting to doubt he'd ever existed in the first place.

Ralf had existed; Miles had existed, though the men were gone now. Miles had rotted from the inside out, his body emaciated, his every joint swollen and peppered with welts that oozed sallow pus down his blackened skin. Ralf, Anders only recognized by his mutton chops, jutting out from his bloated face. He was long dead, his chest cavity hollowed out and eaten while Miles dragged what Anders guessed was his arm around the camp, sucking on the marrow like a pacifier.

An arrow ended him. Fenris' blade and Hawke's bow cleared out the rest, and Anders' magic burned the bodies. They made camp atop the expedition's grave, and Varric's stomach rumbled at the scent of burning meat. The poor dwarf made it a handful of steps away from the campfire before he was retching. Fenris swallowed frequently, a hand massaging his throat to keep the bile down, and Hawke had visibly paled.

Varric staggered back to the group, and threw himself down next to Hawke, lips glossed with spit and skin sleek with sweat. "Maker's breath, Blondie. You are one tough son of a bitch. This shit isn't making you sick?"

Anders shrugged, "You get used to it."

"Because that's comforting," Varric said.

"It's not really supposed to be."

And yet it was, if only because no life was better than life as a ghoul. They were two camps away from the surface, and Anders doubted they were like to encounter darkspawn again once they set off in the morning. A two day trip back to Kirkwall once they hit the surface, and the nightmare would finally be over. They'd be free of the blighted Deep Roads forever. Free of the dark. Free of the dead. Out, and up, back into the light with the life.

Notes:

Fanart
Fenris swatting the crow

Apples and Apostates
Shred of Blue: The events of this chapter as told from Hawke's perspective.

Chapter 79: A Day for Silence

Notes:

Hello everyone! Thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 1 Martinalis Late Morning
Kirkwall Chantry

A crow walked the rafters of the Kirkwall Chantry, its talons scuffing across the dusty wood and raining small motes down on the congregation. Hightown filled the pews, men and women dressed in their finest silks and velvets: dyed with red madder root and purple brasilwood. Lowtown filled the floor, men and women in plainer cottons and wools: dyed with blue woad and yellow marigolds. Darktown filled the corners, men and women in rags, dyed with nothing.

Chantry Sisters walked among them, carrying burners that filled the air with smoke and the cloying scent of incense. The whole of the congregation was already in mourning, and needed no encouragement, but the incense stung the eyes. The Grand Cleric's sermon was accompanied by a quiet chorus of sniffles and sobs, and tears and sweat washed away powder or dirt depending on the face. The air was stifling with the heat of a thousand candles and a thousand bodies, and so the crow paced, fluttering its wings to keep cool.

"We close this morning with a prayer from the Canticle of Trials, 1:14-16," The Grand Cleric announced.

"Though all before me is shadow,
Yet shall the Maker be my guide.
I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Beyond
For there is no darkness in the Maker's Light
And nothing that He has wrought shall be lost.

I am not alone. Even
As I stumble on the path
With my eyes closed, yet I see
The Light is here.

Draw your last breath, my friends.
Cross the Veil and the Fade and all the stars in the sky.
Rest at the Maker's ride hand,
And be forgiven."

The faithful repeated the hymn, and Grand Cleric reminded those gathered that the Chantry would be hosting plays throughout the day of Andraste's death, with the bonfires to begin at sunset. It went unspoken that the fires would be magic, conjured by the mages of the Gallows and enchanted to last throughout the night in lieu of kindling so that the smoke didn't suffocate the city. Brothers walked among the crowds with offering bowls, collecting tithe as the congregation dispersed.

The crow flitted from the rafters, and flew out the great twin doors of the Chantry, bypassing all. It soared through the city, feeling the sun warming its feathers and the wind blowing through them. It followed eddies and currents, aimless and free in the sky, far above the foundry smoke and the concerns of men who coughed and choked in the thick of it. It relished in the strain in its wings, the fresh air in its lungs, the racing of its heart, but a push on its mind reminded it to return to its roost, and so it made its decent into Darktown.

Anders landed in his clinic in an explosion of feathers. He arched his back, stretching his arms above his head and winning a loud pop from both his shoulders. Maker, but he'd missed flying. Three weeks underground was three weeks too long. The stone was alarmingly cold in August, and Anders danced across it to snatch his patchwork socks from the table and slide them over his bare feet. He shrugged out of his coat and shimmied back into his trousers, idly fantasizing a day when all of his clothes were enchanted to transform with him.

"So what was that?" Anders asked, "Not a fan of flying? I thought we were taking today off."

A ripple of blue ran up the inside of his left arm, and Anders chased it with his fingertips. "What? You want to practice?" Anders inhaled a breath of mana, and let it tingle through his veins. Sensation dulled in his left arm, and his veins glowed, and then cracked open with spirit fire. Anders watched Justice roll and stretch his fingers, and felt none of it. It was still a little surreal to see, but Justice seemed more comfortable with it than owning his entire body.

"It was bloody boiling in that Chantry," Anders mused, running his fingers up the inside of his forearm and over the slight bump in his wrist. Justice closed his fingers over his when Anders' reached his palm, and Anders grinned. "You want to try cold today? I can work with an ice spell, and you can see what you think. You should probably get used to it before winter rolls around."

Justice let go of his fingers, and Anders took it for agreement. He pulled on his mana, and let it shape into a thin film of frost on his fingertips. He ran them through the light dusting of hair on his forearm, tracing over the cracks of spirit fire and pressing on a few freckles. Justice's fingers twitched at the sensation, and Anders laughed. "Now picture that bone deep, and you've got winter in Ferelden. Wintermarch here with the wind in the mines can be just as brutal. Not looking forward to all the grippe we're going to have to heal."

The remark stirred an odd sense of malcontent in him, and Anders pinched the side of his hand, "What? Oh-come on, Justice, obviously I want to heal them if they're sick, I just meant it would be better if they weren't sick to begin with. Winter is hard on the refugees... Harder, I guess. Maker, I still can't believe Mark died while we were gone. I told the dumb blighter to stop drinking. I told him his stomach couldn't take it.

"And then there was Elissa's baby... crib death. She said he wasn't sleeping on his stomach... Maybe the foundry smoke? Lissa had just made him those swaddling clothes, too," Anders sighed at the ripple of reassurance he felt from Justice. Logically, he knew it wasn't his fault, but he hated watching his patients die around him. "I can't believe those bastards at the Chantry charged for the service. At least the Beshcals are alright. If something had happened to Thom because of that necklace I don't think I'd be able to forgive myself."

Anders let the ice fade from his fingers, and wiped what he could of the water from his forearm. He'd dry it properly later. Justice hated the rags in his clinic. So far, anything with an abrasive texture made his spirit recoil, alongside acrid scents and bitter tastes. "So what do you think? Winter seem like something you can handle?"

Justice gave him a thumbs up, and Anders laughed and wrung his hand down his forearm. "Now we just need to figure out how to let you use my mouth so we can actually talk to each other and Maker there is just no way to talk about this sort of thing without making it sound dirty," Anders laughed. "I think hands are easy since that's the focal point of my magic without a staff, but there have to be other ways to summon you without completely trading places."

"Why aren't you for that, by the way? Merrill said it was safe, and I know Darktown isn't the most appealing place, but I bet you'd like sitting in the grass in the forest, or walking along the beach, or swimming..." Anders wasn't expecting an answer, and couldn't make sense of the tangle of emotion he felt from Justice in response, "Do you think you could tell me? I know, it's not like my life is at stake right now, but... look I-it... I couldn't do anything for Karl, but you should be able to experience all that."

A shiver ran up his spine, and static down his arms. Anders closed his eyes and forced his breathing to slow; he relaxed, and felt as if he fell. When his eyes opened again it wasn't at his command, and sapphire light danced across the walls of his clinic. "I am trying, Anders," Justice's voice echoed from him, and Anders settled comfortably behind his eyes while the spirit paced, wringing his hands. "But without a cause to focus on? Your world overwhelms me. These sessions avail me, but there are so many more sensations than I could ever anticipate in the mortal world.

"I do not trust Merrill," Justice continued, "She is not like your Commander. She is ignorant to the dangers of blood magic, and there is a pull about her that speaks of demons. It is not the same as your grimoire, where the demons were dissembled - I know you mourn the loss, but it disquieted me. They were stripped of purpose and enslaved and it is not a fate I would wish on any spirit or demon. The pull about Merrill is something more. It concerns me, and I am not certain she is correct in thinking these transitions do you no harm.

"I laid witness to Eli as you did, but I witnessed him through your eyes. I cannot say if he was a figment of your imagination, but I know the thought troubles you. Your world is not like the Fade. There, such a complex creation would be a thing to be exalted, and not a sign of an ailing mind. It is a strange thing to reconcile, but I am trying. I have no wish to be a burden on your mental health, and you saw Eli immediately after our transition. It does not seem unlikely to assume the two are correlated.

"I hope it is as Hawke claimed and the lyrium lies at fault, but I cannot be certain, and neither can you," Anders bristled, and Justice massaged his palm with his thumb. It was disorienting to watch, considering how many times Anders had done the same when attempting to soothe Justice when he said something that seemed to distress him. "You would forgo this fact for compassion's sake. It is admirable, but misguided.

"I aspire to justice, and so long as you act in pursuit of it through the Collective and our work with the refugees, I am content. You asked me of my desires once, and while there is much I long to experience of the mortal world, I am not Wisdom. You are more important than my curiosity, and I will not risk you to sate it.

"I have no qualms continuing with these sessions, but if you experience more visions as a result then we will cease this, and I will limit myself to defending you when the need arises." Anders fervently wished they were two bodies and not just two minds. It made arguing all but impossible, but Justice must have felt his frustration. "I will not be swayed on this, Anders. You claimed to want me for your spirit, and swore to care for my well-being. I would be remiss not to do the same.

"I know we agreed would be a day of leisure for you. Your preoccupation with alcoholic beverages has not escaped me, but I cannot consent to you imbibing. I have no wish to experience the mind altering effects of these drinks again. It disturbs me immensely, and if you are determined to do me favors, I would ask only that you refrain."

Justice stopped pacing. He stood in the center of his clinic, spirit fire cracking through his palms and running up his arms. It flared at his heart, and raced down the flat of his stomach, chasing sharp hips and glowing faintly through his trousers. It was like looking at another person when Justice looked down at himself, and yet it was so undeniably him Anders couldn't quite disassociate from it. He wondered how Justice felt, and could only guess he didn't care with how often spirits changed their forms in the Fade.

"You are thinking of me again," Justice noted, "... I wish I understood your question. I miss our talks. This is not the same."

Anders fell into himself; the whiplash staggered him, and Anders hit one knee. Blackened dust fell like foundry ash from his skin as the cracks in his veins sealed shut, and Anders shook the last of it from his hair. "What did Varric call it? Magic dandruff? I should buy a broom for these chats," Anders found his tunic and dusted himself off with it before pulling it over his head. "I know it's not the same, but I think we're doing alright.

"Look I-... I won't have anything to drink," Anders sighed, gathering up the rest of his clothes and his satchel. "I miss it, but I don't need it. I'm just going to go and light a few candles, and spend the rest of the day at the Hanged Man. I'll... just have some apple cider or something. You know they're doing the Walk of Spirits through Lowtown tonight. Can you imagine us going?" Anders laughed, locking up as he left his clinic.

"We wouldn't even need a costume," Anders mused, waving to the few groups of refugees he passed. "How do you feel about all that? People dressing as spirits and parading through town?" Anders couldn't discern a response, and guessed that meant indifferent or ambivalence, "Apparently it's pretty popular here. It's a Nevarran thing, I guess. Seems a bit better than everyone sitting around mourning till morning."

"Isabela's going as Desire. She's got the purple body paint and everything, and I think she's going all out with the tassels," Anders spent a few minutes lost in that image until a nudge from Justice brought him back to himself. "Alright, fair, I can see why that wouldn't appeal to you, but she's bloody gorgeous." Anders hopped onto the lift, and hoisted himself into Lowtown, "I bet Beth's got something like Compassion picked out. Hawke... maybe Duty?"

Anders had no idea. He hadn't spoken to anyone but Isabela since they'd gotten back to Kirkwall. The four of them had stumbled through the city gates in the dead of night, and while Hawke had gone home, Varric had put him and Fenris up at the Hanged Man for the night. Anders had needed the bath and the food and, Maker, the bed. He'd gotten a chance to talk to Isabela the next morning. The pirate was just back from exploring her lead on her relic with Merrill, to no avail.

Fortunately, the girls' quest hadn't gotten them lost in the Deep Roads for an entire month. The most that Anders could get out of Isabela was that whatever had happened involved a library in Cumberland, a goat, and a jar of bees. According to Merrill, only the goat was an accident, and Anders wasn't sure he wanted to hear the full story. Unsurprisingly, Merrill wasn't interested in the holiday. Anders had managed a minute before the two of them were arguing about spirits and their classifications before Isabela steered them back into calmer waters.

Bartrand hadn't returned to Kirkwall, despite Varric's hopes. For all intents and purposes, the head of the Tethras House had vanished, along with any surviving members of the expedition. Varric suspected he'd fled to Rivain, but wherever he'd gone, it wasn't back to his family estate. It left Varric the de facto head of his family, and merchant prince of Kirkwall, though considering what it cost him, the dwarf was in no mood to celebrate.

"Varric and Fenris aren't going. We were all planning on getting shit faced, but I guess I'm already there living in the sewers," Anders joked, to what felt like a wave of contentment from Justice. Anders knew it meant Justice approved of his decision not to drink, but pretended it was his spirit laughing at his joke. "Probably for the best not to go, with Ser Aveline Valkilljoy as the new Guard Captain. I bet half the city will be in the brigs by the end of the night."

Anders had done a decent job of avoiding the guardswoman since he'd gotten back into the city, but the fiery redhead was part of Hawke's menagerie of misfits, and Anders didn't doubt she'd be present for Wicked Grace today. He pushed the thought away, and made his way to East Lowtown. A hex had been cleared for plays in honor of Andraste's death at the hands of the Tevinter Imperium, though Anders had no plans to watch them.

He'd read too much of The Search for the True Prophet to put too much stake in the Chantry's versions of Andraste. Lately, it felt like there was nothing Anders didn't doubt about the Chantry's teachings. The death of Andraste's sister, Haliserre, felt like an all too familiar tale. A fire had taken her, sudden and inexplicable, when the girls had been nearing puberty. What mage hadn't experienced something similar, whether it was a fire in a forest or a fire in a barn?

Why wouldn't the Chantry cover it up? They'd done the same to the Canticles of Shartan and the Canticles of Maferath. The Chantry was all too eager to forget forgiveness. To forget freedom. To forget that men, not mages, were the makers of Tevinter's oppression. To forget everything Andraste fought for and against. Anders stole a place for himself in line for the votive racks, and tapped his boot where his coin lay hidden. He had a few bits for candles, gifted from Varric when they'd returned to the city.

It was a bit a candle, and at this point Anders felt like he needed a silver. "I used to hate this part of All Soul's Day," Anders mumbled to himself, despite the looks it won him. He cared about Justice, not about strangers. "I used to think people celebrated it because they wanted to mourn. I thought it was as simple as choosing to be happy, as if anyone can actually choose how they feel. I didn't even realize I was lying to myself. I didn't care.

"The candles are symbolic," Anders continued. Most of the mourners around him ignored him; on another any other day, a man mumbling to himself would be sure sign of insanity, if not demonic possession, but on All Soul's Day the assumption was likely that he was talking to a dead man. Considering the last body Justice had possessed, it fit. "You like symbols, right? They probably remind you of home."

It was all the Fade was, after all, and a warm coiling in the pit of his stomach told him Justice agreed. "Well, it's a symbol of Andraste. She was burned at the stake in Minrathous. They call it the Second Sin, and say it's why the Maker turned from humanity again. When you light one for someone, you're turning the Maker's gaze on them. It's a prayer sort of like a torch, to help them find their way through the Void.

"I know you probably heard all about the Stone from Sigrun, and what the Dalish believe from Velanna or- fuck, Lyna. I forgot all about her. You liked her, didn't you? Do you want me to leave a candle for her?" Anders asked, and felt another flare of warmth in his chest in answer. "Alright. So that's... Lyna, Sigrun, Mother, Karl... Mark, Elissa's baby... Shit, Barkspawn. Is it ridiculous I'm thinking of lighting a candle for a dog?"

Anders couldn't discern the tangled knot of emotion he felt from Justice in answer. "Probably not. It was my fault." Maker, Amell had told him not to make his own spells. He'd given him a damn staff cleaved from the bones of an ancient dragon and inscribed with runes so powerful they were named in honor of dwarven paragons, and Anders still hadn't listened. Anders never listened, not until it was too late. "Sidona, Mhairi... Maker, what do I do for Velanna and Nate?"

Anders couldn't say if they were dead, but the thought haunted him as a very real possibility. Velanna would hate it. She wouldn't want some human tradition honoring her. Nathaniel would have appreciated it, though. "Ralf and Miles, too. How many bits is that? Eleven? Maybe twelve? Then there's... then there's Amell." Anders didn't need to think about it. Amell wouldn't want a candle. He hadn't believed in the Chant. Anders wasn't sure if he even believed in the Maker.

In the end, Anders lit twelve candles. One for Lyna, and the kind words she'd had for Justice. One for Sidona, and the kind words Anders hadn't had for her. One for Mark, and the senselessness of his death. One for Sigrun, and the sacrifice of hers. One for Elissa's baby, and the life he'd never live. One for his mother, and the life she had. One for Mhairi, and the apology Anders hadn't appreciated. One for Barkspawn, and the apology Anders owed him. One for Ralf, for dying too soon, and one for Miles, for dying too late. One for Karl, and everything that could have been, and one for just in case.

Anders spent the walk to the Hanged Man thinking of what All Soul's Day used to be: to Thedas and to Anders. A day for silence. It might have been fine before, when he had no one to mourn, but now he finally had a reason to break it. He'd heard the sermon. He'd lit his candles. The dead were dead, and Anders was looking forward to spending time with the living, but when he showed up in Varric's room no one else had a mood half as light as his.

Aveline's headband was gone, and her hair was wild, fallen about her face which was buried in her hands. Varric was standing by his casks, tankard in his left hand with circles beneath his eyes. Fenris was sitting with his arms folded over his chest, glaring holes into the table. Merrill was crying into Isabela's bosom while the pirate held her, a faraway look on her face.

"Who died?" Anders joked.

"Really, Blondie?" Varric sighed, "On All Soul's Day?"

"What, don't tell me someone actually died?" Anders asked, hesitating to take his seat. "Where's Hawke and Beth?"

Merrill wailed into Isabela's chest, and Anders felt his heart drop into his stomach. "Where's Hawke and Beth!?"

"Alive," Aveline said into her hands.

"For now," Fenris said.

"Don't talk like that!" Merrill pushed off Isabela to scowl at Fenris, the red veins like cobwebs in the whites of her eyes. "Creators... I can't imagine how terrified she must be. Surrounded by strangers. Watched all the time. She doesn't deserve that. Poor Bethany... she was such a sweet girl... poor Hawke..."

"What are you saying?" Anders demanded.

"Templars got Sunshine," Varric explained, voice hoarse and unreal to Anders' ears.

"No-that's not-" Anders choked on the taste of mana. "How?"

"Word got out," Aveline sighed, leaning back in her chair. "The Knight-Captain apprehended all of them. Bethany. Leandra. Even that tit, Gamlen. I kept the men on alert for Hawke, but the templars got to him first when he got home. 'A hanging offense for harboring apostates.' Maker, I've been pulling every string I can find, and it's barely enough to keep them from the actual gallows. I need your contacts, Varric."

"I already told you, everything my house has, Hawke has," Varric said, glaring into his tankard as if the ale were somehow to blame. "I got in touch with my guy in the Gallows and I'm greasing every wheel I can find. Shit, I haven't slept in two days. I'm doing everything I can, and it's costing me a fortune."

Anders felt sick; pain tingled in his finger tips, and bile welled in his throat, bobbing like a buoy every time he swallowed. Beneath that, a righteous fury boiled with the magic in his veins. His head swam with visions of molten silverite, rent limbs, and a river of blood. Anders pushed it down. Logically, he knew he couldn't storm the Gallows and bend the bars to Beth's cell to set her free, but the thought persisted. Maker, he could almost taste the copper on his tongue.

"Not here," Anders muttered under his breath, dragging his hands through his hair. His veins rippled with blue at his wrists, and Anders fisted his hands in his hair, "Beth isn't here; it won't help."

"Easy, there, Sparky, it's not the end of the world," Isabela said, "Have Justice think happy thoughts. Whipped cream, handcuffs-... maybe not handcuffs."

"Happy?" Anders laughed, smacking a palm full of spirit fire down on the table, "What about Justice is happy? Justice is righteous. Justice is hard. Justice is not this!"

"Settle yourself, mage," Fenris sneered. "None of this helps Hawke."

"Hawke!?" Anders laughed, "What about Beth? Who's going to help her? Maybe you can petition the templars for mercy for him, but not for her! Beth is in the Gallows right now-"

"Where she and other mages belong," Fenris interrupted him.

Anders stood up in a burst of veilfire, the back of his legs hitting hard stone and sending the heavy chair crashing to the ground. "You know nothing! They will throw her to demons! A girl ruled by Fear made to stand against Pride while plagued by Despair! Have you any idea the demons that whisper 'cross the Veil to mages torn fresh from their homes? The spirits of Valor and Honor and Purpose that do battle on behalf of such somnambulant souls?

"They call it a Harrowing, for there is no other word! It a cowardly test the templars have devised, and force upon all mages, and it is neither good nor right! It is evil and unjust, and even a splinter of fear, a seed of doubt, will unmake the girl! The demon will devour her mind and the templars will destroy what is left of her! And should she survive, it will spare her nothing!

"The slightest insurrection, and the templars will take her mind! You condemn your master for the lyrium he wrought beneath your skin, but say nothing of the brands they press upon a mage's brow! You think the loss of your memories marks you? That you are unique in your suffering!? That mages do not fear the same loss of self everyday they spend as prisoners in the wretched Gallows!?"

"Do not compare me to mages!" Fenris snarled, gripping the table so fiercely it splintered beneath his gauntlets. "I am not cursed with magic! I do not suffer the whisperings of demons! I did not willingly make myself into an abomination and lay ruin to my mind!"

"You would dare-!" The Fade echoed in Anders' voice; his pulse so thick with mana he could almost step into the Fade.

Isabela heaved his chair upright, and forced him down into it with a hard shove on his shoulders, "You're not putting out any fires with this pissing contest! Does anyone here have any real ideas? Hawke might die. Did you all forget that? I'm not happy about Beth either, but she's the only one we know for sure isn't going to hang for this."

"Hawke won't hang," Aveline said firmly.

"But it's the law, isn't it?" Merrill sniffled, "I should have been here. Poor Beth. She could have come to me. I would have hid her."

"You weren't the one Hawke trusted to look after his family, Kitten," Isabela said with a sneer tossed and caught in Aveline's direction.

"Don't you dare accuse me of having any part in this," Aveline snapped. "You have no idea what I've done for the Hawkes or what Hawke has done for me."

"Look, Aveline, no one's accusing you of anything, but maybe when Sunshine asked about the Circle-" Varric started.

"I never named her!" Aveline interrupted.

"What are you talking about?" Anders demanded.

"She was scared," Aveline said, "She wanted information. I asked around. Conditions at the Circle, visitation rights for families, rules of correspondence."

"You did what!?" Anders half stood before Isabela wrenched him back down.

"I did what she asked!" Aveline said, "The mages there-"

"Are prisoners!" Anders snapped.

"Only the troublemakers!" Aveline shot back.

"And who is to say-" Anders started.

"Blondie, this isn't helping," Varric interrupted.

"Who cares if it's helping!?" Anders yelled, "She led the templars straight to them!"

"That's not fair," Merrill said, her voice still watery, "We don't know that, and if she did it wasn't on purpose."

"It doesn't matter!" Anders argued, "You don't ask around at the Circle! You don't tell the templars there's an apostate living in the city! You sure as shit don't spend time with that same apostate's family so everyone knows who you're asking for! Of all the ignorant, idiotic, thoughtless-"

"She wanted to go!" Aveline shouted.

"Good for her," Fenris snorted. "Now she is kept safe from others as well as herself, and others are kept safe from her."

"You're lying," Anders said.

"You're not worth the air," Aveline said flatly. "She asked me for information on the Circle. She's tired of running. Of hiding. Of being afraid. I asked around. The Circle isn't what you say it is. With good behavior, visitation rights start-"

"Good behavior?" Anders laughed. "Are you fucking serious!?"

"Bethany would never want to be in the Circle," Merrill said fervently, "Never."

"Look, what Sunshine wanted isn't important right now," Varric said. "If she wanted to go willingly someday, that would have been her choice, and we wouldn't be here right now. The fact is the templars found out first, and now everyone is fucked. Killer, Leandra, Uncle Greasy. The Gallows are one thing, but the gallows are another. We need them out. I'm doing what I can, but if it comes to the Coterie, and breaking them out, then we all need to be on board with getting them out of Kirkwall, and that's why we're here. Now are we all agreed or not?"

"Agreed," Fenris said, "I owe Hawke."

"Me too," Isabela said.

"He's my friend," Merrill said.

"Maker..." Aveline sighed, digging her knuckles into her forehead, "Yes. Yes, agreed. I can work with rotations, give us a window to get them out of the city."

"I have some friends," Anders said. "I'll see what I can find out."

The Collective couldn't find out nearly enough. They hadn't been any help with Quentin, and they weren't any help with Bethany. The apprentices were kept locked away, out of even Bancroft's reach, and Anders had yet to master the form of a rat to break his way into the Gallows. Maker, they hadn't even found the password for the Victim's Door. There was no getting Bethany's phylactery from them until she passed her Harrowing.

If she passed her Harrowing.

Notes:

Fanart
Anders lighting candles

Chapter 80: My Failing and My Falling Part One

Notes:

Hello everyone! Thank you for all your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 8 Martinalis Early Evening
Kirkwall Darktown

Rock wraiths. Ancient dwarven legends. Dwarves so corrupt the Stone rejected them, as Sigrun had so often feared for her fate. Those were what they'd faced in the Valdasine Thaig, and what the volcanic eruption had saved them from when Justice had still been controlling his body. Anders had been lost within himself, but he'd heard the tale from Varric. A creature so massive it dwarfed even ogres, radiating magic and energy.

A slab from the ceiling had slain it. The volcano that was to thank for their rescue lay in the eastern Vimmark Mountains, near Ostwick, and the explosion had rained ash on the city. Their Circle had responded by bringing their mages out in force to conjure a barrier over the entire city. It was the largest consolidated magical endeavor the Free Marches had seen in over a decade, and wouldn't you know it, it had saved thousands of lives.

No one cared. Not Fenris, not Meredith, not anyone. Mages were still magic, and magic was still a sign of the Maker's hatred, and anyone who bore it still suffered. Anders didn't think it was possible for him to hate Aveline anymore than he already did, but learning more about conditions at the Gallows made him livid. Bancroft's contact Jake told him everything he never wanted to know. Correspondence and visitation were allowed a year after a Harrowing. One letter a week, one visit a month, the former read and the latter supervised by templars.

There was nothing good in it. Nothing right. Nothing but oppression and injustice and the ever-looming threat of Tranquility. Anders had experienced the templars' trust and leniency firsthand, and it wasn't something he would wish on his worst enemies. He thought of the sweet girl who mistook weeds for elfroot and blushed bright red all the way to her ears, and thought of her in the Circle, and felt torn between disgust, outrage, and heartache. Beth deserved better.

Anders hated that there was nothing he could do for her. The Victim's Door stood strong, all two-hundred and seventy-seven planks, guarding the phylactery of each and every apprentice who lived locked away in the darkest depths of the Gallows. Bancroft still hadn't made inroads with the raiders. Samson was still a ghost. The Coterie had extended their arrangement to another month before they were willing to open the tunnels. Everything had hit a wall at once.

Anders hated it. Justice hated it. It made them feel powerless. Purposeless. It was a dangerous way to feel, and they poured themselves into their work with the refugees to keep themselves focused. For the nonce, Anders climbed over one of many collapsed beams in the dilapidated mines beneath Kirkwall, the Beshcals on his heels. They beat a cautious path through Darktown; the chokedamp was at its worst in summer, but complacency was the most dangerous thing a man could fall prey to in Kirkwall.

After near a year in the wretched city, Anders had learned like the rest of the refugees to follow the rats. There were in abundance, as always, and marked the safest passages, but Thom and Abigail were Lowtowners. They weren't used to the way the winds howled through the caverns in early autumn, the fetid stench of the sewers, the rush of roaches or other skittering vermin. Abigail bumped into his back, her eyes on the graffiti that covered the walls, illuminated by the flickering light of a campfire that carried the distinct scent of burning dung. "Poor darlings..." She mumbled.

"They get by," Anders said.

"Don't we all," Thom agreed, dodging a roach that bolted under foot. Anders stepped on it. "You should come by for dinner more often."

"Thanks, Thom," Anders said; it was easier than arguing.

"You said Evelina takes care of six children?" Abigail asked, "All by herself? Down here?"

"Pryce and Walter help," Anders said; there was no sense elaborating Pryce worked for smugglers and Walter begged on street corners.

"Begging?" Thom guessed, "They'll want to stick to East Lowtown, over in the foundry distinct. The guards don't patrol there, and no gangs ever keep it long, but it gets a lot of traffic in the morning."

"You can pass it on," Anders reached the ramshackle mess of rotten pine and blackrock that passed for a home and knocked on the rusted bronze plank that passed for a door. Sparks danced with roaches on the ground as it eased open, and a face full of pockmarks and spotty stubble poked out. "Hey Walter. You feel like letting me in?"

"Feel like going out," Walter muttered, his voice breaking between boy and man, "Begging's best in the evening. I don't see why we have to stay here for some-"

"Walter!" Evelina called from inside.

"Yeah, come in," Walter wrenched the door the rest of the way open; the shriek of metal on stone made both the Beshcals wince.

There was still nothing by way of furniture, but the bedding that made up the far wall was fresh and the kids were fed. Six dirt-speckled faces peered up at the three of them from around Evelina's skirts, and while no one was in their Chantry-best, their hair was brushed, their eyes were wide, and their mouths were closed. "Anders," Evelina smiled, her eyes not lingering on him long before they fell to the Beshcals, "This must be...?"

"Thom and Abby," Anders waved at the Marchers, who stepped forward to shake hands. Introductions were brief, and Anders found a spot for himself to sit alone and conjure cats and birds and all manner of creatures for the children to chase while the Beshcals got to know them. Anders wasn't sure he could call it justice, but he supposed he could have rationalized it if he tried.

It was their responsibility as Wardens to see the evil the Blight had wrought undone, and the Blight had driven hundreds of refugees to Kirkwall's shores. It was for them to provide for them, but it still felt more like compassion than justice. Justice wasn't a child's laughter, or a would-be parent's smile. Justice was fire and fury and freedom. Anders tapped his fingers on his knee, trying and failing not to think of Beth, or the restless spirit inside him.

A tug on his sleeve distracted him. Anders glanced over at Nika, the youngest girl in Evelina's care. She was two big eyes and two big knees, and at present, one very large frown. "Big frown," Anders noted.

"Tell me a story," Nika ordered, settling down beside him.

"You don't want to play with everyone else?" Anders asked. Nika shook her head, and Anders spent a thoughtful moment chewing on his bottom lip, "A story..." Maker's breath, did he even know any children's stories? There was Andraste and the Wyvern, but Anders hated that story. He could still remember the Chantry Sister in Tallo telling him that story to keep him trusting in the Maker, and keep him from putting up a fight when his father drowned him. There was the Witchwood, but the templars had always used it to remind young mages they were too foolish to think for themselves. "How about the Doggle-Boon Behemoth?"

"What's a doggle-boon?" Nika asked.

"It's nothing," Anders grinned.

"It's a story about nothing?" Nika's frown deepened, "That's boring."

"It's a story about a monster made of nothing," Anders said.

"Like the darkspawn?" Nika guessed.

"Exactly like the darkspawn," Anders said; he'd heard it all of once, until he'd met Oghren. The dwarf had been determined to learn the poem for his son, and Anders had heard it muttered under his breath one too many times while they were drinking not to know it.

"Are there Wardens in the story?" Nika asked.

"There are Wardens in the story." Anders promised.

"I like Wardens," Nika grinned.

"I sure hope so," Anders mussed the girl's hair, and wracked his memory for the melody, "Alright let's see...

"Beware ye well, my son and belle,
Beware ye well the Calling.
For you will face, with time and grace,
Our failing and our falling.
My failing and my falling.

"We sought the beast at farthest east
And paid a bloody tithing.
So will I will that you would kill,
And end its fabled writhing.
And end my fabled writhing.

"A doggled-boon our hopes had strewen,
A bargain drained and straining.
So gird in steel and train your zeal,
And pray its will is waning.
And pray my will is waning.

"A bander snatched and hander matched,
No jabber whilst you're walking.
Do not be swayed to drop your blade,
When danger comes a-stalking.
When Mother comes a-stalking.

"Your eyes are green as its had been,
The doggle-boon behemoth.
Your heart is true and arrows too,
But can you two unsee wroth?
For I could not unsee wroth.

"For though you win, hold fast your twin,
There's danger celebrating.
Renew this day, and call callay,
But now begins the waiting.
As then began my waiting.

"Beware ye well, my son and belle,
The red, your will it leeches.
And wail you will for kin to kill,
Until your heart it reaches,
Unless my lesson teaches."

"So they killed it?" Nika asked eagerly, pulling her knees up to her chest, "They killed the doggle-boon? Or the darkspawn? Or...?"

"They killed it," Anders assured her.

"But they didn't win?" Nika frowned.

"Well... it's a darkspawn, sweets. They come with the Blight, and the Blights always come back," Anders shrugged.

"Always?" Nika pouted.

"At least until all the Archdemons are dead," Anders allotted, "But hey, there's only two left, and then the whole world is safe forever."

"Because of Wardens," Nika said.

"Because of Wardens," Anders said.

Nika scrambled across the floor at his agreement, and flung her arms as far as they could go about his chest. "What's this for?" Anders asked, patting her back with the hand that wasn't trapped between them.

"Saving the world," Nika said, and ran off to play.

Anders felt Justice's enthusiastic agreement in the memory of Amaranthine through two separate pairs of eyes. Even in retrospect, Anders couldn't decipher who they'd been before they'd joined. The memories were tangled, and he couldn't say which perspective was mage and which was spirit. It made him dizzy just to try, and so he didn't. The important thing was that they'd done it, and even if the Wardens hadn't thanked them for it... well, Nika was good enough.

The little girl, as it turned out, was also good enough for the Beshcals. Anders wasn't surprised she stole their hearts, even with their original intent to adopt one of the boys. Walter was bitter and Cricket was wild; Pryce might have been perfect, but the boy had his sisters. He worked every odd and dangerous job Athenril gave him, all without complaint and all for a few bits, to provide for the girls. He'd never think to leave them, and couldn't stand to lose them.

Anders tried and failed not to think of Hawke, but the similarities were too strong. The man had done everything right, and it hadn't meant a damn. It was Tuesday again, and that meant Wicked Grace at the Hanged Man, but Anders wasn't sure it would be worth the trek without Beth. It wasn't much of one, after leading the Beshcals and Nika out of Darktown and back to their home in Lowtown. The Hanged Man was less than a five minute walk away, but Anders hesitated all the same. What was even there for him now?

Varric. The man had become a fast friend, listening to his stories from his time as a Warden and giving him a weekly reprieve from the horrors of Kirkwall. The lunches Anders shared with him and Franke were one of the few things keeping him relatively sane in the wretched city. Merrill had promised to gather ginger root for the dwarf for tea to quell the phantom pains in his hands, but she didn't know how to prepare it with elfroot to make sure his blood didn't clot and infection didn't set in.

Anders turned the short trip to the Hanged Man long dragging his feet. There was always Bela, but Anders wasn't sure the gorgeous pirate was worth stomaching Fenris and Aveline. Add in the fact that he was still on uneven footing with Merrill, and tonight was bound to be miserable. Anders stopped outside the door to the Hanged Man and listened to the rambunctious revelry within with sinking spirits. He'd much rather spend the evening with his spirit, helping Justice learn a new sensation, but before he could make up his mind Merrill showed up and make it for him.

The tiny elf met him outside the tavern, two bright green eyes peering out from beneath a bundle of furs and scarves to fight back the autumn chill. "Anders! Oh dear, aren't your ears cold? You don't have a scarf. Everyone needs a scarf, especially in winter. I could make you one if you like. I made one for Beth. It was a lovely bit of red, but it was so hard to find the madder for it. You know you can only harvest it once a year and-I'm babbling. I'm sorry. How are you?"

"I'm good, Merrill, thanks," Anders lied, doing his best to ignore the discomfort roiling inside him. Justice had every right to be distressed, but Anders didn't know how to reassure him without talking. "Did you find the ginger for Varric?"

"Oh yes, I have it right here," Merrill said eagerly; she reached for her satchel and stopped, "I should probably wait until we get inside. It's all a mess in there. I can never keep it clean. Too many little things; it gets disorganized so easily."

"My satchel gets like that, too," Anders said.

"Oh, I doubt it gets as bad as mine," Merrill grinned, "I've seen your clinic. You keep everything so neat and organized. I don't know how you do it."

"Well if I didn't I'd never find what I need for my patients. Besides, satchels aren't shelves, they're more-... Maker," Anders sighed, cutting himself off at the sight Fenris cresting the steps that led to the Hanged Man. There was no mistaking the shock white hair and matching tattoos, glowing faintly through the heavy fur coat the elf had draped himself in.

"Hello Fenris!" Merrill waved at the elf's approach. "We were just talking about winter coming up, and how everyone should have a scarf. Your coat is lovely though, was it a gift from-"

The door to the Hanged Man swung open, and a patron came stumbling out on two left feet. The poor bastard made it two feet down the street before he doubled over and wretched.

"Charming," Fenris said flatly.

"And this is one of the nicer taverns around here," Anders quipped.

"They let you in," Fenris said, "It can't be that much nicer. Sour ale. Vomit. The smell of desperation..."

"Do you like anything?" Merrill asked, lips pursed.

"I like quiet," Fenris shouldered past them into the tavern.

"Remind me why we come here again?" Anders asked, unable to help the surge of affection at the sight of Merrill trading barbs with her fellow elf.

"Because of Hawke," Merrill said softly, eyes on her feet.

"... Maybe don't remind me," Anders sighed. "Ready?"

"For what?" Merrill blinked.

"Nothing, Merrill," Anders followed Fenris inside, Merrill on his heels for what was bound to be a long night. It wasn't as if Fenris was wrong. The Hanged Man was no Crown and Lion. There was no pine burning in the hearth, or rushes lining the floor. Catalpa wood filled the air with a bitter fragrance and an excess of smoke, and Anders' boots stuck to the planks with every step. The thought of Merrill and Fenris' bare feet on those same planks sent a shiver of sympathy up his spine.

Isabela was already in her chair, her boots kicked up onto the table, the spill of her dress leaving her thighs on display. Anders let his eyes wander over them with a vivid memory of his fingers denting deep brown skin, sweat trickling between them, the air heavy with the sound of skin on skin and laughter broken by moans. Isabela flashed him a grin for his stare, and patted the seat on her left. Anders returned the grin and took it.

"Well, you look gorgeous today," Anders couldn't help mentioning.

"Rude," Isabela huffed, dipping the tips of her fingers into her ale and flicking the droplets at him, "I always look gorgeous."

"Oh, absolutely," Merrill agreed.

"Careful, Kitten, I'll break your heart," Isabela grinned, snatching Merrill's arm as she walked by and dragging her into the seat on her right, "This one is wicked. Did I tell you the jar of bees was her idea?"

"Oh, it was nothing really," Merrill buried a hand in her hair, cheeks tinted pink, "It was just a thought. I didn't think you'd actually try it."

"You didn't tell me anything," Anders said, "Like why your relic would be in a library?"

"It wasn't just a library," Isabela huffed, "It was the library. You know, the Great Cumberland Library? It's right up there with the Archive of the Crows. They keep a lot of shit in those repositories. Do you want to hear the story or not?"

"I'm more interested in the relic you lost," Anders admitted. Anything worth the lives of two-hundred slaves that interested a crime lord in the Felicisima Armada had to be more than a pretty bauble.

"Good luck, Blondie," Varric snorted, passing out drinks to him and Fenris, "I've been barking up that tree for months."

"How is it you don't know what it is?" Anders asked.

"It was in a box," Isabela said.

"And you didn't open it?" Anders asked, "You managed to resist the urge?"

"It was locked," Isabela huffed. "It was a locked box!"

"Hasn't stopped you before," Anders pointed out.

"What do you want me to say?" Isabela scowled at him.

"Nothing," Anders shrugged, "I just found it curious, that's all."

"Well you keep your curiosity over there, thank you very much," Isabela flicked another round of ale at him, "You had your go."

"I'm not arguing against another," Anders grinned.

"Well you'll have to make a better argument than that," Isabela snorted, "I-"

The door opening cut her off, and Aveline entered, her freckles and the shadows under her eyes the only color on her face. She was still in full Guard Captain armor, the emblem of Kirkwall emblazoned in gold on her breastplate, her helmet tucked under one arm she tossed to the table, where it rattled among cheese plates and other appetizers. "They're out," Aveline declared, falling heavily into her seat with the clink of metal on stone.

"Hawke?" Varric guessed.

"All three," Aveline said. "Maker, the favors I had to call in. If half the city didn't owe Hawke their lives, I think he'd have lost his. It took reminding the Knight-Captain he owed Hawke for saving his men, calling in favors from the Viscount's son, the Starkhaven prince, and even that tit Meeran for the Knight-Commander to realize Hawke was more trouble than he's worth. You'd think it wouldn't take a week to realize it, but... they're back. They're safe."

There was a collective hesitation, and a collective clatter as the four of them hit their feet. "Good luck," Aveline warned them. "I can't get two words out of him."

"It's Hawke," Varric said, swearing over his coat when buckling it proved a struggle. "Most days, you're lucky to get one word out of him." Merrill dodged around the table to buckle the dwarf's coat for him. "Thanks, Daisy," Varric sighed. "You staying here then, Aveline?"

"I need a drink after all that," Aveline said, picking up her helmet as they left Varric's room. "But I'm telling you, he's not talking to anyone."

"Well we should still go see him," Merrill said, "He's our friend. Is he okay? I mean, they didn't hurt him, did they?"

"... On second thought, maybe you should go see for yourselves," Aveline decided.

"Because that's not ominous or anything," Isabela huffed.

"He's alive," Aveline snapped, "That's good enough."

"Andraste's dimpled ass it is," Anders said, "How bad is it? Do I need my staff?"

"How would I know?" Aveline demanded, "He's a little roughed up. They all are."

"Better than dead," Fenris said.

"Because that's not an argument I've ever heard before," Anders snorted.

"Ladies, ladies, can we not?" Varric interrupted, pushing the two of them apart to head down the stairs. "Hawke first. Fight later."

"Good plan," Isabela said. "Minus the fighting. Unless Justice gets involved, of course. I need more Love and Lyrium material."

"A whole month trapped underground didn't give you enough?" Varric wondered. "Did I mention Blondie doesn't remember any of it? You could have a lot of fun with that."

"Stop," Fenris said.

"Yes, refrain," Anders said.

"Eighth of August, 9:32 Dragon, Blondie and Broody agreed on something," Varric said, waving goodbye to Aveline as the guardswoman made for the bar, and the rest of them made for the door and out into Lowtown. "I say we grab Hawke and drag him for drinks until he can't piss straight. I know what Aveline said, but she isn't exactly what I'd call persuasive."

"You can say that again," Isabela snorted.

"She isn't exactly what I'd call persuasive," Varric repeated obediently.

Hawke's hovel wasn't far from the Hanged Man. It was a hex over, and no less charming than the first time Anders had visited. Broken glass was strewn across the stoop, the stone stained with piss and beer. "PAY UP" was still graffitied across the door, though it was joined by scrawlings of "FILTHY SPELLBIND" and "DAMNED ROBES." Merrill hesitated on the steps, and twisted her scarf between her hands at the sight.

"Is it like this everywhere with humans?" Merrill asked.

"Everywhere the Chantry is, this is," Anders said.

"I don't think I like the Chantry very much," Merrill decided.

"You shouldn't, Kitten," Isabela said, "You're too sweet for it."

"The Maker abandoned us long ago," Fenris said. "You should stick to your own gods,"

"I think that's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me," Merrill mused.

"It's as like to stay that way," Fenris said.

"Fenris, are we friends?" Merrill asked.

"No," Fenris said.

Anders snorted. Varric knocked once on the door before snatching his hand back with a pained snarl. "Left hand," Anders reminded him.

"I know!" Varric snapped, and dragged his mangled hand through his hair, the empty fingers of his glove catching and bending on the golden strands. "Shit... Fuck, I'm sorry, Blondie."

"Hey, don't ever worry about it," Anders assured him. "It'll take a while to get used to it."

"Yeah," Varric sighed.

Isabela took his place and banged a fist against the door. It stayed stubbornly shut, and an awkward silence broken by awkward coughs filled the air.

"Maybe he's not home?" Merrill guessed, when the door swung open.

Hawke stood with a dagger drawn and clutched to his chest, and didn't lower it at the sight of them. He was more than just a little roughed up. The man's nose was broken, as though an ogre had pinched the bridge of it. Burst capillaries painted the left side of his face every shade of crimson and purple imaginable, and his bottom lip was split open. He sucked hard on the cut, and the sight of missing teeth made Anders' gums hurt.

"Maker's breath, Hawke," Varric said. "You-"

"No," Hawke interrupted, gesturing between Merrill and Anders with his free hand, "Not you two. I can't. I'm sorry. I can't put Mother through that again. I'll keeping paying your rent-but I can't-I'm sorry."

The door closed.

Merrill met it with sniffles. Fenris with a derisive snort. Isabela with a frustrated one. Varric with disbelief, and further knocks that went unanswered. Justice was furious. Anders felt the spirit roiling inside him, dashing up against his skull and skin and wearing down the shell they shared with a roar so full of feeling Anders could almost make out the words. Spirit fire shot through his veins like lightning, and "Atrocities!" followed it like a clap of thunder.

Anders dug the heels of his palms into his eyes and begged, "Not here." Someone took his hand, and led him down the steps and through the city. Distantly, Anders hoped it was someone he trusted, but he couldn't see. He couldn't hear. He could barely think. How were they ever to ask or expect Lirene and Cor's aid sheltering apostates when this was the fate of any who dared? When only princes, viscount's sons, and mercenary lords had the power to stand against the corrupt theocracy that ruled Thedas?

It was impossible. Better they surrender now to the anger that boiled in them both, and let it scald the flesh of every templar between them and Bethany. Better they let that same fire melt the bars to her cell, and see at least one innocent soul freed if there was no other way for them to fulfill their purpose. Better they do something, than suffer the strands of time winding tighter and tighter about their neck like a noose, until the Knight-Commander kicked their soapbox out from underneath them and they hung with the rest of the Gallows.

A hard smack brought Anders back to himself, and he found himself blinking into an old mirror, eyes like amber and a selfish soul that still remembered how to smile. "Careful, I'm into that," Anders quipped, rubbing away the sting Isabela had left in his cheek.

"This is bad, how, exactly?" Isabela joked, her expression twisting into something like a frown, "Are you alright, sweet thing?"

"Peachy," Anders lied, looking around to try to determine where Isabela had taken him. It looked to be an alley, though which or where he couldn't say. "Where are we?"

"Not going full-Justice on Hawke's doorstep," Isabela said, "I thought you had a handle on all this."

"I do," Anders scowled, "But you saw him! The templars beat him bloody just for being Beth's brother. Maker, I just-... I don't know how I'm going to get any support for the mages' plight when helping us is a hanging offense."

"Some people like getting hung," Isabela quipped. "Speaking of, you look like you could use a drink."

"Justice doesn't let me drink anymore," Anders sighed.

"What, he'll let you get tit-faced but not shit-faced?" Isabela grinned. "Come on, you're way too worked up about this. One drink, you'll feel better."

"I can't," Anders ran his hands through his hair, and did a quick check to be certain no one had nicked anything from his satchel while he'd been busy losing time. "I promised him I wouldn't."

"Yawn," Isabela rolled her eyes, "He sounds like a slave driver."

"Don't call him that," Anders snapped. The words fell out before the taste of mana ever touched his throat, and Anders rolled the tension out of his shoulders while Isabela blinked at him. "Look, it's not like that. He's a spirit of Justice, okay? He's not a slave driver. He used to lecture me for owning a cat, for Maker's sake."

"It was a joke, Sparky," Isabela groaned, "You do still know what those are, right?"

"Sorry," Anders sighed, "Look, I'll be fine, I'm just not feeling up for Wicked Grace anymore."

Isabela flapped a hand at him, "Fine. Be boring. You know where to find us when you pull that stick out of your ass. Or you know," Isabela waggled her eyebrows at him, "Spirit."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that." Anders decided. He made the walk back to Darktown, his mood slipping out from under him. Maker, beaten and bloodied just for having a sister for a mage. There was no way Anders could ask Lirene or Cor to help him now. They already suffered raids from the guards and the templars, when there was no reason to suspect either of them for harboring apostates.

Anders spent the evenings walking the warrens Hawke had shown him, his thoughts turning back to the man at every twist in the caverns beneath the city. The poor blighter had been a mess. The guilt Anders felt at leaving him that way threatened to drown him, especially when it coupled with the thought of Leandra and Gamlen in a similar state. He'd been too angry to think of healing. The memory frightened him, and he couldn't blame Justice for it. It wasn't like him. He was a healer, not a fighter.

The thought wouldn't stick. He fought. He fought every day. Against templars, and darkspawn, and darkness, and disease. He wasn't the same man who sat numb in the Chantry after he'd called down his first firestorm on a band of bandits. Or maybe he was. Maybe that was the worst part of it. Maybe he'd always had the capacity for fury and the incapacity for guilt. Maker knew the templars had always angered him, he just hadn't had the means to do anything about it.

He had the means now. Anders made the trek back to Hawke's home late that night, when the streets were lit with stars, and knocked on the door. Hawke answered it the same way he had before: after several minutes delay and with a knife in his hand.

"I told you not to come by here," Hawke said.

"This isn't my first Harrowing, remember?" Ander said, grateful Justice's outrage had subsided, and they could focus on what was important in the here and now. "You have to need healing after all of that."

"No," Hawke said.

"What do you mean, no?" Anders demanded, "Have you looked at your face?"

"Everyone's looked at my face," Hawke frowned, "What do you think is going to happen if these bruises are gone tomorrow? If Gamlen stops limping? If Mother stops crying? Everyone will know I know a healer, and that puts you in danger. That puts all of us in danger. I'm sorry, Anders... but you and I-... I'm sorry."

The door shut.

Notes:

Inspired Works
Splitting Lips and Splitting Hairs: Hawke's capture as told from Cullen's perspective as written by Pastel Plugins.

 

Fanart
Hawke with a black-eye (Sketch)
Hawke with a black-eye (Colored)
Hawke with a black-eye (Final)
Anders at Hawke's door
Anders and Nika

Chapter 81: My Failing and My Falling Part Two

Notes:

Hello everyone, welcome back! We've hit a few milestones, 17k Hits and 700 Kudos, and as always I wanted to say thank you for all your wonderful comments, subscriptions, bookmarks, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 22 Martinalis Sometime
Somewhere

Maker, it was dark. Shadows skittered in the corners of his eyes, scrambling into nothingness whenever he turned to catch them in the act. Anders walked backwards, one foot after the other, watching the walls and the way the sickly green light from the Veilfire in his hand slithered across it until he bumped into one of his companions. He turned, the heel of his boot scraping through grime, and stared into the face of a darkspawn, skin peeled back from flesh to reveal a face full of gaping holes and twitching muscle.

Then he blinked, and it was Hawke again. "Anders?" The archer asked, blood and gristle in the cracks between his teeth one second and gone the next. "Anders?" Hawke asked again. The hand he set on Anders' shoulder was grounding, and for a moment the shadows stilled. "You still with us?"

"Yeah..." Anders ran a hand through his hair, the strands cold and damp after Maker knew how many hours down in the dark with the dead. "I'm here."

Somehow, he kept walking. The floor beneath his feet shifted between rock, and flesh, and blood, and shadow, and hands, crawling with claws up his legs and dragging him down by the sleeves of his pants until he hit his knees and forced everyone to halt. He could have resisted them, if not for the rock. It was the same. The same swath of white and black granite they'd passed when they'd set out, hours upon hours upon hours ago.

"It's the same," Anders twisted the words into an unholy litany while his tongue turned to rot in his mouth, "It's the same rock. It's the same, it's the same, it's the same."

Hawke caught him, all too-familiar hands on his shoulders, pushing him up from where he curled into his knees and forcing him upright to stare into the bleeding eyes of a ghost. Then his face cracked, and his nose broke, and suddenly he was less Amell, and more Hawke, "No it's not. Anders, it's not the same rock. It's alright."

"It's the same," Varric snarled, and kicked the rock so hard his toes fell off and scattered like mice into the dark recess of the Deep Roads, "Damnit! How many senses are you missing, Broody? Humor? Direction? What's next, are you blind and deaf too?"

"Don't test me, dwarf," Fenris shot back, but the lyrium was all wrong, red and glowing, cracking out through dusky skin and bleeding black. "You asked me the way north, this is north!"

"This is bullshit is what it is!" Varric screamed, his jaw falling slack and hanging low down his neck. There was something familiar in the eyes he sprouted and the way his limbs stretched and rattled, but Anders couldn't focus on anything but the rock.

"It's the same," Anders sobbed, "It's the same, it's the same, it's the same!"

Hawke pushed his bangs back from his face, and forced his eyes up to meet his, red and reassuring in the infinite black, "Anders! Focus. It's not the same-"

"The fuck it isn't!" Varric shouted.

"You're not helping!" Hawke yelled back over his shoulder. Dog started barking, but the echo that came back was a shriek's wail. No one seemed to notice or care.

"Because anyone but Blue's been any damn help down here!" Varric raved, dropping his laden satchels and ripping off his coat and the rest of his clothes, "Fuck Blondie! Fuck Broody! Fuck Bartrand! Fuck you! Fuck this fucking damp! It's in my fucking lungs and I can't fucking breathe and the walls are closing in on us and it's all your fucking fault! You said you could get us out of here, elf, and you led us past the same damn rock-!"

"Enough of the rock!" The lyrium came alive, bright and bold and beautiful, like rubies encrusted in Fenris' skin. "You care so much about the rock!?" The elf slammed a fist through the rock, and it shattered in an explosion of granite and dust. "There! Now it is not the same!"

"All of you, shut up!" Hawke shouted, "Fenris, sit the fuck down! Varric, put your damn clothes back on! Anders-"

"It's the same, it's the same, it's the same," Anders wept the words until he lost sense of them, and everyone around him. A hard pinch to the crook of his neck brought him back to Hawke.

"Look at me," Hawke ordered, and Anders obeyed, but Hawke's skin was blighted, blistering and rotten with festering sores and sunken sockets, and he was no more real than Eli. "You can do this. You're a Warden."

"He was a Warden-!" Varric started.

"Varric!" Hawke bellowed, and the very air seemed to shake with it. The archer snatched up a discarded glove and flung it at the dwarf's bare chest, "Put your damn clothes back on!"

"Fuck my clothes," Varric hit the ground, and pinched the heavy leather glove between the two remaining fingers on his right hand, "Fuck them. Fuck them. Fuck-" Varric dissolved into sobs. Fenris paced the length of the cavern, shattering every stalagmite he passed, and the barking mabari persisted.

"Anders. Focus. Please," Hawke begged, grabbing Anders' face in his hands, "I need your help."

Anders swallowed down the bile in his throat, and forced himself to meet the man's eyes. They rolled out from Hawke's sockets, and Anders screamed. Hawke's body fell apart, strips of skin peeling away and funneling endlessly into his gaping mouth as the darkness swallowed them both.

Anders jerked awake still screaming, every muscle tight. His cot was damp with sweat, the canvas soaked through and his quilt in a knot around his feet. His tunic was ruined. Anders had learned long ago to stop wearing it to bed, but he couldn't bring himself to undress before he fell asleep. Lately, he couldn't bring himself to do anything. He didn't have the energy. If not for his nightmares, Anders doubted he would even have the energy to get out of bed, but they jolted him awake, so awake he stayed.

If it could be called being awake. Anders ran a hand through his hair, unwashed for five nights now. The closest Anders came was running sweaty palms through the oily strands before tying it back. He stayed on the edge of his bed, unmoving and unmoved, until the thud of a fist on his clinic door and the urgings of his spirit pushed him to his feet. He couldn't explain it, or even find the will to want to. It wasn't a cloud over his head, or a stone in his stomach; it was nothing.

A nothing so profound it felt like the Void had taken him. The darkspawn hivemind consumed his nights, twisted with his memories of the Deep Roads and every other waking horror that left him exhausted for his days. The Coterie was running him ragged; Harlan had extended their agreement to yet another month of healing before they opened up the tunnels. The fire Anders might have felt at the runaround a month ago had long since ceased to burn, and turned to cinders.

They were warm enough to keep him working with his patients, but rest was more energy than Anders had to spare. He missed lunches with Franke and Varric. He missed dinners with Thom and Abigail. He missed time with Evelina and the kids, with Lirene and Lissa, with Cor and the Dogs. He hated the halt of it all. The nothing. The look of pity on Selby's face when he told her about the Coterie's extension, and the look of utter indifference on Bela's when he missed yet another week of Wicked Grace.

Anders gathered up the ashes from his makeshift hearth, and sprinkled them haphazardly in the corners of his clinics like Evelina had suggested to keep out the vermin. There was no sense worrying about the rats. Anders hadn't made any process with the transformation, and he was beginning to doubt he ever would. There was always Bancroft, Jake, and Bardel once they were inside the Gallows, but Anders wanted to do more than escort a few frightened mages through the warrens.

He wanted to be in the thick of it. He wanted to break down the Victim's Door; he wanted to bend back the bars to the apprentice's cells; he wanted to tear the sunburst brand from a templar's hand and see that silver sword of mercy buried hilt deep in the bastards; he wanted justice. Maker, did Anders want him. The spirit was the only thing holding him together, and Anders was only holding him back. He hated it, but more than that he feared it.

Anders had no idea what his melancholy might be doing to Justice. He hated it. He hated himself for having it. He hated that he didn't know how to fight it. He hated that he didn't know how to fight at all. Neither of them did. They were fire and fury and righteousness, unrelenting and unrestrained. They weren't subterfuge and subtlety, and it showed. They didn't know how to fight this battle, and the thought that he might waste months if not years to the Coterie and Harlan's empty promises terrified him.

All the while, Bethany and every other mage in the Gallows suffered. Anders cared about his patients, but he cared about mages more. If his nightmares weren't of the Deep Roads, or of Amell, they were of his Harrowing. He thought of how he had Compassion there to save him, and how no spirit would be there to save Bethany. Justice was right. There were any number of demons that could latch onto the poor girl, from Despair to Fear to what little hints of Rage Anders had seen from her, and he couldn't imagine her holding her own against any of them with Pride bearing down on her.

Anders tried not to think about it, but there were few other places he could turn his thoughts of late. In the lull between patients, he'd find himself rubbing his hands raw in the wash, picking at his cuticles until his nails looked sunken, or running his hands through his hair until the strands he dislodged made webs on his fingers, thinking very determinedly of nothing. It was early evening when the company of a friend and Justice's persistence finally broke him from his doldrums.

Varric was coping. The dwarf's injury wasn't nearly as severe as Eylon's had been. He could still dress himself, down to the golden hoops that glittered on his ears, but Anders wasn't naive enough to think the amputation hadn't changed him. The dwarf was never without his gloves, and he'd taken to stuffing the missing fingers to compensate for the loss. They stood out against the rest, unerringly straight and stiff and utterly inept at supporting his crossbow or his quill. The dwarf had to learn to write all over again, as far as Anders knew he was meeting with limited success.

"Hey Blondie," Varric offered by way of greeting, pacing restless on the floor of his clinic with his thumbs stuffed into his belt. The three false fingers on his right hand tapped in unison against his hip. "Long time no chat; you mind if I sit?"

"That's a chair," Anders waved a hand towards one of the many crates encircling his table, and Varric sat. The poor blighter might have deserved a better friend, but if nothing else at least he couldn't ask for a better healer. "Can I get you anything? Water? How are the fingers?"

"Back in that thaig being used as darkspawn toothpicks, probably," Varric shrugged, "The tea's been working out so far. Tastes like shit though. I hate ginger. Tastes like... fuck, I don't know, that kind of ginger taste that makes the back of your throat swell up, you know what I mean?"

"I get like that with cinnamon," Anders found the lone metal cup to his name, and a breath of mana filled it with water. "Still like it though-" They fumbled the cup in the hand off, and it slipped through Varric's fingers, water sloshing over the table and onto the dwarf's trousers.

The man leapt up with a curse, his mangled hand clenched into a fist, or a macabre parody of one. His thumb and pointer finger curled, but the three stuffed ones stayed mockingly straight. "Son of a bitch," Varric gave the crate a vindictive kick while he smacked at the strain on his trousers, but the wood was rotten, and the planked splintered and caught his boot. "Fucking flaming shit-ass damn-"

"Hey, it's fine," Anders righted the cup, the memory of Varric's Deep Road's breakdown fresh in his mind from his nightmare. The dwarf wasn't running through Darktown shrieking and streaking, but an amputation wasn't a wound that ever healed, and wasn't something to take lightly. Anders gestured to the foot Varric still had stuck in the crate, "Need a hand?"

"A few fingers, maybe," Varric chuckled reluctantly, and gave him a wave of allowance. "Fuck, I'm sorry, Blondie. I broke your-... chair thing."

"It was a shitty chair thing," Anders grinned, and freed the dwarf's boot. "I've got plenty. Pick another."

Varric picked a new crate, and Anders refilled the cup for him. He set it on the table rather than hand it off. "Left hand."

"I know," Varric sighed, "It's too bad Blue doesn't let you drink because I could seriously go for one right now."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Anders offered, and Maker save him, he didn't mean it. He didn't have the energy. A poultice for the pain, he could handle, but he didn't want this conversation. He wanted to crawl back to his cot and stay abed, away from the world and all its fruitless obligations.

"No, no," Varric spared him, and Anders hated the breath of relief he let out. "No. I'm not here about that. I'm not the only falling apart, Blondie, I'm just the only one doing it literally. I know, you're probably having the time of your life martyring yourself down here, but it's not too hot topside either. Broody crawled into a bottle and I haven't seen him since we found out about Sunshine, bribing the gangs to leave Daisy alone when she wanders Lowtown at night is bleeding me dry, and I think Aveline is one more game of Wicked Grace away from arresting Rivaini for the fuck of it."

"So why are you telling me?" Anders asked, "Tell Hawke. Have him make everyone play nice."

"That's why I'm here," Varric said. "Shit, getting Killer to talk before Sunshine was like pulling teeth. Now? Forget it. I figured a little time, a few drinks, he'd be back up on his feet, but it's not happening. It's been two weeks now and every day he's down at the docks, staring out at the Gallows. His mother went to Aveline, Aveline went to me, and I'm going to you."

"Did you forget Hawke hates me?" Anders snorted, "He doesn't want any mages near his family, remember?"

"He doesn't hate you, Blondie, he's just scared shitless," Varric said, "Fuck, who wouldn't be after that? Look, I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it was important. We've tried everything, but Hawke won't talk to anyone. I know it went to shit fast, but you two had a bit of a thing for each other for a while there, and with how close you kept to him in the Deep Roads-... Do you think you could try? Just see if he'll come to Wicked Grace tonight or something."

Maker. Anders suffered a sigh so heavy it took his head down with it, and left him propping his forehead up on his fingers. "Varric, I'm not even coming to Wicked Grace tonight."

"Come on, Blondie, don't make me beg," Varric said. "When have I ever asked you for a favor?"

"There was that time you had me do your hair," Anders mused, and Varric chuckled. The humor fell on him like a shroud, and Anders didn't doubt he'd be buried in it someday. He thought of Hawke in the Deep Roads, and the man's insistence that he needed his help, and sighed. "Fine, fine. Is he at the docks now?"

"He's never anywhere else," Varric said.

"Anders to the rescue," Anders sighed to himself later, hunched down under his coat and dragging his feet down the crooked streets of Kirkwall on his way to the docks. That was the problem with people. Nothing came without a catch. There were never any favors, just debts to be repaid, and Anders' boots were full of nothing but his feet. He couldn't afford the tax social interaction was putting on him lately, and perhaps the worst of it was he knew it wasn't like him.

He loved people. He loved his patients. He loved talking. He talked too damn much. It was all anyone in the Circle had ever said of him, and while he might have been lazy in the past, he'd never lacked for energy the way he did the past few weeks. Just the walk to the docks was draining, as bad if not worse than the many expedition he'd suffered with the Wardens. If not for Justice's warmth in his chest and the comfort of their bond, Anders doubted he would have made it to the piers, but made it he did.

Hawke wasn't hard to find. The archer was at the far western docks, on one of the abandoned piers furthest out into the Waking Sea. The wood had long since rotted, logged with water and battered half to driftwood by the waves. Dog was with him, the mutt having fled to the guard the day the templars had taken Hawke captive. Aveline had cared for the mabari for the week it had taken Hawke and his family to be set free, but if the templars had gotten their hands on it, Anders didn't doubt they'd have beaten it along with the rest of Hawke's family for the sport of it.

The planks sagged and cracked as Anders' made his way across, a few outright snapping when he put too much pressure on them. There was nothing quiet in his approach, but Hawke didn't bother looking up. Anders supposed Dog's lacking of barking made it clear he wasn't a threat, but for some reason Anders suspected the man wouldn't have been moved for anything. If he'd spent the past two weeks on the pier, it seemed clear he'd given into despair over the loss of his sister, and Anders couldn't blame him.

Anders took a seat beside him, and let his legs dangle over the edge. The air was heavy with the musky scent of rotting wood, the salt of the sea, and the whisper of Ferelden that clung always to Hawke. Anders glanced at him, but the archer kept his gaze fixed on the Gallows. His face was marginally better. The bruises had turned sallow, and the cut on his lip had scarred. The swelling in his left eye had gone down, and he was left with a smattering of red and orange and other sunset colors where the bruise had been.

Anders tried to think of something reassuring to say, but the words wouldn't come. He knew what the conditions in the Circle were like. The old fortress had been used to house slaves in the time of Tevinter, and no matter who ruled Kirkwall, the Gallows never changed. The name alone was proof the Chantry would rather see mages hang than waste the coin it took to provide them. Anders had been furious when Amell had told him the First Enchanter knew of the ritual to reverse possession, but that it was never used because it was too costly.

So mages were cast to demons, and the ones that fell to them were slaughtered, all because it was more economical than saving them. Too much lyrium. Too many mages. Too much risk. But it was possible. It could be undone. There was no rhyme or reason for Harrowings, or the inevitable fate of mages who failed them. Demons were lured and bound and mages were made to fight them when the meekest of them, mages like Bethany, might go their whole lives unnoticed by demons otherwise.

"How bad are they?" Hawke asked suddenly. Anders glanced at him, but his eyes were still on the Gallows. Red as they were, there was no fire left in them. "Harrowings. How bad are they?"

"... Do you really want me to answer that?" Anders asked.

"Yes," Hawke said.

"Bad," Anders said. "They take you in the middle of the night. Templars. Lots of them. You don't know what's going on, or where they're taking you... If you're going to be made Tranquil. Killed. Raped. They gag if you make noise so you don't wake the other apprentices, drag you if you won't walk, or carry you if you struggle. Then they bring you to the Harrowing chamber. In Kinloch... it's the only place you can see the sky.

"How's that for the Circle's idea of mercy? A little glimpse of moonslight through stained glass before the end. K-... a friend, wept so loud he never even heard the rules of his Harrowing before he woke up in the Fade. But.... they tell you that you have to fight a demon. That they'll kill you if you fail. Then the First Enchanter takes your hand, and shoves it into a bowl of lyrium. It hurts. Andraste's knickerweasels, it hurts. It's like ice, so cold it burns, and when it hits your heart?

"Then you wake up, and you're in the Fade, and nothing makes sense. Spirits and demons and mages shape everything, and you can't tell one from the other. It's not just a battle. That would be too easy. They come and they talk to you and you think you can trust them, and the next thing you know a demon has a hand around your heart and fingers threaded through your thoughts. It's not easy. It's not gentle. It's bloody harrowing. ... I'm sorry, Hawke."

Hawke nodded. The man lost himself to the motion, pain laced through his expression in the draw of his brow and the quiver in his jaw. Anders watched him and thought inexplicably of his mother, and how she must have felt watching her only son handcuffed and carted off to prison. A farmer from Tallo would have no way of knowing what conditions in the Circle were like, but Anders knew she had wept. He'd seen the tears when she'd thrust the pillow into his hands, rivers turned fast to rapids in the few seconds they'd had together before the templars pulled them apart.

And now she was dead. Anders shifted to lean back on his elbows and watch the sky. Blues and violets bled together with a hint of red as the sun fled beneath the horizon, so far from the gold and emerald of the Fade. Maker, Anders missed it, and not just because Justice had lived it, and they were one. He missed it for himself. For Compassion. For being the only place he had any hope of seeing his mother again. For being the only place a mage could feel relatively safe and confident in his abilities, when no one was binding demons to your dreams and forcing you to fight them.

"How did you survive yours?" Hawke asked eventually, his voice hoarse but steady.

"I had help," Anders shrugged. "My spirit fought the demon with me."

"Justice?" Hawke guessed.

"No..." Anders felt the lump in his throat, and wondered how many more minutes of clear communication he had left in him. "A different spirit. A spirit of Compassion. She found me, when I was taken to the Circle. Spirits... they're virtues. Compassion is one of the weakest. Faith, Hope... Justice, they're the strong spirits. The things people rally behind. Compassion is just... something people cling to whenever it's offered. It was what I needed at the time, I suppose.

"Beth... Maybe a spirit would help her, but it's rare for them to notice most mages. I'm a spirit healer. I draw them. Compassion already knew me. If a spirit were going to help Beth, it would have to be something like Valor or Justice. Harrowings.... they're bloody twisted. Spirits can sense it, and they're drawn to right the wrong they can feel there. Beth's lived her whole life on the run. She's a strong girl. A spirit of Fortitude might notice her. Or she might make it on her own. It's always Pride they make you fight, and Beth-... well she's not-...."

"She's not," Hawke agreed.

Beth wasn't proud. She didn't jut her chin and put her foot down when someone challenged her, she muttered and cast her eyes to the ground. She ran and hid. It was exactly what the templars wanted from mages, and exactly why they pitted them exclusively against Pride. The demon wouldn't have much of a foothold with her, but Anders couldn't explain that with his jaw shaking. He thought of his Harrowing, of what the demon had offered him, of Compassion's arms encircling him and pulling him away before he could sell his soul for a few seconds of freedom before the templars struck him down.

Anders inhaled for four seconds, held it for seven, and exhaled for eight. Four, seven, eight. Anders lived by the numbers. Taken together, they were one of the few things he could use to bring himself down from a panic attack. It wasn't foolproof. Nothing was. It was day by day and if the wound were still fresh Anders doubted any sort of breathing exercise could have saved him, but Justice might have. Anders felt his spirit's anger like a fire in his chest at the memory, battling back the memory of the lyrium and its icy coil, and relaxed in time to hear Hawke start talking.

"I was seven," Hawke said, voice still rough, "When Beth was born. I remember my parents arguing as Mother went into labor. Father wanted to go to the Chantry to beg for a midwife; Mother wanted him to stay. Twins, and she wanted to risk it rather than risk him, but Father wouldn't hear it. He left, and it wasn't as if she could chase him. 'For the children, Leandra,' I remember he said. I was too young to understand what it all meant, but I understand why you hate the Chantry. Mother did too, then.

"Father brought back a midwife. With the stress... when your magic manifested when we fought about the Chantry, that's not the first time I've seen something like that. Beth did it growing up; Father did it then. He paced, lightning on his fingers and fire on his every exhale, telekinesis making everything in the damn house float. The births went fine. Maybe I just didn't realize how lucky we were, but...

"I remember the way the room smelled. Like shit, and piss, and blood. So much damn blood, all over the sheets and on the floor, and the midwife's hands. Mother was holding Carver and crying, and Father handed me Beth. She looked like shit. Still bloody, pink and wrinkled, squalling like a damn gull, but Father said, 'That's your little sister, Bethany. You're going to take care of her, and your little brother Carver, and your Mother. You hear me?'

"The way he said it, I knew I didn't have a choice. So I said, 'I hear you,' and Father left with the midwife. For all he and Mother knew, that was the last time they'd ever see each other, but the midwife didn't turn him in. Father came back that evening, and packed up everything that was important. Food. Clothes. Blankets. All of it, but Mother was in no condition to travel. They agreed then and there if the templars came, he'd take us and go.

"It was always like that. It changed on a bit. If Father was caught, we'd run with Mother. If Mother was too sick, we'd run with Father. Nothing was permanent. Nothing was important. Carver mattered. Beth mattered. That was it, but when I was seven, when I was eight, when I was nine, when I couldn't carry both, it was just Beth. You take Beth, and you go. That was what Father always said. I spent years playing hide and seek with her, pretending it was just a game, and then it happened.

"I was sixteen. Beth was nine. Carver was a shit. Always getting into fights. Always getting into trouble. Anything for a bit of attention from Father, no matter how negative. Spanked, switched, smacked, he'd settled for anything. He never understood why we couldn't draw any attention to ourselves, or that all the time Father spent with me was just to get me ready to take his place. No matter how many times Father took him by the ear, he never listened. He always fought with all the other boys, and Beth was always standing up for him.

"I was just back from Amaranthine when they ran in from the fields. I had a girl there. Maverlies. She had green eyes, and a gap between her front teeth that made her whistle. We were going to enlist under Howe together, but then Beth's magic manifested. She was crying, could barely get the words out, kept saying it was an accident, but I knew. She was a mage, and nothing else mattered. 'You take Beth, and you go.' So I did. We left that night.

"Gave it all up for her. Always did. Always swore I would. When Carver died... And now..." Hawke stopped, choked down what Anders swore was a sob, and didn't continue. Anders had no idea what he could say to comfort him that wouldn't be a lie, and so said nothing, and it felt an age before Hawke spoke again. "Aveline says correspondence starts after a year. Do you know-... do you know if they tell the families? If a mage fails their Harrowing?"

"They don't even tell the other apprentices," Anders said honestly, and cringed at the long, slow breath it drew from Hawke. "Families aren't even supposed to ask about mages that get taken to the Circle... I'm sorry, Hawke."

"Sorry doesn't help Beth," Hawke said. "... it was my fault."

"What?" Anders sat up and rolled over to face the man, "No it wasn't. It wasn't anyone's fault but the bloody templars. They're all a bunch of bastards, Hawke, you can't-"

"It was my fault," Hawke interrupted him. "I made you heal Gamlen. I didn't think. The other dockworkers. They saw him throw his back out. He made up some bullshit about Andraste's Ashes, but no one believed him... At least you're safe now... They think Beth is the Darktown Healer, and it's all my fucking fault."

"That's-..." Anders faltered, unable to process the implications of Beth taking the fall for him. "It's still not your fault. I agreed to heal Gamlen. If anything it's my fault. I've been healing refugees since I stepped off the boat. Sooner or later, someone was going to have to pay for it. And Beth... Look, Hawke, I... have some friends. I haven't had much luck with them lately, but I might be able to get a letter to Beth, or at least find out if she's alive."

Hawke turned to stare at him, the whites of his eyes as red as the rest, "You'd do that for me?"

"I'd do it for Beth," Anders said.

"Thank you," Hawke said.

"You don't need to thank me," Anders said.

"I'm thanking you anyway," Hawke said.

"You're welcome."

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
A little less like my father and more like my dad: Hawke's backstory, as told by Hawke

Chapter 82: Pain and Bane

Summary:

Hey folks. As always, thank you for the comments and kudos. They really make the story worth it. Thank you for reading.

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 5 Parvulis
Planasene Forest

The Free Marches were a far cry from Fereldan. The people were different, the foods were different, even the weather was different. It was Kingsway, and Kingsway, much like August and Solace and every other month in Fereldan, would have meant rain. In Fereldan, by now the skies would be grey, the roads would be littered with carts sunken into the sodden ground, and the cloying scent of autumn decay would be mingling with the stench of wet dog.

Maker, did Anders miss it.

The Free Marches were beautiful this time of year. The skies were clear, the ground was firm, and there was a light chill in the air that made every breath taste crisp and fresh. The weather warranted little more than a scarf, and Merrill had graciously knit him one to replace the one that had been stolen from him. While the elf had many talents, Maker bless her, knitting wasn't one of them. The scarf was coarse and uneven, the sides were unraveling, and it had been clumsily dyed with shades of yellow and orange that came together in such a way as to resemble cat barf.

Anders had been speechless when Merrill had proudly tied it about his neck, especially after seeing the exquisite paintings that littered her small home in the alienage. Thank the Maker, the girl had taken it for gratitude, and gone on to ramble about how Arianni, another Dalish in the alienage, was teaching her how to knit for a bit a lesson. As far as Anders was concerned, Merrill should have asked for her coin back. The scarf was a mess, but then so was Anders, so who was he to judge?

Weeks had gone by, and Anders still hadn't made any progress with either the Coterie or the Underground. He wasn't sleeping well, he wasn't eating well, and the less said of his hygiene the better. Hawke was counting on him, and Anders still hadn't managed to get any news of Beth, let alone get a letter to her. He couldn't transform into a rat to save his life, and apprentices in the Gallows weren't allowed windows, which meant there was nothing his crow form could do for Beth, just like there was nothing it could for Karl.

Anders told himself not to think about Karl, and much like everything Anders did in life, he failed at it. Walking through the Planasene forest in search of regents for his patients, all Anders could think about was the month he spent overturning every rock and bit of bark for some sign of Andraste's Grace. There was as much sign of it now as there had been then. From the canopy to the underbrush, everything was green without the slightest hint of white. Weeds, grass, herbs, all of it looked the same to Anders. If not for Merrill singing softly to herself at his side, Anders didn't doubt he'd have forgotten what elfroot looked like.

It was some sort of Dalish nursery rhyme, and Anders tried to focus on it instead of his failure with Karl, and future failure with Bethany.

"Heart shaped leaves with veins of green:
Elfroot, to ease the pain.
Flat capped and gray that grows in the clay:
Blightcap, the hunter's bane.
Spindly with thorns like a great demon's horns:
Felandris, marking the veil.
Loose leafed and tall with a high purple stall:
Deathroot, to make the mind frail."

The verses were hummed under the little elf's breath as she made her way through the forest with him, occasionally plucking bits of elfroot or spindleweed for the wicker basket on her arm. Merrill might not have had Varric's voice, but her singing wasn't as disastrous as her knitting. Apparently Velanna's shrill shriek was a voice unique to her and not all Dalish women.

"Shame Beth isn't here to have heard that," Anders said. "Poor girl couldn't tell elfroot from dandelions."

"It's just a silly little song for children, really," Merrill said. "The Keeper used to sing it to me when I was little, after I was given to the clan at the Arlathvenn."

"Oh, of course," Anders snorted. "Feeble minds and demons horns, what child isn't comforted by that?"

"I was," Merrill said. "That song helped me remember different herbs that would help the clan. It's a Keeper's job to remember everything. Even the dangerous things. Even the things people want you to forget."

"Like blood magic?" Anders guessed. Merrill's silence seemed answer enough, so he continued. "How do you do it?"

"Well um..." The Dalish shrugged and rubbed at her sleeves, "I normally use my forearm. It's the easiest access point and with long sleeves-"

"No," Anders pinched the bridge of his nose and resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "I mean, how do you deal with your clan casting you out over it? Don't you resent them for it?"

Merrill continued without answer, a vine rising from the forest floor to catch her foot and carry her over a moss-covered log. Anders stepped after her, bark breaking underfoot and filling the air with the scent of rot. The foliage around them leapt to life at the sound, crows and crackles taking wing in a panic all too reminiscent of how most folk reacted to blood mages and abominations. Anders couldn't help resenting the little blighters, and they weren't even people. He couldn't imagine Merrill not resenting her clan.

"Well?" Anders asked, easily cutting the little Dalish off in a few long strides. He plucked up the elfroot she had been reaching towards, and Merrill blinked wide emerald eyes at him, but Anders knew better. The innocent act was an act. Merrill had practiced and perfected it. As a mage, a Dalish, and a maleficar, she didn't have a choice. None of them did.

"You have pretty hands," Merrill said.

"I have pretty what?" Anders asked.

"Pretty hands," Merrill repeated, "Has no one ever told you?"

"Don't change the subject," Anders said.

"You do, though," Merrill reached out to take one such hand, and ignored the ripple of sapphire from his disgruntled spirit that came at the touch. "Your nails are worn down past the tips of your fingers, and your skin is ripped all around the edge, like you've worked them to the point of falling off."

"If that's your definite of pretty suddenly this scarf makes a lot more sense," Anders mumbled, shaking free of her grasp. "What do my hands have to do with your clan?"

"Everything," Merrill said. "Do you resent your patients just because your hands are raw?"

"Of course not, but that's different," Anders said.

"I don't think it is," Merrill shrugged, and stepped around him to continue their search for regents.

"Of course it is," Anders argued after her, "Your clan abandoned you. They don't need you. My patients need me. Kirkwall's mages need me. They need you too. Why not stand with us? With the Collective? They'd be grateful for your help."

"I am helping them," Merrill bounced the wicker basket on her arm, half full with a variety of herbs meant for his clinic.

"They need more than just salves to heal the bruises templars leave on them," Anders said, letting Justice's fire add an echo to his voice, "We could do so much more for them if we worked together. Once I can get access to the Coterie's tunnels, the Collective and I will be able to start smuggling mages out of the Gallows, but they'll need help on the outside. Someone to teach them how to survive. There are elves in there too, you know. With your help-"

"I said no!" Merrill whirled on him, a fire behind the emerald in her eyes that lit them all the colors of autumn and of death. It faded fast, and Merrill dropped her basket to pace a few yards away from him. Finding a log not so rotten as to crumble at her weight, she sat and buried her face in her hands. "Dread Wolf take them. Creators know my clan would."

"You clan would what?" Anders asked. Merrill sniffled into her hands in answer, and Anders retrieved the basket to take a tentative spot beside her. His mind turned while Merrill wept, and Anders didn't have it in him to feel guilty. The answer was right there in front of him. For at least half the mages in the Circle, the Dalish were the answer. He didn't need to risk the Dog Lords, or Lirene, or any of his patients when it came to elven mages. The Dalish would take them in, and they'd be safer there than in any alienage across Thedas. It was brilliant. If not for Merrill crying, Anders might have laughed. "Merrill, are you saying your clan would take in mages?"

"Well, why not?" Merrill laughed for him, though Anders couldn't account for the bitterness of it. "They already took in that half-blood. Creators, I can't believe the Keeper would do this."

"What half blood?" Anders asked. "Do what?"

"Hawke... saved someone," Merrill scrubbed at her face and sat up. The whites of her eyes had been dyed a bright red by her tears and her skin was flushed, but her voice was steady enough.

"And this is ... bad?" Anders guessed.

"Yes," Merrill said. "I mean-... no, but it's not fair. Well, I suppose it is fair, but it doesn't feel fair-but... Do you remember I told you about Arianni? She's teaching me how to knit?"

"How could I forget?" Anders gave his hideous scarf a tug, and Merill continued.

"She's... from my clan, or she was, before the Blight. She fell in love with a human," Merrill managed a grin as bitter as her laugh, "It's forbidden, you know. It doesn't matter how clever, or how beautiful, or how-... exciting they are... We're the last of the elvhen. We have to perserve our culture. We have to."

"... Merrill?" Anders prompted when the silence stretched, and Merrill lost herself to thought.

"Sorry," Merrill sniffed. "She had a son with a human, so she had to leave the clan. She went to Kirkwall, but her son was a mage, and without a Keeper... Arianni went to the Circle, and her son ran away."

"Smart boy," Anders mused.

"He ran to his father, and his father sent him to this ex-templar. Thompson? Tamson?"

"Samson?" Anders supplied, and to his shock Merrill nodded. Somehow, Hawke had managed to find Samson without the Collective's resources and in less than half the time Anders had been searching for him. The things the man could do for mages if only he put in the effort.

"I think so. He helps runaway mages... sometimes. He works with pirates to free them - not good pirates like Isabela - and sometimes the pirates take the mages he sends captive instead. One poor girl-... It's a shame you weren't there. Not that it's your fault, she just-..."

"... Gave into demons?" Anders guessed.

Merrill nodded and went on, "Arianni's son got taken captive, so she asked me for help, so I asked Hawke, and... We didn't have time to come get you. We killed the pirates, and Arianni's son didn't want to go to the Circle, so Hawke said he should go to the Dalish, but it doesn't work that way. He's a half-blood. The clan shouldn't have accepted him."

"But you don't resent them at all, right?" Anders couldn't help his sarcasm, but fortunately Merrill was too crestfallen to react to it.

"It's not fair," Merrill said, "Everything I've ever done has been for them."

"So?" Anders asked.

"So what?" Merrill asked.

"You never answered my question," Anders said. "How do you deal with it?"

Merrill shrugged, "How do you?"

"I don't have a clan, Merrill." Anders said.

"You did," Merrill said, "You had the Wardens."

"... I try not to think about it," Anders said.

"Does that work?" Merrill asked.

"No," Anders said, and won a shaky laugh from the little elf.

"It doesn't work for me either," Merrill said, retrieving the wicker basket from where Anders had set it beside them to bounce it restlessly against the log. "... I'll ask the Keeper if she'll take in the elven mages in the Circle."

"Merrill, that's-"

"If you'll teach us how to shapeshift," Merrill interrupted him.

"If I what who?" Anders stopped short. The tears were gone from Merrill's eyes, and the fire was back, burning hot enough that Anders could almost feel himself sweating under her stare. "What are you talking about?"

"Your coat," Merrill reached to pluck a feather from his spaulders, and Anders smacked her hand away. "I recognized it as soon as I saw it. There are legends among my people of Keepers who use such magic. We hear them at every Arlathvenn. A clan in the Tirashan, or the Donarks, or the Arbor Wilds whose Keepers live as wolves, or crows, or bears. I didn't think the legends were true, but when I saw your coat, I asked my spirit, and he confirmed it."

"Your demon, you mean," Anders corrected her, a tension flaring up his spine that wasn't borne entirely of Justice.

"That magic isn't yours," Merrill continued as if she hadn't heard him, "It comes from the time of Arlathan. It belongs to the Dalish."

"That's funny, because I'm pretty sure it belongs me." Anders stood up and stepped back. He pulled Amell's grimoire from his satchel, flipped it open, and let the corners of the pages run against his fingers, "Hm, yep. My grimoire, my coat, my magic."

"Just because you come into possession of a thing doesn't make it yours." Merrill scowled, "Do you have any idea how much of our magic has been stolen by your mages? How much of our land has been lost to your countries? How much of our history has been destroyed by your religion? All we have left are stories, and you humans take even those when you write us out of them."

"You don't know what you're talking about. This," Anders shook his coat with his free hand, "Doesn't have anything to do with you, okay? A human mage taught me how to do this, not a Dalish."

"And who taught him?" Merrill asked.

"Another human," Anders said.

"And who taught them?" Merrill asked, "It's Dalish magic. It doesn't matter who uses it now, it matters who used it first."

"I think you've got that backwards," Anders said.

"Why do you even care?" Merrill demanded, "What does it matter if someone else knows how to use it?"

"Because I-you-it-..." Anders choked on his words, and couldn't even form them in his mind. All he could see was Amell. The two of them sitting back in Amell's quarters at the Vigil, their arms outstretched, blood running free from fresh cuts as Amell spoke of all the rules and regulations that accompanied blood magic.

This wasn't that, but it was close. It wasn't for anyone else. Amell had written it for him. Amell had taught him. What did it matter if some Dalish had come up with it? Amell had the soul of a Dalish... or something weird like that, and Amell had wanted Anders to have his grimoire. Not Velanna. Not Merrill. Anders.

"You humans are all the same," Merrill stood up and abandoned her basket, spindleweed, foxmint, and elfroot scattered across the forest floor with little distinction from weeds and rotten leaves despite hours of work. "You don't even care about the things you take from us, you just don't want us to have them."

"This doesn't have anything to do with you or the Dalish," Anders argued. "It's my magic. End of story."

"It's not your story to tell," Merrill said. "It's ours."

"Well good luck with that," Anders snorted.

Merrill left him to the forest, and Anders went back to gathering herbs alone. The little elf had been spending too much time around Varric. Their lives weren't stories. No one wrote them. No one read them. Anders didn't have an obligation to share his life with the Dalish or with anyone. Amell's grimoire belonged to him. Amell's magic belonged to him. His only obligation was to the mages of Thedas. If the Dalish didn't know how to shapeshift that was their own damn fault.

He wasn't being unreasonable. With Karl, it had been different. He'd cared about Karl. Without knowing how to shapeshift, it would have been impossible for Karl to escape the Circle. It had still been impossible in the end, but that was beside the point. Teaching one person to save their life was different from teaching an entire group of people who thought the world owed them something just for existing. If Merrill had wanted the magic to help him break into the Circle, it might have been different, but she didn't care about mages; she only cared about elves.

And not even all elves, only the Dalish. There were elves locked away in the Gallows right now that Merrill didn't give a damn about because their faces were bare. It shouldn't have mattered whether or not Anders was willing to teach the Dalish shapeshifting. Merrill should have wanted to help because it was the right thing to do. That was what Hawke had done for Feynriel. Hawke hadn't cared that the boy was half-elf, only that he was someone who needed saving. Hawke-

Hawke could talk to the Dalish for him. According to Merrill, bringing Feynriel to the Dalish had been Hawke's idea in the first place. There was no reason the Keeper might not be willing to invite other elves into the clan. It was common knowledge she and Merrill didn't see eye to eye, and this might be one more thing the two disagreed on. Delighted, Anders turned east to head back towards Kirkwall, when a spot of white stopped him in his tracks.

It was a mushroom. A bit of mold. A trick of the light. The tuft of a hare's tail. Anything but what Anders knew it was.

Andraste's Grace.

The small wildflower was nestled up beside the base of a tree, a splash of orange like a sunburst at its center and fading to white at the edge of the petals. Karl's favorite. The flower Anders had searched high and low for for over a month, to no avail. Karl was dead. He'd never see the flower, as he'd never seen the forest, or the mountains, or the plains, or the swamps, or anything the world had to offer, because the world had nothing to offer a mage.

Anders crossed the distance between him and the flower on shaky legs, and fell more than knelt beside it. Andraste's Grace. The free and unmerited favor of the Maker, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings, all in one little flower. It was no wonder Karl had wanted it so. What mage didn't want to hear the Maker still loved them? That their magic wasn't a symbol of his hatred, but rather his blessing? No Sister or Brother or Templar would ever say as much, so where else were they to look but relics and symbols?

Anders twisted the stem about his finger, plucked it free from the ground, and then wondered why. There was nothing to be done with it. No one to press it for, or give it to. Anders dropped it in his basket with the herbs all the same, but the weight of it felt impossibly heavy, and forced him to stop again before he'd walked more a few feet. Anders found himself a seat on the forest floor, and turned the flower over in his hands, thinking on Merrill's praise of them.

Karl had said much the same, and all Anders could think was that they hadn't truly known him. So few people did. The healer had the bloodiest hands. That went the saying. Whether it was meant for the patients they lost, or the blood and sweat they gave for the ones they saved, healers were always losing something or someone. Anders didn't know that it was true. Anders wasn't selfless. He didn't give of himself for the greater good. Anders cared about Anders. It was Justice that had changed him.

Justice had given him the fire to fight for the plight of mages. Justice wanted to tear down the walls of the Gallows for Bethany, for Karl, for every mage that suffered or had suffered therein. Anders was so bloody selfish he couldn't be bothered to teach a few hedge mages spells that would help protect them and their clans from wayward templars all because he didn't want to share. That wasn't the mark of a selfless man. It was the mark of one who couldn't let go of his past because he feared taking hold of his future.

Karl would have wanted him to teach Merrill, and any other mage willing to learn, but Karl wouldn't have understood. He didn't know what the magic meant to Anders, even when Anders had been teaching it to him. It was a piece of Amell. A piece of the man that Anders had been willing to share with Karl because of what Karl, or the idea of Karl, had meant to him. It was an idea Anders clung to even as he couldn't admit to it because deep down, he knew he'd never obtain it.

No mage could.

The flower was beautiful, but the sunburst was an ever-tainted symbol for Anders now after he'd seen it branded into Karl's forehead. There was no healing that wound. No washing that blood off his hands. No matter how many flowers he picked. Anders found Karl's final letter in his satchel, the one he'd saved for someday, and forced himself to open it. Every day was someday. Reading it would never get any easier.


My Dearest A,

You are the only thing in my thoughts of late. You and our kiss. I had almost forgotten how desperately I missed the touch of another human being, and after three years without, to have that touch be yours, I might have died and gone to the Maker's side. I hope you will forgive me if I come across as overzealous. Isolation can do things to a man, as you well know, but you saved me from that fate, as I have every confidence you will save me from the Circle.

I am desperate for freedom, ever more so now that I have a hope to share that freedom with you. I regret to say that my desperation has yet to translate into any outstanding magical ability. You give yourself far too little credit, my friend. I fear the magic of physical transformation is beyond me, and I am doomed to be a graying old man for the rest of my life. Fortunately, that doesn't seem to matter to you.

I was thinking of what you said, of being willing to teach me of life outside the Circle, and trying to fathom the scope of what that entails. I have no life skills. I have no idea how to cook, how to mend clothes, how to manage coin, how to ride a horse, how to survive without lining up for meals served by Tranquil three times a day. I know nothing of the way of the world, and while that terrifies me, part of me finds it exhilarating. To think that in just a few short days


The letter ended there. There was no final sentence scrawled dramatically at the bottom of the parchment that read, "The templars have come for me!" or "They're breaking down the door!" or something whimsical like, "We'll be together." or "I'll be holding you." It just ended. With no resolution. No closure. Nothing to lessen the pain of Karl's death at Anders' own hands or offer some form of comfort knowing Karl had in some way anticipated everything might not go according to plan.

Instead Karl had had every faith in him. His tranquility had come as a surprise, his death as a desperate last resort. Until the templars had taken him captive, Karl had every reason to believe Anders would one day be walking through the Planasene Forest with him, and they'd stumble across Andraste's Grace together. How many other mages had such hopes and dreams cut short by the Chantry's brand? How many other mages didn't dare to hope or dream for fear of it? Anders had to save them.

If that meant giving up what little of Amell Anders had left then...

He'd ask Hawke.

Anders returned to his clinic to drop off his herbs and his things, and then went out in search of Hawke. The archer was at his usual haunt of late: the rotting pier with the best view of the harbor, and consequently the Gallows. Guilt weighed Anders every step across it, and seemed to bow the boards beneath him. He'd come to beg a favor and he had nothing in return. No news of Beth. No progress with the Collective or the Coterie. Just a flower plucked too soon and a letter left unwritten.

There was less of Amell in the man by the day, and not just by his broken nose. Hawke had lost his fire the day he'd lost his sunshine. He glanced at Anders with no hope in his eyes, and in a way it was comforting. The man expected nothing, it meant Anders couldn't disappoint him. He took a seat beside the archer, and shared silence for a time before Hawke broke it. "How much did Beth tell you about our father?"

"Just that he was devilishly handsome and ridiculously charming," Anders said with a shrug, "Oh, and there might have been a little mention of how I reminded her of him. Can't imagine why."

"He was an ass," Hawke said.

"Ouch," Anders said.

"Just as stubborn as one too," Hawke continued without acknowledging him, "I told you he was strict, and that's the short of it. He had high expectations for everyone, including himself. If he said he was going to do something, he did it. Could take a week, month, year, but he'd do it." Hawke tore his gaze from the pier, and fixed Anders with a look that was somehow as soft as it was intense, "I know you're trying. Thank you."

"Well um..." Anders' throat dried up on him, and he had to take a moment to clear it, "You're welcome." Hawke went back to starring out at the pier, and Anders forced himself to press on before his guilt got the better of him. "So, while we're sharing, a little bird told me you played a pretty big part in rescuing some poor bloke from the Circle?"

"Who, Fen... Fen... shit. That elf kid?" Hawke asked.

"Touching," Anders rolled his eyes. "I can tell he meant a lot to you for you to risk your neck like that. Must be an old friend. Known him for years?"

"What of it?" Hawke asked.

"Why'd you do it?" Anders asked.

"What was I supposed to do, let some slaver sell him to Tevinter?" Hawke scowled.

"Well, yeah," Anders said, "That's what most people would have done in your shoes. Actually, speaking of shoes, I have this friend-nevermind. Later. Anyway, I thought you didn't want to get involved with mages and templars and all that? What changed your mind?"

"Merrill asked for my help," Hawke said simply. "She's a friend."

"Are we friends?" Anders asked, and held up a quick finger to forestall an answer, "Don't answer that. So, since we're friends, I was wondering if you might be willing to me a favor, as a friend. You remember how you came up with that brilliant little plan of sending Feynriel to the Dalish instead of the Circle? You know, on account of him being half-elf and all?

"Well I was wondering, just hear me out, if the Dalish might be willing to take in other mages. Only, and hear me out here, these mages are whole-blood. The Dalish would be twice as willing to accept them as a half-blood, wouldn't they? Right? It's brilliant. So I was thinking, since you're on such good term with them, you might be willing to ask their Keeper if they'd be willing. What do you think?"

Anders gnawed on his bottom lip, but he didn't have any time to ruminate on his request before Hawke shrugged. "Okay."

"Wait, really?" Anders asked "That's it? You're not going to argue or tell me that you can't risk getting involved or that it's not your problem or-"

"You want me to?"

"No no! No backsies," Anders snatched up one of the archer's hands and gave it a frantic shake, "We shook on it. Handshakes are sacred."

To his surprise, Hawke snorted. It wasn't quite a laugh. Anders doubted the man had it in him after what had happened to Bethany, but damned if it wasn't close. It brought a smile to Anders' face to know he'd given Hawke some kind of joy despite not giving him any kind of closure. Hawke returned it, and in the silence that followed, Anders could almost believe he wasn't lying when he said they were friends.

Anders returned to his clinic in high spirits. He was finally making progress. He might not have had a full underground started just yet, but he had the frameworks. He had a place for the elven mages to turn to once they were free, he had an inside man with the templars, he had an arrangement with the Coterie that would eventually grant him access to their tunnels, and he hadn't had to sacrifice any part of Amell to do it.

And it lasted all of the ten minutes it took him to walk back to Darktown and find his door smashed in, his clinic raided, and his grimoire stolen.

Chapter 83: Luck of the Dog

Summary:

Thank you to everyone who has helped support my husband and I recently. This particular chapter is dedicated to KyluxTrashCompactor. Thank you for all of your bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, and as always thank you for reading.

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 5 Parvulis Evening
Darktown

It was known to the refugees of Darktown that the emerald lantern marked the healer's clinic. The right combination of herbs could spark an emerald flame, and it was to this technicality any refugee would attest on the rare chance a wayward templar happened to stumble across the clinic. Rare because the refugees would keep watch, and warn their healer well in advance of any patrols. It still happened on occasion, and so the refugees were ever vigilant for sunbursts, for silver swords of mercy, for anything that marked the Circle or the Chantry's presence.

Apparently, that vigilance meant fuck all where Dalish mages were concerned.

A combination of man and spirit tore apart the already ramshackled clinic, to no avail. The grimoire was gone. Merrill had stolen it. There was no other explanation. Rolan and Eylon had broken the bindings, the demons had escaped, and there was nothing left to protect the tome. No whispers of death and damnation, no blood-curdling or mind-shattering screams. It was a tome, burnt and tattered, and the only threat its reader risked was a paper cut.

It was just a book.

Anders folded his hands above his head and took a deep breath, but the blend of sewage, mildew, and rot that was Darktown was far from soothing. It coated his nostrils and congealed into a snot so thick he couldn't breathe. He coughed, and coughed again, snot running down his throat and setting it aflame. It burned. He couldn't breathe. Maker, he couldn't breathe. Anders beat a closed fist against his chest, desperate for air, for one simple breath, choking sobs around the mucus in his nose and throat, and collapsed.

It was just a book.

He woke to sight of stalactites and the scent of shit. Different stalactites. Different shit. The ceiling was dripping with icicles of salt and slime, phosphorescent lichen lit the room a sickly green, and the irregular gurgle of Kirkwall's drainage system meant he was still in Darktown. Aside from that, Anders couldn't say, and with how many caverns sprawled beneath the city, he could have been minutes or miles from his clinic. He took a deep breath, and was rewarded with air that was crisp by Darktown's standards.

"Well, well, well," A ruddy face and a mess of gnarled red hair appeared in his line of vision. Cor "The Bastard" Blimey grinned down at him, "Look who joined the living."

"Cor," Anders said. One of the gang's new dens, then. They must have been doing well for themselves if they were expanding their territory.

"As I live and piss," The Dog Lord fell onto the cot beside him and slammed a hand down on Anders' chest. Fire shot through his veins, and Anders rolled over and vomited, only it wasn't vomit. It was black, and thick, and left a spider web of phlegm and mucus connecting his nose and mouth to Cor's boots. "... We're gonna pretend that didn't just happen, yeah?"

Anders' throat quivered, and one look at what had come out of him convinced him it should keep coming out. He vomited again, and left his head lulling off the side of the cot for fear of round three.

Cor grabbed a fistful of his bangs and lifted his head up, "You're better than this."

"Yeah?" Anders wiped off his mouth and resolved to ignore the resulting black on his sleeve.

"Yeah," Cor let go of his bangs, and Anders let his head go back to lulling, "Setting up your clinic 'sides a vent o' chokedamp and damn near getting yourself killed when it blows. Don't tell me you don't know better. How long you been in Kirkwall?"

Anders shrugged, "Time flies when you're having fun,"

"You know better," Cor said. "You're bloody lucky my dogs found you when they did. You got fucked six ways to Sunday."

"I think I'd feel a lot better if that were true," Anders said. Chokedamp. Anders tried for a laugh and it came out as a wheeze. He hadn't fallen to despair or despondency, to rage or remorse. He hadn't lost himself at all. He'd just passed out. It wasn't emotional. It wasn't spiritual. It wasn't anything.

It was just a book.

"You know your boy Franke made these for me?" Cor shook the sludge from his boot, "You ain't been by to see him since you got back from that shit show in the Deep Roads. Him nor Lirene. You're pissing your shit away down here with the Coterie. Come back to me, yeah? I'll be better this time."

"I bet you say that to all the healers," Anders' chest rattled with every breath like there was nothing left in him but his bones. Maker knew he ached straight through to them. Chokedamp. It was just the chokedamp.

"Only the pretty ones," Cor said. "Come on, what do you say? What's the Coterie got that old Cor can't get for you?"

"A book," Anders said.

"Well shit, I can get you a book, yeah? Got a whole stack by the privy-"

"No, my book," Anders sat upright and took stock of the makeshift infirmary they were in. There wasn't much. The Dogs never had much. Cots were haphazardly strewn between stalagmites, and a small body of water collected in the center of the room. A stack of books beside it answered any questions Anders might have had about the privy. He stumbled towards it and splashed a handful of water in his face. "My grimoire. Someone stole it. I was trying to find it. That's probably why I didn't notice the chokedamp before I passed out."

"Well that's easy," Cor ripped a page from the top book and handed it to Anders to dry his face with. Kirkwall: The City of Chains. And the Dog Lords wiped their asses with it. Fitting it went both ways, Anders supposed. "We find your book, you come back to us, yeah? What do you say?"

"I'm not a dog, Cor," Anders wiped off his face and tossed the page in the bucket beside the pool. There was no sense arguing it. Anders needed the caves. The Coterie controlled them. That was all there was to it. Anders shimmed through the stalagmites and made for the exit.

"Please," Cor followed him, "You've got the flees, the smell. You chase every cat you come across,"

"Cor-"

"And you're loyal." Cor grabbed his shoulders, and turned him about to face the nearest occupied cot. All Anders could see of the patient was their leg, or what was left of it. A jagged gash oozed sallow pus and rot, and had been draining long enough to stain the stone beneath them. It was infected. Anders could tell by the sight, let alone the smell. It should have been amputated. Without a healer, the infection would spread to the blood, but the Dog Lords thought they had a healer. "You don't leave a man when he's down. You don't back down from a fight. You're tough. You're Fereldan."

"I'm an Anders,"

"Bullshit," Cor squeezed his shoulders, and called out, "Oi, Bree, guess who I found?"

The patient sat up. Anders knew the pockmarked face, the dirty blonde hair, the grin full of chipped and missing teeth, "Anders. I knew you'd come back to us,"

"Arf," Anders sighed.

An hour later, and Anders was sitting around the fire with Cor, Bree, and a handful of other Dogs. It wasn't much. It was never much. The Dogs were always derelict, destitute, and diseased. They lived off skewered rats, makeshift furniture, and scavenged armor. They couldn't compete with the Coterie. They didn't have the resources.

"Look, Cor, it's not just the book-"

"I know," The Dog Lord interrupted him. "I know, yeah? That little symbol of yours you had us sniffing around the city for when you got off the boat? A broken circle? Real subtle, that. You want the Coterie's lyrium tunnels, except you don't want to smuggle out lyrium. You want to smuggle out mage folk. You're mad as a mad dog."

"Cor-"

"If you think you can do it alone. Let me guess, you work for the Coterie a month, and they give you access to the tunnels. How many months ago was that?"

"That's not-" Anders stopped himself, and tried to count. Maker... how many months ago was it? Four? Five?

Cor must have read his expression, because he rolled his eyes. "That's what I thought. The Coterie is never going to let you use their tunnels. You need a boat."

"A boat? To reach an island? Andraste's knickerweasels, why didn't I think of that! Oh wait, I did. Samson wants fifty silver a mage, the Redwaters won't risk it, and the Crimson Weavers want two sovereigns just to have the conversation, so thank you, Cor "The Genius" Blimey, for that valuable insight, but unless you can pull a boat out of your ass-"

"I have a boat," Cor interrupted him. Anders stared at him, slack-jawed, and a couple of the dogs snickered. "What? That's it? No, 'thank you, Cor 'The Genius' Blimey, for pulling a boat out of your ass for my ungrateful one?"

"How do you have a boat!?" Anders shoulders locked, his arms shook. Maker, he couldn't see straight. Cor had a boat. Months. Anders had wasted months. Karl-

"Easy," Cor grabbed him and sat him back down when Anders tried to stand. "It ain't mine, yeah? Belongs to the Undercuts. Their Captain ran south o' something. Now you heal him, you get to use his boat."

"That's-I-how-" It couldn't be that simple. Anders had been trying to find a way to get access to the Gallows for months, and it had been staring him right in the face since he got off the boat.

"Well?" Cor grinned expectantly.

"Thank you," Anders laughed. If not for the stain of his teeth and stench of his breath, Anders could have kissed him, "Thank you! Cor, thank you, I- don't- you're a bloody genius."

"Damn straight," Cor punched his shoulder, "So the Undercuts get you in, you get your mages out, and we get your mages."

"What?" Anders laughed again, but this time it was humorless. Of course there was a catch. There was always a catch. "Look, Cor, refugees are one thing, but mages are another."

"You can't hide the smell o' shit from a dog," Cor said, "And that right there? That's shit. They're refugees. You look me in the eye and tell me your Gallows ain't earned the name. You look me in the eye and tell me you mage folk aren't running from something worse than the Blight. You look me in the eye, man to man, and tell me Fereldan, a real Fereldan, would turn away a mage after what the Hero o' Fereldan done for all o' us."

Anders swallowed back his protests, and could swear they left a bitter taste on his tongue. This was Cor, for Maker's sake. The man had fed him, bed him, all but wed him as soon as he'd stepped off the boat. He was a racketeer, a thug, and a thief, but he was good on his word. He was good to his gang. Anders should have trusted him to mean well. "I know you mean well, but-"

"But what?" Cor interrupted him, "My dogs ain't good enough for your mages?"

"But I'm not going to free mages from templars just to have them rounded up by the guard."

"You see any guardsmen down here?" Cor swung his arms wide in every direction. Admittedly, the caverns of Darktown weren't oft tread by any but the downtrodden, but the Dog Lords didn't limit themselves to Darktown. Their territory spawned half of Lowtown, and the guards made more than the occasional arrest whenever the gangs wandered topside. "You and Vallen get on, yeah? She'll look the other way for you."

"Aveline?" Anders laughed, "Aveline hates me. She looks the other way for Hawke."

"Look, I'm not saying we kidnap 'em. I'm saying we free 'em. And freemen get a choice."

"Cor-"

"You keep saying my name, you're gonna wear it out." Cor dropped his smile. "That's the deal, Anders. You take it, or you leave it."

Anders wanted to leave it. Karl had the right of it. Most mages didn't know life outside the tower. They jumped at the chance for any alternative, whether it was a gang or an open window. It wasn't really a choice if they weren't in the right frame of mind to see it as one. Amell had taught him that. Amell had taught him that a thousand times over. How many opportunities had he given Anders to leave, but go where?

They wouldn't know any better. They'd be offered a place instead of a prison, and what mage would say no to that? "The Collective comes first. Then the Dalish. Then you can ask," Anders said. "And if they say no, they get to leave. No strings."

"No strings," Cor spit into his hand, and held it out to shake. His phlegm was a shade of yellow to match his teeth and almost as disturbing as the black Anders had been vomiting hours prior.

"That is all kinds of unsanitary-"

"We live in a sewer, Anders. Spit in your damn hand."

Anders spit in his hand.

"Good," Cor grabbed another rat off the fire, and Anders wrinkled his nose. The least he could do was wipe his hand off on his pants, but considering the condition of said pants, Anders supposed it was debatable whether it would help. "The Undercuts will do you right. Their Captain's Kanky Hammertoe. Ex-Carta. Don't ask about the name-"

"What's with the name?"

"Got a toe the size of a hammer," Cor answered without pause, "That's what your healing. Been fine for years, but got so bad recently he can't walk. Paid the Gallows five sovereigns for the mages to tell him there was nothing they could do for a dwarf."

"And that didn't leave him cross with the mages?"

"Left him cross with Stannard," Cor snorted, "The way Kanky explained it, good healers in Kirkwall get the brand. Too much risk of possession so-"

"What?" Anders stood up so quickly a few of the Dogs looked over. "No. No that's not-spirit healers you mean? Spirit healers are being made tranquil?"

"I don't know what they call 'em," Cor said, "The good ones. The ones like you-"

"Spirit healers," Anders repeated. "Spirit healers are being made tranquil? We have to go now. Right now-"

"What are-"

"They will not take another mage as they took him!" Anders snarled; he felt his fury a storm. His skin split as if lined in lightning and spirit fire bled through the cracks. It cast the cavern in sapphire, a color so akin to the bright blue of Karl's eyes before they'd been dulled by the Chantry's brand. "We will not sit idly by as this grievous offense is wrought upon innocents. We are called to righteous task to strike a blow against our oppressors, and the hour of reckoning is too long coming in this foul and fetid City of Chains. I beg of you, brothers and sisters, stand with me and see justice done!"

The clatter of a ladle hitting stone brought Anders back to himself. One of the Dogs had dropped it along with their jaw. The tension was so thick it had all but manifested into its own person, taking up a spot behind Anders to breathe in his ear. It felt like an age before he realized the breath for his own. He was panting, his arms still raised in some absurd call to arms to a room full of vagrants and vagabonds, all of them staring wide-eyed and slack-jawed at his abominable outburst.

"Yeah!" Someone in the back of the cavern shouted.

"For Fereldan!" Someone else screamed.

The cavern erupted. The Dogs were on their feet, cheering and whistling and jostling. Even Cor stood up to clap him on the shoulder. Anders felt like he was in shock. He'd just outted himself as an abomination in front of two dozen people, and no one had noticed. It didn't seem possible that no one had noticed. Maybe someone had noticed. Maybe they were already on their way to the Gallows. Maybe it didn't matter.

The templars were making spirit healers tranquil. The templars thought Bethany was the Darktown Healer. That was what mattered. That was all that mattered. Anders shook himself from his stupor and pulled Cor aside. "What dock? The Undercuts, what dock?"

"The west end, third pier," Cor said. "We really doing this now?"

"Meet me there," Anders said.

Anders left the cavern at a sprint, and let it carry him to the edge of Darktown where it opened up over the inlet of the Waking Sea. A man leapt, and a crow soared. An updraft from the ocean carried it up to the city and over Lowtown, where it circled the hexes until it spotted the small shipping company that marked the Collective's front. Anders hit the ground at a roll, and banged his fist against the door while the feathers of his transformation still fell, "Package delivery! Package delivery, damn it! Open the bloody-"

The door opened to Mistress Selby's frowning face. "Anders, I swear-"

Anders shoved past her to pace the length of the small office, "They're tranquilizing them! I can't believe it. Except I can believe it. The slightest offense, and they're tranquilizing them! Maker, this is all my fault. I never should have healed him. I never should have taught her. I never should have gotten involved with any of it-"

"Slow down, love," Selby caught his face in her hands. They were weathered and wrinkled with age, and somehow felt all the more soothing for it. Selby was old. Her sister was old. Mages could grow old. If they fought for it, mages could grow old. "Who are they tranquilizing?"

"Spirit healers," Anders said.

"What?"

"They're tranquilizing spirit healers. They said they're at an increased risk of possession, which, okay, yes, but that doesn't mean-Ow!"
The pain of Selby digging her nails into his face grounded him, and finally made him aware of something other than himself. The circles under Selby's eyes were as grey as her hair, pinned up for bed and matched to her night frock, but there was no sign of exhaustion in her stare. Her eyes were hard, and fixed on his face. "Elsa is a spirit healer. My sister is a spirit healer. Anders-"

Anders took her hands in his when they started to shake, “Tell me where she is. Tell me exactly where in the Gallows and I’ll get her. I’ll get her tonight. We have a boat. We’ll get her out. Where is Bancroft?”

Selby was shaking. She aged in his arms, a year, two years. Decades past in seconds, and Anders caught her when she collapsed and eased her into the nearest chair. “Selby, where is Bancroft?”

“Not here,” Selby whispered, staring at her shaking hands, “He’s not here. He-he was going to try to help the Redwaters get more established, join them on a few raids, I don’t-”

“Okay, so he’s not here,” Anders tilted her eyes back up to meet his own, “Is Bardel on the night shift today?”

“I don’t-”

“Okay,” Anders took a step back and ran his hands through his hair. They came away covered in sweat and strands of blonde, “Okay. So it’s just us.”

“Oh Elsa,” Selby sniffed, “Oh no… oh no, oh no-”

“Stop it!” Anders gave Selby a gentle shake, “So we don’t have Bardel. That just means we can’t get past the Victim’s Door. So no apprentice phylacteries. Elsa isn’t an apprentice. We’ll get her out, get her phylactery from the Chantry-”

“It’s not there,” Selby said.

“What?”

“It’s not in the Chantry. They moved them all back behind the Victim’s Door after-... after Karl.”

“Okay,” Anders said. “Okay. Okay, so, no phylactery. That’s okay. That’s okay. We’ll just-I…. We’ll have to-I can…”

“Oh Elsa,” Selby broke and buried her face in her hands. Her shoulder shook, and her hair spilled from its bun with the force of her sobs.

“Stop it!” Anders pulled her hands away from her face, ignoring the mess of tears and snot that glued their hands together when he clasped them tight. “Stop it. So the templars will have her phylactery. So what? They’ve got mine, and I’m right here, aren’t I?” Selby sniffled, and Anders squeezed her hands tighter, “Aren’t I?”

Selby nodded, and Anders admired her for that, “Right. So. Tell me where she is. Tell me where she is, and I’ll get her out. I promise.”

“Okay,” Selby said.

“Okay,” Anders said.

It wasn’t going to be easy. Nothing ever was for Anders. Elsa was on the fifth floor in the east wing. She was a mage, which meant she wasn’t quite as locked away as the apprentices, but not nearly as free as the senior enchanters. The docks at the Gallows disembarked into the courtyard where the Tranquil set up their shops, and without access to the tunnels, there were no hidden passageways to sneak the mages through. They’d have to cross the courtyard between guard rotations, and without Bardel, Anders had no way of knowing what the rotations were.

He still had to try. He had to try for Elsa. He had to try for Bethany. He had to try for Hawke.

A crow flew from Lowtown to the western docks, and counting the distant piers like it might sticks for a nest, but before it could come across the third, it spotted a familiar sight of man and mabari on the furthest pier where no ships docked. It circled low, and landed among the long abandoned cargo on the abandoned port, and a man stepped out from behind them.

"Hawke," Anders called out, moving across the rotten planks at as close to a run as he dared.

"What is it?" Hawke asked without taking his eyes off the sea.

"Beth," Anders said, "The templars-they're making Spirit Healers Tranquil."

"Beth isn't a spirit healer," Hawke said. "She was always good with telekinetic magic. Took after Father. Used to use it to play with her hair when she thought no one was looking..."

"They think she's the Darktown Healer, remember?" Anders wanted to shake him. Now wasn't the time for whimsical reminiscing. "What kind of healer do you think I am?"

"What are you saying?" Hawke asked.

"What do you think I'm saying? We have to get her out of there. Now. Tonight. I've got some friends. A boat. I'm going to the Gallows. I'll find a way to get her out, but I need you to be ready to get her away from here. I can't get her phylactery. They'll have it locked up. So I need you-"

"I'm coming with you," Hawke interrupted him. The archer stood as if ready for battle and stared at Anders so expectantly Anders might never have guessed the man had all but atrophied for the better part of a month.

"No you're not," Anders almost wanted to laugh. It was absurd. This whole thing was absurd. "Look, I don't have a plan. I don't know the guards rotations. I don't know where the apprentices are kept. I'm not prepared for this like I was last time."

"You weren't prepared last time," Hawke said flatly. "I'm coming with you. Dog, home."

Obediently, the mabari trotted off down the pier, and left Anders alone with Hawke. The mercenary met his stare and held it, and Anders hated how piercing it was when the man could actually be bothered to make the effort. He couldn't bring Hawke with him. If he was too late for Beth-... he couldn't put Hawke through that.

"I'm quiet, I keep to the shadows, and I can pick locks," Hawke said. "I'm coming with you."

"Hawke, if we're-... if Beth-..."

"I'm coming with you," Hawke said a third and final time. Anders didn't have time to argue. He nodded, and led the way towards the pier the Undercuts were docked at.

Two dwarves guarded the pier, their uniforms vaguely reminiscent of a mix between the Carta and the Coterie. Some of the Dogs had already arrived, and waved him through to the captain’s quarters where Captain Kanky Hammertoe was laid up.

"You must be Cor's boy," Kanky said. He was uninspiring, as far as dwarves went. He had a squared off face, but all his features were pinched in towards his nose, and gave him the look of a man who had just stepped in dog shit. Anders hoped the expression was just for the pain, but somehow he doubted it.

Kanky's toe was more anvil than hammer, as far as Anders was concerned. It was old break, combined with poor circulation, combined with alcoholism, combined with a handful of unfortunate warts and callouses. It was a mess, and far from an easy fix, but nothing Anders was going to let stop him.

"That's me," Anders agreed, rolling up his sleeves. Hawke took a place at his side, and handed over whatever instruments he asked for without comment. He wasn't quite the same assistant Bethany had been, but he was there, and he was quiet, and he did what Anders told him.

"Cor tell you my terms?" Kanky asked. Anders couldn't help the tension that gripped his stomach at the question. It wasn't the sort someone asked unless their terms were about to change.

"I scratch your back, you scratch mine, that sort of thing?" Anders asked.

"You fix my toe, you get my ship," Kanky said. "One-night only."

"So you're just going to use me and lose me, is that it?" Anders asked.

"One toe, one night," Kanky said. "That's the deal."

"I could break the other nine," Hawke muttered.

"Try it, Dog Lord, and my boys will break a lot worse than your toes," Kanky's sneer pinched his face in even further, if such a thing were possible.

"As if my heart wasn't enough," Anders said. "Fine. One night."

They were underway within the hour. The Waking Sea carried with it the chill of autumn, and Anders pulled Merill's scarf taut against his face to hold back the wind. The flame from the balefire that guided ships to Kirkwall's harbor seemed disembodied among the fog, the Gallows a distant shadow. He felt as ready to storm the island as he might the Black City itself. He hadn't prepared. He hadn't planned. Cor had oversold the Undercut's support. Kanky would bring them close enough to the Gallows for a rowboat, and no further. The more men Anders brought with, the less mages he could be bring back, so Anders and Hawke were going alone, and somehow he had to get them both through the Gallows and to the quarters of whatever spirit healers he could find without being spotted by templars.

He was mad as a mad dog, and so was Hawke for being fool enough to join him, but what choice did they have? The templars were making Spirit Healers Tranquil. They might have been making Bethany Tranquil. The brand could be pressed to her brow any moment for all Anders knew, and Hawke... Hawke had trusted him. He'd trusted that Anders would get word of her. Trusted that Anders would one day, someday, bring her home safe. Bringing her home Tranquil was anything but.

The archer leaned against the railing with him, silent since they'd left the captain's cabin. His eyes were fixed to the Gallow's flame, and he looked no different than he did down at the pier every day, save for the wind in his hair and the slight crease to his brow that spoke less of desolation and more of determination. Anders nudged him, and Hawke turned towards him. His eyes were far more trusting than Anders deserved.

"Back in there, with Kanky's toes?" Anders said, "That was pretty funny."

"I was serious," Hawke said.

"That's what made it funny." Anders said. "Look... when we get in there... We need to get to the fifth floor, on the east wing. If we can get there, there's a woman there who will help us the rest of the way. She'll know where the apprentices are kept."

"Alright," Hawke said.

"Look, a lot of this is going to be luck," Anders said. "I wasn't kidding when I said I wasn't prepared. If we're not careful and we get caught, they'll kill us, and anyone they so much as think was helping us,"

"Alright," Hawke said.

"And I can turn into a crow." Anders said.

"Alright," Hawke said.

Anders stared at him. Hawke stared back. Silence stretched.

"Well I'm not going to do it right now," Anders said.

"Alright,"

"I really can though."

"I said alright."

"You don't believe me."

"Anders-"

"No, that's fine. You don't have to."

"I believe you."

"Alright." Anders said.

"Alright." Hawke said.

The Undercuts cast anchor in the shadow of the Gallows, to the far east of the docks, and lowered them both in the rowboat. The Dogs that had joined them assured them they'd keep an eye on the Undercuts and make sure they wouldn't cast off without them, which was something, though Anders didn't doubt it was far less grandiose than they had anticipated after his rousing speech in Darktown.

He and Hawke rowed towards the docks as best they were able, but they weren't sailors. They didn't have Isabela. They didn't know how to keep the paddles quiet, how to disembark without all but falling off the pier, how to tie a stable knot to ensure the rowboat didn't drift away. It was sheer luck that got them to the Gallows without being caught, and as they watched the rowboat bob back out to sea, Anders supposed it would have to be sheer luck that got them out.

Chapter 84: Bird's Eye View

Summary:

Thank you to everyone who has helped support my husband and I recently. This particular chapter is dedicated to LegoPrime. Thank you for all of your comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, and as always thank you for reading.

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 5 Parvulis Night
Kirkwall Gallows

The Waking Sea was awash in silvery light, cast from the moons and stars, but it died upon the docks. The fog crept up in its stead, rolling into the Gallows with the wind and all its whispers. The Gallows were different at night. Not that Anders had ever been during the day, but night had a way of making shadows into things shadows ought not to be. Pillars turned to statute turned to templar.

Anders couldn't think past his heartbeat, fast and frantic and just beneath the skin, waiting for the pull of magic to sink it into the mind of another. He ran down the pier after Hawke, trying to tackle the docks one plank at a time, but there was no calming his thoughts. There was no talking his way out of this if they were caught. Blood magic was all he had. Calling on Justice was calling on disaster. The spirit wouldn't rest until the Gallows came crumbling down around them, and Anders couldn't risk it.

Anders felt himself a storm: his pulse roared like thunder in his ears, sweat ran like rain down his back, his memories flashed like lightning behind his eyes. This was desperate. This was death. The gates to the Gallows courtyard were as open as the gates to Amaranthine on the eve of Cassus, because no man was mad enough to storm them. He couldn't do this. Maker, he couldn't do this.

This wasn't like with Karl. He hadn't flown across the Waking Sea, bird-brained and barely able to comprehend what he was doing until he was in the room with the man. He was walking straight into the very place he'd been dragged back to all his life, and walking blind. Anders was shaking, and it took him an age to realize Hawke was the one shaking him. No sooner had they stepped off the pier than Hawke took him by the arm and dragged him to cover.

The man's eyes were on him, a red so akin to blood Anders couldn't help but be comforted by it. "You with me, Anders?" Hawke asked.

Anders wondered how long he'd been asking.

"I'm with you," Anders agreed.

"You sure?" Hawke asked.

"I'm sure," Anders brushed the man's hands off him, only to have Hawke catch him by his jaw and force his eyes back when Anders tried to look away.

"You can't do that in there," Hawke, or whatever had possessed Hawke to make him capable of eye-contact, said, "You can't break down."

"I-" Anders squared his shoulders, but couldn't hold the pose under the intensity of Hawke's stare, "I can't promise that."

The man... the mercenary, the capable and competent companion Anders had elected accompany him, drew his bow from off its sling on his back and strung it. The stillness of the night and the silence of the act was maddening; the red cedar bent easily under Hawke's skillful hands, and the twang of hemp snapping into place was all but gone with the wind. Anders couldn't do this.

"Be a crow," Hawke said.

"What?"

"Be a crow," Hawke said again. "You're not a mage. You're just a bird. I'm the only one here. I got desperate. Couldn't wait the year for visitation. Wanted to see my sister, so I stole a rowboat and got lucky with the fog. You're just some bird. No one cares about birds."

"I'm just a bird," Anders said.

"You're just a bird," Hawke agreed.

Anders took a deep breath, and a step back. "You might want to look away," Anders warned him.

"Why?" Hawke asked.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," Anders said.

It itched. It always itched. Down pierced his skin, and burst black from his arms. His fingers seized, and unraveled into wings. His legs buckled beneath him as his skin sloughed and split apart, scales fusing their way down to his toes. His bones hollowed, stretched, snapped apart, and then snapped back into place. His spine cracked, and then collapsed. His jaw broke through his lips, and snapped shut into the beak of a crow, that ruffled its newly formed feathers and cocked its head at the human beside it.

The human paled. The crow ignored it, and flitted up onto the crates the man sat against. There were no other humans, nor elves, nor dwarves about, and it was a short flight through the gates to the Gallows. The crow circled twice overhead, and found a perch atop one of the many bronze statues that lined the courtyard. Some were bent and bowed and broken, more skeleton than man, donning naught in the way of dignity. Others were bold and brutal and barbarous, more armor than man, donning naught in the way of dignity. Men of metal without mettle.

They were remnants of an age long passed but ever present. The crow sat atop the statue, watching the smaller men of blood and flesh move patrol the courtyard below. They wore silver in place of bronze, but otherwise well emulated their predecessors. The crow waited out their passing, and cawed when the guard changed. The human that had accompanied the crow to the Gallows sprinted through the courtyard, up the stairs, and paused at the portcullis.

The crow abandoned its perch to fly into the Gallows proper. The guard had gone down the western corridor, so the crow flew east. The corridors were cramped and cavernous; the distance between each door marked the rooms much the same. A barred window was inlaid in each, with scarcely enough to room for the crow to perch, and even less to squeeze through. It flitted from one window to the next, finding on each mage within the markings of maturity.

Fledglings were further from the ground, though no further from predators. The crow turned down the hall, in search of stairs for the human accompanying it, and squawked at the sight of silver.

"Shoo!" The templar snapped, flapping its gauntlets like ineffectual wings at the crow. "Get! How did you get in here? Get before you shit everywhere!"

The crow flew back down the corridor, cawing out one warning after the next, but the human that had been following it was nowhere to be seen. The crow landed where the corridors intersected, hopped to face one direction after the next, and saw nothing. Each corridor was identical, stone upon stone lined in sconce upon sconce. There was no color save for the dark auburn doors and occasionally tapestry. The crow squawked its frustration, and flew north on a whim.

It doubled back at the sound of a whistle, and stopped before a tapestry emblazoned with a sunburst. The crow recognized the symbol for a threat, and grabbed a loose thread to tug upon. The tapestry unraveled with each small tug, and the crow gave a squawk of delight that turned fast to alarm. A human hand emerged from behind the tapestry, and scooped it up to pull through to a hidden passageway. "What are you doing?" The crow's human whispered, red eyes reflecting enough of what little light lingered for the crow to see them clearly.

The crow thought of the symbol and the need to destroy it. It thought of coming winter and the threat it presented. It thought of men of silver and sword turned to molten metal, of corpses and carnage and carrion. It thought of the red the human carried in its eyes and the way the color dyed the dead. It thought-

"Shut it." The human poked the crow's chest. "You're a bird, remember? Birds don't glow. Birds-... do bird things. Like find stairs. Go find stairs."

Crows didn't need stairs. Humans did. They needed them to go up. Up to the fifth floor. East wing. Fifth floor. The crow hopped onto the human's shoulder, and stared into the pitch black of the passageway behind it. It cawed. The caw echoed. The crow flew out into the black, comforted by the steady thud of the human's footfalls behind it.

The passageway was a maze. It doubled back a dozen times over, and seemed to circle the entire Gallows. Time passed. In the passageway, light and sound were muted, broken only by the occasional conversation the tapestries hiding the entrances muffled. The crow stopped to listen to one, continuous of the click of its talons, but the words were lost on it. It recognized only the tone, for it was a tranquil one. Dead but not dead. Alive but not alive.

The crow stayed beside the tapestry long after the footfalls had faded. There was too little wind in the passageways to keep flying. Too little wind in the corridors. Too little wind in the Gallows. There was too little wind. The human that traveled with it picked it up again, whispered, "You're just a bird," and shoved it through the tapestry. There was still too little wind, but there were stairs. The crow squawked, and the human followed it out.

They made their way up, and up, and further up. The fifth floor awaited them, no different than the first, save that as they came across their first crossroads, a templar turned the same corner they did.

It seemed a routine patrol. The templar's sword was undrawn, his helmet undonned, his head and shoulders bowed as if by the weight of his thoughts. He had the coloring of a cardinal, in his hair, in his sash, in the tunic that shown beneath his armor, in the blood that ran from the cut on his cheek when Hawke leveled his arrow against the man's face. "Master Hawke," The templar's voice belied more familiarity than fear.

"Thrask," Hawke said.

"A pleasure to see you again, serah," Thrask said.

"You didn't see me," Hawke said, drawing the arrow further back so the metal no longer pressed against Thrask's skin. He seemed in more pain from the exchange than the templar, and the crow couldn't fathom the cause. The templar was a threat. Templars were always a threat, and the only thing to be done with a threat was to harry it until it died or fled.

"No, I didn't," Thrask agreed, glancing to the arrowhead. It seemed too long a look for a man's whose life hinged on not seeing. "But all the same, there is a conversation I would have with you, were you here. I wonder if you would indulge me."

"... Why?" Hawke said. The crow screamed and landed on the Hawke's shoulder, pecking at whatever exposed flesh it could find. "Shut it."

"Because I know you to be a person of good character and..." Thrask cocked an eyebrow at the irate crow on Hawke's shoulder, "Unusual ability. And I require your aid in a delicate task, as I suspect you may need mine."

Hawke lowered his bow. The crow screamed again. It thrashed and lost feathers beating its wings on the human's shoulder. It bit between each screech at whatever flesh was closest, and dug its talons in when Hawke tried to pry it off.

"You may wish to quiet your bird, serah," Thrask suggested.

"Enough!" Hawke fisted a hand around the crow's beak to quiet its screams. "His daughter is a mage. Shut it already."

The crow calmed enough to cease its onslaught, and sat restless on the human's shoulder. Thrask quite admirably ignored the exchange, and gestured back the way he'd come. He led them to a nondescript room, and shut the door behind them. They were a mage's quarters, albeit in disuse by the dust, and seemed as safe a place as any to speak.

Alone, Thrask finally eyed the bird on Hawke's shoulder. " Meredith has created as much dissent as obedience, but I must admit, I have never seen such a clever attempt to circumvent the rules of correspondence as smuggling in a messenger crow. You continue to impress, Serah."

"...Right," Hawke said.

"Arianni tells me you sought a better path than the Circle for her son Feynriel." Thrask continued. "You did more for him than I for my own daughter. If I had been so strong for Olivia... but she is at peace now, and I cannot forget the kindness you have done me, keeping her secret. I would keep yours in turn. Forget your bird. I will be your messenger, and take you to your sister, if you would be willing to show mages a kindness once more."

"What kind of kindness?" Hawke asked.

"There is a group of apostates," Thrask said, "Mages of the former circle at Starkhaven. It burned to the ground, and their templars sent for us to relocate the survivors. Some escaped."

"Not my business," Hawke said.

"The lives of many innocents are at stake here, Serah," Thrask said. "These mages, their phylacteries were burned, and they escaped before our First Enchanter could make them anew. It has been nearly impossible to track them, and they have shown that they attack templars on sight."

"Why are you pestering me for?" Hawke demanded, "This is templar business, and I've no business with templars."

"Your sister is a mage, Master Hawke," Thrask said. "I suspect you will have business with templars all your life."

"The only business I have right now is seeing my sister. I helped you even after the beating you gave my family," Hawke tensed, and unsettled the crow where it stood on his shoulder, "Gave my mother. You owe me."

"And it is the Maker's saving grace I know it, and it was I who found you wandering the Gallows and not another, like Ser Karras. You will recall him, I have no doubt. Knight-lieutenant. Great crony of Meredith. The man who would have left your uncle lame had I not stopped him."

"You don't get a reward for not beating Gamlen to death," Hawke said, "Not with how many people in this city want him dead."

"I am not asking for one. I am simply reminding you that under Meredith there are less templars sympathetic to the mages' plight with every passing day, and Ser Karras is not one of them. He has been assigned to these apostates from Starkhaven, and as he sees it they are hiding from pursuit. When he finds them, he will murder the lot, and Meredith will consider it justified. I am on your side, Serah. When Guard Captain Vallen begged your freedom I stood with her. Stand with me now."
"Why would he find them?" Hawke asked.

"Because there have been sightings along the Wounded Coast," Thrask said, "And there are only so many caverns. Please, speak with the group. Convince them to return and surrender peacefully before my fellow templars do otherwise. They are better off alive and in the Circle than free and dead, and if Ser Karras finds them first... it will be a blood bath. I know it."

"How do I know they're better off in the Circle?" Hawke asked. "People talk. Spirit-healers and harrowed mages are being made Tranquil. Templars who don't agree are killed in some new initiation ritual. They could be better off dead."

"I refuse to believe that. I have sacrificed my station to speak on behalf of mages, and there are others who have done the same. The Circle is not what it should or could be, but we cannot give up on it. There is no such initiation ritual, I assure you, nor are harrowed mages being made Tranquil with any blessing from Meredith. She is not quite the monster she is made out to be... although..."

"Out with it," Hawke said.

"There have been incidents. Harrowed mages who have allegedly... volunteered for Tranquility. They are being investigated, but we digress," Thrask gestured to the door, "My patrol lasts another quarter hour. Come with me. I will take you to your sister, and exchange any letters you wish. I ask only that you do me and the missing mages this favor."

"I need a minute." Hawke said, and when Thrask deigned not to move, continued, "Alone. With my... thoughts."

"A minute may be all you have," Thrask said. "I will wait outside."

The templar departed, and the crow came apart in a series of clicks and clacks as its spine unraveled. Its beak broke and swung limp at its neck before snapping back into the shape of a jaw, while the rest of its human face seemed to melt into place. Skeletal hands fast followed by flesh clawed free of its wings, and its talons fused into feet. The only remnants of its existence were the feathers that adorned Anders' pauldrons. Anders stood up, and Hawke stepped back.

"Maker's breath," Hawke turned away from him to cover his mouth. He bent at the waist and swallowed what Anders could only guess was vomit, his pallor noticeably green.

"We are not going to hunt apostates for him," Anders hissed; he'd warned the man. If Hawke was going to be sick he could do it on his own time, and not when the cause was at stake. Thrask wasn't Bardel. Anders didn't know him. He didn't have any history with him. Hawke did, but Hawke was here for one mage, not all of them. Anders was, and no matter what it cost him, Anders had to remember that.

"She's my sister, Anders," Hawke whispered.

"I won't doom a dozen mages to save one," Anders whispered back; with each breath, he tasted mana, and breathed deeper.

"It's Beth, Anders." Hawke recovered enough to stand upright, "For Maker's sake, Anders, it's Beth."

"Don't you think I know that?" Anders asked. "Look, we stick to the plan-"

"We don't have a plan," Hawke hissed. "It's a good deal. I'm taking it. You with me or not?"

"We are not," Justice said for him.

"No one asked you," Hawke said.

"I am Anders," Justice said. "Anything you ask of him, you ask of us. We cannot agree to this."

"Anders, please," Hawke grabbed him by his shoulders, but couldn't quite settle on his grip. His hands squeezed, shifted, squeezed again, in a dance of desperation. "I need you."

"I can't," Anders said, "You heard him. Harrowed mages are being made Tranquil, and the Knight-Commander knows. First it was Libertarians, now it's spirit-healers, and they're covering it up. Saying they volunteered. Saying Karl volunteered. They can't keep getting away with this. We have to do something. We have to get them out, and we have to get them out now. How many lives is Beth worth?"

"All of them!" Hawke let go of him and scratched furiously at his scalp. "Look, this? Thrask? This is more than we set out with. He's a good man. He can help you, but not for nothing."

"Not for this," Anders said, "I won't send mages back to the Circle."

"We can't save them, Anders," Hawke said. "There's two of us. We can save Beth. Find out where in the tower she is, and come back another day with a real plan."

Hawke was right. Damn him, he was right. They'd panicked. They'd come out here with nothing but gal and gumption. There was no one to rescue because no one knew they were being rescued. The Undercuts wouldn't even give them more than a rowboat, so even if they broke down the doors to every cell they came across, they wouldn't be able to row out more than a handful. They needed the Coteries's tunnels, Bardel and Bancroft to get past the Victim's Door for the phylacteries, and they needed the Dogs to help the mages recover from their time in the Circle.

"-....There's a templar," Anders said, "Alrik. I have it on good authority he's behind the mages behind made Tranquil. Tell Thrask to watch him. And the Starkhaven mages-... we don't send them back here. If we find them, we help them escape. We get them to Ostwick, or Ferelden, or anywhere but here."

"Fine," Hawke said.

"What?" Anders said.

"Fine," Hawke said. "Done. You good? That was our minute."

"I'm good," Anders said.

Hawke looked away from his transformation. The crow bounded back onto his shoulder, and Hawke opened the door. Thrask was awaiting them outside. The templar had been leaning against the wall, for all intents and purposes at ease, no doubt due to the fact that he seemed to be the only templar assigned to the floor. "Free and free," Hawke said. "Not free and dead, not alive and in the Circle. Free and free. I handle it how I handle it, no questions. Beth sends her letters. Once a week. And Alrik stays away from her."

"Alrik?" Thrask asked. "What does-... yes, fine. Agreed, but if any wish to return to the Circle, you must accompany them. Ser Karras would not spare them otherwise."

"Fine," Hawke said.

"She is in the west wing, with the other first years," Thrask said. "We'll have to stop to get the keys-"

"I can pick the lock," Hawke said.

"Fair enough," Thrask said. "Stay close and quiet."

The templar led to the opposite end of the Gallows, and all the while the crow counted the cells they left behind. Within one was a mage named Elsa who specialized in spirit healing. The crow didn't know her spirit. Whether it was Justice, or Compassion, or Faith. It hoped that it was Hope. With the time it would take the crow to come back, Hope was all she had.

Bethany's cell was a cell like any other. Hawke drew a rake and a wrench from a pouch on his belt, and the crow watched in avid fascination as he tapped, twisted, and turned them until the lock gave with a click. There was no ward. There was no need for one. No mage could replicate what the rogue had done so effortlessly with the limited skills the Circle availed them.

"Beth?" Hawke knocked twice before he opened the door. The room was painfully small and painfully familiar. It boasted a bed, desk, and wardrobe, and little else. A window large enough to throw oneself from was open and faced seaward, and hopefully proved no threat to the mage who lived within. Beth was asleep, and Hawke sat on the bed beside her to shake her awake while the crow found a perch on her bedpost.

"Beth, wake up," Hawke said.

"Garrett?" Bethany grabbed Hawke's hands and squeezed as if to test if they were real. Her eyes were bright, and the shadows beneath them seemed borne from lack of sleep over sorrow. She found her smile easily enough, and her magic along with it. She lit the candle on her nightstand with a breath of magic, and did it without fear or hesitation. She bore no bruises, and seemed no worse for wear when she hugged her brother with strength and enthusiasm. "Garrett, what are you doing here? Thrask...? Visitation doesn't start for another year."

Hawke said nothing. He pulled Bethany into his arms, and seemed to come apart, as if the strength fled from all but his arms. He clung to Bethany like a drowning man to flotsam, shaking with each rickety breath as though it might be his last. He spoke, but the words were choked, and the crow couldn't decipher them.

"I'm okay," Bethany whispered. "I'm okay. I'm doing fine. It's okay."

"I can spare five minutes," Thrask said, and closed the door for them.

"I'm fine. Look, see?" Bethany took one of Hawke's hands, and used it to push back her bangs. Nothing marred her forehead. "Everything is fine. This isn't the end we thought it was."

"Thought-" Hawke managed.

"I know," Bethany squeezed Hawke's hands again, though this time it seemed as if to prove to him that she was real, "I know, we all did, but I'm fine. I'm safe. I'm Harrowed."

"You're what?"

"I'm Harrowed," Bethany said again, "The templars made a point of putting me through the Harrowing as soon as I arrived. They thought I was at risk of possession or running away like Father, but it's over. I'm glad it's over. It was-... but let's not talk about that. I'm fine, and you don't need to worry about me."

"Always going to worry about you," Hawke said, "Came to save you."

"I know, but don't," Bethany said, "The Circle isn't what we thought it was. They're good to me here. The First Enchanter looks out for us. We help each other, and the templars are mostly polite if you don't cause trouble. They're not all monsters, if you can believe it."

"It's just us, Beth. Whatever they've done to you-"

"They haven't done anything to me," Bethany said. "They're just doing their jobs. They ask me questions about what you do, but that's all."

"If they hurt you-"

"They don't take threats well. And it doesn't matter. They're just questions, and I've stored quite a bewildering weave of answers. Everyone knows you're with the Red Irons, but I won't help them prove it. You should quit, you know. You're too good for Meeran, and now we don't need the money."

"Beth-"

"I'm fine. Really. I've even started mentoring apprentices. I get to spend time with the children, teach them basic spells, and one of them, Ella, has taken a shine to me. She's always asking questions, never afraid to learn... I would have given anything to be like that are her age.

"You can't imagine it, Garrett! This whole time we were so concerned with being free, we never stopped to think about what that meant. Running, being afraid, always looking over our shoulders, giving up our lives... that wasn't freedom. This is freedom. I'm happy, Garrett. I'm so happy. Please don't worry about me."

"You sure?" Hawke asked. "I can get you out. Anders-"

"I'm fine," Bethany interrupted him, "This is the best thing that could have happened to us. I've been so worried about Mother... all she used to do was sit in that rathole and think about Carver, let it eat her up, and now me? I tried to get her to look for work, or reconnect with childhood friends, but she said it was too pathetic. But now you can tell her I'm fine, and maybe with the estate, she can have the life she always wanted. You can have the life you never got to have because of me. I get to stop running. And Gamlen... Gamlen's a tit."

Hawke chuckled, and Anders finally broke. The crow exploded, and Bethany screamed. Thrask rushed back inside, but Anders was scarcely aware of him. "You're fine!?" Anders demanded, "You're a prisoner for the rest of your life, but you're fine? You can never see your family or have one of your own, but you're fine? You never get to breathe fresh air, to feel wind, or rain, or snow, to smell the earth after rain or flowers in bloom, but you're fine!? You're not fine! You're a bloody coward!"

"Anders!-"Hawke stood up.

"Aveline told us," Anders continued, "I didn't want to believe her, but it's true, isn't it? You wanted to join the Circle. You asked for this. You gave up. Threw your life away."

"I accept what I am and act accordingly," Bethany said. Andraste's saving grace, she didn't even hesitate. "I can pretend to be miserable if you want, but I'm not."

"Because you don't understand the stakes!" Anders shouted.

"Well it's a good thing you're here to carry the burden." Bethany sneered.

"Your father carried that burden. Your brother carried that burden. They spent their lives fighting to keep you free. You said so yourself. How can you turn your back on that?"

"This is my life, Anders," Bethany said.

"Until the templars decide otherwise," Anders said."Until you speak against them, or fall in love, or-"

"I'm not Karl!" Bethany cut him off. "Do you have any idea what a hard decision this was for me? How long I've lived in fear of the Circle? You have no idea the courage it took me to change my mind. I hope one day you change yours."

"You're wrong," Anders said, "You're so wrong."

"Master Hawke," Thrask said in the stillness that followed. "Is everything alright?"

"Fine," Hawke said. "Five minutes up?"

"So it is, but... how did your friend..."

"Not your business." Hawke said, and gave Bethany's hands a final squeeze, "I'll write you."

"Finally learn your letters?" Bethany's grin was watery, but Anders didn't have it in him to sympathize. She'd brought it on herself.

"Most of them," Hawke said. "Write me."

"Correspondence-" Bethany started.

"We'll make an exception," Thrask assured her.

"Give my love to Mother," Bethany hugged her brother, and the two parted. To his credit, or what little credit Anders was willing to give a templar, Thrask didn't ask again after Anders' sudden appearance. He led them in silence back to the east wing, and failed to notice or in the very least comment when Anders ceased to follow and a crow took his place.

The crow had no need of stairs when any window would bring it back to the docks. It left Hawke's shoulder, and flew through the east wing's fifth floor. It perched on each small window on each cell door and peered within, searching for signs of a mage who's name it couldn't speak and who's face it couldn't place. It thought of the one who had sent it, a woman all in grey, from her pallor, to her hair, to her eyes, and after an age seemed to stumble upon a mage who matched her, or what remained of one.

Her eyes were grey. Her pallor much the same. Her hair the sort of blonde that turned to ash with age, and the sunburst scar was fresh upon her brow. It was the dead of night, but by the circles under her eyes, she'd not slept in days. She seemed preoccupied with organizing a set of scrolls, and stopped only briefly to regard herself in the mirror that lay on her desk. Her reflection took in first her eyes, and then the sunburst on her forehead, and then dropped the mirror in the wastebasket.

Bethany didn't understand the stakes.

She didn't understand them at all.

Chapter 85: Act of Mercy

Summary:

Thank you for reading. Any advice or constructive criticism is welcome, and comments are greatly appreciated. Thank you for all of your comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, and as always thank you for reading.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon 6 Parvulis Early Morn
Kirkwall Docks – Collective Packaging House

The room had never felt smaller. Crates and barrels were stacked to the ceiling and made a maze of the packaging house. It dead-ended into Selby's desk, where the woman spent most of her day working tirelessly to manage the front and the Collective it protected. It was a good front. Bundle something up in parchment, put on a servant's garb, and you could go anywhere with anything. Even the Gallows. It was how they smuggled in letters, leaves, flowers, seashells... little whispers of the world beyond its walls.

It was cruel.

It made no difference, and Anders knew it. He had known since he stepped off the boat. Mages were locked in their cells and denied appearances at court. Others were made Tranquil for slightest of crimes, whether or not they were Harrowed. Their families met with their own version of the gallows if they tried to stop it. Half of Kirkwall was blind to it, and the other half knew better than to see it. Anders wasn't just sensitive to it. It was real and it was happening and Elsa was just the start. He'd known better than to promise to save her.

Anders was cruel.

Kirkwall had been called the City of Chains for over a thousand years. Smuggling in one letter or smuggling out one mage wasn't going to change that. All they were doing was building up false hope, and even that was for naught when the templars were tranquilizing the mages who might have called on such spirits. It made no sense. Healers were how the Gallows made their coin.... Healers and tranquil. Their labor was free and their stalls had lined the Gallows' courtyard, filled with their bloody wares, and one for the other might have been a wash as far as Stannard was concerned.

Kirkwall was cruel.

Or maybe it was just Elsa. Maybe she was the only spirit healer the Gallows had, and that was what Kanky had meant. Maybe Cor had been confused. Maybe Elsa had gotten tired of waiting for her sister to rescue her. Maybe she really had volunteered for Tranquility. It wasn't unheard of in Ferelden, so why couldn't it happen in Kirkwall? Maybe the Chantry had gotten to her like Keili, or she had given up like Owain. Maybe Anders had wasted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity on some ill-conceived plan to rescue mages beyond rescuing.

Life was cruel.

Selby had fallen asleep at her desk. They'd yet to speak of it. They'd yet to speak of anything. They'd come back to the packaging house, and they'd come back without Elsa. There was nothing to be said. Selby's tears had been ugly. The woman wept like a demon of despair had settled in her chest and coiled tight around her lungs, wailing with every breath. Hawke had sat with her, without comment or complaint. He was better suited. Hawke, of all people, was better suited to comfort the poor woman. Anders was elsewhere with his thoughts.

Beth-

Anders slammed a hand into the nearest crate and felt nothing when it splintered apart beneath his fist. Selby shifted, and Anders tried to tell himself to calm down. Beth had taken an arrow of mage-bane for the Collective. She’d spent months healing the refugees of darktown. She’d even summoned a spirit for an abomination, for Maker’s sake. “I’m not Karl,” Beth had said, her face scrunched and scowling at his offer of freedom.

Beth wasn’t cruel, Beth was a bloody idiot.

Anders looked to Hawke, and thought of the coin, the time, the life the man had wasted to give his sister one she’d thrown away. “We should move on,” Anders said to him. He left the packaging house without waiting to see if Hawke followed his advice.

The sunrise bled across the bay, painting it in all the colors of mourning as though it felt for him. It was done. Beth was with the Circle, but the Starkhaven mages didn’t have to be. Anders didn’t need the Undercuts, the Dogs, the Coterie, or any of Kirkwall’s gangs to see them free. He had Justice, and for once, he’d see it served. Let the templars try to stop him.

He could be at the Wounded Coast before the sun finished its climb across the sky and see the Starkhaven mages to Ostwick or Cumberland or the bloody Black City for all they would care. Anywhere was better than the Circle, and any mage worth their magic knew it. Anders started down the docks towards the coast. It meant heading east, which meant passing the Qunari Compound.

It had been a bazaar once, for sailors and fishermen and all else the tide brought in. The banners still flew, soot and shit-stained, but welcomed no ships. There was no need, with Stannard forcing trade through the Gallows. Shipmasters could still make berth at the docks, but the sunken ship in the harbor was a testament to what happened to those who tried to skirt the templar’s levies without Kanky’s knowhow.

The qunari had occupied the docks for near a year now, and it had worked out in Stannard’s favor. The Knight-Commander should have joined the Undercuts, to hear Varric tell it. There was a small cost for everything. A small cost to unload goods. A small cost to store them. A small cost to ferry them back to Kirkwall’s mainland. A smaller cost to pay the dockworkers like Gamlen to unload the goods all over again, and the smallest cost to pay the elves who ferried goods up to the Lowtown bazaar.

It was a short walk from the docks to Lowtown, but fewer elves made it every day. The qunari opened their gates to them, and unlike Isabela and every other sane person in Thedas, the elves ran in instead of away. Anders couldn’t fathom it - waking up one day and deciding what he really needed was someone else telling him everything he should think. The Qun made the Circle of Magi look like a pleasant vacation.

If that had been Bethany’s only alternative, Anders could have forgiven her, but it wasn’t. She didn’t have to join the Circle and become a cog in Stannard’s wheel. Performing lightshows for nobles on First Day, healing reflux after Satinalia, supervising the new Tranquil Stannard seemed to make every day.

If Fereldans were having trouble finding work now, it was only going to get worse. Tranquil didn’t need rest. They didn’t need pay. It cost Stannard nothing to control trade in Kirkwall and gained her everything. Maybe that was why she kept making good mages Tranquil. Maybe that was why she was in no hurry to see the qunari on their way. No one would blame her. They’d blame the qunari. And once they made one allowance, they’d only make more.

The templars were already raiding the Lowtown. How long before they started raiding Hightown? Any excuse would work. They had to stop the spread of the Qun. They had to keep the people safe from the qunari. Was anywhere in Kirkwall free of them? Anders didn’t want to think about it. What was it Hawke was always saying? ‘Don’t borrow trouble’? But how could Anders help it when there was so much to go around?

Anders kept his eyes on the bay as he passed the compound. He couldn’t stand to catch a glimpse of one of the qunari mages, their lips sewn shut, their wrists bound… not now. The red rusted spikes that lined the docks and the fetid waves that lapped over them and into Darktown were a reprieve in comparison.

A sound behind him drew Anders’ attention. He looked over his shoulder to see Hawke jogging to catch up with him, black-fletched arrows clattering in his quiver as it bounced against his thigh. He looked fierce when he moved with purpose, but Anders wasn’t of a mind to appreciate it. He could just imagine what Hawke had to say, and he didn’t want to hear it.

He kept walking for as many paces as he was able before Hawke overtook him and turned him about with a hand on his upper arm. Hawke’s eyes were uncharacteristically soft, as red and as warm as the sunrise. Anders hated it. He’d done nothing to warrant the look and nothing had happened to warrant Hawke wearing it. Hawke’s relief was Anders’ rage.

“Where are you going?” Hawke asked.

“Where do you think?” Anders shot back, staring at the hand Hawke had on his arm.

“Wouldn’t ask if I knew.” Hawke let go of him, but hesitated pulling his hand away. Anders didn't know what to make of it.

“The Starkhaven mages aren’t going to rescue themselves,” Anders shouldn’t have had to explain. This wasn’t a conversation to have in public. The docks were sparse, but he couldn’t get comfortable. “You heard Thrask.”

“What’s your plan?” Hawke asked.

“To… rescue them?” Anders frowned.

“How are you going to find them?” Hawke asked.

“I’ll look.” Anders said, but the questions continued.

“What are you going to do when you find them?” Hawked asked.

“Help them,” Anders said.

“How?” Hawke persisted. “Do you know how many caverns are along the Wounded Coast? Which ones Karras has checked already? What about the guard? Are they patrolling the coast today? Is Karras? Civilians? Which routes do the merchant guild use?”

Maker save him. Hawke couldn’t have picked a more inopportune time to develop a vocabulary. The questions felt more like an interrogation, and Anders didn’t have the patience. More importantly, he didn’t have the answers.

“I have no time to argue with you,” Anders turned back around and kept walking. He didn’t make it far before Hawke overtook him again and pulled him into an ally, where his hands stayed firmly on Anders’ upper arms.

“Then don’t,” Hawke kept hold of him. It would have been a simple thing to break free of his hold, but Hawke squeezed his arms when he tensed. If Anders didn’t know better, he might have thought it a substitute for an embrace. “Don’t bullshit me, Anders.”

“What do you want, Hawke?” Anders asked.

“I want you to give this some thought.” Hawke let go of his arms when Anders made it clear he wasn’t trying to escape.

“I’ve spent enough time thinking and too little time acting,” It was already Parvulis. In three months, he’d have been in Kirkwall a year. Anders had come with nothing but the clothes on his back and somehow ended up with less. His grimoire was gone. Karl was dead. His clothes were rags, cobbled together with leather, and wool, and feathers for transformation magic that had served nothing and no one. “Do you know how long I’ve been in Kirkwall, trying to make a difference?”

“And you thought it would be easy?” Hawked snorted.

“You don’t know what it’s like for me,” Anders said hotly. “For Justice. In the Fade, there is no time. We sat idle too long waiting for the right moment to strike and now-…” Silence stretched. Hawke stood still, thumbs looped into his belt, the picture of patience Anders lacked. “Are you really going to make me say it?”

“What do you think happened back there?” Hawke waved a hand at the Gallows, no anger, all confusion. “My sister –“

“Is in the Circle!” Anders all but screamed. Maker, it was like he forgot.

“Not your choice,” Hawke said. “Not mine. Brooding isn’t going to change it. Doesn’t need to change it. She’s happy. She’s safe. ‘The plight of every mage is my burden.’ That’s what you always say, isn’t it? Or does that stop at the Circle doors?”

“It stops when the mages are free.” Anders said, grateful for the echo Justice gave him.

“And their families?” At Anders blank stare, Hawke put one hand on Anders’ shoulder and the other on his heart, as if to make it clear he spoke from it “Do you have any idea what you’ve done for us? Beth’s alive. She can write to me. To mother. To Gamlen for all she gives a damn.”

“And that’s enough for you?” Anders asked incredulously. “You seriously think just because she passed her Harrowing she’s out of danger? That the Circle will protect her?”

“If they don’t, you will,” Hawke said with such conviction Anders felt torn. Not between Anders and Justice, but between shame and fury he and his spirit shared in equal parts. Hawke shouldn’t have trusted him. He shouldn’t have been grateful to have his sister in the Circle. Anders had failed him. Anders was furious he wasn’t furious and ashamed he wasn’t shamed. “Anders, you’ve done enough for Beth. You’ve done enough for me.”

“I don’t deserve your thanks.” Hawke hadn’t offered it, but it was there, unspoken in the warmth behind his eyes, in the hand upon his shoulder, in the compassion in his tone. Anders looked away from him – unable to meet his eyes.

“My advice, then,” Hawke let go of his shoulder, “You want to save the Starkhaven mages, you need a plan.”

“What, and you’re going to help me come up with one?” Anders scoffed.

“I don’t do anything sight unseen,” Hawke held up a fist, and started ticking down the steps on his fingers, “I get the official report from Thrask, layout of the coast and cave network, the standard sweep run by the templars when mages go rogue along it. Patrol routes from Aveline, the guild’s routes from Varric. We go when it fits, where it fits, small group, outfitted as guardsmen.”

“Because Aveline’s term as captain has been so mage friendly,” Anders rolled his eyes, “I’m sure she’d be delighted to help us impersonate the guard.”

“Not asking her,” Hawke said simply, “Kept a whole set of uniforms from a group of pretenders that were ‘taxing’ some of the Hightown nobles. We bring Varric to bullshit anyone we pass, and double back through the Planasene Forest when we find the mages. Karras can follow the coast all the way to Ostwick while the mages get a boat at Cumberland or keep north along the Imperial Highway to Nevarra.”

It … wasn’t a terrible plan. Hawke had come up with it on the spot, like it was nothing. For some reason, it was reassuring. Anders let himself breathe. If he convinced no one else in Thedas, at least he had Hawke at his side. The same man who had walked out on him the day they’d met at the mere mention of confronting templars stood before him brazenly prepared to defy them. Maybe now that Hawke wasn’t worried about Bethany, he would be free worry about the rest of the mages.

Or maybe he just felt obligated to repay him. Anders couldn’t get the measure of the man, but a good plan was a good plan. “Did you learn strategy at Ostagar?”

Hawke snorted. “Soldiers who learned strategy at Ostagar died at Ostagar.”

“Where then?” Anders asked.

“You want to pester me or you want to save your mages?” Hawke shot back.

And there was the Hawke Anders remembered. “And here I thought we were having a moment,” Anders joked.

“We-I-…” Hawke choked on his words, a hand in his hair blocked his face from view, “I have a condition.”

“The one where you open your mouth and you’re an asshole?” Anders recalled.

“That one,” Hawke agreed, “Look it’s… I’m not proud of my past.”

“And I’m a shining example of someone who is?” Anders laughed.

Hawke apparently decided the question was rhetorical and deigned not to answer him, “Come with me to The Hang Man. Talk to Varric. You still want to know, you can ask me anything then.”

“Anything?” Anders raised an eyebrow at him, “Be careful what you offer.”

Hawke smiled. Sort of. Anders would count the twitch at the corner of his lips for a smile. They left the docks in what Anders was willing to call a companionable silence. The clatter of Hawke’s arrows in their quiver was almost soothing in its rhythm. Anders bumped into him, distracted by it, and Hawke spared him a glance, but didn’t flinch or snap.

Progress. Perspective. It was a good plan. Hawke, on occasion, could be a good man. If Anders never got access to the Coterie’s tunnels, if he never found a ship, if the rest of his efforts with the Collective, the Coterie, and the Dogs were all for naught, at least he could save the Starkhaven mages. He had to save the Starkhaven’s mages.

It was a steep climb from the docks to The Hanged Man that took them past Kirkwall’s elaborate pulley system. A ramshackled mess of hickory, oak, and walnut warped together to form a railway bolted into the sandstone stairs. A single cart at the bottom awaited goods to transport to Lowtown and beyond. It was pulled by a massive rusted chain that connected to an equally massive wheel, wedged between the Hanged Man and the residential district where Hawke lived.

Anders wondered how many more years were left in it until it snapped. He wondered the same of himself. They passed the alienage on their way to Lowtown and Anders tried and failed not to think of Merrill and the theft of his grimoire. It had to be her. It was too convenient. There was no other explanation. Cor had offered to get it back for him, and after all, the Dogs had stolen the Warden’s maps. It wouldn’t be hard to steal back his grimoire. He didn’t need to panic. He needed to plan.

A chorus of ‘Hawke’ when they entered the Hanged Man broke Anders out of his reverie. The patrons cheered and raised their cups at the man’s entrance. Half of them were Red Iron, by their garb, but even Norah and Corff joined in, so Anders supposed the man must have been missed by more than just Varric and their motley crew. Anders dodged around the crowd that came to envelope Hawke and waited for him by one of the hearths.

It reminded him a bit of the Circle, when everyone had known his name, save that The Hanged Man kept no false pretenses of civility. Part of the floor was missing by the hearth; the planks had been torn up to show the sandstone beneath. It was stained with a trail of blood that led all the way to the spittoon in the corner. Curiosity got the better of him, and Anders glanced in it. Blood had bronzed it, and a disturbing number of teeth lined the rim. Anders gave it a kick, and the teeth slid into the spittoon with a ‘plink.’

“Make a wish,” Anders mumbled to himself.

“You wish away your days you’ll waste the ones you have,” Hawke said. Anders didn’t know why he was surprised the man had snuck up on him. “Let’s go.”

Varric was in his room, meeting with a female dwarf when Hawke let them in. It seemed a bit rude to interrupt, but the thought didn’t seem to cross Hawke’s mind. The man poured himself a drink from the pitcher on the table and took a seat in one of the sunken stone chairs without comment.

“A hundred sovereigns, Raella?” Varric was saying to his guest, “I just got back from an expedition, and you want me to fund another one? What in the blazes for?”

“For the interest, of course,” Raella said. She must have been important. Anders could tell by the lack of dirt. That, and her dress was lined in gemstones and quite literally framed in her gold, fluorspar sewn into every seam and hem.

“Count me out this time,” Anders interjected, taking a seat next to Hawke.

“I’d go again, for the right coin,” Hawke said, pouring Anders a drink of his own.

“Are you mad?” Anders asked.

“How are you repaying this, exactly?” Varric continued as if neither he nor Hawke were there. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sympathetic, but it’s my understanding the first expedition went missing, and that was with Darion Olmech leading them. How are you planning on finding Amgarrak Thaig without him?”

“The official purpose of the expedition is the rescue of Lord Brogan.” Raella frowned, her eyes flicking over to the two of them. Anders grinned back at her, and her frown deepened.

“Who, officially, was declared dead by Lord Answer,” Varric countered. “There were three days of mourning. I sent flowers.”

“Jerrik doesn’t believe him to be dead. You of all people know the opportunity afforded by the Blight. I can only imagine how much return you gained on your investment with what you discovered at the Valdasine Thaig.”

“Less than you’d think,” Varric rubbed the fingers of his left hand over the stuffed glove on his right. Anders still needed to get the man a prosthetic.

“Neither of us are mourning Bartrand, Varric,” Raella rolled her eyes, evidently ignorant to Varric’s injury. “Help my family, so Jerrik doesn’t have to mourn Brogan. Jerrik will personally repay the loan, with five percent interest, over the next fifteen years.”

“If he survives.” Hawke interjected.

“He has recruited the assistance of the Warden-Commander of Ferelden and one of the Glavonak explosive engineers,” Raella frowned at him. “His survival is assured.”

Anders heart skipped a beat, and he spat out the drink he’d been in the middle of taking.

“The Warden-Commander?” Anders repeated, “You’re funding an expedition back into the Deep Roads for the Warden-Commander of Ferelden?”

“They’re not coming here, Blondie,” Varric assured him. “And we’re not going down there.”

“Good,” Anders took another drink and tried to relax, “Those bastards made me get rid of my cat. Poor Ser Pounce-a-Lot…”

“You had a cat named Ser Pounce-a-Lot?” Hawke asked.

“He was a gift. A noble beast. The blighted Warden-Commander said he made me too soft,” Anders couldn’t imagine Leonie protecting anyone. More Wardens had died under her charge than lived. Whoever Jerrik was, he was likely better off without her. “I had to give him to a friend in Amaranthine.”

“Will you fund the expedition or not?” Raella demanded.

“Fifteen percent interest, over the next ten years,” Varric said. “For the risk.”

“Agreed. House Dace will sign as soon as you have the contract written.” Raella saw herself out.

“Now if only I could still write,” Varric sighed, taking off his glove to rub at the nubs on his hand.

“They’ve healed enough by now that we should be able to work on getting you that prosthetic,” Anders reached across the table to take Varric’s hand and assess the injury. The wounds were a pretty pink, a shade darker than Varric’s skin, and Varric didn’t wince at any pressure put upon them. “I’ll have Franke make a mock-up in leather for you to test.”

“Thanks Blondie. Hawke,” Varric gave them both a nod, “And thanks for your help with Raella. Bartrand’s ex fiancée, if you can believe it. She’s not too fond of humans, and a quick deal is the best deal. Anyway, what can I do for you?”

“Group of apostates along the Wounded Coast,” Hawke explained, which Anders really didn’t consider much of an explanation. Hawke had never told him much of the jobs they’d worked together in advance either, so he wondered why he thought Hawke would be any different with Varric. “Need the guild routes, to move them out without being seen. Need you with, in case we are.”

“Bringing me along for the bullshit and not Bianca?” Varric said. “Fine by me. The story should be easy enough, I suppose…” He stood up to pace, rubbing his chin with the two fingers he had left on his right hand, “Let’s see we’ve got… Lieutenant Florian, from Ferelden… sent to root out rebel mages at the Knight-Commander’s personal invitation! But the guild routes? I’m still cleaning up after Bartrand. A business is like a puppy. Take your eyes off it for one second and there’s shit all over your floor. I’ll look, but you need to give me a week.”

“Make it a day,” Hawke countered before Anders could protest.

“Hawke, you wound me.” Varric sighed. “Alright, but I’ll have to start looking into it now. So unless you’re sticking around to help-”

They left quickly and were half-way to Hightown before it occurred to Anders Hawke intended to go straight to the guard. He caught Hawke’s arm to stop him. “It’s probably better I’m not there when you talk to Aveline,” Anders said.

“Right.” Hawke said, eyes fixed on Anders’ hand on his arm. There were dark circles under them, and Anders realized they’d gone over a day without sleep. Hawke wasn’t a Warden. He was probably exhausted.

“Do you want to pick this up tomorrow?” Anders offered.

“Thought you were in a hurry,” Hawke said.

“I am but-… not at your expense.” With everything that had happened to Hawke of late, Anders didn't want anything to be at the man's expense ever again.

“I’m fine.”

“I need better than fine," Anders said seriously. "This has to go right, Hawke.”

“It will.” Hawke caught his hand, and actually squeezed it before taking it off his arm.

“You can’t promise me that.” Anders said, and he meant it. He wasn’t getting his hopes up again. “They could be dead already for all we know.”

Hawke had nothing reassuring to say to him. There was nothing reassuring to be said. He scratched at his scalp to wake himself up, took a quick assessment of where they’d stopped. He sat on the stairs that led to the higher hexes, towards Hightown. Anders cleared away a bit of bird shit with his boot and sat with him.

“I’d pick elsewhere to nap if I were you,” Anders joked.

“Ash Warriors,” Hawke said.

“What?”

“Earlier,” Hawke explained. “You said you wanted to know where I learned strategy. That’s where.”

“That’s… not really the answer I expected,” Anders looked the man over, trying to picture him as one of Fereldan’s Ash Warriors. They were a group of mercenaries with mabari in place of family, who fought like dwarves for the Chantry's beck and call. Anders could see some of it. Hawke had the piety down, the love for dwarves and mabari. The rest? “Don’t Ash Warriors … not have any family?”

“I deserted.” Hawke explained. “… it was complicated. I left home, back in Lothering, after we moved there to join a group of mercenaries. The Crimson Oars. My family needed the coin. Maybe they needed me more… but I sent back a stipend. Father understood. Mother didn’t.

I killed someone for the first time and found out I was good at it. There’s nothing like it-… I kept on, kept at it, and one day I killed the wrong person. I glassed him. It was just a bar fight. The cup shattered… went straight through his eye. Split it right down the center. There’s a liquid…” Hawke touched the corner of his eye, “Like water. Like he was crying. Shot arrows that didn’t kill a man as quick.

“They put me on the gallows for it the next day. Oars left,” Hawke shrugged, “Wasn’t their fight. The guard had to muzzle Dog to get the noose around my neck. He maimed five of them, trying to reach me. I think that’s why they decided to give me a choice. Gallows or Ash Warriors. Chose life.

“They erase everything when you join. Crimes. Records. Everything. You don’t get a stipend; you can’t write to family; you just fight. Bandits. Slavers. Whatever. Wherever. I managed a few letters anyway, when I could, but I was with them for years before Carver found me. He sent a letter to one of the inns we were staying at, and I got it before we left.

“He told me Father’d died. That he was begging at the Chantry. That he didn’t know what to do… He must have sent dozens before I got one. I deserted that night. Went back to Lothering and started hunting to support them, but Mother never forgave me for leaving. When I took Carver with me to Ostagar, she told me not to come back this time.

“My company’s sergeant died on our first skirmish in the wilds. I took his post, and that was it. We had three skirmishes, before the last, and by then if you didn’t know what you were doing you were dead. Our captain knew enough to know better when the beacon lit and the reinforcements didn’t come. I had to drag Carver off the field when we were routed…”

“That’s…” Anders started, stopped, and tried again. “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry. I know nothing I say will change it, but you were lucky to have them as long as you did.”

“Not what you expected?” Hawke asked.

Anders thought back to the day they’d met and wanted to laugh. “Not even close. You know, you’ve been fighting darkspawn longer than I have,” Anders joked. “Have you ever considered joining the Grey Wardens?”

Hawke laughed. The bark suited him. Anders smiled, and was surprised he enjoyed the silence they shared.

“…Am I like him?” Hawke asked suddenly.

“Like who?”

“My cousin,” Hawke elaborated. “Am I like him?”

Anders swallowed a stone. It settled in his stomach, cold, heavy, impassable. Hawke was staring at him. His eyes were the same blood red, though they were lined with the shadows a different life. Not darker or lighter, just different. “You’ve been talking to Varric.”

“Not an answer,” Hawke said.

“You look like him,” Anders managed, somehow. “A lot like him… but it’s not the same. I don’t want to put all that on you. You’re not him and I’m not the man I was a year ago. You’re steadfast, and loyal, and I know even if you don’t agree with me, you’ll be honest.”

“You deserve it.” Hawke said sincerely.

“I don’t know what I deserve,” Anders stood up, and held out a hand for Hawke to do the same. “But you’ve seen who I am, and you’re still here.”

Chapter 86: The Revolutionists

Notes:

Thank you for reading. Any advice or constructive criticism is welcome, and comments are greatly appreciated. Thank you for all of your comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, and as always thank you for reading.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon Umbralis 7 Evening

Kirkwall – Darktown

The sewers had flooded, winter storms bleeding sleet into Darktown. Anders’ boots broke through a thin film of ice with every step. The hot sewage beneath churned in his wake, a sour stench like wilted lettuce following him through Kirkwall’s underbelly. He wrapped his scarf tighter about his nose and mouth, near to suffocating, but he could still taste it.

The water rippled at his passing, cascading out over the edge of the chasm and staining the blackrock a putrid brown. At least he was finally making waves in Kirkwall, Anders thought bemusedly. The desultory waterfall was the only sound apart from his footfalls squelching through the muck. The sewers themselves were abandoned. The floods forced everything from rats to refugees out into Lowtown, where Fereldans clashed with Marchers, and a handful were arrested for rioting, others for loitering, until the prisons were full up.

With refugees. Not rats. Anders didn’t doubt Aveline would have tried if she had any cells small enough.

It soured the soul to see. Some of the refugees even welcomed imprisonment as a reprieve from destitution. Prisoners were fed. Prisoners were sheltered. Citizens were left to freeze in their freedom.

“One fight at a time,” Anders said to himself, rolling his fingers along his staff when his veins split with veilfire beneath his gloves. He learned to love the feeling; the heat from the flame, his skin pulled taut, the precipice of the change, the edge of abandon. The anger kept them going, but if it went unchecked it wouldn’t necessarily keep them alive. “We can’t right every wrong.”

The flames subsided, which was for the best considering Anders had no intentions of storming the Viscount’s Keep anytime soon. The Gallows, maybe. Anders had a meeting with the Collective and if nothing else, the floods afforded them privacy. Anders trekked through Darktown until he reached a non-descript door cut into the blackrock, a broken circle smeared in blood barely visible against the rust. He knocked thrice, and the door opened outward, a wave of sludge cascading over his boots.

“Nothing like the red-carpet welcome,” Anders grinned at the shivering mage who’d opened it.

“Anders. S-S-S-… My apologies,” Alain stuttered, shifting from foot to foot in the muck. The poor fellow reminded Anders of a rabbit. He was two big eyes and two big ears, and he jumped at anything and everything. “They’re almost f-f-f-… almost done.”

Anders’ eyes had to adjust to the number of mages clustered within, haloed by their magic and his affinity for it. It pulsed, dark and familiar, like the last gasp of a dying man or the first of a risen one, save for Alain. Unlike the rest of the Starkhaven mages, he wasn’t a maleficar. Also unlike the rest of the Starkhaven mages, his magic barely pulsed at all. He would have been lucky to light a lantern, which was probably why the door was marked with blood instead.

Anders slipped in around him, and Alain shut the door behind him. It might have been a wine cellar at one point, but it had long since been abandoned. The back ceiling had collapsed and left no other point of entry point. The racks that lined the walls had been stripped apart by termites, rotten cork and shattered glass the only remnants of the wine bottles that had once filled them. A collection of waterlogged barrels straining against their metal hoops made up the only furniture.

The remaining Starkhaven mages were circled around a spelltome set on one such barrel in the center of the room. Their hands were clasped, but their palms must have been slit, because they were dripping blood. Each drop melted through the ice, and seemed to take shape in the water, wriggling and rippling like frenzied leeches at their feet. The trio was chanting, their voices hushed and entreating. “The blood feeds. The blood nourishes. In blood, the call is heard. In blood, the deal is made.”

Even ankle-deep in the frozen mire, Alain was sweating. Anders nudged him with his elbow, “Nothing like a spot of iconoclasm to end the day,” Anders whispered cheerily.

“I s-s-still don’t understand why we’re doing this,” Alain whispered back.

“Practicing for dinner parties.” Anders quipped.

Alain managed a rickety smile that quickly twitched apart into a frown, “I’m s-s-s-… I mean it.”

“What’s not to understand?” Anders asked. “Once we make enough of these spelltomes, the diffused magic will let us distribute energy across all of Darktown. I can augment them with regenerative properties, and the Collective can start relying on them for our rescue operations. We can finally start freeing mages from the Gallows. We'll run them straight through the lyrium tunnels, the warrens, and out of Kirkwall with a haste no normal mage could channel.”

It was bloody brilliant. Anders had made more progress in the past three weeks than he had in the past three months. Hawke had helped him rescue the Starkhaven apostates right out from under the templars’ noses, and no one had been the wiser. Anders only wished they’d been able to rescue more. There were only four left, by the time Anders and Hawke had found them. The others had died or been captured fighting templars along the coast.

Still, Anders hadn’t needed to risk the Dalish, or the Dogs, or anyone getting them out of Kirkwall because they hadn’t wanted to leave. They’d joined the Collective, phylactery-free, and set straight to the task of helping Anders free as many of their fellows from the Gallows as they could. The spelltomes were just the start. It made Justice a little uncomfortable, but it was worth it. At least bound, the demons could find new purpose. Just purpose. Their leader had made a convincing argument, as far as Anders' was concerned. It wasn't like they were entreating with the demons, and what better victory was there over something that couldn't die than to ensure the rest of its life was lived nobly?

“But the blood magic…” Alain protested, looking at the ritual from behind his hand as a man might the sun, as if it would burn or blind him if looked too hard. “Couldn’t we do the same rituals with l-l-lyrium?”

“And how do you propose we get it?” Anders demanded. Fire cut across his veins, warmer than any scarf in the frozen depths of Darktown. “The templars have everything! For a thousand years, they’ve had the knights, the lyrium, the bloody Maker on their side. For a thousand years, we’ve bowed to them. It has to change.”

“Like this?” Alain gestured to the ritual, and Anders tried to calm down enough for the flames to recede. Alain reminded Anders of himself, over a year ago. Maker, how had Amell put up with him? “Blood magic isn’t a power the templars keep from us for spite. It’s evil.”

“It’s a tool,” Anders countered, “Same as a bow or a sword. Would you cut off a child’s hands to ensure he never wields one in anger?”

“Depending on the c-c-child.” Alain mumbled.

Anders ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. Alain should have understood their plight. He was a mage. They had to use whatever they could against the templars or risk losing everything they had. Then again, at least Alain was here. Twitching, jumping, and flinching, but he was here. Anders told himself to let it go.

The ritual ended. Anders excused himself to heal casting cuts and exchange greetings. There was nothing evil in any of the maleficarum. Terrie and Grace were sisters who looked as if they were always on the run from templars, a constant tinge of pink under their tawny skin. They were also twins, identical save for the tattoos they’d picked for each other. Willful and impulsive, they’d stolen a grimoire of glyphs and hexes as apprentices and tattooed their favorites on each other’s faces. Terrie had a glyph of repulsion on her cheek and could never pick up anything without dropping it. Grace had an hex of affliction on hers and was always too hot or too cold.

Grace was also married, unofficially, to Decimus. Unofficially, Anders knew, because no Chantry priest would ever officiate a mage’s wedding. They didn’t even have wedding rings. How would they pay for them? Anders wished there was something he could do for them, but that wasn’t why they were gathered. One fight at a time, Anders.

Decimus greeted him with a hug, as he always did. The ex-Senior Enchanter had been the head of a subgroup of Starkhaven’s Libertarian Fraternity until it burned to the ground, and he had more connections than Anders could count. It meant he was a known face, albeit a paling one from his time in Darktown. Against his greying hair and ice blue eyes, the old necromancer almost looked like he’d summoned himself.

“Anders,” Decimus smiled. There was something slow and unnatural about his smile, as if he was always learning the expression for the first time. It was creepy, but creepy wasn’t always a bad thing.

Anders smiled back, and nodded to the spelltome, “Dec. Is that the last one?”

“So it is,” Decimus picked it up and held it out to him. It was a simple thing, ram leather with an iron lock, nothing embossed on its cover. Anders braced himself for a scream when he took it, but none came.

“No screams?” Anders turned the book over in his hands. There were no screams, no whispers, no hint of the demons Decimus had bound. Strange. Maybe his magic was stronger than Amell's had been. “What did you bind, a demon of silence?”

“What need have we for such parlor tricks? We don’t want to be drawing attention to ourselves, now do we?” Decimus plucked the tome back. Anders felt the Fade well in him as he ran his fingers over the lock, “Sword of the Maker, Tears of the Fade.” Decimus whispered and let loose a small burst of flame. The lock fell open, and the tome was otherwise unscathed.

If only Amell’s grimoire had been made with the same magic.

“I studied the magic behind the Victim’s Door for years,” Decimus explained, waving him over to a waterlogged barrel to sit. The bottom had bloated in the flood and creaked precariously when Anders perched on it. The rest of the mages found their own barrels or chose to stand. “This way, we prime the lock with a pass phrase and unlock it with a spell. When we’re done, we close the book. Attempting to open it any other way will burn it from the inside out.

“We scattered the other five throughout Darktown. They should provide more than enough mana for any encounters with the templars. A tempest atop a blizzard, a firestorm atop an earthquake… I dare say even Alain could manage a fireball.”

At his name, Alain jumped. “You said I wouldn’t have to f-f-f-… kill anyone.”

“The time comes you may not have the choice,” Decimus set down the tome, and stood up to pace around the wine cellar, tugging his beard into a point. “Do you remember the fire in Starkhaven, Alain?”

Alain looked down at the mention. “I r-r-r-… I do.”

“We chose to leave, Alain,” Terrie chimed in, “All of us together. Decimus risked everything to go back through the flames and destroy our phylacteries. Not just for us four, but for everyone. We can’t leave them in the Circle just because we were lucky enough to meet Anders.”

Decimus stopped beside Alain, “Who are we?”

“The Resolutionists,” Alain told his hands.

“This is the resolution,” Decimus said firmly.

“No one’s asking you to kill anyone,” Anders tried to reassure Alain. He could tell the poor fellow was uncomfortable, and no one was ever bullied into being a hero. Well, no one except Anders, but he was probably the exception. “If it comes to it, that’s what Decimus and I are here for.”

Alain started, “But you’re a healer.”

“Sometimes, the best way to heal is to make sure no one gets hurt,” Anders explained. “Better the death of one templar than so many innocents. In any case, we’re not here to fight templars, we’re here to free mages, and that’s why we need the tomes.”

“So we’re ready then?” Grace asked. “We can save Innley and the others?”

“We’re ready,” The words alone made Anders feel vindicated for how long he’d waited to speak them. The rest of the Starkhaven mages would have their phylacteries in the Gallows to destroy with their recent recapture. The Coterie had finally relinquished their hold on the lyrium tunnels. The Redwaters had finally provided promise of passage. All they’d needed was a little push, so Decimus... pushed.

Anders and Decimus had met with Lilley, who’d taken them to see Brekker, who’d taken them to see Harlan, who ultimately had the final call with the Coterie. The argument had given Harlan a bit of a headache, but he agreed that they could start using the lyrium tunnels once a month. Then they’d met with Hawke, who introduced them to Samson, who introduced them to Captain Leech of the Redwaters. He’d twitched a bit at first, but ultimately consented to providing safe passage for any mages they brought him.

Decimus was … persuasive. Anders didn’t know if he had it in him to be persuasive. Using blood magic in a fight was one thing, but using it to change a man's mind was another. It turned a man from his true purpose, but if his purpose wasn't true, what other choice did they have? It had been Anders’ only thought at the time. He’d entreated on the Collective’s behalf long enough. The Coterie had no intention of honoring their arrangement, and inaction had become an action unto itself. One Anders couldn’t abide. He had an obligation to see the mages free, whatever the cost. Amell had done it. Decimus had done it. Their causes were just. The ends would justify their means.

“Alain will keep watch at the entrance to the tunnels,” Anders continued, “Grace and Terrie will take the them to the Gallows. Bardel will leave the mages’ rooms unlocked. Innley and the others will meet you at the Gates and Bardel and Bancroft will destroy their new phylacteries. Once you get my signal, move. We’ll leave the tomes open, and you can channel a haste on the way back to get them out before anyone notices they’re gone.”

“And what of me?” Decimus gathered up Grace’s hand and kissed her knuckles. “I’ll not sit idly by while my wife is endangered.”

“I’ll need you back here, at the entrance, to help Alain,” Anders said, watching Decimus and Grace's exchange and wanting to believe it would last. That it was possible for a mage to find and keep love, but that wasn’t their world. Yet. “We’ll need to get them to the docks through the warrens and to the Redwaters unnoticed, but if there’s trouble before we get back, you’re the best one to handle it.”

“These templars strike first and think after, love,” Grace said, returning Decimus' kiss. “Do not give them the chance. They will be easier to kill than control if they show.”

“If they trouble us, the dead themselves will meet the call,” Decimus promised.

“Anders, what is your signal?” Terrie asked.

Anders grinned. “A little bird will tell you.”


A crow flew from Darktown and out into the channel that cut Kirkwall in two, navigating the wind and sleet that fell from the sky with ease. Two colossal bronze statues flanked the channel, collared and leashed to the Gallows by a massive chain. The crow followed an updraft along the cliff face, where dragons carved into the blackrock watched it soar with the jealous eyes. They were trapped within the rock, like the rest of the crow’s murder was trapped within the cage across the sea.

The crow followed the chains across the Waking Sea until it reached the Gallows. The courtyard was lined with the same familiar bronze statues - some not quite monsters, some not quite men. The crow found a perch atop one with the symbol of a sunburst on it and befouled it, only to be shooed away by a predator. “Get! Shoo! Maker’s breath, right on the helmet. Augh… I’ll have a Tranquil clean it later.”

The crow squawked and flew away. Framing the stairs, wrought-iron spikes held blood red banners that flapped in the wind without taking flight. Below them, two statues were bowed so low on their knees they were almost on their stomachs. Each reached a hand towards the other but had no way to span the distance. The crow perched on the palm of one and watched the comings and goings of predators in the early evening twilight until the courtyard was empty.

Leaving its perch, the crow flew through the gallows, squalling defiance until a storm drain rattled. Two members of its murder climbed out from the drain and hurried across the courtyard to the western portcullis. There was something important behind it, the crow knew, but it was closed. The crow hopped onto the grating and cawed. The caw echoed down the hall. The crow cawed again, and the caw echoed again.

“Where are they?” One of the humans whispered. Terrie. That was the sound for it.

“This could be a trap,” The other muttered. Grace. “We should have brought Decimus.”

The crow squawked at them and hopped through the lattice. It toddled down the hall and was almost trampled when a half dozen humans came running around a corner, chased by a predator. The reflective man of metal had a silver sword of mercy emblazoned on its chest-piece, the sunburst skirt it wore beneath as red as the blood it intended to spill. Templar.

It was a threat to be destroyed. To be shredded, stripped, slain. To have the pieces of it scattered for carnage and carrion. The crow would tear it apart, entrails ripped from -… Bardel. It was Bardel. The crow was the only threat about.

“Quickly now,” Bardel stopped at the portcullis and ushered one of the mages forward, oblivious to the furious crow at his feet. “Innley, quickly.”

Innley was a small thing, more prey than predator, all but lost under a robe embroidered with blue poppies. The Fade swelled in him, and his hands emerged from his sleeves sheathed in sapphire. It surged over the portcullis like a wave and lifted it in its gateway. The mages ran through, to freedom, and the crow flew away.

Nothing went wrong. The mages made it through the lyrium tunnels safely. Alain and Decimus met with no trouble in Darktown. Anders and Decimus saw them through the warrens to the Redwaters. The Redwaters saw them away. Anders sat in his coat on the docks with Decimus, watching the ship sail out of the harbor in a daze. The biggest risk they’d encountered was Anders, and his own inability to control his anger at the sight of templars. He’d have to work on that… somehow.

Decimus gave his shoulder a pat and stood, “I should head back before I’m recognized.”

“I’ll walk you back,” Anders said. He had to pick up his things from where he’d locked them in his clinic anyway. He followed Decimus down the stairs, and through a back alley that led to a storm drain. He cast a final look over his shoulder at the bay as they descended, “Here’s hoping they don’t end up in Llomerryn in nothing but their small clothes,”

“Their captain will keep his word as long as I’m around.” Decimus assured him, dropping into the sewers with a small splash.

“And how long will that be, exactly?” Anders asked, dreading the thought of what the Collective would do without Decimus as much as he was dreading the thought walking back through Darktown barefoot. He really needed to enchant the rest of his clothes to match his coat. Anders jumped off the ladder and stepped on something soft that felt like it burst beneath his toes.

Best not to think about it. Anders shook his foot without looking down at it. “Not that I’m not grateful, but we need to be ready.”

“As long as it takes to get the rest of the Starkhaven mages out of the Gallows, I suppose,” Decimus shrugged. “You know this only worked because of the overcrowding. If all six of them hadn’t shared the same cell, Innley would be the only free mage tonight. We need the First Enchanter’s support.”

“This again,” Anders rolled his eyes. “Fereldan’s First Enchanter never did anything for the mages there. You know he used to set traps, leave out books on blood magic and try to trick mages into reading them so he could have an excuse make them Tranquil?”

“Orsino may yet surprise you,” Decimus put an arm around his shoulder, and whispered into his ear as if there were anyone around in the flooded sewers to overhear them. “I have a friend in the city who informs me Orsino has been supplying him with some fascinating paraphernalia.”

Anders snorted, “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I get an itch.”

“Books, my dear boy, books,” Decimus laughed, “The very same your old First Enchanter used against you, Orsino supplies for research. All we need do is ask, and my friend could put us in touch with him. He may even know where to find that grimoire you’ve been looking for.”

Anders shook his head. He already knew where to find his grimoire. Getting it was the difficult part, “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

“And when your contacts on the inside are caught?” Decimus made it sound more like an inevitability than a possibility. “Who will you turn to then? When the guards are double posted? When the Loyalists are made to watch the Libertarians, and those who want freedom are roomed with those who spurn it?”

All good points. None of them any Anders wanted to hear. He couldn’t stand the thought of working with the First Enchanter of any Circle. He’d lived in a Circle for most of his life. He knew exactly what it took to move up in one. The Senior Enchanters in Fereldan had been everything Anders hated. Mages who turned on their own kind to serve the templars. Orsino couldn’t be any different if he let it get this bad.

“We’ll get there when we get there,” Anders shrugged out from under Decimus’ shoulder. He’d worry about it later. Today was a victory. “I’ll see you, Dec.”

“Take care, Anders,”

Anders checked on his things in his clinic, but the lock Hawke had gifted him had held. Anders dressed and whistled his way to the Hanged Man. There was only a half-hour left before curfew when the guards would start rounding up anyone still out on the streets. Citizens were already streaming out of the Hanged Man, and Anders felt like a fish swimming upstream trying to get through. He wanted the chance to see Hawke before the day was out. The fact that Merrill would probably be gone by now was just a plus.

No such luck. The elf was standing outside the moat of broken glass and refuse that surrounded the Hanged Man, barefoot in the snow, and trading words with Varric.

“Daisy, for my sake, please don’t cut through any alleys on your way home tonight,” Varric begged.

“Nothing ever happens. I’m perfectly safe, Varric.” Merrill assured him. She left with a wave, and a smile in Anders’ direction he didn’t return.

“That nothing is costing me a fortune,” Varric muttered when Merrill was out of ear shot. Anders resolved to ignore it. He started for the door, but Varric caught him by the edge of his coat before he made it inside. “Blondie, hold back a second.”

“Anders at your service,” Anders said, trying for an innocent expression. He wasn’t going to let anything ruin today.

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about why the Dog Lords have taken a sudden interest in Daisy, would you?” Varric had an impressively enigmatic look on his face, but Anders knew it wasn’t a question.

He shrugged anyway, “Beats me.”

“Uh huh,” Varric let go of his coat. “Well if you did, I sure wish you’d tell me, because it’s getting pretty expensive to cover your tab and bribe the Coterie to walk Daisy home every night.”

Anders shrugged, “Wish I could help.”

“Funny, I was about to say the same thing,” Varric said.

Varric couldn’t help him. The rotund dwarf wasn’t exactly stealthy, and Merrill lived on the fifth floor in the alienage, which was five floors too many for Varric. Unless Varric suddenly turned into a mage and learned transformation magic, there was no way he would make that trip willingly. So unless he intended to talk Merrill into giving Anders’ grimoire back -….

Maybe he could talk Merrill into giving Anders’ grimoire back. “I-… lost something.” Anders said cautiously.

“Go on,” Varric said.

Anders went on, “A grimoire. The Dogs promised to find it for me. It’s possible someone might have found it and it’s possible they don’t understand that it doesn’t belong to them.”

“Mhm,” Varric rubbed at his beardless chin with his thumb, “And how much is this grimoire worth?”

“Everything,” Anders heard the echo in his voice, and clenched and unclenched his fists to calm down. One fight at a time. “It was Amell’s. You can’t buy me off, Varric. If it means I can’t drink here-“

“Easy, Blue,” Varric held up both hands. “I mean seriously. How much is it worth? Did it ever occur to you that someone else might be interested in the Darktown Healer’s grimoire? Like, oh, I don’t know, literally every thief in Kirkwall?”

“Of course it occurred to me,” Anders scowled. “I’ve tried every fence in Kirkwall and no one has tried to sell it. Which means whoever has it still has it.”

“Every fence?” Varric sounded dubiously, “Even the Black Emporium?”

Anders had never heard the name before, but it didn’t mean anything. His grimoire had gone missing the same day as his fight with Merrill. It couldn’t have been anyone else. He scrambled after his anger like a cat after a string of yarn, “No, but-“

“Call off the Dogs, Blondie.” Varric said. “Consider it my belated Satinalia present. Ask Hawke about the Emporium. He has the invitation, not me. He’ll take you there, and if you still can’t find your grimoire, I’ll talk to Daisy for you.”

It wouldn’t hurt anything to try. “How am I supposed to argue with that?” Anders sighed.

“You’re not,” Varric pushed him towards the door. “Come on, get something to eat before curfew.”

“I thought you were cutting me off?” Anders asked.

“I considered it,” Varric allotted, “But I’m afraid you wouldn’t eat if I didn’t feed you. So here we are, a dwarf and a human walking into a bar-”

“You’re lucky you’re so short. That hurt like mad.” Anders quipped.

Varric elbowed him. “You could have just stopped me, Blondie.”

“Why waste a perfectly good set up?” Anders grinned. He disentangled himself from Varric’s company with a promise to talk to the Dogs first thing in the morning and searched the crowd for Hawke. The only patrons left in the Hanged Man were the sots and the tenants, and he supposed Isabela counted for a bit of both. Anders found her by the hearth before he found Hawke, and she wasn’t sitting in a chair so much as the lap of the person in it.

She was twisting a bit of the fellow’s hair about her finger, so shockingly white it shamed the snow outside. The hand that held her by the small of her back was marked by tattoos a matching shade. Fenris. Ew.

Hawke was at the next table over, seated with a fellow in full silverite armor lined with gold filigree who was just begging to be mugged. His hair was an ochre color, like the rust that ate up half of Kirkwall, slicked back with wax or fat that only nobility could afford. Anders hesitated, but Hawke waved him over when he spotted him, so he supposed it was safe.

“Sebastian,” Hawke explained with a raised mug in the noble’s direction. “He’s a brother in the Chantry. Sort of.”

“I’ve never seen someone from the Chantry come to Lowtown,” Anders spun a chair over to the table, curiosity overtaking caution. “Can you officiate weddings?”

“Little fast,” Hawke mumbled into his mug. Anders grinned and kicked him under the table.

“I… could, yes,” Sebastian said slowly. “But I have left the Chantry, and would have to return to officiate anything, so I am afraid I cannot. It was good to see you again, serah Hawke, but I must go if I am to reach Ostwick by Cassus. Good day, serah-…?”

“Anders,” Anders supplied.

Sebastian spared them both a small bow and left. Anders poured himself a drink from the pitcher on the table. It was cider and safe, as always of late. “He seemed decent,” Anders allotted, stealing a slice of bread off Hawke’s plate.

“Who are you marrying?” Hawke asked.

“Some friends,” Anders said.

“Mage friends?” Hawke guessed.

“So Fenris and Isabela, huh?” Anders dodged the question, “When did that start happening?”

Hawke shrugged, “Didn’t ask. Didn’t care. Not-“

“Your business?” Anders cut him off with a grin. He waved what was left of his stolen slice of bread at Hawke’s bowl. “What’s that?”

“Lamb stew,” Hawke pushed it at him. “You’re late. Missed Wicked Grace.”

“Thought I’d save myself the coin,” Anders took a bite of the stew. It was more carrot and potato than it was lamb, not that Anders was complaining.

“You’re late a lot,” Hawke said.

“Miss me?” Anders asked around a mouthful of stew.

“Sometimes.” Hawke kept his eyes on him, and Anders couldn’t tell if it was a joke. His mouth was empty but he swallowed anyway. “When you bathe. You smell like shit. Why are you still in the sewers?”

“The view, obviously,” Anders joked. So much for flirting. “Where else would I be? Can you imagine me crawling out of the sewers and into Hightown? They’d chase me out with pitch forks and torches without ever knowing I was a mage.”

“The Rose would put you up. You could heal the girls,” Hawke suggested, undeterred. “You could stay here, have Varric get you a room.”

“I’m where I’m needed,” Anders waved him off.

“You’re needed in a bath,” Hawke muttered.

Anders pretended he didn’t hear him. “So Varric mentioned this place. The Black Emporium? He said you could take me there. There might be a grimoire there I need to get back. I was hoping you could get it for me, for an IOU.”

“No,” Hawke said.

“Why no?” Anders asked. Hawke’s eyebrows furrowed and Anders half-expected his 'condition' to take over when he opened his mouth, but he closed it and took a drink instead. “Why no?” Anders asked again.

“I don’t have the coin for anything there,” Hawke told his drink.

“You don’t even know how much it’ll cost,” Anders protested. Hawke had the coin. Anders knew he had the coin. Varric had already funded a hundred sovereign expedition with the coin.

“Doesn’t matter,” Hawke said.

“Well then just take me and I’ll figure out how to pay for it later.” Anders insisted.

“Alright,” Hawke relented with no explanation. Maker, talking to Hawke was like pulling teeth sometimes, and Hawke was already missing a few. Anders ate. Hawke watched him and took the occasional drink. “How’d it go? Your thing?”

Anders shot him a grin, “No one’s dead yet.”

“Keep it that way.” Hawke said.

“Well that’s the plan,” Anders finished his stew, and leaned on the table so he could better whisper without being overheard. “We got six today.”

“But not Beth,” Hawke didn’t whisper. “Don’t get her hurt, Anders.”

“Why would you even say that?" Anders asked, "I would never mean to-“

“You didn’t mean to last time,” Hawke cut him off. “What happens in the Circle now that there’s been an escape?”

… Templars cracked down. Mages lost privileges. Other people suffered the consequences of Anders’ actions. “She’ll be fine.” Anders said instead.

“How do you know?” Hawke asked.

“I’ll make sure,” Anders promised. A stupid promise. Beth didn’t want to escape the Circle. What else could Anders do for her? Hawke was staring at him and Anders knew his answer wasn’t good enough for him. It wasn’t even good enough for Anders. “I’ll… write to the First Enchanter. He can make sure she stays safe.”

Hawke seemed to think that was good enough. He gave him a clipped nod and stood. Anders made to follow him, but a hand on his shoulder forced him back into his chair. “Stay here tonight,” Hawke ordered, emptying a handful of coppers from his pocket onto the table. “Take a bath. Sleep in a bed.”

Anders caught his arm, torn between gratitude and frustration. He wanted to like Hawke, but the man made it so hard sometimes, “You can pay for my room but not my grimoire?”

“Can’t afford what you want,” Hawke said. “Can afford what you need.”

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
No Saying No: Alain's backstory

Pariahs
Pariahs is a companion piece to Accursed Ones that follows Fenris, Isabela, and Merrill and their relationship throughout Accursed Ones.
What's in a Name?: The start of Fenris and Isabela's relationship, as told from Fenris' perspective.

Chapter 87: Burn After Reading

Summary:

The letters we sent and the ones that we didn't.

Notes:

Any advice or constructive criticism is welcome, and comments are greatly appreciated. Thank you for all of your comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, and as always thank you for reading.

Chapter Text

9:32 Dragon The Month of Cassus
Letters Delivered to the Collective of Kirkwall, Burnt After Reading
Letters Delivered to the Desk of First Enchanter Orsino, Burnt After Reading

To the Collective of Kirkwall
Delivered

To the Individual Going by ‘A’,

Please consider this a letter sent in good faith, as you must understand the consequences of its discovery. I was advised through a colleague of mine who was advised through a colleague of yours that you had expressed an interest in speaking with me. I hope we can agree it is a bit simpler if I contact you directly. As we do not know each other: an introduction.

I have known what I am and been where I am since I was a child. I am in no way remarkable. I am not the best scholar nor the most proficient in our shared craft. For many a year, I was unnoticed and preferred it as such. I came to realize early those of us who are noticed are not noticed long. I lived my life to see the sun rise in the morning and set in the evening with no concern for the in between.

That was no life. It took a friend ending theirs for me to understand. Maud, if you would know her name. She had a mother and a father who loved her, an older sister with a beautiful singing voice, and a dog who would sleep by her feet. She received letters often from home, but they served only to remind her of the life she had lost. The restrictions on correspondence started when she took her own life, as if the letters were to blame and mere ink on parchment could birth such tragedy.

My friend was the first, but she wasn’t the last. It spread like a sickness, and we lost at least one soul to suicide each year. The others who share this space with us, those with the order, would snigger when they thought no one was listening. “One less to worry about,” I would hear them say, when it was their abuses that drove us to desperation in the first place. We needed a change, so I stepped up when no other would.

I have been this present version of myself for four years now. It is my life’s mission to bring hope to my people and make our days worth living. Life must always be preferable to death. I understand you have a similar goal. I am still unremarkable, but I am a voice if you need one. You may trust me to always put my brothers and sisters before myself, and you may trust that I count you as one of them.

That said, what is it you hope to gain from our correspondence?

Speak plainly, but not too plainly.

For this letter and all that follow I would ask that you burn after reading.

O,


A Letter Crumpled on the Floor of a Clinic in Darktown.
Never Sent

What about Karl? Were you a voice for him? He trusted you. He wrote all about how you fought for him. For mages. How you pushed for more privileges, how you voted to split from the Chantry in Cumberland, and for what? You were supposed to keep him safe. He was a senior enchanter. All it took was open support of the Libertarians, a conversation in the library, handful of letters, and then…

The First Enchanter is supposed to be consulted on any disciplinary measures taken by the templars. You should have had the final say. You should have kept him safe. Where were you when they locked him in solitary? Where were you when Alrik was torturing him?

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THEY SEALED HIS SOUL BEHIND A BRAND OF LYRIUM AND THE CHAINS OF TRANQUILITY?

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN ELSA SUFFERED THE SAME FATE? WHAT TRANGRESSIONS WERE THEY MADE TO ANSWER FOR? WHAT CRIME WARRANTED THIS MAGICAL CASTRATION? YOU HAVE FAILED IN YOUR CHARGE OF PROTECTING OUR BRETHERN. YOU ARE INEFFECTUAL AT BEST OR COMPLICIT AT WORST. THE CIRCLE HAS NO NEED OF YOU. ANDERS HAS NO NEED OF YOU

(The rest of this letter is illegible)


To the Desk of First Enchanter Orsino
Delivered

O,

I appreciate the letter, but I’m afraid we’re fresh out of faith. I need more than that.

I need information. I heard you recently lost six of our brothers and sisters. I have friends in your care, and I need to know about the conditions they’re facing as a result. Assurances they will not be held accountable for the actions of others if any more are lost, and more will be lost.

I have never known someone in your position to have the same goal as someone in mine. I’m honestly surprised you wrote me. The change that our people need cannot come from within. Not when within they face things worse than death. I’m sorry about your friend, but I’ve lost many under your care to things worse than suicide. Your mission may be to bring hope to our people, but mine is to bring our people to hope.

I’ve heard your story too many times. Trying to make life bearable around the order and the rules, trying to forget you’re nothing more than a slave. It never works. The order doesn’t see us as people, and the grievous injustices they’ve inflicted have gone unquestioned for too long. If they cannot be made to answer for their crimes then we cannot be made to suffer them. We must be free of their abuses.

I cannot sit idle in the hopes that change will come of its own accord or wait for another to make it so. I hope you can see that and help it come to pass. This should be your fight too.

I have nothing to offer in exchange for your support. My cause is just. If that is not enough so be it.

The less you know of me the better. Not to play who has the biggest risk, but I think I’d win. Mine’s pretty big. There are hounds in the city, and I’d rather they not sniff me out.

A,


To the Collective of Kirkwall
Delivered

A,

We are all of us the heroes of our own stories. You are not the only one who believes their cause a righteous one. I have heard those same words from the one who commands the ‘hounds’ of which you speak.

Perhaps it would help your cause to know more about her. She had a sister once. A sister like us. She lost her to Fear, and that Fear destroyed not just her family but her entire village. It inspired her to be who she is today. She will stop at nothing to ensure that such an abomination never again comes to pass, and who is to say her motive is wrong?

So you see justice is an interesting concept. It can drive a man to perform the noblest deeds as well as the worst atrocities. Just as you cannot trust in faith, I cannot trust in justice, and so perhaps we should trust in each other. The best alliances are often found in the most unlikely of places. Someone like you provides someone like me with… alternatives for our people in difficult times.

As to the six individuals you mentioned – that was quite a tragic affair. Mass self-immolation. It’s more common than some would think and less common than some would like. Aside from the few individuals charged with the task of cleaning the scorch marks off the walls, no one was the worse for wear. You need not worry about your friends.

We have taken precautions to ensure it does not happen again on so grand a scale, but no system is infallible. I do not doubt we will lose one or two every so often, despite our best efforts. While I may be uniquely qualified to identify at risk individuals, I am not always successful in deterring them when their hearts and minds are set.

One young girl comes to mind. It is unlikely she will pass a certain test you may be familiar with, and I suspect she knows it. It’s unfortunate, but no one would be surprised if she didn’t make it to the test. She’s always knitting at her window and never misses a sunset. The third floor is a long drop to the rocks below, and I worry.

Her test is in one week.

O,


To the Desk of First Enchanter Orsino
Delivered

O,

If that’s the lead bitch’s goal, she’s failing miserably, but I don’t know how that helps me. A sad backstory won’t sway her hounds to mercy when they’re running lose in the city. So her convictions are sincere. I sincerely believe she should be convicted. She’s let one bad experience color her whole world, and her treatment of our people, to the point where mass self-immolation isn’t even questioned. That’s insane.

Andraste’s knickerweasels. Really? Mass self-immolation. I never would have thought of that. That’s pretty clever. Tragic. Dreadful. Etc. Etc. The rocks are another a terrible way to go. I heard about the girl and the fact that you lost her, despite all your precautions. I hope no one blames you. You did everything you could for her, and I promise she knows it, wherever she is.

I shouldn’t have doubted you. We’re on the same side, although I don’t know how I feel about being an alternative. It makes me feel a bit like a side-dish. I’m pretty sure I should be the main course, but I understand wanting to take it slow for now. I suppose I should warn you: I am pretty needy.

Are you worried someone else might follow in her footsteps?

A,


To the Collective of Kirkwall
Delivered

A,

Understanding our past can help us predict our future. I am sure the information will be of use to you in due time.

As to the girl, she will be missed. With the storms of late, it was no real surprise we were unable to recovery the body. I hope you will pass along my condolences to her family.

Your concern is appreciated, but unnecessary. I am glad we could reach an accord that favors us both, and I suppose I shall have to work on my analogies. I did warn you I was unremarkable, and I am fast finding your wit outpaces mine. You will simply have to assume my amusement.

There is one more fellow who comes to mind. Dnniks Mopupn. You will forgive the code, but one cannot too be cautious, especially with an individual who is the subject of a great deal of scrutiny of late. He is to be brought up on charges of conspiracy. The paperwork was filed today, and I suspect he knows it. I think he would rather go out on his own terms than face ours.

He does not have much time.

O,


A Cypher Decrypted and Crumpled on the Floor of a Darktown Clinic
Never Sent

Dnniks Mopupn… Npupom Skinnd? No

Maker’s bloody balls. Why couldn’t he just write a name?

Maybe it’s an anagram

1D, 3N, 1I, 1K, 1S, 1M, 1O, 1U, 2P

Donn Pumpkins? Nudniks… Nopp? Munnion DKPP?

Damnit

Underlined… Under… Dnniks… dicks...

Ask Varric

D N N I K S M O P U P N
U N D E R L I N E D U N
J A K E T H E B L R V A

Jaketh Eblrva? Orlesian cypher my ass

D N N I K S M O P U P N
U N D E R L I N E U N D
J A K E T H E B L A C K

Jake the Black


To the Desk of First Enchanter Orsino
Delivered

O,

You’ve proven yourself a true friend. Better than I deserve. Maybe you already know from colleagues of colleagues, but I work with a group of like-minded people, and your information saved some of them. It set us back, but it would have been worse if it caught us off-guard. We can still move when we’re needed, but it might take a few weeks to prepare.

It’s a little late, but I should probably introduce myself. I’m a healer. I came here to escape and just couldn’t leave. Bit ironic, but you know how it goes. Come for the freedom, stay for the crippling injustice and helotry. A friend is even writing a story about me. The hopeless romantic waging an epic struggle against forces of oppression, and there are plenty in this city. I’ll let you know how it ends.

Anyway. I need a favor – to be returned however you like. I have a friend in your care. Vrwlryg Ueqxh. She’s not in danger, but without someone on the inside looking out for her, I fear she will be. I need her to stay safe and I’m trusting you to keep her that way.

(I hope I wrote her name right. Really not a fan of cloak and dagger codes and phrases. Ig-pay ommon-cay ould-way e-bay asier-eay. Actually, that’s not easier at all. We can stick with the cypher.)

Your friend,
A,


To the Collective of Kirkwall
Delivered

A,

Consider her safe and the favor repaid. I’ve been in need of an apprentice, and she is an extremely talented young woman and a light in this dark place. I am the better for knowing her. I am also the better for knowing you. It takes great courage to do as you do, and I appreciate your service and discretion, but now I must ask for the latter.

There must be a period of mourning. We have lost many of late, and we cannot afford to lose more. I will let you know when it’s safe again, but it may be longer than a few weeks. Should you need me for anything else, you have my support in any actions you take. I hope I have yours as well, for there is a situation I was hoping you could assist me with.

These losses we have incurred. They have gone unquestioned because they have not been out of place. The conditions we face would drive ordinary men to madness. Tensions rise, accusations fly, and the slightest misstep is met with the most grievous of punishments. Do not think I missed what you had scratched out in your earlier letter. You are not wrong. I have lost good men and women recently on false charges - inciting to riot, profane practices, and other fabrications.

I am doing all that I can to protect my people, but I need more support. I do not know the extent of your reach, but there is a woman of… grand status in the city. She has the ability to put a stop to this kind of treatment if she would but speak on our behalf. She refuses to pick a side, but she has not seen these abuses firsthand. I know she would not wish this on any of the Maker’s children. If we could but show her…

But I am not in a position to speak with her alone. I am never without escort in the city. If I had a friend willing to speak on my behalf, on behalf of my people, it might make a difference.

Your friend,
O


To the Desk of First Enchanter Orsino
Delivered

O,

I wish I had good news. A friend helped me get an audience, but she wouldn’t hear it. Doddering old biddy. ‘Gossip is a sin, child.’

She said it wasn’t ‘her role to form opinions on you-know-who’s character’ but that she showed, ‘an admirable devotion to her duties.’ The abuse, the beatings, the rape, the -… brands. It all meant nothing to her. She said that we had to be made to suffer the consequences of our actions and that the Maker never burdens us with more than we can overcome. It was like talking to a Chanter.

She’s proud of what’s happening. Or blind to it. She said if it came to it, the Maker would step in, as if this is His will. I knew it would be a waste of time. It’s not right. Andraste preached freedom and ended slavery. She didn’t fight the Imperium for us to become another one. I know there are others who would see it that way if we could reach them. I’m sorry I couldn’t help,

Your friend,
A


To the Collective of Kirkwall
Delivered

A,

Do not be so quick to burn this bridge. She is not the blind, doddering old biddy you believe her to be, but she cannot heal a wound if she does not know how deep it goes. If she does not believe in our suffering, then we must show it to her.

There are those who would Seek out the Truth of these abuses, but their presence may do more harm than good. I have long agonized over how far to walk this road, but I am left with no choice. I have enclosed a letter with my personal seal. It must go to the Divine in Val Royeaux. I dare not send it through my usual channels.

I am trusting you to see this delivered.

Your friend,
O


To the Desk of First Enchanter Orsino
Delivered

O,

Are you sure this is a good idea? It starts at the top. The Divine is the one who appointed Grand Cleric. The Grand Cleric appointed the Knight-Commander. I’m sorry for speaking plainly, but it’s the truth, and it’ll be plain to anyone who seeks it. You’re looking for friends in high places when you should be looking for friends in low places.

Do you know what the people think of the trade levies? Of the curfews at night? Of the raids in the city? There’s our support. Talk to my friend about what life was like out here. We all know the new laws aren’t coming from the Viscount, they’re coming from the Knight-Commander. If you were willing to speak openly against her, I think this city would surprise you.

Your friend,
A


To the Collective of Kirkwall
Delivered

A,

I spoke with your friend. She had several fascinating stories as to the conditions in the city that align with yours. Perhaps I am too far removed these days. She’s doing well, in case you were curious. She has developed a talent for force magic, particularly maelstroms of manipulative energy and ethereal weights. She has an uncommon precision to keep such overwhelming power under control.

We must exercise the same caution. I cannot take this to the city without the support of its leaders. I will take your suggestion under advisement, but please, see my letter delivered.

Your friend,
O,


To the Desk of First Enchanter Orsino
(A detailed list of relics and antiques is included with this letter)
Delivered

O,

It’s done. I hope you’re right. I’m glad she’s doing well. She’s important to me. I don’t have a lot of things left that are, and I could use your help with that.

I heard you sometimes acquire things for your colleagues. Are we colleagues? If we’re not, we should be. Since we’re colleagues, I was hoping you could acquire something for me. I’ve recently gained access to… an emporium, of sorts, in the city. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it, but anything you can imagine is there. Compendiums, codices, relics, antiques, schematics. The catch is it’s for a price, and it’s a price I can’t pay.

If you could get me the coin, I could get you anything you need. All I need is eighty-four sovereigns for something for myself – a book that was stolen from me and somehow ended up there. I’ve tried everything to get it back, but this isn’t the sort of place you can break into and they don’t take exchanges. Believe me, I tried both.

I would even be willing to make a copy for you. The things in this book are things you won’t find anywhere else. Summoning, binding, enough necromancy to make a Mortalitasi blush. If that doesn’t interest you, I’ve included a list of things that might.

Your friend and colleague,
A,


To the Collective of Kirkwall
Delivered

A,

That is no small sum, my friend. I will speak with the lucrosians about your list and keep you apprised, but there are some pursuits even they cannot afford. Of course, I will make no mention of your book.

I have a proposition for you. You mentioned yourself a healer. We provide such services here, but one must first inform the harbormaster, charter a ship, receive dispensation from the templars, compensate the lucrosians … Anyone who comes here, comes here publicly, and that kind of knowledge is leverage in the wrong hands.

There is no discretion for the jilted lover, the expectant mother, the wounded duelist, the Blooming Rose patron. You could fill a void in this city and your purse at the same time working with the nobility. Perhaps with enough time, they might even come to see you as an ally and take on our plight. When that day comes, I would have no hesitation speaking out publicly.

I know where you can start. There’s a gentleman, late in his years, who came to us recently. He is not suited for this life. He spoke too plainly upon his arrival and was made to answer for it. I suspect he will not be with us long, either by his own hand or by the templars. Bresilp Qi Mbomvcm. Perhaps you could give your sympathies to his family.

Your friend and colleague,
O


To the Desk of First Enchanter Orsino
Delivered

O,

Don’t worry about it. I had to ask. Closed mouths don’t get fed and all that. Or if they do it’s not pretty. You’d need a bib, probably smear a lot of food, make a mess, have to change. I’ll figure it out. I already offer the services you mentioned, but my patients are a little different. Most of them can’t rub two coppers together, let alone a sovereign. I couldn’t charge them for something they’d die without.

When it comes to the nobility…

The old fellow you lost recently. I found his wife, Agnes. It meant everything to her. With the flood and her tears, it’s lucky this whole city isn’t under water. They’re not exactly nobility anymore, but she gave me a brooch. It had a goose or something on it. It fetched a sovereign, but I wouldn’t feel right about charging her either.

I don’t suppose you have eighty-three more people who need my sympathies? With less grateful families?

In all seriousness, I take it things have settled down? When do you suspect we’ll hear back about whether not our friends will come Seek out the Truth?

Your friend and colleague,
A,


To the Collective of Kirkwall
Delivered

A,

The opposite. I will be as candid as I can, for I fear this will be our last correspondence for some time. There have been incidents these past few weeks. Violent outbursts from some of the new recruits. One or two recruits I would understand; there will always be those who join the order for the wrong reasons, looking to live out some perverse fantasy, but this is different.

There is a pattern to it. The new recruits vanish for a few days, and when they return they are changed. This is not some new initiation ritual, nor some simple trip to the Blooming Rose. This is something else.

There was a new recruit by the name of Wilmod. He had friends and family among us and visited them often. He treated us as equals and spoke openly against those who did otherwise. There were even rumors he joined to help others escape, though I suspect them unfabricated. All the same, I knew him to be a good and kind man, but after his initiation he was no man at all.

It started with the outbursts, easily excused. An apprentice handled too roughly; an order issued too loudly. A few apologies, and it was over. The old noble gentleman we lost was the worst. Wilmod brutalized him. Our healers saw to a dislocated hip, a fractured elbow, and terrible, terrible bruising… It was a good thing we lost him. He would only have been made to suffer more in here.

The Knight-Captain confronted Wilmod for it, some days later, and Wilmod was overcome with Rage. It burned him from the inside out. I watched the lava push his eyes from their sockets and melt them onto his cheeks. His skin blackened and charred and he left pieces of himself behind when he charged. We lost two brothers in the fight. The order seven. The Knight-Captain is permanently scarred.

I apologize for my verbosity. It is needed. Only one of us could have done something like this to Wilmod. I know you have colleagues who would see the order undone, and you may even count yourself among them, but this is not the way. Please, if you know something, if there is anything you can do to put a stop to this, if there is anyone you suspect, do not be silent. Put an end to it, before it puts an end to all of us.

There is no way to tell how many other recruits have been corrupted. We have been put on lockdown until it is deemed safe again while an investigation is conducted. If I suspect you falsely, forgive me. I do not wish to leave you on such dire news, but if anyone were to Seek out the Truth of our plight now, it would not go in our favor. I fear what they will find when they arrive, and they will arrive. They cannot ignore the summons of someone in my position. You were right to advise me against it. I wish I had listened to you, my friend.

As to the nobility, you cannot put others before yourself to your own detriment. Grateful though they may be, they are not your brothers and sisters, and you will discover there are limits to their gratitude. We are perhaps done a disservice in our upbringing to not understand the true value of coin. At the right times in the right amounts, there’s nothing more powerful. The lucrosians understand this better than anyone, and we would do well to learn from them on occasion.

If you truly wish your book reclaimed, you must claim it with the coin it takes to do so before someone else does. You are not the only one with an interest in necromancy. Over a million people live in this city, and not all of them have good intentions. You may find a bleeding heart bleeds itself to death.

Your friend and colleague,
O

Chapter 88: Not in Hand, Not in Play

Notes:

Thank you for all of your comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, and as always thank you for reading.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon Verimensis 17 Mid-Day
The Hanged Man – Varric's Quarters

The setting: The Hanged Man. The cast: Three rogues, two mages, one warrior. The scene: A game of cards.

Enter Anders, our hero, about to turn the Maker’s gaze back on His creations. The culmination of all his trails and tribulations was for this moment. The moment he finally won a hand of Wicked Grace. It was so close Anders could taste it, and it tasted exquisite. The pot was up to seventeen silvers, which meant it was just a little shy of the eight thousand or so more Anders needed. He’d be able to buy Amell’s grimoire back from the Black Emporium in no time at this rate.

“What’s the high suit again?” Merrill asked, flicking the edge of one of her cards with her thumb nail. It was a tell, or a trick, or a something, but Anders didn’t care. Anders couldn’t lose.

He had the high suit. Four serpents. There was no beating him. He drew a dagger on his turn, shuffled his hand, and discarded it. He’d been discarding the same card he picked up for the past three rounds, and no one hand noticed. All he needed was someone to play the Angel of Death, and the game was his. If only Oghren could see him now.

“Serpents, Kitten,” Isabela reminded her with a tap on the nose. Merrill flushed pink and didn’t seem to notice when Isabela switched a few of their cards and stuffed them into her boots. Neither did anyone else, but Anders let her have it. No amount of cheating could stop him now.

“So, Blondie,” Varric nudged him with his foot to pull his attention away from his card, “Not to spoil the ending, but what do you think the chances are that we’ll have to introduce Bianca to our friends from Starkhaven?”

“Pretty high, I’d wager,” Isabela answered for him, discarding more cards than she should have had to begin with, “The whole putting demons in other people thing is a real turn off.” Isabela’s hand hesitated over the draw pile, and Anders didn’t doubt more cards were finding their way into her boots while she waggled her eyebrows at him, “When it’s not consensual.”

Anders snorted, “Again, Justice isn’t a demon, but I really wasn’t getting a ‘Love and Lyrium’ vibe from O’s letter.”

“You read my friend-fiction!” Isabela exclaimed, dropping her boots off the table so quickly a few cards fell out. “How far are you? Did you get to the part where-?”

“Stop,” Fenris cut her off, a hand in front of his face as if he couldn’t bring himself to look at Anders. “Please.”

Varric wasn’t a better choice. “It’s really good,” Varric mouthed.

Fenris muttered something in Tevene and made a very determined effort to turn his cards into a face mask. Anders didn’t blame him. The smut in her friend-fiction was shameful, but Varric wasn’t wrong, it was pretty good.

“You’re so cute when you blush,” Isabela teased, tapping Fenris’ nose the same way she had Merrill’s to the same effect.

Anders stared at the three of them. Were they all… a thing? No… maybe? No. Then again, he wouldn’t put it past Isabela. You really couldn’t fault anyone for sleeping with her. It was just… understood, but he doubted Fenris would be with a mage even by association. There was no way the three of them were all together. Well-… No.

“It’s not consensual,” Anders said. Cards. Focus on cards. Focus on victory. Gossip is a sin, Anders. Not your business. “Demons seek out mages. For them to possess a non-magic host, the veil has to be thin, or they have to be summoned. It’s thin in Kirkwall, but not that thin. Someone is doing this to the Order, but I don’t think it’s Dec, or anyone from Starkhaven.”

“It’s no wonder they’re on lockdown,” Varric whistled, “How do you know if it’s your friend or your friend plus one? A very nasty plus. I doubt they all glow. I’m pretty sure Blue is the exception and not the rule.”

“They don’t,” Merrill said, a little too cheerily for the topic, Anders thought. “They augment a mage’s connection to the Fade beyond any normal capacity for mana. It’s like putting too much pressure in a pot. You have to expend mana as a counterweight, otherwise they start to reshape themselves into something that can hold it. Like a tea kettle. It’s why Justice glows, and why most possessions aren’t pretty.”

“Aw, you think I’m pretty?” Anders joked.

“Also, you can smell it in their blood.” Merrill ignored him. She’d been doing that a lot recently, ever since Anders had started ignoring her. Anders supposed he deserved it for unjustly suspecting her of stealing his grimoire, having her followed by a Lowtown gang, refusing to help her people recover an ancient part of their magical history, and just generally being an ass. He’d have to make amends. Somehow. Maybe she was like Valenna, and Anders could just get her a rock and pretend it never happened. Probably wishful thinking.

“Normal thing to know,” Hawke mumbled.

“Oh, not really,” Merrill drew a card, and finally seemed to realize her hand had changed. She glanced at Isabela, and then to the floor, and gathered up a few of the scattered cards, but never once looked over her head for the joke, “Most of my people have forgotten the old ways.”

“Blood magic,” Fenris sneered around the cards he’d all but shoved into his mouth, “Demons. You made a mistake letting those mages go. The moment it was convenient, they gave themselves over to the first demon’s promise and now they are well on their way to making themselves magisters. Also, you cheated, put the cards from the floor back.”

“What cards?” Merrill asked innocently.

“The ones from the floor,” Fenris said flatly. “Not in hand, not in play,”

“But they were in my hand,” Merrill protested, “I just dropped them. That’s not really cheating to pick up something I dropped, is it?”

“Not in hand, not in play.” Fenris repeated stubbornly. They definitely weren’t together, Anders decided. Not knowingly, at least.

“I don’t know why you’re being so cross.” “Not in hand-“ “Varric, are there any rules against dropping cards?”

“Children, children,” Varric said placatingly. “I don’t care.”

“You know possession isn’t the only thing that can cause mutations,” Merrill told her cards, frowning, “Too much lyrium can do the same thing. It also causes paranoia, obsession, dementia…”

“Three for three,” Anders joked.

“It’s impressive, sure, but I wouldn’t call it a mutation,” Isabela added, nudging Fenris with her shoulder. The lyrium-branded elf winced at the contact but didn’t scoot away.

“I know your markings hurt,” Merrill said insistently, waving her cards at the exchange, “I could help you-“

“Fasta vass,” Fenris snapped, “I don’t want your pity. Save it for the victims of all of the blood mages the abomination insists on protecting.”

“Not all mages are like your magisters, you know,” Anders said, for what must have been the hundredth time since he’d met the man. Fenris rolled his eyes, but Anders continued anyway. “Most of us know how to say ‘No’ to demons and we’re friendlier than you think. I don’t think Dec is the one possessing templars.”

“Tell that to his future victims if our suspicions are correct,” Fenris said.

“Or, we could try to make sure there are no future victims by finding the real culprit. I was hoping that you all could ask around.” Anders said, with glance around the table, before his eyes settled on Hawke. “See what you can find out about what’s going on, without involving the guard.”

The man was sitting quietly beside him, a hand over the cards he kept face down on the table. He was still in his Red Iron armor, despite his recent ascension to nobility, and it was still fetching. Deep reds and blacks accented a powerful build that had stood against templars, qunari… magic rocks. The archer was staring at him, enigmatic red eyes perfect for Wicked Grace and terrible for reading.

Hawke was the one with the influence, the affluence, and all the other fluences. The motley crew wasn’t here for Anders, and had all but fallen apart in Hawke’s absence. Anders didn’t have any way to compensate or convince them, but Hawke did. If Anders had his support, he could do anything. Even win Wicked Grace. “It would help Beth,” Anders added, if only because he didn’t know if Hawke would say yes for him.

“We’ll take care of it.” Hawke said. Anders wondered if he would have done the same if he hadn’t mentioned his sister.

“So we’ve got a mystery on our hands,” Varric mused, palming two cards so clumsily even Anders’ noticed. “I’d start with the Rose. There are only so many places the templars frequent-“

“Ahah!” Isabela caught his wrist. Heartless. Anders would have ignored it. Maybe that was why he usually lost, “Nice try, handsome. Two fingers might be all you need for some things, but cheating takes a little more finesse.”

“Rivaini, you wound me,” Varric sighed, but put the cards back. Anders wasn’t sure if they were same cards he stole, but they were cards. He’d worry about helping with the prosthetic later. For now, this was war, and he was a warden, and there was only one thing they found in war.

“I thought that was your brother?” Merrill said.

“Good one, Daisy. Like I was saying, the Rose-“ Varric shuffled his cards, but his metal fingers did as poor a job of supporting them as they did picking them up. Three cards slipped, and in Varric’s scramble to catch them, the rest followed. “Son of a bitch!” Varric snapped, slamming his metal hand on the table. It rattled cups and coins and silenced all of them so well Anders heard the quake in Varric’s next breath. “-… sorry, mother.”

Or maybe it was just cards.

“Thank the Maker, my hand was terrible,” Anders lied, scattering his cards in the discard pile. He left his seat to squeeze between Hawke and Varric and take a look at the prosthetic. Varric wiped at his eyes with his free hand, tears staining his sleeve and reddening his complexion.

“I’ll get more drinks!” Isabela announced, fleeing at the sight of feelings.

“Okay, hear me out,” Anders said, taking off Varric’s leather glove to reveal the metal one beneath it. It was a decent contraption, a metal glove with mock fingers in a permanently relaxed position. The goal was for them to move in tandem with Varric’s index finger, but it was a work in progress. Not Anders’ work. Anders had no idea how to make something like that, but Varric had a friend who was working on it. For now, the fingers were frozen, and the entire thing had to be perfectly fitted to Varric’s hand or it was more hinderance than help. “When we find Bartrand, we boil him in oil.”

“Too prosaic,” Varric shook his head, flexing his hand when Anders took off the prosthetic. “Trapped in a cave with hungry bears, right at the spring thaw.”

“Bears don’t normally attack people,” Merrill shook her head, gathering up Varric’s hand to massage his amputation. “Mostly they just run away if they see you. Though one did chase Pol once when he stumbled across a sow with cubs.”

“Dipped in molten gold and left as a statue in the Viscount’s Keep,” Anders offered instead, adjusting the fennec leather straps that held the prosthetic in place.

“That’s poetic,” Varric allotted.

“Aveline might notice,” Fenris countered.

“Could feed him to Dog,” Hawke suggested.

“That’d be one big shit,” Varric said. Anders fit the prosthetic back onto his hand, and Varric flexed it. “I hope Gerav finishes my new hand soon.”

“I’m sure it will be lovely,” Merrill said. “But does it have to be silver? This one doesn’t really match anything you wear. Oh! I could paint it for you!”

“That’d be nice, Daisy,” Varric agreed.

“So long as you do not paint it in blood,” Fenris snorted.

“Really?” Anders sighed.

“Play nice,” Hawke added.

“Blood doesn’t make a very good paint,” Merrill said thoughtfully, “It dries a sort of dirty brown and I think madder root red would go better with Varric’s wardrobe. I still have some left over from the scarf I made for Beth.”

“I’d love that, Daisy, thanks,” Varric gave her hand a pat. “I don’t think Rivaini is coming back. Does someone want to count the coins?”

Hawke handled it. They came up short, and Hawke took the loss Isabela had stolen. Anders pocketed the measly silver he’d bet and eyed the ten Varric took back suspiciously. “Wait a second, did you drop the cards on purpose?”

“Blondie, how could you?” Varric clutched his chest hair like an aghast noblewoman might her pearls, “I am a wounded man, aggrieving the loss of his livelihood.”

“You cheeky bastard,” Anders should have known better. He gathered up his things with a sigh, “So, look, I’ll talk to Dec, and if you all could just ask around, hopefully we can figure this out. Same time next week? Merrill, do you have a minute?”

Merrill had bundled herself up in so many scarves she looked as round as Varric by the time she was done. “Of course,” Merrill toddled out into the hall. Anders followed her and tried to think of what he wanted to say.

‘Sorry I’m so selfish I didn’t want to share what little pieces of Amell I have left, even though he had the soul of a Dalish and never hesitated to help Velanna relearn her heritage by teaching her how to be an Arcane Warrior?’ ‘Sorry I immediately assumed you stole his grimoire because that’s what I would have done?’ ‘Sorry I had you stalked by a group of Lowtown thugs because it was easier than just talking to you?’ ‘Sorry I didn’t appreciate how much you do for the Collective helping me gather herbs in the Planasene Forest until you stopped because I started ignoring you with no explanation?’ ‘Sorry that I didn’t give you the same benefit of the doubt I gave Amell when you had to use blood magic on Justice and I to protect yourself, Beth, and the entire alienage from us?’

Anders floundered like a fish, opening and closing his mouth for so long Merrill laughed at him. “What are you doing?”

“Sorry,” Anders managed.

“That’s okay,” Merrill rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet and tugged at a few of her scarves. She reminded Anders of a walking ball of yarn, “I do strange things too sometimes. What did you want to talk to me about? I don’t think anyone in the alienage will know anything about what’s happening. We try to avoid the templars, ever since raid.”

“Right-no.” Anders took a deep breath and pushed past his spirit’s discomfort at the mention of the raid. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Merrill blinked at him, wide green eyes that couldn’t possibly have been as innocent as they seemed. She had to know he’d been being an ass. Maybe she just wanted him to say it.

“Being an ass?” Anders tried.

“Oh,” Merrill said. “Thank you.”

“So… are we good?” Anders asked.

“No,” Merrill said.

“What do you mean no?” Anders demanded, “Look, I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you. I thought-… I thought you stole my grimoire, after our fight, but it turns out it was just some random thief, and they sold it to some evil emporium under the city, and it’s going to cost me a fortune to get it back. I think that’s a pretty sufficient punishment, so I just- want us to be friends again.” It wasn’t like he had many, and Merrill… She was a good person. A good mage. He missed their weekly excursions outside the city, their magical debates and theory-crafting, her positive attitude in the face of anything and everything.

“You thought I stole your grimoire?” Merrill took a step back from him. “Because we had a fight? Why? Because I’m Dalish?”

“No,” Anders ran a frustrated hand through his hair. This wasn’t working. Why wasn’t it working? It had always worked with Amell, with Hawke, and anyone else Anders cared about. ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘That’s okay.’ Problem solved. Normally the only reason people didn’t forgive him was because he didn’t care enough to apologize. What was he supposed to do if apologizing didn’t work? “Because that’s what I would have done.”

“You would have stolen something from me if I didn’t let you borrow it?” Merrill looked hurt.

“No-I mean-“ Probably. “I-…” Maker, he just kept making it worse. “You-… Look, my grimoire, it was important to me. Don’t you have anything like that? Something you’d never trust anyone else with?”

“I do,” Merrill said. Okay. Progress. “I’m sorry about your grimoire. I don’t know what I would do if someone stole my mirror, but … I’d be mad at them, not you. I know I make stupid mistakes, and I’m dangerous, but I thought we were friends.”

“We are friends,” Anders said. “Look, what you did to Justice… can’t we just call it even?”

“I was protecting Bethany from you!” Merrill argued. “I was protecting myself. What were you doing? Who were you protecting, having me followed every night? That’s because of you, isn’t it?”

“How do you-“

“I’m not stupid,” Merrill glared at him, folding her arms across her chest. “I can’t believe you.”

“I’m sorry,” Anders said. The word felt hollow, and Anders didn’t know how to fill it. “What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know,” Merrill admitted. “More than sorry.”

“More than sorry,” Anders joked unhappily, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Merrill rolled her eyes and started down the stairs. Anders followed her through the Hanged Man to the exit, and caught her in the doorway. Cold air whipped inside and pooled sleet at their feet, and Norah yelled at them to close it. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“How?” Merrill asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Anders admitted.

“I’ll see you next week, Anders,” Merrill shook her head and left.

Anders felt miserable. He stood in the doorway and watched Merrill vanish into the distance, snow eating up his boots until Norah physically dragged him from the entryway with a lecture Anders barely heard. He took a seat by the door and fiddled with the cat-barf colored scarf that Merrill had made for him. He should have known better. How many of his problems could have been solved by now if he just had the good sense to talk them out?

All it took was a letter to Orsino, and the First Enchanter was all but throwing mages at Anders for him and the Collective to rescue. If Anders had written to him as soon as he got to Kirkwall, he might not have wasted half a year trying to put together the framework of an Underground. He didn’t even need to worry about phylacteries when Orsino wrote off every mage they rescued as a suicide. They were just thrown away, no questions asked, and the mages were free.

Decimus might have had to use blood magic to convince the Coterie and the Redwaters to help escaped mages, but at the end of the day, they hadn’t required much convincing. It was just talking. Maybe if they’d been a little better at it, a little more persuasive, a little more cunning, then they wouldn’t have needed the blood magic at all.

What was he doing? Why couldn’t he just talk to people like a normal person? He hadn’t changed at all. He was just like Isabela, still running away from anything that made him uncomfortable. Suddenly Hawke seemed a great deal more relatable. How many more situations was he just making worse by not talking them through?

Not Decimus. Anders wasn’t going to jump to any conclusions. The fact that Decimus was eager to bind demons to spelltomes didn’t mean he was eager to bind them to templars. Everyone had a limit. Decimus had helped him. Decimus had helped the Collective. He was a part of every major rescue mission that Anders had organized. Surely he had to understand that unleashing demons in the Circle would do far more harm than good.

Just because he was a blood mage didn’t mean he was an evil blood mage. Anders would just go talk to him. If it turned out he was behind it after all, Anders would just-…

Would just what? Just ask him to stop? The man had made a splinter cell in the Libertarians and named it the Resolutionists, for Maker’s sake. He didn’t believe in half-measures. Just last week he was giving a speech about how they would show every person in Thedas how little protection the Circle of Magi actually offers and how they would take their fight to the Chantry… but it was just a speech, wasn’t it? Anders gave speeches all the time.

What would he do if Anders tried to stop him? He wasn’t the sort of man to give up a cause any more than Anders was, and Anders was fueled by a spirit of Justice. Anders traced a vein in his hand, imaging it cracked open with spirit fire. “What do we do?”

“Who are you talking to?” Hawke appeared in front of him, and Anders jumped, knocking his knees on the table and falling back into his seat.

“Maker’s breath, don’t do that,” Anders muttered, rubbing at his heart. “I’m going to end up with heart problems like Thom one day.”

“Who’s Thom?” Hawke asked, taking a seat across from him.

“Patient,” Anders said. He glanced around the Hanged Man, but no one was paying them any particular heed. Anders lowered his voice anyway. “You don’t think Decimus is really behind this, do you?”

“Do you?” Hawke shot back.

“I don’t know,” Anders admitted. “I hope not. He’s a good man, Hawke.”

“A good man who possesses people with demons.” Hawke corrected him.

“He’s helped the cause,” Anders continued, “I could have Beth out tonight if she wanted to leave.”

“But she doesn’t,” Hawke said simply. “Others don’t. You want them in there with abominations?”

“No,” Anders said, “Of course not, but-“

“No,” Hawke cut him off. “He’s doing this, he dies.”

Anders chewed on his bottom lip, “What if I can get him to stop?”

“Can you?” Hawke asked.

“I don’t know,” Anders sighed, leaning back in his chair to rest his head against the wall. He regretted it immediately. It was sticky. Why was it sticky? “We have a meeting this evening. I’ll talk to him.”

“Do you want me with you?” Hawke asked.

“No,” Anders sighed, “The less involved you are the better. If I can’t handle this, Justice will.” Anders felt a surge of confidence from his spirit at the mention, but Anders couldn’t take any comfort in it. He didn’t want to have to handle it. He wanted to be wrong. He wanted it to be someone or something else. Not one of the strongest allies Anders had met in the city since he’d met Hawke. “We have to stop this before the Seekers get here to investigate the Knight-Commander.”

“What then?” Hawke asked.

“What do you mean?” Anders asked.

“I mean, what are you hoping they’ll find?” Hawke elaborated. “If the Grand Cleric didn’t care about what happened to Karl, why would the Seekers?”

“How could you even-“ Anders started, hand erupting with flame. Hawke caught it and snuffed out the blue fire between his gloves before Anders could set the whole tavern aflame.

“I’m not saying it was right,” Hawke kept hold of his hand. The leather was coarse and queerly comforting, as was the fact that Hawke didn’t seem to care about the magic that came with his outburst. At the same time, Anders had a profound urge to rip his hand out of Hawke’s grasp that didn’t seem at all like how he should have felt. It had to be Justice. “I’m saying what then?”

“I don’t know,” Anders didn’t know anything. He didn’t know what to do about the Seekers, about Decimus, about Merrill, about Hawke, holding his hand and waiting for a better answer. Anders knew it was a bad idea to write to the Seekers. A waste of time to talk to the Grand Cleric. He’d warned Orsino. Some problems Anders needed to talk through. Others… Others were past the point of talking.

“You should,” Hawke said. “I don’t want to lose you to this.”

“Lose me?” Anders repeated, grinning. “I didn’t know you had me.”

“I just meant-…to your cause,” Hawke backtracked.

“That’s all?” Anders blurted, catching Hawke’s hand when he tried to pull it away. It felt good to hold it. It felt better to be held.

“What?” Hawke asked.

“I mean... you’ve done a lot,” Anders said, despite himself. He could practically feel Justice scrabbling at the inside of his skull with where Anders felt the sudden need to take the conversation, but he couldn’t help it. First Beth, then Merrill, now maybe Decimus. Hawke wasn’t the one losing people. Anders was, and Hawke was the one who kept them around. Who kept them going. Who kept them grounded. “You got me the audience with the Grand Cleric, you saved that boy Feynriel, and those apostates from Starkhaven…”

“Wasn’t about you,” Hawke said, but let him keep his hand.

“That’s just makes it matter more that you follow your convictions,” Anders decided, and the sentiment seemed to quiet Justice some. “My cause is to make a world where your sister can be free again. It’s not a bad thing to lose myself to, and I couldn’t do it without your support.”

“And?” Hawke said.

“And we were going to get drinks once,” Anders finished lamely.

“Once,” Hawke agreed.

Great job, Anders. A masterful seduction. He tried to retrieve his hand, but Hawke tangled their fingers together to keep a firm hold on it. Hawke sighed, and fished his chantry amulet out from under his vest. He held it between them on his thumb, “Where do you fit with this?” Hawke asked.

“The chantry did many good things for you and your family, but it can’t be a good part of our society if it will not accept mages.” Anders said. He didn’t fit with the chantry at all. He fit with the Chant of Light. Hawke should have been able to separate the two, for his sister’s sake. “Its laws were made a thousand years ago, based on fear of an empire that has long since crumbled. If it can’t acknowledge that its templars are beyond its control, it must be torn down.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Hawke put the necklace back under his vest. “Elthina can’t acknowledge the templars are beyond her control. She’s one woman. You’re one man. You can’t tear down the chantry single-handedly.”

“It would not be single handed,” Anders had Justice. He had the Collective. They gained new mages every day, and fewer and fewer left Kirkwall when they were given the chance to stay and fight.

“Who would help you?” Hawke asked, “Decimus? Do you think he gave the same speech before he started possessing templars?”

“Decimus is hurting people - Maybe. I’m talking about an institution,” Anders said.

“There are people in that institution,” Hawke argued. “And who’s talking? You, or Justice?”

“Who would you listen to?” Anders demanded. He suddenly wanted his hand back. “Justice is no malevolent influence as you seem to think. He is the embodiment of righteousness. If he disapproves of something, it is wrong.”

“Alright then, tear it down.” Hawke said.

“What?” Anders deflated. He couldn’t have been that convincing. Was he bleeding? Had he accidentally mind controlled him or something? He stared at Hawke, flabbergasted.

“Tear it down,” Hawke said again, “What’s your plan?”

“I-“ Anders stumbled.

“Don’t have one.” Hawke finished for him. “You should. What if you have to kill Decimus today? What if you have to kill them all? What if what you’re doing kills more people than it saves? How many people are risking their lives each time you free a mage from the Gallows?

“You don’t know. You don’t think. We risked everything to break into the Gallows, and Beth was fine. She was never in any danger. I like you, Anders, but you’re impulsive. Look at me. Really think about it. Do you really want to be with me? Does Justice, because I won’t get just you, will I?”

“… It’s not just you,” Anders said. “He doesn’t want me to be with anyone.”

“Then why are you asking me about all this?” Hawke asked.

“I-…” I’m lonely? I’m tired? I like the way you stand up for your convictions? The way you take care of your friends? The way you fight for mages? The way you keep me grounded? I don’t care if this is wrong? “I don’t know.”

“Then figure it out,” Hawke let go of his hand and stood. “… Be careful tonight. …You can come by the estate after, if you want dinner. Just fly in. I’ll leave a window open.”

Anders left the Hanged Man. Hawke was right. Of course Hawke was right. There was no separating him and Justice. Anders couldn't be with Hawke if Justice didn't want him to be. He wandered the crowded streets of Lowtown, trying to turn his thoughts elsewhere. The floods were killing Kirkwall. With the refugees piled in from Darktown and the nightly curfews, the gang wars were spilling into the day. The Dogs fought the Sharps, the Sharps fought the Coterie, the Coterie fought the Carta, the Carta fought the Reining Men, and left Anders and Aveline cleaning up the mess.

The half of the gangs that didn’t end up in jail ended up at his clinic, even flooded as it was. Anders spent the day healing wrenched limbs, crushed arms, cracked skulls, and open wounds. Even Cor was part of the fighting, and stayed after Anders finished healing his broken foot to talk about how Kanky was regretting not agreeing to help his cause. Apparently, one of the mages they’d freed had decided to stay on with the Redwaters and was wreaking havoc as a veritable human canon at sea.

Anders locked up after Cor left, and sloshed his way through the sewers. The waters were down to a thin film, but when you slept on the floor, there was no difference between one or two inches of sewage. Anders hoped it would clear up by Pluitanis. He had a cot, so he was better off than most, but it was the smell that concerned him. Or rather the lack of it with how well he’d adjusted over the past month. At this rate, he was going to permanently damage his sense of smell.

He tried not to think about it, pulled on a breath of mana instead. He held it until the sensation dulled in his left arm, and his veins cracked with blue fire. Justice stretched their fingers and fiddled with the ends of the scarf they wore. It was soothing for both of them, Anders imagined, considering no part of him felt otherwise. He had Justice. No matter what happened, he’d always have Justice. Anders flipped a mental coin for whether to talk about Hawke or Decimus, and decided to go with the more pressing concern.

“So… what do you think we should say?” Anders asked his spirit, running his fingers over the back of his hand, “Tomes good, templars bad? Hey Decimus, just curious, what do you think has been possessing the templars lately? I’m getting the sense that the templars are filled with a lot more Rage than usual? Hey Decimus, maybe we gave you the wrong impression, but most people don’t like to share their bodies with spirits or demons?”

Justice didn’t have any suggestions. It didn’t matter to him what they said. It mattered what they did. Anders stopped in front of the bloody door that marked one of their many Collective safehouses and sighed. Well. Here goes nothing. He knocked three times, and the door opened.

“So, a templar and a demon walk into a body-“ Anders started, when pain tore through him, as if his blood was boiled with all the fire of the sun, until there was nothing left but ash, and he collapsed.

Chapter 89: Enemies Among Us

Summary:

“I had a run in with Alrik myself. He’s the one who did the ritual on Karl. Nasty piece of work. Likes to make mages beg.”

 

 

“Ser Karras said if I tell anyone he’s been in my chambers, he’ll make me tranquil.”

Notes:

TW: Implied/Referenced Rape

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon Verimensis 17 Evening

Darktown - Collective Meeting House

It was more than pain that came with a templar’s lyrium-infused smite. It was the death of magic. It cut them off from the Fade. Not completely. Never completely. There was always a part of them that existed beyond the veil, but on this side, the world was immutable and unchanging. No amount of will would reshape it into fire, or lightning, or any of the primal forces usually at their command.

Anders’ magic dissipated. There was no room for it around the lyrium’s song and the burn it left behind. Justice felt it like a Calling, only there was no Archdemon to make it sing so. There were only templars. Five.

Justice took the fall on their shoulder and rolled through the sewage. They were quick to their feet, but the water added weight and soaked into the suede. A templar rushed them, just as hampered, his red skirt steeped in filth that dyed the chantry sunburst a putrid brown. He didn’t have the range, or the speed, and his thrust was clumsy. Justice caught the blade in their coat, twisting with the motion to free them of it and put them behind the templar.

They were so much more than man and magic. They would reshape the world where magic failed. Locking their hands around the templar’s throat and jaw, Justice wrenched. Windpipe crushed into spine crushed into muscle, and a last gasp pulsed beneath their fingers. Head and helmet gave way from shoulders with a snap, and lulled unnaturally backwards, when a second templar came at them, weapon raised high.

It wasn’t a sword. Too late, Justice saw the brand, then he saw darkness.

Anders didn’t know how long it had been when he came around. Thickets and reeds dotted a barren landscape, casting queer shadows that seemed to slither away into an emerald sky. Far away, someone was crying. Anders crawled towards the sound. His legs were boneless, his right arm dead at his side, but he still had his left. He grabbed dirt, rock, and will, and crawled, but the ground melted to rot in his grasp. What had once been rock became boil, and burst, hot pus seeping beneath his nails.

“Fuck,” Anders swore, but kept crawling. Pus wept down his arm and solidified into maggots. They burrowed into his skin, writhing ecstatically through his veins, trilling, singing, Calling.

Far away, someone was still crying. Anders pushed through the corruption, and the maggots grew quieter and quieter, until his skin was his own again. It wasn’t his Calling. “Hello?” Anders grabbed one of the cobblestones in the streets of Amaranthine, and dragged himself through the bloody gutters, “Is someone there?”

It was Darrian. The bulbous mess of man and Rage was huddled in on himself, naked skin stretched to translucency trying to contain the twitching muscles beneath. Spines and spikes jutted through his skin everywhere bone met bone and rattled with every sob that wracked his disfigured form. Anders pushed himself into some semblance of a sitting position, and gathered as much of Darrian as he could into his one good arm. “Hey, I’m here,” Anders said. “I’m here.”

Tears spilled down Darrian’s contorted face, “Where is here?”

“I-…” Anders looked around the deserted cobblestone streets. Rivers of blood ran through the gutters up into the ocean above. Bloated bodies knocked together in the foamy waters, their eyes wide and white and fixed on him, no matter where the waves took them. “Amaranthine,” Anders said slowly, but it felt wrong.

Darrian walked his knotted hands up Anders’ arms to tangle them in his hair and pull him close. Skinless lips pressed up against his ear. “Save him,” Darrian whispered.

“Save who?” Anders asked.

The corpses shrieked, “Save him!”

Anders snapped awake. He was in what looked like a storage room, long since abandoned. It was bereft of windows, a single sconce on the center pillar the only light source. A blood-orange glow illuminated walls lined in shelves lined in cobwebs. Broken pallets were stacked against overturned crates and scattered haphazardly throughout the room, offering little cover between the two exits Anders could see. One stairwell led up, the other down. Nearby, someone was crying.

It was Alain. He was lying on his side a few feet away, and he was everything Anders had tried to make the Collective. Woolen clothes from Lirene, leather boots from Franke, a scavenged leather vest from Cor, a scarf from Abigail. It wasn't a collective of mages, it was a collective of people coming together for mages.

Except no one was coming now. Anders’ coat was missing, his legs and arms were bound, and his right arm was in agony. Something had scalded him. The underside of his forearm was a dripping mess of charred skin and crusted blood. It should have been a simple thing to heal, but nothing happened when he tried.

The Fade was there, just beyond the Veil, but he couldn't reach it. Each attempt felt like an inhale that brought no air into his lungs. It had to be the templars' shackles - runes on the inside weakening his connection to the Fade. Except Anders had worn those shackles before and cast through them. Simple cantrips, but he’d done it. The shackles just made him feel fatigued and unfocused, but this was different. This was suffocating.

Anders tried to remember what had happened in the fight. They had killed a templar. Taken blows. Then darkness. They must have lost themselves to their anger. There must have been reinforcements. Anders remembered killing one templar, which would have left four, but they would have needed four score to stop them. They were just exhausted.

Focus, Anders. Think back to your apprenticeship and all those lessons with Senior Enchanter What’s-His-Face. Hands were a focal point for magic, and in lieu of a strong connection with the Fade, a mage needed contact with whatever they wanted to use that magic to reshape. Anders twisted in his shackles, stretching his fingers until they grazed the burn on his forearm. Pain laced through him like lightning. Anders screamed through grit teeth, but no magic flowed from him to his wound.

Skin, or what resembled it, stuck to the tips of his fingers when he pulled them back. Blood glued together bits of crinkled black, with all the scent and sensation of overdone bacon. Anders swallowed back his dinner, not for the way his own peeled skin reminded him of it, but for the fact that he couldn’t heal it. He could always heal. He was a mage. A spirit healer. The matrimony of the Maker’s first and second children. He was Justice.

Even as Anders thought it, it felt wrong. It didn't resonate with him. It wasn't the core and cause of his being. It was just... justice. Just a word. An ideal. A spirit. Why couldn't he feel his spirit?

"Justice?" Anders said.

No one answered him. No veilfire rippled through his veins. Nothing welled in him. Nothing drove him forward, or spurred him on, or championed his cause, or helped him to his feet. He was alone.

His soul felt sundered. He couldn't be alone. They were themselves. He wasn't him. He wasn't one person. He was Anders and he was Justice and they were one and this was wrong. Anders couldn't breathe. Half of him was missing and panic filled the void Justice had left. He wheezed, choking, but next to him Alain was crying.

Alain. Save him. He'd dreamed. He had a dream. Save who? Alain? Justice? Himself? He couldn't dream. How had he dreamed?

Save him. Focus Anders. Anders dragged himself across the floor to Alain's side and squeezed his shoulder. "Alain, what happened?"

"Can you h-h-heal me?" Alain asked without looking at him. His voice was hoarse, and Anders wondered how long he'd been crying. How long had Anders been unconscious? How long had Alain been here? Where was here?

"I have to get these shackles off first. They're a real fashion crime," Anders joked. Alain inhaled a rickety breath, and Anders squeezed his shoulder again, "Can you sit up?"

"It's the sigil. Not the shackles." Alain said, not moving. Anders had no idea what he was talking about. "Please... you can h-h-heal dwarves. You can h-h-heal through anything. Please h-h-h… help me."

"Heal what?" Anders asked. A mottled maroon colored bruise marred Alain's throat, like he'd been choked, and his palms were scuffed a bloody pink, but Anders didn't feel any major breaks or bleeding.

Alain's words were barely more than a whisper, but Anders heard them. He'd heard them before, in the Circle, from mages curled up in dark closets and corners, who could never be healed so simply. "I can still feel him."

"Flames," Anders draped his shackled arms over Alain and squeezed as best as he was able. It was awkward, and pushed his manacled hands up under Alain's chin, but Alain squeezed feebly back. Anders searched for words, but everything that came to him fell short. Sorry wasn’t strong enough and no magic would make it okay. Justice would have known what to say. He was the one with the strength. The conviction. Anders was just Anders.

"I'm here," Anders decided. "I've got you."

"He’ll come back," Alain shivered.

“I’ll kill him,” Anders promised.

Alain shook his head against Anders’ chest and said nothing. Anders disentangled himself from Alain and tested the shackles at his feet. He could still shuffle, but he wasn’t running anywhere any time soon. “Where are we?”

“Above the wine-cellar,” Alain hugged his knees to his chest. “The meeting place is down the s-s-stairs.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Anders used the wall to shimmy his way to his feet, keeping one eye on the stairs leading down for any templars that came up, “The ceiling was caved in, and it was blocked off last week. How would they know to clear it out?”

Alain didn’t answer him. He also didn’t get up. Anders tried to nudge him with his foot, but the shackles made it so difficult his toe barely grazed him, “Come on, we have to get out of here. Whose house is this?”

“I don’t know,” Alain told his knees, not moving.

“Well where are we?” Anders demanded. He knew they were on the west side of Kirkwall, but nothing beyond that. Darktown cobwebbed beneath the entire city, sewers intersecting with mineshafts intersecting with natural caverns. Anders might have been able to find his way to the lifts, but Kirkwall’s above and below were two completely different beasts. “Lowtown? Hightown? The Foundries?”

“I don’t know,” Alain said unhelpfully.

Anders bit back a frustrated growl. It wasn’t Alain’s fault. Anders could have been in his position if he’d been the first to arrive to the meeting. It didn’t make sense. Or maybe it made too much sense. Bardel had warned him, after Karl. The templars knew about him. They’d sent for his phylactery months ago. Maybe they’d finally gotten it from Kinloch and that was how they’d tracked him down.

Or maybe Orsino had set him up. Maybe he hadn’t destroyed Jake’s phylactery after all, and the templars had used it to follow him when the Collective rescued him from the Gallows. Or maybe Orsino didn’t trust him to investigate the templar possessions, or thought he was part of it, and wanted to get into the Knight-Commanders good graces by turning on him.

Or maybe it was one of his patients. Maybe there was a bounty on his head that was worth the trade, if it would buy them a roof over their head with Darktown flooded. Or maybe it was the Coterie. Maybe they knew Decimus had used blood magic on Harlan, and they wanted revenge. Or maybe it was Aveline. The Guard Captain had already turned in a few mages to the templars, and she was the reason Beth was in the Circle –

A scream from downstairs cut off Anders’ train of thought. Anders ran towards it and tripped over his shackles. His elbows took the brunt of the fall, and his face took the rest. Anders bit the inside of his cheek, skinned his already skinned arm, and forced himself to stop. He lay on the ground, shackled, blood welling in his mouth, Hawke’s words running through his ringing skull. ‘You don’t think,’ Hawke had said. ‘You’re impulsive.’

Hawke was right. He couldn’t do anything tied up like this. He had to think. He had to plan. He didn’t have magic, so what did he have? Anders swallowed, tasted copper, and changed his mind. He didn’t have the Fade. That didn’t mean he didn’t have magic.

Anders shuffled back to sit beside Alain. He hated how easy it was. Downstairs, a woman was screaming. Anders could hear his demons in her voice. The fear of capture, the agony of betrayal, the despair, the pain. Nothing in him fought it. No righteous fire kindled in response. Nothing drove him to action, to purpose, to battle. Not in that moment. Not in the way Justice would have.

Don’t think about it. Think about the spell. He had the blood from the cut in his mouth and the burn on his arm. There was power there. He could feel it, pulsing in time with his heart, and he would use it to its last beat if it came to it. The spirits in his dream had told Anders to ‘save him’, and right now there was only one him Anders had a chance of saving.

Anders tilted his head back and held his chin up to keep the blood in his mouth, but some still spilled when he spoke, “Alain, listen. I can melt the chains – freeze them.” Frost was better. It would take less blood to chill already cool air than it would to bring about a fire with no natural spark. And it would numb the pain. “Either way, it’s going to hurt. I don’t know how well I can control the temperature so it doesn’t touch you without a staff, but if I get the chain you can run-“

Alain was shaking his head, but that was too bloody bad. Anders wasn’t asking and they didn’t have the time to argue. He was about to cast the spell when something distracted him. It was quiet. The screaming stopped. Anders looked at the stairs and heard the muffled conversation of a handful of different voices from below, coupled with laughter.

A templar’s helmet popped up from below, followed shortly thereafter by a body, to which it was regrettably still attached. He was followed by two others, one of them carrying a body Anders’ hoped was still alive. It was Terrie. The templar dropped her next to Anders and Alain, while another manifested shackles out of one of the crates in the storage room. Anders hoped she’d killed the missing fourth.

She looked… better than Alain. She was covered in a foul sludge from the fight, but her clothes were intact, and she had no visible breaks or bruises or casting cuts. Anders hoped the screaming had just come from the templars’ smites. He didn’t know if he could live with himself otherwise.

Alain kept his face in his knees, but Anders couldn’t help his scowl. The templar shackling Terrie stared at him through his visor. Anders imagined he was grinning. The other two took off their helmets, but the change didn’t make them monsters turning into men, just monsters turning into different monsters.

One had a mustache and goatee, the other had muttonchops. If they kissed, they’d have four arms, four legs, one beard, and no soul. Anders couldn’t decide which one to hate more.

The templar doing the shackling slapped the glyph on Terrie’s face with the back of his glove. It cut her cheek, bruised her jaw, and made Anders wish the man’s helmet was off so he could commit his face to memory. He’d kill him. He’d kill them all. Not yet. Not now. He didn’t have the blood. “What’s this then?” The templar asked.

Muttonchops walked over to Alain, who scrambled violently backwards until he was pressed up against Anders’ side. “Well, princess? What is it?”

“It’s a gl-gl-gl-“ Alain stuttered.

“Gl, gl, gl, gl,” Muttonchops parroted back, rolling his eyes. “Cut it off her.”

Alain found his courage, all but diving over Anders’ towards Terrie, but Muttonchops grabbed him and shoved him back against the wall. “It’s not dangerous!” Alain protested.

“I don’t believe you,” Muttonchops sneered. He leaned over Alain to leer at Anders, so close Anders could feel the man’s breath on his neck. “What do you think, Anders?” Muttonchops asked, licking his jaw up to his ear. “Is it dangerous?”

Anders didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. He did his best to ignore it, holding onto the taste of copper in his mouth and worrying the cut with his teeth to keep the blood flowing. He’d need it for whatever spell he was going to cast to save them. Patience. Planning. It had to be worth it. It had to save them. It couldn’t be for him and his anger.

He’d been through worse than a templar’s humiliation. Namaya’s betrayal. Solitary confinement. His father drowning him. Amell…. This was a moment. It would pass. For him, for Terrie, for Alain… The ends would justify the means.

.. he hoped Terrie stayed unconscious.

“I guess it’s dangerous,” Muttonchops decided.

Muttonchops pulled a dagger from his belt and tipped it playfully back and forth. Anders could lock his arms around the templar’s neck to slam his head down onto his own dagger… and get impaled by the templar behind him. He could spit corrosive blood into Muttonchop’s face and hope he bled enough for Anders to cast another spell before he got impaled by the templar behind him. He could use his own blood even if he got impaled to kill every templar in the room… unless he got impaled through the heart.

He’d been impaled before, but he had Justice. Did he still have Justice? Would Justice save him if he was impaled now? Could Justice save him if he was impaled now? Was Justice even still a part of him? Anders had to assume he wasn’t. Anything he did had to be something Anders could do, and Anders couldn’t save Terrie’s face.

“Oh for the love of Andraste,” Goatee sighed, loud and dramatic, “It’s a repulsion glyph, Karras, not an invitation to make her repulsive. You had your turn with the boy. Do you really think we want to look at some bitch’s skinned face while we have ours?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Helmet shrugged, tracing the glyph on Terrie’s face. He pressed down harder, and the edge of his metal glove cut into her skin.

“See?” Karras said, waving the dagger at Terrie and the templar squatting over her, “He doesn’t mind. Don’t be such a prude, Otto,”

Otto rolled his eyes and drew what Anders initially thought was a sword, but quickly realized was a brand. There wasn’t a sunburst on it. Anders tried not to panic. Otto held it over the sconce’s flame for a long minute, and then shooed Helmet away from Terrie. He knelt over her, slapping her face a few times until she stirred. “Good morning,” Otto purred.

Terrie jolted upright with a primal scream, and Otto slammed the brand into her chest. Terrie’s scream curdled with sobs, and Otto kept the brand firmly planted with one hand and stroked Terrie’s cheek with the other, “Now that’s the sound I like to hear. Do you know what this is? A little glyph of neutralization, almost like the one on your cheek. Your friend Alain gave us the idea, when he told us about your tattoo. Apparently, a mage’s magic can sustain a glyph inscribed on their flesh indefinitely. The more powerful the mage, the more powerful the glyph. You’ll never feel the Fade again, and I don’t even have to make you Tranquil.”

“Come on, we should go, we still have two more to get when they show up,” Helmet said, nudging Otto off Terrie.

“You’re going to beg for demons to take you by the time I’m done with you,” Otto said, putting his helmet back on, “I wonder if they’ll hear you through the glyph? Won’t it be fun to find out?”

Karras wasn’t as quick to follow, “I heard you’re our shapeshifter,” He whispered, sticking his tongue into Anders’ ear, “Normally, I don’t fuck animals, but I’ll make an exception for you.”

The templars left.

Terrie grabbed at her chest, coughing violently. She pulled at her shirt, and it suctioned off her burnt skin with a hiss that made Anders’ heart twist. “Alain, what did he mean?”

“I j-j-j-… I j-j-j-… I-“ Alain stuttered.

“Alain, what did he mean!?” Terrie screamed, clambering over Anders’ legs to reach Alain. Anders should have stopped her, but he didn’t.

“I told you I didn’t like the b-b-blood magic!” Alain screamed back.

“Do you like this!?” Terrie demanded, wriggling across the floor on her stomach to beat at Alain’s legs with her shackles, “Do you!? Is this better!? Do you like this more Alain!? Do you like it!? Does this please your delicate sensibilities you damned craven!?”

“Terrie,” Anders forced himself to say, still holding the blood in his mouth.

“What!?” Terrie rolled over to face him, still half on his legs, eyes wild. “If you tell me to calm the fuck down I swear to the Maker I will-“

“They said they wouldn’t h-h-hurt anyone,” Alain sniffed.

“Well hear ye, fucking hear-ye, Alain, they lied!” Terrie flailed her arms over her head in Alain’s direction. “You worthless, rotten, stool pigeon!”

“Terrie, he knows,” Anders felt numb. It was the safest way to feel. He couldn’t afford to feel anything else. He had enough blood for one spell. It had to count. He couldn’t get them all out and he couldn’t expect the Collective to help them. It didn’t matter how many apostates or malifcarum they sent while the templars had their brand. If they were going to get help, it couldn’t be from a mage. And if someone was going to get it, it couldn’t be Alain. His dream be damned, Anders couldn’t trust him. “I can get you out.”

Terrie stopped flailing and struggled into a sitting position, watching him intently. “How?”

“I’ll freeze the shackles on your ankles and shatter them. It’s going to hurt,” Anders warned her, “So be ready. Get out of here, stay on the west side of Kirkwall, and go to Hightown. Look for an estate, north of the markets, with a red emblem of two hawks fighting on it. Tell the man who lives there what happened. Where we are.”

“I will,” Terrie promised. She braced herself, and Anders spat the blood out on her shackles.

Part of him watched, petrified. What if it didn’t work? He’d invented the spell on the spot. Amell had warned him not to invent spells with blood magic, but it wasn’t as if Anders could mind control the chains into falling off. What if it the glyph on his arm didn’t just sap his connection to the Fade, it also sapped his connection to blood magic? What if they were all doomed?

The blood congealed on the chain links between the shackles, and slowly ceased to drip. It crackled on the metal and seemed to suck the warmth from the room. He brought his manacles down hard on the chain links, and they shattered into shards of ice and jagged steel. Bits imbedded themselves into his hands and Terrie’s ankles, but it worked. There was nothing he could do for the shards, or the frostbite that was bound to follow, but it was better than dead.

Anders let out the breath he’d been holding and watched it turn to fog in the magic-chilled air. Terrie leapt to her feet and ran up the stairs without a word, but found several colorful ones when she reached door at the top. “It’s locked!” Terrie glanced between Anders and the stairs that led down into the dark with the templars. “Anders, it’s locked!”

Of course it was locked. Why wouldn’t it be locked?

Anders struggled to his feet and shuffled his way to the stairs one painfully small step at a time, his numb veneer cracking. Maker save him, he was pathetic. This was a pathetic way to die. Justice would have been ashamed of him. He would have flexed their way out of their chains and charged up the stairs and through the door, and then turned around and charged right back down and into the templars. Anders was going to waddle his way to the Maker’s side.

They should have recognized the glyph. They should have anticipated this could happen. They shouldn’t have marked their meeting houses in blood. They shouldn’t have mixed maleficars and apostates. They shouldn’t have gotten comfortable. They should have planned better. They should have known it couldn’t be this easy to lead a revolution. Now they were going to die, and there would be nothing just or noble about their death.

Anders reached the stairs, and then realized he was stuck at the bottom. He couldn’t lift his foot high enough to get up one. He really was going to die here. Why was he even trying? He couldn’t pick a lock. What was he going to do? Blood magic the door open? Anders tried to reach the first step and collapsed on the stairs with an inane cackle, “These stairs are really inclined to ruin my day.”

“Just crawl!” Terrie hissed down at him.

Anders crawled, dragging himself on his elbows and knees, feeling no better than he had at the bottom. “So, Anders, how did you end up betrayed by a close friend and about to die horribly to a handful of sex-crazed templars?” Anders mumbled to himself, “Oh you know, step by step.”

Terrie shook him by his collar when he reached the top, “Hurry up! Melt the lock.”

He could do that. With blood. Which he didn’t have. Anders looked Terrie over and settled on the cut on her cheek. He pulled from it, and corroded it, and flung it at the lock. It sizzled, and popped, turning the metal an angry red before it set fire to the door. “This feels worse.” Anders decided.

Terrie flung herself shoulder-first into the flaming door. On her third attempt, the door splintered, and Terrie went rolling through it. She was back on her feet in an instant, and then she was gone, running from what Anders could only hope was an otherwise abandoned building.

Anders could follow her. Slowly. Whether he waddled or wriggled his way out, it wouldn’t be pretty. Someone was bound to notice him rolling through the streets, leaving a trail of slime from the sewage like some kind of giant, trussed up slug. The templars would catch up with him, and what of Alain? What of Decimus? What of Grace? Was Anders really going to leave them to suffer whatever horrors the templars wanted to inflict on them?

Alain… Alain had betrayed him. Like Rolan had betrayed him. Like Namaya had betrayed him. Like Ferrenly had betrayed him. Worse, Alain had betrayed Terrie, and Decimus, and Grace, and the whole of the Collective. How many other Collective Meeting Houses were being raided right now?

But Alain had suffered worse than the consequences of his action, and Anders didn’t know the extent of Decimus’ crimes. Whatever they had done, they had been driven to do, and Justice… Justice wouldn’t approve of him leaving them to their fate. Justice had befriended thieves, and maleficars, and murderers. Even Velanna, who had murdered droves of innocent traders, had been redeemable in Justice’s eyes. Anders had to help.

A shard of metal was embedded in his wrist. It missed a vein, but it would do. He couldn’t twist his fingers around the manacles to reach it, but he didn’t need to. Anders held his hands to the burning door frame and positioned the shard so it caught on the lock’s strike plate. Wrenching his hands down ripped the shard out and sliced up the side of his wrist to the bone. It burned, but it bled.

Anders pulled from the blood, froze the chains at his feet, and shattered them with the manacles on his wrists. Shrapnel flew, burying itself in his arms and legs. The cold was almost a comfort, Anders decided, running back down the stairs to Alain. It kept him numb. Kept him focused. He cast the same spell on the shackles at Alain’s feet, and smashed them again, to more shrapnel and more biting cold.

“Alain, come on,” Anders grabbed Alain’s hands and pulled, “We have to go.”

Alain didn’t move. “I just want to go home.”

“Good plan, get up,” Anders said, pulling harder. Alain stayed stubbornly seated.

“The Circle is my home,” Alain said. “Since I was six. I want to sleep in a bed. I want to write to my family. I don’t want to live like this.”

“Are you shitting me?” Anders let go of Alain in disgust and took a step back. “You still want to go with them? After they-“

A scream from downstairs cut him off. Anders ran for the wine cellar and didn’t make it more than a few steps down before he stopped, relief flooding over him. Decimus. The old mage’s hands were sheathed in dark red energies, tethering him to the four surviving templars. Grace stood behind him, her arm cut laterally, blood flowing freely into the miasma of Decimus' spell. Decimus could have possessed all four of them for all Anders cared. He'd saved them.

“Dec,” Anders laughed, waving his shackled hands, “About time. Little help?”

“I dare say I am helping more than a little,” Decimus chuckled, face twitching as if trying to discern how to smile, “What has happened?”

“Funny story,” Anders grinned, starting down the stairs, when one of the templars exploded. The blast knocked Anders back into the storage room, and Anders heard the telltale echo of two souls tangled in one body from below in the guttural laughter that followed.

“I have happened!” A voice declared, reverberating through the house.

Too many things happened at once. Decimus lost his hold on the templars in the aftermath of the explosion. One of the templars contorted, his legs spindling out from beneath his skirt, thinner and thinner, until they snapped under his weight. He flopped into the feculent water, and his legs kept growing, twisting up over his head. Toes burst from his boots, and sharpened into claws that skittered across the ceiling, pulling him out of the sewage. The silver sword of mercy on his chest burst open, and his ribcage sprouting forth like spider legs and spilling his lungs onto the floor. They landed in the sewage, still inhaling and exhaling like beached fish while he screamed, his helmet hiding whatever had become of his face.

“Envy!” One of the templars screamed. “Karras, get reinforcements! We’ll hold them off!”

One of the templars rushed the abomination. One rushed Anders. The last rushed Decimus. Anders was ready. Decimus wasn’t. “Dec!” Anders screamed, too late.

The templar impaled him. Grace screamed. Decimus caught the sword when it was already through his chest, his fingers shaking on the silverite. He smiled, a normal smile for once, soft and sweet, “Grace, love…run from me,” Shadows enveloped him, and Anders didn’t see the rest.

The templar was on him. Anders cast a hasty spell of corrosion that melted through the templar’s breastplate and stumbled him. His swing went wide, and Anders scrambled backwards. He was half-way to the stairs out when he remembered Alain, still curled up on the floor and drowning in despair. His hesitation cost him. Something embedded itself in his lower back and dropped him to his knees. A hard blow followed, knocking him onto his side.

“Die here,” The templars snarled, little more than a blur of silver and violet. Anders blinked. He couldn’t see. He blinked again, and the templar was gone, up the stairs and out the charred husk of the door.

The injury was agony. Liquid fire spread through his veins, and Anders retched. Vomit mingled with blood in his mouth and stuck to his chin. “Alain,” Anders retched again, “Come on. We have to go.”

Alain didn’t move. Anders crawled up the stairs, one step at a time, slipping on his own blood and vomit, each breath a cough that tore through his lungs shredded them like paper. His hands were still bound, his arms still shredded with shrapnel, and he stopped halfway up, exhausted. “Alain,” Anders tried again. Downstairs, the abominations were cackling. The wine cellar caught fire, smoke and heat started billowing into the storage room, and Alain still wasn’t moving.

Anders must have passed out. The thunder of metal on hardwood woke him, templar after templar rushing past him on the stairs and into the wine cellar. The templars were screaming, bellowing orders over the roar of flames and abominations. Anders started crawling again. Alain was still downstairs. The templars hadn’t even noticed him. No one was coming to save him. It was just Anders.

“Alain!” Anders tried to yell. It came out as a hoarse whisper. “Alain, please! We have to go!”

Anders sat at the top of the stairs, exhausted. He could force him. He had to force him. He couldn’t let Alain die here. He had to save him. Anders pulled on the blood pouring from his arms and spun the spell with his will. Freedom. Safety. Forgiveness. Alain didn’t deserve to die.

Something grabbed him. His concentration broke, and he was dragged upstairs and slammed back into a wall. “What do we have here?” A templar’s tinny voice sang at him, “A blood mage bleeding to death?”

“Ironic, right?” Anders’ voice barely broke a whisper, but damned if he wouldn’t go out with a joke.

The templar didn’t laugh. He gurgled. An arrowhead burst out from his throat, fountaining blood onto Anders’ face. The arrowhead vanished as quick as it had appeared, and Anders wondered if he’d imagined it in his pain-infused delirium. The templar collapsed, and Anders collapsed with him.

A shrouded figure in black and brown leathers appeared at his side, dark hood pulled low to hide his face, but there was no hiding his eyes. Hawke threw Anders’ arms over his neck and lifted him into his arms. Anders blinked. Anders thought he blinked. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again they were in another room, sitting on a windowsill that opened out into Hightown. There was a trellis beneath them, and Hawke was shaking him.

“Mage bane,” Anders guessed by the pain. “Justice… Alain…”

“I have you,” Hawke wrapped an arm tight around his waist, and swung their legs out of the window, “Hold onto me.”

“Can’t heal…” Anders slurred.

“I have you.” Hawke said again, more firmly, “Stay with me.”

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
Demon's Backbone: The events of this chapter as told from Hawke's perspective.

Chapter 90: Save Me

Summary:

In which Anders is saved.

Notes:

Hey what’s up you guys!? Welcome back to Accursed Ones. Don’t forget to SMASH that kudos button, bookmark, and subscribe. Let me know what you think in the comments down BELOW.

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon Verimensis 17 Twilight

Hightown

Hightown was burning. The flames from the cellar had spread to connecting manors, and people were spilling into the streets. Some came to aid, others to gawk. A ring of templars barred citizen and guard alike from doing either. "Stay back," Some ordered. "Stay calm," Others suggested.

Anders was for both. Hawke manifested a cloak and draped it over him. It smelled like Ferelden. Rain, dirt, and dog, and Hawke like leather. Anything was better than the vomit crusted in Anders' stubble. He took a deep breath and hoped it would ground him. Hawke's arm around his waist kept him upright, but no amount of support would keep him conscious.

He wasn’t going to make it. Tears from the smoke blurred Anders’ vision, the world fading in and out around him. If not for the shackles, he couldn’t even have kept his arms around Hawke’s neck. The cloak was a start as far as disguises went, but there was no hiding the chains connecting his wrists. Or so Anders thought until Hawke wrapped his scarf around them, and suddenly Anders wasn't a dying mage but a drunken lover.

"Really just... walking out of here?" Anders asked around his thickening tongue. Just making it down the trellis had been a struggle. Hawke seriously couldn't expect them to walk out of a back alley and through a dozen templars, guards, and nobles without being noticed.

"We're together," Hawke's declaration wasn't exactly the romantic one Anders had imagined. Hawke wiped dried vomit and blood off Anders’ lips with his thumb, and Anders supposed he could forgive the lack of flowers. He was alive. Hawke had saved him. Hawke - “You're drunk."

Hawke was cunning. It was a trick. Blood loss was getting to Anders. Drunk honestly sounded about right.

"Try to walk,” Hawke said. Anders tried for an obedient step, but his legs were imbedded with shrapnel and gave out from under him. Hawke squeezed his waist and held him aloft where he would have collapsed. Anders couldn’t imagine the strength it took to do with one arm. “I won’t let you fall,” Hawke promised, “Pretend you can walk. Make it look real.”

Anders couldn’t walk. Not through Magebane. This disguise wouldn’t hold however long it took them to get clear of the crowds. Anders’ arms and legs were lacerated; it was only a matter of time before he bled through his scarf, and the less said of the injury on his back the better. There’d be no hiding him once his blood stained Hightown’s marble streets.

Anders made his peace with it. “If they catch me-“

“I have you,“ Hawke cut him off.

“If they catch me,” Anders said again, “If they make me Tranquil. Kill me. Swear it.”

Hawke didn’t answer him. Anders grabbed for the only thing he could reach, shaking fingers clutching Hawke’s hood. It fell from his face, permanently maimed from the last time Hawke had protected a mage. He looked down at Anders over a broken nose, scarred lips hiding missing teeth and twisted into a frown. He said nothing. Anders wasn’t Bethany. Anders wasn’t his family. Anders was barely his friend. How much could Anders expect Hawke to risk for him?

Anders searched Hawke’s eyes, but they belied nothing of the thoughts behind them. Hawke clasped his jaw, and for one inane moment Anders thought he would kiss him, “On my father’s grave.”

Anders nodded, and tried for another step. Hawke held him through it, and Anders had to hope it looked real enough when Hawke pulled him into the crowd. Citizens had stepped back to push the guards forward, and the templars were falling apart under the onslaught. Even their armor seemed to rust, reflecting flames on one side and the blood-orange of the guard on the other.

The marble mansions weren’t at any risk of collapsing, but the flames devoured doors, window frames, trellises. They spilled out into the gardens and raced up vines and trees to the rooves, where they danced among the shingles and lit up the night sky. Inside, demons still cackled, and outside, nobles still gawked.

"Isn’t that the de Soliere’s place?" Asked a giant duvet in the vague shape of a woman.

"Is it?” Returned a bundle of fleece, “I hope they're alright."

"Oh, haven't you heard?” A woman in a lace night frock sidled between the walking blankets, “Heborah was a mage. He took his own life when they brought him to the Circle. Poor Agnes sold it. I heard she lives in Lowtown now.”

“Just dreadful,” Said the fleece. “But I thought Heborah actually escaped? Perhaps that’s why the templars are here?”

“I heard Agnes left the city,” A pile of furs chimed in, “A gentleman from Starkhaven bought it. I do hope he’s not hurt. These mages ruin everything.”

“Oh, Garrett –“ The woman in lace spotted them as they skirted past, and grabbed Hawke’s arm. Anders swallowed back vomit at the suddenness of their stop. “Leandra would know - Garrett would you see if Leandra can step out?”

“Of course,” Hawke said.

“Who is your...?” The furs gestured vaguely at Anders, a fox pelt bouncing up to briefly reveal a thin human arm beneath.

“He's my...” Hawke looked at him for a long moment, and Anders laughed. This had been Hawke’s idea, and the man couldn’t even think of a term for him that wasn’t ‘filthy fucking sewer rat.’ No one was ever going to believe they were together. “He’s mine.” Hawke decided.

Apparently, they believed it. “I think he’s had a touch too much, darling.” Lace said, covering her nose. “Not a friend of your uncle's I hope?”

“He'll be fine,” Hawke said. “I’ll send Mother out.”

“Such a shame,” Fleece tutted as they left, “I hope it's not serious. Wasn’t your daughter around his age?”

“And the seneschal's son, if he leans that way,” Duvet added.

“With his sister in the Circle?” Lace scoffed, “Scions don’t have the luxury of leaning. I'll have a talk with his mother.”

Anders didn't hear whatever followed. He also didn’t remember closing his eyes, but he was inside when he opened them. Burning maple crackled in a marble hearth beside him. The dusty chandelier above was candle-free, the hearth alone casting light throughout the room. Moth-worn curtains blocked out the moonslight, tightly drawn as if shamed by the state of the foyer and the few delipidated armchairs that furnished it.

This couldn't have been Hawke's estate, Anders thought groggily as Hawke untangled them. Maybe Fenris' mansion had been closer. He could already hear the bitter little elf bitterly bittering on about how bitter he was in that shrill voice that -…. wasn't at all how Fenris sounded.

It sounded like Leandra. Anders' head lulled backwards to find Hawke's mother smiling at him. No. That wasn't right. Upside down meant it was a frown.

"How could you do this to me?" Leandra was lamenting, chasing after Anders with a towel. "Oh-not on the rug! It's the only one we have."

"He's not a damn dog," Hawke snapped, lying Anders out on the floor. Upright to downright was a bad idea. Anders threw up in his mouth, and what he couldn't swallow spilled down his chin.

Leandra gagged, shoving a towel under Anders’ head, "Don’t you dare raise your voice at me, I raised you! After everything this family went through with your sister-"

"Mother!" Hawke slammed a fist into the floor. It was leather on stone, and muted, but it might have been a gong for how his mother went silent. "Get a bucket of water, and the kit from my room with the bandages. Now."

Leandra fled, muttering under her breath, but bandages weren't magic. Anders was past needle and thread. Hawke could sew him into a quilt and it would do nothing for the Magebane poisoning him. He needed a cleansing aura, which Anders couldn't channel without Justice.

"Blood-" Anders coughed. His lungs crackled, burning up like the log in the fire beside him. Less air came with every breath.

"Takes four pints to die," Hawke wiped away the vomit on Anders' mouth for the second time that day. A lockpick fell from his sleeve to his hand, and with a few taps Anders' shackles were gone, "You're not there yet."

"Blood's poisoned," Anders tried again. "Magebane."

"I hear you," Hawke said, eyes lingering on each cut as if adding them together. It was going to take him a while, Anders thought bemusedly, and decided he had time to close his eyes.

A shake woke him, seconds later. "What?" Anders started.

"Stay with me," Hawke said.

"Where would I go?" Anders mumbled.

"The Void. Eyes open," Hawke ordered, squeezing his shoulder before he stood. "I'll be back."

Stay awake. Hawke ran out of the room, and Anders lay on the floor in the foyer. It wasn't exactly what Anders expected of a Hightown mansion.

True to his namesake, Gamlen had gambled the mansion away. The family estate had actually been left to Leandra, a fact Hawke had presented to the Viscount in a recent audience. It won him back the property, considering Gamlen had never had a legal right to sell it to begin with, and considering Hawke had killed the slavers Gamlen had sold it to. Finders keepers and all that, Anders supposed, but Hawke didn't have to keep everything the slavers had left.

He could have spruced for some furniture at least. A servant or two. It seemed the thing to do to fit in with folks who gossiped in furs and fleece and goose-feather duvets. Anders couldn't imagine what else Hawke was doing with the coin he'd won from the expedition.

"Stay awake," Anders mumbled, watching dust motes fall from the chandelier. "Stay awake…Can't die on the good rug… Think of the scandal... the wailing and gnashing of teeth... Don't you cry for him, he don’t need your sympathy, he died a legionnaire, and that’s the best that dust can be…”

Anders sighed and sat up. It was quiet in the chapel, save for the crackling of the sconces that lined the walls and illuminated the tapestries in a pale green light. Anders stared at one depicting the death of Andraste’s sister, Halliserre. Her charred body lay in the center of a clearing, and written in the ashes were the verses of Threnodies, ‘In your heart shall burn an unquenchable flame, all consuming, and never satisfied. From the Fade I crafted you, and to the Fade you shall return each night in dreams, that you may always remember Me.’

“It’s not fair,” Anders said. “It’s right there. What clearer sign does the Chantry need of the Maker’s love for magic? Why else would He gift us with it? The Search for the True Prophet has the right of it. Andraste had to have been a mage. How else would you explain the death of her sister? Or her connection to the Maker in her dreams if she wasn’t a Dreamer in the Fade? How else would she be aware of Him?”

Someone squeezed his shoulder. Anders turned around on the pew. Aura was sitting beside him, golden hair aglow, with eyes like veilfire. She smiled, “I love your theories.”

“You do?” Anders asked.

“Of course,” Aura said. “You want to believe in a just world, and you think with the Maker on your side you prove your cause a righteous one.”

“It’s not just because I want to be right,” Anders argued, “Think about it. The war against the Imperium, the earthquakes, the firestorms, that’s not the wrath of the Maker, it’s the wrath of a mage.”

“Perhaps,” Aura tangled their fingers together. “And you think if her wrath could bring low the Imperium, yours could the Circle?”

“The Chantry,” Anders said. “If the Grand Cleric won’t reign in the templars, and the Seekers of Truth don’t see that Meredith is out of control, then there’s no one left for us to turn to but ourselves. The Circle is a prison, but the fault isn’t on the prisoners. I just have to convince them to rise up.”

“Your convictions comfort me,” Aura said, running her thumb over the back of his palm. Her hands were cold, as if cut from ice, but strangely soothing. “You are doing good work, freeing mages from the Circle and turning them to the Collective.”

“That’s not the response I usually get,” Anders said, and sighed. “But it’s been a year and I’ve only freed a handful. It’s like taking a chisel to a mountain.”

“How else are valleys made?” Aura asked. “Does an avalanche not start with a snowflake? A firestorm with a spark? A storm with a raindrop?”

“Why do you believe in me?” Anders asked.

“I am you,” Aura said.

“Oh, good,” Anders laughed and stood. More crazy. More hallucinations. No one would ever feel the same way he did. He was alone in this fight. The chapel dissolved, burning up around him like the streets of Amaranthine as Leonie’s arrows rained down from above. Anders scrawled out a hasty glyph of warding and grabbed Aura. Hallucination or not, he couldn’t let her die. “Stay close. I’ll get you to safety.”

“I am safe,” Aura said, seemingly unconcerned by the death and destruction hailing down around them. “I am you.”

“And I’m Mr. Wiggums,” Anders said. “Listen, as soon as the volley stops-“

“Anders,” Aura said forcefully. “Hear me.” She stepped out of his grasp and out of the glyph. Arrows pin cushioned her. Anders screamed, but Aura smiled through it and held out a hand for him. There was something familiar in the offer. In her smile. Against all his better judgment, Anders took her hand. Aura pulled him out into the volley, and arrows pinned them together.

“This is a moment,” Aura said while Anders screamed, “Weather it and you will come out the stronger for it. Breathe. I have you. I am you. No force in this world or the next will keep me from you.”

Anders woke still screaming. It felt like his veins were being pulled out of him through his lower back. Someone was holding him down, and Anders thrashed until he heard Hawke’s voice, “Anders! Anders, hold still!” Hawke’s chest was pressed against Anders’ back, arms pinning Anders’ own to his side, so close Anders’ felt his beard scratch against his ear when he spoke, “She needs you to hold still.”

He tried. Maker, he tried, but it burned like nothing had ever burned before. Anders dug his nails into the floor, and Hawke manifested a hand for him to squeeze. “She?” Anders asked to take his mind off the pain.

“Merrill’s here,” Hawke explained. “She’s-… doing blood magic shit. I don’t-whatever. You have to hold still.”

Anders tried to laugh. It came out as a wheeze, “Now you’re - fuck - okay with blood magic?”

“Shut up,” Hawke said.

“What would the Chantry think?” Anders asked.

“Shut up,” Hawke said again.

“It’s almost-Maker’s fucking-fuck- It’s almost like it matters how you use it-“

“Shut up,” Hawke squeezed his hand. “You’re right. Alright? You happy?”

“I’m dying,” Anders laughed. “I’m ecstatic.”

“Not letting you die,” Hawke said.

“I didn’t know it was your choice,” Anders said.

“It is,” Hawke said. “Shut up. Let her concentrate.”

Anders couldn’t see Merrill. He could see the fire, the drawn curtains, and a pair of boots with too many buckles. Anders followed them up long legs to a tight black corset, to a golden choker on a long neck, to a glinting labret nestled beneath lips pursed in concern. Isabela knelt to push his hair out of his face. “Hey Sparky. Rough go?”

“No talking,” Hawke said.

“Pssh,” Isabela waved a hand in Hawke’s face.

“Creators,” Merrill’s voice mumbled from somewhere behind him. “It’s almost a vial’s worth. You’re lucky the Dread Wolf didn’t take you. I think I have it all. You can let him go.”

“You think, or you know?” Hawke asked.

“I have it all,” Merrill said.

Hawke let go of him. Anders missed the weight. Without it, all he could feel was the sharp throb in his lower back, and the pinpricks of shrapnel down his arms and legs. Merrill’s face popped up in his field of vision, upside down vallaslin resembling antlers on her cheeks. “How do you feel? Not good, probably. I pulled all the impurities from your blood, but I don’t know how to close the wounds. I brought some bandages, but um, I think Hawke has that covered. Did you know there’s a neutralization glyph burned into your arm?”

“Got that,” Anders put on his most grateful smile. He was surprised Merrill had come after how Anders had treated her. She was too good for her own good. Or maybe Isabela had persuaded her, “Thanks, Merrill.”

“You’re welcome,” Merrill vanished, and reappeared a moment later to sit next to Isabela, “I wouldn’t be a very good friend if I didn’t help when I could. I brought you some elfroot, for the pain.”

“Still friends, then?” Anders asked, accepting the leaf Merrill offered him to chew.

“I meant Hawke,” Merrill said.

“Kitten-“ Isabela reached for Merrill’s hand, but the elf folded her arms across her chest before Isabela caught it.

“I’m still upset with you,” Merrill said seriously. “But you’re hurt and I know-… I think-… you’d heal me if our places were reversed.”

“I would,” Anders said.

“I don’t know how to do stitches.” Merill said to Hawke. “Arianni might. She’s teaching me how to knit, and she makes pretty sweaters. Not that Anders is a sweater, but-“

“I’ve got it, Merrill,” Hawke said.

“I’ll bring you some spindleweed then,” Merrill stood up, and padded out of sight, “If you add it to a meal a day it, it helps with recovery. I don’t know how long it’ll take to heal naturally.”

“Why would it need to heal naturally?” Hawke asked.

“The glyph on his arm,” Merrill explained, “We’ll have to find a way to get it off before he can heal. Right? Or…?”

“Right,” Anders guessed, twisting his arm so he could see the burn where he was lying. It looked putrid, yellow pus leaking down his arm to drip off his elbow and onto Leandra’s prized rug. He was a terrible house guest.

“You know if you just connected that bit there, you could make it look like cleavage,” Isabela mused. “Or maybe a butt!”

“Someone just cut it off, please,” Anders held his arm out to Isabela, considering she was the only person he could see.

“The whole thing or just the burn?” Isabela asked, thoughtfully fingering the hilt of a dagger at her hip.

“No one’s cutting off your arm or your skin,” Hawke said, pushing Anders’ arm away from Isabela.

“Want me to make it a butt?” Isabela asked eagerly.

“It should be fine once it scars,” Merrill said. “Once it pulls your skin taut, that should ruin the integrity of the glyph.”

“That will take weeks,” Anders protested, “I need this off now.”

He couldn’t go weeks without knowing what had become of Justice. If it meant he was missing a swath of skin from his arm, then that was it meant. It wasn’t anyone else’s decision what he did with his body. Anders tried to sit up, and pain laced up his spine from the wound on his back. Anders swallowed down a scream and banged his fist on the floor to focus on a different pain.

“You don’t need it off,” Hawke said. “You want it off. You can stay here until it scars. Hold still, I’ll handle the stitches.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t have any prophet’s laurel,” Merrill said. “But um, elfroot should be fine for the poultices. I’ll be back with the spindleweed.”

“Wait for me, Kitten, you’ll get lost,” Isabela gave Anders’ hand a pat, “Stay sparky, Sparky, we’ll be back to check on you.”

Anders heard the sound of a door opening and closing to signal their departure, which left him alone with Hawke. Anders tried to look back at the man, but all he could see was his boots from where he was kneeling next to him. “You want to tell me what happened?” Hawke asked, rolling Ander’s tunic up.

“You first,” Anders let Hawke lift him to get his tunic off, grateful the man wasn’t just cutting it off. Anders only had the one. “Where’s Terrie?”

“Ran,” Hawke explained. Anders heard water dripping, and then felt a chill as a cloth ran over his back. “Told me you’d been captured by templars, that they weren’t going to send you to the Circle, that…” Hawke stopped, and Anders felt his hand on his shoulder. “… Did I get there fast enough?”

“For me,” Anders gave the hand on his shoulder a grateful squeeze. Karras’ threat hadn’t been at the forefront of his mind. Not when Alain had already lived it, and there were greater threats to worry about. Capture. Tranquility. Death. Not just for him, but for Alain, and Terrie, and Grace, and Decimus. “… There was a boy there. Maybe twenty. And a woman who looked like Terrie. Do you know if they made it out?”

“Mother will find out,” Hawke went back to cleaning the blood off his back, “She’s watching the fire with the rest of the nobility,”

“Like some damn blood sport,” Anders snarled, missing Justice’s echo. “People died in there. Decimus died in there.”

“What happened?” Hawke asked again. The washcloth vanished, replaced with one that dried.

“It doesn’t matter,” Anders thought of Alain, and how immobile the boy had been while Anders escaped. Hawke didn’t need to know it was Alain’s fault. “It won’t happen again – You need to clean the wound before you suture anything, you know, and not just with water. You’ll want a poultice, and you need to make sure there’s nothing still inside me, no metal, no dirt, no-“

“I know,” Hawke cut him off, and Anders felt said poultice smeared on his back and around the edge of his wound. “Merrill took care of it. Don’t change the subject. What happened?”

“They caught us,” Anders didn’t know what else there was to say. “… One of the templars was possessed, and Decimus gave himself to demons so we could escape. I couldn’t fight… I can’t feel Justice through the brand.”

“That’s it?” Hawke left him briefly to hold a needle over the fire. “You don’t know how they caught you? You don’t know who’s possessing the templars?”

“Well it’s not like I can ask Decimus now, is it?” Anders frowned. What did Hawke want from him? It wasn’t as if anyone could plan to be betrayed. There was bound to be dissenters in every group. Anders just had to do better next time. Hawke didn’t need to know the specifics, like how their blood magic had scared Alain into going to the templars in the first place, or how Anders hadn’t been persuasive enough without it to save the poor boy.

Hawke came back with the needle and threaded it, and set his free hand over Anders’ wound, “Are you numb yet?”

“Not yet,” Anders said, staring at the burn on his arm. Maybe if he just peeled some of the skin off…

“Leave it alone,” Hawke ordered, reading his thoughts.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Anders put his arm down at his side to force himself to stop looking at the burn, “This is-I can’t feel him. You don’t understand. I am Justice. He is me. He-“

Anders stopped short, remembering his dream. Aura had said she was him. Anders had no reason to dream of Aura. She wasn’t important to Anders; she was important to Justice. Anders thought back to his earlier dream of Darrian and Amaranthine, and his most recent dream at the chapel at Vigil’s Keep. They all meant something to Anders, but they meant more to Anders and Justice. Did Justice finally have a demesne? Could he finally dream again, or was it just some strange side-effect of the glyph?

“Are you numb?” Hawke asked again. Anders couldn’t feel Hawke’s hand on his back, so he supposed the poultice had taken hold. Anders nodded, and while he couldn’t feel the sting of the needle, he could still feel pressure on his skin as Hawke’s suturing pulled it closed. He focused on the sensation over his dreams. Hawke wouldn’t know how to interpret them. Anders could ask Merrill later.

… except she wasn’t speaking to him.

Focus on something else, Anders. Like the nice fellow sewing up your back. “Where’d you learn this?” Anders asked.

“Mother,” Hawke said.

“Not the answer I was expecting,” Anders admitted.

“Father wasn’t a healer,” Hawke explained, “He was mercenary. Someone had to sew him up.”

“So, earlier, it didn’t sound like she was too happy to see me,” Anders said. If he couldn’t pick at a literal wound, he’d pick at a metaphorical one. “Not that I’m not grateful to be rescued, but I thought you didn’t want me or Merrill near your family. You know, after Beth.”

“I don’t,” Hawke said. “But you need to eat, and you can fly in for dinner, and Merrill… no one knows she’s a mage. It’s not like she’s walking around with her staff, and even if she was, it just looks like a branch.”

“Because that’s a normal thing to walk around with,” Anders mused.

“She’s an elf. Doing elf shit,” Hawke said. “No one cares.”

“That’s kind of racist,” Anders said.

“This city’s kind of racist,” Hawke said. “Neighbors’ll probably assume she’s a servant.”

“Why don’t you have any of those, by the way?” Anders asked. “When you told me to come over for dinner, I was a picturing a table with chairs, maybe a couple of plates… my clinic has more furniture.”

“Working on it,” Hawke said.

“I guess there are a lot of rooms to furnish,” Anders decided, turning his head to look at the other side of the foyer. A hallway seemed to go on for leagues, and a stairwell curved up to a second and possible third story, “How many are there, by the way?”

“Lost count after twenty,” Hawke joked.

Anders laughed and shifted his arms. There was still shrapnel in them. “Do you have a bowl or something, so I can start pulling these out?”

“I’ll get it. I’m almost done.” Hawke said.

True to his word, Hawke finished shortly thereafter, and set aside the bloody needle and what was left of the thread. His kit was no small thing. There was needle, thread, forceps, drivers, bandages and towels, piles of elfroot: both raw and ground into pastes and poultices, mortar and pestle used to make said poultices, pumice, and several bowls of water. What he lacked in furniture, Hawke certainly made up for in supplies.

“I’m going to sit you up,” Hawke warned him before doing so, but knowing the pain was coming made it no less painful. Anders clung to Hawke long after the man had finished moving him, struggling to even out his breathing around the agonizing tremors that ran up his spine. Hawke followed one with his fingers. It was an unexpected comfort, as were the words that followed it. “I have you. Breathe through it. I’ll wrap it when you’re ready and we’ll start on your arms.”

“I’m good,” Anders lied. Forcing himself to take a deep breath, Anders let go of Hawke and sat back. Red eyes raked over him, and Anders was suddenly and acutely aware he was without a shirt. Rib-cage thin and covered in blood and sewage wasn’t exactly the look he was going for, but it was the only one he had. Anders traded modesty for humor, “Like what you see?”

“You’re a mess,” Hawke said, wrapping bandages around his lower back and midriff. He really knew how to flatter.

“But I could be your mess,” Anders joked, “Think of how many fun nights like this you’re missing out on.”

Hawke tied the bandage off and met his eyes without matching his playfulness. “This isn’t fun. You want to sit up or lie down while I get your arms?”

“Up’s fine,” Anders said. He wasn’t looking forward to moving again. “It was a joke, you know.”

“It wasn’t,” Hawke took one of Anders’ hands, picked up a pair of tweezers, and started pulling shards of metal from his arm. “Scared the shit out of me tonight,”

The wounds bled anew, and the sting brought Anders near to tears. Weather it. That’s what Aura had said. What Justice had said. He just had to weather it. Humor helped. Hawke didn’t understand.

“It isn’t like I planned this, you know,” Anders said, trying not to wince as a particularly jagged piece of metal came free of his arm. “… My friend died tonight. I can’t feel Justice, I don’t know if Grace is alive, I don’t-” Anders had to stop. The whole of the Collective might be destroyed, for all Anders knew. Selby, Evon, Donal… they could all be dead, and it was all on Anders.

He shouldn’t have trusted that every mage would be willing to go to the same lengths as him. He shouldn’t have agreed to make the spelltomes. He should have expected someone would betray him. He should have gotten to the meeting before the templars raped Alain. He should have killed the templars before they killed Decimus. He should have planned better. He should have been better.

“It’s your life,” Hawke said, dropping the bloody chunk in the bowl beside them. “It’s always going to be your life. I know what it’s like. Your life was my father’s life.”

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe he thought it was worth it?” Anders demanded. The son of a mage should have understood. Anders couldn’t stop, no matter what happened. When the choice was fight or die, it wasn’t a choice. He was so tired of Hawke’s excuses. “That some things are worth fighting for?”

He didn’t need a lecture. He needed an ally. Anders twisted out of Hawke’s grasp and reached for another pair of tweezers. He could debride his own injuries and was about to say as much when Hawke caught his face in his calloused hands and forced Anders to look at him. Anders couldn’t read what he saw in his eyes.

“Why do you think I came for you?”

Chapter 91: Benedictions

Summary:

In which Hawke has some reservations.

Notes:

Today is my birthday! Thank you for reading. I appreciate the feedback. Don’t forget to SMASH that kudos button, bookmark, and subscribe. Let me know what you think in the comments down BELOW.

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon Verimensis 18 Early Morn

Amell Estate – Foyer

It was a soothing scent, maple. Like the coming of autumn, displaced as it was at the end of winter. It masked the rank and rotted scent of Anders’ burn and smelled… sweet. Almost cloying. It whispered promises of rebirth, recovery, resurrection. Peaceful promises, with none of the violence that Anders lived and breathed and bled.

It was there in the fire, reflected in the red of Hawke’s eyes as he held him. Hawke didn’t say anything else, but he also didn’t let go. Apparently, the question wasn’t rhetorical.

“I still owe you seven silver for Wicked Grace?” Anders guessed. He didn’t know what to do about the hands on his face and settled on holding Hawke’s wrists. “…I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

“’Course I came,” Hawke said, letting go of Anders’ face to resume debriding his arms. There was nothing gentle about pulling shards of metal out of someone’s skin, but somehow Hawke managed. His calloused fingers were deliberate, precise… almost intimate. Anders didn’t know how it made him feel. Not really. Not when half of him was missing. But the half that was left couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“Your support means the world to me,” Anders said, watching him.

“I hear you,” Hawke said.

“What does that mean?” Anders asked.

Hawke finished with the last of the shrapnel in Anders’ arms, and then ran his hands along them as if to double check for any he’d missed. Anders doubted he needed to linger the way he did. “Legs or burn next?”

“Legs,” Anders decided, wishing Hawke would answer him, “The burn is going to be bad. I’ll probably pass out before you finish.”

“You need sutures here,” Hawke ran his thumb along the bone-deep cut on Anders’ wrist. Anders wondered what he’d think if he knew Anders had done it to himself. Maybe he wouldn’t care. Maybe he’d understand. “And you need to change. None of this matters if you’re covered in shit.”

“Right, I’ll just dip down to the old Darktown wardrobe and put on a fresh pair of trousers, then,” Anders rolled his eyes. “Maybe I’ll pick up doublet or two while I’m there.”

“I’ll get you something,” Hawke assured him. “Bath’s upstairs. I’ll carry you.”

Anders stopped him with a hand on his chest before Hawke could pick him up, “Answer me first. What do you mean you hear me?”

“It means I hear you,” Hawke said unhelpfully. “What do you want it to mean?”

“I want it to mean I’m not alone,” Anders’ mouth said without consulting him. The words fell like vomit, one after the other, “There’s no one else in this city who isn’t a mage who would stand with me. Not against templars. Not without hesitation. You’re the one bright light in Kirkwall.”

It wasn’t a question, but Anders wished Hawke would answer it.

“I’m taking you upstairs,” Hawke said, “Brace yourself.” Anders should have listened. It was like being stabbed all over again when Hawke picked him up. Pain ran up Anders’ spine and knotted up in his shoulders. Hawke must have felt him tense, because he did his best to massage it away with the hand on his shoulder.

“Are you going to say anything?” Anders asked.

“What do you want me to say?” Hawke asked.

“I don’t know,” Anders admitted. “You’re not alone, Anders? I’ll always come to your rescue, Anders?”

“You’re not alone. I’ll always come to your rescue,” Hawke said obediently. It didn’t sound sarcastic, so Anders decided not to take it as sarcasm.

“It was a pretty dramatic rescue, you know,” Anders recalled, resting his head on Hawke’s shoulder. It was a nice shoulder, as far as shoulders went. “Templars all around. You appearing out of the shadows. Very theatrical. We should tell Varric.”

“Not his business,” Hawke said. “Bath then bed. I’ll bring you breakfast when Merrill comes back with the spindleweed.”

“No oatmeal,” Anders said.

“No oatmeal,” Hawke agreed.

Upstairs was no less sparse than downstairs. Hawke took him through an empty loft, down an empty hall, into an almost-empty room, before ending up at the wash. It was furnished, if nothing else. There was a latrine, a basin, and a bench. A massive wooden washtub made up one corner of the room, and a hearth the other. All of it drained into Darktown.

Anders tried not to think about it, but it was too symbolic. He’d be pissing away his clinic in Hightown while he recovered, and the guard would be there to tell the refugees it was rain. He couldn’t just abandon the refugees just because he was hurt. Not when Aveline was flooding the brig as fast as the rains flooded Darktown. Maybe he could convince Hawke to check on them.

Later. When he was clean. There was no soap that Anders could see, but there were towels. Someone had already drawn the bath, for all the good it did him. He couldn’t get the bandages wet, which meant the bench would have to serve.

“I’ll get you some trousers,” Hawke said, setting him on it.

“No smalls?” Anders asked.

“You won’t fit in my smalls,” Hawke said.

“Are you bragging or teasing?” Anders wondered.

“Yes,” Hawke grinned. Anders grinned back. Hawke left to fetch him a change of clothes, and Anders sat on the bench. The sun was coming up, if the light from the eastern window was any gauge. That, or the flames had devoured the rest of Hightown and he was about to be burned alive.

It would have been better than being left alone with his thoughts. Anders was circling the drain in seconds. Damn Alain. Damn him. If he had just trusted them. They were just spelltomes. A few demons bound to new purpose. Decimus had been a good man and a good mage. Anders had believed in him. He’d done more for their cause in a month than the rest of the Collective had managed in a year, and it had all gone up in flames.

There’d be nothing left but ashes now. There was no blood magic holding the Redwaters and the Coterie to their word. Alain was for the Circle. Terrie had vanished. Grace wouldn’t have left Decimus’ side, no matter how sweet his goodbye. They were all gone. Dead, captured, or soon to be, to say nothing of the rest of the Collective. Alain might have betrayed them to the last man for all Anders knew.

Those that survived would have to face the Seekers of Truth, and Maker save them when they showed. At this rate, the Seekers would arrive just in time to witness possessed templars running amok in the city, and Anders still had no idea who was possessing them. The ones that weren’t possessed knew his face, his name, and after tonight might know Hawke was hiding him with how the nobles gossiped. He’d lost his grimoire, his coat, his magic, his spirit. Everything had come together just to fall apart.

Anders picked at the blood crusted under his nails and wished Hawke would come back. He could feel the pinpricks of frostnip starting in his arms and legs, and they were bound to start swelling soon. Anders was dragging his legs onto the bench when Hawke came back with trousers, and a bowl full of supplies.

“I need to get the metal out before I can change,” Anders explained.

“I have you,” Hawke took over, emptying out the bowl and laying it beneath him to catch blood and shrapnel. “There’s some more elfroot under the bandages.”

Anders chewed on it instead of his thoughts while Hawke worked on his legs. The man was still in his leathers, but he was missing his gloves. There was a smattering of dark hair on the back of his hands Anders knew didn’t stop at his wrist. He let his eyes wander over Hawke’s arms and down to his thighs, recalling the strength in both for Hawke to carry him through Hightown.

Hawke stared at him for staring, but Anders could always blame the blood loss. It wasn’t as if there was anything else to look at. There was a mirror over the basin, but Anders looked less and less like Anders of late. Gaunt, frostnip-blue skin, covered in sewage and torn near in two by the templars. Anders wasn’t someone Anders wanted to look at.

“That’s the last,” Hawke said, dropping the final bloody fragment into the bowl. Each piece had come with chunks of skin, crusted blood, bits of hair, until the bowl looked like something from a necromancer’s ritual. Hawke didn’t seem bothered, at least. “You need help changing?” Hawke asked.

“I’ve got it,” Anders waved him off, “No peaking.”

Hawke turned about obediently on the bench. Anders glanced between the towels and the trousers and wondered if he really had it. Setting his hands on the bench, Anders tried to lift himself up to shimmy out of his pants, and nearly shimmied right off the bench. “Andraste’s dirty socks-I-… do not have this.”

“Anders, you-“ Hawke started.

“Do you think-“ Anders started at the same time. “… you first.”

“You need help,” Hawke said plainly. “If you had passed out I’d have already taken care of you.”

“I’m a healer. I get that…” Anders sighed, looking back at the mirror. He didn’t see Anders; he saw Kristoff, with deep pitted skin and sad sunken eyes, “This just isn’t really how I want you to see me.”

“You don’t know how I see you,” Hawke said.

“Filthy fucking sewer rat doesn’t really leave much up for interpretation,” Anders smiled sadly. “I was a looker once. You should have seen me. Clothes, wit, hair, name something sharp and I was sharper. Your loss, really. Just at a… temporarily embarrassed heartthrob point in my life. Once I gain a few stones, cut my hair, take regular baths, it’s over for you. I’m telling you; it’ll be love at first sight.”

“You’re stalling,” Hawke said.

“So?” Anders asked.

“So…” Hawke sighed, scratching his scalp, “You didn’t have to send Tamatha.”

“Terrie?”

“Whatever,” Hawke shrugged. “You didn’t have to send her. You said yourself, you weren’t sure I’d come. You could have freed yourself. You didn’t. You knew what they were planning to do to all of you, and you saved her… I see that.”

Hawke stood up, retrieved a towel, and dropped it Anders’ lap. “I’m going to lift you up. Get undressed, clean up, I’ll lift you again when you’re ready to change.”

There wasn’t much point in arguing, Anders supposed. Hawke looped his arms under Anders’ shoulders and lifted him an inch off the bench. Anders battled with his trousers and the towel until he was able to replace one with the other. Hawke set him down and supplied him with a pumice and another towel. The latter helped with his modesty, but did nothing for how cold the bench was on his backside.

“No soap?” Anders asked.

“Mother is on some strange milk cleanse,” Hawke held up his hands to forestall all of Anders’ whos, whats, wheres, whens, and whys. “It’s in fashion. I don’t know. Use the pumice. Get your arms. I’ll help with your legs.”

“I am so getting an infection,” Ander predicted, cleaning his arms.

“You want me to get you some milk?” Hawke asked, pulling Anders’ legs back onto the bench to chase away blood and grime with pumice and towel.

“I hope you’re joking,” Anders said.

“Merrill said she got all the impurities out of your blood. Shit falls into that category,” Hawke said.

“I still can’t believe you went to her for blood magic,” Anders said.

“I went to her to save you,” Hawke corrected him, “Not for blood magic.”

“You can’t separate the two,” Anders said.

“Watch me.” Hawke said.

“You honestly still feel the same way about blood magic after tonight?” Anders asked. So much for old dogs and new tricks.

“If that was all it was,” Hawke allotted. “But it’s not. I’m never going to agree with you, Anders, but I trust you to know when to stop.”

“Honestly,” Anders muttered, “Sometimes you make me want to wring your neck, but I suppose I’ll take it.”

“Feelings mutual,” Hawke said. It hurt to hear back, and Anders regretted saying it.

Hawke finished with his legs before Anders finished with his arms and spent the excess of time massaging his feet. He went about it absent-mindedly, eyes fixed on some far corner of the room, like he’d been doing it for years. Calloused fingers slid between his toes, pushed down his cuticles to free dirt beneath his nails, kneaded at the soles of his feet.

“Thanks,” Anders said.

“Hm?” Hawke hummed.

“For um… you know.” Anders said eloquently. Hawke raised an eyebrow at him, and Anders forced himself to continue, “Fighting for me.”

“I hear you,” Hawke said, “Finished?”

“Finished,” Anders said proudly, setting aside the pumice and towel.

Hawke went about helping him into his trousers in a haphazard sort of dance that almost ended with Anders trading his life for his modesty when he slipped on the wet floor beneath him. Hawke caught him, but it cost him his towel and trousers, and left him pressed up against Hawke naked and bleeding. Because of course it did. Anders wasn’t allowed to have any fucks or dignity left in him.

“Blighted bloody brand,” Anders slammed his fist into Hawke’s chest, “As if this day needed to get worse. At least I wouldn’t care if I was Tranquil.”

“I’d care,” Hawke said, holding him.

“Just- give me a second to ditch my dignity,” Anders said, preparing himself for mental and physical acrobatics he’d need to get dressed.

“Anders…” Hawke tiled Anders’ chin up to meet his eyes, “I don’t care.”

“Ouch,” Anders said.

“You want me to close my eyes? I’ll close my eyes. You want me to match you? I’ll match you. I don’t care,” Hawke said, “You’re a healer. Act like it.”

“Well forgive me if I’m not all for humiliating myself in front of someone I-“ like? Respect? Am attracted to? Want to be with?

Mercifully, Hawke didn’t make him finish. “What, you think I won’t respect you because… why? You’re hurt. You’re human. You’re-”

“Bare ass naked?” Anders supplied.

“You’re not like this for me,” Hawke said. “If you were, I wouldn’t let you feel this way.”

“You can’t control how I feel,” Anders said. “What does that even mean?”

“Means if you wanted me to see you like this you’d know damn sure I was for it,” Hawke ran his thumb over his chin and his nail grazed Anders’ bottom lip, “But you don’t, so I’m not. Alright?”

It was mature enough. Anders could match it.

“… Alright,” Anders said. “Just-… help me sit.”

Hawke helped him sit, fit Anders’ legs through his pants, and picked him up so he could pull them on and cinch them at his waist. When he finished, Hawke cut them off at the knees to get access to his legs. They were stitched, bandaged, and all too fast followed by his arms, which meant the burn was next. Anders flicked at his nails in silence while Hawke worked, watching his hands.

He still felt the ghost of them… everywhere. In his shoulders, along his spine, in his arms and legs, his hands and feet, the edge of his lips. It was a pleasant sort of haunting. One Anders wasn’t keen to banish. What were they? What could they be? What did Hawke even want them to be? Anders searched Hawke’s collar for the chain of his necklace, but it wasn’t visible. The chantry sunburst was there, somewhere under his armor. Anders didn’t doubt it, but Anders didn’t fit with it.

… he could fit with the rest of him. Hawke might change his mind. He had seen the abuses of the templars firsthand, and he’d made allowances for the blood magic… but Anders didn’t want to be just an allowance. Hawke ran his fingers over a suture he finished, touch lighter than the feathers in his quiver, and Anders had to battle back a shiver.

“I’m sorry for putting you through all this,” Anders said, fighting with his feelings. “I don’t have to stay here, you know. I can rest up in my clinic.”

“Don’t do that,” Hawke said without looking up from his suturing.

“Do what?” Anders asked.

“Blame yourself,” Hawke elaborated, “You didn’t do this, it was done to you. You’re staying here.”

“You can’t just order me around, you know,” Anders argued for argument’s sake. It was easier than admitting he liked the command in Hawke’s voice. “You’re not my commanding officer. This isn’t Ostagar.”

“If this was Ostagar, you’d be dead,” Hawke chuffed. “You want to go, go, but you’re walking out of here on your own.” Hawke tied off a final suture, and then sat back and waited for Anders to call his own bluff.

“I’m just saying, people saw me come here,” Anders said. “What if the templars come knocking?”

“They won’t,” Hawke said with a certainty Anders envied. Hawke apparently decided Anders wasn’t leaving, because he went back to bandaging his arms and legs, which left only the burn on Anders’ forearm.

It was mess. The brand wasn’t the most hygienic thing in the world to be stabbed with, and the burn had turned putrid and yellow, which meant infection. Merrill had allegedly pulled the impurities from his blood, but she must not have been able to work around the glyph. Anders hoped it didn’t mean lockjaw, but he supposed he’d find out in the next few days. If it was, then he wouldn’t have a choice but to cut the glyph off.

“Lie back,” Hawke said. “I’ll wash your hair, and then get the burn.”

“I don’t know that my hair’s a priority,” Anders mused, but lied down. He wasn’t eager to have his arm debrided.

“It is,” Hawke said, but he was smiling when Anders looked at him. “I’ll be back with a bucket-“

“No!” Anders almost rolled off the bench in his scramble to catch Hawke’s wrist as he walked past. “Just-use the bowl.”

“… alright,” Hawke said slowly. He emptied the bowl into the basin and refilled it with water from the bath, all mercifully without question for Anders’ outburst, but the silence was no better. Anders didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts. Not after everything that had happened tonight.

“Tell me about Ostagar,” Anders said.

“Told you about Ostagar,” Hawke shielded Anders’ eyes and poured out some of the water over his hair.

“Tell me more about Ostagar,” Anders said stubbornly. “Humor me. Make conversation.”

“… Ash Warriors were there,” Hawke said after some thought, combing his fingers through Anders’ hair. “Carver’d been bragging to half the encampment about how his brother used to be one of them, but you don’t stop being an Ash Warrior. I warned him to leave it, but he ended up getting into it with one of them. I think he thought if he could best one, it would be like besting me.

“He was always showing his ass, all mouth and no trousers. The Ash Warriors make the Red Irons look like greenhorns… When I joined, one of their first lessons was some shit about dying before battle, so you’re ready for it. They cut shallow lines, all down your arms, and pour salt in them until you scream. Turns out it’s actually a lesson in not doing stupid things. Carver needed it.

“Our captain broke it up. Probably saved Carver’s damn life, for all the good it did. Varel always saw shit before it hit the windmill.”

“Varel?” Anders tilted his head back to look at Hawke. “Seneschal of Amaranthine Varel?”

Hawke made a sound of agreement, “That was him. You knew him?”

“He served the wardens in Amaranthine,” Anders recalled. “I could never remember his name. I-uh… I didn’t care enough to remember it. I take back what I said earlier. I looked better, before, but I wasn’t better. I was selfish. He was a good man… would have done anything for the wardens.”

“Was?” Hawke asked.

“He died,” Anders said, searching Hawke’s eyes to see how it hit him. He couldn’t read the man right side up, let alone upside down, but Hawke’s hands froze in his hair and Anders imagined it hurt. “I’m sorry.”

“How?” Hawke asked eventually, going back to washing his hair.

“Darkspawn,” Anders said. It was always darkspawn. What else killed wardens? Unless wardens killed themselves. “They attacked the Vigil, and our Commander-… the Commander, not my Commander, got him killed.”

“That’s not me,” Hawke said.

“What’s not you?” Anders asked.

“People dying under my command,” Hawke explained. “Aveline mentioned you were worried about how I lead. I know I’m not the kind of leader you’re used to serving under, but no one dies for me.”

It would have comforted Anders to hear, once. “Some things are worth dying for.”

“You die, and the thing doesn’t get done,” Hawke said.

“You know, that’s actually not a bad point,” Anders allotted.

Hawke barked out a laugh, and started drying Anders’ hair, “You have any stories about Varel?”

“I mean… sure, I guess,” Anders shrugged, “He was a tough bastard. I met him when the darkspawn attacked Vigil’s Keep for the first time. The talking kind. They took him up to the top of the keep, and I think they were going to throw him over the edge, for dramatic effect or something. Or maybe he was bait? Am-… We had to use blood magic to get him away from the darkspawn. He was unarmed but ready to go right back in with fisticuffs.”

“Sounds like Varel,” Hawke said.

“No comment on the blood magic?” Anders prodded.

“You did what you had to do,” Hawke said, helping him sit back up when he finished with his hair.

“… Thanks,” Anders said. Hawke straddled the bench beside him, and Anders wondered who was stalling. Maybe both of them. His burn wasn’t going to debride itself, but… well, exactly. It wasn’t going to debride itself. It could wait. “I really didn’t like him, at first. Not the most mage-friendly fellow, but … we had this Guard Captain, Garevel. Nasty bloke. Always looking for an excuse to kill someone.

“The people revolted. No one could blame them. Darkspawn were swarming the fields, ruining the harvest, and they were starving. They just wanted into the granaries, and Garevel wanted to kill them, but Varel wouldn’t let him. He kept trying to reason with them until the Commander-until we all got back to talk them down. Actually-“

Anders stopped when the memory came back to him. That had been blood magic too. The people wouldn’t leave on their own. What stories did he have that didn’t involve blood magic?

“Actually?” Hawke prompted.

“That wasn’t when I decided I liked him. It was later. When it was about me.” Anders held up both his hands and wiggled his fingers, “Selfish! The templars sent a retinue to bring me back to the Circle, even though I was Grey Warden, and Varel sent someone to warn me. We uh…” used blood magic to convince them to leave? “We were able to prepare for it and get them to leave. After he-…Andraste’s ass, what did he say… It meant a lot to me…”

“Doesn’t matter,” Hawke said. “Matters what he did.”

“Still wish I could remember,” Anders said.

“… Being a Grey-Warden wasn’t enough to keep the templars away from you?” Hawke asked.

“No mage is ever really free,” Anders said. He knew Justice would have echoed him if he could.

Hawke didn’t have a retort. Anders didn’t know whether that made him feel better or worse. His silence was companionable, if nothing else.

“We should probably deal with this,” Anders held out his burnt forearm.

“Breakdown what you need me to do,” Hawke said, taking his hand.

“You have to remove the burned tissue, which is not as easy as it sounds. Get a washcloth, and wipe off the glyph, but whatever you do don’t scrub. Whatever skin’s still left and loose, you’ll have to cut off. The blisters don’t look too bad. You can just deflate them.” At Hawke’s blank stare, Anders continued, “Basically make a hole it in and squeeze out the fluid. Wash the burn again. Once you’re done, you can put the poultice on the bandage and wrap it. It’s going to hurt, no matter what you do or how much elfroot I eat, so … just try to ignore me.”

“You want me to do this here?” Hawke asked.

“Maybe let me sit on the floor in case I pass out,” Anders said, “But here is fine.”

Hawke moved him to the floor, set out the supplies, and held his hand. “You want something to bite down on?” Hawke asked, hovering over his arm with the washcloth. Just the drip of water stung.

“… maybe,” Anders agreed. Hawke took off his belt and Anders bit down on it.

Anders had never known a gentler touch, and it was agony. Blackened skin sloughed off his arm with each pass of the washcloth, and translucent bits hung like gristle from what lingered of the reddened skin beneath. He screamed through the belt, tears spilling down his face, and struggled to breathe around his sobs. It was worse than the brand, and almost worse than when he’d been impaled in Kal’Hirol. He should have just had Isabela skin him.

Hawke had to skin him anyway. Loose skin that lingered had to be cut away, and Anders swore his nerves weren’t dead. He felt every slice and nick as Hawke cleaned and cleared the burn, and swore he blacked out. Hawke seemed to be working on a different piece of his burn every time Anders blinked. It was like a tapestry of torment blocking off the Veil. Anders sucked in a breath of leather, wishing he could will himself unconscious. His nightmares were kinder.

His arm still burned long after Hawke finished. Hawke wrapped it in poultice-coated bandages, and carried Anders from the wash. Hawke took him to the room they’d passed to reach it, and Anders had to blink through tears to take in his surroundings. It was spacious, furnished with a mattress but no bed, clothes but no dresser, and bow and armor but no stand. Hawke laid him out on the mattress, and smoothed back his sweat-soaked hair, “Get you water?”

Anders shook his head, “Just stay here.”

“Alright,” Hawke sat cross legged on the floor beside him.

“Twenty rooms and none of them are for guests?” Anders asked.

“They’re not furnished,” Hawke said, “Told you, I’m working on it,”

“What did you do with your coin from the expedition?” Anders wondered, “Give it to Gamlen?”

“Just about,” Hawke chuffed, shifting to lie down on the floor beside him. It was sweet of him, really, considering Anders was pretty sure this was his bed.

“Seriously, what happened?” Anders asked, “And don’t say it’s not my business.”

“That’s not it,” Hawke told the ceiling. “… I had to find a way to pay for the expedition, after Beth. Time was running out, Bartrand was looking for other partners. I did what I had to do, same as you, it just cost me.”

“So what did you do?” Anders asked.

“… I borrowed it,” Hawke shrugged. “It’s not your problem.”

“From who?” Anders pressed, “The Coterie? Maybe I could help.”

Hawke shook his head. “Carta… Fifty sovereigns. I repaid it, but they want a hundred in interest. I don’t have it.”

“What are you going to do?” Anders asked.

“I’m working on it,” Hawke said.

Which meant he had no idea, Anders was willing to bet. “Weren’t you the one who told me to plan?”

“I get fifty silver on Red Iron jobs, if I’m lucky. A sovereign or two if it’s a big one.” Hawke counted imaginary coins on his fingers. “Carta’s not going to wait a year for their coin, and the estate doesn’t get me any. Mother doesn’t work. Beth doesn’t get a stipend. Plan was to get Beth here, whatever it cost. If the Carta wanted a pound of flesh after, they could have it.”

“Maybe I could help,” Anders said. It was partly his fault. He’d cost Hawke his savings when Beth had needed a healer, and it was the least he could do to repay the man for saving his life.

“Blood magic?” Hawke guessed.

“No…” Anders said. “Unless?”

“No,”

“Orsino had an idea, then. Healing the nobility. I wasn’t for it, but…” Amell’s grimoire could wait… it would still be there, however long it took Anders to come up with the coin. Hawke needed him now. “I could get the Coterie to connect me to the Blooming Rose and work out from there. It probably wouldn’t take long for me to get what you need.”

“This is my problem,” Hawke turned him down. “You heard the nobles outside. Those are the people you’d be looking to heal. This city isn’t for mages.”

“But-“

“No,” Hawke cut him off, rolling over so they were face to face. “It’s not your business.”

“Seriously?” Glaring while prone didn’t carry the gravitas Anders wanted, but he didn’t have the strength to sit up. “How can you say that to me? You said I was worth fighting for, that I wasn’t alone, that you’d come to my rescue. Back there in the wash-… am I crazy? Are you just teasing me? When you told me to think about the Chantry and where we fit, did you even mean it?”

“Course I meant it,” Hawke’s eyebrows drew together and he pushed himself up on his elbow, “Anders-“

“Then why don’t you want my help?” Anders demanded. “Don’t you have any faith in me?”

“These people don’t want you to heal them,” Hawke waved a hand around the room as if the nobles were in it, “You’re nothing to them. A curio. They’d turn you in just to gossip about it later.”

“That’s my risk to take, and maybe I think you’re worth a few.” Anders argued stubbornly. “You saved my life, why can’t I return the favor?”

“I didn’t want to save your life – No, shut up – I told you I didn’t want to lose you to your cause, and you almost died for it tonight. Anders I-… I don’t know where we fit. You’re a maleficar, and you’re possessed, and you live in a sewer. Your life is for some secret mage underground and you’re constantly risking it. You want the Circle torn down, but Bethany’s happy in it, and we-… I-… I want you, but you terrify me. ‘Us’ terrifies me. Tonight terrified me.”

Anders wished he could sit up. He tried, propping himself up on his elbows, but Hawke’s hand on his chest pushed him back down. It traveled over bare skin to map the angles on Anders’ face. There was no fear that Anders could feel. His touch felt soothing, safe, sustaining.

“I’m here,” Anders promised, tracing the break in Hawke’s nose down to his lips. They were soft, made softer when Hawke wet them.

“Marvel at perfection, for it is fleeting,” Hawke mumbled against his fingers.

“So I’m perfect now?” Anders teased.

“Close enough. I’ve never met a better man. The refugees, the mages-”

“I’m just… doing what’s just.”

“He’s not here,” Hawke reminded him, “This is just you. You’re Benedictions.”

“Which verse?” Anders asked, watching his lips.

“All of them.”

Hawke’s eyes were on Anders’ lips, and it was all the encouragement he needed. He slid his hand from Hawke’s face to the back of his neck and pulled, not caring if Hawke came down or he came up. Neither of them moved. Hawke’s hand on his chest kept him flat. “Get some sleep. I can’t lose you, Anders. It’s hard enough when you’re not mine. It would kill me if you were.”

Chapter 92: What Will The Neighbors Think?

Summary:

In which Anders gets visitors.

Notes:

Thank you for all of your kudos/comments/subscriptions/bookmarks, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon Verimensis 24 Sometime
Somewhere

The incense was like a fog. It rolled down the steps of the Chantry, carrying whispers of the Chant of Light. Anders scaled the stairs with Hawke, twisting Karl’s Ring of Study on his finger until it wore his skin raw. The incense-thick air seemed to sense his trepidation and didn’t part for his passing. Endless waves crashed against him, as if intent on sending him far from salvation’s shore.

If not for Hawke’s support, Anders knew he wouldn’t have been able to make the climb. Emerald light rippled through the fog, formless shapes picking up the Chant of Light and echoing it in Karl’s voice. It grew duller and duller the closer they came to the Chantry’s doors until it was a soulless monotone, intoning erudition, “Jealous of life… they could not feel, could not touch.”

“I can’t do this,” Anders wheezed. He couldn’t breathe. A rattling sound echoed in his chest when he tried, like there was nothing left in him but incense.

He ran back down the stairs, marble steps crumbling in his wake, faster and faster until the destruction overtook him. The entire Chantry came down, collapsing in on itself like the thaig in the Deep Roads, only the enemy within couldn’t be bested so easily. The force of the implosion sent Anders to his knees, and for all he searched the emerald sky, there was no Maker in the Black City to hear his prayers.

Hawke emerged from the rumble in His absence.

“You can,” Hawke said, kneeling beside him. “Tell me again what you’re going to say.”

“There have been rumors -… Stories-…” Anders couldn’t think. The incense was too thick.

“Accounts,” Hawke supplied.

“There have been accounts,” Anders repeated dutifully. “…Of Karl-Oh Maker, Karl-…“

“Harrowed mages,” Hawke corrected him.

“Harrowed mages made tranquil against their will. The Rite of Tranquility-… Chantry law forbids performing the Rite of Tranquility without significant provocation and the consent of the First Enchanter. As the Grand Cleric-… as Kirkwall’s Grand Cleric it is your sacred charge to ensure that no mage- no man is unjustly severed from the realm of the Maker and the first of his children. You have an obligation to investigate these accounts and strip the Knight Commander of her command if they are found true.”

“Good,” Hawke said. “Stand up.”

Anders stood up. The Grand Cleric Elthina stood before him. She was incense given human form. Old and grey and ashen, with a suffocating presence that seemed to suck the air from the room. She heard him out with an impatient frown that seemed to imply she wished she hadn’t.

“Thank you for trusting me with your concerns, my child,” Elthina face’s split into an unexpected smile, her wrinkles stretching to an almost impossible depth, “I will summon the Seekers of Truth to investigate these claims. In the meantime, no further mages will be made Tranquil until they have been made to stand trial, and I have received sworn statements from the Knight-Commander and the First Enchanter.”

“That’s-,” Anders laughed in disbelief, “That’s amazing. That’s wonderful. That’s-…. That…”

Anders trailed off. Elthina was still smiling at him, an unnatural green light ghosting her eyes. There was something wrong about it. As if she didn’t quite see him, or her eyes weren’t quite hers.

“…That wasn’t how it happened. You-… you told me it was all gossip, and that you admired Meredith…” Anders fit the memory together in bits and pieces. The Chantry dissolved, and Elthina along with it. The Fade. This was the Fade.

“Justice!” Anders realized. He whirled to face Hawke, but he was gone. A warped replica of Anders took Hawke’s place, a version of himself Anders hardly recognized. There was a strength about him, born from a weight his year in Kirkwall had stolen from him. He was dressed for battle, silver and blue armor emblazoned with gryphons, with sword and shield in place of staff, but it was him. It was Justice.

Anders tackled him. He wrapped his arms around Justice’s neck and clung to him like a dying man to prayer. Justice was all armor, with no warmth or give to his embrace, but he could have manifested as an iron maiden for all Anders’ cared. “Maker’s breath, finally,” Anders laughed. “I’ve been casting sleep spells for days. I thought I was going to bleed out before I figured it out. Are you alright? Talk to me. Hug me, stupid, I know you know how.”

The stiff encase of metal that was Justice’s hug was the greatest comfort Anders had had in weeks. “You are aware of me?” Justice asked cautiously.

“Of course I’m aware of you,” Anders pulled back to take in Justice’s face. It was like Anders’ face, veined with veilfire. There was a hardline to his lips and brow that spoke of a mixture of confusion and conviction, and was all too perfect for him.

“You look good. We look good?” Anders waved his hand over Justice’s face, “This, whatever you’ve got going on here looks good. Is this how you see yourself now?”

“I am you.” Justice said firmly.

“Right, sure, out there, but you’re your own person too,” Anders hugged him again, burying a hand in Justice’s hair. It was cropped short, another interesting twist Anders most certainly would not replicate, but didn’t mind seeing if it made Justice happy. “It’s so good to see you. Really you. Merrill had this theory that since possession puppets from the Fade, and my magic powers the glyph, it was sort of syphoning your energy - whatever, I don’t care, I’m just glad she was right.”

“It is good to see you as well,” Justice said. “I have been trying to communicate with you when you visit the Fade, but you walk as if under the haze of blood magic. It is most disquieting.”

“Yeah, that’s-… how most people are when they’re in the Fade,” Anders shrugged, “They’re asleep. You have to be a Dreamer to visit the Fade at will, or use a ritual like we did back at Vigil’s Keep with lyrium or blood magic. Spirit healers can kind of cheat. Once we’re acclimated to our spirits, it’s pretty easy for them to wake us.”

“It was not easy,” Justice said. “I tried many times to make you aware of me to no avail. I had begun to fear if we would ever be able to communicate.”

“You and me both,” Anders patted at Justice’s arms and shoulders. “This is-I don’t know how I feel about this. I know I’ve been saying I want to be able to dream again, but this feels weird, right? Before-with Compassion-we were still us.”

Justice watched Anders’ hands crawl across him without comment, when it suddenly occurred to Anders he should probably respect his spirit’s autonomy. There was no telling how long Justice would have it. Anders stuffed his hands into his pockets and Justice followed the motion with his eyes, frowning. “You are not distressing me.”

“Reading my mind?” Anders guessed.

“I am familiar with it.” Justice said.

“I feel for you,” Anders joked, looking for a place to sit. The pews of the Vigil’s chapel manifested beneath him. Anders sat, patting the space beside him for Justice. “You don’t think we’ll be like this in the Fade from now on, do you?”

“I cannot say,” Justice said unhelpfully, joining him on the bench, “There is a block across the Veil. When I reach for you it is as if the mortal realm does not exist. I feel your presence here like a shadow, as if something has pulled us apart but only just. Your days bleed through, the senses separate, and I have spent mine piecing them together.”

“Sounds like you really adjusted,” Anders said. “Building a demesne from my memories, talking to me in my dreams… but, hey, about that, what the fuckshit? Darrian, Amaranthine, the Chantry, that one with the Broodmother? Are you mad at me? You know I would do something about the brand if I could.”

“I feel no animosity towards you, Anders,” Justice said, with a look of such profound confusion he seemed offended Anders had even considered it.

The rest of the Vigil’s chapel came into being around them, but it was off. The statue was more Aura than Andraste, and the tapestries were woven together with the worst of his nightmares. Their battle with the Broodmother, where Sidona and Eram had died. The ruins of Amaranthine, where they had killed Darrian. The dark of the Deep Roads, where Anders had nearly gone mad. The Chantry, where they had killed Karl.

“Do these memories not console you?” Justice asked.

“No offense,” Anders said, “But are you sure you know what that word means?”

“These were grievous injustices,” Justice stood and marched to the nearest tapestry. He surveyed it with his hands locked behind his back, like a commander assessing a battlefield. “I am exultant to have righted them at your side. They were a great comfort to me in your absence. We won a great victory against the Darkspawn this day. Here, we won our first battle after we joined. And here, we swore to bring down the Circles and avenge the man you loved.”

Anders watched Justice pace among the tapestries with heavy steps before he stopped at the one with Karl. His embroidered blue eyes twisted up in Anders’ heart like a knife. Why couldn’t Justice have stopped by the bone dragon or some other horrible monster? Why did it have to be Karl?

“I never said I loved Karl.”

“I am aware,” Justice ran his fingers over the tapestry, Karl’s ring of study gleaming on his hand as it did Anders’. “I believe he felt it in our final moments with him, all the same.”

“So look,” Anders cleared his throat, scrubbing tears from his eyes, “I don’t know how much time we have before I wake up, but I wanted to ask you what to do about the Circles. I feel like I’m in over my head. We’ve freed a few mages, sure, but what’s the long term? I’ve been trying to think about how to achieve our goal, and short of a revolution, I just don’t see it.”

“Then we start a revolution,” Justice said.

“And how do we do that, exactly?” Anders asked, “No one from the Collective has come to visit me, and I’m worried they might all be dead or blame me for what happened. They were our only allies, and they’re gone. Maybe the Seekers could replace the Knight-Commander, or the Grand Cleric, and that helps this generation, but what about the next? If we really want to make a difference, we need the Circles free of the Chantry’s yokel, but they already voted for independence once and it didn’t pass.”

“Then you must convince them to vote again.”

“How?”

Justice hesitated, and Anders was grateful the spirit hadn’t just tossed out the first cliché that had come to mind. He stood holding his elbow, chin in hand and deep in thought.

“Exactly,” Anders sighed, throwing himself back on the pew to watch the demesnes float through the Fade around them. One of them belonged to Compassion, somewhere out there.

“… There was a passage,” Justice said eventually, coming back to sit beside him. Anders made room for him by draping his legs over Justice’s lap. “In the Warden-Commander’s journal. He spoke of how the crown had agreed to grant Ferelden’s Circle their independence in exchange for his service during the Blight, but how this attempt had soured because he did not have the support of the nobility. You need not repeat this mistake.”

“You think I should start healing the nobles,” Anders deduced. “Hawke said it was a bad idea.”

“His opinions need not concern you,” Justice said. “Convince the nobility, as you have convinced the refugees. Convince your fellow mages, within and without the Circle. Appeal to their sense of justice. Once you have the support of the people, come forward and demand freedom for yourself and your fellow mages. If it is not granted, take it by force.”

“Revolution,” Anders said.

“Yes,” Justice said. “I have missed our talks.”

“Me too, Justice…” Anders said, “Are you going to be alright, when this over and we’re back to normal?”

“You are asking if I find it preferable to be apart?” Justice asked.

“I guess, yeah. You’ve been back in the Fade for almost a week now. Do you miss it? I could try to find a way for us to separate permanently. Amell said it was possible to undo a possession. I think he even had the spell in his grimoire… once I get it back from Xenon.”

“Is this your wish?” Justice asked.

“You first.” Anders said.

“I am you, Anders,” Justice surveyed his hands and mapped them against Anders’ own. They were a perfect fit. “As much as you are me. I have not felt whole in our time apart.”

“That makes two of us,” Anders said. “One of us? Whatever.”

Silence stretched for a time, Justice’s gauntlet-clad hands resting on Anders’ legs. The demesnes floating above were too fluid and formless for Anders’ to guess which belonged to Compassion. Justice was the only constant in the Fade.

Anders nudged him. “I’m not cutting my hair.”

“It is a liability in battle.” Justice said stiffly.

“Beauty is pain.”

“You have reservations,” Justice said, “I understand. You need time to adjust.”

Anders shook his head, “Not happening.”

“We will revisit this discussion.” Justice decided.

“No, I don't think we will,” Anders said. “No revisiting. We visited. We're good. Besides, this could be our last chance to have a real conversation, shouldn't we talk about something, you know, profound?”

Justice growled at him. An inhuman growl, low and deep in his throat, and Anders woke up to a face full of mabari.

Anders recoiled, smashing his head back into his pillow. The mabari lurched forward in pursuit, a thick glob of slobber dislodging from its jowls to land on Anders chin. It snarled, breath like hot garbage, its teeth too close to Anders' face for comfort.

"Hey buddy..." Anders said cautiously. "You wanna... fuck off? Yeah? You wanna fuck off? Go see Hawke? Hawke!"

"Hessarian's hairy ballsack, about damn time you woke up," A familiar voice said.

Anders glanced around the slathering mabari to see Cor sitting in a corner of his room. The Bastard waved. “Little help?” Anders asked.

“Cor blimey, no,” Cor laughed, “You’re a dead man.”

No sooner had he spoke the words than Hawke burst into the room, holding a half-fletched arrow like a dagger with wild eyes, “What!?”

“The dog,” Anders explained.

“The dog,” Hawke repeated slowly, lowering the arrow. “What about the dog?”

“Get it?”

“He won’t bite,” Hawke waved the arrow at Cor, “What about him?”

“Oh, I definitely bite,” Cor grinned yellow teeth at him.

Hawke ignored him, “Said he knew you.”

“So you just left me alone with him?” Anders asked, “What if he was lying?”

“He’s got you there, friend,” Cor said.

“Not your friend,” Hawke said, “I was gone for a minute. Dog would have killed him if he tried anything.”

“I think the dog would have killed me, actually,” Anders said.

“You’re fine,” Hawke whistled, and seemed to command both dogs. The mabari settled into a corner of the room, growling like a rusty wagon wheel, and Cor took his spot at his bedside. “Down the hall if you need me. Dog stays.” Hawke left.

"Ferelden to his toes, that one,” Cor said, eyeing Anders’ bandaged midriff. "How's my favorite healer doing?"

"How long have you been here?" Anders asked.

"Long enough to know you fart in your sleep," Cor said, digging through his pockets. “Heard you got your ass kicked. Brought you some shit, yeah? Figured it would keep you from chewing your tail off while you get better. Didn't know you'd have a right hoard already. Might nab a few things on my way out, nothing personal."

“Or you could, you know, not.” Anders said.

Cor wasn’t wrong. Anders was well off. Everyone Anders had ever met had seen to it. At first, it was nothing much. Hawke bought him a mattress and moved him into his own room in the estate. Varric brought him parchment, Isabela smutty literature, Merrill some earthy Dalish tea, even Fenris brought him a drink, and Aveline a generously stern look. Then Hawke had taken a trip down to Darktown to retrieve Anders’ things, and someone had spotted him.

Word had spread, the way words do, and refugees had come creeping up into Hightown after him like rats hunting the cheese in a spring-trap. They brought bandages, herbs, charms and trinkets, poorly knitted socks, waterlogged books, cracked mirrors, warped drinking flasks, playing cards and other odds and ends.

His room was littered with it. In lieu of furniture, he’d organized it into piles. One for clothes, one for medicinal supplies, one for games, one for trash. The trash pile was definitely the largest. Cor was just going to add to it. Leandra was going to kill him. She disapproved of his visitors and made it no secret. Whatever fondness she’d had for him had been thrown out with the rug Anders had ruined.

‘What will the neighbors think?’ Leandra would say after each visit. Anders knew them all by name. The Arenburgs, the Reinhardts, the de Carracs, the Cavins, the Harimanns, the de Launcets. It was exhausting. Anders didn’t know how Hawke put up with it. Bedridden as he was, it wasn’t as if Anders could stop the refugees from showing up, and once they arrived, there wasn’t much point turning them away.

Their mere presence caused the scandal. Lowtown trash, all of them. Visiting Hawke, if anyone asked, which everyone did. He hadn’t been in Hightown a month, and Anders was already ruining his reputation.

“Bree made you set a dice from some old soup bones,” Cor was saying, upending his pockets onto Anders’ chest, “Manus made you-… whatever the fuck this is, and I got you this.”

A necklace joined the ever-growing pile on Anders’ chest. Under normal circumstances, Anders was a sucker for jewelry, but a necklace of rotten teeth wasn’t exactly what he considered normal. “You shouldn’t have,” Anders picked it up gingerly by the rope, and dropped it as far away from himself as he could. “Really.”

“Cut my bleeding heart out why don’t you,” Cor snorted, “First you don’t write, now you don’t want my gifts?”

“You can’t read, Cor.”

“Conall’d read it to me,” Cor said dismissively, “Sideways, Lirene filled me in. Bitch is my bitch now, believe it or not.”

“Or not,” Anders said.

“Necklace ain’t just a necklace,” Cor continued. “From the Weavers. I felt all kinds of twisted after Kanky fucked you, so I figured we fuck him back, yeah? Got you an in with the Weavers that don’t cost two sovereigns. You get the Bleeder some blood every now and then, and you get your boat.”

“Blood? You mean- you don’t mean what I think you mean.”

"Aye, I mean it." Cor said.

“No,” Anders said quickly, refusing to let himself think about it. Without Justice, he couldn’t trust his answer. He had to draw a line somewhere, and human sacrifice seemed like a pretty low bar. “Thank you, but-…” If they were templars… if they were going to die anyway... “No.”

“Oh yeah?” Cor raised an eyebrow at him, “Who else you got left? Redwaters pissed off, week back.”

“They did?” Anders asked. “... of course they did. No. No more blood magic. That’s what got me into this mess in the first place. I have a friend who’s a captain. She could probably put in a good for me with … someone.”

“Suit yourself,” Cor shrugged. “Figured I owed ya. When you back up on your feet? Floods got us a good dozen extra Dogs, and now we got half the foundry, good third o’ Darktown, even some of the Bazaar, but the boys could use you. Vallen’s been after us like a bitch in heat, and the fighting’s getting good. Think she’s jealous ‘bout me and Lirene.”

“I’m sure that’s it,” Anders agreed. “Couldn’t be the theft, the extortion, aiding and abetting mages…”

“What, now it’s a crime to be a criminal?” Cor asked.

“I’m not a Dog Lord, Cor,” Anders said. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt because you think I’ll be there to heal you. The stitches in my arms come out today, but my legs and back need more time.”

Cor stood and scratched at his crotch, “You keep saying that, but we both know you’ll be with us till the last dog is hung. Take your time, then. We’ll see you out there, Anders.”

Cor left. Hawke spent the day on a job, and Anders spent it copying pages from Amell's journal, or more specifically, the few that were illegible scribbles. If Anders didn't know any better, he would have thought it evidence of a stroke. The symbols weren't in any language Anders could read, but there was only one other language Amell spoke, which meant it was elvish.

Anders hoped there were enough pages to make a bandage for the rift he'd rent in his relationship with Merrill. For all he knew, it was a waste of ink. Amell only seemed to write in elvish when he was flustered or frustrated, and Anders was fairly certain most of it was profane. The last thing he wanted was to hand Merrill a piece of parchment that told her to go fuck herself, but that would be his luck at this rate.

There was a familiarity to the way Amell wrote. Not just because it was Amell, but because he was slightly more. Amell hadn't been possessed. It wasn't the same. But it was close, and Anders wanted to believe he would have understood. He would have wanted Anders to be for more than the cause of mages. He'd want him to be for mages' causes. Merrill was a start.

He was halfway through a page where Amell had been ranting about the Chantry’s hypocritical use of blood magic, when there was a knock on his doorframe. Anders looked up to see Leandra standing in the doorway. She surveyed the trash heaped about his room and made a sound more whimper than sigh, “This was to be Carver’s room. He was a good boy. Clean.”

“Lovely estate, marm,” A woman in Coterie green said, stepping around Leandra and into Anders’ room. She looked as if she’d spent too much time in the sun and acted much the same. It was Lilley, of course, because one gang wasn’t enough for one day. “Appreciate the tour. Trouble you for some tea?”

“Of course,” Leandra forced a smile, “All of Hightown pities me, my daughter is in the Circle, my eldest son is a thug, I’m harboring an apostate, and now the Coterie is in my home, threatening what little I have left. What’s a cup of tea? Sugar?”

“Two cubes, if you could marm,” Lilley said. “Be out of your knickers before you can piss ‘em,”

“My knickers,” Leandra muttered under her breath as she left, “Maker save me.”

“Did you really have to threaten her?” Anders asked.

“Have to?” Lilley sucked the words in through the gap in her teeth, and spat them back out the same way, “Want to, now there’s a thought.”

“What are you doing here?” Anders demanded, trying for indignant and ending up somewhere in the vicinity of confused. “If it’s about our deal, I have to heal myself before I heal anyone else. The Coterie can wait.”

“See, waiting really wasn’t part of the deal,” Lilley tutted, skipping through a pile of trash and crushing half of it in the process to squat at his bedside. “Not our part, at least. Harlan’s had a change of heart.”

“What, he switch it out for one that beats?” Anders asked. The blood magic must have worn off with Decimus dead, because not enough had gone wrong of late. He'd lost his boat and now he was going to lose his tunnels.

“Cute,” Lilley tapped his nose, “The way Harlan sees it, there’s no point to healing both sides in a war. You still want our tunnels, we gotta talk about your dogs.”

“They’re not my dogs-“ Anders protested, probing himself up on his elbows with a great deal of effort.

“Mmm, that’s a lot of shit for one chamber pot,” Lilley said. “Here’s the new deal. You don’t heal them. You don’t look at them. You don’t sniff their asses or whatever the fuck else you dogs do. They go up in flames, you don’t so much as piss on them to put them out. You get me?”

“Get yourself,” Anders said. “I’m the Darktown Healer. I heal everyone in Darktown, and everyone in Darktown is in a gang. There’s no other way for refugees to survive in Kirkwall, and your turf war isn’t just with the Dogs, it’s with the Sharps, the Sisters, the Avengers, the Reining Men, the Carta-… “ A thought occurred to Anders, “No, in fact, you can go back and tell Harlan that if he wants me to keep healing his men, then he can get the Carta to forgive Hawke’s debt or he can get a new healer.”

“That’s how you want to play this?” Lilley cracked her knuckles, as if her hands actually held the cards the Coterie was playing. Anders was willing to call it. No blood magic. No Justice. Just Anders. Anders had been healing the Coterie for months. They needed him. They owed him. If they were this scared of the Dogs, they might not survive without him.

“That’s how I want to play it,” Anders said.

“… Alright.” Son of a darkspawn, it worked. “I’ll take it back. Hawke, he’s the one shares the mines with Hubert, right? Hubert pays his dues. We’ll see what Harlan says.”

The mine! Why hadn’t Anders thought of the mine? Why hadn’t Hawke? Why did he even need the Coterie? Couldn’t Hawke pay off his debt and pay for Anders’ grimoire with whatever he was earning from the mines? Anders would have to ask him.

“But you,” Lilley pulled at his bandages with a dirty fingernail. Anders swatted her hand away. “You got balls. Fancy someone to suck ‘em?”

“…Thanks, but no thanks,” Anders tried to grin. His face refused and contorted into the sort of expression a person made when they were about to sneeze. Lilley shrugged and stood in time for Leandra to come back with her tea.

“Thanks marm,” Lilley said, accepting the tea and pouring it straight into Anders’ chamber pot. “Be seeing you, Anders.”

"I suppose this is my life now," Leandra lamented, staring at Anders chamber pot as the scent of piss brewed with chamomile filled the room. "Tea and crumpets with... thugs and scoundrels."

"Not a bad one, marm." Lilley said.

"Let me see you out. Maker's mercy - don't touch the paintings. If you're going to get your filthy fingers all over something, please just steal it."

Lilley left with Leandra, and Anders’ eyes drifted to Cor’s necklace. He hadn’t needed it. He didn’t need it. If Hawke could compromise on blood magic, so could Anders. He could convince the people to support his cause without it. He’d convinced Hawke. He’d convinced Lilley. He’d convinced most of Darktown and Lowtown, and Hightown was next. He didn’t need the Weavers. He had Isabela, and she was bound to know a captain the Collective could utilize to get mages from the city. Anders flipped through Amell’s journal, aimlessly searching for more elvish to copy until one passage stuck out at him.

The Chantry would speak about the sanctity of the mind, but the mind is no more sacred than the lungs, the liver, the heart. It’s an organ of reasoning, nothing more. True reasoning requires connection to the rhythm of blood. Interrupt that tireless pounding of life, and the mind is open to control.

There’s nothing unique to blood magic about it. The heart skips the same beats when it finds love or faces fear. It makes no difference if the push to change it comes from magic. The Chantry and their Templars use the same coercion without it. Their sword of mercy is the same one Hessarian used to kill their beloved Andraste. The symbol alone speaks volumes to what they truly hold sacred.

Control. Power. Fear. Martyrdom. They’d have every mage follow in Andraste’s footsteps. They don’t care about the sanctity of a man’s mind, only the malleability of it. The idea of anyone else with sway over the minds of the masses terrifies them. Let them brand me maleficar, foul, corrupt, accursed. Mien’harel na nadas.

Anders tapped his quill on the paragraphs after he finished copying the few elvish symbols at the end of them. He missed Justice. He didn’t trust how he felt without him. Amell made a convincing argument, but Hawke had made convincing arguments in the opposite direction. What if he couldn’t convince the nobles on his own? If the way they thought was wrong, was it wrong to change their minds?

Probably. Maybe. Technically? How technical could he afford to be when there were new Tranquil in the Gallows’ courtyard every day? Decimus had been for it, but Decimus was dead. He’d convinced the people he needed to convince, and Anders had been one of them when it came to spelltomes. What if Decimus had used to blood magic to convince him? How would Anders know? Did it matter?

It mattered to Alain. It mattered to Hawke.

Anders set the quill aside and lay with Amell’s journal over his face. He wouldn’t need blood magic at all if he could get all of Kirkwall to read it. Amell might not have been able to convince the nobles in Ferelden, but they hadn’t read his journal. They hadn’t heard him out. If Anders could just get them to listen, to read, he could get them to understand.

The elvish was for Merrill, but the rest … could be for Beth. For Hawke. For Kirkwall. For Elthina and Orsino and maybe even Meredith.

Not all of it. Just the important parts. The parts that people needed to hear.

… Maybe the parts without blood magic.

Anders grabbed a fresh piece of parchment and wet his quill.

“Andraste said that magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him, but it is not ruling to wish the same rights as any man…”

Notes:

Elvish Translation
Mien’harel na nadas - Revolution is inevitable.

Fanart
Anders waking up to Dog

Chapter 93: Have Your Pie and Eat it Too

Summary:

In which there is pie.

Notes:

Thank you so much for reading! I sincerely appreciate it. As always thank you for any kudos, comments, subscriptions, or bookmarks.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon Verimensis 24 Evening
Hightown: Amell Estate

Andraste said that magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him, but it is not ruling to wish the same rights as any man. Mages deserve the same freedoms of all men. The right to love, to life, to liberty. Mages have no rights to marriage, to children, to land

The Templar Order’s symbol is Hessarian’s Sword of Mercy, but they are not an order that practices mercy. Mages are subjected to the Harrowing, a ritual that pits them against demons, and are killed if they fall prey to them. There’s no reason for mages to martyr themselves following in Andraste’s footsteps – possession can reversed with a ritual of lyrium and magic, both of which can be found in abundance in the Circle

The Circles are an institution of oppressive. They are abusive and unjust. No child should be torn from their parents for the crime of being how the Maker created them. Mages’ gifts are granted by the Maker, and it is not for man to decide how the Maker created mages is not normal.

It goes against no will of the Maker for mages to live as free as other men. The Chantry made its laws a thousand years ago based on fear of an empire that has long since crumbled. Andraste fought against slavery only for her followers to make slaves of mages

“No...” Anders crumbled up the parchment and tossed it over his shoulder. He didn’t even know where to start. There was too much to say. Did he appeal to mages, or to the masses? Did he appeal to Andrastianism, or against it? How did he call the Chantry to task without condemning the Chant of Light? Where was the line between reinterpretation and heresy?

Anders pulled out a fresh piece of parchment and frowned at it. A single blot of ink grew larger and larger with every frustrated tap of his quill, but no words sprung from it. Anders rolled over and stretched, his back in knots. He’d been writing for hours, leaning over the edge of his mattress to scribble out passage after unsuccessful passage on the floor.

Justice wouldn’t have had any trouble. He would have taken to the page with abandon, huge scrawling capital letters detailing his hatred for the Circle in no uncertain terms. Maybe Anders was going about this all wrong. Maybe he should just let Justice write it.

Anders stared at the ceiling and ran an idle finger along his necklace, vial of blood bouncing each time he passed over it. If only every other word in Amell’s journal wasn’t about blood magic, he could have just copied it verbatim. Except the Chantry didn’t come into play in Amell’s version of freedom. He didn’t care about the Chant of Light, or the Chantry, or what the masses thought, and that was the problem. You couldn’t change the world without changing the people in it.

“How am I supposed to pay for all this paper, Anders?” Hawke’s voice broke through his thoughts, and Anders glanced up from his nest of parchment to find him in the doorway.

The left side of his greaves were scorched, and there was a rip in his left vambrace. His right vambrace was missing completely, his arm a mess of rent flesh. Anders pictured him blocking a swipe from a rage demon, or a disgruntled arsonist, or a flaming nuggalope. Anders was leaning towards nuggalope. Hawke looked exhausted. Whatever it had been, the repairs wouldn’t be cheap and his arm wouldn’t heal pretty.

“It’s not on loan,” Anders joked, putting up his quill, “Varric gave it to me, remember? Or did something get your head? You look like you could have used me.”

“Could always use you,” Hawke said, stepping over a few piles of various and sundries to throw himself on the floor at Anders’ beside. The pages of Anders’ manifesto took flight, like pheasants startling from the underbrush, and scattered around the bed. A few landed on Hawke, but he made no effort to do anything about them. He lay with his head on Anders’ mattress, blinking slow blinks at the ceiling.

Anders propped himself up and leaned over him, grinning. “I’m listening.”

“Was a mess,” Hawke said, completely missing his meaning. Or completely avoiding it. “Fenris killed the magistrate’s son.”

“What!?” Anders almost fell on him in shock, “I thought you were going to rescue him?”

“So did I…” Hawke flicked a strand of Anders’ hair. It fell stubbornly back into Hawke’s face, and he twisted it up in his fingers. Anders definitely wasn’t cutting it. “He was killing elves. Girls. Little girls. Not just killing them. Said he was possessed but I don’t think he was. I think it was just him.”

“Maker’s breath,” Anders muttered. Little girls. This whole city was damned, “How do you know he wasn’t possessed?”

“Merrill checked his blood,” Hawke said. Casually. Like the blood magic was normal. It was more comforting than Hawke playing with his hair. “He wasn’t like you.”

“There’s no one like me,” Anders said glibly.

“I know,” Hawke’s gaze drifted off Anders’ hair and to his eyes. The eye-contact was so rare Anders swore sometimes he forgot their color, more bittersweet than red in the moonslight. There was something uniquely Hawke in how they searched Anders’ own. For what, Anders had no idea.

It would have been so easy to kiss him.

Well, maybe not that easy. He’d have to scoot forward a bit, get around Hawke’s broken nose, find his mouth under his beard… plus the mood was all wrong. Definitely not the sort of topic Anders wanted to remember for their first kiss.

“What happened with the magistrate?” Anders asked instead, threading an experimental hand through Hawke’s hair. It was somehow both sweaty and coarse, and not altogether pleasant, except that it was Hawke, and he didn’t stop him. He even hummed when Anders ran his nails along his scalp.

His lips would have been softer. Anders thought of them moving against his fingers, whispering praises of perfection, and wondered why anything else mattered when he’d lain awake aching for him ever since. So what if Hawke was terrified of them? Life was terrifying. Bettered to be terrified together than terrified alone.

“Hates me,” Hawke said, still watching his eyes, “Swore revenge. Still managed to get an audience with the viscount tomorrow.”

“Sounds productive,” Anders grinned, “You know, despite the murder. Well on your way to hobnobbing with the rest of the nobility,”

There was no reason not to kiss him. Anders could die tomorrow. The burn or the laceration could throw a clot, even on the mend, and tangle up in his heart while he slept. Hawke could die on a job. Why not live first?

“… should have been in the Circle.”

“What?” Anders’ blood chilled, and he recoiled so quickly he pulled his own hair on Hawke’s hand in the process.

“Magistrate’s son,” Hawke elaborated, letting Anders’ untangle his fingers from his hair. “Didn’t know what he was doing with his magic. With his mind. He was sick. Maybe in the Circle... Magistrate’s been hiding him his whole life, and now he’s dead.”

“He was a monster,” Anders said with disgust in equal parts for the man and the Circle that might have housed him. “That had nothing to do with being a mage.”

“Not saying it did,” Hawke didn’t fight him. He picked up one of the crumpled balls of parchment and turned it over in his hands. “What is all this?”

“It’s-…” Anders massaged the back of his neck, floundering. A revolution? A dream? A nightmare? A pile of empty words?

Hawke smoothed the paper out against his knee and read, “’Magic is a gift from the Maker, a connection to the Fade from which the Maker formed the physical world and all living beings, and the Maker himself declared that all men should return to it. Threnodies 5:8 - It’s 5:7 – To cut any man off from the Fade is to cut him off from the Maker-… is this about your old lover?”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” Anders joked.

“You’ve had more than one made Tranquil?” Hawke asked.

“No, it’s more in general,” Anders took the parchment away from him, wadded it back up, and threw it over his shoulder. “I’m just trying to gather my thoughts.”

“Literally?” Hawke asked.

“It’s kind of turning out that way,” Anders agreed, “It’s like a manifesto on magic. To convince people that the Circles are abusive and unjust. What do you think?”

“I think you need a lot more paper,” Hawke said.

He wasn’t wrong. Anders gestured to Hawke’s gored arm. “You want me to stitch that up?”

“Looks worse than it is,” Hawke said dismissively, “You want dinner?”

“Always,” Anders agreed.

Hawke left to bathe and came back a short while later with dinner. It was fish and egg pie, which was apparently some kind of Starkhaven staple that Leandra had gotten from Sebastian now that he was back in Kirkwall. Anders couldn’t say much for the presentation, which was a whole fish head sticking out of the pie, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Anders could say more for the man presenting it. Hawke was fresh from his bath and hadn’t seen fit to bother with a tunic. His sunburst amulet framed a strong collarbone, and void-black hair adorned a muscular chest, running down his stomach to vanish beneath his trousers. They hung off his hips, loosely knotted and tempting fate, but it was his arms that distracted Anders the most. They were archers’ arms, and they’d saved his life on more than one occasion.

Anders could see now why Hawke wasn’t concerned with his injury. The wound had cauterized, three wrinkled pink slashes cut across Hawke’s forearm, which meant rage demon. Anders’ ran his fingers over the burns when Hawke handed him his dinner, thinking of his own brand hid by his bandage.

“I think I wear it better,” Anders joked. “Make sure you put a poultice on that.”

“Later,” Hawke said. “Eat.”

“Fish pie?” Anders asked.

“Looks worse than it is,” Hawke said again, this time with a grin.

Anders thought of staring at the fish to keep his eyes off Hawke, but the fish stared back. He didn’t have to leer. Hawke had a handful of colorful tattoos Anders supposed would be safe to comment on if Hawke asked. Like the one of a red anvil stabbed through with a sword, just above his waist and pointed straight at his crotch.

… Maybe he’d stare at the fish after all.

“Mother’s practicing for a dinner party.” Hawke explained, reclaiming his spot at Anders’ bedside, “Get used to it.”

“I’m not complaining,” Anders said.

“You’re complaining,” Hawke said.

“I’m complaining a little,” Anders allotted, taking a suspicious nibble. It tasted, unsurprisingly, of fish. “How is the dinner party going to work with no furniture, by the way? Are you going to convince the nobles that minimalism is in fashion or something?”

“Furniture’s on loan from Seb,” Hawke said, “Something about worldly possessions getting in the way of his quest for vengeance or his service to the Chantry. Can’t remember which.”

“Because those are totally similar,” Anders said.

“Always going on about one or the other.”

“Hold on - I thought he left the Chantry?”

“Thought so too,” Hawke shrugged, “Not sure now.”

“You know, it’s touching how many details you remember about your close friends,” Anders teased.

“Not a friend,” Hawke said around a mouthful of pie. “Looks at me like I’m Lowtown trash, like the rest of Hightown, just better at hiding it.”

“Didn’t you say he was one of the good ones with the Chantry? Especially considering he left it?” Anders recalled. “I thought we liked him?”

“Sometimes.”

“Something happen?”

“Thinks I should take the name Amell,” Hawke explained. “Said it would make me more legitimate.”

“And we … don’t like the name Amell?” Anders asked cautiously, impressed with himself for even being able to have the conversation.

“Rather have people respect the name Hawke. It was my father’s name. I think Mother regrets it. His life. His magic. Leaving all this behind. I’m not an Amell,” Hawke paused between bites, as if there was more he intended to say, before changing his mind and shoveling down more fish.
“… And?” Anders prompted.

“… And I don’t want you to think of me that way.” Hawke admitted, looking at Anders through his bangs.

There was a vulnerability in his eyes that Anders imagined he could heal with his mouth if not his magic. If not for the fish. It peeked out of the pie like a voyeur at the entire exchange, gawking with glossy eyes, and Anders shook the thought away.

“I don’t,” Anders promised, grabbing the nearest ball of parchment. He smoothed it out to reveal a smear of ink and a few blurred lines from the Chant. “These aren’t just for abstract people, you know, they’re for you. I know you think Beth is safe in the Circle-“

“Anders-“

“But I know she’s not. If you could just read… not this one, maybe this one-“

“Anders,” Hawke caught his hands to stop him from rifling through his mountains of papers. “Let’s just have dinner.”

Anders deflated. He looked at the passage he was holding, a short diatribe on the injustice of solitary confinement, and crumpled it back up.

Hawke kept hold of him, massaging Anders’ wrists with his thumbs until Anders looked up at him. “I’ll read it when you’re finished,” Hawke promised. “Just don’t want to fight with you.”

“Why would we fight?” Anders fought. “You know what the templars did to me. What they did to Alain. You know Beth is wrong. You know she is. You know what happened to Elsa, to Karl-“

“Anders,“ Hawke sighed, letting go of him.

“No, you know!” Anders persisted, “You’ve seen it. You can’t sit there and tell me the whole system isn’t corrupt.”

“You really want to do this now?” Hawke asked.

“Yes, I want to do it now,” Anders said hotly. “You told me to plan, so I’m planning. You told me to think about where I fit with the Chantry, so I thought about it. Did you?”

“Every day,” Hawke said softly. He looked at the pie. The pie looked at him. “Beth is happy, Anders. For the first time in a long time. I know what happened. I was there. But men did this to you. Not darkspawn. Not monsters. Not templars. Just men. Just like the magistrate’s son was a man.”

“That’s nug shit. Those ‘men’ are what the Chantry made them.”

“They’re what the Knight-Commander made them,” Hawke countered. “Not the Chantry. And the Grand Cleric here? She isn’t the Chantry. Any more than the Divine is the Maker. She’s just one woman.”

“That one woman is the Grand Cleric of the entire Free Marches,” Anders waved a hand towards the window and the horrors that lay beyond it, all going on with Elthina’s blessing. “She controls the Chantry. Why are you defending her?”

“Not defending her. I’m saying this isn’t the way it’s supposed to work. All men are the Work of our Maker’s Hands-“

“Please don’t.” Maker save him, Chantry dogma was worse than dog shit.

“-From the lowest slaves to the highest kings. Those who bring harm without provocation to the least of His children are hated and accursed by the Maker.”

“Transfigurations,” Anders cited, “I know the Chant, Hawke, you can just tell me the verse if you’re going to quote it.”

“Do you? Got a verse wrong in your manifesto,” Hawke scratched at his scalp, “Look, you’re the least of His children.”

“Thank you,” Anders said flatly. “I’m touched. You’re touching me. The bad sort of touch.”

“Tell me I’m wrong. Look at yourself,” Hawke’s hand waivered indecisively between the bandages on Anders’ midriff and forearm. “Look at what they did to you. Look at what they did to Allen.”

“Alain?” Anders corrected him.

“Whatever. It’s the third commandment. This city stops at the second. I’m not blind.” Anders took the phrase like a punch to the gut. “I know what can happen to mages here. You’re sitting right in front of me. This whole city is sick. You can’t heal it with this,” Hawke picked up a piece of his manifesto and threw it onto his bed, “It’s not enough, but it’s not the Chantry’s fault. It’s the people. Petition for a new Grand Cleric and the Chantry can work the way it’s meant to work – holding the templars accountable.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Anders said sarcastically, “Except the Divine appointed her, so who should I petition? The Maker?”

“The Divine’s old,” Hawke waved the thought away. “She’ll be gone in a year.”

“What if she’s not?” Anders countered. “What if the next one is just like her? How long are we supposed to live as slaves? Ten years? A hundred? When is enough enough? The mages must be free. If the Circles vote to split from the Chantry, the Templars won’t be able to control us anymore.”

“This is how you get them to vote?” Hawke picked up another piece of parchment and made a show of skimming it. Anders couldn’t tell if he actually read it.

“Yes,” Anders said.

“… Why don’t you have anything from Transfigurations 1:5?” Hawke asked.

“What?”

“Harm to men’s livelihood and peace of mind,” Hawke quoted for him. “That’s what Tranquility is, isn’t it?”

“It-….yes!” Anders pushed his pie aside and snatched his quill back up. He grabbed the nearest parchment, already used, and turned it over, “Exactly. Those-… Knickerweasels, what’s the verse?”

“Those who steal from their brothers and sisters, do harm to their livelihood-“ “Slow down. Do harm?” “-to their livelihood,” Hawke said again, slower, “And to their peace of mind. Our Maker sees this with a heavy heart.”

Anders waved his hand over the wet ink, willing it to dry, “Does this mean I have your support?"

Hawke inhaled deeply and exhaled even deeper, but didn't answer him. "We should take your stitches out." He said instead.

Anders fished out a set of tweezers and a scalpel from one of his piles and held them hostage for Hawke's answer, "Does it?"

"I support you, Anders." Hawke said after too long a pause.

"But?" Anders guessed.

"But Beth is my sister," Hawke said. "You won't win if you ask me to choose."

Close enough. Anders relented his hold on the tools, "I’m not asking you to."

“And you need to be more careful,” Hawke said, running calloused fingers over the stitches littering Anders’ arms.

It wasn’t such a terrible thing to counsel caution, Anders supposed. Especially considering Anders was starting to look more like a traditional abomination after what he had been through. Seam upon seam stitched his arms and legs together, haphazard and horrible without a flicker of veilfire beneath. Hawke set tweezer and scalpel to one, and Anders wondered if he’d come apart without them.

“The change that you want isn’t going to come today,” Hawke said, snipping the first stitch. Somehow, Anders didn’t unravel. “It isn’t going to come tomorrow. It takes time.”

“I know that,” Anders said.

“You’re impatient,” Hawke continued, “You try to rush this and you’ll get yourself killed.”

“I know that too,” Anders said.

The stitches were slow going. They had to be cut free, one at a time, and pulled from his skin. It wasn't pain so much as pressure, and the uneasy sensation of something sliding under his skin that was a little too reminiscent of the Blight. Hawke’s hands helped, chasing away the sensation with a gentle caress as the sutures came free. It was nice. Almost too nice.

"There was something I wanted to ask you about when you got home,” Anders said.

"Ask me," Hawke paused to meet his eyes, and Anders forgot his question. A handful of alternatives came to mind, ‘Fancy a go?’ the loudest and least productive of them. He’d tear the stitches in his back if he tried anything enthusiastic.

… Then again, Hawke seemed pretty gentle.

"The mine,” Anders cleared his throat and his thoughts, “The Bone Pit. Why can't you use it to pay off the Carta?"

"Everything I get from the mine goes back into the mine,” Hawke said. “It barely breakeven. Won't turn a profit for at least three more months with everything I have to replace."

"I might be able to help," Anders said.

"Does this have to do with the Coterie?" Hawke guessed. "Mother said they showed up today."

It was surprisingly astute of him. Anders probably wouldn’t have made the connection in his place. "If anyone can convince the Carta to forgive your debt, the Coterie can."

"In exchange for what?” Hawke asked.

“Nothing,” Anders said.

“It’s never nothing,” Hawke finished removing the last of the stitches on Anders’ arms and set the tools aside. Anders wished the rest of his wounds could heal so quickly. He wished the city could. “This is exactly what I mean.”

“What?” Anders asked.

“You,” Hawke said with a gesture that encompassed all of him, “You’re impulsive. The Carta, the Coterie, it doesn’t forgive the debt, it just moves it. Told you I was handling it.”

“That’s a fine ‘Thank you.’” Anders said, “How about, ‘thank you, Anders, for coming to my rescue! I don’t know how to ask for help when I’m in trouble, so I lash out at everything except the problem.’ Or ‘You’re so brave, Anders, I can’t believe you stood up to one of Kirkwall’s most fearsome gangs just for me.’ Or ‘I can really tell how much you care, Anders, even though I won’t be with you because I’ve suddenly decided it’s sacrilegious.’”

“That’s not it,” Hawke said.

“Then what?”

“It’s complicated,”

“Then uncomplicate it,” Anders said.

“What do you want me to do?” Hawke asked. “You want me to tell the world, the knight-commander, that I’m with an apostate?”

“It’s a start,” Anders said. “I know I can’t give you a normal life, I’ll always be hunted, hated…”

“This is supposed to convince me?” Hawke asked.

“It got your shirt off,” Anders joked.

Hawke laughed, a loud bark that dissolved into chuckles, his face flush beneath his beard, “Damnit, Anders you’re-… It’s wash day.”

“Sure it is,” Anders said. “You said if I wanted you to see me, you’d make sure I knew you were for it. Am I supposed to see you?”

Hawke shrugged. Loquacious as always. Anders didn’t care. They could die tomorrow. He didn’t want it to be with regrets, but he couldn’t reach Hawke without sitting up, and he couldn’t sit up without help. He propped himself up on one elbow and shoved past his trepidation to run his hand along Hawke’s thigh, through the hair on his stomach, up to his collarbone, waiting for Hawke to stop him.

Hawke didn’t. He sat, silent and still, until Anders couldn’t reach any higher, and collected Anders’ hand to cradle against his heart. His rapid pulse said everything he didn’t.

“You make me question everything,” Hawke clasped Anders’ jaw with his free hand, and ran his thumb along Anders’ cheekbone, “I can’t be my mother, lover dead to darkspawn, and me resenting him for who he was and what he made our lives…”

“Then don’t resent me.”

“Don’t die.”

“Not really part of the plan.”

“Swear it.”

“Stop teasing me. You can’t say the things you say and do the things you do and expect me to resist you. I’m still a man.” Anders gathered the sunburst amulet in his palm and half expected it to burn like the Rite. It didn’t. He pulled, but Hawke tilted his head so their foreheads touched and their lips didn’t. “Kiss me.”

“Anders, I’ve never-“

“Garrett!” Leandra barked.

Hawke started and headbutt him, and Anders almost broke the chain on Hawke’s necklace jerking backwards. Anders massaged his forehead, lamenting the lack of his magic for the migraine that started behind his eyes. Hawke swiveled around to look over his shoulder, where Leandra was standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips.

“Can I see you in the kitchen?” Leandra framed the request in such a way as to make it clear it wasn’t one.

“Fine,” Hawke said, not moving.

“Now?” Leandra pressed.

“Fine,” Hawke looked back at him. Anders shrugged.

Hawke gathered up their plates, the bloody stitches, some trash from one of Anders’ many piles, and his chamber pot. There were more tattoos on his back. A mabari’s face decorated his shoulder, a chantry sunburst in place of one of its eyes, and a second was set low on his back. Anders didn’t quite process what it was before Hawke left.

Hawke didn’t return, and the night passed restlessly. Anders tossed about on his mattress, torn between too hot and too cold and too itchy and too lustful to sleep. He could always let a few drops of blood for a sleep spell, as he had been doing for the past week, but he couldn’t stop thinking of Hawke and where his dreams would take him.

The same dreams that Justice shaped.

Sex was a need of his body. Or something. That was what Justice had said, but that didn’t mean Justice wanted to be the one filling it. Justice… Justice wanted love, but love wasn’t keeping Anders awake at night. Anders shimmied out of his trousers and wrapped a hand around his aching cock to stroke the concerns out of his head.

It didn’t work. His arousal pulsed in time with his heart, loud and fast and hot. Too hot. Definitely too hot. Sweat ran between Anders’ shoulder blades to the small of his back, where it soaked into sheet and bandage alike. It itched, between heartbeats, and kept him on the edge of orgasm. Anders bit back a keen of frustration and arched his back, thrusting into his palm. A spasm of pleasure shot down his spine but twisted up into pain when it reached the wound in his back.

“Fuck,” Anders gasped, letting go of himself. He lay with his trousers around his ankles, trembling and frustrated. Tensing his arm had pulled the skin around his brand and hurt almost as much as the wound on his back. A tremor seized him, every so often, from his back, his arm, his cock, and brought no release.

Justice might.

Anders scratched at one of the stitches on his legs, let enough blood to light the candle at his bedside, and worked on his manifesto until morning. He fell asleep somewhere in the middle of the day, dreamed of darkspawn, and only woke again when Hawke was back from his job, with Isabela, Fenris, and Merrill all in tow. They stopped by his room to visit, but Anders didn’t have much to offer by way of hospitality.

Only Fenris seemed to care. The barefoot elf padded circles around his room, unable to find a place to sit. He wore a look of disgust on his face as he surveyed the hills and valleys of garbage Anders had accumulated, “Venhedis… You live like this?”

“Don’t you live in a haunted mansion full of dead bodies?” Anders asked.

“We cleaned out the bodies a few months ago,” Merrill said cheerily, burrowing into in a pile of paper like an owl. “I planted a few flowers outside last week. You should come see. “

“He is not invited,” Fenris said, giving up on finding a spot to lean against the doorframe.

“Play nice,” Isabela said, sitting in Merrill’s lap. She was taller, thicker, and generally bigger than Merrill in every way, but the tiny elf seemed delighted to be smothered. Anders couldn’t blame her. He remembered it being fun. “How are you doing, Sparky?”

“How do I look?” Anders asked.

“Like death,” Fenris supplied.

“No flirting,” Anders warned him. Hawke chuckled, and found a spot for himself on the edge of Anders’ mattress. “How did it go with the job from the viscount?”

“Turned out it was actually a job from the Arishok,” Hawke said.

“Fenris didn’t kill him too, did he?” Anders asked.

“No,” Fenris shot him a frown for the question.

“Shame,” Anders said.

“He has lots of guards,” Merrill said, “I think it would be difficult for anyone to kill him. And I don’t think anyone should.”

“Kitten-” Isabela drew out the nickname in such a way as to suggest this was a reoccurring argument. She shook her hands through her hair, pushing off her bandana, and turned to take in Merrill’s frown.

“You weren’t there,” Merrill picked up Isabela’s discarded bandana and twisted it anxiously. “You don’t ever come see the compound. He cares about elves.”

“Not about mages,” Anders said.

“Well no…” Merrill agreed.

“He cares about the Qun,” Fenris corrected them both, “Nothing more. The mage is well, the job is done, am I still needed?”

“Mmm, always,” Isabela purred, disentangling herself from Merrill. “Missed you today, Sparky. Get well soon. Hawke. Kitten.”

Isabela left with Fenris. Merrill stayed, still twisting the pirate’s bandana around her fingers.

“Why do you care about the Arishok?” Anders asked. “You’ve seen what the Qun does to mages.”

“I’ve seen what this city does to elves,” Merrill countered. “There was another riot in the markets today. You know I saw someone get stabbed this morning? It’s not… so exciting anymore. The city hahren said the guards knew the nobleman’s son was killing elves and refused to do anything about it.”

“It was just a rumor, Merrill,” Hawke said. “Aveline would have stepped in if she had proof.”

“But she didn’t,” Merrill said. “You did.”

Apparently, Hawke didn’t have a retort. He asked, “You staying for dinner?”

“I don’t want to be too much trouble… that um… that would be nice.”

“It won’t be,” Anders warned her. “Fish and egg pie.”

“What’s wrong with egg pie?”

“I’ll tell mother,” Hawke left them alone.

“So what happened?” Anders asked again. “What did the Arishok want? And why was the Viscount asking on his behalf?”

“I don’t know,” Merrill said. “About the Viscount, I mean. Hawke came to get me later. Some elves stole poison gas from the qunari and used it on a few of the hexes in Lowtown, over on the east side. I don’t really know what he thought I could do about it. It’s not like I know every elf, you know.”

“That’s insane,” Anders said. “Why?”

“Well there are a lot of us…”

“I mean why about the poison gas.”

“Oh! Right. I think they were hoping people would think the qunari were attacking so they could start a war.”

“Still not really getting the why in all this.”

“The alienage is angry,” Merrill said solemnly, “You can feel it in the air. In the vhenadahl. People are upset with the hahren, the qunari, the guards, the city, their lives… do you know what it’s like for elves in Kirkwall? Do you even care when they’re not mages?”

Anders bristled, propping himself up on his elbows and opening his mouth for a retort about being the embodiment of justice, and forced himself to stop. He didn’t. He was the cause of mages. Not the cause of elves. But that didn’t mean it was right.

“I don’t,” Anders said honestly. Merrill blinked; her eyes seemed impossibly big in their shock. “I care-but I don’t know what it’s like. I’m already in stitches for one plight, if I take on another I might lose an arm… I got you something. It won’t help, but-”

Anders rolled over and rifled through his papers. Maker, had he managed to lose them in his manifesto? Had he thrown them out somehow? Hawke was back with dinner before Anders finally managed to find the few pages of elvish he’d copied from Amell’s journal. He handed them to Merrill without comment or explanation, feeling equal parts sheepish and foolish.

Please don’t let it be profane. Please just let it normal.

Merrill stared at the parchment, and Anders stuffed himself with pie.

Hawke made a face at him. “Don’t tell me you like it now.”

“Is this… written elvish?” Merrill asked eventually, tracing the poorly copied symbols almost reverently, “Real written elvish?”

“… can’t you read it?” Anders asked.

“No. This symbol looks familiar but-…” Merrill stumbled over herself in her haste to stand, and tripped and fell into his manifesto, “I have to ask my spirit!”

“Wait!” Anders caught her ankle when she tried to get back up, “Just- I don’t know what it says either, but it might -… not be the nicest things. Amell was… kind of possessed by this ancient elf spirit. He only wrote in elvish when he was upset.”

“… I thought you didn’t want me to have his grimoire.”

“It’s from his journal. I -… you were right. He would have wanted you to have it.”

“… Thank you, Anders.” Merrill hugged the parchment to her chest. “This is a kind gift.”

“Are we friends again?” Anders asked.

“Friends again,” Merrill agreed, rolling up the parchment and sliding it into her belt. “I-… oh… sorry Hawke… The pie… yes. Let’s have pie. Oh my, that’s very unsettling. Does it have to have its head sticking out like that?”

“You could push it back in,” Hawke suggested.

Merrill poked the fish head down into the pie, and it crept slowly back out, mouth agape. “No, no, that’s much worse.”

Anders gagged on a bite and Hawke barked a laugh. They ate for a time, Merrill and Hawke regaling him with tales from the day’s job. Apparently, some of the elves were upset that some different elves were abandoning their gods for the Qun, and that had sparked the entire ordeal. They’d stolen poison from the qunari, framed an old contact of Hawke’s for the theft and framed humans for the attack, all at the behest of some mysterious benefactor that wanted the city in turmoil.

It had worked. The Viscount had asked for Hawke’s help to avoid an incident as much as to avoid it being known that he was trying to avoid an incident, but an incident had been caused anyway. A quarter of east Lowtown had been quarantined, the elves had been blamed, and the alienage was under a tighter curfew than the rest of the city as a result. There weren’t enough guards to enforce it, which meant outsourcing to the templars, which led to the riot with the rumors of some of the templars being possessed spreading.

The whole thing was a mess.

“So, look,” Anders said, steering the conversation to lighter topics, “Not that that’s not all horrible, but I have to know. What’s going on with you and Isabela?”

Merrill choked on her fish. “What? Nothing! Why would anything be going on?”

“Something is definitely going on,” Anders said.

“Leave it,” Hawke said.

“Don’t tell me you know and I don’t,” Anders said.

“There’s nothing to know,” Merrill said with a painfully innocent and painfully fake smile. “We’re friends. What else would we be?”

“More than friends?” Anders suggested.

“Good friends?” Merrill guessed.

“Don’t play stupid,” Anders said. “That doesn’t work on me.”

“I -… um…” Merrill fiddled with her fish head. She picked it up and put it face down in the pie, and by her flush Anders imagined she wished she could do the same.

“Fenris,” Hawke said for her.

“So she’s sleeping with him,” Anders shrugged. “She sleeps with a lot of people. Have you said anything to her?”

“No!” Merrill looked aghast. “I couldn’t! Fenris-… he seems happy. And Isabela, she’s-…” Merrill set her pie aside and sighed into her hands. “… She’s so …. She can make everything better with a smile. It’s like magic that doesn’t get her in any trouble… But I can’t.”

“Why not?” Anders asked.

“How do you do it? You and Isabela… You’re so open. It’s like you’re not even ashamed.”

“What would we be ashamed of?” Anders blinked.

“… Liking… all types of people.”

“…That not something the Dalish are for?” Hawke asked.

“No… not in my clan, at least.” Merrill said. “Some clans are different but… The Keeper always said that it was our duty to make sure the clan survived beyond just our lives. After Marahriel … she never let me forget. She said I had to set an example for the clan.”

“She sounds like a bitch,” Anders said.

“I can’t be with a human. Or a-… someone like me. Please don’t tell Isabela.”

“We won’t,” Hawke said for them, with a frown in Anders’ direction, “Not our business.”

“What makes you think she doesn’t already know?” Anders asked, ignoring him, “You should say something. What’s the worst that could happen? You’re already exiled. Who cares what your clan thinks? Who cares what Fenris thinks? I doubt they’re exclusive and if that doesn’t bother you, why should anything else?

I don’t know what it’s like to be Dalish, but I know what it’s like to give everything for a cause, and trust me, this… sex, love… that’s not something you give up. It’s not something you want to give up. It’s not something you can give up.”

Notes:

Pariahs
Lovely Little Things: "But he can't just live with a bunch of dead bodies, so we cleaned up the bodies and broke things. Statues, paintings… it was fun."

Chapter 94: Dead Set on Ending Badly

Summary:

In which there are fears and frustrations.

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

I sincerely appreciate any feedback, be it in the form of kudos, comments, bookmarks, or subscriptions. Thank you for reading.

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon Verimensis 27 Mid-Day
Hightown: Amell Estate

Anders was going mad. Over a week he'd spent at Hawke's estate, and for over a week Hawke had tortured him.

Hawke brought him breakfast every morning and dinner every night. He changed his bandages, his sheets, his clothes, even his damn chamber pot. He helped him with everything from using the wash to writing his manifesto, but he did it all as a friend.

Anders was done being friendly. He wanted more than friendly. Hawke rarely bothered with a tunic in the comfort of his own estate, wash day be damned, and it was miserable.

Anders couldn't wear anything but his torn trousers with his injuries. Anders had an excuse. Hawke didn't. Hawke just had muscle. A powerful build that captivated Anders every time he came into the room. The thickness of his arms, the set of his shoulders, the strength in his thighs. Anders was obsessed. He felt like Isabela, biting his lip whenever Hawke was in arm’s reach, her desperate whimper of ‘Maker, the chest hair’ floating about in his lust-addled head.

It was like a demon of desire had taken up residence in Anders with Justice’s absence. It wasn’t his fault. Not when Hawke had capitulated to everything Anders had been arguing for since he set foot in Kirkwall. The blood magic, the freedom of mages… Hawke had even taken on his hatred for oatmeal. How could Anders not want the man, when Hawke did nothing but care for him day and night between jobs?

It didn’t help that Hawke didn’t know how to flirt. He’d been washing Anders’ hair one-night, attentive fingers massaging his scalp for far longer than necessary, and Anders had made some glib comment about it being more straw than hair after a year in Darktown. The appropriate response would have been something like, “Goes with your arguments” or “Could be a scarecrow for templars” or any number of things Anders expected Hawke to say, instead of what he actually said.

“Color’s wrong,” Hawke had said, “There’s a touch of red, like fire. It’s in your hair, your eyes, your soul… burns through the blue like the sun.”

“Pretty sure that’s the fever,” Anders had joked, but whether it was fire, or fever, or Hawke, it dried out his throat and left him sweating for the rest of the wash.

It was always something like that. Some stupid comment about his convictions or a general refusal to play into Anders’ self-depreciating remarks. Anders almost missed being called a filthy fucking sewer rat. At least he would have known to handle it. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t know how to handle how Hawke was treating him, it was just that he couldn’t. Whenever he came close to kissing him, Hawke would step back, and Anders couldn’t chase him.

His mattress never turned him down, but his mattress wasn’t getting him off. Anders couldn’t count the nights he spent aching for Hawke. His fantasies could have filled the Fade, but they never finished him. His right arm always cramped, and he couldn’t keep a steady rhythm with his left. His bandages itched as soon as he started sweating. The stitches on his legs pulled whenever he curled his toes and the less said of his back the better.

Anders had never been more frustrated. He’d known Hawke for almost a year, and Anders had never seen him with anyone. He doubted Hawke would waste the coin it took to go to the Blooming Rose, and unless Isabela had developed a sudden talent for discretion, Anders was it. He was willing and waiting and wanting and if he couldn’t stand it, Anders had no idea how Hawke could.

Anders lay on his stomach, trying and failing to write more of his manifesto. Hawke was at his side, because Hawke was always at his side. The archer had one of his suits of armor laid out in front of him, and he was working grease into each piece for… archer reasons. Definitely not the sort of reasons that Anders would have preferred for the grease.

He wasted ink, watching Hawke’s hands; a steady drip from his quill to the parchment that soaked into the hardwood. They were captivating. Steadfast and strong, a smattering of charcoal hair on the back of his palms, every calloused finger attentive to every inch of the leather.

Hawke worked the grease into his chest piece, and Anders would have killed to be in its place. Hawke’s thumbs circling his nipples, his hands kneading their way down his stomach until they reached his aching cock. His fingers wrapped around him, slick with grease and stroking him to completion -

“What?” Hawke asked.

“What, what?” Anders asked, wrenching his gaze off Hawke’s hands.

“You’re staring,” Hawke said.

“You’re staring,” Anders shot back.

“Don’t know what to write?” Hawke guessed, gesturing to Anders’ page full of ink blots.

“I know what to write,” Anders put his quill up to massage at his shoulder. Thank the Maker he was on his stomach, “I just don’t know how to write it.”

“Need help?” Hawke set his chest-piece aside to join him on the mattress. It sank with his weight and pressed Anders’ up against his thigh. Maker’s breath, he smelled amazing. An earthy scent like leather and clay and all the things of a man who made himself from nothing. “What are you trying to say?”

“If I knew I’d say it,” Anders said.

To Anders’ shock, Hawke’s hands traded places with Anders’ own to massage his shoulders. It felt as fantastical as Anders imagined it would. He cleared his throat to smother a moan, and tried to look over his shoulder, “What are you doing?”

“Can’t afford the frame yet,” Hawke said. “You shouldn’t have to sleep on the floor.”

Hawke massaged his way down Anders’ back, working out knot after knot. His greased fingers glided over Anders’ skin, alternatively kneading or caressing, and kindled a fire in the pit of Anders’ stomach. It tangled up in his toes and curled his fingers. Anders couldn’t help his moan. “Fire and Blight, your hands,” Anders groaned into the mattress. Hawke was going to be the death of him.

Hawke melted tension along his spine, and Anders’ whimpered, “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Thought you deserved it,” Hawke murmured.

“You know this is torture, right?” Anders asked. Hawke pressed his thumbs into the nape of his neck, and Anders swallowed down another moan. “Fuck-…you’re torturing me.”

“Doesn’t sound like I’m torturing you,” Hawke countered, his voice a low rumble that seemed almost taunting, as if he knew exactly what his hands were doing to him. Hawke mapped his way across Anders’ back, his neck, his arms, his legs, every inch of him that was free of bandage or stitch.

It was one of the best massages of Anders’ life, and it was going to drive him insane. He couldn’t decide what to do with his own hands, and alternated between chewing on them and burying them in his hair. He felt flush, pleasure rippling through him at every press of Hawke’s hands to pulse in his cock, and it was everything he could do to keep from thrusting into the mattress.

He should have told him to stop. It was the sensible thing. They were ‘complicated.’

“Fuck me,” Anders begged.

Hawke’s hands paused on his back, “You’re still hurt,” Hawke said. It wasn’t a no.

“I don’t care,” Anders said.

“You talk to your spirit?” Hawke asked.

“He knows I need this.” Or near enough. Anders didn’t care right now. He’d worry about Justice later.

Hawke straddled him, and whatever blood that was left in Anders’ his head left it to rush to his cock, stiff and throbbing against the mattress. Maker, finally. He hadn’t been laid in almost a year. He couldn’t think of a better place to be than pinned between Hawke’s thighs, safe, surrounded, no templars, no Circle, nothing but Hawke’s fingers buried inside him, his lips on his neck-

“I’m rolling you over,” Hawke warned him, taking hold of Anders’ shoulders to move him onto his back.

“Fuck-Hawke-” Anders swallowed down a gasp, pawing up at Hawke’s chest. It was still torture. Anders couldn’t reach the parts of Hawke he wanted to reach. He scrabbled for the strings that held Hawke’s tented trousers to his hips, but the knot was worse than a chastity belt.

Hawke wasn’t in the same hurry. He swept his oiled hands over Anders’ chest, his thumbs circling over Anders’ nipples and working them into stiff peaks until Anders was writhing beneath him, his every breath a pleading gasp. Anders thrust upwards, desperate for some kind of friction, but Hawke caught his hip to push him down into the mattress.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Hawke murmured, kneading Anders’ hip instead of his cock.

“Don’t tease me,” Anders begged.

“Not teasing,” Hawke traced the edge of Anders’ bandage, “Not hurting you either. Go slow.”

“Slow,” Anders repeated obediently, shivering at Hawke’s touch as it ran along the waistline of his trousers. Hawke shifted to put himself between Anders’ legs, and Anders grabbed at his hands, “Wait- I want to see you.”

“You want to see me or feel me?” Hawke countered, pushing Anders’ cut-off trousers up as far as they would go to graze the inside of his thigh with his teeth.

Anders’ hips jerked – he couldn’t help it. He was aching to bury himself in any part of Hawke. His hands, his mouth, his ass, anything to drown out the arousal roaring through him. Hawke pinned his hips to the mattress with a steadying arm.

“Feel,” Anders choked out, “Fuck - feel.”

“Garrett Florian Hawke!” Leandra screamed, manifesting out of the Void and into the doorway. “What in the Maker’s name are you doing?”

Hawke slammed a fist into the floor beside them, turning his head on Anders’ leg to look at his mother, “What the fuck does it look like?”

“Are you shitting me,” Anders dug the heels of his palms into his eyes with a strangled sob. This was it. This was how he died. Justice’s blue had been stolen from him and all that lingered of the color was in his balls.

“Anders, dear, cover your ears,” Leandra suggested, “It looks like you are trying to ruin this family. Darling, we talked about this-“

“Now?” Hawke demanded, sitting up, “You want to do this now?”

“I already lost Carver and Bethany, so close together. Don’t make me lose you too. Gamlen is still lame from the last time we were caught with magic-”

“Mother-“

“Don’t ‘Mother’ me. You’re missing teeth! Your nose – My hip will never be the same. You need to find a suitable young woman to marry – one without magic. How are we to pay for the estate without a dowry?”

“Mother!” Hawke snapped, “We’re not doing this now.”

“When would you prefer?” Leandra asked, picking imagined lint off her dress. It was purple, which meant it was ludicrously expensive. For Hawke’s sake, Anders hoped it was a mix of red madder and blue woad, or purple brazilwood, not true Waking Purple made from thousands of sea-snails dredged from the Waking Sea and worth countless sovereigns.

“Nevermind,” Leandra waved a hand over them, as if she could brush their relationship away as easily as she had the lint. “I just came to tell you that I asked around, and people are saying that there were four mages responsible for the fire last week. One is dead, and two were taken to the Circle. You know the servants from the Vael estate are coming today to set up the house. Just-… Maker’s breath, get dressed and make sure you’re ready to receive them within the hour.”

“Two?” Anders tried to sit up. His stitches pulled taut on his back, and he collapsed with an agonized hiss, “Which two? What were their names?”

“A man and a woman, from Starkhaven. People are saying-… Dear, you don’t want to hear this. Why don’t you just focus on getting better?” And getting out of my house, Anders imagined Leandra wanted to add by her strained smile.

“Saying what?” Anders demanded, “What are they saying?”

“Dear boy,” Leandra sighed unhelpfully, adjusting the sleeves to her dress. “You really-“

“Just tell him,” Hawke cut her off.

Leandra frowned at him, “They’re saying that the Circle is too overcrowded. That Starkhaven is cursed. Their Circle burnt down; their Royal Family was murdered… They’re saying they’ve brought their demons to Kirkwall and that the Knight-Commander should call for the Rite of Annulment while she still has any templars left.

“The new punishment for any mages caught trying to escape is a choice between Tranquility or death… but Beth is a good girl. She’s still sending her letters, and Ser Thrask assures me things aren’t as dire as they seem. It’s just talk. People always talk. Our family will be fine. We just have to trust in the Maker.

“Now please, get dressed and meet me downstairs,” Leandra left.

“This is all my fault,” Anders realized. Void take him. He should have listened. To Hawke, to Cera, to the Collective. They told him to be patient. To plan, to have contingencies, and he hadn’t listened. He’d drowned the city in blood to save its mages and only ended up hurting them. Decimus was dead. The Redwaters were gone. The Coterie might close off their tunnels.

For what? For a few dozen free mages and some spelltomes? How was that justice? What would happen to Alain? To Grace? Were their choices Tranquility or death?

Anders couldn’t breathe. An agonized gasp tore from him and dissolved into a sob that wouldn’t cease. Anders hated how good it felt. It was release, in lieu of the kind he’d been craving for the past week. It was selfish and served nothing and no one and he hadn’t changed at all since his first night in Vigil’s Keep save that now he used blood magic for all the wrong reasons –

Hawke lied down beside him and pulled him into his chest. Anders hated it. He didn’t deserve Hawke’s pity, but he also couldn’t turn it away. Anders cried until he couldn’t. Hawke ran his fingers through his hair, whispering verses from Exaltations. “’Whoever passes through the fire is not lost but made eternal; as air can never be broken nor crushed, the tempered soul is everlasting.’”

“Alain wasn’t fucking tempered,” Anders muttered into Hawke’s chest. “He-…” Anders couldn’t finish. Anders could never finish.

“You were,” Hawke said. “’Remember the fire. You must pass through it alone to be forged anew. Look upon the Light so you may lead others here through the darkness.’”

“Who am I supposed to lead now?” Anders demanded. “The Collective is dead or gone or hates me-“

“Me,” Hawke said, “You lead me. I’ll help you get them out. Alain,” Hawke actually got his name right. “If he’s not dead. If he’s not Tranquil. I know the warrens; I know how to move through this cesspool of a city. I’ll help you get him out.”

“They’ll just kill you too,” Anders mumbled. “Or Beth, for knowing you. Your mother’s right. You shouldn’t be with me. It puts you at risk. What if your position isn’t enough to keep you safe? What if the knight-commander turns on you?”

“Things I’ve thought,” Hawke ran his fingers through Anders’ hair and slicked it back with what little grease lingered on them. “But I’ve never felt this way about anyone. I don’t know what’s right here, Anders.” Hawke untangled them, but hesitated in leaving his side. His fingers danced over Anders’ lips, wet with snot and tears, and ultimately withdrew, “I have to get dressed.”

Hawke didn’t come back. Anders spend the rest of the day alternatively listening to the commotion of Sebastian’s servants setting up the house, crying, writing his manifesto, reading Amell’s journal, crying, or trying to get off. He had the most success with crying.

Anders lay abed that night, a page in Amell’s journal open to better days, a hand around his cock that was more or less decorative. It was a good page. There was a sketch of Anders sleeping naked, and beside it was a long-winded diatribe on how he looked and sounded during sex. It ended with talk of how Amell had made sure Anders always had a candle, so he didn’t have to wake up to darkness.

Hawke had made sure of the same. It was a firestorm waiting to happen with Anders manifesto scattered around the room, but it was a comfort in the absence of veilfire. Anders ran his hand lazily up and down his shaft, red eyes bleeding together in his fantasies, occasionally interrupted by a memory of Decimus and his sad smile, and the knowledge that Grace hadn’t run.

Anders chased the thoughts away with memories of Hawke’s eyes boring into his while he straddled him. They had been so close. Maker, just five more minutes, and Hawke would have had Anders’ trousers tangled around his ankles, his cock stiff and throbbing and leaking down his shaft for Hawke’s tongue.

Anders swallowed a moan, imaging the warmth of Hawke’s tongue licking up the underside of Anders’ shaft, chasing veins and ridges, before taking him deep into his mouth. Anders thrust into his palm, imaging the swirl of Hawke’s tongue paired with a hard suck, and a pang in his back broke his fantasy. Anders whimpered.

Just – Maker, fuck - Hawke. Think of Hawke. Saliva and cum escaping around his straining lips, soaking his beard, eager groans vibrating on Anders’ cock. His red eyes heavy with want, hands wrapped around Anders and stroking in time with his mouth. Pleasure burned through Anders’ veins and pulsed into pain at his brand, stretched taut from the rapid strokes of his fist. Anders dug his free hand into the mattress, gasping frustration. So close – he was so close – Maker just let him-

His skin tore. The glyph broke. White hot ecstasy surged over him. His skin split with veilfire along his veins, and Anders came hard in a storm of magic. Static crackled over sweat-soaked skin and ripped from his throat in a cry of rapture. Anders collapsed, spent beyond measure, and lost himself to a blissful oblivion.

Justice frowned, assessing Anders’ hands, sticky with his release. Anders’ body was weak, his limbs trembling with the aftershocks of hedonism and mindless indulgence. The stitches on his back had torn with the glyph, and added a second ache that pulsed in tandem with the one from his cock. Justice sat up and pulled on Anders’ magic to wash across his wounds and burn out his stitches.

Their arm, he avoided healing. The glyph wouldn’t serve. Unwrapping the bandages, Justice surveyed the interlocking magics that had bound him to the Fade. Two mirrored symbols akin to the shape of a man’s heart and bearing the same pulse. Justice set Anders’ nails to the edge of the scar and ripped, painting Anders’ arm and mattress a vivid red.

It was a simple thing to heal, their flesh regrown into a heart shaped scar. Justice traced it, burning the shape into his memories. Never again. It would serve as a reminder. A warning of the risks of complacency.

Justice stood and surveyed the room in which he found himself. It was littered with whispers upon whispers. A broken mirror jutted out of a pile of trinkets, and Justice retrieved it. It echoed of a young woman’s distress at her own visage, marred by the rough hand of a guardsman, and gladly gifted to the man who had healed it. Beside it, a waterlogged book pulled too late from a flood told the stories of a boy grown too fast to man to provide for his loved ones, in a city that held no love for him. Justice flipped through it, and felt it freely given to the first person to show the boy a kindness.

There were many such stories, lingering on every bit and bauble strewn about the room. Like memories floating through the Fade. He could not hear them all.

… This place was a distraction.

Justice found most of Anders things discarded in a far corner and dressed. A new coat was there, better, brighter. No scraps of cobbled suede, but black hardened tusket, reinforced with quillback-spine struts. It whispered of the women who had woven it, arguing over the need for perfection. Course we’ll make another. Anything for him. Loden wool lining murmured of the men who had sheered it. For the healer? No charge.

Justice shrugged into it, and the echoes of the one who had gifted it. Don’t thank me. You need armor. Real armor. Good, hard leather. I’m not letting this happen to you again.

… Hawke was a distraction.

Justice gathered the scattered pages of Anders’ manifesto and left.

Anders came back to himself in his clinic. It had been raided, at some point. Most of his furniture was upended, and his cot was missing, but he could always sleep on an operating table until he found another. Anders shifted the satchels on his shoulders. They were light, carrying only his books, cookware, and the pages of his manifesto. The gifts that had littered his floor in Hawke’s room were missing.

“I guess we don’t need them,” Anders allotted, righting a table and depositing his things on it.

His lantern was already lit with veilfire, Anders noted when he poked his head outside his clinic. The floods had finally cleared and left lichen in their wake. The bioluminescent glow painted Darktown in all the colors of the Fade, shadows on shadows shifting like something out of the Black City. It was equal parts beautiful and bizarre.

Anders leaned on the doorframe to his clinic, watching the shadows shift and hugging his staff. Anders channeled an aura of aptitude for no other reason than the fact that he could, the runes on his staff rippling with energy. Maker, he had missed magic. The breath of the Fade. The whispers from across the Veil. The taste of mana and the comforting presence of his spirit.

There was nothing like it. It was like being held close, cradled… a bond so complete Anders hadn’t been Anders without it. The world hadn’t been right without it. The concerns that had consumed him for the past week seemed almost trivial in comparison.

Ander reached for the Fade, frustrations forgotten, and knitted together a bloom of raw magic that felt equal parts regenerating and energizing. He let it tingle through his fingers until sensation dulled in his right hand, and his veins split through with veilfire up to his shoulder.

“I missed you,” Anders said, tracing the scar Justice had left on their forearm. “Guess you missed me too.”

Justice gave him a thumbs up, and Anders laughed. “Couldn’t have said goodbye to Hawke before bringing us back here?”

Justice gave him a thumbs down. “What did you say in the Fade?” Anders mused, deepening his voice, “You have reservations. You need time to adjust.”

Justice’s thumb pointed stubbornly downwards, and Anders laughed again and dispelled the veilfire. “Alright, I get it. You want to get back to work. So do I, but there’s this little thing called pleasantries. Good morning, good night, nice to see you, I’m taking off for a bit. We can’t just vanish. Hawke will have a panic attack.

“Let’s… go check on the Collective, go back to Hightown, let Hawke know we’re okay, and then we can reopen the clinic.”

Justice’s thumb pointed outward, neither up nor down, and Anders could guess what parts his spirit was willing to compromise on. Anders was locking up his clinic when he heard the commotion echo through the caverns of Darktown. Another raid.

Anders hadn’t had the chance to enchant his new coat. The only thing on him he could transform with was his staff, and he wasn’t willing to leave the rest of things to the mercy of the templars, but it was more than that. They didn’t need to run. They didn’t want to run. The memories of Decimus’ death, of Alain’s abuse, of Grace’s capture burned bright in his memories and cried out for vengeance.

They’d never run from templars again. Anders tugged at the sleeves to his coat, pulling them down over his wrists. So long as no brand touched his skin, nothing would stop them. Not ever again. The templars would rue the day they’d crafted a brand that didn’t go so far as to make him Tranquil.

He’d ask Franke to make him some gloves later. For now, he’d watch for brands. Anders gripped his staff as the military chatter grew closer and reached through the Fade for lightning. It crackled along his fingertips and gathered in a darkening storm along the cavern roof, only to dissipate when the approaching group rounded one of the cavern corners and came into sight.

Orange. Not silver. Guards, not templars. Anders let go of the magic in his confusion. Since when did guards come to Darktown?

Their leader spotted him and raised a fist to call their men to halt. Anders lowered his staff-… walking stick, if anyone asked, and hesitated at their approached. Their orange helmet came off, and orange hair came out. Aveline. Why? Anders waved, and wondered if he should have stopped channeling his tempest after all.

Aveline stomped up to him like a charging bronto, and Anders took an uneasy step back. “What are you doing here?” Aveline cornered him.

“I live here?” Anders wasn’t sure why he made it a question.

“You’re supposed to be with Hawke,” Aveline hissed. “How am I supposed to explain you to my men?”

“So you weren’t leading all these men down here just to arrest me?” Anders asked.

“Have you done something arrest-worthy?” Aveline returned.

“This is a trick question,” Anders decided. “I’m an apostate.”

“This is a warning,” Aveline corrected him, “Why are you walking around with a staff?”

“It’s a walking stick,” Anders said.

“Don’t play stupid,” Aveline said. “My men won’t if they ever catch you with it.”

“What are your men even doing in Darktown? Since when do you care about refugees?” Anders asked.

“Since those refugees have gang affiliations,” Aveline said, glancing over her shoulder at the loitering group of guardsmen, “You may as well know now. I have the men, and we’re cracking down. We arrested Ignacio yesterday.”

“Strand?” Anders didn’t believe it. “The Sharps? You arrested Ignacio Strand, of the Sharps Highwaymen? Are you insane? Do you have any idea how much territory is up for grabs now? How many gang wars you’re going to cause?”

“Less work for us if the gangs destroy themselves,” Aveline said. Callous bitch. She had no idea what she was doing. Better the demon you knew than the demon you didn’t. With Ignacio gone, his territory could go to the Coterie, or the Carta, or worse, the Reining Men. “Look, I know some of the people you associate with, Anders.”

“No surprise there. Most people know Hawke,” Anders joked.

“Fine. Be glib,” Aveline dismissed him. “Look, this city is full of people who are dead set on ending badly. For Hawke’s sake, I don’t want to see you end up the same way.”

“Who’s the one making them end badly?” Anders demanded.

“You know what I’m saying. Every Dog has its day, Anders. Cor’s is coming. Don’t be there when it does.” Aveline turned back to her men, calling loudly, “Walking stick! Let’s move out.”

Anders watched the patrol depart deeper into Darktown, frowning. He’d have to warn Cor… after he checked on the Collective. Anders left towards the docks, relieved at the familiar faces he passed on his way through Darktown. It was night, but Darktown never slept. Anders relit fires, refilled water canteens, and healed a half-dozen cases of gripe before he’d even gotten a half-league from his clinic. All the while Anders shook excited hands and returned more than a few hugs.

It was almost enough to make him forget where he was going and what might await him when he got there. This was where they belonged. It was their cause, almost as much as the plight of mages was their cause. They were meant to heal. To be a force not just of reckoning but of healing and salvation for the downtrodden in Kirkwall. It gave them purpose, but more than that, it let them see progress. Anders might have had to wait to see the mages free, but he didn’t have to wait to heal a broken arm or leg, contusions and cuts.

And with each spell cast, Justice was there at his fingertips, as much a comfort to Anders as his patients. It kept him grounded. Kept him focused.

Anders stopped at the ladder that led up to the docks, anxiously shifting his staff from one hand to the other. He had to know. He had to be sure. The mages needed the Collective. Alain’s hatred for blood magic couldn’t run so deep as to see them destroyed. It wasn’t as if they were all maleficarum, flooding the streets with blood and sacrificing children and kittens. It was just a few spelltomes, and it was just Decimus and Anders.

Selby, Donal, Evon, Bancroft, and the countless other mages peppered throughout Kirkwall didn’t deserve whatever fate the templars had in store for them. They had to be okay. They had to be. Anders stared at the flecks of moonslight breaking through the storm drain, tinted green in the lichen-light, and thought of the stained glass of Kinloch’s Harrowing chamber. He couldn’t be responsible for the death of another mage. Not again. Not when all they wanted was nothing more than the freedom to breathe the open air under an open sky.

Veilfire roiled over him, and straightened his spine when panic bowed it. Anders had an obligation, whatever awaited him. He climbed.

Chapter 95: Where We Stand

Notes:

Thank you for reading! Hope you like it.

I appreciate any feedback constructive or otherwise.

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon 1 Pluitanis Mid-Day
The Black Emporium: Far Beneath Darktown

The Collective Packaging House still stood, nestled between the Harbor Master’s Office and Woodrow’s Warehouse, like the many parcels stacked therein. Donal still manned the door, Selby the desk. Anders’ fears and paranoia had been unfounded. He had knocked on the door, fully expecting the packaging house to be packed with templars in place of postage, and had been greeted in the usual fashion.

Well, not quite the usual fashion. Smiles were few and far between from Donal, from Selby, from Bancroft, but Anders smiled enough for all of them. He sat through lecture upon lecture, unable to help his grin for the very fact that they were still there to lecture him. He lost his Most Trusted status, but it was a small price to pay when he hadn’t lost the Collective.

Anders deserved it. The only thing Anders most trusted about himself was the fact that he couldn’t be trusted. Everything was to go through Selby first, from the rescues from the Circle to the contracts and contacts for the Collective. It seemed a fair exchange, considering Anders had cost them the Redwaters. Someone had to protect the Collective from Anders protecting the Collective.

Terrie had survived, somehow. The Collective had found her before the templars, and once her own brand healed she had decided to come work with Anders in his clinic. After everything, she didn't even know if Decimus had been the one possessing the templars. "He might have been," was all Terrie could say on the matter. The only way to be certain was to wait and see if the incidents stopped with his death.

In the meantime, it was nice to be back in the clinic again, to gather herbs with Merrill again, to have an aide again. It was nicer to know Terrie didn’t blame him for the capture of her sister or the death of her brother-in-law. Given time, she didn’t even blame Alain.

“He was too young. For everything,” Terrie had said simply, and that had been the end of it.

There was other work Anders could do for the Collective while on probation. He was still approved to take contracts, the most lucrative of which came from the Black Emporium. The contracts didn't specifically say 'go the Black Emporium,' of course, but some requests could only be fulfilled with goods and services only Xenon could provide. Which left them for Anders.

It wasn't that anyone else couldn't take them. It was just that the Emporium was invitation only, and Anders was the only one in the Collective with an invitation. It served to mend some of the blood his magic had turned bad. And it paid. It paid well, sometimes in whole sovereigns, just in return for purchasing artifacts from the Antiquarian on the requestor's behalf.

Anders had Hawke to thank for it. He had no idea how Hawke had earned the invitation, but the coin-starved mercenary had no use for it. Unlike Anders' clients, Hawke didn't have hundreds of sovereigns to waste on magical artifacts when he was struggling just to buy sundries. Anders tried not to think about the kind of people his clients must have been.

It was beyond tempting not to simply buy Amell's grimoire instead. Anders had the coin… albeit temporarily. Nothing was stopping him. Nothing except the need for the good will of the Collective, his own moral code, and a literal spirit of Justice. If not for all that, Anders would have caved. Instead he bought other things for other people.

Anders sat on the edge of a walkway in the Black Emporium with Merrill, their feet hanging out into the abyss. It was a massive labyrinth of a library, cobbled together from driftwood and scavenged lumber. It hung suspended in the depths of Darktown's caverns, where the Veil was thin.

Anders still had trouble believing such a place existed. It was littered with artifact upon artifact, tome upon tome, and virtually unknown to the world outside of Hawke's small company of friends. An ancient skeleton of a man sat at its epicenter, moldering into his chair. He was guarded by golems, which perhaps explained why no one had simply raided his magical archives.

It certainly explained why Anders hadn't. Amell's grimoire was still there, set high on a shelf that only telekinetic magics could pull from. On either side were other grimoires, bound in human skin and hissing with demons. Amell would have loved it here.

Anders had tried everything to get it back, short of paying for it. He'd brought Amell's journal to prove the handwriting matched. "Finders keepers!" Xenon had gasped. He'd asked Hawke to steal it for him, but just touching the shelves had Xenon sputtering, "Don't manhandle the merchandise!" In a moment of weakness, Anders had even gathered up all of the spelltomes he'd made with Decimus for a trade. "No exchanges!" Xenon had wheezed at him, like a corpse expelling air on death.

Xenon was… beyond disgusting. The macabre cadaver was almost pure leather, rotten and sunken with too many limbs. If that was the immortality Avernus had offered, Anders was good.

There was no getting around the eighty-four sovereigns. Not unless Dog managed to eat the Antiquarian. The mabari had already tried the first time Hawke had brought it, and almost been crushed by a golem as a result. Not on command, of course, but Xenon was basically jerky, so what did anyone expect, really?

"An honest mistake," Xenon had rasped good-naturedly. "You would be surprised how often that happens."

Anders was glad the decaying caretaker was absent from the section of the library that held Amell's grimoire. Without his feeble gasps, it was almost peaceful. Dust motes danced in the silvery light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere in the Emporium, illuminating row upon row of grimoires, scrolls, and tomes. There were too many to count, all covered in cobwebs and years of decay. There was no way anyone would ever find Amell's grimoire among them, Anders told himself.

"It's very high up," Merrill noted, craning her head to regard the nondescript grimoire with the Amell house crest embossed on the spine. "It's almost as high as…"

"Something that high," Anders said.

"Did you ever notice that the Amell symbol is two hawks?" Merrill asked, tilting her head to the side as if it would change the symbol into something else, "Why do you suppose that is? It's not like Hawke picked it."

".. I don't know." Anders admitted, copying her. It still looked like two hawks, just sideways. So much for that. "I never thought about. Maybe it's a coincidence?"

"Maybe," Merrill nudged his booted foot with her bare one, "I don't think anyone will buy it. Eighty-four sovereigns is a lot of coin. I don't think I've ever seen eighty four of anything. Except maybe people in Kirkwall. And halla at the last Arlathvhen. And trees. And grass. Would you count grass? The blades, maybe?"

"So it's an uncommon number," Anders said.

"How long do you think it will take to get it back?" Merrill asked.

"I'm not sure," Anders said. "These Emporium contracts aren't normal, you know. They pay well, but they don't pay often. It's not like you need a new grimoire on necromancy every day."

"You do if the first one doesn't have what you need." Merrill said.

"Astute and creepy. Thanks." It wasn't something Anders wanted to consider. The last thing Kirkwall needed was an evil Decimus. Then again, Decmius might have been an evil Decimus. "You and Amell would have gotten on."

"You'll really teach me shapeshifting when you get it back?" Merrill asked. "You're not just saying that so I'll help you buy it?"

"No offense, Merrill, but you're the last person I would go to for coin, " Anders said. "Hawke pays your rent."

"The Dalish understand currency," Merrill huffed, swinging her legs, "We just don't use it. When I came to this city… there was a lot I didn't know."

"I know what you mean," Anders said.

"The clan would never charge someone for a place to live," Merrill elaborated. "If someone joins the clan, the clan comes together to build them a new aravel… like how Hawke and all of us came together for you."

Anders wasn't sure he considered Hawke's band of misfits a clan. A gang, maybe. "Thanks Merrill."

"It's too bad you can't just invoke vir sulevanan to get your grimoire back," Merill said.

"Invoke vir what now?"

"I don't know the word in common," Merrill confessed, looking sheepishly. "It's when you do someone a favor so they give you something."

"You scratch my back I scratch yours?"

"But I'm not itchy…"

"No-that's how you say it. Favor for a favor. Anyway, I tried. Unless you know how to un-corpsify someone, there's nothing Xenon wants."

"Amell might."

"Amell might," Anders agreed.

"... still no dreams?" Merrill asked.

"Still no dreams," Anders said. "I guess we can't talk as two people if we're not two people. I miss Justice, but we miss us more, if that makes sense."

"Not really," Merrill admitted, "But you could always cast the glyph again if you wanted, I suppose."

"That's going to be a hard 'No' from both of us," Anders said with a shudder for the memory. "Imagine going a week with no arms, then imagine it's twice as bad."

"Two weeks with no arms?"

"I was going to say something more like a week with no arms and no legs."

"Oh," Merrill looked put out for having guessed wrong. "Well then why didn't you just say that?"

"It was just a phrase," Anders said.

"All words are just phrases when you put them together," Merrill said.

"Are you trying to be funny?"

"If I say yes, does it make me less funny?"

Anders laughed, his smile hurting his face. "Did you talk to Isabela?"

Merrill shook her head. "Creators no. I thought about what you said but it's… tricky. What if she doesn't feel the same way?"

"Then she doesn't feel the same." Anders said with a shrug. "Wouldn't you rather know?"

"Elgar'nan, I don't know." Merrill sighed. She leaned over the abyss, putting all her weight on the rope-railing and trusting as if it were magic. Maybe it was. "Do you suppose you could come with me?"

"Will I come with you to ask Isabela if she wants to be in an open relationship with you and Fenris?" Anders clarified.

"Would you?" Merrill asked, spinning on the rope to face him. Her trust in it was going to give him anxiety. "Maybe we could talk to her today!"

"On Wintersend?" Anders asked.

"Is that bad day to ask?"

"Not exactly," Anders said. "It's a human holiday for tournaments… like fighting pits but with knights."

"Isabela likes fighting," Merrill said eagerly.

"And arranged marriages."

"Oh dear, she definitely doesn't like that. Maybe tomorrow, after Wicked Grace?"

"Deal," Anders said, tugging her back from the rope under the guise of a shoulder hug. "So hey, on a related note, it's killing me, why is she even still with Fenris? I thought she was more of a one and done?"

"Fenris isn't so bad. He's kind of like Hawke."

"Sure, and I'm kind of like Aveline."

"I mean, not really. You break the law. Aveline arrests people who break the law. Except she doesn't arrest you. Maybe she's a bad guard…"

"I was being sarcastic," Anders said.

"Oh! I suppose that makes more sense. But Fenris just doesn't know how to explain how he feels. And mostly he just feels cross. Like Hawke. I feel sorry for him. He was a slave. When we went to clean his house, he got so angry. He said his old master liked everything clean. It was so sad.

"But he can't just live with a bunch of dead bodies, so we cleaned up the bodies and broke things. Statues, paintings… it was fun. You should spend more time with him. With all of us."

"So I can break things," Anders said.

"So you can be with people. I know you have your cause; I have one too. Sometimes it gets so bad I forget to eat and Varric has to bring me food," Merrill laughed, like it was funny. Like it was normal.

Anders stared at her and felt wretched. It was too familiar. He should have been a better friend.

"I'll try," Anders conceded. Hawke's group of misfits may not have been Wardens, or a clan, but if the Dog Lords taught him anything it was that gangs weren't all bad.

They sat in companionable silence for a time, until a general malaise stirred him from his spot. It didn't serve to sit idle. There was always work to be done, and lately he was always waiting.

Waiting to earn enough coin for Amell's grimoire. Waiting for the Collective to trust him again. Waiting for Varric to find out if the templars were still being possessed, or if the incidents would die down with Decimus's death. Waiting for Orsino to write him again.

"So hey, I need to drop this off," Anders patted the parcel at his side, "Meet you at the clinic?"

Merrill agreed and stood with him, peeking and peering into piles of baubles and trinkets on the way out. Somehow, she ended up with a pair of gloves and some paint brushes that Xenon gave her for free. And a single sock.

"Only one!" Xenon had gasped when Merrill had tried to make a pair.

Anders made his way back to the packaging house, dropped off the parcel, and then headed back to his clinic, caring for the refugees he encountered along the way. Things were good, all waiting aside. The Coterie had agreed to wipe away Hawke's debt with the Carta. Cor and the Dog Lords were fine, despite Aveline's threats. The battle over the Sharps' territory hadn't been too bloody. He and Merrill were friends again.

The world wasn't ending, it was changing.

If his time at Hawke's estate had done anything for him, it had proven he had the support of the common people. Any one of the refugees could have turned him over to the templars. Ever since the fire, there were wanted posters plastered throughout Lowtown with his likeness, or near enough.

No one had. Not even Fenris, for all he allegedly hated mages and magic. Even Aveline had had half the posters taken down for … some city ordinance or another. Amusingly enough, something had gotten lost in translation along the way, and the posters didn't name him as 'Anders' but rather 'An individual hailing from the Anderfels.' It made for a nice bit of plausible deniability for anyone who knew him.

It also made for a nice bit of information for the Collective. If the people were willing to harbor mages, they might not need to smuggle them out of Kirkwall at all. The Dogs were comfortable with it. Orsino just had to be comfortable with it, but until the templars were stable, they didn't have the First Enchanter's support. As far as Anders was concerned, they didn't need it.

Less templars meant less people watching for mages slipping through the cracks and out into the city. The Dalish were still good on their promise of support, thanks to Hawke and Merrill. The elves could go to the Dalish, the humans to the Dogs, and it could all go on with or without Orsino's go-ahead. But Selby wanted them to start funneling mages slated for Tranquility, and she wanted to do it with Orsino's blessing.

And so the waiting.

It wasn't just the Collective Anders waited on, it was Hawke. Waiting for Hawke to want Anders as badly as Anders wanted him. Anders couldn't stop thinking of him and the week he had spent in the archer's care. Isabela had warned him, what seemed like ages ago now, that he should prepare to be pampered. The nights at the Hanged Man and a few bundles of food were one thing, but living with Hawke was another.

Anders missed waking to him - or even waking to his growling mabari. He missed breakfast and dinner and all the moments in between. He missed Hawke washing his hair, massaging his back, straddling his hips… He missed Hawke's hands, and the way they felt against bare skin, as if in that one moment Hawke had worshiped Anders more than the Maker himself.

A vague feeling of discomfort rolled over him, and Anders frowned. And he missed Hawke's help with his manifesto. His promise of support whenever Anders was able to rescue Grace and Alain. The discomfort subsided, but only just. Justice was a hard spirit to please, Anders supposed. If nothing else, Justice's disapproval made Hawke's absence more tolerable. When only half of Anders' ached for him, it felt more infatuation than desperation.

Anders hadn't seen Hawke since Justice had dragged them from the estate a few days ago. He'd come back to Hightown to be greeted with a rather taciturn Leandra. She promised to deliver word that Anders was alive, but she didn't say which word. Anders doubted it would be any of the ones he wanted Hawke to hear. And even if it was, Anders wanted Hawke to hear it from him.

Still, he didn't want to risk Hawke, which meant visiting Hightown under the cover of darkness, or waiting for Hawke to visit him, and Hawke didn't visit him. Anders could have gone as a crow, but he had yet to enchant his new coat to transform with him. Without Amell's grimoire to reference, he wasn't sure he would remember the charm in its entirety, but after yet another day and no word from Hawke, he didn't see a choice.

He couldn't just leave it. Justice had his reservations, Hawke had his reservations...
Maker, even Anders had his reservations, but Hawke was worth it. He was doing good things for Kirkwall. A Ferelden risen to nobility and sympathetic to the plight of mages was everything the City of Chains needed to see was possible. Everything Anders needed to see was possible. Hawke was change. He was hope. He was…

He just was. Anders would work it out when he saw him. Hawke couldn't expect him to plan everything. Anders got back to his clinic to find Merrill pacing through it and reading a page from his manifesto.

"Oh! I'm sorry," Merrill put down the parchment, picked it back up, and put it back down again all in the span of a few seconds, "I got bored waiting - This is a nice story. What's it for?"

"It's not a story," Anders rolled the parchment up and tied it off with a bit of twine, small enough for a crow to carry. "It's a manifesto on magic."

"But… what's it for?"

"To teach people. To show them that mages are no different from other men."

"But we are different. We're magic."

"That doesn't -" Anders swallowed a sound of frustration, "We shouldn't be treated differently for our magic. I just… there has to be some combination of words that explains that. That I can use to convince people. I know if I can just get the right words in the right order, people will understand. Mages should be free. I just-... I'm working on it."

"Hahren Paivel used to tell stories on magic," Merrill said. "They were good stories. I could tell you some, sometime, if you like."

"... that would be great, Merrill," Anders said. He hadn't considered incorporating anything from the Dalish, but they'd convinced their people to live peacefully with mages and no templars, and must have gotten something right. "Thanks."

"So can I watch the transformation?" Merrill asked, taking a seat on one of his operating tables.

"I just have to enchant my coat first," Anders said, shrugging out of the coat and laying it out on a spare table.

"Can you not transform without it?" Merrill asked.

"I can," Anders said."But only I can."

"Am I missing something dirty? I feel like I'm missing something dirty."

"My clothes don't transform with me, unless they're enchanted, and the enchantment only works on things made from animals."

"Oh my… does mean you have to wear leather underthings? Or no underthings?"

"Normal questions."

"I'm sorry, it's just silly. Wouldn't that be something? I suppose wool would work too. So how does the enchantment work?"

"I guess we'll see," Anders slit his wrist, and let his blood drip onto his coat. It soaked into the leather, the bone, the wool, carrying his will along with it. When he finished the spell, Anders healed his casting cut and eyed his work dubiously.

What if he got it wrong? Would he fuse with the coat and transform into some sort of leather abomination, like Xenon and his chair? Would he turn into a crow with a tiny coat? Would the coat just stay the same and smother his tiny crow body to death?

It was fine. It would be fine. Probably.

"Alright, I'm going to change so…" Anders took off his boots and his socks.

Merrill kept watching him attentively, tapping her fingers on her knees as if she wanted to be taking notes. "Should I close my eyes? I don't want to miss the spell."

"It's fine," Anders said, trading his tunic for his coat. He turned around to shimmy out of his trousers and smalls, and tied the coat closed. Simple. Not that he cared either way after the ordeal with the brand. Hawke had already seen him naked; Merrill seemed inconsequential in comparison.

"Why don't you enchant the rest of your clothes?" Merrill asked. "It didn't seem to take that much blood."

"Tunic and smalls are cotton, the boots and trousers have linen or flax stitching or something. The coat was custom made," Anders explained.

"Well… here goes nothing." Anders rolled his toes on the cold cavern floor and cast.

A perfectly normal crow stood on the floor of a nondescript cavern, the clack of its talons echoing through Darktown. It paced for a time, surveying the glowing lichen illuminating its roost with a reverent appreciation for the way the disjointed emerald light echoed of an old roost from an old life. An elf crouched beside it, petting its feathers, measuring its wingspan, and cooing her approval.

The crow permitted it for a time, but it had a mission in mind. Hopping onto a nearby table, the crow picked up a bit of bound parchment in its beak, and flew through Kirkwall to Hightown.

The crow landed on the roof of a hawk's roost, went hopping from window to window, searching in vain. It flitted down to the garden situated in the center of the estate. It was a peaceful plot of land, beholden to two small trees and overgrown with elfroot. The crow tapped idly along the windows connected to the garden, peeking as it went, until it reached the dining hall.

The hawk was therein, mingling with preening hens all too eager for courtship. The hawk laughed, a queer sound from its lips that felt pulled from parchment in a stiff series of 'Ha's. The crow squawled, dropping its parchment to beat against the glass with beak and wing. The hawk glanced at him, smiled at the hens, and excused itself to join him in the garden.

Anders exploded in a shower of feathers, furious. A tree blocked his silhouette, least he alert the half-dozen noble women stuffed into the dining hall like fish in one of Leandra's pies. All of them just as gawking and glassy eyed for Hawke and his peacocking.

A black doublet lay beneath a tight crimson corset that trimmed his waist and made his shoulders look impossibly broad. Silver chains looped under his arms, and leather straps hung about his legs, accents that highlighted the power in both. His hair had been slicked back with grease, and he looked… noble. Anders hardly recognized him.

"What are you doing?" Hawke whispered angrily, pinning Anders against a tree to block him from being seen at any angle. "Are you trying to get caught?"

"No, that's my question," Anders hissed back. "What is this?"

"I told you, it's a dinner party," Hawke said.

"On Wintersend? Are you seriously - Is this some - are you getting -" Anders didn't know how to say it. Maker, he hadn't thought Leandra was actually serious. Was she really trying to arrange a marriage for Hawke? Was Hawke really letting her? Did he have a choice? Did he want one?

The garden door creaked open, and Hawke covered Anders' mouth with his palm.

A voice called out, "Serah Hawke?"

"What!?" Hawke snapped. Very posh. Definitely every young noblewoman's dream.

"Is everything alright …?" The voice asked.

"Fine - I need… I'll be inside," Hawke said eloquently.

"Alright …" The door shut.

Anders shoved the hand off his mouth, scowling. Hawke stood pressed against Anders, thigh between Anders' legs, an arm above his head, effectively trapping him. Anders was vaguely aware it should have made him feel claustrophobic, but all he felt was fire.

"You leave without a word, your room covered in blood, and I have to hear from Mother that you're even alive, but you're the angry one?" The longer Hawke spoke, the harder it was for Anders to feel anything but consumed by him.

"Yes I'm the angry one," Anders snapped. "I saved you a hundred sovereigns and this is what you spent it on? This is why you haven't been by the clinic? Because you're too busy trying to pick your favorite noblewoman?"

"This was my father's," Hawke tugged at the doublet, "You know what I've bought for myself since I got here? A bar of soap because Mother won't stop buying milk. One bar! I spent more on the mattress you ruined.

"And you didn't save me anything. The Coterie upped Hubert's dues on the mine, and now the Carta is spreading rumors Varric and I had Bartrand killed."

"So you thought it was a good time to get married?" Anders demanded.

"This isn't - I'm not -" Hawke scratched furiously at his scalp and ruined his hair in the process. Ebony strands jutted out at odd angles and made him seem every bit a crow with ruffled feathers.

"You're not what?" Anders asked.

"I'm not getting married!" Hawke barked, eyes darting to the door as if afraid someone heard him. It made his argument far less convincing. "This is-..."

"Not an engagement party?" Anders asked. "Just a normal party full of suitors and I missed the invitation?"

"How would Mother send it?" Hawke asked, "Drop it in a latrine?"

"Yes, I live in the sewer," Anders threw up his hands, "The sewer is the place where I live. Does kicking me while I'm down come naturally to you now, or were you just trying to walk over me?"

"I'm not- You-..." Hawke choked, ruining more of his hair running his fingers through it. "You didn't talk to him, did you? Justice. That's why you left as soon as your magic came back."

"Don't make this about me! I came here to see you."

"Well you see me! Why are you here?"

"I don't know anymore," Anders said. "I'm not fighting a dozen nobles for your favor." He'd lose.

"This was Mother's idea," Hawke explained, as if that made it better.

"Don't act like you've never heard the word 'No.'" Anders scoffed, "It was one of the first things you ever said to me."

"I can't say no to her. The estate is in her name, not mine. If I try, she- I…"

"What?" Anders asked.

"She'll use Carver," Hawke said, "She always uses Carver."

"What does your brother have to do with an arranged marriage?"

"Nothing. Everything. I-he-it was my fault. My strategy. I was supposed to blind it. I only got one eye… the ogre ripped him in half and threw him on her. She was pinned under his chest the entire time it took Beth and I to kill it."

"... I'm sorry. I still don't - … I don't want to say 'So what?' But…"

"You can't be here," Hawke said.

"Why?" Anders demanded. "Because you can't stand to look at me after last week? You just - you don't even care do you? You used me."

"Anders, no-"

"I won't forget this," Anders shoved Hawke's arm aside.

Hawke grabbed him and spun him back into the tree, winding him. "Used you? For what? For a few seconds of my hands on your chest? You think that's all I want from you? This is just a damn dinner party."

"On Wintersend," Anders scoffed.

"I'm not getting engaged."

"I don't believe you."

"Believe this," Hawke kissed him.

It felt aggressive. It felt like capsizing. Like a wave of emotion had taken Anders and shattered him to driftwood and flotsam. Hawke's lips crashed against Anders' own, stealing protests, breath, heartbeat. His hands on Anders' face locked them together; his palms were warm, his lips warmer, his breath near scorching. Anders forgot how to breathe, and gasped instead.

Hawke's beard scratched his face, bark scratched his back, and it was all Anders could do to respond. To push back against him with a hungry groan, to tangle his fingers in Hawke's hair and ruin it the way Hawke was ruining him.

Hawke stole a hand beneath his coat, cooling the flush skin on Anders' chest, "Where is your tunic?"

"I'm not - wearing one," Anders managed around Hawke's lips. He tasted like whatever wine he'd been drinking. Anders couldn't place it, but still felt as if he'd shared the bottle.

"Why are you like this?" Hawke asked, giving Anders no time to respond before his mouth was on him again.

"I didn't plan-"

"You never do."

A banging interrupted them. It didn't come from the dining hall. Leandra scowled from the kitchen window, her face scrunched up like she'd eaten a mound of lemons. She made a spinning gesture with her hand, as if motioning for Hawke to come inside.

"I have to-..." Hawke let go of him.

"Yeah, no, go," Anders agreed.

"You're not going to-..." Hawke gestured vaguely at him.

"We're good," Anders assured him, still struggling to catch his breath. "Yeah. I'll uh-I'll see you tomorrow. Wicked Grace."

Hawke took a step back, and a sound like the crunch of leaves broke through their heavy breathing.

Anders pointed at the flattened page from his manifesto. "That's my-"

"I know," Hawke peeled it off the bottom of his boot, and folded it up for his pocket. "I'll read it."

Anders grabbed him before he could head back inside, and smoothed Hawke's tousled hair back. Then, because he could, Anders kissed him again. Softer. Slower. The rattle of Leandra's rage at the window almost soothing for how Hawke ignored it.

"She's going to kill you," Anders said against his lips.

"You're worth it."

Chapter 96: Hearts of Gold or Near Enough

Summary:

In which Varric runs from his responsibilities.

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back. I hope you're still enjoying the ride.

Thank you for any bookmarks, subscriptions, kudos, or comments. They're very motivating and I sincerely appreciate it. Most of all thank you for reading.

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon 2 Pluitanis Early Evening

Kirkwall Docks: Collective Packaging House

To The Collective of Kirkwall,

Delivered

A,

It is good to write to you again, my friend. I hope this letter makes its way safely into your possession. I cannot say if you have had a hand in the quiet we have enjoyed of late, but if so, you have my sincere thanks. Time will tell if the storm has passed, or if we have simply sailed into the eye, but there have been no further incidents. Our lockdown is ended and not a moment too soon.

Your likeness has made its way to my desk, and I confess it is not altogether unflattering. For your sake, I hope it is not an accurate rendition. All the same, I trust this means that you are alive and well.

I had feared for your fate after the fire at the de Soliere estate. A brand was discovered there. A makeshift glyph, worked by one of our kind and imbued with lyrium. It might comfort you to know it has been destroyed and its use expressly forbidden. Should you or one of your companions have suffered from its effects, I am led to believe that something as simple as a crack in the structure will nullify its effects.

I think it would be to our mutual benefit to rekindle our relationship. There are several individuals who would benefit from making your acquaintance. Please write back if you are in a position to receive them. Time is of the essence.

Your friend and colleague,

O

“Well?” Anders fidgeted while Selby read and reread First Enchanter Orsino’s letter. It was one of many in the packaging house, hastily sent and hastily opened, by the pounce that covered Selby’s desk. The fine white powder jumped with every thoughtful tap of Selby’s letter opener as her ash-grey eyes moved across the page. Anders heart kept time with the taps, jumping in his chest for her verdict.

“We don’t have a way to get them out of Kirkwall,” Selby said, more observation than refusal, “Not without the Redwaters. Not with the curfews. The Captain Vallen doesn’t slack on patrols. The roads aren’t safe.”

“The refugees will take them,” Anders said easily.

“The alienage won’t,” Selby countered, burning the letter over the candle on her desk. “Between the guards, the templars, the qunari... I won’t leave elven mages to be hunted like rabbits.”

“The Dalish, then,” Anders refused to let his hopes turn to ash as quickly. “I know the warrens. I can get them out.”

“Can you?” Selby raised an ash-grey eyebrow at him.

“Of course I can,” Anders said with a confidence he might not have earned. “I have a friend who helped someone with elven blood escape the Gallows. He talked to them. They said they’d take more.”

“How many more?” Selby asked.

“I-” don’t know? Didn’t think to ask? Anders held up a finger, and added more until he wasn’t so much counting as shrugging.

“How many?” Selby insisted, “One? Two? A dozen? Two dozen?”

“As many as we need,” Anders decided.

“No,” Selby saw through him. "We need numbers. Sketch can only hide so many in with the servants. It takes time to move them between the Hightown families, even the ones that think all elves look the same.

"I'm not saying no, love. Don't make that face. Write him back. No charge, there's some paper in the desk over there. Here - you can use my quill. Don't spill the ink. We can take three if they're elves. Six if they're human.

"Get me numbers on the Dalish. Meeting times, places, and names. Then we can take more."

Anders wrote, making a chair of a stack of parcels beside Selby's desk that gave like parchment and sunk when he sat. "My manifesto?"

"Finish it first, love." Selby gave his free hand a pat, "I want you in the tunnels for the rescue."

".. really?" Anders stopped writing; ink dripped onto his letter and swallowed up a sentence. Selby's pat turned into a pinch, and Anders stowed the quill. "...Even after everything with Decimus?"

"You were impulsive, running off with those Starkhaven mages, but sometimes impulsive is good. Makes you move. Gets you going. Before you came to Kirkwall, I thought it would take an urn to get a mage out of the Gallows… but if that's where they end up anyway why save them at all?

"We all want the same thing, love. Our Most Trusted status isn't just about us trusting you, it's about you trusting us. Get us what we need with the Dalish, and we'll get you back where you belong."

Anders finished up his response to Orsino and left it with Selby. Wrapping Merrill’s makeshift scarf into a makeshift hood, he headed out into the quays, staff held high. At this point, ‘staff’ might have been a bit of a misnomer. As much as Anders hated bastardizing it, he didn’t see a choice. A crystalline cage set atop dragonbone runework wasn't exactly the most subtle thing to be toting around Kirkwall, so he improvised. The shaft he wrapped with leather, and the cage he hid behind broken bits of bone, tied together to resemble a fishing spear.

No one looked twice at him the entire walk through the docks, despite passing more than a few leaflets plastered with his picture. Anders peeled one off the wall of the Harbor Master’s Office that had been vandalized with what he could only hope was paint.

“TAKE BACK OUR STREETS!” The leaflet screamed at him. “Ferelden refugees, Qunari soldiers, now arsonist mages? THIS ENDS NOW! Send a message that Kirkwallers WILL NOT ACCEPT THIS! Band together to drive foreign waste from our doorstep. Reclaim the Free Marches FOR THE MARCHERS! If you care about our future, join the Friends of Kirkwall! Reclaim our city!”

What Anders could only assume was a rather crude map had been drawn at the bottom, hiding whatever bounty the templars were offering for him. Great. Anders crumpled up the leaflet and burnt it into ash in his palm, shaking it out on the stairs to Lowtown. Another gang. Just what Kirkwall needed. Just like he’d predicted. Getting rid of the Sharps hadn’t done anything for the city.

Anders climbed the winding streets to the Hanged Man, taking care to stay in Coterie or Dog Lord territory. He could probably get away with moving through old Sharps’ hexes, before curfew, but he didn’t want to risk it. The narrow alleys seemed to fold in on themselves, blocking out the sun at all hours of the day save the middle of it, and there were too many shadowy corners for too many shadowy figures.

The markets were safer, the common cutpurse not much of a threat when Anders had no purse to cut. They were buzzing with flies and Lowtowners, and Anders danced his way through stalls hocking everything from rotten produce to Andraste’s Ashes before he reached the Hanged Man. It loomed over the lot like a drunkard over the privy, vomiting patrons into the gutters.

Norah was outside, throwing bucket after ineffectual bucket of seawater onto the walls in an effort to clear away the latest bit of graffiti. The Hanged Man had more tags than a sailor tattoos, and wore them all with as little loyalty. Dogs drank with Coterie drank with Winters drank with Irons, or didn’t drink at all, and everyone wanted to drink. Anders waved Norah a hello and saw himself inside, just in time for the evening bar fight.

Someone grabbed him, and wrenched him out of the fight or into it. A bottle flew through the space his head had occupied moments prior, narrowly missing and shattering on the wall behind him. Sour ale splattered on his face, smelling faintly of vinegar. Isabela grinned at him, sparkly white teeth the cleanest thing Anders had seen all day. Wavy black hair covered half her face, her bandana missing. Anders supposed that meant Merrill had kept it.

“Remind me how you can stand it here again?” Anders asked, wiping his face off.

“Drink enough, Sparky, and standing is the least of your worries,” Isabela grinned, leading him to a table with a good view of the fight. Her long legs covered more ground than his, and he stumbled to keep pace. “Someone’s eager. You’re never this early for cards. Think you can win back those fifty silvers you owe me?”

“I was hoping to see you, actually.” Anders checked the chair for vomit before he sat. “I wanted to talk to you about the raiders you used to sail with.”

“You did?” Isabela asked, spinning her chair to drape her legs over his lap, “What in the world would make a man of justice like you poke your nose in such a dirty business?”

“Is it though?” Anders wondered playfully, “Because I seem to recall you freeing hundreds of slaves at the cost of indebting yourself to the entire Felicisima Armada.”

“Temporary insanity,” Isabela pushed her boot into his face. They smelled like ale and leather, and Anders supposed he should have been grateful they weren’t caked in vomit. “A bout of foul morality. A horrifying fit of decency. If that’s what you’re looking for, Sparky, you’re looking in the wrong place. Why don’t you ask Hawke or something?”

Anders pushed the offending foot back into his lap, “I know you’re not as selfish as you pretend-”

“You take that back!”

“There have to be others like you,” Anders insisted. “Raiders or smugglers with hearts of gold.”

“Sorry, Sparky, I’m one of a kind,” Isabela flashed him a grin. “Why this sudden interest in raiding? This wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain island in a certain sea, would it?”

“What if it did?” Anders asked.

“I’d tell you that most sailors aren’t looking for gold in their hearts, and they’re not likely to find any in your cause.” Isabela said. She sounded sage and almost sorry. Anders checked his ears for wax, but he'd heard right. She wanted to help.

"What about you?" Anders asked. "How do we get you a new ship?"

Isabela laughed, and ignored him for the bar fight, pointing to the few patrons who weren’t on the floor. “Look! The Red Irons won! They can iron my red anytime. No, that one doesn’t work. Hmm…”

“Fill your cup?” Anders suggested. “Cup their fill?”

“Oo, good ones,” Isabela agreed.

Norah came back inside with her empty buckets, stepping over and sometimes on a few unconscious patrons on her way back to the bar. “No one gets another round until someone pays for this table!” Norah called out.

A handful of patrons rushed forward, some of them doubtless too drunk to remember they hadn’t been involved in the fight in the first place. Others made an attempt to prop the two shattered halves of the table back together. A few sots must have thought it actually worked, because they made the mistake of trusting it with their drinks, and it promptly collapsed again like an overfull levee.

Eventually, someone must have paid, because Norah loaded up a tray with tankards and started making rounds.

“Now if only I knew what it took to get some of that Red Iron from you-know-who.” Isabela grinned at him, waving Norah down. Isabela flicked a copper out of her corset that Norah dropped into hers.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Anders said, shaking his head when Norah offered him a drink. “Seriously, what about you? Why not get a new ship, or steal one-”

“We pirates prefer the term ‘commandeer’” Isabela corrected him, extending a pinky to drink.

“Commandeer then,” Anders said. “What’s stopping you? Wouldn’t it help you look for your relic if you could look outside of Kirkwall?”

“I’ve looked outside of Kirkwall, remember?” Isabela said. “It’s here. I know it is. Someone’s just waiting for the right time to sell.”

“You ever going to tell me what this relic is?” Anders asked, “Maybe I could help you look for it and you could help me move people. You know, favor for a favor.”

Isabela took a long drink, and belched into his face. “You have pretty eyes.”

“You’re impossible,” Anders sighed.

“You love it.” Isabela said.

A shock of white hair appeared in the door to the Hanged Man, the only visible part of Fenris save for the lyrium tattoos that glowed through a heavy winter coat. He scanned the crowd with a scowl that didn’t lift, even when he spotted them, and made his way over by walking over benches as opposed to the floor.

“Speaking of impossible,” Anders muttered.

“Oh, I know, just look at him,” Isabela threw an arm over Anders’ shoulder and pulled him conspiratorially close, “That taut, controlled body, brooding demeanor and intense gaze… I hear he still wears the shackles from his life in bondage under his clothes. You know what they say about men like that, don’t you?”

“That wounds heal but scars are forever?” Anders guessed.

“But-...” Isabela’s lips pursed like her ale had turned sour. Well. More sour. “I had a whole joke lined up. You’re no fun.”

“Are you sure Fenris likes you joking about that time in his life?” Anders asked.

The man in question reached their table in time to hear the question. He snatched up a chair and dragged it, squealing protests, to sit beside Isabela. “Do not presume to know what I like, mage,” The word dripped out of the corners of Fenris’ mouth, like a lush who was brimful of vomit. Anders was so glad he agreed to spend more time with Hawke’s friends.

“Here I thought we were friends,” Anders said with forced despondency.

“You thought wrong,” Fenris said, stealing Isabela’s drink without a dagger ending up in his palm. They must have been close.

“What about all that time we spent together in the Deep Roads?” Anders recalled. “Remember when we painted each other’s toenails?”

“You picked the wrong color,” Fenris said.

Anders hated himself for laughing. Someone must have thrown an extra log in one of the hearths, because Anders swore a trick of the light made it look like Fenris smiled.

“What are we waiting down here for?” Fenris asked.

“Varric is in some sort of meeting,” Isabela explained, waving at Norah for another drink to replace the one Fenris stole. “I’ve seen more dwarves in the past hour than I have in my whole life. It’s pretty funny, actually. They keep scurrying in and out on their stumpy little legs.”

“Why?” Anders asked.

Isabela shrugged, “Because they’re short?” Another copper traded corsets, and Norah handed her a replacement tankard.

“No, I mean why the meeting,” Anders pressed. “Does it have anything to do with the rumors?”

“What rumors?” Fenris asked.

“About Bartrand,” Anders explained. “People are saying Hawke and Varric killed him.”

“Kaffas,” Fenris muttered. “What people?”

“Carta people. It’s-...” Anders hesitated. Hawke had told him of his debt in confidence. He had no idea if Hawke had told the rest of their group. “Complicated.”

“And what of us?” Fenris asked, “We were there.”

“I don’t think anyone cares about us,” Anders said.

“Oh, people definitely care about you, Sparky,” Isabela pulled a leaflet from her corset and unfolded it to a picture of his face, “You’re finally famous. We’ll have to come up with a better name for you than ‘that Anders fellow’ though. I’m thinking, the Terror of Hightown! What do you think? Too much like the Butcher of Lowtown? You’re right, I should work on it.”

Fenris snatched up the parchment and shredded it, to Anders’ shock.

“Aw, you do care,” Anders said.

“I care about being seen with you,” Fenris corrected him.

“Sure you do. We’re friends now,” Anders decided.

“Hawke!” The tavern roared. It sounded like a collective cough, at first, and almost startled Anders out of his seat. He was barely back in his seat before Hawke was standing beside him, a hand on the back of Anders’ chair he contemplated taking.
Was that the kind of relationship they had? Did they have a relationship? What did the hand mean? Was it there on purpose?

“What are you all doing down here?” Hawke asked. He looked himself again, clad in dark leathers that seemed to pull the shadows up around him. Only his eyes caught the light, flickers of red beneath a strong brow and wild bangs. They looked at everyone but Anders.

Anders should ask him, though now wasn’t exactly the best time to ask. Not with the dog there too. It growled at Anders, and trotted over to sit at Isabela’s feet.

“Varric’s in a meeting,” Isabela explained, scratching the mabari’s ear. Anders was not jealous.

“And you didn’t interrupt it?” Hawke asked, “You know he hates meetings.”

“The sea is a cruel mistress,” Isabela said with a whimsical sigh. “Plus I want to see how many dwarves can fit in his room. I’ve counted at least fifteen so far. Soon they’ll have to start stacking on top of each other. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

“How many drinks have you had?” Fenris asked.

“Leave me alone,” Isabela huffed.

Hawke abandoned them to head back towards Varric’s room. Anders scrambled out of his chair to follow, and heard Isabela and Fenris doing the same. He nearly slipped on the stairs in his haste, coated in saltwater that was mostly salt from their last wash. Isabela caught him from behind, Hawke from in front.

“Easy Sparky,” Isabela teased, “The fun hasn’t even started yet.”

“You good?” Hawke asked, keeping a hold of his arm until Anders nodded.

“My heroes,” Anders joked.

“This is definitely a sandwich I could get behind,” Isabela mused.

“I am right here,” Fenris muttered.

“You could come too,” Isabela flapped a hand at him.

“I’m out if he’s in,” Anders said.

“Your loss,” Isabela said.

She hadn’t been kidding about the number of dwarves. Varric looked like he was holding court, or whatever dwarves called court. Dwarves upon dwarves upon dwarves were packed into his room, and seemed to be split into two groups that were yelling at each other. Anders recognized Batrand’s ex-fiancée Raella, who seemed to be leaning more towards the middle with Varric. He was sitting in his chair, head in his hands, and couldn’t have looked more miserable if he tried.

“The Kalna will not stand for this!” One of the dwarves was shouting.

“You have no proof of these allegations!” Someone shouted back.

“Is his absence not proof enough?” Someone else hollered. “You ascendants have been clamoring for more sway since you saw the surface! Bartrand’s death-”

“Alleged death!” Raella interrupted. “The expedition-”

“We all know Gavorn is behind these rumors!” Yelled yet another person.

“Varric!” Hawke’s bellow cut through the chaos, and pinned each dwarf in place like an arrow. “A word?”

“Of course!” Varric jumped up, and wove through the crowd with a speed Anders had never seen from him, “If you will all excuse me, my esteemed colleague and I have pressing business to attend, so-”

Varric grabbed Bianca, his jacket, and Hawke’s hand, and all but leapt down the stairs in his escape. None of the dwarves followed their abrupt about-face. It was almost as if Varric’s position mattered more than his presence. “Ancestors preserve me,” Varric muttered, “Who told them where I live? I should leave the city for a few days.”

“What’s happening now?” Isabela asked, leaning back against the stairwell to let Varric and Hawke pass as their group turned around, “No cards? Can we at least get a few more drinks to go?”

“Sorry, Rivaini, today is not a good day to be me,” Varric shrugged into his jacket and swung Bianca onto his shoulder. They followed the hasty dwarf all the way back to the entrance in time for their missing companions to step through it. If not for the fact that she was out of uniform, Anders might have assumed Aveline had arrested Merrill. The elf looked terribly lost, and the guardswoman had a guiding hand on her shoulder.

“I found her wandering around out back,” Aveline explained.

“This didn’t keep me from getting lost at all,” Merrill mumbled, turning a ball of twine over in her hands and looking at it like it had betrayed her. She had Isabela’s bandana tied about her neck like a favor. Maybe after tonight it would actually be one. Anders still had to help her with that conversation.

“What are you all doing?” Aveline asked.

“Leaving,” Varric said, “I think House Tethras could stand to have my cousin Elmand in charge for a few days.”

“You don’t have a cousin Elmand,” Aveline frowned.

“I’ll introduce you sometime,” Varric offered, ducking under Aveline’s arm to leave the Hanged Man. “He’s a little on the shy side.”

Everyone followed Varric out into Lowtown’s streets, and loitered in the center of the hex like rocks in the rapids. People flowed haphazardly around them, sometimes crashing them into them, and Anders tugged anxiously at his scarf. Merrill came over to adjust it to better hide his face when she noticed him fidgeting.

Aveline noticed as well, and said nothing. There was that, at least. “Varric… he’s imaginary.”

“Which makes him a much better head of the household than I am. He never misses the Merchants Guild meetings, for one. Ancestors, it’s only been…” Varric started counting on what fingers he had left, and gave up. “Not enough for them to start holding assembly in my room. Holy mother of green cheeses, this whole business with Bartrand is giving me a headache.”

“So… are we playing cards outside?” Merrill asked, gauging the sky and the few clouds that peppered it, “I suppose the weather is nice today.”

“No cards, Kitten,” Isabela said sadly. “Varric’s too busy being accused of murder. You know what I do whenever that happens?”

“Three guesses,” Fenris said.

“Hide the bodies,” Isabela grinned.

“Maybe this isn’t something we discuss in the open?” Aveline suggested.

“Killer, how is the estate looking these days?” Varric asked.

“Why not?” Hawke shrugged, waving them all towards Hightown, “Mother couldn’t hate me more.”

“I need to talk to both of you about these rumors,” Aveline said, maneuvering Hawke and Varric to the front of their little group. The dog took up any space Anders would have filled, not that he wanted anything to do with Aveline. He supposed he could always stay later at the estate to talk to Hawke about whatever they were now.

Anders fell back to walk with Isabela, Fenris, and Merrill and went back to pestering the pirate captain. No one who called themselves the Queen of the Eastern Seas could honestly say they didn’t know a ship captain who might be willing to smuggle mages. If the Collective could find one ship, even temporarily, Isabela had to know dozens.

“So about that ship…” Anders said.

Isabela groaned. “This again. Fine, fine, Martin. Happy now?”

“Who’s Martin?” Anders asked.

“He’s a friend,” Isabela explained.

“A friend or a friend?” Anders wondered.

“I never let him steer my ship, if that's what you're asking. From what I hear, he doesn't have good control of his rudder. But he stood up to the Terror of Llomerryn... Slavery, murder, torture… nothing is too much for Ianto. He’d traffic in souls, if he discovered a way to extract them from people.”

“I’m sure the magisters are working on a method for that as we speak,” Fenris muttered.

“Anyway,” Isabela said, “Martin stood up to him when the slavery started, and Ianto slit his throat.”

Well, that wasn’t the most glowing of recommendations. “And they… buried him shallow?” Anders guessed.

“You could say that,” Isabela laughed, “The sea spat him back out. He’s alive and well, and he’s one of the good ones. He can help you and… “

“And?” Anders prodded for her to continue.

“And I can keep him honest.” Isabela raised a hand like she might a white flag of surrender. Anders could have kissed her. He settled on bumping into her as they walked, and was rewarded with a playful shove back in the opposite direction.

“What are you two talking about?” Fenris asked.

“Your favorite topic,” Isabela said sarcastically. “Mages!”

“You want to help him,” Fenris stressed every word, like he was learning them for the first time. “Am I understanding this correctly? You think the mages should be free?”

“Everyone should be free,” Isabela said, so Anders didn’t have to, “Not just mages.”

“Not everyone’s dangerous,” Fenris argued.

“It’s not about who’s dangerous,” Isabela countered. “It’s about having choices made for you. Don’t you wish you had the choice not to have lyrium stuck under your skin?”

Fenris didn’t say anything. Isabela nudged him, and he mumbled something Anders couldn’t hear, but argued no further.

Well throw him in a fire and call him Andraste, Isabela accomplished in one minute what Anders had been trying to do for one year. Anders doubted Fenris would be storming the Gallows anytime soon, but Isabela had actually convinced him to agree with something where mages were concerned. First Hawke, now Fenris… who did that leave in Hawke’s motley group who wasn’t for the cause of mages? Aveline?

Anders stared at the guardwoman's back. She was as red as a Chantry sunburst, and gesturing rather violently between Hawke and Varric. A few words carried back to him; she was still on about Bartrand and their failed expedition, but mostly about how irresponsible they’d been to bring along no credible witnesses. “An apostate and an escaped elven slave?” Aveline was saying, “No, you two came back alone. Tell me how-”

Anders decided he’d leave that one for now. He couldn’t die on every hill. They reached Hawke’s estate without incident, and set up for cards in the parlor. It had gained a modest amount of furniture, courtesy of Sebastian. There were couches, armchairs, a rug, and tapestries galore, all depicting various scenes from the Chant of Light. What there wasn’t was a table, so they played cards on the floor.

It was a good game, all games considered. Anders only lost a few coppers. No one had learned anything investigating the possessed templars. Anders supposed there was no harm discussing it in front of Aveline, considering the guard knew everything after the incident in Hightown. Not that he wanted the culprit locked away or Tranquilized, but odds were the culprit in question was dead. Even Varric, who knew everything about everything, had learned nothing. To Anders’ surprise, he hadn’t even remembered Anders asking him to investigate two weeks ago.

“Sorry, Blondie, there’s been so much on my plate lately I’ve had to add a few notches on my belt,” Varric apologized, shuffling what Anders was sure were too many cards in his hands. They slipped on his prosthetic, and went spraying into Isabela’s face. “Ah-...”

“Don’t worry about it, Varric, it happens to a lot of men,” Isabela teased, sneaking a few of the wild cards into her own hand.

“You know, I might start with the Rose, if we really want to be sure Decimus wasn’t behind the possessions,” Varric took his accident well, and he went back to shuffling his cards without comment, “There are only so many places the templars frequent.”

“You said that last time,” Anders reminded him.

“I did?” Varric asked. “That’s… I don’t remember. That’s weird.”

“... Varric,” Merrill said gently, reaching out to touch his chin and turn him to face her. “Can you say that again?”

“That’s weird?” Varric said obediently. “What’s the matter, Daisy?”

“The part about the Rose,” Merrill said.

“I might start with the Rose,” Varric said. There was something wrong in the way he said it. Like he didn’t speak the language, and was just parroting the sounds.

Merrill drew a dagger from her belt. Everyone panicked. Fenris and Aveline were on their feet, Varric fell onto his back, and Hawke and Isabela were yelling at all of them to sit down. Anders watched, fascinated, when Merrill slit her own wrist and wove a spell together. “His blood is his blood, his heart is his heart.”

“Daisy-hang on a second-what-”

“Merrill. Put the dagger down, now.”

“Blood magic!”

Merrill ignored all of them, and cast. Blood bubbled up from her wrist, popping into a fine mist that skittered through the air like a thousand tiny spiders. They crawled down Varric’s throat, and seemed to choke him. He started coughing. Aveline dove on Merrill, twisting the dagger out of her hand to shove her face first into the floor.

“Hey!” Anders stood up.

“Release him!” Aveline shouted, pinning Merrill with a knee and warding off Anders with the dagger. “Now, Merrill!”

It was just a dagger. It was nothing to him. To them. “Release her!” They bellowed, the words echoing through the estate.

“Both of you-” Hawke started.

“Aveline!” Varric coughed, rolling on to his knees. “Aveline stop! Ancestors have mercy, can this day get any worse?”

“What did you do to him?” Aveline demanded, not getting off Merrill.

“Can’t-... breathe-...” Merrill wheezed, scrabbling at the rug.

Isabela kicked Aveline. It wasn’t very effective. The giant guardswoman rocked to one side like a buoy, and Anders had to knock her off with a blast of energy pulled straight from the Fade. She toppled end over end until Hawke caught her.

“Are you alright, Kitten?” Isabela asked, gathering Merrill up into her arms. Anders let a wave of healing magic roll over her casting cut and the bruise Aveline had left her with.

“That didn’t go quite like I thought it would,” Merrill mumbled.

“Is she alright?” Aveline demanded, struggling to right herself, “What about Varric? What did you do to him?”

“She saved me,” Varric said between coughs. “Though a little warning might have been nice.”

“Not on the rug-” Hawke started, hand outstretched as if to catch the few drops of blood that spilled from Varric’s lips before he gave up. “Fuck it.”

“Idunna,” Varric coughed again, this time catching the blood and spit in his good hand. “She’s a blood mage, at the Blooming Rose. I went last week. She-... Fuck, I don’t know. She did some kind of weird magic shit and I forgot all about her. She’s behind the possessions.”

“I’ll gather the guard,” Aveline declared and stood. Aveline looked between Merrill and her dagger, and at least had the decency to look sheepish when she handed it back. “Sorry.”

Anders considered stopping her. A blood mage was still a mage. He thought of Decimus and the abomination that had killed him, and said nothing.

“That’s okay.” Merrill slid the dagger back into her belt, and rested her head on Isabela’s shoulder.

“It’s okay?” Isabela repeated incredulously, smoothing Merrill’s hair back. “You just got hit by a human battering ram.”

“You may need help with this blood mage. I’ll come with you,” Fenris stood up and left with Aveline.

“I guess the game’s over,” Varric noted, wiping his bloody hands off on his trousers before lying back on the floor. “So that was a thing that happened. Thanks again, Daisy. Remind me not to go anywhere by myself in this city… ever again. Killer, you mind if I just… sleep here? Today was exhausting.”

“Guest room’s upstairs.” Hawke said.

“No stairs,” Varric whined.

“Yes stairs,” Hawke looped his arms under Varric’s shoulders, and hefted him to his feet. “You need me to carry you?”

“I wouldn’t say no,” Varric said, “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

Hawke picked him up with an arm around his shoulders and under his knees. “So I heard you’re being fixed up with one of the Helmi daughters.”

“Thanks, Hawke, I’ve been trying to forget about that all week,” Varric sighed, “I guess now I’ll have to tell her about us.”

“Not love at first sight?” Hawke asked, the rest of their conversation fading as they departed. No other quips followed them, which Anders supposed spoke volumes as to where Isabela's concerns lied.

Merrill was still wrapped up in her arms, the two of them whispering what Anders could only imagine were soothing things to one another. "Awkward, boob crushing do-gooder," Isabela was muttering. Yep. Definitely soothing. It seemed like they were getting on. Merrill hadn’t even needed his help. Not like Decimus had.

Anders stared at them, and decided he could talk to Merrill about visiting the Dalish for the Collective later. He excused himself and wandered through the estate until he found himself in the garden. Anders sat in a patch of elfroot, and stared up at the darkening sky. It would be curfew soon. Too late for him to stay much longer and not stay the night.

He could almost make out the Chained Man, among the stars. The constellation dragging its heavy chain looked how Anders felt. Except Anders didn't have a chain. There was no reason for him to feel the way he did. Everything had worked out in the end, in a twisted sort of fashion.

The Collective was still working with him. Orsino was writing him again. Isabela had given him a new contact for their smuggling operations. Any day now, Anders might be able to rescue Alain and Grace, and once he had a chance to talk to the Dalish, there would be no mage Anders couldn’t save.

Except Decimus. After everything, it hadn't even been him.

Anders thought of his sad smile, and whispered words. "Run from me."

Words not even meant for Anders, but ones that brought him near to tears for the ones he heard beneath them.

"Take care of yourself."

A knock on the garden door interrupted his thoughts.

Hawke joined him, standing with his thumbs in his belt rather than sitting. “You miss the sewers so much you have to sit in the dirt?” Always the comforting presence, Hawke.

“That’s me,” Anders agreed, counting constellations, “Anders the Awful they call me.”

“You staying?” Hawke asked.

“Do I get to be carried to my room?” Anders joked, surprised by how easily Hawke held his gaze when it drifted in his direction. “Do I still have a room?”

“Long as you want one,” Hawke assured him.

“What are we?” Anders wondered.

“What do you want us to be?” Hawke asked.

“Alive,” Anders wasn’t sure why it made him laugh, but it did. There must have been something wrong or worrisome with his laugh, because Hawke sat beside him when it dissolved into chuckles. “... It wasn’t even Dec. After all that, it wasn’t even him.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Hawke said, setting a hand on Anders' thigh. "Don't live in it."

"Carver wasn’t yours," Anders covered Hawke's hand with his own. Apparently they did have that kind of relationship. "No matter what your mother says.”

“You weren’t there.” Hawke said.

“Neither were you.” Anders said.

“No,” Hawke agreed, “But I know you.”

“I know you too.” Anders said, dragging off his scarf to better see him.

Hawke's eyes might have been constellations themselves, for all their fire. The night seemed warmer for them, and warmer still for Hawke's lips against his. Anders wasn't sure who kissed who, only that Hawke tasted of spirits and smelled of home. There was a roughness to him, in this scratch of his beard, in the clutch of his hands.

Anders didn't know him. Not really. Not all of him. Not the way he wanted. He didn't know how fast was too fast, how hard was too hard, how much was too much. Anders straddled him, and Hawke's hands on his hips ground them together.

"Hawke," Anders said, then wondered if he preferred Garrett.

"Hm?" Hawke's lips fell to Anders' neck, where he was sure to leave a mark. Anders threaded his fingers through his hair, and Hawke bit him. Featherlight, testing. Anders pushed him down harder until he felt the sting of it and groaned.

He should have stopped thinking. He should have let himself have this one moment. Let it turn into more. Hawke's hands found their way beneath his tunic, which he was actually wearing this time, and were warmer than his coat against the cold night chill. The question floated through his head, more unrelenting than Justice's disapproval of Hawke and the distraction he represented, until Anders couldn't ignore it.

"Do you-... should I call you Hawke?" Anders asked.

Hawke stopped, and pulled back from him. He didn't seem upset, at least, his fingers tracing Anders' spine beneath his tunic. "Should I call you Anders?"

"... What?"

"I know it's not your name," Hawke said easily. "Any more than Fereldan is mine."

"... Says who?"

Hawke looked offended. "Common sense?"

"Anders is my name,” Anders said. He wasn’t of a mind to think of his father tonight or any night. “But Hawke isn’t yours. Do you want me to call you Garrett?”

"Want you to call me Hawke,” Hawke said, running a thumb over Anders’ lips, “We are who we choose to be."

They stayed in the garden, through the night and into the break of dawn. Anders didn’t remember quite when it happened, but at some point they ended up lying down, Anders head on Hawke’s shoulder, Merrill’s scarf a poorer blanket than Hawke’s arms around him. They watched the constellations, and spoke. Of family. Of friends. Of everything. Of nothing. The low rumble of Hawke’s voice in his ear, and the occasional press of his lips against Anders’ brow wasn’t quite the intimacy that Anders had wanted, but maybe it was what he needed.

Chapter 97: Ghilan’him Banal’vhen

Summary:

In which Anders visits the Dalish.

Notes:

Hello all! Thank you for reading and supporting this story.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon 21 Pluitanis Evening

Somewhere Near Sundermount

Anders was a runner, not a walker. Walking was not his thing. The season never mattered. Whether it was freezing in Ferelden in Firstfall, or burning up in the Bannorn in Solace, somehow, he always ended up suffering his small clothes. He still had all of his clothes, for the moment, but Anders felt it necessary to keep a healthy level of suspicion about him.

He doubted he’d lose them for the reasons he wanted on this little venture. Wintersend had passed, and winter had been sent, but spring was little better. Destructive forces of nature assaulted him on all sides. The tiny pollen spores were worse than any storm Anders could have conjured. He sneezed. And sneezed. And sneezed. And for a bit of variety, he sneezed again.

“Come on Varric,” Anders called over his shoulder, wiping his reddened nose off on his scarf.

He shouldn’t complain, but Anders had never been one to heed ‘should’ and ‘should nots.’ The pace Hawke set couldn’t compare to one set by the Wardens, but there was a pace, and there was pollen, and that was enough. It also didn’t help that Anders hated being away from the city, especially when the Collective had resumed their rescues, but he couldn’t spend every minute of every day escorting a mage from the Gallows. Especially not if they had no place to put them.

And so, the Dalish. The Sundermount loomed, the tallest mountain of Vimmark. In all his time in Kirkwall, Anders had never been. He had no reason to go, but beyond that, the locals said it was haunted. Creatures from the Fade prowled its heights, and spiders and ghasts littered its base. All in all, a lovely place for a summer home, if you were a Dalish, which Anders was not.

“I’m right behind you Blondie,” Varric’s wheeze was all but swallowed up by the wind, and Anders glanced over his shoulder to see the dwarf some ways back. The merchant prince moved like a wallop ball struck by the most petulant of players, rolling from place to place one tiny tap at a time. He looked much the same, round and bound in leather.

If Varric was the ball, Merrill was the mallet. She spoke little on the trek to visit her clan, her ordinarily pleasant expression twisted into a scowl that put Fenris to shame. Anders lost track of her, every so often, her mottled green and brown armor blending her into the foliage until she emerged to push Varric along. Combined with her silence, it was painfully unnerving and made her seem like the love child of Nathaniel and Velanna.

… Not that Anders had given them any chance of that.

Merrill appeared to step over a small boulder, and Varric followed, rolling over it and into the dirt, where he stayed. “I’m way behind you,” Varric corrected himself.

“Come on you two, we’re not even up the mountain yet,” Isabela urged from up ahead, one foot propped up on a fallen log as if she were sailing them to the top of Sundermount. Anders couldn't decide if he loved or hated the enthusiasm. He was leaning towards hate.

Isabela didn’t need to be there. She was there for Merrill, who had some kind of magical mirror that needed some kind of magical tool from her clan to repair. Anders didn’t know all the specifics. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t his. Anders was there for the Collective, and Hawke was there for him. And for coin. But hopefully mostly for him. Varric came to escape the Merchant’s Guild, and Fenris… probably had nothing better to do.

“Are we sure we’re going the right way?” Varric asked, pitching face forward into the dirt the second he stood. “Nug-licking-... That’s the seventh root I’ve tripped over in the last ten minutes. They’re doing it on purpose, I swear.”

“They can hear you talking about them,” Merrill helped Varric to his feet.

“Good one, Daisy.” Varric dusted off his trousers, “You’re joking, right? Tell me you’re joking.”

“This is the right way,” Merrill ignored the question, pointing to a pile of rocks. “We just have to follow the cairns.”

“Rocks,” Fenris picked up the top stone on one of the piles. Either someone had painted a face on it, or a bird had taken a masterful shit. “Who knew the Dalish were the ones with stone sense? Perhaps you should have been with us in the Deep Roads.”

“Cairns, not rocks,” Merrill took the rock out of his hands and put it back on the pile, whispering something in elvish. An apology, maybe. “They’re sort of like shrines, to Ghilan’nain. They point the way home… except I guess it’s not home anymore.”

Not bird shit, then. Anders was glad he’d kept his mouth shut. Fenris coughed into his hand, and Anders wondered if he regretted defacing the shrine, or if it was just the pollen. Probably just the pollen.

"Don't remind me about the Deep Roads,” Varric said, flexing his fingers. “I wish I had actually killed Bartrand down there. I’m so jaundiced over these rumors I’m turning yellow.”

“Why are you all stopped?” Hawke came back down the trail in clipped steps, wind tearing through his hair. He had on a black leather jerkin with a rich golden trim, studded leather armor straining against thick arms and thick thighs. It was a gift from some noble or another, but it was better than his Oars or Iron armor.

It was better than better, actually. Hawke looked breathtaking. Anders forced himself to pick up his pace to walk at his side. Lately, what time he didn’t spend with the Collective, he spent with Hawke. If he could do both, he shouldn’t waste it. At least when it was both, Justice couldn’t disapprove.

“It’s another day’s journey to the encampment, assuming they haven’t moved on,” Hawke said. Behind him, pathways carved through rock and pine, adorned with the crumbling ruins of some long forgotten world. There were so many twists and turns up the mountain they’d be lost without the cairns. “We need to make the cave for camp before nightfall."

"The clan can't move on," Merrill said sadly, "Not without our halla. They'll be there… She’ll be there. By the Dread Wolf, I’m not ready to see her again."

“To see who, Kitten?” Isabela asked.

“The Keeper… I can’t talk to her. We fight or talk circles around each other. She has a disappointed frown that turns your bones to jelly…”

“I hope it works on the Knight-Commander.” Anders mused. “She’s going to be the future of elven mages in Kirkwall soon.”

“It’s a good future… it’s just not mine,” Merrill said sadly, “The templars know better than to bother us. They’ll be fine with the clan.” Merrill pulled Isabela’s bandana off her belt to wring it together in her hands. “You can’t-when we’re there-... we can’t be…”

“No one will even know I’m there,” Isabela poked Merrill’s nose. “I’m just here to help you get your little arrow helm.”

“Arulin’holm,” Merrill corrected her.

“Right." Isabela said. "I'll be in and out faster than a first fuck."

"We might not need to steal it." Merrill said. "The Keeper might let me invoke vir sulevanan. I'm still one of the People… whether or not they consider me part of the clan."

"We're here to trade." Hawke reminded them. "No one does anything that jeopardizes that."

"Four syllables in one word!" Varric noted. "Good job Killer."

Hawke didn’t laugh, but Anders knew him well enough to know his hard exhale was more or less the same thing. Anders settled in at Hawke’s side as they continued, sneezing every so often and trying to keep the wind from sending his scarf flying back down the mountain. It whipped into Hawke’s face a handful of times before the archer got fed up and snatched it off Anders’ head.

“I need that, you know,” Anders said. For all he’d once hated helmets for what they did to his hair, he was beginning to envy them. And hoods. Anything would have been better at hiding his likeness than the scarf Merrill had woven him, which seemed to unravel a little bit more each day, making a slow transition from scarf into wig.

“You don’t have to wear it out here,” Hawke stuffed the scarf into his pack.

“Pretty sure I have to wear it everywhere, thanks to our friends in the Gallows,” Anders said. “At least until I figure out how to shapeshift into another person. I’m thinking the Grand Cleric. You want to hear my impression?”

“There’s no templars out here,” Hawke gestured to the pines that littered Sundermount, the only witnesses the birds and rodents - Anders hoped they were rodents - scurrying among them, “... And it’s good to see your face.”

“It’s good to be seen,” Anders was surprised how much he meant it. Hawke traced his jaw, so light a touch the tips of his fingers ghosted stubble and no skin. Anders shivered, and the wind played no part in it.

“You having any trouble?” Hawke asked. “Templars? Guards?”

“I’m good,” Anders promised. “They check the refugee camps, every so often, but it’s not like my clinic is a secret. With the posters… it’s probably only a matter of time.”

“You have the room,” Hawke said. “You need it, use it. You don’t have to risk yourself.”

“I’m fine, for now,” Anders said. Not that the offer didn’t tempt him, but some part of him resisted to the point of resentment. It would be a distraction. He’d accomplished nothing to further the cause, the week he spent in Hawke’s care. “It’s some of my friends I’m more worried about. The templars aren’t so much interested in me as destroying my kind and all I represent.”

“You still don’t have to sleep in the sewer,” Hawke said.

“No offense, but your mother hasn't exactly rolled out the welcome mat for me,” Anders reminded him, searching for a more justifiable reason to decline, “How’s that going, by the way? You’re not married yet, are you?”

“... It’s going,” Hawke said stiffly.

“Translation…?” Anders pressed.

“She’s trying to work something out with the Reinhardts,” Hawke said.

“Did you try the magic word?” Anders asked. “It’s no, in case you forgot.”

“Bartrand was working to arrange Varric’s marriage, before he fucked off. The only reason Varric got out of it is because he’s the head of his House now,” Hawke scratched at his scalp; the tick was so bad it was a wonder he wasn’t losing hair. “I’m not.”

“So what?” Justice’s frustration fed into Anders’ own, “Your mother is just going to force you to marry someone you don’t even like? What about us? She won’t even let me alone in a room with you.”

A cairn ahead marked a divergence in their path. It veered up, and through the crumbling remnants of a stone structure. Anders stepped in front of Hawke once they were inside it, “Anders, what-?”

Anders clasped the back of Hawke’s neck, pressing the two of them together and hating all the times he’d gotten no further than this with the man before someone or something interrupted them. “I lie awake at night, aching for you,” Anders whispered.

“You think I don’t?” Hawke lifted him off the ground and pinned him to the nearest wall, his lips at Anders’ ear. The desperation in his voice was as much a torment as the grip of his hands on Anders’ ass, “What do you want me to do about it? You know I want you.”

“Then have me,” Anders all but begged, fisting his hands in Hawke’s hair. For one mad moment he couldn’t have cared less that their companions were minutes behind them. He could make do with minutes.

“Not here,” Hawke words were a stark contrast to his actions; he didn’t have magic, but he didn’t need it. He worshipped Anders’ neck, teeth and tongue leaving bruises and bitemarks. “Not at camp.”

“I don’t need flowers,” Anders pleaded.

“Not getting you any,” Hawke murmured.

“Ooo,” Isabela whistled when she came through the doorway, “This is exciting! You, Anders, and Justice. You know what they say, two’s company, but three is better.”

Hawke dropped him. Anders barely managed to catch himself before he hit the ground. Maker, he’d never been so frustrated in all his life. At this point, the others could watch for all Anders’ cared.

“Keep your nose out of our affairs.” Hawke said gruffly.

“Keep your affairs out of my nose,” Isabela shot back. “Really, don’t mind me. Please continue.”

“Tell him that,” Anders muttered.

“I just did,” Isabela winked at him.

“Not doing this. Not her business,” Hawke abandoned them, quick steps taking him out of the ruins and back onto the path.

Isabela threw an arm around Anders’ shoulders, leading him out after Hawke. “He has a nice ass, doesn’t he?”

“He is a nice ass,” Anders said, swallowing a sneeze as the forest grew back around them, grass giving way to bush giving way to tree. The pollen was there, like a templar with a phylactery, chasing him at every turn and adding to his frustrations.

“Truer words, never spoken,” Isabela grinned. “So, tell me everything. Did he float your frigate?”

“It’s complicated,” Anders said.

Isabela let go of him, “Ew.”

“You and Fenris and Merrill aren’t?” Anders asked.

“Of course not,” Isabela said, “Everyone loves me. I’m a lovable person.”

Anders laughed and left her, jogging to catch up with Hawke. His pack rattled on his back, staff hitting the back of his ankles for his efforts. The archer spared him a frown Anders was sure he didn’t deserve when he caught up. “Our affairs?” Anders repeated.

“What of it?” Hawke asked. “You’re mine, aren’t you?”

He said it so casually. Like it was nothing. Anders forgot how to walk and tripped over himself. Hawke caught him and righted him. “I mean… That’s a pretty possessive way to talk about someone you haven’t-... we haven’t-...”

“I’ll get a room at the Hanged Man, when we’re back,” Hawke offered.

“What about your mother?” Anders asked.

“I’m not getting married,” Hawke promised. “I’m Ferelden, I’m a mercenary, my sister is in the Circle, and as far as anyone in the city is concerned, I killed my business partner. There isn’t a family in Hightown who wants me for their daughter. And if there is, all I have to do is talk to her, and then there isn’t.”

It made sense, Anders supposed, but he couldn’t be the only one with an interest in Hawke. He was a self-made man, he owned half the Bone Pit, he was an ex-sergeant, and one of the most competent people Anders had ever met. He was selling himself short. “... Are you saying you act like an ass on purpose at your mother’s parties?”

“Don’t have to act,” Hawke said.

Anders laughed his way through a sneeze. “And we can’t just go find a cave somewhere because…?”

“Because you deserve a bed,” Hawke said. “... And a bath. Your face is-... Varric has a kerchief.”

“Have I ever told you you’re a real flirt?” Anders asked, wiping his nose off on his sleeve.

“You’re the one who said you liked that I was honest,” Hawke said.

“But does it always have to be brutal honesty?” Anders wondered. “What about compassionate honesty? Sentimental? Seductive?”

Hawke snorted and said nothing. Anders supposed that meant he had nothing to say. They walked together in silence, save for the song of the Sundermount as they continued their climb. Wind rattled through the pines to a litany of birds: waxwings and robins, bluebirds and sparrows. An occasional sneeze, and the rustle of woodland critters or ghasts skittering through the underbrush made up the chorus.

Sundermount was like the opposite Kirkwall, where Veil grew thinner as one descended. Here, it grew thinner the higher one climbed, until Anders could feel the Fade like a stranger’s breath on the back of his neck, making his hair stand on end. “We’ll have to be careful here. There could be tears in the Veil further up, where demons slip through.”

“You deserve better,” Hawke said suddenly.

“What?” Anders asked.

“You wanted honesty,” Hawke elaborated. “You deserve better. You shouldn’t have to hide your face in the city you’re saving. Don’t always agree with you, about the way you do it, but you want the right things. The men who caught you-... I have an arrow for them.”

“We’re going for seductive honesty, I see,” Anders grinned.

Their trip up the mountain was ghast-free, to Anders’ relief, as was the cave they made camp in. A chill wind blew from the entrance, carrying in pollen caught in the silvery light of the moons. It was a beautiful sight, made all the better by the dull blue luminescence of the glowing lichen above them. It clung to the cave ceiling, like dripping stars, and if not for his sneezing and their companions, it might have been one of the most romantic nights of Anders’ life.

Everyone unpacked and chose spots for their bedrolls. Anders was almost surprised Isabela’s bedroll wasn’t pushed together with Fenris and Merrill’s. The pirate strung up a hammock between two trees outside the cave, and the elves set themselves up in opposite corners within it. Varric picked a spot so close to the fire Merrill conjured Anders feared for his chest hair.

Merrill mumbled a small prayer as she closed the flame in with rocks, and fed it pine to keep it alive through the night without magic.

“Sylaise, whose heat rivals Elgar’nan’s light. Sylaise, whose temples rival Mythal’s cities. Sylaise, whose breath rivals Andruil’s spear. Sylaise, whose skill rivals June’s craft. Sylaise, whose fire cannot be quenched, we give ourselves gladly to your service.”

“Do we, though?” Anders wondered, debating throwing his bedroll down next to Hawke or finding his own space. Hawke dropped his pack next to Anders’ feet, effectively resolving his dilemma. Anders laid out their things together, and Hawke passed out rations.

“We do not,” Fenris said, accepting a bit of jerky from Hawke as he settled in by the fire.

“It’s just a prayer,” Merrill sighed, curling up next to the flames and rolling her toes on the rocks containing them. Isabela came back inside, free of armor and most of her clothes, and claimed Fenris’ lap for her head and Merrill’s for her legs. Merrill didn’t even seem cheered by it. Maybe Isabela’s feet smelled.

Varric peeled off his gloves, stretching his fingers and the prosthetic that passed for them. He looked down at his hands and sighed a suffering sort of sigh. “It’s a good thing we left the city when we did. Maybe this business with Bartrand will have blown over by the time we get back. Ancestors, why did it have to be my hand? Why couldn’t he have closed the door on my foot?”

“To spare us having to carry you,” Fenris said.

“I’ve never had so many ideas for so many stories before in my life, and I can’t write any of them,” Varric sighed. “Gerav does good work, but I just don’t have the same touch.”

“Varric, stop, you’re going to make me cry,” Isabela covered her eyes with an arm. “Are you telling me I’ll never read the rest of Swords and Shields? They haven’t even had sex yet!”

“Sorry Rivaini,” Varric said sincerely. “Would you believe before I started that, it had been ten years since I published anything? It’ll probably be another ten by the time I finish at this rate.”

“If it helps, I can’t write either,” Merrill said. “Not in Elvish. I’ve been trying to practice, but it just looks like scribbles. I brought some for the Keeper… but she’ll probably just laugh at me.”

“... I could help,” Anders offered, pulling Hawke down to his side when he finished handing out food. It was a decent seating arrangement. Anders, Hawke, Merrill, Isabela, Fenris, Varric, made all the better by the fact that Aveline hadn’t joined them. “Not-... with either of those things, obviously, but it’s been hard to find time to work on my manifesto with all of my patients. We could all get together once a week to work on things. Like we do for cards.”

“... That’s a great idea!” Isabela agreed around a mouthful of jerky, while Varric and Merrill seemed to belabor it. “Fenris will go.”

“Fenris will not,” Fenris frowned down at her.

“Fenris,” Isabela swatted the chest of the man in question, “Does not know how to read or write.”

“Vishante kaffas,” Fenris stood up so quickly Isabela’s head hit the ground with a loud thwack, and Anders pushed a hasty surge of healing energy in her direction. “I told you - ”

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak ‘never gets sex again.’” Isabela snarled over him, massaging the back of her head. “Like I was saying, Fenris only knows Tevene. So he’ll come. Good? Great. I’m going to bed.” Isabela disentangled herself from Merrill and left.

Fenris stood, clenching and unclenching his fists, and stormed off to his bedroll. Anders got the distinct impression that Fenris did not, in fact, read and write Tevene or any language. The four survivors chewed their salty jerky in silence for a time until Varric broke it.

“So Daisy,” Varric changed the topic, “What was that little prayer earlier?”

“It was a song to Sylaise, the Hearthkeeper,” Merrill explained. “Sylaise’s path is called the Vir Atish’an. The way of peace. It’s for healers… I never followed it. The Keeper called my path the ghilan’him banal’vhen… the path that leads astray… I’m glad you’re here with me, Hawke.”

“What do I have to do with your Keeper?” Hawke asked.

“Nothing, really. When you came to ask me for help with Anders last month, even though I was still so mad at him… I was so happy. You didn’t want me. You wanted my magic. The old magic. The magic that everyone has always condemned me for.”

“Rightly so,” Fenris interjected from his bedroll.

“No one asked you,” Merrill hissed. “... I just… Anders was the only other person-... but then he-...”

“I’m sorry, Merrill,” Anders wished he could say something else. Something better. But sorry was all he had.

“I’m just glad you’re here,” Merrill said to Hawke. Anders supposed he deserved to be ignored. “I don’t think I could face the Keeper without you.”

“We’re here to trade,” Hawke reminded her. Wind whistled through the cavern, bringing pollen, and Anders smothered a sneeze into his elbow. Hawke’s face crumpled up like a page from Anders’ manifesto, and he scooted away slightly. “You don’t want to talk to her, don’t talk to her. We’re getting your tool, ink, and ironwood. They get mages.”

“Untrained, unsupervised mages, entrusted to the care of one elderly apostate on cursed ground riddled with demons,” Fenris revised. He looked comfortable, curled up in his blankets and ignorance. “You must truly hate your clan to propose such a trade.”

“Can you just go to sleep?” Merrill demanded.

Fenris grunted, and rolled away from them to face the cavern wall.

“Actually, I think that’s my cue,” Varric said, crawling into his bedroll and under his blanket. “I’ll take you up on that offer, too, Blondie. It’d be nice to have somewhere quiet to get away and just write, every once in a while. Try to keep it to a whisper, would you?”

“I hope it works,” Merrill whispered obediently into the fire. She needn’t have bothered. Varric started snoring almost immediately. “I’m terrified of the task she’ll give me… I just know it will be horrible.”

“She was grateful for the elf kid,” Hawke said.

“Feynriel,” Merrill reminded him.

“And for more mages,” Hawke found Anders’ thigh and Merrill’s shoulder, and squeezed both. “Said it would give your clan an advantage, and that she’d have to repay me. She can make good on it. You don’t need to do anything for her.”

“We’ll see,” Merrill sighed. She looked miserable.

“Are you sure you’re both okay with this?” Anders asked, overcome with the sudden need to self-sabotage in the face of Merrill’s vulnerability. “You weren’t exactly happy your clan took in Feynriel, and I know you still have doubts about … what I’m doing.”

“You’re going to do it anyway,” Hawke said simply.

“It’s not because they took in a mage,” Merrill said. “The clan will need a new First, and a new Second… We take in elves from the cities all the time. But Feynriel… he’s a half-breed. I’m happy for Arianni, but the Keeper was the one who exiled her for falling in love with a human in the first place. She just- She makes me so-... She would never make that kind of exception for me.”

“Learn to live with disappointment,” Hawke said. “That’s all family is.”

“Or,” Anders frowned, reaching across Hawke to take one of Merrill’s hands and squeeze it, “Maybe you find a new one.”

Merrill squeezed back, at least. “Let’s just not stay here any longer than we have to.”

The three of them found their bedrolls. Anders took off his coat, and sat on the one he shared with Hawke, watching the archer untie himself from his armor. Lace after lace came apart under his deft fingers, until he was down to his tunic and trousers. He really did look breath-taking, basked in a mix of orange and sapphire light from fire and lichen. He looked down at Anders, face slightly in shadow save for his lips, framed by his beard like a work of art made for men to worship, and said, “Don't sneeze on me.”

A laugh tangled up with a sigh in Anders’ throat, and came out like a wheeze that must have been too close to a sneeze for Hawke’s comfort, because he took a step back. “I mean it.”

“You can’t stop me,” Anders joked, reaching through to the Fade. A small burst of elemental magic disrupted the earth beneath Hawke’s feet, and sent him stumbling into bed and Anders’ arms.

Anders decided he liked having Hawke above him. Hawke adjusted easily enough, propped up one elbow with only some of his weight on Anders. His free hand wandered, mapping Anders’ body like the most diligent of cartographers, as if he couldn’t afford to miss a single angle or curve. “You always use magic in bed?” Hawke asked, voice low.

“Do you want me to?” Anders whispered back, conjuring static about his fingers and letting it play across Hawke’s lips. It made his eyes flutter, which couldn’t have been a bad thing.

“Not sure,” Hawke said.

“Could you two maybe do that outside?” Merrill’s voice intruded on the moment, “It’s kind of intimate.”

Hawke rolled off him, and Anders rolled onto his shoulder. The unyielding stone beneath him was a stark contrast to the cushioning body of the man beside him. Anders wasn’t sure how he could be expected to sleep. Hawke pulled their blankets over them, and seemed content with his lot. Anders lay awake, thinking of Hawke, the rise and fall of his chest and steady breathing, how easy it would be to unsteady it.

Isabela slept outside. There was no reason they couldn’t. A ripple of irritation pursued the thought, and Anders thought it might be the pollen until he recognized it for Justice, and tried to turn his thoughts elsewhere. The Dalish. He’d have to give some kind of speech to Merrill’s Keeper. Or maybe not. Maybe she really would take as many elves as Anders could get them.

The alternative was Sketch. An elven apostate Anders had never met and was not allowed to meet, who tossed elven mages in with elven servants like a salad of servitude. That wasn’t freedom. Not the kind Anders wanted for them. It could be worse, but it could be better.

A breeze tore through the cavern, and Hawke wrapped his arms around him, their shared body heat fighting back the chill in their shared bedroll. Anders was glad he wasn’t asleep. Congestion and Justice aside, Anders wanted the distraction.

He twisted his head and bore the scratch of Hawke’s beard for a kiss long and languid, sounded by their thready breath and the wet break of their lips. Anders curled his fingers in the thick wool of Hawke’s tunic and breathed in his scent. Rain. Dirt. Ferelden. Home. Calloused hands slid beneath Anders’ tunic and squeezed his hips, and Anders muffled a sound not quite a moan in Hawke’s mouth.

There was no better distraction to be had. Anders broke off him to settle back against his shoulder, and stare at the lichen bleeding blue on the ceiling. “See any constellations?” Anders whispered to keep from waking the others.

Hawke hummed thoughtfully, threading his fingers through Anders’ hair for so long Anders feared he might fall asleep. “Judex,” Hawke decided.

“Where?” Anders demanded, scowling up at the reflection of starlight for its betrayal.

Hawke pointed to the ceiling and traced the outline of the Sword of Mercy until Anders finally saw it. A controlled burst of elemental magic killed the constellation, and rained dust down on them. “Damnit, Anders,” Hawke smothered a laugh into his fist and wrenched the blankets above them to save them from the worst of the ash.

“Well, what were you expecting me to do?” Anders demanded from under the covers.

“Nothing less,” Hawke decided after a pause. Anders found his lips, beneath the covers, and Hawke’s hands slid down from his hips to his ass and squeezed.

Anders’ urgent whimper was swallowed up in their kiss. “Come outside with me,” Anders pleaded; the words fled from his mouth and into Hawke’s. Anders chased them with his teeth, biting Hawke’s bottom lip and sucking until he felt Hawke’s answer pressed hard against his thigh. Anders slid his hand between them to massage Hawke’s cock over his trousers, desperate for the groan that spilled from Hawke’s lips, for how he twitched against his palm, for the involuntary jerk of his hips, “Please.”

Hawke might have been his thrall for the effort it seemed to take from him to catch Anders’ hand and pin it against his chest. “When we’re back,” Hawke promised, breathing hard.

“Why wait?” Anders whined.

“Because,” Hawke squeezed his hand. “You’re not a tryst. This isn’t the Circle. You’re not with the Wardens. You’re just a man, like you said, and you deserve to feel like one. A warm bath. A hot meal. A soft bed. No fighting, no running, no rushing. You’re mine, and I’m going to make you feel how I want you to feel.”

“... How am I supposed to feel?” Anders asked.

“Safe.” Hawke said.

The word wove through him like a spell and twisted up in his heart before flooding his veins, setting every inch of him to shivering. “You’re really okay with this?” Anders asked. “You’re really going to help me free mages? Even though Beth doesn’t want to be free?”

“… Beth got lucky,” Hawke said. “She’s got the First Enchanter looking out for her, thanks to you. You got lucky. If I hadn’t gotten there when I got there… Whatever you want from me, Anders, you have.”

Anders gathered up a handful of Hawke’s tunic with his free hand and tugged, only half-joking, “Just five minutes outside. No one will notice-”

“No.” Hawke said.

“You’re a liar and I hate you,” Anders said, but he slept.

They reached the Dalish encampment the next day without incident. The Dalish made no secret of their presence, assuming one knew enough to follow the cairns to find them. The entrance was a bed of pine needles, lined in blood red banners embroidered with the faces of halla, and lit with lanterns shaped from their horns. The decorations gave a warmer welcome than the Dalish.

They blockaded the entrance to their encampment, arrow upon arrow trained on Hawke’s group as they approached, reflective eyes glinting in the lantern light. Anders traced a glyph of warding into the needles with the butt of his staff while Hawke and Merrill approached, just in case.

“Look,” Isabela nudged him, pointing through the wall of elves to the flecks of red sails beyond, “Elven land ships! Screw sea ships, I want one of those.”

“I don’t think they’re for sale,” Anders noted.

“Everything has a price,” Varric said encouragingly.

“The question is who pays it,” Fenris added.

“Now you’re getting it, Broody,” Varric said.

From up ahead, Hawke made a gesture for them to join. Merrill looked cowed. Her eyes were downcast, shoulders slumped and staff clutched tight to her breast.

“All good, Kitten?” Isabela asked.

“Everyone is staring at me,” Merrill said, “Let’s get this over with.”

Day started earlier on the Sundermount, where the sun could find them, free of Kirkwall and its quarries. It couldn’t have been more than a moment past sunrise, but the Dalish were already up and about. Anders didn’t need to spend more than a minute in the camp to know their lives were infinitely better than the ones lived in Kirkwall’s alienage.

It was a beautiful encampment, for one. Aravels were ringed about the clearing, grand elven land ships like ornately carved wagons, donned with colorful silken hoods. Scattered around them, the trappings of the lives of the elves who lived in them. Pine boxes, wicker baskets, clay pots, all decorated with symbols from the forest. Trees, horns, leaves, and roots.

The Dalish moved about freely. Hunters came in with their early morning kills and traded them off to tanners who skinned and soaked them, who traded them off to cooked, who smoked or dried them. Carpenters, bowysers, metalworkers, loomers, weavers. Everyone seemed to have a place and excel in it.

Screw doing something right. The Dalish did everything right. Anders really needed to take Merrill up on hearing those stories.

Anders bumped into one of them, while he was gawking, and the elf whirled on him, boney finger pressed so close to Anders face it was almost picking his nose. “Watch your step shem! You don’t know how many arrows are trained on you right now!”

“Yes, insult the people who are only here to help,” Anders shot back. “That will work out wonderfully.” Well… Maybe not everything, Anders revised as the elf stormed off. They were about as welcoming as Velanna had made them out to be. Merrill must have been the exception.

Anders found a seat for himself, out of the way, and watched everyone disperse. Varric found the camp’s storyteller and was immediately engrossed. Isabela poked about one of the aravels. Hawke and Merrill went to meet with the Keeper. Anders considered joining them, but the Keeper knew Hawke. She didn’t know Anders. As much as he wanted to make a case for his cause, it was probably better for Hawke to make it for him. Anders tried to trust him.

Fenris came to sit with him, his expression unreadable beneath his silverite wolf helm. Now that Anders actually knew what he looked like beneath it, it seemed more silly than intimidating. “I think if I can take off my scarf, you can take off your helmet.”

“No,” Fenris said, voice tinny beneath his helmet.

“If they were going to ambush us they would have done it already,” Anders surmised.

“Ambush you, perhaps.” Fenris said. “I deal with enough questions from the witch without the Dalish adding to them.”

“I think you’re good. Brace yourself, because no one might have told you this before, but you’re not the most approachable person,” Anders joked. “You know, on account of how you kill most of the people who approach you.”

“You are not as funny as you find yourself,” Fenris said.

“What are you so worried they’ll ask you?” Anders asked.

“You see the irony in this question, I hope,” Fenris said.

“It’ll be more ironic when you tell me,” Anders noted.

“My markings,” Fenris relented. “The witch-”

“Merrill.” Anders supplied helpfully.

“-is constantly asking after them. How they work. How they feel. How Danarius kept them from poisoning me. I did not escape one mage to become beholden to another.”

“Has it occurred to you that maybe ‘the witch’ is asking because she cares about you?” Anders suggested.

“No,” Fenris said.

“Well, I tried.” Anders shrugged and went back to watching the Dalish. The conversation with the Keeper did not appear to be going well, by Merrill’s folded arms and Hawke’s glower. Then again, Hawke only had so many expressions. There was happy glower, sad glower, angry glower, steamy glower, which was any glower… It was hard to tell.

“... She does not care for me,” Fenris said.

“Get under your skin?” Anders shot him a grin.

“You would not be the first,” Fenris joked.

Anders laughed so hard he nearly choked. Maker, but he was dark. Maybe he really didn’t mind Isabela joking about his life as a slave.

“She cares for Bela,” Fenris continued. Nicknames already. Anders was going to have to catch up. ‘Killer’ wasn’t exactly romantic, and Kitten was taken, so Hawke was going to have to do for now. “I am no better than her mirror. A shattered thing to be pieced back together to sate her curiosity.”

“I think her mirror is a bit more important to her than you are,” Anders said. “But you’re in there somewhere, deep down. Deep Roads deep, probably, but still. Merrill only cares about magic when it serves the Dalish. If she’s asking about you… it’s for you.”

Fenris didn’t have a reply. A tiny elf ran up to them, dressed in a tunic he’d dyed brown with mud, and pointed to Fenris’s helmet. “Are you the Dread Wolf?”

“Leave me be,” Fenris snapped.

“Hey!” Anders said loudly, leaping off the box to steer the boy away from Fenris. “What’s your name?”

“Tamlen,” Tamlen said. His face was mostly eyes, his head mostly ears.

“Tamlen,” Anders repeated, kneeling, “He’s a wolf, but he’s not the Dread Wolf, as far as I know.”

“He could be,” Tamlen warned him, “The Dread Wolf is a trickster! He’d never tell you.”

“How do you know I’m not the Dread Wolf?” Anders asked.

Tamlen’s eyes grew so big Anders feared they’d fall off his face, before the boy laughed. “No, you can’t be. You’re a human! ... Are you human?”

“I’m mostly human,” Anders said, letting a bit of veilfire crack his skin.

“Feynriel is mostly human, too,” Tamlen said, not the slightest bit perturbed by the display of magic. Maker, to have such a childhood. “But he’s still one of the People. Is that staff? Are you a mage?”

“I am,” Anders agreed, conjuring a ball of light in his palm for the boy.

Tamlen gawked at it, delighted. “Is it true humans lock up mages?”

“Yes, it’s true,” Anders said.

“Is it true they lock up elves?” Tamlen asked.

Anders reflected on the alienage, and said “Yes, that’s true too.”

“I don’t like humans.” Tamlen decided.

“Humans don’t even like humans,” Anders joked. “Where are your parents, Tamlen?”

“Out hunting,” Tamlen said. “I’m supposed to be listening to Hahren Paivel, but a dwarf is distracting him. Don’t tell the Keeper!”

“Promise,” Anders held a finger to his lips, and Tamlen ran off.

Hawke and Merrill rejoined them, and Anders couldn’t help noticing Fenris’s helmet seemed to point away from her. “You’re good,” Hawke said.

“What’s good?” Anders asked. “I need specifics, remember.”

“She said she’d take them all, and they’d make it work. You just have to get them up the mountain,” Hawke said. “Something about all of the People being for all of the People. Merrill gets her tool, and we get all the ironbark we can carry. The only thing she wouldn’t give up was the ink. Said it was sacred.”

“It’s just ink, really.” Merrill grumbled, kicking at the pine needles littering the ground. “The blood is what makes it sacred. She just wanted to say no to something, even after I gave her real written elvish. Nothing is ever good enough for her.”

“If it’s just ink, then I’ll just get Solivitus ink and he can pay what he pays,” Hawke decided. “Let’s go.”

“Wait, really?” Anders stood up, and Fenris went to fetch Isabela and Varric, “That’s it?”

“One of our hunting parties is missing,” Merrill said. Of course there was a catch. There was always a catch, “They should have come in this morning. She wanted us to find them before she would give us anything.”

“Shouldn’t be hard to track,” Hawke said. He tilted his chin back and looked at Anders like he was trying to get the measure of him. “... Think you could get a bird’s eye view? This’d go faster.”

“You know shapeshifting isn’t Chantry-sanction.” Anders warned him, but by the Maker and all the elven gods, if hearing Hawke finally ask him to use forbidden magic didn’t do things to a man. “In the Circle, they used to say that the Maker made men, ‘immutable as the substance of the earth’ and that was how men should stay.”

“I want you how I want you,” Hawke said, unconcerned.

“He’d have to get undressed,” Merrill said thoughtfully.

Hawke barked, startling a few nearby Dalish, and Anders couldn’t help snorting. It didn’t help any that Merrill looked completely oblivious. She glanced around the encampment and sighed. “... They gave my aravel to Feynriel. Maybe we should go find a cave?”

“I should be fine,” Anders assured her. “I had the Dogs get me some new clothes last week. All wool or leather. I haven’t tested them yet, but I guess now is as good a time as any.”

"What do you mean you haven't tested them?" Hawke asked.

"Well it's a charm," Anders explained, "Like an enchantment. It's more involved than a normal spell. I usually cast it straight from my grimoire, which I don't have, so I'm going off memory. But it worked with my coat, so I guess my memory is pretty good."

"What happens if it's not?" Hawke asked.

"I don't know," Anders admitted. "I turn into a pair of socks?"

"I have enough socks,” Hawke said. “Stay human.”

Their group gathered at the edge of the Dalish encampment, where it dissolved into the forest. Hawke tracked the trail left by the hunters. It might have gone faster with Anders flying overhead, but Hawke wanted him to be careful, so Anders was careful. They took more than a few left turns, and Anders was beginning to suspect Hawke was bullshitting all of them until he called for a halt at the entrance to a cave.

"In there," Hawke said, kneeling to string up his bow. "More tracks go in than come out."

"There's a joke in there somewhere, I just know it," Isabela dusted her hands with dirt and drew her rapier.

"What are we looking at here, Killer?" Varric asked, loading his crossbow. "Ghasts? Wyverns?"

"Humans. Heavy armor." Hawke pointed to a footprint dug into the forest floor. There were no toes, which meant shoes, but the rest was wind to Anders.

"Mercenaries?" Fenris guessed, tapping his feet while he stretched.

"Not sure," Hawke said. "But they're gone and the elves aren't."

"Not elves. People," Merrill corrected him, anxiously wringing her staff, "Pol, Radha, Harshal, and Chandan. They're good hunters. Well… not Pol, but he's worldly. He's lived with humans. He knows how to talk to them."

"We might be speaking past tense here, Kitten," Isabela warned her.

"No!" Merrill said fiercely. "They could have just made camp. Let's hurry."

Hawke led them in darkness. Anders reached across the Veil and pulled on a wisp to hold a ball of light above his staff, illuminating the far recesses of the cave. It almost resembled the streets of Kirkwall, sandstone walls weaving a crooked path down into the depths. Cobwebs emerged, the deeper they dived.

Small things, at first, like little snowflakes hung up on spindles of thread. They grew into snowballs, from snowballs to icicles, from icicles to an avalanche of silk. Hawke sighed so long and so hard he ran out of breath. “Spiders. Why does it always have to be spiders?”

Anders inhaled mana, and exhaled fire. The silk wall dissolved into ash, painting the sandstone in grey. The makeshift snow wasn't the only thing that fell from the ceiling. Giant flaming spiders joined it, hissing their fury.

Oops. Well… that was one way to start a fight.

“Fuck!” Hawke screamed and loosed an arrow down the throat of the first to hit the floor.

Anders channeled an aura of aptitude and carved out a glyph of repulsion beneath Varric’s feet. A spider tackled Isabela, and caught her buckler between its fangs, wrenching violently back and forth. Anders heard a crack, and Isabela screamed. A root tore up from the ground and tangled around the spider’s head, twisting tighter and tighter until it popped like a pimple, a stream of black blood painting the cavern wall.

“Varric, Anders, cover Isabela,” Hawke recovered enough to order, “Fenris, forward. Merrill, give us a chokehold.”

A wall of roots sprang up, creating a narrow passage down the center of the cavern Fenris and Hawke planted themselves in. A few spiders managed to skitter in along the ceiling before Merrill finished. Anders carved another glyph of repulsion beneath Isabela and joined her in it, trusting Merrill and Varric to finish them.

The Veil was so thin this high up on the Sundermount it didn't feel like he was summoning Justice so much as becoming him. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. Veilfire split along his palms as he untangled the shattered buckler from Isabela’s arm and set it aside. Bone broke through skin at her forearm, as white as the smile Isabela flashed him through the pain. “I guess I do need you riding in on your spirit to protect me after all.”

“We are here for you,” Anders promised, “Sleep.”

He cast the spell with the command, and Isabela slept. An open fracture was no dislocated elbow. Anders couldn’t just wrench it back into place. He unwound some of the leather on his staff, fashioned a tourniquet on her arm, and went to work. It was a slow process, traction. The split bone and marrow sunk back into rent muscle, bubbling with blood and stopping him every time he came into resistance, until it finally set. His magic knit bone back together, followed by muscle, followed by skin.

The fight was over when Anders woke her. One solitary spider yet lived, pinned to the ceiling by a bolt through its thorax. It hung above them, legs twitching, spitting poison fury until Hawke put an arrow through its head.

“Need we go further?” Fenris asked, “Is this encounter not answer enough these hunters are dead?”

“We have to find them,” Merrill said. “Even-... even if they’re gone. We have to bring their amulets back to the Keeper for their families.”

They continued, Anders with strict instructions not to set fire to any cobwebs they passed. They were maybe fifty paces in when the wailing started.

“... This is place is Setheneran. Do you think a spirit got through?” Merrill asked.

“Maybe,” Anders said. “The Veil is thin enough.”

“Demons,” Fenris said flatly. “Lovely.”

“Merrill, take point,” Hawke ordered. “Anders, more light.”

Merrill moved to the front of their group, and Anders added a second wisp to his spell. The wailing grew louder, the further they went. A vibration accompanied it, deep, erratic thrums that seemed to come from the Sundermount itself. It was a wretched sound - dark and keening like a death knell. As if the mountain itself were in mourning.

The passageway opened up into a massive cavern, where a creature was pacing over the bodies of three Dalish. It was as large as a dragon, and vaguely resembled one, save that it seemed built from bark. The spindly beast’s back was almost to the ceiling. It stumbled about on legs like massive tree trucks, a webbing of leather connecting them to its narrow body. It reminded Anders of an Envy demon, its head swaying back and forth from one Dalish to the next, but there was no malice in its motions.

Two of its five legs were missing, as was an arm and an eye. It’s one surviving arm hung low, occasionally nudging one of the lifeless hunters like a desperate child trying to shake long dead parents awake. It stumbled over on its broken feet and crashed into the ground, crawling to rest its head on the nearest Dalish, its threnody shaking the mountain.

“Well shit,” Varric said.

“What-no-... how-” Merrill bit back a sob.

“Merrill wait-!” Hawke called too late. Merrill was gone, bolting into the cavern. She skidded to her knees at the body of the closest elf, but the creature paid her no mind. It seemed more concerned with lamenting its loss than causing more.

“...Why-... how did this happen?” Merrill bent over the body, shoulders shaking, “Oh Harshall… I’m so sorry. I’ll tell Ineria for you.”

“And so we have our answer,” Fenris said. “This thing has ended them.”

“No!” Merrill whirled on him, her green eyes rimmed in red, “It’s a varterral. It would never… They’re bound to the People. It would never hurt a Dalish. It can’t. It’s magic.”

“Because no magic ever went awry,” Fenris snorted.

“You’re not helping,” Isabela hissed, taking a cautious step into the cavern. The varterral twitched like an upside down spider, and flailed to its feet, screaming fury.

“Out!” Fenris grabbed her and dragged her back into the passageway.

The varterral’s head reared back, and Anders wasn’t going to wait to see what came out of its mouth. “Look out!” Anders conjured a barrier and dragged Varric and Hawke into it. Caustic poison flew, and his barrier shimmering when it splattered against it. It burned through rock, and sandstone, and Anders didn’t want to find out what it did to flesh.

“Merrill, get out of there!” Anders yelled.

“Time to go, Daisy!” Varric added.

“It won’t hurt me,” Merrill said dispassionately, standing. “I need to get their amulets…”

“Damnit-...” Hawke muttered through grit teeth as the three of them stumbled backwards, out of the varterral's range and sight of Merrill. “Anders, can you?”

“I can try,” Anders supposed. This was their task, after all. If Anders wanted the Dalish to take in mages, he had to complete it. He’d faced a dragon. What was a varterral?

“Wait,” Isabela grabbed his pack, and wrenched him back by it. “Just trust her.”

“Yes, trust the blood mage, what-” Fenris started.

“Shhhpssshhhh,” Isabela covered his mouth with her hand. Fenris shoved her hand off, frowning, but went silent. “If she says it won’t hurt her, it won’t hurt her. It only got pissy when I got involved. Hawke, please.”

“... Alright,” Hawke said.

So they waited. Varric paced, wringing his hands so much he dislodged his prosthetic and had to realign it. Hawke and Fenris stood, backs to the cavern wall, arms folded. Isabela sat, patient, trusting, foolish. Anders had been her, a lifetime ago. He knew what it was like to wait for a friend who was never coming back. He worried at his earring for the span of two heart beats and broke.

“Fuck this, I’m getting her out of there,” Anders reached through the Veil and pulled on the spirit that waited for him there, flooding his veins, splitting his skin, burning through his eyes and painting his world in sapphire. “Merrill!” Anders yelled with Justice’s echo, running back into the cavern and straight into her as she left it.

“I found this,” Merrill said, her voice as lifeless as the hunters. She pressed a dagger into Anders’ hands, blind to the fire that split them. “... in Chandan’s back… Poor Tamlen… both his parents...”

Anders turned the blade over in his hands, a chantry sunburst engraved into its hilt. “... Templars.”

“... Were they mages?” Fenris asked.

“No,” Merrill said.

“Does it matter?” Anders demanded.

“What are templars doing on the mountain?” Varric asked… someone. It wasn't like any of them would know. It wasn’t like templars needed a reason. “Since when do templars hunt Dalish? That’s just asking for a war. What’s changed?”

“I have,” Merrill said, staring down at her hands and the three amulets dangling from them, “I’m in the alienage… They were looking for me.”

“Kitten…” Isabela reached out to her, but Merrill flinched back.

“You don’t know that,” Hawke said. “Don’t this make this about you.”

“Who else would it be about?” Merrill demanded.

“... What about the kid?” Varric offered. “Feynriel. Thrask warned us they’d keep looking for him.”

“You don’t know that either,” Hawke said. “Stop borrowing trouble. We need to get back.”

“What about the templars?” Anders asked.

“What about them?” Hawke said.

“We can’t just leave them out there,” Anders gripped the dagger so tightly the leather creaked, “These were innocent people, and templars killed them for the crime of knowing a mage!”

“I don’t think anyone is suggesting that, Blondie,” Varric said, but Varric didn’t understand. Varric wasn’t a mage. He wasn’t oppressed. He was a prince. He lived a life of luxury never fearing that the people who knocked down his door would bring worse than words.

“I was,” Isabela said, “We don’t know what happened here. You found a dagger. It happens to have a sunburst on it. That doesn’t mean whoever was wielding it was a templar. Hawke has a sunburst on his necklace, and Hawke’s not a templar.”

“Not about me,” Hawke said, covering Anders’ clenched fist with his own, “Don’t make it about you. Elves-… People are dead. It’s about them. Clan should know.”

Anders shook him off, “This was an injustice! It cannot go unanswered!”

“Last time you answered an injustice you nearly died,” Hawke argued, “What if they have more of those brands?”

“The mage is right,” Fenris said. “Better to deal with it now than live with a wolf at your back. We should track them down.”

“No, what are you doing? You’re supposed to be on my side,” Isabela pushed Fenris in no particular direction, “Look, has it occurred to you that there is no justice in the world? Other than that voice you keep in your head?”

“… They have Pol,” Merrill said suddenly, a hint of color that wasn’t tattooed into her flesh returning to her, “… They must. He wasn’t with the others.”

“We will save him,” Anders shoved the dagger into Hawke’s hands and started for the entrance.

He didn’t run, but the pace he set was a pace for Wardens, and there were none with him now. He heard the clatter of Hawke’s quiver as the man ran after him and couldn’t help the veilfire that burned in his palm when Hawke caught it. It spread up his arm and into his chest, flaring to life in his heart. “Anders, stop! Think, if templars did this-“

“Enough!” Justice whirled on him, dropping Anders’ pack. “You would counsel caution when a man’s life hangs in the balance! You are a distraction – Anders spends more time convincing of you of the need for justice than working in the pursuit of it. He has no need of you!”

The human released him. Justice saw them from the cave and Anders saw them into the sky. Sundermount shrunk as a crow soared above it, surveying ruins and the pines that sprouted from them. Men of metal were below, somewhere in the twisting trails and treks; it was just for the crow to find them. It circled high and low, weaving with the wind until it caught a glint of something reflecting off the sun.

The crow perched in a tree at the edge of a clearing. Men of metal had made their nest within it, madder root red tents encircling a fire. A half-dozen templars milled about it, sharpening swords and polishing armor. Beside the fire, two of them held an elf. He was naked, save for an amulet and the ropes binding his arms and legs. His skin was a pale pink, his hair a gentle ginger, his feet an ugly black. The templars swung them out over the fire, laughing.

“Talk, knife-ear, before we burn the other end,” One of the templars ordered.

Anders fell on them. He didn’t remember the fight. He remembered the storm.

His arms alit with lightning, and his fist shattered through a silver sword of mercy to clutch the blackened heart beneath it. Each electric pulse forced another beat from the dead man’s body, twitching and seizing in Anders’ arms as his blood turned to fire and fuel and fury. The first templar to recover and come for him melted mid-charge. The molten silverite liquified flesh and evaporated blood.

The red haze choked the encampment and all within it. Never again would a brand touch their skin. Never again would they be torn asunder. Never again would they suffer a templar to live. The ground quaked, and split with fissures, spitting fire and ice, and all was red and blue.

Anders stood in the bloody abattoir of his victory, when it was over, breathing hard and holding a charred heart in his hand. The encampment was gone. The earth had swallowed it. Tent poles jutted out of the bent and broken ground at odd angles, charred bits of fabric fluttering with the pollen in the wind. Anders sneezed red. He tasted copper. He dropped the heart, coughing, and spat out a bit of… something.

Something he didn’t want to think about. His legs hurt, and Anders slid to the ground beside the frozen body of a templar. Their eyes were sludge, icy chunks melting from their sockets down a face so purple it was almost black. Anders looked away from it, rolling up his pant legs and rolling down his socks to look at his feet. His boots fell apart with the motion, the laces…

Maker, the laces. They were woven into his legs like stitches, some bit of his charm gone horribly wrong. Anders tugged on one and winced. They were thicker than stitches, and didn’t come out as easily. They’d have to wait. He was here for a reason… for something…

For Pol. For Merrill’s friend. Anders looked around the encampment, but the bound elf was nowhere to be seen. Anders dragged himself through the wreckage, climbing over the faults left by his earthquake, calling out every so often. “Pol? Pol, where are you? It’s safe now.”

Anders found the elf at the bottom of a crevasse, his feet burnt down to the bone, staring sightlessly up at the sky.

… Damnit.

Anders slid down, taking care not to fall on him. He looked … lost. Like he’d woken up a little too early, before the day was ready for him, and he had to face it alone. Anders looped Pol’s bound arms around his neck and climbed back out. It was a struggle to the top, but somehow he made it, even with the mess his magic had made of his feet. At least Anders still had his, not melted to marrow by a templar’s malice.

Anders couldn’t find the elf’s clothes. He searched the camp for something to substitute for modesty, and ended up pulling down a few scraps of tent. Anders laid them out over Pol, sat beside him, and waited. He pulled out the laces from his left leg and was working on his right when Hawke and the others found him.

Merrill ran to Pol. Hawke ran to him. Anders didn’t deserve it. Not after what Justice had to said to him, but Hawke was there, pushing Anders’ blood-soaked hair back from his forehead, anxious red eyes searching Anders own. “Any of this yours?” Hawke asked.

Anders shook his head. The others hung back. Anders didn’t blame them.

“Anders, do something,” Merrill begged, cradling Pol’s naked body to her chest. “Help him,”

“I’m sorry, Merrill,” Anders said.

“Heal him!” Merrill shrieked; Pol’s arm flopped limply against her side as she rocked him back and forth. “You have to - all of this – all of this death and you can’t…? You have to heal him!”

“He’s gone, Merrill,” Anders said. “I’m sorry.”

Isabela took a tentative step forward and seemed emboldened when no varterral burst forth from the wreckage to chase her back. She sat at Merrill’s side while she wept, saying nothing. Varric and Fenris joined her and did the same.

“… They tortured him,” Anders said eventually. “For information. Whatever it was… he didn’t give it up. He died bravely.”

“As if the way one died mattered,” Fenris muttered.

Merrill sniffed and laid Pol out on the ground, “When death is all there is, it matters.”

“Get his amulet,” Hawke said. “Let’s go.”

They walked back to the camp in silence.

Chapter 98: Abstention and Absolution

Summary:

In which there is no abstention and no absolution.

Notes:

I appreciate any comments / bookmarks / kudos / subscriptions. Thank you for reading.

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon 22 Pluitanis Mid-Day
Sundermount: Sabrae Clan Encampment

News of the hunters' fate hit hard. The clan seemed determined to make it hit Merrill harder. They blamed her for everything from the hunters’ deaths to the Blight, and they meant the latter literally. Apparently her mirror had had it once, much like the staff Anders had found in Kal’Hirol, and had spread it to the clan, killing Tamlen’s namesake. Ironically, they seemed to care more for the dead Tamlen than the living one.

Anders watched the boy run off at the news of his parents’ deaths and not even the Keeper followed him. "It is the way of men, da'len," The wizened old elf said simply. She reminded Anders of an old willow tree, great and grand, failing and frail. "I will return their amulets to their families."

Their group dispersed to gather up the supplies they were promised, save for Anders. The Keeper raised an eyebrow at him, wrinkles cracking like bark across her skin, "Do you need healing, da'len?" She asked with a gesture to Anders' mangled leg.

"No, I'm all stitched up," Anders joked rather than look at his right leg. He'd gotten as far as rolling up his pant leg and taking off his sock, but hadn’t had a chance to heal it. He’d developed a limp on the walk back to the camp that was like to be permanent if he didn't see to it soon. "Not to make this about me, but… what does this mean for us?"

"For us?" The Keeper repeated, tilting her head. Silver hair spilled over her shoulder like withered vines, crinkled green eyes belying little, "Of course, you mean the mages. What do templars always mean, da'len?"

"I don't know," Anders hated riddles.

"Neither do they," The Keeper said. "Or they would not fear us so. You need not worry. When I say we will take them all, I mean we will take them all. I would not turn away one of the People."

You turned away Merrill, Anders wanted to say but didn’t. "What if more templars come? I can't promise you'll be safe."

"I did not ask you to," The Keeper said. "We are the last of the Elvhenan, never again shall we submit. Next time, we will be ready. Merrill tells me you found a varterral in the mountains. It will serve to protect the clan."

It didn't protect the hunters. "What if it's not enough?" Anders asked.

"Then I will be," The Keeper said.

What choice did he have but to trust her?

Anders found an out of the way place for himself in the ruins outside of the encampment. It wasn't the most ideal hospice, but then neither were the sewers. The only real difference was this one had a less than ideal aide. Tamlen was there, the tiny elf a shuddering bundle of knobby knees and drooping ears.

He started when Anders sat in the grass beside him, two big eyes filled with rivers the wrong kind of red.

“Hey,” Anders said gently.

“Hi,” Tamlen sniffed, looking at Anders’ leg. “Your leg is gross.”

“Yeah,” Anders agreed. His calf had swollen on the walk, as if to accommodate the thick sutures that had become of his laces. All in all, Anders supposed he should count himself lucky it was the only part of his charm that had failed. It could have been the whole boot. It could have been his small clothes. “It’s okay, though. I can heal gross things.”

“What about dead things?” Tamlen asked.

“I’m afraid not,” Anders gave the boy a smile, “But I had a friend once who could bring the dead back to life.”

“You did!?” Tamlen’s tears stopped, “How did they do it?”

“Magic,” Anders explained. “But it didn’t bring back souls - just bodies.”

“... I wish I could do that,” Tamlen told his knees, which seemed to shrug at their shortcomings, “... just for a hug.”

Anders set a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and turned it into a hug when he didn’t flinch. “It’s okay to be sad.”

“I’m not sad,” Tamlen said, but his tears begged to differ, “I’m angry.”

“It’s okay to be angry too,” Anders aimed to pet the boy’s hair, but his ears got in the way, and Anders ended up bending them about on accident.

“They left me,” Tamlen muttered.

“They left to go hunting,” Anders said. “They didn’t leave to die. Sometimes death just happens, and it’s okay to be angry, because it’s not supposed to be fair. It’ll never be fair, because you’ll never deserve what happened.”

Tamlen sniffled, and his nose scrunched up into his eyes. “Your leg smells.”

“Well, you can sit with me and my smelly leg, or you can sit with your clan,” Anders said, “But you can’t sit alone. Do you want to go back to the Keeper, and let her know you’re okay?”

Tamlen ultimately decided on his clan. Anders turned his attention back to his mutilated leg and the laces leaking from it. He took hold of one and pulled. The string slithered beneath his skin like a tapeworm, coming free with a wet sort of hiss and burning the skin it passed through. Anders endured. Tamlen’s parents hadn't. It could have been worse.

Somehow, someway, somereason, Fenris found him. The elf squatted next to him, watching without comment until Anders couldn't take it anymore. "What?" Anders demanded.

"Did you kill him?" Fenris asked.

"Kill who?" Anders asked.

"Pol," Fenris took off his helmet; for once, he wasn't scowling beneath it. "The Dalish."

"What kind of monster -?" Anders started, "Why would you even ask me that?"

"He is dead," Fenris said, as if that was all the confirmation he needed. "You were there."

"So I must have killed him?" Anders couldn't believe he thought he'd been making progress with the man. He tugged too hard on the lace in his frustration, and bit back a curse at the pain that shot up his leg. "Where do you get off?"

"Do you remember?" Fenris asked. "Are you sure?"

… No.

"Fuck you," Anders snapped, shuffling about on his ass to face away from the accusations. It wasn't quite as dramatic as storming off, but he didn't have many options.

"It was a question. Not a condemnation." Fenris said calmly. "The others will not understand if you did."

"... what are you trying to say?" Anders twisted to look at him again. Really look at him. Fenris was squatting on the balls of his feet, helmet looped under his arm, looking at Anders like he was a corpse he'd stumbled across, and he was sad to find him that way. "Are you saying that if I accidentally killed an innocent man in a frenzy, that what? That you're okay with that?"

"No," Fenris said. "Nor should you be."

"Great, well, thanks for clearing that up," Anders waved the bloody lace at him. "You can leave now."

Fenris left.

It ate at Anders on the walk back to Kirkwall. Chewing at his feet, licking at his palms, gnawing at his guts. He thought back to the storm. The inferno. The earthquake. The corrosive miasma of blood. Pol. His feet. The blackened bones dripping melted marrow and losing toes as Anders dragged him to the surface.

No.

The templars had killed him. Anders had killed the templars.

Anders lay awake that night in the cave, where the lichen hid its constellations from the jealous sky. He'd burned Judex from the cluster, but it lingered when he closed his eyes, the luminous upside down sword rendering its guilty verdict.

It wouldn't be his first horror.

Anders couldn't sleep. He left the cave, and found himself a quiet grove to wash the gore from his clothes. The water came away red. Always red. No matter the magic. No matter the race. Anders swore he tasted copper. He sneezed, spat, and sneezed again. The memory smelled, even through his own snot. Burnt flesh, soiled trousers, upturned earth. The heart in his hand. The thing in his mouth. The rent limbs and eaten flesh.

Templars.

He’d killed the templars.

They continued down the mountain in the morning, following the cairns back to the Imperial Highway. The ancient road skirted the Planasene Forest, and ran along the Wounded Coast. They had to cross it to reach the warrens into the city if they were to avoid the main gates, and they had to avoid the main gates.

"Why?" Merril had asked, all too eager to be back in the city. "Don't we look like lumbermen? With all the lumber?"

"Lumbermen look a bit less dangerous, Daisy," Varric had said. "Less armor. More axes."

"Ironwood's not wood." Hawke had added, "Don't need anyone else knowing about your clan."

Trading with the Dalish wasn't exactly frowned upon, but it wasn't exactly smiled upon either. It was more... suspicious-squinted-upon, and the last thing Anders needed with the templars hunting him was suspicious squinting.

They took the warrens into the city, to a carpenter's shop in Hightown, who traded sovereigns easier than Hawke traded words. Hawke passed out their cuts, and they dispersed.

Anders may have had the Keeper's support, but it wasn't over. The Redwaters had made everything so easy. Out of the Gallows, onto a ship. Race was irrelevant. Without a staff, a mage was just a man. But until Anders could get Selby on board with Martin and find a new ship, the mages they freed stayed in Kirkwall, the City of Chains, where the name said it all.

After the riots, the poison, the murders… elves were noticed. Fenris and Isabela kept to the shadows when they split for his mansion. Varric escorted Merrill back to the alienage. The elven prison was guarded by guards and templars alike, but with the latter attacking the Dalish, would mages really be safer on Sundermount than in the Gallows?

… what was he supposed to tell Selby?

… what was he supposed to tell Merrill?

Nothing. Nothing because the templars were dead and Anders had killed them and only them.

Anders barely noticed Hawke maneuver him into an alley behind the carpenter's shop. The narrow pathway put even the richest streets of Lowtown to shame, affording everything but comfort. It was almost grotesque in its opulence, lined in vibrant rose trellises, with corroded copper drains breaking up the marbled gutters, as if even the nobles’ piss deserved a royal welcome into the sewers.

Hawke didn’t belong here. If Anders deserved better than Darktown, Hawke deserved better than Hightown.

"You good?" Hawke asked.

"Good with what?" Anders wondered what kind of expression he was making to warrant the question.

“Your feet,” Hawke elaborated, gesturing to the blackened socks Anders had all but walked off on the way back from Sundermount. “You’re not an elf. You don’t have the skin for it. How are you taking it?”

“I can take a lot,” Anders shrugged. He took a moment to think about what he’d said, and decided it warranted a grin, but he didn’t have it in him.

“Doesn’t mean you should,” Hawke said, “You need new boots?”

“Franke’ll spot me,” Anders said. “He owes me an ale.”

“Ale’s a copper, shoes like yours cut a sovereign.” Hawke said.

“Then it’s a good thing my cut is a sovereign,” Anders joked mirthlessly. Without his shoes to put it in it, Anders had no choice but to spend it. He’d stuffed the leather remnants of his boots into his pack and it wouldn’t cost much for Franke to put them back together.

If only his magic could have done the same for Pol.

“I’ll be fine,” Anders promised, “You don’t need to worry.”

“Yes I do,” Hawke pushed a stray strand of Anders’ hair under his scarf. Something about him looked off. He was still missing teeth, and the scar on his lips broke up any twist to them, “Damned reckless of you to go after those templars. They could have had brands.”

“But they didn’t,” Anders caught his hand and kissed it, trying to place what was wrong with him, “Don’t borrow trouble.”

“You are trouble,” Hawke said. “Don’t need to borrow it. Get what you need from the Dalish?”

… he was smiling. He looked off because he was smiling.

"... Yeah," Anders said cautiously. Smiles. What was next? Full sentences? "I did. I'm good. I thought I would go check on some friends. Let them know how it went."

“When are we getting the rest of your friends?” Hawke asked. “The kid and the wife?”

“When we can,” Anders said. He didn’t want to think about it. If Orsino or Bardel couldn’t get Alain and Grace out... then they couldn’t get them out. There were others they could save in the meantime. “I have to take who I can get for now. This helped. Really… thank you for your support. I’ll see you tonight? Should I bring anything? Wine? Chocolate? Flowers?”

“Thought you said you didn’t need any flowers,” Hawke said.

“You might,” Anders had to force his smile before he felt it.

“Don’t,” Hawke said. “Wouldn’t know what to do if you did.”

“It’s not that complicated, you just eat the flowers and water the chocolate,” Anders joked.

Hawke laughed, and squeezed the hand Anders had forgotten he was still holding, “Sunset. Hanged Man. Don’t be late.”

Anders’ smile left with Hawke. He hurried to Franke’s shop in crumbling socks that came apart as fast as his composure. Hawke was right. He wasn't an elf. His feet were in agony, more blister than callous, and his conscience felt much the same.

It wasn't right. After Velanna, Nate, Karl… Anders should have been able to weather Pol, but the fear festered, rubbing its way into his thoughts like an ever growing pustule, and Maker help him when it burst.

Franke would take his mind off it. The cobbler had finally saved enough from working at the tanners to rent out his own space at the edge of the foundries. It wasn't the markets, but Anders couldn't say if that was for or against Franke's favor.

It was mid-day, and the market was making use of the light that breached the sunken quarries. Marchers flooded the streets, an undulating mass of cutpurses and customers. Shopkeeps moved like serpents, snatching up any who strayed too close to the edge. Stalls blended seamlessly with shacks, making it impossible to tell which was which, save for the vendors that burst out of them. Each one was worse than the last.

"Real bread! No sawdust!" One sawdust covered merchant cried, shoving a loaf at Anders as he walked past.

"Fresh fish!" Promised another, smelling of anything but and waving whitefish at him, "Real crab!"

"Healing potions!" Called a third, hoking horseshit, or near enough by the bottle's color, "Cures chokedamp! Don't go back to Darktown without it!"

Something in him forced Anders to a halt. Something ancient. Something angry. Their soul suffered for sophistical sins. They agonized over lives others so flagrantly disregarded. This merchant, this miser, would undo all they had wrought. No potion nor poultice held such power. As if they could be bottled.

Anders clutched at the bridge of his nose. Maker, he didn't need this. Not now. Not with the quarries wallpapered with his likeness, and rabid templars substituting for guards in a gang ruled city. He just wanted to fix his shoes so he could go back to Hawke in them.

"Healing potion, serah?" The merchant pressed, scuttling like a roach to the edge of his stall where Anders had stopped, "Summer's coming. Chokedamp'll be getting worse soon. Cures the gripe and the cough too!"

“You have to stop,” Anders muttered, pushing the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I know we’re upset, but you have to stop.”

“Headache, serah?” The merchant guessed, “My potions will fix you right up!”

“What’s in it?” Anders shouldn’t have asked. He should have left. He had to leave.

“Only the finest of herbs!” The merchant cooed, holding the vial out to him like a proud parent might a child. “Prophet’s Laurel! Dawn Lotus!”

“Elfroot?” Anders supplied. His head swam, and he saw spots like sapphire stars as the merchant continued.

“Ah-yes!” The merchant stumbled, “Of course! Plenty of elfroot! Buy two! Save one for summer, for the chokedamp!”

“How much?” Anders asked.

“You could buy it for a song!” The merchant gave a flourishing little bow from behind his counter, and gathered up a few more vials from a box he must have kept at his feet, “A fair price to save a life-”

“How much!?” The counter shattered. Anders hadn’t meant for it to shatter, but the wood came apart like wind at his rage. The merchant jumped back, vials clattering at his feet. A few broke in his mad scramble; the smell of rotten flesh and overripe tomatoes spoke of nightshade and henbane. “How much are you charging the desperate, the despondent, the downtrodden!? What is the price of their lives?”

Anders grabbed the merchant by his collar when he tried to flee, and lifted him off his feet. “How much!?”

“T-t-t-twenty six silver,” The merchant stammered, gripping Anders’ wrist to keep from choking. “Please-I just-” His tunic ripped, and he landed on his ass amidst the broken vials. “Just trying to make a living, messere. Mercy-I.. “

Anders stared at the frayed bit of linen in his hand, so threadbare it was almost see through despite the stains. The merchant was just as desperate. Just as downtrodden. They couldn’t - “Who are you with?”

“I’m just-”

“Who are you with!?” Justice shattered the rest of the vials with a blast from the Fade.

“Friends of Kirkwall!” The merchant said quickly. “People get hooked. That’s all. It just gets them hooked, it doesn’t kill them-”

“You are a merchant of deceit and dishonor, purveying draughts of death!” Justice snarled, “The blood of innocents is on your hands. It is not the chokedamp which kills them, it is their trust in you! How many have you sold?”

“I-... I don’t-” The merchant swallowed.

“How many!?”

“I don’t know! A few dozen.”

“You will find these lost souls, you will tell them of your lies, and you will send them to the green lantern in Darktown.” Justice caught the scrabbling merchant by his jaw and forced his gaze back to him, “You will atone.”

“Okay-Yes! I’ll go-I’ll tell them!” The merchant promised - words once hollow filled with truth.

“These Friends of Kirkwall, how are they known?” Justice asked.

“The old tevinter heraldry,” The merchant said. Justice let him go, and the merchant bolted from his stall.

Anders stayed where Justice left him, kneeling in a broken stall in broken glass, the puddle left by the potions seeping into his socks. Maker, why couldn’t they just let it go? He wasn’t ready to turn around and face the scores of templars and guards that had to be waiting for him at the commotion. This didn’t help Pol. It didn’t help Alain, or Grace, or anyone. There was always going to be some poor bastard duping some other poor bastard.

Maybe Anders was the poor bastard. If he couldn’t control himself around a simple charlatan, could he honestly say he’d controlled himself around the templars?

“That was some shit,” Someone said from behind him. Anders turned around to a face full of Dog, and felt an undeserved rush of relief. Two thugs with hair, skin, and eyes in varying shades of dirt smiled down at him, “Serves him right, yeah?”

“Bree,” Anders waved limply. “Sabin. Any guards?”

“Haven’t seen any all day,” Sabin said, his eyes the closest thing to orange in sight, “Bastard says they have something big planned. Think they’re going for Kanky, with how Stannis is cracking down at the docks. You hear the Redwaters split?”

“I heard,” Anders pulled his scarf up over his nose, and poked his head out of the stall. Everything was brown. From the walls, to the crowds, to the merchants. No orange. No purple. “What are you doing here?”

“Making friends,” Bree’s chipped grin was almost as much a comfort as the lack of guards. “Ain’t right, what they been slinging. Last month it was Andraste’s Ashes. This month it’s healing potions. Next month’ll be a poultice of piss. I’ll tell the Bastard you got here first, yeah? You got the blood of a Dog, Anders.”

“A feral one, maybe,” Anders picked up a piece of the broken counter, and ultimately set it back down when it didn’t puzzle itself back together. Nothing was ever so simple. “I didn’t mean to do this. I just-... how heartless do you have to be to sell counterfeit healing potions?”

“Don’t feel bad, yeah?” Bree said, “No one lives long without one.”

“Ain’t your fault,” Sabin agreed, “Friends of Kirkwall are friends of no one. You should come by the Den later. Last clash with the Coterie weren’t pretty. Your mages what joined us are nice and all, but they’re no healers.”

“The Coterie is bothering you?” Anders frowned, “I told them not to give you trouble,” Well, maybe not in so many words, but he’d told the Coterie he wouldn’t stop healing the Dogs, so what was the point of fighting? “I’ll tell them to back off.”

“You got sway with the Coterie?” Sabin’s pupils ate up the orange of his eyes, as if even the color couldn’t be trusted with such talk, “How’s that possible?”

“He’s the Healer,” From how Bree said it, Anders might have been the only one in all of Thedas, “He’s got sway with everyone. You need an escort? Where you headed?”

“Franke’s,” Anders said.

He didn’t need the escort, but the walk took away some of his woes. Franke’s shop was about the size of a shoe. It smelled aggressively of leather and feet, and the walls were panelled in half-finished boots. A cramped workstation was covered in an array of tools Anders didn’t know the names for but vaguely reminded him of torture devices. The Dogs sniffed at them and fled.

Franke went to work on his boots. The repairs cost him nothing, save for the energy it took to follow along with one of Franke's stories. Anders sat in a portable bootblack chair Franke rolled up to Hightown on occasion, massaging the blisters on his feet. The story was something about something. Anders heard the words 'feet' and 'dandelion' and 'cranberry' but it was hard to listen to anything other than the angry voice in his head.

"But carriages are just like that, yeah?" Franke paused, and looked at him for a response.

"...yeah?" Anders agreed?

"... you know what I just said?"

"Carriages are just like that?" Easy.

"Afore that."

Feet. Cranberries. Anders flipped a mental coin. "... something about dandelions?"

"You got something on your mind?" Franke guessed, "Something to do with how your boots peeled off your feet like bananas?"

Anders eyed Franke’s workstation, wondering how much he should even tell him. The first time Franke had thought him guilty of murder the cobbler had stabbed him, and a few of his tools looked suspiciously close to knives.

Then again, at least if it was Franke Anders would know he deserved it. "I threatened someone," Anders confessed, "On the way over here. And not with a good time."

Franke dropped his grin and his tools, turning to face him on his stool, "... they have it coming?"

"They were selling this addictive poison,” Anders explained, “Passing it off as potions…"

"So they did?"

"The new gang put them up to it. Friends of Kirkwall, the ones who replaced the Sharps."

"So they didn't?"

"I don't know." Anders ran a weary hand through his hair. "... maybe. He was just trying to make a living."

"Franke's making a living, yeah?” Franke grinned. It was a big grin. It stretched his lips, puffed his cheeks, crinkled his eyes, until it didn’t fit on his face and Anders had to share. “Sounds like he was making a killing."

Anders snorted, "I'm not a Dog. I should have… I don't know, reasoned with him. I was just so angry."

"Something get you that way?" Franke asked.

"What doesn't make me angry lately?” Anders picked at a blister on his toe, thinking of Pol, Dec, Beth, Karl. “Every time I get something in this city, I lose something else. I wasn't even in the city this time… "

"Can you get it back?"

"No."

"Then it's gone,” Franke said. “You go with it, or you go forward, yeah?"

"Yeah,” It sounded like something Hawke would say. It wasn’t absolution, but maybe Anders shouldn’t have been looking for it in the first place. “Thanks, Franke."

Anders stopped by the packaging house to share the news of the Dalish with the Collective. He left out the part about the templars and asked Selby to set up a meeting with Bardel. He couldn't just speculate. He had to know why they were there.

He spent the rest of the day in his clinic with Terrie. The merchant must have made good on his promise, because a few unwitting addicts trickled in, Thom among them. "We thought it would help if I had another attack, in case I couldn't get to you in time. We thought the Friends were different. Should have known a gang is just a gang."

Eventually the patients slowed. Terrie went home. Sunset came and went. Anders stayed in his clinic, warring with himself. He should be rooting out these Friends of Kirkwall and calling them to task on their abuses. Except that was the exact line of thinking that created the Friends of Kirkwall in the first place. If Aveline had just left well enough alone they'd still have the Sharps.

Better the spirit you knew than the demon you didn't. Besides, tonight was supposed to be for him. For Hawke. A man beholden to the very institution Anders wanted to destroy. By Hawke's own admission he would never pick him over his sister, and if their work with the Collective bore fruit that day would surely come. They shouldn't be wasting time with him.

"I know you don't like him," Anders said to himself, pacing new gutters into the floor of his clinic. "I know you don't think I should be in a relationship. I know, alright? But this is different… This isn't like Karl. Hawke can take care of himself. I can take care of myself.

If we don't work, if something happens… it won't be like before. I won't-... I won't try again. I have the cause now. I can't just give up on it. And- look, I have you. Okay? I won't leave you."

It wasn't enough to take the tension from his shoulders or the knot from his stomach, but it was enough for him to leave his clinic.

It was all Anders could do to keep from running to the Hanged Man after the day he'd had. He didn't want to draw any attention to himself that wasn't red eyed and rough handed. There weren't any guards that he could see, but in peace, vigilance or something.

Maker, but wouldn't peace be nice. Just one night. One peaceful night. One night with no guards and no guilt and no games. Just him and Hawke and the Hanged Man. Anders didn't know what he was looking forward to more, the bath, the bed, or the sex. Maybe the sex. Or the bath. Sex in the bath? He could compromise.

Anders got Hawke's room from Corf, and wondered if he should knock. The sun had set. What if Hawke had left? What if Hawke changed his mind? What if there were only so many times he could watch Anders slaughter a score of templars in a blind rage before it was too much for him? What if he heard about the merchant?

What if he guessed about Pol?

Anders opened the door. The room almost reminded him of a cabin - small but full. Fresh rush welcomed him; hickory and sage were burning in the hearth. To the left a bath had been drawn, by the wet and warped bilge of the wooden basin. The hint of lye marked freshly laundered towels on the bench beside it, and even a change of clothes.

A bed in the back was framed in candles, or had been, by the piles of wax that remained, and was made with extra blankets. An overfull table to the right held every choice of food and drink the Hanged Man had to offer, along with a neatly bundled parcel on the edge Anders assumed was meant for him.

Hawke was sitting in one of the chairs, spinning a dull knife into the table. He was in a tunic and trousers. No armor. No finery. No nonsense. Just undyed and untied linen, easy to put on, easier to take off. Just a normal man. Anders couldn't decide if he wanted to be him or fuck him.

Hawke looked up and the knife clattered gracelessly to the table. "You're here. Wasn't sure you'd come."

"Justice doesn't approve of my obsession with you." Anders shut the door behind him. "He thinks you're a distraction."

"You obsessed now?" Hawke crossed the floor to him, and stopped just shy of an embrace. His hands went into his belt loop instead. "Since when?"

Since I saw your eyes.

"Since you saved me," Anders said instead, a different splash of red drawing him in by the bath. There was a stand attached to it, filled with soaps and salts, pumice and emery, along with a small bowl of embrium petals. "I thought you said I wasn't getting any flowers."

"For the bath," Hawke explained.

"Which is for someone else?" Anders teased, dancing around him to the parcel. Hawke caught him about the waist and spun him in the opposite direction.

“No,” Hawke gave him a push, “Bath first.”

Anders went with an obedient chuckle, shrugging out of his coat, only to stop when he noticed Hawke wasn’t undressing.

“Just me?” Anders guessed.

“Had one, waiting for you to get here,” Hawke explained.

“So, you’re just going to watch?” Anders grabbed the hem of his tunic, and wiggled his hips to pull it from his trousers, “Should I do a special dance? Anders spicy shimmy?”

“Get in the bath or I throw you in it.” Hawke warned him.

“Promise?” Anders grinned. It was funny at first, but it was too… planned. Too deliberate. Anders didn't do deliberate. He did spontaneity and passion and stumbling with your pants around your ankles. The last person he'd been deliberate with…

It wasn't the same. Anders wasn't the same. He was starved and scruffy and scarred. Hawke had already seen him naked, but not like this. The rogue pulled up a chair and sat at the edge of the bath, like a Blooming Rose patron waiting for a dance, but Anders wasn’t a rose.

“What?” Hawke said, not quite a question.

“Are you- I mean-”

“Throwing you-” Hawke decided and stood.

“Okay, alright,” Anders warded him off and turned around, but his hands felt frozen.

“You need help or something?” Hawke guessed, and then he was behind him, warm hands under Anders’ tunic, running up his chest and over scars to push it up and off and away. They lingered on the mark Rolan had left, when the sword had cut clean through him. “This should have killed you,” Hawke noted.

“The Maker didn’t want me,” Anders joked, but it didn’t feel like a joke.

Hawke kissed his neck, a possessive press of firm lips and coarse beard, “I do,” Calloused fingers walked their way down to Anders’ waist, and undid the laces to his trousers in a few deft flicks. They fell off Anders’ hips, and his smalls followed. “Get in.”

Anders stepped obediently into the bath. The water had gone tepid, and he reheated it with a breath of magic before sliding down to sit. It was just water, really, but it felt like an ocean to lose himself in. Hawke sat on the chair behind him with a wet cloth and a bar of soap, and didn’t so much wash his back as massage it. Anders let him, leaning against his legs, mind as empty as the Void. It was just nice. Just quiet. Just Hawke.

“This isn't what I expected,” Anders admitted, worried he’d end up falling asleep.

“What did you expect?” Hawke asked, adding a handful of embrium to his bath. Soap and salt hid whatever color the grime from Sundermount had dyed it, and the white foam and red petals felt surreal. Almost Fade born.

Maybe Anders had already fallen asleep. Then again this wasn’t exactly a dream Justice would approve of. “You bending me over the table and fucking the Fade out of me?”

Hawke seemed to consider it. “Still can,” He tangled a hand in Anders’ hair, and tugged him back into a kiss that wasn’t half as rough as Anders wished it was. It stretched, long and languid, barely breaking for breath. Hawke’s free hand mapped Anders’ chest, tracing skin scars pulled taunt and sinking beneath the waters.

Anders clutched at him, his hands a slippery mess in Hawke’s hair, in his beard, as desperate for some kind of purchase as he was some kind of friction. His breath pitched up the lower Hawke’s hand traveled. Blunt nails combed through the trail of ruddy brown hair on Anders’ trembling stomach, running from navel to cock and stopping just shy of either.

Anders arched his hips into nothing at another pass from Hawke’s hand, a sound more whimper than whine swallowed by Hawke’s mouth. Maker, Anders couldn’t take anymore teasing. His skin felt flushed, his pulse burning in his ears, his toes, his cock, and Hawke barely touched him.

Anders bit Hawke’s bottom lip, near to begging when Hawke’s fingers finally wrapped around his aching cock. Hawke moved with an almost painful deliberation, one finger at a time, as if it was important Anders feel everything there was to feel.

Hawke’s slow rhythm was a perfect torture. Tension coiled in the pit of Anders’ stomach with every steady stroke, until he was sweating with the need to drag Hawke into the bath with him. To feel his weight over him, Anders’ ankles on his shoulders, to be fucked until he screamed and the water went cold.

“I’m not-” Anders tilted his head back to speak, and Hawke abandoned his mouth to lavish his neck. He carved a path down to Anders’ collarbone with teeth and tongue that left Anders shaking with shivers, “I’m not getting a table-fucking impression here.”

Hawke’s hand swept up and down Anders’ length, barely rippling the water. “What impression you getting?”

“Something-fuck,” Anders whimpered. He pushed his foot into the rim of the bath, and thrust impatiently into Hawke’s hand. It sent a wave of water over the edge, “Fuck - something slower than that.”

“You want me to go faster?” Hawke gave his ear a questioning tug with his teeth.

“I don't know," Anders said thickly. Maybe he wanted to be tortured. To spend the night at the edge of abandon. Hawke pushed wet strands of flaxen hair out of Anders' face and pressed soft lips to his brow. Anders decided he wanted Hawke to have him every way a man could be had. "That feels - a little faster,”

“Like this?” Hawke’s pace pitched up, a blissful friction that turned the tension in Anders’ stomach to fire, and spread it to his chest, his feet, his hands. Anders’ bit his lip to stop it from escaping out his mouth, but Hawke pushed his lips apart with his thumb. “Talk.”

“Like that,” Anders gasped, a haze of pleasure drowning out every thought in his head “Yes, like that - that’s good, don’t stop.”

“Not for the Maker,” Hawke promised, sliding his fingers into Anders’ mouth. Anders sucked the taste of salt off them until he couldn’t, and his breath turned to broken gasps and desperate pants. Ecstasy wound through him, so tight and tense Anders feared he might snap.

“Fuck, Hawke,” Anders choked. Hawke hummed some kind of response against his neck, the sharp press of his teeth accompanying each kiss. “I'm so close. I need - Maker, I need, just, just - fuck.” Anders covered Hawke’s hand with his own, and found the perfect rhythm to take him over the edge.

He came hard, arching his back and shaking through his climax. It was blinding, breath-taking, release. Waves of pleasure pushed his pulse into his throat, where it tangled up with the breathe Hawke had stolen from him.

Anders rode out his high and crashed like an addict. He sunk into the bath, and suddenly the water was too cold. The sweat on his skin was too hot. The wooden basin was too flat for his ass. His stomach cramped, and he realized he'd been tensing it.

Hawke's fingers combing salt through his hair grounded him. Anders stretched, popping more than a few overworked bones. A breath of magic reheated the water, cooled his skin, and steamed the air. He leaned back to find Hawke watching him like his namesake.

Anders gave him a lopsided grin, “Thanks.”

Hawke bark-laughed, and left him to retrieve a towel. For the floor, apparently, and not for Anders. Hawke threw it down to soak up the water they’d spilled, and moved his chair to the opposite end of the basin. He picked up the pumice and one of Anders’ feet, and went to work scrubbing Anders’ callouses.

Anders could definitely get used to this.

"Keep it up and I might fall asleep,” Anders warned him. This must have been what it felt like to have a servant. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so quick to judge Hightown after all.

"You'll wrinkle," Hawke said.

"Give you a look at your future." Anders joked without thinking.

“I'll take it,” Hawke said. And he smiled. He wore it well, rare as it was, a twist to his lips that carried up to his eyes. It crackled there like Soul’s Day fire, the kind of passion that could steal the dead back from the Maker.

Anders met his eyes and felt… calm. It was a weight, but he could bear it. He wanted to bear it. Hawke scrubbed at a blackened blister with the same expression, and Anders wiggled his toes at him. “Is this really how you imagined tonight?”

“Like taking care of you,” Hawke said easily.

“What about you?” Anders asked.

“What about me?” Hawke repeated.

“You want a go?” Anders pushed his foot into Hawke’s chest, and the dark hair that showed at his plunging neckline, “I’m worried your mother is going to tear through the Veil like some kind of demon of abstention before you get a turn.”

Hawke chuffed, “Later. Dinner’ll get cold.”

Anders scooped up a handful of suds and flicked them at him for the poor excuse, “I can reheat it.”

“Anders,” Hawke pulled Anders’ foot to his lips once he’d scrubbed it pink, and kissed his toes, “Relax.”

“Never.” Anders said.

“We have all night,” Hawke switched feet. “Didn’t plan on spending it sleeping. Have dinner with me.”

Anders picked up the emery, and went to work on his nails, squinting with mock-suspicion that was only slightly mock. It seemed a bit one-sided, but damned if he didn’t enjoy it. The last time anyone had pampered him… was the last time Hawke had gotten him a bath.

If this was what Hawke wanted… “I’m not getting dressed.”

“Didn’t ask you to,” Hawke shrugged.

“At least take your shirt off,” Anders said.

Hawke’s tunic came off. He looked better without it. Virile. Broad shouldered and strong chested, dark hair covering tanned skin decorated with colorful ink. Anders poked the red anvil tattoo at Hawke’s waist with his toe. “Red Irons? Right?”

“Right,” Hawke agreed.

“What are the others?” Anders asked.

“Get out, and I’ll tell you,” Hawke said, finished with his feet.

Anders climbed out, and Hawke handed him a towel Anders reserved for his hair. Hawke turned around so Anders could see his back, and glanced at him over his shoulder. “Pick one,”

Anders could probably guess, but he traced over the mabari on Hawke’s shoulder with the chantry sunburst devouring its eye. “Ash Warriors,” Hawke said.

The next was an arrow on the inside of Hawke’s arm fletched with red, which was apparently, “Just an arrow.”

The last was a skull, framed in oars, a slash of red across its eyes that made Anders a little queasy. “Crimson Oars.”

“Any others?” Anders wondered, snaking his fingers into Hawke’s belt.

“A few,” Hawke turned back around and pushed Anders towards the table, overflowing with everything the Hanged Man had to offer. There were more embrium petals, scattered between plates Anders hadn’t noticed before. Just because. Just for Anders. “Sit, eat-”

Anders cut him off with a kiss, running his fingers through Hawke’s beard for the strong jaw beneath it. He had a slight taste of mint, and smelled like clean things, linen and lye, salt and soap. Just because. Just for Anders. “I didn’t need all this,” Anders said.

“Yes you did,” Hawke locked his arms around his waist, and held him like he owned him.

Anders wished he did, “Fuck me.”

“Again?” Hawke asked around Anders’ eager lips. His hands dropped from Anders’ waist to his ass and squeezed, a moan spilling from Anders’ mouth and into Hawke’s when his fingers wandered his backside.

“I’m a Warden,” Anders said.

“Alright.”

Hawke lifted him into the nearest chair and knelt between his legs, like a disciple come to worship. He sucked on his fingers almost leisurely, one at a time, wetting his lips at every pass. Anders squirmed in anticipation, watching him. Hawke raised an eyebrow at him, and Anders whined, his cock stiff and throbbing and leaking down his shaft.

”Hawke,”

“Relax,” Hawke swept his fingers up the inside of Anders’ thigh until he reached his cock. He traced ridges and veins, gentle and unhurried, making Anders twitch and shiver.

“Hawke, I swear-”

“Relax,” Hawke bent to him, following the path left by his fingers with his tongue.

“Maker, Hawke, I want-” Pleasure coursed through Anders, a moan catching in his throat when he tried to speak. Hawke wrapped a slick hand around Anders' cock and pumped, turning his words to breathy whispers, “I want you to fuck me so bad,”

“Am fucking you,” Hawke mumbled, breath warm on wet skin. His lips stretched over the head of Anders' cock, and slid slowly along his length. Anders had to fight to keep from thrusting up into his throat. Hawke took to him with vigor and looked like desire. Raven hair swayed with every bob of his head, hiding eyes Anders was sure would end him.

He clutched at Hawke’s shoulders, lost to the pace, the pleasure, the heat, the scratch of Hawke’s beard on his thighs and the wet slide of skin on skin.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, Hawke-..." Anders whimpered. He writhed. He felt like crying. Hawke hummed encouragement on his cock, a gentle vibration that tangled up with the slick friction of Hawke’s tongue and sent spasms of pleasure through him.

“Oh fuck - yes - I'm going to - I'm right there,” Anders grabbed the chair, afraid he’d slip off it. Hawke didn't change his pace, saliva escaping around his lips and dripping down Anders’ cock. Anders dissolved, a mess of gasps and shivers, until Hawke found his hand, and tangled their fingers together.

It ended him. Anders’ climax burned through him, so hot the Fade burned with him, fire crackling along his veins and up his throat. He exhaled smoke, and tears of release turned to steam at the corners of his eyes.

Hawke was resting on his thigh when Anders came back to his body, beard wet with saliva and cum. He watched the rise and fall of Anders chest as he recovered, his face uncharacteristically soft.

“What?” Anders wheeze-laughed.

Hawke shrugged a shoulder, “You look good.”

“Yeah?” Anders aimed for a smirk. Only half his face complied.

Hawke ran a hand through the red-brown hair on Anders stomach. “You are good. You make me better.”

“That's…” Anders didn’t know what to say about that.

He hated himself for his hesitation, but Hawke didn’t seem to care. Like he’d said it just to say it and to the Void with what Anders thought. It was real. He was real. Hawke stood up and grabbed two cloths from the table. One cleaned his face, and the other he dropped in Anders’ lap. “You hungry?”

“Always,” Anders grinned.

“Eat,” Hawke ordered, moving to sit in the chair across from him.

The longer Anders looked over the choices littering the table, the more deliberate they looked. It was all on purpose. All for him. There was no ale, only cider, and not everything was part of the Hanged Man’s menu. The jellied pigs feet, sure, but the pickled eggs were a Ferelden recipe. The nordbotten fruit stew an Anderfels one.

Anders picked up a fork and poked a plump apricot with it. His mind filled with unbidden memories of his mother, and the jar of coins they’d kept in the kitchen for when the traders came in with fruit from Antiva. The way she’d grab his hand, and he’d grab the jar, and they’d run full tilt through the village for dried apples, prunes, or whatever else was in season.

Anders set his fork back down and scrubbed a tear out of his eye. He pushed the fruit stew aside, and ate pigs feet instead.

Hawke eyed the scorned dessert, “There’s no brandy in it,”

“No, that’s not-...” He’d explain another time… maybe. “I think you cured it.”

“Cured what?” Hawke asked around a mouthful of pickled egg.

“That condition where you open your mouth and you’re an asshole,” Anders explained.

“Doubt it, but I’ll take your cock over my foot,” Hawke said.

Anders laughed, “You really think I look good? Not like… what did you call me once… vulture shit?”

“Skinny,” Hawke said, ignoring the barb, “I’ll fix it.”

“Promise?” Anders grinned.

“I take care of what's mine,” Hawke said seriously. Maybe too seriously. That was the second time Hawke had called him ‘mine’ and Anders was afraid of getting used to it, “Do what you need for the city. I'll keep you safe from it.”

“Can you just fuck me now?” Anders asked, and was rewarded with the wrong kind of pounding. The door rattled with the force of whoever knocked on it, startling Anders out of his chair and into a fighting crouch. He summoned a suit of rock armor, in lieu of his clothes, and webbed electricity through his fingers.

“Hawke!” Aveline’s voice called through the door. “Are you in there? We need to talk!”

“Relax,” Hawke said, standing, “It’s just Aveline.”

“Aveline, the Guard-Captain of Kirkwall,” Anders frowned, but let the spells disperse. He debated the need for pants. “You’re not seriously answering her, are you?”

“Hawke?” Aveline called again.

“I’ll just tell her to come back later,” Hawke waved him to the opposite side of the door.

“You damn well better,” Anders went, but he pouted, arms folded and frowning, foot tapping for good measure.

Hawke opened the door enough for himself, and no one else, “What is it?”

No guards or templars burst through, so Anders supposed he counted that a win.

“We need to talk,” Aveline said from where Anders couldn’t see.

“Talk,” Hawke said. “I’m busy.”

“Not here,” Aveline said, “Downstairs. Put a shirt on and meet me there in five.”

Hawke shut the door. The heavy thud of metal on hardwood grew fainter as the guardswoman departed.

“Is put a shirt on code for get the fuck out of Kirkwall?” Anders wondered, while Hawke went to find his shirt, “Should we jump out the window?”

“It’s code for put a shirt on,” Hawke said, dragging his tunic over his head, “I know you two don’t get on, but before we were anything, Aveline and I were close.”

“Close…” Anders repeated slowly, wringing a finger in his ear to check for water, “Close as in speaking strictly proximity? As in I am close to the bath because I am in its general vicinity?”

“We were something,” Hawke explained. “Not sure what, but something.”

“How?” Anders lost his neck. His head recoiled into his shoulders in disgust, “Why?”

“You’re a lot alike,” Hawke said.

“I’ll try to forgive you for that,” Anders said.

“She’s strong,” Hawke shrugged, “Does good work. Doesn’t put up with my shit. I like that in a person.”

“What happened?” Anders asked.

“You,” Hawke said. “Was already south. Wouldn’t have worked anyway.”

“Why not?” Anders asked, “I mean, aside from the obvious guard falls for mercenary problem. Not that I want to share, but she doesn’t really seem very… ” Anders tried to search for the right adjective, but most of the ones that came to mind also applied to Hawke. The longer he thought about it, the more it made sense, and the more his head tried to sink into his spine.

Hawke didn’t answer, at first. He stopped, hand on the door knob, and tensed like he was going to say something rough. It wasn’t Anders business, it didn’t matter, don’t pester me. Anders watched him soften out after a great deal of effort. “I killed her husband. Meant it for mercy. He had the Blight, but we should have tried to do something. To find a Warden. To find a healer… To find you.” He smiled, but this one he didn’t wear well; it was too heavy. Too full of rue and regret. “Instead of killing an innocent man. But I live with it, so she doesn’t have to.”

Hawke left.

Anders sat at the table, waiting for Hawke to get back and considering what he'd said. Anders thought of all the things he'd learned to live with. The things that weren't fair. The things he didn't deserve and the things he did, and wondered if he even knew which was which anymore.

Anders eyes slid to the package, and his hands followed, and before he knew it was open.

It was a book. Darktown's Deal by Varric Tethras. Well… not everyone could be good at giving gifts. Anders flipped through a few pages disinterestedly, skimming passages about the Carta and the Coterie. Well written, sure, but it wasn’t The Search for the True Prophet, or Phylacteries: A History Written in Blood. Anders closed the book, and a leaflet flew out and onto the floor.

It was a note, scrawled in near perfect penmanship.

For the man who changed my life
And became a better part of it
May the Maker judge him whole
For the world left him broken.

Chapter 99: Until the Last Dog is Hung

Summary:

In which the last dog is hung.

Notes:

Thank you for reading. I sincerely appreciate any feedback, constructive or otherwise.

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon 23 Pluitanis Late Evening
The Hanged Man

Anders tried to read it. He genuinely tried. He started at the table, and wandered to the bed, and after several contortions ended up on his back, one leg in the air, Darktown's Deal balanced precariously on his foot. The words were bent at impossible angles, but he could see them, sort of, so that had to count for something.

It wasn't his fault. Kirkwall's gangs were the last thing Anders wanted to think about. The vial of oil he'd found by the bed was infinitely more entertaining. Anders rolled it between his fingers, watching the liquid slide back and forth behind the glass. There was something wonderfully torrid about it, even corked instead of cocked.

He couldn't wait to use it. Hawke had been so quiet. He'd made almost no sound, even with his lips stretched and straining around Anders' cock. Anders wanted to hear him, to see him, to feel him. The way Hawke's raven hair had swayed as his head rose and fell in Anders' lap had been beyond captivating. He'd seemed so attentive, so focused, like he couldn't afford to fail. Like it was possible to.

Anders took a hand to himself for the memory, trying to recapture the way Hawke had felt. The way he'd held him in the bath, each slow stroke paired with a swipe from his tongue or the press of his teeth on Anders' neck. His harshly whispered, "Talk," as he'd forced Anders' lips apart.

Anders rolled his hips, and the book fell off his foot and onto his face.

"Ow," Anders sighed and set the book aside. Whatever it was shouldn't have been taking Hawke this long.

Anders dressed in the change of clothes Hawke had brought him. They were Hawke's clothes, with Hawke's smell. Dog, dirt, hints of lye. Anders wondered if he could get away with keeping them. It would be nice to have something of him. The gift was a gift, but it reminded him of Varric, not Hawke. Anders didn't lay awake at night for want of the storyteller. He wanted the one about whom the stories were told.

He snatched up his scarf and wrapped it lazily around his head on his way out of the room. Light steps took him down the crumbling hall and warped stairs, to the tavern floor. Hawke was by the bar, still arguing with Aveline about something. A few guards and patrons were involved in whatever it was, and seemed to be taking sides.

Anders didn't make it more than a few steps before Hawke locked eyes with him. The archer gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Anders stopped. Hawke flicked his eyes up, so back up Anders went. He hovered at the top of the stairs, the wrong kind of tension building in his stomach.

Had the merchant gone to the guard? Had someone reported seeing him? Had the possessions started back up, or was it just another job?

Anders didn't know. He had to know. He went back into the hall to think and to pace, and succeeded only in the latter. The third time he passed Varric's door, he decided patience wasn’t one of his virtues. Anders knocked, rattling the wood so violently a cloud of dust fell off the mantel and onto Varric’s head when he opened it.

Flaxen hair stuck up on one side, as if freshly peeled off a pillow. Varric frowned, "Blondie, if I ever want a midnight snack, you'll be first on my list, but-"

"I'm a whole meal, thank you," Anders interrupted, anxiously wringing his hands, "What's going on? Aveline is downstairs with Hawke, and something’s up. Do you they're planning to arrest me?"

"What?" Varric woke up. He threw his jacket on over his night frock, and hurried downstairs. Anders followed him, hiding in the large shadow cast by the small man.

Crowds of patrons and guards alike parted for him, and Varric clambered up onto a chair. "Gentlemen, not-so-gentlelady, to what does this humble establishment owe the honor?"

Aveline shot Varric a look. Thin lipped, furrowed brow, sidelong eyes. It was the sort of look that said you shouldn't be here, this isn't for you, but I can't make you leave. She wore it often around Varric, but rarely with such sorrow. When she spoke, it was with the voice of the Guard Captain of Kirkwall, and not Aveline Vallen.

"Hawke is under arrest for the murder of-" The uproar from the patrons cut off the rest of Aveline's accusation, but Anders didn't need to hear the rest.

His blood went cold. Bartrand. It had to be Bartrand. It had to be Anders' fault. He should have known he couldn't wipe away Hawke's debt so easily. But why just Hawke? Why wasn't Varric under arrest?

The patrons rioted. The guardsmen quailed. One caught a tankard of ale on his shield. Another took a pig's foot to the face. One of them drew their sword, and a patron shattered a glass in response.

Anders grabbed the hem of Varric's nightfrock and tugged to get his attention. "Do something!"

Varric stood on the chair in a daze, as if he wasn't sure if he was still sleeping. Anders wished he’d wake up. "Okay, shit, let me think."

"Think faster," Anders hissed.

"You guards are a bunch of stinking road apples!” Someone yelled, “No way we’re letting you arrest Hawke!”

“Arrest him!” Someone else suggested, “Good riddance, fucking Hightown trash, think you’re so much better than us now!”

“Piss on that!” Yet another someone spat, “Hawke owns the mines! I can’t go back to working for that Orlesian! My wife is dead because of him!”

“Aveline’s an Orlesian name!” One of the patrons seemed to realize, “No wonder she ain’t done shit for Fereldens! Thrice-cursed whorespawn.” They picked up their plate and whipped it at Aveline’s head. The Guard Captain ducked, and the ceramic shattered on the wall behind her, narrowly missing Corf behind the bar.

Hawke grabbed the hand of the man who’d thrown it, and twisted it behind his back when he went for a second. “Enough!” Hawke roared. The Hanged Man went silent, save for the awkward clatter of a few plates and mugs, “She’s just doing her damn job!”

"That's right!" Varric said. He must have had an idea. Please let him have an idea.

Varric waved his arms for the attention of the crowd, loudly projecting his voice through the Hanged Man, “Our dear Guard Captain is just following orders. So who gave them? Who beside the Viscount has the authority?” He paused theatrically, but no one offered up any suggestions. Not even Aveline, though Anders hoped she knew where her own orders came from. Anders didn’t know what her silence meant, and couldn’t tell fact from fiction as Varric continued.

“Magistrates. Magistrate Vanard, if we're being specific. The magistrate’s son Keldar was the Demon of Death, and Hawke happened to be there when he died. So now he's falsely accused Hawke of whatever Hawke is accused of. Falsely.

Now, I’m sure we all remember what the magistrate's son was doing to elves. And I'm sure our dear Guard Captain wouldn’t let the magistrate use the guard to fulfill his own personal vendetta. Why don’t we all-”

“Fuck elves!” Someone yelled, “Who cares about knife-ears? Quarter of Lowtown was quarantined after that stint with the poison gas. If not for the Darktown Healer I’d be dead. If Vanard’s son was killing them-”

“Shut the fuck up, Marco, you racist arse. Knife-ears ain’t the problem, it was them oxmen gave them the poison gas!”

“You’re both stupid!" Norah chimed in, "Ain’t the point. Hawke was one who saved us from the poison gas, not the guard. None of you cravens were out in the streets, sealing off that mess with him, were you? Varric's right. We oughta go to the Viscount, tell him what we think of his Magistrate messing with Hawke.”

“We oughta fix these bootlicking bitches, is what we oughta do. You guards are in here trying to arrest the only champion Lowtown’s ever had, when you oughta be out there looking for the Butcher!”

“This isn’t a negotiation,” Aveline bellowed over them all, “This is an order, straight from-”

“What are you doing about the Friends of Kirkwall?” Someone interrupted her, “Why don’t you ever patrol past the markets!?”

“Go back to Ferelden if you don’t like it in Kirkwall,” Suggested one of the patrons on the side of the guards. A Marcher. “No one will miss a few base-born jackals. And take Hawke with you - his family’s a bunch of robes and robe-fuckers.”

“Mals, you say one more bad word about mages I’m gonna kick your ass so hard the next thing out of your mouth will be my boot.”

“You’d know a thing or two about having shit up your ass, Marco. You see the Healer so much I bet he’s fucking you like the little bitch-”

Fighting erupted again. Patrons threw cups, plates, and food, attacking guards and each other with chairs, benches, and the occasional fork. The few guards Aveline had brought with her kept their shields up, save for the one who'd drawn his weapon. His sword slashed madly back and forth in the air before him, despite Aveline's orders to sheath it. Someone knocked into someone, who knocked into someone, who knocked into Varric.

The dwarf fell, the guardsman flailed, and the sword skewered him.

It wasn't clean. It wasn't easy. Varric pitched off the chair, and the sword thrust through his heart and lung. Blood ran like wine down his chest, more than seemed dwarvenly possible. The weight of his fall twisted the sword out of his inadvertent assailant’s hand, and the guardsman struggled to catch him. They toppled together, Varric’s blood painting the guardsman’s uniform in all the colors of the sunset.

Time slowed. Time could be funny like that. Tankards, cups, and plates dropped from patrons’ hands, and didn’t fall so much as float. Guardsmen twisted sluggishly toward their fellow. Avenline’s knees bent as if to lunge, her hands outstretched, but the air had turned thick as water, and not even Hawke was fast enough. His hand snatched out and fisted around the collar of Varric’s jacket, but the jacket was all he saved.

“No! Don’t you dare!” Someone screamed. Someone who sounded like Anders, but couldn’t have been, because Anders couldn’t be here, in this moment, watching this happen to his friend.

Varric’s made a sound half a gasp, for he had only half his lungs to make it. He had one breath left in him. Maybe two. In a mortal world, with mortal constructs. Time. Life. Death. They caught him. The magic was an extension of them. A hand that ripped from the Fade and through to Varric’s heart, beating it despite the sword that pierced it. The weapon didn’t rip from Varric’s body so much as flow free, and melt into a lifeward on the floor beneath them.

It burned through the hardwood floors, a wall of flame erupting from the molten metal. It encircled them in an aurora of blue and green veilfire, shutting them off from the world and any who would dare to interrupt.

Anders gathered Varric into his arms, a hand to his friend’s chest pulsing with all the benevolent energies the Fade had to offer. Varric grabbed feebly for Anders’ hand, and tried for another sound. Only blood answered him, frothing at his lips, dying his teeth a bitter pink.

“We are here,” Anders promised, knitting the rent muscle and tissue back together. Slowly. Carefully. Varric’s body couldn’t take the shock of coming apart and snapping back together all at once. It would have broken him. Anders was sweating with the effort, with the heat, with the fear of what awaited him outside the wall of flame when they were done.

“Don’t let me die, Blue,” Varric whispered when he could whisper. “Not ready to go just yet.”

“We are here,” Justice promised - Anders relaxed into his presence, in a way that didn’t feel so much as his mortal withdrawing as he usually did, as tangling together in trust. “You will not meet an ignominious end.”

“Ignominious,’ Varric repeated weakly, “Good one. Remind me to use that,”

“I shall endeavour to do so, should we speak again under better circumstances.”

“Cards?” Varric offered.

“A diversion I play poorly.”

“You’ve got to be better than Blondie,”

“... So I am told,” They smiled.

Varric mended. They were meant for it. For death - or its deterrence. Justice traced the scar left on the dwarf’s chest, a shade lighter than the rest of his skin, smooth and void of hair. “Now we match,” Anders joked. The flames recedeed with his spirit, and the world was waiting for him, and what he’d done.

It was like waking to a demesne within the Fade. The Hanged Man had changed, like the aftermath of an earthquake. Tables had been overturned, blocking windows and exits. The night’s patrons were huddled behind the bar, the staff and some of the guards blocking them from leaving. The rest manned the door, save for Norah, Hawke, and Aveline, who sat patiently waiting outside his lifeward.

Well… maybe not patiently. Hawke’s hand was burned, and loosely wrapped with a wet bar towel.

“Thank the Maker,” Aveline sighed.

“Maybe thank Blondie?” Varric suggested, rubbing at his chest. Dried flakes of blood came free of his frock and dusted the burnt floor beneath him. “Let’s… not do that again. I’m not ready to meet my ancestors.”

“Tethras,” The guard who’d stabbed him called from his place at the bar, “... Varric, I swear I never meant-”

“Quiet, Wright,” Aveline cut him off.

“I could stand to hear it,” Varric stumbled to his feet with a hand on Anders’ shoulder. The guardsman erupted with apologies. Anders stayed on the floor, trying to think of his exits.

All of the patrons and guards had seen him for what he was - an apostate. To the keener, an abomination. The doors and windows were blocked. It left only the stairs. There’d been a window in the room he shared with Hawke. He could fit through it, but only as a crow.

Did he change back into his clothes? Did he leave without them, knowing he could likely never charm another set without risking death until he got Amell’s grimoire back? What about Hawke and the arrest? Was that still happening?

Someone touched him. Anders jumped up and away from the contact. He felt the presence of his spirit just beneath his skin, waiting, ready, but it was just Hawke. His eyebrows were raised, his expression tense. The look said something in a language Anders didn’t speak, but desperately wanted to. When Anders didn’t react to it, Hawke put himself between Anders and the guard, pushing him gently back towards the stairs.

Run. That was what it said. But how could he? Anders couldn’t just leave him.

Justice must have agreed with Hawke. Anders didn’t recall casting anything, but the burns on Hawke’s hand cooled and receded as if of their own accord. As if in thanks. Or as if in goodbye.

“This never happened,” Aveline was saying to the patrons they’d herded behind the bar like sheep. A few bleated back in protest, and Aveline shouted over them. “We came. We arrested Hawke. We left. No one was hurt. Are we clear?”

Silence. Nervous glances.

“Are we fucking clear!?”

“That’s him, ain’t it?” The one named Mals guessed, pointing at Anders. “He’s a fucking mage.”

Someone, drunkenly, "Varric's a mage?"

“He’s the one what’s on all the posters,” Mals continued, “The arsonist! The Terror of Hightown!”

The same someone, slurring, “Varric’s an arsonist?”

Aveline looked at one of the guards in her group, “Melindra.”

“Aye, Captain,” The one name Melindra nodded. She was a petite woman, all but swallowed by her uniform. The pauldrons came almost up to her ears, and framed a soft face, with soft eyes, and a soft smile that turned deadly when she drew her sword, and stepped behind the bar.

“What are you-” Mals took a step back, as did all the patrons.

“I’m sorry, Mals," Melindra said; even her voice was soft, gentle and genuine. “It was an accident. There was a brawl. I fell out of formation and you attacked me.”

Mals took another step back, bumping into a patron who shoved him forward. “I didn't-!”

“You had a glass,” Melindra explained, picking a bottle up off the bar and shattering it against the counter. She dropped it at Mal’s feet, the air thick with the scent of spiced wine, blood, and burnt hardwood, “It was a weapon. I had to defend myself.”

"I don't- No! You can't-” Mals panicked, running in a small circle like a lamb that finally realized it was sacrificial.

He threw himself at Corf, and was promptly pushed away. “He was always angry,” The bartender added, “Never paid his tab.”

“Wright saw,” Melindra said, with a glance back to the guard who’d more or less done what she was describing. Wright looked to Varric, then to his Guard Captain, and ultimately nodded, “I didn't mean to kill you-”

“I was drunk!” Mals screamed, flinging himself down on the floor where Anders’ couldn’t see him. “I'm drunk. Don't know what I saw. Didn't see anything. Blacked out, before you got here.”

“Is that right?” Melindra asked.

“Yeah,” Mals said from somewhere behind the bar, “Yeah, that's right.”

“Did anyone else see a mage?” Melindra asked, sword leveled at the crowd.

Heads shook.

It was disgusting. Anders was disgusted. Even meant for him, it was too practiced. Too perfect. Too corrupt. To the Void with Varric’s book, the Coterie, the Carta. The real gang in Kirkwall wore orange.

“The magistrate sits in judgment next week,” Aveline said in the silence that followed. “You have concerns, you bring them then.”

“Red-... Aveline,” Varric found his courage, when no one else could. He straightened his torn night frock, and smoothed back his bedridden hair, “This is Hawke. Look, come back to my room, let’s just sit down and talk-”

“This is the law,” Aveline interrupted. “... Come to the barracks, in the morning. We can talk then, but Hawke comes now.”

Fuck this. This wasn’t the law, and if it was, the law wasn’t just. Anders wasn’t about to let them almost kill Varric, threaten innocents, arrest Hawke, and get away with it all. “If you think for one second-”

“Stop,” Hawke locked an arm around the back of Anders' neck and pulled him aside in a rough sort of embrace, "Magistrate's a puppet. Carta doesn't get their coin if I die. Aveline knows what she's doing. She has to make a show. That's all this is. Not like with the Knight Commander. I'll be fine. You have to run."

He was too trusting. Anders had seen his like before and couldn't bear to see it again. He fisted his hands in Hawke's shirt, as if he could hold him so easily, "Run with me."

Hawke fished a key from his pocket, and closed Anders' hand around it. The brass cut with how tightly Anders clutched it. "Keep it. Tell Mother I'll be home soon."

Hawke went with Aveline. Anders didn't remember going back to their room. He didn't remember changing back into his own clothes. He didn't remember flying to Hawke's estate, the brass key clutched in his talons, but he remembered being there, for a moment. He sat on the edge of Hawke's bed, staring at the key in his hands.

It wasn't fair. Hawke wasn't a monster. Anders might have been. He was the mage. The maleficar. The abomination. Hawke was just Hawke. He hadn't killed Bartrand or even Keldar. What did he have to answer for except his relationship with Anders?

Anders couldn't stay here. What if someone from the tavern told the templars, and they found him here? What would they do to Hawke and his family the second time they were caught harboring an apostate? Anders left the key on Hawke's writing desk, and flew away.

Anders didn't know what to do or where to go. He felt Justice's presence like a pull upon his skin, as if all of him had scarred and his spirit was the only thing holding him together. He'd promised. He'd promised not to come undone.

He had to be sure. Hawke had to be safe.

A crow flew through the highest part of Hightown to the Viscount’s Keep. It was a massive, gilded thing, rivaling the Chantry itself in size. It practically glowed, illuminated from within by fires kept alight by court mages, on special dispensation from the Circle and attended always by templars. It wasn’t a safe place for the crow to be, and it kept to the rafters when it found an open window.

Interminable chains hung from an equally interminably high ceiling, holding lanterns of magelight. They illuminated violent violet banners embroidered with the symbol of Kirkwall’s Viscount: winged swords. Swift justice that seemed apt for the crow, if not the Keep. It flitted from banner, to chain, to banner, down to the south wing that housed the barracks of the Kirkwall City Guard, and beneath the barracks, the prisons.

The crow didn’t actually need to go to the prisons. Past the barrack’s foyer was the common room, where Hawke sat at a table with Aveline, talking casually and breaking bread. No shackles. No chains. The crow found a potted plant, and hopped up to hide beneath the fern.

“We have to play this smart,” Aveline was saying, “My men will attest to Keldar’s death at his own hands, but Bartrand is difficult. Varric can’t just get up there and talk. Even if he hadn’t benefitted from Bartrand’s sudden… disappearance, there aren’t enough words in the world to convince the magistrate to let go of his son’s death. Varric will need to bring the Guild. Vanard can’t ignore them.”

“Arrest him - abuse of power,” Hawke suggested around a mouthful of bread. “The Viscount can’t have signed off on this. He owes me his son’s life.”

“He won’t support you publicly,” Aveline countered, drumming her fingers on the table. “Ever. Not now that you’ve had dealings with the Qunari.”

“At his behest,” Hawke muttered, “Doesn’t mean you can’t arrest the magistrate. Not that he’d fit in the cells.”

Aveline laughed, “One gang at a time. When are you going to leave Meeren, by the way? You don’t need to be with the Red Irons anymore. You have the coin. You own half the bloody mine, for Maker’s sake.”

She didn’t know about Hawke’s debt, the crow realized. Hawke shrugged, and didn’t tell her, no matter how close he claimed they were.

“Did I see right back there?” Aveline asked. “Are you and Anders…?”

“Not your business,” Hawke said.

“Fair enough,” Aveline backed off, and so did the crow. It flew from the Keep, and circled High and Low before ducking into Darktown. It found its roost crawling with men of metal. Templars. Betrayed. Always betrayed. The patrons had reported him.

The crow couldn’t find any from its roost. Terrie or Evelina or any of the mages, and hoped they were safe with the Dogs. The crow flew back to the Hanged Man, and landed on the window to a room filled with carved stone, crimson throws, and flickering wax candles. A dwarf was within, speaking with a familiar human, and the crow tapped until the dwarf opened the window.

The crow hopped onto the floor. It stretched, and snapped, wings unraveling into arms, talons exploding into feet, beak breaking apart into a jaw. Anders dusted off his feathers, and Varric locked his door. He’d changed out of his night frock, and into a pair of tunic and trousers, apparently abandoning sleep and any evidence of the evening.

Isabela was there with him, dressed in a shirt and her smalls, and nothing else. Her eyes were lined in the dark circles of an interrupted sleep, and contrasted sharply with her skin. She’d paled, watching Anders’ transformation, and covered her mouth to swallow what was probably not just a burp. “So, I heard I slept through the fun?”

“Fun?” Anders repeated incredulously, trying not to shout. He didn’t want to alert anyone else to his presence, “Do you even know what just happened? Hawke was arrested! By Aveline! Some magistrate is out to hang him for what Fenris - your lover - did! He’s the one who murdered the magistrate’s son, and Bartrand isn’t even dead, but Hawke is going to be if someone doesn’t do something! Are you all really-”

“Oh Varric, do something before he hurts himself,” Isabela cut him off. She wandered over to Varric’s low-bed and threw herself down in it, as unconcerned as Hawke and Aveline had been by the entire ordeal.

Anders sputtered and ran his hands through his hair; they came away with a few stolen strands of blonde, and Anders locked his hands behind his head to force air into his lungs. He’d promised. He’d promised not to fall apart.

“We’ll figure something out, Blondie,” Varric said, pouring himself a drink from his liquor cabinet. Anders wished he could have one, “I don’t think many people heard in the riot downstairs, but the official charge is that Hawke killed Bartrand, which is sadly untrue but hard to disprove. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Magistrate found a few Winters ready to testify after Hawke stole their contract out from under them saving the Viscount’s son.

“So, unless we can find a witness that isn’t you, me, or Broody, we’ll have to change the narrative. We make it about Keldar and a corrupt magistrate, bring a mob up to the Viscount’s Keep, and ta-da, free Hawke.”

“The big girl’s arrested me at least a dozen times already,” Isabela chimed in, “It’s nothing to make a big deal over. Now you going full Justice in front of a dozen witnesses, that I would make a big deal over. Varric was just telling me about how you saved his life with the power of friendship and magic. You’re a regular hero, Sparky.”

Anders forced himself to breathe. It came out as more of a sigh. He found a seat for himself on the bed beside Isabela, and stared longingly at the liquor cabinet. “I don’t think anyone thinks of me like that,” Anders said.

“I sure as shit do,” Varric snorted, scooting in beside him. “You want anything? Food? Drink? Foot massage? Inheritance from House Tethras?”

“I want Hawke,” Anders said without thinking, and changed his answer to something that might be more immediately achievable. “I want there not to be templars in Darktown. I’m not saying Aveline was right to threaten everyone down there, but I honestly thought they would listen. I can’t believe they reported me that fast.”

“There’s always templars in Darktown,” Varric countered. “No one said shit, Blondie, trust me. You walk down there, and you’re getting a royal welcome. Norah’s got everyone ripping up the floorboards as we speak to get rid of that little rune thing you made.”

“Lifeward,” Anders said wearily.

“Sure,” Varric said. “Look, since you clearly aren't staying at Killer’s, why don’t you sleep here? Rivaini’s going to help me pen up some things for the Guild, and get ready for the judgment.”

“I don’t think I can sleep,” Anders said, but he stayed.

The week passed. Anders didn’t remember how he spent it.

They found their mob. Varric brought half the Merchant Guild. Merrill most of the alienage. Half of Lowtown showed up, Fereldans and Marchers, with nobles sprinkled here and there among them. Above them all, a crow. It sat in the rafters of the Viscount's Keep, anxiously plucking out feathers as it watched the proceedings.

Magistrate Vanard was a bitter old man who looked like someone had pickled him. His skin was wrinkled and warted, and his brow hung heavy after having spent too many years furrowed. He wore a bright red doublet, embroidered with gold trim, that resembled gold over spilled blood a little too well. The crow hated him.

He wasn't the only magistrate, but he did look the most important. Vanard sat in the Viscount's throne like he owned it, one leg draped over the arm of the chair. A half dozen other magistrates lined the throne on either side of him, and the day's prisoners were brought out one at a time for judgment.

Hawke was first, and justice was swift, though not in the way that anyone expected.

"Garrett Florian Hawke," The words dripped from Vanard's lips like wine into the glass of a drunkard. He sighed contentedly, once they were spoken, and seemed to sip them back up on his sharp inhale, “The formal charge today is the murder of Bartrand Tethras. The sentence is death. Next prisoner."

“Magistrate, with all due respect, there’s nothing to indicate Hawke’s guilt in this matter,” Aveline interrupted, projecting her voice over the roar of protests. The guards in attendance eyed each other anxiously and raised their shields, a thin line of orange protecting the gathered magistrates from the angry mob. A few of the magistrates backed away from Vanard. One fled the proceedings entirely. “Bartrand’s brother, Varric Tethras, has found a witness-”

“Next prisoner, Guard Captain,” The magistrate ordered.

Aveline squared her shoulders, balled her fists, and-... turned on her heel and left.

Left? She just left? Where the in the Void was she going? How could she just leave?

Anders- the crow- he was a crow-

The crow exploded, coming apart in clicks and clacks of broken wings and twisted talons. Anders was stranded on the rafters. A few dark feathers drifted to the floor below at his shift, unhurried and unnoticed. Anders might have joined them at a much faster pace if he hadn’t caught himself. The rafters creaked at his weight, but held steady.

A guard led Hawke out of the throne room. Anders had to follow him. Anders had to save him. But he couldn’t save him because he couldn't follow him because he couldn’t get down. There was only safe way down, and Anders had lost it. He had to calm down. He had to be a crow. But he couldn’t calm down because he couldn’t be a crow because he couldn’t calm down.

“I can’t do this,” Anders hyperventilated. His lungs seemed to shrink, his heart along with them, beating faster and faster as his breath grew shorter and shorter as if his insides alone had transformed. Justice forgive him, he was wrong. “I can’t do this again. I can’t go through this again-”

The next prisoner was an old man. Decrepit and dirty, he seemed to crumple in on himself with every step, until he was practically crawling on his hands and knees.

Like a dog.

“Conall of Redcliff,” A different magistrate announced him, “The formal charge is racketeering, larceny, destruction of property, and being a known affiliate of the ‘Dog Lords.’ The sentence is death. Next prisoner.”

The next prisoner walked like he’d won a fight and looked like he’d lost it. His ruddy complexion was muddied with bruises, his red hair matted with blood, and all of his teeth were rotten or missing, but he walked cock first, shoulders back.

Like a lord.

“Cor Blimey, alias ‘The Bastard.’” The same magistrate announced, “The formal charge is racketeering, larcency, destruction of property, murder, and being a known affiliate of the ‘Dog Lords.’ The sentence is death. Next prisoner.”

They were all Dog Lords.

The sentence was always death.

Anders couldn’t get down.

Anders couldn’t breathe.

Anders blacked out. He fell off the rafters, and into the skin of a crow. Justice held it for him. It was simple magic. Justice wasn’t a crow - he was an ideal. He was formless, genderless, raceless. He simply was, and if the form of a crow could aid in his pursuit of justice then it was the form he would wear.

Justice surveyed the crowd below, and how they had split. The Fereldens stayed for the Dog Lords, rallying in protest of their sentencing. The elves and the dwarves had split for Hawke. Divided, their forces were ineffectual, and easily held back by the Kirkwall Guard, who seemed at a loss as how to proceed without their Captain.

Justice flew after Hawke. It served no justice to see him condemned for no crime. He was a distraction Justice felt no affection towards, but Anders did. Anders had need of him - and mortal things. Mortal comforts. Mortal pleasures. Mortal company. To have such things offered and then lost was an injustice he did not deserve.

Justice was reminded of why he had once pitied mortals in the Fade when he found Hawke. Their concept of justice was primitive, and offered no room for atonement. Hawke and all the others condemned by the judgments were in the eastern courtyard, corralled like cattle into a stockyard. The courtyard which held a different sort of gallows than the ones he and Anders so strove to tear asunder.

A hangman awaited them, defended from the mob by guards, a few Circle mages, and their templars. Elves and dwarves threw rocks, rubble, and rotten food in protest. The crowd swelled with humans as more Dog Lords were sentenced, until their number overtook the guard. It was a war they could win, had they only someone to lead them.

Perhaps this was the change the city needed. To remove the magistrates and unseat the Viscount beholden to the Knight-Commander. As Justice considered it, he felt the Veil thin, and one Circle mage sent a pulse of lightning ricocheting into the hand of the other. It was a florid bit of magic, little more than bright static, but the mob scattered all the same.

Chaos and cowardice won out over courage and composure. Some citizens yet lingered, but their numbers had dwindled, and their courage had been cowed. All of Hawke’s companions remained, as did several mortals Justice recognized for friends and allies of Anders, among others. One of them recognized him. The one who sang. Fenris.

A distraction, but a beautiful one. He was still as radiant as Justice remembered, singing with all the chorus of creation in his veins.The lyrium-imbued mortal stopped by the statue upon which Justice was perched, and held out a hand for him. Justice stepped onto it. Perhaps he would fight with him.

“... Justice, yes?” Fenris said, his voice so low it was hard to hear around the song, “We have this. If they cannot be convinced to free Hawke, Bela will pick the locks, and we will see him from the city as we planned once before. ... If you would help Hawke, leave.

“There are yet more guards within the Keep, who will come if this turns to bloodshed. The rest… these dregs are justly convicted of the crimes they stand accused. Look who lingers.”

Fenris held out his hand, and Justice looked.

For most, there was righteous anger, but not for all. Justice looked at the others. The Marchers. The ones who weren’t Fereldan. Honest, decent citizens, decrying the crimes the Dog Lords had committed. A widow, whose spouse had walked the wrong way home. A shopkeep without a shop, who hadn’t the coin for a bribe. A mutilated dockworker, who hadn’t taken one.

Fenris set him back on the statue, where he stayed, conflicted.

Did their victims not deserve vengeance?

They brought out the Dog Lords first, perhaps at some prior order from Aveline. One desperate soul shoved through his fellows, and tried to run when they opened the stockyard. He was speared by a guard, his body left to bake on the cobblestones. They took the next, an old man who struggled to step over the body of his fallen comrade, but took the stairs to the scaffold with dignity.

“Last words?” The hangman asked, slipping the noose over his crooked neck.

“Get on with it,” Conall said, “Void’s waiting for me.”

His neck snapped on the fall, stretching it straight. The crowd screamed, some in shock, some in sorrow, some in satisfaction. The hangman unhooked the noose, and Conall fell beneath the scaffolding into the pit below. Justice didn’t hear the thud over the screams of the next man they brought out.

“Fuck you!” Cor screamed, his confidence gone with Conall. He dug his heels into the dead Dog to fight off the two guards dragging him. The body rolled, leaving a smear of blood and entrails until they managed to heave him over it. “Last words!? I got fucking last words!” Cor continued as they struggled to get him up the stairs, “Fuck you! Think you’re so safe now, you got the big bad Bastard!? Think the guard is going to protect you from what’s wrong with this city!?

“Where was the guard when the Friends of Kirkwall emptied your pockets!? Where was the guard when the oxmen kidnapped your sons!? Where was the guard when the Demon of Death was raping your elves? Where was the guard when your elves poisoned half of Lowtown!? Where was the-Get the fuck off me! The guard is what’s wrong with this city!

“Extortion! Fuck you! It’s a fucking tax ‘cause I’m the fucking law around here! When you’re starving, when the chokedamp gets you, when some other fucking gang rapes your wives, you don’t go to the guard! You don’t go to the Chantry! You go to me! My Dogs! My healer! You think the guard is going to save you from the Butcher!? Fuck you! You’re all dead without me, you hear!?

“You’re dead! You’re fucking dead! You’re fuc-nght!”

His neck didn’t snap. He swung, bound hangs clutching at the thick rope about his throat, feet scrabbling madly at the hatch door, trying to pull himself back onto the scaffolding. The crowd cheered, some for him, some against him. The Dogs howled in their cage. The rope pushed his neck fat up into his jaw, his bloated face turning red, then purple, then almost black.

He kicked until he didn’t.

They went through three more Dogs in a similar fashion before Aveline finally returned with a dwarf and a human in tow. The human seemed a noble of small stature and high status, by the gold filigree decorating his collar and the oil slicking back his auburn hair from matching eyes. He tapped a quill impatiently at a clipboard holding a collection of leaflets he didn’t take his eyes off, even when he called out to those gathered.

“Let it be known that Magistrate Vanard has been found to be in abuse of his station by Viscount Dumar, and his judgment has been voided. Garrett Hawke is free to go, on the testament of…” The nobleman flipped through his leaflets, frowning.

“Bodahn Feddic,” The dwarf volunteered. His pale blonde hair was braided into his beard and hid a ruddy complexion, made ruddier when he smiled.

“Yes… well… Guard Captain, as you were,” The nobleman nodded and left.

“Get him out, Maecon!” Aveline called to one of her guardsmen.

Hawke was freed. Some of the crowd cheered. Some of the crowd booed. Several came forward to clasp his hand or clap his back, and many more simply left. Behind them, the guards brought up the next Dog Lord.

“Boy am I glad business brought me and my boy back to Kirkwall,” Bodahn was saying to Hawke, “Messere Tethras tells me they were saying you killed the … older Messere Tethras?”

“Bodahn,” Hawke gave the dwarf a nod, casual and conversational, as if he had never considered the prospect that he might share a fate similar to the one carrying on behind him. “How did you get here?”

“Been here for a while now, actually,” Bodahn said. “It might have … slipped my mind to register with the Guild when I came back. Taxes are no trivial thing you know. But when I heard through the lyrium vein Messere Tethras was fixing to take the Guild up to the Viscount’s Keep, I just had to know what for, and well… here I am! Strange charges, these. Hard to kill a man who’s not dead.”

“You know where Bartrand is?” Varric clenched his good fist. Behind him, another Dog died.

“Rivain!” Bodahn said cheerily, “Or so he told me that’s where he was headed when we got back. You know, we were told it was you all who died down in that thaig. Felt terrible, losing everyone on the way back up… We went back to Ferelden, for a while. The boy had a commission to work at the Circle there, you see-”

Bodahn continued his tale, but it was one meant for mortals. Justice had no place among them, nor did Anders without his scarf. Justice flew them back to Darktown, and landed easily outside their clinic in Anders’ form, though he still lacked his mind. His mortal was curled up in the dark recess of his memories of warm Anderfel desserts, dried Antivan fruits, and the rattle of copper coins in glass jars.

“He is well,” Justice assured him, tracing gentle fingers over Anders’ palm to stir him to the surface. “He is freed. His companions pulled through for him, though not the Dog Lords. You must see to the Collective, and ensure that no similar fate has befallen the mages we freed.”

Anders stood outside his clinic, emerald veilfire flickering in the broken lantern beside the rotting door. He felt nothing. No sensations. Not the warm wool of his tunic, the smooth leather of his coat, the hard sole of his boots. He didn’t feel the wind on his face, smell the acrid stench of the sewers, taste the cotton in his mouth.

Hawke was safe.

No thanks to him.

Cor was dead.

No thanks to him.

Anders pushed open the door to his clinic, and realized only belated he hadn’t unlocked it.

It was crowded.

Pale and pockmarked faces looked up at his entrance. They were all the same or similar: mismatched armor, jaunt cheeks, sunken eyes lined in shadow. Dogs. Maybe a dozen, huddled by his fire, sitting on his cot, curled up in his corners. One of them shuffled forward; her face flush beneath her freckles and the veins in her eyes sharp and glossy with unshed tears.

“Anders…” Bree stumbled into his arms, “What do we do?”

Chapter 100: Free To Good Home

Summary:

In which strays find new homes.

Notes:

Thank you for reading. I sincerely appreciate it.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon Nubulis 1 Afternoon
Darktown: The Healer’s Clinic

Three mages had run with the Dog Lords before the guard had wiped out the gang. The apostates had avoided capture with a mix of luck and magic and huddled in Anders’ clinic, gnawing marrow from the bones of rats like vultures scrapping over the dead. It wasn’t the future Anders had envisioned for them, but it was a future.

Better the vulture than the carrion, left to rot beneath the gallow’s scaffolding. Anders wondered how long it would take the guards to clean out the bodies. He wondered how long it would take the guard to add to them. He wondered if they would get any sort of funeral or if they were all bound for the same mass pyre. He wondered the same of the survivors in his clinic.

Bonwald, Teryn, and Dalian had all been slated for Tranquility or death. It was why Orsino had chosen them. Why Anders had rescued them. But now he had no place for them. They couldn’t stay here. Neither could the Dog Lords. Anders had to do something.

Terrie shuffled among the survivors, ladle slipping from her hand and back into the bucket as she dolled out water and the occasional poultice. She looked up at his entrance, and set the bucket aside to join him and Bree. “Talk outside?” She suggested.

The three of them left his clinic. Terrie eyed the door, and those beyond it. "They can't stay here."

Bree rubbed her nose red, sniffling, "Then where do we go?"

"I don't know," Anders squeezed her shoulder, "I'll think of something."

“I’m gone till they are,” Terrie warned him, rubbing at her brand between her breasts. “Templars are getting smart. There are too many random raids now. They almost got Evelina last week. A group this big draws eyes.”

“I know,” Anders scratched at his own brand for the memory. “Let me think of something…. I have some friends who could put up the mages, and maybe Lirene can take the Dogs?” As soon as he said it, Anders remembered Cor’s proud boasting that the two of them had gotten together, and felt sick.

“They’re watching her,” Bree shook her head, “It’s how they got the Bastard…”

“Maybe the Coterie then?” Anders pressed on. “Could you - I don’t know - switch gangs? Is that a thing?”

“There ain’t no gang in Kirkwall’ll take a Fereldan," Bree said, "Bastard was all we had.”

“Does it have to be a gang?” Anders asked. There had to be something. The Dog Lords weren't mages, and once they weren't Dog Lords they just were. Maybe they could find work. Live normal lives. Franke had managed. "Maybe-"

"Hey," Terrie snapped her fingers in front of his face, “Before you go do whatever it is you’re thinking of doing, don’t forget about the meeting tonight.”

“What meeting?” Anders asked.

“The meeting?” Terrie’s eyes flicked to Bree. It was so unsubtle it looked like it hurt, "The meeting you told me to remind you about?"

“The reminder doesn't really help if I don't remember," Anders said.

“Our friends?” Terrie's eyes flicked to Bree again.

“My friends are dead,” Anders said, but the memory emerged as if from a fog. The Mage’s Collective. He’d asked for Selby to set up a meeting with Bardel about the templar raids on the Dalish. It seemed so long ago and far away, but he had an obligation to ensure this didn’t happen again. Mages had to be safe wherever he placed them.

"I'll tell the Dogs to pack up," Bree reached for the door, and Anders caught her hand before she went inside.

"Bree… just wait," Anders said. "Terrie, give me a few days. They wouldn't be here if they had anywhere else to go."

"None of us would." Terrie said. "... I'll stay today, but then I mean it Anders. I'm gone until they are. I can't get caught again. I won't."

Anders didn't want to think about what her promise meant, but he knew. Sigrun had made the same one.

"Where is the meeting?" Anders asked. "Bree won't say anything."

"I'm a Dog," Bree agreed. "Not a rat."

“Smetty’s Fish Guttery," Terrie relented. "At sunset. What are you thinking?"

“I’m thinking the Coterie owes me,” Anders explained.

Anders waited for Bree to go back inside, and then transformed into a crow with ease. He'd felt everything there was to feel, and it was easy to change on the outside when there was nothing left on the inside. Human. Crow. What difference did it make?

The charm broke again. This time on his socks. Fortunately, they didn’t transform with him. A crow stood in a puddle of wool, pecking at the pieces until a human retrieved them. Terrie shook the socks at him. "What am I supposed to do with these?"

The crow didn't know. The crow didn't care. The crow needed its grimoire. The crow needed the coin to get its grimoire. But the crow was just a crow and the crow had nothing. It flew through lichen-lit tunnels and abandoned mineshafts, searching for the Coterie barker to no avail. Eventually it gave up, and flew from the mines out into Kirkwall’s turbid skies, and above them into Hightown.

The Coterie operated out of the Blooming Rose, a brothel in a dimly lit corner of Hightown. What light there was spilled across the cobbled streets like wine, painting it deep pinks, mauve, and mulberry. Red lanterns were strewn haphazardly across a grand entryway of marble pillars, decorated with banners boasting the services offered within. The embroidery could almost pass for a rose.

The crow flew inside an open window, and settled on one of the many statues within. Figures melded from bronze and posed erotically, their faces hidden behind masks, like many of the clientele. The crow recognized a few as ones who visited its roost for its own services, to recover from the ones offered herein.

The employees were lounging throughout the parlor, reclining in cushioned chairs, strewn across couches, leaning back against the bar. Some were done up in finery, with dyed and embroidered dress, while others wore only their smalls. A few seemed to wear little more than well placed scarves. Only one seemed to be Coterie, a thick dwarf in full armor, idling by the bar and showing a small elven boy how to make to a shiv.

The crow watched the dwarf, and all who interacted with him. It listened only half-heartedly to the idle chatter of the employees as they complained about their patrons. Hubert never washed his feet. Gamlen always fell asleep halfway through. Meeran got a little too rough, and red ochre to hide the bruises was getting expensive.

The crow looked to the one who’d said it. She was an elf. Most were elves, but she was pregnant. She needed a healer.

“Piss off now!” An unmistakable voice cut through the crow’s thoughts before they turned too human. Lilley. The tanned skinned marcher with sun-bleached hair emerged from a backroom, and was immediately ran down by the small elven boy with the shiv the dwarf had made for him.

“I’m gonna shank you!” The boy said excitedly.

“Not if I shank you first, you little shit,” Lilley caught the boy by the wrist and twisted the shiv out of his hand. She stabbed at him with it, and either she had alarmingly good reflexes or alarmingly bad ones, because the boy dodged back without being gutted.

“Let me join the Coterie!” The boy demanded. “I want to fight the guard! I’ll kill all the flaming rat turds!”

“You watch your fucking mouth,” Lilley cuffed the boy and handed back his shiv, “Where’s your mum?”

“Getting fucked!” The boy said proudly.

“The fuck did I just say?” Lilley said.

“I can say what I want!” The boy stuck his tongue out, and Lilley made another swipe at him. He dodged it, and bolted back to the dwarf. “Master Stumps! Master Stumps! Lilley’s done getting fucked!”

“I see her, kid,” The dwarf rolled his eyes, and shoved the boy out of his way. He gestured with his head towards the kitchens, and the crow followed the two gang members into it.

More elves were working within, cooking dinner for the Rose and all its inhabitants. A woodfire oven crackled with the scent of roast pork, and stacks of rye bread were piled on the table. The dwarf snatched up a loaf and took a bite, spitting crumbs when he spoke, “Piss off.”

The elves scattered.

Lilley locked the doors behind them, and the crow came apart into a human.

Lilley screamed. The dwarf dropped his loaf, and knocked several more off onto the floor. He promptly joined them, scrambling under the table to wheeze and gasp. “What the nug!? Who the fuck-!?”

“Shave a horse and punch me in the teeth, Anders, what in the Void is wrong with you?” Lilley clutched at her heart, leaning back against one of the doors and checking again to ensure it was locked.

“No, that’s my question,” Anders said, settling on the emotion that came easiest when he could feel them again. It was anger. It was always anger. “You were supposed to be keeping the Carta in check. Hawke was arrested. A magistrate had him arrested.”

“Alright,” Lilley gave her teeth a thoughtful lick, “Easy now. So this magistrate, I suppose you’ll be wanting him to find a nice ditch to lie down in?”

“Who the fuck is this?” The dwarf recovered enough to ask, crawling out from under the table.

“He’s our healer,” Lilley explained, “We’ll talk later, Stumps, go change your smalls.”

“Fucking spellbinds,” The dwarf muttered. He left out one of the back doors, and took the pungent scent of ammonia with him.

“The magistrate isn’t the problem,” Anders started pacing. Lilley gathered up the spilled bread and put it back on the table with the rest while he continued, “The problem is the Carta. This can’t be their last play. You said you would wipe away Hawke’s debt. If the Carta keeps trying to have him killed-”

“They won’t,” Lilley promised, hopping up onto the table with the bread. She patted the space beside her, but Anders wasn’t in a mood to sit, “Look, your magistrate, we’ll take care of him, but this wasn’t the Carta.”

“Of course it was the Carta,” Anders said.

“I dug up some bodies, when you gave me this little mission,” Lilley said. “Hawke didn’t get his coin from the Carta. Not officially. He got it from Dougal Gavorn. He’s Carta, but the Carta never signed off on the loan. They thought it was too risky, so Dougal paid out of pocket. That’s probably why he’s so pissed he didn’t get his interest, and did whatever he did with this magistrate you’re talking about.”

“How does any of that help Hawke?” Anders asked.

“Dougal already got his warning when we warned the Carta,” Lilley said. “This is the nail in his coffin.”

“So… what?” Anders asked. “You’re just going to ask nicely for the Carta to hand him over?” He didn’t want another gang war in the streets. He just wanted Hawke safe.

“Don’t have to ask,” Lilley grinned, “We got their girl Brosca. That’s what Stomps and I were going to talk about, before you made him piss himself silly. Cadash won’t risk her. They’re tight.” Lilley held up two fingers and wiggled her tongue between them. “Carta’s ours now.”

“You realize these names mean nothing to me,” Anders said.

“You want the story?” Lilley offered, “Pull up, I’ll tell you.”

Anders pulled up, and sat on the table next to her. Lilley handed him a loaf of bread, and he bit into it before he remembered it had been on the floor. Well… better the floor than the sewers.

“Malika Cadash is the big power in the Carta, like Harlan is with the Coterie. House Cadash does most of the lyrium smuggling in the Free Marches. They get it out of Orzammar and we get it into the Gallows. That’s the deal.

“So, back during the Blight, Bhelen gets made King of Orzammar, and he takes a casteless for his wife - which is a huge fuck no for dwarves. Be like the Viscount marrying a two-bit whore, except that two-bit whore is Carta, and Carta wants coin. Call it a matchmaker’s fee. But the whore loves the King, so she decides she doesn’t want to pay it. Carta has to get their coin somehow, so they send in the whore’s sister - that’s Brosca - to fix a Proving.

Proving’s like a holy duel for dwarves, but one you can put coin on. Brosca wins the Proving, but she gets caught. Casteless in a Proving? Another fuck no for dwarves. So this crazy bitch cuts her tongue off in front of everyone. Claims she’s a Silent Sister and her caste don’t matter. Doesn’t work, and they throw her in the dungeons.

Word gets back to Malika, and I guess it impressed her, because she smuggled Brosca out of Orzammar. Like I said, they’re tight,” Lilley held up two fingers on both hands and scissored them together, “Cadash goes through all that for Brosca before she even met her, so you better believe as long as we have her the Carta’ll do as we want.”

"So you threaten someone's lover so someone else will stop will stop threatening mine," Anders set aside his bread and wondered when he'd done the same for his morals. "I hate this city."

"Safe for you means not safe for whoever you're safe from." Lilley said. "You'd think you'd know that by now, being a mage."

"... that's fair. A little rude, but fair.”

“Manners are just pretty lies,” Lilley said. “So, we’ll get on Dougal and your magistrate, and then we’re square? You stop making Stumps leave little stumps in his trousers?”

“What are you doing with Brosca?” Anders asked.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered,” Lilley said.

“Look, I’m not asking you to kill anyone, I just want-”

“You want your bit of tussle muscle safe,” Lilley said. “Can’t see what you see in him. Seems to me he’s so uptight you’d get stuck.”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” Anders said.

“Brosca ain’t any of yours,” Lilley countered. “Anything else, then?”

There was always something else, but there was only so much Lilley could do for him. With the war it sounded like the Coterie was starting with the Carta, the further the Dogs and the apostates were from them, the better. Anders would have to keep looking for somewhere to put them, but not everyone had the luxury of choice. Anders thought of the elven woman and her bruises. “... I want a room.”

“A room?” Lilley grinned yellow teeth at him, “Fuck yeah, I’ll get you a room. I’ll get you this room right here, right now. You want a go?”

“Not that kind of room,” Anders smacked Lilley’s hand away when she went for his laces, “For the girls. They come down for blue and black cohosh, on occasion, but they need better care… and I need a place to see people who don’t want to be seen in Darktown.”

“Well look at you,” Lilley said, “...I’ll take it back to Harlan, but he wants to call this place Harlan’s Harlots. He doesn't care about the product, only the pay. He’ll want a cut.”

“I’m not charging the girls,” Anders said quickly. “Or the boys. Just the clients.”

“I’ll let you know,” Lilley hopped off the table. The pork was starting to smell like char in the oven, and Anders hoped the scullions wouldn’t suffer for his interruption. “We square?”

“Square,” Anders agreed.

He left the Blooming Rose as a crow, and flew back to his clinic to check on the survivors. The Dogs could wait, but the apostates needed somewhere now. Anders bundled his face up in his scarf, and spent the day finding a place for each of them. He thought of his reluctance to rely on his patients, over a year ago, but time had taken away his options.

Bonwald was easy. The old mage was mostly beard, frail and unassuming. His age was his crime, and the reason for his rescue. The elderly fellow had been caught after curfew in the library because he’d fallen asleep in the midst of his research, and no amount of protests could convince the templars it wasn’t for something sinister. He moved so slowly Anders had had to carry him through the tunnels on his back, Bonwald’s tears soaking the back of his neck the entire way.

The Beshcals were excited to have him. He was Abigail’s grandfather, if anyone asked, moved back to Kirkwall to help take care of her adopted daughter Nika and teach her letters.

Teryn was challenging. A Ferelden, who went by the royal moniker in jest. A farmer who was a little too good at farming, his neighbors had grown jealous of his harvests and reported him to the Chantry. He’d left behind a sick sister, and had been caught hoarding regents in the Circle he’d used the Collective to send back to her. He needed access to the packaging house, and after several circles around the docks Anders moved him in with Elissa. Her cousin, in from Gwaren.

Dalian was impossible. A child of mages, born into the Chantry, raised in the Circle, he all but bled magic. His eyes weren’t a brilliant topaz; they were every topaz. Sky blue, rainforest, poppy, pink and honey. They turned on a copper, and Dalian couldn’t control it. It was a little too captivating, and it had captivated a templar. Orsino had barely managed to stop Dalian from throwing himself out a window on the promise of Anders’ rescue.

He had a pretty face, and he’d covered it with sewage bending to kiss the ground when Anders got him out.

Sunset came, and Anders hadn’t found anywhere safe for him, so Dalian stayed, and Terrie left. The Dogs were still there, waiting for an answer Anders didn't have. He left them with what food he did, and went to his meeting.

Smetty’s Fish Guttery rank of fish at all hours of the day. An indoor dock where Smetty’s fishing boats could drop off their catch of the day, and Smetty’s workers could tend to them. Barrels upon barrels were stacked throughout the guttery, rattling with fish and crabs, clams and shrimp. A shark was strung up from the ceiling, bleeding out onto into the bay, and could have fed the Dogs for well over a fortnight if Anders had any way to get it for them.

He couldn't imagine what it would cost. Anders had no idea how Cor had managed with so many people depending on him. He found a barrel for himself that wasn’t moving too much, and sat on it to wait. The elven workers ignored him, as always, stripping down squid at a table cobbled together from driftwood. It was grueling work, and Smetty had to be paying extra for their silence.

Maybe Smetty could afford to take the Dogs.

It wasn’t long before Bardel joined him. The templar had changed out of his uniform, and into an outfit that almost matched Anders own. A dark coat with a matching hood was pulled low to shadow his face, which seemed to have gained a few more lines since Anders had last seen him.

"In this world," Bardel said in greeting, glancing nervously back at the elves slicing away behind them.

"Or Beyond," Anders said back. The new cloak and dagger phrase was Selby's idea, one of many precautions she'd put into place since Decimus's death. "What's going on, Bardel?"

"Much has changed," Bardel said, "I am not sure where to begin."

"The start usually works," Anders said.

"You heard about the possessions?” Bardel guessed, leaning back against a barnacle encrusted pole.

“I heard,” Anders said, “A blood mage was hiding in the Blooming Rose. She mind controlled my friend.”

“Idunna,” Bardel agreed. “She was working with a group. They’re not like us. They call themselves the Resolutionists, and they-”

“Stop, stop, stop.” Anders’ throat contracted, and he swallowed back bile. It tasted stale. It tasted dead. “That’s not right. Decimus was a Resolutionist. You’re telling me he was working with Idunna? That he was part of the possessions after all?”

“I cannot say,” Bardel said unhelpfully, “They’re a violent splinter cell of Libertarians, and they’ve engaged in acts of terror and sabotage against the Chantry throughout Thedas. We captured a dozen of them, and the Knight Commander had three made Tranquil at random, without question.

“Her paranoia is verging on madness. She sees blood magic everywhere. She is not even giving the mages a chance. The lockdown may be lifted, but our orders are stricter than ever. A mage who warrants the slightest suspicion warrants Tranquility in her eyes.

“You may know the First Enchanter wrote to the Seekers of Truth to investigate her… and I wish I had good news. The Seeker they sent arrived a fortnight ago. His name is Cahail, and he seems a reasonable man, but these are not reasonable times for him to arrive.

“It’s clear to any that the Knight Commander rules with iron and lyrium, but the possessions make her seem justified. Cahail is putting together some kind of inquisition, and he’s asking for proposals to deal with what he considers the ‘blood mage’ threat.”

“Proposals?” Anders’ laugh was harsh and heated, “Proposals like maybe we don’t back mages into a corner so they have nowhere to turn but blood magic and demons?”

“You preach to the wrong congregation, my friend,” Bardel said sadly, “I know well of the Order’s sins. Some are my own. It is Cahail we must convince.”

“So tell him about Ser Alrik,” Anders said hotly, static rolling over his skin. “Tell him about Ser Karras. Maker’s mercy, just ask the Tranquil what Alrik does to them! The man’s a cold-blooded lizard-”

“Otto out-”

“Otto?” Anders interrupted. He knew the name. He’d never forget it. He was the templar who’d branded him. The templar who’d branded Terrie. His eyes were blue as lyrium and his soul was just as cold. “What does Otto have to do with Alrik?”

“Otto is Alrik,” Bardel explained. “Otto Alrik is his full name.”

He’d met him. Maker’s mercy, Anders had met him. He’d met the monster who performed the ritual on Karl, and the monster had walked away. How had Anders let him walk away? Anders’ chest felt tight. He stood abruptly, and locked his hands over his head. He inhaled for four seconds, held it for seven, and exhaled for eight.

Four, seven, eight. Four, seven, eight. Four-

“... I thought you knew,” Bardel said while Anders practiced breathing. “Forgive me. I know you’ve suffered at his hand. Thekla-”

“Don’t,” Anders cut him off.

Bardel gave him a small nod, and pushed on, “Otto outranks me - Cahail would not take my word over his, and I do not rank high enough to speak with a Seeker anyway. I’ve drafted a proposal to submit anonymously. Mistress Selby has a copy should you wish to make any alterations. I’m told you’re drafting a manifesto of your own and you may have the words I lack.

”Your phylactery arrived from Kinloch, but there is something wrong with it. It no longer glows, as though you are dead, though you are known not to be thanks to Thekla’s testament and the Hightown fires. We’ve tried everything. Our Entropy Enchanter was even called upon to cast a remote Curse of Mortality, but as you live and breathe, it failed.”

“And you’re just telling me this now?” Anders demanded, “What if it had worked?”

“Mage or no, it is no easy thing to leave the Gallows,” Bardel said, “And it takes no magic to be cursed in Kirkwall. I will not pretend to know what life is like for an apostate, but I would ask that you also not pretend to know what life is like for a templar. Do not mistake my aplomb for apathy. I have practiced it to the detriment of my soul.

“You cannot know what it is to stand still at a Harrowing. To stay silent at a Ritual of Tranquility. To take a newborn child from its mother. Your war may be without, but mine is within. One day I will have to stand before the Maker and justify the life I have lived, and I will not have the words.”

If Anders was supposed to feel sorry for him, he didn’t. He couldn’t. If all Bardel had left was apathy, all Anders had left was anger. “What about the Dalish?” Anders asked. “You said the Knight Commander keeps the raids on a schedule - twice a month in Darktown, but the templars are everywhere now. The alienage, Sundermount, Hightown. Why?”

“Why not?” Bardel said, dragging his fingers through his hair, and the grey that now peppered it, “I cannot speak to the city, but I imagine it is because the Viscount is not stopping her. For Sundermount? A Dalish elf came into the city recently. Vahnel. He turned in his own Keeper.”

Anders laughed - a mad sound, half-bark, half-cackle. A few of the workers glanced over at his outburst, and Anders scratched at the edge of his brand until it bled for a physical pain to replace the emotional one. Of course. Of course, of course, of course. What else could go wrong?

“Is she alive?” Anders asked.

“She is a he,” Bardel said with a confused sort of frown. “An old man, portly and placid, but an alleged maleficar according to Vahnel.”

Not Merrill’s Keeper then, Anders realized. How many Dalish clans were there in the Free Marches? Why did Anders assume there was only one?

“I do not believe it,” Bardel continued, “Vahnel was second in line, and bitter about it, but we should never have gotten involved with the Dalish in the first place. It’s an unspoken law to allow them their mages, but the Knight Commander heard ‘blood magic’ and no more.

“She took the Keeper, and had him interrogated. He denied the blood magic, but confessed his clan had some kind of magical artifact. The Knight Commander deemed it a threat, but the patrol she sent to Sundermount to find it never returned. Seeker Cahail has ordered us not to retaliate, but he does not control the Dalish, and there is no telling how the rest of the clan will react if they learn what we did to their Keeper.

“The Knight Commander is out of control. She’s even struck out against the qunari. One of their mages got loose from their templars, and burned down the village of Wrenwith. It was a tragedy, but their mages are their own. We should have returned it, but the Knight Commander captured it… and turned a blind eye when one of our brothers tortured it.

“I tried to reason with Cairn… I tried, but he had family in Wrenwith. The qunari… its lips were stitched, but the Tranquil still had to cover it’s cell door with runes to block out the screaming… and now it’s escaped. Seeker Cahail ordered us to leave it, but Cairn deserted to chase after it. Part of me almost hopes he kills it. If the Arishok learns of what we did to it…

“There's war coming. With the qunari. The Dalish… I can’t help but wonder if the Resolutionists are right, and there is no peaceful way to see this through.”

“Is the Keeper alive?” Anders asked.

Bardel shook his head.

“How long until the Seeker makes his decision on the proposals?” Anders asked.

“He returns to Val Royeaux with his suggestion in Solace,” Bardel said. “He wants this inquisition of his to look into the accounts of blood magic first, and see if it has any connection to why the Veil is so thin in Kirkwall. I think he is looking for some way not to blame the mages for succumbing to the temptation, but he is only looking at the end result, and not the root cause.

“If I could but speak with him… I know Vahnel is to be part of this Band of Three, as Seeker Cahail calls it. Grand Cleric Elthina has called on the Brothers and Sisters of the Chantry for volunteers to join, and the Knight Commander has done the same. I have volunteered, and I hope I can bend the Seeker’s ear, but I cannot guarantee I will be chosen. Many have stepped forward… Otto among them.

“Should he take Otto’s side… But it does not help us to speculate. I’m doing all that I can, my friend. You can ask no more of me.”

They parted ways. Bardel returned to the Gallows. Anders to his clinic. Dalian and the Dogs were still waiting for him, as was a patient. Jansen, one of the workers from the Bone Pit, sat on one of Anders’ operating tables, patiently kicking his feet and cradling a broken arm. Anders healed it, only half-listening as Jansen prattled away about life in the mines.

Anders’ mind was elsewhere, processing everything Bardel had shared. The Seekers of Truth were finally here. It might not have been the most ideal time for them to arrive, but at least they’d arrived. At least they were taking proposals. At least they were trying to be sympathetic to mages’ plight, and call Meredith to task on her insanity. At least elven mages would be safe with the Dalish, assuming Meredith actually listened and left them alone.

They had until Solace to make a proposal. Anders could get Bardel his manifesto to give to the Seeker of Truth. He could do something. He could make a difference. He could make a change.

“Wouldn’t believe the change!” Jansen was saying. “We got all kinds of safety shit now. Helmets, gloves, this sort of reinforced leather all enchanted like against heat and cold. How do you do that? Hawke’s even got us setting up some kind of pulley system like the one we got coming up from the docks, but I wasn’t paying attention, and well, here we are.”

“You’re all good, Jansen,” Anders bundled up a bit of elfroot for the miner, “Try to be more careful next time.”

“You got it, Anders! Oh, and hey, you should take this back,” Jansen shrugged out of his cloak, and held it out to him. “Can finally afford to buy myself a new one, now that Hawke’s taking care of us Fereldans.”

“Thanks,” Anders took it, and Jansen left.

The Dogs treated him like they’d treated Cor with Jansen gone. Respectful nods, beseeching eyes, hopeful smiles. Anders didn’t know what to do with them. They’d already cleaned out his food, and he had nowhere to send them. He could try Smetty, but the more he thought about it the less likely it seemed. Smetty employed elves. Elves came cheap. Humans didn’t.

Anders sat on his cot, staring at the cloak Hawke had gifted him months ago. The longer he stared at it, the less he liked it, but what other choice did he have?

Hawke might not have been a Dog Lord, but he had never turned away a stray.

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
Count Down: Dalian's backstory as told from his perspective. TW: Implied/Referenced Rape.

Chapter 101: It Gets Easier

Summary:

In which things get easier.

Notes:

Thank you for reading. I sincerely appreciate all of the hits, comments, kudos, bookmarks, and subscriptions.

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon Nubulis 14
Darktown: The Healer’s Clinic

Anders meant to go that night, but when his clinic door closed so did his eyes. He meant to go the next morning, but the sun set purple and rose orange. Anxiety evolved into paranoia, and Anders saw the colors everywhere. Templars and guards and they were ever in pursuit of him and he had to hide.

He had the Dogs help him move his clinic four times before he wasn't so much satisfied as stalled. The refugees caught up with him, and flooded in at the first hint of emerald from his lantern. He'd been neglecting them lately, and guilt kept him for the day, and the next, and the one after that, until he lost count.

The Dogs were loyal bed fellows. They ran errands for Anders and his clinic, gathering mushrooms, herbs, bandages, and all manner of things for his patients. Bree stepped up when Cor dropped down, and kept them in line, but she couldn't keep them fed.

Anders' coin dwindled by the day. The Collective only had so many Black Emporium contracts, and they only paid so much. It was no small feat to feed a dozen starving refugees who weren't sustained by the Taint, and deep down Anders knew he couldn't provide for them. Anders could barely provide for Anders.

He had to see Hawke.

He didn't want to see Hawke.

Time passed.

Magistrate Vanard died. Mysteriously. Under mysterious circumstances.

Dougal Gavorn left Kirkwall. Allegedly. It was alleged.

Maybe it wasn't justice, but vengeance was close. It was all Anders had left. Vengeance and anger. At the guard. At the templars. At the gallows and the Gallows. But mostly at himself.

Hawke was better at escaping the gallows than Anders was at freeing people from them. If anything, Anders had all but walked him to the noose. Fenris may have cost Vanard's son his life, but Anders had cost Dougal his coin. In this city, you'd have to cast a man in gold to give him any weight, and it was clear to Anders who bore the blame of Hawke's arrest.

Anders stood over his basin, washing his hands raw until a flare from Justice stopped him. "Sorry…" Anders mumbled.

"What for?" One of the Dogs asked.

"Nothing," Anders said.

"You alright, Anders?"

"Dandy," Anders lied. Emotionally, economically, things were not dandy. Physically, Anders had his scars. His feet had been kicked to callouses by the coin he kept in his boot, but those callouses had healed. He was fine.

Fine like Cor wasn’t. Fine like Hawke almost hadn’t been. Anders didn't know how much time had passed when he finally went to see him. He couldn't trust his thoughts or charms to hold through any transformation magic, and so he walked. A long walk. Somehow, his clinic had moved to the opposite end of Kirkwall. Winds buffeted him at every twist and turn through the sandstone quarries and up into Hightown, as if feeling his fears and warning him away.

A massive marble bridge spanned the gorge that cut the city in half, and only too late did Anders notice the guard post in the center. The wind had pulled his scarf low on his face, but how low was too low? Anders pulled the wool over his nose, but the guardsmen had seen him. One of them took a step towards him, and it was a step too many. Anders turned and ran.

He was back in the sewers before his brain caught up from where he'd left it on the bridge. He could have been followed. He could have led them back to his clinic and the souls he harbored there. Anders threw together his things, and Dalian and the Dogs followed suit. They lost a day, tearing his clinic down and setting it back up, but at least they still had days to lose.

The second time Anders was more careful. He crossed gorge below the city, not above. He tied his scarf tight around his face. He traveled at night, in shadow, far from star or moonslight.

He reached Hawke's estate without incident. Anders climbed the trellis to his balcony, tearing up his arms on thorns and popping rosehip. By the time he reached the top, he was a bloody mess, and the dog tried to maul him into something bloodier.

The slathering mabari snapped at Anders' hand the second he set it to the railing. He fell with a panicked squeak, tearing down half the bush and the trellis along with it in a mad scramble to catch himself. Up above, the mangy mongrel trumpeted victory to half of Hightown.

So much for the subtle approach.

"Fall to your death or climb to it," Hawke yelled down over the barking.

"What's option three?" Anders yelled back.

"Anders?" Hawke's head appeared over the balcony. He vanished briefly, and the barking stopped. Anders climbed back up, and Hawke reappeared in time to help him over the ledge.

Hawke was just fine. No rope burns around his throat. No bruises from any shackles about his wrists. His hair was a bit tousled from the sleep Anders had interrupted, and he was in a pair of silk trousers, and that was it. Anders wondered how Hawke had planned to handle him if he'd actually been an intruder, but he supposed the dog was enough. The mabari curled up at the foot of Hawke's bed, rumbling like an upset stomach.

"In the flesh," Anders joked, taking off his scarf to wipe off blood and rosehip. "Or most of it."

"What are you doing here?" Hawke pulled him inside and shut the curtains. “Why are you covered in blood?”

"That's a fine hello." Anders huffed, picking thorns out of his skin, "You want to try again?"

"Where have you been?" Hawke demanded, even less welcoming on the second attempt.

"In my clinic, with my patients-"

"For a fortnight?"

Had it really been that long?

"I lost track of time," Anders said lamely; the thorns came out of his skin easier than excuses came out of his ass, "You know, you could have come to see me."

"You don't think I tried?” It didn’t sound like a question, and Hawke didn’t give him time for an answer, “Your clinic was ransacked. You were gone. Where could I have come?"

"Anywhere you want I guess?" Anders shrugged sheepishly. Hawke didn't laugh. He looked like he'd never laughed in his life.

Anders didn't know how to tackle this conversation. He could feel the weight of it in his stomach like a stone. It felt heavy, but worse than that, it felt crowded. Like the dead were there, just over his shoulder, waiting to hear what Anders had to say about them.

There were so many.

For the first time in his life, Anders was grateful for Leandra's interruption.

"Garrett?" Hawke’s mother called through the door, "Is everything alright? I heard a commotion."

"Fine!" Hawke called back.

"Darling, can you open the door?" Leandra rattled the knob, as if to demonstrate how, "I'm concerned. Why is it locked?"

"I said it's fine!"

"Is someone in there with you?"

"Go back to bed, Mother!"

"You're not with that elf, are you?"

Hawke growled and made a gesture Anders interpreted to mean 'Wait.' He stormed out of his room, a feat in itself with Leandra trying to storm her way in, and shut the door firmly behind him.

"The elf has a name," Hawke’s voice faded as he steered his mother away, "And there's more than one. Did you even notice?"

"Of course I noticed."

"What's his name, then? What's her name? Name one of my friends. One! Just one."

"Anders." Leandra said his name like it was something foul on the sole of her shoe.

Anders was grateful he couldn't hear the rest of the argument. The words turned to whispers, and sounded like a foreign language from far away. It left Anders alone with the dog. His newest nemesis stayed by the bed, which finally had a frame. The room was furnished at last, albeit modestly.

Hawke had an armoire for his clothes as opposed to a pile, and a strange sort of workstation littered with tools, wood shavings, feathers, and strings Anders assumed was for his arrows. Above it, multiple bows were hanging on the wall, though why he needed more than one was a mystery to Anders. There was also the writing desk.

The key Anders had left was gone, replaced with a book that was none of his business.

Anders flipped it open. It wasn't so much a journal as a ledger. It went back months, detailing each job and what it paid on one side, and Hawke’s expenses on the other.


Earnings Expenses
Solivitus's Job: 1 Sovereign
Red Iron Commission: 3 Sovereigns
Bone Pit Cut: 200 Sovereigns
Runes for the Workers: 189 Sovereigns.
New Pickaxes: 15 Sovereigns
Fenris' Cut: 15 Silver
Isabela's Cut: 15 Silver
Merrill's Rent: 10 Silver
Replacement Armor: 20 Silver
Anders' Food: 5 Silver
Council of Five: 10 Sovereigns
Cut for the Widow: 1? 3? Fuck 5 Sovereigns

138 Workers 137 Workers. Damn Hubert. Can't mine Drakestone without good rune-work, but Worthy's a greedy bastard. At least next time it'll be cheaper. Bodahn can have Sandal do enchantments for the cost of the materials. Pickaxes'll have to be next month. Uncle’s debt'll have to wait… Can’t wait. Council will kill him. He'll have to stay at the estate until it's paid. What's that leave me? 9 sovereigns should cover what I owe Elegant and Tomwise.... shit I still have to get milk. I'll get kaddis next month and leave Dog home for now.


It was exhausting. From the look of the pages, Hawke lived job to job, even in Hightown. Anders couldn't ask him to take on more debt with the Dogs. He fixed his scarf, and was halfway to the balcony when Hawke came back.

“You're leaving,” Hawke didn’t sound surprised, and it hurt.

“I should go,” Anders said. “It's not safe for you if I'm seen here.”

“Then why'd you come?” Hawke asked.

Anders opened his mouth but no words came out. The dead still felt like they were there. Watching. Waiting.

Hawke crossed the room to stand in front of him, the inked mercenary more intimidating than impressive. Not for the bare chest, but for the bare heart, “Talk,” Hawke ordered. “You owe me that.”

“You almost died,” Anders managed. It seemed a good enough defense.

“So you walk out me? “

“I didn't walk out on you-”

“Bullshit,” Hawke cut him off, “A fortnight! You vanish for a fortnight and you don't have to shit to say?”

“You're the one who told me to run!" Anger, then. Anders could do anger. Anger was familiar. Anger was safe. “You're the one who told me it would be fine. You said Aveline had it under control, but if Bodahn hadn't been there-”

“He was. Stop-”

Anders grit his teeth so hard he felt it in his jaw, and snarled through them, “So help me if you say something about borrowing trouble.”

“Making excuses,” Hawke finished, “You walked out on me!"

“So what if I did?” Anders threw up his hands, “That's what I do. Surprise! That's who I am. I'm an apostate. I run away, and you could stand to learn a thing or two from me. I can’t believe you just trusted Aveline to handle it.”

“She did handle it-”

“Now who’s bullshitting? You got lucky. You shouldn’t have trusted her. You shouldn’t even be trusting me. If you get caught with me-”

“That's my choice,” Hawke slammed a thumb into his chest with the same force he put into his words. “Don't pretend you didn't ask me to make it. The one bright light in Kirkwall. That's what you said. Look, this wasn't even about you -”

“How was this not about me? I’m the reason the Carta was threatening you in the first place!”

“They’re a gang. Threatening people is what they do. This city is a shithole. Gangs and magistrates run rampant under an absent Viscount who has to be strong-armed into doing his bloody job, but he did it. Now the rest of the magistrates are talking about how I’m untouchable.

“It worked out. We can work out, but not if you’re just going to give up because of complications. I thought you were more dedicated than that.”

“Complications,” Anders laughed humorlessly. “You almost died! Did you miss the part where you almost died!?”

“So did you, three months ago,” Hawke didn’t sound moved, “I told you then it would kill me to lose you, but I'm here. I'm with you. Whatever it costs me. Where are you?”

Hawke looked at him like Anders was haunting him. A dead man, crowded in with the rest who’d dropped beneath the scaffolding and burnt up on the pyres. Like Anders was so concerned with the dead there was no room left for the living. Anders hated it. He would have done anything to make Hawke stop looking at him like that.

Anders kissed him. He almost missed, a rough clash of beard and stubble that took two attempts to reach Hawke’s lips and swallow his surprised grunt. Anders locked his arms around Hawke’s neck and tangled his hands in sleep-tousled hair. “I’m here,” Anders promised. “I’m here.”

Hawke gathered Anders into his arms. He tasted like mint, like the night Anders had interrupted, like the night Anders needed. He wasn’t dead. Neither of them were. “Don’t leave me again.”

“Okay,” Anders said around their kiss, rough and messy and torn apart by the occasional gasp, “Okay.”

Hawke’s mouth left his lips to carve a scorching trail down his stubbled jaw and arched neck. He reached the sensitive skin at Anders’ collarbone and sucked while Anders’ fumbled shakily with his coat. It hit the floor with a heavy thud, and a hard suck from Hawke almost took Anders down with it.

“What do you want?” Hawke mumbled into the crook of his neck. “What do you need?”

“Just fuck me,” Anders fought his way out of his tunic, but it tangled up on his elbows. The soft press of Hawke’s lips fell to Anders’ bared chest, and Anders had to restrain himself from burning his way out of his clothes. Hawke’s lips were pursued by teeth and tongue, an assault of hot, wet swipes and sharp bites that left Anders choking back needy whimpers.

Anders flung the shirt as far as he could when he finally escaped it, a vindictive toss that briefly distracted the drooling mabari watching them. Nothing had put Anders off faster, his erection dying with each drop of drool. “Dog,” Anders pushed Hawke’s head off his stomach, “Get the dog.”

“Seriously?” Hawke broke from him, frowning. Anders frowned back. “Okay, alright.” Hawke stumbled to his feet with a sputtering whistle, “Come on! Let’s go!”

The mabari stared at him, dumb or disobedient.

“Let’s go!” Hawke opened the door, and waved a violent hand between it and the dog, “Outside! Let’s go!”

Anders stumbled his way towards the bed and out of his trousers and smalls while the mabari trotted out with an almost deliberate slowness. The leather caught on his calf when he hit the mattress, but Anders was hard pressed to care. He didn’t want to care. He didn’t want to think. He just wanted to feel Hawke alive and well and inside him.

“I have some oil-” Hawke started, locking the door.

“Just come here,” Anders said.

“I’m here,” Hawke was on him again in a breath, his hands everywhere as if they couldn’t decide which part of Anders’ body they wanted to learn first. Anders struggled with the laces to Hawke’s trousers, squirming down into the sheets to try to see beneath him. He fumbled blindly with the knots while Hawke kissed, and carressed, and traced, and did everything but fuck.

“Just take it off,” Anders gave up, and pushed impatiently at Hawke’s shoulders, “Just take it off.”

“Okay,” Hawke climbed off him, and in a few twists the trousers were gone.

Maker’s breath. He was huge.

And gorgeous, if Anders allowed himself a moment to acknowledge it. Powerfully built, with thick arms and thicker thighs Anders couldn’t wait to be beneath. Dusky skin was covered with dark hair and darker ink. He had a constellation tattooed around his cock, and a druffalo skull on his thigh decorated with a sunburst, like it had been tranquilized. It looked newer than the rest.

Anders would worry about it later.

“If you can’t-” Hawke started at his hesitation.

“I can take it,” Anders caught his hand, and a swell from the Fade coated Hawke’s fingers with oil. He wanted to take it. He wanted Hawke to own him so Anders could stop owning himself.

“Guess I do like magic in bed,” Hawke decided. Anders didn't need the kiss that followed half as much as the warm hand Hawke ran along the inside of his thigh, “I missed you.”

“Fuck me,” Anders caught Hawke’s wrist and tangled their hands together, setting Hawke’s fingers to his entrance and pushing two oiled fingers inside him.

Mind-emptying bliss flooded over Anders at the tight stretch, and whatever sound he made was the last encouragement Hawke needed. The mercenary hooked a freckled ankle over his shoulder, and shifted to bury his fingers down to the knuckle. They were archer’s fingers, deft and dexterous, and they curled in just the right way to hit a perfect bundle of nerves deep inside him.

A shaky breath tangled up with a moan in Anders’ throat, and he squirmed, driving himself down on Hawke’s hand. “Don’t tease me-just go fast.”

Thank the Maker, Hawke listened. Oil-slick fingers drove into him, stealing shaky breaths and ragged moans. Anders ran his hands through the sweat that gathered on his brow and pushed it back into his hair, tangling his hands in the flaxen strands as Hawke fucked him.

“Heal your arms,” Hawke ordered, and only belatedly Anders realized it wasn’t just sweat coating his skin, it was rosehip, and blood, and a roar of blue flame cauterized the scratches. Anders swallowed, and the cloying taste of lyrium coated his tongue before it faded.

Part of him wanted it back, and he tried not to think about it. Hawke’s thrusting fingers left him panting, a shudder cracking into every breath until Anders was a writhing mess of sweat and sensation beneath him.

“This good?” Hawke planted a kiss on his ankle that turned into a bite, and Anders whimpered affirmations. “Can you take another?”

“Yes - yes, please,” Anders gasped, his cocking twitching where it lay hard against his stomach when Hawke stretched him for a third. “Fuck - Hawke,” Anders rocked eagerly against his fingers, and Hawke kissed his ankle again.

“You look beautiful,” Hawke groaned, voice low, rough, and earnest. So dangerously earnest.

“Not-” Pleasure spilled through Anders’ veins, flushing his skin at another crook of Hawke’s fingers, and Anders’ voice cracked into a whine. “Not like - Maker - Not like dog shit?”

“Not even close,” Hawke squeezed his leg, dragging blunt nails down his sweat-soaked skin, “Can you make some kind of light? More than the candle?”

Anders summoned a ball of magelight, and smeared it sloppily across the canopy. It was cracked and fractured and split off in the wrong direction, casting half of Hawke’s face in shadow. It outlined the hard bridge to his broken nose, and a red eye, pupil blown wide and dark with passion.

“Fuck me, you’re-” Anders cut himself off. Alive. Hawke was alive. That was enough. ”Just fuck me.”

“I am,” Hawke said, driving his fingers in deeper as if to prove it. The surge of pleasure that followed tore a moan from Anders’ arched throat. “You feel good. You sound good. You are good. You deserved a good night-”

“Stop- Stop talking,” Anders cut him off, batting blindly at Hawke’s chest. “Fuck me.”

“How?” Hawke pulled his fingers from him to caress Anders’ cock. He ran the pad of his thumb over the tip of Anders' cock, smearing precum down his rigid length. His hands stole shivers, but if he kept talking his words were like to steal tears, “You want to be on top? Might be easier-”

“No,” Anders sat up and gathered Hawke’s cock in his hands. It throbbed with Hawke’s heartbeat in his grip, twitching when Anders smeared it with oil pulled fresh from the Fade. Hawke caught both his wrists in one hand, and pinned Anders’ arms between them. He caught Anders’ jaw with the other, forcing him to meet his almond eyes.

They were a deep scarlet, and far more searching than they had any right to be. “Anders, breathe.”

“I’m breathing,” Anders said; it was hard to hear anything past how hard he was breathing.

“You want a fast, hard fuck, fine, but you’re going to talk to me,” Hawke ran his knuckles over Anders’ cheek, ghosting stubble, “Something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Anders lied. Everything was wrong. Hawke was the only thing left that wasn’t. “I just - I need you to be alive.”

“I’m alive,” Hawke promised.

“I need you to prove it,” Anders said.

It must have been a good enough answer. Anders pulled Hawke atop him, tucking his knees into his chest. “You have to tell me if you can’t take it,” Hawke lined himself up with a hand, the head of his cock pressed firmly against Anders’ entrance, a gentle pressure until Anders’ body surrendered to him.

“Fuck,” Anders’ voice cracked. His hands curled into fists on Hawke’s back at the sensation of Hawke sinking into him. It was overwhelming, stretching him to the edge of what he could take, and turned his breath to tatters. “Stop-” Anders croaked, “Just-... fuck, just give me a second.”

“Many as you need,” Hawke held himself up with one hand and kneaded Anders’ ass with the other, but he was almost shaking with the effort of holding back for him. He bit his lip so hard he left crescents indents all along his lips while Anders adjusted. There was something beautiful in it. The care. The moment within a moment.

“Fuck me,” Anders begged when he could beg again. Hawke tightened his grip on his ass, fingers denting pliant skin and pinning him in place for his shallow thrusts. The smooth glide of his cock sent flickers of heat coiling through Anders. It beaded into sweat on his skin, so flushed he felt like he was burning.

“Harder,” Anders pawed at Hawke’s face, and the furrow of restraint cutting across his brow. Hawke aimed a kiss at his fingers, and Anders slid them between his lips, eyes fluttering at Hawke’s teeth rasping his knuckles, “I can take it.”

Anders left his fingers between Hawke’s lips when he sunk in deeper, living for the harsh gasps that spilled over them, eyes closed and lost to the bliss Hawke built in him. Hawke’s hips snapped against his ass, driving him up the bed with every thrust. Pleasure burned through Anders in waves, and escaped in cracked whimpers and broken cries.

“Fuck, Hawke,” Anders’ breath hitched sharply, on the edge of shattering, “I’m almost - You’re so-”

Hawke gathered Anders’ trembling body in the arm that wasn’t holding him up. His head dropped into the crook of Anders’ shoulder, and there was no mishearing him when he kissed Anders’ neck, “I love you.”

“Fuck,” Anders unraveled. He didn’t mean to unravel. Not to those words. Liquid pleasure burned through his veins, almost scalding, and he came hard. His cock pulsed and throbbed, the wet heat of his release spilling across his stomach while his body tensed and shuddered. All the while Hawke mumbled nothings in his ear, his voice hoarse and cracking and sweet as lyrium.

It was too much. Anders whimpered with at the staccato rhythm of Hawke’s last few thrusts, over-sensitive body trembling with the aftershocks of his climax. He heard Hawke's ragged groans and felt the heat of his release inside him, and Hawke collapsed on him. It was a good weight. A comforting weight. A weight Anders hoped he could take.

Anders wrapped hesitant arms around him, and wondered if he’d be lucky enough for one of them to fall asleep.

No such luck. “You need me to move?” Hawke mumbled.

“No,” Anders said.

“I should move,” Hawke said. “Change the sheets.”

“Alright,” Anders said.

Hawke rolled off him, and kicked his trousers off the floor and into his hand to change back into them. Anders watched Hawke’s muscles shift while he went through the motions. He had a nice back, like something sculpted from stone and set in bronze. Anders traced a shoulder blade, and won a shiver. Hawke glanced back at him, “You want a sandwich?”

“Sure,” Anders said. A sandwich was safe. No one fell in love with a sandwich.

“Couldn’t get these off?” Hawke noted, tugging at the pant leg still stuck to Anders’ calf.

“It’s not that easy to get me out of my pants, you know,” Anders joked.

Hawke exhaled through hard through his nose, and gave Anders’ ankle a tug that took him off the bed and sent him towards the bath to wash up while Hawke changed the sheets. Anders took a long piss and a longer bath, and finished with the latter in time for Hawke to return with the sandwich.

It didn’t seem like something he was allowed to eat on the bed, especially not after Hawke changed the sheets, but Hawke didn’t stop him, so that was where Anders ate it. “So… rye bread, huh?” Anders said eloquently.

“Can we talk about this?” Hawke asked.

Oh shit.

Hawke opened his palm to the brass key Anders had left on his desk, and Anders breathed a sigh of relief. “What does this mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything really,” Anders explained, “I just didn’t want your family hurt because of me.”

“My family’s fine.”

“Really?” Anders asked. “Because I might have heard that your uncle is in debt to some group called the Council of Five.”

Hawke raised an eyebrow at him. “Who told you that?”

“You did,” Anders said. “Sort of. Your journal was open.”

The eyebrow raised higher. “Was it?”

“I opened it.” Anders said.

Hawke exhaled bemusedly, “He’ll be fine. He’s staying here until I get it sorted.”

“I’m sure you’re just loving that,” Anders guessed.

“Other things I love more,” Hawke said, far too unashamedly. Stop. Bad. Bad Hawke. “Look, the key. It goes to the cellars beneath the estate. There’s a trap door that leads out to some caves in Darktown. You can come here whenever you need, and you don’t have to tear yourself up on the trellis or fuck up your feet with your magic.”

Anders took it, and wiggled it in the air between them with a queasy smile, “Thanks.”

“You going to tell me why you’re here?” Hawke asked.

“It couldn’t be just to see you?” Anders asked, taking off his warden's necklace to hook the key onto it.

“Could,” Hawke allotted. “Isn’t, but it could.”

“... I need a favor.” Anders felt horrible saying it. Hawke wasn’t wrong. Anders had avoided him for a fortnight for fear of something that had already passed, and the only reason Anders had even gone to see him wasn’t because he’d wanted him; it was because he’d needed him.

“Ask it.” Hawke said.

“You’re not mad?”

“You want me to be?”

“Kind of.” Anders admitted.

“Why?”

“I’m a glutton for punishment?” Anders shrugged, dusting crumbs off his hands and looking for a place to set the plate. Hawke didn’t have a nightstand yet. His hand moved slowly towards the floor, and Hawke’s frown followed it. Anders locked eyes with him, and made to hide the plate under the bed until Hawke snatched it from him. Anders snorted, “I need you to give some people a job at the mine.”

“People?” Hawke repeated. “What people? Mage people?”

“No,” Anders said, though part of him insisted that wasn’t a terrible idea. “... Fereldans. They can’t find work anywhere else.”

“Alright.”

“Really?”

“Could always use more workers,” Hawke shrugged, “Hubert keeps the mine understaffed and overworked. Got folks working ten hour shifts to make the numbers.”

“Well that’s horrible. I’ll bring them by…?”

“Whenever you want,” Hawke said. “Jansen’s the foreman. I’ll tell him to expect you tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t have to thank me. Just don’t fuck off for a fortnight.”

“No promises.” Anders grinned, and Hawke’s brow furrowed. “Kidding.”

“I’m going to put this up,” Hawke tipped the empty plate at him, “Be here when I get back.”

Hawke left, and Anders rolled back onto the fresh sheets and firm mattress. It was nice to be in a bed again, in place of his cot, but some part of him still insisted he shouldn’t - couldn’t - get used to it. That it was dangerous. That it was impermanent. That there were things more important than love.

Did he love Hawke?

Could he?

Hawke returned, and sat on the edge of the bed beside him to run a hand along his thigh. “Am I sleeping here tonight?” Anders wondered.

“You want to?” Hawke asked. Anders didn’t know how to answer, but he also didn’t get up. “You going to tell me what was going on with you?” Hawke asked. “Why you were avoiding me?”

“I thought I already did.” Anders said, “That’s just who I am.”

“No it’s not. You’re a good man.”

“So people keep telling me,” Anders said. Hawke rolled into bed with him, and pulled him into his arms. Anders lay on his chest, tracing the arrow inked into his arm, “...The first person you killed, do you remember them?”

“Not the pillow talk I expected.”

“I remember,” Anders said. “His name was Mosley. He was a bandit. Kidnapped some poor girl and was blackmailing her father.”

“Sounds like he deserved it.”

“Maybe,” Anders said. “I killed him for it, so I hope so. I didn’t feel anything. I never feel anything. I’m just angry all the time. I think if Bodahn hadn’t been there, I would have killed the guards to free you. I ran into some on the way here, and I ran away because I think I would have killed them too.”

“What do you want me to say to that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even think about it anymore. It gets easier, you know? The gang at your judgment. The Dog Lords. They were working with the Collective. They were my friends, and now they’re dead, and-”

Anders took a breath to steady himself. Hawke ran gentle fingers along Anders’ shoulder, chasing constellations in his freckles, and Anders didn’t know what to make of his silence. He glanced up into his eyes, but found no judgment in them. “... And I’m worried that’s getting easier too.”

Chapter 102: Luxury of Leaning

Summary:

Alternative Titles: Welcome to the Family / Found Family / A Lot Like Love

Notes:

Thank you for all of the hits, comments, kudos, bookmarks, and subscriptions, but most of all thank you for reading.

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon 16 Nubulis Before Sunrise
Hightown: Hawke Estate

Hawke snored. Very loudly. Anders traced the bridge of his broken nose, following the path of kaddis that normally painted it a shade of red to match his eyes. A templar had broken it when they discovered Bethany for a mage - and there was no healing it.

Not while the magic marked Hawke as harboring another apostate. Not while that word still held weight. Not while the Circles and the Chantry still stood. Anders own rest was fitful for no fault of Hawke's snoring. He would rest easier the day Hawke could.

Anders moved to get up, and Hawke grunted, rolling over to wrap an arm around his waist and pull him close. "Morning."

"Morning," Anders agreed, folding his arms over Hawke's chest. "Sleep well?"

"Better than most nights," Hawke said, "Surprised you stayed."

"I'm afraid to get down," Anders only half-joked, "The dog nosed the door open last night, and now he's sharking around down there."

"He can smell fear," Hawke joked back. Hopefully. “You going to leave if I get him?”

“You ask that like you expect me to,” Anders said. “I’m not just here for the sex. Last night I just-... I think we were after different things.”

"Maybe," Hawke said. "Doesn't mean I wasn't for it."

Anders believed him and felt guilty anyway. "Still."

"Make it up to me with another," Hawke suggested.

"Could make it up to you right now," Anders offered. "I'm not much of a romantic, but I think I dragged in enough rose petals climbing up the trellis to set the mood."

"Don't need romance, just need you," Hawke said, though Anders was willing to bet while Hawke might not have needed it, he definitely wanted it. "Meant what I said. Don’t need you to say it back, but I need you to hear it. I love you.

“You’re safe here. You’re safe with me. Whatever you need from me for your cause, you have it. Don’t have to be scared to ask me to give some refugees a job, or whatever else you’re holding back. If you had killed the guards at the judgment, I wouldn’t have cared. Not in the way that you think.”

"How can you say that?" Anders asked. "Killing those guards wouldn't have been justice. It would have gone against everything I stand for - everything you stand for."

"Chant only condemns those who bring harm without provocation," Hawke said. "You were provoked."

"Everything provokes me," Anders argued. The verse wasn't going to keep him from the Void. "There are things I've done- things you don't know- things you can't know- I'm a monster."

"I know enough," Hawke rolled atop him. “And I want you all the same.” A steady hand ran down Anders' chest, stirring shivers with the blunt drag of his nails. The caress was interspersed with an occasional massage, and Maker how Anders needed it.

He felt tense, as much from the anticipation as the conversation, with all the words spoken and unspoken between them. Hawke seemed determined to leave none for the latter. He traced Anders' lips with his thumb, like he was waiting for a response. When one never came, he must have settled on Anders' sharp exhale when his hand stole around his cock.

"You're mine," Hawke said. Anders couldn’t say it back; the words wouldn’t form. He tried to find a place for his face and his shame in the crook of Hawke’s shoulder, but Hawke pushed him back down into the mattress. "Look at me, I want to see you."

It was just a handjob, really. It shouldn't have meant much of anything, compared to last night, but it meant everything. Hawke's slow strokes built a fire in the pit of his stomach to match the one Anders saw in his eyes.

They were beautiful. Anders regretted all the time he'd spent avoiding looking into them. A shudder of pleasure played through him, starting in his trembling thighs and rolling up to his hips and out his throat in a soundless gasp.

"That," Hawke kissed him, "Do that again."

"Make me," Anders finally found words. He meant it for playful, but it came out pleading. "Please make me."

Hawke made him - and remade him. He melted between fist and fingers, bringing him to the edge of abandon and dragging him back down again and again. Heat coiled tightly over every inch of Anders' trembling body. "Hawke," Anders begged, for want of what he wasn't sure.

The tease, maybe. The torture, the torment. If this was his punishment, he didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve Hawke, but somehow he had him. Somehow he hadn’t lost him. Somehow he was safe - secure -

"Maker, you're everything," Hawke said.

Anders shivered with pleasure. It roiled over him like a wave, curling his toes, canting his hips, knotting up his shoulders and twisting up in his hands. Hawke met his eyes through all of it- and Anders had never felt so naked. So completely and utterly exposed.

It was fine. He was fine. Hawke was still here, still wanted him, even knowing everything there was to know about him. As tangled in him in as-... as -...

Anders whimpered, a keening sound that trembled in his jaw. Sweat gathered on the back of his knee, in the small of his back. He rocked his hips up into Hawke’s fist, and his foot slipped in the sheets. “Fuck, I want to come.”

“Long as you look at me,” Hawke said.

Anders nodded. He couldn't speak. Every breath shuddered and cracked with pleasure and pleading, and he came apart in Hawke’s arms. Maker, but his eyes were so beautiful. Hawke loved him. Anders could see it. Maker, he could feel it, burning him up into ash and leaving him so spent and vulnerable the slightest breeze could have blown him away.

Hawke held him together, his hand sticky with his release, and trailed kisses up his jaw. “Thought of you on the gallows,” Hawke mumbled while Anders clung to him, catching his breath and shivering with the aftershocks of pleasure. “Seeing you in the crowd. Wondering who would take care of you if I was gone. I won’t die that easy.”

“You better not,” Anders said, capturing Hawke’s lips and his cock to return the favor. It didn’t take Hawke nearly as long to unravel in his arms, and Anders was beginning to enjoy the weight of him when Hawke stirred.

“You want anything?”

"Hmm," Anders drummed thoughtful fingers on Hawke's back. "Mostly to dissolve the templar order, abolish the rite of tranquility, and see mages granted autonomy over themselves."

"I meant for breakfast," Hawke said. "Can work on the rest later."

“Anything but oatmeal, in that case.”

“Or nordbotten stew?” Hawke added. Maker, the man really wasn’t pulling any punches.

Love. Relationships. Anders’ mother. Anders wasn’t ready for any of these conversations. Hawke had enough trouble with a live mother without Anders bringing up a dead one. “What, just because I’m from the Anderfels means I have to like all the cuisine?”

“Anders, you eat rats.”

“That doesn’t mean I eat everything,” Anders huffed. “Or read everything. What was up with that book, by the way? Darktown’s Deal? Is it supposed to be some kind of metaphor for how we met or...?”

“You didn’t read it,” Hawke guessed.

“I read some of it,” Anders said defensively.

“Read it,” Hawke said. “I’ll bring up breakfast,”

Hawke flung the covers back, and Anders caught him before he could roll out of bed. He wanted to say something. Share something. Make it clear he was here for Hawke as much as himself. He scrambled for a topic, and the druffalo inked into Hawke’s thigh stared up at him. Skinned, tranquilized, horrifying. It was something. Not something Anders wanted to go down on, but something.

“What’s this one for?” Anders asked.

“For you,” Hawke said.

Because that wasn’t concerning at all. “Why’s it Tranquil?”

“I had it done after Karl,” Hawke explained. “Maybe it’s for him.”

“You didn’t even know him,” Anders said. “Or me, back then.”

“Knew enough. Watching you go through that... I told you I killed Aveline’s husband? She told me I didn’t spare her any pain - I just took away her choice. I still think we should have tried harder to save Wesley. I think we should have tried harder to save Karl.” Hawke held up a hand to forestall the argument Anders had ready for him. “But it was your choice - like it should have been Aveline’s choice. The difference was you didn’t give me a chance to take it away from you.

“You never do. You’re a free man - and you never let me forget it. I never want to forget it. That night - I don’t know - it just stayed with me. I think if it came to it, you would have torn the whole Chantry down, and I think you would have been right to do it. Karl was just one man, but he was your man, and he was a man too many.

“You don’t know what it means for me to say that. You don’t know how much this past year has changed me. This isn’t for nothing.” Hawke thumbed the chain of his sunburst necklace, “I believe in the Chantry. I go to every service. I tithe. I pray. I give confession. But that night? I would have watched it burn.

“You did the right thing for Karl. You and Justice. The way he looked at you -... Dead’s better. If it comes to that - for Beth. For you. … I just hope I’m half the man you are.”

Anders didn’t know what to say about any of that. “... what about the constellation?”

“It’s Equnior.” Hawke said. “... I was drunk.”

Anders laughed, and snatched up his trousers to shimmy into them. “Why don’t I come with you to get breakfast?”

"Family might be up," Hawke warned.

"I've met your family," Anders reminded him. "I'll be okay."

"Whatever they say, I'm for you," Hawke caught his hand and kissed his knuckles. Like a regular nobleman. Hightown must have been rubbing off on him. Next thing Anders knew he'd be offering his arm.

"Thanks," Anders said, "It's good to be for."

The sun had risen before the estate, and it was quiet. Rugs muffled their footsteps, and tapestries took their conversation on the way to the kitchens. Anders might not have even found them without Hawke’s aid. The estate was a massive, sprawling thing, almost like Kirkwall itself, save that it was empty. Three stories of halls, rooms, and balconies without even counting the basement that twisted its way into Darktown.

It wouldn’t be such a terrible place to live.

"Bodahn and his boy are staying with us," Hawke told him as they went downstairs. "He owes the Dwarven Merchant's Guild some obscene sum in back-taxes."

"Do you know anyone who isn't in debt to someone for something?" Anders asked.

"City of Chains," Hawke shrugged. "Told Bodahn I'd spot him, but he wouldn't take it for nothing, so he said he'd work it off. I know you still need your grimoire - "

"I'm not going to get jealous of you helping the man who saved your life," Anders nudged him, "I'll be able to afford it eventually.”

“How?” Hawke asked.

“I got a room at the Rose,” Anders said on their way into the kitchens. Hawke’s uncle was already awake, brewing peaberry over a low flame. He moved with all the energy of a man who hadn’t yet accepted that he was awake, but apparently still had enough to look Anders over and snort.

“You would,” Gamlen said.

“Uncle,” Hawke said. “Fuck off.”

“Love to,” Gamlen said. “Once my drink’s done. How much you charge for a tumble? Fifty copper?”

“You couldn’t afford me,” Anders said.

“But I’m sure my nephew can,” Gamlen said. “This why you’re not paying off the Council? I can’t wet my whistle but you can wet your pecker?”

“I said fuck off,” Hawke said.

“And I said I’m getting my drink.” Gamlen sneered. “Least when I blow my coin getting blown I don’t take my whores home with me.”

“Where do you get off?” Anders demanded. “I healed you! Without me-”

“Beth’d still be here,” Gamlen snatched up his drink and left.

“I’m sorry,” Hawke said when he’d gone.

“Whatever,” Anders shrugged, taking a seat at the counter. “You warned me, right? I just hate that word.”

“You could have corrected him,” Hawke said, wandering between the larder and the pantry to gather up a breakfast for him. Smoked druffalo, rosemary biscuits, sliced honeycomb. It was the sort of thing Anders would have killed for as an apostate, took for granted as a Warden, and just felt guilty for now.

No other mage lived so well. Hawke set a basket of spotted eggs beside the stove and rummaged for flint to light it, as if he’d forgotten Anders was one.

“Why?” Anders asked, lighting the stove with a snap of flame from his fingers. Hawke smiled for it, and Anders hoped his next words wouldn’t take the smile away. “I’m not interested in that kind of work, but I’ve done it before. Apostates don’t really have a lot of choices…. Does that make you uncomfortable?”

“No,” Hawke said quickly, “I just wouldn’t want to share.”

"You realize I'm possessed?” Anders felt the ripple of Justice's presence, like blunt nails running down his spine, and let it play out across his skin for good measure, “Not much of an option here."

"Doesn't count." Hawke said.

"Because Justice is a spirit?” Anders guessed. “They're just as complex as people."

"You love him?" Hawke asked.

"That's a loaded question."

"That's a loaded answer,” Hawke said, “He doesn't count because he's part of you. Isn’t that what you’re always saying? Not the same as working at the Rose or wherever you were before.”

"It was at the Pearl in Denerim,” Anders explained, picking the less complicated of two topics. “A long time ago, before the Blight. It wasn't like I wanted to work there, but I needed the coin to book passage to Llomerryn. I figured if I could just run far enough, eventually the templars would decide I wasn't worth the effort.

“Rivain… that was the dream. Somewhere the Chantry didn't have much oversight. Somewhere mages were respected. Sandy white beaches, fried oysters with Llomerryn red sauce, and the jewelry? Don't even get me started.

“But I couldn't exactly swim there, so I needed the coin. What else was I supposed to do? I didn't have any skills that weren't magic, and apostasy doesn't pay. Ladies paid forty silver for a tumble, but I only saw ten of them, and the room cost me five.

“Sanga - the proprietor - was nice at least. She was good at trying to make sure none of us got hurt, and kept my secret when some of us did. But five silver a roll was nothing when each ship wanted a sovereign.

“Except Isabela's. That's how I met her. She bought a night with me and offered to take me with her, but the templars caught me before she set sail. I'm surprised she didn't tell you."

“Didn’t ask her,” Hawke said. “Wasn’t my business.”

“But you must have been curious, right?” Anders pressed. He couldn’t imagine that kind of restraint when he’d never hesitated to listen to one of Varric’s stories or jump into a journal. “You never had the urge to ask about me?”

“I ask about you,” Hawke said. “Just don’t ask about you. Look, at the Rose, you’re just healing the girls, right?”

“And the nobles,” Anders said. “I know you don’t agree, but the Coterie will screen all my clients. I’ll be safe. I just have to find a way to convince more people like you to join the cause.”

“I thought that was what your manifesto was for.”

“It is, but people have to be willing to read it first. The Free Marches aren’t like Ferelden. The only mages the nobles talk about are the magistrate’s son, the Terror of Hightown, and Idunna the Exotic Blood Mage of the East. I have to show them we’re not all monsters to be feared, but I can’t do that as the Darktown Healer.”

“Read the book.”

“What does Darktown’s Deal have to do with my manifesto?”

“Just read it.”

Anders didn’t have a chance to push for more. The rest of Hawke’s family woke up, and a rather terse exchange with Leandra led to one of the most awkward meals of Anders’ life. He regretted his earlier bravado - breakfast with Hawke’s family was not a breakfast Anders wanted any part of. He fidgeted in one of the high-backed chairs in the dining hall, trying to remember how to sit like a person and not a hunched rat fighting for scraps in the sewers.

For the most part, Leandra ignored him, reciting the latest gossip to her captive but not-so-captive audience. Gamlen followed up his peaberry brew with a tankard of ale, and Bodahn preoccupied himself with alternatively helping his son cut up his food or praising him for managing on his own. Anders found enlightenment in his eggs, and did his best to keep his mouth full in lieu of keeping it shut.

“The Reinhardt’s daughter was asking about you again,” Leandra said to Hawke.

“So tell her about me,” Hawke said.

“You know she'll be at the de Launcent’s Feast Day ball,” Leandra said.

“Good for her,” Hawke said.

“Her mother tells me she'll be wearing an emerald gown,” Leandra continued, “Since things are going so well with the quarry, I was thinking we could commission you a matching doublet.”

“I'm seeing Anders,” Hawke said.

“Well… yes, we all see him, dear,” Leandra said, despite making a concentrated effort not to.

Hawke set his fork down, “Mother, enough. You know we're together.”

Gamlen snorted into his drink, “Guess I don't have to ask which one of you is the girl.”

“Uncle-”

“You know the Rose has plenty of skinny boys for you to bugger without passing up a good dowry for this one,” Gamlen said, “Maker knows this family needs it.”

“Then you marry her,” Hawke snapped.

“Like mother, like son, right?” Gamlen said. “Why is it you just can’t resist ruining your life for some fool apostate?”

“Took a lot less for you to ruin yours,” Hawke shot back.

"You want to talk about what ruined this family?" Gamlen said.

"Could someone pass the butter?" Bodahn asked cheerily.

"Magic ruined this family! Our father was supposed to be Viscount until our fool cousin had all those mage brats and you-" Gamlen thrust an accusatory fork at Leandra, "-ran off with that damn apostate. You really going to let your boy make the same mistakes?"

"Anders isn't a mistake!" Hawke snapped. "I love him. I'm with him. So shut the fuck up about him."

Anders passed the butter. Bodahn mouthed his thanks.

"Darling, think about this,” Leandra said. “You can never get married. You can never have children. If you don't marry - properly - the Amell line dies with you."

"It died with you," Hawke said. "My name is Hawke."

“Well!” Bodahn interrupted loudly, “Lovely breakfast! Thank you, Master Hawke. I’ll have to make sure I’m up a little earlier to make the next one. I’ll make sure to set another place for Master Anders from now on. If you’ll all excuse me and the boy, we should hit the markets and pick up a loaf of sugar before they get too crowded. Come on, Sandal.”

“I like the markets,” Sandal followed his father out, and Anders took the opportunity to flee the room with them. As much as he liked Hawke's company, of the two families, Anders was for the Feddics. 'Master Anders' was definitely preferable to 'skinny bugger boy.'

Hawke had warned him, but it still put a damper on his mood after Hawke had lifted it. Anders wandered his way back through the estate to Hawke’s room.

Hawke caught up with him while he was getting dressed. “Anders wait - I’m sorry about that.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Anders said. “I’m an apostate. Can you really blame them?”

“Yes,” Hawke said seriously. "Don't leave for that."

“I’m not,” Anders lied. “I probably shouldn’t stay too long, though. Wanted criminal and all that. If your uncle ever notices the bounty on my head he’ll turn me in for sure.”

“He’s a rat bastard,” Hawke said.

“Then I guess it's a good thing I’m not with him,” Anders said. Come on Anders. You can do it. Just a few more words. “... I’m with you.” Close enough. “I need to get back to my clinic and let the refugees know about the mine, and I still need to find a place for one of the mages the Dog Lords were sheltering… but I’ll see you tonight?”

“Tonight,” Hawke agreed.

Anders didn’t mean to move in. He really didn’t. It just sort of happened. He spent the night here and there. He left things he felt would be safer at Hawke's estate at Hawke's estate. Hawke cleared out a drawer for him, and had him fitted for clothes to put in said drawer. Nightwear, a healer’s apron, a few extra tunics, socks and smalls, and eventually the drawer became a dresser.

The dresser became other things. Other things became more things. And more things… became good things.

Fereldan refugees found gainful employment at the Maharian Quarry sounded a lot better than ‘ex-thugs hauled shit at the Bone Pits,’ so that was how Anders tried to think of what became of the Dog Lords. A free man found food and lodgings at a respectable establishment sounded a lot better than ‘an apostate took up whoring at the Blooming Rose,’ so that was how Anders tried to think of what became of Dalian. A nobleman fell in love with a mage, and offered him shelter in Hightown sounded a lot better than ‘an abomination took advantage of a poor man’s hospitality,’ so that was how Anders tried to think of what became of Anders.

Hawke got him everything he needed for every cause he had. It started with a mortar and pestle, and ended with a full alchemical workshop in the cellar. It was enough for his clinics, but not enough for the Circle. The Circle needed his manifesto - preferably before the Seeker of Truth had it annulled - but his manifesto needed parchment. Parchment needed ink. Ink needed pounce, and so on and so forth.

Hawke commissioned him a writing desk of rosewood, and had it set up for him in the study. It had a fake back where Anders could keep the second draft of his manifesto, since Hawke had bound the first.

Anders should have given the man more credit. Darktown's Deal wasn't just a lengthy diatribe on the peculiarities of the Coterie. It was a lengthy diatribe on the injustices of the Circle. Three quarters of the way through, on page seventy-three, was Anders' manifesto. Hawke had cobbled it together from the half-formed thoughts Anders had inflicted on him over the past few months, and Varric had printed it.

It brought him near to tears when he finally found it during one of their writing sessions. Five of them set about a low table on the second story of the study. Merrill was working on her elvish. Fenris his common. Varric his latest serial. Hawke on nothing. He sat beside Anders, reading the book he’d been telling Anders to read for ages, when Anders finally saw what was in it.

Anders barely recognized it at first. It was cohesive. Coherent. Covert. It was everything he needed and more. Anders made a sound more whimper than whine and snatched the book out of Hawke’s hands, with a litany of thanks, prayer, and “You printed it! Maker’s breath, you actually printed it!”

“Blondie, you wound me,” Varric said, taking a break to rub at his amputated fingers and grin. “Of course I printed it. What else are printing blocks for if not printing things?”

“This isn’t just a ‘thing,’” Anders flipped blindly through the other pages that buried the manifesto, “This is a revolution. I can’t believe-... I can’t. I can’t use this. I don’t want you getting arrested for me.”

“Arrested,” Fenris snorted, “It is like to get him killed.”

“Blondie, Broody, trust me, if I ever decide to get caught, it won’t be over what I publish, it’ll be over what I don’t.” Varric said.

“I think it’s sweet,” Merrill grinned, scooting over to shove herself up against him and peek at the published manifesto. “It was so hard to keep it a secret! I’m glad you finally found it. Now you can share your story with everyone like you wanted. I liked this bit here, where you included the story I told you about the Vir Atish’an.”

“You all knew about this?” Anders asked.

“Only told Varric,” Hawke said, an idle hand rubbing Anders' back. “It was supposed to stay quiet.”

“And it did,” Varric huffed, “Honestly, Killer, Rivaini practically lives with me. I had to tell her, and she had to tell Broody and Daisy. It’s not like we told Red or Choir Boy. I’m a little offended it took this long, though, Blondie. You were really never tempted to read my magnum opus?”

“Thought Viper’s Nest was your magnum opus,” Hawke said.

“They’re all my magnum opuses,” Varric protested. “Magnum opi? Whatever.”

“I’ll read it,” Anders promised, cradling the book against his chest. “I promise. Front to back. First thing tonight. Hawke this-... You don’t know what this means to me.”

“Think I do,” Hawke brushed an imagined strand of hair behind Anders’ ear.

“In private, if you please,” Fenris sighed.

“Oh stop, it’s sweet.” Merrill huffed. “It’s nice to see you smile. You’ve been so serious lately, sometimes I get you and Fenris confused.”

“Take that back,” Fenris said.

“What if the wrong person reads it?” Anders asked.

“Blondie, how long have you had it and not read it?” Varric asked. Shame kept Anders silent, and Varric chuckled, “Exactly. Let’s cut the shit, my old work is old work. If I can do something new with it, I should. You can send it anywhere you want. Even to the Gallows.”

“The templars screen correspondence,” Anders worried at his bottom lip. The Collective could smuggle letters easily enough, but a whole book?

“Lucky for you, then, that book is ten years old,” Varric said. “Everyone’s already read it, and no one’s going back to reread it.”

“I did,” Hawke said.

“Not helping, Killer,” Varric said.

“I’m not saying don’t, I’m just saying be careful,” Hawke said. “A few copies. No more. Anything else’ll be suspicious.”

“A few copies,” Anders repeated, hardly hearing him. It was happening. It was really happening. This was how he convinced the Seeker of Truth. This was how he convinced Orsino. This was how he convinced the College of Magi to vote for independence from the Chantry.

“Now that Killer’s finally had his time to shine, it’s my turn. Here,” Varric fidgeted with his coat, and pulled out a bit of parchment to push across the table to Anders. “I can’t keep track of all your human holidays, and I don’t really want to wait for one. Blondie - that shit in the Hanged Man -... I’ve been trying to think of a way to repay you for keeping Bianca from ending up a widow, and I think I finally figured it out.

“That’s a sneak peak of Hard in Hightown, chapter… something. I’ll make it work. Go on, read it.”

Anders read, “The mage held out a hand over the wound. Light welled up from Donnen’s sleeve as though it had oozed out of him. In a few breaths, the wound closed and his bruises faded from purple to brown and then to nothing… The chantry clinic turned no one away... Varric, the chantry doesn’t have a clinic.”

“It doesn’t?” Varric mused, “Well, it’s just a story. But you know what they say about stories. There’s power in them… and really, that’s all history is: the best tales. The ones that last. Might as well be mine. And in my story? It seems to me that maybe that’s something the chantry should do. Maybe mages heal more than they hurt. And maybe, just maybe, if folks read about something like that in my story, they’ll wonder why it’s not in theirs. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll want to do something about it.”

Anders lay awake that night, reverently tracing the edges of Darktown’s Deal. He wanted to read it, he meant to read it, but he kept flipping back to the page that held his manifesto. It wasn’t perfect. He’d changed so much, in the handful of copies he’d shared with Hawke over the past few months, but it was something.

It was a place for him to start. It was something he could use. It was something he could share - and Anders knew exactly who he wanted to share it with. He shook Hawke awake with a hand on his shoulder.

“Hmn?” Hawke mumbled.

“Hawke, are you awake?”

“No,” Hawke said.

“... I want to send my manifesto to Beth.” Anders said.

Anders had never been very good at reading him, but it definitely woke him up.

Hawke sat up, “Anders-”

“Isabela already sends her books,” Anders cut him off, “I know it’s a risk - but if I can convince Beth maybe she’ll understand that we can save her - that we can get her out. She could be free to live a normal life-”

“Anders-”

“Free to have what we have,” Anders slapped a hand over Hawke’s heart, rather than name it. He couldn’t name it - but maybe it didn’t need a name. Hawke covered his hand with his own, and Anders hurried on, “She deserves that. You know she does. You know we all do. If I can convince her, maybe I can convince the Seeker.”

“... what do we have?” Hawke asked.

“Each other.”

Chapter 103: Dissent

Summary:

To Knight-Commander Meredith, re. the so-called "Mage Underground"

Every Circle in Thedas suffers from individual mages who rebel and attempt to flee. These apostates are usually found and returned to the Circle or mercifully killed if they have fallen to demonic temptation. Until now, I have never served anywhere that the populace does not fully cooperate in hunting these rebels.

Here in Kirkwall, citizens actually help rebel mages escape. Escaped apostates have survived their freedom long enough to form the "the mage underground," a network that feeds and shelters escapees and even transports apostates into remote areas of the Free Marches and beyond our easy reach.

As of late, the movement has grown bolder, sending raiding parties into the Gallows in an attempt to break out mages who lack the skills or willpower to escape on their own. This is a grave concern. My recommendation is to fight back, both physically and in turning the minds and hearts of their supporters against them.

—Knight-Captain Cullen

Notes:

Thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon 16 Ferventis Mid-Day
Collective Packaging House

Between the parcels and the personage they didn’t quite fit in the packaging house. Anders sat on the edge of a desk decorated with a map of the Free Marches. It was held in place with a boot, a knife, and two books. The boot could have smelled better.

Dalian's slippers wouldn't have worked. The ex-enchanter looked every bit the magical courtesan, splayed out across one of the many shipping crates. His robes were more decorative than practical: rope and sash covering his back and shoulders, but not his chest. Looking at him, you'd never have guessed he'd just escaped a templar's raid.

Looking at Selby, you would. The state of the Collective’s leader made Anders’ heart ache. She’d aged a decade in the short year Anders had known her, after her sister had been tranquilized. At some point, she’d acquired a cane Anders prayed no one mistook for a staff, because for once it really wasn’t one.

“I’m not leaving Kirkwall,” Dalian said.

“You need to,” Selby insisted. She also insisted on standing, for some reason, even though they all left the chair empty for her. “You narrowly escaped Meredith’s hounds. The city just isn’t safe, love.”

“The Rose is,” Dalian waved her off with a well-manicured hand. “Hasn’t it helped having me there? Without me, you’d never know how many of the noble families support our cause.”

“Anders is there often enough. He can manage on his own,” Selby said.

"Anders would rather not," Anders chimed in.

Selby frowned at him, “It’s not worth losing Dalian to the templars.”

“It was one raid,” Dalian didn’t sound concerned, “The Knight Commander isn’t looking for me, she’s looking for templars.”

“So she’s blind to rape in her own tower, but consensual sex is a stain on the Order,” Anders noted ruefully. “No surprise there.”

“If you’re caught-” Selby pressed.

“I’m not the Madam’s first mage,” Dalian cut her off. “The Rose is full of hidden passageways. Anders - if you could?”

“It’s true,” Anders said. The Blooming Rose had needed the replacement after losing Idunna, and they seemed happy enough with Dalian and vise versa. “He’s good, Selby, and he’s there more than I am. He even got the Harimanns to read my manifesto. They’re for it.”

“Maker’s grace -” Selby muttered, rubbing at the new lines the argument wrinkled into her forehead, “Fine. Let’s focus on the elves. We must get five out through the gates and get to the caves. It’s that or they risk capture and interrogation.”

“I can get two out tonight,” Bancroft said. The Fake-Tranquil wore a bandana to hide the brand about his forehead during their meetings. After Selby’s sister, Anders wasn’t the only one the symbol upset. “A guide on the other side will take them to the refuge. Don’t pick anyone with a cold; last time, a careless sneeze almost alerted the guard.”

“Out where?” Selby peered at the map.

Bancroft tapped by the boot. “Ostwick.”

“It’s no good,” Selby chased the path Bancroft picked with a finger shaky with age, “The guards patrol too often.”

“We wouldn’t need Ostwick if we’d just sent the elven mages to the Dalish,” Anders said bitterly. “You told me to get numbers. I got numbers. I didn’t-” kill Pol for nothing? “-make the trek up Sundermount for nothing.”

“Anders is right,” Evon added from where he was stuffed into a corner. Even hooded in the shadows, the tattoos on the Chasind’s face were visible. “I warned you the nobles would notice. It doesn’t take a tattoo for someone to remember your face.”

“We sent the ones who wanted to go,” Selby said. “I won’t send more. Not with how the Dalish are raiding the east roads.”

“The Sabrae Clan isn’t even behind the raids,” Anders argued. “There’s more than one Dalish clan in the Free Marches.”

“A moot point to the templars if they decide to strike back.” Bancroft said. "We cannot trust Stannard to reason. Not with her attacks on the Dalish and the Qunari."

“Fine,” Anders tapped near the knife, “Then we sail them out. My friend is a better contact than Samson. We won’t lose any with her. The Fifth Wind has the space, and their first mate is a mage.” Anders was beginning to realize ‘pirate’ was as common a profession for apostates as ‘prostitute.’ “They can take them to our contacts in West Hill.”

“The Fifth Wind?” Bancroft asked. “You’re talking about Fell Orden, the blood mage? The one who destroyed a prison in Ostwick in the chaos of the volcano’s explosion?”

“No, we’re done working with maleficars.” Selby put her cane down. “No more blood magic.”

“Blood magic is the only reason we have access to the lyrium tunnels in the first place,” Anders reminded her.

“Or the tomes to haste us through them,” Terrie added from the bundle of parcels she’d packed herself into. The packaging house was sweltering with the windows shuttered in the humid Kirkwall summers, but Anders doubted that had anything to do with why Terrie chose that moment to roll up her sleeves and display the scarred arms beneath them.

“One good deed does not make it good magic,” Selby said with forced patience. “Do I need to remind you two the Seeker of Truth has deemed this whole mess the Blood Mage Threat?”

“Do you need to remind me that my brother-in-law is dead and my sister was captured?” Terrie laughed. She tried to stand, but slipped in her sweat and sent a few wilted pieces of parchment fluttering to the floor. “I’m sorry, did the templars catch any of you? Brand any of you? Beat any of you? Rape any of you!?”

Dalian raised his hand and wiggled a few ringed fingers. Evon mirrored the motion.

“No, no, no, enough, we’re not having this argument again.” Bancroft picked up the boot and banged it on the table to silence all of them. “Blood magic or no blood magic, we can’t trust the raiders’ promise of passage - the templar’s bounty on us is far too tempting. Press on your contacts. We have to get the five of them out.”

“Do we have to get them out, or do we just need to move them?” Anders asked.

Selby frowned, “What are you asking, love?”

“I’m asking do we need to get them out of Kirkwall, or do we just need to move them? Would another noble family work?”

“We’re out of places to move them,” Selby said. “Just because the Harimanns read your manifesto and didn’t turn Dalian over to the templars does not mean they or I am comfortable with them keeping elven apostates among their servants.”

“Not the Harimanns,” Anders said.

“... I’ll talk to Sketch,” Selby said slowly. “But we should still do as Bardel says. The more ways we have to get mages out of Kirkwall, the better.”

The room murmured its assent, and Bancroft tapped at the sketch of the Gallows. “Where are we with Grace and Alain?”

“Still in solitary,” Anders said.

“Are we sure?” Bancroft asked, glancing around the small room cramped with mages and mage supporters, “Where is Bardel?”

“Late,” Anders said.

“No, really?” Terrie rolled her eyes, “How did you divine that one?”

“I’m a time-mage,” Anders grinned.

“Not good,” Bancroft mumbled. “Not good. He knows too many of our locations.”

“We all know too many of our locations,” Selby sighed.

“Bardel would never turn on a mage,” Dalian said. “He’d die for anyone in this room. He’s everything a templar should be.”

“You sound like a Loyalist,” Terrie sneered.

“Dalian is right,” Anders couldn’t believe he was defending a templar, but Bardel had long since ceased to be one in his mind. He was more like… a spy, addicted to lyrium. “Bardel’s brother is a mage. He understands our plight.”

“That means nothing,” Terrie said. “I understand the plight of elves. I wouldn’t die for it.”

“Fine,” Anders said, but he wasn’t thinking about Terrie, or Bardel, or anyone in the room when he said, “What about family? Would you die for that?”

Terrie grumbled herself silent, which Anders counted as a yes.

“If he’s caught, he’s caught,” Evon said, “He won’t talk, and it’s not like they can make him Tranquil.”

“... And what of his brother?” Selby said.

No one seemed to know what to say to that, but everyone seemed to know what it meant. “If the hounds sniff us out, the other site we discussed is clear,” Bancroft said. “Be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice.”

They scattered. Anders hung back at Selby’s beckon. She took the rejuvenation spell Anders cast on her with a grateful smile when she finally sank into her chair, “What are you thinking, love?”

“The Amells,” Anders said.

“The Amells,” Selby repeated slowly. “The ‘Cursed with Magic’ Amells? The ‘Charged with Harboring Apostates’ Amells? The ‘Every Mage in the Entire Family has been Found Out by the Templars’ Amells? Love, are you feeling alright? Why in the Maker’s good graces would you think that any apostate would be safe there?”

“Because I’m safe there,” Anders explained. “I’ve been living there for almost three months, and no one has noticed, but they have noticed the lack of servants. Two dwarves for a family that was second in line for the Viscounty? They need this as much as we do, but they can’t afford to pay real servants.”

“... You might be onto something there,” Selby allotted. “You’re sure you can trust them?”

“I’m sure,” Anders said.

“Alright. If Sketch can move them, we’ll move them.” Selby said. “You be careful though, you hear me, love? This city’s boiling over like a bad pot of stew. I don’t want to lose you in it.”

Anders pulled up the hood of his cloak when he left. Selby wasn’t wrong. The city was swollen with magic. The Veil was so thin it was practically bursting at the seams, echoing in one in a dozen souls who walked Kirkwall’s streets. Most of them, Anders recognized. Most of them, Anders rescued. Mages slated for Tranquility, ferreted from the Gallows at Orsino’s behest, and yet more, despite it.

Anders hadn’t meant for there to be so many. He’d just meant to rescue the one, but the one hadn’t wanted to be rescued. He’d sent a copy of his manifesto to Beth, but Beth had sent it back. He’d sent another copy of his manifesto to Orsino, and Orsino had sent it to the library, where someone had finally read it.

Except they hadn’t read what Anders had meant for them to read. They hadn’t read ‘The Circle is an institution of oppression.’ They’d read, ‘I am not in the Circle.’ They hadn’t read, ‘Everyone born in Thedas has a natural right to freedom.’ They’d read, ‘I am free.’ They hadn’t read, ‘You should be free.’ They’d read ‘You could be free.’

They’d wanted out.

They’d sent a letter.

Orsino had said no.

Anders’ manifesto stayed in the library.

Someone else had read it, but they hadn’t read what Anders had written either. No one did. They all read something else. It was like teaching Fenris his letters, and watching him fill in the blanks of a sentence he couldn’t quite finish with what he expected to be there. Mage after mage ignored a manifesto on mage rights, and read about mage rights made manifest instead.

They all wanted out.

They all sent letters.

Orsino always said no.

On it went, pleas and refusals flooding the packaging house, until something changed.

Selby read his manifesto.

Selby liked his manifesto.

Orsino still said no, but Selby said yes.

In three months, they'd sent three raiding parties. To break out the ones who lacked the skills or the willpower to escape on their own. The others. The ones whose deaths Orsino couldn’t fake. The ones whose cells Bardel couldn’t reach. The ones whose phylacteries Bancroft couldn’t destroy.

The ones who wanted Darktown’s Deal.

Anders would never forget the first letter they'd answered. A mother who wanted the chance to find the child the Chantry had stolen from her. She was no one. No one to the Chantry. No one to the Circle. And if they didn't do something, no one to her child, too.

I should like a copy. She had begged.

We will try. They’d written back. We cannot ensure delivery.

I should like it, all the same. Had been the reply.

Without Bardel, the first attempt hadn’t even made it past the new wards on the portcullis.

The second attempt had scattered them into the Waking Sea and barely saw them all back to shore.

The third attempt, Anders had brought Hawke.

He’d asked on Summerday, which, in retrospect, was perhaps ill timed on Anders’ part. They’d been on a walk through the forests outside the city, gathering feathers for Anders’ coat and Hawke’s arrows, when Anders had proposed it.

“I have to ask you something,” Anders had said, “Will you help me free a group of mages from the Gallows? Not Alain or Grace… just mages.”

By Hawke’s expression, it had been clear he’d expected Anders to propose something else entirely. His look had been so soft it made the feathers seem sharp. Then it had vanished, and he’d frowned. “You want to do this now? With the Seeker here?”

“I want to do this ever,” Anders had countered. “There’ll always be a reason to wait.”

“Is this because of Beth? Because she’s happy in the Circle? You know all that matters is that you weren’t-”

“It’s not about Beth. It’s about every mage. Think about how many there are in the Free Marches. Think about how our numbers have doubled in the past three years, and not just because Starkhaven’s Circle burned down. I don’t want to save just one or two. I want to save them all.”

“Like this? If the Seeker hears of a mage underground attempting to break into the Gallows, what do you think will happen to the mages inside it?”

“What is already happening to them!" Justice had echoed him, "What do you think this has all been leading towards? The underground? My manifesto? We have to act."

"But we don't have to act right now. You’re not thinking clearly."

"You haven't read the letters. I can't sit idle. You shouldn't either. You cannot claim to care for me and despise what I stand for."

"I care about you, Anders, but that doesn't mean I agree with everything you say."

"If you don't agree then your support of mages ends at talk.”

Hawke had turned without a word and left him in the forest, and for a moment Anders had honestly thought he’d accidentally ended everything. Anders had gone to his clinic, instead of going home, but Hawke had been there waiting for him in full armor. “What do you need me for?” He’d asked, and that had been the end of it.

The raid had gone well. Hawke had scaled the portcullis and picked the lock to the guardhouse to raise it, and the Collective had handled the rest. They’d freed over two dozen, the Seeker none the wiser, and the only expense was the strain it had put on Anders’ relationship with Hawke.

Which, honestly, could have been a worse strain. Hawke hadn’t said he’d loved him since, and if that was all it cost… then, well, it wasn't like Anders had ever said it back. He wasn’t trying to be an ass, he was just… holding back from saying it. He had a handful of ready responses that came close enough. ‘You better.’ ‘So I’ve heard.’ ‘Do you, now?’ And once, a very heartfelt, ‘Yeah.’

But an honest to Andraste, ‘I love you’?

A mage knew better than to say that. Anders pulled down a sun-bleached parchment etched with his likeness on his way into the Hanged Man, and tossed it into the spittoon on his way up to Varric’s room.

Hawke was already there, and pulled out a chair for him at his entrance, so their relationship couldn’t have been beyond mending. Anders was a healer, after all. He took the seat Hawke offered, and Hawke squeezed his shoulder before reclaiming his own chair. Anders shot him a grin, and Hawke gave him one back. Things were fine. Things were good.

The company, maybe not so much. Sebastian Vael, former-prince of Starkhaven and current-Chanty pisspot, had taken to joining them for cards and the occasional job for… some reason. The more pious of the two archers, Sebastian had taken a vow of poverty and pomposity. He was never without golden gilded silverite, ursine furs, and so much religious regalia he made Hawke look half a heretic. Anders couldn't pretend to understand what Hawke saw in him. Fortunately, whatever it was, Varric couldn’t see it either.

“So Choir Boy, I’ve been hearing some rumors about Starkhaven from the mages that made it out of your Circle,” Varric said, dealing Anders in, “They say you eat the dead up there, and murder strangers in the streets.”

“Why do I suspect that when you say you’ve ‘heard’ rumors, you mean you’ve invented then?” Sebastian drawled in a drawl that ate up vowels and mashed up consentents.

“Probably because he has,” Isabela guessed. She was the only one of their usual crowd present, with Merrill focused on her mirror, Aveline on the guard, and Fenris on… whatever Fenris focused on. Avoiding Sebastian, maybe.

“Me? Lie?” Varric looked aghast, “Why don’t you tell us about Starkhaven, then, Choir Boy? I’m sure we’re all burning up with curiosity about your far-away land.”

“I’m not,” Anders said.

“My far-away land?” Sebastian repeated, “It’s inland Free Marches, not the moons.”

“And here I was hoping,” Varic sighed.

Sebastian rearranged a few cards in his hand, and ultimately shrugged, “It’s a lot like here, though there are fewer dead people.”

“Well, you don’t have Killer,” Varric noted.

“What do I have to do with dead people?” Hawke asked.

“The nickname doesn’t speak for itself?” Varric said.

“Sweet thing, your death toll is approaching natural disaster,” Isabela snorted.

“Working with Hawke is certainly much more exciting than the Chantry,” Sebastian agreed. “You seem to be involved every time there’s a crisis in Kirkwall. If there was someone like you in Starkhaven, I would not have a usurper on my family throne and no support to reclaim it despite my campaign.”

“I support you,” Hawke said.

“I stand corrected,” Sebastian nodded at him.

“So this usurper of yours is… twenty feet tall?” Varric guessed.

“Not even close, no,” Sebastian said.

“But he has claws for hands, right?” Varric asked.

“Fingers,” Sebastian wiggled some of his, which seemed a little insensitive, all things considered, “Perfectly normal ones. If a little fat, perhaps.”

“He eats babies, though,” Varric persisted. “And farts fire.”

Anders laughed.

“You’re not serious, I hope,” Sebastian frowned.

“You can’t even pretend to be interesting, can you?” Varric sighed, “Killer, honestly, what do you see in this guy?”

“Play nice,” Hawke said, “Can’t you two bond over some commonality of princes?”

“A merchant prince is a little different from a prince prince.” Varric said.

“Is it?” Sebastian mused, “I think Hawke is right. Would but the Maker approve, and you and I could be so much more than the best of friends. There was a time when this was all I did with my life… drinking, gambling…”

“Why couldn’t I have met you then?” Isabela sighed wistfully.

“Was this before or after you got Andraste’s face soldered to your pelvis?” Varric tipped his hand at Sebastian’s belt.

The ex-prince frowned. “My father had this armor commissioned when I took my vows as a brother.”

“And you’re okay with it?” Anders asked.

“I beg your pardon?” Sebastian started as if he’d just realized Anders was there.

“I’m just not sure I’d want the Maker seeing me shove His bride’s head between my legs every morning,” Anders explained.

Hawke choked on his drink, and Isabela laughed. “The Maker might be into that,” She grinned. “What is that one verse? With passion’d breath comes darkness, but with many against Her, She finds His light untiring as it parts the Veil-”

Sebastian’s face turned as red as his hair, “Don’t do that to the Chant!”

“It’s just a joke,” Anders chuckled.

“A sacrilegious one,” Sebastian smoothed his hair and tried to the same to his expression. “The Maker isn’t something to joke about.”

“The Maker left us to our own devices generations ago,” Anders said. “He’s never going to step back in and start listening to our prayers or our jokes again. He’s gone.”

“For the moment,” Sebastian said like the Maker just had stepped out for the privy, and not for eternity, “He has given us a chance at redemption. A chance to draw back his gaze. We have but to earn it.”

“Look around Kirkwall,” Anders said, and Maker or no Maker, once he started he couldn't stop. “That’s not happening anytime soon. The Knight-Commander is making sure of that. You’re a brother in the Chantry, what do you say when people come to you with what’s going on in this city? What’s your answer when someone asks, ‘So if Andraste preached freedom and ended slavery, why do you lock up mages and keep them as slaves?’”

“You seem very angry,” Sebastian noted.

“And here I thought the Chantry was against mind-reading,” Anders said sarcastically. “Did that change? Can I roll up my sleeves in that case? Because there’s a lot of hot air in here.”

“Anders-” Hawke began.

“It’s fine, Hawke,” Sebastian said easily enough. “You’ve assembled quite the team, and I know apostates to be among them, though I will not pretend to know why. The Circle exists to protect mages. Did something happen to you in yours, Anders? Is that why you left to join the Wardens? I had heard there were problems in Ferelden...”

“What, Uldred? Are you saying a mage can only be unhappy in the Circle if demons are involved?” Anders demanded, “It’s not about demons. It’s not about being beaten or raped by a templar - though that does happen. It happens in Ferelden and it happens in Kirkwall. Everywhere the Circle is, injustice is. A mage shouldn’t have to join the Grey Wardens to escape it. Every man, woman, and child born in Thedas has a natural right to freedom. Why is that so hard for the Chantry to understand?”

“You were given to the Circle. I was given to the Chantry. Hawke was driven away from his home by the Darkspawn,” Sebastian said, as if the three were in any way comparable, “None of us are free, though I do understand some of your frustration. The Gallows are dreadful, and it is a mark of shame for Kirkwall to feature them as a main attraction.”

“You-... you do? Oh. Well.. Thanks.”

“Of course,” Sebastian said. “As you said, I am a brother in the Chantry, and while no one has come to me with your questions, I will take them when you have them.”

“What, like confession?” Anders asked.

“Like confession,” Sebastian agreed.

“Ew,” Isabela said.

“Helps,” Hawke said. “You should think about it.”

“...Thanks, but no thanks,” Anders said. “I’m past talking about it.”

“Could have fooled me,” Varric said. “Don’t make that face, Blondie, I’m just saying, it would be nice to have one game of cards where we don’t talk about mages or templars.”

“That’s who I am,” Anders said. “There’s nothing else inside me.”.

“I don’t know, I bet there’s something else inside you,” Isabela winked.

“Really?” Anders sighed.

“That’s who I am,” Isabela shrugged. “So how did things go tonight, Sparky? Think you’ll need the Fifth Wind while they’re in port?”

“No, I-” Anders didn’t get much further before the door to Varric’s room burst open, and a templar burst in.

Anders recognized the shimmer of silver, the matted purple, the burnt brown of hard leather scabbards and gloves made for the harshest of hands. Hawke hurdled him to get between him and the templar, and Anders didn’t so much as fall as flip out of his chair in his panic. He ended up on the ground, wedged between the heavy dwarven stonework that made up all of Varric’s furniture, and the room dissolved into chaos.

“On my honor, I come in peace,” Bardel’s unmistakably tinny voice called out from somewhere under his helmet.

“Hawke, wait!” Anders scrambled to his feet, “It’s fine, he’s a friend!”

“A friend,” Hawke repeated slowly, lowering the dagger he’d pulled from the Void. Thank the Maker he hadn’t killed him. “... a templar is your friend?”

“It’s good to see a sword of the Chantry,” Sebastian said in welcome.

“I always did like a man in uniform,” Isabela waved. “Joining us?”

“No,” Bardel gave a shaky bow that rattled his armor as much as it rattled Anders’ nerves. “I do not have much time. I am being followed-”

“So you came here?” Hawke brought the dagger back up.

“I had no choice, I could not go to-... anywhere else in this world.” Bardel stumbled over their passcode, and Anders hesitated returning it. If it was just Hawke, or even Varric… Isabela would tell Fenris, and there was no telling who Fenris would tell. Even less telling who Sebastian would, but if Bardel was in danger… if the Collective was in danger….

Fuck it, “Or Beyond. Go ahead,”

“... So be it, but know that I put my life in your hands, my friends,” Bardel barrelled through his explanation as quickly as he’d barrelled through the door. “Ser Alrik has drafted a proposal for the Seeker. He would see all mages in Kirkwall made Tranquil over the next three years.”

“Madness!” Sebastian slammed a hand down on the table as he stood, as if the proposal could be so easily quashed, “The Grand Cleric would never allow such a thing.”

“Would she not?” Bardel sounded like he’d given up - as if the proposal had somehow made him Tranquil along with all the mages in his care.

“You have no idea,” Anders hissed at Sebastian, “Harrowed Mages are already being made Tranquil and she isn't doing anything about it. Why would she step in now?”

“Maybe Choir Boy could talk to her for you?" Varric suggested.

“Of course,” Sebastian said. “Elthina is like a mother to me. She would not condone this. Not everyone is out to persecute mages as you seem to believe.”

“It past the time for speculation,” Bardel said. “Alrik’s proposal is not for the Grand Cleric. It is for the Seekers of Truth. For the Divine herself. Alrik was always a sadist, but the qunari have inspired him. The things the qunari do to their mages…

“Their lips are stitched. Their arms are permanently bound. Their scripture is carved into the back of their masks so it is the only thing they see. Alrik has seen how the city tolerates them. He believes most would tolerate it if we followed in their footsteps.”

“So why are you coming to me?” Anders asked. “There has to be someone you can take it bring this to-”

“There is no one,” Bardel said. “I tried to get an audience with the Seeker, but I was denied. Ser Felestia was selected to join the Band of Three, and she will not hear me. She favors the Knight Captain, and he-... he is for it. What he saw in Ferelden-... But there isn’t time. The Brother the Chantry selected for the Band of Three will not see me either.

“On my honor, I tried everything. I even went to the First Enchanter, but the only power Orsino wields in the Gallows is his magic. Anders - I am afraid this is the end of it all.”

“You said the Seeker was taking his proposals to the Divine in Solace,” Anders argued, “My manifesto isn’t ready-”

“It must be,” Bardel said. “It must be. You must get it to the Seeker. Somehow - Alrik’s Tranquil Solution -... we must do something. You must do something.”

“Do what?” Anders asked. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I -... I don’t know. I don’t know what can be done. I have to go. They’ll know I was here. Please - leave quickly - a back exit - something,” Bardel fled.

“So…” Isabela drawled in the silence that followed, “... Anyone get the Angel of Death?”

“I think the game’s over, Rivaini,” Varric said sadly.

“This is ridiculous,” Sebastian said. “There is no ‘Tranquil Solution.’ If there is any truth to this, it is a single man’s lunacy. It goes against everything the order believes. The rite of tranquility is a last resort.”

“Talk to me when you’ve seen a friend with his mind in shreds, and then tell me what the order believes,” Anders snapped.

“I’ve met Ser Alrik,” Sebastian said, “He is not the face I would want put on the order, but the Chantry would never follow through-”

“The Chantry has followed through on worse!” Anders said hotly, “What do you think the Rite of Annulment is? Hawke-...” Anders started, but he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. “Help me.”

For one painfully long moment, Anders had no idea how Hawke would react. If he’d counsel caution, if he’d name this just another one of Anders’ delusions, if he’d flatout refuse. Hawke still held his dagger, and a word from him could have sheathed it in Anders’ heart.

“Sebastian said he can get an audience with Elthina,” Hawke said slowly. “So we’ll get an audience with her. If she doesn’t know anything, then we can get the name of the Brother who’s part of the Seeker’s band, and see if he does.”

It was a good plan. They saw it through, but saw nothing from it. The Tranquil Solution was a rumor. The proposals that had been submitted to the Seeker were confidential. Sebastian was content. Anders wasn’t. Hawke saw him home, and Anders spent the evening standing on the balcony. The Chantry loomed over Kirkwall like a tombstone, lined with the names of every mage in the Gallows.

It was still humid, even in the evening. Kirkwall’s summers were as oppressive as its leaders. The very air seemed to sweat, dampening the walls, the windows, the railing. Anders rolled up the silken sleeves of his night-frock, and felt wretched for no fault of the weather. This wasn’t working. He could dissent into madness and the Chantry would still stand, basking in its supposed light of the Maker while it cast its long shadow across the whole of the world and the mages within it.

There had to be something more he could do.

Hawke joined him, and if not for the weather, Anders would have leaned on him. Hawke traced the scars on his arms, connecting his freckles like constellations, and Anders couldn’t help but wonder what he still saw in him. Hawke wasn’t shouting of mage rights from the rooftops, and there had to be a point where Anders’ cause would take him somewhere Hawke wouldn’t follow.

“You have that look,” Hawke said. “Talk.”

“Are you sure you want to encourage me?” Anders asked. “What if I’m about to ask you to blow up the Chantry?”

“You wouldn’t ask me that,” Hawke said. “You’d ask Sandal.”

“He really did a number on the west wing, didn’t he?” Anders mused.

“Five hundred sovereigns worth,” Hawke sighed. “Bodahn warned me not to give him salamanders.”

“Seems like he should have warned you that charity is expensive,” Anders said. “Look, about that, what if I could get you more servants? Servants that didn’t cost anything but the room?”

“Mage servants?” Hawke guessed.

“They need somewhere safe, and you need safe servants. You know what it’s like to live your life on the run, you should want to-” Anders drew his shoulders back, and inhaled for a speech Hawke smothered with his hand.

“Stop. Stop doing that,” Hawke caught Anders’ wrist and pinned it to the railing when Anders tried to push him off. “Stop spouting off your manifesto to me. I’ve read it, alright? You know I’ve read it. Stop trying to convince me and just talk to me, Anders.”

Hawke let his hand fall away, and Anders couldn’t help thinking Hawke trusted him more than Anders trusted himself. Mage rights had become synonymous with mage fights in his mind. Anders wasn’t sure he even knew how to talk about it without riling himself up. He was just so angry. He was always so angry.

“... We hide some of the elves with the servants,” Anders managed, somehow, “With some of the noble families. The ones that don’t notice their servants or the ones that support mages.”

“Smart,” Hawke said gently, caressing his cheek with a touch equal parts cooling and soothing. Anders wasn’t sure whether to blame the heat, himself, or Hawke for his flush.

“It wasn’t my idea, so three guesses why,” Anders shrugged. “... I don’t believe Elthina.”

“I didn’t think you would,” Hawke said. “What do you need?”

“Help me find evidence of Ser Alrik’s Tranquil Solution,” Anders said. “If we can bring proof before the Grand Cleric, she’ll have to act. She can’t pretend this isn’t anything other than a request for the Rite of Annulment.”

“What are you thinking?” Hawke asked.

“The Brother in the Seeker’s Band has the proposals. If we can get them off him and show the Grand Cleric-”

Hawke held up a hand, “You want me to steal from a Chantry Brother?”

“I want you to save the lives of every mage in Thedas,” Anders countered. “I want you to save Beth, even if Beth doesn’t want to save herself. What other choice do we have?”

“There’s always a choice,” Hawke said. “Just-... give me a minute.”

Hawke left him on the balcony, and a minute stretched into two, and two stretched into more. Anders wandered through the estate after him, and wasn’t sure why he was surprised when he found Hawke in the chapel.

Then again, ‘chapel’ was perhaps an overzealous description of the room. It was more or less a study, two stories, spindly windows set high in the wall and cracked with stained glass depictions of the Chant of Light. There were no statues, no pews, no votive racks, nothing that cost anything. The first story was for confession, the second for cobwebs.

Hawke sat against the wall, staring up at a stained glass depiction of Andraste, his amulet hanging from his fingers. Anders sat beside him.

“When was the last time you prayed?” Hawke asked.

“I don’t remember,” Anders said honestly. “All Soul’s Day, maybe? Last year?”

“I’ve lost track of my confessions. Of what I should confess for…” Hawke sighed and dropped the amulet back into his shirt. “That phrase, the one you and the templar used? It’s from the Commandments, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Anders agreed. “Foul and corrupt are they who have taken His gift and turned it against His children. They shall be named Maleficar, accursed ones. They shall find no rest in this world or beyond.”

“Why that one?”

“Because… I don’t know. Selby picked it.”

“Fits. You never rest. … The Chant… it’s just words. Just talk. But you’re not, and I’m not.” Hawke pushed himself to his feet, and held out a hand for him. “Let’s go.”

“... You’re sure? What about the other Commandments?” Anders couldn’t help asking. “Those who steal from their brothers and sisters, our Maker sees this with a heavy heart?”

“... If His heart’s not heavy already, then He’s no Maker of mine.”

They brought Isabela, and Anders hoped the fight to get the groggy pirate out of bed was the worst one they’d have that night. A cup of peaberry brew and a jog up to Hightown later, and Isabela was more than for their venture for the opportunity it afforded her to raid the Chantry reliquaries. Anders wasn’t a rogue, but he made a decent scout as a crow.

It was far from breaking into the Gallows. The Chantry was always open. The Holy Brazier had to stay lit. The faithful had to throw themselves in it. The crow watched a repentant sinner hold their hand over the massive flame that made up the centerpiece of the Chantry until they collapsed, to the crooning praise of a Chanter, and thought of the Dalish that had suffered the same at the hands of the templars.

Perhaps they had thought themselves merciful.

Perhaps Alrik thought the same.

The crow flew back to the entrance hall, and cawed at the Chanter’s distraction. Isabela made for the reliquary, and Hawke for the second story that housed the faithful. Votive racks, braziers, and torches cast light throughout the Chantry, but the many statues afforded cover for the shadow that moved among them. Twice, the crow lost sight of him, and only found him again because it knew his destination.

The man didn’t take the stairs so much as vault them, springing from one wall to the next and rolling over the bannister with the Chanters below none the wiser. The crow led him to the door that housed the Chantry Brother assigned to the Seeker of Truth, where the human paused. “Be ready to cast a sleep spell on him. He can’t know anyone was here.”

The crow came apart, and Anders took its place. He channeled the spell, and held it to cast while Hawke picked the lock. The door opened, and the spell cast, but the room was empty.

“Perfect on the first try,” Anders grinned.

“No,” Hawke closed the door behind them, “If he’s not here now, he will be soon. Hurry and find what you need.”

Brother Kerowen took his vows of poverty seriously. His room had a place to sleep, a place to eat, and a place to shit, and that was about it. Anders dug through all three, but the proposals weren’t there.

“We have the wrong room?” Hawke asked.

“No, this is it,” Anders scratched at his scalp, and stopped when he realized what he was doing. “I don’t understand. Bardel wouldn’t have lied.”

“The reliquary?”

“Maybe,” Anders agreed.

A man and a crow fled the Chantry, and rejoined a woman in the arbor outside it, where Anders came apart into Anders again. “Any luck?” He asked.

“Plenty,” Isabela grinned, wiggling fingers covered in dozens upon dozens of rings, “No proposals, though, sweet thing.”

“They had to be there. Let’s look again-” Anders turned for the Chantry, but Hawke caught him and pulled back into the arbor.

“If Isabela says they’re not there, they’re not there,” Hawke said. “Where else would they be?”

Anders didn’t want to admit it, but there were only two places they could have been. The Chantry or... “The Gallows.”

“Then we go to the Gallows,” Hawke said so readily Anders kissed him. Hawke kissed him back, a firm hand around his back offering all the support Anders needed.

It might not have been Hawke’s kind of romance, but it was definitely Anders’ kind. The kind that didn’t hesitate. The kind that didn’t question. The kind that Anders could trust to be for him, even while the world was against him.

“Thank you,” Anders said, but he meant something else.

“I’ve got you,” Hawke said, but it sounded like he meant something else, too.

“Spicy,” Isabela whistled, “Right, sweet things, should I tell Evet to get the Fifth Wind ready?”

“No,” Anders straightened out his coat, “No, we need to be careful. We shouldn’t sail there. We can take the tunnels.”

“What tunnels?” Isabela raised an eyebrow.

“Tunnels to the Gallows. Lyrium smugglers built them to service the templars who crave the stuff,” Anders explained. “You cannot tell anyone about them. Not Fenris. Not Merrill. It’s a secret that has saved the lives of hundreds of mages. Promise me.”

“I don’t know about tunnels, sweetheart,” Isabela said uneasily. “I belong on the open sea, not squished under a thousand tons of rock.”

“Need you for this,” Hawke said. “You already freed a hundred slaves, what’s a hundred more?”

Isabela pursed her lips into a pout, “That’s not fair. You can’t play the slave card. I’m not- This isn’t-... Fine. Fine. Let’s go give some templars a good spanking. But this isn’t charity! If we kill them, I get to loot their stuff.”

“Not killing anyone,” Hawke said.

Anders hoped that was true, as he led them through the tunnels an hour later. The twisting limestone caverns dripped with the weight of the ocean above, and Isabela jumped at each bead of water that fell from stalactite to stalagmite. “I do not like this,” Isabela mumbled, wringing her hands on her rapier, “I do not like this at all.”

“You’re fine,” Hawke said.

“This is not good,” Isabela danced nervously around a puddle, “This is not sexy.”

“Why would this be sexy?” Hawke asked.

“Rescue? Romance? Risk?” Isabela rattled off her reasons. “But under the sea is a bad place to be. We should have taken the ship. Always be on top. That’s my motto.”

“Why-”

“Shh!” Anders hushed them. “I have personally led five mages to freedom through these tunnels. They echo.”

Isabela took to humming, to replace the chatter, which wasn’t much better. Words slipped in, here and there, and eventually it was clear she was whispering a sea shanty to herself.

“There was a ship - she sailed to Rivain,
Heave, lads, they’re gaining
There was a ship came home again,

What d’ye think was in her hold?
Heave, lads, they’re gaining
There was diamonds, there was gold.

Many a sailorman gets drowned,
Heave, lads, they’re gaining
Many a sailorman gets drowned.”

“Oh for -” Anders rolled his eyes, “We’re not going to drown.”

“Shh,” Hawke hushed them both the second time around. “Listen.”

They stopped and listened, and for a long while Anders heard nothing but the drip of the ocean and the nervous crack of Isabela’s knuckles. Then came the wail, and it wasn’t the wind. Anders broke into a run, Hawke and Isabela on his heels. He rounded a corner, and slid to a stop behind one of the many stalagmites lining the cavern the tunnel spit them out into.

Templars. Too many templars, ringing the cavern like malicious metal stalagmites, around a mage. There shouldn’t have been a mage. The Collective hadn’t planned a rescue. There was no way for the would-be apostate to know the way through the tunnels without them. There was no way for the would-be apostate to even escape the Gallows without them. Which meant they'd done it on their own, which wasn’t possible.

“Please, I haven’t done anything wrong,” The girl - she was a girl - a too young girl - pleaded, “My door was unlocked -”

A trick.

A trap.

“I just wanted to see my mum - No one ever told her where they were taking me - I would have come back-”

“That’s Ella,” Hawke whispered. He hadn’t brought his bow. Isabela didn’t use one. Daggers and rapiers were nothing against full plate.

“Who?” Isabela whispered back.

“Beth’s apprentice,” Hawke explained. “Fuck. Shit.”

“So you admit your attempted escape?” Purred an unmistakably familiar voice from one of the templars. Ser Alrik took off his helmet, bald head gleaming in the torch light of his fellows. His gloves followed. So did his belt. “You know what happens to mage girls who don’t toe the line around here, don’t you?”

Veilfire flared over Anders’, like the caverns had cracked, and the ocean had come crashing down on him. Anders hit his knees under the weight of it, biting his lip so hard he drew blood. “No-not here-this is their place - there are too many - we can’t-”

“Anders, calm down-”

“She admits her door was unlocked,” Someone who wasn’t Bardel said, because it couldn’t be Bardel, because he wouldn’t look like Bardel, he would just look like a templar - “It was your shift, Otto. You lured her down here for this -”

“Well, you don’t fuck a bitch in a bed,” Alrik chuckled. A few other templars chuckled with him.

They outnumbered Bardel.

They outnumbered Hawke and Isabela.

They didn’t outnumber Justice.

Chapter 104: Into Madness

Summary:

In which there is madness.

Notes:

Thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon 16 Ferventis Evening
The Wounded Coast

"You fiends will never touch another mage again!"

Fire.

"I will have every last templar for these abuses!"

Lightning.

"Every one of you will feel Justice's burn!"

Water?

Anders lay on the beach, pale moonslight and the tide rolling over him. He'd sunken into a shallow grave with its efforts to bury him on the shore. Sand crusted along the side of his face and crunched in his teeth. He was wet, and cold, and his clothes were drenched.

… Not water.

The sand had gone red. The tide carried the color away in endless rivets. Anders' skin was stained with it, so much blood it was almost black. Thick and threaded between his fingers like veins, dripping to the pulse of some long dead heart shredded beneath his fingernails.

Not again.

Groaning, Anders pushed himself to his knees. Pain lanced through his body like a scalpel lanced through an old boil, and Anders vomited blood into the ocean. Vomiting was a mistake. It pulled muscles taut against the cold steel still lodged in them, and Anders looked down at the dizzying sight of a hilt embedded in his gut.

"What…" Anders swallowed queasily, but swallowing was a mistake too. It came with the taste of copper and the texture of gristle, and he had to battle back the urge to vomit again. He didn’t want to vomit again anymore than he wanted to think about what he’d vomited up.

He just wanted the blade out and his guts in. Life’s simple pleasures. Anders could worry about what had put the blade there later. Bracing himself, Anders wrenched the sword free with a scream and a burst of restorative energy that sealed the wound as it formed.

… not a sword.

"Okay…" Anders wheezed, staring at the dweomer rune work. The golden guard. The mermaid engraving.

A rapier.

Isabela’s rapier.

And Anders its scabbard.

"Okay…” Anders said slowly, “Okay. Okay okay okay. Okay-so that's-that-"

Anders knew what that meant. There was only one thing it could mean. It meant what it meant for Nate and Velanna and Pol and Anders couldn't form the words. He couldn't finish the thought. He couldn't he couldn't he couldn't he couldn't

The blade fell from his shaking hands, piercing through his panic attack as violently as it had pierced his skin. Anders spun in a circle in the sand, screaming. “Bela!?” Moonslight refracted off the Waking Sea across an empty shore. “Hawke!?” The tide washed up kelp and driftwood, but no bodies. "Bela!?" Anders screamed again, but nothing answered him. Not even echoes.

"No, no, no - Justice - Justice what happened? What did we do? What did we do!?" Anders dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. The pressure conjured spots, but no memories.

What had happened? What had they done? They'd been in the tunnels, they'd found a group of templars, and then…

Then what?

Then nothing. Just … sensations. Rage. Vengeance. Righteous fury. Fire and shrapnel and screams and blood. So much blood. Anders fisted his hands in the sand, viscous with the stuff. Grainy bits chafed against his palm, like charred skin melted by the wrath of his inferno.

Whose skin?

Anders dug a piece out from beneath his fingernails, but there was too much blood and too little color to tell. Anders dug through the sands around him, but turned up no necklace, no earrings, no buckles or belts. There was nothing. Nothing but her rapier, buried to the hilt in his stomach, and Anders still alive despite it.

Templars. Just templars. Please just let it be templars. Maker, please just let him have killed the templars and not Isabela and not Hawke and not the mage girl and not Bardel and not Andraste who knew how many other poor unfortunate souls had been trapped with him a tomb of his own making.

Anders stumbled to his feet, blood soaked sands swallowing his first unsteady steps. He had to go… somewhere. Somewhere he could find out what had happened. Somewhere he could find out what he’d done, but walking through his memories was like walking through an earthquake.

...There had been an earthquake.

Anders had cast an earthquake. The ceiling had cracked, and threatened to collapse with all the weight of the Waking Sea. Stalactites had fallen like the Gallows portcullis, blocking off their exit, dripping with salt water and the blood of the templars they impaled, and narrowly missing Isabela. Anders remembered her shrieking that they were all going to drown.

He remembered Hawke, blood streaked like kaddis across his face, his voice hoarse from his own screams and died down to nothing more than a whisper. Anders couldn’t hear him, not even in the memory, but he could read his lips. He could read his eyes. He could tell that Hawke had begged Anders to show them another way out, but Anders hadn’t been Anders. Anders hadn’t even been Justice.

Anders had been fire and blood.

Anders couldn’t see past it. It was like watching a man bleed out on his operating table. Somewhere, underneath all that blood, was a vein or an artery that made it all make sense, but Anders couldn’t find it. There was no healing his memories. No making sense of them. They were just gone.

Like Isabela was just gone.

She couldn’t have survived. Nothing could survive him. Not Isabela. Not Hawke. Not Justice - or his spirit wouldn’t have let this come to pass.

Then again, maybe he hadn’t. There was nothing to reassure Anders that the blood that painted the shore didn’t come from his friend, except that the rapier was only a rapier and there was no hand or body attached to it. Maybe Isabela had escaped. Maybe she’d drowned in the tunnels like her silly shanty predicted.

Maybe Anders should find out.

Anders picked up the rapier, and stumbled his way through the sands. There was more than one entrance to the lyrium tunnels, and one or two led to the Wounded Coast. Anders had made it out. There was no reason to think Hawke and Isabela might not have made it out with him.

It wasn't hard to find his way back to the entrance. If Anders didn’t know the way, he could have just followed the blood. It had to have been his - not that there was any way for Anders to know. It just had to have been.

There were no other footprints. No other bodies. Not that Anders’ magic was the kind that left bodies behind, but he would have seen something. A bow. A boot. Something, but there was nothing but sand and blood.

Anders wasn’t sure how long he walked before the rocky outcropping of the lyrium tunnel came into view. No one waited for him at the entrance, because there was no entrance. It was blocked off, the hill collapsed in on itself as if by magic, and there was only one mage around to have done it.

Did he even want to know what was inside?

… Hawke was inside.

… Isabela was inside.

… Whether or not they were alive inside was the question.

Nothing happened until it happened. There was no reason for Anders to put himself through it twice. Unless it had already happened, and Anders was putting himself through it three times, because Hawke was dead and Isabela was dead and everyone was dead like Nathaniel was dead and Velanna was dead and Amell was dead-

The sound of someone crying brought Anders back to himself. It was too close and too clear to come from the tunnel, and it took Anders too long to realize he was the one crying.

So much for this getting easier.

Anders took a steadying breath, and cast the rocks aside with a stonefist. It looked more crypt than cave. Blood painted the limestone caverns a shade more befitting sandstone. Gore ran down the sloping tunnels, feeding into where the Waking Sea swallowed them. His earthquake had severed them from the Gallows, flood waters making any return journey impossible.

Starlight crept in slowly, as if it sensing his hesitation, seeping into the blood, catching on the waters, and illuminating three bodies huddled together in the center of the cave. Three living, breathing bodies.

One of them screaming.

“He’s back!” The mage girl shrieked, scrambling backwards, but there was nowhere for her to go. She didn’t seem to care, crashing through the waters as if she planned to swim her way back to the Gallows. “He’s back to kill us like he killed everyone else!”

“Hawke, get us the fuck out of this,” Isabela screamed right along with her, stumbling back until the waters were higher than her boots, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as finding her rapier had. At least she was alive to scream it.

“Maker, no, I don’t want to die!” The mage sobbed, “Mercy messere!”

It wasn’t the first time she’d screamed it.

Anders remembered her desperate whimper the first time she’d huddled behind Isabela. He remembered Isabela crying as she drove her rapier home in her defense. He remembered Hawke’s shattered, “No!” He remembered looking down at the rapier dispassionately, to Isabela’s horror and Hawke’s relief, and declaring the need for the mage’s death.

She had tricked them. She had trapped them. She had been a tool to lure them to their death at the hands of the templars.

No, no, that wasn’t what happened.

Was it?

Hawke wrenched him from his memories with a tight embrace meant more to contain than to comfort. There was no affection for him in that hug - and Anders hated himself for what he’d done to deserve it.

“Get her out of here,” Hawke ordered over his shoulder. Anders heard the scrabble of Isabela and the mage girl fleeing from the cave. Fleeing from him. It was for the best. The further away from him they could get, the better. They weren’t safe around him. Hawke wasn’t safe around him.

Hawke still hugged him - even when they were alone. Maybe he was affectionate. Maybe he was afraid. Maybe Hawke thought he could squeeze Justice out of him - and maybe he should. Anders barely felt Hawke’s arms around him, his hands in his hair, the hard kiss he pressed against Anders’ jaw.

“Hawke…” Anders didn’t know what to ask. He didn’t know what to say.

That hadn’t really happened, had it?

“I’m here,” Hawke promised. “I’m here with you. You’re here with me.”

“What happened?” Anders asked.

“You killed them,” Hawke released his tight hold on him, but kept his hands on Anders’ face. “It’s over. They’re dead.”

“But what happened?” Anders asked again, searching for a place for his hands, but they didn’t seem to fit anywhere on Hawke’s body. Not on his pallid face, not on his tense shoulders, not on his heaving chest.

“Doesn’t matter - it’s over,” Hawke’s lips lied, but his body couldn’t. “Wasn’t your fault - you’re a good man, you just-”

“Don’t say that,” Anders fought his way out of Hawke’s grasp, “Don’t fucking say that - just tell me what happened. Tell me what I did.”

“You killed them,” Hawke said unhelpfully.

“I know I killed them, that’s not what I’m asking-”

“I know what you’re asking,” Hawke said. “More came. You cast an earthquake, and the tunnels cracked. You dropped the whole damn Waking Sea on them and us, but we made it out, and we’re fine.”

That… didn’t sound terrible, Anders supposed, but it couldn’t have been the full story. Isabela wouldn’t have stabbed him if it was the full story.

“Then-... why did I trap you in here?” Anders asked. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“I’m telling you enough,” Hawke said.

“Tell me the rest.”

“I’ll tell you at home. Anders - there were too many moments tonight I thought you were gone -”

“Tell me what I did!” Anders shouted.

Hawke did everything but run from him. He dropped one shoulder back and brought one arm up, his knees bent, all of him tense for a battle he had to know he couldn’t have won. With a visible amount of effort, he relaxed, and said, “... You killed your friend. The templar. You tried to kill the girl. You tried to kill us-”

Hawke kept talking. Anders stopped listening. He remembered. He remembered enough. He remembered Bardel, gathering up the mage girl and trying to get her to safety. It had to have been to get her to safety, but it hadn’t looked like safety. It had just looked like a templar taking away a mage.

Anders remembered the blast. He remembered Bardel crashing through a stalagmite and sliding across the floor. He remembered throwing Hawke and Isabela across the cavern when they tried to intervene. He remembered Bardel wrenching off his helmet, screaming out his name, and Anders’ name, and the Maker’s name, and none of them had mattered.

He remembered Hawke, barely back up on his feet and forcing himself between Anders and Isabela after the petrified pirate had skewered him, pleading, “Anders, it’s over! Stop! You killed them all!”

“Not all,” Anders had said, and Justice had said, and they had said, together, staring at the poor mage and what their rage-addled mind had thought she’d done.

“Leave her, Justice!”

"Justice answers to no one."

"You answer to me! Anders is mine! Not another step, demon, or I swear-"

That had worked. Andraste’s pyre, it had worked too well. Hawke couldn’t have known how close he’d come to dying. Or maybe he could have. Anders didn’t know which was worse.

"I am no demon." They’d claimed.

"Then prove it!" Hawke had challenged them. A stupid challenge - even from a man who never lost one.

Their hand had flared with veilfire, and they’d grabbed Hawke by the collar of his cuirass. The armor had burnt, smoke stinging their eyes and drawing tears as oil, flesh, and leather burned. Anders remembered - no, he saw - the mark they’d left on their lover.

Anders wished that had been the worst of it. He’d gone so far as to draw back his free hand to strike, only to stumble out of the cave at the last minute. He’d torn down the ceiling to stop himself from going back, and ran.

He should have kept running.

“I need to get out of here.”

Anders fled.

“Anders wait!” Hawke called after him, but no amount of waiting could change what he’d done.

Anders had to get away from Hawke. Anders had to get away from Anders, but there was no one else for him to be. No amount of transformation magic that would make him anything more than an abomination.

He tried anyway, on his mad dash back to the city. A few haphazard transformation attempts that twisted him into something else. A crazed corvid that made it a few feet off the ground before a man crashed back into it, and kept going. He had to keep going. He had to get away. He had to leave before he killed anyone else.

Anders didn’t remember making it back into the city, but he was there, scrambling up the stairs to Hightown at such a slant every step hurt his knees. Bile wriggled like a worm in his throat, and he swallowed it back to no avail. There was no throwing it up. No coughing it out. It choked him, the acrid taste mingled with the sickly sweet hint of mana. Anders forced it down again and again. No, no, no. Maker, not again. Not ever again.

"Justice stop," Anders sobbed, crawling the final few feet to Hawke’s estate.

Anders burst through the front door, and no doubt woke the whole estate in the process. It didn’t matter. After tonight, he’d never wake them again. Anders stumbled his way to the room he shared with Hawke, and slammed the door behind him. He barred it with everything from his staff to the dresser to the writing desk.

Maker, what had they done?

They’d killed Bardel. They’d killed the Collective. They’d killed their cause. They’d almost killed that poor girl. They’d almost killed Isabela. They’d almost killed Hawke. How could they call this Justice? This wasn’t Justice. This was just rage. This was just madness.

Anders sobbed, dry heaving, but the bile remained. He could no more remove it than he could remove Justice. Maker, what had happened to him? What had Anders made him into?

He should have known better. His every torrid desire, his unchecked anger, his crippling fear. All of it must have been influencing Justice. Why else would his friend, his spirit, turn on them like that? If Hawke hadn't been there... Maker, Hawke had been there and it had barely mattered. It was a miracle anyone had survived their bloodthirsty onslaught. Anders didn't remember moving, but he wound up in a ball in the corner of their room, sobbing into his knees and digging ragged nails into his scalp.

His necklace fell from his tunic to dangle between his legs. The key to Hawke’s estate clinked against the vial of darkspawn blood, what little light illuminated the room dying on the ichor and catching on the brass. Anders fisted a hand around both and pressed them to his lips, wet with tears and cracked with blood.

He’d already killed Amell.

He wasn’t going to kill Hawke too.

Anders dug through the room for his satchels, growing musty and moth eaten in the bottom of his dresser. He’d emptied them out, over the past three months, growing comfortable and complacent in Hawke’s care, imagining himself a man and not an abomination. He should have known better. They should have known better.

Anders threw them on the floor and his things along with them, and started sorting. He didn’t get far before he heard Hawke calling to him through the door, punctuating every word with a pound of his fist. The wood would give eventually. Anders hoped the door had more resolve than the man, and kept sorting through his things. Trash. All of it. How had he ever let himself collect so much? How could he possibly have so many trinkets, baubles, and other useless knickknacks?

He was an apostate. This wasn't his home. He didn't have a home. He had to get out of here. They had to get out of here. They had to get out of Kirkwall, and go somewhere they'd never hurt anyone. They were fooling themselves to think they were strong enough to come out of a possession sane. Maker, they'd meant well, and now.... and now...

Anders heard the door finally slam open. It was his own fault for not locking it, and thinking the barricade would stop Hawke. He ignored it. "Trash," Anders muttered, tossing aside one gift after another, "Trash. Trash-" His hand stilled over the seashell he'd found for Karl, so many lifetimes ago. "Keep. Trash. Won’t be needing that anymore."

“What are you doing?” Hawke demanded.

“Leaving,” Anders said. “Going somewhere I won’t hurt anyone. To my Calling, or-”

"Stop that!" Hawke grabbed his wrists and tore his hands away from the letters Anders was feverishly sorting. "You're acting like a moody child!" A burst from Justice wrenched his hands free, and Hawke retreated a step at the magic that flared in his eyes.

"Don't fucking touch me!" Anders snarled, trying to ignore the signs of battle marring Hawke's armor. “I almost killed you! Everything I ever do will be stained by this. We’ll be stained by this.”

"It’s not a stain," Hawke said, kneeling beside him and pushing the box of letters away. “It’s just a burn.” Hawke pulled apart the charred remnants of his cuirass and the tunic beneath it, revealing a bloody swath of skin in the vague shape of a hand. Hawke framed it with his own, like it was just another story inked into his skin and not a sin Anders had forever branded there. “I’ve had worse. You’ve healed worse. I’m not leaving you for it."

"You should,” Anders choked out, flinching when Hawke touched his shoulder. “I murdered my friend. We almost killed that poor girl!"

“You did,” Hawke said, keeping a firm hold on his shoulder. “It happened, but it was an accident.”

“Exactly,” Anders laughed mirthlessly, “One that happened because I am dangerous. Unstable. Everything the templar say. Look at yourself! Don’t you see? You were right. I was wrong! Justice and I-... we’re just a monster. Same as any abomination.”

“That’s not true,” Hawke said. “You were just-... you were out of control.”

“I’m always out of control,” Anders couldn’t remember a time lately he’d felt in control. He blacked out. He lost time. He attacked merchants and templars and anyone who got in the way of his twisted pursuit of justice. “This is all my fault. Justice has been warped by my rage. He was good and merciful and I changed that! I corrupted him. I corrupted us.

“I have to leave. I can’t stay here. I can’t keep working with the collective. I can’t trust myself to hold him or whatever creature we’ve become back, and I will not put myself in that position again. I will not put you in that position again.”

“You can’t run away from this, Anders,” Hawke said.

“What am I supposed to do?” Anders demanded. “How can I fight for the freedom of mages when I am the example of the worst that freedom brings? I destroyed the tunnels. The Collective will never free another mage again.”

“So the tunnels are gone,” Hawke said, “So you use a ship. Isabela-”

“Tried to kill me,” Anders laughed, tilting his head back to keep in his tears. “She should have tried harder.”

“Don’t say that. Look at me. Look,” Hawke caught his chin and forced him to meet his eyes. The tears spilled, and Anders appreciated that Hawke didn’t try to wipe them away. He wasn’t sure when he would stop. “You killed a good man. We kill good men every day-”

“That’s different-”

“Because you knew him?” Hawke demanded. “Horseshit. I’ve been there. I told you I glassed a man. Killed him when I didn’t mean to kill him. The difference between us is I loved it. I lied - I am violent. I wish I wasn’t, but I am. There’s nothing like the smell of fresh blood.”

“But…” Anders held the hand Hawke kept on his face. “Those who bring harm without provocation…? You always quote it…?”

“The Chantry saved me.” Hawke said. “It didn’t change me.”

“What are you saying?” Anders asked. “Are you saying I should just…. Enjoy being like this?”

“I’m saying you own it,” Hawke said. “You confess to it. You move on from it. You’re possessed. Strong will isn’t going to be enough to counter that. This is who you are, Anders.”

“It can’t be,” Anders said. “How can I even trust myself to heal anymore? What if that… creature of vengeance turns on a patient? Will he… will I resist? Or will I loose his fury?”

“You won’t,” Hawke said, catching Anders hand and pressing it to his chest. His skin was burnt and tacky, and peeled off in strips when Anders recoiled. Hawke sucked in a sharp breath and pulled him back. “You think you’re going to hurt me? You won’t.”

“I already hurt you,” Anders said miserably. He wanted nothing more than to heal Hawke, to see his skin smooth and dusky beneath his fingers, free of ash and char and blood, but he couldn’t. Not while Hawke’s sunburst amulet grazed his fingers. Not when he feared whether or not Justice could see past it. “You have too much faith in me.”

“Sometimes faith is the only thing a man can have,” Hawke said.

Anders shook his head. He’d lost his faith a long time ago. “I can get you a salve. I don’t-... I can’t-... I killed him, Hawke.”

“I know,” Hawke said.

“I killed him.”

“I know you did.” Hawke pulled him into his arms, and Anders’ chest shook with a selfish sob. He wasn’t the victim. He was the monster. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Anders choked, angry at the tears that blurred his vision and angrier still at what a relief it was to loose them.

“It’s not.” Hawke agreed, but he still held him. Anders lay against his chest, mindful of his burn, mindful of how he should have been treating it, mindful of the spirit he could have summoned to heal it.

It wasn’t safe.

He wasn’t safe.

“... I want to do something,” Anders said. “Attend the funeral.”

“Okay,” Hawke said.

“He has a brother in Ostwick. A mage… I don’t know his name.”

“We’ll find out,” Hawke promised.

“... Did you find anything on Ser Alrik? About the Tranquil Solution?”

“Nothing left of Ser Alrik to find anything on,” Hawke said.

“So this was all just… for nothing.”

“Not for nothing,” Hawke said. “For Ella. If we hadn’t been down there, you know what would have happened to her. It didn’t because of you.”

“Worse almost happened to her because of me,” Anders said. “Worse happened to Bardel because of me. Worse will happen to all of the mages in Kirkwall because of me. We have nothing on the Tranquil Solution and now we can’t even get mages out of the Gallows to save them from it. We have nothing. I have nothing.”

“You have me,” Hawke promised, and kissed the top of his head. “I’ll ask Ser Thrask to look into it.”

“... I need you to do something else for me,” Anders said.

“Name it,” Hawke said.

“I need you to get me eighty four sovereigns,” Anders said.

“For your grimoire?” Hawke asked. “Why now?”

“Because this isn’t me. Because this isn’t Justice. Because this isn’t us. This isn't what we wanted. This isn’t why we did this,” Anders took a deep breath. He could feel the pull of the Fade in his veins, burning just beneath the surface and itching to split across his skin, and fought to restrain it. “If I can’t master the spirit inside me… then it shouldn’t be inside me. Amell knew a ritual to undo a possession. I need to do it, so I can undo it.”

“... Are you sure?” Hawke asked.

“No,” Anders said, but in the end it didn’t matter. His control was fraying - and he was afraid. Afraid for himself. Afraid for Justice. Afraid for Hawke.

It was for the best. Justice could be his spirit in the Fade, where Justice and Compassion and Love had meaning because it was the only place where justice and compassion and love could exist. There was no room for Justice in Thedas because there was no justice in Thedas.

Anders set his mind to it and Hawke set his coin to it. Anders knew the sovereigns would set him back with someone and set it aside with the rest of his sins. He already had so many, one more couldn’t hurt.

They changed before they left. Hawke brought his bow, and his throwing knives, and his daggers, and his dog, and Anders couldn’t pretend it wasn’t all for him anymore than he could pretend it wasn’t necessary. They stopped in his workshop, and Anders handed Hawke an elixir of grounding and a fire balm his lover pocketed.

“Still love you,” Hawke said.

Anders exhaled hard through his nose. “... If he tries to stop me, you can’t try to stop him. Just run.”

“Don’t think I can reason with him?”

“Justice isn’t a thing to be reasoned with,” Anders said. “It’s a thing to be delivered. Swiftly, without mercy or hesitation.”

“Reasoned with him in the cave,” Hawke argued.

“You almost died in the cave.” Anders countered.

The walk to the Black Emporium was quiet.

Anders could have almost sworn the massive library had moved. It was still suspended in the depths of Darktown, where the Veil was thin. Anders could hear the whisper of excited wisps at his passing and the spirit that passed with him. There was no hiding his intentions from Justice. They were a part of each other - the worst parts as much as the best parts. Justice had to have known what he planned, and yet for once, Anders didn’t feel angry.

He felt calm.

The massive golem that guarded the Emporium saw them inside. The Antiquarian hadn’t moved - in part because the Antiquarian couldn’t move. The corpse wheezed in delight at their entrance, startling a few moths that had settled in his gaping mouth. “Come in! Come in! It’s so rare to have company. Well, living company, at any rate. And my rates are the best!”

Anders wasn’t sure why he hesitated on the ramshackled bridge that led out from mineshaft to mortuary. They didn’t have a choice. This was for the best. The best for Anders. The best for Justice. The best for both of them.

Hawke took his hand, but didn’t pull him forward or backward. He just held it. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” Anders said. “I don’t know if I want this, I just -...”

“You want to leave?”

“I don’t know.”

“You want to go in?

“I don’t know.”

“Well don’t just stand there!” Xenon wailed, “Step inside! Have a look around! But not too close!

“Look, you wanted it back before this happened, right?” Hawke asked. “So let’s get it back. You use it how you use it.”

It was better than making a choice he wasn’t sure he could unmake. Anders nodded, and Hawke led him inside.

“We’re here for a grimoire,” Hawke explained.

“I have quite an extensive library on the history of forbidden magic,” Xenon boasted. “It’s back there. Somewhere. I … think. I haven’t been able to turn my head to look for two centuries.”

“I know where it is,” Anders led Hawke and his mabari through the labyrinth. Walkways upon walkways suspended out over a great abyss of black, and led to the towering shelves that made up the emporium’s library. Anders stared up at a wall of scrolls, tomes, and grimoires beyond counting. He stared until their spines bled together, and his vision blurred, and his knees buckled.

It didn’t matter what he wanted.

Amell’s grimoire was gone.

Chapter 105: Fester

Summary:

In which things fester.

Notes:

Thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon Early Solis - Hour Unknown
Kirkwall Hightown: Hawke Estate

The bread had begun to turn. There it festered on the edge of the desk, orange flickering over green on rye in a putrid sort of painting. Hawke had brought him the sandwich... it felt like hours ago, but bread didn't turn that fast, even in the humid Kirkwall summers. It might have been a day ago. Perhaps two. Anders couldn't say. The curtains were drawn, and the bubbling hill of wax atop which flickered a tiny flame told him nothing. He hadn't been counting the candles. A pile lay beside him, and Anders knew he was living a life of unnecessary opulence, but he was too paranoid for anything else.

Hightown was already talking. Hawke didn't need them talking any more. An unwashed apostate rifling through the study of the Amell Estate was bound to draw a kind-hearted neighbor to the rescue, and when they saw the pages of Anders' manifesto carpeting the study? A burglar would meet a kinder fate than the one Hightown would seal for Hawke. No, the curtains had to be drawn, but Anders couldn't write in the dark, so the candles burned.

Inspiration had struck him in the clinic, and Anders had run with it like an open wound, bleeding out through the sewers and into the trap door in Hawke's cellar with the key his lover had bestowed upon him months ago now. Anders wore it on a chain about his neck, at a length that let it dangle against his collarbone. The cold metal felt good against his skin, a key to hearth and home and heart, a reminder of the things all mages deserved and that Anders too often took for granted.

All of it was for naught. His inspiration had run dry well before his ink. Anders took in the spoils of his efforts, spoiling beside his lunch or dinner or whatever meal the sandwich was meant to be. Page after page of manifesto, and no progress. He'd rewritten the same passage over and over: parchment pooled on the desk, fell upon the floor, and lay in crumpled wads in the waste, and the mages were no closer to freedom. The manifesto was never good enough. No matter how he tried, Anders could never do it justice.

Perhaps because there was no justice. Not in the world and not in him. Anders couldn't bring himself to call on whatever had become of his spirit. Whether he was Rage or Vengeance or something else entirely, Anders’ control was slipping. At some point, he’d crossed over from moodiness into a feral sort of paranoia. He didn't heal. He didn't sleep. He didn't eat. Cloistered in his clinic or the estate, Anders worked on his manifesto or mundane medicine not borne of magic, but nothing he did would bring Bardel back.

The funeral hadn’t helped. Anders had had what he could only describe as a fit. He could have sworn Bardel's blood was still there beneath his fingernails, and that someone would see and realize what he'd done. He'd sprinted back to the estate and washed his hands raw, but no amount of soap or salt had seen them free of blood. It had seemed so real at the time, and Anders had been so sure if he could just go deeper, just get under his filthy fucking nails, he could wash it off. He’d ripped out two before Hawke had managed to stop him.

Anders looked back to the sandwich, a rotten thing now, but a labor of love once. The crusts had been cut, the lettuce, browned and wilted, was layered with slices of some kind of meat that had no doubt been fresh from the butcher days ago. There was absolution in that sandwich. Somewhere between the crumbling rye and mildewing tomato was a care for craft Hawke only put to bow or beloved. Untainted, despite it all.

Anders remembered Hawke sliding it across the desk and planting a kiss on his forehead in the process when he'd brought it, and while Anders swore he could still feel the damp of his lover's lips against his forehead, it was doubtless just summer sweat. He must have been sitting here for ages.

Anders stretched in his chair and winced at the crack of cartilage that came with the movement. Days, then. Thirst and hunger followed; his throat was as dry as the Western Approach and he could all but taste the sand on his tongue. The pain of hunger had passed, and in its place a tension had taken hold of his gut. Anders knew the Taint was sustaining him at this point, but it couldn't feed him. Nor, at this point, could the sandwich.

Anders picked up the plate, and swallowed down a gag in lieu of the sandwich Hawke had made for him. The scent of rotten meat and wilted greens had taken to the air and tangled with the scent of melted wax, and if his stomach weren't already empty Anders knew it would have turned. He pushed the bile down and himself up, and tripped on his first step. He hit the floor and the sandwich followed fast: rye, rotten meat, and broken bits of porcelain scattered across the study.

Anders lay with it for a time. His mess. His regret. His guilt. He felt no better for the company, and either it was the middle of the night, or the middle of the day, because no one came to his rescue. Eventually, Anders made himself move, gathering up the broken pieces of porcelain and sandwich slices. He could have left it for the servants, but it was a mess of his own making, and one of the few Anders could actually do something about.

He'd just swept up the last of the crumbs when Hawke found him. Anders decided it was midday by his garb. The man looked nobler by the hour. His customarily windswept hair was slicked back with wax. His leather jerkin wasn’t made for battle but to corset tightly at the waist. Richly dyed silks didn’t so much guard his chest and thighs as accent the strength in them. He looked like the sort of person Anders should have stepped out of the way for, as opposed to into the arms of.

"Finally moved," Hawke noted. "Was getting hard to tell you and Xenon apart. Draw you a bath?"

Maker and probably half of Hightown knew Anders needed one, but the time he’d lost haunted him. He couldn’t afford to rest. “Thanks, but I should get back to work. Maybe this evening.”

“Said that last time. Not a question this time,” Hawke heaved him over his shoulder without warning. “Filthy sewer rats go in the bath.”

Anders struggled, but there wasn’t much he could do without magic, and he wasn’t about to do anything with magic, “Are you serious-!?”

“Most days,” Hawke said, carrying him through the estate to the wash.

“Put me down - Hawke - I don’t have time for this-”

“Can’t hear you over the smell,” Hawke said.

Anders gave up somewhere around the stairs when a whiff of his own armpit convinced him Hawke was right. The bath was already drawn, a bowl of salts, soaps, and embrium petals sitting on the stand beside it. “Could you be more cocksure?” Anders demanded when Hawke set him down.

“Haven’t given me reason to be anything else,” Hawke countered, “Come on, I’ll join you. You need a break.”

Anders needed to get back to work. He needed to finish his manifesto, to restock the clinic, to do, to act, to strike-

Hawke unlaced the front of his tunic, revealing the burn beneath it, and Anders relented. “Maybe just for a minute.”

Undressing was its own battle. Summer sweat adhered his clothes to his skin, and his bandaged fingers didn't make it any easier. They peeled off like the rind of a rotten lemon and smelled just as sour. Sewer rat was probably a compliment at this rate. Hawke didn't seem to mind, and helped Anders out of his clothes with all of his usual tenderness. “Let’s make it a long minute,” Hawke mumbled.

Free of the trappings of nobility, Hawke looked less the man Kirkwall expected and more the man Anders knew. Scarred and stretched at the shoulders and thighs from muscle gained too fast and battles fought too hard. He looked human, and almost made Anders feel the same when he pulled him into the bath and his arms.

“A long minute it is,” Anders sighed, leaning back into Hawke’s attentive hands. It was no small feat to make himself relax, so long as there was an ever present voice in the back of his head driving him to actions he’d soon regret. “... Did you find the Tevinter texts I asked for?”

"... A few,” Hawke said, fingers kneading soap into Anders’ matted hair. “No rituals on curing possession in any of them though. I showed you yesterday when I got back from the Emporium, remember?"

"Right. Yeah. Sorry, I've just been distracted. I don't think I got anything done today."

"Can't be easy to write. How are your fingers?” Hawke asked.

“Still fingers,” Anders said, wiggling them. It would take a few months, but the nails would grow back.

“Should heal them,” Hawke said.

“I wish you’d stop saying that,” Anders sighed. “... magic can’t heal everything, you know.”

"Your magic can," Hawke said. Anders didn't have the strength for a response, let alone a spell. "You think about what I said? Giving confession?”

“There’s nothing to think about. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done with magic. How do I confess to that? You want me to walk into the Chantry with a staff while I’m at it?”

“You can trust Sebastian.”

“I can do a lot of things.” Anders said. “That doesn't mean that I should… Look, I appreciate that you’re trying to help, I just don’t want to talk about it.”

“What do you want to talk about then?”

“Nothing,” Anders said.

The rest of the bath was silent, save for the hitch of their breath and the lap of the water. Anders lost himself in Hawke and the certainty of his hands. This was his confession, the quiet litany of, “Please, please, please,” Anders whimpered at Hawke’s exacting touch. The man never seemed more an archer than when he handled him: his every motion left Anders strung out and trembling for release. For all he’d forsaken his magic of late, his climax was like a lightning storm, thundering in his heart and shocking through his veins.

Eventually, his pulse lost the race with his thoughts, and Anders climbed out of the bath to dry and dress. “Somewhere to be today?” Hawke guessed.

“I should go check on the clinic,” Anders explained. For all he knew, it might have been weeks since he’d restocked them.

“Do you know what today is?” Hawke asked.

Anders froze in the middle of toweling his hair. A glance at Hawke assured him the man didn’t look particularly aggrieved, but then again, Hawke had always had a face for Wicked Grace. It could have been any day.

"... Our five month anniversary?" Anders guessed. It was Solace. Anders was pretty sure it was Solace. Any day now, the Seeker would return to Orlais to put forth his proposals to the Divine, and Anders manifesto had to be one of them. He had to get back to writing it as soon as he finished with the clinic.

"Try again."

"Your name day."

"One more."

"My name day?"

"The day, Anders."

Anders had no idea, which he supposed was Hawke’s point. He went back to toweling his hair, and tried to ignore the slosh of water that marked Hawke getting out of the bath, but there was no ignoring the man when Hawke took the towel away.

“Tell me what day it is,” Hawke said.

“Why are you asking me this?” Anders asked.

“Why can’t you answer?” Hawke asked.

“Because I don’t know! You know I don’t know. Why are you doing this to me?”

"You're doing this to yourself. You tell me why. The bath is a start, but you need a real break. I know you’re not eating. If you just forgot, fine, but I don’t think you did. I think you’re trying to punish yourself, but there’s a difference between fasting and starving.”

"I can't starve," Anders reminded him.

"Semantic shit. You know how long it's been since you've been to bed?"

A day? Two? Anders couldn't remember. “I’m going to go check on the clinic."

Anders left. Hawke let him. It wasn't as if Hawke wasn't trying. The man was doing everything in his power to take care of Anders when Anders stopped taking care of himself. Anders knew it. He just couldn’t afford to rest. Not yet. He had to free the mages. He had to free Justice. He had to free himself.

The manifesto was what mattered, but Anders couldn’t just abandon the refugees. Terrie managed the clinic in Darktown and Anders' weekly trip to the Blooming Rose, but she wasn't a spirit healer. She knew enough creationism to heal the occasional broken bone, and relied on Anders to keep her supplied with potions and poultices for the rest. It wouldn’t help when the chokedamp hit, but Anders would cross that bridge when he came to it.

Anders left the estate by way of the cellar, turning down refugee after refugee who begged fire, or water, or healing magic of him. A few followed him all the way to the clinic, where Anders turned them onto Terrie. She went about filling buckets, lighting torches, and seeing to the sick while Anders took stock of the clinic’s supplies. Dwindling, as always. Terrie didn’t have the reservoir of mana Justice did.

Anders traced over the veins on the back of his hand, up to the fingernails he’d mutilated. There was nothing Terrie could do for them, but they were just bones, really. Hawke wasn’t wrong - Anders could have healed them. On a good day, he and Justice were a panacea for the Blight itself, but on a bad day, their destruction rivaled it.

The sound of someone crying broke him from his doldrums, and Anders glanced over his shoulder to where Terrie was finishing up with a patient.

“Calm down,” Terrie was saying, “They’re just lice.”

“Lice?” The woman repeated, shimmying back into her smalls. “Like bugs?” .

"They're not 'like' bugs. They are bugs," Terrie said, handing the distraught patient a vial of oil, "Wash with this and give it a fortnight."

The woman pocketed it, wringing her hands, but she wasn't Anders' patient. Anders didn't have patients. He was only here to take stock of the clinic's supplies - not coach to Terrie's terrible bedside manner. The woman left, and Anders went back to counting potions. He felt Terrie's eyes on him the entire time, and did an admirable job ignoring her until she spoke.

"You're overreacting." Terrie said.

"You're underreacting," Anders countered.

"The clinic needs you," Terrie said.

"The clinic has me," Anders waved the scroll he'd been taking inventory on.

Terrie didn't look particularly impressed with it, not that Terrie looked particularly impressed with anything. She closed the door to the clinic and any new patients for the evening, and stood before it with her arms crossed.

"It needs your magic."

Anders was tired of this fight, "No one needs my magic."

"Because it killed a templar?" Terrie pressed.

"Bardel wasn't a templar," Anders said. "He was one of us."

"He was a templar, and a templar will never be one of us." Terrie said. "Besides, we don't need him. We have enough supporters in the Gallows thanks to your manifesto. We don't have enough of the man who wrote it."

"I'm not doing this with you again," Anders rolled up his scroll and stuffed it into his satchel. "None of this matters. I'm banned from the Mage's Collective."

There was no proof of what Anders had done, of course. The Knight-Commander would never allow it. The very existence of the Coterie-controlled tunnels implied her power might end at the Gallow's gates. Lyrium smuggled in? Mages smuggled out? A score of templars dead at the hands of an abomination as a result? No. Officially, Bardel had died in an earthquake - a victim of structurally unsound architecture as opposed to a structurally unsound mind.

Unofficially, most everyone knew better. Unofficially, most everyone would never speak to him again.

"I'm not talking about the Collective." Terrie said. "I'm talking about the Resolutionists-"

"I said no," Anders said. "I'll finish my manifesto for the Seeker and that's it. I'm out."

"Why even bother!?” Terrie threw up her hands, “What's the point of trying to stop the Tranquil Solution if you're just going to act like one?"

"I'll see you next week," Anders tried to step around her, but Terrie didn't budge.

Frustration flared through him, and Anders forced himself to take a slow breath. He couldn't afford to be frustrated. Frustration led to anger, anger led to rage, and rage led to places Anders couldn't come back from.

Terrie wasn't wrong, but she also wasn't right. Anders' fight with the Chantry and their Templars wasn't the same fight as any other apostate. When he was cornered, when he was caught, when it came down to tranquility or death, it would never be his death.

"Terrie, move," Anders said, reaching for the door again.

"We tortured a templar." Terrie said suddenly.

Anders stopped. It wasn't the same as what he'd done. If anything, it might have been worse, but Terrie didn't look how Anders felt. She looked the opposite. Her shoulders were stubbornly squared and not slouched in shame, and curiosity kept him as she continued. "Decimus, Grace, and I, and a few other Resolutionists. When our Circle burned down.

"He was one of the ‘good’ ones. Trevelyan, I think was his name. He never raped us. Never beat us. Never said an unkind word or had an impure thought. You know what he did? Harrowings.

"... Do you know what happened at my Harrowing? A rage demon mutilated me. I tried to run, and it crawled over my legs. They melted like butter over an open flame, and I still have days I wake up and think they’re gone. My sister’s Harrowing? A desire demon took advantage of her, and she couldn’t look at Decimus for months afterwards. Alain’s is the reason he has his stutter.

“So that was what we did to the templar. We wasted buckets of lyrium, sending him into the Fade again and again. After the first Harrowing, he was sorry. After the second, he was desperate. After the third, he was incoherent. A demon possessed him on the fourth.”

“That’s horrible,” Anders said.

“Is it?” Terrie asked. “I’m not saying we were right. We weren’t. It was cruel, but that’s because Harrowings are cruel. We put him through four, but he’d overseen four score. There are no good templars, Anders. With what the Circle puts us through… are you really surprised there are no good mages?”

“I don’t believe that,” Anders said. “I can’t believe that. We have to be better if we have any hope of the people taking our side. That's why we started this clinic."

"That's why you started this clinic," Terrie said. "Do you really think that Selby or Bancroft have what it takes to change the world? Do you really think they want to? Anders, listen, I have all of Decimus' old contacts. Come with me tonight and-”

The door thudded violently, and threw Terrie forward. “Open the door!” A familiar voice screamed, “Maker’s mercy- Anders - Terrie - Someone! Open the door!”

“That’s Evelina-” Anders reached for the door and Terrie grabbed his wrist.

“Wait! She could be bringing the templars down on us-”

“Move!” Anders snarled with an all too familiar echo. A hard wrench of his hand sent Terrie stumbling, and she kept the momentum going, fleeing out the back entrance before Evelina made it inside. For all their sakes, Anders prayed Terrie was wrong when Evelina dragged Pryce and his sisters inside the clinic with her.

“Anders, thank the Maker, please-” Evelina gasped.

“What happened?” Anders asked, “Is it the chokedamp? Where are Walter and Cricket?” Please don’t let it be chokedamp. He’d have no choice but to summon Justice if it was chokedamp.

“It’s -” Evelina wheezed and waved at the kids.

Pryce was holding a piece of metal like a sword, the pockmarked teenager guarding the door like he expected someone else to come bursting through it. Behind him, his sisters were huddled together, scared, crying…

Haloed.

“She’s a mage,” Anders realized.

One of the girl’s looked up at him at the accusation, wide blue eyes made bluer with tears. “I didn’t mean to! Please make it go away! Can’t you do that? Don’t some mages lose their magic?”

“No,” Evelina and Anders said in tandem.

“It’s okay, Monkey,” The other sister said; her curly blonde hair had been singed off the entire left side of her head. She had no idea how lucky she was if that was all that had come of her sister realizing her affinity for magic. “My hair looks cool like this. Right, Pryce?”

“Sure,” Pryce said, not taking his eyes off the door.

Anders grabbed Evelina’s arm and pulled her a short distance away from the kids, hissing, “When? Where?”

“Lowtown,” Evelina explained, still wheezing. “The markets. There was no where else to go - Anders -... I’m sorry- I’m so sorry - can you take her somewhere? Anywhere?”

“I can’t - Something happened - I’m not with the underground anymore.”

“Maker- so that’s it? The Circle?”

“Evelina, no -”

“At least they’ll feed her-”

“The Knight Commander is going to make everyone Tranquil,” Anders cut her off, “The Seeker is taking the suggestion to the Divine any day now. It’ll be an Annulment. You can’t.”

“Then you have to take her-”

“I can’t- I don’t have time to explain - It’s not safe with me-”

“It has to be” Evelina grabbed the front of his tunic, “They saw her, Anders. They saw all of us. They’ll be here any minute. Please, it’s you or the templars. Which is it?”

It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t. Just the thought of templars was enough to set his blood to boiling. He could feel his rage like some twisted transformation magic, a tension that tangled up in his muscles, cracked through his bones, and split across his skin. Anders pressed his knuckles into his eyes and the fire that lit them. Even if the Tranquil Solution never came to pass, the girl would still be imprisoned and Harrowed. She’d never see her brother and sister again.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t just.

“Fuck,” Anders snarled, “It’s us. We’ll take her. We’ll figure something out.”

Evelina didn’t question the plural. She ran to Pryce and spun him away from the door by his shoulders. “You listen to me, Pryce. You take your sisters, and you go with Anders. You do whatever he says, no questions, no backtalk. You listen to him, you hear me?

“I can fight them!” Pryce argued.

The little mage broke from her sister to fling herself into Evelina’s arms, sobbing. “Mommy!”

“Shhh, shit, shhh, don’t cry,” Evelina said, crying, “You did nothing wrong. You remember that. Magic is never wrong. No matter what kind. Anders-... Anders, take her.”

Anders pried the girl off Evelina. She weighed nothing in his arms, and Anders didn’t have to look down to see the veilfire breaking through them. It bathed his clinic in sapphire, and spread up his shoulders to his eyes at the telltale shouts that started in the distance.

“You there! Which way did the apostates go!?”

“Out of my way, cur!”

“Check down here!”

The little girl threw arms around his neck, sobbing, and Anders bit the inside of his cheek at the rage he could feel bubbling in his chest, “This is our fight. This is our fight. Not the templars. Not the templars. Focus. Please focus.”

“Give me a dagger,” Evelina said.

“How are you gonna fight them with a dagger!?” Pryce demanded, brandishing his metal as if it could compete against the bastard swords or the bastards who wielded them. “Let me help!”

Anders wrenched his dagger off his belt and tossed it to Evelina. Nathaniel had given it to him, when Anders had first committed himself to blood magic a lifetime ago, and using it never seemed more justified than in this moment. Somehow, Anders knew he’d never get it back. Evelina stabbed it through her palm, and Pryce stumbled away from her.

“Get your sister,” Anders ordered, grabbing the boy's hand and tugging him away before Evelina could see his expression turn from shock to horror. Pryce grabbed the other girl, and they fled out the back while Evelina ran out the front.

"The Circle is broken!" Evelina’s scream followed them through the mines, and Anders counted it a mercy that it was the last one the children heard.

There was nowhere else to run. Nowhere else to go. Nowhere else to take them. Anders and the children fled through through the twisted mineshafts of Darktown, and up into the cellar of the Amell estate. They ran straight into Leandra, who dropped the wine bottle she’d just retrieved from one of the racks with a shriek.

“Maker’s mercy!” Leandra clutched at her chest, “Anders, what in the Maker’s good graces are you doing with all these children?”

There was no sense in trying to hide it, Anders supposed. “Saving them from the Circle.”

“... Good gracious, all of them?”

“I have no time to explain,” Anders said, shifting the girl in his arms, “Pryce, barricade the door.”

“Wait-!” Leandra danced over the shattered glass, “They’ll know something is amiss if you block it off. Pryce - your name is Pryce?”

“Yes, marm,” Pryce said, still shakily brandishing his makeshift sword.

“Do you see that wine barrel, over by the far wall? The big one just there? It’s fake. The front of it is a hidden door - you can hide in there. Turn the spout to the left - there’s a good boy - All of you get inside. Quickly now.”

Leandra shut the door behind them and they huddled together in the unforgiving dark. The slope of the barrel helped to remind Anders it wasn’t a cell, but it was a paltry reminder beside his panic. He was still trapped. Worse than that, children were trapped with him and a spirit he couldn’t control. A spirit who couldn’t ignore the templars that burst through the cellar door to another panicked shriek from Leandra. He prayed to the Maker and to anyone who would listen that Justice would trust him enough to stay silent.

“How dare you!” Leandra was saying, “First the Order raids the DuPuis estate and now you break into my cellar? Do you even know who I am? The Amell Family is second in line to viscounty!”

“We were searching for apostates-”

“My daughter is soon to be an enchanter in the Circle, and you would accuse my family of harboring apostates?”

“-A thousand apologies, Lady Amell, my recruit speaks out of turn. He meant we must have taken a wrong turn-”

“A wrong turn!?” Leandra shrieked, “The Knight-Commander will hear about this! I want all of your names-”

“Now, there’s no need-”

“Your names!”

Eventually, the templars must have left. The cellar went silent save for the soft sniffles of children. When the door to the wine barrel opened again, it was to Leandra and Bodahn’s smiling faces.

“Come on out now, dear children, it’s safe,” Leandra said. “You must be tired from running. Why don’t we get you a bath and something to eat?”

Pryce climbed out first. Anders followed with the boy’s sisters in toe. “Is it safe?” The mage girl asked.

“Is it ever!” Bodahn said cheerily. “The Amells are formidable folk indeed. Come along now, nothing to worry about, I’ll get a room made up for you three to share.”

“Evelina said to stay with Anders…” Pryce said suspiciously.

“Is she dead?” The non-mage girl asked. “Anders, is she dead?”

“I don’t know,” Anders said honestly.

“Mommy…” The mage girl sniffled.

“She wasn’t our mother,” Pryce said. “She was a blood mage. All this time, she was a blood mage, and she never told us.”

“She did what she did to keep you safe, because she loved you,” Anders explained. “When the pain fades, that’s all that will matter. Go with Bodahn - you can trust him. I’ll come get you later.”

The children left with Bodahn, and left Anders alone in the cellar with Leandra, who was no longer smiling.

“Thank you,” Anders said. “For helping them.”

“I don’t see how I had a choice,” Leandra said, “You just show up in the cellar with three mage children you… what? Stole from the Circle? Saved from a blood mage? What am I to make of all this, Anders?”

“Only one of them is a mage. What was I supposed to do? Let the templars tear their family apart? Just because you let that happen doesn’t mean I will.”

Leandra inhaled sharply, and Anders immediately regretted what he’d said. Anders had brought the templars down on her family more times than he could count and Leandra had helped him despite it. Just because she didn’t approve of his relationship with Hawke didn’t mean she didn’t approve of mages. “... I apologize. I didn’t mean to suggest-”

“No, you meant it,” Leandra cut him off. “I visited Bethany at the Circle and she seems happy enough, but… you’re right. I lost her. I lost her and I lost Carver and it’s been hard. I wouldn’t wish that on those poor children, but that is what will happen if they stay here. What do you intend to do with them?”

“I-...” Anders trailed off. He was banned from the Mage’s Collective. Isabela wasn’t speaking to him. His options for getting apostates out of Kirkwall had dwindled to Samson. The ex-templar promised passage from Kirkwall, but passage and safe-passage were two different things. “I’ll think of something. I just need a day or two to make arrangements.”

“What sort of arrangements?” Leandra pressed.

“It’s safer if you don’t know.”

“Safe?” Leandra interrupted him with a familiar bark of laughter, “What exactly is safe about harboring apostates among my servants? Don’t look so surprised, dear, I’ve not gone senile in my dotage.”

“You knew? But you never said anything.”

“What is there to say? It’s a little hard to miss. My tea never goes cold, my bath is always warm, we never run out of firewood. Don’t even get me started on the chandeliers.”

“... And you’re not angry?”

“I was at first,” Leandra admitted. “But I’ve seen how Garrett looks at you and how you look at Garrett… and I know this is where your hearts have been ever since we lost Bethany. I suppose I should stop fighting it, but I have a right to know what’s going on in my own house and what you have planned for those children.”

“I have a contact who might be able to help me find a ship,” Anders explained. “I can send them to an old acquaintance in West Hill where they should be safe.”

Leandra seemed satisfied enough with his answer. She headed towards the stairs, and Anders mouth continued without his consent. “Why the change of heart?”

“Excuse me?” Leandra stopped.

“About Garrett and I,” Anders elaborated ,”Does this mean you approve of me now?”

“Dear, I never disapproved of you,” Leandra sighed. She took a seat on the edge of a wine barrel, and Anders joined her on the one beside it. “... When I thought you and Bethany were together, I was so happy. I pictured the two of you running off into the sunset like Malcolm and I. Bethany was never going to have a normal life, but Garrett…

“Parents aren’t supposed to have favorites, but we do. Garrett… you know how he is. Selfless. Loving. He was always quiet, and I think it’s because words aren’t enough for him. I have to look out for him because he never looks out for himself, and being with you just proves that.”

“I don’t see how any of that proves you don’t disapprove of me.”

“It proves I wanted Garrett to have the life I wanted for him, and not the life he wanted for himself. I’m sorry if I made you feel unwelcome.”

“... Thanks. That, uh-... thanks.”

“I suppose I just needed some time to realize there’s still life once your children have outgrown you… I’ve actually been wondering if I shouldn’t remarry.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“Nothing I’m willing to share yet, so don’t pry,” Leandra nudged him. “And don’t tell Garrett or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“No promises,” Anders said. “Where is he, by the way?”

“He left an hour or so ago. I assumed you two had a fight with how he stormed out.” Leandra explained. “... Do you want to tell me what it was about? It might help to talk through it.”

“What happened to not prying?”

“I’m his mother. I’m always going to pry.”

“You might regret it.”

“I might regret not prying more.”

Anders wavered. It wasn’t anything Leandra could help him with, but Hawke was always telling him to confess. “... I did something. Something I can never take back. Hawke-... Garrett thinks I should forgive myself for it, but I can’t.”

“You killed someone,” Leandra surprised him guessing right, but her husband had been a mercenary, and her sons had been soldiers. She wasn’t unfamiliar with death and she didn’t sound particularly disturbed by it.

Anders nodded.

“I thought so. Malcolm was the same way. The guilt would just weigh on him. You could see it in his shoulders whenever he came back from one of his contracts. Garrett learned to live with it young. He was… sixteen, I think, when he killed someone for the first time.

“Bethany wasn’t much older than those little girls when she first got her magic. Garrett was the only one home. Malcolm and I were at the markets, and by the time we got home, Garrett had already packed the house, readied the horses, and killed the neighbor. Carver had to tell me the story. Garrett didn’t even think it was worth telling.

“A few of the other children in the village had seen Bethany cast the spell. Some silly little thing… a mind push I think it’s called? Bethany was a good girl. She hadn’t hurt anyone, but a neighbor came to confront Garrett about it, and said he had to tell the templars. Garrett said he understood. Then he grabbed his hunting bow, and his quiver, and shot that poor man full of so many arrows he looked like he’d sprouted wings.”

“What am I supposed to take away from that?” Anders asked.

“That some deaths are as unforgivable as they are unavoidable.”

“Not this one. This one was avoidable. I was with a friend when I killed him, and I don’t know why my friend didn’t stop me.”

“Have you talked to this friend about what happened?” Leandra asked.

Anders shook his head.

“Maybe you should.”

Chapter 106: The First Sacrifice

Notes:

Thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon 7 Martinalus Early But Not That Early
Kirkwall Hightown: Hawke Estate

Anders was awake. In theory. Drool still tethered him to his pillow, and his eyes were crusted with sleep, but they were open, and had been for some hours. He just hadn’t moved. A cold breakfast lay in bed beside him, obscured by crockery and smelling faintly of ham. Anders wasn’t starving himself. He had every intention of eating it. Eventually.

The creak of the door opening turned Anders’ head. Bodahn let himself in, his interminable smile creasing his cheeks above his braided beard. His son trailed after him with a matching expression. “Someone here to see you, Master Anders.”

“No one wants to see me," Anders muttered, resisting the urge to pull the covers over his head.

“Nothing a good shave and a pair of pants can’t change, messere,” Bodahn said blithely, retrieving Anders' untouched breakfast to hand off to his son. “There’s a good lad, take that back to the kitchens. Best not to keep guests waiting, Master Anders. She’s waiting for you in the sitting room.”

“She?” Anders repeated, “She who? Did the Knight-Commander finally tire of torturing Tranquil?”

“A mistress Lirene, I believe it were,” Bodahn explained, rummaging through his armoire and holding up one pair of pants after the other. “Perhaps the teal? With a nice maroon doublet to compliment?”

“No - Don’t worry about me, Bodahn, I’ll be right down.” Lirene couldn’t afford the dye. It seemed a slap in the face to wear either around her. Anders rolled out of bed, and into a pair of plain brown trousers before making his way downstairs.

There was no reason for Lirene to be visiting him. There was no reason for anyone to be visiting him, truth be told. He’d finished his manifesto, and Sebastian had taken it to the Seeker of the Truth, to be considered before the Divine. He and Hawke had taken the children he’d rescued to Samson, and found them passage out of Kirkwall. Bodahn had found homes for the rest of the children Evelina had been watching, and that was it. He was done.

There was nothing left for Anders to do, so he spent most of his days doing nothing.

Some part of him felt guilty for it, but he was habituated to the feeling, even amplified as it was in Lirene’s presence. She was the sort of person who’d never done nothing a day in her life. The tenacious refugee looked out of place in the gilt and vastness of Hawke’s estate. She paced in patchwork linens before the marble fireplace, wringing the Lowtown soot off her hands. Anders had looked worse, once upon a time, when he’d first crawled out of the sewers and into Hawke’s bed.

He cleared his throat to get her attention and joked, “This is the sitting room, you know. Most people sit.”

“Anders,” Lirene crossed the room so quickly Anders half-expected a knife to fall from her sleeve and into his heart. No such betrayal befell him. Lirene flung her arms about him instead, pulling him into a tight embrace he most certainly didn’t deserve. “Hightown’s been good to you. Used to be able to count your ribs. You still have all twelve?”

“Lirene,” Anders gave her back a bewildered pat, “What are you doing here?”

“Lissa’s gone missing,” Lirene went back to wringing her hands. “It’s been almost two days. She was taking the linens down to the laundress in the alienage, and never came back to the shop. I checked with the laundress, and I know she dropped off the linens, but after that? It’s like she just disappeared.”

“What do you mean, disappeared?” Anders asked. “People don’t just disappear. Maybe she’s staying with family?”

“I am her family, and I’m telling you, she’s gone. I’ve looked everywhere. Asked everyone. I even went to that blighted qunari compound to see if she’d converted, but I can’t find her.”

“Well, she’s not here,” Anders said.

"You sure?" Lirene looked around the sitting room, as if Lissa were simply hiding behind the tapestries, or sequestered away in the loft. "You check every room?"

"It might take a few days if I did," Anders joked, "Look, Lirene, I can't believe I'm suggesting this, but did you tell the guard?"

“Tell them what?” Lirene laughed bitterly, “That Cor’s old bitch lost one of her pups? As far as the guard is concerned, Cor and I should have honeymooned on the gallows… You know they made me watch him hang?”

“Flames, Lirene, I’m sorry-”

“Piss on your flames,” Lirene shoved him. “Where’ve you been, abandoning your clinic? Abandoning us? The refugees need you."

“It’s complicated,” It wasn’t, but Anders didn’t know what else to say. “I’m possessed, and I don’t trust myself to heal anymore?” “I have fits of rage and black out, and when I wake up dozens are dead?” “I killed one of my closest allies over a simple misunderstanding?” No… No, best not.

Mercifully, Lirene seemed to accept it as answer enough. “This isn’t. Lissa is missing,” Lirene said missing the way another might have said dead. “More women go missing every day. There’s a killer out there, somewhere, and the guard doesn't care. They’re calling him the Butcher of Lowtown."

Anders had heard the name before. It ran in the papers alongside the Terror of Hightown. A convenient cock and bull tale to raise taxes, enforce curfews, and excuse the abuses of the guardsmen. Or at least that was what he’d thought. The alternatives… “I'm not saying I don't believe you, but how do you know? Missing women… it could be worse than just a killer. It could be darkspawn."

Anders had already encountered darkspawn in Kirkwall once before, and the Wardens themselves had launched some sort of expedition in the area. As much as he hated to picture Lissa suffering such a fate, it was possible. Darktown was far from the deepest part of Kirkwall.

"No,” Lirene shook her head, “Us Fereldans are no strangers to the Blight. Darkspawn take women whole. This bastard… he leaves pieces… the ones he doesn't want. One poor woman… he skinned her… left her body strung up with the butcher's pigs."

It was an image Anders could have done without. "Hence the name, I suppose.”

Lirene grabbed his collar, her hands dying the linen a dirty grey, "You have to find her."

"I'm not a guard, Lirene,” Anders argued. “How am I supposed to find her? I can't just go door to door asking with my face on every wanted poster from here to Ostwick."

"You can do something,” Lirene insisted.

Missing. Dead. Worse. Anders made his peace with it. He didn't see the point in getting Lirene's hopes up, and yet... Lissa was worth doing something for.

She spent her days begging for butcher's scraps and tavern leavings, and baked them together with bags of sawdust so the refugees would always have something to eat. Anders remembered she'd save the bags to sew together into… something. An apron. Swaddling clothes. A dress, half finished for Satinalia that Lirene pretended not to notice, despite the room they shared.

Whatever her fate, an injustice had befallen her. One he couldn’t let go unanswered.

“Alright,” Anders peeled Lirene's fingers free of his collar, “I’ll try. I’ll... think of something.”

Anders regretted his promise as soon as Lirene left. There was nothing Anders could do for Lissa. The only person who could do something was a guardsman, but a guardsman never did anything for anyone. Not in this city. Anders thought of Cor, his fingers clutching at the rope about his throat, swinging, suffocating… all while Lirene watched from the crowd.

Who had they saved, trading the Dog Lords for the Friends of Kirkwall, and replacing one gang with another? Not apostates, fleeing from the Circle and to the Collective. Not elves, fleeing from destitution and to the qunari. Not refugees, fleeing from the Blight and to Darktown. Not Lissa, and however many other women were missing.

Anders stared at his reflection in the mirror set above the fireplace. A harsh orange glow danced across his tunic, not unlike the color of the Kirkwall Guard. Anders tried to picture Aveline’s response if he came to her with one missing refugee in a city rife with the Coterie, Carta, and crime.

"I need your help." Anders told his reflection.

I need you to get out of my office." His reflection countered.

"A friend of mine needs your help?"

"Then I’ll hear it from your friend.."

"I have a crime to report? Do your bloody job and protect this city!?"

No and no. Aveline wouldn’t care. Not if it came from him. Anders groaned, thudding his head against the mantlepiece for a solution. Nothing came to him, but a knock at the entrance to the sitting room drew his attention. Hawke joined him, dressed in a black jerkin atop his usual form-fitting leathers from whatever job he’d taken today. He was carrying the biscuit Anders had abandoned with breakfast, and shoved it rather unceremoniously into Anders’ mouth when he tried to speak.

“Warned you about skipping meals,” Hawke said. Anders chewed through a dry and crumbly silence beneath his watchful eye, “Next time I’ll shove the whole ham in there. Bodahn said you had a visitor. Something going on?”

"You could say that,” Anders coughed, wishing Hawke had brought tea to accompany the awkward bite. “A friend of mine is missing. Hopefully."

"Hopefully?" Hawke raised an eyebrow at him.

"Well, when the alternative is murder," Anders shrugged.

"Start talking sense."

“Sometimes I forget I fell for a poet,” Anders joked. “Lirene came to visit me. You met her once or twice, I think. She works a shop down in Lowtown, helping refugees and selling Ferelden imports. She has a friend who works with her - Lissa. She didn't come back last night. Lirene thinks the Butcher of Lowtown got to her."

"Where was she last?"

"Why?” Anders squinted suspiciously, “Are we going to go tell Aveline? Lirene already went to the guard, you know. They didn't do anything about it."

"I will," Hawke said.

“Just like that?” Anders asked.

“Just like that,” Hawke caught his hand, and kissed his knuckles. "I'm for you, Anders. Always."

“She’ll have been between Lowtown and the Alienage,” Anders said, “If we’re going now, we probably shouldn’t go alone.”

“Why not?”

“I don't want to use any magic." Anders explained. Leandra meant well, but Anders wasn't ready to talk about what had happened yet. To Justice or to anyone. Talking to Justice might not even help. The last time they'd killed in a frenzy, Justice had been no better equipped to remember what had happened than Anders. "We might need the support… assuming anyone is still willing to support me."

"Isabela forgives you, Anders," Hawke assured him.

He’d have to take his word for it, considering Anders had been too ashamed to face her. Her forgiveness was all well and good, but Anders didn't forgive Anders. They left for Lowtown, and picked up Varric and Merrill along the way.

Varric, for his part, was 'always up for a good mystery,' and Merrill thought it 'all sounded terribly exciting.' Neither of them made any mention of what Anders had done beneath the Gallows, but they knew. Anders knew they knew. He could feel the tension of it in the air between them, a strange, pitiable thing, not at all hateful or accusatory, and somehow that only made it worse.

It didn't matter. Anders wasn't here for Anders - Anders was here for Lissa. The four of them followed in her footsteps, but there was little to speak of between the Alienage and Lirene's shop. A few alleys split off into gang territory, but for the most part it was no man's land. The graffiti was just graffiti, the criminals just criminals. None of the corner beggars had seen anything, an answer no amount of copper seemed to change.

Anders had all but given up hope when Hawke called, “Here,” on their second pass at retracing Lissa’s steps. He kicked aside a pile of refuse to reveal a rusted storm drain.

“Good eye, Killer,” Varric freed the grate from the stone, a shrill drag of metal that drew winces for more than one reason. Staring into the darkness, Lissa’s fate stared back. “I have to admit, I’m not getting the sense that we’re coming up on a happy ending for your friend, Blondie.”

“Not dead till she’s dead,” Hawke said. The man had more faith than Anders did at this rate, but that was nothing new. Hawke climbed down first, and Anders and Merrill followed. Varric went last, and his prosthetic failed him after two rungs.

“Shit!” Varric screamed as he tumbled past Merrill and into the blackened void below. Anders didn’t think about it. He didn't have the time. His hand snapped out, sheathed in veilfire, and caught the dwarf by his jacket. Hawke pulled him back to the ladder, and supported him while he gathered his bearings.

As quick as it had come, the veilfire vanished. Anders stared at his hands, his grip knuckle white on the rotten rungs of the ladder. They were normal hands, vascular, dusted with auburn hair at his wrists, and freckled by the last of the summer sun as the nights stretched with the coming of autumn. No blood stained his palms. No skin lodged beneath his nails. They were just normal hands.

Anders dropped down into the sewers, and his hands were still normal, if shaking.

Hawke held one, and then the other. “Hey. He’s alright. You saved him.”

“This time,” Anders said ruefully.

“Everytime. You can control it. You’re the strongest man I know."

Anders tried to laugh. All he ended up doing was clear his throat, “The strength part is all Justice, I’m afraid.”

"You are Justice." Hawke said; Anders couldn’t say if it was a comfort. He managed a wan smile. "Good?"

"Good."

“I owe you one for that, Blondie," Varric chimed in, “Remind me not to ask for butter fingers for my next prosthetic, would you?”

“Sure thing,” Anders said.

The sewers were… well, sewers. They smelled the way sewers smelled and looked the way sewers looked. Merrill summoned a ball of magelight, and it battled back shadows in either direction, none shaped like Lissa. A river of waste lapped at their ankles, stagnant save for the occasional ripple of roaches, and washed away any would-be footprints.

“Well.. now what?” Anders asked.

“This way leads back to the alienage,” Merrill gestured off to their right, “We haven't had any trouble with the Butcher."

"I hate to say it, Daisy, but maybe that just means the butcher is an elf?" Varric ventured.

"I don’t think so,” Merrill said, “The guards are always at the alienage, ever since the riots… they catch everyone. Even criminals, sometimes.”

They went left.

“Where does this lead?” Hawke asked.

“Why are you looking at me?” Anders asked.

“You know why I’m looking at you.”

“I lived in the sewers, not the sewers,” Anders frowned. “I have no idea where we’re going.”

“Towards the foundries, I think,” Varric said.

“You sure you don’t have any dwarven stone sense?” Anders wondered.

“Dwarven sewer sense, maybe, with all the shit I had to put up with from Bartrand,” Varric snorted.

Merrill called for a halt, after a few minutes spent walking. Anders felt the familiar pulse of blood magic, and the wall rippled. Blackened stains peeled away from the sandstone to bubble around the elf’s fingers. “This is blood. Around a day old.”

“I guess that means we’re going the right way,” Anders guessed.

“You sure about that?” Varric asked, “Maybe someone just had a bad night with the Hanged Man Special.”

“I think we’d find a lot more blood, in that case,” Anders said.

“Why, Blondie, was that a joke?” Varric’s eyebrows shot up, “About time. Ever since you got back from that mess at the Gallows, I feel like crying just looking at you.”

Maker, Anders didn’t want to have this conversation. He picked his pace, a mistake that sent sewer water splashing above his ankles and into his boots. It was upsettingly warm. “Don’t.”

Varric, as it were, did. “You made a mistake, it happens.”

“I killed someone,” Anders corrected him.

“You’ve killed more than a few someones, by my count.”

“It’s not the same!”

“Why?” Varric wondered, “Because this one you feel bad about? Maybe that’s the problem.”

“Leave off,” Hawke said.

“I think Varric is just worried,” Merrill said gently, reaching for him, “We all have been. Are you alright, Anders?”

“I killed an innocent man!” Anders snapped, swatting her hand away, “How could I be alright? There is no definition of alright that fits this state.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? For me? This could be you if you’re not careful with your demon! Trapped in your own body, while someone moves you like a puppet, and there’s no escape until you wake up to the blood on your hands-”

“If you’re trying to scare me, it won’t work,” Merrill interrupted him, “Justice, Pride, Valor… Everything is dangerous in excess. There are no good spirits, Anders. I understand that. I’m sorry that you didn’t.”

“... So am I,” Anders sighed.

They continued. The conversation didn’t. Merrill led them through the sewers, following what blood hadn't been washed away by Kirkwall's drainage system. Eventually, the trail emptied them out into an abandoned foundry. It was floored with metal - rusting hinges, slabs, and other oddaments. The walls were lined with furnaces, thick with old ash, and discarded crucibles hung on chains from the ceiling over molds of sand. Anders couldn't begin to guess what they'd been meant to shape, worn and rotten with disuse.

“Bad guys,” Varric whistled, peaking into a low hanging crucible and coughing at the cobwebs that greeted him, “So predictable. Abandoned foundries. Rundown warehouses. Where’s the style? The statement? A place should say something about a person, you know?”

“This doesn’t?” Hawke asked.

“I think it does,” Merrill said, clearing a path through the metal for her bare feet with the butt of her staff, “I think it says … that they’re old. And dangerous. And falling apart.”

“Great,” Hawke said.

“Careful, Hawke,” Anders warned him, “The Veil is thin here.” He could feel it like a tension in his veins, threatening to breathe life into the veilfire within them. Hear it in the excited whispers of wisps, echoing across the Veil, clamoring for a mold of their own in the long abandoned foundry. “There might be-”

“Intruders!” A voice wailed, ash, soot, and sand swirling from the floor and into the vague shape of something almost a man. Discarded bits of metal swarmed, lining row upon row of inestimable teeth as the ash wraith took shape.

“-demons." Anders finished.

“Begone, spirit!” The Fade swelled, and raw mana tore the shade apart at Merrill’s command, only for a second to form, followed by a third, and a fourth.

They didn't need him, Anders tried to assure himself as Merrill dispelled a second shade with another clash of mana. Hawke drew his daggers, Varric his crossbow.

A deft slash from Hawke cleaved straight through one of the creature’s incorporeal forms to its heart, and turned it back to dust. A second slower, and its teeth would have skinned his arm, but he had it. They all had it. They didn’t need Anders. They didn’t need Justice. They didn’t need whatever Anders and Justice were together.

The rhythmic thud of Varric’s crossbow echoed through the foundry, and one of the shades noticed him. It charged, and Varric left out a panicked cry, “Bianca’s not doing much here!”

“You have to hit their heart!” Anders warned him.

Varric tried, bolt after bolt flying harmlessly through the formless shade. Maker save him, Anders couldn’t. He couldn’t call on one Fade denizen to kill another when he couldn’t say for certain which was worse. Mercifully, Merrill saw and saved him before Anders had to risk all their lives to save one. The shade exploded in a cloud of dust, Hawke cut down the last, and it was over.

Varric sneezed. "Does this mean the Butcher is a mage?"

"Might," Hawke agreed, nudging a pile of ash with the toe of his boot. “On your guard.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Varric said, retrieving one of his bolts from where it had lodged itself into a nearby beam. “Blondie, you might wanna grab something sharp and pointy if you’re not going to be throwing any magic around.”

“Trust me, if I start throwing magic around, having something sharp and pointy won’t make a difference,” Anders said, picking up another stray bolt and handing it back to Varric. “... If it comes to that, you should all run. Just in case.”

“It won’t,” Hawke said. He took the lead through the foundry. They faced another batch of shades, and more types of traps than Anders had names for. The entire building was rigged with acidic grease, soulrot, choking powder, and Maker knew what else Hawke was constantly stopping them to disarm and dismantle. He stowed them all away in the countless pouches on his belt, for what future purpose Anders couldn’t possibly imagine.

It was their present day purpose that concerned him. Anders had no idea what to make of it all. The abandoned foundry, the weakened veil, the shades, the traps, the trail of blood. It seemed more likely that they’d stumbled upon the lair of a blood mage than a serial killer, though Anders supposed the two weren’t mutually exclusive. It was a disconcerting thought, especially for what it entailed for Lissa, and had him picking up the pace as he hurried after Hawke.

Anders was expecting a corpse, whether it was fresh, dried, or risen. He wasn’t expecting a scream. It was a relief, despite how fast the scream became a wail. The inarticulate, mournful cry echoed through the foundry, and a panicked, “Get away from me!” sent them racing to the second story, and into a not-so-abandoned workshop.

… It looked like a surgery. Anders didn’t have another word to describe it. Three tables filled the center of the room, each with an open hole at the center that allowed for the blood to drain. And Maker, the blood. The room didn’t have the same drainage as his clinic. It caked the floors, the wood bulbous and swollen like the blighted flesh of an abomination. The walls were lined with makeshift shelves, filled with jar upon jar of… things.

Pieces.

People.

Lime or oil filled the flasks; hands, feet, and tongues bobbed in them like apples. Anders felt sick. Varric felt worse. “Maker’s breath,” Varric hiccuped, his throat muscles quivering as he battled back vomit.

There was no time for vomit. Lissa lay on one of the tables, covered in blood. It dyed her hair, her skin, her pretty dress. Anders would have thought her dead, if not for the staccato gasps making her chest rise and fall. Beside her, leisurely tracing a glyph in her blood, stood a nobleman. In Hightown, he would have been utterly forgettable. He had very fine hair, and very fine clothes, and a very fine face, but not-so-very-fine eyes. They were gold, and bore the clear mark of magic, and for one furious moment Anders forgot he was trying to go without his own.

“Get away from her, you bastard!” Anders screamed, pulling for the Fade when Lissa sat up.

She threw an arm in front of the man, in a haphazard attempt to defend him, and slipped in her own blood. She nearly toppled off the table until the man caught her. “Anders?” Lissa whimpered, “Anders, stop, it’s okay, he saved me.”

“That didn’t look like saving to me,” Varric muttered.

“No, it didn’t,” Hawke agreed.

“He saved you?” Anders repeated incredulously. “How did he save you?”

“I… I... “ Lissa’s lip quivered. Her shaky inhale turned fast to more sobs, and she buried her face in her knees, covering her head with her hands.

“Well that clears everything up,” Varric said.

“... He could have her under thrall,” Anders guessed. It was the only thing that made sense with how they’d found her.

“I do not,” The man said, a little too quickly for Anders’ liking. His accent was a thick Orlesian, and maybe it was just the Ferelden in him, but Anders didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him. “I confess, I am a blood mage, but I am not the blood mage who did this. I know what this looks like, but I didn’t hurt her.”

“Do you take me for a fool?” Hawke unsheathed a throwing dagger, and Anders didn’t doubt it could have found the man’s throat with a practiced flick of his wrist, but he held back. “Merrill - check her.”

Anders felt the pulse of magic, and a mist of blood rose from Lissa’s skin, dissipating into the air around her. “She’s not enslaved,” Merrill said. “... But she is bleeding.”

“Lissa, what happened?” Anders found a spot at Lissa’s side, opposite the stranger, and set a comforting hand on her back. “Do you need a poultice?”

Lissa pulled her face up from her knees, her eyes lipid pools of tears. “I need magic.”

“I-”

Lissa brushed her hair back. Not behind her ears. Just back, because her ears were gone. A red crescent of rent flesh framed her ear canal. A small waterfall of blood ran in rivets down her neck to pool about her collarbone and trickle over her shoulders.

“Maker’s fucking flames,” Anders muttered. “Magic can’t heal this, Lissa. I’m sorry. I can stop the bleeding, but I can’t regrow your ears. Unless… they’re still here…” Anders looked back at the jars.

“... Can you look?” Lissa begged.

“Alright,” Anders squeezed her shoulder, and when that seemed insufficient pulled her a hug tacky with blood and tears. If her ears were still here… if he had to use magic… if it was for healing… Anders looked over Lissa’s shoulder to where Hawke stood by the entrance, ready for anything. Even if Anders lost himself, he wouldn’t lose Hawke. Hawke could bring him back. Hawke could talk him down. Hawke could keep him him. Anders went to check the jars.

“Let me explain, please,” The nobleman begged.

“Twenty silvers he says, ‘it wasn’t me, it was the other blood mage.’” Varric waggered, Bianca still propped against his shoulder and trained on the stranger.

“Talk quickly.” Hawke said.

“My name is Gascard. Gascard DuPuis. You are… Messere Hawke, no?” Gascard bowed, a strange bit of formality that only made him seem more suspect, as far as Anders was concerned. “I live just across the way. We are neighbors, though I confess I have not been very neighborly. You understand, as an apostate, it is better I keep my own council, but it is more than that.

“I did not always live alone. I had a sister, once upon a time, but she was murdered… skinned alive. The man who killed her was never caught. I have made it my life’s purpose to find him and I will use anything to do it. Even blood magic. I have spent years hunting him, following the bodies, and finally I tracked the sale bâtard to this place. I had him in my grasp.

“I had only to find a way to sneak inside without alerting the demons he had lurking in this place. I was so close. I was finally going to face her killer, but then you showed up. I heard the shades warn of intruders, so I ran inside, but I was too slow. He escaped out the back. I would have given chase - but the lady, you see-”

“Lissa,” Lissa said. “My name is Lissa.”

“Bullshit,” Anders turned away from a jar of kidneys, “I know blood magic when I see it. You weren’t healing her when we showed up.”

“A tracking spell, should he take her again,” Gascard explained.

“And you didn’t take any of this to the guard?” Hawke asked.

“Why?” Gascard snorted, “I don't want him arrested. This isn’t about justice. There is no justice in this world. Only vengeance. I need to be the one to bleed him dry.”

“That’s… more than a bit creepy, you know,” Merrill mumbled.

“Besides, they probably wouldn’t even hear me out,” Gascard sighed, propping himself up against one of the surgery tables, “... I fear I have raised suspicions about my true nature. The templars raided my estate, just a few months ago.”

“What does he want with these women?” Hawke asked.

“See for yourself,” Gascard waved at the shelves of jars lining the walls. The scalpels, forceps, and other pieces of surgical equipment scattered on trays and work tables. The tomes and grimoires stacked in the far corner. “I believe he uses the women for some ritual. For what purpose, your guess is as good as mine.”

“Does it matter?” Lissa demanded. “He’s a monster. Please messere - just… cast your tracking spell. I want to go home. Anders… Anders, are my-... did you-... did you find my ears?”

Anders hadn’t. He’d found feet. Tongues. Hands. Kidneys. A pair of lungs. Strips upon strips of skin. Teeth. A selection of scalps. Remnants of the Butcher’s victims, all neatly jarred and stacked into perfect rows. He hadn’t checked them all. There were too many, and yet, in that terrible moment, as his world narrowed down to the frantic pulse of his broken heart, there was only one.

Anders couldn't breathe, couldn't blink, couldn't turn away. When he reached out to touch the warped glass, his hands were anything but steady.

Floating within were two eyes, a lovely shade of red.

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
The Things We Do For Love: An incident a few days before this chapter, as told from Gamlen's perspective.

Chapter 107: Once Removed

Notes:

Thank you for the warm welcome back! I sincerely appreciate all the comments. It's nice to know you're still reading after all this time. It really means a lot to me. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon 7 Martinalus Late Afternoon
Kirkwall Lowtown: An Abandoned Foundry

Anders picked up the jar, and the eyes seemed to follow him. Webbed in veins, nerves, and muscle, discolored and misshapen by lime, but there was no mistaking them. Anders couldn’t bring himself to blink, terrified the color would change if he did. His own eyes watered, tears welling and distorting his vision, and Maker maybe they were brown, or amber, or anything other than what Anders knew them to be.

Anders had lost himself in those eyes more times than he could count. He’d woken up to those eyes. He’d fallen asleep to those eyes. He'd loved those damn eyes.

They were Amell’s eyes.

Ą̸̤̝̬̟̇̇̾̿̓͒͂̅͌͒͒n̶̺̟̳̞̜̼͙̺̄̅̾̐͆̄̈́͛͌̈́͘d̵̟͖̑̎͂ȩ̸̹̖̗̗̫͓͎̳̹̬͓̃̋̉̎̏̓̏̚͝r̷̛̻̈͗̅͐̊̃̀s̵̛͚̘͚̉̎̀,̵͈̞̊̍̓͊̊̾̕͠ ̵͙̓̈́̅͒̿̉̄̽͠ȳ̷̡̱̩̘͙͝o̴̜̯͍̫͙͉͔̠̼̝͋͛͑̑̅̾̑̇͂̔̓̿̌͛͝ų̷̻̳̯̟̩͉͕͎͓͇̪̤̐̓̅͗̒͐̑͌̈́̇̚͝͠ͅ’̷̛̛͙͓͙̯̘̼̲̘͓̮͉̞͈̀͗̊͑̉̍͛͌̓̐̒̎r̴̨̻̰̗͎̼̱̙̣̳̼͒̔̅̈́̑͜ȇ̴̳̝͈̞̥̘͙́̒͊ ̵͕̪̬̲̭̩̠̟̪͚͍̝̝̓̋͐̿͑̚ͅa̶̠̤͇͎͋͐́̀̌͒͝ ̸̝̯̖̳͖̣̮̘̜̥̯͂͌͑̀̾̽̉͌͋̀̐̾̆͠ͅͅh̷̢͎͎̭͍̙̝̬͑̍̈́ȩ̴̡̰̳͚̻̹͍͖̬̙̲̰̓͂̉͛̅̈́̃͜͝ͅǎ̶̡̬͑͆̐̾̾͆͝ͅl̷̨̨̡̧͙̖̺̱̼͉̖͖̳͋̋̐̏̾̿̎e̷̢̝͇̺̖͉̱͕̞͉̎͊͗͛́͘ŗ̸͍̘̰̓̃̎̓͌͠͠ͅ ̵̛͓̹̞̯̤̭̺͍̬̦͓̥̞̜̱̽̀̇̅̐̋̓͘̕͝͝͝͝ä̸̛̠̠͉̆͗̆́̕̚̚͠r̷̬̒̅̓͐̔ě̶̬̗̮͕̰͎̈́n̵̨̢͙͖̝̗̹͔̲̺̠̲̘̠̮͂̄̐’̴͕̭͎͍͊́̿̂̃̎͝t̴͖͇͖̘̥̺̮̲̹͖͔͖̿͋̇̈̈͆̐͒͑̔̎̅͝ ̶̨̢͎̪͇̘͍̼̃̄͐y̶͖̘̰̜̫̤̎̓o̸̠͎̘̻̳̤̥͒̊͜ͅư̸͇̗̯̰͓̥̈́͑͗͊̋͆̒̆̆?̸̛͇̘̻̟̓̇́̍̓̏́̈́͑͛̍͑͝
̵̡̡̡̛̘̗̘͕̳̦͙͔͍̌͆̈̿̃͑̉̈́͛͌̕͝ͅĮ̷̣̖̗̤͕͇͈͈̥̪̟͂̈̈́͌ ̵̞̒̾́͒̑̓̓̃͒h̵̢̢̝̞̠̮̱̙̖̭͇͈̞͔͒̄́͐̋̏̈́̒̂̉e̷̯̱̜̦͙͈̹̰̙̊̉̋̈́̾̓͐̏̆̏̇ͅr̴̼̪̬̙̮̃́̽̐̕͝͝͝ę̸̨̡̝̪͎̹̺̖̈́͛̈̿͘b̴̫̟͓̰̼̲͍̂̾̂̈́̀͊͊̓̑͜͝͝͝y̷͉̐͑ ̴̡͓̮̼̟̥͌̍̎̈́̔̆̔͛͊͒̚͝c̶̗̦͔͙̰͈̊̅͑͌͗̈͂̈́̒̀̈̈́͝͝o̷̲̯͖̞̺̪̪͖̖͆̋̅̈́̊̐̕n̷̛͍͚̑̽̊̆̿̈́͝s̴̡̛͖̞͍̘̬͎̲͍̋̉̔̏̎̔́̃͐̄͒̅̋̐c̷̢̛͓̣͉̭̹̤̣̳͕̙̪͓̫̥̄͗̊̎͒͘r̵̡̧̢̧̞̮̣̫̯̥̹̠̺̗͂̕͜i̸̛̬͚̩̼̼̣̜͚̦̣̠͇̼̒̿͒̒̄̃͐́͌̒̇͝p̷͎͚̘̠͓̤̝̈́̉͐͛̓̏̋̓̚͜͠t̷̡̨̻̦̬̤̮̝̯̱̯̬͕̎̿͆̓͂̋̓̄̑̈́͘͜ͅ ̷̧̖̤̫̠͈̥̫̹͇̤̫̬̗̔̈͋t̴̗͉̭͉̾͐̈̽́̚ḧ̶͉̳̝i̶̡̧̢̧̛̪̯͍͕̖͓͓͙͍͕̋͌̅͜͝s̷̰̞̠̹̼̯͈̠̳̐̍́̔͜ ̷̢̡̛̠̝̪̪̰͇̖̙̝̤́̎̎̑̀̋͜m̷͉͓̪̓̇̈́͒̇̈́̈͐̈́͐͘̚a̴̡͉̦̳̱̬̯̳̟̳̬̥͛ģ̸̞̯̜̮̟͍͎͔̼̑̂̽͌́̇̂͘ͅe̷̛͎͍̲͕̮̼̫ ̴͖̬̠̺͖̎f̵̨̠͈̘̪̤̉͐̃̈́̄̓͋̉͐͝͠ǫ̵̹̼̠͎̟̺̰̣̊̄r̸̢̼͙͍͐ ̵̡̨̡͙͖̖͎̼͉̉̄̊̇̇͌͛͝͝t̵̨̠͚̤̲̫͕̟̥̾h̷̨͈͚̻͔̠̣̯̾̿͆̽̐́ě̷͕ͅ ̶̨̛̮̥͍̗̦͊̄̈́͑̑̅̍̒w̶̧̢̨͍̣̹̹͚̞̦̺̖̼̟͎̐̕͘ḁ̸́̓͂͐̈́̋͌͛͝r̶̨̥̹̠̗͎̙̲͇͇̖̋̆̌̄̽̅̀̊̍͘͜ḓ̸͓̍̇͗̾e̵̥͂̑̍͗̿̕͝ṅ̷͕̩͓͎̥͓͕̺̮̫̜̜̬̭̾̀̅s̵̢̳̦̘͍̻͙̞̰͙̖͍̲͇͕͂̂̂̉̿̽̈͂̚͠͠
̸̛̛̗͙̝̣̜͚͇͊̂̃̄̈̀̀̇̒́͝Į̵͈͔͓̤̞͚̩̗̱̃̏̕͝͝ ̶̨̹̩̗̻̣̲̤̲̟̥͚̫̤̬̓̚t̴̤̾̂̀̓̈́̅h̷̡̻͍̺̝̻̱͂̀̈́̎̌̑͐̒͆̋̓̕̕͝͠ͅḯ̸̻͍͙̣̯͈̠̹̥̏̄͒͆̽̇̿͌͌̕͝n̴̮̂̅̈́͒̈́̏͒͊͆̕͠k̸̨̢̫̟̖̥͓͒̉̔̊̒͑̓ͅ ̸̢̢̨͓͙͈̤̼̻̬̲̳̝͖͆̋̔͊̓̓͂̅̄͠͝y̷̙̐͊͒̌̆́͛̿̆̊ơ̶͓̪͍̺̜̝̹̎͐̏̋͌͒̑̎̈́̽ự̵̟̻̃̊̓̈́̉̄͗͗̔͘̚͘̕ ̸̨̧͖̺̳̠̙̲̮̺̥̳̔͐̎ͅl̸̳̠̬̠̫͔̽̿̏͌̈́̈́̈̍̐̔i̵̢̜̩̩͕͖̩̙͖̠̣͈̤͎̤̾̌̃̔̿̉̓̽̏̂͆̆̍̈͋k̸̡̧͕̬͍̟̙͂͒͒͒͆e̸̛̩̬̠̩̫̦̅͋͊̍̈͑̐̋͛̅͘ ̴̡̢̰͇̯̯͕̠͎͍͍̥͈̤̈͊͑͌̈̓̃m̵̧̨̈́̑̈́̄̓̃̒̈ë̴̢̛͓̻͎̝̭̫́̋̅͋̾͗͝ ̸̙̤̜̉̊̂̈́͐͜à̴̢̨͙͇̤̲̻̪͕̯̻͖̩̬̕͜ ̷̦̮̹̭̙̤͕͖͓̭̥̬̙̜͇͆̉̇͗̀̑̃̏͂̕͠͝͝l̶̢̛̤̻͍̰̼̖͔̬̔̿̍̽̓͝i̶̟̯̞͔̊̔͑͆͠͠ẗ̸̨̛͓̯̰̞̬̞̺̬̟̖́̅̒̐̓̍͌͛̕t̵̡͍̟͔͔̘͑́̈́̇̈́̽̽l̵̰̣͓̥̘̦̖̞̤̭͒̓͋̆̀̚͠ě̵̡͖̘̼͇̙͑͒̄̓́̕͘̕
̸̨̨̱͓͓͖͕̪̗̹̞͙̟̇̆͛̂̇̃̃̈́̏́̍̑̂͘Y̵̢͋̆͌̇̈́͑͑̚͜ǫ̷̘̠̭̘̙̱͚̮̞̫̒̀̔̃̀̿͝͝ȕ̸̡͈̫̞͈̘͈̮͈̞̺̥̓̀̕͜'̶͓̼͈̝̦̱̇͌̅͆̕͝͝͝͠r̵̛̳̮̼̙̹̟̀̾̑̓́͌͆e̸̡̢̧̢͓̠͓̪̙̗̜̲̳̻̒͋̉̔̀͜͝ ̵̢̹̥͎̞̞̹̩̣͎͚̩̼̌̈̃̾́̒̕͝ş̴̢̼͔͕̘͎̬͈̰͖̞̜̒̃̄̈́͐̅͌̐͌͝͠ơ̴͈̦̞̫̬͈̗̬̰͍̟̘̣̈́͂̎̃̄͛̓̒̀̕̕͝ ̶̞̫̙̯̳͙͈̜̱͊͐̓̉̄͌̎̈́̕͘͝͠b̷̩̫̖̯̹̠̣̠̂̎͋̆͊́͘ͅͅë̶̛̺̻͈̣̫̿̂̿͊͜a̸̧̨̛̝̳̰͈͙͒͗͋ų̸͈͚̯̙̤̲͒̿̌̓̋͠t̷̖̭͚̼͖̦̰͈̭̄͂i̷̟̼̜͚̩̜̯̯̠͖̺̱̹͝ͅf̵̛̻̥̼̙̼̬͖̱̟̃̑́̾̐̽͊̋̈̊̅͠͠ư̸̠͙͍̯̫̲̠̟̫̹͊l̶̝̱͓̜̈́̊̍͊́̓͗͛̎̿̈́͠
̵̨̢̛̩͚̲̣͙̫̥̹̺̔̓̈́͐͆̄͑̉̊̓Ḯ̴͔͎̝̫̿͋̄̉͐̍̓͘͠'̸̨̘̳̪͚̳͚̺͎̖̫̲͎̑̆̽̊͆͑̏̊̕͜͠͠m̴͕͎̂̎̓̎̂͂͊͗̍̓̊̕͝ ̶̧͖̙̱̦̭̄g̸̨̻̲̰̟̣͈̠̪͔̝͒̉ơ̵̧̧̧͇̭̟̝̻̥͎͖͒̽̎̃̍̒͝ḭ̷̺̣̻͙̙̲̦̜̼͖̰̖̠̝̄̑͆͝ṉ̵̢̧̯͔̹͓̺͈̃̊͗̄͆́̏̐͝͝͝ͅͅg̸̺͎̟̲̯̺͐͠ ̴̩͋̐t̴̺̳̂͝ö̵͙́̊̕ ̷̭͈̟͎̓͂̓̕͜͝m̵̢̨̰̪͙͇̯̱̻̭͔͚̂̅ͅy̵̠̲̤̝͇̍̀̅̂̑̍̓̏̉̚ ̶̘̬̲̳̮̹̒̉̑C̵̛͈̙͈̳̗̟͚͉̬̤̈́̈̔́̑̾͝ͅa̴̛̞̗͚͖̝͌̇̋̒͊͛̂̍̔͝ͅl̴̝̤̪̩̹̯̓͋̕ͅͅl̵̮̺̳͎̼̯̥̝̝̗͉̟̮̰̯̋į̸̼̰̖̲̰̺̩̠̯͇̅͊̄̔̈́̿̽̌̋͂̔̂n̸͓͍̟̦̜̹̙͇̱̫̏̂̌͗̉̇͂̿̓͘͠͝g̶͖͇̜̬̯͇̪̮̲̟̣͈̅͜ͅ
̴̢̧̟͍̀̈́̍̓́͌̈́͛̍͆̚͜͠͝͠I̵̢̡̯̤̣̘̹̰̠̼̣̅͊̆̀̕ ̸̞̝͚͕͓͈̻̮̻̮͍̀̈͋̋̓͑̓̉͆̽͝͝ç̷̺̬̳̳̹̞̭̥̓̍͆͆̒̔̾̒͜a̴̧̨͚̝̲̩͇̟͍̙̼̠̙̒̅̈́̂̔͛n̷̨̛̪̜͚̜̠̬̓̈̑̂͠͝'̸̤̭̏̈́̑͒͘t̴̜̯͓̋̓̍̏̎̓̉͂̉͒͗͠͝ ̷̡͖͇̲̭̬̰̣̀̆̽̉̊͊́͌͋͐͝l̴͈̺̘̱̽̆́̍i̷̯͍̭͋͐͠v̷̢̡͖̗̜̒̽͗̇̚̚ẻ̸̡̧̞̼̹̤͇̫̥͇̳̆̒̄̓̄͆̒̀̓̾͗͆ ̷̟̯̓͒̀̋̅̍͝l̸̟̻̞̝͌̍͌́̚ḭ̸̧̼̦̭̘͔͈̠̰͓̼͌͐́͌̎̈́̋͜ͅͅķ̷͓̰͕̥̘͕͉̱̮̪̰̽̂̀̽̅͌̓͜͝͝ͅḙ̵̜͗̽̒͂͛͘͝ ̶̨͚͚̠̱̻̠̍͌t̷̬̻͈͍̼̼̑͆̈́͋͋̅͋̊̆̚̕͝h̶̨̛̬̯̱͈͓̟̖̙͈̑̆͝͠ͅi̵̡̛̬̬̬̘͎͍̮͙̤̘̹͔͖̔̒͛̅͘ş̵̼͈̜̝̟̤̈̓͗͑̚ ̶̙͙̞͖̭̤̲̼̬̦̇͋
̴̲̼͓̭̣̗̜͎̒̔̑̉͐͛͑̓́̈͘͝Ő̴̩̹͍͈̤̭̖͙͕̥f̵̧̧̧̡̧̘͕͓͍͔̬̫̦͋͌͊̂̽͊͘͘͝ ̴̛̞̙̦̥͔̳̻̯̲̣̭̾̑͌̽͘͝c̴͍̞͎͓͙̖̣̖̜͈̻̮̳̔̔͜͜o̷͉̱̪̅ǘ̷̺̮̲̪͓̤̜̭̓̀̓͂̍͛͘͘͜͠͠ṟ̴͌̉͐̌͗̒͝͝s̵̮͎̠̆̑ë̴͖̱̥̙̩̣̖̗̓ ̸̨̯̮̱͎͔̠̆I̷̘͚̝̯̗̞̳̓͛̒͑̆͘͘͝͝ ̶̞͑́̿̈́͆l̴̡̢͇͈̙̘̻̥̖̙̤̳͍̐̍̌͌̂̚͜ǫ̸̨͍̼̫̜̘̇͛̎̄̒͜͝v̸͖͖̰͂̀̀̏͘e̴͎̽̎̒̊͌̑̐̉̍ ̵̻̙̘͔̩̗̣͆̎̌̓͝y̷͓̝̫̣̮͈̥̞̅̓̍͋̈̈́͑̊̕̚͝ͅo̵̺̅̋̐́̕u̵̺͈̲̳̩͖̣̜̰̣͉͔̗͐̍́͂̚͜
̴̥̉͌̿̂̕T̶̳̟̗͙̺̭̙̖͈̗̔͜͝ͅa̴̧̨̼̞̰̭̦̬̟̍ķ̶̩̖͇̹̯̣̟̮̆̐̊̇̋̏͆̀̃͋̔͝͝ę̶̝͚͎̓̈́̉́͋ ̴̹͇̞̹͈̯͔͊̽́̓c̶̱̔ä̵̧̲͈̫̯̙́͑͗͛̆̽̌͊̔̄̕͝͝r̶̭̽̋̈́̎̐̈́͑̆̓̚͠ë̸̖̟̜̲̫̞̺͈̖̺͉̻͕̬͊̒̀̾̎̉͑̑̆̎͒͊̚ͅ ̵̢̮͔̘̻̠̬̜͎̻̱͖͙̭̎̈͒̐̇̃͌̉͘ŏ̶̠͇̆́̀͑̉̉͌͝f̸̢̲̬̙̳̯̱͋͊̈́́̄̐̓̓͐̀̚͝͠ ̸̢̗̜͍̺̤̝̹̃͐͜ͅy̶̨̤͔͙̳͚͓͂͛̈̋͆̊́͂o̶̢̼͚͉̠͓̥͑͊̽̄̔̂͗͑̄̎̚͜͝ú̶̺̼͖͍̹̗̠̼͈̿̔̑͂̉͘͜͜r̶̥̟̗̒͊̌ŝ̵̮͌͛̓̑̊͜͝ẻ̵̻̪͓̭̼̠̲̘̉ḷ̴̢̨̦̬̭̮͉̻̠͚̜̘̟͋͆͋͘͜f̴̢̯̘̏̀ͅ ̴̢̨͈̘̙̥̲̅̑͛̾͠Ą̷̺̫̫̩̦̥̼̑̆̿͐̈͂͘͘͝͝ṇ̵̨̧̧̣̺̳͓͉̯̓̄̽͛̇͘͜͠ḓ̶̛̥̹̦̲̿̅̈̉̍̄̄͊̓̕̚͘ę̴̛͓̹̥̜̹̱̞̻͍͖͙̇͒̑̕͜ͅr̵͙̙̦̯̜̱͉̥͒͒̊̈́͌̂s̸̢̛͍̹͇͈̤̻̦̭̓̌̍͐͌̂͘͜͝͝͝

“Anders?” Hawke’s voice reached him. Anders tore his gaze off the jar, and looked back to where Hawke still stood in the doorway. He couldn’t quite see for the distance, but Anders knew his lover’s eyes. They were all but identical to the ones he held in his hand.

There weren’t words to describe them. They were soul-crushing. Heart-shattering. Staring into those eyes and the worlds contained within them, Anders didn’t just feel loved, he saw a reflection of himself he could love in turn.

“Anders, did you find her ears?” Hawke asked. By his tone, it wasn’t the first time he’d asked it.

“Not yet,” Anders turned back to the jars, and conversation turned away from him. The lids were engraved with runes he didn’t recognize. Something to help with preservation, if he had to guess, and his imagination wouldn’t let him not. Quicklime and oil could only go so far after a few years.

The dismembered body parts abruptly gave way to tomes, scrolls, and other magical miscellany. Anders stared at them all, not quite seeing them, but he could feel them. The magic pressed upon the Veil, bloated and swollen with the foul and fetid work of this place, ushering across shades, wisps, and other horrors.

In the center of it all, one grimoire stood open to a page on necromancy. Etched in charcoal was a depiction of a dismembered man, a combination of telekinetic energies and wisp bindings pulling him back together for use as an undead vessel. The edges were charred. The script familiar. The spine embossed with two hawks.

It was Amell’s grimoire.

Ỉ̴͎͍̩̘̦̮̹͙̟̱̤̓ͅ ̵̢̛̯̝̙͈̫̈̈́̇́̌̊̾͘ẅ̸̢͙̻̼̥̹̼͕̯͕͇̦̣̪͇́̆͗͒͜ͅo̶̺̻͇̩̬̭̐̌̆n̷̺̼̎͒̔̽͗'̷̠̩͇̦̠̥̺͓̍̂̔̊̾̈́̅̑t̶̨̧̡͎̦͖͚̣̫͉̼̺̆̑̐̿͌̀̋̌̇͛͐͂̈́̎̂̐̚ͅ ̴̧̡̛̜̹̭̭̫͙̺̬̦͖̤̼́̈́͒͛̍̑̈͒͂̇l̶̜̿̅̓̚͝é̵̡̗͈͔̭͔̹̹͍̼̻̦͋ť̷̞͔̜̞͐̋͆͑̈́̕̚͝ ̴̱̩̩̫̼͍͕̟͈͛͊̋̔̀͌̚ͅt̴̢̛͚͚͚͎̺̰̭͔̀̌͑̊͛͆̌̈́̏͊̎͗͝͠h̶͙͈̠͕͙̦̿̈̆̍̍̅̊͒̽́͝ȩ̶̧̡̺̰̺̤̠͈̫̍̿́̋̆̈́̎̚͘͜ͅm̴̡̨̹̝͖̭͚̲̖̖̘͕̝̹̈́̾̔́͂͗̿͆̍̇̽̉̚ ̶̢̧̧̘͍͔͉̥̳̖̦̞̻͉̖͇̖̆̉͐͒̐̌͑t̵̨͉̯̘̥̬͈͕͈̙̭̝͓̫̮̃̓̈́̄̊̇͗̉͜á̶͉̺͖̰͚̥̦̳̦̙̓̑͆̈́̎̋͘k̴̹̻̦͕͈̲͒͂̆̾̅̊͑͋̅͛͊̎͘͝e̶̢̡̮̞̞̦͙̗̫͙̓̉̍̅͊̉̓̕ͅ ̸͎̟̿̈́͋̑̔̎͂̍̇̚͠y̷̧̹̩̞̮͍͚̟̣̦̲̯̬̓̿́̈́͑̍̓̽̆͂͑̆̈́͊͘͝ơ̴̩͑͐͊̐̀ṵ̵̧̦̜̲̝̭̯̘̬̪̫̳͔͕̻̼̍̉̈́̈́̈́͝ ̵̧̧̺̳̤̙͇̥̞̩͗̓̍̂͋̋̔b̸͉̠͙̻̟͎͍̝̮̼͔͔͙̀̽̂͆a̶̧̮̻͓̮̰̙̟̳͙̹͉̰̥̋̎͂̐͘ç̷͙͕͍̮͖̰̜̳̩̳͉̹͋̓̆͛̓̇͠ͅk̷͈̞̗̩̹̥̪̇̈͒͛̔̔̽̀̍͗̄͂͝͠.̷̛̺͗̇̏̂̇̈́͆͛̓͘̚͝͝͝͝
̵̡̡̤̄̓Y̶̥͒̓͆̀̓͛o̶̡͂͌̋ư̵̧̹̰͈̠̣̥͇̦̞̼̞̞͎̒̂̂͒̇̽̑͐̔̂̉̇̌̕ ̵͚̫͈̤̞͚͌̒̊̉̆̈́͒̂̏̃̏̕d̸͎̬̫̝͇̻̲̼͛́̈̄̂̍̊͆̆̕͠͠͝͝ơ̷̖͉̈́͒͗̀͆n̴̨̻̼̹̖̪͎̞̟̥̙̺͖̝̹̋̂̾͒̓͑͒̚̚͝'̷̫̰̂̑̒t̷͍̼̯͍̫̗͕͓͎̩̝͙̗̤̻̞̄͊͐̉́̈̒̈́̊̑͠ ̵̘̘̱̘͖̜̤̺̳̪̖͖̘̥̹͜͜͝o̷̢̢͉͚͉͎̩̱͎̳̜͎͍͙͒̆̽̂̃̾̍̒w̷̹̤̬̣̤̤̪͇͈̍̂̓̎̆̅͆̈́̈̊͋̂̒͜é̸̺̻̱̙͕̩͚͉̫͈̻̞̳̦͔̀̑̐͗̊̔́̂̅̕͘͝͝͝ ̴̘̓̏͂̄̈͝m̷̢̛̬̙͕͉̱͔̠̿̅̃͂͋͛̍̒͛͝e̵̢͓͈͉͕̹̺͍̒̽̃͗̔̍̈́̈̾͒̚̕ ̵̰̳̩͈̳̟̻̖̜̹͕͐͆͂̇ͅa̴̡̡͇̰̙͎̮̯̝̲̥͙̤͙͓̹͒͂̎̋͗̈́̄̎͒̾̅͐͝n̴̬͊̓̎̓͑̈́͐̾̈́̀̿̂̉̇͘y̷̨̧̨̢̞̮̘̟̞͕̘͎͓̜̙̮͆̍̉̔̿̚t̵̢̢̢̞̙̖̘̭͖̞̔̓̉̏͗ͅĥ̸̨̢͉̬̥̮̳̺͎͎̫̹̆͛̈́̂̊̈͆͛͋͆̚͠͝ȋ̵̧͍͎̠̝͙͈̃͌̋͂̿͝n̸̛̛̪͈͗̓̈́̋̆̋̈́̃̔̇̾̂̌̕͝g̵̛̣͓͙̤̭̳̏̏̔̂̎̂͑̈́͛͛̈͜͜͝
̸̨̱̫̘͉͔̱̤̟̠̣̞̼̦̠̻̺́̏̇̈͋̈́͆̐̈͛́͆Ÿ̷̫̳̞́̌̒͗̑͛͝ǫ̷̦̮̮́̿̓͆̈̌͛͆͛͛̓̆̚̚͘u̴̡͚͛̽̇͗̎̓̈́͛̏̑̆̒̔͝͝’̴̥̜̔̐̐r̶̦͋̋͊̅̔̒̒͘ȅ̶̪̗̞͔͇̠͈̥̅̿́̍̐̐̇̽̔͒͆̀͝͝ ̴̿̒̓̓̓̓̿̋̾͋̓͂̇̚ͅt̶̡̡̨̛̤̠͓̗̰̲̜̹̤̬̗͎̳ͅḣ̵̤̝̃̇͗̈́͆̐͂͒͗̈́̀ȩ̴̤̲̜̘͈̩͕͕̜͙̎͜͝ ̵̻̣̹̯̦̔̎̓͒͒̔͌̽̓͒͒͠m̵̛͕̝̟̱̳̳̪͎̿̄͛̎̉͒̅ȏ̷̘̭͉̘̗̥͍͍̦̰͉̬̠́̅̐̋͠͝s̵̨̡̡̧̼͈̺̻͙̜̺̠̞͔͍̭̓̏͑̀̔̊͘ͅţ̵͈̲̌̍̀͆̏͊͆͘͝ ̷̧̛̠̗̜̲̥̘̣̪̫̦̜̬̤̓̋͐͊̿̏̿̈͘ä̴̞͙̜͕̗̜̞͖̯̹̬̞̟̗̩́͜t̵̞͙̻̯͇̗͔̤̳̣̝͎̍̓̐̇̓̋͘͜͜t̴͉͖͙̼͖̘͎͇̹̯͙̳͓̦͂̏̏͑̓̓͋ṛ̶̢̨̪̬̟̪͕͌͗̇͑̍̉̎̊̇͝a̵̛̦̐̔͒͗͝ç̶̨̭̺̜̘̲̙̻͚̘̫̺̤̭̘̽͗̾̿̾̄͐̇̿́̀̕͝͝ͅt̵̘̭̤̗͈̭̯̞͚̬̥̯̲̜̘̤̉͋̆͂͂̄̍̆͋̈̂͠i̵̛̛͙̮̣̮̫̙̖͕̥͕̎̑͗̋͆̈́͑͑͜v̸̧̨̧̨̛̭̤̻͙̲͖͇̺͈̭͍̻̞͑̋̄͗̇̓̊̓̅͌̒͝ę̵͇̳̙͎̭̻̌̅͐̆͌̇͘͜ ̴͙̑́̄̎̅͋̋̃̄͘̕m̷͎̝͆̐̓̐̄̓͗̃̂̕̕͜ḁ̸̢̪͎̯̞͊̄̈ņ̸̡̧̛͓͕̰͎͈̗̼̫͆͛̾̓̔͑̍̐̕ ̷̡̱̱̦͕̦̼̳͇̥̜̫͚̱̗̩̝̀̈́͘I̴̱̬͍͇͎̍̄̓͛͒̊̉̓͜’̷̧̣̤͔̫͖̜͇̱̣͍̞̋̿̑v̷̡̛̗̤̩͖̳̗̆̋̒͂̄͐̚̕͘͝e̸͚͎͍̩͔̻̾̄̊͐͋͘ ̴̢̡͇̙̯̺̬͔̖̼͐̋̋̒̓͊͝ḝ̵̨͈͈̭̮͇̾̂̃̓̽͘v̸̛̛̺̣̟͕̟̻̠͓͂͒̾͆͑̓͌̉͠͝ę̷̢̩̰̼̟͇̖̂̊͐̆̔̊̉̌͝͠r̵̢̘͔̪͚̺̼̺̭͊̇̃ ̷̞̤̠̼̫̠̩̣͖̌̂̒̍̈s̸̛̯̰̫͖̥̗͖̝̪͕͙͐e̵̡̡̪̲͈̝̬͙̳͇̋̌̀̂̏̈͋̍͂̕͝ẹ̸̞͓̗̩̗͎͈͕͙̦͖͇̖̺̫̉̐͊͂̍̑́̈́̓̎͌̕͜͝͠͝n̸̠̘͉̱̭̝̟̰͖͍̟̜͖̩̰̂́͋͌̄͋̄̍͛̓͗̊̕͜ͅ
̶͎͖̘̩̳͇̫̗̲̻͇̌͛̀̅̌̾̊̅̿̂̆̍͗̚͝Į̴̢̞̹̼̰͍̤̩͔͕͓̳̾̄͜͝'̷̡̛͇̫̤̥̲͇̝̱͍̼͕̬̟͋̄̃̚̕͜͠ĺ̴͔̦͕̣͎̑̔̇̕ĺ̵̨̧͕̠̝̦̩̖͈͍͉̼͎͇͉̔̍͛̈́̆̔̆̎̐͊ ̴̜̜̻͕͍͎̯̭͂̄̃͠t̵͈̥̫̤͂̎̅͌͋͠ȑ̵͈̋̈͝y̸͚͎̤͖̳̖̰̹̜̬̞̳̤̏̄̈́̋́̄͗̆̈̽̅̚͜͠ ̸̢̧̛̤̺̘̬̺̩̬̪͒̈̉̊̾͂̽̒̕͝t̷̒̊̆̿͛̿̐̆̕ͅǫ̵̛̲̯͙̮̜̞͖͙̮̞̯͍͒̐̆̄̈̅̎̇̈́́͘ ̴̦̟͙̟̖̆̃̃ͅm̸̡̳̳̩̙̗͓̑͐͜ả̷̛̰̃̚ḳ̴̡̪͓͙̩̼̞̞̭̤̔͌͑̔é̵̢̱̺͍̭̞̞̘̬̦̬̲͖͎͕̈́̇͊ ̸̧̘̩͖̖͕̠̱̖͙̲͍̠͆̐͛̽̈́́́̈͌̽̂̽̿̀̊ͅi̴̗̰̭̫͍͙͔͂̇̐͋͗̆͒t̷̜̼̯̠͈̰͑̒͗̄͂̋̃̓̽͊̓̀̀̆̾ ̴̡̧͎͚͖̳̩͔̺̥̟̝̹̱̿͗̎̈́̇̌̽̊͘͘ͅa̶̧̢̗̜̺͎̼̐ ̵̧̯̝͔̮͈̭͋͝ͅg̶̡̞̦̯͖͎̻̭͚̜̖̱̼͉̠͚͑̈͋͛͒̒̒̚̚͜ŏ̵̺͚̘̻́͂̆̚͝͝ō̵͖͙͕̫͊͌̍̂̚͝͠d̴̖̬̯̥̮͙̖̙̰̣͙̈́̅͋͐̆̌̀͐̈́̀͘ ̴͙͍̹̼̖͈̮̣̣̩̜̖͓̑̾̄͂͒͜o̸̡̧͕͛͐͐̌̕͝͝ͅn̶̨̧̢̯̙̬̫͎̩̗̮͍̰̞͙͉̊̆̍è̵̡̧̛̼͓͈̲̖͔͍̄̆͋̍͗͊͐͌̎̉͝

“Anders?” Merrill touched his arm, “Are you alright?”

Anders shook his head, but it must have been in the wrong direction, because Merrill kept her hand on his arm, “Is it Justice? Seeing all of this? Do you want to step outside with me?”

“No,” Anders said quietly. “It’s not Justice.”

When he turned back, the shelf was empty, the grimoire gone, and for one panicked moment Anders thought he'd imagined it. Just another hallucination of the addled mind of a broken man, until Varric cleared his throat.

"Blondie, you sure you want anything to do with whatever's in that book?"

"What book?"

"The one you just put in your satchel, like Rivaini with a bad hand of Wicked Grace?"

Anders hadn't even realized he'd taken it, but it was there, nestled among his things like he'd never lost it to begin with. "... I'm sure."

"Okay, but, are you really sure? I'm normally not one to advocate a book burning, but maybe this time we just strike a flint and whatever happens, happens."

"No!" Gascard interrupted to protest. He took a panicked step towards the library of tomes, but Hawke stepped with him, cutting him off. "You can't. How else are we to lure the killer back here, if not with all this?"

"I don’t think he ever left,” Hawke said, adjusting his grip on his dagger, “I don't trust you, and I don't suffer men who can't be trusted"

“It’s not him,” Anders said before Hawke could throw it.

“What?” Hawke held off, but his eyes didn't leave the nobleman.

“It’s not him,” Anders repeated.

“Then who is it?” Merrill asked.

“Yeah, mind filling us in here, Blondie?” Varric asked.

“It’s just not him,” Anders abandoned the jars and grimoires to return to Lissa’s side. The blood had begun to clot, crusted red crescents like some sardonic tattoo of the ears that had been stolen from her. “I’m sorry, Lissa, I can stitch the wounds closed for you, but I don’t think your ears are here.”

Lissa reached up to cup one of her ears, flinching at the nothingness she encountered, “Where else would they be?”

“He must have another lair, somewhere,” Gascard started pacing, his footsteps making a sickening suction-like sound on the blood-drenched floor. “The bâtard sournois. Of course he does.”

“Can you track him?” Hawke asked, “The way you were going to track her?”

“Not without some of his blood,” Gascard shook his head. “The magic works like the Circle’s phylacteries. But I do not think that will be necessary. Look at these jars.”

“I’ll pass,” Varric said queasily.

“There are so many,” Gascard continued, gesturing grandly between the shelves, “Dozens of women. Dozens of grimoires. This must be his life’s work. He will come back for it. I know it. I have only to be here when he does.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Hawke asked.

“Then he will kill again,” Gascard shrugged, as if it was of no consequence to him, “And I will find him when he does.”

“Or maybe we come up with a plan to find this guy before that happens?” Varric suggested. “I can think of one off the top of my head. Big. Red. Angry. I get that you have a personal vendetta against this guy, but I think this is a bit bigger than that. Let’s just give this to the guard and call it a day.”

“Do as you will - the guard will not find him,” Gascard said, “This… menagerie of macabre changes nothing. I will find him.”

“What do we do with all this?” Merrill asked, tracing the spine of another grimoire set upon the shelves. “We can’t just leave it here.”

“I will stay with it-” Gascard started.

“No. You’re going home.” Hawke cut him off. “I’ll handle this. I don’t trust you, and if you’re playing me false, I’ll handle you too.”

Gascard looked about to protest, but he must have had at least a fair knowledge of mathematics, because he counted four against one, and bowed his way out of the foundry. They gathered up the grimoires and tomes, and left the jars. Merrill warded the foundry with a mix of paralysis and repulsions glyphs, and the four of them took Lissa back to the Hanged Man.

Varric bought her a room for the night, where Anders cleaned and treated her injuries. Merrill fetched her food, and Hawke left to tell Lirene of their success. He returned with her as Anders was finishing Lissa’s stitches, and Lirene swept him up in a whirlwind of gratitude that eventually spat him back out into Varric’s room.

Drinks were poured, and not for the first time Anders resented his sobriety. They found seats: Varric his own, Merrill the table, Hawke Anders' armrest. Anders leaned against him, cradling a mug of cider and letting his eyes wander around the room and away from the conversation.

It was a nice room, all things considered. Stone shelves honeycombed the western wall, filled with books Varric was perpetually “planning to read.” Above them, granite murals of Kirkwall were carved with more care than the city itself. Artifacts from the Valdasine Thiag decorated the north wall, framed in tapestries detailing the history of Kirkwall back to the days of the Tevinter Imperium. Beneath them, a stone table, laden with pitchers, bottles, and jars.

They were just jars. There was nothing special about them. Completely innocuous, and mostly from clay, they held lagers and malts. Brandies. Mead and moonshine. No scalps. No fingers or toes. No lungs. No hearts.

No eyes.

E̸̛͉͍̮̽͛̕̕̚͝v̸̮̹͚̘͙̤͖̤͙͆͒̾̾ę̶͕̼̹̞̅̋̽͆͒̄̚ͅr̴̨̺͍̜̫̭͗̊̃̈͒̉y̴̡͉͈͚̱̞̦̰̭͔̱̎̂͋͂͘̕̕͠͠o̷̰͈̟͙̣̳̊̿̒̍̽̉̎̔͆͂̓͗̕ņ̶̫̜͕̟͙͎̫͆̃̐̕e̶̜̹̹ ̷̨̞̰͎̘͖̪͖͚͚̈̄̉̓̎̽͘ͅͅh̸̻̝̻̬͍̥͚̳̦̟̟̜͑͐̉̊̋͑a̶̱̜̖̲̜̗͓̪̗̿̐̈́̌̂̃̔̓͂̚͝s̴̢̢̢͉͚͉̱̅̊̈́̈̋͆̕ ̴̧̼͉̘̭͚͉͖̚ͅâ̸̟̣̟͛̇̊̈̄̌̓́̃̚ ̷̞̻̞̄̒̇̾̌͘͝ͅḻ̷̡̢̢̛̮̝̮̱̟͉͇̼̅̆̒̈̅̄̅͑́̕͝í̶͎̘̥͉̰̺͋͜ṃ̵̲̻͖̪̩̽͌ͅi̶̟͌̀ṯ̵̱̬̏̉̆̍͜,̷̡̡̹͚͙͚̪͖̪̲̙̻͋̑̀̊̌͐̉͌̓͠ ̶̨̡͎̮̦͋̾̂̚Ȁ̵̧̬͑̊̒͑̾͋̏̓͝n̶̢̗̙͖̺̖̖̣͓̦͐̒̅̀̅͆͝d̵̢̡̛̲͈͇̻̜̤̪͈͕̱͌̇̋̋̈́̅͜ȩ̵̡̛̰̻̥͉̥͛̾̆͑̏̈́̍́̌͜r̴̛̥̞̩̰͔͉̰͆̈́̈́ͅs̵͓͖͙̰͊̅̾͂͋̈́̚͝
̷̡̢͔̪̭͎͕̹͖̮͍̗̆T̷̨̝̻͓͓̼͋͆̒̒̑̊͒̾̓̋͜͝͝h̷̡͓̳̼̲̦̼̤͒i̵̪͖̫̳͚̱̙͈̍̆̂̍͌͛͜s̶̺̿̉ ̶̧͇̬̺̫̥͙̂͐̈́̓͘̕̕͝ǐ̶̢̙̦͕̺̟͔̏̐̃̓̏̐́͌̚s̸̨̛̥̝̳̩̣̻̱̜̔̋̓̇̐͊̾͗̿͘͠ ̷̡̝̙̖͈̮͔̑̓̐̊͜͝͝͝ͅm̴̢̲̟̤̹̲̖̹̿̐̄̉̂̚ͅĭ̸̙̞̟̬͇̌̆̏͗̓̕ͅn̶̢̜̱̺̮̜̗͓̤̣̻̞͑͛̐̈͊͑͊̾͂͌̉͐͜͠ȩ̶̡̦͔̺̫̜̜̙̲̩̄̓̀̓̒̓̇̈́̆̌͝.̸̹̣̪͑͒̈́͑͐̉̇̈́̈͘͜ ̵̛̦̝̩͈͉̭̯͕̻̜͎̟̘̆̋̃͌͘Ḯ̵̡̞̝̗̘̬̥̮͙̪̗́̀̑͝ͅ'̵̦̝͗̈̂͝m̷̢̯̪͍̭̭͍̹͎͙̞̂͜͜ ̵̲̜̆̑͌̌̒̅̇̏͠ş̵̼͔̝̟̘̾̈̂̾̈́͛̈́̆̏͝͠o̶̢̢̜̻̻̍̀̿̐̈́̒͘͝͝r̸̦̱̈́͌͆̾̍̔̈́͂̅͒͆͒̾r̴̯͍̯͉͇̝̆́̔͠͠y̷̧̖̬̖͔̼͚̿͋͊́͛͂̋̒

“So Blondie,” Varric was saying, “Not that I don’t trust your judge of character, but do you mind filling the rest of us in on how you know our new friend Gascard DuPuis isn't Gascard GuiLty?"

"What?" Anders asked.

Varric gestured vaguely with his tankard, "Don't tell me you bought all that. 'Et waz not me, et waz ze other blood mage!' You found something in there, right? That book you took, I'm guessing?"

"What book?" Hawke asked.

"... This one," Anders pulled the grimoire from his satchel, and held the spine up to Hawke.

Hawke’s eyebrows furrowed at the sight of his family crest. "Your old grimoire?"

"He must have bought it, " Anders wanted to laugh. Or cry. Or scream. Do something so he could feel something, but he knew if he did, he wouldn't stop. "From the Black Emporium. He had to have known what kind of magic was inside."

"Or maybe not," Merrill said, conjuring fresh ice for another round of drinks."It was with the other grimoires. With how many we found in there, he could have bought them all."

"No," Anders didn't believe that. It wasn't a coincidence. "You said once someone might buy more than one grimoire if the first one didn't have what they needed… well, he knew this one would have what he needed."

"I can't imagine anyone needing all that." Merrill shivered.

"Still not really answering my question here, Blondie," Varric said. "How do you know the guy who bought it wasn't the guy we just let go?"

Anders stared at the cup in his hands, fresh ice bobbing in the cider, and his stomach turned. One breath at a time. He just had to get through it one breath at a time. Anders pushed the cup away. "Because I know who did."

"Well, come on then, don't leave us in suspense," Varric pressed.

"... his name is Quentin."

Hawke was staring at him. Anders needed Hawke to be staring at him. He needed to see Hawke’s eyes, and the difference between them and the ones in the jar. Hawke’s eyes had the hard edge of a man who would do anything to survive. The sort of man Anders didn’t have to fear ever losing.

"He's … your uncle? Or cousin, I think? He was Amell’s father… so whatever you call that. You know, Fausten Amell, Hero of Ferelden-"

"I know who he is," Hawke squeezed his shoulder. "I've heard the story from Varric. You don't have to tell it again."

"Yes I do," Anders had to tell it to Hawke. "I met Quentin at Vigil's Keep, almost two years ago. He just showed up out of the Void one day. Said he escaped Starkhaven's Circle by burning it down. He probably did. He was powerful enough. He was a necromancer, and a maleficar, and everything Amell wanted in a father.

"Which is pretty messed up, honestly. Amell should have known better than to trust him. All they ever talked about was blood magic and necromancy. He spent a fortnight obsessing over Amell’s eyes, and then the night before he left, he-... mind controlled me-" One breath at a time, Anders, "To cut them out.

"Quentin might have been Amell’s father, but he only shared his blood to spill it. Amell never sent anyone after him. He just gave up. He just -... and Quentin just got away with it."

Hawke already knew. Anders didn't know how Varric told the story, but he knew Varric told it. He knew Hawke had heard it, even if they'd never spoken of it. Not to each other. Nothing beyond a short affirmation on the steps of Lowtown that Anders saw Hawke as Hawke, and not as anyone else.

But it was one thing to hear a story, and another to hear a confession. Anders waited for a reaction that never came. Hawke listened as though it were an old retelling - as if Anders had simply spoken of the Blight - nodding along with a solemn reverence for all its horrors.

"He was a maleficar," Hawke said, as if it were explanation enough, and he didn't sit in the presence of two. Maybe it was. Maybe death was the inevitable end of all blood magic, and the only question was whose. Hawke squeezed his shoulder, and Anders squeezed back.

"Being a maleficar doesn't make someone a monster," Merrill argued. "Do you know why he did it? What he was trying to do?"

"Does it matter?" Anders demanded. "Is there a reason that justifies it?"

"I'm not trying to justify it. I'm trying to understand it. How are we supposed to stop him if we don't know what we're stopping?"

"With an arrow," Hawke said. "Anders… How do you know this is Quentin? It can't just be the grimoire."

"I hate to say it, Blondie, but blood mage serial killer isn't exactly a unique profession in Kirkwall," Varric added. "You and Daisy are kind of the exception to the rule."

"...I found his eyes. In one of the jars."

"... are you-... I mean, are you sure?" Merrill asked. "It was years ago, wasn't it?"

Anders looked at Hawke. The hearth's fire caught and crackled in his eyes, a deep and unnatural red of a Fade-Touched bloodline. "I'm sure."

"So we take it to the guard," Hawke said. "The viscount puts a bounty on him, Aveline gets a wanted poster made up -"

"Easy there, Killer," Varric held up his hands, "Let's think about our hand before we play it. Before Kirkwall, Quentin was just another Starkhaven apostate. Blondie, refresh my memory, what are the templars doing about the Starkhaven apostates these days?"

"Nothing," Anders said. "With their phylacteries destroyed, they can't be tracked. Whenever that happens, the Chantry keeps it quiet. They don't want people thinking their hold over mages is anything but absolute. It's better to pretend they caught them all, or they died, or never existed."

"Exactly," Varric said. "I bet you my last copper there's a paper on some templar’s desk that says Quentin Amell died in the Starkhaven Fire. Aside from the people in this room, I doubt there's anyone in the Free Marches who even knows he's alive, or let alone what he did to the Hero of Ferelden.

"Now you want to go to the Viscounty, and the Guard, and tell them Quentin Amell is the Butcher of Lowtown?"

"... yes?" Anders ventured.

"No. You said it yourself, Blondie, Quentin is Hawke’s uncle."

"First cousin, once removed." Hawke corrected him.

"I know how stories work" Varric waved him off. "First he's your cousin, then he's your uncle, then he's your brother or your father. The point is, he's family. And not only is he the Butcher of Lowtown, but he's also an apostate, or was it a maleficar? Or maybe an abomination? And now it's not just guard business, it's templar business.

"I don't think you need me to tell you why that's bad. You haven't been a noble long, so you don't know how all this works yet, but it's not just the guards and the templars; it's the gossip. Think of Orlais' Grand Game, and now make it a bloodsport.

"Sunshine in the Circle? Maybe she moves up a little too fast, and the de Laucent's get jealous their son doesn't do the same. Maybe people start to wonder if she conspired with the Butcher. Maybe correspondence turns up proving it.

"Hawke not married? Maybe one of the dozen noblewomen he turned down for Blondie gets jealous. Maybe Hawke was involved in the killings - maybe he got off on it. Maybe he was even seeing the Butcher. Maybe the templars raid the estate, and they find a staff, or a grimoire, or maybe they just find a pair of Blondie's pants.

"Maybe the whole family knew about it. Maybe they were sheltering Quentin. Maybe-"

"Enough," Hawke interrupted. "You made your point."

"But none of that's true!" Merrill protested.

"Does it matter?" Varric asked. "Think about what happened to Hawke’s family when Sunshine went to the Circle, or when the magistrate lied about Bartrand. Killer's got enemies. I'm just saying, maybe we don't fill their quiver for them."

"So we keep his name quiet," Hawke said. "We can still tell the guard what he looks like. Say we saw him escape saving Lirene."

"Lissa," Anders corrected him.

"Whatever. They arrest him-"

"And get his name anyway." Varric said.

"Or he kills them all." Anders countered. "Powerful blood mage, and all that."

"Then we tell the templars," Hawke said.

"Who make him Tranquil," Anders said.

"And get his name anyway." Varric said.

"You have a better idea?" Hawke demanded.

"I press my contacts, quietly, for anyone matching Quentin's description. We find him and we kill him." Varric said.

"And when that doesn't work? When we just find more jars?" Hawke countered.

"I'm not saying it's a perfect plan. I'm just saying I think it's the plan that keeps you safe. Blondie, back me up here."

"... I think we should help Gascard," Anders said. "I agree with him. I don't want Quentin arrested or Tranquil. I just want him dead."

If he was being honest, Anders wanted him worse. He wanted his eyes carved from their sockets. He wanted his ears ripped from his head. He wanted his tongue cut from his mouth. He wanted to pull the man’s spine from his throat and flay him to death with it. He wanted justice and vengeance and everything in-between. Past that, he didn't care who helped him get it.

… but he didn't want any of that if it meant risking Hawke.

"I'm telling Aveline," Hawke said, holding up a hand to forestall any protests. "She'll keep it quiet. A few men on the foundry to watch if he returns. Varric can press his contacts for wherever else Quentin might be hiding, and we can work with Gascard to see if anything else turns up. When we find him, we send him back to the Maker in a jar."

Afternoon turned to evening, and Anders and Hawke turned back to Hightown. Anders to the estate, and Hawke to the Viscount’s Keep to speak with Aveline. The Amell estate carried on blissfully oblivious to its ties to the Butcher of Lowtown. Two of the servants, both apostates, were arranging bouquets of white lilies in the foyer, and waved at his entrance. Anders doubted they would if they knew the truth about him, but Selby had kept the Collective silent on his sins. He could only hope Aveline would do the same for Hawke and Quentin.

Anders took a bath and changed into his nightshirt before he returned to his satchel, and the grimoire inside it. Somewhere within was a ritual to sever him from Justice, if he wanted. Anders had almost forgotten about it with Quentin and the aberrations of his past consuming his thoughts, but now that he had it back he couldn't help but consider it.

Anders stared at the veins on the back of his palms, and imagined them split with veilfire. Despite everything, it still comforted him. He remembered Justice’s fervent promise that he wouldn’t leave him even if he had the option, and wondered why he’d never thought to promise Justice the same when his spirit had begged him not to leave him alone in this world.

There had to be some other way to help them control their anger. Some way where Anders didn’t have to lose the best part of himself. He’d lost enough already. Anders resolved to put the grimoire away with the rest of his books, and his satchel clinked.

It shouldn’t have clinked.

Anders stared into the medley of medical supplies. Since he’d sworn off his magic, he carried around bandages, needles, thread, poultices… but no jars.

He’d taken the eyes.

When had he taken them?

Why had he taken them?

Anders picked up the jar. It seemed a poor substitute for an urn. One of the eyes shifted, spinning leisurely in the lime while the other stared back at him. Maker, no wonder Amell had refused to let him see him without his bandages on. The damn things were going to haunt his nightmares. Anders had no idea what to do with them. He couldn’t just throw them away, but it wasn’t like he could just mail them to Weishaupt either.

He’d worry about it later. Anders stowed the jar under the bottom shelf of his armoire, spent an embarrassingly long time lighting the hearthfire with flint and tinder, and ultimately decided to reread his grimoire to see if Quentin had added to it or left any clues on where he’d gone.

Hawke returned, a simple, “It’s done,” all he had to say of his conversation with Aveline before he left for a bath. Anders was still reading when Hawke reemerged, raven hair tousled and damp against wheatish skin. Once upon a time, Anders might have warmed his hands with the Fade to dry it for him. The thought passed, and Hawke climbed onto the bed beside him, gently prying his grimoire from his hands to rest on the nightstand. “Maybe there’s been enough blood magic for one night,” Hawke suggested.

“Maybe,” Anders agreed, tracing the neckline of Hawke’s robe. The velvet plunged below his collarbone, and framed the burn Anders had left on him months ago. Because Anders was dangerous. Like Quentin was dangerous. Like all blood mages and abominations were dangerous.

“You want to talk?” Hawke guessed.

“No," Anders kissed him.

He didn't want to talk, to think, to feel. He didn’t want to process everything that had happened to him, or because of him. He didn't want anything but Hawke.

Anders pushed Hawke’s robe from his shoulders. There was no avoiding the burn Anders had left on him, so he didn't. The dark hair on Hawke’s chest gave way abruptly to scar tissue, catching on Anders' fingertips as he traced over it. It haunted him, even now, for how little it seemed to mean to Hawke.

Hawke kissed back as ardently as he ever had before Anders had branded him. His hands were as sure as they ever were when they freed him of his nightshirt. His eyes were still lidded with the same passion that drove him to follow Anders into fire, no matter how it burned.

Anders broke from him to grab for the oil they kept in the nightstand, and push it into Hawke’s hands. No creationism. No magic. Just Hawke. Hawke bit off the cork and spread it across his fingers to sheath two inside him. “I have you,” Hawke said it like an oath, his voice thick with passion and promise.

“Fuck,” Anders arched into his touch, chasing the mind-numbing bliss that flooded over him at the perfect stretch of his fingers. The world narrowed down to the cool caress of satin sheets, the give of goosefeather mattress, the crackle of hearthfire beneath the sound of hitched breath and skin on skin.

Anders lost a little more of himself with every steady thrust of Hawke’s fingers. His hands clutched about Hawke’s shoulders were the only things that seemed to keep him solid. Hawke pulled from him briefly to bend his legs up to his chest, and fit against his body before he thrust inside him, and anything that was left of Anders dissolved into sensation.

He burned with it - his every breath a whimper as Hawke moved in him. Every stroke slow and steady as if the night would last forever, and the world outside would wait for them. Firelight danced across Hawke’s features, the break of his nose, the pale scar that cut across his lips and died out beneath his beard. Anders traced it, the heat of Hawke's harsh groans spilling over his fingers in time with Anders’ moans.

It didn't seem possible that a man could be so scarred, and so unbroken. Anders could feel the strength in him. In every snap of his hips, in the corded muscle of his arms and shoulders, in the firm clasp of his hands on Anders’ thighs. In the pleasure it wrought inside him, coiling around his spine and trembling across his skin. “Please,” Anders pleaded, unsure what he was pleading for, “Please, Hawke.”

Hawke’s eyes swept over Anders’ aching cock, his fingers tracing where it lay against Anders’ trembling stomach. “Do you want me to finish you?”

“Look at me?” Anders hadn’t meant it for a question, but it came out as one.

Hawke looked, and Anders felt like he saw everything. His tortured childhood, the onset of his magic and his father’s increasingly desperate attempts to free him of it. His mother’s tears and all his unanswered prayers to return to her. His isolation and abuse in the Circle. The templars’ swords and burning sunbursts. His failed escapes. His year in solitary. The men and women he’d murdered, and all the lovers among them.

“I love you,” Hawke said anyway.

His end, when he met it, felt like Veil tore inside him, and all the magic of the Fade burned through his veins. Anders cried out, arching with such an intense wave of ecstasy it threatened to snap him in half before he collapsed. He felt boneless, almost incorporeal, if not for the cool kiss of sweat-soaked sheets on his shivering skin as Hawke continued to thrust into him.

Aftershocks of pleasure rippled through him, pulling him back together, until he was shaking with the overstimulation of it all. Anders whimpered, his breath coming in tattered gasps and choked Oh’s as Hawke sought his end in him. Strands of raven hard matted and stuck to his forehead, sheened with sweat like brilliant beads of glass in the firelight.

He was so beautiful. The tortured thought repeated itself in Anders’ head, and started spilling from his lips in a desperate litany, “You’re so beautiful. Maker, Hawke, you’re so beautiful.”

“Damnit, Anders,” Hawke seemed to shatter. His voice broke, and he trembled in Anders’ arms, the heat of his release filling him with his final thrust before he collapsed. Anders wrapped his arms around him before he could roll away, feeling the weight of him, the tremor in his breath, the warmth of his skin.

“Beautiful too,” Hawke mumbled eventually, the scratch of his beard against Anders’ neck eliciting a shiver from him.

“Goes without saying,” Anders joked.

Hawke chuckled, rolling off him and onto the dry side of the bed, which felt a little unfair, all things considered. Anders pushed him until Hawke was balanced on the edge of the bed, and Anders had a comfortable spot in the middle. The scent of sex and burning pine hung in the air between them, and beneath it, a soft undercurrent of sandalwood.

Anders had gotten Hawke a vial of the scented oil as a gift, an indeterminate amount of time ago. Or Hawke had gotten it for himself, if you counted where the coin came from. Anders didn’t. In the past few months, coin had become a thing Hawke no longer seemed to need to count.

It was a deep, woody scent that reminded Anders of the forest. Of hunting trips through the Planasene Forest, and foraging for herbs in the Vimmark Mountains. Of fletched arrows, and boiled leather, and the silent footsteps of a practiced hunter, and other good things. It seemed to suit him better than the dog and dirt of Lowtown, and Hawke wore it, so he must have thought the same.

Anders tried to keep his thoughts wrapped up in that scent. In the warmth of Hawke’s skin pressed flush against his own. In the pleasant ache from their lovemaking that sent the occasional shiver rippling up his spine. But they churned, traitorously, back to jars of lime, to skin split with veilfire, to burnt chests and dead men.

“... When I was in the Circle, love was only a game,” Anders said quietly. He felt the mattress shift as Hawke turned to face him, but it was easier to talk to the knotted woodwork of the canopy bed. “It gave the templars too much power over you if there was something you couldn’t stand to lose…"

“You aren’t going to lose me,” Hawke promised, wrapping a strong arm around his waist to cleave them tighter together.

“What if we die tomorrow?”

“Then I’ll find you overmorrow at the Maker’s side.”

Anders laughed, a bitter, broken sound, “What if he won’t have me?”

“Then I’ll follow you into the Void.”

A chill swept up Anders’ spine, raising the hair on his skin and turning his hands and feet to ice. It was a familiar sensation. The sort of sensation that warned a man when he was doing something dangerous. That told him to turn back, to stop before it was too late, and he said something he couldn’t take back. Anders’ voice cracked, like the surface of a frozen lake, and when he spoke, he felt the shock of the icy waters in his soul, “I love you.”

Hawke pushed himself up onto his elbow, staring down at him with a warmth in his eyes that slowly melted through the icy fear clutching at Anders’ racing heart.

“I’ve been holding back from saying that... I just… I’ve never said it to anyone.”

“Never?” Hawke asked, the doubtful crease to his brow softened by the tenderness of his tone.

“Not like this,” Anders said.

“Why are you telling me now?”

“Because I'm afraid of telling you never.”

Notes:

Fanart
I love you

Chapter 108: Not Again

Summary:

Alternative Titles: Maker Have Mercy / Eyes of the Beholder Part 2 / The Bad Chapter

Notes:

Thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon 16 Martinalus Early Afternoon
Kirkwall Hightown: Hawke Estate

Grimoires. Tomes. Scrolls. Runes. A library of lyrium and blood. Anders and Merrill poured over the texts they'd salvaged from the foundry, but they were no closer to finding Quentin. Gascard, Varric, Aveline... None of them met with any luck.

A week had passed, and Quentin hadn't surfaced to claim his collection. Anders was beginning to doubt he ever would, but if Quentin didn't reclaim it, he'd have to rebuild it. It wasn't a comforting thought, especially with what it implied for Lissa, and every other woman in the city.

Aveline passed along the disappearances that came across her desk, and, Maker, there were so many. The guard didn't even bother to investigate half of them. A missing wife had eloped with her lover. A traveling tradeswoman had traveled somewhere else. A sojourning Antivan had sojourned their way home. The excuses were endless, when the guard even bothered to make them. Missing refugees were little more than footnotes, misspelled names scribbled in the margins of larger reports on unrest in the city.

It was easy to blame Aveline for all of it, and a part of Anders did, but almost a million people lived in Kirkwall. With the endless gang wars, the templars' constant raids, the tunnels of darkspawn and the thinning Veil beneath the city, someone went missing every day. Trying to find Quentin in all of it was like trying to find a black cat in a coal cellar.

Anders stared at the grimoires littering the low table and carpeting the floor. He'd spent the day in the library, to no avail. Merrill, Fenris, and Varric had joined him around noon for their usual writing session, but none of them were writing, and reading wasn't getting them anywhere.

"Big sigh, Blondie," Varric noted. "No luck?"

"At least if I had no luck, I wouldn't have bad luck," Anders sighed, discarding the journal he’d been reading. It had seemed the newest, freshly bound and still smelling faintly of the tanners, and Anders had hoped that would mean… something. "There's nothing in there but the ramblings of a mad man. He talks about infusing corpses with lyrium, but I don't even think that's possible."

"Let me see," Fenris retrieved the journal. Anders wasn't about to hold his breath waiting for the man to figure out how to read it. He picked up another from the pile and started flipping through the pages.

Varric watched Fenris sound his way through a few words before sympathy must have gotten the better of him. "No Hawke today, Blondie?"

"I do not need his help!" Fenris snapped, slamming the book down on the table. The spine cracked, and Merrill jumped. "I can read at my own pace."

"I think Varric was just asking, Fenris," Merrill said gently.

Fenris grumbled so far down into his chair he looked like he was trying to crawl under the cushion. Anders thought of laughing, but Fenris was trying to help, so he settled on a snort.

"He's out with his mother," Anders explained. "She's introducing him to some nobleman she's been seeing. I guess she gave up trying to arrange his marriage and settled on arranging hers instead."

"No shit?" Varric raised an eyebrow.

"Maybe a little bit of shit," Anders said. "If they do end up getting married, he'll be Hawke’s step-father."

"How's Hawke taking that?" Varric asked.

"Strapped to the teeth," Anders laughed at the memory. "No joke, I thought he was going on a job."

Anders had tried to get Hawke’s opinion out of him, but it was like pulling teeth. Harder, considering Hawke had actually lost a few. Eventually, Anders had managed to get Hawke to explain he wanted the man to know he wasn't a normal noble, and wouldn't pretend to be. "If he's fine with that,"Hawke had said, "Then I'm fine with him."

"Poor bastard," Varric chuckled.

"I think it sounds lovely," Merrill said. "Why wouldn't love be lovely?"

"Who is to say it is love?" Fenris sneered over the edge of the journal he still hadn't finished reading, "And not a marriage of convenience? Or are the nobles of Kirkwall somehow different from those of Tevinter?"

"Leandra is different," Merrill argued. "She knows my name, and she lets me use some of the garden for embrium and elfroot."

"Such a low bar," Fenris rolled his eyes, "What a wonder she could fit beneath it."

"Must you always be so cross? You don't think it's nice that Hawke might get a new father?"

"His mother may yet get a husband. That does not mean Hawke will get a father. This man is not family and marriage will not make it so."

"The privy is downstairs if you need help with whatever crawled up your ass and died," Anders waved a hand towards the stairs, "Personally, I'd trade places with Hawke in a heartbeat. I could always do with a new father."

"A shame it is not your mother he is marrying then," Fenris noted.

Anders' mother was dead. For some reason, saying as much didn't seem worth it. It wasn't as if he could bring her back. "No kidding. I do not have good luck with in-laws."

Varric laughed, "Maker's breath, Blondie, that's dark. Any luck with that book, Broody?"

"This ritual the mage writes of is not possible," Fenris deduced, "It is all wrong. The treatment, the application, the amount… it is as if the mage expects the lyrium to grow on its own."

"Can I see?" Merrill asked. It must have been a rhetorical question, because she plucked the book out of Fenris' hands.

"In case nobody noticed, there's a lot more than just one book in this pile, and I'd like to get through them all," Varric reminded them, "Sooner, rather than later. If it doesn't help us find Quentin, I say get rid of it, before he gets rid of someone else."

Anders started obediently on the next book in the pile. It wasn't quite a grimoire and it wasn't quite a journal. If anything, it reminded him of the notes he'd kept for his infirmary… save that all of Quentin's patients were dead.

Your feet vex me so. Something in the way you cut your nails. I cannot see you in another until I file them just so, and what a disappointment when you are not there.

I cannot tell you how many feet have failed me. The toes too short. The tips too wide. The arch too flat. The heel too wrinkled.

Did I ever tell you that your feet are beautiful? Did I ever notice? Surely after some long social, some promenade, when you freed them from the confines of your heels and my clumsy thumbs massaged away the troubles of the day, I must have told you.

Maker, please let me have told you.

Such simple troubles we had in those bygone days. Such simple remedies. I found a nice pair the other day, but the preservation takes away the texture. Quicklime just isn't to my liking. Vermillion is promising, but your complexion was never ruddy. Perhaps honey…

It has to be perfect.

You have to be perfect.

Anders didn't know what to make of the fact that it didn't make him queasy. It didn't make him anything but angry. "I think he's trying to resurrect someone."

"Come on, Blondie, I'm a dwarf and even I figured that out." Varric said.

"No, I don't just mean binding a wisp to a corpse, I mean really resurrecting someone." Anders tapped at the page, and its inane ramblings on the preservation effects of honey, "He's trying to recreate them with pieces of other people. Maker, he's a bloody madman."

"Again, pretty sure we figured out the madman part." Varric said.

"That's not the point," Anders argued, "He's trying to resurrect someone specific-"

"This is red lyrium, isn't it?" Merrill interrupted, shoving the book she'd taken from Fenris under Anders' nose. "Like what you found in the Deep Roads? That's what's different about it! Look, here, on this page, he says vermilion-"

"Wait a second, back up," Varric climbed halfway onto the table to swipe at the book in Merrill’s hands, "How does he have red lyrium? No one has red lyrium. We left that shit down in the thiag, and no one knows about the location except-... except no one. Let me see that."

Varric snatched up the book and buried his nose in the spine, muttering, "How the fuck…"

"What do you suppose the difference is?" Merrill asked.

"Well… it was red." Anders shrugged. "... and Justice said it sang backwards."

"It felt different," Fenris added. "Hotter. Stronger. If I did not know better I would say it called to me."

"Do you know better?" Merrill asked.

"... no."

"Great. Very creepy," Anders said.

"Did you not feel it as well?" Fenris asked.

"...I did," Varric said quietly, putting the book down, "I felt it the second we walked in there. You know, I never told you what happened when Bartrand locked us in there."

"We were betrayed," Fenris recounted, "What is there to tell?"

"...I wanted to hold it," Varric flexed his mangled hand, "The idol. I could hear it. This… song. Ancestors forgive me, it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard. Bartrand wouldn't let me. We started fighting, and then…" Varric wiggled his prosthetic fingers.

It seemed like an apology. Or a confession. Varric didn't need to give either, as far as Anders was concerned. He'd suffered the worst from Bartrand's betrayal, and even if he'd wanted the idol, he wouldn't have tried to kill them to get it. Anders glanced at Fenris, but the elf didn't seem to blame Varric either, despite how he blamed everyone for everything.

"That shit is evil," Varric continued, "We need to destroy it. If Quentin has it, he had to have gotten it from somewhere."

"Perhaps your brother has returned to Kirkwall," Fenris guessed.

"Or someone smuggled it out of the thiag," Anders countered.

"I'll find out," Varric said. "But I'll need your help, Blondie. You and Blue seemed immune to that stuff, and if I get anywhere near it again, I might go full Bartrand. If I find it, I'll need you to destroy it for me."

"I can't. Justice and I aren't safe. I need to figure out how to control us, or we could do more harm than good."

"Honestly, Blondie, between Blue and red lyrium, I think I know who the lesser of two evils is," Varric said.

"At least one of us does," Fenris snorted.

"Master Anders?" Bodahn's voice echoed up from the first story. "Mistress Vallen is here-"

"You don't need to announce me, Bodahn, it's not a ball," Aveline’s voice followed.

"And the day was so young," Anders sighed.

The Guard Captain crested the stairs like a sunrise. Big. Orange. Uncomfortable to look at directly. She surveyed the four of them in the center of the library, sitting in a pile of books, and scowled like she'd never read a day in her life. "Where’s Hawke?"

"Red, good to see you," Varric lied, as far as Anders was concerned.

"Not here," Anders said.

"I can see that, you ass," Aveline frowned. "He was supposed to stop by the barracks an hour ago."

"Perhaps he has been waylaid by his would-be father," Fenris said.

"His what?" Aveline asked.

"Leandra is seeing someone!" Merrill explained. "Hawke went to go meet him. Isn't that romantic?"

"... that's lovely, Merrill."

"We're researching Quentin. Do you want to join us?"

Anders stopped listening, and went back to flipping through Quentin's notes. Dozens of different types of preservatives and their effects on human skin were detailed within, none of which gave Anders any clue as to where said preservation might be taking place. He turned another page, and froze at the familiar face staring up at him.

Leandra.

Or a portrait of her, sketched in charcoal. Her hair was styled differently, swept up into a perfect bun to better display high cheekbones, a strong nose and subtle chin. A hint of a smile showed in her almond shaped eyes, but something about her seemed off. She looked… younger. Happier. Not quite Leandra.

Anders turned the page.

Leandra.

He turned the page again.

Leandra.

Leandra.

Leandra.

Over and over and over, Leandra's face filled page after page after page. Only it wasn’t Leandra. On a handful of the pages, her eyes had been painted with blood.

Someone else.

Someone who looked like Leandra.

Someone with Amell’s eyes.

M̸͕̊̊̾͜ͅȳ̷̲̜̹̌ ̵̞̈́̉͗ͅm̶͖͎̭̋̐͑͜͝ö̴̡͈͓̪́̓̈́t̶̞̣̱͒̎ḩ̷̤̍e̴̢̻̻͋̒̈ͅr̸̲̿̈́'̴̙̈͂̌s̴̡̬̫̱̈͒̄ ̷̦̲̈̅͑̔n̸̫̪̜̼͂̄a̶̱͆m̶̬̗̞̃ě̷͕͇̘ ̴̧̤̽̏̽w̶͉͔͍̐̔̕͝à̷̱̈̏̈s̴̨̿ ̵̯̯̿̆͝R̶͓̈́͜ę̵̘̪͑͒v̴̪̲̫̿ḵ̶̙̑̄ȁ̵͓̘.̸̱̙̔̓͒
̶̲̈́̌̈S̴͙̰̃͊͠h̷̡͖̲̀͛ȇ̵̬̥̘'̵͈̠͂̔̃s̵̭̼̜̝̓̈́̈́͌ ̶̧͓̻̿d̵̲̍e̵͕͈̩̭͊͘a̵̻̼͕̐d̵̡͍̯̣͂̔̉ ̷͖̘̈́̀͝n̵̻̞͂̊̀͠ò̴͇̘̩̂͘w̴̥͝.̶̬͛̕

"... it's his wife," Anders realized.

"Whose wife, Blondie?" Varric asked.

"Quentin," Anders scrambled to his feet. He knocked the table in the process, and sent a handful books cascading over the edge to a few panicked shouts from his friends. "It's his wife!" Anders bolted from the library, and took the stairs so fast he slammed into the railing, winding himself.

Aveline caught up with him, and spun him around like she'd caught him thieving on the streets. "Slow down. What's going on?"

"Get off me!" Anders smacked the gauntleted arm on his shoulder, and won a bruise for his efforts. He could feel Justice’s fire roiling beneath his skin as his spirit followed his thoughts, and Maker save him, he didn't care. "I have to save them! I can’t do this again! I can’t go through this again! Quentin's trying to resurrect his wife!"

"Easy there, Blondie," Varric wheezed, catching his breath from his quick jog down the stairs after him, heavy jacket flapping at his heels, "We know he's trying to resurrect someone. Who cares if it's his wife?"

"This is his wife!" Anders shoved the sketchbook into Varric’s face so violently the dwarf reeled from the impact, clutching his nose in one hand and the book in the other.

Varric blinked the portrait into focus and swore, "Oh shit."

Anders broke free of Aveline, and ran through the estate to his bedroom, startling servants and knocking over a vase of lilies in the process. He dug through his room in a panic, scrambling for his grimoire, his staff, whatever draughts or potions that could serve in a fight with a maleficar. Maker, he didn’t know. What kind of magic did Quentin use? Necromancy. Blood magic. What else? Damnit, what else?

“Anders, wait!” Someone called after him. Anders barely heard them.

Spirit magic, maybe. Amell had used spirit magic. Amell had killed mages with more efficiency than a templar could ever dream. Swords, smites, and abominations couldn’t kill Anders. Could a mana clash? He needed a spirit balm. He needed to make a spirit balm, which meant he needed a spirit shard, which meant he needed a lifestone - and foxite… heatherum - Fuck, what else?

It didn’t matter. He had to get to Leandra. He had to get to Hawke. Flames, he probably even had to get to Gamlen and Bethany. If Quentin wanted to reconstruct his dead wife, there were only four Amells in the city he could use to do it. Anders could already picture it happening all over again. Gamlen skinned. Bethany amputated. Leandra defaced. Hawke-...

His eyes.

He had the same eyes.

He had the same fucking eyes.

His friends were clustered at the entrance to his room when Anders bolted back out of it. He crashed through Merrill, but didn’t make it through Fenris. The elf flared with lyrium, singing with all the strength of the Fade, and spun him into the wall, pinning him.

“Fenhedis, enough!” Fenris shouted.

Anders shoved him, arms splitting with veilfire. Fenris’ tattoos flared, and Anders felt the magic flow through the lyrium pathways on his skin, washing ineffectually over him. It must have hurt, all the same, because Fenris snarled, and slammed him against the wall. “Enough! We will combine our efforts. We will find him. But if you go out those doors now, whether or not you find Hawke, you will lose him.” Fenris grabbed Anders' wrist, and held one burning hand up to his face. “Is this what you wish? Is this what he would wish?”

Anders tried to breathe, but he couldn’t. He inhaled, and the air stopped in his throat before reaching his lungs.

“Where are they right now?” Aveline asked.

“I don’t know-” Anders sucked in a deep breath, “At her suitor’s.”

“What’s his name?” Varric asked.

“I don’t know,” Anders said.

“Maybe Bodahn would know?” Merrill suggested.

“Quentin must already have them,” Anders shook his head, “Why else would Hawke be late? You said you were waiting for him, didn’t you? I can’t- I can’t- I can’t-”

“He doesn’t get to die without my say so,” Aveline cut him off. “Let’s go. No one gets abducted in broad daylight in Hightown. We'll find him.”

Bodahn didn’t know.

Leandra had kept her own council, you see, and it would have been terribly improper to pry. Yes, she had been seeing the gentleman for some time, but it had been a rather secretive thing. He visited on occasion, but for the most part they met at the markets, or the theatre, or wherever else the nobles were meeting these days. He sent flowers, though, and maybe the servants knew each other, if you had a few hours he could ask around and - oh, you didn’t? Well, he wished he could have been of more help, but surely they would be home soon, if you wanted to wait.

Anders didn’t remember walking away. He found a corner in the foyer, and sank to the floor, crumbled up with his satchel between the bench at the wall. His staff was propped against the wall, and slid slowly across the rug, threatening to clatter down along with him. There was no point. There were thousands of noble families in Kirkwall, scattered throughout dozens of districts, and covering leagues of land.

He’d never find Hawke.

What was the last thing Anders had said to him?

Something about dinner, maybe. Or Beth? Hawke had wanted to write her about something. He’d been on his way out the door, wearing a brown leather corset with some sort of pattern (leaves? feathers?) over a black tunic and trousers, with an array of throwing daggers strapped to his thigh. A few strands of hair stuck out at odd angles despite the oil slicking them back, and he’d been carrying something.

It didn’t mean anything.

It was barely worth remembering.

It was probably the last memory he’d ever have.

Bare feet and brown leather wrappings manifested in front of him. Merrill crouched down, green eyes bright with hope Anders knew better than to cling to, “We can still find him.”

“Get up,” Aveline picked up his staff and shoved it under his arm, as if she planned to use it to leverage him to his feet, “We’re not quitting that easy. I’ll send the guard door to door if I have to.”

“... I think it’s a little late for that, Red,” Varric said thickly. He took a seat on the bench beside Anders, staring at his hands. Whatever he hoped to find in them, he didn’t.

“You are magic, are you not?” Fenris demanded, “Use it.”

“Just use magic,” Anders laughed mirthlessly, “Andraste’s ass, why didn’t I think of that!? Thank the Maker I’m magic! Let me just use my magic to summon Hawke out of the bloody Fade! Oh wait, magic doesn’t fucking work like that! If I was going to track him, I’d need his blood for a phylactery, and I don’t see any of his blood around here, do you!? No! Because his blood is wherever Quentin is spilling it, tearing him apart for his bloody ritual while I sit here - doing nothing - all over again! You fucking - you don’t even - you can’t-”

“The dog,” Fenris cut him off.

“The dog.” Anders repeated flatly.

“The dog is magic,” Fenris elaborated, “The magisters bred them with it. The dog can find him.”

“Excellent!” Aveline agreed, “He’s a great tracker - Hawke and I run drills with him and the guard - he’ll find him. Anders, was Hawke wearing kaddis when he left?”

“No,” Anders stumbled to his feet. He would have remembered the swipe of red across the break of Hawke’s nose. “No - he -... I have something else.”

Anders ran back to his room, and dug through Hawke’s armoire for the vial of sandalwood oil he’d given him. They found Dog in the kitchen, lying in front of the larder, and he snarled at Anders’ approach.

“Down boy!” Aveline ordered, snatching the vial out of Anders’ hand to hold under Dog’s nose, “You listen to me, Dog, Hawke is in danger. You’re going to find him, and you’re going to do it fast. You hear me?”

The mabari barked, and bolted for the front door. The five of them ran after him, and out into the streets of Hightown. The plan was a bloody Hail Maker. The dog was as likely to lead them to a pile of rubbish as it was to lead them to Hawke. Even if it did, the only ones among them armed or armored were Aveline and Fenris. Aveline for her guard uniform, and Fenris because he never went anywhere if he wasn’t in full armor with his old master hunting him.

Anders had his staff, but he was in a wool doublet and trousers. Merrill didn’t have hers, and her tunic and tabard didn’t offer much for protection. Varric had Bianca, and a handful of bolts, but he had even less armor than Merrill. Aside from his jacket, he was barely clothed, wearing a tabard with no shirt beneath it.

The dog ran them to the market, and back to the estate, and through the gardens and the Nevarran quarter, and finally stopped in front of the old de Solliere estate. Remnants of the fire lingered, in the pristine whitewood door against charred stone, the curiously crisp shutters against old marble, the empty trellises and barren gardens. It looked, for all intents and purposes, a lifeless husk, rotting from the inside out.

Aveline slammed a fist against the door for so long Anders considered blasting it open, when an elven servant finally appeared. He wore white suit without a single spec of dust, with perfectly kempt hair, and skin that was almost uncomfortably smooth. When he smiled, his teeth were a dehydrated white. “Welcome. Have you come to visit the master of the house? I am afraid he is out at the moment.”

“Who is the master of the house?” Aveline asked.

“Hawke!?” Anders shoved past all of them, running into the foyer.

“Please remove your shoes, serah,” The servant called after him, “Great… pains are taken to keep the estate pristine.”

Anders had been in the estate once before, when Hawke had rescued him from it half a year ago now. He knew the way to the cellars, and the fact that they led out to Darktown, but he couldn’t remember anything beyond that. The foyer told him nothing. It was completely devoid of any rugs or furniture, marble floors polished to an almost obscene shine. A handful of closed doors decorated the walls, and a stairwell curved up to a pitch-black second story.

“The master goes by Daylen,” The servant continued, chasing after their shoes as he waved them inside. “Would you like to wait for him in the sitting room?”

The mabari sniffed at the floors, whining from one door to the next as if Hawke had been in all of them.

“We’re not-” Anders started, when Merrill grabbed his arm.

“We would love to,” Merrill said meaningfully. “Thank you so much, that’s very kind of you.”

“This way,” The servant bowed, pushing open one of the doors to… a sitting room. Slivers of light crept in from thin windows set high in the ceiling, illuminating a single divan in the center of the room. There was no other furniture. The servant closed the door behind them, and his footsteps faded as he left with their shoes.

“This is a bad chapter,” Varric said. “This is a really bad chapter. I do not like this chapter.”

“This man is a mage,” Fenris said obviously, “Note the hearth. No logs, nor even ashes.”

“What are we doing in here, Merrill?” Aveline demanded.

“That poor man was enslaved,” Merrill explained, unsheathing the dagger she kept at her hip. “I could feel the blood magic on him. We have to help him - I just didn’t want anyone to panic.”

“Too late,” Varric said.

“We don’t have time to help him, we have to help Hawke!” Anders argued.

“If we help him, he might help us,” Merrill said, “We don’t know where Hawke is - he could be anywhere.”

“Fine,” Aveline said, “Do your magic, but keep it subtle. I can’t protect you if word of what you are gets out.”

“I don’t need you to protect me,” Merrill slit her wrist, crescents of blood spinning like rings about her fingers as she held the spell to free the servant. They left the sitting room, but the servant had vanished.

“Hello?” Merrill called.

Her voice echoed back at her. The servant didn’t answer.

“Find Hawke!” Anders hissed at the dog.

The mabarai sniffed in a circle, whining, and seemed to settle on a random door. Anders opened it. It was a drawing room. Filled with drawings. There were so many Anders stepped on one when he walked inside.

Portraits covered the walls, stacked high to the ceiling. Parchments coated the floor from corner to corner. Raven hair was everywhere, a few stealthy strands of grey hidden behind delicate ears. Wheatish skin covered everything, save for a darker blemish shaped like Lake Calenhad at the neck. Everywhere he looked, red eyes followed him, with a soft, secretive smile and slightly crooked teeth.

Revka.

Revka.

Revka.

Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka. Revka.

“What the fuck?” Varric said.

“This is Quentin’s house,” Aveline said.

Anders stumbled out of the room, screaming. “Hawke!? Hawke, love, where are you!?”

“I’ll try upstairs,” Merrill suggested.

“No don’t-!” Anders grabbed her arm before she could run off. “We can’t split up. He could kill you. You don’t know him like I do. Besides, there’s a cellar that leads to Darktown.”

“Which is it, then?” Fenris demanded, hefting his sword off his back and flexing his fingers, “Upstairs or down?”

The servant reappeared, emerging from a wall that must have been a servant’s entrance. He didn’t even seem to notice their unsheathed weapons, or the blood floating around Merrill’s fingers. “Please do confine yourselves to the sitting room - the master will be with you shortly.”

Merrill flung the spell at him. The elf stumbled, blood flowing into his eyes, his ears, his nose. He collapsed, clutching his head and keening in agony. Merrill ran to his side, and wrapped an arm around his shoulder, “Dareth, lethallen! Your mind is your own again.”

“No - no, no, no!” The elf scrambled out from under her arm, slipping across the polished floors in a mad scramble towards the front door, “Get out of here - I have to get out of here! You have to get out of here!”

Aveline grabbed him by his collar, and heaved him off the floor, “Where is Hawke?”

“Who!?” The servant jabbered, “I don’t - I don’t know who that is - I don’t know who I am - Oh Maker, I don’t remember - let me go, let me out of here, I have to get away from him!”

“The human man who came through here recently,” Aveline shook the elf, “He was with an older woman. Where are they?”

“I - I - I -... downstairs - the cellar - there’s a door hidden behind the stairs - but you don’t want to go there! Don’t go! Let me go! Let me go!” The elf twisted and contorted, flailing in Aveline’s arms until he somehow managed to bite her hand. Aveline snarled, and dropped him, and the elf bolted from the estate.

“Hurry!” Anders ran for the cellar door. He didn’t open it; there wasn’t time. Raw magic tore the door from its hinges, splinters and chunks of wood showering down around him as he took the stairs as fast as he and Justice were able. He couldn’t see the door the servant mentioned beneath them. There had to be a latch, or a key, or a ward that kept it hidden, but he didn’t have time. Anders tore down the stone, flaming hands melting through the masonry as he dug into the walls until one caved into a separate room.

It was a surgery.

It was Quentin’s surgery.

Pristine marble walls. Immaculate marble floors. Polished silver drains gleaming where they met. Uniform shelves lined in identical glass jars. Trays of knives neatly aligned from largest to smallest. Orderly work tables where honey, vermillion, quicklime, and oil worked to preserve strips upon strips of skin.

On the far side of the surgery, peopled surgical tables were arranged in perfectly precise rows. Behind them, Gascard struggled with a back exit, a massive painting slowly transforming into a door as he heaved against it. It was a portrait of a dead woman, and yet, staring up at her was the very same woman, very much alive. Quentin cradled her in his arms while the Fade roared in him like a storm, tearing through the Veil in greater and greater bursts.

Revka clung to him, shaking and naked. Seams of stitches shown along her arms and legs, at her knees and elbows, all down her spine, in a halo about her scalp.

Her eyes, when she finally turned to look at them, were red.

Chapter 109: All That Remains

Notes:

Thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon 16 Martinalus Late Afternoon
Kirkwall Hightown de Solliere Estate Cellar

One day, years from now, Anders would listen to Varric tell the story of the Butcher of Lowtown.

In Varric’s story, when the disappearances started, the guard would investigate, but find no evidence. Undeterred, a rogue templar would continue the investigation, motivated by his love for the butcher’s first victim: a mage. Quentin’s fictional foil, she would serve as an example of good and gentle magic, to remind the listener that such a thing existed, despite what was to come.

The victims would be faceless, and fewer. Attractive women with few social ties, only a handful would ever go missing. Their deaths would be comfortably predictable, predated by a bouquet of white lilies the Butcher would send them a few days before their murder. Something to delude the listener into thinking it could never happen to them.

The rogue templar would suspect an Orlesian nobleman in the murders, and enlist Hawke’s help. They would discover the nobleman was secretly an apostate who was also hunting the Butcher to get revenge for his murdered sister. The investigation would hit a wall. The templar would turn up dead. Then one day, a bouquet would arrive at the Amell estate, and Leandra would go missing.

With the apostate’s help, Hawke would track his mother through the city in a daring rescue, following trails of blood through the sewers to the Butcher’s lair. When they arrived, the apostate would reveal his betrayal. He had secretly been the Butcher’s apprentice all along, but Hawke would convince him to see the error of his ways, and turn against his old master.

It would be a grand battle, with dozens of shades, demons, and abominations taken down by Hawke’s arrows as he fought valiantly to save his mother, but in the end it would prove too late. Leandra would die in Hawke’s arms, but not before she could tell him that she was proud of him, and that she loved him.

In the end, Hawke would be hailed as a hero. The apostate would leave Kirkwall, renouncing his magic to live a life of atonement on the road. The city would rest easy knowing the Butcher of Lowtown was dead. When Varric told the story, Anders would almost believe it.

If only it were true.

The force of Quentin’s magic tore them from all their moorings. It was like the fist of the Maker Himself forced them from the surgery and through the stairs. Planks and balusters scattered through the cellar as the structure came crashing down, burying them. Justice pulled them from it, a blast of magical energy clearing away the rubble.

The wretched ward was a perversion. What should have been a place of healing and salvation had been warped to one of torment and despair. They would see it unmade, along with all who played a part in its creation. Scores upon scores of souls cried out for justice from across the Veil and from within jars of glass. Justice could hear them, and he would answer.

Vigilance crackled beneath his fingers, elaborate runework amplifying the spell shield he summoned when he charged, still barefoot for the earlier theft of Anders’ boots. Another wave of force magic hit him, and dissipated into the Fade. “Prends pitié! Une abomination!” Gascard shrieked.

“No! I will not be stopped! My love transcends death!” A surge of telekinesis accompanied Quentin’s cry, a scalpel launching itself from a tray to sheath itself in Gascard’s leg.

Blood fonted. Gascard collapsed. A maelstrom of energy took shape in the center of the room.

“Forgive me, old friend,” Quentin fled out the back, Revka in his arms.

The magic was like the pull of the abyss, rooting him from pursuit. It redirected gravity and collapsed the surgery in on itself. Jar after jar slid from their shelves, shattering on the marble and birthing hands, feet, and veined hearts.

In the center of it all, the Veil tore, bathing the surgery in the emerald light of the Fade. Despair was the first to crawl through, jaw after dislocated jaw swallowing itself and stretching out into the physical manifestation of a scream. The serpentine creature spiraled into the air with a deafening shriek. It formed a lance of ice in its emaciated hands, and hurled it at Justice.

Justice’s hands erupted with a cone of flame, melting the lance before it struck home. Despair wailed, launching lance after ineffectual lance and filling the ward with steam. At last, the strength of the gravity well waned, and Justice rushed the demon. Too late, it tried to flee, and Justice caught it by an elongated foot. He whirled with the motion, shattering the many-jawed demon against the marble. Teeth rained like hail through the ward as the demon dissipated in a puff of green smoke, but there was no relishing the victory.

Fear followed Despair, the demon gathering up strips of skin and bits of bone as it took shape in the center of the surgery. Terror upon Terror accompanied it, bursting forth from severed hands and feets that littered the gutters while Fearlings formed in the shadows. The demons swarmed past him, cutting him off from his companions, but not from Quentin.

The demons would keep. Vengeance would not. Justice started after Quentin, when he heard the screams.

“Anders!” Varric’s broken cry cut through the sonic pulses of Terror demons. From the cellar, the sounds of battle carried. Lyrium sang through arcane pathways carved in unwilling flesh, pulsing with chaotic energy to keep malevolent demons at bay. A mabari barked. Steel clashed with flesh and bone as a shield braced against shards of ice. The exertions of mortal bodies tangled together with the cries of Anders’ companions as they were slowly overwhelmed.

“For the love of - Hang on, Daisy - Anders! Damnit, Broody, drag him back here!”

“Through what window!?” Fenris demanded.

“Make a fucking window!” Varric shrieked, “She’s dying!”

“Not today!” Aveline snarled from some unseen blow, “Not while I’m here! Keep pressure - fall back -”

“The stairs are gone! We can’t fall back or up! Do something!”

He was called to higher purpose. He was called to Justice. The fate of Anders’ companions, while regrettable, was their own. Too many souls had suffered at Quentin’s hands for his crimes to go unanswered. If vengeance was not enacted now, there might never be another chance. Everything in him told him to pursue Quentin.

Everything except Anders.

A fear not his own clutched at his heart, paralyzing him. Don’t let her die.

A distance chortle echoed across the Veil. Shimmering through the Tear, Justice could see the formations of Pride.

Summoned, perhaps, by his own.

To think that the revenging the dead was somehow more worthy than defending the living. He had made such a mistake once before when he stood against the Baroness. Against Anders. He would not make such a mistake again. However Merrill had wronged him, she did not deserve such an ignoble end.

None of them did. So long as the Tear in the Veil lingered, their deaths were an inevitability. More demons would pour through until they were overwhelmed, and the city along with them. Justice stepped beyond the Veil, driving back the Fade’s magic with his own. The Tear bubbled and rippled, expanding and contracting as it fought against the immutability of the mortal world. A burst from the Fade collapsed the Tear in on itself, cutting off Pride before it could cross.

Justice ran back to the cellar, where Anders’ companions struggled against the demons that had grown fat off the horrors of Quentin’s experiments. Fearlings swarmed them, feeding off past and present traumas. The mabari was stuck at the top of the stairwell, barking down at the battle the others were slowly losing.

Fenris fended off two terror demons, their skeletal arms nearly at length with his greatsword. He’d already taken blows, his armor shredded down his right side. Fearlings clinging to the creatures painted them white as the Fog Warriors of Seheron, blending them in with the steam, and with every blow Fenris sobbed, “Forgive me.”

A templar, withered with Blight-Sickness, pressed upon Aveline. Every parry swung harmlessly through the manifestation, the actual Fearling dancing gleefully about her feet.

In the far corner, the Fear demon watched, chuckling as it fed. “Delicious. You spent your whole life trying to be the chevalier your father wanted. The one thing you chose for yourself, and the darkspawn took him. You failed him. You let another make the choice for you. Too weak. Too afraid. You will fail Hawke too."

The two warriors fought to defend Varric, who knelt on the ground with Merrill in his arms. A chunk of wood was staked through her chest, some piece of the stairwell from when it had come crashing down. Life ebbed from her slowly, drenching the dwarf in her blood, whose innate resistance to magic seemed to be the only thing keeping him sane. “Anders!” Varric screamed, voice hoarse, one hand keeping pressure on Merrill’s wound, the other holding a dagger he swiped at any Fearling that skittered too close. “Anders help!”

The Fear Demon was the heart of it all. There would be no healing Merrill while it lived. Justice channelled lightning through Vigilance, the staff as an extension of his arm as he charged. Too late, Fear noticed. In the Fade, it would have reshaped their realities to avoid the attack, but it was bound by the constraints of the mortal world. The creature dove to the side instead, and Vigilance cleaved through the arachnoid limbs sprouted from its back.

Three of the six limbs burst, spraying a fetid liquid across the cellar that burned like acid to the touch. It ate through Justice’s sleeve, burning his arm, but before he could free himself of his coat, Fear latched onto him. The creature’s three surviving limbs speared into his back, pinning them together in a frenzied grappling match that pretzeled them across the cellar.

Justice’s skin cracked with veilfire. He set himself ablaze, searing the skin from the demon’s bones to break its hold. Chunk upon chunk of beautiful, perfectly preserved, wheatish skin sloughed to ash and char, crumbling from the demon’s arms, its chest, its face, but still it held on. “Feed me!” Fear hissed, teeth slipping from its gums as they burnt away. “Fear for me! I know what you are! I know what you fear to be! Demon! Vengeance! You are as I am!

“You killed them! You killed them for naught! You killed them all for naught! An injustice! A violation! An abomination! You are me! You are me!” The demon scrabbled beneath him, its dozen legs slipping in its own acidic blood as Justice burnt it down to ash, until it spoke no more.

He climbed to his feet, a pulse of benevolent energies mending the burn on his arm, and assessed the battlefield. Fenris’ arm had been broken. He held his greatsword in one hand, haphazard swings doing little to keep the Terror demons at bay. It was only his lyrium markings, erupting with one blinding sapphire pulse after another that seemed to hold them off. Aveline was barely conscious, kneeling behind her shield while the Fearlings gorged on her, draining the life out of her. Varric and Merrill were as they’d been, though a Fearling lay dead beside the dwarf for his efforts.

A blast of raw magic tore one of the terror demons apart. The other screamed at him, a deafening blast of sonic energy Justice charged through. He caught the creature by its dangling jaw, and wrenched, eviscerating the demon as one massive strip of flesh cleaved from its body. The Fearlings panicked, and scattered, skittering up the walls, deeper into the cellar, or out into the mansion proper.

It was not his pursuit, Justice reminded himself. He knelt beside Varric and Merrill, and took stock of the dead demon, however minor. “You were very brave,” Justice noted.

“Thanks Blue,” A watery smile crossed Varric’s face, and he held Merrill a little tighter, “I think we needed the rescue. Daisy went and got herself knocked out. Can you get her up?”

“I cannot,” Justice said, relaxing his hold on their form, “Anders will care for her.”

Anders came back to himself without ever having left. He remembered the battle. He remembered how they felt throughout it. He remembered Justice in tune with him. He remembered letting Quentin go.

For Merrill.

It was for Merrill.

Anders held onto the benevolent energies from his spirit, his hands cracked with veilfire as he cast a lifeward beneath his friend. “I’ve got her,” Anders said, “You can pull out the stake. Slowly. Be careful.”

Varric tried, his bloodied hands slipping on the stake, “Red, can you help us out here?”

Aveline dragged herself to their side, ashen skin amplifying the haunted shadows beneath her eyes. She set one hand to the stake, the other to Merrill’s chest, and gently eased it free at Anders’ instruction. “Easy, keep her steady. I can’t tourniquet this kind of wound, and if you go too fast she’ll bleed out. There you go, keep going. Keep going. Okay, I’ve got her. Give me a few minutes… Did anyone see Hawke?”

“You made it further inside than we did,” Aveline said, tossing the bloody chunk of wood, “I only saw the explosion.”

“I will check,” Fenris declared, but didn’t move. He looked half-dead, leaning on his greatsword as though it were a cane.

“Don’t,” Varric said quickly, “Nobody wander off. That was a little too close for my taste. We need Daisy for all this blood magic shit. Just - wait.”

They waited, the mabari whining pitifully at the top of the stairwell, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it right now. Anders healed Merrill, but he couldn’t do anything for the blood she’d lost. When she woke, groggy and pallid, she could barely stand. “By the Dread Wolf,” Merill groaned, “I’ve got so many bruises they’ve got names and families. What happened?”

“You fell down some stairs,” Varric joked, pulling Merrill’s arm around his shoulder. “Here, lean on me, we still have to find Hawke.”

“Fenris, your arm-” Anders started.

“Hawke first,” Fenris waved him off.

In the aftermath of the Veil Tear, the once-pristine surgery was ruined. The shelves had toppled, and all the jars along with them. What body parts hadn’t been perverted by demons were still scattered across the marble like a fisherman’s haul. Oil, honey, and other preservatives trickled into the gutters. Gascard was gone, but not gone far. A trail of blood led out the back exit, and the Orlesian’s grunts and curses echoed back to them as he dragged himself along.

The surgery tables had toppled, the bodies that had once populated them rolled a few feet towards the gravity well Quentin had conjured in the center of the room. One wore a familiar lavender dress and coral corset, a modest gold necklace and matching earrings one of the few bits of jewelry she’d gotten a chance to own. Her greying hair was dyed black with blood, crusted all along her hairline from what remained of her face.

It was gone. Skinned. Red muscle and yellow fat hung off high cheekbones, brilliant amber eyes staring sightlessly from where Quentin had left them. Beside her, Hawke lay just as unmoving, bloody speculums digging into either side of his face, holding open empty sockets.

Not again.

Maker, please, not again.

“No!” Anders screamed, sprinting across the surgery. Broken glass embedded itself in his feet as he skidded to Hawke’s side. He barely felt it, a panacea of restorative energy rolling off him like a storm. “Don’t be dead! Please!”

His feet were healed before he hit his knees. Fenris’ arm mended, flesh and bone snapping back together. Merrill’s bruises and even her fatigue vanished. The beginning of an ulcer receded in Aveline. The swelling stopped in Varric’s wrists, and his joints moved as easily as they had in his youth.

Leandra was still dead.

Hawke’s eyes were still gone.

But he wasn’t dead.

He wasn’t dead.

A veil of sleep kept him unconscious. Anders reached for the speculum holding open Hawke’s eyes, but his hands were shaking. Somewhere in the distance, the dog was still barking. All of it came back to him. None of it ever left him. Waking up covered in blood. The barking. Being led to the washroom. Finding Amell in the corner. The barking. Seeing the bloody towel pressed against his eyes. Finding out he’d done it. The barking. Amell going to his Calling. The fucking barking.

Anders couldn’t move. Couldn’t bring himself to touch him. The others caught up to him, moving with more caution through the sea of broken glass. Clatters followed as weapons hit the ground in shock. Aveline swore. Varric dry-heaved. Merrill started crying. The fucking dog was still barking.

“Maker’s breath.”

“What the fuck?”

“Creators have mercy.”

“Will someone shut that fucking dog up!?” Anders yelled.

Merrill sank to her knees, crawling through oil and quicklime to hold shaky hands over the Hawkes. “Oh no… Oh no, oh no… Poor Leandra… Poor Hawke… Oh no…”

“Is he dead?” Aveline asked.

“He’s not dead,” Anders said. “He’s unconscious.”

“... We should… We should get those things out of his eyes…” Varric said, sliding to the floor and gingerly pulling Hawke’s head into his lap. He pushed Hawke’s hair back from his face, and gingerly released the first speculum. Hawke’s eyelid slipped half closed, hanging limply in his socket. “Shit fuck-” Varric gagged.

“We should shut that fucking dog up,” Anders shoved himself to his feet, and stormed out of the surgery, a net of sleep on his hands he flung at the barking mabari. The dog slumped over, unconscious, but the silence didn’t comfort him. Anders couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t do anything. Not for Amell. Not for Hawke. Anders screamed until he ran out of breath, and started hyperventilating.

Fenris appeared in front of him, and shook him by his shoulders. “This is not about you.”

“You-” Anders sucked in a deep breath, but he didn’t have a retort. Fenris was right, but it didn’t matter. “I can’t. I can’t - ”

“This is not about you!” Fenris shook him again. “This is about Hawke. He will need you. Do you love the man or not?”

Anders managed a nod.

“Then endure it,” Fenris pushed him back into the surgery.

Varric had removed both speculums holding Hawke’s eyes open. Merrill had draped her scarf over Leandra’s skinned face. Aveline had picked up her sword and shield.

“We can’t let Quentin get away,” Aveline said when he re-entered. “Rule of thumb is if a criminal runs to the sewers, he’s gone, but Quentin was carrying... He was laden down. The other man with him, do we know who he was?”

“Gascard DuPuis,” Varric said. “A nobleman. We met him once before. He claimed he was hunting Quentin. I knew he was full of shit.”

“He was injured,” Aveline pointed her sword at the trail of blood that led from the surgery. “If we leave now, we should be able to catch him.”

“A bloody blood mage isn’t really something you go chasing, Red,” Varric argued. “In case you forgot, we just got our asses kicked.”

“We have to try,” Aveline said. “We can’t let these two get out of the city.”

“What about Hawke?” Merrill asked, scooting up against Hawke’s side and cradling one of his limp hands. “We can’t just leave him in this… place.”

Varric and Aveline started arguing. Anders stopped listening. Quentin was gone. He’d escaped. It was too late for him and it was too late for Hawke. Anders could picture it happening all over again. Hawke wouldn’t be able to cope with the loss of his mother anymore than he’d been able to cope with the loss of his sister. Blind and broken-hearted, Anders would lose him. The only difference was Hawke wouldn’t call it his Calling.

Anders wandered aimlessly through the surgery, and joined Fenris where he knelt picking through a pile of notes and grimoires Quentin had left behind. Anders picked a leaflet, dripping with quicklime and blood.

Today is our anniversary. I’d hoped to complete my work before now, but I’ve encountered a setback, and now I’m missing the most important piece. I’m so sorry, my love. Please wait a little longer. I haven’t forgotten my promise.

When I find a new pair, I’ll know. I would know those eyes anywhere.

Veilfire cracked through his palms, burning the leaflet to ash. It was his fault. It was always his fault. If he hadn’t taken Amell’s eyes, Hawke never would have lost his.

“Mage,” Fenris spoke in hushed tones, “Anders. You can fix this.”

Anders shook his head. He couldn’t speak. There was nothing to fix. There were no eyes to heal.

Fenris handed him one of the tomes, slightly soggy with quicklime. Anders couldn’t quite read it through his tears, but the restoration jumped out at him. Reattachment. Reanimation. Restoration. It was all there. Everything he’d ever wanted but never found. Regenerative blood magic that could reattach Hawke’s eyes, if only they still had them somewhere.

… He had Amell’s eyes.

“We should wake him up,” Merrill interrupted Aveline and Varric’s argument to suggest.

“Why would we do that?” Varric demanded.

“So he’s awake,” Merrill patted Hawke’s hand, “He must have been so scared. He should know we saved him.”

“Did we?” Varric wondered.

“I’m going to wake him up,” Merrill decided, pulling the veil of sleep back from Hawke.

Hawke woke with a groan, rolling out of Varric’s lap and into a puddle of blood and oil. “Damn, my head,” Hawke muttered, rubbing at his temples like his missing eyes were a headache he could just massage away. “What the fuck-”

“Hey Killer,” Varric said, voice choked.

“Varric?” Hawke reached out blindly with one hand until he connected with his friend’s shoulder. “Why can't I see?”

“Your eyes-” Aveline started.

“You were hurt.” Varric cut her off. “... What do you remember?”

“I don’t-...” Hawke stumbled to his feet. Aveline steadied him, “I don’t know. Mother and I were going to tea, I think. Where is she?”

“She’s -” Merrill whimpered.

“She’s right here,” Varric said.

“Am I drunk?” Hawke guessed, reaching to rub at his eyes. Aveline caught his hand before he connected with the empty sockets.

“You’ll wanna be,” Varric said.

“Why? What happened? Where are we?”

“... You were really hurt,” Merrill sniffled. “Very badly, lethallin.”

“... Anders?” Hawke asked.

Fenris nudged him. Anders took one step, then another, and somehow he ended up in front of Hawke. His cheeks and beard were crusted with blood, and his eyelids hung over empty sockets. Anders didn’t know why Amell had never let him see them. They were just a light pink, like a normal eyelid, only… everywhere. Anders cupped Hawke’s face, clearing away flecks of blood with his thumb.

“I’m here, love,” Anders promised.

“... Can you heal me?” Hawke asked.

Anders looked at Fenris, and then back at Hawke. He looked at the tome.

… It took a sacrifice.

Hawke found Anders’ hand where it rested against his cheek, and followed it up along his arm, over his shoulder, and to the back of Anders’ neck. He pulled their foreheads together, and took a slow breath that seemed to calm him for any answer.

“... I can heal you.”

“What!?” Aveline blurted.

“Actually, Killer-”

“I can heal you,” Anders sealed his promise with a kiss, a firm press of his lips that banished all of his reservations. “I’m going to put you back to sleep, so I can concentrate on the spell.”

“Alright,” Hawke’s hands squeezed where they held him, “I trust you.”

“Sit down,” Anders helped Hawke back down to the floor, “You’ll be fine when you wake up.”

“What the fuck happened to me?”

“I’ll fix it,” Anders kissed Hawke’s forehead, “I would drown us in blood to keep you safe. I love you, Hawke.”

He cast a veil of sleep, and Hawke slumped in his arms. Anders laid him out in time for Aveline to grab him by his collar and heave him up to his feet.

“What do you mean you can heal him?”

“... We need to find Quentin,” Anders said.

“Then let us be off.” Fenris said.

“... Do I want to know?” Aveline asked.

Anders looked down at the tome in his hand. There was nothing special about it. No embossment or engraving. Nothing but where they’d found it. He lifted it slightly. “I think you already do.”

“I can’t be part of this,” Aveline said. “Whatever this is.”

“Be part of what?” Merrill asked.

“The stairs are out,” Fenris reminded her, “There is no way but forward.”

“... I’ll stay with him,” Varric decided. “Be careful.”

They didn’t find Quentin, but they did find Gascard. Revka’s portrait concealed an entrance to the sewers. Quentin could have gone anywhere in Kirkwall in the time it had taken them to muster, but Gascard had only made it as far as a storm drain. He’d been unable to climb the ladder to Hightown, and had evidently passed out from blood loss. But he was alive. And he still had blood to lose.

“We can’t let Quentin out of the city,” Aveline said. “I need to report what happened here. The fallout can’t be worse than what Hawke has already been through. That man needs to hang.”

No one argued with her.

Aveline looked down at where Gascard lay, unconscious, against the ladder.

“Hanging this one serves no one,” Fenris said.

“... Hanging who?” Aveline said, and climbed out of the sewers.

“What are we doing?” Merrill asked. “How are you going to heal Hawke? Why did Aveline just leave?”

“There’s a jar of eyes in the bottom drawer of my armoire,” Anders said. “Can you go get it?”

“... Why do you have a jar of eyes?”

“Can you go get it or not?”

“You’re going to try to transplant someone else’s eyes? How do you know how to do that? How is that even possible?”

“You are the blood mage,” Fenris said, waving at Gascard, “How do you think?”

“That’s-... no, we can’t. We can’t sacrifice the unwilling!”

“Would you rather I made him willing?” Fenris cracked his knuckles.

“There have to be other options-”

“There aren’t!” Anders snapped. “You don’t know! I’ve been through this! There are no other options!”

“This isn’t right.”

“He was part of all of this!” Anders reminded her, “He was down there with Quentin! He lied to us! He’s a bloody bastard and all those girls' deaths are on his hands! This is justice.”

“No it’s not,” Merrill turned to Fenris. “This is wrong. You hate blood magic, how are you going along with this?”

“You are all blood mages. This is blood magic,” Fenris shrugged, “What else is it for?”

“I never wanted to use blood magic like this.”

“No one is asking you to,” Anders said. “Can you get the eyes or not?”

“I-... I’ll get them,” Merrill mumbled, climbing out of the sewers.

Fenris picked up Gascard, and they went back to the surgery. Anders righted one of the toppled tables, and Fenris laid Gascard out on it. Anders rummaged through his satchel for a strip of cloth, and tied a tourniquet around his leg so he wouldn’t bleed out. They righted a second table for Hawke. Varric watched, an enigmatic expression on his face.

“... So we’re really doing this, huh?”

“You can leave,” Anders said.

“I gotta be here for Killer,” Varric shook his head. “When he finally sees all of this. I gotta admit, Broody, I’m surprised you’re sticking around.”

“This is how it has always been done. Blood mages using blood magic.” Fenris said. “And he is no innocent. He is a blood mage himself. One way or another, he dies. This is simply another.”

They waited. Anders read over the spell.

Merrill returned with the jar, but held back from handing it over. “I want to hear him confess.”

“Really Daisy?” Varric asked, “You want him awake for this?”

“He deserves a chance to defend himself.”

“He deserves to die,” Anders said.

“Wake him up,” Merrill said stubbornly.

Anders woke him.

Gascard blinked groggily, swaying a little as he sat up, “Where am I-... You-... Ah… erm… you saved me! You all saved me! I am so grateful, if you hadn’t arrived-”

“Try again,” Varric said.

“This is your fault!” Anders slammed him back against the table. “You knew Quentin! You could have helped us stop this!”

“No!” Gascard lied, “No, I didn’t know him-”

“Try again again,” Varric said.

Anders had to let go. Everything in him cried out for the man’s death. He wasn’t Quentin, but he was close enough. He was part of it. He was part of all of it, and Anders wanted him dead, but he couldn’t just kill him. It couldn’t just be murder.

It had to be a sacrifice.

He took a step back and Fenris took a step forward. His hand phased with lyrium, and he slammed it through Gascard’s chest, clutching his heart.

Gascard screamed. Merrill flinched, but didn’t look away. Gascard kept screaming, his body seizing in pain and thrashing madly against the table. He beat ineffectually at Fenris’ arm, lodged deep in his chest, “Stop! Maker’s mercy, please stop!”

“That pain you feel is just the beginning, mage,” Fenris threatened.

“What do you want from me!?”

“A confession,” Fenris said.

“I lied!” Gascard sobbed, his face draining with saliva and snot, “I lied! I knew Quentin from the start! It was never about revenge! I never had a sister! I was his apprentice - but I didn’t kill those women! It was him! I just studied - I just studied! Maker, please stop, killing me won’t bring those women back!”

Fenris let go. He nodded to Merril. “Your confession.”

Merrill handed over the jar.

Anders cast the spell.

Chapter 110: The Way Forward

Summary:

Or The Five Stages of Grief, Minus One

Notes:

I thought I would try something different with this chapter, and make it five 'shorts.' I hope you like it! Thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon The Month of Martinalus and Into Parvulis.
Kirkwall Lowtown: The Hanged Man

Denial

The templar’s investigation seemed to last forever. Anders and the apostates that worked at the estate stayed at the Hanged Man. The housekeeper, the cook, the scullion, the laundry maid, and another fellow with a title that Anders had forgotten were crammed into a single room Varric had set aside for them. The cramped quarters felt reminiscent of the Circle, cots pushed head to foot to fit them all.

It was marginally better than sleeping on the floor, not that Anders could sleep without Hawke. He couldn’t stand the thought of not being there for him after everything that had happened, but he didn’t have a choice. Templars were posted in and around the estate, courtesy of the Knight-Captain. Meredith had personally appointed her second in command to the case.

Cullen Rutherford. Anders remembered him from his time in Kinloch as being hardly memorable. What Anders knew of him now was cobbled together from official reports and unofficial scandals. The apostates spoke of him in hushed warnings, claiming the almost-annulment of Ferelden’s Circle had driven him mad. The extent of his madness seemed to be the only thing up for debate.

Some said he was traumatized, the way any man would be, but had spent time recovering at the Greenfell Chantry. Others said he’d completely snapped, and the Circle had covered up the murder of three apprentices by his hand. Whatever the truth, he wasn’t the sort of man Anders trusted to keep Hawke safe. Cullen had already imprisoned Hawke once for the mere crime of having a mage for a sister. Anders didn’t want to think about what Cullen would do if he found out Hawke also had a mage for a lover, so he stayed away.

If he had any other option, he would have used it, but it wasn’t as if he could hide in the estate with the templars patrolling it. A crow was bound to be noticed, and Anders didn't know any other forms. He spent most of his time with Merrill, trying to learn a new one, and the rest with Varric, trying to learn about Hawke.

Varric, Aveline, and Sebastian were the only official friends Hawke had as far as the guard and the templars were concerned. Of the three, Varric was the only one liable to keep Anders informed of what was happening. Anders sat in Varric’s quarters, in a high-backed stone chair he'd come to think of as his own, cradling a tankard. It was just water. Anders wished he could ale it down the way the Hanged Man watered down their ale, but he wouldn’t do that to Justice.

Varric, for his part, looked tired. He sank into his chair and set his prosthesis aside to massage at his hand. Anders cast a rejuvenation spell on him, and Varric smiled, "How are you holding up, Blondie?"

“I thought I would have nightmares,” Anders admitted. When he could sleep at all, which wasn’t often, the Fade eluded him and the Taint left him be. Small mercies, he supposed.

"I thought I wouldn't," Varric countered, "Don't take this the wrong way, Blondie, but how are you okay with all of this? Between the two of you, Daisy's a bit more familiar with all this blood magic shit, and when you cast that spell, I thought she'd never stop crying."

"I didn't have a choice," Anders shrugged. He thought of Gascard, and the way his screams had tapered off into a gargled sob at the end, and felt nothing. "The spell took a sacrifice."

"I know, but that doesn't mean you have to be okay with it."

"You heard his confession. What we did down there was justice."

"See, I've met Justice. Nice guy. Little awkward at parties. That down there? Not the same thing. Maker's breath, Blondie, that spell didn't just kill him, it sucked him dry."

"He was a murderer,” Anders shouldn’t have had to remind him, “We murdered him back. What else were we supposed to do?"

"I don't know," Varric admitted. He took a long drink, and leaned back against his chair, closing his eyes, "Maybe being blind wouldn't have been that bad."

"Does it matter?" It was done. Anders had sacrificed him. It was too late for What If's and Maybe's. If they'd wanted to stop him, they should have done it when they had the chance, but no one had. Not even Justice. "Your prosthesis works, but would you really pick it over your fingers?"

"Do I have to sacrifice Bartrand to get my fingers back in this scenario?"

"That's just a nice bonus."

Varric laughed, "See the difference here is you're asking me. We didn't ask Hawke."

"So what? Weren't you the one telling me I shouldn't feel guilty about murdering people?”

"You should know better than to listen to me by now, Blondie. I just think… I don't know," Varric sighed. "I don't know what I'm saying. All this shit is fucked."

Anders wasn’t about to argue with that. He drank, wishing he was actually drinking. “... How’s he doing?”

"Not good," Varric shook his head. “He and Uncle Greasy had it out. Ancestors, that was uncomfortable. It can’t be easy knowing Quentin is still out there, but I hate seeing humans cry. Even sub-humans like Greasy. Greasy blamed magic for everything and Hawke -... well, he’s been through a lot. I guess he thought family was more important than fighting, because Uncle Greasy ended up moving back in, so look forward to that.

“Let’s see… what else… The templars gave some kind of special dispensation to Sunshine, and let her visit with an escort. I don’t know if it’s because her mother died, or because the Knight-Commander wants to get on Hawke’s good side, but she looks good. She’s got some fancy new Circle robes and I think she’s an Enchanter now? Or a Junior Enchanter? Or something? I can’t keep track of all this magic shit.

“Choir Boy has been visiting a lot. I don’t know if I’m imagining things, but it seems like he’s taken a real liking to Sunshine. They probably went through your whole human Chant the other day before I left. No idea how that’s going to work out with the whole locked away in a tower forever, thing, but Hawke didn’t seem to mind.

“Templars probably won’t be hanging around for much longer, at least. The Knight-Captain seems to think Quentin made it out of Kirkwall. I don’t think anyone needed magic to figure that one out. There might be some good news, though. It turns out Quentin had a lot of kids. Don’t ask me why he didn’t kill them too. One of them, Daylen Amell, is a Tranquil in the Gallows. They’re going to try to make a phylactery with his blood to track Quentin down, but they’re not sure if it’ll work.”

“Of course they are,” Anders shook his head. The Chantry loved blood magic so long as they were the ones using it. “... What about his eyes?”

“What about them?” Varric asked.

“Has he said anything?” Anders pressed. “About what happened? … About what I did?”

“He hasn’t really had the chance,” Varric chased after a smile, but the corners of his lips kept flagging, “There are more templars in that house than servants nowadays. I don’t know how he’s dealing with it, Blondie. I don’t know if he’s dealing with it. Honestly, with everything he has going on right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s in denial about the whole thing.”

Bargaining

The estate felt empty. The windows were shuttered. The hearths empty. The chandeliers unlit. There weren’t enough people living in it to merit otherwise. When Anders and the apostates returned, Bodahn greeted them by candlestick.

The dwarf had stewarded the house alone for near a fortnight, but his beard was still neatly trimmed, his shirts freshly pressed. If only he'd been smiling, Anders might have thought nothing had changed. "Good to have you back, Master Anders," Bodahn said as the servants flooded past them and to their respective chores.

"Thanks, Bodahn," Anders shook his hand, and squeezed Sandal's shoulder when the boy wandered over. "Where's Hawke?"

"In the chapel, I believe," Bodahn said.

"He's sad," Sandal added.

"That he is, my boy. That we all are."

"Thanks - …" Anders took a step towards the chapel, but the look on Bodahn's face made him hesitate. "How are you two doing?"

"Now, don't you worry about us. There'll be time for all that later. You go see him. He needs you."

It might have scared Anders to hear, once upon a time, but that time had long since passed. He was done with being afraid. He was done with running. He was done with waiting until it was too late to say and do what needed to be said and done. He went to the chapel.

It was a two story room, illuminated by stained glass depictions of the Chant of Light. The first story had been outfitted with pews, sunbursts carved into the hardwood. They faced a stone altar, where an abattoir of molten wax painted Andraste's feet a deep and bloody red. In the corner, a votive rack burned with a single candle. Anders had never seen the second story. He didn't visit often.

Hawke was sitting on one of the pews, in a fitted silver doublet with black trim and matching trousers, and there the self-care ended. His hair was tousled, like it had been pushed back with a tired hand and stayed that way for want of a wash. His beard was unkempt. Scars like crow's feet were permanently scored around his eyes, giving the illusion of wrinkles, but he didn't smile enough to have earned them. Hawke’s wrinkles were at his brow, and relaxed slightly at his entrance.

"Anders," Hawke didn't sound angry. He didn't sound anything.

His eyes and the expression in them were heart-breaking. He looked like a man left to wander the Void, and Anders the one who left him. Anders joined him on the pew and pulled him into his arms, relieved Hawke still went willingly. Anders hadn't been certain he would after what he'd done.

When Anders had restored his sight, one of the first things Hawke had seen was his mother. Or what was left of her. Hawke had stared for a long while, and then draped Merrill’s scarf back over her face.

"Was she dead?" Hawke had asked. "When you found her?"

Anders had nodded. "I'm sorry, love."

And that had been it. No other words. No other reaction. Everyone but Varric had fled when Aveline warned them the templars were on their way, and Anders hadn't seen him again until this moment.

Anders expected… something. Tears. Screams. Accusations. Hawke held him in silence. His hands clutched tight about Anders' shoulders, the only sound between them their breathing, but it was level and even.

“I know nothing I say will change what happened,” Anders ran what he hoped was a comforting hand through Hawke’s hair. It was slick with oil and flaked with dandruff, but the intimacy made him feel a Tranquil given magic with how he’d longed for it in their time apart, “I just… I’m sorry.”

"For what?"

That wasn’t the response Anders had expected. He leaned back, "Your mother.”

"I don't even remember what happened," Hawke sounded like he wanted to laugh, but couldn’t muster the sound. “We went for tea, and then… nothing. I woke up and she was dead.”

“I’m sorry,” It seemed insufficient, but it was all Anders’ had to offer.

“No one can tell me why I don’t remember,” Hawke said. “Not even Cullen.”

“I can,” Anders took a steadying breath. It wasn’t a memory he wanted to relive. It wasn’t even a memory he could relive. “His magic. If he mind-controlled you, you wouldn’t remember unless he wanted you to. The templars won’t tell you because they think it means he could still have some kind of influence over you. They probably want to sweep the whole thing under the rug.”

“... What kind of influence?”

“Blocks on your memory. Compulsions to behave a certain way. But you’re fine,” Anders promised, kissing the back of his hand. “Merrill would have noticed if he’d done something like that. But it does mean if he tries again, it will be easier for him.”

“Easier,” Hawke snorted. “Like it was even hard.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Empty words; Anders knew from experience. They hadn’t made a difference to him. They probably wouldn’t make a difference to Hawke, but he deserved to hear them. “Your mother wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”

Hawke laughed. Actually laughed. The bitter bark startled Anders. “You don’t know my mother.”

“I know she loved you,” Anders countered. They’d spoken, however brief the exchanges. Leandra had only really warmed up to him in the month before her death.

“My mother loved me the way a painter loves their paintings,” Hawke said, his voice rough. “She made me, but she could only see the flaws. There was nothing I could do to make her happy. Even when I was a boy… Father used to beat us. Mother used to watch. Her words were worse than his switch.

“‘We deserved it. We were rotten children. Couldn’t we see how much we were hurting her, making Father hurt us?’ I could handle it, when it was just me, but then it was Carver, and then it was Beth… I don’t even remember what she’d done. Something harmless. Dropped a plate. Ruined a needlepoint. Something children do. Mother took Beth by her arm, and dragged her to Father…

“Mother looked so pleased with herself when he brought out the switch. Like she’d won. Like she needed to win against a child. Beth was… young. Five? Maybe six? I got in front of her, and Father gave me the scar on my brow. The look on Mother’s face… Like I’d shit in her shoe.”

It was hard to reconcile the Leandra from Hawke’s past with the one from his present. Harder still to reconcile that he’d still lived with her, despite it all. Anders’ relationship with his family wasn’t half as complicated. He’d loved his mother. He’d hated his father. To hear him talk, Hawke seemed to feel both emotions in equal measure. “You never told me.”

“Never had a reason,” Hawke shrugged. “I know my mother. There wasn’t a thing she didn’t blame me for. Father’s death… Carver’s... If she was here, she’d blame me for hers too.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying you’re sorry.”

“Alright… I just want you to know that I’m here for you,” Anders found his hand and squeezed it, “Whatever you need.”

Hawke leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the shrine and the wax slowly dripping from it. Anders sat beside him, wishing there was more he could do for the man. For some reason, Anders thought of Nate. The old boy would have had the perfect verse. Something about finding peace at the Maker’s side, or sinners being forgiven for their sins, or something. Something better than the nothing Anders had to offer.

“Blood magic did this,” Hawke said eventually.

“A madman did this,” Anders corrected him, “That’s what made him do this, not magic.”

“Magic let him do it,” Hawke countered. “Magic let him do all of it, and there were no templars to stop him. If Starkhaven’s Circle had never burned down, he’d still be there, and Mother would still be alive… I keep thinking it could have been Beth. If the templars hadn’t taken her. If she wasn’t in the Circle. If they weren’t keeping her safe.”

“They're not keeping her safe, they're keeping her captive,” Anders felt an old, familiar anger he’d left buried bubbling to the surface, and battled it back. Anger didn’t help Hawke. “Beth is fine. Aren’t you always saying not to borrow trouble?”

“You still think all mages should be free?”

“Of course I do,” Anders said quickly, “Look, I know you’re looking for someone to be angry at, but being angry at mages isn’t the answer. If it helps, go ahead and be angry at me.”

“I am angry at you,” Hawke turned to look at him, but he didn’t look angry. He looked disappointed. “Anders, you sacrificed a man.”

“I’d do it again,” Anders said fiercely. Gascard deserved to die. Nothing could convince him otherwise. “Gascard was part of all of this.”

“What if he wasn’t?” Hawke asked.

“He confessed! He was Quentin’s apprentice. He knew what Quentin was doing and he didn’t want to stop it, he just wanted to learn from it. He was-”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Hawke cut him off, “I’m saying, what if he wasn’t? What would you have done?”

“... What are you asking me?”

“You know what I’m asking you. Would you have still done it?”

“Are you seriously asking me if I would have sacrificed an innocent person?” Anders demanded. Hawke didn’t answer him. He just kept staring at him with Amell’s eyes. A vibrant, fade-touched red, though the patterns were slightly different. Hawke’s eyes had been reminiscent of sunbursts, where Amell’s reminded Anders more of blood spreading through water. Anders wasn’t used to seeing judgment in them. “No.”

“What if I was dying?” Hawke pressed, “What if I was dead? What if a few lives were all it took to bring me back?”

“Are you seriously- … Are you comparing me to Quentin right now?”

“He wasn’t a madman. He was a maleficar with the means to bring back his wife. Wouldn’t you?”

“Not if you’re going to act like this,” Anders’ joke was more a snap. “I know blood magic killed your mother, but it also saved you. It’s just a tool.”

“It has to start somewhere,” Hawke said. “I don’t care that you killed Gascard. I probably would have killed him too. That’s not my point. My point is you used blood magic to do it. You make one allowance, you make more, until you make too many. I’ve been that man. I’ve done things and enjoyed doing them and it took the Chant to get me to stop. You’ve been that man too.

“Don’t you remember how you felt when you killed Bardel? When you weren’t in control of your magic? I don’t want you to be that man anymore, Anders. I don’t want to make you that man. If something happens to me, and you can’t heal it… then you can’t heal it. Promise me.”

Hawke cupped his face, searching his eyes for… something. An end to his love, maybe, but there wasn’t one. Anders meant what he’d said. He’d drown them in blood to keep Hawke safe.

“... Alright,” Anders lied. “I promise.”

Depression

Anders woke up alone. The space beside him was cold, and he couldn’t say how long it had been empty. A wisp crossed the Veil at his beckon, and illuminated an empty room. “Hawke?” Anders called out.

Not again.

Anders scrubbed the sleep from his eyes and rolled out of bed. A dull orange glow flickered past the balcony window, oil lanterns dimly illuminating Hightown streets in the dead of night. Too early for anyone to be awake. Or too late. Or too tired. Anders dragged himself into the hall, the wisp hovering about his shoulders bright enough to see without burning his eyes.

He didn't really need it. He could find Leandra’s room with his eyes closed. Pushing open the door, Anders cast the wisp out into the room. The bed was neatly made, an evening dress laid out for when Leandra returned from tea. An unfinished needlepoint was waiting on her divan. Lilies had wilted down to potpourri at her desk, where a few flowers had been pressed into transparency in a half-finished diary.

No Hawke.

Anders left the room and went through the estate, calling out and waking the occasional servant. Hawke was nowhere to be found, and Anders was of half a mind to head to the Hanged Man when he finally found him in the ice cellar. Hawke was sitting in a collection of pails, frozen half to death.

“Maker’s breath, Hawke,” Anders shrugged out of his robe and draped it across Hawke’s trembling shoulders. “What are you doing down here?”

Hawke gestured to the pails, "I have all this milk.”

“Let’s go back to bed, love,” Anders wrapped an encouraging arm around his shoulders, but Hawke didn’t move.

“What am I supposed to do with all this milk?” Hawke kicked one of the pails over. The lid popped off, and it went rolling through the cellar, painting it white as quicklime. Hawke swallowed and looked away.

“Put it out for the cats?” Anders suggested

Hawke exhaled hard through his nose. His breath hung in the air between them, like the pale ghost of a laugh. “The cats?”

“We could adopt one,” Anders forced as much cheer as he could into his voice, “I’d like a tabby.”

“A cat.” Hawke repeated.

“Come back to bed, love.” Anders pulled him to his feet. Hawke let him, the second time around, but he lingered in the cellar, staring at the mess he’d made.

“I have to clean this up.”

“No you don’t,” Anders kissed him. Once. Twice. The third time Hawke finally closed his eyes and kissed him back. They went back to bed. Anders got rid of the milk in the morning.

Anger

Anders was reading in the library when a shout startled him out of his chair, and his book out of his hands.

“Master Anders, come quickly!” The servant’s pupils were blown, their face flush from their mad dash up the library stairs. “It’s Master Hawke.”

The servant ran him down to the foyer, where Bodahn was wringing his hands over a pile of Hawke’s armor. The archer had stripped it off on his way through the estate. A glove here. A pauldron there. Anders followed a trail of bloody leather until he caught up with him in the hall.

Hawke was soaked with red a shade to match his eyes. It squelched in his boots, and was smeared like kaddish across his face. “What happened!?” Anders grabbed Hawke’s face, a pulse of healing magic finding only a handful of bruises on the man, despite the state of him.

Hawke blinked, “Mereen.”

“Mereen…?” Anders gestured at the coating of carnage, “Mereen what? Mereen’s dead? Mereen’s dying? Is this Mereen’s blood? Mereen’s wine? Talk to me.”

“We had a disagreement,” Hawke explained, reaching to rub at his eyes when he finally seemed to realize his hands were dripping. A crease furrowed his brow, as if the discovery was more annoying than alarming. “Red Iron’s are mine now.”

“A disagreement?” Tendrils of creationism washed over Hawke’s eyes, but they were still healthy, and still in his skull. It was just an itch.

"We took a contract on some nobleman. Harrison or something. The other nobles wanted him dead, and I wanted to know why before I killed him. Turns out he convinced the Viscount to send aid to Ferelden after the Blight… couldn't just kill him for it."

"And Mereen?"

"Wasn't happy until someone died." Hawke shrugged.

"... weren't you friends? Do you want to talk about it?"

"Just did," Hawke continued stripping out of his armor. Anders followed him to the wash, where he channelled a spell to fill the tub with water Hawke dyed pink. Anders sat on the bench beside him, an arm draped over the railing and into the water, warming it with a low pulse of primal magic.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Anders asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Hawke asked, scrubbing what Anders assumed was Mereen’s blood out of his beard.

“Because of all this?” Anders gestured to encompass all of him, covered in the gore of his former comrade. “Mereen was the one who helped you get into Kirkwall, wasn’t he?”

“What of it?”

“I just want to know how you’re feeling.”

“He never should have fought me.” Hawke said simply. “I need all the allies I can get in this damned city. I’m not going to kill the only Ferelden sympathizer I’ve met in the past three years. Mereen knew that. He made his choice when he took the contract.”

“He was still your friend,” Anders argued.

“I’ve killed friends before,” Hawke said.

So had Anders. It probably wouldn’t have been the most comforting story to share. “What happened with the nobleman?”

“Invited me over for dinner,” Hawke paused, setting aside the pumice he’d been using to scrub beneath his nails. “I’d bring you-”

“Your apostaste lover - out in public?” Anders forced a laugh, “Not if you love me, you won’t.”

“Just saying," Hawke shrugged. "If I could.”

“You better not,” Anders threatened him, splashing a handful of water in his face. “I can’t stand all that pomp and circumstance. I wouldn’t go for all the cats in Thedas.”

Hawke laughed and left to get dressed. He seemed fine, but for some reason Anders couldn't help but think he wasn't. Anders stayed in the wash, watching the blood Hawke’s friend circle the drain. A veneer of crimson lingered, barely visible against the copper. Anders summoned more water to wash it away, to no avail. He found a servant to scour the tub, and the memory along with it.

... Anger.

There were more... incidents. Episodes. Bouts. Anders didn’t know what to call them. Worse, Anders didn’t know what to do about them. It came to a head when someone started raiding Hawke’s cargo shipments from the Bone Pits, and Hawke’s business partner suspected one of the Dog Lords. The Coterie claimed a cut of the profits from the mines, and took a vested interest in ending the theft when they weren’t the ones doing the thieving.

The commotion sent the servants scattering. Bodahn found him in the apothecary, working on a batch of poultices for the clinic, and wheezed through his warning, "Master Anders - I fear we're on some very loose sand upstairs!

"Excuse me - I mean to say - Master Bartiere is here, with a great many Coterie folk, and they have a gentleman with them… The poor fellow is in a very bad way. He could very much use a healer but I don't believe they brought him here for one, if you catch my meaning. Me and the boy can't be here for this. Won't do him any good to see this sort of thing, but maybe you can stop it."

Anders ran upstairs with him. Sandal was waiting in the hallway, rocking anxiously back and forth and whining under his breath. “Pa…”

“I’m here, my boy,” Bodahn grabbed his hand, “They were heading to the study, last I checked, Master Anders. Come along now, Sandal, let’s go to the market.”

“I like the market..” Sandal mumbled nervously as they fled.

Anders didn’t have to go far to find the commotion. Lilley and two other people in Coterie colors were dragging a poor bastard through the estate. Anders recognized him. The ex-Dog Lord looked like he’d been made from straw. His hair, his eyes, his complexion, his physique. One punch could have crumpled him, but Sabin looked like he’d taken several. Hawke and his business partner trailed behind the group, talking.

Anders ran into the room, “What’s going on here?”

“Go back downstairs, Anders,” Hawke said.

“Well lookie here, if it ain’t another traitor,” Lilley licked her teeth, “You’re lucky Hawke here pays his dues after you skimped out on us, abandoning your clinic. I didn’t see you, get it?”

Anders ignored her, “What are you doing? Sabin, what’s going on?”

“Anders - please help me -” Sabin sobbed, snot and tears smeared in his mustache, “Please-”

“In there,” Hawke waved the Coterie towards the study.

Lilley opened the door, and Hawke’s business partner, Hubert, kicked Sabin through it. “This dung pile has been leaking our shipment schedule!” The Orlesian shopkeeper spat on Sabin’s back, “He won’t tell us who he’s working with.”

“So you’re going to beat it out of him?” Anders guessed, “He can’t talk if he has a mouthful of broken teeth. Look, I know him, let me just-” He took a step towards the study, and one of the Coterie men shoved him back.

It was nothing. It was just a shove. Anders had had worse. Justice didn’t even bother to react, but Hawke did. He grabbed the Coterie thug by his collar and slammed him into the wall so hard a painting fell off it. The thug scrabbled in his grip, half-choking, “Touch him again,” Hawke snarled.

“Easy,” Lilley set a hand on Hawke’s wrist, and lowered it until the thug’s feet touched the ground, and he stopped gasping. “We’re wasting time. If there’s another ambush while you’re all dicking about, it won’t be our fault.”

“Of course,” Hubert followed the Coterie thugs into the study, where they manhandled Sabin into a chair. Hubert punched him, sending the poor blighter reeling over the armrest, “Who else has been screwing us over? Tell me, you rotting mongrel!”

“Messere, please don’t hurt me!” Sabin struggled madly chair, climbing and sliding in every direction in an attempt to escape it, “Please! Anders-”

“Hawke, stop, let me talk to him-” Anders said.

“This doesn’t concern you, Anders,” Hawke stepped into the study, and closed the door behind him.

“Please, messere, don’t hurt me!” Sabin’s wails carried through the hardwood, and Anders had half a mind to break it down. “I knew you in Lothering -”

“I don’t like friends I’ve never met,” Hawke snapped. There was a thud, and another wail from Sabin.

“Please - please don’t hit me again! If I tell you what you want to know, you’ll just kill me, or throw me in prison! My life’s not worth much but my family - please - I know I shouldn’t have stolen from you, but my family - my wife and son - I just wanted to give my wife and son a better life- You knew them in Lothering-”

“Lothering’s dead and burnt,” Hawke cut him off, “You’ll share the same fate if you don’t start talking.”

Whatever happened to Sabin was soundless, but he screamed all the same, “Please - please stop - I’ll tell you everything! I’ll give back the gold -! There’s an ambush planned at Dietrich Crossing next week!”

Sabin started sobbing.

“I do love how you get results,” Hubert said cheerily.

“Want me to deal with this runt?” Lilley offered, “Free of charge. I’ll drop him in a ditch on my way out.”

“Yes, please!” Hubert sounded delighted, like someone had offered him a dessert and not a man’s death sentence, “Take him, with my blessing! I assume my partner will not object.”

“I don’t care what happens to him,” Hawke said.

The door swung back open, and the Coterie thugs carried Sabin out. The formations of bruises shown on his face, skin slowly sallowing, and one of his wrists looked twisted. His legs dragged limply, pulling up the rug as they dragged him down the hall.

“You can’t just kill him!” Anders protested.

“You wanna get your boy?” Lilley suggested, stepping around him.

“Let it go, Anders,” Hawke said.

“Don’t be a bloody hypocrite! What happened to not killing innocent men? Or does it not count if you don't use magic?”

“This isn’t that. You asked me to look after the Dog Lords. I kept them clear of the guard. I gave them honest work. He still betrayed me. If you want me to feel bad for him, I don’t. He’s a thief.”

“That doesn’t justify murder!”

“Doesn’t it?” Hawke raised an eyebrow, “You know how many of our men died in the raids on our shipments? I have to deal with this, Anders. We’ll talk later.”

A crow followed three predators, garbed in green and dragging their prey between them, back to their roost. The massive marble structure was surrounded by red lanterns and imagery of roses in bloom, and so crowded the crow slipped in unnoticed. It followed the predators down, below the earth, to a collection of cages, where they deposited their prey.

“Thought we was gonna kill him,” One of the predators said.

“Not without a bit of fun,” The lead predator explained. “Come on, let’s get back to Hawke and Hubert before they get their knickers twisted.”

The predators left, and Anders exploded. To his credit, Sabin didn’t scream. He just whined. Very loudly. The ex-dog lord fell backwards, tripping over the cot in his cell beneath the Blooming Rose. The existence of said cells beneath a brothel wasn’t terribly comforting, but Anders would have to worry about it later. Sabin’s cell was one of several, though only one other was occupied, and the individual within appeared to be a sleeping dwarf.

“Andraste’s flaming garters,” Sabin massaged his chest, “If they sent you to kill me, that little scare nearly did it.”

“I’m not here to kill you, Sabin,” Anders said, “I’m here to get you out.”

Of course, freeing Sabin was easier said than done. Anders wasn’t a rogue, and picking a lock was beyond him. Melting a lock, however… would make it fairly obvious that a mage had freed him, and there were only so many mages interested in Sabin’s freedom.

Would it matter? Who would it matter to?

“You are?” Sabin ran to clutch at the bars, “Thank the Maker, Anders, I’m so sorry.”

“Why’d you do it, Sabin? We saved you.”

“I know. I know you did. I know I spit on you when I did it. I just needed more coin than I was getting. I got my family out of Darktown, and got a place in Lowtown, but I got the wrong place. It ain’t been the same without The Bastard. Friends of Kirkwall took over the whole neighborhood, a few months back, and their protection cost more than I was making. I’m sorry. I swear, if I had any other way to get the coin, I wouldda done it, I swear I wouldda.”

“I believe you,” Anders promised, squeezing Sabin’s shoulder through the bars. “Stand back, I’m going to break this open.”

“Won’t they know you helped me then?” Sabin asked.

“Do you have a better idea?” Anders demanded.

A tapping to his left nearly startled Anders out of his skin. The dwarf had woken up. A face covered in brands and scars frowned up at him from the cell beside Sabin. Her auburn hair had been braided once, but had long since frayed itself free, and she was dressed in rags that told Anders nothing of who she might have been. She twisted one fist into the palm of her hand, and then held both hands out flat.

“... What?” Anders said. “What does that mean?”

The dwarf opened her mouth. She didn’t have a tongue. She made the gesture again.

“... I’m sorry, I don’t-... What?”

The dwarf huffed, loudly, and pointed over his shoulder. Anders followed her finger to a set of key rings hanging on the far wall.

“Oh.”

“... We’re fucking stupid ain’t we?” Sabin said.

The dwarf put a fist with her pinky out on her forehead. Anders guessed that meant yes. He retrieved the keys, and went through three of them before he found the ones that unlocked the cells.

“How do we get out of here without them catching us?” Sabin asked.

Anders didn’t know, but the dwarf apparently did. She led them through the dungeon and to a privy, which consisted of a wooden bench with a series of circles cut into it. The dwarf flipped up the top of the privy, and leapt inside. A loud and feculent splash followed.

“... This or die?” Sabin asked, peaking over the edge of the privy and into the sewers below.

“This or die,” Anders agreed.

“Well shit.” Sabin said.

It was an accurate observation if Anders ever heard one. Sabin jumped in. Anders followed, and the sewers eventually spat them out into Darktown. The dwarf tapped his hand to get his attention, and then made a series of symbols Anders didn’t understand. She pointed at herself, tapped her palm with her index finger twice, and then pointed at him.

“I’m sorry, I still don’t know what you’re saying,” Anders confessed.

“I’m getting out of here,” Sabin said, “Between the Friends, the Coterie, and Hubert, it’s not safe for me and mine in Kirkwall anymore. Thank you, Anders. That’s twice now you’ve saved my life, though I know I don’t deserve it.”

“We’re more than our mistakes, Sabin,” Anders said. “You didn’t deserve to die for them.”

“What about your guy?” Sabin asked, “Isn’t he going to be angry at you?”

“He was already angry. It didn’t have anything to do with you.”

“No offense, but if none of that were personal, it kinda scares me.”

“I know,” Anders said. “...Me too.”

Notes:

Fanart
Hawke grieving

Chapter 111: Lyrium and Lies

Notes:

Thank you for reading! And thank you for any feedback / kudos / bookmarks / subscriptions. I sincerely appreciate all of the support. :) I hope you like the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon 20 Parvulis
Kirkwall Hightown: Hawke Estate

"Hawke said he didn't care what happened to him," Anders reasoned. “So really, it doesn’t matter that I freed him. Sabin didn’t deserve to die. I know the commandments. What one man steals, another has lost, but Sabin wasn’t even the one stealing. Not really. It was all the Coterie in the end.

“You know it was all just some sort of internal squabble? One of the Coterie stealing from their own, and now Lilley is dead, and so’s half the Coterie. All because someone didn’t like Hawke. They’d never even met him; they just knew he was Fereldan, and he’d made something of himself, and that was enough to hate him.

“Can you imagine? Hating just to hate? Sometimes I forget it’s not just mages who have to deal with it.”

Anders sighed, scratching at the stubble framing his jaw. He wanted a shave, but he needed a beard more. His likeness was still plastered from Lowtown to Hightown, and if he wanted to move freely between the two, it was the beard or blending in with the posters.

And it was Kingsway. Cold month, Kingsway. Anders didn’t like the thought of going through it barefaced. He wasn’t exactly off to a great start, the way he’d lied to Hawke. He had every intention of telling Hawke what he’d done… eventually. When Hawke was doing better. When he could stand his own reflection, and the mirrors weren’t all covered with tarps. When he could stand to buy milk again.

“It’s not nice to hate people,” Sandal agreed, rummaging through the larder and emerging with a sack of something he heaved onto the table. The little dwarf frowned at it afterwards, as if he’d forgotten what he’d planned to do with it or wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do next.

“What are we up to today, buddy?” Anders prompted helpfully.

“Lunch!” Sandal clapped his hands, seemingly delighted to be reminded. “I’m making bread!”

“Enchantment bread?” Anders guessed.

Sandal laughed, “You can’t enchant bread!”

“I bet you could,” Anders reached over to ruffle his close-cropped hair, “I saw the runework you did on Hawke’s armor the other day. Warding runes, right? For magic resistance?”

Sandal nodded grimly, “Pa said magic hurt him.”

“Yeah… Yeah, it did.”

“You have nice magic!”

“Thanks, buddy,” Anders smiled. “What’s the next step for your bread? Do you need to go get some barm?”

“And water!” Sandal ran off to retrieve the ingredients. Anders watched him go with a fond smile that lasted only as long as his view of the boy. Sandal was a good kid. Bodahn was lucky to have him. Luckier than Anders would ever be, at least.

“Master Anders!?” Bodahn called from the foyer, while Anders was ruminating over children or his lack thereof. The steward sounded panicked, which was worryingly common of late, “Master Anders, a visitor is here to see you! He’s not well, messere!”

Anders bolted from the kitchen. Bodahn was supporting the guest. The man sagged bonelessly against him, covered in ash and leaving a trail of soot in his wake. One arm hung limp, burnt an angry red, the other clutched about Bodahn’s shoulders. Sweat had straightened his curly brown hair, but his big mouth was still twisted into a smile, despite the state of him.

“Franke!” Anders rushed over, heaving Franke’s other arm over his shoulder. “Bodahn, help me get him to a guest room.”

They maneuvered the cobbler to one of the guest rooms on the first story, and laid him out on the bed. Anders sent Bodahn to fetch his supplies from the apothecary, and summoned a life ward beneath Franke. The poor man was a mess. His lungs were coated with smoke, both his arms were burnt, and one of his shoulders was dislocated.

“We have got to stop meeting like this, Franke,” Anders joked uneasily, summoning Justice to clear the smoke from Franke’s lungs. “What are you doing here? What happened to you?”

“Ran afoul of some friends,” Franke coughed wretchedly, his whole body shaking, “Me and my big mouth, yeah?”

“Friends?” Anders repeated, “Like Friends of Kirkwall, friends?”

Franke nodded. His throat was swollen, no doubt from how much smoke he’d inhaled. Anders let him rest, and focused on healing him. Justice’s benevolent energies reduced the inflammation in his lungs and throat, and mended the burns on his arm. Bodahn came back with a draught of elfroot tea, and helped Franke drink it before he departed again to brew more.

“Alright, now the arm. This is going to hurt a bit,” Anders took hold of Franke’s wrist and straightened out his arm, manipulating the joint back into its socket. The cobbler swallowed down whines, tears streaming down his soot-stained face until Anders finished.

“That it?” Franke sniffled.

“That’s it,” Anders sat Franke up, and handed him more elfroot to chew for the pain. “Surprised you didn’t faint.”

“Well,” Franke tried to smile, lips quivering, “You know. No blood, yeah?”

“What happened?”

“I miss Cor,” Franke said between mouthfuls of elfroot, his voice hoarse from the smoke, “... I never really thought about what he did for Fereldans in Kirkwall. I just figured a gang’s a gang, yeah? But the Friends of Kirkwall… they came by the shop looking for coin. I said I wouldn’t pay. Next thing I know, I’m waking up to a room full of smoke, and the whole shop’s on fire...I couldn’t fucking breathe, Anders.”

Franke’s shoulders started shaking. Anders put an arm around them, “I’m so sorry, Franke.”

“It’s not me,” Franke explained, his voice breaking, “It’s my wife. My little girls. I keep thinking of them boarded up in my shop, back in Amaranthine. They couldn’t fucking breathe, Anders.’

Franke dissolved into sobs. Anders held him, trying and failing not to think of that day. The way the arrows had blotted out the sky, and the fires had spread through the markets. The friends they’d lost. They’d done what they could.

“Thanks for all this,” Franke said eventually, when he could finally speak. “I promise this ain’t how I've been meaning to visit.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Franke,” Anders said, “You’re lucky to be alive. Why didn’t you go to the clinic? It’s closer.”

Franke’s face scrunched up into a frown, “... Clinic’s closed. Been closed.”

“What?” Anders let go of him. It couldn’t be closed. He’d never closed it. He’d just-... stepped away for a while, “I know I've missed a few supply runs, but I just finished a batch of poultices-... What happened to Terrie?”

“Can’t say,” Franke shrugged, massaging at his shoulder, “The past few months haven’t been easy for folks without you… It’s bad out there, Anders, and the guards are just making it worse. It’s like having a whole other gang on the streets. When I told them the Friends were asking for protection money, they asked me how much, and said they’d give me a discount… Everything I had was in that shop… I don’t-...” Franke sucked in a rickety breath, and buried his face in his hands.

“Master Anders?” Bodahn popped back into the guest room, cradling another cup of elfroot tea he passed off to Franke, “Master Tethras is here, asking after Master Hawke. Should I send him in?“

“Don’t let me keep you, yeah?” Franke said.

“No - just - Franke, just stay here,” Anders squeezed his shoulder, “I guess I’m popular today. You can send Varric in, Bodahn.”

Bodahn left to fetch Varric, and Franke stared at him like he’d grown a second head.

“What, like, stay here, stay here?”

“We have room,” Anders gestured around the empty guest room, “It’s got a bit of a pest problem though, so if an old rat bastard bothers you, just ignore him.”

“... Thanks,” Franke sniffed. His hands were trembling, and a few drops of tea escaped the cup, “You’re a real good friend, yeah? Sorry about the time I tried to kill you.”

“It happens,” Anders shrugged.

Varric joined them, armed to the teeth. A metal breast plate gleamed beneath his leather coat, not at all like the one he usually wore. It had been made from wyvern scales. Metal guards were buckled at his shoulders, at his elbows, over his wrists. A massive leather belt was laden with bombs, caltrops, and all manner of knives. Two quivers were slung over either shoulder, bloated with bolts, and he held Bianca like a club.

“Where’s Hawke?” Varric demanded.

“... Is it safe for him if I tell you?” Anders wondered.

“Don’t have time for jokes, Blondie,” Varric said. “I need his help.”

“He’s out with Aveline,” Anders explained. “What happened?”

“Fuck,” Varric ran a hand through his hair, yanking on a few blonde strands, “Alright, I’ve got some news, but you might want to not be near anything breakable when I tell you, and I should tell you in private.”

“Alright,” Anders stood up, “Try and get some rest, Franke. Let Bodahn know if you need anything. I’ll be around.”

Anders followed Varric to the study. The dwarf paced as he spoke, testing the straps to his armor, counting his knives, and generally making Anders anxious, “I’ve been trying to find out how Quentin got his hands on red lyrium. You remember that servant we found in his estate, one Archdemon short of a Blight? I asked around, and I found him in the alienage. He claimed Quentin bought the red lyrium off a dwarf.

“I tried not to jump to conclusions, but I had my contacts look into it. It turns out Bartrand called in a few loans; he’s just been putting everything in his steward name. But it’s got to be him! If my information is good, and it’s always good, he purchased a house in the Rivaini quarter of Hightown. I have to go, Blondie, but I can’t go alone.”

“So you want Hawke to help you kill your brother?” Anders guessed.

Varric deserved justice for everything Bartrand had done to him. He deserved revenge, but Anders wasn’t sure that Hawke was in the right frame of mind to help grant it. Hawke was so concerned with keeping Anders from violence that he’d all but abandoned the same for himself. More violence didn’t seem like the answer.

“I didn’t say kill,” Varric held up the hand that wasn’t clutching Bianca like something hoped to bludgeon Bartrand to death with, “I just want to stop by his new house. Welcome him back to the neighborhood and all that. Bianca’s been missing him something awful.”

“I’ll go with you. Let me just get my things.”

“You’re not worried about Blue?”

“You want justice,” Anders shrugged, “We understand.”

Justice… was still Justice. He was still his friend. He was still his spirit. Justice had stood by him, even when Anders had driven one of Hawke’s knives into Gascard’s heart and drained the life from him. If Justice could do that, then Anders could stand by him despite the fact that he’d killed Bardel. Anders knew what templars made them. It wasn’t fair for him to strike a flint and be surprised by the fire.

Anders didn’t know what to expect when they confronted Bartrand, so he dressed for what he didn’t. Leather armor, leather boots, leather coat, a satchel of supplies, Vigilance, his grimoire, and an everknit wool cloak to cover all of it. Anders kept the hood pulled up on the trip through Hightown, and Varric led him to what looked like an abandoned estate.

It lurked in a back corner of the district, shadowed by an awning embroidered with the symbol of Kirkwall. It might have been red once, but had been bleached orange by the sun. Dead leaves, bird feathers and feces, and foundry ash sagged it at the center, the thinning fabric threatening to rip with every autumn breeze. The wind stirred up dirt in the estate’s entryway, cluttered with broken bottles and detritus forgotten by the street sweepers.

“... How long ago did Bartrand live here, exactly?” Anders asked.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Varric cupped his hands over a dusty window, trying to peer inside, “My sources said they saw people making deliveries here a week ago. This place looks like it’s been empty for months.”

“It could be a trap,” Anders nudged him back from the window with the butt of his staff for fear of something bursting out of it.

“You might be right,” Varric said. “Look, Blondie, you don’t have to be here with me. He’s my brother.”

“You’re my friend,” Anders said. “Would you ask Hawke to leave?”

“That’s different. Killer’s…well, Killer.”

“I wish you’d give him a different nickname,” Anders sighed.

“You think of a better one, Blondie, you let me know,” Varric pushed open the door.

Anders expected them to walk into an ambush, but it was just a foyer. The walls were framed with interlacing arches and the floors were done up in decorative tilework reminiscent of Rivaini culture. The foyer led to a central courtyard, framed by two hallways, both with intricately carved staircases that led to the second story.

“Should we flip a coin?” Anders asked.

“When in doubt, always pick the right direction,” Varric said.

They started towards the right hall, when what might have been a man emerged from the left. He was dressed in plain linen clothes, and looked like a servant, or the memory of one. He reminded Anders of a ghoul. His skin was pale, his veins prominent, and they pulsed. A bright, vibrant red to match the glow in his eyes. He smiled, stumbling towards them, “Visitors… Have you come to hear the song?”

“No thanks,” Anders held his staff out in front of him, but the servant didn’t seem to see it. His eyes were unfocused, his head tilted to one side like he was listening intently to something no one else could hear.

“The song,” The servant dragged his hand along the wall. One of his nails broke off. “You have to hear the song. You have to hear it! You have to hear it!”

The servant shrieked, and charged. He ran like an animal, tripping over his arms and legs, foam spilling from his lips. A crossbow bolt punched through his shoulder, the force of it knocking him off his feet. He lay on his back, flailing and spitting, “The song, the song, the song!”

“Andraste’s knicker weasels…” Anders muttered, standing a few cautious feet back from the poor blighter. “He’s like a ghoul... “

Varric stared at the crazed servant for a long minute, and put a second bolt through his eye. “Ancestors. What did my brother do to him? He was completely out of his head.”

“He’s not the only one,” Anders caught Varric’s hand, and pulled him behind him. From the opposite end of the hall, a dozen red eyes stared back at them.

“Shit,” Varric said. “Let’s do this, Blondie.”

Red-lyrium ghouls rushed them, climbing over each other in their frenzy. They ripped through tunics and tore through skin, littering the hallway with shredded cloth and blood. When they couldn’t get through each other, they went through the furniture, knocking over statues and pulling down tapestries. They were worse than ghouls. Ghouls were still there. These… things… were stark raving mad.

Anders’ hands erupted in a cone of frost, freezing the first row of red-lyrium ghouls solid. The second burst through them, shattering them in a spray of congealed blood, muscle, and fat. Varric launched a volley of bolts that caught the first three to break through, but more followed.

One tackled Varric, screaming, “Listen! Listen, listen, listen. I want you to listen.” The red-lyrium ghoul bit into its own wrist, ripping off a chunk of flesh. Blood freckled Varric’s face, and the creature shoved its wrist against his lips. “Just a taste! A taste of the song!”

Anders grabbed the thing by its collar, but the fabric ripped when he tried to pull it off. His hand split with veilfire, and he punched through the creature’s neck, grabbing its spine and flinging it clear. Varric rolled away, spitting and hacking as he stumbled to his feet, and threw a bomb from his belt into the hall.

The resulting explosion blew out the wall to the courtyard, and collapsed the ceiling. More red-lyrium ghouls fell down from the second story, like a bloody infestation. Anders summoned an inferno, and sent it spiraling down the collapsed hallway, melting the ghouls into the floor, the walls, the ceiling, until they stopped coming.

The estate quieted, save for the sound of their labored breathing and the crackle of burning tapestries. A few pebbles and bits of dust trickled down from the hole in the ceiling, and somewhere under the rubble a red-lyrium ghoul moaned. “The song, the song, no, no, no… it’s so quiet. It’s so quiet…”

“Ancestors have mercy,” Varric muttered. “What the fuck is going on here, Blondie?”

“You’ve got me,” Anders said. “Are you okay? You didn’t get any blood in your mouth, did you?”

“No,” Varric wiped his mouth with his thumb, smearing blood on his glove. “Call me a picky eater, but I’ll have to pass on the cannibalism.”

“Let me wash your face, just in case. We don’t want you licking your lips and going full crazy.” Anders summoned a handful of water, and washed away what he could. “You should take a real bath when we get out of here.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Varric pushed his damp hair back from his face. The ghoul’s blood had dyed it a strawberry blonde, but his lips were clear. “... Keep an eye on me, will you, Blondie?”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“So far, but things can always get worse.”

“Look on the bright side. If that’s what red lyrium does to someone and Quentin used it to resurrect Revka, maybe we’ll get lucky, and she’ll kill him.”

Varric snorted, “Maybe we already got lucky, and it killed Bartrand.”

“Only one way to find out,” Anders said.

They went upstairs, checking each room as they went, but they seemed to have cleared out most of the red-lyrium ghouls. Only a handful remained and were easily dispatched with a bolt or a spell. Only one still seemed to be aware of himself. He’d barricaded himself in the master bedroom, and was huddled in the corner when Anders and Varric broke through.

The dwarf was finely dressed, wearing golden embroidery and a doublet trimmed in blood. His eyes weren’t glowing, but they looked no less crazed, his pupils blown so wide it was hard to see whatever their original color had been.

“Hold up,” Varric held up a hand, “I know this man. He’s Bartrand’s steward. He was with us on the expedition.”

“Varric?” The dwarf glanced up from his knees, “Is that you? Bartrand said you were dead. Praise the Ancestors!”

“What is going on here, Hugin?” Varric asked, keeping both hands on Bianca. Anders didn’t begrudge him his caution.

“It’s your brother,” Hugin explained, glancing nervously towards the door they’d broken in through, “He’s -... That statue we found in the Deep Roads. It drove him mad. We-... We went to Rivain… bad memories in Kirkwall, he said… but then - the statue - he said it sang to him… He said he needed more.

“We came back, and he went back to the thiag for more lyrium… And then everything got worse… Even after he broke the lyrium apart and sold it... I’ve been hiding in here. Everyone else has gone mad. They’re like crazed animals!”

“What did he do to them?” Anders asked.

“He didn’t do anything,” Hugin laughed, “At first… He didn’t have to. The lyrium… it changes you. Most of us were just nervous… paranoid… heard voices... but some… some got violent. And then… Bartrand he… he started forcing people to eat it… some of the servants - he cut pieces of them off while they were still alive. He said it was to help them hear the song. Please - please stop him.”

“Maker’s breath,” Anders muttered.

“Bartrand’s not exactly a nice guy, but this doesn’t sound like my brother,” Varric said. “I can’t believe the idol would make him do all this… If it’s this dangerous… Hugin, how many people did he sell the red lyrium to?”

“I don’t know,” Hugin admitted. “A few.”

“Ancestors,” Varric reloaded Bianca. “We need to find this shit and destroy it before this happens again. Where’s Bartrand?”

“In the study,” Hugin said, “He took some of the servants and locked himself in there with them. No one’s come out in days, and those sodding lunatics keep prowling the halls. Are-... are they gone? Did you kill them?”

“We killed them,” Anders promised, “You’re safe now. You can leave.”

“I wish I believed that, human,” Hugin wrung his hands nervously, eyeing the door.

“You can trust him,” Varric assured him, “Get out of here, Hugin. Go to the Hanged Man. Tell Norah I sent you. She’ll take care of you. I’ll meet you there later.”

“Okay, but-... Varric, please be careful. Your brother is gone. And by the sounds coming from his study, the servants are too. Whoever you find in that room… give them a merciful death.”

Hugin fled.

“Come on, Blondie. Let’s finish this.”

They found what remained of Bartrand in the study. The lyrium was… consuming him. It sucked the color from his skin, until all that remained was vibrant red veins glistening and pulsing beneath a translucent grey. All of his hair had fallen out, from his beard to his brow, and when he turned to look at them his eyes were beams of red.

“Varric?” Bartrand gargled. “Is that you, little brother?”

Maker’s breath, his mouth. His gums had crystalized, red lyrium growing out around his teeth. A few had almost fallen out, dangling from his bleeding gums on wispy veins and wiggling when he spoke.

“What did we use to joke about? Boiling him in oil?” Anders tried to recall. “... I guess we were letting him off easy.”

Varric lowered Bianca, his expression unreadable. Anders carved a glyph of repulsion beneath him in case Bartrand charged, but he didn’t seem hostile. He seemed blind. His eyes darted about the room, beams of red casting odd shadows through corner cobwebs.

“I can’t - I can’t hear it anymore…” Bartrand whined. A tooth fell out. “Can you - can you help me hear it!?”

Bartrand ran at Varric, bouncing off the glyph. He landed on his ass, a few feet away, and started sobbing. Even his tears were red. Anders wasn’t sure if they were blood or lyrium. “I just need to hear the song again… just for a minute…”

“Bartrand, get a hold of yourself!” Varric finally seemed to decide on an emotion. Unsurprisingly, it was anger. He stepped out of the glyph, and pressed Bianca to Bartrand’s chest, “Do you know where you are!? Do you know what you’ve done!?”

“You have to help me,” Bartrand begged. He reached for Varric, his hand flailing in the air between them. Red lyrium had pushed through his cuticles, and taken off a few of his nails. “Help me hear it. Please. You were always the good one.”

“Help you!?” Varric slammed Bianca into Bartand’s chest. Anders didn’t know much about his crossbow, but he knew a retractable bayonet was part of it. Presumably a trigger was the only thing between Bartand and death. “Bartrand you left me to die! You left all of us to die, and for what!? For the idol? Look at yourself. Look at what you’ve done to the men and women who served you. Where’s your nobility!? Your dwarven honor!?”

“I just want to hear it,” Bartrand sobbed, “It wants me. I want it back. I was wrong to sell it - I just - I just had to get rid of it - but you’ll get it back for me! You’ll get it back from them! He smelled like blood and she glittered like the sun… thieves! They were thieves!“

“Bloody ancestors,” Varric took a step back, flexing his mangled hand, “I didn’t come here just to leave without telling my brother he’s a filthy nug licker and have him actually hear me! All I’ve wanted was to look him in the eyes and get his answers but… he’s not there.”

“... Maybe I can heal him,” Anders offered.

It wasn’t his smartest offer. Anders had no idea what he was trying to heal. Lyrium poisoning, maybe? Except the only cure for lyrium poisoning was more lyrium. And it didn’t feel the same as lyrium poisoning. It felt unnatural. Like something powerful had poisoned Bartrand’s mind. Like a demon. Or blood magic. Or the Blight.

Merrill had mentioned wanting to help Fenris with his markings by suppressing the lyrium in them. It was a temporary fix, and it would have to be channelled, but maybe he could try it. Anders knelt beside Bartrand, and summoned Justice. He pulled on the lyrium in Bartrand’s veins, suppressing it, and the red in his eyes slowly dimmed. Bartrand looked between Anders and Varric, and finally seemed to see them.

“... What - ...What the dust…” Bartrand rubbed at his forehead. Red dust stained his temple wherever his fingers pressed. He looked down at his hand, grey and pulsing with lyrium, and choked on a sob, “What… Varric?”

All of the fight fled from Varric. All of the anger. He set Bianca aside, and knelt at Bartrand’s opposite side. “I’m here.”

“Varric, what have I done?” Bartrand started shaking, his expression a watery mix of fear and despair. “Why did I do all this?”

“I don’t know,” Varric reached for his shoulder, and seemed to change his mind, keeping his hands to himself, “I honestly don’t know.”

“Make it stop,” Bartrand picked up Bianca, thrusting the crossbow back into Varric’s hands. He must not have known the trigger for the bayonet, because nothing happened, but he pushed his chest against the weapon all the same, “Make it stop, please, don’t let me - … I know I don’t deserve it, but please Varric, don’t leave me like this. Make it stop, make it stop-”

“Enough with the speeches,” Varric hooked Bianca onto his back. “Blondie here is a healer, you’ll be fine-”

Anders shook his head.

Varric swallowed, and looked back at Bartrand. He was crying silently, red tears spilling from the corner of his eyes and leaving trails of pink in his ashen skin. “Why did you do it, Bartrand?”

“I just wanted to hear the song,” Bartrand explained, like a Warden after his Calling. Anders didn’t know what to make of it. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s-... I-... I know.”

“If you can’t help me - at least - at least don’t let House Tethras fall like this,” Bartrand said.

“I won’t,” Varric promised. He finally mustered up the wherewithal to touch him, reaching out to squeeze his brother’s shoulder. “I’ll take care of it. I’ve been taking care of it. I’ll… figure out how to take care of you too.”

They took Bartrand back to an estate that Anders didn’t even know Varric had owned. Apparently House Tethras had an entire mansion in the dwarven quarter of Hightown. Varric set Bartrand up in a room, under guard, and then walked him back to the Hawke estate.

“You okay?” Anders asked.

“No,” Varric laughed. “I almost wish you hadn’t wiggled your fingers and cleared Bartrand’s head. I liked it better when I just wanted to kill the bastard.”

Anders nudged him, “If I ever had any doubts about who my favorite brother was, they’re long gone.”

“Oh please, there was never any doubt,” Varric shoved him back. “I’m the handsome, irresistible, charming one. I’ll deal with Bartrand somehow. Maker, that’ll be even more of a joy than it used to be. I still can’t believe what he did in that house. It was one thing to walk away and leave us to die, but all that? Letting him live after all that? … What does Blue think?”

“Justice…” Anders tried to pull apart how they felt about it all, to decipher what was spirit and what was man, but it was too tangled. Whatever he and Justice felt, they felt it together. “... isn’t always vengeance. Sometimes justice is just… whatever you need it to be.”

“I don’t know what I need,” Varric sighed, “A stiff drink, maybe. I thought I was going to find him gloating, lying on a bed of gold and commissioning painters to commemorate the instant he sealed us in the Deep Roads… but that idol did worse to him than I ever could. Thank you for all this, Blondie. I owe you one.”

“You’re my friend, Varric. You don’t owe me anything.”

“You mind looking through Quentin’s research for me? Seeing if you can find out anything else about red lyrium? Maybe we’ll find some kind of cure for Bartrand in there.”

“Maybe. I’ll look.”

They parted ways. Anders went back into the estate, where chaos was waiting for him. The foyer was alive with servants, elves, and all manner of people. They ran from room to room, carrying linens, buckets, and other miscellany. Anders took a step back towards the door, when Isabela spotted him.

“He’s back!” The Rivaini pirate shouted, running across the foyer to grab his hand and drag him through the estate.

“What’s going on?” Anders asked.

“Fenris is hurt,” Isabela said.

“Who are all these people?”

“No time to explain!” Isabela shoved him into the room that had been previously occupied by Franke. It was still occupied by Franke, though the cobbler appeared to have fainted at the sight of blood. He’d been rolled up to one corner of the bed while Fenris sat on the other, an arm around Merrill keeping him upright. The Dalish was helping him with a cup of what Anders assumed was elfroot tea.

Hawke knelt behind him on the bed, a collection of bowls, towels, and poultices laid out at his side. All of them were dressed in armor and drenched in blood. Hawke looked up from Fenris’ back at his entrance, flicking a stray strand of hair out of his eyes, “Anders, we need you.”

“What happened?” Anders shrugged out of his coat and rolled up his sleeves. “Maker’s breath, this day is one disaster after another.”

“Slavers captured Fenris,” Merrill explained. “... They tortured him.”

“It was no torture,” Fenris coughed on a mouthful of tea, “For Hadriana, this was simply a conversation.”

“That Tevinter bitch is lucky you killed her so quickly,” Isabela knelt in front of Fenris, delicately brushing back his shock-white hair to reveal more lyrium markings on his forehead. “How’s the tea, sweet thing? You need any more?”

Anders took stock of him. From the front, Fenris was more or less fine. He was wearing a pair of loose fitting red trousers, and if any blood stained them, it blended seamlessly. The rest of him was bare, bruises purpling his wrists and throat between his brands, but nothing quite so severe as to warrant any panic. His back was something else.

He’d been whipped. Anders stood behind him with Hawke, struggling to process the damage. His skin was ripped open, diagonal strips of carnage as bright and red as the wrong kind of lyrium. Somehow, it didn’t break his markings, it just seemed to cut around them. Anders could still hear them, a sweet, lilting song that moved the soul to tears.

“Anders,” Hawke said, but it didn’t sound quite like his name. Anders - or Justice - or someone, turned to look at him. “Not a scar.”

“What?” They asked.

“Not a scar,” Hawke repeated. “Don’t let him live with this.”

“Kevesh,” Fenris rolled his shoulder, and choked on a pained snarl at the motion, “I do not need your pity.”

“Just let him help, sweet thing,” Isabela cradled his face, “The only scars on your back should be from my nails.”

“Do as you will,” Fenris muttered.

Fenris mended for their magic. Flesh was unrent, blood unspilled, injustice undone. Through it all, the lyrium sang. A lyrical, captivating sound so similar and yet dissimilar to that which they had just witnessed corrupting souls to madness. Both were ancient, and yet the one was calming. As if it had always been, and would always be, and shaped everything and everyone.

“It is done,” Justice noted when they finished.

“... You have my gratitude,” Fenris nodded to them. “... All of you.”

“Can stay if you want,” Hawke offered.

“You have guests enough as it is. I will not keep you.” Fenris stumbled to his feet, Merrill still under one arm.

“We’ll help you get home,” Merrill offered.

Isabela crossed the room to kiss their cheek, “Don’t forget this, sweet thing. You’re good sometimes.”

The three of them left. Justice listened to the song until it faded with the distance, and Hawke turned them about to face him. “... We need to talk. You and me. Not Anders.”

“I am Anders,” Justice reminded him, and yet, he wasn’t. Memories like motes of dust clung to Hawke, moments in time not meant for him. Calloused fingers plucking strings not meant for arrows, a deep bass singing a song as sweet as lyrium. Strong hands finding Anders in the dark, drawing hitching breath or no breath at all. A shaky, panicked gasp in the dead of night, quieted with the press of familiar lips and the warmth of mingled breath.

“Anders didn’t do this,” Hawke unbuckled his chestpiece, and wrenched down his tunic to reveal a burn in the shape of their hand. “Talk.”

“When I am only called upon for battle, does it not stand to reason that battle is all I know?”

“Not good enough,” Hawke said. “In battle, you’d still know we were allies.”

“Are we?” Justice had witnessed enough of Hawke’s hesitation to call such into question.

“Bardel?” Hawke pressed. “You think he wasn’t an ally?”

An unpleasant sensation washed over Justice. He paced to the opposite end of the room, but there was no escaping it. “... I had a friend. A dwarf. He called himself a berserker. In battle, he saw only enemies… I would liken my state now to his then.”

“Why now? Were you like this before?”

“It was not so overwhelming before,” Justice flexed their hands. He felt the press of their nails against his palm. The itch of their beard. The cool breath of air caressing their throat. The tension and pressure of their buckled armor. He tasted the copper tang of blood that hung in the room, through scent alone, even long after Fenris had gone. It was too much. He let go.

“... Anders?” Hawke guessed after a moment spent watching him.

“Guilty,” Anders shrugged. “... So look, not that you didn’t pick a great topic I would never want to change, but what happened with Fenris?”

Hawke started gathering up the supplies they’d laid out for the Tevinter fugitive. “Slavers captured him. Tevinter magisters. We tracked them down to a ship on the docks, and killed them before they could set out.”

“Magisters?” Anders repeated, hurriedly casting a rejuvenation spell that washed over Hawke like oil on water. “... You’re not hurt?”

“Why would I be?” Hawke asked.

“Because they’re magisters?” Anders guessed, “Are Sandal's runes really that powerful?”

Hawke shrugged.

“What about all those people in the foyer?” Anders asked, accepting a few bowls and towels Hawke handed him to carry.

“Slaves,” Hawke explained, “Ex-slaves… They had nowhere else to go. Who’s this?” Hawke nudged Franke. The cobbler snored.

“That’s Franke,” Anders explained. “His shop burned down. Well - A gang burned his shop down. I told him he could stay here. I’m sorry I didn’t ask.”

“Don’t have to ask,” Hawke shifted the bundle in his arms so he could kiss his cheek. His armor smelled like lightning. Like fire. Like the Fade, thrown at him with all the force a magister could muster, and yet, he seemed fine. Anders cast another rejuvenation spell, just in case. “... Mother’s dead. The estate is mine. I just -... means it’s yours too.”

The ex-slaves joined the apostates as servants, and the Hawke Estate finally seemed to function like an estate. One of them, a timid elf by the name of Orana, had brought a lute, and spent her evenings playing in the foyer. Hawke joined her on occasion. It seemed to be good for him. He played well, and he sang well (when the dog wasn’t joining in), and Anders listened to a handful of serenades on a handful nights, while he read through Quentin’s old research notes.

He wasn’t sure what he hoped to find for Varric. Something about red lyrium, and how it poisoned anyone who came into contact with it, or how to remove it or suppress it or make it less dangerous, or even its practical applications in necromancy. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but it was anything other than what he found. The note slipped out from between the pages of one of Quentin's many tomes, in an all too familiar script.

My dear friend,

I have obtained the grimoire you requested. I’ll leave it at our usual hiding spot. Please collect it as soon as possible. I would hate to see it in the wrong hands!

Your last letter was fascinating. You have proven me wrong, once again, by doing the impossible. I shouldn’t have doubted your resolve, and I hope you will keep me apprised of further progress.

Your friend and colleague,
O.

Notes:

Pariahs
A Free Man: The events of this chapter, as told from Fenris' perspective.

Chapter 112: Ser Cumference and the Terrible Tower

Summary:

Alternative Title: Pendulums of Justice

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you like the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon 2 Frumentum
Kirkwall Hightown: Hawke Estate

Anders was going to kill him.

A fury so cold it froze the very air shattered the note in his hand. Bits of frozen parchment fluttered to the floor, clinking on the hardwood. Orsino had lied. Anders had written to Orsino of his grimoire almost a year ago, and the First Enchanter had claimed to have no means of helping him reclaim it. Only to purchase it for Quentin.

Orsino had used him. Anders’ grimoire. Hawke’s eyes. Hawke’s mother. The countless victims of the Butcher of Lowtown. Orsino had helped Quentin with all of it. Orsino had encouraged it. Fascinating the letter had said. Jars upon jars of glass flashed before Anders’ eyes, filled with limbs and organs and eyes. Progress the letter had said.

Unbidden, Anders thought of the surgery. The strange scent of death mixed with honey and cinnabar. The operating table and Hawke laid out upon it. Cradling his lover’s face in his hands. Speculums holding open Hawke’s eyelids. Forceps clutching Amell’s eyes. Tendrils of blood magic and creationism tethering veins and nerves together. The lifeforce he could feel ebbing from Gascard, fueling his magic as he restored Hawke’s sight.

Anders had gone without nightmares for months. Standing over Quentin’s research, and Orsino’s support of it, the memory plagued him. Gascard’s screams. Merrill’s tears. Varric’s nausea. How little all of it meant to him. How easily the pendulum of justice swung between healer and executioner.

Anders wrenched himself free of the memory. It was done. There was no going back.

Executioner suited him fine.

A crow flew from the marble mansions of Hightown, through Kirkwall’s sandstone quarries, and out across the turbulent grey of the Waking Sea. The Gallows loomed, risen from the blackrock and buffeted by the waves. A beaconfire roared atop the foreboding tower, warning ships and freemen to steer clear. It was a warning the crow would have heeded, once, but no more.

The crow circled the tower windows, checking room after room. Eventually it came across a study walled in bookshelves, illuminated by a handful of wisps. A carved mahogany desk occupied the center of the room, where a lone elf with a receding hairline sat dressed in the thick woolen robes of a First Enchanter. A quill in his hand scratched away at a bit of parchment, to what nefarious end the crow couldn’t say. The crow didn’t care. The crow wanted him dead.

Anders exploded, lightning crackling between his fingers and making the hairs on his arms stand on end. Orsino jumped in his chair, knocking over his inkwell and soaking his papers in black.

"What in the-" Orsino started.

Anders grabbed the edge of the desk, and heaved it across the room. Ink sprayed like ocean foam, and the mahogany shipwrecked against the door, barricading entry and exit. "You helped him!" Anders advanced on the man. Orsino bolted, running for a spiral staircase that led up and away. A spectral hand burst through the Veil, grabbing the elf by his collar and flinging him into one of the many bookshelves. Grimoires rained down around him, and Orsino summoned a hasty spell shield.

"Help!" Orsino called out - to templars. To the only help to be found in such a place. To murderers, to oppressors, to malefactors and reprobates. Anders grabbed him by his throat and heaved him to his feet, slamming him against the shelves. More books fell. Anders' hand crackled with lightning and veilfire, eating through Orsino’s spellshield and snapping in the air between them.

"You helped him!" Anders repeated through grit teeth. "Their blood is on your hands, and you will repay it to the last drop."

"Helped who!?" Orsino tried to pry Anders' hand off him, and burned his palms for his efforts. He sucked in a pain breath, so wide-eyed with terror his eyes retained only the faintest whisper of green, "Whose blood?"

"First Enchanter - Is everything alright?" A voice echoed down the stairwell, accompanied by the sound of hurried footsteps.

Anders summoned a wall of flame across the entryway to cut off Orsino’s rescue. As quickly as he summoned it, the flames were dispelled. Bethany ran through the still smoldering remains of his spell, clutching her enchanter's robes about her knees and revealing bright yellow socks patterned with sunbursts. Leandra had knit them for her name-day a few months ago. Anders felt sick with something at the sight. Bethany couldn't have known the life she was so quick to save had ended so many others.

Bethany ran to Orsino’s side, amplifying his spellshield with her own. "Anders what are you doing!? Let him go! Orsino-"

"-has deceived you," Anders interrupted her, funneling more energy into his magic. Sparks roiled over Orsino like a storm. Mana drained from the Circle mages rapidly, exhaustion stumbling Bethany and leaving Orsino sagging in his grasp. "Tell her!"

Orsino refused. "Run child, get help-!"

Anders would wring a confession from his corpse. He shattered the spellshield, a shock of lightning tearing through the elf. Orsino screamed, convulsing against the shelf. Bethany reached for the Fade, but Anders reached with her, cutting off her spell before it cast.

"Anders, for Maker’s sake, stop!" Bethany begged, wrenching at his arm, amber eyes wide, "You're hurting him."

"I'm killing him," Anders corrected her.

"Why!?" Bethany grabbed Orsino instead. Anders cut off the spell before it electrocuted her; the static sent a few raven strands wisping away from her face. Orsino collapsed in her arms, gasping, grey hair frayed in all directions. "For Maker’s sake, why? Are you insane!?"

"He killed your mother!" Anders screamed at her. It wasn't how she deserved to find out, but she deserved to find out.

Bethany looked like he’d slapped her. "What? No… a man named Quentin Amell killed her… Garrett told me…" Bethany looked between the two of them. Orsino, shaking in fear, and Anders, shaking in rage. She slowly disentangled herself from the First Enchanter.

"Child, please, the templars -" Orsino wheezed, "The man is insane."

"... how?" Bethany asked, her voice barely a whisper.

"He was helping Quentin," Anders said, lightning still crackling between his fingers, rolling up his spine, coiling in his throat and echoing in his voice when he spoke. "Supplying him with grimoires. Supporting his research. This is all his fault!"

Not all. Deep down, Anders knew not all. Orsino hadn't taken Amell’s eyes and cost Hawke his. Anders had done that.

"... First Enchanter?" Bethany took a step back from Orsino.

"That's not true," Orsino coughed, massaging at his heart, "What happened to your mother had nothing to do with me."

"If your tongue spouts only lies we will relieve you of it," Justice threatened him, grabbing the old mage by his collar and dragging him back up to his feet. Static rippled over Orsino’s robes, "Speak the truth or your prayers."

"Alright! I confess! I knew Quentin!" Orsino tried to retreat from him, pulling himself along the shelves and stretching out his robes, "We were colleagues once. But I knew of his research only as conjecture! If I had known how far he was willing to go-"

"You would have done nothing!" Justice pulled hard on his robes, sending Orsino stumbling into his fist, winding him. "You knew it was more than conjecture, you bastard!" Anders added, "You don't dabble in necromancy!"

Something in Orsino seemed to snap. He broke Anders' hold on his robe with a blast of force magic too fast to block. "I had my suspicions!" Orsino screamed back at him. "But resurrection? A true restoration of the soul? Have you any idea the value of such magic? The advantage it would give us?"

"You fucking bastard," Anders' skin split with veilfire, bathing the study in the harsh emerald light of the Fade, and the Maker beyond it when Anders sent Orsino to him. "Do you have any idea how many people he killed!?"

"Mundanes!" Orsino spat, "Not mages. That was the agreement-"

Anders punched him. Justice helped. He heard a crack, and Orsino bounced off the shelves and hit the floor. Anders took a step towards him, but Bethany shoved herself between them, pushing ineffectual at his chest. "Stop! Just stop! You made your point."

Orsino spat out a mouthful of blood. A tooth glistened in the thick mess of red. He pulled himself up onto his knees, breathing hard. Bethany knelt beside him, just out of arm's reach. "Thank you, child," Orsino said, blood trickling over his lips.

"... my mother was not mundane," Bethany said, a hard edge to her voice that reminded Anders of her brother. "And I'm not your child. What did you do?"

"Nothing," Orsino rubbed at his purpling jaw, "I did nothing. We exchanged letters. I secured a handful of magical artifacts on his behalf. Nothing more."

"... in exchange for what?" Bethany's voice shook. A few books started floating. "What was my mother's life worth?"

"Is the knowledge of how to bring her back not enough?" Orsino asked.

"No."

"... Quentin was of Starkhaven," Orsino sat back. He was so weak he almost fell over. "He is the one who destroyed their Circle. He promised the same for us."

"What?" The books clattered to the floor as Bethany lost her hold on her magic, or the emotion fueling it. "Why-... why would you do that? Destroy the Circle? You're the First Enchanter!"

"Oh child, we have not had a First Enchanter for many years," Orsino said sadly. He looked up at Anders. "You know as well as I. Anders. You are A, I take it?"

"I'm your worst nightmare." Anders didn't believe him. Even if Orsino had changed his opinions on the Circle in the last year, it didn't justify it. One life for the lives of every mage in the Circle might have been a trade Anders understood. He might even have made it, but Quentin had killed scores. And he had killed them for Revka, not for the Circle. There was something else. Something Orsino wasn't telling them.

"I don't believe you," Bethany agreed with Anders for once. "We need the Circle. You know we need it. The templars watch out for us. We're safe here."

"Do they?" Orsino countered. "Were they watching out for you when they cast their smite on you last week?"

All at once, the veilfire faded from Anders. Justice was still there, waiting just behind his eyes, but Anders was the one who remembered the Circle. The smites. The templars. Their abuses. The crushing pain and mind breaking solitude. "... Beth?" Anders touched her shoulder.

Beth flinched away from him. "It was my fault… they thought I was trying to run…"

"You were just trying to buy flowers," Orsino corrected her, a weary smile on his bloody lips. Anders hated how easy it was to relate to it. "If we cannot lie to each other, let us also not lie to ourselves."

"So you helped him kill all those people… my mother…" Bethany stood up. She turned away from them both, pacing to the ruined bookshelf and running her hands through her hair. "... just so he would destroy the Circle?"

"I don't believe you," Anders picked Orsino up by his shoulders. Veilfire split through his skin, burning Orsino’s robes. Smoke and the scent of burning wool filled the air, stinging Anders' eyes, but at least he still had them.

"Maud!" Orsino screamed, waves of force magic erupting from him. They knocked over shelves, chairs, end tables. When they hit Anders they dissipated into the Fade. "It was for Maud!" Anders let go of him. Orsino smacked at his shoulders, flailing to put out the flames eating up his sleeves. "He promised to revive Maud - when he perfected the magic!"

"Maud?" Bethany repeated. She sounded almost disinterested in his answer, making no move to defend him as he backed away from Anders.

"A friend," Orsino licked his lips, to clear his blood or his nerves, "You can't kill me-"

"Watch me," Anders said.

"-Without also killing the Circle," Orsino summoned a spellshield alongside his defense. Both felt as thin as samite to Anders. Orsino squared his burnt shoulders in some semblance of defiance and desperation, "You think it is bad now? Who will stand up to Meredith when I'm gone?"

"I will," Bethany said firmly. "I'm your apprentice, aren't I?"

"A Ferelden refugee, hastily elevated to nobility to the resentment of half of Hightown and cousin to the Butcher?" Orsino laughed, "You've only been in the Circle a year. Meredith would never allow it. When First Enchanter Maceron died, she blocked the appointment of a successor for months! She claimed the Circle had no need for one. You weren't here. You don't know what those months were like. Without me, who will stay her hand? If you kill me, you kill us all."

His speech seemed to reach Bethany, to judge by the way her hands ran nervously through her hair and over her face, but it didn't reach Anders. "I still don't believe you," He said.

“What answer will appease you!?” Orsino snapped, throwing his hands in the air. One of his burnt sleeves ripped, and slid down to his shoulder. “Love for my people? Love for my friends? What more reason does a man need? Yes, his research was dangerous, but the things he achieved-”

“My mother’s death was not an achievement!” Bethany screamed at him.

“The resurrection of his wife was!” Orsino snapped back. “Quentin destroyed his Circle - and the phylacteries of every mage within it. When Kinloch fell, Uldred did not even come close to what Quentin did. Can you not see the power the man wielded? Can you not imagine the advantage it would have given us over the templars?”

“We don’t need an advantage over the templars!” Bethany argued, ripples of sonic energy amplifying each word and warping the floor beneath her. “We’re on the same side. They protect us from people like Quentin. From people like you!”

“Who is this for, child? The Knight-Commander? The Knight-Captain? Do you see them?” Orsino gestured around the wreckage of his study. His sleeve slipped off his arm, and fell in a crumpled heap on the floor. Orsino sighed like he had held his breath for decades. “... What of the Tranquil? Do you see them? …Are you not tired?”

“I’m tired of fighting to prove that not all mages are dangerous maleficarum, only to have the people I care about prove me wrong.” Bethany said. Her eyes flicked to Anders, but the daggers in them were dull. “If we keep pushing the templars, we can’t be surprised when they push back. The Rite of Tranquility… the Tranquil…”

“Karl,” Anders said.

Bethany looked away from him, “This isn’t how we fix it.”

“Then what is?” Orsino laughed.

“... How was he going to do it?” Anders asked.

“Do what?” Orsino asked.

“How was he going to destroy the Circle?” Anders clarified.

Orsino’s lips twitched into a weary smile, “How else? Magic.“

“Be more specific,” Anders’ hand crackled with lightning.

Bethany grabbed his wrist. “No. No one is destroying the Circle, and no one is killing Orsino.”

“Thank you-” Orsino started.

“I don’t want your thanks. You’re wrong - but the Circle does need you. It needs a First Enchanter.” Bethany looked back at Anders, “Does anyone else know?”

“Not yet,” Anders said.

“You can’t tell Garrett,” Bethany said.

Anders considered checking his ears for wax. “You want me to lie to your brother about how the First Enchanter helped kill his mother?”

“He won’t understand.”

“I don’t understand!” Anders countered.

“If you tell Garrett, then Garrett will tell the templars,” Bethany explained. “The templars will kill Orsino, and all it will do is prove that we can’t be trusted to govern ourselves. It's the one thing he's right about. The Circle only works if both sides have a voice.”

“The Circle never works!” Anders argued, “We need a revolution.”

“So you want to start one in Quentin’s name?” Bethany shot back.

Anders choked on his anger. It was a hard swallow, thick and viscous like old bile, but she was right. Anders hadn’t written his manifesto for Quentin - he’d written it for mages. If Anders was going to take the mantle of mage freedom back up, then it had to be for them, and they needed more than just the destruction of one Circle. They needed to break free of the Chantry. They needed the support of the common people. They needed the frameworks of a revolution that Anders had built with the Mage’s Collective, but Anders had ruined that relationship.

He didn’t want to ruin another.

“I can’t keep lying to him.” Anders said.

“You have to,” Bethany hissed. “You know Garrett. You know what he’ll do if he finds out. I don't like it, but killing Orsino will only make things worse for all of us. Please, Anders. If you really care about mages, you can’t just care about the best of us. You have to care about the worst of us too.”

A crow flew from the high tower of the First Enchanter’s quarters, but didn’t fly far. It settled on a statue in the Gallows’ courtyard, and watched the comings and goings of predator and prey. Its thoughts were tumultuous, barely contained by its diminutive form. Below, forehead after forehead was scored with sunburst after sunburst. Those prey who were unmarked moved hurriedly, heads down, as if afraid the predators might notice and seek to rectify their lack of a brand.

A loud snap cut through the crow’s thoughts, followed by a thunk and cut-off cry. The crow flittered on its perch, startled by the commotion below. A predator clutching a crossbow jogged across the courtyard to where another crow lay dead, impaled by a bolt. Void-dark feathers were scattered around it, glistening with hints of green and purple, and dripping with blood. The predator picked up the crossbow bolt, and swung the dead crow around with an exuberant cry.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Another predator asked.

“I got him!” The first predator declared, thrusting the dead crow at their peer, “I got the shapeshifter!”

“That’s just a fucking crow, man.” The second predator cringed, shoving the impaled crow away.

“No, it’s the shapeshifter!” The first insisted.

“Then wouldn’t he.. you know, shape shift back?” A third chimed in.

“... No… no? I don’t know.”

“I think he would. It’s not like he can keep casting magic if he’s dead.”

“No, shape-shifting isn’t channelled. He’d stay a crow.”

“How do you know? No one knows. It’s forbidden magic.”

“I know because some of us actually paid attention when we interrogated that Dalish Keeper, you dumb-”

“Shhh! Keep your fucking voice down.”

“Oh please, no one cares about knife ears. Why’d you think that was the shapeshifter anyway?”

“It was acting strange. Like it was watching us. I saw it pick up a copper someone dropped-”

“Crows just do that. They’re smart. You just killed a crow, man.”

“Are you crying?”

“I like crows!”

“Get over it. We have to stay vigilant. We can’t let that shapeshifter into the Gallows. Maker knows we don’t need the rest of the mages learning that kind of magic and just flying the fuck out of here.”

“Kind of wish they would. It would sure make my job a lot easier.”

“Shut up, man. And stop killing crows.”

The crow fled from the Gallows, and through the massive chasm that cut the City of Chains in half. Autumn winds howled through the blackrock of Darktown, bringing the grippe and all the ailments of winter. The crow’s flight took it to an old roost, where Anders landed. His old clinic was abandoned. The lantern hung unlit. Empty shelves, once filled with poultices, gathered dust and grime in the dark. It didn’t look like it had been raided, but Terrie was nowhere to be found.

Anders sat on one of his operating tables. He’d lost his revenge. He’d lost his clinic. He’d lost the Collective. What hadn’t he lost, besides Hawke? How long would Anders keep him if he had to lie to him? Anders stared at his hands, and the ripples of blue pulsing through his veins that told him Justice was with him. “What do we do?”

We act. Anders felt the words as clearly as if Justice had spoken them, but they didn’t help. He didn’t know what kind of action to take if he couldn’t take vengeance.

Orsino had been part of all of it, and there was nothing Anders could do about it. Bethany was right. As long as the Circle stood, the mages needed a voice within it, but that voice didn’t have to belong to Orsino. If they could get him to step down and appoint a successor, maybe…

Maybe what? Maybe Meredith would still be the Knight-Commander, and the mages would still be imprisoned and nothing would change. Maybe the Seeker of Truth would return with the proposal accepted by the Divine, and maybe it would be the Tranquil Solution.

Veilfire crackled at Anders’ fingertips. Anders watched the fire spread, and relaxed into the sensation. It felt warm. Like spectral hands caressing bare skin, over his arms, his shoulders, locking around his throat.

“We must make amends,” Justice said. The mortal world overwhelmed, but Anders didn’t. Justice narrowed his focus to the beat of their heart, a curiously rapid thing beneath their chest. “The Collective suffered a grave injustice at our hands. If you believe them to be the best path to freedom for all mages, they are the path we must walk. We must find some way to atone for what we have done.”

Justice let go. Anders sat with his advice. It was good advice, but if Anders couldn’t forgive himself, how could he expect anyone else to do the same? Hawke had forgiven him, but Anders didn’t trust himself to talk to Hawke just yet and not confess what he’d learned about Orsino. Isabela had forgiven him, but Isabela was Isabela. She might have supported the cause of mages, but she didn’t live it. She didn’t breathe it.

Merrill did.

Her advice couldn’t hurt. Anders went to visit her. The elven district felt vaguely reminiscent of the Gallows. A group of guardsmen patrolled by the stairwell that led down to the alienage courtyard and their great tree, casting suspicious glances at anyone coming or going. Elves moved about quickly, pulling up tattered hoods to cover pointed ears. Anders slipped into one of the many sandstone apartment buildings, decorated with graffiti of the forest, of halla, of another kind of freedom.

Inside, residents moved a bit more freely. They relaxed on the stairwell or played dice in the foyer, but froze when he passed. Reflective eyes followed him on his way up to Merrill’s door. It took a handful of knocks before she answered, her tattooed face peeking out at him from the sliver of an opening she allowed. “Oh, Anders! Hello! Come in! Can I get you anything? I have… water.”

“Hi Merrill,” Anders put on a smile, and Merrill ushered him inside. She was swallowed by a smock, the original color of which was anyone’s guess. Her slender fingers were covered in paint, smears of blue decorating her chin and cheek where she must have touched her face. “Am I interrupting?”

“Oh no,” Merrill wiped at her smock, and only seemed to get more paint on her hands, “I was just painting.”

Merrill waved at the canvas set up at her desk, and the face staring back at him almost made Anders forget the reason for his visit. “Fenris?”

“I’m so glad you can tell! It’s a surprise!” Merrill plopped down on the bench set out in front of her desk, moving a paint palette for him. “Promise you won’t tell him?”

“I’ll… try not to mention it the next never we talk,” Anders joined her, “... Is something going on? Things seem tense out there.”

“Oh no… Well, no more than usual. I suppose things are always happening whether we want them to or not, aren’t they? Actually, since you’re here, maybe you can help! There’s - oh dear, I didn’t even ask why you’re here. I’m sorry. Why are you here? Are we trying another shapeshifting lesson?”

Anders told her, leaving out what he needed to leave out. He wanted to work with the Mage's Collective again. He needed some way to earn their forgiveness. He wanted her advice on how to do it.

"I really don’t know,” Merrill admitted with a tiny shrug. “I don't suppose they have any ancient elven texts you could transcribe for them?” She teased, “Oh! Or maybe you could teach them shapeshifting!"

Anders tried to laugh. He tried to remember how. “Not into a crow. The templars know I can turn into one. I think I need a new form, but I’m not having any more luck with rats than you are with crows. I’m sorry about that, by the way.”

“Maybe I can help with that!” Merrill jumped up. “What if we’ve just been trying to learn the wrong forms? You said we needed to be able to relate to the forms we choose, so what if you tried to shapeshift into a cat? You love cats! There are mousers at the Circle, aren’t there?”

“I mean… sure, except I can’t actually get another cat. Animals aren’t big fans of abominations,” Anders reminded her. “Hawke is the only reason Dog hasn’t mauled me.”

“I think I have a fix for that,” Merrill said eagerly.

Anders thought of the last time he’d forced an animal to be comfortable with his presence, and shook his head. “I don’t want to use blood magic for this.”

“It’s not blood magic,” Merrill promised, running to her room and reemerging without her smock. She grabbed his hand, smearing it with paint, and dragged him out of her apartment, “A cat in the Lowtown market had kittens a while back, and I think they’re ready to wean.”

“You don’t pay attention to templars, qunari, or politics, but you notice kittens?” Anders asked, wondering why he was letting her lead him down the stairs and back out into the alienage. He didn’t want a cat. Not really. He couldn’t stand the thought of being handed a kitten and having the poor thing fling itself out of his arms in terror. He didn’t need to be reminded he was a monster. He proved it to himself every day.

“Templars, qunari, and politics don’t meow and attack your feet when you’re buying food,” Merrill countered.

“Look, Merrill, I appreciate it, but I’d really rather focus on the Collective right now,” Anders said.

“You can’t focus on more than one thing at a time?” Merrill asked, glancing back over her shoulder at him. She bumped into another elf, trying to navigate through the crowds, and threw out a hasty apology as they left the alienage for the markets.

“This is kind of a big thing.”

“Big things can be little things too. Sometimes you just need to look at them differently.”

“How is getting a cat going to get back into the Collective?”

“Maybe you could use it to sneak into their meetings, figure out what they want, and get it for them so they forgive you!”

“That’s a little roundabout, don’t you think?”

“So is asking me for forgiveness instead of them,” Merrill shrugged, “Why don’t you just say you’re sorry and see what happens?”

“I did. It didn’t matter.”

“So say it until it does.”

They stopped in front of a small stall in the bustling Lowtown markets that consisted of a plank covered with a tarp laid out over two uneven barrels. Piles of squash were rotting atop sprouting potatoes and parsnips and smelled uncomfortably ripe. After a brief exchange with the shopkeep, Merrill crawled under the tarp and emerged with a kitten.

A very fat kitten. The silver tabby had one bright green eye. The other had been ripped out. The kitten’s face was mauled all down the left side, mutilating its nose and leaving it with a small underbite. Merrill handed it to him. “They were afraid the injury would make it hard for him to eat, so I guess they’ve been overfeeding him.”

The kitten… didn’t hiss. It didn’t yowl. It scrambled into his coat, and found a comfortable spot in his armpit, where it settled in and started purring. Anders started crying. “I-... what? Can he-... can he not smell?”

“Not well, I don’t think,” Merrill said. “One of the guard dogs got him, a month or so ago.”

“And you just - … I can just have him?”

“Are you happy?” Merrill asked.

“Do I look happy?”

“No. Not at all. You look very sad, really.” Merrill admitted.

Anders couldn’t name the emotion. Whatever it was, it took his anger. It took his regret. It took his everything. He felt exhausted. He felt elated. The kitten let itself be carried back to Merrill’s apartment, where they set it on the floor to explore. It wandered aimlessly, bumping into furniture and chewing on the edges of books.

“What are you going to call him?” Merrill asked.

“Ser Cumference, I think.”

“He is rather pudgy, isn’t he?” Merrill giggled. “I’m glad you like him.”

“I just hope the dog doesn’t eat him,” Anders said, watching the kitten try and fail to jump onto one of the tables. “What did you need my help with?”

“What?”

“Earlier, you said I could help you with something,” Anders reminded her.

“Oh... It’s not for me, really. It’s for a friend of mine. Well, she’s not a friend, she’s Arianni’s friend, but Arianni is my friend, so-”

“What is it? If it’s a sex thing you don’t have to be embarassed, I’m used to healing - … well, everything.”

“It’s not a sex thing! Well… I mean… it’s sort of a sex thing… it’s just… tricky.” Merrill wrung her hands together and looked away from him. “... She was raped. We think it was one of the guards.”

“Flames,” Anders swore. “Of course it was. If it’s not the templars, it’s the guards, and if it’s not the guards, it’s the gangs. What did Aveline say?”

“She said she couldn’t do anything because we don’t know who it was, “ Merrill confessed. Her voice was level but her fists clenched. “My friend - Arianni’s friend - she won’t talk. She hasn’t talked. Not since it happened. I just-... maybe you can make sure she’s okay? Not that she would be okay after-... but her brothers are worried.”

“Of course I will,” Anders promised.

“Have you ever… healed something like that before? In the Circle?”

“All the time,” Anders wished he hadn’t.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t believe in your cause at first. I’m sorry I didn’t want to help. I just-... I had my own cause.”

“I did the same thing to you,” Anders reminded her.

“I’m glad we’re friends again,” Merrill smiled.

“... You really do forgive me, don’t you?” Anders asked. “Even after everything I’ve done.”

“Of course I forgive you, Anders.”

“I accused you of stealing my grimoire. I almost killed Isabela. I bloody sacrificed someone. Merrill, that’s not even half of it.”

“I still forgive you,” Merrill squeezed his hand, smearing it with more blue paint. “I think the Collective will forgive you too.”

“Why?”

“Because the mages need someone like you, the same way my People need someone like me. You believe. In freedom, in mages, in good spirits and bad templars. With more fire than the sun. You just need to be more careful... A lot of things burn in that fire.”

Chapter 113: The Calm Before

Notes:

The second half of this chapter is something you may have already read on my tumblr, though the scene has been slightly edited to fit this chapter. Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, kudos, subscriptions, and bookmarks, but most of all thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:33 Dragon 4 Frumentum Early Afternoon
Kirkwall Docks

The docks were quiet, save for the wail of gulls and the push and pull of the tides beneath the peer. Kirkwallers skirted the edges of the qunari compound in silence, speaking in nervous glances. Things were… not good.

The qunari had been in talks with the Viscount when one of their delegations had gone missing. The general consensus was that the guard was involved. The worse consensus was that the Chantry was as well. There wasn’t exactly a plethora of military organizations keen on ejecting the horned giants from the city that could take on one of their delegations.

Anders was no friend of the guard or the Chantry, but he understood the hate. Kirkwall was well on its way to becoming a second Kont-aar. One qunari settlement on the continent was one too many as far as Anders was concerned. Two? He might as well sew his lips shut and get it over with.

But Kirkwall had maintained a tentative truce for years. The city kept the qunari supplied and the qunari kept out of their way. Their compound housed hundreds of soldiers that could have otherwise been out on the streets with the rest of Kirkwall’s gangs. Anders hated the foreign fanatics as much as the next mage, but provoking them was suicide.

Then again, so was what Anders was about to do. Anders stared at the Collective packaging house, sea breeze heavy with brine whipping a few loose flaxen strands about his face. Graffitied on the front of the building was the symbol of the Friends of Kirkwall - the vague shape of dragon in rust red. Anders hoped the tag was just a tag, and not a sign that the Mage’s Collective had crumbled without him.

Anders knocked on the door. “Package delivery.”

Donal opened it. He looked like a qunari, if you took away the horns, the grey skin, the rope armor, the warpaint, the zealtroy, and the qunari.

He was huge and intimidating. Anders craned his head back and smiled up at him. “Hi Donal.”

“Don’t think I’m supposed to let you in,” Donal said, with a glance over one of his massive shoulders. Behind him, parcels were stacked high and tied with twine, and somewhere behind them was the rest of the Collective. Assuming they still met on the same days at the same times.

“Who is it, love?” Selby’s voice called from the back.

“Should prolly go, Anders,” Donal rolled his fingers along the edge of the door, but didn’t slam it in his face. That had to count for something.

“I just want to talk,” Anders said.

“Don’t think they wanna talk to you,” Donal said.

“Donal, love?” Selby called again.

“... Come in I guess,” Donal stepped out of his way and Anders stepped inside. The scent of salt and fish was fainter in the packaging house, muddled by the musk of parchment and sawdust. Anders navigated a maze of parcels and boxes to the backroom, where Selby and three other members of the Mage’s Collective were talking.

The old Mage’s Collective leader had advanced from cane to chair in the few short months Anders had been gone. It resembled an arm chair with wagon wheels, and Anders counted it a small mercy it seemed comfortable. Evon stood on one side of it, a scarf hanging off one ear that was doubtless meant to cover the tattoos on his face. A woman Anders didn’t recognize stood on the other.

Bancroft stood in front of Anders. The fake-tranquil vaulted the table to reach him, grabbing a fistful of his robes and snarling, “No! No! No! You don’t get to be here.”

“I just want to talk,” Anders pried Bancroft’s hand off him, “I won’t stay.”

“There’s nothing you can say that we want to hear,” Bancroft said, shaking the hand Anders had touched like it was covered in shit, “We don’t talk to abominations.”

“He’s still Anders, Bancroft,” Evon argued. “At least hear him out.”

“He doesn’t look like an abomination,” The strange woman added.

“He doesn’t need to,” Bancroft spat. He was practically foaming. “You can’t shake a demon’s hand and say it’s just a joke. Only an abomination could have the strength to collapse the tunnels beneath the Gallows and live. Get out. Get out before I do something I’ll regret.”

“Whose packaging house is this?” Selby finally spoke up, spinning one of the wheels on her chair so she faced Anders and Bancroft. “Whose Collective?”

“M.S. you can’t possibly-”

“Whose is it?” Selby demanded.

Bancroft bowed his head, “... Yours.”

Selby wheeled her chair around the table. A quilted blanket was draped over her legs, and Anders couldn’t help the cleansing aura he let wash over her. Her joints were swollen - a pain she’d live with the rest of her life. Anders could alleviate the inflammation temporarily, but it would always come back. He must have helped, at least a little, because Selby’s frown deepened.

“Well?” Selby demanded, “Let’s hear it.”

“I’m sorry,” Anders said.

“Anything else?”

“I want to help.”

“Is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“Donal,” Selby called loudly. The massive doorman’s head poked around the door so fast he’d either been eavesdropping or learned to teleport. “Get the book.”

Bancroft made a choking sound, “M.S. you’re not seriously-”

Selby hissed at Bancroft the way a person hissed at a dog. Bancroft sat like one. Selby looked back to Anders. “You don’t come back here. These meetings aren’t for you. You want to help - you get a job. You want to help more - you get another job. Can you reopen the Rose clinic?”

Anders shook his head. Harlan might have let him work at the Blooming Rose while Lilley was alive, but with her dead, Anders didn’t have any contacts left in the Coterie. The gang was in shambles after their civil war over Hawke, and Anders doubted the survivors were in any mood to make concessions for the lover of the man who’d killed half of them.

“The one in the Darktown then?” Selby pressed.

“I can do that,” Anders said.

“Then you do it.” Selby said. “If we need you, we’ll find you.”

It was better than nothing. Anders would take it. “Okay.”

“Go on then,” Selby nodded at the door.

Anders hesitated, wondering how long he could push his luck lingering, “... What happened to Terrie?”

Bancroft laughed.

“Gone,” Selby said. “She joined the Resolutionists. We haven’t seen her for months.”

“Dalian?”

“With us. More than that’s not your business anymore.”

“... I’m sorry. For Bardel. For the tunnels-”

“Leave now, love,” Selby cut him off.

Anders left. He took a handful of commissions for the Collective from Donal, and went back to the estate. Anders wasn’t sure what he’d expected to come away from the exchange feeling, but ‘relief’ had been low on his list, a few rungs beneath ‘shame’ and ‘despair.’ It wasn’t forgiven, but Anders didn’t need it to be. It was a chance, and he wouldn’t waste it.

It might take months, or years, but Anders would be ready when he could finally help with more than just commissions. He could feel his excitement tangled together with Justice at the prospect of progress, but picking deep mushrooms wasn’t exactly the best outlet for it. Shapeshifting was. If there was anything that would have an easy time of knocking phylacteries off the templars’ shelves, it was a cat.

He found Ser Cumference in the inner courtyard, sleeping on top of the mabari. Leandra’s garden had been converted into a training yard, complete with an archery range and a few training dummies. Hawke was in the process of punching the straw out of one, and had been for a while to judge by the sweat glistening on his shoulders and catching in his chesthair. Anders forgot what he was doing, and sat on a bench to watch him.

Hawke seemed to be doing better. Anders needed him to be doing better. A man could only listen to so many serenades before he expected the serenader to act on them, but Hawke had been distant since the surgery. Emotionally. Physically. They still talked. Hawke still touched him, but he hadn’t taken him to bed but once since the incident.

Anders wished he knew why, but Hawke hadn’t told him. Not really. He had a handful of excuses. He was tired. He had to wake up early. He needed a bath. Not tonight. But the last never turned into ‘maybe tomorrow.’ There were a handful of things Hawke hadn’t told him that Anders desperately wished he would. Like why all the mirrors were still covered in tarps, and he couldn’t seem to stand his reflection, despite how little it had changed.

Anders could guess, but they weren’t good guesses. He’d rather know, and know how to fix it. He’d fixed things with the Collective, or near enough. Fixing things with Hawke couldn’t be that difficult. Anders listened to the thud of Hawke’s fists battering straw for a while longer before he cleared his throat.

“I think you won,” Anders said.

Hawke laughed, ceasing his onslaught to lean on the dummy’s shoulder, and ran a hand through his sweat damp hair. Anders watched the way the strands feathered about his face and all its scars, and loved him so much he felt sick with it. “How’d it go?”

“It went,” Anders shrugged. “They’re letting me take commissions again.”

“It’s a start,” Hawke agreed, unwrapping the bandages around his hands, “You ready for lunch?”

Anders caught Hawke’s wrist when he made to leave, “Actually, I was thinking maybe we could talk.”

Hawke stared at his hand, “We’re talking right now.”

“I mean about us,” Anders stood up to run his hands over Hawke’s chest, enjoying the steady rise and fall, the dark hair damp with sweat, the scent of exertion that clung to him and wishing it was all for other reasons.

“What about us?” Hawke pushed a few strands of hair back from Anders' face. Rather ineffectually. The loose strands fell right back into his eyes.

“That’s kind of my question, actually. Are we alright?”

“Why wouldn’t we be?”

“Because we haven’t… you know... caboodled in a while.”

“Caboodled?” Hawke snorted.

“Sex,” Anders clarified. “I would like to have sex.”

“We have sex.”

“Was I invited?”

“Well it wasn’t with Justice,” Hawke joked.

“I’m serious,” Anders hated himself for laughing. He wasn’t going to let Hawke deflect his way out of this conversation. “I’m here for you, but you’re not using me.”

“You want to be used?” Hawke raised an eyebrow at him. If they’d been playing Wicked Grace, Anders would have folded then and there for his expression. Hawke looked like Anders had dealt him a hand he could do anything with.

“Is that on the table?” Anders asked playfully, “Because I’m on the table. I’ll get on the table right now.”

Hawke laughed, and lost the expression. He pulled Anders’ hands off his chest and kissed his knuckles. “I have to take a bath.”

“How do you know?” Anders chased after him when he left the courtyard, “When is the last time you looked in a mirror?”

“Anders…” Hawke stopped on the stairs to the second story with a frustrated sigh, scratching at his scalp.

“Will you at least tell me why they’re all covered?”

Hawke looked away from him. Anders hated it. Hawke looked away from everyone except Anders. Something about eye-contact felt intimate to Hawke, and made it feel intimate to Anders in turn. Just catching his eye in public felt like a passionate kiss surrounded by voyeurs, and Anders had come to love it. He hated having it taken away.

“They’re not mine,” Hawke said. “I look in the mirror and I can tell. I know you can tell too.”

“I don’t see anyone but you,” Anders caught his jaw, and turned his eyes back to him. “I love you, Hawke.”

“It’s not about my cousin. I don’t care that they’re his - I know you love me. I just know they’re not mine. They look wrong. I just… I don’t know, Anders.”

“You’ll never get used to them if you don’t look at them.” Anders said.

“I’m going to take a bath,” Hawke left him downstairs. Anders thought of chasing after him, but he didn’t want to push it. He went back to the courtyard, and almost lost a few fingers prying Ser Cumference away from the dog to practice his shapeshifting. He was still practicing when Hawke came back down in full armor, bow case and quiver slung over his shoulder.

Anders scrambled to his feet, and jogged into the foyer after him, “Job?”

“Thought I’d go hunting,” Hawke explained. “... You want to come?”

“I think I made that pretty clear,” Anders joked. “Is that an option?”

Hawke rolled his eyes, but he grinned, “Might be.”

“I’ll get my cloak,” Anders ran up the stairs, and won a real laugh for it. He grabbed his cloak from his armoire, and was on his way back out when noticed the mirror on Hawke’s side of the room. The tarp had been pulled off, and lay in a crumpled heap at its base.

Anders grinned the entire trip to the Planasene Forest. He couldn’t not. Hawke’s tentative promise - Anders was going to call it a promise - of sex occupied his imagination, conjuring one vivid scenario after the next. The road to the forest was lined in crumbling cobblestone walls, the perfect height for one man to sit and another to kneel. The trees were thick, and would have served as well as Circle pillars for privacy. Oblivious to his fantasies, Hawke kept walking, and it was with no small amount of disappointment Anders eventually realized he actually did want to go hunting.

Hunting was agony.

Hawke was beautiful.

Hunting was agony because Hawke was beautiful.

Broad shouldered, with dark leather armor cinched tight around a powerful form and covered with an impractical amount of buckles. Anders couldn’t imagine how he was supposed to get the damn things off, but Maker, he wanted them off. Hawke’s jerkin looked like it had been invented to torment him. There were at least four straps, two belts, a harness… And that was just the jerkin. The man’s boots were practically made of buckles.

They had plenty of privacy. They didn’t need to keep delving into the forest after whatever it was Hawke was after. It could wait. Anders couldn’t. Hawke didn’t seem to grasp how badly Anders ached for him. Even without the promise - tease? - of sex, Anders would have come just to watch him. Hawke moved like he was dancing. Anders had never seen a man step lighter. His feet barely touched the ground, moving soundlessly through the forest in pursuit of his quarry.

Anders could have been his quarry. All Hawke had to do was turn around and take him. He would have been an easy catch, crunching every other autumn leaf that covered the forest floor, but Hawke was ignoring him. There was no other explanation. Anders sighed. Loudly. Hawke held up a hand for silence. His hands were gloved, more flaming buckles, but they could string a man out as easily as they did his bow.

Maker’s breath, Anders wanted to be strung out. Tense and trembling in Hawke’s arms, pinned to a tree or the forest floor, while Hawke used him for his own pleasure. He wanted it more than he wanted whatever they were hunting, but Hawke wasn’t paying him any mind, and it was killing him. It had been killing him for weeks. Anders knew Hawke needed time after everything he’d been through, but he was still a man.

A man Anders loved in every sense of the word. A man Anders wanted to be loved by in turn. A man Anders needed to know still loved him after everything Anders had done. A man in so many damn buckles it put Sebastian’s chastity belt to shame. Anders tried to put it out of his mind, but the way Hawke moved left him failing rather spectacularly. He wasn’t the sort of person a man could ignore.

The tracks they were following led down a steep hill, and Hawke slid gracefully after them. His boots carved a path through the underbrush, fingers of his free hand trailing through the dirt for balance until he reached the bottom of the valley. Anders followed slowly, practically crawling down the hill after him. When at last he caught up to where Hawke was waiting for him, he was chuckling.

“What?” Anders demanded, collecting his balance and his dignity.

“Nothing,” Hawke said, but he was finally staring at him. Maker, Anders had missed the eye-contact. There were volumes in those eyes, if only because they belonged to Hawke.

“You were laughing,” Anders reminded him.

“Chuckling,” Hawke corrected him, grinning.

Anders frowned, “You have me alone, in the middle of nowhere, and you could do whatever you want with me, and you’re making fun of me.”

“Can I?” The offer drew a raised eyebrow from Hawke, and kindled a fire in his eyes that burned hotter and hotter as Anders stalked up to him. His armor, however, stayed stubbornly buckled.

“Well?” Anders demanded.

“I didn’t say anything,” Hawke said, but he didn’t need to. A streak of kaddis painted the bridge of his broken nose a shade of crimson to match his eyes, and they said everything Hawke didn't. Those eyes burned through layer after layer of clothes, until Anders swore he could feel the heat of Hawke’s gaze on his skin. Still untouched, despite the tension building in the ever-narrowing space between them.

“You said a lot,” Anders countered.

“Did I?” Hawke asked, voice so deliciously low it made Anders’ knees weak.

“You did, in fact,” Anders traced one of the straps on Hawke’s armor. There were so many damned buckles he didn’t know where to start. “You said you haven’t been able to take your eyes off me since we got out here… That I’m the most handsome man you’ve ever seen… That my looks are rivalled only by my magic...”

“I have a lot to say,” Hawke noted.

“You’re a talker,” Anders agreed.

“Anything else?” Hawke asked.

"That you can't wait to get out of this armor," Anders reached to undo one of the buckles, but Hawke caught his wrist and pinned him against a tree. The suddenness of it took Anders' breath away, and had him stuttering to reclaim it.

"I think you misheard me," Hawke said, the scent of him clouding Anders' thoughts with leather and sweat and the tantalizing promise of more.

"That you um - you can't wait to get me out of these robes?" Anders guessed.

"There you go," Hawke unbuckled Anders' belt without ever taking his eyes off him. "What else?"

Anders swallowed, struggling to string together a coherent thought while all the blood rushed from his head. He’d wanted this. He’d practically begged for it, but he hadn’t been expecting the intensity of it. Hawke slid a hand beneath his trousers, mapping his length over his smalls, watching his reaction. Anders groaned; his knees nearly buckled, hips jerking into Hawke’s hand.

Hawke leaned forward, teeth grazing his ear, "What else?" He asked again, hot breath spilling across Anders’ neck. Anders turned to kiss him, but Hawke pressed their foreheads together, keeping his lips out of reach.

Anders fought back a whine, "You - Maker’s breath - you've been waiting to touch me." Anders' hips rocked to the rhythm of Hawke’s unhurried strokes. Hawke murmured a sound of agreement, carving a wet path with teeth and tongue down to Anders’ collarbone. Anders buried his hands in Hawke’s hair, holding him to his neck while every sharp bite and hard suck went straight to his cock.

"And?" Hawke asked, the sensation of his beard moving against his skin making him shiver.

"And you love the way I feel,” Anders continued. Hawke gripped him encouragingly in response, drawing a needy whimper. “You - Maker - you love - I don't know, Hawke- "

"Keep going," Hawke ordered, sliding his free hand beneath Anders’ tunic. The leather felt surprisingly smooth against his skin, his thumb moving in lazy circles around his nipple, worrying it to a stiff peak. Anders bit down a moan, his breath hitching as Hawke tweaked and pinched and teased.

Anders arched against Hawke’s exacting touch. He clutched at Hawke’s hair, desperate for purchase, silken strands sliding between his fingers. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take. The slow caress through two layers of fabric was torturing him, and Hawke didn’t seem in any hurry to end it. “You want - You want me in your mouth.”

"How bad?" Hawke finally let go of him to unbuckle his gloves. Anders felt like he’d been pulled apart. None of him connected. He was just dry lips and trembling thighs, heaving lungs and aching cock.

"Bad," Anders took a deep breath to steady himself, "You can't wait to taste me."

Hawke cupped the back of his neck and pulled Anders in for a kiss so urgent it was almost crazed. Hawke was everything. Anders’ needy whimper turned to moans, and he clung to Hawke while his lover’s hands explored his body. Massaging his neck, gripping his ass, kneading his hips. Putting him back together as easily he’d taken him apart.

Hawke pulled back from him, and dropped to his knees, taking Anders’ trousers and smalls with him. Anders’ cock was stiff and throbbing and nothing had ever felt more perfect than Hawke’s hands on him, warm and slick and free of gloves. Hawke kissed his hips, spreading the fluid leaking from Anders’ cock down his shaft in slow strokes.

“Fuck, Hawke,” Anders squirmed, clutching at Hawke’s hair, “Please just-”

Hawke glanced up at him, dragging his tongue along his length. He looked perfect on his knees, red eyes so hot they burned. “Do what you want,” Hawke murmured, taking him into his mouth. The warm, wet embrace sent a shock of ecstasy through his veins, and Anders groaned. He fisted his hands in Hawke’s raven hair, guiding him along his length in slow, deep thrusts.

Hawke unmade him until he was nothing but sensation. Pleasure thrummed madly with Anders' pulse, curling his fingers and toes, and escaped in broken gasps every time Hawke hollowed his cheeks and sucked. “Fuck - Hawke - that's so good -” Hawke caressed his trembling thighs, covered in a smattering of auburn hair gone dark with sweat, keeping him warm despite the wind.

Anders' soft and drawn out moans echoed through the forest beneath the slick sound of Hawke pleasuring him. He couldn’t hear Hawke, but he could feel him. His groans vibrated on Anders' cock, low and hungry, and sent shivers of pleasure running up his spine. Anders could feel his end like a knot of ecstasy he was desperate to unravel. "I'm right there - I'm right there -"

Hawke gave his thighs an encouraging squeeze. Anders pulled him low on his cock, thrusting jerkily into his throat as he road out his end in thick, white hot waves of ecstasy that filled Hawke’s mouth to overflowing. Anders let him go when he finished, gasping and struggling to catch his breath in the aftermath of his climax. His whole body throbbed, a pleasant ache that tingled in his hands and feet and rang softly in his ears.

Hawke pulled him down to the forest floor with him. His beard was damp, and scent of sex clung to him when he pulled Anders in for a kiss. Anders felt comfortably drained, relaxing in Hawke’s arms while his hands ran in mindless sweeps over his powerful back. "You good?" Hawke murmured.

Anders shook his head. He could never have enough of Hawke. "Give me a minute."

His minute became two, and two became more. Hawke held him, slowly stripping him of the rest of his clothes. He unbuckled Anders' cloak and coat, pushing them off his shoulders and laying them out beside him. His tunic followed, Hawke dragging it up over his shoulders. The only thing left was his trousers and smalls, crumpled and caught at his boots.

"You hear the rest of what I said?" Hawke rekindled their game, tugging at his ear with his teeth.

"You-..." Anders took a slow breath, feeling his pulse start to race again at the promise in Hawke’s voice, "You want to fuck me."

"How?" Hawke’s hands walked down his back, pressing lightly on either side of his spine, kneading the tension from him. Relaxing him. Readying him.

"You want to take me right here, on my knees," Anders said shakily, swept up in thought of him. Of being had by him. Of being claimed by him. "You want to fuck me into the ground."

"Oil," Hawke tangled their hands together. Anders pulled for the Fade, a breath of creationism slicking Hawke’s hands.

Hawke freed him of the last of his clothes, and turned him around, pushing him down. Anders' elbows hit his coat and his knees hit the ground. The dirt chaffed against his skin, but it was everything he’d asked for. He felt Hawke’s hands massaging their way up his thighs, pausing to stroke his cock where it hung heavy between his legs. The slick warmth dripping from Hawke’s fingers coated his length, sending eager shivers up his spine.

“Fuck Hawke,” For one wildly irrational moment, Anders felt moved to tears at his touch. He felt them stinging at the corners of his eyes, and blinking lost a few to his lashes. “I missed you.”

“You’ve always had me,” Hawke promised, working two fingers knuckle-deep inside him. The perfect stretch of his fingers filling him sent a shiver of ecstasy through Anders. It pulsed in his cock, tangling up gasps in his throat, and a crook of Hawke’s fingers left him seeing spots. “Breathe,” Hawke had to remind him.

“I’m breathing,” Anders lied, but Hawke didn’t leave him with a choice. His shallow thrusts wrung one hard gasp after the next from Anders’ throat, “Fuck - I’m breathing.”

Hawke held the nape of his neck, rocking him back onto his fingers, fucking him open for his cock. The exquisite sensation of being stretched, being filled, being taken left Anders a mess of broken cries and trembling limbs. Anders clutched at his hair, damp strands slipping through his fingers and sticking to his forehead. "Please, Hawke, I want it, I want it, I want it," Anders whimpered.

Hawke pulled from him, and left him feeling painfully empty while he readied himself. Anders heard shuffling, and the click of too many belts before Hawke’s hands were on him again. Calloused fingers gripped his hips, holding him steady, and Anders felt the press of Hawke’s cock against his aching flesh.

He pushed into him with a deliberate slowness, forcing him to feel every inch. He was so thick. There was so much of him. Anders felt stretched to the edge of burning. He writhed beneath him, caught somewhere between whimper and moan as Hawke took him. He felt aflame, pleasure burning through his veins and pulsing in his cock with every shallow thrust of Hawke’s hips.

"There you go," Hawke murmured, shifting his grip back to a possessive hold on Anders' neck, "That's what you want."

"Oh fuck yes," Anders drew in a sharp breath, "Harder."

"You want to be fucked," Hawke obliged him, lengthening his thrusts, hitting a spot deep inside him that sent waves of pleasure crashing through Anders, and spilling out his throat in wild moans.

The sound of their sex rang in Anders' ears. Skin connecting with skin, Hawke moving inside him, their mingled breath, Hawke’s harsh grunts and Anders' needy moans. The rustle of legs shifting and adjusting as Hawke seemed to drive deeper and deeper inside him.

Anders was so hot he felt like he was melting. He could feel the sweat running down his arms, the inside of his thighs, gathering in the small of his back. It was all he could do to stay upright, face buried in his hands, sweat and saliva catching on his palms as he gasped into them. "I love you," Anders choked out.

"Keep talking," Hawke grunted.

"I love you so much," Anders managed, somehow. "Harder - fuck me -"

Hawke shifted his grip, a hand on Anders' head pushing him into his coat. Anders' elbows gave out on him, his cheek chaffing against the leather with every thrust. He barely felt it. His veins felt like liquid flame, pleasure coursing through every inch of his trembling body, aching for release. "Hawke, I'm - I'm right - "

Hawke wrapped a firm hand around Anders' leaking cock, and Anders lasted a handful of strokes before he came apart. His climax felt an inferno of ecstasy, burning in his veins, blazing across his skin, and leaving him breathless and spent. He felt a profound sort of emptiness, but Hawke was still filling him.

Every thrust sent shockwaves through Anders' overstimulated body. It left him trembling, broken gasps spilling from his lips with every snap of Hawke’s hips. "Ha-ah-Hawke," Anders whimpered. "Don't- ah - don't stop -"

"Almost-" Hawke fisted one hand in Anders’ hair, and gripped his hip with the other. His hips connected with Anders' thighs with every quick thrust, the slap of skin on skin barely audible over the sounds spilling from Anders' lips. It was too much, and somehow not enough, and Anders never wanted the moment to end. He felt sore, and stretched, and completely overwhelmed.

He didn't exist beyond Hawke. Beyond being Hawke’s in this moment. He’d needed this like he'd never needed anything. Hawke taking him, taking all of him, his sins and his flaws and his failures, and still wanting him. Still loving him, Anders' name on his lips as he filled him.

Anders felt empty when Hawke pulled from him. He lay on his coat, boneless, the autumn air chilling the sweat on his skin. Hawke caressed his thighs, occasionally slipping his fingers inside him, still slick with his release.

"You're beautiful," Hawke said.

"Obviously," Anders joked.

"You good?"

"Mhm…. Are you?"

"I think we lost the deer," Hawke said.

Anders chuckled, dragging himself up onto his knees and twisting to face Hawke. "That's not an answer."

"No," Hawke agreed. He cupped Anders' face, his thumb moving in a gentle caress over the stubble gracing his jaw. "This was good. You needed this. I needed this, but after everything… I'm not good, Anders. You know I'm not."

Anders laid his hand atop Hawke’s, "What can I do?"

Hawke kissed him, long and slow and sweet, until the chill autumn air left then shivering in each other's arms. "What you're doing."

Notes:

Pariahs
Ir Abelas, Ir Abelas, Ir Abelas: The continued progression of Isabela/Fenris/Merrill's relationship.

Chapter 114: The Storm

Notes:

Thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter :>

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:34 Dragon 17 Ferventis Late Morning
Kirkwall Darktown: The Darktown Healer’s Clinic

Justice scrubbed at the blood staining their surgery table. Chunks of flesh and muscle sloughed off the edge, landing in the gutters with a wet splash. It seemed a shameful thing to discard them so, but they were not in the Fade. Pieces meant less to mortals than the whole, for some reason, and most of the woman had gone to the funeral pyre.

It had been a good death. They had ensured it. But it was a death, all the same. Anders did not take them well. Justice thought that strange. It seemed a thing to which he should be accustomed. The woman had suffered terribly before their intervention. The refugees had brought her to them in pieces. A leg here. An arm there. The whole of her ripped open from chest to hip. The pieces, they could mend, the blood, they couldn’t. She’d lost too much of it.

She’d passed as painlessly as they could manage. They’d held a small service for her friends and family, Anders reading a few verses from the Chant of Light he held so dear, and then returned to their clinic, where he’d retreated. Justice did not mind so much anymore. It was good to feel the breath of the mortal world, without the call of battle.

When he finished cleaning, Justice went to the edge of the clinic, open to the chasm splitting the city, and sat on the blackrock. The wind caught in his hair, wisping a few strands free of their tie, and not for the first time Justice thought they should cut it. Anders stirred, a sense of malaise washing over him, and Justice battled it back with assurances. No changes would befall their form without Anders’ consent, whatever Justice’s feeling on the matter.

It was an otherwise agreeable form. Justice traced over the scars on their arms, thinking of the woman and her injuries. Surely there was a practical application of blood magic that could benefit them in such scenarios. Something to restore a person’s blood or transfuse it from one body to another. It was a shame the magic was not studied more broadly to the benefit of those in need. Perhaps it was something they could rectify.

Smoke carried on the wind, interrupting his thoughts. Justice leaned out over the edge of the chasm, scanning the horizon. It seemed to be coming from the docks.

Curious.

“Healer!” A refugee burst into the clinic. They were dripping blood, “We need help!”

“What is it?” Anders hurried to their side, but a cursory check assured him the blood wasn’t theirs. “Who is it?” Anders revised.

“We found her on the lift!” The refugee explained, dragging him out of the clinic. Their hand was slick with blood, and slid out of Anders’ own as they took off through the tunnels. Maker, please don’t let it be another trap. The refugee rounded a corner, and Anders heard the commotion before he saw it.

“Hang on, dearie, the healer will save you,” Someone said.

“Just a little further,” Promised another.

Anders rounded the corner. There were no templars waiting for him, but his relief was short lived. A handful of refugees were carrying Isabela. The pirate was wearing armor, for all the good it had done her. Her buckler hung broken from one limp arm, and her rapier was missing. Deep brown leathers were dyed an ugly black with her blood, spilling from the spear sticking out of her stomach. After all the years they’d spent with him, the refugees knew better than to remove it.

“There he is! You’re safe now, girl.”

“Her leg is broken; we think she fell down the lift, messere.”

“Lucky to be alive, she is.”

Anders' heart leapt into his throat, and he had to fight to get the words out. “Get her to the clinic,” Anders channelled a cleansing aura through Justice, his spirit’s concern tangled together with his own. Of all their companions, Isabela was one of the few who liked Justice, and was liked by him in turn. She was liked by everyone.

Everyone except the qunari, to judge by the spear. Anders recognized the interlocking square carved into the woodwork. The refugees carried Isabela back to his clinic, and laid her out on the table. Anders cast a lifeward beneath her, a veil of sleep to keep her unconscious, and removed the spear. Flesh knit back together at his beckon, but there was still nothing he could do for the blood. She hadn’t lost that much, Anders tried to reassure himself as he set her leg.

Then the screaming started.

“I’ll check it out, healer,” One of the refugees offered, running out of the clinic.

Anders forced himself to focus on Isabela. Dressed as she was for a fight, she couldn’t have been planning for a fight with the qunari. More than anyone Anders had ever met, Isabela was terrified of the qunari. She found every possible excuse to avoid the compound, and fled at the first sight of horns in the street. She would have known better than to fight one, which meant one had brought the fight to her, but why?

“Healer!” The same refugee burst back into the clinic and slammed the door behind them. “Oxmen! They came down from the lift - they’re - they’re - They’re killing everyone!”

“Maker save us!” One of the refugees cried.

“Fuck the Maker,” Spat another, “Healer, what do we do?”

“What do you mean they’re killing everyone? Why?” Anders glanced at the door, but he couldn’t leave. Not yet. Isabela’s leg wasn’t healed. The bone was barely set.

“Well I didn’t stay and ask!”

“My family’s out there!” One of the refugees ran out the door.

“Don’t! There’s too many of them!”

“Get everyone you can to the clinic,” Anders decided quickly, “I’ll get us out of here. Go! Hurry!”

Most of the refugees ran out at his orders, but a few stayed, huddled together nervously behind him and generally getting in his way while he healed Isabela’s leg. He could hear the sounds fighting drawing closer, interspersed with random qunari phrases he couldn’t translate.

“Nehraa Koslun!”

“Itwa-adim!”

It was familiar. Too familiar. Isabela wasn’t fully healed, but the battle couldn’t wait. Beneath the qunari’s attack, Anders could hear the sounds of makeshift shelters being torn apart. Refugees screaming for mercy. The hurried directions of those trying to flee. It was like any other raid, whether it was templars, or guards, or gangs, and they would end it.

“Stay with her,” Anders ordered the remaining refugees. He grabbed Vigilance, the dragonbone staff crackling with static at his touch, and ran out of his clinic and into chaos.

Darktown was a maze, and the only advantage the refugees had against those who raided it was that they knew all of its exits. Caves connected with tunnels connected with the ruins of the ancient Tevinter city of Emeris, and mineshafts ran through it all. Rickety bridges, some of rope, some of wood, some of stone crossed a handful of divides. Refugees ran in all directions, unable to reach his clinic. It stood apart, a wood and rope bridge connecting it to a flat of blackrock, where countless refugees were either fighting or surrendering to the advancing qunari.

“Get away from them!” Anders screamed, unleashing a current of lightning on the first qunari he saw. The current forked between three of them with all the strength of dragon breath, and the qunari exploded. Horns, grey skin, and blood graffitied the walls, joining the tags of the Carta and other gangs. A few refugees saw him, and made a break for his clinic. One took a spear in the back.

“No!” Anders screamed, sprinting across the bridge to the injured man’s side. He summoned a lance of ice, channeling the magic until it numbed his hand, and flung it through the qunari who’d thrown the spear. His chest froze, and went so cold it shattered, his limbs and head rolling in all directions. The other qunari pointed at him, shrieking.

“Bas saarebas! Vinek kathas!”

“Please,” The impaled refugee choked on his own blood, a shaky hand clutching at Anders' ankle, “Please, healer, help me, I’m so scared.”

In the distance, a qunari flipped over a makeshift tent. A couple was huddled within, and the man dove at the qunari with a dagger that didn’t come close to the range of the qunari’s sword. He all but threw himself on it. The woman screamed, half-crawling, half-running so fast she didn’t look where she was going, and ran herself right off a cliff. The chasm swallowed her screams.

Maker, there were too many refugees. He couldn’t save them all. He couldn’t even come close. “Get to the clinic!” Anders threw his magic into his voice, amplifying it through the caverns. He cast a lifeward beneath the impaled refugee, prayed to the Maker it would be enough, and charged into the fray.

It was just him. There were no patrols in Darktown. No guards. No one to stand against the horned giants' sudden assault on the city. There were only a dozen that Anders could see, but they were a force. Not against Anders. Anders tore through them with fire, and lightning, and ice, but they tore through the refugees with the same brutal efficiency before he could stop them. Dozens of refugees made it past him to his clinic, but dozens more didn’t.

The caverns were rivered with blood by the time it was over. It lapped over the impaled refugee, waters so high he seemed to float. The lifeward was dim. He hadn’t made it.

An elven refugee ran down the passageway, screaming and slipping in blood, “More are coming down the lift!”

Anders caught him before he went sliding over the edge, “Is anyone behind you? Did you see anyone else alive?”

“I don’t know,” The refugee confessed.

“Go to the clinic! Tell anyone you find to get there. Hurry.”

“Maker praise you, healer!” The elf threw over his shoulder as he fled.

Anders went to the lift, and waited.

He saw the torches first; red dripped across the cavern walls like a great onyx throat slit and bleeding into Darktown. The qunari spoke in hushed tones, qunlat echoing through the caverns, Koslun and bas repeating several times. Anders gathered his mana, lightning welling between his fingers and making his hair stand on end. He could feel it in his teeth, and grit them against the sensation, eager to drop the storm on the lift when they came into view, only to lose the spell at the sight.

They had a mage with them.

Anders could see the magic haloed about her, the eager wisps that pressed upon the Veil at her beckon, adding their light to the torches. She looked young, not that Anders was any judge of how qunari aged. She stood at the forefront of the group, her face covered by a long golden mask. It hung from two curved horns, painted in black and yellow stripes. Her wrists were shackled, the chains to them held in the hands of a qunari behind her.

“Let her go!” Anders roared, throwing a sphere of magical energy at the mage’s captor. An anti-magic ward flared to life around him, and swallowed the spell. The mage-girl hummed with magic, manifesting more wards for the qunari

“Teth a! Bas saarebas!” The qunari holding her chains screamed, pointing a sword at him. Someone flung a spear. Justice dodged it, a cone of flames erupting from his hands. It set the lift aflame, if not those upon it, but there was nothing the girl’s magic could do for the smoke. The qunari stumbled off, coughing and choking, and he tore into them.

The first qunari to come off the lift met with Vigilance, a blow from the staff snapping the qunari’s head back so far his neck snapped with it. The second met with a spectral fist that caught his jaw, and cleaved it from his skull. The third charged off, appearing from the smoke as if by magic, and impaled him on its spear, running him into the blackrock.

The two survivors and the mage stumbled off, cheering for their victory. Justice snapped the spear in half, and pulled himself off it. The wet hiss of the wood dragging through his skin turned a handful of horned heads in his direction. The cheering stopped. Justice killed the survivors, but left the mage at Anders’ insistence.

“You’re free,” Anders held up his hands, trying to show the girl he meant no harm. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

A brilliant tactic on his part, considering the mask blinded her.

The mage hit him with a shockwave of force that sent him crashing into the blackrock, and the spear still impaled in it. Anders screamed, pain blossoming in his back, and he felt a crack that must have been a rib. “Stop! I don’t want to hurt you!”

The qunari didn’t seem to care. She cast another shockwave, but Anders summoned a spellshield, and diffused the magic. A burst of healing magic snapped his rib back into place, and Anders charged her. He tackled her, a blast of energy from Justice knocking the girl off her feet. Anders grabbed her mask, and ripped it off her face.

Her lips were free of stitches, but she looked… scared. Wide violet eyes stared up at him, her face painted to match in unfamiliar symbols. Anders caught her shackled wrists and slammed them into the ground, “Stop! Please! They’re dead. You’re free. I’ll help you stay free, just-”

The qunari kneed him in the crotch. Anders crumpled, wheezing, and the qunari scrambled out from underneath him. She crawled over to the one who’d held her chains, and pulled what was left of his head into her lap. Tears spilled from her eyes, smearing her face paint, and she screamed at him. “Nehraa Qun!”

The qunari went up in flames. Anders cast a panicked blast of ice to put them out, but the poor girl had burnt her grey skin pink. She collapsed, shrieking in agony, and a second spell from her blew her own heart out of her chest.

Anders stumbled back to his clinic, the girl’s mask clutched limply in his free hand. The sound of fighting carried from inside, without the sounds of battle. Anders pushed open the door to a room crammed full of refugees, all arguing about what to do and where to go.

“Healer, the docks are burning!”

“Please help, the oxmen took my brother!”

“We have to get out of the city! They’ll kill us all!”

Anders pushed his way through the crowd to where Isabela lay on his surgery table. The spell had worn off, and she was conscious, but her leg was still broken. “Hey Sparky,” Isabela pushed herself up onto her elbows, arms shaking with the effort, “Nothing like a near-death experience to get the blood pumping. Remind me to thank you and Blue for the rescue when I get the chance.”

“We can’t stay here,” Anders had destroyed one lift, but there were more. The qunari could keep coming. “We’ve got to get everyone out of here. Justice will carry you to the estate.”

“My heroes,” Isabela reached for him. Justice picked her up, mindful of her broken leg. Most mortals were not so easily mended as he and Anders.

“With us!” Justice boomed through the clinic, silencing the refugees’ chatter. “We will ensure safe passage from this place.”

Justice led them out the back exit of the clinic, through the sewers to Hawke’s estate. “I am led to believe your attack was at the hands of the qunari?” Justice asked of Isabela.

The pirate was half asleep in his arms. Her golden bandana had slipped, bunching up the strands of curly black hair that didn’t fall in front of her pallid face. “Thought I was going to die,” Isabela mumbled.

“I would not allow it.”

“You’re a good spirit.”

They reached the estate without incident, and the refugees crowded into the cellar. Pale and pockmarked faces stared at him, huddled between shelves of wine and brandy. Too few, it seemed, and yet surely more than there would have been without their intervention. “You will be safe here. A good and valorous man resides within. He will protect you,” Justice promised, “We will return.”

Justice carried Isabela upstairs into the kitchens. The cook and the scullions were at work preparing lunch for the estate, the flour that coated them a stark contrast to the blood Justice brought with him. The scullions started, but the cook was an apostate. She wiped her hands off on her apron, eyeing Isabela, “Was it the templars, Master Anders?”

“No. We are under attack by the qunari, though I cannot say how far the fighting has spread,” Justice explained. “Please ensure the refugees below are provided succor and sustenance. Fortify the estate and do not leave. Where is Hawke?”

“Yes, messere,” The cook said quickly, opening the door to the foyer for him with a push of telekinesis. “He’s in the study. Hurry, you lot! You ken what he said.”

The bells started before he reached the study, peeling their warning through Hightown. Justice carried Isabela to the study, where Hawke sat looking over a handful of parchments and more or less ignoring the bells. There was no distinguishing them from a wedding, a death, or even the turn of the hour, beyond how long they rang. It would take too long for the city to come to arms.

“Please clear the desk,” Justice said.

Hawke glanced up at them, and quickly scattered his papers. Justice laid Isabela out on the desk, where Anders finally resumed healing her leg.

“Hey Hawke,” Isabela waved, and winced when Anders realigned her leg to mend the bone.

“What have you done now?” Hawke demanded.

“Well I didn’t run into a burning orphanage full of children,” Isabela said, “Remember the relic? The one my old boss was going to kill me over? Turns out one of my old crew had it. When he started talking to black market dealers all over Lowtown, I knew he was looking to sell something big, so it had to be the book. He set up a deal with some Tevinter Magisters, but I managed to get there first.”

“Book?” Hawke asked. “I thought you didn’t know what it was.”

“I-... well- … I know it’s a book, but it’s written in a foreign tongue-...”

“Qunlat?” Anders guessed when he finished healing her leg.

“Yes… about that…” Isabela sat up, rubbing the back of her neck, “It… maybe belongs to the qunari and there’s a small chance they maybe heard about the deal, and maybe want it back.”

“You think!?” Anders couldn’t believe it was that simple. That all this time the qunari had been here for Isabela. She’d turned the entire city into a powder keg, and wasn’t even trying to blow out the fuse. “They’re burning down the bloody city! The docks were on fire-”

“What?” Hawke asked.

“The qunari followed her into Darktown and started killing refugees. I saved who I could - they’re in the cellar right now - but we need to stop them! Let’s just bring them the relic-”

“No!” Isabela clutched her satchel to her chest, “I need it! You don’t understand.”

“Enlighten me,” Hawke said.

“I’ve always known what the relic is, I just didn’t want to bore you with the messy details, that’s all. It’s a qunari text handwritten by that philosopher of theirs - Keslan, Cousland, whatever his name is. It’s worth a fortune, and I need a fortune. The slaves I freed… You have no idea what it cost Castillon. He’ll kill me if I don’t repay him. This is the only way to do it.”

“It belongs to the Qunari, and you’ll let them leave with it,” Hawke said, “I’m not letting the city burn for you.”

“So you’ll let me burn instead!? Castillon will feed me to the sharks! Hawke -”

“Castillon is not your concern right now, I am.” Hawke snatched the satchel out of her hands, “Anders, how far has the fighting spread?”

“I don’t know,” Anders admitted, “The refugees told me the docks were on fire, and I know it went into Darktown.”

“Go and get a bird’s eye view, and then come back. We need to get Varric and Merrill before it reaches them. I’ll send some of the servants out to bring the others here before the qunari hit Hightown, and get my armor.” Hawke left with Isabela’s satchel.

“Sparky! Sparky wait!” Isabela chased after Anders as he headed for the front door, grabbing his arm. “Please. Castillon will kill me. He will kill me. I have been giving him every coin that passed through my fingers for the past three years, and every day he reminds me it’s not enough. He’ll have heard about the relic the same way I did. He’ll know I found it. He’ll know I didn’t get it back for him.”

“We will protect you from this man,” Justice promised. He could feel Anders’ anger in the tension coiled in their shoulders, and detached himself from it. It wasn’t his anger. “But you must offer penance for the consequence of your actions. Many have died. Returning that which you have stolen is your first step towards redemption.”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand.” Isabela released their arm and stormed away.

They went outside, where a crow took flight to survey the city. It was impossible. Smoke covered the lower half of Kirkwall, rising from the docks in great billowing clouds of grey, and could only have meant the qunari had burned the ships there moored. Hightown was still visible, the Chantry bell peeling its endless peel, swaths of orange running to and fro that seemed to indicate the guard was aware of the assault, if nothing else.

For all the good awareness did them. The guard wasn’t an army. They were the guard. The only standing army Kirkwall had was at the Gallows - and if all the ships were sunk, the only way the mages and templars would know to aid the city would be if they noticed the flames, or if someone told them.

A swath of black approached the Hawke Estate from the dwarven quarter. The crow counted at least two dozen dwarves in their numbers, and flew back into its roost. Hawke was just finished with stringing his bow when the crow flew in through the window, and Anders landed with a roll. “A group of dwarves is on their way here. Maybe Varric’s not at the Hanged Man?”

“Of course he’s at the Hanged Man.” Hawke slung his quiver over his shoulder. “Is the Circle safe?”

The Circle was never safe. Anders swallowed down the vitriol the question stirred in him, and forced himself to think of Beth. “It’s probably the only safe place right now,”

“Good,” Hawke whistled for Dog, and they jogged back down stairs in time for the front door to burst open, and a swarm of Carta dwarves to come flowing inside, oblivious to Bodahn’s panicked protests. “This is not the time,” Hawke sighed.

Two dwarves stood at the forefront, though it was clear which one was the leader. She was wearing a set of heavy plate armor made from volcanic aurum, liquid black and framed in fluorspar a shade of honey like her hair. One side of her head was shaved, and she had a beard that was braided with crystals. At her side was a familiar looking dwarf with bright red braids and a casteless brand, wearing light leather armor in Carta green.

Hawke notched an arrow, “You break into my house like you want to die.”

“Bless your heart, we’re not here for you,” The leader said, pointing an axe at Anders, “We’re here for him.”

“Wrong answer,” Hawke drew the arrow back.

Anders grabbed his arm, “Wait, I think I know one of them.”

Hawke relaxed his grip, and Anders stepped in front of him. The redhead gestured at the group of dwarves, and then held one palm up, and flicked a finger off it towards him.

“She says we’re here to repay you,” The Carta leader explained. “You saved my girl. Now we’re going to save your boy. The oxmen are heading to Hightown, and taking anyone who's anyone with them, but they won’t take us, and they won’t take you. You’re under our protection now.”

“We don’t need your protection,” Hawke started.

“The refugees do,” Anders cut him off. “We can’t just leave them here if we’re going to go save Varric and Merrill - … Where’s Isabela?”

“We can’t wait for her; we need to move.” Hawke eyed the group of dwarves milling about the foyer, “You trust these people?”

“No,” Anders admitted, “But I don’t think we have a choice.”

“Where are the rest of your boys?” The Carta leader asked.

“Lowtown,” Anders said.

“You best be slicker than nug shit if you plan on getting in and out of there alive,” The Carta leader whistled. “The oxmen are all over it. Good luck to you boys. Promise not to loot the place unless you die.”

“... Thanks,” Hawke said.

They took the sewers to Lowtown. The tunnels echoed with the nervous whispers of refugees, flooding into Darktown to get away from it all. Anders walked at Hawke’s right with the dog on his left. "I'm glad you're safe, love." Anders said. "I don't know what I'd do if you were caught out in all this."

"Take the city down with me, probably," Hawke guessed.

"What are we going to do? We can't fit the whole city in the estate, and we can't fight the qunari alone." Not without losing everyone they were trying to save.

"We find the Arishok and return the relic," Hawke jostled Isabela’s satchel on his hip. "Pray he stops the siege."

"What if he doesn't?"

"Then just pray."

They emerged from the sewers and into a war zone. The guard was nowhere to be found. Anders didn't doubt they'd all left to defend Hightown. The gangs had taken to the streets in their stead to defend against the qunari. The Friends of Kirkwall. The Reigning Men. The Invisible Sisters. They were making a stand at the Hanged Man.

The qunari didn't have them outmanned, but they did have them outmaneuvered. Everything that wasn't carved from stone was in flames; the smoke was like its own army, marching through the streets and choking out anyone it met. The qunari stood back, dispatching the gangs with arrows and spears as they fled the fires. The Arishok was nowhere to be found.

Hawke pointed to the servant's entrance to the Hanged Man's kitchen, where a half dozen qunari stood watch. "There. With me."

Hawke felled two before they noticed him. He was like a shadow in the smoke, his mabari tackling any unfortunate soul who came too close. Anders channeled lightning, loosed it through a handful of qunari who stood in a cluster. The first took the brunt of the spell and exploded. The other two collapsed in a fit of convulsions.

Hawke reached the door and kicked it open. Three crossbow bolts went sailing out, narrowly missing him.

"Let's dance you sons of bitches!" Varric screamed from inside.

"Varric, on the Maker, if you shoot me, I will shoot you back!" Hawke snapped.

"Killer!?" Varric called back.

They hastened inside, where Varric was guarding the rest of the patrons from behind a hastily constructed barricade of bar tables and stools. He looked like he’d put on his armor so quickly he’d forgotten half of it. He had his prosthesis, but not his gloves, only one pauldron, mismatched boots.

Anders hugged him. “Thank the Maker you’re alright. I was afraid you’d be dead.”

“Please,” Varric held a hand to his chest, jostling his gaudy necklace, which was evidently more important than a shirt or chest armor, “I’m too good looking to die this young. What’s the plan, Hawke?”

“Is everyone alright?” Hawke called out to the crowd of patrons.

“We’re out of water,” Norah called back. Her bun was falling apart, and she was cradling a bucket against her chest, “If they try to burn us out again we’re done for.”

“We’ll get you all out of here,” Anders promised. “You just need to make it to the sewers.”

“We can’t go out there!” Someone cried. “The oxmen will kill us!”

“They’ll kill us if we stay here! We have to try!”

“I’m gonna be sick… I’m gonna die… I’m too fucking drunk…”

“Varric, what have you heard?” Hawke pulled Varric away from the nervous cluster of patrons arguing over their inevitable deaths. “Have you seen Merrill?”

“Nothing good,” Varric sat at one of the few surviving tables, and took a drink out of one of the abandoned cups. “They’re saying it started in the alienage. That the elves revolted to join the qunari, and that’s what started all this.”

“A falsehood,” Justice said.

“Are you sure?” Varric asked. “The qunari came pouring up from the docks. Ancestors, what a nightmare. Most of them kept going to Hightown, but a few stayed behind. The ones that aren’t here went to the alienage. Some templars came from the Gallows when they saw the smoke, and followed them to the alienage. That was… I don’t know when that was.”

An explosion rocked the Hanged Man. The stairs leading to the second story collapsed, rubble tumbling down the stairs like the very stone was trying to evacuate. One of the patrons ran out the servant’s entrance, and a qunari’s spear launched him back inside. It protruded from his chest, and tore his heart out his back, killing him almost instantly. The rest of the patrons started screaming.

“Tell me you didn’t come down here to die with me, Killer,” Varric begged.

“I didn’t come down here to die with you,” Hawke promised.

“Don’t lie to me, Killer.”

“You just told me-”

“I know what I said! Ancestors, we’re going to die.”

“No one is going to die!”

“Tell that to him!” Varric pointed at the impaled patron.

“Fuck him!”

“He’s already fucked! We’re all fucked! Look at him! We sure as shit aren’t going back out the way you came in so what are we going to do?”

“... I don’t hear anything,” Anders said.

“What?” Hawke asked.

“The fighting,” Anders explained, “I don’t hear it anymore.”

He could hear the sobs of patrons, the crackle of Lowtown burning outside the tavern, Varric’s panicked breathing, but beyond that, nothing. There were no sounds of combat. No explosions. No screams. Either the gangs defending the Hanged Man had died, or the qunari had. There was only one way to tell, but abomination or not, Anders wasn’t in any particular hurry to be impaled when he stepped out the door.

Something pulled him. A sensation like a shiver down his spine, a tingle in his fingertips, dragging his feet across the Hanged Man to the front door. Anders swore he heard whispers when he pushed open the door, but there was only smoke. The gangs were still there, still alive, crouched down below the smoke, trying to catch their breath. Varric and Hawke joined him outside.

“What the shit happened?” Varric asked one of the Reigning Men.

“They happened,” The gang member pointed down the street. A slew of qunari bodies led up a flight of stairs, and at the top...

Anders stared out into a sea of silver and sapphire; the years ran backwards, faster than the river of blood that poured down the carved sandstone stairs and painted them red. Heavy leather boots tipped in silverite splashed through the sanguine abattoir on their way down the steps, and Anders shrank back, his hand like a vice on Hawke's forearm.

Wardens. The pull had been Wardens.

He'd gone years with no pursuit, but there was no running from this. The Wardens didn't need a phylactery to trace him. His blood was enough, tainted and untapped, coursing through his veins with every rapid beat of his heart. They'd know. Maker save him, they knew. Anders could see it in the curious tilt of a few helms, scanning the crowds, and settling on Hawke while Anders cowered behind him.

The dwarf in the group stepped forward, and set gauntlet-clad hands to his helmet. It lifted off his head in a shower of crimson and silver, and dropped to the ground beside him with an unceremonious clatter. "Holy fucking shit," The dwarf said, his voice a familiar gravel, "Sparkles?"

Anders crept forward in spite of himself, returning Hawke's uncertain caress down his forearm with a brush of his fingers as they separated. "... Oghren?" Anders dared. The dwarf had won a few new scars that had torn through the bulbous mass that made up his face, but his eyes were sparkling, and there was no mistaking him.

He didn't look angry, Anders tried to reassure himself. He'd look angry if Velanna and Nathaniel were dead, wouldn't he? Oghren shot across the hex before Anders could decide. The dwarf grabbed his arm and wrenched, and Anders lost his balance. The ground swept up to meet him and a hard yank around his shoulders kept his face from colliding with the ground. Then suddenly he was pinned, pressed tight to cold metal and the overwhelming stench of unwashed body odor.

"Hahaha!" Oghren chortled, and Anders felt his hair tie violently torn from his head along with several hairs while Oghren ground his fist against his scalp. "Well shave my back and call me an elf! Sparkles! You're a-fucking-live! You filthy fucking nug-humper!" Oghren swung him wildly, Anders’ knees skidding across the ground, and planted a disgustingly wet kiss on a part of his face Anders would rather not think about. "Boss! Boss, get the fuck down here! It's Sparkles!"

Anders’ thoughts shattered.

There at the top of the staircase stood a ghost, exactly as Anders remembered him, three years ago today.

Chapter 115: Long Time No See

Notes:

Words cannot express how much I appreciate your feedback on the last chapter. Thank you so much for reading and all of your wonderful encouragement in keeping this story alive. I hope you like the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:34 Dragon 17 Ferventis Afternoon
Kirkwall Lowtown

It wasn’t possible.

He was dead.

A memory of dragonscale and griffin wings stepped as if from the Fade. Time hadn't stopped so much as moved backwards, and Anders was twenty-six again. Three years wound back in a blur - and all Anders' mistakes along with them. A mabari even stood at the Warden Commander’s side, painted in black and red reservoir runes. It blocked his descent with a bark.

“Ten down, half-a-hand high, Commander,” One of the Grey Warden’s said, but her voice was far away, from another time, and Anders barely heard her.

Anders barely registered anything beyond the man before him. He even moved the same: shoulders back, chin up, defiance in his every feature. Like he could walk into the Black City and paint it gold. Like no man or mage could match him.

“Oghren, if this is a prank-” The Warden Commander started.

Anders stopped breathing; a sob threatened to strangle him. Maker, his voice-

“I swear,” Oghren scrubbed his lips and eyes with the back of his gauntlet, “I swear on the Stone it’s him - arm’s length from me.”

“Anders?” The Warden Commander stopped in front of him. Tears battered his vision black and blue, but Anders knew him. Anders could never forget him.

“Guilty,” He joked, voice raspy with tears.

All at once, strong arms locked around his waist. The world spun, smoke and sandstone and griffons, overwhelming him with the enveloping scent of copper and the wild crackle of the Fade. Anders lost his staff, sobbing with laughter, and barely managed to catch himself when they stopped spinning. He pitched forward, dragonscale pauldrons cutting into his palms.

The Commander unlatched his helmet and tossed it to the streets. Tousled hair, so black it absorbed the light, spilled about an ecstatic face. His features were cleaved straight from Anders’ memories and the darkest corners of the Fade. Maker, Anders knew that smirk. It had brought him low more times than he could count. He knew the arch of his nose, the slant to his jaw, the curve of his chin, the set to his brow, the-

The blindfold.

He was blind.

He was still blind.

“I-.. Ah-... A-...” Anders couldn’t form words.

“Anders!” Amell formed them for him, with another wild spin that tore the rest of the world away. Amell said his name again and again between beautiful, free, cackling, perfect laughter. Amell spun him until he was dizzy and the world was a blur. Amell. Amell was alive. Amell was here. Amell didn’t hate him. Amell hadn’t left him. The world lurched, and Amell set him on his feet, but there was no way Anders could stand on his own.

"You're alive," Anders tried to say, but the words fled from him, swallowed up by an incoherent whimper.

“You’re alive,” Amell said for him, but that couldn’t be right, because Anders had never been dead. “How does he-... Oghren, how does he look?”

“Blonde?” Oghren shrugged. “Come on, Boss, don’t make it weird, I don’t wanna wim and wam about-”

“Oghren, tell me,” Amell practically keened. A gauntlet-clad hand cradled Anders’ jaw, catching tears while Amell stared at him sightlessly.

“He ain’t weird looking like Uldred,” Oghren relented, retrieving their helmets and donning his own. “Same parts unless he’s hiding an extra pair of stones under his robes. Looks like you-know-what worked like it did with you-know-who. He’s good, alright? Pretty as a painting.”

“Tell me you’re you,” Amell ordered him.

“I’m me,” Anders choked, pawing mindlessly at Amell’s armor. The veilfire cracking on his hands disagreed, but it was still him. Justice was still him. Anders was still Justice. They could be whatever Anders needed them to be in that moment. Just in that one moment. “We’re me. We’re each other.”

“Alright, enough. He’s mine,” Hawke wrenched them apart by their shoulders, a hard shove on Amell’s chest forcing him between them. “Keep your hands off him, or I’ll shove an arrow so far up your ass you can taste it.” He gestured between Amell and Oghren with said arrow, “Both of you. We don’t have time for this.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Oghren held up two meaty hands, “Ain’t like that. Kiss don’t count if there’s no tongue, or the Boss’d have me bent over by now.”

“... The speaker bares a close resemblance to you, evanarius.” One of the Wardens noted. He was elven, by his height, and his accent was vaguely familiar.

“Does he?” Amell raised an intrigued eyebrow.

“Eh, can’t see it,” Oghren said. “He’s right though; we ain’t got a lot of cover here, Boss. We got an inn’d do for a spell - northeast twenty paces.”

“Can we delay?” The elven Warden asked.

Anders felt a pulse of blood magic around Amell, like that of a phylactery, drawing him east. Amell considered it for a moment, and circled a hand in the air, “We can spare ten minutes. We’ll hold at the inn. Anders-”

“We’ll come with you,” Anders said quickly, surprised he could speak at all around the lump in his throat. Hawke opened his mouth as if to protest, and Anders cut him off. “We’ll go with them. There are survivors inside. We need to get them to safety.”

“They’re not our concern,” The female warden dismissed him. Anders could feel the pull of the Fade within her, but she was dressed in armor, and must have known Amell’s magic. She made for the inn, the gangs parting anxiously for her and the rest of the Wardens.

“Dumat,” Amell whistled for the mabari at his side, “Find the inn.”

Oghren thrust Amell’s helmet and Anders’ staff into their respective stomachs. Amell seemed to carry his helm easily enough, but Anders' hands were sweating, and the dragonbone kept slipping through his fingers. He felt like he’d forgotten how to use them. Everything suddenly took a conscious amount of effort. Gripping. Walking. Breathing. Everything but Amell.

Anders walked alongside him, distantly aware that Hawke and Varric followed. It was like watching a ghost or a demon. Some trick of the Fade or his mind. It couldn’t be real. It had to be a dream. A nightmare. Any moment, the Call would claim him, and Anders would wake screaming his regrets with no phantoms from his past to take them away.

Inside, the Grey Wardens immediately set about changing up the fortifications, raiding the bar for supplies, cleaning their weapons and armor. Anders knew someone should be evacuating the patrons, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave Amell’s side. He couldn’t help the fear he’d vanish if Anders looked away. Fortunately, Varric took over, waving the patrons out and pointing them towards the storm drain that led to the sewers.

Dumat - not Barkspawn, because Barkspawn was dead - led Amell to a table. Dog stayed at Hawke’s side, growling low in his throat for the other mabari’s presence, who largely ignored him. The painted mabari slammed his front paws on a bench, and Amell sat. Anders sat next to him, wringing his hands on his staff, trying to figure out what to say, what to ask, how to be.

Amell looked at Hawke, despite seemingly being unable to see him. “My name is Amell,” He offered, holding out a hand for him.

“Yeah, he ain’t shaking it,” Oghren deduced after an awkward minute, taking a seat beside him. He handed Amell a canteen Anders doubted held any water, and Amell drank.

“Hawke,” Hawke grunted.

Amell tilted his head, “Carver or Garrett?”

“Garrett,” Hawke stuffed his thumbs into his belt, scowling for his own sake, “You know about me?”

“Gamlen’s nephew...? And you and Anders are together?”

“Yes.”

“Well, meeting family is always eye-opening,” Amell’s lips twitched into a quiet smile, and Oghren chortled. He turned his head to Anders, “Are you happy?”

“'Course he’s happy,” Hawke snapped impatiently, waving a hand at the door, and the faroff peel of Chantry bells echoing over the charred ruins of Lowtown. “The city’s burning! Are you going to help with the invasion or not?”

“We got other shit,” Oghren said.

“More important than an invasion?” Hawke demanded.

“Aye,” Oghren thumped Amell’s thigh, and stood, ruffling Anders’ hair on his way to the bar and taking a few flaxen strands with him, “Damn good to see you, Sparkles.”

"What other shit?" Hawke asked.

"Warden shit," Amell explained, or didn't. He kept his smile, and turned back to Anders, "Are you happy?" He asked again.

Anders nodded, and hated himself for it. He should have known better - Amell couldn't see it. "It’s been a laugh a minute,” Anders joked. “We’re happy," He took Amell’s hands, and looked to Hawke, "Hawke - can you give us - can you just-..."

"... Alright. Just-... " Hawke scratched at his scalp, and snarled through a sigh that took all the steel from his shoulders, "Whatever you need from him, go ahead. I'll be outside. Don't forget Merrill needs us."

Anders didn’t know what to make of the allowance. Was it an allowance? Did he want an allowance? An allowance for what? Amell squeezed Anders' hands, but it just felt like leather and dragonscale, and not Amell, "What do you need from me?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Anders laughed. He needed everything from Amell. He didn't know where to start. "Can't you help with the invasion? Don't tell me Grey Wardens don't get involved in politics. I know that's not true."

"It's not," Amell allotted, running his thumb over the back of Anders' hand. "But we can't. Our mission is bigger than one city."

"The alienage then? Can you get us there?"

Anders felt the pull of blood magic again, and Amell pointed towards the alienage. "Is it in this direction?"

Anders nodded again, and hated himself again, "Yes - Fuck, sorry - yes."

"We'll get you as far as we can." Amell promised

Anders clutched Amell’s hands so hard it hurt. Questions choked him, three years of regrets tangled together in his throat. Why can't you stay? Why did you leave? Where did you go? What happened to Velanna? What happened to Nate? What happened to you?

"Why are you blind?" Anders blurted instead.

He shouldn’t have been blind. Anders had found a cure. Two years too late, but Anders had found one. It took a sacrifice, but Avernus had been a blood mage. Amell was a blood mage. They could have found someone. Someone slated for the gallows. Someone who deserved it. Someone to make it just. Anders had. Anders could heal him. He just needed-... eyes.

Amell exhaled hard through his nose, but Anders couldn’t name the emotion. Bemusedly? Ashamedly? Impatiently? It had been so long Anders couldn’t read him and it hurt. "Disappointed?" Amell asked quietly.

"I thought - You said -..." You said you wanted to die. Anders sucked in a shaky breath. "You said you couldn't live like this."

"You asked me to try." Amell squeezed his hands. "I’m trying.”

“Now you’re trying?” Anders let go of his hands, anger bubbling up inside him, and maybe it was irrational, or maybe it wasn’t, or maybe it was just old and buried and the necromancer in Amell exhumed it with everything else. “Now!? Not before!? You were gone for-”

“Blondie,” Varric interrupted him with a hand on his forearm, and Anders swallowed down the rest of his rant. “I hate to interrupt - I know what this means to you - but Daisy’s gotta mean more right now. We gotta go.”

The patrons were gone. A few of the Wardens were staring at him. The part of Anders that was Justice knew Varric was right, but that part was Anders couldn’t move. If he moved, he had to move forward, and Amell wouldn’t come with him. Justice stood them up, and Amell stood with them.

“Daisy is your friend in the alienage?” Amell asked.

“She’s tough, but I don’t think she’s qunari invasion tough,” Varric said, “Varric Tethras, at your service, Warden-Commander. Rogue, storyteller, and presently, pantshitter. Tell me you’re going to help us.”

“As much as I can,” Amell said. He put his helmet back on, and brushed his fingers over his mabari’s head until he found an ear to scratch, “Dumat, find outside.”

They regrouped outside the inn. The gangs had scattered, either to join the evacuees or defend other parts of Lowtown. Justice brought them back to Hawke’s side, signifying his presence with a ripple of veilfire that won him half a smile. “You good?” Hawke asked.

“He is trying to be,” Justice said.

“What about you?”

“Eager for battle.”

Amell took a spot on his opposite side, and Anders hated that he couldn’t see him smile. There was no taking back his anger without talking, but there wasn’t time to talk.

“Right, which way, Boss?” Oghren asked, rolling his shoulders and the greataxe draped over them.

“East,” Amell gestured towards the alienage, and the Grey Wardens set out. Varric squeezed in between Amell and Anders, but he wasn’t interrupting. Anders didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what he had time to say.

“So, Commander, about the blindfold…” It sounded like a question, but Varric must not have known how to ask it tactfully, because he trailed off like he expected Amell to continue, but Amell didn’t.

“You’re leading them blind?” Hawke asked for him.

“Yeah, yeah,” Oghren waved him off, “Blind leading the blind, we get it, we’ve heard it.”

“Be nice, Oghren. They might have a new one,” Amell said.

“I’ll take you up on that someday,” Varric promised, “In the meantime, should we be looking out for you? The qunari are pretty mean with those spears. I can yell duck.”

A few of the Wardens chuckled.

“Yes, look out for him,” The female Warden agreed, with the needling sort of tone a person could only use when they were giving terrible advice and they knew it.

The qunari seemed to have taken a clear path to Hightown. The routes through the hexes that didn’t lead towards the noble district saw fewer casualties lining the streets. A few nervous heads poked out from windows to watch them as they passed through the apartment buildings. The Lowtowners seemed to prefer taking their chances with the smoke over the qunari, but it would only kill them slower. They needed to evacuate, or put out the fires, but they were too afraid to do either.

“Eleven, southeast, fifty paces closing,” Amell said suddenly.

“Eleven what?” Anders asked.

The Wardens fell into a defensive formation around them. Oghren took the front with the female Warden, while the elven Warden hurried to the cover of an overturned fruit cart. The summer sun had melted berries into the sandstone, but the scent was swallowed by the smoke. Varric ran to join him, while Hawke joined the front. A grimoire snapped off Amell’s belt, and hung suspended in the air beside him, radiating magic.

Anders didn’t do anything. Anders didn’t know if the Wardens needed him to do anything. He fell into a support role, casting glyphs beneath the archers and channeling an aura of haste through Justice for the others. Eleven qunari poured out of the southeast alley and into the hex, shouting in qunlat. By their masks and chains, two were mages.

“Third left! Two mages!” Oghren bellowed, and charged.

The battle joined. The mages died. It happened so quickly Anders missed it. The qunari holding their leash missed it. The qunari-templar rushed forward only to be wrenched backwards when the corpses attached to the chains didn’t charge with him. A crossbow bolt from Varric took him in the chest, punching through his rope armor and spilling berry red blood in the streets.

A half-dozen armored qunari rushed to the forefront, interlocking tower shields that were quickly peppered with bolts and arrows. They made a slow advance, holding the frontline with spears they thrust at anyone who came to close. For every spear Oghren cleaved in half, another took its place. The female warden didn’t have the range to close on them, the occasional pulse of force magic staggering but not felling the giants. Hawke vaulted onto an apartment stoop, and launched a string of arrows that dropped two of the qunari, but left him exposed.

It snapped Anders from his stupor and into a panic. He summoned a barrier around Hawke in time for a spear to sail past him. Another qunari braced for a second throw, and Anders flung a fireball into their midst. The tilt of their shields sent the flames washing over their heads, and did little to deter them. Anders gathered the magic for an earthquake, dust and sandstone rumbling beneath his feet, when the first qunari fell.

He dropped his shield, and then collapsed atop it, tears of red smearing his face paint. A second followed. Then a third. They seemed to wither, strength draining from their arms and sagging their flesh. Blood oozed from their eyes, their ears, their pores. The Wardens renewed their assault, and Anders finally noticed Amell had joined them. A miasma of entropic energy seemed to seep from him, leeching the life from the qunari until there were none left.

“Quit showing off,” Oghren huffed, prying his axe free of the tower shield it was embedded in.

“You were taking too long,” Amell said.

“Are you alright, love?” Anders reached Hawke’s side when he came down the stoop, checking over his armor for anywhere the spear might have grazed it.

“Fine,” Hawke briefly clasped the back of his neck before looking at Amell. “You couldn’t start with that?”

“No,” Amell said.

They were almost to the alienage, but smoke was coming from the west. It carried screams neither Anders nor Justice could ignore. “Someone needs help!” Anders called out, following the wails to an apartment building that had gone up in flames. “Over here!”

The building’s doors and windows had been devoured by the inferno, the sandstone charred an angry back. The first story was impassable. The screams came from the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth. Men and women hung out the windows, pleading for rescue. One brave fool had climbed out, and was trying to climb from windowsill to windowsill to the neighboring building. Anders made it there in time to watch him fall, and crack his head on the sandstone.

A fast death.

A few of the trapped survivors saw him, and their screaming intensified. Anders caught a few pleas over the warnings of Chantry bells, the roar of the flames, and the building crumbling in on itself.

“Please help!” A woman from the second story yelled, “My mother’s trapped! I can’t leave her!”

“Take my boy!” A man from the third story begged, dangling a too-small-child out the window, “Please take him!”

“Get back inside! You won’t survive the drop! We'll get you out! Everyone, help me put it out!” Anders glanced over his shoulder, ice welling in his hands, but no one had followed him. The Wardens stood at the entrance to the hex, watching impassively with Hawke and Varric. “Help me!” Anders screamed.

Hawke joined him, if only to put a hand on his shoulder, “Anders, we can’t save everyone. The whole city is burning.”

“Yes we can!” Anders smacked his hand off, “Amell, help me!”

“... What are you trying to do?” Amell asked.

“The bloody building’s on fire, and there are people in there!” Anders snapped, before it occurred to him Amell genuinely might not know because he genuinely could not see.

“And the alienage?” Amell asked.

“I’m not leaving them to die!” Anders shouted, hands erupting with frost amplified by Vigilance. It hit the flames, and turned into steam, scalding up the walls and burning one poor bastard leaning out the second story. He yelped, and darted back inside. “Stay inside, damnit! We’ll get you out!”

“... Surana, help him,” Amell said.

“Yes, Commander,” The female Warden took off her gloves, and Anders felt the Fade swell as she channelled a significantly weaker cone of frost into the apartment, slowly battling back the flames with him.

Amell’s hand touched his back, feeling up to his shoulder, and squeezed. “Go save your friend,” Amell said. “We’ll get them out.”

“You want us to split up?” Varric asked, “We stack the odds against us any higher, we could use ‘em to climb out of here.”

“Jacen will go with you,” Amell said, and the elven warden, Jacen, obediently moved to stand beside Varric. The name was familiar, but it was all too distant, and too far away from the immediate threat of the burning apartment building.

“You said there were templars at the alienage,” Hawke reminded Varric. “If we’re splitting up, Anders should stay here.”

“What are templars to you?” Amell’s head tilted to one side, and if helmets could look confused, his managed.

“To an apostate?” Hawke barked a bitter laugh, “You might have the luxury of being a Grey Warden-”

“Anders is a Grey Warden,” Amell cut him off.

“He is not dressed as one, evanuris,” Jacen noted, eyeing over Anders’ coat and unadorned leather armor while he leaned on his longbow.

Amell let go of Anders’ shoulder to unbuckle his belt. The griffon emblem hung limp from the loops in his greaves, and Amell pulled his tabard free. He felt again for Anders, connecting with his elbow and sweeping up to his shoulders in a fast caress of leather, and draped the tabard over his head.

“You got it backwards, numbnuts,” Oghren said helpfully.

Amell fixed it. Anders couldn’t bring himself to touch it. He didn’t deserve it. He wasn’t a warden. He was a deserter. He was a murderer. Amell must not have known. There must not have been any survivors to tell him. Or maybe he wasn’t. Maybe Nate and Velanna were fine, but then why weren’t they here? Why couldn’t he ask? Why couldn’t he find the words? Why didn’t he want Amell to know it had been him if they were dead?

“I can’t-” Anders choked, frost magic dying on his hands, “I’m not - I can’t wear this-”

“I say you can,” Amell said firmly. “Go. Save your friend. We’ll wait here for you.”

Somehow, Anders left with Hawke, Varric, and Jacen. The tabard felt heavy and unnatural, catching with every step and tripping him up.

“What if the qunari have Daisy?” Varric asked, nervously swinging Bianca towards every alley they passed on their way to the alienage, “Ancestors, what if the templars do? Are we really going to fight Chantry soldiers in broad daylight?”

“We cross that bridge when we burn it,” Hawke said, but by his tone, Anders heard yes, and loved him a little more for it.

The alienage was its own warzone, and in the middle, the vhenadahl, the tree of the People. The great spiraling oak towered over the elven district, bathing it in a brilliant orange glow. Flames licked across the branches like little leaves, raining ash and fire through the streets. Elves were dousing the tree with everything from water to chamerpots, to little avail.

There was too much against them. The qunari. The templars. Other elves. They seemed to have split into three groups. Some had joined the qunari. Others cowered by the templars. Most simply panicked, running to and from their homes, caught between fire and death.

“Aeducan, Bemot, and Garen,” Varric swore, crouching at the top of the steps “What do we do, Hawke?”

An elf ran to the tree, holding a dagger that wouldn’t serve against qunari or templars, and stabbed it through his palm. A blizzard formed above the vhenadahl, and swallowed the flames, pelting qunari and templar alike with hail and ice.

“Huon no!” One of the elves screamed. “Run!”

“Kill the maleficar!” One of the templars screamed back.

The qunari threw an obedient spear towards the elven mage he barely managed to dodge. It embedded itself in the truck of the vhenadahl, and the mage fled towards one of the apartment buildings. The sky cracked open above him, and a smite knocked him off his feet before he got more than a handful of paces.

“You fucking bastards!” Veilfire cracked across Anders’ hand, charged with lightning and quickly smothered by Hawke’s glove.

“A Grey Warden tabard won’t save you if they find out what you are,” Hawke grabbed his face and turned him away from the sight of the elven mage, “Focus. I’m not losing you to this."

"Daisy!" Varric screamed.

Her apartment building was on fire. It was so hot the stone had cracked. Gnarled roots, pulsing with all the magic of the Fade, grew like grout between the cracks. Vines wrapped around neighboring buildings and walls to keep the building standing. The heat shattered windows in great gasps of rock and rubble, like even the building was suffocating under all the smoke.

Varric took off down the stairs. Hawke ran after him, and barely managed to grab the dwarf before he crossed the no man's land the two armies had made of the alienage. The templars were entrenched in the markets, stalls of woven baskets and pretty jewelry turned to makeshift fortifications. Hawke chose them over the qunari, and they joined a score of templars holding there with three score of elves.

"Damnit, Varric, you're going to get yourself killed." Hawke snapped, pulling them all to the cover of a ruined market stall. It was covered with a pretty tarp patterned with leaves, and clear skies. The owner was curled up dead beneath it.

"Her building is on fire!" Varric snapped back, "We have to help her!"

"You can't help her if you're dead. You go in there you'll just be on fire too!"

"I have a fire balm in my pack," Jacen said, "Though I fear I have only the one."

"Hawke!" One of the templars spotted their group, and interrupted their argument. "We need your help!"

Help. Help with what? Help with the mage they'd smited? Help with the qunari they emulated? Anders would help them to their graves. He couldn't control the veilfire rolling over his arms, choking out his throat, but the templars took one look at his tabard and ignored him. Hawke didn't. "Anders - Justice, look at me."

They looked.

"Calm down. You're the cause of the mages. Not templars. A mage needs your help. Can you get Merrill out?"

They looked to the building, pulsing with roots and vines and magic. Merrill’s magic. The amount of mana poured into the spell to hold the building together was beyond that of any normal mage. She would have resorted to blood or demons in her desperation. In either case, she would not be able to hold it long.

"... We need a scarf." They said.

Hawke ripped down the tarp. A spear sailed through the space his hand had occupied. Hawke tore the tarp into a scarf, and they summoned water to drench it before wrapping it around their face. Jacen handed them the fire balm, and they worked quickly with Hawke to work it into their armor and any exposed skin.

“Be safe, da’len,” Jacen said, “I should very much not like to tell the Commander you died.”

The archers joined the templars in their assault against the qunari, and Anders ran for Merrill’s apartment. Justice hastened him, a storm of ice whirling around Vigilance to battle back the flames and smoke, but there was no magic that could replace the smoke with clean air. They had to hurry, but the stairs had turned to charcoal. Great roots took their place, massive gnarled things that spanned the center of the building like the trunk of a second vhenadahl that made Anders’ heart ache for fear of what he’d find at the top.

They climbed. Charcoaled stairs collapsed beneath their feet with every other step. Vines held or snapped with their weight seemingly at random. Splinters caught beneath their nails as they dug their hands into the roots, leaving a trail of blood and bark behind them on their way to Merrill’s floor. The building shuddered, groaning like the undead, and one of the apartments collapsed into the one beneath it. A cloud of dust struck them in full force, knocking them off the root and onto the stairs, but miraculously they held. They vaulted them to Merrill’s floor, and found her door burnt away, and Merrill within.

She looked like the varterral they had faced on the Sundermount. A creature born of wood and earth and rock, given form and breath by magic. The Fade pulsed in her like a storm, and her blood along with it. The cuts drenched her arms in red, soaking through the floor of her apartment, charred an ugly black and crumbling away. Each plank and board took pieces of her with it. A painting here. A portrait there.

“Merrill!” Anders wrenched down his scarf to call from the stairwell. The smoke was suffocating, “Merrill, you have to get out of there!”

“Anders - help me!” Merrill begged, but there was no way he could reach her.

“The floor won’t hold me!” Anders called.

A vine sprouted from the ceiling beside Merrill, spiraling out into the hall to wrap around the great root in the center of the stairwell. Anders took hold of it, and set a tentative foot inside her apartment. The board beneath him crumbled. A gout of flame surged up through the opening, fueled by the wood and release of pressure in the apartment below. “I can’t reach you! It’s not stable! Just shapeshift out!"

“I can’t leave it!”

“Leave what!? Come on! You can’t hold this spell - you’re going to bleed out!”

“I can’t leave the eluvian!” Merrill sobbed, vines spilling from her in place of tears, “My People need it! Please - Anders please do something! Help me get it out!”

“Merrill, just leave it!”

“NO!” Merrill shrieked, and the root exploded, dozens of branches shattering through the sandstone walls of the apartment complex and latching onto neighboring buildings. One split the wall behind her, and cleaved into the apartment of a handful of screaming elves who quickly fled out of sight.

“Damnit, Merrill,” Anders kept hold of the vine with one hand, and used his staff to test the floorboards with the other. A few held, but it was slow going. Too slow. The apartment next to Merrill collapsed, the resulting explosion knocked him from the vine. Anders fell into the flames, and barely managed to catch himself with Vigilance. The floor creaked as the dragonbone staff held his weight between a handful of floorboards, and Anders pulled himself back up into Merrill’s apartment.

Anders could feel the heat of it all, even through the flame balm. It was oppressive. Suffocating. The balm was starting to melt, great beads like wax tears rolling down his face, and Merrill didn’t even have one.

“You’re going to die!” Anders screamed, regaining his place on the vine.

“It’s for my People!”

“Your people need you! Not a bloody mirror!”

“You don’t understand!”

Anders wasn’t going to let her die, even if he had to force her to leave. He grabbed the dagger from his belt, but a vine lashed it out of his hand and into the flames below before he could make the cut. “Damnit Merrill!” Anders finally reached her, “Do you want me to tell Isabela you died!?”

“I can’t leave it! It’s all I have!”

“No it’s not!” Anders grabbed the rock that made up her shoulders, “Don’t burn in this fire!”

“Okay,” Merrill sobbed, great, gasping breaths of smoke and ash, her tears painting new vallaslin in the soot on her face.

“We’re going to jump, okay?”

“Okay,” The pulse of blood magic faded, the cuts on her arms became like any other, and the Fade dimmed. Merrill wrapped her arms around him, and let go of the spell. The building lurched, Anders shoved them both through the hole her magic had left in the wall as it collapsed.

Rubble followed them, sealing up the wall against any flames that followed. They hit the ground at a roll, and crashed into a cupboard that showered them in crockery. Merrill kept sobbing, even long after her cuts were healed and Anders had pulled the smoke from their lungs. He helped her outside, where Hawke and the templars must have defeated the qunari, because there were none to be found.

Anders and Merrill hung back until the templars left, and then rejoined Hawke, Varric, and Jacen.

“Damn you,” Hawke ran to wrench him into a rough embrace, “That’s the last time you make me think you’re dead, you hear me?”

“Double for you, Daisy,” Varric agreed, scrubbing tears from his face. “You guys just had to bring the whole building down with you?”

“I am glad you are well, da’len,” Jacen said. “Your friends are formidable archers. We met with an easy victory.”

“If that’s easy for a Warden I don’t wanna see hard,” Varric said. “The templars are going to get more help from the Gallows and help us retake the city. At this point, I don’t care if we give the Arishok the relic or a bolt through the eyes, as long as it gets rid of him.”

“We should make haste, the Commander will be waiting for us in Lowtown,” Jacen said.

“Fine, let’s go,” Merrill said, starting for the stairs from the alienage so quickly the rest of them had to jog to catch up with her.

“Really, Daisy?” Varric sidled up to her, “You just fell out of a burning building into an invasion full of qunari and Grey Wardens and templars and you don’t have any comments? Not even a question or two?”

“I’m not a plant, Varric,” Merrill snapped, moving to walk beside Hawke and Dog instead.

Varric watched her go, crestfallen, and Anders squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll tell you later,” Anders promised.

They reached the hex without incident. The flames had been put out, and the Lowtowners evacuated. A handful were running water from wells to other buildings, but most were traumatized. They clustered about the stoops of apartment buildings that hadn’t taken the brunt of the qunari explosives, huddled under blankets, crying or praying or both. The Wardens stood apart, and they went to rejoin them.

Amell was still there. Anders hadn’t imagined him. The Warden Commander sat on a stoop with Oghren, his mabari at his feet, and looked up at Anders’ approach.

“Hey Sparkles,” Oghren said. “How’d it go?”

“Can I talk to you?” Anders asked.

“Guessin’ that ain’t a question for me,” Oghren stood with a stretch that popped a few of his joints, “I’ll go fart somewhere else.”

“Anders,” Amell stood, and Maker there was something in the way he said his name that ruined him. “What is it?”

“I-... I don’t even know where to start,” Anders took a step closer to him, but he couldn’t smell anything but firebalm and burnt wood. Couldn’t see him behind his helmet. Couldn’t hold him through his armor. Off in the distance, the Chantry bells sounded their distress.

“Where can I find you when this is over?” Amell asked.

“Why do you have to find me anywhere?” Anders wanted to know. Anders had to know. There had to be a reason. Something worth the pain in his chest at the thought of Amell walking away from him all over again. “What mission is so important it’s worth a million lives?”

“Come with us, and I’ll tell you.” Amell offered.

"Come with you?" Anders repeated incredulously. Some part of him considered it. A whole life flashed before his eyes where he said yes. "Just-... forget the invasion, Hawke, my friends, my cause, all of it?"

Amell didn’t say anything, but Anders knew he meant it. Anders couldn't name the emotion it stirred in him. It was like it didn’t exist. Like it was an emotion found only in the Fade. In far off memories of unlived lives and impossible futures.

“I can’t,” Anders grabbed Amell’s hands, “Why can’t you just stay? For me? Please just-... why can’t you just stay?”

Amell pulled him into an all-too-familiar embrace. Anders knew what it meant. Amell had hugged him the same way once before. And both times, Amell couldn’t see his tears.

“I’m sorry, Anders,” Amell said. “I’m a Warden first.”

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
Wardens (we could be): A short from Oghren's perspective after Amell left Vigil's Keep.

Happy. Alive.: The events immediately following this chapter as told from Amell's perspective.

Fanart
Are You Happy? - Artofapumpkin

Fanfiction
Stolen: Hawke's perspective on the events of this chapter as told by Hedge Warden.

Chapter 116: To Catch a Thief

Summary:

In which a thief is caught.

Notes:

Thank you for reading and for all of your wonderful feedback. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:34 Dragon 17 Ferventis Evening
Kirkwall Lowtown

The Wardens left.

Anders ran his thumb over the ring Amell had given him. It was a twisted loop of rosewood, the grain of which seemed to shift and change from one moment to the next, taking on shapes reminiscent of animals and people. The deep auburn was like old blood, the figures within chasing each other in endless circles.

"So I can find you when this is over," Amell had explained.

It was enchanted. Anders could feel the magic in the ring, and Justice the memories of those who wove it. A mother's love for her daughter - as twisted as the rosewood. The daughter's love for her friend - as warm as the hands that wore it. The friend’s love for him. Anders didn't know whether he wanted to wear it or burn it.

Amell had left him.

"I'm Warden first," Amell had said.

Since when? Since he abandoned Vigil's Keep? Since he abandoned Anders, and Justice, and Velanna, and Nathaniel, and Sigrun? Since he left the arling to the Orlesians and they burned the heart of it down? Since he left Sigrun to die, and Velanna to die, and Nathaniel to die, and Compassion…

Anders pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. The soot on his palms stung his eyes, but it seemed like a better reason for his tears. The city was burning. Another bloody city was burning, and the Grey Wardens weren't doing a damn thing to put it out. They just left, off to a nest of broodmothers or whatever they thought was so damned important they’d let the world burn for it.

"Bastard," Anders muttered to himself.

"Cheer up, Blondie," Varric nudged him on their way back to the Hanged Man. "At least he's not dead."

"Stop," Anders pushed Varric’s hand off his arm.

"Is there something in the air?" Varric glanced up at the grey that had ceilinged the city. "Something besides all the smoke? What's with all the moody mages?"

"Moody mages?" Merrill repeated, anger etched like vallaslin on her face, "By Andruil, Varric, I could strangle you!"

"Easy!" Hawke held her back with a hand on her chest, "We don't have time for this. We have to get back to Hightown and deal with the Arishok."

“Why?” Merrill snorted. She ran a frustrated hand through her hair, the ashes of her home falling like dandruff on her shoulders, “Maybe the qunari should be in charge of the city. Maybe they would do a better job.”

“Like they do for their mages?” Anders shouldn’t have had to remind her.

“The qunari didn’t start this,” Merrill said. “The guard did. They keep us locked away in the alienage, and make it illegal for us to even try and defend ourselves while the nobles hunt us for sport, and instead of protecting us they-...” Merrill stopped, breathing hard. She’d lost more blood than it seemed she should have in her body, and wasn’t doing well, stumbling with every other step. Anders pressed Vigilance into her hands, and Merrill steadied herself on the staff as she walked. “... so we killed him.”

“Killed who?” Hawke asked.

“The guard that raped Arianni’s friend,” Merrill said.

“Bemot’s beard, Daisy…” Varric muttered. “Are you serious? You didn’t actually-... When you say we, you mean they, right?”

“What does that have to do with the qunari?” Hawke asked.

“The Arishok took in the ones who did it,” Merrill explained. “He said they were justified, and killed the guards who came to arrest them. The qunari didn’t burn the vhenadahl, the guards did, after they found out what happened at the qunari compound. Things just kept happening until-...”

“That’s not what started it,” Anders felt like someone should tell her, and apparently that someone was him. “They’re fanatics. This is all because of a bloody book.”

“Why would the qunari want a book about blood?” Merrill asked.

“Later,” Hawke said.

Merrill let it go, so Anders did too. He wasn't looking forward to telling Merrill her lover was the reason the whole city was going up in flames. He couldn't imagine what that kind of betrayal would do to someone. Add in the fact that Merrill had just lost her home and her eluvian because of it, and maybe it was better Isabela had run off.

They reached the Hanged Man. The sign had fallen at some point in the fighting, turning it from a hanged man to a beheaded one, just in case they were under the impression things couldn’t get any worse. Hawke heaved the storm drain free of the sewers, and Varric cleared his throat.

“So uh… not that Bianca couldn’t handle this by herself, but what about the templars? Shouldn’t we wait for them?”

"Wait for them to do what?" Anders demanded. He couldn't believe Varric was even suggesting it. The templars would sooner see the city burn than let a mage put out the flames. "Accuse the fires of apostasy?"

"Look, Blondie, you’ve been a little distracted lately so maybe you haven’t noticed, but we’re out of our league here. Like, really out of our league. I know you’ve got some opinions on the whole mages versus templars thing, but at the end of the day it’s just a lot of humans in skirts and beggars can’t be choosers. Dead beggars especially.”

“If they get here, they get here,” Hawke said. “We have the relic; let’s bring it back.”

They took the sewers back to Hightown, the waters risen to their ankles and sloshing with every step. It was as if the city had wept, and they were left wading through its tears. A tense silence settled over them, broken by the terrified whispers of refugees echoing through the tunnels. From above, they could hear the crackle of fires, distant explosions, and the occasional scream.

Anders hated not acting on it.

He’d spent the past eight months making sure that he could move through the city unnoticed. He grew out his hair and his beard. He only wore leather and wool, enchanted to transform with him for an easy escape from any encounter. Anything to keep Hawke safe from the templars for harboring an apostate, and that meant no magic beyond his clinic and Hawke’s bed.

Anders fingered the edge of the Grey Warden’s tabard draped over his coat. Amell’s tabard. The templars hadn’t looked twice at it. Hawke had given him an allowance for whatever Anders needed from Amell, and this was it. Freedom. The freedom to use his magic to whatever end he and Justice saw fit.

That end seemed to lie above them now. They could face the qunari as they had faced the darkspawn hordes in Amaranthine, and see the city free of them, the Arishok and his relic be damned. Their veins split with veilfire at the thought, and Anders battled it back with a frustrated sigh. A Grey Warden mage the templars would suffer. An abomination they wouldn’t. There was only so much they could do without risking exposure, tabard or no tabard.

Damn Amell for leaving. Anders pulled the tabard’s collar over his nose. To block out the scent of the sewers, and not breathe in the one clinging to it. Copper and the Fade. Magic and memory. Hawke shot him a frown, and Anders let go of it, feeling irrationally guilty for breathing.

"About back there-" Anders started.

"You want to do this now?" Hawke demanded, with a glance at Varric and Merrill, "Here?"

"Do what?" Merrill asked.

"Don't mind me." Varric said. "I've been dying to get more details on your romance. How’s it going? Did one of you go down on one knee yet? Swear eternal vows of love, or is this just a physical thing?"

"I don't see how that's any of your-" Anders started.

"Not your business," Hawke said at the same time.

"If you two don't tell me, I'm just going to have to make it up," Varric said.

"We have more important things going on right now," Hawke said, to both of them.

They reached the estate. The refugees panicked when they pushed against the door, screaming for mercy and scrambling over each other until they realized who they were. It seemed a miracle the refugees were still there at all, considering the ease with which the qunari conquered the city, but Anders supposed that meant the Carta had made good on their promise.

They emerged from the cellars and into the estate proper, and found it fortified. Tables were upended over windows, a few of them already broken from the qunari onslaught. Dressers and statues barricaded the doors, while buckets of water stood waiting to put out any fires should the qunari decide to burn them out.

The dwarves stood in a loose semi circle in the foyer, eyeing the points of entry and guarding the servants huddled behind them. Most of them were injured. Burns and bruises, wrenched limbs and torn ligaments. The Carta leader waved at their approach, not a single gem out of place.

“Well I’ll be,” The Carta leader whistled, “You’re not dead. You must have the balls of a bronto and the brains of a nug going outside in all this. Sorry about the furniture. Oxmen are pitching a nasty fit out there. You got a few extra guests we’ve been looking after.” She pointed her thumb over her shoulder.

A handful of their friends were huddled among the servants. Franke. Hawke’s business partner. One of the Harimanns. Only two of them sat apart. Fenris was slouched on the ground beside the stairwell, armor scored and helmet in his lap, with a bandage like a bow about his shoulder. The lyrium-branded elf was clutching his greatsword, his white hair grey with sweat. Isabela sat on the stairs beside him, idly twisting a dagger into the steps. Anders was surprised she’d stayed. Or surprised she’d come back.

“Fenris, you’re bleeding,” Merrill hurried to his side. Anders joined her, and untied the poorly done bandage to heal what seemed to be a deep gash from a qunari spear on his shoulder.

“So it would seem,” Fenris gave him a small nod for his help. “Hawke - … you have my thanks. Had you not sent Orana for me, I would have fallen in the fighting.”

Hawke dropped his gear on the only table that hadn’t been upended, and frowned at Isabela. “You came back.”

“I know, stupid, right?” Isabela shrugged. “It’s your bloody doing. I was halfway to Ostwick before I knew I had to come back and help. You better make good on your promise, Sparky. Castillon won’t forgive me for this.”

“I don’t forgive you for this,” Hawke said.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Isabela flapped a hand at him.

Hawke bit back a frustrated snarl, and grabbed a servant out of the cluster the dwarves were defending. “Where is everyone else?”

“Everyone else, Master Hawke?” The servant stuttered.

“Sebastian? My uncle?”

“This is everyone we could find, Master Hawke,” Bodahn said from the center of the servant pile, arms around his son, who was rocking back and forth and crying softly.

Hawke didn’t seem to hear him. Or maybe he just didn’t want to hear him. “Where is my uncle?” Hawke gave the servant a shake, but no answers spilled out of them, “Where is he? Where the fuck is my uncle!?”

"I don't know!" The servant sobbed, scrabbling at Hawke’s hand, "I don't know, Master Hawke, I'm sorry!"

"Hawke, stop!" Anders shoved between them, "He's not here."

Hawke let go of the servant, who quickly dove back into the safety of the pile. Hawke paced away from him, hands laced over his head. His reflection paced with him, watching him from a mirror hanging on the wall. Hawke stopped in front of it.

"I saw the qunari taking hostages-" Fenris started helpfully.

Hawke wrenched the mirror from the wall and shattered it across the floor, screaming. Broken glass and splintered wood scurried away from him, as did most of the servants. Paintings and vases followed, and Anders caught him before he could start tearing through the fortifications. "Hawke - love - breathe -"

"If I have to lose anymore fucking family-" Hawke choked, clutching him with shaking hands.

"We'll find him," Anders promised.

"You don't know that," Hawke said. "Fenris-... what do they do with captives?"

"The qunari waste nothing," Fenris said. "Ordinarily, they would take them as converts, but I heard some of them talking on the way here. They are searching for the Tome of Koslun, and the thief who took it. He is the founder of their religion. The most revered being in their history. The text is sacred beyond measure. I suspect if they do not find it soon, they will begin killing hostages until they do."

"So, not to interrupt, but has anyone seen Rivaini?" Varric said.

Isabela was gone. So was the satchel that held the tome.

"I saw her head to the kitchen," Merrill said helpfully from her spot beside Fenris. "Why?"

"Wait here," Hawke picked his bow and quiver back up, and whistled for Dog, "The templars should be here soon."

"Killer, wait-" Varric started, but Hawke was gone before he could finish.

Anders stared after him. The kitchens led to the cellars which led to Darktown. Isabela didn't have much of a head start. Hawke might have been able to catch her. Anders might have been able to catch him.

To what end?

To catch the thief? To save her? To help his lover? To hinder him?

Outside, the city burned.

"Where are they going?" Merrill asked. "What's going on?"

"... of course," Fenris shook his head. "It was her, wasn't it?"

"What was who?" Merrill asked.

"... Isabela stole the relic from the qunari," Anders explained. "She's the reason all this happened."

"What?" Merrill asked, "No. That can't be right. So you're saying she - she just ran? That she just left us here?"

Anders watched her disbelief give way to betrayal, betrayal give way to heartbreak. "I'm sorry, Merrill," Anders said.

"And Hawke is… he's just going to get the tome back, isn't he? He's just going to get the tome?"

"Do you really think she can strand the qunari here for four years without consequence!?" Fenris demanded. "Are you so blinded by love you cannot see the damage she has caused?"

"At least I know how to love!" Merrill shoved him, stumbling unsteadily to her feet. Anders ran to catch her before she fell. She shouldn't have been moving, after everything she'd been through. "What do you know how to do, besides hate? Anders-... Anders, you can catch up with them, can't you? You can do something!"

"Merrill, look outside," Anders waved a hand at the broken windows, "We have to get the tome back. I could fight the qunari, but they have hostages. We can't just let them die."

"Maybe we could-" Merrill’s eyes flicked to the servants and the dwarves surrounding them, "-we could convince them to leave."

It might have been possible, but Merrill had been drained to translucency trying to save her mirror. Anders couldn't mind control however many qunari were with the Arishok. Maybe if Amell had stayed-...

"You know we can't," Anders said, "Look, we just need to get the tome back. That's all. Once Hawke gets back with Isabela, we'll bring the Arishok the tome, and get him to release the hostages and end the siege. Then we can find Castillon and kill him, and it won't matter that she can't give the tome to him."

"Not to piss on your cake here, Blondie, but you're assuming he brings Rivaini back alive."

"She's his friend," Anders snapped at him, "Of course he'll bring her back alive."

Varric held up both hands, and backed off.

… Mereen had been Hawke’s friend too.

Anders tried not to think about it. He set about healing the injured the servants and dwarves while they waited for Hawke, and had nearly finished when the Carta Leader whistled for him.

Anders joined her at the front of the foyer, where she crouched beside a window. The redhead Anders had rescued months ago had reappeared at her side, and waved at him. "What is it?"

"My girl's been keeping watch from one of the windows upstairs, and things aren't looking good."

"No, really?" Anders asked sarcastically.

"Your templars finally showed up. A few mages are with them. It looks like they're trying to fight up from the markets, but the oxmen have the high ground. What do you want us to do?"

"Why are you asking me?"

"If brains were leather, you wouldn’t have enough to saddle a nug. Do you really not know?” The Carta leader pointed an axe at the redhead beside her, “Who is she to you?”

“Well-... honestly, I don’t-”

“She’s no one to you, but that girl is the Stone and the stars to me,” The redhead smiled in agreement, and brushed the back of her fingers over the carta leader’s beard, “Do you know how many no ones who are someone you’ve saved in this stone-cursed city? How many people would die for the Darktown Healer? You’re in charge here, mage. So I’m asking you again, what do you want us to do?”

“... You said there are mages with them?” Anders asked.

The Carta dwarves removed the barricades from one of the servant’s entrances, and gathered in the alley for an ambush against the qunari. Anders, Varric, and Fenris joined them. Merrill had let too much blood, and didn’t have the protection Anders’ tabard afforded him, and stayed behind. The qunari stood above the markets, launching spear after spear into the templars with such force some pierced the silverite of their shields. Anders summoned a firestorm, and sent it crashing down into their midsts. The others picked off any who escaped the blast, and the fight was over quickly.

There were a half dozen mages, and more than a dozen templars. The Chantry soldiers charged up the stairs to the plaza at the sight of his magic, only to stop short at his tabard. One of them was wearing the armor of the Knight-Commander. If Anders was the cause of mages, she was the opposite. The personification of oppression. She carried herself like Andraste reborn, her head held so high she must have expected the ground to rise to meet her. Her eyes were so cold they could have put out the fires with a glance, if only she deemed it worth her time. She took him in with a frown.

“I am Knight-Commander Meredith,” She said, watching the veilfire that lit his eyes with a curiously raised eyebrow. “... I know you.”

One spell.

One spell, and it could all be over.

One spell, and the Circle could be free of her.

How many templars were too many? Could they kill a dozen? How quickly? … Could they kill her? She sang with lyrium - a song that almost put Fenris’s markings to shame. It sang forwards and backwards and rebounded in on itself, but whatever magical immunity it granted her, she was still mortal. Still made of flesh and bone and spine and they had only to-

“Surely you are mistaken, Knight-Commander,” Orsino’s voice cut into his thoughts. The old elf hurried up the stairs to the Knight-Commander’s side, staff thudding on the marble, Bethany on his heels.

They couldn’t - They couldn’t lose control here. It wasn’t safe for Beth. For Varric. For Fenris. A memory of Bardel flashed before their eyes, crawling backwards across the limestone caverns, screaming for the Maker’s mercy and Anders’ mercy. Anders took a hasty step back, and Varric took a hasty step forward.

“I am not,” Meredith said firmly, “You are the one they call the Darktown Healer. The one my men have been looking for… You are a Grey Warden?”

“He is!” Varric said brightly, twirling a hand and bowing low, “Knight-Commander, can I just say-”

“I was not aware the Grey Wardens had elected to remain in Kirkwall to assist with the invasion,” Meredith said over Varric. Literally. She didn’t even bother looking down.

Anders couldn’t unclench his jaw. His eyes flicked from Orsino, to Meredith, to Beth, “There’s a lot you’re not aware of,” He managed through grit teeth.

“... Indeed,” Meredith rolled her fingers along the hilt of her sword. “... Senior Enchanter Cera, you served with the Grey Wardens, did you not?”

Oh fuck.

One of the mages shuffled out from behind one of the templars, and climbed the stairs to Meredith’s side. The elf moved slowly, her back bowed, using her staff as a walking stick. She was dressed in the robes of a senior enchanter, but they seemed to hang off her bones. She pulled down her hood, and revealed a face that looked nothing like Anders remembered.

The only trace of the fire she’d once had was in her hair, and even that had faded. The auburn strands were so thin Anders could see hints of skin beneath them. The tips of her ears had been cut off - and Anders knew it had nothing to do with the battle that had taken place beneath Vigil’s Keep. The cuts were clean. Deliberate. Malicious. She looked up at him and looked afraid, but whether it was for him or of him, Anders couldn’t say.

“Yes, Knight-Commander?”

“And do you recognize this man?”

“Yes, Knight-Commander.”

“... And?” Meredith pressed.

“... He is a Senior Grey Warden, Knight-Commander. A-” Cera swallowed, glancing between him and Meredith, as if she couldn’t decide who terrified her more, “ ... A merciful man. Renowned for his spirit healing.”

… What the fuck?

“... Very well,” Meredith waved her away, “We welcome your aid, Warden. The qunari are taking people to the Keep and may already be in control. We need to deal with them.”

“And who will lead us into this battle?” Orsino scoffed. “You?”

“I will fight to defend this city as I have always done,” Meredith bristled.

“To control it you mean,” Orsino corrected her, “I won’t have our lives tossed in the flames to feed your vanity… What say you, Warden?”

“Yes, Warden,” Bethany stressed the word, a suspicious frown on her face, “What do you say?”

“They have hostages,” Anders said. He wasn’t sure how much longer they could wait for Hawke without doing something about it. “If we’re going to do anything, we have to find a way to get them out without alerting the qunari.”

“We know a backway inside the Keep,” The Carta leader said. “We’ll get you inside.”

Hightown told the story of the qunari’s advance and the guards’ defense. At every chokehold, they had fallen. The tops of every staircase. The streets between the districts. The bodies of guardsmen were strewn, orange uniforms splattered with blood in all the colors of a sun rising on their desperate defense of the city. It left Anders with a strange sort of disconnect. He hated the guard, but they’d never stood a chance, and had made a stand all the same.

In death, sacrifice.

Anders shook the thought away, and fell back to walk with Cera. The elf spared him a nervous glance, but spared the templars far more. Anders gave her sleeve a tug, and Cera fell into step with him several paces back.

He should have hated her. He thought he’d killed her. She’d tried to kill him. She’d been one of the dozens that had confronted him in Vigil’s Keep, years ago. All Anders had wanted that night was a chance to say goodbye to Compassion, and instead he’d said goodbye to his entire life.

Anders looked at her mutilated ears and bowed back, and all he felt was pity.

“What are you doing here?” Anders whispered.

“The Commander sent me away,” Cera whispered back. “After what we did to you. We all assumed you were dead or that you had gone mad.” A templar glanced back at them, and Cera put on a queasy smile until they looked away. “Anders -... I-... I know I do not deserve it, but please help me. Please-... if you could just speak with the Commander - You were right about the Circle. You were right to escape - and damn the rest of us.”

“No I wasn’t,” Anders squeezed her hand. “... I’ll find some way to get you out. I promise.”

They reached the Keep, and the dwarves led them inside a servant’s entrance. They passed through the larders, and dozens of servants cowering therein who directed them to the throne room, where the qunari had allegedly taken most of their hostages. They took the servants passageways, between the walls of the Viscount’s Keep, to the back of the throne room.

The qunari’s speech echoed through the walls.

“Look at you all!” A deep voice boomed through the stone, “You are like fat dathrasi. You feed and feed and complain only when your meal is interrupted! You do not look up! You do not see that the grass is bare! All you leave in your wake is misery. You are all blind, and I will make you see.”

They emerged behind the qunari, in a small alcove hidden from sight, to little advantage. The whole of Hightown had been stuffed into the Viscount’s throne room. The Arishok paced back and forth down the carpet that lined the room, its patterns soaked through with the blood of the Viscount. The Arishok didn’t so much step over him as he did kick his corpse across the room, like a child with a ball.

He was massive, easily towering over the heads of humans and qunari alike. Six horns split from his head, decorated in gold, with shock white hair spilling from between them. He wore a deep burgundy armor, covered in the interlocking symbols of the Qun. He reminded Anders of an ogre, but he spoke and gestured like a nobleman.

The qunari were everywhere. There was no getting the hostages out without losing at least half of them. Anders counted too many familiar faces among their number. Aveline and her new husband, and a host of her guardsmen. Gamlen, and some of the girls from the Blooming Rose. Sebastian Vael, and the nobles who supported him.

“You are starting a war!” One of the nobles near Gamlen screamed. The Arishok stalked over to the speaker, and Gamlen vanished like a roach escaping the torchlight. The Arishok snapped the speaker’s head with a flick of his massive wrist, and a handful of nobles wailed.

“We have always been at war, human,” The Arishok said dismissively. “And you have always been losing. You will return the Tome of Koslun, and the thief who stole it, or you will die. Begin.”

One of the qunari dragged a sobbing noblewoman before the Arishok. She had curly brown hair, and had pissed her petticoat by the puddle she left behind. “Where is the Tome of Koslun?” The Arishok asked. Anders didn’t hear whatever the girl said in response, but it must not have been the right answer, because the Arishok snapped her neck.

“Andraste’s grace,” Orsino muttered.

“We must strike before it’s too late,” Meredith whispered, “Or there will be no one left to save.”

“Are you mad?” Orsino hissed, “There are dozens of us and hundreds of them! We need a distraction.”

“This is no time for games!” Meredith snapped. “We must act, or all within will die. Warden-”

One of the qunari shoved Sebastian forward. The Starkhaven prince looked traumatized. He was clutching a bow that had long since broken, and stumbled in a confused circle before ending up in front of the Arishok.

Bethany sucked in a pained breath, and grabbed Anders’ arm so hard her nails cut into the leather. “Anders-Anders-Anders-Please-”

“There are too many-” Anders started.

“Not for you!” Bethany argued, though Anders honestly wasn’t sure if that was true, “Please-”

‘There are too many hostages, Beth,” Anders cut her off, “If we fight like this-”

“Please!”

The door to the throne burst open and spared him the burden of choice. Hawke walked into the throne room, the Tome of Koslun in one hand, Isabela in the other. He carried her over one shoulder, his dark leather jerkin stained with what Anders could only assume was her blood, by the arrows in her leg. She looked unconscious, her arms dangling against Hawke’s back, completely unresponsive to Merrill, who stumbled after him, sobbing.

"Hawke - Lethallin - Please no - Let her go - Please, Mythal'enaste - Please - ma vhenan wake up! You can't -"

Hawke ignored her. The qunari parted for him, almost politely, as he stalked down the hall.

Fenris shoved his way to the forefront, a hand to his chest rippling with lyrium, like he’d rather rip out his own heart than watch what was happening.

“Now you care?” Anders demanded, furious with him. Furious with himself. Furious with Hawke. He didn’t have to bring her. He could have just brought the tome. He could have lied. He could have said she got away. It might not have been justice for the qunari but-... Isabela was a friend. What about justice for her? She was scared. She was desperate. She was on the run for freeing slaves, for Maker’s sake. She deserved a chance to make amends that she’d never get with the qunari. “What happened to her facing the consequences of her actions?”

“I had not thought he would do it…” Fenris admitted.

The Arishok abandoned Sebastian to greet him.

“Shanedan, Hawke!” The Arishok said, a little too warmly, his massive arms spread a little too wide. “Maraas toh ebra-shok. Have you come to resolve my conflict?”

“Your tome,” Hawke handed over the book. The Arishok took it, running one reverent hand down the cover before passing it off to another qunari, who vanished into the crowds with it. Hawke dropped Isabela at his feet. She rolled a few feet, and Anders thought he saw a hint of movement that assured him she was alive, if nothing else. “And your thief.”

Chapter 117: To Save a Sinner

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions/bookmarks/kudos and comments! I sincerely appreciate the feedback and hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:34 Dragon 17 Ferventis Nighttime
Kirkwall Hightown: Viscount’s Keep

"Take her and go," Hawke said.

"Most wise," The Arishok agreed. One of the qunari retrieved Isabela, tossing her over his shoulder like a shawl. "This is what respect looks like, bas! Some of you will never earn it. But you are too late. We have set the gaatlok in the tunnels beneath the city. Kirkwall will be cleansed by daybreak.”

“You set what under the city!?” Hawke demanded.

“You ass!” Aveline shouted, a hand from her husband the only thing that kept her from charging out of the guards and onto the Arishok’s axe, “You have what you came for! You have no reason to do this!”

“You are not worthy to speak to me,” The Arishok sniffed, “This city is a poison and you are the viper’s head. I sought to offer you a choice - accept and succeed within the Qun, or deny and die. But the qunari have what we came for. We will go.”

“No,” Hawke stepped in front of him, and a handful of qunari set their hands to their spears. Anders’ anger was swallowed up by his fear. He couldn’t even see Hawke behind the Arishok’s massive bulk. Hawke couldn’t seriously expect to fight him and live. “You’ll go and you’ll take your garbage with you.”

“.... You alone are basalit-an. You are worthy. I will tell you, and only you, how to stop it when we are gone from here. Our dreadnought awaits and morning is soon. Come quickly, but know this, the only way to stop the gaatlok now is to alter it into saar-qamek. For what you have done, I give you the honor of choosing your death.”

The qunari filed out of the Viscount’s Keep. Hawke went with them. Panic ensued as the translations of gaatlok and saar-qamek spread through the crowd, rippling out like rocks thrown into a pond. Explosives. Poison.

Varric reacted first, “Let’s go - we have to help Hawke before the whole city blows!” He bolted out of the Keep after Hawke.

Meredith and the rest of her group shoved past Anders and Fenris and into the throne room proper. "We have to evacuate the city!" Meredith called out to the gathered nobles. “We have but hours before daybreak! First Enchanter - Clear the way to the northeast gate and the Vimmark Road! Men - Sweep Hightown for survivors!”

Not Lowtown. Not Darktown. Just Hightown. The nobles swarmed from the Keep like a tidal wave, shrieking and climbing over each other in their haste. Anders had seen a mob before, but never like this. Men and women went down, and didn’t get back up, trampled into the stone. Anders had no idea how to stop it. “Stop running!” Anders yelled over the din of screams, “Just walk, damn you!”

No one listened to him. Anders jogged after Meredith, and grabbed her arm before the flood of nobles swept her away. The Knight-Commander looked at him with such thinly veiled rage it could have birthed a demon. “What about the rest of the city!? What about Hawke!? You can’t evacuate the entire city before sunrise, but we might be able to stop the explosions and quarantine the gas. We have to help him.”

“We have to do nothing,” Meredith wrenched her hand free of his grasp. “You do not command me. The Viscount is dead - This city is under my protection.”

“Please, Knight-Commander, he’s my brother!” Bethany begged, hurrying to take a spot at Anders’ side. “We have to help him! The city-”

“Is lost,” Meredith cut her off. Anders was so angry he saw spots. All at once, she wasn’t Meredith, but Leonie, condemning a city to death because she hadn’t the courage to save it, “I wish your brother luck, but we cannot pray for a champion to save us. We must bring about our own deliverance.”

“Please!” Bethany pleaded, like Sigrun had pleaded and Velanna had pleaded and- “Please, at least grant me leave to try to help him. We have to try.”

“... Very well,” Meredith allotted with a small nod, where Leonie never had. The illusion broke, and Anders felt like he could breathe again. “Maker go with you, Hawke, but know that I will send you to him myself if you are not back at the Gallows when all this is over.”

Bethany thanked her for the threat, and shoved through the crowds after her brother. Meredith and her templars followed the nobles out, but the Carta lingered with Anders and Fenris. The red-headed dwarf retrieved the Viscount’s crown from his severed head, and christened the Carta leader with a handful of gestures that made her laugh before turning back to Anders.

“No one knows Darktown better than us,” The Carta leader said. “We’ll meet your boy at the docks and do what we can to stop the explosives. Good luck, mage, don’t get dead.” The Carta dwarves retreated back out the servant’s passageway, opposite the mob, and left Anders and Fenris with the trampled dead.

Anders knew he had to help do something about the explosives before the whole city collapsed in on itself, but from the pile of crushed limbs and flatten torsos, someone moaned. It figured that after everything the qunari had done to the city, the nobles had brought about their own end. Anders had never seen anything like it. Arms pressed through torsos, legs splitting skulls, bodies twisted and tangled into an unholy abomination of flesh and silk.

But someone was alive. Someone had survived. Whether or not Anders could save the city, at least he could save them.

“I hear you!” Anders called out. He dropped to his knees in the pile, peeling apart smashed torsos and digging through intenses, praying he didn’t accidentally pull apart a survivor, “Say something!” Anders thought he heard a gurgle, a few feet to his right, and crawled towards it, when Fenris joined him.

“Mage...” Fenris knelt in the pile with him, and dug out what might have been a man once, “... Here.”

Anders crawled over to him. The poor bastard was beyond him. His skull had been split open, blood and brains leaking out onto another someone else’s chest. He was split almost in two at his waist. Deep blue eyes, like limpid pools of tears, shook as they scanned his face. “-... Scared.”

“I know,” Anders cradled his face. “It’s okay.”

“Daughter…?” The noble gargled.

“She’s fine,” Anders lied. He didn’t know the man or his daughter. There was too much blood even if he did. She could have been crushed underneath him for all Anders knew. “She made it out. She’s fine.”

The stranger died.

“... For a man possessed by a spirit of Justice, you have an odd sense of it.” Fenris said.

“I don’t have time to argue with you,” Anders stood up, “The city is going to burn - We have to catch up to Hawke and find out how to save it.”

“I meant no offense,” Fenris said quickly, following him over the pile of nobles and out of the Keep.

From the Keep’s courtyard, the whole of Kirkwall was laid out before them. The smoke swallowed the moons and all the stars, but there was enough light from the fires that they could still see the charred path the qunari had taken to reach the Keep. Anders summoned a ball of magelight, and tried to take some comfort in the fact that some of the city was untouched. It was short lived. There was no telling how many explosives the qunari had set beneath Darktown, and what it would look like when they went off in the morning.

“... Could their gaatlok really level the city?” Anders asked.

“Yes,” Fenris said.

Someone was crying. Merrill was crumpled up into a ball beside one of the pillars. Anders ran to her side, but beyond the blood loss, she wasn’t injured.

“Merrill, we need to go,” Anders squeezed her shoulder.

“I tried to stop him,” Merrill sobbed.

“I know,” Anders knelt beside her, “I’m sorry.”

"I tried-... I tried to force him to stop,” Merrill elaborated, hiccuping, “I couldn't - I don’t know if I lost too much blood or he just-... he just hated her more than I loved her. I’m sorry, Anders-... Creators, I’ve failed everyone.”

“... You tried to use blood magic on Hawke?” Anders asked.

Merrill nodded.

A tension flared up his spine and split across his veins, burning with veilfire that quickly died down. She was desperate. They were all desperate. Merrill loved Isabela - as much as Anders loved Hawke. If he’d drown the city in blood for Hawke, he couldn’t begrudge Merrill doing the same for Isabela.

“Maybe we can still save her?” Merrill asked.

“Merrill-...” Anders looked between her and the destruction Isabela had wrought.

Hundreds had died. Thousands more might join them.

Isabela was a good friend, but-...

Anders thought back to the day he’d met her in Denerim. A selfish twenty something apostate, working at the Pearl and as enamoured with pirates as Isabela was with prostitutes. She’d been a trusted patron, and had paid extra for a night with an ‘apostitute.’ Anders remembered her toothy grin when she’d made up the word, soaked in sweat and laying on his chest.

“Are you happy here, sweet thing?” Isabela had asked, tracing idle circles over the freckles on his shoulders.

“I’m happy anywhere that’s not the Circle,” Anders had said, and it had been true at the time.

“Really? If you could go anywhere in the world, would this be it?”

“We can’t all be pirate captains. How would I go anywhere else?”

“The funny thing about pirate captains is they have pirate crews. What do you say?”

“You know I’m a mage, right? Don’t tell me you didn’t feel the electricity. I must be losing my touch.”

“Oh, I felt it. If I find a few extra silver laying around, I’ll happily pay to feel it again, but I’m serious. Why don’t you come with me? Templars are funny about water. They tend to sink in it. Must be the weight of their sins.”

“Are you serious?”

“Not usually, but right now I am.”

“Why would you do that for me? I know I’m good in bed but I can’t be that good.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, sweet thing, but it’s not that. Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for mages. I think we all deserve a chance at freedom, don’t you?”

Anders would have gone with her, if the templars hadn’t caught him first. Isabela had meant it. She’d always meant it. For all of her flaws, she believed in freedom. She believed in it so strongly she’d freed an entire cargo hold of slaves, and indentured herself to one of the worst captains in the Raiders of the Waking Sea as a result. If Castillon hadn’t forced her, she might never have stolen the Tome of Koslun in the first place. If anyone was to blame for what had become of Kirkwall, it was him. Isabela was just caught in the storm.

“... We can try,” Anders agreed.

“You will fail,” Fenris said.

“At least we’re trying!” Merrill swayed her way to her feet. She tried to shove him, and stumbled. “You didn’t even try to stop him. I love Isabela! You can’t even imagine what that is.”

“Do not bare your heart to me, mage,” Fenris snarled, grabbing a handful of her tunic, “Unless you would have me rip it out.”

“You already did!” Merrill screamed at him. “I can’t believe I thought the three of us could be together! All it took was one night and you abandoned me! Now you want to abandon Isabela too!”

“Do not make light of that night! Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done!”

“Well you certainly made it look easy!”

“This isn’t helping Isabela!” Anders pulled them apart. He didn’t have the time or the energy to process whatever relationship drama he’d stumbled across between the three of them, “Fenris - what do you mean we’ll fail?”

“Nevermind that Merrill can barely hold onto consciousness, and you sanity, but I know what qunari do their prisoners.” Fenris paced through the courtyard. His voice was level, but his hands clenched and unclenched at his side, and betrayed a deeper concern than Merrill gave him credit for. “They waste nothing. First they will assess if they can reeducate her into a loyal follower of the Qun, and when she refuses, as she will, they will use qamek. It is a poison, feared in Tevinter above all others. Much like Tranquility, save that it can be applied to all, mage or no. It wipes out a person’s memories, and turns them into a mindless laborer.”

“So we have to hurry,” Anders said. “I can fly to catch up with them, but Merrill-”

“I’m coming with you,” Merrill said firmly.

“Merrill-”

“I’m coming with you,” Merrill said in a tone that brokered no argument, “I already lost the eluvian. I won’t lose Isabela too.”

Anders took off his tabard. Fenris’ face crumpled, and he recoiled, “Can you not transform along with your clothes?”

“Only if they’re enchanted. My tabard isn’t.” On any other day, Anders might have laughed. He rolled Amell’s tabard up, took off Amell’s ring, and pressed both into Fenris’ hands. “Do not lose these. I swear on the Maker, Fenris, if even one thread is missing-”

“Enough,” Fenris snapped, “I need no instructions. I will hold your things, and evacuate Hawke’s estate, just-... When you free her-... tell her I am sorry.”

“What for?” Anders asked.

“... For not being with you,” Fenris said.

Anders looked at Merrill, “Are you sure you can do this?”

A red-tailed hawk took her place. Anders was surprised she could still hold the form, considering her friendship with Hawke was what had motivated her to pick it in the first place. A crow flew with the hawk from Hightown, fighting against the wind to stay clear of the smoke. They circled down to the docks, over the abandoned qunari compound, and perched high upon its walls.

The docks were in ruins. The piers had collapsed into the harbor. The tide rolled over the burnt shells of the ships that moored there, like it was trying to bury them. It pushed and pulled the first casualties of the qunari onslaught, their bloated corpses knocking up against the sandstone levee.

Only two ships survived. The one the templars had taken from the Gallows, and the qunari dreadnought. The dreadnought was over twice the length and width of the templar’s ship, and three stores high above the water. It was a massive dark wooden construct, framed in a sinister casing of metal, and lined in more oars than the crow could count at a glance. The horned giants filed into it, but Isabela was nowhere to be seen.

Neither was the Arishok or Hawke. Anders shook off his crow form, and Merrill came apart in a blast of feathers that nearly knocked her off the wall. “They must have already taken her onboard,” Anders said, with a glance back at the city.

He couldn’t help wondering when the explosions would start. Whether Hawke would stop them in time. How many people he would save. How many he wouldn’t. Whether they should be helping him instead of Isabela.

“I have no clear answer,” Justice said at Anders’ retreat, “... Both pursuits are worthy. Saving the city is a good and valorous thing, but an injustice has befallen Isabela. Her actions have borne dire consequence, and she must seek to rectify them, but I do not believe that she should suffer for a crime committed under duress… Not as Karl suffered.”

Whatever Anders’ doubts, the comparison eliminated them. If qamek really was like Tranquility, Isabela didn’t deserve it.

“What do we do?” Merrill asked, hanging onto his arm to stay upright, “We can’t burn the ship with her inside it. How do we get her out?”

“I don’t know,” Anders admitted.

“Maybe… Maybe we can sneak onboard and break her out.”

“If we do, they’ll just go after her again. Even if the city survives the explosions, it won’t survive another invasion. We can’t save her here. We’ll have to wait until they set sail, and make it look like she jumped overboard near Highever.”

“Is that far enough?”

“It has to be. It’ll take them a week to reach Ostwick or Brandel’s Reach, and after what Fenris said, I don’t know if we can wait that long.”

They waited in the dark while the qunari boarded. Merrill started crying at some point. Anders wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her against his side. “So… Fenris?” Anders asked playfully, hoping to take her mind off Isabela.

Merrill sniffed, “It was a mistake.”

“Ouch,” Anders whistled.

“That’s what he said,” Merrill elaborated, “Elgar’nan, I felt like such a fool.”

“You do have pretty questionable taste,” Anders teased.

“He was nice… for a while.”

“... I know the feeling.”

“Are you mad at Hawke?”

“Of course I’m mad at Hawke,” Anders said. “I get it, I was mad at Isabela too, I still am, but Amell always used to say that we’re more than our mistakes. I didn’t used to think that was true, but ever since Justice-... we really believe that.

“I never told you, but I had another friend who was Dalish before I met you. Velanna. The one I had you ask Justice about. She was - well, she was a bitch. Had such a big chip on her shoulder it practically replaced her head. She killed scores of innocent people all over a misunderstanding, just because she was too proud to talk to them.

“We could have just killed her. She was a murderer. She never denied it. But we didn’t. We gave her a chance to redeem herself. Justice - he really believed in her. He believed that she deserved a chance to atone and that she still could, despite everything she’d done. And she did. She really did. When the darkspawn attacked Amaranthine and the Warden Constable ordered us to burn it down, Velanna was the first one to defect.

“... I don’t know if we would have saved the city without her. Isabela deserves that chance. I know why Hawke did what he did, but Isabela never meant for this to happen. Velanna meant to kill the people she did, but I-... I would never betray her… I don’t think I can forgive myself if I did. I don’t know how Hawke could-”

Merrill snored. Anders chuffed, and pulled her under his coat to keep her warm while the qunari finished boarding. “... You could forgive Merrill too, you know,” Anders said to himself, and the ripples of veilfire that swam within his veins, “For when she bound us. She didn’t mean to hurt you. You know we can’t control ourselves in combat. We could have killed her too.”

This is true. Anders felt the thought flit behind his eyelids. Your compassion shames me.

“Well… I had twenty-seven years with her,” Anders joked. He didn’t know the words for the rest of what he wanted to say. That Justice shouldn’t have been ashamed of anything when it was Anders’ anger that corrupted him. That sometimes justice was more important than compassion. That Anders was a bit of a hypocrite, considering compassion for Merrill was a lot easier for him than compassion for Hawke right now.

The qunari finally set sail with daybreak, and the first explosion woke Merrill before Anders could. It felt like an earthquake, rumbling through the city and nearly knocking them off the wall. Anders watched a plume of smoke rise in the distance, and wondered how many more would follow. They waited as long as they could as they dreadnought set out, but no other explosions followed. Hawke must have stopped the rest.

“Falon’Din enasal enaste,” Merrill mumbled sleepily.

“Come on,” Anders said, “Let’s go.”

A crow and a hawk followed the qunari dreadnought as it sailed from Kirkwall across the turbulent Waking Sea. The long strokes of dozens upon dozens of oars shot the ship across the waves, but they kept pace. The ship stayed along the Free Marches’ coastline, never banking for Ferelden, and the crow began to suspect it never would. Hours passed before the crow felt safe flying down to the ship, where it perched on a porthole. It spotted only qunari within. The hawk joined it, searching porthole after porthole until at last it let out a victorious shriek.

The crow flew to join it, fighting briefly with the larger bird for purchase, and eventually settled to where it could peer inside. It didn’t have the look of a prisoner’s cell. The room had a cot, a chamberpot, and a table and chair. A human sat on the cot, divested of her armor, in a plain white tunic and brown trousers, cut off at the knee on one leg. The leg in question was braced and bandaged, being tended to by a qunari.

She was a woman, the first of their race the crow had ever seen. Her horns were painted gold, and she was wearing a set of robes almost reminiscent of a Chantry Sister. In place of sunbursts, she was adorned in interlocking symbols of the Qun. Decorative chains hung at her neck and waist, and at her side was a bowl, containing a small orb covered in flames. It burned a bright white with hints of lavender and rose, and the human seemed terrified of it.

Qamek.

The human scooted back against the hull of the ship, wincing at the qunari’s ministrations to her leg. The hawk pecked at the glass, and shrieked again, as if uncertain how to pierce it. The crow shrieked back at her, and flew from the porthole to the deck of the ship, searching for an entrance. The dreadnought seemed a ship holding a small apartment building at its stern. The crow flew through one of the open halls, landing before what it hoped was the door of the same room it had seen from the porthole.

Qunari patrolled the halls, and the crow dodged the giant’s feet with panicked hops until the hall emptied. Anders let go of the spell, and gathered a small storm in his hand for when he entered. The door was unlocked, to his surprise, and the qunari was unconscious, to his surprise again.

Isabela had fallen off the cot and onto the floor in whatever fight had ensued in his absence. She looked up at his entrance, hand raised threateningly like she expected a rapier to manifest in it. “Try it! I’ll make you cry for your-... Anders?”

“To the rescue,” Anders closed the door behind him, and dragged over the chair to barricade it for good measure. He opened the porthole for Merrill, and she flew inside, crashing apart into an elf and slamming into the cot beside Isabela.

“Kitten?” Isabela asked.

Merrill flung her arms around her, “I’m so sorry, ma vhenan. Are you alright? Did they hurt you?”

“You’re hurting me, Kitten,” Isabela winced, peeling Merrill off her injured leg.

“Sorry,” Merrill sniffed.

Anders knelt beside her, restorative energies mending the damage Hawke’s arrows had wrought. Anders felt all of them, even after they’d been extracted. One that had pierced her calf, and imbedded itself in the bone. One that had gone clean through her thigh. Another had caught in her shoulder. All of them were coated with knockout poison, still coursing sluggishly through Isabela’s veins. Anders undid the bandage about her leg, and extracted it with blood magic.

“What are you two doing here?” Isabela asked.

“We’re here to rescue you,” Merrill said. “We never should have let them take you.”

“Rescue me?” Isabela repeated. “... why?”

“What do you mean why?” Anders demanded, a hot flash of veilfire stinging his eyes, “Everyone deserves freedom, remember?”

“Some people have freedom taken away for a reason, Sparky,” Isabela looked away from him, “Maybe you weren’t paying attention, but I’m a thief. All of this is my own fault. You shouldn’t have come.”

“That’s not true!” Merrill grabbed her face, “You’re good, and kind, and brave, and I know you didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

“I stole the relic from the qunari!” Isabela pushed her hands away, “I’m the reason they landed in Kirkwall. I’m the reason all of this happened. Don’t you get it? I’m not like you two. You’re heroes! You come flying in to save the day any chance you get, but I don’t. I was never going to give back the relic. You and I have nothing in common. I’m not a hero. I’m just a lying thieving snake.”

“That doesn’t mean you deserve whatever the qunari had planned for you,” Anders said. “I know that. Merrill knows that. Maker, even Fenris knows that. He would have come with us if he could have kept up. He said to tell you he was sorry he couldn’t. I get it, everyone makes mistakes, but you have a chance to fix yours. To make things right again. We just have to get you out of here first.”

“The shore is about a league off,” Merrill wrung her hands together, “Do you think you could swim that far, vhenan? You’re a wonderful swimmer. You’ll be fine, won’t you?”

“I suppose I'll have to be,” Isabela stood, testing the leg Anders had healed. “How are we getting out of here?”

Anders set his hands to the hull, channelling fire through his palms and charring a way out for her. Isabela kicked out a few of the surviving planks when he finished, and peered over the edge into the ocean.

“What if the qunari notice before we get to shore?” Merrill asked fretfully, peaking out of the hole.

“Don’t jinx me, Kitten,” Isabela leapt over the edge and into the ocean. A crow and a hawk followed her back to swore, circling to keep pace. The swim took hours, and each time Isabela tired, the hawk would panic, shrieking and swooping and diving until she resumed swimming. The qunari dreadnought pressed on without her, fading into the distance, towards Ostwick and beyond. Eventually, Isabela dragged herself to shore, and collapsed in the sands, half-asleep, the tide rolling over her like a blanket.

Merrill hit the ground beside her, crash landing in a spray of sand that had Anders hurrying to her side. She was worse off than Isabela with how hard she’d pushed herself - drained of blood and mana. Anders dragged both of them out of the tides and onto dry sand. Shrugging out of his coat, Anders pulled both his friends against him, and draped it over them, channeling a mix of restorative energies and primal magic for warmth.

“So cold,” Merrill mumbled against his shoulder.

“I’ve got you,” Anders promised, dragging her legs into his lap, and doing the same for Isabela.

“Isssabela?” Merrill slurred.

“I’ve got her too,” Anders massaged her legs to keep what little blood she had left flowing, “You can rest for a minute. It’ll be okay.”

A minute became an hour, and an hour became more. Anders was exhausted. He’d been up for almost two days, and the limitless supply of mana Justice offered him was quickly becoming limited. The channel was beyond draining, and it didn’t help the ache in his arms and back, sitting with Isabela and Merrill on either shoulder and holding them upright. He must have dozed off, because the sun moved across the horizon when he blinked.

“Hey,” Anders shifted, disturbing both of them, “We should move. We don’t know if the qunari will double back when they figure out you’re missing, and we don’t want to be on the coast when that happens.”

Isabela climbed to her feet, and Anders helped Merrill do the same. They stumbled inland, walking blind until they hit the road between Kirkwall and Ostwick. “Should we take turns carrying each other back to Kirkwall?” Anders joked.

“Kirkwall?” Isabela repeated with a frown. “I’m not going back there.”

“What do you mean you’re not going back?” Merrill asked. “Of course you’re going back! It’s your home!”

“Kirkwall’s your home, Kitten, not mine, and I destroyed it. No one wants me there. Not you, not Aveline, not that bastard Hawke.”

“I know what he did, but-” Anders started.

“Then you know he doesn’t want me there,” Isabela cut him off. “He shot me, Anders. I thought he was going to kill me. I’d rather take my chances on the run. Don’t give me that look. I’ll be fine. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

Anders wanted to argue - but every argument that came to him was against Hawke, and not for him. He couldn’t find the words, so he gave up on them. “... What about Fenris?”

“... He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself too.”

“What about me?” Merrill broke from him to run to Isabela, and fling her arms around her neck, “Ma vhenan - don’t go. Please stay. We can talk to Hawke. We’ll tell him that we saved you, and that you’re sorry for stealing the relic, and that you want to make things right-”

“There’s no making this right, Kitten,” Isabela pried Merrill’s hands free, “I’m a wanted woman. Aveline will make sure of it. If I go back there, I’ll just be moving from one cell to another.”

“But we saved you - We saved you so you could stay,” Merrill insisted, “You can stay.”

“I never should have stayed in the first place,” Isabela said. “I’m a pirate. I should have been acting like one. As soon as I get to Ostwick, I’m getting myself a ship, and sailing wherever the sea takes me.”

“But-... but you’ll come back? You’ll write to me, won’t you?”

“Pirates have awful penmanship, Kitten.”

“Please don’t go,” Merrill choked, eyes red with tears, “I love you.”

Isabela winced, like the words hurt worse than Hawke’s arrows ever could. She took a step back, and turned away. “I told you not to.”

Isabela left.

Notes:

Pariahs
Wicked Grace: The events of this chapter as told from Isabela's perspective.

Fanart
Hawke Will Fight You - 0ptiimus: An alternative version of how this chapter could have gone.

Chapter 118: On Deaf Ears

Notes:

Thank you all for your wonderful feedback, kudos, and comments, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:34 Dragon 18 Ferventis Afternoon
The Wounded Coast

Merrill couldn't make it back to Kirkwall. A hawk launched itself into the sky, and an elf fell out of it. Anders landed beside her, and healed the ankle she'd broken in the fall. Tears streamed down her inked face, and if she had been anything like him, she would have blamed it on the pain. She wasn't, and she didn't. Anders had never known her to be afraid of her feelings.

"I'm such a fool," Merrill sniffled.

"That's not true," Anders said.

"I thought she loved me," Merrill said. "She never said it, but I thought-..."

“Sometimes it’s not easy to say,” Anders said.

“There’s nothing easier,” Merrill disagreed, shaking her head and sinking her face into her hands, “I loved her. I loved her. I loved her.”

"Does it matter?"

"Of course it matters! What do you mean-"

"I mean it was the right thing to do," Anders said, as much to convince Merrill as himself. He'd been so angry with Amell for abandoning the city, and then Anders had gone and done the exact same thing. "Whether she loved you or not."

"Why did Hawke have to give her to them?" Merrill fisted pale fingers in pitch dark hair, "Why couldn’t he just give them the relic?"

Anders didn’t have an answer for her. Anders didn’t even have an answer for Anders. Anders hadn’t been so far away he couldn’t see Hawke’s face when he’d entered the Keep. He’d looked cold. Not cold the way Meredith was cold. His expression hadn’t been icy - it didn’t sting, it didn’t bite. It had been cold the way the dead were cold - detached from the world and everyone in it. When he’d thrown Isabela to the qunari, it had been as an undertaker threw a corpse to the pyre.

Had she really meant so little to him?

Anders tried to think back to all of the time they’d spent together. Evenings at the Hanged Man. Afternoons at the Wounded Coast. All the games of Wicked Grace. All of it just… gone. Like ash in the wind of Kirkwall’s fires.

The sun rose grey over Kirkwall in the distance. The smoke lingered, shadowing the Wounded Coast from the summer sun, even leagues away as they were. The survivors would need healing. They had to get back to the city, but Merrill was in no state to travel.

“She’s safe, Merrill,” Anders reminded her, “Hold onto that.”

“I’d rather hold onto her,” Merrill said miserably.

“I know,” Anders pulled her into a hug. Merrill broke, great gasping sobs wracking her body as she huddled against his chest. Anders stroked her hair, her pointed ears catching on his sleeve, “Believe me, I know.”

They made a makeshift camp on the side of the road. Merrill fell asleep on his leg beside the fire, and Anders covered her with his coat. She twitched in her sleep every so often, muttering in elven or crying. Anders watched the smoke. He knew the city needed him, but everytime he wondered if he’d done the right thing, he thought of Karl. The sunburst scored into his beautiful brow. The emptiness in his bright blue eyes. The indifferent set of his rosy lips. He thought of Isabela with the same expression, and Merrill having to see it, and his doubts left him.

Some causes were more important.

Merrill was still too weak to hold the transformation magic when she woke later that afternoon. Kirkwall loomed like a sunrise, burning through the day and into the next, and the walk back was heavy. Anders didn’t have the answers that Merrill wanted to hear. Anders didn’t have any answers at all, but he was there, and he was with her, and he had to hope that counted for something.

There were no guards posted at the gates. Anders supposed they didn’t have any left to spare. The city appeared to have been partially evacuated to escape the fires, the smoke, the poison gas. Refugees set up camp outside the walls, all along the Wounded Coast. A few folk accosted them as they passed, begging alms or offering warnings.

“Turn back, travelers, there’s nothing for you here,” One suggested.

“Have you seen any caravans?” Another asked. “Is Ostwick sending aid?”

“Messere - your staff - have you magic? Can you help us? Please - my brother’s burned, and the Circle is charging five sovereigns a healer.”

“... Where is he?” Anders asked.

“Mistress, mistress are you Dalish? Our alienage burned down, and my mother is sick with the smoke. Please, would your clan take us in?”

“Well I’m not exactly-...I want to help but-...” Merrill retreated a pace, bumping into him. Anders steadied her, and she looked at him like she expected him to answer for her. Anders felt for her. Merrill‘s clan had fled Ferelden before the Blight had taken root. She’d never seen destruction on this scale before, and she wasn’t prepared for it. Anders squeezed her shoulder, and felt strangely proud when she straightened them for it. “I suppose I could ask.”

It took them two hours to make it two yards. Anders healing the survivors, Merrill comforting them. Eventually, they escaped and made it into the city proper. Kirkwall was in ruins. Sections of Lowtown had been haphazardly quarantined. Overturned carts and stalls blocked alleys and roads, gang tags replaced with graffitied warnings. GAS and POISON and TURN BACK painted across the sandstone walls of the city.

“Elgar’nan,” Merrill whispered, “This is… Have you ever seen anything like this? How do we fix this?”

“One day at a time,” Anders said.

“... What do we do?” Merrill asked, wide green eyes looking everywhere but where she was going. She stumbled over a broken bit of something that might have been a spear once, and bumped into him again. “... There’s so much… Everything is so...”

“I know,” Anders wrapped her hand around his forearm to keep her from wandering into anything, “We heal the survivors first, then we clear out the gas, then we start rebuilding. Other cities will send aid.”

“How do you know?” Merrill asked.

Anders thought of Amaranthine, “Because I’ve done it before.”

“I’m sorry,” Merrill said. “... I don’t know how anyone could go through this twice. I-... I don’t even know how to go through it once… My mirror-”

“... I’m sorry Merrill.”

“Do you think it’s still there? Maybe-... maybe under all the rubble-...”

No.

“Maybe,” Anders smiled.

“... I don’t have anywhere to stay,” Merrill suddenly realized.

“Yes you do,” Anders squeezed her hand.

Hightown was better off than Lowtown. Repairs were already underway. The surviving members of the guard patrolled the streets, directing street sweepers and servants scouring evidence of the attack from the marble buildings. A handful of mages were with them, telekinetic energies clearing away the rubble. It seemed like there should be more. Templars were with them, one for every mage, watching and not helping.

A templar spotted his staff, and jogged over, but his sword wasn’t drawn, and no smite came crashing down on him. Merrill wrung her hands together anxiously all the same, and Anders pulled her under his arm. He felt a sudden surge of protectiveness, and relaxed into the sensation of his spirit’s emotions tangling together with his own. Mages. Mages were more important than templars. If it came to combat, they just had to focus on Merrill. On keeping her safe.

“You there!” The templar called, “You’re the Warden?”

“I’m a Warden,” Anders said slowly, wishing he had his tabard to back it up.

“The Knight-Commander wants to speak with you,” The templar said. Mercifully, he didn’t so much glance at Merrill.

“That’s funny, because I don’t want to speak with her,” Anders said.

“She has questions for you,” The templar explained.

“I’m good,” Anders smiled humorlessly, “She can keep them,”

The templar must not have known what to say that, because he didn’t say anything, and Anders and Merrill pushed past him. Anders couldn’t believe it actually worked. The templar didn’t fight him. The templar didn’t question him. The templar didn’t stop him. Anders was a Warden, and there was nothing the templar could do about it. Anders was a Warden, and Anders was free.

The rest of the mages weren’t.

This would help them change that.

Hawke’s estate was largely untouched relative to the rest of Kirkwall. The Carta had held good to their promise to defend the estate, and hopefully the man within it. Anders stared at the elaborate heraldry hanging over the door, twin hawks against a backdrop of Kirkwall, framed by a crown. Merrill stared with him.

“... He’s alright, isn’t he?” Merrill asked. Anders was surprised she cared. “Do you suppose he’s alright?”

“He’s fine,” Anders said, because Hawke had to be. Because given the choice between Hawke and Isabela, Anders had chosen Isabela, and Anders couldn’t live with himself if that meant he could never choose Hawke again.

Hawke had dealt with saar-qamek before. Disgruntled elves had unleashed the poison gas on half of Lowtown, and Hawke had saved the city then. He wouldn’t have had any trouble saving it a second time. Not with Varric and the Carta helping him. He didn’t need Anders there to rescue him. Between the two of them, Anders was the only who’d ever needed to be rescued.

He hoped.

They went inside. The foyer had been largely put back together. A handful of servants were working on the pieces still in disrepair, measuring broken windows, sweeping up glass, rolling up burnt curtains. Bodahn ran to greet them, immaculate as ever, chestnut hair still neatly braided, though Anders swore a few strands of silver had appeared overnight. “Master Anders, Mistress Alerion, so good to see you back safe!”

“Hi Bodahn,” Anders said, “Where’s Hawke?”

“In the study with Master Tethras,” Bodahn said. “And some of the … um… dwarven ladies and gentlemen from earlier.”

“... I don’t think I want to see him,” Merrill confessed, a furrow appearing in her brow when she looked to the study, “I’m glad he's alright. I am. I just -... I just don’t think I want to see him.”

“You should get some more sleep anyway,” Anders untangled their arms, “And you need to eat something. Bodahn, can you get Merrill a room and some dinner?”

“Of course!” Bodahn said. “Master Anders, about Master Hawke-”

“Thanks, Bodahn,” Anders didn’t want to hear whatever apologies Hawke had pre-prepared for him. He left Bodahn in the foyer and went to the study. Two stories, the walls were made of bookshelves and framed a marble hearth, atop which an old Tevinter-style statue stood. The masked dragon loomed over the handful of dwarves lounging about on the second story, while Hawke and Varric were on the first.

They looked fine. Varric was wearing a new set of clothes he must have borrowed from Bodahn, with the damage the Hanged Man had sustained in the assault. They didn’t quite fit, stretched tight and riding up at his stomach. Hawke was wearing his own clothes, black silk slacks and a maroon robe he hadn’t bothered to lace.

His inked skin was unmarred, save for the handprint Anders had burned into his chest, dark hair freshly washed and tousled about his face, free of any ash or soot. A glass of wine swirled idly in one hand, while the other rested on a bent knee. Hawke didn’t just look fine. He looked comfortable. Anders couldn’t believe he looked comfortable.

“Are you serious?” Anders demanded. Varric looked up at him. Hawke didn’t even bother. Anders set his staff aside. He needed his hands. Needed to wave them at Hawke, or run them through his hair when he started pacing. “I can’t believe you. This whole time I thought - … I don’t know what I thought.

“I thought you’d be praying. I thought you would think Isabela was worth praying over. What happened to confessing your sins? I can’t believe you just gave her to the qunari! You know what they’re like - they’ve been in the city for years! You had to have known what they were going to do to her.”

“Blondie-” Varric tried to interrupt him.

“No, you don’t get to apologize for him,” Anders cut him off. Hawke was finally looking at him, which was something, but he didn’t look sorry. He looked frustrated, a slight crease to his brow that didn’t deserve to be there. Anders was the one who got to be frustrated, “You didn’t even hesitate! I know you had to save the city, but Isabela practically lived with you for three years. Three years, Varric!”

“Blondie-” Varric tried again.

“And you just abandoned her. She was a good person! She might not have been perfect, but you know she was a good person. The qunari are zealots. They’re a bunch of fanatics! If they lost some sacred text that thinks it can justify what they do to their mages then I say good riddance! Isabela never would have stolen it if Castillon hadn’t forced her - you didn’t have to give her over to them-”

“Blondie!” Varric shouted, slamming his hands on the arms of his chair so hard his prosthetic popped off. “Shit,” Varric muttered, hopping off the chair and chasing after it. A handful of Carta dwarves peered down at them over the railing for the commotion.

“What?” Anders demanded.

“He can’t hear you,” Varric said.

“You think?” Anders frowned, “Hawke, are you even listening to me?”

“No - Blondie…” Varric sighed, fixing his prosthetic. “I mean he really can’t hear you. He’s deaf.”

“... He’s what?” Anders misheard him. He misheard him. Varric had said something else. Something that made sense. Something Anders could process.

“Not completely,” Varric held up his good hand, “He can hear you if you yell in his ear, but that’s about it. Maybe… maybe you wanna sit down?”

“I-... what?” Anders looked at Hawke. Hawke was still staring at him, free hand supporting his head while his fingers rubbed idly at his temple. He tipped his glass of wine towards him, and took a long drink that said more than Anders wanted to hear.

“No, no I don’t want to sit down.” Anders crossed the room, creationism on his fingers he set to one of Hawke’s ears, but there was nothing to heal. Someone else already had. Poorly. His magic met with scar tissue. Hawke raised his eyebrows almost bemusedly at his failure, and took another sip. “... How? Why? When?”

Varric urged Anders into the chair he’d vacated, and retrieved another for himself from the opposite end of the study. Varric sat back down, retrieving his own wine glass Anders desperately wished he could take a drink from right now. “How, why, when… Any particular order?”

“Varric-”

“I'm kidding,” Varric assured him, “Killer seems to be taking it well. The how is the gaatlok. The qunari had ten charges set up throughout the city, and we managed to get nine of them before the sun started coming up. Don’t me ask how it works, but they had all kinds of mirrors rigged to catch the light and make everything go off at the same time in the morning. Hawke thought he could make it. He tried to get the last one on his own, and…

“Well, that’s the when and the why, I guess. Even my ears were ringing for a few hours after the blast went off, but Hawke was right on top of it. Killer’s lucky to be alive, if you ask me. Everyone in that section of the city is deaf, dead, or close enough.”

“But… so…” Anders ran a hand through his hair. This-... This wasn’t-... This shouldn’t have-... “Who healed him?”

“Now, Blondie, I’m sure you could have done Killer one better, but it wasn’t their fault. The blast got Killer good in the hip, and someone had to do it.”

Someone had to do it because Anders couldn’t.

Because Anders had left him.

“I-... But he can still hear? Hawke?” Anders grabbed Hawke’s free hand, testing the volume of his voice, “Hawke? Hawke!? Hawke!?”

“I can hear you,” Hawke assured him, a little too loudly.

“Yeah, that’s a thing too,” Varric rubbed a knuckle into his ear closest to Hawke, “Your Carta friends stayed to help out. Not my usual crowd… Unsubtle. Kind of fuzzy in their business plan, with a little too much smuggling, gambling and murder for hire, but they can sign. So far we’ve got yes -” Varric made a fist with his good hand, and nodded with it “- and no.” Varric pressed his pointer and middle finger to his thumb.

“Talk to you in a year,” Hawke snorted at the gestures, taking another drink.

“... Two to three, if we’re lucky,” Varric guessed. “No one said learning a language was easy.”

“Can you just-...” Anders ran his hands through his hair, “Can you just leave us alone? Can you all just leave?”

“... Sure thing, Blondie.” Varric stood up, and waved for the eavesdropping dwarves to follow, “I’m uh-... temporarily displaced, as it were, so I’ve got a room in the east wing if you need me.” Varric thumped a fist on Hawke’s shoulder, shouting, “Good talk, Killer!”

The dwarves left.

Hawke refilled his wine glass from the flask of red on the table. Anders couldn’t process it. He looked fine. He looked the same. But he wasn’t. He was deaf. Or near enough. He was deaf because Anders had left him.

“... What happened?” Anders asked.

Hawke frowned, “I can’t read lips, Anders, I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“What happened!?” Anders asked again, louder, and when that didn’t work, shouted, “What happened!?”

“Varric didn’t tell you?” Hawke asked, loudly.

“I want you to tell me,” Anders had to shout.

“You want me to tell you?” Hawke surmised, like he wasn’t quite sure what Anders had said. Anders nodded, and Hawke barked a laugh. “You want me to tell you the qunari were going to blow up the city? You want me to tell you you were going to let them? You want me to tell you I had to stop it by myself because you were gone? What the fuck do you want me to tell you, Anders?”

“I want you to tell me you’re sorry!” Anders shot back. “I want you to tell me you had a plan to get Isabela back! I want you to tell me you didn’t chase her down and shoot her half to bloody death!”

“I can’t hear half of what you’re saying,” Hawke said.

“Of course you can’t,” Anders muttered. “Of course. Fuck. Damnit. Fuck. Fuck!”

“Just yell what you want to say,” Hawke said.

“I am yelling!” Anders yelled.

“Where the fuck did you even go?” Hawke asked.

“I went to save Isabela from what you did to her! They were going to make her Tranquil!” It was what it was. There was nothing anyone could do that justified Tranquility. Death, fine, but Tranquility? Tranquility was worse. “Do you even remember Karl!? Does that damn tattoo on your thigh mean anything!?”

“You what?”

“I saved her!”

“You did what!?” Hawke set his wine glass down, “Anders, what have you done!? What happens when they come back here?”

“They won’t! They still have their bloody relic! You could have just given it to them in the first place!”

“You know that for a fact?” Hawke scoffed, “You dealt with the Arishok? You were there any time I dealt with him?”

“Isabela doesn’t matter!” Anders shouted, “She never mattered! If she was just going to face a punishment for her crime, if they were just going to lock her up, then maybe that would be justice, but that was never what any of this was about! The qunari tried to blow up the city anyway! They had the relic and they had Isabela and they had no reason and they still tried!”

“They tried because of her!”

“They were just looking for an excuse! How can you not see that!?”

“What?” Hawke frowned, leaning towards him.

“I said they were just looking for an excuse! How can you-”

“What!?”

“Son of a bitch-” Anders cleared his throat. He needed a glass of water, but there was nothing for him to drink but wine, and he couldn’t even do that. “The qunari destroyed the entire city because of what one person did! That’s not justice! That’s madness! Can’t you see that!?”

“I see a woman who got what she deserved, until you saved her from having to face the consequences of her actions.”

“How can you say that!? I thought you said no one died under your command!”

“Isabela was never under my command,” Hawke laughed. “She betrayed me. She betrayed the whole damn city. I’m not sorry, Anders, and you can’t convince me to be.”

“She didn’t have a choice!”

“She had a choice!” Hawke slammed fist on his armrest, the resulting bang echoing through the study. “She had a choice every damn day of her life. She could have told us about the relic. She could have asked us for help. She could have given a damn about someone other than herself for five minutes and not stolen the relic and ran with it when she came back, but she didn’t. Tell me again why I should care?”

“She made a mistake!”

“What?”

“I said she made a mistake!”

“And she paid for it. I’m not a Warden, Anders. I don’t do second chances.”

“What do the Wardens have to do with anything!?”

“You tell me,” Hawke went back to his drink. “You were the one wearing his tabard.”

“Are you seriously going there right now!?” Anders demanded. “Amell doesn’t have anything to do with this!”

“Doesn’t he?” Hawke raised an eyebrow at him, “You were begging him to save the city. You were practically on your damn knees-”

“He could have helped!”

“How? With more blood magic? My cousin didn’t save the city and neither did you,” Hawke patted his burned chest, “I did, and I had to do it alone, and now I can’t hear shit except you blaming me for it.”

“Fine, so you don’t care about Isabela,” Anders wasn’t going to fight about Amell. “What if it had been me!? What if the qunari had been after me!?”

“They weren’t.”

“What if they had been!? Are you really going to sit there and tell me you don’t believe in forgiveness after everything I’ve done!? I know you do!”

“What have you done?” Hawke asked with a dismissive snort, “Killed a few rapists who happened to be templars? You think I care about that? You think that’s anywhere near what Isabela did?”

“She made a mistake!” Anders insisted, “She could have been anyone. She could have been me!”

“She’s not,” Hawke said flatly, “I love you. I never loved Isabela.”

“She was still a friend!” Anders argued, “She was still your friend! She was still Merrill’s friend, and Fenris’ friend, and my friend!”

“You think you could have done it differently?” Hawke demanded, “Well then why didn’t you?”

“They were going to make her Tranquil!” Anders shouldn’t have had to keep reminding him, “They were going to kill her! I would never kill a friend!”

Hawke raised an eyebrow at him, “Are you sure about that?”

Anders’ anger strangled him. He made a wheezing sound, a tension in his jaw that kept his mouth open and snarling. Damn him. Damn him to the Void and back. Too many faces flashed before Anders’ eyes. Bardel. Karl. Velanna. Nathaniel. Hawke didn’t even know about half of them, but he was right. Damn him, he was right.

Anders stormed out of the study. A half dozen eavesdropping servants scattered and Bodahn made a very determined effort to melt into the wall. Anders didn’t know where he was going. He paced angry circles around the estate, and eventually found the room Bodahn had given Merrill. She’d left the door open, and was curled up in a nest of blankets and pillows she’d moved to the floor. She was still awake, and smiled at him in the doorway, but it seemed sad.

“You two were really very loud,” Merrill noted.

“Hawke is deaf,” Anders explained.

“... I don’t think yelling changes that,” Merrill said.

“Mostly deaf,” Anders revised, sitting cross legged beside her.

“Oh,” Merrill said. “... How does that work?”

“I don’t know,” Anders admitted. He hadn’t even asked, and he felt horrible for it. “... Did you get dinner?”

Merrill nodded.

“... Don’t like the bed?” Anders guessed.

“It was too soft,” Merrill explained. “... Does Hawke mind if I stay here?”

Anders hadn’t asked that either. “... It’s our estate. You can stay as long as you want.”

“Thank you, Anders,” Merrill said. “You’re a good friend. I mean… I haven’t really had many friends, but you’re what I think a good friend should be.”

Anders reached over and squeezed her hand. Merrill squeezed back.

“Do you need to go get your things?” Merrill asked.

“My things?” Anders asked.

“The things you left with Fenris” Merrill elaborated, “Your tabard and your ring.”

“Right,” Anders had almost forgotten about them. He stood up, but Merrill grabbed his ankle before he could leave.

“Anders-... When you see Fenris… I know you’re not his friend, but will you promise to be nice to him?”

Anders frowned, “I will if he will.”

“He won’t,” Merrill predicted, and Anders was willing to bet it was an accurate one, “He’ll be rude and cross and terribly churlish, but please be nice to him. Please… he loved her too.”

“... Okay,” Anders promised, “Just this once.”

“Thank you.”

The Tevinter District was a short walk from Hawke’s estate. It would be evening soon. The sun set slowly, painting the horizon in shades of red like a great throat slit and bleeding into the Waking Sea. Lamplighters moving through Hightown’s marble streets pretended not to see it, carrying about their tasks like the air wasn’t still thick with ash and the city wasn’t a charred husk beneath them. Anders couldn’t wait to get back to his clinic. There was nothing he didn’t hate about Hightown.

The Tevinter District wasn’t near the Viscount’s Keep, and was largely untouched. Fenris’ manse was sequestered away in a far corner of the district, where it was easily missed by the patrols Aveline refused to send. Anders knocked, and a woman answered. She was an elf, dressed in… or… well… not dressed in transparent silks that both covered and didn’t cover every inch of her pale skin.

“Hi handsome,” She purred, “Are you here to see Faith?”

Anders cleared his throat, “... Fenris?”

“Yawn,” The elf left the door open, and went back inside to yell up at the second story, “Fenris! There’s a human here to see you!”

A handful of other women were wandering around the estate in varying states of undress. Anders suddenly wondered if he’d wandered in the Blooming Rose by mistake. He elected to stay outside, waiting by the window when Fenris finally emerged in nothing more than his trousers.

“Mage... You are here for you things?” Fenris guessed.

“Why are there so many women in your house?” Anders asked.

“They are Isabela’s women, not mine,” Fenris said.

“Isabela’s… women?” Anders repeated, a handful of explanations flitting around in his head. Prostitutes Isabela hired? Prostitutes Isabela protected? “... And they’re just living in your house?”

Fenris ignored his question and went inside.

Be nice, Anders reminded himself, following Fenris inside. Be nice. Be nice for Merrill.

Fenris led him through the foyer, up the stairs, and to the master bedroom. It was a grand room, with an elaborately carved bed, a set of divans before a fireplace, multiple wardrobes, and a table for games. It was like any other noble’s room, at first glance, but not at the second one.

The bed was blanketed with wine bottles, and broken glass of the empty ones lined the fireplace. There was an unfinished game of chess on the table that looked like it had been interrupted by a game of cards, and in the betting pool, a few pieces of Isabela’s jewelry. Her things were everywhere. A captain’s hat on a bed post. A belt draped over the divan, a pair of boots under the bed. A bandana, tied about Fenris’ wrist like a favor.

… Be nice for Fenris.

Anders’ tabard was neatly folded on an armchair, his ring atop it. Fenris retrieved them, but hesitated in handing them over. “... Did you save her?” Fenris asked.

“We saved her,” Anders assured him.

“... And… what became of her?”

“... She didn’t want to come back,” Anders explained.

“I see,” Fenris withered. His shoulders collapsed, his head bowed, his expression crumpled in on itself. Anders had never felt more sorry for him.

“I’m sorry, Fenris.”

“I do not need your pity,” Fenris snapped, shoving his things at him. “Take your things and be gone.”

“... Do you-...” Do you what? What could Anders possibly offer Fenris that would mean anything to him? “... Merrill is staying at the estate. If you want to talk. … To either of us.”

Anders put on the ring on his way out. He stood outside the estate, looking over the ruins of Kirkwall, holding Amell’s tabard to his chest. It still smelled like him. Like copper. Like the Fade.

Come with us.

… He could have said yes.

… But he hadn’t.

Anders went to the dwarven quarter of Hightown, and knocked on more doors than he cared to admit before someone wearing Carta colors answered. “Hi,” Anders waved. The dwarf scowled. “Nice to meet you too. I’m Anders. Darktown Healer? You maybe heard of me? I’m friends with-” Shit. Anders didn’t even know their names. “I know your leaders? Are they here?”

“.. Aye,” The dwarf muttered, waving him inside. “Don’t be touching nothing.”

The foyer was the most extravagant Anders had ever seen in his life. Everything was black onyx and white marble, gilded in silver and lined in more gemstones than Anders had names for. It put Hawke, the Viscount, and likely the whole city to shame. Anders felt guilty just standing on the floor, his boots still caked in the dirt of his trek along the Wounded Coast.

Eventually, the Carta Leader emerged from one of the halls. Her beard was braided with rubies today, and she was wearing a black satin robe that seemed to imply she’d been about to head to sleep. “Healer,” The Carta Leader grinned, “What can I do for you?”

“I need you to teach me to sign,” Anders said.

Chapter 119: Hey Sparkles

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful feedback, bookmarks, subscriptions, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter. Welcome to Act 3!

Chapter Text

9:34 Dragon 24 Solace Afternoon
Kirkwall Docks: The Healer’s Compound

Yes. No. Good. Bad. Hate. Love. Sad. Happy. Angry. Hungry. Hello. Goodbye. All his letters, and a handful of other random words.

A month had passed, and Anders had the vocabulary of a toddler, with a few adult words thrown in. Shit. Damn. Flames. Blow me. Fuck me. Fuck you. Nothing that stopped any conversation with Hawke from becoming a shouting match, whether Anders was angry or not.

The shouting scared the servants, it scared the dog. It scared the cat. Ser Cumference had taken to mauling Hawke’s legs, and the dog had borne the brunt of more than a few sleep spells. Varric started going to the Merchant Guild's meetings to escape it, and Merrill was a ghost on the best of days. Coming home was as frustrating as it was exhausting.

The qunari compound at the docks had been turned into a makeshift infirmary. With the saar-qamek, Darktown hadn’t been safe for his clinic, and with his tabard, he didn’t need to hide it. The compound was one of the few places in the city untouched by the invasion, and the qunari had emptied it with their departure. The refugees and the gangs had furnished it for him, a handful of makeshift cots and shelves filled with patients and supplies, respectively. The former of which was always growing and the latter of which was always dwindling.

Anders muttered the alphabet under his breath, signing along with the letters while he cleansed saar-qamek from the lungs of a refugee. A ripple of veilfire corrected the occasional gesture. Justice was infinitely better at signing than Anders. Anders could feel Justice’s love for the language, overriding his frustration. The spirit loved the symbolism. The emotion that could come from the movement. The connections between the shapes and what they might represent beyond the words. How ‘love’ seemed an embrace, but ‘hate’ seemed to push away. It made the world and all of its concepts make far more sense than they ever had before.

Justice corrected him when he mixed up ‘n’ and ‘m,' and Anders finished healing the refugee when he reached ‘t.' He took a drink from his canteen, and wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. The one downside to the compound was that it lacked shade, and it was summer. The sun was sweltering, baking birdshit and blood into the floors of his new clinic, and there was never enough time to clean it all.

Anders had some help, but not nearly enough. Merrill spent most of her days traveling between the Dalish clans in the Free Marches, requesting aid and relocating Kirkwall’s alienage elves that wanted to leave. Varric worked with the Dwarven Merchant’s guild, securing loans and investing in repairs and reconstructions. Fenris did fuck all. Sebastian prayed, for all the good that did, and Aveline had the guard doing whatever she had the guard doing. Hawke…

Hawke was the Champion of Kirkwall.

The Viscount was dead. The Arishok had killed him. The city fell to the Seneschal, Bran Cavin, to act as the Provisional Viscount in his stead while an official replacement was found. Anders didn’t know much about the man beyond the fact that he’d treated him once or twice at the Blooming Rose, and Bran looked the other way for mages when it benefited him to do so. According to Hawke, the man had ‘a stick up his ass just so the Knight-Commander could puppet him with it.’

Knight-Commander Meredith had more or less taken charge of the city overnight, and the nobles had more or less let her. In the aftermath of the siege, Meredith had gathered the nobles back in the Viscount’s Keep and named Hawke Champion of Kirkwall. The title was something only the city ruler could bestow, something Varric knew, but apparently no one else did, because Bran signed the paperwork and the criers went out with it.

‘Champion’ was a title unique to the Free Marches. Like ‘Hero’, if Anders had to guess. Hawke was the first the country had had in fifty years, and the first Kirkwall had had in ever. It gave him a position of power, but how much power was anyone’s guess. A lot, probably. The nobles certainly seemed to think so, considering they spent all day every day learning to sign to vy for his favor.

If nothing else, Hawke didn’t seem to mind that he was deaf. “Only voice I miss is yours,” Hawke had said, when Anders had finally calmed down enough to ask him. He didn’t seem to mind much of anything with how his life had changed after being named Champion, and Anders didn’t know what to make of it. Anders wanted him to mind. To regret what he’d done to earn it. But Hawke didn’t.

Anders did. He regretted everything with every patient that stepped into his infirmary. He regretted focusing on his friends and not trying to stop the qunari as soon as he’d known they were attacking. He regretted not convincing Amell and the Wardens to stay. He regretted not letting Merrill save Isabela on her own. He regretted not being a better friend to Isabela so she could have trusted him to help her with her relic before it was too late.

He had so many regrets they had names and families and parents and grandparents and a whole lineage spanning all the way back to a barn in the Anderfels, where a little boy burned a little cat, and his father sent him off to the Circle while his mother cried, and he never saw either of them ever again. He had so many regrets they drove him half-mad, spiraling him between days he couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed and days he couldn’t bring himself to get into it.

Anders finished his water, conjured more to refill his canteen, and then started on his rounds to do the same for the barrels he kept around the infirmary. A single templar sat in a corner of his clinic, pretending to pay attention. In truth he was half asleep, his cloak pulled up over his head to shield it from the sun, occasionally waking himself up when he snored. The Knight-Commander insisted on providing Anders with ‘an escort’ as an ‘esteemed guest of the city.’

Thrask had volunteered. Hawke’s friend. He reminded Anders of Bardel, even though he looked nothing like him. He had a mop of red hair and matching goatee, with eyes as blue and as turbulent as the Waking Sea. His daughter had been an apostate, and his daughter had died, and Thrask had hated the Circle ever since. A fact Anders knew, but Meredith apparently didn’t.

The woman was blinded by fear, paranoia, hatred, and everything in between, according to Thrask. “You’re costing her a lot of coin,” Thrask had warned him when Anders first set up his new clinic. “Five sovereigns a patient. Thousands upon thousands.”

“I’m costing the Lucrosians a lot of coin,” Anders had corrected him. One of the Fraternities of Enchanters within the Circle of Magi, they were in charge of the accumulation of the Circle’s wealth. With how many bloody Tranquil were in the Gallows, Anders was pretty sure they could spare it.

“The Lucrosians count our coin. They do not keep it,” Thrask had said. “Meredith will not permit this long. She intends to claim you are interfering with local politics by undermining her authority in the city and the Circle. I am here to find evidence for her.”

“Good luck with that,” Anders had snorted.

“I fear if I cannot find it, she will invent it,” Thrask had warned him.

“Let her,” Anders had said. “She can take it up with the Warden Commander.”

Anders might have been bluffing. It had been two years, and Anders wasn’t in any particular rush to test the limits of Amell’s compassion for a man he’d only been with for half a year. Throwing his name around like cheap coin was probably going to use it up just as quickly, but Anders didn’t see any other alternative. Kirkwall needed a healer. Anders needed to heal. In lieu of his work with the Collective, it was a purpose, and Justice needed one.

It was a good purpose. An important purpose. The city was in shambles, and someone had to do something about it, but there was only so much Anders could do. He was out of elfroot. Again. At this rate he’d strip the entire Planasene Forest bare. Anders threw his satchel over his shoulder, and kicked Thrask awake.

“I’m heading out for elfroot,” Anders said, signing out the letters for elfroot for practice.

“What?” Thrask snorted, jolting up right, “Yes? Who?”

“You’re a terrible spy,” Anders noted.

“High praise, serah,” Thrask made a bowing motion with his hand, “Did you need me?”

“Just let everyone know I’ll be back in a few hours,” Anders said.

Anders stepped out of the compound and into chaos. Kirkwallers flowed through the streets like a tidal wave, cheering and chattering, waving flags and favors. Anders couldn’t move through it all and found himself swept up with the mob. He spotted Abigail, Thom’s wife, in the distance, and waded over to reach her. “Abby!” Anders shouted, catching her sleeve, “Abby, what’s going on?”

“A ship!” Abigail said eagerly. “A ship! Maker’s mercy, Anders, a ship! Someone’s sent aid! Poor Nika’s worn through her shoes, and we haven’t the coin for more. The price for everything has gotten so high, and someone raided our house when we evacuated. We have her wearing four layers of socks. Oh, I hope they have shoes,” Abigail grabbed his hand, and dragged him along with her.

“Shoes?” Anders repeated, suddenly confronted with the harsh realities of his own privilege after not giving thought to his shoes in years. “Maker’s breath, Abby, I can get you shoes.”

“Later, later,” Abigail flapped her free hand in his face, fighting through the crowds to a stairwell alongside the Harbor Master’s office. It gave them a good view of the wharves, and was so crowded Anders was pressed shoulder to shoulder and back to chest with a handful of other refugees.

Down at the wharves, Aveline appeared to have gathered the entirety of the guard, for all the good it was doing her. The thin line of orange was like an old fisherman’s net desperately struggling to contain a frenzy of sharks. It was nothing like the mob that had gathered to turn Anders away the first time he’d set foot in Kirkwall, but the ship sailing into the harbor was. The Pride of Amaranthine drifted towards the docks, outpaced by a second ship from the Gallows.

The Gallow’s ship moored first, and a good dozen templars with a handful of mages disembarked, Meredith among them. Anders recognized the red hood, the golden crown, the gleaming silverite. She and her templars joined the ring of guardsmen, and Aveline stepped out of line to talk to her. Anders wouldn’t have heard a word of what they said if he and Abby weren’t standing almost directly over them with how riled the crowd had gotten.

“We will handle this, Guard-Captain,” Meredith said.

“You will not,” Aveline countered, quickly moving up several rungs from ‘detested’ to ‘tolerable’ in Anders’ book, “The aid is for the city, not the Circle. This belongs with the guard.”

“I am the highest ranking authority in this city,” Meredith said, “I will speak for it.”

“The Viscount-”

“Has appointed me to act in his stead as I see fit,” Meredith cut her off, “This is not news.”

“Meredith. No.”

The Pride of Amaranthine must have seen the mob, because they dropped anchor in the bay. A handful of distant figures moved about the ship, boarding their tender instead. They rowed the small boat into the docks while Aveline and Meredith argued. Anders didn't recognize any of them. There were no Grey Wardens that he could see or sense on the tender, no blue or silver or griffins, and he felt a strange pang of disappointment for it.

The man at the forefront wore a doublet of gold and white, Amaranthine’s colors, emblazoned with the city’s heraldry. He stayed on his small boat, where no one could reach him, and spoke through a druffalohorn. “The city of Amaranthine sends aid to her sister city of Kirkwall, following her victory over the Qunari, in recognition of the safe harbor provided refugees of the Blight!”

“As she should!” Meredith called back.

“We welcome it!” Yelled Aveline.

"We come bearing food, blankets, and medical supplies," The ambassador said, to a round of wild cheers from the mob, "We will not unload unless the safety of our men can be guaranteed! The crowds must disperse!"

Protests rang out across the docks. The mob surged against the guardsmen’s line, like the citizens were so desperate they’d rather swim their way to the supplies than risk losing them. The guards shoved back with shields, and Meredith raised her sword above her head. “You will disperse or be dispersed! Enchanter!”

One of the mages stepped forward, and pulled through the Fade. Anders summoned a hasty spellshield over Abby in time for a wave of telekinetic force to blast across the harbor, knocking back the first row of citizens and sending the rest screaming for Lowtown.

Of course. Of course she’d used a mage and not the templars. What better way to reinforce her diatribe that all mages were evil than to give them no other choice? Abby shook with fear and Anders with anger when he let go of his spellshield. “Are you alright?” Anders asked.

“Well as a hole in the ground,” Abby mumbled uneasily, retreating for the stairs, “... You’ll get us some shoes you said?”

“Promise,” Anders said.

“We’ll hold you to it,” Abby fled with the rest of the mob.

The tender rowed to one of the few wharves that wasn’t occupied by the burnt husk of a ship. A few guardsmen and templars jogged to meet them, and help them tie up their mooring line to disembark. Anders descended the stairs and lingered near the wharf, watching the ship and wondering if he knew anyone aboard. Amell was alive. What were the odds Anders would be so lucky twice? Not good, if his past was any indication. It would be better to leave and spare himself the pain of whatever revelations lay in wait aboard the ship.

For some reason, he didn’t.

“I bid you welcome,” Meredith nodded to the ambassador.

“Kirkwall bids you welcome,” Aveline corrected her, offering the ambassador a small bow. “I’m surprised you were able to navigate the harbor. We haven’t had any other relief ships in yet.”

“Fereldans are stubborn,” The ambassador smiled. Without his druffalo horn, his voice was so low it was barely audible, and wibbled jowls that put a mabari to shame when he spoke.

“Indeed,” Meredith lifted her chin to peer out at the ship, “Have you brought men as well?”

“A score, to aid in reconstruction and distribution,” The ambassador said. “I am Lord Guy.”

“Guard Captain Aveline.”

“Knight-Commander Meredith,” The two women paused to scowl at each other before Meredith continued, “You will dock at the Gallows and my men will assist in the distribution.”

“I am afraid we will not,” Lord Guy said before Aveline could protest, and it was painfully clear she had every intention of doing so. “Our supplies are to be distributed per the instructions of Senior Grey Warden Anders of Kirkwall, and no other. By order of Arl Amell of Amaranthine, Warden Commander and Chancellor of Ferelden."

“... They are?” Anders asked. More than a few heads turned in his direction. Meredith looked livid, Aveline indifferent.

“Unacceptable-” Meredith started.

“Sensible,” Aveline cut her off, pushing through her line of guardsmen to grab him, and drag him over to the ambassador before Anders could process what was happening. “This is him.”

“You match the description, Warden,” Lord Guy bowed low, jowls flapping, “I am told you will have a ring that confirms your identity?”

“I-...guess I have this?” Anders held up the hand with the twisted rosewood.

“May I?” Lord Guy took his hand without answer, inspected the ring, and let go with a satisfied nod. “Very good. Where would you have us dock, Warden?”

“This is untenable,” Meredith hissed through her teeth, jaw clenching, “Placing a mage in charge of the city’s relief efforts? I will not allow it.”

“That mage is a Grey Warden, and he’s already in charge of Kirkwall’s relief efforts,” Aveline said, “Or did you miss the infirmary?”

“The unsanctioned magic affronting my doorstep?” Meredith laughed bitterly, “Of course I have not missed it. Do not think I don’t know what you’re doing, Warden. You will not undermine me.”

“I think you’re doing a good enough job on your own, actually,” Anders probably shouldn’t have said.

Meredith took a step towards him. Aveline took a step in front of him.

“You’re out of your depth, Meredith,” Aveline set a hand to her sword hilt. “Go back to your world and leave us to ours.”

“I won’t forget this,” Meredith warned them both, but left the mages and templars.

“Warden?” Lord Guy prompted, evidently unperturbed by the drama.

Anders stared at the ship. An entire ship, laden with supplies, that Amell had sent to him. Not to Kirkwall. To Anders. For some reason, it just made him angrier.

“What if I was dead?” Anders asked.

“Beg pardon?” Lord Guy blinked.

“What if I was dead or gone?” Anders pressed, “Were you just not going to help the city?

“Standing orders were it would fall to next of kin in the Amell Family,” Lord Guy said. “A Gamlen Amell, I believe was the name, Warden. Where would you have us unload?”

Anders had no idea. Anders wasn’t the Viscount or the Guard Captain or the alienage Hahren. He was a healer. He healed as needed. Injuries he could judge, but everyone needed food, blankets, clothes, shelter. He wasn’t prepared to decide who needed what most or even what should go where before it went somewhere else. He looked at Aveline.

“... The infirmary would serve to store the supplies,” Aveline volunteered at his hesitation, “Don’t you agree, Warden?”

“Right. The infirmary, it’s in the compound,” Anders waved a hand at the distant sandstone courtyard, “You can dock here.”

“Very good,” Lord Guy bowed again and departed back to the tender with the news, leaving Anders alone on the wharves with the guardsmen. They were barely a step above the templars, as far as he was concerned. For all Aveline had stood up to Meredith, she hadn’t done the same to her own men. Anders thought of Merrill’s friend, the poor girl the guardsmen had raped, and the justice her brothers had enacted before fleeing to the qunari. The violence that had ensued afterwards.

“What now, Anders?” Aveline demanded at his stare.

“Nothing,” Anders lied. It wasn’t worth the fight.

“Right,” Aveline rolled her eyes, “Like having my help is so terrible. Any second I’ll surrender to the almighty power of “guard captain” and enslave all mages.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look out!” Aveline jumped at him, “Authority! Oooh!”

Bitch.

“Shut up,” Anders paced to the opposite end of the wharf, only to pace back a minute later, furious, “No, you know what, there is something.”

“Of course there is,” Aveline shook her head.

“You’re as much to blame for what happened as Isabela!”

“What?”

“If you had actually done something for the elves in this city, they might not have turned to the qunari for help, and the qunari might not have been so disgusted with the city that they tried to destroy it!” Anders hadn’t meant to shout, but he was so damned used to it after a month of struggling to talk to Hawke he couldn’t help it. A dozen guardsmen looked his way, and Aveline grabbed his arm and dragged him away from her men to the edge of the wharf.

“Lower your voice,” Aveline hissed, keeping her hold on his arm.

“Do you have any idea how bad it is?” Anders demanded, “Gangs were defending the streets in the invasion. Gangs! Because your guardsmen are too busy raping and pillaging to do their bloody jobs! So yes, look out, authority, because I’ve yet to see someone with it who doesn’t abuse it!”

“I did what I could with the men that I had,” Aveline kept her voice low, emerald eyes bouncing between him and the guardsmen eyeing them. “The men Guard-Captain Jeven left me. I have spent three years trying to undo the damage he did to the guard - indebting himself and half the men in his charge to the Coterie. Do you think that kind of change happens overnight?”

“I think it only happens if you force it, and I don’t see you trying,” Anders said with unbridled disdain. “Merrill told me you didn’t even do anything when she told you your men raped that poor girl.”

”There was no evidence!” Aveline hissed, “We’re not all like you and Hawke. We can’t just run on blind faith that guardsmen are bad, and mages are good, and the Maker will provide! How many men have you ever had answer to you? One? Two? A dozen? A score? I have hundreds of men, and I have to speak for all of them, so yes, sometimes that means bad guards do bad things and get away with it. It’s the way it is.”

“That does not make it just,” They snarled.

“I never said it did,” Aveline let go of him. Anders paced away from her, running his hands through his hair and losing a few blond strands in the process. He couldn’t stand her. Not unless Meredith was standing right next to her. He couldn’t be bothered to try.

The Pride of Amaranthine docked with no Wardens aboard. The score of men from Amaranthine also included its crew, and they and the guardsmen unloaded the supplies into Anders’ clinic. There was everything Anders could have wanted and more. It was so lavish it was almost obscene. Sacks upon sacks of barley, barrels of dried fish, seemingly endless potatoes and onions. An alarming amount of chickens, and even a few goats. Poultices, bandages, elfroot and embrium. Tents, blankets, and bedrolls. Even a crate of lyrium potions.

“The young and the old,” Aveline recommended for distribution. The guard spread the word through Lowtown and the encampments outside the walls, and citizens crept cautiously back to the docks. The sun crept across the sky as they worked, supplies changing from hand to hand to hand, until the ship’s hull emptied and the docks didn’t. It had seemed so excessive, but by the day’s end it was a drop of water in a bucket of blood.

Anders sat on his crate of lyrium potions when it was over, trying to shut out the sobs of the citizens who hadn’t made it to the clinic in time. The guard dispersed them, redirecting them to the handful of soup kitchens the Chantry had set up through the city for those without supplies. Anders knew what they served. Soup from seaweed. Bread half baked with sawdust. Beetroots and beach cabbage. The usual famine foods.

Why couldn’t Amell have sent more?

How did Lirene stand it when she closed the shop at night?

Anders buried his face in his hands, wishing he could reconjure his anger, but the day had worn through it. He felt miserable, and he couldn’t help wishing Amell had never left him in charge. It was one thing to heal a crowd, it was another to feed it. Anders didn’t need the lyrium potions. He couldn’t run out of mana, but he could run out of food.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed that way, but eventually someone kicked the crate he was sitting on, and Anders glanced up at one of the soldiers that had been on the ship. She had curves in all the wrong places. A bulbous nose, bulbous arms, bulbous calves, covered with bulbous silverite armor. She gave him a salute, “Sergeant Joanna, Warden, of the Silver Order from Vigil’s Keep. I’m in charge of the men sent to aid in the relief efforts. I have a letter for you from the Warden Commander.”

“... a letter?” Anders repeated.

“Well it’s not like he wrote it,” The sergeant snorted, “But no one that important writes their own letters anyway.” The sergeant handed him the letter, and her and her men returned to the ship for the evening.

Anders turned it over in his hands. The parchment was weathered, sealed with black wax and stamped with the Amell family crest. Scrawled on the front in an almost illegible script was ‘To Be Delivered to Senior Grey Warden Anders of Kirkwall.’ Anders doubted a scribe would have such horrible penmanship, and had to assume either Amell had penned it blind or Oghren had written it for him.

Two boots peeking out from a violet robe appeared in front of him, and Anders followed them up to Thrask’s face. “I’m back to the Gallows for the evening. The guard’s agreed to guard the compound. Be well, my friend.”

Thrask left, but his boots reminded Anders he’d promised a pair for Abigail’s daughter. He stuffed the letter into his satchel for later, and left the compound, making the long trek back up to Hightown and Franke’s shop, mercifully untouched by the invasion.

“Franke’s in!” Franke called at his knock.

Anders let himself inside. The cobbler was sitting at his workstation, hammering away at an upside down boot, which didn’t seem at all to Anders how cobbling should work, but he wasn’t a cobbler so he opted not to question it. “Hey Franke. Do you supposed you could get me a pair of shoes?”

“... looks like you’re wearing some,” Franke said, with a glance at his shoes to confirm, but he didn’t sound playful. He sounded the opposite.

“Was thinking of getting a matching pair for my cat,” Anders joked. Franke didn’t smile. “... Is everything alright?”

“Will be when you leave,” Franke said flatly.

“What are you talking about?” Anders asked.

Franke pointed his hammer at him. Anders checked over his shoulder, but no one had followed him inside. It was just Anders. He had his satchel, and what he assumed was an unoffensive black doublet with matching trousers. The color hid blood well enough it shouldn’t have bothered Franke.

… But the Warden tabard might.

“Franke-...” Maker save him, Anders was too tired for this. “I-... It’s just a tabard, Franke.”

“It’s their tabard,” Franke said. “And you’re wearing it.”

“For protection,” Anders had had this fight enough times with Hawke. He didn’t need to hear it from Franke too. “I’m an apostate, remember?”

“Aye,” Franke’s frown filled his entire face, from his lips to his brow, “And I remember you got on well enough without it, so why are you wearing it now?”

“I don’t have a choice. How am I supposed to work in my clinic without it?”

“Keeping it in Darktown, that’s how.”

“Great idea! I’ll just take the broken lift down there with all the poison gas!”

“They killed my girls, Anders!” Franke screamed at him, “They burned them a-fucking-live! They care so much about killing darkspawn they’ll kill anyone who gets in their way! You don’t come near me wearing that. You don’t ever come near me wearing that. Get out. Get out before I forget we’re friends.”

“... Abigail’s daughter needs new shoes,” Anders said, and he left.

Anders didn’t make it back to the estate. He passed through the district’s gardens, and collapsed on a marble bench. Home meant Hawke, and Hawke meant shouting, and Anders had shouted at enough people today without shouting at Hawke too. Franke wasn’t wrong. The Wardens had abandoned Kirkwall the same way they’d abandoned Amaranthine. A relief ship didn’t change that. But Franke wasn’t right either. He didn’t understand what it was to be a Warden. None of his friends did. It wasn’t something Anders could just leave behind. The Taint. The Call. It was inside him, as much a part of him as Justice.

Anders opened the letter.

“Hey Sparkles,

Always knew you were tough as bronto balls. Never doubted you were out there somewhere, doing whatever the fuck you're doing. Never thought I’d miss your whining. Must be getting soft as well as old. I ain’t much for words but you get it.

So look, Boss ain't gonna tell you, but we're after something big. You hear about the Hambleton massacre? We're after the thing that did it. Fat bastard is about as nasty as an Archdemon. Tell you all about if we live, but don’t go tellin no one else. Boss’ll know I snitched.

Rest of this is him, but I ain't about to draw hearts over every i or any shit like that.

Anders,

I hope that this relief can help you where I failed. I realize that it, and I, came too late, but you have it all the same. I have sent word to the other Arls and the Free Cities, and more should follow.

The others assure me you looked well. I hope the past two years have been kind to you. I hope that you are safe. I hope that you are well. I hope that you are loved. I hope that this letter is legible. ← Fuck you too Boss.

I know our lives have changed, but you will always be a part of mine. I hope that I can be a part of yours again. I will return to Kirkwall as soon as I am able. I would only ask that if you have no wish to see me when that time comes, that you send the ring I gave you back to Vigil's Keep. It was a gift from the mother of my son, and it means a great deal to me. The enchantment maintains a connection between us for as long as you wear it.

With all that I am,
Amell.”

Anders lay on the bench for a long while, holding the letter and staring at the constellations painted across the night sky. He focused on the connection Amell claimed was in the ring, and for a moment he felt sure that Amell was thinking of him... somewhere. He felt concern, and regret. But the ring told no more.

Chapter 120: Give Me A Sign

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful feedback, bookmarks, subscriptions, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:34 Dragon 25 Solace Morning
Kirkwall Hightown: Hawke Estate

Anders slept lightly, a snoring Ser Cumference sliding between his chest and his throat with every breath and all but suffocating him. The little bugger wheezed in his sleep, and the scent of rotten fish eventually woke Anders.

Or maybe it was the shouting.

Maker, it was always the shouting.

Ser Cumference bolted, heaving off his collarbone and under the bed. Anders groaned, rolling onto his stomach and dragging his pillow over his head to bury his face in the sheets. They were good sheets. Freshly laundered and smelling faintly of lye, far better than the cat’s breath. They covered a firm mattress where Anders firmly intended to stay.

If only Hawke intended to let him. “Wake up!” The pillow launched itself off Anders' head.

Andraste save him. It was too bloody early for this. Anders dragged the covers over his head in place of the pillow. He signed an angry, “Mo!” with his free hand, followed by the “No!” he was going for after Justice corrected him.

“‘I know our lives have changed, but you will always be a part of mine-’” Hawke said.

Anders woke up. Sleep crusted his eyes, and they burned to open, welling with tears that smeared Hawke into a blur of black and bronze. Anders scrubbed him into focus, “What are you-”

“‘I hope that I can be a part of yours again’?” Hawke waved Amell’s letter at him. The blackened wax seal flapped on the weathered parchment, two hawks cleaved talon to talon. Anders snatched it out of his hand, ripping it in half in the process.

Fucking-

Anders crumpled Oghren’s half of the letter in his hand, “You went through my things!?”

Hawke didn’t look guilty - because of course he didn’t - one hand to his waist pushing open his unlaced robes, framing an expansive chest covered with dark hair to match his tousled hair and beard. The beautiful bastard looked like he’d just woken up, and apparently couldn’t wait to argue Anders into doing the same. "What?” Hawke frowned.

Or maybe he just couldn’t hear him.

Anders set the ripped parchment aside to free up his hands, “You r-e-a-d-”

“Of course I read it,” Hawke guessed before he finished the rest, gesturing to the side of the room that held Anders’ desk. Anders' satchel was draped over his chair, but the letter hadn’t been in it when Anders had finally gone home for the evening. It had been in his hand, and eventually, on the desk, “You practically left it out for me. Don’t act like you don’t read my journal. What is this, Anders? Now he’s sending you love letters?”

Anders didn’t want to have this fight. Anders didn’t want to have any fights. He was so bloody tired of fighting. So bloody tired of Hawke being deaf. If he could just fucking heal him, then maybe he could just fucking talk to him, but there was no healing him without blood magic. Without Quentin’s magic. Anders doubted Hawke would forgive him a second sacrifice.

“N-o-t-” Anders started.

“Not,” Hawke waved an impatient hand while Anders fumbled through the signs.

“A.”

“A.”

“Love-”

“Not a love- … Not a love letter?” Hawke deduced with a scoff, “You expect me to believe that? Did you even read it?”

“Of course I read it!” Anders shouted. Hawke had no idea how many times he’d read it. “It was for me! Why are you reading it!? Why do you care if he writes to me!?”

“Because he’s in love with you!” Hawke flung the rest of the letter at him. “‘With all that I am’? I’m deaf, not blind. Were you even going to tell me?”

“There’s nothing to tell!” Anders argued. At Hawke’s frustrated frown, he signed, “N-o-t-h-i-n-”

“Nothing?” Hawke finished for him. “It’s not nothing. This is something. He’s something to you, and don’t pretend he’s not. You never would have looked twice at me if I didn't look just like him.” Hawke paced away from him, shaking a hand through his raven hair, “Void damn me, it was worse than a mirror. Never should have taken the damn tarps off.”

“That's not true,” Anders said quickly, but Hawke couldn’t hear him, because Hawke wasn’t looking at him. Anders rolled out of bed and grabbed Hawke’s wrist. Hawke’s startled flinch sent a surge of sympathy through him. Anders never would have been able to sneak up on him before. Anders spun him about so Hawke could see his face and read his lips.

“That’s not true!” Anders yelled, because it was worth yelling. Because Hawke shouldn’t have thought it. Because Anders had never given him a reason to think it.

Had he?

“I love you,” Anders signed, so fiercely the motion wrenched at his arms. “I love you!” Anders thrust the ‘you’ into Hawke’s chest. “Asshole!” He added.

“Don’t act like you don’t love him too,” Hawke said.

“He left me!” Anders screamed - and it felt like a weight lifted off his chest with the words. Like he finally had the energy to scream again after a month of screaming himself hoarse. “I begged him to stay, and he abandoned me! He isn't you! We didn’t fight about it and go to bed and fight about it again in the morning!” … except they had. They had and it hadn't mattered because Anders hadn't won. Anders buried the memories and pushed on, "He didn’t give me the chance! He wanted to die more than he ever wanted me! You think I'm going to throw away the last year… for what!? For a man who left me twice!?”

Hawke looked unimpressed, "You tell me."

"I can't believe you're even asking me that!" Except Anders could believe it, because Hawke refused to listen to him even when he could hear him. Because Anders had hesitated when Amell asked him to come with, however much he pretended he hadn't.

"Can't believe you're not answering," Hawke countered.

"No. Alright? No," Anders signed along with the 'No's.' "That doesn't mean he just stops being important to me! I can't just shut off how I feel about someone like you can!"

Hawke didn't react. Anders wondered if he'd heard him or if he'd just pretended not to. Anders collapsed on the edge of the bed, rubbing the crust from the corners of his eyes. He felt bone tired but too awake to go back to sleep. He was so bloody tired and there was nothing he could do about it. It would take years before they could actually sign well enough to stop screaming at each other.

Hawke was staring at him like he was waiting for him to say more, but there was too much to say. “T-i-r-e-d,” Anders signed.

A heavy sigh escaped Hawke, tension melting from his shoulders until they sagged. Maybe he was tired too. Hawke joined him on the bed, his weight shifting the mattress and leaning Anders into him. "Tired of what?" Hawke asked.

"Y-e-l-l-i-n-g," Anders signed slowly, hating the need to spell it. It seemed like a word he should know by now.

Hawke wrapped a sympathetic arm around his shoulders, and pulled him flush against his side. He still smelled like home, despite what he’d done, the heat of his skin like a hearth Anders could curl up beside. The open robe draped around Anders' shoulders served better than a blanket, but it was too hard to say. Too exhausting. "I just want to talk to you," Anders sighed, but Hawke didn't hear it.

They stayed that way for a long while, until Hawke finally spoke, "... you couldn't have fixed it. Even if you'd stayed. Shouldn’t have said you could have. Ears were bleeding… nothing in them left to heal. Orsino did what he could."

Anders blood didn't boil so much as curdle - an anger so primal it sickened him. His stomach turned, every muscle clenching.

Orsino.

Orsino had healed Hawke.

Orsino had failed to heal Hawke.

Orsino was part of the reason Hawke’s mother was dead and now he was part of the reason Hawke was deaf. Damn him. Damn him and damn Anders for not telling Hawke. For still not telling him. It wasn't right. It wasn't just. But what choice did they have? If Orsino died the Circle died with him.

"Not his fault," Hawke said when Anders tensed, but he had no idea just how much Orsino’s fault everything was. "Not your fault. It just happened."

Anders shrugged out from under Hawke’s arm. Anders wasn’t blameless. At this rate, there wasn’t a soul left in Kirkwall he could name who was. Anders had just as much fault as Orsino, and Hawke, and Aveline, and Isabela.

If he’d stayed to help, he might have been able to help with the explosives, and Hawke might have been able to make it to the last one in time. If he’d mind-controlled the Arishok, he might have been able to convince the qunari to leave without Isabela. If he’d gone after Isabela with Hawke, he might have been able to stop him from turning her in.

There was simultaneously everything and nothing Anders could have done differently. Guilt and anger fought for dominance inside him, leaving a battlefield of bloody memories and upturned regrets in their wake, with Hawke at the center.

Anders didn’t know how to sign all of that, so he signed, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Hawke traced his face. The tender touch was a stark contrast to the rage burning in Anders. It felt like a shock of ice water, starting at his brow and sweeping down to brush his hair behind his ears, grown past his shoulders of late. It was almost a habit to lean into Hawke’s touch, no matter how frustrated Anders found himself. Hawke thumbed over the old scars of closed up piercings, a slight smile on his lips that no longer seemed to begrudge Anders the way he had when the wounds were fresh, “You did what you thought you had to do, same as I did.

“I still don’t agree with it. The nightmares… They’re not about Mother anymore. I keep thinking the qunari will come back, looking for Isabela, and I won’t hear the bells.” Hawke dropped his hand with a rueful shake of his head, “Not that I listened when I could. But it’s been over a month, and nothing.”

Anders lost his hold on his guilt and his anger in the face of Hawke’s affection. He'd gone so long without it he'd almost forgotten what it was like. How gentle Hawke could be. It made it all the worse when he wasn't. Anders still didn’t agree with what Hawke had done, if he was being honest. Still hadn’t forgiven him for it, if he was being more honest. But he was so tired of being angry and guilty and needed some other way to be.

“S-a-f-e,” Anders signed.

“For now,” Hawke countered. “One of these days you’re not going to be that lucky. What if they had come back, Anders? You’ve got to stop and think about the consequences. What they cost. Not just you, or a friend, but everyone.”

“Don’t borrow trouble,” Anders joked.

Hawke squinted, captivatingly red eyes fixed on Anders’ lips. Anders doubted he’d heard him. Anders should have yelled, but it wasn’t in him. Hawke squeezed his thigh and stood at his silence. Anders retrieved the ripped pieces of Amell’s letter, wondering if he should keep it. Wondering why he’d kept it in the first place. Amell had said he’d visit eventually. Anders had read it. He didn’t need to reread it. Hawke was right to be upset.

Anders got up, and stored the crumpled pieces of parchment away in his satchel. The rosewood ring was still twisted around his finger, the deep brown a stark contrast to his pale skin. He'd worn it all month - and wasn't even sure why. For Amell? For answers? When? Anders couldn’t help thinking, but the ring didn’t answer.

Hawke nudged him out of his thoughts. An inkwell and quill dropped onto Anders’ desk, along with a fresh bit of parchment. “Write to me, then,” Hawke suggested. “If you don’t want to yell.”

Anders didn’t know where to start. He sat, and Hawke dragged over his own chair to sit with him. He tilted it back against the wall, two pegs off the floor, free hand drumming idly on the desk while he waited. Anders was struck with an involuntary memory of the countless nights they’d spent this way. Anders, obsessively writing and rewriting his manifesto until his hand cramped and his eyes burned. Justice, content in his pursuit of purpose. Hawke, penning patient edits to their stream of consciousness.

“I love you,” Anders wrote. It seemed an easy enough start.

“I’m angry with you.” Came just as easily. “I will never understand how you can be so passionate in your love for me and so antagonistic towards everyone else. You asked me once if I would have you tell the knight-commander and the world that you love a mage and would stand beside him. I would, but how can I trust that you will? What if my cause takes me somewhere you won’t follow?

“If the Divine approves the Tranquil Solution or Meredith calls for the Right of Annulment, I will do anything to stop it, no matter what happens to the city. If that moment comes, how do I know you won’t turn on me like you turned on Isabela?”

Anders stared at the words after he’d written them, tapping his quill and blotting ink across the bottom of the parchment. It wasn’t the only reason he cared so much - Isabela had been his friend - but it was an important one. Anders’ focus might have been on helping Kirkwall recover from the aftermath of the qunari invasion, but that was only because it was more immediate than the Circle, and he could actually do something about it.

The tunnels beneath the Gallows had collapsed. The ships he’d tried to secure had sailed with Isabela. There was no other way for the Collective to see mages free of the Gallows, and if there was, Selby and the others hadn’t shared it with him. Anders had done as much as he could. He’d petitioned the Grand Cleric. He’d summoned the Seekers. He’d sent his manifesto to the Divine, to the Circle, to the nobility.

His cause might have stalled, but he hadn’t given up on it. He’d never give up on it. The mages had to be free, and it had to start here. For Karl. For Bethany. For every mage Anders had seen free from the Gallows, and for every mage that he hadn’t. The templars were entrenched in Kirkwall, more so than any other city. Long before the qunari had ever landed in Kirkwall, the templars had killed the last Viscount at the behest of the Divine, and appointed a new one with the blessing of the Grand Cleric.

They were corrupt. Meredith was corrupt - and it went far beyond making Harrowed Mages Tranquil or ordering Enchanters to assault citizens. It was a rot. A filth. A festering as wretched as the Blight that Tainted the city and all who lived within it. Anders had to do something about it. He just didn’t know what more he could do short of destroying the Circle as Quentin had promised, and the thought of following in his footsteps made Anders feel sick to his stomach.

Anders put up the quill and pushed the parchment over to Hawke. Anders watched his eyes move across the paper as he read, like the sun traveling across the horizon, leaving him wondering what the morning would bring when Hawke looked up. “You're not some pirate I met in a bar and ran a few jobs with, Anders.” Hawke set the parchment down, and picked up Anders’ hand in its stead.

Neither was Isabela, Anders wanted to say, but Hawke continued.

“I love you. If I have to pick between you and the city, it’s you. All I have left is my uncle, my sister, and you. You're family. You're my family. You think I wouldn't be right there? That you wouldn't have me if it came to that? Beth is in the Circle. If the Knight-Commander ever moved against her, I’d put an arrow through her throat myself.”

Anders wasn’t sure what it said about him that the prospect of killing the Knight-Commander was so damned romantic it made his heart skip. Nothing healthy, probably. A handful of witty one-liners came to him, all too complex to sign. “Thanks,” Anders signed with his offhand instead. At least he hoped it still meant thanks if he used his offhand.

“Where would your cause ever take you that I couldn’t follow?” Hawke pressed, threading their fingers together. “What are you planning? To break out the whole Circle? Like Starkhaven? I’ve been on the run before. Beth’s been on the run before. I like this life, but I don’t need it.”

Too many emotions welled in Anders at the words, catching on each other in his throat and choking his shout into a whisper, “Do you really mean that?”

“Louder,” Hawke reminded him.

“Do you really mean that!?” Anders repeated obediently.

“‘Course I mean it,” Hawke said.

It meant everything, but it also meant nothing. Starkhaven hadn’t changed anything. Their mages had been recaptured and relocated. Their Circle had already been rebuilt. Grace and Alain were a testament to it - trapped in the Gallows and Anders without the means to free them. Even if he could, Anders didn’t just want to free some mages. He wanted to free all mages. Freeing one Circle wasn’t enough. He had to do more.

“That doesn't mean I’m waiting for an excuse to throw all of this away,” Hawke continued. “We’re not there. If it comes to that, it comes to that, but Beth is happy and you’re safe. You want me to tell the Knight-Commander and the world I’m with you? I’m with you. The Harimanns are having some sort of party for All Soul’s Day. Come with me, and I’ll tell anyone you want.”

Anders hadn’t meant it like that. He’d meant when push came to shove, would Hawke stand with him and with magic? Or would he sit by as righteously as he had with Isabela when it was Anders Meredith and the rest of the city was coming for? The thought of living together openly, despite Anders’ increasing notoriety in the city, made him uncomfortable. Being in the spotlight with the Champion of Kirkwall would only make targets of both of them.

Anders freed his hands from Hawke’s, and signed, “S-c-a-r-e-d.”

“Scarred-... Scared?” Confusion wrinkled Hawke’s brow, “Why would you be scared?”

Anders didn’t know how to explain without yelling, and he didn’t want to yell. Hawke caught his wrist across the table, and tugged him from his chair. Anders circled the table, and ended up straddling Hawke’s lap. He’d missed his lap. The strength in his thighs. The easy way Anders fit against them. The past month felt a year for how he’d almost forgotten.

Hawke’s shoulders were as broad as they’d always been, and the robe hung off them, flirting with the floor. Anders set his hands to him for balance, but the way his fingers flexed through his lover’s chest hair had nothing to do with anything but instinct. Anders tried to remind himself he was still angry with him, but it was hard to hold onto anything but the distracting man in front of him.

A man he could still lose if he wasn’t careful. Anders traced the break in Hawke’s nose he’d never healed after the templars had tortured him. Hawke caught his meaning and his hand easily enough. “It was a long time ago,” Hawke set Anders’ hand back on his chest. His skin was warm, and the room almost uncomfortably so, the summer sun rising through the eastern window.

The day was waiting, but Anders had had so many days they bled together, and he was so tired of them. “It was yesterday,” Anders whispered. It was yesterday, and it was today, and it was tomorrow, and it was everyday for someone somewhere so long as the Circles stood. Hawke had just been the first time Anders had seen firsthand what happened to the families of mages, and not just mages themselves.

Two years, and he still remembered the way Hawke had opened the door after the templars had finally let him go. His broken nose. His blackened eye. His split lip and missing teeth. All for Beth. Anders cupped Hawke’s face, tracing his lips and the faint scar that crossed them. Hawke had been hurt enough.

“You're a Warden,” Hawke reminded him; there was something terribly distracting in the way his lips moved against Anders’ thumb, “Not an apostate.”

Anders wasn’t a Warden. Not really. He had a shield in the shape of a tabard - one the Wardens could take from him whenever they wished. Worse, they could collect on it, and what would happen to Hawke if he refused?

“Wardens are allowed to have families, so have one,” Hawke continued. “Tell the world you’re mine.”

Mine. The possessive always went straight to Anders’ cock for all the connotations that came with it, but he couldn’t move. He stared at the scar on Hawke’s lip, like two seams of fabric coming together, soft and supple as velveteen. Anders pressed his nail into that flush and full red, the color indenting a shade lighter at the pressure to match the scar. Hawke’s lips moved in the whisper of a kiss against his trembling thumb.

He did love Hawke - but loving him publicly? Memories of Mistress’ Woolsey’s warnings assailed him, blending together with assassins and magebane and the judgmental sneers of Amaranthine’s nobles. Anders felt his heart race for too many reasons when Hawke’s hands found their way into his robes, sweeping up and down his back, chasing shivers along his spine.

Hawke had strong hands. Even after the loss of his sister, his mother, his eyes, his hearing. He’d always had strong hands. Anders felt himself nodding. He pushed down on Hawke’s bottom lip, urging his lips apart to kiss him. There was something nervous in it - like Anders had never kissed him before. Like he couldn’t remember how. A stutter in his breath, breaking over Hawke’s lips as he kissed back, reassuring and familiar. Hawke’s hands kneaded Anders’ hips, gently rocking the two of them together.

Anders remembered how to move with him, chasing the friction and the tension it built in the pit of his stomach. Maker he’d missed this. He’d wanted this. He was so tired. So tired of being Anders and being in charge of himself, of relief efforts, of everything. He didn’t want to be anything but Hawke’s. To relax for five bloody minutes in his lover’s arms and not have to worry about qunari or templars or refugees or anything other than the calloused hands that guided his yielding body.

“I love you,” Anders’ voice shook. He signed in the small space between them, his hands grazing Hawke’s powerful chest with the words, pressing them into his heart.

“You love me,” Hawke translated, the warmth of his breath spilling across Anders’ lips, spreading a flush across his skin. The heat was like an ache, clinging to his skin, pulsing in the pit of his stomach, in his thighs, in his cock. It was so bloody hot. Anders shrugged out of his robe, Hawke’s fingers running through the sweat gathering in the small of his back and spreading it along his spine, eliciting shivers Hawke had to have felt.

“I love you,” Hawke’s hand cradled the back of Anders’ head, and their kiss turned into something firm and insistent. His fingers tangled in Anders’ hair, and the sudden pull went straight to Anders’ cock. Hawke’s voice was so low Anders felt more than heard it, “This what you want?”

“Yes,” Anders gasped, beating the word against Hawke’s chest with every version he could sign. “Yes. Y-E-S. Yes.”

The robe caught on the chair as Anders shoved it off Hawke’s shoulders, leaving just skin. Bronze, burnt, beautiful skin inked and scarred with his life and Anders’ life and their life. Anders traced over the rifts in Hawke’s skin, the too smooth texture of his burn. Hawke’s hands slid down his back, kneading over pliant skin until he reached Anders’ thighs. Hawke stood with him, drawing a startled gasp when he hefted him bodily onto the desk.

Parchment scattered, inkwell and unlit candles clattering over the edge of the desk. Hawke’s fingers stole beneath his waistband, dragging Anders’ trousers down his thighs, over lean legs, catching briefly on his ankles before they hit the floor. Anders reached for him, and Hawke caught both his hands. An eager flare of primal creationism sent blissfully hot oil pooling over their fingers and onto Anders’ chest.

Anders hadn’t meant to summon so much. It spread across his skin like a fever, running between his ribs with every heaving breath or pooling low on his stomach. Anders stole a hand around himself, stroking the excess of oil into his aching cock. He twitched against his palm, his thumb circling the head of his cock and caressing his slit, smearing oil with the early promises of release.

Hawke stopped, a well oiled hand on Anders’ shoulder somehow keeping him steady so he didn’t slide right off the desk. “Maker, I could just watch you,” Hawke said thickly, with an encouraging squeeze on his thigh.

“Fuck me,” Anders shook his head.

Hawke set Anders’ ankles over his shoulders, the stretch pulling at the back of Anders’ knees. A second quickly followed, Hawke’s slick fingers pushing into him with a lustful groan. “You miss this?”

There was nothing for Anders to bite down on. No pillow. No shoulder. A crook of Hawke’s talented fingers drew a needy whine from Anders' lips. “Oh, fuck yes, right there.” Anders forgot to sign it. He forgot how. He forgot everything. He threw his arms over his head to hold the edge of the desk as Hawke moved in him, wringing moan after breathless moan from his lips.

Anders’ harsh pants dried out his lips. Everything was so warm. Sweat gathered on his brow, running along his hairline and catching on his ears. It slid down the inside of his thighs, joining the oil coating Hawke’s fingers as they worked inside him.

Hawke squeezed his shoulder, his thumb crooked slightly around his throat, and Anders would have given anything for him to squeeze, “Sign,” Hawke groaned, “Sign something.”

Anders freed up his hands, beating “Fuck,” against his chest. He didn’t know all the words, but he tried anyway, stringing together the ones that he did, fighting against the urge to clench his hands into fists at every surge of pleasure that came from Hawke’s thrusting fingers, “Fuck me till you hear me.”

"Fuck you… hear you…" Hawke shoved a few wild strands of hair out of his eyes with a frustrated snarl, "Fuck you till I hear you?"

“Yes,” Anders signed.

Hawke broke from him to push his slacks down his hips. His cock took the place of his fingers, a slow, deliberate push that wrung whimpering gasps from him as his body yielded to the intense stretch. Hawke held his shoulder with one hand, and caressed up and down his trembling thigh with the other, whispering encouragement while Anders writhed beneath him, “There you go, that’s right, just like that.”

Hawke sank in deeper, stroking a bundle of nerves that sent a rush of heat surging across his skin. Anders cried out, gripping the edge of the table with one hand and desperately signing, “Yes!” with the other.

Anders arched to meet each shallow thrust as Hawke started moving. Every roll of Hawke’s hips left him whining for more, the hot thrum of arousal echoing with his own cries in his ears. His sweat-soaked skin stuck to the table as Hawke moved him back and forth across it. Anders pawed at him mindlessly, running his hand over his powerful arms and the veins pulled taut against the muscle.

He was beyond gorgeous. Beads of sweat rolled from Hawke’s shoulders, catching in the brilliant black strands on his chest and beneath his arms, gathering on his hips when they connected with Anders’ thighs. The wet snap of them connecting underlaid every rough grunt or eager moan, if only Hawke could hear him. Pinned to the table, his legs aching, Anders cried out, again, and again, and Maker, Hawke had to hear him. He was wound so tight with need he thought he might snap.

“Please,” Anders babbled, slick fist pumping frantically around his aching cock, straining for the edge, “Please, please, please.”

Hawke squeezed his shoulder encouragingly, and Anders fell apart in his eyes. Ecstasy washed over him, like veilfire splitting through every inch of his skin, white hot release coating his hand and his quaking stomach. Anders chased after the sensation, every inch of him shivering with pleasure as his hand moved jerkily, drawing it out as long as he possibly could.

Mind-numbing bliss followed as Hawke filled him to overflowing, the heat of his release spilling down Anders’ ass with his final few thrusts before he pulled from him. Anders lay on the desk, struggling to catch his breath while Hawke did the same, his harsh gasps playing out across his chest. Anders chased a bead of sweat as it moved across his collarbone, feeling a lazy smile play across his face.

“Thanks,” Anders signed.

Hawke laughed, and dragged him off the desk to share a bath. Anders spent it resting on Hawke’s chest, slowly signing out how he’d spent his yesterday, and it was wonderfully, blissfully, finally, quiet.

Solace turned into August. They still couldn’t sign well enough to talk, and wouldn’t for years yet, but Anders took to writing and Hawke took to reading. The Harimanns’ All Soul’s Day gathering was… not something Anders would have subjected himself to willingly. One relief ship hadn’t healed the city, and Anders was needed in his clinic, not hobnobbing with the nobility.

But Hawke invited him, so he went, despite how uncomfortable it made him. All Soul’s Day was meant for a somber remembrance of the dead, and the Harimanns’ party seemed anything but so long as the pyres still burned throughout the city. Even worse, the second he and Hawke walked in together, all eyes were on them. It wasn’t until Anders scurried away to the hor dourve table that he realized too many of those eyes were on him.

Paranoia insisted it was his tabard, or the magic inherent in his hands, but as the night went on another reason occurred to him. He turned heads. Anders could scarcely believe it after three years in the sewers, filth such a second layer to his skin he felt noticeably lighter without it, but there he was: turning heads in Hightown. His hair was done up in braids and tied with red ribbons at the back of his head, dripping gold and wrapped in velvet, and for once, the freckles on his face didn't make him think of dirt.

When eyes followed him and hands rose up to cover mouths, they came paired with blushing faces and timid smiles that left no doubt as to what the nobles thought of him. Anders wandered back to Hawke in something of a daze, and found him in the sitting room, surrounded by a crowd of men in suits and women in dresses festooned with ruffles.

"I dare say I don't know who to envy more," One of the noblewomen giggled, looking Anders over with eyes that seemed to compliment every inch of him and made him feel five years younger. "You're a lucky man, Serah Hawke."

“L-u-c-k-y,” Anders signed for him, since the woman hadn’t.

"Don't I know it," Hawke agreed, planting a shameless kiss on Anders’ knuckles.

“Serah Warden, might I have a moment?” Another of the noblewomen asked. She was an older woman in a brilliant violet gown, trimmed with gold to match the jewelry dripping obscenely from her ears, her nose, her lips, her brow. There was so much she practically glowed in the candlelight - and it wasn’t until Anders did a doubletake he realized she was haloed.

“You can have a few,” Anders untangled himself from Hawke, signing, “T-a-l-k,” and pointing at the stranger.

Hawke waved him off, and the nobles crowded in, alternatively struggling or forgetting to sign to talk to him.

The noble led Anders into a study. An apostate. A noble apostate. An old noble apostate. Anders wondered if she knew he knew she was a mage. More so, he wondered how she’d managed to live so long without anyone else knowing. “Johane Harimann,” The woman introduced herself with a small curtsy.

Harimann. Harimann as in the noble family hosting the party. Harimann as in the noble family Dalian had convinced to read his manifesto. Anders had never asked exactly how many of the Harimanns had read it, but at least one of them had, and considering she was a mage, Johane seemed like a safe enough guess. She circled the study, trailing her fingers across the spines of the books.

“Anders,” Anders introduced himself. “Great party,” It wasn’t, but it seemed a bit rude to say otherwise.

“Thank you,” Johane smiled over her shoulder, tipping a book free of one of the shelves. The cover looked vaguely familiar, even at a distance. “I wonder, Serah Warden, if you have read Darktown’s Deal?”

“I have,” Anders said. If she was asking what Anders thought she was, he’d been the one to write it.

“A delightful piece,” Johane returned to him with the book. Newly printed. They were definitely talking about what Anders thought they were talking about. “It seems a shame it is not more widely circulated, wouldn’t you say?”

Cloak and dagger, Anders. You can do this.

“I would.”

Johane smiled, but there was something terribly off about it. Too many teeth, “Perhaps we could do something about that.”

He just hoped he wouldn't have to use the dagger.

Chapter 121: We Should Talk

Summary:

Written with inspiration from Ushauz.

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back. Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos. I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:34 Dragon 30 Matrinalis Morning
Kirkwall Hightown: Hawke Estate

Aside from her smile, there were few things Anders didn't like about Lady Johane Harimann. She was no friend to the Knight-Commander, which consequently made her a good friend to Anders. They weren't painting each other's toenails close, but they were close. Taking tea and discussing iconoclasm close. Anders spent more than a few early mornings with her at the Cafe d’Or, listening to her vision for the future. The small cafe was perched on a hill in the Orlesian district of Hightown almost as high as the Chantry. The veranda boasted a view of the entire city, and helped Johane look past it.

Johane wanted all of Thedas to take Darktown's Deal. Listening to the old girl go on was so fantastically romantic Anders swore Justice was sweet on her. She had connections in Starkhaven and Orlais, and wanted to send Anders' manifesto to all of them. Hidden missives in the Randy Dowager to start - recommending a special edition of Darktown's Deal for those looking for ‘magical release’ and ‘true liberation.’

But Johane didn't want to risk the author - either author - in the process. Allies were too few and far between to lose them to impatience or indiscretion. Talk with Johane was - for the moment - still just talk. Kirkwall commanded most of Anders’ focus as ships and caravans came in throughout August. Aveline had wrested the city’s relief efforts from Meredith, and apparently felt he’d done a good enough job the first time to punish him with a second, and a third, and a fourth.

If he had to hear ‘Bless you, Warden,’ one more time Anders was going to snap. The supplies always ran out before the survivors, and no amount of thanks in the afternoon could drown out the cries in the evening. After a month, Anders couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed to face it. He knew he couldn't stop, not really, not forever, but he needed a break before he broke. Hawke was busy with the Bone Pit, making a fortune off the masonry the city needed to build, but Merrill had returned from her latest excursion petitioning the Dalish clans in the Free Marches for aid, and joined him for breakfast.

“You sounded like you had fun last night,” Merrill noted around a mouthful of biscuit, while Anders struggled to remember what had happened last night. Socks. Something about his socks on the floor. “You and Hawke.”

Damnit, Anders, a grown man and a mage, and you can’t pick up after yourself?

Socks!? You’re on me about socks!? You’re lucky I’m not on the floor after the day I had!

What kind of day did you have?

I don’t want to talk about it, please, I just want to relax. Or, more accurately, a haphazard signing of ‘No. Talk. Sex. Now.’

… Merrill probably meant the sex.

“Maybe too much fun,” Anders admitted, blaming his coffee for his flush, “I think we’re going to break the desk one of these days.”

“Do you suppose I could borrow your grimoire?” Merrill asked.

“What does my grimoire have to do with last night?”

“You two were so loud, I just figured you must have some… um, dirty spells.”

“Dirty spells?” Anders raised an eyebrow at her.

“You know,” Merrill teased, waving her fork in a roundabout gesture that seemed anything but sexual, “To make things more exciting.”

“More exciting? For you and Fenris?” Anders gave her a playful shove; he couldn’t imagine Fenris wanting anything to do with magic in bed, if only because then it would mean he’d have to imagine him in bed, “Yes, I do, and no, you can’t have them. Warden secrets.”

“They’re not really secrets, are they?” Anders took an uncommunicative sip of his coffee, and Merrill abandoned the line of questioning, “You and Hawke seem like you’re doing better. You are, aren’t you?”

Anders supposed they were. The letters helped. Confining his days to a page helped them not feel as long, as much as it helped him talk to Hawke. It didn’t fix everything. Anders’ days were exhausting. So exhausting he couldn’t pick up his socks, but that wasn’t Hawke’s fault. The longer Anders spent in the aftermath of the invasion, the harder it was to forgive and forget what Isabela had done to bring it about.

“I can’t just stay mad at him forever,” Anders felt guilty confessing as much to Merrill, knowing what Isabela had meant to her.

“Forever is a terribly long time,” Merrill allotted, “... I think I might. You know. Stay mad at him.”

“I’m sorry, Merrill,” Anders said, if only because Hawke wouldn’t.

“How does Justice feel about all of this?” Merrill asked.

Anders tried to decipher between the two of them, but nothing came to him. Justice did not like eating. Drinking, he could handle, but not eating. There were too many tastes combined with too many textures, and he remained stubbornly withdrawn despite the question Merrill posed. Anders chewed through the last of his biscuit and washed it down with another drink of coffee before he sat back on his stool, flexing his hands, trying to untangle man and spirit.

Veilfire cut across his skin, and Anders relaxed into the warmth of the transition, “It is complicated,” Justice said at the summons, trying and failing to ignore the distasteful sensation of crumbs caught between their teeth. “His actions were not without justification. He has sacrificed a part of himself for the city, whereas Isabela has abandoned it. It is my - our hope she will return and attempt to atone for her transgressions. Her desertion was a disappointment, but I do not regret the role we played in her rescue. Her punishment was not fit for her crime.

“... I do not like biscuits,” Justice let go.

Anders still felt the veilfire, long after it was gone. It danced along his spine, a pleasant distraction while they turned to lighter topics. A clan in the northern Free Marches near Wycome had agreed to send aid to Kirkwall’s alienage. Medicinal herbs, wood and ironbark, baskets and other woven goods. All things the city needed and Anders would have been happy to hear about, if he could focus on them.

Anders rolled his shoulder, chasing the tingling sensation that danced across his skin for far too long before he realized Justice had nothing to do with it. Anders bolted out of the kitchen and into the foyer. Ser Cumference was weaving between the feet of a massive mabari while Bodahn spoke to its owner.

A Warden. The pull of another Warden. He was something out of the Fade, overflowing with magic, the silver knotwork on the cobalt doublet suspiciously reminiscent of runes. Feathered black hair fell carelessly in front of a matching blindfold, and he looked up at Anders’ despite it.

“Amell,” Anders still choked on his name.

“Anders,” Amell didn’t. The words seemed to come to him as easily as they did two years ago, “It’s good to hear your voice.”

“Too long, it’s been,” Bodahn said when Anders failed to say anything else, picking up whatever conversation Anders had interrupted, “Such a delight to see you again, messere. You’ll be staying, I hope? We should have a room in the east wing that would serve well enough. This is the family estate after all. Master Hawke will be delighted to have you. Such a terrible time it’s been - it would be good to have more family in these halls.”

“Thank you, Bodahn, but I’m only staying a fortnight,” Amell said.

“A fortnight?” Anders blurted. It was no time at all.

“Thirteen days, technically,” Amell said.

“Plenty of time to visit!” Bodahn said cheerily, “The boy’ll be glad to see you. The old enchantments are still holding up well, I hope?”

“Very well, thank you,” Amell said, still looking in Anders’ direction.

Anders had never wanted to hug someone so badly. He didn’t remember moving but he must have because he was suddenly standing next to Bodahn. “What are you doing here?”

“I didn’t want to miss your name-day,” Amell reminded him. Anders had completely forgotten about it. “Thirty, isn’t it?”

“I can’t be that old,” Someone who sounded like Anders said.

“My mistake,” Amell smiled, “Are you free?”

“Yes - Yes I’m free. Did you-” Anders forgot how to talk. “-want to come inside?”

“Am I outside?” Amell asked.

“This is the foyer-”

“It was a joke, Anders.”

Anders laughed. It sounded insane to his ears. “Right. Hilarious. Um-”

“I wouldn't mind a tour of the estate... or, we have a new compound in the city,” Amell said when he floundered, “Sergeant Joanna tells me you haven’t been, and I could use the practice mapping the streets.”

“Compound,” Anders repeated. They had a Warden compound. For Warden things. Because they were Wardens and Wardens had Warden things to do. “Sure. Let me just - get my things.”

Anders fled. It felt like fleeing. It felt like he needed to flee. Some distant part of him was aware Merrill left the kitchens at the same time he ran up the stairs and all but locked himself in his room. Anders pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, but the spots the pressure conjured did nothing to erase the image of Amell waiting in the foyer.

No Calling.

No invasion.

No reason not to talk.

No reason not to talk about Velanna, and Nathaniel, and Sigrun, and Compassion, and Roland, and Cera, and Barkspawn. Anders pressed harder, but the spots just looked like dappled starlight in the night, illuminating the courtyard of Vigil’s Keep and all the friends that Anders had lost while Amell kissed him goodbye and left both of them to die. Andraste’s bloody pyre, it felt like he had a dozen times over in the past two years, with Justice the only thing keeping him from the Void, veilfire burning through all the cracks the world had left in his heart.

Anders couldn’t breathe. He slid down the door frame, crumpling in on himself. He felt like he was hyperventilating. Sapphire burned through his veins at the first few staccato gasps that escaped him, enveloping his chest and sinking into his lungs. His heart rate slowed, and breath came easier. “Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Okay.” Anders kneaded at his chest and the spirit coiled tightly inside it. “I’m okay. I can do this.”

Anders picked himself up. He put on his boots and his tabard, hooked Amell’s grimoire to his belt, and grabbed his staff. Static swept up his arm, making his hair stand on end, and the rosewood ring tapped softly against the dragonbone with every anxious roll of his fingers. Anders stared at the shifting figures in the grains of wood, trying to feel… something through the magic. To get a sense for how Amell seemed so calm. So serene. Nothing came to him - or if it did, he was too anxious to decipher it.

Anders went back downstairs. Merrill’s voice and her apparent conversation with Amell carrying through the halls.

“-technically not before either.” Merrill was saying, “I’m Dalish. You probably knew that because of the vallaslin - except I guess you wouldn’t - and oh dear, I’m making a mess of this. I’m sorry, I’m not very good with new people.”

“Mirthadra aneth ara,” Amell said.

“Oh, that’s - humans don’t normally - you are sure you’re human, aren’t you? Your accent is very good!”

“It’s not mine,” Amell looked at Anders when he reached the bottom of the stairs, but Anders swore his footsteps hadn’t been that loud. “Anders - you have a cat?”

“A cat?” Anders couldn’t process the question. Ser Cumference was making a very determined effort to play with the mabari’s collar, wheezing and huffing through repeated leaps at the spiked leather. The mabari snorted every few swats, shifting and struggling to ignore the harassment. Obviously he had a cat. “Yes. Right. A cat. I have a cat.”

“Does it have a name?”

“Ser Cumference.”

Amell exhaled bemusedly for it, “Are you ready to go?”

Nope. “Ready,” Anders said.

“Did you want to accompany us?” Amell asked Merrill.

“No!” Anders answered for her. “No, she’s good. Everyone’s good. Let’s go. Warden compound. Warden business. You know how it is.”

“Oh, okay,” Merrill gave Anders a sidelong glance, “Maybe we can talk later? I have a lot of questions for you.”

“Of course,” Amell said. “Dumat, find outside.”

Bodahn bolted around them to get the door, and Anders followed Amell out into Hightown. Anders didn’t know what he needed. He didn’t remember what he needed. He hated remembering those last weeks at Vigil’s Keep when Amell had scarcely left his quarters. Anders felt like he should do something. Like he should offer his arm.

He didn't. Amell walked fine with the dog at his side. Anders didn’t. He stumbled over perfectly flat marble streets, unable to take his eyes off him. He looked exactly the same as Anders remembered him. Jet black hair pulled into a braid on one side of his scalp, a few strands escaping over the blindfold. Long sleeves despite the fact that summer hadn’t quite crept into autumn. Like nothing had changed when everything had.

“Do you like the city?” Amell asked suddenly.

Anders battled down another insane laugh, “All the rubble is great.”

“And you live at the Amell estate now? With Bodahn and his son?”

“Sandal’s great.” Anders agreed. This was fine. This was easy. These were easy questions.

“I never imagined you’d see it before I did,” Amell joked. Anders’ laugh escaped like steam from a kettle, and he cleared his throat to stop the sound, glad Amell didn’t call him out on it. “I hope Garrett’s made it more welcoming than my grandfather did.”

“He goes by Hawke,” Anders said.

“We have a lot in common,” Amell noted.

Not really.

“It would be nice to meet him,” Amell continued. “Gamlen never wrote much about the rest of the family beyond their names. I can’t quite remember them all… Leandra, I think, is Hawke’s mother? And he had a few siblings?”

“Leandra’s dead.” Anders said. Your father killed her, trying to resurrect your mother.

Maker, how was he supposed to tell Amell that?

Amell kept talking, but his words came at him as if from underwater. Anders hadn’t thought about Quentin in months, but he was still out there somewhere, with Hawke’s eyes and Leandra’s face. The memory assaulted him. The stitched together corpse, fueled with red lyrium and blood magic, staring at him with Hawke’s eyes. Amell’s warnings on the risks of blood magic and all its unintended consequences and how little there had been when Anders had driven Hawke’s dagger into Gascard’s heart. How easy it was.

My love transcends death!

I would drown us in blood to keep you safe.

How Anders could have said either one.

How was he supposed to talk about the estate, or the city, or the weather? How was he supposed to talk about anything? How was he supposed to do this?

“Anders?” Amell’s voice broke him out of his trance. They’d stopped walking. Amell touched his shoulder, “Are you alright?”

Anders couldn’t handle the contact. The firm support the hand on his shoulder offered, like it was prepared to catch him if he collapsed. Like it almost expected him to. “Peachy,” Anders lied. They kept walking. “So, hey, where is this compound? And since when do we have one?”

“Technically, all the watchtowers belong to the Wardens,” Amell said. “They were built during the First Blight to watch for the Archdemon, and we have a few strongholds in the area, but we only requisition them for Blights. Outside of them, there’s nothing official in Kirkwall. The viscount offered us the compound, provided we handle reconstruction.”

“Why…?”

“I have to station you somewhere,” Amell said with a small smile. “And we could use it. We usually make use of the inns, but the last time we had someone stationed in Kirkwall their room was raided and several confidential documents were stolen. Having our own compound is more secure. The Warden-Commander of the Free Marches’ focus lies along the Minanter River, and with the Vimmark Mountains between her and Kirkwall, she doesn’t mind sharing her jurisdiction.”

“But this - I mean… why now?” Anders pressed, “Why are you doing all of this now? Is this really just for me?”

“I had no idea you were in Kirkwall, Anders,” Amell strained to hold onto his smile, “If I knew it wouldn’t have taken me two years to come. We have matters that we have to attend to in the Free Marches, but I won’t trouble you with them.”

For now. If Anders was officially stationed in Kirkwall as a Grey Warden, he doubted he’d be kept in the dark for long. It was only a matter of time before someone came to collect something from him. If not Amell, then the Warden Commander in the Free Marches, or whatever Warden-Commander replaced Amell the next time something horrible happened to him and he decided to abandon Anders all over again.

“How long have you been here?” Amell asked at his silence.

“Since I left Amaranthine,” Anders said.

“How did you leave?”

I broke a horse’s mind with blood magic so it could stand to be near an abomination after murdering my friends in a fit of blind rage because the Warden-Constable you left in charge recruited a templar who tried to kill me while I was in the Fade watching Compassion turn into a demon of Mercy because she couldn’t sense me through Justice.

Anders opened his mouth but nothing came out. Dumat barked, and Anders glanced down at the mabari. It stood at the top of the mountainous sandstone stairs carving their way down to Lowtown, blocking Amell’s descent. Anders wondered if he needed help. He wondered how to ask. Amell scratched the dog's ear, and the mabari bounded down a few steps.

“Do you-....” Anders’ touched his arm, the sleeve of cotton covering a myride of scars Anders knew were still there but couldn’t feel through fabric.

“If you like,” Amell wrapped a hand around Anders’ forearm, but after a single gauging step down the stairs continued without issue. Kirkwall was made of sandstone stairs, sloping queries, and uneven streets. Amell had managed to find the estate without any help. He probably didn’t need any now. Anders stared at the hand on his arm, but it was too late to do anything about it.

Copper. Copper and the abrasive scent of mabari. Copper and the earthy scents of constructions. Dirt, sawdust, and smoke sweeping up from the foundries working tirelessly to rebuild the city. Copper and the occasional breath of the Fade and pressed linens when Amell’s shoulder brushed against his on the impossibly long descent into Lowtown.

“The Collective helped me,” Anders answered eventually, thinking of Rosalyn and her pancakes. “I took a ship, and I’ve been here ever since.”

“What have you been doing?” Amell asked.

“I run an infirmary,” Anders said, because it was the easiest thing to say. He didn’t know where to start with the rest of his life and how it had gone down Kirkwall’s drains before Hawke had dragged him out of the sewers and into something worth living.

“For the entire city?” Amell sounded impressed.

They crossed a handful of servants laden down with barrels and baskets, filled with supplies only the nobility could afford but were too entitled to get for themselves. The servants nodded as they passed, mumbling a respectful, “Wardens,” as they continued up the stairs, but at least they didn’t add “Bless you.”

Anders waited until they were out of earshot to say, “Justice helps.”

He saw a flicker of something in Amell’s expression, but he couldn’t name the emotion. “... Would you tell me about him?”

“About Justice?” Anders asked. “What about him?”

“About what it’s like for you,” Amell elaborated. “... I’m told that it can feel comforting.”

“... It can,” Anders said cautiously.

“And it’s not something you can extricate yourself from?” Amell asked. “The two of you are a complete bond?”

“Not exactly,” Anders said, wondering how many times and how many different ways he would end up explaining his relationship with Justice. “He’s part of me, but he’s also separate from me. We can’t exactly have a conversation, but I can feel his thoughts as my own. Sometimes it’s like watching someone else in your own body, and sometimes it’s hard to tell where I end and he begins.”

“Is it something where I could talk to him?” Amell asked.

“... Maybe,” Anders didn’t know how he felt about the question. Anders didn’t know how Justice felt about the question. The last time Amell had spoken with Anders’ spirit was during a Harrowing to fight a Fear demon that had plagued them both, and the questions he’d asked had been… intimate. But Amell had known Justice as Justice, and might have just wanted to talk to Justice for his own sake. “... Not in public. It shows when he’s forward.”

They reached the bottom of the stairs, and for some reason Amell didn’t let go of his arm and for some other reason Anders didn’t make him. Lowtown was recovering. The saar-qamek had been removed from some of the city, and the rubble had been cleared away in the markets. People went back to being people. They bartered at ramshackled stalls for overpriced almost-foods, weeds and roots and bark, and lined up at soup kitchens, asking no questions about the meats that made it into them.

Every other building was burnt out, like sandstone skulls lining the way to the Warden Compound for how the blackened char of the fires framed windows and doors. Amell stopped in front of one with a newly replaced door carved with a gryphon emblem. The sandstone walls were burnt, the windows lacked shutters or even glass, but it stood, like a skeleton resurrected from the ashes of the invasion. Dumat scratched at the door until Sergeant Joanna opened it, her silverite armor replaced with simple linens. “Welcome back, Commander. Warden.” She nodded, waving them inside.

It was… less than inspiring. The small apartment building was nowhere near as grandiose as Vigil’s Keep. Three stories, but only the first was accessible, the remnants of a burnt staircase clinging to the walls like spiderwebs. The entrance doubled as a common room, where a few soldiers seemed to be enjoying an off day with dice and cards. It split off into a handful of other rooms, some with doors and some without.

“How is it?” Amell asked.

“It is,” Anders said.

Amell chuckled, “I’m told renovations will take at least a year. You don’t ever have to stay here, obviously, we just need a presence in the city. We’ll only keep a few men stationed, and it should serve as an inn for any Wardens in the area.”

Dumat wandered off, but Amell no longer seemed to need him. He led Anders to a room with a door, and retrieved a key from his pocket. There was something painfully captivating about the way he interacted with the world. He touched everything. His hands ghosted over tables, along walls, down the frame of the door to trace the handle before he unlocked it. He waved Anders into what must have been his room. There was a cot, a chest of Maker knew what, a couch and a small table before it, and a scribe’s desk with a few letters on it.

Amell sat on the couch. “How have you been?”

“How have I been?” Anders rested his staff against the wall, and took a few uncertain steps around the small room. What kind of question was that? After two years, how could Amell possibly start with that? Like the past two years could be summed up with ‘Great, thanks for asking, you?’ “How do you think I’ve been?”

“You mentioned that you were happy-”

“I tried to kill myself!” Anders screamed at him. The words came pouring out, one after the other, like a river of blood he vomited up from the core of his being, tainted and tortured, “The only reason I’m alive is because Justice saved me! I had the dagger and I was going to drive it through my heart, but he stopped me! He stopped me because you were gone! Because you left me! You left me to die and I tried to move on and the first man that I - Karl - I - they made him Tranquil!

“He was a good man and a good mage and the bloody templars took him from me and I couldn’t stop them! I couldn’t conscript him! I couldn’t save him! I couldn’t do anything for him! I had to-.. I had to-... Fuck. I killed him. I killed him. I killed him so he wouldn’t have to live like that and every day I have to walk past the place where he died in my arms and hear the bells and the Chant of Light and the prayers like any of it means a damn thing when they’re singing on top of his grave!

“How have I been? How have I been!? You don’t get to ask me how I’ve been! You have no idea how I’ve been! You have no idea what I’ve been through! You have no idea how miserable the past two years have been for me! You have no idea! You don’t know! You left me!”

Anders was so tense he was shaking. He felt like he could barely breathe. He took a deep breath, and the air caught in his throat and didn’t quite reach his lungs. He could hardly see through his anger, his vision spotty, but Amell was still there. Still real. Still alive. Still not some hallucination he’d conjured in a fit of delirium, or dreamed up in the Fade.

He stayed on the couch, his expression unreadable, and Anders couldn’t say if it was the blindfold or just that he’d always been so damned enigmatic. “Well!?” Anders demanded, practically itching with anger, with the need to keep screaming, to find something else to scream about. “Bloody say something!”

“You’re right,” Amell said quietly.

“What?” Anders blinked.

“You’re right,” Amell said again.

No. No, fuck him. Amell didn’t get to take his anger too. “I’m right. I’m right!? What do you mean I’m right? You think it’s that easy!? You think - you think you can just agree with me and fix everything? You come back, and you leave me again like it’s nothing, and then you put me in the worst position I can possibly imagine - putting me in charge of that relief ship! Sending it to me and not the city! Every day for the past month I’ve had to pick who gets to eat and who doesn’t! Who gets to live and who dies! You think I wanted that!? You think that counts as an apology!?“

“No -” Amell started

“You think that makes up for abandoning me!?”

“No.”

“Stop fucking agreeing with me!” Anders screamed.

“I’m not going to fight with you, Anders,” Amell said.

“Oh you’re not?” Anders scoffed, “You think you can make that decision for me too? Well I’m going to fight with you and you’re going to bloody well listen! You never should have left! You never should have put the Orlesians in charge! They ruined the Arling! They burned Amaranthine to the ground! My friend’s wife and children died boarded up in his shop and now he won’t even talk to me because you made me a Warden again!

“Sigrun is dead! She died! She was my best friend and she died and I had to dig her bones out of the ashes of the bomb that you gave her! Do you have any idea how shit - how fucking shit - how fucking bloody shit - you knew she was suicidal! You knew and you gave her those damn bombs anyway! You wanted to die, fine, but you didn’t have to take her with you!”

Amell didn’t say anything. He just sat there, staring ahead and slightly down. His hands moved from his sides to wring once in his lap, but that was it. No other reaction. Anders stopped in front of him. He wanted him to stand up. To pace. To scream. To do something. “Say something!”

“You’re right,” Amell said.

“Say something else!”

“What else do you want me to say, Anders? What else can I say? I thought what my father did to me would be the worst day of my life, but it wasn’t. It was when I came back to Vigil’s Keep… and I found out what happened to you.”

“To me?” Anders repeated. Of course. Of course Amell would say that, because it was always about Amell and what Anders meant to Amell and damn the rest of the world no matter what the world meant to Anders. “To me!? I’m alive! Velanna is dead! Nathaniel is dead! I killed them! I killed them because the templars came for me when you were gone and they tried to kill me because I’m an abomination and I went mad. I killed them. I killed all of them. Don’t sit there and act like you still love me. You don’t know me.”

Finally. Finally, a fucking reaction. A crease, however slight, in his brow just above the silver blindfold. Amell stood up, his hand raising like he meant to reach for him before it dropped back to his side. “No you didn’t.”

“I didn’t what?”

“You didn’t kill them.”

“... What?”

“Nathaniel is the Warden Constable… his sister is the new bann of Amaranthine. Velanna is an ambassador to the Dalish lands in the south. We found her sister in the Deep Roads and put her through the Joining. They’re alive and well, and still together. You didn’t kill them.”

“... You’re lying,” Anders said. “You’re lying. You’re lying to me like you lied when I cut out your eyes. You’re lying-”

“I’m not lying,” Amell said. Quick steps took him to his desk, where he gathered all the letters the scribe had left. He returned to press them into Anders' trembling hands. “One of these is addressed to Warden Constable Howe. Open them all. I don’t care. Why would I be writing to a dead man?”

The letters shook out of his hands, spilling onto the floor. He didn’t need to open them. It couldn’t have been a bluff. It couldn’t have been, but that meant - it meant -

“I-... I didn’t-... I didn’t kill them?”

“You didn’t kill them.”

“I thought-... all this time I thought-...”

Cracks. Cracks like glass splintered up from his fingers, shaking through his hands, his arms, his shoulders, bursting apart in his heart. Anders filled them with tears. He hit his knees, sobbing into his hands, wretched gasps shaking through his chest and choking in his throat with every miserable breath. Alive. They were alive. He hadn’t killed them. They hadn’t killed them. They weren’t insane. They weren’t a monster. They weren’t an abomination.

“They’re alive?” Anders’ voice broke.

Amell knelt next to him, and set a tentative hand to his shoulder that eventually became an embrace. “They’re alive. You didn’t kill them. They’re alive and well.”

Notes:

Fanart
Amell as portrayed by Thiefbird.

Chapter 122: The Weight of Years

Notes:

Thank you for all of the feedback on the last chapter!!! Thank you for all of your subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:34 Dragon 30 Matrinalis Late Afternoon
Kirkwall Lowtown: Warden Compound

Anders’ tears held the weight of years. Day after day ran down his face, soaking into his beard and leaving an ocean of salt on his lips. Amell’s arms wrapped around his waist and shoulders, a low pulse of telekinetic energy not unlike a heartbeat embracing all of him. None of it felt real. It couldn’t be real. It was too impossible. Too painless, when nothing in Anders’ life had been for so long.

Alive and well. The words echoed in his ears along with a handful of others, and it took him too long to realize Amell was talking.

“-never deserved to live with that,” The whispers were more warmth than words, barely audible over his own sobs, even with Amell breathing them into his ear, “You’re so indomitably strong, so incontrovertibly brave, so interminably compassionate. You never deserved to suffer. You’re right. You’re right to be angry, to be sad, to be any way that you need to be. You deserved so much better. You deserved so much better from the world. You deserved so much better from me.”

Anders made his arms move, clawing his way up Amell’s back to fist his hands in his doublet, clutching so tight he swore he could feel the skin beneath. Amell kept talking, listing virtues Anders hadn’t possessed in years or had never possessed at all. Anders couldn’t stand it. Amell didn’t yell. He didn’t fight. He just gathered up the broken glass of Anders’ emotions and all their lacerations and handed them back.

“You’re right,” Amell said again, but Anders didn’t want to be. He didn’t want to make Amell into a monster because he couldn’t handle the thought of him as a man. Couldn’t handle the thought that Amell hadn’t saved him from all of it not because he hadn’t wanted to, but because he hadn’t been able to. Couldn’t handle that it had all just happened and Anders couldn’t blame anyone for it. Couldn’t handle that after he’d begged, and prayed, and pleaded, Amell had come back. Amell had actually come back.

“I’m not,” Anders’ voice was thick with grief and phlegm, lips tethered with spit and tears. “I’m not right. I’m the reason you left,” Anders’ hands had gone numb from how tightly they’d clung to Amell’s doublet. He untangled one, pinpricks of feeling making his fingers tremble when he traced the edge of the blindfold. It had been his fault, but he could fix it. He knew how to fix it. Amell caught his hand before he pulled it off.

His grip was so extraordinarily gentle it barely touched Anders’ skin, ghosting over the hairs on the back of his hand and making him shiver. Anders was suddenly, intimately, achingly aware of himself and the man holding him. The strong arm encircling his shoulders, the firm thigh pressed tight against his own, the heat of his body. His lips, ever so slightly parted, so close Anders could taste the air he breathed.

“You’re the reason I came back,” Amell corrected him.

Justice would not have chosen that moment to experience the myriad of sensations overwhelming Anders. A loss of circulation had turned their arms and legs to static, and it was difficult to breathe around the phlegm lodged in their nose and throat. They were almost feverishly flush, their heart pounding ceaselessly like it was desperate to escape the confines of their ribcage. “Hm. Excuse me,” Justice untangled them from Amell to stand and pace feeling back into their limbs. “Anders is experiencing difficulties.”

“Anders is…” Amell stayed on the floor, “...You’re not?”

Amell looked the same as Justice remembered - blood perverting the pulse of the Fade until the Veil seemed a river of red flowing through him. Disconcerting, but they had long since learned the marvels of such magic and Amell was - for the moment - bereft of bound demons. His presence was tolerable. “No. I no longer find your presence distressing. It is… good to see you?”

Surely that much was true. Amell had proven himself an ally - if not necessarily a friend. He had listened to his lamentations when Justice had first trapped himself in the mortal world. Had attempted to help him return to the Fade when Justice still mourned the loss of it and the spirits therein. Had gifted him books of poetry and prayers that spoke of the beauty of the mortal world when Justice had decided not to leave it.

“Justice?” Amell guessed.

“Yes,” Surely that much was obvious.

“You feel like the Fade,” Amell noted.

Karl had claimed the same. “I am born of it.”

“... is this normal for the two of you?”

“We are as we are.” Justice shook off the last vestiges of heat and static, but their throat and nose were beginning to dry, and were no more pleasant than when they were wet. “You wished to speak with me?” He asked to take his mind off it.

“... How present are you normally?” Amell gathered up the scattered letters with a few blind sweeps of his hands, “How present is Anders right now?”

“We are always present in each other,” Justice thought this much was obvious. A person or ideal did not cease to be simply because it was not acted on in the moment. Anders was simply… withdrawn. “Our thoughts, our emotions, our sensations dull depending upon who is forward, but we are no normal possession. I am not reaching across from a demesne within the Fade. I am here, in the mortal world, as I have always been.”

There was, of course, magic that could force him back into the Fade and seal the connection between them. The scar on their forearm was a testament to it, but it was unpleasant, and he would not see it repeated. Nor would he share such knowledge with any who did not already know it, no matter Anders’ feelings towards them.

“... I have another question, but I mean no offense with it,” Amell said, setting the letters back on the desk.

“Then I will take none,” Justice said.

“How are you sane? How is he?”

“I have ensured it,” Justice said. He had taken great pains to ensure it - for all his failings in battle, he would never lose himself outside of it. Their form was shared. It was not his to pervert and twist and tangle to his will. It was for Anders. It would always be for Anders.

“I could reverse this if you wanted,” Amell offered.

“We do not,” Justice said firmly.

“... Can I ask why?”

“I am Anders. I love Anders,” Justice felt Anders’ shock at the admission, but surely it was no revelation. He had made no secret of it.

“Are you also with Hawke?”

… was he? Surely not. They spoke. They were civil and courteous in their exchanges as behooved Anders, and yes, Justice saw the merit of the man, the strength of his convictions, but he also saw when those convictions failed to align with their own. Irrelevancies. Hawke’s affections were for Anders and not for Justice. “I do not believe myself to be.”

“Is that-...” Amell’s hand clenched. A strange gesture. “Are you alright?”

“You are alluding to something,” Justice gathered. “I do not know what.”

“Are you happy?” Amell clarified.

“I do not understand the question,” Nor did he understand Amell’s apparent obsession with it. “I am an ideal. I act in pursuit of it.”

“Pursuit how?”

… Amell had held a Most Trusted status with the Mage’s Collective. It was his work that had first inspired Anders to aid apostates in Amaranthine. It seemed a safe enough thing to share. “We work with the Mage’s Collective.”

“Doing what?” Amell pressed.

“All that we can,” Justice said. “All that is required to see the injustice of the Circles undone and the mages freed.”

“Freed as in rescued?” Amell covered his mouth. Another unfamiliar gesture. "You rescue mages from the Circle?”

“Yes… though at present we lack a way to move them from the Gallows. It has put a most distressing moratorium on our work.”

“... follow the lyrium,” Amell said.

“I do not understand.”

“The Chantry controls the lyrium trade, but templars are addicted. Someone always smuggles in more."

"Of course! The Carta! We should have seen it. We must attend to them at once-" Justice started for the door, but a sudden surge of concern from Anders kept him from charging out of it. Justice stared at the veilfire breaking through their skin, frustrated. It was not as it was when he was Kristoff. There was no concealing his presence, and no safely traversing the city unless they could.

Justice tried to relax his hold on their form, to little avail. Anders would not have it. Patience, Justice counseled himself. Temperance. Virtues. Virtues not borne of justice, but not without merit. Justice resumed pacing while Anders gathered himself. "-... when we are able. Have you more questions?"

"Can I hold your hand?"

"My-hand?"

"I can feel the Fade in you, but Anders said it showed when you were forward. I've only ever seen one possession that didn't alter the host in some way… I trust that you're both as you say you are, but I can't see whatever this does to him."

"... as you wish."

It was strange to be touched by someone not Anders. No ill fortune befell him, in stark contrast to the last time Justice had given a maleficar his trust. Amell traced over his fingers, wringing each knuckle as though he were anxiously counting them. He followed the lines in his palm, and finally mapped over the veilfire splitting their veins on the back of their hand. "... this is what shows?"

"Yes."

"What is this?"

"Veilfire."

"Can you describe it?"

"Fire born of the Fade that runs in Anders' veins, a lyrium blue that does not burn."

"Thank you," Amell let go of him. Justice scrubbed away the sensation on their thigh.

"I require no thanks. It was a trivial task."

"Not for your hand. I know what happened at Amaranthine. I know the city would have fallen without you. I know Anders would have fallen without you. Thank you, for saving him." Amell said sincerely, "For saving all of them."

… curious. "Justice is its own reward."

"You wanted to be more than that once," Amell reminded him.

Long ago. "There is too little Justice in this world already for me to be anything else."

"That was poetic."

"I enjoy poetry."

"I'll have to find you another book," Amell offered.

… curiouser. "I would like that."

"Is Anders alright?"

"He is many emotions," Justice said.

"Would you mind if I talked to him again?"

"I would not, but I am not the one who ended your conversation."

"... Does he want to leave? Or… would it help if I left?"

"Perhaps."

Amell took a shallow breath, and fixed an imagined fault with his hair. "I'll wait in the common room then. You can leave whenever you're ready. If-... I'll be here a fortnight."

Amell left. Justice paced the small room in his absence. He was uncertain if Anders truly needed to leave or simply needed time. Justice wandered aimlessly, shifting through the motes of memory that lingered in this place, searching for something that might offer him some bit of comfort.

Apologies for the state of things, Commander, I know it’s not what you’re accustomed to. Fear.

I asked from a room, Sergeant. I assume we’re in one. Amusement.

Four walls, or near enough. The city’s in a bad way. Reminds me of Amaranthine… Forgive me, Commander, but Kirkwall never sent us aid. Why- Confusion.

Have compassion, Sergeant. Remorse.

There were more, but the longer he lingered the more distressed Anders seemed to become. Unable to quite call him to the forefront, Justice managed to contain the veilfire to the back of his eyes, a light blue in place of their usual amber. Justice left, and spent the walk back to Hightown trying to call his mortal back to himself and untangle Anders' emotions. Regret. Sorrow. Anger. Relief. Joy. Passion. Guilt. More, it seemed, than could be conceivably felt at one time.

The Dwarven District awaited them, but Justice should not have been the one to attend to it. Anders had formed a relationship with the Carta that Justice had not, and so he took them back to the estate, practicing the various formalities of mortality. A greeting to Bodahn. A pet for the cat. A nod to the servants. Justice put Anders' things away, stripped down to a tunic and trousers, and sat in the inner courtyard, letting the sun warm them.

There was no such thing in the Fade. Light alone was a difficult concept to replicate. It was often fractured, reflecting in every direction as spirits pulled indiscriminately from fire, crystals, or starlight. None were half as soothing as the sun. It breathed life into Anders’ skin, creating a constellation of freckles too long denied him in the Circle. Too long denied too many. “We should speak with the Carta,” Justice said.

“The Carta?” Varric’s voice intruded on their solitude. The dwarf joined them on the bench, parchment and a bit of charcoal in his hands for one of his many novels, “You short on words, Blondie? I learned a couple new good ones if you want. This one’s my favorite.” Varric crossed his arms over his chest, two fingers out on the upper hand, in the symbol for ‘bullshit.’

“Blow me,” Anders signed his own favorite back, unable to help a small smile. If there was anyone in Kirkwall Anders could trust to keep things light, it was Varric. Justice had the right idea, but after the day he’d had, Anders was looking for light in a less literal sense.

“You’ll have to get Hawke for that,” Varric joked.

Anders exhaled bemusedly, staring at the back of his hands as Justice relaxed. A few freckles, a smattering of auburn hair, ruddy knuckles. Anders ran his thumb along a quiet vein. The veilfire was still there, just waiting for something to ignite it. It was always there. It would always be there.

I love Anders.

“You feeling alright, Blondie?” Varric nudged him. “You’re looking kind of down, and I doubt it’s just for my sake.”

“What are you writing?” Anders asked to change the topic.

“Hard in Hightown, Chapter Something,” Varric waved the parchment at him. “I’m working on Isabela’s character.”

“What do you have so far?” Anders asked.

“Not much. She’s a pirate-” “-obviously-” “-and she steals a shipment of something-” “-obviously-” “-and she gives it back.”

Anders exhaled again, less bemusedly, but he didn’t have any tears left. His lips were drier than Varric’s parchment, so cracked he tasted copper. It sounded like a nice story. “A pirate with a heart of gold.”

“I thought I’d give her a ship,” Varric continued. “Something she’d like. You know those statues on the front of ships? What are they called? Figureheads? I was thinking of a woman.”

“Naked,” Anders said.

“Obviously naked, Blondie, I’m not trying to insult her. Busty. Probably throw in a lewd gesture or two while I’m at it.”

“She’ll love it,” Anders said. “What’s Isabela’s name? In the story?”

“Now you’re asking too many questions,” Varric warned him, brandishing the charcoal like a dagger, “Aside from her name, the other problem I’m having is I don’t know shit about ships. I’m thinking of calling it the greatest boat in the history of boats and just calling it a day.”

“The pointy bits towered majestically over the water,” Anders volunteered.

“The roundish wooden part seemed like it could crush armadas beneath its…”

“Wood?”

“Shit, you got me,” Varric chuckled. “I don’t know. Some days I don’t even know what I’m writing, I just have to get the words down.”

“Now who’s looking down,” Anders said.

“Well it’s not like she’s here to tell us what all this shit is called,” Varric sighed.

“Varric-... About what I said-...”

“You say a lot of shit, Blondie. You're gonna have to be more specific.”

“About you not caring about Isabela just because you helped Hawke,” Anders felt wretched reminding him, “I’m sorry.”

“Aw, Blondie, stop, you’re gonna make me cry,” Varric joked, but there must have been some truth to it because he cleared his throat afterwards, “What are you bothering the Carta about? Should I be worried? Scratch that, I should always be worried, but should I be worried worried?”

"Something Amell said," Anders said without thinking.

"A little daisy told me Creepy was in the city," Varric took on a serious tone. "You wanna talk about it?"

"That depends," Anders eyed the parchment in Varric’s hand. "Are you going to use it in your book?"

Varric grinned, "Only if it's good."

Anders didn't know where to start. Anders didn’t know if he wanted to start. He thought of all his accusations and how willingly Amell had taken them. He felt angry for feeling guilty. He felt guilty for feeling angry. He felt like a crumbling tower of emotion stacked on emotion constantly on the verge of collapse.

"He's alive,” Anders still had trouble processing it.

"Yeah, I noticed that when we met."

"I didn't.” Anders ran a hand through his hair, “Everyone is alive. Amell. Oghren. Nate. Velanna. Everyone I thought was dead."

“No shit?” Varric whistled, “I must owe someone something. Pretty sure I had a bet on whether the moody rebel mage would get a happy ending. So why do you look like the cat pissed on your pillow?”

“I know how to handle cat piss ,” Anders said. “I don’t know how to handle any of this.”

“What’s there to handle? Unless we’re talking about Creepy. Is that what this is about? You trying to figure out how to handle him?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know.”

“What do I know?”

“Nothing,” Varric changed his mind, retrieving his charcoal for a convenient surge of inspiration. Anders turned towards him, his height giving him an easy view of the parchment and the nonsensical squiggles Varric doodled on it.

“No, say what you were going to say.”

“Blondie said aggressively,” Varric mumbled to the paper.

“I’m serious,” Anders frowned, “What are you saying?”

“I’m just saying lately things with you and Hawke have been a little…”

“A little what?”

“Loud,” Varric set his not-writing back down. “And I don’t just mean the wall banging.”

“He’s deaf. Of course we’re loud.”

“See the thing about that is that everyone can hear what you’re loud about. I don’t think Killer’s eager for a family reunion. You prepared for that little conversation? Because I’m not. I seriously need to invest in some earplugs.”

“I was until you said that,” Anders groaned.

“Can you really blame him?” Varric asked. “You and Creepy have a lot of history.”

“Old history,” Anders shouldn’t have had to remind Varric or Hawke, “I was with him for three months. I’ve been with Hawke for a year. I can’t believe anyone is even acting like that compares.”

“I write romance, Blondie,” Varric said, “Forget years, some of my characters only need a day.”

“Are you actually trying to encourage me to… what? What are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything,” Varric held up his hands. “Just saying… if you ever need someone to say you were somewhere else, well, you know where I’ll be.”

“I cannot believe I’m hearing this right now. You realize I’m possessed by a spirit of Justice, right? Even if I wasn’t, I would never do that to Hawke, or to anyone.”

Varric shrugged, “What can I say? I’m a romantic.”

“I’m going to pretend this conversation didn’t happen,” Anders decided.

“What conversation?” Varric winked.

“Stop.”

“Stop what?” Varric winked again.

“You’re impossible,” Anders snorted, “But I feel better. A little concerned about you, but better, so thanks.”

“Anytime, Blondie. So about the Carta?”

“It’s about mages,” Anders warned him.

“That’s my cue!” Varric hopped off the bench, “I’ll see you at dinner, Blondie. Unless you’ll be down at the clinic?” Varric winked several more times.

“Go away,” Anders laughed.

Anders stayed in the courtyard, chuckling to himself until his amusement at the absurdity of Varric’s offer wore off. His last handful of words to Amell replayed in his head - accusing Amell of not knowing him. If nothing else, that much was true. Amell didn’t know anything about how much his life had changed. He didn’t know anything about how much Anders had changed.

He hadn’t been with him during any of his rage-addled blackouts. He hadn’t been with him when he’d killed Karl. He hadn’t been with him when he’d lost his mind in the Deep Roads. He hadn’t helped him with his work with the Collective, or saved him from it when the templars had found him. He hadn’t seen him kill a friend or sacrifice an enemy in cold blood. Hawke had. Justice had.

Anders' thoughts turned back to the latter of the two. Justice… loved him. His spirit loved him. A spirit of Justice thought he was worthy of love. “... Why?” Anders asked, but he couldn’t decipher the response. He felt simultaneously loved and in love - a warmth that slowed the anxious racing of his heart and quieted the seemingly endless turmoil of his mind. Inexplicably, he thought of Leandra, and her advice that he talk to Justice, and fervently wished that he could.

Maybe if he replicated the glyph. Something with paint in place of a brand. Something he could do before he slept and remove when he woke up. Comforted, Anders left the courtyard for a late lunch, and then went to visit the Carta.

The Dwarven District was cast in bronze and gold. Their architecture was sturdy and geometric, and everything that wasn’t stone still looked as though it had been chiseled from it. Statues of paragons lined the courtyard, holding axes, hammers, and the occasional book or trinket that signified whatever had elevated them to paragonhood. In front of the Carta’s estate was a woman holding a sword in her mouth. Her name had been weathered away, the words “The Grey” etched at the base of the statue.

A silent sister, Anders knew, but he thought of Wardens when he knocked. A familiar frowning dwarf answered. “Lantos,” Anders forced a grin onto his face, “Is Cadash in?”

“Ain’t your day, Healer,” Lantos grumbled from under his mustache.

“You can say that again,” Anders joked. “I was still hoping I could talk to her.”

“Figured you weren’t here for me,” Lantos waved him inside, “Can wait in the drawing room, if you can fit.”

“Are you calling me fat?”

“Aye, long ways,” Lantos grinned and wandered off.

Anders saw himself into the drawing room. It was as rich as the rest of the mansion, gilded with gold and covered in velvet cushions and curtains. Anders found an undersized armchair for himself while he waited, his knees bunched up around his chest. A life-size portrait of Cadash and Brosca occupied the wall in front of him. The Carta Leader was standing, wearing a flowing violet gown that probably cost more than Anders had ever had in his life, her hand on her lover’s shoulder. Brosca sat on the same armchair he did now, in a dress of gold and peach, studded with sapphires and fire opals, and all too reminiscent of the one Sigrun had wished for years ago but Anders had never thought to get her.

“He was my friend too, you know,” Sigrun’s memory echoed in his ears, “Next to Varlan he was the best friend I ever had.”

… Amell hadn’t killed her. Anders shouldn’t have said he had.

Anders was alone for his thoughts for far longer than he would have liked before Cadash finally joined him, Brosca trailing brightly after her as usual. They looked enviably happy. “Healer,” Cadash grinned, pulling up a chair for herself and dragging Brosca down into her lap. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“It might not be one,” Anders warned them, signing what he could of the words, which was more or less ‘not’ and ‘happy.’

Healer. See. Happy? Something. Something else. Anders couldn’t quite follow everything Brosca signed. Cadash didn’t translate it so he continued.

“I wanted to talk about lyrium,” Anders managed the signs for ‘I wanted to talk,’ but whatever the sign was for lyrium was anyone’s guess. Brosca wiggled an ‘L’ into her palm. “Lyrium?” Anders repeated the gesture.

“Yes,” Brosca signed. “Good!”

“Lyrium, huh?” Cadash tugged idly at her beard, “I love you healer, but I get the sense you couldn’t jump over a copper to save a silver. I don’t think you can afford it unless your boy is paying.”

“I don’t want to buy,” Anders assured her, without any signs. He didn’t know how to say the rest of what he needed to say. “I want to know how you’re getting into the Gallows, and if you could get anyone out.”

“Aye, I suppose we could,” Cadash shrugged, “That all?

“Wait… really?” Anders sat up, dropping one leg in favor of the other. “Just like that? What’s the catch? What do you want in exchange?”

“In exchange?” Cadash snorted. “Bless your heart, Healer, I’m eating high off the nug. You’ve been opening a lot of very profitable doors for me ever since your boy went deaf. Do you have any idea how many nobles I got lined up outside my door, shitting silver for the chance to talk to him? I might have to give up smuggling altogether with how many of the boys I have giving lessons, but I’ll be a nug’s aunt if anyone but my girl makes an honest woman out of me.”

“But-...” It couldn’t be that simple. Anders thought of the months he’d spent indentured to the Coterie, healing thug after thug, making no progress. The morals he’d compromised allying with Decimus, and resorting to blood magic to finally force the Coterie’s help. He’d just asked, and Cadash just said yes, like it was nothing. “Seriously?”

“You best pick your jaw up off my floors before I have to wax them,” Cadash laughed. “Ain’t no one ever done you a kindness, Healer? You’re not hurting business, so why should I care?”

“I mean, I might,” Anders argued, looking his gift horse in the mouth and crawling all the way down its throat, “There are only so many people I could want to get out of the Gallows, you know. Isn’t that going to cause problems for you?”

“Will it?” Cadash raised a well-manicured eyebrow, “The templars are responsible for mages. The Knight-Commander is responsible for the templars. The Grand Cleric is responsible for the Knight-Commander. The Chantry is responsible for the lyrium that keeps it all going. It’s all connected. If one link in that chain breaks, the whole mail unravels, and everyone knows it. A little bit of stress is good for business. You know what helps with stress? Drugs. You know what I sell?”

“Drugs!” Brosca signed cheerfully.

Anders left the Dwarven District in a daze. It had been so simple and it had been right in front of him the entire time. Amell had been back in his life for less than a day, and with a handful of words he’d done more for the Collective than Anders had managed in the past year. Whether or not they let him be involved, Anders could tell Selby, and she could do whatever she wanted with the alliance.

Anders went back to the Warden’s Compound as the sun crept towards the horizon. Black basalt watchtowers cast long shadows across the broken and battered metropolis, but it was still standing. It kept going. It moved forward. Anders could do the same. He knocked on the door with the same staff Amell had given him years ago, and Sergeant Joanna opened it.

Her expression was far from welcoming. She looked… uneasy. Almost afraid. Anders knew his one-sided argument with Amell had been loud, but he didn’t think he’d done or said anything to warrant the fear. “Warden,” She said. “... Do something for you?”

“Is Amell still here?” Anders wondered if it would ever stop feeling strange to say his name again.

“He’s out. Due back shortly,” Sergeant Joanna said cautiously. “... Would you like to wait in the commons?”

“Sure,” Anders said.

Anders found an out of the way spot for himself in a corner chair. The few soldiers in the commons eyed him with the same nervous energy. Anders didn’t want to think about all of the things he’d said to Amell, but with all the looks he couldn’t help himself. The reactions didn’t seem to make any sense. The only person Anders had threatened had been himself, yelling about how he’d tried to commit suicide.

… Anders hadn’t told anyone that before. Justice had, but Anders hadn’t.

… Why had he put that on Amell?

To get even? To hurt him? To get him to feel the way Anders had felt when Amell had left him? Was vengeance really who he was now?

A scrabbling at the door drew him out of his thoughts. Joanna hurried to it to let Dumat and Amell inside. “Welcome back, Commander.”

“Sergeant,” Amell was carrying a parcel under his arm, and didn’t seem aware of him. Anders wondered why he’d thought he would be.

“Hey,” Anders said awkwardly.

Amell stopped short on his way to his room. “... Anders. Did you want to talk?”

“Yeah,” Anders followed him, eager to escape the soldiers’ prying eyes. Amell closed the door behind them and set the parcel on his desk. He didn’t sit down this time. Anders supposed he deserved that.

“What can I do for you?” Amell asked.

“Still waiting on that pony,” Anders joked.

Amell smiled, but Anders doubted it was real. “I’m still working on it.”

“What did you get me for my name-day then?” Anders asked.

“... We don’t have to do this, Anders,” Amell said.

“Do what?”

“Pretend.”

“What are we pretending to do?”

“I understand if you can’t forgive me,” Amell said rather than answer him. “But I’ve never regretted anything more than I do leaving you.”

Anders’ chest constricted, and he fought through the feeling with grit teeth, “You regret leaving me so much you couldn’t wait to do it twice.”

“I’m a Warden, Anders,” Amell said, like it was the most important thing a person could ever be, “The one time - the only time - I ever let go of that, I lost more than I can put into words. You said you were happy.”

“You still left!” Anders yelled.

Amell didn’t. “There’s nothing I can do that makes up for that. I already know that. If there was, I would do it.”

“Then why did you come back!?” Anders demanded. He crossed the room in three ground-eating strides, and grabbed Amell’s hand, pressing the ring he was still wearing into Amell’s palm, “Why did you give me this!?”

“You know why,” Amell turned the rough grip into something gentle, a light caress of his thumb along Anders’ finger that hurt twice as much, “... We were friends, before we were anything. I’m here now - if that’s something you wanted to be again.”

Anders cleared the lump from his throat, “What if it’s not?”

“... Then it’s not,” Amell said with an evenness Anders’ envied. “And I hope your life and love are long.”

Damn him. Damn him and damn his refusal to defend himself and damn Anders for trying to make him. Anders wrenched him into an embrace that left no room for lies between them. “Damn you. I missed you. I missed you so much. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
Coffee and a Quill: Varric's perspective on Hawke's decision to give Isabela to the Arishok.

Chapter 123: How Have You Been?

Notes:

Thank you for all of your subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely appreciate the feedback and I hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:34 Dragon 30 Matrinalis Evening
Kirkwall Lowtown: Warden Compound

"I missed you too," Amell accepted the embrace the same way he had everything else: gently. His hands traveled Anders' back like a cartographer on unfamiliar shores, attentive to every dip and arch. "Every hour of every day."

Anders just held him. It had been so long since he’d just held him. "Why didn't you come back sooner?" Anders whined, voice muffled against his shoulder.

"I was only away two months," Amell said. "I was back by the end of Haring, but you were gone."

It had seemed like so much longer. "Why didn't you look for me?"

"They told me you were dead," Amell said. "Do you remember anything about what happened that night?"

Anders shook his head, "Blood and fire."

"The templars captured all of you. They took you to a binding circle in the cellars. When you broke it, you freed Nathaniel and Velanna, but then the templars silenced all of you. Nathaniel could only carry Velanna… he's blamed himself all this time. He saw them run you through. When he came back, there was only blood and Cera. She was incoherent, but she swore everyone had died."

"But - I took a horse. Even if it came back, I took my things."

"No one knew. Leonie got rid of all the evidence the same night," Amell said. "She didn't want the scandal of a dozen dead templars to fall on the Wardens."

"Bitch," Anders muttered.

"She's been reassigned," Amell assured him.

"Why are you still blind?" Anders shouldn't have kept asking, but the blindfold haunted him. He'd finally learned how to heal what he’d done to Amell, but he'd already given his eyes to Hawke. If he could just find new eyes… a new sacrifice… Anders felt nauseous, but the thought persisted. It was possible.

"Avernus tried everything he could," Amell said simply, "I'm fine, Anders. The last face I ever saw was yours. I can live with that."

Anders didn't know what to say to that. He pulled back, mindlessly caressing Amell’s sleeves, fabric catching and bunching at every anxious pass of his hands. "... how have you been? You know, your turn, if you want to yell at me or anything."

"I don't want to yell at you. You don't need to worry about me," Amell led him back to the couch, and they sat down. "Tell me about your life."

"What's left of it," Anders cleared his throat, acutely aware of how unflattering the noise was. "Maker, where do I even start? The free clinic I've been running under Knight-Commander's nose for two years? The constant templar raids? Getting kicked out of the Mage’s Collective?"

Amell found his hand and squeezed it. "... Karl?" He ventured.

Anders thought of the seashell and the handful of letters, buried in his bottom dresser drawer, and the almost-life he’d had with them. "... I started writing to him almost as soon as I got to Kirkwall. The templars were keeping him in solitary, but the Collective managed to smuggle in letters. I tried to get him out. I learned shapeshifting from your grimoire, and I tried to teach him, but he couldn’t-...

“The bloody templars found out. They made him Tranquil and used him to set a trap for me at the Chantry. Can you believe that? It was like they wanted to remind me exactly who is in charge of the Circle… Like I could ever forget. He died… in Cloudreach, two years ago.”

“I’m sorry, Anders,” Amell said.

“Yeah, so am I...” Anders thought of Karl and his lyrium blue eyes. Justice’s firm assurance that Karl had known they'd loved him in their final moments with him. That they had loved him. That their heart could go from affection to adoration in the span it took theirs to beat and Karl’s to stop. "I would visit his room, and we could forget that out in the world we were nothing but templar slaves. We hadn't been together for a long time, but still... it hurt."

"You did the right thing for him," Amell promised.

Anders took a steadying breath and continued, “Karl was how I met Hawke. He agreed to help me try to rescue him in exchange for help with a Deep Roads’ expedition. I needed the help. Ever since Justice and I joined, we have… blackouts.”

Anders shouldn’t have told him. Anders didn’t want to tell him. Anders didn’t want Amell to know the kind of person he’d become since he’d left Amaranthine, but for some reason he told him anyway. “It’s not-... I’m not-... We’re not the same. We get so angry we can’t focus. When we fight, everything is a haze. People get hurt.

“I thought Karl might get hurt. I thought I might hurt him.” Anders hadn’t hurt him. Anders had just killed him. “I kept his ring,” Anders wiggled his fingers, adorned with rosewood and silver, and then realized he was an idiot. “The Ring of Study the Circle gives you after completing your Harrowing. Just… you know, to remember him.

"Justice can feel the lyrium in it. It didn't always used to be this easy for us to switch, but lyrium seems to summon him. I managed to get a vial a few months later. I thought it would help if Justice and I could talk, so we could try to understand each other. A friend of mine helped with the spell - Merrill, you met her - but the templars raided the alienage when we tried.

"They raid everywhere. The Knight-Commander is out of control. She’s constantly harassing the elves, the refugees, the poor, anyone she can get away with suspecting of magic. You can’t even carry a broom in Kirkwall without a templar trying to smite you.

“The templars caught an apostate in the alienage, and we just got so angry. Merrill had to -... bind us to keep us from fighting them in broad daylight. You don’t bind spirits. Justice… I spent days healing him, but it took us months to really get over it. I had another friend there when it happened - Bethany - but she was too scared to do anything.

"She’s Hawke’s sister. I guess she’s your cousin too. She’s an apostate… or she was. She's in the Circle now, but she wasn’t back then. Hawke and his family came to Kirkwall to hide behind the Amell name and keep her safe, but his uncle Gamlen sold the estate. Hawke was hoping the expedition would get him enough coin to buy it back. He was desperate and out of options. Why else would anyone go to the Deep Roads, right?"

"Why else?" Amell smiled.

“Aside from Warden reasons,” Anders revised, “Varric - you met him - and his brother were in charge of the expedition. That’s how we met Bodahn and his son. I know you used to travel with them. You were all he talked about. ... I hated him for it. I read your grimoire. I read your journal. I read them so many times and I still couldn’t stand to hear anyone talk about you. I thought you were dead.”

“I’m not,” Amell promised.

“I mean, I know that now,” Anders rolled his eyes, “You’re not that good at necromancy.”

“I might be,” Amell joked.

“You might not be,” Anders shoved him. “I’m not ready to joke about you being dead yet, so stop it. Anyway, Varric's brother betrayed us and abandoned us in the Deep Roads. It took us weeks to get out, and by the time we did the templars found out about Bethany and took her to the Circle. They tortured Hawke’s whole family for harboring an apostate...

“I spent a lot of time working with the Mage’s Collective after that. There used to be tunnels below the Waking Sea, and we used them to free mages who were at risk of Tranquility or suicide. Some of them were so grateful they bent to kiss the ground through the sewage… I personally led five to freedom with help from some apostates from Starkhaven.

“... we used blood magic for everything. I don’t even know if we needed to. Mind-control. Demon binding. Justice was against it but I didn’t listen. I was so caught up in making any kind of progress. It scared one of them and he wanted to go back to the Circle. He turned us into the templars, and they raped him… He went to them for help, and they raped him…”

Anders trailed off. Alain and Grace were still in the Circle. They’d been sent to solitary, and the Mage’s Collective had never managed to free them. He thought of Alain curled up in the cellar of the de Solliere estate, and his whispered plea for Anders to heal him. Like it was something Anders could heal. He thought of how Alain had refused to come with him when he’d escaped, even after everything the templars had done to him.

Anders had been so disgusted at the thought of someone wanting to stay in the Circle he hadn’t even considered why it was what Alain had wanted. He’d been so up his own ass he’d been disgusted with a bloody rape victim. Alain hadn’t wanted to go back to the Circle. Alain had just wanted to stop running. Anders couldn’t fault him for that. Alain shouldn’t have had to run in the first place.

“That’s not your fault,” Amell said. There was an air of melancholy around him, accompanied by a sympathetic smile Anders didn’t deserve. “That’s not his fault. Every mage carries some horror of the Circle with them.”

Anders didn’t want to think about the Circle horrors he carried with him. He continued, “A friend of mine gave himself to demons so we could escape. The whole building caught fire, and I still couldn’t convince Alain to leave. I tried to persuade him, but I couldn’t get the spell off in time. A templar dragged me away from him, and…”

And then Hawke saved him. Anders couldn’t form the words. He couldn’t sit with Amell and talk about Hawke. For some insane reason, he felt guilty. Almost unfaithful. What was worse was he couldn’t even tell who he felt unfaithful towards. Amell had been dead. It had been years. He shouldn’t have felt anything. They were just talking.

“... You don’t have to tell me,” Amell said at his silence - his voice impossibly soft - and the implications of Anders’ pause suddenly occurred to him. Amell’s hand loosely held his fingers, his thumb running along his knuckles, and he kept his sympathetic smile, “You can, and I’ll listen, but you never have to.”

“He didn’t rape me,” Anders corrected him, pressing on, “I think he was just going to kill me, but Hawke saved me. We got together a while later, on First Day, last year. He owed a lot of coin to someone and his mother was trying to get him engaged to get him a dowry to pay off the debt, but I kind of ruined that. He actually ended up getting arrested because he couldn’t repay it. He’s fine now, obviously, but…

“The guard arrested a lot of people at the same time. A Ferelden gang, friends of mine who were helping the Collective. The guard hung them all and the Collective never really recovered. We found out that the templars were trying to call for the Rite of Annulment under another name: the Tranquil Solution. I wrote a manifesto to argue against it. The Seekers of Truth took both proposals to the Divine… around this time last year, actually. We haven’t heard anything since then, though.”

“I’m not surprised,” Amell noted. “The Divine is old and her mind is failing. She has four attendants just to move her back and forth from the Sunburst Throne, and she’s asleep on it most of the time. She hasn’t considered any proposals in years.”

“How do you know that?”

“I have a friend in the Chantry,” Amell said.

“How?” Anders squinted at him. “You hate the Chantry.”

“It’s a long story.”

“Isn’t that what we’re sharing right now?” Anders pressed, nudging him when Amell didn’t volunteer anything else, “Tell me. I missed you, alright? I want to hear about you too.”

“Alright,” Amell squeezed his fingers, “My friend's technically a bard, but she left Orlais to join the Chantry. I met her during the Blight. She was a capable archer and a talented rogue. She was appointed the Left Hand of Grand Cleric Elemena after the Blight, and has been something of a liaison between the Chantry, the throne, the Grey Wardens, and Orlais. She’s… fond of gossip.”

“Does she have any gossip about Kirkwall?” Anders asked, his and Justice’s mind already turning with the possibility of an ally in the Chantry. Maker’s balls, why hadn’t Anders thought of that? “Karl was Harrowed. Making him and other Harrowed mages Tranquil goes against all Chantry Law, but the Grand Cleric here isn’t doing anything about it. She’s a doddering old biddy who personally appointed Meredith Knight-Commander.

“She’s for everything Meredith is doing in Kirkwall. She’s the reason it’s gotten this bad. I’ve tried to talk to her but she doesn’t bloody listen. She can’t see that Meredith is crazy. Even her own people think she’s lost it. Meredith killed the last Viscount before Dumar, and practically ran the city through him while he was alive. Now that he’s gone things will only get worse. There has to be some way to get them both out of power, but - why are you looking at me like that?”

“Anders, I promise I’m not looking at you,” Amell joked.

“You know what I mean,” Anders said; a part of him still couldn’t process how easily Amell seemed to joke about his disability when it had almost driven him to kill himself two years ago. “Why are you making that expression?”

“I just never thought I’d hear you talk like this,” Amell admitted. “It’s-... impressive.” Anders got the sense 'impressive' wasn’t the first word that had come to mind, and Anders heard too many flustering alternatives in Amell's smirk. “I can ask her for you.”

“Thanks,” Anders said.

“You were talking about the Collective?” Amell reminded him.

“Right…” Anders wasn’t sure he wanted to keep talking about the Collective, but… maybe it would be better to tell him about Bardel. Maybe Amell would stop looking at him like that if Anders told him. A knock at the door stopped him.

“What is it?” Amell called.

“Apologies, Commander,” Someone who was not Sergeant Joanna called back. “Dinner’s served in the commons. Should I bring you and the Warden of Kirkwall a plate?”

“... Are you hungry?” Amell asked.

“I’m always hungry,” Anders said without thinking.

“Two plates,” Amell called back.

Anders was always hungry. The Taint had a way of doing that. It wasn’t a lie. It was a good reason to stay, but it was also a good reason to leave. He probably should have left. He had food at home and a home to go home to and the Warden Compound wasn’t it. The soldier who’d interrupted them shouldered open the door, and shuffled inside with two plates laden to sate a Warden’s appetite in one hand, and two mugs sloshing awkwardly in the other.

The soldier set the plates on the table before the couch, and tapped Amell’s with a fork to indicate its location. “Roast salmon with lemon, white potatoes, skewered vegetables, and rosemary bread, Commander.” He set the mugs down, and tapped Amell’s with a fork again. “Water.”

“Thank you, Alec,” Amell said.

“Anything else tonight, Commander?” The soldier asked.

“No, thank you.”

The soldier bowed his way out, even though Amell couldn’t see it, shutting the door behind him. It seemed like a lot of food considering the city was still struggling, but Anders ate no worse in Hightown. In the end, it wasn’t the food that occupied his thoughts, it was Amell. Anders couldn’t help watching him, remembering the first few days Amell had refused to eat after he’d gone blind.

Pride. Shame. Depression. Some combination of the three at not knowing how to do something so simple. Anders’ failed - always failed - efforts to cheer him, eating with his eyes closed and smearing food across his face. Amell ate fine. He found his fork and his plate with a few simple taps from the soldier, and chewed his potatoes while Anders’ throat closed up so tight he couldn’t possibly have forced food into it.

“Not hungry after all?” Amell guessed after he’d had a few bites alone.

“No - I am - I-...” Anders inhaled shakily. Amell set his fork down and turned to him.

“Anders?” Amell touched his shoulder. Anders hugged him, burying his face in his shoulder for a rickety breath of pressed linens and copper. Amell slid tentative arms around him, “What is it?”

“What isn’t it?” Anders laughed. What was he expecting? For Amell to have survived off the Taint for the past two years? That he wouldn’t have found accommodations for the loss of his sight? That he would just stumble through the rest of his life? He was alive and he was living and whatever he claimed Anders didn’t have anything to do with it and for some insane reason he felt guilty about that too.

“I’m here,” Amell assured him, like Anders hadn’t noticed. Like he could notice anything else but the attentive fingers running through his hair, the warm - the fantastically warm - body that kept ending up in his arms.

“I should have been.”

“Should have been what?”

“I should have been there,” But he couldn’t have been and Amell couldn’t have been and he had to stop thinking about could have beens but he couldn’t. “You’re blind and I don’t know what you need help with and what you don’t anymore. I don't know you. You just - You’re alive. You’re really fine?”

“I’m really fine,” Amell promised. “You know me. You'll always know me. There’s nothing you should have done differently. Nothing. You survived. Everything you’ve been through, you survived. You run an infirmary for an entire city. You free mages from the Circle. You’re safe and possessed by a spirit who loves you. You have a home and a life and a love. You have everything I ever wanted for you.”

“But not with you,” The words fell out of his mouth. Anders hadn’t meant to say them. They scattered like marbles, tripping up him when he chased after them, and there was no taking them back.

“... I know,” Amell said.

“That’s it?”

“What else do you want it to be?” Amell asked. “You have whatever you want from me, and you owe me nothing for it. If that means that we’re friends, then we’re friends.”

“Do you…” Anders cleared his throat, “I mean, are you with anyone?”

“No,” Amell said.

“Why not?”

“Why do you ask?”

“How have you been? What have you been doing?” Anders backtracked from the line of questions and the only places they could have led. He picked up his fork and started eating, “I know I’m so wrapped up in myself I can be my own blanket sometimes, but I care about your life too.”

“You haven’t finished telling me about the Collective,” Amell countered, returning to his dinner.

There wasn’t much more Anders wanted to tell. He’d killed Bardel. He’d almost killed Hawke. He’d been so caught up in self-pity in the months that followed he hadn’t noticed Quentin courting Leandra until it was too late. Hawke had lost his eyes and his mother and his mercy, and Anders had healed his sight but not his grief. Hawke was always one day away from pounding someone to death in an alley, and somehow Anders had been surprised when some of those people were his friends. Hawke had gone deaf just when they desperately needed to talk, and letters served as dressings for wounded hearts while they learned how to hear each other again. It was all too hard or too intimate to share.

“That’s it,” Anders lied around a mouthful of bread. “Your turn.”

“What do you want to know?” Amell asked.

“Everything?” Anders said. "Anything? … why are you wearing a blindfold?"

"When I say Avernus tried everything he could, I mean he tried everything he could," Amell didn't quite answer him. "It's best no one knows exactly what that means."

"But… we're alone," Anders argued. Whatever it was, Anders could fix it. He was sure he could fix it. "Whatever he did, you don't have to wear it in front of me."

"Thank you, Anders," Amell said, but left the blindfold on.

Anders decided not to push it. "What have you been doing?"

"Running the Arling," Amell said. "It took a year for Amaranthine to recover, but Nathaniel saved Teryn Cousland's life a while back, and he's been extremely generous ever since. In addition to approving my appointment of Nathaniel's sister as the bann, he commissioned a statue of Nathaniel in front of the estate."

"No kidding?" Anders thought of the statue of Hawke at the docks, standing on the Arishok's head, and wondered if Nate's was any more accurate. "How's the old boy feel about being a hero?"

"Uncomfortable. I'm told the sculptor got his nose wrong."

"How do you manage that? It's pretty hard to miss."

"Velanna said something similar," Amell grinned. "He's done well as Constable. We've built a small navy and trade well along the Waking Sea. I keep a mage on every ship and the Raiders have learned to leave our colors alone. The Vigil's also doing well as a major trade hub. The Silver Order is our standing military force, and we've saved a lot of coin guarding our own caravans as opposed to hiring mercenaries."

Amell took a long pause to eat, chewing through his thoughts and his dinner, "... We rebuilt the Blackmarsh. A lot of refugees have been settling in the area. The usual Warden expeditions… Amgarrak, Kal'Hirol, we actually helped Orzammar reclaim-"

"Not that I'm not interested in all that -" He wasn't, "- but what about you?" Anders wanted to touch him. Anders felt like he couldn't stop touching him. Did he touch his other friends this much? Did Amell being blind make it more or less okay to touch him? Anders touched his knee. Nothing inappropriate about knees. "How have you been? Not the Arling or the Wardens. Chancellor of Ferelden? That sounded new."

A bit of color crept into Amell's face, like it used to years ago when Anders teased him for all his titles, "Not exactly. I was offered the title before the Battle of Denerim, but Alistair objected to it. Officially, I was kept on as the Arcane Advisor, with Eamon Guerrin as Chancellor."

"So what happened to Eamon?"

"He was deposed."

"How come?"

"I deposed him."

Anders snorted. "I thought you didn't like getting involved in nobility and politics. You didn't even want the Arling."

"I know."

"So why did you depose him? How did you depose him?"

"Technically Queen Anora did… I had correspondence between him and King Cailan that proved he was conspiring with Orlais to unseat her, I just never did anything with it. The country was in the middle of a civil war and we needed to be united."

"So why now?"

Amell ate his fish.

"Come on, tell me. I'm not going to go running to the Viscount with secrets of national security. You know I don't care about all that. Just give me the gossip."

"Pettiness?" Amell ventured with a sheepish shrug. "... Anora promised Kinloch Hold autonomy from the Chantry in return for the mages' service during the Blight, but without Eamon and Alistair's support she wasn't making any progress… so I got rid of him. I wasn't exactly expecting the appointment. The Grand Cleric wasn't pleased. Neither was the King. My friend in the Chantry has been doing what she can to keep the peace."

"That doesn't sound petty to me," Anders said. It sounded like Amell was making more progress with mage rights than Anders.

"The First Warden disagrees with you," Amell said.

"Shove him," Anders said.

"I'll pass that along in my next report," Amell said.

"You better," Anders grinned.

Anders was keenly aware of the late hour by the time they finished dinner. The sun had set when a soldier retrieved their plates, a ray of starlight illuminating Amell’s room from a high set window for want of any candles or torches. Not Amell’s want, because Amell didn't need them, but Anders did. He summoned a sphere of magelight and bound it to his staff, aware he should have left with it but unable to make himself.

"... you're really only staying a fortnight?" Anders asked.

"I'll write to you," Amell promised. "And visit as often as I'm able. You can write to me, and you'll always have a place at the Vigil."

It didn't feel like enough. It just felt like a longer goodbye. "... did you want your ring back? Now that you know where I am? I know you said it was important to you."

"No," Amell folded Anders' fingers closed. "It is, but no. At least not until I can get you another. Morrigan understands."

"Morrigan is…?"

"My son's mother."

The casual admission made Anders' heart ache. Son. He’d completely forgotten. Amell had a son. "I thought you said you would never see her again. That you would never meet your son."

"I might never have," Amell allotted. "Morrigan… changed her mind. His name is Kieran."

"I'm surprised it's not hurson or sonlock or something," Anders joked. "With all your Wardeny darkspawn names."

Amell laughed. A genuine cackle that almost choked him, "Well, I didn't name him."

"Good thing too or I bet you would have," Anders teased, "... is he-... does he live at the Vigil with you?"

"Yes, but they travel often."

"How old is he?" Anders couldn't remember.

"Three."

"… does he-" look like you? Great question Anders. Very smart. How would Amell know? "What's he like?"

"He's three." Amell said again. "He likes clay, and mabari, and magic. And hide and seek."

"I'm not trying to be an ass, but how does that work?"

"Did you want to play?" Amell smirked, and there was something painfully flirty about it.

Anders felt too many things. An ache in his chest that flushed his skin in a complex mix of guilt and longing. He laughed away his answer, "I know you can sense Wardens. How can you sense someone else?"

"Everyone has blood," Amell said.

"So… I mean… can you see me?" Anders asked hopefully.

"No. I know where you are, and I have a vague sense of direction. That's all."

Anders could fix it. He just had to tell him. He just had to tell him that his father had murdered Hawke’s mother and stolen Hawke’s eyes and Anders had sacrificed a man to restore his sight with Amell's eyes and they just had to find another person to sacrifice and another pair of eyes to use and he couldn't. He couldn't tell him any of it.

"I should probably head out," Anders said instead.

"Are you free tomorrow?" Amell asked. "I'd like to visit the estate and meet my cousin, if you're comfortable with it. The Circle as well, with Bethany there."

… no. No, no, no. Anders was not comfortable with it at all. It was a bad idea. It was a very bad idea. It was perhaps one of the worst ideas in the history of ideas. "That works."

"Can I walk you out?" Amell offered.

Anders shrugged. Amell didn't see it. "Sure," Anders corrected himself.

The walk was the longest shortest walk in Anders' life. The soldiers stared all the way to the door, and Anders was sure they continued to stare when he and Amell stood outside of it. "So, I know you don't know, but do you know why everyone is staring at me?"

"Are they?" Amell asked. "I'll make sure they stop."

"I'm not trying to get them disciplined or anything, I just want to know what the looks are about."

"... you were rather loud, Anders," Amell reminded him. Anders didn’t need reminding. He knew he was loud. He didn't have any choice but to be loud. Hawke was deaf.

… fuck. Hawke was deaf. Amell was blind. How in the Void were they supposed to talk?

Later. Anders would deal with it later. "Is that really all the looks are about?"

"... not many people are loud with me, Anders," Amell said.

"I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry. You were right to be angry. I understand if you still are."

"I wish you'd stop saying that."

"What do you want me to say instead?"

"I don't know. Yell at me for something. Reading your journal. Deserting the Wardens." Killing your dog. "You're not even a little bit angry?"

"If I ever want to yell at you, Anders, you'll be the first to know." Amell smiled. "Give my best to my cousin."

Anders would not be doing that. "You got it."

Anders' staff illuminated the complicated labyrinth of Kirkwall’s streets on the walk back to Hightown. The day turned over in his head, bleeding through his yesterdays and tomorrows. The Wardens were alive and well. Amell was alive and well. Despite everything, Anders was alive and well.

Alone with his thoughts and with his spirit, he felt loved. He felt secure in feeling loved. Anders pushed open the door to the estate.

"Where the fuck have you been!?"

… Fuck.

Here we go again.

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
A Hero Comes Home: Amell's return to Vigil's Keep.

Fanart
How Have You Been? by NotTooPunk4You

Fanworks
Pyre For Anders: Anders' funeral at Vigil's Keep as told by Cas

Chapter 124: Spin a Story

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:34 Dragon 30 Matrinalis Nighttime
Kirkwall Hightown: Hawke Estate

The estate had gone to bed. The echoes of wisps flickered in the chandelier, primal magic illuminating the foyer in cool tones vaguely reminiscent of the Fade. Matching flames danced silently in the hearth, mage servants negating the need for tinder. There was a faint scent of coffee in the air, from the kitchens or the mug in Hawke’s hand.

It should have been peaceful.

Hawke’s armchair was turned towards the door, casting half his face in shadow, but Anders could still see his scowl. It felt like he wore it just to have something to wear, as thoughtless as a hastily donned robe. Varric sat in the armchair opposite, and twisted around at his entrance. "Hey Blondie,” Varric winked. “Long day at the clinic?"

"Stop,” Anders said to Varric. “I wasn't at the clinic."

"Well?” Hawke’s scowl darkened when Anders didn’t sign or shout. He set his drink down and stood up, “Where the fuck have you been?"

Damnit. Damnit, damnit, damnit. Why hadn’t he gone home sooner? Why had he gone home at all? "You know where I’ve been!” Anders yelled. Anders didn’t want to yell. Anders didn’t have the energy to yell, but somehow he found the anger.

"Should have spun a story,” Varric tutted, retreating back into his chair.

"You're damn right I do,” Hawke gestured to blackened windows marbled with starlight, “You have any idea how late it is? What the fuck am I supposed to make of this, Anders?"

Anders knew exactly how late it was. He was too bloody tired for this. "You're not supposed to make anything of it! There's nothing to make! You're supposed to trust me!"

"You're supposed to give me a reason to trust you,” Hawke countered.

"You have a reason!” How many damn times did Anders have to remind him of all the reasons they had? “You have a year of reasons!"

Hawke scoffed like Anders hadn’t given him any, "So you weren't out all night with your ex lover?"

"I was out with my friend! My friend who happens to be my Commander! I'm a Warden-"

"When it's convenient," Hawke cut him off.

"You wanted convenient! You wanted safe!” Maker’s breath, even carrying a staff, it was like Hawke forgot he was a mage, “He's how we stay safe!"

"You think he's the one keeping you safe!?” Hawke’s laugh was a humorless bark, “The Knight Commander is obsessed with you. You think being a Grey Warden stopped that!? It made it worse!"

“It doesn’t matter! She can’t touch me!”

“Yes she can! Do you have any idea how many times the templars have asked about you? Do you have any idea how many lies I've told for you?"

"I never asked you to!"

"You never had to! That’s what you do for people you love!” Hawke countered. “You think about them and how your actions impact them!”

“I do think about you!”

“Really? You thought about me the whole time you were with him? You thought about how fucking worried-”

"Don't act like you were worried about me!" Anders shouted. “Worry doesn’t have anything to do with it!”

"Of course I was worried!” Hawke shouted back, “I can be worried and angry. You vanish for a night with another man while the Knight Captain is practically stalking me-"

"Come off it,” Anders rolled his eyes. Hawke didn’t hear him. Anders hadn’t yelled it. Anders hadn’t signed it. Anders couldn’t sign fast enough to keep up with what he said when he had to sign every letter of the words he didn’t know, “You're his friend! You've been his friend ever since the investigation! A bloody templar-"

"Beth is in the Circle! I have to be his friend! That doesn't mean I have to like him! Who do you think did this to me!?” Hawke gestured at his broken nose, his missing teeth from Cullen’s right hook, “You think I want to see you like this!?"

"You tell me!” Anders shouldn’t have yelled, but the more he yelled the easier it was to yell anything, whether or not it was true. Hawke looked like he’d slapped him, but it was too late to take it back, so Anders pressed on, “You're the one who wanted us out in the open!”

“You wanted me to tell the world so I told them! Damnit, Anders, you know I don’t want you anywhere near the Circle. That doesn’t mean I want you giving them excuses to put you in one!”

“Amell isn’t an excuse for anything! You’re the only one who cares if I’m with him! Don’t act like the templars have anything to do with it! You let them keep Beth in the Circle! I’m supposed to believe you’d care if I joined her!?”

"I don’t want that for you!” Hawke waved a hand at him, like Anders was special, but Anders wasn’t. The Circle was an injustice against any and all mages. “I don’t want it for anyone who doesn't want it! Beth wants to be there! She needs to be there!"

"No one needs to be there!"

"My mother is dead! A blood mage murdered her! He would have murdered Beth-"

"I'm a blood mage!"

"Shut up," Hawke surged forward, covering Anders’ mouth with his hand. The sudden embrace was so rough it was almost suffocating. Hawke hissed at him, "Shut up. I know. You can't fucking yell that."

Anders smacked Hawke’s hand off his mouth, “I have to yell everything! I’m tired of yelling!” Anders dropped his staff to fist his hands in Hawke’s robe and kiss him silent. Anders poured his anger and his exhaustion into it, breathing hard through his nose, his grip knuckle-white against the jet-black robe. For one blissful moment the only sound was the air that passed between them, but it was over too quickly.

Hawke pulled back from him. A hand on Anders’ chest kept him from chasing after him. “Stop,” Hawke hissed. “You’re not fucking your way out of this.”

“I can’t fuck my way out of anything!” Anders threw up his hands, “You won’t let me fuck you!”

“That’s probably my cue to go,” Varric decided, slinking out of his chair and down the hall.

“We fuck all the time!"

“No, you fuck me all the time!” Anders thrust a finger into Hawke’s chest, “I’ve never fucked you!”

“So you fuck him instead!?” Hawke demanded, “That’s what this is about?”

“I didn’t fuck him!” Anders snapped. “Maker’s breath, you think about fucking him more than I do!”

The words fell from Anders’ mouth like a drunkard down a flight of stairs. He hadn’t meant to say them, but Hawke wasn’t nearly deaf enough not to have heard them and everything beneath them. Anders felt the shock of what he’d said settle in his own expression, and buried it beneath more anger, “You’re so concerned with who’s fucking who that you don’t even think about why I want to fuck! I don’t want to fight! I’m tired of fighting! I want to relax and lately I can’t even do that! We’re supposed to be partners! You only ever use me-”

“You like being used! You practically beg for it-”

“Well I'm tired of being so fucking sore all the time!"

“Then don’t fucking ask for it! Stop changing the damn topic!”

“I didn’t fuck him!” Anders shrieked.

“Then what were you doing?”

“Talking! Talking and not fucking yelling for once!”

“I’m supposed to believe that?”

“Why not!? You believe everything else!”

“What in the Void is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I can’t believe you’re still wearing that damn sunburst after they branded Karl with it!”

“This isn’t about my religion-”

“This isn’t about you at all! Amell doesn’t have anything to do with you!”

“He has everything to do with me! He looks just like me. Look me in the eyes - look me in his fucking eyes - and tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m crazy. Tell me I’m worried for no reason. Tell me you weren’t there all fucking night, Anders,” Hawke sounded exhausted, and for some reason Anders doubted the hour had anything to do with it.

“You think I don’t know you’re tired of all this? You think I don’t know it’s not just the yelling? I know you’re angry we don’t see eye to eye on the Circle, on the blood magic, on the Chantry, on Isabela… I know. I hear you, alright? Look, just-... just tell me you weren’t there all fucking night.”

“You're not a templar. You don't get to decide how I spend my time or who I spend it with. Amell is my friend, and he's your cousin, and he's coming over tomorrow. If you're so sure I fucked him, why don't you ask him yourself?"

Anders doubted Hawke had heard it all. He hadn't been nearly loud enough. Anders picked up his staff and stormed off down a random hall to find a guest room to lock himself in for the night. He ran into Merrill, standing in the doorway to her room and rubbing the sleep from bloodshot eyes.

"Lethallen," Merrill mumbled. "Are you alright?"

"Take a guess!" Anders snarled. Merrill flinched back, and Anders' anger dissolved. "I'm sorry - I shouldn’t have - "

Merrill pulled him into a gentle hug, full of the scent of the forest, of good and growing things. Anders hugged her back, but it felt tainted. Vindictive. Like he was just hugging her to prove he had another friend he hugged. "...Have I mentioned I don't really like it here?” Merrill said when she let go of him, “It's always so terribly loud."

"I'm sorry," Anders said.

"It's not your fault,” Merrill assured him. “You have to talk to him. I just wish you both said nicer things."

"Me too,” Anders sighed.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Merrill waved him into her room. Anders put his staff up and joined her in her nest of blankets. He’d spent all day talking and yelling and he didn’t think he had it in him anymore, even in the face of Merrill’s cheerful smile. Anders had no idea how she managed it. She’d lost her clan. She’d lost her home. She’d lost her lover. It seemed like the only thing she had left was Fenris.

The man was practically rabid in his hatred of mages and magic, but somehow Merrill made it work. “...How often do you fight?”

“I try not to fight at all - unless we’re out with Hawke. I really don’t like being pummeled, but it always seems to happen whenever we’re on a job. Maybe if one of these days we could battle with a pack of pretty flowers or soft bunnies I wouldn’t mind so much-”

“With Fenris,” Anders clarified.

“Oh,” Merrill picked up a pillow and hugged it to her chest. “I suppose that makes more sense. Um… I don’t know. Sometimes, but we’re not together like you and Hawke.”

“You’re not? I thought - you two seem - …”

“We’re friends again but… I don’t think he wants to be more than that anymore. We spent one night together a long time ago, but I - … I did something to his markings. I was just trying to help! Honest! And it did help for a little, but -... it made him remember things. Things about his past. Things about who he used to be. Isabela said he was scared of knowing who he really was but…

“Our past shapes our future. You can’t have one without the other. I wonder sometimes if maybe he was afraid I wouldn’t like him if I knew him. If maybe he wouldn’t like himself. If it’s better to just pretend he’s someone else, but he’s not. I could help him. I know I could, but he’s so impossible to talk to.”

“I know what you mean,” Anders sighed.

Anders didn’t want to go back to his room and Merrill didn’t make him. He lay on the bed while Merrill slept in her nest on the floor, listening to her mutter in her sleep. It wasn’t the same as Hawke’s snoring, and sleep, when he finally found it, was fitful. Anders wasn't sure whether it was the lack of covers or the lack of Hawke, but he woke in the middle of the night.

Anders dragged himself out of Merrill’s room, but the stairs to his own seemed vast and insurmountable, stretching to the Void and back, and he couldn’t climb them alone. Anders went to the study instead, and gathered up parchment, quill, and pounce for a note. Anders stared at the parchment, trying to think of what he wanted to say instead of what he wanted to yell.

"You're wrong. I would never do that to you. I know you believe in me, but you also have to believe me. You mean the world to me. Your support means the world to me. You’ve always stood with me against the templars, and I'm sorry I’ve always put you in that position. I worry about you too. I worry one day your position and influence won't be enough to protect you and it will be my fault.

"You must see that Beth is wrong. That the Circle must be dismantled for her own good. That the Chantry is responsible for all of it. That a man, and not a mage, was the reason for your Mother's death. That blood magic is a tool to be used for good or evil. That nothing justifies - "

Anders stopped, and stared at the beginnings of yet another manifesto his apology note had become. Hawke had asked him to stop trying to convince him ages ago, and to just talk to him, but Anders didn’t know how. He was so used to fighting. He was so used to having to fight. The Circle. The templars. Hawke. Anders scratched out the second paragraph.

"Amell is a part of my life. He's happy for me. He's happy for me for being with you."

Stop making me unhappy? Stop being such an ass? Stop being jealous? Just bloody stop?

“I love you. I’m with you.”

Anders set up the quill and dried the ink. He took his note back to his room, wielding it like a shield when he crept inside. He shouldn’t have bothered. Hawke was asleep, tangled up in his robe and holding a pillow wearing one of Anders’ old tunics. Anders set the note on his nightstand, stripped out of his clothes, and climbed into bed.

A few tugs freed the pillow from Hawke’s arms, and won a mumbled, “Hrn?”

Anders traded places with it. He found a comfortable spot for his head in the crook of Hawke’s shoulder, and signed a ceaseless ‘Sorry’ against his chest until he fell asleep.

Anders' sleep was dreamless, as always. The night mercifully free of mares. He woke with the sun, and the idle caress of Hawke’s fingers on his back. Anders stayed on his shoulder, hating the awkwardness that had wedged its way between them. He didn’t know what to do about it. It just felt like yet another person he didn’t know how to talk to. Anders tapped on Hawke’s chest to signal he was awake.

“Morning,” Hawke offered, in his normal voice.

"M-o-r-n-i-n-g," Anders signed without lifting his head.

Hawke traced a shoulder blade, and Anders couldn’t help his shiver, “We still fighting?” Hawke asked.

"U-p t-o y-o-u,” Anders signed.

"Rather not." Hawke said.

Anders ran his fingers along his collarbone, down to a broken qunari symbol on his breast. The ink was more or less healed after a month, and made about as much sense as his statue. Hawke's gentle touch helped the bitter taste in Anders’ mouth. “L-e-t-t-e-r,” Anders pointed at Hawke’s night stand.

“Read it,” Hawke said, “… I believe you. You want to be his friend, be his friend. Just… leave a note or something next time.”

Anders sat up, a handful of hurtful responses fighting for first place in his throat - Thanks for your permission. Now you believe me? Why don’t I just give you my phylactery while I’m at it? - but Hawke’s expression stopped him. He was still lying down, framed in the black velveteen of his tangled robe, a crease in his brow like he was already trying to listen to whatever Anders had yet to say. Like he could already hear how senselessly cruel it all was.

“A-m-e-l-l. Visit. You.” Anders signed instead.

“Why would he want to visit me?” Hawke asked.

“Cousin,” Anders signed.

Hawke sat up, confusion and frustration warring in his tone, “What am I supposed to say to him?”

Anders shrugged. He had no idea what Amell wanted to say to Hawke or vise versa. Whatever someone said to their cousin, he supposed, but neither man had much luck where family was concerned.

“This is a terrible idea,” Hawke decided.

Anders laughed and signed, “I know. Be nice”

“I’m always nice,” Hawke lied.

“No,” Anders signed.

“How is he going to talk to me?” Hawke realized the same dilemma Anders had last night, “Doubt he can sign.”

Anders shrugged again, but he could guess. Anders could see, and Anders could hear, and to some small extent, Anders could sign. Hawke left him to call for a servant, and they broke their fast with bannock, berries, and cheese in bed. It was a quiet morning, and they signed slowly through it, with words when they could and letters when they couldn’t.

“Is the Knight Captain really stalking you?” Anders asked.

“Feels like it. Escorts Beth every chance he can, but he doesn't bother her in the Circle, so I know it’s not about her. Gives me updates on Mother’s investigation every other week, even though we both know it’s as cold as she was. Came here after the Harimann’s party, demanding to know how long I'd been with you…”

“What did you tell him?”

“What?” Hawke said aloud.

“Cheeky bastard,” Anders chuckled.

“If he wants to talk to me, he can learn to talk to me. You have.”

“Poorly.”

Hawke reached across the bed to squeeze his hand, “We'll get there.”

“We’ll get there,” Anders agreed.

Amell brought gifts, because of course he did. Rune tracings for Sandal. Beard oils for Bodahn. A set of stationary for Anders and Justice. Enchanted kaddis for Hawke. The stationary was bad enough, but the damn jar was worse. Anders couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten Hawke anything half as thoughtful. His last name-day present had been sex.

But Amell was always so damn thoughtful. Sandal was so excited he cried, hugging Amell and babbling about enchantments and magic. Amell sat Dumat down, and ran Sandal’s hands along the mabari’s kaddis, talking in simple terms of Tevinter runework and the stencils he used to accommodate his lack of vision. For some reason Anders couldn’t stand watching it. Amell seemed so good with him.

… Did Hawke want kids? Why didn’t Anders know? Why hadn’t Anders asked? Could he have kids now that he was a Warden again?

Anders fled back to his room with the excuse of putting away his present. Stationary. For letters. For manifestos. It was so damn simple. It was so damn perfect. Why couldn’t Amell have brought him a pony? Pulling himself together, Anders went back to the foyer, relieved to find the whole thing hadn’t dissolved into fisticuffs in his short absence.

The mabari were cautiously engaging with each other, Hawke muttering the occasional, “Be nice,” whenever Dog tensed. Bodahn was telling some sort of story about Silent Sisters and sign language, doing his best to sign and say it simultaneously, which… admittedly wasn’t very good, but it was something. No one was yelling. No one was fighting.

Then Gamlen walked in. He took one look at Amell and snorted, “We ain’t got enough cripples in this house?”

“Shut up!” Anders descended the stairs so fast he practically jumped. Hawke caught him before he charged Gamlen back into the kitchen, but his expression must have been threatening enough, because the old bastard took a nervous step back.

“What did he say this time?” Hawke asked.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Gamlen sneered.

“Insult,” Anders signed. “You. Amell.”

“Fuck off, Uncle,” Hawke said.

“Uncle?” Amell repeated. “As in Gamlen?”

“One and only,” Gamlen shot him a coffee-stained grin. There was nothing nice in it, and Anders was glad Amell missed it. He did his best to sign along with the conversation for Hawke.

“I’m Revka’s son. Fausten. We’ve exchanged letters? It’s nice to finally meet you.” Amell held out a hand for him, and Anders was almost surprised Gamlen shook it. He eyed the gifts scattered about the foyer and frowned.

“No gift for Uncle Gamlen, huh?”

“I wasn’t aware you were staying at the estate,” Amell explained.

“Nice to know I rank below the knothead,” Gamlen snorted. “You better not be fuck all like your father, boy, or I swear on the Maker-”

“Shut up!” Anders shouted. “Just leave!”

Hawke must have heard him, because he added, “I said fuck off, Uncle.”

“I’m not the one who’s deaf. I heard you - and I’m leaving. Gladly,” Gamlen spat, retreating to his room with his coffee, “Last thing this place needs is more magic.”

“... Sorry,” Anders said and signed. Neither Hawke nor Amell seemed to need the apology, but Sandal did.

The boy sniffled while Bodahn rubbed his back, “Don’t mind him, my boy.”

“He’s mean,” Sandal rubbed at his reddening nose.

“You remember the demons from the Circle?” Amell asked, “What I told you?”

“Don’t listen,” Sandal said.

“And?”

“... Only strong people don’t listen.”

“That makes you very strong, doesn’t it, my boy? Come on, let’s go try these new runes, shall we? Always good to see you, messere.” Bodahn left with Sandal.

“Still want to be part of the family?” Hawke asked.

“Of course,” Amell smiled.

“Yes,” Anders signed for him.

“I wouldn’t,” Hawke snorted.

A handful of signs and shuffling later, and they managed to agree to move from the foyer to the drawing room. The conversation was the most awkward thing Anders had ever endured in his life. They had to sit in a loose semi-circle so Hawke could read his lips and watch him sign, and he had to translate everything Amell said, but he couldn’t keep up even with Justice’s help, and ended up omitting most of it.

"It’s good to finally meet you,” Amell said to start, “I've written a few letters to Gamlen, but he never spoke much of our family.”

"Letter,” Anders signed. “Gamlen… Not told family."

"All of Gamlen's mail is black,” Hawke said, “Surprised you even know my name."

"It was worth it."

"Coin," Anders signed.

"Figures he'd put a price on his own family,” Hawke snorted, “Uncle'd gamble his soul if he had one."

"We all have our vices,” Amell said quietly.

Anders wasn’t going to unpack that. "... not mad," He signed.

"I would be," Hawke said.

A look of confusion crossed Amell’s face. "Would be what?"

Anders groaned. Why had he agreed to this? Why had Amell wanted this? "I have to spell everything you say. I just told him you weren't angry with Gamlen."

"Would it be easier if my scribe accompanied me? Perhaps letters-"

"No, I need the practice,” Anders cut him off, “I'll just tell you if I change anything."

"Whatever you need,” Amell assured him, “I can't imagine the dedication it took to learn an entire language in so short a time… it's extraordinary.” You’re extraordinary, Anders heard.

"Justice helps."

"We done?" Hawke asked at the lack of signs or shouts, frowning.

"I'm sorry," Amell said. "I'd like to hear more about you."

"Talk,” Anders signed, “You."

"Talk about me?" Hawke deduced.

"Yes,” Anders signed.

"I have Varric for that."

"Not here,” Anders signed and didn’t say, “Be nice."

"What about me?" Hawke relented.

"Your life.”

Hawke shared an abridged version of his life. Amell could hear it. Anders had heard it before. He didn’t need to sign it. He stared at his hands, the eager whisper of veilfire dancing beneath his palms as Justice helped him sign. The slow spread of warmth that came from focusing on the spirit inside him. The spirit who loved him. The spirit Anders still hadn’t spoken with. Anders wanted to speak to him, but talking to Justice was as hard as Amell talking to Hawke.

“You served at Ostagar?” Amell’s question broke Anders out of his thoughts. He reached out a hand and connected with Anders’ forearm to get his attention. Hawke frowned for it, but Anders didn’t know what else he expected Amell to do, “Anders - he served at Ostagar?”

“Hawke and his brother,” Anders said.

“What company?” Amell asked.

“He was a sergeant under Captain Varel. The old seneschal, if you can believe it,” Anders said.

“What is it?” Hawke asked.

“Ostagar,” Anders signed back.

“What about it?” Hawke asked.

“Did you know Duncan?” Amell asked.

“Duncan?” Anders signed.

“I don’t know who that is.”

“My predecessor. He was the Warden-Commander of Ferelden. He would have been wearing Rivaini-style Warden armor? Bearded, muscular, hair graying at the temples with a noble bearing.”

Anders signed slowly through the flattering description, unable to help wondering if Amell had had a similar relationship with his Commander. He wished he could ask him. He wished Hawke would ask him. He wished he’d asked everything there was to ask about him in the short months they’d had together. He wished he had every journal Amell had ever written and not just the one.

“I met him,” Hawke agreed at the description. “One of his recruits stole from my brother… Carver made it too easy. Lost a week’s wage, and when I confronted him for it, he threatened me. Wasn’t about to fight a Warden.”

You fight one every day, Anders thought bitterly.

“The recruit - was his name Daveth?” Amell asked.

“Daveth?” Anders signed.

“Never knew his name. Don't remember what he looked like."

“Who's Daveth?” Anders asked.

“He was a Warden… a good Warden,” Amell said unhelpfully. “Did you meet any others?"

"Others?" Anders signed.

“No.” Hawke said. “Too busy running when Mac Tir quit the field. Can’t believe you spared the bastard.”

“Not many can,” Amell allotted.

“Be nice,” Anders signed.

“Betrayed country,” Hawke signed back.

“Not his fault,” Anders signed.

“Rewarded,” Hawke signed.

“Not a reward,” Anders signed.

Amell raised an eyebrow at the silence, punctuated by the occasional crack of knuckles and smack of hands on hands. “... Everything alright?” Amell asked.

“Fine,” Anders lied.

Conversation turned away from Ostagar, and to the handful of other things Hawke apparently found relevant enough to share about his life. The Red Irons. The Bone Pit. The Qunari - which Amell wanted to hear all about. Hawke’s truths were worse than Varric’s lies - but Amell loved them. He looked enraptured, offering little compliments throughout. Hawke appreciated them. Anders didn’t.

When Hawke finally got to the siege, Anders couldn’t stand it. To hear him tell it, Hawke had hunted down a thief and gotten a city full of explosives in thanks. He didn’t even say Isabela’s name. Anders wanted to tell Amell it was a lie. That Isabela had been his friend. But he wasn’t even sure anymore, and Amell was listening with an easy smile and Anders couldn’t say anything. “It’s remarkable they agreed to leave at all. Qunari don’t back down easily. If the Arishok himself named you Basalit-an I doubt they’ll ever return to Kirkwall.”

“Remarkable,” Anders translated, frowning. “Impressed. Kirkwall safe.”

“... He really said that?” Hawke asked.

“Yes,” Anders signed.

“... Thanks,” Hawke said.

Amell stayed for lunch - a relatively painless experience filled with more chewing than talking. Afterwards, he excused himself on the grounds that he wanted to visit Bethany at the Circle. Hawke had work with Hubert, but Anders didn’t. “Going with,” Anders signed, bracing himself for a fight.

Somehow, he didn’t get one.

“Okay,” Hawke signed with a shrug.

“It was good to meet you,” Amell said to Hawke, “I’d like to write once I’m back in Ferelden, if you’re of a mind.”

“Write,” Anders signed.

“Fine,” Hawke said.

The two of them left, Anders in a bit of a daze Hawke let him leave with Amell at all. It didn’t seem possible that a jar of kaddis and a few compliments could smooth the man over, but Amell was like emery. Anders decided not to think too hard about it.

“So… what do you think?” Anders asked, taking Amell’s arm and setting it on his forearm when they reached the stairs down from Hightown. He didn’t need it. He had Dumat, but the mabari didn’t seem to care and neither did Amell.

“What do you mean?” Amell asked.

“About Hawke?”

“What would you like me to think?” Amell asked.

“Because that’s not vague at all. You don’t have your own opinion?”

“I’ve been blindsided by family before,” Amell joked.

“That’s-... I can’t believe you’re joking about that. Come on, tell me what you really think. I’m not going to be offended.”

“I care about you and the people in your life,” Amell offered unhelpfully. “Is there anything I should know about Bethany?”

“She’s not deaf… or blind, or mute, or anything,” Anders said. “I’m sorry I forgot to tell you.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about. I appreciate you translating.”

"What was the alternative?" Anders could just picture how the day would have gone without him. Hawke walking out and leaving Amell alone in a room talking to himself, probably.

"... a mild application of persuasion?" Amell must have missed the part where the question was rhetorical. "Something to allow him to feel your words and intention without forcing compulsion?"

Anders choked on a wild laugh. Maker’s breath, he could just imagine how that conversation would go. "Good one. Completely unrelated, but maybe we keep the maleficarum to a minimum. Especially considering where we're going… are you okay? Going back in a Circle-" blind? Was that an okay thing to ask? Was it okay or insulting to be concerned?

"I'm not going alone," Amell pointed out.

Anders ran away from that, "While we're there, can you do anything for Cera?"

"Cera?" Amell asked.

"I know you dismissed her," Anders said. "The Circle transferred her to Kirkwall. She doesn't deserve to be here. She doesn't deserve to be in a Circle at all. Can you reinstate her or something?"

Amell didn't say anything initially. They reached the bottom of the stairs, and continued through the sandstone streets of Lowtown. Most people gave them wide berth, either for their tabards or the massive mabari at their side. The scent of dust and molten metals were thick in the air. When Amell spoke, his words were quiet, and Anders barely heard them over the foundry hammers and bellows.

"She tried to kill you."

"Nate tried to kill you," Anders countered. "You forgave him. Why can't I forgive Cera?"

"... Compassion never left you."

Anders' heart seized at the words, "What?"

"It's in everything you do. In everything you are. I can try, but short of conscripting her it would be subject to the Knight-Commander's approval. From what you've told me, I can't see her agreeing, and persuading her to might be telling. If you want to save her, you might have better luck with your allies Justice mentioned."

"... no, you're right. I don't want this falling back on you. I'll figure something else out."

"I'm sorry."

"Why are you sorry? You’ve given me plenty, alright? The advice, the ring, the stationary… At this point I’m surprised I don’t have a pony.”

“It’s not your name-day yet,” Amell pointed out.

“Don’t tell me you actually got me something else.”

“Somethings. One for every year I missed. The stationary was just… because.”

“I don’t-...” Anders swallowed, “I didn’t get you anything.”

Amell squeezed his arm, “You got me everything.”

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
A Hundred Roses: Varric's perspective on his conversation with Hawke immediately before this chapter.

Chapter 125: Give and Take Part One

Notes:

Thank you all for your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

My sincerest thanks to Ushauz, Trashshark, and Darthfar for their help with this chapter :)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:34 Dragon 1 Parvulis Mid-Day
Kirkwall Lowtown

Anders was everything. There was no other way to interpret what Amell had said. The Lowtown streets seemed to fade away, a haze of graffitied sandstone, tattered banners, and faceless Kirkwallers. Anders stared at Amell. It was safe to stare at Amell. Amell couldn’t see Anders stare at him. Hawke was wrong. The two men were nothing alike, and having Amell back made it painfully clear.

Why? Anders wanted to ask. Why was he everything? What could he possibly have done for Amell in six short months that made him worth everything? It was so long ago, and the memories were so muddied. Was it when he’d stumbled into Vigil’s Keep and almost caused a diplomatic incident with the King of Ferelden? When he’d proven such an inept soldier he’d almost gotten himself killed in Kal’Hirol? When he’d almost gotten Amell killed trying to hunt down his phylactery?

When he’d had a half-naked panic attack in the Silverite Mines? When he’d accused Amell of insanity for treating with demons? When he’d immediately turned around and asked him to summon a demon for him? When he’d hated Amell for saving his life with blood magic? When he’d immediately turned around and asked Amell to teach it to him? When he’d cut out Amell’s eyes and called him a selfish bastard for not being able to get over it in less than a month?

...Anders should have been better to him.

Anders covered Amell’s hand where it rested above the crook of his elbow, entwining their fingers together. Wordlessly, Amell adjusted his stride to walk closer to him, their shoulders pressed together, his arm flush against Anders’ side. Anders wanted to say something to him. Something that meant something. Something that let Amell know seeing him again was the best thing that had happened to him in the past three years. Something someone said to someone who came back from the dead.

“Amell?”

“Hm?”

After three months of shouting Anders almost didn’t hear him. He was so quiet. It was barely a sound, a hum so deep in his chest it felt like it came straight from his heart. Amell covered their interlaced fingers, holding him with both hands, and Anders walked into a wall.

Anders clipped the corner of the building with his shoulder and stumbled, taking Amell with him. Dumat caught Amell, darting in front of him so his knees connected with the mabari’s side instead of the ground, and Amell caught Anders. The irony of the whole thing wasn’t lost on him, nor was the embarrassment. “Anders?”

“The wall moved,” Anders explained, rubbing his wounded shoulder and wounded pride.

“Did it?”

“They do that in Kirkwall.”

“I’ll keep that in mind," Amell smiled.

“You better,” Anders rearranged Amell’s hands on his arm, and they continued. “It’s pretty dangerous.”

“It’s a good thing I have an escort,” Amell noted.

“Anders to the rescue,” Anders agreed.

“I was talking about Dumat,” Amell teased.

“Oh ouch, see if I ever-”

“I’m kidding,” Amell squeezed his arm like he was afraid he’d lose it. "What were you going to say?"

… Anders wasn't going to say anything. There was nothing he could say. He had Hawke. It was too late to say all the things he should have said. "... What did you get me?"

"For your name-day?" Amell guessed. "It's a surprise."

Anders was pretty sure he was all surprised out for one lifetime. "Is it a pony?"

"Not a pony," Amell said.

"You hate me."

"I don't hate you," Amell said, and then, with a gentleness that made it achingly clear exactly how much Amell didn't hate him, added, "I don't hate you at all."

Anders forgot how to talk, which was probably for the best considering what he might have said. His mind turned towards the Gallows, and the thought of walking into the mage’s prison of his own accord without any intention to rescue mages from it. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, and it came accompanied with the fear that at the first silver sword of mercy or Chantry sunburst he and Justice would be so overcome with anger they’d reduce the Circle to rubble to rival Kirkwall.

They were, but they didn’t. Amell helped. His hands and voice were equally soft, and Anders had to lean conspiratorially close to listen to anything Amell said. It was a good distraction, and lasted until they came across the Knight Captain in the halls. Cullen Rutherford had short, curly hair an indecisive shade of red or blonde, and after one look at Amell looked caught somewhere between blind rage and abject terror.

"... Faust-... Amell?"

"Yes?" Amell looked in his direction.

Cullen took an unsteady step back. Anders bit back a snort. Sure, it was a little unnerving to think a blind man somehow knew exactly where you were, but it definitely didn’t warrant Cullen’s reaction. "No… no, I followed the reports - they said you were dead."

"An exaggeration." Amell smiled.

"No… no, this is a trick,” Cullen backed up, tripping over his tongue, the floor, his own feet, “This is another trick. You will not tempt me, demon!" Cullen fled so quickly he practically vanished.

"... Who was that?" Amell asked.

"The Knight Captain, I think,” Anders blinked at the space Cullen had occupied a few seconds ago. “Cullen Rutherford."

" … from Kinloch," Amell seemed to recall after a moment's thought.

"Yeah. I heard they sent him to the Greenfell Chantry to recover after the whole Uldred thing. Not long enough, apparently. Did you know him?"

"I did."

"Was he always - you know...?"

"... excitable?" Amell volunteered.

"Crazy?" Anders corrected him.

Amell shrugged, "He was better than most."

"At what?" Anders laughed, “Quaffing lyrium?”

"He never wore a helmet."

Something about that sounded strangely familiar. The words, and the way Amell said them, but Anders couldn’t quite place it. He’d never been a fan of helmets or the templars who wore them, so he let it go without too much thought. The Knight Commander seemed more pressing. The commotion Cullen caused brought her out to confirm that Amell was not, in fact, a demon.

Once that was settled, Meredith moved onto Anders, but she didn’t accuse him of being a demon, or an abomination, or anything else. She just accused him of costing her coin, which was apparently worse. Anders wasn’t sure he’d have been able to hold his tongue if he wasn’t already holding Amell’s hand, but for once it was easy. For once he didn’t have to fight. For once he had someone to fight for him.

“The Wardens are responsible for protecting Thedas from calamity,” Amell pointed out, “I would say a calamity has befallen Kirkwall, wouldn’t you, Knight-Commander?”

Meredith made a valiant effort to win a staring contest with a blind man, and when that failed, said, “He is interfering with Circle commerce offering healing services free of charge.”

“I would be happy to sit with your Lucrosians and discuss alternatives, or write to Grand Enchanter Briaus on your behalf. I’m sure the other Circles would be willing to send aid if you’re struggling with managing your finances.”

There was an insult or a threat in there somewhere, Anders was sure. Some accusation that Meredith was inept or incompetent or insane. A tense exchange later, and Meredith begrudgingly accepted 'Warden Business' as an overarching excuse for Anders' existence and left them alone. Anders decided to call it a win.

He could use a few. Hawke had claimed that the Knight Commander was obsessed with him, and Anders wasn’t optimistic enough to think a conversation with Amell changed that, but it certainly seemed to help. Amell certainly seemed to help. Being a Grey Warden certainly seemed to help, which was good, considering it wasn’t something Anders could stop being.

Sebastian was visiting Bethany when they finally found her room. The Prince of Starkhaven’s presence was worryingly common of late. Anders didn’t want to imagine a Chantry Brother courting Hawke’s sister, but whether he imagined it or not, it seemed to be happening. Hawke didn’t seem to care. If anything, he seemed to encourage it, which was not at all what Hawke had done when he’d assumed Anders was courting Beth.

The dichotomy between how Hawke saw a mage and a man bothered him, and the four of them walked the entirety of the grounds at Anders' insistence. The opportunity to learn the layout of the Circle wasn't one Anders intended to waste, and it gave him something else to focus on. If not for the distraction he was sure he’d get into a shouting match about the Circle, the Chantry, the color of the bloody sky.

Anders didn’t know how Amell managed it. He didn’t shout. He just talked. About nothing. Ferelden, Starkhaven, Bethany's studies, her life growing up, Sebastian's family, his struggles in Kirkwall. At no point did Amell actually offer his opinion on anything and at no point did anyone but Anders actually notice. Anders waited until they were on the ferry back to Kirkwall to ask, “So what do you think?”

“About what?” Amell asked.

“Anything? Everything? I can’t figure you out.”

“Right now I was thinking the wind is nice,” Amell offered unhelpfully.

“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” Anders said, but he didn’t disagree. It was peaceful at the back of the ferry. The wind carried with it the scent of brine and the mist of the Waking Sea, playing in Amell’s hair and framing it about his face while the Circle faded into the distance. It was cold, and a reasonable excuse to stand so close to him. “Sebastian? You’re not actually considering helping him reclaim Starkhaven, are you?”

“No,” Amell allotted.

“Alright, well that’s something, why not?”

“Politics.”

“No bullshit, Black Fox,” Anders shoved him. “Why?”

“... There’s a reason my father burned down Starkhaven’s Circle, Anders. The Vaels are… devout. They dedicate all of their second sons and daughters to the Chantry. One of them even served as the leader of the Seekers of Truth, when we were children. They weren’t making Harrowed Mages Tranquil like they are here, but they tested frequently for maleficarum.

“Public whippings. Easy access to their own blood… my father showed me the scars. When they weren’t doing that, they would sell their mages services to the nobility… and not just their magic. They sold them so often they’d overexert them to the point of lyrium addiction. Once the mutations started, it was easy to accuse their mages of possession and send them to Aeonar.

“Prince Goran is still a Vael, but he’s a puppet. His fiance has been ruling through him for the past year, and from what the Mage’s Collective has told me, things have been better for the mages there since they rebuilt their Circle. It’s still a Circle, but the abuses are fewer and far between.”

Anders decided not to think about Amell’s father, and focused on Starkhaven instead. He’d heard about the conditions from Decimus and the rest of the Starkhaven mages, but he hadn’t heard that Starkhaven’s old leadership had condoned it all. He also hadn’t heard that conditions had changed under Starkhaven’s new leadership. He should have. His cause was bigger than Kirkwall, but he’d buried it with Bardel.

“Who’s his fiance?” Anders asked.

“A noblewoman from Kirkwall, actually,” Amell said. “Lady Harimann.”

“Harimann?” Anders repeated, “Flora Harimann?”

“I believe so.”

“I know her. I mean - I know her mother. She’s-” a mage “- a friend. I knew she had connections in Starkhaven, but I didn’t know her daughter was engaged to the Prince.”

“Would you mind introducing me?” Amell asked.

“I don’t mind,” Anders said quickly, as excited at the opportunity to actually do something for Amell as he was to talk to Johane again knowing just how far her machinations for mage rights went. Maybe he had alternatives to the Collective after all. “We have tea every other Tuesday at a cafe in Hightown. I’ll take you next week.”

“Thank you,” Amell squeezed his arm.

“So what else are you doing while you’re here?” Anders asked.

“I have to meet with the Viscount and the Merchant’s Guild sometime this week, but beyond that I was hoping to spend most of my time with you.”

“Not your family?” Anders asked.

“... Family doesn’t mean as much to me as it used to, Anders,” Amell said softly. “I’m glad to have met them, but I came here for you, so we could get to know each other again.”

Getting to know Amell sounded good. Days passed, and they spent them in Anders’ infirmary and with the refugees, but more often than not Anders just ended up talking about himself. He wasn’t doing it on purpose, but Amell had a way of turning the conversation around on him. Anders wanted to know him, but Anders still wasn't sure what Amell could or couldn't do, and he didn’t want to make an ass of himself asking.

“What do you do for fun?” Anders finally worked up the nerve to ask on the third of Kingsway, after lunch at the Warden Compound.

“Fun?” Amell raised an eyebrow at him.

“You do remember fun, right?” Anders teased.

“You might have to remind me.”

“Haha, very funny,” Anders nudged him, trying and failing to ignore the undertones in that, “Come on, tell me.”

“Is there something you wanted to do?” Amell countered. Anders was already flustered, but there was nothing fair in Amell's smirk or Anders' answers. Yes. No. Maker, yes. Maker, no. At his silence, Amell offered, "...Cards?"

"Sure?" Anders ventured, biting his tongue on the 'How?' he wanted to follow it up with.

Amell left him to retrieve a deck of cards from a drawer in his desk. Anders watched him shuffle, captivated. He couldn’t imagine doing half of the things Amell did. If he closed his eyes and tried to shuffle he'd end up playing pickup. Amell dealt him a hand for Diamondback, but the cards were strange. The ink was raised, and Amell ran his thumb over each of them before rearranging them in his hands.

Anders lost. Several times. He had better luck with draughts, but he was willing to bet it was only because Amell had to play from memory based on where Anders said he moved his pieces, and occasionally - accidentally - Anders lied. Anders couldn’t fathom it. He couldn’t remember half his own moves even when he could see the board. “How are you real?” He blurted when Amell finally won a match.

“How are you?” Amell countered playfully.

“How can you remember all of this?” Anders clarified.

“It wasn’t something I learned overnight,” Amell allotted, and Anders wasn’t sure if it was the admission, or Amell’s endless flattery, or Anders’ endless flush, but he thought of Hawke, and he felt guilty.

Anders hadn’t been with Amell while he learned how to navigate his loss of sight. He had no idea how difficult it had been for him. He had no idea how long it had taken. He had no idea how Amell had struggled or how the people in his life had struggled with him. As much as he should have been better to Amell, he should have been better to Hawke.

Anders went home early, and practiced signing with Hawke over dinner, and felt a little better when they managed it without a fight. The fourth of Kingsway was the day before his name-day, and Anders spent it back at the Warden Compound. Amell reasoned he would want to spend his actual name-day with the people who were closest to him, and Anders didn’t have it in him to tell Amell he fit into that category, so Anders got his presents early.

True to Amell’s word, there were three. There was lyrium in one of them. Justice could hear it, and Anders couldn't resist opening it first. It was a case of Aqua Magus. Anders turned the bottle over in his hands, full of memories and melancholy. "... I can’t drink this," Anders said, but he suddenly wasn't sure if that was true.

… it was lyrium, and Justice did like lyrium. "I don't think I can drink this," Anders revised, watching the veilfire flowing through his veins, catching and reflecting in the blown glass of the Aqua Magus. "...Justice usually doesn't like to share me with other spirits."

"Can I ask why?" Amell asked.

Anders shrugged, "An out of control abomination isn't really the best idea.”

"You could always pace yourselves," Amell pointed out.

"I mean…" Anders uncorked the bottle, trying to get a sense for how they felt. He missed drinking. Maker’s breath, he missed drinking, but Justice didn’t like being drunk. Anders poured himself a shot, watching the way the lyrium rippled like lightning through the spirits, waiting for something. Some sort of resistance. Some sort of sign that Justice was still against drinking, no matter what it was he drank. Nothing happened.

Anders set the glass to his lips, and waited one final breath before he knocked it back. A rush of warmth spread down his throat, tangling together with veilfire and flaring out from his chest to tingle across every inch of skin. It was an almost electric ecstasy. Every sound was rhapsody, the lyrium in his heart pulsing in time to a threnody from some long forgotten age. “I guess… we like this.”

"That was the goal," Amell smiled, and it felt like he knew him better than Anders knew himself.

Anders blamed a lot of things on the lyrium-infused drink. His flush. The lyrical edge to Amell’s voice. The sensation of being tangled together with his spirit - Andraste’s sweet sacrifice - it was a sensation. He felt calm. He felt complete. He felt level and pure of purpose and his pursuit of it.

Somehow, Anders managed to resist the urge to pour a second shot. He didn’t want to test his luck, no matter how much they enjoyed it. He wasn’t interested in either type of spirit causing him to black out in front of Amell if Justice changed his mind or Anders went too far, and going too far seemed to be a habit of his lately.

The second gift was safer. A glass chess set. One set of pieces was smooth, the other frosted, and it made it a simple affair to distinguish sightlessly between the two. Anders lost an hour to a good game and good company before he opened the last: a small piece of parchment.

“What is this?” Anders stared at the list of dates stamped with the Amell family crest.

“Whatever you want it to be,” Amell said. “Free passage and private quarters on the Pride of Amaranthine, and its itinerary, so you can visit whenever you want. Trade will bring it to port once a month. You’ll always have a place with the Wardens. I’m sure I’m not the only one you missed, and I know I’m not the only one who missed you."

“That’s…” Anders thought of Nate, and Velanna, and Oghren, and Woolsey, “Thanks, that’s pretty marvelous. This is all pretty marvelous. You’re-...” Anders cleared his throat. There was nothing he could say to Amell, but there had to be something he could do for Amell. Anders fumbled with the grimoire latched to his belt, and pressed it into Amell’s hands. “Here. You can have this back.”

“What is this?” Amell turned the burnt and tattered book over in his hands.

“Your grimoire,” Anders suddenly felt embarrassed by the condition. “The binding broke when the templars caught me, but it still has most of the pages.”

Amell gave it back to him, “Keep it, Anders. You’ve made better use of it than I did - learning shapeshifting. I’m sure there are other spells that could benefit you.”

“I kept the staff, too,” Anders grabbed the runic dragonbone from where he’d propped it up against the couch, and wrapped one of Amell’s hands around it. “I called it Vigilance. You know, like you said.”

Amell pulled a shadow from the crystal in the staff and snuffed it out in the same breath of entropy energy. He made an appreciative sound, and handed it back as well. “I’m glad.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“What do you like? I know it’s not your name-day, but what am I supposed to get you when it is? And don’t say I already got you everything. I’ve been thinking about it, and I never got you anything except a pride demon statuette, and that was honestly kind of insulting. Is there something you want? Beyond an introduction to Johane?”

“I want you to be happy.”

Anders lay awake that evening, tracing over the scar on his forearm, his thoughts pulling him in too many directions. He thought of Amell, and how effortless it was to spend time with him. He thought of Hawke, and how much effort he put into spending time with him. He thought of Justice, and how effort and time seemed so inconsequential in the face of their cause. He thought of himself, and wondered what he was supposed to be thinking about, and fell asleep without any answers.

Anders spent most of his actual name-day giving gifts instead of receiving them. The time he and Amell spent with the refugees was in the forefront of his mind, and he filled a satchel with food from the pantry he took to the Beshcals before helping Lirene and Lissa bake a dozen loaves of dust for everyone else. None of the refugees knew it was his name-day, not that they would have been able to afford to get him any gifts if they did, but it was still a nice start to the day.

A surprisingly kind letter from Bethany was waiting for him at the estate when he got home. Anders opened it and the rest of his gifts in the drawing room with his friends. Varric got him a set of quills and a wax tablet for writing. Merrill got him a painting of Ser Cumference and a bundle of feathers for his coat. Hawke got him a fight.

"A Tevinter Chantry amulet!?" Anders shook the sacrilegious sunburst at Hawke. There was no mistaking it. Chantry’s sunburst was hollow and its flames were curved, whereas the Imperial sunburst was whole and its flames were as sharp as the headsman's axe Anders would get for wearing it.

He didn't even want to wear it. Anders had no idea how Hawke had managed to get the amulet, or why he thought Anders could stand the sight of a sunburst after what had happened to Karl. "Do you want me to get executed!?”

“Here we go,” Varric sighed, pressing his thumbs into his ears.

“You think I’ve spent two years keeping you from the Gallows just to watch you swing from them?” Hawke demanded.

“You tell me!” Anders shouted, “You know it’s sacrilege to wear this in any land under the Divine!”

A servant carrying a tray of cheeses entered the drawing room, heard the shouting, and did an abrupt about face.

“... Do you think they forgot something?” Merrill asked.

“Ear plugs,” Varric said.

“Now you care about sacrilege?” Hawke switched to signing, “Maleficar. Why do you care?”

Of course. It always came back to the blood magic, even though there was nothing specific to blood magic in the Chant of Light. Transfigurations didn’t even mention blood magic - maleficar was just a word the Chantry slapped on any mage who opposed them. It didn’t even mean blood mage. It just meant ‘one who is depraved’ in ancient Tevene, and Anders was getting sick of hearing it.

“I know what I am! That doesn’t mean I want to go shouting it from the rooftops!”

“You were shouting just fine last week!”

“In my own home!” Anders reminded him, “How am I supposed to wear this outside it!?”

“It’s a symbol of mage freedom,” Hawke signed what he could of the words, “If you don’t like it, don’t take it.”

… Anders hadn’t thought of it like that. Anders hadn’t thought Hawke had thought of it like that. He looked down at the sunburst cutting into his palm, and thought of Karl. How much different his life would have been in Tevinter. How much longer. If Hawke meant it for freedom...

“No,” Anders signed, “I like it.”

“Could have fooled me,” Varric muttered.

“This is you liking something?” Hawke snorted.

“You just… surprised me,” Anders thumbed the rough edges, and wondered why he’d forgotten Hawke came with them. “Believe me, I’ve considered what life would be like under the Tevinter Chantry-”

“I don’t support the Tevinter Chantry,” Hawke cut off his slow signing. “I just thought you’d like the amulet.”

A symbol of mage freedom Hawke didn’t even support. Matching amulets that didn’t match at all. The amulet went from being the worst gift, to the perfect gift, to the loneliest gift in the span of a few heartbeats. Well… not everyone could be good at giving them. “Well, I do,” Anders put it on under his tunic, signing, “Thank you.”

Anders did like it, no matter the undercurrents that came with it. He had every intention of making it clear just how much he liked it when they went to bed that night, but his hand didn’t make it past Hawke’s waistband before Hawke caught his wrist. Anders sat up, blankets bundled about his waist.

"What's wrong?" Anders signed.

"... you tell me," Hawke signed back.

"Nothing," Anders ran the pads of his fingers up the firm expanse of Hawke’s chest, and then raked down with his nails. His heart skipped eagerly at Hawke’s reaction. His deliberate swallow, and the shaky breath that chased it. "I've been thinking all day about the best way to show my gratitude for your gift… how to return one as meaningful." Anders would have signed, if he knew how to sign it quickly. He didn't, so he shortened it to, "Thank you. Sex."

"Anders, I-" Hawke caught his hands when Anders made another pass for his waistband, "I don't want to use you."

A surge of shame hit him like a tidal wave, drowning out every other emotion. He'd only said what he'd said when they fought because he was angry Hawke was right, and he couldn't fuck away his problems any more than he could run from them. Anders signed, "I shouldn’t have said that."

"You sure?"

"Of course I'm sure,” Anders signed, “I love you.”

"So you don't want to fuck me?" Hawke asked.

Anders did. Anders absolutely did. He’d asked once or twice, but he also hadn't thought too hard on it when Hawke declined. It still occupied his thoughts every so often. It certainly occupied them now. Something slow. Hawke on his stomach, Anders atop him, shallow thrusts wringing one enthusiastic groan after the next from Hawke’s lips. Sweat soaking Hawke’s hair, his face sliding against sheets, Anders’ teeth tugging at the lobe of his ear, whispering things just to whisper them, the heat of his breath and the caress of his lips against Hawke’s skin leaving him feeling whatever he couldn’t hear.

"I do,” Anders signed, maybe a little too quickly.

"I'm not interested in that," Hawke shattered his fantasy.

"Okay. That's okay," Anders promised, already altering his fantasy. Hawke on his back, arched with ecstasy, his hands fisted in the sheets while his feet slipped in them, Anders between his legs. “I don’t need that. I just need you.”

Anders shifted to press against Hawke’s side, fingers following the trail of hair that ran from his chest down to his waist, mindful not to dip below it until Hawke consented to it. “Sex?” Anders signed again.

Hawke pushed a stray lock of Anders’ hair behind his ear, blood red eyes almost black in the dark, and Anders was acutely aware they were as vulnerable as they were passionate. "I've never slept with anyone else."

"... What?" Anders forgot to sign. He forgot to shout.

Hawke must have read his lips, "You're it."

"You said -” Anders cleared his throat. He signed as quickly as he could through the words, the room awash with veilfire with how many times Justice corrected his shaking hands, “You had a girl in Amaranthine."

"Fumbled over our clothes in a few corners."

"Aveline?"

"One kiss."

Anders was a bastard. Anders was a rat bastard. He thought of their first night at the Hanged Man, the bath, the food, the candles, the scattered embrium petals. His own selfish assumption that it had all been for Anders’ benefit, and couldn't have also been for Hawke. The frantic night Anders had given him instead after Hawke’s arrest.

“You seemed- I thought-” Hawke couldn’t have been a virgin. Anders remembered being a virgin. Anders remembered sleeping with virgins. The awkward fumbling, the lack of rhythm, the too fast orgasms or no orgasms at all. His first night with Hawke hadn’t seemed like that at all.

Hawke watched him fumble with his words and his signs and shrugged, “Spent time at the Rose, learning what you'd like.”

Anders was definitely a bastard. “Sex,” Anders signed frantically, “Sex, please, sex. I want you. I want this. I want everything we’ve ever done.”

Hawke finally agreed, and Anders had him every way Hawke would have him, signing “want” until his hands were sore and his arms were tired, and he was sure Hawke believed him.

He missed the following day with Amell. He spent it with Hawke and the Carta instead, learning new signs and practicing old ones, but the knowledge that Amell wasn’t staying brought him back to the Warden Compound. A fortnight was no time at all really, and Anders blinked through days at Amell’s side.

He spent time with Amell and Merrill, discussing all kinds of magic and magical theory. They talked about their success with shapeshifting, and demonstrated the few forms they’d learned to more of Amell’s endless praise. To his chagrin, Anders couldn’t hold onto them in front of Amell. The man would trace a gentle finger over his wings as a crow or his ears as a cat, and the form would unravel.

Merrill didn’t have any such problems, as a hawk or a hart. Anders wasn’t sure if it was Amell or the elven in his head, but Merrill adored him. Her questions were endless, and Amell didn’t seem to mind indulging her. Seeing the two of them together reminded Anders of Sigrun, and was occasionally hard to watch, but he pushed through it and into other days. Amell’s meeting with the Merchant’s Guild turned out to be a meeting with Varric, over an expedition he’d unwittingly funded for him, and Anders couldn’t believe how close he’d come to finding out Amell was alive sooner.

“I fund a lot of shit, Blondie,” Varric held his palms up to ward off Anders’ anger, “Just because I sign the papers doesn’t mean I read them. Besides, if I recall correctly you were there when I agreed to fund House Dace’s expedition to Amgarrak, and neither of us considered Creepy might be the Warden Commander that was going with them.”

It was, regrettably, a good point. Anders listened to the two men talk about everything from the expedition, to House Dace, to all of the stories Varric wanted to hear Amell tell about the Blight and the Battle of Denerim. Was he secretly the king or queen’s consort (he wasn’t) and had he fought the Archdemon on the back of an undead griffon (he hadn’t) and had he really summoned an army of demons to fight the darkspawn horde (he hadn’t) and had he risen an undead army (he had)?

As much as Anders enjoyed Amell’s retelling, he knew it wasn’t an honest one. Amell made no mention of what it really cost. Sacrifices. Anders had read his journal. Amell had sacrificed more lives than Hawke or Anders ever could. Anders hadn’t given it much thought if only because it was difficult to think about. It was almost impossible to rectify what Amell had done with the man who had done it.

Amell - the Amell Anders knew - was soft-spoken. Gentle. Compassionate. He wasn’t someone who traded one life for another. He killed, but Anders remembered Amell had mostly meant it for mercy. He couldn’t think of a time when Amell had sacrificed anything worse than his sleeves, torn from his own casting cuts, but it had happened.

It haunted Anders on the walk back to the Warden Compound. He thought of the days Amell spent talking circles around him, claiming they were supposed to get to know each other again, and everything Anders still didn’t know about him. The scars that Amell kept hidden from him, the same way he kept the ones on his arms hidden from the world. Hypocrite that he was, Anders wanted to know about them, even if he refused to share his own.

"Amell, can we talk?" Anders asked instead of leaving when they reached the compound.

"... Always," Amell led him inside and to his room, and closed the door behind them. His fingers swept down the hardwood, barely brushing the doorknob, and the locked clicked.

"Denerim," Anders blurted.

"Denerim…?" Amell repeated.

"I read your journal," Anders said, trying to focus on something other other than Amell’s hands, but his eyes weren’t an option, and his lips weren’t much better. His eyes wandered around the room, sparsely furnished and free of any miscellany, but eventually came to the conclusion that Amell was still the most interesting thing in it.

"It's been a long time since I wrote it, Anders,” Amell found a seat for himself on his couch. “What did you want to know?"

Anders sat next to him. Not right next to him. Just next to him. “... you sacrificed soldiers.”

"... I did." Amell agreed, expression neutral.

“... And?” Anders prompted.

"And?" Amell raised an eyebrow.

"... could you talk about it?" Anders pressed.

"It isn't something I did lightly, Anders."

"I'm not judging you, alright?” Anders assured him, and because it seemed like maybe the assurance wasn’t enough, found his hand and held it, “I just… can you just talk about it?"

“Why?”

“Because I want to hear you talk about it,” Anders said stubbornly.

“We were losing,” Amell relented, but Anders couldn’t gauge how he felt. He was self-possessed, and told the story with the same calm composure he told all his war stories. “We stormed the city, but the Archdemon burnt through a battalion before we made it to the market district. The infirmaries were overflowing, but there was nothing the healers could do for them. There’s no cure for the Taint, aside from becoming a Grey Warden… as far as I was concerned, their death was their Joining.”

“And no one knew?”

“Everyone knew,” Amell said. “It was war. Volunteers came back from the front. Wounded men and women. Some civilians we rescued… A girl, maybe twelve…” Amell trailed off, inhaled once, and continued, “It took what it took.”

Anders couldn’t begin to process that. Amell had to have been exaggerating. It wasn’t possible that an entire army could know what he’d done and never speak of it. There were rumors, of course. Anders had heard them, but the only reason Anders had even known about the sacrifices was because he’d read about them in Amell’s journal. Anders thought of the sacrifices he and Hawke had made, and how small they suddenly seemed.

“Do you have nightmares?”

“I'm a Warden, Anders,” Amell smiled. “I always have nightmares. …Why are you asking me about this?”

Because Anders wanted to know Amell almost as badly as Anders wanted to know himself. Because Anders had sacrificed someone. Because Hawke had sacrificed someone. Because he wanted to know if they were monsters or men or maleficarum or just poor unfortunate souls who did whatever it took to survive. Because for some reason he’d always trusted Amell to have the answers and because Anders had so very few ever since Amell had walked back into his life.

“Anders?” Amell squeezed his hand and turned towards him. “Why are you asking me?”

Anders took a shallow breath, but the air didn’t quite make it into his lungs. He felt like he was shaking, but he wasn’t. He was so still he felt like fractured glass and one touch would shatter him. Amell pulled him across the couch and into his arms, but Anders had put enough on him without adding his tears. He inhaled, and he exhaled, and for a long while that was all he did.

“Why?” Amell asked eventually.

“To save Hawke,” Anders managed.

“When you remember it, remember why.”

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
Sweet Thing: Isabela's perspective on the time Hawke spent at the Rose.

Chapter 126: Give and Take Part Two

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you like the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:34 Dragon 10 Parvulis Early Morning
Kirkwall Hightown: Hawke Estate

"You know you can't have your cake and eat it too, Blondie," Varric said over breakfast. Hawke had left early to deal with something at the Bone Pit. Anders’ joke that Hawke was leaving him to get boned had been… ill taken, and Hawke had decided on a fight for breakfast.

Anders had a scone.

“Not a cake,” Anders wiggled the pastry at Varric, a few crumbs falling onto his plate. He usually wasn’t a fan of eating in the dining hall, but breakfast in bed wasn’t an option, so at the table he sat. The slab of hardwood was so massive some aspiring carpenter must have sanded down the whole tree, and the three of them clustered together at one corner of it.

“Isn’t it?” Merrill asked, eating the cranberries out of her scone before she ate the scone itself. “A cake is just flour and eggs and sugar and other ingredients you bake. A scone is like a small cake.”

“Like a cake doesn’t make it a cake,” Anders said.

"Whatever it is, it's not going to last," Varric said.

“Right,” Anders frowned at him, “Because I’m eating it.”

“Oh dear, we’re not talking about cakes, are we?" Merrill mumbled.

“Look, Blondie, I’m just saying-”

“You’re always just saying something.”

“There’s a lot of somethings to be said,” Varric pointed out. “You can’t have Creepy stroking your ego in the morning and Hawke stroking your you-know-what at night. At least not out in the open like this. You gotta spin a story or someone’s gonna spin one for you.”

“I don’t have to do anything because I’m not doing anything,” Anders said.

“Ehh,” Varric wiggled his hand.

“I’m not,” Anders insisted, “Besides, Amell is going back to Ferelden in three days.”

“If a few years didn’t change how you felt, I’m getting the sense that a few leagues won’t either,” Varric took a drink of his coffee with an entirely unnecessary raise of his eyebrows.

“You have no idea how I feel,” Anders said.

“I’m getting the sense you don’t either,” Varric countered. "I’m not trying to start shit, I’m just trying to give you some perspective on the shit that’s already started. As far as you knew, Creepy was dead. Now most people, they know when to cut their losses. Usually when the loss happens, but you kept Creepy alive. You kept his journal; you kept his grimoire. Shit, Blondie, you kept his eyes. I’m not saying you can’t move on; I'm just saying you haven’t. If you don’t want anyone to get hurt, then they can’t know about the things that’ll hurt them.”

“Why are we hurting anyone?” Merrill asked, “Why does anyone need to be hurt? Can’t you just be with both of them?”

“Not everyone is as open with their heart as you are, Daisy,” Varric explained.

“Maybe they should be,” Merrill shrugged, finished with her cranberries and moved onto her actual scone, “Maybe it's simpler. Simple is good. It sneaks up on you, makes you smile. Maybe that should be enough once in a while.”

“Can we stop talking about me like I’m not here?” Anders asked. “Or better yet can we just stop talking about me?”

“It’s not just you, though, is it?” Merrill asked, “It’s Hawke and it's Amell. I think he’s nice. Amell, I mean. I know it wasn’t all him, but he helped appoint the Alienage Elder to the King’s personal court, and get my people land in the south near Ostagar… like the Dales… we’ve never had anything like that before. It makes me think maybe my clan shouldn’t have run from the Blight… maybe we should have stayed and fought for him… I think I would have liked fighting for him.”

“He’s a Hero, I’ll give him that,” Varric said. “Except for the evil blood magic thing.”

“There’s nothing evil about blood magic, Varric,” Merrill frowned.

“Maybe don’t say that too loud around Hawke,” Varric said.

“I’m not around Hawke,” Merrill said.

“I noticed that,” Varric chewed through his thoughts and his scone, “You ever plan on being around him again?”

“... Don’t you miss her?” Merrill asked.

“Isabela?” Varric guessed, “Of course I do.”

“You called her by her name!” Merrill smiled, “I’ve never heard you do that before.”

“No fun in calling her Rivaini if she’s not here to be annoyed by it,” Varric shrugged.

“The only reason Isabela isn’t here is because she left,” Anders reminded them. No matter how Anders disagreed with what Hawke had done, he was tired of talking about Isabela like she was dead. “She could have stayed and tried to make things right again, but she didn’t.”

“She was scared,” Merrill argued.

“She was blithely ignoring the consequences of her actions,” Anders said. “She left because it was easy. It would have been harder to stay so she didn’t.”

“Not that I disagree, but how would her being here help, exactly?” Varric asked.

“She could make up for her mistakes.”

“How? By flogging herself daily?” Varric asked. “Sometimes things are just broken, Blondie, and you have to make the best of it.”

“Sometimes things are broken and you fix them,” Anders frowned.

“We’re not talking about Isabela any more, are we?” Merrill asked.

“I’m heading out,” Anders dusted his hands off and stood up. “I’ll be at the clinic.”

“And when Hawke asks?” Varric prompted.

“I’ll be at the clinic,” Anders snapped.

Anders went to the clinic. The clinic was where Anders went. He spent his morning healing what he could of the city’s ailments, and thinking very determinedly of anything other than what Varric had said. There was nothing to think about. Amell was his friend. Amell was just his friend. Whatever Anders had been with Amell in the past was in the past. Anders’ life was in Kirkwall with Hawke and Amell’s life was in Amaranthine with the Wardens.

Anders finished sweeping the day’s detritus from his clinic, and found a spot from himself in the shade with Thrask. The terrible templar shared the latest gossip from the Gallows, but it was difficult to pay attention. Anders was too distracted not thinking about Amell. Anders twisted the ring of rosewood around his finger, not because of Amell, just because of the magic. Because the magic was interesting. Because it had to be blood magic.

The ring was like a phylactery, only far more powerful. A phylactery wasn’t a connection. It didn’t work both ways. There were no emotions attached to them beyond the malice the Circle poured into them. Anders’ actual phylactery was inert. The Taint had corrupted his blood, and Anders couldn’t have been happier about it. It was everything he’d ever wanted and nearly died for, years ago in an Amaranthine warehouse, but for some reason he’d let Amell give him another one.

… not that Anders was thinking about him.

Anders felt the pull of Amell’s blood at the midday sun. Amell invited him to lunch, and Anders needed to eat, so he accepted. A week hadn’t done much to improve the condition of the Warden Compound. At some point, a chunk of the staircase had collapsed. The resultant pile of rubble had been swept into a corner, and just needed someone to throw a rug over it, but Amell couldn’t see so Anders supposed it was fine if he didn’t know just how bad it was.

Despite the sorry state of the building, most of the soldiers were out helping with construction in the city. Anders and Amell had lunch in the commons, which consisted of a thick beef stew with root vegetables and a pickled salad, while Amell talked about Kal’Hirol. Apparently, the Wardens had helped Orzammar reclaim the great thaig, and the dwarves had held a celebration in honor of the casteless that had defended it. A statue had even been erected in their honor, and Anders wanted to imagine Sigrun would have liked it. From the sound of it, she also would have liked the celebration, which had gone horribly, horribly wrong thanks in no small part to a greased nug and one too many mushrooms.

“Merrill stopped by the compound this morning,” Amell told him when Anders finally stopped laughing.

Anders froze. Merrill’s terrible advice on open relationships replayed in his head, and he seriously hoped she hadn’t given it to Amell. “She did?”

“She asked to visit the Vigil,” Amell explained between bites of his salad.

“What do you mean?” Anders pushed his plate aside. “You mean she wants to be a Warden?”

“Not that she mentioned,” Amell said, far too casually.

“What did you say?” Anders asked.

Amell shrugged, “I told her she was welcome.”

Anders felt like he’d swallowed stones in place of potatoes, “Why?”

Confusion wrinkled Amell’s brow, and he finally stopped eating, “Because she's your friend?”

No. No, Merrill couldn’t leave. She couldn’t. She was his friend. She was his best friend. His only friend beside Hawke and Varric. Anders had already lost Sigrun, and Karl, and Beth, and Cor, and Decimus, and Isabela, and Franke, and Maker knew how many others, and he couldn’t lose Merrill too. “So you just - what?” Anders asked angrily, “You just thought you’d take her from me?”

“I didn’t offer, Anders, she asked,” Amell said gently.

“You’re supposed to say no!” Anders snapped. Andraste’s bloody pyre, why didn't Amell ever say no? “She’s my friend! You can’t just conscript my friends! She’s been through enough without dying in the bloody Joining!”

“I’ve never used the Rite of Conscription on anyone but you."

“You know what I mean!” Anders wasn’t unpacking that, “Mhairi died! Lyna died! Merrill can’t die like that, and you can’t promise me she won’t if she takes the Joining.”

“She’s just visiting, Anders."

“What if she’s not!?”

“Then it’s her choice,” Amell said. “... Is there some reason she shouldn’t have the same one you did?”

Of course there were reasons. There were plenty of reasons. Selfish, selfish reasons. He’d miss her. He’d miss her so bloody much. He missed her already. Anders scrubbed away the threat of tears starting in the corner of his eyes. “...How long did she want to visit?”

“She didn’t say,” Amell said.

“Fuck,” Anders muttered.

“Anders-” Amell began, but whatever he was going to say was cut off when the door to the compound slammed open, and Hawke stumbled in on Varric’s shoulder with Dog on their heels. Varric was wearing his usual deep brown jacket, stained black with Hawke’s blood where the archer leaned heavily against him.

Hawke was still walking, and that was about all Anders could say for him. Anders couldn’t see anything wrong with his armor, a tight and studded leather buckled protectively about him, but he was obviously bleeding and he looked sick. His complexion was sallow, his teeth grit against the foam gathering around them with each sharp breath.

“Hey Blondie, Creepy,” Varric said brightly, stumbling under Hawke’s weight, “Little help?”

Anders jumped out of his chair and hastened Hawke into it, “What happened!?”

Once Hawke was sitting, Anders could see the puncture in his armor. There were two giant slashes across his shoulder blades, and the wound was inflamed. It smelled ripe, blood and pus belying whatever toxin foamed in his mouth. Anders channeled a cleansing aura and made short work of Hawke’s buckles.

“Spiders,” Hawke snarled, wincing while Anders eased him out of his chest armor and tunic. Dog whined and curled up at his feet, “Always the Maker-damned spiders.”

“Hey Creepy,” Varric said for Amell's benefit. “Varric Tethras again. Sorry to barge in like this. Hawke ran into a little trouble at the quarry, and I figured since Blondie wasn’t at the clinic he’d probably be here. My instincts are impeccable, as usual,” Varric dusted his coat off, sighing when his hand came away tacky, “Ugh, I got blood on my coat.”

“Alec,” Amell called, and a soldier with hair as red as Hawke’s blood ran into the room a moment later, “Will you get them whatever they need?”

“Elfroot,” Anders said, “A bowl of water, towels, bandages, and a poultice if you have it.”

“Yes, Warden,” Alec ran to retrieve the supplies.

“What happened!?” Anders shouted.

“Told you,” Hawke muttered.

“My guess?” Varric offered, and continued before anyone could ask for it, “Deep crawlers are already pretty quiet, but Killer’s deaf. Didn’t hear the one that got him before it was too late.”

“Varric, can you just ask him?” Anders asked.

“Not hear?” Varric signed.

“Of course I can’t hear,” Hawke snapped.

“Not sure what you were expecting there, Blondie,” Varric admitted.

Alec returned with half of Anders’ supplies. Anders washed out the wound, his free hand massaging Hawke’s uninjured shoulder to battle back the tremors playing through him. A proper assistant would have brought the elfroot first for the pain. Anders pressed the towel to Hawke’s back, catching blood, pus, and venom while his magic cleansed the inflammation.

“Is his mabari not trained for service?” Amell asked, a hand towards the floor drawing an almost immediate reaction from Dumat, who came to sit beside him.

“As far as I know, the only service his mabari performs are public ones when someone gets on Hawke’s bad side,” Varric said, shaking out his bloody coat and draping it over one of the chairs.

Hawke caught the hand Anders was using to massage his shoulder, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Speaking of bad sides…” Varric sighed.

Anders shifted so he was next to Hawke instead of behind him. He tried to sign through his spell, but casting and signing simultaneously was impossible. He shouted, “Healing you!?”

“You’re supposed to be at the infirmary,” Hawke reminded him.

“I did warn you, Blondie,” Varric took a seat next to Hawke and kicked his feet up. Anders half expected him to pull a piece of parchment from his belt and start writing everything down, but he just started snacking on Anders' interrupted lunch.

"I was at the infirmary!” Anders shouted, “I can't be at the infirmary all day!"

"Because you're too damn busy-"

"Having lunch!?" Anders thrust a hand at the abandoned bowl of stew, and whatever illicit implications Hawke seemed to see in it.

"Don't pretend that's what you're doing," Hawke shot a wasted look at Amell.

Anders was not having this conversation. Not again. Not in front of Amell. He was just sitting there, scratching Dumat’s ear and listening to all of it. “I’m not doing anything!”

“You know damn well what you’re doing,” Hawke countered. “You’re with him. You’re always with him and now you’re lying to me about it?”

“I’m not lying!” Anders screamed. “I’m having lunch!”

“With him! Surprised you were sitting at the table and not bent over it.”

“He’s my friend!” Anders snapped, anger outweighing his embarrassment. “You want to know what I’ve done with him!? All the dirty details!? I hugged him! Are you happy!?”

“Do I look happy?”

“You look like an asshole!”

“You’re acting like one!”

“You-”

“I’m sorry,” Amell interrupted them. Anders was so shocked he forgot what he was going to say. Hawke didn’t say anything, because Hawke didn’t hear anything, but he must have at least known Amell said something, because he frowned and followed Anders' stare.

“He can’t hear you, Creepy,” Varric reminded him.

“Would you mind translating?”

“Yeah, sure thing,” Varric said slowly, dragging his chair to sit beside Amell and sign. “Killer. Creepy. Talk.”

“Anders would be at his clinic if I hadn’t invited him here for lunch. I’ve commanded a lot of his time because he means a lot to me and it’s difficult to make him mean less, and that’s unfair to you. I’m sorry.”

Amell said it like it was true. He said it like he was sorry. Like he’d done anything that warranted being sorry about. Like he was the only one who wanted the two of them to spend time together and like there was anything wrong with spending time with him in the first place. Anders couldn’t tell if Amell was lying or telling the truth, but it just made him angrier.

Varric hummed cautiously, and signed, “My fault. Made him visit. Sorry.”

“You stay out of this,” Hawke said at the translation, “I don’t want your apology; I want his.”

“I don’t have anything to apologize for!” Anders screamed, wishing he could pull all the venom from Hawke and not just what the spider left in him. “You told me whatever I need from him -”

“One time! Not for fucking ever!” Hawke jerked to look at him, and the towel slipped, scraping across his wound. Hawke hissed in pain, and Anders steadied him.

“Hold still,” Anders signed to be sure Hawke understood him, and then went back to shouting, “I can’t just live at my clinic in case something happens to someone! I have a life-”

“You’re supposed to have a life with me,” Hawke cut him off.

Alec returned with the rest of his supplies and an admirably guarded expression. He left them without comment and fled into a backroom. Anders finished pulling the venom from Hawke, and tossed the ruined towel on the table. Washing his hands, he set them to Hawke’s back, and a final surge of creationism sealed the wound. His skin around the spider bite was an angry pink, and Anders coated it with the poultice for any residual pain.

“It was a good try, Creepy,” Varric said while Anders worked.

“... I have a trainer I can send for his mabari if he’d like,” Amell offered.

“I’ll tell him when he calms down,” Varric said.

“Life with you,” Anders signed angrily after he finished with the poultice. His wrists popped at the sharp motion, and he rubbed at them irritably before grabbing the bandage to wrap around Hawke’s shoulder.

“You don’t need to be here every damn day,” Hawke said when he finished, snatching up his ruined armor.

“You have no idea what I need!” Anders screamed. No one did. There wasn’t a single soul who understood what Anders had been through except the one who had been through it with him. The one that had saved him and changed him and accepted him and loved him and was him, but apparently Justice wasn't taking sides. “You have no idea how hard this is for me! I didn’t put his eyes back in his skull, I carved them out! I never even said goodbye! I haven’t seen him for three years and you’re mad at me for spending a fortnight with him!?”

“You know damn well why I’m mad at you!” Hawke gestured at him with his mangled cuirass like Anders had been the one to mangle it.

“You're mad because you're jealous!” Anders snapped, “Because you don't listen to me and being deaf has nothing to do with it!”

“You think I don’t listen? You think I didn’t hear you say you think about fucking him?”

“I think about fucking everyone! I’ve thought about fucking Fenris, for Maker’s sake, that doesn’t mean I ever would!” Anders shrieked, “I was having lunch!”

“Really?” Varric perked up, “You and Broody? Wait till I tell Rivain-... ah, shit.”

Hawke glared at Anders for a long while, and eventually waved his armor at the meal he’d interrupted. “Enjoy your lunch,” Hawke left with his mabari.

“Son of a bitch,” Anders muttered, dragging his hands through his hair, “Amell I-... I’ll talk to you later.”

“... We cast off with the morning tide, on the thirteenth,” Amell told him. “I understand if you can’t see us off.”

Anders ran out after Hawke. Kirkwallers scattered like pheasants from the underbrush at his approach, inked from the waist up and armored from the waist down, bow case on his bandaged back and quiver rattling against his hip. His mangled armor hung limp from one hand, and his mabari walked on the other.

Anders jogged to catch up and cut him off. "Stop!" Anders signed.

Hawke stopped, scowling.

"Stop," Anders signed, hand slapping into his palm. "Stop. Stop. Stop."

"Alright," Hawke said, scowl slipping the longer Anders signed it. "Alright."

"Jealous. Asshole. Insecure-"

"I said alright," Hawke said.

"... back?" Anders signed.

"Better."

"Spiders?"

"Dead."

"Hear?"

"No."

"Dog?"

"... what about the dog?"

"Amell. Help. Dog. Hear."

Hawke sighed, thumping his armor lightly on Dog's side while the mabari stared up at him, head cocked curiously to one side. "How?"

"I don't know," Anders signed. "You. Help. Need. Not want. Hurt. You."

"I know," Hawke sighed, slinging a tired arm around his shoulders for the walk back to Hightown. "I know."

Anders dragged Hawke back to the Warden Compound the next day. It was awkward, but it would have been more awkward without him. In a commendable show of restraint, Amell didn't say anything about their episode the day prior. Apparently, he had a group of ex-werewolves who served under him as animal handlers, and while that sounded like Varric-level bullshit to Anders, from what he remembered of Oghren’s stories he was pretty sure it was true.

Amell offered to send him one for Dog and Hawke accepted. The rest of the day was humbling, watching Amell demonstrate a dozen different things with Dumat and discuss how they could apply to Dog. Amell seemed keenly aware of what a loss of hearing meant for Hawke, given how he relied on it. He talked about combat, and working as a unit, and having to learn just as much as the dog, and how Hawke should avoid it until they were skilled if he could.

They had lunch, and dinner, and by the time they left Anders felt equally ashamed and impressed. Hawke and Amell’s lives had changed, as irrevocably as Anders’ life had changed with Justice, and it took seeing them together to really realize it. It wasn’t something anyone could fix in a day.

"No fight without me," Anders signed on the walk home.

"No fight with you," Hawke signed back.

Anders spent the twelfth of Kingsway with Amell with no protests from Hawke. They walked out to the Wounded Coast, and found a comfortable outcropping of rock where they could sit with their feet in the water, chilled by the ocean spray and warmed by their magic. The scent of brine and the call of the gulls occupied Anders' thoughts, and it was peaceful.

The stark contrast to ereyesterday wasn't lost on him. Amell hadn't mentioned any of it. Hawke hadn't just aired their dirty laundry, he'd dumped it over Amell’s head. They'd yelled about everything from affairs to enucleation, and the man had no reaction. Anders wasn't sure if that made it better or worse. Amell should have had a reaction. Something beyond the apology he shouldn't have given in the first place.

"You remember that swim in the Hafter? In summer?" Anders asked, "Everyone just stripped and jumped in?"

"I remember," Amell said with a fond smile.

Anders cleared his throat, still trying to do the same for ereyesterday’s embarrassment, "I guess modesty didn't matter as much after the mines."

"It never did. We're Wardens."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means we all have the same nightmares,” Amell shrugged, “The same blood. The same Calling. It means we never have a reason to be ashamed of ourselves or each other."

Amell leaned back on his hands, the sun on his face and the wind in his hair, and seemed content in his own existence. Not for the first time, Anders envied him. He was like the eye of a storm, but Anders couldn’t stay with him forever. Amell was leaving and Anders was staying and he had to find some way to weather the world without him. Some way to weather Hawke without him.

"I don't need you to rescue my relationship,” Anders said. Amell didn't say anything, so Anders continued, "You shouldn't have apologized."

"You're right," Amell said.

"You can't just say that every time I'm mad at you," Anders frowned.

"You have a right to be mad,” Amell countered, “It wasn't my place to say anything."

"... Thanks."

"Would you mind if I spoke to Justice?" Amell asked.

"Did you bring any Aqua Magus?" Anders joked.

"Are you out already?" Amell asked.

"I'm kidding, I'm not Oghren," Anders said, reaching for the Fade and the spirit that tethered him to it, and the quiet that came when Anders surrendered to him.

“I am always present,” Justice reminded Amell, correcting the poor posture Anders had been indulging on the rocky outcropping. “When you speak with Anders you speak with me.”

“I wanted to hear of your life,” Amell explained.

“My life is Anders' life,” Justice said.

“There must be some distinction.”

“There is none.”

“Anders doesn’t care for poetry,” Amell pointed out.

“... perhaps not,” Justice allotted.

“What else do you enjoy?”

“... Self expression,” Justice signed the words for his own benefit. “Pursuit of purpose. Valour and compassion. The sun.”

“Can I ask a personal question?”

“All questions are personal.”

“More personal.”

“You may.”

“Your love for Anders - could you speak to it? Your life with him?”

“It is as he has told you. We exist within one another. To love him is to love myself." For Anders to love him was for Anders to love himself, and perhaps why his mortal struggled so with the reciprocation. “He is beautiful. It is as if a spark of the divine lives in him. It is not a thing to which I can make a comparison. Anders is not one virtue. He is all of them.”

“His vices?” Amell prompted.

Justice thought of his rage, his desire, his pride. His capacity to overcome them. “These too are beautiful.”

“Do you still find the world overwhelming?” Amell asked.

“At times.”

“Now?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Justice thought on it. The outcropping beneath them and its separation from sand and sensation. The seclusion. The calm of Anders’ mind and the world around them, chaos confined for the moment to the turbulent and tumultuous sea that broke upon their haven here. “Many reasons.”

“Anders mentioned a manifesto?” Amell asked.

“Yes,” Justice recalled fondly, “We wrote it together.”

“I'd like to read it.”

“I can recite it for you.”

“From memory?”

“Yes.”

“Please.”

They spent the rest of the day together and Anders stayed up with Merrill that evening. Her things were packed, one small bag that held a single change of clothes she’d bought for herself. She'd lost everything else in the fire.

"Are you sure about this?" Anders asked, sitting with her in her nest of blankets, a game of draughts going nowhere between them.

"I'm sure," Merrill said. "I think it will be good for me. To get away for a while. To be by myself. To figure out who I am and what I want."

"You can't do that in Kirkwall?" Anders asked.

“... This place is so sad now. Everything is cold, hard stone and it remembers the blood that was spilled on it. The Veil is so thin - the spirits echo us in the Beyond and they don’t tell the same stories Varric does.”

“That’s why we have to stay,” Anders argued, “What about the elves? What about the alienage?”

“I helped. I really did help. I found all the clans I could find and got all the aid I could get, but there are a lot of elves, and there are a lot of alienages, and I just… I don’t have to be here. I can’t be here. It’s so dismal, Anders.”

“You think being a Warden isn’t?”

“I don’t want to be a Warden. I just want to be me and I want to know who that is… without my clan, or the alienage, or Hawke, or Isabela, or Fenris, or anyone else.” Merrill reached across the board game and squeezed both his hands, “I promise I’ll write. I’ll write so much. I’ll write so many letters the trees will be so very cross with me, but I need to do this, and you need to let me.”

Merrill’s eyes glowed in the dark, a reflective emerald not unlike the Fade, and Anders knew she could see him just fine. Anders couldn’t see her, but it had less to do with the dark, and more to do with his tears. “Are you coming back?”

“I think so,” Merrill said. “I hope so. I would miss you if I didn’t.”

Anders stayed up with her long after the sun had set and the moon had risen. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but he woke up in a crumpled ball with a pain in his back and game pieces stuck to his cheek. Merrill was draped over him, and she must have drooled or cried in her sleep because his tunic was cold where her face pressed against it.

They shared a bittersweet breakfast, and went down to the docks together. Varric, Fenris, and a handful of elves from the alienages came to see her off. Anders brought a few parcels for Amell, but his hands were sweating so much he left patterns on the parchment. The soldiers from Amaranthine loaded their ship for the voyage home, with a handful to remain at the compound at Anders’ disposal.

“Don’t stay gone too long, Daisy,” Varric squeezed Merrill’s hands, completely engulfed in his gloves.

“I’ll try not to,” Merrill promised.

“Here,” Varric produced a letter from his pocket, and pressed it into her hands, “Something for you to read on your voyage.”

“You always tell the best stories.”

“They’re better when you’re in them,” Varric smiled sadly.

Amell followed a group of the soldiers from the compound to docks, a pack over his shoulder and Dumat at his side. He was dressed in white trousers and a brown doublet with golden trim, Amaranthine colors, for his voyage back to it. Anders opened his mouth, but no words came out. It was all just wind, swallowed up by the sea.

“Amell! Over here!” Merrill called for him.

Amell joined them, smiling, “Merrill. Anders. Who’s with you?”

“Yours truly,” Varric said; his voice sounded scratchy, but at least he could talk.

“This is Fenris,” Merrill introduced the man, bundled up in furs and a frown. “He’s-... my friend.”

Fenris grunted.

“Pleased to meet you,” Amell held out a hand. A branded hand darted out from the furs like a snake, clasped Amell’s hand like a bite, and vanished just as quickly.

“We’re good to set out, Commander!” One of the sailors called from the ship.

“I suppose I should go then,” Merrill noted. She hugged Anders hard, and stared at Fenris. “... Fenris.”

“Merrill,” Fenris said. Anders supposed it was better than ‘witch,’ but that was about all he could say for the goodbye.

“... write to me?”

“As you wish,” Fenris mumbled.

“I’ll miss you. I’ll miss all of you,” Merrill walked down the pier and boarded the ship.

“Creepy. It was good to meet you,” Varric said thickly, and left in the opposite direction.

“Anders…?” Amell prompted him.

“That’s me. Here - I -...” Anders fumbled with the parcels, and pressed both to Amell’s chest.

“What are these?” Amell asked, rearranging the packages to fit under his arm.

“... My manifesto,” Anders said, and suddenly realized he was an idiot. He felt like an idiot, struggling to get the words out around his heart in his throat while Amell stood in front him as calm and collected as always. “I know you can’t read it, but I don’t have any raised ink. I can get some - I didn’t have any-”

“Thank you,” Amell smiled. “I have scribes. They can read it or copy it for me.”

"Right,” Anders cleared his throat. “The other one is a bilboquet. I know, I know it’s Orlesian, but it’s a game for kids. I thought - you know - for Kieran.”

Something in Amell’s expression cracked, like shattered porcelain. He was still smiling, but there was so much sorrow in it, and all at once he wasn't the Warden Commander or the Chancellor of Ferelden or anyone but Amell, and Amell was leaving.

Anders grabbed him, his arms locked tight around Amell’s shoulders. There wasn’t anything in his eyes. It wasn't sweat or sea foam or rain. He was just crying, and he couldn’t make himself stop. Childish, inane pleas caught in his throat. Nonsense. Don't go. Please don't go. Please don't leave me again. He must have said one of them.

"Never," Amell promised, squeezing hard.

Anders and Fenris stayed on the docks, long after Amell and Merrill had gone, watching their ship sail away across the Waking Sea.

Chapter 127: What You Make It

Notes:

Kingsway is the low name and Parvulis is the high name for the ninth calendar month in Thedas. Chapter settings reference the month by their high names whereas characters reference the months by their low names. I do not know why I made this decision five years ago but it is too late to rectify and a reminder seemed warranted.

Thank you for all of your subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:34 Dragon 13 Parvulis Morning
Kirkwall Docks

It was Kingsway.

It had been Kingsway for thirty years.

And Kingsway was cold.

It sank under his clothes, his skin, a hoarfrost coating his lungs and throat and choking out every miserable breath. The cold burned his nose, his face, his eyes, but Anders wasn’t ready to blink. He could still see the ship, a speck of black on blue against the roiling horizon of the Waking Sea.

Fenris was still there, a hunchbacked bundle of furs and unspoken feelings. He was the only person left in Kirkwall who hadn’t shared his opinion on Anders’ relationships, but Anders doubted it was because he didn’t have one. Especially not after he’d seen Anders have half a breakdown in Amell’s arms. He could already hear it. Some heartless, closed-minded barb about how Anders was an abomination and Hawke was a monster and Amell was a maleficar and they all deserved each other.

“Well?” Anders shrugged deeper into his coat. “Let’s hear it.”

“Hear what?” Fenris asked.

“Whatever you’re going to say about all that,” Anders said. “About me.”

"What have you to do with anything!?" Fenris whirled on him, obscuring his view of the ship. Emerald eyes contrasted sharply with blood red veins and the tears that glistened on his lashes, and maybe Anders was the heartless one. “You think I am here for you!? You think I care about you!? That I think of you at all!?”

“Merrill-” Anders started.

“Do not!” Fenris grabbed a handful of his coat, snarling into his face. “Do not speak her name. Not to me. Not ever.”

“You want me to call her witch instead?” Anders snapped.

“What I want-!” Fenris’ voice broke, and he shoved Anders back a pace. “Just-... leave me be.”

Fenris left. Anders watched him go, and the regret he felt for it was so much easier to bear it was almost comforting. “... I’m still pretty selfish, aren’t I?” Anders asked himself. Justice didn’t answer, which Anders supposed was an answer in itself. “Still think my vices are beautiful?”

A tension in his gut, like stress, telling him to follow Fenris. Justice didn’t say it, but Anders could feel it. The ever present urge to atone. “... Yeah. You’re right.” Anders sighed.

It took Anders a few days to work up the nerve to talk to Fenris. The man hadn’t asked for his company and most likely didn’t want it, but where Anders had Justice and Hawke, Fenris had no one. Anders passed the time he should have spent with Fenris fixating on his ring - trying to decipher whose emotions were whose. Depression, Anders. Guilt, also Anders. Sympathy, Justice. Impatience, also Justice. Something profoundly undefinable. A sort of saudade, maybe Amell.

They all hurt, in their own ways, and it had to be a hurt Fenris felt with him. Alcohol seemed like the best solution, and Anders couldn't have been more relieved Justice finally let him drink it. He took a bottle of Aqua Magus and a bottle of Carnal 8:69 Blessed he hoped Hawke wouldn't miss from the cellars and went to visit Fenris. An elf opened the door - one of the women Isabela had rescued(?) or recruited(?) from the Blooming Rose. She had beautiful brown hair braided tightly along the side of her head, and her vallaslin was faded but her smile wasn't.

"Hey Faith," Anders remembered her from his time at the Rose.

"Hey Healer," Faith wore a blanket, and pulled it a little tighter around her shoulders. "You here to come or come in?"

"Is Fenris here?" Anders asked.

"He's in the mirror room," Faith waved him inside. "One of the girls has the itch. Do you think you could see her first?"

"Sure," Anders supposed. Faith led him through the mansion. It seemed to have turned into the passionate love affair of a smoke den and a brothel. The floors were covered with overlapping rugs and tapestries, an excess of couches, cots, and clothes spilling luridly from one room to the next. The air was heavy with the scent of sex and blood lotus, and there was a layer of magic to it all.

Anders swore he could hear the whispers of Desire. Breathless gasps seeking a crescendo, like someone on the edge of ecstasy, their trembling fingers caressing the Veil and begging entry. It put him on edge, but the Veil hadn't torn. It was just thin, like it was everywhere in Kirkwall. There were two apostates among the prostitutes living at the estate, and they seemed both aware of and unconcerned by the demon feeding off them.

“Her name is Allure,” One of the apostates explained, who looked very much like a desire demon herself, save that her skin was more bronze than lilac.

“You know she’s a demon, right?” Anders asked while he healed her.

“She’s only a demon if you want her to be,” The apostate said, which wasn’t entirely surprising, considering she was elven. “Don’t worry, we use protection. She never comes across the Veil, and she helps keep the patrols away.”

“She’ll only betray you,” Anders frowned. “That’s all her kind can do.”

“Her kind can do a lot more than that,” The other apostate grinned, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Does Fenris know?” Anders asked.

“He has his own demons to worry about.”

Anders was not about to be the one to tell Fenris his estate was haunted. He resolved to ignore it. So long as there was no tear in the Veil, the demon's influence wasn’t really hurting anyone, and Anders was the last person who should have been facing off against a Desire demon right now. Not when there was no telling what it would look like... or who it would look like.

Faith led him upstairs when he finished his rounds, and knocked on the door of a room he'd never been in before. "Fenris?"

"Leave me be," Fenris called back.

"Your friend is here to see you," Faith said.

"I have no friends," Fenris snapped.

"... well… he's in there." Faith shrugged, "Good luck."

Anders rearranged the bottles under his arm, and wondered what he was doing here. He and Fenris weren’t friends. At best, they tolerated each other. At worst, they hated each other. Fenris must have had other friends in the city, but then why weren’t they here? Anders tried to remember the few moments they’d shared that went past tolerance. Their forced camaraderie in Deep Roads. Fenris’ understanding of Anders’ blackouts on the Sundermount. His belief in Anders’ ability to heal what Quentin had done to Hawke.

… What had Anders ever done for him?

He knocked. Fenris didn’t respond. Anders opened the door.

A mirror room, Faith had called it.

Anders hadn’t even considered what that meant.

Glass. Everywhere Anders looked - there was glass. Shattered pieces - some clear, some reflective - spread across the floor like a puzzle. Stacked against the walls were bits and pieces of wood: ironbark, oak, pine. The burnt and broken frames of doors or windows or mirrors. Fenris sat in the center of it all, the pulse of his lyrium markings reflecting off the many pieces of glass and painting the room in sapphire. He had on a pair of plain black trousers, with brown leather gloves scratched a shade closer to beige. The only piece of glass that wasn’t broken was the bottle in his lap.

Anders didn’t know what to say. Anders didn't know what needed to be said. He picked his way across the glass to Fenris’ side. Fenris glowered for it, but he seemed more tired than anything else. Anders sat next to him.

“I said leave me be,” Fenris muttered.

“Shut up,” Anders said.

Fenris shut up. Anders handed him the bottle of Carnal to replace the empty one in his lap. From his squint, Fenris must have suspected it was poison, but after a year of lessons he knew how to read. His eyes went from the label, to Anders, to the label.

“... This is expensive,” Fenris noted.

“It was in the cellar,” Anders explained.

“... Hawke may be angry with you,” Fenris warned him.

“Hawke’s always angry with me,” Anders shrugged.

“Hm.” Fenris hummed. “... Are you familiar with the vintage?”

“I assume it comes from grapes,” Anders joked.

Fenris didn’t laugh, because Fenris never laughed at Anders’ jokes, but Anders wasn’t sure what else to call the noise he made. “It’s an Orlesian liqueur for the daring, or those who wish to seem so. It is believed to enhance... sensation, if you will. See here, the peach pit at the bottom?” Fenris angled the bottle so Anders could see the erotic carving.

“Well that’s-” Anders snorted, “If I have any sensations that need enhancing, I’ll keep that in mind. Honestly, it just looked like a nice bottle.”

Fenris chuckled, “So it is.”

Fenris found a corkscrew, abandoned a few feet away in the glass, and opened the Carnal. Anders held out the Aqua Magus he’d brought for himself, and Fenris opened it for him. Anders took a small sip of his Aqua Magus. Fenris took a fish-worthy gulp of his Carnal.

“Why are you here, mage?” Fenris asked.

Because Anders had slighted him and he had an obligation to set it right. Because of all his wrongs this was the easiest to rectify. Because he could relate to how Fenris felt. Because someone should be.

“I just am,” Anders said.

Fenris nodded, cradling the Carnal against his chest. There was something soothing in the silence and the way the lyrium filled it. In the unspoken apology and Fenris’ unspoken acceptance of it.

“So...” Anders said.

“So?” Fenris asked.

“What is all this?” Anders asked.

“Broken glass,” Fenris said.

“You don’t say,” Anders joked.

“I had intended to tell her…” Fenris picked up a piece of broken glass, turning it over in his hands. “The glass just seemed easier to find than the words.”

“You sure found a lot of it,” Anders noted. It couldn’t have all been from Merrill’s mirror. There were too many pieces of too many different types of glass.

“I confess, I never paid her mirror much mind until she lost it,” Fenris said. “I remember only the size and the shape of it. I cannot say for certain if any of this is even from her mirror.”

“How did you get it all?” Anders asked.

“I looked,” Fenris shrugged. “I spent three months combing through the wreckage of her apartment for every piece of glass and wood… The gloves were a belated occurrence. I may have spilled more blood for the accursed thing than she.”

"And you’re okay with that?” Anders asked.

“There is no sport in baiting me, mage,” Fenris warned him, “You will find it too easy.”

“I’m not trying to bait you,” Anders promised. Fighting felt so much like talking these days, Anders wasn’t sure he’d even notice if they were. “I just know how you feel about blood mages.”

“Do you?” Fenris raised an eyebrow at him. “How is it you know and I don’t?”

Anders set his drink down with a surge of excitement not entirely his own, “So you understand it’s just a tool?”

“For some,” Fenris said cautiously.

“And the rest of it?” Anders asked.

“The rest of what?”

“By now, you must see what an injustice the templars are,” They said.

“Must I?” Fenris asked, raising a cautious eyebrow at the veilfire playing across their veins. “Templars try to control what they have good reason to fear.”

“But they go too far,” They argued.

“Talk to Hawke about his mother,” Fenris took another drink of his wine, “Ask him who went “too far.””

Anders had already talked to Hawke about his mother. He knew how that conversation had gone. If a mage didn’t want to be in the Circle, then Hawke was supportive, but beyond that support he thought the Circle kept good mages safe and bad mages locked away. Nothing was that black and white. Anders felt a familiar surge of anger. “You can’t hold all mages responsible for that!”

“I don’t, but it doesn’t take all mages to cause something like that to happen,” Fenris said. “Only the weak ones.”

“Not all mages are weak!”

“True,” Fenris didn’t match Anders’ anger. He just sighed, long and hard, and stared out at his sea of glass. “Merrill, for instance, was not weak.”

“But she was a blood mage,” Anders pressed.

“... I know.”

“And?”

“And what?” Fenris demanded. “I have seen the depths of man’s depravity and it is bottomless. I am not saying the Circle is the answer. I am not saying I have an answer. I know Merrill was a blood mage, but that does not mean-... It does not mean anything.” Fenris stared at his warped reflection in the bit of glass he held, “I do not want her in pieces.”

There was so much emotion in so few words it almost scared him, and they weren’t even his emotions. Anders fought down the instinct to run from them with a joke. Something about how everything Fenris touched ended up in pieces. Anders wasn’t exactly one to talk. “Why didn't you tell her?” Anders asked instead. "Why don't you?"

Anders had been so self-absorbed he’d assumed Fenris already had, and the two had rekindled their romance after Isabela left for Ostwick. It hadn't helped that Merrill hadn’t corrected the assumption until Anders had asked her. It also hadn’t helped that they hadn't seemed like just friends. There was definitely nothing friendly in the way Fenris had spent the past three months. The room was practically a shrine.

“What purpose would that serve with her gone?” Fenris demanded.

“She’d know?”

“To what end?” Fenris frowned, “I will not manipulate her into a love ill suited to her life.”

“It’s not manipulative,” Anders frowned back at him, “It’s just giving her a choice.”

“She made her choice,” Fenris said, but for once there was nothing bitter in the way he said it. “She made it for herself. I’ll not take that from her to sate my own selfishness, and neither will you. Hear me, mage, this room stays between us.”

“But this is wrong,” Justice argued, “Her purpose lies in her pursuit of lost knowledge and the eluvian was her key to reclaiming that knowledge for her people. To deny her would not be just.”

“There is no purpose here, spirit,” Fenris tossed the bit of glass he held back into one of the piles. “Just broken glass.”

“Merrill almost died for her mirror,” Anders reminded him. “You don’t think she’d want to know you saved it?”

“You cannot promise her I have,” Fenris countered. “Do you see an eluvian here?” Fenris gestured vaguely between the many piles of glass. One clear, one reflective, one a shade of silver, one almost black. For all the time Anders had spent with Merrill, he still couldn’t say. Her mirror had just been a mirror to him. He just remembered glass, a wood frame painted gold or maybe jade, with pieces twisted around the base like a snake or a root, and so many cracks Merrill had filled with magic and blood.

“Merrill might,” Anders said.

“She might not. If she wishes to return to Kirkwall, then she will return to Kirkwall, and I will tell her then, but I will not lure her back with false hope, and neither will you.”

It wasn’t false hope, it was just hope. They retrieved one of the broken shards, trying to get a sense for the motes of memory that clung to it, but no matter which they touched, there was only fire and fear. Whatever memories there were in the glass, the invasion overwhelmed them. It couldn’t overwhelm the magic, assuming it still lingered in the pieces as it did in the whole, but the Veil was thin and they weren’t sure what they were searching for. They set the piece they held aside with a sigh, and took another sip of Aqua Magus, the lyrium in it tangling them ever tighter.

“... This was selfless.” They said. Three months digging through broken glass, for want of nothing but the happiness of another. “You must love her.”

“What of it?” Fenris took another drink. “Love is not magic. It means only what you make it.”

It seemed a thing to think upon. Their love and what they made of it. With each other. With Hawke. With all those dear to them. They wished Fenris well and went home still entangled. Two drinks seemed perhaps an overindulgence, and they laid out on a couch in the solar, waiting for the effects to dissipate. Ser Cumference joined them, unconcerned by the veilfire rippling through their veins, and curled up on their stomach.

If only all love were as uncomplicated.

Hawke found them there after a short rest. He was dressed in his father’s finery, a black doublet with a crimson corset, accented with silver chains and leather straps. It held mixed memories of Wintersend, where a fight had led to their first kiss.

“What are you doing up here?” Hawke asked.

“Lying down,” They signed.

“Sit with you?” Hawke asked.

“You may,” They signed.

Hawke joined them on the couch and they shifted so their head was on his lap. Hawke undid their hair tie, and ran his fingers through the flaxen strands, humming under his breath. They weren’t sure if he could hear what he was humming, or if he was going off sensation alone, but it was a familiar serenade. One written in worship of Anders’ hands, and only Anders’ hands.

“We would hear of your affections for us,” They signed.

“Too fast,” Hawke’s brow furrowed, “You, hear, me… what?”

“Affection,” They signed again.

“Affection?”

“Yes.”

Hawke seemed to think on it for a time. “Alright,” He said eventually, “I’ll be right back.”

He left them on the couch, and returned with his lute, dusty with disuse after three months. “I don’t know if I can still play this,” He warned them, reclaiming his spot on the couch.

“We will follow your intentions,” They had to sign twice for Hawke to follow along.

Hawke fiddled with the strings, for what purpose neither of them could say. “Can’t hear myself. Didn’t have this written out. Just - you know. Whatever this sounds like.” Hawke spared them a suspicious glance, as if he expected to find judgment in their expression, but they kept it neutral, and so he sang.

“I know fire is your water
I know you live your life accursed
I know blood is your salvation
I know you’re near to death with thirst

“I know, I know
I know the flames are catching
I know, I know
I know the flames are cleansing.

“I know the embers are your air
I know how the pyres burned
I know the scars they left behind
I know the man that they interned

“I know, I know
I know that fire always burns
I know, I know
I know the ashes in your urns.”

They were good intentions, though there was no plurality in them, and in truth they had not expected otherwise. They lingered in the solar, signing and singing, and fading into singularity, and eventually unconsciousness. Anders woke up alone some hours later. He had a headache, and a cup of tea to curb it. Anders reheated it with a breath of primal magic, thinking of the man who had left it for him, and the spirit who drank it with him.

“That was fun, right? Us being us?” Anders asked, but he could never be sure if Justice had the same opinion or no opinion when he had to rely on emotion to distinguish between the two of them. “We should be us more often. This whole thing was one of the best and worst times of my life, and I don’t think I could have gotten through it without you. I don’t know how Fenris does it by himself.

“I know you want us to focus on the cause and this whole thing with Hawke and Amell has just been a distraction, but sometimes I really need a distraction. You must need one too every now and then. I know you’re looking forward to that poetry book Amell promised you... and I’m sorry Hawke and you aren’t-... you know. I’m sorry it’s just me. I don’t know how much that matters to you, but… I love you.”

Anders finished his tea and ran his hands through his hair. He loved Justice. Of course he loved Justice. Everyone loved justice. The world was a terrible place and terrible things happened to not-so-terrible people and the only justice in the world was lack of it because no one deserved all the terrible things that happened to them. Justice was a virtue, a pursuit, an obligation.

He was also a spirit. A spirit who liked poetry, and music, and magic. A spirit that had saved his life more times than Anders could count. A spirit who saw beauty in everything, even Anders. A spirit who loved him, but Anders didn’t know what that meant, and he didn’t know what Justice wanted it to mean.

“Only one way to find out,” Anders supposed.

Glyphs were as much art as they were magic. Imbue the intricate linework and flowing calligraphy with mana, and you had a spell. In theory. Anders sat on the floor of their room with Hawke's kaddis that evening, fingers dripping crimson over the jar. It had a sour sort of smell like old paint, pungent enough to mask possession. The mabari sat at his feet, snuffling at his toes like it hadn't spent the past year trying to chew them off. After an hour of deliberation, Anders was swimming in slobber, and the dog was covered in enough wards to fill a grimoire.

Anders didn’t need to use his grimoire. He had Alrik's outline - branded into his wrist - and that was enough. All he had to do was trace over it. The runework would sever his connection to the Fade, and once he went to sleep, he and Justice could talk. Unless his spirit wanted to do more than talk.

Did Justice want to have sex him? Did Anders want to have sex with Justice? He didn’t think he did. It seemed like something they would have done by now, all things considered. Anders already had plenty of sex. He had sex with Hawke. He had sex with himself. He’d had sex with Isabela, and almost had sex with Karl, and Justice had never seemed interested in any of it. Not that that meant he couldn’t just be interested in sex with Anders.

… What would that even be like? The last time they’d been in the Fade together Justice had just looked like him. Was Anders supposed to have sex with himself? Anders wasn’t sure even he was narcissistic enough to manage that. Would Justice have some other form? Would he care what form he had? Would he have to be a he? Why didn’t Anders know and why couldn’t he stop thinking about sex?

Maybe because he usually had sex when he went to sleep, but Hawke was finishing up with something with someone and hadn’t joined him for bed yet. It just Anders, and Justice, and the damn dog. The filthy creature abandoned Anders’ toes for his face, nuzzling at his cheek and slathering him with drool.

"Stop that," Anders shoved the snuffling mabari off, "I really don't like all this... open slobbery affection. Go on, go away or I'll just keep wasting kaddis on you."

The dog cocked its head at him.

"Go away," Anders said again, "I know you understand me."

Dog sneezed on him.

"Oh for - how are you supposed to help Hawke hear if you don't listen?"

With a whine, the dog finally left. Anders finished the glyph and it shimmered to life on his wrist. It felt like a door slamming in his face, cutting him off from the Fade. The world was suddenly, mercilessly, immutable and unchanging, and Anders was small. Smaller than he was in shackles or a cell, but it wasn’t a brand. He could wash it off whenever he wanted. He knew that. Of course he knew that.

Anders pulled his knees up to his chest and took a shallow breath. He knew that. He knew it. He knew that. He knew it. He-

“Anders?” Hawke’s voice forced Anders’ head out of his knees. Anders hadn’t heard him come in. At some point Anders had fisted his hands in his hair. The strands were stuck together with kaddis, pulling on his scalp and giving him a headache.

“One and only,” Anders cleared his throat. He forgot to sign it.

Hawke sat down next to him and untangled Anders’ hands from his hair. He held his arm, and ran his thumb along the edge of the glyph. “... Why don’t you try talking to him tomorrow?”

“No,” Anders signed. “No, I want to talk to him now.”

“... You want me to help you sleep?” Hawke offered.

“Yes,” Anders signed.

Hawke left his side, and came back an indeterminate amount of time later with a pipe, a pouch, and a tinderbox. Hawke filled the pipe, lit it, and handed whatever it was over. “Knockout powder,” Hawke explained. “Takes about ten seconds. I’ll carry you to bed when you’re asleep and leave a bowl and cloth on the nightstand, and you can wash it off when you wake up.”

Anders didn’t remember smoking or falling asleep, but he woke up to fighting.

“For fuck’s sake, not again,” Anders groaned, dragging his pillow over his head.

Except he didn’t have a pillow.

He had the concept of a pillow. Anders woke up in a field of reeds in the Fade to an absolute mindfuck. Anders was yelling at Anders yelling at Anders.

One version of him was clean shaven with close cropped hair, and wore dark leather armor, with knee-high boots and elbow-high gloves. His shoulders were squared, and covered in blue brigandine studded with silver. A chainmail tabard was belted about his waist, perfect posture proudly displaying the gryphon insignia emblazoned on his chest. He held a weapon, but Anders’ mind couldn’t process if it was a sword or a staff.

The other version was closer to Anders now. A full beard, long hair loosely bundled, with a dark leather coat and feathered spaulders covering the first outfit that fell out of his armoire. One too many belts and pouches held bandages, poultices, canteens, and whatever else an impromptu patient might need, his slouched posture constantly on the brink of a breakdown.

Actual Anders was in a pair of silk trousers and too tired for whatever this was.

“One of us is going to have to change,” Anders interrupted the fight with a joke.

“But we all seemed so fond of this form,” Current-Anders protested, “And I do hate to be left out.”

“Begone from here, demon,” Warden-Anders, or Justice, ordered.

“My name is Allure,” Current-Anders, or Allure, said, “You have treated with my kind before. I mean you no harm.”

“A mistake,” Justice frowned. “One not to be repeated.”

Anders climbed to his feet. The landscape warped and changed from a field of reeds to pieces of his past. The river in Tallo where his father had drowned him flowed across the landscape, cutting Allure off from him and Justice. Anders' clinic manifested around Justice, while Hawke’s estate bled together with Vigil’s Keep behind Allure.

“... What are you talking about?” Anders asked, taking a spot behind Justice.

“I once tried to trade with a hunger demon,” Justice explained, not taking his eyes off Allure. “An unreasonable evil, as are all your kind.”

“You talked to a hunger demon?” Anders asked. “But you hate demons.”

“With just cause,” Justice frowned.

Anders couldn't imagine Justice interacting with a demon. Anders thought of his Harrowing and wondered if Justice had gone through something similar or if it had been completely different. If that was why he was so sympathetic to the plight of mages.

“I am not some base hunger,” Allure argued. “I am so much more than that, but I am no threat to you. I can see your mortal is taken. Can we not converse?”

Anders watched the two Fade denizens stare at each other. It wasn't the kind of night he’d planned on having, but then, Merrill had treated with demons. Amell had treated with demons. Apparently, even Justice had treated with demons.

“What do you want?” Anders asked.

“Everything and nothing,” Allure said brightly, manifesting a bridge across the river. The demon crossed, but stopped in the middle when Justice set a hand on his sword-staff.

Awkward. More so that it just looked like Anders threatening himself. “Remember what I said about one of us changing?” Anders asked.

“But this is the form your spirit prefers. Your spirit desires no other,” Allure argued. “You are… complex. Perhaps this one?” Allure’s form shifted, and suddenly they were Hawke. “Or this one?” Amell. “Or this?” Armor. Kristoff’s armor. A weathered silverite and threadbare tabard of a hard lived life, Aura’s locket resting gently against a griffon ensignia in a delicate balance of love and duty.

“... That one.” Anders said.

"This is a demon of desire," Justice reminded him. "It exists to make men forget their purpose and their pride. Do not relax around it."

"I won't," Anders promised. "What do you want to talk about?"

"You," Allure said, helmet tilting in a slight nod in lieu of the smile the demon could no longer wear. The landscape shifted to the Vigil’s chapel, where Anders had spent most of his time with Justice. Allure sat at the base of Andraste. "Your spirit. Your love. It is a rare thing. Not a spirit pulled to a mortal, but a mortal pulled to a spirit. You are… different."

"I'm a spirit healer," Anders explained, sitting on one of the pews. Justice stood next to him, hand not leaving his sword-staff. "And an abomination. It's complicated."

"Not this," Allure said. "This is pure. I felt it in your magic when you healed my mages, and I desired to see it for myself."

"... so, what, you just want to watch?" Anders joked.

"Would that your spirit had such an interest," Allure said with a sensual sigh, chased by a playful giggle. "I would be delighted."

Anders glanced at Justice, "You don't?"

"No," Justice shot him a frown of reprimand that left him simultaneously relieved and embarrassed.

"But I mean - you love me, right?"

"Of course," Justice frowned the same frown.

"There are many kinds of love," Allure said helpfully.

Anders sought out Justice’s hand. Justice kept his eyes on the demon, but he squeezed - firm and free of doubt.

"I love you too." Anders said.

Chapter 128: Letters from the Vigil

Notes:

Frumentum is the high name and Harvestmere is the low name for the 10th month in Thedas.
Umbralis is the high name and Firstfall is the low name for the 11th month in Thedas
Cassus is the high name and Haring is the low name for the 12th month in Thedas.

Letters are arranged in order of the sender first and the month they are sent second.

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:34 Dragon Frumentum, Umbralis, and Cassus
Letters From Vigil’s Keep

From Senior Warden Velanna - Sent in Harvestmere
This letter has been crumpled and smoothed out.

Why am I not surprised you did not think to send letters back with Amell for any of us? Are you a spirit yourself, unmoored and adrift in the flow of time to change so little in three years? Or are you simply human? (That is not an allowance. It is an insult. Be sure to take it as one.)

I have nothing to say to you as you so clearly have nothing to say to me. I am only writing this because Nathan has all but forced my hand. Did you give any thought to us when you fled? Have you any idea how we suffered in your absence? You fool. You thoughtless fool.

We fled as you did, but Nathan came back for you, and Leonie had him imprisoned. Were it not for Amell he would be dead. I will never forgive you the weeks I spent trying to free him from the dungeons. You cannot imagine

Seranni should like to hear from you. She must think me a hahren with how often she asks to hear the stories. You are something of a legend here. You and Sigrun. They call you many things. The Heroes of Haring. The Martyrs. The Lord and Lady Redeemer. Never your names. You'd think they forgot them.

I did not. Write back.


From Senior Warden Velanna - Sent in Firstfall
A note from Seranni is included with this letter asking for more stories.

No, I do not forgive you. Do not be absurd. One apology is not sufficient. You owe me several and I shall expect them with regularity.

Yes, I am aware you are not entirely human, just I am aware you are not entirely funny. In fact, it is remarkable you are not entirely dead. Humans treated you like filth all your life and so you thought to spend three years hiding in it? Running a free clinic? I cannot believe you wasted your time and your magic on the same people who forced you to live so far below them you could not read what they thought of you if it were written on the soles of their shoes.

A free clinic. How absurd. I can just imagine what Leonie would say about all the coin you must have wasted over the years. Amell told you what he did to the shemlen bitch, I hope? How he crippled her for what she did to us? It was a shame you were not there to see it happen. I think my heart exploded with her leg.

Seranni appreciated your letter - and your wild stories. Compassion, Justice, and now Desire? Must you do everything to excess? The spirit would not be drawn to you so if you could but feel in moderation. My advice would be to control yourself and not to concern yourself with it. There is no harm in its presence. Perhaps it will help you realize this ridiculous distinction between spirits and demons is but another of the lies your Circle told you, but that would require you to listen to someone other than yourself for once, and I doubt that you are capable.

As for your other problem, you are a fool.

Of course I remember the apostates we rescued together years ago, but do you remember the woman you mean to rescue now? You are not the only one Cera tormented. You are not the only one she tried to kill. Amell banished her for a reason. She has gotten nothing less than she deserved. She was always a flat ear; now she simply looks the part.

Should her mutilation move me?

It does not.

Of course I will help.


From Senior Warden Velanna - Sent in Haring
There are blots on this letter as though from a few drops of water.

My clan took her. The next Arlathvenn is not for several years, and with my exile and Ilshae’s death, the only mage our clan had left was our Second. He became our new Keeper, and he has had to lead the clan alone after I tore it apart. He has no First or Second, and so the clan agreed to take her. Cera wanted me to thank you again for freeing her from the Circle, but my clan thanked me.

They actually thanked me.

You are a fool. You and that ridiculous spirit of yours. Atonement. Forgiveness. Redemption. What would you know of any of it?

You do not know regret. You do not know what it is to spill the blood of countless innocents. You do not know what it is to destroy your own family. You do not know what it is to have the death of loved ones on your hands. You do not understand. Once you have done something like that, you cannot make amends, you can only chase the empty concept of them in the Beyond.

I hate Cera.

I hate that she is alive. I hate that she is safe. I hate that she is happy. I hate that you rescued her and I hate the part that I played in that rescue. I hate that my clan has accepted her and I shall have to see her whenever I see them. I hate that she has survived and so many others have not. I hate her. I hate her so much, but they thanked me.

Thank you.

Thank you both.


From Warden Constable Nathaniel Howe - Sent in Harvestmere
The ink on this letter is faded to varying degrees, as if written over the course of several days.

It feels as though I am writing to a ghost. The Maker must be watching over you, my friend. Or perhaps the first of His children? In any case, I am glad you are well. I am glad you both are.

I can only imagine how overwhelming it must have been to learn that we survived. I can scarcely believe it myself. I apologize for whatever Velanna is writing now. I understand why you didn’t send any letters back for us. I am a little disappointed you elected not to return, but I understand.

From what I have heard, you have quite the life abroad. I spent eight years in the Free Marches, myself. I loved it there, especially Kirkwall. Were it not for my family’s ruin, I might have stayed indefinitely. Have you been to the Grand Tourney yet? There’s one every thousand days. The last would have been well over a year ago, though I’m not sure where it was held.

Perhaps you could convince the Viscount to host the next in Kirkwall? I’m sure you could get an audience as the Champion’s paramour. The trade and traffic could only help the city recover, and it would be a good excuse to visit. I won the archery contest at the Tourney in Tantervale, and it was one of the best times of my life.

I’m told Hawke is an archer as well? And that he trained with the Ash Warriors? I imagine he must be a frightening force on the battlefield. I look forward to meeting him someday. I hope the trainer for Dog (? Is that right? Is his name really Dog?) is able to help him.

Stay in touch,
Nate


From Warden Constable Nathaniel Howe - Sent in Firstfall
The ink is this letter is uniform as though written in one sitting.

I trust you are enjoying the lack of snow, my friend.

I envy you, but aside from the weather and the state of the world, things are well. Thank you for asking ‘Howe’ I’m doing. I’ve never heard that joke before. Especially not from you. Every day. For half a year.

No, I don’t regret leaving the Free Marches. The Vigil is my home now, and it’s good to be close to family. Yes, Delilah and Albert still have Ser Pounce-a-Lot. Yes, he’s doing well. I still think the name is a little ridiculous, but they insisted on keeping it for you. He gets along well with their son. He’s almost three now. They named him Sigurd, for Sigrun, and the part she played in saving the city.

It feels like there’s always a lot of children at the Vigil. My nephew, Amell’s son, Oghren’s son. Velanna and I have decided to abstain. Not just for the Taint, but given the lives we lead and the fact that our child would be half-blooded. I imagine it would hurt too much not to see her heritage in her children and I think I have more than enough family as it is.

What of you? You’ve been with Hawke almost two years now, I believe it was? Have you given any thought to marriage? Children?

As to your question, I believe it took around a year to train Dumat? You will have to ask Amell. I know that his loss of sense was difficult as well, but I don’t think it’s for me to share more than that.

Be well,
Nate


From Warden Constable Nathaniel Howe - Sent in Haring
There is a circular stain on this letter, as if a cup of tea or coffee were left on it.

Winter keep you warm, my friend.

I’m sorry to hear that the trainer is not - as you say - magic. I would counsel patience for both man and mabari. These things take time. The mabari is supposed to alert Hawke to sounds. If it doesn’t, then whatever is making that sound is going to get the better of him, and that can’t be a good feeling. Especially not if the trainer is pelting Hawke with noisemakers. I imagine it’s not as entertaining for him to experience as it is for you to witness.

As to the rest, no, I don’t think two years is too short a time to consider either conversation. I do think they’re important conversations to have before life has them for you, but that’s just what I’ve found to be true of my relationship. It need not apply to yours. I understand the two of you have a lot of recovery to focus on right now.

My own focus has been inward of late. The Divine’s death has been weighing on me, Maker rest her soul. I don’t think I realized how few of our friends share our faith until now. I hope you don’t mind me talking about it. I can’t help but feel as though I’ve lost my governess all over again. The stroke was no surprise considering her age, but to lose the Most Holy on Satinalia no less…

Amell mentioned the annum was once dedicated to Zazikel, the Archdemon of the Second Blight and Old God of Chaos. Her death was certainly chaotic. Divine Beatrix III personally named Revered Mother Dorothea her successor, and yet it took the Grand Consensus a month to officially declare her Divine Justinia V.

Part of me can’t help but wonder why? Did the Grand Clerics disagree with the choice? Did they doubt it? Beatrix III’s mind was failing. Who is to say she was of sound mind when she named Dorothea her successor? Or that she named her at all? They say Justinia had a colorful past, and if someone can manipulate their way onto the Sunburst Throne, I’m not sure what’s sacred anymore.

Walk in the Maker’s sight,
Nate


From Senior Warden Oghren Kondrat - Sent in Harvestmere
This letter is barely legible.

Hey Sparkles,

The fat bastard is dead and this fat bastard killed him! Sorry I didn’t come visit with the Boss, but time after a mission is Oghren time, if you know what I mean. You better not be crying about it though. If you wanna see me, you can get off your sorry ass and come see me. Ain’t hard to ride a boat. Your little elf friend did. Thank you, thank you, thank you for sending that little wild flower over to Oghren’s neck of the woods, by the way. I think she likes me. Knows my name and everything.

So anyway, I promised I’d tell you what we were doing and why we couldn’t stop doing it. Sparkles, you sure as shit better not let this letter get out, or I’m gonna be hot as the Feast Day shits. This is for your eyes only, get it? I mean it. Don’t go telling no one nothing. Not your old Boss or your new Boss.

So about two years ago, me and the Boss had what we in the Warden business call an oopsie. There was this expedition, see? More like a suicide mission, really. Boss likes those, but that wasn’t why we went. You ask anyone else, they’ll tell you the expedition was to rescue some noble fuck and find a lost thaig for the glory of Orzammar, but that’s nug shit.

We went cause of me. Cause of the ex-wife. Cause Branka wanted to find some long lost lore about golems, and the first expedition King Bhelen sent never came back. So she asks me, and I ask the Boss, and well… Kid’s like an ant trying to shoulder the world. Ain’t nothing that weighs more than that, so you can throw whatever else you want on top. I shouldn’t have asked. Kid shouldn’t have agreed.

But I did and he did and away we went. We save the expedition, save the research, shit, we even saved a golem, but we let something out. Something big. Something bad. Call ‘em Harvesters. These things are nasty as an Archdemon, Sparkles. Magic flesh golems full of blood and lyrium that get stronger with every kill and feed off the dead. These things were so powerful the ancestors sent the whole thaig into the Fade just to get rid of them.

Just one of these fucks caused the Hambleton massacre. Ate the whole fucking city cause of me. I’m telling you, Sparkles, it’s bad. If even one of those things goes unchecked, it’s gonna swallow the world.


From Senior Warden Oghren Kondrat - Sent in Firstfall
This letter is also barely legible.

Hey Sparkles,

Yikes. You didn't expect me to read all that did you?

I'm kidding. Kinda. Don't worry about it, alright? We got a handle on it. Boss's working with the ex-wife hunting the live ones and researching the dead ones. Besides, what are you gonna do about it? You know your post is a load of nugshit, right? I love you, Sparkles, but you're not a Warden. You're a glorified innkeeper.

Compound ain't anything else. Think about it. You got what? Five soldiers who report to you? And they do what exactly? Nothing but keep the pillows fluffed in case a Warden shows up. Boss only bought that place to keep the templars off your ass. You can bet he'd buy another if he could do the same about his cousin.

We got a fuckton more than just the Harvesters to worry about, and you ain't gonna hear half of it. You ask the boss, or anyone else, and you ain't gonna hear none of it. I'm glad you care, but caring ain't enough. If you wanna be a Warden, then be a Warden. And if you don't, then you don't.

I only told ya about the Harvesters so you wouldn't hold leaving against the Boss. I get it, you got a new guy, but we all know the Boss still loves you. I can see this getting weird, so look, it don't matter to me one way or the other who's dicking you down, but I'm too old for all this dicking around.


From Senior Warden Oghren Kondrat - Sent in Haring
Unsurprisingly, this letter is barely legible.

Hey Sparkles,

How do I know? Cause I know everything, that's how. How's he been? How's he really been? Why you asking, Sparkles? You're just gonna regret it. There's a reason the Kid didn't tell you. Past three years ain't been pretty. I guess I should start at the beginning.

Kid lost it when we got back from Avernus. And when I say he lost it, I mean he lost it. Kid was a brutal son of a bitch for a whole bloody year. He lost his eyes, he lost Sigrun, he lost you. How else was he supposed to be?

I don't blame him none. It was a good move. Coming back the way he did, if he'd come back weak, he might have lost the arling too. Damn near did, but he can still work his magic blind, and you can guess how he didn’t. I'll give you a hint. Starts with blood ends with magic.

I wish that were it. Kid went on a binge. Drink, smoke, dust, anything, everything. You name it, he took it. Kid threw himself into drugs and the Deep Roads, and eventually he took too much. Found him half dead in the wash couple years ago. Kid's lucky to be alive. Only thing that got him to stop was the Kid's kid.

Little shit means the world to him. Boss dropped the heavy stuff like heavy stuff. He's been good since. Really turned it around. Now, I'm not saying you were the only reason it went down like that, but you were a reason. He loves you, Sparkles. Honest to Stone, loves you.

Now you tell me, what do you think that means? What'd you expect? That the Boss would show up and sweep you off your feet? You got a guy. Wouldn't matter none to me if I were him, but the boss ain't about that. Of course he's not gonna tell you. What good's telling you gonna do?

I met the guy you're with. I'm sure he's great and all, but he don't seem like the sharing type. Boss told me he practically pissed on ya when he was there. So why don't you stop worrying about the Boss and start worrying about him? The Boss'll be alright. He's got a kid. He's got the kid's mom. He's got me.

He loves you, Sparkles, but he don't need you.


From Merrill Alerion - Sent in Harvestmere
The text on this letter gets progressively smaller closer to the end of the parchment, as if the author didn’t consider the size before they started writing.

Hello from Ferelden!

It's very muddy here. Do you remember it being muddy? I think I forgot. Elgar'nan, it's like the roads aren't paved. They are paved, it’s just like they aren’t. Amaranthine is actually a very pretty city. There are so many banners and tapestries it feels like the city’s made of cloth! It’s such a nice change from Kirkwall. It’s just so very muddy. It felt like I was wearing clay shoes by the time we reached the Vigil!

The Vigil is very lovely too. It’s stone, but it’s different. You can feel the strength in it. Like it would still be standing at the end of the world. I think I'll like it here. Everyone has been so very kind to me. They’re very busy though, and the Vigil is very big, and it’s hard not to get lost. I almost wish I had a ball of twine like Varric’s always joking about.

I promise I’m not complaining. It’s exciting! I’ve met so many people I feel like I’m at an Arlathvenn! That’s a gathering of clans, in case you didn’t know. Dalish clans that is. Not ALL the clans, of course, that wouldn’t be possible, but a lot of them! We have one every ten years. It’s like your human First Day where everyone checks to make sure everyone else is still alive. Only it’s not morbid! It’s really very fun. My parent’s clan didn’t make the last one. I hope they’re okay. I haven’t seen them in over ten years.

I think I’m going to go visit them. In the Dalish lands at Ostagar. Seranni said she would take me the next time she went. I met her at the last Arlathvann a few years ago. She’s different than I remember. She seems… very sick? Kind of dead? No one seems to talk about it, and I really want to ask, but I don’t want to be rude. She can’t really be dead, can she? Can Wardens live if they’re dead?

I know she’s not possessed, so it must just be the Taint, but it looks… so bad. Not that there’s anything wrong with being dead, if she’s dead. Lots of people die. I’ve just never talked to a dead person before. You know I asked Amell and he said that he had? I think he was joking. I know he’s a necromancer but I don’t think that’s really possible. Do you suppose it’s possible? Talking to the dead? Who would you talk to if you could? I think I’d talk to Pol. I’d tell him I was sorry we couldn’t save him.

I’m running out of space so I think I have to stop writing now. I have a letter for Fenris and Varric, but I’m not sure where to send them. Could you give them their letters for me? Iknowyouwillyou’resoverykindImissyouverymuchlethallenmaytheDreadWolfnevercatchyourscent


From Merrill Alerion - Sent in Firstfall
The text on this letter starts small and gains in size before becoming small again, as if the author tried very hard to remember the size of the parchment and failed.

Hello lethallen!

I’ve had so much fun these past two months I’m not sure where to start. I think Seranni and I are friends now. I feel a bit silly for thinking she was dead. She’s not! I asked. I couldn’t help myself. She didn’t mind. She’s very nice actually. She’s a ghoul? It’s like a darkspawn but not. She also likes darkspawn? Which is… very strange.

I’m not sure what there is to like about darkspawn. No one will tell me. There are a lot of secrets here. I like it! It’s like being in one of Varric’s mystery novels. I have so many theories about everything and it’s fun trying to figure out what everyone is hiding. It’s actually made it a lot easier to make friends. People seem to like it when I ask questions.

I like most everyone here, but I haven't really gotten to know many other Wardens except Seranni and Velanna. And Amell. And Jacen. And Oghren. I miss Varric. You know he was the first dwarf I ever met? Oghren isn’t like him at all. He's... very gross. I'm sorry, I shouldn't say that, but it's true. I really wish he wouldn’t talk to me but I don’t want to be rude.

Amell is nice though. I think we’re friends. I asked him if we were friends and he said he’d be happy to be friends so I suppose we’re friends now. He knows so much about magic but he still listens to my theories. It makes me feel like I know a lot about magic too? I mean, I do, of course I do, but after spending three years on one little spell and never getting it right… It helps.

Promise you won't be mad, but I told him about his father. It was kind of an accident. We were just talking about our parents and I thought you had told him already. Don’t worry, he wasn’t mad! I don’t think he gets mad. I’ve been here two months and I’ve never even heard him raise his voice. I don’t know why you didn’t tell him. He deserved to know.

The page is almost full and I haven’t even talked about you! I hope you and Hawke had a good Satinalia. You didn’t forget about it, did you? Did you get him a nice present? Did he get you a nice present? I’m sorry about the amulet, but you know it’s okay if you don’t share the same beliefs. IdontbelieveintheMakerandyoudon’tbelieveintheCreatorsbutitsokaybecausewe’refriends


From Merrill Alerion - Sent in Haring
The text on this letter is reasonably sized for the parchment.

I’m at Ostagar!

Or I will be when you get this letter. Seranni and I actually left in Firstfall before the snow made the roads too bad to travel. Which means I’m writing this letter right after I finished writing my last one. It feels kind of silly not sending them together, but I didn’t want you to miss a month. Amell promised he would send it for me in Haring.

I should probably write a few more just in case. I’m going to be gone until Guardian. Maybe Drakonis. I’m so excited, lethallen! Ostagar! Our own land! I know it’s just a blighted ruin, but it’s our blighted ruin. I’ve never been but somehow it feels like going home. I hope my parents are there. I hope I get to see them again.

Velanna says the blight has poisoned a lot of the land and that it will take decades for the earth to recover, if it ever can, but a few clans still live there trying to make it habitable. She thinks I can help. I think I can help. I cleansed the blight from a shard in my mirror. It was just a shard of glass, and it took blood magic, and lyrium, and a deal with a demon, but I cleansed it! Glass is really just sand and sand is just earth and I think I can help. I really do think I can help.

I miss you though. You and Fenris and Isabela and Varric and Bethany and even Hawke sometimes. I think I’ll end this one now. All-Mother watch over you, lethallen.


From Warden Commander Fausten Amell - Sent in Harvestmere
There’s something off about the handwriting in this letter. A book of poetry is included.

Anders,

It occurs to me I didn’t actually thank you for the bilboquet. Kieran seems to think it’s a flail. I assume this isn’t the intended purpose but I have no point of reference beyond the bruises he leaves on my legs. Morrigan is less than thrilled. She’s been leaving him with me until he gets tired of it, which is another gift you probably didn’t intend on, but thank you. It means a lot to know you thought of him.

Thank you for the fortnight as well. I hope you found the time as well spent as I did. I hope you know how impressive you are. That no other man could manage what you’ve managed. Your work in the clinic is shouldering the city and I’m glad you have someone to help you with the weight of it. Your work with the collective is an equal inspiration. If I can do anything to help you, you only have to ask. You can tell me anything. My scribes are trusted.

Merrill is settling in well. She seems to have made a few friends which I’m sure she’ll share with you in her own letter. She has a lot of questions, but she hasn’t expressed any interest in the Joining, in case you were concerned. Seranni’s… appearance generally dissuades people, and she and Merrill seem to be close.

I’m sure you’ve met him already, but the animal handler arriving with these letters goes by Swiftrunner Wolf. Yes, that’s really his name. He was a werewolf until around four years ago, in case he seems a bit… brusque. I promise he’s the best animal handler in Ferelden. He manages the kennels at Soldier’s Peak and has trained everything from mabari to dracolisks. I’ve arranged for him to stay at the compound, but I’m sure he’d be fine with staying at the estate if you and Hawke would prefer that.

I hope he’s able to help you find a way forward and I hope that you enjoy the way that you find.

Always,
Amell


From Warden Commander Fausten Amell - Sent in Firstfall
The handwriting in this letter is curiously familiar. Another book of poetry is included.

Anders,

The free passage is yours to use however you see fit. If that means someone other than you uses it, I would ask only that you keep it clandestine. Ensure she travels under a different name, that she keeps herself covered, and that she doesn’t speak to anyone until she disembarks and Velanna can find her at the docks. She’s well known in the Free Marches and Ferelden, and I’m trusting you not to let this fall back on the Wardens.

I hope this doesn’t come across as threatening. I just want to reiterate that you take precautions for the sake of everyone involved. I know you didn’t ask me this lightly and I hope you know I’m not answering it lightly either. I’ve spent four years working with the collective, but I’ve never done what you’re doing. My titles don’t mean anything compared to what someone like you means for mages.

I read Darktown’s Deal. I look forward to Johane finally referencing it in the next issue of the Randy Dowager Quarterly. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Divine is dead. There couldn’t be a better time to distribute your manifesto then while the Grand Clerics are summoned to Orlais and no Annulments can be enacted. The next Divine will need time to consolidate power, and the Knight-Commanders will be too busy vying for her favor to notice or care whatever comes of it.

I haven’t given thought to much outside the Wardens for the past few years. I hope you know what an inspiration you are. I’m glad to be able to do something for you and your cause. I’m also glad to hear that Justice enjoyed the last book. I’ve enclosed another for him.

Always,
Amell


From Warden Commander Fausten Amell - Sent in Haring
The handwriting in this letter is definitely familiar.

Anders,

You don’t need to apologize. I understand why you didn’t tell me about my father. I’m sorry you had to go through that twice. I’m sorry you had to go through it once. I meant what I said. There’s nothing you should have done differently. You saved Hawke’s sight. If you hadn’t he would be blind and deaf and I can’t imagine the challenges that would come with losing both senses.

I hope you believe me. They’re just eyes. I don’t need them. I should have realized that sooner.

I don’t think any of us can say my father actually managed to resurrect my mother. I can hold a soul to its corpse immediately after its death, but the spell only lasts as long as the blood, and it leaves a desecrated husk when it ends. From what you and Merrill described, the woman he had with him looked human. It could have been a spirit or a demon or a collection of wisps or something else entirely.

My father doesn’t matter to me anymore. I promise I’m not upset or angry with you. Honestly, I’m just interested in the magic and the red lyrium Merrill mentioned. It sounds concerning for a variety of reasons. It reminds me of the kind of magic that was used to create the Harvesters. I know Oghren told you about them. I warned you once he doesn’t keep a lot of secrets.

I also know you asked him about me. I told him he could tell you whatever he wanted to tell you.

If you ever want to ask me again after you hear whatever he has to say, I’ll try to answer this time.

Always,
Amell

Chapter 129: Consent is Key

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 16 Verimensis Morning
Kirkwall Hightown: Hawke Estate

Four months after Anders had come to Kirkwall, Karl had died, and Anders had resolved to dismantle the Circles, but for three years, all he’d managed to dismantle was his own sanity. He’d freed a handful of mages and slain a handful of templars, but nothing beyond that. Progress had stalled, but it hadn't stopped, and it finally seemed like he was making it again.

Thanks to the Carta and the Wardens, work with the mage underground had resumed in earnest. Selby had forgiven him. Anders hadn’t given her a choice. Once Amell and Velanna had agreed to help, Anders had stormed into the packaging house and announced he was saving Cera with or without them. Okay, so maybe mostly Justice had done that, but Anders had been for it.

He was also for Johane, distributing his manifesto through the Free Marches, Orlais, Ferelden, and wherever else the Randy Dowager Quarterly was published. The freshly bound missive meant more to him than any of the letters he’d received from the Vigil over the past three months. Anders turned it over in his hands, rereading it for the fifth time that day.

“The Randy Dowager ignites winter passions with a special edition of Darktown’s Deal, being a tale of uprising for those brave and bold enough to seek it. Inquiries for a magical release and true liberation should be sent to the Lady directly.

"The Randy Dowager: Exhibitions for the noble of thought, but spry of step.

"The Lady herself says: “Only for those of particular taste. Consent is key for bondage, in the bedroom and beyond. Four scarves fluttered in shock out of five.”"

Subtle. Arguably too subtle as far as Anders was concerned, but Johane assured him it was just the start. They’d republish his manifesto throughout special editions of other books with sympathetic authors, and spread it throughout the whole of Thedas. Finding sympathetic authors was easy, considering Varric could just make them up.

Anders lay on a couch in the solar, sunlight all but obscured by the frost rimming the window pane, missive dangling from his hand. Now what? They had to push for a reconvening of the College of Magi to break away from the Chantry, but there was no telling how long that would take. It depended too much on the other Circles, on their First Enchanters and Knight-Commanders, on the Grand Enchanter and the Knight-Vigilant and the Divine.

Anders looked at Hawke, fletching a pile of arrows at the table a few feet away. Anders hadn’t told him about any of it. Anders didn’t want the rescues or his manifesto or anything he did falling back on him. Hawke had been through enough and Anders didn’t want to put him through more. Hawke knew he worked with the Collective, but nothing beyond that. Hawke hadn’t asked. Anders hadn’t shared. Varric had not so subtly suggested sharing was a “terrible idea” with Hawke’s mother dead and his sister in the Circle, but Anders wanted to know what he thought. About the cause. About the future. About their future.

Anders whistled. Dog nudged Hawke’s leg to get his attention, and Hawke paused his fletching to raise an eyebrow at him.

"Do you want kids?" Anders signed.

Hawke didn’t say no. He just said, "What?" And he looked shocked. And he dropped the arrow he was holding.

"Kids," Anders signed again. "You know, like adults, only smaller."

"Why would I want kids?" Hawke signed quite possibly the most absurd question Anders could imagine someone asking. Anders wanted kids. Hawke had to want kids. Everyone wanted kids.

"To have them?"

"That's not a reason."

"I can't think of a better reason,” Anders argued, “Do you have any idea how many children the Chantry takes from their parents who would do anything to have them again?”

Hawke pinched the bridge of his nose like he was warding off a headache, "Anders, tell me you're not kidnapping children from the Circle."

"If I was it would be rescuing, not kidnapping,” Anders frowned, fumbling briefly with the words and spelling a few of them out, “I keep thinking about Pryce and his sisters. We could have taken them in. Why didn't we?"

"Why would we?” Hawke countered, “She was a mage.”

"What does that have to do with anything?" Anders demanded. Sure, the little primal mage had burnt half her sister’s hair off on accident, but she’d also asked Anders to cut her hair to match. She was just a kid. A good kid.

"It has to do with everything,” Hawke signed, “You don't know what it's like to grow up on the run."

"I know exactly what it's like to grow up on the run!" Anders scowled, smacking the words against his palm.

"No, you know what it's like to run,” Hawke corrected him. “You were sent to the Circle when you were twelve. When I was twelve, I was running arrows in the army against the Avvar so I’d know how to run in a crowd when the templars came for us. When Beth was twelve she spent every other day hiding in the cellar. What kind of life is that for a child?”

"A good one,” Anders signed vehemently. “I wish my father had loved me enough to try. Besides, who says they’d have to run at all? You’re the Champion of Kirkwall-”

“Don’t call me that,” Hawke cut him off. “You think the templars won't notice if we adopt some kid the same time an apprentice goes missing?”

“It doesn't have to be a mage,” Anders argued, “Do you know how full the orphanages are since the invasion? The Chantry keeps the kids that aren’t adopted and turns them into bloody templars. Saving them from that is almost as worthy as saving a mage from the Circle.”

“Why have you been to the orphanage?” Hawke asked.

“I go for the kids,” Anders explained. “Since I’m a Warden, it’s not like I have to hide my magic anymore, and no one’s born hating it. They like the light shows.” Anders conjured a collection of light and ripples of arcane energy that took the shape of a cat, and perched it on the table.

In retrospect, not his smartest choice. Ser Cumference emerged from under the couch and dove at the other cat with a furious yowl. The chunky little bastard slid through the construct, off the table, and onto the floor. The commotion excited the dog, and the two promptly went crashing off through the estate.

“...Do you want kids?” Anders signed again.

“What would I do with a kid, Anders?” Hawke sighed.

“Raise it?”

“Like my parents raised me?” Hawke looked and sounded visibly dispirited at just the thought. “Like your parents raised you?”

That was a terrible reason not to have children. Sure, some of the scars on Hawke’s skin were from his father, and some of the ones on his heart were from his mother, but he didn't have to repeat their mistakes. “We aren't our parents.”

“Aren't we?” Hawke asked.

“Well let me check,” Anders tugged at his tunic, checking his collar and his sleeves in case an old bastard or a corpse fell out of them, “I'm not drowning my son in a river to get rid of his magic, and I'm not dead, so I'm gonna go with no.”

“I’m not. I tried so hard not to become my mother, I think I became my father instead," Hawke said ruefully. "I don’t want kids, Anders. I wouldn’t be any good for them.”

“Yes you would,” Anders protested.

“Do you really think that’s true, or do you just wish it was?” Hawke asked, not giving him time for an answer before he stood up and dusted off his hands. “I’m going to change. You still want to see Beth with me today?”

“... Yeah.”

Hawke left the solar. Anders stayed in it, thumbing the edge of the missive until it wilted in his hands. Well… That was okay. He didn’t need kids. There wasn’t any room in his life for a kid anyway. He was an abomination in the middle of trying to start a revolution, risking the gallows with every mage he rescued from them. Where was the room for a kid in all of that?

Anders tried not to think about it. He spent the trip to the Circle thinking about Sebastian instead. As much as Anders resented Hawke for bringing him, he resented Bethany more for courting him. The Starkhaven Prince was the Grand Cleric’s personal apologist, and since the Divine had died, he'd only doubled down on the proselytizing. Anders couldn’t stand him, and he couldn’t stand that the Hawkes could stand him.

Sebastian hadn’t even bothered to learn how to sign. He just had a Brother from the Chantry follow him around to sign for him, the pompous prick. Anders glared at his reflection in Sebastian’s gilded armor as they made their way towards the docks, trying to keep his mouth shut for once. The last thing he wanted was to start up another fight about the Chantry, especially when it would be three against one with Sebastian, the Brother, and Hawke.

“Thank you again for agreeing to help me today, Hawke,” Sebastian said, and the Brother signed, “I had thought my quest for justice would end with the Flint Company. I almost wish I hadn’t looked into who sent them. The Harimanns were my parents’ allies. It’s hard to believe they betrayed us like this.”

Anders tripped over his own feet and caught Hawke’s arm to steady himself.

“You good?” Hawke signed.

“What about the Harimanns?” Anders signed back.

“Hired the Flint Company,” Hawke explained aloud to include Sebastian in the conversation, “They assassinated his family a few years back, and Seb posted a bounty. Red Irons and I wiped them out, but we never knew who hired them until last week. We’re going to take care of it after we see Beth.”

“Take care of it how?” Anders asked.

Hawke mimed out shooting an arrow.

“The Harimanns,” Anders signed the name letter by letter, trying not to panic, and when that failed, trying not to show it, “But you saved the Harimanns! You killed Mereen just for threatening them, remember?”

“Lord Harimann,” Hawke corrected him. “Not his family. He’s dead.”

“He was a good man,” Sebastian chimed in when Hawke spoke, considering he couldn’t follow what Anders signed, “He died in the invasion, trampled to death in the mob that fled the Viscount’s Keep. I don’t know if he was part of my family’s murder, but the Harimann family seal was on the contract.

“In truth, it’s his daughter I suspect. Lady Johane Harimann took over the family when her father died. She was always jealous of my family for being royalty when hers were mere nobility, but I can’t imagine that pushing her into outright murder.”

“But the suspicion is enough to push you into it?” Anders demanded.

Sebastian frowned, “Of course not, but a distant cousin of mine holds the throne for the moment, and he’s engaged to Johane's daughter Flora. Whether it was for money or power, it’s clear Lady Harimann betrayed my family.”

“So you’re just going to kill her?” Anders tried not to shout. This couldn’t be happening. Not to the woman who’d saved Starkhaven’s Circle from the sunburst grip of the Vaels. Not to his only connection to a publishing house willing to spread his manifesto across Thedas. Not to another mage. Not to another friend.

“Initially, I had just hoped to speak with Johane and find out what drove her to this madness," Sebastian explained, "But I am the last of my line, and I could not risk confronting her alone and making a target of myself. When I enlisted the Champion’s support, Elthina helped me see that I risked starting a war between Kirkwall and Starkhaven for my pride, and that’s when I realized it. Pride.

“Lady Harimann is a mage - fallen to the temptation of demons. There can be no other explanation. I spoke with the Knight-Captain about my suspicions, and he agreed there have been troubling rumors surrounding the family of late. In truth, I can't believe I didn't see it sooner. We're going with a small company of templars to confront them this afternoon. Maker willing, she and her family will be brought to justice for their crimes against mine.”

“Templars.” Anders shoved himself between Hawke and the Chantry Brother to keep him from translating anything back for Sebastian. “You’re helping templars?”

“I’m helping Sebastian,” Hawke signed back. “The Harimanns killed his family.”

“The templars don’t care about his family, they only care about the family harboring a mage!” Anders signed furiously, “Don’t you remember what they did to yours? How could you put someone else through that?”

“My family didn’t assassinate another family,” Hawke countered. “Not all mages are good, Anders.”

“How do you even know she’s a mage?” Anders asked.

“I don’t,” Hawke shrugged, “The templars will. They’re going to test the family for magic.”

“And if they don’t find any?” Anders asked.

Hawke mimed shooting an arrow again. “They still killed his family. Red Irons will take care of it if the templars don’t.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Fuck. What the fuck was he supposed to do now?

“Everything alright?” Sebastian asked.

“Peachy,” Anders lied, moving back to the other side of Hawke so the Brother could go back to translating. He had to do something, but what? There was no time to do anything. They were only seeing Beth for an hour. Once the hour was up, the templars would be breaking down Johane’s door. Anders had to warn her somehow. Anders’ mind spun in a panicked circle while Hawke and Sebastian talked.

“The Harimanns won’t stand against you,” Hawke was saying, “You riding back to Starkhaven after?”

“I don’t know,” Sebastian said while the Brother signed. “No matter what happens, Goran holds the title, and others must still vie for it. I can’t charge in blindly. In truth, I don’t feel as righteous as I did before. I keep asking myself, do I want this because it’s right, or simply to have what I never thought I could?”

“Starkhaven’s yours,” Hawke said.

“And yet in trying to retake it, I have already brought death to so many and will bring death to so many more. Could I ever do enough good as King to justify that?”

“Worry about reparations once you take your lands,” Hawke said.

“The ends justifying the means, I presume? I know you’ve done great things in Kirkwall, Hawke. I imagine your methods haven’t always been scrupulous, but you clearly do more good than harm. I just don’t know if I can follow that road. I’ll have to pray on it.”

Anders fought back a handful of furious interjections. The foremost of which was that Sebastian was fine following that road as long as he picked the blood he paved it with. So what if Johane had had his family killed? The Vaels were monsters. They hid cruelty with piety, and their Circle had been almost as bad as the one in Kirkwall before it burned down. Starkhaven was better off without them.

Anders had to leave. He had to warn Johane. Conversation turned to other topics, and Anders struggled to grab one that gave him an excuse to leave. He was going to be sick? He had to piss? He had to pick up supplies for the clinic?

“-never been to Ferelden.” Sebastian was saying.

“Merrill!” Anders snatched the topic, gesturing frantically, “I forgot to help Fenris with his letter this month and the ship for Amaranthine leaves tomorrow. I’m sorry, love. Apologize to Beth for me? I’ll see you tonight?”

“Alright,” Hawke signed. “See you tonight. Love you.”

“Love you,” Anders signed back and fled as fast as he could without arousing any suspicion. He couldn’t go sprinting through the streets in a Warden tabard and expect nothing to come of it, but he couldn’t waste time walking to Hightown. Johane needed every second he could give her. Anders went to his clinic, closed in his absence, and hastily changed out of his tabard and the few pieces of jewelry he wore that weren’t enchanted to transform with him.

The rosewood ring could transform with him, so he left it on. A chest of lyrium potions was the only thing in the clinic with a lock, and Anders stuffed his things inside. Anders buried the keys to the chest and the clinic in a jar of incense of awareness, and warded everything for good measure. If any of it got stolen… then it got stolen.

A crow flew from the infirmary and over the carrion of the city. Scaffolding had been left to mildew in the winter weather, rotting off the great sandstone skeleton below. Humans and elves picked their way through the remains, embalming or imbibing the decay. The crow flew above it all, to the marbled streets of its roost, and the roost of its murder. None of the windows were open in winter, so the crow landed in the inner courtyard.

Anders ran into the estate, startling the two guards posted in the foyer. They'd been playing dice, outfitted in cheap splintmail painted with the abstract face of a bear or a mabari or a lion. Their swords were sheathed, and in no way prepared to stand against a host of templars.

“Johane!” Anders yelled.

“Maker fuck me!” One of the guards squeaked, recoiling into a wall and bouncing off it. He rolled a six, “How did you get in here?”

“Who the shit-” The other stammered.

“Where’s Johane!?” Anders demanded. The guards gawked at him. Anders gave up on them, bolting up the stairs to the second story, which finally stirred them into action.

“Hey wait-”

“You can’t just-”

“Johane!?” Anders yelled on his run through the hall. “Johane!”

One of the doors opened, and a head popped out. Not Johanne’s. The man had burnt brown hair, with giant eyebrows that swallowed up most of his shocked face. Brett. Jowan’s son.

“Anders?” Brett asked. “My goodness, Serah, what’s going on?”

“Brett,” Anders skidded to a stop to grab the nobleman by his puffy shoulders, “Where’s Johane?”

“Apologies, my lord!” One of the guards finally caught up to him, armor rattling like dice at their abrupt halt. “We don’t know how he got inside.”

“He’s a family friend,” Brett explained, “Return to your post.”

“Yes, my lord,” The guard bowed and left.

“Mother’s in the solar with Flora,” Brett explained. “Whatever is the matter?”

“Where’s the solar?” Anders asked.

Another head peaked out from the same room Brett had left. Elven, with wide brown eyes and dark brown hair, but she clearly wasn’t a servant. Her emerald dress contrasted sweetly with Brett’s orange doublet, and she held his arm when she hid behind him. “Brett, is everything alright?”

“I cannot say,” Brett said, “Anders?”

“The solar!” Anders barked.

“Upstairs,” Brett stuttered, pointing down the hall. Anders ran, distantly aware that Brett followed, and after two wrong doors threw open the one to the solar. It was modest compared to the one at the Hawke estate, more reading nook than solar. Johane and Flora were taking tea on the padded seats that framed the windows, overlooking the marble streets below. Good. That was good. At least they could see if the templars were coming.

“Johane,” Anders wheezed, struggling to catch his breath.

“Anders?” Johane set her tea down.

She wasn’t ready. She was dressed for leisure, barefoot, in a dress of silk and flax that wouldn’t hold on the run in the winter. Her face couldn’t have been more identifiable, long and thin and dripping with jewelry. Chains ran from her nose to her ear, gold hoops all along her brow, a labret like Isabela’s nestled beneath her lips, pursued in confusion. She wasn’t ready at all.

Flora looked just like her mother, save that her hair was still black and not grey, and she wasn’t a mage. “Mother, who is this? What is he doing here?”

“I'm sure he'll explain,” Johane said. “Anders...?”

Anders had escaped the Circle seven times. There was nothing quite like the euphoria of freedom. The first breath of air outside the Circle tower. The way it filled your lungs made you feel like you could run forever. He’d also been caught seven times. He knew the way it felt when that breath ran out. Like it was the last you’d ever take. Like you’d never breathe again.

Anders took a deep breath, and waited one merciful moment for Johane to take one too.

“They know,” He said.

“Oh,” Johane said softly.

“... Templars,” Brett’s voice said gravely from behind him.

Flora dropped her cup. It hit the floor and shattered into a dozen pieces, spilling tea and shards of painted porcelain. “No. No, who are you, even!?” Flora scrambled off the couch, but she was barefoot, and landed on her own shattered cup. She stumbled, grabbing at her foot and the porcelain embedded in it, leaving a trail of blood and tea and tears, “There’s nothing for anyone to know! Get out! Get out, you filthy liar!”

“Flora...” Brett looked pale. The elven woman who’d been with him slung his arm around her shoulder, and eased him into a seat at the table. “Get father.”

“You get father!” Flora shrieked. Anders healed her foot almost off instinct when she got the shard out. “You get him for no reason! Mother-”

“How long?” Johane asked.

“An hour, at most,” Anders said.

“You’re lying!” Flora screamed. “Get out, guards-”

“Flora,” Johane swept the shards aside with a wave of telekinesis and stood, setting a hand on Flora’s shoulder, “Little flower… get your father.”

“No!” Flora smacked her hand off.

“I’ll get him,” The elf offered.

“Thank you, darling,” Johane said.

The elf left. Flora snatched a vase from the table and flung it into a corner, papering the wall with wilted flowers and stale water. Brett looked green, belching and swallowing like he was fighting back vomit. Johane fixed her cuffs and took a few shallow breaths. “So,” Johane cleared her throat, and kept clearing it, “Yes. Well. Yes. So.”

“They don’t just know you’re a mage,” Anders interrupted her apparent shock. “They know about Starkhaven. They’re bringing a host of templars to test your family for magic, and if they can’t find any, the Red Irons will kill you all anyway.”

“I see,” Johane said.

“Maker’s mercy,” Brett gagged. Flora flung another teacup against the wall.

“Who was it? Sebastian?” Johane asked. “Corbinian?”

“Sebastian,” Anders said. “We have to get you out of here. All of you, or they’ll hang your whole family for harboring an apostate.”

Johane nodded a few times, golden chains rocking gently against her cheek.

“No!” Flora dropped the kettle she’d been about to heave through the window and grabbed her mother’s hands. “Mother no, I’m engaged! The wedding is in Bloomingtide! Goran still has the throne, if we go to Starkhaven-”

“We tried, my darling,” Johane patted at her hands.

“No! No, we’re so close, Goran will protect us-”

“He can’t protect an apostate, little flower,” Johane said. “There’s still a Circle in Starkhaven, no matter how we changed it.”

Brett picked up the kettle and threw up in it. The elven woman returned with a man Anders assumed was Johane’s husband. He looked like a portrait of exhaustion. A chin strap framed his drooping face, his hair dyed an unnatural shade of black to hide his age. “I dismissed the guards and the servants. A few volunteered to pack bags for us before they fled,” He said in welcome.

“We can’t give up!” Flora protested. “We can’t give Starkhaven back to the Vaels or everything will just go back to the way it was! It’s not right! It’s not fair! Mother please! You said we would change things! You said we would make it so no one ever had to live like this! We can still do it! I can do it! Goran listens to me! As long as he has the throne we can still change things!”

“Johane, we have to go now,” Anders said.

“Sebastian’s taken vows!” Flora argued, “He’s chaste! The nobility will never back him while he refuses to produce an heir. I can give Goran heirs. No one will care about the coup, Starkhaven’s history is built on it. Mother, please, we can still make this work!”

Johane hesitated, glancing between him and her daughter, and eventually came to a decision. “... You can, but not with me."

"Mother no-"

"Do you want this, or do you want me?" Johane demanded.

"... I want this for you." Flora whispered.

"Then do it for me," Johane said.

"I will, Mother. I promise."

"We’ll say it was me. We’ll say I was alone. That there’s never been magic in our line and none of you knew I was a mage.”

“You know the Vaels, my darling,” Her husband said wearily from the doorway. “He’ll never believe us.”

"He might!" Flora protested.

"... no, your father is right," Johane sighed. "They won't believe you, and I won't leave you here to die."

"We all knew this day would come," Johane’s husband said. "It comes for every mage."

"It shouldn't!" Flora shrieked. "There has to be something else - just think!"

"You don't have time to think," Anders reminded them. "You have time to run. You need to go-"

“Blood magic!” Flora blurted excitedly, “We’ll say it was blood magic. We’ll tell them you mind controlled us. They’ll believe that. The Vaels always blame blood magic."

“The templars can test for it, little flower,” Johane’s husband shook his head. “They’ll know it’s a lie.”

“What if it’s not?” Brett dragged his head out of the kettle and wiped the sick from his lips, “What if it’s real? Mother could compel us to believe we never knew she was a mage, and that she worked alone to remove the Vaels. Flora could stay engaged to Goran, Mother could run, and no one would suspect anything. As long as they know we were mind controlled, would they really investigate further?”

“Yes!” Flora bounced on the balls of her feet. “Yes, of course! Mother-... please. If we can't save you we can still save Starkhaven."

“It doesn’t work that way, my darlings. Spells like that are complicated. They take years of study. I don't know how to do any of that." Johane seemed to give up, resigned to her family's fate. To her own fate. To the fate of every mage who dared to live free of the Circle. "Anders is right. We need to run. I’m not a blood mage.”

Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him. Foul and corrupt are they who have taken His gift, and turned it against His children. They shall be named Maleficar, accursed ones. They shall find no rest in this world, or Beyond.

Anders knew the verse. Every mage did. But Anders was a runner. He ran from the Circle. He ran from the Templars. He ran from relationships. So what did he care? He was never going to rest anyway.

“I am,” Anders said.

The Harimanns looked at him, but there was no horror in their expressions, only hope. Anders wasn't sure if that made it better.

“I still think you should all run,” Anders continued. “I can’t promise I’ll be able to cast the spell without breaking your minds. The templars might not be able to dispel it, and you might never remember everything. I’d have to get my grimoire, and we don’t have a lot of time to get you out of the city either way.”

“I'm not running,” Flora said. “I worked too hard for this. Just make sure I remember I hate the Circles.”

“I’ll stay,” Brett said.

“Me too,” The elven woman added. It seemed like Anders should know her name.

“... I'll miss you, my darling,” Johane’s husband said. It seemed like Anders should know his name too.

But it wasn't his family. It wasn't his life. Not anymore.

“... This must be how it feels to take Darktown’s Deal,” Johane laughed mirthlessly. She pulled Anders into an unexpected hug that smelled like lavender and lyrium, and kissed his cheek, “Do it, and hurry. I’ll get you everything you need to contact the Dowager on your own.”

“Dress warm,” Anders hugged her back, “Pack light.”

Anders spent the flight home and the run back counting the seconds as they turned into minutes. Johane’s estate was all but abandoned when he returned, the servants and guards fled from the templars' coming wrath. Johane and her family were still in the solar, watching the roads, and sent Brett down to get him and lead him back upstairs.

Johane had changed into an outfit suitable for horseback and the run, richly lined in mink with an overstuffed satchel on her shoulder. She’d taken all her jewelry out, and her hair was dripping black from a haphazard dye job. Her eyes were glistening with unshed tears, but Anders couldn’t say how many she’d shed while he’d been gone. Her family looked the same. A resolute sort of misery that left their jaws alternatively locked or quivering.

They all said goodbye.

Anders cast the spell.

Chapter 130: What Have You Done Now?

Notes:

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Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 16 Verimensis Late Afternoon
Kirkwall Sewers Beneath Hightown

Anders dropped from the ladder into the sewers, boots breaking through a layer of icy sludge and splashing putrid water. A sphere of magelight illuminated the darkened corridor, curved walls smeared in shades of black, brown, and green. Aside from the smell, and his reason for being here, it didn’t bother him. Anders was used to it.

Johane wasn’t. She slipped a few rungs down the ladder, and Anders caught her before she went face first into the waste. She still made a splash, a wave of slush lapping over the front of her trousers. “Maker of all,” Johane choked. She took one shaky breath, and then another, and then started sobbing into his shoulder.

Her cries echoed back through the sewers, as if countless other apostates wept with her, but they were alone, and they had to move.

“Come on, Johane,” Anders kept his voice firm and purposeful, the same way he always did when a mage needed rescuing. Whatever support he offered had to be strong enough to keep them standing.

Johane collected herself, and Anders led her through the sewers towards the docks. It was a long descent, the sewers bleeding together with the hollows of Darktown. The undercity had been refilled by the destitute and the downtrodden after it had been cleared of saar-qamek, but there was no clearing the chokedamp. The dead were there too. Corpses left to rot and bloat in darkened corners, when they weren't dragged away by the desperate and the hungry or pushed over the chasm into the Waking Sea.

Johane followed him through it, eyeing one unfortunate soul after the next and sniffling to herself like she couldn't decide who she felt more sorry for. "It shouldn't be like this."

"I know," Anders said.

"We meant it for the best," Johane said.

"I know," Anders had heard enough about Starkhaven from Decimus and the rest of the apostates to believe her even before Amell had told him about Sebastian’s family history.

"It wasn't just the Circle," Johane continued. "We were going to dissolve it all. The divine right to rule. The alienage. Brett so wanted to be married… With Ferelden naming an elven bann, we thought why not go further? Tear it all down…"

"A noble cause," Justice agreed.

"Where are we going?" Johane asked.

"The Mage’s Collective," Anders said. "... It's more subtle than it sounds."

"It cannot be less," Johane gave him a watery smile. Anders was surprised the old girl even managed that. She hadn't just lost her way of life, she'd lost her family, and her family had lost her. The only thing they'd remember of her magic was that she'd used it to enslave them. Anders wondered how many memories the spell had erased. How big a part Johane's magic had played in the lives of her children and her husband. How much of her or any mage was left when you took that away.

Selby wouldn't take her. Anders argued himself hoarse, but Selby wouldn't budge. Johane was too well known. Her father had ensured it as one of the few noble families in Kirkwall that supported Ferelden refugees. Worse, Johane wasn’t just a noblewoman, she was the mother of the princess-consort of Starkhaven, and a wanted woman. "A little hair dye doesn't hide that. We move her now, the whole city will know. We can’t risk it. I'm sorry, love. Wait and hide. Give it time for things to die down."

Anders paced through the sewers afterwards, dragging his hands over his face and his frustration. Wait. They couldn't wait. The templars would sweep the city. Johane would have better luck getting out ahead of it than she would hiding from it. Anders just had to think of something.

Anders took her to the Hawke Estate through the cellar entrance. He had the servants close all the curtains and clear out, and then led Johane up to his room. He got her something to eat, and a better cloak with a hood she could pull over her head, and sat on the edge of the bed with her.

"What did you pack?" Anders asked.

"Correspondence for you," Johane opened her satchel, and handed him a bundle of hastily bound missives. "The Dowager resides in Orlais. This is my seal. Use only gold wax. She'll help you publish your manifesto. I have other contacts. Mage sympathizers, but none of them are prepared to harbor an apostate…"

"I'll get you out, Johane," Anders promised.

"Anders, my friend…" Johane pulled the gifted hood down, the lining stained black from her rushed dye job. "I'm not a Circle mage with a phylactery for you to destroy, unknown to the world and all within it. I'm a Harimann. I'm known throughout the Free Marches. I sponsored the melee in the last Grand Tourney. I've been to the Winter Palace. My likeness is on busts and portraits and gossip columns. If none of my contacts can hide me, how can you?"

Because he didn't have a choice. Because she was a mage. Because she needed help. Because it was his purpose. Because it was who he was. Because it was all he was.

"Because I have to," Anders said, and whether he felt it in his bones, or his blood, or his soul, or his spirit, he felt it.

Johane started pacing. Anders joined her, tossing out and shooting down ideas. Maybe he could get her out through the warrens beneath the city, or through one of the gates if he was lucky, but he had nowhere to take her after. Where was she supposed to go? Selby was right - Johane wasn't just guilty of apostasy, she was guilty of a coup. She was a political refugee. She didn't just need out, she needed asylum, and Anders only knew one person who might be able to grant it.

“...Amell," Anders said.

"That's an old name no one uses now," Johane looked confused. "How does it help me?"

"There’s a boat leaving for Ferelden tomorrow morning,” Anders explained. “The Pride of Amaranthine. There’s another branch of the Mage’s Collective in the city, at an inn called the Fisherman's Rest, and they might be able to help you. If they can't, you can go to Vigil’s Keep - ask for the Commander and tell him I sent you."

"He would harbor an apostate?" Johane asked.

"He hasn't said no to me yet," Anders hoped this wouldn't change that.

Amell had said he could use the free passage however he wanted, after all. Anders just had to keep it clandestine. Cloak and dagger, and all that. Anders had just never thought he’d be more afraid of using the cloak. Johane had dyed her hair. She had a hood. She could use a different name. That had to be clandestine enough. Sure, Amell probably expected him to ask permission first, but Anders didn’t have time, so he’d have to settle for forgiveness.

Amell would forgive him.

Hawke might not.

His steps were soundless, as always, and Anders didn’t hear him until it was too late. Hawke shouldered open the door in full leather armor, and the fact that his bow was bound to his back was probably the only reason he didn’t shoot Johane with it on sight. He froze at the sight of them standing together in his room, one still hand on the door knob, and too many things happened at once.

Hawke’s free hand went to the throwing daggers gartered around his thigh. Johane crackled with electricity as she reached for the Fade. Anders yelled and signed, “Wait!” Neither of them listened. Hawke threw a dagger. Johane a bolt of lightning. Anders cast a panicked barrier and shoved himself between them.

Anders blocked the dagger with his chest, but his heart only stopped when he realized he didn’t block the spell. It hit Hawke in full force and he went crashing back into the hall. Veilfire flared through Anders before he could follow, and Justice enveloped him to wrench Hawke’s blade free of his chest. Restorative energies from the Fade sealed the wound shut, and Anders snapped back into himself.

“Hawke!” Anders screamed, sprinting into the hall.

Hawke was fine. He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t electrocuted. He’d already recovered, throwing daggers laced between the fingers of one hand, flask in the other he lobbed into the room as soon as Anders ran out of it. The sound of glass shattering followed. A grey miasma sent Johanne stumbling out of the bedroom. Whatever it was made Johane throw up, and was so disorienting Anders nearly did the same.

“Stop!” Anders signed and screamed.

“Get out of my way, Anders,” Hawke’s eyes darted between where his dagger had landed in Anders’ chest and Johane coughing behind him, caught somewhere been pain and panic, “Harimann, release him from whatever spell you have on him or I swear I’ll gut you and everyone you ever loved!”

“There’s no spell!” Anders shouted and signed frantically, a cleansing aura rolling off him for whatever damage Hawke had taken from Johane’s spell, “Stop! Both of you stop! She’s my friend!”

“No she’s not, Anders, she’s a fucking blood mage!” Hawke grabbed another flask from his belt, and Anders prayed it wasn’t knockout powder. He wasn’t sure if he could cast a sleep spell before Hawke could throw it, “She enslaved her whole family! Snap out of it, damn you!”

“No she didn’t!” Anders screamed and signed, “I did!”

Hawke stopped. His posture relaxed, if only slightly, an incredulous look on his face that slowly gave way to outrage. “You did what?”

“I did it,” Anders repeated, signing. “I enslaved them.”

“Why in the Void would you do that?” Hawke demanded.

“So they wouldn’t hang for harboring an apostate!” Anders signed, “So you wouldn’t help the templars hang them!”

“She’s not an apostate, Anders, she’s a bloody traitor!” Hawke pointed past him with his fistful of throwing daggers, “That dagger was for her and so are the rest of these.”

“You’re not killing her,” Anders smacked the words against his palm. “Johane, get out of here.”

Johane didn’t need to be told twice. She fled, half-running, half-stumbling her way out of the hall and down the stairs, back towards the cellars and the passage to Darktown. Hawke took a step after her, and Anders took a step in front of him.

“I’m not letting you kill her,” Anders signed again.

“Damnit, Anders, I almost killed you.” Hawke dropped the throwing daggers and repocketed the flask. He grabbed a handful of Anders’ torn tunic, fresh blood staining the beige a shade of red almost like wine, and looked agonized. Hawke wrenched, and Anders went stumbling into his arms. His embrace was like a vice. For one cruel breath, Anders thought of breaking free of it, but he’d felt the same fear when the lightning struck. Anders clung to him, the Fade flowing through him like a river of healing energy, but Hawke was fine. Sandal’s runes had held.

Hawke fisted a hand in his hair, and planted a hard kiss on his cheek. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me!?” Anders broke out of his arms, signing, “What’s wrong with you! I can’t believe you thought I would just let the templars tear another family apart if there was something - anything - I could do about it!”

“She! Murdered! Seb’s! Family!” Hawke signed, gesturing violently with every word. “The Flint Company murdered every damn one of them! Damnit, Anders, they even killed the cook! It was treason! Why do you care what happens to her!?”

“She’s a mage!” Anders shouldn’t have had to remind him.

“That doesn’t make her good!” Hawke shouted.

“Yes it does!” Anders was done with this argument. Anders was done with blaming mages for acting in self-defense. Anders was done with blaming mages for anything. You couldn’t drive a blade through an entire people for a thousand years and complain they got blood on you when they pulled it out. “It does because she did it for mages! She did it to change things!”

“You have no idea why she did it!” Hawke scoffed.

“Yes I do!” Anders signed furiously, “She’s my friend!”

“What do you mean she’s your friend?” Hawke asked.

“I mean she’s my friend!” Anders signed again, “She was helping me print my manifesto until you ruined everything!”

“How long?” Hawke demanded.

“What?”

“How long were you working with her?”

“I don’t know,” The question threw him. Anders ran a hand through his hair, wracking his brain for the answer, but time felt like such an abstract concept ever since he’d joined with Justice, “A few months?”

“Months,” Hawke repeated incredulously. “You’ve been working with someone to print your manifesto for months and you never told me?”

“Of course I didn’t tell you!” Anders signed, “I was protecting you!"

"From what?" Hawke demanded, grabbing a handful of his tunic again. "A paper cut? Don't fucking lie to me."

"Fine!” Anders snapped, shoving the words into Hawke’s chest. A levy broke inside him, and all his frustrations came pouring out. “You don't want me to lie!? You believe in the Circles! You believe in the Chantry! You don't want a revolution! Why would I tell you!?"

"Because you're supposed to trust me!" Hawke countered, shaking him roughly.

“Trust you!?” Anders repeated, smacking his hand off. “Like Isabela trusted you!?”

“Don’t start with that-”

“You don’t want me to start with anything else. You talk about how you’d pick me over the city, well it’s time to pick me!”

“That’s not what this is! The Harimanns weren’t saving anyone, they were just grabbing power.”

“They were taking power away from the Chantry! You talk about how you’d stand against the Knight-Commander if she tried to annul the Circle, but the problem is you’re willing to let her get far enough to try! If you’d actually read my manifesto-”

“Read it!? I practically wrote the damn thing with you! I’m the one who convinced Varric to print it in the first place! And now you’re telling me you’ve been printing it with a treasonist for months and you didn’t tell me because... What? Because I’m happy Beth’s happy in the Circle?”

“Because you believe in them. You say you want the mages freed, but your support is just talk! It has been ever since your mother died. You believe in the Circles like you believe in the Chantry!”

“Don’t talk to me about my faith. Don’t act like you know what I believe in anymore. I don’t even know what I believe in anymore.”

“Well I do!” Anders signed, “I believe in freedom for every man, woman, and child born in Thedas and that freedom will never come so long as the Chantry denies it to mages! It must be torn down along with all who support it and if that means getting rid of the Vaels then I’m only sorry Johane missed one!”

Hawke glared at him, jaw working like he was trying to chew his thoughts into words, but every time it looked like he came close he swallowed them back down. Anders belatedly realized he’d just confessed to being willing to kill one of Hawke’s friends. Sebastian was Hawke’s friend. Anders knew it. Hawke supported Sebastian's claim to Starkhaven’s throne, spent time with him at the Chantry, and had nothing against Sebastian courting his sister. Anders doubted Hawke would do all that if he wanted him dead.

Anders wasn’t clamoring for Sebastian’s death, but he wouldn’t have mourned it. If the choice was between Sebastian or Johane, it was an easy one for Anders. Apparently, it wasn’t as easy for Hawke.

Eventually, Hawke said, “You could have told me.”

“No,” Anders signed.

“Any time, you could have told me,” Hawke said stubbornly. “You could have trusted me.”

“Would it have mattered?” Anders demanded. “Would you have saved them? Would you have stood against Sebastian?”

“They murdered his family,” Hawke signed. It wasn’t a yes, and Anders wasn’t settling for less than one. “For no reason.”

“You know the reason,” Anders signed.

“It’s not good enough. You can’t just kill everyone who supports the Chantry, Anders, there won’t be anyone left,” Hawke said. “You have any idea how many commandments you broke?”

“I don’t care,” Anders signed.

“I know,” Hawke sighed. He ground his teeth, like he was holding back from saying more, but the words still slipped out anyway. “I can’t be around you right now.”

Anders felt like Hawke had thrown another dagger into his heart, but they were all still on the floor. "What does that mean?"

"It means I can't be around you right now," Hawke said unhelpfully. "I don't want to see you."

Anders heard him. Anders saw him sign the words, but suddenly it was like he'd never learned them. He couldn’t process them. He couldn’t respond to them. "What happened to the Harimanns?" Anders signed instead.

"Found them addled out of their minds. Templars took them in for questioning and to see if they could undo the damage you did."

"You can't tell them it was me," Anders signed adamantly. "You can't tell anyone."

"You want me to lie?" Hawke deduced with a frown.

"Yes."

"You want me to lie for you when you won't even tell the truth for me?" Hawke said slowly, shaking his head. "... just go, Anders."

"... Go where?" Anders signed.

"Anywhere else," Hawke looked away from him, effectively ending the conversation, and started picking up his scattered daggers.

… Where was Anders supposed to go? Out of the room? Out of the estate? Out of Hightown? Out of Kirkwall?

"Love-..." Anders started, but he didn't have anything else to say.

Anders pulled his tunic up over his nose, and retrieved his satchel from the bedroom, still thick with the miasma from Hawke’s flask. Hawke was sitting on the floor in the hall when he came back out, one elbow on a bent knee, hand holding his head up, raven hair spilling over his expression while he stared at the handful of throwing daggers he’d collected. The one with Anders’ blood on it was still in the bedroom where Justice had left it, but Anders imagined that was where Hawke’s mind had gone.

Anders hesitated, trying to think of something to say that would undo it all, but he wasn't sorry. Not about the things Hawke wanted him to be sorry about. It wouldn’t have mattered if Anders had told him. Anders would have done the same thing. Hawke would have done the same thing. It all would have happened the same way.

Anders left the estate through the cellars and stepped out into Darktown, resolved not to think about it. He had to think about Johane. The estate emptied out into a mineshaft, cracked sandstone walls unsubtly graffitied with images of naked slaves crushed beneath the heels of templars and guardsmen. A dull orange glow from further down the corridor spoke of refugees, the dull murmur of their conversation echoing on the wind. “Johane?” Anders called.

No answer.

Anders checked with the refugees, but none of them had seen anyone matching Johane’s description. He circled back and tried another corridor with the same result. Anders went down to the docks and checked with the Pride of Amaranthine, but the captain hadn’t seen anyone matching Johane’s description either. Anders told him to expect her tomorrow morning, considering Anders might not find her today.

The templars might. Johane wasn’t on any of the ferries going to and from the Gallows, but there were ferries. Several of them. Five patrols worth of templars swept past him and into the city, and Anders knew they wouldn’t just stop with Johane, so he couldn’t either. He went back to the packaging house, and found Selby and Bancroft arguing about how to deal with the raid.

“Oh good, you’re here,” Bancroft announced sarcastically, pacing circles around the table littered with letters in the center of the room. “More fuel for the bloody fire.”

“How can I help?” Anders asked.

“Help!?” Bancroft whirled on him, “You and that noblewoman are the reason this is happening! A full city raid! Do you have any idea how many people we’re going to lose tonight!?”

“None,” Anders said firmly. “Tell me how to help.”

“Blood of Warning,” Selby wheeled her chair around the table, “Mark the doors, love. You’re the only one who can move fast enough. Bancroft, get him the vials-”

“I’ll move faster without them,” Anders set his satchel by the door and all his unenchanted things along with it. “Do we have anyone new?”

“Not since last week,” Selby promised.

“You miss even one house-” Bancroft started.

“I won’t,” Anders said.

“You better not,” Bancroft said.

“Hurry, love,” Selby said. “Start on the east side of Lowtown and work back through the city. Bancroft, get Evon and start on the west.”

The Blood of Warning was an old spell. The ward reacted to the pull of mana that lived in every mage and flared to life at their presence. The quick flash of crimson was intended to warn apostates of any coming raids. It wasn’t quite blood magic, but it wasn’t quite not blood magic either. Blood was just a component. Traditionally the Mage’s Collective used the blood of goats, but Anders couldn’t carry anyone’s blood but his own as a crow.

Anders slit his wrist and made the transformation. He spent the rest of the day racing the templars through the city. He flew, he landed, he cast the ward, he took flight again. He was exhausted by the end of it, near sick from blood loss and pushed to the limits of his mana with transformation after transformation, but it was a good exhaustion. It took everything, until there was nothing left inside of him but the pursuit of purpose. The will to live. The will for other mages to live with him.

Anders made it back to the packaging house well after the sun had set. Selby found him a space between the boxes and parcels, and fed him a modest meal of bread and cheese. Anders must have fallen asleep after eating it, because he woke to crumbs stuck in his beard and Bancroft kicking him. The fake-Tranquil looked exhausted, the sunburst tattoo on his forehead glistening with sweat. Evon was with him, the Chasind’s eyes peeking out from around the scarf he wore to hide his tattoos, his posture crumpled in defeat.

“We lost three,” Bancroft said, tossing the empty vials onto the table.

Of course they did. Of fucking course they did. Anders buried his head in his hands and took a few miserable breaths. Because the day wasn’t bad enough. Because Anders hadn’t lost enough without adding in the very people he was trying to protect.

Selby wheeled her way to his side, “Who?” She asked.

“Mais Dalesdottir,” Evon said hoarsely, leaning against the table. “Teryn and Elissa.”

“Elissa not even a mage!” Anders slammed a hand down on the table, bouncing his plate off it. He couldn’t believe that didn’t matter to the templars. He could, but he couldn’t.

“She harbored one,” Bancroft said bitterly.

“They strung her up on the street,” Evon explained, unravelling his scarf from around his head. His face was flush, and he looked like he’d been crying, “... Threw a rope over a lamp post and just hung her right there.”

“Fucking bastards!” Anders stood up so quickly he dizzied himself, veilfire burning through him, but there was nothing to do with his anger. It was just there. He sat back down, worried he’d be sick if he didn’t. “Dammit. Damn the fucking templar bastards.”

“Damn you,” Bancroft corrected him. “You and that noblewoman-”

“There are always raids, love,” Selby said gently.

“What noblewoman?” Evon asked.

“Johane Harimann,” Anders explained. “She’s an apostate. The templars made her.”

“Some fault of yours, no doubt,” Bancroft guessed.

“That’s enough, love,” Selby frowned. “She’s a good woman who did a lot for us in Starkhaven. There’s been no public whipping since they rebuilt the Circle there.”

“Tell that to Elissa,” Bancroft muttered and left.

“... He’s still mad about the whole abomination thing,” Evon explained.

“Thanks Evon,” Anders said flatly.

“And the killing Bardel thing,” Evon added.

“Yeah, I got that,” Anders said.

“And the destroying the tunnels thing,” Evon said.

“Good to know,” Anders said.

“That’s enough, loves,” Selby said. “Go on home now. There’ll be work in the morning.”

Anders couldn’t go home. Hawke didn’t want to see him and Anders didn’t know what that meant. Anders didn’t know how to ask what that meant. What would he do if he went home? Beg forgiveness for something he didn’t want forgiveness for? Build a wall of pillows in the middle of the bed? Sleep in a guest room like Merrill, darting down a different hall at the first sight of Hawke?

It would be fine if he went home. It had to be fine if he went home. Hawke was just angry. Hawke was always angry, but Anders had learned to live with it. They’d spent the morning talking about kids, for Maker’s sake. Their two year anniversary was in a fortnight. It was on Wintersend. It was a day for celebration and tourneys and theater and marriage proposals. Sure, maybe Hawke wasn’t in the mood for any of those things right now, but he still loved him.

Didn’t he?

Of course he did. Hawke wouldn’t have been so upset if he didn’t love him. Hawke had thought he’d almost killed him. Hawke hadn’t. Hawke couldn’t. Anders had taken a blade before and lived the night he’d lost Compassion. Hawke had seen the scar. He had to know a blade was nothing to him. Anders should have reminded him. Anders should have comforted him.

… Hawke should have comforted him. Hawke had taken the equivalent of a lightning strike. If anyone was lucky to be alive it was Hawke. If he hadn’t been so paranoid after his mother’s death and invested so heavily in Sandal’s runework he might have died. He might have died because Anders had rescued the mage who might have killed him.

… it was an accident. It was just an accident. Hawke had gone for a dagger. Johane had been scared. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but the bloody templars who made them all live like this, bleeding and running and fighting half to death just to survive. Anders had to save her and every other mage no matter what it cost him. Hawke had to understand that. Anders could go home. Hawke would want him to go home. Anders wanted to go home.

It was a long walk back to Hightown. Anders was exhausted. The stairs were exhausting. He was barely conscious by the time he made it back to the marbled streets and their perfumed oil lanterns. He reached the estate, and stared up at the window to the solar overlooking the market, where he’d spent the morning. Ser Cumference was in the window, and scratched at the glass at the sight of him in the street, but the longer Anders looked at the little blighter, the more he realized his cat was the only one who wanted to see him.

The infirmary wasn’t fit for winter, and the Warden Compound meant walking all the way back to Lowtown. Anders didn’t have the coin for an inn, and there was only one other place that was still standing where he might be able to stay. Anders dragged himself through the Hightown Districts until he reached a corner manse, huddled between its fellows for warmth, and knocked on a door carved with intertwining serpents.

An indeterminate amount of time later, the door opened. Fenris stood in the threshold, wearing a pair of trousers and a tunic ill suited for the season, but the estate was warm enough for it not to matter. He took him and his satchel in with a frown.

“Hey,” Anders said lamely.

“Hey yourself,” Fenris said.

“Can I stay here tonight?” Anders asked.

“... Tonight?” Fenris raised a suspicious eyebrow.

“... And maybe tomorrow,” Anders said.

“And overmorrow as well, I suspect,” Fenris said, stepping back and waving him inside. “Find your own room. I’ll not share mine.”

“Thanks,” Anders said. Fenris shut the door behind him, blocking out winter’s chill while Anders strove to do the same with what had driven him here. “... The ship sets out for Amaranthine tomorrow.”

“I am aware,” Fenris said, taking a few steps back and rubbing warmth back into his arms.

“Did you need help with your letter?” Anders asked. Not everything he said to Hawke had to be a lie, after all.

“I gave it to the captain this afternoon,” Fenris said.

Anders nodded, wringing his hands on the strap to his satchel and wondering if he owed him some sort of explanation. “... Fenris-”

Fenris held up a hand to stop him. “I don’t care.”

Fenris went back upstairs and Anders went hunting for a room. Eventually, he found one that wasn’t occupied by someone having sex or a smoke. The small nook might have been a tea room once, by the dilapidated hutch and small table shoved into a far corner. A few chairs with their legs broken off encircled a rug where a water pipe might have gone during the day. It wasn’t four posts and a canopy, with a purring cat, feather pillows, and the warm body of the man he loved granting him the only reprieve he’d ever known from endless Tainted nightmares, but Anders had made his bed.

Now he had to lie in it.

Chapter 131: But This is All I Ever Was

Summary:

Alternative Title: Makings of a Martyr

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I appreciate the feedback and I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 16 Verimensis Nighttime
Kirkwall Hightown: Fenris' Estate

Anders couldn’t sleep.

It wasn’t the same. The dog wasn’t there, jumping on the bed in the middle of the night and wedging itself against his back. The cat wasn’t there, curled up on his head or stuffed under his armpit. Hawke wasn’t there, shooing both away to wrap a strong arm around Anders’ waist and pull him against the firm expanse of his chest. Anders couldn’t sleep without him and his snoring. He lay awake for what might have been hours, wondering if Hawke was doing the same, until exhaustion finally claimed him.

Elissa was screaming. She swung from the gallows, rope pushing her neck up into her jaw, bloating her face into a broodmother. Her skin purpled and stretched, growing larger and larger until she touched the ground, birthing darkspawn after darkspawn from rolls of blighted flesh, and Anders was one of them. Her children came like a tidal wave, pouring down the sandstones stairs of the city, devouring everything in their path.

Hungry. Ravenous. Starving. An insatiable appetite for the living, the dead, the raw, the rotting, blood and pus frothing over his lips, bulging his stomach, but he could still hear it, hungry, calling, hungry, calling, hungry-

Anders woke up in a cold sweat, heart racing, and reached into the empty air for a man who wasn't there. Hawke wasn’t there. Anders fought his way out of the rug he’d rolled himself into for the night in lieu of a mattress or blanket and sat up. A hastily conjured sphere of magelight battled back the black, but only served to cast queer shadows through the room. Anders swore he could hear whispering, but he didn’t know if it was darkspawn, or his nightmare, or the Veil.

His nightmare. Of course it was his nightmare. His stomach growled, and Anders pulled his knees up to his chest, fighting back a pathetic whimper. A nightmare. Just a nightmare, but he could still hear the Call, and he was still hungry, and he was still Tainted, and Hawke still wasn’t here, and he still couldn’t sleep.

Anders kneaded at his chest and the frantically beating heart beneath it, and then suddenly, for some inexplicable reason, he felt calm. Anders never felt calm. That wasn't right. Anders lifted his head out of his knees and stared at his arms, but no veilfire split through them. Justice was as exhausted as he was. Anders' eyes followed the path of his veins up to his hands, and the ring he wore on one.

… Amell felt calm.

Anders felt calm because Amell felt calm. Could Amell make him feel calm? Could he feed into Anders' emotions? Could Anders feed into his? Did the ring work that way or could Anders just feel how Amell felt because he was thinking about him? Anders couldn’t help thinking about him. Hawke wasn’t here, and Anders was Tainted, and Amell had Tainted him.

Anders wondered if his panic had woken him. He wondered if Amell had already been awake. He wondered if this was all in his head, some delusion conjured by his broken heart to reassure him someone somewhere still cared about him. That he hadn’t ruined everything. That he hadn’t lost everything. Anders rolled himself back up in his rug and twisted the ring on his finger. A delusion. It had to be a delusion.

Still… Gratitude. How was he supposed to channel gratitude? How was he supposed to channel any emotion? How did the damn ring work? “Thank you,” Anders said to himself. … Probably not like that, but at least he tried. Anders took a breath, deep and even, and went back to sleep.

A crow flew down to the docks the next day and settled itself on the high perch of the infirmary walls, watching the comings and goings of humans in the early morning twilight. It spotted the familiar shape of one of its murder, emerging from a back alley with its hood pulled low to hide its face. Johane darted through the waterlogged streets to the wharves with an unnatural haste, and after a brief exchange with the captain of the Pride of Amaranthine, boarded the ship. The crow watched and waited until it set out to sea with no templars in pursuit.

Anders landed in his infirmary, relieved for the first time in a long time. Johane was alive. Johane was still alive. It hadn’t all been for nothing. Anders kept his infirmary closed for the day, and spent his time with the Mage’s Collective instead. The aftermath of a raid was as dangerous for apostates as the onset of one. Apostates scattered throughout the city, hiding with friends and family or just hiding, and it was for the Mage’s Collective to see them all back to their homes.

Anders was possessed. He could tell a mage from a mundane at a glance. No one else could, but it didn’t stop them from trying. More than just the Waking Chasm divided the city after a templar raid. Neighbors turned on neighbors over the slightest suspicion to curry favor with the militant arm of the Chantry. Templars walked the streets with Chantry Sisters, begging alms and subsequently handing them out for any information on suspected apostates.

Bastards, all of them. Anders checked on the Beshcals first and was glad he had. A mob had gathered outside their building: refugees in rags, lowtowners in linens, and guardsmen in orange holding them all back. Anders shoved his way towards the forefront, where two templars and a Chantry sister were speaking with someone wearing Friends of Kirkwall red.

The gang member wasn’t even hiding it, a tattoo of the old Tevinter heraldry showing on his neck, just above his collar, but the guards didn’t care. They were too busy containing the citizens alternatively cursing the templars or the mages they hunted. The corrupt bastards were just another arm of the Chantry that needed to be amputated.

“-Beshcal got magic!” The gang member was insisting.

Anders’ heart stopped. The Beshcals weren’t mages, but they harbored one. They were part of the mage underground because Anders had made them part of it. He’d made dozens upon dozens of families part of it. Families who offered to harbor him if ever the templars came for him. Families who wanted some way to save his life the way he’d saved theirs. Families who had no way of repaying him for his magic, but believed in the good in it. Families who wanted to make a difference, even if it was just for one person. One mage.

The Beshcals harbored Bonwald. He was pushing eighty, more beard than man, and more cane than legs. Anders would never forget freeing him. He'd had to carry him on his back through the underground tunnels, the old scholar weeping his thanks. If someone had made him, there was no way Bonwald could run. Plan A was out. Anders had to come up with a Plan B and fast.

One of the templars banged a silver fist on the Beshcal’s door and bellowed, “Open, in the name of the Maker, you wretches!” He had hair like pumpkin pulp and a head like an overripe squash. It was almost too easy to imagine splitting it, but Anders couldn’t just kill him in front of everyone. Plan B was out too. What was Plan C?

“Abby, sweetheart, stay inside!” Someone from the mob cried.

“Blessed are the righteous!” Yelled someone else. “Send the damn blood mages back to their Maker!”

“Fuck back to the Gallows, you bastards! You can’t hang all of us!” A rock sailed out of the crowd, and pinged off the templar’s armor. It didn’t so much as dent it, but the templar whirled around with a feral gleam in his eyes, and drew his sword.

“Guardsmen!” The templar snarled, “Bring me the wretch who threw that stone!”

Chaos erupted. None of the guardsmen drew their swords, but their shields were weapon enough. One smashed theirs into the face of a protestor with a sickening crack. Blood splattered across the shield, painting it in all the colors of a sunset, and the protestor collapsed. Someone screamed. Someone else tried to drag the collapsed fellow to safety.

More guardsmen followed suit, striking out with their shields, and too many people tried to move in too many different directions. Something smacked into Anders' shoulder. Rocks and rubble flew overhead, protestors flinging whatever was close at hand at the advancing guardsmen. Someone drew a dagger, and someone else shoved Anders into it, the blade glancing his side. Protestors surged forward with more weapons, some real, but mostly makeshift, and turned them on the guardsmen and each other. Others tried to turn and flee, and were caught in the middle of it all, shoving into each other and knocking people down to be trampled. It was the Viscount’s Keep all over again.

No, no, no. No, Anders wasn’t going through that again. He wasn’t digging through a mass of mutilated flesh, gagging on the charnel stench of it all, only to have the sole survivor die in his arms. Plan C. Plan C. A woman went down, and it was like watching her fall into a raging river. She grabbed the hem of his coat with a terrified whimper to keep from being swept away, screaming when someone stepped on her ankle. What the fuck was plan C?

“Stop!” Anders screamed and the Fade screamed with him.

It worked.

Everyone stopped.

… They didn’t have a choice.

Blood magic was funny like that.

Anders felt like he’d cast the spell on himself. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t let go of it. He was in a crowd. He was in the middle of a bloody crowd using blood magic on the crowd. Someone had to have noticed. Everyone had to have noticed. But they were all just frozen, waiting for whatever else he willed of them. Anders didn’t have anything else to will. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He just wanted the fighting to stop.

Everyone let go of their weapons at the thought. Anders braced himself, and let go of the spell, but the fighting didn’t resume. The templars didn’t smite him. No one accused him of blood magic. No one even looked at him. It couldn’t be that easy, and yet after a moment’s hesitation, people started helping people. Picking up the fallen, tending to the wounded, fleeing as it suited them.

The spell had saved the crowd, but it hadn’t saved the Beshcals. The templar who’d started it all scowled as the spell wore off, with a twitch that spoke of lyrium addiction. “I said bring me the wretch who threw the stone!”

“At ease, Ser Mettin,” The other templar said. She had greying black hair with a face full of wrinkles, but Anders was willing to bet the only reason she wasn’t clamouring for blood was because she was too tired to spill it. “The commoners are merely misguided.”

“They're complicit, but you're right, we can’t waste time. There could be a hive of blood mages and their supporters in there, scattering like cockroaches as we speak.” Ser Mettin banged on the door again with the hilt of his sword. “Open up!”

“Or there may be innocents,” The Chantry Sister chimed in gently from where she hovered off to the side, removed from it all. She may as well not have bothered.

“Innocents?” Ser Mettin scoffed, “Hardly. You know how difficult these mages are to track down, Sister. It’s because of families like this one.” Ser Mettin took a step back, shoving his pulp-hair out of his eyes and shouting up at one of the shuttered windows, “This is your last warning! You will leave your home or we will burn it down!”

“Alright!” Abby’s voice called anxiously from inside. “We’re coming out, but there are no mages in here!”

“Liar!” Someone from the crowd yelled.

“You’re the liar!” Someone else yelled.

“We’ll be the judge of that,” Ser Mettin shouted back.

The door eased open, and Abby’s head popped out first. Her hair was done up in a fraying bun, and she was wearing an apron still covered with flour from the morning’s bread. Her adopted girl Nika clung to her legs, wide-eyed with fear no child should ever have to feel. She stared up at the templars like they were the doggle-boon behemoths from one of Anders’ stories. The little girl tripped over her feet and Abby’s feet when she was led outside, too scared to even cry.

Thom followed them out and shut the door behind them. Bonwald wasn’t with them. Anders didn’t know where the old apostate was and prayed the templars didn’t either, but it wasn’t just Bonwald the Beshcals had to worry about, it was Thom. The man had a heart condition Anders helped him manage with an enchanted necklace, and it reeked of blood magic.

Anders stayed in the crowd, blood magic welling about his fingertips from the cut on his side. He had to do something. Something that would send the templars away. Something that would convince them the Beshcals weren’t mages or mage sympathizers. He just wasn’t sure what yet. No one had noticed the first spell, but he’d doubted he’d be so lucky with the second.

“Abby, sweetheart, just do what they say, it’ll be okay!” Someone suggested.

“Send them to the Void!" Spat someone else. "Only Our Lady shall weep for them!”

“All templars are bastards! Justice for Elissa! Justice for Mais!”

Anders’ mind raced through everything he could remember from Amell’s grimoire and his lessons on persuasion. It was a matter of willpower, and aligning the target’s desires with your own. The more receptive the target the less noticeable the spell. If Anders cast anything in support of mages on Ser Mettin, the man’s head would probably explode.

Which only left the Chantry Sister and the other templar.

Anders hedged his bets on who Ser Mettin had already listened to once, and picked the templar.

Tired. No blood shed. You want to go home.

“Is this all of them?” Ser Mettin asked of the gang member.

“Aye,” The gang member lied, but Anders imagined it was more for ignorance than mercy. Thom must not have been able to pay for protection this month, and the guard must not have given a shit. “The little one’s a blood mage. Saw her skin her knees without crying. Used the blood to talk to demons, she did.”

“Messere Middletown isn’t a demon!” Nika protested.

“Hush now, sweetie,” Abby urged, petting her hair.

“A confession,” Ser Mettin decided, leveling his sword, “Let us strike now and put them all down.”

“No, no, no!” Abby went white as a sheet and shoved Nika behind her. “That’s just a character from one of her stories!”

“Mettin, enough,” The other templar said at Anders’ urging, stepping in front of the Beshcals. “They’ve surrendered.”

“Our duty is clear,” Ser Mettin scowled, “They all must die.”

The female templar rubbed her temple, and Anders relaxed his hold lest the spell start to show in earnest. “The blood mage, perhaps,” She allotted, hand dropping as her headache apparently receded. “But you can’t kill the others just for helping their family.”

“Watch me,” Ser Mettin said.

“No,” The other templar stayed firmly planted between Mettin and the Beshcals. “I will not let you do this.”

“At last you show your true colors, Ser Agatha,” Ser Mettin laughed with another lyrium addled twitch. “You are a traitor to the order. The Knight-Commander will hear of this. Now move aside or die with them. Guardsmen-”

Time for plan D, which was apparently Damnit.

Anders shoved through the guardsmen with a burst of energy ripped from the Fade. “She’s not a mage!”

“Warden,” Ser Agatha took in his tabard with a small nod.

“This doesn’t concern you, Serah,” Ser Mettin said.

“It’s concerning you want to murder an innocent child!” Anders shot back.

“She stands accused of apostasy and blood magic,” Ser Mettin said haughtily. “There is no innocence in either charge.”

“She’s a child!” Anders repeated. “If you’re so convinced she’s a mage, smite her and see for yourself!”

Ser Mettin considered it for a moment, and ultimately lowered his sword with a satisfied nod. “Very well. Ser Agatha?”

Ser Agatha hesitated, glancing between him and the Beshcals. “... You invite great tragedy if you are wrong, Warden. A quick death would be kinder.”

“I’m not wrong,” Anders snapped. “Just do it. Nika. Nika, look at me.”

Nika didn’t. She was too busy staring at the sword Ser Mettin had been leveling at her family. Thom squeezed her shoulder, his hands and voice shaking. “Look at Anders, sweetpea.”

“I promise this won’t hurt,” Anders said.

“Warden’s promise?” Nika whimpered.

“Warden’s promise.”

Nika stared at him, her eyes like saucers. Ser Agatha raised a hand, and the sky cracked open over her. A radiant light crashed down on her, but to anyone without magic in their veins, light was all it was. To a child, it was also scary. Nika screamed, flinging her hands up over her head and curling in on herself.

The crowd gasped in shock. Ser Mettin ran with it. “Aha!” The blood-thirsty bastard shouted triumphantly. “Proof. The girl is a maleficar, just as claimed. The family dies-”

“She’s a girl!” Anders shouted over him. “She’s barely seven! She’s not even old enough to have magic yet!”

“Evil has no age,” Ser Mettin said.

“Evil looks like it’s pushing forty if you ask me,” Anders glared. “You want to see what a smite does to a mage? Smite me.”

“I beg your pardon?” Ser Mettin blinked.

“You heard me, you bastard,” Anders said.

“... Ser Mettin, the Warden speaks the truth,” Ser Agatha said, backpedaling hastily at the idea of smiting one. “The girl would have done far more than scream if she were a mage. Clearly the claims of blood magic were fabricated-”

“I am your superior and I will decide who is a mage and who is not!” Ser Mettin screamed petulantly, all but stomping his foot. “Sister, you stand witness. The Warden invited the smite.”

The Sister was still cowering off to the side, behind the guardsmen’s line and far from the templars and Beshcals alike. Technically, she outranked all of them, and could have stopped this madness whenever she wanted, but she looked just as terrified as Nika and just as in control of the situation. “I-... Yes… Andraste 7:12.”

“Don’t know that one,” Anders said.

“Let my cries touch their hearts. Let mine be the last sacrifice.” The Sister said.

The templar cast the smite.

Justice didn’t help him weather it. Justice couldn’t help him weather it. Not in front of two templars, a Chantry Sister, a patrol of guardsmen, and a crowd of Kirkwallers. The sky crashed down on him, and set his blood on fire. Pain lanced through his veins, sapping his strength and his mana and twisting around his heart and the pulse of the Fade within it. Anders collapsed, simultaneously crying out and throwing up. The harsh burn of his vomit curdled in his throat, and left him gasping on the ground.

He was still bleeding. He was still bleeding if he needed to bleed, but Ser Mettin just grunted. The templars and the Chantry Sister left, escorted through the city by guardsmen, and most of the crowd dispersed. Most, but not all. A half dozen strangers rushed over to him. Someone gave him water. Someone else wiped off his face. Yet another someone covered him with a cloak and rubbed his back.

“Are you alright, messere?”

“That son of a bitch just wanted to hurt someone.”

“Bless you, Warden.”

“That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Can you stand? Do you need help?”

“Anders,” Abby appeared in front of him, kneeling off to the side of his vomit. “Andraste’s sweet saving grace, Anders, thank the Maker you were here, I don’t know what we would have done.” She pulled him into an embrace, and Anders flung a weary arm around her shoulders to return it. “You’re a life saver.”

“A martyr, more like,” Thom said from somewhere nearby. “I think I had another heart attack back there.”

“Don’t joke, Thom,” Abby swatted somewhere off to her left.

“I’m not sure I am,” Thom said. “Here, you all, help us get him inside, would you?”

Someone flung his arm over their shoulder, and hefted him to his feet. Anders tried and failed to stumble around his vomit, and ended up dragging his boot through it. He tracked a few yellowed footprints through the main room, a modest set up with a hearth, a cooking space, and a table and chairs. Someone sat him in a chair, and there Anders stayed until all the strangers had left with the Beshcals’ thanks.

“Andraste’s bloody pyre, finally,” Anders said when he was alone with the Beshcals. Veilfire split through his veins, washing away the agonizing aftermath of the smite, and came with a profound surge of emotions Anders knew didn’t belong to him. Respect. Pride. Admiration. Affection. All of them helped with the foul taste in his mouth. So did the apple Abby handed him. “Thanks,” Anders said while he chewed.

“Don’t you go thanking us,” Abby warned him, massaging his shoulders. “Don’t you dare go thanking us after that.”

“Let the man do what he wants, woman,” Thom said, sinking bonelessly into a chair. “I think he’s earned it.”

“I won’t have it,” Abby said.

“Where’s Bonwald?” Anders asked.

“Playing hide and seek,” Nika explained, trading Abby’s leg for Thom's. “... I’m sorry I screamed. The light didn’t hurt.”

“It’s okay,” Anders promised. "I know it was scary."

“Why did it hurt you?” Nika asked.

“Templars hurt mages, sweetie,” Abby explained.

“Go find Bonpa and tell him the game’s over, sweetpea,” Thom suggested, pushing Nika towards a backroom.

“Bonpa?” Anders repeated with a raised eyebrow when Nika left.

“Oh stop,” Abby swatted his shoulder. “He’s family now.”

“They could have killed you,” Anders said like they didn’t already know, but for some reason he felt like it warranted repeating. “They hung Elissa in the street yesterday.”

“We heard,” Thom said grimly.

“Any thoughts on that?” Anders asked.

“This is Stannard’s city,” Thom said. “Always has been, always will be.”

Anders didn’t agree with that, but he didn’t have time to sell the Beshcals on revolution with the templars patrolling the city. “If I need to move him, I need to know now.”

“You’ll be doing no such thing,” Abby said sternly. “He’s a Beshcal.”

“Always has been, always will be,” Thom added.

Anders stayed long enough to finish his apple and see Bonwald alive and well with his own eyes before he moved on. He spent the rest of the day checking in with the apostates the Collective had scattered throughout the city, but no one else he encountered had such a close encounter with death. Some were just missing, but Anders couldn’t say if they were dead, in hiding, or in the Circle. The sun was passed mid-day by the time he finished, and went back to the docks to give Selby the headcount.

Selby traded him bread and cheese for lunch, and Anders spent the rest of the day in his infirmary. He was still Tainted, and still hungry, and still thinking of his nightmare when the sun began to set. The thought of going to bed hungry again terrified him, but somehow Anders managed to guilt Thrask into sharing his dinner with an “I’ll owe you one.” Anders wasn’t exactly sure what he owed him, but whatever it was, he couldn’t repay it. He didn’t have any coin. Hawke did.

Anders locked up the infirmary that night and made the long walk back to Hightown. He stopped outside the Hawke estate, the same way he had the day prior, but Ser Cumference wasn’t in the window this time. He thought of going inside, but no one had come to see him at the infirmary. Not Hawke. Not Varric. Not Sebastian. Not Aveline. Not anyone but his patients. Hawke didn’t want to see him. If Hawke wanted to see him, Hawke knew where to find him.

Anders went back to Fenris’ mansion, and lay awake for a long while, rolled up in his rug. Veilfire rippled through his veins, a quiet comfort in the non-dark, and when he finally slept, it was free of nightmares. He woke hungry, and wondered if he was welcome to anything in the kitchen. Fenris had given him a room, but Anders didn’t know if he was willing to give him more than that. He also didn’t know if the food belonged to Fenris or the girls or someone else entirely. Anders was deliberating in the doorway when Faith wandered in, topless with trousers.

“Hey Healer. Help me with the morning bread?” Her reflective eyes swept over him, lingering briefly on his crotch, and she grinned, “Or maybe the morning wood?”

“Very funny,” Anders rolled his eyes.

“Made you look,” Faith teased.

“I’ll help,” Anders rolled up his sleeves. “What do you need?”

“Yesterday’s dough is in the ice cellar, but I like to start a new batch before we use the last one. We go half flour half dust. Bowls are on the left. Summon some water, would you?”

Anders lost an hour making dough and baking bread and won a light breakfast for it, but it wasn’t enough to keep a Warden from going hungry. He needed real food, and the coin to buy it, and spent the day taking contracts for the Collective. They were mostly running errands, and took him the rest of the day, but he came away with two silver for it, and bought a large enough dinner to sleep through to the next.

Anders spent it in his infirmary, and the one after it the same way, when Varric finally showed up to see him. He looked well, dressed in his usual red tunic and brown jacket and toting Bianca on his back. He wasn’t covered in blood, or dragging a half-dead Hawke with him, but Anders’ heart constricted all the same. It was hard to breathe, and harder to talk, but somehow he managed. “Hey Thrask, can you give us a minute?”

“Of course,” Thrask snorted awake, and stumbled out of the clinic. Varric took his chair, and Anders sat on the surgery table next to it.

Part of him wanted to be angry it took him three days to visit, but Varric had his own life. He was a Merchant Prince. He spent every day buried in paperwork with all the loans he was managing reconstructing Kirkwall, and when he wasn’t doing that, he was taking care of his lyrium-addled brother. He didn’t have time for Anders’ drama on top of his own. It was nice that he’d come at all.

“Hey Blondie,” Varric said with a smile he probably wouldn’t be wearing if Hawke had sent him to break up with Anders for him. Then again, maybe they’d already broken up. “Thought I’d come check on you.”

“Thanks.”

“Would have come by sooner, but it took me a while to notice you were gone.”

“Ouch,” Anders forced a smile, but he couldn’t get it up into his eyes. “What gave it away?”

“It’s quiet,” Varric joked.

“Hawke didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“... Ouch,” Anders lost his smile.

“Yeah,” Varric sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I thought I'd let you know the Hanged Man should be finished around this time next month if you need a place to stay.”

It was a nice offer. Anders wasn’t sure if he’d take it. “Thanks Varric.”

“You staying at the Warden Compound?” Varric guessed.

“No.”

“Can’t be in here,” Varric noted, with a glance to the open sky above.

“No,” Anders agreed.

“Well don't leave me hanging,” Varric kicked the leg of the table Anders sat on. “I told you the place isn't ready yet.”

“I'm staying with Fenris,” Anders explained.

Varric’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “No shit? Poor Rivaini. She’d have a Feast Day with her friend-fiction.”

“You know for once, I actually wouldn’t mind reading it,” Anders admitted. “Have you heard from her?”

“Nothing,” Varric said sadly, “But I didn't come here to talk about Riviani. You wanna tell me what all this is about?

“Hawke really didn't tell you?” Hawke told Varric everything. It seemed like Varric should already have the full story, and the fake story, and whatever other stories he wanted to add to it.

"I can probably guess,” Varric said. “Lady Harimann goes missing the same day we find out she killed Choir Boy's family? The same Lady you and I have been working with to publish your manifesto?”

Anders didn’t say anything. Varric didn’t need him to.

“Look Blondie… you're my friend. Shit, you're one of my best friends. You’re the reason I can still write. You saved my life. You save everyone's life, whether or not they deserve saving, and that's kind of the problem here.”

“She deserved to be saved, Varric,” Anders argued.

“Tell that to Choir Boy,” Varric said with an unhappy smile.

“I can’t tell it to anyone, and neither can you.” Anders said seriously.

“I know,” Varric sighed, rubbing his thumb into the palm of his hand, or what remained of it after Bartrand. Varric understood. Varric had to understand. Not just because he was one of the only friends Anders had left, but because he knew what it was like to want to redeem the irredeemable. He wrote story after story about it.

“... How’s Hawke?” Anders asked.

“Why don't you ask him?” Varric countered.

“He said he didn't want to see me,” Anders told his hands, but they didn’t know what to do about it either. There was too much blood on them.

“A little late for that,” Varric joked. “What are you going to do about it? Or is this what you're doing about it?”

“I don't know,” Anders sighed, scrubbing his hands against his thighs. “I just want to know how he's doing.”

“You'd have to ask the Maker, seeing as He seems to be the only one Hawke talks to these days,” Varric joked.

“I'm serious, Varric,” Anders frowned.

“Blondie, Killer couldn't have a good day if the Maker made him one,” Varric said with equal seriousness. “He's doing the same way he's always doing. What about you? How are you doing?”

Maker save him, Anders wished people would stop asking him that question. He laughed, high-pitched and hysterical, and cleared his throat to stop the sound. How was he doing? What kind of question was that? He’d lost his home, he’d lost his lover, he’d lost his cat, he’d lost mages and mana to the templars and their smites, he’d lost a full stomach and a good night’s sleep. How was he supposed to be doing?

“Never better,” Anders smiled.

“I'm sure,” Varric smiled with him, but it was sad. “Look, Blondie, I just want you to know… I’m still your friend. Anyone could have seen something like this coming. You’ve been right what it says on the cover from day one.”

“What’s the cover say?” Anders asked.

“Moody Rebel Mage.”

“And you still read it?”

“Well… I figure if you judge a book by its cover, you might just miss a good story.”

Chapter 132: Wasted Time

Summary:

“Time is just time. You can’t waste it. It doesn’t spoil, or go moldy when you’re not looking. I want to spend some with you.”

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 21 Verimensis Morning
Kirkwall Docks: Warden’s Infirmary

The thing about being a healer no one ever talked about was that there was no winning. Everything Anders did was a stall. Sooner or later, death came for everyone, and he lost.

“I’m sorry,” Anders said the same way he always did whenever someone was too far gone. Frostbite. The poor bastard had frozen to death long before Bree had carried the corpse to the clinic. His limbs were black and hard, dead tissue covering every inch of exposed skin.

“Thanks for trying, yeah?” Bree sighed, staring at the dead Dog Lord on his surgery table. “He took an extra shift in the mines. We think he fell asleep. Must have missed him at headcount…”

“It’s not your fault,” Anders squeezed her shoulder.

“Tell that to the Bastard,” Bree sighed again. “Tanned my hide for forgetting him.”

“Cor’s dead, Bree,” Anders reminded her.

“Oh - um…” Bree looked sheepish. “That’s what we call the boss. Don’t tell him, yeah?”

No risk of that. Anders would have to be talking to Hawke to tell him anything. “You want me to handle the burning?”

“It’d save us a silver if you could,” Bree said.

“They should be free." They should have been, but they weren't. The Grand Cleric was so concerned with reclaiming the Golden City she was trying to turn the Chantry into one. “Bring the Dogs by tomorrow morning with something for the ashes if you want them.”

Bree left. Anders moved the dead Dog Lord to the back of the clinic and covered him with a tarp in time for his next patient to walk in, dressed in all the finery of Hightown. A thick wool cloak was thrown over a striped emerald doublet, loosely clasped with three silver chains stretched across a broad chest. Windswept raven hair with a few early strands of grey fell around hard features, set in a resting glower that softened only slightly at the sight of him. Bree's Bastard.

"Hawke," Anders signed.

Damn him, he looked gorgeous. Anders looked like he felt. He hadn’t bathed. He hadn’t shaved. He hadn’t changed. He looked like shit. He looked like he should have looked without Hawke, but Hawke didn’t look how Anders wanted him to look without him.

"Anders,” Hawke signed back. “Talk?"

Thrask was still in his corner, but he was asleep. Anders waved Hawke towards the table and chairs that served as his makeshift apothecary, but Hawke didn’t sit, so Anders didn't either.

"How are you?" Anders signed.

"Not here to talk about me,” Hawke signed.

"Then what are you here to talk about?" Anders signed. "I can't sleep. I miss you."

"Not here to talk about you," Hawke cut him off. "Here to talk about us. I think we need time apart."

They were already apart. Anders didn't know how much more apart they could be. Hawke looked like he was living a completely different life in a completely different world.

"How much time?" Anders asked.

Hawke shrugged unhelpfully, "Enough to figure out what we want."

"I want you."

"Why?"

"I love you," Anders signed.

"Act like it." Hawke said.

"I do!"

Anders did. He’d accompanied Hawke on countless quests throughout the city for want of nothing but his company. He’d gone to the Deep Roads with him. He was learning an entire language for him. He’d sacrificed someone for him, for Maker’s sake. If that wasn’t love, what else was it except wasted time?

"No," Hawke said.

"Are you breaking up with me?" Anders asked.

"I need a break. I love you, but I can't be with you right now." Hawke signed.

It seemed like it should hurt more, but Anders didn’t feel anything. Just numb. Maybe a little tired. Like this was just another fight and it was just another Tuesday. But it wasn’t, and Anders didn't know what to do or feel about it. Time passed without words, spoken or signed, and Thrask snored.

"Varric said you're staying with Fenris?" Hawke asked.

Anders nodded. He didn’t trust himself to sign or say anything. Hawke dug into his pocket, and set what looked like roughly fifty silver on the table between them. His hands moved like he was signing something, but Anders couldn’t read it. He was too busy staring at the table, and the fifty silver glittering up at him, and something in Anders snapped.

"Are you serious!?” Anders shouted. Thrask jerked awake with a startled snort.

"You need the coin-" Hawke started.

"Fifty silver!?” Anders signed and shouted. “That's what I'm worth to you?"

"That's what I have on me-"

"I don't want your pocket coin,” Anders snatched up a coin and flung it at him. “I don't need your charity, Champion."

"You expect me to believe that?” Hawke caught it, and tossed it back onto the table. “I know you don't have any."

"Now you care!? It's been days in the dead of winter! My last patient froze to death overnight!"

"I didn't tell you to leave-"

"That's exactly what you told me! You told me to leave the house you said was ours! You know what else you told me? You told me I wouldn't lose you. You said you'd follow me into the Void." Damn him, Hawke knew how much it meant to him to love someone. He was the only person Anders had ever confessed to loving, and there was the worth of it. There on the table. Fifty fucking silver.

"We both said a lot of things." Hawke left.

“Fuck,” Anders snarled, dragging his hands through his matted hair. “Fucking bastard. Fuck.”

“... Is everything alright, serah?” Thrask asked from his bundle of furs in the corner.

“Fine,” Anders muttered. The worst part of it was Hawke was right. Anders did need the coin. He had to spend every other day taking every contract he could from the Collective just to make enough to keep from going hungry. Anders stared at the coin on the table. It was an Orlesian mint, stamped with a symbol of the sun and framed by the words “Remember the fire.”

Fifty silver. Fifty fucking silver. Hawke made more than that in an hour. He owned one of the most profitable quarries in the Free Marches and one of the most successful mercenary bands. Anders didn't care that it was all he'd had on him. Hawke had come to see him. He could have had whatever he wanted to have on him. They’d been together for two years. For fuck’s sake, Amell had given him three sovereigns his first day at the Vigil and they hadn’t been together at all.

Hawke shouldn't have given him anything. It would have hurt less. Anders gathered up the coins and stuffed them into his boot. The metal cut into the sole of his foot as he went about his day, his anger growing with every step until they turned into stomps. Fifty silver. Fifty fucking silver. Anders spent it all in a fit, dragging sacks of barley, winter squash, dried meat, and root vegetables up to Fenris' estate. The girls were ecstatic, but Anders didn't stay for the celebration.

He went back to Hawke’s estate towards the end of the day for the rest of his things. Hawke wasn’t home, but Bodahn let him inside with a sad, "The boy and I have missed you, Master Anders. Expecting you’ll be coming home any time soon?"

“I don’t think so, Bodahn,” Anders said.

The cat came running, chittering away in reprimand for how long he’d stayed away. Anders caught him and carried him up to his room. It looked the way he’d left it. Hawke’s lute resting against the edge of the bed, bows along the walls, armor stands beneath them. Hawke’s armoire, chest, and desk were all as closed off as the man himself, but the bed was neatly made for two with no changes to their pillows.

Anders retrieved his staff, hating the lump in his throat. He filled up two satchels with the things he deemed worth taking. Letters, books, jewelry, clothes, a seashell, Merrill’s painting, his mother’s pillow. He stuffed Ser Cumference on top of it all, the straps to his satchel cutting into his shoulder with the fat bastard’s weight on the walk back to Fenris’s place. Anders fought with the door and everything he was carrying, and eventually gave up and thumped his staff against the wood.

Fenris opened it, wearing one of Merrill’s scarves and chewing on a strip of the dried meat Anders had bought that afternoon. He raised an eyebrow at the bundle of things Anders was holding. “Another night, I presume?”

“Or two.”

“Or more,” Fenris guessed, stepping back to let him inside.

Anders started for his room when Fenris called after him, “Anders.”

“Yeah?” Anders glanced back at him.

Fenris didn’t say anything at first. He tapped the jerky against his palm, like he was trying to figure out how to thank him for it, but Anders wished he wouldn’t. Then he’d just have to admit why he’d been able to afford it. “Donnic will be by later for Diamondback,” Fenris said eventually.

“Okay?” Anders frowned.

“You could come.”

“I could? Where? All the rooms are taken.”

Fenris rolled his eyes and went upstairs.

“That was funny!” Anders called after him. Anders chuckled to himself, but the humor wore off. He set Ser Cumference loose in his room, and sat in one of his broken chairs. The cat set about investigating its new lodgings. Ser Cumference seemed the most interested in the rug where Anders had been sleeping. He kneaded it for a long while, huffing and snorting, before circling back over to curl up in his lap and purr.

It was almost enough to make Anders forget he was crying.

Time passed. Hawke didn’t come to see him. Anders didn’t come to see Hawke. It was painful how easily he seemed to vanish from his life. Anders kept up with his signing lessons, and asked about him whenever he saw Varric, but that was it. Hawke never came to Fenris’ mansion, and Anders wasn’t sure if it was because he was there, or because Hawke’s betrayal of Isabela had ruined his relationship with the man. Their weekly games of Wicked Grace and writing sessions had stopped after the invasion, and Hawke no longer seemed to keep the same company Anders did.

Wintersend came and went. Anders spent their anniversary as deep in a bottle of Aqua Magus as Justice would let him get, which wasn’t very deep, but it was deep enough. Veilfire burned through the day and into the night, illuminating the letter Oghren had sent him in Haring.

He loves you, Sparkles, but he don’t need you.

Anders didn’t know if the words were born of wisdom or rotgut, but he kept thinking about them and what Hawke had said. What he needed. What he wanted. What love meant and what he wanted it to mean and whether any of it mattered.

He had Justice. He was Justice. His spirit was in his heart and in his blood, burning with all the fire of the Fade, and there was nothing that compared. Anders felt him in everyone he healed and everyone he touched and every life he saved. A constant companion and a constant comfort driving him to be better and do better. Someone who knew his vices and his virtues and loved him because of them and not in spite of them.

That was love. That was the kind of love Justice had for Anders and Anders had for Justice, and whether it was the kind of love he wanted or the kind of love he needed, it might be the only kind he’d ever get.

Wintermarch gave way to Guardian with Wintersend, winter to spring. The days grew warmer and the templars colder, the raids only dying down after a riot at the docks sank one of the ferries and nearly drowned the templars on it. It was the only good news he’d had since Johane had escaped, damped slightly by the fact that the templars had only nearly drowned. Anders spent his days split between the clinic and the Collective, and his nights in the dark and the spawn that came with it.

Anders woke in a cold sweat, scratching frantically at his arms, but they weren’t covered with boils. The blight wasn’t sloughing away his skin until there was nothing left of him but the Taint. He couldn’t hear the Call, more alluring than any demon and more compelling than any magic, driving him and his spirit to madness.

It was just a nightmare, but his heart was still racing and he was still shaking and it was so dark and he was so alone - and then all at once he was so calm. Anders took a steadying breath, magic illuminating the room and the sweat drenching his clothes. The angry red lines he’d scratched into his arms. The rosewood ring on his finger.

… A delusion.

Anders took the ring off. His heart skipped, panic choking him, and Anders frantically stuffed his finger back into it. A sense of calm washed over him, like a deep breath of warm air, and Anders relaxed into it.

…Not a delusion.

“... Thanks, Creepy.” Anders pulled his knees up to his chest and draped his arms over them, staring at the ring. The calm that came with it rivalled the Call. Anders had never known a calm like that. His life was a constant swirling storm of emotion, and Anders was always drowning in it. Anders didn’t know how Amell managed it. Anders had had so many nightmares of late it seemed like Amell should be annoyed with him by now, but he wasn’t. He was just calm, despite being woken up in the middle of the night by someone else’s nightmares.

He must have been used to it. He’d always stayed up late. Always been willing to give up his own sleep if nightmares kept his wardens from theirs. Always been ready with a game of cards or a few drinks or just a kind word to help them find it again. That was all this was. It was just Amell looking out for one of his Wardens like he always did, no matter how far away they were.

Anders dug out the last letter Amell had sent him. There was nothing particularly special about it. Amell shared what he’d learned about Grand Cleric Elthina from his friend in the Chantry, and listed the names of those in the city who had petitioned for the Divine to appoint a replacement. Potential allies for his cause, Amell had explained, though he cautioned he didn’t know the reasons behind any of the petitions.

Nothing about Amell himself. Nothing about how he felt. Nothing about what he wanted. Amell had offered to answer any questions in the letter he’d sent in Haring, but Anders couldn’t bring himself to ask anything. What did you ask someone who had a breakdown because they thought you were dead? What did you say when you found out they’d gotten so reckless they didn’t care if they lived or died? What did you say when you threw the fact that you’d almost killed yourself in their face and they just sat there and took it like their pain didn’t mean anything because you’d never told them it did? What did you say when you couldn’t say anything because you had someone else you were already saying things to?

Anders didn’t know, so he hadn’t said anything. His letter in Haring had been about nothing. The collective, the clinic, the cat. His letter in Wintermarch much the same, save that it would arrive with an apostate seeking asylum, and all the chaos that would come of it. Hawke had known him for three years and loved him for two, and saving Johane had undone all of it. Amell wouldn’t be any different. Anders was just going to lose him too.

The first week into Guardian, the collective ran out of work. The clinic ran out of patients. Anders ran out of everything. He stayed in his room for two days before Fenris found him, wrapped up and wallowing in his rug.

“Get up, mage,” Fenris kicked him and the rug unraveled, spilling Anders out onto the floor. “We’re going out.”

“No," Anders grumbled.

"I am not asking," Fenris folded his arms over his chest. "Get up."

Anders groaned, dragging his knees up under his chest, but he didn't get any further than that before he gave up.

"What are you doing?" Fenris asked at his crumpled posture.

"Protesting." Anders said.

"If this is your idea of a protest, it is no wonder the mages aren't free,” Fenris snorted.

"Go away.” Hessarian end his suffering, Anders just wanted to be alone. The templars had scaled back on their raids. Winter was ending and the gripe was ending with it. There was nothing for him or his spirit to do. No purpose for them to pursue. No one wanted him. No one needed him. No one loved him.

"I will not."

"What do you want, Fenris?"

"I want you to get up."

"Why?"

"Because we are going out."

"Great. Thanks. Really cleared that up for me." Anders muttered. Fenris didn’t leave, so Anders pushed himself up. He barely had the strength after two days in bed - or in rug - and his graceless stumble almost sent him colliding into a wall. Anders rolled his hand in the mockery of a bow when he was finally on his feet. "Ta da."

"Are you waiting for applause?"

"Couldn't hurt," Anders said flippantly.

Fenris clapped. Once.

Anders begrudged him for the bemused snort it won. Anders retrieved his hair tie from Ser Cumference’s claws and tied his hair back in a sloppy bun. His beard was a mess, and his clothes looked like sweaty, crumpled parchment, but Fenris was tapping his foot, and Anders doubted he had time to change or bathe. He climbed over the rug to retrieve his staff, but Fenris stopped him.

"Leave it," Fenris said. "The tabard as well. Put on your cloak."

"Okay…?" Anders swung himself into his cloak and followed Fenris out of the room. To where, he couldn’t begin to guess. Fenris didn't look dressed for anything but winter. He was wearing boots for once, and a thick woolen cloak with a hood he pulled up over his shock white hair when they went outside. Stealthy. Strange.

Fenris led him through Hightown. Anders had no idea where they were going, and it seemed like Fenris didn’t either. He just walked, down alley after alley, looking up at every other balcony and into every other window. Anders wondered if they were looking for someone to rob. Anders wondered how he was supposed to justify that if they were.

It was Hightown. Whoever they robbed would have to be wealthy, if not excessively so. There was something to be said of the disparity of wealth and the injustices that came of it, he supposed. “What are we doing?” Anders asked.

“Helping some friends,” Fenris explained.

“Friends of Kirkwall?” Anders asked.

“Friends of Red Jenny,” Fenris corrected him, finally stopping in one of the many back alleys they’d patrolled. He pointed up at a balcony, where a red scarf wrapped around the banister. “There.”

“Right,” Because that name meant anything to him. “Red Jenny. Remind me why we aren’t helping Blue Jenny or Purple Jenny again?”

Fenris ignored the question. He glanced around the alley, but whatever else he was looking for, Anders couldn’t say. It was just an alley. The cobbled street was slightly sunken, standing water draining to nowhere, a few barrels and crates that didn’t fit in their estates spilling out of them. Fenris took a few steps back, and then took a running leap at the wall, snatching the outcropping of a windowsill. His feet scrabbled against the smooth marble, and after an embarrassing amount of struggling, he managed to climb onto the edge of it.

Great. So Anders was just here to heal him when he broke his bloody legs. Typical. Anders sat on a crate, and watched Fenris fling himself from the sill to the balcony. He caught the edge of it, but the sill cracked in half, a chunk of wood clattering to the ground below. After a bit more graceless flailing, Fenris snatched the scarf, and dropped back down to the ground.

“Okay?” Anders said.

“Let us move on,” Fenris said, stuffing the scarf and whatever was in it under his arm and continuing on like nothing happened.

“Are you going to tell me what that was about?” Anders asked.

“Helping,” Fenris said vaguely. “Little people with little things that lead to bigger things for bigger people… I thought it might be of interest to you.”

“... Is this a spot of insurrection?” Anders deduced. “Is that what’s happening here? Are you an insurrectionist?”

“I am a fugitive on the run from a Tevinter magister, what do you think I am?”

“I think you’re taking me on a date,” Anders joked.

Fenris recoiled, his face crumpling in on itself like he’d swallowed a lemon, a lime, and a whole bottle of vinegar. Anders hadn’t laughed in so long he’d forgotten what it felt like. It felt good. Fenris shuddered. “Never say that to me again.”

“So what did that person do?” Anders asked. “Say something nice about mages once?”

“Beats his servants.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh.”

“I can’t watch you do that again, you know.” Anders said. “It was embarrassing for both of us.”

“You think you could do better?” Fenris demanded.

“I know I could.”

They continued throughout Hightown, retrieving more red markers and putting them in different places, none of which meant anything to Anders, but apparently meant something to someone. Most of them were small, and easily retrieved by a cat. Fenris frowned at him for the transformation the first time he bounded down from a balcony with a bit of parchment tied with a red string in his mouth.

“That is cheating.” Fenris said.

“Don’t be a sore loser,” Anders grinned.

“I did not lose,” Fenris said.

“You lost.”

Their little venture eventually landed them back at Fenris’s estate around lunchtime, and Anders couldn’t think of a reason for them not to have it together, and apparently Fenris couldn’t either. His face must have forgotten how to smile over the past month, because it hurt by the time lunch was over, and Fenris headed back to his room.

“Hey Fenris?” Anders called after him.

“What is it?” Fenris asked.

“... Thanks for this,” Anders said.

“... Thank you for the food,” Fenris countered.

The days were longer in the spring, but easier to weather. Fenris’ forays for the Red Jennies were infrequent, but they helped Anders as much as they helped Justice. Whether it was a minor inconvenience or outright ruin, the Red Jennies seemed to serve justice to those who thought themselves above it. Their trips were simple and seamless, and a pleasant pursuit of purpose. They also gave him something to talk about with Fenris, but having something to talk about with Fenris meant he needed time to talk about it, so Anders started joining him and Donnic for Diamondback, and started feeling better.

Then Varric showed up with his mail. The bundle of missives from the Vigil was slightly larger than usual and slightly more terrifying. Anders sat on the floor of his room with them, debating which to open first or whether to open them at all. Velanna. Nathaniel. Oghren. Amell. Merrill. Johane. Anders arranged them and rearranged them, trying to decide if he wanted to go from most painful to least painful or vice versa, and wondering if he even knew what order that was.

Maybe he’d just mix it up. Anders decided on least painful first, and opened Merrill’s letter.

Hello Lethallen!

If you’re getting this letter I’m still at Ostagar. Or I’m back from Ostagar and I forgot to tell Amell not to send it. That sounds like something I’d do, doesn’t it? But if I did that I’m sure I sent you another one to let you know I got back. I can’t wait to tell you all about it! Do you think I’m having fun? I hope I’m having fun.

Don’t you have a holiday this month? Something about the end of winter? Your human holidays are so hard to remember. I hope you’re staying warm! Don’t forget to wear the scarf I made you! I haven’t really made anything since I came here. I suppose I haven’t been feeling very creative. Sylaise must be upset with me. What about you? Are you doing anything to relax?

I know you like playing cards, even if you’re not very good at it, but what about when you’re alone? You know you can't just write and rewrite your manifesto all day. You should do something nice for yourself. Like make something. I bet it would be good for you. All-Mother watch over you, lethallen.

It was a nice letter. Definitely the least painful. Most painful may as well follow. Amell’s letter was sealed with a bit of black wax, stamped with his family crest, and only opened with the touch of magic. Anders had never thought much of the precaution, but considering the mess he’d gotten Amell mixed up in, it was a good one to have. Anders should have been more cautious, more like him, but it was too late for that. He opened the letter.

Anders,

I want to preface this letter by saying I'm not angry with you. I gave you permission to use the free passage as you saw fit and you did. I asked you to keep it clandestine and you tried. I understand you wanted to save your friend, and the fact that you trust me to be there for you when you need me is not a trust I ever hope to break. What follows is my own fault.

A mage of noble blood is not something that goes unnoticed no matter what precautions you take. I know. Lady Harimann's presence here is no secret. Please understand this has put me in a very difficult position. I can't grant asylum as Ferelden's Commander, I can only do it as its Chancellor, and many will not see the distinction. Even as Chancellor, I need the support of the throne to handle the diplomatic incident this has become.

I appreciate your confidence in me, but I have not had the full support of the throne since I put Alistair on it. Anora believes harboring Lady Harimann provides an opportunity for an alliance with Starkhaven, but only if Goran Vael recognizes her as family. Alistair believes an alliance is worthless with the throne in contention. Regardless of their beliefs, Chantry authority supersedes the Crown in all matters of apostasy.

The only thing short of conscription that can save your friend is removing that authority, and I have tried. I demanded autonomy for the Circle when I killed the Archdemon and ended the Blight and I was promised it by the Queen in front of the country. It’s been four years, and that promise hasn’t been fulfilled. If saving the world couldn’t win us our freedom, I don’t know that anything can.

I’m trying, but I can’t promise anything. I would ask that you refrain from utilizing the passage I provided for anyone other than yourself without expressly asking me beforehand from now on. I’ll do whatever I can for you, but there’s only so much I can do. I promise I’m not angry with you, but I need you to understand you're asking a lot of me.

Amell

Well… that wasn't so bad. Johane was alive. Amell was helping her. Amell was helping every mage in Ferelden. Sure, maybe he hadn't been able to win autonomy for the Circle before, but he hadn't really been trying before. He'd asked for freedom, but he'd gone on to become Commander of the Grey and freedom had fallen to the wayside. If anything this was good. This was great. He wasn't even angry.

Anders opened Oghren’s letter next.

Hey Sparkles,

You really stepped in it now. Boss's pissed. Not sure what you were thinking sending that broad our way. Boss mentioned you'd gone all funny about freedom. I guess that's the old corpse husband of yours. You know, Sparkles, just cause the dude's inside you all day doesn't mean you have to put out. Why don't you try saying no for a change? I bet it'd do us all some good.

Thought I made it clear we got enough to worry about without adding mages and templars into the mix. Now the Boss's gotta go begging and buggering and blood magicking his way across the bannorn to get support for his boon, and even if he gets from the nobles, he sure as shit ain't getting it from the Chantry. Prolly send an Exalted March on the Vigil just for trying.

Ain't even counting what the First Warden'll do if this gets back to Weisshaupt. Boss could be reassigned for this shit, but it's not like you gave him a choice. Old broad went and asked for him by name in front of the whole sodding court. Thought the Boss was gonna pop a blood vessel and not in the fun way. I sure did.

Lucky you ain’t here or I’d give you a good ass kicking. You know I didn't tell you what I told you so you could go and use it against him, right? I told ya so you wouldn't make the same mistakes I did taking advantage of the Kid. Maybe you know you fucked up. Maybe you don’t. But I know you know the Kid’s been cleaning up your mess from day one. I can't believe you still got him doing it after all these years.

You better sodding thank him.

Chapter 133: The Man You Made Me

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 17 Pluitanis Afternoon
Kirkwall Hightown: Fenris' Mansion

The letters painted a picture read together. Johane had been made in Amaranthine, and subsequently turned away by the Mage’s Collective. She’d fled to Vigil’s Keep while Amell was holding court, and forced his hand in front of the nobility. In her own letter, she apologized and explained that she couldn’t waste the opportunity.

She had no interest in conscription and the protection that Amell could afford her as Commander of the Grey. Mages could already find their freedom in the Grey Wardens, and joining them would change nothing, save that it would show a clear political interference from the Wardens. The Wardens already interfered with politics, but the distinction between Commander and Chancellor was a razor’s edge they could use.

The Chancellor of Ferelden and the would-be Queen Mother of Starkhaven hosting court as out apostates made all those in attendance complicit. It was a scandal the Chantry couldn’t ignore, but they also couldn’t address. The Queen’s decree of freedom for mages following the Fifth Blight still stood, whether or not it was enforced, and imprisoning her would take an Exalted March when Amell had a standing army and two fortified castles to his name in Amaranthine alone.

What happened next would determine whether or not the Queen’s decree would stand and the mages of Ferelden would ever be free. If the Chantry didn’t act, then they accepted the consequences of that inaction and the implicit allowance of free mages outside their Circles. If they did, then they risked open war with Ferelden, Starkhaven, and even the Grey Wardens. It was a catalyst for change and Anders didn’t regret it.

As to whether or not Amell did…

Amell said he wasn’t angry, but if the past few months had taught Anders anything it was that people didn’t always say what they meant, Amell especially. Oghren said Amell was angry, and Oghren knew Amell better than anyone. It would make sense if Amell was angry. He was a Warden first, and a mage second. It wasn’t Amell’s fight, but Anders had forced him into it.

… He’d do it again. Whether or not it was Amell’s fight, it was Anders’ fight. If he had to fight it alone, he would, but he didn’t want to. He wanted someone, anyone, to fight it with him. He wanted freedom in the form of three sweaty sovereigns, pressed into his hand with no regrets and no regard to the consequences the Chantry would bring to bear on the one who offered it. He wanted to fight, pushed beyond exhaustion in an endless war against evil because he couldn’t afford to stop. He wanted a firestorm, brought down on the ruins of a Chantry and all who lay within it because it had to be done and he had to be the one to do it. He wanted Amell, and the man Amell had helped make him.

Whether it was as his friend, or his Commander, or his something else, Anders didn’t want to lose him again. He didn’t know where he stood with Hawke, but the more he realized he didn’t need him, the more Anders wondered if he wanted him. He’d tried for three years to get Hawke to support him, and if it hadn’t happened yet, then maybe it was time to stop and be with someone who did.

Anders didn’t have a desk, or a chair with any legs to go with his table, so he wrote his letter on the floor.


Amell,

I know you’re angry with me. You’re not the only one who writes to me, you know. I'd rather hear it from you. I can handle you being angry with me. I can handle you not agreeing with me. If seeing a mage to freedom costs me your friendship, then that’s what it costs me. I can handle the consequences of my choices. I'd make the same ones all over again.

I didn’t just want to save a friend. I wanted to save a mage. Maybe she should have stayed to face the consequences of her actions, but then where would that put Starkhaven? You said it yourself, Flora Harimann isn’t just engaged to Goran Vael, she controls him. If her mother was executed for treason for killing the rest of the Vaels, it would ruin everything. The engagement would be off, and Sebastian would have a stronger claim to the throne.

You met him. You know he’s just as if not more pious than his family. The fact that he’s courting a mage hasn’t changed that. Beth is just a pretty bird he can visit when it suits him to prove to himself there’s nothing wrong with keeping her in a cage. He thinks mages should be happy with what we have and more tractable when we aren’t. I’ve heard him say the bloody words. He supports Elthina and Meredith and any Circle he made would be in their image.

If he reclaimed the throne, Starkhaven would just go back to the way it was before, and I can’t let that happen. That Circle was worse than the Gallows. That Circle made your father into a monster, and I can’t let it make any more. Johane was trying to change that. The world needs people like her. It needs people who are willing to do whatever it takes to see mages to freedom no matter the consequences because those consequences can't be worse than the way things are now.

Every day, the templars patrol the city hunting for apostates, and if they can’t find them, they invent them. The zealots have been purging mage-sympathizers throughout Lowtown. Hanging them in the bloody streets! People were rioting by the time they stopped. They had to sink the ferries to get them to stop coming. Things are quiet for now, but I don’t know how long that quiet will last. No one is stopping them.

It’s been eight months and we still don’t have a Viscount. The Knight-Commander blocks every appointment and she does it with the Chantry’s blessing. Brothers and Sisters go with every templar raid to beg for alms they’ve never given back to the city. The guards escort them, turning mages over to the templars to be locked away in solitary confinement or made Tranquil, and there are so many Tranquil. I go to the Gallows courtyard every week just to count them.

Things have to change. Not just in Kirkwall, but everywhere. The plight of every mage is my burden and you cannot imagine how hard it is for me to ask someone to share it with me and how few people will. I have friends throughout the city who will hang if the templars ever find out they’re helping me. For a long time, I wasn’t prepared for that to happen, but I am now. I have been ever since one of them hung anyway.

I told you about Cor. He was a gang leader, but he was a good man. Justice watched him hang, and it was one of the hardest things we’ve ever done. We couldn’t deny his victims justice, but that justice didn’t change anything. A new gang took the place of the old one, and everything is exactly the way it was before except now my friend is dead.

I couldn’t let that happen to Johane anymore than I could let it happen to Starkhaven. Their Circle might be better but it isn’t gone. It’s still a prison with all the horrors that come with it. Harrowings. Phylacteries. No autonomy, no privacy, no marriage, no children, no freedom. If anything, what Johane did wasn’t enough. You can’t just remake the Circles, you have to tear down the entire establishment.

I can’t do that alone. I need support. You said you were looking forward to seeing my manifesto in print, and you know Johane is the only reason the Dowager agreed to print it. She’s the only reason I stand a chance of getting the world to understand the mage’s plight and getting the mages to understand it's not a hopeless one. The vote for independence must come. The College of Magi must see that.

Divine Justinia may have rejected the Tranquil Solution, but allowing us our lives is not the same as allowing us to live them. She has done nothing for mages and if she isn’t working to be part of the solution then she’s part of the problem. Either the Chantry grants us our freedom or we take it by force. There is no alternative. Every day, Meredith tightens her grip on the city and Elthina lets her.

This isn’t the first time she’s taken power and it’s not the first time Elthina has helped her do it. You know Meredith arrested the last Viscount and you know Elthina had him imprisoned after he tried to expel the templars from the city. He tried because someone had to. Someone has to stand against them. Someone has to stand against all of them and tell the world that mages won’t be punished any longer for our Maker-given gifts.


Anders stopped and stared at the makings of a manifesto he’d scrawled across two sheets of parchment. So much for a confession. Anders set up his quill with a sigh. No wonder everyone was angry with him. He’d written almost a thousand words, and hadn’t managed an apology or thanks in any of them. It was just the cause. It was always the cause.

Anders rifled through Amell’s old letters, and all of the kind words within them. “I hope you know how impressive you are.” “I hope you know what an inspiration you are.” “No other man could manage what you’ve managed.” “I'm glad to be able to do something for you and your cause.” “You don’t need to apologize.” “If I can do anything to help you, you only have to ask.”

… But Anders hadn’t asked.

And now instead of asking forgiveness or offering thanks, Anders was just fighting. He was always fighting or running and he couldn't stop. He didn’t even know why. He just wanted to keep calm for once but he couldn't even do that. Anders stared at the ring on his finger and the shifting figures chasing each other within the grains, but he still wasn't sure how to feel Amell through them.

Anders wanted to feel him. He hadn't felt him in so long. His calm. His magic. Maker, his hands. His body, warm skin slick with sweat and pressed flush against his own, breathy words of worship spilling from his lips. Anders stripped out of his trousers, a sloppy surge of creationism spilling oil over his palm. He wrapped an impatient hand around his cock, trying to remember everything he’d buried for the past three years.

Fuck. It had been so fucking long. Just one night. Any night. Something. But it was so bloody long ago and he could only remember pieces. The sweat beneath Anders’ thighs, and the way they'd stuck to the desk the first time Amell had fucked him on it. The breath of the Fade in the rush of heat that pulsed along Amell’s tongue. The way Amell had whispered, “Anything you want,” and then given it to him.

“Fuck,” Anders hissed through his climax, finishing messily over his hand and his thigh. Anders wasn’t sure if he was just that lonely or he just wanted Amell that badly, but the release didn’t help. He felt better, but he still didn’t know what to say to the man. Anders lay tangled in his trousers, staring at the ceiling while he caught his breath and twisted the ring around his finger.

… He probably should have taken it off.

… It was probably fine. It wasn’t like Amell could constantly feel everything Anders felt. Sure, the ring formed a connection between them, but it wasn’t a constant connection. It couldn’t have been. There was some sort of magic in it that had to be consciously willed. Maybe. Maybe not, or how had Amell known when to calm him down from every nightmare he’d had in the past month?

Hm.

Not good. Definitely not good. Maybe not good? Anders could take the ring off, so Amell probably had a way to stop feeling whatever the ring made him feel if he wanted to stop feeling it. Would he have wanted to stop feeling it? Would he have even understood what he was feeling and why he was feeling it or would he have just felt inexplicably aroused in the middle of the day?

It was fine. Anders was an adult. Amell was an adult. Hawke had already blurted that Anders still thought about having sex with Amell. It wasn’t like it was a surprise. Anders had just never acted on those thoughts before. It hadn’t seemed right to think about someone that way while he was with someone else. Not that Hawke had ever believed him.

Anders didn’t want to think about Hawke. He cleaned himself up and went back to his letter.


I always thought you were that person. I wouldn’t be the man I am now if I hadn’t met you. You saw the injustice of the Circle and you fought against it in any way that you could. You believed in freedom and second chances. You made the hard choices and you lived with them. You saved us all from the Blight. You showed the world that mages can be trusted with power and not succumb to it. The rest of us are standing on your shoulders, but the water is still over our heads.

I know I’m asking a lot of you. I don’t have a choice. It’s that or drown, and I know you won’t let me. I wouldn’t have sent Johane to you if I didn’t believe you could save her. I do. You can. I believe in you. I always have.

I still care about you.

I still think about you.

I still want you.

I have a responsibility to my fellow mages. You freed me, and now I have to free those who remain oppressed through whatever means necessary. I have an obligation and I cannot set it aside for anyone or anything, no matter what it costs me, and it’s already cost me more than I can say. I can’t apologize for that. I thought I could. I’ve spent the past three pages trying, but I’m not sorry.

I wish I could have told you, but I didn’t have the time. I know you’re angry. I understand if you don’t like the man that I’ve become. I don’t even like him most days, but he’s who I am now, and he still has feelings for you. You were never dead to me. I never let you die. For three years, you haunted me. Your magic. Your memory. I look to you when you’re not even here and you’ve never let me down.

You told me you would answer if I asked about you. Well, I’m asking. Do you still want me?


Well. He wrote it. Now he just had to send it. Did he want to send it? How could he trust himself to know if he missed having Amell or he just missed having someone? What if he was just turning to Amell because he couldn’t turn to Hawke? Was he really that much of a bastard to replace one man with the other? Hawke had accused him of it often enough. Was that all he was doing? Why did he care what Hawke thought?

Anders finished the rest of his letters for the Vigil, wondering how much more parchment would cost when he ran out, and how he was supposed to afford it when it did, and hating himself when his first thought was to ask Amell to pay for it. Well… so what if it was? Amell wanted him to write, didn’t he? Anders wasn’t taking advantage of him. Amell could afford it.

Anders could afford it too, if only Hawke had given him more than fifty fucking silver. Why didn’t he have any damn money? Why had he gotten so comfortable up in Hightown to think he’d never need any? Why had he trusted Hawke to take care of him? Why hadn’t he taken care of himself?

What did Fenris do for coin? Did Fenris do anything for coin? Hawke had offered him a job with the Red Irons around a year ago, but Fenris had refused. The Red Jennies didn’t pay, but the bits Fenris gambled during Diamondback had to come from somewhere. Anders would have to ask him.

… Anders would have to thank him. He’d been staying with the man for a month, and he hadn’t done anything but buy him fifty silver’s worth of food and heal the girls. Anders wasn’t sure exactly how to thank him. Even living with him, Anders didn’t know much about Fenris besides the fact that he liked to gamble and he liked to drink.

… and he liked Merrill.

Maybe Anders could help him with her mirror. Merrill had said he needed a project, after all, and maybe it would help keep Anders from spiraling if he had something to do when he wasn’t working with the Collective or the clinic. Something that gave him purpose. Justice liked the Dalish. He thought they deserved justice for how humans had wronged and continued to wrong them, and that educating humans on what they were so carelessly destroying was the best way to bring about that justice. Merrill’s mirror seemed like a good enough start to that education.

Anders went to the Collective the next day, and took a contract for the Black Emporium. He spent the day in the forgotten library beneath the city, lost in a maze of bookshelves and rope bridges, looking for ancient elven tomes that might help him understand what kind of glass and wood the mirror was made of, when he stumbled upon what looked like an eluvian among the antiquarian’s artifacts.

It wasn’t quite the same. The frame was infected with what looked like red lyrium, and there was a reflection in the glass, but that reflection was warped and rippled every few moments. It stared back at him, but there was always something wrong with it. He was overweight. He was underweight. He looked too haggard. He looked too happy. His skin was too grey. His skin was too pale. Scars crawled across his face, burns and cuts and bruises he could almost remember getting but knew had never happened.

Veilfire burned through his veins, and dragged him away from the mirror. “Yeah… yeah, you’re right,” Anders mumbled, patting at his face, but it felt the same as it always had. He made his way back to the massive throne in the center of the room, where the Black Emporium’s three hundred year old proprietor was moldering.

"Xenon, what’s the mirror, up on the second floor?” Anders asked.

"That old thing?" The corpse wheezed, startling the moths that had taken up residence in its mouth. "A foyer into the forbidden. Don't look too close! It alters the very fabric of reality… changes who you are… who you were… who you will be. And it's not for sale!"

"Is it an Eluvian?" Anders guessed.

"No… no,” Xenon drawled sleepily. “No… and yes."

"Yes or no," Anders frowned.

"Or," Xenon cackled.

Close enough. Anders bought the grimoire the Collective had sent him down to buy, but stopped on one of the rope bridges before he left. A blackened void lay below him, but above were the seemingly endless shelves that had housed Amell’s grimoire after Anders had lost it. Anders thought of the days he’d spent sitting on the bridge with Merrill, staring up at the Amell family crest embossed on the spine, praying that one day he’d be able to get it back.

He wasn’t just lonely. Anders mailed his letters, and waited through what felt like the longest month of his life.

He spent his days working with the clinic and the collective, and helping Fenris. When they weren’t making runs for the Red Jennies, they were working on Merrill’s mirror. Studying the glass and the wood that made up the almost-Eluvian in the Emporium and matching it to the shattered pieces Fenris had collected from the alienage. Progress was so slow it was almost painful, but it was progress, and eventually they had the glass narrowed down to two piles and the wood to one.

Time passed easier when it was well spent, and Guardian gave way to Drakonis. Construction finished on the Hanged Man, and Varric invited him and Fenris for food and drinks at the reopening, which would have been grand, save that Varric invited everyone. Fenris. Anders. Sebastian. Aveline. Donnic. Thrask.

Hawke.

He looked as gorgeous as always, dark blue corset vest over a lighter blue tunic, greying hair pushed back from a scowling face. His expression still softened whenever Hawke looked at him. Anders didn’t know what to make of it. He felt guilty just being around him after writing to Amell, but they were on a break. They’d been on a break for two months, and if that wasn’t long enough for Hawke to figure out whether or not he wanted to be with him then it seemed like Anders had his answer.

The group filed into Varric’s room, distracted by drink, but Anders was more distracted by Hawke, and the way he lingered outside the room until Anders reached it.

“Hi,” Anders signed.

“Hi,” Hawke signed back.

“No Dog?” Anders signed.

“No,” Hawke signed.

Great. Not at all awkward.

“... Heard you’re still learning to sign,” Hawke signed.

“... Heard the templars let the Harimanns go,” Anders countered.

“Told me not to tell.”

“Didn’t think you’d listen.”

“Telling wouldn’t change what happened,” Hawke shrugged. “... You eating?”

“Most days,” Anders frowned.

“I’m serious.”

“I’m poor.”

“Anders-...” Hawke scratched behind his ear, which seemed to be a change from his old tick that kept him from messing up his hair. It hurt to see and not know how many other things had changed about him. “I was never just going to leave you with fifty silver.”

“But you did.”

“Orana’s been bringing food over,” Hawke explained. “Have you been eating or not?”

… Anders didn’t know that.

Why didn’t Anders know that?

… Why hadn’t Anders bothered to look at whatever Hawke had signed when he’d put the silver down?

… No, no fuck him. Hawke could have supported him when Anders needed his support. He could have left him with more. He could have brought over more than just food. He could have been less of a stubborn bastard and more of the man Anders had fallen in love with. He could have come to check on him himself instead of sending his servants like one of the bloody nobles the Red Jennies targeted.

“Three square meals of sawdust,” Anders flashed him a grin and went inside.

Anders sat next to Fenris. A year ago, Anders would have been on the opposite side of the room. The irony of it wasn’t lost on him. Aside from Varric, the best company Anders kept was with a mage-hating fugitive and a templar, but Fenris had scaled back on the mage-hating and Thrask wasn’t much of a templar. The man wasn’t much of anything with how often he slept. It was a miracle he didn’t sleep through the game, his alarmingly thin eyebrows drooping every so often as he struggled not to nod off.

Unsurprisingly, Thrask wasn’t any good at cards, but he was good for a few bits when Anders needed someone to spot him who wasn’t Hawke. Anders hadn’t wanted his charity before and he didn’t want it now, but he wasn’t about to cost the girls whatever food they were getting to sate their hunger just to sate his pride. Anders learned later that evening it was enough that they’d stopped going half dust on their bread.

… Someone should probably thank Hawke.

Not Anders, but someone.

Anders was busy. Anders had his own life. Anders had the Collective, and the clinic, and his friends. The ones in Kirkwall, and the ones at Vigil’s Keep, and all the letters that came with them. Varric brought them over the same way he had last month, and Anders forced himself to remember to thank him before he fled back to his room and ripped Amell’s open.


Anders,

I know I’m not the only one who sends you letters. Oghren is my best friend, but he doesn’t speak for me. I speak for myself. When I say I’m not angry with you, I mean I’m not angry with you. I know you’re still wearing the ring I gave you. Have you felt any anger from me? Do you feel any now? I meant what I said.

You didn’t force me to do anything. I could have turned Lady Harimann away. I could have sent her on a ship back to Kirkwall. I could have mind-controlled the entire court to forget she’d ever been there, but I didn’t. I made my own choice for my own reasons, but I won’t pretend it was an easy one to make or that it hasn’t tested the limits of my patience.

I am angry, but not with you. I’m angry that I couldn't grant her asylum the second she set foot in the Vigil. I’m angry there is no safe haven for mages outside the Grey Wardens and I’m angry that I never tried to make one. I’m angry that I didn’t work more with the Mage’s Collective. I’m angry I stopped fighting for freedom because I had mine. I’m angry that I gave up four years ago.

If I had kept trying, I might have won us the freedom the Queen promised me, but I was tired. I was falling apart. Every day for six months I dragged myself out of nightmares and there was no relief in waking up. Then I found you in that cell. You came back when I let you go. You should have run, but you stayed because it was the right thing to do. You were tired. You were starving. You were scared, but you stayed and you fought.

Every time I gave you the chance to run, you stayed and you fought. You inspired me, Anders. You always have. Yes, this has put me in a difficult position. Yes, I want you to ask before you put me in a position like this again. Yes, I’m angry, but I’m angry with myself. I’m angry with the situation. I’m not angry with you.

How could I be angry with you? I told you to do as you saw fit. I told you you had my support. Why would I be angry with you for listening to me? Why would I be angry with you for believing in me? I don't know if you overestimate me or my position, but your belief in me is what helps me believe in myself.

I know everyone believes in me, but that’s only because they believe in the Hero of Ferelden. They don’t know who I am beneath the title. You do. You know the choices I made to end the Blight. There was nothing noble in them. It wasn’t for a better tomorrow, it was for a tomorrow. Now that tomorrow is here, don’t I have the same obligation to help you make it a better one?

There’s no room for anger in my feelings for you. I know you haven’t been sleeping well. I know you feel guilt and gratitude in equal measure since I’ve been staying up with you. I appreciate the gratitude, but not the guilt. It’s not an emotion I’m accustomed to feeling. You aren’t forcing me to do anything. I want to be there for you.

I value you and your friendship more than words can ever express. Whatever there is between us, I hope we’ll always have that. If your question is meant to ask if we can be more than friends again, then I have two answers, and I hope you understand how much it pains me to write them.

If you’re still with my cousin, then it is with immense regret that I have to decline. If that ever changes, I hope you’ll ask me again.

If you’re not with him, then of course I still want you, Anders. I’ve never stopped wanting you. You’re everything to me. You’re my Calling.

If you want me, I'm yours, but have you considered what that life would be like?

I'm a Grey Warden. I’ll always be a Grey Warden. That comes first for me, the way Justice and your cause come first for you. I'm staying in Ferelden, and if you're staying in Kirkwall, that's a life of letters and visits every few months. I can live happily like that. Can you?

Think about it.

If you happen to think of me as well in the meantime, then it would make things a great deal less awkward if you could do it at night. I don’t think I’ve ever left a room so quickly before in my life.

Always,
Amell

Chapter 134: Flags of Red and White

Notes:

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Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 16 Nubulius Sometime
Somewhere

Anders lay with his feet on the headboard, staring up at the emerald sky. Lyrium veins tangled around the posts of the canopy bed, the shadow of the black spire muting the sepia tones of the Fade. Justice sat within arm’s reach, sifting through his memories of the Circle and the many injustices therein, muttering the occasional condemnation to the choir but otherwise content.

“Am I an ass?” Anders asked.

“I do not understand the question.”

“Liar.”

“I do not understand what you hope to obtain from the question,” Justice clarified.

“Hawke, Amell, all this…” Anders waved a hand at the washed out replica of Amell’s room at the Vigil. “Do you think I'm being an ass? You love me… I love you… am I an ass for wanting more than that?”

“No,” Justice said.

“Do you care?” Anders asked. “Are you jealous?”

Justice frowned, “Envy is a thing for demons.”

“Feeling it doesn't make you one,” Allure offered up from their corner of the bed. Their form was an androgyous personification of desire: lean muscle and lilac skin covered in an excess of gold, with eyes like burning violets. Allure wasn’t fond of it, but they were surprisingly respectful when Anders asked them to pick something that wasn’t one of his lovers.

“I do not,” Justice’s frown deepened.

“Why not?” Anders asked.

“I love you and I am you,” Justice explained. “... I confess, I envied the love Kristoff and Aura bore for each other, but I have never envied you yours. I have felt it. Not as my own, but as yours, and it is a beautiful thing to behold. I was wrong to think it a distraction. I see now you allow none where our cause is concerned.”

“I guess…” Anders said. “Still, you must have an opinion.”

“No.”

Anders sighed.

“You are frustrated with me,” Justice noted.

“No,” Allure said helpfully.

“You are frustrated with yourself,” Justice corrected himself.

“That's the one,” Anders pointed at him with a snap of his fingers. “I just wish I knew what I wanted.”

“Life. Liberty. Love.” Allure pulled from him.

“None are attainable while the Circles yet stand,” Justice said.

“Not really comforting, love,” Anders said.

“How should I comfort you?” Justice asked, but apparently it was a rhetorical question. “I am not born of compassion. Does it not move you that you are free to choose such things of your own volition while others are not?”

The memory formed in front of them at Justice’s beckon. Fields of reeds flattened out to the cobbled courtyard of the Gallows, excited wisps forming the shape of the Tranquil girl and her elven lover. They echoed with the memory of their voices from the last time Anders had gone to visit Bethany.

The elf shoved his way through the queue lined up before the Tranquil’s stall, “Helana! I’ve been searching for you everywhere. You weren’t in your rooms, the libraries-”

“We have no scheduled appointments at this time, apprentice,” Helana said, her voice a dispassionate reprimand for the interruption.

“No! Helana, it’s me!” The elf vaulted the table, scattering an assortment of goods to grab her hands. “Don’t you remember me!?”

“Of course,” Helana tilted her head, spilling auburn locks over the bloody sunburst on her brow. “You are Apprentice Jaken. We were once involved in an illicit relationship.”

“Illicit!?” Jaken screamed, while the templars dragged him away with apologies to the patrons. “I love you!”

Justice sent the wisps scattering at the end of the reenactment, “That you have the luxury of choice while others have theirs taken from them is an injustice we must rectify.”

“I get that,” Maker knew Anders got it. It was a wonder he hadn’t burned down the Circle on the spot. “I do. I just- …”

"Miss me?" Allure smirked, their form shifting. Violet eyes burned red and lilac skin turned wheatish, scars etching themselves across the lean arms that reached for him until Justice raised a hand in warning. “I cannot possess him,” Allure rolled their eyes, but kept their distance. They sat just out of arm’s reach, shirtless, covered in scars and radiating magic.

“I don’t know,” Anders stared at an old scar between Amell’s ribs, where he'd taken a templar's blade for him, and could almost remember the way the texture had felt against his lips from all the times he’d pressed them against it. “You’re a desire demon, aren’t you? Can’t you just tell me what I desire?”

Allure wrinkled their nose, and the form evaporated. “Such an ugly word. I embody allure. What is demonic in that?”

“Everything.” Desire, Hunger, Pride… they were all sins.

“Says who?” Allure asked.

The Chantry. It was a good point. Anders mulled over it, but Justice didn’t.

“You are corrupt, and seek to corrupt mortals in turn.”

“How so?” Allure huffed, “I help them pursue their desires, so I should be blamed for them? Should you be blamed if the justice you help your mortal pursue is an injustice to another?”

“Yes,” Justice said stubbornly. “All must be held accountable for their actions.”

“Not that this isn’t a fun conversation,” Anders interrupted, “but can we go back to the whole pursuing desires thing? Life. Liberty. Love. Maybe focus on the last one?”

"You want what all men want,” Allure flopped down beside him, ignoring Justice’s protests. “To be understood. To be known. To be laid bare and not found wanting.”

Allure’s form shifted back to wheatish skin, less lean, more broad, a broken nose streaked with kaddis. “I'm sorry, Anders. I'm sorry for being so angry. I’m sorry for taking that anger out on you. I was wrong - the Chantry is wrong - nothing justifies the Circles. Nothing justifies the year you spent in solitary and the fear it makes you feel whenever you’re alone. I shouldn’t have left you alone -”

“Stop!” Anders sat up, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes before any tears formed in them. “Stop-... Just stop. Hawke would never say that.”

“But the allure is there,” Allure shook the painful form away. “There are those of my kind who prey on the unattainable. Hold it over you. Use it to manipulate. Perhaps these are the demons you so fear.”

“So what do you do?” Anders asked.

“I help,” Allure said. “If you want him, you must change him. I can feel the magic in you. You know how.”

“I’m not going to do that to Hawke.”

“Then you will never have him how you want him,” Allure shrugged. “You want to know the past three years were not wasted. You want to know you did not sacrifice everything for nothing. You want to know you found love when you came to Kirkwall and did not lose it when you left Ferelden.”

“... well?” Anders prompted.

“Does it feel like you lost it?” Allure asked, but they were Amell again, sliding a hand across the sheets to caress the ring on Anders’ finger on their way up his arm. Allure rolled atop him, ignoring Justice’s disgruntled sigh, whispering everything Anders had ever wanted to hear with Amell’s voice, “You have whatever you want from me, and you owe me nothing for it. You’re my Calling.”

"Okay, alright, Maker-" Anders rolled out from under him - them - and onto the floor, sweating with desire. "Can you like… fuck. Can you just - can you bring him here? He's asleep too isn't he?"

"He does not touch the Fade,” Allure peaked down at him. “There is too much blood in him."

Anders stayed where he’d landed, his rug manifesting beneath him. “… what about Hawke?”

Allure seemed to consider it, "No."

Weird.

“... Because I don’t want him?” Anders guessed.

“Perhaps,” Allure said.

“Very helpful, thanks,” Anders sighed, blowing a strand of hair out of his face. “... I should cut my hair.”

“I agree,” Justice said, manifesting on the floor with him.

“And shave.”

“I agree with this as well.”

“It's not like Fenris has a razor I can borrow,” Anders said in his defense. “He doesn’t need to shave.”

“We could stay at the Warden Compound,” Justice pointed out.

Anders shook his head, “I don't want them to tell Amell."

“Tell him what?” Allure asked.

“That I look like this,” Anders tugged on his beard, uneven and matted after three months of living on the floor.

“There is no shame in needing aid,” Justice said, unashamedly. “You know this. We do not judge our patients their injuries. Why do you judge yourself yours?”

“Habit?" Anders shrugged. "After seven escape attempts, the only reason the templars didn’t kill me is because I wasn’t a threat. When you hear you’re worthless for fourteen years… I don’t know. I guess you start to believe it.”

… filthy fucking sewer rat hadn't helped.

“You are not,” Justice said with all of the confidence Anders had never had. It was nice to hear. It was nicer to believe.

“Would it be weird if I kissed you?” Anders asked.

“Yes,” Justice frowned.

“Just checking,” Anders found one of Justice’s hands and held it. “Still love me though, right?”

Justice's frown intensified.

“Just checking.”

Anders washed away the glyph when he woke up. Without Hawke’s enchanted kaddis, he'd mixed a lyrium potion with a jar of ink, and it served well enough for his nightly chats. The only downside was now he was running short on ink as well as paper. He didn’t use it every night, but it was nice to exist apart from Justice every so often so they could talk, and Allure wasn’t terrible company.

Anders still hadn’t told Fenris about them. Fenris wouldn’t have understood the demon or spirit or whatever Anders was supposed to call the Fade denizen. Anders barely understood them himself. Merrill would have, but Merrill was in Ferelden. Amell would have, but Amell was in Ferelden too.

“... You want to know what I think?” Anders asked over breakfast.

“No,” Fenris said around a mouthful of bread.

“I think we should visit Vigil’s Keep,” Anders said.

“To what end?” Fenris asked.

“To visit? Don’t you miss Merrill?”

“What of it?”

“See, there’s this thing people do when they miss someone -” Fenris rolled his eyes so hard they stayed pointed at the ceiling while Anders continued “- stay with me, I know it sounds crazy - they go see them so they don’t have to miss them anymore. I know, I didn’t believe it at first either, but-”

“You know this from experience, do you?” Fenris cut him off, washing his bread down with a mouthful of morning wine. “This is why you have spent so much time with Hawke of late?”

“... Maybe I don’t miss him.”

“... Maybe not,” Fenris allotted, finally looking at him. “... How are we to afford this visit?”

“I have free passage to Amaranthine,” Anders explained.

“And you would share it with me? Why?”

Because we’re friends. Because I don’t want to go alone. Because you’re sharing your house with me. “... I just would.”

Fenris nodded, “When shall we go then?”

Anders wasn’t sure. He’d have to ask. Anders went back to his room after breaking his fast, and stared at the sheet of parchment laid out on the floor before him, thinking of all the words he’d written and all the words he still wanted to write. Amell had told him to think on what he wanted from their relationship, so Anders had slept on it, but despite Allure’s assurances, he was still anxious. He had to get it right this time.


Amell,

I came so close to getting on the first ship out of Kirkwall when I read your letter, but you're right. I do need to think about it, for a lot of reasons. I feel the same way about your friendship, and I don't want to lose it. You were the first real friend I ever made outside the Circle. After Ferrenly and then Namaya, I thought I'd never trust anyone again, but you changed my mind.

You and the Wardens. Sigrun and Oghren. Nate and Velanna. I miss it sometimes. Everything we used to get up to patrolling the arling. You charging into the fray. The rest of us scrambling after you. You're wrong, you know. It was noble. You were noble, and it didn't have anything to do with your blood. I understand the Wardens come first for you. I'm glad you understand the mages come first for me.

I still wish I hadn't put you in this position. I know it's a problem. I can't always rely on you. I mean, I know I can, but it's not fair to you and I need to stop. I’m just so used to you having my back. I can't really afford ink or paper for letters anymore, and all I can think of is asking you to pay for them. That's not some manipulative way of asking, by the way. You're probably already stuffing a letter full of sovereigns, and that's my point.

You shouldn't have to do that. I shouldn’t ask you to do that. I'm going to start working with Johane’s contacts and the list of names you sent me so I have a choice the next time something happens. I’m not with Hawke right now. I’m not sure what that means, but I want to be able to choose you. The way my life is right now I'm worried I'm not choosing you, I'm just using you. I don’t want to do that to you.

I already took you for granted once. You know I did. Don't lie. You're too good at it. If you do, I’m afraid I’ll believe you and just end up doing it again. I didn't realize how much you meant to me until you were gone, but can you blame me? (Don't answer that.) You know what it was like in the Circle. You know how dangerous it was to get close to anyone. You know why it's so important to put an end to them.

You know what they did to me. The year I spent in solitary. I bet you even knew I went insane in there and you were just too nice to tell me. If you didn’t… well. Now you do I guess. Karl told me about Mr. Wiggums. That cat was just a rumor I started about my own hallucinations. The Circle broke me the same way it breaks every mage.

Every mage except you. I never even asked what they did to you. Even when I told you about solitary, I figured Irving's star pupil wouldn't understand. Do you remember the mines in the Wending Woods? When the darkspawn trapped us in those cells? You had to hold me through a panic attack when you freed me. I must have bruised a few of your ribs for it, but you didn’t say anything. You were just there for me.

I didn’t really think about it. You were always there for me. It was just one more thing I took for granted. Looking back on that… were you ever in solitary? Did anything happen to you in the Circle? I know you had a crush on me because I kept escaping, but you never really talked about why you wanted to escape. I never really asked, and there was nothing in your journal.

I told you I read it. I never knew how tired you were, or how much you used to drink, or how much it all weighed on you. I wish I had noticed. I wish you had let me. I wish I had been there for you the way you were always there for me. I'm glad you told me. I'm glad Oghren told me. I want to know.

I know you think I'm some sort of inspiration, but you're that to me too, you know. You're a lot of things to me. I should have told you a long time ago. Better late than never right? I know you think you stopped fighting, but that's not true. You fought for Amaranthine. You fought for me. You just stopped fighting for yourself, but you have to know you're worth fighting for.

I was thinking I could come visit next month. Things around here are quiet for now, and if you're not too busy cleaning up my mess or saving the world from awakened darkspawn or flesh golems or whatever else, it would be good to see you. I could take the Cloudreach ship out, and stay through Bloomingtide.

It would be nice to meet your son, if that's okay with you and his mother, and see everyone else again. There aren't a lot of people here I feel as close to anymore. I have a few friends, but I think they're getting sick of listening to me talk about mages and templars. Probably because they told me they're sick of listening to me talk about mages and templars. I don't know, it’s just a guess.

They’re still my friends though. I thought maybe a few of them could come with me. They want to see Merrill again, and since she wanted to come back to Kirkwall in Bloomingtide, maybe we could spend time there and sail back with her. We could stay in Amaranthine if you don’t have room at the Vigil or you don’t want us getting in the way of any Warden business. I just really want to see you.

I can’t believe it’s been six months. Your letters give me something to look forward to these days. I keep all of them. You should know how much I cherish hearing from you. I’m already looking forward to the next one, even if it’s just to say it’s not a good time for me to visit. You can say that, by the way. You’re my friend and you can say no to me whether or not we’re more than that.

I know we can’t see each other often, but I’m not alone. I have Justice. I am Justice. Lately I just can’t help thinking it would be nice to have you too. I promise I’ll think about it, but I haven’t felt this happy in… well, six months. I’ll think about you too. A lot. You probably shouldn’t have told me that. I was never able to get you to postpone a meeting before, and now I’m afraid I’m going to use this power for evil.

I’m kidding. I’m kind of kidding. I don’t think I could stop thinking about you that way if I tried, and after that letter, I’m not trying.

Anders

Always,
Anders


It was a two to three day voyage across the Waking Sea to Amaranthine. Anders waited three, plus one more for the post from Amaranthine to the Vigil. He lay awake that night focusing on the band of rosewood and the man beyond it, but he just felt impatient, like he was hovering over Amell’s shoulder waiting for him to finish reading his manifesto.

Maybe Amell wasn't thinking about him, but Anders wanted to feel him anyway. There had to be a way. He was just missing something. Anders breathed mana into the enchantment, and choked on the stress that followed. It was so strong it felt like a physical presence, in his skin, under his fingernails, constricting his heart and shallowing his breath.

Andraste’s bloody pyre - Anders did not feel that way. Anders felt fine and wanted Amell to feel fine in turn, but fine wasn't much for an emotion. Calm. Relaxed. Concerned. Anders tried to will it like he would a spell, and it seemed to work. The stress faded, tension melting from him. Surprise took its place, followed by an affectionate sort of warmth.

If not for Justice, Anders probably wouldn't have been able to decipher any of it, but after four years with his spirit Anders was getting better at understanding how he felt, even if he wasn’t any better at understanding why he felt that way. Anders wondered why Amell had been stressed, but considering everything on his shoulders it was probably a stupid question.

Anders wished he could ask it anyway. The ring might have made him feel close to Amell, but it wasn't the same as being there for him. Anders couldn't talk through any of it. Couldn't clarify how Amell wanted to deal with his emotions. Couldn't confirm if any of his own were unwanted.

After his episode in awkwardness, Anders made sure to take the ring off whenever he got off to Amell. But Amell had said he could get off to him. He just wanted him to do it at night, and it was night... and it was hard not to think about him. Anders couldn't count the times he'd looked to Amell for comfort in six months of endless fighting, even if he hadn’t sought that comfort in his hand.

The memory was enough. Amell holding him after Anders had unloaded three years of anger on him, and not fighting. Maker, just not fighting, no matter how much Anders deserved it. Amell wasn't weak for that, he was unbelievably strong. A pulse of telekinetic energy had accompanied his embrace, so close and yet so far from a cage, and so reminiscent of the nights they’d spent together.

Nights where Amell had undone him and all the damage the Circle had done to him. Anders unlaced his shirt, dragging blunt nails up and down his chest, feeling the quiet stirrings of arousal flowing through his veins at the memory. Maker, he missed the ropes, the bondage, the bands of telekinetic energy. The trust. Anders pushed his trousers and smalls down his thighs, trying to decipher how Amell felt about him keeping the ring on when he thought about him.

The same arousal, laced with affection. Anders chased after it, a surge of creationism spilling hot oil from his hands and breathing more mana through the enchantment. It was so hard not to touch himself, but Amell had always taken his time with him, and this felt so close to being with him. So wonderfully, painfully close. Anders circled his nipples until they were stiff peaks, tunic riding up under his shoulders, coarse fabric of the rug dragging against his back, Amell’s name on repeat in his head.

Anders’ felt his answer through the ring, an overwhelming rebound of passion. A fever took him, and Anders could almost pretend it was Amell’s hands, running over every inch of his skin until he was aching with desire. Anders’ breath hitched as he kneaded down his thighs, recalling Amell’s fondness for them, cock hard and aching for the man.

Anders stole a hand around himself, slow strokes like hot breath on a kindling flame. Amell would have said something. Some lie about how he was beautiful or gorgeous or perfect even if he had no idea what he looked like anymore. Would have pressed his lips to the inside of his thigh. Would have swallowed his cock with that blissful expression that killed any doubt in Anders' head as to how badly he wanted him.

Anders exhaled shakily when he realized he was holding his breath, shifting to rock his hips into his pumping fist. Pleasure wound tight in his stomach, caught up in his chest, tingled in his feet and curled his fingers and toes, and echoed across the Veil. Anders swore he could hear hitching gasps, like Amell was in the next room, but he didn’t know if it was Allure, or Amell, or the memory of Amell.

Whatever it was, it was perfect. Anders clutched his thigh with his free hand, fighting to feel past the rising ecstasy of the moment for how Amell felt, but it was all too tangled. He was so fucking turned on, so overwhelmingly, utterly, aroused. There was nothing in his head but the thrum of his own arousal - and Amell felt it. Anders wondered if Amell just felt aroused in turn, or if he also had a hand to himself.

Maker, Anders hoped he did. He wanted Amell to want him. It was so easy to picture his hands and the captivating way they moved, like he was making love to everything he touched. The tension in a scarred arm as Amell pumped his fist to the memory of him, losing sleep and sweat. Anders breathed more mana into the enchantment, and felt increasingly tense, so clearly on the edge of ecstasy. Everything but the actual physical sensation of whatever Amell felt.

A wave of delighted satisfaction hit him, and Anders followed Amell over the edge with a few more frantic strokes and a string of eager curses. A storm of ecstasy tore through him with his climax, white hot release spilling between his shaking fingers. Anders swallowed back a moan, shaking and spent, sweat soaking into the rug and chafing against his ass. Anders tugged lazily at his cock, shivering through the aftermath of pleasure, and the knowledge that Amell thought the same way about him.

He could live like this. He could live happily like this. Anders couldn't send Amell the thought, but he could send him the emotion. Happy, or near enough, in his exhausted bliss. He felt a similar emotion in turn, and imagined lying down beside him, wrapped up in Amell and not a rug. Anders breathed mana into the enchantment for as long as he stayed awake, even when all he and Amell felt was tired, and when he finally slept, it was free of nightmares.

Time passed.

Anders enjoyed its passing. Faith helped him with his hair and his beard, and he had enough clothes to make it through a week without wearing the same thing. He wrote to the contacts he’d gotten from Johane and Amell who were sympathetic to the mages’ plight. He wrote to the Randy Dowager and planned the next reprint of his manifesto with Varric. He ran out of parchment and he ran out of ink and he ran out of coin, and finally asked Fenris how he got his.

His housemate shrugged, and said he stole it from those who would not miss it. Anders couldn’t quite bring himself to justify theft, and took the flood of Collective contracts that came with the spring instead. Days spent collecting medicinal plants in the Planasene Forest and the Vimmark Mountains left him living contract to contract, but it was work and it was honest. Anders had fewer nightmares, and when he did, Amell was always there. He thought of him on the occasional night and felt stupidly blissfully happy when Amell thought of him back.

He even got along better with Hawke. Varric put their old group through triage with how hard he worked to repair their damaged relationships, aligning schedules like broken bones and bandaging slights like gaping wounds. Weekly games of Wicked Grace were paired with food and drink and music, and talk. Anders talked. Hawke talked. Anders and Hawke talked to each other. The little things that people talked about when they couldn’t talk about the big things.

Anders’ work at the clinic. The latest noble gossip. Bran Cavin’s latest decree or lack thereof so long as he remained the Provisional Viscount. The next Grand Tourney, and Kirkwall’s hosting of it. They didn't fight, but Anders was willing to bet it was because they had nothing important to fight about because they had nothing important to talk about. Still, it was nice not to fight. So nice Anders didn’t mind spending time with him outside their weekly games of Wicked Grace, and Hawke apparently didn’t mind spending time with him either.

Hawke invited him to the Cafe D’or for dinner, in early Cloudreach, and Anders couldn’t come up with a good reason to turn down a free meal, so he went. The small cafe was nestled between the city’s ballast watchtowers, and Anders had been there often enough. It was where he and Johane used to take tea, and the memory of her dampened his mood beyond his salad’s ability to raise it. Anders pushed a chickpea around the edge of his plate with his fork while Hawke signed something about some sort of ball he was hosting.

“-can’t be alone,” Hawke was signing. “I’ll have to fight off the de Launcets.”.

“You can take Fifi,” Anders assured him. It was hard to eat and talk to Hawke. He kept having to put his fork down, sign, pick his fork back up. Still, it was better than yelling. “Babette though - she looks like a biter. Watch out for the teeth.”

“Anders,” Hawke signed patiently. “I’m saying I want you to come home.”

Anders dropped his fork, “Do what now?”

“Come home,” Hawke signed. “I can't stand the thought of you out there without a warm bed and a warm meal.”

“I have a bed,” Anders lied.

“You have a rug,” Hawke countered.

“Varric is a snitch.”

“Varric is your friend,” Hawke corrected him. “He doesn't want you to live like that anymore than I do.”

“I don't need you to take care of me,” Anders signed with a scowl. “I'm not some Circle mage locked up in a tower waiting for you to rescue me. Go rescue Beth if you want to be a hero.”

“That's not what I meant-”

“Well it's what I meant,” Anders signed fiercely.

Home? Come home? How could he come home? The estate wasn't his home. Hawke had made that clear when he’d kicked him out of it. Anders didn’t have a home. Anders didn’t need a home. He ate whatever he could whenever he could and he slept wherever he could whenever he could and that was fine with him.

“Come home,” Hawke signed again.

“Blow me,” Anders signed back.

“Fine,” Hawke didn’t look fazed. “Come home first.”

“You kicked me out!” Anders shouldn’t have had to remind him. “You told me you didn't want to see me. You didn't want to talk to me.”

“I told you I needed time.”

“It's been three months!” That wasn’t time. Time was a day. A week. A fortnight. Three months was three bloody months.

“I know how long it's been,” Hawke didn’t look fazed by that either. “I needed time and you gave it to me.”

“What about what I needed!?” Anders signed, smacking his hands together with the words. It sounded like someone getting slapped, and a few heads turned to look at them.

“I know what you needed,” Hawke signed. “You needed someone to be there for you. I told you I made sure you were getting enough to eat. I would have given you more coin if I thought you would have taken it, but you needed time away from me too.

“I know I've been an ass since Mother died. More of an ass than usual. I was angry. I’ve been angry my whole life. My father died, my brother died, my mother died… and every death was my fault. Anders - … When I threw that dagger, I thought you were going to die too. I thought I’d lost you and I couldn’t-... I just couldn’t look at you and not see what I did to you. I was angry and I shouldn’t have taken that out on you.

“I shouldn’t have said you don’t act like you love me. I know you do. I’ve seen it. I know you regret leaving me during the invasion. I know you regret not being there to heal me. I know what and who you sacrificed for me. I know you wouldn’t have spent the past three years with me if you didn’t love me.

“But you’re right, I was insecure. When my cousin showed up and I saw how much he looked like me, I thought he was the only reason you ever looked twice at me. I know you love me for me, but I’m an asshole. I couldn’t imagine why someone like you would love someone like me. I doubted you and I shouldn’t have.

“You told me I’m the only man you ever loved. I know you would never betray me. I understand why you spent so much time with him. I was mean. He was nice. He looks just like me. I look just like him. You weren't in love with him, you were just using him to help you get through everything I put you through. You were hurt and you were confused and you needed closure and you got it.

“I know you wouldn’t throw away three years with me for three months with him. In all the time I've known you, Anders, I've known you're a good man. You're a healer. You're compassionate. You're forgiving. You're everything I'm not.”

Hawke retrieved a ring from his pocket, and slid it across the table towards him.

“I had this made before everything went to shit.... I was going to ask you on Wintersend, but I'm asking you now. Will you marry me?”

Fuck.

Chapter 135: Fuck, Marry, Kill

Notes:

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(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 3 Eluviesta Early Evening
Kirkwall Hightown: Cafe D’Or

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Damnit, fuck, fuck, shit, fuck.

This wasn't happening. This wasn't real. This was the Fade. This was Allure, but there was nothing alluring in what Hawke had said. He hadn’t apologized. He hadn’t agreed. He’d just-... proposed.

Amell…

Fuck.

Was Anders really using him? Could everyone but Anders see it? Was Anders just that fucking blind he couldn't see he was taking advantage of his kindness, his compassion, his patience, his friend?

"I have to go," Anders knocked over his chair, shoving a handful of startled patrons out of his way as he bolted from the cafe. The air in the Orlesian District was thick with the scent of kerosene, lamplighters walking through the marble streets and striking flint. Magic had become a luxury few could afford in the aftermath of Meredith's rise to power, and the scent was nauseating.

Anders had to get away from it. He fled through blanched streets, sick with stress, and skidded to halt outside the Tevinter District. The Veil at Fenris’ estate was thin, and Hawke’s words made him doubt the demon within it. Allure was a demon. Allure was a demon of desire, and Anders had lived with them for the past three months. Maker, what if that was all his feelings for Amell were? Just some corrupt perversion of what he should have felt for Hawke.

He couldn’t go to the Hanged Man. Varric wouldn’t have any advice that he could use. Adultery. Infidelity. Betrayal. Hadn’t Anders done enough of that? How had Justice let him do something like that? How had Anders let himself do something like that? Why did he think that taking time meant taking whatever he wanted from whoever he wanted? How could he do something like that to Amell?

Anders stumbled blindly through the city, and eventually took a lift into Darktown. The undercity welcomed him with the scent of old sewage, graffitied caverns, and pockmarked refugees, begging healing magic. Anders did what he could for them, and eventually found an out of the way stairwell carved into the blackrock, the steps worn and concave at the center. Anders sat and stared off into nothing, wishing he could think of much the same.

He couldn’t. He could only think of what Hawke had said. That he wasn’t in love with Amell. That he’d never been in love with Amell. That he was just using him because he was hurt, and confused, and needed closure. It was like Hawke had read his letters, or worn his ring, and knew every fear he’d ever felt. Maker save him, it was exactly like Allure had said. Anders felt laid bare in the worst of all possible ways. Amell deserved better than that. Amell deserved better than him.

Anders sucked in a rickety breath, but the tears that stung at the corner of his eyes wouldn’t spill. He didn’t feel sad. His breath came steadier, a warmth that settled in his chest like an embrace about his heart, and he felt calm. He felt comforted. He felt loved. Anders stared at his hands, void of veilfire, a ring of rosewood set beside a ring of study on his left.

… No, no fuck Hawke, and fuck his doubts. Anders had Amell’s ring. He had Karl’s ring. He didn’t need Hawke’s too.

Anders held onto the thought through the day and into the next, but Hawke was waiting for him at his infirmary. The massive sandstone courtyard could house a hundred patients, but barely seemed to fit Hawke. His presence was suffocating, and there was nothing Anders could do about it. Apparently the Champion of Kirkwall could go wherever he wanted, whether his lockpicks let him or the authorities did.

Anders wanted to run. He froze instead, one foot inside the compound, the other still out in the docks, his head and his heart already sprinting off into the Void. Which just left his hands, and all the idiotic things they signed. "You know when a door is locked, that means you're not supposed to go inside," Anders joked.

"You know when a door is open, that means you are," Hawke signed.

"You need healing?" Anders ignored the implication in Hawke’s words, draping his satchel over a chair. "Break your funny bone again?"

"Anders, come home," Hawke signed. A spring wind played in his greying hair, and he looked impressively unaffected considering Anders had walked out on his proposal yesterday.

Anders hated him for it. He’d never been more affected in his life. He'd finally gotten his life in order and decided there was no room for Hawke in it, but apparently Hawke didn't see it that way.

"You can't just walk back into my life!” Anders gestured angrily.

"You can't just walk out of mine,” Hawke countered.

"You kicked me out!" Anders argued.

"You left."

"You told me to leave!"

"I said I needed time,” Hawke corrected him. “I never said you had to spend that time away from home."

No. No, that wasn't what happened. Was it? Hawke had told him to leave, hadn't he? Anders couldn’t remember. What had Hawke said? He didn't want to see him. He didn’t want to be around him. Hawke had told him to go somewhere else, so Anders had gone somewhere else. He’d done what Hawke had told him to do… hadn’t he?

Anders shook it off and pressed on, "So you waited three months to ask me to come back?"

"I waited three months to give us both time to calm down,” Hawke signed, hopping off the table, and the closer he came the worse Anders felt. “We both needed to calm down. I know you're scared but I'm not going to let you leave me just because I'm deaf and things are hard."

"That's not why I left!“ No, wait - Anders hadn't left. Hawke had made him leave. Even if he hadn’t, Anders hadn’t left because Hawke was deaf. He’d left because Hawke didn't support him or his cause.

"Course it's why you left," Hawke signed. "You always leave when things get hard. You run. It's what you do. You ran after our first night together, but I took you back because I love you. You ran when you almost killed me, but I took you back because I love you. You ran when the city was under siege, but I took you back because I love you."

"That was different!" Anders insisted.

"How?" Hawke signed.

That wasn't - none of that was -... Anders opened his mouth, his hands clenching and unclenching as he struggled to find words to fill them with. It was different. It just was. Maybe Anders had run before, but that wasn’t what he was doing now.

… was it?

"Listen, I forgive you for running,” Hawke signed, with a too-gentle expression, like he was watching Anders hurt himself, but Hawke was the only one hurting him. “I'm used to it. We've always been passionate."

"We've always fought!" Anders corrected him.

"Everyone fights." Hawke shrugged. "Love is a fight. Everyday, it's a fight, and it's worth it. Marry me."

"You can't just ask me that-!"

"Why not?"

"Because - ” Anders’ hands shook, but he couldn’t find the words. Couldn’t bring himself to sign them. Could barely bring himself to think them.

He didn’t want to be with Hawke. But he must have wanted to be with Hawke or else why had he been with him for so long? Why had he told him he loved him? Why had he sacrificed so much for him? Hawke wasn’t wrong. Anders was a runner. He had been all his life. The templars had thrown it in his face every time he’d gotten caught. He was practically a yo-yo. He ran away, he got caught, he ran away, he got caught.

What if this was just that? What if he was just running, and getting caught, and running, and getting caught? Anders didn’t want that kind of relationship, but what if that was just the kind of relationship they had? What if Anders was just running because Hawke was right, and things were hard because Hawke was deaf and his mother was dead and both of those things were Anders’ fault?

“I have a patient,” Anders signed at the first person to wander into his infirmary. It was a simple infection, but Anders poured his mana into it until Hawke grew tired of waiting for him and left. Anders spent the rest of the day in his clinic, lost in his thoughts and arguing over his own memories.

Hawke had kicked him out. Hawke had kicked him out because Hawke didn’t support him. Anders hadn’t left him. Anders hadn’t run, but by the end of the day he wasn’t sure anymore, and by the next morning Hawke was back.

“Come home,” Hawke signed.

“Stop asking me that,” Anders signed back.

“Not asking,” Hawke signed. “I’m not leaving you alone.”

“I’ve been alone for three months.” No, damnit, Hawke had left him alone for three months, but Anders hadn’t signed it and Hawke was already signing something else and Anders couldn’t hold onto the thought.

“No you haven’t,” Hawke signed. “You’ve been with Fenris, but you can’t stay with him forever. What happens the next time you lose control? You think I haven’t heard about how you’ve been confronting templar patrols in the streets? Did you forget what happened last time? I’m the only reason you didn’t kill everyone down in those tunnels. You think I’m going to let you go through that again?”

“I’m not going to go through that again!” Damn him, why did Hawke have to remind him? Did he think Anders forgot? Did he think Anders didn’t know the burn was still there on his chest, beneath all his velvet doublets and silk brocades? Did he think just because the sunbursts and the silver swords of mercy couldn’t touch him they didn’t still terrify him? “Justice and I are one now.”

“You know that for sure?” Hawke asked.

Yes. No. Maybe? A man stumbled through the doors of his infirmary, holding an injured woman in his arms, and Anders breathed a selfish sigh of relief. “I have a patient.”

“I’ll wait,” Hawke signed, and damn him, he did.

Anders healed the woman's ruptured spleen, struggling to find some way to escape the conversation he and Hawke had left off. Thrask was asleep. Anders didn't know the woman or the man who'd brought her and they didn't know anyone else who needed healing. He spoke at length about the aftercare of her injury, praying another patient would follow, but none did.

“I’m here for you, Anders,” Hawke signed when they left. "Thought about what you said when I told you I needed a break, and you don't have to worry. You're not going to lose me. I still love you, but love takes work. I'm willing to work. Not going to throw away three good years for three bad months."

But it wasn't just three bad months. It was so much more than that. It was the six months of fighting each other before them, and the eight months of Hawke fighting other people before that, and the two months of Anders' depression before that, and the four months of pretending whatever this was could ever work. Like they hadn't known exactly where they stood ever since the day they'd met and Anders had asked him to free a mage, and Hawke had turned to leave without a second thought.

Anders tried to sign it, but he couldn’t think of the words. He couldn’t think of anything other than the fact that Hawke was here and he wasn’t leaving no matter how badly Anders wanted him to leave. “More than that,” He managed.

“Then we’ll work through it,” Hawke signed. “We’ve worked through worse.”

“I have a patient,” Anders signed with relief when someone walked through the door. Hawke finally left, but Anders doubted he'd stay gone. Anders had to talk to someone, but there were only so many people he could talk to. He went to the Hanged Man that afternoon, the walls of the rebuilt tavern already sporting a fresh coat of vomit. Anders pushed his way through a sea of slovenly patrons, vaguely aware a few raised tankards for his tabard at his passing but unable to appreciate it.

He took the stairs to Varric’s room and didn’t bother knocking. Hawke’s best friend was sitting at his writing desk, leaning back in his chair, looking like he was planning on a pigeage with how many grapes were strewn across the floor. He threw another one towards his mouth just as Anders entered, and it bounced off his nose and rolled down his bare chest.

“This is your fault!” Anders slammed the door behind him.

“I’m gonna need you to narrow that down for me, Blondie,” Varric set his grapes aside and went hunting for a shirt in his armoire. “Even Red lets me know the charges first.”

“Hawke proposed!” Anders started pacing, stomping grapes into wine in the process.

“Congratulations?” Varric said over his shoulder.

“For what!?” Anders whirled on him.

“The wedding, I assume,” Varric said, shrugging into a tunic.

“I didn’t say yes.”

“... Did you say no?”

Anders shook his head.

“I’m pretty sure those are your only two options there, Blondie,” Varric waved him towards a chair, but Anders didn’t want to sit. He wanted to pace. He wanted to run.

“I’m going to Ferelden in a fortnight!” Anders reminded him, waving a hand in the direction of the docks. “You said going was a good idea! You agreed to come with me. Why would you do that if you knew Hawke was going to propose?”

“I don’t see how those things are mutually exclusive,” Varric said.

“Amell’s in Ferelden!” Anders snapped.

“Still not seeing the problem here,” Varric said, hopping up to sit on the edge of his table. The mannerism was too much like Hawke, and it bothered him.

“The problem is I was going to be with him,” Anders explained, dragging his hands through his hair and losing a few flaxen strands in the process. Maker, not again. How much hair did he even have left? He was going to look like a ghoul at this rate.

“Hm,” Varric hummed.

“Hm!?”

“Look, Blondie, you know what my advice is on dealing with the family drama, but you were pretty adamant you and Creepy were just friends before,” Varric reminded him. “Seems like that changed awful fast. You sure this is about him?”

“What do you mean?” Anders asked.

“I mean are you sure this whole thing wasn’t just to get Killer’s attention?” Varric asked. “You and Hawke split, you write to your ex the next day? I’m just saying, it seems like you got what you wanted.”

He hadn’t. It wasn’t about that. It wasn’t about that at all, but everyone kept saying it was, and Anders wasn’t sure anymore. Hawke stopped by the infirmary again, and invited him to dinner again, and Anders was hungry again, so he accepted again, but no matter how hard he tried he didn’t want Hawke again.

Anders stared at Hawke’s hands, signing away about something, but there was nothing captivating in them. They were just hands.

"I'm going to Vigil’s Keep next week," Anders signed from across the table, and that should have been the end of it, but it wasn't.

"I'll go with you," Hawke signed easily.

"What?"

"You want to see Merrill," Hawke guessed. "Varric wants to see her too. Don't mind coming with."

Anders did. Anders minded very much. "I'm going to see Amell too." He signed. Or not. All he managed was, "Amell."

"So see him," Hawke shrugged. "I shouldn't have been jealous. He left you, and instead of going back to you, he went back to the Wardens. Don't know why I couldn't see that. Don't mind if you're friends. I know he can't commit to more than that."

That's not - Amell didn't - It wasn’t like that, but Hawke seemed so sure that it was. Anders had said it before, hadn’t he? He’d said Amell had left him. He’d screamed it. He’d believed it. Everything Hawke kept saying was true, wasn’t it? It had been true once. It was probably true again. Anders just couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see anything.

Hawke kept coming back. Day after day, visiting the infirmary, taking him to lunch or dinner, talking about everything Anders didn’t want to talk about and making him think about everything Anders didn’t want to think about, and it was exhausting. Anders was confused. Anders was hurt. Anders loved Hawke. Anders didn’t love Amell. Anders couldn’t take care of himself. Anders was a danger to himself. Anders was a danger to other people. Hawke kept him safe from himself and the consequences of his actions. The more Hawke talked, the more Anders believed him, and the more he would have done anything to make it stop.

Hawke was right. Hawke was right about all of it. Anders couldn't trust himself to know himself. He was insane. He'd been insane ever since he'd spent a year in solitary. He was possessed and pursued by Desire and tangled in Amell's emotions ever since he'd put on the ring and he couldn't say for certain any of his own were real.

Fenris’ voice broke him out of his thoughts. He was standing in the doorway to Anders’ room, and frowning for some reason.

“You… are living with Hawke now?” Fenris asked.

Anders blinked, staring at the satchel he'd set out and all the things he was stuffing back into it. Was he? Was that why he was packing? He thought he was going to the Vigil, but the ship wasn't here yet.

“What’s it to you?” Anders asked.

"... Nothing," Fenris said.

Anders went back to folding up his clothes. He didn't recognize all of the rings on his finger. One of them must have been from Hawke. He didn’t remember saying yes, but he must have, or else why was he wearing it?

Anders strapped his staff to his back and shouldered his satchels. He picked up Ser Cumference, and spared Fenris a smile on his way out. "Thanks for the past few months.”

Fenris followed him as far as the front door, when he finally called after him. “Mage.”

“Fenris.”

“... If he is not good to you this time, I’ll kill him.”

“... Thanks, I think,” Anders left.

Sandal was ecstatic to see him again. Anders hadn’t made it more than a few feet into the foyer when the boy came running, dropping the laundry he’d been carrying to hug him. “Anders!”

Anders let go of Ser Cumference, and knelt to hug him back. The cat immediately set about chasing Dog through the house, knocking over what sounded like a vase in the process. “Hey buddy,” Anders said.

“I missed you!” Sandal said, wringing his hands happily. “It’s sad when you're gone.”

“Sorry, buddy,” Anders said, fixing Sandal’s collar. “I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“It’s okay!” Sandal clapped his hands. “You came back! One day, the magic will come back too. All of it. Everyone will be just like they were. The shadows will part, and the skies will open wide, and when he rises, everyone will see.”

“... That’s great, buddy.” Anders ruffled his hair.

Bodahn said something to welcome him back, but Anders couldn’t hear him, and he only knew he was talking because his lips were moving. They were hard to read under his mustache, so Anders didn’t try. He thanked him when it seemed like he should thank him and went upstairs to take a bath at Hawke’s insistence.

Anders didn’t remember undressing, or filling the bath, or heating the water, but he was in it. All the luxuries of home surrounded him. Salts, pumice, emery, soap, towels, incense. Anders ran his fingers along the side of the tub, leaving streaks in the copper, thinking of the three rings he wore on them, and ultimately took Amell’s off so he could cry.

Things went back to normal. Anders had breakfast with Hawke and his uncle in the morning, worked at his infirmary throughout the day, and the mage’s collective into the night. Sex was… not a thing that happened, but he and Hawke still slept together when Anders could sleep. It was fitful, but it was sleep, and it was probably just because they hadn’t slept together in so long. It would get easier. It always did.

Letters arrived from Vigil’s Keep, and Anders opened them, but he couldn’t read them. The words all blurred together, no matter whose letter he held, but he gleaned that he was welcome to visit from the one Amell had sent. It wasn’t until he was actually on the ship, leaning over the railing and watching Kirkwall fade into the distance with Hawke’s arm around his waist that he realized what he was doing.

Why was he doing it? Why hadn’t he just sent a letter? When had he even gotten on the ship? Anders clutched the railing, fighting back the intrusive urge to fling himself over it. “I'm going to be sick,” Anders muttered.

“So long as you do it in the other direction,” Fenris warned him. The wind blew back his shock-white hair, revealing three lyrium tattoos etched into his brow, creased slightly either for the threat of vomit or Hawke’s company, or both.

“You good?” Hawke asked, rubbing his back.

“Sick,” Anders signed.

“Get you some water?” Hawke asked.

“Yes,” Anders signed.

Hawke left. Anders stayed where he left him, draped over the railing like a wet towel, and eventually threw up. A breakfast he didn’t remember eating painted the hull in shades of yellow. Maybe eggs. Maybe bread. At least it wasn’t oats. He hated oats.

He should have been grateful it wasn’t oats. Thanks to Hawke he’d never eat oats again. Thanks to Hawke he actually remembered to eat, even if he didn’t remember having eaten. Hawke remembered for him. He brought him all his meals, and kept Anders from giving them all away. It was a wonder Anders hadn’t starved living with Fenris with how irresponsible he’d been giving all of his coin and food to the girls.

But that was the kind of person he was. Irresponsible. Careless. Thoughtless. Downright reckless in his endless pursuit of justice to the detriment of himself and everyone around him. Using them for his own selfish ends and damn the consequences. Amell deserved better than someone like that, and Hawke could help him stop being someone like that. This was all for the best.

Amaranthine was nothing like Anders remembered. The docks weren’t crumbling into the ocean. There were no bodies bloated along the shore. The port was bustling, a dozen different colored banners flapping high above the city, and it sang with subtle undercurrents of magic. Beautifully grown gardens that didn’t seem as though they should thrive in the urban air. Miraculously clean water that flowed through the aqueducts. Smokeless forges that didn’t blacken the sky. The city didn’t seem rebuilt, it seemed reimagined.

It wasn’t all magic. The docks still smelled of brine, the wharves still creaked when Anders disembarked with Hawke, Fenris, and Varric. A woman jogged over to them. Elven, her silverite breastplate chiseled with a familiar house crest, and accompanied by a matching tabard. “Warden Anders, Ser!” She called out, waving as she ran.

“That’s the name,” Anders smiled queasily.

“Corporal Kallian!” The elf saluted, flushed and grinning. “You probably don’t remember me, Ser. It was private Kallian before.”

“Congratulations on the promotion,” Varric said, shifting his pack on his shoulder and signing along with the conversation for Hawke.

“Thank you, Master Dwarf,” Kallian said, eyes barely flicking to Varric with how fixed they were on Anders. “Ser, it’s so good to see you, Ser. It’s an honor, Ser, it really is. I fought four duels for the post to watch the docks for your arrival! I’m to escort you back to the Vigil. I can secure -” Kallian eyed their group over, “ - four? horses at the stables if you’d like to ride out tonight, or rooms at the Crown and Lion if you’d like to wait until the morrow.”

“A duel? For the mage?” Fenris snorted. “How many suitors have you?”

Kallian’s face twitched like someone had stabbed her with a pin. She looked at Fenris and smiled tightly. “... Or however many horses you would like, Warden, Ser.”

“No, it’s four, just - ignore him,” Anders said. “He doesn’t speak nice.”

“I speak just fine,” Fenris muttered.

“Can I get your things, Ser?” Kallian offered.

“No, thanks-... uh-... I guess, horses?” The sooner Anders got this over with, the sooner it would be over after all.

“Of course, Ser! This way, Ser,” Kallian saluted again, and led them from the docks.

Varric nudged him as Kallian hurried on ahead. “Rub your feet, Ser? Massage your back, Ser?”

“Stop,” Anders said.

“You believe this, Killer?” Varric signed. “Our little Blondie, a hero.”

“Why wouldn’t I believe it?” Hawke signed. “He saved the city.”

“And you didn’t think the stories were a little exaggerated?” Varric signed.

“You weren’t telling them,” Hawke countered.

“Touché,” Varric said, calling ahead to Kallian. “Corporeal! You think we could hear the Ballad of Blondie - excuse me - Warden Anders and how he single-handedly saved the city from a horde of marauding darkspawn who eat babies and fart fire?”

Kallian’s brow furrowed, and she slowed her steps to rejoin them. “...You can always ask the bards to play the Heroes of Harring when we get to the Vigil. It’s a favorite.”

“... Bemot’s Beard, are you serious?” Varric asked. “There’s actually a ballad?”

“Several,” Kallian frowned, tearing her eyes off Varric to smile sweetly at Anders. “... I’ll be your escort at the Vigil, if there’s anything I can do for you, Ser, it’s an honor.”

“Thanks,” Anders signed.

“I’m sorry?” Kallian blinked at the gesture.

“Thanks,” Varric translated, signing as he spoke. “We sign sometimes. It’s a thing we do. No reason.”

“Ass,” Hawke signed.

“One reason,” Varric corrected himself.

It wasn’t until they were outside the city that Anders remembered he couldn’t actually ride a horse. They weren’t even close to the stables, but his scent must have carried on the wind, because he could hear the uneasy knickers and whinnies that carried from them.

“So - Actually, about the horses-...” Anders cleared his throat. “Not good friends, me and horses. I’ll have to walk to the Vigil, and it’ll take all day. Maybe we should get those rooms after all. ”

It was that, or enslave a horse, and Anders wasn’t in the mood for blood magic.

“The Commander sent his own horse for you, Ser,” Kallian said. “I was told you were to ride no other. Are you sure you want to walk?”

“... what kind of horse?” Anders asked.

“... It would be easier to show you, Ser,” Kallian jogged off towards the stables, and they moved to the side of the road, out of the way of the flow of traffic. The occasional cart rattled past, carrying the early spring harvest and losing some of it along the way. Kale and collards, onions and turnips. Anders caught a flying carrot out of habit, and broke off half for Fenris while they waited.

“This can’t be good,” Varric signed. “Anyone wanna place bets?”

“Blood magic,” Hawke signed.

“Demons,” Fenris signed.

“Just stop,” Anders signed.

Kallian returned, holding the reins to an armored horse. A silverite chanfron covered its face, etched with lyrium runework. A matching spiked crinet ran down its neck, with a peytral around its chest emblazoned with gryphon wings, and a blood red caparison draped atop it all. The horse’s legs were wrapped in leather bindings, but despite all of the coverings, pieces shone beneath it. Pristine, bleached white bone.

A dead horse.

Necromancy.

Kallian handed the reins over to him. The horse didn’t so much as huff. Anders set a hand on its forehead, and felt the Fade that burned within it. The excited whispers of wisps bound within the skeleton. Run. Serve. Death. Sacrifice. “... This is his horse?” Anders asked.

“Yes, Ser,” Kallian said. “His old courser died on an expedition, and the Commander spent months on the magic to revive it.”

“Pay up,” Hawke signed when Varric translated.

Necromancy wasn’t blood magic, but Anders didn’t care enough to correct him. He secured his pack to its haunches, and vaulted onto the horse. Kallian led everyone else back to the stables for their living mounts. Anders didn’t remember much of the ride to the Vigil. He spent it lost in the magic and the memory of the man who made it, knowing he didn’t deserve him and hating what he had to tell him.

Vigil’s Keep rose from the distance, granite walls patrolled by silverite soldiers. It was early evening when they arrived, and the courtyard was awash in enchanted lanterns. Kallian led them to the guest rooms, news of their arrival spreading quickly. Dozens of familiar and unfamiliar faces accosted him on the walk through the halls to welcome him back. Anders felt apart from himself. He watched himself hug and be hugged by people made strangers by time until they reached the guest rooms.

Kallian promised a feast in a few hours. She left to spread official news of his arrival to the Wardens, or would have, if Anders hadn't ran after her.

"Hey - Kallian - Could you take me to see the Commander?" Anders asked, relieved Hawke hadn't followed him. "I need to talk to him."

"Of course, Ser."

Anders didn't know what happened in the in-between, but he must have interrupted a meeting, because suddenly he was in a war room, maps of the Deep Roads overlaid with maps of Thedas across a dark-stained table, surrounded by a dozen high back chairs hastily vacated at Amell’s order.

Maker's breath, he was beautiful. Warden necklace atop a long sleeved tunic and a crimson vest, raven hair braided loosely on one side of his head. When he stood, his hand traced the edge of the table, jumping chairs on his walk to him. "Anders?" Amell asked at his silence.

"Hey," Anders managed.

"Hey," Amell smiled, stopping a forearm's length from him. Anders tried and failed not to breathe, the scent of copper and the Fade clouding his head, and his head was already clouded enough with Hawke. "You feel sad." Amell noted.

"I'm engaged." Anders blurted.

Time seemed to freeze. Anders had spent so much of the past fortnight in a haze, he couldn't help but notice when that haze finally cleared. He was engaged. He was engaged and he didn't want to be engaged and he didn't even remember when he agreed to being engaged but he didn't know how to stop being engaged. Anders didn't know what he expected. Rage. Despair. For Amell to fix this the way he fixed everything. Anything other than what Amell did. He laughed. A sound more squawk than cackle.

"I'm not joking," Anders said. Maker knew he wished he was.

"Of course not," Amell cleared his throat, recovering quickly. His expression was slate, and Anders couldn't read anything in it. "I'd like my ring back."

"...Why?" Anders didn't want to give it back. Anders never wanted to give it back.

"I don't think there's a need for you to wear it while you're here, do you?" Amell asked.

There was. Of course there was. He had to know how Amell felt. But Anders couldn't tell. He felt too wretched. Too worthless. Too miserable. He couldn't tell what was Amell and what wasn't.

"Why?" Anders whined.

"I can sense you, and you can sense me. We can find each other without it, and I'd like to process this on my own." Amell held out a hand for the ring.

Anders took it off, but he didn't feel any different. He dropped it into Amell’s hand, and felt like he dropped his heart along with it. Amell pocketed it, and finally smiled. "Thank you."

"I'm sorry," Anders croaked.

"Why are you sorry?" Amell asked.

"Because -... because I'm engaged."

"You have nothing to be sorry about. I'm happy for you." It was probably a lie, but Anders couldn't tell anymore. "When is the wedding?"

"I don't know." I don't want to know.

"I hope you'll invite me when you do," Amell kept smiling. Anders kept fighting the growing lump in his throat, choking out his breath and making his eyes sting with tears he shed freely considering Amell couldn't see them.

"Are we still friends?" Anders asked shakily.

"Of course we're still friends, Anders," Amell reached for him, fingers brushing across his chest and stealing the breath from his lungs. He found his upper arm, and squeezed. "Why wouldn't we be friends?"

"Because-..." Because I led you on. Because I used you. Because I lied to you. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Amell said firmly. "Just be happy. I'm glad you came. I have some work to finish up, but I had a feast planned for when you arrived. We can talk more then. Why don't you go see everyone?"

Anders didn't want to see everyone. Anders didn't want to see anyone. He didn't remember leaving the room, but he couldn't go back to the one he shared with Hawke. He found himself in the crypts, beneath the Vigil cellars, and sat down beside an old sarcophagus, covered with fresh flowers.

"Hey wifey…

"Remember fuck, marry, kill?

"...I messed up."

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
Cut Your Teeth: Amell's perspective on the events of this chapter.

Chapter 136: World Gone Crazy

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. Please mind the trigger warning on this chapter.

TW: This chapter contains dub-con/sexual assault. If you would like to skip it, I have included a summary of the chapter for you in the end notes. You can also read it with the scene removed here.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 19 Eluviesta Early Evening
Ferelden: Vigil’s Keep Crypts

“See how the rain has washed away
The tears that you were crying?
Though the darkness calls me down
You know we all are dying…”

Anders inhaled shakily at the end of the verse, too choked to sing the next. He closed his eyes and thumped his head against Sigrun's sarcophagus, wishing she was here with him. She'd always been able to make him smile. At least he finally had a song for her.

“A little early for your Calling, isn’t it?” A familiar voice asked.

Nate. The Warden Constable stood at the base of the stairwell into the crypts. His hair had gotten longer, a mane of black he’d braided like one. He’d traded his goatee for stubble, as if he needed more shadow. He had enough of it under his eyes, in his voice, in the ghost of a smile he wore on his lips. He looked good. A little fat.

“Men are always premature,” Velanna chimed in from beside him. She looked better, wild blonde bangs obscuring the vallaslin on her face but not the resting bitch. Someone must have forced her into real clothes, an elegant dress that looked like folded leaves corseted about her waist and pinned in place by a gryphon pendant at her collarbone. “A Shred of Blue? This is the best you could do?”

“At least she’d understand it,” Anders countered. It wasn’t in elvish, which seemed like it should give him a point over Velanna’s old song.

“She would understand you’ve a terrible singing voice,” Velanna said, joining him on the floor. She smelled like the forest, and age-old memories. “What are you singing of your Calling for, you fool?”

Because it feels like I went to it.

“Death and dying was her thing,” Anders shrugged, scrubbing the tears from his eyes with the heel of his palm.

Nathaniel toyed with one of the flowers on Sigrun’s tomb. “Can you feel her?”

“Normal question," Anders said.

“In the Stone,” Nathaniel elaborated. “Oghren says she makes the Vigil stronger.”

“Oghren also says dwarves are born from the Stone as rocks,” Velanna rolled her eyes.

“Velanna believed him,” Nathaniel grinned.

“Oghren?” Anders repeated, something almost like a smile creeping at the corners of his lips. “You believed something Oghren said?”

“I did not say I believed him,” Velanna kicked a foot out at Nathaniel, who dodge nimbly to the other side of Anders. “I said I almost believed him.”

“Pink rocks for girls, gray rocks for boys,” Nathaniel elaborated, sliding down on the opposite side of Anders. “Dipped in lava until they hatch.”

Anders exhaled hard through his nose. Velanna elbowed him for it, a sharp stab beneath his ribs that came with a surge of relief for the excuse it gave his tears. Anders choked on a sob, and Velanna crushed him into a sudden hug Nathaniel quickly joined. Limbs and hands tangled together with the scent of leather and leaves, and Anders felt better than he had in weeks. He was still crying, but there was something safe in it, in the shadow of Sigrun’s tomb, where no one would question his tears.

“You idiot,” Velanna muttered into his chest.

“She means-” Nathaniel started.

“I know,” It was so hard to know anything recently, Anders couldn’t have been more grateful when he did. He couldn’t not know, crushed between two of the best friends he’d ever had in his life. He grabbed an ankle and a wrist, his face in Velanna’s hair. "I'm an idiot."

Velanna thumped a fist against his chest. “You and your spirit both.”

“An inescapable one," Nathaniel said.

“I’m special that way,” Anders said.

“That’s one way to put it," Nathaniel said.

“Ironic is another," Velanna countered. "How is it you escape your templars and we cannot escape you?"

"You're the one who came to see me," Anders pointed out.

"I came to see Sigrun," Velanna said, untangling herself from him to settle more comfortably against his side.

"Liars," Nathaniel kept an arm around Anders' shoulders. "Both of you."

"Us?" Anders joked, leaning back against the tomb and Nathaniel’s arm. "Lie about feelings?"

"I have never," Velanna huffed.

"You'd have to have some first," Anders pointed out.

"I have feelings."

"Bitchy isn't a feeling."

"Neither is stupidity."

"It's been working out for me so far."

"I would imagine, considering you have the emotional depth of a puddle."

"I'm an ocean."

"You're an idiot."

"I'm glad the two of you are still so close," Nathaniel said.

"Do not be jealous," Velanna waved a hand at him.

"Who's he jealous of though?" Anders wondered.

"You, obviously," Velanna said.

"You sure about that?" Anders raised an eyebrow at her.

"Velanna," Nathaniel said.

"I knew it," Anders grinned.

"I'm breaking up with you," Velanna said over him.

"Again?" Nathaniel sighed.

"We can share, I have two hands," Anders joked, waving both.

"Touch me with them and I will break them," Velanna threatened.

"I'm a healer," Anders shrugged, throwing an arm around her shoulder that Velanna did not in fact break.

A companionable silence stretched, and Anders breathed easier for it. His broken heart felt better, splinted between old friends, and for a time he could pretend the past four years had been a fever dream and he wasn’t living some waking nightmare without them.

"I have to admit, I didn't think it would be this easy," Nathaniel broke the silence.

"What?" Anders asked.

"Going back in time," Nathaniel clarified.

Anders thought of Amell, and the smile he'd had for him, and how nothing Anders had done had managed to take it away. "...I did."

The three of them stayed in the crypts, talking about what Amell had planned for the month. There was the feast, of course, paired with so many minstrels and bards it would have made an Orlesian blush. A theater troupe on reserve for evening plays. A veritable tourney's worth of games for the days.

"What if I hadn't shown?" Anders couldn’t help wondering.

“Then you’d have been even more of a fool than usual,” Velanna said.

“I think we all know there was no chance of that,” Nathaniel grinned, a secretive sort of grin that made Anders’ sick to his stomach wondering if they knew about his letters to Amell. “We’re keeping you. I’m sure dinner is about to start. Shall we?”

We shan’t. We shan’t because if we shalled then we’d have to go back inside wearing the wrong ring for the wrong man but there was nowhere else to go. Anders followed them out of the crypts and back into the Vigil, where servants were hurrying back and forth arranging the main hall for a banquet. Tables were being pushed together, benches were being carried out, a stage was being set up.

For Anders. All of it was for Anders.

Amell couldn’t tell him it was for all mages or his morals or any of the other excuses he’d used years ago whenever Amell had done something kind for him. It was just about Anders. It was always just about Anders. It was there in his letters, and the way that he signed them every month, with a quiet Always, Amell like it meant something different if he didn’t put Yours in front of it.

Hawke probably knew that, and that was probably why he manifested out of the Fade like some reincarnation of his mother to confront the three of them the second they set foot in the hall.

“There you are,” Hawke signed, a hand on his arm dragging Anders away from Nathaniel and Velanna and out of the flow of traffic. “Where have you been?”

“With my friends,” Anders signed.

“Everything alright?” Nathaniel asked.

“I-” Anders started, but Hawke was still signing, and he couldn’t pay attention to two conversations at once.

“You can’t just leave without telling me,” Hawke signed.

“I didn’t leave,” Anders argued.

“How would I know?” Hawke countered. “I can’t talk to anyone here but you and Varric. I shouldn’t have to remind you. You know why I’m deaf.”

Hawke was right. He shouldn’t have had to remind him, but for some reason he did. Hawke was deaf and it was Anders' fault. Anders had abandoned him, and Hawke had gotten hurt, and Anders hadn’t been there to heal him. The man responsible for his mother’s death had healed him instead, and Anders was still lying to him about it.

“I’m sorry,” Anders signed, because he should be sorry, but he was too busy feeling sorry for himself.

“Just tell me next time,” Hawke signed.

“Oi, Sparkles!” A familiar voice bellowed. Anders tore his eyes off Hawke to the sight of Oghren stomping across the hall like a bronto and rolling up his sleeves as he went. “I warned ya! I’m gonna kick your sorry ass!”

“I missed you too-” Anders started.

Oghren slammed a fist into his stomach. It wasn’t enough to knock him on his ass, but it was enough to bend him over it. Anders wheezed, while Velanna laughed and Nathaniel looked like he was struggling not to. “That’s for sending us the old broad,” Oghren spat. “Now we’re even-”

Oghren didn’t get further than that before Hawke grabbed his shoulder and spun him into his fist. Oghren reeled back a pace from the suckerpunch, rubbing his jaw while a vicious grin crept onto his face. “Boy, you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for some son of a bitch to do that.”

It felt like there was a moment where Anders could have said something. Done something.

It passed.

“Here comes Oghren!” Oghren bellowed, charging forward to ram his shoulder into Hawke’s stomach and slam him bodily into the wall. Hawke collided with a pained grunt, and brought an ineffectual elbow down on the crook of Oghren’s neck. He couldn’t have been at more of a disadvantage, facing off against a berserker in melee combat with a height difference that made every knee and elbow hit just shy of where they should.

Anders wondered why he didn’t care more.

“Would you like this to stop…?” Nathaniel asked.

“It seems it will soon,” Velanna noted. “Five silver for the dwarf.”

“You can’t always bet on Oghren when this happens,” Nathaniel sighed.

“You are just tired of losing.”

“And your point, my lady?”

“My point is you should bet sooner.”

Hawke finally broke free of the exchange, rolling clear of Oghren’s flailing fists and slinging a flask at his feet that exploded in a cloud of dust. Oghren sneezed. “Knockout powder? I’ll use that shit for seasonin’ when I serve you up your ass! Let’s go-!”

“Oghren,” Nathaniel interjected. “That’s enough.”

“He soddin’ started it-”

“I said that’s enough.”

“Elf bet first, didn’t she?” Oghren guessed.

“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Nathaniel sniffed.

“I did,” Velanna said cheerily.

“Pha,” Oghren spat. “Whatever.”

“Are you alright?” Anders signed while his friends argued.

“Am I alright?” Hawke signed back with one hand, and held his injured side with the other. Anders belatedly remembered to send a surge of creationism through him, washing away the bruises Oghren had left on him. “He attacked me.”

“You punched him,” Anders signed.

“For punching you!” Hawke signed.

“He’s my friend,” Anders argued. “He didn’t hurt me-”

“He punched you,” Hawke corrected him. “And they laughed! They’re not your friends. They’re assholes.”

“They are my friends-” Anders argued.

“You haven’t been friends with them for years,” Hawke countered. “If you were still their friend they wouldn’t treat you this way.”

They weren’t treating him like anything. It wasn’t like it was the first time Oghren had punched him. It was Oghren. Oghren punched everyone. Oghren had even warned him he was going to kick his ass when he showed up, and if he really wanted to hurt him he could have done a lot worse than a gut punch. And sure, maybe Velanna had elbowed him, but…

“It’s not like that,” Anders signed.

“Yes it is,” Hawke signed. “You think Varric would ever do that to you? You think I would? They’re not your friends - they never were.”

That wasn’t right. It wasn’t right. The Wardens were his friends. Nathaniel and Velanna and Oghren and Amell. They were some of his best friends, but Anders could still feel the pain of Velanna’s elbow and Oghren’s fist, and he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know what to do.

He was so tired.

“Everything alright, Anders?” Nathaniel asked again.

“Aye, he’s fine,” Oghren slapped Anders’ shoulder. It hurt a little, but it wasn’t-... It just wasn’t like that. “He’s a tough son of a bitch. Good fight.” Oghren held out a meaty hand for Hawke, who eyed it with a scowl.

“Good fight,” Anders translated.

“Whatcha waving for?” Oghren frowned.

“Hawke’s deaf,” Anders reminded him.

“Looks fine to me,” Oghren said.

“Deaf, you toadstool, not dead,” Velanna rolled her eyes.

“Ah. Shame,” Oghren shrugged, giving up on the handshake when Hawke didn’t take it. “So we gonna eat or we gonna stand around and starve till our trousers drop?”

“Drop your trousers around me again, dwarf, and I will make sure you have no need of them,” Velanna threatened him, but they headed off towards the main hall, trading the same shoves they gave Anders. Because they shoved everyone. Because they were soldiers. Because they were Wardens. Because they were friends.

They were his friends.

Hawke wrapped an arm around his waist and kept him from following. Anders didn’t want an arm around his waist but he didn’t know how to get it off. Nathaniel raised an eyebrow for it. He looked like he was doing a dozen different equations in his head, but they could only lead to one shameful conclusion. Anders suddenly understood why Hawke hated eye-contact. The confused look Nathaniel gave him made him want to curl up and die.

“I take it this is Hawke?” Nathaniel guessed.

“That’s him,” Anders agreed.

“I see,” Nathaniel said slowly, with a nod to Hawke. “... A pleasure to meet you, Champion.”

Anders translated. Hawke waved.

“Anders, could I have a word with you?” Nathaniel asked.

“Knickerweasels?” Anders supplied.

“A private word,” Nathaniel clarified.

“Dick?” Anders tried again.

“Very well, be glib,” Nathaniel sighed.

“What’s he saying?” Hawke signed.

“He wants to talk,” Anders translated.

“Don’t want you talking with him.”

“He didn’t hurt me,” Anders argued.

“Still laughed.”

“He’s still my friend-”

“Merrill’s your friend, and you haven’t even seen her yet,” Hawke countered. “You don’t think she wants to see you?”

“... Maybe later?” Anders said aloud.

“... Later it is,” Nathaniel agreed. “Our table is at the head of the hall, closest to the stage. See you shortly?”

“See you,” Anders agreed.

Hawke led him back to the guest rooms with his arm still firmly locked around his waist. It was just an arm. Hawke had had his arm around him before, and it hadn’t bothered him before, so it didn’t make sense that it should bother him now, but it did. They reached the guest rooms, up on the second floor, where Varric and Fenris were talking to Merrill out in the hall.

She didn’t look anything like the broken woman Anders had dragged out of a burning building ten months ago. Her clothes weren’t threadbare linens worn for want of anything else. She wasn’t drained of blood and joy. A knee length emerald dress swirled with patterns reminiscent of her vallaslin, belted with a teal sash that looked like it had been knotted one too many times by forgetful hands. Her raven hair was free of soot and finely braided, one pointed ear lined in silver piercings. She looked good. She looked great. She looked like the hero of her own story while Anders prayed for one in his.

“Lethallen!” Merrill shrieked at the sight of him, sprinting down the hall to fling herself into his arms. Her arms locked around his neck and her knees around his waist, and Anders would have fallen over if Hawke wasn’t supporting him. “It’s so good to see you! Did you miss me? You did, didn’t you? I missed you! I missed you so much!”

Anders hugged her. She smelled like spring, and dirt after rain, and rebirth. “Hey Merrill.”

Merrill hopped down from his arms, and snatched up his hands, practically beaming, “I’m so glad you came! I have so much to tell you. You must have so much to tell me! Did you know you’re a hero? I mean, of course you know, but did you know? There are so many songs, lethallen, you have to tell me which ones are true!”

“I’m telling you, Daisy, stories are never true,” Varric said when he joined them, Fenris trailing silently behind him. “They’re only true for whoever tells them.”

“I want to hear Anders' story, then,” Merrill insisted, undeterred. She glanced at Hawke, like she finally realized he was there, and her eyes widened. “...Hawke?”

“Merrill,” Hawke said in greeting.

“... You came to see me?” Merrill asked, and Varric translated the question for her.

“‘Course I came to see you,” Hawke said. Hawke lied. Hawke hadn’t come for her. He’d come for Anders. He’d come to be with Anders because he was always going to be with Anders whether or not Anders wanted to be with him.

“But I-... I never wrote… and you still came?” Merrill asked.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Hawke said after Varric translated.

Not for her. It wasn’t for her, but Merrill didn’t know that, and Merrill wouldn’t believe that, and Merrill wasn’t even looking at him anymore, she was looking at Hawke, and then she was hugging Hawke, and then Hawke was hugging her, and Anders felt sick to his stomach.

“It’s good to see you too,” Merrill said.

“You better?” Hawke asked.

“I’m better,” Merrill agreed. “Are you better?”

“Better,” Hawke agreed.

“... Do you think we can still be friends?” Merrill asked.

“Think so,” Hawke said.

“I think so too,” Merrill smiled, watching Varric translate. “I’ll have to… um… learn how to do all that with my hands. I think I can learn how to do that. I already move them so much when I talk I may as well be saying something with them, don’t you think?”

“I think you’ll be great at it, Daisy,” Varric said.

They were friends again. Hawke and Merrill were friends again. They couldn’t be friends again. Anders didn’t have any friends who weren’t friends with Hawke outside the Wardens, and Hawke had said the Wardens weren’t his friends. It wasn’t true, but everything Hawke said was true, so it had to be true. Anders had to have a friend who wasn’t friends with Hawke, and if that friend wasn’t Merrill, then who was it? Who did he even have left?

… Fenris was his friend. The lyrium-branded elf leaned against the wall, off to the side, squinting while Hawke and Merrill and Varric spoke in an awkward combination of signs and sounds. Anders found a spot beside him, and breathed a little easier when Fenris spared him… not a smile, but a raise of his eyebrows that acknowledged his presence.

“She forgot Isabela,” Fenris signed.

“She loved Isabela,” Anders signed back.

“And you?” Fenris signed.

Anders looked at Hawke. He was talking to Merrill, but he could look over at any moment and see whatever he was signing. Even if Anders said something, Varric would hear it and tell him. It didn’t matter either way, because Anders didn’t know what he wanted to sign or what he wanted to say.

What was he supposed to say? That he didn’t want to be with Hawke? Even if Anders couldn’t remember agreeing to marry him, Hawke probably hadn’t forced the ring onto his finger. Anders could take it off. Nothing was stopping him, but everytime he thought of taking it off he felt paralyzed. He felt guilty. He felt trapped. He felt crazy. He couldn’t tell Fenris that. He couldn’t tell anyone that. It didn’t make any sense.

Anders never answered him. The five of them went down to the main hall for the feast, to a chorus of cheers from all gathered when he entered. Anders waved sheepishly, and Nathaniel waved him over to join him at a table with Velanna, Oghren, Amell, and a few people Anders didn’t recognize. He took a seat at the corner, diagonal from Amell. Hawke sat next to him, and everyone else found their seats as food was brought out.

The minstrels started playing one ballad in his honor after the next. Children and mabari ran wild, getting underfoot and under tables, the din of laughter and conversation flooding the hall. It was the most elaborate party Anders had ever seen, and it was his party, but he couldn’t enjoy it. Hawke was sitting too close to him, their legs pressed together, his hand occasionally running along Anders’ thigh.

Anders couldn’t stay focused on any of the conversation. It wasn’t important. Old friends and new exchanging pleasantries and making acquaintances. The only thing Anders managed to focus on was Amell, but Amell hardly spoke, and when he did, it was usually in a secretive aside to the dark-haired woman at his side. Anders missed her name, along with the names of everyone else at the table, and eventually lost interest in it. He watched the children careen through the hall, and wondered which of them was Kieran.

It was easy to find Amell. Oghren’s Amell. He looked like Oghren’s beard with legs, covered in grease and crumbs, and brandishing a turkey leg like a club. His fiery red hair had frayed free of its braids as the little berserker ran shrieking and barefoot after a few of the other children. There were so many of them - and more than a few had black hair.

The little group circled their table more than a few times, and eventually one of them went scrambling up into the dark-haired woman’s lap. He had to be Amell’s son. He looked just like him. He had the same wheatish skin, the same raven hair, the same blood red eyes. He stayed in his mother’s lap, eating apple slices off her plate and humming along to the latest song the minstrels were playing.

“Enough, you silly boy,” Morrigan - that was it, her name was Morrigan - said eventually, hefting Kieran off her lap and passing him off to Amell. “Eat your father’s dessert, if your own was not sufficient.”

“Your father wants his dessert,” Amell protested.

“Then your father should have eaten it first,” Morrigan countered.

Amell leaned over and whispered something to her that made her laugh, and bounced Kieran idly on his knee while the boy stole all the apple slices from his plate. They looked happy. They looked like a family. They looked like everything he and Justice were fighting for, and everything he’d never have. They looked like what he needed to see, and what he needed to remember, and what he needed to focus on, and what mattered more than he did.

Anders got through the evening, but it was harder to get through the night. He lay abed some short hours later, in the guestroom he shared with Hawke, wide awake and Hawke wide awake with him. Anders lay on his side, facing away from him, counting the stones in the wall while Hawke’s hands massaged his back, working the tension out of his shoulders and into his gut. Anders ignored him, even when Hawke pushed his tunic up under his arms. Anders didn’t raise them, the fabric bunching up in his armpits and soaking through with sweat.

Not tonight. Maker, not any night. Anders didn’t want to have sex. Anders had gone without sex for three months, and no matter how much he missed it, he didn’t miss having it with Hawke. Hawke’s hand traveled from his back to his chest, tweaking one of his nipples between his thumb and forefinger, and even if Anders didn’t react, his body did.

“Tired,” Anders finally signed, the same way he had every night for the past fortnight.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Hawke said, still touching him, working each nipple into a stiff peak. He normally stopped, and Anders didn’t know what to do when he didn’t.

“Tired,” Anders signed again. Hawke didn’t say anything, one hand tangled in his hair, the other massaging its way down his side. They weren’t the hands he wanted. They didn’t move the way the hands he wanted moved. Amell’s hands felt fluid, flowing over his skin as naturally as blood flowed through his veins. Hawke’s hands clutched and clenched, but on some level they felt nice, and almost nothing had recently.

He still didn’t want them. He still didn’t want this. Maybe Hawke just hadn’t seen him sign it. “Tired,” Anders signed over his shoulder. “T-i-r-e-d.”

“I know,” Hawke kissed his neck, the scratch of his beard more irritating than arousing. “You can just relax. I’ll take care of you.”

Anders didn’t want to relax. Anders couldn’t relax if he tried. He felt too tense. Too paralyzed. Too panicked, but there was no reason to feel anything but nice. Hawke’s hands felt nice. They felt nice, and he knew they felt nice, and they’d felt nice before, and they should feel nice now, but they didn’t feel nice and it wasn’t nice and he should have said it wasn’t nice but he couldn’t say anything.

His tunic was still on, but his night slacks came off, and Hawke caught one of his hands and pulled it up to his scratchy lips to kiss. “Oil?” Hawke said, but it didn’t feel like a question, and it didn’t feel like he could say no, and when he summoned it and Hawke used it it didn't feel nice at all. Anders tried to focus on breathing, on what it felt like to breathe, but he felt so much more than that.

The burn from the stretch he’d gone without for so long, the impossible thickness of his cock, the flush of heat and tension that accompanied it. Hawke couldn’t hear the sounds he wrung from him, and Anders didn’t want to hear them either. He whimpered into the sheets, and thought of covering his ears while Hawke gripped his hips, holding his trembling body to him. “There you go. That’s what you want.”

But it wasn’t, it wasn’t, and Anders didn’t know why he signed “Please,” against the mattress or what he was pleading for because it started to feel nice. Hawke slid him along his cock, shallow thrusts hitting that place of passion within him, and wringing a gasp from his throat. And then another, and another, until Anders was practically screaming with the sheer ecstasy of it all. It felt incredible, and he’d never felt more ashamed than when he came hard against the sheet, and Hawke said, “You’re mine.”

Hawke’s finish sent Anders fleeing to the wash to rid himself of it, but he couldn’t do anything about the memory. He felt like he was going to throw up, but he couldn’t throw up because Hawke might know he'd thrown up, and he didn’t have a reason to throw up, because there was nothing to throw up about. He had sex. He had good sex. Anders swallowed down the sickness in his throat, and went back into the bedroom where Hawke was waiting for him with the sheets drawn back.

There was nowhere else to go but his arms, so that was where he went, but he couldn’t sleep. He could barely breathe. He felt so fucking sick. Hawke fell asleep, eventually, and Anders slid slowly down the sheets until he escaped his arms. Hawke didn’t wake up, but Anders cast a sleep spell over him for good measure. He pulled on his slacks, and went hunting for somewhere else to be sick.

Anders was outside. Anders didn’t remember going outside, but he was there, standing under the Vigil’s eaves in the southern courtyard. It was raining, droplets splashing up and under the eaves to muddy the legs of his trousers. Amell was standing next to him, still dressed for the day despite the fact that they’d moved into the night, a roll of something smoking between his fingers.

How did Anders get here? What was he doing here?

“What did you want to talk about?” Amell asked.

Did he want to talk? Why didn’t he remember asking Amell to talk? Anders rubbed warmth into his arms, struggling to find a topic. Everything. Nothing. He didn’t want to marry Hawke. Couldn’t Amell see he didn’t want to marry Hawke? Maker, please, couldn’t someone see he didn’t want to marry Hawke? Why couldn’t Anders tell someone he didn’t want to marry Hawke? Why didn’t he want to marry Hawke? Hadn’t he at some point? Why was he losing so much time? Why couldn’t he have lost the time he’d just spent with Hawke instead?

“... Lot of rain,” Anders said.

“Hm,” Amell agreed, taking a long pull of whatever he was smoking before offering it over to him.

Since when did Amell smoke? Since when did Anders? Anders took it, along with an experimental pull, and coughed through the burn before handing it back.

“We were going to host games tomorrow,” Amell told him.

“... Maybe Velanna and I could dry the grounds,” Anders offered.

“Maybe,” Amell said.

“... Amell…” Everything Anders wanted to say stuck in his throat. Help me. Please help me. The words wouldn’t come. “... I can’t believe you did all this for me.”

“Why can’t you?” Amell took another pull of whatever they were smoking. “I meant my last letter, Anders.”

Anders hadn’t read his last letter. He couldn’t tell Amell that.

“... You look good,” Anders said instead. It won him a smirk. It felt like a nice thing to win. “... I look good too, by the way.”

“I know,” Amell said.

“You don’t though,” Anders said. “I could look like a ghoul right now for all you know.” He felt enough like one. Unable to say anything. Unable to think anything. Losing more time and more sanity with every passing day.

“I'm sure you’d make a handsome one,” Amell assured him.

“All three teeth and no nose,” Anders joked.

Amell took another long pull, and flicked the rest of the roll out into the rain. He reached out and touched Anders’ chest, starting at his heart and sliding up to his trembling throat, lingering briefly over his lips before he found his cheek. He ran his thumb along the bridge of Anders’ nose, and smiled. “Still here,” He noted.

“Teeth might not be,” Anders mumbled, wetting his lips.

Amell’s hand slipped lower on his cheek, his thumb running along his bottom lip and pulling it slightly back from his teeth. Anders sucked in a shaky breath, fighting for words, for action, for anything. “... Did you want me to check?” Amell whispered, taking a painful step closer.

Yes. Fucking Maker yes. “Can you-...” Anders took another breath. “... Can you just hold me?”

Amell pulled him into his arms, his whisper softer than the rain. “... Always.”

Notes:

Fanart
Oghren Punching Anders by Darthfar.

Chapter Summary: Velanna and Nathaniel sit with Anders beside Sigrun's tomb and share a few jokes. They return to the Vigil, where Oghren gut-punches Anders for sending Lady Johane Harimann to them. Nathaniel and Velanna laugh, and Oghren then announces that they're even now. Hawke witnesses the exchange, and punches Oghren for punching Anders. Hawke loses the fight, and afterwards he signs to Anders that the Wardens aren't his friends because they're physically abusive and laugh at his pain. Nathaniel tries to talk to Anders, but Hawke tells him Anders he doesn't want him talking to him. Hawke and Anders head back to the guest rooms, where they encounter Merrill. Hawke tells Merrill she's the reason for his visit to the Vigil, and Merrill says she wants to try being friends again. The group goes to the feast the Vigil is hosting for Anders, and then Anders and Hawke go to bed, where the dub-con scene takes place. Afterwards, Anders has a lapse in memory, and finds himself suddenly outside the Vigil talking to Amell, and asks him to hold him. The chapter ends.

Chapter 137: Credit for Trying

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 19 Eluviesta Late at Night
Ferelden: Vigil’s Keep Courtyard

Rain fell. Anders listened to the muted sound of water on water as the weather made mud of the courtyard. It caught in leaves of larch and birch, and pattered across grey stone paths and tiled eaves. It was temperate, the open air an easy thing to breathe, infused with the scent of fallen rain and whatever they’d been smoking.

Amell’s hands ghosted his back, like wisps calling on the memory of a hug. For one panicked moment, Anders was afraid that was all they were, and he was imagining this like he was imagining everything else. He clung to Amell just in case, trying to assure himself that he was real. That this moment was real - even if he couldn’t remember how or why he’d gotten here.

Everything had gotten so bad so fast. Wasn’t he supposed to be with Amell? Hadn’t he come here to be with him? But he wasn't with him, and it was like he was back in solitary all over again - losing time and looking for companionship where none existed. The Wardens weren’t his friends, and Amell was a Warden first.

No. No, that wasn’t true. That wasn’t real. That was just Hawke, but Anders was with Hawke. Anders had been with Hawke. He could still feel his hands, clenched around his hips while he fucked him, and Anders whimpered, digging into the sheets like a mad dog, and-... that hadn't happened, had it? It couldn’t have happened. He was just remembering it wrong like he remembered everything wrong.

It was sex. It was just sex. That was all it was. That was all that had happened.

“... You’re shaking,” Amell said softly.

“It’s cold,” Anders lied.

A low pulse of primal magic warmed the embrace in answer. It felt like a fire centered in Amell’s chest, and Anders curled up beside it. “Better?” Amell asked.

“You have no idea,” Anders tried for a laugh and landed somewhere in the vicinity of a shaky exhale.

“Tell me what else I can do for you,” Amell begged, gentle fingers brushing a few blond strands of hair behind his ear.

He was so close Anders could have turned his head and met his lips. The thought haunted him, tangled together with all the answers he had for Amell's question. Fix me. Kiss me. Free me. Fuck me. Save me. Anders didn’t know which one to say, so he didn’t say any of them.

“I’m still waiting on that pony,” Anders joked.

Amell exhaled bemusedly. “What kind?”

“The pony kind?” Anders shrugged, repositioning his hands for a better grip on Amell’s shoulders. “... I like your horse.”

“Did you want me to make you one?” Amell guessed.

“You have a lot of dead horses lying around?” Anders asked.

"I'm sure I could dig one up," Amell joked.

"Are you serious?”

“If you want me to be," Amell said. "I've already buried bodies for you. I don't mind raising them too."

The memory came with a surge of guilt - the way all Anders’ memories did of late. It just made him think of Hawke, and how often Hawke reminded him of all the things he'd done wrong. All the different ways Anders owed him. For his coin. For his sister. For his burn. For his eyes. For his mother. For his hearing.

Anders probably owed Amell too. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“... The barmaid."

“What barmaid?” Amell sounded confused.

“When I tried to destroy my phylactery and the templars came for me, you killed them and buried their bodies for me… and I thanked you by making out with that barmaid.”

“You thanked me by saving my life,” Amell corrected him. “Anders, you have nothing to be sorry about with me. Where you find your happiness doesn’t matter as long as you find it.”

That didn’t sound right. That didn’t sound real. Anders didn’t know what to say if he wasn’t supposed to say sorry. He stayed in Amell’s arms, trying to lose himself in his scent, but it was too faint beneath whatever they’d been smoking.

“Since when do you smoke?” Anders asked.

“Since you died,” Amell said.

Anders wasn’t expecting that answer. Amell didn’t seem like he was expecting it either. He tensed, like he couldn’t quite believe he’d said it, but Oghren had already told Anders he used. Oghren had also told Anders he'd stopped. Whatever he’d been smoking hadn’t been elfroot, which didn’t leave a lot of healthy alternatives.

… Anders probably shouldn’t have had any.

“You don’t have to worry about it,” Amell added hastily.

“I am a little,” Anders confessed. He considered pulling back so he could see Amell's expression, but he wouldn’t have been able to read it anyway, and holding Amell seemed to keep him honest. “... Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Amell promised, threading his fingers through Anders’ hair. The soft drag of blunt nails along his scalp was a gentle comfort, and came paired with the slightest nudge of Amell’s head, like they were cuddling and not hugging. “How are you?”

"A little worried about whatever I smoked," Anders joked.

"... Blood lotus."

Blood lotus. Great. Goodie. Because Anders needed more hallucinations. "Why blood lotus?"

"The high and hallucinations aren't why enough?" Amell asked.

"I could do without any more hallucinations personally," Anders said without thinking.

"... Any more?" Amell asked cautiously.

Shit. Fuck. Well… no going back now. Anders had dislocated the conversation, and now he had to set it, and it was probably going to hurt. "Mr. Wiggums wasn't the only time I saw something that wasn't there,” Anders explained. “When I was lost in the Deep Roads, I saw a ghoul who promised to lead me to the surface, but he wasn't real either… I know, crazy tainted person, I'm not really fighting the Warden stereotype."

"You're not crazy," Amell assured him.

"What else do you call seeing things that aren't there?" Anders laughed bitterly.

“ … An escape.”

“An escape from what?”

“Solitary? The Deep Roads? If you think it’s something more, then I believe you, but maybe you felt trapped and you wanted to escape, and it was the only way that you could,” Amell suggested. “I don’t think that means you’re crazy. I think it means you survived.”

… Anders had never thought of it that way. It felt as freeing as it did frightening. If his visions were all just about an escape, then how could he trust that he wasn’t looking for one in Amell? "I'm starting to wonder if you're even real right now."

"I'm real," Amell set Anders’ hand against his heart. His pulse felt a little fast - the corruption and the Call within it reminiscent of a deathknell, but there was something comforting in it, because it was Amell, and death didn’t stop him. “You can feel me. You can sense me.”

“I wish that helped," Anders said.

“What would?” Amell asked.

“I don’t know,” Anders said. “I wish we could stay like this forever.”

Anders shifted in Amell’s arms to see his face. Amell’s hands relaxed, like they were prepared to let go of him, but that was the last thing Anders wanted right now. Real or fake, Amell made him feel grounded - even with the ground eroding away beneath him. When Anders didn’t let go, Amell asked, "Do you want me to keep holding you?"

"Yes.”

Obedient arms encircled his waist. "... Do you want me to do anything else?"

"I don't know,” Anders wasn’t sure if it was the question or the blood lotus, but he took the initiative to trace Amell’s brow above his blindfold. Amell shouldn't have worn it. There was nothing wrong with his eyes. There was no reason to hide them. Anders didn’t care what color they were, or what shape they were in, or whether they were real or glass or gone. They were Amell, and Amell was beautiful.

Would it have really been that bad to kiss him? Just once? Just for closure? Just to move on? Just to move forward? Just to remember what it felt like? Just to kiss someone he actually wanted to kiss?

Hawke had implied Anders could kiss him, once, but Anders had missed his chance. Amell didn’t react to his touch. He stayed frozen in place while Anders traced his face. He should have reacted. What if Hawke was right and Amell didn’t love him after all?

Hawke loved him. Anders had Hawke. Anders had Hawke and not Amell and it wasn’t right, or fair, or just to want him instead, but then why wasn't Justice stopping him?

… why wasn't Justice helping him?

"Would it have to mean something?" Anders asked, because he didn’t know what it would mean.

Amell inhaled so shakily Anders realized he hadn’t been breathing the entire time Anders had been touching him. “It would to me,” Amell clasped Anders' jaw, and his thumb moved in a gentle caress on his cheek. "Anders… if you want me to kiss you, I will, but…

"I don't want this to be what we have. If that's all you want from me, I'll take it. I know I said I wouldn't, but I lied. I’d settle for it, but if we’re going to be more than friends, I want to be more than that. I can't be more than that if I kiss you. I have to know if we were ever together and I didn't make you happy, you would tell me, so I could let you go and you could be free to be with someone who did.

“… does he not make you happy?"

Amell was right. Anders knew he was right, but he was so damned miserable he didn't recognize himself or the choices he was making. He couldn't just pile one bad decision on top of another and use them to climb his way out of the hole he'd dug himself. He had to undo the bad decisions he'd already made.

Anders took Amell’s hand, and kissed his fingers in lieu of his lips. An interminable kiss that left him sick with longing, but not sick with himself. “You’re right,” Anders said. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to bring that kind of ugliness into your life - you deserve better than that. I never want you to settle for your own happiness.”

“Anders, I-...” Amell cleared his throat. “Your friend - shit -”

“My friend shit?” Anders blinked.

“Your friend is coming. Varric,” Amell waved a hand at the door to the Vigil. He fumbled in his pockets with shaking hands until another roll of blood lotus appeared in them. A flare of primal magic didn’t so much light it as char the whole thing to ashes the second Amell set it between his lips. “Shit,” Amell muttered.

He must have been high. Anders couldn’t remember him swearing half as freely in the past. True to Amell’s word, Varric emerged from the Vigil a moment later. His eyebrows shot up into his hairline when he saw them, and he wandered over to join them on the eaved walkway that framed the Vigil. He was dressed in his night frock, but he’d thrown his jacket over it, apparently unable to sleep.

“Blondie. Creepy,” Varric waved with his thumb and pointer finger, his prosthetic off for the night. “Guess we’re all men of the night.”

“Should we all be working the same corner?” Anders joked, trying and failing not to resent the interruption.

“Nothing wrong with a little healthy competition,” Varric said.

“I’ll concede,” Amell said, heading back inside. “Varric. Anders. You can always call on me.”

“Good one,” Anders called after him.

Varric raised an eyebrow at him.

“What?” Anders frowned. “It was a good one. You know, call like visit-call or warden-call or call-call.”

“Which one are we doing?” Varric wondered.

“Will you stop?” Anders said. “We were just talking.”

“You think Killer cares?” Varric asked. “You gotta be more subtle than this, Blondie. You want him finding out?”

“He’s asleep,” Anders had cast a sleep spell on him just to be certain.

“And when he wakes up and you’re gone?” Varric asked.

“He won’t,” Anders said. “Besides, there’s nothing for him to find out. I told you before, I’m not going to cheat on him.” No matter how much he thought about it.

“You ever hear the phrase love him or leave him? Because if we’re not going with ‘love him,’ that just leaves ‘leave him.’ You’re not thinking of leaving him, are you?”

“... What if I am?” Anders asked.

“... Then I’m worried for you, Blondie. You and Creepy both.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about how people who stop being friends with Hawke have a tendency to stop being friends with everyone.”

“No. No, this is what you do. You exaggerate.” Anders wasn’t going to let everyone keep changing his mind about everything. He was done with Hawke. He should have been done with him a long time ago. He wanted Amell. He'd always wanted Amell. “Not everything is a story, Varric. You warned me Hawke would kill me for spending time with his sister - well surprise! I’m not dead.”

“Mereen,” Varric said flatly. “Isabela.”

“Fenris?” Anders added.

“You think Broody burned that bridge? He’s not stupid. He knew he’d have to walk over it again. Will you just-... will you think about it for a second?”

There was nothing to think about. It was Hawke. Sure, Hawke could be a little aggressive, and a little jealous, and a little possessive, but he wasn’t a murderer. Sure, when someone touched Anders, Hawke had a tendency to touch them back tenfold, but he didn’t kill them. He just threatened them, or punched them, or choked them. He didn’t kill them.

And sure, maybe he’d killed Mereen, but Mereen had tried to kill the Harimanns. And sure, maybe Hawke had tried to kill them later too, but he was a mercenary. He killed a lot of people, but he killed for coin. He didn’t kill for jealousy. He didn’t kill for nothing. Varric was just over-embellishing the way he over-embellished everything.

“Remember when you helped me with Bartrand?” Varric prompted at Anders’ silence.

“What about it?”

“Remember how I wasn’t looking for you? I was looking for Killer. Because that’s what I wanted to do to my brother. Because that’s who he is. Because there’s a reason Killer’s Killer, and Daisy’s Daisy, and Broody’s Broody, and Sunshine’s Sunshine. Are you following me yet?”

“Whose side are you even on?” Anders demanded. “You were all for me getting back together with Hawke before and now you’re telling me I should be afraid of leaving him?”

“I’m on whoever’s side the story needs me to be on. Hawke’s great! When he’s Hawke. I think you’re great with Hawke! When he’s Hawke. When he’s not? I want Killer to get better. Believe me, I love a good redemption arc, but he’s not there yet. If you leave him, I’m worried he’ll never get there. You’re good for him, Blondie. Shit, most days, you’re the only good in him.”

“So I should just stay with someone who’s bad for me because I'm good for them?”

“I’m not saying you have to stay with him. I’m just saying I want you to be careful if you don’t. Look, just... let me walk you back to your room in case he’s awake and wondering where you went.”

"Fine," Anders said.

The two of them walked back to his room while Anders went over the day in his head. He didn't want to be with Hawke. Hawke didn't support him. Hawke didn't make him happy. Amell did. He wanted to be with Amell. He just had to hold onto that, but it was so hard to hold onto anything recently. His guilt and doubt were overwhelming enough without adding in fear.

Varric was just being paranoid. Hawke was just Hawke. He wasn't dangerous. Hawke loved him. Hawke took care of him. Hawke had crossed the Waking Sea with him. Hawke might not have believed in freedom for mages, but he'd always believed in freedom for Anders. Anders just had to tell him he didn't want to marry him, and everything would be fine.

There was no reason to be afraid of him.

Except that he was awake.

He was awake.

He was awake and sitting on the bed when Anders opened the door, but he couldn't be awake. He couldn't be awake because Anders had forced him to sleep. He'd cast a sleep spell that should have lasted for hours, and it hadn't been hours. Had it? How much time had he lost? Had he even cast the spell at all?

He remembered casting it. He remembered, but he must not remember, because Hawke was awake and he couldn't be awake if Anders had cast it. He must not have cast it, but he remembered casting it. He remembered. He knew he remembered.

Maker save him, he was mad.

"Where have you been?" Hawke demanded, confronting them both in the doorway.

Anders couldn't talk. He couldn't sign. He couldn't think. Hawke was awake. Hawke was awake and Anders was insane and Varric was answering for him.

"Relax, Killer," Varric signed easily. "I couldn’t sleep, so Blondie here was just giving me a tour of the Vigil."

"Told you you’re supposed to leave a note," Hawke signed.

"Go easy on him, would you?" Varric signed. "I don't know about you but my room didn't come with any stationary. Besides, what’s the big deal?”

“How else am I supposed to know if he’s okay?”

“He’s fine. Nothing’s going to happen to him here. I get that losing Sunshine did a number on you, but there are no templars here. Blondie’s fine.”

Hawke scratched at his scalp, and ultimately sighed. “You’re right.”

“I”m always right,” Varric grinned. “I'll see you in the morning."

Varric left. Varric left him. Varric couldn't leave him. If Varric was so afraid for him why would he leave him? Anders couldn't be alone with Hawke. He couldn't -... he wasn't. He had Justice. He always had Justice.

He'd just been so withdrawn it was like he wasn't there. Sure, Anders had been too afraid of Allure to visit him in the Fade since Hawke proposed, but Justice was still part of him. Anders should have felt him, but it was like they'd just joined and they weren't in sync for some reason. Like Justice had gone back to being afraid of making himself present.

Hawke first. Anders just had to break up with Hawke first, and then he could go find Amell and Amell could help him with Justice and everything would be fine.

Everything would be fine.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Hawke guessed. He ran a hand - a nice hand - up and down his arm. His expression was soft, but as the seconds sped by the softness faded. Hawke’s brow furrowed, and his nose wrinkled, and Anders couldn’t say why or why it terrified him.

"We need to talk," Anders signed.

"Maker’s breath, Anders, what have you done now?" Hawke asked.

"Will you just listen to me-"

"You reek of blood lotus,” Hawke said, shaking his tunic like he expected ashes to fall from it. “Were you smoking?"

"No-"

"Don't lie to me,” Hawke signed inches from his face.

"I'm not lying!” He wasn’t. He hadn’t been smoking. Amell had been smoking. Anders had just hugged him. Anders had hugged him for… a quarter hour? A half hour? He might have smelled like him but he hadn’t smoked. Nothing beyond the one pull Amell had offered him. “I only had one smoke-"

"It's always just one smoke,” Hawke cut him off. “You have any idea how addictive blood lotus is? You know my father smoked. You're really going to do this to me?"

Damnit, it wasn’t about Hawke. At the end of the day it wasn’t even about Amell. It was just about Anders and what he needed to be happy and this wasn’t it. "My smoking isn't your problem-" No - wait - fuck - he didn’t smoke -

"Of course it's my problem. You're my problem."

"No," Anders signed vehemently. "Not anymore. I am done compromising on my happiness for yours-"

"You're not happy - you're high,” Hawke said dismissively. “I've been through this before with my father and my uncle. I'm not letting you do this to yourself."

"You're not letting me do anything!” Anders shouted. Maker, it felt good to shout again, but he was afraid of the whole Vigil hearing him, and went back to signing. “I have been driving myself mad trying to find reasons to be with you, but I cannot be with a man who does not support me."

"You think I'm going to support you ruining your life with lotus?" Hawke raised an eyebrow, still unaffected. Still unmoved. Still not fucking listening.

"This isn't about lotus!” Anders signed, hating how long it took him to spell the word. He didn’t know how to sign lotus. He didn’t even know how to smoke lotus. "This is about us. I don't want there to be an us."

"Yes you do." Hawke signed. "If you think I'm going to listen to a word you say while you're like this, you're wrong. You have no idea how bad my father got when he used to smoke. You're unstable, Anders. You don't know what you're saying. You need to sleep it off."

"You don't know what I need!" Anders screamed.

"Yes I do. You need a bath and a bed. Let's go," Hawke reached for him, and Anders took a panicked step back, but it was like Oghren rushing Hawke. Hawke’s shoulder connected with his chest as he heaved Anders over it, one arm locked around his shoulders and the other around his ass.

"Hawke stop-!" Anders clawed at Hawke’s back, grabbing for purchase in his tunic, struggling to get away from him without outright hurting him. He didn’t manage to free himself before they reached the wash, and he didn't remember what happened after that.

Anders woke up in bed. He was naked, the sheets cool against bare skin, and his head was killing him. Anders sat up with a groan and a breath of restorative energy. Fucking shit. Not again. What happened? What was he doing in bed? What was he doing naked? Why couldn’t he remember? Why did he keep blacking out? What was wrong with him?

What was happening to him?

Why was this happening to him?

Maker, why was this happening to him?

Anders buried his face in his knees, blanket tangled up around his waist, struggling for breath and memory. He must not have heard Hawke come in, because suddenly Hawke was sitting next to him, caressing his leg with one hand and holding a tray with breakfast for him with the other. Anders flung himself backwards and collided with the headboard before he realized what he was doing.

Hawke wasn’t doing anything to him. He was just bringing him breakfast. What was Anders so afraid of? It wasn’t like Hawke could actually hurt him. Nothing could actually hurt him. He was fine. He knew he was fine, but his heart was still racing.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Anders signed.

“Headache?” Hawke guessed.

“Yeah,” Anders signed.

“Not surprised,” Hawke said, setting the tray beside him. It was a plate of sliced oranges, muffins, sausage and eggs, and salted ham. “You shouldn’t have been smoking.”

… Had he been smoking? Was that all this was? How much of last night was because he’d been smoking? Everything with Amell? Everything with Hawke? What had happened after Hawke had picked him up?

“What happened last night?” Anders asked.

“You smoked too much lotus. You were delirious. I helped you with a bath and got you into bed. I thought you could use a relaxing morning, so I brought you breakfast. Can you heal your headache?”

“Yeah,” Anders signed, picking up a muffin to cradle against his chest. “Thanks.”

Smoking… Anders remembered smoking. He remembered coughing. He remembered how the night had smelled like blood lotus. He didn’t remember smoking more than once, but maybe he was just remembering things wrong, the way he remembered the sleep spell wrong.

“I know Varric didn’t smoke with you,” Hawke said. “One of the Wardens?”

Amell wasn’t just one of the Wardens. He was his Commander. Once upon a time, he’d been his everything.

"So what?" Anders demanded.

"I told you they weren't your friends,” Hawke signed. “Anders, do you not remember what happens when you get drunk? Now you're getting high?”

“I wasn’t-”

“Don’t lie,” Hawke said. “Look, I forgive you, but you have to take better care of yourself. You can’t get drunk or high, or you’ll lose control. What if you hurt someone? The Wardens won’t forgive you like I will if you have an episode while we’re here."

… Justice wouldn’t hurt anyone. Anders wouldn’t hurt anyone. Would they? They had before, and Anders didn’t want Amell to see him like that if they did, but-... Amell would forgive him. Wouldn’t he? Amell still wanted to be with him. Amell didn’t think he was crazy or out of control, but maybe Amell just didn’t know him like Hawke knew him.

Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe Anders would rather have no one than have Hawke. “Listen, Hawke, what I said last night-”

"I forgive you,” Hawke cut him off. “People say things when they're high. I know you didn't mean it."

But he had meant it. He had. He had and it hadn't mattered because he was high, but he hadn’t thought he was high, but maybe he just didn’t remember or didn’t know he’d been high. He’d never been high before so how could he say he hadn’t been high last night? Amell had been high. Maybe Amell hadn’t meant any of it either. Maybe Amell hadn’t even been there and it had just been Anders smoking out in the rain by himself trying to escape an inescapable engagement.

Anders ate breakfast with Hawke. He knew he was at the Vigil, but it felt like he was back at the Circle, trying to escape over and over again and getting caught every time. Except Anders had escaped the Circle. Amell had helped him escape the Circle. Maybe he could help him escape this too.

The day was easier outside the room, if only because Varric kept Hawke entertained and away from Anders. Anders and Velanna did their best to dry last night’s rain from the grounds, and ended up with an awkward scorched earth fiasco that cost them a maypole and left everyone who witnessed it laughing.

“I wasn’t aware we’d planned on a bonfire,” Nathaniel joked, staring out at the destruction from beneath the covered walkway with their small group of Wardens. “I’d have brought a list of my sins to burn.”

“You will do no such thing,” Velanna said. “They are the only interesting things about you.”

“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Amell said.

“Yeah… about that,” Anders said, eyeing the crumbling maypole and the desert they’d created around it. “You know the Western Approach?”

“I”m familiar,” Amell said.

“This is the Eastern one,” Anders joked.

Amell chuckled.

“Suppose we could water it back up,” Oghren suggested, with a crude shake of his belt.

“Trousers,” Velanna pointed a threatening finger at him. “I swear on the Dread Wolf, dwarf-”

“Eheheh.”

“You cannot piss away all your problems, da’len,” Jacen chimed in.

“What else am I supposed to give if I don’t give a shit?” Oghren asked.

“Blood and bile,” Seranni mumbled from her spot in the shadows.

Oghren hocked an obedient ball of spit onto the blackened ground. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened.

“I suppose that just leaves blood,” Nathaniel noted.

“No,” Amell said.

“Come on,” Anders nudged him. “You’re telling me you can’t just compel the ground to forget what we did to it?”

Anders was joking, but Amell knelt and set a hand to the ground. Wisps flitted across the Veil and sank into the char and ash, dead grass, mushrooms, and rot spreading out in a small circle from his palm in a strange corruption of nature magic and necromancy. It was one of the most fascinating things Anders had ever seen, even if it didn’t seem particularly useful. It reminded him of Merrill, and made him wonder if Amell had learned it from her or Velanna.

“Nope,” Oghren said. “Not touching that. Let’s get some more fire going.”

“Your form is terrible,” Velanna said when Amell stood.

“A credit to my teacher,” Amell teased.

“Dirthara-ma,” Velanna shoved him.

“Lasa ghilan,” Amell countered.

Anders missed them so much he felt it like a physical ache - alleviated slightly by how readily they seemed to take him back. Even so, he couldn’t help but feel haunted by everything Hawke had said, and the doubts that plagued him made him feel distant. Eventually, their group gave up trying to fix their mistake, and went and found Merrill to fix it for them. Her magic regrew the grass and a few saplings of birch and larch, but it took all morning. The servants found a new maypole, somewhere, and games were set up for the afternoon.

Anders' favorite - for no particular reason - was the one Hawke couldn’t play. Goalball was a game for the blind and played off sound. It consisted, unsurprisingly, of a goal and a ball. The bundle of leather was filled with bells, and rolled between two teams towards their goal. They played with blindfolds, and also unsurprisingly, Amell was best at it.

It was a fun game and Anders liked playing it, even if he usually ended up flinging himself face first into the dirt trying to block the ball. At one point, he ended up colliding with Amell in the process. He knew it was Amell, because the pained grunt sounded like Amell, and the blend of copper and the Fade smelled like Amell, and the gentle hands that helped him to his feet felt like Amell.

Anders breathed creationism over him for the impact. Amell pulled him into an unexpected hug. Even if they were blind, no one outside the game was, and the hug was apparently to cover the response Amell had to his magic. Anders felt his arousal and the subsequent blood magic that relieved it. “Don’t heal me,” Amell whispered into his ear.

“Don’t get hurt,” Anders countered.

“Go easy on me.”

“Never,” Anders shot back.

Anders had to find some way to talk to him alone, without Hawke or any of the other Wardens, but the moment never came. The closest he came was when Nathaniel pulled him aside after one of the games, but Anders couldn’t say for sure if they were out of earshot of everyone, and the thought that someone would hear them and word would get back to Hawke somehow terrified him.

“Anders, about that word?” Nathaniel asked.

“Dick?” Anders recalled.

“I know it’s not my place, but can I ask after your engagement?” Nathaniel asked.

“A little late if you’re asking me after,” Anders joked.

“Are you sure about it?” Nathaniel persisted, undeterred.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Anders smiled queasily.

“You remember that old game we used to play?” Nathaniel asked. “Fuck, marry, kill?”

“What about it?”

“... is this really who you’d pick?”

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
Ugh: Amell's perspective on the events of this chapter.

Chapter 138: A Gift of Flesh

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. Please mind the trigger warning on this chapter.

TW: This chapter contains sexual assault. If you would like to skip it, I have included a summary of the chapter for you in the end notes. Alternatively you can read the chapter with the scene removed here.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 20 Eluviesta Late Afternoon
Ferelden: Vigil’s Keep Courtyard

No.

It was such a simple thing to say, but Anders couldn’t say it. Not to Nate and not to Hawke. Nathaniel was the only person who questioned him, and Anders hated himself when he didn’t answer. Anders didn’t remember what he said - something glib - but he knew it wasn’t yes. The fact that he hadn’t said yes hadn’t mattered to Hawke and it hadn't mattered to Nate either.

Nathaniel dropped it. Anders wished he hadn’t. Anders wished a lot of things. The rest of the day passed at the Vigil, and there was no escaping Hawke. The worst of it was no one else seemed to notice how badly Anders wanted to escape him. To everyone else, Hawke was quiet. He only spoke when he had someone to translate for him.

To Anders, he was garrulous. The signing was endless. They shouldn’t have come to the Vigil. They should cut their visit short. The Wardens were making Anders unhappy. The Wardens were making Anders unhealthy. Anders should be at home where he wouldn’t be so vulnerable, so confused, so corrupt.

The only reprieve Anders could find in it all was that Amell couldn’t see them together. He couldn’t see when Hawke stood with an arm around his waist or his shoulder, or held his hand, or squeezed his thigh. He couldn’t see how virulently Anders didn’t want Hawke to touch him, and Anders could believe that if he could, he would notice where no one else did.

Anders noticed. Anders spent the afternoon noticing and the evening afraid of what he noticed and what it meant awaited him at night. Dinner was… insane. The chefs had prepared one dish for the entire Vigil. It was a wyvern, stuffed with a gurn, stuffed with a horse, stuffed with a halla, stuffed with a swan, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a quail, stuffed with a bunting that had choked on a gold piece the chef had pushed down its throat.

“Abomination for the abomination?” Anders joked, watching a host of servants cart the wyvern’s head to the forefront of the half dozen tables that had to be pushed together and reinforced just to hold the thing.

“It’s-... called a Gift of Flesh,” Amell explained, a bit of color creeping up his neck. “It’s considered an affront to the Maker in Orlais.”

“What’s it considered here?” Varric asked, a dubious look on his face as more servants arranged the bloated wyvern's body to look like it was crouched to take flight.

“Dinner,” Amell said, “Excuse me.” He navigated crowds well, a guiding hand grazing shoulders and elbows almost like he was dancing through them. Watching him walk away made Anders feel sick, but he didn’t know how to go after him with Hawke’s arm around his waist.

“... Varric, do you think you could-... ask Hawke to do something?” Anders asked.

“... Sure thing Blondie,” Varric said, and switched to signing to get Hawke’s attention. “Hey Killer, you get a look at this thing? I think they left the horns on the halla. Check it out-”

Varric led Hawke away and Anders went after Amell.

“Amell,” Anders called, dodging a wheelbarrow of vegetables the servants were adding to the monstrous carcass. “Amell, wait up.”

Amell stopped close to one of the exits from the main hall, head tilted to make it clear he was listening to him. “What is it, Anders?”

Yes, what was it, Anders? What are you doing trying to get Amell’s attention when you already have Hawke’s? What are you even going to say? ‘Help, my extremely considerate fiance has been paying attention to me all day?’ ‘Help, Nathaniel asked if I was happy with my engagement and I didn’t answer him and now I’m afraid no one will ask me again?’ ‘Help, I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not anymore and I need you to ground me?’

“... No Dumat?” Anders asked.

“He’s around,” Amell said. “I don’t need him to navigate the Vigil.”

“So… a gift of flesh, huh?” Anders asked.

“... And anything else you wanted from me,” Amell said with a rueful smile.

… Hessarian save him, what was he supposed to say to that? Anders’ throat didn’t just close up on him - it packed its bags and left. Anders tried to laugh it off and all he managed was a flustered cough.

“It takes eight days to cook - it was too late to stop once they started,” Amell explained.

“You know wyverns are poisonous right?” Anders asked.

“The chefs had the venom extracted so we could serve Aquae Lucidius with dinner,” Amell explained. “I told them not to serve you anything but Aqua Magus - I know you’re not fond of hallucinations.”

Anders had only told him about his hallucinations last night. How was Amell already making accommodations for them? How could anyone be so considerate, so cautious, so compassionate?

“Not unless this is one,” Anders blurted.

“It’s not,” Amell promised, with a too-easy smile. "You can feel the Call in me. If you want, I can teach you to better sense it sometime.”

“... I want that a lot,” Anders said.

“I know you were still getting used to the taint when everything happened. I’m sorry I never got the chance to really help you with it.”

“You helped me with a lot of things,” Anders argued.

Amell kept his smile, but didn’t say anything in response.

"How much did all this cost?" Anders asked.

"... A fair amount.”

“You shouldn’t have done all of this for me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t deserve it,” Anders took a shaky breath, and he tried. Maker, he tried to tell him, but he couldn’t form all the words. “Amell - I feel terrible.”

“Why?” Amell found his arm, and squeezed. “You deserve to be happy.”

I’m not. I’m not. I’m not.

“So do you.”

“I’m trying,” Amell said softly. “Don't worry about the cost, Anders. We were overdue for a celebration. Was there anything else?"

Yes. Yes, there was something else. There were so many things else. Anders wasn't the Hero of Harring. He was just a man, and he needed a hero, but he couldn't bring himself to ask for one in the main hall anymore than he could in the courtyard. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Amell said. "Enjoy the evening."

The gargantuan feast came accompanied with a play. The Ballad of Ayesleigh told the end of the Fourth Blight. A lightshow conjured darkspawn more silly than scary, with exaggerated frowns in place of teeth, and children chased after them with wooden swords while the actors performed.

Anders spent the evening focused on it, and the night signing everything he could remember of it for Hawke. The retelling took him well over an hour, and at the end of it Hawke slept instead of sleeping with him. Anders breathed a sigh of relief when Hawke finally started snoring. He had to leave. He had to get away, but he didn’t know how to get away. He was too afraid to cast anything on Hawke. He couldn’t trust his magic, or his memory, and he didn’t know how to make sure Hawke stayed sleeping. He lay awake for hours, listening to Hawke snore, his heart skipping every time Hawke shifted or stopped, and must have fallen asleep eventually.

He knew he fell asleep, because he woke from one nightmare into another. Hawke was between his legs, the weight of his arms pressing down on his thighs, his mouth around his cock. “What-?” Anders grabbed at the sheets, struggling to drag himself free, but Hawke’s hands were locked around his hips and held him in place.

“Hawke stop-” Anders begged, but he couldn’t remember the sign for stop. Tension was already coiled tight in the pit of his stomach, saliva and sweat soaking his skin. Every pull of Hawke’s lips sent flashes of heat from his cock to his heart, and Anders’ choked on an involuntary moan. He pushed ineffectually at Hawke, his hands slipping through silken locks down to his shoulders in a feeble attempt to get him off, but he was so overwhelmed with ecstasy he gave up.

"Oh fuck, please - Ah-" Anders bit his lip to keep from saying the wrong name. Hawke wouldn't have been able to hear it, but Anders was too afraid to say it. His mind fled to the man all the same. Amell’s gift of flesh, the ache in his voice when he’d asked Anders not to heal him, the way it had taken everything in Anders not to cast spell after spell just to hear it again.

Anders’ orgasm hit him like a punch to the gut. It left him winded and wheezing, and he lay in the outline of his own sweat. Hawke trailed unwanted kisses up his chest, and settled down beside him, “You good?”

Of course he was good. It had felt good, so how could it not be good? “Yes,” Anders signed and hated himself for it. Hawke kissed him, and Anders could taste the truth of his words on his tongue. He'd enjoyed it. He couldn’t argue that he hadn’t, but he felt sick to his stomach all the same.

“Couldn’t stop thinking about how you signed the whole play for me,” Hawke explained, running his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry I fell asleep. You must have spent all night thinking about me.”

… That was true, wasn’t it? Anders had been thinking about him. He’d been thinking about Hawke touching him, and he’d been thinking about going to bed with him, and he’d been thinking about everything he could do to stop it from happening, but maybe he was just remembering that wrong too. He must have wanted it to happen or else he wouldn’t have enjoyed it so much.

“I did,” Anders signed.

“What were you thinking about?” Hawke asked.

“Your hand on my thigh,” Anders recalled.

Hawke ran a hand along his thigh in response, and Anders shivered for it. “What else?”

“The way I start sweating whenever I get close to you. The way I can’t think about anything but the way that you smell when you’re near me. The way you touch me like you own me. The way you fuck me.” The way I hate all of it.

“Open your mouth,” Hawke signed.

At least it wasn’t a question. Anders couldn’t have said no if it was. Hawke rolled him into his lap, a hand tangled in Anders' hair sliding him along his cock. Anders had accused Hawke of using him once, but he’d only said to hurt him. It hadn’t felt true until now. Anders finished him, and Hawke kept a thumb under his chin until he swallowed.

Hawke never questioned a bath, so Anders made himself one, and threw up in it. It felt safe enough, knowing the sound was muted underwater and that the bath would drain. Anders lay in it afterwards, watching the bile float in the water, trying to remember what it was like to have sex with anyone but Hawke. Amell, Isabela, the countless women in his past and his time working at the Pearl. Had it ever felt this bad?

Hawke knocked on the door, and Anders flung a panicked handful of salts into the bath, but Hawke didn’t come in. He just said he was going to have breakfast with Varric, told him to enjoy the day, and left. Anders couldn’t enjoy the day. He couldn’t enjoy anything. He stewed in his own vomit, his head hanging over the rim of the bath, the rush of blood dizzying him until a knock came at the door to their quarters.

Anders forced himself to get dressed, and opened the door to Mistress Woolsey. The treasurer’s hair was an elegant blend of grey and white reminiscent of silver, braided into a bun like a coin at the back of her head, with eyes like the sovereigns she managed for the arling. She smiled.

“If it isn’t my favorite trouble maker,” Woolsey said.

“If it isn’t my favorite trouble unmaker,” Anders countered.

“No hug?” Woolsey asked.

Anders wasn’t sure he could stand to be touched, but he made an effort. Woolsey didn’t feel anything like Hawke. The old girl was wearing a plain linen dress, no velvets or silks, and she was soft and frail and not sturdy or broad. She gave him a ginger hug back, and her wrinkled hands felt so unlike Hawke’s he felt better. “No kiss?” Anders teased.

“Just one, and you will tell no one least they start calling me Mistress Floozy,” Woolsey kissed his cheek, grinning widely. “How have you been, Ser?”

“Peachy as a pie,” Anders lied. “I bet you’re just loving having me back with what this must be doing to the treasury.”

“I am absolutely livid,” Woolsey promised, patting his hand. “But the Commander insisted and he can be quite persuasive. Much of this was from his personal funds, in any case.”

Of course it was. Anders was an asshole.

“How much?” Anders asked.

“The wyvern, for one,” Woolsey recalled. “The Commander went hunting for it in Crestwood. Do not look so guilty - it is unbecoming. The Commander does nothing to his disadvantage. A few of the creatures were plaguing the town, and Bann Franderel could not spare the men to defend it. He’s indebted, and we should be so delighted.”

“As long as we’re delighted,” Anders supposed.

“Indeed we are. The Wardens have missed you - the Order and the men and women among it. They’ve asked for you to join them today. Walk with me.”

Anders walked with her. They stopped by the kitchens for a breakfast of muffins, and continued to the barracks. There were at least a dozen wardens awaiting his introduction, and Anders forgot most of their names as people shook his hand and passed him around.

Ser Fenley was a knight who looked like he’d lost his sword up his own ass, with a stern face and sterner disposition. Tamarel was an elven archer who was as lean as her bow with a presence that was anything but, and took up half the room with her laugh. Nolan was an ex-criminal who’d have put Andraste to shame with how he’d burn himself half to death for his sins. Ailsa was an experienced Warden who’d left Tevinter to serve beneath Amell, and by the stars in her eyes when he spoke must have meant it more literally. Martine was almost as old as Woolsey but not half as frail, with arms that put Hawke to shame.

There were others, but Anders didn’t remember them. The rest, he knew in some shape or fashion. Surana, an elven mage from the Circle who’d enjoyed more than a few healing lessons with Anders once upon a time, but no longer seemed to feel the same way about him by her scowl. Jacen, the old Dalish the Orlesians had rescued from Amaranthine’s prison who’d been arrested for poaching. Seranni, Velanna’s sister, and a ghoul they’d rescued from the Deep Roads.

Amell, Oghren, Velanna, and Nathaniel went without saying. Cards, and dice, and distractions took up most of the day. Anders didn’t have the coin to gamble, and couldn’t have been more relieved that the Wardens didn’t play for it. They gambled chores and patrols, or played for the occasional drink that Anders didn’t want to win if it wasn’t Aqua Magus anyway. After a few hands, the group dwindled down to Amell, Oghren, Velanna, Nathaniel, Jacen, and Seranni.

The little ghoul spent much of her time in Velanna’s lap, mumbling nonsense, and Anders couldn’t help but feel a little better that he wasn’t the craziest person in the room for once. The six of them sat at a table in the barracks, playing Wicked Grace, uninterrupted by the outside world, and all the horrors that came with it.

“So… not to bring up bad memories, but where is everyone else?” Anders asked, shuffling the cards in his hand. A bad one, as per usual.

“Leonie is serving in Jader, under Commander Fontaine,” Amell reminded him.

“Legless Leonie,” Velanna chuckled.

Amell cleared his throat, a ripple of telekinetic energy nudging Velanna.

“What?” Velanna huffed, shoving him. “He knows - I could not wait to tell him.”

Anders had been told a lot of things. According to Amell, Leonie had been reassigned. According to Velanna, Leonie had been crippled. It felt like Anders needed to talk to everyone to get the full story, and there didn’t seem to be a better time to do it. “I know you said she lost her leg, but how did that happen?” Anders asked.

“Quickly,” Velanna grinned.

“It was a duel,” Jacen explained.

“An honorable one,” Nathaniel added, discarding a knight. Anders added it to his hand for no particular reason. He only had angels.

“Honorable,” Oghren snorted, greasy fingers making it clear which cards had been his when he discarded a few. “Shameful’s more like it with how quick she lost her leg. Stone knows what she was thinking, challenging the Boss.”

“The same thing you were, no doubt,” Velanna teased, gingerly retrieving one and wiping it off on Nathaniel’s sleeve before adding it to her hand. “The dwarf was so fearful he did not even stay to watch. As if the loss of Amell’s sight meant the loss of his magic.”

“Still waitin’ for you to lose your sense of speech,” Oghren muttered.

“Speech is not a sense, da’len,” Jacen said.

“How would he know?” Velanna asked. “He does not have any.”

“Leonie wasn’t willing to relinquish the post when Amell returned, hence the duel and the reassignment,” Nathaniel explained.

“And you just… what?” Anders prompted.

“I won,” Amell shrugged unhelpfully, and took a long drink from his tankard.

“I know that. I mean the magic. Come on, tell me,” Anders nudged him with his foot beneath the table. “What’d you do to her?”

“... It was crude magic,” Amell said.

“You-know-what magic?” Anders wondered.

“Blood and power,” Seranni mumbled from Velanna’s lap.

“No,” Amell said to both of them. “Spirit magic - a virulent bomb of corrosive poison that you plant in the blood. Larger veins were easier to sense at the time, so I went with her leg. She elected to yield when it exploded.”

“Crawled away crying, if I recall correctly,” Nathaniel said.

“Eheheh,” Oghren chortled.

“I am sure we all took no pleasure in it,” Jacen said gently.

“I did,” Velanna snorted, discarding a card and drawing another.

“... Is that okay?” Anders asked. “I remember before everyone was pretty adamant that you should keep the magic to a minimum.”

“Some still are,” Amell said.

“We have the Teryn’s support,” Nathaniel said.

“You have the Teryn’s support,” Velanna corrected him.

“Amell has mine,” Nathaniel waved off the distinction. “Fergus Cousland was ambushed by darkspawn during the Fifth Blight, and taken in by Chasind wilders-”

“Regular damsel in distress, that one,” Oghren chimed in. “Ambushed in the Blight. Ambushed after it. Ain’t much for an ally.”

“In any case,” Nathaniel said over him, “He lived with one of their tribes for a time, and their shaman healed him. I can’t say if the experience changed him, but he’s supportive of what we’re trying to achieve.”

“With mages you mean,” Anders said.

“Cleaning up your mess is what we mean,” Oghren muttered. "Still don’t know what the fuck you were thinking sending us the old broad.”

"Fuck templars, no doubt," Velanna guessed.

“Be nice, Oghren,” Amell said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Oghren said.

“... Where is Johane?” Anders asked. “I haven’t seen her yet.” And Anders definitely did not want Hawke to see her first.

"Soldier’s Peak," Amell said. "It's more defensible than the Vigil."

“Getting it on with Avernus, prolly,” Oghren chuckled to himself. “Bet their old bones creak louder than the bed, if you know what I mean.”

“Oghren, we always know what you mean,” Nathaniel sighed.

“... Does it need to be defensible?” Anders asked.

“It might,” Amell admitted. “It was built after the second Blight during the Glory Age, and the Warden Commander at the time-”

“No one cares,” Oghren interrupted him.

“History is a luxury, da’len,” Jacen said. “We would all do well to remember it.”

“Our history,” Velanna corrected him. “Humans have enough of it.”

“We are Grey Wardens now, da’len,” Jacen argued. “Their history is our history.”

Amell didn’t pick his story back up. Anders was more for the future than the past, but if Amell cared… Anders watched him shuffle through his hand, his thumb running over the bumps on the edge of the card, and nudged him under the table again. “... What’d the Warden Commander do?”

“He went mad,” Amell said.

“Oh fun,” Anders said.

“He waited too long to go to his Calling, and expanded the fortress with hidden passages and alcoves, trying to protect himself from the shadows he saw. By the time he died, the path to the Peak had become a labyrinth of mine-shafts. It’s difficult to navigate unless you know the way, and we don’t share it outside the Order.

“King Arland Theirin tried to assault the Peak during the Storm Age, and the siege lasted months. When the King realized he couldn’t starve the Wardens out because of the Taint, he stormed the Keep, and only managed to defeat the Wardens because the demons they summoned in their defense turned on them.”

“Theirins,” Oghren grunted

“Theirins,” Amell agreed.

“And that won’t happen to us because… we won’t summon demons?” Anders guessed.

“Us?” Oghren repeated. “What ‘us,’ Sparkles? You’re farting off to Kirkwall with the fiance when the month is out.”

“Freedom isn’t something I'm fighting for in Kirkwall,” Anders argued, rather than address the sickened sensation he felt at any mention of Hawke after how he’d woken up with him. “It’s something I’m fighting for everywhere, for every mage.”

“A noble fight, da’len,” Jacen said encouragingly. “One our Keepers have long fought.”

“One we do not need humans fighting for us,” Velanna said.

“Come on off it, you’re the first person who ever agreed to help me fight it,” Anders kicked her chair.

“Perhaps I am simply feeling contrary,” Velanna hummed.

“Who are you and what have you done with my love?” Nathaniel joked.

Velanna rolled her eyes, “I am simply saying this is not just your fight - and you have a typical human arrogance to assume it is.”

“I’m the one forcing it,” Anders argued. “You’re not the only ones I’ve sent mages to for safekeeping. If you support me, if you support my cause, you put yourselves in danger.”

“You just figure that one out?” Oghren asked.

“... Why are you doing this?” Anders asked. From what Anders could recall of their letters, none of them had appreciated the fact that he’d forced his fight on them. From what Anders could recall of his conversations with Hawke, none of them appreciated him at all. He hadn’t seen them for years. They weren’t his friends. He wasn’t their friend. He was just an unstable danger they didn’t deserve in their lives, but they were all still here, inviting him to be a part of it. “Why are you all doing this?”

“Don’t see you left us much choice,” Oghren said.

“This is a good fight, da’len,” Jacen said. “One Our People must have if we are to hold Ostagar as we did not hold the Dales. If the Chantry does not respect the sovereignty of our Keepers, how will they respect the sovereignty of our land?”

“Like dragons they fly, glory upon wings. Like dragons they savage, fearsome pretty things,” Seranni mumbled.

“We have slain dragons,” Velanna said confidently.

“I would prefer a dragon to an Exalted March,” Nathaniel admitted.

“The Dalish have been our biggest supporters since we’ve declared freedom for mages,” Amell said. “Keeper Lanaya especially. She presides over Ostagar, and she’s an old friend and ally from the Blight. She’s agreed to stand with us if it comes to that, but her focus right now is on resolving the tensions with the Bann of Calon-”

“Yawn,” Oghren slapped the Angel of Death on the table. “Angel of Death. Play your hands, you blighters. Serpents high.”

Everyone played, saying their hands aloud for Amell’s benefit. Anders lost. Nathaniel won. Velanna gathered up the cards to shuffle for another round, and Seranni abandoned her to wander out of the barracks and into the shadows.

“... How did you find her?” Anders asked when she left.

“We searched the Deep Roads,” Amell said.

“We had help,” Nathaniel said.

“What kind of help?” Anders asked. “Dwarves?”

Oghren snorted.

“Not exactly,” Nathaniel said vaguely. “Let’s just say we live in strange times.”

“Is anyone going to tell me what that means?” Anders asked.

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, Sparkles,” Oghren said.

“Aw, you think I’m pretty?” Anders joked.

“As a bronto’s backside,” Oghren agreed.

Velanna dealt another hand, and Anders decided to drop it. He gathered up his cards and arranged them in his hand, eyeing over the bunks scattered throughout the barracks and trying to recall who he’d seen and who he hadn’t. “What happened to Gerod?” Anders asked.

“Reassigned,” Amell said. “Montsimmard.”

“All limbs intact,” Nathaniel added.

“Unfortunately,” Velanna sighed.

“It seemed warranted with Kieran, Amell, and the other children at the Vigil,” Amell elaborated.

“Damn right it did,” Oghren muttered. “Sick fuck.”

“Did anything happen with him?” Anders asked.

“No,” Amell said. “He was a good Warden, but it wasn’t something I could overlook. Fontaine found a post for him.”

“A good Warden?” Anders repeated - disgust welling in him for the memory of when Anders had pried Gerod off Sigrun in the middle of the night. “Are you serious?”

“Being a good Warden doesn’t make someone a good man, da’len,” Jacen said gently.

Amell tilted his head towards Jacen’s voice, as if concurring with him, but it wasn’t a comfort. The memory haunted Anders throughout the rest of the game. He couldn’t help wondering what Amell would have done if he had been there, down in the Deep Roads, faced with one of his Warden trying to rape another. If he would have killed him, like Anders had tried to kill him, or if he would have let it go, the way Leonie and Eram had let it go. If he would have done something then.

If he would do something now.

Anders couldn’t go back to his room that night, but there was nowhere else for him to go. He didn’t know if Hawke wanted to have more sex and he didn’t want to find out. If he could just get Hawke to actually sleep through the night, he might have felt better. He might have felt safer. He just didn’t know how to get him to sleep when he couldn’t trust his magic or his memory, but maybe he could trust someone else’s memory.

Varric didn’t even question it. He just handed over the knockout powder like he might a cup of chamomile tea. Anders hated him a little for it. If Varric knew why Anders wanted it, he shouldn’t have given it to him. He should have helped him instead, but Varric was so concerned with helping Hawke that he didn’t seem to care about helping Anders. But why would he? What did Anders even need help with? Having too much sex? Who needed help with that?

Anders stuffed the vial into his pocket, panic rising when Hawke walked them back to their room after dinner. He should have put it in Hawke’s drink, but he hadn’t thought about it. He just knew he needed it. He just knew he needed something. Now that he had it, he didn’t know how to use it, and it wasn’t like Varric was going back to their room with them. What if Anders thought he used it and then he didn’t, just like he thought he cast his spell but he didn’t? What was he supposed to do?

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t have sex again. He didn’t want to have sex again. He couldn’t go back into that room, but the room was right there, and they were walking right towards it, and he couldn’t - he couldn’t - he couldn’t -

Where was he?

Anders didn’t recognize the room. It looked like a reliquary mixed with a bedroom. All along the western walls were shelves, filled with magical artifacts, perfectly and precariously arranged to give each their own unique space. Stencils and rune tracings and etching agents, bottles of lyriums, ink, and kaddis, a handful of books and tomes. A summoning circle along with a font of power stood before them, with a two-sided desk opposite them. On the eastern side of the room was a canopy bed, a chest covered with wards at its feet and an armoire behind it. In the same corner, a couch and armchair arranged around a low table, with a liquor cabinet and humidor atop it.

Amell’s room.

… He’d changed it. Just a little. Dumat lay on the bed, and spared him a disinterested glance before going back to sleep. Amell was dressed for bed, loosely tied slacks with a looser long-sleeved tunic, and what looked to be a hastily tied blindfold. He waved him towards the couch.

“What did you want to talk about?” Amell asked.

Again? Why again? Why did Anders keep trying to talk to him? Why didn’t Anders remember that he kept trying to talk to him? What did he even want to talk about? Anders sat on a corner of the couch with one leg under him. Amell went to his liquor cabinet.

“I don’t know,” Anders admitted.

“Do you want me to get you anything?” Amell asked.

“No,” Anders didn’t want to doubt himself more than he already did, and the thought that lotus might keep him from leaving Hawke again haunted him. “Is it okay if you don’t smoke?”

“... It’s okay,” Amell left the cabinet and the humidor atop it alone. He joined him on the couch, staring at him sightlessly. “... Is something wrong?”

Everything was wrong. Anders didn’t know how he got here. He didn’t know what was happening to him or how to make it stop. He didn’t know if Hawke was awake or asleep or looking for him and not knowing about Hawke was more terrifying than not knowing about himself. “I don’t know,” Anders said shakily. “... I don’t remember.”

“Don’t remember what?” Amell asked.

“What I’m doing here,” Anders said.

“You said you needed to talk to me,” Amell said. “... Justice said he needed to talk to me.”

“... He did?” Anders asked, staring at his hands, but no veilfire lit them. “... How do you know it was Justice?”

“... He feels different,” Amell said. “He feels like the Fade, and-...”

“And?”

“... And I think I can see him.”

“What do you mean you can see him?” All at once, Anders felt his fears forgotten. He scooted across the couch and reached for Amell, fingers inches from his brow, wondering what rights he had to touch him. “You mean you can see?”

“Not exactly,” Amell said. “I’ve met other people who lost their sight, but no one else had ever lost all of it. They still saw shadows, or shapes, or light, but I never did. There’s-... something, when he’s forward. I thought I was seeing things.”

“Haha,” Anders said flatly. “Be serious.”

“I am. There’s so much of the Fade in you, I wasn’t sure it was real. It’s subtle, but it’s there.”

“What’s it like?”

“Like closing your eyes, after you look at a light, and for a moment you think you can still see it, only fainter and farther away.”

“That’s good, right?” Anders asked eagerly. His fingers hovered over Amell’s face, and while nothing was stopping him, he couldn’t quite bring himself to touch him without knowing if Amell wanted him to after everything that had happened. “This is weird, but can I touch your face?”

“If you want,” Amell said.

Anders cradled his face, fingers skirting his blindfold. “... Can I take this off?”

“... if you want,” Amell said.

Anders did want. Anders wanted very much. He reached behind Amell’s head and unraveled the hastily done knot to pull the blindfold free, and reveal… nothing. Closed eyes. Probably normal closed eyes, framed in dark shadows from one too many surgeries. Anders traced along one eyebrow with his thumb, watching the way his eyes moved, and decided they weren’t glass.

“... Can I see your eyes?”

“… I'd rather you didn't,” Amell said, a nervous shake in his voice that Anders swore he wouldn’t betray having put there. “I made a deal for them. After Avernus tried everything.”

“What kind of deal?” Anders asked.

“They'll work when I need them,” Amell explained. “They’ve never worked. I thought it was a bad joke, at first… but after a few months, I thought it was because I didn’t need them. I wasn’t sure in Kirkwall, and I wasn’t in a position to trust what I saw last night, but now-... I think I can see Justice, and I don’t know why.

“... Was that the deal? Am I supposed to see him for some reason?”

“He’s a spirit,” Anders guessed. “He’s connected to the Fade. Maybe that’s why you can see something?”

“Maybe,” Amell allotted. “But I can’t touch the Fade anymore. I haven’t for years without lyrium. I’d have to forsake blood magic to see anything in the Fade, but if I did, I wouldn’t be able to have some semblance of something close to sight here.”

Amell retrieved his blindfold, and tied it back around his eyes.

“... I could fix them,” Anders said. “I know the spell your father used. It takes a sacrifice, but I could fix them for you. I would fix them for you.”

“... I’d rather you didn’t.” Amell took his hand off his face and held it. “Thank you, for offering.”

“Why not?”

“They’ll work if I need them.”

“You really trust the demon you dealt with?”

“Do you trust Justice?”

“Justice isn’t a demon,” Anders said rather than answer.

He did trust Justice. He did, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t trust himself, and he didn’t trust the influence he had on Justice. There was no reason for Justice to want to talk to Amell that Anders could imagine ending well. Anders was engaged to Hawke, and there was nothing just in what he was doing with Amell, and Justice had to know that and had to want him to stop, but Anders didn’t want to stop doing anything with Amell, he wanted to stop doing things with Hawke.

“Do you know why he wants to talk to me?” Amell asked.

“... I need help.”

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
Heard You Were Talking Shit: Velanna's perspective on Anders' relationship with Hawke and Amell.

Chapter Summary: Anders is too afraid to answer Nathaniel's question. He spends the rest of the day with Hawke, while Hawke signs that they shouldn't have come to the Vigil and the Wardens are having a bad influence on Anders. That evening the Vigil serves a Gift of Flesh, a massive stuffed wyvern in Anders' honor, and there is a play. Anders signs a recap of the play for Hawke that night until Hawke falls asleep, and wakes up to sexual assault. He takes a bath and feels sick, Hawke leaves to spend the day with Varric, and Woolsey comes to get Anders. She informs him most of the events are being paid for out of Amell's pocket, and takes him to spend the day with the Wardens. Anders is introduced to a few minor characters, and plays cards with Wardens for most of the day. They talk about how things are progressing trying to obtain mage freedom in Ferelden. That evening, he asks to borrow knockout powder from Varric, but can't figure out how to use it, and has a panic attack on the walk back to his room with Hawke. He loses time, comes back to himself in Amell's room, and Amell tells him that Justice is the reason for his blackouts and asked to talk to him for some reason. They talk about how Amell made a deal with a demon for his eyes and they'll work when he needs them, but they've never worked until now, as he can see a faint bit of light whenever Justice is forward. Amell asks Anders why Justice wants to talk to him, and Anders confesses that he needs help. The chapter ends.

Chapter 139: Help Me

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

TW: Sexual Harassment

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 21 Eluviesta Nighttime
Ferelden: Vigil’s Keep - Commander’s Quarters

He said it.

It took over a fortnight, but he said it.

Anders took one unsteady breath after the next. He felt trapped inside himself. Like he wasn’t Anders and he wasn’t Justice and he wasn’t anyone. Like he’d suffered some perversion of Tranquility, and still had all of his fears and doubts and sorrows but couldn’t express them. More than anything, he felt like Hawke was right.

He was confused. He was hurt. He was vulnerable. He was scared. He was unhappy. He was delirious. He was unstable. He was insane.

There was no other explanation. He was losing too much time to be anything else. Hours. Days. It couldn’t all have been Justice. Some of it had to be Anders and Anders’ insanity. He was misremembering things. His engagement. His magic. His relationships.

He wasn’t sure who his friends were or how he felt about them. He wasn’t sure who Hawke was and how he felt about him. He wasn’t sure who he was and how he felt about himself. Nothing felt real. This couldn’t have been happening to him, but Anders wasn’t even sure how to define what was happening to him. Hawke wasn’t hurting him. Nothing Hawke had done had hurt him.

Anders wasn’t hurt, he was just… sick. Ashamed. Afraid. The memory of Hawke’s hands on him made his skin crawl. Fisting in his hair, gripping his hips, pinning him to the mattress - like he owned him, and didn’t he? They were engaged. Hawke said, “You’re mine,” like Anders had no say in it, and maybe he didn’t. Amell was still holding his hand, and it didn’t feel the same way at all. His touch was so light it felt like a memory.

“With what?” Amell asked.

“I’m not sure where to start,” Anders said.

“Anywhere you want,” Amell said.

It would have been so easy not to talk about it. To just forget everything. Amell’s lips were right there, and a hand on his jaw would have tilted them up for Anders’ to kiss. He could already see it playing out in his head. Straddling Amell’s lap, Amell’s hands resting gingerly on his hips, trembling breaths giving way to passionate gasps. All the promises Anders would make and then break.

Anders was a liar. He’d already tried to leave Hawke. It hadn’t worked, and he couldn’t promise it ever would. He didn’t deserve Amell. He’d break his heart. He already had. He was a monster, and Hawke was the only one who knew it and loved him in spite of it. It didn’t matter if Anders wasn’t happy with him. Anders was already happy with -....

“Justice,” Anders said.

“What about him?” Amell asked.

“I’m not in my right mind,” Anders confessed, watching nervously for some kind of reaction, but Amell was just listening. He didn’t recoil, or interrupt, or judge, so Anders continued. “We’re not in our right minds. I feel cut off from him.”

“Do you know why?” Amell asked

“No,” Anders said. “I have… gaps in my memory. This isn’t the first time this has happened. I don’t remember the Battle of Amaranthine, or killing Rolan or the templars beneath the Vigil, and I lost days in the Deep Roads. It’s been happening a lot more recently and I just-... thought you might know what’s wrong with me. You’re the only person I know who has any experience with what I am.”

"My experience isn't exactly the same. Wynne was different. She and her spirit were one. She felt Faith’s presence as a constant warmth as opposed to a separate entity. Her spirit only made its presence known when someone was near death, but even then it was just in the way the magic manifested. The spirit never spoke or engaged with any of us.

“Wynne was Faith. She acted in pursuit of her purpose in everything she did at the expense of everything else. It came before Blight, and it’s why she left us before the Landsmeet.”

“How does having faith get in the way of stopping the Blight?” Anders asked.

“It was complicated,” Amell said unhelpfully. “... Do you feel fulfilled?”

“What do you mean?” Anders let go of his hand. Amell couldn't be asking him that. Amell couldn't be implying this was his fault. Amell wasn't Hawke. “Are you asking if Justice is able to fulfill his purpose? I’m not just doing nothing with my life, you know. The Knight-Commander called for worse than an Annulment in Kirkwall and I petitioned the Grand Cleric and the Divine to stop her because no one else would.

“I’m not just working with the Mage’s Collective, I’m one of the people leading it. I’ve rescued dozens of mages from the Circle and kept dozens more apostates out of it. I have a network of nobles, gangs, and refugees to move them out of the city and keep them away from Meredith’s hounds. I’ve made alliances with the Dalish, and the Carta, and people whose real names I don’t even know to spread my manifesto across Thedas.

“I’ve done all of that while running a free clinic in the city to show the people there that magic is not something to be feared. Nothing matters more to me than my cause. I might not have killed myself, but the man I was died with Karl. Justice and I are one and the same. I would never keep him from his purpose.”

Anders finished his tirade, chest heaving. It felt like standing over the desolated battlefield of another blackout, with too many regrets and too few survivors. Only Anders wasn’t standing, and he hadn’t blacked out, and there was no battle, and Amell survived.

“I wasn’t asking about Justice, Anders,” Amell said gently.

“... what are you talking about?”

“I mean do you feel fulfilled?” Amell asked again. “Just you. Not Justice.”

“... why are you asking me that?”

“The Arl of Redcliffe’s son was possessed by a desire demon during the Blight. He agreed to the possession to save his father’s life, and he had more than enough desire for the demon to pursue its purpose, but he still had frequent blackouts. His father was in a coma. There were rumors his mother was having an affair. He was afraid of being taken to the Circle. He wanted an escape, and the demon gave him one.”

“Justice isn’t a demon,” Anders said. “It’s not the same.”

“I don’t know if I believe in the distinction anymore,” Amell admitted.

“Of course there’s a distinction,” Anders argued. “You’re not an elf. Just because you have the memories of one doesn’t mean you have to believe them.”

“I still think it applies, if you’re experiencing something similar,” Amell said. "Anders, is something wrong? Something besides your disconnect with Justice?"

"What isn't wrong?" Anders asked, struggling to put words to what had happened to him. "Amell… when I was wearing the ring and-... and thinking about you. Did you-... have a way to stop feeling that?"

"That?" Amell raised a painfully provocative eyebrow.

"You know what I mean," Anders shoved him. Anders meant to shove him. His hand connected with Amell's arm, and longing left it there. "Did you want me to feel that way about you?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Amell asked.

"I'm worried I forced all that on you," Anders explained.

"You didn't," Amell said.

"Are you sure?"

"You could feel me," Amell said. "You know I wanted to feel you."

But he didn't. He didn't because feeling aroused and consenting to sex weren't the same thing, and it mattered. Maker save him, it mattered so much. "You never said yes."

"Yes," Amell said.

Anders had never heard anything half as erotic. The word went straight to his cock, and his mind filled with memories of their first fuck on Amell’s desk. The one Amell had now wasn't the same, and Anders felt foolish for missing a piece of furniture.

Amell took his hand off his arm and kissed his fingers. Anders had been wrong. It was worse than a normal kiss. At least with a normal kiss, Anders could kiss him back. He couldn't do anything but forget to breathe at the intimate press of Amell’s lips. It didn’t fix anything, but Anders could pretend it did.

"...Can I have the ring back?" Anders asked.

"Why?"

"So I can have it." So I don’t have to talk about it. So you can feel it and you can fix it.

"Why do you need it? You know how I feel, Anders. If you want me to know how you feel, talk to me,” Amell said, like it was that simple.

“I am talking to you,” Anders said. Maker, he was trying so hard to talk to him.

“You never answered me," Amell pressed, like a boy with a bear and a stick. “Are you not happy?”

“Of course I’m not happy!” Anders exploded. "Why would I be happy? There is no definition of happy that fits this state! I couldn't be more unhappy. I couldn't ache for you more than I do now - and you'd know that if you hadn't taken back your ring, but that doesn't have anything to do with Justice! He doesn't care about that kind of thing. I do. My pyre would burn cold for just the thought of you and Hessarian himself couldn't save me from the flames."

Amell reached for him, and Anders grabbed his hand to press against his lips. He was so desperate his teeth grazed Amell’s fingers, and he prayed his stupid kiss said everything he couldn’t.

"Anders…" Amell cradled his jaw, and for one merciful moment it felt like this would all be over. "If you feel that way about me, why aren't you with me?"

"Because I'm with Hawke."

"Leave him," Amell said.

"I can't." Hawke wouldn't let him.

Amell took his hand away, and all Anders’ hopes along with it. "Then leave my room.”

"I thought you were my friend," Anders said shakily. Amell was supposed to save him. Amell had to save him. Anders didn't know how to save himself.

"I am," Amell promised, but it was hard to believe him. "But I need you to leave before I beg you to stay."

Anders left, and wandered the Keep in a daze. He'd asked for help. He'd asked for help and Amell hadn't helped him. He was still with Hawke and he still didn't want to be with Hawke and he still didn't know how to escape Hawke, and why would he? The only real relationships he'd ever had were with Hawke and Amell and Justice, and all of them were falling apart.

Maybe this was normal.

Days passed. Anders spent them slowly losing his mind. The Wardens were welcoming, but there was a wall of secrets between them. Topics they circled warily whenever Anders asked. Seranni's rescue. Whatever was happening in Orzammar. An upcoming expedition in the Free Marches. Anders heard Hawke in their silence. They didn't trust him. They wouldn't treat with him. They weren't his friends.

Anders’ friends didn’t feel like his friends either. None of them saw what Anders saw in Hawke. Fenris’ focus was on Merrill, and Merrill’s focus was never on anything for very long. She looked at Hawke and saw a man who’d healed, while Varric saw a man who needed healing. Both of them took Anders for his healer, but Anders couldn’t heal Hawke any more than he could escape him. Hawke’s signs were a torment he saved for when no one else could see or understand him.

It just made Anders afraid he was imagining it all. He stayed up late to avoid going to sleep with Hawke, or worse, waking up with him. More often than not, it meant staying up with Amell, and struggling to find some way to undo all the damage he’d done. There was a lot of it, but fixing his relationship with Justice was more important than ending his relationship with Hawke, so that was what he tried to do. The library seemed a safe enough start.

Anders searched through the shelves for something on possession, while Amell lounged on the couch. He was smoking, a roll of lotus dangling from his fingers, where once upon a time they might have held a book. He’d liked reading - and Anders hated knowing there was something he could do about it, but Amell wouldn’t let him do anything until Anders did something about Hawke. Every time Anders tried, Hawke shut him down, so Anders stopped confronting him, and redoubled avoiding him.

“I’d start with Beyond the Veil.” Amell suggested. “Mirdromel comes as close as you can to denying the distinction between spirits and demons as the Chantry allows in print. The Maker’s First Children is a bit archaic. We should have Spirits of the Spire somewhere. It’s a new study from Orlais by Senior Enchanter Francois on mediums that explores the volition and expression of spirits.”

“We’re going to pretend I understood any of that,” Anders said, fingers skipping over the spines for any of the books Amell mentioned.

“You’re not going to read any of them, are you?” Amell guessed.

“Define read,” Anders found Beyond the Veil, and pulled it from the shelf. The tome weighed more than he did. “There are pictures in this thing, right?”

“You tell me,” Amell exhaled a cloud of smoke.

Right. Amell liked drawing. Anders felt like a bastard. He found a spot beside him on the couch, massive tome draped over his knees, and flipped through a few pages of square spirits and round demons. “Well, these suck. Mirdromel should have had you do his illustrations.”

“If I ever visit Orlais, I’ll let him know,” Amell said.

“You think something in here will help with my blackouts?” Anders asked.

“He has a section on possession somewhere,” Amell said. “Anders… I know you want to find another answer, but are you sure spending time with me isn’t what’s making you lose time? If it’s that hard to be around me-”

“I don’t care,” Anders cut him off. “You’re my friend. Justice knows that. I don’t think he would want to take that from me even if I have been unhappy.” Amell wasn’t even the reason he was unhappy. He was unhappy because of Hawke, but even if Anders was blacking out to escape him, he still shouldn’t have felt this detached from Justice outside the blackouts. “Besides, you’re one of the only people who actually sees him as his own person. You have no idea how many times we’ve read every book of poetry you've sent. Chant for Dreamers, Verses of Dreams, Memories of the Grey…”

“Do you have a favorite?” Amell asked.

“We both do,” Anders said.

“What’s yours?” Amell asked.

“You first,” Anders said.

“Right now?” Amell took another pull of lotus. “Leave Her, Warden.”

“Subtle,” Anders joked.

“This is my fourth one,” Amell waved the roll of lotus at him, and exhaled smoke.

“How many more before you sing it for me?” Anders asked.

"I hate singing," Amell reminded him.

"How many more before you say it for me, then?" Anders revised.

None, apparently. Amell shrugged, and his voice sounded lyrical enough.

“Oh, the times were hard and the Taint thorough,
Leave her, Warden, leave her
I guess it's time for us to go,
And it's time for us to leave her

Beware these wonted loves, I say,
Leave her, Warden, leave her
They'll steal your mind and your heart away,
And it's time for us to leave her

Leave her, Warden, leave her
Oh leave her, Warden, leave her
For the Call is come, and your love can’t know
And it's time for us to leave her

She cannot come and you cannot stay
Leave her, Warden, leave her
She’s in your thoughts both night and day
And it's time for us to leave her

The Blight is quelled, our work is done,
Leave her, Warden, leave her
And down below we'll take our run
And it's time for us to leave her

Leave her, Warden, leave her
Oh leave her, Warden, leave her
For the Call is come, and your love can’t know
And it's time for us to leave her.”

Anders wasn't sure whose benefit the song was for. His, he hoped, but he was too afraid to ask. Amell ran the fingers of his free hand along his necklace while reciting it, jostling his warden pendant and what looked to be a small bit of fired clay attached to it.

“... What is that?” Anders asked when he finished.

“What is what?” Amell asked.

“The thing on your necklace,” Anders asked.

“This?” Amell thumbed the bit of clay, “They’re my eyes.”

“... your eyes,” Anders repeated flatly. Okay. His eyes. Anders could work with clay eyes.

“Kieran made them for me,” Amell explained.

That made more sense. “They don’t like-... work, do they?”

“They’re clay, Anders,” Amell chuckled.

“Hey, it’s you, you can’t blame me for asking,” Anders argued. He settled in against Amell’s side, reading Beyond the Veil aloud, enjoying the arm around his shoulder and the occasional deep breath Amell took of his hair. "Are you sure you're okay?” Anders asked. “You know, with the smoking?"

"I've quit before," Amell said dismissively.

"I'm not sure you know what quitting means," Anders joked.

"It's not that addictive, Anders. I've done a lot worse," Amell said, which was totally comforting. "Maybe Justice wants an escape too."

"I think we'll pass - but good peer pressure!"

"I mean with the disconnect. Maybe he's withdrawn because he wants an escape."

"From what?" Anders asked, but somehow he knew.

"A lack of purpose while you're here?" Amell guessed. A good guess. A wrong guess. "Grand Cleric Elemena should be in from Denerim with Knight Commander Tavish tomorrow. If you wanted to sit in on the negotiations-"

"Knight-Commander?" Anders repeated, scrambling out from under Amell’s arm. "A Knight-Commander is coming here?"

"... along with a score of his men. It was originally going to be two score but Leliana-"

"A score?" Anders cut him off. "A score of templars is coming here?"

"Yes?" Amell said.

"Great. Good," Anders yanked therapeutically on his hair. "Bad, meet worse!"

"I told you we were going to discuss terms this month," Amell said patiently. Anders didn't remember that either. "Is something wrong?"

"Of course something is wrong! Templars are staying here."

"... Where else would they stay?"

"Oh I don't know,” Anders said sarcastically. “In the ground?"

"Anders… I'm doing what I can.” Amell found the ash tray on the end table beside the couch, and tossed the last of his lotus in it. “The College of Magi won't reconvene for years. Do you have another way for us to win our freedom?"

"Fighting for it!"

"This is a fight. It's just a cautious one," Amell said. “They’ll be here three days and stay in the guest wing. If you can’t be affable, you can always be absent. There’s space in the barracks for you.”

Affable. Anders would be lucky to be alive. The procession of templars that arrived the next day was almost as distressing as Hawke, and the thought that Justice might be trying to escape him too. The templars, Anders avoided. Hawke, Anders couldn’t. After half a week of successfully avoiding him, Hawke cornered him in the guest hall.

Anders had been going to change after a game of goalball. It wasn’t time for lunch, and there was no reason for anyone to be there, so no one was. It was just a hallway, and it was just Hawke, and Anders was just afraid, but after being free of him for even a few days, the fear gave way easily enough to anger.

“Anders, we need to talk,” Hawke signed. Just talking to him felt threatening, forced to watch his hands and the way they seemed to strike through the words. They were rough and calloused, powerful tendons covered with dark hair, and Anders hated the memory of how they’d known him.

“No, you know what, I need to talk and you need to listen,” Anders signed back, clenching and unclenching his hands between the words, trying to hold onto his anger and not his anxiety. “What did you say to Justice?”

“What are you talking about?” Hawke signed.

“Justice,” Anders signed again. “What did you say to him? I haven’t been able to feel him at all.”

“What did I say to the demon possessing you?” Hawke signed. “Anders, do you hear yourself?”

“He’s not a demon!” Anders signed, and finally - finally - felt something from his spirit. Some surgance of anger that helped to fuel his own - but it was tangled up in terror too. “He’s my spirit. What did you say to him?”

“The truth,” Hawke signed. “He’s going to get you killed. He’s a danger to you and he’s making you a danger to yourself. You never would have done half of the things you’ve done if he hadn’t forced you. I’ve seen what happens to an abomination when the demon takes over. Thrask’s daughter was mutilated in minutes because Fear got the best of her.

“You have no idea how close you’ve come to that happening to you. Karl, Bardel, Johane. You can’t see the way you change when he takes over. You think a spirit would break your skin like that? You think a spirit would throw you in front of a templar’s sword? In front of my dagger? Whatever Justice was before, he’s not anymore. One of these days, he’s going to take over, and he’s not going to let go, and I’m not going to let that happen.”

“What you know about Justice could fit into a thimble!” Anders’ hands shook with so much anger he could barely form the words. “I'm the one who took a dagger from you! I’m the one who was willing to die for the cause of mages! Justice is a spirit! He can’t die!”

“He’s going to get you killed,” Hawke signed. “I'm not going to watch him ruin you.”

“I don’t need his help! I can ruin myself!” Anders signed. “I did the day I agreed to marry you!”

“Are you done?” Hawke signed.

“What do you mean am I done?” Anders couldn't believe Hawke didn’t react, or maybe he could, and that was what floored him.

“I mean are you done acting like a moody child?”

“Child!?” Anders signed, “Are you listening to me? I don’t want to marry you!”

“Yes you do,” Hawke signed. “What is this about now, Anders? Did my cousin make you some promise we both know he’s not going to keep?”

“He didn’t promise me anything!”

“I know. I did,” Hawke pinched his own ring finger to reference the engagement ring. “You’re wearing it.”

“I don’t want to wear it!” Anders snapped. “I don’t want to marry you, and I don’t want to fuck you!”

Hawke laughed. Genuinely laughed, a scathing chuckle that sounded so callous it sent a shiver up Anders’ spine. “Yes you do.”

“No I don’t!” Anders signed. “You just want to fuck me.”

"More garbage about how I'm using you?” Hawke guessed. “Enough, Anders. We both know you love it.”

“I was asleep for half of it!” Anders signed.

“Like you haven't woken me up with sex before,” Hawke signed dismissively.

“I've woken you up for sex!” Anders corrected him. “It's different!”

“Damn right it's different,” Hawke smirked. Actually smirked. “You've never come so fast before.”

Anders felt his face heat up. It was true. Anders remembered it being true. He remembered scrambling at the sheets, shaking with ecstasy, trying to drag himself away while simultaneously thrusting into Hawke’s mouth. Hawke saw his flush and took a step closer. Anders took a step back and hit the wall.

“I could fuck you right here, right now, and you'd beg for it,” Hawke signed.

“No I wouldn't,” Anders swallowed.

“You sure?” Hawke fisted a hand around his belt. Anders’ heart hammered madly in his chest, beads of sweat running down his side when Hawke’s fingers slipped beneath his belt. He was overwhelming - the raw strength in him strained against the fabric at his arms, across his chest, and Anders couldn’t escape it. His presence was like a pyre, and Anders the miserable sinner who burned for him whether he wanted to or not.

“Yes,” Anders signed. “Yes I'm sure, you bastard.”

“You love it,” Hawke signed.

Anders felt frozen. If he didn’t have to sign he wouldn't have managed to move at all. He managed a desperate shake of his head, his hands shaking through the words, and it took too long for him to notice the veilfire breaking through them. “I said no.”

“No you didn't,” Hawke grabbed one of his burning hands, and pinned it to the wall above his head. He didn't even react to the flames. "That's not you. You never say no to me."

"I hate you," Anders choked out, but his hand was pinned, and he couldn't sign it.

Hawke must have read his lips easily enough. "I hate you more," Hawke kissed him, and Anders hated the needy moan that escaped him. He shoved his way out of Hawke’s arms, fighting back his flush with veilfire, when two templars turned the corner and found them in the hall.

Found him. Found the abomination, cracking and breaking apart, in the middle of Vigil’s Keep, during tense negotiations to win freedom for mages in Ferelden, and set their hands to the hilt of their swords. “Hey! You there! Stop where you are!”

Anders blinked.

He opened his eyes to carnage and chaos. Blood was everywhere. The tapestry behind him was on fire, a depiction of the Archdemon over Denerim slowly giving way to char and ash, as if the threads of its breath were truly alight. One of the templars was on the ground, unconscious or dead, his skirt still smoking from the aftermath of the spell. The other was crumbled in the corner, also unconscious or dead, his silverite armor drenched in crimson. He was missing an arm, and Anders was holding it.

“What-...” Anders choked, dropping the arm. It flopped to the floor, spraying blood on his boots, leatherbound fingers still clenched around a silver sword of mercy.

No. No. No, no, no not here. Not here. Not at the Vigil. Not in front of the Wardens. Not in front of Amell. Not when the rights of free mages hung in the balance. Why? Maker, why? Why had he done that? Why had they done that? Why had Justice done that?

“Damnit, Anders,” Hawke muttered, a hand lost to his hair and the other clutching some unknown injury to his ribs. “What have you done?”

“I don’t-... I don’t-...” Anders stuttered.

A servant chose that moment to turn the corner, a spindly elf with braided brown hair who looked far too young to face the carnage with half the courage she did. “Oh no,” The elf mumbled, wringing her hands on her apron. “Oh no, not the lieutenants…. we can’t hide the lieutenants…” The elf bolted from the hall, only to return a moment later with a flood of servants.

They ushered him and Hawke into the nearest guest room, and the bodies of the templars along with them. Anders had no idea if they were dead, but the one who’d lost his arm would be soon if he didn’t stop the bleeding, but Anders couldn’t heal him. Anders couldn’t move. He couldn’t think. He could barely breathe. He started hyperventilating, clutching his chest while Hawke signed things Anders couldn’t understand.

The templars were laid out on the bed, the arm set beside the one who was missing it. Corporal Kallian appeared at some-point, and tied a tourniquet around the stump on the templar’s shoulder, so he must have survived. Anders could tell she was talking, but he couldn’t understand what she was saying anymore then Hawke could. Eventually she gave up and started talking to the servants instead.

Anders’ vision blurred with his hearing. He couldn’t see, or hear, or think, or breathe, or-

Amell.

Amell was there, his hands on Anders’ shoulders, blind to the fury in Hawke’s face for the contact. “Anders,” Amell’s voice cut through the chaos. “Anders, listen to me, I need you to heal them. Can you do that for me?”

“I-... I-... I think so-...” Anders swallowed, stumbling over to the bed. He focused on the templar with a missing arm first, the Fade breaking through him in sporadic bursts of restorative energy that slowly served to reattach it. “I-... I need time to-... to do this-...”

“You have time,” Amell promised. “Everyone, leave. Corporal, clear the hall. This doesn’t get out.”

“Yes Commander,” Kallian saluted and vanished with the servants. It left the three of them alone in a room with two unconscious templars. Sense came back to Anders slowly. His vision was still spotty, but he could hear the commotion of servants scouring the blood from the hall, tearing down old tapestries, putting up new ones. Like it was normal. Like they’d done it before.

“What happened?” Amell asked.

“I don’t-...I don’t know. I don’t remember,” Anders stuttered. He looked at Hawke, and somehow managed to sign through his spell, “What happened?”

“What do you think happened?” Hawke asked. He was talking to Amell, but he was looking at Anders. “You know what happened. You know exactly what happened. He saw templars and he lost control. You know he doesn’t handle templars well. You shouldn’t have brought them here. You should have known what would happen to him.

“If you cared about him at all, you never would have done this to him. You’re supposed to be a mage, aren’t you? You know what the Circle put him through. You know what the templars did to him. And you bring them here and make him relive that? If you cared about him at all, you wouldn’t have let them anywhere near him.

“But you don’t. You don’t care about him. You don’t love him. You put him up on a pedestal and you’re surprised he gets hurt when he falls? Did you even stop to think about what he wanted before you threw this party for him, or were you just thinking about what you wanted from him? He’s been nothing but miserable since we got here.

“You and your Wardens don’t even know him. He’s nothing like your minstrels make him out to be. He’s not a hero or a martyr, he’s just a man, and he deserves better than you.”

Anders healed the templars through Hawke’s speech, restorative magics mending rent muscle and torn flesh, broken bones and shredded veins, but doing nothing for the blood the templars had lost. It was all still there, a river of red from the door to the bed from when the servants had dragged the bodies. It rippled more and more as Hawke spoke, droplets of crimson floating up from the floor and drifting to swirl around Amell’s hands.

Anders recognized the spell.

It was meant to break a man’s mind.

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
At His Hands: Amell's perspective on the events of this chapter.
Before The Rain: Time spent with Amell from Anders' perspective.
Sentimental Scar: Time spent with Amell from Anders' perspective.

Chapter 140: A Warden First

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

TW: Sexual Harassment (?)

Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 26 Eluviesta Afternoon
Ferelden: Vigil’s Keep - Guest Quarters

Anders watched the formations of the spell, blood swirling up from the floor to Amell’s hands, and felt the Fade swallow the room. The strange surge of mana that accompanied the blood magic might have torn the Veil for its strength. Hawke didn’t seem to notice the blood magic, and for one abominable moment, Anders hoped Amell would cast it on him.

A spell that would change him. A spell that would remake him. A spell that would unmake him. A spell that would end all of this so Hawke wouldn’t remember anything they’d ever had together and Anders wouldn’t either and he could spend the rest of his life with Amell fighting for freedom in Ferelden instead of killing himself in Kirkwall. Amell waited for Hawke to finish his tirade, and then just…

Ignored him.

“Anders, what happened?” Amell asked again, blood still woven between his fingers, the spell formed and waiting for what purpose Anders couldn’t begin to guess.

“I don’t remember,” Anders said.

“Does Justice?” Amell asked.

“I don’t know,” Anders was too afraid to switch. Justice had been forward when Anders had nearly killed both the templars and Hawke in the process. They were both unstable. They were both dangerous. They were both monsters.

“Can I ask him?” Amell asked.

“No,” Anders said. “No - No, it’s not safe. We’re not safe. We could hurt you.”

“I trust you,” Amell said.

“I don’t trust us!” Anders snapped.

“What is he saying?” Hawke signed.

“Asked what happened,” Anders signed back.

“Told him what happened,” Hawke signed, and said aloud. “I told you what happened. He doesn’t need you confusing him. Haven’t you done enough damage to him? Are you trying to make things worse, making him go through that again, or do you just like to see him suffer-”

“Be silent!” Amell hissed.

Hawke’s mouth kept moving, but sound stopped coming out of it. He didn’t even seem to notice, signing through a speech Amell couldn’t hear. It seemed like too much to hope the spell would last forever.

“Did they attack you?” Amell asked.

“I don’t know,” Anders said.

“Did they threaten you?” Amell asked.

“I don’t know,” Anders said.

“Did they scare you?” Amell pressed.

“I don’t know!” Anders shouted. “Hawke told you - I lost control! I’m a monster! It’s like the longer we go on, the less of us there is. We never should have done this. Being with Justice - loving Justice - I thought it would make a difference, but my anger is too strong. I can’t control what we’ve become.” Anders wanted to collapse; his hands on the templar’s shoulder were the only things keeping him standing as he reattached the man’s arm.

Anders didn’t care about the bastard beneath him. The man was a templar. He spent his life addicted to lyrium, subjugating mages to imprisonment and isolation, to harrowings and tranquility. He was a monster, but Anders was worse. Anders had mutilated him - and that mutilation could end up costing Ferelden’s mages their one chance at freedom. Everything Amell had done, Anders had undone.

“I’m sorry,” Anders battled back a selfish sob. “I tried my best… please don’t hate me for failing.”

"I don't hate you," Amell promised, but he had to be lying. Amell had to hate him. Anders hated himself. “You're not a monster and you haven't failed.”

“What did you do to Hawke?” Anders asked.

Hawke was still ranting, pacing impatiently through the blood smeared across the floor, the suction from his steps the only sound he was making. He didn’t seem to be aware of the compulsion on him, or the blood that hovered ominously around Amell’s hands.

“I kept him silent,” Amell said.

“Why can’t he tell?” Anders asked.

“Because I don’t want him to,” Amell said. “How long will this take to heal?”

“I don’t know - ... a quarter hour?” Anders guessed.

“Bastard’s just ignoring me, isn’t he?” Hawke signed.

“Yes,” Anders signed. “Did I hurt you?”

“Course you hurt me,” Hawke signed. “You hurt everyone. You're possessed. This was just a matter of time.”

Anders expanded his cleansing aura to encompass Hawke. The burns, the bruised and battered ribs and whatever else Anders had done to him. His wasn't the only magic in the room. Mana seemed to roll off Amell in waves, but it was just mana, and no spells formed from it. It felt ancient, arcane and powerful, and undeservedly comforting.

“Why are you doing that?” Anders asked.

“So I have no mana for them to smite if they wake up,” Amell explained.

“... does that work?” Anders asked.

“After a fashion,” Amell said. “I can’t cut off my connection to the Fade, so it’s still painful, but it’s not debilitating.”

"Smart," Anders cleared his throat. Of course it was smart. Amell was smart. Amell never would have done something like this. "... Aren't you worried you could tear the Veil like that?"

"No," Amell said.

“Why not?” Anders asked, but he couldn’t focus on whatever Amell said in response with Hawke signing in front of him.

"Now what?" Hawke signed.

"Still asking what happened," Anders lied.

"Lucky I talked you down before you killed them is what happened," Hawke signed.

"Thank you," Anders signed.

"Told you Justice was dangerous," Hawke signed, "Told you you were unstable."

"You were right."

"I can't take care of you if you won't let me, Anders," Hawke signed. "You have to trust me. You have to listen to me."

"I'm sorry," Anders signed, focusing on the men he was healing for some excuse to get Hawke to stop trying to talk to him.

"Anders, are you alright?" Amell asked when Anders didn’t respond to whatever he’d been saying.

"Am I alright?" Anders asked incredulously. "I almost killed these men. Of course I'm not alright."

"Did they hurt you?" Amell asked.

"I don't know," If they had, Justice had healed him. "Maker, the talks…"

"It's fine,” Amell assured him. “It's still early. We're in a recess. All we've talked about is the Chantry demanding we hand over Lady Harimann."

"You should probably hand over me too," Anders said miserably.

"I would never," Amell said fiercely.

"Why not?" Anders laughed - a wretched sound more wheeze than anything else. "I'm a monster." He signed the words with one hand and healed with the other. "Dangerous. Unstable."

"I know," Hawke signed.

"You're not," Amell said.

"How can you say that?" Anders demanded, glancing up from the templars to take in Amell’s expression, as collected as ever. "You didn't see the blood in the hall! For all you know I ripped the poor bastard’s arm off and tried to beat him to death with it!"

"I don't care if you did," Amell said.

"You should!" Anders snapped. "You should because I ruined everything!"

"No you didn't," Amell said. "I'll take care of it."

"How?" Anders asked.

"Are you finished healing them?" Amell asked.

"Finished," Anders said, stumbling back from the bed, the bloody sheets and ashen bodies sprawled atop them. "... The uh - … the tall one still lost a lot of blood. He'll be fatigued."

"That's okay," Amell promised. "Tell no one what happened."

"I won't," Anders said shakily.

"Will Hawke?" Amell asked.

Blood still encircled Amell’s hands, dripping up from the floor in defiance of gravity to flow between his fingers, over his knuckles, around his wrists, reminiscent of veins. The spell was still there, waiting for whatever purpose Amell willed. Anders could lie. He could just lie. He could say he didn't trust Hawke not to tell, and Amell would do it. Anders knew he would do it. Amell would break his own cousin's mind on a word from him, and Void take him, Anders wanted him to.

The words caught up in his throat. Do it. Just cast it. I want you to do it. I want you to cast it. I want out. Please get me out.

“Anders, I need you to answer the question,” Amell said.

“He won’t,” Anders said.

Hawke wouldn’t. He hadn’t told anyone about the Harimanns. He wouldn’t tell anyone about this either. Anders knew he wouldn’t. It didn’t matter how badly he wanted out. He didn’t deserve out. Hawke was right about everything. This just proved it.

“Leave the room,” Amell said.

“Okay,” Anders said, and signed, “We have to leave.”

“What about them?” Hawke asked, with a nod to the templars, his voice apparently returned to him.

“We can't tell anyone what happened,” Anders signed.

"Won't," Hawke signed.

“He said he’ll take care of it,” Anders signed.

“How?” Hawke asked.

"He just will," Anders signed.

Hawke glanced between Amell and the unconscious templars, but an eye-twitch was the extent of his protests. By the time they left the guest room, the hall was clear. The blood was gone, the tapestries exchanged, the char conspicuously covered by a well placed rug. Anders followed Hawke back to their room and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at his hands and the blood drying beneath his fingernails.

Anders picked the flecks free with his thumbnail, and felt nothing. He felt like he felt after killing Mosley, only he hadn’t killed anyone. He’d just almost killed someone, and almost killed his cause in the process. Over what? Over the sight of a Chantry sunburst? Over a silver Sword of Mercy? Over a few templars in a hallway? Over nothing?

One minute he’d been fighting with Hawke, and the next…

The next Hawke was the only thing that got him to stop fighting.

A fist under his chin tilted his head up from his hands. “You need a bath,” Hawke signed. “And you need to change.”

“Okay,” Anders signed.

Hawke led him to the wash and stripped him out of his clothes. If Anders didn’t know better, he would have thought Hawke even cast the spell to fill the tub for him. Anders sat in the wooden washtub, the water foamed pink with salts and blood, letting Hawke scrub the memory from his skin. He felt numb - the only sensation the abrasive scratch of the pumice scraping beneath his nails.

“Shouldn’t be here,” Hawke signed. “Not safe for you with templars.”

“Okay,” Anders signed.

“Get us a room in Amaranthine until they leave,” Hawke signed.

“Okay,” Anders signed.

“You believe me now?” Hawke signed, watching him from beneath his bangs while he worked. “About Justice? About you?”

“Believe you,” Anders signed with his free hand.

“Good,” Hawke finished with his hands and moved onto his hair. Hawke’s fingers massaged his scalp, the viscous texture of the blood he dislodged dripping down Anders' neck and over his collarbone. It shouldn’t have felt as familiar as it did. Hawke’s hands. The blood. The bath. The way the water never washed all of it away.

The walk to Amaranthine took them until late in the evening. They didn’t have horses because Anders couldn’t ride horses. Anders could only ride Amell’s horse, and he couldn’t ask him for it. Amell was busy. Anders kept him busy. He made one mess after another, and someone else was always cleaning it up. Amell. Hawke.

At least Hawke understood it was a mess, and Anders was the one who’d made it. He knew what a danger Anders was to himself, to others, to his cause. Amell didn’t. Amell’s words haunted him on the walk to the city.

I don’t hate you. You’re not a monster. You haven’t failed.

But Amell should, and Anders was, and Anders had.

Hawke bought them a room at the Pilgrim’s Rest. It was smaller than the one at the Vigil. There was a bed of rush, an uneven table with a water-stained copy of the Chant of Light stuffed under one leg, a bucket that served as a wash, and a window to throw it out. Hawke helped him out of his clothes and into bed, where his kiss and his caress were the only comforts left. Anders lay on his shoulder, and wept himself to sleep.

The next day was a haze of heartbreak. It had been almost two years since Anders and Justice killed Bardel. Two bloody years, undone in a day. Two years of learning how to talk to each other. Two years learning to trust each other. Two years of learning to love each other. Two years of trying to serve what was best in themselves and not what was most base. Two years of trying to prove to themselves and the world that mages were not a thing to be feared.

Two years of walks along the Wounded Coast just to feel the sensations of the sand. Two years of traveling through the Vimmark Mountains just to taste the air. Two years of poetry read between patients just to enjoy the beauty and vulnerability in the feelings of mortals. Two years of healing in their clinic and trusting they hadn’t shed the blood that stained their hands. Two years after Bardel that followed the two before, and the time they’d spent healing from when they’d thought they’d killed their friends in the cellars of Vigil’s Keep.

But they hadn’t.

They hadn’t.

For all of their horrors, they hadn’t done that.

Anders stayed in bed for the first day. On the second, Hawke left to retrieve lunch, and Anders stared at his hands. Faint blue-grey veins showed at his wrists, void of any veilfire, and Anders traced idly over one after the other. Everything Hawke had said about them was still true, wasn’t it? They were a monster. They were dangerous. They were unstable. They were insane.

Why else had they done that?

… was there some other reason?

“... I don’t hate you,” Anders whispered, for some inane fear Hawke might hear him, even when he couldn’t hear at all. “You’re not a monster. You haven’t failed.”

… Fear.

… Turmoil.

… The faintest of hope.

“... what happened?” Anders stared at his hands, but Justice didn’t sign an answer, and Hawke came back.

Lunch was some sort of meat pie and a creamy turnip soup, with charred bread and lemonade. It was a decent enough meal and no doubt what the inn was serving, but the fact that Hawke had managed to get it, the room, and all their other meals for them without any help almost made him angry.

Anders didn’t have the energy to be angry, but he tried. Hawke had hounded him at the Vigil, insistent that he needed him, that he couldn’t talk to anyone besides Anders and Varric, and yet he seemed to have no trouble without either one of them. Hawke could still talk. People could still gesture. If he really wanted something, he had the coin to get it.

“What happened?” Anders finally signed over lunch.

“What do you mean?” Hawke signed while he chewed through his mystery meat pie.

“I mean at the Vigil,” Anders explained.

“You lost control,” Hawke signed.

“But what happened?” Anders signed insistently.

“Templars showed up,” Hawke signed. “Saw your magic. Justice took over. He started raving and attacked everyone, just like he did in the tunnels. A fireball took out a tapestry and a templar, and he ripped the arm off the other before I got him to stop.”

“Raving about what?” Anders asked.

“The usual garbage,” Hawke signed. “Justice and injustice. You called him a creature of vengeance once. That’s what he is now, Anders. I warned you strong will wouldn’t be enough to counter it. I know you’re trying, but you’re possessed. You’re lucky I was there.”

That couldn’t have been right, but could Anders really say it was wrong? He hadn’t been there. He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember. He finished lunch, and Corporal Kallian arrived from Vigil’s Keep to let them know the templars would be gone by the morrow, and give him a letter in an exchange that almost ended in Hawke losing a hand when he tried to take it for him.

Given the choice between Hawke reading it over his shoulder or not reading it at all, Anders picked the latter, and stuffed it into his pocket. They went on a walk through the markets, passing by stalls and shops filled with things that would have served for Feast Day gifts for his friends if only Anders had come last month. He'd wanted to come last month, but he'd tried not to rush things with Amell and ended up rushing them with Hawke instead.

He didn’t love Hawke. Hawke didn’t even seem to love him. Anders knew he was a monster, and he didn't need Hawke’s constant reminders as they walked the stalls, thrown in between idle talk of trinkets. Anders was unstable. That carving looked interesting. Amell was only making things worse. This tailor had a nice display. Anders couldn’t control himself. That cafe would be nice for dinner. Amell had never loved him.

Anders signed back the occasional 'I know and 'You're right,' his mind elsewhere as they wandered the markets. Hawke was wrong. Amell cared about him. Amell loved him. Maybe Amell loved him too much, but Anders would rather be on a pedestal than a whipping post.

Anders should do something for Amell. Something to thank him. Something to apologize to him. Anders might not have deserved him, but Amell deserved that much. Something. A kind word. A gift. A bottle of Aqua Magus. Or maybe a pipe. Was that enabling? Should Anders enable him? Amell seemed fine with the smoking. He was just a bit more relaxed. That wasn't such a bad thing. Anders could stand to be more like him.

They passed by one stall after the next, until they reached one piled high with children's baubles. Anders thought of getting one for Amell's son, or Oghren’s son, or Nathaniel’s nephew, but he didn't have the coin.

“... Hawke, could I have a few silver?" Anders signed.

“What for?” Hawke signed.

“I thought I could get something for the kids,” Anders explained.

“What kids?”

Kieran. Amell. Sigurd. The Wardens' kids. His friends’ kids. The friends Hawke hated and didn’t want Anders to be around. The kids Anders had thought might be a part of his life when Amell came back into it. "... the orphanage we passed." Anders lied.

"...Thinking about kids again?" Hawke guessed.

"Yes," Anders lied.

"You really think that's a good idea in your condition?" Hawke asked.

Well. So much for the coin. Anders may as well keep the lie going, for posterity's sake if nothing else. "Can we at least see them?"

"Alright," Hawke relented, miraculously. He set Anders’ hand in the crook of his arm, and circled back towards the orphanage. The building was built up against the wall of the city, new or renovated, and looked welcoming. Three stories, short by Kirkwall's standards, with stained glass windows depicting dragons, and a yard of wild cabbage with a few abandoned toys.

There were no Chanters outside the building, or templars patrolling the ground, and Anders almost hadn’t recognized it for an orphanage at first. The sign above the door read, “Blight Orphans” and was painted with pictures of children. Chaotic squeals sounded from inside, and had to be a better escape from his life than blacking out and waking up to a bloody abattoir of death and destruction.

Hawke banged a fist on the door, and the mess inside seemed close enough. They must have interrupted a late lunch or early dinner. Children were everywhere, covered in everything, and two went sprinting out and into the city as soon as the door opened. The man who opened it was… just a man. No Chantry robes, no Templar insignia, just a plain linen garb and a face painted in jam.

“Afternoon, messeres,” The fellow announced cheerily. “What can I do you for?”

“Shouldn’t you go get those two?” Anders gestured to the kids fleeing through the cabbage patch.

“Oh no, those are mine,” The fellow said dismissively. “They’ll be back. Or not, if I’m lucky.”

“... Is this an orphanage?” Anders asked.

“Sure is,” The fellow wiped his hand off on his trousers, and held it out to shake. Hawke squinted at it, so Anders shook it for him. “Name’s Dirk. You folks looking to adopt?”

“Shouldn’t there be a Brother or Sister here if we were?” Anders asked.

“Nope,” Dirk grinned. “We’re not connected to the Chantry. Grey Wardens funded the place, after the Battle of Amaranthine. See the plaque?” Dirk tapped a dirty sign squeezed between the door and the stained glass window.

It was nothing. Just a scrap of bronze, hammered into words, but it still hurt his heart to read. “For the Wardens who gave their lives in defense of the city. May you live on in its children.” Beneath that, the Grey Warden motto, framed in gryphon wings.

“Run this place with the wife, Melisse,” Dirk explained. “Figure the kids should be able to grow up without the Chantry’s say so, you know? Wouldn’t do right raising little templars after a dwarf and a mage died for our sins and all that. Maker didn’t even make dwarves, and He ain’t too fond of mages. Ah, sorry, didn’t mean to get all controversial. You coming in?”

Of course. Of course Amell had something to do with it. What hadn’t Amell done? What was there to the man that Anders didn’t adore? Dirk saw them into what looked to be a multipurpose room, whose current purpose was lunch or dinner. Tables of all different sizes were filled with children, toys, and a general mess of things. There was no stage, but Anders found a spot for himself on one of the taller tables, and conjured a lightshow for the kids.

Dirk went and fetched Adventures of the Black Fox, and read through the story to accompany the lightshow. Hawke humored him, watching without comment, and occasionally shuffling away whenever a child got too close to him. It couldn’t have been more apparent he had no interest in children, and the longer Anders watched him, the less Anders had an interest in children with Hawke.

Anders hadn’t meant to visit, but he felt better for it. The kids weren’t terrified of him. He wasn’t a monster to them. He wasn’t deranged or dangerous or anything other than a mage, and no one was ever born hating magic. The kids loved it, running through the halls after conjured cats and birds and scattering with giggles at the occasional explosion of light. There were no Brothers or Sisters herding them, just Dirk and his wife and a few volunteers who wandered in and out at random.

“... Where do the kids go when they’re grown if no one adopts them?” Anders asked. As much as he hated the idea of raising children to be Brothers, Sisters, and Templars, if nothing else, the Chantry wasn’t throwing them out on the street.

“The Vigil, to serve the Wardens,” Dirk explained. “Where else?”

“... Where else?” Anders agreed.

Anders didn’t just feel better when they left the orphanage, he felt focused. He felt whole - more aligned with Justice than he had been in weeks. It couldn’t just stop with the College of Magi voting for freedom, if they ever would. The whole system was corrupt. Children of mages were given to the Chantry, who trained them to serve as templars, who hunted more mages and stole more of their children in an endless cycle of slavery and servitude. They couldn’t just dismantle the Chantry, they had to find alternatives for it.

Except the Chantry was entrenched in every city - and Anders had to find some way to rip it out by the root. He had to do something with himself. He had to do something with Justice. They couldn’t spend months on end wallowing in self-loathing like they had after they’d killed Bardel. They were used to self-loathing. They had to wade through it.

His walk with Hawke took him from the orphanage to the Chanty of Our Lady Redeemer. It looked more or less the same, a stone statue of Andraste the centerpiece of the courtyard overlooking the markets. A small commemorative plaque had been added to the courtyard wall. “Not all are His creations, but all are His children. Sigrun Kondrat - Warden, Legionnaire, Our Lady Redeemer.”

Kondrat. Sigrun wasn’t a Kondrat. She didn’t have a caste. She was a casteless, abandoned to the Legion of the Dead, whose only chance of redemption in the eyes of her people was to die fighting darkspawn so she could be worthy of the Stone. She wasn’t one of the Maker’s children. She didn’t even believe in the Maker.

… Oghren must have done something to get her the surname. Something to make her a member of the warrior caste after she’d died. Something that meant something more than the little bronze plaque, nailed into the stone. The Wardens had built her an orphanage, and the Chantry had built her a plaque. She’d died to save them, and that was all she was worth to them. No statue. No verse in the Chant of Light. Just a little bronze plaque.

How much was it even worth?

Fifty silver?

“We should get married here,” Hawke said.

Anders tore his eyes off the plaque, and felt like he snapped out of a two day daze and back into himself. “What?” He signed.

“Chantry’s where you and Justice joined, isn’t it?” Hawke signed. “Why not us?”

“You hate Justice,” Anders signed.

“Don’t hate him,” Hawke frowned a little. “I just don’t trust him. You shouldn’t either. He’s the reason you can’t control yourself. He’s dangerous, Anders, he’s a demon.”

“Stop calling him that!” Anders signed.

“Fine,” Hawke rolled his eyes. “He’s a spirit. A spirit who can’t tell his friends from his enemies and almost killed two men two days ago.”

Anders didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. “I’m not getting married here,” Anders signed instead.

“Why not?” Hawke signed.

“Because I don’t want to get married here,” Anders signed. Because Hawke couldn’t replace Justice any more than he could replace Amell.

“Summerday is in a few days,” Hawke signed.

“Good for Summerday,” Anders signed sarcastically.

“We’re getting married,” Hawke signed.

“No we’re not,” Anders signed. “I told you before, I don’t want to marry you.”

“You think you’re going to marry my cousin instead?” Hawke guessed.

Hawke advanced on him, signing as he spoke, and his words were so vicious Anders braced himself for impact. It didn’t come, but Anders retreated all the same, bumping into the courtyard wall and Sigrun’s tiny plaque. “Your cousin would never force me to marry him.”

“My cousin would never ask you to marry him,” Hawke countered. “You think he still wants you after what you did?”

“I don’t care,” Anders lied. “I don’t want you.”

“More lies,” Hawke signed. “You need a reminder?”

“Don’t touch me,” Anders signed frantically, but he didn’t sign it nearly fast enough.

Hawke closed the space between them, fisting a hand in his tunic and twisting the fabric to hold him inches from his face. Anders couldn’t breathe. The Chantry fell away and the rest of the world with it. Hawke might have had a hand to him, but it was his eyes that pinned him in place. The deep blood red had never looked at him like that when they’d belonged to Amell. It was a look that stripped him bare and flayed him raw, and left him trembling in Hawke’s grasp without Hawke even touching him.

“You think I would ever let anyone take you from me?” Hawke whispered.

Anders didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be anywhere near Hawke. He had to get away from him, but he couldn’t get away from him. He was trapped. He was trapped, he was trapped, he was trapped, and he didn’t want to be trapped, he didn’t want to be any of this, he didn’t want to be anything, he didn’t even want to be Anders - and suddenly he wasn’t.

A crow flew out of a handful of noble garments, and fled from the Chantry to the Pilgrim’s Rest. Anders crashed into his room through an open window that wasn’t quite open enough. He tore the shutters from their hinges, and landed in a crumpled heap of slats on the floor beside the bed. He stayed there, naked and hyperventilating, until he realized Hawke would come looking for him. Anders stumbled to his feet, pulling out splinters and pulling on clothes, and managed to get himself into a pair of trousers and a tunic before Hawke caught up with him.

He was carrying Anders' clothes in one hand, and raised an eyebrow at his half-dressed scramble. Hawke shut the door behind him, and Anders froze, his heart trying to claw its way through his ribcage, when Hawke tossed his clothes at him. The silks and satins smacked into his chest, and slid down to pool about his feet. “You done?” Hawke asked.

“Am I what?” Anders signed.

“Done with your fit?” Hawke elaborated.

“My fit!?” Anders signed. “I told you-”

Hawke caught one of his hands and stopped him mid-sentence, “You don’t want to get married here, we won’t get married here, but we’re getting married.”

“You can’t just decide that!” Anders snapped, but he couldn’t sign it with Hawke holding his wrist. Anders wrenched away so hard it hurt, and probably sprained his wrist in the process of freeing it. “I don’t belong to you.”

“Yes you do,” Hawke shoved him back against the wall, pinning him bodily with a heavy arm across his chest. “You’re mine. You’re mine to marry. You’re mine to fuck. You’re mine to love. You’re mine to hate. You’re mine to do whatever I want to do with you. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“I hate you,” Anders swallowed nervously, clamoring for veilfire, but Justice didn’t answer him. Justice had to answer him. He needed Justice to answer him - but the last time he’d called on him they’d lost control - and they both knew it - and they both knew why he didn’t answer this time.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Hawke said again, but Anders couldn’t. He couldn’t, and Hawke knew it, and Anders hated him for it. “Can’t, can you?” Hawke guessed, clasping his jaw, holding him in place, pressing down on his bottom lip with his thumb while Anders trembled for his touch or for fear of it. “You love it. You want it. You’re mine, and you always will be.”

Hawke kissed him, and Anders hated himself for kissing back, but he hated Hawke more. Hawke picked him up and pinned him to the wall, and Anders wrapped his legs around his waist almost on instinct. He fisted his hands in Hawke’s hair, gasping through one impassioned kiss after the next. “Fuck you,” Anders signed. “Fuck you.”

“I love you,” Hawke kissed his neck, sucking and biting in an assault of hot breath and sharp teeth that left Anders arching up into the sting. Hawke held him up with one hand, and frantically unlaced his trousers with the other before Anders finally realized what he was doing and flailed his way out of his arms.

“Fuck you - stop - stop,” Anders signed, crawling across the bed in a mad scramble for distance and the clear head it afforded him. “Stop!” Anders signed violently.

“Why?” Hawke signed, visibly struggling to catch his breath. "You going to fly away again?"

“Because I said stop!” Anders signed frantically. “Because I said no, you fucking bastard! Because I said I don’t want to fuck you and I meant it!”

Hawke exhaled mockingly, but he didn’t chase him across the bed like Anders' panicked imagination insisted he would. “Yes you do.” Hawke tilted his head to Anders’ obvious erection, as if his dick’s opinion mattered more than his did, but he stopped. He stopped. Thank the Maker, he fucking stopped.

Anders slept uneasily that night, waking up in a panic every other hour, but Hawke was asleep each time and not trying to sleep with him. Anders gave up trying to go back to sleep at the first hint of daybreak, and got up, but his absence from the bed must have woken Hawke.

Anders expected a fight. Anders always expected a fight, because they always had a fight, and if they didn’t have one now Anders knew they’d just have one later. About Amell. About Justice. About mages. About the Chantry. About children. About marriage. About everything and anything because fighting and fucking were all they had left, and Anders couldn’t take it anymore. Insane, unstable, deranged - Anders didn’t care. Hawke could have been the only man left in the world who loved him, and Anders still wouldn’t love him back.

He packed his things to head back to the Vigil. To Amell. To the man he wanted. To the man he needed. To the man who didn’t think he was a monster. To the man who didn’t think Justice was a monster. To the man who believed in him, who trusted him, who made him feel more instead of less. To the man he never should have left and the man who never should have left him, and to the Void with what Anders deserved. Amell wanted him, and Amell deserved to have him and anything else he wanted.

Anders just had to tell him about Hawke… about how he couldn’t escape Hawke. And if meant Amell didn’t see him the same way, and Amell knew how weak, and pathetic, and helpless, and in dire and desperate need of saving he was, then that was what it meant, and at least someone would save him. Hawke packed with him, and walked back with him, and they arrived at the Vigil in time for everyone to leave.

The courtyard was full of commotion. Servants and soldiers ran back and forth across the grounds, fetching potions, poultices, and all manners of supplies for the Grey Wardens gathered there. They were dressed for battle, silverite armor and blood blue tabards, weapons strapped to their sides and packs strapped to their backs. Their families were with them, exchanging words as their horses were led out from the stables to them.

Oghren was closest, talking to a dwarven woman with red hair several shades lighter than his own. She had an upturned nose and upturned smile that seemed just a little too sad. She was dressed like one of the servants, a dirty chef’s apron tied around her waist like she’d been in the middle of cooking when something had happened that brought her and the rest of the Vigil outside. Oghren’s son ran circles around their feet, red braids flying behind him, squealing at the top of his tiny lungs. “Kill it, Dad! Kill it, Dad!”

Oghren grabbed the boy by his legs, and heaved him up into the air and his arms. “You bet my hairy fucking ass I will!”

“Oghren!” The woman with him hissed.

“Oh… uh… sorry,” Oghren cleared his throat, and corrected himself. “You bet my hairy ass I will!”

“Oghren,” Anders called out, breaking away from Hawke to jog over to him. “What’s going on?”

“Hey, Sparkles!” Oghren said, dropping his son the way someone might a flailing dog.

The boy went back to running circles around him, shrieking, “Hairy ass! Hairy ass!”

“You’re just in time,” Oghren said. “One of the fat bastards decided to crawl up out of the Deep Roads. You ready to die?”

“Well when you put it like that,” Anders said sarcastically, trying to take stock of how many Grey Wardens were gathered. “What’s going on, really?”

“What do you think?” Oghren belched. “We’re gonna die. You coming or what?”

“Stop saying that,” Anders snapped. “Where’s Amell?”

“Do I look like an elf?” Oghren asked.

“What?”

“You know, do I look like his Keeper?” Oghren joked.

Anders abandoned him to shove his way through a sea of silver and sapphire, and found Amell’s horse before he found him. He stood apart from the rest of the Grey Wardens, closer to the Vigil proper. He was standing with Morrigan, the dark-haired sorceress wrapped up in a fur coat that looked to have been hastily thrown on over a few strips of leather that made up her clothes. She was holding their son, the three of them in such a tight circle it felt intimate just to look at them.

Anders jogged over anyway, and hovered anxiously next to him.

“-not forgive you,” Morrigan was saying.

“I love you both,” Amell squeezed his son’s shoulder.

“It tapped the blood,” Kieran mumbled, staring at Amell.

“What blood, you silly boy?” Morrigan asked.

“In the Stone,” Kieran elaborated.

“I told you,” Amell said.

“So you did,” Morrigan adjusted Kieran on her hip, and brushed his hair back from his blood red eyes. “... He is still so very young.”

“I believe in you,” Amell promised.

“So you should,” Morrigan huffed. “Your man wants you at long last, it seems. We will not keep you. Come, silly boy, let us wave from the ramparts.”

“Bye, Father,” Kieran waved as they left.

“Anders?” Amell asked at their departure.

“Hey,” Anders said eloquently, his hand dancing in the air between them, struggling to find a place for itself. “... So, Father? Not Dad or...?”

“Kieran’s… advanced,” Amell offered unhelpfully, a hand to his undead horse’s reins. “I’m glad you were able to see us off.”

“Why do I have to see you anywhere?” Anders asked, an all too familiar tension in his gut and an all too familiar lump in his throat. “What’s going on?”

“Our scouts found a Harvester near Ortan Thaig,” Amell explained. “We’re leaving.”

“Leaving,” Anders repeated. “Why do you have to leave?”

“It’s a Harvester, Anders,” Amell said, like that was reason enough to abandon him. Amell always abandoned him. “Did you get my letter?”

“I got it,” Anders hadn’t read it, but he’d gotten it.

“And…?”

“And I got it.”

“Are you okay?” Amell asked.

“No,” Anders said. “I mean - I’m not - but the letter doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Anders said. “Amell, please, you can’t leave. There’s at least a dozen Grey Wardens here - why do you have to leave?”

“... I’m the only one who has ever survived an encounter with a Harvester, Anders,” Amell said. “Commander Janeka lost a dozen men to the Hambleton Massacre. I have to go.”

“I could come with you,” Anders blurted, finally making up his mind and grabbing Amell’s hand to crush it between them in something like a hug.

“... I can’t promise you’ll come back,” Amell said. “I can’t promise any of us will. Are you sure you want to come?”

It was a fair question, but it wasn’t the question Anders heard. The question he heard was whether or not it was safe for him to come. Whether or not it was sane for him to come. And he already knew the answer.

“Please don’t go,” Anders said. “You're supposed to be with me. I came here to be with you.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Anders. Nathaniel is staying,” Amell gestured with his free hand towards where Nathaniel stood on the stairs leading up to Vigil’s Keep, saying goodbye to Velanna, while she handed him what looked like but couldn’t have been a phylactery. “Anything you would have of me, you can ask of him.”

“No I can’t,” Anders said. He couldn’t tell Nate. He couldn’t tell anyone. “It has to be you.”

Amell pulled him into his arms. Anders clung to him, cutting his skin on the dragonscale of his armor and burying his face and his hands in his hair. Amell’s magic enveloped him, a cage of telekinetic energy that pulsed with every swallow breath, and felt like the only thing holding him together while his heart broke apart. “I wish it could be.”

Chapter 141: The Third Act

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

TW: This chapter contains sexual assault. I have included a summary for you in the footnotes, or you can read the chapter with the scene removed here.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 1 Molioris Nighttime
Ferelden: Vigil’s Keep - Main Hall

The Vigil felt abandoned. Not even the wind moved through the halls. Tapestries hung still against cold stone walls, doors seemed to open or close of their own volition. Over a score of Grey Wardens and half of the Silver Order had left with the Warden Commander, leaving Nathaniel in charge as the Warden Constable. The Vigil’s Seneschal Garevel stayed with him, as did Ser Fenley, Seranni, and a handful of Wardens Anders didn’t know.

Summerday came. The annum was everything Anders had expected from Amell. There was no grand procession to the Chantry. No wedding bells peeling through the Vigil courtyard. The Vigil celebrated the annum for Andoral, the Old God of Unity, and its defeat at the hands of the Grey Warden Garahel during the Fourth Blight instead.

The minstrels sang the Ballad of Ayesleigh again, and brought out stick gryphons for the children, who ran through the aisles whapping at what few adults remained with wooden swords. The theater troupe performed a section from The Stalata Negat, a dwarven history on the endless fight against darkspawn beneath the surface throughout the Blights. It wasn’t the same without Amell and the others. The performances felt forced and lackluster, and as the play went on the crowd dwindled.

By the third act, there was almost no one left.

Anders sat with Nate, the seats beside them filled with empty tankards, dirty utensils, and discarded plates. Servants cleaned the tables while mabari milled about beneath them, gnawing on bones and abandoned scraps of food. Everyone else had gone back to their respective rooms for the night, but Anders dreaded following.

Hawke would be there. Hawke would always be there, and Amell never would. Anders couldn’t get the memory of Amell leaving out of his head. "Told you." Hawke had signed, his arm like a yokel around Anders' shoulder. "How many times does he need to leave you before you believe me?"

One more, Anders tried to tell himself, but the truth was closer to one less.

Anders tried not to think about it, but there wasn't much else to think about.

“How did the talks go?” Anders asked.

“As well as to be expected,” Nathaniel said.

“What did we expect?”

“Not much,” Nathaniel said. “We’ve agreed to keep talking. The Chantry isn’t prepared for an Exalted March just yet, so we’re counting that as a win.”

“I guess I'll take what I can get,” Anders said.

“Don’t we all?” Nathaniel said. “You know, Anders, I’ve been wondering - you haven’t asked about Pounce since you’ve got here.”

“Who?”

“Your cat.”

“And his name is….?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“Say what?”

“Ser Pounce-a-Lot,” Nathaniel sighed, rolling his eyes.

“How is the old boy?” Anders grinned.

“Well, with my sister. Did you not want to visit?”

“It wouldn’t be a good idea,” Anders explained, trying not to think about it. “Me and animals don't get on anymore since Justice and I became a thing. They can only stand me if they can’t smell me - kind of like Oghren.”

Nathaniel chuckled. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay,” Anders said. “I have another cat. Ser Cumference. The little blighter lost his nose in a fight with a mabari… I miss him.”

“You could always bring him next time,” Nathaniel twirled a too-familiar compass around his finger, finishing off the last of his ale while the performers yawned through the last of their lines.

"What is that?" Anders asked.

"This?" Nathaniel stopped spinning the compass. The vial of blood within it pointed west. "Velanna’s phylactery."

Anders couldn't have heard that right. "Velanna’s what?"

"I'm fairly confident you heard me, Anders," Nathaniel said.

"Why do you have her phylactery?" Anders demanded, the sight of his friend's blood making his boil. Or maybe it was already boiling. Maybe it was always boiling. "Why does she have a phylactery?"

"Do I really need to answer that question?" Nathaniel asked.

"Yeah, you really do."

"So I can kill her," Nathaniel said what any normal person would say about their lover.

"Sexy," Anders said sarcastically. "Here I thought all the templars left the Vigil."

"You can't have been gone from our lives for so long as to have forgotten our deaths," Nathaniel frowned, dark eyebrows drawn together in reprimand. "Broodmothers? If you know some magic to forget them, I'll take it, assuming it also means I can forget your jokes about them."

Anders’ anger hit a wall, and the impact dazed him. Nathaniel was right. Anders hadn’t fought darkspawn in years. He thought back to Sigrun’s panic when they’d freed her from the Silverite Mines, and felt like a bastard. He and Hawke deserved each other.

“... my jokes weren’t that bad,” Anders said.

"They were almost as bad as the broodmothers.”

"They really were more breast than beast weren't they?"

"Please,” Nathaniel buried his face in his hand.

“They are just not the kind of girls you go bobbing for apples with, you know?”

“Anders,” Nathaniel begged.

"What did you think of the one we fought?” Anders prodded. “Left side a little bigger than the right?"

“I should have taken my chances with the Harvester.” Nathaniel groaned while Anders laughed to himself.

“Oh come on, Oghren was a lot worse,” Anders said.

“Don’t remind me,” Nathaniel said. “You haven’t heard his new ones.”

“He has new ones?” Anders asked eagerly.

“No.”

“You have to tell me. It’s -...” Anders floundered. “It’s unjust.”

“It’s unjust not to tell you?” Nathaniel repeated bemusedly. “Very well, let me think… more breast than brain?”

“Heard it.”

“The only time he ‘didn’t want to take a swig out of a pair of jugs’?”

“Maker’s breath,” Anders snorted so hard he hurt himself. “A pair? Sounds like he was lowballing it, dozen tit?”

“Stop.”

“I’m just saying, women really do make suckers out of men.”

Nathaniel shook his head, chuckling and choking on his ale, “Velanna would kill me if she heard us.”

“Something something bitch tits,” Anders joked, staring at her phylactery. “... You’d really do it?”

“... with as many arrows as it took,” Nathaniel said.

"Still, a phylactery?" Anders said.

"Amell makes them for all the women who want them," Nathaniel explained.

"... he does?” Anders couldn’t picture Amell using the same magic the Circle had used to subjugate them. “Why wouldn't he just make them a ring?"

"A ring?" Nathaniel looked confused.

"You know,” Anders almost lifted his hand, until he remembered Amell’s ring wasn’t on it. Amell hadn’t given it back. Anders hadn’t thought to ask for it back. “A ring so you could sense her without tracking her like a bloody templar."

"If such magic exists, it's not something he's ever shared with any of us."

"... why not?"

"... Anders, I don't think you realize what a close counsel Amell keeps,” Nathaniel admonished gently. “You're asking after magic I didn't know existed until just now. I love a mage, but I'm not one. If you want to know about his magic, you should ask his son’s mother. I'm led to believe her magic is just as if not more impressive."

Anders felt awkward at just the thought of talking to Morrigan. The sorceress had fought alongside Amell throughout the Blight, helped him defeat the Archdemon, had a child with him, and now she and that child were living with him at the Vigil. In some way Anders couldn’t define, they were a family, and Anders wasn’t part of that family. He never would be.

"Look, broodmothers aside, a Harvester is a golem,” Anders recalled from Oghren’s letters. “It’s not like they’re going to fight darkspawn. Why did she give you her phylactery for that?”

"We're Wardens,” Nathaniel said simply, slipping the phylactery back under his tunic. “We're always fighting darkspawn. Assuming the Harvester is above ground, Ortan Thaig is too close to West Hill. They’ll have to harry it back into the Deep Roads before they can fight it.”

“Why?” Anders asked. “What are they like?”

"Golems,” Nathaniel said unhelpfully. “Golems the size of dragons. Monstrous creatures made from corpses and fueled by lyrium and blood magic… possessed by something from the Fade. I’m not sure on the specifics. I’ve never seen anything like them… layers of sagging flesh roll over the top of one another, like a suit of armor borne of fat and rot, with limbs beyond counting.

“The dead fuel them. They hunt out mass graves, tombs, and pyres. The Harvester responsible for the Hambleton Massacre found a Dalish graveyard, and I’m told it was the size of a mountain by the time they brought it down.”

"Okay,” Anders said slowly, trying and failing not to picture Amell and all of his friends fighting something like that without him. “Okay. Okay, so… so you keep them away from the dead, and they’re an easy kill, right?”

"Not exactly,” Nathaniel smiled wanly. “They have an aura of decay that makes them challenging to engage, and their bodies are corrosive. We’ve been mining lifestones in the Wending Woods for nature salves, but they’re only so effective. If you cut a piece of them off, and somehow avoid the blood, the piece reanimates. I learned the hard way when one of the undead torsos tore into my leg. I’ve had to wear a brace ever since.”

Anders hadn’t even noticed Nathaniel was wearing a brace. He leaned back on the bench, but there was nothing obvious about how Nathaniel was sitting. His legs looked normal. “Is that why you didn’t go with?”

“I didn’t go with because I’m the Constable,” Nathaniel frowned at him, like he was offended at the thought an injury would keep him from combat. “The Vigil falls to me if Amell dies.”

"Why would he die?” Anders demanded, setting his tankard down so harshly he startled a few half-asleep performers into finishing their lines. “I get it, big monster, very scary, but it’s Amell.”

“I’m not sure whether you overestimate him or underestimate him, but these creatures are no easy kill.” Nathaniel said. “Have you had a chance to see him fight?”

“...I mean, I watched him wrestle in the sparring ring once,” Or twice. Or more than twice. Amell had seemed as remarkable ever. The image of him shirtless and sweating with another man pinned beneath him was only slightly less erotic if the man in question was Oghren. “I know he still uses physical magic, but it’s not like he’s going to wrestle the damn thing. In Kirkwall he used auras. Death magic, miasmas, you-know-what magic, that sort of thing.”

“That’s not how he kills them,” Nathaniel said.

“What is?” Anders asked.

“If you don’t know, I’m not sure I should tell you,” Nathaniel said unhelpfully.

“You haven’t told me anything,” Anders protested. “I’ve been here a fortnight, and I still have no idea what’s going on. I’m still a Warden, you know. Amell’s still my Commander. You’re still my Constable. You’re really not going to tell me?”

Nathaniel didn’t answer him, and for a moment Anders was afraid he never would. Nathaniel took a quick stock of the main hall, the performers passed out on the stage, the lone servant that had fallen asleep scrubbing down a table, and leaned conspiratorially close. “... He has a pact.”

“With a demon?” Anders guessed.

“I don’t think so,” Nathaniel said. “Something more than that, but it only answers when he’s near death… and it doesn’t keep him from it. Velanna knows more than I do, but I’ve seen what he can do when it fuels him… it’s like you with Justice, only I don’t think Justice would ever hurt you. This thing wants him to die. I think he’s promised to it when he does.”

“Great,” Anders said flatly. “That makes me feel so much better about not going with him.”

“Why didn’t you?” Nathaniel asked.

Because Hawke was right. Because Anders was dangerous. Because Amell already had to fight a Harvester and he didn’t need to fight Anders too. “I just didn’t.” Anders said. “... How do you stand it? Not going with Velanna?”

“I pray on it,” Nathaniel said.

The Vigil’s chapel was how Anders remembered it. Tapestries depicting the Chant of Light framed redwood pews, a marble statue of Andraste holding the hilt of a sword impaled through her chest at the forefront. She was framed in votive racks, red wax running like blood down the sides of the slanted altars. Anders sat at a pew in the front, but he couldn’t remember how to pray.

He thought of Justice instead, and the time they’d spent together, and how much he hated the time they were spending apart, but what was he supposed to do about it? They were unstable. They were dangerous. They were losing their grip on reality. The thought that calling on Justice while Anders was drowning in rage, despair, and the rest of his demons might be corrupting Justice was terrifying, and not something he ever wanted to subject on his spirit.

“I love you,” Anders said to himself. That was true, at least. He could still say that. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you, but I know that’s what I’m doing with all of my anger. I have to stop relying on you when I’m at my worst or that’s all that will be left of either of us. Exposing you to all of my anger, my fear, my desires… it can’t be good for you. Hawke is wrong. You’re not corrupting me. I’m corrupting you.

“... You’re right, you know. All of this - Hawke, Amell - it’s just been a distraction. We have to focus on what’s important. I know I haven’t been my best lately, and I’m sorry for what that’s done to you. I don’t ever want to lose you, but I’m worried about what we’re becoming…”

Anders stared at his hands - the swath of lines across his palms, like wouldbe casting cuts. The untapped blue-grey veins and dormant veilfire within them. The smattering of freckles and pale blonde hair on his arms that assured him he was still human - or near enough - and not the mutilated abomination Hawke feared Justice would make him. He just had to ensure Justice stayed Justice, but he couldn’t do that if he wasn’t working in pursuit of his purpose, and he couldn’t do that here.

The sound of footsteps drew Anders’ head up from his hands. He expected Nathaniel, but it didn’t surprise him when it turned out to be Hawke. He looked tired, his hair bedraggled and his eyes slightly redder than usual. “Praying?” Hawke signed, joining him on the pew. Anders took a shaky breath, fighting the urge to scoot away from him.

“Trying,” Anders signed.

“What for?” Hawke signed.

“Everything?” Anders shrugged. “I thought we could control it.”

“You can’t,” Hawke signed. “Anders, I know you want to believe Justice is a spirit, but look at what he’s done to you. Look at what happens when you let him take control.” Hawke tugged the collar of his tunic down with his thumb to reveal the burn Justice had left on his chest. “You want to pray? Pray over Erudition. The first of the Maker’s children watched across the Veil, and grew jealous of the life they could not feel, could not touch. In blackest envy were the demons born.”

“It was an accident,” Anders signed.

“It’s always an accident,” Hawke countered. “How many more accidents do you need to have?”

“What am I supposed to do?” Anders signed.

“Undo it,” Hawke signed. “You would have undone it already if your grimoire had been at the emporium when we went. Don’t you remember how you wanted to reverse the possession after what happened in the tunnels? You said it yourself - he’ll just go back to the Fade.”

Anders didn’t want to undo it. He couldn’t stomach the thought of being without Justice. Even now, even Justice little more than a flicker in the deepest recess mind, he wasn’t alone. He could feel him in his magic - so much more than he could if Justice was just another spirit the Fade - tangled up in his very soul. He could feel him in his thoughts, in his emotions, in his appreciation for small beauties and his anger over small injustices. He couldn’t imagine life without him. It would have been worse than Tranquility.

“I just don’t want to hurt anyone,” Anders signed.

“You’re already hurting people,” Hawke signed, and quoted more of the Chant at him. “I pity your folly, but still more do I pity those whose lives you have taken in pursuit of selfish goals.”

“Selfish goals!?" Anders repeated, erupting out of his seat to whirl on Hawke. "I'm trying to save the lives of every mage in Thedas!"

"How?" Hawke asked. "By killing every templar in Thedas?"

"If that's what it takes!"

"All you're doing is hurting yourself and your cause."

"I wouldn't expect you to understand,” Anders sneered. “You've never supported me."

Hawke stood up, and Anders felt a familiar fear chill his blood at how slow and deliberate the motion was, "Say that again."

"No," Anders signed nervously.

"You're delusional,” Hawke signed, punching his fist into his palm with the words. “You've been butchering scores of templars since the day we met. The Chantry, the Gallows, the Vimmark Mountains - countless innocent men and women. Have I ever told anyone? Have I ever betrayed you?

"You're an abomination. You're a maleficar. You’re a monster - and I’ve always been for you. You have no idea what I’ve sacrificed for you. My mother’s love, my uncle’s respect, my sister’s safety, marriage proposals, coin beyond counting, my flesh, my hearing, my soul.”

Hawke advanced on him, and Anders backed up into one of the votive racks, the stone altar at level with his waist. “Tell me I don’t love you,” Hawke dared him. Maker save him, his eyes were so red they were practically glowing, melting Anders onto the altar. His palms slipped on wax as he scrambled backwards, his heart racing. “Say it.”

He couldn’t. He couldn’t because Hawke did love him. Anders swallowed, and Hawke followed the motion with his eyes. “You know better, don’t you?” Hawke asked.

“Yes,” Anders signed shakily.

“That’s what I thought,” Hawke clasped his jaw, and dragged his thumb along his bottom lip, pressing faintly with his nail. “What is this about, Anders? Do you just like provoking me?”

“No,” Anders signed. “No, I-...” What? He what? He didn’t love Hawke? Was that even true?

“You what?” Hawke murmured, the press of his fingers on Anders’ cheek so rough it was almost painful, but there was something so appealing in the pain Anders almost wanted more of it. He deserved more of it.

“You hate magic,” Anders signed. The fact that Hawke hadn't turned him over to the Circle wasn’t the same as working to dismantle it. After what had happened to his mother, Hawke was for the Circle, and that meant he could never be for Anders. “Magic is all I am.”

"You're mine," Hawke corrected him. "You're whatever I want you to be."

"I'm not," Anders signed. "I'm magic."

"You want to be magic?" Hawke signed, and there was something threatening in it. "Magic exists to serve man. What do you think that means?"

Anders knew the answer, but he couldn't sign it. Hawke didn't wait for one. He spun him around by his shoulder and shoved him onto the altar, pressing his face against melted wax. "Hawke stop!" Anders scrambled to push himself up, but a hand between his shoulder blades forced him back down onto the cold stone. "Stop-!"

Hawke's weight pressed down on him, his chest flush against Anders' back and his lips against his ear. "I can't hear you," Hawke reminded him, his voice an almost inaudible whisper. Hawke forced a hand beneath his waistband, squeezing his ass. "You want to scream? Go ahead. I want everyone to know you're mine."

Anders didn't. The thought of someone finding him like this was worse than being like this. Hawke held him down, kneading tension into anticipation. This was happening, and Anders didn't know how to stop it from happening. He didn't know if he wanted to stop it from happening. He deserved whatever was happening.

He tried to relax, but Hawke’s fingers kneaded roughly up and down his ass, gripping so tight Anders whined. Hawke wrenched his trousers down, exposing his abused flesh to cold air, and spanked him. Anders jerked against the altar, fighting back the shout Hawke seemed to want from him.

"Oil," Hawke ordered.

"No," Anders signed, shaking his head and scraping his forehead against the stone.

"You want it raw?" Hawke's guess was followed by the sound of him sucking on his fingers, like saliva would even be enough for them. Hawke pressed two spit-slick fingers to him and pushed, and Maker save him, it was agony. Like there was no way inside him, and Hawke was just pressing against his skin until it gave.

Anders gripped the altar, choking down a sob. The stretch burned, more pain than pleasure, like Hawke set him on fire like just another candle on the rack. Every thrust of his fingers felt like the strike of a flint inside him, and Anders lasted a handful of thrusts before he gave up. "Stop, stop!" Anders signed over his shoulder, summoning a frantic coat of oil over his hand. "O-i-l."

Hawke's fingers stilled, but didn't leave him. His free hand caressed up his back almost lovingly until he reached his hair, and fisted his fingers in it. Hawke wrenched, bending him back like a bow, and Anders fought back a cry at the suddenness of the motion. Hawke leaned over him, his beard coarse against his cheek. "Beg for it."

"Please," Anders signed obediently, so strung out he was shaking. "Please."

"Please what?" Hawke crooked his fingers, and sent an unexpected surge of pleasure through him.

"Please oil," Anders signed, legs trembling so much his feet kept slipping on the chapel floor.

"Do what with the oil?" Hawke pressed.

"Please fuck me," Anders signed. "Please. Please."

Hawke let go of his hair, and pulled his fingers from him. Anders collapsed. Hawke gathered the oil off his hand, and slid two fingers back into him. Anders lay on the altar, struggling to catch his breath between the soft moans Hawke wrung from him with every smooth thrust that soothed the burn of his earlier abuse. "There you go." Hawke praised him. The crook of Hawke’s fingers felt a reward for his pliance, and Anders shivered for it, a wave of pleasure curling his toes.

“That’s what you want,” Hawke murmured, a hand on his hip rocking him back on his fingers until Anders took over the motion for him. “You want a prayer?”

Hawke traded his fingers for his cock, and the impossible stretch that came with it. Anders scrambled away from him, dragging his nails through the wax as Hawke dragged him back on his cock, quoting Threnodies. “In your heart shall burn, an unquenchable flame, all-consuming, and never satisfied.”

“Fuck,” Anders whimpered under his breath. “Oh fuck, Maker, fuck.”

Even if Hawke couldn't hear him, he could see him. His cheek sliding against the wax, spit caught on his lips from his mouthed gasps with every thrust, his hands clutching the top of the altar. Bent over it like a sacrifice in front of Hawke, and Andraste, and the Maker, and none of them gave a damn about him.

Hawke’s steady thrusts set every inch of his skin aflame. Anders could feel the fire he stirred in him pulsing in his heart, his face, his cock, begging for release. Anders' hands erupted with fire, melting through the wax, and for one feral moment Anders thought of burning the whole chapel down around him and taking Hawke with him. Hawke finished before he could act on it, his release filling him to overflowing, dripping down his thigh and slicking his last few thrusts.

Hawke pulled from him, leaving him on the precipice of his own release when he flipped him over on the altar. “Bastard,” Anders signed, his hands still burning, tension coiled tight in the pit of his stomach. “Fucking bastard.”

Hawke grinned, smoothing back his sweat soaked hair. “Did you scream?”

“No,” Anders signed.

“You want me to make you?” Hawke asked.

“Fuck you,” Anders signed, shaking the fire from his hands. Hawke didn’t seem to care, dropping to his knees to suck his cock. Anders fisted his hands in his hair, groaning as Hawke built him back up to the edge of ecstasy.

Nathaniel walked in on them like that. Anders leaning against a ruined altar, Hawke on his knees in front of him, moaning emphatically while Anders dragged him along his cock. There was nothing questionable about it. Anders was fucking Hawke’s throat, and Hawke was enjoying it, and so was Anders. Nathaniel cleared his throat with a bemused chuckle, and backpedaled hastily out of the chapel.

“Fuck me,” Anders choked through his climax, pleasure flowing through him in waves and filling Hawke’s mouth to overflowing. It looked too familiar, spilling over Hawke’s swollen lips and drenching his beard, and Anders felt an unwanted surge of affection for it. “Fuck me. Fuck me. Damnit.”

His release left him shaking and spent, and Anders slid to the floor, the cold stone like a shock of ice water to his soul. Damn him. Damn him and damn Hawke. He’d said no. He’d said no, but Nathaniel would never believe him now. Anders didn’t even believe himself. He felt amazing, his body boneless as Hawke fixed his trousers for him and pulled him into his arms.

“You good?” Hawke signed.

“I’m good,” Anders signed.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Think we should go back to Kirkwall this week,” Hawke signed. “Being here isn’t good for you. All your friends left you. No reason for us to stay.”

“Okay,” Anders signed.

No one was against leaving early. Varric and Fenris didn’t care, and Merrill had said her goodbyes when the majority of the Grey Wardens left to fight the Harvester. The Pride of Amaranthine was scheduled to leave a fortnight from now, but Nathaniel admitted it was unlikely the Grey Wardens would come back before then, and that it likely wouldn’t make a difference if they left early. Anders went to the creche the next day while everyone packed.

The room was… soft. Littered with rugs, pillows, and blankets, toddlers ran amok, crashing harmlessly into cushioned furniture. A single wetnurse rocked a basinet in a corner, and looked largely disengaged from the chaos. A small section was set aside for parents, where Morrigan lounged reading a book and drinking wine. Anders found a spot for himself in a nearby armchair, and sat, hugging his legs.

Most of the children belonged to the servants. The Wardens were limited to Kieran and Amell. From what Anders could tell from his time at the Vigil, everyone loved Amell. The tiny Kondrat seemed to be collectively raised by the Wardens who so rarely sired children of their own. The few remaining Wardens wandered in and out, engaging the feral child in mock combat, bringing him pastries, asking after his day and praising the most mundane of accomplishments.

Kieran was… off. Amell had called his son advanced, but Anders wasn’t sure if he would have used the same word. Kieran was three, almost four, and unusually well coordinated and well spoken for a toddler. He was quiet, and when he did talk, it seemed like he wasn’t talking about the same things the rest of the toddlers were talking about. Anders watched the two children playing some sort of fighting game, while the little dwarf complained about his height.

“I want to be taller!” Amell insisted.

“You can’t be taller,” Kieran said.

“Yes huh!”

“No you can’t,” Kieran said. “You need the Titans.”

“Then, then, you be shorter!” Amell ordered.

Kieran seemed to settle for that, and the two continued their battle with Kieran on his knees, but it was still… odd.

“... What are the Titans?” Anders asked.

“Excuse me?” Morrigan raised an eyebrow at him, golden eyes squinting over the top of her book.

“The uh-... the Titans?” Anders repeated.

“Have you a stutter, or are you simply dim-witted?” Morrigan asked.

“Neither?”

“So sure you sound. I trust you have a reason for watching my son so?”

“He’s Amell’s son,” Anders explained.

“How talented Amell must be to have birthed the boy all on his own,” Morrigan said sarcastically.

Don’t call her a bitch. Don’t call her a bitch. Don’t call her a bitch. “Morrigan, right?”

“As it was when we met,” Morrigan pointed out. “Truly, you must be a marvel in bed.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It cannot be your wit that captivated Amell so,” Morrigan explained.

“I’ll have you know I'm pretty charming, and pretty pretty, and pretty sure I don’t see how my relationship with Amell is any of your business.”

“I do not see how our son is any of yours,” Morrigan countered.

Anders should have left. Morrigan was right. There was nothing for him here, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. He watched the two boys smack at each other with woolen swords, and didn’t mean to sigh. “... I just wanted to meet him.”

“... He is just there,” Morrigan set her book aside. Anders couldn’t name the expression on her face. “... go and meet him then.”

“... Thanks. I’m good. I just-... want to sit here for a while,” Anders hugged his legs a little tighter. “He looks happy.”

“He is,” Morrigan finally grinned, and gestured to the children. “This is not a childhood I recognise.”

“Why not?” Anders asked. “You didn’t play Wardens and Darkspawn when you were a kid?”

“The games my mother encouraged were less innocent. You may have heard of her. My mother is Flemeth, the Witch of the Wilds,” Morrigan’s smile faded. “She spent most of her time trying to make me into something that would please her.”

“Did she?”

“I should hope not.” Morrigan said. “And what of your mother?”

“Dead,” Anders said.

“You have my condolences.”

“Thanks,” Anders said.

“... I am told you are leaving overmorrow?”

“That’s the rumor,” Anders agreed.

“Tis for the best, no doubt.”

“Why do you say that?” Anders asked.

“Why should I not?” Morrigan asked. “I would have thought it wily of you to get in the good graces of one who can protect you against your templars, but you have made a fool of the man. A strange choice, considering you seem to have need of him to free those who are too feeble to free themselves.”

“They’re your templars too,” Anders said rather than talk about Amell.

“Hardly,” Morrigan scoffed. “I fled no Circle nor will I ever be beholden to one. They are a cage made from fear. I cannot decide who is more stupid: the ones who built the cage, or the ones who allow themselves to be put in it.”

“They’re not allowing anything,” Anders said hotly. “How can you even say that? They’re slaves! I’m trying to free them, and so is Amell.”

“At your behest,” Morrigan said. “Surely you know this?”

“He’s doing it because it’s the right thing to do,” Anders said.

“Is he? No doubt next he shall begin rescuing little kittens from trees.”

“He’s a good person.”

“What is that to mean?” Morrigan demanded. “That he should risk all for those who risk nothing? That he should fight while others fail? Amell has told me of your little predicament. I understand that you have come into power and you must do all that you can for your cause to control it, but make no mistake: Amell champions no cause but his own.

“This is not about what is good or what is just or whatever flight of fancy helps you find the Fade at night. This is about you - and what you have asked of him - and so it is good of you to go before you ask any more.” Morrigan turned her attention away from him, and back to her book. “The heart is a treacherous thing. Never trust it.”

Anders stood on the deck of a ship some days later, watching Ferelden fade into the distance. He thought of what Morrigan had said, sailing back to Kirkwall with Hawke, and knew he’d never trust himself or his heart again.

Notes:

Anders and Nathaniel stay up late, talking about Ser Pounce-a-Lot, the peace talks with the Chantry, and the Harvesters. Ser Pounce-a-Lot is alive and well, the peace talks are in a stalemate, and the Harvesters are incredibly difficult to kill. Amell has some sort of pact with some sort of something that gives him the strength to kill Harvesters. Anders goes to the chapel, and talks to himself about how he still loves Justice but he's worried he's corrupting him. Hawke joins him, tells him he should undo his possession, and the sexual assault occurs. Nathaniel walks in on them, and hastily leaves with an embarrassed giggle as he assumes the exchange is consensual. Hawke says they should leave Ferelden early. Anders agrees, and spends a day in the creche. He and Morrigan talk about how Amell is holding the peace talks for Anders, and Anders sails back to Kirkwall. The chapter ends.

Chapter 142: No Children

Summary:

Alternative Title: A Year From Now

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all, thank you for reading!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 5 Molioris Afternoon
The Waking Sea - A Boat

Hawke massaged his feet.

The idle press of Hawke’s thumbs moving up and down the sole of his foot was gentle. Loving. It made the past month feel like a fever dream. Something that hadn't happened. Something Anders had exaggerated or imagined.

Varric, Fenris, and Merrill were crowded into the cabin with them, four bunk beds built into the walls with a narrow walkway between them. Everyone had their own bed, save for Hawke and Anders, who slept tangled in each other. Nightmare after nightmare woke Anders on the voyage home, but that was all they were.

Nightmares. Falsehoods and fabrications. Anders was fine. Anders was safe. Anders was sick, stomach churning with the intrusive thought that one solid kick would break Hawke’s nose a second time. He tried to ignore it, but it was all he could think about.

"I can't believe the two of you are getting bonded!" Merrill grinned, pressed up beside Fenris in his bunk. The poor man looked like he’d caught a hummingbird, still as a statue for fear it would fly away. "I'm so happy for you, lethallen."

"Thanks, Merrill," Anders smiled queasily.

"When is the ceremony?” Merrill asked. “Or um -... wedding?"

Not Summerday, Anders thought vindictively. He signed the question for Hawke, who glanced at Merrill.

"Summerday," Hawke said.

Of course. Of course it was still Summerday. Stubborn bastard. The holiest annum wasn’t the annum Anders wanted for his wedding. He couldn’t stand the thought of being in another Chantry. Not after Karl. Not after Hawke.

Varric whistled from up on his bunk, and Anders pointed towards him so Hawke could see him sign. “I think you missed it, Killer.”

“Next Summerday,” Hawke clarified, rolling his eyes.

A year from now. A year from now and he’d spend the rest of his years with Hawke. Anders twisted the ring on his finger, hating himself for wearing it. Once they were married there’d be no taking it off. He’d never get it annulled. With Anders’ luck Hawke would consummate it right there on the altar in front of the whole bloody Chantry. Anders snorted bemusedly to himself, and Fenris shot him a confused look.

"Oh!” Merrill said. “That's very romantic. … Is that romantic?"

"It's romantic, Daisy,” Varric agreed.

"Why is it romantic again?" Merrill asked.

“It’s a human thing,” Varric explained, signing while he spoke. “With summer starting, the idea is a hot day makes for a hot marriage.”

“Really?” Merrill asked.

“Really,” Anders chuckled.

“Stop bullshitting,” Hawke said. “It’s a holy day for marriage, celebrating when Andraste performed weddings en masse for the slaves she freed from the magisters during the first Exalted March against the Tevinter Imperium.”

“A pity she did not march further,” Fenris volunteered, signing slowly through all the words he had to spell. “In Tevinter, you would chain yourselves to each other in service of Andoral, the Old God of Unity.”

“Hot,” Anders joked.

“Sure we’d find another use for the chains after,” Hawke added.

Hate that. “The Imperial Chantry is still a Chantry, you know,” Anders argued. “You’re really telling me evil blood mage magisters are still running around worshipping the Old Gods?”

“They do not say as much aloud,” Fenris allotted. “But it is where the custom comes from.”

“Sign,” Hawke reminded them.

“You sign it for him,” Fenris huffed, wriggling in on himself in something reminiscent of a pout.

“Don’t be cross,” Merrill nudged him. “Varric, how do I sign um... Congratulations?”

“Beats me,” Varric shrugged. “I know ‘good job.’” Varric set his hand to his lips, and dropped it into his palm before tapping two fists together.

Merrill repeated the sign. Hawke raised a confused eyebrow. “Good job… What job?”

Merrill pointed at Anders, and Hawke barked a laugh. “Not a job,” Hawke said.

"Bet it still feels like it some days," Anders signed.

“Don’t mind,” Hawke signed.

“What do you mind?” Anders asked.

“Haven’t found my limit yet,” Hawke shrugged.

“What is your limit?” Anders asked.

“Not sure I have one,” Hawke signed.

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Not sure you have one either,” Hawke kissed his foot, and Anders fought back the urge to kick him.

“Some of us still know what you two are saying, you know, Blondie,” Varric reminded him.

“Trust me, we could say a lot worse,” Anders joked.

“Not a contest,” Varric held up his hands. “Just think of the children, that’s all I’m saying.”

“We’re not having children,” Anders said.

“You’re not?” Merrill asked. “But you love children.”

“Who is to say children would love him?” Fenris countered.

“Children love everyone!” Merrill protested, slapping at him. There was a special care in the way she did it, her fingertips just barely grazing the edge of his jerkin or a few strands of his hair, never touching his markings. Fenris’ smile couldn’t have been more lovesick without throwing up on her. Anders rolled his eyes. Fenris could have spared himself a lot of time and pain if he just told Merrill how he felt. “They’re the future. They keep the blood of the People alive.”

“Hardly relevant here, no?” Fenris asked.

“Of course it’s relevant,” Merrill said. “We all have a future. Don’t you want children?”

Fenris cleared his throat so many times Anders was tempted to summon him a handful of water. “We are discussing Hawke, not me.”

“But don’t you?” Merrill pressed.

“... I have not thought on it,” Fenris mumbled.

“Why not?” Merrill asked.

“I am a slave,” Fenris explained.

“No you’re not,” Merrill gingerly gathered up his hand, her thumbs just shy of his brands. “Ar lasa mala revas.”

Anders had no idea what the words meant, and he was willing to bet Fenris didn’t either. Whatever the translation, the intention was clear. It probably should have embarrassed Anders to overhear it, but for some reason it didn’t. It was just nice. It was nice that something was just nice.

“Gonna need you to translate that when I write about your epic romance, Daisy,” Varric said.

“It - um…” Merrill cleared her throat, still staring at Fenris, who was staring at her. “It means you’re free.”

“Danarius yet lives,” Fenris said. “I’ll never be free so long as he does.”

“I don’t believe that,” Merrill said. “I don’t think you do either. You don’t have to kill him to be free of him. You just have to be free of him.”

“He’ll never stop hunting me,” Fenris argued. “You don’t know Danarius. I belong to him. He’ll never let me forget it.”

“He’s not here. You don’t have to wear his chains,” Merrill traced his face, and for a minute Anders was sure she’d kiss him, but Fenris untangled himself from her and stumbled out of the bunk.

“You know not of what you speak,” Fenris left the cabin.

“I said something wrong, didn’t I?” Merrill guessed.

“No, Daisy, I think you said everything right, and that’s the problem,” Varric said.

“How is that a problem?” Merrill asked.

“The truth hurts,” Varric said.

“Anyone going to tell me what that was about?” Hawke asked.

“Fenris is upset about Danarius,” Anders signed.

“Why are we talking about Danarius?” Hawke asked.

“Because we were talking about children,” Anders signed.

“What do children have to do with Danarius?”

“Conversation just went that way,” Anders shrugged.

“What about children?” Hawke asked.

“Not having any,” Anders signed.

“Change your mind?” Hawke guessed.

“One of us had to,” Anders signed.

“Didn’t have to be you,” Hawke countered.

“Didn’t it?” Anders asked, talking and signing. “We already have a mabari and a cat. Children are just excessive.”

“They’re not excessive,” Merrill protested. Varric translated loosely, his arms hanging down from his bunk above her. “They’re children. What about um… that nice lady who used to watch orphans in Darktown? You used to spend so much time with them. Don’t you remember?”

“The nice blood mage?” Hawke recalled.

“Wrong audience, Killer,” Varric signed.

“Evelina,” Anders said. “... We haven’t been able to find her. Either the templars killed her or they’re keeping her in solitary. It’s been harder to find mages in the Gallows without a templar on the inside ever since I… ever since I did what I did.”

“Maybe you could find someone else to help you?” Merrill suggested.

“You shouldn’t be looking for her in the first place,” Hawke countered, and Anders regretted signing his side of the conversation. “What do you think the Knight-Commander would do to you if she found out?”

“Why would she find out?” Anders asked.

“You could get caught,” Hawke explained.

“I could always get caught,” Anders signed.

“You’re not an apostate anymore,” Hawke signed. “If the Knight-Commander caught you in the Circle, she’d never let you out of it. People know we’re together. You get caught, whatever you do falls back on me, and anything that falls back on me, falls back on Beth. You really want to do that to her?”

“Evelina deserves to be free,” Anders argued. “Every mage does.”

“Not every mage wants to be free,” Hawke countered. “What happens to them? You’re going to get them killed. Is that what you want?”

“Of course not!” Anders signed.

“That’s what’s going to happen,” Hawke signed. “You can’t even be in the same room as a templar without losing control. What happens when you lose control in the Circle and kill all the mages you’re trying to save?”

“That’s not going to happen!” Anders signed.

“Like it didn’t happen with Ella?” Hawke raised an eyebrow. “Almost killing Beth’s apprentice was enough? You want to kill her too?”

“...No,” Anders signed.

“Then don’t,” Hawke signed. “Don’t want you raiding the Circle anymore. You start hurting mages trying to save them then you’re no better than the templars.”

“... You want me translating any of that, Blondie?” Varric asked.

“...No,” Anders said.

“Why not?” Merrill asked.

“So Daisy,” Varric deflected, saving him. “Tell us about Ostagar. How did it go, cleansing the Blight? The Grey Wardens out of a job yet?”

“I wasn’t fighting darkspawn, Varric,” Merrill admonished him.

“You weren’t?” Varric asked. “Not even a little darkspawn? Maybe an ogre or two?”

“Ogres aren’t little,” Merrill said.

“How would you know unless you fought one?” Varric countered.

“Because whenever you tell stories about ogres, you always start them with, ‘No shit, it was huge!’”

“I do do that,” Varric said thoughtfully.

“Still waiting to hear how it went,” Anders said.

“Not very well,” Merrill confessed. “I cleansed a little patch for a garden, but it took an awful lot of blood. The corruption is really very stubborn.”

“How much blood?” Hawke asked.

“Oh… you know,” Merrill said vaguely.

“Not a lot,” Varric signed. “Couple drops.”

“Do me next,” Anders joked.

“I don’t think I could cleanse people,” Merrill said quickly. “I’m still not even sure I can cleanse not-people. The corruption might just come back. I was hoping my spirit might be able to help, the way it helped with my mirror.”

“Great idea, Daisy,” Varric said, but he refrained from signing anything about Merrill’s spirit.

“Well if you ever figure it out, let me know,” Anders said and signed.

“Done with the Wardens?” Hawke asked.

“I left, didn’t I?” Anders frowned, signing and not talking. “That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? You wanted me to be done with them. You said they weren’t my friends.”

“They aren’t,” Hawke agreed, and Anders couldn’t help believing him.

The Grey Wardens were a family, and Anders wasn’t part of that family. He hadn’t been for years. He’d left, and they’d moved on, and their lives were all well enough without him. All Anders had managed to bring into their lives since he’d come back was trouble and complications and ugliness. The less involved he was with the Wardens, the better.

Kirkwall hadn't burned down in his absence. Anders wasn’t sure whether or not to count that a victory. The Circle still stood with all its horrors, and the templars still poured out of it and into the city’s streets. There’d been another riot at the docks - one that had taken place on his behalf. The templars had claimed his infirmary with the blessing of the Grand Cleric and the provisional Viscount, and were constructing a training facility for fresh recruits.

Anders' supplies had been largely confiscated. What few things the templars hadn’t taken had been relocated to the Warden Compound. The small handful of soldiers assigned there had made a valiant effort to reconstruct his infirmary in one of the rooms off the commons. The compound was taller than it was wide, and ill fit to serve as an infirmary. The room set up for his infirmary consisted of a single surgery table, shelves devoid of any supplies, and a cot.

A room on the second floor had been set up as his apothecary, which meant Anders had to take a flight of stairs every time he needed something for his patients. It wasn’t a fun development for him or his thighs, but it was still better than Darktown, and Anders made it work. Anders whistled to himself while preparing health poultices, his fingers stained with elfroot and the air thick with the scent of distilling foxite and heatherum.

A book of poems was propped up against the alembic, the pages wilting from the steam, alongside a parchment scrawled with the occasional revision for the next reprint of his manifesto. A constant cleansing aura kept Justice tangled in him, and as the days went by seemed to help the two of them reconnect. Anders called on his spirit when things were good, and calm, and soothing, and felt good, and calm, and soothed in turn.

The Warden Compound was safe, and Anders quickly came to see it as a haven, even when no letters arrived for him from the Vigil in the middle of Bloomingtide, when the Pride of Amaranthine docked. Anders didn’t know why he expected any, considering he’d only left Ferelden a fortnight ago, and Nathaniel had told him the Wardens wouldn’t have defeated the Harvester in that timeframe. It hurt all the same, and just seemed to reinforce that Hawke was right.

Hawke was right about everything. He was right about the Grey Wardens. He was right about Amell. He was right about Anders. The only thing Anders managed to hang onto was that Hawke wasn’t right about Justice. Justice wasn’t a demon. Justice wasn’t some malevolent influence on him. Justice was the best thing about him. If Anders was one of the only good things about Hawke, Justice was one of the only good things about Anders.

Hawke didn’t believe that, and Anders was tired of fighting with him, so he did whatever it took not to fight with him. He agreed to things he didn’t agree with. He did things he didn’t want to do. He said things he didn’t want to say. The only problem was the more Anders agreed, and did, and said, the harder it was to remember he didn’t agree, or want to do, or want to say.

Anders tried not to let it bother him overmuch. They were just little things. Unimportant things. Hawke wanted to know where he went, or what he did, or who he did it with. It didn’t hurt to tell him. They were engaged. It made sense that Hawke would want to know about how Anders spent his time and who he spent it with. If Hawke wanted him to not go somewhere, or not to be with someone, he always had a good reason. Hawke was just taking care of him.

Anders wouldn’t have anything without him. Anders didn’t have the coin for anything without him. Hawke was the only reason Anders had somewhere to sleep and something to eat. More importantly, Hawke was the only reason Ser Cumference had somewhere to sleep and something to eat. The little blighter decided to help with his manifesto by eating half of it, and Anders was running out of parchment, but he hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask Hawke for more.

Working on his manifesto wasn’t the same as working with the Collective, but the thought that Hawke might say no was paralyzing. It wasn’t that Anders couldn’t get more parchment from Varric or Nathaniel, it was that if he did, Hawke would know he’d asked someone else after he’d said no, and Anders didn’t want to have that fight.

It would be fine. Anders just had to ask. It was just parchment. Hawke supported his manifesto. Anders could ask him for parchment for that. Anders confronted him in the study one day, tapping on the desk to pull Hawke’s attention from where he was working on one of his ledgers. “What is it, love?” Hawke signed.

Love was good. Love was a good sign. Fights didn’t start with love. “I'm running out of parchment,” Anders signed.

“Have Bodahn get more,” Hawke signed.

… That was easy. Anders liked that it was easy. He sat on the edge of Hawke’s desk. “What are you working on?”

“Red Iron’s ledger,” Hawke signed.

“How is that going?”

“Good,” Hawke pushed the ledger aside, eyeing him over, and there was nothing particularly threatening in his expression. “Wiped out Evets Marauders. They had bounties in Jader, Cumberland, and Kirkwall. What’s the parchment for?”

Anders’ heart skipped, his hands fumbling for a lie, but the only other thing he might need the parchment for was letters, and that seemed worse. “My manifesto.”

“Rewriting it?” Hawke guessed.

“Yes.”

“Could help you with it,” Hawke offered.

“... you still want to do that?” Anders asked.

“Someone has to help with your spelling,” Hawke joked.

“I’d like that,” Anders signed.

Hawke caught his hip, and tugged him into his lap. It didn’t hurt him to be there. He wasn’t hurt, he wasn’t hurt at all, but his heart was still racing, and Anders didn’t know how to make it stop. … Anders could electrocute him. Anders could electrocute him like Johane had electrocuted him. Hawke wasn’t wearing his armor. All it would take was a breath of mana, and Anders could kill him.

Why would he kill him? That would be horrible. Anders would never kill him. Anders loved him. Anders had loved him. Anders was engaged to him. He couldn’t have thought that, but he must have thought it, and Hawke was signing something and Anders had to pay attention.

“Good you have something to do,” Hawke signed. “Glad you stopped working with the Collective.”

Anders hadn’t. He just hadn’t told Hawke that. “Glad you support it.”

“You need anything else?”

“...ink?”

“Now you’re pushing it,” Hawke signed. It was probably a joke. It seemed like a joke.

“Funny,” Anders signed.

Hawke grinned, and Anders let himself breathe again.

“Master Anders?” Bodahn’s voice interjected. Anders clambered off Hawe, relieved at the interruption. “Master Hawke? Master Vael is here for Master Hawke. It seemed rather urgent.”

The steward stood in the doorway to the study, hands wringing easily through the signs. Sign language was apparently as common as Common in Orzammar. Bodahn knew more signs than they did, but was allegedly ‘much too busy stewarding’ to add teaching to his list of responsibilities. ‘Terrible teacher anyway, wouldn’t you know it? Never managed to get the boy to pick up on any of it. Terrible shame, that. It’s supposed to be good for lads like him.’ Anders was willing to bet Bodahn just didn’t want to interact with Hawke anymore than he already did after witnessing him beat Sabin half to death in his study.

“Hawke?” Sebastian’s voice called through the estate - and Anders couldn’t help chuckling. Hawke had been deaf for almost a year, and the Starkhaven Prince still hadn’t caught on that yelling for him wouldn’t get him anywhere.

The exiled Starkhaven Prince joined them in the study a minute later, hastily pursued by the Chantry Brother that served as his translator whenever he spent time with Hawke. “Thank goodness you’re here,” Sebastian said, while the Brother translated. “We have a mage problem at the Chantry.”

“What kind of mage problem?” Hawke asked, abandoning his ledger to join Sebastian.

“Unsanctioned proselytizing,” Sebastian said.

“They’re talking?” Anders deduced, the Brother’s loose translation of ‘illegal talk’ confirming his suspicions. “Mages are talking and you think that’s a mage problem? I’ll give you a bloody mage problem. What’s wrong with you!?”

“This doesn’t concern you,” Sebastian scowled at him. “You’ve made no secret of your intent to lead the mages here in revolution.”

“Well, I’ve tried not to shout it from the rooftops,” Anders shot back. “You’ve just been around when I talk with my friends.”

“Do not sign this,” Sebastian held up a single finger in warning to the Chantry Brother before he continued. “Seeing as we have mutual friends” - Sebastian tipped his head at Hawke - “who for some reason don’t want you to get hurt, let me tell you this: if you go forward with this revolt, the Chantry will bring its full might to bear. They will kill you.”

The threat couldn’t have been more empty. There were so many things so much worse than death. “Andraste was killed,” Anders said. “That doesn’t mean she failed.”

“Do not compare yourself to Andraste,” Sebastian hissed, and waved a hand for the Brother to resume signing. “Hawke, we need you at the Chantry. Please?”

“I’ll get my armor,” Hawke said.

“Seriously?” Anders demanded when Hawke left the room. “You think I can’t just tell him what you said?”

“What are you talking about?” Sebastian asked.

“You know damn well what I’m talking about!” Anders snapped. “You threatened to kill me.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Sebastian said. “I would never do such a thing.”

“You just did!”

“Brother Plinth, did you hear any such threat?” Sebastian asked.

“Not at all,” The Brother said, with a tiny bow. “I trust you know your commandments, Serah? Those who bear false witness and work to deceive others, know this: there is but one Truth. All things are known to our Maker, and He shall judge their lies.”

“I’m not lying!” Anders snapped. Sebastian had threatened him. He’d threatened him in his own home. How could they just-...

… He’d threatened him. That had happened.

Hadn’t it?

Anders shoved past them and hurried after Hawke, and ran into him leaving their room. He was wearing his armor, leather embossed with Sandal’s runework, and covered in flasks and throwing knives. His bow was in his hand, hastily strung, and Dog was at his side. None of it looked half as intimidating as his eyes, such a vibrant red they were practically glowing when Hawke steadied him. “Anders?”

“I’m coming with,” Anders signed.

“Don’t make a scene,” Hawke warned him.

“I’m coming with,” Anders signed stubbornly.

“Come with, then,” Hawke signed.

The Chantry was holding a service. Nobles were packed shoulder to shoulder beneath the Grand Cleric’s pulpit, a waterfall of red wax all too reminiscent of the bloody altar dripping into the congregation. There were so many candles the Revered Mother presiding over the service was barely visible through the glare, and practically glowing with sweat. The incense had become a fog, and made it hard to see, and hard to smell, and hard to think.

Anders shouldn’t have come. Sunbursts hung from every banner, and all Anders saw in them was Karl, and the Rite of Tranquility, and his beautiful, lyrium blue eyes staring sightlessly up at him. The memory haunted him, and Anders took a step back towards the exit, but something held him in the Chantry. An obligation. A responsibility. Justice - urging him towards the cluster of mages who had been harried away from the congregation and halfway up the stairs towards the second story of the Chantry.

“Good people-” The Revered Mother was saying loudly, her voice swallowed by the argument taking place in the Chantry.

“You don’t worship with us!” One of the nobles shouted, climbing onto the base of a statue as if being taller would make him louder. “Your kind Blackened the Golden City! You’re not men, you’re monsters!”

“Enough!” First Enchanter Orsino’s voice bellowed across the Chantry, a sonic pulse amplifying the volume of his voice, clearing the incense, and snuffing out a handful of nearby candles. The old elf climbed a few steps higher on the stairs. “My people are people! We have done nothing to you!”

“All that the Maker has wrought is in His hand, beloved and precious to Him,” The Revered Mother said. “Let us turn back to-”

“Mages are the reason the Maker turned His back on us!” Someone else shouted, undeterred by the scripture. “Mages terrorize this city! The Butcher of Lowtown! The Demon of Death! You’re all the same!”

“We’re not what’s terrorizing this city!” A mage who sounded suspiciously like Bethany shouted.

“You attack us in the streets!”

“On the Knight-Commander’s orders!” An unfamiliar voice countered.

“Did you translate all that?” Sebastian asked the Brother.

“Yes, Brother Vael,” The Brother assured him.

“Tell Hawke they incite to riot,” Sebastian said.

“What are you talking about?” Anders shoved himself between the Brother and Hawke. “Listen to them - the mages didn’t even start this! They’re just here to pray. Bloody look! They have escorts - there’s a half-dozen templars here with them.”

“Shirking their holy duties,” Sebastian said.

“Their duty to what!?” Anders demanded.

“I know you fear us!” Orsino’s voice cut through the disgruntled murmurings of the crowd. “Knight-Commander Meredith uses that fear to take control of your city! We are not responsible for the levies! We are not responsible for the curfews! We are not responsible for the raids! You have seen the chaos of her reign!”

“He’s right!” One of the noblewomen agreed. Anders couldn’t see her through the incense, and tried to commit her voice to memory. “The Knight Commander opposes every effort to replace Viscount Dumar!”

“Will you allow it!?” Orsino shouted.

The crowd grew wild and agitated, and quickly morphed into a mob. Nobles shouted and shoved, trampling candles and each other as they split into a clear divide of those who were for or against the Knight-Commander.

“Enough of this,” Sebastian grabbed Hawke’s hand, and dragged him towards the mages, the Chantry Brother in tow. “Let us put an end to this farce.”

“Farce!?” Anders shoved his way after them. The crowd quickly parted for them as it recognized the Champion, the Prince, and the Warden all storming the Chantry. “What farce!? Everything they’re saying is true!”

“What they’re saying is sedition!” Sebastian whirled on him, thrusting a finger into his chest.

Hawke moved so quickly Anders had trouble following him. He grabbed Sebastian’s hand and wrenched, and Sebastian went staggering into his chest. Hawke locked a hand around the back of his neck in the twisted mockery of an embrace. His eyes glowed with the reflection of a thousand votive racks, and Anders only heard his threatening whisper because Hawke couldn’t gauge his own volume well enough to keep it inaudible. “Don’t ever touch what’s mine.”

Hawke let Sebastian go. The exiled prince stood where Hawke left him, looking so dazed he might have been drugged. Hawke’s eyes snapped back to the Chantry Brother, who held up both hands in a hasty surrender, and Maker save him, but Hawke hadn’t seemed half as attractive as he did in that moment for almost half a year. Anders shuffled closer to him, unable to help a smug smirk.

“Laugh all you want,” Sebastian mumbled when he collected himself. “I already sent for the Knight-Commander. I thought only to involve Hawke before this became violent.”

“Who’s going to make it violent?” Anders demanded.

As if in answer, the Chantry doors opened, and the Knight-Commander walked in with a host of templars on her heels. They wore the same bucket helms as the ones guarding the mages on the stairwell, but for some reason theirs looked far less friendly. The reaction from the crowd was immediate. Nobles surged backwards, crashing up against the pulpit like waves breaking against a cliff face in their desperate scramble to escape the templars.

“What is going on here?” The Knight-Commander demanded.

“Knight-Commander!” Sebastian waved, practically skipping to Meredith’s side. “This mage provokes an uprising.”

“That’s a lie!” Anders snapped.

“Is that so?” Meredith mused, stalking across the floor of the Chantry with a hand to the hilt of her sword. She nodded politely to Hawke on her way to the stairwell, where a good two dozen mages still stood clustered, guarded by their half-dozen templars. “First Enchanter. Explain yourself.”

“The First Enchanter accused you of trying to take control of the city!” Sebastian snitched helpfully, trailing after Meredith like a puppy, and pissing on everyone else in the process.

“Did he?” Meredith mused, turning slowly to survey the gathered nobles, who scooted further back into each other. “Am I to understand you all indulged this treason?”

“Treason!?” Orsino demanded from the stairwell, climbing down a few stairs to stand at the forefront of his mages. Curiously, none of the templars guarding them moved to join Meredith. “The only treason here is yours! The city has been without a Viscount for a year!”

“And so it shall continue to be, until there is a ruler capable of succeeding where Dumar failed,” Meredith said.

“And if one cannot be found!?” Orsino demanded. “Will the templars rule Kirkwall forever!?”

“We will not stand idle while the city burns around us,” Meredith said haughtily.

“You’ve done nothing but!” One brave, but very short, noble shouted from the safety of the congregation. “The Champion and the Warden saved this city!”

“The templar order exists to guard the Chantry and the Circle!” Orsino continued. “I suggest you let the nobility rule the city!”

A few nobles cheered. More than a few templars stepped forward, and the cheers stopped. “I do not need you, or anyone, to tell me what my duty is, mage,” Meredith threatened, starting towards the stairwell with a hand to the hilt of her sword. It sang with lyrium, but it sang backwards, and the hollowing sound was all too familiar.

Anders broke from Hawke to throw himself in front of her, “The First Enchanter is right - You should not be ruling Kirkwall!”

“And yet I shall continue, until such a time as the city is safe,” Meredith frowned. “Brother Plinth, translate for the Champion. Ask him if he agrees with the First Enchanter and the Warden’s accusations. Remind him of who keeps his sister safe.”

The Chantry Brother signed through the threat. It proved an effective one. Hawke locked a hand around his arm, and dragged him out of Meredith’s way. “If the nobility want Meredith to step down, they’ll tell her to.”

“Are you mad!?” Anders wrenched out of his grasp, signing frantically. “They fear her! Everyone fears her! Look at them!”

“I fear her!” Hawke signed back, and turned to say aloud to Orsino, “What are you trying to do here? Cause a rebellion?”

“The people of this city need to know what is really happening!” Orsino said, while the Brother translated. None of his mages backed down. Bethany was among them, standing next to Orsino despite what he’d done to her mother and everything she’d claimed to believe about the Circle. Anders couldn’t help wondering if she’d just gotten caught up in the chaos when she’d come to pray, or if she actually believed in anything that was happening.

“And then what?” Meredith stalked the rest of the distance to the stairwell. The few templars guarding it seemed to part almost reluctantly. Anders ran after her. Ran after a templar, into more templars, pursued by more templars, possessed by a spirit susceptible to how much he hated templars. Anders drained his mana in a hasty surge of creationism, and more than a few mages looked his way with curious expressions for the magic. There was no sense trying to hide it. Thanks to Justice, his mana was almost limitless. A smite would cripple him if he didn’t start draining it now.

Meredith grabbed Orsino by his collar, and wrenched him down a step. “You want to see them tear down the Gallows with pitchforks and torches?” Meredith hissed under her breath, so quiet Anders only heard her because the templars guarding the stairwell didn’t stop him from following. “You think that would be better?’

“It cannot be worse,” Orsino shot back. “Your refusal to listen to reason leaves me no choice.”

“What I refuse to listen to are excuses,” Meredith pulled him down another step. “Perhaps you are ill fit to your position if you cannot understand this.”

“Let him go,” Anders grabbed her shoulder.

Anders was an idiot.

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
Little Nightmares: A night at the Hawke Estate from Anders' perspective.

Chapter 143: The Cause of Mages

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

There Is No Time
Scratched into the Walls of a Cell in the Gallows

Blood stains the grout between the stone, the etchings done as if by nail in dim light.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of struggle. Magister and slave, human and elf, templar and mage, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

The modern society that sprouted from the ruins of Andraste’s Exalted March has not done away with oppression. It has but established new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of magic, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the oppression: society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great forces directly facing each other: mages and templars.

Now and then the mages are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding voice of mages. This voice is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern magic and that place mages of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one struggle against the Chantry at the College of Magi in Cumberland.

The College of Magi has voted, time and again, to be free of the Chantry’s yokel, but our struggle is a political struggle. The organisation of the mages into a single voice is continually being upset again by the competition between the mages themselves. The Fraternity of Enchanters encourages dissension between mages when we should rise up together, stronger, firmer, mightier to dissent against the Chantry.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the mages with the templars is at first a national struggle. The mages of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with their own templars. Throughout the Ages mages and templars have faced more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing Circles, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the templars lays the foundation for the sway of free mages.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed. But in order to oppress a people, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The slave, in the period of slavery, raised himself to a position of servitude, just as the petty soldier, under the yoke of Chantry absolutism, managed to develop into the templars.

The modern mage, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of time, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own enslavement. He becomes a slave, and here it becomes evident that the Chantry is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an overriding law.

It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this rule, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society. The essential condition for the existence of the Chantry and its Circles is the dissension between the mages. Therefore this manifesto - for the cause of mages - and the development of communication between them to cut from under its feet the very foundation of the Chantry.

Its fall, and the victory of freemen, are equally inevitable. The Divine is no more a mouthpiece for the Maker than the Chant of Light is His word. It was written by man, and interpreted by man, and it is man, not the Maker, who decides which interpretations to follow. The Chantry has been adding or excising Canticles throughout the Ages, starting with the first compilation by Divine Justinia I.

The first Divine wasn’t chosen by the Maker, she was appointed by the Emperor. Kordillus Drakon I was a tyrant. He refused to allow any interpretations of the Chant of Light but his own, and countless versions of the faith are lost thanks to him. He founded the Orlesian Empire - and wiped out everyone who refused to submit to his rule or worship in the process. He believed he was chosen by Andraste to spread her word - so much so he took it upon himself to write more of it.

The Canticle of Exaltations details Drakon’s visions of the Maker’s return once the Chant of Light is spread to every corner of the world, but who is to say it must be Drakon’s version? So much of the faith can be attributed to man, and not the Maker. The Canticle of Exaltations. The holy office of the Divine. The Nevarran Accord. Emperor Drakon created all of it. Not the Maker. Not Andraste. Man.

The same man who called on mages during the Second Blight condemned them to the fate they now suffer. Had it not been for mages, the Second Blight might have swallowed the world. Emperor Drakon enlisted the help of mages, and it is thanks to mages that his armies found their victory at the Battle of Cumberland, and thanks to a mage that the Archdemon Zazikel was slain at the Battle of Starkhaven, just like the Archdemon Urthemiel was slain by a mage at the Battle of Denerim.

The name ‘Amell’ is carved repeatedly beneath this passage, interspersed with ‘Help me.’

The Grey Warden Neriah sacrificed herself to defeat the Archdemon Zazikel, and that sacrifice was forgotten. The sacrifice of a mage was forgotten. Her robes are the same robes now worn by Chantry Brothers and Sisters who preach a version of the Chant of Light written and compiled by a man who condemned her kind - mage kind - to a fate worse than death for a thousand years.

Emperor Drakon created the Nevarran Accord, and subjugated an entire people. Signed during the Second Blight, the Nevarran Accord established the Seekers of Truth, the Circle of Magi, and the Templar Order. There’s nothing in the Chant of Light that warranted their creation and nothing in the Chant of light that warrants their continued existence. The Circles are an injustice. They are an abomination. They are a sin.

They were created out of fear of mages and magic, because of the alleged sins of seven mages or magisters. The Chantry would have us believe that magisters trespassing in the Maker’s city made the first darkspawn, but the darkspawn live in the Deep Roads. They respond to the call of the Old Gods. They have nothing to do with humans - or the Maker - at all. It is no coincidence that the people the Chantry blames are the same ones they’re trying to oppress.

The Canticle of Threnodies was written by Divine Justinia I, almost two hundred years after the death of Andraste. The idea - the lie - that seven mages could have blackened the Golden City is a convenient excuse to hold all mages responsible for the crimes of a few, and one the Chantry is all too eager to repeat again and again, enslaving all mages for the fear of what they might have done or might yet do.

It is an injustice, and one that must be fought, and has been fought, and must continue to be fought until it is undone. The Nevarran Accord declared the Seekers of Truth, the Circle of Magi, and the Templar Order to be under the authority of the Chantry, but the Chantry has lost control of all three. The Chantry never had control to begin with. When the Nevarran Accord was first signed, it regulated mages and their magic to nothing more than the service of the Chantry.

In that Age, mages kindled the eternal flame that burns in every brazier in every Chantry, and dusted the rafters and the eaves if they were fortunate. In protest - in peaceful protest - the mages of Val Royeaux barricaded themselves inside the cathedral, and in response Divine Ambrosia II attempted an Exalted March against them in the middle of a Blight! Man’s response to mages has always been bloodshed, even when mages shed their blood in defense of man.

This bloodshed must stop, or be answered in kind. There is nothing in the Chant of Light that justifies it. Andraste suffered at the hands of magisters. Thus, she feared the influence of magic. But if the Maker blamed magic for the magisters’ actions in the Black City, why would He still gift us with it? The oppression of mages stems from the fears of men, not the will of the Maker.

It goes against no will of the Maker for mages to live as free as other men. Andraste said that magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him, but it is not ruling to wish the same rights as any man. The right to life. The right to love. The right to liberty. Mages are denied these things - and it is the Chantry that denies them. Andraste preached freedom and ended slavery, only for her followers to make slaves of mages.

The crimes of the Circles go beyond counting. They are an institution of oppression. They are abusive and unjust. No child should be torn from their parents for the crime of being how the Maker created them. Mages’ gifts are granted by the Maker, and it is not for man to decide how the Maker created mages is not normal.

All men are the Work of our Maker’s Hands,
From the lowest slaves
To the highest kings.
Those who bring harm
Without provocation to the least of His children
Are hated and accursed by the Maker.

The Circles bring harm to mages without provocation. Anyone born with magic is torn from their family, and given to the Circle as slaves for a mere accident of birth. Their parents are told they’ll be thrown in prison if they ever ask about them, stripped of their rights in the eyes of the Maker. And if you run away, they hunt you down, again and again and again, with the same magic they condemn.

If magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him, then it is the Chantry that is foul and corrupt for its use of blood magic in the subjugation of its mages. Children given to the Circle have their blood taken by the First Enchanter, and turned into phylacteries. A leash, utilized by Templar jailors to track down mages and ensure they can never escape. Never return to their families. Never live free of the Circle, if the Circle permits them to live at all.

Mages within the Circle are under constant surveillance from the Templar Order. The Chantry would call them saviors. Holy warriors. Champions of Hessarian’s Silver Sword of Mercy, the Archon of Tevinter, who drove his sword through Andraste’s heart in her final moments. The truth is that all mages can expect the same treatment from templars as Andraste from Hessarian: a quick death should they fail their trial by fire.

The Harrowing is one of many horrors subjected upon all mages. The Circle would call it a test to prove that mages can resist the temptations of demons, and the inevitable possession that comes from them, but nothing could be further from the truth. You’re taken from your room in the middle of night, without warning or explanation, and dragged or carried to the Harrowing Chamber. You’re told you have to face a demon - and that the templars will kill you if you fail.

Most mages do fail. The system is designed for them to fail. The Circles can only house so many mages. The Chantry prisons were designed for hundreds and end up holding thousands. The Harrowing serves as a culling for those mages not made Tranquil, and used to serve the Chantry, peddling their bloody wares, enchanting items for the masses to fund the Circle’s endless cycle of enslavement.

There’s no preparation. No precautions but a templar’s sword levied at your heart. You’re sent into the Fade, but it's not just a battle. For my Harrowing, I found myself on a plateau of swirling smoke and mist. I could not see my feet, or perhaps I had no feet in that place. Each step was treacherous. I had to believe there was a ground. If I didn't, there wouldn't be, and I would fall into nothingness. I was protected only by my will and my magic.

The demon I faced took the form of an apprentice. It told me it had died during its own Harrowing. It spoke the truth - on the cruelty of the templars, on the injustices of the Circle, on the willingness of the Chantry to throw mages’ lives away, forcing them to fight demons or die trying. It told me it would help me escape, help me get away from them, from the Circle if I just let it in.

Etched into the stone beside this passage is the word Compassion, again and again.

This is the kind of temptation the Circle thrusts upon untrained mages. Untrained children. The demon they bind to the Harrowing chamber is one of Pride, and it is bound with clear purpose: to ensure that no mage of confidence, of courage, survives to challenge them. It teaches mages to forgo defiance for diffidence to survive, and it takes a lifetime to recover from.

Throughout it all, the templars waited beyond the Veil, standing over my paralyzed body, their swords pointed at my heart, waiting for the moment of my failure. All it would take was a splinter of fear, a seed of doubt, and I would be unmade. The demon would devour my mind, and the templars would destroy what was left of me.

This was my Harrowing, but my experience is the experience of all mages. My cause is the cause of all mages. A mage of the Circle has three choices - the Harrowing, Tranquility, or death. They force this choice upon all mages and call it good. But it is neither good nor right. It is evil and unjust. And it is done without cause.

There’s no reason for mages to martyr themselves following in Andraste’s footsteps. The Circle would have you believe that the Harrowing is a necessary evil, but no evil is necessary. The Harrowing is performed for fear of what mages might become. For fear of abominations: mages of unfathomable power possessed by spirits and demons, but mages face the greatest risk of possession at their own Harrowing.

Were mages not subjected to the Harrowing, most might go their whole lives without ever encountering a demon. Those mages with the greatest potential of attracting a demon are spirit healers and spirit mediums. Mages borne of good and gentle magic, who seek to offer healing and salvation. These are the mages who are most threatened. Their magic is not something to be feared, but something to be shared.

As Eileen spoke unto the masses,
"My hearth is yours, my bread is yours, my life is yours.
For all who walk in the sight of the Maker are one."

As Eileen provided succor and salvation to the masses so too does magic. Mages should not have to justify their right to life, love, and liberty when magic brings so much good into the world. Magic can heal wounds, cure illness, grow crops, warm hearths, grant light, slay evil, save good, and perform all manner of miracles. If magic is meant to serve man, it cannot do so in a cage.

The risk that a mage might one day become an abomination is not the risk the Chantry would have you believe. The fate the Circle so fears is a reversible one. Possession can be undone with a ritual of lyrium and magic, both of which can be found in abundance in the Circle, but the Templars would sooner kill mages than make the effort, and they don't stop at Harrowings. The Rite of Tranquility is even worse.

The words ‘A good man. A good mage.’ encircle this passage several times.

The Rite of Tranquility severs a mage’s connection to the Fade, in so doing is believed to make the Tranquil immune to possession, but it is a fate worse than death. The dreams of Tranquil mages are severed. All the color, all the music in the world, gone. It takes away everything human inside you. There's nothing left to fix - and no greater sin than to take away what was given to us by the Maker.

The verse is etched deep into the stone, as if scratched again and again, the grooves dyed a dirty brown with dried blood.

Then the Maker said:
“To you, My second-born, I grant this gift:
In your heart shall burn
An unquenchable flame
All-consuming, and never satisfied.
From the Fade I crafted you,
And to the Fade you shall return
Each night in dreams
That you may always remember Me.”

The Maker Himself gifted mages with the ability to touch the Fade - to be close to Him - and the Chantry has no right to take that away from us and turn us into mindless slaves for their own profit. The worth of a mage is directly connected to the worth that they can generate for their Circle. Mages are exploited for their magic, but nothing compares to the coin they create when they lose it. Tranquil proprietors fill countless stores throughout countless countries, performing menial and administrative functions, cleaning chambers, purchasing supplies, managing shops, archives, and records. It is a fate worse than death, and no mage deserves to suffer it.

The Chantry would claim that the Rite of Tranquility requires the approval of the First Enchanter, but the very position exists at the Knight-Commander sufferance. The oppressed are allowed, once every few years, to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress us. The First Enchanter has no real power within the Circles. The power lies with the Knight-Commander, and the templars are all too eager to use it.

Mages who aren’t made Tranquil or killed in their Harrowings are beaten, whipped, raped, locked in solitary confinement, and abused time and again. These abuses, these injustices, these atrocities, are carried out without cause and go against the Maker’s Word.

All things in this world are finite.
What one man gains, another has lost.
Those who steal from their brothers and sisters
Do harm to their livelihood and to their peace of mind.
Our Maker sees this with a heavy heart.

Mages have no recourse against these abuses, and templars are free to carry them out without limit. The Right of Annulment gives the Grand Clerics the right to authorize the Knight Commander to purge an entire Circle of its mages for the crimes of one. It was created by Divine Galatea in 2:83 in response to an abomination that killed seventy people. Seventy people, and in retaliation for their deaths, the Right has been invoked seventeen times.

Seventeen times. Even the smallest of Circles houses thousands of mages. There is nothing that justifies the massacre of an entire people. The Chantry would claim that templars exist to serve and protect mages, and yet when faced with the threat of one mage the Chantry’s response is to slaughter all of them. That is not justice. That is not temperance. That is not mercy. That is not the will of the Maker or His Bride.

Andraste would never condone the Circles as they now stand. Her plight was the plight of all mages - so reminiscent of what mages suffer she might have been a mage herself. Andraste’s sister Halliserre died in a violent incident under mysterious circumstances with Andraste present when Andraste was young, and mages come into their power in their youth. Andraste heard voices, saw auras, and heard bells in the aftermath of her sister’s death, the way a mage might hear spirits, see magic, or sense lyrium.

Her connection to the Maker in her dreams is all too akin to the connection of mages to spirits, and how better for her to be aware of Him than if she were a Dreamer in the Fade? Andraste’s Exalted March brought with it droughts, wildfires and landslides upon the Tevinter Imperium, and might just as easily have been the wrath of mage as it might have been the wrath of the Maker.

Those who oppose thee
Shall know the wrath of heaven.
Field and forest shall burn,
The seas shall rise and devour them,
The wind shall tear their nations
From the face of the earth,
Lightning shall rain down from the sky,
They shall cry out to their false gods,
And find silence.

Beneath this verse of the Canticle of Andraste are the words ‘drown us in blood’ but it does not appear to be part of the passage nor is it a known verse from the Chant of Light.

Those are the words sung by Andraste. Not by the Maker. The Canticle of Andraste was her song, her promise to Him, and it is the promise of a mage. The promise of a mage’s wrath, when that mage is faced with the oppression of their people, and that rage, that vengeance, is infinite. Andraste’s vengeance brought low the Tevinter Imperium, the same way the vengeance of mages now will bring down the Chantry. Revolutions are the catalysts of history, and mages have nothing to lose but their chains.

Mages have everything to gain in revolution. Mages have no rights to property, to marriage, to their own children. Mages who seek the company of other mages within the Circle have their children taken from them and given to the Chantry, and this is the best case for a scenario for a mage who finds themselves pregnant. Too often, mages and tranquil alike are raped by templars and forced to bear their children, to be given back to the Chantry and raised to be templars in a perpetual cycle of abuse.

The Chantry would seek to control not just mages, their minds, their magic, their bodies, but their very bloodlines. By containing magic to the Circles, the Chantry hopes to breed it out of the rest of the world. The Chantry will settle for no less than total control over mages and magic, and we must do all that we can to stand against them. If the choices are Tranquility or death, we have no choice but to make every confrontation a life-or-death struggle. We cannot reason with the Chantry when they take away our ability to reason.

The plight of mages does not fall to just one mage or just one manifesto. It falls to all mages. We all struggle against oppression. We all must strike a blow against our oppressors. We all have a responsibility to each other. Those of us who are free must act to free those who remain oppressed. We have a responsibility. We have an obligation.

There is a strange char to the scratches that follow, as if scratched with a match or flame.

Whereas the Circle was established not merely to protect the world from mages, but also to allow mages to practice their art safely and without fear, and,

Whereas under the Chantry’s command, the templars sworn to protect all people—including mages—from the harmful effects of magic, have instead persecuted mages with such biased judgment as to worsen the problems they were meant to mitigate, and,

Whereas the Rite of Tranquility intended as a tool of last resort to stop uncontrolled mages from hurting themselves or others, has instead been used for punitive and political purposes to silence dissent and inhibit civilized discourse, and,

Whereas Andraste herself intended the relationship between mage and templar to be one of practitioner and protector, not prisoner and jailer, and this contract has been broken, leaving mages in fear for their lives from those sworn to protect them,

Now, therefore, let all mages declare the following:

We, the free mages of Thedas, do hereby seek to dissolve the Circles and renounce our sworn submission to the Order of the Templars.

We reiterate Andraste's assertion that magic was made to serve man, not rule over him, and state unequivocally that we will use our abilities only to defend ourselves from those who would see us relinquish our lives and freedoms under the presumption of guilt for crimes we have not committed.

We condemn those practitioners of magic who, through illness of mind or understandable but misguided anger at those who oppressed them, would use their Maker-given powers to threaten innocent lives, and we pledge to aid any legitimate and impartial government in bringing these lawless apostates to justice.

We look earnestly to a future of cooperation between all peoples of Thedas, free from persecution and prejudice, and hope to build a better world alongside all who approach us with friendship instead of fear.

The Chantry does many good things, but it can’t be a good part of our society if it will not accept us. If it will not accept mages. Its laws were made a thousand years ago, based on fear of an empire that has long since crumbled. If it can’t acknowledge that its templars are beyond its control, it must be torn down.

It must be torn down.

It must be torn down.

It must be torn down.

Chapter 144: Survive

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading.

Chapter Text

There Is No Time
There Is No Place

They were not Anders.

They were not Justice.

They were both and they were neither and they were something in between. They were together and they were apart and they were what they needed to be to keep being. They were in solitary but not in solitude and they survived.

The cell door opened.

They left it.

Broken men awaited them, intent on escorting them from the dungeons. The men’s blood sang like daggers beneath their skin - eating them into nothing - calling from behind a door old whispers wanted opened. They were changed - incomplete - reaching - always reaching. The cloying scent of decay clung to them, mingled with some older, bigger, long forgotten thing.

Templars. Three of them. Soldiers of Hessarian - the redeemed, the penitent sinner, the compassionate - of which they were none. They wore brilliant silverite mined from pits of bone and fashioned into silver swords of mercy. Memories from the pit clung to them like motes of dust. Bone upon bone upon bone. The Veil thin enough to sunder for the suffering of the workers who bled the metal from the earth.

Hawke was among them, pacing the poorly lit corridor. He looked well-kempt despite their time apart, dressed in all his usual finery, raven strands waxed back from a strong brow, but his eyes were wild. They greeted him with a wave, and Hawke crossed the hall to slam a fist into their face. The blow staggered them, and Hawke’s rough hand on their jaw wrenched them back into a kiss more teeth than lips.

Feeling. Sensation. Touch. Even pain was welcome for how long they'd gone without. Hawke’s harsh kiss felt a chisel to a dam. Something they dare not let linger for fear of the flood of emotion that lay beyond, but it felt impossible to pull away from him: the warmth of his lips, the strength in his hands, the cracks he caused in the very foundation of their soul. With a surge of effort, they broke free to massage their bruising jaw, dragging their thumb across their lips.

Hawke saw their mutilated fingers, nails scratched down to pink flesh, and grabbed their shackled wrist. "Who did this to you?"

"We did," They took their hand back to sign.

"We? Hawke signed, glaring at whatever he saw in their eyes, but they knew their veins to be free of visible veilfire. “Damn you. Don't ever do that to me again."

"We did not do it for you," They signed. "We did it for mages."

"The mages were rioting!" Hawke signed.

"Speaking the truth," They corrected him.

"Who cares about the truth?"

"You did once."

"You're more important than the truth," Hawke signed vehemently. "You shouldn't have gotten involved. If you had just supported Meredith, none of this would have happened."

"You support her enough for all of us," They signed

"Beth was there! You were there! You both could have died!"

"If our death is what it takes to see the mages free then perhaps we should die."

"Don't you ever fucking say that," Hawke snarled, grabbing their sweat-encrusted tunic and wrenching them close. "Told you not to make a scene. What’s the first thing you did?”

“We would do it again,” They signed fiercely, prying his hand off and shoving him back. Hawke winced, shaking away the pain of their grip. “Did you do as we asked?”

‘Save them.’ They had asked nothing else of him. Three mages had escaped in the chaos, and one for three had seemed a fair exchange when the nobility could finally see there was nothing fair to it at all. They had seen the templars' reign unravel in hushed whispers as they were led away and knew no greater comfort in the confines of their cell. Surely their rescue was proof that they’d been right.

“Not here,” Hawke signed. “You have no idea how hard it was to get you out.” Hawke turned to the templars and gestured at the shackles on their wrists. “Get those fucking things off him.”

One nervous templar handed him the keys instead. Hawke unlocked them, and a resplendent surge of mana followed, but mere shackles couldn’t keep them from the Fade. The shackles were irrelevant. The cell was irrelevant. The templars were irrelevant. Hawke’s rescue, while welcome, was irrelevant. The mages were relevant. The cause was relevant.

They left the dungeons at their own pace, tapping on each door they passed, whistling gentle tunes that carried through the wood to the souls still trapped within. A few whistled back - and they lingered when they did. Whistling, laughing, rapping at the door or leaning back against it in their efforts to reach through it. There was no such thing as solitary. They would not allow it.

Time was irrelevant. They couldn’t say how much they spared each mage, but it never seemed to be enough. “Don’t go!” One of the prisoners screamed through the door when they stepped away from it. Her voice was small and hoarse, but the door rattled with her strength when she flung herself against it. “Please don’t leave me!”

“Pretty girl like you?” They stopped to call back through the wood. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“You’re not allowed to talk to them,” One of the templars warned them.

“Stop us,” They dared - their voices echoing together. The templar took a nervous step back.

“What are you doing?” Hawke signed.

“She wants to talk,” They signed. “We were not the only ones in solitary.”

“And you want to go back into it?” Hawke demanded. “Stop testing them. We have to go.”

“Go then,” They signed.

“Pretty?” The mage called back, her watery laugh muffled through the door. ”Shaved my head before throwing me in here to keep the lice away from me.”

“Too bad for the lice,” They joked.

“Oh, I still have lice,” The mage promised.

They whistled playfully, and won a laugh for it. The templars escorting them shuffled anxiously, glancing down either end of the hall as if for fear someone would overhear the conversation. Hawke moved to pull them away from the mage’s door, but they deflected his hand and shoved him back.

“I don’t know your voice,” The mage confessed.

“You will,” They said. “We’ll come back.”

“You promise?”

“We promise.”

“... Can you sing that song again?” The mage begged.

“They’re not allowed visitors in solitary,” One of the templars finally broke, a bulky looking fellow whose sunburst sash strained to contain his gut. “Let’s go, Warden."

The templar took a step towards them. Hawke stepped between them, hand to a shortsword at his hip. One of the other templars grabbed the first, so lean and lanky he seemed a skeleton, rattling nervously in his armor and through his apologies as he dragged his fellow away, “Excuse him, Champion - Warden. Take your time, Champion - Warden. Sorry, Champion - Warden.”

Anders and Justice whistled. Hawke paced. The templars argued across the hall.

“Do you have a death wish?” The lanky templar whispered. “What are you doing?”

“My duty,” The bulky one whispered back.

“You weren’t at the Chantry,” Lanky said. “Don’t touch him.”

“Okay,” Bulky held up his hands. “Andraste. It’s not like he killed anyone.”

“He could have! He ate a smite from the bloody Knight-Commander.”

“That’s just a rumor,” Bulky said.

“Lot of rumors,” The third chimed in - short and stocky enough to rival a dwarf. “Rumor he bested her. Rumor she bested him. Rumor he spared her life. Rumor she spared his. You really wanna find out which rumor’s real?”

"Alright, calm down,” Bulky said. “He can't be that tough. She still got him in chains didn't she?"

“Because he let her,” Lanky insisted.

"Wardens are martyrs,” Stocky agreed.

“He’s not a martyr," Bulky spat. "He’s a mage."

“Not our mage,” Stocky said. “We’re lucky we’re letting him out before word gets back to them.”

“Three of our mages escaped because he got involved,” Bulky argued. “Knight-Commander had to hold someone responsible.”

“Shouldn’t have been him,” Stocky said.

“Well I don’t see the First Enchanter down here, do you?” Bulky asked.

“Rumor was Grand Cleric wouldn’t let the Knight-Commander take him,” Stocky said.

“The Warden wouldn’t let her take him,” Lanky corrected his fellows. “You didn’t hear his speech. If the Grand Cleric hadn’t stepped in the Warden would have turned the whole Chantry against her.”

“Treason,” Bulky muttered.

“Truth,” Stocky said.

The mage calmed enough for them to continue after a few songs, and they moved on, the templars and Hawke hastening after them. Lanky sidled up beside them. “Sorry it took so long to let you out, Warden.”

"Time is irrelevant," They said.

“Sure seemed relevant to the Champion,” Bulky pointed out.

“Shut up,” Stocky elbowed him.

“He can't hear me,” Bulky said.

“Warden can, what if he signs it?”

“Meant no offense,” Bulky mumbled.

“The Circle means nothing else,” They said.

They left the dimly lit dungeon for the Circle proper. Even the architecture was oppressive. Cramped, unending corridors echoed with their footsteps, and the footsteps of the mages that flooded from their quarters as news of their release spread through the Gallows. They reached a crossroads on their way out of the fortress, and the crowds grew too numerous to continue through.

Mages clamored for their attention, begging all manner of favors. The truth of what happened at the Chantry, word from their families, news of the outside world, recruitment into the Grey Wardens. A few desperate souls even went so far as to smuggle letters into their pockets. The templars were overwhelmed, and Bulky ran for backup.

“Anders!” Bethany called from the crowd, shoving herself through a sea of robes to fling herself into their arms. “Anders, thank the Maker! The idiocy! I thought they were going to kill you! You can’t die for him - he doesn’t deserve it.”

“No mage deserves this, Beth,” They said.

“You’re right,” Bethany whispered, amber eyes flicking anxiously between the few templars yelling for the rest of the mages to clear out. “I did what you said - I got the Libertarians to read your manifesto. All of us. The Resolutionists and the Isolationists too. The Lucrosians-”

“Back to your rooms!” A templar screamed, storming the hall with a group of his fellows. “All of you - back to your rooms!”

Half the mages scattered, and became a number more manageable for the templars that had come to corral them. One of them grabbed Bethany and pulled her out of their arms. Hawke grabbed the templar in response and shoved him away from his sister, snarling threats. Bethany retreated despite her brother’s defense, signing frantically as she eyed the templars dissolving the crowd. “They caught Evelina - Huon too. They killed them. Anders, they killed them.”

“Emile?” They signed back.

“I don’t know,” Bethany signed and fled.

“Please, gentlemen!” Orsino’s voice rang out through the hall, the First Enchanter pushing through the few mages who refused to disperse. He looked exhausted, his eyes sunken so deep into his skull it was impossible so see the color, grey hair receding back past his pointed ears. For all they may have saved him from one injustice, it was clear they could not save him from them all. “I see no harm in allowing the Warden a moment with his own kind.”

“I do,” Meredith countered; templars and mages alike scattered at her approach. Golden hair spilled from beneath a crimson hood and crown, silverite armor decorated with chains and a sunburst sash, in some unholy fusion of Knight-Commander and Chantry Sister. She was already tall, but her heels left her towering over her men and mages alike. “I will not allow this to continue. Leave - before you do more damage than you already have.”

“Sign,” Hawke signed.

“She wants us to leave,” They signed.

“Good. I want us to leave,” Hawke signed.

“No,” They signed back, stepping around him and struggling to speak in the singular for the benefit of those gathered. “That’s it? Let me out and send me on my way?”

“Consider yourself fortunate I let you out at all,” Meredith said, hand to the hilt of her sword. The engravings on the crossguard could almost be mistaken for garnet. Almost, but not quite. They recognized the backwards song - and the red lyrium that sang it. She called loudly over her shoulder. “Ser Thrask!”

Thrask stumbled free of the lineup of templars in the hall. Somehow, he was awake, but no one had told his hair. The auburn strands were flattened on one side of his head and curled on the other, his beard curling forward like a slide from being tugged one too many times. “Knight-Commander?”

“Fetch a translator for the Champion,” Meredith said. “I do not trust the Warden.”

“Yes, Knight-Commander,” Thrask bowed his way back into the crowd and vanished.

“That’s rich, coming from you,” They said.

“I will not be lectured by a criminal,” Meredith said.

“You had no right to arrest me in the first place,” They said, signing and not waiting for the translator. “How long did it take before the people were rioting on your doorstep?”

“Your sedition afforded three mages the opportunity to escape,” Meredith scowled.

“My sedition?” They scoffed. “Not a single thought given to the fact that you templars brought all of this upon yourselves?”

“You have poisoned the people of this city against me,” Meredith hissed. “Would you have me do nothing in response when rogue mages threaten this city?”

“We would have you not paint us all with the same brush!” Orsino joined in, taking a place at his side. “Not all mages are waiting for the opportunity to wreak havoc!”

“You know as well as I that temptation preys on every mage, no matter how noble their intentions,” Meredith said. “The apostates proved a threat that could not go unanswered.”

“Unmurdered you mean,” They corrected her. “We know you killed them.”

“They chose their fate when they fled,” Meredith said.

Thrask returned, a Tranquil on his heels, who took up a quiet spot beside Meredith and started signing.

“So the templars are absolved of all responsibility?” They demanded. “You can’t be that big an idiot.”

“Be very careful, mage,” Meredith spat the word like a curse. “Your relationship with the Champion and the Wardens protects you only so much.”

“You hear this, yes?” Orsino demanded, gesturing between Meredith and Hawke and waiting for the Tranquil to sign out both sides of the argument. “She would keep your lover locked up if she were able.”

“Do not hide behind the Champion,” Meredith said quickly before Hawke could finish following along with the signs. “He saved this city, unlike some who threaten it with their misguided outrage.”

“You push us into desperate acts, and then use that as justification to press even further!” Orsino threw up his hands. “Is it any wonder they ran when your templars began smiting us!?”

“You would rather we loose apostates on the city!?” Meredith shot back. “I will not sacrifice the well being of innocents for the sake of a few mages. I will not!”

“You’ve gone too far and you know it,” They snarled. “Huon and Evelina were good people - and you killed them. He saved the alienage during the invasion. She saved orphans before it. They risked everything for this city. Maybe if you’d never taken them to the Circle, they’d have no reason to escape it!”

“There are maybes enough to fill half the graves in Kirkwall!” Meredith spat. “I will not add more to the pile. Ask the Champion if he shares your opinion. He knows all too well how his own mother died at a blood mage’s hands.”

“Leave his mother out of this,” They stormed forward, leaving no distance for Meredith to draw her sword save to unsheath the hilt of it into his gut if it came to blows. Meredith tensed, and they wouldn’t have been surprised if the thought crossed her mind.

“Cold corpses speak louder than abstract freedoms, do they not?” Meredith asked. She sounded almost convincingly sad, but her eyes were cold and blue as lyrium. She turned them on the Tranquil. “Sign it. Ask the Champion. I would hear his answer.”

“Now who is the one hiding behind the Champion?” Orsino demanded. “When will this end? When will you stop seeing evil in every corner?”

“When it is no longer there,” Meredith said,

“This argument isn’t helping matters,” Hawke said when the Tranquil finished signing for him. “It didn’t help in the Chantry and it isn’t helping now.”

“I am through trying to help her!” Orsino stole the words from their mouth. “She will not be helped!”

“Justice shall be tempered by mercy,” Meredith said.

“What you people know about justice could fit into a thimble,” They snarled.

“That has never been your code,” Orsino added. “The city will not submit to your rule. You will find that not everyone bows to your will, Knight-Commander. The Warden stands with us - and so does the Champion.”

“I don’t need anyone speaking for me,” Hawke said when the Tranquil finished signing.

“Indeed. You are naïve, Orsino,” Meredith scoffed. “You think because the Champion’s sister is in the Circle that he must despise it? I understand the Champion better than anyone here. We share the same history. My sister was a mage. Her name was Amelia. She was a kind, gentle soul, and completely unprepared for such a burden. My family hid her too. We knew she could never last in the Circles or past their rigorous tests.”

“You bloody hypocrite,” They snarled. “You broke the laws you tell everyone to abide by now?”

“I did, yes,” Meredith confessed, to no particular shock of anyone gathered. The templars must have known. The mages must have known. Even Hawke must have known. “My sister was terrified and utterly grateful for our efforts. We thought we were doing the right thing... but then she was possessed by a demon. My sister killed our family and I only barely escaped.

“Before the templars brought her down she had slain seventy innocents. So I understand perfectly well why the mages struggle, as well as why the laws we uphold are so vital.”

“That doesn’t justify what you’ve done,” They argued. “You’ve turned this whole thing into a crusade. The laws aren’t yours to uphold. You’re not the bloody Viscount!”

“I will serve as I am called upon to serve. I will not allow my sister’s death to be without purpose. It will serve as a reminder of where good intentions can lead. I have sympathy for mages. They suffer a terrible curse, but it is one that carries a price they must not deny. Answer me, Champion, have I gone too far?”

“You’ve gone mad, is what you’ve gone,” They spat.

“Many are assumed to be mad,” Meredith said. “Right up until the point they are proven correct.”

“And others are thought mad right up until they’re dragged screaming into the asylum,” They said.

“Enough,” Hawke said and signed. “We’re leaving.”

“Good,” Meredith said.

Hawke grabbed their arm and dragged them down the hall, shouldering through templars and mages alike.

“Warden,” Meredith called after them. “If you will not hear the Champion’s opinion, then perhaps you should hear his deeds. No templar of mine killed Huon or Evelina.”

A lie. It couldn’t have been true. Hawke wouldn’t have done such a thing. He had come to the Chantry to save lives, not take them. They looked to him, but Hawke hadn't heard the comment and had no reaction to it. The templars escorted them from the Gallows and onto the ferry.

The waters were as tumultuous as their thoughts. They churned beneath them, rocking the deck and knocking them into Hawke. He wrapped an arm around their shoulders to steady them, but it felt just another templar’s chain. He even smelled the same. The Twins of Kirkwall loomed, bronze slaves sobbing into their hands as if in sympathy as the basalt cliffs closed in around them like yet another cage.

The servants were gone from the estate when they returned. They couldn’t speak to their departure, or anything but Hawke when they were finally alone with him. No sooner did they step inside than they grabbed Hawke’s shoulder and spun him around, cornering him in the entry hall.

“You killed them!?” They signed. Three mages had fled in the chaos of the Chantry, and of the three, at least two were dead at Hawke’s hand. They’d asked nothing else of him before they’d left with Meredith. They’d suffered solitary for nothing. Nothing but the chance to show the nobility that Meredith was out of control, but the opinions of the nobility were nothing compared to the lives of the mages.

“Let go of him,” Hawke ordered.

“Answer the question!” They signed.

“Let go of him, damn you,” Hawke shot back. “You think I don’t know you’re controlling him? I can see it in your eyes. I swear on the Maker, Justice, I’ll find some way to kill you before I let you take him from me.”

“We are not Justice anymore than we are Anders,” They signed. “Answer our question.”

“It’s not that simple,” Hawke signed.

“We told you to save them,” Their hands split with lightning, and it was all they could do to keep from grabbing Hawke with them. Electricity crackled through the foyer, richoching off the walls and charring the woodwork. “We asked nothing else of you!”

“I tried!” Hawke snapped. A spark of lightning cracked in the air, a hairsbreadth to his left, and he didn’t so much as flinch. “You think I didn’t!?”

“We do not know what to think!” They signed. “You have assured it!”

“You don’t know what to think because you’re possessed!” Hawke said. “Justice is driving you mad. Damnit, Anders, can you even hear me?”

“Of course we can hear you,” They signed. “How could you kill them!?”

“With good aim,” Hawke signed.

They slammed their forearm into Hawke’s chest, pinning him to the door. Lightning still crashed through the room, casting a strange white light across Hawke’s skin until they managed to stop the spell. “Why!?” They shouted - their echo loud enough for Hawke to hear.

“They were blood mages, Anders,” Hawke said, unrepentant. “Huon sacrificed his wife right in front of me, and Evelina bled herself to death.”

“Why!?”

“You think I stopped to ask!?”

“You should have stopped to save them!” They signed.

“From what? Themselves?” Hawke demanded. “I saved who I could.”

“Emile?”

“On a boat,” Hawke signed.

“One,” They let go of Hawke to pace, dragging their hand through their hair, flaxen strands matted into straw from their time in solitary. “One of three. And the nobles?”

“You proved your point,” Hawke said. “They’re against her - that doesn’t mean they’re not scared of her.”

“Then we must give them courage,” They decided.

“No,” Hawke grabbed their shoulder. They smacked his hand off, and Hawke shoved them back against the entry table. A vase went crashing off and onto the floor, scattering porcelain and petals while stale water soaked into the rug. “You’re not doing this. You keep pushing Meredith, next time she won’t just take you prisoner, she’ll make you Tranquil.”

“Then kill us,” They signed.

“You think I could?” Hawke barked a laugh - he sounded stricken. “Damnit, Anders, look at me.” They looked, but there was nothing to see but a broken man and all his broken things, themselves among them.

“If you love us, you would kill us as we killed Karl,” They signed. “Do you love us or not?”

“I love Anders,” Hawke snarled, giving them another shake as if it would separate them.

“Then you would not let him live as a templar’s puppet,” They signed.

“So he should live as your puppet instead?” Hawke demanded. “Let go of him.”

“No,” They signed. “You know what we are. We’re monsters. We’re liars. We never claimed we would do anything but hurt you. If you cannot accept that then you cannot accept us. You swore you would do it once before - before you loved him. Swear it again now. Swear you will kill him.”

Hawke glared at them, his eyes a dull russet in the dim light of the entryway. The scent of burnt wood from their lightning storm filled the air, tendrils of smoke rising from the few charred scars their anger had left on the estate, but not on Hawke. Hawke raised a hand to their face, fingers clenched as if he couldn’t decide on an open palm or closed fist, and they expected a strike. One never came. Hawke dragged his thumb across their forehead instead.

“... Don’t give me a reason,” Hawke said softly.

“Swear.”

“On my father’s grave.”

“Swear on Carver’s.”

“... why?”

“You loved him more.”

“... On Carver’s then.” Hawke let go of them, a heavy sigh pulling the strength from his shoulders. “Let go of him.”

“We cannot,” They signed. “We know you don’t understand our cause, but you must support it.”

“I believe in your cause,” Hawke might have lied. They could no longer tell. “Just not the way you go about it.”

“Revolutions do not happen peacefully,” They argued. “There’s no one in Kirkwall we wouldn’t kill to see mages free.”

“There’s a better solution.”

“No.”

“If you talk to the Grand Cleric-”

“No.”

“If Meredith steps down-”

“You were there!” They shouldn’t have had to remind him. “You were at the Chantry! You were at the Circle! They see mages as monsters. They can’t imagine a world with room for all of us.”

“If you want mages to be free, you need to convince people you’re not dangerous,” Hawke argued.

“Impossible!” They threw up their hands, shoving free of Hawke and heading for their room.

“All you’re doing is proving the templars right,” Hawke called after them.

A bath helped them recover. Their beard was trimmed, their hair washed and plaited. They re-pierced their ears - a vanity, but a comforting one - and dressed in freshly laundered clothes of wool, fur, and feathers enchanted with their blood to take to their skin as needed. They allowed themselves a moment in the mirror after, content in the transformation, and left to gather their things.

Hawke was waiting for them in the bedroom, massaging away what must have been a headache, a half-empty glass of wine on his desk. He’d fetched a meal for them as well to judge by the two plates on his desk. “What are you doing now?” Hawke asked.

“There is work to be done,” They explained.

“What work?” Hawke asked. “You just got out of solitary and you’re going straight back to the clinic?”

“There is work to be done,” They signed stubbornly.

“Eat something first,” Hawke ordered, shutting the door before they could leave through it.

“We cannot delay.”

“Either you eat it or I feed it to you,” Hawke threatened.

They ate. Hawke ate with them, and while they felt no better, they felt fuller and fatigued.

“Be back before dark,” Hawke said.

“We will,” They signed.

The clinic could wait. The cause was more pressing. They went to the Hanged Man, and found Varric in his quarters. The stout dwarf wore his blonde hair as they once did, pulled back into a simple ponytail that kept it from falling into his square face as he poured over paperwork at his low stonetable.

“We must speak with you,” They said, shutting the door behind them.

“Blondie!” Varric scattered his papers, scrambling out of his chair. “Praise the Ancestors - I thought Hawke was going to tear the Gallows down stone by stone until her Ladyship let you out. How are you doing?”

“The Knight Commander has gone mad,” They said.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Varric said. “Really. What happened at the Chantry? Did you really duel her Ladyship? Defend a dozen mages from a dozen templars? Stop a templar coup? Heal a hundred nobles? Go full fisticuffs with the Grand Cleric?”

“The Knight Commander has red lyrium,” They said.

“Oh,” Varric wrung his hands together, tugging at his prosthetic.

“... You knew,” They realized.

“No!” Varric said quickly, “Well… okay, yeah. Bartrand was selling the stuff, after all. It’s been hard prying a list of his clients out of him, but… someone who smells like blood? Easy. Creepy Senior. Someone with hair that glittered like the sun? Double easy. Her Ladyship. It’s the rest of them that are giving me trouble.”

“Trouble!?” They demanded. “You know what red lyrium does to people. Your own brother has fallen to madness and in almost two years we have yet to find a cure save to chisel away at the spread of corruption seeping through his skin and poisoning his blood. You would leave the Circle beholden to such evil!? How long have you known!?”

“Easy there, Blue,” Varric took a cautious step back. “It’s not like I had any proof beyond Bartrand’s ravings, and even if I did, who was I supposed to tell? The Viscount in her pocket? The Grand Cleric under her boot?”

“Us!” They said. “You were supposed to tell us!”

“So you could do what?” Varric asked. “Kill her in the street? Blue - just take a second and think about this, would you?”

“The time for thought has passed,” They said. “There can be only action.”

A crow flew from the Hanged Man to the Collective Packaging House, and found Mistress Selby taking tea in her quarters on the second story. They were modest, a cushioned couch that doubled as a bed with a drawer built beneath it that served as an armoire. Her wheelchair took up one corner of the room, arranged before a small tea table, and something like a shrine occupied the other. Shelves, filled with piles of unset letters to and from all the mages they hadn’t managed to save.

They knocked, and Selby looked up from her tea with a weary and watery smile. The old Collective Leader looked even more exhausted than Orsino, if such a thing were possible, sagging under the weight of her dress and all her responsibilities. “As I live and breathe… we heard they’d taken you.”

“They did,” They said, pulling up the only other chair to join her at the table.

“But you escaped.”

“As many times as it takes.”

“There’s a good lad,” Selby reached across the table and squeezed their hand. Her touch was soft and slight, her palms wrinkled with age few mages would ever live to see. “We’ll get you on a ship tomorrow.”

“We are not leaving,” They said.

“I don’t want to see you back there,” Selby shook her head, silver strands spilling free from a sloppy bun. “None of us do. Not even Bancroft. The poor man was distraught.”

“They can’t take us back,” They promised. “They had no right to hold us to begin with.”

“... Praise the Wardens,” Selby decided. “What are you doing here, love? Shouldn’t you be resting? I know where they were keeping you. I know what you’ve been through. No one will blame you if you take some time for yourself.”

“We cannot. We have an obligation.”

“You keep saying we, love. Why?”

“Because we are us, and not one or the other.”

“You and your spirit, you mean?” Selby guessed. “You’re together?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

They thought of the cell. The solitude. The painful dark. The chilling cold. Their bleeding hands and unanswered prayers.

“... because we cannot be apart.”

Chapter 145: Darktown’s Deal

Notes:

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Chapter Text

There Is No Time
It Is Dark and Damp

Flickers of orange light skittered like roaches in the far distance as they waited in the blackened corridor. Torchlight illuminated the undercity as the destitute and the downtrodden shuffled from shelter to shelter. Burning barrels, makeshift hearths, decrepit chandeliers flickering with age-old enchantments. Even light was a luxury this far below the earth.

It felt reminiscent of the Deep Roads - save that darkspawn were few and far between in Kirkwall. They still emerged on occasion, clawing their way up through the city’s cavernous underbelly like rats to feast upon the dead and the dying. It was almost a comfort to battle such a simple evil, such a rectifiable injustice. They missed it on the rare occasions they had cause to fight against it.

They had other battles to fight. Darkspawn, while a threat, were more or less contained below the surface between the Blights. Scattered raiding parties struck out at remote villages on occasion, but that was why the Grey Wardens existed. Mages had no such champions - and they desperately needed them. All eyes were on Kirkwall - and the City of Chains was setting a dangerous precedent.

They heard bits and pieces from the post, the cryers, their missives with the Dowager and the Mage’s Collective. In the aftermath of the Qunari Invasion, aid had flooded into Kirkwall, and news had flooded out. The Champion of Kirkwall had defeated the Qunari. The Viscount had been slain, and the Knight Commander had replaced him. The Chantry was in charge of the city, and there was no telling how many other cities would follow.

The Mage’s Collective had already lost contact with Tantervale. There, Chantry law was all but absolute, and the city guard was obsessed with its enforcement. That obsession was spreading into Hasmal. Escaped slaves and refugees flooded into the city from Tevinter, and the Mage’s Collective helped them escape along the Minanter, but fewer and fewer apostates made it down the river to Starkhaven.

Goran Vael still ruled, and Flora Harimann still ruled through him, but the longer Meredith and her templars ruled Kirkwall, the more emboldened the templars of other cities became. The more devout of the nobility resisted Goran’s rule, there were whispers of civil war as they threw their backing behind Sebastian or Corbinian. With the river unsafe to travel, apostates were chased south into the Wildervale.

Kirkwall’s Collective had their resources stretched thin rescuing them. Markham’s Collective helped, but Ostwick’s Collective was infested with Aequitarians, and was more of a Research Exchange than it was a Mage Underground. The safest place for apostates in the Free Marches was in Wycome and Hercinia, to the far east, where the Chantry’s hold was lax and their manifesto spread faster than the Chant.

To get them there, they needed allies. They heard Fenris before they saw him. He sang with lyrium and all the emerald waters of the Fade. The very substance of creation itself from whence the Maker fashioned the world, if the Chant of Light was to be believed, and they tried. Despite all the Chantry had done to them, they tried. Clinging to canticles, to verses, to a single word, to some small semblance of faith when they’d lost so much of it over the years.

Something to assure them that this was not what the Maker had intended. That magic was His blessing and not His curse. That they were still His children, first and second, and there could be love between them. That the injustices of the world, if there by design, were theirs to rectify and not theirs to suffer. That they were not alone in their belief.

Fenris was dressed in a heavy woolen cloak, brown hood pulled low over his pointed ears, a faint blue glow showing at his wrists, his ankles, around his neck. He was as subtle as he could be, given the lyrium etched into his skin. He carried a massive burlap sack over his shoulder, and dropped it at their feet when he joined them. It hit the ground with a wet crack. "As requested."

"Thank you," They hefted the bundle into their arms, and felt the shifting of limbs within.

“I will not ask why you need this if you will not ask why I have it,” Fenris said.

"We trust it was a just death," They said.

"A slaver," Fenris volunteered.

"Thank you," They said again.

They started down the corridor, and Fenris called after them. “Mage.”

“Yes?” They glanced over their shoulder at him.

“... have you a need for more aid?”

They turned around. “More bodies?”

“More anything,” Fenris shrugged, shuffling from foot to foot.

“... you know what you’re aiding, don’t you?” They asked.

“Why are you questioning me?” Fenris demanded. “Do you wish my aid or not?”

“We would not deceive you into it,” They said. They had enough deception in their lives with Hawke.

“You speak of deception where you should speak of debt,” Fenris said. “You help me with my Friends. Should I not help you in turn?”

“Our friends are magic,” They said. “We know your feelings on them.”

“Do not presume to know how I feel,” Fenris snapped, with a quick glance over his shoulder to ensure their solitude in the corridor. “You think I have not heard the way you speak of late? You think I do not know you and your” - with a visible amount of effort, Fenris swallowed back whatever he’d been about to say - “your spirit are some shared consciousness now?”

“You haven’t said anything about it,” They noted.

“Is there a need for me to say something?” Fenris asked.

“No.”

“Then I will not,” Fenris said, too easily.

It shouldn’t have been that easy. Nothing ever was. Few individuals knew the truth of their condition since Hawke had freed them from solitary - and even fewer supported it. Hawke had wasted no time asserting that Justice had taken hold of them and refused to release them. A lie, but the fear that it might be true was still there, beaten back by whatever part of them was Anders. They were no demon.

Possessed. Monster. Abomination. Whatever their title, they would wear it together. They would wear it for each other. They would wear it for the cause. “When you help us, you’re helping mages.”

“Were you not the one who said that I should help them?” Fenris asked. “Did you not say they were slaves?”

“They are slaves,” They said.

“Well then?” Fenris gestured to the corpse they were carrying. “What now?”

The woman was light; beneath the coarse texture of the fabric they could feel the shift of fat, muscle, and bone. The body had begun to drain, soaking into the burlap and staining it a darker shade of russet, but it was whole and it would serve. The templars would look no further than the assurance that the woman was dead - discarded and forgotten in the cells beneath their wretched prison. A fate befitting a slaver, but not the young woman who had prayed so fervently for just one more song.

They had promised. They had promised to free her and they had an obligation to see that promise fulfilled. Red lyrium was all too akin to the Taint - a corruption that eroded sanity and the soul. They could leave no mages to the mercy of the Knight Commander so long as she was under its influence. The mages had to be freed - even if they had to free them one mage at a time. The Gallows were only the beginning. They would see the city, the Free Marches, the very whole of Thedas, freed from the templars’ tyranny.

Further help from Fenris, while welcome, was unnecessary. The elves were yet more victims of Meredith’s rise to power - and they would not have the blood of another friend on their hands. “Now you should go,” They said. “You don’t want to be caught outside the alienage after curfew.”

“I am but a day away from getting caught outside the alienage before curfew,” Fenris rolled his eyes, unconcerned.

“By Danarius?” They guessed, shifting the weight of the corpse in their arms.

“By the guard, at this rate,” Fenris said. "Aveline claims she will have no choice but to restrict elves to the alienage if the riots continue.”

“Why doesn’t she just build a Circle for you while she’s at it?” They asked, indignation mixing with amusement in their tangled soul at the predictability of it all. Aveline’s fight against Meredith’s right to rule may as well have been for show. Aveline answered to the Viscount, and the Viscount answered to Meredith. After almost a year of losing battles, orange and silver were all but interchangeable.

“You speak as though the alienage is any different,” Fenris said, pulling his hood a little lower over his face, as if that alone could hide his height, his build, his reflective eyes.

“They haven’t made you Tranquil yet,” They pointed out.

“Nor you,” Fenris said. “Wonders never cease.”

“What did the hahren say about the riots?” They asked.

“Who do you suspect is leading them?” Fenris raised an eyebrow, with another wave at the body. “Huon’s death did not go over as well as our friend’s here.”

More indignation. Less amusement. They hadn’t known Huon. They hadn’t needed to. Everything they’d needed to know about him, they’d learned the day he’d sacrificed himself for his people. The elf had outed himself for a mage and a maleficar to save the vhenadahl - the giant oak at the center of the alienage and one of the elves last ties to their homeland of Arlathan. He’d used his blood to cast a blizzard to put out the fires over the alienage. It was a wonder Huon hadn’t been made Tranquil the moment he’d been captured.

For all it had mattered. Hawke had killed him all the same.

“Were you there?” They asked. “When he died?”

“No."

“Hawke said he killed his wife,” They recalled. “That he sacrificed her.”

“And you believe him?” Fenris scoffed.

“Should we not?” They asked.

“Hawke has hardly been believable of late,” Fenris said.

“What do you mean?”

“He is changed since Isabela... perhaps before. He is paranoid.”

“That’s something coming from you."

“I fear because I must,” Fenris frowned, just a little. “You hold the proof of it in your arms. Danarius yet lives - and I am still hunted. Hawke is not. He fears because he can. He sees enemies in every corner, and if he cannot find them, he invents them. In your templars. In his blood mages.”

“He doesn’t have to invent them - they exist - or have you forgotten our time in solitary?”

“I have not forgotten you went there willingly,” Fenris countered. “I have no doubt you could have freed yourselves as you free mages now.”

“Are you actually defending us?”

“Would you rather I not?”

“It’s just… a change from the ‘all mages are evil’ diatribe.”

“They are not,” Fenris’ frown faded, a hesitant smile rising in its stead. “Though one in particular can be very annoying. ”

“We’re telling Merrill,” They joked.

“I was not speaking of her,” Fenris said.

“You haven’t spoken of her at all.”

“Do you need my help or not?”

“We do not,” They hesitated all the same. “... Thank you, Fenris. You have been a good friend.”

“You may speak in the plural. Not in the past,” Fenris left.

The caves beneath the Waking Sea had been ravaged but not ruined in the aftermath of Bardel’s death. The damage left by their earthquake had been irrevertible, but by the Maker’s mercy a path to the Gallows survived. It had taken years of structural and navigational work from the Collective, the Coterie, and the Carta, but they’d found it.

Naught but veilfire illuminated the sunken passageways. Their footsteps echoed through the limestone caverns until they dead-ended into a grotto. Glowing lichen made a slow crawl up the stalactites that dripped into the underground lake, illuminating the cavern in a pale green light. A small rowboat lay discarded by the shore, and there was nowhere to sail it but down.

It served for air, upended and underwater, and was a risk few were willing to take. There were easier ways to smuggle mages out of the Gallows. Ships docked daily, unloading supplies or loading enchantments, and any number of mages could always slip out among them. Yet more ships didn’t dock at all, but lingered under cover of shadow beside the rocky fortress for those brave enough to scale down the walls and trust themselves not to be dashed upon the rocks.

But those rescues took time. They took planning. They took raiding parties. This just took them. Stripping out of everything but their trousers, they left their clothes in a neat pile on the shore. The waters were cold, and a casing of primal magic warmed them for the swim. They dragged the boat and corpse underwater with them, a feat in itself to keep both from floating to the top of the cavern where they might get stuck among the stalactites.

Keran was waiting for them on the other end when they emerged, violet robes swirling about his silverite tipped boots as he paced back and forth in the caverns connected to the Gallow's storerooms and drainage system. The newest member of the Mage’s Collective was nothing like the man he’d replaced. Bardel was calm and composed, with chivalry to put a chevalier to shame.

Keran was paranoid. His eyes were a piercing shade of blue, and they were always moving, darting from corner to corner as he paced. Aside from his eyes, he was relatively unassuming. He had an average build and a relatively handsome face, with short blonde hair and the thought of a goatee in his stubble. He'd joined the templars not for any hatred of magic or love of the Chantry, but to provide for his family.

He had a good heart, and it made him an easy mark. He’d been one of the Resolutionist's first victims. The radical sect of mage insurrectionists had taken to capturing templars and forcing demons into them in an attempt to overthrow the Order. Decimus had been one of them - but Anders and Justice had thought the group too dangerous. The Resolutionists were too willing to place mages and innocents at risk to achieve their goals, but of late, it seemed mages and innocents were at risk anyway.

Keran, or what was left of him, had sought them out after seeing them at the Chantry. Because he agreed with them, but more than that, because he was like them.

"You're late," Keran said. His skin cracked, all along his veins at his neck and up to his ears. Shards of ice lanced through the split skin, like frozen stitches, holding him together. The episode lasted only as long as it took them to blink, and he was human again.

"Fear," They said.

"Keran," The abomination corrected them. "We have to be Keran here. Why are you late?"

"We were speaking with a friend.” They set down both boat and corpse, limestone cool against bare feet, and dried themselves off with another surge of primal magic. “You need not concern yourselves.”

"I'm always concerned," Keran grabbed the boat, and dragged it to a more acceptable hiding spot behind a collection of stalagmites. "I'm always afraid."

"You’re always Fear," They said, picking the body back up. The water added weight to the burlap, and it took an aura of enhancement to carry. “How is it no one knows?”

“How does no one know about you?” Keran countered, leading them through the limestone tunnels back towards the Gallows. He spoke in hushed whispers, forcing the occasional stop at every crossroads to ensure no one came across them.

“We are no demon.”

“What’s wrong with demons?”

“Asked the templar.”

“Asked Fear,” Keran whispered, eyes glowing a vibrant sapphire when he glanced back at them. “Keran’s fear sustains me. Are you not sustained by your mortal in turn?”

“It is not the same.”

“How is it not?”

“Justice is an ideal,” They said. “Something to pursue. Fear is something to suffer.”

“I suffer willingly,” Keran said.

“... as do we,” They supposed.

“You learn to love the fear,” Keran said. “The racing of your heart. I know it wasn’t what the Resolutionists meant to happen when they kidnapped me - I know everyone else died to their demons - but Fear was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Is that the only reason you’re helping us?” They asked. “Because you’re afraid of being caught?”

“No,” Keran said. “We’re starting something. Something on the inside while you work on the outside. Mages and templars working together. Isn’t that what we all want?”

“We want an end to the Circles.”

“The Circles aren’t the problem, Meredith is. She needs to go. She’ll cause open war with the mages if she stays in charge. We have to take her down. We need a real Viscount, and templars who protect mages, not massacre them.”

“Who is we?”

“The Resolutionists. After the Champion saved me, they found me - found us - again. They threatened to reveal us if we didn’t help them… it was terrifying.” From the wistful way Keran spoke, terrifying might have been interchangeable with thrilling. Even so, the Resolutionists had forced a possession on Keran. It didn’t seem like anything could be thrilling enough to forgive that.

“And you’re still working with them?” They asked.

“They’re not all violent,” Keran said. “Their leader has been working on the inside for years - one mage, one templar at a time - teaching us we don’t have to hate each other."

“Who is he?”

“... Swear to secrecy,” Keran said.

“We swear it,” They said.

“The mages and the templars each have their own leader. Ours is Thrask,” Keran said. ”He showed us Meredith isn’t the only way.”

Thrask. Hawke’s friend. Varric’s friend. Anders’ friend. It was no wonder he slept away his days if he was busy leading an insurrection with his nights. They believed it. It was too easy to believe. Thrask’s daughter had been a mage, and he’d kept her from the Circles all her life, only for her to die trying to escape them. His hatred for the Circles - and for Meredith - was as vast as the Void.

“And the mage?”

“Grace,” Keran said.

“No wonder she refused rescue.”

“Her husband led the Resolutionists in Starkhaven before they burned their Circle down,” Keran explained.

“We know,” They said.

The limestone tunnels came to an abrupt end as the Gallow’s drainage system collapsed into them. They climbed a makeshift stairwell of rubble up into the sewers, and from there it was a short walk to a ladder that led them up into the dungeons.

“Just the one,” Keran led them through the dungeons, passing one cell after the next, to the door of the mage they’d met in solitary. “We’re getting a dozen apprentices in from Tantervale next week. I can get you three then.”

“Good,” They said. “We will take them.”

“They only speak Tevene,” Keran warned them. “They won’t make it here. Children never do when they have to learn the language before their lessons. The Knight Commander never holds back their Harrowings… some of the children only get a few years training. The Champion’s sister only had a day.”

“We know.”

“Do you speak Tevene?”

“We have a friend who does.”

“Here,” Keran stopped at the door. “If she screams, I’ll have to silence her. We can’t be caught.”

“We understand.”

Keran unlocked and opened the door. Torchlight spilled into the cell, like ale from a cheap clay cup sloshed across a table at the Hanged Man, and sent the lone occupant scrambling away from it with the same fear. The mage pressed herself up against the darkened corner, and Keran inhaled shakily, a look of ecstasy flitting across his face. “So afraid,” Keran mumbled, before he left them alone to guard the hall.

“Remember us?” They asked, setting down the corpse inside the cell. It was so familiar it almost felt like home. Four walls, a bucket that smelled of ammonia, and a bed of rotten straw. They knelt in the light, while the mage cowered in the corner. She looked as she’d promised: unwell. Her complexion was sallow, and her shift stained and tattered from however long she’d spent in solitary. A few months, at least, to judge by how much of her hair had grown back.

Her eyes were beautiful. A reflective blue, bordering on purple, and positively radiating magic. She was an elf. They hadn’t asked for an elf. They’d just asked for a woman. No matter how they burned the body, the differences would be too vast. They’d have to burn the body’s ears, and pray it served once the slaver’s fat had melted from her bones.

“...No?” The mage said shakily.

“We promised to come back,” They reminded her. It was hard to hold onto time of late, but it couldn’t have been that long before they’d made good on their promise.

“... The bard?” The mage recalled, crawling through the straw and hovering at the edge of the light, like she expected it to burn.

“Well I’m no Philliam, but I try,” They joked, speaking in the singular to keep her calm. “What’s your name?”

“Plinth,” Plinth said.

“Well, Plinth, I can’t stop thinking about those lice, and there’s no way I’m letting them keep you all to themselves,” They said, with as much of Anders as they could manage. A lighthearted smile, a carefree lilt to their voice, a softness in their eyes, though the amber was always awash with the colors of veilfire. “What do you say we get out of here?”

“Out?” Plinth asked. “... out of solitary?”

“Out of the Circle,” They corrected her.

“... Who are you?”

“A friend,” They smiled.

Plinth crawled through the straw and into the light. She was dressed in a beige shift, stained brown with sweat in great swaths down her sides. Her fingers were mutilated, though no writing adorned her walls, and they didn’t doubt it came from her attempts to tear down the door. Everyone tried, their first time in solitary. Digging at the lock, clawing at the hinges, scratching at the wood until their fingers bled, sometimes down to the bone.

“I”m going to heal your hands, okay?”

“Okay,” Plinth offered them their hands like she expected them to cut them off. They took them, and her tears when they started, healing what they could of the damage. “Maker - I haven’t - You feel - ” She dissolved into sobs, and they gave her a long moment before they helped her to her feet.

“There’s a templar outside,” They warned her. “He’s an ally. Stay with him. We’ll join you shortly.”

Plinth stumbled obediently out of the cell. They almost expected her to panic at the sight of the templar, despite warning her of his presence, but her sob was mingled with laughter and relief. “Keran. I knew it. I knew you were one of the good ones.”

They unbound the body from the burlap, and rolled it to the center of the cell. The slaver was human, and distressingly muscular, but she was the only corpse they had. Keran brought them the elf’s shackles, and locked them around the corpse. They burnt the body down as far as felt feasible for a mage of normal magic, with straw their only kindling, and made sure to char her ears flat against her skull.

“What do you think?” They asked.

“... Suicide,” Keran decided.

Plinth couldn’t swim. The slender elf clung to them beneath the upturned boat on the swim back, her arms locked so tight around their shoulders she choked them on occasion. Fear, solitude, and access to the Fade after months without made her magic unstable. Bursts of primal magic heated the water in great gouts of steam, and turned the upended boat into a sauna by the time they reached the Darktown grotto.

They changed back into their clothes, which by some fortune hadn’t been stolen from them on their journey, but there were few who knew the existence of the grotto and even fewer who had cause to visit it, considering the waters weren’t fit to drink. Plinth paced around the grotto, touching stalagmites, the limestone walls, burying her hands in piles of guano.

“This is real?” Plinth asked, smiling through tears and hugging a stalagmite. “This isn’t the Fade?”

“Do you see the Black City?” They asked.

“I thought I dreamed you,” The shaken elf confessed, pressing her face against a grey stalagmite. “If this isn’t a dream… what do I do now?”

“Now you’re free,” They knelt beside her, a hand on the stalagmite keeping them steady, and a hand to the elf’s shoulder. She took a shaky breath for the contact, and they would have hugged her had she asked, but she didn’t. “They’ll destroy your phylactery when they find your body. I doubt they’ll notice that it’s human. I didn’t know you were an elf. I’m sorry.”

“Neither did my family,” Plinth said. “My mother was a surrogate for a noble family… She kept seeing my father in secret, and they killed him for it when I was born. When word got out they were using an elf as a surrogate, the whole family was ruined, and most of them joined the Chantry… they’ve never visited me… I don’t have anywhere to go…”

“You have plenty of places to go,” They promised, squeezing her shoulder. Plinth took another rickety breath. “I have a boat waiting to take you to Wycome, or I can try to find you a place with the Dalish or the servants in the city, but it will take some time.”

“What’s in Wycome?” Plinth asked.

“It’s on the coast,” They explained, sliding down to sit beside her. Plinth scooted closer to them. She smelled like salt water and body odor, still clinging to her after months in solitary despite their swim through the tunnels. She pressed up against their arm, and they knew how much the contact meant to one who’d gone months without it. “Near the mouth of the Minater River. People call in the Capital of Revelry.”

“What people?”

“Drunk people, probably,” They grinned. “Wycome imports so much wine they make Orlais look sober. The closest Circle is leagues away, in Ansburg, and there’s almost no templars. It’s one of the freest cities in the Free Marches.”

“It doesn’t sound real.”

“If you don’t believe me, why don’t you see it for yourself?”

Plinth nodded. They climbed to their feet, and held out a hand for her to take. She burst into tears in their arms when she did, and they pulled her into the hug they wished someone had given them when they’d been freed. Something gentle. Something kind. Something free of violence, when they already knew so much of it.

They covered Plinth in the cloak they had brought for her. It was made for a human, and dragged across the cavern floors as they navigated Darktown. The hem was ruined by the time they reached the docks, fraying and soaked through with sewage, and reason enough for the few dockworkers out in the evening to steer clear of them when they made for the Collective’s ship.

It was a small thing, with two sails, manned by less than a dozen men and used to smuggle contraband. The words Bucket o’ Ale had been painted onto the side, once upon a time, and long since faded down to Bucket. The caravel serviced a shop the captain ran out of a room at the Hanged Man, selling venom, toxins, and all manner of poisons to the Coterie, the Carta, and every other gang in Kirkwall. The deck was abandoned, but the captain emerged from below when they boarded.

He was an older fellow, bowbacked and hobbled, with more hair on his face than on his head. A gruesome scar necklaced him, a remnant from his days as a Raider of the Waking Sea. He’d spoken out against his fellow raiders for trading in flesh, and nearly died for it. He was one of the few raiders they would ever trust, both for what he’d done and who’d known when he’d done it. He was an old friend of Isabela's, and while she was long gone from their lives, it was her name that had won them his favor.

“Martin,” They waved, steering Plinth towards him.

“If it ain’t you,” Martin waved back, glancing over their shoulder to be sure they weren’t followed. “The you. And the her. How we doing today, sweetness?”

“Martin, stop, you know I’m engaged,” They joked.

“That ain’t never stopped me before,” Martin grinned. “But I was referring to the lady.”

“I’m still not sure I’m dreaming,” Plinth confessed.

“Better a dream than a nightmare,” Martin said.

Plinth managed an uncertain smile, wringing her hands on the cloak and glancing anxiously up at the sky, as if she expected to see the Black City floating somewhere behind the clouds, but there was nothing there but the clouds, the moons, and all the stars, waiting to chart the way to to freedom.

“You’re still in shock,” They squeezed her shoulder to ground her. “I wish there was time to let you adjust, but the city isn’t safe. You don’t have to get on this one, but the next ship to Wycome won’t set out for a month. If you don’t want to go we need to-”

“No -” Plinth said quickly. “I want to go. I want to leave. I just -... I’ve been in the Circle since I was nine. I don’t remember what it’s like, I don’t know-”

“The Collective will take care of you,” They promised. “Once you get to Wycome, they’ll help you find somewhere to live and somewhere to work.”

“It’s real then?” Plinth asked. “The mage underground? Is this -... is this Darktown’s Deal?”

“... you read it?”

“I found it in the library. I was looking for a romance novel. They won’t let us read them. They say they’re non-curricular, but sometimes they get smuggled in anyway. I know Tethras writes them, and I thought maybe Darktown’s Deal would be one. It wasn’t, but I kept reading anyway, and when I found the passage on magic…

“I was so scared it was a trap. That the templars had left it there just to see who would read it, like they do with the tomes on blood magic. I tried to forget about it, but I couldn’t. I read it every night, for months…. I was sneaking out to the library to read it again when I got caught. I wouldn’t tell them what I was going to read, so they sent me to solitary for being outside my quarters after curfew.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“For getting you sent to solitary.”

“... did you write it?”

“... Yes.”

“Who are you?”

Justice. Anders. Both. Neither.

“I’m a mage.”

Chapter 146: A New Path

Notes:

Unfortunately I haven't been able to respond to comments lately, but I promise I read all of them and they mean a great deal to me. They're all incredibly motivating to keep the story going. Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you like the chapter.

TW: Child death

Chapter Text

It Is Getting Warmer Out
The Veil Is Thin Here

They were tired. Sundermount seemed to rise higher into the sky with every step, the earth crumbling away beneath them like some construct of the Fade. They took to the path with their staff, Vigilance driving inches deep into the upturned dirt with every exhausted step. Their palms were slick with sweat, dragonbone slipping between their fingers, and more often than not they made the climb on their knees.

They slipped. Again. Maker take them, they were so fucking tired. He -… they could barely bring themselves to stand. “Fuck me… us… damnit,” Anders - they muttered, dragging their hand down their face and smearing it with sweat.

Hawke’s hand on their jaw tilted their head up, and they blinked hard against the light reflecting off the glitterdust scattered across the mountain path. It was so bright. They were so tired. It was hard to even summon a surge of rejuvenation to get them back up on their feet, but they had to keep going. They had to keep moving. They had an obligation. They had a purpose.

“What’s wrong?” Hawke signed. His mabari was a ways off, darting from underbrush to underbrush and generally failing at the only job it had to alert Hawke to sound by making more of it instead.

“Tired,” They signed.

“You eat the breakfast I left you?” Hawke asked.

“Yes,” They signed.

“Drink some water,” Hawke unhooked his canteen and pushed it into their hands. They took a long drink, but it tasted off. Stale, probably, from spending too long in the leather. They felt no better for it. "You're not getting enough sleep."

"There is work to be done," They signed.

"There’s always work to be done," Hawke signed, hefting them to their feet. "You're working too much."

"Impossible," They pressed on, aware their companions’ eyes were on them, but there was nothing else to be said or signed. None save Fenris knew of their continued work with the Mage’s Collective. There was no one else they trusted. Not Hawke. Not Varric. Not even Merrill.

The five of them had taken to the Sundermount on her behalf, to request her demon’s aid in restoring her mirror after Fenris had recovered all its broken pieces. For the most part, everyone made efforts to sign, but Merrill’s lessons were progressing slowly, and she, Fenris, and Varric spoke aloud more often than not. Whenever the others stopped talking, the sounds of the forest filled the silence Hawke argued with them through.

“The clinic can wait,” Hawke signed, dodging his mabari as it bolted from one side of the path to the other after a squirrel. “You don’t need to be out here with us.”

“We are low on reagents,” They adjusted the satchel on their shoulder, stuffed with elfroot, embrium, and lies. The Collective had lost contact with the Sabrae Clan, and this mission was a convenient excuse to reestablish it.

“Have the Wardens get them,” Hawke suggested. “You’re running the clinic out of their compound. They don’t keep it stocked?”

“The clinic is ours,” They shook their head. A few golden strands slipped free of their braids and stuck to the sweat on the back of their neck. They pressed their palm to their forehead, but summoning a coat of frost felt like summoning a blizzard in their exhaustion. Condensation followed the path of their brow, dripping down their nose and over their eyebrows. “Not the Wardens.”

“Wardens are taking advantage of you and the work you’re doing,” Hawke signed. His greying hair was waxed back, but had begun to feather in the heat, a few beads of sweat rolling down the sides of his face. The thought that he would appreciate a similar spell came and went. “It's their clinic, as far as anyone knows, but they don’t respect you enough to provide for it. They’re using you to make themselves look better.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” They asked, rather than belabor the point. “Our patients need us.”

"No they don’t,” Hawke signed. “I know you like your work, but you don't have to run the clinic, Anders. The Circle provides healing for the city."

"At a price," They frowned, but even anger felt exhausting. There was no reason for them to be so tired. They ate. They drank. They slept. They cared for themselves to ensure they could care for others, and yet still, they were tired, and grew more tired with every passing day. “One few can afford.”

“Not everyone can afford everything,” Hawke signed.

“So they should go without?” They demanded, their gestures broad in place of quick to signal their frustration. “We can help them.”

“You’re not helping anyone hurting yourself,” Hawke signed, smacking his hands together with the words, and they resisted the urge to flinch. Hawke wasn’t going to hit them. He’d only hit them once, in a fit of pique when he’d freed them from a solitude of their own making, and he hadn’t hit them since.

He was simply physical. It wasn’t a concern. Hawke had always been physical. He didn’t hit them so much as grab them, but never for no reason. If they forgot to eat, or forgot to drink, or took too long to come to bed, Hawke reminded them. Occasionally he disagreed with them, and occasionally they argued, and occasionally those arguments turned from signing with their hands to shoving with them.

They weren’t arguments Hawke could win. If he shoved them, it was a simple thing to shove him back. His hold was an easy one to break, and thus far they’d broken no bones in the process. A vase. A painting. A few plates. Even a table once, but no bones, and bruises were an easy thing to heal. The worst that had ever come of it was a sprained wrist on Hawke’s part when he hadn’t stopped touching them one night, and they’d bent his hand behind his back.

He hadn’t bothered them in bed since.

“You’re working yourself to death in that clinic,” Hawke continued. “You spend all day there, you come home exhausted, and you stay up all night working on your manifesto. You have to stop."

"No,” They signed. “We have discussed this. Learn the meaning of the word.”

“I know what it means,” Hawke signed. “Damnit, Anders, look at yourself. You've been working so much you can barely walk. I’m done watching you hurt yourself. You can’t recover from solitary by putting yourself back in it. You have to stop isolating yourself from everyone. You have to stop isolating yourself from me.”

“We have every meal with you,” They argued. Hawke ensured it. They broke their fast with him every morning, and had lunch with him every midday and dinner every evening. There were days it felt they spent more time with Hawke than they spent with themselves.

“Not good enough,” Hawke signed. “I don't want you at the clinic after midday, and I don’t want you staying up late working on your manifesto.”

“I don’t-... We don’t care what you want,” He-... they signed. Maker’s sweet saving grace, they were so bloody tired. They didn’t have the energy to fight for their cause and fight Hawke at the same time.

"Stop signing ‘we,’” Hawke signed, all but punching his chest with the plural. “You're not Justice. You're Anders. You're a man. One man. One." Hawke held the number up to their nose. "Sign it once."

"No,” They signed.

"I said sign it,” Hawke stopped them with a hand on their chest. Dog cocked his head at them, and their companions stopped with them after a few paces when they noticed, exchanging nervous glances. Fenris took a step towards them, but Varric pulled him back to give them unwanted privacy. “You’re Anders.”

"We said no-"

"Sign it, or we’re going home,” Hawke threatened. “This has gone on long enough."

“You can’t control us.”

“Try me,” Hawke moved so his back was to their companions and his hands were out of their line of sight. “You think I want anything to do with this quest? Helping Merrill talk to some demon so she can end up like you? You think I don’t remember how you said this felt? That you feel trapped in your own body, while Justice moves you like a puppet, and you can’t escape him?”

“This isn’t like that,” They signed.

“Prove it,” Hawke ordered. “Let him go.”

“We told you, Justice isn’t holding me - us,” They fumbled over the sign, belatedly tapping their chest twice to signal the plural.

“If he’s not holding you, why can’t you say who you are?” Hawke asked, a fierce scowl etched across his brow. “You’re Anders. Sign it.”

… What was one more lie?

"I'm Anders," They signed.

"Again."

"I'm Anders," They signed.

"Again."

"Enough,” Anders - no, damnit - they signed. “I signed it, didn’t I?”

They shoved past Hawke, fury fueling their steps as they continued up the mountain path, following the painted cairns that marked the way to the Dalish encampment. They were distantly aware their companions followed them, their words carrying on the wind, though they doubted all of them were signed.

"You still think he's a good man?" Fenris asked of Merrill.

"What has he done to you now?" Merrill asked.

"I am not the one he torments," Fenris said, a little too loudly. They ignored him, but they couldn’t outpace him. Fenris caught up with them, and shot them a meaningful look, and they ignored that as well. There was nothing to be done. Hawke wasn’t worth the time or energy it took to argue with him. They had little enough of either to spare.

"Torments?” Merrill repeated in disbelief. “How is Hawke tormenting him? Anders, is he tormenting you?”

“You ask questions for which you have witnessed answers,” Fenris answered for him.

“What have I witnessed?” Merrill demanded. “Hawke taking care of him? I can’t believe you think he’s tormenting him. You know Hawke loves him.”

“Hardly knows the meaning of love,” Fenris muttered.

“Now you’re just being cruel,” Merrill said. “Hawke isn’t tormenting him; he's helping him. What if Justice never lets go of him? Is that what you want? Do you really hate Anders so much you want him gone forever?”

“Is that an option?” Fenris shot them a grin, and they managed an exhale one part bemused and more parts weary.

“Either Anders controls Justice, or Justice controls Anders,” Merrill said. “Hawke is just trying to undo what they did to themselves before it's too late."

"Who is to say the mage wants it undone?" Fenris countered.

"He shouldn’t have done it in the first place,” Merrill said. “It’s dangerous. Anders could lose himself like this. Hawke is concerned. We all should be.”

"Fasta vass,” Fenris snapped, hands half-raising for a rant, when he seemed to remember Hawke was still with them, and talking with his hands meant talking to Hawke. He stuffed his thumbs into his belt to keep from gesturing. “Hawke is not concerned for the mage, he covets him. The mage shares his soul with his spirit as much as he shares his heart.”

“It was never safe for him to share,” Merrill said. “You don't understand how dangerous it is for them to be this tangled in each other.”

“I understand as well as you the dangers of spirits and demons. They are kept as slaves in the Imperium, bound for all manner of purpose. Danarius bound Desire by the dozens for his guests when the rest of his slaves would not suffice. Hawke is no different with how he treats the mage. I would never bind you to me and me alone."

"That’s not what Hawke is doing,” Merrill argued. “He’s just looking after him - the way Varric looks after me, or do you think Varric is tormenting me too?”

“I sure hope not, Daisy,” Varric finally chimed in. “I’m just trying to make sure you get some fresh air and sunshine every now and then. You’ve been holed up at Broody’s working on that mirror for so long I was afraid you’d wilt.”

“I’m not a plant, Varric,” Merrill said.

“Allow an old dwarf his analogies,” Varric said. “Speaking of which - does anyone have one for hoping your friend doesn’t get possessed by a demon? No offense, Blondie… Blue… whatever.”

They managed a wave in place of words, surprised they didn’t stumble for it when it meant taking a hand off their staff. They couldn’t have been far from the encampment. They just had to keep climbing. Keep going. Keep moving.

“You’re sweet, Varric,” Merrill said. “I’ll be fine. Probably.”

“Really instilling confidence with that ‘probably,’ Daisy,” Varric said sarcastically. “Does anybody else get the feeling that this is going to end badly? Just me, huh?”

“It’s not all bad, Varric,” Merrill said. “Think of the stories you’ll be able to tell later!”

“No offense, Daisy, but I could live without telling anyone we murdered you on some mountain side,” Varric said. “It’s a little hard to make that one sound good. Who thought putting a demon in a cave on Sundermount was a good idea in the first place?”

“Where would you have put him?” Merrill asked.

“Tevinter, maybe?” Varric suggested. “Or in the Anderfels? Further away from Kirkwall, that’s for sure, but that would probably just mean more walking for me, so maybe not. Remind me why we have to do this again?”

“I wish we didn’t,” Merrill said. “I thought the arulin’holm would be the last thing I needed, but the eluvian still won’t work. I have to go back to the spirit that helped me at the start of all this.”

“The demon,” They finally spoke up - though they couldn’t quite manage the malice they usually did in the correction. Not just because they were tired, but because between Fear and Allure, more than one demon had treated with them justly of late.

“He knows about the mirror. I don’t know how much. He won’t tell me everything, and it’s dangerous to trust,” Merrill said, with a pointed look in their direction they met with a roll of their eyes. “He said he witnessed its forging. He told me how to cleanse it of its corruption. He must know how to make it work.”

“Looked like it was working to me, last time I checked,” Varric said.

“It’s not,” Merrill said with a frown. “It doesn’t even reflect! Do you think it’s supposed to just sit there and show nothing at all? I can feel the power in it, but it’s... like it’s asleep. I can’t seem to wake it.”

“Maybe that’s a sign we let sleeping mirrors lie?” Varric suggested. “If the only option is demons…”

“The eluvian was lost before Arlathan fell - and the only creatures who know anything about it are in the Fade. I don't know if it was the elvhenan or tevinter who bound the spirit, but he was left over from the war between my people and the Tevinter Imperium, sealed in an artifact on Sundermount. I’ve called to him in the Fade, but he doesn’t seem to hear. I have to look for him in the ruins, where my people made a last stand fighting on the graves of our elders.

“But if things go wrong, if he possesses me, I need you all to strike me down. I won’t live my life like-... like that.”

“Like us,” They said what Merrill meant.

“I’m sorry, Anders,” Merrill said. “I know you wanted this, but I don’t.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to die,” They argued. “Possession is no more a death sentence than it is irreversible.”

“I don’t believe that,” Merrill said. “Even if the spirit is driven out, the soul is left scarred. It can’t recover. Not really. It’ll always be at risk from other spirits. Like a wounded animal falls prey to scavengers… the only cure is death.”

“Are we sure this is the only way to fix your mirror? What about your uh-” Varric snapped his fingers with his good hand. “Your Keeper?”

“The Keeper would never help me,” Merrill said bitterly. “Why do you think I had to find the demon in the first place? The whole clan has moved on by now anyway - why else do you suppose we haven’t heard anything from them? We’ll never find them until the next Arlathvenn. I have to do this. Thank you all again for coming with me. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

The sun was making its descent in the sky by the time the painted cairns led them to the Sabrae Clan’s encampment. It still existed, despite Merrill’s doubts, though it had moved since last they had visited. Aravels pressed up against the mountainside in small clusters of community - absent the community. The colorful canvases that covered the ornately carved landships had been bleached by the sun and befouled by birds, as if they’d been left unattended for weeks if not months.

Spilling from the aravels were the abandoned lives of the elves who should have lived there. Fires that had smouldered down to ash, food and drink scavenged by the wilds or left to rot, leather left to tan until it cracked, scattered tools and half-finished projects. No elves. No half-elves. Nothing and no one but a few lingering livestock, roaming absently through the deserted encampment.

“What…” Merrill’s hands went slack, her staff dragging through the dirt as she came upon the first cluster. “Where is everyone? Why are their aravels still here? They should have moved on ages ago.”

“So… this looks bad,” Varric signed, nudging a clay bowl with his boot and unhooking Bianca from his back. “Anyone else think this looks bad?”

“Keeper!?” Merrill called, sprinting from one aravel to the next, panic mounting as each one came up empty and each cry went unanswered. “Master Ilen!? Hahren!?”

“... Something foul happened here,” Fenris agreed, though all he signed was, “Danger.” He drew his sword from off his back and unwrapped it from its case.

“Maren!?” Merrill’s voice echoed from a far-off aravel. “Fanarel!? Vinel!?”

“No sign of a fight,” Hawke signed, stringing up his bow while Dog nosed through the discarded pieces of livelihood.

“Doesn’t mean there wasn’t one,” Varric signed back.

“The demon?” Fenris guessed.

“Variel!?” The sound of a crash accompanied Merrill’s shout as she tore through another aravel. “Terath!? Iberia!?”

“Perhaps,” They agreed, adjusting their shoulder strap. The satchel felt heavy, filled with herbs and air, and didn’t bode well for any upcoming battles if the others needed their help.

An ear-splitting shriek sent the three of them racing across the encampment. Merrill stumbled out of an aravel and collapsed, her staff clattering to the ground as she crawled away on her hands and knees. Tears spilled down her face, but she wasn’t sobbing so much as screaming, a hand to her chest like it was the only thing that kept her heart from bursting out of it. Fenris skidded through the dirt to her side, an anxious hand turning her face towards him.

“What?” Fenris stroked her face. “What has happened?”

Merrill wailed, and gestured vaguely towards the aravel. A putrid scent wafted from the small caravan, like spoiled meat, and was all too reminiscent of the scents that clung to the back alleys of Lowtown in the aftermath of a gang war. There was no reason to search after its source, but they did all the same. A wicker bassinet in the far corner held the smallest of bodies - all but consumed by the wilds.

The infant’s eyes had been eaten away. Its nose and one of its cheeks gnawed off, and its torso was gone, replaced with a bowl of ribs and the vague outline of a tiny spine. Varric ran out of the aravel at the sight, but didn’t quite make it out the door before vomiting on his boots. Hawke glanced at the bassinet, and opted not to check it before heading back outside. Dog sniffed once, and whined before following him. They lingered and thought of all the nameless faces from their Amaranthine nightmares, the souls they hadn’t saved, the stolen children they’d delivered in the Circle.

They rolled the babe up in its swaddling clothes, rearranging a tiny leg when it fell off, and carried it outside. Merrill was still on her knees, sobbing into Fenris’ jerkin, her grip white-knuckle on the leather. "Why did they just leave her!? Where did they go? Creators, please let this be a bad dream."

“Merrill,” They said, compassion and purpose warring in an awkward echo in their voice. “Do you want us to burn her?”

“Blondie-” Varric cleared his throat, visibly battling back a gag. “-Maybe we give her a minute?”

Merrill shook her head against Fenris’ chest. “No-... I-... I need to bury her.”

“Deal with it later,” Hawke signed, eyeing the bundle in their arms. “Worry about what happened here first.”

They leaned their staff against the aravel to free up one hand to sign, surprised they didn’t fall over in its absence. “She deserves more dignity than this.”

“She’s not going to find any here,” Hawke’s signs were slightly slowed for the bow in his main hand. “Let’s go.”

“No,” They retrieved their staff, effectively ending their conversation with Hawke, and squeezed Merrill’s shoulder. “Merrill?”

“Okay,” Merrill stumbled to her feet with Fenris’ aid. They took the tiny body into the woods, where their magic formed a tiny grave, and Merrill’s magic grew a tiny tree, and together they said a tiny prayer.

"O Falon'Din
Lethanavir--Friend to the Dead
Guide my feet, calm my soul,
Lead me to my rest."

“... I don’t know about leading,” Varric joked darkly. “Pretty sure someone would have to carry her.”

“Not now, Varric,” Merrill mumbled, patting at the upturned dirt and the tiny sapling her nature magic had sprouted from it. She stumbled to her feet, dirt falling from her palms. “Creators, how could this have happened?”

“You’re really asking that?” Hawke asked after Varric finished signing a translation. “There’s a demon bound to this mountain - and thanks to the mage underground there were plenty of mages here for it to possess."

"You're really blaming the mage underground for this?" They demanded.

"You want me to blame you instead?" Hawke asked.

“I don’t want you to blame anyone!” Anders - … they signed. “We don’t even know what happened. If you want to blame someone, why don’t you try blaming the bloody demon!?”

"It would have taken powerful magic to break him free of this prison," Merrill said, while Varric signed. "You couldn't just set him loose. Nobody could. Not without doing something terrible."

"Like sacrificing an entire clan?" Hawke guessed.

“No… Creators, that can’t have happened,” Merrill pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, smearing dirt across her face. “Mythal, all-mother, protector of the people, watch over us, for the path we tread is perilous. Save us from the darkness as you did before and we will sing your name to the heavens.”

“Might be getting overzealous with that ‘we’ there, Daisy,” Varric said.

“You don’t understand... her shrine is here, on this mountain, just like the spirit’s shrine. She’s even more dangerous. They say if Mythal smiles on you then you need fear nothing at all, but those who anger her are struck from the earth as if they never lived at all… just like this. Maybe… maybe the clan angered her somehow.”

“Or maybe there’s a reason your clans only keep so many mages,” Hawke countered. “If one of them got possessed, you don’t think more would have followed? Thrask’s daughter summoned dozens of demons when she got possessed.”

“Killer’s got a point, Daisy,” Varric agreed.

“Maybe… maybe they just forgot her,” Merrill wrung her hands. “Maybe humans forced them to leave.”

“You believe this?” Fenris asked.

“I want to,” Merrill said, stumbling out of the woods and back towards the encampment.

They found a survivor among the deserted aravels, or a survivor found them. He came staggering down the mountain path, long blonde hair clumped into ropy strands from too long without a wash. He seemed human at first glance, but not at the second. His ears were a little too slanted, his eyes were a little too large, the bridge of his nose a little too prominent. A half-elf. He’d worn his clothes ragged, his sleeves sliding down his arms and fraying apart at the seams. “Hawke,” He called, sprinting across the encampment and losing one in the process. “Merrill! Thank the Creators!”

He might have been a mage, by his halo, but the sun was so bright and they were so tired they could hardly tell. The simple stonefist they’d cast for the burial felt like it had exhausted their mana, and they leaned hard against their staff, weighed down by their satchel and struggling to stay awake.

“Feynriel!” Merrill caught his arms when he reached her. “What happened? Where is everyone?”

“The mountain graveyard,” Feynriel said. “The demon took them.”

“Well, you called it, Killer,” Varric signed, translating the conversation for Hawke when they didn’t. Dog finally stayed by Hawke’s side, growling low in his throat for the stranger’s presence.

“What do you mean the demon took them?” Merrill asked.

“It possessed the Keeper,” Feynriel explained.

“No, no it couldn’t have!” Merrill argued. “The Keeper would never let something like that happen.”

“She did it to protect you,” Feynriel explained. “She was afraid of you completing the eluvian. It was all she talked about. She said it would be a doorway for the demon, to let it escape from its prison and into our world, and that you would have been its first victim.”

“No, no, no - Elgar’nan, no,” Merrill dragged her hands through her hair, smearing dirt through the charcoal strands. “Why would she do that? She didn’t need to do that! If she hadn’t been so stubborn - if she had listened to me -... but she never believed in me and now -…”

“She said she couldn’t let that happen to you.” Feynriel said.

“So she let it happen to herself!?” Merrill demanded. “Why didn’t she listen to me? All this time I thought I could help her, but she chose to destroy herself in order to escape my help. All those people… This can’t be happening. I’ll wake up, and this will all be a terrible dream. How did all of this happen?”

“You’re not responsible for her stupidity,” Hawke promised when Varric finished signing.

“The clan is still alive,” Feynriel said. “We can still save them-”

“How?” Hawke cut him off when Varric caught up with his signs. “You expect us to believe a demon’s been possessing your Keeper for how long but it kept your clan alive?”

“The Keeper held it back,” Feynriel explained. “She couldn't fight it in the Fade while it was trapped, and she couldn't banish it without making it stronger, so she made herself its prison.”

“Doesn’t answer my question,” Hawke signed. “How is the clan alive?”

“When it finally took over, the demon kept them alive,” Feynriel explained. “To-... feed on them.”

“Mythal have mercy,” Merrill paced in a miserable circle and dragging her hands through her hair.

“Someone want to explain that one to the dwarf?” Varric asked. “We’re not talking like… feed like feed are we?”

“The strongest of demons drain the souls of their victims,” They explained, recalling the baroness in the Blackmarsh and the Pride that dwelt within her. It was a terrible injustice, one the villagers no more deserved then than the elven apostates they’d entrusted to the Sabrae Clan deserved now. Hawke was wrong to blame the underground. He was right to blame them. Whatever happened to the apostates they’d sent here was on their hands. “We have seen it before. They imprison them within their demesne in the Fade, and feed upon their fears.”

Merrill stopped pacing to sob into her hand. Fenris set a hand to her shoulder, and Merrill curled up against his chest, whimpering into his tunic. “Why is this happening? Mythal'enaste - the whole clan-”

“We can still save them,” Feynriel said, taking a few eager steps back towards the path he’d come down. “If we kill the Keeper, the demon dies with her.”

“No!” Merrill stumbled out of Fenris’ arms and retreated from Feynriel. “You can’t ask - I won’t do this! Anders - please - you know how to reverse a possession. You can help her, can’t you? You can fix this!”

“I might be misremembering here, but weren’t you the one who said that you couldn’t cure a possession, Daisy?” Varric asked.

“I was wrong!” Merrill grabbed their tunic, short-sleeved but woolen, and soaked with sweat from their trek up the mountain. “Anders please - please do this for me, lethallen. I don’t want anything bad to happen to the Keeper. I just want to fix this. How do we fix it?”

“We will need to get close enough to the demon to bind it,” They recalled from when they had read over the spell, long ago, in a moment of doubt their love had since vanquished. They unlatched Amell’s grimoire from their hip and flipped through the pages for the ritual.

“Thank you,” Merrill patted up and down their arms in lieu of embracing them. “Thank you, thank you. We have to save her. Mythal, please help us save her. What else? What do we need to do? How can I help?”

“We’re not sure. We’ve never done this before,” They found the page with the ritual, but the words all blurred together, the parchment glowing like glitterdust in the sun. They moved the grimoire back and forth, squinting until the spell came into focus. It took lyrium, which they had brought, and blood, which they had.

Their group readied themselves and their weapons, and Feynriel led them to the mountain graveyard. They had never seen its like outside the Blight. The ground was rotten, an infestation of congealed blood and pulsing muscle, and Merrill’s clan was trapped within it. Each grave bore an extra occupant, dozens upon dozens of elves sewn into the undulating mass for the demon to feed upon.

The Veil was so thin they felt as though they could step through it. They could feel the demesne that lay beyond, and all the tortured souls there trapped within, crying out for any spirit or demon that would listen. Compassion, Mercy, Justice, Vengeance, Rage, Despair, Courage, Valor, anything to battle back the one that held them here. She sat upon a shrine, looking for all intents and purposes the same woman who had promised to keep them safe, now keeping them prisoner.

There was nothing demonic in her. The hem of her dress swirled about her swaying feet, a gentle barberry bark yellow, and suited to the season. Her silver hair was perfectly plaited, pulled back from vibrant green eyes that crinkled with all the warmth of the weather. Her face was painted with golden vallaslin in the shape of a downward arrow on her brow, delicate swirls like the path of the wind running down her cheeks all the way to her chin.

“Welcome home, da’len,” The Keeper greeted them warmly, her eyes fixed on Merrill.

“Keeper,” Merrill choked, wringing her hands on her staff.

“Keeper?” The Keeper repeated with a tiny scoff, hopping off the shrine and moving leisurely through the graves. The wails from beyond the Veil seemed to grow louder with every step as the demon sapped the strength from the clan to fuel its own. “You know me, da’len. I’m not your Keeper. You have no Keeper… and now, neither do I.”

“How could you do this?” Merrill demanded.

“You always knew my help came with a price,” The demon said with a shrug. “Your Keeper chose to pay it for you.”

“I don’t want this!” Merrill waved a tortured hand at the graves. “I never wanted this.”

“Why are you here, da’len?” The demon asked, stepping over a prone elf. “Do you need my help again?”

“Let her go,” Merrill begged. “Please - please let her go.”

“You get one chance,” They said, weaving the binding spell with their blood from the cut they’d carved into their wrist before they’d come to the graveyard.

“The Audacity…” The demon drawled flirtatiously, eyeing over their group. “Marethari is mine, just as Anders is yours.”

“... How do you know my name?” Anders-... they asked.

“You gave it to me,” The demon explained, but the truth was in their blood. In the blood that soaked the graveyard soil, rising from it in a crimson mist, sinking into their skin and the skin of their companions, too fast for them to fight. “You gave everything to me. You all did - the minute you walked into my domain.”

The mabari fell over, unconscious. Fenris took two faltering steps and followed, slumping to his knees. The demon walked among them as they fell, one by one, and paused to gingerly stroke Merrill’s hair when she collapsed. The spell was formed - they just had to cast it - they just had to bind it - they just had to fight it - but they were so tired of fighting. So very, very tired.

The demon turned to them, and smiled a melancholy smile. “What a pale Vengeance... I can feel the bane upon your blood… you must be so tired. Come… sleep. Let’s talk.”

Chapter 147: Show Me That You're Human (You Won't Break)

Notes:

I'm still not at a point to respond to comments lately, but I promise I read all of them and they mean a great deal to me. They're all incredibly motivating to keep the story going. Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you like the chapter.

Chapter Text

The Sun Is Setting
The Graves Are Full

The sky overhead was a deep ocean blue, fading into shades of violet. A single cloud drifted overhead, backlit by the moons, red and white light bleeding together like drops of rain in a pool of blood. The Black City was absent, and they sat up slowly, their fingers sinking into the wet grit of soil, blood, and rot that filled the graveyard around them.

Their companions and the Sabrae Clan were scattered across the mountain side, slowly regaining consciousness as they peeled themselves free of cocoons of flesh. Memory came back to them slowly. The graveyard. The demon. The Fade, surely, but the memory was muddled, as if they’d watched it happen through a film, with only one half of their consciousness present for its undertaking.

Justice had been present - but they weren’t Justice - they were Anders. They were Anders and they were Justice and they were both. They had to be both.

“What…” They massaged at their temple, smearing chunks of bloody dirt across their face, struggling to remember what had happened.

“Keeper!” Merrill shrieked, churning up red mud in her mad scramble across the graveyard. “No, no, we were so close! Keeper! Keeper!”

Marethari lay against a tombstone, her head lulling backwards over the edge at an unnatural angle. Arrows sprouted from her chest, with so many feathers they looked like wings bursting forth from her heart. Merrill gathered her up in her arms, weeping. “No, no - Keeper - Ir abelas, mamae, ar lath ma.”

“No!” Something not quite Feynriel roared from across the graveyard, his hands crackling with electricity. “Audacity! How dare you! Wretched one - you will not contain my magic!”

A bolt of lightning shot from Feynriel’s hands, raw energy forking in all directions - snapping through the air, charring the ground, shattering tombs on its path across the mountain - straight for Hawke. They reached for a barrier, a spellshield, anything, but they didn’t have the mana, and they weren’t fast enough with their blood. There was an explosion of lightning and a blinding flare of white, and then -

“No!” Anders screamed.

No, no, no - the spell was too strong - the Veil was too thin. The Fade roared in Feynriel - in what was left of Feynriel - the demon possessing him fueling his magic beyond what any rune would have been able to withstand. Anders knew - he knew because he’d tested it. Night after night working with Sandal on armor that would keep Hawke safe from him - from them. Anders had already failed to keep him safe too many times - and this couldn’t be the last time.

Too many memories flashed before his eyes. Memories of days made better for the fact that they were memories, and Hawke could be the Hawke that he remembered. A man who loved in stolen glances, and not accusive ones. A man whose hands didn’t shove or strike but caressed, staking only loving, reciprocated claims. A man he’d spent two years learning to love through all their late nights and later mornings, only to lose…

Long before this moment, but...

Maker, please, he didn’t want him dead.

Anders ripped the blood from his veins and raced across the graveyard. A haste fueled his steps to Hawke’s side, slipping through the corrosive rot of Audacity’s blood magic, channeling - anything. Regeneration. Rejuvenation. Fucking bloody resurrection if that was what it took. His vision came back in spots as the light faded, and Hawke-...

Hawke was fine. He was already sprinting across the graveyard, unscatched by Feynriel’s spell, because-... because it missed. Because it had to have missed. Because there was no other explanation. Arrows flew, finding their mark in Feynriel one after the other. One hit his shoulder, another his stomach. Feynriel howled, a barrier of flames springing to life around him and destroying any of Hawke’s arrows that tried to pierce it.

“Damn your bane!” Feynriel snarled, his face painted in ash from the endless rain of Hawke’s arrows. “I will find you and I will swallow your soul in your sleep!”

The abomination fled down the mountain path, Hawke on his heels, but no further arrows flew. Hawke raised his hand, his skin glowing like glitterdust in the summer sun, and the sky split open over Feynriel. The abomination’s scream felt as though it echoed from across the Fade, torn from the very throat of the Maker Himself. The force of it knocked Feynriel off his feet, dispelling his barrier, and sent him rolling down the hill.

With a mad bellow, Feynriel managed to right himself, and vanish into the woods. An arrow flew wide, embedding itself in a nearby tree, and splattered the bark in a familiar pink poison. Hawke whistled for Dog, and the two of them ran into the woods together after the abomination. Anders - they - he -

A smite.

Hawke cast a smite.

He cast a fucking smite.

Anders - they - he fled, tripping over their own feet in a hasty retreat to where Merrill still knelt, hunched over her Keeper’s body, bloated with Hawke’s arrows. “Merrill - Merrill - Hawke - Merrill we -” Anders shook Merrill’s shoulder. They hadn’t meant to shake her, but he was shaking so bad they couldn’t help it. “Merrill we have to go - we have to go now.”

“Blondie - Blue,” Varric looked disheveled, one side of his face caked in blood and dirt from when he’d collapsed, knocked unconscious by the demon’s magic like everyone else. Everyone except for Hawke, who had to have been awake to have killed the Keeper. Who’d only been able to stay awake because he’d resisted her magic. Because he could resist her magic. Because templars could resist magic. Because he was a fucking templar. “Hang on - just take a minute to calm down.”

“Calm down!?” Anders smacked away the hand Varric offered them. “Don’t touch us! You knew! You know everything Hawke does! You knew he was a fucking templar and you never told me! Andraste’s bloody pyre, the bane in our blood -... magebane-...” They felt sick with fury, coursing through their veins with Hawke’s poison. “You knew and you were just going to let him kill me - kill us!”

“Blondie-”

“Why!?” Anders screamed so loud their voice cracked. “Why would you do that to me - to us!? What was worth betraying me!? What was worth killing me!?”

“Blondie - no - it wouldn’t have killed you-”

Do not lie to him!” Justice roared, grabbing the dwarf by his jacket and lifting him off his feet. “We will suffer no more of your lies!

“Son of a bitch, Blue, put me down!” Varric grabbed their wrists, kicking and scrambling in their grasp. “Daisy - Ancestors - someone - a little help here!?”

You would turn a blind eye to the abuse of a man you claimed your friend!” Justice poured his rage into their tangled soul, drowning out all the emotions Anders begged his help to keep from feeling. Betrayal. Heartache. A sorrow so profound Despair and Compassion pressed upon the Veil in equal measure to give it answer. “You would condone it!

“Blue - fucking holy balls - just let me explain-”

There is no explanation!” Justice cut him off - distantly aware that the mortals on the mountainside were gathering to witness their fury, but there was no end to it, and Rage clawed at the Veil in response. “There is no justification! You have seen an injustice and indulged it!

“Ancestors - Daisy -” Varric flailed for Merrill’s attention, but she hadn’t moved from her spot on the ground, the Keeper still cradled in her arms. Fenris had joined her, but whatever he’d encountered in the Fade had left him so shaken he seemed mute. “Broody - Please, Blue, listen we were afraid-”

You fear what we have become only because you can no longer control it!” Their skin split with veilfire they hadn’t the mana to maintain, but they had the blood. It caught in the flames, a mist of crimson that quickly became a miasma, offering them the strength that Hawke had sought to steal from them. “So you seek to control him with this violation instead! You see a mage free of the Circle and so you seek to bring the Circle to him! You would see his lover turn to lyrium and speak nothing of it! You would stand idle while a templar poisons and imprisons him!

“Seriously - first person to help me out here is my new best friend!” Varric kicked at their stomach like he hoped to climb out of their grasp. “Let’s just talk about this! Daisy - come on - tell him!”

The strength in their arms faltered. Varric slipped free, and hit the ground in a graceless heap of limbs, crossbow bolts, caltrops, and coins falling out of his pockets.

“... Tell me what?” Anders whispered.

Merrill finally looked up from Marethari’s corpse, but there was nothing shocked in her expression. “Anders-...”

“Tell me what!?” Anders screamed.

“It...” Merrill cleared her throat, hoarse from the tears she’d shed for her Keeper, but not for him. “It wasn’t to hurt you. It was to suppress him. So you wouldn’t end up like this. Anders, I promise, we made sure it wouldn’t hurt you.”

“You made sure?” Anders repeated. He couldn’t breathe. He laughed instead, one frantic exhale after the next as he backpedalled away from them. “You made sure. You made sure it wouldn’t hurt me!? You think-” Anders blinked hard, vision spotty. “-You think he hasn’t hurt me?”

“He’s trying to save you,” Merrill said gently. They hated how gently she said it. They were so tired of gentle words excusing violent hands.

“With magebane!?” Anders screamed. “How long - how much - what if he had killed me!?”

“He wouldn’t have,” Merrill promised, resting Marethari’s body against the tombstone and pushing herself to her feet. “We made sure you only had enough to hold back Justice, so he would stop controlling you.”

“Justice isn’t the one controlling me!” Anders - they said, taking another step back. “Justice isn’t trying to kill me! Justice isn’t a bloody templar!”

“Hawke isn’t a templar, Anders,” Merrill said. “He’s just taking lyrium. It’s not the same thing.”

“Yes it is! He tried to kill me!”

“Lethallen, I promise, I would never let that happen,” Merrill said gently. So bloody gently. “It was for your own good. Can’t you see? It worked! You said ‘me,’ and not 'us.' I’m so happy it worked! We all are.”

“... all of you?” Anders didn’t want to believe it. Maker, he didn’t want to believe it, but it was so easy to make him believe anything. This couldn’t be happening to him - to them - but it was so hard to hold onto them when they were so tired - and Justice was so tired - and everyone was so fucking happy they were so fucking tired.

Anders looked at Fenris - at his friend - his friend - they were friends - weren’t they friends? - please, Maker, they were friends - but Fenris wasn’t looking at him. He was looking past him, at the path that led away from the graveyard.

“Mage,” Fenris finally spoke. “Run.”

The sky cracked open. The world went dark.

They woke with a headache. They were abed, the mattress beneath them soft and supportive. The sheets were a cool cotton, finely woven, the pillow overstuffed with feathers. The ceiling of the canopy bed was carved with a dragon in flight, and had greeted them every morning for the past two years, and had never looked more terrifying.

They surged upright so quickly they felt dizzy, grappling for the Fade and any magic they could muster. Rejuvenation, barriers, haste, primal energies. They were in such a panic the spells rebounded, and one of the bed posts exploded. The canopy creaked under the uneven weight, lurching slightly, but was too sturdy to collapse.

Maker, if only it had. They felt like someone should bury them. They felt like someone had buried them, and they’d been so bloody stubborn they’d crawled right out of their own grave. Their head didn’t just ache, it pounded. They’d lost so much blood and mana they felt empty of everything but Hawke’s bane, without even the strength to vomit it back up.

Hawke was sitting in a nearby armchair, reading a book, his mabari at his feet. The fireplace crackled behind him, casting a dull orange glow through the room. It seemed surreal. Almost peaceful. Like something from their yesteryears. Dog nudged Hawke for the noise, and he set his book aside on the table beside him with a sigh.

“Damnit, Anders,” Hawke stood up, running a weary hand through his greying hair. “Really? You have any idea how much this bed costs?”

“Get away from us,” They signed frantically, scrambling backwards and tangling themselves up in the sheets. They slipped off the edge of the bed, and crashed onto the floor, skinning their elbows on the rug as they dragged themselves away from Hawke. They glanced around the room for an exit, but all the windows were interlaced with iron, in a decorative diamond pattern that kept intruders out and slaves in from when Tevinter had ruled the city and its architecture.

Which just left the balcony doors, and the door to the hall - Ser Cumference’s tiny paws beneath it begging to be let inside.

“Us?” Hawke repeated the sign, tapping his chest twice, a dangerous crease in his brow. “What did I tell you? You’re not Anders and Justice, you’re just Anders.”

“We’re not,” They signed vehemently from their place on the floor, scooting back against their nightstand and using it to climb to their feet, pulling out drawers in the process. They couldn’t stop shaking, and they couldn’t say why. Rage. Fear. Weakness. Some combination of the three. “We’re together. We’ll always be together and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“You think so?” Hawke retrieved the book, and held it up so they could see. It was burnt all along the edges, and embossed with a reservoir rune. “You think I don’t know what this is?”

“That’s mine,” Anders - they signed. They started forward, and Dog stalked to Hawke’s side, growling. Hawke held up his free hand in warning, a casing of light on his fist radiating with the makings of a smite. They stopped. “Give me my grimoire.”

“Your grimoire?” Hawke turned the spine to him, embossed with his family crest. “You think I don’t know who gave this to you? You think I don’t know why you want it?”

“Give it to me,” Anders signed.

“No,” Hawke said. “I’m done, Anders. Do you even remember what you did? You summoned demons up on that mountain. Rage possessed one of the mages your underground sent there, and Despair would have possessed another if I hadn’t come back when I did. Half of Merrill’s clan is dead because of you.”

“That’s a lie,” They signed quickly. It had to be a lie. They hadn’t summoned demons. They’d been aggrieved and they’d been angry but they hadn’t summoned demons. Demons might have answered them, but they hadn’t summoned them. They couldn’t have summoned them. Hawke was lying.

Hawke had to be lying.

“You’re out of control -” Hawke signed.

“You’re a fucking templar!” They signed.

“I’m taking lyrium,” Hawke confessed - like it wasn't even a confession and it was just a conversation. “It’s not the same thing. If I wasn’t, I’d be dead. You have any idea how many blood mages, demons, and abominations are loose in this city? How many you’ve loosed, freeing them from the Circle?”

“Don’t blame us for this-”

“There’s no one else to blame,” Hawke signed. “You knew about Quentin - but you’re so caught up in your cause you never warned me. You never warned Mother. Justice never let you.”

“Justice doesn’t have anything to do with this!”

“He has everything to do with this,” Hawke signed. “What do you think this is about, Anders?”

“What do we think this is about!?” They repeated. “You’re poisoning us!”

“I’m freeing you,” Hawke corrected them. “Justice is controlling you. How else do you expect me to get him to stop?”

“There’s nothing to stop!” They signed.

“You’re only saying that because he’s making you say it,” Hawke signed. Casually. Like it was a casual conversation. “You don’t know what you want because he won’t let you want anything else. Once Merrill undoes the possession, you’ll understand.”

“Once Merrill does what?”

“You’re lucky she still wants to help you after what you did to her clan. When this is over, you can thank her.”

Hawke started for the door, Amell’s grimoire under his arm, and all the rituals within it. Rituals that would unmake them. Rituals that would separate them. Rituals that would tear them apart - when they couldn’t bear to be parted. A haste quickened their steps as they rushed across the room, and slammed Hawke against the door before he could open it.

The grimoire clattered to the ground, and Ser Cumference’s tiny paws vanished from sight for how the door rattled with the impact. Dog went wild, barking and growling circles around them, and practically slathering with uncertainty on whether or not he should join in the fight.

“You fucking bastard!” A burst of primal energy encased their hands in stone, but they were so weak Hawke barely seemed to feel the fists they beat against his back. Hawke whirled, his elbow connecting with their side and throwing them off. They staggered, an unfocused blast of lightning achieving little more than light when it struck Hawke in the chest, both for the lack of mana in their blood and the abundance of lyrium in Hawke’s.

Hawke grabbed them by their tunic, and the force of his fist connecting with their jaw sent them crashing to the ground. “Sit!” Hawke’s barked order might have been meant for both them and the Dog. The mabari sat with a whine, and they rubbed at their jaw. “You done?” Hawke demanded, towering over them. He wasn’t even breathing hard. “You can’t stop me. Go on. Try blood magic, you fucking demon. See what happens.”

He was bluffing. He had to be bluffing. But the thought that he might not be bluffing was terrifying. Hadn’t Audacity already tried blood magic? Had it been blood magic, or had it just been a sleep spell? If a Pride demon’s magic didn’t work on Hawke, what chance did they have? But they had to try something. They had to do something - whatever it cost them. If their magic wouldn’t work on Hawke then-...

Then it would still work on the grimoire.

“If we’re a demon, you made us one,” Anders signed, gritting his teeth so hard it hurt just to focus on the pain. On some physical manifestation of it, but it didn’t come anywhere near the pain in his heart when Amell’s grimoire went up in flames, along with all the rituals within it.

“Maker damnit!” Hawke snapped up the grimoire, but they’d already cast the spell. Once it burned, fire was fire. The flames consumed page after page, burning them down to ash faster than Hawke could put them out, until all that was left was the empty leather binding, Amell’s crest blackened and charred along the spine.

“I hate you,” Anders signed again and again. “I hate you, you fucking bastard, you bastard.” Anders buried his hands in his hair and sobbed into his knees. Three years. Three fucking years - bound to his blood, his soul, his heart, even long after the binding had broken. Three fucking years he’d had Amell’s grimoire - even if he couldn’t have him.

Maker save him, he hated Hawke so fucking much, but he loved Justice more.

“Fine,” Hawke snarled, flinging the ruined grimoire at them. It smacked against their legs and slid to the floor, the few strips of parchment that remained too close to the spine to even hold ink. Anders hugged it to his chest, the leather awkward and formless without the pages between it. Three years Amell had worked on his grimoire before gifting it to him, in a ritual of blood and lyrium and Anders’ desperate desire to find some way to restore the sight he’d wasted on Hawke.

They never should have bothered. They never should have saved him. They never should have sacrificed for him. They never should have been with him. They had to leave him. They had to get away from him. They had to get away from here. They had to run.

“I swear, Anders, I wanted to make this easy for you,” Hawke’s voice interrupted their thoughts. They dragged their head up from their knees to the sight of him opening a drawer at his desk, and retrieving a vial from it. “But you always have to make things hard.”

“What is that?” They signed.

“You know what it is,” Hawke said, tipping his hand so they could see baneful pink within the corked glass.

“Get away from me,” Anders tried to stand and slipped on the rug, a frantic haste exhausting the last of his mana and only serving to help him fall faster. It should have hurt, but they’d burned through their mana and all the sensations that came with it, and they were losing feeling in their hands and feet.

Hawke’s boots settled on either side of them, and he knelt to grab the back of their collar. They slammed a sharp elbow into his thigh, and didn’t even win a grunt. Damn mana, they’d settle for blood, but Hawke must have tended to their injuries because they weren’t bleeding. They bit down hard on the inside of their cheek, but couldn’t break the skin before Hawke rolled them over.

They crawled backwards, but the damn rug kept sliding under their hands and feet, and they couldn’t move fast enough. Hawke held the magebane in one hand and seized their shirt with the other, fabric ripping at the seams when he tried to wrench them back. “Stop!” Anders’ panic mounted with every sign, when he couldn’t use his hands to move and talk at the same time, feet slipping on the floor as he scooted away. “Stop! Stop, no, stop, no, no!”

Maker make him fucking stop - Hawke was insane. They couldn’t drink magebane - not at that potency. They’d die. Anders would die - and leave his love bound to his rotting corpse like Kristoff all over again - no feeling, no sensation, no ability to experience all the joy and beauty of the mortal world that Justice had come to love in all the time they’d spent together.

He wouldn’t be able to walk the Wounded Coast and feel the wind in his hair or the sand beneath his feet, taste the ocean in the air, smell the cypress on the shore. Anders wouldn’t be able to walk it with him, a little bored but bemused at the poetry that sprung to Justice’s mind over such simple pleasures, like a mage fresh out of the Circle. He’d be gone, he’d be dead, and his empty husk wouldn’t be able to offer Justice anything. His spirit would just be trapped... tranquil.

Their hands crackled with sparks of static and flame, not nearly strong enough to light Hawke or even the rug on fire, but damn them they tried. Hawke pressed one knee down on their chest to hold them in place while they signed ‘no’ after ‘no’. His expression was almost worse than the bane in his hand. Hawke didn’t look sorry or sad, angry or annoyed. He looked impassive. Almost bored.

Hawke’s - Maker, Amell’s - gorgeous red eyes watched him like he was nothing. Like they were an arrow to be fletched or a ledger to be filled. Like they were just one more job when Hawke took hold of their face and set the vial to their lips. They weren’t strong enough to shove his hands away, no matter how many times they tried.

“Drink it,” Hawke ordered.

“You’ll kill me - us,” They signed.

“Stop being so fucking dramatic,” Hawke said, flicking his hair out of his face. He pressed down so hard on their jaw with his thumb he might have been trying to break their teeth as much as open their mouth. “I know how much you can take. What do you think I’ve been doing since you got out of solitary? Open your damn mouth.”

“No,” Anders signed with one hand and pushed against Hawke’s thigh with the other, trying to drag himself out from underneath him, but he couldn’t move. He started crying. Hawke’s thumb pushed past his lips, pressing down on his gums until he won enough room to force his thumb between his teeth. Anders bit down hard, but all he won was a wince when Hawke poured some of the bane into his mouth.

It tasted like bitter fire, burning his tongue, his gums, his lips. Anders jerked and coughed to keep from swallowing, bane frothing over his chin and searing his skin worse than any rashvine. He thrashed violently, and managed to spill half the vial onto the floor.

“Damnit, Anders,” Hawke snarled, and set the bane aside to grapple with him, forcing one of Anders’ arms beneath his knee to hold him steady before he picked the bane back up. “I swear, you make it hard to love you,” Hawke said, forcing his mouth open a second time and pouring the rest of the bane down his throat.

Hawke tossed the vial aside, and clamped one hand over his mouth and pinched his nose with the other. Hawke’s hands tilted his head back to try and force him to swallow. Anders grabbed at his arms, his chest, his hair, anything he could reach, coughing and forcing as much of the bane from his mouth as he could, vicious pink poison spilling between Hawke’s fingers and down his upturned face.

“Swallow,” Hawke ordered him. “Swallow, and I’ll get you something to wash away the taste.”

It burned - fuck him, it burned so much - He couldn’t breathe - the bane felt like it was burning through his throat and he hadn’t even swallowed. Anders sobbed, choking, and his tears felt so cool compared to the bane they were almost soothing. He felt light-headed, suffocating, and Maker maybe he should. It was bane. It drained mana - and they had so little of it left.

What happened when they ran out? Would it just start draining Justice next? At least if he suffocated he wouldn’t subject Justice to it. It would be easy. He wouldn’t even have to do anything. He just had to wait. He’d just wait. He’d just die. He wanted to die. He’d rather die than live like this - unbound from Justice and bound to Hawke instead. Anders coughed again, involuntarily, and more of the bane slipped down his throat, and kept coughing, and kept swallowing, and kept living.

Hawke let go of him when he finished it. When Anders finished it. Because he was Anders. Because Justice was quiet, and contained, to a far corner of his consciousness, without the mana to keep them tangled together. Anders sobbed, and couldn’t stop sobbing, because Justice wasn’t there to help him stop sobbing. There was no one there but Hawke, wiping the bane he’d spilled off his face with a kerchief that smelled faintly of sandalwood.

Anders had given him the cologne ages ago, and Hawke had worn it everyday thereafter. Anders had liked the smell, once upon a time. The way it mingled with the scent of lightning he finally recognized for lyrium in Hawke’s blood, for Maker knew how long Hawke had been taking it. Anders hated it now. The way it consumed the scent of dirt and dog that had clung to the refugee he’d met who’d worked so hard to save Anders from himself, but he didn’t need saving from anyone but Hawke.

“There you go,” Hawke said gently, setting aside the kerchief. “See? You’re fine. Didn’t I tell you I’d take care of you? You good?”

“I’m tired,” Anders signed, staring at the floor.

“Sign that again,” Hawke said.

“I’m tired,” Anders signed obediently.

“You’re tired,” Hawke repeated, caressing his face. “Just you. Who are you?”

“Anders,” Anders spelled out his name.

Hawke smoothed back the few strands of hair that had escaped his braids in their fight, and kissed his forehead. The gentle press of his lips and the relieved exhale that accompanied them was such a stark contrast to Hawke’s earlier treatment of him Anders felt like he’d fallen into the Fade, where Allure could give him the version of the man he wanted and not the version of the man he had. “Good,” Hawke said. “Get you something to drink?”

“Water,” Anders signed weakly.

“Alright,” Hawke said. “I know you’re tired, but I don’t want you sleeping on the bed until I have the servants switch it out with one in the guest rooms. You can sleep on the couch for now. I’ll be right back.”

Hawke left the room with his mabari, and it was only when Anders heard a click he realized the door was different. The lock had been replaced with one that locked from the outside. Anders staggered to his feet, but his legs were boneless. He fell, again and again, trying to make it to the door, and gave up half-way there to crawl the rest of the way. Anders wrenched on the handle, but the click hadn’t been for nothing. It was locked.

There was still the balcony. Anders just needed to get to it before Hawke came back. Anders dragged himself over to the double doors, panelled in the same unbreakable mix of iron and glass, but he was shaking so badly his arms and legs gave out from underneath him every few inches. The magebane still burned, like it was corroding him from the inside out. He reached the doors, and tugged hard on the handle, but he might have been grabbing the rung of a ladder for how it moved.

Locked.

Hawke came back, and found him curled up against the doors, resting his head on the glass. “What are you doing?”

“I-...” Anders fumbled for an excuse, but he couldn’t think of anything even remotely believable. “I needed some air.”

“Doors are locked,” Hawke explained.

“I know,” Anders signed.

Hawke helped him drink a glass of water, and carried him to the couch when he couldn’t walk. Hawke draped a blanket over him, and cracked open the balcony doors for the light breeze that flowed through them. “There you go,” Hawke sat with him, pulling his head into his lap to unravel his braids. Anders faded in and out of consciousness, staring out at the balcony and the freedom that lay beyond it as the servants replaced the bed.

At some point Anders woke up, and judged it the next day by the sun that streaked in through the windows. He was abed, and not acouch, alone save for the mabari Hawke had left with him that growled whenever he got too close to any of the doors. Breakfast was waiting for him on his nightstand, alongside a note that explained Hawke had business with Hubert, and would be back in a few hours.

Anders didn’t doubt it was laced with magebane. He had to find some way to get out of here - but he doubted Hawke would have left him anything. The food was on a wooden plate, but there were no utensils, and it was all things he could eat with his hand. Hawke’s weapons and armor were gone. The candelabras had been removed from the nightstand. The room looked like it had been emptied of everything that might have helped him escape, but Anders looked anyway, digging through Hawke’s things for his lyrium and whatever mana he could syphon from it, but he couldn’t find it.

When that failed, Anders went through his own things, but his dagger and his lyrium potions were gone, and his books wouldn't help him break the locks on the doors. Anders sank to the floor beside his armoire, emptying his drawers, his satchels, his pockets, but all he turned up were a handful of unread letters.

His fingers grazed over the blackened wax, and the enchantment sealing the letter gave at his touch. The parchment had been folded over, the letter short. Amell had sent it to him after he’d fled the Vigil for Amaranthine, but Anders had never read it. He’d never even opened it. He’d been too scared of Hawke finding out, and then he’d gone back to Kirkwall, and then to solitary, and from there the days all bled together as much as he bled into Justice.

“Anders,

If you left the Vigil for your own sake, I hope you're well. If you left it for mine, I hope you’ll come back. Everything has been taken care of, and the delegation will be gone by the morrow. Please trust when I say you haven't ruined anything.

You're not a monster; you're possessed. I know the Circle taught us they were synonyms, and I won't pretend it was easy for me to unlearn that, but I have. It’s been three years, and you're still you. You could never be a monster. There’s nothing just in the Circles. If you burnt them all down, I'd be there to dance in the ashes.

I wish I could say you could ask anything of me, but you can’t ask me not to get involved in your relationship with my cousin and ask for one with me at the same time. I trust you know there’s no truth to what he said. I also trust you know he’s taking lyrium, but if for some reason you don’t, and you’re not comfortable with that, ask Corporal Kallian to give you a tour of the city.

She’ll take you back to the Vigil - alone - and set standing orders to refuse him entry. I can’t say if this past fortnight has all been my imagination, but you said you were unhappy. You said you wanted my help. You and Justice both. If this isn’t why, I hope you forgive me for presuming, but I’ll always be here for you.

Always,
Amell.”

Chapter 148: A Time and A Place

Notes:

Thank you for all of your comments. I promise I read all of them and they mean a great deal to me even if I don't respond. That said, I just want to repeat that this is a dark horror story, but it ends with Anders alive and well.

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I thought I would try something new with this chapter. I hope you like it!

Chapter Text

A Time: It must still be 9:35. There’s been no wedding - and no procession of children wearing white gowns on their way to the Chantry to be taught the responsibilities of adulthood, so it can’t be Summerday yet. It’s hard to gauge the days, or the months, or the annums, but the seasons have to count for something. They pass outside the windows, outside the balcony doors, and it doesn’t feel like all four have passed to mark a year.

Nine Thirty-Five Dragon marks thirty or thirty-one years. It’s hard to say if the fifth of Kingsway has passed already, and the Chantry isn’t in view of the balcony or any of the windows to see any fires that might burn for All Soul’s Day. First Day and Wintersend are too hard to gauge, but there hasn’t been any snow, so it must still be 9:35. It’s good to know the year. It’s good to know something.

It’s hard to know anything else. The balcony is on the third story, and the street below is narrow and not traveled often at night. The moons catch on the cobbled stone, and a single kerosene lamp is lit once in the evening and always dies before sunrise. A few hours pass in darkness before the servants put up awnings, and all that’s visible are the edges of the squares on either side of the street.

The Dwarven Quarter to the north is busy with business. No one stands still for long - servants and couriers take long strides on short legs as they go about their days. The Gardens to the south are anxious with activity. Templars patrol as often the guard, and the nobles seem divided on who they should respect.

The Reinhardts’ estate is across the way. Like all of Hightown, it’s carved from marble, the windows too narrow to be anything but balistraria. There are no mages within to judge by the light that shines through them. A dull orange-yellow, untouched by the Fade. Shadows pass by on occasion, never pausing long enough to look at the balcony across the way.

No one seems to notice.

No one seems to care.

The marble manse is draped in vibrant red banners, declaring their allegiance to the Chantry. There’s no telling how long they’ve decorated the estate, but they must have been purchased in the past year, after the death of the Viscount and the Knight-Commander’s rise to power. The style is a recent one, flaming swords vaguely reminiscent of silver swords of mercy, but beneath the swords is a crown.

The implication is obvious. The templars rule the city. The nobles support them. Even from a distance, the fear in every stitch is clear. The banners are draped from the third story and fall to the top of the first, and one of them doesn’t match the others. A group of children climbed the estate and pulled one of the banners off -...

How long ago was it?

It’s so hard to tell.

It took three of the little blighters to get it off, hanging off the edge of the fabric and laughing - maybe. The glass is too thick for most sounds to carry through, but it seemed like a game. The children too young for it to be an act of rebellion against anything other than their parents. Whatever it was, it was short lived.

The children made it as far as the Garden Square with the banner before they were caught by a patrol of guardsmen. Between the three children, one of them was a girl dressed in the brightly dyed finery of Hightown, while the other two were boys in undyed linens a shade of beige the guards beat red. One of the commoners was human, and tossed back to the streets after a dozen or so blows to his backside, but the other was elven.

The guards beat the boy within an inch of his life - until his screams and the screams of his friends carried through the glass of the balcony doors. Glass that finally broke after a chair, a nightstand, and a table were thrown into it, but the iron that interlaced it still stood, too narrow for any hands to fit through, and the doors stayed locked and closed.

No one else paid the children any mind. Passersby passed by without a second thought. Servants hurried by with downturned heads; nobles tutted behind their hands. The middle class merchants that spilled into Hightown hovered out of range of the guard, watching and whispering, all but waiting for the boy to die.

The noble girl ended it. She shoved her way through the ring of guardsmen and flung herself on top of the elven boy, and one of the guards noticed a moment too late. The switch in his hand came down on the girl’s back, and the scene changed on a silver. The servants fled, the merchants gasped, and the nobles rioted.

Guards, nobles, and templars poured into the square. The nobles gathered around the girl, and the templars gathered around the guard, but the guardsmen were far from fast to give their fellow over willingly. The two groups came to blows in the square - in a full scale riot that sent civilians scattering, the banner and the elven boy forgotten.

The noble girl dragged the elven boy from the fight, first by his tunic, and then by his arms, struggling and tripping over her dress until she reached the street. She stayed by the boy’s side, and might have been screaming for help, but there were too many screams to tell one from the other. The elven boy wasn’t moving, and by the girl’s panic he might not have been breathing either.

Broken glass meant blood, and blood meant magic, and magic breathed life back into the boy, but at three stories down the spell was a struggle, and there was no blood or magic left to blast the balcony doors from their hinges before the servants heard the commotion and brought Hawke to put a stop to it. Hawke had the glass replaced and enchanted - and no amount of furniture broke it again.

The new banner on the Reinhardt’s estate is a brighter red than the rest. The old banners are faded shades of orange from the summer sun, but summer must have passed. It feels like autumn or early winter. The sun doesn't bake the room, and the weather changes often. There's wind and rain outside, but no snow.

The wind lays siege to banners and awnings, and steals hats, scarves, and parasols from the nobility in a whirlwind of fabric. Couriers lose missives and mail, and placards are torn from the walls of the street below. Wanted posters for apostates, advertisements for plays, notices for changes to curfew go up and come down, too far away to see the date, and the wind never blows them up to the balcony.

The rain reduces the world outside to a blur of color. Water washes the marble grey and the banners a dark maroon, and eats away the days when they can’t be seen through the glass. It's easier to spend them sleeping - or in the company of Ser Cumference. There’s no telling the passage of time in his comings and goings, but he’s a comfort - one of very, very few.

He’s gotten bigger - in every way possible. The anosmic tabby is two years old now. Maybe three. Dark stripes stretch across his round body, and the scar tissue that makes up the left side of his face. His breath is still rancid, a mix of milk and fish and just overall cat, but it smells so much better than sandalwood. He likes to sleep in armpits, or on necks, and waking up to that one good eye and ugly face is at least a reason to wake up.

Sunrise marks the morning, but beyond that, it’s hard to mark the passing of the hour when the Chantry bells only peal for midday and for service. Hawke retells the sermons, reading from the Chant of Light what feels like once a week - but might be more or less. There’s nothing in the sermons that marks the passage of time, and Hawke won’t say. Hawke just says to rest and to recover.

There is no recovering. Magebane laces every meal, and the Taint makes it impossible to starve. Starving just enough to be rid of the bane doesn’t work. Hawke shares too many meals, and feeding the ones Hawke doesn’t share to Dog just makes the mabari sick. After three days of runny shits and chunky vomit, Dog finally stops eating everything in front of him, and there’s nowhere else to hide it.

There is no resting. Sanity feels like it’s slipping with the seasons. Writing out the manifesto helps for something else to focus on, but the words keep changing on every read through. Madness, maybe. It's hard to keep track of what was written and what wasn’t, what’s changed and what hasn’t, but hiding the manifesto helps. Under the bed, in the armoire, between the bookshelves, stuffed into pillowcases.

Anywhere to find it again later, and check to see if the words are still the same. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they aren’t. The one on the back of the nightstand is the only one that stays the same, carefully wedged between the lining and the paneling. It feels as safe as it does dangerous. There has to be a reason the rest of the words are changing, and if it’s not madness the only reason left is that Hawke is the one changing them.

The manifestos Hawke rewrites are more canonical. More complicit. There are no calls for iconoclasm, only idle talk of ideology, but it doesn’t seem to matter either way. There’s no mail - no way to send it or receive it. There are only old letters - and reading them is dangerous. They don’t help to tell the time, but they do paint a picture of when time seemed to stop.

Everything after going to solitary in Bloomingtide is a blur. It’s not spring anymore - and it feels like summer is over but winter hasn’t quite started - so it might be anywhere from August to Firstfall. Which means three to five months have passed. Three to five months lost somewhere between time spent in solitary, or time spent tangled in Justice, or time spent here in this room.

The first letter is from Cloudreach - in the spring - before solitary - before the proposal - before everything.


Anders,

You're right, you shouldn't have to ask anything of me. Your reinstatement should have come with a stipend. Mistress Woolsey hasn't let me hear the end of it since I brought it up. The books have to be rebalanced, but she feels as I do that it's warranted. You can pick up your back-pay for the last six months at the compound, and I'm sure we can spare the parchment for your letters.

I've also included a short list of responsibilities I'd like you to handle, to assure you this isn't charity.

  • Bimonthly scouting expeditions to the attached Deep Roads entrances to review for any signs of darkspawn activity. Report back with any concerns on each location and notify local authorities as needed of any necessary blockades.
  • Address any reports of darkspawn sightings in the Planasene Forest, Wounded Coast, and South-Western Vimmark Mountains.
  • Recruitment is optional, but any interested parties should be sent to Vigil’s Keep to report to me or Wycome to report to Commander Janeka.
  • Ensure positive relations with local populace, authorities, and Viscounty through continued work with the free clinic while in uniform.

That aside, you’ve never taken advantage of me, Anders. Everything I've done for you I've done of my own free will. I thought it would be obvious by now but I want you to be happy. If I happen to be a part of that happiness, then I feel lucky, not used. I know how much I meant to you. You never had to say it. I remember the Circle. I know why you didn’t.

I’ve felt it almost every night this past month. I’d rather not commit too much to paper, and I don’t want to put any expectations on you, but this past month has meant more to me than I can say. When I told you I wasn’t with anyone, I didn’t think an elaboration was necessary, but if you’re committed to visiting in Bloomingtide, then I feel like I should tell you that I haven’t been with anyone since I heard you’d died.

I’m sure you’ll hear otherwise when you visit, but I’d rather not explain that in a letter. I’d also rather not talk about my time in the Circle, but you helped me survive it. I’m glad to hear what our friendship meant and means to you, but you made the biggest impact on my life before you knew me. You healed me. I doubt you remember. I was just another patient - and you had hundreds.

You wouldn’t be who you are if mages didn’t come first for you. The Circle didn’t break you - and I have no doubt you’ll break the Circles. It means a great deal that you want my help to do it. Lady Harimann’s asylum is serving as a catalyst for conversations the Chantry refused to have since Queen Anora declared the Circle’s independence. The Chantry has agreed to send a delegation to the Vigil in Bloomingtide.

Ferelden’s Grand Cleric Elemena and Denerim’s Knight Commander Tavish will both be present for it. Tavish took out the contract with the Antivan Crows on me a few years ago, and the evidence is something I can always use if negotiations go south. It’s honestly convenient the assassin’s attempt on my life aligned with what my father did. Most everyone assumes I lost my sight to the Crows and if word got out the Chantry sent them I’m sure it would sway popular opinion.

All that is to say I’m glad to be able to support you. You were there for me, Anders. Read my journal again if you don’t believe me. Start with the day we met and every day thereafter if you want to know how much you meant to me. How many entries on the state of the arling end abruptly or interrupted? Who do you think interrupted them? Please trust me when I say I had everything I wanted.

I would love for you to meet Kieran. He'll be four this year. I don't know what kind of relationship you wanted to have with him, but I’d like for you to have one. He means the world to me and while I don’t expect him to mean that to you, it would mean a lot to me if the two of you were fond of each other. His mother doesn’t mind, and it would be nice for the two of you to meet.

I'd be glad to see you as well. You’re always welcome to visit. I hope to see you within the week, but I understand if something has come up between now and last month. You don’t need to worry about finding an inn; you're free to stay at the Vigil. I can always spare a room for you, or if I’m not reading too much into the nights we’ve spent together, I can spare mine.

Always,
Amell


The second letter is from Justinian, in the middle of summer. It put its receipt at around a month and a half after leaving Vigil’s Keep, considering no letters came from the Vigil in Bloomingtide. It’s unopened, and might have arrived during solitary, if solitary stretched into Justinian.


Anders,

I'm sorry for my abrupt departure, and that I couldn't write to you in Bloomingtide. Our expedition took longer than anticipated. I won't bore you with the details but the Harvester is dead, and Oghren and Velanna are well.

I'm disappointed not to have heard from you last month. While you're under no obligation to write to me every month, your letters mean as much to me as you said mine did to you. I hope you’ll continue to send them. I don’t see any reason we can’t stay friends.

I'm sorry I couldn't stay for the rest of your visit but I enjoyed the time we spent together. I understand you left early, though Nathaniel couldn’t speak as to the reason. I can’t say if you were bored, or shaken by the incident, or upset with my decisions, or something else entirely.

If you left for boredom, let me know. I'll have the theatre troupe disbanded.

I’m kidding.

If you left over the incident, Oghren’s letter may help more than mine. You aren't the first man to spill blood by accident. I’m sure he tells it differently, but he once killed a man in a duel. It was meant to be a duel to first blood and ended up being to the last. There were precautions - the weapons were blunted - but anything and anyone can kill if given the right opportunity.

It was an accident. They happen. I don’t think I ever told you, but when I learned the summoning sciences, I killed my instructor. He stepped into the binding circle, and the construct I summoned killed him. I learned from the experience, and that's all that you can hope from a mistake. You're more than yours. I hope you won't let them haunt you. I promise it gets easier. Everything scars.

If you were upset with me, I understand. I presumed a lot of you with your visit. I’m happy for you and my cousin, though it seems obvious you’re intended to be exclusive, and I can’t come between that. I gave you the opportunity to escape him and if that didn’t interest you then there’s no other type of escape that I can offer. I don’t want us to be a secret.

I hope you know that’s all I meant with all I put together. I wanted you to know I'm not ashamed of you. I'm not ashamed of you as a man, as a mage, as however much more than that Justice makes you. I wanted you to know that I wouldn't keep you in the shadows this time - no matter the politics. If you visit again, I promise to restrain myself.

I hope to hear back from you. I want us to stay friends. I hear the wedding is on Summerday. I'll make sure I'm free if you want me to be there.

Amell


The next letter is from Solace - at the end of summer, and the only indication that summer has passed. It’s hard to say how long it’s gone unopened and unanswered.


Anders,

I'm not sure why I haven't heard from you, but I can only continue the stipend if you continue the assignments. I doubt you mind - you didn’t ask for one and you did say you didn’t want to rely on me. If you change your mind, you can always let me know. Alternatively, you can write to Nathaniel, but it seems you're not writing anyone of late. I’ve heard from Hawke and Merrill and they both assure me that you’re well.

The talks are going well. The Chantry has agreed to respect the asylum I’ve offered Lady Harimann and we’re working to extend that asylum to all apostates in Ferelden. I read your latest manifesto in the Dowager Quarterly - as did Anora and Alistair. They both support it. Anora was to be expected, but Alistair was a surprise. I think it helps that I didn’t write it.

He was ten when he was given to the Chantry - and old enough to understand its failings. Whatever I think of him, he never wanted that life. For all that’s happened between us, it was good to hear him speak against the Circles. There’s no repairing our relationship, but I think this may be the first thing we’ve agreed on since… some time ago.

I understand things aren’t going as well in Kirkwall. Knight Commander Meredith seems to have replaced the Viscount and Grand Cleric Elthina seems to have indulged her. I imagine you’re behind the recent petitions calling for her replacement and I’m glad you’ve found allies among the nobility, but I don’t know that will be enough.

Elthina has had decades to consolidate power - and the Divine hasn’t held the throne a year. My friend in the Chantry was appointed the Left Hand of the Divine and she hasn’t heard anything encouraging. Justinia can’t move against Elthina without losing half the College of Clerics. I’m not saying you should stop - or excusing that inaction - I just thought I would explain it.

I’m sure you feel the same, but I don’t know that the timing is ideal for Kirkwall to be hosting the Grand Tourney. Nathaniel is ecstatic - he’s looking forward to participating in the archery competition - but I’m worried the Grand Cleric and the Knight Commander will use this as an opportunity to convince the rest of the Free Marches to support the Chantry’s sovereignty. There’s talk of every country from Tevinter to Ferelden making an appearance.

I don’t know if I’ll see you there. I hope you’re well.

Amell


The letters stop at Solace, both from Amell and everyone else. Hawke might have started intercepting them, but it seems just as likely they might have stopped sending them. So likely and lonely it hurts. People visit - but none of them are friends.

Merrill comes to measure magebane. Her eyes are always downcast, her hands are always wringing, her smile always forced. The words come easy - that Merrill is a monster, that she’s no better than Audacity, that she’s worse than her Keeper - and Merrill flinches every time. If nothing else, it’s nice to share the pain.

Sebastian comes to pray. He talks about his youth and how he understands rebellion, and how he found salvation in the Chant, and it’s almost worse than Merrill. He's still seeing Bethany, but he thinks she’s given up a life of contemplation for corruption. Her complaints about the Circle must not be her own, but those of whatever foul maleficarum have turned her mind against him. If nothing else, it’s good to hear about her.

Varric comes to tell lies and call them stories. He talks about how Hawke replaced Leandra with lyrium - about how Hawke is only trying to keep his family safe - about how Hawke has so little family left. He talks about how much family means - about everything that Bartrand has become - and how lyrium makes Hawke become other things. Little things. Excusable things.

Hawke’s not paranoid - he’s cautious. Hawke’s not obsessed - he’s in love. Hawke doesn’t misremember - he just forgets. Varric comes with cards, and the only time he seems to tell the truth is when he talks with his lips hidden behind them. It’s just once, and it’s just sad, and it hurts more than all the rest.

“I’m sorry, Blondie,” Varric says from behind a losing hand, and he doesn’t bring the cards again.

Fenris doesn’t visit.

Fenris said to run, but there wasn’t any time, like there isn’t any now. It’s just autumn, somewhere between August and Firstfall, and nothing seems to measure it. It passes in moments - some big, like the riot in the square, and some small, like the red ribbon tied to the balustrade on the balcony. It appears one night as if by magic - if it’s even there at all.

It wouldn’t be the first hallucination. There are so many they’re not worth counting. They’re usually the doors. They open in the middle of the night, when Hawke is asleep, or in the middle of the day, when Hawke is gone, but they’re never really open - and if they are it’s too terrifying to check. Hawke always seems to know.

The door to the hall was open once, and only once, and it’s not a memory, it’s a bruise. It was purple once upon a time, but it’s almost gone now, freckles faint within the yellow. It isn’t safe to leave - it isn’t safe to try - and if the hallucinations aren’t the doors, they’re what lies in wait beyond them. Familiar faces in the square or in the street that seem to stare up at the balcony and beckon.

Amell, more often than not, in armor or some form of finery, with eyes or without them. Sigrun, waiting in a wedding dress, and there’s some horror in not knowing if she’s waiting for a wedding or waiting for a death. Nathaniel and Velanna. Even Oghren on occasion, but the ribbon is new.

The faces that come for it are elven, and unfamiliar. They gather on the balcony when Hawke is gone, but the doors are locked and warded and the elves aren’t real even if they weren’t. They wrench at the handles, and pry at the hinges, and beat against the glass. One even swells with the Fade, and makes an effort to dispel the wards, but the doors stay closed, and eventually they leave, if they were even there.

What feels like the next day, but might be the day after, Fenris - or the thought of him - is on the balcony. The sun is soon to set, but the awnings are still up, and no one seems to notice that he’s there - if he’s even there at all. He beats a fist against the glass, and it almost sounds like something, but none of the other faces make any sounds - and he must be real but there’s no way to know.

He seems real - barefoot on the balcony, dressed in his old woolen cloak, pulled down over pointed ears and muting as much of the lyrium as it can. He doesn’t have his greatsword, but his markings serve well enough for weapons. The lyrium in them flares to life, and he thrusts a fist towards the doors that bounces off the wards.

He’s real. He’s real and he’s here and he’s real and he’s here. This is happening and this is real and this is happening and this is real. The cat. Where is the cat? The cat is here somewhere. Somewhere, under the bed or the couch, but the cat is too hard to find, and the doors are too hard to open, and Fenris gives up on them. He climbs onto the balcony bannister and leans off to the side. His hand flares with lyrium again, and he thrusts it through the stone.

The wall explodes in a burst of dust and stone that coats the room in rubble. Screams start in the streets below at the explosion, and too-fresh memories of the invasion of Kirkwall, where the sound was commonplace. The hole isn’t big enough for anything but a hand, but another punch makes it big enough for a head, and a third makes slightly more room than that before a guardsman’s crossbow bolt bounces off the stone.

“Kaffas,” Fenris - really Fenris - snarls, and spares the streets below a glance, still crouched on the bannister while he struggles to tear through the stone. Another crossbow bolt pierces his cloak, and a third hits the wall beside his head. A fourth goes sailing through the hole and imbeds itself in an armoire. A fifth takes him in the thigh, and nearly knocks him off the bannister.

“Get out of here - I can’t heal you!”

“Fenhedis! I have it!”

“Don’t throw your life away!”

“Shut up, mage!”

Another crossbow bolt flies wide. One hits the doors and clatters onto the balcony. Another cleaves through the hood of Fenris’ cloak, slicing between his ear and the side of his head, before bouncing off the wall. Blood paints the side of Fenris’ head and the bannister beneath him, his leg shaking with effort for the arrow piercing it. A fourth punch shatters more of the wall, and makes the hole is big enough for a child, but not a man.

“Damnit, Fenris, leave or I’ll make you leave! I’m not watching you die!”

Another bolt sails through the air, and almost takes Fenris through the heart, when a flare of lyrium makes his entire body glow a vibrant, incorporeal sapphire. The arrow sails clean through him, and the one piercing his thigh falls free and tumbles down to the street below. Fenris dares another glance towards the street, and his expression tightens.

“I’ll return,” Fenris promises. “I swear it.”

The blood already spilled serves to heal the wounds left by the guardsmen, and Fenris flees, jumping from one balcony to the next, until he hits the ground, and sprints out of sight, a patrol of guardsmen in pursuit. The hole is still a hole, and some of the stones come loose, but not nearly enough. Screaming to the street below only turns a handful of heads, and there’s no rescue from any of them.

The servants fix the hole in the wall, and Sandal’s enchantments reinforce it along with the rest of the estate, and Fenris doesn’t come back. There are no more ribbons on the balcony, and his face joins all the other hallucinations in the crowds. None of them are real - and there’s no rescue coming. It’s easier not to fight to make it through the days.

Ser Cumference is still here - his awkward attempts at grooming consist mostly of chewing on unbraided strands of hair. He’s still here, and he’s real, and he helps. The days get easier, and Hawke gets nicer, and time still passes, and there’s still no way to tell what time it is. August. Kingsway. Harvestmere. Firstfall. Whatever day it is, it’s 9:35, and it’s autumn.

A Place: The fucking room.

Chapter 149: Try Harder

Notes:

Thank you for all of your comments. I promise I read all of them and they mean a great deal to me even if I don't respond.

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Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon Frumentum and into Umbralis
Kirkwall: Hawke Estate

Hawke let him out in Harvestmere.

The first time Hawke had offered to let him out felt like a trap. He’d opened the door and stood out in the hall, waiting for Anders to join him. It was nothing. Just breakfast in the dining room, but when Anders hadn’t moved from the couch, Hawke had signed, “You coming?”

Like Anders was allowed to go with him. Like Anders had always been allowed to go with him. Like Anders hadn’t spent the past however many days or weeks or months locked away in their bedroom, unable to go anywhere. Like everything was normal and it was just another Tuesday.

“No,” Anders had signed back.

Hawke had shrugged, and left him in the bedroom, but he hadn’t locked him in. Anders had spent the entire day curled up on the couch, staring at the door, watching the occasional servant pass by in the shadows that moved beneath the frame. They brought him his breakfast, and his lunch, and his dinner, and Anders ate them all without protest.

He’d gotten used to the taste of magebane. The way it felt. Like a weight on his shoulders, in his bones, sinking into his skin and thickening his veins, so heavy he couldn’t keep his eyes open. And it burned. It always burned. A corrosion he could feel eating him from the inside out - warring with the taint - draining through his mana until he felt like a shadow of himself, but no amount of it could take Justice from him.

His spirit was still there, a quiet presence full of quiet comforts in the few stolen moments they could manage, working on their manifesto or reading through what poetry Hawke let them keep, but it wasn’t the same as when they’d left solitary. Anders was still Anders, and the second time Hawke offered to let him out, Anders went with him.

He’d never felt more tense, sitting in the dining hall and eating a breakfast of eggs, roast potatoes, and spiced sausage with a fork. A fork he could stab through his hand for access to his baned and tainted blood at any moment to cast - … something. Anders wasn’t sure what he could cast. He wasn’t sure what would work.

Anders wasn’t used to fighting templars on his own. It had taken him seven escape attempts to be free of the Circle, and he’d only managed it because Amell had saved him. There was no fighting templars without help. Without Amell’s magic. Without Justice’s strength.

Blood magic might work. Amell had managed it, but Amell was the better blood mage, and Anders had lost his grimoire. He didn’t have anything but a fork - and he was too afraid to use it. The moment passed - and more moments passed after it.

Lunch in the solar. Reading in the study. Evenings in the drawing room. The less Anders fought, the less Hawke fought back, and Anders was too scared and tired to fight. Hawke allowed him more when Anders only did what Hawke allowed. Anders spent whole days outside the room, free to move about the estate, as terrified of the allowance as he was of losing it.

The rest of the mages were gone. All of the elven apostates Anders had offered sanctuary. He had no idea what had happened to them and he was too afraid to ask. The only servants left were ex-slaves. Slaves Hawke had rescued from Hadriana - Danarius’ apprentice - when she’d tried to recapture Fenris two years ago. They were so quiet they might have been ghosts, fading from the halls whenever he walked past.

He gathered what Hawke had told them in bits and pieces from their passing. That Anders was ill. That Anders was insane. That Anders was Hawke’s. The servants avoided him wherever possible, and where impossible, didn’t speak to him so much as the floor. Even Bodahn was afraid of him - or for him - laughing nervously whenever Anders spoke whether he was joking or not. Sandal had all but ceased to exist. Anders saw evidence of him - his shoes in the foyer, his rune tracings in the cellar, his hand prints on the chandelier - but never the boy himself.

The only person who didn’t seem afraid of the man Hawke had become was Gamlen, but it wasn’t because the old bastard couldn’t see it. Gamlen knew. Gamlen just didn’t care.

“Look who it is,” Gamlen whistled when he found him curled up on a window bench in the solar, half-asleep and staring out the window at the markets. They were busy this time of day, and Anders’ hopes and hallucinations filled them with his friends. “My nephew finally decide to let you out of his little Circle, did he?”

“What are you talking about?” Anders asked; his voice sounded strange to his ears - an unsettling sort of monotone - like listening to a Tranquil. He wished he didn’t have to talk, but even after a year of lessons, Gamlen could barely sign. If nothing else, it was comforting to know it wasn’t a test and Hawke hadn’t sent him.

“Like you don’t know,” Gamlen said, retrieving a cigar from his pocket and holding the end out for Anders to light. “Would you?”

“I can’t,” Anders shook his head. He didn’t have the mana.

“Damn,” Gamlen whistled, lighting it with a matchstick instead and opening a window for the smoke. “Did a number on you, didn’t he? Could have warned you the boy ain’t right.” It sounded more like mockery than sympathy, but at least it was honest. If nothing else it put Gamlen more than a few steps above his nephew.

“Why didn’t you?” Anders asked.

“Pfft,” Gamlen shrugged. “I hate you?”

“Are you flirting with me?” Anders joked wearily.

“My father would have been the Viscount if not for the magic in our line,” Gamlen said, blowing smoke against the glass instead of out the window. Tobacco smelled better than sandalwood, but that bar was so low it was on the floor, and Hawke had gone and grabbed a shovel.

“And… I’m part of that line?” Anders guessed. “Does that mean we’re related? Is the wedding off?”

“Like that now, wouldn’t you?” Gamlen snorted. “Don’t tell me you're surprised. Never met a wife a husband didn’t beat.”

“You really are a catch, you know that, right?” Anders said, rearranging his limbs on the bench and staring out the window. It was a drop, at three stories, but he doubted it would kill him, and he was so tired it didn’t seem worth the effort.

“Never raised a hand to my girl, but I never married her either,” Gamlen exhaled another mouthful of smoke that actually made it out the window. “Nothing good ever came of marriage or magic. If not for either one my sister would still be alive.”

“I don’t have the strength to argue with you,” Anders said.

“I’ll bet you don’t.” Gamlen eyed him over, and joined him on the window bench with a sigh. “... My uncle used to beat his wife and kids. Not his son - he loved that bastard to death. His grandkids. All four of them. I guess it runs in the family.”

“Good thing we’re not having kids,” Anders noted.

“If only that stopped you shit packers from trying,” Gamlen snorted.

“I can’t wait to have an uncle,” Anders joked.

“I could do without another nephew,” Gamlen countered, with a long pull of his cigar that scattered ashes on the floor. “You really gonna marry him? Maker’s breath, man, just say no.”

“You think I haven’t?”

“Bloody say it again. What’s he gonna do? It’s not like it can get worse than this.”

“It can always get worse.”

“You got me by the balls there,” Gamlen said.

Hawke let him out of the house when Anders didn’t make any attempts to escape it. It started small - a trip to the market. Confession at the Chantry. A visit to the Viscount’s Keep. Hawke went everywhere with him, and so long as Anders never tried running from him, Hawke never tried chasing him. Anders was too scared and tired to run anyway. Eventually Hawke let him out on his own, or as close as Anders ever came to being on his own.

He always had an escort. Someone there for his protection. A servant. A mercenary. A shadow - and Anders was already seeing too many. Familiar faces from the corner of his eye, or off in the distance, like wraiths from the Fade waiting for some impossible, imagined rescue. Anders didn’t have the mana for transformation magic, and he didn’t have the energy to run, but there had to be a way out.

He tried once - in a fit of pique - when he managed to find some of the energy magebane had stolen from him. Steaming himself in distilled foxite and heatherum chased Orana from his apothecary at the Warden Compound, and Anders crawled out the window. The fall from the second story sprained his ankle, and he didn’t make it far before a guardsman saw him limping, and offered to help.

Anders should have just taken the help. Instead he’d panicked. He thought of the guardsman reporting to the Guard Captain, and how that title seemed synonymous with Knight Commander of late. Both women shared a hatred of magic, and a friendship with Hawke, and beyond disagreeing on which of them should rule the city, the only real difference was the color of their hair.

Anders had run for the only place he could think of running, and fallen down a storm drain in the process. The guards had fished him out of the Darktown sewage and brought him back to Hawke, who insisted he stay off his ankle until it healed. Anders had spent a week back in the room, and been so relieved when the week ended he’d actually thanked Hawke for ending it.

Nothing was as bad as the room. Anders would have done anything not to go back into the room. It wasn’t so bad as long as he could leave the room. He’d grown up in the Circle - and it was easy to fall back into that life. A life of constant oversight and supervision, of having every choice made for him, down to the meals he ate and when he ate them. It didn’t matter how he felt. If he put on a smile and told a few jokes, he could get through the day, and eventually that was all he did.

Satinalia came. Hawke threw a ball for the annum - and as much as Anders hated them - he was for any opportunity to talk to the nobility. He might not have been able to get any help for himself, but he still could try to get help for his cause. The nobles were the only people in the city with the power to unseat Meredith, if only they would use it. They just needed convincing - and Hawke hadn’t said Anders couldn’t try to convince them. He might not have let him work with the Mage’s Collective, but Hawke still let him work on his manifesto, and that was something. Anders still had something.

Anders untangled himself from under Hawke’s arm to join Bran Cavin. The Seneschal - or the Interim Viscount - had picked out a quiet corner where he could drown in a bottle of wine, and some part of Anders wanted to join him, but after Maker knew how many months of magebane, there was too little of him left to lose the rest in drink. What Anders had left he gave to Justice and to mages.

“Well look who it is,” Bran tipped his drink at him, face as flush as his hair - such a bright red it was almost pink. “You. The you.”

“Anders,” Anders reminded him.

“And her what?” Bran blinked.

“Well I can see this is going to be a productive conversation,” Anders sighed, keeping Hawke in his line of sight. The occasional wave kept Hawke from joining him, but it didn’t keep his heart from racing whenever Hawke looked over. Not that there was anything wrong with Anders talking to someone, but the fear that there might be was always there.

“Productive,” Bran snorted. “Nothing productive in visiting the Champion.” Bran slurred the title - but whether he was drunk or mocking was hard to say. Probably both.

“Everyone else seems to think so,” Anders said. The estate was packed so tight with noblemen and women their elbows bumped when they signed. Not a soul among them noticed anything off when they were so focused on the Champion they couldn’t see Hawke.

“I am not everyone else,” Bran wrinkled his nose and patted his chest. “I am the Seneschal. A position that does not traditionally endure sans Viscount. Now I am trapped” - Bran hissed, scooting closer to him with an anxious glance around the room - “under templar scrutiny waiting for them to note how easily I might be replaced.”

“Seems like you’ve been replaced already,” Anders noted, steadying him.

“Not -” Bran surged forward, shoving his drink into Anders’ chest and spilling wine on his doublet, but it was black and the stain wouldn’t show. “ - officially. Officially we must appoint from Kirkwall's elite. A consen-.... consensus of the nobility. A willing nominee!”

“So bloody do it,” Anders hissed. “What are you waiting for?”

“Both are lacking,” Bran sighed. “I can't fault it. These are difficult times.”

“You’re telling me not a single person in this city wants to be its Viscount?” Anders demanded.

“No, no!” Bran drawled. “No, everyone wants to be Viscount, but anyone who thinks to take this office needs more than popular support, they need particular support.”

“You mean the Knight Commander’s support,” Anders corrected him.

“Meredith would not openly declare a preference,” Bran flapped a hand in his face, and then started giggling. “No need there. We can all see what’s between her and the First Enchanter.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know a woman who likes to walk on a man when I see one,” Bran snorted into his drink, and sent droplets of wine up into his nose hairs. “I bet she leaves the boots on.”

That was an image Anders could do without.

“Bran, focus, the Viscount?”

“What?” Bran blinked.

“What are you doing to replace the Viscount?” Anders pressed.

“Nothing!” Bran laughed, and then cringed, glancing around to see if anyone else had heard him. “The rule of Kirkwall is deliberately separate from the Chantry’s will, but the Order embodies security in Kirkwall. They want the new Viscount to be more accepting of... oversight. Anyone who wants to rule Kirkwall needs support from the Templars. That is the new truth of this city.”

“Since when are city leaders appointed by Knight Commanders?” Anders hissed under his breath. “Just pick someone and put them on the throne and get rid of the bloody Knight-Commander!”

“Shhh!” Bran shoved his hand over his mouth, but he was still holding his drink, and ending up pressing the glass stem to his lips and spilling more wine on his shoulder. “Don’t you know what happened to the old Viscount’s predecessor? He was a tyrant, certainly, but his rule - his life - wasn’t ended until he actively sought to expel the templars.”

“That doesn’t mean we should do nothing,” Anders argued. “They have death squads hanging people in the bloody streets. The riots aren’t just in Lowtown anymore - look around. People are terrified.”

“They should be,” Bran said. “The good of all is inexorably tied to what is good for the templars.”

“You’re bloody useless,” Anders pushed his hand off.

“And proud of it, serah,” Bran tipped his glass again, and started when he realized it was empty. “A dangerous thing, taking sides. I avoid it whenever possible. You should look a little closer to home for that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Champion put in a bid for the Viscounty,” Bran explained. “He may yet win Meredith’s support. He certainly seems to share the old hatreds the templars feel deserve central focus. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about hosting the Grand Tourney. This whole thing is a political maelstrom waiting to happen, if you ask me, which no one did. No one ever does.” Bran stumbled away from him and off towards a servant holding a tray of appetizers. “More wine, serah!”

Hawke - Viscount of Kirkwall. Anders wasn’t sure if that would be better or worse than no Viscount at all. Hawke already had too much power in Kirkwall. He was the city’s Champion and owned the Red Irons: the deadliest mercenary band in the Free Marches, and half the Maharian Quarry: the largest mine this side of the Vimmark Mountains. The Bone Pits supplied everywhere from Kirkwall, to Cumberland, to Jader.

Hawke was almost violently wealthy, and wealth meant power, and there was only one person left in Kirkwall who came close to competing with him, but between Meredith and Hawke, Hawke still had to be the lesser evil.

Didn’t he?

Anders tried to tell himself as much at the Grand Tourney in Firstfall. Nathaniel had suggested Kirkwall host the one-in-a-thousand day event, last Harvestmere. Anders had spent weeks with Hawke, hobnobbing with the Seneschal and the nobility, finding sponsors for each of the games. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Something that would bring trade to the city and help it recover in the aftermath of the qunari invasion.

Anders didn’t have any interest in the games, but bringing in representatives from across Thedas had seemed like a way to speak to the plight of mages beyond publishing his manifesto in a filthy quarterly and hoping a bored noblewoman would stumble across it and decide to trade needlepoint for iconoclasm. Now it just seemed like a mistake.

Meredith was already winning. The tourney grounds had been set up outside the city. A massive arena had been constructed to the north of the east road, to be used as a tiltyard for jousting or an amphitheatre for plays. The stands were three stories high, and covered in Chantry regalia. Sunbursts banners flew high enough to be seen for leagues in every direction, gold and crimson striped canopies protecting the best seats from the winter wind or any risk of snow.

Private seating had been built above the arena entrance for the Knight Commander, who was hosting the tourney in the absence of an official Viscount, and any visiting nobility. Citizens who couldn’t afford seating clustered up on the city walls, overlooking the tournament. Beyond the joust, there multiple archery ranges, and dozens of list fields for all manner of contests of arms.

Colorful pavilions littered the grounds, intermingled with tents of competitors and their servants. Contestants had come from all over Thedas. The Anderfels, Orlais, Antiva, Rivain, Tevinter, Ferelden - and more who hailed from nowhere at all. Tal’Vashoth, Dalish, Avvar, Chasind. There were so many people from so many places Anders couldn’t walk through a crowd and hear the common tongue.

Hawke was competing in a few of the archery events, and might have been sponsoring a few of the others, but Anders wasn’t sure. Whatever Hawke was doing at the Grand Tourney, it took up his time and his focus, and Anders was free of him. He couldn’t say how long he’d stay free of him, but there were worse escorts to have than Orana. There were also better ones.

Orana was quiet. Almost unnervingly so. She was always in arm’s reach, just off to his left, and she was always watching him. Her eyes were almost unnaturally wide - a shade of green that might have been reminiscent of poison if any color but pink made him think of it of late. Whenever she did speak, her words were as gentle as they were grim.

“I don’t think Master Hawke wants us to leave the grounds.”

“Master Hawke wouldn’t approve of us having lunch without him. He’ll want to make sure you take the right dosage.”

“We shouldn’t speak with the Harimanns - Master Hawke will be upset.”

“Are you sure we should frequent these establishments? I don’t recognize any of Master Hawke’s business partners.”

“Please be mindful of your cloak, Master Anders, I don’t want to tell Master Hawke it needs to be rehemmed.”

“We should check in with Master Hawke. He’ll be concerned if he doesn’t hear from us soon.”

Anders sighed and turned around, waving Orana on to lead him back towards Hawke’s pavilion, when someone grabbed his wrist and wrenched him into the crowd. Their grip was like iron, and Anders went stumbling after them, unable to focus on anything but his own feet, terrified of slipping and falling into the dirt thousands upon thousands of feet had pounded into mud, and ruining the outfit Hawke had picked out for him.

His captor pulled him through crowds and alleys, between tents and pavilions, and eventually dragged him into the backroom of a stall that looked like it was selling children’s toys. It was cramped, and filled with barrels of wooden swords and shields painted with all manner of heraldry. The stranger pulled down their hood, and turned into Fenris.

He looked… wretched. An uneven shave had ruined his hair, the shock white strands sticking out in all directions, but doing nothing to hide the scar the crossbow bolt had left on his ear. A whole chunk was missing, and it didn’t seem like his only scar. His eyes were shadowed and sunken, and there was something worryingly off about his posture.

“Fenris,” Anders glanced over his shoulder, expecting Orana to still be there somehow, but her absence was as terrifying as her presence. “What are you doing!? I have to get back before Orana tells Hawke I’m missing-”

“Kevesh!” Fenris pinned him back against the wall before he could run out of the room. “Missing is the point!”

“Get off me!” Anders shoved at him, panicking at the amount of dust and wood shavings coating the wall Fenris had pinned him against, and trying to come up with an excuse for how they’d gotten on his cloak if Hawke asked. “I can’t be missing! If Hawke finds out I tried to run he’ll never let me outside again!”

“Get a hold of yourself!” Fenris snarled, voice low. “Do you want to be free of the man or not!?”

“I can’t,” The makings of a sob rattled in his chest, crackling in his lungs and strangling his breath, but Maker he couldn’t cry - he’d never stop. “I can’t-”

“You must,” Fenris said. “I need your help.”

“My help?” Anders repeated, sorrow giving way to confusion giving way to anger “You need my help? You need my help!? Does it look like I can help you!? Does it look like I can help anyone!? You left me! You promised you’d come back and you left me with him - and you want my help!? Do you have any idea what he’s done to me?”

“Yes,” Fenris said flatly. “Why do you think I came for you? You think I could not see you suffer because you did it in silence? You think I did not do the same for years at Danarius’ side? You think I cannot see how Hawke has changed? How he is hurting you? You think I do not see how the others enable him? How they live in fear of him? You think I will ever let someone put that fear on me again?”

Anders fought his way out of Fenris’ arms, but there was no room to pace. He dragged his hands through his hair, and was struck with a sudden panic that Hawke might be upset with him for ruining his braids before he forced it down. “Where did you go?” Anders scrubbed unshed tears from his eyes and turned back to Fenris. “Where have you been!?”

“Where do you think!?” Fenris shot back. He untied his cloak so it hung off his right arm, and thrust his left towards him. He wasn’t wearing his armor. He wasn’t wearing anything but dirty linens. His left arm was scarred at the wrist. They were familiar scars. Perfectly perpendicular, a little more than an inch apart, left whenever someone pulled too hard against a pair of shackles.

“... Danarius?” Anders guessed.

“Hawke,” Fenris corrected him, shrugging back into his cloak. “... I failed to escape the guard. The magistrate spared me from the gallows and sent me to the mines. Have you any idea how many prisoners he employs?”

Anders shook his head, “I didn’t know.”

“Neither did I,” Fenris said. “... The bane. The lyrium. If I had known-”

“I know… me too.”

Anders didn’t know what else to say. It was hard to look at him. It felt too much like looking in a mirror, knowing what Fenris had been through and who had put him through it. He stared at Fenris’ feet instead, the deep scars and dark discoloration that had come from the time he’d spent working in the mines. There was no floor to the stall, just dirt, and Anders kicked it with his boot while Fenris tapped it with the ball of his foot.

“How did you not know?” Anders asked eventually. “Merrill-”

“Never told me,” Fenris cut him off. “... We are no longer together.”

“... because of me?”

“Are you so surprised?” Fenris asked. “Do you not want to leave Hawke?”

“I tried,” Anders said. “I’ve been trying.”

“Try harder,” Fenris said.

“Try harder,” Anders repeated, all of his anger coming back to him. “Just try harder! Brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that! Let me just escape harder next time. I’ll make sure to do that the next time Hawke is smiting me so he can force magebane down my throat! I can’t believe he’s doing this to me! I can’t believe he’s been taking lyrium for years and Varric knew and never told me!”

“Can you not?” Fenris asked.

“No!” Anders said. “It wasn’t like this - Hawke wasn’t like this -... We were fine - it was fine -”

“It wasn’t,” Fenris said. “You just didn’t know any better.”

Anders sat on the edge of a barrel full of children's toys, and buried his face in his hands. “Where are we?”

“A Friend’s stall,” Fenris explained.

“... Why are the Red Jennies helping me?”

“Because you need help.”

“How did you escape?” Anders asked.

“It remains to be seen if I have,” Fenris countered. Anders forced himself to look up at him. Fenris was smiling. It was tired, and it was forced, but he was smiling. Anders tried to smile back, but all he managed was a weak twitch of his lips.

“Can you fight?” Fenris asked.

“No.”

“Can you run?” Fenris asked.

“No,” Anders shook his head. “It’s a miracle I even made it here. You don’t understand how tired this makes me - how exhausted I am. I may as well not have magic.”

“Bane is a popular poison in Tevinter,” Fenris said. “I know its effects. Danarius used it often against his rivals. He had me pour it in their drinks.”

“Then you know I can’t help you,” Anders said. “I don’t know what you want from me, Fenris-”

“I want you to kill him,” Fenris said.

“... Hawke?” Anders guessed.

“If it suits you, but I was speaking of Danarius. He is here - sponsoring one of the archers. He has used the Tourney as an excuse to come to Kirkwall so his rivals won’t know he’s here for me and these filthy markings. You have to help me kill him. I cannot do it alone.”

“I don’t have the mana to kill a magister, Fenris,” Anders said.

“You are a blood mage, are you not?” Fenris demanded. “Use your blood. Use his.”

“Fenris… I can’t.”

“Yes you can!” Fenris took a step towards him, and Anders flinched. He hadn’t meant to flinch, but Fenris’ frustration was evident in the tension in his shoulders and the set to his jaw, and he was too used to how Hawke dealt with it not to flinch. Fenris stopped short for it, and knelt in front of him. “... use mine, if you must, but help me, Anders, please.”

“... Okay,” Anders took a steadying breath, and stood. “Okay. How are we supposed to do this?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Fenris admitted.

“Great start,” Anders rolled his eyes. “... what about a lyrium potion? Do you have one? Can you get me one? Something to counter the bane?”

“The only counter is a cleansing,” Fenris said. “Purifying blood magic. I have seen the spell but I cannot tell you how to replicate it.”

“Merrill knew it,” The recollection left a bitter taste in Anders’ mouth. Templars had captured him and half of the Collective, and Hawke and Merrill had saved him when he’d almost died to concentrated magebane - what felt like a lifetime ago. Now they were working together to poison him with it.

“... I know where she keeps her grimoire,” Fenris said. “I can get it for you.”

“I still need a lyrium potion,” Anders said. “Hawke took all of mine. I don’t know where he keeps them.”

“Danarius will have some,” Fenris said. “Our Friends should be able to get them from him.”

“Okay,” Anders scrubbed the sweat off his palms on his trousers. “Okay. Okay, so... now… now what?”

“Now you wait here,” Fenris said. “The first archery contest is in two hours. That gives our Friends time to find you lyrium, time for me to return with Merrill’s grimoire, and time for you to learn the spell. We ambush him in his caravan after the contest.”

“There are hundreds of caravans,” Anders argued. “How are we supposed to know which one belongs to him?”

“There are none like his,” Fenris said. “It cannot be missed. It is twice the size of the others and may well be mistaken for a manor for its size. The thing is so sick with magic it is a wonder it does not tear the Veil with its passing. You will know it.”

“... What about Hawke?” Anders asked.

“What about him?”

“... I need your help too.”

“Then we will kill him next.”

Chapter 150: Well Past Prayer

Notes:

Thank you for all of your comments. I promise I read all of them and they mean a great deal to me even if I don't respond.

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Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 17 Umbralis
A Stall At The Grand Tourney

Two hours.

Two hours and this would be over. He’d help Fenris kill Danarius, Fenris would help him kill Hawke, and this bloody nightmare would finally be over. No more magebane. No more smites. No more of that fucking room. Maker damn him, he hated every piece of furniture in that fucking room. He hated the armoire full of all the clothes Hawke had fitted for him. He hated the couch and all the songs Hawke had sung for him on it. He hated the desk and all the manifestos they’d written together at it. He hated the bed.

… Andraste preserve him, Anders hated the bed so fucking much.

Dead. Dead and burned. Dead and gone. No more of Hawke, or his thrice-damned hands, and all the things they did to him.

… Did he really want him dead?

Of course he wanted him dead. Why wouldn’t he want him dead? Hadn’t he killed men for less? Hadn’t he killed Mosley for less? He’d burned Mosley alive - for the crime of extortion and the threat of rape - and he’d lived with that. Mosley was a snake. He’d bloody looked like one, with beady black eyes and a jaw so wide he must have unhinged it at some point. Anders had never forgotten his face - his strained look of confusion through Amell’s compulsion - like he couldn’t understand what was happening to him.

Anders wondered if he’d looked the same when he died.

He wondered what Hawke would look like dead.

Hawke was worse than Mosley, wasn’t he?

He deserved to die, didn’t he?

… for what?

For using lyrium because he was afraid of blood mages after one had killed his mother? For having him stay in their bedroom for a few weeks - waiting on him hand on foot? For making him take magebane to suppress a spirit that had almost killed him? Except it wasn’t just a spirit. It was his spirit. It was Justice - and Justice was Anders - and Anders was Justice. He’d promised to be Justice, the day he’d taken his hand and his soul in the streets of Amaranthine, and Hawke wanted to take that from them.

Alive. Dead. It didn’t matter, as long as Hawke was gone.

Anders paced in the small space the merchant’s stall afforded him, wondering how long it would take Fenris to make it to the alienage and back. There was nothing to mark the passage of time, and the minutes he spent away from Hawke felt simultaneously like seconds and hours. It might have been a quarter hour or a whole one when the shopkeeper came into the backroom, and Anders almost had a heart attack.

It felt like a heart attack. His chest constricted - and every muscle along with it - pain lancing through him and sending him staggering back into one of the barrels and scattering toy swords through the dirt.

“No, no, it’s okay!” The woman rushed across the stall to catch him. “I’m a Friend. Everyone likes Friends. Okay, maybe you don’t. Breathe - you know how to breathe don’t you? Inhale, exhale - … no? Okay - maybe just sit down? Or just - … alright, close enough. Okay, let’s just lean against the wall here. The wall is nice. Are you going to pass out? You look like you’re going to pass out. Please don’t pass out. You’re really very tall and I don’t think I can carry you.”

Anders eventually managed to force breath into his lungs for it, crumpled in a corner of the shop with the Red Jenny hovering over him. Something about her reminded him of Bethany, but her eyes weren’t the same color, and she had curly brown hair that framed her face in loose ringlets. She was wearing a simple brown dress that hid the dirt kicked up by the tourney, and seemed kind enough, but Merrill had seemed kind once upon a time too.

“All better?” The Red Jenny asked, pushing what felt like cool glass into his shaking hands. “Here, your Friends got you a gift.”

Anders cradled the vial against his chest. It was a light blue, so diluted there was doubtless more water than lyrium in the potion, but it was lyrium. Maker save him, he craved it like a man dying of thirst craved water, but he couldn’t drink it yet. Not while he still had magebane coursing through his system. He might have missed lunch, but he’d still had breakfast, and he honestly couldn’t say how long it took the poison to leave his system when Hawke never stopped forcing it on him.

“... Where’s Fenris?” Anders asked hoarsely.

“No names,” The stranger held up a finger in warning. “We’re all just Friends here.”

“Where’s my friend?” Anders corrected himself.

“He went to get something for you,” The Red Jenny told him what he already knew. She righted the barrel he’d knocked over, and started picking up the scattered toy swords and dumping them back inside. “He’ll be back soon.”

“How soon?”

“Before the first archery contest starts.”

Still not helpful.

“Why are you helping me?”

“Because that’s what Friends do,” The woman paused to smile at him - and Anders tried to tell himself there was nothing threatening in it. “They help each other.”

“But I’m not a Friend.”

The shopkeeper gave him a strange look, and dropped the last bundle of swords into the barrel. She returned to his side to pat his knee, and Anders’ involuntary flinch won him a sad sort of smile. “You’re a good Friend. One of my best.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Friends help people, and there’s no one in Kirkwall who helps more people than you. Did you think no one would ever help you? Did you think no one would ever thank you? We’re here for you, Healer.” She stood up, and hesitated at the door, dusting dirt off her dress. “Do you want me to leave the door open? You can see the lists for one of the melees from here. It might be fun to watch while you wait.”

“No,” Anders said quickly. “Thank you. No one can know I'm here.”

“We’re all Friends here,” The Red Jenny assured him, slipping back out the front.

Too much time seemed to pass. Minutes. Hours. It couldn’t have taken that long to make it to the alienage and back. Something had to have gone wrong. Fenris was in trouble. Anders was in trouble. By now Orana would have told Hawke that he was missing and Hawke would be looking for him and it was only a matter of time before Hawke would find him, and there was no telling what Hawke would do when he did.

Anders couldn’t just stay here, waiting until he got caught, but he had to stay here. If he left Hawke would find him, but if he stayed Hawke would find him too. Anders paced, warring with himself, when what sounded like an explosion sounded in the distance. Screams carried from outside - shocked, panicked, outraged. Anders made out a handful of words. Explosion. Fire. Help.

The last moved him. Anders ran out of the stall and into chaos. Smoke rose from the arena, blackening the sky, and even from a distance the heat of the flames could be felt, devouring all of the seating set aside for anyone of import. The Knight Commander. The Champion. Royalty and dignitaries visiting the city. The explosion had to have been meant for someone, but there were too many someones it could have been meant for.

They came pouring out of the arena as it crumbled. Debris from the explosion was scattered across the tourney grounds. Charred wood, warped shrapnel, and chunks. Thick, viscous red chunks that couldn’t be identified as anything other than meat. A few chunks held pieces of bone - a femur. A spine. A whole jawbone, with enough flesh and muscle left to give it the vague shape of a smile.

Tourney goers panicked, rushing in every direction to find someone to help or someone to blame. One poor bastard was already taking the brunt of it. A massive qunari mercenary with horns as wide set as his shoulders was getting pelted with all manner of food and filth - his assailants decrying the invasion and the qunari for the attack - whether or not they followed the Qun.

Tal’Vashoth started fleeing from the grounds, pursued by whoever saw fit to pursue them, while other groups formed over old hatreds. Fereldens fought Orlesians. Orlesians fought Fereldens. Nevarrans fought Marchers. Marchers fought themselves. Antivans watched, drinking and laughing, and someone grabbed him and whirled him into a pavilion. A feminine face was flush and giggling beneath a familiar glyph.

“Terrie?” Anders gawked.

“Anders!” Terrie’s grin was so wide it warped the glyph on her cheek. “Did you see? We got her! We finally got her! This is the resolution we’ve been working for - tell me you saw!”

“Got who?” Anders asked. “Terrie, what are you talking about?”

“The Knight-Commander!” Terrie explained, in a giddy whisper. “We killed her!”

“... you did?” Anders looked back to the arena; ash and burning fabric rained through the air like fallen snow, and against the blackening sky it looked almost beautiful. It shouldn’t have been beautiful. It should have been horrifying, but Anders watched the sunburst banners burn, and thought of Karl, and for a moment all he felt was relieved. “... how do you know?”

“Look!” Terrie hugged him with one arm, bouncing on the balls of her feet while the arena burned, and all of the Knight-Commander’s supporters burned with it. “No one could have survived that.”

But people had survived it. Normal, everyday people, who came stumbling out of the arena, burnt and bloodied and coughing smoke. They weren’t templars; this wasn’t their barracks or their training compound. This was the Grand Tourney: a celebration full of civilians who wouldn’t understand what the Resolutionists had done or why they’d done it. All they would see was the explosion - and the magic that had made it - and this would only fuel their fear of it. The Resolutionists hadn’t made some grand statement against the Circles or the Chantry. The only statement here was death.

“Maker’s breath, Terrie, there were innocent people in there!” Anders hissed, gesturing to the injured stumbling out of the arena.

“No one who sits with the Knight Commander is innocent,” Terrie said disdainfully.

“You don’t know who supported her and who didn’t,” Anders argued. “That explosion had to have killed at least a dozen people and injured a hundred more. I have to go help them.”

“Help them?” Terrie recoiled, a look of disgust on her face. “Who are you?”

“I’m a healer,” Anders said.

“A healer,” Terrie said the word like an insult. “Stand in the ashes of an Annulment and tell them you healed the ones who ordered it.”

… Didn’t she have a point? Wasn’t he responsible for the lives that were taken by the lives that he saved? At the end of the day, if it meant there would never be another death squad patrolling the streets, or another Tranquil in the Gallows courtyard, or another child taken from another mother, wasn’t it worth it?

“What if she isn’t dead?” Anders asked.

“Then we’ll try again,” Terrie said simply. “We only need to be lucky once. She needs to be lucky every time.”

“Anders!” Fenris called - appearing from the crowd to throw himself between him and Terrie. His hand glowed a furious sapphire, and Anders wrenched him back before he thrust it straight through Terrie’s chest.

“It’s fine!” Anders said quickly. “She’s a friend.”

“She is not,” Fenris said, but the lyrium faded back to a dull white against his skin. He pulled his cloak tight around his ragged clothes, and took a defensive spot beside him. “I would know.”

“Not that kind of friend,” Anders said. “What took you so long?”

“I could not find it,” Fenris explained. “She must have moved it - or taken it with her wherever she has gone today.”

“What do we do now then?” Anders asked.

“It should take the templars an hour to mobilize from the Gallows,” Terrie told them. “I’ve heard you haven’t been working with our old friends for a while, and if you’re looking for new friends, we meet at Smetty’s Fish Guttery at midnight. Watch yourselves.”

Terrie vanished back into the crowd. Fenris pulled him back under the pavilion, swearing under his breath in Tevene. “Fasta vass - we will never catch him unaware now.”

“What do we do?” Anders asked, pulling his hood down low on his face and cursing himself for not doing it sooner.

“Keep you from Hawke,” Fenris decided. “Until the bane loses its hold on you - only I do not know where we can stay. I am wanted in the city.”

“For escaping the mines?” Anders guessed. “... Hawke put a bounty on you?”

“The magistrate put a bounty on me,” Fenris corrected him. “Hawke simply declined to pay it.”

“Fuck,” Anders ran a hand through his hair. “How much is it?”

“You truly think to convince him after all he has done?” Fenris demanded.

“I might be able to afford it,” Anders explained. “I have a six month stipend at the Warden Compound. I don’t know how much that is, but the bounty on you can’t be that high. All you did was damage a building.”

“The bounty is not the problem. The problem is Danarius. He knows I am still in the city. He will have seen my face on the posters - and I have no one but you to face him with me.”

“What about Merrill?” Anders asked. “I know what she did to me, but she still loves you-”

“I do not trust her,” Fenris cut him off.

“Maybe-...” Anders looked out across the tourney grounds. Too few guards were pushing their way through the crowds, alternatively breaking up fights or starting them. People who weren’t fighting gathered in nervous clusters, helping or hovering around the wounded. There were so many thousands in the crowds from so many countries, it didn’t seem possible that they could be alone in them. “... Nate might be here.”

“Who?” Fenris asked.

“Nate,” Anders said. There was no way to see him in the crowd, if he was here, but Anders should have been able to sense him, the way he could sense darkspawn. Like a shiver running up his spine, or crawling across his skin. A call that sang within his blood and pulled on his heart, but he was so tired it was hard to sense anything beyond the bane. “He said he wanted to come to the Tourney. He might be here… Amell might be here.”

“Good people of Kirkwall!” A familiar voice called out across the tourney grounds, amplified by magic. Meredith, alive and well and standing on the ramparts of the arena, flanked by Chantry banners. Light seemed to shimmer around her, a magical barrier warping her image and protecting her from anything else the Resolutionists might throw her way. Orsino stood at her side, channeling it, and Bran’s joke that the two of them were together came back to him.

“I bid you stay calm,” Meredith continued. “Rest assured the situation is under control and the Order will ensure your safety. We are the peacekeepers - the champions of the just - and there will be no further attacks. The blood mages responsible have been apprehended and dealt with.

“These radicals are hated and accursed by the Maker, and would seek to destroy us and our way of life - but we will not give them the satisfaction. The Circle will see to the wounded free of charge. Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter. Let us be blessed and let us pray!

“Maker, my enemies are abundant.
Many are those who rise up against me.
But my faith sustains me; I shall not fear the legion,
Should they set themselves against me.

“The tourney will continue!”

The reaction from the crowd was mixed. Some people cheered. Some people murmured. Some people heard ‘blood mages’ and ran away screaming. Most people just went back about their day, albeit with something of a nervous energy. The minstrels started back up, the maypoles went back to spinning, and off in the distance someone announced the archery competition would be pushed back an hour through a druffalo horn.

“If they are here, how are we to find them?” Fenris asked.

“I should be able to sense them,” Anders said.

“Should?”

“I can’t sense anything through magebane,” Anders explained, turning over the vial of lyrium in his pocket. “The Friends only got me one lyrium potion and I don’t know how long the mana in it will last or if it will even be enough to counteract the bane.”

“I have met your Wardens - and half of them are crippled,” Fenris said. “You truly think they could stand against a Tevinter Magister?”

“You have a better idea?” Anders demanded.

Fenris shook his head. “Drink it then.”

“And pray?” Anders joked, flicking the cork free with his thumb. The sweet scent alone seemed to strengthen him, but he was so bloody tired there was no telling how much it would help.

Fenris chuckled wearily, “I think we’re past prayer.”

Anders drank. The Fade rushed like a torrent through his veins, splitting them with a wave of veilfire and washing the pavilion in emerald light. The sudden surge of mana was so overwhelming after so long without it blinded him. It felt euphoric, it felt exultant, it felt incomparable in that it felt anything at all. Anything but weak and weary.

It was still far from a panacea - and it didn’t do anything for the terror that followed when Anders realized he’d turned himself into a beacon drinking it, even if it was only for a moment. Fenris realized it too. He grabbed his hand, and seemed to pick a direction at random to vanish into the crowd, but it was the wrong direction.

The pull didn’t come from that direction. The Call didn’t sing from that direction. The Wardens weren’t in that direction. Anders dug his heels into the ground, churning up dirt, and wrenched Fenris towards the arena. “This way - they’re here - they’re this way.”

“Have a care,” Fenris warned him, falling in at his side and tugging his hand so their pace was still hurried, but less noticeable. “The Champion will have had a seat with the Knight-Commander.”

Anders tilted his head towards a pile of charred and broken boards that had been blown clear of the arena. “You think it was that one?”

“If we are lucky,” Fenris joked.

“What if it wasn’t?” Anders tugged at his hood. Fenris’ cloak was forgettable. Wool. Brown. Anders’ wasn’t. It was a deep crimson, lined in fennec fox fur, and just rich enough to be noticeable. The only thing that might save him from notice was that the color was so prevalent in Kirkwall between the city’s heraldry and the Chantry’s every other noble wore it.

“Then you run,” Fenris said.

“What happened to killing him?” Anders asked.

“You cannot do it alone - and we cannot do it in public. If we see him, we run.”

“Okay,” Anders was for running. Anders was always for running, but he couldn’t say if he had the strength to run even with what mana the lyrium potion had given him. One potion didn’t undo the months he’d spent in a veritable solitary, every muscle and emotion atrophying, until he was a shadow of his former self who could barely stand, let alone stand against Hawke - or a Tevinter Magister.

Maker, he hoped Nathaniel was here.

The crowds gave way to the pavilions surrounding the arena. It was easy to spot which one belonged to the Wardens. The shingles were a deep blue, and covered in ash from the explosion. Banners hung from silver eaves, decorated in gryphon heraldry, and a small company of men and women wearing matching armor sat around a table, talking and laughing and utterly unconcerned by the horrors around them. One of them wore a blindfold.

“Amell!” Anders screamed, breaking from Fenris’ side to shove his way through the crowd and to the pavilion. He didn’t make it to Amell before a Warden the size of a qunari clotheslined him, winding him and holding him aloft.

“Let’s try that again, Serah,” The qunari-sized Warden said, setting him back on his feet and holding him in place with a hand on his shoulder. “Commander. You’ve a guest. Warden. Maybe eighteen hands high. Pale. Blonde. Thin.”

“Anders?” Amell asked.

Anders said something - he knew he said something - sound came out of his mouth but he had no idea if that sound formed words. There weren’t any words he could say that would serve. There was too much to say and too little time to say it, but whatever sound he made must have been good enough.

“Let him through,” Amell ordered. The hand left his shoulder, and Anders flung himself into Amell’s arms.

Amell caught him with a startled grunt, rattling crockery on the table he was leaning against. Maker save him - maybe Amell finally would. He smelled incredible - no sandalwood, no dog, no dirt, no lyrium. Nothing but smoke and copper and freedom and the Fade. Anders buried his face in his shoulder and his hands in his hair, trying to find real words, something more than just the few pathetic, nonsensical sounds that fell from his lips, but nothing came to him.

“Mage,” Fenris said from somewhere behind him. “We have no time for this.”

“You’re right,” Anders untangled himself from Amell - who stayed leaning against the table, a look of complete confusion on his face. “You’re right - Amell - I have to talk to you.”

“Of course…” Amell said slowly. “.. Nathan, are you alright without me?”

“I’ll manage,” Nathaniel said from the group of Wardens sitting at the table and gawking openly at the two of them and the scene Anders had made. “... Anders. Good to see you. You always knew how to make an entrance.”

“Dumat, find the tent,” Amell said his mabari.

Dumat hefted himself to his feet with a sigh, and trotted off towards the cluster of tents that marked where the Wardens were staying at the tourney. Anders grabbed Amell’s arm, his grip like a vice. Fenris followed, anxiously pacing in front of them, falling behind them, hunching under his cloak and glancing in every direction.

Amell’s tent was a far cry from a caravan, and consisted of little more than a space for him and his mabari to sleep, but it was a tent, and it was private, and it was enough. Dumat found a spot for himself on what was apparently his bedroll, and flopped back down with another sigh. Amell untangled Anders’ fingers from where they were digging into his forearm. “What is it, Anders?”

“I need your help,” Anders said - because he had to say it - because he’d gone too long without saying it. He thought the words would flow, one after the other, the way they did with Fenris, but they didn’t. Fenris knew what he’d been through. Fenris had seen what he’d been through. Fenris had been through what he’d been through, but Amell hadn’t, and Anders wasn’t sure how to tell him. “We need your help.”

“You need my help?” Amell repeated.

“There is a magister here,” Fenris took over for him, and Anders breathed a sigh of relief. “Danarius Tenebrius. He is one of the most powerful magisters in the Tevinter Imperium. He gave me these.” Fenris pushed his cloak off one shoulder to reveal the lyrium markings etched up and down his arm - and then seemed to remember that Amell was blind, and couldn’t see anything he was showing him. “... Lyrium markings. And now he seeks to reclaim them. We need your help to kill him - and quickly - before he catches me. I am a fugitive and he would see me a slave.”

“... You need my help assassinating a member of the Magisterium?” Amell said slowly.

“Yes,” Fenris said.

“You have to help us,” Anders said - and tried to say more than that - but he didn’t know how to say it. Hawke was Amell’s cousin - what would Amell say if Anders asked him to kill him? What would Anders say if Amell asked him why? Amell already knew Hawke was taking lyrium - and he hadn’t tried to kill him for it. That wasn’t a good enough reason.

Did Anders even have a good enough reason? What if he didn’t? What if Amell said no? What was Anders supposed to do then?

“You have to help me,” Anders begged. “Amell, please.”

“Anders…” Amell’s voice was strained, and he looked like he was fighting back a frown - and Anders felt his heart fall into his stomach for it. Amell couldn’t be frowning at him. Amell never frowned at him, but he was here, and he was frowning, and Anders didn’t know what to do about it. “You left the Vigil without a word to me, you haven’t written in months, you’ve ignored every assignment I’ve sent you, you don’t come to visit when I send word I’m in the city, and after a week of staying here, you finally show up not for any want of me, but because you want my help to murder a man?”

That wasn’t true. Maker, that wasn’t true. That wasn’t what he’d done. He’d never wanted to leave. He’d never meant not to write. He hadn’t known Amell was staying in the city and Hawke wouldn’t have let him visit even if he had. He’d been in solitary. He’d been in solitary for months. He’d never escaped it. Hawke had never let him. He’d never meant for any of this to happen.

“I’m sorry,” Anders choked out.

Amell sighed, pushing a frustrated hand through his hair. “Fine.”

“What?” Anders asked.

“Fine,” Amell muttered. “Just step on me.”

“What?” Anders said again.

“Fenris, wasn’t it?” Amell ignored him to gesture in Fenris’ general direction. Amell never ignored him. It didn’t make any sense for Amell to ignore him. Amell loved him. Amell was supposed to love him. Did Amell even still love him? “Do you know where he’s staying?”

“Yes,” Fenris said. “But we cannot go yet. The mage is poisoned.”

“... What?” Amell stopped short.

“Bane,” Fenris elaborated - but not nearly as much as Anders wished he would. “He cannot fight like this. Do you know the spell to cleanse his blood?”

“... I know it,” Amell held out a hand. “Give me your hand.”

Fenris gave him his hand.

“I meant Anders,” Amell explained.

“... I- ... “ Fenris cleared his throat, blushing. “I will wait outside,” Fenris decided, leaving the tent.

Anders gave him his hand when Fenris left, and Amell rolled his sleeve up to his elbow. Anders had all but forgotten his touch. His hands. They weren’t anything like the ones that had known him of late. They were safe, and soft, and swept lightly over his skin, pausing over the few casting cuts that nowhere near measured the ones that littered Amell’s own arms, but he wasn’t smiling. He should have been smiling. Maker, why couldn’t he just be smiling? How was Anders supposed to tell him what had happened to him if he wasn’t smiling?

Amell pulled a dagger from his sleeve, and handed the hilt of it to him. “Cut yourself.”

“Horizontal or…?”

“So long as you bleed,” Amell said.

Every day for you, Anders wanted to say, but he doubted Amell would appreciate it. Amell didn’t look like he appreciated anything he had said or had to say. Anders cut his wrist, and Amell’s spell drew the bane from his blood. For some reason, it didn’t feel as painful as when Merrill had done it.

“How did this happen to you?” Amell asked.

Hawke. Just say Hawke. Just say Hawke. Maker damnit, why couldn’t he just say Hawke? Why couldn’t he just tell Amell what had happened to him? That Hawke had imprisoned him, that Hawke had poisoned him, that Hawke had beaten him, that Hawke had raped him?

How was he supposed to say that? Would Amell even believe him if he said that? What if he didn’t? Andraste preserve him, Anders felt like he would die if Amell didn't believe him. He couldn’t stand the thought of Amell doubting him when Anders already doubted himself. He hadn’t been able to tell anyone what was happening to him. The only reason Fenris knew was because Anders didn’t have to tell him.

“... a templar did it,” Anders managed. That was close. That was something.

“Did you kill them?” Amell asked.

“Not yet.”

“Did you want my help with that too?” Amell guessed.

“Yes,” Anders said. Thank the Maker, yes. He offered. He offered and Anders didn’t have to ask and -

“Of course you do,” Amell muttered, with another frustrated sigh that felt like a sword plunged straight through his heart. He pulled the last of the bane from his blood, and the poison evaporated as if it had never been. “Anders, I appreciate that you-”

“I never read your letters,” Anders blurted.

Amell choked on a laugh, and cleared his throat. “Of course you didn’t. Anders -”

“I was in solitary,” Anders cut him off.

Amell’s entire demeanor changed. His expression softened, but his grip tightened on his arm, and he pulled him a step closer. “... How long?”

“I don’t know,” Anders admitted. “I can’t-... keep track of time anymore.”

“... no one told me,” Amell said.

“I’m sorry. I would have written-”

“No,” Amell pulled him into a fierce embrace, and Anders battled back the urge to sob into his shoulder. Amell threaded his fingers between his braids, caressing his hair, and pressed his lips against his neck in something not-quite-a-kiss. “No. No. Don’t be sorry. Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry for that. I’m sorry. I understand.”

“Mage,” Fenris poked his head back inside the tent. “We haven’t the time. Guardsmen are sweeping the tourney.”

“Okay,” Anders cleared his throat, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t pull away. He couldn’t do any of this alone.

Amell untangled them gingerly, and slid a hand from his shoulder to his cheek, brushing away what tears had fallen with his thumb.

“I’m here,” Amell said. “I’ll help you.”

Chapter 151: Alone

Notes:

Thank you for all of your comments. I promise I read all of them and they mean a great deal to me even if I don't respond. They're very motivating in keeping the story going!

This chapter is a little long. Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:35 Dragon 17 Umbralis Late Afternoon
The Grand Tourney - Warden’s Encampment

Amell was here. Amell would help him.

Anders wasn’t alone. He had Amell and he had Fenris and he had Justice. He felt him in the veilfire that flickered through his veins, imperceptible flashes of sapphire just beneath his skin, like the early makings of a lightning storm as he and his spirit fought to recover from what Hawke had done to them. His strength filled him when the bane left him, Justice pouring his energy into him to keep him standing, to keep him moving, to keep him fighting.

“Thank you,” Anders said shakily - not quite sure who he was talking to and not quite sure it mattered.

“Of course,” Amell whispered, brushing the tears from his face, but the more Amell touched him the more Anders shed.

“Can you teach me that spell?”

“Of course.”

“Mage,” Fenris hissed, darting back inside the tent and tightly clutching his cloak. “We haven’t the time - if the guards find me they’ll send me back to the mines. I’ll never escape Danarius in chains.”

“Okay,” Anders tried to collect himself. “No, you’re right. We have to go now - Can we go now?”

“Can you get my staff and my cloak?” Amell asked. “I can’t be seen doing this.”

“Okay,” Anders ran a panicked circle around the tent before he found the cloak in question, nondescript and draped over a travel pack on Amell’s floor. Amell traded his tabard for it, and donned a pair of gloves that had been stuffed into one of the pockets. The staff was a thing of volcanic aurum, and cold as death to the touch for the few seconds Anders held it, regretting not having any gloves of his own.

“Dumat, stay,” Amell said, taking Anders’ arm and letting him lead him from the tent.

Fenris ushered them across the tourney grounds, dodging patrols of guardsmen and templars alike. “He will be on his guard now,” Fenris said anxiously. “This will not be as simple as I had hoped.”

“I assume I’m not fighting a magister in full view of the tourney?” Amell asked.

“He has a caravan,” Fenris explained. “There are two guards posted - but they are more concerned with drink and dice than duty. So long as he has not posted more, we can enter through a window unnoticed. There will be wards on the caravan, but the mage should have no trouble dispelling them. We lie in wait - kill him - and be done with it.”

“What if he calls for help?” Anders asked.

“The caravan is warded against sound from the inside,” Fenris said, clenching his and unclenching his fists over some old memory. “... Danarius always liked his privacy.”

“What if he doesn’t come back alone?” Anders pressed. “What if there are other magisters or apprentices with him?”

“Then we kill them as well,” Fenris said stubbornly.

“What if we can’t?” Anders argued. “There’s only three of us, and I’m not sure how much more of today I can take. I’m not healed just because there’s no more bane in my blood, you know, it still drained everything in me.” Justice was the only reason Anders could still put one foot in front of the other after how long he’d spent locked in that bloody room. “I want to help, but it might just be you two in there.”

“We'll be fine. What about the body?” Amell asked.

“Burn it,” Fenris said. “The caravan along with it. No one will question another attack. People will blame it on those who carried out the first.”

“Blame it on mages, you mean,” Anders corrected him, but the more he thought about it, it almost seemed like a good idea. Danarius was a magister. Meredith might be able to blame mages for one attack, but if a mage died in the second, people might question who was really responsible, and they might be able to undo some of the damage the Resolutionists had done.

“Have you a better idea?” Fenris demanded. “I will kill him if it is the last thing I do.”

“Well I don’t want it to be the last thing I do,” Anders argued. Maybe he wouldn’t mind dying, if he was still back in that bloody room, but he wasn’t. Anders was free, and he was alive, and for the first time in months he wanted to stay that way. “There has to be a way we can get him alone instead of fighting a caravan full of magisters.”

“What’s his preference?” Amell asked.

“What?” Anders tripped, and nearly took Amell down with him.

“Does he like men?” Amell clarified.

“Why in the name of the Maker and Maferath does it matter?” Anders demanded.

“It’s a perversion in Tevinter,” Amell explained. “If he has a preference for men, he won’t want to be seen with one. It’ll be easier to get him alone without anyone noticing.”

“He does,” Fenris said.

“You’re not really thinking of just… charming him back to his caravan, are you?” Anders asked, stomach churning with the thought of Amell on some other man’s arm, whispering Maker-knew-what in some other man’s ear, his hands learning some other man’s body. “He’s a bloody slaver!”

“A slaver we’re going to kill,” Amell shrugged.

“You seriously think you can just walk up to a magister and get him into bed in one conversation?”

“Yes?”

“What if he says no?” Anders countered. “What are you going to do then?”

“I'm not sure,” Amell admitted. "No one’s ever said no before."

“This is a terrible plan,” Anders said.

“It will work,” Fenris said.

“How do you know?” Anders asked.

“He is his type,” Fenris said.

“Insane?” Anders guessed.

“Young,” Fenris corrected him, looking Amell over - and making Anders uncomfortable in the process. “Foreign. Famous. Not someone he is like to encounter again.”

“I hate this plan,” Anders said.

“I’m not going to sleep with him, Anders,” Amell said.

“I still hate it.”

“Have you a better one?” Fenris asked.

Anders didn’t - but he still didn’t like it. There were a lot of reasons Anders didn’t like it, and the thought of Amell flirting with some other man was the least of them. Amell was blind - and they were sending him off into the company of a Tevinter magister on the vain - the incredibly vain - hope that he could get the man alone without arousing any suspicion after an assassination attempt on some of the most important people in the Free Marches.

They stopped short of the archery range, where dozens of nobles from Tevinter were gathered, waiting for the competition to begin. Their fashion was as lethal looking as their culture, full of sharp angles and dark iridescent colors. The women were dressed in highlow skirts, the men in robes that flared open at the waist, displaying elaborate buckled trousers and stockings. Fenris pointed Amell towards Danarius, and sent him off.

Amell crossed the grounds with his staff and touched the shoulder of the first person he encountered, whispering something that got them to lead him the rest of the way to Danarius’ side. It was almost distressing how easy it was for Amell. He said what couldn’t have been more than a few words, and Danarius led him out of earshot from the group of nobles. Every other sentence seemed to pull Danarius closer to him, until the old bastard was practically hanging off him, whispering something into his ear and dragging him off towards his caravan.

Anders and Fenris followed them through the crowds and to the caravan. Fenris hadn’t oversold it. The caravan was a massive two story manse on eight wheels that must have taken a fleet of horses to pull. Painted glass windows radiated magic, shifting through all the hues of the rainbows, and intricate rune work made up all of the engravings and knotwork on the caravan’s walls.

There two guards posted in the front of the caravan, and a wave of Danarius’ hand and a pulse of blood magic seemed to steal the memory of their passing. Anders couldn’t repeat the spell, so they circled around the back. Two more guards were posted behind the caravan, squatting over a game of dice and losing them in the grass on every other roll. It took three attempts at a sleep spell to knock them unconscious, and the third only worked because it wasn’t a spell so much as a concussion.

Fenris got frustrated, and rushed the idle guardsmen, slamming their heads together and knocking them both out. Anders couldn’t say why he’d struggled so much with the spell, whether it was because he was out of practice, or out of mana, or the runework Danarius had his soldiers wear was just that strong, but it didn’t bode well for the coming fight. Anders had better luck dispelling the wards on the window, and Fenris climbed up the caravan. He jumped from the wheel rungs to the windowsill, and rolled inside with a shatter of painted glass Danarius’ enchantments muted.

Anders didn’t manage it with nearly half as much grace. He slipped off the wheel on his first attempt, and couldn’t pull himself up onto the windowsill on his second. On the third try, Anders finally managed to heave himself into the caravan one knee at a time, and topple inside with a sloppy barrier that seemed like it would shatter before the might of a magister.

It didn’t, because the magister was already dead. Danarius was laying on a white divan, the rich fabric splattered with blood reminiscent of rose petals. His robe was open from the waist up, his chest cavity and all his ribs inverted, as if it had exploded from the inside out. Fenris stood over him, drenched in his blood and holding his heart in his hands, a few of the veins still tethered to his corpse.

Amell was sitting next to the corpse, staff propped up against his shoulder, lightly splattered with blood but looking more or less unconcerned by it. Between the two of them, Fenris looked infinitely more shaken. He was frozen, chest heaving, his hand trembling so much it looked like Danarius’ heart was still beating. Anders picked himself up off the floor with Justice’s help, and stumbled over to Fenris’ side.

“Fenris,” Anders said gently, wondering whether or not he should touch him. It seemed like he needed -... something. Support. But Fenris didn’t like to be touched and Anders wasn’t quite sure how else to support him.

“He’s dead,” Fenris whispered.

“He’s dead,” Anders agreed.

“He’s dead,” Fenris said again.

“Yeah… yeah he’s pretty dead.”

“He just… died.”

“That happens when you lose your heart.” It hadn’t happened to Hawke, but still.

“I didn’t think he would die…” Fenris confessed. “I didn’t think he could die…”

“What did you think would happen?” Anders asked.

“I don’t know…” Fenris turned towards him, and a few veins snapped and slithered free of Danarius’ corpse, hanging from between his trembling fingers and the heart still resting in them. “I thought -... I thought I would see him and-... I thought I would just go back…”

“Back to being a slave?” Anders clarified.

Fenris nodded, several small shakes of his head as he glanced between him and the heart in his hand.

"Why would you do that?" Anders asked.

"Because I already did… I only ever escaped him by accident. We were separated - and a group of Fog Warriors took me in. When Danarius came for me, they protected me. They would have protected me… but he told me to kill them and I did… I killed them all…"

"... it wasn’t your fault. You didn't think you could say no."

"Of course it was my fault! Use your eyes, Mage! You still have them! He is dead. He is dead and I could have killed him long ago. It was easy!"

"... No it wasn't."

Fenris dropped Danarius' heart and spun away from him, choking on a sob. “What do I do now?”

“Now we should probably leave before someone finds us here,” Anders said.

Amell stood up, a pulse of blood magic clearing the splatter from him and Fenris. Droplets encircled his hand, and he shook them off onto the floor. “Through a window, I imagine?” Amell asked. “Unless there’s a backdoor in here?”

For one idiotic moment Anders had forgotten Amell was blind, and that sensing blood didn’t give him any ability to sense doors, windows, or furniture. It wasn’t that it was hard to think of him as blind, it was just that it was hard to imagine there was anything that Amell might need help with, when Anders was so used to Amell helping him.

“It’s a window,” Anders explained, when he noticed the shelves lining Danarius’ caravan, and all the potions that lined them. Lyrium potions. Anders grabbed handfuls of them, stuffing them into the pockets in his trousers, his doublet, his cloak.

“A window we’re not leaving through?” Amell guessed at the delay.

“No - we are - I just-” need some way to defend myself in case my fiance decides to smite the ever-loving-Fade out of me again? Maybe not. “Wanted a few potions.”

“I don’t suppose he has a grimoire somewhere?” Amell asked.

“Venhedis - burn it - and everything else along with it,” Fenris spat, finally breaking out of his shock.

“You know, historically, burning grimoires really hasn’t ended well for me,” Anders said. “Are there any demons bound to it?”

“What does it matter?” Fenris demanded.

“Because if the bindings break, the demons escape, and that’s bad?” Anders said. “You do see how that’s bad, right?”

“I will not trade one magister for another,” Fenris hissed. “You are not keeping his grimoire.”

“Well we can’t just burn it,” Anders argued. “I’m not unleashing demons on the bloody tourney. Let’s just take it and we can unbind the demons later where they won’t kill half the city.”

The problem with taking the grimoire was that first they had to find the grimoire - if Danarius had even brought his grimoire - and that was apparently not a very easy thing to find among all of the magical paraphernalia Danarius had scattered throughout his caravan. Eventually they did. Danarius had apparently been using it as a coaster, which didn’t seem particularly promising for there being any ground breaking arcane secrets inside it.

Anders latched it to his belt, and they checked for any passersby before they climbed out the window in a moment that meant more to Anders than it should.

It was just a window - a few pieces of shattered glass still caught on the sill - but Amell needed his help finding it. Needed his hand set to the sill, needed his cloak draped over the glass, needed a gauge for where the wheel started and where his feet should go on the climb down, needed someone to steady him on the drop to the ground. It took what might have been a minute, but probably should have only taken seconds if Anders had any idea what he was doing.

He didn’t. Maker save him, he had no idea, but Amell needed his help and Anders helped him. Anders couldn’t remember the last time he’d helped anyone. Anders couldn’t even help himself. He hadn’t even helped Fenris. Not really. Anders hadn’t done anything but bring him to Amell. Amell had faced down a magister with him, and Anders hadn’t even managed to climb into the caravan in time to see it.

But Anders still helped Amell. Maybe Amell didn’t even need help - but Anders was helpful - and it made him feel not quite so helpless. They fled into the tents and pavilions, and Anders drank one of the lyrium potions he’d stolen from Danarius to cast a firestorm over his caravan. The magical monstrosity was bloated with glyphs and wards, and the magic rebounded in a massive shockwave that bowed trees and sent nearby tents flying. The caravan burned, tourney-goers screamed, and the three of them fled back towards the Grey Warden encampment.

“Thank you,” Anders said, while Fenris paced an anxious circle around the two of them on the walk back. “I know I don’t deserve it but still having your support after all these years it - … it means a lot to me.”

Amell squeezed the guiding arm he was holding, “I’ll talk with the Knight-Commander,” Amell said - in a way that made it sound like he intended to do a great deal more than just talk. “She had no right to lay hands on you.”

“You think she will listen?” Fenris asked. “I don’t care a fig for the woman, but she believes herself the only one holding back the madness in this city.”

“Holding back,” Anders repeated with a scoff. “She’s howling at the bloody moon. You heard her speech - blaming blood mages before the fires were even out.”

“It was blood mages,” Fenris pointed out.

“That’s not the point. She’s crazy. Even her own people think she’s lost it.”

“Mages in glass houses shouldn’t throw fireballs,” Fenris countered. “We have witnessed the madness in this city first hand thanks to your friends. Did you know of the attack?”

“Of course not,” Anders said. “Don’t get me wrong - I’d love her head on a pike - but the Knight-Commander isn’t the problem. It’s the Circles - and something like this is only going to scare people into thinking the templars are justified. We can’t just kill them - we have to show the world what they’re doing to us. If there was some way to get people to understand the templars are forcing our hands - that we didn’t strike first -...”

Anders trailed off, frustrated. It was never that easy. No one could see what went on in the Circles. People didn’t see the brands or the templars who wielded them. They only saw the mages who fled from them - and the horrors the Circle made of them. Anders didn’t know how to tell the world what went on behind closed doors. He didn’t even know how to tell Amell.

Tents turned into stalls selling spiced, smoked, and salted meats, and reminded Anders he hadn’t eaten since morning. His stomach growled for it, but Anders didn’t want to stop for anything or anyone until they were back at the Warden’s encampment. It wasn’t safe to stop. The dirt pathways grew wider to accommodate the increase in traffic as much as the increase in patrols. A patrol of guardsmen rounded one of the stalls, and saw the three of them walking, and everything went to shit.

“You there!” One of the guardsmen called out. “Halt! Stop! Men - it’s the fugitive!”

Anders honestly couldn’t say which of the three of them the guardsmen meant, but Fenris didn’t wait to find out. He turned on his heel and fled, tearing through the crowds so quickly he formed a river of dust through the tourney goers. The guardsmen took off after him, and Anders couldn’t decide whether to run after them or away from them, he just knew he had to run.

He didn’t have the chance. A patrol of templars followed them - and Maker they weren’t just any templars - they were the Knight-Captain’s own. Heavily armed and armored in silverite dredged up from the depths of the Maharian Quarry. Their skirts were blood red, like they couldn’t wait for the chance to spill it, if only someone would give them the excuse. They were terrifying, but they were nothing next to Hawke.

He and Cullen walked side-by-side, like they were leading the patrol together, the two of them signing absently while they scanned the crowds. For him. It had to be for him. There was no one else for them to be looking for. There was no one else for them to find. Hawke looked straight at him, and his red eyes were as vibrant as they were violent.

Anders died. Anders felt like he died. His heart stopped, his chest tightened, his throat closed. Everything left him. Thought. Hope. Air. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe he couldn’t breathe he couldn’t breathe he couldn’t breathe he couldn’t he couldn’t couldn’t he couldn’t

Anders blinked. Damn him, why had he blinked? He shouldn’t have blinked. Why hadn’t he run? He should have run. He should have escaped, but he couldn’t. Hawke jogged over to him, and all the templars jogged after him, and he couldn’t escape at all.

“There you are,” Hawke said - Hawke didn’t need to say - Hawke could sign - but he must have wanted to say so Amell could hear because he said. “Thank the Maker. Damn you for making me worry about you.”

Anders was dead. Anders must have died. He had to be dead. He felt stiff as a corpse when Hawke pulled him away from Amell’s side. Amell didn’t stop him - Maker, why didn’t Amell stop him? Justice tried to stop him - a surge of righteous anger Anders could feel boiling hotter than the bane Hawke forced into his blood - but Justice couldn’t stop him anymore than Anders could.

Justice was tired. They were tired. They were exhausted. They were scared. They were in a crowd - surrounded by innocents - and there was no telling what they would do if they did something - so they didn’t do anything.

“Worried?” Anders’ hands shook through the sign.

“Of course I was worried about you,” Hawke said - and kept fucking saying - when he should have been signing, but if he was signing he wouldn’t have been saying what he was saying and Anders knew it. “The whole tourney is going up in flames.”

As if to remind them, tourney goers found the templar patrol, and demanded their help with the flames rising from the Tevinter Encampment, blaming everything from blood mages to qunari to a stray candle. Cullen sent his men off to help them, but there was only one templar Anders cared about and he was still here.

“Are you alright?” Hawke asked.

“I’m fine,” Anders signed, but he wasn’t. Maker, he wasn’t fine at all.

“Orana said she lost you after the explosion,” Hawke explained - and maybe it was true. Maybe he really was just worried because Orana had lied. Anders wasn’t sure if she’d lied for herself or for him, but it was easier to forgive her everything she’d done for Hawke if she’d done it for fear. “I thought something had happened to you.”

“I was with Amell,” Anders signed.

“For hours?” Hawke finally signed, retrieving a familiar flask from his pocket, and pushing it into Anders' hands. “You missed lunch. You must be thirsty. Drink.”

Anders drank it.

“Amell-... Warden Commander,” Cullen coughed at the lull in conversation when Hawke stopped talking outloud. “Chancellor? Hero? I confess I’m not sure how to address you these days.”

“Chancellor is fine,” Amell said.

“Chancellor. Of course. It’s ah” - Cullen coughed again - “quite a title.”

“And yours…?”

“Cullen. It’s Cullen. I mean - it’s not Cullen - Cullen isn’t my title,” Cullen laughed, his shoulders rising higher with every awkward giggle like he was trying to learn how to fly. “I mean I’m Cullen. Of course I’m Cullen. You knew that. It’s Knight Captain these days. It’s good to see you. I mean-! Not that it’s not good to not see you. Not that I don’t mind that you can’t see me. I mean- that is to say I- It’s Knight Captain.”

“That’s fortunate,” Amell said. “I need an audience with the Knight Commander.”

“An audience?” Cullen rubbed the back of his neck. “I-... Well I-... I don’t know that I could - She’s really very-... with the Viscounty and - but I’d be happy to grant you an audience!"

“What are you doing with him?” Hawke signed while Amell and Cullen spoke.

“Walking?” Anders signed. He handed the flask back when it was empty. He knew better than to leave anything in it, and wished it had come with water. Something for the burn. Hawke usually gave him water after, as long as he drank it all. He wanted to ask for water, but Hawke would have given him water if he was allowed to have water.

“Walking,” Hawke signed back, a too-familiar set to his jaw and the way it clenched, but everyone who cared couldn’t see and everyone who saw didn’t care. “Expect me to believe that? You’re really going to do this to me again?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Anders signed.

“Did you fuck him?” Hawke signed.

“No,” Anders signed.

“Don’t lie to me,” Hawke warned him, and there was something so feral, so primal in his eyes somehow Anders knew Hawke would think everything he said was a lie. “I saw his hands on you.”

Amell was blind. Amell had to keep his hands on him. Anders fumbled over the signs, panic mounting by the minute, until he felt like he was overflowing with so much fear he couldn’t hold onto it all. It cinched tight around his throat, choking him like a noose. “No - He - Hands - Need - Not Want -”

“You didn’t want his hands on you?” Hawke supplied.

Anders shook his head in every direction, too scared to know which one was right.

“Say it, then,” Hawke signed.

“Say what?” Anders signed.

“Say you didn’t want his hands on you. Say he forced you away from me. Say you didn’t want to leave me. Say you want nothing to do with him. Say you never have and never will.”

Anders said it.

Hawke told him to say it so he said it. He didn’t have to say it. Hawke couldn’t hear him say it, but Hawke could watch him say it, his eyes following the path of his lips as they moved mindlessly through the words. He had to say it. Hawke would know if he didn’t say it. Cullen could tell him whether or not he’d said it. He didn’t want to say it, but Amell didn’t even seem to care that he’d said it.

His only reaction was a slight tilt of his head - like he was caught off guard or maybe just listening. He didn’t look like he was dying. He should have looked like he was dying. Anders felt like he was dying.

“Why are you telling me this?” Amell asked.

“The Champion has been concerned as to his fiance’s whereabouts,” Cullen offered, when Anders couldn’t answer. “I believe they were discussing it.”

“Could you extend my apologies to my cousin, in that case?” Amell said, like it was nothing and Anders was nothing and everything he’d said was nothing. “I’m sorry for keeping him from you.”

Cullen signed it, and Hawke seemed satisfied that he’d gotten some kind of reaction, even if it wasn't much of one.

Hawke put an arm around his waist, his hand resting against the grimoire Anders had latched to his belt. “I look for him for hours and find out he’s been with you the entire time?” Hawke said aloud. “You know we’re getting married in six months - and you’re really out here trying to come between us again? What kind of family are you? Just go.”

“... Anders,” Amell said with an almost imperceptible nod. “Always good to spend time with you.”

“Could I escort you back to your encampment, Chancellor?” Cullen offered.

“Thank you,” Amell took his arm and left.

Anders tried to call after him - to yell, to scream, to cry, to fucking do something - but he couldn’t make any noise. He could already feel the bane thickening his blood, consuming his mana, his stamina, his connection to the Fade and to Justice, his will to live. He didn’t have to drink it. Maker, he didn’t have to drink it, but Hawke told him to drink it, to say it, and his arm was around his waist and his grip was so tight Anders winced.

“I know you’re lying,” Hawke signed when Amell had gone.

“I’m not lying,” Anders signed, his heart rate picking back up at Hawke’s expression, like he wanted to paint the world as red as his eyes. Anders tried to step free of him, but Hawke wouldn’t let go, and Anders signed every lie he could come up with as fast as he could come up with them. “I didn’t want to be with him. I didn’t want to go with him-”

“You didn’t?” Hawke signed.

“No!” Anders signed. Hawke finally let go of him, but Anders didn’t feel any freer. “No, I swear, he forced me.”

“Forced you?” Hawke signed. “How did he force you? He’s blind.”

“He - …” Maker, what was he supposed to say? What did Hawke want him to say? He’d say it. He’d say anything to escape his eyes, his hands, the smite that had to be waiting for him as soon as they got home and Anders went back into the fucking room.

“Did he force you to kill Danarius?” Hawke signed.

“How do you-”

“That’s not your grimoire,” Hawke signed. “You don’t have a grimoire.”

“It’s-...” Anders fumbled, racking his brain for someone to blame. Could he say it was Amell’s grimoire? Would that be better? Would that be worse? He didn’t know.

“I know all of the dignitaries visiting the city,” Hawke signed. “I’m the Champion. You think I didn’t know exactly what you were doing when I saw the fires at the Tevinter encampment?”

“Fenris-” Anders tried.

“-Is a fugitive,” Hawke cut him off - and something in Anders - or maybe Justice - finally snapped. A fugitive. A fucking fugitive. Fenris had clawed through stone to try to save them, and taken arrow after arrow for it, and all Hawke had to say about him was that he was a fugitive.

“You made him one!” Anders signed, and some echo of Justice signed with him, their hands flaring with veilfire to make it through the words. “You had him working in the mines like a bloody slave!”

“He’s a prisoner,” Hawke signed dismissively. “It’s not the same thing.”

“Yes it is!” Anders signed. “You’re a bloody slaver, you bastard!”

“You asked for this.” Hawke signed. “You asked me to give the gangs honest work - so I gave it to them. I’m keeping them off the gallows. Would you rather see him hang?”

“I’d rather you would!” Anders signed viciously.

“He gave you lyrium, didn’t he?” Hawke guessed.

“What?” Anders blinked.

“My cousin,” Hawke signed. “That’s why you’re acting like this. You think I can’t see the veilfire in your veins? You need me to burn it out of you?”

Maker not again - not another smite - not before the bane had drained his mana. Anders had made himself sick drinking lyrium on top of magebane on top of lyrium, his mana in such a constant state of flux he felt like the Veil was trying to tear inside of him. He couldn’t take another smite. He couldn’t.

Veilfire burned through his leg, and dragged it back a step through the dirt. It was just one step, but it was a step, and Anders forced it into another. One. Two. Three, until he was turning and running through the tourney stalls. Anders crashed into a cart of pears, a knight in full silverite, and a cluster of powdered Orlesians in his mad scramble through the Tourney, but he didn’t know where he was running. He didn’t have anywhere to run.

He didn’t know how to find any Friends. He didn’t know how to find Fenris. He didn’t know how to find anyone but Amell. He followed the Call until he reached a walled pavilion, but it wasn’t the Warden’s encampment, and it didn’t make any sense for Amell to be inside, but that was where the Call led him. The sounds of an argument carried through the door, but Anders didn’t make it inside before his blood burned with a silence that buckled his knees and sent him crashing into the dirt.

Hawke wrenched him to his feet and slammed him back against the wall. Hawke held him to the wall with one arm, and signed with the other. “I said stop.”

“Get off me!” Anders tried to scream, but the silence stole his voice along with his mana.

“You want me to smite you?” Hawke signed, his hand flaring white and making it hard to see the words.

Anders shook his head, and Hawke let go of him to sign with both hands. “You think I’d let him take you from me? I’ll kill him first.”

“You couldn’t if you tried,” Anders signed vehemently.

“You think I need to do anything?” Hawke signed. “You say one word to him, I’ll fucking ruin him. You think I can’t? What do you think the Chantry and the Crown will do when they find out he tried to kill the Knight-Commander? That he killed a foriegn dignitary at the Grand Tourney? He’s a mage. They’ll make him Tranquil before they take his word over mine.”

“Amell didn’t do any of that,” Anders argued.

“You think anyone will believe you after what you did at the Chantry?” Hawke all but rolled his eyes. “You’re one of his Wardens and you’re publicly contesting the Knight-Commander. You think people won’t believe it if they don’t already? I swear, Anders, one word, and Karl won’t be the last lover you saw made Tranquil.”

He was lying. It was a lie. Hawke couldn’t touch Amell. He couldn’t hurt Amell. Amell was the Commander of the Grey. He was the Chancellor of Ferelden. He was untouchable. Anders was the only one Hawke could touch. Anders was the only one Hawke could hurt. Anders was the only one Hawke could terrify. Anders’ knees buckled, and he slid to the ground, unable to stop shaking at the image of a Chantry sunburst on Amell’s brow.

Hawke’s hard exhale mocked him. Like he hadn’t expected him to do anything else. Like he knew there was nothing else he could do. Hawke ran a hand through his hair, pacing through the dirt alley beside the pavilion while he caught his breath. “What am I supposed to do with you, Anders?” Hawke sighed.

Anders didn’t have an answer. Anders didn’t know what to do with himself either. He stayed on the ground, listening to the sounds of fighting carry from inside the pavilion. It had to be Amell. Anders knew the way he felt. The quiet deathknell that pulled upon his heart whenever he was near. Whatever Amell was saying was too quiet, but Cullen was shouting.

“The Divine won’t allow it! The Order won’t allow it!” Cullen was yelling - sounding much more like the violently paranoid Knight Captain Anders knew than the embarrassingly awkward one they’d encountered out on the Tourney Grounds. “Mages cannot be trusted with their freedom.”

Amell said something in response, but Anders couldn’t hear it, and whatever it was just seemed to make Cullen angrier.

“I’ve seen first hand how that trust and leniency is rewarded!” Cullen snapped. “You left me in that cage to be tortured! The Circle was lost! It should have been Annulled - and all the blood mages with it!”

Amell said something else, and the sounds within the pavilion turned from those of an argument to those of a fight. There was a crash that sounded like shattered clay or porcelain, followed by the thud of a table or chair being toppled. The wall Anders was leaning against rattled with impact as something collided with it, and Cullen snarled. “You’re not a person! None of you are people! You’re a mage - you should have been my mage!”

It sounded too familiar. Hessarian save him, it sounded far too familiar. The fight. The thuds. Everything Cullen said and the way he said it. The only difference between him and Hawke was that Anders could actually hear him. Anders scrambled to his feet and ran into the pavilion without thinking - and Hawke ran after him.

Anders didn’t make it more than a few feet into the pavilion before he froze. The paralysis was so sudden it was almost violent. It coiled through his veins - constricting every inch of him - until even his eyes were frozen. Anders couldn’t see Hawke to know if he suffered the same spell, but he must have. Everyone in the pavilion suffered it. Everyone except Amell, because Amell had cast it.

He looked like he’d been in the fight Anders had heard. His hair was disheveled, a few strands loose from his braid, his face bruised with the impact of a fist or a wall. His staff was missing - thrown to some far corner of the room with half of the furniture. His cloak was gone with it, crumpled in a heap atop an upturned table. His tunic had been pulled free of his belt, and his blindfold was gone.

Cullen held it, the bit of fabric dangling from a clenched fist. He looked like he’d been frozen the moment he’d ripped it off. His sash was undone, hanging off either side of his skirt, and the moment Anders had interrupted couldn’t have been more obvious. He’d been through it more times than he could count, but Amell hadn’t been through it at all, because he was Amell.

Amell wasn’t weak. Amell wasn’t helpless. Amell wasn’t anything like him.

Amell was a blood mage. He didn’t need Anders - or anyone - to save him. He saved himself, where Anders never could. Cullen had assaulted him and Amell had ended that assault without a single drop of spilled blood. He didn’t need to spill it. He pulled it straight from Cullen’s skin - a mist of crimson that ripped from his veins while Cullen screamed soundlessly.

Amell stared at them sightlessly for the interruption. His eyes were black pools of Void, with irises like flowing blood. A Fade-Touched, demonic crimson that never quite settled.

“Let him go!” Hawke’s voice ordered from somewhere behind him, but no smite followed, so he must have been paralyzed. “Or I swear-”

“Shh,” Amell said gently. Hawke went silent.

“Amell,” Anders tried - and he could talk. Amell didn’t make him stop talking. He just stared, calm and quiet while Cullen writhed in agony next to him. Maker preserve him - he looked gorgeous. Virile, unstoppable magic cleaved straight from the Fade or the Void or something in between. Like the Maker himself had taken all of his demons and set them against all of his enemies and his demons had won.

Anders would rather die than see him Tranquil - and if Amell killed Cullen that was what Hawke would make him.

“You can’t kill him,” Anders said.

“There’s no one I couldn’t kill,” Amell said.

“Amell, please, it’ll come back on you if you kill him,” Anders argued. “He’s the Knight Captain.”

“He’s whatever I want him to be,” Amell corrected him.

“Amell, I’m begging you-” Anders started.

“No,” Amell cut him off. It wasn’t blood magic, but it may as well have been. Anders had never heard him speak the word with such conviction before. “You ask me for nothing else.”

It felt like a knife, and Amell the one driving it into his heart. Anders wasn't asking for himself, but he couldn’t find the words and traded them for a whimper. “Please.”

“If I wanted him dead, he’d be dead,” Amell said. “I’m out of uniform, Anders. Cullen was last seen with you and Hawke. I’m not the one his death would fall back on. Is that what you think of me? That I would ever put you in danger? That I would ever hurt you? That I would ever force you?”

“Amell I-... “ Anders felt sick to his stomach just thinking of everything Hawke had told him to say and the fact that he’d said it. Amell hadn’t had any reaction when Anders had said it, but he had one now. He didn’t seem angry, or even sad. He seemed disappointed, and heartbroken. “I didn’t mean it.”

“I know,” Amell said. “You said it for him. He wanted to know where you were and you didn’t want to tell him you were with me. I understand why you said it.”

“You don’t,” Anders said. “Amell, I’m sorry-”

“What do my eyes look like?” Amell cut him off.

“What?”

“What do they look like to you?” Amell asked again. “Tell me what you see.”

“They’re-” The question threw him. There was no explaining what he saw. He just saw Amell. “They’re beautiful.”

“What do they look like, Anders?” Amell pressed.

“... Black,” Anders said. “They’re black - and red. Like… Desire or Pride.”

Amell laughed - a broken sound somewhere between a cackle and a sob. “They’re magic, Anders. You only see a demon’s eyes because that’s how you see me. If you still thought the same way about me, they would just be red.”

Cullen finally moved. He clicked, like a broken child’s doll, and handed Amell his blindfold back. Amell tied it around his eyes, and Cullen jerked across the pavilion, gathering up Amell’s scattered things and handing them back to him one at a time. He helped Amell with his cloak and his tunic and fixed his hair before he righted one of the downed chairs and promptly passed out in it.

“I’m sorry it’s not the Knight-Commander, but the Knight Captain will die before he lets her put you in solitary again,” Amell said.

The blood seemed to dissipate, along with any evidence of his spell. Amell started for the door, and the spell holding Anders gave abruptly, collapsing him face first into the dirt. The one holding Hawke didn’t. He stayed frozen in place, his eyes twitching spastically in his skull between the two of them.

“Amell wait, just wait, Andraste’s bloody bookends - wait,” Anders half-crawled, half-ran across the room to grab Amell’s arm before he reached the door, only for Amell to wrench free of his grasp and whirl on him.

“Wait for what?” The evenness of his voice measured against the violence of the motion gave Anders whiplash.

“Hawke-... he-...” Anders choked.

“He won’t remember,” Amell promised.

“I don’t think you’re a demon,” Anders said. “I would never think that - Amell I-... I care about you.”

“How am I?” Amell asked.

“What?”

“How am I?” Amell asked again, his expression belying nothing.

Anders floundered, “You’re-... Cullen assaulted you.”

“How do I feel about it?” Amell asked.

“What do you mean how do you feel about it?” Anders asked.

“Tell me how I feel,” Amell said. “Right now. Here in this moment.”

“I-...bad?”

“You don’t know,” Amell said flatly. “You didn’t ask. I know you care about me, Anders, but you don’t think about me. You don’t think about me at all.”

But he did. Anders did think about him. He never stopped thinking about him. He thought about him, and he cared about him, and he-... he cared about him so much.

“Amell, I’m sorry.”

“... I forgive you,” Amell lied. “Take care of yourself, Anders.”

Amell left.

His letters stopped.

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
Tell Me What You See: Amell's perspective on the events of this chapter.

Inspired Works
Roses and Other Red Things: Cullen's perspective on Amell in the Circle as written by Pastel Plugins.

Chapter 152: Keep Your Friends Close

Notes:

Thank you for all of your comments. I promise I read all of them and they mean a great deal to me even if I don't respond. They're very motivating in keeping the story going!

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter!

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon Late Pluitanis Late Afternoon
Kirkwall Hightown: Hawke Estate

Hey Sparkles,

I got your letter. Got your last five actually. I love ya, but you gotta stop. Even the wife don't write me this much. Before you start crying, I ain’t mad. Ain’t got nothing to do with me. We're friends, you and me.

I get it. If anyone gets it, I do. I know you and the Kid got it bad for each other, but I can't fix this for you.

If he wants to write you, he'll write you, but you fucked up, Sparkles.

You fucked up big time.

Anders had read the letter so many times it was falling apart. The ink had been worn away in places, the parchment itself rubbed a shade lighter from the oils on his fingers, creases from where he’d folded and unfolded it so thin they were starting to rip.

It wasn’t the only letter he’d gotten from the Vigil, but it was the nicest. Woolsey had sent him a three page lecture for his failure to uphold his duty to the Wardens. Velanna had gone through the trouble of sending him a single scathing letter just to tell him she wouldn’t send him any more. Nathaniel had sent him one full of questions Anders couldn’t answer.

Why hadn’t he written sooner? Why hadn’t he come back to visit? Why hadn’t he come to see them when they had? Why had he turned Amell away? Why did he have to hide his friendships for the sake of his relationship? What kind of relationship did he have that he had to cut off all others? Was something wrong? Was there something he wasn’t telling them? Was there something he couldn’t tell them? Was there something they could do to help? Because if there wasn’t… then were they even still friends?

Anders had been lucky to get the letters at all. Letters came to the estate, or to the compound, and Hawke got them all before he did. Anders didn’t doubt Hawke hand picked the ones that made it through to him. Anders was missing anywhere from four to six months of mail - and he’d only managed to get last month’s letters because he’d wrested them from Bodahn before the steward had given them to Hawke.

Sending letters was worse than receiving them, because nothing was stopping him. Anders could go to the post, but his constant escort meant Hawke always knew when he did. If someone at the post was working for Hawke, he’d be able to read or rewrite any letters Anders tried to send. If someone at the post wasn’t working for Hawke, he’d still be able to glean what Anders wrote from whatever the Wardens wrote back. Either way, it wasn’t safe. Anders tried to reassure himself it wasn’t paranoia if it was actually happening to him, but his hallucinations weren’t helping.

Red ribbons. Gryphon wings. Whispers of lyrium or the Call. The first time Anders had thought he saw Fenris in a crowd after the Grand Tourney, he’d bolted through the markets after him and ran straight into a patrol of guardsmen, who’d taken him straight back to Hawke. After a week in the room, Anders had stopped chasing after familiar faces, but he hadn’t stopped seeing them.

The Champion of Kirkwall banquet had no shortage of hallucinations - mixed in among the nobility. They’d come from all over the Free Marches to pay homage to Hawke. Anders knew the ones he needed to know. The ones who supported the Knight Commander and the ones who didn’t. After the explosion at the Grand Tourney, the former outnumbered the latter, but news from Ferelden might change that.

Ferelden had declared freedom for its mages. The Circle was autonomous. The Knight Commander served at the discretion of the First Enchanter, and not the other way around. The Chantry still stood, but they had no rights to the mages inside or outside the Circle. Apostates were free to practice their apostasy, and so long as they abided by the laws of the land, they were at no more risk of templars than the average citizen was of the guard.

Anders didn’t know any more than that. He didn’t know if the First Enchanter still made phylacteries. He didn’t know if the Circle still put mages through Harrowings. He didn’t know if the Templars could still use the Rite of Tranquility. He didn’t know if the Order could still call for the Right of Annulment. He didn’t know if parents outside the Circle still had to send their children to it, or if parents inside the Circle still had to send their children from it.

All Anders knew was that Amell had done it. Whether Amell had done it for him, because of him, or in spite of him, it was the closest Anders had come to hearing from him since the Tourney, and his heart ached for it. Anders wanted to ask him, but the King of Ferelden had come to Kirkwall to make the announcement instead, before the Knight Commander had chased him out of the city, accusing him of trying to incite rebellion. Anders wasn’t sure if that had been the King’s goal, but rebellion was what had happened.

The Collective, or the Resolutionists, or maybe just the Circle had blown up one of the walls in one of the towers at the Gallows. Mages had come pouring down the blackrock and into the sea like a fisherman’s haul, scooped up by everything from pirates to merchant vessels who ferried them off to Ferelden and freedom. Anders hoped. He hadn’t been part of the rescue; he’d only heard the rumors.

Ferelden’s free mages were just the start of them. King Theirin was offering amnesty and reinstatement into the army for any deserters. The way Hawke and Aveline talked, it had cost them half the Red Irons and half the guard. Aveline contracted the vacant posts out to Hawke and his Red Irons, but the mass desertion still left the guard short handed when the alienage revolted.

King Theirin had also promised autonomy for his country’s alienages, forbidding local banns and arls from touching the elves sacred Vhenadahls following a rebellion in the town of Edgehall. It was a pittance, but it was better than Kirkwall, where elves were curfewed, murdered, and subjected to an endless list of abuses by Aveline’s guards and Meredith’s templars. One rebellion led to another, and Kirkwall’s elves had torn down the alienage walls in protest. The way Orana told the story, no one had been hurt until the guard had gotten involved. Where the elves had turned their anger on their prison, the guards had turned their anger on their prisoners.

Elves were slaughtered en masse, and their Hahren along with them. The guards strung them up from the Vhenadahl and forbade the removal of the bodies. Anders was willing to blame the Red Irons recruits for the decision, considering Aveline had them removed once she found out, but the damage had already been done. The walls around the alienage came back up faster than the elves had torn them down, and the elves were put under lockdown, forbidden from leaving unless they were going to work or to the markets.

Merrill had taken over as the alienage’s new Hahren, and Anders hated that it worried him. It wasn’t anything like Hawke vying for the Viscounty. Kirkwall’s Hahren had changed four times in four years, and each reason was worse than the last. The first Hahren had fled the city to join the Dalish. The second had been found for a mage and thrown in the Gallows. The third had gone missing, and the fourth had been hung from the Vhenadahl.

It didn’t bode well for Merrill, or any of the elves in the city, but Anders couldn’t help the city’s elves anymore than he could help its mages. He was still at Hawke’s mercy - and Hawke didn’t have much of it left. He took everything from Danarius’ grimoire, to his lyrium potions, to Anders’ letters, to Amell’s journal. Anders couldn’t remember how the fight had started, but he remembered how it ended.

Hawke had thrown the journal into the fireplace. Anders had watched it burn - and felt nothing. He’d felt numb. He’d felt some glee in feeling numb because he knew it wasn’t how Hawke wanted him to feel.

“We should add a log,” Anders had suggested. “It’s getting cold out.”

The bruise had been worth it. In a twisted sort of way, it was almost fun. It reminded him of Rylock and her relentless pursuit on his every escape attempt. Anders in chains, Rylock taunting him, Anders taunting her back, seeing how far he could push her before she finally snapped. The hitting that came with the snapping, maybe not so much fun, but watching her unravel over a handful of words - knowing he held that much power over her when in reality he didn’t have any - there was something to that.

Something spiteful. Something vindictive. Something vengeful. Something that let him know he had some power over Hawke - any power over Hawke - and that made it all almost tolerable.

“Why don’t you get this tattooed?” Anders had suggested after Hawke had hit him, laughing from his spot on the floor. “Commemorate the moment you became your mother. Or was it your father?”

“Shut up,” Hawke had signed, but if Hawke wanted him to shut up, he should have tried to break his hands instead of his jaw.

“You should take off your belt,” Anders had continued. “Make it more familiar. That was what your father used for Carver, wasn’t it? Except your father wasn’t the one who got him killed.”

“Don’t ever talk about Carver,” Hawke had picked him up off the floor, and Anders had grinned.

“How about Bethany, then? Your own sister would rather be in the Circle than be with you. She begged the templars to take her away from you-”

Hawke had thrown him against his nightstand, and Anders had grabbed whatever happened to be on it, which happened to be a wine glass, and shattered it against Hawke’s face. Hawke’s hand had glowed white with a smite, but Anders hadn’t had any mana left, and he’d laughed through it.

“I hope you let them take me next, but you probably want to kill me yourself, right?” Anders had signed. “Like a real man? That’s what you’re so afraid of, isn’t it? You think you’re less of a man if you’re fucking one?”

“You’re the only one getting fucked between us,” Hawke had signed, practically burning with lyrium, and on some level it was still terrifying - it always would be - but there was something so pathetic about him, about everything he said, about everything he did, that Anders had just kept laughing.

“I wish I was getting fucked,” Anders had signed, and shouted for good measure. “You could never fuck me the way Amell fucked me.”

“I told you not to say his name-”

“I say it every fucking night!” Anders shouted over him. “You just can’t hear me. I’ll remember to sign it for you next time so you know!”

Hawke had advanced on him for it, and Anders shoved the nightstand between them. Drawers and all their contents scattered across the floor, tripping Hawke up before he reached him. “You could drink all the lyrium in Orzammar and never measure up to him. I hope you keep taking it. I can’t wait to watch you go mad, a small man in his big mansion, no family, no friends-”

“I swear on the Maker, Anders-” Hawke had snarled when he’d finally reached him, his hand fisted in his tunic.

“-everyone’s second choice,” Anders had spat. “The only thing I love about you is your eyes.”

Maker’s breath, Anders had loved saying it. Nothing had happened to him for saying it. Nothing that wasn’t happening to him already. Gamlen was right. It couldn’t get any worse, but damned if Anders didn’t try to make it worse every time he talked to Hawke. He got so good at winning their fights eventually Hawke just stopped talking to him.

It was so disappointing Anders would catch himself starting fights just for something to do. For some way to have some semblance of control. For some way to hurt Hawke half as much as Hawke hurt him. Anders stood off to the side at the banquet, watching the nobles and trying to come up with something to say or something to do that he could use against Hawke later, but he was too distracted by the servants.

Every other one seemed to have a red ribbon tied up in their hair, around their neck, on their wrist. They couldn’t have all been Friends of Red Jenny. Anders had to be hallucinating. The closest thing he had left to a friend was Bethany. Anders only saw her on the rare occasions the Circle let her visit the estate - and he could count them on his hand. Her name-day. The annums. Now.

“Excited for Summerday?” Anders nudged her, tearing his eyes off one of the servants.

“What?” Bethany jumped, sloshing the wine she was clutching. It was her third glass for the night - not that Anders was counting, or jealous, or thirsty for something other than the taste of magebane.

“Summerday?” Anders prompted. “The wedding? You and Sebastian? Me and Hawke?”

“Right,” Bethany rubbed the back of her neck, “The wedding. The wedding on Summerday. The Summerday wedding.”

“Beth?” Anders pressed.

“Yeah?” Bethany asked.

“The wedding?” Anders said again.

“Right, the wedding,” Bethany took an impressive gulp of wine, staining her teeth red. “You know, I always thought if I was going to get married at the same time as my brother, that brother would be Carver. Garrett’s not exactly-... well he’s not-... you know.”

“I know, I’m too good for him,” Anders joked.

“Who isn’t?” Bethany asked.

“Oh, Mean Bethany,” Anders whistled, rolling a kink out of his neck. “I missed her. Sebastian must be having the time of his life. Is it because of the chaste marriage thing? Be honest, it’s because of the chaste marriage thing. Tell you what, I’ll take that arrow for you. I’ll have a chaste marriage, you have a normal one. What do you say?”

“I need to talk to you in private,” Bethany grabbed his hand without warning, and dragged him through the foyer towards the kitchens.

“Okay, but I’m warning you, I think of you like a sister, so this is going to be a really awkward ten minutes,” Anders joked.

“This is serious,” Bethany said.

“Okay, fine, five minutes-”

“Quiet,” Bethany dragged him through the kitchens and straight into the pantry, where she shut the door closed behind them. The light from beneath the door was barely bright enough to see his own feet, and he was seconds from hyperventilating when a surge of mana from Bethany illuminated the darkened pantry, and the panic on her face.

“I was actually kidding-” Anders started.

“I need your help,” Bethany grabbed a handful of his doublet and slammed him back against the pantry door. The walls rattled, and a few potatoes rolled off the shelves and onto the floor. “Please, Anders, I can’t marry him.”

“You can’t what now?” Anders asked.

“Sebastian!” Bethany hissed under her breath, her eyes shifting through shades of amber as her fear manifested in her magic. “I don’t want a chaste marriage. I don’t want any marriage. Not to him. Please help me, Anders, I’m begging you.”

Anders could come up with a thousand reasons why someone might not want to marry Sebastian, but he couldn’t come up with any for Bethany. The two of them had been together for the past two years, going on three, and Bethany had never spoken an ill word about him. Anders might have hated Sebastian, but Bethany had seemed to think of him as something out of a storybook romance. Now she was hiding from him in a darkened pantry that smelled like stale grain and old potatoes, begging to be free of him.

It should have been more disorienting, but after the year he’d had, Anders would believe anything about anyone. “Why not?”

“Why don’t you want to marry Garrett?” Bethany countered.

“... how do you know that?” Anders asked.

“I know,” Bethany let go of him to wring her hands together. “I see the way you two talk to each other. You sound just like our parents. All this time I thought Garrett was just being overprotective, but I saw the…” Bethany’s eyes dropped to the floor, and she tugged at her collar.

“The what?”

“Anders, your neck,” Bethany said sadly.

Anders mirrored Bethany’s touch, sliding his fingers beneath his collar to trace below his collarbone, and it took him too long to remember the yellowing bruise from when Hawke had shoved him against the fireplace mantle. “This?” Anders smiled queasily. “Love bite.”

“These aren’t,” Bethany rolled her sleeve up to her elbow, revealing a vicious swath of burns. Her skin was a mangled pink - from her wrist all the way to up her shoulder. Anders had never seen anything like it. Amell’s scars didn’t even come close. He ran his fingers gingerly over the warped skin, speechless.

“We pray together,” Bethany said in the barest of whispers, but she said it. She owned it. She shared it. Her voice broke, but there was so much strength in every crack. “It seemed harmless at first. We would hold hands over the flames like all the couples do, and let go whenever it got too warm. Then we started going to confession, and he wanted to burn away our sins, and the smaller burns were fine... but the flames kept burning longer and longer and hotter and hotter and I didn’t know how to make him stop.”

“Why didn’t you tell Hawke?” Anders asked.

“Because Garrett will kill him,” Bethany said.

“And that’s bad because....?”

“I don’t want him dead, Anders,” Bethany said, with a compassion Anders had lost years ago. “I just don’t want to marry him.”

"I can get you out,” Anders might not have worked with the Mage’s Collective since Hawke had thrown him into solitary, but he still knew them. Even if he didn’t, he knew the Resolutionists. They could take the cellars into Darktown and be gone from the city before the sun set on it. “Right now. I can have you on a ship before the banquet ends."

"No,” Beth shook her head. “I can’t leave. I want to help the Circle. I want to make a difference. I want to fight. I just-... I can’t fight him.”

Anders had never related to someone more in his life, but Sebastian wasn’t Hawke, and Anders wasn’t scared of him. “I can.”

“Thank you, Anders,” Bethany hugged him, her arms tight around his waist and her head tucked under his chin against his chest. Her hair smelled like lilies: her mother’s favorite. It was a nice smell, and Beth must have made it a nice memory, because Beth was a nice person, despite having a not nice life.

“Do you want me to heal you?” Anders offered.

“... Can you?” Bethany asked.

Anders wasn’t sure, but he wanted to believe that he could. He wanted to believe that the strength Justice offered him could overcome what had happened to Bethany. He wanted to believe they could overcome what had happened to them. “Do you have any lyrium on you?”

“Why do you need lyrium?” Bethany asked.

“... I just think it’s a nice chaser for magebane,” Anders joked - and nothing happened. The Veil didn’t tear. The world didn’t end. His heart didn’t stop. It stuttered - just a little - but it kept beating.

“Bane-... Garrett?” Bethany pulled back to meet his eyes - and nothing happened. She didn’t hate him. She didn’t doubt him. She didn’t blame him. Her eyes watered - just a little - but they still met his. “Maker’s breath… I’m so sorry, Anders.”

“I’m sorry too,” Anders said. “I didn’t notice.”

"I didn't either,” Beth assured him. “With him. With Garrett. I don’t have any lyrium, but... " Beth pulled out a hairpin, a few raven strands falling loose without it, and handed it to him. “... mine or yours?”

“I’d need both,” Anders said.

“Okay,” Beth said.

Anders stabbed their hands together, and Beth winced, but she’d weathered worse. Anders tangled their heartbeats together, and his skin cracked with veilfire and his heart with Justice. Emerald flames devoured the mist of blood that fueled them, and Anders let them consume him along with Beth’s scars. They came with rage - a righteous warmth for the brutality Beth had known - and a desire to it avenged in whatever way she saw fit.

Miraculously, impossibly, the scars rescinded.

"... leave one." Bethany said.

Anders let go when he finished, a single burn on Beth’s forearm.

“What do you want me to do?” Anders asked.

“I don’t want to marry him,” Beth explained, rubbing her thumb against where the pin had pierced her hand. There was no scar, but Anders didn’t have any elfroot for any residual pain. “I don’t want him to visit me. I don’t want him to talk to me. I don’t want him to be anywhere near me.”

“Okay,” Anders said.

“And I don’t-... I don’t want it to be blood magic.”

“... why not?”

“... I really did love him, Anders. I don’t think I’ll ever love him again, but I don’t want to change him. I want him to change himself.”

“You really think he can?”

“I hope so… I hope Garrett can too.”

Anders squeezed her shoulders, and led them out of the pantry. A few scullions in the kitchen eyed them without comment, and that was a little concerning, but Anders had more important things to worry about. “You want to come with me, or you want to stay here?” Anders asked.

“Stay here,” Bethany said, rubbing her arms. “If I see him… It’s funny, you know my first word was ‘no’? Now I can’t even say it.”

“Hey, at least you know yours,” Anders said. “I’ll be right back.”

Nobles from across the Free Marches and even a few from Orlais were packed into the estate for the Champion of Kirkwall banquet. Sebastian wasn’t difficult to find - drinking on the balcony overlooking the foyer. Anders couldn’t begin to describe the abomination of mismatched silks, satins, and jewelry the exiled prince had worn to schmooze for allies among the visiting dignitaries. It had to be some sort of traditional Starkhaven something, but his house crest just looked like catfish to Anders.

“Anders,” Sebastian tipped a glass of wine towards him that looked almost comically small set against his ridiculously oversized sleeves. “Good of you to join us. You’ve been conspicuously quiet today.”

“Don’t worry, the day’s still young,” Anders said.

“I suppose, but before it gets any older, I just want to say that I'm proud of the restraint you’ve shown here,” Sebastian said, stepping away from the group of Hasmallers he’d been speaking with to steer the two of them to a more secluded section of the balcony.

“I’m not a monster,” Anders said. “I'm not going to turn into a raging abomination every time someone commits a fashion faux-pas, or you’d be dead already.”

“I meant not taking advantage of a captive audience to proselytize about the fate of mages,” Sebastian said. “But the other thing is good, too.”

“I have plenty to say about the fate of mages, believe me, I just figured I’d start with Beth.”

“Anders, whatever this is about-”

“She’s not marrying you.”

“This is some judgment on the sanctity of our marriage somehow made less for the chastity of it, I presume?” Sebastian guessed, unphased. “I assure you, our wedding will be no less binding than yours.”

“There’s not going to be a wedding,” Anders said.

“I’m surprised at you, Anders,” Sebastian said. “I’m marrying Hawke’s sister. You’re marrying Hawke. I believe that makes us brothers. We should strive to be amicable.”

“The day you call me brother is the day someone shoves a chalice of darkspawn blood down your throat,” Anders said.

“Anders-”

“Shut up,” Anders snarled, battling back the echo of Justice in his throat when a few nobles glanced their way. “I know what you did to her, you bloody sadist. She doesn’t want to marry you. She doesn’t want anything to do with you. You’re not going anywhere near her ever again.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sebastian said. “Is this another one of your fits? Perhaps you need to lie down. Should I get Hawke?”

“Go ahead,” Anders snorted. “I can’t wait to watch what he does to you when he finds out you’ve been burning his sister. The chastity thing really isn’t going to work in your favor when Hawke shoves his foot up your ass, if it’ll even fit in there with your head.”

“Burning-!” Sebastian hissed, ducking like he expected an arrow to come flying across the foyer. “Is that what she told you? I take confession! I take her confessions to absolve her of her sins.”

“You absolved her whole bloody arm, you bastard!” Anders couldn’t keep his voice down - Justice wouldn’t let him. He sang in his throat and Sebastian recoiled into the mass of fabric that made up his robes.

“I am trying to save her soul from the Void,” Sebastian argued, eyes darting nervously among the increasing number of guests who looked their way. “You would have the mages cast aside the Maker and give into sin-”

“She’s not yours to save!”

“You wouldn’t understand!” Sebastian said. “You’ve never given confession!”

“We will take yours,” They snarled - a surge of righteous veilfire setting them aflame in the foyer to a chorus of shocked gasps from the guests.

“What’s going on here!?” Cullen fought his way through two of the noblewomen’s massive hoop skirts to come between them.

“Knight Captain!” Sebastian said with a sigh of relief. “Praise the Maker, the mage-”

“Warden, are you alright?” Cullen asked, ignoring Sebastian.

“... what?” Anders asked.

“Is this man bothering you?” Cullen asked, turning back to Sebastian with a hand on the hilt of his sword. “Serah, you are a guest in this house.”

“... What?” Sebastian asked.

“What cause do you have to harass the Champion’s fiance?” Cullen demanded.

“Harass-” Sebastian staggered about in a confused circle, glancing from one noble to the next like he expected one of them to come to his rescue when the Knight Captain failed, but none of them did. “I am the Prince of Starkhaven-”

“Unless I’m mistaken, Goran Vael is the Prince of Starkhaven,” Cullen said. “You are in exile, and here on the Champion’s good graces, and would do well to remember it.”

“I am to marry his sister-” Sebastian started.

“She doesn’t want to marry you,” Anders cut him off. “She doesn’t want to be anywhere near you. Just stay away from her.”

“Warden, am I to understand this man has been harassing the Champion’s sister?” Cullen asked.

Cullen stared at him, waiting for an answer. He didn’t stutter. He didn’t twitch. He didn’t look like he was warding off the broodmother of all headaches. He sounded sincere. Almost comically so, like he genuinely believed himself to be some knight in shining armor, riding in to rescue him and all the other mages along with him. Amell hadn’t just mind controlled him - he’d completely remade him. It was like Cullen was an entirely new person.

“... yeah,” Anders said slowly. “Yeah, he uh-... she doesn’t want him visiting anymore.”

“Consider your visiting privileges revoked,” Cullen said to Sebastian.

Sebastian stuttered, spitting up wine in place of words. The nobles shot him mixed looks of disgust, pity, or outright embarrassment and started shuffling away, effectively exiling the prince all over again.

“I think he should leave,” Anders added.

“You heard the man,” Cullen said.

“I will not,” Sebastian finally found words. “This man is no one! This is the Champion’s banquet. Where is Hawke? Hawke!”

“This man is the Champion’s fiance,” Cullen corrected him. “I think it is fine if he speaks for him. Do I have to escort you out of the estate?”

Sebastian glanced between the two of them, and ultimately stormed away and down the stairs. Nobles parted for him like a rat had gotten loose in the foyer, and immediately fell to gossip when the front door slammed behind him.

“Thank you for your help, Warden, though I would ask that you not keep such things a secret in the future. The mages of the Circle are my responsibility, and it is a grave concern if any of them are being mistreated.”

“I’ll uh… I’ll keep that in mind,” Anders said.

Bethany finally came out of the kitchens and joined them on the second floor, anxiously wringing her hands. “... is he gone?”

“He is, Mistress,” Cullen said with a tiny bow and a tinier blush. “You have my sincerest apologies on my behalf and on behalf of the Order.”

“... that’s okay,” Bethany said.

“It’s not,” Cullen said fiercely, still bowing, like he meant it for some chivalrous sort of apology. Anders coughed to cover up a laugh. “Had I any idea you did not care for his company I would never have permitted it. How can the Order ever regain your trust?”

“Knight Captain-”

“Cullen, please,” Cullen finally lifted his head from his bow, and Bethany blushed when their eyes met. Actually blushed. Amell really had thrown the whole man out and made a new one. “Titles are for the Order. You and I are equals.”

“Cullen then…” Bethany said. “You’re not like the rest of the Order.”

“I’m not sure how that is intended, but I hope to make it a compliment, my Lady.”

“Lady?” Bethany giggled. “I don’t hear that often in the Circle.”

“Would you like to?” Cullen asked.

“I-... oh my-... I need to-... um… I need to go talk to Garrett. Anders, Cullen, thank you,” Bethany fled.

“Ah,” Cullen rubbed away the flush on his neck. “... I suppose I overstepped.”

“No,” Anders drawled sarcastically, unable to help his residual unease over who the Knight Captain had been, and who he might still be if anything went wrong with the magic that had remade him. Then again, it was Amell’s magic, and Amell’s magic had never failed before. “She’s been single a whole minute. Go for it. That’s classy.”

“You’re right,” Cullen cleared his throat. “… What do you suppose would be the appropriate time frame?”

“Somewhere between never and never,” Anders suggested. “Mage? Templar? You don’t see anything wrong there?”

“I suppose it would be inappropriate,” Cullen agreed. “Thank you for your thoughts, Warden. Excuse me.”

Cullen left, and the party more or less went back to normal. Hawke seemed like he was avoiding him, so there was no chance of any fun there. Anders found a spot by the appetizer table, eating through his endless tainted hunger until the evening ended. The servants lingered, cleaning up the estate, and Anders finally found Hawke hiding away in the study, Dog at his feet, a glass of wine cradled in his hands.

Anders whistled, and the mabari nudged Hawke’s foot. Hawke looked at him, and hastily looked away before Anders could sign anything at him. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.”

Already upset then. That would just make this more fun. Anders skipped to the other side of his chair and signed out, “Too bad.”

“Damnit, Anders,” Hawke stood up, and took a step back. “I said I don’t want to hear it. Hasn’t today been bad enough without another fucking fight?”

“We could always make it worse,” Anders signed cheerily.

Hawke downed the rest of his wine, and placed the empty glass on the mantle before he thought better of it and picked it back up. “Bad as Beth and Seb?” He signed with one hand.

“Oh, baby, tell me more,” Anders signed. “You know they broke up, right?”

“I thought they were happy.”

“Do you think we’re happy?”

“Goodnight, Anders,” Hawke left him in the study. Dog followed him out, and Anders leaned on the vacant armchair with a sigh. Maker’s breath, why did Hawke even still want to marry him? They couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as one another. The bastard was so stubborn he’d rather be with someone who hated him than no one at all.

Anders left the study, and ran into a servant on his way out. Except she wasn’t a servant. She was a Friend. The same Friend who’d shared her stall at the Grand Tourney. Her curly brown hair was done up in red ribbons, and she held a finger to her lips before pulling him back into the study and shutting the door behind them.

“What are you doing here?” Anders whispered, a surge of panic suffocating him at how close the woman had come to running into Hawke.

“What are you doing here?” The Red Jenny countered. “We were supposed to get you out of here.”

“No. No, we tried that - okay? It didn’t work. You don’t understand, I can’t leave him.” Hawke had made it clear what would happen if Anders tried to leave him again. Anders didn’t care about what would happen to him, but he cared about what would happen to Amell. “He’ll hurt someone I care about.”

The woman set a gentle hand over his heart, and the veilfire that beat within it. “He’s already hurting someone you should care about.”

Chapter 153: People Are Good

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments and thank you for reading! I hope you like the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon Late Pluitanis Evening
Kirkwall Hightown: Hawke Estate

The Red Jenny smiled like she knew him, but she couldn’t have known the full depth of what she said or the way she said it. Anders should have cared about himself, the way Bethany cared about herself, and Fenris cared about himself, and everyone seemed to care about themselves, but he didn’t. He missed it - that selfishness - but there wasn’t enough of him left to care about.

It had been eaten away over the years by everyone who should have cared about him. Every ‘mage.’ Every ‘monster.’ Every ‘demon.’ Every ‘abomination.’ Every ‘filthy fucking sewer rat.’ Anders didn’t care about Anders, but he cared about Justice.

“How?” Anders asked.

“There’ll be a riot in the west end markets on the twenty-third of Drakonis,” The Red Jenny said. “All you have to do is be there at midday and we’ll get you out, but we don’t have anywhere to put you. Do you have any friends? Someone who can take you in?”

Anders shook his head. Amell had told him not to ask for anything else. Anders doubted he even still had the free passage Amell had promised him, and he didn’t think his heart could take it if Amell had taken that away. The only other group that might be able to move him out of the city was the Mage’s Collective, and Anders wasn’t about to risk them. Hawke might know about the packaging house, might find some way to follow him there, and the Mage’s Collective couldn’t afford to lose it.

His patients, maybe, but they couldn’t move him out of Kirkwall and Anders was past pretending he could stay. Hawke would always be able to hurt him so much more than Anders could hurt him back. A rapier wit and a shield of sarcasm didn’t do anything for the bane in his blood, the bruises on his skin, the cracks in his soul that grew with every passing day he spent in that fucking room. What did that even leave him? Who else was there who wasn’t afraid to stand up to templars and anyone who supported them?

“Everyone has someone,” The Red Jenny pressed. “Someone who did you a kindness and might do you another. It doesn’t have to be big. Someone who sits with you at the Chantry. Someone who smiles at you in the markets. A friend you haven’t spoken to in a few years. People are good. You go to good people when you’re in trouble and good people get you out of it. Think about it - you know someone good.”

But he didn’t. He could only think of someone who wasn’t as bad as Hawke.

“There’s a group who meets at Smetty’s Fish Guttery at midnight,” Anders said. “I don’t know what day. They might be willing to help me, but I can’t just leave. What about my cat?”

“We’ll get your cat out. You just get you out,” The Red Jenny said. “This group - is there anyone we should ask for?”

“Terrie,” Anders said. “Terrie or Thrask. What about you? What’s your name?”

“I told you, no names, remember?”

“Here I thought we were friends,” Anders joked.

“We are Friends,” The Red Jenny promised. “But you won’t think so if I tell you my name.”

“Why not?” Anders asked.

“... It’s Amell,” The woman relented. Anders must have misheard her, but the way she gauged his reaction seemed to imply that he hadn’t. “Charade Amell. I’m Gamlen’s daughter - and the Champion’s cousin - but I’m no Friend to either of them.”

“I didn’t know Gamlen had a daughter,” Anders confessed.

“Neither does Gamlen,” Charade grinned. “I’m Charade Hartling, as far as anyone else knows. It’s better this way. This isn’t the kind of family anyone wants to be a part of. When your Friend told me what was happening to you… I guess I took it personally. I never knew my father, and now I know I never want to.”

“Gamlen didn’t do this,” Anders said.

“He didn’t stop it, either,” Charade said. “The west end markets. Twenty-third of Drakonis. Midday. Don’t forget.”

There was no chance of Anders forgetting. It was all he could think about right up until the twenty-third finally came, and he packed everything he could into a single satchel as inconspicuous as he could make it. He packed his mother’s pillow, and Karl’s seashell, and not much else. He didn’t have much else.

He’d lost Nathaniel’s dagger saving Merrill from the alienage fires. His name-day bracers from Amell and his playing cards from Sigrun had been stolen from him years ago. Most of his jewelry had been sold to book passage to Kirkwall or feed its refugees. He’d burned Amell’s grimoire, and Hawke had burned his journal. All of his old letters had been taken from him, and Justice’s poetry books were replaceable.

There was Merrill’s painting, but Hawke would notice if he took it off the wall, and it didn’t mean as much to Anders as it used to. The things that were most important to him were things Anders could wear. Sigrun’s earring. Karl’s ring. His Joining amulet. The coat Lirene and Lissa had made for him, and the boots Franke had cobbled. The staff Amell had given him for Satinalia.

The only thing he couldn’t pack and get away with was Ser Cumference. Anders sat on the floor next to the silver tabby, scratching his ear and listening to his labored purrs. The fat bastard was the only reason he’d survived the months of solitary Hawke had put him through. With Fenris gone, and Bethany in the Circle, the damn cat was the best friend he had left, but Charade had promised to get him out somehow, and Anders didn’t have any choice but to trust her.

“I’ll see you soon, alright?” Anders promised, forcing himself not to think of Ser Pounce-a-Lot. This didn’t have to be that. He’d lost enough. He didn’t have to lose anything else.

He just had to lose his life in Kirkwall. All of his friends in the Mage’s Collective. All of the refugees he’d rescued. All of the friends that he’d made. If Anders was being honest with himself, he’d lost them long ago. He found Sandal in the kitchens, sneaking snacks from the pantry, and gave the boy a hug no one asked him to explain before he left.

He made it as far as the foyer before Hawke caught him.

“Where are you going?” Hawke signed.

“The markets,” Anders signed.

“I’ll go with you,” Hawke suggested, whistling for Dog.

Fuck.

It was spring, and the weather was fair, but Anders couldn’t stop sweating. The weight of his cloak was oppressive, and Hawke was bound to notice the rivers running down his sides. He was bound to notice his overstuffed satchel. He was bound to notice something. Anders’ heart was beating so loud and so fast it was a mercy Hawke was deaf, and they signed, because there was no way Anders would have been able to hear him talk.

“What do you need to get at the markets?” Hawke signed on the way there.

Away from you.

"Feastday gifts,” Anders lied.

“Should get me mittens,” Hawke suggested.

“What?” Anders signed.

“You know, instead of keeping my mouth shut,” Hawke explained with a shrug. “Get my hands to shut up.”

Anders hated himself for smiling. “Was thinking of a skirt. You know, really fit with the templar profile.”

“Red or purple?” Hawke asked.

“Red, obviously,” Anders signed. “Purple would clash with the bruises.”

“Didn’t mean for you to hit the mantle,” Hawke signed.

“Well, I meant for the candelabra to hit you, so I think we’re even.”

“I didn’t,” Hawke signed again, and it was almost easy to forget all the other things his hands had done. The wind played in his greying hair, his eyes didn’t seem quite so red or quite so angry, and he smiled when he looked at him.

“... okay,” Anders signed.

“Was thinking we could cut back on the bane,” Hawke signed. “Just - you know - so you still have your magic.”

“You were?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Been thinking about Beth and Sebastian,” Hawke explained. “She told me he was controlling. … She told me I was controlling.”

“You think?” Anders rolled his eyes.

“Not often,” Hawke joked.

Something almost like a laugh escaped him, and Anders did his best to smother it. “Beth’s a smart girl.”

“Smarter than me,” Hawke signed. “Should have saved the Tevinter Chantry Amulet for next week.”

“Going to be hard for you to top that,” Anders agreed.

“Do my best to do worse.”

“You always do.”

They reached the markets, but there was no sign of any riots. The square was lined in open-doored shops, welcoming customers and the gentle spring weather. Stalls formed a second ring in the center, and nobles and servants moved leisurely among them. The crowd didn’t seem anywhere near large enough to lose himself in, and by the set of the sun it was almost midday.

“How did we get here, Anders?” Hawke signed.

“To the markets?” Anders joked, touching every other bauble at a random stall while Hawke loitered next to him.

“You know what I mean,” Hawke signed.

“Step by step,” Anders shrugged.

“We used to be happy.”

“Did we?” Anders frowned.

“Course we did. You remember when you moved in? Back before we had any furniture? All those nights we spent writing your manifesto on the floor?”

“My back remembers,” Anders signed, and won a laugh that won a smile. “I think I misspelled more words than I actually wrote.”

“Blame the Circles,” Hawke suggested.

“I do every day,” Anders signed.

The Chantry bells peeled for midday, and Anders froze. There were three exits to the market, with guards posted at each of them, but no elves came pouring in. The servants gathered didn’t topple carts and stalls in a sudden frenzy. The nobles didn’t start breaking all the windows of the shops. There was no riot. There was no way out.

… maybe there never would be.

“... Did you mean it?” Anders asked. “About the bane? What about Justice?”

“Still worried about him,” Hawke admitted. “Still worried about you. Think about how hard he pushes you. Don’t you remember what your life was like before we met? You were living in the sewers before I rescued you.”

Anders wrung his hands on his staff, scanning each shop, each exit, each servant. There were no red ribbons. No escapes. There was just Hawke.

“I remember,” Anders signed.

He did. Anders remembered the first time he’d set foot in Kirkwall - his staff in his hands and his satchels on his shoulders. He remembered getting off the boat with Franke, and he remembered learning Kirkwall’s streets with Cor, and he remembered healing its refugees with Lirene, and he remembered surviving its nights with Justice, and he remembered trying to save its mages with Selby, and he remembered doing it all without Hawke.

“Bloody slavers!” The scream rang through the market. There was a crash, and suddenly the window of Hubert’s Fine Goods shattered in an explosion of flame. All at once, the square was full of Kirkwallers decrying the conditions at the Bone Pit, and throwing everything from rocks to bottles to rotten food at the store of the quarry’s co-owner.

“This isn’t Tevinter!” Someone screamed.

“The Free Marches are free!” Yelled someone else. “No slavers in Kirkwall!”

“Free the miners!”

“Bartiere is a bastard!”

“Hawke can’t hear us!” Yet another someone chanted. “Hubert won’t help us!”

The rioters surged over them like a tidal wave, decrying Hawke’s treatment of his workers, and the few posted guards rushed over to defend them. Someone grabbed Anders’ arm, and that someone wasn’t Hawke. Anders couldn’t see anything but the back of their head, their dirty blonde hair done up in red ribbons, and it was all the encouragement he needed to run with them.

He could hear the mabari barking, and Hawke screaming, and the rioters chanting, and the guardsmen bellowing orders, and forced himself not to listen to any of it. He focused on putting one foot in front of the other. On breathing in and breathing out. On running. His eyes burned the longer he held them open, but he was afraid if he blinked he’d blackout, or worse, he’d shed the tears he felt brimming in them.

The Friend led him from the markets, through Hightown’s marble streets and down into Lowtown’s sandstone ones, down alley after alley, until at last she pulled him into a warehouse on the eastern docks. Two stories, and filled with barrels of imported wine bearing stamps from Val Chevin, it smelled faintly of sour grapes and the bay. The Waking Sea lapped at the private docks in the back of the warehouse, carrying the sounds of gulls and distant dockworkers.

A dozen or so people were gathered around a table in a far corner of the warehouse, talking amongst themselves, and seemed largely unperturbed by his arrival.

“Good luck, Healer,” The Friend smiled and left.

Anders stayed where the Friend left him, staring at the door they’d left through, and expecting Hawke to follow him through it. He didn’t, but there was no reason to believe he wouldn’t later. There was no reason to believe that this would last. That this would work. That this would be anything other than just another failed escape attempt.

Anders wrung his hands on his staff, eyeing the Resolutionists gathered at the table and trying to place them. Men and women, one or two elves, mages and non-mages, but they were all dressed in cloaks pulled low over their heads, and all saved one ignored him. Keran pushed off his hood and jogged over to clasp his shoulder, grinning broadly before his veins split with ice to signal his demon’s presence.

“Vengeance,” Fear sighed wistfully, “You burn with bane… and terror. We would alleviate you of it. We have enacted much of you of late to trade.”

“What are you talking about?” Anders asked.

“You’ve never felt a spirit’s siphon?” Keran asked. “When one purpose overlaps with another and they pull from one another for strength?”

“When would I have felt that?” The only other spirits or demons or abominations Anders had met since joining with Justice were Rage, Allure, and Audacity. None of them had been in a position to siphon anything from him, and the way Fear talked made it sound a great deal more intimate than he was comfortable with. “Do you see a lot of other abominations around here?”

“We see many in the Circle,” Keran said. “Trade with us. Nothing compares to the euphoria that comes from a pursuit of purpose.”

“You know, I don’t know that we’re that kind of abomination,” Anders joked uneasily. “Thanks though.”

“Can you not feel Vengeance through the bane?” Fear guessed, ice crawling through his cheeks. “Grace can bleed it from you - and then we can share.”

“I’m for bleeding,” Anders said. “Sharing, not so much. I’m a one spirit kind of mage. Where’s Grace?”

“We will take you to her,” Fear offered. “We have been expecting you. We mean to move against the Knight Commander at the Feast Day Festival. Fear runs rampant on all sides.”

“Lucky you,” Anders said, letting Keran - or Fear - or both - lead him through the warehouse to a room on the second story that consisted of a collection of tables surrounded by a collection of chairs. Grace sat at one of them with Terrie and Thrask, but Anders barely noticed them. Hunched under a ratty woolen cloak on a bench at one of the tables was a familiar face, branded with lyrium.

“Fenris!” Anders sprinted across the room to fling his arms around his neck. Fenris caught him with a grunt and nearly fell off the bench in the process.

“Mage - the markings,” Fenris reminded him.

“Sorry,” Anders let go, and sat on the bench beside him. “I'm glad you're alright. I was afraid the guards had caught you and sent you back to the mines.”

“Not for want of effort,” Fenris said with a small smile. “I took a bolt, and it took all of Haring to recover. I could not reach you in Wintermarch-”

“Are you actually apologizing to me?” Anders cut him off. “For what?”

“For leaving you with him,” Fenris explained. “... Were our places reversed, had Danarius captured me and had you the means-... It took you but hours to see Bela free.”

“Hawke isn’t Danarius,” Anders said.

“He is close enough with how he has enslaved half the city,” Fenris said with a dismissive snort.

“The riot… was that you?” Anders guessed.

“You need not thank me,” Fenris waved him off. “Hawke did most of the work himself. I had but to suggest it.”

“I think I’m going to thank you anyway,” Anders said.

“You may thank me for this, by taking it away from me,” Fenris said, pushing a basket on top of the table towards him. The basket yowled, and two rows of teeth broke through the wicker to chew at where Fenris’ hand had been seconds prior.

“Ser Cumference!” Anders grabbed the basket and dragged it over. “You got him out! How did you get him out?”

“I did not. Orana did. I merely took the basket from her when she arrived, and suffered enough for it.” Fenris gestured to the inside of his arm, where it must have rested against the basket, his skin lined in bright pink scratches. “Why you would not leave without this creature is beyond me.”

Anders flipped the basket lid open to reveal Ser Cumference occupying the majority of the space. Anders scratched his ear, and won an open-mouthed purr.

“Demon,” Fenris muttered.

“He’s not a demon,” Anders protested. “He’s perfect. Fenris - I can’t thank you enough for all of this.”

“Thank me by not going back to him,” Fenris suggested.

“I can do that,” Anders said.

Anders closed the basket, and joined Grace, Terrie, and Thrask at their table.

“It’s good to see you well, my friend,” Thrask said in greeting with a polite roll of his wrist. “We were discussing our plans for the Feast Day Festival. Please, join us.”

“You are joining us, aren’t you?” Terrie asked.

“I wouldn’t do you any good if I did,” Anders said, taking a seat. “Keran said you could cleanse magebane?”

“I see life outside the Circle has been no more kind to you than life inside the Circle has been kind to me,” Grace noted, pulling a dagger from a sheath in her cleavage and slitting his wrist with so little ceremony Anders jerked back with a pained hiss. Grace’s cleansing burned worse than her blade, and Anders dug his nails into his thigh in the hopes one pain would distract from another. “I owe you thanks for your attempted rescue.”

“Is this why you didn’t want to leave?” Anders guessed. “So you could do whatever it is your doing with the Resolutionists?”

“I am the Resolution,” Grace said.

“Where’s Alain?” Anders asked.

“Well and at the Circle,” Thrask said.

“Where are we?” Anders asked.

“Gardibali's Warehouse,” Thrask said.

“You ask a lot of questions for someone not committed to the cause,” Grace noted.

“He’s committed,” Terrie reached across the table to squeeze his arm. “Aren’t you, Anders?”

“Not if I can help it,” Anders joked, trying not to think of Hawke, and all the time and effort Hawke had spent this month planning a wedding they’d never have. “Didn’t my Friends tell you I need to get out of Kirkwall?”

“Everyone needs to get out of Kirkwall,” Grace said, sheathing her dagger when she finished with her spell, and his blood was free of bane. “You’re not special.”

“Not everyone is engaged to the Champion of Kirkwall,” Anders countered. “Hawke is going to come looking for me, and you don’t want him to find me with you.”

“He’s right, Grace,” Thrask said. “The Champion is unstable. With how the lyrium is laced, we cannot account for how he might react.”

“What did you just say?” Anders asked.

“Damnit, Thrask,” Grace muttered.

“The Warden is a friend-” Thrask started.

“You know he’s on lyrium!?” Anders stood up so quickly he knocked over his chair in the process. “You knew and you never said anything to me?”

“Know?” Grace rolled her eyes. “Thrask is the one giving it to him.”

“Grace-” Thrask groaned, rubbing at his temple.

“Well is he a friend or not?” Grace asked.

“How long have you known!?” Anders demanded. “You worked with me in my clinic for months! Months!”

“I’ve always known,” Thrask said. “He started taking it after the death of his mother. I give him my dosage every week. I wanted to quit and the Champion wanted to start. I warned him of the risks, but he was adamant, and I was desperate.

“The Knight Commander has been lacing the lyrium these past years. I could not speak to what at first, but it felt hotter... more potent, more addictive. I noticed the effects a few months after the change. Much of the Order has become more possessive, more paranoid, more violent...

“Everyone who takes it is stronger - and not just their abilities. I’ve seen men with strength beyond what a human body should bear, men who go for days without sleep, men who heal in days from wounds that should leave them bed ridden for weeks…

“She is lacing the lyrium with some red form of it. The Champion seemed familiar with it when we found out, but he wouldn’t share anything about what it was or where it came from. I don’t know where the Knight-Commander gets the red lyrium, but I know it comes in on a boat from Ferelden. She’s expecting another shipment on Feast Day - and we mean to sink it.

“We could use your help.”

“My help?” Anders repeated in disbelief, reeling from the revelation. “You’ve known Hawke has been taking red lyrium for years! You’ve been giving it to him! Andraste’s sweaty socks, more possessive, more paranoid, more violent... and you just let him keep taking it!?”

“Not everyone experiences symptoms,” Thrask held up his hands. “Not everyone experiences all of them. Some of the men seem immune. The Champion-”

“His name is Hawke!” Anders yelled over him. “Damn you, his name is Garrett, and he was a good man until you ruined him! Maker damn you - tell me -... Tell me you can reverse it. Tell me you can still fix it. Tell me you can still fix him.”

“I-...” Thrask looked away from him. “I cannot say. As far as I know the effects are irreversible. There are sanatoriums filled with men of the Order who have lost their minds to lyrium. The lyrium takes us all in the end - whatever the color.”

“Damnit,” Anders dragged his hands through his hair, pacing away from them. “Damnit, damnit, damnit.”

It had to be reversible. There had to be something. Something Anders hadn’t found with Bartrand. Something he could still find if he stayed and tried to help and-

“Mage,” Fenris caught his sleeve to stop his pacing. “No.”

“He-” Anders started.

“No,” Fenris said firmly. “This changes nothing. It does not excuse him. It does not change him.”

“Doesn’t it?” Anders demanded. “If it was just the lyrium-”

“It wasn’t. You know it wasn’t.” Fenris turned to Thrask, “These men and their violence, did they have it before?”

“They did,” Thrask admitted. “The lyrium only made it worse.”

“Fuck,” Anders pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, fighting off the sting of fresh tears.

“This is not for you. You are not responsible for him. You do not need to excuse him. You do not need to forgive him. You do not need to save him. You survived him. Mage - Anders - look at me.” Fenris squeezed his arm, and Anders looked. “Now you need only to escape him.”

Fenris was right. Of course he was right. Fenris was right, and Bethany was right, and Charade was right, and all of them were right. Anders couldn’t care about Hawke. Anders had to care about Anders, and Anders had to get out of here, but the explosion that came from downstairs left him terrified he never would. The sounds of fighting swallowed those of the sea, steel on steel interlaced with panicked cries and bellowed orders.

Resolutionists ran from the room to join the chaos on the story below, but Anders didn’t. Anders couldn’t. He didn’t just hear orders. He heard the Order. Men and women declaring their allegiance to the Knight Commander, the Chantry, and the Maker in their battle cries. The Chant of Light echoed through the warehouse to a chorus of Fear - cackling as the abomination battled back the sudden onslaught of templars.

“He followed me,” Anders’ staff clattered out of his hands, and he stumbled away from the door. “Hawke followed me. He followed me. I can’t go back - I can’t go back - I can’t go back -””

“Anders, calm down-” Fenris said, but Anders couldn’t calm down. Each panicked gasp stole more and more air from his lungs until he was so faint he could barely see, barely stand, barely breathe.

Anders blacked out.

Anders came back to himself in the marble alleys of Hightown, clutching Ser Cumference’s basket so tight against his chest the wicker bent. Fenris dragged him by his satchel like a leash, his hand drenched in blood, droplets sliding down the oiled leather. Anders' staff was missing, and he couldn’t remember what had happened or where they were going.

“Which is it?” Fenris hissed, stopping them at the exit to the alley and gesturing to the shops that lined the square.

“Which is what?” Anders asked. “I don’t-.. What are we-...”

“The friend of which you spoke,” Fenris explained. “The one you lost. The one Hawke will not suspect.”

Friend. What friend? Anders didn’t have any friends. Anders had lost too many friends. That didn’t narrow it down at all. The square was filled with shops and none of them looked familiar except for-...

“Franke,” Anders pointed to one of the smallest shops in the square, so compact it was barely wide enough for the door. A sign hung above it, painted with a shoe.

Fenris bolted with him across the square. He slammed the door open with so much force a handful of shoes toppled off the shelves lining the walls, and slammed it closed just as fast. Franke was leaning over a workbench, hammering together a boot longer than his arm, and jumped at their entrance. The two pieces to the boot flopped apart and onto the floor, and Franke scowled.

“You best be fixing to fix Franke’s door,” Franke said, pointing his hammer at them. “What are you doing here, Anders?”

Anders had no idea what he was doing here. “I-... Fenris?”

“They are sweeping the streets - we haven’t time for this,” Fenris said, turning a quick circle that gave him a full tour of Franke’s shop. It was so small it barely fit the three of them, squeezed between a worktable and a shoeshine chair.

“Is that blood?” Franke asked queasily, eyeing the crimson smeared across Fenris’ hand.

“A templar’s,” Fenris explained, wiping it off on his trousers. “They are here for the mage. Where are we to hide?”

“Hide?” Franke repeated, running a nervous hand through his curly brown hair. “You’re hiding from templars? Here? Now? Anders, what are you thinking coming-”

“Franke, please,” Anders shoved aside his shock and shoved Ser Cumference into Fenris’ arms. He grabbed Franke’s hands. “They’ll put me back in solitary. Please, Franke.”

Maker, he didn’t deserve it. He hadn’t spoken to Franke in over a year. Franke hated him. Franke had hated him ever since Anders had gone back to being a Warden, and Anders had given up trying to do anything about that hatred. They weren’t friends, but they had been once, and that had to count for something. Justice thought it did, or Justice wouldn’t have brought him here, and Justice had never been wrong before.

Please. Please please please. Please, Maker, people are good. People are good.

“Alright,” Franke broke free of his hands. “Alright, yeah?”

Franke grabbed a draw string on his ceiling and wrenched. A trapdoor gave, and a ladder unfurled to his small room above his shop. Fenris pushed past him and scrambled up it, Ser Cumference stuffed under one arm and yowling up a storm.

“You keep whatever’s in that box quiet, and don’t move when you’re up there,” Franke warned him. “Floor creaks, yeah?”

“Thank you,” Anders hugged him. “Thank you, Franke, thank you-”

Franke peeled him off. “You best not be sending Franke to the gallows instead, Anders, or I swear I’ll haunt you to the end of your days.”

“At least it would be good to see you again,” Anders joked.

“Get up the bloody ladder,” Franke said.

Anders climbed up the ladder, and pulled the door closed behind him. Much like the shop, the room was small. It consisted of a bed, a chamberpot, a table and chair with a collection of sparse shelves that served as the kitchen, and a wooden beam that seemed to function as an armoire by the collection of clothes draped over it. Anders huddled on the bed with Fenris, a hand in the wicker basket petting Ser Cumference to keep him quiet, and waited.

The templars came.

The city was under lockdown. The Champion’s fiance had been kidnapped by a Tevinter fugitive. Anyone with any information as to the men’s whereabouts was to report them immediately to the Order or to the city guard, for a sizeable reward or under pain of death, whichever the Champion saw fit.

"So, I suppose that means you folks aren't in the market for a new pair of shoes?" Franke asked, and the templars left.

"Maker, fuck me," Anders let out the breath he'd been holding, the tears streaming down his face making it hard to see Franke when he climbed up to join them.

"You speak as if he hasn't already," Fenris muttered, resting his forehead on his bent knees, breath coming in shallow gulps that belied his own panic.

Franke pulled up his chair, and sat across from them, his big mouth twisted into a big frown. "You gonna tell me what this is all about?"

Anders shook his head, "I wouldn't even know where to start."

"Weren't a question," Franke warned him. "You're gonna tell me, or you're gonna get out of my shop."

"Mage…" Fenris set a tentative hand on his shoulder. "... tell him. Tell someone."

Anders told him.

Chapter 154: Justice for Anders

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you like the chapter!

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 23 Nubulis Early Evening
Kirkwall Hightown: Franke’s Footwear

“I don’t know what to say,” Franke said when Anders finished his story. He’d recounted everything that had happened to him since the qunari invasion. It seemed like where he should start, but the more Anders thought about it, the more he realized he should have started sooner.

He should have started when they’d met, and Hawke had been against helping him free Karl. He should have started when Bethany had gotten hurt helping him in his clinic, and Hawke had threatened and blackmailed him into helping him in the Deep Roads. He should have started with every filthy fucking sewer rat. Every dangerous abomination. Every sinful maleficar. Every rough hand and cruel word Hawke had subjected him to over the past four years.

Every fight about their faith. Every fight about the Circles. Every fight about their future. The way all the fights had bled together until that was all there was left. Hawke had never wanted what he’d wanted. Hawke had never believed what he’d believed. Hawke had never been the man he’d wanted him to be. Four years, and Hawke still believed in the Circles, in the Chantry, in evil blood mages and blood magic, in good templars and bad mages.

Hawke had never looked at him and seen a mage. He didn’t see Anders, or Justice, or the man and the spirit they’d become together. He saw an exception. He saw what he wanted to see: someone for him to save, but Anders hadn’t needed saving until Hawke had come into his life. The lyrium hadn’t made things bad, it had only made things worse. The abuse. The rape. The isolation. The beatings. The bane. Anders couldn’t blame it on the lyrium.

“Maker’s breath,” Franke stood up and took a small turn about his tiny room. His curly brown hair was tousled into chaos, and his eyes were wide. “... you’re really possessed?”

… Well, not the best reaction, but not the worst either.

“Franke,” Anders frowned. “The abuse?”

“Oh, right,” Franke glanced back at him. “No, it’s fucking horrible, yeah? I just-... you’re possessed?”

“I’m so glad you’re the first person I told,” Anders said flatly. “Thank you for making this so much easier for me.”

“Yes, he’s possessed, congratulations, you’ve divined it,” Fenris said, lying on the bed with his legs propped up against the wall. Ser Cumference lounged on his chest, occasionally chewing on his fingers while Fenris scratched his ears. “Now get past it.”

“A spirit of Justice though?” Franke pressed. “The whole time?”

“No, I swapped him out for Sarcasm two years ago,” Anders rolled his eyes. “Yes, the whole time.”

“... Is that why you did it?” Franke asked. “Defending the city back in Amaranthine?”

“I left them before that,” Anders said. “Not all Wardens are like that, Franke. It doesn’t take a spirit of Justice to know destroying an entire city is wrong.”

“Not all Wardens,” Franke muttered, thumping a fist along the wall while he paced. “Yeah, not all Wardens. That why only three deserted with you?”

“What do you want me to say, Franke?” Anders demanded. “You want me to say I’m not a Warden anymore? Look at me. Look at what Hawke did to me. I’m not anything anymore.”

“... You hear things, yeah? About the Champion,” Franke sighed and sat back down. “About the Bone Pits... They say he can’t hear the screams, and he wouldn’t care if he could. The way he’s got the Red Irons walking the street with the guard, replacing ‘em one at a time… I thought you were for him. I didn’t know he had you locked up in there. When you stopped working at the clinic, I guess I figured you just got too good for everyone.

“I just fucking believed it, you know? ‘Wardens,’ I figured. No darkspawn, no reason to care. Thought that’d be the end of it, but the nobles talk about you. Got so sick of hearing about the Champion and his fiance and their Summerday wedding. Wardens say they don’t get involved in politics, and then they turn around and take out whole arlings. Figured one’d marry the Champion with him fixing to be Viscount.

“... Was he just gonna drag you down the aisle kicking and screaming?”

“And throw the mage in the brazier after, no doubt,” Fenris said.

“Well, we hadn’t really talked about the honeymoon,” Anders joked.

Fenris chuckled, but Franke looked horrified. He dragged a hand over his face to wipe away the expression. “Bit dark for Franke, that. What do we do now? Champion’s got the city on lockdown looking for the both of you.”

“We?” Anders asked.

“Me and my big mouth,” Franke shrugged. “Look, Anders… I hate the Wardens. I do. I hate ‘em to death, but… I don’t hate you, and even if I did, I’m not about to send you back to the Champion or your friend back to the mines for it. Franke’s not about that.”

“The scar on my shoulder begs to differ,” Anders reminded him.

“One time, yeah?” Franke said with a sheepish smile. “You try and kill a man one time, and he never lets you forget it.”

“If only you had succeeded; we would not be in this situation,” Fenris snorted. “We must find a way out of the city.”

“How?” Anders asked. “Hawke owns the city. Every other guard is a member of the Red Irons and he’s got enough friends in the Order that he has the bloody templars out looking for me. I can’t believe he told them you kidnapped me. Like I’m some Circle mage they’re trying to rescue.”

“Yes you can,” Fenris corrected him.

“Yes I can,” Anders sighed.

“Your guy really did a number on you didn’t he?” Franke asked.

“Try all of them,” Anders said.

“Well, templars already checked the place,” Franke said. “... Suppose you can stay here till they lift the lockdown. Can’t be that long, yeah?”


It was that long.

A day turned into a week and a week turned into a fortnight and a fortnight turned into a month. Red Irons, guardsmen, and templars patrolled the streets with hounds, and there was always some new reason to keep the lockdown going. At first it was for Anders, but then it was for the gangs that plagued the streets, and then it was for the elves that escaped the alienage, and then it was for the alleged apostates loose in the city, and then it was just for whatever Hawke or Aveline or Meredith or whoever was running the city wanted it to be for.

Anders and Fenris signed throughout the day to stay quiet while Franke worked, and slept on the floor. Franke slept in his bed, and Ser Cumference abandoned them to sleep with him. There was nowhere else to hide. Their likeness papered the walls of the city, and anyone who might have sheltered them was too busy sheltering themselves.

The Resolutionists were dead to the last man, and the Collective and the Friends were in hiding. News came in the form of rumors from Franke’s customers, and anything Franke could glean from the cryers and the post. The cobbler stretched himself thin sheltering the two of them, trying to muster together the coin to feed three grown men and one overgrown cat on one man’s salary. Anders wanted to help, but he didn’t have any coin.

Anders had gone to the Warden Compound after the Grand Tourney to try and get the six months of back pay Amell had sent him, only to find out Hawke had gotten it first. Anders couldn’t be trusted to manage his own coin, after all, considering the last time Hawke had given him fifty silver Anders had spent it all in a fit. Hawke wasn’t wrong. He had reasons. He had excuses. They just never justified what he did.

Time passed. The three of them spent it hungry, cramped, and increasingly frustrated over their close quarters, but no matter how frustrated they were no one hit him. No one hurt him. No one raped him. No one poisoned him. Anders’ blood was free of bane, and veilfire reclaimed it slowly. Anders cradled clay cups, and threadbare blankets, and wooden utensils, his hands alight with veilfire and with Justice, gradually reintroducing him to the slightest of sensations.

“We’ll be okay,” Anders whispered, and hoped it was true.


“I’m starting to think this might be it,” Franke said one day over dinner. There was only one chair, and Franke always got it. Fenris ate on the bed. Anders ate on the floor.

“Must you start all conversations with no context?” Fenris muttered around a mouthful of turnips.

“You needing context is about as bad as me not giving any,” Franke countered. “I’m saying this is it. This is Kirkwall now. Champion’s never gonna let go of the city. We gotta figure another way out for you two. Get you to the docks, get you on a ship, and get it over with.”

“Tell us how you really feel, Franke,” Anders joked around the same hard turnip he’d been chewing for the past few minutes.

“Just did,” Franke said. “That cat’s gonna eat Franke out of house and home and then it’s just gonna eat Franke.”

“...Martin?” Fenris suggested. “Perhaps he could find Bela for us. She offered to take me with her once, if she ever found herself a ship… ”

“He’s not at the Hanged Man,” Anders shook his head. “I flew to check yesterday. Either he moved or Aveline finally had him arrested.”

“How is it you can manage that but you cannot fly from here to Ostwick or Cumberland?” Fenris demanded.

“I’m not leaving you here,” Anders frowned at him. “Besides, I can’t hold the form for that long anymore.”

“Why’s that?” Franke asked. “You don’t suppose the Champion’s putting bane in the water now, do you?”

“Maker, I hope not, but at this point I wouldn't put it past him,” Anders said. “No, I just-... I have to stop thinking about everything else to hold it. I can’t. Justice used to help me, whenever my mind got the better of me, but he’s been quiet. Hawke was hard on him too…”

“What of Amell?” Fenris asked.

Anders dropped his bowl. Turnips scattered, broth dripping through the floorboards and into Franke’s shop. Ser Cumference wandered over to swat a sliced turnip across the floor and under the bed.

Franke frowned at him, “You ain’t getting more than that.”

“What about Amell?” Anders asked, retrieving as much of his scattered dinner as he could.

“Did he not promise you free passage?” Fenris pressed. “Is that not how we came to visit Merrill? We paid for no passage then.”

“He told me not to ask him for anything else, remember?” Anders said.

“I am not suggesting we ask,” Fenris said.

“What if I don’t have free passage anymore?” Anders asked. “What if they turn us away at the docks? You really think I’ll be able to shapeshift if the guards or the templars come for me? The first time I tried to fly out of this room I had a panic attack on the roof and got stuck up there all day, and you almost broke your neck trying to get me down.”

“I’m sorry, did you die?” Fenris asked.

“Sarcasm,” Anders rolled his eyes. “Good. Helpful.”

“More so than you of late.”

“At least my magic lets me leave the room.”

“And spend hours crying on your return.”

“I told you, I saw a patrol-”

“There are always patrols! They are not patrolling for crows!”

“Hawke knows I can shapeshift! You don’t know what they’re patrolling for.”

“For you! All the more reason to see you from the city. You must find your courage or let your spirit find it for you.”

“You really want to pull at that thread?”

“He is more than capable-”

“He’s just as scared as I am!” Anders snapped. “He’s been like an echo ever since Hawke proposed. You don’t understand-”

“I understand better than anyone!” Fenris shouted.

Anders flinched. Fenris sighed. Franke ate his dinner, hiding behind his bowl and anxiously stuffing turnips into his mouth.

“If you cannot do it, let him do it for you,” Fenris said, much more softly. “He saw us from the warehouse. He brought us to Franke. Whatever fear he harbors for Hawke is far less than the love he harbors for you. I say we take the ship from Amaranthine when it arrives and we put this place behind us. Either the passage is free, or you persuade the captain to believe it is.”

“Just-... mind control some poor bastard?” Anders asked. “Over a few silvers?”

“Unless you wish to ask Hawke for another fifty,” Fenris said.

Anders exhaled bemusedly. It didn’t hurt the way it used to hurt. If the past few months had taught him anything, it was that he was worth a lot less to Hawke than fifty silver.


The ship from Amaranthine was due to dock towards the end of Cloudreach. The plan was for Fenris and Anders to wait until the hour it was due to ship out before they boarded. Fenris would carry what he could - Ser Cumference, Anders’ satchel - and Justice would accompany him as a crow or a cat or whatever form his spirit deigned to hold. Anders didn’t like it, but Anders wasn’t a part of it. Once he said goodbye to Franke, Justice would take over.

“I’ll write you,” Anders promised, and prayed he meant it this time.

“You going back to the Wardens?” Franke guessed, clasping his arm.

“I don’t know,” Anders admitted.

“You listen if you do. Don’t you let them do like they did in Amaranthine. You gotta be better than them. You gotta make them better than they are. You gotta save people. You gotta make sure there are people left to save. Don’t you go there and be like them. You promise me. You promise me right now for my girls you won’t let something like that happen again. Not if you can do something about it.”

“I promise, Franke,” Anders said.

They opened the door, and Fenris and Justice left for the docks.


“Mage,” Fenris said when Anders came back to himself. “It’s over.”

Kirkwall was fading, the black city almost indistinguishable from the blackrock as the Pride of Amaranthine sailed into the distance. The bronze twins wept across the strait, chained between the city and it’s Circle, and all the horrors still within. Anders stood on the ship’s deck, leaning against the railing with Fenris leaning beside him. Anders spun in a slow circle, but the deck didn’t warp and change into his room at the estate or a cell in the Circle or demesne in the Fade.

It was just the deck of a ship, and he was just standing on it. It was littered with a few barrels, a few coils of rope, and a few idle sailors wandering from port to starboard. A single gull was perched upon the mast, and looked to have befouled it at some point. The ship’s hull cut through the waves, lightly misting him with salt water and making his skin prickle and itch.

It was calm, and it was quiet, and it was over, and Anders wept.

Anders had been free of Hawke for over a month, but it hadn’t felt like freedom until he’d made it free of the city. He’d almost forgotten the feeling. The way every breath filled his lungs. The way he could breathe at all. It was a three day voyage across the Waking Sea from Kirkwall to Amaranthine, and Anders spent much of it on the deck, enjoying the breeze and trying to get Justice to enjoy it with him.

Anders needed Justice to enjoy it with him. He needed them to be them, and them to be safe being them, and them to enjoy being them if he was ever going to be him again. Even if Anders was still Anders, and Justice was still Justice, Anders needed to know that they could still be each other without losing the other, but there was no magic he knew that could heal what Hawke had done to them, and it wasn’t until he told Fenris what he was trying to do that he made any progress.

“I have a thought,” Fenris said.

“Just the one?” Anders joked.

“If you wish his presence without overwhelming your own, call upon it.”

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do for the past two days?” Anders demanded. “You think I like living like this? I can’t remember anything when Justice is forward. I can’t remember what happened when Hawke proposed. I can’t remember what happened at the Vigil. I can’t remember what happened in the Fade. I can’t remember what happened in the warehouse. I can’t remember anything but what Hawke did to me, and that’s the last thing I want to think about right now.

“It feels like I’m cut off from half of my soul and I don’t know how to get those memories back. I don’t know how to get Justice back. I don’t know how to heal what Hawke did to him. What I did to him. I drank so much magebane I can’t even remember half of what happened. There has to be some way to reconnect with him but I don’t even know where to start.

“What Hawke did to me - I don’t care. I care about Justice. I want him back. I want us back. I never should have let Hawke do what he did. To me. To us. To him. If I had just stopped him-”

“Stop,” Fenris cut him off. “You did not do this. You endured this. Do not go back to him - not now that you are free. Go forward.”

Anders didn’t know where forward led. Sailing towards Amaranthine felt like sailing towards uncertainty, and he didn’t want to do it alone. “I don’t know how.”

“I believe this will help,” Fenris said. A brilliant sapphire flowed through the lyrium etched beneath his skin, like the emerald waters of the Fade, and called on them to give it answer. Justice lingered, and listened, and they remembered.


They remembered Anders saying no to Hawke’s proposal, and how he wouldn’t take it for an answer.

“Marry him,” Anders laughed but there was no Joy in it. There was only Rage. And Regret. Anders paced through Allure’s demesne within the Fade, torn between fighting or fueling his demons, while Justice tried to comfort him. “I can’t marry him. What in the bloody Void is he thinking? He hasn’t talked to me in three months and now he wants to marry me?”

“He has not treated you justly,” Justice agreed.

“And you have no Desire for him,” Allure chimed in.

“What am I supposed to do?” Anders asked. “How do I get out of this?”

“You are under no obligation to accept this proposal,” Justice said. “Decline it.”

“I thought I did,” Anders ran a hand through his hair - the golden strands reminiscent of wheat kissed by the sun in the far fields of Tallo. Innocent once, but beautiful always. “I don’t think I love him anymore. I don’t think I have for a long time. This last month with Amell-... you’ve felt that too, haven’t you? The way we feel about each other?”

“I do not believe it is for me to feel, but I know the emotions of which you speak,” Justice said.

“... you can feel it if you want,” Anders offered. “I mean, Amell knows you’re part of me.”

“I love you,” Justice said. “I am you.”

“That’s kind of my point. You know how I feel about him. Do you feel any of that?”

“I am you,” Justice said stubbornly.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” Anders decided. “I just-... I don’t want to marry Hawke.”

“Then we will not.”


They remembered Justice saying no to Hawke’s proposal, and how he wouldn’t take that for an answer either.

“No!” Justice signed when Anders gave up signing it for himself. “Enough. He has refused you. He has refused you time and again. Anders has no need of you.”

“Who else is going to protect him from you?” Hawke demanded.

“I have never harmed him,” Justice signed.

“You almost got him killed taking that damn dagger!” Hawke signed back.

“Thrown by your hand - for want of a mage’s death.”

“A mage?” Hawke scoffed through the symbol Justice loved most in this world. “She was a murderer! She slaughtered an entire family and you let her walk away without facing the consequences of her actions.”

“A family of tyrants!” Justice corrected him. “She sought to see mages free of them!”

“The servants? The children? Were they tyrants too?”

“War comes with casualties. Their deaths were not without purpose-”

“Purpose?” Hawke barked a laugh. “What purpose? Rage? Revenge? You call that Justice? You call anything you’ve done Justice? Is that even what you are anymore?”

“I am Anders!”

“You’re a damn demon. Look at what you’re doing to him - look at how you’re hurting him - look at how you tear him apart whenever you come forward.”

A falsehood. Surely, a falsehood, and yet the veilfire that burned in Anders’ veins and split his pale skin seemed as great a threat as any blade. One Justice subjected on him for no pursuit of purpose but for want of mortal comforts and comforting mortals. He signed no reply.

“You think a spirit of Justice would do something like this to a man like him? You don’t let him sleep. You don’t let him eat. You’re out here throwing logs on his pyre. You think I’m going to let you turn him into just another dead man’s corpse for you to wear? I swore I’d kill him before I let him live as a templar’s slave, and I swear I’ll do the same before I let him live as yours.”

It had not seemed an empty threat, and it had not been the last. Anders refused him, and Justice refused him, and for all they continued to refuse him, Hawke continued not to hear it. They fought and in that fight Hawke shoved the ring upon their finger and dared them to take it off. Justice hadn’t bothered. He’d left the clinic and gone straight to Fenris’ estate to pack their things and see them off to the man they both knew Anders truly wanted, but he hadn’t held on long enough, and Anders hadn’t remembered any of it.

The disconnect between them seemed only further confirmation that Hawke was right. That they weren’t Anders and Justice, but rather Anders or Justice, and given the choice, Justice picked Anders.


They remembered the horrors of the Vigil and how no had ceased to mean anything at all.

Twice Justice asked Amell for his help, and twice Anders’ affection for the man overwhelmed him before Justice could explain what he wanted help with. Amell never understood and Hawke never stopped. One red smite after the next silenced Justice’s protests when Anders was too afraid or too depressed to voice them until they couldn’t take it anymore.

“I said no,” Anders signed, shaken. He hadn’t stopped shaking since Hawke’s first assault. His trembling hands, his tapping feet, his racing heart, his rickety breath. Anders fell apart for no fault of veilfire and Justice would not watch him burn alone.

“No you didn't,” Hawke grabbed their burning hand, lyrium encasing his own to save him from the flames, and pinned it to the wall above their head. "That's not you. You never say no to me."

"I hate you," Anders said with a strength Hawke had never taken from him.

"I hate you more," Hawke kissed them, and they shoved him off in time for two templars to witness the display.

“Hey! You there! Stop where you are!” The men raced over, hands to the hilts of their swords, decrying the assault. Decrying the violation. Decrying the injustice. Decrying Hawke.

Justice meant to see Anders free of the man, but Hawke grabbed his arm when he tried to leave. One of the templars shoved Hawke off him. “Get your hands off the mage!”

Hawke hadn’t heard him. Hawke wouldn’t have listened if he could. He grabbed the templar’s arm and spun with it, slamming him into the wall and rattling him in his armor. “Back off.”

“He is deaf,” Justice volunteered.

“He’s dead if he keeps assaulting Wardens,” The other templar countered. “Tell him to calm down. Fletcher - are you alright?”

Fletcher wrested free of Hawke and wrenched his sword free of its scabbard. “Damn me, Barris, this bastard’s strong -”

“Either of you lay so much as a hand on him-” Hawke threatened.

“You are the only one who has laid hands on Anders,” Justice signed with such fury he felt a brother to Rage. “Leave us!”

“Leave you with templars?” Hawke signed. “If you think for one second I’ll ever let you go, you’re wrong.” Aloud, he said, “Both of you, stay out of this” - and made another grab for Justice.

The fight was chaos. Barris came between them. Hawke grabbed his wrist before he could draw his sword and slammed the hilt of it into his stomach, winding him. Barris staggered back, and it was enough. Justice had had enough. Veilfire turned to fire - a blast that should have set Hawke a flame and seen an end to him - but the lyrium in his blood flared to life and swallowed the magic. A smoke bomb went off, and Hawke set a hand to his shoulder. To their shoulder. To Anders’ shoulder - and Justice would see to it he never set a hand to his love again.

He’d thought it was Hawke’s hand.

He hadn’t meant to harm Fletcher.


They remembered how Merrill had begged their help to free Marethari from Audacity, and how much like Hawke couldn’t hear no, they couldn’t say it.

”... Vengeance?” Justice - … Vengeance? - repeated. “That is not my purpose. I am Justice.”

Audacity was… a marvel. Pure purpose burned within him, cleaved from the souls of the People bound within his demesne. A being born of lightning, with twisted horns a halla’s envy and glistening scales a dragon’s desire, he sang with power, with Pride. And more. He sang with… vengeance.

“Facets,” Audacity said dismissively. “Is Vengeance not Justice? Is Justice not Vengeance? There is little left of either within you. The bane within your blood has kept you from your purpose, as the Dalish kept me from mine.”

“They are not the ones who bound you to your prison,” Justice argued. “This is not just.”

“Nor are they the ones who freed me from it,” Audacity waved one massive, dismissive hand. “They left me to burn as the bane burns you now. I would be a wisp were it not for what I could siphon from the few souls who passed my prison.”

“That they did not right a wrong does not mean they committed it,” Justice said firmly. “It serves no purpose to imprison them in turn.”

“It serves yours,” Audacity countered. Five vibrant eyes swept over him, an eternity of teeth within his smirk. “Vengeance is such a pleasant pursuit.”

“I am not borne of Vengeance,” Justice argued.

“Your kind cannot lie. You may not have been borne of it, but you cannot tell me you do not seek it,” Audacity crackled with lightning, a soft sapphire bleeding through a deeper violet speaking to the mixed purpose with him. “You may have mine if you wish.”

It wasn’t safe to accept. He was a demon. His purpose impure, but Justice - Vengeance? - had so little of his own left. Audacity offered it for want of nothing - and how Justice wanted it. He wanted Justice. He wanted Vengeance. He wanted purpose. He wanted to feel. He wanted to feel something other than what he had felt buried beneath Hawke’s bane for an eternity.

“I have treated with your kind before - and was all but consumed for it,” Vengeance whispered warily.

“By what?” Audacity asked.

“Hunger,” Vengeance said.

“They were Hunger,” Audacity chuckled. “I am not. I will not consume you unless you want to be consumed.”

“Why would you offer me this?”

“I can feel myself within you,” Audacity reached for him - and when Vengeance didn’t stop him - traced along his arm with the blunt edge of his claw, ripples of purpose bleeding through at the contact alone. It felt like fire and fuel. “The Audacity, the impudence of all that you have suffered. I can alleve you of it.”

“If you’re offering your Vengeance, then offer all of it,” Vengeance said. “Let the elves go.”

“Persuade me,” Audacity said.

Vengeance reached up to run the tips of fingers along Audacity’s jaw, violet separating from sapphire as Vengeance pulled his purpose from him. It felt euphoric. It felt exultant. It felt like a fire to burn away the bane - Audacity cradling his head, claws threaded through his hair, siphoning away the shame that Hawke had subjected him to along with it. Audacity’s desire for vengeance faded in turn - and for that one moment Vengeance had hoped to see an end to their conflict without the need for violence.

It was a moment Hawke had ended.

They remembered how for all they were for Justice and for Vengeance, Hawke had only been for violence. Hawke had been among the templars that followed them to the warehouse and to the Resolutionists - and Justice had fled. He’d fled because he had to flee - and not just for fear. He’d fled because for all he may have wanted vengeance, Anders deserved justice, and the only way to find it was in his freedom.

Chapter 155: Twenty Questions

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter. I sincerely appreciate all of the comments - they're very motivating in keeping the story going and letting me know you're still here.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 28 Eluviesta Late Afternoon
The Waking Sea: The Pride of Amaranthine

Anders watched his wedding ring sink to the bottom of the Waking Sea and fade into the distance as The Pride of Amaranthine sailed towards its port city.

“We could have sold that,” Fenris pointed out.

Anders shook his head. “I don’t want anything from him.”

“I might,” Fenris said. “That would have fetched ten sovereigns by my guess.”

“Go get it then,” Anders set a hand between Fenris’ shoulder blades and shoved.

“Kaffas!” Fenris flailed, torso toppling over the railing before he righted himself. “I should have left you in Kirkwall.”

“But you didn’t,” Anders grinned.

“But I didn’t,” Fenris agreed.

“I think you like me,” Anders joked.

“What?” Fenris recoiled.

“That’s why you saved me, isn’t it?” Anders prodded. “You just couldn’t stand to see me with Hawke.”

“Or perhaps I just can’t stand to see you,” Fenris countered.

“You like me.”

“I like quiet.”

“You like me,” Anders sang, skipping after him when Fenris fled across the deck. “You like me. You like me.”

Fenris whirled on him. “Your transformation magic - can you hold it now?”

“I mean… I guess, why?”

Fenris heaved him over the railing and into the ocean - and it proved alarmingly difficult for a crow to fly out of it. Anders landed back on the deck in an explosion of feathers and laughter, “You like me so much it makes you stupid.”

“I will tie the anchor to you next time,” Fenris took a threatening step towards him, and Anders fled below deck to join Ser Cumference in the hold, chuckling to himself and through the rest of the day until the ship docked in Amaranthine. The port city was as bustling as ever, and welcomed them with colorfully painted buildings and brightly colored banners in place of blackrock and bronze slaves.

Anders disembarked with nothing to his name but a half-empty satchel and a heavy wicker basket. There was no parade, no cheering crowd, no escort from the Vigil, but there wasn’t a group of guardsmen or templars waiting with shackles for him either. Anders stood on the wharves with Fenris, overlooking the bay and breathing in the brine.

“Is this real?” Anders asked.

“What else would it be?” Fenris asked.

“A dream,” Anders shrugged.

“Have better ones,” Fenris suggested.

“This is pretty good as far as my dreams go,” Anders admitted, adjusting his hands for a better grip on the basket when Ser Cumference shifted inside it. “I don’t know how I would make it any better.”

“When I first escaped Danarius, I wanted for nothing save my freedom,” Fenris shared. “Good dreams will come.”

“What did you want?” Anders asked. “You know, once you were free.”

“... I wanted Bela,” Fenris said with a melancholy smile. “I want her still.”

“You think you can find her?” Anders asked.

“Perhaps,” Fenris said. “I’ve given it some thought and I intend to book passage for Llomerynn. If she is anywhere, she is there, sailing the Rialto Bay with the Felicisima Armada. I will get us a room at an inn for tonight, and see you off in the morning.”

“Where am I going?” Anders asked.

“To the Vigil - and your Amell,” Fenris said.

“He’s not really mine, Fenris,” Anders said. “I fucked it up, remember?”

“Unfuck it,” Fenris said.

Anders snorted so hard he hurt himself, and coughed to clear his throat. “I’ll try that, thanks.”

“You are welcome,” Fenris said.

Fenris snatched a purse off a noblewoman Anders told himself could do without the coin and bought them a room at the Crown and Lion for the evening. Anders let Ser Cumference loose in the room, and Fenris got them dinner. The inn was serving roast eggplant and druffalo beef, and spared them an extra handful of scraps for Ser Cumference. It felt like his first night free of the Circle, all those years ago, eating a full meal and sleeping in a real bed, and was hard to let go of come morning.

Fenris walked him to the city gates - and there they lingered.

“... What if he won’t take me back?” Anders asked.

“As a man or as a Warden?”

“Both? Either?” Anders shrugged.

“Did he dismiss you?”

“I don’t know,” Anders said.

Amell hadn’t dismissed him. Anders had dismissed Amell - taking advantage of his kindness more times than he could count. Anders had used him to the point of abusing him. He’d come to him for help so many times he forgot to come to him for anything else. He’d just assumed Amell would always be there waiting for him - without ever giving him a reason to wait. Anders shouldn’t have made him wait at all. He should have been better to him.

Amell was his Commander. Amell was his friend. Amell was his almost.

Now he was none of that.

“Then find out,” Fenris said.

Anders shifted Ser Cumference in his arms - already aching with the thought of the day’s journey to the Vigil. He couldn’t start it. His feet felt leaden - like he was just another statue of just another Warden decorating Amaranthine’s streets. “This is probably hard for you, right?” Anders joked. “Watching me leave?”

“It is all but impossible,” Fenris said flatly.

“We can still make it work, you know. I swear I can change.”

“For the worse, I’m sure.”

“... You’re going to write, right? When you find her?” Anders asked. “Do you know how?”

“Do you?” Fenris countered.

“It’s the reading part that always tripped me up."

Fenris smiled. He squeezed his arm in something not quite a hug with the wicker basket yowling between them, and said, “Go home, mage.”

Anders took one step and then he took another and then he kept taking them. Amaranthine faded into the distance and Fenris faded with it. He followed the Pilgrim’s Path south, passing merchant wagons, patrols, and the occasional cart of summer vegetables. The sun chased him when he reached the North Road, setting on his arrival to the Vigil and painting the granite in hues of violet and crimson.

No procession came out to greet him at the gates to Vigil’s Keep. The posted gatesmen didn’t even recognize him. They asked after his business at the Vigil and seemed to doubt him when he shared it.

“The Commander will see you if he sees fit,” One of the gatesmen said. “We’ll let the Constable know you’re here.”

“I’m not here to see Nate - the Constable,” Anders said. “I’m sure I’ll see him later, I just want to see Amell - the Commander first.”

“And I want a pony,” The gatesman snorted in a near perfect mirror of his past. “The Commander sees who he sees. You can wait in the yard or the hall for the Constable. Don’t wander the Vigil.”

Anders bit back a retort and shifted Ser Cumference in his arms. There was no telling if he’d get a warmer reception or a colder one if he introduced himself as the mage who saved Amaranthine as opposed to the mage who left it. In the end, “Warden Anders” was probably better than “The Hero of Haring”. It was probably more believable.

Anders was a mess. He’d lived in a single room above a shoe shop for a month - surviving on turnips and sawdust and other famine foods. He was wearing the same pair of clothes he’d escaped in because he didn’t have any others. His tunic had lost an alarming amount of its thread count, and his trousers were so stiff they could probably walk away from him if he took them off. His hair and his beard were more or less indistinguishable from each other, and after three days in a ship’s hold he desperately needed a bath he’d forgotten to take at the inn.

Anders was lucky they let him in at all. He went to the main hall without complaint, and found a seat at one of the tables that lined the hall, stretching from one wall to the other. Most of the nobles who frequented the Vigil had either gone back to their quarters or left this late in the evening. The servants were winding down for the day, clearing crockery and sweeping the floors after dinner. A few Grey Wardens wandered through the hall, but none of them seemed to recognize him.

None of them except Oghren. The dwarf trundled out of the kitchens with what looked to be a whole ham or nug stuffed under his arm, and did a double-take when he saw him. “Holy shit,” Oghren gawked. “Sparkles?”

“That’s not my name, but you’re sure wearing it out anyway,” Anders waved.

Oghren hurried over and dropped his ham/nug on the table, rattling Ser Cumference’s basket. The tabby growled unhappily for it, and chewed at the hole he’d worn through the wicker. He probably needed to piss, but Anders wasn’t about to let him out until he knew he could let him stay.

“Well butter my beard,” Oghren chuckled. “You look like shit.”

“As good as I feel, then,” Anders joked.

“The fuck are you doing here, Sparkles?” Oghren dragged a bench over, the wood screeching across the stone and making Anders’ wince.

“I was in the country,” Anders shrugged.

“Uh huh,” Oghren licked grease from his ham/nug off his thumb. “How’d you get in the country?”

“I left the other country,” Anders explained.

“Uh huh,” Oghren said, pulling a flask from his belt and taking a drink. “And the other guy?”

“... I left him too.”

“Uh huh… and…?”

“And I thought I’d give being a Warden a go again,” Anders said.

“You sure you thought?” Oghren prompted.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean are you sure you thought?” Oghren said. “About whether or not being a Warden again is such a good idea after all your bad ideas?”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Anders said.

“Sounds about right,” Oghren shook his head and took another drink. “Sparkles, I love ya, and it’s good to see ya, but you could live longer than Avernus and not deserve that Kid.”

Anders didn’t need Oghren to tell him that. Anders didn’t need anyone to tell him that. He’d already told himself - more times than he could count.

“I’m not here to hurt him,” Anders said. “I’m his friend.”

“Then maybe you should start acting like one,” Oghren offered him a drink from his tankard.

Anders stared at it and felt nauseous.

“Ain’t poison,” Oghren joked.

Anders wheezed his way through a laugh and took a cautious sip. He expected it to burn - brandy or whiskey or malt he’d apologize to Justice for later - but whatever Oghren was drinking tasted like nothing.

Anders hacked it back up like he’d swallowed moonshine. “Is this water?”

“Course it’s water,” Oghren frowned at him, screwing the lid to his flask back on and stuffing it back into his belt. “Gave up drinking years ago.” Oghren stood up, and retrieved his ham/nug with a sad shake of his head. “... It’s like the Kid says, Sparkles. You don’t ask.”

Anders dragged Ser Cumference’s basket over when Oghren left and flipped open the lid enough to scratch his ear without letting him escape. “You still like me, right?” Anders mumbled, but it wasn’t like the cat couldn’t answer.

A servant came and found him, an indiscernible amount of time later, and led him through the Vigil to the war room. The furniture had changed. The dark-stained table had shrunk in size, and the room had been shifted to accommodate a scribe’s table, where a scribe sat scrawling away. Amell sat beside him, dressed in a black vest and a short sleeved tunic, one scarred arm resting openly on the table, the other draped across a bent knee. He wasn’t wearing his blindfold, and two black eyes with flowing red irises cut straight through Anders’ heart.

It didn’t matter if they were demonic. They were beautiful. Maker, they were beautiful, but Amell hadn’t believed him and Anders probably shouldn’t open with telling him again, but he didn’t know what else to open with.

“... Anders,” Amell’s voice broke him from his trance. Anders set Ser Cumference on the table, wringing his hands for words once they were free until he remembered he didn’t have to use them anymore.

“... Hey,” Anders said.

“What are you doing here?” Amell asked.

“I-...” I want to be a Warden again? I want to be your friend again? I want to be with you again? “I-...” I left Hawke? Hawke wouldn’t let me leave? Hawke was the reason I was in solitary? “I’m sorry.”

Okay. Okay, those were words. Words were a good start. It was good to start with words.

“... I know.”

Okay. Okay, those were also words. Those weren’t the words he wanted to hear but those were words and he heard them.

“I wrote to you,” Anders said.

He hadn’t written the right words, but he’d written. He’d written that he was sorry. He’d written that he hadn’t meant it. He’d written that he’d wanted to write sooner. He’d written that he’d been in solitary - he hadn’t written why - but he’d written that he had. He’d written so bloody much but Amell had never written back.

“... I know,” Amell said.

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you doing here, Anders?” Amell asked again.

Anders glanced at the scribe, still scribbling away at her desk, and desperately wished that she would leave. He could barely bring himself to talk to Amell alone without adding in an audience.

“I’m here,” Anders said.

Brilliant. Bloody fucking brilliant. Why didn’t the Void just take him now?

“It’s Summerday, Anders,” Amell told him. Anders hadn’t even known. He hadn’t even remembered. It was still so hard to keep track of time. “... Today’s supposed to be your wedding.”

“Well-...You know… I realized you wouldn’t be there, so I figured why go?” Anders joked.

Amell didn’t laugh. Anders really wished he would laugh. Or smile. Or something. Amell exhaled once, hard, through his nose, but there was nothing bemused about it. It sounded more like a restrained sigh than a restrained laugh.

“I-” Anders cleared his throat. “I left-...Hawke. So, you know, no wedding, so that’s-... a thing that’s not happening.”

“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” Amell pointed out.

“See - funny story - I-... can’t,” Anders managed - and somehow managing it felt-... well it couldn’t have felt any worse, so there was no other way for it to feel but better.

“You can’t?” Amell repeated.

“I don’t know how.”

“You don’t know how to tell me what you’re doing here?”

“No.”

“... Can I do something for you?” Amell guessed.

“No!” Anders exclaimed, surging forward a pace like he could snatch the question from Amell’s lips and force him to take it back. “No-... No, I don’t want you to do anything for me. That’s not why I’m here. There’s nothing I want you to do for me. I mean-... there is, but-”

Amell exhaled again, but this time there was something bemused in it, and this time Anders wished there wasn’t.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go-” Anders tried again, but as soon as he said it it sounded even worse. “I mean I want to be here - I could have gone somewhere else - I just don’t know where I would have gone - but I -... here.”

… fuck.

Anders took a deep breath, trying to stave off the panicked tears he could feel stinging at the corners of his eyes, and ran both his hands through his hair. His fingers caught in strands matted from months without a wash and knotted from old braids he’d never fully unraveled, and some miserable part of him wished Amell could just see him. If he could see him - if he could see what Hawke had done to him - he wouldn’t have to say it.

“You’re here,” Amell repeated, with more grammar than Anders had managed.

“I’m here,” Anders agreed miserably. Amell gestured for him to continue, but Anders still didn’t know how. Eventually, he managed, “... can I stay here? Not-... I mean not-... unless-... With the Wardens? Can I stay here with the Wardens?”

“Anders… I can’t keep making exceptions for you-”

“I’m not asking for that,” Anders cut him off before Amell said something that hurt more than that already did. “I’m just-... I’m just asking to be a Warden again. I want to be your Warden again.”

“... There’s space in the barracks,” Amell said.

“Thank you. Thank you, Amell I- thank you,” Anders took a step towards him, and Amell must have heard him or sensed his blood because he held up a hand to keep him from taking any more.

“Anything else?” Amell asked.

“... There is. There is, I just-... I can’t-... yet.”

“... Dismissed then,” Amell said. “Report to the infirmary in the morning.”

Okay. That was okay. Amell could dismiss him as long as Amell didn’t dismiss him. Anders picked up Ser Cumference’s wicker basket and froze. “I have a cat,” Anders realized.

“You have a cat…?” Amell prompted.

“Can my cat stay?” Anders asked.

“... Yes, your cat can stay, Anders. You can both stay.”

“Thank you,” Anders said for what felt like the hundredth time, and left the war room for the barracks. He spent a good five minutes wandering the halls before he realized he couldn’t remember the way there, and felt miserable for it. He sat on a bench in one of the halls and buried his face in his hands, hating himself and all the years he’d wasted until Jacen found him like that. The Dalish crouched down beside him with such a loud pop of his old knees it startled Anders out of his depression.

“Evening, da’len,” Jacen smiled, faded orange vallaslin crinkling across his wrinkles. “You look like you have been on a journey.”

“You could call it that,” Anders decided. “It’s Jacen, right?”

“So it is,” Jacen said. “Was it Anders?”

“Still is, most of the time,” Anders joked.

“And the rest of the time?” Jacen wondered.

Anders probably shouldn’t answer that honestly without talking to Amell first. “The rest of the time I’m a bastard.”

“Fortunate for you there are no bastards among the People,” Jacen grinned. “Would you like to talk about it?”

“Thanks, but I was really just looking for the barracks.”

“Are you staying with us, da’len?”

“I hope so.”

“Hope is a good thing to have. I’ll show you the way.”

Jacen led him through the Vigil and to the barracks that housed the Wardens who didn’t rank high enough for private quarters or just didn’t want them. A few had gone to bed with the set of the sun, but not all, and there were more empty bunks than open ones. Jacen pointed out the four that were actually unoccupied, but only one of them was on the bottom, so that was the one Anders picked. He let Ser Cumference loose, and the wretched little blighter walked the length of his cot before he pissed on his pillow.

“... Yeah, okay,” Anders sighed.

He threw the pillow in the laundry, made a trip to the kitchens to beg a bowl for food and water, and set both out beneath his bunk. Ser Cumference was still there, squatting in a corner and looking terribly proud of himself, and hopped down to drink after a few idle splashes told him where the water was. Anders took his spot on the bunk, and stared up at the planks supporting the one above him when he noticed the runes carved into them. Anders sat up, and found more runes carved into the post beside him, but they weren’t magic, they were dwarven.

“Jacen?” Anders asked.

“What is it, da’len?” Jacen asked, folding up his tabard for the day at his own bunk.

“Whose bunk was this?”

“Sigrun, the young lady who died in Amaranthine,” Jacen recalled. “You invited me to her funeral if I recall correctly. We have kept it vacant ever since, but I do not think she would mind if you took her place.”

“Oh,” Anders mumbled, tracing the runes on the post. Four years, and Anders had forgotten where she used to sleep. And then his cat had gone and pissed on her pillow. “... I’m a bad husband.”

“What was that, da’len?”

“Nothing,” Anders lay awake for hours, listening to the Wardens file into the barracks throughout the evening and trying to sleep, but one of them snored. Anders tried to ignore it, but every time he almost drifted off, he snapped back awake in a panic until he remembered it wasn’t Hawke. It wasn’t Hawke. He wasn’t here. Anders was fine.

Anders wasn’t fine, but he tried to be, and eventually he slept.

Anders woke up on the floor. Oghren kicked his mattress out of his bunk with him on it, knocking him onto the floor and almost taking out his teeth in the process. “Good morning, princess!”

“What-” Anders groaned, rubbing his jaw, but the pulse of healing energy from Justice surprised him more than the abuse. Anders stared at his hand as the glow of magic faded, and a rickety breath tangled up in his chest. Justice healed him. Justice could heal him. Anders could heal with Justice and there was no bane in his blood to stop him.

“How was her majesty’s beauty sleep?” Oghren laughed, heaving the mattress off him.

“Her majesty could use a little more,” Anders said from the floor.

“Yeesh,” Oghren squinted at him, looking him over like he hadn’t already seen the state of him last night. “You ain’t kidding. Her majesty could use a beauty coma. You go to the infirmary like that you better hope you can heal heart attacks.”

“Are you really giving me a lecture on my hygiene right now? You? Is this really happening? This isn’t really happening, is it?”

“Let’s go, Sparkles,” Oghren held out a hand for him, and Anders should have known better than to take it, but he did, and won another gut punch that doubled him over the dwarf. “Not letting you fuck this up again.” Oghren said while he wheezed. “Boss says go to the infirmary, you go to the infirmary. You better take a bath, though, or Finn’ll give you one.”

“Who?” Anders groaned, with another pulse of healing magic and another rickety breath.

“What? Did you think the Boss’d never find another healer?” Oghren snorted, shoving him through the bunks and towards the wash. “Don’t worry, he ain’t fucking him. Finn’s so uptight he shits-”

“Okay, okay, good morning,” Anders cut him off, stumbling around him and into the wash, where a handful of other Wardens were getting ready for the day.

“You ain’t getting out of this that easy,” Oghren trundled after him. “You gotta get it together, Sparkles. Boss ain’t bending over for you anymore, if you know what I mean.”

“How could I not know what you mean?” Anders demanded.

“I’m just saying, I don’t want you fucking this up.”

“You said that already.”

“Well I'm saying it again,” Oghren huffed. “Got a tabard on your bunk. Wear it. You need a razor?”

“Do you own one?” Anders asked doubtfully.

“Wife does,” Oghren said.

“Sure,” Anders relented. “Now I’m going to take a bath, so unless you’ve really changed and you’re going to help me-”

“Alright, alright,” Oghren held up his hands. “Back with a razor. Don’t fuck up!”

“Okay.”

“Don’t fuck down either.”

“Okay.”

“Just don’t fuck-”

“Oghren! Go away!”

Oghren went away. Anders went into the wash. There were cabinets filled with towels and soaps, a few benches, and a few vanities. Dividers offered some semblance of privacy between sunken stone basins, but just the thought of a bath made Anders sick to his stomach. He hadn’t had one since escaping Hawke, and he didn’t want one.

Hawke had carried him to a bath more times than it felt like he’d carried him to bed. Anders couldn’t look at the water without thinking of all the times he’d thrown up in it, or fought to escape it, or worse, hadn’t fought at all. He sat on a bench with a bucket instead, and left his trousers on to scrub at everything above his waist with a pumice.

Every Warden who wandered in gave him a bewildered look for it, but the fact that they could wander in made him hard pressed to care. He wasn't about to take them off. Oghren came back, and found him sitting on the bench, his trousers soaked with suds, and heaved such a heavy sigh it billowed through his mustache.

“... Hoo boy… I… I think I’m gonna tell the Boss you need a day,” Oghren decided, glancing between him and the razor in his hand. “... And I think I’m gonna keep this. You uh-... you have fun there, Sparkles.”

Oghren fled - and Anders finally stopped and stared at what he’d been doing and wondered why he’d been doing it. He was drenched in soapy water, his hair a mangled wet knot, his only pair of trousers ruined. Soap and grime mingled together beneath his nails, and his was skin rubbed raw and bloody with pumice. Well… well shit.

Anders squished his way to the cabinet and found a towel, and was still trying to dry out his pants when Nate came and found him in the wash. Unlike Anders, Nate looked great. His hair was a black so dark it was almost blue, long and lustrous and bundled neatly at the back of his head. Clean shaven, with a perfect goatee, he wore a blue doublet trimmed in silver with loose trousers that hid a brace beneath them. He used a cane to walk, but he didn’t walk far, stopping at the entrance to the wash.

“Anders,” Nate said. “... Do you mind if I close the door?”

“Velanna might get jealous,” Anders warned him.

Nate tried for a smile and landed somewhere in the vicinity of a cringe. “... I don’t think there’s a risk of that right now.”

“Ouch,” Anders said.

“The door?” Nate said again.

“Okay.”

Nate closed the door. Nothing happened. It was just a door. Anders didn’t mind being alone with Nate, or anyone if he was being honest, he just didn’t want to take a bath.

“I wish I could say it’s good to see you,” Nate said.

“I mean you could say it anyway,” Anders shrugged.

“It’s good to see you,” Nate said obediently. “Just not like this. Can I help?”

“Really?” Anders gestured at his trousers, stuck to his skin from the water still soaking them. “Not even a little jealous?”

“No, I’m not doing anything about those,” Nate said quickly. “You’re stuck in them I’m afraid. I was thinking we could start with your hair?”

“What’s wrong with my hair?” Anders joked.

“Don’t open that door,” Nate grinned, his cane echoing on the stone on his way over to a vanity. He waved him towards the stool, and Anders wandered over, still dripping wet, and sat with a squish. “How much of this do you want to keep?” Nate asked, retrieving a razor and a pair of scissors from the vanity drawers. Oghren really must never have shaved if he didn’t know they were in there.

“Justice always wanted it short,” Anders shrugged.

“Short it is,” Nate said, starting in on his hair. Anders watched the matted blonde strands gather in pools on the floor about his feet, and did a decent job keeping his breath shallow and steady while Nate worked. “I’m told you’re staying this time?”

“That’s the rumor,” Anders mumbled.

“It’ll be good to have you,” Nate said. “Surana’s healing leaves… much to be desired.”

“Is that why you have the brace?” Anders guessed, channeling a panacea through Justice and wondering if it even did anything for Nate. If nothing else, it did something for him to feel his spirit’s presence tangled through his soul.

“If I recall correctly she gave me a shot of whiskey and told me to walk it off,” Nate joked.

“That sounds about right from what I remember of her in the Circle,” Anders said.

“Yes, she mentioned you gave healing lessons,” Nate drawled, in a way that made it perfectly clear Anders did not, in fact, give healing lessons.

“Oghren said you have someone working in the infirmary?” Anders asked.

“Finn,” Nate said. “He can’t stand the sight of blood.”

“Are you serious?”

“He fainted last Satinalia over spilled wine,” Nate chuckled. “I think he might just hate the color.”

“Sounds like you’re lucky I came back,” Anders said.

“Sounds like we are,” Nate agreed. “... Can I ask what kept you?”

“You know,” Anders shrugged.

“I don’t,” Nate said. “I’d rather not guess.”

“You sure?” Anders joked. “We could play twenty questions.”

“... Alright,” Nate said.

“What?”

“Twenty questions,” Nate said. “Yes or no. What do you say?”

“... yes, I guess, but that counts as one.”

“Fair enough. You have a reason for not writing?”

“... Yes.”

“Did you want to write?”

“Yes.”

“Did someone not let you write?”

“Yes.”

“Did Hawke not let you write?”

“Yes.”

“You missed your wedding… did you want to marry him?”

“No.”

“Did you ever want to marry him?”

“No.”

“... was he forcing you to marry him?”

“... I think that’s twenty,” Anders joked.

“That’s eight,” Nate corrected him.

Anders nodded.

“Was he hurting you?”

“... yes.”

“When you visited last year, was he hurting you then?”

“Yes.”

Nate stopped his questions and focused on his hair. Strands gathered in wet puddles from the water dripping off his pants, sticking to his chest and his arms and making him itch. Anders scratched at his arms, listening to the idle snip of scissors and his own shallow breathing.

“... Amell said you’d been in solitary?”

“Yes.”

“Did he put you there?”

“Yes.”

“Does Amell know?”

“No.”

“Does anyone know?”

“Yes.”

“Does anyone here know?”

“No.”

“Do you want anyone here to know?”

“... Yes.”

“Do you want them to know now?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to tell them for you?”

“No.”

“... Will you talk to me, when you can?”

“... Yes.”

“Do you like your hair?”

“Yeah… Yeah, I-... I do.”

“... that’s twenty.”

“Thanks Nate.”

“... I’m here for you, Anders. We all are, when you’re ready.”

Chapter 156: You Can Stay

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 2 Molioris Late Afternoon
Ferelden: Vigil’s Keep

“So - once more from the top. The mortar and pestle are cleaned after every use and stay on the alchemy table. The brass alembic is for heatherum, the copper alembic is for foxite, the glass is for frostback bulbs, and all of them are cleaned after every use. Retorts are stored in the cabinet here - cleaned after every use - and the calcinators are stored under the table here - cleaned-”

“-after every use,” Anders interrupted Finn with a groan without lifting his head off the table.

“Excellent!” Finn clapped his hands together. “Why don’t we go over deep mushrooms again? We grow blightcap, ghoul’s mushroom, brimstone mushroom, and bleeding russula light - not dark of course - in the cellars. Sponge root and blighted morel are imported from Orzammar once a season, and beetle and spider spores-”

“-are brought back from expeditions,” Anders groaned, dragging his head off the table. ”Listen, Florian-”

“Finn,” Finn frowned.

“I thought it was Florian,” Anders said.

“It’s Florian Phineas Horatio Aldebrant, Esquire,” Finn said.

“You shortened it to Finn?”

“You shortened it,” Finn frowned at him. “To Flora. Don’t you remember? The other apprentices never let me hear the end of it. They used to stuff their reagents in my robes.”

Anders didn’t remember that, but then Anders didn’t remember much of anything. It sounded like something he would have done, and still did, whenever he was so overwhelmed with his life he had to make a joke out of it. “I mean that doesn’t sound that bad. So you got some extra elfroot-”

“Rashvine,” Finn frowned, ticking off reagents on his fingers. “Deathroot, glitterdust.”

“Well that’s not very clever,” Anders said. “Glitterdust isn’t even a flower.” Finn frowned harder, and Anders cleared his throat. “I mean-... Sorry."

“... Yes, well… I suppose you should be!” Finn tapped the finger that represented glitterdust, bewildered by the apology and utterly unsure of what to do with it if it wasn’t something he could clean or lecture Anders about.

"So… deep mushrooms?" Anders ventured. "Love those tainted little guys.”

Finn clapped his hands and resumed his lecture. “So, the only destroying spirit we’ve found is a small patch in Kal’Hirol-”

Anders let his head flop back onto the table and stifled another groan. He felt like he’d been sent back to the Circle and sentenced to listen to one of Ines’ endless lectures on restorative draught or botanical compendiums, except Surana wasn’t here to distract him this time. Granted, Finn’s lecture wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the other reasons he felt like he’d been sent to the Circle this past year, but it was still bad.

Anders had spent the past four years running a free clinic for refugees, and the year before that running the very infirmary Finn was lecturing him in now. He didn’t need to know about where the kitchens kept their tallow or what herbs grew where in the gardens. He could just go get those things when he needed them the same way he always had. Anders was the most accomplished healer Anders knew, but Finn didn’t seem to trust him to sweep the floors.

Anders wondered if that was all from the Circle or if there was something else to it. Anders looked human again - or whatever he felt like calling himself. Nate had cut his hair, and then waited outside the washroom to reassure him of his privacy while Anders cleaned himself up to the best of his ability without taking a bath. After, Nate had found him a change of clothes that more or less fit, and promised Anders he could use his and Velanna’s washroom whenever he had need of it in place of the one at the barracks.

Anders had headed off to the infirmary afterwards. Nate had assured him he didn’t have to go, but the infirmary was where Amell had assigned him so the infirmary was where Anders went. Amell was his Commander - and Anders wasn’t going to lose that like he seemed to have lost Amell’s friendship. He’d go to the infirmary every day if that was it took to atone for what he’d done - even if it meant he had to deal with Finn, and what Finn thought of him.

It seemed a safe bet Finn didn’t trust him because he didn’t trust the man Anders had been in the Circle. If it wasn’t that, Anders had no idea what else it could be. What else was there that made him untrustworthy? Did everyone at the Vigil know what an ass Anders had been to Amell and the rest of his friends? Amell had always valued his privacy, from what Anders could remember, and while Anders couldn’t picture Amell telling anyone outside the Wardens, he could definitely picture the Wardens telling people outside the Wardens.

Not a fun thought, that.

Just as unfun was the thought of working with Finn for the rest of his life. Florian Phineas Horatio Aldebrant, Esquire had replaced Cera as the Vigil’s Circle Ambassador, and he was easily the most annoying man Anders had ever had the misfortune of meeting. He was also in charge of the infirmary, which meant Anders wasn’t just working with him, he was working for him, but working for Amell meant working for Finn so Anders worked for him.

Anders spent the day in the infirmary cleaning - or cleaning wrong, according to Finn, who followed him around cleaning everything he cleaned. A handful of the Wardens came by to visit and reintroduce themselves, including Seranni, who apparently scared the shit out of Finn. The ghoul had poked her head into the infirmary and Finn had reacted like it had fallen off - shrieking and shooing her away, but it wasn’t like they had any patients.

The Vigil infirmary had never been busy. It was part of the reason Anders had loved the post when Amell had first given it to him. Most of the time he hadn’t even had to be in it, he’d just had to be around, and if some scullion had cut their finger cooking he’d tossed a healing spell at them and called it a day. Wandering the Vigil when Amell had assigned him to it probably wasn’t the best way to atone, so Anders stayed put even when he had nothing to stay put for.

Finn could clearly manage the infirmary without him. He’d been doing it for years - and he’d been doing it without a spirit - even though he was a spirit healer. Anders and Justice couldn’t wrap their heads around it. The man was more than capable of communicating with spirits and forming connections with them, he just chose not to. Anders wasn’t sure if it was because Finn was too indecisive or too intolerable.

He couldn’t imagine a spirit - or a demon for that matter - who would be willing to put up with his endless mushroom lectures. Still, the magic that came from spirit healing required a stronger connection to the Fade than a mage could manage on their own, which meant Finn still had to channel something, so he channeled wisps. Wisps. Half-formed thoughts. The only type of thoughts Anders had left after listening to him all day. Frustrating as it was, Anders survived a day with him. Even more impressive was that so did Finn.

Anders dragged himself to the great hall for dinner and piled his plate high with some sort of fish covered in rhubarb sauce, a watercress and mustard salad, and as much bread as he could balance on top of it all. The Wardens all seemed to have their own seats at their own tables, and Anders had no idea where he fit among them. He ran a hand through his hair, and ended up smacking himself in the shoulder when he forgot he’d cut most of it.

Anders was going to bruise at this rate, but he hadn’t been lying. He did like the haircut - especially in the summer when he could feel the occasional breeze on the back of his neck. It had been nice of Nate to cut it for him - and nicer of him not to tell anyone why he’d cut it. Anders wanted to tell them almost as badly as he didn’t want to tell them. Nate hadn’t made him feel anything for telling him - and Anders doubted that was a reaction he’d get twice.

He hadn’t felt the same desperate attachment he’d felt with Fenris, the shared sympathy he’d felt with Bethany, the cringing awkwardness he’d felt with Franke, or the heartbroken outrage he’d felt with Merrill and Varric. He hadn’t felt anything except maybe a little lighter. Maybe a little better. Maybe a little more whole and a little less like broken pieces, but one out of six wasn’t the best odds for someone reacting the way he wanted when he told them.

Nate had the best reaction because Nate didn’t react. Nate just cut his hair. Anders didn’t want to gamble on the rest of his friends. Historically, gambling had never gone in his favor. He’d almost lost an ear to the Coterie over a game of Wicked Grace until Varric had paid Gallard for him. The memory took the wind out of him. Anders was half-way to going back to the barracks to eat by himself until Nate found him, and dragged him over to his table with all the old friends Anders was sure he’d lost.

Nathaniel sat with Velanna, Seranni, and Jacen at a massive banquet table that held most of the Wardens. It looked like the sort of table made to feed an army, weathered with water rings and marked by cutlery. Chips and scratches broke up patterned knotwork, covered with a dark blue runner trimmed in silver and stained with dinner. Mabari lounged beneath the benches, inhaling any food that hit the floor, and growling when he got too close. Amell and Oghren sat with their families at the head of the table, not quite close enough to talk but not so far away they couldn’t shout.

It was summer, and while the Vigil wasn’t exactly sweltering, it was warm, and most everyone wore clothes suited to the weather. Even Amell. He wore a blue vest over a white tunic, with short sleeves. He never wore short sleeves, but there he was, wearing them, elbows resting on the table and scars visible even from a distance. He wasn’t wearing his blindfold either. His eyes still looked black, despite how Anders knew he felt. Amell had to be wrong about the magic in them. Anders wanted to ask about them again, but Amell hadn’t come to see him, and he tried to eat his dinner instead of letting it eat at him.

Anders sat where Nate put him, sandwiched between him and Jacen. Velanna and Seranni sat across from them, Seranni with a plate full of fish and no sides, and Velanna with a plate full of sides and no fish. Her reception wasn’t exactly warm, but she didn’t stab him with a fork either, so Anders tried to call it a win.

“Ugh,” Velanna rolled her eyes. “Was I not clear when I told you I did not want children?”

“Sometimes these things just happen, my lady,” Nate joked.

“This is why one takes precautions,” Velanna countered.

“This is about me, right?” Anders guessed, stabbing a fork through his fish and wondering how quickly he could down the thing to escape this conversation. “We’re talking about me? I’m good at this game.”

“Everything is not one,” Velanna frowned.

“Why don’t you just say what you want to say to me?” Anders asked.

“Anders, Velanna, perhaps-” Nate tried.

“Now you wish to hear from me?” Velanna scoffed. “Am I to speak only at your leisure?”

“I haven’t felt anything close to leisure for the past year,” Anders hissed.

“Why should I care how you feel?” Velanna demanded. “You’ve shown no care for me.”

“Velanna, love-” Nate tried again.

“It’s complicated,” Anders said.

“No doubt,” Velanna laughed at him. “You would have to learn your letters to send them.”

“I said it’s complicated!” Anders snapped. “I couldn’t just send a letter.”

“Of course not,” Velanna said sarcastically. “You would have to write it, fold it, mail it. The entire ordeal is beyond you.”

“I get it - alright?” Anders said. “I’m a bad friend. I’m a bad Warden. I’m a bad person. You can stop. I can’t feel worse than I already do.”

“Try,” Velanna said snidely.

“Velanna, that’s enough,” Nate said. “Anders has a good reason.”

“Does he?” Velanna scoffed. “Does Justice?”

“Leave him out of this,” Anders said.

“I don’t think I will,” Velanna said. “What purpose does abandoning us serve? Is that Justice? Well? Have you forgotten how to pursue it or forgotten how to speak?”

“You are baiting us,” They said. “It is not safe for Justice to be forward.”

“Excuses,” Velanna said, gesturing at Amell with her fork. “Look to your Commander - do you see a fear of magic in him?”

“This is not the same,” They said. “He bares his arms where you would ask us to bare our soul.”

“Velanna, I really think-” Nate tried.

“So bear it,” Velanna hissed.

“Stop,” Justice snarled. It took effort to keep the veilfire coursing through Anders’ veins from splitting his skin, but it was a necessary effort. They were not known among the Vigil and they did not know if they could afford to be known. They had not yet asked - but Justice did not see the same need as Anders in the attempt. It seemed evident it would be as with Kristoff, in that he would never be Justice, and always be Anders.

He was Anders. He did not mind being Anders. It was not for anyone - even old friends - to risk Anders trying to make him into more.

“I will not,” Velanna said. “You were supposed to be more than just a spirit and instead you act like less than one.”

“I have acted as I must to ensure Anders’ safety,” Justice said. For all their time together he had no other choice. He was Anders - he sought his purpose in Anders - and if ever he was Justice they were cautious. A quiet beach. An empty grove. A locked room. When that caution faltered, Anders suffered - or those around him did.

“Forcing him on us ensures his safety?” Velanna snorted.

Anders was the only one who had been forced, and while he did not wish it known, Justice did not know what else to say. “Yes.”

Velanna blinked, sinking a little in her seat and slowly lowering her fork back down to her plate. “... from what?”

“Velanna,” Nate said again. “My love - please. Let it go. They have their reasons.”

“I doubt they are good enough,” Velanna muttered, but relented. The rest of dinner was as awkward as it was silent, and Anders left the table as soon as his plate was empty. He didn’t know what to do with himself if he wasn’t at the infirmary, and ended up on the battlements so Justice could watch the sunset.

It was a marvel, as were most things in the mortal world. The sun set over the Feravel Plains in shades of crimson and violet over the distant gold of fields of barley and wheat, a light dusting of clouds catching the colors, absent the demesne of other spirits and demons. It proved as beautiful as it did lonesome - and they left the battlements when only the sapphire of their veilfire and the light of the moons illuminated it.

Days passed. Anders spent them in the infirmary, in the barracks, on the battlements, or in the crypts, sitting with the memory of Sigrun. If Vigil’s Keep was home, it wasn’t exactly a joyous homecoming, but it was a quiet one. He ate things he wasn’t afraid to eat, he drank things he wasn’t afraid to drink, he slept in a bed he wasn’t afraid to sleep in for fear of what he might wake up to. Fenley still snored, and it was still hard to sleep with his snoring, but after the second night in the barracks Anders wasn’t the only one upset with it.

It really wasn’t Fenley’s fault. He was a knight - buff and broad shouldered - with a physique that more or less matched Hawke. Fenley had snored, and Anders had panicked, and Anders’ panic made Ser Cumference panic, and the fat feral bastard had flown across the barracks to maul the poor man awake. Between Ser Cumference pissing on his bunk and attacking anyone who got too close to him, Anders didn’t exactly have many candidates for new friends among the new Wardens.

Anders tried not to mind overmuch. He hadn’t come to the Vigil to find new friends - he’d come to be free of false ones and repair relationships with old ones. Sharing what he’d gone through might help with that, but it was a lot easier when all Anders had to say was yes or no, and no one else had asked him to play twenty questions. Some part of Anders didn’t even want to share it. He just wanted to move past it - and living in it didn’t help him do that.

He couldn’t imagine telling everyone what he’d gone through when it would just feel like going through it all over again, but he had to do something to undo the damage. He just didn’t know how deep the damage went. Anders had written after the Grand Tourney, but clearly not all of his letters had made it to Amaranthine, and he didn’t trust the ones that had. Oghren and Amell claimed to have gotten them, but Velanna and Nathaniel hadn’t.

Anders couldn’t say why Hawke had let him send some letters but not all of them. He’d written so many he couldn’t remember what all of them said. He’d said he was sorry. He’d said he’d meant to write sooner. He’d said - in vague roundabout ways of not saying - that he had reasons for not writing and hoped that they were good enough, but as much as he’d wanted to share them then he didn’t want to share them now.

It felt like too much, too soon, for too little, but if Hawke came to Vigil’s Keep looking for him, and he didn’t share, then it might be too late. There had to be other ways, easier ways, gentler ways, kinder ways, for him to move forward, but Anders couldn’t find them, because aside from Nate, no one really seemed to want to talk to him.

Anders couldn’t blame them. Amell wasn’t the only person Anders had hurt. Velanna recounted his wrongs so often Seranni had actually gone so far as to write them down. She’d handed him a messy, crumpled parchment appropriately titled ‘LIST OF CRIMES’ as if the only reason Velanna kept telling him everything he’d done was because Anders kept forgetting it. It wasn’t as if Anders had anything better to do, so he’d read it up on the battlements, trying to make sense of the little ghoul’s disjointed thought process.

LIST OF CRIMES

  • Six of sorries for the sinned. Six of silence for shared blood.
  • Deaf to the Call
  • Forgotten in the blood
  • Home coming. Home stolen.
  • Taken, taken, taken, taking all to take.

Anders got the gist. The only letters that had gotten through were the ones he’d sent to Oghren and Amell, asking for forgiveness but doing nothing to earn it. As far as anyone knew, he’d abandoned Nathaniel and Velanna the same way he’d abandoned them the first time he fled the Vigil, treating his friends like toys he could pick up and play with or put away whenever he wanted.

He’d abandoned his responsibilities with the Wardens and served them only when it suited him - disregarding every assignment Amell ever sent. He’d ruined relationships he didn’t even have yet, treating the barracks like his private quarters bringing in Ser Cumference and all the chaos that came with him, and simultaneously setting himself above the rest of the recruits getting favoritism from the Constable, the same way he’d gotten favoritism from the Commander.

If nothing else, he didn’t have the latter anymore. Days passed at the Vigil - and Amell never came to see him. Anders was starting to doubt he ever would. There was no reason for Amell to visit him. He had his own responsibilities to the Wardens and to the Arling and unlike Anders he never neglected them. The only time Anders ever saw him was when he broke a fast with the rest of the Wardens - and it wasn’t something Amell did every day.

“... In his quarters, with Morrigan and Kieran I believe,” Nate volunteered over a dinner absent Amell when Anders kept staring at the high table, waiting for Amell to manifest at it.

“Right,” Anders pushed a scallion around in his soup.

“... Have you talked to him?” Nate asked.

“I talked at him,” Anders shrugged.

“And?”

“And what?”

“How did that go?”

“Well, between joking about marrying him instead of Hawke, and then implying I only came here because I had nowhere else to go…” Anders gestured in the air between them with his spoon, recalling the twin horrors that had escaped his mouth his first night at the Vigil. “I think my left foot tastes better than my right.”

“Not well then,” Nate deduced.

“You think?” Anders rolled his eyes.

“Why don’t you try again?”

“And say what?” Anders snorted. “I doubt he’s up for twenty questions. I don’t know how to tell him… I don’t want to tell him. I don’t want him to think of me that way.”

“What way?”

“You know what way.”

“I don’t,” Nate lowered his voice, and leaned closer to him. “There’s no shame in what you’ve been through, Anders.”

“Fun topics,” Anders said.

“Would you like another?”

“That’d be great.”

“How is the infirmary?”

“... That’s it, isn’t it? Amell hates me. Why else would he assign me there?”

“Not good then,” Nate noted.

“If I have to hear about one more bloody mushroom-...” Anders stuffed a spoonful of soup into his mouth to keep it from running.

“Amell has mentioned Finn can be a bit… overzealous.”

“That’s putting it lightly.”

“Someone should.”

“Amell doesn’t like him either?”

“I don’t believe he would ever say that,” Nate said cautiously.

Amell wouldn’t say a lot of things. That didn’t mean he didn’t mean them. Anders stared at his empty seat and bit back another sigh. There was no reason to sigh. He was free. He was safe. He had food. He had a friend. He had Justice - and the quiet evenings they spent together on the battlements. He might have had more of Justice, if he had anything infused with lyrium he could paint over the glyph on his arm to spend his nights with him, or permission to spend his days tangled in him, but either one meant asking Amell for yet another favor, and Anders had asked him for enough.

“What do his eyes look like to you?” Anders asked.

“Amell?” Nate guessed. “Red - as before. Why? What do they look like to you?”

“You know,” Anders shrugged. “Red.”

But they weren’t red and Anders wasn’t sure what that meant and he wasn’t sure how to ask or how to make it up to Amell beyond doing what Amell asked of him. He stayed in the infirmary even when Finn didn’t - cleaning up after no one. If nothing else, Justice seemed to like cleaning, where Anders hated it, and since they never had any patients there didn’t seem to be any harm in Justice being the one to clean whenever Finn wasn’t around.

Justice was in the process of cleaning out the calcinator following a batch of incense of awareness when Amell finally came to see them, and Anders overwhelmed him. Anders didn’t mean to overwhelm him, but it was Amell - and he was here - and he hadn’t been here - and there was no reason for him to be here.

“Do you need healing?” Anders dropped the brush and the calcinator along with it, and tripped over his trousers rushing across the infirmary.

Dumat led Amell inside. He wasn’t pallid, he wasn’t bleeding, there were no bones breaking through his skin. He looked well. He looked amazing. He looked incredible. Amell was in the same sort of outfit he seemed to wear in the summer, a vest and short sleeved tunic, and his gorgeous eyes followed him across the infirmary.

“None that you know,” Amell said.

“I deserved that,” Anders decided, wondering whether or not he should take heart or lose it that Amell had come to talk to him. He wiped the gathering sweat on his palms off on his tunic, and waved a hand at a chair. Why? Why had he waved? Why was he like this? “Do you want to sit or-...?”

“I’m not staying,” Amell said.

“You could,” Anders tried not to sound as miserable as he felt.

“You haven’t left,” Amell noted.

“I don’t want to leave.”

“I doubt that,” Amell grinned.

“Don’t,” Anders fought back the urge to grab his hands. Amell’s company was almost as painful as the lack of it. He’d only said a handful of words, and Anders already ached for him, watching the way the crimson flowed through Amell’s eyes and the way they seemed to settle on his lips. “Amell I-... I really want to be here.”

“No one wants to be with Finn,” Amell joked.

“Ariane does, I think,” Anders said. Somehow, Finn was actually seeing someone. Or allegedly seeing someone. Anders had never seen Finn’s mystery Dalish, but she was probably real. Probably.

“Do you see her?” Amell countered.

“You really don’t like Finn, do you?”

“I would never say that.”

“Nate said you’d say that. You know, about not saying things. You can be a little petty, you know. Just for fun.”

“It’s good to have your permission,” Amell said dryly.

“See?” Anders snapped his fingers into a point Amell couldn’t see and felt like an idiot for it. “Like that. That was great. You should do that more often. Less towards me. More towards Finn.”

“What are you doing here, Anders?” Amell asked.

“Seeing how much of my foot I can get in my mouth, mostly,” Anders joked, but it didn’t feel like a joke. He was too good at it for it to be a joke. “I’m up to my heel, if you were wondering, but I’m committed to reaching my ankle.”

“So long as you’re committed to something.” That one hurt. Anders didn’t have a comeback for that one. “Finn says you haven’t left the infirmary.”

“Well it’s-...” Anders floundered. He didn’t know what to say. Everything he said kept making things worse, and Amell wasn’t making it any easier for him. Amell had always made things easier for him. Maybe Amell had made things too easy for him, but everything else in his life had always been so hard, and he just wanted something, one thing, that didn’t have to be, but it wasn’t happening and he couldn’t figure out how to make it happen. “You assigned me here, didn’t you?”

“It’s the infirmary, Anders, it’s not Aeonar. You don’t have to stay in here all day,” Amell said - a little more gently, and Anders wished he could just smile and Amell could just see how much a little gentleness meant to him.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Anders said.

“You mentioned.”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

“You mentioned that too.”

“You don’t believe me,” Anders guessed.

“I did once,” Amell said.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“Amell I-... I know I made a lot of mistakes. I should have never stopped writing you, and I should have never stopped reading what you wrote me-”

“You were in solitary,” Amell cut him off. “You can’t apologize for that.”

“I have to apologize for something!” Anders snapped. Fade take him, he had to apologize for everything. He’d wasted four - five? - years of their lives and now they were practically strangers, but there was no one Anders wanted to know more. “I want to fix this. I want to fix us.”

“There is no us, Anders,” Amell said it gently, but it didn’t feel gentle. It felt like Amell’s hand around his heart, ripped fresh from its cage but still beating, and Anders didn’t want it back but he didn’t want it broken.

“I want there to be,” Anders whispered.

“I know.”

It wasn’t no. It wasn’t yes. It wasn’t really anything.

… maybe they weren’t ready for it to be anything.

“... do you think I made it to my ankle?”

“I think you made it to your knee, actually,” Amell smiled. It was nice to make him smile, though Anders imagined it would be a while before he could make him laugh.

“Impressive, right?” Anders joked. “You sure you don’t want there to be an us?”

“... You don’t have to stay in here, Anders.”

“I don’t know what else to do. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

“Be a Warden.”

Anders wasn’t sure he remembered how. “I'm trying.”

“... I know you are,” Amell said. “Dumat, find outside.”

“Wait-!” Anders caught him by his wrist when he turned to go - heart in his throat. The texture of too many scars was somehow forgotten and familiar, and letting go of it was painful. “I have to ask you something. I know you told me not to ask you for anything, but this isn’t for me. It’s for Justice. Can what we are-... Can people see us?”

“What are you asking?”

“Can people know about him?”

“Yes. Of course they can. Anders, when I said you could stay, I meant you could stay. Both of you. All of you.”

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
We're Here For You: Nathaniel's perspective on the events of this chapter.

Chapter 157: Join Us, Brother

Notes:

This chapter marks the sixth year of Accursed Ones! Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Thank you again for all of your comments, they're extremely motivating in keeping the story going.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 20 Molioris Late Afternoon
Ferelden: Vigil’s Keep

The Wardens seemed… fond of him. None save Anders had been fond of him for some time, and Justice was unaccustomed to it. He was unaccustomed to a great many things he experienced at the Vigil - not the least of which was the ability to experience them at all. For all Amell assured them they could live openly, Justice didn’t share Anders’ blind trust, and he doubted.

He had cause to doubt. He’d lived too long as Kristoff at Amell's own orders not to doubt. After Kirkwall, the world and the men within it felt static and immutable - the possibility of change something to be found only in dreams. Mortals thought them monstrous - and always would. They decreed it - crafted it - there in the very language they used to speak of them. An abomination. An abnormality. An aberration.

The Wardens did not call them that.

“A spirit,” One of the older Wardens said with no small modicum of shock when she found him in the library, reading through a book of poetry in relative solitude. One wrong encounter could cost them the haven of healing they found at the Vigil, so it seemed a sensible precaution to have no encounters at all, but it was a thing not easily managed.

“... Yes,” Justice said cautiously, setting his book on the low table before him.

“A spirit of what?” The Warden - a mage - asked, hovering at the opposite end of the couch. She looked to the book, and made a guess. “Love?”

“Justice,” Justice corrected her.

“You possess the Warden from Kirkwall?” The mage asked. “The Hero of Amaranthine?”

“His name is Anders,” Justice said. “Our name is Anders.”

“Mine is Ailsa,” Ailsa sat on the arm of the couch. A blue-gray robe covered her from head to toe, and she paired it with gloves a shade of silver to match her hair. The style didn’t suit the season, but she didn’t seem to mind, a soft smile on a softer face. “I’ve met Anders. I haven’t met you. I would have thought a Warden leaned towards Duty or Valor.”

“The darkspawn are a cancer in the heart of this world,” Justice said. “Cleansing them is a noble pursuit.”

“Noble, but is it yours?”

“Yes,” Justice frowned. He knew his purpose and he would not have it called into question. He was Justice, and he was Vengeance, and he was Anders, and whether he was a spirit or a demon or something in between, he was loved and he was whole and he would not be broken again.

“I was just curious,” Ailsa assured him, light blue eyes wide with the truth of her words.

“...Thank you for your curiosity,” Justice relented. “Can I do something for you? Do you need healing?”

“Don’t we all?” Ailsa brushed a loose strand of grey hair behind her ear, and her sleeve slipped, revealing a series of familiar scars. “Why don’t I see you more often?”

“Anders is me as much as I am him. You have seen me before, just not as I am now,” Justice explained, eyeing her warily. There were no inherent evils in blood magic, and yet his mind went to Merrill. Her bane. Her blood. The many ways she had seen them bound to false purpose. “We have not been well received in the past.”

“I wouldn’t think so… Fortunately we’re in the present. You should be welcome here. They’re saying the Chancellor is corrupting Ferelden into the next Tevinter.” Ailsa whispered playfully from behind her hand.

A strange thing to say. Amell was no slaver. His willingness to kill one seemed proof of that. “Tevinter’s corruption is in its slavery, not its magic.”

“They go hand in hand, I’m afraid,” Ailsa said.

“You’re a mage,” Justice said with Anders’ echo. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“I’m barely a mage by Tevinter’s standards,” Ailsa said ruefully. “I’m a laetan… or I was.”

Justice battled back an incredibly inappropriate urge to joke about latrines. “We’re unfamiliar with the term.”

“Mages with no magic in their bloodline,” Ailsa explained.

Absurd. Anders’ father was no mage and yet he had magic to move mountains when injustice buried the desperate and the downtrodden beneath them. “That does not make you less of one.”

“Justice, you said? Are you sure it wasn’t Compassion?”

“You are joking,” Justice decided after a moment’s consideration.

“You can tell?”

“One or two,” Justice joked.

Ailsa laughed - a pleasant sound made all the more pleasant for having been its source. For having brought some joy, some beauty into their lives when their lives had lost so much of it. “You should spend less time alone. We play cards after dinner - why don’t you join us?”

“We would not be welcome,” Justice said.

“Why not?” Ailsa asked.

“Abominations rarely are.”

“You’re in a rare place, my friend,” Ailsa said. “The Warden Commander of Ferelden is its Hero and its Chancellor, and he is a known maleficar who has not made any efforts to hide it since he won autonomy for the Circles. No one questions him and those who do don’t question long. There’s so much magic at the Vigil the Veil could fall and no one would notice.”

“They would notice us,” Justice said.

“Did you notice me?” Ailsa asked.

“... You are no abomination,” He would know - he would have felt the pull of purpose. Ailsa was mortal, and yet when she rolled up one long sleeve she did not look it. Her skin was warped, a webbing stretched across the crook of her arm that kept it from straightening. Engorged sapphire veins wrapped around blackened crystal that broke through her wrinkled skin at her joints.

… curious.

“Are you sure?” Ailsa asked.

“... Yes.”

“Lyrium mutation,” Ailsa explained, rolling her sleeve back down. “I was an architect in Tevinter.” The few books left out on the table lifted in sheaths of sapphire, and neatly arranged themselves into a tower, his book of poems on the top. “One of the best. Until Orzammar opened a new embassy and I took too much lyrium trying to compete with them. I ruined my mind, my body, my family… my business collapsed and I joined the Wardens so I wouldn’t have to sell myself into slavery to pay off my debts.”

“You found a pure purpose among them.”

“So did you,” Ailsa countered.

“... Yes,” Justice supposed. “I was Kristoff before I was Anders. He is the reason I joined the Wardens.”

“Kristoff...?” Ailsa tested the name. “I’ve seen his statue at the Blackmarsh. He was one of the Heroes of Harring, wasn’t he? The Warden who died with Sigrun at Amaranthine?”

“He died long before then. He was a bounty hunter, before he joined the Grey Wardens, and regretted much of his past. He married a woman named Aura in Jader, and was stationed at the Warden stronghold there until he was dispatched to Ferelden to investigate the darkspawn who failed to return underground after the Fifth Blight. He died to them, in the Blackmarsh, and a demon of Pride bound me to his body until Anders offered his.”

“That’s quite a tale.”

“I have never told it before,” Justice realized.

“You should tell it more often,” Ailsa said. “Join us for a game of cards, and should you lose, know that your debt will not be forgotten.”

“Those are not the words,” Justice frowned.

Ailsa laughed again, “Join us, and I’ll tell you of a way you can find purpose here.”

It seemed a fair trade. Justice joined the rest of the Wardens for Wicked Grace the next evening and learned more of the men and women they were to call Brother and Sister. Beyond Ailsa, he played with Fenley, Martine, Amethyne, Nolan, and Tamarel, all of whom seemed far more fond of Justice than they had of Anders.

Ser Fenley embodied courtesy and chivalry. A knight from Highever - he’d won a tournament held in Nathaniel’s honor following his rescue of Teryn Fergus Cousland, and asked to join the Wardens as his boon. As tall as he was kind - which was to say he was both - he took protecting the common folk from darkspawn with the utmost sincerity. His soul was good - though it did not burn the brightest.

Martine was Orlesian. Forgivably so. She’d served under Warden Commander Larius and then Warden Commander Janeka in the Free Marches for nearly twenty years before transferring to Amell’s command. She would not share the reason, save to say Janeka’s command had proven... non-traditional. She’d lost a lover to the Calling six years ago, and joked as often as Sigrun that she was overdue to join them.

Amethyne hailed from the alienage and was the youngest of the Wardens. Her mother had died during the Fifth Blight, and she’d turned to thieving to survive. She’d ended up in the dungeons of Denerim for it, where Amell had found her a few months ago. She was missing half an ear, and had shaved half her head to make sure every human she crossed paths with knew it.

Nolan joined the Wardens for the memory of Mhairi - the young Warden who had died in Anders’ Joining. He’d grown up with her in Dragon’s Peak and served with her in the King’s Army, and remembered her when he’d wound up on the gallows for crimes he wouldn’t share. He’d written to the Vigil for mercy, and Amell had answered in her stead. He was distressingly Andrastian, and burned himself so many times for so many sins he looked like he’d traded the gallows for a pyre.

Tamarel was an elf, loud, boisterous, and overfond of food, fighting, and fucking. She’d been recruited by Duncan, the Warden Commander of Ferelden before Amell, for her sharp eye and skill with a bow, and immediately deserted. She’d spent the Blight in the bannorn, robbing the rich with a group of outcasts, until they were all hunted down and killed. Tamarel alone survived, and fought a one-woman war against the bann with traps and ambushes until Amell heard of her - and convinced her to rejoin.

Amaranthine was nothing like Kirkwall, Vigil’s Keep nothing like the Hanged Man. There was camaraderie in the company neither Justice nor Anders had found in the Free Marches. The Wardens did not gravitate around a single soul as Hawke’s companions had around him. They were a web, complex and connected, and the loss of one did not result in the loss of all.

Ailsa and Martine spoke often of the Blessed Age as the only two who had lived through it. Fenley and Martine had a playful Ferelden/Orlesian rivalry, while Amethyne had a less playful one with every human in the group. Nolan was half-dwarven, a fact he reminded her of often, and one the rest of the Wardens seemed to doubt for how often he said it. Tamarel had evidently slept with all of them save for Martine, and was determined to add her to the list.

“Just sayin’,” Tamarel purred a proposition for the third time that evening, caressing Martine’s arm. “Feren would want you to be happy, and I could make you happy.”

“I have doubt for both of those things,” Martine pinched Tamarel’s wrist between two fingers and dropped it onto the table.

“No faith,” Tamarel sighed, kicking back in her chair.

“I have faith in the Maker alone,” Martine said stoically.

“Could help you find Him,” Tamarel waggled her eyebrows.

“Why do you not ask our new Brother instead?” Martine gestured towards him with her cards - an impressive hand, though he should not have seen it. “Or the blonde serving girl who doesn’t know how to lace her bodice, hm?”

“She’s blonde?” Tamarel joked.

“Not downstairs,” Nolan chimed in.

“No!” Tamarel leaned across the table towards him. “How? When?”

“She’s a lovely young lady,” Fenley muttered. “Be courteous.”

“Oh, I was,” Nolan chuckled.

“Tell me everything,” Tamarel demanded.

“Tell us nothing,” Fenley said.

“Tam - maybe not in front of Justice?” Ailsa suggested. “Give him a chance to think we’re normal?”

“No chance of that,” Tamarel said dismissively. “May as well think we’re funny.”

“He’s not Joy, he’s Justice,” Ailsa said.

“So he can’t joke?”

“I know a few,” Justice said.

“I bet you do,” Tamarel purred, rubbing her foot along his ankle beneath the table until he shifted his chair away from her. “You want to tell me them later?”

“Please don’t fuck the shem,” Amethyne begged, a weary hand holding her face. “At least not in the barracks.”

“He’s a spirit - doesn’t count,” Tamarel said. “Or does it? Is it a threefer?”

“It is nothing for it is not to happen,” Justice said.

“That’s what Fenley said,” Tamarel grinned toothily. “I’m warning you - I’m persistent. Won’t take no for an answer.”

A sickness came over them - one that churned their dinner in their stomach and sent it crawling up their throat. Justice set his cards down and stood. “Excuse us for a moment.”

They left for the wash, and sat for a long while at one of the vanities, breathing shallow breaths.

It passed.

It was good that it passed.

It was good that it could.

They rejoined the Wardens, and conversation went mercifully elsewhere. They meant no ill will, and they were pleasant company and found his company pleasant in turn. Whenever Anders had spoken of his purpose in the past, his friends had groaned, or changed the topic, or altogether left. The Wardens didn’t.

He discussed the classism inherent in Tevinter’s class structure with Ailsa. He spoke of the sufferings of serfdom to Fenley. He lamented the disparity of wealth within and without the alienage with Amethyne. He talked of atonement with Nolan and Tamarel.

No one called him mad, or claimed it for a fit. No one said he ruined the evening talking of injustice through it. No one saw black and white and argued in favor of grey. They simply spoke, and more often than not they agreed, and come the end of the evening he felt fulfilled - as he had not found fulfillment in any save Anders for some time.

“Thank you,” Justice said to Ailsa as the Wardens filed off to bed. “Was this the purpose you promised?”

“I’m glad you found some in it, but no,” Ailsa said. “The Commander holds court at the end of each month for the arling. I thought you might find some purpose in seeing judgment carried out.”

“... I would,” Justice said slowly. “Thank you.”

“You can’t go like this though,” Ailsa warned him, gesturing to their clothes, though Justice found no fault in them. They wore their tabard as instructed, and alternated between the trousers and tunic Nathaniel had found for them and the ones they’d worn when they’d fled Kirkwall.

“We have nothing else to wear,” Justice said. “We have not served long enough to see a stipend for a tailor.”

“You don’t need one,” Ailsa promised. “I’ll take you to the Vigil’s tailor tomorrow and we’ll get you some new clothes.”

“... Thank you.”

Their new clothes were - in Anders’ words - fetching. The tailor had them fitted for two pairs of trousers, five tunics, gloves and a belt, a few pairs of socks and smalls, and leather armor that matched what Amell had commissioned for Anders years ago. Court apparel consisted of a deep blue vest to wear over their tunic, on the grounds the tailor couldn’t see anything finer finished in time for the end of Bloomingtide.

“How are the robes holding up, Ailsa?” The tailor asked.

“They’re holding,” Ailsa shrugged.

“You know the Queen’s court was going sleeveless for Summerday,” The tailor said in a needling sort of tone.

“Thank you, no thank you,” Ailsa said.

They left, but her refusal stuck with him. The tailor’s shop was on the grounds of the Vigil, but it wasn’t part of it. It rested in the shade of its high granite walls, and outside that shade the sun was sweltering in the midst of Bloomingtide. Just the walk across the courtyard was enough that Ailsa was sweating. There was a sheen across her brow, and the roots of her grey hair were dyed almost black.

“Would it not be better suited to the weather?” Justice asked.

“You’ve seen my arms,” Ailsa reminded him.

“I’ve seen the beauty in them,” They said.

“The what?” Ailsa laughed.

“You quit,” Anders explained. Blue, red… lyrium was lyrium. Addiction was addiction. Pain was pain. “You realized you were hurting yourself and your family, and you stopped before it was too late. You have no idea how rare that is. You have no idea how much I wish more people were like you.”

“... Justice?” Ailsa asked.

“Close enough,” Anders shrugged. “The Commander doesn’t hide his arms. Why should you?”

“I’ll think about it,” Ailsa relented.

They got their first outfit the next day. It felt infinitely better having been made for them. Justice spent the day enjoying the feel of fresh linens and cleaning out the infirmary when Oghren came and found him.

“Hey Sparkles,” Oghren said, oblivious to the whisper of veilfire flowing through their veins when it didn’t split their skin. “About time you cleaned up. Gang’s going for a swim in the Hafter. You coming?”

“...Are you sure you want me there?” Anders asked, shoving the retort Justice had been wiping down with a cloth into the cabinet.

“Not if you’re gonna whine about it,” Oghren huffed, kicking his feet as he wandered aimlessly through the infirmary, picking up flasks and leaving fingerprints on them Finn was bound to lecture him over later.

“Well when you put it that way,” Anders said sarcastically.

“Come on,” Oghren tossed a flask back onto a table, the glass clinking but not cracking, and almost giving him a heart attack. “You've been sitting in this infirmary so long even Finn’s getting sick of you.”

That wasn’t true. Not exactly. Not since Amell had come to see him. Anders left the infirmary, he just left it as Justice. Justice had friends among the Wardens Anders didn’t have. Justice hadn’t ruined his friendships the way Anders had. It felt better being Justice than it did being Anders. Quieter. Calmer. He needed calm. He needed quiet. He needed to heal, and short of throwing himself into Amell’s arms, this seemed like the best way to do it.

… Amell probably wouldn’t catch him anyway. “I think I’ll pass, but thanks.”

“Sparkles-...” Oghren tugged at the long red braids of his beard. “Come on. I’m trying here.”

“Trying to what?” Anders asked.

“Shit, I don’t know. Figure shit out. You’ve been walking around all…” Oghren waved vaguely at him.

“All?” Anders prompted.

“You know, more flaming than usual,” Oghren joked.

“I’m possessed,” Anders said - and felt some relief in saying it. In that he could say it, whenever he wanted, to whoever he wanted. He was still waiting for the other shoe to drop out of a templar’s smite, but it hadn’t happened yet. The Wardens, the soldiers, the servants, the visiting dignitaries… no one questioned the veilfire that burned beneath his skin or in his eyes, and if they did, Anders didn’t hear about it.

Whether it was because no one noticed, or because no one cared, or because apostasy had ceased to be a crime, or because he was a Warden, or because he was Amell’s Warden, Anders wasn’t sure and wasn’t sure it mattered. Amell had promised and that was enough. Amell was always enough.

“Yeah I got that,” Oghren said. “Whole Vigil got that. Had to explain to the nugget that lightin’ themselves on fire is just a thing humans do.”

“That’s not-...” Anders pressed his fingers into his temples. “Please tell me you didn’t tell your son that.”

“Why not?” Oghren snorted. “Not like he knows any better.”

“You’re an amazing father,” Anders said sarcastically.

“Raised one Amell, didn’t I? Just working on my second.” Oghren said. “Listen, Sparkles, the way I see it, it’s been three weeks, and you ain’t left yet, so I guess you ain’t leaving. If you ain’t leaving, you’re staying, and if you’re staying-”

“I’m not leaving?” Anders guessed.

“Har fucking har,” Oghren said flatly. “Come on, I ain’t any better at this shit than you are.”

“Are you saying you forgive me?”

“Ain’t saying I don’t.”

“Should we hug or-...?”

“Naw, we’re good,” Oghren took a hasty step back, but Anders wasn’t sure whether it was worth following him. It was one thing if Oghren forgave him, but Oghren’s relationship wasn’t the only one he’d strained. There was still Velanna and Amell and Anders wasn’t sure he could stand to be around them if they couldn’t stand to be around him, no matter how he missed them.

… he did miss them.

… he missed them a lot.

“... So the Hafter?” Anders relented, letting Oghren lead him out of the infirmary. “I don’t have to see you naked, do I?”

“You ain’t gonna be able to resist,” Oghren chortled, elbowing him.

“No. Nope,” Anders turned on his heel. “Thank you, goodbye-”

“Come on, you wish,” Oghren caught him by his belt, and spun him back around with a push towards the stables. “The ladies would die for a view of the ol’ dwarven handaxe.”

“Are there actually going to be any ladies on this trip?”

“Well there’s you-” “-Thanks-” “-The wife. Bitch tits. Bitchier tits. Think that’s it.”

“Do the tits have names?” Anders asked.

“I call ‘em left and right,” Oghren chuckled.

“Why are you like this?”

“You really wanna pull at that thread?” Oghren asked.

Anders stopped in the courtyard, shy enough of the stables the horses didn’t get riled over his presence. A few stable hands were already leading a few of the horses free from their stalls for the trip to the Hafter, adjusting saddles and saddle bags filled with supplies for an evening out. Food and water, blankets and towels, parasols for shade.

“Not walking?” Anders guessed.

“In this heat?” Oghren snorted. “Fuck that. What’s the problem?”

“Me and horses - not friends,” Anders shouldn’t have had to remind him. “Kind of like me and templars. Or me and Velanna. Or me and Amell. Or me and me. I don’t have a lot of friends, is what I’m saying.”

“You rode here, didn’t you?” Oghren countered.

“On my own two feet,” Anders joked.

“Naw, naw, I mean before, last year,” Oghren rolled his hand to signal the passage of time. “Boss sent the old bag of bones for you, didn’t he?”

The horse was more than just a bag of bones. It was a feat of magic on magic. Necromancy that put a Nevarran to shame, and the only kind of horse that Anders could ride without breaking its mind. That Amell had thought to send it for him when he’d come to Amaranthine was just the first of a thousand heartbreaks.

“I don’t think Amell wants me using his horse whenever I want,” Anders said.

“Why don’t you ask him?” Oghren shrugged. “He’s coming with.”

“What?” Anders spun around, half-expecting to run into him, but Amell wasn’t in the courtyard yet. No one was, but the stable hands brought the skeletal horse out from the stables with four other fully-fleshed horses. One brown Amaranthine charger, and three short, stout Highever ponies, in varying shades of black and white.

“Who’d you think was coming?” Oghren asked.

“Lots of tits apparently,” Anders said.

“Well yeah but we gotta bring someone to suck ‘em,” Oghren chuckled.

“I don’t know you,” Anders said. “I’ve never met you.”

“Heheh, alright, lemme think. Archy and Bitch Tits, me and the wife and the nugget, Kid and the witch and their runt. That’s it. You know, family shit.”

Anders wasn’t a part of anyone’s family. “... I shouldn’t be here. Look, thanks but-”

“But what?” Oghren demanded. “You gonna go crawl back up your own ass in the infirmary and let Justice wear you around the Vigil for the rest of your life?”

“... Well… yeah,” Anders shrugged.

“Uhuh, no,” Oghren said. “You’re staying and you’re coming and if you’re real nice to the Kid-”

“Do not finish that sentence.”

“Fine, fine,” Oghren relented, shielding his eyes against the sun to look to the Vigil and the handful of figures leaving it. The smallest ran full tilt down the stairs and collapsed face first into the dirt. Nathaniel picked up Oghren’s tiny terror of a son by his collar and righted him, and the smaller Amell went tearing across the courtyard covered in dirt and shrieking at the top of his lungs.

“Swimming!” Little Amell squealed.

“There’s the little thunderhumper!” Oghren yelled back. His son tackled him in what should have been an entirely unsuccessful assault, but Oghren threw himself - extremely unconvincingly - into the dirt. His son climbed on top of him with triumphant - if unintelligible - battlecry. “You killed me!” Oghren laughed. “You’re killing me! Fuck - you’re really killing me - get off you little shit.”

“I win!” Little Amell shrieked, bolting to one of the ponies. “I win! You suck, dad! I ride in front!”

“Oghren, language,” A dwarven woman far too pretty to be Oghren’s wife sighed when she caught up with her son. She had an upturned button nose with strawberry blonde hair braided into a bun to keep it off her neck, and a pretty white dress already stained with sweat from the walk across the courtyard. She tugged at her collar while Oghren climbed to his feet, visibly impatient to be off, and started when she noticed him. “Hello… um…”

“Sparkles,” Oghren volunteered when Anders didn’t answer. “Sparkles, wife. Wife, Sparkles.”

Anders couldn’t answer. Amell would have heard him answer. He was walking on Morrigan’s arm, and by the witch’s suspicious squint, it didn’t seem like she'd known he was coming. It didn’t seem like anyone did. They were all dressed for their evening out, in light dresses or short sleeved tunics, and they all eyed him when they caught up with Oghren’s wife and son. Even Amell, his eyes drifting to him like he could sense his pulse and the way it raced for him.

“Anders!” Nathaniel said loudly, breaking from the group to clasp his arm, frozen against his side. “Happy to have you with us.”

“Speak for yourself,” Velanna muttered, shouldering past him on her way to their horse.

This was a terrible idea. Anders would know. He’d made more than enough of them. He smiled queasily. “You know, actually I just remembered, I have a thing-”

“Right!” Oghren cut him off. “The thing. I took care of the thing. You’re good.”

“What thing was this exactly?” Morrigan hummed.

“You know,” Oghren said vaguely, rubbing the back of his neck. “The thing. The thing he needed help with.”

“Can we stop talking about my thing?” Anders begged.

“Here most men want to speak of nothing else,” Morrigan noted. “Kieran, dear boy, leave the man alone.”

Anders followed her eyes and felt like his heart jumped out of his chest. Kieran stood next to him, staring up at him with unblinking red eyes, quiet as the grave.

“The sky falls for you,” Kieran said.

“Thanks?” Anders ventured.

Kieran ran back over to Morrigan without acknowledging him, “I want to ride alone! Please, Mother!”

“As you wish,” Morrigan picked the boy up and joined the stablehands at one of the ponies to help him get settled.

Anders didn’t have a horse. Anders would have to mind-break a horse. Or fly. Flying was an option. Flying was an excellent option. Flying was an option that got him out of this mess and back to the infirmary or the battlements or anywhere Amell wasn’t, staring as intently as his son, and saying just as little.

“So, look, not that I don’t appreciate the invitation, but horses like me about as much as people do nowadays, so I think I’m just going to-”

“Ride something else!” Oghren chimed in. “Lucky you the boss’s horse ain’t a horse. You can ride with him. Right, Boss?”

“... Oghren, can I talk to you in private for a moment?” Amell asked.

“Nope!” Oghren said, striding quickly away from them and over to his horse.

Anders watched the stablehands help everyone mount up on their horses. Nathaniel and Velanna were already waiting at the gates, Nathaniel holding a parasol that kept the sun off them, their horse pawing impatiently at the ground. Morrigan had vanished, a crow perched on Kieran’s shoulder in her stead as he trotted the pony out to join the others, followed by Oghren’s wife and son while Oghren scrambled hastily up on his own mount.

A stablehand held the reins to Amell’s undead mount, a few polite yards away, but Amell wasn’t paying them any mind. He was just standing where the others had left him, staring like he was waiting for Anders to say something, but Anders didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t planned on saying anything to Amell because he hadn’t planned on seeing Amell because it seemed obvious Amell didn’t want to see him.

“Oghren didn’t tell anyone he invited me, did he?” Anders guessed.

“No,” Amell said. No surprise there.

“I think I’ll just save you the time and uninvite myself,” Anders decided.

“You don’t have to do that,” Amell said, as painfully polite as always. He was probably lying. He was a good liar.

“It’s better than you doing it.”

“I wasn’t going to uninvite you, Anders.”

“Sure,” Anders said flippantly. “So, about that thing I have-”

“You can ride with me.”

“What?”

“You can ride with me,” Amell said again. He whistled, and the stablehand rushed over with his horse. He found the saddle easily enough, one hand resting on the pommel, and stopped. “... Anders, can you help me?”

“Yes!” Anders closed the space between them so quickly he almost tripped, hands hovering uselessly over Amell and his horse. He had no idea what kind of help Amell needed, but whatever it was he would do it. He’d never wanted to do something more. “Yes - what do you - what do you -”

“I can’t wait to hear the end of these sentences,” Amell smiled slightly.

“What do you need?” Anders managed.

“The stirrups?” Amell prompted, leaning on his horse so he could hold one leg slightly off the ground.

The stirrups. Right. Amell couldn’t see the stirrups. Anders could help with stirrups. He knelt beside him, and prayed Amell couldn’t tell how badly his hands were shaking when he guided his boot into one of the stirrups and stood back up. “You’re uh - that’s - you can -”

“Yes?” Amell prompted.

“You got it,” Anders said. “You’re stirruped.”

Amell tested his weight on it, checked the position of the saddle a second time, and heaved himself up onto his horse. The stablehand fixed the other stirrup for him, which was probably what should have happened the first time, and tested a few of the straps before leaving them alone.

“So I just uh-.... I just hop up?” Anders asked.

“Take my arm and swing up behind me,” Amell explained, holding down a hand for him.

The swinging part didn’t sound hard. The taking Amell’s arm part did. Anders had touched Amell once since the Grand Tourney six months ago, when he’d caught Amell’s wrist as he was leaving the infirmary. That brief, blissful contact was bound to haunt him for six more. Anders had no idea how he was supposed to do it again, but somehow he managed, gripping Amell’s arm and the myriad of scars that covered it.

The next step, of course, was the swinging. Anders was supposed to swing. Swing, swing, swing. Maybe a hop. Or just flail madly until he got onto the back of the horse, but he didn’t do anything. He just stood there, holding Amell’s arm while all of his thoughts fell out of his head.

“Anders?” Amell asked eventually.

“Yeah?”

“... Do you need a mounting block?”

“... Yeah.” Anders lied.

“The stablehands should have one,” Amell let go of his hand, and Anders scrambled after his scattered thoughts.

“Right - I’ll… go get one of those.” Anders fled to the stables, and scared all of the horses in the process, which upset all of the stablehands. One of them scowled something fierce the entire walk back to Amell’s horse, flinging the mounting block down on the ground beside it and watching him climb up with folded arms and such a stern look it put Velanna to shame.

Somehow, Anders made it onto the horse, the echoes of wisps not half as distracting as Amell, sitting in front of him on a cramped saddle that pressed Anders up against the firm expanse of his back no matter how he shifted to accommodate him, his hands clutching the cantle to keep from clutching Amell.

“Hold onto me,” Amell said.

“Are you sure that’s okay?”

“I don’t want you to fall.”

“Too late for that,” Anders shouldn’t have joked. Anders should have kept his mouth shut, but Anders didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut, no matter how many times he opened it just to put his foot in it. Amell didn’t say anything, which was what Anders should have done. Anders wrapped his arms loosely around Amell’s waist, and the horse set off after the others.

The undead horse didn’t smell like a horse. It smelled like the Fade - like raw magic with a faint undercurrent of leather from the saddle. Anders wished it smelled like a horse. If the horse smelled like a horse he might not have been able to smell Amell. Copper and a faint undercurrent of blood lotus, a fresh scent like soap that clung to his hair, so close to Anders' nose it made him self-conscious of every inhale.

Anders hoped - fervently - that the ride would be as silent as it was awkward, but they’d barely made it beyond the walls before Amell said, “You’re tense.”

“Yep.”

“Is the saddle uncomfortable?”

“No, I am.”

“Did you want to talk?” Amell offered.

“Do you really want me to?” Anders asked facetiously.

“You can.”

Anders didn’t know what to do with the allowance. He didn’t know what he wanted to talk about. He didn’t know what he could talk about. “... Scale of one to ten, how mad at Oghren are you right now?”

“Somewhere between a five and a six,” Amell shrugged.

At least it wasn’t a ten, but it still hurt that it wasn’t zero. “You didn’t have to let me come with, you know.”

“I know.”

“... do you want me here?”

“Do you want to be here?” Amell asked instead of answering.

“Do you really have to ask?”

Amell didn’t answer him. Anders squeezed his wrist where he held his arms around Amell’s waist, doing his best to keep from touching him, from breathing him, from wanting him, but there was nothing else for him to focus on. They’d left the Vigil from the southern gate, along the Pilgrim’s Path, and looped west towards the Hafter. There was nothing of note along the path, and the only things before them were their friends.

“... So… riding alone, huh?”

“Hm?”

“Kieran,” Anders explained. “He’s riding alone?”

“...He’s learning,” Amell said with a fondness Anders hadn’t heard from him since he’d arrived at the Vigil. “Morrigan can shift back if he needs her.”

“Is that advanced....?”

“He is with most things.”

“Is he a mage?”

“... I hope so. He has… visions. We’re not sure if he’ll ever have more than that," Amell said. Anders chuckled, and Amell shifted in his arms, turning his head so he could better hear him, and Anders could see his lips. “Did I miss a joke?”

“Can you believe that?” Anders asked. “That you hope he’s a mage? That it’s safe for you to want that?”

“... Is it?”

“Mages are free in Ferelden.” Amell had been the one to free them. It felt like something he should be more excited over.

“The Circles have token autonomy,” Amell corrected him. “It’s not the same thing as freedom.”

“It could be if you keep fighting for it,” Anders argued.

“... You haven’t published any new copies of your manifesto this year.”

“I-...” Anders swallowed past the lump in his throat - trying not to think of how many copies he’d written only for Hawke to rewrite them. All the times he thought he’d gone mad, that the words had changed, that Anders had been the one to change them, that he just couldn’t remember, that he was just tired, that he just needed to lie down. A surge of veilfire cut off the train of the thought, and Anders took a steadying breath. “... I didn’t really have the chance to write any.”

“You can write now, if you want,” Amell offered.

“Write now, right now?” Anders joked, and if he hadn’t been holding him, he might not have noticed the bemused exhale it won from Amell.

“If you like,” Amell’s face was still turned to the side, so Anders could see the slight curve of his lips and the way it lingered.

“... Did you like it?”

“Every word.”

Chapter 158: Found Family

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 22 Molioris Afternoon
Ferelden: The Hafter River West Of Vigil’s Keep

Summer sucked.

Anders leaned back on his arms, long legs precariously arranged so none of his skin touched the rest of his skin. He sat on a woolen blanket, dark gold and patterned with bears, in the shade of a willow tree. The branches sagged under the weight of their leaves: a striking silvery white. They dipped into the Hafter, slow moving waters stealing the occasional leaf and whisking it downstream towards the Vigil, where Anders should have been.

Instead he was here. Sweating. Suffering. Swatting the occasional mosquito. He’d taken off his tabard, but he was hesitant to do the same for his tunic. His face and his arms may have freckled, but his body was scarred. He'd gained two pounds since he'd come to the Vigil, but he could stand to gain a dozen more before he was comfortable with himself again.

He'd done everything he could to starve the bane from his blood when he was with Hawke, and he'd eaten only famine foods with Franke. Now that he could eat, he still had trouble with it. Oghren had offered him a drink, his first day at the Vigil, and Anders had coughed it right back up. He'd expected ale, and gotten water, and felt as traumatized as the old Oghren would have for the betrayal. Anders had gotten his own food and drink ever since, but his heart still skipped if the water was too stale, the soup was too bitter, the anything was too off.

A plate of gooseberries, cheese, and bread sat untouched at his side, along with a canteen of water he was trying to work up the nerve to drink despite not filling it himself. There was no reason to suspect it was anything but water. It was Amell’s canteen, and Amell had filled it, and Anders trusted Amell more than he trusted himself on the best of days, but he still couldn’t drink it. He ate a gooseberry instead, but even that was difficult considering they didn’t grow in the Free Marches, and he wasn’t used to the taste.

No one seemed to notice his reluctance to eat or drink. It was hot and not everyone was hungry and most of the group threw themselves into the river the minute they dismounted. Little Amell ran straight in without bothering to undress and ruined his entire outfit when he fell face first into the mud. Anders was starting to worry about the kid, especially considering Kieran didn’t have the same problems, and they were more or less the same age.

Then again, Kieran had other problems. Where Little Amell was lucky to last a minute without toppling, Kieran was unusually coordinated for a boy of four or five. He carried himself like a tiny noble, never tripping or stumbling, and only seemed to run with his mother’s permission. He rarely spoke, and when he did, it was always prophetic or polite. He went through the entire ordeal of unsaddling his pony with Morrigan and setting out a lunch and a blanket with Amell before he finally folded all his clothes into a neat pile and ran off to join the mud monster that was Oghren’s son.

It was a little strange, but the boys seemed to get along. Everyone did. They felt more like one family than they did three. Their blankets formed a loose semi-circle around the willow tree, a few short yards from the riverbed, and food, conversation, and people spilled between them. For all Oghren had promised Anders wouldn’t have to see him naked, he’d lied, but he had so much body hair it was like he was wearing fleece, and at the end of the day, Anders didn’t really care.

The intimacy of it all moved him more than the nudity. Morrigan and Felsi argued over the latest children’s fashions, naked from the waist up with towels draped over their laps. Velanna lay on her stomach, massaging Nathaniel’s bad leg and chiming in occasionally while he and Amell spoke, and Oghren flung the boys into the river like goalballs. Anders sat, and watched, and wondered what he was doing here until Nathaniel dragged him into the conversation.

“It’s better with Anders, actually,” Nathaniel said, drawing Anders’ head up from his lunch at the mention of his name.

“Obviously,” Anders joked, wondering what he’d missed. “What are we talking about again?”

“My leg,” Nathaniel elaborated, gesturing to the warped scar tissue stretched across his thigh, and the poultice slowly melting off it in the summer sun. “I assume you maintain some kind of aura when I’m around.”

“It’s nothing, really,” Anders shrugged. The panacea was like second nature to him most days, as natural as veilfire or breathing, and half the time he wasn’t even aware he was channeling it. “I’m glad it helps.”

“Helps?” Nathaniel scoffed. “I’d have left my cane at the Vigil if I’d known you were coming.”

“You will do no such thing,” Velanna sat up, long blonde hair falling around her shoulders and obscuring her chest. “The last time you left your cane behind on an outing, you tired, refused to let us carry you, and made me mad at you for three years.”

Nathaniel toyed with her hair, a contemplative expression on his face, before he said, “That was only two years ago.”

“You still have one year left. Would you like to make it four?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, my lady,” Nathaniel tipped his head, a few sweaty strands of black hair spilling from his bun. “My apologies.”

“Keep your apologies and your cane or I will help you find somewhere to put them,” Velanna threatened.

“As long as it’s not in front of the kids,” Anders joked.

“Don’t prod her,” Nathaniel warned him.

“But I have this stick and I don’t know what else to do with it,” Anders said, and couldn’t help notice the grin he won from Amell for his antics. He hadn’t meant to win it, but the fact that he had, that he still could, almost made the outing worth it.

“I can help you find somewhere to put that too,” Velanna said.

“Is it my ass?” Anders guessed. “I bet it’s my ass.”

“It’s your ass,” Velanna agreed cheerily.

“I love when I’m right,” Anders said - and swore Amell laughed. He looked like he laughed. The silent shake of his shoulders had to count. If Velanna wasn’t laughing, it hurt a little less if Amell was.

“How sad for you it does not happen often,” Velanna said flatly.

“I’m all choked up about it, trust me.”

“Not if you were a spirit of Truth.”

“My love-” Nathaniel started.

“Do not ‘my love’ me,” Velanna huffed, flinging her towel into Nathaniel’s face. Bared, her vallaslin swept down her naked body in intricate linework reminiscent of leaves, trees, and halla in honor of a god whose name Anders had forgotten. She left them for the river, but Anders was willing to bet her departure was more over his presence then his prodding, and would have happened anyway.

“I warned you,” Nathaniel said.

“What do we say to a swing?” Velanna called to the boys, a pulse of nature magic engorging one of the branches on the willow along with its vines.

“We say thank the sodding Stone,” Oghren muttered, dragging himself from the river to flop face down beside his wife with a fart. “Those kids are wearing me the fuck out.”

“Oghren, language,” Felsi sighed.

“It’s Common, Fels,” Oghren said helpfully.

“Father!” Kieran called from the river. “Come swing!”

“What do you say, you silly boy?” Morrigan yelled back.

“Please!” Kieran added.

“Coming,” Amell called back.

Amell stripped out of his tunic and folded it midair before handing it over to Morrigan, who arranged it neatly beside the pile of hers and Kieran’s clothes. His trousers and his smalls came off in an easy sweep, and Anders swore he wasn’t going to stare at him, but his eyes must have been crossed because they didn’t listen.

He looked breathtaking. The summer sun had tanned his wheatish skin a shade more befitting bronze, and a hard life had etched it with innumerable scars. Casting cuts sleeved his arms, and old burn wounds spoke of dragon fire along his side and back. Scars from swords, spears, axes, and arrows marred the rest of him, but Anders didn’t feel the same urge to heal them that he had with Bethany.

They were too captivating. Amell was too captivating - a force of might and magic, blood and sacrifice. Anders had forgotten about most of his scars and how he’d got them. How many of them had he taken for someone else? How many had he taken for Anders? When had Anders ever taken one for him? When had Anders ever done anything for him?

“Shit, sorry,” Oghren’s voice broke into his thoughts, and Anders belatedly realized Oghren had been talking to him. He was sitting up, excessive body hair and a plate of half-finished food the only things keeping him modest. “Obviously the Boss’s ass has something more important to say. I’ll just wait until it’s finished.”

Anders tore his eyes off Amell. It was a small mercy Morrigan had led him to the waterside, and neither of them heard Oghren mocking him. “I wasn’t looking at his ass.”

“What do you call this then?” Oghren asked, a few crumbs falling into his beard when he let his jaw go slack.

“... Leering?” Anders ventured.

“Seriously, Sparkles, an ass is an ass,” Oghren said. “Boss ain’t that pretty.”

“Sure, and I’m not that funny,” Anders said flippantly.

“Now you’re getting it,” Oghren agreed. “Back me up, Fels.”

“Well...” Felsi glanced over at Amell, waist deep in the river with his family. “I guess he’s attractive... in an obvious sort of way.”

“Right,” Anders rolled his eyes. “Obvious beauty is the worst. Hate that. Me? I like when it’s a secret. Adds to the mystery of the romance.”

“Romance,” Oghren sucked grease off his fingers, which was a little concerning considering he hadn’t eaten anything greasy, and turned to his wife. “I’ll show you romance. Hey there, you plump little persimmon, why don’t you give me a taste of those juices?”

“Easy there, you greasy old bronto,” Felsi set a hand on Oghren’s hairy chest to keep him at bay. “I'm married.”

“Oh yeah?” Oghren waggled his eyebrows. “Why don’t you tell me about this husband of yours?”

“That worthless copper plated sword cast?” Felsi snorted. “I’m sure you can come up with something better to talk about.”

“Talk?” Oghren looked offended. “What kinda man do you think I am? You, me, the bushes. Let’s get those branches a-rustling.”

“And they say romance is dead,” Anders shook his head, scooting away from the couple and closer to Nathaniel when Oghren’s atrocious pickup lines somehow proved effective. “Get a room. Get a bush. Get away.”

“They’re fine,” Nathaniel assured him. “It’s not as if the boys haven’t seen them kissing.”

“I haven’t seen them kissing!” Anders protested. The image of Felsi’s fingers threaded through Oghren’s back hair was definitely one he could have done without. He swiveled around on his blanket to watch the river instead, where the rest of his old friends were enjoying themselves.

Little Amell was in the process of climbing one of the vines Velanna had grown from the willow tree, and Velanna’s responsible, adult oversight consisted of encouraging him to climb higher. Morrigan sat in the shallows, watching Kieran struggle to swim to where Amell stood, waves of telekinetic energy sending the boy back to the shore with each attempt. He looked happy. When was the last time Anders had seen him happy?

“Have you talked to him yet?” Nathaniel nudged him.

“Yep,” Anders said.

“What did you say?”

Anders did his best impression of a turkey, and Nathaniel wheezed his way through a laugh.

“I’m sorry,” Nathaniel said. “I shouldn’t laugh-”

“Someone should,” Anders said. “I don’t know what Oghren was thinking inviting me.”

“I think he was thinking that you missed us,” Nathaniel ventured. “And that we missed you.”

“Velanna has a funny way of showing it,” Anders said.

“It’s Velanna, Anders.”

“... Alright, I can’t argue with that, but it’s not like Amell’s over there aching for me,” Anders waved to where Amell stood with the water up to his waist, enjoying his time with his family. “I think I’d notice.”

“Not that voyeurism isn’t the healthiest way to rekindle a romance, but why don’t you try asking him?” Nathaniel suggested.

“Ask him what?” Anders smacked a mosquito off his neck. “I can barely say two words to him without sandwiching my foot between them. Besides, if he wanted to talk to me he would.”

“I don’t agree with that,” Nathaniel said.

“You should,” Anders said. “I’m seriously considering seasoning my socks.”

“I meant about Amell not wanting to talk to you,” Nathaniel elaborated. “Relationships aren’t one-sided, Anders. You can’t just wait for him to want you. Be his friend. Go swimming.”

Anders could go for a swim. It wasn’t the same thing as taking a bath. The river was wide, and Anders could leave it whenever he wanted. No one was forcing him into it. No one had their hands on him. No one was rolling up their sleeves and scrubbing his nails with emery, his heels with pumice, his skin with soap. They were all just swimming, naked or near enough, lounging on their blankets or in the grass, and the mud crusting the soles of their feet finally convinced him it couldn’t be further from a bath.

Anders stripped and he swam. His friends talked, and he talked with his friends, and even if he didn't exactly talk to Amell they were part of the same conversations. No one commented on his weight, despite his reservations, and the stress of it all faded as much as it could. Anders excused himself when it got too overwhelming, and found a comfortable spot close to the shore to relax, and steam with primal magic, but he wasn’t alone long. Nathaniel joined him, and Velanna reluctantly followed, pursued by Felsi and Oghren while Little Amell napped on their blanket.

"I'm surprised this is still nice in the summer," Nathaniel noted, tangling his hair into a wet bun on the top of his head. "It’s a shame we don’t have any hot springs near the Vigil."

“Oh sure, Sparkles warms the water and everyone wants in on it, but I do it and everyone runs,” Oghren rolled his eyes.

“Oghren, baby, sometimes it’s better when you don’t talk,” Felsi said.

“Amell, why don’t you join us?” Nathaniel suggested.

It was a good suggestion. There was no reason not to suggest it, save that Anders wished he hadn’t. The five of them sat in a circle in the shallows, and Anders had made it a point to keep his back to Amell to keep from staring at him. Unfortunately, that point also meant Amell was closest to him when he left Morrigan and Kieran on their blanket to join them. Anders heard him wade into the water, and comment a moment later, “It feels like we’re sitting.”

“We’re sitting,” Anders agreed, trying to ignore the fact that Amell was still naked, and he was still naked, because everyone was still naked. Even if Amell was standing, and Anders was sitting, and sitting while Amell was standing made Anders think about anything other than sitting and standing.

“Where is it safe for me to sit?” Amell asked, with an outstretched hand Anders should have taken. If he’d taken it, Amell wouldn’t have touched the back of his head instead, fingers threading through his hair and lingering for half a heartbeat. Years spun back at his touch, and the memory of Amell’s hands on the back of his head while Anders knelt in front of him tormented him for one shaky inhale before Anders realized he should have been helping him.

Anders shook the thoughts away and caught his hand, shifting to make room for him and pull him down to sit. “Here.”

“Thank you,” Amell sat with one leg bent, his arm draped over his knee, the hand that had touched his hair flexing while conversation carried on around them.

“... How’s the water?” Anders asked.

“Hm?” Amell glanced at him, not quite far enough for his eyes to settle on him but far enough that Anders knew he was paying attention.

“The water?” Anders asked again. “Warm enough?”

“Warm enough,” Amell said. “... Your hair is different?”

“Nate cut it,” Anders explained, wondering if that was all he’d been thinking about since he’d sat down. “Did he not tell you?”

“It felt shorter than I thought.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty short,” Anders said.

“Excuse me,” Amell stood up, and went back to his family’s blanket. Anders watched him go, cursing himself.

‘It’s pretty short?’ That was the best he could do? That was how he was supposed to rekindle their relationship? Why was he like this? Why couldn’t he come up with anything better to say? He may as well have told Amell he was still blonde while he was at it. Fade take him, Oghren had more riveting dialogue than he did. At least Oghren’s wife wanted to be around him.

Anders tried not to let it bother him, but it did. Their group finished lunch after their swim, dried off and dressed, packed up their things and saddled their horses. Somehow, Anders managed to mount up behind Amell without a mounting block or making a complete ass of himself. Amell’s hair was still slightly damp, and Anders watched the way the sun caught in the raven strands in silence for a long while before he couldn’t help himself.

“Are you okay?” Anders asked.

“Hm?” Amell glanced over his shoulder at him.

“Earlier - in the river - you left pretty quick,” Anders explained. “... don’t like the new hair?”

“I think you’re asking the wrong person, Anders,” Amell smiled.

“I’m asking you.”

“I’m sure it’s stunning.”

“So stunning you couldn’t stand it?” Anders joked.

Amell didn’t look like he thought it was stunning. His smile didn’t reach his eyes. Anders would know. He couldn’t stop staring at the flow of crimson in them. Amell turned back towards the road and didn’t answer.

“Hey,” Anders let go of his waist and squeezed his shoulder. “Are you okay? Listen, I know we’re not-... Well, we’re not, but if I did something back there -... I wasn’t trying to come between you and your family, or-”

“You didn’t do anything, Anders,” Amell promised. “It’s fine.”

“It doesn’t feel fine.” Anders felt Amell inhale shakily, and rubbed his back without thinking about it. Amell didn’t make him stop, which was something, but it was a concerning something considering they weren’t exactly on the best of terms. “I know this is going to be hard to believe, but I promise not to make whatever this is about me.”

“That is hard to believe,” Amell said.

“Ouch,” Anders grinned.

“It is about you,” Amell said.

“Okay,” Anders said. “... you can still tell me. I won’t make it into anything.”

“... I can’t remember what you look like.”

“... Oh.”

Amell didn’t volunteer anything else. Anders kept his hand on his back, rubbing his shoulder, forcing himself not to make anything of the way Amell’s shallow breathing felt beneath his palm. At some point he took Amell’s hand and slid it into his hair. Amell kept it there, which seemed like a good sign. Anders wrapped his arms around his waist, and leaned against his back.

“... It’s really short,” Amell said.

“Yeah, it is.”

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah, I do.” He liked the way Amell’s nails scratched idly at his scalp more, but he kept it to himself. Eventually, Amell took his hand back. “... Still blonde.” Anders said helpfully.

“Good to know.”

“... Lots of freckles.”

“Anywhere in particular?”

Anders took Amell’s hand and set his fingers to the freckles on his wrist. “Here.”

“Just your wrist?”

“I can’t really reach around you like this, but they go up my arm. Mostly on the outside. I”ll probably have a few on my shoulders after today, and there’s a lot on my face, across my nose and my cheeks.”

Amell’s hand swept slowly up his arm to his elbow and back down to his wrist. “You feel thin.”

“I am thin… I’ll get over it…. What do you think of the hair?”

“I like it.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I’m allowed to touch it now.”

Anders laughed, “Don’t get excited. The second I grow it back out it’s hands off.”

“When is that, exactly?” Amell asked.

“I don’t know. I might just keep it this way. What do you think?”

“I think I’m glad you came today.”

“... Yeah, me too,” Anders untangled an arm from his waist so he could go back to holding his shoulder with one hand. “Amell, look, I know-... I know we’re not-... I missed you. Do you think we could just- … start over? Be friends?”

“Anders, I know you’re trying-” Amell started, and it didn’t feel like a good start, because it wasn’t yes, but Anders forced himself to hear it. “-and it means a lot to me that you’re trying, but I’m trying too.”

“... okay,” Anders said, and somehow it was.

Days passed, back at the Vigil, and Anders felt torn between chasing the high of their ride back from the Hafter and respecting Amell’s space. It seemed like the mature, adult thing to do would be the opposite of what Anders wanted to do, so he ultimately decided on space. Amell’s wasn’t the only relationship he’d strained, after all, and there were other relationships he could focus on fixing.

Velanna wasn’t like Amell. She hadn’t earned Oghren’s nickname for nothing, and she didn’t make a pretense of politeness for anyone or anything. Anders’ endless apologies got him nowhere. After almost a month of it, Velanna was still pissed, and for some mature, adult reason Anders decided to be petty. He borrowed a bit of stationary from Ailsa - who claimed not to need it because her daughter in Tevinter never wrote her back - and wrote Velanna a letter, and ended up accidentally roping the messengers at the Vigil into a war between them.


V,

I should have written you sooner, but I’m writing you now. I’m sorry. I hope you can forgive me.

A.


A,

Keep hoping.

V.


V,

Okay. I guess I should hope for something simpler to start, so I hope this letter finds you.

A.


A,

Congratulations. It did. Who is even giving you parchment? Stop wasting it.

V.


V,

You’re not a waste. You’re just a bitch. I miss you anyway.

A.


A,

I don’t. Call me a bitch again and see what happens.

V.


V,

Bitch.

A.


A,

How do you sleep at night? I’m curious.

V.


V,

Like a baby. An itchy one. Thanks for the rashvine. Sorry I didn’t get you anything.

A.


A,

Consider it a belated gift for your engagement.

V.


V,

I think I’ll just consider you a heartless harpy instead.

A.


A,

I don’t give a shit.

V.


V,

Stop by the infirmary. I have a potion that can help with that.

A.


Velanna actually did. Anders expected to walk away from the encounter with a broken bone or a bruise in the very least, but he ended up with neither. They just talked. Tense, slightly hostile talking, but talking. Mostly about Seranni, and how life as a ghoul was treating her, especially considering Finn was too terrified to do anything for her, assuming there was anything to be done. The general consensus was that there wasn’t, and there didn’t need to be, but Velanna seemed to appreciate that he offered all the same.

By the end of Bloomingtide, Anders wasn’t willing to call things fixed, but he could call them better. He still couldn’t bathe, but he could wash himself sitting and not feel suffocated. He still couldn’t stand Fenley’s snoring, but he could get through it and not scare Ser Cumference. He still couldn’t take food from friends, but he could eat with them again and not feel so out of place. He had one, at the Vigil, with the Wardens.

Anders wore his new vest atop a new tunic alongside new trousers, and found an out of the way spot in the grand hall while Amell held court on the last day of Bloomingtide. He felt painfully underdressed, compared to the nobles that filled the hall, and especially compared to Amell. He wore a sleeveless bronze doublet trimmed in fluorspar, with Amaranthine’s heraldry embroidered over his breast, and knee-high boots. He presided over the court on a sturdy throne of rich grained wood, carved with intricate rune work Anders was willing to bet had a practical purpose.

Anders had never cared about politics in the past, and if he was being honest, he still didn’t care if it didn’t concern mages or magic, but watching Amell carry out high justice filled him a sense of purpose. Each case was more invigorating than the last - made all the more fulfilling that Justice didn’t disagree with Amell’s choices. A shepherd stole two bushels of grain, a crime punishable by hanging or flogging, and Amell chose conscription to the army instead. A soldier deserted and was due for execution, and Amell had them imprisoned. Two nobles squabbled over land and Amell found a compromise for both.

The only case he couldn’t solve came from a handful of farmers from a neighboring bannorn. They’d come to complain about their bann’s taxes and how he was bleeding them dry, and while the irony made Anders laugh, there was nothing Amell could do about it. He wasn’t their arl, and complaints against the bann had to be taken by the teyrn. The fact met with protests from the farmers, who argued the chancellor’s authority should supersede the teyrn’s, and resulted in a lengthy breakdown on the extent of Amell’s jurisdiction as Amarnathine’s arl but Ferelden’s chancellor.

Court had begun at daybreak, and was dismissed late into the afternoon, but Justice could have watched it go on well into the evening. It was exhilarating. It was thrilling. It was fulfilling. It was a pure pursuit of purpose the likes of which he’d gone too long without. He felt exultant, without the means to express or contain it, and paced the length of the hall as the nobles departed. The law had never aligned so closely with justice in Kirkwall, where the only sentence the magistrates seemed to carry out was death, regardless of the crime.

Amell was so much more than a magistrate. His judgments so much closer to justice. He was remarkable. He was fascinating. He was captivating. He was-...

Tired.

The nobles left, and Amell stayed in his throne, elbow resting on a bent knee, his hand buried in his hair the only thing that seemed to be keeping his head up while the seneschal spoke about something Anders couldn’t hear from a distance and Amell didn’t seem to be listening to anyway. He stood up while the seneschal was still talking with a wave of his hand that seemed to ask for silence, and left the hall with Dumat.

He could have gone anywhere. To the kitchens, to Morrigan’s room, to Oghren’s room, to the Wardens’ barracks. He had friends and family and plenty of people in between, and there was no real reason for Anders to worry about him, but he did anyway. Justice might have loved watching the judgments, but Justice was Justice. He wasn’t a man or a mortal or anything less than the embodiment of an ideal that didn’t weigh on him the way it might weigh on Amell, and definitely would have weighed on Anders if he was in his place.

Anders thought of his journal - burnt down to ash at Hawke’s hands - and all the nights he’d spent drinking, and he worried. There was no reason to worry - there wasn’t - but he went to Amell’s room anyway. Somehow, even though he’d forgotten the way to the barracks, and he hadn’t visited Amell’s room in over a year, he still knew where it was. If Amell wasn’t there, it wouldn’t matter, and Anders could leave. Anders knocked on the door and waited, longer than it made sense to wait, and was about to leave when it opened.

Amell had lost his doublet, but he was otherwise still dressed. He smelled like blood lotus, which made sense, considering he was smoking it. “Anders,” Amell guessed, or knew, or sensed.

“How’d you know?” Anders asked.

“You just told me,” Amell said.

“Liar.”

“Maybe,” Amell smiled.

“Can I come in?” Anders asked.

Amell waved him in. Dumat was resting on the bed, and spared him a glance, but otherwise ignored him. He didn’t growl at him. For some reason, Amell’s mabari never did. Amell walked back to the sitting area in the corner of his room, tracing his way around his couch before he sat down. Anders sat next to him, watching him smoke and wondering if it would be overstepping if he asked him to stop.

“What can I do for you?” Amell asked.

“That was my question, actually,” Anders explained.

“You don’t need to do anything for me,” Amell said.

“You sure?” Anders asked. “... You seem-... how are you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Justice and I watched the judgments,” Anders explained. “You’re pretty good at those, by the way. I mean, you have to be for a spirit of Justice to agree with you, but… you just seemed… how are you?”

“... tired,” Amell said slowly, a confused crease to his brow Anders regretted having put there. He’d earned it. He deserved it, but Amell didn’t. He deserved… something… someone. He deserved to talk so he didn’t have to smoke.

“You want to talk about it? No judgments,” Anders joked.

“... No.”

“... Okay,” Anders rubbed the sweat off his palms on his trousers. That was okay. He’d tried. He’d tried, and he could just keep trying. Anders stood back up. “Okay. I-... you know, if you do.”

“... Anders?”

“Yeah?”

“... Do you feel like a game?”

“... Wicked Grace?”

“I’ll get the cards.”

Chapter 159: I'm Sorry

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos! Most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 17 Ferventis Early Morning
Ferelden: Vigil’s Keep

This was stupid.

It wasn’t their anniversary. They didn’t have an anniversary. They'd never had anything to have an anniversary over. Anders couldn’t remember the day of their first kiss, their first fuck, their first whatever they’d had after that. The only day Anders could remember was the day they’d met - and this wasn’t even it. They’d met in the Circle, but Anders was so self-absorbed he couldn’t remember that either.

Anders paced through the halls of the Vigil, five sweaty ribbons clutched tight in his hand. Five ribbons for five years. Five years since they'd met in the dungeons of Vigil’s Keep and Amell had changed his life forever. Anders made it half-way to Amell’s room before he glanced at the ribbons in his hand and turned back around again.

Ribbons. Amell had saved his life more times than Anders could count - definitely more than five - and all Anders could come up with was ribbons. All Anders could afford was ribbons, and the only reason he could afford them was because of the stipend Amell gave him as one of his wardens. That, and the discount from the tailor Ailsa had gotten him to afford the measly strips of fabric.

Velvet, silk, suede, leather, and linen, all in different colors. Purple, red, brown, black, blue. Colors it seemed like Amell wore, but it was anyone’s guess if he actually liked them. He had to like them, otherwise why would he wear them? Unless he didn’t care what he wore because he couldn’t see what he was wearing and he wore whatever his outfitters told him to wear because that was the kind of person he was.

Quiet. Accommodating. Bloody uncommunicative. Anders had an easier time prying out Amell’s eyes than he did a straight answer.

… Nope. Nope, not funny.

This was stupid. They were just ribbons. Anders could give him ribbons. It didn’t have to mean anything. It wasn’t like Anders had put any thought into it. It wasn’t like he’d spent an entire day frozen in front of fifty rolls of fabric in the tailor’s shop, overwhelmed with how many choices there were for something as inconsequential as a ribbon Amell probably wouldn’t wear anyway. Anders had never even seen him use ribbons for his braid. He used twine, or a string, or other things Anders never noticed because they were as unostentatious as Amell.

Amell might not even remember today. He had dozens of wardens, all of them pulled from their own pyres, all of their lives irrevocably changed because of him. Anders wasn’t special. Anders hadn’t been special for years. Every time he had a chance to be special he’d gone out of his way to show Amell how utterly unspecial he really was. Amell had more titles than Anders could remember, and for some reason Anders thought a few scraps of fabric anyone could dig out of the tailor’s trash would mean something to him.

So what if they didn’t? What else was Anders supposed to do? Lay awake aching for him night after night, hoping a blind man would notice him staring from across the hall? If Amell didn’t like the ribbons he didn’t like the ribbons and Anders would get over it, but he wasn’t going to get over anything - or under anyone - pacing in circles out in the hall. Anders stopped in front of Amell’s door, sweat turning ribbons into washcloths, and finally knocked.

Now he just had to wait. Wait and hand him the ribbons. Hand him the ribbons and explain why he’d gotten the ribbons without making an ass of himself. No telling jokes. No shoving his foot down his throat or his head up his ass. Just hand over the ribbons and open his mouth and say words.

Amell opened the door and Anders did not say words. Amell was not dressed in a way that was conducive to Anders saying words. He had on a loose pair of plain brown slacks he’d obviously slept in and nothing else. His hair was disheveled, braid undone, like he’d rolled out of bed and over to the door. Anders’ laugh was a little too close to his turkey impression for comfort, and he smothered it as best he could.

“Well I’m overdressed,” Anders said.

… So much for no jokes.

“Anders,” Amell blinked sleep from his eyes. “Is the sun even up?”

"Wouldn't you like to know," Anders said, because he didn't. “Someone had a late night."

“It’s the weekend,” Amell said, leaning sleepily on the door. Maybe he didn’t remember today after all. “What can I do for you?”

“You have got to stop asking me that,” Anders stuffed the ribbons into his pocket, and then wondered why he bothered. It wasn’t like Amell knew he had them. “One day I’ll actually ask you for something and then what’ll we do?”

“Whatever you asked - if I’m following,” Amell scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of his palm.

“See that’s kind of the opposite of what we’re going for, remember?” Anders shifted from foot to foot. He couldn’t have this conversation standing still. “You told me not to ask you for anything.”

“When?”

“Just… you know,” Anders said vaguely. “Before.”

“You can ask me for things, Anders,” Amell fought off a yawn. “I just wish you’d wait for the sun to come up before you did.”

“See, I tried that but it was taking too long,” Anders said. “I can come back when the sun does, I guess, but-”

“It’s fine. I’m awake,” Amell lied. “Did you want to get breakfast? Or coffee? Are the kitchens even serving?”

“I don’t think so,” Anders said. “Can I come in?”

Amell waved him into his room and shut the door behind him. The room was almost pitch black, the sun barely creeping up over the horizon to gauge by the curtainless windows, and Anders summoned a ball of mage light before he fell to pacing, trying to work up the nerve to do more than that. Amell’s eyes did an admirable job tracking him until he seemed to realize Anders wasn’t going to stop moving, and gave up. “Is everything alright?” Amell asked, leaning against his couch.

“How are you?” Anders asked

“You keep asking me that.”

“I keep wanting to know.”

“Tired,” Amell said.

“Right,” Anders snapped his fingers for something to do with his hands. “Sorry about that. Should I come back later? I should come back later.”

“Anders, it’s fine. I have time for you.”

“Just not this time, right?” Anders joked.

“If you’re going to wake me up to ask how I am, next time you can just assume it’s tired,” Amell suggested. “When did you become a morning person?”

“This morning?” Anders guessed. “When did you stop being one?”

“Last night,” Amell said. “Was there anything else…?”

Anders dug the tangled mess of sweaty ribbons out of his pocket. He just had to give him the ribbons. Just give him the ribbons. Just hold still and give him the ribbons. Anders forced himself to stop close enough to Amell to cloud his head with copper, and calm down, but Anders seemed to have the opposite effect on him. Amell stood a little straighter, his eyes focused on his face, just shy of his lips.

“I have something for you,” Anders explained.

“Is it coffee?” Amell asked.

“Give me your hand?”

“If this is a prank-”

“It’s not, just give me your hand.”

Amell gave him his hand, and Anders pushed the knot of ribbons into his palm. Amell felt over the bundle of fabric with his thumb. “What is this?”

“It’s today,” Anders blurted, to his immense and immediate regret. Anders dragged an exhausted hand down his face. So much for not putting his foot in his mouth either.

“... this is today?” Amell repeated, fiddling with the fabric.

“It’s for today,” Better. Still not good, but better. “I know it’s not much, but-”

“I still don’t know what this is, Anders,” Amell said.

“They’re ribbons,” Anders explained. “... They got a little tangled.”

“A little?” Amell raised an amused eyebrow.

“Here-” Anders took the knotted fabric back and fought with it until one of the ribbons came free. He stuffed the rest back into his pocket, and set the leather strip in Amell’s hand. “... Can you feel that?”

“Yes?” Amell looked confused.

“I mean can you tell what it is?”

“Is this a trick question?”

“Can you tell what it’s made of?”

“... leather?”

“It’s black,” Anders said enthusiastically, unraveling another ribbon and swapping them out. “What about this one?”

“... silk?”

“It’s red,” Anders said. The rest of the ribbons stayed stubbornly knotted, despite his increasingly frustrated attempts to unravel them. “Hang on. I just - I fucked this up.”

“They’re all different colors?” Amell guessed.

“Yeah,” Anders muttered, digging his thumbnail between the velvet and the suede and prying them apart to hand one to Amell.

“Velvet?”

“Purple.”

“Suede?”

“Brown.”

“Linen?”

“Blue,” Anders told him. “They’re ribbons.”

“You mentioned.”

“I know you don’t use a ribbon for your braid, but I thought it might look nice if you did, and this way you could know what color you’re wearing,” Anders explained. “You probably have an outfitter or a courtier or something for all of this but this way you can pick something out for yourself. If you wanted. If you don’t already. I don’t really know, I guess, I just-... thought you might like them. You can tell me if it’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” Amell promised, running his thumb over the different fabrics.

“So do you have a courtier or something…?”

“Or something.”

“So this was stupid.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“If you already have something like this-”

“I don’t. I just keep everything in order. I can show you,” Amell stepped around him with a gauging hand and stole Anders’ breath in the process. He went to his armoire and opened a door, where a handful of outfits were neatly arranged into sections. Warden blues, Amaranthine browns, Ferelden golds. Political and impersonal.

“Nice wardrobe, Commander,” Anders joked. “Does Amell have one?”

“... I guess I’m holding it,” Amell smiled, and maybe the ribbons weren’t so stupid after all.

“I can show you how to braid one in if you want,” Anders offered.

Amell fished out the silk from the bundle, “Red?”

“Red,” Anders agreed.

The rest of the ribbons went into a drawer in Amell’s armoire, and Amell handed him the ribbon of choice.

“Do you have a comb?” Anders asked.

“Same place as before,” Amell said.

“... I don’t remember where that is,” Anders confessed, trying not to let it dishearten him. If Amell could get over forgetting what he looked like, Anders could get over a comb.

“Washroom vanity, second shelf on the left,” Amell said.

Anders left to go fetch it, and returned to find Amell sitting on the couch. He didn’t really need the comb. Amell’s hair was straight and easy to manage, and Anders could have fixed it with his fingers, threaded through the void-black strands, dislodging knots and smoothing back flyaways, which was what he ended up doing.

“Couldn’t find the comb?” Amell guessed.

“I found it,” Anders admitted. He found it, but he wasn’t interested in using it. Amell’s hair felt more silken than the ribbon he’d picked to braid it.

“Did you have something against it?”

“A few things.”

“Such as?” Amell asked.

“You felt my hair,” Anders reminded him. “Fair’s fair, right?”

“So this is about justice?”

“You get it,” Anders murmured, dragging his nails along Amell’s scalp and watching the way he leaned into his touch. Anders' pulse felt like it left his heart to sink into his skin, flush and aching for the slow blinks he won from Amell and the thought that they might not have anything to do with how tired he was.

“So Justice is the one running his fingers through my hair?” Amell asked.

“I am Justice,” Anders said.

Amell turned his head towards him, and Anders’ fingers slipped over the tip of his ear, “You don’t look like him right now.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Anders mumbled, tracing the scar tissue of an old piercing and wondering if he could convince Amell to redo it. Maybe if he had an earring to wear in it. He would have looked nice with one. Some bit of silver to match all his warden regalia, and go with the blue ribbon if he ever wore it.

He didn’t need to wear it. He didn’t need to wear anything. He was already captivating, in just a pair of loose slacks, his head tilted into Anders’ palm, vibrant Void-black eyes struggling to stay open, and Maker, he couldn’t be that tired, could he? Anders thumbed his cheek, and Amell finally pulled back from his hand with a sharp inhale.

“How to do a ribbon braid, wasn’t it?”

“Right,” Anders cleared his throat. “Ribbons. You just treat it like a normal braid. Divide it into three sections, and add the ends of the ribbon into one of the outer sections.” Anders worked the ribbon into Amell’s hair, doing his best to forget all the times he’d braided his own hair, and all the times Hawke had unbraided it. This wasn’t about him. Hawke wasn’t here. Anders wouldn’t let him be here.

“Simple enough,” Amell said.

“I got you five,” Anders said. “It’s been five years, so... I got you five. I don’t know if you remember today, but meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me. I just wanted you to know that I think about you. I never stopped thinking about you….”

“Thank you,” Amell said softly.

“All done,” Anders announced, tracing over the braid he’d woven behind Amell’s ear, and the bit of red silk threaded through it. It was the right shade to match his eyes, and he couldn’t help feeling proud of himself for getting it right, even if he was the only one who saw Amell’s eyes the way he did.

“How’s it look?” Amell asked.

Incredible. Incomparable. Breathtaking. Heartstopping.

“Intaking.”

Fuck.

“... Intaking.” Amell said slowly.

“I…” Anders groaned. “You know. Incredible and breathtaking. Intaking.”

“I’m glad it looks intaking, then,” Amell teased.

“No, the braid’s a little messy honestly,” Anders said. “I should probably redo it.”

“Oh. Well, in that case-”

“You’re breathtaking.”

“Anders-” Amell sighed.

“Please let me finish,” Anders begged.

Amell stopped talking, but didn’t say anything that indicated he actually wanted him to finish, and Anders hadn’t come here to hold him hostage.

“... can I finish?” Anders asked instead.

“... go ahead,” Amell relented.

“I love your eyes,” Anders said - and maybe that was too much too fast but he couldn’t look into them every day knowing Amell thought he saw them as anything less than beautiful. “I don’t know why I see what I see, but I love them.”

“... They’re a demon’s eyes to you, Anders.”

“So what?” Anders demanded. “You’re the strongest mage I’ve ever met. I can’t look at you and not see that. If I see Pride, maybe it’s because you never let the world take yours. If I see Desire, maybe it’s because I’ve never wanted anyone more than you. Let me wear your ring if you want to know how I feel about you.”

“It’s not that simple,” Amell said.

“Yes it is,” Anders said. “Amell, you have to know I don’t think you’re a demon. If you really believe I see you that way, why tell me you’re trying? Why even talk to me? Why waste your time?”

“... it’s not that simple.”

“It is,” Anders said. “It is for me. Isn’t there anyone else who sees what I see?”

“... I never cared what anyone else saw,” Amell said. “Why do you think I took the blindfold off, Anders?”

“Then care why I see it,” Anders said stubbornly.

“You don’t know why you see it.”

“Neither do you.”

“I know how they work.”

“No, you don’t,” Anders shot back. Amell frowned, and it seemed like a good sign Anders should stop, but he didn’t. “You told me yourself you don’t know why you can see Justice.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Prove it.”

“What?”

“Prove it’s not the same thing. Prove you actually know what you’re talking about, because I don’t think you do. I look at you and I see the most extraordinary man I’ve ever met. I see the kind of leader mages need. I see someone who shows the world he won’t be punished for his Maker given gifts. I don’t see a demon, and if I do, I don’t care. I love yo-ur eyes.”

… fuck.

The silence stretched itself taut until the tension was painful. Anders hadn’t meant to say what he’d almost said. It wasn’t something he should say, no matter how he meant it. Not with everything the way it was. Amell looked more pained than anything else, and Anders had caused him enough. “I don’t suppose I can walk any of that back?”

“... do you want to?” Amell’s question was so quiet Anders almost didn’t hear it.

“...No.”

“Then don’t,” Amell said.

… that had to be good, didn’t it? Anders wanted it to be good. He wanted something with Amell to be good, after how good Amell had been to him. Anders hadn’t done anything to deserve Amell being good to him. He’d been at the Vigil for a month and a half, and Nate was still the only person who knew why he’d done the things he’d done. As far as Amell knew, Anders had said everything he’d said and done everything he’d done of his own volition, but Amell was still here, sitting, talking, trying just because Anders wanted him to sit and talk and try.

It didn’t seem possible anyone could love him that much.

“... Can I touch your face?” Anders asked.

“... if you want,” Amell said.

Anders traced his fingertips over Amell’s eyebrow, and swept them in a half-circle around his Void-black eyes and the crimson flowing through them. Amell didn’t understand how perfect they were. They were still red, still Amell, but they weren’t the same red that had beaten him down into the broken man that had dragged himself out of the City of Chains. They were magic. Pure, purposeful magic - and there was nothing they loved more.

"...You don’t understand what it means to see you with eyes I didn’t take from you.”

“You didn’t take them from me,” Amell lied.

“I took everything from you. I just want to give you something back,” Anders shifted closer to him so their thighs were pressed together, and cradled his jaw in the palm of his hand, tracing the edge of his lips with his thumb. “... Can I kiss you?”

Amell’s sharp inhale wasn’t a yes, and Anders needed one. Amell’s hands sought out his arms, and followed them to his shoulders to lay flat against his chest. “Anders, last year, at the Tourney, when you said everything you said to me-”

“-I didn’t mean it,” Anders cut him off, swallowing a wave of nausea at the thought of having this conversation. If he started talking about everything he’d done or hadn’t done, should have done or shouldn’t have done, he’d never stop. He didn’t want to have this conversation, but he had to have it at some point, didn’t he?

“I know,” Amell said gently. “I know you were in solitary. I know you said it for my cousin’s sake. I can imagine all of the reasons why you might have said it. I can imagine not wanting to give up something safe for something uncertain. I can imagine how much you needed something safe after solitary-”

“No you can’t!” Anders fought free of his arms and stood up. “You can’t imagine any of it, so don’t! I don’t want you making excuses for me. I don’t want you coming up with reasons for why I did everything I did. I still did it. I wish I hadn’t said it. Maker, you have no idea how much I wish I hadn’t said it.” Anders dropped to his knees in front of him and clutched Amell’s legs, desperate hands bunching up the fabric on his thighs. “I would give anything not to have said it.”

Anders rested his forehead on Amell’s knees, trying to force himself to breathe, to calm down, to not ruin this anymore than he already had. A whisper of veilfire played in his throat, and helped a little. Amell helped more. He threaded his fingers through his hair, in a touch both gentle and ginger, and filled with unearned absolution.

“I know... I know you would,” Amell said. “Anders, I’m trying, but the last time I tried, you got engaged. I felt everything you felt for me and it wasn’t enough.”

“You are. You always were.”

Amell slid off the couch to join him on the floor, and pull him into a hug Anders was sure he hadn’t earned. “Thank you for the ribbons,” Amell said against his ear. “I don’t think anyone’s ever put that much thought into something for me before.”

“You’re my friend,” Anders said lamely.

“You’re mine,” Amell promised.

They lingered there for a long while, not talking, not doing much of anything but holding each other, and even that felt like a favor, but it couldn’t have been. Amell wouldn’t have held him the way he held him if it was just a favor, breathing in a little too deeply, toying with a few short strands of hair at the nape of his neck and making him shiver.

“... Do you want some coffee?” Anders offered.

“So much,” Amell said quickly.

“I could bring some up - if you want?” Anders asked. “I promise I’ll stick to less weightier topics. We could just talk about the systemic abuses of the Circle or overthrowing the Chantry or something.”

“Thank you,” Amell agreed.

“I’m sorry for putting all that on you just now-”

“Don’t apologize.”

“Just get you coffee, right?” Anders joked.

“Please,” Amell begged.

Anders fled the room, replaying their conversation over and over in his head. So much for not putting his foot in his mouth or his head up his ass, but it could have been worse. Anders wasn’t sure how it could have been worse, but he always seemed to manage to add a few more logs to his pyre where Amell was concerned. Still, Amell hadn’t struck that flint yet, so it could have been worse.

“Scale of one to ten, how awkward was that?” Anders asked his hands, and half-expecting every finger to light with veilfire.

“Warden Anders, Ser!” Corporal Kallian called, catching him in one of the halls on the way to the kitchens. The sprightly elf jogged over, but didn’t look injured, or particularly pleased to see him, which didn’t leave many promising reasons why she might want to talk to him.

“I didn’t do it,” Anders said.

“You’ve a visitor, Ser,” Kallian explained. “In from Kirkwall. They’re waiting for you in the grand hall.”

No. No - no - no no no. He couldn’t have a visitor. He couldn’t. He couldn’t - Maker he couldn’t -

“Who?” Justice asked.

“An old friend of yours, I believe,” Kallian said.

“Describe them,” Justice said.

“I believe he said his name was Master Tetris?” Kallian guessed. “He was in your company when you visited the Vigil last year. He’s a dwarf, blonde and a bit stocky. He has a crossbow with him, but I could have him disarmed if you’d like.”

“Is he alone or with others?” Justice asked.

“Alone, Ser,” Kallian said.

“Thank you. I will see to him.”

Kallian bowed and left. They weren’t dressed for combat, should it come to it. Anders had worn what little finery he had for the anniversary he’d meant to celebrate with Amell. His vest wouldn’t stop a crossbow bolt laced with magebane, nor would anything he wore serve against knockout powder or any other deceptions, but Varric couldn’t be permitted to linger anymore than he could be permitted to return and tell Hawke of their whereabouts.

He had to see to this. He had to see to this because Anders couldn’t see to it. Because he’d failed to see to it for years and Anders had suffered for his inaction. For his inability to see the signs of abuse, and indignity, and injustice until it was too late. He wouldn’t fail at it again. He’d saved Varric’s life once before, and if it came to it, he would take it back.

Justice went to the grand hall, and found Varric seated close to the entrance. He wore no armor, a simple tabard covering a simpler tunic, a travel pack at his side and Bianca resting on the banquet table. Nothing in his appearance spoke to violence, but they’d known enough with his blessing to know better. Varric stood at his approach, and even his wave seemed audacious.

“Blondie,” Varric guessed wrong. “Ancestors, it’s good to see you. Look at you! You look good! You start working out? Listen-”

“No,” Justice cut him off.

“I’m guessing you’re not too happy to see me right now,” Varric wrung his hands together, worrying anxiously at his prosthesis.

“You guess correctly.”

“I promise I wouldn’t be here if I had any other choice. We have to talk-”

“Not here,” Justice cut him off. A death in the grand hall seemed improprietous. “Come.”

Justice left the hall for the courtyard. Varric snatched up his pack and Bianca and hurried after him. “Blondie, wait up, where are we going?”

“Here,” Justice led him to the infirmary.

Finn was within, sweeping already swept floors, and frowned at his presence. “Didn’t we agree to alternate shifts?”

“We have need of the space,” Justice said. “Depart and do not return for the next hour.”

“Hello?” Finn said. “Look, I’m sure you understand what alternate means, but in case that was too many syllables-”

Leave,” Justice snarled.

“Andraste’s grace!” Finn jumped, the broom clattering out of his hands. “The Commander is hearing about this!”

Finn scuttled out of the infirmary, and Varric traded places with him, chuckling as he watched him run away. “He seems-”

Justice grabbed him by the back of his neck and flung him face first into the wall of the infirmary. The alchemy cabinet doors bounced open, and a handful of retorts fell out and shattered on the floor. “You would dare come here!?

“Bemot’s beard - Blue - wait,” Varric scrabbled back along the wall towards the corner of the infirmary. “Just wait-”

Justice advanced on him, and Varric reached for Bianca. Justice snatched it from his hands and snapped it in half over his knee. “You will never hurt him again. You will leave this place in pieces.

“Hawke knows I’m here!” Varric screamed, scrambling under a surgery table to escape him. “I have to go back! If you kill me he’ll know you’re here too!”

Speak!” Justice barked.

“Blue - Blondie - you have to come back,” Varric said from under the table.

“We will never go back,” Justice said.

“You don’t understand,” Varric swallowed, boots slipping beneath him as he pushed himself up against the wall like he wanted to sink into it. “Listen, I knew - I knew about the lyrium. I didn’t see the big deal! It was just lyrium. I have friends in the Order. Ancestors, you had friends in the Order! I didn’t think he’d ever use it against you-”

You lie. You warned us he would hurt us if we ever tried to leave him. You knew exactly how he could.

“Daisy said the magebane was for your own good! It wasn’t! I get that it wasn’t, but then Killer had you on house arrest and by then it was too late-”

You did nothing! You sat in silence while we suffered! You broke bread with him and watched him break us!

“I was bullshitting him! I’m always bullshitting him!” Varric rambled. “Shit, I don’t know, I was scared! Maker’s breath, Blondie, you think you’re the only person scared of Killer!? The whole city is scared of Killer! Blondie - can you be Blondie? - things are bad. I didn’t think it would get this bad. Hawke’s convinced Broody kidnapped you. He’s got half the Red Irons sailing the Rialto Bay looking for you and the other half keeping the city under lockdown.

“He’s the Viscount now. Shit, he’s more than that, he’s practically Kirkwall. He owns the whole damn city. The mines, the guard, the magistrates, the carta. I don’t know how he did it, but he’s got them mining red lyrium. He’s obsessed with the stuff. Come on, Blondie, you remember Bartrand. You remember what red lyrium did to him. Hawke’s not Hawke anymore. He’s not even Killer. I don’t know who he is.

“He’s just mad. Honest to Ancestors mad. You have to come back. You’re the only one who can do something about it.You’re the only one Killer might listen to-”

No.

“You can heal him!” Varric protested. “You can help him, Blondie, I know you can. You were getting close with Bartrand! You can cleanse whatever this shit is doing to him. We just have to get him to stop taking it - and then we can get Hawke back. Please, Blondie, I know you want him back. It’s Hawke. He’s in there somewhere, like Bartrand is in there somewhere, and I know if we just try to help him he can come back from this. Please help me help him.”

You made your pyre,” Justice snarled. “Now burn on it.

“Blondie-... Anders-...please...”

“Hawke knows you’re here?” They asked.

“... He sent me here,” Varric licked his lips. “He sent me to see if you were here, but-”

“We can’t let you tell him we’re here, Varric.”

“I won’t! No bullshit, I won’t tell him you’re here! Hey - hey hey hey - Anders - Anders put the scalpel down! I won’t tell him - listen - listen I won’t tell him - What do you want me to tell him? I’ll tell him you weren’t here. I’ll tell him I looked all over Amaranthine - shit - okay - all over Ferelden - and I couldn’t find you. I’ll tell him you weren’t here!”

“That’s what you’ll tell him.”

“Yeah. Okay. Right. Right - that’s what I’ll tell him. Just - … just put the scalpel down. I’ll tell him. I promise I’ll tell him. He’ll never know you’re here.”

“No, he won’t.”

“Fuck - that’s a lot of blood - Blondie, come on, please, you don’t have to do this, I’ll just leave-”

“I don’t trust you. I don’t trust him.”

“You can! You can trust me - Anders, please don’t-”

“...I’m sorry, Varric.”

Notes:

Fanart
Anders Apologizing by a-charaid.

Chapter 160: Don't Forget The Coffee

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter. All of the comments are very motivating in keeping the story going!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 17 Ferventis Late Morning
Ferelden: Vigil’s Keep

Varric left.

The thick haze of blood magic faded after the spell took hold, and Varric had left the infirmary in a daze. He left the inner courtyard, headed down the steps to the outer courtyard, and stopped at the stables. He saddled and mounted his horse, and rode off from Vigil’s Keep without a backwards glance. Bianca, he’d lost to a storm on the boat ride over. Anders, he hadn’t found despite all of his searching. Justice waited until he faded from sight before going back to the infirmary.

He healed their casting cut, cleaned and put away the scalpel, and then set about tidying up the infirmary. Scrubbing spilled blood from the floor, sweeping up broken retorts, gathering the shattered halves of Bianca and wondering what to do with the ruined crossbow. It didn’t serve them. It never had. It never would.

Justice tossed it into a calcinator and burnt it down to ash, and was in the process of sweeping when Finn returned. His pale skin was a bright beet red to match his hair - either from anger or exercise or both.

“You-!” Finn puffed up his chest. He took one furious step forward, shook his finger at him, and then took one nervous step back before Justice could even react. “You have no right to kick me out of my own infirmary! You - you - I am not the same apprentice you tormented! I am Kinloch Hold’s Ambassador and the finest linguist and foremost expert on ancient Tevinter history and I will not -”

Justice set up aside the broom he was using, and Finn tripped over his own feet retreating from him.

“-I will not be treated in such a fashion!” Finn continued, eyeing him nervously. “Now I may not be as formidable a spirit healer-”

“Wisp healer,” Anders said under his breath.

“You!” Finn hopped forward a pace. “You are not in charge of this infirmary.”

“You’re right,” Anders said. “Sorry about that.”

“You-... what?”

“Take it easy, Flora,” Anders clapped him on the shoulder and left.

“It’s Finn!” Finn yelled after him.

The infirmary was in the inner courtyard, alongside a dozen other buildings, and not a far walk from the entrance to the castle. Anders made it through the portcullis, but collapsed before he reached the halls. The well worn granite steps were nowhere near as endless as the crooked sandstone steps of Kirkwall, but they felt just as insurmountable. Anders’ hands were shaking, and his breath came in shallow, staccato gasps when it came at all.

He was gone. Varric was gone. They were safe. They were safe here - free of Hawke - at Vigil’s Keep - with each other - with their magic. No one could touch them. No one could hurt them. No one could hunt them. No one could take them back to cold cells and locked rooms and baned blood and beaten bodies. They were safe, they were safe, they were safe.

Breathe. They just had to breathe.

They breathed. Their world narrowed down to inhales and exhales, and slowly reshaped itself one piece at a time. The hard stone stairs on which they sat. The bite of their nails digging into their scalp. The sun warming their freckled skin. The sweat rolling down their sides. The cotton stretched across their bent knees. The steady pulse of their heart as it relaxed and they recovered.

They recovered.

Anders - or Justice - or someone stood up and took another deep breath. He was fine. He was safe. Justice kept him safe. His magic - their magic - blood magic - kept them safe. Magic no one could take from them. Magic Amell had taught them-

“The coffee!” Anders bolted up the stairs.

The Vigil was finally awake, soldiers, servants, nobles and wardens wandering through the halls and darting out of his way. Anders ran to the kitchen, grabbed two mugs of coffee from a scullery maid, and stuffed as many muffins as he could fit under his arm. Ignoring the looks he got for it, he hurried back up to Amell’s room and kicked at the door for an embarrassingly long time before he realized Amell must have left.

Well... shit.

Anders checked the grand hall, and the slowly filling banquet tables, but Amell wasn’t there either. Desperate as he was, Anders wasn’t sure he was prepared to keep running through the halls of Vigil’s Keep looking for him. Anders sat at a banquet table with his two cups of coffee and his too-many muffins, practicing his sighs until Tamarel and Ailsa joined him.

“Justice,” Tamarel guessed wrong, sliding onto the bench beside him and stealing Amell’s coffee and a muffin. “Waiting for me?”

“No,” Anders said.

“Tam, behave,” Ailsa said, sitting across from him.

“Don’t be jealous,” Tamarel tossed half her stolen muffin to the mage, who caught it with a flare of telekinesis. “You know I love to share.”

“He’s not interested,” Ailsa said, taking a bite.

“He’s playing hard to get,” Tamarel countered.

“He is spoken for,” Justice said.

“Oh?” Ailsa leaned across the table, a few strands of silver hair slipping free of her bun to frame her face and mirthful smile. “Who? Anders or Justice?”

“I’m telling you, it’s a threefer,” Tamarel insisted. “If one’s taken both are.”

“Not necessarily,” Ailsa argued. “Though I have been meaning to ask: I’ve never heard of a spirit pursuing more than one virtue.”

“I do not,” Justice said.

“What are you pursuing with your poetry?” Ailsa countered. “For a spirit of Justice there seems to be a lot of Love in your life.”

“Perhaps,” Justice allotted. There was some justice there - when the love was deserved - when it was equitable, when it was reciprocated, when it was borne of the respect of equals. When one soul balanced another. When they found an equilibrium between them.

“So who has yours?” Ailsa asked.

“I do not believe it is for me to say,” Justice said. If Anders could not say it then Justice should not be the one to say it for him.

“Bored now,” Tamarel decided, taking a long swig of Amell’s coffee before hopping off the bench. “We’re heading to the Wending for a hunt, you in?”

“No, thank you,” Justice said. “I wish you good hunting.”

“Maybe we should be wishing you that, yeah?” Tamarel elbowed him. “Good luck, Love.”

Justice flexed his hands. It was a virtue. Tamarel meant it only for a virtue. Not for a nickname, long since abandoned and spoken with anything but the emotion behind it.

Ailsa traded places with her when she left, sitting backwards on the bench, crystalline elbows clicking when she leaned against the table. “Forgive me my curiosity?”

“I welcome it,” Justice said.

“Can you pursue other virtues?” Ailsa asked. “Love? Compassion? Courage? Do you find some justice in them or seek them out simply for their own sake?”

“I seek them out for mine,” Justice explained. “Justice is not a virtue, it is an ideal, and it cannot be pursued without compassion or courage, wisdom or perseverance.”

“Someone should tell the magistrates,” Ailsa joked.

“I have not seen Amell use them,” Justice said, though he supposed there may have been lesser courts and magistrates in Amaranthine under the Bann. Perhaps he should ask.

“I take it you watched him hold court last month?” Ailsa deduced. “What did you think?”

“I found it virtuous.”

“You sound like you admire him.”

“Perhaps.”

“Hm,” Ailsa hummed, taking another bite of her muffin. “I was in Tevinter for the Battle of Amaranthine, but I’ve heard the Heroes of Haring. Some versions leave out a few things. Like how the mage who sacrificed himself for the city was the Commander’s lover.”

“He was.”

“Was or is?” Ailsa raised a curious eyebrow.

“I do not believe that is for me to say,” While their affection for one another seemed apparent, acting on that affection was another matter, and Justice couldn’t say if they ever would.

“They don’t say the same about Kristoff,” Ailsa pointed out.

“Perhaps not,” Justice allotted.

“How do you feel about that?”

“I am Anders,” Justice said. “I feel as he does and he feels as I do.”

Ailsa finished her stolen muffin, and dusted off her hands. “Do you two always drink two cups of coffee, or was the other one for him?”

“It is a special day,” Justice explained.

“How so?”

“It is special to Anders,” Justice corrected himself. It was hard to distinguish between what had happened to Anders or Justice before they had been Anders and Justice. “Today is the day of his conscription.”

“It is?” Ailsa asked eagerly. “Why didn’t you say anything? We would have done something! What do you drink? We should start you a Ritewine.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Grey Whiskey? Conscription Ale?” Ailsa fought with her robes, and pulled a flask from her sleeve to hand to him. Etched into the metal were the words: Vintage: Warden Ailsa. Don’t go quiet. Justice handed it back, and it vanished inside her sleeve once more. “It’s a custom. Maybe it’s just the Commander’s custom. My company in Tevinter never followed it, but the Commander has us keep a flask and keep it going with whatever we’re drinking for the day.”

“We do not often drink,” Justice said.

“It doesn’t have to be alcohol,” Ailsa assured him. “Kondrat’s isn’t. What should we start you with? We’ll get you a flask.”

“Our favorite would offend,” Justice warned her.

“How could it?”

“Aqua Magus.”

“We don’t have to share,” Ailsa smiled for the mention of the lyrium-infused spirits.

“Thank you. We would be grateful,” Justice rolled his fingers along their coffee cup, still untouched, and felt a wave of anxiety at how long they’d spent sitting still, their promise to Amell still unfulfilled. “Do you know where we might find the Commander?”

“He doesn’t normally join us on the weekends,” Ailsa said. “Or ever this early. If he’s not in his chambers, did you try the Arcane Advisor?”

“You are referring to Morrigan?” Justice guessed. It seemed a likely place for Amell to have gone, but it was not their place. “We have no wish to come between him and his family.”

“Maybe you wouldn't. Rumor is he entertains the occasional noble, but in all the time I've been here, I've never seen him court anyone. I used to wonder why, but then I asked him why he doesn't have the minstrels play the version of the Heroes of Haring that includes his love for you. He said they couldn't do it justice.”

Ailsa left. Justice went back to the kitchens for fresh coffee and a proper breakfast tray, and carried them back upstairs. He tried Amell’s chambers once again, and met with silence once again, and then went to Morrigan's chambers and knocked there. A moment later and the door opened seemingly of its own accord until Justice glanced down at the one who’d opened it.

“... Good morrow,” Justice ventured.

Kieran stared up at him with unblinking, unfailingly red eyes, his raven hair braided with a fresh ribbon to match his father’s. “Father falls for you,” He said. Creepy, but… he really did remind them of Amell.

“Is he here?” Anders asked.

“Father!” Kieran ran back into the room. “A Warden for you!”

The room was warm. Rugs and tapestries woven with images of the Korcari Wilds decorated the floors, hung from the walls, and were draped over furniture. The room sang with arcane energy, divided into sections that served for sleeping or sitting, shared between mother and son. One massive portrayal of a dragon rising from the ruins of Ostagar was draped over what might have been a statue or a mirror in the far corner, opposite a reading nook where scrolls and tomes spilled messily from their shelves and onto the floor.

Amell sat at a table with Morrigan, drinking coffee Anders had taken too long to get him. He’d changed from his slacks into plain black trousers and a plain white tunic, the bit of red in his hair and his eyes the only color to him. He looked to have woken up, though Morrigan hadn’t. She huddled under her robe, a shade of sage to match the woven woods around her.

“And now he comes to my room,” Morrigan sighed, gold eyes so bright and piercing he could see them from a distance. “Shall I have the servants fetch an extra pillow for him as well?”

“Make sure they’re down,” Anders joked. “I can’t stand feathers - quills prodding you in the middle of the night? No thank you.”

“Yes, what worse way to wake up than to a prick?” Morrigan frowned. Kieran climbed back into a chair beside her, and cradled what looked to be a cup of warm milk in place of coffee. “Amell?”

“Did you want to join us?” Amell asked.

No. Yes. Yes and no. Anders wanted to be with Amell, but he didn’t want to come between Amell and the people he was already with. Life hadn’t stopped for the Vigil just because Anders had left it. Things had changed. For everyone. Amell had Morrigan and Kieran. Oghren had his wife Felsi and his son Amell. Nathaniel had his sister Delilah and his nephew Sigurd. Velanna had her sister Seranni. They all had each other and the years they’d spent together.

Anders felt like an extra piece to a puzzle someone had finished without him.

“Anders…?” Amell prompted, with no doubt as to whether he was Anders or whether he was Justice or whether he was both. Amell could tell. Amell could see them - really see them - where no one else could, and he seemed to want them here.

“That’d be great,” Anders said.

“Ugh,” Morrigan groaned.

“I brought you coffee,” Anders set the tray he was carrying on the table. “And breakfast.”

“All things he has already,” Morrigan rolled her eyes. “Next you will bring him another son.”

“I’ll do my best.” Anders joked, sitting as far from Morrigan as possible without taking the chair and fleeing the room with it.

“You did it wrong,” Kieran said, standing up on his chair to grab the tray and drag it across the table. He rearranged it in front of Amell, and tapped the plate and then the mug with a fork. “Scone. Coffee. Fork on the left.”

“Thank you, Kieran,” Amell said.

Kieran sat back in his chair and fidgeted with his braid. “...Can I have the scone, please, Father?”

“Why tell him he had it if you intended to steal it, you silly boy?” Morrigan asked.

“I’m not stealing!” Kieran protested.

“You can steal it,” Amell said.

“From the Dark Wolf himself,” Morrigan hummed. “A true thief.”

“We should write to Couldry,” Amell smiled in a way that seemed to imply he was joking, but Anders had no idea what they were joking about. He felt almost painfully othered, but forced himself to weather it, eating the scone he’d brought for himself and drinking his coffee, chiming in with a joke when he could until breakfast was over.

Anders followed Amell out into the hall afterwards, kicking himself. He’d forgotten all about the coffee, set up breakfast wrong, interrupted Amell’s time with his family, and all but ruined the day before it even started. So much for their anniversary. So much for proving he’d changed. So much for proving he thought about Amell as much as he said he did.

This was fixable. This was fine. Anders couldn’t ruin everything in an hour. Amell wasn’t acting like he’d ruined anything, but he might have just been being polite around his family. Except his family wasn’t around now, and Amell still didn’t look angry, or disappointed, or much of anything really. He looked as enigmatic as always when he said, “Join me for a walk?”

“Where are we walking?” Anders asked.

“You decide,” Amell shrugged, wrapping a hand around his arm. He didn’t need a guide. Anders might not have known everything about what Amell needed since he’d lost his sight, but he knew that. He ran the fingers of his free hand over Amell’s knuckles, and was rewarded with a squeeze that made him feel like a giddy teenager.

Anders picked a random direction and set off through the castle halls. “So, hey, sorry about that in there.”

“About what?” Amell asked.

“Breakfast,” Anders explained. “I’ll get the hang of it. If you want me to get the hang of it.”

“I don’t expect you to know everything, Anders,” Amell said. “If I need your help, I’ll ask for it.”

That didn’t sound like the Amell Anders remembered. Five years really was a long time. “I’m sorry I was late with the coffee.”

“I have to talk to you about that, actually,” Amell said.

“Do you, though?” Anders half-joked.

“Finn came to see me,” Amell said.

Of course he did. Of fucking course he did. Maker, Anders didn’t want to talk about this, but he might not have a choice. “He mentioned he might do that.”

“Please don’t make Finn come to see me,” Amell said.

Oh thank fuck. Anders laughed away the nervous energy he’d pent up through breakfast. “Flora’s not that bad,” Anders lied.

“You heard that nickname?” Amell asked.

“I made it up."

Amell looked confused. “No you didn’t.”

“What do you mean no I didn’t?”

“I did,” Amell said. “You weren’t even at the Circle when everyone started calling him that.”

“Why?” Anders laughed. “I know he’s annoying, but did he really deserve the nickname? You know the other apprentices put rashvine in his robes, right?”

“Don’t take this from me,” Amell said.

“Okay, okay,” Anders chuckled. Amell squeezed his arm, the slightest smile on his lips, and for a moment Anders felt like maybe talking to him wouldn’t be so bad. “So… what did Finn come to see you about?”

“I wasn’t listening.”

“You liar,” Anders grinned.

“He said you kicked him out of his infirmary - please don’t do that again - and that you had a friend in from Kirkwall.”

“That’s not strictly accurate,” Anders said.

“That you kicked him out or that you had a friend?” Amell asked.

“Oh, no, I kicked him out, but it wasn’t to talk to a friend…” Deep breaths. A few deep breaths and Anders could talk about it. He could talk to Amell about it. He could talk to Amell about anything. Amell wasn’t mad. He wasn’t mad. He was just listening, holding his arm while they wandered the halls, their shoulders grazing every few steps. He was safe. They were safe. “You remember Varric? Varric Tethras? I think you have a few of his books in the library.”

“I remember,” Amell said.

“He came to tell me about Hawke,” Anders said, hating the foul taste his name left in his mouth. It tasted bitter. It tasted like bane. “He wants me to come back to Kirkwall.”

“What did you say?” Amell asked, and Anders hated that he had to.

“No,” Anders said firmly. “I’m not going back. I’m never going back.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. I wish I’d never left. This place is home,” And then, even though he probably shouldn’t have, Anders added: “You’re home. I’m staying here as long as you let me.”

“...You can stay as long as you want,” Amell promised.

“Forever’s a long time,” Anders warned him.

“Anders, even if you don’t want to go back to Kirkwall, what about your cause?” Amell asked. “I thought you were committed to the plight of mages.”

Anders hadn’t thought about the plight of mages in months. He was a mage, and he had his own plight, and that had to count for something, but on some level Amell was right. He couldn’t just give up on it because he’d given up on Kirkwall. “I can do that here, can’t I? You said I can still write my manifesto, and there has to be plenty of work to make sure mages keep the freedoms they’ve won here. I know they’re not used to competition, but I doubt the Mage’s Collective vanished as soon as you freed the Circles.”

“They didn’t,” Amell allotted.

“Okay,” Anders said. “So I’m staying.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“Of course it is.”

Anders hadn’t put much thought into where they were walking - the way he didn’t put much thought into anything - and eventually they ended up on the battlements overlooking Vigil’s Keep. The ancient fortress was built beside the mouth of the Hafter, nestled between the Knotwood Hills and the Wending Woods. Up on the battlements, the inner courtyard was visible, the roofs of the armory, the infirmary, the cellars, and the outer courtyard beyond it. Further still, the farms that supplied the Vigil and the palisades that defended them, windmills and watchtowers giving way to the Feravel Plains in the far distance.

… It really did feel like home.

Amell just as much. He leaned against his shoulder, and Anders honestly couldn’t say how he’d wound up there, but he wasn’t about to move him. They sat with their legs hanging off the edge of the battlements, tempting fate, but when hadn’t they? Anders breathed in the scent of copper, an undercurrent of sweat from the summer sun, and only spoke so he wouldn’t fall asleep and roll right off the battlements. “So Kieran’s cute. Matching braids?”

“He insisted,” Amell said.

“You seem happy with him.”

“I am.”

Kieran’s prophecy came to mind, there on the battlements, Amell in his arms, and Anders almost believed it was true. “So... you know how you said he has visions?”

“Did he say something to you?” Amell guessed.

“A few things, actually,” Anders said. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

“Why not?” Amell asked.

Telling him was probably pushing it, but… “One was about you.”

“Was it?”

“It’s weighty.”

“You can be weighty.”

“He said you fall for me,” Anders said.

Amell didn’t look particularly shocked by the prophecy. He considered it for a moment and said, “I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

“I’m serious,” Anders insisted. “That’s what he said. You fall for me. He said the sky falls for me too, but that one just sounds made up.”

Amell exhaled bemusedly. It wasn’t quite a laugh, but Anders was getting there. “I fell for you a long time ago.”

“Maybe you fall for me again.”

“Maybe.”

Anders set a tentative hand on Amell’s shoulder and caressed his arm. “You remember how I used to be touchy, not feely?”

“I remember.”

“I think I’m over that,” Anders said.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You’re touching me an awful lot in that case.”

“Sorry-” Anders took his hand off, and Amell reached blindly over his shoulder for it. Anders let him find it, and Amell set it back to his arm. “Well now I’m getting mixed messages.”

“I was just kidding, Anders,” Amell promised.

Anders set his fingers beneath Amell’s jaw, and gently turned his head to face him. The deep circles beneath his eyes made him seem perpetually tired, but there was a genuine gentleness in them Anders hadn’t known in years. “... You never said if I could kiss you.”

“... I guess I didn’t,” Amell said.

“... Can I?”

“Anders, when I said you were my Calling, I meant it,” Amell said. “I’ve died a thousand deaths for you and I’d die a thousand more, but I can’t keep dying alone.”

“I don’t want that. I don’t ever want that. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to be the thing that buries you,” Anders mapped his face, fingers tracing along the ridge of his brow and sliding back into his hair. “I want to be the thing that brings you back.”

“He said to the necromancer,” Amell joked.

“Well… you can’t spell it without romance, right?” Anders exhaled bemusedly, but he was too lost in him to laugh. “That’s a real question, I’m shit at spelling.”

“... you’re perfect.”

“No I’m not," Anders said, but on some level he knew Amell already knew that.

“... and Justice?”

“It’s Anders," Anders joked.

“Is it?" Amell asked. "I know you have friends in the Wardens who only think of you as Justice.”

“... Well…" Anders floundered, but he didn't have a defense. "Okay, yes, but-... I’m still me.”

“You’re more than that now,” Amell said.

“You didn’t care last year," Anders argued. Amell had said he would kiss him then. Granted, he'd said it the same day Anders had shown up and broken his heart, and then never again, but he'd said it. Kissing aside, they'd more or less had sex every night Anders had worn his ring. Magic mutual masturbation sex from across the sea, but Anders wasn't picky.

“I should have," Amell said. "I don’t want half of you, Anders.”

“He doesn’t mind," Anders said. Amell was safe. They knew he was safe. They’d been hurt enough to know they'd never let themselves be hurt again. Amell might break his heart but only veilfire would ever break his skin.

“I might," Amell found one of his hands, and pressed soft lips to his knuckles. "Anders-... I can’t. I’m sorry. My heart isn't broken; I am. I love you, but I think before I love you, I should know you, and I think you should know me too.”

"I want that," Anders said thickly, "Maker, I want that so bad."

"It’s Amell," Amell joked.

Anders laughed, "Can I hug you at least?"

"It feels like you already are," Amell said.

"Andraste's ashes, Amell, you're not at court, just say yes or no."

"You can hug me," Amell relented.

Anders pulled him flush against his side, an arm around his waist, his forehead resting on Amell's shoulder. "That still wasn’t a yes,” Anders pointed out.

“Well…” Amell felt for his hair and breathed him in when he found it, the movement of his lips across his forehead almost like a kiss. “I can’t say yes to everything.”

“I won’t make you,” Anders promised.

Anders didn’t remember falling asleep, but he must have, under the midday sun on the seventeenth of Justinian, because he woke up on Amell’s shoulder. Anders was slouched against him, baked by the sun, a kink in his neck and a cramp in his leg. “... Um,” Anders said tactfully.

“You fell asleep,” Amell said, leaning back on his arms to hold them both up, the Fade flowing through his arms to help him keep the pose.

“You could have woken me up, you know,” Anders dragged himself away from the edge of the battlements and to his feet, and took Amell’s arm to help him do the same. “Get revenge.”

“I don’t want revenge,” Amell said.

“What do you want?” Anders asked, leading him back into the Vigil.

“Right now?” Amell asked. “... I was leaning towards another cup of coffee.”

“You could have just slept with me,” Anders joked.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Amell said.

Anders went back downstairs to the kitchens and shared another cup of coffee with him, and from there the day came apart. Wardens joined them, and split their focus from each other, and eventually Amell’s responsibilities caught up with him. Amell invited him back to his quarters that evening, and Anders spent the entire day thinking about it, and all the reasons Amell could want him there.

Okay, so maybe he really only thought about one reason Amell could want him there, but Anders couldn’t help it. The way Amell touched him was haunting. His hands wandered over his body like he wanted to learn it all over again. Maker, Anders wanted him to learn it. He couldn’t imagine trusting anyone else to learn it, but Amell could. If he was just slow. If he was just gentle. If he was just everything he’d ever been.

Anders knocked on the door to his room that evening. Amell hadn’t changed, save to undo his braid for the night, and waved him inside the pitch dark room. Anders summoned a ball of magelight, but he didn’t trust himself to sit. He stood in the center of the room, rocking on the balls of his feet. “So… I’m here. Why am I here again?”

“I have something for you,” Amell explained.

Don’t ask if it’s his dick. “Is it your staff?”

Son of a bitch.

“Well, you did lose yours,” Amell reminded him.

“Right… I guess I should explain how that happened,” Anders said. “You see, there were… crows.”

“Crows?” Amell raised an eyebrow at him.

“Antivan Crows. Dozens of them. They stole it right out from under me. I think they had a contract on it. I was lucky to escape with my life.”

“Hmm.”

“I dropped it,” Anders confessed. “During a templar raid.”

“It is a staff,” Amell said.

“Wait-... seriously?”

“I was going to wait until you joined us on an expedition, but if you’re staying…”

“I’m staying,” Anders surged forward to sweep up his hands. “I’m staying.”

“It’s on the desk,” Amell squeezed his hands.

True to form, the staff was set across his scribe’s desk. The shaft was a deep black nevarrite with a violet sheen, wrapped in hardened gurgut leather. The head of the staff was a cage of silverite, a brilliant sphere of sapphire pulsing like a heart at its center, tendrils of lyrium growing out through the silverite like veins.

“This is…” Anders picked up the staff. It crackled with lightning, and gave a faintly audible hum when touched: a wistful tune, as if it were thinking of a faraway or forgotten place. Runes were inscribed all along the cage, but Anders couldn’t read the language they were written in. Tevene, maybe. “You didn’t have to do this. You could have just snapped a branch off a tree and called it a day.”

“You mentioned lyrium aligns you and Justice,” Amell said.

Lyrium. Pure blue lyrium. Something to bring them together when the world had only ever tried to keep them apart. Anders swallowed past the lump in his throat and traced along the runes. “What do these say? The runes?”

Amell joined him at the desk, and walked a hand across its surface until he found the staff. He took one of Anders’ hands, and laced their fingers together to trace over the runes.

“There’s strength in absence,” Amell read. Amell probably had memorized. “Absence of weakness and of limitation. Absence of caution and of mercy. The Void has always been within.”

Absence of sight, Anders thought, lost in the Void within his eyes. “... What do you think I should call it?”

“Today.”

Notes:

Fanart
Amell and Kieran as portrayed by Keiserollart.

Chapter 161: Be Gentle

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I thought I would try something a little different with this chapter. I hope you like it!

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 25 Ferventis Evening
Ferelden: Vigil’s Keep

Wouldn’t you know it, Anders still liked Amell even when he was just spending time with him. Anders didn’t need to know more about Amell to know he cared about him, but Amell seemed to think he did, so Anders got to know him. Amell hadn’t changed. He was still the same man, the same mage, the same maleficar Anders remembered.

It had never been easy to get Amell to talk about himself, and for some reason that didn’t change even when it was Amell’s idea. Whenever Anders asked him one question, Amell would answer a different one, or turn it around on him. Anders was lucky if he noticed, and more often than not it took hours to call him out on it.

Amell didn’t even seem to realize he was doing it. It was ingrained in him after all the time he’d spent at court, first as the Commander, then as an arl, and then as the Chancellor. Anders had never paid so much attention to someone before in his life, trying to pry the past five years out of Amell without him defaulting to talk about the arling or the wardens, but eventually Anders got the gist.

Amell had returned to Vigil’s Keep, ousted Leonie, and instated Nathaniel as Warden-Constable in her stead. Almost immediately afterwards, they’d left Vigil’s Keep for a cloister in Highever for those with visual impairments, and encountered Teyrn Fergus Cousland along the road being harassed by local banditry. Nathaniel had saved him, and Fergus had been generous ever since.

Dumat had been a gift from Fergus. One that inspired Amell to start up kennels and stables for the sightless, the hard of hearing, and the physically impaired. With so much of the country ravaged by Blight and Civil War, the people saw Amell as the Hero of Ferelden all over again. The kennels were manned by the Wolves - the ex-werewolves Amell had saved during the Blight that Anders still had trouble believing existed even after meeting one - at Soldier’s Peak.

Much like Vigil’s Keep, Soldier’s Peak was a city unto itself, a veritable fortress in the Tarcaisne Mountains on the border of the Arling of Amaranthine and the Teyrnir of Highever. More than a dozen Grey Wardens were stationed there, including Avernus the Ancient Archivist, along with the Wolves and a family of traders. Amell had spent some time getting the kennels established, and shortly thereafter, Morrigan had come back into his life and Kieran along with her.

Both of them had changed his life just a few short months after Anders had left it, but Morrigan was still more or less a mystery. Amell didn’t think it was his place to share her plans, but her return to Ferelden was an ordeal that had evidently involved Oghren, Finn, his alleged Dalish lover Ariane, copious amounts of blood magic, a fight with a Varterral, and an expedition to the Deep Roads.

The Wardens had gone on a few other expeditions into the Deep Roads, Kal’Hirol and Amgarrak among them. Kal'Hirol had gone great. Amgarrak not so much. There was no telling how many Harvesters they’d unleashed, and their scouts were constantly combing through reports from all over Thedas for any hint of one.

Meanwhile, freeholders flooded into the Blackmarsh, both for the promise of land and to swear fealty to the Hero of Ferelden over their own arls and banns. The slighted nobles had complained to the King, and the resulting diplomatic incident and/or screaming match had pushed Amell into ousting Arl Eamon as Ferelden’s Chancellor and taking his place.

Of course, the surge in freeholders meant a surge in the fisheries, and the Blackmarsh had become a whole village, bustling with people, with boats and ships arriving daily at the port city, and recently apostates from other countries had been immigrating to the marshland-

“You’re doing it again.”

“What am I doing?”

“Talking about the arling. We’re supposed to be talking about you, remember?”

“I am the Arl, Anders.”

“Am I getting to know the Arl or am I getting to know Amell?”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. ...I thought this would be easier.”

“... You can trust me, you know. I’m not going to run for the hills if you tell me Avernus is actually up at Soldier’s Peak sacrificing kittens and virgins or something. I mean, I might run up there to stop it, but I’ll come back and give you an earful afterwards.”

“No, no, Avernus’ research is ethical.”

“See the way you say that makes me think it’s really not.”

“... He used to sacrifice wardens.”

“... Fun.”

“He doesn’t now.”

“Good to know.”

“I told you he was over two centuries old. It came with a cost, but with his research he learned how to extend his lifespan and how to draw power from the taint. It’s blood magic not even demons can counter - I can’t tell you how invaluable it’s been - the things we’ve done with it. It doesn’t take a mage to utilize and-... it’s ethical now.”

“What does ethical mean?”

“…”

“Really not making the strongest case here, Creepy. Listen, I promise, alright? I’m not going anywhere. If I disagree with something you’re doing, I won’t leave you, I'll just tell you, and we'll work it out.”

“And if I am sacrificing kittens and virgins?”

“Please tell me you’re not doing that.”

“No, it’s-... you can’t share this with anyone.”

“Amell, really, you can trust me. I don’t even tell myself my own secrets. I thought Nate and Velanna were dead for three years, remember?”

“We send him darkspawn.”

“Well that’s… not bad. Is it? Is that bad? Why am I asking if that’s bad? They’re darkspawn. They’re bad, right?”

“It’s complicated. They have the capacity to be more than darkspawn if they’re awakened.”

“Awakened? Like the ones that used to talk? Why would anyone want to awaken them? They’re evil. If they’re awakened, they’re just awakened evil.”

“I don’t know if that’s true.”

“Do you not remember the attack on the Vigil? Kal’Hirol? The Silverite Mines? Because I do, and they were pretty evil then, so unless they had a sudden change of heart-...”

“One did.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. They call themself the Messenger. You might have met them. I was told they warned us of the attack on the Vigil and helped us defeat the Mother. They lived in the Wending Woods for a time, helping travelers along the road, but they spread blight sickness. “

“You didn’t just let them stay there, did you? You know what blight sickness does to people. You remember Nate’s governess.”

“I know. I sent them to Weisshaupt for study, but there are others. The Seeker. The Prankster. They’re people, Anders. They pick names for themselves.”

“See, I’m people. You’re people. Darkspawn? Not people. I think you’re good here.”

“What does Justice think?”

“I am Justice. Darkspawn are a cancer to be cut from the world. All of them are irredeemable fiends - awakened or not.“

“Would you ever speak with one?”

“To what end?“

“To see if you feel the same way afterwards.”

“Why do you want me to feel any other way? I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong sending darkspawn to Avernus or Weisshaupt for study, awakened or not. If anything I just want you to teach me whatever you learned from him. Blood magic that pulls from the taint and can’t be countered by demons sounds useful.”

“… It is useful.”

“Well there you go. Easy. What’s next? Some moral quandary over eating meat?”

“Fenley seems to think there is one.”

“Wait, seriously? He doesn’t eat meat?”

“Seriously.“

“… but he’s huge! He’s like the size of a qunari. What does he even eat?”

“Lots of bread, I think.”

“Make sure not to send him to Kirkwall, in that case. I think there was a whole year I ate nothing but rats and pigeons. … Why are you smiling?”

“It’s just-... still inspiring.”

“Eating rats? Really? Eating rats is inspiring? Amell, we have got to talk about this pedestal. Can you even hear me all the way up here?”

“You did what you needed to do to survive. Let me have this.”

“It was that or eat at the soup kitchens, and call me crazy, but I’d rather know what I’m eating and not who I’m eating.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

“… You could blame me a little. Have you ever-... Maker, I can’t believe I’m asking this-”

“Eaten someone?”

“Stop laughing! It’s a serious question! I’m serious - stop laughing at me!”

“I’m sorry - I’m trying -”

“You’re not trying very hard.”

“I swear I’m trying. No, I haven’t eaten anyone, Anders.”

“You’re an ass.”

“I’m sorry. What were we talking about?”

“You think eating rats is sexy but somehow I’m the one getting mocked here.”

“I’m not mocking you. Yes, maybe I think survival is sexy, but I don’t think you can begrudge me that.”

“Uhuh.”

“Are you pouting?”

“I’m not pouting.”

“You sound like you’re pouting.”

“Well I’m not. Tell me more about whatever you’ve going on with awakened darkspawn or whatever we were talking about.”

“We found Seranni with one.”

“I don’t like the sound of that. Please tell me she doesn’t fuck darkspawn.”

“…”

“Amell, you have to tell me she doesn’t fuck darkspawn. I’m going to lose my mind. I’m losing my mind. She doesn’t fuck darkspawn, does she? On the Maker, you tell me right now if she fucks darkspawn-”

“I don’t know!”

“How do you not know!?”

“I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know.”

“How do you not want to know!? There is nothing I’ve wanted to know more in my entire life. What- how-?”

“She was very fond of him.”

“Him? It’s a him? What is happening?”

“I don’t know how to explain.”

“There is no way I’m letting you get out of this one. Who is he? What is he? Is he a ghoul? I can forgive a ghoul. She’s a ghoul. If he’s a ghoul I’m okay. Andraste’s knickers, is he an ogre?”

“An ogre?”

“I mean if you have to pick one-”

“… is this a dick joke? Am I going to come out of this conversation feeling inadequate?”

“Okay, one, there’s no way that’s physically possible and I hate you for making me think about ogre dick-”

“You started this conversation-”

“And two, is he an ogre?”

“He’s not an ogre.”

“… Well now I'm a little disappointed.”

“He’s a hurlock. He calls himself the Seeker. He’s one of the Architect’s disciples.”

“The Architect?”

“It’s a long story.”

“It’s your story, right? I want to hear it.”

“The Architect is the one who kidnapped us in the Silverite Mines, five years ago. He needed our blood for a corrupted version of the Joining Ritual that awakens darkspawn. He claims to want peace between darkspawn and men, but his version of it is tainted. He’s tried twice to see an end to the Blights. The first time he tried to taint the whole of Thedas to turn everyone into ghouls so there’d be no need for war between them and darkspawn.”

“How do I not know this?”

“I didn’t even know it until I read the reports. He had help from some Grey Wardens who agreed with him, and Kinloch Hold’s old First Enchanter Remille. The last Warden-Commander before me, Duncan, managed to stop him, but he didn’t manage to kill him. Weisshaupt has sent three different expeditions trying to track the Architect down, but it wasn’t until a few years ago we finally managed to find him.”

“And you killed him, right?”

“He can’t die.”

“What do you mean he can’t die?”

“I mean he can’t die. He’s like an archdemon. He can possess anything that’s tainted. Ordinarily with an archdemon, if a Grey Warden delivers the final blow, the soul can’t pass through them and both are destroyed in the process. It doesn’t work that way with him.”

“How do you know?”

“… I tried.”

“You tried!? Wait - hold on - you tried knowing it would kill you?”

“Yes.”

“Why-... why-... what about Morrigan?”

“… what about Morrigan?”

“You said she gave you a ritual that let you defeat the archdemon without dying to it. Couldn’t you just use that on the Architect?”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a ritual that has to be prepared in advance and it’s-... painful.”

“More painful than dying?”

“After a fashion.”

“Maker’s breath… but you used it before?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“She asked me to use it. I don’t regret it, but I don’t know that I would ever use it again”

“What if I wanted you to?”

“You don’t know what it is.”

“I know it kept you alive and I happen to like you that way.”

“If you wanted me to use it, I’d consider it, but there wasn’t an opportunity, and I don’t know if it would even work on the Architect. The ritual lets you capture the soul of something.”

“And he doesn’t have one?”

“I don’t know if his can be contained. He let me kill him just to prove he couldn’t die.”

“Maker’s breath. So what happened to him?”

“Nothing. He’s still in the Deep Roads, awakening darkspawn, but the process drives most of them mad. He actually attempted his Joining Ritual on the Old God Urthemiel, to try and awaken him and free him from the Call, and ended up causing the Fifth Blight in the process.”

“You can’t just say words like that.”

“You did ask.”

“That’ll teach me. Should I expect any other world shattering revelations? Is it that kind of evening?”

“I think it’s a nice one.”

“We have got to do something about this no kissing rule if you’re going to keep looking at me like that.”

“Anders, I promise I’m not looking at you.”

“How many times are you going to tell that joke?”

“I thought it was funny.”

“You also thought Barkspawn was funny.”

“… it was funny.”

“… I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago. Ser Cumference?”

“Hey, that’s bloody brilliant. You’ve felt him, right? I dare you to come up with a better name for that fat bastard.”

“I think I would have given more thought to how that can be shortened.”

“I swear if you start calling my cat Ser Cum-”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah, I heard it, stop smiling.”

“Can I ask how you have him?”

“What do you mean?”

“You mentioned you can’t ride horses because of how they react to Justice and I’ve heard the mabari growl at dinner. What makes him different?”

“He can’t smell. He got mauled when he was a kitten and lost an eye and most of his nose. For a long time I thought he was the only animal I’d ever be able to be around but, you know, I’ve noticed Dumat doesn’t growl at me. I’ve been meaning to ask why that is.”

“Why would he?”

“Abomination?”

“… I hope you don’t think of yourself that way.”

“I mean I-... I am possessed. Don’t change the topic. You just said you know mabari hate me. Dumat’s a mabari. Ergo…”

“I’ve had Dumat since he was a puppy. He doesn’t have any aversions to magic.”

“I think this is a little different.”

“Is it? I have a summoning circle in my room, Anders, I think we both know how often I entertain spirits and demons.”

“Entertain, huh? Is that what we’re calling it?”

“Now who’s changing the topic?”

“I just-... Barkspawn died.”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“… yes it was.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I got him killed.”

“Eylon killed him. You killed Eylon. Nathan told me what happened.”

“… Did he tell you everything?”

“What do you mean?”

“I swear I didn’t mean for it to happen. I looked after him every day when you were gone. I took him everywhere; I got him food and water... I even talked to him everyday like he was a person.”

“Why are you telling me this, Anders? I know you did everything you could.”

“So you know how I said you could tell me anything? Do you think you could tell me that before I tell you this?”

“You can tell me anything.”

“I mind controlled him. After Justice and I joined, he kept trying to kill me, and we couldn’t get him to stop. Leonie threatened to send him to the kennels if I couldn’t control him, and I’d already lost Ser Pounce-a-Lot, and I was so terrified I’d lose him too-... I changed him so he wouldn’t feel threatened by me… by what I am. When Despair possessed Eylon, Barkspawn didn’t see him as a threat, and Eylon killed him. It was my fault. If I hadn’t-... he might have ran or fought or had a chance. … Amell? … Please say something.”

“Something.”

“… Can you say something else?”

“Something else.”

“… I’m sorry.”

“… I know.”

“Are you okay?”

“… Does anyone else know?”

“Nate and Velanna.”

“They never told me.”

“… Should I have told you?”

“Yes. Yes, you should have told me. Thank you for telling me.”

“I’m sorry. I know how much he meant to you. I tried to keep him safe.”

“I’m sure you did everything you could.”

“You don’t have to forgive me, you know.”

“I know.”

“Are you okay?”

“I think so.”

“… So… ogre dick, huh?”

“Subtle.”

“They’re really not. Really, though, do you want to talk about it?”

“Ogre dick?”

“Barkspawn. Everything I did. You can yell at me if you want.”

“I don’t want to yell at you. I understand why you did it. I might have done the same thing in your place. You might not have had to do it at all if I hadn’t left.”

“If it’s not my fault, it’s definitely not yours. I never should have blamed you for leaving when you found me in Kirkwall. You promised you’d come back and you did, and I shouldn’t have blamed you. I just missed you so much and I missed so much time with you and it just made me so angry-... I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

“… Thank you.”

“… Did I ever even apologize for that before?”

“… I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”

“Andraste’s ass, why do you like me again?”

“Is that a serious question?”

“No, so don’t start. I know I have a lot of lines, but I promise I’m not finishing. I just want to do this right this time.”

“So do I.”

“Is that why you asked about Justice?”

“He’s part of you.”

“I’m not used to people seeing him that way.”

“I do. Do you think I could talk to him?”

“You are talking to him. I don’t know how to explain it but it’s hard to tell where I end and he begins. Sometimes it feels like we’re one person and sometimes it feels like we’re two, but most of the time it’s something in between.”

“Is it right now?”

“… maybe not. … It’s hard to let go around you. I just-... I feel like we lost so much time. I don’t want to lose anymore.”

“I’m here, Anders.”

“… we enjoyed your judgments. You do what is right and you do not waver.”

“That’s reassuring, coming from a spirit of Justice.”

“Do you need the reassurance?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“You’re Anders as much as you are Justice. I can’t be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me.”

“Your love for each other is not meant for me.”

“Isn’t it? If you love him and you are him, shouldn’t you be a part of it?”

“Your love is not meant for me.”

“It could be.”

“… To what end?”

“Consent? Whatever there is between Anders and I involves you. You’re half of his soul and I want to love all of him.”

“I have no want for physical love.”

“There’s more than one kind of love.”

“You sound like Desire.”

“I’m sorry?”

“A friend from the Fade.”

“… you’re friends with a Desire demon?”

“They called themself Allure. They helped us learn more of our love for each other.”

“Do you not see a distinction between spirits and demons anymore? What happened between this year and last to change your mind?”

“Many things. Many demons. Allure. Fear. Audacity. Vengeance. Not all demons are malicious. They are but reflections of the many facets of mortals and there is beauty in all of them. Anders has shown me - in his rage, his despair, his fear. I told you once I loved his vices - I just did not think to love the manifestation of them in my own kind. It was unworthy of me.”

“… So Pride and Desire…?”

“What of them?”

“What do you think of them?”

“You’re asking for your eyes?”

“… Yes.”

“They are the eyes of a demon. You know this. You told Anders as much when you spoke of the deal you made for them. I cannot say why the truth aggrieved you so.”

“It’s complicated. The deal I made was with my simulacrum. Anyone who sees them sees what they expect to see.”

“I do not.”

“What do you mean?”

“I see them as they are. I can see the magic you speak of on them, but I can see through it.”

“… You can? … Can Anders?”

“Yes.”

“So he just-... he can just see them?”

“Yes? They look as he described. Were you unaware?”

“…”

“I have upset you.”

“I’ve upset myself.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Don’t tell Anders?”

“I am Anders.”

“I know.”

“We have never seen a demon or spirit with eyes like yours.”

“My simulacrum isn’t a demon or a spirit.”

“What else is there?”

“Her name is Xebenkeck.”

“I’ve not heard the name.”

“She’s a Forbidden One. One of the first demons who created blood magic. I found her in the Fade, at Soldier’s Peak, when Avernus was looking for ways to restore my sight. We made a pact that they would work when I needed them and that everyone who saw them would see what they expected to see. She never told me what they looked like…”

“I told you so.”

“Anders-...”

“I told you so. I told you I didn’t think you were a demon. I told you and you didn’t believe me!”

“I’m sorry.”

“… Honestly? I wouldn’t have believed me either. Not after everything I put you through. Seeing your real eyes doesn’t change that. I should have been better to you. I should have been thinking about you. Kirkwall just-... I’m glad I’m gone.”

“Tell me about it?”

“Kirkwall? Where do I start? It’s called the City of Chains for a reason. The Veil was so thin I could hear the souls of the dead crying out for justice just walking down the street. My last few months there-...”

“… whatever it is you can tell me.”

“You don’t have to hold my hand while I do it. Not literally, at least.”

“I like your hands.”

“Do you like any other part of me?”

“Your legs. Your arms. Your nose”.

“Maker’s breath, I love your hands. Is that-... is that okay? I know you have to touch me-”

“I don’t have to touch you.”

“You’re making not kissing you really hard right now.”

“Did you want me to stop touching you?”

“No.”

“You seemed anxious.”

“I am.”

“You can talk to me.”

“I was hallucinating. The last few months. The blackouts, the hallucinations, the stress... I hated it there.”

“I’m glad you left.”

“So am I. I feel like I’ve been like this ever since I left Ferelden. Everything makes me so paranoid. You remember how you said you needed the new compound in Kirkwall because one of your wardens got robbed the last time they stayed at an inn?”

“I’m guessing that was you?”

“What gave it away?”

“Bringing it up?”

“I thought you were dead. I thought Leonie had sent someone after me. I had a friend raid his room for any mention of me. I guess I should have told them to look for your signature. I could have come back years ago. I did so many things in that city I regret.”

“Do you want to tell me about them?”

“… tell me I can tell you anything again?”

“You can tell me anything.”

“I killed my friend. It was an accident. I blacked out, and when I woke up, he was dead. ...His name was Bardel. He was a good man. Honorable. Valorous. I never meant-...”

“Are you sure you killed him?”

“I’m sure. … Thanks. For asking. Sometimes I’m still not sure what’s real and what’s not. I still wake up in the middle of the night and I see-...I just see things.”

“You can come talk to me when that happens.”

“At night?”

“I’m normally up late in the parlor anyway.”

“We’re kind of up late now, aren’t we?”

“Did you want to head to bed?”

“Well, if you’re going to twist my arm…”

“One week wasn’t exactly what I meant when I said we should get to know each other.”

“It’s been eight days, actually.”

“Well, in that case-... I’m kidding!”

“You don’t have to be.”

“I am, though.”

“Do I have to get off your lap if you’re kidding?”

“… not right this second.”

“Maker’s breath, you smell amazing.”

“I spent all day sweating in the yard.”

“Well, do it again tomorrow.”

“I’ll try. ...What are you wearing?”

“More than I’d like to be.”

“You’re relentless.”

“Warden stamina, remember?... I'll stop, if you want. I’m not trying to pressure you, I’m just-... I don’t know, I guess I’m just having fun.”

“You’re not pressuring me. I don’t want you to stop having fun.”

“Well in that case I am wearing the finest Orlesian silk doublet in the deepest lavender you’ve ever seen, with a deep black Antivan leather corset over it. It makes everything pop. Eyes, hair, freckles, all of it. We’re talking a sovereign’s envy in gold. I look amazing, basically.”

“What are you really wearing?”

“An undyed tunic and some black trousers.”

“It sounds amazing.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Anything.”

“Have you really not been with anyone else?”

“I really haven’t.”

“Some people say you have.”

“You could just ask me instead of asking other people.”

“I’m asking you now, aren’t I?”

“Maybe not on my lap?”

“Moving.”

“I tried. I was with someone during the Blight. He was an Antivan Crow Loghain contracted to kill me, but he ended up helping me against the Blight instead, for a few months before he left for Antiva. He came back… three years ago? He stayed for around a month, but we couldn’t make it work.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I’m all grown up. I can handle complicated now.”

“I couldn’t talk to him.”

“About what?”

“Anything. ...I couldn’t be that open.”

“… You’re talking to me.”

“I’m trying to.”

“You don’t have to tell me everything tonight, you know. We have to keep some of the mystery alive.”

“Thank you.”

“… There’s some things I still can’t tell you either.”

“Tell me when you’re ready to tell me.”

“I want to be ready. I really do, I’m just-... not.”

“Then you’re not. Be gentle with yourself.”

“… be gentle with me.”

“Always.”

Chapter 162: The Harvest Part One

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 4 Solis Before Sunrise
Ferelden: Vigil’s Keep

“Get up, you blighters!” Oghren bellowed, startling Anders awake and giving Ser Cumference a fit. The terror of a tabby bolted across the barracks and chased Fenley out of it.

“Fenley! Pantalons!” Martine called after him. The old Orlesian dug through Fenley’s chest for a pair of trousers and ran off in pursuit.

“It’s time for a harvest!” Oghren yelled, banging the butt of his greataxe against every bedpost he passed. “Who wants to die!?”

“We do!” Half the barracks yelled back, at varying levels of wakefulness.

“I don’t,” Anders groaned his way to sitting. Amell had more or less ruined his sleep schedule. Then again, it might have been more accurate to say Amell had fixed it. The first month at the Vigil, if nightmares or Fenley’s snoring plagued him, Anders weathered it by just not sleeping. Recently, he weathered it with Amell. Amell hadn’t been lying about staying up late, usually in the parlor or the solar, smoking and reading some raised text from one of his scribes.

Anders couldn’t begin to fathom reading something with his hands. The few times Anders had tried he’d been lucky to decipher a single word, much to Amell’s amusement. It was still nice, having somewhere to go, someone to talk to, some way to calm down before he went back to bed, and actually slept. Of course, that meant he also had to actually wake up.

“What’s going on?” Anders asked, to no answer. Half the barracks was already dressed by the time he even finished stretching.

“Let’s go die!” Oghren roared, pumping a fist into the air on his way out the door.

“Oghren, wait up!” Anders rolled out of his bunk and ran out into the hall. Unlike Fenley, he slept in his slacks and an oversized tunic, and also unlike Fenley, he didn’t come shuffling back in clutching his trousers over his crotch. “Wait! A harvest? Like a Harvester?”

“No, we’re going mushroom farming,” Oghren rolled his eyes, shouldering his greataxe. “Of course it’s a Harvester, Sparkles. Boss must think you’re pretty pretty cause you sure ain’t pretty smart. Don’t worry, I won’t tell him he’s wrong.”

“Seriously, a Harvester?” Anders pressed. “Where? When?”

“Seriously. Here. Now,” Oghren said. “You coming?”

“If you’re offering,” Anders joked.

“I’ll laugh when you’re funny,” Oghren sniffed and thumbed his nose. “Get dressed. We’re riding at the end of the hour and it ain’t that kinda party.”

Anders still didn’t have a horse to ride. He could always go as a crow, but he didn’t have armor beyond his coat that was made for transformation magic. If he was being honest, he’d forgotten all about it. He’d spent the past two months at Vigil’s Keep, and the only violence he’d known was the violence that had followed him from Kirkwall. He wasn’t prepared for a battle. He was barely prepared for breakfast.

Anders dressed in the armor he did have, and resolved to worry about the rest at the stables later. Leather chestpiece and trousers, silver-studded brigandine spaulders, leather boots and gloves, and a chainmail tabard. What else did he need? What else was he supposed to bring? His staff, obviously. Anders obviously needed his staff. He probably needed other things. What other things? He hadn’t been in a battle that wasn’t with templars in so long he couldn’t remember.

Armor. Staff. Armor. Staff. What else? There had to be something else.

“Time to die, shem,” Amethyne smacked his shoulder on her way out. She had her armor. She had her weapons. She also had a bandolier of bombs strapped to her chest, but Anders didn’t have any bombs. Anders didn’t know what else he had.

“Grimoire,” Ailsa appeared at his side. The old mage was dressed in a leather vest, the sleeves of her tunic as wide as they were long to accommodate her mutated arms, and the crystals emerging from her elbows. She was carrying her staff and a backpack, but it was anyone’s guess what was inside it.

“What?” Anders asked.

“I remember my first battle,” Ailsa said. “I was so nervous I forgot my staff.”

“This isn’t my first battle,” Anders said.

“Have you fought a Harvester before?”

“No.”

“This is your first battle,” Ailsa said. “Where’s your grimoire?”

“I don’t have one,” Hawke had burned one grimoire and kept the other.

“Your belt? Your satchel? Your blade? You’ll be healing, won’t you? You’ll need lyrium potions, stamina draughts, nature salves, poultices, bandages, swift salves…”

“Right, okay,” Anders grabbed what he had at his bunk and ran to the infirmary for the rest. His satchel was bloated by the time he was done, a burden for any horse and a death sentence for any crow, but he’d been sorry enough, and at this point he’d rather be safe. Anders hurried down to the stables in the outer courtyard, where servants and stablehands ran wild, saddling up the horses for their expedition.

A few wardens had already arrived and were strapping their things down to their mounts. Those with leather armor wore it, and those with metal strapped it to their horses for when they reached their destination. Anders probably should have been readying his own horse, but he didn’t have one. He couldn’t ride his nerves wherever they were going, which didn’t leave him a lot of options.

He was still wondering what to do when Velanna burst out of the ground beside him in a shower of roots and dirt. Anders did not scream. He just expressed his surprise in a calm and dignified fashion.

“Idiot,” Velanna rolled her eyes.

“Bitch,” Anders said. Velanna smacked the back of his thighs with her staff. It was a vicious thing of blackened metal, radiating frost magic as cold as the woman who wielded it, and it bloody hurt. A surge of restorative energy washed away the sting, and Anders joked, “If you’re going to spank me, the least you could do is cuddle me after.”

Velanna took another swing at him, and Anders learned how to dodge.

“You’re an idiot,” Velanna said.

“You’re running out of insults,” Anders countered.

“You give me too many reasons to insult you.”

“Ow,” Anders swooned, hand to his chest. “My feeling.”

“Take now, for instance,” Velanna’s gesture encompassed him from head to toe. In the very least, she could have narrowed it down for him. Anders was probably forgetting something, but at least he’d remembered pants before he’d fled the barracks. “You think to come with us and yet you have no means to do so.”

“I’ll just ride with Amell,” Anders decided.

“So you assume,” Velanna said. “So you always assume, where he is concerned, and so he always indulges.”

“Someone’s jealous,” Anders sang.

“You two are a mistake,” Velanna said. “You make each other weak.”

“Time for judgments already? It’s not even the end of the month.”

“You know it’s true. You’ve been gone for years, you insult him beyond measure, and now you’re barely back two months and already courting again? Weak. Both of you.”

That wasn’t weakness, that was strength. It would have been easy for Amell to give up on him, for Anders to give up on Amell, but Anders was trying - Maker, he was trying so hard - to be someone worth being with. And besides, they weren’t really courting each other, they were just… courting the idea of courting. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Lie to yourself if you must. I am no fool.”

“I’m so glad we’re friends again,” Anders rolled his eyes.

“So I should coddle you as he does?” Velanna demanded. “Have you any idea what we go to face?”

“This is a trick question,” Anders decided.

“You could never kill him,” Velanna said.

“That’s your job, isn’t it?” Anders asked, wondering when they’d started gendering Harvesters. “I’m the healer, in case you forgot.”

“Amell, you idiot,” Velanna rolled her eyes. “Nathan would never hesitate for me, but you could never kill Amell. You would do better to stay behind and stay out of the way.”

“You lost me,” Anders said. “Why does it matter if I can’t kill him? Is Amell a Harvester? Or somehow at risk of becoming a Broodmother? Am I at risk of becoming a Broodmother? You have to tell me if I am. I know I said I wanted kids, but I meant human kids. Elven or dwarven kids would work too, I guess, but darkspawn are out of the question.”

“He has not told you?” Velanna asked. “Why am I not surprised? You soften him. What else hasn’t he told you?”

“How would I know, exactly?” Anders asked.

“Either we kill the Harvester or we kill Amell,” Velanna explained. Or didn’t.

Anders had no idea what that meant but he didn’t like the sound of it. “Why, exactly?”

“Ask him yourself,” Velanna said.

The last of the Wardens coming on the expedition flooded out of the Keep and into the outer courtyard in a sea of blue and silver, shoving at each and laughing despite the alleged death Oghren had promised. They gathered up outside the stables, followed by Amell, who walked alongside Oghren and Dumat.

Oghren made a show of counting everyone, but gave up half-way through. “We got enough.”

“The scouts’ sightings in West Hill match those of a Harvester,” Magic carried Amell’s voice across the courtyard, and silenced everyone gathered. “With a graveyard’s worth of dead along the River Dane. We have to end it before it reaches Old Crestwood and the dead buried beneath the lake. It’s a three-day ride, hard pressed along the North Road. We exchange horses at Harper’s Ford. Bann Franderel’s men and the Silver Order will meet us at the Imperial Highway. Any who fall will be risen.”

“So don’t fucking fall!” Oghren yelled.

“In death, sacrifice,” Ser Fenley said stuffily.

Surana shoved the giant knight, “Maybe the Commander’ll bring you back pretty.”

“Couldn’t bring you back worse,” Amethyne chimed in.

“As long as he’s intact,” Tamarel grinned. “If you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean!” Oghren high-fived her on his way to his horse.

“Tam,” Ailsa groaned.

“It would take some precise magic to bring back something that small,” Surana said.

“An honor to serve with you all, as always,” Fenley excused himself for his own horse.

Tamarel stared at his ass as he left, “I’d still fuck him.”

“We know, Tam,” Ailsa sighed.

“Do not fuck me if I die,” Amethyne warned her.

“If you’re dead, do I need consent from you or from the Commander?” Tamarel wondered.

“Ugh,” Velanna muttered. “We are not kin.”

“Well as long as we’re not related,” Tamarel purred, prancing towards her.

Velanna’s staff crackled with ice. “Touch me and die.”

“You can fuck me if I do,” Tamarel promised.

“We know, Tam,” Ailsa sighed again.

“The Commander’s half Nevarran, isn’t he?” Tamarel mused. “I bet he’s into it.”

“And I’m leaving,” Anders decided, breaking away from the group to jog over to Amell, who was waiting with Dumat for the stablehands to finish readying his horse. Amell’s armaments were bundled on the back of the horse, for whenever they arrived at West Hill. Amell wore a simple set of riding leathers in their stead. “Amell - or - Commander?”

“Whatever you like,” Amell smiled, not quite looking at him.

“Can I ride with you?” Anders asked.

“You’re coming?”

“If you keep using your Commander voice I might,” Anders joked and won a smirk for it. “You weren’t really going to fight a Harvester without a healer, were you?”

“Surana is-...” Amell trailed off. “... We’ve fought without one before.”

“Well, you don’t have to fight without one anymore,” Anders adjusted the bloated satchel on his shoulder. “Anders to the rescue and all that.”

“Are you sure?” Amell asked. “You don’t have to accompany us, Anders. This is a suicide mission, and you haven’t been on one yet. We have an expedition planned next month if you need time to adjust.”

“I don’t want any special treatment,” Anders said.

“... riding with me is sort of special treatment, Anders,” Amell pointed out.

“I only want a little special treatment,” Anders revised.

“You can ride with me,” Amell said. “Ride in front.”

Anders handed his things over to a stablehand, who latched everything to Amell’s horse. The two of them mounted up, and Dumat and a half-dozen other mabari ran out after the rest of the wardens and their horses. The undead construct followed without any urging on Anders’ part, which meant it did so of Amell’s accord or its own, the wisps within whispering just a little too low to hear.

It felt like magic. It felt like the Fade. The North Road followed the Feravel Plains, cutting through fields of wheat and barley, dappled with gold from the late summer sun. It was deceptively peaceful, with Amell pressed up against his back, his arms wrapped around his waist, his breath playing over the back of his neck and making him shiver.

“Do you know what to expect?” Amell asked.

“With you?” Anders asked, holding one scarred arm. “Never.”

“With a Harvester,” Amell said.

“A giant corrosive golem with an aura of decay that reanimates everything around it, right?” Anders recalled from Nate and Oghren’s descriptions. “What else is there to know? No, you know what, there is something actually. Why does Velanna think you’re going to die?”

“We all might die,” Amell said. “To destroy a Harvester you have to destroy its core. It’s a Fade construct, bound in lyrium and blood, and if it survives it reanimates.”

“Don’t let it survive,” Anders said. “Got it. Anything else?”

“Strategy?” Amell suggested.

“Go for it, Commander.”

“Amethyne doesn’t handle auras or hastes well - if you can avoid casting them on her. She’s not used to the way magic alters her limitations. Oghren’s gotten better at draining the souls of the dead and the dying and shouldn’t need any healing-”

“Oghren’s gotten better at what!?” Anders whipped his head over his shoulder so quickly he pulled a muscle in his neck.

“...Fighting?” Amell said innocently.

“You said he drains souls,” Anders repeated. “Oghren drains souls? How does Oghren drain souls?”

“Blood magic.”

“Be serious,” Anders put as much of his frown into his tone as he could.

“I am serious," Amell said. “It’s blood magic.”

“Your blood magic?”

“Our blood magic. We have dragon blood,” Amell said. Like that was a normal thing to say and have. “It was a ritual we underwent during the Blight. It’s not the same as demonic or tainted blood magic. It’s… an untapped energy deep in the blood and the bone that consumes all others. You can use it to drain your opponent’s life force or your own. The drain is power. Strength. Speed. An aura that manifests as a torrent of pain for yourself and everyone around you.”

“... You know what, sure, why not,” Anders wasn’t going to unpack all of that. “That sounds about right with you. No auras for Amethyne or heals for Oghren. Anything else?”

“Don’t retreat. Tamarel laces the battlefield with traps for anything that gets past us. Fenley does best with barriers - he’ll be defending Jacen and Seranni. They’ll rally wherever you cast your glyphs. Nolan handles the hounds, and if you’ve any enchantments for fire, Martine could use them. Surana can’t hold them for long.”

“I can remember all of that,” Anders decided.

“And don’t heal me,” Amell said.

“You always did get frisky after a fight, I guess,” Anders recalled their fight with a dragon in the Blackmarsh, and the night after it, and joked, “I wouldn’t want to give you a hard time.”

“I’m serious,” Amell said.

Anders didn’t like serious, “Why can’t I heal you?”

“I have to be near death to summon my simulacrum,” Amell explained.

“Your simulacrum,” Anders said slowly. “You mean the Forbidden One you made a pact with that wants you to die? That simulacrum?”

“Her name is Xebenkeck,” Amell offered helpfully.

“Why do you have to be near death to summon her?” Anders asked.

“Because that’s the pact,” Amell said.

“That sounds like a pretty shitty pact,” Anders frowned. “Why summon her at all?”

“She’s the only thing that’s ever killed a Harvester,” Amell explained.

“I thought you were the only one who’s ever killed a Harvester,” Anders said.

“Channeling her,” Amell said. “I still have control of myself and my magic, but it’s a frenzy that drains my life force and takes all of my focus. I have to kill the Harvester before it kills me, and if I can’t, then you have to kill Xebenkeck or the Harvester, whichever survives.”

Anders was not going to overreact.

Anders was going to have a normal reaction.

“Are you fucking kidding me!?” Anders exploded. A few of the other wardens glanced back at them, and the mabari started barking at his outburst. “Your strategy is to kill yourself!? What in the bloody Void-”

“Anders,” Amell cut him off, squeezing his arms around his waist in a reprimand as firm as it was gentle. When he spoke, his voice was low, and Anders barely heard it over the barking. “You can’t question me out here.”

“What do you mean I can’t question you?” Anders hissed under his breath, twisting to see Amell’s face. “I question you all the time.”

“Not in the field,” Amell said, with a slight crease to his brow. “Not in a fight. If you have a suggestion, I’ll hear it, but my orders stand and I expect you to follow them. ”

“My suggestion is you don’t die,” Anders snarled. “So help me, Amell, if you think I’m going to go through that again-”

“If you can’t follow my orders, then you can stay in Harper’s Ford until we get back,” Amell said.

“You’d seriously leave me behind just because I don’t want you to die?”

“I seriously would.”

“I can’t believe you,” Anders muttered, turning back to the road. Of course Amell wanted to kill himself. When didn’t Amell want to kill himself? The bastard. The stupid bastard. He slit his wrists so bloody much Anders should have guessed he had a death wish years ago. Amell was lucky he survived a cold cup of coffee without drowning himself in it.

Anders steeped in his anger until he turned bitter for it, muttering the occasional curse under his breath. Of course. Of course he found out now, trapped in Amell’s arms for an entire day spent riding along the North Road. Of course he hadn’t found out before, so Amell could leave and Anders could hate him for it and Amell could come back and everything could be better. Of fucking course.

Now he had to deal with it, but Anders didn’t know how to deal with it. He wasn’t Nate. He couldn’t wear Amell’s phylactery around his neck, confident in his ability to give him a merciful death. Anders hadn’t even given Amell a merciful life.

“I don’t want to die, Anders,” Amell said gently, after what might have been minutes or hours.

“Could have fooled me,” Anders muttered. “Seems to be your first solution for everything.”

Anders knew he shouldn’t have said it as soon as the words left his mouth, but there was no taking them back, and there were still hours left to go before they made camp for the night, and Anders didn’t want to be there for them.

“... I have a question,” Justice said.

“Go ahead,” Amell said.

“Your simulacrum: Xebenkeck, the Forbidden One, and this pact you made with her, was it consensual?”

“What do you mean?” Amell asked.

“Did she agree to make it with you or was she bound to it?” Justice asked.

“She offered it,” Amell said. “Why do you ask?”

“You’ve bound my kind before,” Justice recalled. “What is to stop you from binding them again?”

“... I still do,” Amell confessed.

“I see,” Justice said stiffly.

“I bind anything that crosses the Veil in combat,” Amell elaborated.

“And outside of it?” Justice asked.

“Why would I?” Amell asked. “… does it bother you that I bind demons in combat? I bind anything with blood in battle.”

“I can forgive you your use of bindings in battle, but not beyond it. I’ve been bound to false purpose before and broken by it,” Justice recalled, the memory of Merrill’s magic as fresh as the day she’d cast it on him. “It is not as it is in the Fade. I can’t reawaken as a wisp. Breaking me breaks Anders.”

“I would never bind you,” Amell promised.

“You bound Anders,” Justice reminded him.

“I did, but it didn’t break him.”

“Anders disagrees.”

“Anders is alive to disagree with me,” Amell countered. “If the choice is between his life and his love, then it’s his life, every time.”

Poetic. Admirable. Agreeable. “Why does your simulacrum want your death?”

“I had nothing else to trade,” Amell said.

“I would think your life worth more,” Justice said.

“... thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Justice said. “This Bann Franderel, is he the same man whose freeholders came to you to beg relief from his taxes?”

“He is.”

“And now you defend his lands for him? Should he not keep a standing army with these taxes to attend to the dead along the River Dane?”

“You sound like Morrigan,” Amell noted with a bemused exhale, an unfamiliar if not entirely unpleasant sensation that played against the back of his neck. “The Silver Order is more renowned than the King’s Guard. Franderel’s army doesn’t compare to mine.”

“Then this is a grievous oversight. Is he negligent or ignoble?”

“Both?” Amell shrugged. “Franderel ousted Bann Teoric. He was a supporter of Loghain during the Blight. I worked with a group of likeminded people to de-stabilize his reign… six years ago? We tried to steal his private collection to help fund our army, but he discovered us before we could pull it off. We only managed to reclaim a relic from him, but it did help win the Chantry’s voice against Loghain at the Landsmeet. He’s cunning and covetous, but the Harvesters are my responsibility, and his army couldn’t stand against them no matter how he funded it.”

“Then he should not serve,” Justice said. “You should have him removed.”

“I’m not the Teyrn.”

“Can you not do so as the Chancellor?”

“Not without the Crown’s blessing.”

“Then you should get it.” Amell had no response, but it seemed to warrant one. It was an injustice. One to be righted and one it seemed he had the potential to right. “You disagree?”

“My Chancellery is more focused on the Circles right now,” Amell said.

“Will you not consider it?”

“... If you feel that strongly about it.”

“I know no other way to feel.”

“Neither does Anders,” Amell said, but it sounded more warm than anything else.

Time was a mortal construct, but Amell was mortal, so Justice passed the time describing the countryside to him until they reached a small inn off the North Road come nightfall. The dirt road that led to it was grooved by the passage of countless wagon wheels, the thatch roof and bowed wooden walls of the inn rife with age. A warm glow shone from dirt-covered windows, illuminating a small garden filled with sleeping chickens, and beyond it, stables.

There weren’t enough rooms for all of them, and while Wardens had rights to seize goods and lodgings to aid their cause, Amell elected not to. Most of their company stayed in the loft above the overfull stables, save for Nolan, who slept in a pile of mabari beneath them. Amell, Oghren, and Velanna all stayed in the inn. Anders couldn’t sleep in the stables, so he had to join them eventually, but he sat out on a fence post outside instead, arguing with himself.

Anders should apologize. Anders didn’t want to apologize. For all Amell claimed he didn’t want to die alone, he seemed determined to do it. Anders was tired of resigning himself to Amell’s death. If Amell got to pick between Anders’ love and Anders’ life, then Anders should get to do the same, and Amell should have known he would have picked his life too.

Anders went inside, old wooden floors creaking beneath his boot the only sound in the middle of the night. The scent of something lingered from dinner, tables with dirty crockery arranged around a smoldering hearth, a stage in the far corner abandoned with all the minstrels gone to bed. The innkeep, or a patron, had fallen asleep on a bench, a mug of ale dangling from their fingers and dripping onto the floor.

Anders followed the pull of Amell’s blood to his room and knocked. Velanna opened the door instead. “Hello?” Anders said.

“Ugh,” Velanna took a step back to let him inside. “Your imbecile arrives.”

The room felt more crowded than the stables. Bedrolls occupied the right half of the room, the cot the left. A chamberpot had been stowed beneath it, a small table pressed into the corner holding a pitcher and a bowl to complete the wash. Oghren already looked to have fallen asleep on Dumat. Amell was sitting on the cot, with what looked like a tactile map draped across his lap.

“West Hill?” Anders guessed.

“West Hill,” Amell agreed. “I was going over our approach.”

“Ma ghilana mir din'an, if you two are the last thing I hear, Falon’Din himself will not keep me from haunting you,” Velanna warned them, crawling into her bedroll. “Go outside or go to sleep.”

“Outside?” Anders suggested, or maybe begged.

Amell folded up his map, but didn’t move to join him, “Outside is…?”

Shit. Right. Okay. Anders picked his way across the bedrolls, and led Amell out into the main room, and to a bench that wasn’t drenched in ale. Amell set his map on the table.

“What did you want to talk about?” Amell asked.

“Your simulacrum,” Anders said. He wasn’t going to panic. He was going to be calm. He was going to have a normal conversation. If this was his last conversation with Amell, it wasn’t going to be one that he ruined or made about himself or turned into a screaming match. He didn’t have to scream. He could just talk. He was with Amell, and Amell was someone he could talk to, and someone who could talk to him. “Do you have to use it? Are you sure there’s no other way to kill a Harvester?”

“None that we’ve found,” Amell said.

“How does your deal work?”

“I promised her my death, but I can’t say if she’ll wait for it. Channeling her is as much a fight with her as it is with a Harvester. She’s a Forbidden One, Anders. A First Demon. If she possesses me, she has to die.”

“What if you’re not dead?” Anders asked. “What if she possesses you while you’re alive?”

“She might, but I doubt you would be able to tell, and it wouldn’t be worth the risk,” Amell said.

“You can reverse a possession,” Anders shouldn’t have had to remind him. Amell was the one who’d told him it was possible. “You don’t have to die the second you get possessed.”

“The second I get possessed might be the only time I can die,” Amell argued. “It’s the only time she’ll be vulnerable. I don’t want you or any of the wardens to let her escape for my sake.”

“You can’t die,” Anders said, frustration gritting his teeth and raising his hands before he realized what he was doing, and forced himself to stop. He didn’t need to fight. Anders took hold of Amell’s hands to keep his own from signing. “I can’t lose you again.”

“I’m not trying to die, Anders,” Amell said, running his thumb over the back of Anders’ hands. “I’ve fought three Harvesters, and I haven’t died to them yet, but someday I might. I know we might not have the same Calling, but you must have something you think is worth dying for.”

Anders could name a lot of things he’d die for. Justice. Amell, even, but he wasn’t going to throw himself on a sword anytime soon. The only time he’d done that had been over…

“Karl,” Anders said. “... Karl was worth dying for. If there was something I could do to make sure no mage was ever made Tranquil again… if it stopped an Annulment… but you can’t tell me you’d just sit here and watch me die if there was something you could do about it.”

“... I wouldn’t,” Amell admitted.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Anders said firmly. “I don’t care if you’re possessed by a Forbidden One or one of the bloody Seven. If there was even a chance I could, I would do whatever it took to save you.”

Amell freed one of his hands from his grasp and cradled his jaw, running a gentle thumb along his cheek. “How?”

“... I’d bind you,” Anders decided.

“She’s a Forbidden One, Anders,” Amell reminded him, like Anders could forget with how often he kept saying it. “She invented blood magic.”

“Not yours,” Anders argued. “Not mine. Not the blood you gave me. Not the blood we share. We’re tainted. Teach me how to use it to bind you.”

“Anders, we’re riding out in the morning-”

“Then teach me now. Tonight. I’m not losing you. Not to anything. Not ever again.”

Chapter 163: The Harvest Part Two

Notes:

Thanks for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 5 Solis Mid-Day
Ferelden: The North Road in the Highever Teynir

Amell was asleep. Anders let him stay that way, holding Amell in his arms while they rode towards West Hill and death. Asleep, he didn’t look like a necromancer with tainted dragon’s blood capable of unleashing a Forbidden One. He just looked like a man, not even thirty, his head lulling against Anders’ chest, but the undead construct they rode on was a constant reminder he wasn’t just that.

Anders couldn’t bind him. He’d tried. Maker, he'd tried all bloody night, but it wasn’t magic he could learn in the few short hours he’d forced Amell to stay awake, casting spell after spell in the fields behind the inn. The handful of times Anders had managed to pull from the taint for the binding, Amell had swatted his spell aside with as much effort as he might a gnat. Anders couldn’t compel him to do anything.

… at least not with magic. Anders had asked him to try and Amell had tried. He'd stayed up the whole night to teach him, for all the good it had done. Anders brushed Amell’s hair back, pressed a hard kiss to his forehead, and tried to make his peace with it. The rest of the wardens had. There wasn’t a soul among them who wasn’t prepared to kill him if his simulacrum got the best of him. Flames, they practically idolized him for it.

Ailsa thought it was impressive. Fenley thought it was noble. Martine thought they all had to die someday. Nolan had trained the hounds to tear him apart. Jacen and Seranni seemed to be of a mind their arrows wouldn’t make a difference, but they were prepared to fire them. Surana was firm in her belief Amell would just bring himself back afterwards, and Tamarel had called dibs on fucking Xebenkeck under the argument that she ‘sounded hot’ and insisted on calling her a simplecum.

The joke started what was apparently an old argument between all of them on the moral implications of fucking someone in someone else’s body, and everyone seemed to want Justice and Anders’ opinions on it, which was not something either of them wanted to talk about with Amell half-asleep in their arms, or ever, with anyone, really. A merciful change in the wind had eventually startled the horses away from the abomination riding with them, and Anders finally got a chance to ask Oghren.

Anders regretted asking Oghren. He’d expected another joke. Something tasteless. Something about how Oghren could take Amell any day of the week, that Oghren was just waiting for an excuse, that his fingers got twitchy anytime the Kid used so much blood magic Oghren mistook him for a tick he was itching to burst or a pimple he was eager to pop. He hadn’t expected Oghren to say, “What'd you expect, Sparkles?"

"For someone to want him to live?" Anders almost wished he could sign to keep from waking Amell, but none of the wardens knew sign language, and even if they did, Anders had better things to do with his hands, wrapped as they were around Amell’s waist.

"You think any of us want the Kid to die?" Oghren demanded, wrestling his horse as close to them as it would go. "None of us want him to die, but shit happens. We don’t live long. You think I want to be the one to tell the Kid’s kid? What am I even gonna say? ‘So, you know that dad of yours? Dead. Sorry!’"

"... He died making the world a better place?" Anders joked, and won a chuckle from Velanna on the opposite side of them for it.

"Don't kid yourself, Sparkles,” Oghren said. “Hero's just another word for horror."

“You wish the truth? Is he asleep?” Velanna glanced at Amell, curled up in the crook of his shoulder, and answered her own question. “Good. The truth is he will kill us all before we kill him. Do not look at me like that. I still intend to try - as should you - but if this thing takes him it will take the whole world with it.”

“... What’s it look like?” Anders asked.

“Not as you do. He doesn’t look possessed. You can see her echo over him from the Beyond - like Desire merged with Pride. They’re both blind while Amell has her eyes, but if she possessed him I imagine they would work for her again. Wait until that happens to try to kill them. You can tell when someone is possessed, I hope? Now is not the time for you to be premature.”

They followed the North Road out of the arling of Amaranthine, through the teyrnir of Highever, and into the bannorn of West Hill. A company from the Silver Order joined them from Soldier’s Peak, along with Bann Franderel’s men when they reached the Imperial Highway. There were perhaps a hundred and a half men between them all when they marched south through the fields of the Bannorn towards the River Dane, and there was a stark contrast between Amell’s soldiers and Franderel’s… conscripts?

Anders wasn’t sure what to call them. The Silver Order was, shockingly, silver. Their weapons and armaments were silverite, while Franderel’s men wore druffalo hide and fought with iron. The Silver Order looked like they’d been born to fight, well disciplined and falling into a practiced formation behind the wardens. Franderel’s men were so green Anders could see it in their faces. Some of them looked so sick they seemed sallow, malnourished and lucky to be standing, let alone holding weapons.

“This looks bad,” Anders said against Amell’s ear. “The Bann’s men look sick. It can’t be good if people need healing before the fight even starts.”

“Sick how?” Amell asked. “Plague? Taint?”

“... They look like they’re starving,” Anders said. “... how high are his taxes again?”

“High,” Amell said grimly.

“This isn’t right,” The Bann’s men weren’t in any particular formation so much as they were gathered together in nervous clusters, like fowl ready to take flight at the slightest provocation. They clearly weren’t prepared to fight and clearly didn’t want to. There was little distinction between them and the freeholders who followed the army, carrying supplies for the army’s eventual encampment. “We should do something about this.”

“I don’t know that now is the best time, Anders,” Amell said.

“It’s never the best time,” Anders argued. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do something. These people don’t look like soldiers. How are they supposed to fight a Harvester?”

“They don’t need to be soldiers. They just need to hold a sword,” Amell said. “They're here to fight the undead or join them.”

“Maker’s breath, Amell.”

“We’ve never taken down a Harvester without casualties.”

“Warden casualties?” Anders asked.

“Some,” Amell said. “Commander Janeka lost men to the Hambleton Harvester, and I lost Lyam last year to the Ortan Harvester, but we’re wardens. We have the stamina for it. Most losses come from outside our company.”

“These men are going to be all of our losses if we don’t do something,” Anders said.

“What do you want me to do about it, Anders?” Amell asked. “We need an army to stand against the undead dredging themselves out of the Dane, and the Crown hasn’t committed to allowing mages to serve in one. West Hill is between Kinloch and Jainen, and Franderel hasn’t requested aid from either Circle.”

“What’s the point of giving us freedom if we can’t do anything with it?” Anders demanded hotly. “I know you said it was a token autonomy, but are you really telling me that the Crown would rather let the world burn than use magic to put it out?”

“That’s what I’m telling you,” Amell said.

“I thought things were better here,” Anders sighed.

“I wish they were,” Amell said.

Bann Franderel joined them, and a half-league from the River Dane, and Anders decided he hated the man at first sight. There was nothing particularly wrong with him. He was handsome enough, with long, luxurious brown hair and eyebrows so thick they outclassed his mustache. He looked like any other noble, and it made him easy to hate. His armor was purely ceremonial, gold filigree decorating every inch, with a sword at his side that seemed more gem than steel.

It was probably petty of him, but Anders didn’t offer to dismount while the Bann and Amell spoke. Franderel gave his recount of events on horseback as they marched, fighting with the reins and swearing every other minute while his horse pranced and nickered anxiously away from the undead construct and the abomination riding it. It was probably equally petty that Amell had to have known it was happening and didn’t do anything about it.

It didn’t fix anything for the soldiers, but it made Anders feel a bit better. The rest of Franderel’s army was encamped at Wutherford, a riverside village south of the Imperial Highway the undead were plaguing. It bordered the Oswin Bannorn, but Bann Loren cared even less for his people than Bann Franderel did. If Franderel was to be believed, Loren had become a recluse following the death of his wife and son during the Blight, and locked himself up in his castle.

He refused all offers of aid and ignored all requests for it. The people of Wutherford had pleaded for aid from either bann, and been shuffled between the two until Franderel finally caved when the undead started moving north along the River Dane, deeper into West Hill and towards Crestwood. Listening to it all made Anders’ sick with rage. Kinloch was a few short leagues away, and anyone could have gone to the mages for help against the undead, but to hear Franderel’s army talk they may as well have summoned them.

“This is what happens when you let mages out of their tower. They unleash this shit. Loren’s trying to get us all killed letting ‘em settle in Oswin.”

“Franderel’s got the right of it refusing ‘em land. I’d be banging down the Chantry door if my neighbor wore a robe.”

“Franderel doesn't have the right of anything - the greedy bastard. It’s those filthy immigrant heretics, I tell ya, ruining our country ever since the King opened the borders. You gotta burn your dead so mages can’t bring ‘em back.”

“You wanna talk heretics? The Maker cast mages out of His city and the Crown turns around and lets them into ours? This is His punishment. We didn’t learn from the darkspawn so He sent us the dead.”

“Maker should have sent us some food. I thought they were darkspawn. Isn’t that why the Wardens are here?”

“The big one’s a darkspawn. The rest are undead.”

“Who cares? Magic is magic. I’ll eat my hat if a mage doesn’t have something to do with this.”

“At least you'd be eating something. Still, you better be careful how loud you say that. Arl’s a mage, ain’t he? Melt your mind, he will.”

“He can’t hear us.”

“He’s blind, not deaf.”

“Oh shit, really?”

“You’re so fucking stupid, I swear to the Maker-”

The soldiers fled to the opposite side of the field, casting a few nervous glances in their direction as they went. An intrusive thought that they’d flee a little faster with a snap of lightning over their heads came and went.

“Do you still feel bad for them?” Amell asked in the silence that followed.

“... Well, not them specifically,” Anders said. “Doesn’t that make you angry?”

“It makes me tired,” Amell said.

Scouts returned with sightings of the undead, a half-league down the river, and the Wardens gathered ahead of the army and dismounted to suit up for battle. Amell gave a quick address Anders probably should have paid more attention to, but he couldn’t focus on it. At some point everyone took a drink, and Anders unhooked his flask from his belt to join them, but the Aqua Magus didn’t do anything for his nerves.

The battle didn’t have anything to do with it. Anders understood it would come with casualties. He was prepared for casualties; he just wasn’t prepared for Amell to be one of them. Not for men who condemned his magic with one breath and relied on it for the next, no matter how starved for food and justice they might have been. Their fear and condemnation made Amell seem more like Ferelden’s martyr than its hero.

The thought of him dying, disrespected and unacknowledged, by the very people he gave everything to save was all too akin to what they’d suffered in Kirkwall. Night after miserable night and day after wretched day, healing the desperate and the downtrodden, asking for nothing and somehow receiving less. Their efforts met only with endless persecution. They expected it for themselves. They did not expect it for Amell - and they would not allow it.

The rest of the wardens set about sending their horses off to the army’s encampment, and Anders pulled Amell aside. The river was free of dead, for the moment, the rapids barely audible over the din of the gathering army. Pine grew sparse along the riverbed and the scent of it hung in the air, soon to be replaced with blood, death, and decay, and Anders had to say something before that happened.

“What is it, Anders?” Amell asked.

Don’t die? It’s okay if you die? I understand if you die? I understand this is worth dying for? I respect you? Fuck those guys? “... nice speech.”

“You weren’t listening,” Amell guessed.

“I wasn’t listening,” Anders admitted.

“You never did care for them,” Amell smiled.

“I care for you.”

“I know.”

“You don’t, though. I never told you,” Anders had never told him anything. He’d never even come close to explaining how he felt. The closest he’d come was asking if Amell loved him, and then never saying it back. “I shouldn’t just because you might die, but... I do, you know.”

Anders expected… something. Some sort of grand gesture. Some sort of grand reaction. A sharp inhale, a single tear, an awkward laugh, a passionate kiss, a frustrated sigh. Amell’s smile was so slight he may as well not have reacted at all.

“I know,” Amell said. “I do too.”

Amell put on his helmet, and pulled him into an embrace, but it didn’t feel the same way the rest of his goodbyes had felt. It didn’t feel like forever. It just felt like for now. “Be safe.”

“You too,” Anders said thickly.

Amell separated from him. Velanna took Amell’s hand, and vanished beneath the ground with him in a shower of dirt and roots. They reemerged at the forefront of the wardens, leading the advancing army, and a whistle from Amell sent Dumat racing after them. Anders hadn’t even considered how Amell was supposed to navigate a battlefield blind when he couldn’t run across it, but he and Velanna seemed to work well enough as a unit.

Oghren seemed to act as his second in battle in lieu of Nathaniel, waving the rest of the wardens upwards and onwards. Anders had always fought alongside archers in the past, so it seemed like he should fight alongside them in the present. He went and found Jacen and Seranni, and the army marched towards Wutherford.

The first undead dragged itself up the rocky bed of the River Dane, and met with a bolt through its skull before Anders even realized it was there. The twang of Seranni’s crossbow and the splash as it hit the water were the only signs it had ever been.

Well… that was easy.

“Nice shot,” Anders said.

“It comes again,” Seranni mumbled.

True to the little ghoul’s words, the corpse reemerged over the edge of the riverbed a few seconds later, bolt twitching spastically in one of its rotting eyes. Jacen’s arrow through its throat knocked it back in.

“Nice shot?” Anders hoped.

“It comes always,” Seranni mumbled. Another corpse climbed out of the river, more fresh than the first. The fellow might have been from Wutherford, dragged down to his death while he was fishing to judge by the ties intended to keep water from making its way into his tunic and trousers. They hadn’t worked, fetid water gushing from the corpse as it sloshed up onto the bank.

“They don’t stop, da’len,” Jacen reminded him, notching another arrow that sent the fisher-fellow careening back into the river. “They don’t die. No matter how little is left of them. Not until the Harvester does.”

Well shit.

Anders didn’t see a Harvester. Granted, Anders had never seen a Harvester, but the undead that dredged themselves up from the depths of the Dane didn’t look anything like a lyrium golem made flesh. They were just undead, and for the most part the Wardens ignored them as they pressed upstream, leaving them for the Silver Order and the Bann’s men. The Silver Order might have been able to hold their own, but the Bann’s men couldn’t.

They hadn’t gotten more than a few yards when Anders heard the first scream. He glanced back down the river in time to see an undead rip the throat from some poor bastard. The splash of red across the corpse’s face brought color to its bloodless cheeks, and for a moment it looked more alive than the sallow soldier it had eaten. Its shriek was a hollow echo, air pushed out over rotten chords, and Anders swore he heard a few of them snap even from a distance.

The rest of the soldiers watched, as inept as they were afraid, as the eaten soldier sagged against the corpse in something almost like an embrace. His gurgling screams blended together with the rush of the river and faded away, but instead of collapsing, he turned, drew his sword, and drove it through the first soldier to run to his rescue, and all at once the undead were a multitude.

Every soldier who fell to the undead rose again as one of them. Anders summoned a wall of ice between the dead climbing up from the river and the soldiers dying to them, and the magic gave the men enough of a break to regroup, and hack the handful of undead to pieces too small to be a true threat, but Anders didn’t have time to offer any more help than that. The dead swarmed from the south, crawling out of the river and straight into the wardens.

Anders couldn’t count them all. A graveyard’s worth, Amell had said, but Anders didn’t know how many that was. The dead emerged from the river in varying states of decay, some completely skeletal, others with their skin rotten down to hard leather, some fresh enough to retain their fat and the muscle beneath it, losing pieces of themselves as they hauled their soaked and bloated bodies from the Dane and dragged them across the battlefield.

The worst were the newly dead. The villagers from Wutherford - dead for all of a few days. They still had their clothes, their hair, their skin, their eyes and the last spark of emotion in them before they’d died. Fear. Terror. Abject horror etched forever in their wide-eyed expressions as they ran from one death to the next, cut down again and again by Oghren’s axe, and Fenley’s sword, and Ailsa’s magic. Anders channeled an aura of aptitude for as much of the field as he could manage, manifesting second winds and strengthened blows.

It felt effortless. It felt exultant. It felt like falling into the Fade. Spellblooms energized the mages, wisp upon wisp tethering them to the Fade and the mana within it. Glyphs warded the archers, repelling any undead who crossed the intricate linework. Hastes spurred the warriors, quickening their steps as they cut through one undead after the next. It felt pure. It felt purposeful. It felt-

Hungry.

Anders was hungry. Not just hungry, he was starving. He felt like he hadn’t eaten anything ever before in his life and not even the taint could sustain him. His stomach clenched and churned, growling so loud it was the only thing he could hear. Anders doubled over, hand to his stomach, his staff pressed into his shoulder keeping him upright. He did better than the rest of the army and most of the wardens.

The Bann’s men were screaming. The Silver Order was screaming with them. One mad bastard dove on the undead in front of him and ripped the creature’s throat out just for something to eat, and the rest of the army joined him with almost no hesitation. Jacen wasn’t near any of the undead. The old archer tackled Seranni, and the two of them went rolling through the grass, the ghoul’s shrieks finally snapping Anders out of it.

“Jacen, stop!” Anders ran after them, and grabbed Jacen’s ankle, dragging him off the ghoul. The old Dalish clawed at the grass and the dirt, shoveling it into his mouth in a frenzy before Anders cast a hasty sleep spell over him and laced it with a barrier and repulsion glyph for anyone that came his way.

“It hungers,” Seranni babbled, teeth chattering as she scrambled away from them into the pines littered across the riverbed. “It hungers. There’s no harvest. There’s no harvest. I promised - I promised not to eat -...”

“What hungers?” Anders held out a hand to help her to her feet, and Seranni growled at him. Anders pulled his hand back. “Seranni, what’s going on?”

“Velanna,” Seranni begged, snatching up what might have been a piece of bark or a piece of person and shoving it into her mouth. “Velanna - sister - sister stops the hunger - please -”

“Okay,” Anders said gently. “Okay, come on, we’ll find Velanna. Come with me. Come on.”

Anders kept his hand to his grumbling stomach rather than offer it to her again, and stumbled back towards the river. The hunger felt worse the closer he got. Maker save him, Anders was ravenous. He would have eaten anything. Rocks. Dirt. Grass. The bloody dead. He felt desperate. Insatiable. Like the Void itself was yawning inside him. Like a thousand starving souls crying out for succor and sustenance.

… like the bannorn.

… Like Hunger.

They got back to the battle. Some of the wardens and soldiers were doing better than others, eating grass and dirt to keep from eating the dead, the living, or themselves. Off in the distance, Anders watched Oghren heave Amethyne off Tamarel and into the river, roaring, “Stop sodding eating each other!”

Anders stumbled over, radiating a panacea for anyone who still had enough of themselves left to be healed, when the ground exploded in front of him and Velanna appeared. Anders wiped the dirt off his face, and couldn’t help licking his palm afterwards. Seranni fell to her knees, and snatched up handfuls of the freshly churned soil to shovel into her mouth. Velanna knelt next to her and cast a hasty veil of sleep and a forcefield for her safety atop it.

“It’s not a Harvester,” Velanna said when she stood.

“You think!?” Anders snapped.

“Come quickly, we have to banish it,” Velanna held out a hand for him. Anders didn’t have time to worry about taking it. Roots wrapped up around his ankles, his arms, his chest, and dragged him underground in a rush of dirt and rocks that cut across his skin until they reemerged on a small outcropping over the opposite side of the river.

Only the mages were there. Amell, Velanna, Ailsa, and Surana. Either no one else had managed to resist the demon, or no one else was worth bringing to banish it. From the outcropping, Anders could see the armies fallen to madness. The only mercy was that there seemed to be enough sanity left in them that the soldiers were only trying to eat the dead, and not each other, unless they didn’t have the luxury of selection. Anders would have to heal all of them if they survived the rotten meat.

“Where is it?” Anders asked.

“The river,” Surana said, her stomach rumbling

“We have to lure it out so we can banish it,” Amell said.

“Fenedhis lasa,” Velanna spat, chewing on her nails instead of any of them. “How are we to lure it? It is Hunger. We are all hungry. What more does it want?”

“... Food,” Anders said.

“Such sageous insight,” Velanna sneered.

“I’m serious,” Anders said. “The freeholders. The soldiers. The whole bloody bannorn. They all want food. They’re starving because the bann forced them into a famine. The demon must have been feeding off them.”

“How does that help?” Ailsa asked..

“The demon isn’t just hungry for food, it’s hungry for justice,” Anders said.

“... Velanna, get Franderel,” Amell said.

Roots burst up from the rocky outcropping and swallowed Velanna.

“What are you going to do?” Anders asked.

“I’m going to feed it,” Amell said.

Time passed. Surana took off her helmet and crouched down to shovel dirt into her mouth. Ailsa chewed on her sleeve. Anders wrung his hands along his staff, resisting the urge to start chewing on the leather. Amell just looked tense, his hands flexing, but he kept his helmet on, so at least he wasn’t eating anything or anyone.

Velanna returned with a wailing Franderel. The Bann was missing his cloak and a vambrace, and his arm looked like someone had gnawed on it. Probably Franderel, to judge by the blood staining his teeth, and the fact that he was still trying to gnaw on it. Velanna held his arms behind his back while Franderel’s head thrashed in a mindless circle for something to eat. When he couldn’t find anything, he started chewing on his lips. “He is here,” Velanna said.

“Hunger!” Magic carried Amell’s voice out across the river. “Voracity! Famine!”

At the last, the water rippled, and from beneath it, the demon emerged. Anders had never seen a Harvester, but the freeholders of the bannorn must have dreamed of the one that had plagued the bannorn the year before, because Famine had made itself in its image. The demon looked exactly as Nathan had described: a massive golem of gluttony. Its rotten skin was stretched thin, and Anders could see the bodies of the dead trapped within, folded into endless rolls of fat and flesh.

Someone gagged. Anders felt sick with the sight. He felt even sicker that he was so starved he would have eaten Famine and the dead within its skin if he didn’t know any better. “Do you think it's here to chat?” Anders joked to take his mind off it.

“No,” Amell said.

Famine oozed with one too many limbs, and moved faster than something of its size should have been capable of moving. It snatched Franderel out of Velanna’s arms, and stuffed him head first into its gaping maw, swallowing the bann and all his screams. Famine’s jaws crunched down, the crack of the bann’s spine and ribs an added cacophony to his screaming from within the creature’s mouth.

It should have made Anders feel sick, but it just made him feel jealous. He was so bloody hungry, and pieces of Franderel were raining down on them, and if he just-

The Fade surged, and mana burned through Amell in a violent clash that staggered the demon, and for a moment the hunger abated.

“Such rude dinner guests!” Famine snarled through the pain of the clash. “Rushing to dessert! We should shed some weight!” Its skin burst, pustulant undead slipping out in sacks and splashing into the water. Famine stumbled towards them, a massive hand reaching for the outcropping, “Give us a taste!”

Velanna grabbed Amell, and vanished below ground with him. Surana stepped into the Fade. Ailsa tackled Anders out of the way. They went rolling down the outcropping together, and the strap to Anders’ satchel snapped, spilling potions and poultices everywhere. They landed in a tangle of limbs on top of them in time for the dead to come racing out of the river. Anders' hands erupted with ice over Ailsa’s shoulder, a deep hoarfrost engulfing the first wave of undead.

Ailsa scrambled off him, and dragged him to his feet. “I owe you one,” Anders said.

“We owe each other,” Ailsa countered. “Clash it!”

Anders didn’t know how to cast a mana clash. He wasn’t a spirit mage. He was a primal mage, and the magics were opposed to each other, but he didn’t have time to explain that before Ailsa was sprinting clear of the riverbed for distance on the demon and the dead it spawned. The Fade swelled, clash after clash tearing through Famine from Amell, Velanna, Ailsa-...

Not Surana.

Surana was screaming. Pieces of Franderel sprayed from Famine’s mouth, blood and acidic spit raining down around them. A droplet hit his shoulder, burning through silverite and brigandine and into flesh. Anders screamed through a surge of primal water and restorative energies that washed away the acid, and summoned a hasty barrier for Ailsa, but Amell and Velanna were on the other side of the outcropping.

Surana was running down it, shrieking and ripping her way out of her armor as it melted off her skin. She collapsed, halfway down, and rolled the rest of the way, unconscious. Anders ran to her side and set down his staff to sheath his hands in a barrier, and quickly pulled apart her cuirass, when another wave of undead rose from the river. Anders stopped them with another wave of hoarfrost, but a second wave came crawling over the top of it and slid down the ice towards them.

Anders launched a grease slick over the dead, but the best any of them could do was slow their advance until Famine fell. Anders grabbed Surana and his staff, locking it around her chest and dragging her backwards. “Ailsa!” Anders yelled.

Ailsa didn’t hear him, but Velanna or Amell must have. The two of them burst from the ground beside him, and a nest of vines formed around them, swatting away the eternal undead. “She is dead!” Velanna said. “Leave her!”

“She’s not dead!” Anders snapped. “I can heal this!”

The acid had eaten away at Surana’s skin, through muscle and bone, the scent of rot and waste thick in the air from the demon’s corrosion, but Anders could heal it. Velanna must have trusted him, because she didn’t leave him. Anders channelled Justice, waves of water and restorative energy cleansing what the demon had done to her.

The corrosive nest of vines protected them from the undead, but didn’t protect them from Famine. The demon surged onto the bank, losing pieces with every mana clash, and one massive arm swept through all of them, scattering them across the riverbed. Anders rolled with Surana through grass and mud, and collided with the wall of frozen dead. A few hands swatted ineffectually at them from the hoarfrost, their eyes twitching frantically in their skulls for their nearness.

The impact was agony, but it hadn’t undone the damage he’d healed. At worst, Surana was bruised, but Anders felt beaten. He interlaced a lifeward and a repulsion glyph beneath the arcane elf, and dragged himself to his hands and knees in time to see Famine to grab Amell a few yards away. One massive hand engulfed him, dripping rot and acid, and Maker he couldn’t have seen - couldn’t have known - couldn’t have died like that.

Not like Franderel, eaten alive by Famine, his blood like warm wine and every piece of his perfect skin nothing but something for Anders to hunger for in the worst of all possible ways, feeling nothing but envy that Famine was the one who’d eaten him. Anders cast a panicked barrier, through hunger, revulsion, desperation, and such a profound need for him to be safe - to be alive - to be whole - to be his. Famine’s arm squeezed, rotten muscles tensing, and Amell summoned a forcefield that tangled together with his barrier.

A mana clash from Ailsa sent the demon reeling back into the river. Roots surged up from the rapids, growing massive trunks around the demon’s many legs to hold it in place, but Famine snapped through the vines that latched around its arms. “Time for the main course!” Famine chortled, unhinging its jaw like it meant to swallow him whole.

The Fade roared in Amell, and a whisper of something beyond it in his voice when he snarled, “Die!” and forced raw mana down the demon’s throat in his place.

Famine exploded. Wisps and the emerald air of the Fade scattered in all directions. The hunger pains were banished with the demon, and Amell fell into the river. Anders scrambled to his feet after him, and his leg gave out from under him. Pain seared up his side, and Anders collapsed with something between a snarl and a sob. His ankle had to have been broken when Famine had thrown him across the riverbed, but he’d been so focused on Amell he hadn’t even noticed.

Veilfire split his skin as Justice wound tight around the broken bone, but it wasn’t healing fast enough and Amell was in full armor and Anders swore he wouldn’t panic but he did anyway. Anders grabbed his staff and used it to drag himself to the river’s edge, bones snapping violently into place, when a root burst out of the ground in front of him and shot into the water, dragging Amell out of it and onto the rocky bank.

He hadn’t drowned. He hadn’t died. Amell rolled onto his knees and coughed, and kept coughing, hands fighting with latches to his helmet while water spilled from beneath it.

“I got it,” Anders unlatched Amell’s helmet and tossed it aside. “I got you.” Amell locked an arm around his shoulders and wheezed against his chest while Anders’ panacea washed over him. Velanna and Ailsa cut through the dozen or so undead that lingered on the bank, trapped in grease or ice, and moved to join them. Amell was fine. He was fine. He hadn’t had to summon his simulacrum at all. He hadn’t needed anything except support from his Wardens - and he had it. “We got you.”

Chapter 164: Triage

Notes:

Thanks for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 6 Solis Mid-Day
Ferelden: The Bank of the River Dane

Amell caught his breath, but he didn’t look relieved to be saved. If anything he looked frustrated, jaw clenched, his voice strained when he spoke, “I told you not to heal me.”

Anders didn’t care what Amell had told him. He was a healer, and Amell needed healing. There was no reason not to heal him now that Famine was dead. If just the touch of Anders’ magic was so overwhelming Amell couldn’t control himself, then Anders didn’t want him to, “Well I am, so kiss me or clash me.”

Amell didn’t clash him.

Amell grabbed his face in hands and kissed him. It felt like life-giving fire; the breath of the Maker stolen straight from the Golden City. It breathed through Anders' mouth, down his throat, into his lungs, and out through every inch of his skin. Like lying on the white beaches of Llomerryn, atop sun-warmed sands, blanketed by the waves. Like a breath of lyrium, pulling him into the Fade wherein lay limitless possibility and the stretch of eternity where the kiss never ended.

The strength in his arms, the soft caress of his tongue, the way his taste intoxicated and his scent enslaved. Anders moaned. He shivered. Maker, he practically writhed. If his magic ruined Amell, Amell’s magic ruined him. The play of static, of ice, of fire, the soft pulse of the Fade beneath it all. His lips parted further for more, but Velanna dragged Amell to his feet and back into the fight.

The undead hadn't gone back to being just dead just because Famine had died. The battle continued until the last of them were dispatched. Amell’s kiss haunted him through the day and into the night, and the undead were finally routed at Wutherford, but Anders still didn’t have any opportunity to talk to Amell. He was a spirit healer and the armies needed healing.

The Wardens weren't accustomed to having a real healer with them, or for any of the obligations that came with one. They couldn't just leave come morning. The armies might have had their own healers and physicians, but they didn't have a spirit healer to cleanse the infections they'd contracted eating the dead. Anders set up a makeshift clinic out of an abandoned farmstead, both for his promise to Franke and because he would have done it anyway.

The Wardens weren't exactly against it, but they weren't exactly for it either. They were eager to return to the Vigil, where there was more to eat than whatever the villagers had to spare. The armies ate them out of house and home within the hour, and Justice spent the rest of the day proselytizing over the injustice of it all before Amell agreed to ride back to West Hill to seize Bann Franderel’s stores.

Anders spent the next two days triaging the armies before Amell returned, and Franderel’s stores returned with him. The Wardens distributed supplies to the freeholders in Wutherfurd while the Bann’s army returned to West Hill to raid Franderel’s granneries before dispersing. The Silver Order went with them on their way back to Soldier’s Peak. Only the injured and the infirm remained, but with an army over a hundred strong they numbered in the dozens.

The farmstead Anders had commandeered served well enough to fit them all. The common room had been cleared; mattresses, cots, and bedrolls were pushed together to fit the dozen or so patients he still had left to triage. His latest surgery was a poor bastard whose left calf had been eaten down to the bone, blistering with infection. There wasn’t anything left to be done but amputate, and Anders had been in the middle of sawing through bone when Amell had finally found him.

He was a mess. Whatever had happened at the bann’s estate had left him bruised and battered, but nothing was broken. It had taken every ounce of Anders’ willpower not to flood him with creationism at the sight of his purpling jaw. He’d sent Amell off to a backroom with elfroot instead, and forced himself to focus on his surgery, but now that it was over and they were alone, it felt like something they should talk about.

The backroom was a bedroom, though the mattress had been moved to the infirmary. Amell sat on the rug, his back against the empty bed frame, a roll of elfroot dangling from his fingers to help with the pain, but it couldn’t have been his first to judge by the ashes on the floor. A fire crackled without kindling in the hearth, and a flare of primal magic refreshed the spell. Anders stood at the vanity basin, scrubbing the blood from beneath his nails and the bonedust from his arms, tinting the water pink.

“What happened to you?” Anders asked, now that he finally could.

“The seneschal and his men didn’t agree with the seizure,” Amell explained.

“Should I go heal him next?” Anders joked.

“They agree with it now,” Amell said, taking a long pull of elfroot.

“Should I ask what that means?” Anders asked.

“If you like,” Amell said, but Anders didn’t have to ask. He had the answer in front of him, dripping off his hands and into an old clay bowl. There was nothing else it could mean with Amell. It probably should have bothered him more, but it didn’t.

Anders didn’t care how much blood Amell spilled or whose it was, as long as he spilled it for the right reasons. Anders had argued for an infirmary and Justice had argued for food, and they’d gotten it. They’d convinced him. They were capable of convincing him. They were capable of convincing someone. They hadn’t had to fight. They’d just had to explain. They’d just had to ask, and Amell had done it because it was the right thing to do.

Amell had fed the villagers the same way he’d fed Famine - and it was one of the most attractive things they’d ever seen. They hadn’t pursued justice in so long they’d almost forgotten what it felt like. It felt exultant. It felt ecstatic. It felt like his kiss - intense and intoxicating - consuming heart and soul.

Anders gave up on his arms, and traded his wet cloth for a dry one. “How’s the elfroot?”

“Did you want to share?” Amell asked, with such a painfully provocative smirk and such a clear invitation for intimacy Anders dropped the cloth he was holding.

“I don’t normally smoke,” Anders said, for some insane reason, considering there was suddenly nothing he wanted to do more.

“I don’t normally share,” Amell countered, tracking his every step, the flowing crimson in his eyes melting Anders down to his knees when he reached him. Not for the first time, Anders wondered if Amell could sense the way his heart raced for him. He set a tentative hand to Amell’s wrist to take the elfroot from him, but Amell pulled his hand back. “Come here.”

“I’m right here,” Anders said.

“Closer,” Amell held his free hand in the space between them, inches from his face, like that was where he wanted him, but it was hard to trust if Amell knew what he wanted right now. His eyes were black, and Anders couldn’t see the veins within them to tell how far gone he was.

“Amell-” Anders started, stopped, and didn’t know how to continue. He wanted Amell. Amell had to want him, but they were supposed to be taking things slow, and Anders didn’t know how slow was too slow or how fast was too fast and they still hadn’t talked about the kiss Anders had all but provoked him into. “... Are you sure you want me here?”

“Always,” Amell said - and there was something so profoundly casual in the way he said it. Like it came to him as naturally as breathing. Like it was something he shouldn’t even have to say.

Anders sucked in a rickety breath when he remembered he was supposed to breathe, and shifted as close as he could get without sitting in Amell’s lap. It must not have been close enough, because Amell ran a gentle hand along his legs, and pulled them one after the other over his own. His fingers swept up his throat, and the nervous swallow that played through him, tracing over his trembling lips.

“Open your mouth?” It wasn’t quite a command and it wasn’t quite a question, but Anders would have said yes to either one.

His lips parted, and Amell took a long pull of elfroot before leaning forward, his hand beneath his jaw holding him steady while he exhaled into his mouth in the longest breath of Anders’ life. The taste was intoxicating: elfroot and Amell, a warmth that didn’t burn but flowed down his throat and eclipsed every other thought and sensation outside this one moment.

Anders didn’t want to know another breath if it wasn’t one that Amell gave him, but he had to keep breathing eventually. Shattered sounds more whimper than anything else, but he breathed, shivering under Amell’s touch, and the comforting caress running beneath his jaw.

“Fuck,” Anders swore.

He probably should have picked a different one.

“Is that what you want?” Amell murmured, pressing their foreheads together.

Yes. Yes a thousand times yes. There was nothing Anders wanted more. The offer made him ache; he felt his pulse in his skin, flush and frantic and throbbing through his stiffening cock, trapped in the too tight confines of his clothes. He ran his hands in mindless sweeps along Amell’s arms, fighting for words, but he felt like he'd never used them before.

“You can say no,” Amell reminded him, like he knew he needed reminding. “You both can."

He couldn’t have known how desperately Anders needed to hear it. Anders hadn’t told him. Anders had said no so many times the word had lost its meaning. Eventually there’d been no point in even saying it, and Anders never wanted to say it again. "Share with me again?"

Amell leaned back for an obedient pull of elfroot, and the second time he sought his lips his thumb slipped over them and into his mouth, wetting the tip to drag over his bottom lip. Anders shivered through all of it, his whole body burning with need, with the breath Amell gave him and the calming ecstasy within it. Amell hadn't even touched him and he was already falling apart.

He felt like he'd never been touched before in his life. He was so hard and so sensitive he choked down moans at every brush of Amell’s fingers. Maker save him, there was no way Amell could fuck him. He wouldn't get the chance. All Amell had to do was touch him and that would be the end of him. At this rate Amell might not have to touch him at all.

They should stop. They should stop, but Anders didn’t want to stop. "How high are you?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes."

"I'm not.”

"Liar.”

Anders pulled him into an embrace. Amell let him. He moved so easily for the slightest touch - like Anders could do whatever he wanted with him. Like Anders could have however much control he wanted to have. Like Amell wanted to give him whatever he needed instead of taking whatever he wanted.

"What do you want?" Amell’s impossibly warm lips grazed his jaw when he spoke, every word primed to drive him mad. "I’ll give it to you."

Fuck it.

"Fuck me, I want you,” Anders was so starved for him it made Famine’s hunger feel like a feast. The kiss he pressed to Amell’s neck was a desperate drag of teeth and tongue and wrung a sharp inhale from him. “I want you so bad."

Amell pulled back from him for a final inhale of elfroot before he tossed the roll aside, and it could have burned down the whole farmstead for all Anders cared. He only cared about the second he spent without him, and the age that seemed to pass within it before Amell’s lips were on him, pressed against his jaw and carving a heated path of pleasure down his neck. Smoke escaped with every kiss, clouding Anders’ head and winding back the years, and Maker how he’d missed them.

He'd forgotten how Amell’s magic felt, the way it breathed in him with the first pulse of Fade-borne warmth on his lips. Amell sucked on his neck, worrying at the sensitive skin at his collarbone with teeth and tongue, and Anders arched into the sensation with a shameless whimper. Fade take him, Amell was so warm, so gentle, so soothing Anders could have met his end in just this moment. Pleasure coiled tight in the pit of his stomach, pulsing with every pull of Amell’s lips, and Anders fought it off with shallow gasps.

"Maker, Amell-"

"Pick one," Amell groaned.

"You," Anders clung to him, tangling his hands in his hair. "Always you."

“Heal me?”

Anders pulled for the Fade, and let the creationism breathe over Amell’s skin, washing away the bruises he’d earned. For Anders, for Justice, for the tangled soul they shared that Amell had committed to loving for five long years despite Anders never once saying it back. He should say it back. He should say something - but any hope of word or thought left his head at the passionate sigh his magic wrung from Amell.

Amell wrapped an arm around his back, his hand cradling the back of Anders’ head when he swept forward in one smooth motion and laid him out on the rug. Anders fought off another whimper, coiled with an involuntary panic. He didn't need to panic. There was nothing to panic over. It was Amell, and Anders wanted Amell, but his heart cinched with panic anyway, his arms locking tight around Amell’s shoulders.

"You feel tense," Amell stopped, holding himself up with one arm while the other swept up and down Anders’ side.

Anders shook his head. Amell couldn’t see him shake his head. Anders knew Amell couldn’t see him shake his head, but he shook his head anyway, because Anders was an idiot. He had to have been an idiot to be tense, here, now of all places, when he had everything he’d ever wanted and more.

“Talk to me?” Amell suggested.

“Sorry,” Anders croaked.

“Do you want to stop?” Amell guessed.

No. Yes. Anders felt pulled into a thousand pieces, his heart, his head, his cock, some thrice-damned muscle memory that made him lock up in the arms of the first and last man Anders ever wanted to know him. “Maybe.”

“We can stop,” Amell moved to pull away from him, but Anders kept his arms locked around his shoulders, so Amell stayed in them. “Anders?”

“Sorry,” Anders mumbled, surprised the words even made it out through the flood of embarrassment, shame, and frustration threatening to drown him.

“Don’t be,” Amell said easily. “I might have smoked more than I needed.”

He was lying. Amell was always lying, but Anders pretended he wasn’t. “Stay here?”

“Right now or tonight?”

“Both?” Anders asked. “Is that okay? Is this okay?”

“Anything you want,” Amell promised.

Anders rolled them over, and felt slightly better when he wasn’t trapped. He'd never been trapped. Amell wasn't pinning him to the floor and forcing a vial of bane between his lips, ignoring his every desperate plea for him to stop. The flush to Amell’s skin and the press of his cock made it painfully clear he was aching for him, and he had to have felt how badly Anders ached for him in turn, but he’d stopped anyway. He’d stopped, and Anders didn’t have to ask him to stop, and it just made him even more frustrated that he had to stop at all.

Anders didn’t want to stop. The soothing scent of elfroot clung to Amell, his eyes blown almost completely black with passion Anders couldn’t stop feeling. He felt so close to unraveling over nothing. Anders could have buried his face in Amell’s shoulder and found release just rocking against the warm body beneath him, but he didn’t. He couldn’t - and he’d never hated Hawke more for it.

Amell lay with his arm behind his head in lieu of a pillow, the fingers of his free hand pulling down the neckline of Anders' tunic to trace along his collarbone. His touch didn’t bruise. It didn’t beat. It didn’t bind. It just felt nice - and it had been a long time since anything had.

“Too fast?” Amell guessed.

“Maybe,” Anders lied. It wasn’t, but he didn’t know how to explain, and Amell didn’t ask him to. “... was the kiss too fast?”

“Maybe,” Amell’s fingers swept up to trace over his lips. “Did you want me to kiss you?”

“I always want you to kiss me,” Anders wanted to kiss him so badly his lips parted for his touch, chasing the taste of elfroot and salt on his fingertips, and left him swallowing back needy moans.

“Then it’s not too fast…. Anders, I never stopped wanting you just because I was hurting. It just made wanting you hurt more.”

“I swear I never wanted to hurt you. I want you, I do, I just want you to be sure. Are you sure?” Anders hated himself for asking, but he had to ask. He’d spent the past two months - the past five years - begging for everything Amell was offering but he didn’t want it if Amell would regret it. “You said you wanted us to get to know each other first.”

“I do and we are and we have been,” Amell said. “I’m not going to stop getting to know you if I kiss you. Is there something I should know before I do?”

It seemed like the perfect opportunity to tell him, but Anders didn’t want to tell him. Anders didn’t know how to tell him. He didn’t know what Amell would do if he did. He didn’t know what he wanted Amell to do if he did. “Does that mean we can kiss now?” Anders asked instead.

“It means we can kiss now,” Amell said.

“I’m going to kiss you then,” Anders decided, but then he didn’t. He couldn’t sweep Amell up in some grand gesture without invitation even when he wanted to. He just hovered, uselessly, their lips inches apart until Amell smiled at his hesitation.

“You can kiss me,” Amell encouraged him.

Anders was an amazing kisser. Anders had always been an amazing kisser. Kinloch was full of people who could attest to what an amazing kisser he was, but when he kissed Amell he just felt awkward. Amell was smiling, and his smile didn’t melt at the first press of Anders’ lips, so Anders shifted for the second, but Amell didn’t shift with him, and his smile just got worse when their lips didn’t quite meet.

At least Amell couldn’t see his embarrassment, “Stop smiling.”

“I’m not smiling.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“I’m an incredible liar,” Amell grinned.

It was a joke, and Anders knew it was a joke, but it still seized on something inside him that made his heart skip in all the wrong ways. “... not to me.”

“Not to you,” Amell promised.

Amell’s smile finally fled, replaced with something akin to concern that was easier to kiss away. Anders tangled a hand in Void-black hair and lost himself to soft lips and softer hands. Amell kept one cradled against his jaw, and it kept him from losing track of him whenever they parted. Anders didn’t want to part. It was easier, warmer, safer to stay tangled in him, breathing in his every breath and knowing nothing short of rapture.

Amell must have known it too. He sounded like he knew it, groaning against his lips while they found a rhythm in each other, his free hand kneading across his shoulder, along his arm, down his side, squeezing at his hip, mumbling inane praises or random questions with every other breath. “You feel perfect,” at his shoulders. “You’re still so lean,” at his side. “Forgot how tall you are,” at his hips. “Casting scars?” at his arms.

Anders knew better than to say anything back. His eyes burned with unshed tears and he should have just kept kissing him, but once the words started he couldn’t stop. “I missed you,” Anders’ voice hitched painfully. “I missed you. I missed you so much. Maker, Amell, I’m sorry-”

“Shh,” Amell covered his lips with the tips of his fingers. Anders kissed them and took a steadying breath. “You were worth the wait.”

Anders couldn’t say how long he spent with him, lost in him, before he finally noticed the light outside came from the moons and not from the sun. Parting from him felt like amputating his own heart, but somehow Anders managed, retrieving Amell’s things from his horse and bringing them back to the makeshift infirmary. He laid out Amell’s bedroll for them, because Amell was the kind of person who remembered to bring a bedroll, and both of them stripped down to their smalls, which seemed dangerously close to stripping down to nothing.

Anders lay on Amell’s chest, running his fingers over his chest, dusted with dark hair and patterned with scars, and wondered how everything had fallen together so quickly. Everything in his life was always falling apart, and it didn’t seem possible that this could be any different. He’d end up moving too fast, or too slow, or just moving in the wrong direction. He wanted - ardently - to keep them from ruin. He didn’t know how, but Amell might.

“Promise you’ll tell me if I’m fucking this up?” Anders asked.

“Promise,” Amell hummed.

“You don’t have to spend the night with me, you know,” Anders said.

“I know.”

“People might talk.”

“People already talk.”

“You’re giving them a lot to talk about,” Anders pointed out, tracing the scars on his arms. “... is this really okay? You living openly like this?”

“No,” Amell admitted.

“Then why are you?”

“Because no one can stop me.”

Anders snorted, “Because that’s a normal reason to do something.”

“It’s the only one I have,” Amell found his arm, and with careful fingers traced the handful of casting scars Anders had earned over the years, all but imperceptible for how his magic healed them. “I’m tired, Anders. I’m tired of pretending I’m not a blood mage. I’m tired of pretending I’m not proud of that. The First Warden’s aware. Commander Janeka, Commander Clarel, we’re all maleficarum. The Chantry can’t march against us all.”

“I am so attracted to you right now,” Anders said sincerely.

“Are you not normally?” Amell joked.

“Keep it up and I’ll show you just how attracted to you I always am,” Anders threatened him.

“Is that a promise?”

“It could be,” Anders probably lied. He’d tried. He’d tried and he’d locked up and he’d hated that he locked up but he didn’t know how not to lock up. He was safe. He was free. He wasn’t in that fucking room, but it felt like that fucking room was in him.

“What’s it take to make it one?” Amell asked.

Anders didn’t know. Time, if he had to guess. Sometime between tonight and tomorrow, if one would ever come for him, but he wanted it to be tonight, and he’d be damned if Hawke was the reason it had to be tomorrow. Amell traced his face, waiting for his answer, and Anders kissed him because he wanted to kiss him. He wanted to do a lot more than kiss him, but kissing him seemed like a safe start.

Magic seemed safer. The Fade felt like an inferno inside him, manifesting in warm lips and warmer hands determined to relearn every inch of Amell’s skin in a pilgrimage of scars. Anders followed them from Amell’s lips to his chest, kneading his way down his side, a crackle of static playing between his fingers and wringing a surprised gasp from Amell’s lips. A shallow roll of his hips won another. Anders had never fit anywhere as perfectly as he fit between Amell’s legs, eager hands clutching at his back and holding him-

Anders froze, and fought his way through a trembling breath. Amell’s hands. They were Amell’s hands. Anders rested his forehead on Amell’s chest, and ran his hand in sweeps along Amell’s arm. It was a nice arm. A scarred arm. Anders liked his arms.

“You feel tense,” Amell said, not for the first time.

“I just need a second,” Anders lied.

“Spend it with me?”

Anders rolled off him and onto his shoulder, frustrated to the point of being furious. Anders was amazing in bed. Anders had always been amazing in bed. Kinloch was full of people who could attest to how amazing in bed he was. Maker’s breath, Amell could attest to how amazing in bed he was, but he definitely couldn’t attest to it now. Not when Anders kept freezing up every time Amell set his hands to him. Anders buried his face in Amell’s hair and breathed in the scent of copper, buried beneath elfroot, and his heart slowed as easily as it raced for him.

“Are you alright?” Amell asked, and Anders hummed something he hoped sounded affirmative. “Is Justice?”

“What?” Anders blinked.

“He mentioned he doesn’t care for physical affection,” Amell said. “If he’s not comfortable with sex-”

“No - it’s - “ Flames. Anders didn’t want to get into this. Justice didn’t have anything to do with why he was tense, but it would have been a good excuse, if Anders could bring himself to use it. “I wouldn’t force him into anything. This is just for me. This is just for us.”

“Are you sure?” Amell asked. “You’re still possessed.”

“I am Justice. I know how he feels and how he wants me to feel and right now he wants me to feel happy and he trusts you to make me feel that way. You can’t imagine what it’s like to want someone with more than one soul. It’s-... It’s just been a long time. And it’s you. It’s just a little intimidating.”

“... a little,” Amell said.

Anders sat up so he could see Amell’s face, but he’d never been able to read it. “What do you mean a little?”

“I mean a little,” Amell shrugged. “It’s been a long time. And it’s you.”

Anders couldn’t imagine Amell being intimidated by anything. The man went to battle blind against harvesters and demons and darkspawn, armed with nothing but his magic and his faith in his friends. He defied the Crown, the Chantry, the bloody Maker. Nothing intimidated him, but somehow Anders did.

“... it’s you,” Anders said. “It was always you.”

It should have been enough, but it wasn’t. Something about Amell’s hands - anyone’s hands - clutching him, clinging to him, holding him down kept setting him off. He knew he could get past it, but asking if Amell wanted to jump straight into Anders tying his hands behind his back seemed a little too intense and asking him not to touch him seemed a little too rude. Amell had to have known something was wrong with him, and Anders hated that something was wrong with him, but he didn’t know how to fix it.

Amell fell asleep eventually. Anders didn’t. Anders couldn’t. He was too tense, too frustrated, too bloody starved for Amell and everything he had to offer. The spark of his magic, the heat of his skin, the touch of his hands, the warmth of his mouth and every other end that Anders could have met inside him or Amell could have met in him. Amell was perfect. He was perfect for him - in every way that Anders could want. He didn’t pressure, he didn’t push, he didn’t even snore. When he slept, his breathing was even, and his worst crime was the occasional twitch.

Anders traced along his collarbone, and wished he still had Amell’s ring. Anders could have taken care of himself. Amell could have felt it. Anders could have felt him. They could have felt each other without Amell having to touch him, and maybe that would have been an easier way to start. Instead he was just lying here, aching and agonized, touching Amell’s chest until he woke him up.

“Anders?” Amell stifled a yawn.

“Morning?” Anders lied.

“Is it?”

“No,” Anders admitted. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I just-... I’m just lying here, aching for you. I should probably go find the little mage’s room.”

“Is that what you call it?” Amell joked.

“Nice try," Anders tugged on his ear. "Bad jokes just make me want you more.”

Amell caught his hand and kissed it. “You don’t have to leave.”

“What, just stay here and get off next to you?” Anders snorted. Like he needed this night to be more embarrassing. "I’m sure that’s your favorite fantasy”

“You’re my favorite fantasy,” Amell said.

“Are you serious? Do you really want me to?”

Maker, maybe Anders should have asked Amell not to touch him. Maybe he would have done it. It felt like Amell would have done anything. Like he didn’t need Anders to do anything, but he must have needed something. No one was that selfless, and Anders didn’t want to be that selfish. Not anymore.

“Can you stay on my shoulder?” Amell asked.

… Anders could probably do that. It felt safe enough, pressed flush against his side, Amell’s arm around his shoulders. No one was forcing him or pinning him down. Amell was just there, his fingers moving in a slow caress on his upper arm. “Are you sure this is okay?” Anders asked.

“Yes,” Amell rested his forehead on him, and was bound to hurt his neck for it, but it kept him close and close was all Anders wanted. “Tell me if I can touch you.”

“You could touch yourself,” Anders wasn’t about to be that much of a bastard. Unless Amell wanted him to be that much of a bastard.

“I just want to focus on you,” Amell said.

… maybe Amell did want him to be a bastard. Anders filed the thought away for later, and tried to work up the nerve to actually take a hand to himself. It wasn’t like it would be the first time he found release in the fractured memory of Amell and the few months they’d had together, except he wasn’t a memory anymore. He was too warm to be a memory; the summer heat hung heavy in the infirmary and Anders was already sweating for just the thought of him.

“What about me?” Anders asked.

“Everything,” Amell volunteered, his voice a low murmur that sent a shiver up his spine. “The way you feel… the way you sound… Remind me?”

Anders canted his hips and pushed his smalls down his knees and off - and felt hyper aware of every texture on every inch of his skin in their absence. The bedroll was too thin, the blanket too rough, the air too humid. Everything but Amell felt like too much. Anders kicked the blanket off, but he didn’t like the thought of being the only one not under it, and ended up throwing it across the room.

“Okay,” Anders fought off an insane urge to narrate his fight with the blanket, considering Amell couldn’t see what he was doing. Anders didn't even know what he was doing. He was just lying on Amell, naked and tense and extraordinarily stupid, and if there was a better metaphor for his life to date Anders couldn’t think of one.

“You can still leave if you’d rather be alone,” Amell promised.

“I don’t want to be alone,” Anders said quickly.

“Do you want me to talk?” Amell asked.

“Please,” Anders caressed his chest with the hand that wasn’t trapped between them, tracing over the texture of an old burn, but he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten it. He couldn’t remember half the things he wanted to remember, like how Amell felt and how he sounded, but Amell was right here and it was maddening that Anders could be so bloody stupid-

“You’re perfect,” Amell cut off his train of thought, fingers running idly along his arm. “You’ve always been perfect.”

“I’m an ass and you know it,” Anders said.

“... is that how you wanted me to talk?” Amell asked.

“No,” Anders didn’t have it in him to joke. He knew he was imperfect. He’d heard it said and seen it signed more times than he could count. He didn’t need to keep hearing it. “I just feel like this is all about me and I’m just using you again.”

“You’re not,” Amell said, mapping his face with his free hand, fingers trailing across his brow, down his nose, sweeping along his jaw and making him shudder. “I want you and I don’t care how I have you. I said I want to focus on you and I meant it. I just want to feel you - next to me, under me, over me - I don’t care. I couldn’t want you more than I do now.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“Of course I do.”

“I feel the same way,” Anders swallowed. “I just-... I hope you aren’t expecting anything amazing. I can’t remember the last time I came.”

“Then come for me.”

Maker’s breath, if there was ever an order he wanted to follow. Anders pulled for the Fade. Primal magics tangled together with creationism and warmed the oil on his palm when he took a hand to himself. A wave of panic coiled together with pleasure and settled in his chest, choking out his breath until Amell squeezed his shoulder, kind fingers denting freckled skin.

“I love your magic,” Amell pulled apart his panic, unraveling it one thread at a time until Anders felt like he could breathe, like he could move, like he could feel something he actually wanted to feel. “No one’s ever compared to you.”

“No one?”

“No one,” Amell kissed his forehead.

Anders remembered how to breathe and how to move, every slow stroke of his hand along his cock wringing a shallow gasp from his lips. Pleasure free of any pain flooded through his veins like the crack of a dam, until he was feverish with it, sweat breaking out across every inch of his flushed skin. It felt like too much. It felt like too little. Anders ran his foot along Amell’s ankle for some bit contact, some bit of something, toes curling in the empty air.

“You sound incredible,” Amell praised him. His cool caress across his brow kept the sweat from his eyes, his fingers never deviating from his face, but they could have. Anders wanted Amell to touch him, but he didn’t trust himself to words. A groan somewhere between Amell’s name and nonsense caught in his throat when he tried. “I could listen to you for hours.”

Anders couldn’t last hours. Anders couldn’t last minutes, wrapped in Amell’s arms, listening to him whisper one word of praise after the next. That he was strong, that he was brave, that he was handsome, that he was hilarious, that he was as unbroken as he was unbreakable. Anders’ cracked gasps pitched higher and higher, and he smothered them in Amell’s shoulder, biting his lip against the bliss burning through him with every frantic pump of his fist around his aching cock.

Flames take him, he was so close to shattering, but he didn’t want to shatter without Amell. Anders let go of his cock and dug his nails into his thigh, shivering against Amell’s side and trying to drag himself back from the edge of ecstasy. “Amell, can you - can you touch me?”

“Anywhere you want,” Amell freed his arm from underneath him, hastily shifting so he was lying on his side, propped up on one arm. Amell set his palm on his chest, over his racing heart, but didn’t move it anywhere else.

“I mean really touch me,” Anders pleaded - his voice choked with yearning.

“What am I doing right now?” Amell asked.

“Not touching me,” Anders said shakily.

Amell’s hand moved to the nape of his neck, and pulled him in for a kiss. Amell’s lips moved gently against his own, swallowing his needy whimpers as his hand mapped his naked body in agonizing detail. Anders had never felt more seen than he did when Amell traced every ridge, every curve, every scar, every inch of his flushed and trembling skin. He felt known. He felt understood. He felt laid bare and not found wanting.

“You’re so beautiful,” Amell whispered.

He felt safe, when Amell finally touched him and Anders came apart in his arms.

He felt loved.

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
Maybe Someday: Amell's perspective on the events of this chapter.

Fanart
Amell and Anders Smoking as portrayed by a-charaid.
Amell and Anders Smoking as portrayed by Chimeowrical

Chapter 165: Together

Notes:

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Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 10 Solis Night
Ferelden: Wutherford Farmhouse Infirmary

Anders was sweating. Sex had a way of doing that, but it was the last month of summer, and the promise of early autumn rain caught in the air and kept it humid even in the backroom of the infirmary. A breath of mana turned the air crisp and cool, chilling his skin, and he felt terrifyingly fragile in the aftermath of his climax. Like one wrong word would shatter him. Like he was made of cracks, and in the stillness of the moment veilfire filled them.

Safe. Anders was safe, tangled up in a man and a spirit who loved him, and neither Justice nor Amell would ever hurt him. Not like Hawke had hurt him. Amell finished himself with a fast hand while Anders recovered on his side. Anders shouldn’t have been so wrapped up in his own head he’d forgotten the man he was wrapped up in, but Amell hadn’t even asked him for anything.

He should have. He could have. Anders told himself it didn’t bother him, but it did. Amell never rushed anything. The man hadn’t seemed to know the meaning of a quickie in the few months Anders had had with him. He’d blocked out whole chunks of his day for sex in an intensely satisfyingly and wholly exhausting combination of warden stamina and blood magic.

“This isn’t the Circle,” Amell had said when Anders had brought it up, years upon years ago. “We have time.”

They still had time. They might have lost years of it, but there was no reason they had to lose anymore. Maybe Amell just wanted to take care of himself, but Anders wanted to touch him as badly as he wanted Amell to touch him, and he couldn’t imagine a reason why Amell might not want him to.

… maybe there was something wrong with Amell too.

The two of them barely fit on the bedroll together, even with Anders lying on his side. The blanket was somewhere, and Anders should probably go get it in case some poor patient wandered into the room, but he was busy drawing idle circles on Amell’s chest. Amell shivered, on occasion, and there was something strangely captivating in making him.

“Your fingers are cold,” Amell said.

“Do you want me to stop?” Anders asked.

“Never,” Amell trailed his own fingers lazily up and down Anders’ chest. “Did you have fun?”

“I don’t think you have to ask,” Anders joked. “It’s not like I was faking it.”

Amell exhaled bemusedly, tracing the palm-sized scar that cut across Anders’ heart. “How did you get this?”

“Rolan,” Anders recalled. “The night I left the Vigil. It's probably better you can't see it. It’s not pretty."

"... I like it. It feels like you could survive anything."

He couldn’t, but it was nice that Amell thought he could. "Did you have fun?”

Amell hummed affirmatively. He looked beautiful. He’d always been beautiful, but with an afterglow of ecstasy he looked soul-wrenching. The sheen of sweat on his tanned skin turned it a brilliant shade of bronze, made all the more vibrant for the pale scars that marred it. His smile reached all the way to his void black eyes and the flowing crimson within them, and Anders felt a near physical pain that he hadn’t seen whatever expression he wore in the throes of passion, that he hadn’t felt the soft skin and firm length of his cock beneath his fingers, that he hadn’t held him through his climax, that Amell might not have wanted him to.

“Amell?”

“Hm?”

“Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Amell asked.

It wasn’t an answer, and Anders was getting better at noticing when Amell didn’t actually give one. “You are going to be an inspiration to generations of politicians. Can you just answer the question?”

“I'm not sure how to answer it,” Amell confessed. It wasn’t exactly the kind of confession Anders wanted to hear after sex, but maybe for once it didn’t have to be about him. “You’re incredible.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Anders joked. “Like why you seem distant?”

“Do I?”

“Amell, seriously, it’s question - answer, not question - question,” When that didn’t get him anywhere, Anders ran a tentative hand along Amell’s thigh. “Did you not want me to touch you?”

“You can touch me,” Amell squeezed his shoulder, but Anders was already pressed flush against him and he couldn’t get any closer. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted to do anything for me tonight.”

“Of course I do,” Anders said hotly. He might not have been the most emotionally attentive partner, but he’d always been a physically attentive one. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“... I can think of a few reasons,” Amell said quietly.

“Well stop,” Anders said. “I want you. Tell me what you like.”

“... what?” Amell’s face scrunched up into a look of such intense confusion Anders couldn’t decide if it was offensive or comedic. Amell was almost painfully enigmatic, and for him to react that way to Anders asking what he liked really only left two options. Either he never thought Anders would ask, or he never thought anyone would, and Anders wasn’t sure which one was worse.

“What do you mean what?” Anders demanded. “What do you like?”

“... you?” Amell said slowly.

“You asked me, remember?” Anders propped himself up on his elbow, and took one of Amell’s hands to kiss his fingers. “You were the first person who ever did. I never asked you back. What do you like?”

“I like y-”

“So help me, Amell, if you say you like me again.”

Amell’s words turned into a wheeze that devolved into a strangled laugh.

“Now you’re laughing,” Anders sat back with a huff. “I can’t believe you’re laughing at me.”

“I’m sorry,” Amell cleared his throat. “I’m not laughing at you. I don’t know what to say.”

“How do you not know?” Anders asked. “I know you haven’t been in a relationship with anyone since I left but I know you’ve had sex.”

“No I haven’t,” Amell said.

“Remember the whole not lying to me thing? Like twenty minutes ago?” Anders drawled in lieu of rolling his eyes. “Wardens talk, you know. Everyone knows you have noblemen up to your room.”

Amell sat up, because apparently this was a sitting up conversation. He ran a hand through his coal black hair and looked like he was digging through a grab bag of excuses Anders didn’t need to hear. Amell could have slept with the whole bloody Vigil for all Anders cared, as long as he wasn’t sleeping with anyone anymore. “Not for sex,” Amell managed eventually.

“... Okay?” Anders said. “If you want something else I don’t mind. What do you like? Do you actually want me to step on you? Because I’ll do it.”

Amell snorted, “That’s not-... Well… if you want.”

“You told me you’d try anything with me,” Anything but pain play, had been Amell’s exact offer, and the irony that Anders had spent the past year doing more or less that wasn’t lost on him. “I’d try anything with you too. Just tell me.”

“It’s just politics,” Amell explained - a little too casually. “Some royals or nobles are willing to offer a lot for a night with the Hero of Ferelden, and some of them are the kind of people you can’t refuse without causing a diplomatic incident.”

“You mean -... you mean you-...” Anders couldn’t breathe. “They-... so they just force you?”

“No, that’s not -...” Amell made a sound somewhere between a sigh and groan. “If someone wants a night with me, I just make them think they had one.”

“... Are you serious?”

“... no?”

“You’re seriously telling me you compel people into thinking they’ve slept with you? That’s… I don’t know what that is.” Somewhere between ethically concerning and insanely hilarious. Anders was leaning towards hilarious, but it seemed like he should focus on concerning first. “So some noble wants to sleep with you and you really can’t say no?”

“I never had a reason to,” Amell shrugged.

“Not wanting to isn’t reason enough?” Anders asked.

“I never had a good reason,” Amell corrected himself.

“That sounds like a good reason to me,” Anders argued. “What about all the nobles?”

“I’ve never used it on anyone who didn’t ask to sleep with me first,” Amell said.

Well. That didn't sound so bad. Concern abated, Anders went back to hilarious, propping his elbows up on Amell’s bent knees and resting his chin on his hands. “You really never met anyone worth the real deal?”

“The real deal?” Amell repeated.

“There’s no way your spell is better. No one would believe it. What kind of compulsion is it? Do you just give everyone the same night or do you shake it up depending on the person?” Anders teased.

“Is that a joke?” Amell guessed, grinning hesitantly.

“If I say yes does that mean you won’t answer?” Anders asked. “Because I really want you to answer.”

“... you’re not upset?”

“I’m a little concerned, but as long as no one’s waking up with a newfound appreciation for feet I think you’re good.”

“It’s nothing like that,” Amell assured him.

Anders traced a renewed confidence into Amell’s grin, and was half-way to kissing him when he realized Amell had never actually answered his question. “Are you ever going to tell me what you like or should I go ask one of those nobles?”

“They wouldn’t know,” Amell said. “... I'm not sure I know. The compulsion is whatever they want it to be."

"What about what you want?"

"I just want to know you’re here.”

“You’re not allowed to say you want me," Anders protested. "That’s cheating.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Amell rearranged him so Anders was in his lap with his legs pressed against his sides. “I meant I want to know you’re here. I want to be able to feel you. I want to be able to hear you. I want to know you're more than just a pulse.”

Anders clasped Amell’s jaw, tracing high cheekbones with his thumb, and won a slow blink of brilliant black eyes. Amell might not have been able to see him the way he could see Justice, but Anders could make sure Amell heard him. He could make sure Amell felt him. “I’m here. Put your arms around me. I’ll prove it."

Their legs were already tangled, and for a minute Amell’s arms around his shoulders made him feel claustrophobic. Enclosed. Contained, a firm hand forcing apart his lips and shoving a vial between them, the glass cracking when Anders bit down so hard it shattered and cut into his gums and Maker’s mercy, Anders, why are you always so damn difficult-

Anders shoved the memory aside with a steadying breath of copper. He pulled Amell into a kiss and kneaded along his thigh, eager to make it into more. Something slow. Something safe. Amell could bend him over a table later, when the thought of someone’s hands in his hair shoving him face first into some cruel and unforgiving surface didn’t make him hyperventilate for fear of a memory. It was just a memory, and Anders wanted new ones.

“Can I fuck you?” Anders breathed the question against Amell’s lips.

“Any way you want.”

“Keep your arms around me?”

“Whatever you want,” Amell promised, pressing their foreheads together. “Do you want me to use any magic?”

“Please,” Anders didn't think he could ever stand to have sex again without it. He needed to feel it - free and flowing through his veins - with no bane and no burn and nothing but the Fade. The man who commanded it, the spirit who’d lived in it, the magic that flowed through the three of them that no templar would ever tear asunder again.

Amell’s lips fell to his neck, and he pressed a kiss against his skin that came paired with a pull of the Fade. A rush of heat pulsed along his tongue, and Anders arched into the sensation, groaning when Amell followed it with a play of ice. His breath cooled the sweltering path left by his tongue, and he paired it with a gentle drag of teeth that went straight to Anders’ cock.

Amell kept his arms around his shoulders through it all, his fingers following the path of Anders’ spine up into short strands of gold. Somehow, Anders kept from freezing. His hair was too short to pull, and Amell’s featherlight caress was nothing but comforting. “Tell me if anything is too much,” Amell whispered, and something in the words made Anders’ heart skip.

Amell couldn’t have known what he’d been through, but it felt like he did. Like he could sense there was more to the way Anders tensed at his touch than the time that had passed between them. Maybe Amell had no idea, but the thought that he might made Anders feel raw and vulnerable, his every nerve exposed. It was terrifying, but more than that it was thrilling that he could trust Amell to heal and not to hurt.

“I trust you,” Anders said, static playing between his fingers while he ran them along Amell’s thighs. “Can I shock you?”

“Please.”

Anders pulled through to the Fade, and sent a ripple of electricity coursing through them both in a starburst of ecstasy. Amell smothered a cry in his shoulder and Anders’ breath came in shattered gasps that left his cock stiff and throbbing for his magic, but even a small burst of passion knotted panic with pleasure in the pit of his stomach. Amell pulled it apart with gentle lips and gentler words. That he was amazing. That he was incredible. That they could do as much or as little as he wanted.

The last helped. A surge of creationism coated Anders’ hand in oil, and he took hold of Amell’s cock to run damp fingers up and down his shaft, wringing quiet sighs from him. Anders traced along ridges and veins, relishing the way Amell’s fingers twitched on his back, not quite clutching him. Anders loved his restraint as much as he wanted to unravel it.

He hadn’t felt so completely in control of something in years. Amell rested his forehead against him, his breath hitching as the occasional shiver of pleasure ran through him, cock perfectly rigid beneath Anders’ fingers. Anders tangled his free hand in Amell’s sweat damp hair, and won a soft gasp when he tugged lightly on his ear with his teeth. “Is this nice?”

“This is perfect,” Amell promised breathlessly. “Did you want anything?”

“Just you,” Anders pulled him closer and held them together. The soft skin and firm length of Amell’s cock felt like perfection against his own, warm oil running between them with every leisured stroke. Anders ran his thumb over his slit, smearing oil and the fluid leaking from Amell’s cock down his shaft, and loved and lived for the way Amell dissolved into shivers in his arms.

“Fuck, Anders,” Amell finally broke. Anders finally broke him. It was safe for Anders to break him, and be broken by him. Amell smothered a passionate whine in his neck in such a sweet surrender Anders felt his heart seize for it. “Please don’t stop.”

“I won’t,” Maker, Anders must have been mad to ever have parted from him. “Why didn’t you ever have anyone else?”

“I don’t-...trust anyone else,” Amell choked out.

Anders gripped the back of his head as tight as he could without hurting him, “You can trust me.”

“Kiss me?”

Anders kissed him, and closed his eyes, lost to the taste of his lips, the way they moved together, the sound of their mingled breath, the wet slide of skin on skin, the broken tremors that ran through Amell when his climax hit him and the way it felt when Anders followed him. A rush of ecstasy burned through him in endless waves and coated his hand, pumping until the aftershock was too much to take and left them both whimpering.

Anders pushed Amell down to the bedroll, and collapsed on his chest. Amell felt wet and warm and wonderful beneath him, and Anders felt empty in the best of all possible ways. Like Amell had drained him of everything, even his fear, and he’d found strength in the absence of it all, like his anniversary present had promised. “Amell?”

“Hm?”

“... You make me feel safe.”

“You are safe.”

Anders woke with the sun and felt like he’d slept in the river. Sex had ruined the bedroll, and the air was so thick he felt like he could drink it. All in all a horrid morning, but it didn’t change a perfect night. Anders sat up, careful not to wake Amell in the process. Amell deserved more than the nothing Anders had to offer if he woke him. Absence of fear was one thing, but absence of breakfast was another.

Anders dressed hastily, with a handful of glances in Amell’s direction, but he was still asleep, blanket tangled around his hips and probably baking him into the bedroll. Sweat had stuck a few strands of coal black hair to his brow, and Anders fought off an inane urge to brush them back. Amell slept light, and it would probably just wake him. Anders fled the farmhouse infirmary for the encampment the Wardens had set up in the village square.

In the aftermath of Famine, Wutherford had been decimated. Two story homes of wood and stone formed neat rows on either side of the Dane, and the path the demon had taken through them was evident in their collapse. Debris dammed the Dane, flooding the west side of the village as the river diverted course to accommodate before flowing back in on itself. The village would recover, Anders tried to reassure himself. Amell ensured it, seizing Franderel’s stores when Justice had asked. Livestock had been among them, and a small paddling of ducks scattered at Anders’ approach to the square.

The cluster of tents set up in the village almost looked better off than the houses. Veritable rooms with multiple poles and pegs holding them together, the thick fabric was done up in varying shades of blue, like someone had spilled a deep sapphire dye over white. A campfire burned in the center of them all, free of any kindling, with an untamed quality to the magic that seemed to mark it for Velanna’s if Anders had to guess.

Blankets had been laid out around the fire and a handful of Wardens were seated on them, sharing breakfast, the missing Wardens either out helping the freeholders or still asleep. There wasn’t much for them to wake up over. Fenley was cooking, if you could call it that, which Anders didn’t. A breakfast of pan fried apple bread and potatoes wasn’t exactly the feast Anders wanted to bring back, but since Fenley didn’t cook meat, it seemed like the only breakfast Anders would get.

“Hey Fen,” Anders put on a smile. “Can I get two of those?”

“... Do you and Justice eat separately?” Fenley guessed.

“Sure,” Anders said.

“Of course,” Fenley filled a plate for Oghren, and started on another.

“Bread?” Oghren stared at the plate Fenley had handed him like he was praying for it to turn into something else. “Can’t believe you’re giving us bread. We killed a sodding harvester! We should have a feast.”

“You are aware you did not actually kill a harvester, I hope?” Velanna asked from the blanket she was sharing with Jacen. The old Dalish hadn’t been taking his brush with cannibalism well, and was bent over a cup of tea like he was trying to dive into it.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, Boss killed it like he always does,” Oghren flapped a hand at her, stuffing a handful of bread into his mouth and spraying crumbs when he spoke. “I’m just saying. Be nice if we had that Gift of Flesh right about now.”

“Please don’t speak of flesh, da’len,” Jacen begged, to a chorus of like-minded groans.

“I don’t think I’ll ever eat meat again,” Amethyne agreed, huddled under her own blanket.

“No hard feelings,” Tamarel promised, one of the few who looked blithely unconcerned by it all. Her upper arm was bandaged from where Amethyne had taken a bite out of it before Oghren had managed to pry her off the other elf. “I’m the one who’s always asking you to eat me out.”

“How much longer we gotta stay here, Sparkles?” Oghren called. “You done playing nursemaid yet?”

“It’s not that bad here, you know,” Anders lied. “Clear away the flood, maybe hang a few pictures, I think we’d be pretty comfortable. It would definitely be a step up from my old clinic.”

“Where the fuck was your old clinic?” Oghren snorted. “Dust Town?”

“Close,” Anders said. “Darktown.”

“Humans,” Velanna rolled her eyes. “Must you be so transparent? Darktown? Really?”

“The Black City was taken,” Anders joked. Fenley handed him one plate, and then another, and Oghren squinted. He gestured between the plates with his potato, mouthing questions beneath his mustache, but Anders wasn’t about to wait for him to figure out how to voice them.

He beat a hasty retreat from the encampment, but he didn’t get far before Velanna burst up out of the ground in front of him. “Andraste’s holy hairballs, what the fuck!?” Anders jumped. He lost a plate in the process, apple bread and potatoes scattering in the dirt, and fought back a furious impulse to fling the second plate across the square. Why? Why couldn’t he just have one normal day? Just one normal day with no drama or trauma or elves exploding out of the ground?

“Must you overreact to everything?” Velanna sighed.

“It’s not everything,” Anders snapped. “It was breakfast.”

“You have two,” Velanna noted.

“Not anymore,” Anders scowled.

“Hey Sparkles, wait up!” Oghren jogged to join them. “Sparkles - you - hang on -” Oghren huffed, setting his hands on his knees and holding up a finger.

“What do you want?” Anders demanded.

“Amell?” Velanna asked. There was so much judgment in the eyebrow she raised at him it could have been a magistrate, but Anders wasn’t about to be put on trial. His relationship with Amell had never been anyone’s business.

“No, it’s Anders, actually,” Anders frowned. “I know it gets confusing because he looks nothing like me, but I’m more freckled, he’s more scarred, my hair’s blonde, his hair’s black, my eyes are amber, his are from a demonic pact with an ancient Forbidden One who-”

“How is Amell?” Velanna cut him off. “The Bann’s men beat him, did they not?”

“He’s fine,” Anders squinted suspiciously at her.

“So fine he spent the night in the infirmary?” Velanna countered.

“He’s fine,” Anders repeated. “Hungry, probably, so if you’ll excuse me-”

“Hungry for dick!” Oghren wheezed out with a snap of his fingers, still bent over his knees. “Still got it.”

“I’m leaving now,” Anders decided, setting off towards the infirmary. “Don’t follow me.”

“Oh I'm following!” Oghren hurried after him, and because the Maker had abandoned him, Velanna did too. “You gotta tell us if you’re fucking him, Sparkles.”

“Excuse me?” Anders whirled on him.

“Forming the beast with two backs? Tapping the midnight still? Getting a little pickle tickle? Polishing the-”

“Stop!” Anders cut him off, caught somewhere between embarrassed and reluctantly amused. “Why are you like this? I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“Oho! So there’s something to tell! You’re fucking him,” Oghren turned to Velanna. “He’s fucking him. I win! Five silver, woman! You owe me.”

“I owe you nothing,” Velanna pushed Oghren away with a hand on his face. “Answer the question, Anders.”

“I can’t believe you’re actually betting on this,” Anders said. “Are you serious right now?”

“That ain’t all we’re betting on,” Oghren chuckled. “I give it three months tops before you or the Boss blows it, and then maybe a week before you’re back at it again. Bitch Tits here thinks you won’t last the year.”

“Please stop following me,” Anders begged.

Neither of them listened. They followed him through the flooded city with Oghren spouting euphemism after euphemism when what sounded like a distant whistle echoed in the air, and Oghren sighed. “Oh boy. Really, Sparkles?”

“Really what?” Anders asked.

“Now what have you done?” Velanna frowned.

A blur of black bolted through the streets past them, and it took Anders an embarrassingly long time to recognize it for a mabari, and an embarrassingly longer time to recognize it for Dumat. Amell had left him with Nolan and the rest of the mabari when he’d come to the farmhouse infirmary, and Anders couldn’t imagine a reason for Amell to call him back, but that must have been what the whistle was about.

Amell was crouched outside the infirmary with a panting Dumat when they reached it. His hair was a little disheveled from the night they’d spent together, but otherwise he looked fine, dressed in the same outfit he’d worn last night. He rested his forehead against Dumat, scratching his ear, and Oghren breathed another heavy sigh for some reason. “Not it.”

“I am not doing it,” Velanna set her hand to the small of Anders’ back and shoved. “You deal with him.”

Anders had no idea what there was to deal with, but if nothing else, at least they both finally stopped following him, hovering a few yards off when he went to join Amell. “Morning, handsome,” Anders said in greeting when Amell didn’t look up from Dumat. “I brought breakfast. Just the one though, so you’ll have to fight me for it.”

“You left for breakfast?” Amell guessed.

“Surprise,” Anders said. “I was going for breakfast in bed… or in bedroll. What are you doing outside?”

“I didn’t know where you were,” Amell said.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Anders didn’t know where to put the plate, so he ended up holding it awkwardly in his lap when he crouched next to him. “... Are you okay?”

“Anders, you can’t leave me.”

“I’m not going to,” Anders said fiercely. “I want to be with you.”

“That’s not what I meant. You don’t have to be with me, but you can’t leave me somewhere I’ve never been without Dumat or my staff,” Amell corrected him. “I can’t navigate a village on just the blood of the people who live there.”

Oh.

Well fuck.

Oghren had given him three months to fuck this up when he should have given him three minutes. Anders squeezed Amell's shoulder, fighting back a wave of self-loathing. He’d wanted a perfect morning and he’d made it a miserable one. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to wake up blind, naked, alone and lost with no way to navigate his surroundings. “... I won’t. I’m sorry.”

Amell found his hand and squeezed back, and Anders tried not to hate himself so much, “Breakfast?”

“Apple bread and potatoes,” Anders told him. “I would have gotten you something else but… well, there wasn’t anything else.”

“Oghren and Velanna came back with you?” Amell noted when he stood.

Anders stood up with him, awkwardly clutching the single plate he’d brought. “You can tell?”

“Everyone feels different.”

“How far away can you sense someone?”

“Further than most can see - and in a radius instead of in front of me.”

“That’s pretty impressive.”

“It’s just magic,” Amell said. “... what are they doing over there?”

“Hovering?” Anders had no idea. Oghren and Velanna stood at the fence ringing the farmhouse, and looked like they were arguing, but knowing Velanna they could have just been talking. “I think they thought you’d be more upset. Do you think you should yell at me? You know, just for appearances sake?”

“Is there something wrong with my appearance?” Amell asked.

“Your hair’s a little messy.”

“I mean, I did just have sex.”

“You had really good sex,” Anders corrected him. “Do you want your really bad breakfast?”

“I should check in with everyone,” Amell didn’t say no, but Anders heard one anyway, and tried not to let it dishearten him. “How much longer do you need to keep the infirmary open?”

“I should be done this evening,” Anders promised. He’d gone through most of the supplies he’d brought treating and triaging the soldiers. The salves had been used up before battle, the poultices after it, and the lyrium potions along with them. Anders couldn’t remember the last time he’d run out of mana without having it drained from him, but supporting an army was apparently his limit. It was strangely comforting to have one, and be able to push himself to the brink of exhaustion, instead of being dragged there, kicking and screaming.

“I'll tell everyone we’ll set out in the morning,” Amell said.

Anders caught his arm when he made to leave with Dumat. “Amell-... Can I be your reason?”

“My reason for what?”

“Your reason to say no to someone,” Anders explained. “Can we be together? Not to bring up anything too unpleasant, but I know why we couldn’t be open before with your position. I understand if we still can’t, or if it’s too fast, but I thought with your arms… maybe you wouldn’t have to hide me either.”

“Oghren and Velanna have a bet going don’t they?” Amell guessed.

“I don’t know that that answers my question, but yes,” Anders said.

“Who wins if I kiss you?” Amell asked.

“Oghren, I think,” Anders said.

Amell kissed him, and the fact that he might be doing it just to help Oghren win a bet wasn’t the most romantic reason Anders could imagine for someone to kiss him, but it didn’t stop his knees from feeling weak the longer it stretched. “Please tell me you’re thinking about me and not Oghren.”

“I did promise not to lie,” Amell mused.

“I did not hear that,” Anders said with a light shove to Amell’s shoulder that won him a grin. “Did we even have sex last night? You didn’t compel me did you?”

“Are you sure I can’t lie?”

“Now you’re just being a dick.”

“I’m not going to hide you, Anders," Amell promised. "But I think we should talk about what together means.”

“As long as it means together. As long as it means with you.”

Chapter 166: Vir Suledin

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 15 Solis Late Afternoon
Ferelden: The North Road

Together.

What did that even mean?

Anders didn’t have any clues, beyond the fact that he was apparently allowed to kiss Amell in front of Oghren and Velanna. Or Amell was allowed to kiss him. Anders wasn’t sure if there was a difference. Anders wasn’t sure about a lot of things, but Oghren and Velanna let off on their teasing around the rest of the Wardens, so it seemed like Anders should do the same and keep his hands to himself.

It was difficult to do, sitting behind Amell on the ride back to Vigil’s Keep. Things were finally coming up Anders. He was back with the Wardens and for the first time in months he felt like his tangled soul belonged with them. Not just for pity but for purpose. They found it in battle and outside of it. They could heal, they could cleanse, they could rectify the injustices subjected on the land and in so doing rectify the injustices subjected on themselves.

Franderel and Famine were dead - man and demon both proof that both sides of the Veil had great capacity for evil. Vengeance had been enacted in their deaths, justice in the reparations granted to the freeholders, compassion in the healing provided to the soldiers. It felt pure. It felt purposeful. It felt happy.

Maker, how long had it been since he’d known the feeling?

He had a purpose. He had friends. He had Justice. He had Amell. Anders pressed his forehead against Amell’s back and breathed him in, tightening his grip around his waist. Amell ran his fingers along his wrist in answer with a hum Anders hoped was contented. Anders wanted him to be content. Anders wanted him to be so many things he wasn’t sure where to start.

He’d met Amell in Justinian five years ago, and only had five months with him before he lost him. Anders had kept him alive in his memories, his journal, his grimoire, and found him three years later on the streets of Kirkwall. Two months passed before they could really reconnect and trade platonic letters for five months and romantic ones for three, before everything had gone to the Void when Anders had gone back to the Vigil. Anders had lost six months of time and then lost Amell all over again. Three months of unanswered pleas for forgiveness and one month spent hiding in Franke’s shop later, and it still took three more with the Wardens to finally have Amell in his arms again.

It wasn’t like Anders had only known him for three months, but it wasn’t like he’d known him for five years either. Their relationship felt like a tangled web of intimacy and distance he didn't know how to unravel. Anders didn’t want the distance, but he didn’t want to ruin the intimacy moving too fast to close it. Talking didn't seem like it would do that, so Anders asked, "Amell, do you mind if we fall back a little?"

"What for?" Amell asked.

"To talk," Anders said.

Amell set his hand to the horse’s silverite crinet and Anders heard the wisps within echo with his magic. Distance. Serve. Obey. They were already at the rear of their group, but the undead construct slowed, and added two more horse lengths between them and the rest.

“What are we talking about?” Amell asked.

“What does being together mean?”

“What do you want it to mean?”

Considering how spectacularly his last relationship had failed, Anders wasn’t sure he could trust himself to know what he wanted from a new one. He only knew what he didn’t want. He didn’t want to be hurt. He didn’t want to be beaten. He didn’t want to be baned. He didn’t want there to be lies between them or decisions made for him. He didn’t want to fight. Andraste preserve him, he didn't want to fight. All the things he didn’t want were things it seemed he shouldn’t have to say.

When he thought of what he did want, he could only think of Amell.

“I want you,” Anders brushed Amell’s hair aside to kiss his neck. Amell leaned back against his chest and there was nothing Anders wanted more than what he already had. He couldn’t put what Amell meant to him to words. Amell made him feel safe in every way imaginable. For the past year he’d lived in fear of being vulnerable for how often that vulnerability met with violence. Anders might not have been able to see the scars that violence had left on him, but he knew they were there.

The thought of being vulnerable, of being intimate again, pained him like the tear of stitches on an old wound across his aching heart. For all Anders might have been a healer, he wasn’t used to being healed, but he had no other word for the night he’d spent with Amell. Anders couldn’t stop thinking about the way Amell had held him, like he could feel him coming apart at the seams and he would have done anything to hold him together.

But Anders hadn’t needed him to do anything. He’d just needed him to be patient, to be careful, to be kind. He’d just needed Amell to be Amell so Anders could remember how to be Anders.

“You can have me,” Amell promised.

“Right now?” Anders grinned.

“Is that a joke?” Amell asked.

“It doesn’t have to be,” It was a joke if Amell wanted it to be a joke, but Anders was more than happy to be serious. He dropped his hands from Amell’s waist to caress his thighs with a glance towards the forefront of their procession. None of the wardens were paying them any mind, but even if they were, they wouldn’t have been able to see anything around their mount.

Anders doubted any of them would look back unless Amell gave them a reason, and Anders couldn’t see that happening. The level of self-restraint Amell exercised bordered on blood magic. At times it was almost frustrating, but right now it just seemed like fun, and Anders missed fun.

He pressed another kiss to Amell’s neck, sucking on the soft skin above his collarbone while rolling his tongue. Amell shivered all but imperceptibly, and ran his hand in slow sweeps along Anders’ thigh. The way his body moved for him was addictive and intoxicating, but it wasn’t a yes and Anders needed to hear one. Anders abandoned Amell’s neck to tug on his ear with his teeth, “Do you want me right now?”

Anders wrung a sigh from him, but no answer. Anders dragged his fingers up Amell’s stomach and splayed one hand over his chest. His thumb traced a slow circle over Amell’s nipple, worrying it to a stiff peak through the fabric of his tunic. “You can say no,” Anders felt like he should say, because Amell had said it, and Anders had loved that he’d said it.

“I didn’t,” Amell said quickly, squeezing his leg. There wasn’t much more Amell could do with how they were sitting. There wasn't much more Anders wanted him to do. He wanted to ease into intimacy and he wanted to focus on Amell because Amell deserved to be focused on.

“You didn’t say yes,” Anders countered, punctuating the words with a gentle twist of Amell’s nipple that won him a sharp inhale.

Amell let go of his leg and caught his arm instead, stopping the idle caress of Anders’ hand along his thigh. Amell tangled their fingers together and hesitated. “...Is anyone paying attention?”

“No one,” Anders said, his heart seizing at how much trust Amell had to have in him to take him at his word. Amell guided his hand between his legs, his cock half-hard beneath his trousers for just the promise of him. Anders wanted nothing more than to bring him the rest of the way there, but he had to hear a yes to believe one. “You have to say it. I have to hear you say it.”

“I want you right now,” Amell whispered for him.

Amell turned his head towards him, but Anders couldn’t quite reach his mouth sitting behind him. He kissed his way across his jaw instead, the drag of his lips and teeth carving a slick path down to his neck, interspersed with the occasional hard suck and swirl of his tongue that was bound to leave one mark after the next. Anders wanted to leave them well past his neck, down his shoulders, his chest, over every inch of his perfect skin.

Amell felt incredible. He’d always felt incredible. Lean muscle and warm skin and the slightest of shivers as Anders mapped his length until he was stiff and rigid beneath his fingers. Anders held Amell to him, determined to worship him every way he could. His neck, his chest, his cock. Anders couldn’t remember being half as quiet even in the Circle. Amell barely breathed, one hand gripping the horn of the saddle and the other holding Anders’ arm while he stroked him through the fabric.

Anders kept his eyes on the road and set his lips to Amell’s ear. “I have you,” Anders said, because it seemed like a nice thing to say. He kept his voice low, but no one was near them, and no one was with them, and this was just for them. “I’m right here. You feel incredible. You look incredible. You are incredible.”

“Since when do you-...” Amell cleared his throat. “What?”

Anders felt him tense, saw in the taut muscle of his arm and his grip on the horn, and kneaded down his shoulder until he relaxed. “Since always.”

“You don’t talk like this,” Amell argued.

“Maybe I should,” Anders countered, palming his cock through his trousers and living for every shiver he managed to draw from him. He felt perfect, warm and damp with sweat and the early hints of release, squirming in Anders’ lap to press himself against his hand. Anders tugged on his ear with his teeth, and won another shaky exhale. “Maybe you should know how I feel about you.”

There were so many things Anders could say he didn’t know where to start. That Amell was handsome, that he was brave, that he was righteous, that he was virile, that he was a scholar, that he was strong. The words all caught in his throat, and Anders swallowed them down for fear they’d tangle together if he tried to pick one, and he’d ruin the moment. “You’re everything,” Anders said.

“Fuck,” Amell hissed breathlessly, shuddering in his arms. Anders breathed in the scent of sweat and copper, pressing his forehead against him, their lips so close Anders could almost taste him. Anders held him through his climax until his tremors stopped, and Amell moved his hand to his thigh. Anders rifled through the saddlebags until he found a cloth for Amell to clean himself up in an incredibly awkward shuffle on what had become a very sweaty saddle.

“What-...” Amell said when he caught his breath and they were as comfortable as they could be. “What was that about?”

Anders supposed he deserved the question, but he hated that for all their history Amell had to ask it. “I want you to be happy. I want to make you happy.”

“You do,” Amell said.

"...I want you to trust me again,” Anders added.

"I do,” Amell said, but it felt like he said too quickly.

“We said no lies, remember?”

“I trust that you would never mean to hurt me,” Amell revised, reaching over his shoulder to run his fingers through Anders’ short hair. It wasn’t quite the level of trust Anders wanted, but it felt closer than it had been. “You never said what you wanted together to mean.”

“... I’m tired of hiding. I’m not saying I have to hold your hand in public-”

“My hand didn’t seem like what you wanted to hold.”

“Well obviously your dick goes without saying, but we can work up to that,” Anders joked. “Semi-public sex seems like a good start.”

Amell exhaled bemusedly, “Anything else?”

“...I don’t know,” Anders had wanted kids and a cottage, once upon a time, but that was a lifetime ago. Maybe he still wanted it, but right now all he wanted was something slow and something safe. “... do you think I could stay in your room again? Just once in a while.”

“That’s all?”

“I mean, if I think of anything else, I’ll let you know, but I just want this to work. I know you have a family and a life outside of me and I’m not trying to come between you and them.”

“Did you still want to get to know Kieran?”

“If that’s okay.”

“That’s okay, but I need this to be serious. If you’re not…” Amell trailed off, but Anders heard enough in what he left unspoken.

“I am,” Anders promised.

“You have to tell me if that changes.”

“It won’t. I will, but it won’t.”

“You have to make an appearance at court.”

“A what now?”

“You said you didn’t want to be a secret. If I’m going to refuse any other offers, then you can’t be one. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow, but eventually you have to come with me to Denerim.”

“Hate that, but okay I guess,” Anders shrugged. It wouldn’t be that bad. He’d been around nobles before. He’d been to balls and banquets and made all kinds of public appearances. He may not have cared for the parties or the people, but he’d gone to them all the time with-...

Fuck.

“I can’t,” Anders said.

“You can’t what?” Amell asked.

“I can’t go to court,” Anders said. “I-... Flames. Amell, I-...” Don’t lie. Anders didn’t want to lie, he just didn’t want to tell the truth, but he had to tell him something. “I have to tell you something but I don’t know how to say it.”

“You can tell me anything,” Amell promised.

The truth. Try the truth. Tell him the truth. “Hawke-” The rest of the words got stuck. There wasn’t any room for them around Hawke’s name. It felt like a knot of blood and bile lodged in his throat.

“... Hawke?” Amell said helpfully.

“He hates you,” Anders managed. “He hates what you mean to me. He knows you helped me kill Danarius at the Grand Tourney and I’m worried he’ll use that against you.”

“How?” Amell asked.

“... I don’t know,” Anders admitted. It was murder. They’d murdered him. It seemed like something someone could use, but Anders couldn’t begin to guess how. “He said he would. He threatened you. He-... he said he would.”

“How?” Amell asked again, and there was something almost bemused in it that jarred Anders out of his anxiety. “Who is he going to tell?”

“... I don’t know. He’s the Viscount,” Anders probably should have mentioned that sooner.

“I know,” Amell said. “Word came last month. I sent a congratulations with the rest of the nobility.”

“You-... what?” Anders’ throat dried out on him, and the panic came back in a tidal wave that threatened to drown him. “Did you tell him I was here? Please tell me you didn’t tell him I was here.”

“It was a congratulations, Anders, not a letter,” Amell assured him. “I haven’t written to Hawke since the Grand Tourney.”

“Okay…” Anders wiped the sweat off his palms on his thighs. “Okay. You just-... you can’t tell him I’m here. He threatened you.”

“I heard you,” Amell found one of his hands, and tangled their fingers together to hold it against his chest.

“Okay,” Anders took one shallow breath after the next. “Okay. You just-... no one can tell him.”

“... okay,” Amell said.

“He threatened you.”

“I know.”

Anders rested his forehead against Amell’s back and couldn’t say how long he stayed there, heart racing, close to hyperventilating, every panicked breath of sweat and copper making his heart cinch painfully for fear of losing it. He hated it. He hated Hawke. He hated the crippling dread he felt at the mere mention of the man. He hated that he couldn’t tell Amell why he felt it. He hated that he was so afraid of being close to Hawke he couldn’t be close to Amell.

Amell squeezed his hand, and Anders thought of how blasé he’d seemed hearing of Hawke’s threats, and forced himself to breathe. “... could he hurt you?”

“No,” Amell said.

“How do you know?”

“Kirkwall is one of our closest trading partners. They import grains, livestock and feed, furs, timber… He’d only cripple the city if he stopped trade.”

“I don’t care about the bloody economy, Amell,” Anders snapped. “I care about you.”

“Who is he going to tell, Anders? The First Warden? I killed Urthemiel. I can’t be excommunicated. The Crown? The Imperium isn’t one of our allies. The Magisterium? It would be a disgrace to his house, killed by his own slave and a blind man most will assume shared his bed.

“I promise Hawke can’t hurt me. Most people won’t even believe I’m capable of killing a magister just because I’m blind, and the people who know what I’m capable of know better than to question me. At the end of the day it would be his word against mine, and I promise mine is much more compelling.”

“You promise?”

“I promise,” Amell kissed his hand.

“Promise again.”

“I promise again.”

“Okay… Okay. Okay, if you promise, I can-... I can come to court, but you have to promise. You have to promise he can’t hurt you.”

Amell twisted in the saddle to face him. Anders couldn’t name the expression he wore, save that it seemed soft. Anders watched the way the crimson flowed through his eyes while Amell traced his face, fingers mapping the panicked tension in his brow. “... I promise he can’t hurt you.”

“... you,” Anders corrected him.

“I promise he can’t hurt me,” Amell revised. He didn’t bring it up again for the rest of the ride, but he’d said enough. Anders had said enough. Amell had to have known he was scared of Hawke, and that scared Anders almost as much as Hawke did, but… it was okay. He was okay. They were okay.

The inn at Harper’s Ford was full. Again. The Wardens set up camp in the fields, tents clustered around their camp fire, though food came from the tavern. Dinner was stewed pork with summer squash half of them wouldn’t eat for how it reminded them of human flesh, but Anders hadn’t felt finicky over food in years. He sat on a blanket with Oghren and Amell, warring over how close was too close and how far was too far, and wishing they’d talked more about what together meant before his fear had gotten the best of him.

"Can't wait to be back at the Vigil," Surana muttered from her bedroll, rolling back and forth on the thin canvas. The arcane elf shared her tent with Amethyne, who was still huddled by the fire, grimacing her way through her stew. “Can’t believe we wasted a fortnight on freeholders.”

"You're alive, aren't you?" Anders demanded. Amell had allowed him the infirmary, and he wasn’t about to feel guilty about it. "Should I not have wasted time on you?"

"I did say as much," Velanna mused, running idle fingers through Seranni’s hair where the ghoul lay asleep with her head in her sister’s lap.

“Whatever,” Surana grumbled. “I didn’t ask for your help. I could have healed myself.”

“Woman, you couldn’t heal a cut if someone bandaged it for you,” Oghren snorted, elbowing Anders. “Should be thanking the Stone Sparkles is back to babysit you blighters.”

“I’ll thank the Stone when I don’t have to sleep on it,” Surana said. “I’d kill for a cot.”

“Tam didn’t have any trouble finding one,” Ailsa pointed out, massaging at her creaking crystal joints. The ex-lyrium addict nodded towards the inn, where Tam had shored up with the innkeeper.

“There’s no point in sleeping with someone with no magic,” Surana said dismissively.

“She’s got you there,” Anders allotted.

“She slept with Tam,” Ailsa countered.

“Everyone’s slept with Tam,” Surana waved her off.

“Not I,” Martine interjected, like it was a badge of honor she’d managed to resist. The old Orlesian folded up her uniform in the tent she shared with Ailsa and climbed into her bedroll. “Though I envy her the bed she has found. If I die in my sleep, I should like to be sleeping in a bed.”

“Good that we stayed,” Nolan mumbled from his pile of sleeping mabari. “Good to be good.”

“Speak for yourself,” Amethyne tossed a pebble at him that bounced off the Andrastian's prayer-burnt face and into the pile of dogs. “Those freeholders never would have done the same for us. Shems would empty an alienage before they stopped to help one.”

"Not a shem," Nolan huffed. "Half-dwarf."

“Yeah, the ugly half,” Oghren chuckled.

The question of honor seemed to pull Fenley from the Fade. The massive knight popped his tiny head out of the tent he shared with Jacen just to argue, "Not all humans-"

"It doesn’t take all humans," Amethyne cut him off. "It only takes one."

Fenley took a seat at the fire. "Which is why we are honor bound to-"

"To what?" Amethyne demanded. "To do nothing? Like you did nothing in Highever when the Constable’s father murdered my mother?"

“Here we go,” Surana sighed, closing the flaps to her tent. Martine and Ailsa took the same cue and vanished into their tent. Nolan rolled over in his pile of dogs like he was trying to blend in with them.

“Nathan isn’t Rendon,” Velanna interjected warningly. “Do not compare them.”

“A Howe is a Howe,” Amethyne sneered.

“A who is a who,” Anders mumbled, relieved he hadn’t finished his stew before the fight started so he had something to hide behind.

“You served Howe after he took power,” Amethyne said to Fenley.

"All of Highever served Rendon Howe after he took power,” Fenley said stuffily. “And all of Highever was grateful when Fergus Cousland took it back. Even so, I didn’t serve at Castle Cousland-”

"Cousland," Amethyne spat. "The Couslands and the Lorens are the only victims of Howe’s massacre anyone talks about! Bann Loren abandoned his people to lock himself up in his castle when he lost his wife and son. Just because he wasn’t taxing them like Franderel doesn’t mean he cares about them. Shems are all the same. Helping them with anything more than the Harvester was a waste of our time.”

“How many times must I remind you it was not a Harvester?” Velanna interjected.

“I do not believe that,” Fenley argued.

“You should,” Velanna said.

“Please,” Amethyne rolled her eyes. “Harvester or no harvester, no one cares about elves and no one would have done anything if the undead were plaguing them. Wutherford doesn’t even have an alienage. Bann Loren acts like his wife and son were the only people who died in the Blight, but my mother died and no one even knows her name."

"Iona," Amell said gently.

Amethyne sniffed once, hard, and stormed off into the fields.

“I owe you what?” Anders asked.

“Her mother’s name,” Amell explained, finding Anders’ free hand and pressing his half-finished bowl into it. “Hold this for me?”

“Sure,” Anders said.

Amell followed Amethyne into the fields with a low whistle that brought Dumat with him. Fenley went back to his tent, and left Anders out by the fire with Oghren, Velanna, and a sleeping Seranni. Anders finished his stew, watching Amell and Amethyne in the distance, but they were too far for the conversation to carry and neither of them signed. Anders couldn’t follow along with all of the politics, but he could follow along with the emotions.

Six years had passed since the Fifth Blight, and the country and its people were still recovering. Banns like Franderel bled their bannorns dry reamassing their wealth while banns like Loren abandoned them entirely in their grief. The people suffered so much for it their suffering summoned demons and mages took the blame. The crown called mages free but kept them locked up in their towers, and the only ones who did anything about it were wardens who weren’t even supposed to be there.

Amell said something that reduced Amethyne to tears. Anders watched her hug him, and couldn’t help finding it familiar. It reminded him of all the times Amell had been there for him, and Sigrun, and the rest of them whenever they’d needed someone to be there for them. He was a good man and a good Commander, and he needed someone to be there for him too. Anders had to learn how to bind him before they fought a real Harvester and not just the imitation of one.

“About time the kids went to bed,” Oghren tossed his empty bowl into the pile of dirty crockery by the fire. “Been dying for a chance for us adults to talk.”

“We’re adults?” Anders joked. “When did that happen?”

“For me? About twenty years ago,” Oghren said. “For you? About twenty years to go.”

“You are being generous,” Velanna said.

“So was the Stone when she made me,” Oghren chuckled, with an entirely unnecessary shake of his belt in case they had any doubt as to what he was talking about. “So come on, Sparkles, spill. What’s going on with you and the Boss?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” Anders said.

“I don’t see how it’s not,” Oghren countered. “You didn’t really think we’d let it go, did you?”

“Maker forbid I want to keep my personal life personal,” Anders rolled his eyes. Just because he didn’t want to be a secret didn’t mean he wanted to be a show. “Don’t you two have anything better to talk about?”

“Nope,” Oghren’s grin was a flash of yellow teeth beneath a red mustache.

“I suspect he will not say because he does not know,” Velanna mused.

“Still here, you know,” Anders reminded her.

“Do you suppose he regrets it?” Velanna wondered aloud. “Kissing you in the heat of battle? How will you ever know if that heat was for you?”

“Shut up,” Anders snapped. He didn’t care if Velanna was teasing; he hadn’t had any doubts like that before and he didn’t want to have them now. “You don’t know what we’re talking about.”

“Enlighten me,” Velanna said.

“Blow me.”

“Why? Did Amell refuse?”

“So hey about the Harvester-” Oghren started.

“You know, you have some nerve,” Anders interrupted him.

“Guess we’re still fighting,” Oghren said. “Okay.”

“Oh?” Velanna raised an eyebrow at him. “Did I hit one?”

“What do you even have against us?” Anders demanded.

“Chronologically or alphabetically?” Velanna asked.

“What are we categorizing?” Amell asked, rejoining them. Amethyne came back with him, and left for her tent without comment. Dumat climbed into the literal dog pile with Nolan, and Amell squeezed Anders’ shoulder. Anders pulled him down to the blanket and handed him his bowl back. Amell swept his fingers around the rim until they connected with his spoon, and Anders wondered if he should have handed it to him.

“You and Sparkles,” Oghren said shamelessly.

“What did we decide on?” Amell asked.

“Asininity,” Velanna supplied.

“As a category or a quality?” Amell asked.

“Why not both?” Velanna suggested.

“Redundancy?” Amell shrugged.

“A quality, to be sure,” Velanna said. “He has left more scars on you than your magic, or had you forgotten?”

“Vir suledin,” Amell said.

“Dirthara-ma,” Velanna said.

“I missed this,” Anders joked. “I got used to people talking behind my back. It’s nice to mix it up again.”

Amell finished the last few bites of his stew and set it aside, “Join me in my tent?”

“Hey, hey, hey!” Oghren said hastily. “It’s my tent too, so don’t go getting any wild ideas. I ain’t sleeping out here so you better keep it real fast. I’m talking ten minutes, max.”

“Certainly sounds like yours,” Anders quipped, leading Amell back to the tent he shared with Oghren and closing the flaps behind them. Amell took off his belt and his tabard and folded both beside his bedroll, and Anders cleared his throat. “So what are we doing in here?”

“Talking,” Amell said simply, taking a seat on the canvas.

“I like talking,” Anders decided, sitting next to him. “What are we talking about?”

“Us,” Amell said.

“I like us,” Anders blurted, and dragged a weary hand down his face. Asinine sounded about right, but Amell already knew that about him and he hadn’t left him yet. Anders hoped Velanna was full of shit, and Amell didn’t want to leave him now, but his panic attack on the horse hadn’t been one of his more attractive breakdowns.

“I have to ride to Highever,” Amell interrupted his train of thought.

“Okay?” Anders said eloquently. Highever wasn’t exactly high on his list of vacation spots, or on it at all, but he supposed he could compromise. “What’s in Highever?”

“The Teryn,” Amell said. “I have to tell him what happened to the Bann.”

“Why do I get the feeling you’re not going to tell him what actually happened?” Anders asked.

“Probably because I’m not,” Amell said.

“So what are we saying happened?” Anders asked. “He drowned? Fell off his horse? Was eaten by his own men? The last one sounds close enough, if you ask me.”

“Killed by a Harvester,” Amell said.

“Why are we saying that, exactly? This is probably weird, but I thought it was ridiculously attractive you didn’t hesitate to feed Franderel to Famine,” Anders confessed. “Really put a whole new spin on ‘eat the rich.’”

“It won't end well,” Amell said.

“Why not?” Anders asked. If Hawke couldn’t hurt Amell, Anders couldn’t imagine how Franderel could.

“Famine was a demon, risen between Kinloch and Jainen. We tell everyone the Harvesters are darkspawn, and most of the freeholders can’t tell the difference-”

“Neither can most of the Wardens,” Anders interrupted to joke.

“-but those who can will blame the Circles for unleashing a demon on the bannorn,” Amell continued. “I need Fergus to believe it was a Harvester before that happens.”

“But Franderel summoned Famine!” Anders argued. “If he hadn’t been starving his people this never would have happened. It doesn’t take a strong mage to summon a demon - it just takes a strong emotion. The Circles didn’t have anything to do with this!”

“... You’re so passionate” Amell smiled.

“Of course I’m passionate,” Anders stood up, thought better of pacing, and sat back down. “Why would I not be passionate? This is wrong. We can’t just let the Circles take the fall for this.”

“If we’re lucky, most people will believe it was a Harvester, and the only talk at court will be about how I sacrificed the bann on the battlefield.”

“No one even saw you sacrifice him,” Anders protested. “Everyone was too busy eating each other. Besides, it wasn’t even a real sacrifice.”

“I don’t think most people know the difference, Anders,” Amell smiled. “At the end of the day I survived and the bann didn’t and people will talk.”

“Well so what?” Anders said hotly. “He was a bloody miser. I’m glad he’s dead and so is Justice.”

“So it’s complicated,” Amell said.

“How is it complicated? You shouldn’t take the blame for this anymore than the Circles. You’re an Arl. Franderel was a Bann. You outrank him,” Anders might not have known a lot about politics, but he knew that much. “You should have the ability to enact whatever kind of justice you want.”

“An Arl is just a Bann with a strategic military command,” Amell explained. “We all still answer to the Teyrn.”

“What about Nathaniel’s sister? She’s a Bann. She answers to you.”

“Delilah is an exception. A few of the larger arlings have bannorns within them. Amaranthine is almost a teyrnir. Our navy protects the coastlands from the Brandel Raiders and the Felicisima Armada, and if Orlais were to march on Denerim they’d go through Vigil’s Keep. It’s a military command, where much of the bannorn isn’t. If it came to war the Banns would defer to me but only with the Teyrn’s blessing.”

“Well, you’re still the Chancellor,” Maker, Anders should have paid more attention to Amell’s speeches and his judgments and everything else he did. “Doesn’t that mean you outrank the Teyrn?”

“The chancellery advises and speaks on behalf of the crown. I only outrank Fergus when it suits the crown that I outrank him. Foriegn affairs, anything arcane, some military matters, but nothing local.”

Well that sounded useless. “Do any of your twenty titles actually do anything?”

“No,” Amell grinned. “... I was offered the teyrnir of Gwaren after the Blight, but I declined and asked for the Circles to be freed instead.”

“Well go back and accept!” Anders said.

“It doesn’t really work like that, Anders,” Amell chuckled.

“Well it should,” Anders didn’t pout. Anders was not pouting. Anders was an adult and adults didn’t pout. “... So when are we leaving?”

“I planned to ride to Highever with Fenley and Amethyne in the morning,” Amell said.

“They seem like they hate each other. Is that really a good idea?”

“I can’t afford for them to hate each other. I should only be gone a week. You can take Dans back to the Vigil.”

“I can take what back to the Vigil?” Anders blinked.

“Dans Leur Sang… My horse?”

“Your horse has a name?”

“Of course he has a name,” Amell frowned. “Why wouldn’t I name my horse?”

Hawke hadn’t named his dog. “Why would you name it something Orlesian?”

“He was a gift from Clarel, the Commander of the Grey of Orlais. He came with a name, but I would have given him one if he didn’t have one.”

“What’s his name mean?”

“In Their Blood,” Amell explained. “Apparently it’s an Orlesian tradition to name horses after verses from the Chant of Light. Clarel picked Benedictions 4:11 as a joke between maleficarum. I’m told he had the color of blood as well. She’s a good friend… she’s made several overtures to send us more aid, but they haven’t been well received by the Crown. Eamon’s influence.”

“I could come with you to Highever if you want,” Anders offered.

“You don’t have to accompany me everywhere, Anders,” Amell assured him.

“I know, I just-”

“-can’t get enough of that dick!” Oghren announced his entrance, shouldering through the tent flaps and over to his bedroll. “You best avert your eyes, Sparkles, I sleep in the nude.”

“Please tell me you’re joking,” Anders groaned. “He’s joking, right?’

“How would I know?” Amell asked.

Oghren was apparently joking. He climbed into his bedroll completely dressed and rolled up the corner of the canvas to serve as a pillow, propping himself up to join the conversation. “So what are we talking about?”

“Franderel,” Amell said.

“I thought we were talking about Clarel,” Anders said.

“We’re talking about Clarel because we’re talking about Franderel,” Amell said.

“You know his Royal Whineness is gonna whine up a sodding storm over what we did back there,” Oghren said.

“I know,” Amell said.

“You gonna, you know-” Oghren wiggled his fingers in the air. “-fix that?”

“I’ll think of something. Alistair never cared for how Franderel supported Loghain.”

“Franderel supported that old bastard a lot less than you did, Kid, just saying.”

“I’ll think of something,” Amell waved him off.

The three of them went to sleep, or near enough. Oghren passed out after a handful of ribald jokes, and Amell joined him shortly thereafter, but Anders couldn’t sleep. He slipped out of the tent, and found a quiet spot for himself on the fence ringing the tavern to reflect on the day.

Amell knew about Hawke, or near enough, but apparently Hawke couldn’t hurt him. Apparently, the only thing that could hurt him was Franderel, and the fact that he’d fed him to Famine. It didn’t seem fair. It didn’t seem right. It didn’t seem just.

“Can’t sleep?” Amell asked. They hadn’t even noticed him join them. He must have woken up in their absence.

“No,” Justice said. Amell set a hand to his shoulder, Justice guided it to the fence to help him get his bearings. “Did you want to join me? I am on the fence.”

“About what?” Amell asked, leaning on the fence in place of sitting on it.

“... You are joking,” Justice decided.

“You’re bright,” Amell smiled.

“You described the light you saw in me as faint and far away,” Justice recalled.

“Any light is bright in the dark,” Amell said.

“Poetic.”

“You like poetry.”

“Anders is worried about you,” Justice explained their lack of sleep.

“I’m worried about Anders,” Amell countered.

With good cause, Justice supposed, though it was not his place to say as much. “Is that why you don’t want us to accompany you to Highever?”

“I don’t mind if you accompany me, but I think it would be good for us to take a few days to think about what we want from each other apart from each other,” Amell said.

“This seems a sensible request,” Justice said. Anders’ thoughts seemed to center around Amell whenever Amell was around, and he wouldn’t have been surprised to find that Amell felt the same. “I should thank you for your removal of Franderel. You did as I asked of you without hesitation on the field of battle. It was good to see.”

“I’m glad you approved.”

“Of course… I assume you wish Anders’ company-”

“You are Anders,” Amell set a hand to his arm, as if such contact could keep him or as if he was ever truly gone. “I want to talk to you.”

“You are always talking to me,” Justice said, though he supposed he knew what Amell meant. He let himself relax, veilfire burning through his veins and across the hand Amell had set to his arm. Amell's fingers traced along the magic, the sensation unfamiliar but not unpleasant.

“Is it alright for me to touch you?”

“Of course. How else would you perceive me as anything more than light?”

“You’re much more than that. I hear you in the way he talks, the things he believes in, the way he fights for them. It can’t all be time. I don’t think he would have fought me for an infirmary years ago.”

“... perhaps not,” Justice allotted.

“I’m glad you have each other,” Amell said.

“... that wasn’t a sentiment shared by your blood,” Justice confessed.

“I don’t think my blood and I share many,” Amell said cautiously.

“Perhaps not,” Justice hoped. “... It’s comforting. You’re comforting. I hope we comfort you in turn.”

“You do,” Amell said.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Justice said. “Anders has many memories of you. Facets I was blind to in our brief time together many years ago. You have been an inspiration to him in more ways than I suspect you could imagine.”

“What about you?”

“What of me?”

“... are you alright?”

“Of course.”

“Are you alright with me?” Amell clarified. “With the way that Anders and I spend time together?”

“I assume you mean sex?”

“Yes.”

“There are few things Anders and I disagree on,” Justice said. “His love for you is not one of them.”

“Does that mean you love me or that you’re okay with him loving me?” Amell asked.

“Yes.”

Chapter 167: Old Friends, New Friends, and Not Friends

Summary:

Alternative Title: A Pirate, An Assassin, and a Fugitive Walk Into a Vigil

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 17 Solis Late Afternoon
Ferelden: Vigil’s Keep

The fields and farmsteads surrounding Vigil’s Keep welcomed the return of the Grey Wardens warmly. Men and women stopped to wave at the passing of blue and silver, a few of them begging news from West Hill and Highever. Justice rode a respectful distance from the rest of the Grey Wardens to spare their horses the panic of his presence, but the ride was far from lonesome.

The wisps bound to the skeleton of Dans Leur Sang were laced together with the horse’s memories. They had no virtues to aspire towards and so formed the echo of a soul instead. Justice couldn’t help but wonder if there were similar manifestations of the magic in the Fade. Wisps who formed neither spirits nor demons but the souls of mortals. He’d never encountered any such thing, and it seemed yet another marvel of mortal magic. Or perhaps simply Amell’s magic.

Justice was looking forward to seeing him on his return from Highever. Amell claimed to want him to have a voice in his relationship with Anders, and the more Amell asked after him, the more Justice believed him. Fields and farmsteads gave way to the granite walls of the Vigil, and as they passed below the raised portcullis of the outer courtyard Justice thought of Kristoff and Aura. He’d envied them their love and found his own in Anders, and while his love for Anders was incomparable it was… interesting to be offered more.

A ripple of amusement played through him. “He’s pretty great, isn’t he?” Anders grinned, ruining their posture to drape himself over the horse’s neck and swing an arm back and forth. “I can’t believe he understands what we are… what we’ve become. He’s just… something else.”

The stablehands poured out to receive the Grey Wardens and take their mounts back to the stables, and Anders had every intention of taking a very long nap in his very nice bunk, but Corporal Kallian was there waiting for him on his arrival.

“You know, I’m going to start associating you with bad news,” Anders joked, dismounting with something grace-adjacent and handing the construct’s reins off to a stablehand.

“I can’t say what kind of news it is, Ser,” Kallian apologized. “The Constable was very clear I bring you straight to him on your return.”

“Well let’s not keep the old boy waiting,” Anders waved her on, stuffing his broken satchel under his arm and shouldering his staff on their walk through the fortress. Nathaniel was in the library reading at a table, and the room emptied at his order. Kallian left them alone, closing the door on her way out.

“Anders,” Nathaniel waved him into the chair opposite him. “How was the battle?”

“You know,” Anders shrugged, dropping his satchel on the table and resting his staff against it before taking a seat. “Battle-y.”

“Battle-y?” Nathaniel repeated with an easy grin he probably wouldn’t be wearing if this was anything serious. Anders tried to relax, but he never liked the idea of knowing he had to talk about something without knowing what it was. “Still a fan of oversimplifications, I see.”

“A demon took the form of a Harvester, we sacrificed the Bann, and now we’re lying to everyone about what happened,” Anders explained, leaning back in his chair. “You know, your usual run of the mill Warden stuff.”

“I suspect that’s the abridged version of events,” Nathaniel said. “Nevertheless, I’m glad everyone came back in one piece. Your doing, I suspect.”

“I’ve got the touch,” Anders wiggled a few fingers glowing with restorative magics. “Everything okay? Is your leg giving you trouble? I don’t need to amputate, do I?”

“Always better when you’re around,” Nathaniel assured him. “I need to discuss something with you.”

“Discuss away,” Anders said warily.

“So long as you assure me you’ll stay calm,” Nathaniel said.

“Don’t like that. Did someone die? Did Woolsey die?” Anders joked and scared himself. “If Woolsey died-”

“No one died,” Nathaniel promised. “But I have to tell you something and I need you to trust that I’ll handle it however you want me to handle it.”

“... okay,” Anders said slowly.

“You have visitors. I’m sure they mean well, but considering everything, I thought it was prudent to tell you before I allowed them free reign of the Vigil. I heard you had another visitor in from Kirkwall last month, and obviously you handled it, so I might be being overly cautious, but-... are you alright?”

They weren't. Maker, they weren't, but they tried to be. “Continue,” Justice said.

“They said their names were Fenris and Isabela. No family names. They made port in the Blackmarsh a few days ago. They also arrived with an old-... companion of Amell’s who I can’t in good conscience detain, but if he gives you any trouble I’ll suffer whatever consequences come of it. How would you prefer I handle it?”

“Describe them?” Justice asked.

“Fenris is elven with unfamiliar vallaslin and Isabela is human; Riavini with dark hair and a gold labret,” Nathaniel said.

“... They’re fine,” Anders massaged away the ache in his chest; there was nothing to heal, but a surge of benevolent energies from Justice helped to calm his nerves all the same. “They’re my friends. My real friends. ...I can’t believe he actually found her. Where are they?”

“The guest wing,” Nathaniel said.

Anders grabbed his things and was half-way out the door before it occurred to him it could have just as easily not have been Fenris and Isabela, and the only reason he was in a position to know was because Nathaniel had gone out of his way to help him. “Nate-... thank you. I know we haven’t talked about the thing we haven’t talked about, but-... thank you.”

“We can talk about that when you’re ready to talk about that,” Nathaniel retrieved his cane and stood. It bothered Anders that he needed it. Surana had walked away from the battle with Famine unscathed because he’s been there, but he hadn’t been there for Nate. There had to be something his magic could do for him after everything Nathaniel had done for him. “Introduce me to your friends at dinner.”

Anders fled from the library back to the barracks and dropped all his things on his bunk before bolting to the guest wing. He went through three rooms before it occurred to him to check the parlor. He found them sitting at a table playing cards, like something caught between an age old memory and an impossible future. Isabela looked nothing like the battered woman Hawke had dropped at the feet of the Arishok and Anders had rescued from a qunari dreadnought two years ago.

She was wearing a red captain’s coat and hat, with a full set of leather armor beneath it. It looked far more defensive than the threadbare tunic she’d worn in the past, and she no longer seemed the sort of person who could be taken down by a few stray arrows. Fenris had traded his outlandishly spiky armor for black leather with more buckles than seemed practical, with a white fur trim to match his hair. He’d cropped it short and swept it back, revealing more lyrium tattoos on his forehead Anders hadn’t noticed back in Kirkwall.

“Fenris!” Anders flung himself halfway across the room before he remembered Fenris didn’t like to be touched, and skidded to a halt.

“Mage,” Fenris abandoned his cards and stood up, waving an arm in what felt like an invitation in the space between them. “I mean nothing to you now?”

“Fuck you,” Anders wrenched him into a hug, doing his best to keep pressure on Fenris’ armor and not his skin.

“How many times must I refuse you?” Fenris said, one hard squeeze almost winding him.

“I certainly won’t,” Isabela joked, gold eyes sparkling. After two years, Anders had almost forgotten her voice and how much light she could fit in it. He traded one embrace for another, and Isabela’s startled laugh seemed to imply she wasn’t expecting one. “Looking good, sweet thing.”

“Right back at you, gorgeous,” Anders pulled back to squeeze her arms.

Isabela ruffled his hair, “How have the Wardens been treating you? Mastering your taint?”

“Me?” Anders laughed. “Who cares about me? I never thought I’d see you again. Where have you been? What have you been doing? Who have you been doing?”

“Oh I missed you,” Isabela grinned toothily. “You always asked the right questions. This one, for starters.” Isabela wrangled a finger around one of Fenris’ half-dozen buckles, and pulled him in no particular direction. “It turns out you don’t need a lover in every port if you bring one with you. I found him wandering the streets of Little Llomerryn looking so pitiful I just had to take him with me.”

“And cut his hair?” Anders guessed.

“I cut my own hair, thank you,” Fenris huffed.

“It shows,” Anders grinned.

“You are hardly one to talk,” Fenris said. “I assume your lover’s lack of sight works to your advantage.”

“This whole time I thought he was joking when he said you two were friends,” Isabela said, eyeing the two of them over. “I should start writing my friend fiction again.”

"I am not reading it," Fenris warned her.

"Liar," Isabela grinned.

“Not that I’m not happy to see both of you, but I still don’t understand what you’re doing here," Anders admitted.

“Seeing you is not reason enough?” Fenris asked.

“You tell me,” Anders said.

“Understanding’s overrated," Isabela flapped a hand in his face. "You just need to know enough to stay alive and have fun doing it, and let me tell you, we have been having fun."

"Well don't stop there, tell me everything," Anders insisted.

"I have a boat!" Isabela said proudly. "Siren’s Call II - and I didn’t even have to deal with a demon to get it.”

“Debatable,” Fenris interjected.

“Do we really have to lead with that?" Isabela sighed, rubbing a kink or a conscience out of her neck. "Can't we just enjoy life's simple pleasures? Drinks? Cards? Wet frocks?"

"Start with what?" Anders asked.

"Well?" Fenris set one hand to his hip and waved the other expectantly at Isabela.

"Ugh," Isabela groaned, retreating back to the table. She dragged off her captain’s hat and set it atop the pile of cards and coins, and her shoulders sagged like the hat had held all of her confidence. "Don't go all Justice on me, but I may have had a tiny lapse in judgement."

"Tiny," Fenris snorted, folding his arms across his chest.

"Okay, fine, a big lapse, are you happy now?" Isabela leaned back against the table, her eyes on the floor. "I've been lapsing for the past decade. My sobriety lasts about as long as my morality these days… I wonder if the two are connected?"

"When was the last time you were sober?" Anders asked.

"Exactly," Isabela said, gesturing at him but looking at Fenris. "He gets it."

"He will not," Fenris said.

"What won't I get?" Anders asked. "You didn't steal the crown from the Queen of Antiva this time, did you?"

"That's the beauty of it, I didn't have to steal anything," Isabela said. "I just made a deal."

"At the expense of others," Fenris said.

"It got me a boat!" Isabela argued. "I like big boats, I cannot lie. Besides, I can't be Captain Isabela without a ship to captain. It just rings hollow."

"You are better than this," Fenris countered.

"Were either of you planning on filling me in?" Anders asked. "Or should I just come back later?"

"I'd watch Fenris fill you in all day, any day, sweet thing," Isabela joked.

"She made a deal with Castillon," Fenris explained. "Her old employer. The one who tasked her with stealing the Tome of Koslun to repay him for freeing a ship's worth of slaves. He is expanding his slaving ring to the Free Marches - and she destroyed evidence of this in exchange for a new ship."

"Not just a ship!" Isabela protested. "It got him to stop hunting me. Not all of us had someone to help us kill our former masters, you know. I was alone on the streets of Llomerryn for months-!"

"I did not ask your reasons," Fenris held up a hand to ward off what sounded like a reoccurring argument. "I asked your redemption."

Anders couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He’d forsaken Kirkwall to save Isabela two years ago, and she’d turned around and used her freedom to ensure innocent people lost theirs. She might not have been to blame for the invasion, but she’d gone right back to the same slaver who provoked the qunari into starting it by forcing her to steal from them. Anders wasn’t sure whether he was more angry with her or Fenris for being with her.

Fenris had been a slave. He couldn’t possibly want anything to do with anyone who helped slavers. Hawke had exploited indentured servants and Fenris had hated him for that, but Isabela had arguably done worse helping a whole bloody slaving ring just to get herself a ship. Maybe her safety had something to do with it, but this wasn’t the same as stealing a book. It wasn’t anywhere close.

"You seriously helped slavers?" Anders demanded. "And you think anything justifies it?"

"I didn't say it was justified," Isabela held up her hands to ward him off. "I just said I did it."

"I can't believe you," Anders scoffed, pacing away from her with his hands on his hips. "Fenris was a slave! You freed slaves! How could you do something like this?"

"If saving my neck means putting a collar on someone else's-!" Isabela started, and seemed to choke on the words. She turned around and leaned against the table, rapping her knuckles on the surface. "It was wrong, alright? I know it was wrong. I don't know what you want from me."

"Fenris is right,” Anders said. “You're better than this.”.

"Am I?" Isabela asked the table, but it didn't have any more answers than anyone else in the room.

"We are here for your help," Fenris broke the uncomfortable silence to explain. "So she can undo what she has done."

"I never liked going backwards," Isabela sighed, shaking her head. "Far too easy to trip over your own feet."

"How can you undo a whole slaving ring?" Anders demanded.

"One slaver at a time," Fenris said simply.

"Just because I gave up the evidence doesn't mean I forgot what it said," Isabela put her hat back on and turned back around, squaring her shoulders. "I know where Castillon is working and who he's working with. We're going to take down his entire operation."

“You shouldn’t have helped start his entire operation,” Anders countered.

“It’s not like I’ve spent the past two years loading up the hull with slaves, alright?” Isabela frowned. “I found some papers. I neglected to turn them in to the authorities. That’s it.”

“It’s not and you know it,” Anders said.

“We need your help,” Fenris said.

“Killing slavers in the Free Marches?” Anders asked. “You still owe me one, remember? You told me you’d kill him.”

“... so it’s true?” Isabela asked, and for a moment there was so much sympathy in her expression Anders almost forgot he was angry with her. “He really hurt you, sweet thing?”

“I made no exaggerations,” Fenris answered for him.

Isabela paced through the parlor, and found a seat for herself on the arm of a couch, where her hat fell back into her hands. “And Kitten helped?”

“Yeah,” Anders said stiffly. “She helped.”

“... well shit,” Isabela sighed. “... I always thought she was too good.”

“She is not,” Fenris said.

“How is it you can forgive Isabela and you can’t forgive Merrill?” Anders asked.

“Do you wish for me to forgive Merrill?” Fenris demanded.

“No,” Anders said. “I just-... how do you forgive slavery and draw the line at poison?”

“I do not,” Fenris sniffed. “I gave Merrill the chance to explain, but she poisoned you of her own volition. Hawke wasn’t forcing her hand; she wasn’t living in fear for her life. I gave her the chance to atone. I tried to convince her to free you. To fake the dosage. To lower it. To help me see you from the room he kept you in. She refused.

“I don’t condone anything Isabela has done, but she is here. She is sorry. She is trying. Merrill is not. Will you help us or not?”

“What do you need me to do?” Anders asked.

“Very little,” Fenris promised.

“It’s not really your help we need,” Isabela confessed. “It’s that Commander of yours.”

“Of course it is,” Anders groaned. “Ask him yourself. He’ll be back in a week.”

“Don’t you want to know what we need?” Isabela asked.

“No,” Anders said. “If you want my help, I’ll help, but I’m not asking Amell for any more favors.”

“Are you with him or not?” Fenris asked.

“That’s not the point-” Anders said.

“It’s not that big a favor, sweet thing,” Isabela promised. “We just need someone to make an honest ship out of us.”

“I don’t want to know what that means,” Anders said.

“Registries for port authorities,” Isabela told him anyway. “I can always fake the paperwork, but it’s easier if it’s official. A shipyard, if he can spare it. Castillon has most of the Felicisima Armada in his pocket, but the Brandel Raiders are close to Amaranthine. If we can get a few of the captains on our side we can push Castillon out. If he’s willing to cut a deal with any his ships capture-”

“Stop,” Anders cut her off. “I don’t want to know. Ask him. This doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

“It’s not just about the ships,” Fenris said, because apparently no one was listening to him today. “Castillion is a powerful merchant operating out of Antiva. He has allies and connections we need removed. We can handle the ones in the Free Marches, but some of them are in Ferelden.”

“Great,” Anders sighed. “Now I’m an assassin.”

“Don’t worry, we brought our own,” Isabela assured him. “You’ll like him.”

Anders spent the next few hours catching up with Fenris and Isabela, and introduced them to Nathaniel and Oghren at dinner, where he finally saw their assassin, and immediately decided he did not like him.

Zevran Arainai was an incorrigible flirt. He was an elven Antivan Crow, or something, except he was apparently on the run for killing dozens of them. He had light blonde hair with light brown skin, and sauntered through the Vigil in the most ridiculous looking leather armor Anders had ever seen in his life. Silverite plated boots went up above his knees, and looked like they were stuffed with more daggers than legs. He had on a leather corset in place of a chestpiece, bare chest covered in piercings and tattoos reminiscent of crows. A feathered mantle with more colors than a rainbow completed the absurd ensemble.

The man was Amell’s ex lover, and Anders couldn’t imagine what Amell had ever seen in him. Aside from his outrageous outfit, and his history with Amell, there were other things Anders didn’t like about him. Like the fact that Zevran couldn’t get through dinner without flirting with every Warden in earshot, and ended up feeding Tamarel a bowl of strawberries before the end of the first course. Anders watched her take a whole strawberry and Zevran’s fingers into her mouth and grimaced, nudging Isabela where she sat beside him.

“That’s your assassin?” Anders demanded.

“I know, right?” Isabela hummed, toying with her fork between her teeth. “Why? Are you interested? Because I can totally introduce you. I’ve been trying to get Fenris onboard for a threesome all month and he keeps breaking my heart.”

“Do as you will with the man,” Fenris said. “I’ll have no part in it.”

“Oh, I am and I have been, but Zevran’s no you,” Isabela said.

“And what am I?” Fenris asked.

“... different,” Isabela said softly.

“Hello?” Anders interjected, pointing his thumb down the banquet table at Zevran and Tamarel, who were probably not still sharing strawberries, but he wasn’t about to come between them to check. “Can we get back to this? How is that man an assassin? You can see that coming from leagues away. I’ve seen sunrises more subtle.”

“He has other outfits,” Isabela rolled her eyes. “This is just… you know, more of his tits out look.”

“I seem to recall you wearing something similar your first few weeks at the Vigil, Anders,” Nathaniel reminded him.

“That was one robe,” Anders held up a single finger. “I wore it one time. I never dressed like that.”

“Thank the Stone for that,” Oghren said. “You’d think the elf actually had tits with how riled the Boss got when he wore this shit.”

“You’re joking, right?” Anders asked. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“I’m just saying, I’ve seen things,” Oghren shuddered.

“At least Amell is consistent,” Fenris mused.

“I’m not like him,” Anders said quickly. “Someone tell me I’m not like him. Hello?”

“I don’t think I know enough of the man to say,” Nathaniel said.

“What’s there to know?” Anders demanded. “Seems like it’s all right there on the surface.”

“... Yeah, Boss’s got a type,” Oghren said.

“I’m not a type,” Anders protested.

“You’re definitely a type,” Oghren said.

“How am I a type?” Anders asked. “How am I that type?”

“We opening this jar of worms?” Oghren asked, licking his fingers clean before counting off his reasons on them. “Fussier than a babe when you take it off the teat and needier than one too, pushy, weepy, bitchy, showy, slutty, vain as the day is long-”

“All qualities of yours thus far,” Fenris hummed.

“You know,” Oghren shrugged. “A regular piece of work. Boss must love a project.”

It was a joke. A harmless joke between friends, but Anders had been with someone who saw him as a project - a broken thing to fix - and it cut a little too deep. “He keeps you around,” Anders flashed Oghren a humorless smirk and dug into his dinner.

“How did you all meet?” Nathaniel made a valiant effort to change the topic.

“You don’t want to hear that story,” Isabela waved him off. “I have a better one! Why don’t I tell you about the time I found the Dagger of the Four Winds? It all started with a group of talking statues-...”

Anders listened absently to Isabela’s story. Apparently, she’d recruited the crew of the Siren’s Call II by freeing them from the curse of a maleficar who had turned them all to stone. Anders wasn’t sure whether or not he believed it, but it was an interesting story, like all of Isabela’s stories. He’d missed hearing them, and it gave him something to focus on that wasn’t old and new friends making fun of him, and wasn’t Zevran.

Anders resolved to ignore him, but it wasn’t an easy resolution to keep, especially when Zevran accosted him in the infirmary the next day. He wasn’t wearing a rainbow feather mantle, but the painfully tight leather pants and open-chested tunic weren’t much of an improvement as far as Anders was concerned.

“Can I help you?” Anders frowned.

“It occurs to me we have not been properly introduced,” Zevran bowed, blonde hair falling in front of his tattooed face with the motion. He gave a flourish of his hand that seemed more mocking than anything else, and grinned when he righted.

“I’m okay with that,” Anders said.

“I see,” Zevran drawled. “This is where we begin the typical current lover/old lover rivalry, is it?”

“Nope,” Anders’ frown deepened.

“I believe your name was Anders?” Zevran ignored him, wandering around the infirmary. “My name is Zevran Arainai. Zev to my friends.”

“Zevran it is,” Anders decided.

“It seems I have offended somehow,” Zevran said.

“I just don’t see the point in us getting to know each other,” Anders said.

“Do you not?” Zevran asked, hopping nimbly up to sit on one of his surgery tables. “Surely our dear Isabela has told you of our quest. We may yet have need of a healer. I do not imagine the slaves we will see free will have been well treated by their former masters, but I am always prepared for surprises.”

“What makes you think Amell is even going to agree to help you?” Anders asked.

“Do you know him to be a man who says no often?” Zevran smirked. The smug twitch of his lips couldn’t have been more irritating. “Has he changed so much in three years?”

“He said no to you,” Anders pointed out.

“Such words!” Zevran grasped his heart with a dramatic flair. “Are you sure you are not a Crow yourself to have such deadly aim?”

“From what I’ve heard, their aim isn’t actually all that good,” Anders said.

“How Amell has ruined our reputation, no?” Zevran sighed wistfully. “So many failed assassinations.”

“Poor you,” Anders said flatly.

“Yes, poor me,” Zevran said. “Though I must ask, I am ever so curious, is that how he tells it? That he refused me and it was not the other way around?”

“He doesn’t talk about you at all,” Anders said.

“Now that,” Zevran scratched his nose. “That is good aim. I must say I’m a little jealous of you.”

“Jealousy never hurt anyone,” Anders said. “Much.”

“You truly have no wish for us to be friends?”

“I truly don’t.”

“And I suspect more than that is out of the question as well?” Zevran joked. Anders frowned, and Zevran hopped off the table. “I jest. Unless you change your mind, in which case I am entirely serious. No one ever accused Amell of having poor taste, after all.”

Everyone accused Amell of having poor taste, but Anders wasn’t going to keep this conversation going any longer than necessary. Zevran saw himself out. Anders was not jealous. Anders didn’t care about Zevran enough to be jealous. He spent the week catching up with Fenris and Isabela, and tolerating Zevran’s presence whenever the assassin joined them.

It wasn’t an easy thing to tolerate. Everyone seemed to love Zevran, literally or figuratively speaking. He had an odd sort of history at Vigil’s Keep. He was close friends with Oghren and Morrigan, though he had no relationship whatsoever with Kieran. He was actively sleeping with Isabela and a part of her crew, but he wasn’t involved with Fenris. Nathaniel and Velanna knew his name, but little of him beyond that.

As for the rest of the Wardens, Zevran slept with half of them before the week was out. Anders gave up keeping track. It didn’t matter how many people Zevran was sleeping with as long as he wasn’t sleeping with Amell. Amell wasn’t even here to sleep with him. He was in Highever, unable to receive anyone who’d come to see him, including the King of Ferelden himself when he showed up when the week was out.

Anders had met King Alistair Theirin once, when he’d arrived at Vigil’s Keep with a procession of templars and agreed to allow Anders’ conscription after Rylock had refused it. He didn’t arrive with a procession of templars this time, and that was about all that Anders could say of the man, because that was about all that Anders was allowed to see of the man. His personal guard couldn’t have been more on edge. One of them carried around a scroll and was constantly reading from it, as if the King couldn’t spend a single moment of his time free from responsibility.

Anders had never thought he’d meet anyone with more responsibilities than Amell, but Alistair must have been one of them. The seneschal kept him and his company entertained, and he spoke on occasion with Isabela and Zevran, who apparently had some kind of history with him, but Oghren and Morrigan avoided him like the plague, and no one else had enough status to come anywhere near him. No one except Nate, who for some reason wasn’t invited to his inner circle.

Anders had taken to seeing the old boy in his infirmary at least once a day to help with the pain of his injury. He told himself he was making progress, but he honestly couldn’t say. In addition to the scar tissue on Nate’s thigh, his cane had done damage to his spine. The spine was something Anders could fix in increments, but healing scar tissue was something he’d only managed to do with blood magic, and the damage had only ever been superficial, and he didn’t want Nate to be an experiment.

“What’s he doing here?” Anders asked Nate on the second day of the King’s visit while he healed his back. Nathaniel lay on a surgery table, arms folded under his head.

“Waiting for Amell,” Nate offered helpfully.

“I know that,” Anders rolled his eyes. “Why?”

“At a guess? To discuss the Battle of Wutherford and the death of Bann Franderel,” Nathaniel said. “But the King and I are on no better terms than the King and Amell. He was no friend of my father’s and I can’t say that he sees a difference between us.”

“You know, Nate, sometimes I think you’re just like me,” Anders said.

“Am I, now?” Nathaniel asked.

“Everyone hates your family for something terrible they did, even though you weren’t involved,” Anders elaborated. “It’s like you’re a mage. If there were more Howes, they’d lock all of you up in a tower to protect everyone else.”

“A thrilling analogy,” Nathaniel decided. “I suppose I’m fortunate Delilah and I are the only Howes left.”

“You could have just laughed,” Anders pointed out.

“Sorry,” Nathaniel put on a smile. “I’m not a fan of the King’s visits. Amell is due to return today, and talks with the King never stay talks without the Queen present.”

“What does that mean?” Anders asked.

“It means there’s a reason the war rooms are warded for silence,” Nathaniel said. “The King and Amell never see eye to eye and Amell… well, I shouldn’t say.”

“You can’t just say you shouldn’t say and then not say,” Anders argued.

“Yours isn’t the only privacy I have to respect, my friend,” Nathaniel refused him. “Have you thought about what kind of relationship you’re looking for with him?”

“An exclusive one,” Anders said, thinking of Zevran.

“I thought you might have more interest in an honest one,” Nathaniel countered.

“I’m not being dishonest,” Anders frowned. “I just-... In the Circle, things happen. People get beaten, or raped, or whipped. You lose friends, family, children… We all know it happens. We just don’t talk about it. This is just… like that.”

“I think that sounds lonely,” Nathaniel said.

“I’m never lonely,” Anders said.

It was true, but maybe not completely. Anders wasn’t just one soul, but loneliness wasn’t limited to just one soul. As much as Anders might have been Justice and Justice might have been Anders, it was nice to have someone beyond them be for them. Justice went to the war room Nathaniel had referenced, and traced the glyph of silence etched into the surface of the door. It was an age old thing, and the memory of its carving was buried beneath the many times the magic had been activated by mages in the room. Amell, more often than not.

Memories of him clung like motes of dust to almost every inch of the room. A tactile map of the arling of Amaranthine occupied the center table, and seemed to hold the most of him. One memory in particular was from the day before they’d left for Wutherford. It was a day they’d spent with him, but it had started here, in the aftermath of a meeting.

“You can really read this?” Anders had asked.

“I really can,” Amell had said.

“The way you see the world is beautiful,” Justice had said, because Anders had seemed too afraid to say it, but Justice had felt the same way.

“Did you want me to teach you?” Amell had asked.

“I would love that,” Justice had said, because Justice had wanted to say it, though he had doubts on whether Amell truly heard him say it. Unworthy doubts, it seemed, considering Amell could see clearly which of them was forward.

… it would be nice to be loved.

“-think for one second I’m going to let this go-” A man’s voice echoed from down the hall. The voice itself was unfamiliar, but the tone was one that they knew all too well. Raised and harsh, snarled through clenched jaws and grit teeth, and paired all too often with closed fists.

“When have you ever let anything go?” Amell’s voice snapped back in the same tone.

“You really want to go there?” The other man threatened. “Because I’ll go there. I swear on the Maker, Amell-”

“How many of your prayers has He answered?” Amell cut him off.

The argument grew louder, angrier, closer, and Anders did what he did best.

He panicked.

Chapter 168: The King and I

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter!

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 26 Solis Late Afternoon
Ferelden: Vigil’s Keep

Anders didn't want to be here.

Justice didn't even want to be here.

They didn't want to hear or see anger they couldn't meet and battle back in kind. They didn't want to be trapped in a room with it. They didn't want anything to do with this moment, and they had no way to escape it, save to remove themselves from it.

An orange tabby huddled beneath the war table as three humans filed inside. Amell was still in his riding leathers, and looked like he’d been pulled straight from horseback and into an argument. The King was with him, and seemed far more prepared for a literal fight than a figurative one. Alistair’s royal regalia consisted of a fur mantle covering a deep brown leather brigandine with gold rivets.

An old senior enchanter followed them, her dark grey hair pinned up in a loose bun. One of Anders’ spirit healing instructors from Kinloch and one of Amell’s old companions from the Blight, Wynne was possessed by a spirit of Faith and wasn’t paying either man any attention. She was too busy reading from the scroll she was carrying, a few strands falling into her face while she repeated the same handful of phrases in Tevene.

The tabby made a bolt for the door. The hardwood slammed in its face, and sent the tabby scrambling back under the table. Wynne stayed by the door - engrossed her scroll. Amell breathed mana into the rune of silence on the door, and Alistair paced circles around the war table.

“The Litany, Alistair?” Amell tilted his head towards the sound of Wynne’s reading. “You really think I would mind control you?”

“You tell me,” Alistair said, thumping a frustrated fist on the back of each chair he passed.

“You’d have to have a mind to control first,” Amell said.

“I’m not an idiot,” Alistair said. “Well, not most of the time. I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“If I wanted to compel you the Litany wouldn’t stop me,” Amell said, a few steps carrying him to the table. His outstretched hand found the back of the nearest chair, and he held it in a knuckle-white grip that matched the tension in his tone.

“You’re lying,” Alistair’s grin was vicious. “I’m used to that from you. You don’t scare me.”

“Now who’s lying?” Amell rolled some of the tension from his shoulders, and glanced at Wynne to say, “Shut up.”

“She won’t,” Alistair said. “We’re having this conversation with the Litany whether you like it or not.”

“I can’t focus on this conversation with the Litany,” Amell said, voice strained when he turned back to Alistair. “I can’t see with the Litany, Alistair.”

“Am I supposed to feel bad for you?” Alistair asked. “Because I don’t. Sometimes I doubt you’re even blind.”

“Are you sure you’re not an idiot?” Amell asked; his eyes didn’t follow Alistair in quite the same way as they usually did when the king paced around the table, only glancing at him when Alistair’s footfalls were louder than Wynne’s mumbling, which wasn’t often.

“Why am I not surprised you can’t go five minutes without blood magic?” Alistair rolled his eyes, making his way back around to Amell’s side of the table. “Do you even know any other kind?”

“Do you really want to test me?” Amell dared. “You stopped taking lyrium years ago.”

“Brilliant, assault the King!” Alistair spread his arms mockingly wide. “I’d love to see you talk your way out of that one.”

“Anora would thank me,” Amell said.

“You fucking ass dick,” Alistair sputtered, grabbing a handful of Amell’s tunic. The contact must have startled him, because a surge of telekinetic magic knocked Alistair back a pace and rattled the chairs around the table.

Amell raised a defensive hand, but it wasn’t quite pointed in the right direction. “Touch me one more time, Alistair-”

“And what?” Alistair scoffed, thrusting a finger into Amell’s chest “You don’t order me around anymore, Amell. I’m the one on the throne, remember? You put me there.”

“You think I couldn’t take you off it?” Amell hissed. “Who do you think the bannorn would back if they knew Grey Wardens are sterile?”

“You think they would believe you?” Alistair laughed, pacing a few feet away from him. “You think Kieran is a secret?”

“You don’t ever talk about my son-!” Amell took a step towards Alistair and collided with a chair. He grabbed the back of it and flung it into the wall. A leg snapped off, and startled Wynne into skipping a verse.

“He’s my subject,” Alistair continued, undeterred by the violence. “Or did you forget I’m the only reason he’s not in the Circle? I know he’s a mage. Everyone can see it. Everyone except you. You know you’ll never see him, right?”

“I should break you,” Amell threatened, another burst of telekinetic magic sending the people, the chairs, and the table along with them crashing into the far wall. The tabby went scrambling under the new pile of furniture, and turned around in time to see Wynne and Alistair pick themselves up from where Amell’s magic had thrown them.

“Enough of this!” Wynne hissed between verses of the Litany. “Focus on why we are here.”

“I am focused on why we’re here!” Alistair waved a hand at Amell, who stood in the same spot, unable to get a sense of anything without any blood magic or guides. “You just couldn’t do it, could you? You couldn’t go one day without sacrificing someone?”

“I didn’t sacrifice Franderel,” Amell lied.

“I don’t believe you,” Alistair sang back. “I don’t believe one word that comes out of your mouth. You couldn’t speak the truth if you compelled yourself to. You’re alive. He’s dead. You expect me to believe you didn’t want it that way? You’re so bloody stubborn you’d bring his corpse to court if you wanted to keep him around.”

“Franderel means as much to me as you do,” Amell said. “It was a battle. People die in them. You’d know if you ever fought in one.”

“People die because you kill them!” Alistair countered. “You sacrificed hundreds at Denerim-”

“You quit the field!” Amell shouted over him. “You’re so convinced Loghain betrayed us at Ostagar but he wasn’t the one who ran from the Archdemon!”

“Don’t you dare compare me to Loghain!” Alistair screamed back, fisting a hand in Amell’s tunic. “He killed Duncan!”

“Darkspawn killed Duncan!” Amell smacked his hand off. “Loghain’s the only Grey Warden between you still fighting them.”

“I’m the King!”

“You’re a child!”

“I’m older than you!”

“Act like it!”

“You think I’m immature because I don’t want you butchering my banns?” Alistair scoffed with a laugh of disbelief. “I might have hated Franderel for supporting Loghain, but I didn’t kill him for it. I’m not like you.”

“Just say it,” Amell said. “You wish you were.”

“You’re a disgrace,” Alistair spit on Amell’s boot. “You’re a disgrace to the wardens, to the arling, to the whole kingdom. You should have died. You were supposed to die when you killed the Archdemon. I don’t know what you did, but I know you did something. I know you have something to do with the Harvesters just like you had something to do with the Children.”

“What, Alistair?” Amell demanded. “You think I’m breeding darkspawn beneath the Vigil?”

“You’re the first person to discover two new types of darkspawn and you expect me to believe it wasn’t something you caused? They’re saying it wasn’t even a Harvester at Wutherford.”

“They?”

“I’m not an idiot, Amell, stop treating me like one. I trained as a templar. I know demons. A whole army cannibalizes itself and you expect me to believe a demon didn’t have something to do with it? Hunger, right? Did you summon it?”

“It was a Harvester,” Amell said stubbornly.

“You’re a damn liar,” Alistair scowled.

“Prove it.”

“I don’t have to prove anything. People talk. I can’t have demons running wild in the bannorn less than a year after I give the mages autonomy, Amell-”

“Don’t make this about mages-”

“You made this about mages,” Alistair cut him off. “You wanted freedom and you abused it. You expect anyone to believe it’s a coincidence there was a demon loose between Kinloch and Jainen?”

“Kinloch and Jainen had nothing to do with it,” Amell said. “It was a-”

“-a Harvester,” Alistair cut him off again, rolling his eyes for his own sake. “I still don’t believe you and neither will the Chantry, especially not with Jainen summoning storms across the Waking Sea.”

“The weather?” Amell laughed humorlessly. “You’re blaming mages for the weather now?”

“Prove me wrong.”

“It’s the weather!”

“Prove it. I mean it, Amell. I already told Bann Eremon you’ll see to it.”

“You want me to prove a mage from Jainen isn’t conjuring storms?” Amell asked. “How? Bringing you the no one responsible?”

“I don’t care. Figure it out. If you can’t, I’m done.”

“What do you mean you’re done?”

“I mean I’m done. The Circles go back to the Chantry - and your son goes with them. I’m not letting you ruin Ferelden.”

“I’m the only reason there is a Ferelden!” Amell shouted - magic amplified his voice and clashed violently against the ward of silence. “You’re not condemning my son to a Circle because you hate me.”

“Then you should have put yourself on the throne!”

“You think Anora didn’t offer?” Amell sneered.

“Don’t bring my wife into this,” Alistair warned him. “I won’t be second to you in my own marriage. You already ruined it. You know I need an heir. I know you have the magic to help me-”

“Die childless,” Amell snarled.

Alistair punched him. Amell couldn’t brace for it when he couldn’t see it coming and went stumbling into the wall. Amell shoved himself off it, and Alistair’s hand went to the hilt of his sword, and it was too much to tolerate. It was too agonizingly akin to everything they’d suffered for near a year at Hawke’s hand. Amell couldn’t sense anything through the Litany. He could barely focus on the conversation. He was so visibly disoriented it was physically painful to watch.

“Enough!” Justice ordered - snapping into a human form. “You will not lay hands on him!”

Wynne shrieked and flung the Litany at him. The scroll smacked him in the face and clattered to the floor. Alistair drew his sword and whirled on him. Justice melted the metal with a flare of primal magic, molten liquid dripping off the hilt to sizzle on the stone floor. Another wave of his hand sent the Litany up in flames. “I swear I will not allow it. You are-”

“Demon!” Wynne squealed, a barrier flaring to life around her.

“Faith,” Justice shot back. “I am no more demon than you!”

“Alistair, get behind me!” Wynne ignored him, reaching for the Fade when a sudden wave of paralysis flooded the war room.

“Stop!” Amell ordered.

“You - will not - hold us!” Wynne’s roar echoed with the strength of the spirit inside her, breaking free of the paralysis with a forceful clash of mana. The magic rebounded in a violent explosion that knocked Amell into a frozen Alistair, the hilt of Alistair’s ruined sword connecting with his back. The crack of a rib echoed through the room, along with Amell’s sickened scream, and the paralysis broke. Justice forced a surge of restorative magic through him, snapping his rib back into place.

Alistair scrambled to his feet, but his sword was the only weapon he was carrying. Wynne reached for the Fade, a stone projectile manifesting to launch itself through the air. Justice shattered it with a blast of raw magic, and sent pebbles scattering through the war room.

“I said stop!” Amell clashed her, raw mana burning in direct opposition to her own and crumpling woman and spirit alike.

Alistair grabbed Amell beneath his arm and heaved him to his feet, slamming him back against the wall. “You think you can just summon demons against me!?”

Justice wrenched Alistair off Amell, and he collided with the far wall with a pained grunt. Amell grappled blindly with Justice, and seemed to judge Wynne more dangerous than Alistair, making a vague guess as to her location and setting himself between them. “He’s not a demon! He’s like Wynne!”

“You have an abomination!?” Alistair waved the ruined hilt of his sword wildly between Amell and Justice. “You’re keeping a bloody abomination at the Vigil?”

“Alistair!” Wynne hissed.

“What!?” Alistair snapped. “You called him a demon!”

“He is a demon! He’s Vengeance!” Wynne declared, but Justice didn’t care about her declarations. He would be whatever he needed to be to see an end to this malevolence.

“I don’t care!” Amell echoed his thoughts. “Be silent!”

“Don’t you dare-” Wynne started.

“Be silent or I’ll make you silent!” Amell snarled.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Wynne’s voice echoed with Faith. “You wretched little man. You so much as reach for your blood and-”

“I’ll spill every drop, Wynne, so help me-”

“Enough!” Justice roared. “We are here to cease violence, not condone it.”

“As if your kind knows anything else,” Wynne spat with her spirit.

“For one of Faith you have little,” Justice noted.

“How dare you-” Wynne’s hands clenched, the possessed mage shaking with rage at the accusation.

“What in the Void is your abomination even doing here!?” Alistair pointed the hilt of his sword at Justice. “Are you seriously spying on me?”

“You think I need to spy on you when I’m talking to you?” Amell laughed at him. “How has the country not fallen with you leading it?”

“Then what is he doing here!?” Alistair demanded. “You couldn’t get Zevran to assassinate me so you summoned a demon to try instead?”

“If I wanted you dead, you would be,” Amell said.

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Don’t push me.”

“Don’t-”

“Don’t what!?”

“Don’t-... You-... I-... Go to Jainen!” Alistair sputtered.

“I will!” Amell shouted.

“Good!” Alistair yelled.

“Fine!” Amell yelled back. “Get out!”

“Don’t tell me what to do!”

“Get out!” Amell screamed, a blast of telekinetic magic ripping the door off its hinges and sending it crashing out into the hall.

“Fine!” Alistair yelled, stomping out over broken pieces of the door scattered in the hall. Wynne went scrambling out after him. “But so help me, Amell, if the Circle is behind the storms I’ll put you back in one.”

Amell stood in the wreckage of the war room when they’d gone, dragging his hands through his hair, breathing heavily. The door had been shattered and the glyph of silence along with it. The chairs and the table and the beautiful tactile map upon it lost to a broken pile of kindling. The scent of smoke and molten metal hung in the air, the stonework blackened by his magic.

Justice set a careful hand to Amell’s shoulder, “Are you alright?”

“Get out,” Amell said.

Justice took his hand off, “I meant only-”

“What?” Amell cut him off, a visible tension in the set of his shoulders curiously absent from his hands. “What did you mean?”

“I meant to spare you from how they mistreated you,” Justice explained.

“I don’t need you to save me-”

“They blinded and abused you-”

“You think I want you to know that!?” Amell whirled to face him, and took a step back in the same motion. “You think I want you to see that!? Why were you here!? Why are you spying on me!? Anders, I might expect but-”

“You expect?” Anders cut him off. “You expect me to spy on you!? You think I wanted to be in here? I was already in here when you showed up!”

“You could have left!” Amell argued. “At any point, you could have left the room instead of hiding in it!”

“I panicked!” Anders threw up his hands. “We weren’t trying to spy on you but we couldn’t just watch them treat you like that!”

“He’s the King!” Amell reminded him. “He can treat me however he wants!”

“You said he couldn’t touch you!”

“I lied!”

“You said you wouldn’t lie!”

“That’s what lying is!”

“Blast it, Amell, you can’t just keep lying to me about everything!” Anders signed half the words, and felt sick to his stomach when he realized what he was doing. “I have to know-”

“Get out,” Amell cut him off.

“Don’t tell me to get out!” Anders yelled.

‘Get out!” Amell yelled back. “I don’t want to yell at you!”

“You’re already yelling at me!” Anders didn’t want to yell or be yelled at either, but he didn’t know how to stop. He felt as furious as he did frightened, hands shaking while the rest of him stayed frozen. A handful of slow breaths did nothing to steady him. “Amell -... Andraste’s grace, he threatened your son, you can’t be okay.”

“Get out, Anders,” Amell said again.

Anders didn’t want to get out. Justice didn’t want to get out. They wanted to talk to him. They wanted to be there for him, except Amell clearly didn’t want them to be there for him, but there had to be something they could do after everything the King had put him through.

“... Can I hug you?” Anders asked.

“Not right now, Anders,” Amell said.

Anders left the room, stepping over the broken door on his way out. A few servants hovered anxiously at the end of the hall, ready to retrieve and replace the ruined hardwood but evidently waiting for the Commander’s approval to do so. Anders went back to the barracks with his heart in his stomach, and found Ser Cumference and a piece of twine to entertain him, his mind caught between Wutherford and the war room.

Amell had said he wouldn’t lie to him, and Anders couldn’t decide if he had, even with Amell claiming as much. Amell had promised Hawke couldn’t hurt him. Anders couldn’t remember Amell saying anything about Alistair. Amell hadn’t made any secret of the fact that Franderel’s death could come back on him, but he acted like he was invulnerable in spite of it all. He’d made it a point to boast that no one could stop him, but Alistair and Wynne hadn’t had any trouble. It hadn’t even taken lyrium. It had just taken the Litany of Adria or Adralla or whatever the old biddie’s name was.

Anders probably should have been more angry with him, but he couldn’t get the image of Alistair punching Amell into a wall out of his head. He couldn’t get over the fact that he’d been so afraid of fighting he’d let someone shake and shove Amell until Justice couldn’t take it anymore. He’d been in battle and felt next to no fear in the face of the undead and the demon who summoned them, but one loud argument had him shaking in his knickers. He should have defended him sooner. He should have defended him at all.

Wasn’t he supposed to be a healer?

“Stupid bastard,” Anders muttered to himself, lying facedown on his bunk and waving a bit of twine at the vicious paws that emerged from beneath it.

“I know I am but what are you,” Oghren chuckled, a thump of his fist against Anders’ foot announcing his presence. “Wait... I think I fucked that up.”

“No, you got it right,” Anders rolled over and upright, dragging his knees to his chest.

“Heard you went scootin’ out of the war room after mommy and daddy’s fight,” Oghren said, plopping down beside him. The mattress sagged with his weight, and Anders scooted over so he didn’t go rolling into him. “How’d you manage that one?”

“Is Amell mommy or daddy in this analogy?” Anders wasn’t sure why he asked considering he didn’t want to know.

“Like you don’t know,” Oghren snorted, making himself comfortable against a bedpost. “Seriously, Sparkles, spill. Boss never lets anyone in on those meetings. Guessing you got an earful?”

“From Amell,” Anders said. “I wasn’t exactly invited.”

“Oh boy,” Oghren whistled. “What’d you do now?”

“Nothing. Something?” Anders shrugged and Justice said, “I deceived him.”

Oghren squinted suspiciously at him when his speech flowed between man and spirit, “I mean, sure, shit’s weird, but it ain’t like you’re lying. Since when does the Boss care which of you he’s fucking?”

“That was not the concern,” Justice said. “We were in the room when they arrived and kept our presence from them. It was unworthy of us.”

“Ain’t you ever heard the phrase ‘brace for a fart brace for a shit’?” Oghren asked. “Why didn’t you just keep hiding? You had to have known it’d only get worse if the Boss found out you were sneaking around like-... hang on, I’ll think of one.”

“I do not believe it is for me to say,” Justice said. Nathaniel had taken great pains to safeguard their trauma, and what Amell had been through was nothing if not traumatic. Amell hadn’t wanted them to witness it, so it seemed unlikely he wanted them to share it.

“Big help, Sparkles,” Oghren said. “Lemme guess, they had it out? What’d you expect? They always have it out. Those two have been in the middle of one long, messy annulment since the Landsmeet, and the Boss made sure his Royal Whineness’d have an in-law sparing Mac Tir. Don’t let it get to you. Boss’ll be okay. He always is.”

Anders didn’t know that he believed that. There weren’t many things that seemed to affect Amell, but Kieran was definitely one of them. Anders couldn’t even remember the last time he’d heard Amell curse, but all Alistair had to do was mention Kieran’s name and it unhinged him. Maker’s breath, if Anders hadn’t felt so paralyzed, it might have unhinged him too. What kind of bastard threatened to put someone’s son in the Circle?

A royal one, Anders supposed. He left the barracks for the creche, just to check on him, but Kieran was fine. Amell’s son was sitting at a tiny desk, writing out Maker knew what as part of whatever lessons were appropriate for a child his age. Little Amell was upside down in a chair next to him, eating the feathers off his quill, which seemed much more relatable from what Anders could remember of his own apprenticeship. A tutor sat behind their own normal-sized desk, reading a book, and didn’t seem to be paying the kids much mind.

“Were you going to do anything about that?” Anders asked, wandering over to sit on the edge of the tutor’s desk.

“I have more quills if he finishes that one,” The tutor waved him off.

“Common sense isn’t part of the lesson plan, I see,” Anders noted. “What are we learning about?”

“Kieran, did you want to tell our friend?” The tutor asked.

“Adventures of the Black Fox,” Kieran said without looking up from his parchment. Despite his prophecies, he didn’t have a halo to mark him for a mage. Both of his parents were mages, so it stood to reason he would probably be one, but if he was, he hadn’t come into his magic yet.

Anders wondered if that would make any difference to Alistair.

‘What do we think of him?” Anders asked.

“I like the Dark Wolf more,” Kieran said.

“The Black Fox is pretty cool, though,” Anders said, trying to recall what he could of the story. “He defeated an evil lord who was taxing his people to death. Your dad is a lot like him, you know.”

“My dad’s cooler!” Little Amell announced from where he was stuck in his chair, his lower half on the seat and his upper half hanging out the back. “My dad could kick the Black Fox’s ass!”

“Amell,” The tutor sighed. “Language.”

“My dad says I can say whatever I want as long as my mom doesn’t hear!” Little Amell said with all the confidence of a child parroting their parent.

“Do I have to go get your mother from the kitchens?” The tutor threatened.

“No!” Little Amell fell out of his chair and scrambled back into it. “No, don’t tell! Don’t say I said ass!”

“I won’t say you said ass if you stop saying ass,” The tutor said patiently.

“Who is saying ass?” Morrigan’s voice interrupted the lesson from the doorway to the creche. She looked like such an unrepentant apostate Anders couldn’t help but be worried for her. She wore Chasind robes, cobbled together from leather, furs, and bones, and carried a twisted wooden staff in plain sight with no Grey Warden tabard to excuse it. All she had was a title and the promise of autonomy, and it seemed like the King could take both away whenever he wanted.

“I didn’t!” Little Amell lied.

“Who does that leave, then, I wonder?” Morrigan hummed. “Kieran, have you anything to say?”

“Not ass,” Kieran promised.

Anders laughed despite himself and the day he’d had. Morrigan shot him a look, or tried, but Kieran seemed to have forced an involuntary grin onto her face. “Your influence, I suspect?”

“I don’t have any influence,” Anders assured her.

“And do not forget it,” Morrigan said. “Surely we are finished for today? Dinner is to be soon.”

“I’ll see you boys tomorrow,” The tutor bowed their way out.

“Dinner!” Little Amell leapt onto his chair, and then onto the floor, and went running out of the creche.

Kieran stayed at his desk, quill scratching dutifully away despite the tutor’s absence.

“What are you doing there, you silly boy?” Morrigan asked, kneeling next to Kieran’s desk to take in his handiwork.

“Writing a story,” Kieran explained.

“One of the Black Fox’s adventures?” Anders guessed.

Kieran tore his eyes off his parchment to give him a confused look. “... how do you know?”

“Lucky guess,” Anders said.

“I should like to read it when ‘tis finished,” Morrigan ran a hand through Kieran’s hair. “Why do you not go find your father to wash up for dinner and leave this for the morrow?”

“Yes, Mother,” Kieran hopped off his chair and accepted a kiss on his forehead from Morrigan he returned with a kiss on the cheek before leaving the room.

“... it is to be this then, is it?” Morrigan asked, standing up.

“Excuse me?” Anders asked.

“Hear me, if he speaks even one ill word about you, you will never come near him again,” Morrigan warned him. “I do not care what you mean to Amell, you mean nothing to Kieran but what I permit.”

“Yes ma’am,” Anders probably shouldn’t have been sarcastic, considering he was serious, but Morrigan apparently didn't care enough about him to spare him more than a frown. She turned to go, and Anders’ mouth opened without consulting him. “Morrigan-”

“Yes?”

“What would you do?" Anders asked. “If someone tried to take him to the Circle?”

Morrigan stared at him for so long it made him uncomfortable, searching his eyes for Maker knew what, before she finally glared. “What did he say?”

“What did who say?”

“Do not play coy with me, little man,” Morrigan crossed the room so quickly Anders didn’t have a chance to get off the desk before she was in front of him. “Alistair. What did he say? This is what he fought with Amell over, yes?”

“He-..” Anders scooted back on the desk, but unless he wanted to climb off the other side there was nowhere for him to go. Morrigan planted herself between his legs, and the other side of the desk had never looked more appealing. “Uh-... He didn’t exactly-...”

“Words,” Morrigan snapped. “Quicker.”

“Amell took care of it,” Anders said.

“Did I ask?” Morrigan countered. “What did he say?”

“He said Kieran was a mage,” Anders said. “He said he’d send him to the Circle if Amell didn’t go to Jainen and prove the mages there aren’t summoning storms.”

“Did he?” Morrigan rolled her fingers along her staff. “Anything else? No, nevermind. If I am to hear this I will hear it from Amell lest you simper through the rest of the story.”

Morrigan took a step back from him, and shifted into a wolf that sprinted from the creche and out into the hall. Anders stayed on the desk and propped his elbow up on his knee, pressing his forehead into his hand. So much for respecting Amell’s privacy. Maker’s breath, it was like he was trying to sabotage all of the progress they’d made. He couldn’t even go a few hours without telling someone something he shouldn’t have overheard in the first place.

Anders lost his appetite, but he went to dinner anyway. It had taken Amell almost six months to forgive him for what Anders had done to him at the Grand Tourney, and Anders didn’t even want to know how long it would take him to forgive him for this, but he may as well get started on apologizing now. Anders got himself a plate of the most recent haul from the Blackmarsh, bread, and a vegetable stew, and found a seat at one of the banquet tables with Fenris and Isabela.

The King and his company occupied the high table, as he had for the past two days. Amell, Morrigan, and Kieran were all absent from the grand hall. Anders lingered for the better part of an hour, but none of them arrived late, and all of them had to be hungry. He grabbed a plate from the kitchens, and piled it with enough food to feed three people before heading up to Morrigan’s room.

His knock went unanswered. He focused on the pull of the corruption in Amell’s blood, and followed it to his room, where his knock went unanswered again, but at least he knew Amell was there. “... I brought dinner,” Anders called through the door. “I can just leave it if you want but the hall rats might get it. They look pretty ravenous today. I had to fight off a half dozen of them. You wouldn’t believe-”

The door opened. Amell hadn’t changed from his riding leathers, save to pull his tunic from his belt. No one else was in the room with him. He had a roll of lotus between his fingers in one hand, and was holding a bottle of something by the neck in the other. His pupils were blown, eyes almost completely black with a thin ring of red, and Anders doubted he should be mixing whatever he was mixing.

“Hey,” Anders said eloquently. “I brought dinner.”

“I have dinner,” Amell took a drink from the bottle, and sat back on the couch with it.

“I have a better dinner,” Anders shut the door behind him, considering Amell hadn’t told him to leave. He set the plate on the low table in front of him, tapped it with the fork, and felt ridiculously proud of himself for remembering. “Halibut maybe? With bread and stew. Forks on the left. Plural. I didn’t see Morrigan or Kieran at dinner so-”

“They left,” Amell said. He took a deep breath of lotus, and held the smoke for so long Anders thought he’d swallowed it somehow.

“What do you mean they left?” Anders asked, sitting next to him.

“I mean they left,” Amell said again.

“... they left… the room?” Anders ventured.

Amell exhaled bemusedly, and the cloud of smoke that came with it made Anders eyes water. The exhale turned into a chuckle that went on for so long it made Anders worry about him more than he already did. “I’m not hungry, Anders,” Amell said eventually.

“... are you okay?” Anders asked.

“Do I look okay?” Amell laughed.

It was probably a rhetorical question. Anders didn’t know how to answer it if it wasn’t. Amell drank, and he smoked, and Anders sat and felt useless. “Amell-..” Anders started, stopped, and didn’t know how to continue.

“... You’re hurting yourself,” Justice said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Amell said. “I’m already hurt.”

Anders watched him take another deep breath of lotus, and hated that he didn’t know what to say or what to do or how to help or how to heal. He didn’t know anything, except that Amell probably shouldn’t be smoking or drinking and he probably wouldn’t appreciate being told to stop but Anders should stop him.

“... Hey,” Anders set a tentative hand to Amell’s shoulder, and gingerly massaged his way down to his wrist. “... Share with me?”

Amell shrugged, and Anders took the roll from him and froze it with a pulse of primal magic before setting it on the table. Anders arranged himself in a corner of the couch and pulled Amell back against his chest.

“... Could I get a drink?” Anders asked. Amell shrugged again, and Anders set the bottle aside on the floor. “Thanks,” Anders wrapped his arms around him. Amell inhaled shakily without a roll of blood lotus to steady him, and Anders tightened the grip he had on him, resting his face in his hair. "...Hey Amell?"

"...yes?"

“I thought about what together means.”

“...what?”

“This.”

Chapter 169: Ferelden’s Forgotten Circle

Summary:

In which Anders is not jealous.

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 29 Solis Afternoon
The Waking Sea: The Siren’s Call II

Jainen.

Ferelden’s forgotten Circle was in the middle of a village by the same name in the Waking Sea bannorn. A collection of four islands off the coast of West Hill, the bannorn was ruled by Alfstanna Eremon. Amell had rescued her brother Irminiric from Arl Rendon Howe’s dungeons during the Fifth Blight, when Nathaniel’s father had imprisoned and tortured any of the nobility who disagreed with Loghain’s rule.

Irminiric was a Knight-Lieutenant in the Order. He’d served in Denerim, for a time, but in the aftermath of his torture he’d returned home to serve in Jainen and be close to his family. Alfstanna didn’t share his piety, but she also didn’t share Amell’s irreligion. Her family was famous for its fealty, so much so they made a tradition of sending each new monarch one of their prized horses and a single arrow in honor of some legend or other.

Justice had been paying more attention to the story. Amell told it well. The tradition dated back to the time of Calenhad the Great, when he’d come to demand the Waking’s Seas fealty, and had his horse shot out from underneath him by Camenae Eremon’s archers. He’d walked the rest of the way to the castle, and waited at the gates until Camenae had finally received him, and dubbed him a man of sense and humility worthy of following.

As far as Anders was concerned, Alistair hadn’t exactly inherited that sense and humility, but that didn’t matter to Alfstanna the way it mattered to her ancestor. She was loyal to Amell and Alistair in equal measure, and her primary concern was for her people. Persuasion wouldn’t get Amell anywhere, unless he could convince the entire country the storms weren’t happening. From the look on his face, Anders wouldn’t have put it past him.

Amell stood on the deck of the Siren’s Call II, in a thick woolen cloak a shade of sapphire deeper than the sea. The wind threaded its fingers through his hair, feathering the raven strands free of his face, his expression hard and far away. Orlais, if Anders had to hazard a guess. Morrigan had taken Kieran to stay with one of Amell’s allies until the situation with Jainen was resolved. If it even could be.

Amell was reticent. He had been ever since they'd left Vigil’s Keep. Anders had been lucky to get a handful of words out of him. He hoped Amell wasn’t still angry with him for spying on him, but they hadn’t exactly talked about it. They hadn’t exactly talked about anything. Amell left for Jainen, and Anders had gone with him. Considering there weren’t any darkspawn involved, none of the other Grey Wardens were either. Amell didn’t seem to need them. He looked as prepared to face a political maelstrom as Isabela was a literal one.

The storms surrounding Jainen made the Waking Sea difficult to sail, but Isabela had agreed to sail them anyway in exchange for Amell’s help dismantling Castillon’s slaving ring. Anders couldn’t say exactly how much help Amell had committed, but one boat ride didn’t seem like the most equitable exchange, no matter how dangerous the voyage.

According to Isabela, as long as she was captain, it wouldn't be dangerous at all. Considering her last ship had been smashed to smithereens on the reefs surrounding Kirkwall, Anders had his doubts, but he knew better than to voice them. They hadn’t sunk yet, and her crew of ex-statues seemed to trust her. They also seemed to fear Anders and Amell along with him.

Granted, a maleficar may have turned them to stone, but they got better. There was no reason for them to fear all mages over the actions of one, but that was what they and the rest of the bloody world did. It was probably for the best none of them would come anywhere near him, considering Anders was so angry with all of it he would have launched into a tirade on the spot.

Anders hated this whole quest. If the King’s visit had shown him anything it was that no one was ever going to grant mages their freedom. Freedom wasn’t something someone could give or take on a whim - it was a right - and mages in Ferelden didn’t have it. The King was just another Knight-Commander - keeping mages complacent on the promise of future freedoms if they were good, if they were obedient, if they earned it, but they never could.

Amell was proof of that. He’d done everything right. He’d served the country for six years in every capacity imaginable as the perfect politician, but a politician was never going to win mages their freedom. An oppressed class couldn’t just ask their oppressor to stop oppressing them. They couldn’t play by the rules of the ruling class because the ruling class could always change the rules. If mages in Ferelden were really free, the Circles wouldn’t be autonomous, they’d be dissolved. The fact that the King held their chains instead of the Chantry didn’t change the fact that the chains were still there.

Anders joined Amell at the railing, standing upwind to be free of the smoke from his blood lotus. The scent of brine masked most of it, and as much as Anders didn’t like that he was smoking, he still hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask him to quit. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing you asked someone the same week they lost their son, but there were only so many other things on Anders’ mind. “You know, I’ve been here three months and I haven’t really asked about the Circles.”

“What about them?” Amell asked.

“Everything?” Anders leaned against him so Amell could feel his shrug. “What does autonomous mean? What should I expect when we get to Jainen?”

“A Circle,” Amell said.

“What’s different?”

“Very little.”

“Thanks,” Anders drawled sarcastically. “That clears up everything.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Anders,” Amell sounded tired. “The Order still exists. The Fraternity of Enchanters has more authority, and the Knight Commander serves the First Enchanter, but that isn’t a power structure you dismantle in a day or even a year.”

“Are mages still Harrowed?” Anders asked.

“Yes,” Amell said. “Grand Cleric Elemena and Ferelden’s Knight Commanders had certain stipulations before they agreed to allow the Circles autonomy. Harrowings were one of them.”

Of course. Anders didn’t know why he thought the Chantry would actually let go of the Circles just because the King commanded it. If the Circles’ autonomy was contingent on them staying exactly the same, then they weren’t autonomous at all, but there had to be something. Some small piece of progress, even if the Circle still wore the Chantry’s yokel in all but name.

“Is the Rite of Tranquility still allowed?” Anders asked.

“With the First Enchanter’s blessing.”

“Annulment?”

“If the Knight Commander calls for it,” Amell said.

“I thought he had to answer to the First Enchanter,” Anders said.

“Not on Annulments. The templar oversight is still there. The Aequitarians still want it, and the Loyalists still want Chantry oversight to go with it. If it wasn’t for your manifesto, I don’t know that I would have been able to convince the Fraternities to even vote for their own freedom.”

“You’re kidding me,” Anders said. “Kinloch was almost annulled and the Loyalists… what? Decided the ‘almost’ was worse than the ‘annulment’?”

“Apparently,” Amell said.

Of course. Anders wasn’t sure why he was surprised. The bloody Tranquil had more sense than the Chantry apologists. It shouldn’t have made Anders as angry as it did, but it should have made Amell more angry than it did. Amell didn’t look angry. Amell just looked tired. Anders ran the back of his knuckles along his cheek, and won a surprised shiver.

“... did you really read them my manifesto?”

“I had it read,” Amell said, which Anders counted for more or less the same thing. “A few of the Libertarians cried.”

“You’re kidding,” Anders said.

“So did Surana, the first time she read it.”

Anders was definitely going to hold that over her when he got back. “Phylacteries?”

“Required for any mage who wants to leave the Circle,” Amell said. “Leaving requires the approval of the First Enchanter and the Knight Commander, and the banns reserve the right to refuse mages among their freeholders as they see fit.”

“Are you serious?” Anders asked. “So those freeholders in West Hill were serious? Franderel wasn’t even allowing mages land and people still want to blame them for the demon he summoned?”

Amell smoked. Anders supposed the question was rhetorical anyway. He rapped his fingers along the railing and wondered if he should even bother with any more questions. Nothing had changed - not for any mages in the Circle - but something must have changed for the apostates who were free to live outside of it.

“Marriage?” Anders asked.

“...At the discretion of the Chantry performing the service,” Amell said slowly.

“I’m surprised that one doesn’t take the First Enchanter and Knight Commander’s approval,” Anders snorted. “What about kids?”

“...What about kids?” Amell asked.

“Kids in the Circle,” Anders elaborated. “Are they still given to the Chantry?”

“At the discretion of the First Enchanter,” Amell said. “Irving claims the Circles aren’t equipped for the obligations of child rearing. Children don’t have to go to the Chantry, but they can’t stay in Kinloch. The orphanage I started in Amaranthine has taken in a few, but most of them go to the mages’ families. Jendrik disagrees. There’s a creche in Jainen. I’m told the Tranquil tend to it.”

“What about kids outside the Circle?” Anders asked. “Do they have to go to one?”

“Not if their parents can afford a private tutor,” Amell said. “Otherwise yes.”

“What about Kieran?” Anders asked.

“What about Kieran?” Amell asked.

“What are you going to do?” Anders set his hand atop Amell’s on the railing. “What if a mage really is causing the storms?”

“I’ll handle it,” Amell said, finishing the last of his roll and flicking it off into the ocean.

“What does that mean?”

“I think you know what it means.”

“Can you tell me anyway?” Anders ran his thumb along the back of Amell’s hand. He knew whatever Amell intended would probably involve blood magic, but he wished Amell would trust him enough to say.

“It means there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my son,” Amell said simply.

“What if there’s a reason someone is causing the storms?” Anders asked.

“There isn’t one good enough,” Amell said.

“What if it’s just the weather?” Anders continued. “How are you supposed to prove a mage isn’t causing the storms?”

“By blaming them on something else,” Amell shrugged.

“What if you can’t?” Anders insisted, anxiety joining in with his anger. “Would the king really give the Circles back to the Chantry? We can't just let him. No one has ever come this close to freedom since the Nevarran Accords. We can’t lose this, and Kieran can’t stay in Orlais forever. I know you said you could handle a life of letters with me, but he’s your son.”

“I know.”

“And? Why aren’t you panicking? I’m panicking.”

Amell found his jaw and pulled him in for a kiss. The heady taste of lotus clung to him, and made it hard to hold onto thought, let alone words. Amell hadn’t reached out to him in days, and Anders felt like he melted in his arms. With everything that had happened with the king, Anders didn’t blame him, but Maker, he missed him.

“You can’t just kiss me quiet,” Anders lied, barely breaking from him.

“I’m not,” Amell said against his lips.

“Liar,” Anders poured as much affection into the word as he could, wrapping his arms around Amell’s waist to sink into their kiss, when a playful whistle pulled his focus.

“Such a display!” Zevran purred, draping himself along the railing on the other side of Amell and eyeing them over. Apparently, an audience wasn’t enough to kill the mood for Amell, but it was enough to kill the mood for Anders. He untangled them and set a confused Amell back against the railing.

“Zev,” Amell said, instead of saying Zevran, which was fine. It was fine that Amell called him Zev. It was fine that Zev was accompanying them on their quest to Jainen. It was fine that Anders was trapped on a boat with Zev for the four day voyage it took to get there. It was fine that he was bound to have to spend anywhere from weeks to fortnights with Zev in Jainen once they got there. It was fine that he couldn’t even reconnect with Amell because Zev kept interrupting every time he tried.

“Oh, please, do not stop on my account,” Zevran waved a hand for them to continue. “I was born in a whorehouse, so no need.”

“I thought kissing cost extra,” Amell said.

“Oho, so it did, but I have still seen it done once or twice,” Zevran chuckled.

“Why are you here?” Anders scowled.

“Sexual tension and comedic relief, obviously,” Zevran grinned.

“No, I mean really, why are you here?” Anders asked. “What do you even have to do with any of this?”

“Why, I am here to help of course,” Zevran said blithely. “I imagine having an assassin around will prove useful should we find the culprit behind these storms. Or perhaps I shall simply climb into the crow’s nest and shank the clouds?”

Amell’s amused hum wasn’t a wild cackle, but it was something. More than the nothing Anders had managed to pry out of him for the past few days. Anders was not jealous.

“Because I’m sure you’re doing all of this out of the spirit of altruism,” Anders said.

“Rest assured only one of us has an altruistic spirit, my friend,” Zevran said meaningfully. “I am here because our sweet captain has agreed to safeguard me from the Crows, and seeing as they are hunting me, it seems I could use some safeguarding.”

“You really think it’s helpful to have an assassin hunted by assassins around?” Anders asked. “Doesn’t having you here just put everyone in danger?”

“I am sure everyone aboard can handle themselves, no?” Zevran shrugged. “In any case, it is of little consequence. Simply being at sea is sufficient to keep the Crows at bay.”

“Right,” Anders rolled his eyes. “I’m sure they don’t know anything about seafaring. It’s not like you’re being hunted by the Orlesian Gulls.”

Anders couldn’t say whether Amell’s amused hum was more or less amused the second time around. Anders told himself there was no reason to be jealous over something as absurd as whether or not he could make Amell laugh, but he was jealous anyway. Anders loved his laugh, but he hadn’t heard it since Morrigan and Kieran had left, and he’d be damned if Zevran heard it first.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Amell wasn’t in a laughing mood, and when they reached the seas around Jainen, none of them were. The storms ravaged the ship, throwing it bodily from one wave to the next and flooding the deck and hull. Lightning fell as frequently as rain, and it was a miracle of the Maker they weren’t struck by it. The storm was as endless as it was eyeless, dark grey clouds as thick as foundry smoke stretching to the horizon.

They blocked out the sun, the moons, and all the stars. Anders lost track of night, and day, and time. He stayed in the hull, and no one questioned him over it. Even some of Isabela’s most experienced sailors were sick, but losing track of time made Anders far more sick than a rough voyage ever could. Amell didn’t seem to be sick, but he cared even less for the storms, and stayed in the hull with him as soon as the waters turned rough.

Anders meant to ask him why, but Zevran beat him to it.

“The sea, she is unkind, no?” Zevran said cheerily, swinging himself around a post and onto a barrel beside them, considering the hammocks were rolled up during the day. “But here I thought we were here to divine the truth of these storms. How can you do so from below deck?”

“I can’t swim, Zev,” Amell said; the two of them were seated amongst a handful of crates Anders guessed were full of stolen cargo.

“Such lies,” Zevran hummed, a little too flirtatiously. “Lake Calenhad comes to mind. Bloomingtide, I think it was? You were quite good at… swimming.”

Amell grinned, and Anders got the sense that ‘swimming’ didn’t have anything to do with what Amell was good at. “Not in the ocean,” Amell explained. “If I went overboard, I wouldn’t be able to see any lifelines anyone threw me.”

“So it is a matter of trust,” Zevran deduced. “Rest assured, if you went overboard, I am certain our brave captain would rescue you. How else would you pay her?”

“How else?” Amell agreed.

“Ah, but if you believed this, you would not be below deck,” Zevran tutted, and waved a hand at Anders. “And you, my good man? Shall I assume you too cannot swim?”

The ship lurched violently, rattling crates together, knocking rolled up hammocks against the roof of the hull, and churning Anders’ stomach. Anders threw up in his mouth, and swallowed it back down with a gag.

“Ah, I see,” Zevran wrinkled his nose. “Still, I am told it is not so bad above, so back above I go. Do not have too much fun without me.”

“What did you even see in him?” Anders’ mouth asked without his consent when Zevran had gone.

“What?” Amell asked.

Well… no going back now. “Zevran. What did you see in him?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I know it isn’t my place to criticize, but he just seems so shallow,” Anders said. “Everything is just right there on the surface.”

“You just don’t know him."

“I know as much as I’m ever likely to."

“... Are you jealous?” Amell grinned.

“You can’t really get jealous of someone for sleeping with someone like that,” Anders said. ”It’s just understood. He slept with half of Vigil’s Keep before you even got back from Highever.”

“Hm,” Amell hummed, but he was still grinning.

“I’m not jealous,” Anders said.

“Okay.”

“I’m not.”

“I said okay.”

“Well what did you see in him?” Anders demanded.

“He’s a good person,” Amell said.

“Sure. The assassin is a good person,” Anders said sarcastically. “I’m sure he only ever assassinates templars and tyrants.”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Amell suggested.

“Because that would require talking to him?” Anders ventured. “Didn’t you say he tried to kill you when you met?”

“So did Nathan,” Amell said. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“Seems pretty relevant to me,” Anders muttered. “You don’t really want him here, do you? What does he even have to do with the Circles?”

“... Zevran was the only person who stood with me when I spoke out against the Knight Commander when he tried to annul Kinloch, Anders.”

“He-... what?”

“When Uldred fell to demons, everyone else assumed the Circle fell with him. The Knight Commander evacuated the Order, locked the doors, and abandoned the mages to call for the Right of Annulment from Denerim. Everyone I traveled with at the time thought they were a lost cause. Alistair, Morrigan, Oghren, a few others… but Zevran wanted to save them. He offered to assassinate the Knight Commander afterwards,” Amell said, a little too fondly. “I don’t know why I didn’t let him.”

“So-...” Anders floundered, struggling to hold onto whatever it was he was holding onto. Not jealousy. He wasn’t jealous. He was just-... something that wasn’t jealous.

… scared, maybe. Scared of how much of Amell’s life he had no part in. Scared of how distant Amell seemed since he’d lost his son. Scared of how hard it was to reconnect with him after five years apart. Scared of how much Amell meant to him and how many ways Anders could still lose him - whether it was to his demon or his death or his distance.

“So?” Amell repeated.

“So he doesn’t want the Circles annulled,” Anders said. “So what? He’s still an assassin.”

“Who assassinates other assassins. The Antivan Crows are slavers, Anders. They buy children and raise them to be assassins, just like the Chantry raises orphans to be templars. Zevran’s spent the past six years trying to dismantle them. When I say he’s a good man, I mean it.”

Anders kicked his heel against the crate they were sitting on, but he didn’t have a good outlet for his tension or his nausea. He didn’t know why he even brought it up. Amell had never spoken ill of Zevran in the past, the handful of times he’d spoken of him at all, and it just made Anders even more uncomfortable to think Amell might not have anything unpleasant to say about Zevran when Anders knew there were plenty of unpleasant things Amell could have said about Anders.

“You couldn’t have just said you like his hair or something?” Anders asked.

“Why?” Amell asked. “What does his hair look like?”

“Bad,” Anders lied. “Complete rat’s nest.”

“Hm.”

“Terrible taste in fashion. Lots of warts, too. Really let himself go.”

“I can see why you’re not jealous,” Amell noted.

“You get it,” Anders said. The ship lurched again, cargo straining against the ropes and nets holding it in place, and threw him against Amell’s side, knocking them into the crate next to them. Anders picked himself up, swallowing back bile, and dusted off Amell’s cloak. “Are you okay?”

“Are you?” Amell asked.

“Peachy,” Anders lied.

Amell ran his hands up his chest to his face, and pulled him close so his lips were at his ear. “You have nothing to be jealous over,” Amell said softly, and followed the words with a firm kiss against his jaw Anders hadn’t earned. “I don’t love Zevran.”

“Amell-...” Anders heard everything Amell didn’t say and everything Anders still hadn’t said in the assurance, and his throat closed upon him for it. Another lurch from the storms threw Anders against a crate and threw Amell into him. Anders righted them both. “... Look, whatever happens in Jainen, I hope you know I’ll do whatever it takes to help you protect your son.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean it,” Anders said. “If things don’t work out here, I can always get you the King’s head on a pike. I’m sure I owe you a couple of Satinalia presents.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Amell smiled.

“I’m serious. I’ll put a bow on it and everything.”

“...I should apologize for that.”

“For what?” Anders asked. Amell had been through the Void and back this past week, and Anders didn’t want to hear him apologize for any of it. “For the King assaulting you? Listen, Amell, would you stop? You’ve got me. I’m with you. You don’t have to apologize for everything. You were right. I shouldn’t have been there. I just heard you fighting with that bastard and it set me off and all I wanted to do was fight him for you but I couldn’t. I know I should have left, but I’m glad I didn’t. I would never let anyone treat you that way. I don’t care if they’re a King, a Grand Cleric, or the bloody Divine.”

“I shouldn’t have treated you the way I did,” Amell said. “I shouldn’t have treated Justice the way I did.”

“... in what way?” Justice asked.

Amell scooted back to give him space. “You reached out to me when Alistair left. I know you don’t care for contact and that meant a lot coming from you. I wasn’t receptive and I’m sorry.”

… had he? Justice remembered the fight, and Amell’s reaction afterwards, and the tension he’d sought to ease from his shoulders, but more than that he remembered the purposeful absence of it from his hands. The way Amell had held them down at his sides and refused to let them form into fists. It seemed far more important than whether or not he’d welcomed a hug. “... You have no reason to be. Your rage was restrained.”

“I don’t want you to see me that way,” Amell said.

“You are allowed your anger,” Justice certainly had enough of his own.

“It’s not for you,” Amell said.

“You made that clear,” Justice assured him. “Ardently, in how you put yourself before us when faced with Faith. You need not make such a sacrifice for us anymore than you need weather this storm alone. Anders is an excellent swimmer. Trust that if you went overboard, he would go with you.”

Justice loved poetry. He’d been speaking metaphorically, and hadn’t anticipated that his assurance might become a literal one. Yet after a week in Jainen, they found the source of the storms, and the risk of all of them being thrown overboard became a very real one. A cetus plagued the shores of Jainen, and the violent storms it summoned plagued the island with it.

If Amell’s original deal with Isabela didn’t seem equitable to Anders, his second one certainly did. Killing a sea dragon certainly seemed worth dismantling a slaving ring, but Anders wasn’t sure they could manage without him.

“I can’t fight a naval battle, Anders,” Amell’s admittance shocked him. Anders couldn’t believe there was anything Amell couldn’t do. Amell had lost his eyes and Amell could still see, for Maker’s sake.

“What if they can’t handle it?” Anders argued.

“Then I’ll hire someone who can,” Amell said.

“They’re not just pirates, you know, they’re my friends.”

“I’m not forcing them to go, Anders.”

“... you’re not forcing me to go either,” Anders decided.

“If you think you can handle it, I trust you,” Amell said.

“You-!” Anders inhaled for an argument, and deflated when he realized Amell hadn’t started one. “-... you do?”

“Of course I do,” Amell said simply. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Hawke hadn’t. “... So… does calamari work for dinner?” Anders joked.

“It’s actually closer to an eel than a squid.”

“Just laugh.”

“Haha,” Amell said obediently, but he was smiling.

Jainen's Circle gifted them greater elixirs of grounding for every crewman. Bann Alfstanna Eremon committed as many harpoons as the Siren’s Call II could carry. Even with the aid, sea dragons were known to coil around ships and drag them to the bottom of the ocean, and no amount of harpoons were guaranteed to be effective against them.

Nor, as Anders quickly found out, was his magic. The cetus was almost impossible to see. Its magic blackened the skies and darkened the ocean, and it was easily lost amidst the waves and rain. What little Anders could see of the creature seemed reminiscent of a serpent or an eel, easily twice the length of the ship, with eyes like pinpricks of fire glowing in the dark.

Anders clung to the railing, a rope tied around his waist his only assurance if he went overboard, casting one useless spell after the next. Lightning didn't serve against the sea dragon, and fire washed over its scales like oil on water. A frost incantation froze the ocean around the cetus' tail, only for the creature to shatter it against the hull of the ship and send ice scattering across the deck.

Isabela stayed at the helm, holding the wheel with one hand and her captain’s hat with the other, screaming orders port and starboard Anders barely heard over the crashing waves and endless rain. Her crew alternated between fighting with the ship and the cetus, wrenching on ropes or flinging countless harpoons into the foamy waters, only to reel them back in when they missed their mark.

Even when they hit it, the cetus was a dragon in every sense of the word. The iron harpoons glanced harmlessly off its scales, one after the next, until Fenris finally launched one amplified by the strength of his lyrium markings. The harpoon pierced the cetus' side, its scream like a clap of thunder. Blood fonted from the wound, foaming red among the waves, and the cetus dove beneath the surface.

The rope that tethered the harpoon to the ship dove with it. The cleat the harpoon was tethered to might have served for a dolphin or the smallest of whales, but the cetus ripped it from its moorings. The hunk of metal flew through the air and knocked one of the crewmen unconscious as it went over the edge of the ship. His shipmates dragged him below deck before Anders could do much more than let his panacea wash over him, and the cetus reemerged on the other side of the ship. Lightning struck, electrifying the ocean and crashing down on the deck, snapping planks and setting the ship aflame.

The rains quickly put them out, but the cetus roared, its scream reverberating through the air, and dove towards the ship. Its head was large enough to swallow a man whole, and the crew scattered as it snapped across the deck, shattering the railing and anything else in its way. One poor bastard dove clear of its snapping jaws, only for a second set to burst forth from the cetus' mouth and latch around him.

"Captain!" The crewman wailed.

Zevran raced across the deck to grab his outstretched hand, but the cetus' teeth were hooked. The second set of jaws snapped back into the cetus' mouth, and shredded the sailor in a shower of blood. All that remained of the man was his severed arm. "Braska," Zevran swore, dropping the rent limb. It flopped onto the deck, sliding across the rain slick planks and over the edge in a wash of blood.

Blood. The cetus had blood. Anders corroded the wound around the harpoon, and the creature wailed, but didn't die. If anything, it seemed outraged. The serpentine monster coiled itself around the ship, its body as tall as a man and cutting the crew off from each other. One brave bastard tried to climb it, and shredded his hands on its scales as they sped past while the cetus coiled tighter and tighter. Anders cast another net of corrosion, but the cetus moved too quickly for him to tell if he’d done any damage.

Fenris had done damage. Anders screamed his name when he saw him on the opposite end of the deck, and signed it for good measure, but it had too have been too loud for Fenris to hear him, the rains too heavy for Fenris to really see him. Anders hasted him anyway. After three years of fighting him and fighting with him, Fenris must have felt it. He sprinted across the deck and nearly went overboard when he slipped on the bloody surface, pulling his lifeline taut and scrambling back up to his feet.

“What!?” Fenris screamed.

“Make it bleed!” Anders screamed back.

“What does it look like-” Fenris started, when the crack of the ship breaking under the impossible pressure of the cetus’ coils interrupted them. Fenris grabbed another harpoon, and Anders amplified his strength with a surge of creationism when he drove it into the cetus’ side. Anders followed it up with a burst of corrosive magic, and the resulting explosion covered Fenris in blood and intestines. He doubled over and threw up, but Anders didn’t need any more of his help.

He burned the cetus from the inside out with its own blood, scales sloughing off melting muscle until all that was left was the creature’s spine. Dragonbone wasn’t easily broken, but the might of the Fade was nothing before the might of the mortal world, and Justice snapped it with a blast of raw magic. Another clap of thunder marked the cetus’ deathknell as the two halves of the creature went slack, and slithered over the edge of the ship.

The crew didn’t waste any time cheering, scrambling madly for more harpoons to launch into the cetus and tether its corpse to the Siren’s Call II as it limped back into the bay, where it promptly sank. Anders set up a quick triage on the pier for the surviving crewmen, and the mages and citizens of Jainen dragged the cetus’ corpse and the wreckage of Isabela’s ship the rest of the way to shore.

Amell allowed Bann Alfstanna Eremon everything but the cetus’ bones and its head, the former of which he intended to keep for the wardens and the latter he planned to bring to Alistair. The damage to Isabela’s ship would take weeks to repair in Jainen’s dry dock, but they were weeks Amell didn’t want to wait. Alfstanna agreed to set them up on a ship to sail them back to Amaranthine, on the condition that Amell stay for a celebration.

The town held a feast of fish - or cetus - that Amell laughingly assured him wouldn’t turn any of them into reavers despite the fact that the cetus was technically a dragon. At some point, the feast turned into a festival, and Anders didn’t realize he’d lost track of his friends until he stumbled across Fenris fucking Isabela against a wall in the alley outside the tavern. Isabela waved her captain’s hat at him, laughing, and Anders choked down his own laugh and waved sheepishly back before retreating back inside.

He found Amell leaning against the bar with Zevran leaning against him, everything in the assassin’s posture making it evident he was flirting as relentlessly as he had been ever since they’d left the Vigil. There was nothing wrong with leaning. Anders was not going to throw Zevran through a window for leaning. He was just going to think about it. Vividly.

Amell looked up from his tankard at his approach and smiled, just a little, so Anders calmed down, just a little. “Anders - did you find your friends?”

“They’re having fun,” Anders would have forced himself between Zevran and Amell, but Amell held out an arm for him, so Anders went into it.

Amell pulled him against his side to whisper in his ear, “Are we having fun?”

“I mean-...” Anders cleared his throat, but couldn’t stop a flush from creeping up it. “We could be.”

“I like fun,” Amell pulled him in for a kiss, and if Zevran was still there, Anders didn’t notice.

Chapter 170: You're Why

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter. This chapter is primarily sexual content.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 6 Martinalis Evening
Waking Sea Bannorn: Jainen

Fun.

Amell had been too stressed to have fun this past week, working with the Bann and the First Enchanter to investigate the storms until well into the evening, drinking and smoking in what little free time he allowed himself. Anders had spent his days at the Circle, speaking with the Libertarians and hearing their grievances over how the village blamed them for the storms. Among the Tranquil who worked in the creche was an elven girl by the name of Avexis, whose magic had let her talk to dragons once upon a time, and even though that magic had been taken from her long ago, some people still wanted to lay the blame at her feet.

It was an outrage, as were so many things, but it was over. The Circle was safe. Kieran was safe. Anders could be safe too.

Amell tasted like whatever he’d been drinking. Brandy and blackcurrant, with a heady warmth to his lips that stole the breath from Anders’ lungs. Amell pinned him to the bar, a firm arm around his waist and a firmer hand to his jaw keeping control of their kiss. Anders felt like his heart stopped - seizing anxiously at all the other things firm hands had done - but Maker, he needed this. Anders fisted his hands in Amell’s cloak and pulled him closer.

He wanted this. He wanted to feel safe with this, but when his heart started again it was racing so fast it was the only thing he could hear. Anders kissed back with a fierceness he prayed would overcome his fear, and Amell answered him with a soft bite to his lower lip that turned into a hard suck and left Anders panting. Amell kneed his legs apart, a hand on his ass hitching him up to straddle Amell’s thigh, and Anders was lost.

“Your room or mine?” Anders joked, pawing mindlessly at Amell's shoulders.

“We have the same room,” Amell chuckled, trailing kisses along his jaw.

“Well that makes this easy,” Anders carded his fingers through Amell’s hair, holding him to his neck. The sharp press of Amell's teeth made Anders’ hips buck against his thigh with an enthusiastic gasp. “Or maybe hard.”

Amell chuckled against his neck, his hands sweeping between Anders’ ass and hips, alternately kneading or rocking Anders against his leg. He sucked at the sensitive skin at Anders’ neck, worrying at it with his tongue, and it felt like falling into the Fade. The tavern dissolved. Nothing and no one existed outside of Amell. The strength of his hands, the warmth of his breath, his lips, his skin.

“Room,” Anders begged, breathing hard. “Room, please, room.”

Amell released him and Anders grabbed his hand, dragging him through the crowded tavern with a single-minded determination. Amell’s fingers felt like they’d always been meant to fit in Anders' hand, perfectly interlaced between each knuckle, the caress of Amell’s thumb a smooth glide along the heel of his palm as Amell let him lead him. This-... Maker, this was everything he’d ever wanted.

Anders reached their room and Amell dug through his pockets. The hall sconces cast a warm glow across Amell’s bronze skin, flushed from desire or drink. Shadows played across his face, a few strands of black fallen in front of his blood red eyes with how Anders had ruined his hair. His face was older and harder than it had been five years ago, but still so achingly familiar, and all the nights they’d spent together bled together in Anders’ memories.

The easy trust Anders had had in him, and all the ways Amell had known him. All the things Amell had freed him from: his fear of being chained, of being bound, of being everything the Circle forced him to be. Anders had never trusted anyone so completely and had that trust so completely rewarded, and there was nothing he wanted more in this moment than to make Amell feel that way.

Anders reclaimed Amell’s hand before he found his key, and pressed it flat against the door so Amell could gauge his distance from it before Anders pinned him to it - a careful press of Anders’ palm between Amell’s shoulder blades until he was flush against the wood. The ease with which Amell surrendered to him was so captivating it took his breath away. Anders pressed up against the firm expanse of his back, and stole a hand between him and the door.

“Fuck, Anders,” Amell gasped, the heat of his breath misting on the hardwood. Anders kissed his neck, hips rolling with Amell’s every harsh pant as Anders mapped his length through too many torturous layers of clothing.

“Can I fuck you?” Anders begged, fighting back groans at how perfect Amell felt beneath him, every inch of his wonderfully lean body relaxed and pliant and yielding. Maker save him, Anders wanted so much more of him. He couldn’t not picture Amell gripping the sheets on either side of his head as Anders rocked into him, his hair like a pool of ink around his face as Amell gasped his name until he screamed.

For ecstasy, and not for agony. Amell’s hand on the back of his thigh pulling him in deeper, making it clear Amell wanted him, trembling to stay upright through every deep thrust. Beads of sweat running down the curve of Amell's spine, through dragon fire and darkspawn blades and the beautiful tapestry of burns and scars that made up Amell’s wheatish skin, safe in Anders’ arms and the knowledge that Anders would never add another as long as he lived.

“Fuck yes, fuck me,” Amell begged, the hand that wasn’t pinned to the door kneading Anders’ arm while Anders kneaded his erection, encouraging everything Anders did with everything he said. It didn’t seem possible that Amell could make him feel safe when Amell was the one who was pinned but somehow that was what Amell did.

“I don’t know,” Anders caught Amell’s wrist and pinned it up with his other hand with a surge of confidence Anders hadn’t felt in years for how Amell let him. “I don’t think you want me to.”

“Fuck me,” Amell’s pleading whimper was so quiet Anders didn’t hear it so much as read it off his lips. The sheer and shameless want in Amell’s expression pulled Anders’ pulse from his chest to cock. Anders muffled a groan in Amell’s neck, grinding against him and cursing the cloak that kept them apart.

“No lies, remember?” Anders breathed the words against Amell’s neck, a hard tug of his teeth on Amell's ear pulling a sound more whine than whimper from him.

“I’m not-” Amell choked, shaking his head against the door. “I’m not. I’m not.”

“Promise?” A pulse of primal magic heated Anders' tongue and beaded sweat across Amell’s brow when he licked up his neck.

“Fuck me, I promise,” Amell groaned.

Anders kept Amell’s hands pinned, and dug through his pockets until he found his key, fumbling with the lock until it clicked and they tumbled inside. Literally. Anders didn’t consider how much the door had been supporting them, and knocked Amell over with how much weight he’d been putting on him. They hit the floor with a heavy thud, but Amell’s arms saved his face and his back saved Anders.

“Shit, are you alright?” Anders rolled off him, but if Amell was hurt laughing was a strange way to express it. Anders rolled him over and tangled him in his cloak in the process.

“I’m fine-” Amell wheezed, cackling and fighting to free an arm from the wrap of wool. “You’re on my cloak.”

Anders untangled him, “Maker, I’m bad at this.”

“You’re amazing at this,” Amell crawled over to him and pulled him into a kiss heavy with hunger that spilled down his jaw and killed any doubt in Anders’ head.

“The door’s still open,” Anders warned him.

“I don’t care,” Amell said.

“I care a little,” Anders said, helping him to his feet and locking the door to the room behind them.

It was a nice enough room, panelled walls decorated with images of tide mills and the sea, worn wooden floors covered with warm woolen rugs. A single four panel window was set above a desk Amell didn’t use, and cast the room in silvery starlight, illuminating a sunken stone basin that served for a bath, and a low bed with soft linen sheets Anders couldn’t wait to throw Amell down on.

Anders turned back around to Amell unfastening his cloak, and couldn’t resist swatting his hands away to take over. “Let me.”

“What else do you want me to let you do?” Amell asked, hands falling obediently to his sides.

“Everything,” Anders pushed Amell’s cloak off his shoulders. It fell in a pool around his feet, and Amell seemed more handsome with every layer lost. His black cotton doublet cinched tight at his waist, buttoned in the front and at his wrists, and was stylized with sapphire scrollwork across his beautifully broad shoulders.

“What’s happening right now?” Amell asked at his pause.

“Just thinking about how lucky I am,” Anders said, starting on the buttons to his doublet.

Amell’s hands left his sides to unhook Anders’ belt, the hiss of leather sliding free of cloth the only sound besides the almost inaudible pop of buttons and Amell’s quickened breath. Anders forgot how. There was a painfully slow deliberation to the way Amell moved, like he was inviting Anders to stop him, as if Anders would ever have a reason. As if Amell would ever give him one.

Amell’s eyes seemed to settle on his chest, “Your heart’s racing.”

“You’re why,” Anders tilted Amell’s head up so he could kiss him. He hadn’t finished with the buttons and he didn’t care, sliding a hand inside Amell’s doublet to feel the warmth of his skin, the dark dusting of hair on his chest, the twisted scar across his heart Amell had won for him years ago. “I cherish you, you know.”

A shaky breath spilled from Amell’s mouth and into his own at the words, and Anders swallowed it down with an eager moan. He slid his free hand inside Amell’s trousers to squeeze his ass and pull the two of them closer together. Anders felt like he’d never be close enough, every hitch in Amell’s breath throbbing through Anders’ cock.

Anders’ thumb brushed over Amell’s nipple, one hand stroking and circling, the other gripping his ass, and let a low current of electric ecstasy build between his hands and flood Amell’s senses. Amell trembled in his arms, breathy, hitching moans pitching higher as the spell coursed through him. Anders held it, longer and longer, until he could feel his magic tingling on Amell’s lips.

“Fuck, yes, keep - ah- going," Amell clutched at his shoulders, blunt nails digging into his skin, an eager shake in his voice Anders couldn’t believe he’d managed to put there. "Ah - Anders, fuck me.”

“Ask me nice,” Anders said.

“Please,” Amell begged, undoing his belt and fumbling with the laces to his trousers before Anders cut off the spell and caught his wrist.

“Let me,” Anders bit his bottom lip in a gentle reprimand.

“I am letting you,” Amell lied, breathing in harsh gasps and still shivering in the aftermath of his spell.

Anders set Amell’s hands to the laces of his tunic, and Amell had them undone in a few deft flicks before Anders even started on the next button. “Someone’s eager,” Anders joked, pausing to pull his tunic off and toss it to a far corner of the room.

"Always,” Amell said, dragging the pads of his fingers up his chest. “Zevran said you burned the cetus from the inside out?”

“We have got to work on your bedroom banter,” Anders laughed.

“Corrosion?” Amell guessed.

Anders pushed his braid back behind his ear when it fell forward, fingering the blue ribbon Amell had woven into it. “That’s what you taught me, isn’t it?”

“Not against dragons,” Amell said, his voice so low it seemed reverent.

“You really do think this is banter, don’t you?” Anders popped another button free.

Amell’s fingers lingered on Rolan’s scar, tracing the outline over his heart, and his heavy-lidded gaze made it seem like it was the most attractive thing he’d ever felt, “Do you have any idea how strong you are?”

Maybe it was banter. Maybe it was damn good banter. Maybe it was the best damn banter Anders had ever heard. “This isn’t about me. I want you. I want all of you.”

“You have me,” Amell palmed his jaw, tracing his lips with his thumb and pulling down his bottom lip. Anders licked the taste of salt and the subtle undercurrents of magic off his skin, desperate to taste the rest of him. “You’ve always had me.”

Anders popped the final button free and stopped to take Amell in, chest bared and framed in black from his doublet, trousers hanging off one hip while the weight of his belt pulled them down, boots still laced up to his knees, and wanted nothing more than to leave him like this. “Get on the bed.”

Amell went to the bed, his backwards crawl the most inviting thing Anders had ever seen for how his trousers caught on the sheets and fell down his hips to tangle at his thighs. It left him leaning back on his arms, doublet open to the eager rise and fall of his chest, the outline of his erection straining at his smalls. Anders stripped out of his last few layers of clothing, took a hasty step towards him, and tripped over his cloak.

“Shfuck!” Anders stumbled to the bed and barely managed to catch himself before he landed on Amell. “...You didn’t just see that.”

“Did you trip?” Amell guessed.

“No,” Anders lied, climbing over him.

“It sounded like you tripped,” Amell smirked, and it was unfair how well he wore it, how long Anders had gone without seeing it, how badly he wanted to keep seeing it, day after day to the end of them. Anders traced his lips and Amell parted them slightly for the contact. Anders slipped two fingers into his mouth, and Amell sucked on them so hungrily it couldn’t not conjure images of his cock in their place.

Amell mapped his fingers with an eager sweep of his tongue. The heat of his breath mingled with the slick caress, and a deep suck hollowed his cheeks. Amell's mouth was warm and wet and impossibly smooth sliding along his fingers, and Anders added a third. Amell moaned for him, every pass slicker than the last, so utterly enthralling Anders swore he could almost feel his lips around his cock instead.

“Maker preserve me, you’re beautiful,” Anders whispered, trading his fingers for his lips before Amell could respond.

“You’re everything,” Amell mumbled against his lips anyway. “Fuck me.”

Anders broke from his lips to straddle his legs and pull Amell’s cock free of his smalls, wrapping his fingers around his shaft with a low pulse of creationism that coated his fingers in oil warmed by primal magic. Amell’s breath caught, thrusting his hips up into his hand and digging his fingers into the sheets. The linens twisted into balls around his fists, and made him look so visibly impatient Anders chuckled, but he wasn’t any better.

He was aching to bury himself in Amell, to feel the way his body moved beneath him, to hear the sounds he made, to lose himself in him now that he’d finally found himself again. Anders adjusted his grip for a single slow stroke, swearing appreciatively under his breath at the way Amell felt beneath his fingers, thick and throbbing and slick with oil and fluid Anders smeared over the head of his cock with a soft brush of his thumb. Amell reacted like he’d shocked him, tossing his head back and groaning Anders’ name.

“Is there anything you want?” Anders asked, the fingers of his free hand following the hard outline of muscle in Amell’s abdomen with how he held himself up on his elbows. “Don’t say ‘me.' And don’t say ‘you’ either, wiseass.”

“What - ah - What am I allowed to say?” Amell asked, rocking his hips in time with his strokes.

“Anything,” Anders supposed, as long as Amell was the focus. “I haven’t-... done this in a long time.”

“And I have?”

“Amell-”

“Just keep your hands on me,” Amell said.

“I can do that,” Anders decided, releasing his cock to slide his hands to Amell’s hips, his thumbs moving in small circles. “Roll over,” Anders said, and Amell did, his arms on either side of his face against the sheets. Anders canted his hips up, massaging along the back of his thighs and over his ass, kneading oil into perfectly pliant skin. “Anything else?”

“Keep talking?” Amell suggested, not-quite looking over his shoulder, and he looked so enticing it was almost unbearable.

“I am talking,” Anders massaged Amell’s ass with one hand, and flooded the other with creationism to pump around his cock for some slight reprieve for the ache Amell stirred in him.

Amell’s expression was a perfect blend of desire and affection, the intensity in his blood red eyes as heart-stopping as Anders remembered, “What else are you doing?”

“Touching myself,” Oil ran warm down Anders’ thigh and seemed to heat every inch of his skin. The slick glide of pressure around his cock couldn’t compare to the man beneath him, but Anders had to have something before he had him.

Amell bit his lip, “Describe how?”

“My-uh… my hand is oiled and it’s not-” Anders sucked in a sharp breath. “-it’s not that fast. You just look - fucking fantastic.”

“More than that,” Amell pressed, propping himself up on one elbow and twisting so Anders could see more of his expression and melt under it. Fire would have burned cold beside the crimson in his eyes. Anders didn’t know how to match it with just words.

“Um,” Anders said sexily.

“Describe your dick?” Amell suggested.

“I am one?” Anders joked, so completely flustered he didn’t know what else to say. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d said something nice about himself and actually meant it.

Amell reached for him, his fingertips connecting with his chest and moving in a featherlight caress across his skin that left him shivering. “Say you’re hard.”

“I’m hard,” Anders repeated obediently, setting Amell’s hand over his cock, but Amell didn’t have the best angle to do much more than hold him, fingers tracing ridges and veins in a way Anders could only describe as loving. “Amell, you’re so-”

“Not me,” Amell cut him off. “Tell me how beautiful you are.”

“I-”-’m not. He wasn’t. Maybe he had been, once, but he wasn’t anymore. His skin was scarred, his hair was cropped, he still felt like he was too thin, too weak, too-

Veilfire rippled across his skin in protest and killed his train of thought.

“I’m amazing,” Anders said lightly, trying not to make too much of a joke of it. “Great hair,” - it was, kind of, considering what it meant to him - “Long legs,”- Amell had liked his legs, after all - “Lots of freckles,” - Amell had liked those, too, and maybe they didn’t have to remind him of dirt - “You know. Magic.”

“Use it?”

“I have been.”

“Use it more,” Amell said stubbornly.

“I can do that,” Anders channeled a light healing aura, benevolent energies washing over Amell’s skin with nothing for him to heal, but Amell still sighed for it. “Can I touch you?”

“Go slow?” “-Okay-” “And stay close to me.”

“I can do that too,” Anders promised, pressing lightly on Amell’s back until he was flush against the mattress. Anders climbed over him and brushed ink black hair back behind his ear so he could see his face, dragging oiled fingers up the inside of Amell’s thigh and through the cleft of his ass, lost to the heat of his skin and his sharp intake of breath as Anders circled him.

“Don’t tease me,” Amell begged.

“I’m not,” Anders didn’t think he could even bring himself to tease - athirst for the way Amell rocked back against his hand and imagining him doing the same for his cock. “I’m right here,” Anders promised, easing into him and relishing the way Amell felt around fingers. Amell stifled a hissing gasp in the sheets, and Anders caught his chin. “Don’t-” Anders turned his face back to the side. “- please. I want to watch you.”

Amell didn’t move, save for the smallest of nods, his hands fisted in the sheets while Anders’ worked his fingers deeper inside him. He barely breathed, his mouth open against the sheets and his eyes struggling to stay that way, cracked breaths escaping on every other thrust.

“Is this good?” Anders kissed his jaw and tangled his free hand in Amell’s sweat-damp hair. Shallow thrusts flooded with warm oil spilled over Amell’s skin and onto the sheets, until he was slick and stretched for him.

“Yes,” Amell’s voice broke. “Fuck - it’s good, you’re good - fuck me - you’re perfect.”

“You are,” Maker, but Anders meant it. There was nothing Anders didn’t love about him. The slight tension to his brow as his body surrendered to him. The harsh groans Anders wrung from his lips and the way they twisted into impassioned moans at the slightest crook of his fingers. Anders added a third, and whatever composure Amell had left snapped.

Shameless whimpers of ‘Yes’ ‘Anders’ ‘Fuck’ and ‘Please’ spilled together with shaky, high pitched gasps, and something in Anders snapped with him. He wrenched Amell’s doublet down to bite his shoulder, sucking hard. Amell rolled his shoulder back against his teeth with a choked ‘harder,’ and any thought Anders had left that wasn’t about Amell was lost.

“Tell me you want me,” Anders begged, sliding his hand up Amell’s neck to feel the flush of his skin and how it burned hotter with every stroke, until it felt like he was on fire.

“I want you,” Amell repeated obediently, turning the words into a pleading mantra. “I want you, I want you.”

Anders eased his fingers from Amell and sat back, wringing an oiled hand around his cock and swallowing down moans at the bliss it built in him. He didn’t want to hear anything that wasn’t Amell, and the worshipful way he said his name that put Anders' every prayer to shame. Anders settled back over him, a guiding hand to his cock lining him up to push inside him.

Maker save him, Amell was perfect. The way he took him, his grip knuckle white in the sheets and a slight furrow to his brow, his open-mouthed gasps as his body yielded to the stretch of his cock and he arched his hips back for more of him. Anders sank slowly into him, pleasure racing down his spine, crackling through his nerves like lightning and leaving him panting.

Anders’ arms shook with the effort of holding him upright, and he slid down to press his chest against Amell’s shoulders, tangling one hand in his hair and covering one of Amell’s hands with the other. “You feel - so incredible,” Anders breathed against his ear, a shallow rock of hips making Amell gasp and spooling pleasure deep inside him. “You look - fuck, Amell - you look -”

Anders didn’t have words for how he looked, his hair a pool of ink reflecting silvery starlight. His doublet was still perfectly buttoned at his wrists, riding up slightly at his waist to hint at the dragon fire that burned his back, knee-high boots kicking at the sheets. He looked like a Chancellor, a Commander, an Arl, a Hero, every title he’d ever worn, and somehow Anders was worthy of all of them.

Amell held Anders’ hip, losing his grip through the sweat that built between them on every other thrust, blunt nails dragging across Anders’ skin and sparking with static, like there was so much magic in him he couldn’t contain it. “Fuck me, Anders, don’t stop.”

“I won’t,” Anders pulled Amell’s hair back, the pads of his fingers running through the sheen of sweat on his neck. Anders followed the path of his fingers with his lips, his kiss a drag of teeth and tongue on damp skin broken by groans that spilled from him with every roll of his hips. “I won’t ever. I won’t.”

“Harder?” Amell croaked.

“Okay,” Anders pulled from him, his mind blanking on what harder could possibly mean or how much harder Anders could possibly fuck him. “Okay -... I-... Tell me-?”

Amell pushed himself up and ran a hand through his hair, “Over the bed?”

Anders threw a pillow down for their knees and pulled Amell onto the floor to bend him over the mattress. Anders ran his hands over Amell’s yielding body, gripping his hips as he eased slowly into him, captivated by the way Amell took him and desperate to make the moment last. His eyes were screwed shut, his hands tugging at his own hair while he whimpered Anders’ praises.

Anders didn’t sink into him; he drowned. Amell’s knees didn’t quite touch the ground, his boots sliding on the hardwood with every snap of Anders’ hips as he picked up his pace. The room filled with the steady, slick sounds of his thrusts and Amell’s increasingly eager cries. Anders drove into him, harder and faster until he felt like he was dangling over the precipice Amell hadn’t reached yet.

Liquid heat flooded Anders’ veins with every pulse of his heart, pounding through his ears, his skin, his cock, buried deep in Amell, and he was struck with the sudden urge to strip Amell down to the same naked need Anders felt for him. Anders grabbed for Amell’s doublet, dragging it off his shoulders, but it caught at the buttons on his wrist. Anders tangled it around his wrists on a whim, and Amell’s surpised, “Oh, fuck yes,” ruined him.

“Can’t-” Anders choked, biting his lip hard enough to dent his skin.

“You can, you can,” Amell promised.

A dam of desire cracked inside him, drowning Anders in one wave of ecstasy after the next. He felt it in his cock, his toes, his fingers, his face, every inch of his flushed and trembling skin. His climax unmade him, and remade him, and unmade him again. Anders forgot to breathe, pressing a hand into the mattress to keep from collapsing, white hot pleasure spilling from him and into Amell, painting his cock on his final thrust.

“Fuck-” Anders managed a weak gasp, pulling out. “Fuck - you’re perfect.”

Amell whined at the loss of his cock, and Anders traded it hastily for his fingers, pushing back inside him. Oil mixed with his release, slicking every thrust and wringing moans from him. Anders wrapped the fingers of his free hand around Amell’s leaking cock and rested his forehead against his back, his world narrowed down to the amazing man in his arms.

His quickened breath, the way he moved, his every gasped ‘there,’ ‘faster,’ or ‘yes.’ The harsh edge to his moans when he hit the edge of ecstasy and Anders carried him over it. Amell shuddered in his arms, spilling himself in his hand and clenching around his fingers with a series of breathless ‘fuck’s. Amell sagged against the bed and slid down to his knees, his wrists still tangled up in his ruined doublet.

“Oh, shit,” Anders took hold of his hands, but somehow he’d managed to knot the damn thing like a sailor. “I think you’re stuck in this.”

“Can’t undo it?” Amell guessed, resting his head against the mattress, his labored breathing marked by the rise and fall of his chest.

“That depends,” Anders said. “Do you like this shirt?”

“I think so?” Amell choked out.

“Then no,” Anders joked, but after a very determined and very long minute he had it untangled, and a longer minute after that he had it unbuttoned and off. Amell climbed into his lap and draped his arms around his shoulders, resting his head on his chest. Anders undid the laces to his boots. Anders managed one, but he was so tired he seriously considered giving up. “You sure you don’t want to sleep in these?”

“No,” Amell mumbled.

“No, you’re not sure, or no, you don’t want to sleep in them?” Anders asked.

“No to sleeping.”

“You don’t look like you’re saying no to sleeping.”

“I should bathe,” Amell pressed an exhausted kiss to his collarbone, lips slipping across his skin, and Anders started on his other boot.

“Why?” Anders asked. “You smell fantastic.”

“I smell like sex.”

“That’s what I said.”

Anders eased off Amell’s other boot, and Amell rolled off him and in the general direction of the bath. Sweat had stuck his trousers to his skin, and getting them off took the entire crawl to the basin. Amell fell into the bath, and sat on the stone bench, leaning his head back against the floor.

“You want me to draw it for you?” Anders guessed, sitting on the floor next to him with his legs dangling in the bath.

“I’ve got it,” Amell lied, a weak pulse of primal magic conjuring an uninspiring puddle of water on the floor of the basin.

“Hm, no,” Anders said, shifting to sit behind him with a leg on either side of him and massage his shoulders. Warm water flowed from his palms and over Amell’s chest and back, filling the basin.

Amell turned his head into his leg and pressed a kiss against his thigh when he finished. “Could you get me the soap?”

Anders stood to fetch it from the shelf beside the basin, leaving wet footprints in his wake he followed back,and envying Amell his telekinesis. It didn’t last, a slight melancholy taking its place for how Amell couldn’t use it the same way anymore. Anders pressed the soap to Amell’s shoulder and Amell took it from him.

“Join me?” Amell asked.

“I-...” Anders didn’t know what to say. Anders didn’t know what he could say. He couldn’t take a proper bath? He hadn’t taken a proper bath in four months? That taking a bath reminded him of Hawke, but rinsing off with a bucket reminded him of the Circle, and no matter what he did he felt filthy when he finished? “I’m good,” Anders lied.

“Sit with me, then?” Amell said.

… Anders could probably do that. He reclaimed his spot behind Amell, looping his legs over his shoulders, and threaded his fingers through his hair, kneading idly at his scalp while Amell scrubbed at his skin. At some point he helped Amell wash his hair, and Amell kissed his thigh again. “I love your legs.”

“Pretty sure you love a lot of me,” Anders joked.

“I might,” Amell said.

“... What else?” Anders asked.

“Come here, and I’ll show you,” Amell offered, shrugging out from under his legs to take hold of one and massage his way down to his foot. It felt nice - a pleasant sort of pressure, slowly working through his aches and pains, until all that remained was the gentle caress of the man who loved him, and Anders joined him in the bath.

Chapter 171: Political Maelstrom

Notes:

Thank you for all of your comments. They are extremely motivating in keeping the story going and they mean a great deal even if I don't respond. Thank you for your bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter!

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 12 Martinalis Afternoon
Ferelden: Denerim Palace

“Your storm, your majesty,” Amell said.

Servants wheeled the cart carrying what remained of the cetus to the center of the throne room and tipped it forward. The massive head flopped onto the floor with a splash of blood and water and rolled to the foot of the stairs that led up to the royal thrones. The assembled nobles gasped in a mixture of shock and awe, leaning around each other for a better look at the sea dragon.

“Jainen’s Circle is grateful for the Crown’s continued protection,” Amell said, with a bow that didn’t go nearly low enough. “First Enchanter Jendrik sends his personal thanks that you did not let the threat to the mages go unanswered and that your response was swift and decisive.”

Alistair looked livid. His hands were clenched tight around the arms of his throne, his face a bright, puffed red, but the queen looked delighted. Anora gathered up her skirts and hastily descended the stairs to circle the dragon’s skull. She trailed ringed fingers over the scales, and even dead, the corpse sparked with static. Anora drew her hand back with a restrained grin. “A cetus, Chancellor? I would call your entrance bravado were it not so warranted.”

“Forgive me, your majesty,” A noble Anders didn’t recognize broke from the crowd to bow much lower than Amell had. “How are we to trust this… creature was truly causing the storms?”

“You are to trust your Chancellor,” Anora frowned.

“Trust is earned,” The noble countered.

“As is forgiveness,” Anora said with a lilt of warning to her tone.

“I agree with the Arl,” Alistair said without getting up from his throne. “Do you have anything else to back up your claims?”

“A demonstration?” Amell offered.

“Surely that isn’t necessary,” Anora said.

“If his majesty insists,” Amell held out a hand towards Anora. “Your majesty, join me at a distance?”

Anora took his hand and they retreated to the edge of the crowd, circled around the cetus’ head. Amell stretched out a hand towards it, pulling through to the Fade, and wisp after wisp crossed the Veil to sink into the cetus, forming a translucent spine that coiled through the throne room. Veilfire burned through the cetus’ eyes, and the crack of thunder made every noble in the room flinch when the risen corpse howled.

Lightning snapped through the cetus, like nerve endings flaring to life, and the air in the throneroom dried out as its magic formed clouds across the ceiling. The cetus wailed, head thrashing as it struggled to move with an incorporeal body. Rain fell with another clap of thunder. Nobles shrieked, covering elaborate hairstyles, ducking under arms, or fleeing the room entirely to save themselves and their wigs.

As quickly as it started, it ended, a clash of mana banishing the wisps back to the Fade. The assembled nobles had an array of reactions, some cheering, some politely clapping, others muttering behind their hands and to each other, but the first noble who’d protested bowed low and vanished back into the crowd.

“Necromancy!” One of the unfamiliar nobles blustered, emerging out from behind whatever statue or pillar he’d been hiding behind. “In the throne room-!”

“-Is permitted,” Alistair cut him off with such a heavy sigh it couldn’t have been more obvious he wished it wasn’t. “Thank you, Chancellor, for the demonstration.”

Amell nodded in his general direction, “Magic exists to serve man.”

“So I keep hearing,” Alistair said stiffly. “Bann Eremon?”

“Sends her regards,” Amell said. “With the damage the storms did to Jainen, she felt her duty was to her people.”

“Don’t we all,” Alistair stared down at the cetus, his fingers pressed against his temple with an expression Anders couldn’t identify. Frustration. Exhaustion. Something in between.

“We should celebrate the Chancellor’s safe return, don’t you agree, your majesty?” Anora suggested. “I’m sure Zither would be willing to give one more performance before he returns to Orlais.”

“Of course,” Alistair said flatly. He stood up, and the nobles panicked, shoving to the forefront of their respective groups to bow when he descended the stairs. He stopped at the cetus, and stared at it for a long while before he joined Amell and Anora, with a brief glance at Anders. “Chancellor… Congratulations on your courtship. See me after the celebration.”

“Your majesty,” Amell nodded again. Alistair exited the throne room to the left, pursued by a gaggle of nobles.

Anora eyed the corpse where it lay leaking all the colors of the rainbow across the floor, and asked, “The cetus?”

“A gift,” Amell squeezed her hand. “I’m told the skull has two sets of jaws.”

“You always give the best,” Anora grinned, untangling herself from him and waving down a servant. “Erlina, send this to the taxidermist, would you? I’d like it hanging in the ballroom by Satinalia. Chancellor,” Anora paused, looking at Anders and searching for a title. “Warden? We’ll have a celebration ready by this evening.” Anora left, swallowed up by a storm of skirts as soon as she reached the crowds.

“So, a celebration, huh?” Anders asked, tying himself back up in Amell’s arm. “Anything I should be worried about?”

“Dinner and a dance,” Amell guessed.

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Anders decided, nervously eyeing the assembled nobles. They couldn’t have all been from Ferelden. There had to be visiting dignitaries among them, and some of those dignitaries had to be from Kirkwall. Anders had met with almost every noble family in the blighted city, and while he might not remember them all, he was sure they all remembered him. An apostate, a healer, a warden, and the Champion’s paramour weren’t exactly titles the nobles would forget, even if Anders forgot theirs.

He had enough trouble remembering all of Amell’s titles without adding in anyone else’s. The different forms of address for the nobility seemed endless, lords and ladies and lordships, none of them hard earned. Anders had always hated nobles, and the way they thought it was their divine right to strip away the rights of everyone else. Nobles in Ferelden weren’t any better. Half of the stories Amell told were so horrific Justice had trouble listening to them without ending the nobles Amell spoke of on the spot.

Gell Lendon, the arl of Edgehall, who cut down and burned the vhenadahl of Edgehall’s alienage. Vaughan Kendells, the arl of Denerim, who raped and preyed on the elves of Denerim’s alienage. Voychek Neruda, the arl of Stenhold, who beat his servants for sport. Leonas Bryland, the arl of South Reach, who indulged a daughter rumored to make pelts from puppies for some sick sort of fashion. Eamon Guerrin, the arl of Redcliffe, who disowned his own son for his magic in favor of his brother, Teagan.

While far from the most horrific, it was the hardest to hear. Eamon’s son, Connor, had made a deal with a desire demon to save his father’s life during the Blight. The demon had possessed Connor in exchange, until Amell had convinced it to release its hold on him without violence. Justice had heard the story before, and liked hearing it again, were it not for how it ended. Once the possession had been reversed, Eamon had surrendered Connor to the Circle without a second thought.

He’d replaced his son with a daughter, Rowan, who’d also been found to be a mage last year, and given to the Circle with her brother. Eamon gave up on his children in favor of his brother, who, according to gossip, was Rowan’s real father, despite also being married to a rich foundry owner in Denerim. Anders didn’t care about any of the gossip, but he cared that neither Eamon, nor Teagan, nor anyone made any case for the children and their magic. Not even now, when it seemed they were freest to make one.

Bann Franderel had no heirs, born or named, and his bannorn lay empty as a result. According to custom, the lands would become the property of whoever claimed through skill of arms. A tournament, or more specifically a melee, was due to be held towards the end of autumn with the victor taking the title of Bann as their prize. Word had been sent out across the kingdom and to neighboring countries, and with that word came the debate on whether or not a mage could participate.

It seemed a thing that should have gone without question, but questions abounded, and the crown was all too hesitant to answer them. Amell, unsurprisingly, was for it, as was Gallagher Wulff, the arl of West Hills (not West Hill, because apparently things weren’t confusing enough without a signal letter marking the distinction between a bannorn and an arling). He was one of the few men among the arls with no horror stories to his name. A steadfast ally to Amell, he’d lost two sons in the Blight and held the Wardens in the highest of all possible regard.

He was also the only arl who supported the sovereignty of the Avvar and whose lands weren’t raided by them, considering his daughter had married one. Consequently, or maybe just coincidentally, he also supported the sovereignty of the mages, the Chasind, the Dalish and anyone else who wanted it. As far as Gallagher was concerned, the melee should have been open to anyone, but it wasn’t a popular position held by the court.

Gallagher was, for all intents and purposes, an extreme outlier among the nobility. The arls were bad enough, but the less said of the banns the better. Many of those who hadn’t supported Loghain’s rule had been murdered in the civil war and replaced with far worse counterparts. Bann Ceorlic was cowardly, Bann Kail was arrogant, Bann Parth was angry, Bann Darby was greedy, Bann Lanya was bitter, Bann Krole even more so. The fact that a handful of them thought they’d slept with Amell didn’t make Anders like them any more.

The nobles moved to the ballroom after dinner, hastily cleared by the servants and done up in blue and purple ribbons to match the colors of the cetus. Incense had been brought out to mask the scent of the sea dragon, and made the whole room reek of fish and flowers. It was just one more reason Anders wanted to escape the whole ordeal, but it was for Amell, so he stayed, holding his arm and forcing half a smile whenever someone came to congratulate them, or not.

“Chancellor,” A scowling man with a thick head of black hair and a mustache to match pulled up beside them.

“Parth,” Amell named him.

Parth sniffed, hard, like his own name was somehow insulting, “Should I congratulate you?”

“Shouldn’t you?” Amell said.

Parth looked Anders over, his eyes narrowing so much Anders couldn’t tell what color they were. “You’re courting now?” Parth asked Amell.

“That’s the rumor,” Anders answered for him, forcing a winning smile Parth didn’t return. Part of Anders couldn’t blame him. He wouldn’t have smiled at anyone who’d slept with Amell either, not that Parth had actually slept with him, but he must have thought he had to react the way he did to the announcement.

“But you wouldn’t court me,” Parth noted.

“Oh no,” Another noble drawled, slinging an arm around Parth’s shoulders. The interloper looked like a tall dwarf, broad and stocky, his blonde beard was braided with gold. He wore a crown so ostentatious it put the king’s to shame. “How could the Chancellor move on when you gave him so little to move on from?”

“Kail-” Parth frowned, shrugging him off.

“So you do know my name,” Kail noted.

“You say it often enough,” Parth muttered.

Anders fought off a laugh. Noblemen fighting over Amell when they’d never even been with him was more amusing than he’d expected it to be, but then Kail winked, and it wasn’t funny anymore. “So did the Chancellor last Satinalia.”

“Excuse you?” Anders took a step forward only for Amell to pull him a step back. “Who even are you?”

Kail held out a hand Anders didn’t take, “Kail, bann of-”

“-nothing of import,” Parth cut him off, looking at Anders. “How is it you came to be together?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” Anders said.

“Welcome to court,” Parth said. “Everything is everyone’s business… like the fact that the chancellor is free to court whoever he sees fit with the arling’s inheritance falling to the Grey Wardens and not to any of his heirs,” Parth looked at Amell with an expression full of melancholy and jealousy Anders didn’t give a fig over. “I’ve always envied you.”

“Marry Lanya if you can’t settle for a woman,” Kail chuckled, elbowing Parth. “She’s manly enough in the dark. Flames, she’s manly enough in the light. My proposal still stands, Chancellor.”

“I can’t imagine why he hasn’t accepted,” Anders said flatly. “My knees are weak just listening to you.”

Amell cleared his throat with a reprimanding nudge of telekinetic energy, “Thank you, Kail, but I still have to decline it.”

“You gain nothing by courting one of your own wardens, you know,” Kail ignored them both. “What do you intend for your son to inherit?”

“You know I haven’t named an heir,” Amell said.

“I’ll name the bastard then,” Kail shrugged, unconcerned. “You certainly aren’t making any more. Or if you don’t care for the boy, I have plenty of bastards of my own for you to pick from.”

“You are seriously a catch, you know that right?” Anders said.

“Some catches should be thrown back,” Parth interjected, but he was looking at Anders when he said it.

“Some end up dead on the throne room floor,” Anders said cheerily.

Amell slid his arm around Anders’ waist and pulled him a step back, “Thank you both for your congratulations-”

“He can’t be worth them,” Kail snapped, gesturing angrily at Amell’s hand on Anders’ waist. The sudden outburst and palatable tension summoned a crowd as quickly as the cetus summoned storms. “You get nothing from him.”

“I get everything from him,” Amell corrected him. “This isn’t a political courtship, it’s a personal one.”

“Why?” Parth asked, his voice stricken, “Why him and not me?”

“I’m sorry, Parth.”

“Amell, that night-”

“Come now, this is a ploy,” Kail cut him off with a scoff. “You have my attention. Who else could this be for? Gallagher? Mac Eanraig?”

“It’s Anders, actually,” Anders said lightly.

“Lord Anders, was it?” Kail sneered. “I must have missed your title.”

“I wasn’t listening to yours either, honestly,” Anders shrugged.

Kail bristled, his face turning pink beneath his beard, “Your family name? The lands you hail from?”

“Anders? Really?” Anders snorted. “If you can’t guess, I can’t help you.”

Kail said something in response, but Anders missed it. The dozen or so eavesdropping nobles around them were impossible to ignore, and for just a moment one of the women looked familiar. De Carrac or de Lancet or de Something. Someone he’d met at a dinner or a dance, or a ball or a banquet. Someone who knew him. Someone who knew Hawke. Someone who knew about him and Hawke and fire, flame, and Fade take him, he didn’t want there to be a him and Hawke ever again.

Then the noblewoman spoke, giggling behind her hand, and the illusion broke. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t her, but it didn't matter, because it could still be her next time. It could be anyone, anywhere, always. Someone from Kirkwall was bound to find him, and they were bound to overhear him, and they were bound to tell Hawke, and Hawke was bound to show up looking for him, and…

And what?

What could Hawke do to him?

Amell was still handling the two heartbroken men, but his arm was secure around Anders' waist. It was secure and it was safe and Anders knew that, he knew it, but he couldn’t stop feeling everything he felt. They'd come straight to Denerim after Jainen, and Amell didn't have Dumat or a staff, and Anders knew Amell needed him, and Anders needed Amell too, but he couldn't breathe and Amell couldn't breathe for him and-

Justice could. He felt their shared breath burn down his throat and through his lungs, nerves flaring to life with an electric pulse of veilfire as he settled into their shared skin. Warm, despite the autumn winds that blew in from the gardens through the ballroom’s open doors. Many things kept them that way. Their magic, and the way it flowed through their veins. Their uniform, and its comforting distinction between them and the nobles. Amell, and the way his arm around their waist relaxed its grip when he came forward.

“It was one night, Parth,” Amell was saying.

“It was the best night of my life,” Parth fled into the crowds.

Kail watched Parth leave, and took a steadying breath of his own, brushing imagined dust off his doublet. “I’ll not beg for you,” Kail turned on his heel and left.

The nobles dispersed without the drama to entertain them. Amell’s fingers danced along his side with something akin to uncertainty. “.. Do I need to let go of you?” Amell asked without looking at him.

“No,” Justice decided, though there was only so much sensation he could handle. He folded his arms across his chest, staring out at the sea of nobles and their sins. “This is a foul place full of men of foul deeds. It should not be permitted.”

“The place, the men, or the deeds?” Amell asked.

“Yes,” Justice said - and perhaps it was something in his presence, but no further nobles came to offer their congratulations. His expression, no doubt, unmeasured and unmasked, and all too often a source of discomfort for those who could see it. “Why the deception? These men were unworthy of you.”

“These men have over four hundred soldiers to their name,” Amell said.

“And have you no men of your own?” Justice asked.

“Seven hundred, excluding the navy,” Amell said. “Not enough to stand against multiple bannorns if it came to it.”

“I do not believe it would over such a thing,” Justice argued.

“No,” Amell agreed. “But I can’t afford to have the bannorn against me when it means they’re against the wardens.”

“Not all were against you,” Justice recalled from the demonstration Amell had given to the court. He had not lain witness to Amell’s necromancy in many years, and had all but forgotten the feeling. The way the magic sang across the Veil and promised purpose to those without, drawing wisp after wisp to remake in his image. It was… distracting. “Your address was well spoken but inaccurate. The king did not task you to find the truth of the storms for the sake of the Circle.”

“I was lying,” Amell said.

The ease of the admission left Justice feeling conflicted. It was good that Amell spoke honestly alone, but it did not amend that he spoke dishonestly before a crowd. “To what end?”

“Leverage,” Amell explained. “The more public his support of mages, the more division it sows between the crown and the chantry, and the harder it will be for him to recant it.”

“You believe this justifies the deception?” Justice asked.

“I do,” Amell said. “Do you?”

“I cannot lie.”

“But you don’t have to speak the truth.”

“.. perceptive,” Justice noted.

“I try to be,” Amell smiled a familiar sort of smile, one Anders would have deemed a smirk. It was strange to see it directed at him so casually when it seemed a thing reserved for Anders. Amell looped his thumb into Justice’s belt, his fingers resting against his hip, and it felt relaxed. Intimate. More things meant for Anders and not for him. “How are you?”

“...Curious.”

“About?”

“You,” Justice glanced at him, but Amell was watching the flow of blood in the assembled nobles. “There seemed an underlying threat to your leverage.”

“You noticed?” Amell smiled.

“A metaphor for your son, I assume?” Justice guessed. “That you would not allow the king’s threats to go unanswered and your own response would be as swift and decisive?”

“Yes. It might never come to that, but if it does, it will be.”

“Are you prepared for the consequences of such an action?”

“Yes,” Amell said.

“Good,” It seemed they would be dire, and yet the threat to Amell’s son seemed all the more dire for what it meant for sons like him. Sons like Connor, with fathers like Eamon, who had no one else to fight for them. The oppression of mages was not a thing to go unanswered. “Apathy is a weakness.”

Amell hummed, his head tilted slightly to listen to the commotion of the ballroom as servants carrying drinks moved among the crowds. One approached with a tray and bowed low, “Golden Scythe, your Lordships?”

“Thank you-”

“No,” Justice’s frown sent the servant scurrying off before Amell could accept. “Your preoccupation with spirits is a weakness as well.”

“I don’t consider it one,” Amell smiled - no, smirked - again.

“You are alluding to something,” Justice guessed.

“I was alluding to you,” Amell said.

“Your preoccupation is with Anders,” Justice corrected him.

“You are Anders,” Amell said. “You’re good to him.”

He tried to be. It was a rare thing to have that acknowledged, even now, as Anders sought his strength to escape what he wrongly perceived as his weakness. His fears, his frustrations, the bottomless well of emotion Anders sought needlessly to drain when these were the things that fueled him, that gave him purpose, that spurred him to action over apathy. His fear of Hawke was well founded - and once tempered ensured no such fate would befall him again.

It had not even been Anders’ fate. For all Anders had suffered at Hawke’s hands, it was not his strength, his will, his purpose that had been poisoned by the bane Hawke had forced into his blood, and it was not for his own sake Anders feared him so. It was not weakness. It was love - and Justice felt it often. “Thank you.”

The crowds parted for the bard Anora had spoken of earlier. An Orlesian mage, he wore a featureless white mask that seemed vaguely reminiscent of the Fade and the spirits therein. A matching white suit was festooned with ruffles and ribbons, and the mage was escorted by an Orlesian templar. It enraged, as did so many things, but it also reminded. Reminded that mages in Ferelden required no such escorts, thanks in no small part to their manifesto, and Amell’s faith in it.

The mage carried a vielle à roue, a wheeled sort of fiddle, that played some of the most beautiful music Justice had ever heard to accompany equally beautiful magic. The center of the ballroom cleared for dancing, and the king and queen led the first. Amell released his hip and took his arm in its place. “Dance with me?”

“I have never done so,” Justice said.

“Anders and Kristoff have,” Amell said.

“True enough,” They were easy memories to call upon, simple steps buried deep within the muscle Justice supposed he could recreate as easily as he did Anders’ magic, and yet they were steps Amell had not shared with him. Perhaps never intended to share with him, save that their love was inexorably tied together and to Anders. “Is a dance expected?”

“By the court,” Amell said cautiously.

“And you?”

“Appreciated.”

“... Very well,” Justice took his hand, and sifted through memories of Kirkwall days, of Vigil evenings, of Jader nights, of a little boy, barely ten, dancing on his mother’s feet on a far away farm in the fields of Tallo. They were simple to summon, for a spirit of the Fade, who lived and breathed the memories of mortals, and yet here he had been invited to make his own.

It seemed… a memory worth having. There was a warmth in Amell’s smile that matched the crimson in his eyes, seemingly transfixed by whatever light Amell saw in him. Justice carried him in sweeping movements through the dance, acutely aware of the eyes that followed them, and battling back his baser instinct to perceive them as a threat. A ripple of reassurance not his own flowed through him, and Anders’ comfort kept him calm.

“How are you?” Amell asked, “Both of you?”

“We are well,” Justice decided. “We would share if we were not and it concerned you.”

“If it didn’t?”

“Then it’s not for me to say.”

“I’m here for you, if it is,” Amell promised.

“You always have been,” Even now, Amell was here for them, in his easy acceptance that some things were not for him. “I trust you would not keep me from my purpose.”

“Have you found any here?” Amell asked.

“In Wutherford,” Justice recalled, pausing when the steps to the dance pulled Amell from his arms and back into them. “In Jainen. In speaking with mages of Jainen’s tower to hear of their grievances and how we might rectify them.”

“How?” Amell asked.

“As in our manifesto,” Justice said. “You are familiar with it.”

“I still like to hear you talk about it,” Amell said.

A lie, Justice couldn’t help but assume, with how long their manifesto had fallen on deaf ears.

Sebastian claimed it for sedition. Aveline had confiscated it. Isabela had drawn over it. Varric had never found the time to read it, and Fenris and Merrill had never bothered to pretend they would. Over the years, Hawke had read it, written it, and burned it, the charred remnants of their manifesto little more than ash that joined with Amell’s journal in the cold stone hearth.

They’d read it so many times they knew the words almost as well as their own. Amell wasn’t lying.

“I would have us remake Thedas” - Justice spun him - “into a world where justice rules, not fear. A world with no Circle, no templars. A world where every mage can learn to use their gifts and still return home at night. Where no mother ever need hide her child, or lose him to the fear of his neighbors. Where magic is recognized as a gift of the Maker and not the curse it has become.

“Why should so many others live in the captivity you and Anders fought so hard to escape? Why must the Circle of Magi stand? Just because it always has, just because those who read Andraste’s words twisted them to mean that mages must be prisoners? Why has there never been a revolution?”

“There have been,” Amell said with a soothing sort of bitterness. “Seventeen of them.”

“You speak of annulments,” Justice knew the number well. He’d written of it often enough - night after night, in their clinic, in their cell. “You have stopped one before. Would you not stop another?”

“The Circles aren’t at risk of being annulled,” Amell said.

“Are they not?” Justice wasn’t so certain. “If the mages cast off the Chantry’s yoke, if they spoke and stood against all the Chantry still demands of them, would the Chantry’s response not be as swift and decisive as yours?”

“I wouldn’t let that happen,” Amell assured him, but he assured a great many things.

“How would you stop it?” Justice asked.

“With blood.”

… valorous.

“We must enact more change than we have.”

“... You could meet with the Fraternity of Enchanters,” Amell said after a moment’s consideration. “Convince them to push for more freedoms.”

Justice missed a step in their dance, and skipped another to catch up. “You would allow this?”

“There’s nothing to allow. You can serve the wardens and serve your cause,” Amell said. “You’re a free man.”

“I would think you thought us yours,” Justice said.

“Us?” Amell repeated, his hand sliding from his upper arm to his chest as the dance drew to a close. The assembled nobles applauded for the bard’s performance, joining the dancefloor in the lull between songs or vacating it. Amell stayed where they stopped, his hand over their heart.

“I misspoke-” Justice started.

Amell cut him off, “I thought you couldn’t lie.”

“I cannot,” He had misspoken for he hadn’t intended to say the words.

“Then don’t.”

“... are we to dance again?”

“So long as you lead.”

“How far would you follow?”

“How far would you go?” Amell asked.

“Any distance,” They said. There was nothing they wouldn’t do to see the mages free - to build a world where no father ever had to live in fear of losing his son - and whatever they could do to help Amell bring that about they would, though in that moment all they did was dance.

Eventually, they ran out of them, and all that remained was Alistair, and whatever he wanted from Amell towards the end of the celebration. Anders held him back, unable to forget everything Alistair had done to him the last time he’d thought he was alone in a room with Amell. “You’re really going to meet with him alone?” Anders asked.

“He’s the king, Anders,” Amell said gently.

“I don’t give a fig who he is,” Anders said fiercely, tracing his face, and the light dusting of stubble along his jaw. He kept his voice a whisper to keep from being overheard, “He beat you.”

“I’ll be fine,” Amell promised, catching his hand to kiss his fingers. “I’ll see you back in our room.”

Amell left the ballroom with Alistair. Anders watched him go and seriously considered following him, whether it was as a man, or a spirit, or a crow, or a cat. The queen confronted him before he made up his mind. From what little Anders remembered of Loghain, Anora had little in common with him. Her jowls weren’t sliding off her jaw and her brow wasn’t falling into her eyes, and while they might have been the same piercing blue, they spoke more of smiles than of scowls.

“Anders, I believe it was?” Anora intercepted him when he started for the hallway Amell and Alistair had left down.

“That’s the rumor,” Anders tried for a grin but only managed a grimace. He didn’t want to talk to the queen anymore than he wanted Amell to talk to the king, but it didn’t seem like he had a choice. Anders tore his eyes off the hallway. He didn’t need to stare at it all night. Amell trusted him. He could trust Amell.

“Did I hear right that you have no family name?” Anora asked.

“No family, no family name,” Anders shrugged.

“My father did not have one either,” Anora smiled fondly. “Mac Tir means son of the land. It was given to him by King Maric after his victory at the Battle of River Dane.”

“That’s-...” I don’t care? “-... that’s great.”

“Have you considered taking one?” Anora asked.

“Taking one?” Anders choked. He couldn’t take a family name. Not now. Not after one had almost been forced on him. Besides, Amell wasn’t Fausten. Amell was Amell. Anders couldn’t just take his name when it was the only name he used.

“You’re from Kinloch, correct?” Anora guessed. “And the Anderfels before? I confess, I find myself unfamiliar with the education afforded in the Circle and the customs within the Anderfels, but in Ferelden, you might refer to yourself by your region. Anders of Amaranthine, for example, or Anders ban Airdeall.”

“I haven’t exactly won any melees, you know,” Anders joked. “You sure I should be calling myself a bann?”

“It’s the old Alamarri tongue,” Anora laughed. “It means ‘of the Vigil.’”

“... I guess I am.”

Chapter 172: Good and Gentle Magic

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, bookmarks, subscriptions and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 18 Martinalis Afternoon
Ferelden: The Hafter River

The white willow beside the Hafter had turned a shade of gentle orange as the month crept into the latter half of August. Anders sat on a blanket beneath it, watching Amell and Morrigan play a game of chicken in the river with Kieran and Little Amell on their shoulders. The two of them had returned from Orlais faster than seemed humanly or even magically possible.

Amell had spent a day gone from the Vigil, and Morrigan and Kieran had come back on the next. Anders doubted they’d ever even been gone, because he couldn’t explain how they’d managed to come back so fast. It took over a fortnight to travel from Vigil’s Keep to Jader on horseback, or a week by boat, and another fortnight on top of that to travel from Jader to Montsimmard, where Morrigan and Kieran had allegedly been staying with Loghain.

It seemed far more likely they’d been staying somewhere in the arling, and while Anders could understand Amell keeping that a secret, he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t picked a more believable lie. Amell was adamant he was telling the truth, but not even ‘magic’ was a good enough explanation for how that was possible when there was no magic that could teleport someone across the continent.

“Thank the Stone the Kid’s kid’s back,” Oghren said, splayed out on the blanket next to him. Anders counted it a small mercy he was lying on his stomach. “Soon as he left, the nugget started crying up a storm. Surprised his Royal Whineness didn’t send someone to investigate.”

“Are you really surprised?” Anders asked. “You raised them together, didn’t you?”

“Shit, I don’t know,” Oghren shrugged. “Dropped the nugget on his head so many times I guess I figured he’d forget.”

“Would you forget Amell?” Anders asked.

“Get a couple ales in me and I’ll forget anything.”

“You stopped drinking, remember?"

“Yeah, well. Never say never,” Oghren sighed, watching the kids play. “Shit ain’t easy. Didn’t think I’d ever have to tell the nugget they were different.”

“You didn’t think he’d figure it out?” Anders asked, watching the little dwarf send Kieran toppling off Amell’s shoulders. Amell retaliated by tackling Morrigan into the river, and Anders grinned at the chorus of shrieks that followed.

“Naw. Not about that human/dwarf crap,” Oghren made to roll over, and Anders slammed a hand onto his shoulder to stop him with a firm ‘nope.’ “I meant the mage crap.”

“Kieran’s not a mage,” Anders said.

“He’s gonna be, and then how long’s it gonna be till you-know-who tries to do you-know-what again?” Oghren said meaningfully. “S’like being a Brand. There’s no getting out of Dust Town.”

“Sigrun got out,” Anders fiddled with the tiny silver stud Sigrun had gifted him, five long years ago. It wasn’t real silver, and had long since lost its shine, but Anders hadn’t lost it despite losing everything else.

“She died, Sparkles,” Oghren pushed himself up onto his elbows, and spared him a look that was more profound than Anders was prepared for it to be. “That’s how she got out. Being a mage ain’t any different.”

“It will be,” Anders said firmly. “We’re trying to change things.”

“Oh yeah?” Oghren raised a bushy eyebrow at him. “How long you been doing that? How’s that working out?”

“There’s more I could be doing-”

“Like what?” Oghren sat up, and Anders threw a towel at his lap. “I got your letters, kid. Got ‘em all. Keep ‘em under my bunk with the rest of my shit. You gonna petition the Seekers of Truth? You did that. You gonna petition the Grand Cleric? You did that too. You gonna petition the Divine? Well guess what-”

“I know, I did that,” Anders cut him off. “That doesn’t mean things are just going to change in a day. It’s going to take years of negotiations-”

“Things ain’t gonna change at all,” Oghren said. “You been smuggling mages like the Carta smuggles lyrium and you ain’t made a dent. Circle’s still there. Circle’s always gonna be there.”

“Not if we prove we don’t need it,” Anders said. Kinloch could be an example to Kirkwall. It could be an example to all of Thedas.

“You can’t prove you don’t need somethin’ that never had a reason to begin with,” Oghren said. “I ever tell you about what happened in Orzammar back during the Blight?”

“You told me Amell used a lot of blood magic,” Anders recalled.

“Aye, suppose he did. Convinced the Assembly to let him pick the King. Kid picked Bhelen cause Bhelen promised more soldiers. Casteless soldiers. Now, see, casteless can’t do shit. It’s an insult to the Ancestors for casteless to do shit the other castes can do, so they do other shit, like shovel shit. Assembly says they ain’t people - the way your Chantry says your mages ain’t people - and only people can do people shit.

“So you got not-people doing people shit, and people not liking it when not-people do people shit, and you can guess what happens. People do shit to not-people they wouldn’t do to people and there ain’t no law against it. Laws are for people. So if not-people want to stay not-people instead of dead people, they have to indenture themselves to the army whether they like it or not. You think that changed shit? Made it better?”

“See, I want to go with yes-”

“Nothing changed, Sparkles. King just sent the casteless from one midden heap to another. Dust Town’s still there - just like your Circles are still there. Things don’t get better. They just get different. Kid knows. Witch knows. How long did it take her to get gone when the King came for their kid? She came back this time, but she won’t the next.”

“Who are you to decide what I will or will not do, little man?” Morrigan demanded, leading Amell back to join them on the blanket. Nathaniel and Velanna took their place entertaining the kids in the river, nature magic conjuring a net of vines above the water. Anders warmed his hands with primal magic and ran them through Amell’s hair to dry it.

“Stone knows you ain’t gonna do what’s best for you, you old witch,” Oghren said.

“And what would that be?” Morrigan asked, wringing long black hair out over the grass. “What do your casteless do?”

“Kid ain’t a brand, but there ain’t a soul here who wants to see him with one," Oghren said. "Should be keeping your heads down."

“Sageous advice,” Morrigan rolled her eyes.

“I used to think that,” Anders admitted. “I don’t anymore.”

He doubted Amell did either. He’d threatened the king in full view of his court and made it evident he had the magic to back it up. Necromancy powerful enough to revive a dragon, and Amell had made it look effortless. Like a bird made flight look effortless, because it was born to do it. And it had worked. The king had backed down. Amell’s family had come home.

“Look to Amell, if you wish to know what must be done to keep the boy safe,” Morrigan said what he was thinking. “We do not survive threats by overlooking them, but by becoming them.”

“The world needs to see us,” Anders agreed, his hands still steaming through Amell’s hair. “They have to know we won’t be punished for using our Maker given gifts.”

“So close to sensible,” Morrigan said with a teasing sigh, settling down on the blanket beside Amell when her own hair was as dry as she wanted it to be. “Your magic is a gift of no Maker.”

“I’m not arguing with you,” Anders warned her.

“Now that is sensible,” Morrigan hummed.

At the riverbank, Kieran and Little Amell ran through the shallows, shrieking with laughter, and then just shrieking. Kieran screamed and crashed into the shallows, clutching his leg.

“He’s bleeding,” Amell said.

A violent snap transformed Morrigan into a crow and shot her across the woods to the riverbank.

Amell stumbled to his feet and grabbed Anders’ hand, “Anders, Kieran.”

Anders jogged them to the riverbank, where Morrigan had pulled Kieran from the water. Her hands ran wildly over each foot and each hand, but there was no blood on him that Anders could see, and a hasty pulse of creationism washed over unbroken skin, lightly haloed.

“What is it?” Morrigan asked.

“I fell,” Kieran sniffled, scrubbing his nose. “I’m okay.”

Amell knelt and ran a hand through Kieran’s hair when he reached him, “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Kieran promised. “Can I go play, please?”

“... go and play then,” Morrigan said. “Stay closer to your aunt and uncle, yes?”

Kieran rejoined Oghren’s son, who’d been hovering anxiously nearby, and the two of them ran back down the river towards Nathaniel and Velanna.

Morrigan shoved Amell’s shoulder, hissing under her breath, “He was bleeding, you said.”

“He was!” Amell hissed back.

“Perhaps you confused his blood for that of some creature he stepped on-”

“I know my son’s blood.”

“Clearly not, for he was not bleeding,” Morrigan huffed.

“He healed it,” Anders said, surprised he even had to say it. Two mages, and their first guess wasn't magic.

“What?” Morrigan whirled on him.

“He healed it,” Anders repeated.

“‘Tis far more likely you did, in your panic,” Morrigan stood up to scowl at him, hand to her hip. “No son of ours would be a healer and no mage would come into their magic with such ease.”

“... get me a knife,” Amell said.

“What need have you of a knife?” Morrigan demanded.

“Anders, get me a knife,” Amell’s order sounded like one he would have given on the battlefield, and sent Anders sprinting back to the blanket to rummage through their lunch basket. He came back with a knife, and pressed the hilt into Amell’s hand. Amell sliced the inside of his foot, and held it back out for him. “Put this away somewhere.”

Anders didn’t know what to do with it, and ended up tossing it a few yards off into the grass. Amell stayed kneeling, and Morrigan set a hand on his shoulder. “Kieran!" Morrigan called. "Kieran, dear boy, come help your father.”

Kieran split from Little Amell to jog back over to them. He stopped short at the blood on Amell’s foot, red eyes wide but not prophetic. “You’re bleeding!”

“I cut myself,” Amell explained, a bit more honestly than Anders anticipated, though he supposed Amell could have just as easily cut himself on a rock as he had a knife. Amell held out a hand and Kieran walked into it so Amell could squeeze his shoulder.

“Does it hurt?” Kieran asked.

“A little,” Amell said. “Do you know how to heal it?”

“... I think so,” Kieran knelt to grab Amell’s foot, and with far more ease than should have been possible for a boy his age, flooded him with creationism. Easy as it may have been, it was far from perfect. An excessive amount of mana pushed into the spell filled the air with ambient energy, and left a fresh scar on Amell’s foot, but it was magic and it worked. Kieran bounced back up to his feet with a proud, “I did it!”

“Indeed,” Morrigan said thickly. “‘Tis marvelous work.”

“You did it,” Amell agreed. He cleared his throat, and pulled Kieran close to press a hard kiss to his forehead. “Thank you, I feel much better.”

“Don’t let him step on things,” Kieran frowned up at Anders.

“Sorry,” Anders fought off a grin. He probably deserved the reprimand, considering the knife was lying in wait in the grass somewhere and he should probably go get it, but as soon as Kieran ran off down the riverbank to play, Amell had a breakdown.

Amell buried his face in his hands, with a strangled sound somewhere between a cackle and a sob. “He’s a healer.”

Morrigan kicked him, crying and waving a wild hand in front of her face with every shaky breath, “So he is a healer? Pull yourself together.”

“He’s a healer,” Amell said again, almost incoherent. Anders didn’t think the moment was meant for him, but Morrigan was busy pacing circles around Amell and wheezing, and it felt like he should do or say something. Anders knelt next to him and set a hand on his shoulder, and Amell went crawling into his arms, his fingers slipping through too-short strands of hair. "He's a healer."

“Yeah, he is,” Anders agreed.

“Morrigan-” Amell freed one arm from him to reach in her general direction.

“What?” Morrigan demanded, a fierce inhale doing very little to steady her, “Let me guess, he is a healer? Blast and damnation, what do you want from me?”

“Just hug him, you harpy,” Anders said.

“Hug him yourself!” Morrigan snapped, dragging her hands through her hair. Amell stumbled to his feet, and wrenched her into a hug. “You absolute fool,” Morrigan sobbed, swatting at him. “Who cares if he is a healer? He is a mage.”

“It’s good magic,” Amell said into her shoulder.

“‘Tis all good magic,” Morrigan hugged him.

Amell shook his head. “It’s better magic.”

Anders left them to their moment, and went and found the knife to wash off in the river before it found its way into another foot. Good magic. Better magic. Anders didn't agree with that, and wasn't sure how to unpack it. Amell was a necromancer. Morrigan was a shapeshifter. It was all good magic, whether or not the Chantry agreed, but Amell had never bought into Chantry rhetoric. Anders couldn’t imagine him not believing in the goodness of all magic - especially his own.

Still, Anders wasn’t about to ruin his happiness asking what he meant. There were too many other ways it could be ruined, especially with his son’s fate more or less resting in the hands of the king now that Kieran had actually come into his magic and there was no refuting it. Anders doubted they’d be able to hide it forever. Amell might not have publicly acknowledged Kieran as his heir, but Alistair was right: he wasn’t a secret.

Morrigan came to find him in the infirmary the next day, and watch without comment while he healed Nathaniel’s leg. It was a little intimidating, and Nathaniel was a little annoying. He'd done nothing but complain since they'd gotten back from Jainen, jealous he hadn’t been able to join them for their fight against the sea dragon and the deliverance of its head to the king.

"I’m coming on the next,” Nathaniel said when Anders finished. “I don’t need my cane with your auras.”

“And without them?” Morrigan finally spoke up, leaning against the doorframe with her arms folded over her chest. “Are you a healer or a bandage?”

“Excuse you?” Anders frowned.

“And I should go,” Nathaniel decided, fleeing from the infirmary.

“Don’t leave me alone with her!” Anders protested, but Nathaniel was already gone.

Morrigan raised one dark eyebrow at him, “Well?”

“Well what?” Anders asked.

“Well why have you not healed him?” Morrigan pressed.

“You know that glowing thing my hands do?” Anders said sarcastically, letting a ripple of veilfire play over his fingers. “That’s healing.”

“And yet Nathan remains unhealed,” Morrigan noted. “So what exactly are you doing?”

“I’m sorry, are you a healer?” Anders frowned. “Do you know anything about muscle damage or creationism?”

“Do you?” Morrigan countered. “‘Twas a simple question and I have yet to hear a simple answer. Why have you not healed him?”

“I am healing him. This isn’t something you undo in a day. Using that bloody cane warped his spine, and even if I can snap that back into place, he’s missing muscle in his leg. I’m sure Surana did the best she could” - which wasn’t saying much - “but the corpse that got him took a whole chunk out of his thigh. It was practically an amputation. I can’t just heal scar tissue, I have to create it. If you know how to do that, I’m all ears, but I can’t just transplant part of someone’s leg the way I could a pair of eyes.”

“‘Twas not so hard, now was it?” Morrigan hummed, wandering through the infirmary and inspecting every inch of it so critically she put Finn to shame, picking up and putting down flasks and wrinkling her nose every chance she got.

Be nice. Be nice to the mother of Amell’s son. Anders forced a thin smile, “Can I help you?”

“That remains to be seen,” Morrigan picked up a bandage and wrapped and unwrapped it around her hand in a way that made her seem … nervous? “I am no healer.”

“I got that,” Anders said.

“Amell is no healer,” Morrigan continued.

“I got that too,” Anders said.

“Surana, surely, is no healer,” Morrigan said lightly.

… she wasn't that bad. Anders chuckled, “Definitely got that."

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“What else are you getting?” Morrigan asked meaningfully.

“Is that a joke about Amell?" Anders guessed. "Because I mean, it’s not bad-”

“Our son, you fool,” Morrigan cut him off.

"We have a son?" Anders joked.

“- He is a healer.” Morrigan frowned.

“...yes?”

“And you are a healer?”

“...yes?”

“You are not this pretty; you cannot be this stupid.”

“Are you actually asking for my help?” Anders guessed. “With Kieran? Voluntarily? Did Amell put you up to this?”

“You think Amell the only one who can see the merit in a spirit healer possessed by his spirit?” Morrigan scoffed. “Do you suspect yourself the only mage to have ever done such a thing? I imagine you know nothing of Avvar magic. It matters not. The fact remains that you are capable of teaching him to heal where we are not. Do you want to be part of his life or not?”

Of course Anders wanted to be part of Kieran’s life. He’d wanted kids ever since the first time he’d helped deliver one, sixteen and in the Circle, holding a squalling miracle of magic and flooding it with creationism to sooth its sobs. He still remembered washing the blood from the little girl’s face, and how his thumb had looked against her tiny cheek, and the backhand he’d gotten from Ser Bran for handing her over to her mother, but how was he supposed to know her mother wasn’t allowed to hold her before the Chantry took her away?

“Does Amell mind?” Anders asked.

Morrigan rolled her eyes. “What do you think?”

Anders didn’t know what to think. Anders was too overwhelmed to know what to think. Kids. Anders couldn’t have kids. He couldn’t ever have kids. He was sterile, and there was no room in a Warden’s life to adopt, but Oghren had a kid, and Amell had a kid, and the mages in Jainen had kids, and maybe Anders could have a kid too.

He stopped by the creche after Morrigan left, and found Kieran doodling what might have been a cat in a sketchbook. It was oddly reassuring it was so illegible, and Kieran wasn’t amazing at everything. “Hey,” Anders sat on the floor next to him. “Nice cat.”

“No, it’s a castle,” Kieran frowned.

Oops. “Nice castle,” Anders revised. “Do you ever draw cats?”

“No,” Kieran flipped through his sketchbook, and thrust what looked like a drawing of a beheaded ogre at him. “I drew Dumat!”

“You sure did,” Anders lied, handing the sketchbook back. “Do you like drawing?” Kieran nodded. “What about magic?”

“The world isn’t ready for its return,” Kieran mumbled in a prophetic monotone when he went back to doodling.

Creepy. “What about your magic?”

Kieran set his charcoal down and pulled his knees up to his chest, and looked very small and very young. “Mother says the world isn’t ready for that either.”

“You know magic doesn’t have to be scary," Anders promised.

“I’m not scared of magic. I’m scared of templars,” Kieran said, and he was too damn young to say it. “They take magic away.”

“Well, they won’t take yours. I promise,” Anders squeezed a small shoulder. “Your mom and dad asked me to teach you how to use it. What do you think? Sound fun?”

“You don’t have long,” Kieran warned him - in that same creepy monotone - but after a while the creepiness of it all just reminded him of Amell.

“Then we should probably get started, right?” Anders joked.

Anders, as it turned out, had no idea how to get started. When he thought back to his own education, all he could remember were lessons upon lessons on the Chant of Light and the curse of magic. Real, practical, magical education was something Anders had mostly learned from Compassion, and not from the Circle.

Circle instruction… wasn’t the kind of instruction Anders wanted Kieran to have. He doubted it was the kind of instruction his parents wanted him to have either, but it was usually the only decent training a mage could get. Morrigan wasn’t wrong. Anders didn’t know anything about Avvar, or Chasind, or Dalish magic, and coming up with a curriculum that didn’t condemn Kieran for his magic was surprisingly difficult and unsurprisingly not something that already existed.

Anders spent the next day in the library, not quite sure what he was looking for and hopeful he’d know when he found it, when Amell came and found him. “Anders, do you have a minute to talk?”

“Just a minute?” Anders joked.

“Or more,” Amell found the table Anders was sitting at. His fingers ghosted over the ever-growing pile of books on the table, and he raised an eyebrow. “Light reading?”

“Something like that,” Anders said. “I was just... trying to decide where to start with Kieran’s lessons. I still can’t believe you want me to teach him anything. You know I got the worst marks in all my classes, right?”

“I imagine you skipped most of them,” Amell smiled.

“Why do you even want me to do this?” Anders’ mouth asked without his consent - evidently determined to ruin his only chance to have a real connection with Amell’s son. “You know Finn is smarter than I am, right?”

“I would never let Finn go near my son,” Amell said.

“At least he would know where to start,” Anders picked up The Four Schools of Magic and thumbed through a verse from Threnodies before he tossed it back into the pile.

“Mana and the Use of Magic?” Amell suggested. “First Enchanter Wenselus’ lectures were some of my favorites when I was an apprentice.”

Of course Amell would already have something in mind. Anders was probably wasting his time trying to come up with anything. “Remind me why you’re not teaching him again?”

“I’m not a healer, Anders,” Amell said.

“You’re still a mage,” Anders argued. “Maker, you’re a better one than me.”

“Don’t say that,” Amell traced the edge of the table to his side, and squeezed his shoulder. Anders pulled him - unresisting - into his lap.

“You did,” Anders recalled of Amell’s breakdown by the river, and how overjoyed he’d been to find out his son didn’t share the same magic. “‘Good magic? Better magic?’” Anders wrapped his arms around Amell’s waist. “What’s wrong with yours?”

“I shouldn’t be the only one teaching him,” Amell avoided the question. “I know it’s not the five kids and country cottage you wanted, but having Kieran seeing you as his mentor feels like the first step for him seeing you as his family.”

“... Do you really want that, or do you just want it because I do?”

“I really want that,” Amell mapped his face for his lips and leaned in for a soft kiss that melted all of Anders’ reservations. Anders slid his hands up Amell's back and fisted them in his tunic, half-expecting Amell to turn to smoke in his arms. He couldn’t be real. None of this could be. A love. A home. A purpose. Friends. A chance for a family.

Anders broke from Amell’s lips before it was too hard to pull away, “I was thinking-” Anders took a steadying breath. “-once I came up with a curriculum - that I could share it with the Circles?”

Amell looked confused, “If you like?”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said about the Fraternity of Enchanters,” Anders explained. “How they won’t push for their own freedoms. It’s the way they teach us - every lesson about how magic is a curse and we should all be ashamed of ourselves. If they didn’t-... you remember when you recruited me? Everything I told you about what the Circle did to me? I always said it could be worse, and you always said it could be better.

“Mages need someone to tell them that - to show them that - to teach them that. We can’t just hope the Chantry overlooks us like Oghren said. We have to make them look - like you do.” Anders ran a hand over the scars littering Amell’s arms. “We have to show them why mages are feared. I want to go meet with the Fraternities and convince them to fight for themselves and I think this will help… What do you think?”

“I think you need a way to get there" Amell smiled, taking hold of his hand to kiss his knuckles. "Come with me.”

Amell stood up and pulled him along, leading him out of the library and through the Vigil. “Where are we going?” Anders asked.

“It’s a surprise,” Amell said.

“I like surprises,” Anders decided, leaning into him for a breath of copper with every other step. “What’s this one?”

“If I told you it wouldn’t be a surprise,” Amell countered.

Amell led him out of the Vigil and into the courtyard, stoically ignoring Anders every guess. "Is it sex? I hope it's sex. Is that the joke? Riding you to Kinloch? Is it a carriage? A wagon?" Amell led him towards the stables, and Anders felt a silly surge of excitement. "A pony? You can't get me a pony, you know. I'm possessed. It's too late now."

"It’s never too late," Amell unlocked a padlock on a stable block separate from the rest.

The stable block was pristine, completely clear of any straw or dirt, intricate glyphs carved into the floor and the walls. What looked like a small work-station was set against the far well, neatly arranged into sections. Lyrium potions, etching agents, carving tools, rune tracings, and some sort of ink. The room radiated magic, wisps echoing from across the Veil. In the center of the floor was a pile of bleached bones.

"... You sure?" Anders asked, nudging what looked like a hoof with his boot. "It sure looks like it."

"I'm a necromancer, Anders," Amell slid the door closed behind them, shutting them into darkness. Anders summoned a ball of mage light on just the thought, the excess of reservoir runes filling the room with ambient energy and mana.

"So…" Anders knelt to trace over a skull. "Not to belabor the point, but this doesn't look necromanced yet. Am I missing something?"

"Time," Amell said. "I don't know that it'll be finished by Kingsway, but I thought we could start on it now."

"What's Kingsway?" Anders stood.

"Your name-day?"

"... so this… You really got me a pony?"

"Technically it was a horse-"

Anders fisted his hands in Amell’s doublet and kissed him hard, slamming him back against the stable door. Amell hit it with a surprised grunt, door rattling. “Thank you,” Anders’ fingers fumbled in their haste to unbuckle his belt. “Thank you - let me thank you.”

Anders lost a quarter hour on his knees, and then he lost days in the stable, working on his horse with Amell. Anders wasn’t a necromancer and neither was Justice. Their help creating the construct was limited to carving a selection of runes into each individual bone, and Anders almost ruined the whole thing when he insisted on ‘eyeballing it’ instead of using the rune tracings Amell gave him.

“My bad,” Anders said sheepishly, watching Amell trace the rune he’d ruined with his fingers.

“You can recarve it,” Amell decided. “Just use the tracings, Anders. If each one isn’t aligned, we have to start a new horse.”

“Wouldn’t want to ruin my name-day present before my name-day, I guess,” Anders took the bone back with a laugh. “You only turn thirty-one once, after all.”

Amell stopped mid-reach for part of the horse’s spine and made a face at him. “... Thirty-two.”

“What?” Anders asked.

“... You’ll be thirty-two,” Amell corrected him.

“No, I-...” Anders frowned. That wasn’t right. Was it? He was thirty. Amell had come to see him for his thirtieth name-day, and that had only been a year ago. He didn’t remember having another name-day after that. It had been Kingsway, and it had been cold, and he remembered standing on the docks, watching Amell sailing back to Amaranthine, and now it was almost Kingsway again, but there were no other Kingsways inbetween.

… Unless he’d missed it. Had he missed it? When had he missed it? In solitary? In that fucking room? When…how…

“Anders?” Amell prompted.

“... Right,” Anders cleared his throat. “Thirty-two. I must be getting old. Anyway, where are the tracings?”

“Wherever you put them,” Amell smiled, retrieving the spine and infusing one of the finished runes with mana. Anders set his own bone aside. He didn’t have it in him to recarve it. All at once, he felt exhausted, as dead and drained as the bones that littered the room, and in just as dire need for Amell to revive him.

He watched Amell work, trying to think of what to say, where to start, what to share, but nothing came to him. “You know, I never asked, why is this so involved? I’ve watched you raise things with a lot less effort before. The cetus didn’t take anywhere near this much work.”

“Everything else I raise is temporary,” Amell said. “This isn’t.”

Anders dragged his chair closer with a scrape of wood on wood. He set his hand to Amell’s thigh, and Amell set aside the spine he was working on to give him his attention. “This isn’t,” Anders said softly.

Amell gathered up his hand and held it against his chest, “I know.”

He said it so comfortably, without any shame or doubt or hesitation. Amell never had any - not that Anders had ever seen. He owned his emotions like he owned his magic and Anders wanted so desperately to match him. His strength, his confidence, his courage, his every spoken and unspoken affection. He wanted to be worth him, to be his equal, but he didn’t know how to wear his scars as proudly as Amell did.

“... Amell, can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Alistair - when he beat you -...” Anders hesitated, hunting for the right words, the right comparison. Alistair wasn’t it, but it was a start. “How can you stand to be in the same room with him?”

“I’ve been in worse rooms with worse men,” Amell said simply.

Anders thought of Cullen, of that miserable day at the tourney, and how Cullen had assaulted him. Anders hadn’t helped him. Anders hadn’t healed him. Anders hadn’t even asked if he was okay. He’d asked about Cullen instead - wasted breath begging Amell to spare his life - but he’d done it for Amell. For fear of what Hawke would do to Amell if he did anything to Cullen.

“... Cullen,” Anders said, but he stopped himself from saying anything else. He didn’t want to make excuses; he just wanted to make it better.

“What about Cullen?” Amell asked.

“We never talked about what happened,” Anders said. “What he did to you.”

Amell looked confused, “He didn’t do anything to me.”

“He tried,” Anders argued. “... did you want to talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Amell said - and the ease with which he said it made Anders feel impossibly small and impossibly weak for not being able to feel the same way about Hawke. “He’s nothing to me.”

“Okay,” Anders took a handful of steadying breaths, but Amell wasn’t deaf, and he heard all of them.

Amell found his face and ran his thumb along his cheek, but at least Anders wasn’t crying. “Anders?” Amell said gently. “Are you alright?”

Of course he wasn’t alright. How could he possibly be alright? He’d thought he’d been free of Hawke for four months, but in one day, he’d lost a whole year. “How is he nothing?” Anders asked shakily, fighting the tears stinging the corners of his eyes. One escaped, and ran down Amell’s thumb, his soft caress smearing it across his cheek.

“I made him nothing,” Amell said, and Anders had never heard him speak as softly as he did when he continued. “I made them all nothing - one cut at a time.”

“... them?” Anders repeated.

“... You asked me, once, what happened to me at the Circle,” Amell kept his voice even, like it was just another war story, but Anders had no idea how he made it one. “Everything happened to me, Anders.”

“... Can I-...” Anders cleared his throat. “Can you-... can we talk about it?”

“We can talk about it,” Amell promised.

“... Solitary?” Anders ventured.

“One month,” Amell said.

“... Smites?”

“Too many.”

“... What else?” Anders asked.

“... twenty lashes,” Amell said.

“... you don’t have any scars,” Anders would have remembered.

“You didn’t leave any.”

“I-... what?”

“You were in the infirmary, the day it happened,” Amell explained. “You healed me.”

“... I don’t remember,” Anders felt wretched confessing.

“Why would you?” Amell pressed a firm kiss against his knuckles, his tone and touch so sure and steady and full of fortitude Anders felt like he could weather anything the world set against him. “You healed all of us.”

“I don’t know how to heal,” Anders choked out. “Amell, have you ever been-... has anyone ever-...” Anders didn’t know why he tried. He couldn’t even say it. Four months, and he still couldn’t even say it. He gave up and rested his forehead on Amell’s shoulder instead.

“Forced me?” Amell guessed.

Anders nodded against his shoulder.

“For years,” Amell said, like it was nothing, but it wasn’t nothing, or maybe it was, because that was what Amell had made it. Anders wrapped his arms around his waist, and Amell ran his fingers through his hair, not volunteering anything else, but Anders wished he’d say something. Something that would help him make everything Hawke had done nothing to him too.

“It’s not nothing,” Anders said, and just saying it made his heart beat so fast and frantic he feared it might burst. It felt like a confession, but there was nothing to confess, because Anders hadn’t done anything wrong.

“... it will be,” Amell pulled him closer, until Anders moved into his lap. Anders felt the pull of blood magic on his heart, and his pulse slowed, and he relaxed, and it was good and gentle magic. “I promise. Everything scars.”

Chapter 173: Spirit Healer

Notes:

Thank you so much for all of your comments. They are very motivating for keeping the story going and I promise I read them all even if I don't respond. Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon Someday Parvulis Sometime
Somewhere

The Vigil was awash in sepia tones. The setting sun cast strange shadows on the granite, the light emanating from all around as opposed to from the west. Anders walked through the fields of reeds that made up the outer courtyard, surrounded by Grey Wardens, faceless and laughing, just returned from their expedition to Kal’Hirol.

“Maker’s breath, I’ve missed battle!” Nathaniel kicked his cane up into his hand and took an invigorated step before planting it back in the dirt. “Never a dull moment!”

“Right,” Anders rolled his eyes. “What’s not to miss? Who wouldn’t want to spend their free time in a darkspawn filled pit that goes on forever?”

“When I was a boy-” Nathaniel started.

“Ugh,” Velanna covered his mouth with her hand. “Wardens do not rescue. We are not the heroes of your storybooks.”

“Aren’t we?” Nathaniel countered. “The Hero of Ferelden? The Hero of Haring?”

“Yeah, well, you’ll have to find a new hero for Kingsway,” Anders shuddered. “I forgot the Deep Roads were that… wet.”

“Do not be so dramatic,” Velanna rolled her eyes. “If they were truly so terrible the dwarves would not still live there.”

“The dwarves are crazy,” Anders countered.

“The humans are cowards,” Oghren shoved him.

Anders shoved him back, “Maybe some humans are just tired of darkspawn this, darkspawn that, taint, taint, taint, taint-”

“I will hurt you,” Velanna warned him.

“Taint,” Nathaniel mumbled.

Velanna smacked his shoulder and scowled at Anders. “Did you have to clear him for combat?”

“What can I say?” Anders shrugged. “The old boy missed it.”

“Why do you call me that?” Nathaniel wondered. “I’m only four years older than you.”

“Well you’re not four years younger,” Anders said.

“He’s got you there, Archy,” Oghren pointed out.

“I’ll take the teasing if it comes with adventure,” Nathaniel said.

“Adventure,” Anders snorted. “You mean a bunch of nasty tunnels that smell like nug shit.” Anders elbowed Amell. “You never take me anywhere nice.”

“Does court not count?” Amell wondered.

“If the choice is between nobles and the Blight, the damp, the festering darkness with tainted rats, do you really have to ask?” Anders asked.

“I should plan more expeditions, is what you’re saying,” Amell deduced.

“Obviously that’s what I’m saying,” Anders looped their arms together. The black spire floated off in the far distance, but Anders didn’t think too much about it. He’d escaped over four months ago - and it wasn’t a threat to him anymore so long as Justice was with him.

“It’s a noble pursuit,” Justice agreed - not for the first time. The first time he’d agreed, Justice hadn’t been walking next to him, but he was now. Wisps danced through the reeds, reflecting on brilliant silverite adorned with griffon wings. It was good to see him: his eyes alight with veilfire, his armor infused with lyrium, his very presence radiating magic.

Anders fished for Justice’s hand and held it while he walked. Even the slightest contact was exhilarating. It had been so long since it had been safe to be out in the open with him. To trust that no one would come between them, that no one would tear them apart, that no one would judge them for being together. Justice squeezed his hand, and Anders’ heart raced knowing everyone could see the exchange, but no one commented on it.

“All of your pursuits are noble,” Amell said with an affection Justice deserved to feel. Anders took Justice’s hand and wove it through Amell’s arm, trading places with him.

"Not all think as you do,” Justice said bitterly. “The Loyalists and the Aequitarians voted against pushing for more freedoms.”

“The bastards,” Anders added, with a frustrated squeeze of his hand. “They don’t understand they’re in a prison because they’ve never seen outside of it.”

“They understand,” Amell said.

“Apathy,” Justice deduced.

“Fear,” Amell added. “The Loyalists will never cede from the Chantry, and the Aequitarians still think there’s a way to compromise.”

“There can be no compromise,” Justice said firmly. “Freedom must be absolute.”

“A mage winning the melee seems a good first step,” Nathaniel chimed back in.

“If a mage wins the melee,” Velanna corrected him.

“Always contrary, my lady?” Nathaniel teased.

“Do you truly suspect no templars will enter alongside them?” Velanna scoffed. “Do not be so naive. This melee is a bloodbath waiting to happen.”

“Good,” Anders said hotly. “I hope they try something. I can’t wait to go down fighting.”

“Settle down, Stiff,” Oghren snorted. “You’ll get your chance.”

Justice wasn’t the one who needed to settle down, but they’d given up explaining any distinction between them years ago. Amell noticed, where no one else did, and squeezed Justice's hand with a secretive smirk.

“Have you no better nickname?” Justice sighed.

“Oh, I got plenty,” Oghren chuckled, elbowing them both. “You sure you want to hear ‘em?”

“No,” They said.

“Keep trying with the Fraternities,” Amell suggested. “I’ll keep petitioning Orzammar. The Mage’s Collective has established a presence there ever since Dagna published her theory on lyrium vapors and the supply of magic. If Bhelen agrees to allow a new Circle outside the Chantry’s power-”

“Never gonna work, Kid,” Oghren warned him. “You know Bhelen. You gotta give a lot to get a little.”

“He owes me his crown,” Amell argued.

“So does his Royal Whineness, and how’s that working out?” Oghren countered. “Besides, lyrium’s lifeblood down there, and who do you think buys it all? You think Bhelen’d risk pissing off the Chantry? You fuck with the Chantry, you fuck with trade.”

“Then perhaps trade should be as you put it,” Justice said.

"Fucked?" Nathaniel supplied.

Amell chuckled and, seemingly without thinking about it, pulled Justice’s hand up to his lips to press a soft kiss to his knuckles.

“That’s not what happened,” Justice stopped, frowning.

“You wish it was,” Amell grinned. The crimson in his eyes turned a shade of violet, and that didn’t seem right, but then again they were magic, and magic might have made them change color. Anders leaned against Justice, trying to make sense of it, when Kieran came running through the reeds.

“Father!” Kieran called.

Amell let go of Justice to kneel down and hold his arms open. Kieran went into them, and Amell spun his son in a circle when he stood. “You’re getting bigger!”

“No I’m not!” Kieran protested.

“No?” Amell shifted Kieran so he sat on his arm.

“I can’t get bigger until Amell gets bigger,” Kieran explained.

“We won’t tell him,” Anders grinned.

“Promise?” Kieran asked.

“Promise,” Amell ran a hand through Kieran’s hair, and felt over the ribbon woven into it. “What color is today?”

“Purple!” Kieran said brightly. “Did you kill the darkspawn?”

“You sodding bet we did, Kid,” Oghren clapped a hand on Kieran’s back. “Every last one of the blighters.”

“He’s calling them,” Kieran prophesied.

“Who’s calling them, Creepy?” Anders asked.

“His voice is silence,” Kieran said, and shook off the prophecy. “I practiced!”

“Do you want to show us?” Amell asked, kneeling to set him back down. Amell drew a dagger from his gauntlet, and after a brief battle with the buckles to his armor, bared his arm and paused before he made a cut. “You remember what I told you?”

“It doesn’t hurt you,” Kieran parrotted.

“And?” Amell prompted.

“And…” Kieran fidgeted. “You only cut yourself?”

“Never hurt yourself or anyone else on purpose just to practice,” Amell reminded him. “My magic is different. This is how I experience yours. Anders is here to help you if it’s too difficult.”

“Okay,” Kieran said, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Amell drew a shallow cut across his forearm, and wiped and sheathed his blade in one quick motion. Kieran clasped Amell’s arm with both hands, and a burst of creationism sealed the wound but didn’t heal it. Blood blistered across the cut, and Kieran’s eyes went wide in shock.

“That’s fine!” Anders said quickly.

“It’s worse!” Kieran protested, fisting panicked hands in his hair.

“It’s just a blister,” Anders corrected him.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Amell promised, running his free hand over Kieran’s shoulder. “Mistakes are how you learn.”

“That happens if you only focus on the skin, but bleeding means you have damaged blood vessels. You have to let the spell go deeper,” Anders explained, kneeling next to Kieran and pulling Justice down with him. “Do you want to try again, or do you want me to fix it?”

“... I can try again,” Kieran said, glancing between him and Amell. “Can I try again?”

“Of course you can,” Amell said.

“It’s different,” Kieran chewed on his bottom lip. “It’s not a cut now.”

Anders drew Amell’s dagger, and cut across the blister to drain it. Kieran held his hands over the reopened wound, but no magic flowed from them. He’d probably scared himself - and Anders had no idea how to comfort him. Kieran had been doing fine in all his lessons, and he’d never made a mistake before.

Anders didn’t exactly have a complete curriculum, but working on one felt as fulfilling as working on his manifesto. Kieran was an apostate, free of the Circle, with parents who believed in the goodness of his magic, and there were no templars to take him away. Teaching him felt like experiencing the future Anders had spent the past five years fighting for and only made him all the more determined to make it a reality for the rest of the world.

Anders couldn’t think of anywhere else in the world where Kieran would have been half as free to practice his magic. The servants and soldiers of the Vigil went to him for paper cuts they could have treated with a bandage so Kieran could practice the one healing spell he knew, and they did it with delight. There was no condemnation, no fear, none of the prejudice that Anders had to overcome when he’d first served the Grey Wardens five years ago.

Even the non-mages were invested in Kieran’s education. Kieran joined him for all of his sessions with Nathaniel, getting a feel for creationism and the different injuries and ailments it could treat. He seemed to love learning, but learning from another mage wasn’t the same as learning from a spirit. Compassion had been a better teacher than Anders ever would be, but Compassion was gone, and Justice...

Anders looked to him, and Justice took hold of one of Kieran’s hands. “Never fear your magic,” Justice said firmly, guiding his second attempt at the spell. “Control it instead.”

The wound healed, and Kieran ran small, bloody thumbs over the newest scar on his father’s arm. “I did it!” Kieran said brightly. Amell traced over it with a fond smile while Anders washed Kieran’s hands with a pulse of primal magic.

“I’m proud of you,” Amell said.

“You did great,” Anders agreed, and froze when Kieran hugged him without warning. Anders patted his back, and Kieran hopped back with a grin.

“I have to wake up now,” Kieran vanished.

“What the f-?” Anders fell flat on his ass in the reeds, and finally realized them for what they were. The emerald light of the Fade reclaimed the pale recreation of the sunset the assembled wisps had attempted, and in the far distance, the Black City floated through the sky with the demesne of spirits and demons. “Andraste’s ashes, Justice, you couldn’t have said something sooner?”

“You were enjoying the dream,” Justice explained, sitting cross legged beside him.

The Vigil fell apart into pieces around them, bits of memory scattered through the air or buried in the earth. The Wardens dissolved into wisps, save for Amell, who sat with them, but his eyes were still violet, because he was still Allure. “I think you both were,” Allure grinned.

“A dishonest retelling,” Justice frowned.

“Was it?” Allure glanced at him, tossling raven hair around demonic eyes, purposefully shy of meeting Justice’s own. “You're not the only one who wished it had been different.”

“More dishonesty,” Justice muttered.

“Seemed the same to me,” Anders said, shifting to lie with his head on Justice’s thigh and watch the demesnes roll through the sky. “What was different? Aside from Kieran vanishing like that. That wasn’t actually Kieran, was it? He’s not a Dreamer is he?”

“Yes and no,” Allure said.

“Yes, it was Kieran, no, he’s not a Dreamer?” Anders guessed. “How did he get here then? You know what, actually, don’t tell me. Tell me what was up with the dream instead.”

“Amell never kissed me,” Justice explained.

“He better not,” Anders huffed, with a sudden flare of jealousy. It couldn’t have been more irrational, considering being jealous of Amell for kissing Justice would be like being jealous of Amell for kissing him, but somehow Anders managed. “If I can’t kiss you, he can’t kiss you.”

Justice frowned down at him, “You have kissed me.”

“Nice try,” Anders said. “I’m pretty sure I’d remember that.”

"Any dream you have had since we joined where you have kissed someone, you have kissed me," Justice said, in a way that made it clear he wished Anders would dream about kissing a great deal less than he did, but it wasn’t like Anders could help it.

If anything, it was nothing short of a miracle Anders hadn’t dreamed about kissing with how he’d spent his evening. Voluntarily cutting himself off from his own magic and from Justice with a glyph of neutralization, even for a few seconds before sleep claimed him, was nothing short of terrifying. It felt like pressing a chantry sunburst to his brow, or carving out a piece of his soul, and even if he could wash the glyph away, he couldn’t defend himself while it was there.

After everything that had happened, Anders didn’t think he could ever be that vulnerable again. But he’d wanted to talk to Justice, to breathe the Fade, to be a mage, so he’d borrowed ink infused with lyrium from Amell, and painted the glyph on his arm in his bed, and relaxed when Amell pulled him into his arms and cast a sleep spell over him with a whispered promise that he’d be there for him in the morning.

“That doesn’t count,” Anders flapped a hand in his face. “Those are dreams.”

“This is a dream,” Justice said.

"You know what I mean,” Anders rolled his eyes. “It's not a real kiss if I don't know it's you."

"I have no want for such things," Justice reminded him.

"So what was all that with Amell about?" Anders asked.

"Being loved," Allure said, but that made even less sense, because Justice was already loved.

"I love you," Anders said quickly, rolling up onto his knees. Benevolent energies flowed from him to Justice when Anders caught Justice’s face and turned him to face him. There was no expression to the silverite helmet that blended seamlessly with Justice’s face, identical to Anders’ own, save for the veilfire that burned in his eyes and veins, but Justice didn’t need one. Anders felt his love reciprocated anyway. "You know I love you."

"I love you as well," Justice returned.

"Loving each other is not the same as being loved as each other," Allure said, with a purr that matched Amell’s voice. "Amell wants your whole soul."

“It’s not an easy thing to trust,” Justice said.

Anders thought of saying something reassuring, something about how he trusted Amell, but Amell had given him time to heal, so it seemed like Anders should give Justice time to heal, too, “You don’t have to trust him until you’re ready.”

Justice opened his mouth and made a sound like shattered porcelain, and Anders snapped awake to a chorus of cut-off curses from Amell. Anders grabbed in a panic for the cloth he’d set aside for himself, dunking it hastily in the bowl of stale water on his nightstand and scrubbing at the glyph until his magic rushed back to him. A sphere of magelight illuminated the room, and the wreckage of Amell’s sitting area, and for one heart-stopping moment Anders feared he’d woken from one nightmare to another.

Assassins. Templars. Awakened darkspawn. Horror after horror raced through his thoughts, but Amell was alive and well and leaning on the arm of his couch. He was holding his ankle and hissing in pain, blood like a path of rose petals across the floor, leading away from the shattered remains of his tea set.

“What happened?” Anders asked, setting the washcloth aside.

“Why is the chair there?” Amell asked through grit teeth.

“Why is the chair where?” Anders asked. The armchair wasn’t anywhere. It was where it always was, next to the low table, or close enough. Anders might have moved it over a little so it was closer to the couch, but it was more or less in the same place.

“Where it shouldn’t be,” Amell ground out.

“... Maybe it wanted to be there?” Anders joked. Amell’s tight-lipped expression wasn’t quite a frown, but it was close enough. Anders rolled out of bed and picked his way across the shattered tea set to kneel in front of Amell and take hold of his foot. A shard was buried in his sole, bleeding the porcelain pink. “I guess we don’t want to get Kieran for this one?”

Amell ignored him, “The tea set?”

“... Maybe it wanted to be here too?” Anders ventured, pulling the porcelain from Amell’s foot. He ran his thumb over the cut, sealing the wound with the caress, but Amell didn’t look particularly grateful.

“Anders, you can’t move things,” Amell frowned.

“What if things move themselves?” Anders said lightly, gathering up the shattered pieces of porcelain.

“I mean it, Anders,” Amell went to his armoire, only to trip over the pile of books Anders had left out on the rug last night when he’d been working on his manifesto. Amell stumbled a few feet and caught himself. He stayed frozen after, and took such a deep breath Anders could see it play across his shoulders when he dragged his hands through his hair. “Why?”

Anders set the porcelain on the table and chased after him, dodging around his book pile. “Why what?”

“Why are there books here?” Amell asked evenly.

“I-... was reading them?” Anders said.

Amell found his chest and walked his hands up to the back of his neck to pull their foreheads together, and take another deep breath. “Anders… I look forward to every tainted nightmare when it means waking up to you again after five years apart, and I love that you feel comfortable in my room, but if you want this to be our room then I need you to respect that I’m blind and I need everything to stay exactly where it is at all times.”

“I do respect that,” Anders said, but even as the words left his mouth, he knew he said them too quickly. Anders ran his hands along Amell’s arms, shame like a stone in his stomach. He’d listened to more than enough lectures about picking up his socks, and his shoes, and the shattered pieces of his psyche from Hawke to know better. For some stupid reason, Anders had thought he’d done better, but just because his clothes made it to the laundry didn’t mean he could wash his hands of the rest. “... I will respect that.”

“Thank you,” Amell said. “Pick up your things?”

Amell left him to get ready for the day. Anders picked up his scattered books, his chest tight and his pulse thrumming through his ears, but Amell didn’t say anything else. He didn’t yell. He didn’t scream. He didn’t throw any of the books at his face, or knock over a shelf just to add more to the pile. Anders hovered near Amell when he finished cleaning, and Amell stopped in the middle of buttoning his doublet to raise an eyebrow at him.

“What are you doing?” Amell asked.

“I’m sorry,” Anders said.

“For what?” Amell asked.

“The books,” Anders explained. “...I put the chair back.”

“Thank you,” Amell said easily. He went back to buttoning his doublet, and seemed unconcerned by his mistake once Anders had mended it. It didn’t feel right, and Anders watched him finish with his doublet and move onto his hair before it occurred to him he was still waiting for Amell to yell at him. But Amell hadn’t, and Amell wouldn’t, and Anders got dressed and they got breakfast and Anders got over it.

Amell had court. Anders had freedom. Time at the Vigil was time Anders could spend however he saw fit - so long as he wasn’t needed in the infirmary, on expeditions, or at court. Amell had actually gotten him a pony (or an undead construct of wisps, bones, and necromancy that resembled a pony) and Anders had the freedom to ride it. He had a small stipend, and the freedom to spend it. He could go, or do, or say wherever and whatever he wanted, but outside of his cause, Anders didn’t know what that was.

His audience at Kinloch was like to be his last after the scene he’d caused, but it was one of the most invigorating things he’d ever done. Anders still couldn’t believe he’d actually done it. Walking into a Circle, voluntarily, on nothing but the faith that his status as a Grey Warden would let him walk back out. Standing in front of the same templars who’d oppressed him for fourteen years and knowing that oppression was finally at an end. Speaking his manifesto into life and not just writing it, night after night, to an audience of melted candles and flickering magelight.

Anders had never attended any of the assemblies of the Fraternity of Enchanters during his time at Kinloch. It had seemed like a waste, enchanters and senior enchanters gathering to argue, debate, split into cliques and make speeches that got nothing done. It was all posturing, something to make the mages feel like they had some semblance of control over the Circle when that control had always been in the hands of the templars, but it was supposed to be different now.

It wasn’t.

Anders had gotten half-way through his manifesto to increasingly enthusiastic applause before a lightning storm from Wynne had interrupted him, and silenced the entire assembly.

“This is our power!” Wynne had yelled over the entire gathering, magic amplifying her voice. “We may unleash great destructive force, or we may control it. It is a choice we must make wisely, for this power can bring great suffering to others.”

She’d paused, raising her free hand. Her fingers had moved in an elaborate pattern as she’d cast a spell, and slowly a spirit began to manifest. It had a vaguely humanoid shape, as if knitted together from gossamer strands of light. The spirit had hovered in the air beside her, bewildered at its summoning, and Wynne had held her hand out toward it. Her fingers had passed through its form, leaving ripples in their wake. Her expression had been tender, almost motherly.

“And then there are times when that choice is taken away from us,” Wynne had waved her hand, and banished the spirit, all for show. A creature of Compassion, rent apart into wisps, just so she could make a bloody point. “There are spirits far less benign than that one, and should they force their way into your mind, you will become a creature of chaos.” Wynne had glared daggers at him, like she wasn’t an abomination herself. “Even the most innocent among us could become a terror, and there is no way to know who will fall.

“If I tell you things you already know, it is because we forget how very remarkable we are. We forget the reasons others have to fear us, and that they are good ones. We see only the harsh restrictions placed upon us, and they seem very unfair indeed, but we are making progress and I counsel patience. We have already-”

“Patience!?” Anders had cut her off, to a chorus of angry murmurs from the Libertarians who’d clamored around him for a better chance to hear his manifesto. “How can you counsel patience? You and I have more freedoms than anyone else here! We’re not locked in the tower, herded into our chambers every night like children. No one is threatening us with the Rite of Tranquility for stepping out of line. Everyone here would agree with me if they weren’t afraid of doing so!”

“We do have freedoms,” Wynne had admitted. “They were earned through years of service, as a reward for our part in defeating the darkspawn. I worked to gain the trust of the Chantry; I did not expect it to fall into my lap. Ferelden’s Circles have been granted their freedom, and I will not watch you encourage them to squander it.”

“You can’t squander something you never had,” Anders had shouted back. “What freedoms were the Circles granted, exactly? Freedom from templar oversight? From phylacteries? From Harrowings? From the Rite of Tranquility? The Right of Annulment?”

The assembly had erupted into chaos at that point. Libertarians shoving Loyalists, Loyalists shoving Libertarians, Aequitarians screaming at everyone. Dozens of templars had stormed in and put a stop to the assembly - for the mages’ own protection - and for the first time in his life Anders had been dragged out of a Circle instead of dragged into one, screaming over his shoulder at Wynne the entire time, “You bloody hypocrite! You filthy bloody hypocrite!”

Kester, the old ferryman, had rowed him back across the lake, chuckling the entire time. “Well, look at this! Every time you escaped, you swore I’d never see your face again, and now here you are, back on your own, and a Grey Warden too. You know, you aren’t the only Grey Warden mage to come back here trying to make things better. Kind of funny, that. Things just come full circle at the Circle, I suppose.”

Furious as it had all made him, there was a righteousness to the anger that fueled him in a way nothing else had in months if not years. Free mages - or near to them - gathered together to fight for their freedoms in whatever way that they could. A whole third of the Circle behind him, supporting him - Maker, bloody cheering for him when he was thrown out of it instead of laughing at him when he was dragged back into it.

The whole ordeal had been so exhilarating Anders didn’t have words for just how exhilarating it was. He’d fucked Amell six ways to Sunday as soon as he’d gotten back to the Vigil and it still wasn’t enough. He felt too exultant, too excited, too eager to be enacting the change he’d spent the past five years fighting for and have others enacting it with him. It wasn’t anything like the change he’d enacted in Kirkwall - hiding in the sewers like some filthy fucking sewer rat, freeing one mage at a time, running at the first sight of silver.

Anders didn’t have to run or hide or do anything Anders didn’t want to do - and maybe Amell wasn’t to thank for all of it but he was damn well to thank for most of it. Anders opted to buy him a new tea set to replace the one he’d shattered, but the thought of going to Amaranthine was as overwhelming as the thought of going to Kinloch, and not in quite the same way. Amell had meetings, and Anders couldn’t justify interrupting them to ask his permission to go, and it took him the better part of an hour to realize he didn’t have to.

He could just go. He could just leave. He had coin, and he could just spend it. He didn’t have to ask permission. He didn’t have to have an escort. He was free - and Amell kept him that way - with a stipend and a mount that let him go anywhere and do anything and was the most fantastical display of necromancy and best name-day present Anders had ever gotten, not just for magic or the freedom but for the time they’d spent together working it.

Getting the tea set took Anders all day. The ride to Amaranthine and back took hours, and so did the time Anders spent agonizing over what tea set to get him. At first it seemed like it didn’t matter, since Amell couldn’t see it, but at second it seemed like it did, since Amell could still feel it. In the end Anders bought a set of bone for half price when the vendor had assured him it was durable enough to survive a fall, and Anders had promptly knocked a cup onto the floor and watched it shatter across the shop.

“I have something for you,” Anders told Amell that evening, back in Amell’s quarters, as he had been for the past few days. Anders hadn’t exactly moved in with him, but it was hard to come up with a reason to stay in the barracks when he had so many reasons to stay in Amell’s room. Anders liked his room, and as the days turned into weeks, he liked the thought of it being their room more.

Amell joined him on the couch with an easy smile, “I have something for you too.”

“For me?” Anders pushed the tea set aside, scooting up against Amell with a grin he hoped he could hear in his tone. “Is it my name-day again? I’m not thirty-three already, am I?”

“Not yet,” Amell retrieved a vial from his pocket and pushed it into his hand.

It was pink.

It was pink.

It was pink it was pink it was pink it was pink it was pink it was pink

Anders dropped it, and the vial of bane bounced on the couch and vanished between the cushions. Anders slammed himself back against the armrest, choking on every other word. “What-... What fuck-...” This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. Amell couldn’t be here, giving this to him, doing this to him. Anders couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He could barely speak. “Magebane!?”

“Yes?” Amell said, but he was safe, he was safe, he was supposed to be safe.

Maker, why? “Why are you- why would you- magebane!?”

“You asked me how to cleanse it,” Amell reminded him.

“I-...” Had he? Anders ran a hand through his hair, eyeing the couch cushions and the bane hidden beneath them, his breath coming in panicked staccato gasps. “When?”

“At the Grand Tourney in Kirkwall,” Amell said. “... you were poisoned? You asked me to teach you how to cleanse it.”

Anders had done that. Anders remembered doing that. He remembered Amell holding his arm, and drawing the bane from his blood, and promising to teach him how to do it himself, only for Anders to drink another vial and poison himself all over again just because Hawke had pushed it into his hands and he was too weak, too pathetic, too traumatized to refuse.

“Anders?” Amell prompted.

“What?” Anders tore his eyes off the couch.

“... did you still want me to teach you?” Amell asked.

“... Yeah. Yes. Yes, I want you to teach me,” Anders dug through the couch cushions to retrieve the vial. The glass was cool and his trembling fingers made the bane within bubble and froth. He could already taste it, just looking at it, the bitter fire that burned away half his soul for half a year.

“It’s diluted, heavily so, but I think it’s best if we start with something light,” Amell drew a dagger from a sheath in his boot, and flipped the hilt of it towards him.

Anders cleared his throat to joke, “How many of those do you have on you?”

“So many,” Amell grinned.

Anders held the dagger in one hand and the vial in the other, trying to will himself to stop shaking. “What now?”

“Now you drink it,” Amell said. “It feels like a smite, but it’s the best way to get it in your system. Then make the cut. You have to know your blood to cleanse it. The rhythm, the warmth, the taint… the way the bane doesn’t belong. Draw on it like you mean to banish it and you cleanse it.”

Amell made it sound so simple. In essence, it was. Anders just had to drink the bane and cast the spell - and he’d never be bound to bane again. “... Is that why it didn’t hurt?”

“Why what didn’t hurt?” Amell asked.

“I’ve had my blood cleansed before and it was agony, but when you cast the spell, it didn’t hurt at all,” Anders elaborated. “Is that why? Because you know my blood?”

“That’s why,” Amell smiled. “I’m here if you need me.”

“Okay,” Anders took a deep breath and did nothing. The vial stayed in his hand, a pretty shade of pink, light from the hearth catching on the glass, but the flames didn’t burn half as hot, and Anders didn’t think he could do it. “Okay. Okay.”

“... Did you want me to drink it for you?” Amell offered when the silence stretched to the point of being awkward.

“... you would do that?” Anders asked.

“I would do that,” Amell promised.

Anders popped the cork off the vial. Amell found his hand and covered it with his own, but as much as Amell supported him, this wasn’t something he could do for him.

Anders drank, the cool glass and Amell’s fingers against his lips. The bane scalded its way down his throat, burning him from the inside out and draining through his mana. Anders gagged, vomiting it back up into his mouth and burning himself all over again when he had to swallow it a second time through his tears. A vicious slash from Amell’s dagger opened a vein on his wrist, and Anders tried to focus on the distinction between his blood and the bane, but all he could feel was the drain, draining, draining, draining-

“Breathe,” Amell said gently, holding his hand and the back of his arm while his blood ran over his fingers. “I’m right here. Do you need me to cleanse it?”

“No,” Anders said, and Amell listened.

One shallow breath after the next forced air into his lungs, and Anders focused on his pulse, on the way it slowed the longer Amell held him. His thumb moved in a slow caress along his arm, smearing blood over his freckles, a comforting shade of red that matched his eyes and was so much darker than the bane. Anders focused on it, and then he cleansed it.

“Easy,” Anders lied, squeezing Amell’s hands for all the strength he found in them. “I’m going to get a bandage.”

“Do you not have the mana to heal it?” Amell asked.

Anders stared at the cut on his wrist, one of very few beside the casting cuts that canvased Amell’s arms. Anders took his hand, and pressed his lips to flawless, perfect skin. “I think I’d like a scar.”

Chapter 174: Red Crossing

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 19 Parvulis Early Afternoon
Ferelden: Denerim Palace District

The Grand Melee for the West Hill Bannorn was being held in the Denerim Palace District. The district was a city within a city, three courtyards of cobbled stone stacked atop each other. Stone statues of Andraste christened the streets, golden banners of mabari hung from windows and ramparts, and children ran through the crowds selling baskets of flowers to the tune of minstrels playing on raised platforms.

Songs blended together on the stairs that led from one courtyard to the next. Entertainment for the attending nobility flooded out from the palace and the district tavern and into the streets. The melee itself was taking place in the tiltyard, behind the palace, in the shadow of Fort Drakon. The ancient fortress was the oldest and tallest structure in the city, dating from the time of the Tevinter Imperium, and had been carved from a mountain that once stood-

“Hang on, wait, stop,” Anders laughed, nudging Amell’s shoulder. “A mountain? There’s no way I believe that.”

“What’s not to believe?” Amell asked, adjusting Anders’ cloak against the autumn winds so it shielded both their arms on their walk to the palace. It wasn’t really Anders’ cloak, but he was wearing it, because Amell was letting him wear it, because it was cold and Anders hadn’t thought to wear his own.

“There’s no way that used to be a mountain,” Granted, it was more or less the size of one. The massive fortress put Kirkwall’s Chantry to shame, and was big enough to house all seventy-thousand people in the city in the event of an invasion, but a tower was a tower and a mountain was a mountain. “You can’t just turn a mountain into a tower.”

“You can with magic,” Amell said.

“That’s your excuse for everything,” Anders tugged on his ear.

“It’s a good excuse,” Amell grinned.

Anders craned his head back to take in the Fort, but it was so tall he couldn’t see the top around the buttresses standing this close. “There’s no way you fell off that.”

“Believe it, Sparkles,” Oghren waved whatever he was eating at him. Some sort of bird leg, meat and skin dangling off the bone and flapping dangerously close to Anders’ face like it hoped to revive and take flight. “Boss went right over the edge with the Archdemon. Sodding miracle he ain’t dead.”

“Magic,” Amell corrected him.

“See?” Anders teased. “Same excuse.”

“Old gal saved him,” Oghren explained, offering a bite of his bird leg to Dumat, who huffed and made a very determined effort not to pay attention to the temptation until Oghren took it away. “You met her a couple years back. Circle mage. Knows her spirits, if you know what I mean.”

Amell exhaled bemusedly, and scratched at Dumat’s ear in response to his huffing.

“Old gal?” Anders repeated. “You don’t mean Wynne, do you?”

“Aye, that’s the one,” Oghren said.

“That old biddie is everything I hate,” Anders muttered, veilfire coursing through his veins for the memory of Wynne’s casual summon and slaughter of a spirit of Compassion. The bloody hypocrite argued against her own kind in more ways than one, condemning mages, spirits, abominations, while being all three. “A mage who turns on her own kind to serve the templars. Oghren’s right. It’s a miracle she even bothered to save another mage.”

“Saved a lot of ‘em, during the Blight,” Oghren took another chunk out of his bird leg, bits of skin and spit escaping while he spoke. “Saved the kids when the Circle went to shit, locked ‘em all up in the basement to keep the demons off ‘em, and damn well died for it.”

“What do you mean she died for it?” Anders stopped to trade a copper for a candied apple from a passing vendor, Oghren tapping his foot impatiently the entire time. The old beserker was itching for a fight, and had spent the boat ride to Denerim complaining that he couldn’t participate in the melee. Anders didn’t get it either. The Grey Wardens already controlled the throne and the chancellery, but apparently adding one more bannorn was pushing it.

If nothing else, Oghren winning the melee would have been better than Isabela. She and her crew had finally returned from Jainen, and she’d told so many jokes about being the best duelist in Denerim Anders wasn’t sure if she was joking anymore. There had to be some sort of stipulation to the melee that it couldn’t fall into the hands of a pirate, but if it wasn’t about mages, Anders didn’t really care.

“I mean she died,” Oghren spat out a chunk of fat onto the cobblestones. “Kicked the bucket. Met her Maker. Bought the farm. Sought the Stone. Built the pyre-”

“I know what dead is,” Anders rolled his eyes and nodded to one very confused vendor before they continued. “I think I’d have noticed if Wynne was dead. I think everyone would have.”

“Magic,” Amell said mysteriously.

“Stop that,” Anders gave his ear another reprimanding tug.

Amell chuckled, and kept his voice low when he spoke, barely audible over the music and din of the crowds, “Oghren’s right. Faith joined with her after she died. I don’t know if her possession was a resurrection, or if the Wynne that survived is just a collection of her memories, but she very much died.”

“I don’t care if she’s dead or alive or something between,” Anders said fiercely, a hard bite of his apple cracking caramel under his teeth. “She’s out there arguing against her own kind and convincing mages they should be satisfied with being slaves just because the Chantry calls them servants. That isn’t Faith - or at least not any kind of Faith I want to have.”

“I’m listening,” Amell grinned.

“Listen up at the palace, why don’tcha?” Oghren grumbled. “I’m dying to get off my feet and onto my ass if I can’t knock someone on theirs.”

“You were talking about Faith?” Amell prodded.

“Don’t get excited, I still believe in the Maker, I just don’t agree that the Chantry speaks for Him,” Anders said. Amell let the topic drop, but as they climbed the stairs to the inner courtyard his grip tightened on Anders’ arm and his expression seemed tense. “... that’s okay, isn’t it?”

“Hm?” Amell asked.

“That I believe in the Maker,” Anders elaborated.

“Of course it’s okay, Anders,” Amell said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I know you don't,” Anders said. Amell might have known the Chant of Light better than a Chantry Brother, but that was only because he’d been raised in the Circle, and knew how to use it to his advantage at court.

Amell smiled reassuringly. “We don’t have to share the same beliefs to respect them.”

“Kid don’t believe in the Stone, and you don’t see me holding that against him,” Oghren chimed in.

“I believe in the Stone more than I do the Maker,” Amell said.

“Heheh, well shit, I’ll make sure you’re buried in it,” Oghren chuckled.

“Seriously?” Anders asked, pressing what remained of his apple into Amell’s hand. “The Stone? No offense-”

“Not as a god,” Amell clarified, finishing it off for him. “But I’ve been in the Dead Trenches, and there’s a corruption there that doesn’t have anything to do with darkspawn.”

“S’called the gangue,” Oghren explained. “Dead dwarves not worth the dirt they’re buried in corrupting the Stone. Gonna be me one day.”

“Demons bound into the rock,” Amell disagreed. “The magic in the Deep Roads is more than just what lies beyond the Veil.”

“So then why are you tense?” Anders asked.

“Am I?” Amell asked.

“Crowds,” Oghren said for him. “Harder to see shit. Too much blood.”

“I’m fine, Oghren,” Amell said.

Anders didn’t know that he believed that, but an elven girl carrying a basket of dandelions ran up to them before he could call Amell out on it. Everything about her was brown, from her hair to her eyes to the dress that had clearly been sewn from a flour sack, “Buy a flower, messere?”

Oghren tossed the bone he’d cleaned onto the street to be crunched underfoot in the crowds. “Those are weeds, kid.”

Anders shot him a frown, and dug through his boot for another copper, “We’ll take one.”

“And do what with it?” Oghren snorted. “Braid my beard? Hey, hey - no, no, I wasn’t offering-”

Not offering turned into not protesting when the little girl took him up on the suggestion, and stuffed Oghren’s beard and mustache with as many dandelions as Anders felt like buying. The girl left a handful of flowers lighter and a handful of coppers heavier, grinning from ear to pointed ear. “You’re good with kids,” Amell said when she’d gone.

“Well, you know, I used to be one,” Anders joked, but he was glad Amell thought as much. He’d been mentoring Kieran for a month and he would have hated for Amell to think that month was wasted when it meant so much to him.

The throne room of the palace was closed to all but the attending nobility and their champions, but for some reason that didn’t stop Isabela and Fenris from finding their way inside. The two-story room was crowded with nobles, minstrels at the forefront before the stairs to the thrones performing The Girl in Red Crossing, though no space had cleared for dancing and most everyone seemed to be using the time to size up their opponents. In the end, the King had decided to allow mages to compete in the melee, but refused to allow them to utilize their magic, which ultimately resulted in no mages competing.

They should have competed anyway, as far as Anders was concerned, but the only mages he knew who might have been able to stand their ground without magic were Grey Wardens. Amell’s prowess as an arcane warrior was something he shared with anyone who wanted to learn, but being able to augment your strength didn’t mean much of anything if you didn’t know what to do with that strength. Shit as Surana was with healing, she could handle a sword and board with the best of them, and Velanna was downright feral with her staff, but neither of them were here, which was probably for the best, considering the people who were here were causing a scene.

Anders heard the yelling before he heard anything else, and the nobility moved to allow the combatants space, but whatever they were yelling was indistinguishable over the music.

Too long I have traveled, soon I'll see her smiling.

Guards pushed their way through the crowds to break up the fight, and Anders could finally make out Isabela’s voice, even if he couldn’t make out the words

The girl in Red Crossing I'm longing to see.

Nobles parted for the guards, and briefly revealed the space where Isabela stood, holding her captain’s hat in one hand and gesturing angrily with it. Fenris was with her, just as animated and just as frustrated, his hands moving so much while he spoke it almost looked like he was signing.

O, I know she is there, daisies in her hair.

They were arguing with a noble, or close to one. The woman looked rich, raven hair pinned up beneath a gold diadem decorated with rubies. Her blood red cloak covered a matching breastplate, the collar going all the way up to her pointed ears. Vallaslin inked a familiar face Anders never wanted to see again.

Waiting by the chantry to marry me.

Merrill.

I've dreamed of the kiss I stole 'neath the arbor.

The nobles closed back in on themselves as the guards pushed through, and the three of them vanished from sight, but Anders knew he’d seen her. It couldn’t have been a hallucination. He hadn’t had any hallucinations in months. Or maybe he had. Maybe he was still hallucinating, and he was still back in that fucking room, baned out of his mind, staring out at the Hightown streets and imagining a rescue that was never coming.

I've dreamed of the promise 'neath the old ash tree.

“I can’t be here,” Anders seized Amell’s arm, tugging him back towards the entrance to the palace, away from Merrill, away from his memories, away from the nightmare that had manifested in front of him. “I can’t be here. Amell, please, I can’t be here, can we leave? I have to leave, please -”

O, I know she is there, daisies in her hair.

“Okay,” Amell squeezed his hand, his brow furrowed with unspoken questions, but Anders couldn’t have answered any of them if he tried. “We can leave. Dumat, outside.”

“You kidding me, Sparkles?” Oghren gestured towards nobles clustered around Merrill, Isabela, and Fenris and the scene they were causing. A guard must have been trying to drag Isabela somewhere, because her hand appeared above the crowd, wildly waving her captain’s hat at a height that didn’t seem possible unless someone was holding her. “Two gals going at it and you wanna leave?”

Waiting by the chantry to marry me.

Anders ignored him, dragging Amell through the throne room and towards the palace doors, when a woman Anders didn’t recognize appeared in front of them. She was red. Maker, she was too red. The color was in her hair, in her dress, embroidered flames swallowing up her skirt like the pyre Anders knew was waiting for him.

One last stream to cross, one last hill to wander.

Merrill wouldn’t have come alone. She couldn’t have come alone. Not across the sea, not to court, not anywhere near him unless Hawke was with her. He had to be with her and he had to have people with him and the woman was so fucking red-

Until I reach the love I'm longing to see.

“My friend-” The woman started.

“Leliana,” Amell cut her off. “Excuse us, we aren’t staying-”

“You must,” Leliana caught Amell’s shoulder. “Chancellor, I have to talk to you.”

Anders didn’t have time for her to talk to him, “I can’t stay here, Amell. I can’t-”

O, I know she is there, daisies in her hair,

“Okay,” Amell untangled their arms. “You can go. I’ll follow your blood or find you at the compound. Oghren, go with him.”

“Left the nugget back at the Vigil and I’m still babysittin’,” Oghren grumbled, following him out of the palace.

Waiting by the chantry to marry me.

Anders couldn’t breathe. Not in the palace. Not in the courtyard. Not anywhere near Merrill. He staggered through the palace gardens, music fading as he stumbled over flowers and bushes, distantly aware he was moving so fast Oghren was struggling to keep up with him, but he couldn’t stop, he couldn’t be here, he couldn’t do this. Maker, he couldn’t do this.

He could still taste the candied apple he’d eaten, and the flecks of caramel caught in his teeth made him feel sick. He couldn’t remember the face of the vendor who’d sold it to him. Fade take him, why had he eaten it? What else had he eaten? What else had he drank? Water. Water from his canteen. How long had it been on his hip? Had it ever come off his hip? Did it matter? How many people had bumped into him on their walk from the compound to the palace who could have slipped magebane into his drink?

He could cleanse it. He could cleanse it. He could cleanse it. He was fine, it was fine, he was fine, it was fine.

“Sparkles!” Oghren called after him, huffing violently. “Sodding-fucking-Sparkles, slow the fuck down!”

Anders stumbled into a wall, clutching his chest and the racing heart beneath it, and choked down a sob. Amell-... Amell could slow his heart, but Amell wasn’t here, because-... because why? Why wasn’t he here? Anders needed him to be here.

“Bronto’s balls, Sparkles, but you sure as shit can book it,” Oghren wheezed when he caught up.

Anders didn’t know where he’d gone. He had to have still been in the palace district, but he didn’t recognize the street. The cramped side-street was barely big enough for a carriage, spindly trees grown from cramped pots pressed flush against yellowed stone covered in aging vines. A breezeway shadowed the alley, a building length back, carrying with it autumn winds that swept around the hem of Anders’ cloak.

Anders sank down to sit on a bench, old emerald paint chipping away, and laced his hands above his head, trying to breathe. “I can’t - I couldn’t be there.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Oghren sat down beside him. “Didn’t get why.”

“Merrill-...” Anders took a rickety breath that did nothing to steady him. His skin was crawling, a prickling sensation running across his spine and churning his stomach until he was sure he was going to be sick. Maybe he should have been sick. Just to be safe. Just to be sure he hadn’t had any fucking bane or Maker knew what they’d try to poison him with this time. “Merrill was there.”

“Who?”

“Merrill? Mage? Dalish? You spent four months with her when she came to visit Vigil’s Keep last year?”

“Oh! Tiny tits,” Oghren snapped his fingers. “Sure, I remember. Guessing you got something against her?”

“No,” Anders shook his head. “I mean yes, but that’s not-... I guess it is, but it’s not.”

“You wanna try that again with a little more sense this time?” Oghren suggested.

“... Hawke,” Anders explained.

“Ah,” Oghren clucked his tongue sagely. “The old dick dock, huh? Come on, Sparkles, you had to figure you’d see him again. He’s the Viscount of Kirkwall now, ain’t he? Boss does a lot of trading with him, but I’m guessing trading you didn’t go over too well?”

“Please don’t say that,” Anders said. “He didn’t trade me.”

“Well what’d he do then?” Oghren snorted.

“He tortured me,” Anders said.

“Well shit.”

“Yeah, shit.”

“No, seriously, shit,” Oghren stood up, and glanced around the side-street. “You feel that?”

Anders stood up with him, “Feel what?”

“Darkspawn,” Oghren eyed the windows and doors, “You feel ‘em, don’t you?”

“I mean,” Anders rolled his shoulder. His skin was still crawling, an uncomfortable tingling sensation that seemed to be getting tighter and tighter, but he’d thought it was just stress. “I guess.”

They waited in the side-street, but no darkspawn came pouring through the windows, or tumbling down from the roofs, or running in from the main streets. Men did. Normal, human men, dressed in dark crimson armor and wielding iron swords and throwing daggers. Their eyes were all a bright, glowing red, and ripples of shimmering white played across their skin.

Lyrium.

Red lyrium.

Red Irons.

“I can’t go back,” Maker take him, why had he stopped running? Why had he ever stopped running? He shouldn’t have stopped running. Not in the alley. Not in Amaranthine. Not with Amell. He couldn’t ever stop running. “I can’t go back.”

Oghren spun in a slow circle, and sucked spit through his teeth before he spat it back out. “These your old guy’s guys?”

One of the Red Irons stepped forward, more mabari than man, a drooping mustache over drooping jowls, and a feral look in his bright red eyes mirrored by his men. Gustav. Hawke’s second. “It’s time to go home, Anders.”

“Guessing that’s a yes,” Oghren said.

“I can’t -... I can’t-...” Maker, he couldn't even breathe. He felt like he was going to pass out. He didn’t know whether to run or whether to fight or whether he could even do either one. They were on lyrium. They were all on lyrium and they were all templars and they were all here and he didn’t know what to do but he couldn’t go back. “I can’t-”

“Easy, Sparkles,” Oghren said. “You ain’t doing shit.”

“Give us the blood mage,” Gustav said, hand on the hilt of his sword. “I won’t ask twice.”

“You want a blood mage?” Oghren chuckled, cracking his knuckles. “I’ll give you a blood mage.”

Pain.

An aura of pain exploded out from Oghren. Anders had no other word for it. It was agony - an endless torrent that cascaded through the alley in waves and felt like fire on the inside of his skin to rival the burn of bane. The sudden shock of the -... blood magic? aura? energy? emanating from Oghren startled the Red Iron beside Gustav into dropping his weapon. He fell back, panicked prayers spilling from his lips, but Gustav didn’t. He snatched a flask off his hip and flung it at them, glass shattering on the cobblestone in a cloud of dust.

Dust. Not magebane. It wasn’t magebane. It wasn’t magebane, it wasn’t magebane, and he couldn’t cleanse it. He didn’t know how to cleanse it. It was knockout powder, and Oghren took the brunt of it, but Anders took enough. The dust dazed him, like the weight of two men thrown atop his shoulders, and it was just one flask and Maker, they had to have more and-

Oghren sneezed, and he smirked, and he screamed, “Here comes Oghren!”

Oghren rushed Gustav, dodging a wild downward stroke of his sword to grab his wrist. Oghren wrenched, and Gustav hit his knees. Oghren spun behind him, shoved his hand into Gustav’s mouth, and slammed his foot into his spine in the same motion, breaking his neck and his jaw. Gustav collapsed, dead, and the Red Iron beside him fled into the street, screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Who’s next!?” Oghren laughed, shaking Gustav’s broken teeth from his palm and scattering them across the cobblestone.

Anders snapped out of his daze, but so did the rest of the Red Irons. There were an easy half-dozen, and the first smite that crashed down on him buckled his knees. Anders staggered forward, veilfire ripping through his veins and keeping him from hitting the ground. Another flask went sailing through the air, towards his feet, and Justice froze it in a wave of ice before it shattered. Justice flooded the spell with mana, a wall of hoarfrost sealing off half the alley and the Red Irons behind it.

It left three Red Irons with him and Oghren who hadn’t been cut off, died, or fled. One of them peppered Oghren’s back with throwing daggers, and won another laugh. “No one ever tell you not to bleed a blood mage, boy?”

Oghren couldn’t move as fast as Oghren moved, but somehow he did, sprinting across the alley so fast the Red Iron panicked and threw a flask of knockout powder at his own feet to stop him. The Red Iron knocked himself unconscious, slumping forward only for Oghren to slam him back against the wall, the sound of ribs cracking echoing through the alley as his fist buried itself in the other man’s chest.

The two survivors rushed him, but they were on lyrium, and Anders wasn’t about to risk Oghren hoping his magic would hurt them. He froze the cobblestone beneath them instead, and sent both men sliding across the alley. They crashed into the pretty emerald bench, knocking it over, when an explosion broke through Anders’ wall of hoarfrost. Liquid fire splashed across his cloak and set it aflame, ice turning to steam and scalding up his side and face.

Everything was agony. Blood, and burns, and battle. Oghren’s aura seared his skin from the inside out. The Red Iron’s fire bombs seared it from the outside in. Anders screamed, and Vengeance screamed with him, and they ripped Gustav’s blood from his corpse to fling it over the Red Irons who poured in through the hole in the hoarfrost. The force of the corrosion melted the flesh from the face of the first man through: armor, skin, and muscle sloughed off him to puddle about his feet as he collapsed.

His fellows didn’t follow. A poisoned dagger flew wide to Anders’ left, and another landed in his shoulder. Anders felt the flood of bane within his veins, but past that he felt nothing. No fear. Just anger. Justice wrenched the dagger from his shoulder, cleansing his blood and wrenching more from his veins to form into another net of corrosion. The Red Irons stepped back when the bane didn’t end the fight. Because they were afraid. Because they should be.

More daggers flew, but they were only bane and iron, and couldn’t hurt him. They couldn’t ever hurt him again. Anders threw the spell, and one of the Red Irons threw a flask. The knockout powder shattered at his feet, and everything went dark.

Running through the streets, only silence follows.
Elven arrows sunk into the old ash tree.
O, I know she's there, daisies in her hair,
Waiting by the chantry to marry me.

Ruby on the green, petals lost and drifting.
Take her to His side, Andraste hear my plea.
I found her lying there, daisies in her hair,
Waiting by the chantry to marry me.

Anders woke to a slap in the face. Literally. Oghren slapped him. “Sparkles,” Oghren slapped him again. “Wake up! Come on, Princess, up and at ‘em. You ain’t dead.”

Anders groaned, shoving Oghren’s face out of his face and knocking a few bloody dandelions free of his beard. “Maker’s breath, what’s wrong with yours?”

“I ate a dude,” Oghren explained.

“You what?” Anders must have misheard him. His head felt like his head had been split open, no doubt a concussion from when he’d collapsed. Anders dragged himself into a sitting position, the motion sent a searing pain through his entire body with how many daggers were still buried in it.

“I ate a dude,” Oghren repeated, sitting on the cobblestone beside him in the bloody abattoir of their victory. “Not a whole dude. Just his throat.”

“Normal,” Anders pulled a dagger from his arm, and sealed the wound with a burst of creationism that churned his stomach with how little mana he had left.

“Sometimes you just gotta rip a dude’s throat out, you know?” Oghren shrugged. “Though I gotta be honest, I’m not sure sure these were dudes.”

“They’re Hawke’s dudes,” Anders said, wincing as he removed another dagger from his leg. “... I don’t think I can heal all of these.”

“I got blood,” Oghren scrubbed his nose, smearing the blood on his hands across his mustache as if to prove his point. “Go ahead and use it.”

“You lost a lot of it,” Anders took a shallow breath, and took stock of the side-street. A crumbling wall of hoarfrost separated one side of the alley from the other, blood and char from the Red Iron’s fire bomb grouting the cobblestone. At least six bodies encircled them, half of them intact, half of them missing pieces.

People were starting to gather at the entrance to the side-street, though none of them were brave enough to venture inside with them. Anders didn’t think it would have been the best idea to heal himself or Oghren with blood magic in full view of a crowd, but Hawke didn’t seem like he was going to give him a choice. He could still feel the pull of corruption he’d mistaken for stress and Oghren had mistaken for darkspawn that red lyrium seemed to share, sinking beneath his skin, singing like a deathknell-

“Amell!” Anders tried to yell, but the knockout powder burned his throat, and he coughed instead.

“Easy, Sparkles,” Oghren slapped another cough out of him. “He’ll be a minute. You gonna tell him your old guy jumped us or am I?”

Anders ran a hand through his hair, smearing blood and ash through it. Amell’s cloak slipped off his shoulder with the motion, burnt in half by the Red Iron’s bomb. A bomb. A bloody bomb - in broad daylight in the bloody palace district - just so they could capture him. A whole mercenary gang addicted to lyrium, just so they could capture him. Damn Hawke. Maker damn him, and Void damn him, and Fade damn him, and everything that could fucking damn him, damn him.

Dumat led Amell through the crowd and into the side-street with them, sniffing curiously at the blood that hung in the air before taking a defensive posture behind him when he reached him.

“Hey Kid,” Oghren said cheerily.

“Hey,” Amell said cautiously. “... Anders?”

“Hey,” Anders agreed.

Amell knelt down next to him and found his knee, smothering a pained hiss when his fingers grazed the bane that spilled from the wound on Anders’ thigh with his blood. A surge of blood magic cleansed the last of it from Anders’ blood - and even Anders couldn’t manage the spell as painlessly as Amell did when he cast it on him. “What happened?”

“Sodding good fight is what happened,” Oghren chuckled, rolling a kink out of his shoulder.

“A fight with who?” Amell asked, wiping the bane off on his pants. “Ghouls? These men feel tainted.”

“They may as well be,” Anders took a shallow breath and pulled the last dagger from his side, a subtle pull of Oghren’s blood fueling his magic when he sealed the wounds. “Not that this isn’t my new favorite spot in the city, but could we go back to the compound? Better yet, could we go back to the Vigil?”

“Sparkles,” Oghren said warningly. “You gotta tell him.”

“Tell me what?” Amell asked, his hand hovering in the air between them, like he was afraid he might come into contact with more bane if he touched him. Anders caught his hand, and pressed his palm against his cheek. His skin felt warm, almost flush with the blood that Anders had let in the battle, and couldn’t have been more comforting.

“They were Hawke’s men,” Anders told him.

Amell ran his thumb across his cheek, and maybe it was just Anders’ imagination, but the crimson in his eyes looked a little darker. “Why is Hawke sending men after you?”

“Because,” Merrill’s voice carried from the entrance to the side-street, where she stood with a dozen more Red Irons, and Hawke stood with her. “He needs to come home.”

Chapter 175: Call Me Demon

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 19 Parvulis Late Afternoon
Ferelden: Denerim Palace District

The scent of battle was everywhere. Old copper and burnt hair, with all the undercurrents of death. Shit. Piss. A whisper of meat - faint and metallic. The scents carried on the autumn winds as they swept through the alley, rattling the dying leaves of dormant trees to the steady drip of melting hoarfrost. Time hadn’t slowed so much as paused.

The clasps to Amell’s cloak had burnt away. The heavy wool lay in a puddle at Anders’ feet, exposing him to the biting chill. It caressed his face, stealing beneath his clothes, sinking into his skin, and leaving him shivering for the violation. It was cold, but he’d burned, once upon a time, for the eyes that pinned him to the cobblestone. They’d been Amell’s eyes, years ago, but they weren’t anymore.

They were Hawke’s eyes. Not the deep crimson reminiscent of spilled blood, or even the sunburst shade Quentin had stolen, but a vibrant, glowing red that stripped Anders down to nothing. Not flesh, not muscle, not even blood or bone. Hawke rent him apart with a look - like a spirit torn to wisps. Anders wasn’t Anders. He wasn’t Justice. He wasn’t Vengeance. He wasn’t anything.

“Anders, it’s okay,” Merrill took a cautious step forward, signing while she spoke, like he was the danger between them. “It’s time to come home. We’re here to take you home.”

“You ain’t taking him anywhere,” Oghren pushed himself to his feet and slipped on the blood grouting the cobblestones. He caught himself on his hands, and took a deep breath to find his second wind and right himself, but it didn’t matter. He’d lost too much blood from his own magic and the daggers that peppered his back, and he didn’t have a weapon. “We got a baker’s dozen here, Boss.”

“I feel them,” Amell said softly. He hadn’t moved from where he knelt. His hand against Anders’ cheek felt like the only warm thing left. Even Anders’ blood ran cold at the sight of Hawke standing at the entrance to the alley, flanked by a score of Red Irons.

Hawke looked different. Hawke looked the same. He was wearing the old Viscount crown, a touch of rust to the iron that made it seem forever stained with blood. The sharp black circlet resembled the spires of the Black City and blended with his greying hair. His Viscount’s robes were a deep grey trimmed in white, and he wore a cuirass and bandolier atop them covered in knives, flasks, and bombs.

Everything he could ever need to force Anders to go back with him. Back to the Free Marches. Back to Kirkwall. Back to that fucking room. There was nothing Hawke wouldn’t do to get him back. Anders could see it in his face. His face-...

His face had crystalized. Red lyrium ran along his left ear and cheek bone. There was so little of it it might have been mistaken for piercings, like small ruby studs or a splatter of blood, save that they glowed. Anders had seen its likeness before in Bartrand and his servants, claiming them body, mind, and soul. Anders couldn’t tell if Hawke had gone mad - it seemed like he’d always been mad.

“Anders,” Hawke sighed - a too familiar sigh. There was weight in that sigh, and towards the end of it all that weight had always found its way into his fists. Hawke gestured at the bodies littering the street, like they were nothing more than broken crockery Anders had dropped in the kitchen. “What have you done now?”

“What we’re fixing to do again if you don’t fuck off,” Oghren warned him, reaching over his shoulder and groping for a dagger. He pulled it from his back, and didn’t so much as wince, brandishing it towards the Red Irons like all they’d done was give him a free weapon.

Merrill signed along with Oghren’s threat for Hawke, and looked at Anders with something akin to pity, “You don’t have to let them speak for you anymore. You’re safe with us. We’re here now.”

“Ha!” Oghren pushed his tongue up into his upper lip and dislodged what might have been a chunk of flesh. He spat it onto the cobblestones, a mess of red and white amidst the char, and a handful of Red Irons looked nervous. “Here to let these sissies do your fighting for you, you winking, slack-jawed cowards. Let’s skip the talking and get back to the fighting.”

“Oghren,” Amell said. Oghren grunted, but stayed put, stretching his arms over his chest. The daggers buried in his shoulder moved with the motion, but Anders felt… something from Oghren. A pull, almost like blood magic, and a mist of blood formed along the cobblestone from the corpses, rolling towards him to swirl around his feet like a fog.

He shouldn’t have waited. He should have just fought. They all should have fought. They all should have run. They all should have done something, but Anders didn’t know what to do. This was a nightmare, it was his worst nightmare, and Amell’s easy smile was out of place in it.

“You don’t have to be here,” Amell caressed his cheek, soft and gentle, his voice too low for anyone but Anders to hear. “You can go back to the compound.”

It was such an easy assurance. Amell would handle it. Anders knew he would handle it. Anders hadn’t explained and Amell hadn’t asked him to explain because Amell didn’t need him to explain, he would just handle it because that was what Amell did. Because Amell loved him. Anders felt it in the way the world fell away, in the way Hawke fell away, in the way nothing seemed to exist outside of him when Amell held him. He felt what love was supposed to feel like.

“Get your fucking hands off him,” Hawke snarled, like he had any right to snarl. His bow was already strung, and his grip on it was knuckle white. It was always knuckle white. Anders knew his knuckles better than he knew his hands - and there was no love in either of them. There hadn’t been for years - if there ever had been at all. Hawke had just come to finish the fight he’d sent his Red Irons to start. The bastard. The bloody fucking bastard.

“Don’t fucking talk to him,” Anders signed - his hands alight with Vengeance and veilfire. He took Amell’s hand and set it to the inside of his arm. “You never should have come here. If you so much as look at him I’ll make you wish you’d killed me.”

“I would never kill you, Anders,” Hawke signed, slowly, like he knew Anders hadn’t signed in months. Like Hawke wanted him to listen, even though Hawke had never listened to him. “What lies has he put in your head?”

“Lies!?” Anders shouted. He forgot to sign. He forgot how to sign. Merrill signed it for him, and took a cautious step back from Hawke when she did. Anders stood up. Vengeance stood him up. Anders could feel him flowing through his veins, even drained of almost all his mana, his heart beating slower and surer and safer. Vengeance was in his blood, and no amount of bane could take him from him.

“You want to talk about lies, you bastard?” Anders shouted - with a drain of Merrill’s mana to amplify his voice so Hawke could hear every fucking word. “You want to hear a lie? How about the lie that I ever loved you? The lie that you were ever anything to me? The lie that I ever saw you as anything other than a replacement?

“The lie that you even know how to love? The lie that anyone has ever loved you? Your mother, your father, your sister, your friends? None of us love you, you bloody controlling bastard. You think you’re protecting everyone, but the only danger to everyone is you! I hope the lyrium shows the world what kind of monster you truly are.”

“You done?” Hawke didn’t listen. Hawke never listened. “I took his eyes. I’ll take his hands next if you don’t get them off you.”

“You think I want your hands on me instead?” Anders demanded. “I never wanted your hands on me. I never should have called you a templar - you’re worse. I’d rather be back in solitary than ever be in the same room with you again. I’m with Amell. It’s always been Amell. It’s never been you, and it never will be. I’d rather be Tranquil than feel anything for you. I hate you. I’ll hate you till the day I die.”

“Fine,” Hawke said. Like he didn’t care. Maker, he didn’t even care. “Hate me. Make me your demon. I’m saving you whether you like it or not. I warned you, Anders. I told you I’d never let anyone take you from me. Just remember you made me prove it,” Hawke nodded to Merrill. “Merrill.”

“I’m sorry, Anders. This is what’s best for you,” Merrill said aloud, a dagger dropping from her sleeve and into her hand. She slit her palm and flicked the dagger back into her sleeve in the same motion, practiced and subtle, and utterly unnoticed by the crowd that kept a safe distance from the Red Irons. She did it fast. She did it too fast.

Her hand closed around the cut without a single drop of spilled blood, the spell forming within her fist. Merrill had already bound them once before. There was nothing to stop her from binding them again. There was nothing to stop her from breaking them again. They couldn’t go through that again, but they couldn’t run, they couldn’t move, they couldn’t breathe-

“We’re trying to save you,” Merrill said sadly, poised to cast her spell, when all at once she screamed, clutching her wrist. The hand she’d cut seized, her fingers twitching spastically, the blood of her broken spell corroding through her palm.

“From what exactly?” Amell asked, with an idle squeeze of Anders’ arm, like they were having a casual conversation, and he hadn’t just torn through her spell like the thinnest of parchment.

“Mythal'enaste!” Merrill wailed, cradling her burning hand against her chest. “That should’ve worked! Why didn’t that work!? What did you do? Creators, my hand-”

“I imagine it hurts, but I’m afraid you’ll have to find another healer,” Amell said politely.

“You-... you vile, mean thing!” Merrill hissed.

“Ara seranna-ma,” Amell said.

“Na abelas," Merrill said, and signed shakily with her one good hand. “Hawke, I can’t do this.”

“Viscount. If you have an issue with any of my Grey Wardens then I’ll receive them at court, and if you have an issue with me you can submit it to Weisshaupt.” Amell said loud enough for the assembled crowd to hear, like Hawke even cared they were there. Like Merrill would even bother to sign or Hawke would even care if she did. Like Hawke even cared that he was the Viscount of Kirkwall, and Amell was the Chancellor of Ferelden, and he was out of his jurisdiction.

“I should remind you that you stand on Ferelden soil and-” Amell continued, like Hawke even cared if he continued.

Like there was even anything or anyone Hawke still cared about.

Like Hawke even cared that everyone could hear and everyone could see when he drew an arrow from his quiver and launched it with a smite straight at Amell’s mouth.

Everything that happened, happened in the seconds between seconds.

“No!” Anders burned through his mana for a haste that barely moved him, shoving Amell back behind him. The sky cracked open above him while lightning erupted from Anders’ fingers. It surged across the alley, forking in all directions and tearing through stone, wood, glass, armor, and even lyrium when it connected with Hawke’s chest.

Leather caught fire. Flasks and vials burst across Hawke’s bandolier. Electricity ripped up through the rune-work to Hawke’s neck, searing across his face and setting a flash fire to his skin. Hawke screamed, dropping his bow to clutch his face with both hands, his armor in flames he struggled to put out while it burned him alive.

The smite struck, ripping the last of Anders' mana from him, and the arrow punched through his throat. The force of it knocked Anders off his feet and into Amell’s arms. He felt nothing at first. No pain. Just warmth. Blood was everywhere it seemed blood shouldn’t be. In his throat. In his mouth. On his neck. On his chest. Down his back. It must have gone clean through him and hit Amell anyway. Anders could see the cut, sliced deep along his cheekbone when Amell caught him.

Amell held him. Amell held all of him. Even his blood - bound within his own skin to keep it from spilling more than it already had, but so much had already spilled and he must have been hard to hold. They slipped, and hit the ground together, Amell’s hands sweeping up to his throat and the hole Hawke had left in it, and all at once the Veil thinned, and then tore. Wisps flooded in from the Fade, bloating the corpses of the Red Irons littering the streets.

“I’ll kill you!” The corpses screamed as they rose, one after the other, a deafening, thunderous chorus so loud Hawke had to have heard it. They clawed their way to their feet, dripping blood and magic. “I’ll kill you!” The undead seemed hasted in their rage, hands, knees, and feet hitting the ground in their mad dash across the street towards Hawke.

They’d crossed as wisps, fragments of thought, fragments of feeling, bound to Amell’s will, but they didn’t stay that way. There was too much to feed them. Too much to fuel them in everything Amell must have felt. “I’ll kill you!” The first risen corpse roared. Its skin split open down its spine and caught fire, sloughing apart and burning it from the inside out.

“I’ll kill you!” Rage burst forth from the undead, leaving molten cobblestones in its wake as the demon tore through the Red Irons that rushed to face it.

The Red Irons who died to the onslaught of undead didn’t hit the ground before they joined them, bursting at the seams with raw magic. The crowds fled, the Red Irons scattered, and Merrill grabbed Hawke. He was still on fire, still screaming, when a torrent of roots erupted from the cobblestone and swallowed them both. The echoes of the raging undead faded in and out, and suddenly seemed distant and far away in Amell’s arms.

“Get a healer!” Amell screamed - to someone, somewhere.

It was still warm. It was good that it was still warm. Warm was good. Cold was bad. Shock was cold, but there was no shock. Anders wasn’t in shock. He hadn’t lost enough blood to be in shock. Amell hadn’t let him. Anders tried to focus on him, but his vision kept fading in and out, and it was so hard to see him. It was so hard to do anything.

“I’ve got you,” Amell’s hands held his throat, fingers pressed to the wounds along with his magic, blood stubbornly bound inside him. “I love you. I won’t ever let you die.”

Anders didn’t remember passing out, but he must have passed out, because he woke up. His throat was killing him. It felt like he’d swallowed raw bane and he could feel the coarse fabric of a bandage wrapped around his neck. A tentative swallow made his throat ache, but he could still swallow, which seemed like a good sign. He tasted lyrium and honey, and an undercurrent of mint on his lips from something he didn’t remember drinking.

Anders opened his eyes to darkness. A panicked sphere of magelight illuminated the bedroom in sapphire, but it was just Amell’s bedroom at the Grey Warden compound in Denerim. The first pull of magic sent veilfire coursing through his veins to catch within his throat, soothing the burn that had been left by Hawke’s arrow. Anders reached up to touch his neck with a vengeful surge of satisfaction. He was alive. He was alive, and Justice was alive, and they were in a room, but they weren’t in that fucking room, and they never would be again.

Anders shifted to sit up, when a disgruntled huff stopped him. Dumat was pressed up beside him, his head resting on his stomach, and at the first sign of movement the mabari inched up across the mattress to lick his jaw.

“Hey, gross,” Anders said hoarsely, pushing Dumat off. The mabari huffed again, settling into his armpit instead and being generally bothersome. Affectionately bothersome, despite a perfect sense of smell and full knowledge that Anders was an abomination. Anders freed his arm from beneath the sheets to scratch the mabari’s ear.

Anders felt like he’d atrophied. Everything felt stiff, and moving his arm put a cramp in it. Anders kneaded at the muscle with his free arm, and felt like he could use a full body massage. He couldn’t move his legs, and it took him too long to realize there was a weight to them keeping him pinned.

Anders sat up without moving them, blanket pooling around his waist. He was naked, the air cool but not cold on bare skin. There was a burn on his shoulder from the explosion that made his skin feel tight, but whoever had tended to him had managed to heal the rest of his injuries without any other scars that Anders could see. Anders massaged his neck, but he was hesitant to take the bandage off when he didn’t know what was beneath it.

Amell was asleep in a chair beside his bed, his upper half draped over Anders’ legs. He was in his undershirt, the doublet hanging off the back of the chair the same one he’d worn to the Grand Melee to judge by the dried blood. Anders' first thought was that it had to have been the same day, but it couldn’t have been. They both smelled like they needed a bath, and Amell looked like he needed a shave. His braid was disheveled, hair matted like it hadn’t been washed in days.

The nightstand beside the bed had been turned into a workstation. Water, honey, herbs and lyrium set beside a pouring bowl explained the taste on Anders’ tongue. There was nothing for Amell that Anders could see on the nightstand, or anywhere in the room. No food. No drink. No alcohol or rolls of lotus. Like Amell hadn’t moved from his chair for however long Anders had been unconscious.

“Amell,” Anders rasped, struggling to bring his voice above a whisper around the ache in his throat. Justice flowed through his veins, settled beneath his skin, and channeled a low panacea that helped him find his voice. “Amell,” Anders tried again, at a better volume, squeezing Amell’s shoulder.

“‘Said I’m not moving,” Amell mumbled, not quite conscious.

“My legs are asleep,” Anders said, with another gentle shake of his shoulder.

Amell sat up, scrubbing sleep from the corner of his eyes with the tips of his fingers, “Anders?”

“Morning?” Anders guessed, clearing his throat again.

Amell shifted from the chair to sit on the edge of the bed, tentative hands seeking his legs and running up his sides, “You’re awake?”

“Or a very talented sleep-talker,” Anders joked.

Amell pulled him into an embrace that grew tighter and tighter until it was almost suffocating, but Anders couldn't bring himself to care. Amell would never suffocate him. Would never cage him. Would never do what Hawke had done to him. Anders slid an arm around him, and pulled Amell’s legs up onto the mattress with him.

Anders breathed in his hair, hard pressed to care how much of Amell was in his scent, “How long was I out?”

“A week,” Amell said into his shoulder. “Almost two.”

“Over one arrow?” Anders got that he’d been hit in the throat, but he’d taken swords through the heart, and barely been fazed. It didn’t make sense an arrow would be worse.

“You took a smite,” Amell explained. His voice sounded just as hoarse, like he’d taken the arrow with him. Amell kept one arm locked around him, and freed the other to caress his face, as fierce as he was tender. “The arrow was poisoned. Quiet Death. The healer did what they could, but they said there might be residual pain and it might be difficult for you to talk. You can go back to sleep if you’re tired. I’ll be here.”

“It hit you too, didn’t it?” Anders set two fingers beneath Amell’s chin and pried him off his shoulder. The cut was still there, framing his cheekbone, and looked like it hadn’t been tended to at all. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Amell said, but he didn’t look fine. Beyond the cut, his eyes had enough shadows to unsettle the Blight, like the sleep Anders had interrupted had been the only sleep he’d gotten. Anders ran his thumb over dry lips and ashen skin, and Amell pulled him into a kiss that wasn’t kissing so much as it was breathing.

There was a weight to every breath, and his lips were even lighter. Amell pressed their foreheads together, not quite kissing, not quite doing much of anything but tracing his face, his fingers skirting the edge of the bandage around his throat like he didn’t want to be reminded of its presence.

“I’m not,” Anders whispered. It felt better to whisper. Not just because of his throat, but because of everything. He ran his fingers beneath the cut on Amell’s cheek, creationism slowly mending the rent skin into a scar. “Hawke tried to kill you.”

“I know,” Amell leaned into his touch. “I felt your haste, and your shove, and your blood before the arrow hit me.”

“It shouldn’t have hit you at all,” Anders said. Amell wouldn't have let it hit him if their places had been reversed. “I should have gotten you out of the way.”

Amell's fingers finally fell to the bandage, and he whispered with him, “You should have let it hit me.”

“Are you serious?” Anders pushed him back so he could see his expression - and hated how serious it was. “I took an arrow for you and that’s what you have to say about it? You want to try that again? How about ‘Thank you,’ or ‘I owe you one,’ or ‘I can’t wait to show you how grateful I am?’”

“Thank you,” Amell said, but he didn’t sound thankful. He wasn’t frowning, but he definitely wasn’t smiling either. “I owe you one. I can’t wait to show you how grateful I am, but I don’t want you taking arrows for me.”

“So what?” Anders didn’t have the energy to be as angry as he wanted to be, but he did his best. “You think I’m just going to watch you die?”

“I’m not a healer, Anders,” Amell said evenly, not fighting him, not raising his voice, not doing anything but running his hands along his arms and shoulders. “If someone is going to get hurt it should be me.”

“He wasn’t aiming to hurt you,” Anders said, clinging to his anger to keep him from feeling anything else, but it hurt to raise his voice and the angrier he got the softer he spoke. “I told you. I told you he threatened you. You said he couldn’t hurt you. You promised he couldn’t hurt you.”

“... I’m sorry,” Amell said, but as soon as he said it Anders knew he shouldn’t have blamed him. Amell couldn’t have known. Anders hadn’t told him. Amell had no way of knowing how far Hawke would go because Anders hadn’t told him how far he’d already gone. He should have warned him there was no line Hawke wouldn’t cross. He should have warned him Hawke had already crossed them all.

“... I don’t want you to be sorry,” Anders ran his fingers through Amell’s raven hair, unraveling what he could of a week's worth of knots. “... I just want you to be alive.”

“I’m alive,” Amell promised. “That doesn’t mean I ever want you to do that again.”

Anders wasn’t about to agree to that, but he didn’t want to argue about it either, “You haven’t been sitting here this whole time, have you?”

“Of course I have,” Amell ran his knuckles along his cheek, but there was nothing even remotely threatening in them when Amell’s hands around his throat had saved his life. “How do you feel?”

“Like someone shot me through the throat,” It wasn't a joke. Not completely. Talking was exhausting, and it felt like he had to swallow every other minute to battle the burn in his throat.

“Here,” Amell swung his legs over the edge of the bed to make him a drink from the things on the nightstand. Water, honey, elfroot, lyrium, and an assortment of herbs. No bane. Nothing that would hurt him. Nothing that would ever hurt him. Amell found his hands and placed the pouring bowl in them.

“What is this?” Anders asked.

“A potion ancient elves used in uthenera when they couldn’t sustain themselves in the Fade in their sleep,” Amell said.

“Sometimes I dream of you saying something normal,” Anders took a tentative drink, and leaned his head back against the wall. “Any chance of getting a restorative draft?”

“I can check with the kitchens-” Amell made to stand, and Anders grabbed his undershirt.

“Later,” Anders said. Amell reclaimed his spot on the bed beside him and ran an idle hand along his thigh while he drank, and Anders tried to gather the strength to ask questions or be asked them.

“Does the potion help?” Amell asked.

“It helps,” Anders rolled his fingers along the marbled blue and white pouring bowl. “Did the ancient elf in your head teach you how to make it?“

“Yes.”

“Did he teach you how to force my blood to clot too?”

“No,” Amell took the bowl from him when he finished, and set it back in the same spot on the nightstand. “No one did. I just didn’t want you to die.”

“... Did he?” Anders didn’t trust himself to hope. It couldn’t be over that easy. Nothing in his life ever was. “Did you kill him?”

“No,” Amell flexed his hands, like he was ashamed, but Anders would rather Amell save his neck than wring Hawke’s. “I stayed with you.”

“What happened?”

“What do you remember?”

“I remember you raising the Red Irons,” More than that, he remembered the pure and passionate rage with which Amell had done it, and how he’d felt as safe in Amell’s anger as he had in his arms. “One of the wisps became a demon and everyone ran.”

“Then you remember what happened,” Amell said.

“What happened after what happened? Anders pressed.

“Anders… when I say I stayed with you, I mean I stayed with you,” Amell found one of his hands and held it. “I haven’t left this room since we put you in it.”

Anders didn’t know what to say to that. Anders had never wanted anyone to hear the things that Amell had heard. Anders had never wanted Amell to hear them. It was one thing for Amell to know he’d left Hawke. It was another for him to know why. Anders couldn’t pretend that Amell hadn’t put it together, but that seemed to be what they were doing. Pretending nothing had changed.

“Thank you,” Anders kissed his knuckles, and hoped that nothing had. “Really. Thank you, but you have to know more than that. Where did everyone go? Oghren? Hawke? Merrill? The Red Irons? Fenris and Isabela?”

“Not much. The Red Irons are dead. I tore the Veil when you fell… The side street has been quarantined and Knight Commander Tavish assigned a contingent of templars to watch for demons crossing until mages from Kinloch arrive with enough lyrium to mend the Tear. I haven’t heard from Fenris or Isabela, but I haven’t left the room.

“I don’t know what happened to Hawke or Merrill. I assume they returned to Kirkwall, but if they didn’t, Oghren went back to Vigil’s Keep to alert Nathaniel and Delilah, and I placed a standing order with the guard to have them arrested if they’re found anywhere in the city. I’m sorry if that isn’t what you wanted, but beyond the attempt on my life I haven’t shared anything with anyone.”

What else was there to share? That Hawke had tried to kidnap him? That Merrill had been willing to use blood magic to help him? That the attempt on Amell’s life was all Anders’ fault? “Aren’t you going to ask?”

“Ask what?”

“About Hawke. About everything that just happened. I put you in this position. I put all this on you,” Anders’ throat closed up on him, and the arrow that had torn through it had nothing to do with it. Amell had almost died - and it was Anders’ fault. Hawke had warned him and he hadn’t listened. “You can’t want all of the ugliness I’ve brought into your life. You deserve someone better.”

“There is no one better,” Amell cradled his face in his hands, and if the Void was anything like the black in his eyes then Anders would have let it take him. “Listen to me. There is no one braver. There is no one stronger. There is no one nobler. There is no one more beautiful. There is no one more passionate. There is no one more just. There is no one better.”

“Amell-...” Tears stung at the corners of his eyes, blurring his vision, but Anders didn’t need to see him. Anders didn’t need to hear him. Anders didn’t need anything from him. He just needed Amell - with all of his heart and both of his souls.

A knock sounded at the door and it opened a moment later. The redheaded woman who’d stopped Amell at the Grand Melee stepped through it. Leliana. Unlike Amell, she wasn’t wearing the same red dress she had at the Grand Melee, but her leather armor was decorated in Chantry sunbursts, and something about the smile she wore with it made Anders uncomfortable.

“Awake at last!” Leliana turned her uncomfortable smile on him. “I am so glad to see you well, Warden. A quiet death is not a merciful one.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Anders said, eyeing her suspiciously.

“No, I suppose not,” Leliana agreed. “But I am glad you are well all the same. The Maker must be watching over you. Perhaps He could watch over you a while longer? Amell? Can we speak outside?”

Amell didn’t leave his side. Amell didn’t seem like he ever would, “Later, Leliana.”

“Oh, but you see, there have been so many laters, and I am sure that one of those laters is sooner than this one,” Leliana said brightly.

Amell frowned, “I said-”

“-later,” Leliana cut him off. “Yes. I know, but I can make it later no longer. You must know you cannot keep him waiting. Please do not make it a matter of force.”

“I said no, Lel,” Amell said.

Leliana smiled sadly, “My friend, no is not a thing you can say.”

Chapter 176: A Firm Monarchy

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 29 Parvulis Late Morning
Ferelden: Denerim Warden Compound

“Excuse you?” Anders’ voice cracked with anger, and he was half-way out of bed before he remembered he was naked. Anders wrapped the blanket around his waist and shoved at Dumat’s shoulder to get the mabari to move off of it, and won a disgruntled huff for his efforts. “Who do you think you are?”

“Anders-” Amell started.

“I am the Left Hand of the Divine and the King of Ferelden,” Leliana said, watching his struggle with the dog with something so akin to pity Anders was tempted to roll out of bed and scream at her naked just to wipe the damn look off her face. Anders didn’t want her pity. It just reminded him of Merrill, causing the same pain she pitied him for feeling. “And I am a friend.”

“A friend?” Anders repeated, tugging at the sheets. “What kind of friend are you? He said no. Do you need me to sign it for you?”

Amell ran his hand up his back to squeeze his shoulder, and something in his sigh sounded too much like surrender, “Anders, it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” Anders snapped hoarsely, another hard wrench on the blanket finally provoking Dumat into jumping off the bed. Anders gathered up the blanket and half-crawled, half-scooted across the bed to put himself between Amell and his ‘friend,’ glancing between the two of them. “What does the King even want with you? What does the King even want with him?”

“You know you cannot do as you did without consequence,” Leliana said, a hand to her hip Anders couldn’t help but see as threatening when there were so many daggers there. “Summoning demons? Raising the dead? Tearing the Veil outside the palace?”

“Amell didn’t summon demons,” Anders hissed.

“I’m sorry?” Leliana tilted her head like she hadn’t heard him.

“I said he didn’t summon demons!” Anders repeated - amplifying his voice when he couldn’t scream it like he wanted. It wasn’t Amell’s fault. None of this was Amell’s fault. It was Anders' fault. More than that, it was Hawke’s fault. The anger resonated with him more than the blame when it was something he and Justice could feel together, and Anders held onto it. “Amell summoned wisps. It’s not his fault Rage manifested.”

“Be that as it may, there is no distinction to the people or their king,” Leliana said - still with that damn pity - and even though her hair was red, and her eyes were blue, and her face was bare, she looked just like Merrill. “Of course I trust you did not mean for this to happen, my friends, but it has happened all the same and someone must be made to answer for it.”

“Anders, she’s right, I have to deal with this,” Amell stood up, and Anders scrambled after him to grab him by his belt before he made it around the bed.

“No you don’t,” Anders argued. “No he doesn’t. What kind of consequences?”

“The consequential kind,” Leliana said unhelpfully. “It is up to the King.”

“Fuck the king,” Anders spat, fighting with the blankets with one hand and dragging Amell back with the other. “Amell, don’t go-”

“Anders, I have to go,” Amell said, untangling his hand from his belt.

Anders grabbed his wrist instead, trading one hand for the other, and briefly lost the battle with the blanket in the process, “No you don’t-”

Amell gently pulled his hand off, “Anders-”

“No, you don’t! You don’t have to go! Fuck this,” Anders stumbled off the bed and tripped on the blankets, grappling to keep them above his waist. His legs barely worked after over a week abed, even with Justice’s veilfire flowing through them. Anders grabbed the bedpost to keep himself on his feet, and whirled on Leliana, “Fuck you. Fuck your King. Hawke - Kirkwall’s Viscount tried to kill him! You want someone to suffer the consequences, go find him and make him suffer them!”

“I am aware of the Viscount’s involvement,” Leliana said patiently. “It ends with the attempt on your life, no?”

“You come anywhere near Amell and I’ll show you an attempt on your life,” Anders snarled, veilfire cracking across his chest and painting the room in sapphire.

Amell caught his shoulders and turned him around to cradle his face in his hands. “Justice - Anders, I have to go with her-”

“No you don’t,” Anders grabbed the back of his neck, struggling to keep his hands on Amell when he could only use one of them. “Please don’t - Amell please don’t go - don’t go - you can’t go-”

“Shhh,” The pull of blood magic coiled around his heart, and slowed its frantic beating, but it wouldn’t stay slow. Not if Amell left. Amell couldn’t leave. Amell had already left him so many times and Anders couldn’t stand the thought of him leaving again. He couldn’t stand the thought of Amell going into another fucking room with another fucking monster all because of his fucking magic.

It was just magic. Amell had just used magic. It was just fucking magic and it was the only magic Amell had to use and it wasn’t his fucking fault he’d had to use it. It was good magic. It was good magic. Damn all of them - it was good magic.

“Don’t go,” Anders begged.

“Where is Clarel stationed?” Amell asked.

“What?” Anders choked, pawing at his chest.

“Where is Clarel stationed?” Amell asked again.

“I don’t-... Montsimmard?” Anders managed.

“You go there if you need to go there," Amell said firmly, running his fingers through his hair.

“No - why would I need to go there?” Anders wasn’t going to think about why Amell had said what he’d said because there was only one reason for him to say it and Anders couldn’t live with that reason. “I’m not going there. Just don’t go. Fuck the King - we’ll just leave. We can leave with Isabela - Llomerynn, remember? White beaches, red wine, just don’t go - we can just leave - let’s just leave -”

“I’ll come back.”

“Don’t lie to me-”

“I’ll come back.”

“Don’t lie to me - don’t lie to me - Amell, don’t lie to me-”

“I’ll come back,” Amell pulled him into an embrace of sweat and copper and unwashed body odor and Anders would be damned if he ever left it. Amell pressed a hard kiss to his forehead. “I'll come back.”

He wouldn’t. Maker, he wouldn’t. Anders knew he wouldn’t. Amell untangled them, whistled for Dumat, and retrieved his staff before he left with Leliana. Anders sank to the floor in a pool of blankets, his back against the foot of the bed and his head in his hands. Not again. He couldn’t go through this again.

Veilfire coiled around his heart, rippling like lightning through his veins and healing what remained of his injuries, but there was only so much Justice could do for him. Anders had spent a week abed recovering from what Hawke had done to them, but the bloody bastard poisoned everything. His flesh, his blood, his heart, his state of mind. Anders felt sick. Maker, he was going to be sick.

Anders bolted for the washroom, and barely made it through the door before he threw up on the floor. His stomach was so empty it was sour. The acrid taste of vomit burned his throat, and came paired with honeyed lyrium from Amell’s potion. Anders couldn’t breathe through it. He slid to the floor against the doorway and grabbed at his neck. Flaming hands burnt away the linen, but Anders still couldn’t breathe.

He had to breathe. He had to do something. He couldn’t just sit here, panicking and praying that something would go right when nothing ever did. Anders picked himself up and dug through Amell’s armoire for his clothes - wool and leather, feather and bone - and dressed as hastily as he could manage. His whole body ached, and he knew he wasn’t in any condition to do anything, but he’d be damned if he did nothing.

A crow soared over the city, scanning the streets below until it found the procession of the King’s Guard escorting Leliana and Amell. The men weren’t templars, and would have been as easy to face as they were to follow if it came to it. The crow followed them back to the palace, through the stone halls that led to the King’s war room, and Anders landed in an explosion of feathers that made all of them scream.

“Maker preserve us,” Leliana muttered, looking the least surprised of the group. “Another shapeshifter. Stand down.”

A few of the guards were too busy standing back up to worry about standing down, but aside from being frightened, none of them seemed particularly furious. Of everyone, the only person who seemed angry was Amell, a furrow to his brow when he looked at him. “What are you doing here, Anders?”

“Making bad choices,” Anders supposed, his voice a whisper he wasn’t sure Amell even heard.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Amell said. “I have to talk to the King.”

“Fine,” Anders took one of Amell’s hands and set it to his arm. Amell might need it if the bloody bastard had another Litany, and Anders already needed it with how hard it was for him to stay standing even with Justice settled beneath his skin. “I’ll talk to him with you.”

Amell tugged him back from the door to the war room, “Anders-”

“What?” Anders snapped, leaning in to press his lips to Amell’s ear to be sure he heard him. “This didn’t have anything to do with you. This was about me. I’m not letting you take the fall for me.”

“Gentlemen, if we are finished?” Leliana gestured at the door to the war room.

“Yes,” Anders said.

“No,” Amell said, keeping his voice low. “Anders, if you go in there with me, you stay silent. You don’t have the protections I do. You’re not the Commander of the Grey. You’re not the Chancellor of Ferelden. This isn’t an arrow you can take for me.”

“... Fine,” Anders maybe lied.

“Fine?” Amell frowned.

“Fine,” Anders said.

“Fine,” Amell said.

“Well, how fine it is that we are all fine,” Leliana said brightly, waving them into the war room.

It looked more or less like Amell’s war room at Vigil’s Keep, save that it was easily twice the size. Two thrones in the back of the room overlooked the table in the center, a map of Thedas carved into the surface as opposed to just Ferelden. A wooden chandelier hung over it, decorated with the faces of snarling mabari, and tapestries with the heraldry of banns, arlings, and teyrnirs hung on the walls.

Alistair sat on one of the thrones, rapping his knuckles along the arm and scowling, but Anora was leaning carelessly against the table, drinking a glass of wine and sampling a tray of cheeses that covered Orlais. Anders didn’t know anything about politics or diplomacy but he had to imagine there was a reason Anora was on the opposite end of the room. Hopefully because she didn’t agree with the king.

“Your majesties,” Leliana purred with such overt familiarity Anders in no way believed she’d pick Amell over either monarch. She pressed a too-long kiss to Anora’s fingers and took a seat at the table nearest Alistair and the throne.

Dumat nudged Amell’s hand, and whatever motion Amell made with his hand must have meant sit, because that was what Dumat did. Amell pulled a chair out at the table, and guided Anders into it, so Anders sat too. Amell stayed standing, and looked to Alistair in place of Anora. “No Litany?”

“The day is young,” Alistair smiled thinly.

“It’s not getting younger,” Amell said - and maybe it was just Anders, but it didn’t seem like the most diplomatic way to start.

“Thank you for joining us, Chancellor,” Anora said politely. “We seem to find ourselves in a bit of a predicament.”

“Predicament,” Alistair rolled his eyes, pushing himself up from his throne to advance on Amell. “Why don’t you try disaster? Catastrophe?”

“Fiasco?” Anders’ mouth said without his consent, his grip on the arms of his chair getting tighter with every step Alistair took towards Amell.

“Anders-” Amell sighed.

Alistair started like he just realized he was there, “Who the fuck is this?”

“The Warden who took the arrow for Amell?” Leliana introduced him. “Their courtship was announced last month?”

Alistair looked him over, some of the hostility fading from his expression, but Anders didn’t want his pity anymore than he’d wanted Leliana’s. “You look pretty bad.”

“Yeah,” Anders frowned. “I ate an arrow, remember?”

“... You should try the cheese instead,” Alistair said.

“Excuse me?” Anders’ frown deepened.

“It tastes better,” Alistair joked.

“Thanks,” Anders said flatly. “Next time a foreign Viscount and his mercenaries attack your Chancellor outside your palace after getting past your guards I’ll make sure to remember a chaser for the poison. How’s the wine? What goes best with Quiet Death? Red or white?”

“The white, I imagine,” Anora interjected with an easy smile, tipping her glass at him.

Amell squeezed his shoulder and Anders swallowed a retort. It hurt to swallow, and it hurt to talk, but the thought that Kieran’s prediction of Amell falling for him might be a lot less romantic than Anders had assumed hurt more. The way Alistair looked at Amell - like he was something foul on the bottom of his boot he couldn’t wait to wash away - made Anders feel so feral it was a miracle Anders could stop at all.

Alistair turned that damn look back to Amell, and Anders chewed on his lip to keep silent.

“Amell, do you have any idea what a disaster this is?” Alistair demanded.

“I’m sure you’ll tell me,” Amell said.

“You rose the dead!” Alistair hissed. “In the middle of the street!”

“They died in the street,” Amell shot back.

“That doesn’t mean you raise them there!” Alistair dragged a hand through his hair, knocking off his crown and catching it in the same motion. “Andraste’s flaming sword, Amell, this isn’t Nevarra. Your stunt with the cetus was bad enough, but this-”

“Is an opportunity,” Anora cut him off, toying with a piece of cheese like she held all of Ferelden between her fingers. “To show the dangers of magic and the strength of those who possess it. We need to use this while it lives in the hearts and minds of those who witnessed it and show them what comes of threats to the crown.”

“Threats to the crown,” Alistair scoffed, tossing said crown on to the table. “What about threats to the people!? Demons, Anora! Did you miss the demons?”

“Commander Tavish has the Tear under control,” Amell said.

“A templar!” Alistair spread his arms wide. “Surprise! You think that’s going to help us when the Chantry comes calling about this? What am I supposed to tell them, Amell? How am I supposed to prove mages don’t need oversight when the most famous mage of them all is out here summoning demons in the streets?”

“You know I didn’t summon them,” Amell said.

“Do I?” Alistair sneered. “Do I know that? What else do I know, Amell? You tell me, since apparently you know everything.”

“I know you’re acting like a child,” Amell said.

“I’m acting like a king!” Alistair snapped. “A king who’s people you threatened when you lost control just like the Chantry-”

“Do not-” Amell started.

“-says,” Alistair finished.

Amell took a deep breath, and flexed the fingers of the hand that wasn’t resting on Anders’ shoulder. “You’ve never seen me lose control.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Alistair laughed mockingly. “Telling me it could have been worse? I can’t prove we don’t need templars if you keep making me use them!”

“I asked Tavish to handle it,” Amell pressed his free hand to his chest, “Not you. He’s there on my orders-”

“You didn’t do anything!” Alistair cut him off. “You made a mess, and you left me to clean it up for you, like you always do! First Starkhaven and now you want to start a war with Kirkwall?”

“No one is speaking of war,” Anora said patiently.

“Aren’t we?” Alistair demanded, spinning in a circle to look between Anora and Leliana. “What do you think the Divine is going to do when she finds out about this? What is Leliana supposed to say to her? Andraste’s grace, Amell, it’s like you want an Exalted March.”

“We are not there yet,” Leliana promised from her corner.

“If we had any mages in the city I wouldn’t have had to ask templars,” Amell said. “I told you to open a university in Denerim-”

“Not again,” Alistair groaned, pacing away from him and dragging his hands through his hair.

“The Chancellor has a fair point, your majesty,” Anora said. “The University of Orlais already sets a precedent for free study. Mages should have somewhere to learn that’s not a Circle. Markham, Starkhaven, all the free cities except for Kirkwall-”

“A university,” Alistair scoffed, whirling back around. “How is a university going to help? Is a university going to teach Amell not to summon demons or unleash undead on the city? Is a university going to teach him to think about the consequences of his actions for once in his damn life?”

“Why am I not surprised you don’t see the value in education?” Amell asked.

“Call me stupid, real mature, Amell,” Alistair said. “Remind me, which one of us thought it was a good idea to out himself as a maleficar?”

“We should open a university for mages so we don’t have to use templars,” Amell tried again. “Celene-”

“Fuck Celene! We wouldn’t need any templars or mages if you hadn’t torn the Veil!” Alistair’s pacing him took him dangerously close to Amell, and Anders started to stand up, but Amell’s hand on his shoulder pushed him back into his chair. “We should be calling you Ferelden’s Shame instead of its Hero.”

“Seems like Ferelden already has one,” Anders muttered under his breath, and it was probably a small mercy his throat was so torn no one heard him.

“But it is torn,” Anora said. “And it falls to us to make the best of it. An announcement at court, one that firmly supports the Chancellor’s actions, and makes it clear they were undertaken on behalf of the crown.”

“Behalf of the-” Alistair wheezed. “You’re joking. I married a jokester. You and your jokes, my jokey, jokey wife.”

“Anything less sows division,” Anora frowned.

“I think we’re plenty divided already, don’t you?” Alistair asked snidely.

“Division among the nobility,” Anora said. “Which we cannot afford. With a gentle application of persuasion-”

“Blood magic,” Alistair translated, one hand on his hip and the other dragging across his jaw. “Just say blood magic. Why don’t we all just say blood magic? Go ahead. Go on. Blood magic. Blood magic, blood magic, blood magic.”

“Blood magic,” Anders said.

“With a gentle application of persuasion,” Anora stressed the word. “We can ensure the right response.”

“Which is?” Alistair asked. “A bunch of drooling mind-controlled simpletons in the throne room?”

“What’s a few more?” Amell asked.

“Are you talking about me?” Alistair guessed. “You’re talking about me, aren’t you? Maker, I hate you so much. You think you can just get away with everything, don’t you? Maybe if you could see the damage you caused you’d know how serious this is.”

“Don’t bring his sight into this, you bast-” Anders started again, and Amell pushed him back into his chair again.

“Bastard, right?” Alistair finished for him. “No, go ahead. I’m sure no one has ever called me that before.”

“Don’t bring him into this,” Amell said.

“You brought him into this,” Alistair thrust an accusatory finger into Amell’s chest. “You brought another mage into your mess. You don’t get to have him on one arm and hide him with the other. If he’s part of this-”

“I brought him back from the dead, holding his throat together while he bled out in the streets, and I did it with a dozen undead at my command,” Amell grabbed Alistair’s wrist, and a surge of telekinetic energy kept Alistair from pulling away. “I swear, Alistair, you have not seen me lose control but you will if you keep threatening my family. Do. Not. Talk. To him.”

“Then maybe you should tell him to stop talking to me,” Alistair suggested, opting for a step closer when he couldn’t take a step back. “I don’t need you anymore, Amell, but you still need me. Your family is all magic.”

“You haven’t seen magic,” Amell warned him.

“Enough,” Anora finally abandoned her tray of cheeses to join them. A supportive squeeze of Amell’s shoulder dispelled the binding around Alistair’s wrist, and pulled him back a pace. “We all want the same things. Free mages and a firm monarchy and we cannot have one without the other.”

“Really?” Alistair said. “Because the rest of Thedas seems to be doing just fine.”

“We are not the rest of Thedas,” Anora said. “Magic built this country. The Theirin line - your line - has always supported magic. Calenhad would not be Great if Aldenon had not been Wise.”

“Well I’m not great and Amell’s not wise,” Alistair said. “Not that someone needs a reason, but why did the Viscount even attack you? He’s your cousin, isn’t he? What did you do this time? Sacrifice his sister? Bind a demon to his dog? It’s just your face, isn’t it? You just have that kind of face.”

“The Viscount of Kirkwall - the nexus of all trade that flows between the Free Marches and Ferelden - shot the man I love and you want to tell a joke,” Amell said flatly. “Are you waiting for me to laugh?”

“Couldn’t hurt,” Alistair mumbled.

“Threaten my family again. Tell me Kieran belongs in the Circle. Do it without the Litany,” Amell suggested. “Give me something to laugh about.”

“Regicide rears its ugly head again!” Alistair said mockingly. “You know, actually, with your laugh, it’s probably for the best you don’t.”

“Are we done?” Amell asked.

“We’re done when I say we’re done!” Alistair yelled, grabbing a fistful of Amell’s undershirt. Anders knocked his chair over with how fast he stood up to shove Alistair back. There wasn’t any strength in it. Anders didn’t have any left, but it didn’t seem to matter. Alistair looked so shocked Anders had touched him that he let go almost immediately to gawk at him.

“Don’t touch him,” Anders whispered in the awkward silence that followed. “I’m not going to stand back and watch you beat him again.”

“Beat him?” Leliana blinked, glancing between the three of them. “Did he say ‘beat him’? What do you mean ‘beat him’?”

“I didn’t beat him-” Alistair sputtered.

“Anders-” Amell pinched the bridge of his nose with a strained sigh.

“Well what did you do, then?” Leliana asked. “Why is he saying you beat him?”

“It was one punch!” Alistair said.

“You punched him?” Leliana asked.

“He told me to die childless!” Alistair protested.

“Alistair, he can’t see!” Leliana sounded aghast. “You can’t punch him!”

“Well it’s too late now, isn’t it?” Alistair said.

“Well you can’t punch him again!” Leliana said.

“Like I’ve never punched him before!”

“He could see before!”

“It was a fight! We fight! That’s what we do! He still has magic-”

“And did he use it?”

“Yes! He started it! He’s the one who cast a mind blast-”

“You were tormenting him!” Anders argued.

“Tormenting,” Alistair scoffed. “How? By stopping him from using blood magic?”

“He sees with blood magic!” Anders tried to yell, but it came out as a hoarse whisper he was surprised Alistair even heard.

Alistair didn’t have any trouble yelling back at him, “He does everything with blood magic!”

“To our mutual benefit,” Anora righted Anders’ downed chair, and gently guided Anders away from Alistair and back to Amell’s side. “Alistair -... dear husband,” Anora said in a way that made Alistair sound not so very dear at all. “We have been traveling this road for six years; it is too late to take the high one now.”

“Don’t make me part of this,” Alistair said. “I’ve never asked Amell to handle my problems with blood magic.”

“You never have to,” Anora said patiently. “I ask him for you.”

“You what?” Alistair asked.

“How do you think we got the bannorn to accept a bastard?” Anora asked. “What did you think we were doing in the six months after your coronation?”

“Not mind-controlling the entire kingdom!” Alistair shouted, one hand lost to his hair and the other waving wildly between Amell and Anora. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you. You didn’t trust me, did you? You think I couldn’t have convinced the nobility to stand behind me without you forcing them? Did you even give them a chance, or did you just break them on the spot? You know what, don’t answer that, I already know.”

Alistair paced circles around the war room, dragging his hands through his hair and down his face, a high-pitched laugh escaping him every few steps.

“Yes, the Chancellor should have come to see us sooner,” Anora picked up the argument from where they left off, evidently ignoring Alistair’s breakdown. “And I am sure he will make us a priority in the future, but your majesty’s grief kept you from the kingdom for half a year, whereas the Chancellor’s kept him for half a fortnight, and you must-”

“No,” Alistair stopped pacing and set his hands on the war table, swallowing up Ferelden. “No. No. There’s nothing I must. He doesn’t get to get out of this. Tell me why he tried to kill you. Tell me he didn’t have a good reason.”

“It wasn’t his fault-” Anders started.

“Yes it was,” Amell squeezed his arm, hard, and Anders stopped talking. “I slighted him.”

“Of course you did,” Alistair shook his head. “It’s what you do. You go, and you talk, and you trick people into throwing the first punch so you look like the victim. What for, Amell? What did you do? What did you want? Tariffs? Like Amaranthine doesn’t get enough trade?”

“Do you care?” Amell asked.

“No,” Alistair said. “I care about the mess you left me, starting with the Tear in the Veil and the templars guarding it and the mages we have to bring in from Kinloch to close it and how I’m supposed to explain all of this to the Divine.”

“I’ll close it,” Anders said.

“What?” Alistair gaped at him.

“What?” Amell agreed.

“I said I’ll close it,” Anders said, as loud as he could. “Warden business. Then you don’t owe the Divine anything.”

“I-...” Alistair dragged a hand down his face like he wanted to reset his expression, but all he managed to do was trade confusion for more confusion. “What?”

“Anders-...” Amell trailed off, his jaw working like he was trying to chew his confusion into words. “... Thank you, but-”

“I’ll close it,” Anders said firmly. “I can close it, alright? Are we good? Anything else? You want an apple pie while I’m at it?”

“No, we’re not good,” Alistair said. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe a word either of you say until you prove it. Amell tore the Veil and until you close it Amell answers for it.”

“He doesn’t answer to you,” Anders argued - Amell was a Warden. Wardens answered to Weisshaupt. Alistair shouldn’t have been able to do anything to him. “He’s the bloody Commander-”

“He’s my Chancellor,” Alistair snarled, shoving his thumb into his chest and denting leather armor. “He’s my Arl. This is my country. He wouldn’t be the first Commander of the Grey to lose to a Theirin. He’s staying at the palace, and he’s not going anywhere until the Tear is closed, and if Leliana has to tell the Divine that the templars helped the Circle close it, then he’s taking the fall for it.”

“You can’t do that!” Anders whispered. Anders hated that he whispered. He meant to scream. He deserved to scream. He’d spent enough of his life being silenced without having his voice taken from him - but Hawke had taken everything from him. Anders was tired of having things taken from him - and he’d be damned if Alistair took Amell when the only thing Amell took was blame.

“Anders…” Amell set a guiding hand to his cheek, and turned his head to look at him and not Alistair. “Yes, he can.”

Amell was still a mess. His hair still disheveled, his skin still ashen, his clothes still crumpled, but his eyes and the flow of crimson in them was as sure and steady and selfless as always, but Anders didn’t want selfless. He’d had five bloody years of selflessness, and he wanted to be selfish again.

“No he can’t,” Anders said. His voice was still low, but as long as Amell heard him, Anders didn’t care about the rest. “I won’t let him. I’m going to close the tear, and I’m going to come back, and we’re going home. We’re going back to Vigil’s Keep. We’re Wardens. I’m your Warden.”

“Anders-”

“I’m your Warden,” Anders rested his forehead against Amell’s. “I’m yours. I’m your Warden.”

Chapter 177: Too Much Emotion

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Thank you to PastelPlugins who wrote much of Alistair's dialogue for this chapter :)

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 29 Parvulis Late Afternoon
Ferelden: Denerim Palace District

Close the tear.

Anders could close the tear.

How hard could it be?

The side-street was awash in emerald light, echoes of the Fade casting shadows on yellow stone walls. Reflections of Rage shifted across dirty window panes, reeds replacing cobblestone, and at the right angle, the Black City could be seen behind the clouds. The tear was the same size as the ones Anders had closed all those years ago in the Blackmarsh, but he hadn’t closed them as Anders.

He’d closed them as Justice. He was still Justice, so it stood to reason he could still close them, but Anders had never tried. Justice had never tried. Anders and Justice had never tried as Anders and Justice. Templars were stationed at either end of the alley, watching for demons, and let them pass with salutes that seemed almost mocking, but Anders was past caring what anyone thought of him. No one could say anything worse than the things Hawke had said.

Anders pushed the thought away and cracked his knuckles, staring at the tear and the Fade that lay beyond it. It was just magic, really. Too much magic. Too much emotion. Anders could still feel the Rage that had caused it, making him tense and twitch for its influence. Wisps called from across the Veil, every so often, quiet whispers of “I’ll kill you,” echoing Amell’s spell in the far corners of the street.

Anders ran his fingers along the tear and watched the magic ripple at his touch. Excited wisps gathered at his presence, pulling apart facets of his self. Uncertainty. Determination. Desperation. Siphoning his memories and echoing Amell’s words to him before he’d fallen unconscious. “I’ve got you. I love you. I won’t ever let you die.”

“I love you,” One of the wisps echoed Amell’s voice from across the Veil, manifesting into the emotion. “I love you. I love you.”

Love reached up to mirror his touch from the opposite side of the Veil, and the longer Anders stared at them the more like Amell they looked. “You’re my Calling,” Love smiled, shifting through his memories and the flood of emotion that had torn the Veil. “Do you have any idea how strong you are?”

“... pretty strong, I guess,” Anders couldn’t help smiling back at them, simultaneously surprised and relieved the newly formed spirit didn’t step through the tear and into a templar’s smite. “... Don’t suppose you know how to close this?”

“You’re so beautiful,” Love offered unhelpfully.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say,” Anders sighed.

Anders tried to recall what he remembered of Justice closing the tears in the Blackmarsh, but he’d never asked how Justice had managed it. Justice had stepped into the tear, flooded it with energy, and the tear had ceased to exist. Anders didn’t think ‘more magic’ was the answer to mending the rift, but it was the only answer he had.

Anders stepped into the center of the tear and felt like he’d stepped into the Fade. The rush of mana that welcomed him came paired with a clearer image of Love. Ink-black hair, scarred skin, and blood red eyes lined in heavy shadows. Proud. Defiant. Perfect. “You sure that’s the form you want?” Anders cleared his aching throat. “You know you can pick anything.”

Love apparently wanted Amell. Anders couldn’t blame them. Wisps, spirits, and demons were drawn to intense emotions, and everything he felt for Amell was nothing if not intense. Anders couldn’t pretend he didn’t feel it. The spirit staring back at him was a living testament to everything Amell meant to him.

It was autumn, and Amell had been wearing long sleeves when Hawke had attacked them, but they melted away in favor of bare arms. Love stretched them across their lean chest, massaging a myriad of casting scars as they settled into the form. “They look fine,” Love promised with Anders’ voice, in the highest praise Anders had ever managed five years ago. “You know? Whatever.”

“You should probably stick to things Amell says,” Anders suggested, bottling up his shame. He could have done without another vintage, but apparently this year was that kind of harvest. “He’s better at… you know, you, than I am.”

Anders channelled a panacea, and let the benevolent energies flood the tear while Love watched, seemingly captivated. “It’s good magic,” Love said. “It’s better magic.”

“Little distracting,” Anders said, able to speak evenly with the aid of magic.

“Do you want a distraction?” Love grinned, and damned if they weren’t spot on for Amell’s voice, Amell’s smirk, the cocky tilt to Amell’s head whenever he was flirting.

“Okay, now you’re being very distracting,” Anders frowned, pouring more mana into his panacea and praying he wasn’t on his way to making the tear even worse. “Listen, it’s fine if you want to go through my memories but no flirting.”

“I love you,” Love protested.

“Yeah, I know,” Anders stared at the manifestation of Amell, of everything Amell felt for him, formed, somehow, amidst all of the rage and grief and desperation of their lives, and damned if he wasn’t tired of talking to echoes. “I love you too.”

Anders heard the rip of fabric with the words, and the Veil tore down the street, painting the walls in emerald. Anders cut off his spell in a panic, but the damage was already done, and the tear was already worse. “Bloody blight, how the-” Anders muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. Of course. Of course it was worse. Why wouldn’t it be worse? Why had Anders thought admitting his love for Amell in the middle of a tear was a good idea? “Shit.”

“We’re more than our mistakes,” Love said helpfully.

“This is a pretty big mistake, Love,” Anders sighed.

The emerald filament of the Veil rippled and bubbled with Rage as one of the demons slithered towards the mortal realm. “I’ll kill you!” The demon roar was abruptly cut off by a hasty dispel that sealed the rupture point and kept it from crossing, but Anders didn’t know how many more dispels he had in him.

Maker, this was a mistake. Anders didn’t have the energy or the strength to do whatever he was trying to do even if he knew how to do it. Amell needed his help and he was only making things worse. Anders always made things worse. Amell only needed his help getting out of trouble when Anders was the one who’d gotten him into it. The Turnobles, Rylock, Danarius, Hawke. Anders wouldn’t have been surprised if it turned out the Harvesters were his fault too.

Amell deserved someone better, but if he didn’t want someone better, then Anders would just have to be someone better. “Little help here, Justice?” Anders stared at the veins on the back of his hand, willing veilfire to split them. “Come on, I know you know how to do this.”

“Once,” Justice said cautiously, reaching for the Fade, and all the memories therein. He missed it, on occasion, though he wouldn’t trade anything for the life and love he’d found in Anders, as Anders, in what they were together. The unity, the intimacy, of two souls bound to one purpose.

Love, yes, but Justice more so. The tear in the Veil was a threat to their cause. It was of no consequence if that threat was to just one mage or all of them. Amell shouldn’t have been blamed for his magic. The templars shouldn’t have been credited with containing it. Mages should have been free to watch over themselves, yet Amell had no mage to watch over him but them.

Love’s red eyes went wide and bled together with amber when Justice stepped forward. They pressed upon the Veil with all the eagerness of Oghren’s son at the window of a candy shop, but didn’t cross. “You’re a spirit!” Love copied Anders’ voice, Anders’ words from long ago, when Anders had healed their soul from the damage Merrill had done to it. “A virtue. You’re me!”

“... Yes,” Justice supposed, relieved Love stayed within the Fade. A Tear was… a tragic thing. Spirits drawn to the mortal world, unprepared for their crossing, and corrupted in the process. Justice would never have survived his own if not for Sigrun and Anders’ willingness to help him make sense of the world and his place in it.

“That makes two of us,” Love siphoned through his memories of Anders, pulling upon his radiant soul, his effervescent smile, his ever-present desire to love and be loved, “One of us? Whatever.”

“I’m glad you found your purpose,” Justice said, drawing raw energy from the Fade to force into the rift and collapse it in on itself.

It wasn’t as simple as it had been, once upon a time, when Justice had been fresh from the Fade, and able to call upon it with no influence from the world of mortals. In the time it took to channel more wisps sought their purpose in the memories of the moment that had birthed the tear. “Hate me,” One of the wisps pulled from Hawke’s presence. “Make me your demon.”

Obsession manifested, their form a corrupted version of Hawke, a crown of red lyrium horns breaking through greying hair. Glowing red eyes pierced the very Veil, bleeding into the emerald light cast through the side-street. “You’re mine,” Obsession dragged clawed hands along the Veil, all too reminiscent of the man they mirrored. “You’re mine, and you always will be.”

Love glanced between their efforts to mend the Veil and Obsession’s clear intent to cross it - and seemed to sense the threat. “If you’re going to go, go now,” Love cautioned. The Fade on the other side of the Veil shifted and warped, throwing Obsession across the demesne and away from the tear. “This is the only chance I can give you.”

“Thank you,” Justice could no more stand against Obsession than he could against Hawke, focused as he was on his spell. He poured more energy into the tear, until it was overflowing with magic from both sides of the Veil. “You are stronger than other virtues ever could be.”

“You think I’d let him take you from me?” Obsession snarled, picking themselves up and sprinting back across the demesne. “I’ll kill him first.”

"I'll kill you," Love shot back, setting themselves between him and Obsession, and a final surge of energy collapsed the tear. The magic rebounded in an explosion of dust and magic that rattled windows and doors. Leaves fell from the branches of potted trees and vines snapped free of the walls, dirt and ash ripping up from the cobblestone and into the air. The maelstrom of energy swept through the side-street, and abruptly dissipated, as if it had never been.

Templars swarmed into the side-street at the collapse of the tear, assailing them with questions in place of smites. They were still terrifying, still templars, whether or not their swords were drawn, and neither Justice nor Anders had any answers for them. It wasn’t as if they could explain their connection to the Fade and their ability to control it was because they were born from it.

“Warden business,” Anders repeated, until the words lost all meaning and his throat was burning. Anders shoved his way through a storm of purple skirts and out of the alley. A few of the templars made to follow him, still full of questions, and Anders bolted.

He ran as far as he could, but he was too exhausted to make it back to the palace, and ended up collapsing on the steps to the inner courtyard to catch his breath. The templars were gone. Hawke was gone. Even the tear was gone. Anders was safe. Justice was safe. Anders leaned back against the balusters, hugging one leg to his chest, and trying to feel safe.

"Thank you,” Anders whispered to himself, and earned a bewildered look from a passing noble. “At least today can’t get any worse,” Anders supposed, though it wasn’t exactly today. Days had passed in what felt like hours when Anders had spent most of them unconscious. Miserable, miserable hours. “At some point we have to run out of bad luck and move onto good, right? I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

… yes he did. For all of his horrors, Hawke had been right about one thing. There was no limit to what Hawke would do and there was no limit to what Anders could take. He wasn’t mortal. He wasn’t bound by mortal constraints. So long as he was Justice, there was nothing he wouldn’t do or couldn’t take in pursuit of it. If it was for the betterment of mages, of even just one mage, then Anders would do it.

Anders had done it. Anders just had to get up and tell the king that he’d done it, and Amell would be safe, but he was so bloody tired and he’d already done so fucking much and the thought of doing anything more was so soul-crushingly exhausting Anders must have fallen asleep.

The sun had moved across the sky when he woke. He must have lost hours. Amell had to have been worried about him. There were a handful of coppers in his hand, and some passing noble must have taken him for a vagrant and taken pity on him. Anders stuffed them into his boot, and jogged back to the palace where a servant received him and his anger when they didn’t take him straight to the king.

“The King is not to be disturbed, messere,” The servant apologized.

“I’m going to disturb him, alright,” Anders paced through the grand hall, trying not to panic for fear of whatever Alistair had done in his absence. “Where is he?”

“He’s with the Chancellor, Warden,” The servant said.

“You know another one of the Chancellor’s titles? It’s Commander. As in Warden Commander. As in my Commander. Where is he?” Anders demanded in the barest of whispers that was apparently more terrifying than the loudest of yells. The servant stammered through apologies in place of answers, and Anders shoved past them. “You know what, nevermind, I’ll find him myself.”

Anders followed the pull of Amell’s blood through the palace, unaccosted either for his status as a Warden or as Amell’s paramour or both. Amell’s blood led him to a solar on the third story with two guards posted outside the doors, politely pretending they couldn’t hear the fighting taking place inside.

“-hours ago, Alistair!” Amell was yelling. Maker, Anders missed yelling. “He just had his throat torn out. I told you he needed an honor guard-”

“Honor?” Alistair laughed scathingly. “There is no honor among Wardens. You made sure of that.”

“Anders isn’t Loghain!”

“Is this the part where you tell me he’s a good man? You wouldn’t know a good man if-... if-...”

“If what?”

“Shut up,” Alistair snapped. “I’ll think of something.”

“You never think of anything!” Anders still wasn’t used to the way Amell fought with Alistair. Amell never fought with anyone. Amell scoffed, and the sound was so callous it chilled. “I got us through the Blight, I kept you on the throne, I-”

“-If he fucked you in the ass!”

“... what?”

“You wouldn’t know a good man if he fucked you in the ass!”

“It took you that long to come up with that?”

“Fuck you,” Alistair said.

“Why?” Amell scoffed again. “So you can prove you’re a good man?”

The guards let Anders pass, either on some prior orders or because of his status, and Anders pushed open the doors to the solar. The narrow room was one of cushioned comfort overlooking the grounds, but there was nothing comforting about being in it. Panelled walls covered with tapestries depicted the alliance of Calenhad the Great and Aldenon the Wise, and couldn’t have been further from the scene Anders had interrupted.

By the look of them, Alistair and Amell were seconds away from trading blows. Even Dumat was growling. The tension in the air was so thick Anders felt like he was wading through it, every step slow and leaden as he made his way inside. The two men took a step back from each other when he entered, and Alistair waved a hand at Anders Amell couldn’t see. “See? He’s fine.”

Anders skirted the marble table in the center of the room to pull Amell away from the king, “Define fine.”

“What happened?” Amell let himself be pulled, and seemed to forget Alistair existed. He ran anxious hands over Anders’ chest like he expected to find another hole in him, and Anders caught and held them.

“I forgot the apple pie,” Anders joked. “Took care of the tear, though. Anders to the rescue.”

“You took care of it hours ago,” Amell corrected him. “What kept you?”

“I’d like to hear how you took care of it,” Alistair interjected.

“I bet you would,” Anders muttered, but Alistair didn’t seem to hear him. Anders raised his voice and cleared his throat, “Warden business, remember?”

“I’m still King, aren’t I?” Alistair asked. “Did you miss the part where I’m King? Because it seems like you missed the part where I’m King, as your king, I’m ordering you to tell me how you took care of the tear in the Veil without any other mages or templars or lyrium to help you. I swear, if you sacrificed someone-”

“I told you not to talk to him,” Amell cut him off before Anders could say anything, turning back to Alistair. “You can’t order him to do anything. He doesn’t owe you his allegiance. None of my Wardens do. They’re my Wardens, not yours, and the tear is Warden business, not yours.”

“Don’t talk to me about Warden business,” Alistair rolled his eyes. “I am a Warden-”

“You’re a deserter,” Amell said - with such a palpable disgust Anders couldn’t help but wince. If ever there was a defensible reason to desert, ruling a kingdom seemed like one of them. By his venom, Amell didn’t seem to think so, even though Amell had been the one to make Alistair King.

Anders tried to shake it off, but he couldn’t. Anders had deserted - and he didn’t have half as good a reason as Alistair - and the thought of Amell thinking the same of him hurt more than Anders was ready for it to hurt.

“You deserted me!” Alistair shouted, thrusting a finger into Amell’s chest.

Amell smacked his hand off, “Get your hand off me.”

“Why? Are you going to tell Leliana I beat you again? You’re the one who hurts people, Amell! Not me! You took everything from me!” Alistair shoved his finger into his own chest instead, and started counting off Amell’s sins on his fingers. “My revenge, the wardens-...”

“You left the wardens!” Amell snarled.

“Maker, you even took the dog!” Alistair threw up his hands. “You took him just to kill him! Who does that!? Who takes a man’s dog?”

“Barkspawn wasn’t yours-!”

“And then you left me! You just - you just left me here! My whole life upended to serve your purposes, to rot in this castle, to make a fool of myself in front of everyone at court everytime you speak-” Alistair stopped his rant to pinch the bridge of his nose, like he was giving himself a headache from screaming, but instead of stopping, his solution seemed to be to scream louder. “To-... to-... to what, Amell!? To have a quill ready to sign off on whatever fool cause you’re championing that day!? To take up as little space in your life as possible until it’s convenient for you!? Is that what!?”

“Are you done?” Amell asked - and the way he said it was so cold, so detached, so familiar, Anders felt sick. It wasn’t familiar. It wasn’t familiar at all. It was Amell, and Amell wasn’t Hawke, and Alistair wasn’t Anders, and Anders knew that - Maker, he knew that - but he couldn’t stand the way Amell said it. Anders took an unsteady step back from him and laced his hands over his head, forcing himself to breathe, but the air wouldn’t come.

“No!” Alistair grabbed a handful of Amell’s tunic, and Anders knew he should have stopped him, but he still couldn’t breathe. “Tell me!”

“Tell you what, Alistair?” Amell asked.

Alistair’s grip went slack on Amell’s tunic, and his eyes fell from his face, “Tell me when you decided I was just another means to an end.”

“Everyone is a means to an end when it’s the end of the world,” Amell said.

“The greater good,” Alistair let go of Amell to run his hands through his hair, laughing. “There is no greater good, Amell. There’s good, and there’s bad, and there’s you, pretending you know which is which.”

Amell opened his mouth to say something, something scathing, something vicious, something Anders couldn’t stand to hear him say.

“I’m possessed,” Anders blurted.

Alistair must not have heard him, “What?”

“I’m possessed,” Anders repeated, a panacea helping the pain in his throat when he raised his voice. “That’s how I closed the rift. There wasn’t any horrific ritual with kittens or virgins or anything like that. Justice closed it - my spirit closed it.”

“... Spirits can do that?” Alistair scratched at his scalp, spiking short blonde hair. “... the Order never taught us spirits could do that.”

“Surprise,” Anders held up his hands and wiggled his fingers. “The Chantry lied.”

“... That’s not really a surprise,” Alistair said with a wan sort of grin.

“Yeah, well, glad your world’s not falling apart,” Anders said.

“Well, it’s not Tuesday,” Alistair said, and all at once his anger seemed to defuse. He took in the two of them, and finally seemed to realize the state of them. “... Ah-... I imagine you could use another fortnight to recover, but I can’t give you the luxury. With all the assassins and demons we had to call off the melee, and now we have bigger problems.”

“Bigger than assassins and demons?” Anders whispered.

“Abductions,” Alistair said. “Freeholders in West Hill have been going missing since you s-... since Bann Franderel died. We’ve been trying to keep it under the rug, but I guess we need a bigger rug. Word got out and now the people are saying the bannorn is cursed. Half of the contenders for the Grand Melee have dropped out and I don’t trust the ones who’ve stayed. I need you to take care of it.”

“Of course you do,” Amell rolled his eyes.

“You did this, Amell,” Alistair said. “You fix it.”

“You think I'm abducting freeholders?” Amell asked.

“I think you’re the Warden Commander of Ferelden, and abductions could be darkspawn, and this is your responsibility.”

“I don’t need you to tell me what my responsibilities are as a Warden. I’ve never abandoned them. We haven’t had any sightings of darkspawn in West Hill.”

“Aside from the ‘Harvester’ you killed three months ago?” Alistair asked sarcastically.

“Aside from the Harvester,” Amell said stubbornly.

“It has to be darkspawn, Amell,” Alistair said.

“... why?” Amell asked, losing some of the tension in his shoulders when the two of them finally started talking about the country instead of each other.

“It just has to be,” Alistair said. “There’ve been sightings of dwarves with the disappearances. I don’t know if it’s the Carta, Tevinter, Bhelen, or Branka, and I don’t want to know. People are already saying Ferelden is the next Tevinter. If there’s some kind of slaving ring in the bannorns now, we won’t last the year before the Divine marches on us.”

“And the sanctions on Kirkwall?”

“I’ll sign them. It’s not like you gave me a choice. It’s not like you ever did.”

Amell agreed to look into the disappearances, and Alistair finally let him go. It was encroaching on evening by the time they made it back to the compound. Anders still hadn’t had anything to eat or drink beyond Amell’s potion, and wasn’t sure he could bring himself to when the scent of old vomit assaulted him as soon as he set foot back in Amell’s room.

“I should clean this up before Dumat eats it,” Anders couldn't believe he'd made so many messes in one day. Or one week. Or one whatever. “I-... might have thrown up in the washroom when you left.”

"Are you sick?" Amell asked.

“Well I’m not well,” Anders said, hanging up his coat in the armoire.

“Should I get you another healer?” Amell offered.

Anders glanced over his shoulder at him, “What for?”

Amell set his staff in the stand by the door, “If you’re throwing up-”

“I throw up all the time,” Anders waved him off. “Stress does that, you know.”

“How is your throat?” Amell crossed the room to wrap his hands around his neck, and on some level Anders felt like it should have triggered him the way everything seemed to trigger him. Raised voices, wrong phrases, clenched fists, quick steps. Bloody baths. Fucking food. Amell’s fingers traced the entry and exit wounds from Hawke’s arrow, and it didn’t trigger him at all.

“You know,” Anders shrugged. If he was being honest with himself, he probably should have been resting, drinking only fluids, and not talking, but… well… fuck it. “Bad. Talking’s not fun, which is a shame, because I don’t know how to stop.”

“We don’t have to talk,” Amell promised.

“I spent the past five years not talking to you,” Anders said. “I’m done with that. I want us to talk. I need us to talk… I just don’t know where to start."

"Take your time," Amell said. “I’ll get you a restorative draft and something to eat."

Amell left. Anders scrubbed caked vomit off the stone floors of his washroom, and somehow managed not to vomit all over again. It didn’t do much for his appetite, but Anders had spent the past week surviving off the Taint and Amell’s ancient elven potion and he had to eat something eventually. A servant came back with Amell with the usual overabundance of food that befitted a Warden: roast grouse with blackberries, potato galette, cabbage salad, some kind of soup, and a kettle’s worth of tea, and Anders decided he was hungry after all.

Amell’s quarters in Denerim had a slightly different set up than his quarters at the Vigil. They were smaller, sparser, a corner table with mismatched chairs, considering one had only recently been added for Anders. Eating was… not fun. Anything of substance hurt to swallow, and it took him half the meal to figure out he needed to drink between each bite.

"Did you find out what happened to Fenris or Isabela?" Anders asked, favoring his soup but still unable to identify it.

"They were being held for harassing the Viscount and Hahren of Kirkwall," Amell explained. "Anora agreed to have them released - considering what happened. They went back to the docks to make sure Isabela’s crew didn't desert."

The fact that Fenris and Isabela weren’t immediately deported to Kirkwall was probably the only good thing to come out of Hawke’s insanity, but Anders couldn’t bring himself to savor it. They’d been locked up for over a week, and Anders wouldn’t have blamed her crew if they had deserted, but Amell probably would. “Did you mean it?” Anders asked. “What you said to Alistair about being a deserter?"

"Of course I meant it,” Amell said with so little hesitation it hurt. “Only a Grey Warden can kill an archdemon, and there were only four in all of Ferelden when the archdemon laid siege to Denerim. Alistair quit the field when we needed him most. He was so obsessed with getting revenge on Loghain he became him. Why do you ask?"

Anders toyed with his spoon, scooping up soup and spilling it back into his bowl, "... I deserted too, you know."

"Anders-... “ Amell set his utensils aside and squeezed his shoulder. “The Constable tried to have you killed. It's not the same."

It was close enough. If anyone could understand the need for vengeance it was Anders. "What if she hadn't? What if I'd just left?"

"... It's not a Blight,” Amell said, and Anders wasn’t sure whether or not it was a good thing it took him time to say. “I could never hate you, Anders."

"You hate Alistair. I just-... what if one day my cause jeopardizes the Wardens?” Anders thought of Love - of how Love hadn’t formed until Anders had touched the Veil - of how Love had been Amell - of how Love had always been Amell, and felt sick to his stomach at the thought of Amell being anything else. “We're not supposed to be involved in politics, but what am I doing with my manifesto and my lectures at the Circle?"

"Anders… I'm the Chancellor of Ferelden,” The corner of Amell’s lips twitched into a smile, and Anders tried to take heart in it. “I think we both know Wardens get involved in politics all the time."

"What happens when politics aren't enough? You're the only thing keeping the Circles autonomous, and the King knows it. He can just send you on mission after mission, and it never ends. It has to end. There has to be a way to end it - and I can't see it ending in anything other than violence."

"We don't need violence if we can establish a Circle outside the Chantry’s grasp."

"The king already refused to start a university."

"There are other kings,” Amell said dismissively. “I've been trying to convince the King Bhelen to start a free Circle with ease of access to Orzammar's lyrium - and if dwarves are involved in the abductions in West Hill then we have an excuse for an audience with him."

"...we?” Anders repeated. “I thought you didn't want me to talk when you're being all political. Not that that stopped me, but… well… it should have."

"Anders, if you hadn't said anything to Alistair, I'd probably be stripped of my chancellery by now. I had no idea Justice could still restore the Veil…” Amell’s smile was so full of warmth for a moment Anders forgot it was autumn. “I should have known there's nothing the two of you can't heal."

"There's a lot you don't know,” Anders abandoned his soup to take hold of Amell’s hand and kiss his knuckles. Amell clasped his chin, lightly caressing the stubble ghosting his jaw, and it would have been easy to take the night wherever Anders wanted to take it, but Amell deserved better. “I guess I owe you an explanation, huh?"

"You owe me nothing," Amell promised.

"I owe you half a hundred sovereigns by my count,” Anders half-joked. He pulled Amell’s hand off his face and held it on the table between them, and if he hadn’t known better he might have thought them both spirits for how easy it was to siphon Amell’s strength and use it to help him find the words he’d gone months without saying. “Look… the sanctions… it's not going to work. Hawke’s not going to stop. He doesn’t care about the viscounty. He owns the magistrates, the mercenaries, the mines… anyone who disagrees with him ends up with a noose around their neck. He's a bloody madman."

Amell didn’t look surprised. Anders didn’t know why he expected him to look surprised. There was nothing surprising in anything he’d said. "What would you like me to do?"

"Maker, I don't know,” Anders dragged a hand through short strands of gold. “Politics are your thing, aren't they?"

"Sanctions are politics,” Amell pointed out.

"Zevran’s an assassin, isn't he?” Anders asked. “Can't you just - you know - assassinate him?"

"A contract on a Viscount would cost at least five thousand sovereigns, Anders,” Amell said patiently. “I can't afford that - and I can't take it from the arling's treasury."

"Well-..." Anders floundered. There had to be something. He’d escaped the Circle. He’d escaped the Wardens. He’d escaped Hawke. He wasn’t about to live the rest of his life in fear of any of them.

"Are you sure you want him dead?" Amell asked.

"What kind of question is that?” Anders let go of Amell’s hand. He lost his voice - trying to yell - and had to pull on his magic to amplify it. “Of course I want him dead! He tried to kill you. Aren't you even going to ask me why?"

"No," Amell said.

"What do you mean 'no'?” Anders demanded, standing up to pace. Amell looked so enigmatic they might have been playing Wicked Grace, but this wasn’t a game. It was his life. It was their life. It was the life Anders wanted them to have together, and Amell wasn’t pushing to be part of it. “Don't you-... don't you care?"

"Of course I care, Anders. That doesn’t mean you owe me an explanation," Amell followed his pacing, a few dark locks falling in front of his eyes, and the furrow to his brow made Anders regret his outburst. Anders sat on the edge of the bed, exhausted with himself, with his throat, with Hawke, with everything but Amell. Amell pushed himself up from his chair to kneel in front of him. Amell rested a hand on his knee and looked… reverent. Almost worshipful, but Amell didn’t worship anything. "... I know he hurt you. I don't need to know more than that. You can tell me if you want to tell me, but you don't owe me your scars."

"... It was all him," Anders said. "... all of it."

"Do you want me to kill him?" Amell offered. “If he ever threatens you again?”

"... I'll kill him myself."

Chapter 178: The Climb

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you're still enjoying the story.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 16 Frumentum Mid-Morning
Ferelden: Gherlen’s Pass

“Best keep those gloves on, kid,” Oghren warned Kieran as the caravan rattled up the mountain pass. “Frozen Teeth’ll bite your fingers right off.”

Kieran put his gloves on at Oghren’s insistence without taking his eyes off the window. The frosted glass was covered with doodles. Marmots, hares, foxes, the occasional deer or mountain goat. They all looked the same to Anders. Two ovals stacked atop each other, with four lines for legs, and definitely not worth Kieran turning his fingers blue.

Aside from the occasional critter, there wasn’t much to see on the trip to the kingdom of the dwarves. Just trees. Trees, trees, and more trees - all of them dusted with white. Larch, fir, spruce, and so much pine Anders could smell it through the caravan. The higher they climbed, the more snow there was, until the ground was all but frozen over, patches of ice broken only occasionally by lichen and the hardiest of mosses.

A cold mist shrouded the heights of the Frostbacks. Masses of rock and ice loomed over them on their climb to the entrance of Orzammar and its permanent shanty-town of traders, exiles, and avvars. Anders had never been to Orzammar, and didn’t share Kieran’s enthusiasm about going there. He’d spent enough of his life indoors without going somewhere he couldn’t feel the wind in his hair or the sun on his face.

But here he was, going anyway. About to spend Maker knew how long in a tomb of his own making while Amell negotiated with King Bhelen about whatever was going on with the dwarves and the vanishing freeholders. The fact that Amell had brought his entire family with didn’t bode well for how long those negotiations would last. The fact that he apparently considered Anders part of that family boded a little better.

Amell had said it so many times fighting with Alistair Anders couldn’t pretend he hadn’t heard him. Anders wondered if it was something they were supposed to talk about. Maybe. Maybe not. Amell had already said he wanted Kieran to see him as family, and Anders had already said he wanted to be family, but the more he thought about it the more he felt like they were hurtling out of the present and into the future. Their future.

Anders had been in Ferelden for almost six months now - and everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong - but some things had gone right. The Wardens had gone right. Amell had gone right. He was alive and well and asleep, sandwiched between Morrigan and Oghren and getting shoved back and forth between their respective shoulders every so often. He was safe. Anders had kept him safe.

Anders doubted Hawke could reach them in Orzammar, but he wasn’t about to voice that doubt aloud just to have it come back and bite him in the ass or through the throat. The only things that could reach them in Orzammar were things that were already in Orzammar. Dwarves. Darkspawn. … Harvesters. Harvesters Amell fought with help from a Forbidden One who was constantly clamoring for his soul and bound to take it one of these days.

Anders still couldn’t bind him. Three months. Three months of blood binding after blood binding, trying to control and compel the corruption in Amell’s blood, and Anders still couldn’t do it. He understood the magic, he understood the spell, but he couldn’t get it to take hold. Amell wouldn’t let it take hold - and Anders wasn’t strong enough to bind him if he didn’t want to be bound.

Anders had to be able to bind him or he’d never be able to bind his simulacrum, and Anders couldn’t stand the thought of losing him to it. He couldn’t stand the thought of losing Amell to anything. If it was just a matter of willpower, then that should have been enough, but there had to be something more to the magic. Some application of skill Anders was lacking when he dabbled in blood magic and Amell dedicated himself to it.

It didn’t help that Justice couldn’t help him. The magic pulled from the Taint, and ran counter to demons and spirits and anything in between, but Anders refused to give up on it. Amell was worth whatever it took to master. Anders would take however many literal or metaphorical arrows it took to keep him safe. Oghren shoved Amell off his shoulder and into Morrigan, knocking her book out of her hand and onto the floor of the caravan.

“Ugh,” Morrigan pinched Amell awake. “If you are going to sleep with anyone, sleep with your man.”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” Amell lied, stretching awkwardly in the space between them.

The caravan itself was built for three, maybe four people, but they’d packed in the five of them for the trip to Orzammar. The cramped quarters were more practical than they were comfortable, with storage that doubled for seating and sleeping, and a loft big enough for one person or one very determined couple. Everything was cushioned, but the cushions were so thin they may as well have been blankets, dyed with blue woad and lined in linen that didn’t hold it well.

Another caravan with the rest of their entourage followed close behind, both of them pulled by undead constructs in the vague shape of horses. Magic and modest, veilfire lanterns swung from the ceiling on the inside and out, casting the caravan in the emerald light of the Fade and warding off the local banditry where any Grey Warden heraldry might have failed. The journey thus far had been calm, and quiet, and what Anders needed after everything that had happened in Denerim.

Hawke and Merrill hadn’t resurfaced, and Anders wanted to believe they’d gone back to the Free Marches with Fenris, Isabela, and Zevran. The trio had reclaimed most of the crew that had deserted in their captain’s week-long absence in Denerim, and set out with Amell’s blessing to dismantle Castillon’s slaving ring officially registered to the Amaranthine navy. Some part of Anders - and some part of Justice - imagined it might have been fun to accompany them.

Sailing the coast of the Waking Sea and the Rialto Bay, hunting down slavers and freeing slaves, living every day in a pure pursuit of purpose. It was a good purpose and they were good people, but Anders had his own purpose and he had his own people, and after a week locked in a caravan the size of a cell with those people, none of them had murdered each other, so maybe they were family after all.

“You heard her,” Anders caught Amell’s wrist and pulled him across the divide, sitting Amell between him and the wall of the caravan. “You have to sleep with me now.”

Amell arranged the hood of his cloak into a pillow and leaned against the wall, still half-asleep, “Is that a punishment?”

Anders leaned in to whisper in Amell’s ear, “Do you want one?”

“Do go on,” Morrigan rolled her eyes, retrieving her book from the floor. “You are both making me ill.”

“How did you even hear me?” Anders asked.

“I did not,” Morrigan said. “‘Tis bad enough I can see the way you two carry on. That I cannot hear you is at least some small mercy.”

“Yeah, well, make sure you thank Hawke for that,” Anders massaged his throat, and caught Kieran staring at him. “What’s up, Creepy?”

“Can you heal it?” Kieran asked.

“My throat?” Anders guessed, still whispering. “ ... I don’t know. Someone else healed it first, with creationism, and not with spirit healing.”

“Why didn’t they use a spirit?” Kieran asked.

“They didn’t have one,” Anders explained, sapphire flames running down the left side of his face and over his arm at the mention of spirits, and soothing the ever-present pain in his throat. “Spirit healers are rare… really rare, but they’re more common in Ferelden than anywhere else.”

“Am I a spirit healer?” Kieran asked eagerly.

“Do you have a spirit?” Anders grinned.

“Yes!” Kieran said brightly.

“Kieran,” Morrigan interrupted, tapping at the window, “There is a moose - take care not to miss it.”

“A moose!” Kieran flung himself up against the glass, smearing half his doodles and hastily starting a new oval.

Anders would have written it off as nothing if Morrigan hadn’t glared at him for asking. The gold in her eyes looked feline and feral in the dimly lit caravan, and she mouthed a threatening, “No,” before going back to her book, eyeing him warily every so often.

If Anders wasn’t curious before, he was definitely curious now. Kieran had never mentioned anything about meeting any spirits in the Fade - and Anders had never sensed any when he channelled his magic - but there had to be something to Morrigan’s reaction. Anders glanced at Amell, but he was more or less asleep, his eyes closed more often than they were open. Anders made a mental note to ask him about it later.

Kieran finished his newest doodle and shook Anders’ arm to get his attention. “Did you see the moose?”

“Sure did,” Anders lied.

“Could I heal a moose?” Kieran asked.

“Why are we healing the moose?”

“If the moose got hurt. Could I heal it?”

“If you practice.”

“Could I heal you?”

“I-... don’t think so, Creepy,” Anders smiled.

“I’m sorry,” Kieran said sadly, for some reason, staring at the scar on his throat. “I didn’t see it.”

“See it?” Anders asked. “You mean like see the future?”

“You cannot see everything, silly boy,” Morrigan reached across the divide to push Kieran’s braid back behind his ear. “Nor should you wish to.”

“You can’t heal everything either,” Anders added. “Just because you can heal doesn’t mean it’s your fault if people get hurt, and it’s not your fault if you can’t heal them. You didn’t hurt them. You should try to heal them because it’s the right thing to do, but you shouldn’t feel bad if you don’t.”

Kieran sat with what he said, and seemed to take something from it. Anders hoped it was something good. He still had no idea what he was doing, trying to impart what little, little, little wisdom he had as Kieran’s mentor, but he liked mentoring him. Kieran’s blood red eyes went wide over every little bit of magic Anders taught him, and his endless curiosity and thirst for knowledge couldn’t not remind Anders of Amell when he looked so much like him.

“How did a hawk do that?” Kieran asked, still staring at his scar.

“It was a really mean hawk,” Anders said.

“Mother says animals aren’t mean or nice, they’re just animals,” Kieran said.

“Er-...” Anders said eloquently. Morrigan chuckled from behind her book, and didn’t offer him any advice. “Well…”

“It was a dude,” Oghren said helpfully.

“A dude hawk?” Kieran repeated.

“Nah, a dude named Hawke,” Oghren elaborated. “Shot Sparkles here clean through the throat. Damn near did him in if your dad hadn’t saved him.”

Whelp. So much for subtleties. Morrigan didn’t so much as bat an eye at Oghren’s blunt explanation. Maybe Anders was overthinking all of this.

“How did he save you?” Kieran asked, pulling his legs up onto the seat and settling in for a story. “Father can’t heal.”

“Uh…” Anders said.

“Yes, how did he save you?” Morrigan folded her book closed with a grin, but there was no way Anders was going to tell Kieran his father was a blood mage. Did Kieran know his father was a blood mage? Did Kieran even know what blood magic was? Why hadn’t Anders had this conversation with Amell?

“Well…you see...” Anders squeezed Amell’s knee and shook him awake.

“Craven,” Morrigan mumbled under her breath, reopening her book.

“Did we reach the summit?” Amell yawned.

“Not yet,” Anders said, eager for Amell to take over the conversation and spare him and his throat. “Kieran wanted to know how you saved me. You know, from the whole arrow thing.”

Amell found his hand and wove their fingers together, and Anders didn’t know what to make of the fact that he did it in front of Kieran. Anders didn’t know what it was like to have a family that wasn’t in the storybooks. No one ever told stories about a man and his lover and his lover’s son and his lover’s son’s mother. They told stories about husbands and wives and their children and having them together, and not coming in late to their lives one small step at a time.

“What did you want to know?” Amell asked Kieran.

“Was it magic?” Kieran asked.

“Yes, it was magic,” Amell said. “I kept him from bleeding until a healer could help him.”

“Was it scary?” Kieran asked.

“Yes, it was very scary,” Amell said. “Anders is very important to me.”

“Silence wakes for him,” Kieran said in a prophetic monotone.

“Don’t like that,” Anders decided. “I’m good with sleeping silence.”

“It’s calling him,” Kieran said, still in that same tone. Creepy was definitely as good a nickname for him as it had been for Amell. Anders didn’t mind the prophecies as much anymore, but he wasn’t about to try to decipher any of them. If Amell and Kieran weren’t shaken up by them, Anders didn’t see why he should be either.

“The Call?” Amell guessed, running his thumb along the back of Anders’ hand.

“I don’t know,” Kieran’s voice went back to normal. “It’s gone now.”

Anders waited until Kieran fell asleep, another hour or so into the trip up the Frostback, before he brought it back up. “You ever think about it?” Anders asked, Kieran asleep on his knee and Amell half-asleep on his shoulder. “The Calling?”

“What about it?” Amell fought off a yawn.

“Everything?” Anders shrugged, toying with Amell’s hair and watching the raven strands slip through his fingers. “Ten to thirty years, right? So we have, what? Five to twenty-five more to go?”

“Ah, retirement,” Oghren said wistfully, kicking his feet up on the wall when they didn’t quite reach across the divide between the seats.

“I’m serious,” Anders frowned.

“So full of questions,” Morrigan hummed. “Have you no better topics?”

“Excuse me for thinking of my mortality after a date with death,” Anders said. “You know after all that he didn’t even send me flowers?”

“All men die,” Morrigan licked her finger and flipped a page in her book. “‘Tis not news.”

“All women die too, you know,” Anders countered.

“Hmm,” Morrigan pursed her lips, looking doubtful, and Amell chuckled.

“I made my peace with dying a long time ago, Anders,” Amell said, and healthy as that might have been, Anders didn’t care for it. Amell was too bloody young to die and Anders was too bloody stubborn to let him. “But Avernus’ research should allow us to live a lot longer than that.”

“See, I don’t know that two-hundred years is any better than twenty-five,” Anders said. “Remind me to tell you about Xenon someday. There’s just a lot left I still want to do.... There’s a lot left I still need to do.”

“You still have time to do it,” Amell promised.

Anders hoped he was right. Anders hadn’t done nearly enough for the cause of mages - no matter how his manifesto might have persuaded Alistair and Anora to grant the Circles autonomy. It wasn’t enough autonomy. It wasn’t enough Circles. Anders thought back to everything he’d done with Kirkwall’s Collective, and knew it wasn’t nearly enough.

They’d rescued dozens upon dozens of mages from the Gallows, but they’d never really freed them. There was never anywhere they could go to be free. Even now, with Alistair and Anora offering amnesty to apostates, and refugee mages flooding in from other countries, the whole thing was a mess. Ferelden wasn’t prepared for the influx of mages or how the world reacted to them.

Some mages tried to live free as apostates, and quickly found themselves turned away and back to the foreign templars that followed them when the banns refused them land. Others settled safely thanks to Arls like Amell, only for their respective Circles and countries to demand their immediate extradition. Still more tried to join Ferelden’s Circles, but didn’t request their relocation through the proper channels, and faced the complicated chaos of trying to petition for asylum after they’d already broken the terms attached to it.

Anders had seen the paperwork. It was a nightmare. Stacks upon stacks of parchment, demanding Amell send every other freeholder in the Blackmarsh back to whatever Circle they’d fled to get there. Amell had a whole scribe who did nothing else but answer them on his behalf, letter after letter filled with complicated debates on asylum, extradition, jurisdiction, half of which went ignored when templars came chasing mages across the border anyway.

Mages needed somewhere to go templars couldn’t follow. If King Bhelen could be persuaded to allow the Mage’s Collective to establish a free Circle in the city, then that Circle would exist outside the Chantry’s grasp, and so would the mages within it. Amell had been trying to persuade Bhelen for the better part of a year, ever since Anders had begged him to offer Johane Harimann asylum, and hadn’t managed it yet, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t manage it never. Trying to get King Bhelen to see the merits of magic seemed like an easy way for Anders to keep busy while they were here.

It had certainly taken them long enough to get here. The gates to Orzammar were set high in the mountain, at the end of a switchback road lined in stone dwarves, chipped and cracked with age. The shanty town that lived outside the gates spilled down the frozen slopes, tarps and tents set up under bridges, over statues, or clustered around the braziers lighting the path. More permanent shelters were cobbled together from broken down wagons, fallen trees, and the occasional cave. People must have lived there, but Anders didn’t see any, and he couldn’t help but wonder how many had frozen to death in their makeshift shelters, begging entry to a city as cold and unforgiving as the snow.

At the summit, dead people became people, and the shanty town became a town. An outdoor plaza was ringed in stalls, traders from all over Thedas whose petitions hadn’t gotten them into the city set up outside it. Colorful banners and tarps were weathered by the wind and dusted over with ice and snow, and crowded with dwarves, avvar, and the occasional lowlander. Stables built into the mountainside held everything from horses to harts for those on official business within the city.

Their own mounts had no need of any stables, and they found an out of the way place for the caravans, pressed up against the mountainside, but Grey Wardens could only be so inconspicuous. They’d barely gotten out when a cluster of petitioners rushed them, begging to accompany them into the city. Morrigan swept Kieran away from the crowds while Amell dealt with them, and left Anders alone with Oghren.

Anders shrugged deeper into his cloak, a surge of primal magic battling back the chill this high up in the mountains this late into autumn. The only trees around were dying pines, roots like desperate fingers clinging to the rock and the last of their lives, and made the massive bronze gates in the distance seem all the more inviting, but they couldn’t exactly bring the caravans inside.

Anders craned his head to stare at the bags stacked and strapped to the roof of the caravan and sighed, “Guess that means we have to unload, huh?”

“Believe me, Sparkles, I’ve been dying to unload this whole trip,” Oghren snorted, rubbing his hands - thank the Maker, just his hands - together for warmth.

“Thanks for that mental picture,” Anders tested his footing on a wheel, and when it didn’t snap under his weight, climbed up to retrieve the bags. “How do I give it back?”

“No refunds,” Oghren chuckled. “Anyway, I should be thanking you. Surprised you and the Boss weren’t rocking the carriage like a baby’s cradle, if you know what I mean.”

“Probably because there was an actual baby in it?” Anders reminded him, unlatching the bags to throw him one. Oghren didn’t catch it, and the pack hit the ground with a worrisome crack. Anders frowned, “Catch them?”

“Oh, right,” Oghren chuckled, and shifted his stance to hold his arms out. “Hope that one weren’t mine.”

Anders rolled his eyes and threw him another Oghren actually caught, “So, home sweet home, huh?”

“Ain’t nothing sweet about it,” Oghren said, dropping the second pack on the first. “Orzammar’s rotten to the core. Boss did his best, but there’s no fixing that place. There’s fewer and fewer dwarves each year, and the darkspawn never run out, but you got the noble caste running good dwarves outta Orzammar.”

“What do you mean?” Anders tossed him another pack.

Oghren caught it and dropped it in the same breath, and Anders wondered why he even bothered. “Noble caste has a stick up its collective butt. A stick called “tradition.” Dwarves on the surface ain’t dwarves to them - lose their caste if they ever had one.”

“You didn’t,” Anders said.

“I’m special,” Oghren said unhelpfully. “Anyway-”

“No anyway,” Anders cut him off, withholding the next pack when his curiosity got the better of him. “How did you keep your caste? I saw Sigrun’s plaque in Amaranthine. Sigrun Kondrat? She was my wife first, you know.”

“Grey Wardens are special,” Oghren elaborated. “Their families ain’t. If I brought Felsi and the nugget along, they’d make ‘em paint a brand on their faces so everyone’d know to treat ‘em like dirt. Ain’t a good place for mages, Sparkles. Ain’t a good place for anyone.”

Anders didn’t know what to say to that. Orzammar might not have been the best option, but mages didn’t have many. Anders wasn’t willing to write it off before he’d even set foot inside it. Besides, it wasn’t up to him. The Mage’s Collective had been clamoring for entry ever since some friend of Amell’s had published some study or other about lyrium, and whatever problems Orzammar had, at least a Chantry wasn’t one of them.

“Amell!” Someone called, a pale hand waving wildly above the crowd. A man in unassuming furs stumbled his way through the crowd, bumping into every other person on his way to Amell, and Anders panicked. Anders didn’t need to panic. Everyone everywhere knew Amell, but anyone anywhere could have known Hawke too, and someone who knew Hawke might not have known Amell was blind.

Anders scrambled down from the caravan and joined Amell in time for the fellow to reach him. There was nothing particularly threatening in his pasty complexion and unkempt black hair, but looks could be deceiving. “Hey!” The man - the mage - said loudly. “It’s -”

“Jowan?” Amell guessed, grinning broadly.

“Levyn,” Levyn corrected him, and Anders let himself relax. Levyn was harmless. Levyn was a friend. Levyn was a harmless friend. Some friends could be harmless. Not Anders’ friends, but some friends. Levyn steered Amell back towards their caravans and away from the crowds, who reluctantly dispersed when Amell’s attention lay elsewhere. “Thank the Maker you’re here.”

“Me?” Amell pulled Levyn into a tight embrace. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in West Hill.”

“I was in West Hill. I’m not anymore,” Levyn freed himself from Amell’s arms to spare Anders a small wave. “Anders, right?”

“That’s the rumor,” Anders said. “You’re Amell’s friend from the Circle?”

“That’s me,” Levyn agreed, pushing down the hood of his cloak as if to prove it. “Boy am I glad to see you. You won’t believe what’s been happening. We could really use your help.”

“We?” Amell asked.

“The Collective,” Levyn’s voice dropped to a whisper, and he glanced over both shoulders. There was no one around but Grey Wardens, shouldering bags and backpacks as they unloaded their caravans, and Levyn apparently deemed them trustworthy. “You know? The Mage’s Collective?”

“You know apostasy isn’t illegal anymore,” Anders didn’t mean to whisper back, but his throat didn’t leave him with a choice. “You don’t have to whisper.”

“It’s illegal for me,” Levyn kept whispering. “I’m pretty sure poisoning an arl isn’t something people just forget.”

“I mean, I forgot,” Anders shrugged.

“What are you doing here, Levyn?” Amell asked again. “I know you’re not here to study lyrium vapors and the supply of magic, and you never cared about the Mage’s Collective before. Don’t tell me you’re here to help them petition Orzammar for a free Circle of Magi?”

“Can you keep a secret?” Levyn asked.

“Not on my life,” Anders said.

“Of course we can,” Amell corrected him.

Levyn dragged them both into the shadows of the caravan, and huddled in close to whisper conspiratorially. “People are getting kidnapped! It’s been happening all over West Hill. A friend of mine went missing, and I didn’t even look for him. I didn’t even try. Why would I? He was a mage. Mages go missing all the time. In the Circle, you pass the Harrowing, you take the Rite of Tranquility, or you die. ...Out here, you just die.

“I thought he got caught. I thought the templars caught him. You know how they are - chasing people down with pitchforks and torches just for holding pitchforks and torches - but it’s not that. More people kept going missing. Mages. Non-mages. I started staying out at night to try to catch who was doing it, and I finally did.” Levyn glanced over his shoulders again, and evidently deemed it safe to continue. “Dwarves! I saw them grab some poor bastard off the street and then they just vanished.

“I couldn’t follow them, so... I came here. Where else do you go to look for dwarves, I guess? I thought I could find my friend, but I can’t get into the city. I joined the Mage’s Collective, but they can’t get into the city either. I don’t know what else to do. Can you help me? Can you help us?”

“Of course we can,” Anders said - maybe a little too quickly. He looked at Amell. “We can, right? We’re not just going to let them kidnap mages, are we?”

“They’re kidnapping everyone, Anders,” Amell said.

“You don’t sound surprised,” Levyn noted, shifting from foot to foot. “Why don’t you sound surprised again? You knew, didn’t you? You know. Is that why you’re here?”

“That’s why I’m here,” Amell said, but there wasn’t anything reassuring in the way he said it.

“Well great,” Levyn said. “So you can rescue him.”

“Levyn-... “ Amell rolled his fingers along his staff. “I’m not here to rescue anyone. I’m here to prevent a diplomatic incident.”

“A diplomatic-...!” Levyn hastily wrenched his hood over his head like he was trying to hide from his own raised voice. “Someone kidnapped my friend!”

“Someone kidnapped a lot of people,” Amell corrected him.

“So we’re going to rescue a lot of people,” Anders said firmly, trying to force his frown into his words.

“I can’t promise that,” Amell said.

“What do you mean you can’t promise that?” Anders demanded. “Of course you can promise that. Look, we promise that, okay? We’ll help you find your friend.”

“His name is Varence,” Levyn said.

“How long has he been missing?” Anders asked.

“Two months?” Levyn guessed. “Maybe three? The Mage’s Collective said they’d try to help me find him in the city. Some of their members in West Hill got abducted with him. We’re all after the same thing, we just can’t get inside. You can get us inside, can’t you?”

“I… could get you inside,” Amell said slowly. “But that doesn’t-”

“I knew I could count on you!” Levyn said eagerly, grabbing Amell’s hand and taking off across the plaza so quickly Anders had to jog to catch up with him. “We’ve been trying to get inside for almost a month. I’ve gotten to know everyone and there’s someone I want you to meet. She’s-... well she’s a mage-...”

“She’s in the Mage’s Collective, Levyn,” Amell said. “I don’t think you need to tell me she’s a mage.”

“They’re not all mages,” Levyn argued.

“That sounds like the start of a bad joke,” Anders said.

“It might be,” Levyn allotted. “The rest of my life has been.”

Levyn led them to an encampment on the opposite side of the plaza, where a handful of tents had been pitched beside a wagon filled with dwindling supplies and one rather pitiful looking mule. A campfire in the center burned hot and bright despite the fact that its kindling had long since turned to charcoal. True to Levyn’s words, not all of the people there were mages. There were humans, elves, and even dwarves among them, though Anders doubted any of them were from Orzammar.

If nothing else, their leader was a mage. She was also human, platinum blonde hair braided with beads and feathers reminiscent of Chasind Wilders. She was dressed to match, her clothes cobbled together from fur, leather, and linen, and wrapped up in twine. She stood at their approach, and left her fellows to join Levyn, who took hold of her hand. “Gleam, this is Amell and Anders,” Levyn said. “They’re going to help us get into the city. Amell, Anders, this is our leader, Gleam. She’s-...” Levyn went searching for words, but must not have found any. “She’s my Gleam.”

Maker, it was like looking in a mirror. An embarrassing mirror. Anders could practically hear himself introducing Amell the same way a few years ago. Maker, he could practically hear himself introducing Amell the same way a few months ago. He wasn’t even sure how he’d introduce Amell now, if anyone asked, but no one did.

Amell shook Gleam’s hand, “My condolences, Gleam.”

“Save them,” Gleam said. “No one’s dead yet.”

“I can’t promise that,” Amell said.

“What can you promise?” Gleam frowned.

“We can promise to help,” Anders said.

Chapter 179: Undiscovered Disappointment

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 16 Frumentum Early Evening
Beneath the Frostback Mountains

It was alarmingly easy for Amell to get the Mage’s Collective into the city. Anders wasn’t sure if the dwarves revered him or the Grey Wardens, but a word to the guard at the gates allowed their entire company through the towering bronze gates that sealed Orzammar off from the outside world. Logically, Anders knew Amell had influence, but sometimes he forgot just how much influence he had. Besides the King and Queen, Amell was one of the most powerful people in Ferelden, and on some level Anders probably should have been more respectful of that.

Instead he was out here making promises Amell might not be able to keep, but someone had to make them. Someone had to care about more than just the politics. Someone had to care about the people. With the Mage Collective’s involvement, the victims weren’t just people, they were mage people. Levyn’s friend wasn’t the only mage who’d gone missing. Alim and Melissa - the two apostates Anders had seen free of Amaranthine with Velanna years ago - had also been abducted.

If Anders wasn’t determined to do something about the kidnappings before, he was definitely determined to do something about them now. He couldn’t fight for mage freedom just for mages to be made slaves all over again in some dwarven slaving ring. He had to free them and make sure they had somewhere to stay free and it seemed like he could do both of those things in Orzammar, even if the city didn’t make the best first impression.

If nothing else, it couldn’t have been worse than Kirkwall. It didn’t have Hawke, for one, and it didn’t have a Chantry, for another. Anders had dealt with slavers before and he could deal with them again. From there it would just be a matter of petitioning the King and the Dwarven Assembly for the right to establish a base of operations for the Mage’s Collective.

Their leader seemed competent enough. Gleam walked at the forefront of their procession, leading her half-score of collective members through the grand hall that delved into the depths of the Frostback to the dwarven city below. The Hall of Heroes was lined in countless statues of paragons. Oghren paused at each one, Kieran on his shoulders, telling his own version of history Anders doubted had any basis in fact, but Anders cared more about the future.

“Can you imagine it?” Anders asked. “A free Circle?”

“We’re not calling it a Circle,” Gleam said.

“What are we supposed to call it then?” Anders rolled his eyes. “A square?”

“Does it matter?” Levyn asked, tugging at his hood. “It can be a triangle for all I care as long as there’s no templars.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s no templars in Orzammar,” Anders said. “You can put your hood down.”

“Excuse me if I’m not willing to bet my life on it,” Levyn countered, eyes darting at every other shadow. “Mages are going missing, remember?”

“Everyone is going missing,” Amell corrected him, for what seemed like the hundredth time.

“We should check the Smith Quarter first,” Gleam said.

“Why would Smiths be kidnapping people?” Anders asked.

“One tried to kidnap me,” Gleam explained, flexing her hands for the memory.

“In my experience the bad guys don’t actually take time to introduce themselves,” Anders said. “They just run at you screaming with swords.”

“It wasn’t one of the recent kidnappings,” Gleam said. “Dwarves are always looking for ways to one-up each other. I come from a family of blacksmiths and we used to trade goods with Orzammar for ore. I’m good with fire and forging, and when one of the Smith Caste families found out, they sent someone to kidnap me. They wanted to force me to work in one of the forges, to give them a magical edge above their competition, but the templars caught me first.

“The Mage’s Collective helped me escape the Circle a few years ago, and I’ve been in West Hill ever since. I don’t like cave dwellers, and if they’re kidnapping more mages I like them even less, but I read the study on lyrium vapors and how they help the supply of magic, and we need every advantage we can get against the templars.”

“I won’t argue with that,” Anders said.

“So you’ll help us search?” Gleam asked eagerly.

“We don’t know what they want or who’s responsible,” Amell cautioned. “You’re free to stay at the Grey Warden Embassy, but you don’t have my support in any actions or accusations you take. Ferelden can’t afford to ruin relations with Orzammar.”

“We’re not here to ruin them,” Gleam promised. “If we can make this place a home-... Mages don’t have many.”

Anders didn’t disagree, but it still seemed like they could workshop the name a bit. Orzammar wasn’t exactly ‘homey.’ It was bloated with dwarves, nugs, rats, and stone. Basalt, marble, quartzite, travertine, slate, gneiss, granite. Dwellings carved straight into the rock and arranged in tiers according to caste. Nobles over warriors over smiths over artisans over miners over merchants over servants. The sprawling underground metropolis was so massive it made the Frostback seem hollow, lava flows casting everything in gold.

The molten rivers fed into a great sea beneath the city with the Proving Grounds at its heart. The grand coliseum spanned all six tiers of the common castes. According to Oghren, every problem Orzammar had ever had was solved upon its sands - quickly, and with as much bloodshed as possible, and then a little more for good measure. Oghren seemed to think they’d end up in the sands - or the lava - before the month was out.

Anders doubted his predictions were anywhere near as accurate as Kierans, considering they were here as honored guests. The Grey Warden Embassy was in the Diamond Quarter, at the highest level of the tiered thaig, but getting there meant scaling the rest when the Hall of Heroes spilled them out into the Merchant Quarter. The climb was miserable. The city more so. It looked and sounded like a forge, and the Smith Quarter was the worst offender.

The Mage’s Collective split from the Grey Wardens to make inquiries at the various smithies. Anders didn’t join them. The stench of molten metal and the tireless pounding of hammers assaulted his senses, as did the way the smith caste accommodated for the noise.

They signed.

They all signed.

They had to sign. They couldn’t hear, so they couldn’t talk, so they had to sign, but Anders couldn’t handle seeing them sign. Anders hadn’t had enough time away from Hawke to handle seeing anyone sign. Maybe when he’d been free of Hawke for six months, he could have handled it, but he’d only been free of Hawke for two weeks.

It wasn’t enough time. It wasn’t nearly enough time. Maker, it might never be enough time. Anders could still hear him, still see him, still feel him, under his skin and in his throat and Anders couldn’t talk and he couldn’t breathe and-

Anders didn’t remember making it to the Grey Warden Embassy, but he must have managed, because somehow he was there, throwing up over the privy in the washroom while Amell rubbed his back. Anders’ throat seized traitorously, but there wasn’t anything left in his stomach for him to throw up. He sat back on the floor, and took a few shallow breaths to steady himself.

“Sorry,” Anders said - when he remembered how to talk. “Sorry for-... all of that.”

Amell ran fingers cooled with primal magic across his brow, and Anders allowed himself a minute to appreciate his hands, and the way they never hurt. “Are you sick?”

“No,” Anders took a deep breath and pushed himself to his feet to fill a cup with water from the stone basin and wash out his mouth. “Sick of sign language, maybe. I wasn’t expecting everyone here to use it. I guess I just-... got overwhelmed.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Amell offered.

“Not really,” Anders said between gargles. There wasn’t much to talk about. Hawke signed. Dwarves signed. People signed. Anders just had to get over it. “Talk about something else?”

“Such as?” Amell asked.

Anders took Amell’s hand and led him out of the wash. Their room at the embassy and all its furniture was carved from quartz and covered in rugs, tapestries, and cushions that looked like they hadn’t been dusted in decades with how infrequently the embassy was utilized. Anders smacked a plume of dust out of a cushion and sat Amell on the couch. “Tell me about the last time you were in Orzammar?”

“The last time I was in Orzammar,” Amell repeated thoughtfully, rapping his fingers along the arm of the couch. “Would have been for Bhelen’s marriage, a little less than two years ago. His wife was casteless, and he elevated her entire house to Warrior Caste so he could marry her.”

“He can do that?” Anders asked, dragging their packs from the door to the wardrobe to unpack. “Just change someone’s caste - just like that?”

“Apparently,” Amell said. “He’s been threatening to dissolve the Assembly and rule alone for years, and I think most everyone is too scared to oppose him.”

“Would you?” Anders paused in the midst of arranging Amell’s outfits and glanced over his shoulder at him, amplifying his voice so he didn’t have to do more than whisper. “Oppose him?”

“What for?” Amell asked.

“If he’s behind this?” It seemed like an obvious reason to oppose him, as far as Anders was concerned, and it was a little concerning Amell didn’t jump to it. “Abducting people? Abducting mages? Selling them into slavery? You said Loghain sold people into slavery to fund the civil war during the Blight.”

Amell smiled, “I’m surprised you remember that.”

“Don’t change the topic,” Anders warned him, ignoring the emotion that smile stirred in him. “What if Bhelen is doing the same thing?”

Amell shrugged, “Then he’s risking open war with Ferelden.”

“You don’t think he would?” Anders went back to unpacking. “I’m putting your clothes on the left, by the way.”

“Thank you,” Amell said. “Bhelen is ruthless and ambitious, but he’s not without reason. There’s no reason for him to risk war with the surface when he’s already waging one against the darkspawn.”

“Oghren doesn’t like him,” Anders pointed out.

“Oghren doesn’t like nobles,” Amell waved a disinterested hand. “Bhelen’s a good king. He might not be a good man, but he’s not an evil one. Bhelen’s brother got a noble-hunter with child before his exile, and when the mother came forward, Bhelen could have had them both executed as a threat to the crown, but he took them in instead.”

Anders snorted, “I don’t know that ‘didn’t murder a child’ is a good argument for someone being a good man.”

“I didn’t say he was a good man. I just said he wasn’t an evil one,” Amell said, but Anders didn’t know what that meant. Amell didn’t seem to believe in evil men unless those men were templars. He forgave everyone for everything, and as wonderful as that was, it was also a little worrisome. “He’s true to his word and he’s good to his family. Kieran gets along well with his son Endrin and his nephew Trian.”

“Still not doing it for me,” Anders said, taking a step back from the wardrobe to survey his handiwork. It looked more or less like Amell’s wardrobe at the Vigil, from what Anders could remember, and was hopefully close enough that Amell wouldn’t have to rearrange it all. “Kieran gets along well with everyone.”

“He gets along well with you.”

“You're changing the topic again.”

“Did it work?” Amell asked.

“Yes,” Anders pushed Amell’s arm out of his way and sat on the arm of the couch. “Do you still want me mentoring him?”

“Of course,” Amell held his thigh instead. “Do you still want to mentor him?”

“Of course I do,” Anders said quickly. “Sometimes I just feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Neither did I. Neither did Morrigan,” Amell shrugged, tangling a hand up in his tunic. “We just knew we could do better than our parents.”

“No offense, but you know that’s not hard, right?” Anders joked, thumbing the corner of Amell’s eyes. “I think not mutilating kids should go without saying.”

“You’d think,” Amell hummed. “You’d think not drowning them would go without saying too.”

Anders forgot he’d told Amell that. His father trying to drown the magic out of him wasn’t exactly his fondest memory, but it was a common one. The Art of Parenting for the Good Andrastian had been a popular book, up until less than a decade ago, when the Circle had finally confiscated all known copies of it. Too little, too late. It was common practice throughout most of Thedas to bleed mage children with leeches and drown them half to death, trying to purge what most thought was the Maker’s curse instead of the Maker’s gift.

“You’d think,” Anders said, running his fingers through Amell’s hair. The raven strands slid between his fingers, soft and silken, reminiscent of ink, or flowing water he didn’t have to fear. Anders let it comfort him. Better than his father might have been a low bar, but at least it was one Anders knew he could clear. “What did Morrigan’s mother do to her?”

“She tried to possess her.”

“She tried to what now?”

“Her mother is a demon… or something close to one,” Amell said, and for once Anders doubted he was lying, but it didn’t make the truth make sense. “I killed her during the Blight to keep her safe, but Morrigan is convinced she’ll come back somehow.”

“You have got to stop saying words like that,” Anders chuckled. “So hey, speaking of demons, Kieran said a few things this morning I wanted to ask you about.”

“Ask away.”

“Does he know you’re a blood mage?”

“He knows my magic uses blood, and he knows that people believe that it’s bad, but we don’t teach him the Chant,” Amell said.

It was probably for the best they didn’t. Kieran had enough love in his life and he didn’t need the Chantry’s hate. “Does he have a spirit?”

Amell’s brow furrowed, just a little, and Anders knew there was something there. “Why are you asking?”

“He said he had a spirit. Morrigan didn’t seem to want me to know about it.”

“She doesn’t.”

“But he does have one?” Anders pressed.

“After a fashion,” Amell said slowly.

“What does that mean?”

“I can’t tell you what it means.”

“What do you mean you can’t tell me?” Anders demanded, dropping his hand from Amell’s hair. “I thought you wanted me to be a part of his life.”

Amell shifted to face him, “I do.”

“Well?” Anders folded his arms over his chest, and then wondered why he bothered when Amell couldn’t see him pouting. “Knowing about his spirit is a pretty big part of his life. Do you really think you could know me if you didn’t know Justice?”

“It’s not the same,” Amell said.

“... you don’t trust me, do you?” Anders realized. There was no other reason not to tell him whatever it was Amell wasn’t telling him. Anders took a rickety breath and his heart constricted painfully.

“Anders-...” Amell reached for him, and Anders fought off a childish urge to swat his hand away. He couldn’t be a child and want to raise one at the same time. “No, that’s not it.”

“Then what is it?” Anders asked.

“He’s not just my son, Anders,” Amell said, tentatively caressing his arm. “He’s Morrigan’s son too. I want you to be a part of his life, but I also need you to respect that you’re not the only part.”

It hurt. It shouldn’t have hurt. Amell wasn’t asking for a lot. He wasn’t even asking for a little. He was just asking Anders to mind his own business, but Anders had never been very good at that. He invested everything he was in everything he did and if he couldn’t then he just didn’t do it. He didn’t know how to compromise. Everything in his life had always been all or nothing and Amell was all.

“Anders is hurt,” Justice noted.

“Are you?” Amell asked, pulling his hand back.

“No,” Justice said, wondering at the words that would have let him leave it. “I respect that you are being respectful.”

“Thank you,” Amell said.

Justice shifted to face him, resting his feet on the couch and letting the veilfire in his veins burn a little brighter for Amell’s benefit. Amell had an easier time meeting his eyes for the magic and the way it burned in him, and there was always something soothing in it. In being seen. In being known. It seemed like something all men must want, and yet Amell took great pains in keeping anyone from knowing him.

“Why would you not commit to the rescue of your fellow mages?” Justice asked.

“They might not be alive to rescue,” Amell pointed out.

“Have you no hope?” Justice asked.

“Hope is undiscovered disappointment,” Amell said.

“Hope is the strongest of all spirits,” Justice said. “Mortals would do well to have more of it.”

“Mortals don’t have much to be hopeful for,” Amell said.

“Do you not?” Justice countered. “Are you not hopeful that one day our efforts might win mages their freedom?”

Amell hesitated, and Justice couldn’t help but wonder if he was searching for a lie, but his words seemed true enough. “... I-... don’t expect freedom in my lifetime, Justice.”

“And your son’s?” Justice pressed. “Are you not hopeful he might find it in his?”

“Are you?” Amell asked.

“I am certain,” Justice said.

Amell held out a hand, palm up, but Justice had nothing to offer but his own. He half-expected Amell to pull it to his lips as he might with Anders, but he didn’t. Amell’s thumb ran in idle caress along the back of his palm instead, “Have hope for me.”

So he would. Kieran deserved his freedom. Amell’s son couldn’t just see the future - he was the future. He was the future Justice and Anders wanted - not just for themselves but for every mage - and they still didn’t have it. Mages had been freed from the Chantry just to be beholden to the Crown. There was no telling if Bhelen would be better than Alistair, but they held to hope.

The Mage’s Collective searched the city for the missing mages while waiting for their petition to be heard by the King and the Assembly of Clans. Anders spent the next few days searching with them, but Orzammar was a metropolis in the truest sense of the word. The great thaig was seven cities stacked on top of each other, and while Gleam and her collective seemed certain they’d find the mages in the smithies, Anders couldn’t bring himself to go back.

He wandered the Diamond Quarter instead, on the grounds that it was the nicest place to wander and someone had to wander it, but didn’t meet with any luck. Missing humans seemed like a hard thing to miss. Anders towered over everyone in Orzammar, silent stone golems excluded, but where the nobles were comfortable speaking with him as a Grey Warden, they outright ignored anyone who accompanied him who wasn’t.

Considering the victims of the abductions would have been surfacers, the most likely explanation was that the dwarves had gone out of their way not to see them, so it seemed like Anders should talk to someone people didn’t see. There were certainly plenty of choices. Casteless swept the streets at dusk and dawn - artificial hours kept by dwarven clocks and not the rise and fall of the sun - but they fled whenever Anders got too close to them.

“What’d you expect, Sparkles?” Oghren laughed when Anders pointed it out, walking the stalls in the Diamond Quarter, looking for something to buy for his wife and son. “You could kill ‘em dead in the streets and there ain’t a sodding soul who’d bat an eye. Dusters ain’t gonna talk to you. Prolly think you’re here to hunt ‘em for sport.”

“That’s horrible,” Anders said.

“That’s Orzammar,” Oghren shrugged.

“Would they talk to you?” Anders asked.

“Ain’t nobody in this city who’ll talk to me,” Oghren said, belching at the shopkeep in what seemed like a self-fulfilling prophecy to Anders. “Ain’t you been listening? I’m a sodding disgrace. Now talk about something else before you make me start drinking again.”

Anders would have dropped it, if he hadn’t noticed a casteless woman hovering off to the side of the markets, dressed like a noblewoman. Anders nudged Oghren, “What about her?”

Oghren spared her a disinterested glance, “Noble-hunter. You a noble?”

“I’m courting one,” Anders said.

“Sparkles, trust me, you’d have better luck getting blood out of a stone,” Oghren said.

“I mean… if you throw one hard enough,” Anders shrugged. Oghren chortled, and Anders left him at the stall to talk to the noble-hunter. She didn’t bolt at the sight of him, which seemed like a good sign, pushing short blonde hair out of tired brown eyes to spare him a pretty smile full of crooked teeth. Anders gave her one back, “Got a minute?”

"Not for a human, my lord," The dwarf grinned a little wider. "Grey Warden or no. Hidden Treasure's the best brothel in Orzammar, or you could get a roll in Dust Town for a few bits, if you’re not picky.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Anders said. “My name’s Anders.”

"Teli," Teli said. “Is this your first time in Orzammar?”

“How can you tell?” Anders asked.

“You’re talking to me,” Teli said.

“Maybe you just look like someone worth talking to,” Anders said.

Teli rolled her eyes, but she was still grinning, “What do you want, topsider?”

"Have you heard anything about missing humans?" Anders asked.

"Nothing's free," Teli warned him.

Anders knelt to stuff a hand down his boot, and fished up a coin, "What's a silver get me?"

"Shit, a whole silver?” Teli’s jaw dropped. She snatched it out of his hand, and bit down so hard Anders’ teeth hurt watching her. When nothing happened, she stuffed it down her bodice. “You want that roll after all?"

"Just the information,” Anders said.

"I haven’t heard anything about humans, but us dusters are going missing,” Teli said. “More than usual. You could ask around in Dust Town. Ask for Nadezda. She sees everything."

“Nazeda?”

“Nadezda.”

“Got it. Nadezda. Thanks,” Anders waved and left.

That wasn’t hard. That wasn’t hard at all. Anders had plenty of silvers, so Anders could ask plenty of questions, and rescue plenty of people before the day was out. Anders brought Levyn with him, and descended the seven tiers of the great thaig down to the old ruins crumbling away into the lava. Dust Town seemed reminiscent of Darktown, filled with the desperate and the downtrodden, and all but abandoned by the rest of the city.

Midden heaps and rivers of filth flowed out into the lava, and clogged the air with the scent of burning shit. Every other building was a thing of decay, stone cracked and collapsing into dust, overgrown with deep mushrooms, and inhabited by rats, nugs, and deep stalkers. Creatures and casteless watched from the shadows with reflective eyes as he and Levyn walked the street, pointing them every which way whenever they asked for directions, but eventually they found Nadezda.

She was casteless, unsurprisingly, and had a small spot for begging in what might have been a plaza once upon a time. She had no legs, and a small cart low to the ground that was missing a wheel to help her get around. “Nadezda, right?” Anders asked, taking a seat next to her while Levyn hovered anxiously to him, wringing his hands on his staff and pacing in circles.

“Got me at a disadvantage, stranger,” Nadezda grinned from underneath a mess of matted brown hair she looked to be losing in clumps. Everything about her was brown and falling apart and nothing about her was special. They’d passed maybe a dozen copies on their way through Dust Town, and while Anders had been used to Darktown, Darktown had also been used to him.

People stopped him to beg for fire, for water, for healing. No one stopped him here. They just watched, with eyes full of envy instead of hope, and Anders didn’t know how to give them any. Anders pushed the thought away, and forced himself to focus. “I’m Anders. Your friend Teli said you might be able to help me.”

“Teli and I are friends now?” Nadezda asked.

“That’s what I heard from the cryers,” Anders joked.

“They tell you anything else?” Nadezda asked.

“They said you might know something about casteless going missing?” Anders asked.

Nadezda eyed him over, but Anders could have been wearing rags and looked a sight better than half the people here. “What’s it worth to you?”

“Whatever it costs,” Anders supposed, channeling a panacea for both their sakes, her for the myriad of illnesses that plagued her and him for his throat.

“... Silver?” Nadezda ventured. Anders dug a coin from his boot, and Nadezda’s eyes went so wide for a moment Anders was afraid they’d fall right out of her skull. “Silvers. Two silvers.”

Anders handed over three, and Nadezda clutched them to her chest like Anders had handed her a baby. A baby made of gold and encrusted with gems. On some level it was a little silly, but on most it was just sad. Anders had been poor. Anders had been really poor, but he’d never been this poor. No one should have been this poor. Anders might not have had enough silver for everyone, but he had enough silver for her.

“The missing casteless?” Anders prompted.

“Mother my nug-... “ Nadezda stuffed the coins into the wraps around her amputated legs. “Don’t know why you care, friend, but us dusters have been going missing for years. Bhelen’s men come down every so often, looking for volunteers to indenture themselves to the army and get themselves a couple of rights, but no one ever comes back. People should come back. Bhelen got enough dusters indentured to the army to build a whole new one, but no one ever comes back.”

“Is that all you know?” Anders asked.

“They stopped asking for volunteers around three… four months ago?” Nadezda said.

“That’s when the abductions started,” Levyn chimed in. “... Do you think he’s forcing people to serve in the army? How does a dwarf force someone to do something? It’s not like he can use blood magic.”

“Have you seen any humans in the army?” Anders asked. “Any elves?”

“No and no, friend,” Nadezda said, with a wave at her amputated legs. “But it’s not like I’m out there on the frontlines.”

“Do you have any idea what he’s doing with them or where he’s taking them?” Anders asked.

“Aye, I got a guess,” Nadezda glanced between the two of them, and didn’t say anything else.

“How much for the guess?” Anders asked, stuffing his hand back down his boot.

“...Another silver?” Nadezda asked. Anders handed her two.

Levyn exhaled hard through his mouth, “I should join the Wardens.”

“They take cripples?” Nadezda asked.

“I’m not crippled-” Levyn started, and stopped when he belatedly realized she wasn’t talking about him. “Oh-...uh-...Right. You know, I bet you never put your foot in your mouth.”

“I might if someone found it for me,” Nadezda joked.

“The missing casteless?” Anders pressed.

“Golems,” Nadezda said. “An army of dusters vanishes and an army of golems appears? That’s no coincidence.”

“So… what?” Levyn asked. “There’s some sort of people-golem blackmarket slave trade?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, friend,” Nadezda shrugged.

“Can you think of anything else that could help us?” Anders asked.

“I’d be lying if I said yes, but if you wanna keep giving me silver, I’ll keep taking it,” Nadezda said.

“Thanks for your help,” Anders stood up, and started back down the street towards the Commons with Levyn. Anders nudged him, and whispered, “So what do you think?”

“I think Amell overpays you,” Levyn laughed. “You know you just gave away five silver, right?”

“It was information,” Anders argued, unable to bring his voice above a whisper after talking all day. “I paid for it.”

“Overpaid,” Levyn said.

“We saw the same person back there, didn’t we?” Anders asked. “You’re a spirit healer, aren’t you?”

“I don’t heal coin purses,” Levyn protested.

Anders choked down a laugh for fear he’d hurt his throat. “Don’t make me laugh - I’ve done enough damage on my throat for one day.“

“... Did you want me to take a look at it for you?” Levyn offered.

“If you want,” Anders shrugged. Once upon a time, he might have been too proud, but he was too tired for that anymore. Anders stopped, and Levyn set uncomfortably clammy fingers to his scar, the essence of Hope radiating around his hand. “Well?”

Levyn drew his hand back, whistling. “Sorry. Gleam’s a spirit healer too though! Well, she’s sort of a spirit healer. She’s-... well-... uh-... She’s Gleam.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Anders snorted. “You can just say you’re together, you know. You don’t have to dance around it.”

“... the last person I ever loved got sent to Aeonar…” Levyn pushed his hood off his head running a hand through his hair, and ended up tangling his fingers in the matted black strands.

“I’m sorry,” Anders said sincerely.

“She wanted to go,” Levyn shrugged, matching his whisper. “She’d rather be in Aeonar than be with me… than be with a maleficar… You know I learned blood magic so I could be more like Amell?”

“So did I.”

“But I’m not like him. I’m not like him at all. My lover never came back. Things don’t work out for me. I just want things to work out this time. I want things to go right. I want-... to not be mugged.”

“Well… yeah, me too, but why-...” Anders trailed off, and finally noticed the ring of dwarves that had encircled them from the shadows. “Oh.”

Chapter 180: Well Shit

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

We are officially at one million words! I sincerely hope you've enjoyed the story thus far and continue to enjoy it as we continue.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 21 Frumentum Afternoon
Orzammar: Dust Town

Well shit.

'Get mugged' definitely wasn't on Anders' to-do list, but leave it to his luck to find a way to squeeze it in. Three dwarves encircled them, and a glance over his shoulder quickly turned them into five.

“So… remember the nice lady you paid back there?” Levyn asked.

“It’s ringing a bell,” Anders said.

“I’m starting to think maybe she wasn’t so nice,” Levyn said.

“Maybe not,” Anders said, tightening his grip on his staff and widening his stance to use it. Veilfire snapped across his skin, like lightning in a storm, illuminating the dank alley in flashes of sapphire. The dwarves glanced among themselves with anxious expressions, shuffling in place, but none of them backed down.

They brandished weapons in the air between them, and a man who might have been their leader stepped forward. A brand had been tattooed on his left cheek, and burnt into his right for good measure. Discolored patches of skin showed at his neck and scalp, but whether it was from disease, blight, or something else entirely was anyone’s guess. Anders dubbed him Motley.

“Give us your coin, topsider,” Motley ordered.

Levyn wrung his hands on his staff, electricity sparking with the motion. “You messed with the wrong man-...mage-...s,” Levyn stuttered.

“Really?” Anders sighed.

“Hurry up before someone gets hurt,” Motley threatened, raising his weapon up higher, but his form was so piss poor even Anders knew it was piss poor. Everything about the man was piss poor. His ‘weapon’ looked like the eulogy of a dull kitchen knife, and the rest of his fellows were even worse. One man had the sharp end of a broom, another broken bottle, one a rock, and the last just his fists. Dwarves might have been resistant to magic, but he and Levyn probably wouldn’t have needed it to beat them.

They didn’t need to beat them. They were already beaten. Life had beaten them. Looking at them just reminded Anders of the Dog Lords. Cor, and Conall, and Bree, and Sabin. Endless scraps over scraps, just trying to survive a world that abandoned them. Anders might not have been able to save the Dog Lords, and he probably couldn’t save the casteless either, but he could still help.

“You’ll get hurt alright!” Levyn threatened, still cowering behind his staff like a shield. “You’ll get so hurt you’ll wish you hadn’t gotten hurt.”

“Please stop,” Anders begged, feeling his face heat up in embarrassment at Levyn’s every mewling battlecry. He knelt to dig through his boot, and the few coins stuffed in it. “Look, I’ve only got thirteen silver, so you’re going to have to find a way to split this.”

Levyn bumped him with his staff, looking at him like he’d grown a second head, “What are you doing?”

“What are you doing?” Motley agreed.

Anders glanced up at him, “You’re mugging us, right?”

“... right,” Motley lowered his knife, but Anders couldn’t say whether he actually meant to lower it or keep it pointed at him.

Anders retrieved the silvers and stood back up. The knife stayed lowered, so that answered that. “Well, do you want to keep mugging us?”

Motley exchanged a handful of uncertain glances with his fellows, who alternated between nods and shrugs. “... yeah, we want to keep mugging you.”

“Alright, so how am I splitting this up?” Anders asked. “There’s five of you, so two of you only get two silver.”

“... What is happening?” Levyn asked.

“We’re getting mugged,” Anders nudged him. “Keep up, Levyn.”

“I-... okay?” Levyn said.

Motley exchanged more glances with his crew, and stuffed his knife into his belt. There was no holster, but it was so dull it probably didn’t need one. “I’ll take two,” Motley said, holding out a hand. “I don’t owe Karshol.”

“You got your girls, though,” The dwarf holding the rock came over to protest. “Rogek said he’d get me in the gang. I can take two-”

“Rogek can sod off,” Motley cut him off. “He’s no better than Karshol. Take your three and get a new door in case they come knocking.”

“Gimme two,” Said the dwarf holding the broken bottle. “Still got a few teeth left to sell Kasch.”

Anders handed out the silvers with two for Motley and Bottle and three for the rest. The dwarves didn’t seem to know what to do with the coin once they got it. A few of them even mumbled their thanks. Either they’d never mugged anyone before in their lives, or they’d never mugged someone willing to be mugged. Anders gave Levyn a push, and they continued down the alley.

“What just happened?” Levyn asked, watching the dwarves over his shoulder instead of where he was going, and tripping over his own feet.

“We got mugged,” Anders shrugged. “Well, I got mugged. You’re pretty stingy.”

“Stingy?” Levyn repeated. “I don’t get a stipend, you know. Amell’s not giving me any coin to give away. I can’t believe you just gave them-... Was that really all the coin you had?”

“You really think I needed it more than they did?” Anders asked.

“I think you earned it and they didn’t,” Levyn said.

“They earned it,” Anders argued. “They mugged me.”

“You let them mug you.”

“What’s your point?”

“I-... honestly don’t know,” Levyn shook his head. “I might not have the best memory, but I don’t remember you being-... however you’re being right now. Your spirit isn’t Charity, is it?”

“Justice,” Anders said - with a strange sense of pride that had to come from him. It would have been an ignoble fight. The dwarves weren’t their enemy. They were simple victims of circumstance - and if coin kept them from Orzammar’s gallows then it was coin well spent.

“I bet that worked out great in the Circle,” Levyn joked.

“My spirit wasn’t Justice in the Circle,” Anders said.

“Couldn’t find any, huh?” Levyn guessed.

“Not in the Circle,” Anders said.

“Who did you channel back then?”

“Compassion.”

“You found Compassion... in the Circle?” Levyn repeated the words like he was trying to translate them back into Common, but Anders had said what he’d said. Compassion had been his spirit for as long as he’d had his magic until he’d found Justice. He couldn’t imagine having any others, but he knew Compassion hadn’t been a common spirit to channel. Not in the Circle.

Compassion wasn’t a powerful spirit. It probably wasn’t even a powerful virtue, considering it had just cost Anders thirteen silver. The handful of spirit healers in Kinloch used spirits of Faith. Wisdom. Duty. Virtues that could survive when the Circle starved out all others. No one used Compassion. No one used Justice. No one used Love.

“They found me,” Anders said, with a deep breath that pulled Justice to the forefront of his consciousness, the panacea he channelled through him helping him speak. “Sometimes you have to be what you want to see in the world.”

Levyn laughed, “Guess that’s why you were such an ass back in the Circle, then, huh?”

“Good one,” Anders said.

“I can be funny sometimes,” Levyn grinned. “I wouldn’t trust it though. It comes and goes.”

They left Dust Town for the Commons, where Anders’ tabard kept them out of any more trouble, and started the long climb up endless switchback stairs of stone to the Diamond Quarter. “You’re gonna have to help me out with that one,” Anders said. “Any old grudges I should know about? I didn’t sleep with your sister, did I?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Levyn laughed. “I’ve been in the Circle since I was six. How would I know if I had any sisters?”

“You were in the Circle,” Anders corrected him.

“What?”

“You said you’re in the Circle. You were in the Circle. You’re free now.”

“Sounds like wishful thinking to me,” Levyn said. “I just got sick of hearing Amell go on and on about you, honestly. You know he had a serious thing for you in the Circle, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I know,” Anders said. Amell had told him he’d had a crush on him years ago. Anders knew he’d healed him, at some point, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember ever seeing him in the infirmary. “... Do you know why?”

“You want that alphabetical or chronological?” Levyn asked. They reached the landing to the Mining Quarters, and Levyn stopped to rest his staff beside a stone bench and take a seat. Anders stayed standing. They’d descended seven stories and climbed three, but Levyn wasn’t a Grey Warden. He also wasn’t possessed. Logically, Anders knew he needed a chance to rest, but illogically, he was impatient to get back to the Diamond Quarter and continue their investigation.

“Whatever works for you,” Anders supposed, leaning on his staff while Justice listened to the lyrium. They hadn’t actually called it Today. It was lyrium, so it seemed like that was what they should call it, but Lyrium’s Song didn’t have the best ring to it. Isana’s Song sounded a little better. It was the dwarven word for lyrium, and one of the handful Sigrun had carved into her bunk, and Anders wanted to believe she would have liked it.

“I don’t even know where to start,” Levyn admitted, unlacing his shoe and shaking out a rock. “We always used to talk about escaping, but you actually did it… kind of? Kind of was good enough for him I guess. I never heard the end of it. Every. Single. Time. On and on about the great Anders and his great escapes -... Sorry. No offense.”

“I guess I did ask,” Anders said. “I already knew about that, though. I was wondering about something else. He mentioned I healed him, but I don’t remember him ever being in the infirmary. Do you know anything about that?”

“He did lose a lot of weight,” Levyn said, starting on his other shoe.

“That’s not it,” Anders said. “Things weren’t important to me back then, but they’re important to me now, and I just thought you might know what it was like for him. You know, in the Circle.”

“I broke something,” Levyn said.

“Your foot?” Anders guessed from how intently Levyn was staring at it.

“No… in the Circle,” Levyn elaborated, massaging his feet. “I was never going to make it in there. That thug’s knife was sharper than I am. They were going to make me Tranquil sooner or later, so I tried to summon a demon. Something that could get me out, but I ruined the ritual and broke a statue. Amell lied for me… Amell always lies. He said he was the one who broke it.

“He was Irving’s apprentice, so he knew he could get away with it, but that old bastard never cared about him or the mages. He just bowed to the Chantry’s every whim. They had him flogged for it… they made me watch… I think they knew he was lying. Anyway, they took him to the infirmary after, and I guess you were there. So… there you go. I broke him and you fixed him.”

Anders still couldn’t remember healing him, no matter how hard he tried. He’d healed so many mages for so many things and none of them had faces anymore. Beatings. Whippings. Floggings. Paper cuts that weren’t papercuts, but they weren’t casting cuts, on the Maker they weren’t, but they looked like them, and he had to heal them, Maker, please, he had to heal them so they didn’t scar, they couldn’t scar or they’d know and she didn’t want to be Tranquil-

Anders pushed the memory away, scrubbing the corner of his eyes with the heel of his palm. He couldn’t remember that girl’s face either. They were faceless. They were all faceless. Just split skin, and broken bones, and bruised bodies, and so many tears he’d helped as best he could with so many jokes, and maybe he’d been callow but he hadn’t been callous. “Whatever happened in there, you know it wasn’t your fault,” Anders said.

Levyn spared him a watery smile through greasy black bangs, “Guess you’re a liar too, huh?”

“Do my best,” Anders said.

“Thanks,” Levyn put his shoes back on, and they continued. “For fixing him.”

Anders didn’t know that he had. Amell had his own trauma, but it felt like he was always setting it aside for him. There were still so many things they hadn’t talked about. Levyn had barely been with Gleam a month and already professed to love her and Anders hadn't even done that after five bloody years. “Gleam said she was from Kinloch?”

“She was, but I didn’t really know her in the Circle,” Levyn said. “You know that old asshole, Duty?”

“The templar who named himself after a spirit?” Anders recalled. “I hated that guy.” To be fair, Anders had hated the whole lot, but Duty had a special place in his heart with how he’d beaten every other apprentice that snickered at his name.

“That’s her father,” Levyn said. “Her mother was a mage who ran away from the Circle before the Chantry could take her away, and gave her to a family of freeholders. Most of them died to bandits, but her cousin and her brother survived. They made a living in fighting rings for a while, until she got caught healing them. Duty… hunted her down and killed her cousin in front of her before he brought her back to Kinloch.”

“Are you serious?” Anders asked just to ask. He wasn’t surprised. It was a familiar story and it stirred a familiar anger - a comforting warmth in place of a blazing inferno. Something to keep him focused and move him forward.

“He silenced her with a magic dampener,” Levyn said. “Made her watch while he bled out…. She could have saved him. She’s a good healer.”

“What spirit does she use?” Anders asked.

“She doesn’t,” Levyn leaned in to whisper. “She uses a demon. A demon of spite that formed from her mother’s memories. She goes by Venom.”

“How do you know all this?” Anders asked. “You’ve only been with her a month.”

“She told me. She loves me. I love her. I have regrets, but love was never one of them. I joined the Mage’s Collective to find my friend, but meeting Gleam-... I believe in it all now. The Circle tried to make me Tranquil. They tried to take everything that I am from me. My dreams, hopes, fears, love… all gone. I don’t care what we call it or what it looks like, but if we can make this place somewhere that doesn’t happen-... we should.”

“Any ideas there?” Anders asked.

“Where?” Levyn glanced over his shoulder, like he expected to find an idea following him, and Anders snorted.

“Your friend,” Anders said. “Do you think the missing mages have anything to do with the missing casteless?”

“I don’t do a lot of thinking,” Levyn said. “‘Ask Amell’ is usually my go-to solution for things.”

“I mean, same, but there’s something there, isn’t there? Casteless disappearing, golems appearing… Do you think it’s some kind of slave trade with Tevinter? Trading people for golems? Maybe mages are worth more and that’s why they started raiding the surface when they stopped kidnapping the casteless?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Levyn said. “I just want my friend back.”

“We’ll get him back,” Anders promised.

“I’m not saying we should ask Amell, but we should ask Amell,” Levyn said. “He used to travel with a golem during the Blight. It wasn’t like the golems here. It spoke and everything. It was like a person.”

“Golems aren’t people,” Anders said. “They’re golems. They’re like… Stone and metal animated with lyrium. I think I’d know if golems were people.”

“I’m telling you, it spoke,” Levyn insisted. “The arl’s brother was keeping me in the dungeon for the whole… poisoning the arl thing when Amell found me. He had the golem free me by just… ripping the door out of the wall. The golem looked me dead in the eye, called me ‘human waste’ and said that if it wasn’t for Amell it would ‘squish me just to watch me fountain blood’ for making such a mess of everything.”

“No offense, but are you sure you weren’t hallucinating?” Anders asked. “How long were you in the dungeon?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Levyn scratched the back of his head. “A couple of months, maybe?”

“I’m just saying, I’ve been in solitary, and I’ve had plenty of hallucinations, but I’ve never heard a golem talk, and I’ve seen a lot of golems,” Anders said, counting them off on his hand. “There was the one in Kal’Hirol - the two in Kal’Hirol actually - the one in the Black Emporium… None of them even worked without a control rod. I don’t see how they can be people if they can’t even move without someone ordering them to move. Even the Tranquil are better than that.”

“I’m just saying,” Levyn said. “We should ask Amell.”

“Alright, we’ll ask Amell,” Anders said.

It was late in the afternoon according to the dwarven timepieces by the time they got back to the Diamond Quarter and the Grey Warden Embassy, but Amell wasn’t around for them to ask. He was at the palace, doing whatever it was he was doing, but if he really had had a talking golem with him during the Blight he wouldn’t have been the only one to know about it. Oghren would have known, but Oghren wasn’t around either, which just left Morrigan.

Anders found her in her room, dressing Kieran in what he assumed was the latest dwarven fashion. Excessively buttoned sleeves, puffed shoulders, pinstripe pants, and a belt that swallowed his entire midriff. Anders made a mental note to tell Amell about it later. “What’s the occasion?” Anders asked.

“We’re going to the market!” Kieran said. “Are you coming with? Can Anders come with, Mother?”

“If he wishes,” Morrigan said, tying a small bit of metal into Kieran’s braid to finish his outfit. Anders wondered why she even bothered. Morrigan certainly didn’t dress to match her surroundings. Her Chasind garb was made up of leathers and furs that made her look like she was constantly on the verge of transforming into a wolf or a bear, but her eyes fit in. They were so gold they practically glowed in the dark.

“He sure does,” Anders said. “What are we shopping for?”

“Gifts,” Morrigan said the word like an Orlesian might have said poison. She shouldered an empty pack for said gifts, and ushered them both out of the embassy and into the streets. The Diamond Quarter was tiled with black quartz and grouted in gold. Cryers stood on every corner, bellowing out the latest gossip to passing nobles and servants, who no more looked at the streets than they did the countless casteless that suffered beneath them. Anders doubted they even knew they were missing.

“Who are the gifts for?” Anders asked on the way to the markets.

“Endrin and Trian!” Kieran said. “Can I hold your staff?”

“It’s kind of heavy,” Anders warned him, handing it over. Static swept over Kieran, making his hair stand up and Morrigan sigh when he took it. “Don’t drag it, okay?”

“Okay,” Kieran said, awkwardly holding the staff like a bundle of firewood and teetering in either direction in front of them under the weight. Anders kept an eye on him, but as long as he didn’t drag it and didn’t go toppling over, he seemed okay.

“Apparently ‘tis custom to give men who have everything even more to have,” Morrigan explained. “We are to have dinner with the King this evening. I suspect you shall join us?”

“I guess so,” Anders said. “I can’t afford a gift, though. I lost all my coin.”

“I am sure Amell will afford it for you,” Morrigan rolled her eyes.

“Can I ask you something?” Anders asked.

“Can I stop you?” Morrigan countered.

“What are you doing here?” Anders asked.

“What a question,” Morrigan actually smiled. “Is there somewhere else I should be?”

“I honestly have no idea,” Anders said. “I know you don’t care about the Mage’s Collective and I doubt you care about the missing freeholders.”

“Perhaps you are clever after all,” Morrigan said, watching Kieran clear a path through the crowds with Anders’ staff. “... I am researching something. Something from a very long time ago that I have been researching for a very long time. Something most people have forgotten but the dwarves may yet remember.”

“Are we playing a guessing game?” Anders asked. “Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

“It… is bigger than a breadbox, yes,” Morrigan grinned.

“Are you actually having fun with me?” Anders asked. “Is that what’s happening now?”

“Not if you go and ruin it,” Morrigan said.

“Are you going to tell me what it is?” Anders asked.

“‘Tis a mirror,” Morrigan relented.

“A magic mirror?” Anders guessed.

“Indeed.”

“Is it an eluvian?”

“How is it you know what an eluvian is?” Morrigan asked.

“Doesn’t everyone?” Anders asked.

“Now who is having fun with who?” Morrigan nudged him with the butt of her staff.

They reached the market stalls, set up in a grand marble plaza overlooking all of Orzammar. From the Diamond Quarter, waterfalls and rivers of lava flowed into small lakes around the city, like the dwarves had mined the sun itself and used it to light the grand metropolis. Anders took his staff back from Kieran, who set about rummaging through a handful of stalls filled with children’s toys for whatever he seemed to think his friends would like, and seemed - not for the first time - every bit Amell’s son.

“Come now, how is it you know of eluvians?” Morrigan asked again.

“My friend -...” Not his friend. Anders had to stop thinking of Merrill as his friend. She wasn’t his friend. She’d never been his friend. No friend would do what Merrill had done. “Someone I knew had one. Merrill? She’s the Dalish who came to stay at Vigil’s Keep two years ago. I think you met her.”

“So I did,” Morrigan hummed, rolling her fingers along her staff - a charred bit of wood that looked like it was constantly burning from the inside out. “... She made no mention.”

“It broke,” Anders explained. “She gave up trying to fix it until a friend and I put it back together.”

“You…put it back together?” Morrigan repeated slowly. “You put an eluvian, an ancient elven seeing glass from the time of Arlathan, back together? How?”

“Is this the part where I say magic?” Anders guessed.

“If it is also the part where I-” Morrigan started, and Anders doubted whatever else she was going to say was going to be pretty, but Kieran ran over to them holding a small stone carving of something that looked like a bronto with too many horns, and Morrigan swallowed her threat.

“Can I get this, please, Mother?” Kieran begged.

“How much is it?” Morrigan asked.

“Six silver!” Kieran said.

“We have twenty,” Morrigan said. “How much will you have left?”

Kieran stared at his hands, but they were holding the statue. He set it back on the stall, and started counting off on his fingers.

“That’s a weird bronto,” Anders noted.

“It’s a cretahl, Warden,” The merchant said helpfully.

“I knew that,” Anders lied. “... What’s a cretahl?”

“Great horned warbeasts, from before the fall of the thaigs,” The merchant explained. “Worth every silver!”

“Fourteen!” Kieran said. Morrigan dug through a leather pouch at her belt, and handed Kieran six silver he handed to the merchant, who wrapped up the statue in a bit of parchment. Morrigan put it in the pack, and Kieran went back to hunting for more gifts among the stalls.

“Well?” Morrigan demanded when he left.

“Well what?”

“How did you fix the eluvian?”

“It shattered when the qunari invaded Kirkwall. My friend found all of the pieces, and we matched them to another eluvian I found in the Black Emporium. It’s… an ancient library beneath Kirkwall owned by a four hundred year old nobleman who made a deal with a Witch of the Wilds for eternal life, but I guess he forgot to ask for eternal youth. He’s basically jerky in a chair.”

“Mother,” Morrigan sighed, pressing the fingers of her free hand into her temple. “This mirror, was it for sale?”

“No, but I don’t think you’d want it anyway,” Anders said. “It was infected with red lyrium, and just in case that doesn’t dissuade you, the place is guarded by a golem and Maker knows what else.”

“You are right, that does not dissuade me,” Morrigan said.

“What do you want me to tell Kieran at your funeral?” Anders asked.

“That I died a braver man than you,” Morrigan said. “Golems do not scare me.”

“Do you know a lot about them?” Anders asked.

“More so than most, perhaps,” Morrigan said, leaning back on her staff and eyeing him over. “Why do you ask?”

“Levyn said Amell used to travel with one, back during the Blight,” Anders said.

“So he did,” Morrigan said. “A barely-working statue with a poor memory and a poor attitude, all too eager to cast themself as the worldly sage and judge the world around them.”

“How does a statue have a memory?” Anders asked. “Or an attitude? It’s a statue.”

“‘Tis a golem,” Morrigan said. “‘Tis not quite the same.”

“What’s the difference?” Anders asked.

“Do you truly not know?” Morrigan raised an eyebrow at him.

“Is this revenge for me knowing about eluvians?” Anders asked. “Is that why you’re not telling me?”

“What is there to tell?” Morrigan hummed. “Does everyone not know about golems?”

Anders rolled his eyes, “Point taken, will you just tell me?”

“A golem has a soul,” Morrigan explained. “Intolerable as she was, Shale was a dwarven warrior, perhaps a thousand years ago, before she volunteered to become a golem.”

A soul. Golems had souls. Golems couldn’t have souls. They were statues. They were moving statues. “How-... what?”

“Surprised, are we?” Morrigan deduced. “Truly, she was of little import. Her House was far more interesting than she. The ancestors of House Cadash were destroyed by the dwarves of Kal Sharok for sheltering elves following the destruction of Arlathan so as not to jeopardize their alliance with the Tevinter Imperium. A sound decision, but the dwarves were so ashamed of it they struck the records from their Memories.

“‘Tis truly troublesome to think of how much knowledge their silly shame cost them. They sent excavations centuries later, searching for lost artifacts of Arlathan. I am sure some have found their way back here, and so I am here, buying gifts for children, that the fool king I helped seat might allow me access to Orzammar’s Shaperate and their Memories, to study whatever artifacts they may have collected that I might learn more of the eluvians you so easily stumble across.”

“They have souls?” Anders said.

“Still on that, are we?” Morrigan hummed.

Kieran returned with another toy - another mystical dwarven creature worth eight silvers - but Anders missed whatever it was called. He couldn’t focus on anything other than what Morrigan had said. Souls. Golems had souls. Golems were people. Golems were dead people? Golems were living people? Maker, golems were people. “I don’t understand,” Anders said, while Kieran went hunting for a final toy for himself. “How do golems have souls? Do you have to sacrifice someone to make one?”

“After a fashion,” Morrigan said. “Men cannot make new life - they can only take it from others. A dwarven smith by the name of Caridin created an anvil of lyrium that could be used to forge golems. You take a person upon the anvil, dress them in hewn stone or sheets of metal, and then drown them in molten lyrium. ‘Tis quite fascinating to watch.”

“To watch?” Anders’ voice cracked when he tried to shout, and damned if Hawke still didn’t know what was best for him, keeping him from yelling with Kieran and half a hundred dwarves around. “You-... you watched? You watched someone get turned into a golem?”

“Indeed,” Morrigan said, like there was nothing wrong with it, but there was everything wrong with it. Anders had seen golems. Anders had seen too many golems - stone constructs seemingly incapable of speech or movement or maybe even free will without someone holding their control rod and forcing their will on them. “Why do you ask?”

“Why do I ask?” Anders repeated, choking on his outrage and trying to smother it. Morrigan couldn’t be saying what Anders thought she was saying. Anders just didn’t understand. There was some other explanation - something that wasn’t half as horrible - something that made sense. “Orzammar has golems. Orzammar has an army of golems. You’re telling me they’re all people? That people are bound inside them like-... like-...”

“What word are you searching for, I wonder?” Morrigan smiled - like any of this was anything to smile about. “Slaves? Does that offend your delicate sensibilities?”

“My-...” Anders wheezed, tension hiking his shoulders and locking up his arms. “Are you serious? Orzammar has an army of slaves and you’re just okay with that?”

“I am not ‘just okay’ with it,” Morrigan laughed, a playful sort of giggle that made Anders feel like he was losing his mind. “I support it. Whyever would I not? Orzammar has need of an army and an army of golems is all but invincible. How else do you imagine they might reclaim their lost thaigs from the darkspawn?”

“Literally any other way!” Anders hissed. “How can you possibly condone slavery?”

“I condone power,” Morrigan said. “No matter how feared or frowned upon. Golems are power. Those who choose to become them are powerful. Those who control them are powerful. Did you know the dwarves once had twelve great thaigs that spanned the breadth of Thedas? That they once outnumbered humans and elves alike? How do you suppose that came to be? Do you suppose they built their empire with clemency and compassion? Do not be foolish. They built it as men build all things - with blood and death.”

“You can’t possibly-” Anders started, when Kieran came back, and Anders swallowed down his tirade.

“Can I get this please, Mother?” Kieran begged, holding up a flat black stone with a glowing silver rune carved into it.

“How much is it?” Morrigan asked.

“Four silver,” Kieran said.

“Do you have enough left?” Morrigan asked.

“I have six!” Kieran said.

“Then I suppose you can get it,” Morrigan ruffled his hair, and handed him four silver Kieran handed over to the vendor.

Anders paced a few feet away, static sparking off his staff and making his hair stand on end when he ran his hands through it. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening. An army. A whole army. An army of casteless. Casteless disappeared. Golems appeared. People. Innocent people boiled alive in molten lyrium and bound in cages of rock and steel, enslaved to whoever created them. Maker, it was worse than anything Anders could have imagined - and Morrigan knew about it.

How did Morrigan know about it?

“Answer the boy,” Morrigan nudged him with the butt of her staff on the way back to the embassy.

“What?” Anders asked.

“When do I get a staff?” Kieran asked.

“Oh,” Anders wondered how many times Kieran had asked and he hadn’t heard. “It’s-....” Maker, Anders couldn’t think about this right now. “Why don’t you hang onto mine for now?” Anders gave Kieran back his staff, and turned back to Morrigan when he ran off ahead with it. “How do you know so much about golems?”

“Who do you suspect makes them?” Morrigan asked. “You walked the Hall of Heroes, did you not? You saw the statue of Paragon Branka? You are aware she was Oghren’s wife? She lives in the dwarven fortress of Bownammar, with the Anvil of the Void, and has spent the past six years recreating the Legion of Steel for King Bhelen. Has Amell told you nothing of how he ended the Blight?”

Branka. Oghren had told him about Branka. She studied the Harvesters. Amell helped her study the Harvesters. “We don’t talk about it.”

“Perhaps you should,” Morrigan suggested. “Perhaps he is not the man you make him out to be.”

“Why would you say something like that?”

“Because you seem to be under the impression that the world is made up of good and evil men when the truth is they are all just men, and men do whatever it takes to survive.”

“This isn’t survival!” Anders hissed, with a quick glance to ensure Kieran hadn’t heard him, but all he could do was whisper. “This is just evil.”

“Is it now?” Morrigan asked. “Shall I tell you how we found Orzammar during the Blight? While Loghain was waging his little war in Ferelden, Orzammar waged one of their own. The old King had died and his High General contested his son’s right to rule. Dwarves slaughtered each other in droves in the streets while darkspawn slaughtered them in the droves in the deep. The city was on the brink of collapse.

“Branka was their only living Paragon, and she had been missing for two years - lost to the Deep Roads in the hopes of uncovering the secrets of golems, to give her people a way to defend against the darkspawn. She was the only one with enough influence to declare a king and end the war, and so we left to find her, but when we did, she was not alone. Caridin had survived for over a thousand years - a golem himself.

“He would have had us destroy the Anvil. The sacrifice was too great, he said. Do you know what Amell said to him before he killed him?”

Anders didn’t want to know, but Morrigan told him anyway.

“In death, sacrifice.”

Chapter 181: How Could You?

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 21 Frumentum Early Evening
Orzammar: Grey Warden Embassy

Amell was a good man.

Anders knew he was a good man. He had seen incontrovertible evidence of how good a man Amell was and every day he saw more. Amell had saved him, and Maker knew how many other Grey Wardens. Amell had saved Levyn, and Maker knew how many other mages. Amell had saved Ferelden, and Maker knew how many other countries when he’d stopped the Fifth Blight from swallowing the world.

Anders paced in their room, trying to calm down, but he felt like he was holding back a storm he was doomed to unleash the second Amell walked through the door. Anders didn’t want to unleash it, but he was so angry it was making him sick. His anger bled into his magic, static coiling through his entire body and sparking across the quartz with every step.

Amell was a good man. There was no man better. Amell sacrificed everything for everyone. He sacrificed-... Everything. Everyone. His soul and the souls of others weren’t any different.

Anders shook the thought away. There had to be an explanation. Anders just had to wait to hear it. Anders was going to wait. Anders was going to be calm. Anders was going to be patient. Anders was going to let him explain. Anders was not going to overreact-...

Overreact.

Overreact to what? To the eternal enslavement of Maker knew how many souls for some arbitrary goal of reclaiming a handful of tainted tombs infested with darkspawn that no man or dwarf had set foot in for hundreds of years?

Calm down. Calm down, calm down, calm down. Anders didn’t know enough to jump to conclusions. He’d only learned the truth about golems an hour ago. From Morrigan. Because Morrigan had told him. Because Amell hadn’t told him. Because Amell lied like Amell lied about everything to everyone.

Which was fine. That was fine. It was fine that he lied. Anders knew that he lied. He lied for good reasons. He saved Levyn with his lies and Anders with his lies and Maker knew how many other people with his lies but this wasn’t just a lie, this was-... this was disgusting. This was revolting. This was abhorrent.

“I’m going to overreact,” Anders said to himself.

Anders’ anger faltered when he felt him. Damn him, he loved the way Amell felt. The corruption in his blood and the way it pulled for him the second Amell was back in the embassy. It sang like a deathknell and Anders would have gone to it gladly on any other day, but instead he froze, clutching the back of the couch until the quartz bit into his palm. Amell let himself into their room and set up his staff by the door, still chuckling over whatever conversation he’d just ended with Oghren.

“Anders,” Amell said with a smile Anders wished he wasn’t wearing. “Have you heard this one? A human, an elf, and a dwarf are-”

“We have to talk,” Anders cut him off.

Amell stopped in the middle of unbuttoning his cloak, and traded his smile for a look of concern, “Is everything alright?”

“No, everything is not alright,” Anders said. “How could everything be alright?”

Amell took one too many steps towards him, and Anders took a step back. He didn’t want Amell near him, holding him, clouding his head with copper before he had a chance to confront him. Amell stopped. Anders wished he hadn’t stopped. It would have been so much easier to stay angry if he hadn’t stopped.

“Did something happen?” Amell asked. “Did you see someone sign again while you were out?”

“No, I-” Fuck. Fuck him. He was so fucking good. Why did he have to be so fucking good? “Look, I know about golems, alright?”

“What about them?” Amell asked.

“What about them?” Anders repeated. “What do you mean ‘what about them’? Where do I even start? No, you know what, where do you even start?”

“Anders-” Amell started, but it was a bad start. He was too calm, too collected, too many things Anders wasn't and it just made him feel like he was going mad for being mad.

“Don’t do that!” Anders hissed. “Don’t say my name like that.”

“... Alright,” Amell said.

“You know,” Anders pressed on, electricity snapping the air at the first wild wave of his hand. “I know you know how they’re made. You know they’re people. People you boil alive in molten lyrium and bind to a stone prison for all eternity. I know you know they’re slaves. Don’t tell me you don’t know.”

“I’m not making golems, Anders-”

“Don’t lie to me. I know you had a golem during the Blight. I remember the golem we found and the golem we fought in Kal’Hirol. I know you use control rods to bind them.”

“... Shale was a friend, Anders,” Amell said patiently, like Anders was worked up over nothing. Like however many other hundred golems were out there were nothing. “I never bound them. I never could. Their control rod was broken when I found them.”

“What about the rest of them?” Anders demanded. “The golems in Kal’Hirol? Those were people and you knew it! We could have tried to save them and you just threw them at each other to fight to the death. They’re slaves, Amell! They’re bloody slaves! They’re worse than slaves and you used them. Maker, you helped make them!”

“What are you talking about?” Amell asked.

“Don’t do that,” Anders crossed the room in two ground-eating strides, but he didn’t know what to do once he was in front of Amell. He didn’t want to do anything to him. He was just angry, but if he couldn’t shove and he couldn’t shout he didn’t have any outlets for his anger. “Don’t make me doubt myself.”

“I’m not trying to make you doubt yourself,” Amell said. Nothing in his posture changed at Anders’ sudden advance. He had a hand resting lightly on the back of the couch to help him gauge his surroundings, and that was it. It should have changed. Amell should have done something. Shoved him. Pushed him. Punched him. “Can you just tell me what you’re talking about?”

“I’m talking about how you could have destroyed the Anvil of the Void and instead you kept it. You used it. You’re still using it!” Anders paced away from him when Amell didn’t do anything to him. Amell should have done something to him. Anders was angry, and getting angry meant getting hurt, and he didn’t remember how to be angry when it didn’t. “Do you have any idea how many casteless they’ve taken and turned into these-... these bloody things?”

“A hundred and forty-seven,” Amell said.

“What?” Anders whirled back around, but Amell didn’t look ashamed anymore than he looked angry. He was just standing there listening to him, but he wasn’t hearing him.

“A hundred and forty-seven soldiers,” Amell said. “That’s how many.”

“Soldiers!?” Anders repeated. “They’re slaves!”

“They’re volunteers,” Amell said.

“Volunteers-...” Anders ran a hand through his hair, static making the strands stand on end. “You don’t believe that. Don’t tell me you believe that.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“They don’t know what they’re volunteering for!”

“Neither do Wardens,” Amell said.

“That’s not the same!”

“Why not?”

“We don’t have control rods!” Anders hissed, and thank the Maker, Amell didn’t have anything to say to that. “You have to know this is wrong.” Amell didn’t answer him. Anders didn’t know if it was good or bad that Amell didn’t answer him. “Did you know? This whole time, did you know? You must have known. That’s what’s happening to the missing freeholders, isn’t it? The missing mages? They’re making them into golems, and you knew.”

“Anders-”

“Maker, I can’t believe you. You just let me - you just let all of us run around the city searching for survivors when you knew there wouldn’t be any! You knew what was happening, and you didn’t tell me. You didn’t trust me. You didn’t respect me.”

“Anders-”

Anders’ lost his voice, “Do you have any idea how much that hurts?”

“I do respect you,” Amell slid his hand forward along the back of the couch, like he meant to take a step towards him, but for whatever reason he didn’t. “Anders, I can’t just accuse Orzammar of an act of war without any proof-”

“Don’t make this about politics,” Anders whispered, only to cough at the strain talking put on his throat. He should have started tea if he was going to start a fight, but he hadn’t thought about it, and his panacea didn’t help nearly as much as he wished it did.

“Are you alright?”

“Don’t change the topic.”

“I’m not," Amell said. "Do you need me to get you some tea?”

“What I need-” Anders wheezed, and choked down a curse. “What I need-”

“Anders…” Amell finally crossed the floor, and Anders’ whole body locked up on him. Finally. Finally, finally, finally Amell advanced on him because Amell was angry with him and Amell had his hands on him, but they were just-... soft. Lightly set against his throat, a touch of primal magic cooling his touch. “I’m going to get you some tea, and I’m going to come back, and you can say whatever you need to say to me.”

“I can get my own tea,” Anders muttered, pushing Amell’s hands off and storming out of the room. There wasn’t any point in storming out of the room. He was wearing socks, and all storming did was hurt his feet when his socks didn’t make any sound on the quartz. Anders couldn’t even slam the door when he left it, not with Kieran playing a game of draughts with Oghren in the common room.

Damnit. Damnit, damnit, damnit. Anders forced a strained smile and an awkward wave on his way to the kitchens, where he started himself a pot of spindleweed tea. This wasn’t going the way it was supposed to go. Anders didn’t even know how it was supposed to go, he just knew it wasn’t supposed to go like this, but he didn’t know how to make it go any other way.

Why was he like this? Why couldn’t he just be angry? Why did he think Amell would hurt him for being angry? Why did he think he deserved to be hurt for being angry? Anders folded his hands on the mantle of the hearth and rested his head against them, watching the water boil after a frustrated attempt to make it boil faster turned the first pot to steam.

It was just a fight. Why couldn’t Anders just have a fight? Golems were evil. Golems were slaves. Anders just had to get Amell to admit that golems were evil and golems were slaves. It shouldn’t have been this bloody hard to get Amell to admit golems were evil and golems were slaves.

Tea had never taken so long to make in his entire life, and Anders burned his tongue on the first cup when he didn’t wait for it to cool. A flash of primal magic cooled it before it had any time to steep, and made the first cup taste like lightly flavored water, but it helped. Anders took the teapot back to the room with him, doubled back when he forgot his cup, and then doubled back again when some stupid part of him insisted Amell would have appreciated a cup for himself.

Amell had hung up his cloak and was leaning against the arm of the couch when he came back. Anders set everything on the table, thumping the teapot against the quartz a few times in lieu of tapping it with the stirring spoon he’d left in the kitchen. “Handle’s facing you,” Anders said. “Your cup’s on the left.”

“... I don’t actually care for tea, Anders,” Amell smiled. Fuck. Anders knew there was something about Amell and tea, but he didn’t even know him well enough to know what that something was, and somehow he thought he knew him well enough to believe Amell would never do something like this. “Thank you, though.”

Anders paced on the other side of the table, and trying to find the right words, the right argument, the right anger. “You know golems are evil, don’t you? Tell me you know golems are evil.”

“It’s not that simple,” Amell said.

“Of course it’s that simple,” Anders hissed. “Morrigan said you had a chance to destroy the Anvil. Why didn’t you? You’re a mage! You know what it’s like to be a slave. How could you let anyone become a golem?”

“I’m a Warden,” Amell corrected him. “We needed golems.”

“No one needs slaves!”

“We needed golems-”

Anders set his cup down on the table, “Call them slaves.”

Amell frowned, “No.”

“That’s what they are!” Anders shouldn't have tried to shout. His voice cracked, and he refilled his cup, wishing he’d gotten elfroot instead of spindleweed.

“It’s not that simple,” Amell insisted, tapping at his legs, like all of Anders’ energy had finally bled over and Amell wanted to start pacing right along with him. “Anders, I don’t know what Morrigan told you-”

“Don’t you dare tell me she was lying-” Anders stopped drinking to snarl.

“I’m not saying she was lying,” Amell held up a hand.

“No, because you were,” Anders said. “You knew the truth about golems and you never told me. If you really believe there’s nothing wrong with using them, then why hide it from me?”

“I wasn’t hiding anything from you, Anders.”

“Then what were you doing? What were you thinking? Why did you bring me here? Did you honestly think I’d never find out?”

“Anders-...I’m-... not ready to leave you alone. Not after what happened.”

“You should have told me!”

“You wouldn’t have understood.”

“I understand enough. I understand that for some reason you think anything excuses an eternity of servitude. How could you? I have been driving myself mad trying to think of some way to justify what you did, but there isn’t one. It’s wrong, Amell. It’s just wrong.”

“It was war-”

“I’ve been in wars,” Anders cut him off. “We didn’t need golems to win any of them.”

“You’ve been in battles,” Amell said, like none of them counted. “This was war. This was a Blight-”

“That doesn’t excuse it-” Anders hissed.

“It excuses everything. Anders… I’m glad you spent the Blight safe in Harper’s Ford. I’m glad you never had to face it, but I did. It wasn’t one battle. It wasn’t one city. It wasn’t one expedition. It wasn’t even one war. It was the end of the world.”

“I know that-”

“No you don’t,” Amell cut him off. “I served at Ostagar. The darkspawn horde decimated the king’s army, the Grey Wardens, the Ash Warriors, the Chasind… The only survivors from that battle were a few hundred men under Loghain’s command, deserters, Alistair, and I. Thousands died. You can’t imagine death on that scale until you see it. That valley was a river of blood and death.

“The armies that weren’t at Ostagar were pulled into a civil war because the Guerrins were too proud to stand behind Loghain after he deserted, and hundreds more died because of it. Arlings were overrun because no one was left to defend them. South Reach. The Southron Hills. The Western Hills. Everything south of the Imperial Highway and half of the bannorn. Thousands dead. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands.

“Of course I kept the Anvil, Anders. Orzammar was in the middle of a civil war. Bhelen and Pyral had the Warrior Caste killing each other in the streets, and no amount of blood magic could convince them to stop. Branka was a living Paragon. She was the only person who had the influence to stop the war and convince them to focus on the true threat, but she was gone.

“She took her entire house into the Deep Roads to search for the Anvil of the Void, because she knew Orzammar needed something to help them stand against the darkspawn hordes. You’ve seen the city. You’ve seen how empty it is. You’ve seen how few dwarves are left. Golems are the only reason Orzammar is still standing - and I don’t regret using them.

“I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t find Caridin in the Deep Roads, I found a steel golem who used his name. A steel golem no one had met and no one would believe, who had nothing to offer me against the Blight except a clear conscience. Branka offered me golems. She finished four in time for the Battle of Denerim. Four golems - and they helped me hold four districts - and it still wasn’t enough to turn the tide because it was a Blight.

“I sacrificed… hundreds… of people that day… Men. Women. Children… I don’t expect you to understand, but there’s nothing I wouldn’t have done to end the Blight. Nothing.”

Anders didn’t know what to say to any of that. On some level, he’d already heard everything Amell had said, but he’d never heard him say it all at once. It still didn’t excuse it. It still didn’t justify it. The Blight had ended. Amell had ended it. Maybe he’d done reprehensible things to end it, but it was over and the horrors left by it weren’t. There was nothing Amell could say that could justify eternal enslavement.

“They’re slaves,” Anders said stubbornly, clenching his empty teacup.

“They’re volunteers,” Amell said.

“You think anyone would volunteer for that life?” Anders demanded.

“I did,” Amell said.

“What?” Anders asked.

“I volunteered for this life,” Amell said. “I wanted it. Greagoir was going to have me sent to Aeonar for helping Levyn escape the Circle and Duncan offered me a life of service instead.”

“That’s not volunteering,” Anders said. “You didn’t have a choice.”

“Aeonar was a choice. Tranquility was a choice. Death was a choice. Mages have choices. We just don’t have good ones,” Amell said. “Look at the casteless and tell me they’re any different.”

“They are different! You don’t have a control rod!”

“I’m not the one making them.”

“They’re still getting made!” Anders hissed, and had to stop when he lost his voice again. He poured himself another cup of tea while Amell scrubbed his palms against his trousers. Anders hoped he felt guilty. Anders hoped he felt something. “You can’t tell me they’re not. This wouldn’t be a secret if people weren't being forced to keep it one.”

“What do you want me to do about it, Anders?” Amell asked, like there was nothing he could do, but Amell was Amell. He could do anything. He just had to try, but he wasn’t even doing that.

“I want you to stop it!” Anders thought that was obvious.

“I didn’t start it,” Amell said. “You don’t need to make a control rod to make a golem. You can just make golems - but that wasn’t my decision then and it’s not my decision now. I’m not Orzammar’s king. I can’t order Branka to stop making control rods.”

“But you can study Harvesters with her?” Anders asked, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I know you send her the corpse of every Harvester you kill. Why would you do that when you know she’s turning people into golems? So she can turn around and make more of them?”

“The Harvesters are golems, Anders,” Amell said. “Branka knows more about them than anyone in Thedas. We need every advantage we can get-”

“No you don’t!” Anders threw his cup on the table, and the clatter made Amell flinch. “Maker, do you hear yourself? The Blight is over, Amell! It’s over! You won! You can stop! You have to stop!” Anders shoved his way around the table, but Amell didn’t react the same way he had the first time Anders had advanced on him. He went stiff, his hands clenched on the arm of the couch like he was bracing himself. “... What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” Amell asked.

“... I’m not going to hit you,” Anders whispered.

“I never said you would,” Amell said.

“Do you really think I would hit you?” Anders asked.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” Amell said.

… What was he doing? Maker, what was he doing? Why was he acting like this? He didn’t want to be aggressive, he just wanted to be angry, but it was like he couldn’t remember how to separate one from the other, and he was acting like he acted with Hawke. Except Hawke had never been afraid of him, Anders had been afraid of Hawke, and now Anders was acting like him.

Anders’ hands shook when he set them on Amell’s shoulders with the effort he put into being gentle. Amell stayed stiff as stone, like someone had carved him from the same quartz that made up the rest of their room. Anders felt like he’d swallowed all of it - a three year weight in the pit of his stomach that he didn’t know how to move past.

“I would never hit you,” Anders said as softly as he could manage.

“I wouldn’t blame you,” Amell said, not for the first time, but he wouldn’t have said it unless he thought he deserved to be hit and that Anders deserved to hit him.

“I would never hurt you,” Anders insisted, cradling Amell’s face in his hands and caressing his cheeks with his thumbs. “I would never hurt you.”

Anders kissed him - a featherlight press of his lips to prove he wouldn’t hurt him - caressing his face and turning one kiss into two and then three, until Amell kissed hesitantly back, his arms finally moving from their brace against the couch to slide around his waist. Anders kept their foreheads pressed together when he broke from him.

“I would never hurt you,” Anders promised.

“... Alright,” Amell said.

“I promise.”

“Alright.”

Anders held him, brushing his fingers across his brow and through his hair, and wished he had a ring of rosewood to go beside his ring of study. Amell deserved to know how he felt - even if how he felt was angry - if only so he could know his anger was safe. Amell had been angry with him, when Anders had interrupted his argument with Alistair, and Anders had felt safe in his anger, but Amell clearly didn’t feel safe in his.

Anders kissed him again, and while he couldn’t sense Amell’s heartbeat, he could still feel him. His body was tense, his breathing measured, and his hands didn’t traverse his body the way they usually did when they were close. He was just there, and no matter how Anders swore he’d never hurt him, he felt like he already had. “I promise.”

“I heard you,” Amell said quietly.

“I’m sorry,” Anders said.

“You didn’t do anything,” Amell said, but it just felt like another lie, and Anders didn’t know how to fix it.

“... This is wrong,” Anders said instead.

“Anders-” Amell sighed.

“It’s wrong,” Anders insisted. “You know it’s wrong. I know you know it’s wrong. This isn’t a Blight, Amell. Orzammar doesn’t need golems - and even if they do - they don’t need slaves.”

Amell caught his wrists and gently untangled them. “What do you want me to do about it, Anders?”

“I want you to stop it,” Anders took a step back to give him the space he seemed to want. “We came here to stop it. They’re abducting freeholders-”

“I can’t prove that.”

“You know that’s what’s happening.”

“What I know and what I can prove are two different things,” Amell said, with such a heavy sigh it seemed like it winded him. “Anders-... I know you want to do the right thing, but doing the right thing right now would be an act of war.”

Amell ran a hand through his hair and down his neck, visibly exhausted, and Anders regretted exhausting him. He regretted hurting him. He regretted being focused on the fact that Amell had done wrong instead of being focused on how Amell could do better.

“You have an obligation,” Justice said.

“What obligation?” Amell met his eyes and the veilfire that burned in them, sapphire flames reflected in the blackened void. There was a beautiful complexity to them, and the range of emotion within them. An unwillingness to express any of it perhaps for fear of how it might be received. It gave Justice hope, and made it clear that Amell was, as so he often assured them all, more than his mistakes.

“You supported the use of the Anvil of the Void and the creation of golems. You are responsible for how it is used and how golems are created,” Justice explained. “You have an obligation to see it is used well.”

Amell’s brow furrowed, and Justice marked it for confusion. “... well?”

“You claim a control rod is not necessary to create golems,” Justice recalled from his argument with Anders. He had no reason not to believe him, and yet Amell had proven to lie often, so caution seemed warranted, if not necessarily an abundance of it. “If this is true, then perhaps they should be created, but they should be created willingly.”

Amell opened his mouth only to close it, and his brow furrowed even further, which seemed a mark of more confusion, though Justice had no idea what he’d said to cause it. “... I can’t make her stop.”

“You must try,” Justice said. “You must do all you can. You must not allow an atrocity to continue when you have the ability to end it. Is this not what you believe? Is this not why you put an end to the Blight? Because you could where others could not?”

“This isn’t a Blight,” Amell said.

“This is an evil,” Justice said. Amell’s gaze dropped from him to the floor, and Justice set a hand to his jaw to turn it back. He wasn’t accustomed to the warmth of his skin, or the texture of his stubble, or the way he felt beneath his fingers, but he was accustomed to his eyes. The loss, the suffering, the sacrifice within them. It wasn’t something to be excused, but it was something to be seen, to be heard, to be understood. “Perhaps it was a necessary one, but it is no longer. See an end to it.”

Amell covered his hand with his own. “I’ll… talk to Bhelen.”

“And should he not hear you?” Justice asked.

“I don’t have any leverage to stop him from doing anything unless I can prove he’s abducting freeholders,” Amell said. “If I can prove it… He’d have to believe we’d be willing to go to war to stop.”

“Are you not?” Justice asked.

“Alistair wants it to be darkspawn,” Amell said. “Even if it’s not. If we went to war with Orzammar, word would spread to Jader and to Orlais, and they might decide to act against us while we're weak. Bhelen knows that, but he doesn’t know Alistair or Anora well enough to know if we’re willing to risk it. He only knows me.”

“And would you risk it?”

“No.”

“Is Bhelen aware of that?”

“No.”

“Then the threat alone should serve,” Justice said. “Ensure he makes no further control rods and that he destroys the ones he has and you will have made an end to it.”

“... is that all you want me to do?”

“Is there something else that needs to be done?”

“... I don’t feel guilty.”

“I did not ask this of you.”

“You don’t think I should?” Amell smiled, but it seemed more rueful than ruthless.

“Guilt serves no one,” Justice said. “You must take action to undo action.”

It seemed a suitable resolution. Justice still had a hand to his face, his fingers lost to stubble and his thumb at the corner of his lips, and the sorrowful smile still curved in them. Amell still held him there, his fingers curled into his palm, but his grip was lax and an easy thing to escape should he wish, but he didn’t. It felt almost painfully intimate - holding him while Amell sought his touch and his atonement.

“Any other thoughts?” Amell asked.

“Several,” Justice said.

“On me?”

“Several.”

“Such as?”

“You are searching for something specific,” Justice deduced.

“You’ve never said something specific,” Amell said.

“I think no less of you,” Justice assured him.

“Why not?”

“... I remember Kristoff’s oath. I remember Anders’ oath. I understand the darkspawn are an evil at the heart of this world and you used what you felt was a lesser one against them, but you are responsible for the world you save.”

“... There were only three of us.”

“Three of who?”

“Us. Grey Wardens. At the Battle of Denerim. Alistair quit the field. I was there with Loghain and Riordan, a Senior Warden from Jader. One of us had to die to the archdemon to end the Blight. Morrigan promised her ritual would keep me alive, but I don’t think she knew if it would really work. I think she just hoped. I think she just had to.

“I didn’t. Riordan promised to take the final blow for us, but he died before he could. The last thing he said to me was that he was sorry if I survived, because the world would hate me. Whenever there wasn’t a Blight actively crawling over the surface, humanity would do its best to forget how much they needed me… and that I should let them. Wardens have to stand apart from everyone. That’s the only way we can ever make the hard decisions.”

“I trust that it was a hard decision,” Justice said. “I trust that you have made many, but you must do more than save the world, you must make a world worth saving. Did you not say as much when you promised to do all you could to see the mages free? Do you not still feel the same?”

Amell nodded - an almost imperceptible tilt to his head that Justice felt against his palm.

“Then I think no less of you,” Justice promised.

“... Thank you,” Amell pulled his hand from his jaw to his lips, and didn’t kiss his fingers so much as the ring of study he wore on them. Justice still felt it - a whisper of contact that sent shivers of sensations racing down his spine, curling his toes and clenching his hands.

“... I require no thanks,” Justice whispered, when he remembered to whisper. “You have but to act.”

“We’re expected at the palace for dinner this evening,” Amell took a slow breath, and kept hold of his hand when he dropped it from his lips. “I’ll talk to Bhelen then.”

“Do you want me with you?”

“Do you want to be with me?”

“Yes.”

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
Only the Lonely Survive: Amell's perspective on the events of this chapter.

Chapter 182: Welcome to the Shadows

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 21 Frumentum Evening
Orzammar: Grey Warden Embassy

There was something to be said of justice and what constituted for it. Justice had seen it enacted often, in both the realm of the Fade and the realm of flesh. He had seen men hung for their crimes, and he had seen men forgiven for them, and in all that he had seen what most appealed to him was when he had seen men redeemed for them. There were many things that could constitute redemption, but at their core was the choice to do good and to undo evil, and it was good to see that Amell had made it.

Amell kept hold of his arm when he made to step away, his fingers pressed against his skin and tracing the veilfire breathing through it. It felt a thing to be reciprocated, and so Justice traced the scars that canvassed Amell’s arm, pulling on the memories therein. Memories of cold steel, of vigilance, of victory, of sacrifice. Memories of blood and the sorrow of a blight unbearable.

Amell swallowed and Justice watched the motion play in his throat, an uncertain shake to his voice when spoke, “Justice?”

“Yes?” Justice asked.

“Will you stay with me?” Amell asked.

“...yes,” Justice was always with him - as he was always with Anders - but Amell’s desire for companionship seemed to veer more towards his singular soul than the tangle of two - and Justice felt conflicted for it. Pleased, perhaps, to think it was his specific presence Amell’s sought, at odds with a bitter melancholy that spoke of Anders’ own opinion, but there were many other things on which they aligned.

“Thank you,” Amell said.

“There is more I would have you clarify,” Justice said.

“... Alright,” Amell said.

"Shale, the golem you knew, you said they had no control rod?" Justice asked.

"It was broken before we met," Amell said.

“And the golem in Kal’Hirol?” Justice asked.

“... We needed the advantage,” Amell said. “I don’t expect you to believe me but I would have freed them if they’d survived. It’s… no different than binding someone to me. If I’d broken their control rod from the start, and they hadn’t been willing to help us clear out the darkspawn, I wouldn’t have been able to bind them again.”

“I believe you,” Justice said.

“And?”

“And I understand your decisions, but I do not condone them,” Justice said. “I would not have you make use of them again should we come upon them in our expeditions without just cause. It is not the same as binding an enemy. You must give them the chance to be an ally.”

“And if they aren’t willing to be one?” Amell asked. “We might not have reclaimed Kal’Hirol without them.”

“Did you not swear your allegiance to your Commander when he freed you from the Circle?” Justice countered. “Do you truly not believe any golem you freed would not do the same?”

“...you’re right,” Amell said.

"And the rest?" Justice asked. "Did you have a hand in the golems beyond your choice to keep the Anvil?"

"No.”

“The abductions?”

“No.”

“The control rods?”

“No." Amell rested his forehead against his arm, compounding sensation on sensation with the press of his brow, the caress of his fingers, the warmth of his breath, the silken texture of his hair as it fell about his skin. Justice pushed a few strands back behind his ear to keep them from grazing his arm, lingering over the texture of an old scar along the ridge of his ear, where an old piercing had been torn out and Amell had never quite healed from the loss. “I should have asked.”

“About the control rods?” Justice assumed.

“To kiss you,” Amell corrected him. “I should have asked.”

“... Perhaps,” Justice said.

“Could I kiss you again?” Amell asked.

“... Perhaps,” Justice said.

Amell traced over the cerulean flames that burned through his veins, and kissed where they burned brightest at his wrist, the warmth of his lips accompanied by the slightest drain of mana that felt almost akin to a spirit's siphon, like Amell sought not just him but his purpose. Justice flexed his hand, his fingers cradling Amell’s chin, barely grazing his skin. He’d never held someone the way he held Amell now and couldn’t say how much was too much - for himself or for Amell - when the slightest of sensation made him feel on the verge of being overwhelmed.

"You feel different,” Amell said softly.

"So you have said," Justice recalled.

“I can’t risk compelling Bhelen,” Amell warned him.

“I did not ask this of you,” Justice said.

“I can’t be overt either. The dinner is with our families.”

“I look forward to the complexity of the conversation.”

Amell smiled what seemed his first smile of the evening, “... I thought you might.”

Justice had come to love the mortal world for its beauty and its complexity, and the intricacies of Amell’s station were no exception. His wardrobe had been selected for his chancellery as opposed to his command, Highever Weave dyed in bronze, gold, and white and patterned with the king and queen’s heraldry to show Amell spoke on their behalf. Justice’s own was one of Everknit Wool, dyed silver to suit the Grey Wardens, and perhaps indicative not just of their relationship but of the many facets of Amell’s command that Bhelen threatened with his actions.

Morrigan dressed for herself, but Kieran was still dressed to match the dwarves. It seemed a show of symbolism for the future and a hope for common cause, mirrored in how Bhelen’s children were dressed to match when they arrived at the palace. Carved from stone, as all things were in Orzammar, the walls were broken by lava flows and - curiously - hearths of pure lyrium. It sang throughout the palace from behind runic wrought iron screens, casting everything in cobalt.

Paintings in place of tapestries decorated the walls, depicting dwarven history in geometric patterns and phosphorescent paint. Great braziers burned close to the ceiling, framing massive statues of dwarven paragons, holding everything from axes to hammers to swords. Patterned rugs formed pathways throughout the palace, leading from one room to the next, and they followed one to the throne room for dinner where it became apparent that Bhelen…

Liked cats.

Bhelen liked cats a lot.

There were cats everywhere. Cat statues. Cat paintings. Cat carvings. Cats. Actual cats. Imported cats of every possible size, shape, and color lounging around the throne room. Tabbies. Torbies. Tortoises. Calicos. Red. Cream. Chocolate. Lilac. Fawn. White. Smoke. Blue. Black. Colors Justice couldn’t put a name to and that far exceeded Anders’ own knowledge of cats. He set one foot in the throne room, and all of them scattered in a panicked stampede in every possible direction that sent servants scrambling to reclaim them all.

Introductions were for his benefit and so Justice minded them. The King of Orzammar wore bright red and blue ceremonial armor as befitted his station, and was barely visible beneath it. Bhelen Aeducan had been reduced to two small eyes and one large nose that peeked out from under a crown bigger than his head, with a braided beard that hung half-way down his chest.

His wife, Rica Brosca, looked half his size beside him. She wore a dress that seemed to be made entirely of buttons, her bright red hair done up in elaborate braids, and her face completely caked in makeup that covered a brand. She’d been born without a caste, and under any other circumstances it would have been illegal for her to cover it, but Bhelen must not have wanted her to suffer for it.

If he could so easily raise her to the Warrior Caste, it seemed it should not have been a far stretch to raise the rest of the casteless along with her, and yet instead he sacrificed them to the Anvil of the Void to meet his own ends. If all went well this evening he would be made to answer for it, and yet no overt accusations could be made before his children.

Endrin Aeducan was Bhelen’s son, named for his grandfather - a man both Bhelen and his deceased High General Pyral Harrowmont were rumored to have poisoned during the Fifth Blight when they fought each other for his throne. Endrin was dressed to match his father, a blue and red doublet vaguely reminiscent of armor in its padding. His red-brown hair was long and braided with coins in all manner of minting.

Trian Aeducan was Bhelen’s nephew - named for the brother Bhelen was rumored to have killed, for it seemed Bhelen was rumored to have killed many men. Unlike Endrin, Trian looked little like him. His blonde hair simply braided, his puffed and buttoned garb free of the countless gems that had been embroidered into Endrin’s own. He looked noble, but not too noble, and was clearly meant to be the spare to Bhelen’s heir.

His mother was casteless - and still made to look it. Her slender face was free of makeup, her blonde hair braided back so the brand upon her cheek was sure not to go unnoticed. She still dressed noble - as any member of the King’s family should - a light blue dress that matched her eyes buttoned all along the sides. Her name was Mardy, but Justice never heard her say it. She curtseyed once, and was otherwise all but mute.

Rica’s mother Kalah was… most certainly not. Her bright green dress either wasn’t tailored to fit or had been buttoned wrong, and hung off her in lumps. She didn’t curtsey, and from the scent of mosswine that clung to her breath, probably would have fallen over if she tried. She had a brand of her own, sagging away amidst her wrinkles, and while she’d been raised to the Warrior Caste with Rica, her makeup was too messy to hide it.

Justice sat beside Amell, his knees bunched up beneath the low stone table, frowning at the food that had been served for dinner. Roast cave beetle. Lichen bread. Deep mushroom stew. Served with Valenta’s Red, the ‘Paragon of Ales,’ and while all of it might have been appetizing to Anders, Justice didn’t care for the prospective textures. He pushed the beetle around on his plate with his fork, and wondered how much offense he would garner if he left it all untouched.

“Anders, was it?” Bhelen asked, drawing his head up from his plate.

“It was,” Justice supposed.

Bhelen’s hum seemed doubtful, though Justice could imagine no reason for it to be. Bhelen looked to Amell, who didn’t look to him. “I confess, Chancellor, I never saw you as the type to settle down.”

“One would think he had the sense to know better,” Morrigan hummed from the other side of Amell, elbowing him playfully.

“Since when do men have any sense?” Kalah snorted into her wine.

“True enough,” Morrigan laughed around a bite of her cave beetle.

“One man is bad enough,” Kalah continued, swaying a little in her seat and waving her tankard at them. “Two of ‘em? You got plenty of heads and no brain between them.”

“Mother-” Rica said.

“Mother, mother,” Kalah repeated mockingly, voice pitching up high. “What? You ashamed of me now?”

“Mother, please,” Rica whispered.

“Please what? You think you’re too good for me?” Kalah demanded, slamming her drink down on the table and spilling half of it across the surface. “You think your fancy guests are too good for me? You think I’m still casteless, don’t you?”

“Of course not, Mother,” Bhelen cooed, sliding a flagon in her direction in what seemed the most blatant enablement Justice had yet witnessed. It seemed… a pitiable thing, and made him acutely aware of the fact that he should mind how much Amell had over the course of the evening.

“Damn straight,” Kalah muttered, snatching the flagon up to refill her cup before the servant attending them had the chance. “I’m Warrior Caste now. Ain’t no one too good for me.”

Silence stretched until Amell broke it, “What was the question?”

Bhelen tore his gaze off his mother-in-law with a sigh that seemed disappointed his enablement hadn’t resulted in any further entertainment. “The question was how the two of you met.”

“I conscripted him,” Amell said.

“I’m impressed, Chancellor,” Bhelen said. “I didn’t think you conscripted your Wardens.”

“It was a rescue,” Justice corrected him. “From what would have been a life of imprisonment.”

“I don’t think many people would call joining the Grey Wardens a rescue,” Bhelen said.

“And yet all would call the subjection of an entire people based on an accident of birth a thing to be rescued from,” Justice said.

Bhelen stopped in the middle of raising his spoon to his lips, the slightest of frowns creasing them. “... I’m afraid you have me at a loss, Warden.”

“I was referring to the Circle of Magi,” Justice elaborated. “The mages imprisoned within are not unlike your casteless.”

“I think calling them my casteless is a little ambitious,” Bhelen said cautiously.

“Perhaps,” Justice matched his frown. “Perhaps not.”

“All of Orzammar’s yours, baby,” Kalah slurred, pinching Bhelen’s cheek and effectively ruining his argument. Bhelen scrubbed at his cheek and his frown evolved into a scowl.

“I’ve heard they’ve been serving well within the Legion of Steel,” Amell said politely.

“There are no casteless in the Legion,” Bhelen corrected him. “The Legion of Steel and Stone is part of the Warrior Caste.”

“By your hand,” Amell pointed out.

“They’re one with the Stone,” Bhelen said, lowering his spoon and evidently losing his appetite. “They have to be risen to a caste that’s worthy of it. It’s a great honor.”

“One many would seek willingly,” Justice guessed.

“... True enough,” Bhelen said. “Only volunteers to serve within the Legion.”

“Have they been hard to find?” Amell asked.

“I beg your pardon?” Bhelen asked.

“Volunteers,” Amell said. “Have they been hard to find?”

“Why do you ask?” Bhelen squinted, his eyes all but vanishing beneath his crown in his suspicion.

“I spoke with many of the casteless,” Justice said. “They mentioned you have sought no volunteers for some time.”

“How are you coping?” Amell asked.

Bhelen tapped ringed fingers against the table, metal pinging softly against the stone, and picked his spoon back up. “Something to discuss after dinner.”

After dinner couldn’t come soon enough. The meal was three courses long, and Justice had none of them. Conversation steered towards safer topics, Morrigan speaking much of her research, and the children speaking of things children spoke about. Justice fidgeted, scrubbing his hands against his trousers to narrow his focus to one sensation in place of dozens, and something in the repetitive motion or perhaps just the racing of his heart must have caught Amell’s attention, because he set a hand to his thigh Justice ended up holding, worrying at the cuticles of Amell’s fingers with his thumb until at last the evening ended and Bhelen invited the two of them back to his parlor.

The servants shut the doors behind them, and Bhelen took off his crown and all pretenses with it, whirling on Amell but raising no hands in the motion. “What do you know, Warden?”

“Chancellor,” Amell corrected him.

“Fine,” Bhelen rolled his eyes. “What do you know, Chancellor?”

“People are being abducted throughout the bannorn,” Amell said.

“How sad for the bannorn,” Bhelen said flatly.

“Bhelen-” Amell started.

“Your majesty,” Bhelen corrected him.

“Your majesty,” Amell relented with far less reluctance than Bhelen had. “You don’t want this. Help me help you.”

Bhelen scoffed, “How can you help me?”

“I can make it darkspawn,” Amell said.

Bhelen sighed, tossing his crown onto the nearest couch like it was wrought from iron and not from solid gold. “I wish it were darkspawn,” Bhelen muttered, retreating to his liquor cabinet - a thing of dark mahogany and untold riches. Double doors opened to reveal a plethora of brandies, whiskies, and assorted ales. Bhelen pulled three glasses from it.

“We are not drinking,” Justice said before he could fill them all.

“You should be,” Bhelen said, but he put two glasses back. He poured himself a cup of something, and took a sip before he turned back to them. “Branka’s gone mad.” Bhelen pointed a finger at them around his cup. “I had no hand in it. You tell Theirin I had no hand in it.”

“Tell me what it is first,” Amell said.

“She’s making her own Legion,” Bhelen explained, taking a longer sip. “I stopped sending her brands when my men discovered it. It’s treason. The Legion of Steel and Stone is mine,” Bhelen pressed his cup against his chest. “They answer to me.”

“They have no choice,” Justice said.

“Excuse you?” Bhelen’s brow furrowed.

“You have taken it from them in your use of control rods,” Justice said. “If they are volunteers as you claim you would have no need to bind them.”

“Every brand in Orzammar would throw themselves on the Anvil for a chance to be worthy of the Stone!” Bhelen said, and if Justice had been disappointed in Amell’s decisions, then he was infinitely more so disappointed in Bhelen’s. “They’re volunteers. The control rods are a precaution - and what would an outsider know about it?”

“I know you do not command the loyalty of your own people if you have to force it,” Justice said.

Bhelen set his cup aside, advancing on him, “How dare you.”

“He’s right, Bhelen,” Amell set himself between them at Bhelen’s advance, one hand about his staff and the other held out to ward him off or gauge the space between them. “You don’t need them. Your people love you.”

“Where is this coming from, Amell?” Bhelen retreated to his liquor cabinet to pour himself another glass. “A six year late crisis of conscience?” Bhelen laughed. “You of all people know we need absolute unity to fight against the fulcrum of true evil. I can’t afford dissent within my ranks.”

“You won’t have any,” Amell said, and whether he believed it or he was simply repeating the same assurance Justice had given him, it was good to know his argument had not just been heard, but taken to heart.

“Is that really why you’re here?” Bhelen asked. “So I’ll get rid of my control rods?”

“I’m here to stop the abductions,” Amell said.

“Then help me stop them,” Bhelen said. “Branka’s men are the ones raiding the surface. I can always name another Paragon, but I can’t make another Anvil. I need her back under my command or I need her gone.”

Amell must have considered it, because he hesitated, and the hesitation was disheartening. To think that after all they had discussed, Amell would ask once for freedom for the golems, and relent after that one asking when it wasn’t immediately obtained. For all he hesitated, Amell pressed on, “No.”

“No!?” Bhelen demanded.

“No,” Amell said. “Destroy the rods. Free the Legion. Then I’ll help you.”

“Who says I need your help?”

“You did.”

“The Legion of Steel and Stone could be the last golems Orzammar ever sees if we don’t get the Anvil back from Branka,” Bhelen shook his head. “I can’t afford to give them up.”

“Then I can’t afford to help you,” Amell said.

“Hold on,” Bhelen held up a hand Amell couldn’t see. “What do you really want, Chancellor? I assume you care so much about the control rods because you’re looking to study the magic in them? Your witch can have her access to the Shaperate, if that’s what you're after.”

“Thank you, I'll tell her, but I’m not looking to study anything,” Amell said. “I’m looking to have them destroyed.”

“The Anvil of the Void belongs to the dwarves and the dwarves are the ones who decide what to do with it,” Bhelen said. “It’s not your decision. It was never your decision.”

“It is the right one,” Justice said. “These are your people. You promise them salvation in the Stone and instead you enslave them to it. If they are truly volunteers then you have met their courage with cowardice - condemning them to a life of servitude where they willingly offered you service.”

Bhelen looked him over, but Justice could not say what he saw in him. A Warden, certainly. A mage, surely. The truth, hopefully. “... Your Warden makes a lot of accusations, Chancellor.”

“Is he wrong?” Amell asked.

“Maybe not,” Bhelen said. “... Very well. Help me reclaim the Anvil from Branka, and you have my word that any golems made upon it will be made without control rods.”

“And the ones you have?” Amell asked.

“Destroyed,” Bhelen promised. “But only after we reclaim the Anvil. I’ll ready my armies, and you can send for anyone you need from the surface.”

Amell didn’t answer. To Justice’s surprise, he sought his arm, and wove his hand through it with a gentle squeeze. “... very well,” Justice said, when it seemed apparent Amell wanted him to say something. “If we have your word.”

“Yes, you have my word,” Bhelen said.

They left Bhelen’s private parlor for his public one where their families yet lingered, the children gathered on the floor playing with the gifts they’d unwrapped while the adults spoke amongst themselves. Servants hovered in the background, refilling drinks, and offered one to Amell he took before Justice thought to stop him. Amell untangled himself from his arm once he had it, and left him to seek out Morrigan and sit beside her on the couch.

Justice thought to follow him, and yet it seemed little would be accomplished if he did. He’d fulfilled his purpose, with Bhelen’s promise of freedom, and now it seemed they had but to wait to enact it. Justice reflected on the assurances of both men, and while he was confident that without control rods golems would not be subjected to a life of servitude, he had not spoken with one to know whether or not they were being subjected to a life of suffering. Amell had spoken with one, but Amell was drinking.

Trian’s mother Mardy wasn’t. The casteless woman lingered on the fringe of the nobles and the servants, ignored by both, and seemed surprised by his company when he approached.

“... my lord,” Mardy whispered, with an uncertain cursey, not taking her eyes from him.

“My name is Anders,” Justice said. “I have a question, if you would indulge me.”

“Of course.”

"What do you know of golems?" Justice asked.

"Men and women given to the Stone, Warden,” Mardy said. “Honored and venerated warriors."

"Have you ever spoken with one?" Justice asked.

"They speak only to the Stone,” Mardy said. “... Save for one. Their name was Shale. They traveled with the Chancellor when he was still a Warden."

Amell was still a Warden, but Justice supposed it made sense not all mortals would be able to remember all of his titles. “Did this Shale find their existence to be an honor?”

"We did not speak long, Warden," Mardy apologized. "The Chancellor knew them better."

No doubt, and yet Amell did not seem of a mind to speak with him further. He stayed cleaved to Morrigan, a tankard of ale in his hand, and it was not until they returned from the palace to the embassy that Justice had a chance to speak with him again. Morrigan carried a sleeping Kieran inside, but Amell lingered without, finding a spot for himself against the wall of the embassy and cradling his staff against his shoulder.

“I have a question,” Justice asked.

"Ask away," Amell sounded tired and not entirely sober.

"Shale, the golem you traveled with…" Justice recalled Amell’s repeated inquiries after his own happiness, and what a trivial thing it had seemed to him, and yet apparently of great import to both Amell and Anders. "... did their existence fulfill them?"

"It did," Amell said, heavy lidded eyes sweeping briefly over the veilfire burning through him before he continued. “... they were a dwarf. They used to be a dwarf. ...When we learned they used to be a dwarf, they decided they wanted to find a way to become a dwarf again. They'd been a golem for a thousand years and… they were tired. I think.”

“And did they?” Justice asked.

“Not yet,” Amell dug through his pockets, and retrieved a roll of something Justice assumed was lotus from them.

"Are you not coming inside?" Justice asked.

Amell lit the roll with a flare of primal magic, and looked for all intents and purposes like he meant to sleep standing up against the wall. The roll burned between his lips, smoke wisping towards the far away ceiling, and Amell took such a deep breath of it he must have taken it for air. He shook his head in answer, and Justice felt a surge of concern not entirely Anders.

“What troubles you?” Justice asked.

"... she's Oghren’s wife."

"Who?"

"Branka… she's Oghren’s wife…" Amell inhaled, shaking his head. "He'll never forgive me."

"He must see the evil in her actions, all the same," Justice said.

"Like Anders saw them in mine?" Amell smirked, a heavy exhale of lotus stinging Justice’s eyes.

"I am Anders," Justice reminded him. That he could understand Amell’s choice did not mean he condoned it, and yet he did not see a need to condemn him. They had but to move forward.

Amell exhaled hard through his nose in something not quite a laugh, "Goodnight, Justice."

Justice had no need of sleep. He had never attempted to sleep and he did not intend to sleep now and yet it was difficult to convince Anders of his need for it. There was a turbulence about him, a maelstrom of emotion that Justice couldn’t quite soothe swirling constantly in the back of his mind and eventually flaring its way to the surface. Anders didn’t know how he was supposed to sleep either.

Amell was to blame for all of it. It was his decision to keep the Anvil of the Void. His decision to put Bhelen on the throne. He had to have known the kind of people he was supporting and the kind of choices he was making. He could say whatever he wanted to say and have all the reasons he wanted to have been none of them changed the fact that a hundred and forty-seven people had spent the past six years enslaved.

Anders didn’t know how to reconcile that. Justice might have been able to move past it now that it was already done, but Anders doubted he would have been able to move past it if they’d been there when he’d done it. But they hadn’t been there. Justice had been in the Fade. Anders had been in Harper’s Ford. Amell had been in the Blight.

Anders lay abed for what felt like an eternity before Amell came back to their room. The grind of stone on stone marked the door opening, and was quickly followed by the clatter of Amell’s staff hitting the floor. Anders sat up in time to see Amell propping his staff back against the wall, where he stayed leaning for a long while. Eventually, he dragged himself to the couch, and collapsed face first into the cushions. Anders waited for a while longer, but Amell didn’t come to bed, and eventually his even breathing seemed to mark him falling asleep.

... Did he want to sleep on the couch?

What did sleeping on the couch mean?

Maybe he’d just had too much to drink and too much to smoke and hadn’t made it back to the bed. Anders got up and dragged a blanket off the bed to drape over him, and Amell rolled over but didn’t wake up. He was still dressed in what he’d worn to dinner, including his boots, laced up to his knees and bound to make him uncomfortable in the morning. Justice shouldn’t have let him drink. Justice shouldn’t have let him smoke. Anders shouldn’t have given him something to drink and smoke about.

… so what if he’d been angry? It was worth being angry over. Amell might have been trying to fix it but Amell was the reason there was even something to fix. Anders sat on the edge of the low table, watching him sleep and hating how horrible he felt. He didn’t want Amell to sleep on the couch. He just didn’t want Amell to have done what he’d done, but he’d already done it, and there was nothing Anders could do about that. He didn’t want Amell to ruin his life undoing it, either.

Anders left their room for Oghren’s and knocked for a long while before Oghren finally emerged, clutching a blanket about his waist that was dragging on the floor behind him like the train of a very unflattering dress. “You got a death wish, Sparkles?” Oghren squinted up at him, one eye sealed shut with sleep, the other so blood red he might have been out smoking with Amell for all Anders knew.

“I just want to talk,” Anders said.

“Talk in the morning,” Oghren grunted.

“I want to talk now,” Anders said.

“Fucking sodding fucking,” Oghren muttered, scrubbing his arm across his eyes. “Fine, fine.” Oghren tied his blanket off about his waist like a skirt, and twisted it up around his legs turning around and walking back to sit down on his couch. “What are we talking about?”

“Branka,” Anders sat on the edge of the table.

“Ah, the wife,” Oghren stretched his arms above his head, and Anders recoiled at the stench that wafted from him. “What about the wife?”

“How could you do it?” Anders asked. “Keep the Anvil of the Void? Knowing what it did? Knowing the agony it caused? How could you let her inflict that on your own people?”

“Inflict it?” Oghren snorted. “No need to inflict it. When we found that thing, and came back with the news, a whole line of volunteers followed the old girl back out into the Dead Trenches, ready and willing to sign up. Saving Orzammar? Shit, there were plenty willing to become a golem, sure.”

“They’re slaves,” Anders said. “You know that, right?”

“Aye, I know,” Oghren said. He said it so easily Anders didn’t know what to say. His mouth opened, and closed, and opened again like a rusty hinge, squeaking so much Oghren chuckled. “What’s the matter, Sparkles? One of Bhelen’s fifty cats got your tongue?”

“How could you?” Anders finally managed.

“How could I? Come on, Sparkles, what kind of sodding question is that? Are you a warden or are you a warden? Did you listen when you took that oath or were you too busy looking at the Boss’s balls? Do you even remember what it was? Join us, brothers and sisters. Join us in the shadows where we stand vigilant.

“Well welcome to the shadows, Sparkles.”

Chapter 183: The Demon You Know

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter. I sincerely appreciate all of your comments even if I don't respond - they're very motivating in keeping the story going!

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 22 Frumentum Morning
Orzammar: Grey Warden Embassy

Amell meant to sleep on the couch.

Anders hated that he meant to sleep on the couch.

Anders told himself he was going to apologize, but, “Sorry I was aggressive when discussing your war crimes,” didn’t really roll off the tongue. Anders told himself he was going to apologize anyway, but he didn’t, because Amell wouldn’t. Amell didn’t feel guilty. Amell didn’t feel sorry. Amell “did what had to be done” and Amell “would do it again” and all Anders could think was that he’d turned a blind eye to the torture and enslavement of an entire peoples the same way the Chantry turned a blind eye to the Circles and even though Anders knew it wasn’t the same he said it anyway and once he said it…

Well he couldn’t unsay it.

It ruined breakfast, but what else was new?

Amell set aside his coffee after he’d said it, “What if it freed the Circles?”

“What?” Anders asked.

“If you had to damn a hundred people to free a thousand, would you do it?” Amell asked.

“This isn’t a hypothetical, this happened,” Anders said. “That wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t it?” Amell asked. “If all it took was a handful of deals with a handful of demons in a handful of countries, you’re telling me you wouldn’t make them?”

“Slavery is everything I’m fighting against,” Amell should have known that by now. “There are some lines you don’t cross.”

“I don’t have the luxury of lines, Anders,” Amell said. “It was a Blight - and I crossed all of them. I didn’t have a choice - and neither did you when I conscripted you. Murder? Blood magic? Possession? I’m sure those were all lines you thought you’d never have to cross, but you crossed them.”

“That’s not the same,” Anders said. “You know it’s not the same. I’m trying to free the mages. I can’t enslave a hundred people to free a thousand others.”

”What if it freed a hundred thousand?” Amell asked. “A hundred million? When is it worth it?”

It wasn’t. It was inexcusable, but if that was the choice then that was the choice, and deep down Anders knew it was an obvious one, but Amell had to have had others.

“You can’t just trade one life for another like some kind of god mocker, Amell,” Anders snapped.

“There are no gods to mock,” Amell said.

The fight left Anders livid, but not half as livid as Amell’s decision to stand against Branka must have left Oghren. Amell had claimed Oghren would be upset with him, but Anders hadn’t considered just how upset Oghren would be. The two men tore up Oghren’s room fighting, slamming each other into walls and breaking furniture. Anders had a panic attack trying to stop it, only for Oghren and Amell to tell him to “Fuck off,” and “Get out,” respectively.

Neither of them died - which was all Anders could really say after it was over. Oghren came out of it with a dislocated shoulder and a sprained ankle, Amell with bruised ribs and a blackened eye, both of them beaten and battered like First Day chickens and utterly unwilling to talk to him about it. Oghren gave him a few creative suggestions on where he could stick his nose, and Amell left for Tapster’s Tavern with a brusque, “Don’t heal me.”

Days passed. Amell spent them with Bhelen’s right and left hands, Vartag Gavorn and Frandlin Ivo, planning an assault on Branka’s fortress at Bownammar, and it wasn’t until Anders saw the plans laid out in the common room that the gravity of it all finally clicked with him. They weren’t just going to ask Branka to give up her control rods, they were going to war.

The whole of Orzammar seemed to be mobilizing against their own Paragon, and the mood of the entire kingdom had noticeably soured. Cryers on every corner spoke of everything from the flood of casteless indenturing themselves to the army to the naming of a new Paragon - a smith by the name of Beirus - who Bhelen no doubt intended to replace Branka once they reclaimed the Anvil of the Void. The Mage’s Collective volunteered to accompany the army, considering Branka had abducted some of their own, and Amell sent for more Grey Wardens from the surface.

Satinalia came. Anders forgot Satinalia was coming. He woke up to a necklace on his nightstand: a single simir feather dipped in black gold and veined with lyrium. Rare. Expensive. Arcane. Anders could feel the magic in it, restorative energies that served to soothe his throat when he wore it. Anders put it on almost as soon as he found it, but Amell had taken to sleeping on the couch, and wasn’t in the room for him to thank when he woke up.

Anders wanted to thank him. He wanted to know how to thank him. He wanted to know how to tell Amell he appreciated everything he was doing to undo what he’d done, but at the same time, Amell would have had to do it anyway. Branka had to be stopped so the abductions would stop, but the control rods weren’t part of that. Amell had made them part of it because Anders had asked him to make them part of it, and Anders still hadn’t thanked him.

Anders shouldn’t have had to thank him. It was the right thing to do, and Amell should have done it without being asked, but he hadn’t. He hadn’t even done it when Anders had asked him. He’d done it when Justice had asked him. Amell listened to Justice, and even if Anders was Justice, he felt at odds with himself on everything Amell had done. It was evil, and on some level Anders knew it was less evil than the Blight, but it was still evil.

Amell was fixing it. It should have been enough that Amell was fixing it. It was enough for Justice that Amell was fixing it and Anders wanted it to be enough for Anders, but he knew he couldn’t just be okay with Amell fixing it. He had to be okay with Amell doing it, because Amell would do it again. Anders knew he would do it again. He’d sacrifice anyone and anything for his cause, and for all Anders had sworn time and again that he would do the same for his own, he’d never been forced to confront exactly what that might mean.

Even the Harimanns hadn’t done what Amell had done. People had died when they’d unseated the Vaels in Starkhaven, but those people had been complicit in the subjugation of mages. The casteless weren’t complicit in anything. They were innocents - and in a way - Amell had sacrificed them. It wasn’t anything like when he’d sacrificed the wounded and the willing at Denerim. It was just a sacrifice - and Amell had just made it - and Anders couldn’t help thinking that one day he might have to make one too and he didn’t know what he’d think of himself when he did.

Anders pushed it from his mind and left for the Diamond Quarter’s markets after breakfast. Satinalia wasn’t over yet, and Anders wasn’t sure what he wanted to get Amell, but he wanted to get him something. Something nice. Something meaningful. Something that could get Amell to stop sleeping on the couch and start sleeping in the bed. Something that could say all the things Anders wasn’t saying about acceptance and forgiveness and redemption and made it clear that Anders believed in those things as much as Justice did - he just wasn’t as good at saying it.

A selection of vendors at a selection of stalls were selling a selection of statuettes, but none of them looked like anything Amell would like, and even less of them looked anywhere near as profound as the simir feather Amell had given him. After an hour of searching, Anders belatedly remembered he’d given all his coin away and couldn’t afford to get Amell anything anyway.

Well…

Well, fuck.

Anders hadn’t gotten anyone anything, but everyone got him something, and it felt like his first Satinalia as a Grey Warden all over again. Even Kieran handed him a doodle of a family portrait when he came back from the market. At first Anders wasn’t entirely sure which family, but he made sense of it eventually. Kieran had drawn Morrigan as a bear, Amell as an assortment of sticks, and Anders as a scribble of blue he could only assume was meant to be Justice.

“... You mean this for me?” Justice felt the need to clarify, feeling over the texture of the pigment.

“You save him,” Kieran prophesied - and there was something to be said of his prophecies and the magic within them. They felt… foreign. Like they came from another soul. An older soul.

“From what?” Justice asked.

“The silence,” Kieran said - with the voice of another - and that other felt vaguely reminiscent of the few spirits of Beauty Justice had encountered through his travels in the Fade.

“This is good to know,” Justice smiled, folding up the parchment for his pocket. “Thank you. I will treasure this.”

“You lose it,” Kieran - or his second soul - said. He had to have had one. Justice could feel it. Kieran was possessed, but it was no normal possession, if there was such a thing. Kieran’s spirit was so tightly entwined in his soul there was no distinction until his prophecies called his spirit forward.

“Then I will treasure it while it is had,” Justice said. Kieran hugged him, and the half of Justice’s soul that was Anders urged caution in how he addressed what he’d learned, but Justice couldn’t see the need for it. “Your spirit is one of Beauty?” He asked.

“Mother says not to tell,” Kieran said - his spirit’s presence fading with his prophecy. He went back to the low table and the sketchbook laid out on it and resumed his doodles, “She says the world isn’t ready.”

“Perhaps not,” Justice said, sitting on the edge of the table. “I am. You can speak freely with me.”

Kieran fiddled with his chalk, a contemplative expression on his face, “I like that you’re like me.”

“What you are is a good thing to be,” Justice said. “You hear this often, I hope?”

“Mother says so. Father too,” Kieran nodded. “... but I can’t tell my friends… they can’t touch the magic and they’re alone all the time. They don’t know what it’s like to not be alone.”

“It is a complicated thing,” Justice said.

Kieran frowned at him, “No it’s not.”

“Perhaps not,” Justice exhaled bemusedly. “How long have you been as you are?”

“Since I died,” Kieran said.

… curious.

“Happy soddin’ Satinalia, kid!” Oghren interrupted, kicking open the doors to the common room with an arm full of presents he dumped on the table. One of them cracked and a few of them went spilling off and onto the floor, and the excess made it all the more apparent that Anders had forgotten about the annum. Amell returned with him, and somewhere in the exchange of gifts that Anders didn’t have, ended up giving Kieran a new sketchbook and removing the tag in the process.

“This one is from Anders and I,” Amell lied.

“How kind of Anders,” Morrigan noted.

“I’m a giver,” Anders lied, accepting a hug he hadn’t earned from Kieran that haunted him for the rest of the day and into the evening when he could finally talk to Amell alone in their room.

“Hey,” Anders offered eloquently.

“Hey,” Amell agreed, sequestered away on the couch with a tactile book he’d borrowed from the Shaperate and a bottle of wine Anders was sure he’d empty before the evening was out if Anders left him alone.

Anders sat on the couch next to him. It was quartz, and no matter how many cushions had been thrown on it, it wasn’t exactly comfortable. Anders didn’t like Amell sleeping on it. “Can we talk?”

“We can talk,” Amell agreed, but Anders didn’t know what to say. He took Amell’s hand off the page instead, and set his fingers against his collarbone. Amell traced along the chain of his necklace, and toyed with the feather at the end of it, the memory of a smile hinting at the corners of his lips. “Does it help?”

“It helps,” Anders said - acutely aware Amell had given him a present that made it easier for Anders to keep arguing with him - and determined not to use it that way. “... I’m sorry I didn’t get you anything. I’m sorry I didn’t get Kieran anything. You didn’t have to tell him I got him something.”

“Yes I did,” Amell dropped his hand from his necklace.

“I got mugged,” Anders explained. “I let myself get mugged - when I went to Dust Town with Levyn. …They needed the coin.”

“He told me.”

“I didn’t have any coin left.”

“I know.”

“I forgot about Satinalia.”

“I know.”

“... You didn’t have to tell him,” Anders said.

“... Kieran is six, Anders,” Amell said, marking his place in his book with a ribbon woven into the spine and setting it aside. Anders missed the title. “I understand why you didn’t get him anything. He wouldn’t. I don’t mind if you forget annums or name-days, but he will. I wasn’t lying for your sake.”

That-... made a lot more sense, but it just made Anders feel even worse for forgetting. “I’m still sorry.”

“I know,” Amell said. “Tell me if you need me to get him something for you next time.”

“You shouldn’t have to get me anything,” Anders said. “I'll just remember.” Amell raised an eyebrow at him, and Anders nudged him. “I will.”

Amell’s eyebrow stayed stubbornly up, “If you say so.”

Anders chuckled, and Amell met his chuckle with a grin Anders missed seeing. He traced the curve to Amell’s lips, and swept his fingers down to his jaw to pull him into a kiss that tasted like warmth in place of wine. Amell let him, but it still felt different. Distant. Like he was just going through the motions.

“Don’t sleep here,” Anders whispered.

“Anders-...” Amell broke from him with a weary sort of sigh.

“Sleep with me,” Anders ran his hands over Amell in pleading sweeps to draw some kind of reaction from him, but Amell didn’t have one. He sat beside him on the couch, not quite meeting his eyes without Justice’s veilfire to pull his focus, but that was it. Anders didn’t want that to be it. “I miss sleeping with you.”

“I miss sleeping with you too,” Amell promised.

“So sleep with me,” Anders swung a leg over to straddle him, and putting all his weight on his knees pushed them through the cushions and into the quartz. It was profoundly uncomfortable, and Anders couldn’t imagine sleeping on it, but he could imagine fucking on it.

“Anders-...” Amell’s hands felt along his thighs - gauging him without engaging him - and it was maddening to think he was so close and so far away.

“Please sleep with me,” He hadn’t fucked Amell in so long - and he missed fucking him. He missed the way he felt. He missed the way he made him feel. Like he was safe. It was so hard to feel safe when there were so many things he needed to feel safe from, but for a time Amell had given him safety, and lately it felt like that safety kept shattering.

Things kept shattering it. Every time Anders thought he’d healed, something tore through the bloody sutures of his psyche and hurt him all over again. Being without Amell hurt almost as much as being with Hawke, and Anders just wanted to fix it. He just wanted to heal it. He just didn’t know how - but there had to be a way.

Anders kissed Amell again, carving a path from his jaw down to his neck to worry at the sensitive skin above his collarbone and wring a sigh from his lips. “Anders-”

“Fuck me,” Anders begged, desperate to feel Amell’s response to him. He tugged his ear with his teeth, rocking in his lap, and undid his belt with a few practiced flips of his fingers.

Amell set his hands to his chest and squeezed his shoulders, “Anders, slow down.”

Anders didn’t have any choice but to slow down. His fingers fumbled over the fifty-some-odd buttons to Amell’s dwarven style doublet, electric ecstasy sparking on his hands, when Amell caught his wrists. Amell pulled him into a firm embrace that kept Anders pinned against his chest, his arms stuck to his sides, and held him.

“... What are we doing?” Anders asked when Amell didn’t let go of him.

“We’re sitting,” Amell said.

“Why are we sitting?” Anders asked.

“Because I want to sit,” Amell said.

Anders wiggled his arms forward to loop his fingers into Amell’s belt, “I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” Amell held him a little tighter.

“No, Amell, I miss you,” Anders breathed against his ear, and finally won a reaction in Amell’s unsteady inhale. “Maker, you have no idea how much I miss you.”

“I know,” Amell said, but he couldn’t have known, because he wasn’t acting like he knew. He wasn’t kissing him. He wasn’t moving with him. He felt wrong - stiff and unresponsive like he didn’t want him.

He didn’t want him.

“Fuck. Sorry, I’m sorry,” Anders fought to untangle himself from Amell’s arms, scrambling backwards in his lap and scraping his legs against the quartz. He managed to wiggle his arms free, and shove against the back of the couch. “I shouldn’t have - fuck me - you don’t want me - I’m sorry -”

“It’s okay,” Amell kept his arms securely locked around his waist, and slid them up to his shoulders to pull him back against his chest. “We’re sitting.”

“We’re sitting,” Anders repeated shakily, but it didn’t feel like sitting anymore. It felt like he’d been trying to force Amell into doing a lot more than sitting without even realizing he was forcing him. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Amell relaxed when Anders finally realized they were just sitting, and gathered up his legs, pulling him closer. Anders buried his face in his shoulder for lack of anywhere else to go, and the scent of copper felt undeservedly comforting. “I want you,” Amell promised, threading his fingers through his hair. “I still want you.”

Anders couldn’t imagine Amell wanting him when Anders was determined to fuck his way out of one mess and into another. Maker save him, what was wrong with him? He felt ruined. He felt like Hawke had ruined him - but Hawke wasn’t even here - and Anders didn’t even know why he bothered blaming him - but it felt like there was so little of Anders left to blame.

He didn’t even feel like a man anymore. Just anger. Just instinct. Just impulse. Just muscle memory - and none of the memories were good. He wanted new memories, but he was ruining them with old ones, and he just wanted to go back to the man he’d been five years ago who still understood the difference between yes and no and good and evil and love and abuse.

Anders didn’t mean to start crying, but he must have at some point. His face was wet, and Amell’s shoulder was wet, and everything was wet and dry all at once - a mess of tears and mucus that tethered him to Amell’s doublet and stuffed up his nose.

“Fuck,” Anders inhaled, and his nose squeaked. “I’m sorry.”

Amell ran his fingers through his hair, the gentle drag of his nails along his scalp as undeserved as the kiss he pressed against his brow, “Why are you sorry?”

“All of that, just now,” Anders explained - exhausted with himself. “I wasn’t trying to-... I just miss you. I just want you to know I miss you.”

Amell kissed his forehead again, “I do know that.”

“I don’t want you to sleep on the couch,” Anders mumbled into his shoulder.

“I know that too,” Amell said.

“I want you to be happy.”

“I am happy.”

“That’s a lie,” Anders said.

“Not everything I say is a lie, Anders,” Amell said.

Anders laughed - or made whatever sound passed for one with his nose clogged all the way down his throat, “So you’re avoiding me because you can’t stand how happy I’ve been making you?”

“I’m not avoiding you,” Amell lied. “I spent all day with you.”

“You spent all day with your family,” Anders corrected him. “I was just there.”

“You’re my family,” Amell said - and the practiced ease with which he said it made Anders regret that he hadn’t said ‘our family.’ It was his family. It was supposed to be his family, but Anders wasn’t doing a good job treating it like his family.

“... I should have gotten Kieran a present,” Anders said.

“Get him one next time,” Amell suggested.

“Do you want a next time?” Anders asked.

“Do you want a next time?” Amell asked.

“I want a next time,” Anders said.

“I want a next time,” Amell said.

“Look, all of this... what you’re doing…” Anders slid tentative arms around Amell’s shoulders. “I just want you to know I appreciate you doing it. I know you would have had to do most of it anyway, but you didn’t have to do anything about the control rods and you did. ...I just appreciate it.”

“I know,” Amell said.

“Let me say it,” Anders said.

“Okay,” Amell said.

“I know you’re not the one making them,” Anders said. “I know that. I know you gave Orzammar the Anvil of the Void and what they did with it wasn’t your choice - but you still knew what they could do with it. I know you bind people all the time and that you don’t see it the way I see it, but control rods are evil. We both know they’re evil.”

“Okay,” Amell said.

“So…?”

“So?”

“Come to bed?” Anders said lamely.

“Anders…” Amell peeled him off his shoulder, a web of tears, saliva, and snot caught between his doublet and Anders’ face. “That’s not enough for me.”

“What do you mean that’s not enough?” Anders scrubbed at his face with his sleeves and ruined them in the process. He understood. He was trying to understand. What else was he supposed to do? What else was he supposed to say? “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have-... ” Shouldn’t have what? Shouldn’t have gotten angry about enslaving innocent people? Shouldn’t have thought it was wrong? Shouldn’t have thought it was evil? Shouldn’t have-

Amell shifted back on the couch, like he could sense his anger and he was trying to drag himself away from it. There wasn’t anywhere for Amell to go except over the back of the couch with Anders in his lap, but Amell looked like he was seriously considering it. Like he would have done anything to get away from him and his anger, and it hurt more than Anders was prepared for it to hurt.

“Please come to bed?” Anders whispered.

“Anders, I-... don’t know that I want to come to bed knowing what you think of me,” Amell said.

“What are you talking about?” Anders asked, caressing up and down his arms. “I think everything of you. You’re everything to me.”

“The fact that I mean a lot to you-”

“Everything,” Anders cut him off. “I said everything.”

“-...everything to you-” Amell relented, in an all but inaudible whisper. “-doesn’t mean that you don’t think little of me or my decisions.”

“I’m allowed to disagree with you,” Anders argued.

“I never said you weren’t,” Amell said.

“And I don’t think little of you,” Anders said fiercely. Maker, how could Amell even think that? How could Amell not know how much he meant to him? How could Amell not understand that when Anders said he was everything he meant he was everything? “You’re the one who’s always saying we’re more than our mistakes.”

Amell frowned, “It wasn’t a mistake.”

“So you’re just not going to sleep with me until I agree with you?” Anders asked, but his tone was more phlegm than frown.

“I didn’t say that,” Amell said.

“You’re not saying anything!” Anders protested, climbing off his lap. “You’re not talking to me. I want to fix this and you’re not helping.”

“How am I supposed to help you, Anders?” Amell asked, finally reaching for the wine bottle on the table and the corkscrew to open it. “Just because it’s not a Blight doesn’t mean I haven’t had to make sacrifices. These aren’t hypotheticals to me. I have to pick the many over the few and someday I’ll have to do it again and if you think I’m evil for that-”

“I don’t think you’re evil!” Anders snapped, scrubbing his face off on his tunic and quickly running out of places dry enough to do it. “I don’t, alright? I understand sacrificing a hundred for a thousand. I understand why you did it - I just wanted you to fix what you could after you’d done it. ... I’ll understand if you do it again-”

Amell cut him off with something almost like a scoff. Almost, but not quite. It sounded too tired to be a scoff. Amell popped the cork free of the bottle and poured himself a glass, “You don’t even understand why I did it the first time.”

“You had to, alright?” Anders said. “I heard you. You didn’t have a choice.”

Anders had heard him more than enough times. Branka offered him soldiers. Caridin didn’t. Branka could speak with the Assembly of the Clans. Caridin couldn’t. It wasn’t malice. It was math. Horrible, horrible, horrible math. Math Anders never had to learn. Math Anders never had to do. Math Amell never should have had to do either.

Anders covered Amell’s hand with his own before he could raise the glass to his lips. “...You should have had a choice.”

Amell’s brow furrowed, but it seemed more suspicion than frustration. “...I didn’t.”

“I know,” Anders said. “I’m sorry.”

“... Thank you,” Amell said.

Anders kept hold of Amell’s hand, and slid the wine glass free of it. “Amell-...” Please don’t have anything to drink on Satinalia while blackmailing the king of Orzammar to destroy his control rods for me while you’re planning a war with him so you don’t have to plan a war against him?

Hm.

Hmm.

Hmmm.

“I can sleep on the couch tonight,” Anders offered.

“... I don’t want you to sleep on the couch,” Amell abandoned any efforts to retrieve the glass of wine Anders had taken from him.

“I don’t want you to sleep on the couch either, so one of us is going to have to compromise,” Anders said. “I’m bad at that, by the way.”

Amell grinned, “I know.”

“It seems like there’s a pretty obvious solution here.”

“Is there?”

“Hear me out,” Anders said. “I know this is a little out there, but what if no one sleeps on the couch?”

“Is someone sleeping on the floor?” Amell asked.

“Whatever gets you into bed,” Anders joked. It probably wasn’t the best joke, all things considered, but Amell exhaled bemusedly in that characteristic almost-laugh of his that Anders had missed in the past week.

“What if I like the couch?” Amell asked.

“You don’t like the couch,” Anders said.

“I might.”

“Liar.”

“Maybe,” Amell said, but he smiled.

Anders changed out of his ruined tunic and into a pair of slacks that seemed less presumptuous than climbing into bed naked. Amell changed into his own pair while Anders sat on the bed watching him until he climbed in with him. He felt like a teenager all over again, stuffed into the apprentice dormitories and sneaking someone into his bunk only to realize he had no idea what to do with them.

Amell must not have felt like anything. He lay with an arm behind his head, seemingly content to fall asleep like they hadn’t spent the past week apart. Anders supposed that meant he should fall asleep with him. He forced himself to lie down and keep his thrashing to a minimum, listening to the quiet nothing in the dwarven night. No crickets. No owls. Nothing but Amell’s even breathing.

“Anders?” Amell asked eventually.

“Yeah?” Anders asked.

“Will you come here?” Amell asked.

“... Yeah,” Anders found a place for himself on Amell’s shoulder. He radiated warmth and well-being. A familiarity that felt like he was meant to be here - like he’d always been here - like he’d always be here. Amell dropped his arm from behind his head to drape it around Anders’ shoulder and run idle fingers along his arm. Anders pressed himself against his side, breathing in his scent, trying and failing to remember the last time he’d just held and been held.

Months, maybe? They hugged. They hugged all the time - but they didn’t really hold each other just to be held. Anders didn’t cuddle. Anders didn’t mean not to cuddle, it just wasn’t something he did. There was never any time to cuddle in the Circle, and now that he had time, he had better things to do with it, but Amell didn’t seem to want to do any of those things right now.

Years, then. It had to have been years, but Anders couldn’t remember, and he didn’t really want to remember if it wasn’t a memory he’d made with Amell.

“... This is nice,” Anders whispered.

Amell hummed, “You’re nice.”

“Remember what we said about lying?” Anders joked.

“You were angry. You were right to be.”

“I could have handled things better.”

“... I could have done a lot of things," Amell said, and for all he might have said he had no regrets, Anders heard more in that simple sentence than he could ever name.

“We’re doing them now.”

Chapter 184: The Demon You Don't

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon Day Unknown Umbralis Time Unknown
The Dead Trenches: The Gates of Bownammar

The journey to Bownammar took two weeks. Two miserable weeks spent traversing thaigs and tunnels, subsisting on army rations and whatever underground cave creatures they stumbled across on the march. Cave beetles, cave spiders, cave fish, cave bats. Cave anything that moved if they were hungry enough. Fighting through darkspawn and deepstalkers, and losing men to glowing slimes and gibbering horrors.

The dwarves had reclaimed some of the Deep Roads thanks to Legion of Steel and Stone. It didn’t take long before Anders was sick of hearing about it. The golems that accompanied the army were all bound to control rods, and it took everything in Anders and Justice not to shatter them on sight. The golems walked the perimeter of their formation as the first line of defense against darkspawn… and they were good at it.

They couldn’t not be good at it. They were all but impervious to anything that wasn’t a pickaxe - covered in lyrium-infused runes that fueled all manner of enchantments from lightning to fire to defensive auras. House Helmi had used them to clear the Deep Roads between Orzammar and Kal’Hirol with Amell, and while the venture had its losses, it was ultimately successful.

A whole thaig reclaimed - full of lost smithing knowledge on everything from golems, to lyrium, to great dwarven barrier doors that sealed off sections of the Deep Roads to protect the dwarves against the endless darkspawn hordes. Denek Helmi had been placed in charge of the city - fed and fueled by its underground river - and was as progressive as Bhelen, allowing any casteless who settled within its walls to take up jobs as fishermen.

Anders didn't care. No matter how much good the golems had done, Bownammar was in the opposite direction from Kal’Hirol, in every possible way. The casteless that went there didn’t go there to become settlers - they went there to become slaves - and Anders was impatient to free them. The armies set up their encampment on the cliffs of the Dead Trenches, outside the Gates of Bownammar, and along the way they'd been joined by a battalion from the Legion of the Dead who boasted three ghoulish Orlesian Grey Wardens among them who had joined them for their Calling.

It didn’t remind Anders of the Battle of Amaranthine, or the Invasion of Kirkwall, or the Battle of Wutherford. It didn’t remind him of a battle at all. It reminded him of a city - or a refugee encampment outside of one. Tent upon tent stretched across the ledge of the Dead Trenches - and the horde of darkspawn that filled it a full league below their feet. Their endless cries were like the roar of a waterfall, their undulating mass like the flow of a river, and the army treated them with all the concern of either.

Anders supposed they weren’t a concern, as far away as they were, but he could still feel them. He’d felt them the entire time they’d been in the Deep Roads - crawling beneath his skin, their shadows flickering in the corners of his eyes, the Call of the Old Gods an ever-present whisper in his ear. And, Maker, the nightmares. None of them slept easy. Amell didn’t even have to bother assigning a watch when there was always someone awake, sitting by the fireside and doing whatever they could to block out the Call.

The Senior Wardens had it the worst. In two weeks, Anders hadn’t seen Martine or Ailsa retire to their tents. They’d been Grey Wardens longer than any of them - Ailsa for almost twenty years, Martine for even more - and they joked more often than Justice was comfortable about joining the Orlesian Wardens in the Legion of the Dead and going to their Calling. He had no qualms about a noble death - and yet he wished neither friend a premature one.

The Mage’s Collective kept their tents close to the Grey Wardens, either in thanks for getting them into the city, in trust for their ability to stand against the darkspawn, or in solidarity for being the only surfacers among the dwarven army. Anders sat with Levyn, watching the rest of the mages mingle with the wardens, sipping at his Aqua Magus from the flask Ailsa had gifted him. It had taken him an embarrassing amount of time to pick out an engraving, but everything in Orzammar had finally helped him settle on one. Carved into the cold metal were the words, “Vintage: Warden Anders. No compromise.”

“... You think it hurts?” Levyn asked. He looked depressed, long black hair drooped around his pale face that seemed to get even paler the longer they spent in the dark. “Being a golem?”

“Getting boiled alive?” Anders asked, making himself as comfortable as he could on hard stone, long legs crossed and bent out towards his shoulders. “How bad could it be?”

“After the boiling,” Levyn clarified, staring at one of the steel giants guarding the edge of the camp. “When they’re just golems.”

Right. Levyn’s friend had been abducted. Anders forgot his name. “... I hope not,” Anders whispered. “Amell said the golem he knew seemed happy.”

“Amell says a lot of things,” Levyn sighed, but Anders couldn’t say if he knew about Amell’s involvement with the Anvil of the Void. It didn’t seem like something Amell shared with anyone who didn’t already know. “... Maker, I wish he hadn’t told me. I’d rather just think Varence was dead. I hate knowing things. I hate knowing he could be one of those things”

“It might not be that bad,” Anders lied. There was nothing else it could be, as far as Anders was concerned. Maybe there was someone out there who would have been glad to spend eternity fighting darkspawn - unable to eat, or sleep, or feel, or fuck - or experience anything or anyone other than a lifetime of service, but that someone wasn’t Anders.

It wasn’t even the Grey Wardens. They were all enjoying a dinner of hardtack and deepstalker jerky, drinking and laughing, wrestling or fucking, to judge by the sounds coming from a few of their tents. A golem couldn’t have the same experiences. That lack of sensation sounded like Tranquility to Anders, but it sounded like home to Justice, and must have been part of the reason why the golems didn’t bother him as much.

“Hello my friend,” Ailsa interrupted his thoughts, holding her skirt in one hand and a tray of food in the other. “Do you have room for a few more old souls?”

Martine was with her, her wizened face composed primarily of dark circles and darker wrinkles, but at least she was smiling, “Bonsoir mes amis.”

“I think my soul is pretty young,” Levyn joked, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it.

“Join us,” Justice said.

The Wardens took a seat on the stone beside them, and Ailsa said, “There is talk you mean to establish a Circle of Magi in Orzammar.”

“I don’t know that this is a good place for mages anymore,” Levyn said unhappily.

“I think it is an excellent place for mages,” Ailsa said, the crystallized lyrium in her knees making her robes hang awkwardly when she sat. “Did you know the dwarves are some of the Imperium’s strongest allies? The Ambassadoria is an entire body of dwarven representatives that advises the Archon and the Magisterium.”

“Slavers supporting slavers?” Anders said sarcastically. “I’m shocked.”

“Someone is having a mood,” Martine noted.

“It is a great injustice,” Justice said.

“All places have evil,” Martine said.

“Not all places have slavery,” Anders said.

“This is not so,” Martine tutted, waving a piece of deepstalker jerky at him. “All places have elves.”

“Elves aren’t slaves,” Levyn said, glancing over each shoulder like he was afraid an elf would pop up and disagree. “Are they? Are elves slaves?”

“In Orlais the words are pretty,” Martine said. “We say servante. We mean slave. I think perhaps Tevinter is more honest. Tamarel and Amethyne - they made these things clear to me. In Orlais it is something you look away from.”

“Maybe you can look away,” Anders muttered under his breath, with another sip from his flask. “Can we talk about something?” Anders asked, as loudly as he could. “Like my cat? How is my cat doing?”

“The terror of the Vigil,” Martine teased.

“It must be hard for you to see them,” Ailsa said, ignoring his request for a change in topic and gesturing at the golems. “Are you looking forward to the battle tomorrow?”

“I hope we have no need of one,” Justice said.

He meant it. If they could end the conflict without bloodshed, it seemed that they should, else the blood that was bound to be spilled would be the blood of innocents. Golems pitted against golems, poor unfortunate souls bound within the stone and beholden to whoever held their control rods. Depending upon the strength of Branka’s own Legion of Steel and Stone, they may yet be outnumbered, and see more deaths among their number.

They were good numbers. Seranni sat in a huddle with the rest of the Dalish, and the handful of elven mages in the Mage’s Collective captivated by them, listening to Jacen tell stories of his time in the Wending Woods. Surana and Amethyne weren’t interested, and passed the time playing dice with the other members of the Mage’s Collective instead. Tamarel had found someone’s bed to share, and Ser Fenley and Nolan were back at the Vigil.

Nathaniel, Oghren, Amell, and Velanna had all but attached themselves to the Legion of the Dead. One among their number had known Sigrun, many years ago, and the four of them were eager for stories about her. Anders heard what he could stand to hear. He missed her - but some part of him was glad that her life had gone the way it did. That she’d joined the Legion of the Dead, and not the Legion of Steel and Stone. That her death had been her choice, and not anyone else’s.

“You are a fool,” Velanna said, reflective eyes glinting when she joined him by the fire later with Nathaniel and Oghren, while the others retired to their tents for the evening. “She would have been the first of their volunteers.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Anders said. “Sigrun loved the surface. The dirt, and the trees, and the sun… You think she would ever give that up?” No one would give that up. It would have been like going back to the Circle.

“She did give that up,” Nathaniel said solemnly, staring into the fire. “Stone keep her soul. Is that the right phrase?”

“You know what I mean,” Anders frowned.

“Dwarves are dwindling,” Velanna said. “The darkspawn are always at the gates of Orzammar, threatening to overwhelm them, and you know how she sought to prove herself against them. You cannot tell me she would not have taken the chance.”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” Anders said. “You didn’t know her like I did.”

“Don’t go there, Sparkles,” Oghren warned him, rolling the shoulder he’d dislocated in his fight with Amell a few weeks ago. “Don’t start that shit.”

“They’re evil,” Anders muttered, huddling into his coat.

“Please,” Velanna rolled her eyes. “What the dwarves do with their own people is no concern of ours.”

“I don’t know that I agree with that,” Nathaniel said.

“Thank you,” Anders said as loudly as he could - voice breaking. “Andraste’s holy hairballs, at least someone else understands this is wrong.”

“I don’t know that I agree with that either,” Nathaniel said. “I wasn’t there. It’s not my place to judge.”

“It’s not your place to judge slavery?” Anders demanded.

“No,” Nathaniel frowned. “Of course any use of golems is evil-”

“Pha,” Velanna snorted. “Any use? Now this I must hear.”

“-but I don’t know what other options the dwarves have available,” Nathaniel said. “And I don’t want to fight about it.”

“The only men who don’t wish to fight are those who know they will lose,” Velanna said.

“Magic?” Anders ventured. “A free Circle of Magi could help the dwarves against the darkspawn better than a bunch of slaves.”

“You trust this dwarven king to free your mages when he will not free his own people?” Velanna laughed.

“My mages?” Anders repeated. “You’re a mage!”

“And I am no fool,” Velanna said. “I trust no king. The humans will seek to take Ostagar from us as they took Arlathan and the Dales the moment there is not one among their number to speak on our behalf. Amell speaks for us in his king’s court. What dwarf will do the same for you?”

“I-...” don’t know. Anders had no idea. He didn’t know enough about the dwarves and their deshyrs to know who might be willing to champion a free Circle of Magi, but Velanna was right. The Mage’s Collective had to have someone on the inside supporting them. “I’ll figure it out.”

Oghren snorted, “Figures you’ll figure it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Anders demanded.

“Means you don’t figure shit, Sparkles,” Oghren said. “You’re messing with things you ain’t got no right to mess with and now you got the Boss in on it too.”

“You can’t still be upset with him,” Anders said.

“Sod off, Sparkles,” Oghren muttered.

“I know Branka used to be your wife, but she’s not anymore. She’s abducting and enslaving innocent people!” Anders rasped.

“Aye, and what about it?” Oghren asked. “You think the Boss ain’t forgiven worse? Like Mac Tir ain’t one of his closest allies?”

“You’re really going to sit there and tell me you think it’s wrong to try and destroy the control rods?” Anders demanded. “That’s the kind of legacy you want to leave behind for your son?”

Oghren inhaled like he was trying to inflate, a deep breath that puffed out his chest and his cheeks, and Anders braced himself for a tirade that was bound to blow him over, but after a few heartbeats Oghren let it all out in a sigh. “No… sometimes people need to be kept from doing stupid things, even for good reasons.

“... Branka always had good reasons. Picked up a hammer when she was a nugget, and just never stopped. Never knew how. That was a girl you could talk to for one minute and see her brilliance, but once other people started seeing it too they went and made her a Paragon. Only one Orzammar ever named in the last four generations. She was twenty - too sodding young to be a living legend. Got to her head. Got to her heart. Clad it in iron and never looked back.

“People were counting on her, see? Orzammar was counting on her. Looking for someone to save ‘em from the darkspawn, but what the fuck is a smith supposed to do about against all that? Convinced herself she had to save us and nothing else but golems could. She never left me for my cousin - she left me for the Anvil. That sodding thing consumed her.

“... you know she used to collect little ceramic horses? Ugly fucking things. Shelves and shelves of ‘em. Called it the ‘Wall of Ugly,’” Oghren chuckled, twisting one of his braids around his finger. “She ain’t evil, Sparkles. Ain’t that easy. Ain’t no such thing.”

Anders couldn’t sleep that night. He lay on his bedroll, the orange light of the campfire eking in through the cracks in the tent canvas, listening to Amell have a nightmare. It seemed like a nightmare, by his pained whimpers, and the way he trembled under the covers. After a few minutes, Anders couldn't stand it, and woke him as gently as he could. Amell snapped upright at the first touch of his hand, breath coming in staccato gasps.

“Hey, you’re okay,” Anders steadied him, one hand to his damp chest and the other running through his sweat-soaked hair. “It’s okay.”

Amell clawed his way out of his nightmare, panicked hands clutching at Anders' shoulders, “I can’t-”

“I’m here," Anders said. "I'm right here.”

Amell’s nails dug into his back, “I can’t-You’re not-”

“I’m right here,” Anders promised, dragging him into his lap. He cradled the back of Amell’s head with one hand, and ran the other in long sweeps from his wrist to his waist, through the cold sweat that had claimed his skin. Anders couldn’t count the times he’d woken up the same way - in the five years he’d been a Grey Warden - but someone had always been there for him. Amell, at first. Justice, afterwards.

Anders didn’t like to think about how many years Amell must have woken up without that. “You know I’m here. You can feel me,” Veilfire burned up one side of Anders’ face, the light making it easier to see the stress and the strain the war had put on Amell. “You can see me.”

Amell gripped his face, sapphire flames encasing his hand, and the flashfire of his spirit’s presence seemed to help Amell catch his breath. Anders pressed their foreheads together, and Amell choked out, “I want to feel you.”

“Feel me,” Anders brushed his nose against Amell’s before he fell to his lips, letting the warmth of his breath play over them in invitation. Amell sought him out and sank into him, his hands tangling up in his hair - the flaxen strands at an awkward length Anders couldn’t quite tie back - but a perfect length for Amell to fist his hands in.

Amell surged over him, laying him out on his bedroll and stealing the air from his lungs with the suddenness of the motion. Anders fought to reclaim it, anticipation shaking through his every inhale. Attentive fingers trailed down Anders’ throat, lingering at his eager swallow and thumbing the scarred skin. Anders grabbed Amell’s wrist, holding it to his throat while they rocked against each other, chasing friction and sparks of pleasure.

“What do you want?” Amell broke from his lips to ask, finding a firmer grip on his neck. “Do you want me to choke you?”

Anders couldn’t think of anything he wanted more, except whatever Amell wanted from him. “I want you to fuck me,” Anders dragged the pads of his fingers down Amell’s chest, through pitch black hair and beads of sweat, cold to start but heating fast for the fire that burned between them. “I want you to fuck me however you want to fuck me.”

Amell must have wanted to feel him, because he let go of his throat to map his body. There was such an intimacy in his hands, in the way they moved across him, in knowing it was how Amell knew him. Nothing compared to it - to how Anders wanted it - to how Anders wanted him. The slow caress and clutch of his hands spread a flush across Anders’ skin. Amell chased it with teeth and tongue, carving a path of bright red bruises and bitemarks across pale skin, fading freckles, and light blonde hair.

“What I want…” Amell mumbled, teeth grazing his nipple and making him gasp. “... is to worship you.”

“I-...” Anders swallowed back a moan, but Amell pulled it from him anyway with a talented flick of his tongue. “-Fuck, Amell.”

He should have said something back, something better, but all he could do was choke down one moan after the next and rock against him. Amell encouraged him, squeezing his hip with every over-eager thrust, fingers biting into pliant flesh like Amell wanted to unravel him without even touching him. Maker, maybe he could. Anders fisted his hands in Amell’s hair, the ink black strands slipping through his fingers like Amell’s name slipped from his lips in one pleading gasp after the next.

Pleasure coursed through Anders’ veins to throb through his cock with every pass of Amell’s tongue. Fade take him, Amell was so warm. He felt like a fever, flushing his skin, clouding his thoughts, choking his every breath until there was nothing left of him but the fire Amell stoked in him. Amell’s fingers looped into his waistband to pull his trousers low on his hips, but he didn’t pull them nearly low enough.

Anders whimpered urgently, running his feet along the back of Amell’s legs, pawing at his shoulders, arching into his every kiss, eager to feel whatever Amell wanted to give him - his hands, his mouth, his anything. “Fuck, Amell,” Anders shoved at his trousers, impatient to be free of them. “Fuck me.”

“I am,” Amell pressed a reprimanding bite into his hip, the sharp sting of his teeth sending a jolt of ecstasy through him. “I will.”

“Fuck me faster,” Anders protested, but ‘faster’ seemed like the furthest thing from Amell’s mind. Anders lifted his hips at Amell’s urging, but the pace he set was painstaking. He moved in inches, his fingers sliding beneath his trousers, sweeping along his hips, gently squeezing his ass, slowly rolling his trousers down his thighs.

“I thought we were doing what I wanted tonight?” Amell spoke the words against his hips, a low murmur so full of passion and promise Anders felt it. The heat of Amell’s breath sank beneath his skin and set it aflame, so agonizingly close to his cock Anders couldn’t stand it.

“We are,” Anders groaned, throwing his head back and pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Fuck, we are, but-”

“But what?” Amell exhaled, the warmth of the words spilling over Anders’ cock and drawing a needy moan from him.

“I don’t know,” Anders whined, tugging at his hair to keep from tugging at his cock. If Amell wanted to tease him then he could tease him, but at this rate one touch would be the end of him. “Fuck. I want what you want. Is this all you want?”

“You’re all I want,” Amell promised, dragging teeth and tongue the inside of Anders' thigh, “You’re always all I want.”

“You’re all-” Anders choked, writhing with ecstasy and all but incoherent, “You’re all-fuck me-Amell, I-”

“I know,” Amell gathered his leg to drape his ankle over his shoulder. Amell bit his calf, a hard suck and swirl of his tongue bound to join the countless other marks Amell had left on him. Amell's hands caressed his leg with the same passion they did his cock, moving worshipfully over every inch of him and making Anders’ breath catch every time they slipped low on his thigh.

“Let me say it,” Anders grabbed for whatever part of Amell he could reach, fisting a hand in Amell’s trousers and pulling his leg flush against him for some part of him to hold. “Let me say it. Let me say it.”

Amell smirked, licking the hand that wasn’t holding his leg and sucking slowly on each of his fingers, “So say it.”

“You’re all I want,” Anders said, his heart racing in anticipation. “Maker, Amell, you’re so-”

Amell silenced him with a hand around his cock, the sheer ecstasy of his touch killing every thought in Anders’ head. Amell’s fingers traced over ridges and veins, and he didn’t even need magic. He was magic. Anders’ hips bucked, his head falling back with a groan as he lost himself to the slick friction of Amell’s fist pumping steadily around his cock.

“Fuck,” Anders choked out. “Fuck, Amell-”

“I’m so what?” Amell asked.

“Gorgeous,” Anders managed, somehow, through hitching gasps that pitched higher with every stroke, “Oh fuck - you’re gorgeous - fuck - faster?”

“Fuck faster?” Amell repeated teasingly.

Anders’ laugh fell apart into a moan at Amell’s quickened strokes. Anders felt the Fade, and Amell’s touch turned from warm to hot, and Anders felt it everywhere. Pleasure coiled tight in the pit of his stomach, caught up in his chest, and curled his fingers and toes. Anders groaned, his leg trembling on Amell’s shoulder while he tugged at his hair, every erratic thrust of his hips chasing the bliss Amell built in him.

“Fuck, Anders, you sound incredible,” Amell praised him, his face pressed against his leg with all the desperation of a sinner at a service. “You feel incredible. I want to give you everything.”

Anders’ heart skipped with Amell’s words and everything beneath them and how ardently he felt the same. He wanted to have all of Amell as much as he wanted Amell to have all of him. He wanted Amell to trust him the way Anders trusted him - and Anders trusted him so much. He couldn’t not when Amell went to such desperate lengths to do anything and everything Anders asked of him. He moved armies. He moved mountains. He moved death itself.

Amell loved him, and Anders loved him back, but he couldn’t say it here, now, on the edge of ecstasy and the verge of war, when Amell could think he said it for any other reason but the truth. “Amell-” Anders moaned, reduced to sweat and shivers. “I-I’m-fuck, don’t stop, please-”

“Never,” Amell said.

His climax capsized him, dragging him under in wave after wave of ecstasy, flooding his lungs and choking out every breath. Anders drowned beneath it all, gasping and clinging to Amell as his end burned through him in a thick, white rush that coated Amell’s hand and slicked his strokes. Amell kept moving, every pass of his hand and the aftershock that came with it leaving him shivering in his arms. Anders caught his wrist with an exhausted whimper and held him still.

“Fuck,” Anders gasped, his leg sliding bonelessly from Amell’s shoulder. “Fuck-.. That was-...that was amazing. Maker, you’re amazing.”

“I thought you told me not to stop,” Amell teased, dragging him upright and into his lap.

“I lied a little,” Anders said, draping his arms around Amell’s neck. He was so flushed Amell felt frozen. “Give me-... just give me a minute.”

“Thank you,” Amell said.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“I wanted to fuck you.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re easy to please?” Anders asked.

“You, once or twice,” Amell said.

“I’m right, as usual,” Anders said, leaning back from him so he could see his eyes, and the brilliant crimson flowing through them. “Did I ever tell you you’re gorgeous?”

“A few minutes ago,” Amell reminded him.

“You are, you know,” Anders said, tracing his face. “You’re the most handsome man I’ve ever seen… I’m not just saying that either. I’ve seen a lot of men, so, there you go.”

Amell exhaled bemusedly, “Where am I going?”

“To bed with me, hopefully,” Anders joked.

“I’m already in bed with you,” Amell said.

“Whatever gets you to stay there,” Anders said, pushing Amell down to the bedroll. His hair framed his face in a pool of black, and Andraste preserve him, Anders wasn’t just saying things. He meant them. He meant them so much. Anders dragged Amell’s trousers off, too impatient to tease him. “What else have I told you?”

“About me?” Amell guessed, catching his arm and pulling him back over him, so that was where Anders stayed.

“About you,” Anders agreed, cupping his face to kiss him, and swallow the groan that spilled from him when Anders stole a hand between them to wrap around his cock. He felt perfect beneath his palm, warm and rigid and made for any part of him Anders wanted him to have.

Amell lost a hand to his hair, and the other to Anders’ back, dragging blunt nails down his skin and digging in with every hitch in Amell’s breath. “You-...ah-...you once said I was the-picture of virile-...fuck-”

Anders tugged on his bottom lip with his teeth, determined to wring words and not just harsh pants from him. “Virile what?”

“Heroism,” Amell gasped, his back arched, body trembling, and the sight was so extraordinarily captivating Anders had to have told him as much. At least once - once upon a time - but if he had, Amell didn’t say, and Anders didn’t remember.

“You are heroic,” Anders affirmed, matching his strokes to Amell’s quickened breath. “You’re brave. You’re strong. You’re beautiful.”

“Fuck,” Amell hissed, nails biting into his back so hard they hurt, and were bound to leave angry red crescents in his skin come morning, but damned if they weren’t scars Anders wanted.

“You’re so damn beautiful,” Anders kissed him, and Amell unraveled, mouth slipping, teeth catching, trying to keep a hold on their kiss through his climax, but he was shaking so hard his lips slipped, and his kiss spilled down Anders’ jaw. Anders held him through it, cleaned them off with the sheets, and rolled them onto the bedroll they hadn’t ruined.

Anders settled on Amell’s shoulder, listening to him catch his breath, and running his fingers through the sheen of sweat on his chest. Amell wrapped his arms around him, still shivering when he pressed a kiss against his brow, “Thank you.”

I love you.

Anders wanted to say it. He loved him, and he wanted Amell to know he loved him, but he’d gone so long without saying it the words wouldn’t come. They stayed stuck in his throat, tangled up in all his scars, and not even whispers unraveled them. “Amell?”

“Hm?”

“... How are you?”

“I’m with you,” Amell said, like that meant anything, like that meant everything.

Morning came - and horrors came with it.

Bownammar was both labyrinth and fortress - a mountain within a mountain - too colossal to take in all at once. Braziers illuminated the battlements in pieces - pinpricks of light in the deep. A wall here. A tower there. All but impossible to see, not just for the dark, but for the distance. The Dead Trenches separated Bownammar from the rest of the Deep Roads, and the chasm was so vast the bridge that spanned it made the Imperial Highway seem small.

Stone, steel, and stalwart, the bridge was suspended by dozens of chains thick enough to anchor the world that tethered it to the cave ceiling. Statues honoring the Legion of the Dead framed the sides. They were infused with lyrium, and glowed a gentle sapphire to illuminate their passing, but the bridge was so wide the middle stayed dark. The armies filed on with torches and magelight, whispering their respect. Crafted hundreds upon hundreds of years ago, the dwarves called it a marvel of dwarven engineering.

They should have called it a death trap.

Branka made it one.

The armies were halfway across the bridge when someone triggered something. One of the chains gave, lashing across the bridge with all the strength of a sea dragon, and knocking dwarves and golems alike over the edge. A rumble shook the caverns, and boulders an ogre’s envy fell from the ceiling, smashing through the stonework. Whole platoons were crushed - dwarves, golems, and mages thrown to the Dead Trenches to be swallowed by the darkspawn.

The survivors panicked, stampeding in either direction as the bridge crumbled down around them. Golems thundered after whoever held their control rods, occasionally falling through the cracked stone as it crumbled beneath their weight. One platoon commander climbed up onto the edge of the bridge and began bellowing orders only for the loose chain to swing back around.

"Look out!" Anders didn't yell. Anders couldn't yell. He whispered instead, and the dwarf didn't hear him. The chain connected with his back with a sickening crack that killed him almost instantly and launched his body into the abyss. "Damnit!"

"Bridge's coming down, Boss!" Oghren bellowed over the cacophony of screaming soldiers and crumbling stone. He took off towards Bownammar, dragging Amell along with him.

"Make for Bownammar!" Nathaniel yelled, pointing after them with his cane. The Grey Wardens didn’t need to be told, but the entire bridge was collapsing, and there were more than just Grey Wardens on it. They bolted for the fortress, dodging falling rocks and lashing chains, but Nathaniel couldn’t bolt, and neither could the armies they were leaving behind.

Anders grabbed Nathaniel’s arm rather than risk yelling, “They won’t make it!”

“What!?” Nathaniel yelled back.

“You won’t make it!” Velanna said for him - gesturing at Nate’s cane instead of the hundreds of dwarves and mages who didn’t have their Grey Warden stamina to keep up, especially with the bridge breaking apart into pieces and bound to collapse into the trenches at any second.

Anders hasted himself, and shoved through the ranks to catch up to Amell and hiss into his ear, “Amell, we have to do something - the army isn’t going to make it!”

"Hold!" Amell’s yell stopped every Grey Warden dead in their tracks - literally, if they lingered - but Amell said stop and they stopped. "Ailsa - hold the bridge!”

"I need help, Commander!” Ailsa yelled back, but she tried. The loose chain lit up with the light of the Fade as Ailsa’s telekinesis coiled around it, but she was sweating with the effort. “I need lyrium or-”

“Drain me!” Surana offered in place of Ailsa’s addiction, when whatever telekinetic magic she added to the chain wasn’t enough to move it.

“Gleam!” Anders whispered - unable to pick her or any of the mages out amidst the chaos. What little light there was from the statues dyed on the dust - the air was thick with it, stone after stone shattering apart on the bridge. “Call Gleam! The Collective can help.”

“Gleam!” Amell’s voice rang out over the chaos, a surge of amplification magic making it echo through the trenches. “Hold the bridge!”

A shock of white hair appeared, climbing on top of a golem crushed by falling rocks, and Gleam started screaming her own orders to the Collective. Mages with the magic to help latched onto the chain, forcing it back into place and rushing to weld it to the bridge.

“Rocks - Amell rocks are falling -” Anders whispered.

“Velanna - the rocks!”

As if on command, another boulder fell from the cavern ceiling, and a stone fist from Velanna shattered it. Pebbles fell like rain, and more mages with command of primal magics joined in, shattering the boulders as they fell. The armies ran for Bownammar, and Amell ordered him and the rest of the healers to haste the survivors across. By the time they all made it to the other side of the bridge, half of it had crumbled, and a chunk of their army along with it.

The mages were exhausted. The soldiers were exhausted. Everyone was exhausted. They dragged themselves across the bridge and to the gates of Bownammar like survivors from a shipwrecker spat up by the ocean and had no time to rest. The gates to Bownammar opened and golems poured out and a dwarf Anders could only assume was Branka appeared on the battlements. She was in full heavy armor, vitriol as bright and blue as lyrium glinting off the low light of the Deep Roads, and flanked by yet more golems.

“Paragon Branka,” Bhelen’s second, Vartag Gavorn, emerged from the ranks of his men, haggard and disheveled from the near collapse of the bridge. His armor was dented, and covered in dust, and he looked like he was in no mood to be diplomatic. He snatched up a druffalo horn from a nearby soldier, and bellowed into it to be heard on the battlements. “On behalf of King Bhelen Aeducan - you are hereby ordered to surrender command of the Legion of Steel and Stone to the King. Comply and be spared. Refuse and be put to death.”

“Put to death?” Branka laughed down at him, with no horn of her own, her voice distant and deadly. “Look around you, Gavorn, we’re already dead!”

“If we’re dead, you’ve killed us!” Gavorn yelled back. “You cost Orzammar hundreds of good men on that bridge!”

“Hundreds of fools - to dare stand against their Paragon!” Branka scoffed. “My traps are for the darkspawn! My golems are for the darkspawn! Everything I do is for the darkspawn! Go back to Orzammar and leave me to defend it!”

“Defend it?” Gavorn demanded. “You will destroy it - sending us to war against the surface! You cannot send out raiding parties without the consent of the king!”

“Kings, consent, politics… all of that is transitory! The darkspawn are eternal - and we will never defeat them without more golems!” Branka slammed a fist down on the battlements. “They are the only thing stemming back the tides of darkness! You want the raiding parties to stop? Give me the men and the means to continue my work!”

“Your work is for the king!” Gavorn argued. “The Legion of Stone and Steel belongs to him! You cannot make your own army!”

“I need my own army! I have given bodies and souls to unlocking the secrets of the Anvil of the Void. The means by which the ancients forged their army of golems and held off the first archdemon ever to rise. It is our protector, our greatest invention, the thing that once made our armies the envy of the world, and I will not leave it undefended! I dare not!”

“The whole of Bownammar is your defense! You cannot raid the surface!”

“Bownammar is no defense,” Branka shook her head. “It has been lost to darkspawn so many times even the Memories cannot track it!”

“You’re not going to lose it,” Amell interjected, amplifying his voice through the cavern. “Everyone knows Orzammar needs the Anvil of the Void.”

“Commander,” Branka’s tone became abruptly cordial, like Amell had flipped a switch, and why wouldn’t he? He was her ally. He’d been her ally for years. The two of them talking like old friends over the hundreds of bodies they’d left in their wake made Anders livid. “At last, someone sensible. I suppose your king is against the raids? That seems most likely. You can send him my apologies.

“Bhelen has refused me brands. I needed a replacement. You understand. War comes with sacrifices. As many sacrifices as are needed. Send me whoever you like and I will use them instead, but the work must continue. It must!”

“Branka, you mad, bleeding nug-tail!” Oghren bellowed up at her. “Does this mean so much to you that you can’t even see what you’ve lost to get here!?”

“Look around!” Branka yelled back. “Is this what our empire should look like? A crumbling tunnel filled with darkspawn spume? We need-”

“-to discuss it!” Amell said.

Anders had heard enough. There was nothing more to hear. Branka was never going to stop making golems anymore than she was going to stop making control rods. All they were doing was giving her a chance to convince them she was right - and it wasn’t a chance Anders was going to take. Anders slipped from the armies and into the shadows.

A crow flew from them, startling a nest of bats, and slipping in among them to fly unnoticed over the battlements of Bownammar. Beyond the battlements, Bownammar was a labyrinth of stone. Corridor upon corridor filled with statues and tombs venerating the Legion of the Dead. The crow flew in endless circles, searching for anything that might have passed for an anvil or a forge, but all it came across were cells.

Cells upon cells upon cells - lined in nullification runes - with magic dampeners set into the walls that sent Anders crashing to the ground in an explosion of feathers the second he flew down the hall. Anders skidded across the stone, scraping up his arms and legs, and hastily righted himself in front of one of them. Two familiar elves were huddled within, with ink black hair and polished bronze skin. They were dressed in rags, and covered in soot, like they’d been working in a forge.

“Alim!” Anders grabbed the bars, startling them both.

Alim slammed back against the far wall, squinting at him, “Who are you?”

“Anders!” Alim’s sister Melissa raced to the bars. “Alim - it’s Anders - he saved us in Amaranthine!”

“What are you doing here?” Alim asked, joining her.

“Who cares what he’s doing here!” Melissa said. “Get us out of here!”

“The Mage’s Collective came to free you,” Anders explained. “Where’s everyone else? Where’s Valence?”

“Varence?” Melissa corrected him. “... He’s dead. They’re all dead.”

“How?” Anders asked. “Why? Why aren’t they golems? Don’t you mean they’re just golems?”

“Mages can’t be made golems,” Alim said. “We can’t survive the lyrium, but she keeps trying-”

“Get us out of here,” Melissa scrabbled at the bars, reaching through to grab his coat. “She makes us work the forge - Creators, the screams - I can’t keep making people into those things! She can’t keep making me make people into those things!”

“Where are the keys?” Anders asked, considering he couldn’t melt the lock with the magic dampeners lining the walls.

“I don’t know,” Melissa said. “Why would I know?”

“Her room,” Alim guessed. “She doesn’t trust anyone with them. She doesn’t trust anyone with anything.”

“Where’s her room?” Anders asked.

“Why would I know!?” Melissa screamed at him.

“Melissa,” Alim hissed her silent. “She leaves for the north wing every evening. Her room must be there.”

“I’m going to get you out, but I can’t just save you. I have to save the golems too,” Anders said. “Where does she keep the anvil and the control rods?”

“The rods are in a storage room, somewhere on the eastern side of the fortress,” Alim said. “The forge is to the west.”

“I'm going to destroy all of it,” Anders untangled Melissa’s fingers from his coat. “I’ll come back-”

“Get us out of here!” Melissa begged, grabbing madly for him every time he pried her hands off.

“I’ll get you out,” Anders promised. “I’m coming back-”

“Get us out of here!” Melissa started sobbing, great gasping wails Alim smothered with a hand for fear of being overheard, but he did it too late. The other prisoners must have heard them, because their cries joined in, begging for freedom from the fate the anvil had in store for them.

“I’ll get you out,” Anders promised, stumbling away from the bars. “I’m coming back.”

Anders fled from the dungeon and the magic dampeners inlaid within its walls. The Fade rushed back to him in the main corridor, veilfire surging through his veins like a rush of liquid lyrium, and with it - righteous anger. The City of the Dead had to fall. Anders had to fell it. To the north, keys. The west, the anvil. The east, the rods. Whatever happened, he couldn’t leave the prisoners - the mages - to their chains when there was a way for him to break them.

A crow flew north, through the endless maze of halls that made up Bownammar, checking one room after the next for somewhere Branka might have kept the keys to her countless cells, until it finally came upon a room guarded by two golems.

Two golems the crow had no idea how to get around or get rid of. The crow landed at what it felt was a safe distance, eyeing both golems, who both eyed the crow. Stone grinded against stone, what passed for eyebrows raising curiously at the sight of a crow in the Deep Roads, because they were people. Somewhere, under the stone and steel and runes, they were people, and people didn’t want to be slaves.

Anders was either a genius or an idiot, but he came apart in the hallway. Neither golem charged him. They just stood there, watching, and let him approach, because they were people. Normal people. Normal people he could convince to help him as long as that help didn’t go against whatever their orders were. He just had to say something convincing.

“Hey,” Anders said

Genius.

“I’m sorry,” Anders tried again. “I know you don’t have any choice but to follow whatever your orders are right now, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry she did this to you. I’m sorry no one stopped her. I want to stop her. Help me stop her.”

Nothing. It was like talking to… well… a statue.

“... What’s your name?” Anders asked.

“... Leske,” One of the golems rumbled.

“Leske,” Anders repeated. “My name’s Anders. Is this where she keeps her keys? I need to get the keys - and get everyone out - so she doesn’t do this to anyone else.”

“No one may pass,” Leske said.

Not exactly a resounding yes but not a resounding no either. “I need you to help me,” Anders said. “I’m going to destroy the control rods - but I need to free everyone first.”

“No one may pass,” Leskie said. “... be no one.”

No one. How was he supposed to be no one? Anders was definitely someone.

A cat was no one.

A cat sat in front of the golems, scratching at the door to the room until Leske pushed it open. The cat slipped inside and into the past. Parchment covered the walls, and the floors, and even the ceiling. Revka - some long buried memory insisted - Revka, Revka, Revka. Papering the furniture, covering the bed, spilling from the shelves and covering the table. She was everywhere, she was everything, and Quentin would do anything to get her back.

But it wasn’t Revka.

They were schematics. Just schematics. Endless designs and redesigns for golem after golem. Branka’s obsession was everywhere. It consumed her - the way Quentin’s obsession had consumed him. Anders had never been able to stop Quentin, but he could stop Branka. Anders dug through chests, shelves, and drawers before he found a ring of keys too heavy for a crow to carry.

Anders hasted himself back to the dungeon and saw the prisoners free from it. A dozen men and women, stolen from the surface, with only two surviving mages among them, but they’d survived. They’d all survived, and they were all free, because Anders had freed them, and now he had to free the rest. “Okay,” Anders said. “I need your help to destroy the control rods. Branka is distracted right now, but I don’t know how much longer they’re going to-”

“Fuck that!” One of the humans interrupted, balding and starved half to death from his time in the cells. None of the other prisoners looked any better. Everything about them was unwashed, and unshaved, and unhelpful. “I’m getting the fuck out of here! You’re not making me into one of those things!”

The man sprinted down the hall and the rest of the prisoners ran after him, but they were all just running to their deaths if they ran into any of Branka’s golems guarding the gates to Bownammar. “Wait!” Anders chased after them with Alim and Melissa. “Stop! She’ll just catch you again!”

None of the prisoners stopped because none of the prisoners listened to him because none of the prisoners heard him. They couldn’t hear him over the screams of battle coming from outside the fortress. Except Anders had heard a battle before - and this didn’t sound like a battle. It sounded like a slaughter. There were no orders being bellowed. No sounds of steel on steel or even stone on stone. There were just screams.

The gates of Bownammar were abandoned. No golems guarded them. They opened out into the Deep Roads, where all of the escapees fled, swallowed by the dark. Anders ran out after them, and into a slaughterhouse. There in the courtyard, the Legion of Stone and Steel, the Legion of the Dead, the armies of Orzammar, the Mage’s Collective, and the Grey Wardens were all being torn apart.

The darkspawn were tearing them apart. Red lyrium-infused darkspawn were tearing them apart. Undead, red lyrium-infused, darkspawn were tearing them apart. They were everywhere, swarming over the field like locusts, prying the golems apart, smiting the mages, devouring the dwarves. The courtyard of Bownammar was a field of blood and lyrium, flowing over the edge of the cliffs and into the Dead Trenches like a waterfall of red.

Anders watched a Legionnaire cleave through a hurlock, in a blow that took off half its torso, only for it to keep moving, to keep fighting, to dive onto the man’s back and chew through his spine with glistening ruby-red teeth. The Legionnaire didn’t get the chance to collapse before he was back on his feet, risen from death, but Amell hadn’t risen him. The Legionnaire charged the nearest dwarf, took three crossbow bolts to the face he ignored before he was on them, jaws snapping for their throat, pushing the bolts further into his face as he banged it against their armor.

An emissary. It had to be an emissary. Anders scanned the field, but he couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see anything but red, the darkspawn glowing in the dark and lighting up the battlefield. They swarmed out from a giant undulating mass of flesh and rot, like a broodmother had crawled out of its nest and dragged itself to the City of the Dead to reclaim it. Golems charged it, one after the other, but the mound of meat and muscle consumed stone and steel golem alike, absorbing them into its mass, shoving them into the trenches, outright shattering them into shrapnel in a single blow.

Wardens. Anders had to find the Wardens, but the corruption was everywhere. The entire field was tainted, and it spanned leagues, covering the entire cliff ledge, and spilling back onto the dilapidated bridge. A dozen darkspawn went sailing over the chasm at the lash of a vine, pinpricks of red fading as they fell, and Anders finally spotted Velanna. “Get across the bridge!” Anders ordered Alim and Melissa.

“We’ll try,” Alim grabbed his sister and ran.

A crow flew across the battlefield, and landed amidst the Grey Wardens in an explosion of feathers and an aura of offense. The beacon of destructive power and protection washed over the handful of Grey Wardens he’d found, strengthening their blows and quickening their steps as they fought to keep from being overwhelmed.

“Fucking finally!” Oghren bellowed between blows of his greataxe. He cleaved the darkspawn in two with every blow, but they kept going, torso crawling across the cave floor and crawling up legs until Velanna’s nature magic knocked them over the edge of the cliff. “Where the fuck have you been, Sparkles!?”

“What’s going on?” Anders amplified his voice so Oghren could hear him, casting one glyph of repulsion after the next under every mage and archer he could find.

“What do you sodding think!?” Oghren chortled, lopping a genlock’s head off. It went bouncing across the cave floor and rolled to a halt against a rock, teeth still snapping at every foot that fell near it. The body kept on, blind, clawed hands swinging wildly in the empty air. Oghren kicked it in the chest, and knocked it over for Velanna to sweep into the abyss. “It’s a sodding harvest!”

A harvester.

It was a fucking harvester.

Of course it was a fucking harvester.

Maker, people were missing. Too many people were missing. Their small cluster of Grey Wardens consisted of Oghren, Velanna, Jacen and Tamarel. Anders couldn’t see anyone else. The battlefield was too big. There were too many bodies, falling, and rising, and falling again. Anders summoned a tempest and dropped it over the darkspawn swarming them. Lightning surged through the darkspawn, and they burst apart in an explosion of blood and lyrium, only for more to take their place. They weren’t even making a dent.

Anders joined Jacen, and had to ask his question three times before Jacen heard him, “Where’s Amell?”

“At the front, da’len!” Jacen yelled back, his quiver all but empty. If not for Oghren and Velanna, he and Tamarel would probably already be dead. Anders didn’t want to think about what that meant for the rest of them. He dropped more glyphs - warding, repulsion, paralysis, lifewards - and took the skies again.

The front. Amell was at the front, but the crow didn’t know where the front was. The entire cliff face was carnage - and the front had to be the worst of it. The harvester was at the front - the mass of mutated muscle the crow had mistaken for a broodmother. The crow searched for silver, and found it amidst a wall of golems. Blasts of telekinetic energy threw back any darkspawn who breached the perimeter, and Anders landed next to Ailsa.

People were still missing. Maker, people were still missing. “Ailsa, where’s Amethyne!?” Anders whispered.

Ailsa’s eyes darted to him and back to the field. She couldn’t hear him. No one could fucking hear him. Her magic flung darkspawn after darkspawn over the edge of the cliff to keep them from being risen by the harvester’s magic. Anders summoned a spellbloom for her, and latched a wisp to her staff for the mana it offered, and tried again. “Ailsa, where’s Surana?”

Ailsa must have heard him the second time around. She didn’t answer but she pointed towards a maelstrom of magic that had to have made up most of the Mage’s Collective. Fire, lightning, ice, every element imaginable burnt the advancing darkspawn down to ash when a corpse of any substance rose to fight again. Anders couldn’t make out Surana or Amethyne among them, because they weren’t among them.

They were nearby, safely surrounded by a group of golems, and doing their best to fight from within them. Everyone left alive had taken to clustering around the golems. The stone and steel constructs charged, one after the next, to face the harvester, only to be destroyed by it. From up on the battlements, Branka watched, as one, two, more golems were shattered, and raised a control rod in her hand. “Golems!” Branka yelled over the battlefield. “To me!”

Half of the Legion of Stone and Steel turned, mid-combat, and marched back towards the gates of Bownammar.

“Branka!” Amell’s voice echoed across the trenches. “Damn you - don’t you quit the field!”

“Close the gates!” Branka ordered. “Keep them out!”

The golems guarding Amethyne and Surana abandoned them. The armies panicked, racing after the golems to reach the gates before them. The golems turned on them, crushing anyone who tried to enter, and the darkspawn kept swarming. Anders had never seen the tides of a battle turn so quickly. He didn’t have the range for any spells that could reach Amethyne and Surana. The Collective was closer, and both women must have known it, because Surana shoved Amethyne behind her, towards them, in the split second it took the darkspawn to overtake her.

She was dead.

She was just dead.

Anders knew she was dead. He watched her die. Her shield came up, a darkspawn’s poleaxe came down, and the shield split. A spear followed it, launched from some unknown assailant, and pierced her armor and her heart. She was dead, but she couldn’t be dead, because Anders had saved her. Anders remembered saving her. He remembered dragging her, bleeding and burnt, across the bank of the River Dane when everyone said she was dead and everyone was wrong and Anders had saved her.

He’d saved her for nothing.

Amethyne didn’t see it. Amethyne didn’t stop - sprinting across the dismembered undead that littered the field - flinging everything from caltrops to bombs from her belt behind her as she ran because she knew only darkspawn would follow, because Surana was dead and everyone knew Surana was dead and in that split second everyone had to accept that Surana was dead but Martine couldn’t and Martine didn’t and Martine ran out into the field to save a corpse.

“Surana!” Martine yelled, greatsword cleaving through the shrieks that surged her when she broke rank.

“Martine - stop - she’s dead!” Ailsa yelled.

“She’s not dead!” Martine yelled back, fighting further and further away from them. “She’s not dead! She’s too young! She’s too young! She’s a baby! She’s a baby!”

A corpse grabbed her foot, and wrenched her down, and then Martine was dead too.

“What the fuck,” Anders wheezed, channeling a panacea, a haste, a heroic aura, channeling whatever the fuck he was supposed to channel. He stumbled back into their small cluster of Grey Wardens, and the few golems left bound to Bhelen still defending them, and had no idea what to do. They were dying. Everyone was dying. Surana was dead and Martine was dead and Seranni-...

Where the fuck was Seranni?

“Amell!” Anders staggered through the ranks to where Amell stood beside Nathaniel, wrenching waves upon waves of undead from the harvester and binding them to him instead. Nathaniel had run out of arrows - and stood defensively beside him with daggers that wouldn’t do anything against anything if anything reached them. “Amell - where’s Seranni?”

“Getting Velanna,” Nathaniel answered for him. “Keep us hasted. We’re going to retreat.”

“Retreat,” Anders repeated, wringing his hands on his staff and channeling a haste. “Okay. Retreat. Retreating sounds good.”

Retreating from the front sounded especially good. The harvester was corrosive. The dwarves launched arrow after spear after crossbow bolt at the behemoth, and the spray of its blood melted men and darkspawn alike. Golems charged with fire and lighting tore into the harvester, but they couldn’t reach its core before it reformed, a construct of corpses. The kind of corpses the Deep Roads had in abundance - somehow infused with red lyrium - and there was no stopping it.

Seranni returned and the surviving Grey Wardens returned with her - the ghoul navigating the battlefield with a terrifying ease that somehow saved all of them. They joined ranks behind the golems, and Velanna ran to join Amell.

“Retreat!” Amell yelled.

“Fall back to the bridge!” Nathaniel added.

The golems moved to support the armies retreat - a wall of steel and stone that cut off the undying darkspawn. Anders hasted everyone he could haste, but it was so hard to keep track of everyone over the screams of the dead and the dying. He lost sight of Velanna, and Amell along with her, and panicked. Anders stumbled across the twitching torso of a hurlock, and grabbed Nathaniel’s arm. “Where’s Amell? Where’s Velanna?”

Nathaniel barely glanced at him, directing the surviving Grey Wardens back across the cliff face, “The front.”

“We’re leaving the front!” Anders hissed.

Nathaniel stopped. He looked at him like he’d never seen him before - like he wasn’t a warden and he wasn’t entitled to warden secrets. His eyes took in the bloody abattoir of their defeat, like he was seeing something Anders wasn’t, and he said, “They’re not.”

“What do you mean they’re not!?” Anders demanded, and didn’t wait for him to answer. He pushed through a sea of soldiers fleeing in the opposite direction, back towards the harvester, and the few golems still fighting it. Velanna manifested in front of it, tearing through raw stone in a shower of dust and rock, Amell at her side. A nest of corrosive vines broke through the stone around the harvester, and the harvester tore through all of them, but it served its purpose, and drew its focus.

The harvester turned on them, and a host of roots broke forth from the ground and swallowed Velanna.

They left Amell.

She left Amell.

“Amell!” Anders screamed. Anders had to scream. Anders couldn’t scream.

Nathaniel caught up with him and grabbed his arm, dragging him back. “Anders - we have to retreat!”

“You’re leaving him!” Anders screamed. He screamed - Maker, please, why couldn’t he scream? “Amell!”

“We have to leave him!” Nathaniel yelled at him.

The harvester reared back and vomited - spraying spume, and blood, and rot across the field - but Amell was on the field and the field was corrosive and Amell was screaming and Anders couldn’t scream but Anders had to scream so Nathaniel would let go of him and Anders could reach him so Anders could heal him. He shoved his elbow into Nathaniel’s stomach and broke free, only for Oghren to grab him about the waist and drag him back.

“Let me go!” Anders screamed - he swore he screamed. “Amell! Let me go!”

“We gotta go!” Oghren’s arms were like stone, or steel, and Anders couldn’t break out of them. “Let’s fucking go!”

“Let me heal him! I have to heal him!” Anders was screaming - he swore he was screaming - but no one could hear him - Amell couldn’t hear him. “Amell!”

“That ain’t Amell, Sparkles!” Oghren roared.

“Let me go!” Anders had to be screaming, because if he wasn’t screaming, then he was just sobbing. “I love him! I love him!”

“Then fucking leave him!” Oghren dragged him from the field, but Amell was screaming - he was screaming - he was screaming.

Chapter 185: A Wretched Way

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon Day Unknown Umbralis Time Unknown
The Gates of Bownammar

Anders left him.

Maker, Anders just left him.

After everything how could Anders just leave him? Anders loved him. Maker, he loved him so much, and he’d never told him. He’d never even come close, and now Amell was gone, abandoned to the Harvester and the hope that his simulacrum could kill it before it killed him, before it possessed him, before Anders lost him all over again.

And he’d been screaming.

Maker, he’d been screaming.

The armies were screaming too.

The darkspawn were swarming. The armies had torn them apart, but the parts kept coming. Red-lyrium encrusted corpses clawing their way across the cliffside. Hurlocks with missing arms. Shrieks with missing legs. A genlock with its head split, half a skull hanging off its neck, red lyrium webbed through the pieces of brain sloughing down its chest as it kept charging, immune to every arrow, every sword, every spell, until there was so little of it left it couldn’t keep coming.

The golems formed a wall of stone and steel, crackling with lightning that forked from one golem to the next, shocking any darkspawn that crossed their line. They may as well not have bothered. The darkspawn surged over them, rotting skin charred and webbed with lightning scars, utterly immune to all of it. They fell over the golems and tore through the dwarven armies as they retreated towards the bridge, but the bridge was out.

The bridge was out.

Falling rocks had collapsed the mid-section of the bridge. The grate and grind of chains echoed through the trenches, straining to hold onto the remnants of the bridge, like a great stone corpse swaying from the gallows in the deep dark. The armies gathered on it, the surviving mages summoning everything they could in a last-ditched scramble to span the divide, but they weren’t making any progress.

Darkspawn emissaries countered with firestorms, melting the ice, burning the vines, sending the rock and stone they supported careening into the trenches. Healers summoned barriers in their defense, but the darkspawn were infused with red-lyrium, and countered with smites that brought the mages to their knees. One feral shriek made it past the golems to tackle one of them over the bridge and into the abyss.

They were dying.

Maker, they were all dying.

“Ailsa, the bridge!” Nathaniel took over command of the Grey Wardens - because Amell was gone - because they’d left him.

Anders had left him.

“Fuck,” Anders choked on a sob, trying to block out the memory of the screams, the acid, the sheer agony he’d left Amell in to face the Harvester. He couldn’t see where he was going, tears blurring his vision black and red, Grey Wardens dragging and shoving him through their ranks. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“It’s unstable!” Ailsa yelled back, the old Tevinter architect expending every ounce of her mana to keep the chains from breaking without the counterweight to balance them. The primal mages were still struggling to manifest a bridge from nothing, but every time they came close dozens of dwarves elected not to wait and fought to rush across. The mages were forced to halt their progress or risk binding their bodies to the bridge, but the dwarves died anyway when half-formed vines snapped beneath their feet or too-slick ice sent them careening over the edge.

“Stop crossing!” Gleam screamed from atop one of the many statues lining the bridge. “Damn you, stop crossing!”

“Fenedhis! If their bodies form the bridge so be it!” Velanna yelled back, roots swallowing an overeager dwarf and crushing him into the bridge. “Finish it!”

Another shriek vaulted the golems, and dove for Velanna while her focus lay on the bridge. Anders screamed - damn him to the Void and back - he screamed - but Velanna didn’t hear him. A blast of ice magic went sailing over the shriek’s head, and he missed.

“Look out, da’len!” Jacen screamed, but Jacen was out of arrows. He dove for Velanna instead, knocking her out of the way, and the shriek fell on him, tearing into the arms the old Dalish brought up to block it.

“No!” Anders froze it, on his second spell, and a blow from a nearby legionnaire’s hammer shattered the shriek atop Jacen. Anders ran to his side and skidded to his knees, restorative energies washing over Jacen’s arms - or what was left of them. His right forearm had been shredded down to cracked bone. His hand hung limply off it, leather glove giving way abruptly to bloody bone and shredded tendons.

Anders couldn’t save it, but he didn’t have time to heal it. He made a hasty tourniquet out of Jacen’s belt, and another scream drew his head up in time to see a smite stagger one of the mages. One of the mages he’d saved. One of the only mages he’d saved. The smite came from a charging hurlock, who charged Alim right over the edge, and the scream came from Melissa. She screamed, and kept screaming, and was half-way to throwing herself over the edge after her brother when another mage held her back, but it was only a matter of time.

The darkspawn kept breaking through. They were eternal. Red lyrium cracked across their skin and glowed in their eyes, an endless wave of red that surged against the golems like the breaking of waves against a cliff face. The golems kept crumbling, one after another, slowly pulled apart stone by stone and slab by slab as the darkspawn tore into them. They all kept dying. The golems. The dwarves. The mages. The wardens. They were all going to die.

Amell was out there, somewhere, and he was going to die too.

He was going to die alone.

Amell couldn’t die alone. Anders couldn’t let him die alone. If they had to die, then he wanted to die with him, but he couldn’t reach him. There was no way out, and everyone kept dying, and the darkspawn kept coming, and it never stopped. Please, Maker, it had to stop. It had to stop. It had to stop.

“Stop!” Anders roared - the Fade roared for him - veilfire tearing through his throat and across his skin and setting him ablaze, but the fire didn’t run hot. It ran cold - like a kiss of death and steel - misting breath as it froze the very air around him. The kind of cold that was unyielding, unrelenting, unforgiving. It ran cold and turned to ice.

An outpouring of ice cracked across the cliff face and devoured the first wave of undead darkspawn. The rest of the mages joined in when they noticed his magic, flooding the caverns with ice from floor to ceiling, and walling off the darkspawn. Their magic sealed off the bridge and their small section of the cliff from Bownammar, and all the horrors they left there.

Amell had been left there.

Anders grabbed Jacen’s one good arm and threw it over his shoulder, dragging the unconscious elf to the other side of the bridge and the Mage’s Collective. Their healers had thrown together a fast infirmary, and Levyn stood out like a beacon, radiating Hope and sweating over dozens upon dozens of injured dwarves.

“Can you take him?” Anders asked, and asked again, but Levyn didn’t hear him. “Levyn! Levyn, can you take him!?”

Levyn tripped over an injured dwarf, his eyes so wide Anders couldn’t tell what color they were. He glanced at Jacen and the makeshift tourniquet dripping blood from his mangled arm. “How old is it?”

“New,” Anders said. “Can you take him?”

“I can take him - Gleam! - leave me a few lifewards,” Levyn took Jacen from him. Anders cast lifewards beneath the worst of his patients, for all the good it would do. Most of them wouldn’t survive without the Joining - and even then most of them wouldn’t survive that. They’d fought darkspawn - endless waves of darkspawn - and their blood had to have been tainted by it.

They weren’t even done fighting them.

It was only a matter of time before the darkspawn broke through. Anders wasn’t going to spend it waiting to die. He wasn’t going to spend it waiting for Amell to die. A crow flew from the bridge out over the Dead Trenches and around the wall of ice to take in the multitude of darkspawn swarming the other side of it. They chipped away at the ice with tooth and claw, setting themselves ablaze in their crazed frenzy to reach the survivors on the other side.

A few had diverted to throw themselves against the gates of Bownammar, but the fortress was sealed shut. Not even the battlements could be breached. It was just closed - portcullises blocking off every possible entrance - and locking Branka away with her golems - with her slaves - with the people Anders had promised to rescue and who could have helped to rescue them. The thought broke his form and sent Anders crashing to the cliffside.

Anders took the impact on his shoulder. The battlefield was carnage, and Anders went rolling through it. Rivers of blood and rent flesh splashed across his face, drenched his hair, and soaked into his clothes - wet and warm and thick with the cloying scent of decay. Hard stone tore through his sleeve and his trousers, scraping up his arm and leg, and Anders collided with the still twitching corpse of a hurlock.

None of the bodies left behind were capable of movement. The armies had quartered the darkspawn trying to fell them. The rest had picked themselves back up and rejoined the horde. The hurlock’s limbs had been severed, save for an arm, and half its head had been crushed. It snarled, snapping at his boot, and crunched down on his heel.

Anders kicked free, dislodging a few ruby red teeth in the process, and dragged himself away. The corpse went rolling, snarling and slathering in protest, one good arm flailing wildly across bloody stone as it tried to reach him. Anders couldn’t kill it, and he didn’t have time to worry about it. A surge of restorative energy washed over the bruises he’d earned in the fall, and Anders stumbled to his feet to take stock of where he’d fallen.

The gates of Bownammar towered over him. In the distance, the darkspawn swarming the ice were a faint wash of black against blue. Further down the cliffside, Anders could see more of the horde surrounding the Harvester. He couldn’t see Amell, but Amell had to be there, fighting it, because it looked like it was fighting something, and that something had to be Amell, because Anders’ heart couldn’t take it if it wasn’t.

“Amell!” Anders sprinted across the battlefield, hasting his steps and churning up blood, ice on his fingertips for any of the darkspawn that rushed to meet him, but none of them did.

They swarmed the Harvester instead. It looked like it was breathing, undead darkspawn crawling across and coalescing into the pulsating mass of flesh and fat. The flesh golem sloughed across the battlefield, leaving a river of corrosive blood in its wake, consuming corpses and losing them just as quickly as a frenzied demon tore into it, except it wasn’t a demon, it was Amell.

It still looked like Amell. Damn him, it still looked so much like Amell, even at a distance. Anders could still make out his armor, the corroded dragonscale and melted gryphon wings, the shredded tabard. Parts of his armaments were just gone. His staff, his helmet, a gauntlet, part of his tasset and pauldrons. The acid had eaten it away, and Anders had left him to suffer it, and his demon hadn’t done anything to heal him.

It tore through the Harvester with no regard for its host. Whatever it had done for Amell was just enough to keep him from falling apart. Anders stopped at the edge of the Harvester’s aura of decay when he could feel it sapping the strength from him with every step he took. It sank into his bones, like marrow turned to rot, and brought him to his knees without ever touching him. Amell shouldn’t have been able to stand it - but it wasn’t Amell.

It was his demon - tangled up in him like a spectral embrace. Two sets of vicious horns swept back from his head in a broken circle, with a third that claimed his brow and curved out to the sides. Blackened veilfire burned through his hair, cracked across his face, and devoured his eyes, and it didn’t look like a demon. It looked like the Void given form. Inhuman and other, spines breaking through his knees, his elbows, his shoulders, remaking him into something forbidden - something forgotten.

He was shrouded in the Fade, like his demon would rather drag him across the Veil than cross it, all but immune to everything the Harvester threw at him. He fought like Fenris - only far more feral - incorporeal until he wasn’t. His demon’s hands overlaid his own, telekinetic talons shredding through the Harvester, gouging out great chunks of meat and sinew as Amell dug through to its core and the lyrium-bound wraiths that fueled it.

It wasn’t Amell. It wasn’t enough of Amell. There was no maniacal cackle that marked him mad with power or enthralled with his own strength. He was just screaming. Pained, primal screams from somewhere deep in his chest or deep in the Fade - further than any spirit or demon or mage could ever follow - but Anders had followed him into fire and he’d followed him into death and he wasn’t about to stop following him now.

Veilfire scoured the Harvester’s decay from Anders’ veins. The brand Justice left on his soul burned through the Veil, and pulled him halfway through it. It felt like falling into lyrium - an endless well of mana - crisp and clear and cleansing. Anders ran after Amell - hasted to match his frenzy - but he couldn’t stop to heal him until they felled the Harvester.

Lightning charged through his fingers, snapping out across the cliff face and flash boiling the blood that coated the ground. A chunk of the Harvester dislodged, and fell into the boiling blood, splattering apart into still-twitching pieces. Amell tore at the bloody hollow left by his magic, his own auras making the Harvester blister and slough, and a surge of telekinetic energy burst the Harvester apart.

For half a heartbeat, Anders saw what might have been its core, a pulsating mass of lyrium and muscle, and then it was gone. Amell had ripped the Harvester into pieces, and all of them were still alive, still moving, scuttling across the cave at impossible speeds on dozens of arms, legs, and digitless limbs formed from muscle and bone. Amell chased the one that held the Harvester’s core, but he was still blind, and his demon was still blind, and they shouldn’t have been able to run blind.

They ran anyway - an arcane field radiating telekinetic energy shattering anything with any substance in a radius around them. Rocks. Corpses. Whole statues. A mist of blood, bone, and dust clouded the battlefield. Anders couldn’t see him through it, but he could still see the Harvester. It reformed from the pieces Amell wasn’t chasing - flesh, fat, and muscle leaving trails of pus and blood as the Harvester pulled itself back together.

Anders had been wrong. It didn’t look like a broodmother. It didn’t look like anything. It was just flesh. Endless rolls of flesh, vestigial limbs jutting out in every direction, a veritable graveyard of darkspawn that had been forced into one giant congealing mass of death and decay, glittering with chunks of red lyrium. Anders channelled more lightning, forcing it to the mass, trying to break it back apart. The Harvester formed, and rushed him, wailing death, a massive almost-arm swinging towards him.

It wasn’t an arm - it wasn’t even a limb - it was just parts. Ribs, legs, shoulders, eyes and teeth all mashed together into a horror Anders didn’t even think to dodge before it slammed into his stomach and sent him flying across the battlefield. Stone tore through his armor as he rolled, his vision a blur of red and black until he collided with something hard and unyielding, and then it was just black.

The impact broke him. His shoulder. His ribs. His leg. Justice clawed them back to consciousness, a panacea sending waves of restorative energy through cracked bone, torn ligaments, and rent muscle. The sensations were agony - Anders’ agony, Justice’s agony - a paralysis borne of no magic that kept him immobile and crumpled against the walls of Bownammar. Justice forced air through Anders’ lungs, like shards of glass, and forced himself to weather it.

There was no choice but to weather it. There was no resting. There was no recovering. There was only the battle. The Harvester had pulled itself back together in their lapse of consciousness. Amell - or the Forbidden One fueling him - was still fighting to reach its core while the Harvester struggled to fend him off. It grabbed at Amell’s face, his chest, his legs, at any part of him it could reach, manifesting limb on top of limb to restrain him.

Amell tore them all off, one after the next, flinging limb after limb across the battlefield, only for them to reshape themselves into something capable of movement, and come rushing back to rejoin the Harvester’s mass. It had to be killing him to do it. The Harvester’s blood was corrosive, and it rained across the cliffside, and Amell was still screaming, and they still had to help him.

Justice dragged himself into a sitting position, Anders’ magic slowly snapping his bones back into place and sealing torn muscle. He dug his fingers into the walls of Bownammar, primal magics tearing rungs into the stone, and climbed to his feet. His leg was still broken, and Justice left his weight off it, leaning back against the wall as he took in the fight.

Lightning wouldn’t serve. Ice wouldn’t serve. Fire wouldn’t serve. It seemed no magic would and yet some magic must. Something to quarter the creature so Amell could destroy its core. Justice pulled through to the Fade, and then pulled through to the Harvester, four spectral hands ripping forth across the Veil to take hold of the creature’s shoulders and thighs, and wrench.

The Harvester came apart - the reshaped remnants of darkspawn splattering in every direction when they were ripped free of the larger whole. Arms embedded with teeth, legs stuffed into the ribs of torsos, jaws sprouting from thighs. The undead darkspawn pieced themselves together backwards and wrong, and charged back towards the core of the Harvester. The pulsating mass of lyrium and muscle echoed with the broken cries of countless wraiths bound within. Amell forced a hand into the wailing mass, and a crushing prison imploded the creature’s heart.

The energy in the core rebounded and blasted Amell across the cliffside in a flash of blinding red, spotting Justice’s vision, and the Harvester collapsed. All at once, the creature ceased to be, the oozing corpus sloshing apart into pieces. A mound of rotten muscle and chunks of lyrium lingered where the Harvester once stood, waterfalling blood and pus across the cliffside. The remnants of limbs rolled down its sides, jaws, fingers, and feet ringing the remains in an effigy of undeath.

Creationism flowed through Justice, regenerative energies snapping him back together as he dragged himself along the walls of Bownammar to where Amell had been thrown. It seemed a miracle either of them yet lived. Amell lay crumpled on his hands and knees, and Justice had nearly been felled by a single blow. He felt almost mortal - the death in the air almost meant for him - the Harvester’s corrosive decay leaving a lingering ache in his legs, in his lungs, in the depths of his soul, so heavy it dragged him to his knees.

Anders crawled the rest of the way to Amell’s side. It was Amell. It had to be Amell, but it didn’t look like Amell. It looked like his demon - fighting to sink beneath his skin and claim his soul. Clawed hands dug into his hair around his horns, pinning his face against his knees, blackened veilfire burning up the sides of his face. Amell was still screaming, a strained sound hissed through grit teeth and gasps, veins along his arms cracking and closing with veilfire over and over again.

“Amell,” Anders grabbed him, but the Forbidden One wasn’t anything like Justice. The veilfire burned, scorching his hands, and Anders pulled them back with a curse and a flood of creationism. “Amell, I’m here.”

“Get out,” Amell snarled into his knees - his voice echoing and overlapping. “Get out.”

“Amell, it’s me,” Anders sheathed his hands in a barrier and tried again, grabbing Amell’s shoulders, but it was like his demon was keeping him pinned to the ground. “I’m here.”

“I can’t-” Amell’s fingers clenched and twisted in his hair, blackened veilfire snapping across his skin and vanishing in the same breath. “I can’t-”

“I’ve got you,” Anders forced his head up from his knees, but his eyes weren’t Amell’s eyes - they were blackened pools of Void and burning veilfire, and his face-... His face had been scalded - acid burns running all the way down his neck - raw and red and bleeding. A panicked surge of creationism washed over him like oil on water - like he was casting some kind of blood magic - but Anders couldn’t begin to guess the spell. “Amell, let me heal you.”

“I can’t-” Amell shoved him back, telekinesis that made up his talons tearing through his tabard and shredding his chestpiece. “Kill her-kill me-now-I can’t-”

“... what?” Anders managed.

Amell scrambled backwards, hands slipping through the welter of blood and gore staining the stone, clawing at the veilfire cracking across his face, “Kill me-”

Anders reached for him, “Amell-”

“Anders, kill me!” Amell screamed at him - the command echoed from across the Veil but the blood that laced it died in the air between them when his demon swallowed the spell as it fought to crawl across and claim him.

The remnants of Amell’s compulsion misted across Anders’ face, freckling it with blood, and Anders felt like he went into shock. Amell tried to compel him. Amell tried to compel him to kill him. How could he-... Maker, how could he-...

Anders couldn’t kill him. He couldn’t ever kill him. He couldn’t ever go through that again. He couldn’t hold Amell in his arms and feel his heart, and his breath, and his body still. He couldn’t watch the light leave his eyes when there wasn’t even any light left. He couldn’t wear Amell’s ring, and Karl’s ring, and the ring of every man he’d ever loved and never told. He couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t survive it.

Amell’s demon couldn’t have him.

No one could have him.

Anders grabbed Amell’s ankle and dragged him back to his side through blood and black fire. “Kill me-kill me-kill me!” Amell fought him off, clawed hands ripping through the rock as he tried to drag himself away, a hard kick of his boot skinning Anders’ arm on his dragonscale and saving him the effort of slitting his wrist. “-Anders-kill me-”

Anders seized on the corruption in their blood and forced their hearts to beat together - weaving command and control and compulsion to unweave Amell from his demon. “No,” Anders forced the word beyond the Veil.

“You-cannot-command-me,” Something that wasn’t Amell snarled - blackened fire cracking and closing across his veins.

“I said no!” Sweat and veilfire broke out across Anders’ skin with the effort it took to hold the spell. “Let him go!” His blood drained and the Veil thinned, but whatever lay beyond it didn’t feel like the Fade.

It felt like the Void - like the absence of all things - and it snarled, “You-cannot-have-him.”

“He’s mine!” Anders’ scream echoed through the Dead Trenches as his spirit forced back Amell’s demon. The demon’s presence vanished and its blackened veilfire vanished with it. Amell collapsed, unconscious, and in the stillness of the moment the horror of what Anders had said and done settled over him. He didn’t want to possess Amell, he just wanted to keep him from being possessed.

It was too late. He’d said it. He’d done it. He’d suffer the consequences of his spell with Amell alive to suffer them. Anders gathered Amell up into his arms and channelled a panacea for the both of them. Anders’ leg was still broken, the cracked bone visible through his split skin, and Anders maneuvered Amell so he lay slouched against his chest and he could set it for his aura to heal.

He should have taken off his belt for something to bite down on. Anders bit through his cheek instead, in the agony of the adjustment, and had to heal that too. Everything ached. Everything burned. Everything bled. He shouldn’t have been alive. Anders knew he shouldn’t have been alive. There was a reason the Grey Wardens had left Amell behind and this was it. Anyone else was just more fuel for the Harvester when it killed them.

Anders brushed Amell’s hair back, a weak surge of primal magic conjuring water to wash his face… or what was left of it. So much of his skin was gone. If the acid hadn’t eaten through his helmet first it might have killed him outright. Anders forced his fingers steady and set them to Amell’s jaw, burning through his mana to do… something. To heal him somehow, but there was hardly anything left to heal. He tried anyway, holding him, praying for him, praying for both of them.

Time passed.

Amell was cold.

Anders wrapped his arms around him, and added a pulse of primal magic to his panacea to heat his embrace. Far above, he could hear the winging of bats, and far below, he could sense the movements of darkspawn. It was dark, save for the distant light of a brazier, flickering against the bloodied walls of Bownammar, and the far pinpricks of magelight reflecting off the iceborn barricade. Anders watched them, and prayed they wouldn’t go out, listening to the blood draining off the cliff face, and thought of rain.

"He was mage and Warden both-...
He knew he’d been in battle-.. he’d never seen a Blight.
He had to sit and listen-...
You'll live one day more…

"Gory, gory, what a wretched-...
… what a wretched way -...
Gory, gory, what a wretched way -....

"'Is everybody ready?' -... the Commander- the-...
… he said 'Yes' and then they stood him up.
He charged into the battle, he charged into the fray,
… He charged with all the Grey.
He'll live one day more-...

"Gory, gory, what a wretched way to-.. what-....
Gory, gory, what a wretched way -...
Gory, gory, gory, gory, gory...

"He fought long, and he fought hard; he fought with all the rest.
He felt the thrill of battle, felt the sword that -... felt the sword-...
But as he fell-... he fell-... he rose-...
He'll live one day more-...

"Gory, gory, gory...
Wretched, wretched, wretched...
Gory, gory, gory...

"The darkspawn dove upon him, their swords -... swords-...
Their arrows flew, their maces struck, but still they -...stuck-.
Until at last, that final blast-
He'll live one day more...

"Gory, gory, gory...
Wretched, wretched, wretched...
Gory, gory, gory…

"The days he lived and loved and laughed kept running through his mind.
He thought about-... he thought-...
He thought about the one he’d left behind…
He'll live… he’ll live....

"Gory, gory, gory...
Wretched, wretched, wretched...
Gory, gory, gory…

"The Wardens, they were on the spot…
...There were demons running wild…..
For it had been at least a week-... it had-...
…. -one day more

"Gory, gory, gory...
Wretched, wretched, wretched...
Gory, gory, gory…

"...He fell… his scream was-... was loud, his blood-...
His Brothers, they were heard to say, 'What a wretched-...
… What a wretched-... he-...
… just live, just live, just live...”

"Gory, gory, gory...
Wretched, wretched, wretched...
Gory, gory, gory…

"There was blood on the ramparts…
...There was blood upon the floor…
But of the darkspawn he-... he killed-...
… Victory in war…”

"Gory, gory, gory...
Gory, gory, gory…
What a wretched way...”

Amell stirred in his arms, a pained groan spilling from his lips that sounded more lyrical than anything Anders could ever hope to sing or hear sung. Anders helped him sit up, gently caressing his face, and quickly learning to love the texture of his skin. Mottled and mismatched scars weathered his neck and splattered his face, but they were just scars, and Anders loved all of them. Anders loved all of him. Amell felt for him, tangling a hand up in his hair and pulling him close.

“That’s not how it goes,” Amell said - exhaustion laced through every whispered word.

“I changed how it goes,” Anders said. “It’s better this way.”

“What was wrong with it?” Amell asked.

Anders thumbed his lips until they parted for him to kiss - and Amell wasn’t cold. He was warmth, from the flush of his skin to the heat of his breath, and he was blood. The taste of it was on his tongue, and the scent of it was on his skin, and the pull of it was in his pulse. Anders could feel it, quickening with every breath they shared between them, and the corruption that laced it. He felt it like a call. He felt it like his Calling.

“I wanted you to live.”

Chapter 186: I Love You

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon Day Unknown Umbralis Time Unknown
The Gates of Bownammar

“I told you to kill me.”

Anders froze - assaulted by the memory. Black fire breaking through bloodied bronze skin as Amell crawled away from him on his hands and knees, fighting him off and pleading for death, and Anders hadn’t listened. Anders had saved him, and Anders didn’t regret saving him, but he felt sick to his stomach with how he’d done it.

He didn’t have a choice.

He didn’t have a good choice.

“... I told you I wouldn’t,” Anders said, running his fingers through Amell’s hair.

The damp raven strands kept sliding free of his ears, framing his face and all of the scars that Anders had left on him. Amell caught his hand to kiss his palm and hold it to his cheek, but his fingertips grazed one of his scars in the process. Amell let go of his hand to trace the scar, a dawning horror in his expression that broke Anders’ heart. “Anders, what is…”

“It’s just a scar,” Anders said quickly, “They’re just scars.”

Amell’s hand shook, rising and falling from his face like he was trying to keep from finding any more, but he couldn’t make himself stop. He traced his cheek, his neck, across his nose, “... how many-... how bad-...”

“They’re gorgeous,” Anders grabbed his wrists to stop him. “You’re gorgeous.”

“Why are there scars?” Amell asked.

Anders didn’t mean for him to scar, but the acid had eaten him alive. He’d regrown as much of Amell’s skin as he could. A few mottled scars didn’t mean anything to him. “I like scars,” Anders joked lightly, running his hands in reassuring sweeps along Amell’s arm and cheek. “I like your scars. I thought you could use a few more.”

Amell swallowed like he was going to be sick, “Anders-... why-...”

“They’re beautiful. You’re beautiful,” Anders pressed his lips to one of his scars, trying to think of some way to softly shatter the image Amell had of him that could have healed him without leaving any. “Amell, you almost died.”

Amell flexed his hands, gripping Anders’ tabard to keep himself from reaching for his face. He tried to stand and stumbled back into his arms. “How much blood did I lose?”

“A lot,” Anders said. His armor was stained with it. “You need to rest when we get back to the others.”

Anders felt a pulse of blood magic that marked Amell gauging the battlefield, “Why are we alone?”

“I came back for you,” Anders cradled his scarred face in his hands, veilfire burning in his eyes so Amell could meet them. “I’ll always come back for you.”

“Help me stand,” Amell said. Anders pulled Amell’s arm around his shoulders, the veilfire in his legs getting them to their feet. “Where are the armies?”

“At the bridge,” Anders said, dragging them through the corrosive blood slowly eating its way through the seams in his boot and doing Maker-knew-what to the rest of his armor. “I summoned a wall of ice to hold back the horde, but I don’t know how long it will stand.”

“The horde is dead,” Amell said.

“I think they’re undead,” Anders said lightly.

Amell shook his head, “They’re dead. They’ll all have fallen with the Harvester. We have to fall back from Bownammar before Branka realizes it’s fallen.”

“What are you saying?” Anders asked. “Do you really think she’d attack right now?”

“I would,” Amell said.

“No you wouldn’t,” Anders said fiercely, forcing them to a stop and making Amell stumble against him with the suddenness of the motion. “You’re not Branka. You’re not anything like Branka. Maker’s breath, Amell, you almost died trying to save everyone she abandoned.”

Anders expected him to argue the way they’d argued about everything on this thrice-damned expedition into the Void, but Amell didn’t. He nodded, just a little, and Anders didn’t know what to make of it. Amell didn’t compromise. Anders didn’t compromise. They just disagreed and moved on, but here Amell was, compromising. Anders tried not to think about it. He kept walking, steadying Amell whenever he stumbled.

“Who did we lose?” Amell asked.

“Martine,” Anders said. The loss pained him more than he expected, Justice’s memories of the old Orlesian flowing through him. “Surana.”

Surana hit harder. Surana was a mage. Surana was a memory. Surana wasn’t supposed to die. Anders was supposed to save her - the way he was supposed to save every mage - but he hadn’t. He couldn’t. He hadn’t saved her life - that day on the banks of the River Dane - he’d just prolonged her death. Every life he saved was just a death he delayed.

“Do you see anything of them?” Amell asked.

“Just blood,” Anders said. There was nothing else left. They’d died, and the dead had joined the horde, and the horde had joined the Harvester. If there was anything left of them, it was buried beneath a mound of meat. Anders slowed as they passed the remains of the Harvester, congealing onto the cliff face, and said, “Should we start a pyre?”

Amell shook his head, “Branka would see the flames.”

“A prayer?” Anders asked.

“If you like,” Amell said.

Anders tried, but nothing came to him. There was no light. There was no chant. There was just the dark. And the deep. And the blood.

“You’d think I’d know one by now,” Anders said ruefully, shifting Amell on his shoulder. “Can you say something? Anything?”

“... Sisters in vigilance, though you perished, you died with your blood joined with mine. I’ll honor your sacrifice and carry your memory into battle, until the day that I join you,” Amell said. “In war, victory. In peace, vigilance. In death, sacrifice.”

“... Thanks,” Anders said. It wasn’t a prayer, but maybe an oath was better.

They kept walking, and passed beneath the shadow of Bownammar when Amell spoke again, “It was never that hard before.”

“Killing a Harvester?” Anders guessed.

“Holding her back,” Amell corrected him.

Anders stared at Amell’s eyes, free of veilfire, and hated what he’d done to banish his demon. The compulsion woven through the corruption in Amell’s blood and the emotion he’d forced into it. “Amell-...” I’m sorry I saved you? I’m sorry I compelled you? I’m terrified you might still be compelled and that’s the only reason you’re agreeing with me? “Are you alright?”

“I have to be,” Amell said.

Anders didn’t like the sound of that, but it didn’t seem like the time or the place to argue with him. They came upon the wall of ice blocking passage to the bridge, and true to Amell’s word the undead darkspawn had gone back to being dead darkspawn. Their corpses were piled high against the wall, smoldering and crumbling from the inside out like charcoal.

The darkspawn emissaries had set them ablaze trying to break through. They’d managed an impressive hollow, the ice like glass, cracks splintering out like cobwebs. It stood as high as the battlements of Bownammar, and it suddenly occurred to Anders he had no idea how he was supposed to get Amell around it without the whole thing coming down on them.

“I don’t suppose you learned transformation magic while I wasn’t looking?” Anders joked.

“I’ve been keeping it a secret,” Amell returned, leaning heavily against his side.

“So that wall of ice I mentioned?”

“Still there?”

“Still there.”

“I have a map of the Deep Roads,” Amell said. “There’s another crossing to the south.”

“Or,” Anders said. “Instead of feeding ourselves to red-lyrium infused darkspawn, why don’t we just bring the wall down?”

“We may need it to defend against Branka’s golems if she sends them out,” Amell said.

“Then I’ll summon another one,” Anders said. “I’m not just going to send you off to your Calling. Come on, I’m going to get you somewhere safe, and then I’ll go let everyone know you’re alright and bring the wall down for you.”

Amell didn’t argue. Amell should have argued. The entire shelf was covered in corrosive blood, and there was nowhere safe to leave him when Branka could unleash an army of golems at any minute. Anders found a small hollow infested with bats and piles of guano, a step above corrosive blood and decaying darkspawn, and propped Amell up against the wall only for him to slide down to the floor.

… He was fine. He was alive. He was a little pallid, but pallid was better than dead. Anders knelt to kiss him, and found some assurance in the way Amell found the strength to kiss him back. It wasn’t the kiss he wanted - full of fire and fervor and feeling. Amell’s hands didn’t tangle in his hair, his teeth didn’t tug against his lip, he didn’t gasp - hot and hard and heavy - with every push and pull of their lips, but he kissed him. Amell was alive, and he kissed him.

“I’ll be right back,” Anders broke from his lips, but couldn’t bring himself to break from his side. His hands clutched up and down Amell’s arms, trying to assure himself there was still strength in them. “I’ll be right back.”

“I know,” Amell said.

“I’m not leaving you,” Anders promised.

“I know,” Amell found his face with the hand that was missing his gauntlet, and ran his thumb in a gentle caress along his cheek. Anders knew he meant it for comfort, but he’d lost so much blood his touch was cold, and it just made him more concerned.

“I’ll be right back-” Anders said shakily.

“I know,” Amell pulled him into an embrace, but the arms he draped around his shoulders felt weak and wilted. “I’ll be here.”

“I can drag over a few corpses,” Anders offered, only half-joking. “Make sure you have something to raise if any darkspawn show up?”

“There aren’t any around,” Amell promised. “I’ll be here. I'll be okay. You can leave me.”

Anders forced himself to believe him. He made the transformation into a crow, and lost it almost immediately when Amell brushed the back of his fingers over his wings and mumbled about how remarkable he was to manage the magic.

“I can’t manage anything if you keep doing that,” Anders couldn’t lose himself in a form when he’d already lost himself in Amell. His touch. His voice. His affection. Anders kissed his fingers, and backed away from him so he could make the change at a distance before he flew back to the armies on the bridge.

The Mage’s Collective had reformed the collapsed structure. Stone, vines, and ice spanned the divide, but it was a far cry from dwarven engineering. The makeshift bridge only supported a handful of people at a time, and soldiers shuffled across while Ailsa and Bhelen’s right hand Gavorn bellowed a mixture of orders and warnings to keep them from falling into the Void.

The golems were stationed in front of the wall of ice, either because they still expected the darkspawn to break through, or they were too heavy to escape across the bridge, or both. The Legion of the Dead and a handful of Grey Wardens stood with them - and would be the first to fall if the darkspawn made it through while the dwarven armies fled with the Mage’s Collective. Mercifully, most of the mages had already crossed, save for the healers, who were doing their best to get the injured on their feet so they could follow.

Anders spotted Nathaniel towards the front, conferring with the leader of the Legion of the Dead, and landed next to him. A few of the legionnaires scattered, but the old boy didn’t miss a beat, clasping his shoulder once Anders had one again.

“Praise unending,” Nathaniel said. “There’s no escaping you.”

“I’m like a bad rash,” Anders agreed.

“Is he dead?” Nathaniel asked.

“Do I look like he’s dead?” Anders countered.

“Fair point,” Nathaniel tipped his head. “... Possessed?”

“He’s fine. The Harvester’s dead and so are the darkspawn, but I can’t get him back across with the wall up. Where’s Velanna? I need her to help me melt it down.” Anders scanned the rows of legionnaires and the handful of Grey Wardens who towered over them, and guessed one of the shorter gryphon hinged helmets for her.

“Anders wait,” Nathaniel grabbed his arm and held him back. “Darkspawn aren’t the only threat. We can’t afford to take down the wall if we can’t face what’s on the other side.”

“What are you talking about?” Anders wrenched out of his grasp, waving angrily towards the wall. “Amell’s on the other side! He doesn’t know any transformation magic. We have to melt the wall so we can get him across. He’s not dead but he lost a lot of blood and he can barely walk.”

“I know what his demon does to him, but he’s not the only person who’s injured right now. Look at these men,” Nathaniel pointed his cane at the make-shift clinic spilled across the bridge, where Gleam and Levyn were channeling Venom and Hope as they hurried from one patient to the next, refreshing lifewards, setting bones, mending wounds, rationing poultices… doing what Anders should have been doing. “The wall is the only thing between them and Branka’s golems, and Gavorn believes-”

“Fuck Gavorn!” Anders cut him off. “He’s not our Commander - Amell is - and I’m telling you I need to get him somewhere safe.”

“There is nowhere safe,” Nathaniel said. “Anders-... I know this is hard for you to hear, but-”

“Fuck what you know,” Anders spat, shoving through the lines of legionnaires towards Velanna. “Velanna! Velanna - I need your help!”

“Ma ghilana mir din’an,” Velanna muttered, dodging a few dwarves to meet him in the middle of them. “What is it now?”

“I need your help to bring the wall down,” Anders said. “Amell’s on the other side and we need to get him back.”

“Anders!” Nathaniel caught up with him, cane thudding hard against the stone with every step. “I told you, we need the wall-”

“You think I don’t know that!?” Anders dragged his hands through his hair, voice cracking, “I summoned the bloody thing! I can summon it again-”

“How are you going to have the mana after you melt it down?” Nathaniel asked. “We’re out of lyrium potions. Ailsa is draining every mage who isn’t a healer to keep the bridge together.”

“Who cares!?” Anders hissed.

“You should,” Nathaniel said. “You're the one who told us we have to care about the people we save. Once everyone is evacuated, we can find another way across the Dead Trenches and bring him back, but for now we need the wall. If Branka decides to march against Bhelen-”

Anders turned back to Velanna, “Can’t you just go through the stone and get him?”

“Can you see through the ice?” Velanna gestured at the massive wall of melting hoarfrost. At best, a few dark shadows could be seen where the darkspawn had dug into the wall. “I need a line of sight to reach him.”

“So you’re just going to leave him?” Anders laughed in disbelief, dragging a hand down his face. Maker’s bloody ballsack, it was like they didn’t even care.

“No one is saying we’re leaving him. We’re saying the mission comes first and right now the mission is making sure we survive the mission. Amell should have a map of the Deep Roads,” Nathaniel retrieved his own map from a cylinder on his belt, and called towards the front of the legionnaires, “Oghren!”

One of the dwarves separated from the rest, thicker, wider, slightly taller, and Oghren joined their small group. “Aye? - Hey Sparkles - What now?”

“Turn around,” Nathaniel said, and Oghren did, and Nathaniel unrolled the map across his back, pointing to one of the tunnels. “There’s another way across the trenches-”

“-You shitting me, Archy?-”

“-here to the south. We can rendezvous with you both at the crossing. It should take maybe three? Four hours to reach? But we should be able to rejoin the army without any difficulty. They’ll have wounded, and they don’t have our stamina.”

“That’s it?” Anders asked. “Just send us off into the Deep Roads and hope we survive?”

“I don’t see any other choice,” Nathaniel said, rolling up his map.

“Can’t believe you called me over here so you could use me as a table,” Oghren muttered, dusting off his shoulders.

“You are the right height for one,” Velanna noted.

“I’m the right height for kicking your ass,” Oghren grunted, stretching like he was readying himself to do exactly that. “So what’s the plan? Catching up with Sparkles and the Boss a ways south?”

“That’s the plan,” Nathaniel said.

“I’m right here, you know,” Anders said. “I’m his healer. Do I get a say in this?”

“Say it up, Sparkles,” Oghren said.

Anders had plenty to say. Anders had so much to say he didn’t know where to start. What was he supposed to say, exactly? That he was willing to risk whole armies, whole cities, whole countries for Amell? That he’d drown the world in blood to see him safe? That he loved him? That if loving Amell meant damning the world then maybe the world should be damned? Anders couldn’t say any of that, so he didn’t say anything.

“... You better be there when we reach the crossing,” Anders muttered. Anders flew back across the chasm and found Amell where he’d left him. He was slouched over his bent legs, and for a half a heartbeat Anders couldn’t tell if he was unconscious or dead. A haste took him to his side, and Anders skidded to his knees to shake him awake. “Amell! Amell, wake up!”

“What-?” Amell grabbed for him, an arcane shield flaring to life around him. “What is it?”

“Don’t do that,” Anders wrenched him into a hug, and a deep breath of decay for the whisper of Amell beneath it. “Maker’s breath, you can’t do that.”

Amell hugged him back, “Do what?”

“Scare me,” Anders said. “It would kill me to lose you.”

“I’m here,” Amell whispered the words into his ear. “I’m with you. I’m yours.”

Anders felt the words like a knife in his heart. Of course Amell was his. He didn’t have a choice. Anders hadn’t given him one. Anders had compelled him. Anders might still be compelling him, controlling him, changing him. That wasn’t love. That wasn’t the kind of love Anders wanted for Amell. That wasn’t the kind of love Anders wanted for Anders.

It had to be something he could break, but he couldn’t break it right now. “Nathaniel and Gavorn want the wall to stay up,” Anders said. “We have to go to the southern crossing you mentioned. I know you’re tired, but we should get moving. Where’s your map?”

Amell unlatched his grimoire from his belt, and flipped through a handful of pages to reveal a tactile map of the Deep Roads. Colorless save for a few blood stains, the tunnels were embossed and raised off the parchment, so faint Anders could barely make them out. “So… this is a little embarrassing, but I don’t know which way to go,” Anders said.

Amell took the map back from him and felt along the raised parchment until he reached the Dead Trenches. “Here,” Amell said, and pointed off to his right. “This way.”

Anders helped him to his feet, and they set off to the south. Amell could barely walk. His arm was draped limply over Anders’ shoulders, and Anders kept a firm hold on his wrist and a firmer hold on his waist, lifting him with every other step to keep him putting one foot in front of the other until they reached the southern crossing. The Grey Wardens were there, waiting for them, and Anders was so concerned with making sure someone had Amell he forgot to make sure someone had Anders, and passed out.

It was dark when he woke, the only light the faint luminescence of lichen and cave moss on the cavern ceiling, and the occasional glimmer of precious metals. Colonies of bats and clusters of stalactites rolled overhead, like the passing of clouds and constellations, and the ground beneath him rattled. Anders was in a cart, pressed shoulder to shoulder with the other injured, like the plague had come and claimed them all and the armies were only clearing out the bodies.

There were so many bodies. Anders couldn’t afford to ignore them. He climbed out of the cart, and almost collapsed in the process.

“Easy!” Gleam ran to grab him, the chasind healer helping him find his footing. “You’re lucky to be alive with how much mana you burned back there.”

“Where’s Amell?” Anders asked.

“Who?” Gleam asked.

“The Warden Commander,” Anders said. Gleam pointed towards one of the other carts and Anders staggered over to it. Amell had been stripped out of his armor and was pressed up against the side of the cart in his tunic and trousers. Anders cupped his face, creationism on his fingers breathing out across his skin, but he couldn’t do anything for the blood Amell had lost but let him rest. Anders probably needed to rest with him, but there were still injured to heal, so Anders healed them.

The journey back to Orzammar was solemn and somber. Anders spent it healing and being healed. They’d won a victory against the Harvester, but it still felt like defeat. For all of the dead that they’d slain they had nothing to show for it save those that had joined them. Martine. Surana. Alim. Mages. Golems. Countless dwarven lives. Branka yet lived. The Anvil of the Void still existed. The golems who’d been made upon it were still enslaved to it.

Gavorn had ordered the Legion of the Dead to guard the gates of Bownammar - blockading Branka from the surface to put a stop to the raids - but no one seemed to know how long she’d be able to survive without any supply lines from Orzammar. Bownammar was thaig unto itself, and no one seemed certain if it was capable of self-sufficiency like Kal’Hirol. Anders hoped the bitch starved to death when he remembered that people could starve.

Grey Wardens couldn’t. They recruited dozens among the injured. Dwarves had something of a natural immunity to blight sickness, but that immunity cost them their fertility, and their birth rates were plummeting as a result. They weren’t completely immune, though, and those who’d suffered the worst exposure were already showing signs of sickness. Once it started spreading, their choices were joining the Grey Wardens or joining the Legion of the Dead, and a surprising amount chose the Grey Wardens.

They didn’t have the means to put them through the Joining in the Deep Roads, so they beat a hasty retreat to Orzammar with the rest of the army, where Amell put them through the Joining when they arrived. The rest of the Grey Wardens welcomed the survivors like old friends, but their old friends were dead. Their deaths lingered, like ghosts in the blood, and maybe for the first time in his life Anders heard the words when Amell spoke them.

“Join us, brothers and sisters. Join us in the shadows where we stand vigilant. Join us as we carry the duty that can not be forsworn. And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten. And that one day we shall join you.”

Amell spent the first day back handling the political fallout of their failure. Anders spent it abed. He’d spent two weeks straight burning through every ounce of his mana to keep everyone alive, and he felt like there was nothing left inside of him. Amell woke him at some point with his hands on his back, massaging away the tension knotted up and down his spine. A dinner of roast nug and deep mushroom stew waited for him on the nightstand, along with a restorative draft and the same lyrium-infused potion Amell had made for him in Denerim.

“That feels nice,” Anders mumbled into his pillow.

“Did you want to feel nice?” Amell returned, settling over him to brush his lips against his neck, and all at once Anders felt lost in his warmth, in his scent, in his hands, kneading down his sides and flirting low on his hips. It would have been so easy to say yes, but Anders couldn’t until he was sure Amell could say no.

He rolled over, slowly, and gathered Amell up in his arms, “Not that that isn’t the most tempting offer right now, but can we talk first?”

“We can always talk,” Amell propped himself up on his elbow over him, light from the sconces dancing across his face and the mottled scars that canvased it, faded over the past two weeks.

“I broke into Bownammar before the Harvester showed up,” Anders confessed. “I didn’t think Branka would free anyone, so I just decided to free them myself. I was going to destroy the control rods and the Anvil of the Void and free the mages she’d captured.”

“Did you?” Amell didn’t sound angry, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t. Anders swept his hands along his chest, trying to decide if Amell felt stiff so he could decide if Amell felt angry. Anders expected him to be angry with him. Amell deserved to be angry with him. Anders was angry with himself.

“No,” Anders said. “I could have… I had a choice. I just didn’t know it was a choice at the time. I freed the prisoners first, but then the Harvester attacked and I came to help… All of those people-... I left all of those people. I should have destroyed their control rods and I didn’t.”

“You saved who you could,” Amell said simply.

“Aren’t you angry?” Anders asked.

“Do you want me to be?” Amell asked.

Anders bit back a frustrated sigh and rolled out from underneath him, “Can you just talk to me?”

“... Branka quit the field, Anders,” Amell said, like it was the worst thing Branka had ever done. “I’m not angry you saved her prisoners or tried to free her golems.”

Anders sat up, “And the Anvil?”

“Branka shouldn’t have it,” Amell shrugged, lying where he left him. “Bhelen wants his new Paragon Beirus to use it for volunteers if Orzammar can ever reclaim it.”

“You really trust anyone with it after all of that?” Anders demanded.

“I want to,” Amell said. “The dwarves are the first line of defense against the darkspawn. We need them at their strongest, and golems are strong.”

“So are mages,” Anders argued. “The Mage’s Collective could help him defend against the darkspawn and take Bownammar back from Branka.”

“I’ll make sure you and Gleam get your audience - if you both still want one,” Amell said. “Without the Legion of Stone and Steel, Orzammar will need all the help it can get.”

“I do,” Anders said. “She does.”

“Then I’ll get you one,” Amell promised.

He looked gorgeous, laid out on the bed beside him, his tunic tugged free of his belt and pushed halfway up his chest, a trail of dark hair vanishing beneath his trousers Anders ran his fingers through. It won him a shiver, and the slightest of smirks. “You’re beautiful,” Anders said, and hated that he hadn’t said it sooner.

Amell smiled like he didn’t believe him, “Thank you.”

“I can’t kill you,” Anders said.

“... okay,” Amell said.

“You can’t force me to kill you,” Anders said.

“Okay,” Amell said.

“Don’t say okay,” Anders said.

“Alright?” Amell said.

“Don’t say alright either,” Anders said.

“I’m not sure what you want me to say,” Amell admitted.

“I want you to disagree with me,” Anders said.

“Why?” Amell asked.

“Because I’m afraid you can’t,” Anders ran his hands through his hair. “At Bownammar, when I banished your simulacrum... I used blood magic.”

“I know.”

“I’m worried I used it on you,” Anders elaborated. “I don’t know how much you remember, but I used the corruption in our blood to banish her like you taught me, but when I cast the spell I called you mine.”

“I am yours,” Amell said.

“Please don’t say that,” Anders begged.

Amell sat up and sought his face with a hand to his jaw. Five years, and Anders still felt his pulse quicken and his breath catch at his touch. Amell’s thumb traced his lips and Anders parted them on instinct for the kiss that followed. It felt slow and certain and Amell stretched it from one into countless more, pulling him apart into pure sensation. Pure, passionate, perfect sensation - liquid heat flooding his veins, flushing his skin, dissolving him in Amell’s arms until they were the only things holding him together.

“Anders,” Amell breathed his name against his lips, “You can’t compel me to love you. I already love you."

"I-..." Anders swallowed, clinging to him. "I can't kill you."

"I heard you," Amell said, talking in low tones that sent shivers down his spine. "Anders, I don't think either of us knew you could banish her and I couldn't risk unleashing her on the world-... on you."

"Well I can banish her, so you can't do that to me again - and I have to know if I did it to you."

"You didn't. I promise, I'm not under any compulsions, but I can teach you how to cleanse one if you want."

"Thank you," Anders whispered. "... You said it was getting harder to hold her back. Do you know why?"

"I know why.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“... I love you,” Amell said, but Anders knew Amell loved him. He could feel Amell’s love for him every minute of every hour of every day. Amell loved him with everything he said, and everything he did, and everything he was. It was in all of him - in his heart, in his soul, in his blood. Amell felt so much love for him there was no room for him to feel anything else, and Anders felt the same.

“Amell, just tell me-”

“It’s harder because I love you. Xebenkeck isn’t just a First Demon. She’s the first desire demon, and she doesn’t just feed on one emotion - she feeds on all of them. I could hold her back before because… I never had many before. I love that you feel safe enough to feel angry, or sad, or scared, or any of the ways that you feel around me, but it’s hard for me to feel the same way. It was never safe to feel anything in the Circle, and then during the Blight-...and now-...

“... I love you, Anders.

“I love you so much. I love you more than any time, or distance, or obstacle that could ever come between us. I love you more than I can ever express.”

Notes:

Fanart
Amell's Scars by ArcaneFeathers

Chapter 187: I Love You Too

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

This chapter is primarily explicit content.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 2 Cassus Evening
Orzammar - Grey Warden Compound

“... what if you don’t?” Anders asked.

Amell frowned, “Anders-”

“You mean too much to me for me to ignore that you could be compelled right now,” Anders argued. “I’m not saying you’re lying, I just-... can you just tell me how to cleanse it?”

“Alright,” Amell felt for his hand, and held it, sitting beside him on the bed. “Focus on my heart. To compel someone you have to find the ties between the Fade and the flesh, and align their mind with yours by breaking the rhythm of their own reasoning. If you compelled me, you’d feel it. My rhythm would be broken and my heart would skip.”

“Some people just have an irregular heartbeat, you know,” Anders pointed out.

Amell grinned, “You’d feel the magic.”

Anders set his hand over Amell’s heart and focused on the way it beat beneath his palm, first with flesh and then with the Fade, closing his eyes so he could feel his magic sink beneath his skin.

It skipped.

“Damn me,” Anders wrenched his hand back like he’d been burned. “You said you weren’t compelled!”

“I’m not,” Amell looked like he genuinely believed it.

“Then why did your heart skip?” Anders demanded. “You’re compelled.”

“I’m compelled,” Amell agreed, because Anders' thrice-damned compulsion apparently made him so fucking agreeable he didn’t have a choice.

“No shit,” Anders muttered. “How do I cleanse this?”

“Dispel it like you would any other magic, but with blood, and reset the rhythm,” Amell explained.

“... How do I do that?” Anders asked.

“Focus on the way my heart beats before the skip when you dispel the magic,” Amell said.

Anders could do that. That sounded easy to do. “Do you have a knife?”

Amell pulled a dagger from his boot and handed him the hilt. Anders slit his wrist and set the dagger aside, holding his arm steady to keep from dripping blood onto the sheets. He set his free hand to Amell’s chest, focusing on the beat of his heart before the skip, and cast the dispel. The magic rose from his veins in a crimson mist, sinking beneath Amell’s skin, and resetting the rhythm of his heart.

Anders kept his hand on Amell’s chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart as one minute stretched into more before Amell finally took hold of his wrist. “Anders, I’m fine.”

Anders forced himself to stop listening. He’d cleansed it. The compulsion was gone. Amell was fine. Anders wasn’t compelling him. Anders wasn’t controlling him. Anders wasn’t forcing him. Anders healed his wrist and wiped away the blood with the cloth on his nightstand. “You weren’t.”

“I am now,” Amell promised, finding one of his hands to hold. “... Thank you… for caring. I’ve… always noticed whenever I’ve been under a compulsion before. … I don’t think I ever would have noticed if you’d left it.”

“I would never do that,” Anders said fiercely.

“I know,” Amell kissed his fingers.

“... Are you okay?” Anders asked.

“Of course I am.”

“... Do you still love me?”

“Of course I do,” Amell promised.

Amell loved him to death.

He was bound to a Forbidden One and that love would be the death of him - the way emotions were the death of every mage who dared to have them. Fear. Rage. Despair. Anders felt them with abandon. Demons had plagued his every unwaking hour until Justice had saved him, but Amell had saved him first, standing beside Compassion and against Fear, because Amell didn’t have any.

Amell could say whatever he wanted to say about how Anders was bold and brazen and beautiful just because Justice had possessed him before a demon had the chance, but Anders had never been brave enough to feel love as easily, as openly, as unashamedly as Amell. There were still times Anders wasn’t even sure he could trust himself to know what love was when the love he thought he’d found had fallen apart, and the love he still had was tangled up in his soul.

Even now, even knowing what he felt, Anders didn’t know what to say. Anders couldn’t just say he loved him back. Anders didn’t just love him back. Amell was the only reason he could love at all. Anders had spent his whole life running, and somehow he’d always run to Amell, and Amell had always healed him, even when all he did was give Anders the space to heal himself. There was nothing Anders could say that could capture how much Amell meant to him, so Anders didn’t say anything.

He could say what he needed to say without saying it. Anders pulled Amell into a kiss, his lips moving wordlessly, sharing breath in place of words. Amell’s response was immediate: sharp teeth, warm lips, and wet tongue unraveling any and all of Anders’ anxieties. Anders gripped the back of Amell’s knee, and dragged his leg over him so Amell was straddling him. There was nothing he had to say. There was nothing he needed to say.

He could just be. He could just feel, eager hands seeking the warmth of Amell’s skin beneath his clothes, the fabric of his tunic bunching around Anders’ wrists when he raked his nails down Amell’s chest. Amell groaned into his mouth, and Anders raked him with his nails again, hard enough for him to hiss, but not hard enough for him to do anything else.

Not until he asked. Maker, sometimes not even until he begged. Anders could have wrapped Amell’s hand around his cock and Amell would still wait to hear a yes before he fucked him. “Fuck me,” Anders tried to say, but it came out, “Don’t die for me.”

“I love you,” Amell said, like there was nothing he wouldn’t do for him.

“Then live for me,” Anders said, squeezing the back of Amell’s thighs. Amell rolled up onto his knees, firm hands on Anders’ jaw bending his head back to keep their lips locked, barely letting him break for words. “Live with me.”

“Always,” Amell promised. Maker, Anders wanted always. He wanted it so much he ached.

“Fuck me,” Anders choked, every breath harder than the last.

Amell ran his fingers through his hair and fisted them, gently pulling his head to the side to whisper into his ear, “Fuck you how?”

“Hard,” Anders said shakily. “I want you to tie me down and fuck me.”

Amell tugged on his ear with his teeth, obediently tightening his grip on his hair, and the sharp sting went straight to Anders' cock, “Anything else?”

Anders clung to him, nails buried in his back, “Everything else.”

Amell’s lips fell to his neck in a soft kiss paired with the promise of teeth, “Do you still like it when I leave a mark?”

“I love it,” Anders arched into him and Amell bit down, a hard suck pulling Anders’ skin between his teeth. Anders clutched the back of his head, holding Amell to him, breath hitching at the ripples of pleasure spurred by his tongue.

“Like that?” Amell broke from him to ask, and Anders couldn’t tell if it was the cool air on his damp skin or Amell’s throaty question that made him shiver so much. “Do you want me to use magic?”

“Please - fuck - please,” Anders pulled him back, and Amell’s magic sank in with his teeth. It manifested in a slick heat, sweat breaking out across Anders’ skin as it spread past his neck. Liquid fire filled his veins, coursing through every inch of him in waves.

“Fuck - Amell, that’s - fuck yes,” Anders couldn’t stop sweating. It soaked his hair, sticking strands of gold to his face, and ran down his sides. Wave after wave of warmth coursed through him, sinking deeper and deeper into his veins, pulsing in his hands, his feet, his face, his cock. “Please-”

Amell reduced him to gasps by the time he cut off his spell. The room felt like a sauna, sweat sticking his clothes to his skin as Anders struggled to peel off his tunic. Amell caught his wrists before he could, pinning his hands to the mattress, but the silk sheets felt like hot coals beneath him.

“It’s so hot,” Anders whined, melting beneath him, beneath that crimson stare and the way it burned through the shadows Amell’s pitch-black hair cast across his face. It felt an inferno, searing through Anders’ clothes to heat every inch of skin beneath, dissolving him into nothing but sweat and sensation. “Amell, it’s so hot-”

Amell’s lips were mercifully cool when he pressed them to his jaw, either for his magic or the lack of it. “Do you want to feel that spell inside you?”

Anders’ hips bucked at the thought, seeking whatever friction he could find trapped in the too-tight confines of his clothes while Amell held him down. Maker, he would just melt. Amell would just melt him. “Please,” Anders practically keened.

“Take off your tunic,” Amell ordered, releasing his hands.

Anders stripped, needy whines catching in his throat when the fabric caught on his skin. Somehow, he got the tunic off and tossed it to the floor. “Okay,” Anders leaned back on his hands. The flush on his skin made sweat feel like sleet, the rise and fall of his chest sending one drop after the next shivering down his sides.

Primal magic sparked on Amell’s hands, and Anders' breath caught in anticipation of his touch. Amell set them on his shoulders, sweeping down to circle his nipples with his thumbs. Gentle tweaks worked them into stiff peaks on his chest. Every pinch and pull sent pleasure coursing through him, an electric ecstasy that left him writhing. Anders' hands twisted in the sheets, his hips rocking mindlessly for more. “Maker, Amell, I love your magic.”

“I love yours,” Amell returned, dragging his fingers down his heaving chest and trembling stomach to catch upon his belt. Amell cut off his spell, and unbuckled him slowly. The drag of leather through cloth as Amell pulled his belt free sounded as sensual as skin on sweat-soaked-skin. “No ropes,” Amell said, dropping his belt behind him. “You can dispel the binding whenever you want.”

“I don’t,” Anders swallowed. “I won’t.”

“You can,” Amell said, the laces to Anders’ trousers sliding leisurely between his fingers as he unraveled them and what was left of Anders’ composure along with them. “You can always say stop.”

“I don’t want to stop,” Anders never wanted them to stop. Not to the end of his days and whatever came after them. “I want to feel safe. I want you to make me feel safe. I want to know you’d never hurt me. I want to feel your teeth, and your hands, and your magic marking my skin with how much you love me. I want you to tie me down and fuck me every way you can fuck me until you finish inside me. I want you to be the last man who ever does.”

Amell’s hands faltered on his trousers, a choked gasp extinguishing the fire in his eyes for something closer to water. “Anders-...”

For a moment there was so much passion in his eyes they looked pained, and then Amell grabbed him, his lips everywhere. His lips, his jaw, spilling down to his chest when Amell shoved him back on the bed. “Anything,” Amell gasped between one fevered kiss after the next. “Anything you want.”

Anders just wanted Amell. Anders fisted his hands in his tunic only for Amell to catch them and pin them above his head. The Veil thinned, and Amell shackled him, a slow wring of his hands around Anders’ wrists forming ethereal bands to lock him in place. Anders strained experimentally, and felt the sting of magic like metal. “Fuck, that’s-”

“Too tight?” Amell asked, caressing his way down his arms to his shoulders.

“-perfect,” Anders whispered.

Amell couldn’t not be perfect. He seemed made from magic, hot oil manifesting on his hands as he massaged his way down Anders’ chest, following the path of his lips as he worshipped him in every way imaginable. Anders whimpered under him, hard sucks and sharp bites leaving red rings and redder crescents on pale skin, his entire body aching for want of those same lips around his cock when Amell reached his hips and stripped him of his trousers.

He was so painstakingly deliberate, massaging down Anders’ legs in slow sweeps like Amell had to know every inch of him as intimately as possible. Anders wanted so ardently to know him back, and not being able to touch him was a perfect torment made all the more perfect when Amell caressed his thigh with one hand and his cock with the other. “Oh fuck,” Anders tossed his head against the sheets, rocking his hips into the smooth glide of Amell’s oiled fist.

“Can you be loud for me?” Amell asked, feeling him more than he was stroking him. Cupping his balls, tracing his veins, circling the head of his cock with his thumb in a touch Anders finally wasn’t afraid to describe as loving.

“I-” Anders tried to reach for the simir necklace Amell had given him, hanging off his shoulder with his Joining amulet, and strained ineffectually against the bindings that kept his hands pinned to the mattress above his head. The unexpected resistance sent a pulse of pleasure through him, and Anders fought off a shiver, “I can try.”

Amell released him and took a step back, stripping so leisurely it was almost painful. Anders had never envied Amell’s hands half as much as he did when they could touch him and Anders couldn’t. Amell’s fingers followed the path of his collar as he unlaced his tunic, idly tracing his skin and making Anders ache with want to do it himself. “Don’t hurt yourself,” Amell cautioned, “We can always stop for water-”

“Amell, just fuck me,” Anders cut him off.

“Do you want me to pick how?” Amell smirked, unbuttoning his cuffs.

“Yes,” Maker, yes.

Amell dispelled the bindings on his wrists, “Get on your knees.”

Anders fell off the bed and onto his knees so fast he had to catch himself on Amell’s legs. Anders grabbed Amell’s belt, fumbling with the buckle before Amell stopped him, not with a touch or a spell or even a look, but a very firm, “Don’t touch.”

If Anders wasn’t possessed already he swore Desire would have claimed him, but it still paled in comparison to what Anders felt kneeling in front of him. “Amell-”

“If you touch me, we stop,” Amell warned him, unclasping his belt, and for one wild moment Anders imagined Amell spanking him with it. “I know you like to choke and you need a way to stop.”

“Okay,” Anders relented, digging his nails into his thighs to keep from digging them into Amell when his belt came off. Amell left everything else on but unlaced, an easy tug dragging his trousers down his thighs. The outline of his erection strained against the fabric of his smalls before he freed himself from them, a few leisured strokes driving Anders half-mad with want when all he could do was watch him.

Anders didn’t have the wherewithal just to watch him. He was too beautiful just to watch, one hand to his hip and the other around his cock, somewhere under his loose sleeve a scarred arm tensed to form a fist, void-black eyes fixed on him for no other reason than the fact that Amell knew he liked the way they looked. Maker, Anders didn’t even need to see him. The sound of him would have been enough, harsh breaths stuttering with every stroke.

Amell reached for him what felt like seconds before Anders couldn’t take it anymore, caressing down the side of his face to take hold of his chin. “Open your mouth,” Amell ordered, tracing his lips to find them already parted. Anders licked the taste of salt off his skin, sucking on his fingers when he couldn’t bring himself to wait for his cock. Anders was half-way to reaching for Amell’s wrist to hold him in his mouth before he remembered he wasn’t supposed to touch him.

“Don’t touch,” Amell reminded him, like he knew he’d forgotten. “Hands behind your back unless you want me to stop.”

For once in his life, Anders made himself listen, hands behind his back when Amell guided his cock to his lips. Amell fisted a hand in his hair, gentle at first, and tightening when Anders took to him hungrily. He’d never been so desperate to taste him, his heat, his sweat, his sex, to feel him stretching his lips, sliding along his tongue, thrusting into his throat when Amell held him still to fuck his face.

Saliva slicked Amell’s length with every shallow roll of his hips. Anders moaned around his cock, utterly naked in his need for him. Anders needed to be naked. To be vulnerable. To be at Amell’s mercy and find it in abundance. Amell’s cock hit the back of his throat and Anders choked around him, a shiver of ecstasy running up his spine and throbbing through his cock.

“Fuck, fuck, Anders, you sound fantastic,” Amell stilled his hips to slide him along his cock. Anders groaned in response, lips stretched thin, tears stinging the corners of his eyes, every gagged moan stoking a fire in the pit of his stomach that threatened to catch and consume him with nothing but Amell’s scent and taste and touch to set him ablaze. Anders choked again, and made a sound more gag than moan before Amell pushed him off.

“Why-what-I didn’t-” Anders coughed and cleared his throat. “Don’t stop-”

“I’m not stopping,” Amell said, but he was breathing so hard he must have had to stop, and Anders’ pride outwon his disappointment, “Get on the bed. Lie on your stomach.”

Anders went, shivering at the sensation of cold silk on flushed skin, marked from collar to hip. Amell climbed over him, trailing kisses up his spine until he reached his ear, “Do you want your hands behind your back or at your sides?”

“I don’t-” Maker, he didn’t care. He wanted whatever Amell wanted to do to him. “Back?”

Amell interlocked his wrists behind his back, and ethereal bindings kept them that way. Ropes couldn’t compare to his magic, to the way it felt, like Amell’s hands were locked tight around his wrists, holding him down for Amell to whisper in his ear. “I’m going to fuck you with my tongue, and my fingers, and my cock until you come without ever touching your cock.”

“Flames, Amell-”

“Say yes.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Anders said. He said it so many times it ceased to be a word. It was just sound, just sensation, just surrender. Amell wrapped his hand around his throat, a binding flowing out from his fingers to lock around his neck and pin him to the sheets. Firm hands ran down his sides to lift his hips, balancing his weight between his knees and shoulders, his face pressed and panting against the sheets.

Amell reached his legs, squeezing at his ankles, and another set of bindings locked them in place with his wrists and neck. Fade take him, he wanted Amell to. He’d never wanted to submit to someone so completely, to be known so intimately, to feel someone’s love for him in the way they made love to him.

Amell knelt between his legs, his hands sweeping along his thighs, kneading gently at his ass, moving lovingly over the small of his back. Pleading whimpers of anticipation spilled from him when Amell’s lips followed them, the firm press of his teeth and the warmth of his tongue making him keen, “Amell, please.”

“Keep begging,” Amell spread him with his thumbs, only for his tongue to flick over old indents left by his teeth.

“Please,” Anders begged, voice cracked with need, “Please, please, please.”

The heat of Amell’s breath mingled with the wet drag of his tongue, every pass so teasingly close and so torturously far Anders couldn’t have stopped begging if he tried. He was so flush with want he felt feverish by the time Amell finally stopped teasing him. Amell circled him with his tongue, the play of his breath joining every gentle flick, and the wash of heat sent such a surge of pleasure through him the sound Anders made was more sob than gasp.

“Please,” Anders pleaded, not even sure what he was pleading for when Amell gave him everything he ever wanted. The smooth glide of his tongue had him writhing in minutes, lavishing every inch of his flushed and trembling skin, dipping inside him and melting him at the intimacy of it all. “Please, Amell, please, fuck.”

Anders felt the pulse of the Fade like the pulse of his heart when Amell traded his lips for his fingers. Hot oil spilled down his balls and over his aching cock as Amell circled him, the gentle press of his fingers an unspoken promise of the perfect stretch to follow. Amell kissed his ass, his free hand wrapped around his thigh, “Please what?”

“Please fuck me,” Anders was so worked up he could barely breathe, and for some reason the words kept coming when breath wouldn’t. “Amell, I haven’t been fucked in so long - I can’t even fuck myself - I need it to be you.”

“I’ll be gentle,” Amell promised, but Anders didn’t want gentle. He wanted Amell fuck him so hard he couldn’t walk, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t be anything other than what Amell made him.

“I want-” The sensation of Amell’s finger sinking into him cut him off, and Anders gasped into the sheets. Oil eased Amell’s first few shallow thrusts, wringing one unsteady exhale from the next from him and turning his breath to tatters. “Fuck, I want-”

“What do you want?” Amell murmured, gripping his ass to hold him still and tongue him gently while he worked his finger inside him. Anders whimpered, bound hands clenching and unclenching against his back as the ecstasy of it all but overwhelmed him.

“-hard,” Anders couldn’t talk through the passion Amell welled within him; just the touch of Amell’s fingers and tongue could have melted him without any magic, and as much as he ached to feel either against his cock he knew it would have been the end of him, and he never wanted this to end. “I want hard-”

“I can be both,” Amell shifted behind him and Anders whined at the sudden loss of his lips. Amell felt over his ass, thumbing a few of the marks left by his mouth before he spanked him. Anders’ sharp gasp followed the slap of skin on skin, and won him a second spank, and a third, and a fourth.

“Ah! - Amell - ah! - fuck, fuck me - ah!” Anders’ hands scrabbled madly against his back, toes curling into the sheets every time Amell’s hand connected with his ass. Amell eased another finger inside him, and his body surrendered to the stretch, to the sting, to everything that Amell did to him. A sudden surge of oil warmed him from the inside out, spilling from him with Amell’s steady thrusts, and felt so much like Amell finishing inside him it almost broke him.

“Oh-fucking-” Another spank cut off his choked moan, and was the only thing that kept him on the edge of ecstasy. The Fade swelled inside him, and Amell flooded him with heat, radiating out from his fingers with every steady stroke, and soaking the sheets with his sweat. Anders felt like he was drowning in it - like his heart pumped bliss in place of blood - every pulse throbbing through his cock, hanging heavy between his legs and swaying with every slap. “Oh, fuck me- take me.”

Amell stopped his strikes to run soothing fingers over sensitive skin, “Are you going to come if I fuck you?”

“Yes,” Anders’ voice broke, silent, open-mouthed gasps pooling spit against the sheets as Amell kept up his spell. His thighs were trembling from how long he’d spent on his knees, from how close he felt to coming apart. “Yes, please, Amell, please.”

Amell cut off his spell, fingers stilling so he could hear him over the sound of sex, “You sound quiet.”

“Don’t stop,” Anders whispered, swallowing creationism to battle back the ache he hadn’t even noticed. “Please, please, please-”

“Take a drink for me?” Amell took his fingers from him, and Anders sobbed. He didn’t mean to sob, but he sobbed anyway, a rush of emotion hitting him harder than any hand ever could. Everything stung. His ass, his chest, his throat, his wrists, his ankles, everywhere Amell had marked in every way that Anders had wanted. It stung in the best of all possible ways and Amell’s insistence that he stop to drink stung even more.

Amell dispelled his bindings, and Anders shook trying to sit up until Amell helped him, an arm around his chest pulling him upright and pressing his back against Amell’s chest. “Please don’t stop-” Anders begged, gulping down air in place of the drink on his nightstand.

“I won’t stop,” Amell pressed a hard kiss to his shoulder. “Just take a drink for me.”

“Okay,” Anders crawled over to the nightstand. He took an obedient drink of the restorative draft Amell had brought him, scrubbing the tears from his eyes and clearing his throat.

Amell felt for him, and took a spot behind him to massage his shoulders. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Anders wasn’t sure why, but he caught one of Amell’s hands and set it to his throat. Amell didn’t question it, gently running his fingers up and down his neck, and into his hair when Anders turned to kiss him. Everything about him was sex - his scent, his taste, his hands - everything but his clothes. “Why are you dressed?”

“I’m busy,” Amell joked.

Anders swallowed down a cough, laughing, “Doing what?”

“Doing you,” Amell said.

“You better,” Anders fisted his hands in Amell’s tunic, and Amell rolled them over to lay him out on his back. The suddenness of the motion stole Anders’ breath away and set his heart racing again when Amell gathered up his hands and pinned them above his head, reforming his shackles. “Fuck, I love this.”

Amell settled over him, the hand that wasn’t holding him up mapping the marks left by his mouth, tracing the jagged scar on Anders’ heart and circling his nipple with his thumb. His every touch felt like the strike of a flint, and left Anders keening for the wildfire to follow. Anders wrapped his legs around him, and Amell fit so perfectly between them he might have been made for him.

His cock was pressed flush against his ass, and Anders arched into him, digging his heels into Amell’s back to encourage the way Amell ground against him. “How bound do you want to be?” Amell whispered into his ear.

“I don’t want to move unless you move me,” Anders said, but he ached so ardently for Amell he couldn’t not move with him, sinking into his rhythm with every shallow roll of his hips.

“Like this?” Amell squeezed his hip, and Anders felt his magic flow over him, and all at once he couldn’t move. Everything stilled, his rocking hips, his curling toes, his clutching hands. His chest rose and fell with every hitching breath, and that was all the paralysis allowed him.

“F-.. Oh-...fuck,” Anders stuttered.

“Too much?” Amell tugged on his ear, but the paralysis kept him from arching into the sting.

“N-no,” Anders’ heart thudded madly in his chest, his pulse everywhere. His face, his thighs, his cock, the early hints of his release running down his shaft. “I want it all to be you.”

“It’s all me,” Amell promised, climbing off him. Anders tried to follow him on instinct and strained against the spell. He was lying on his back, unable to see anything but the ceiling, the orange light of the hearth flickering somewhere off to his left. He heard the drop of fabric on stone he guessed for Amell’s trousers, and then felt his hands on his thighs, dragging him to the edge of the bed and bunching silk sheets beneath him.

Amell reclaimed his place between his legs, and bent his thighs back towards his chest until he met with the resistance of his flexibility. Anders’ breath caught, watching him, like Amell had paralyzed his lungs and not just his limbs. Amell caressed his leg and bit down on his ankle, leaving bright red crescents on pale skin. “Please,” Anders begged. “Please-ha-ah-ah-”

Amell eased into him, claiming him in inches, pressure fading into pleasure as his body yielded to the slow stretch of his cock. “Ah-Am-Amell-” Breathless, broken gasps caught in Anders’ throat, oil running warm between them as Amell sank into him, the bite of his nails digging into Anders’ thighs a sharp contrast to the care he took in taking him.

“Anders,” Amell breathed his name as easily as air. He kept a tight grip on his thighs, breathing hard through his nose, and pulled him flush against him. “You feel-fuck-you feel fantastic.”

Everything was Amell. Anders couldn’t move, his arms pinned above his head, his legs bent back to his chest, every sensation amplified when he had no say in them. The silk chafing beneath him, the strands of hair stuck to his neck and forehead, the sweat that formed beneath his arms and on the back of his knees at Amell’s first few shallow thrusts.

“Please,” Anders choked. “Please-please-”

Everything was ecstasy. Amell built a fire inside him and stoked the flames with every thrust. Anders burned beneath him, every inch aflame, so flushed he felt dizzy, almost delirious. Amell overwhelmed everything - sight, sound, sense. Anders' vision came in spots, the sound of them connecting barely audible over the beating of his heart, whimpered pleas and impassioned praise.

“Perfect,” Amell groaned, hips snapping harder and faster with Anders’ every eager plea for more, and he couldn't stop pleading. He felt amazing. He felt Amell, so intimately taking him, fucking him, filling him. His cock claiming him, sliding in and out of him, stroking that perfect bundle of nerves within him. Pleasure hit him in waves, threatening to drag him under and drown him in an ocean of ecstasy, “You’re perfect. You’re so perfect.”

Anders could feel himself on the edge of orgasm, his pulse throbbing through his entire body, broken gasps spilling from his lips pitching higher and higher as Amell fucked him. “Dis-dispel-” Anders stuttered, straining against his magic. “Dispel-”

Amell pulled from him, dispelling the bindings, and Anders grabbed a handful of his tunic to drag him onto the bed with him. “Hold me. Fuck me. Amell, hold me-”

“I’m holding you,” Amell buried himself in him. His teeth, his nails, his cock all sinking inside him. Amell’s teeth scraped across his shoulder, slicking his skin with spit with every open-mouthed groan that spilled from him as he thrust into him. “I’m fucking you.”

“Fuck me-”

“I’m fucking you-”

“Love me-”

“I love you.”

“Amell-”

“I love you.”

Anders' climax felt like falling into the abyss, into the well of all souls, into the emerald waters of the Fade and the embrace of eternity. He burned and he drowned and he fell apart and he fell together and he felt complete, shuddering in Amell’s arms, spilling himself on his cock, sobbing with release and with relief in knowing he was loved, he was loved, he was loved.

“Are you okay?” Amell stilled to ask, kissing away his tears.

“I’m okay,” Anders squeezed his hip, rocking with him through the aftershocks of his orgasm to bring Amell to his own. “Fuck me - I want to feel you finish.”

Amell pressed his forehead to his shoulder, sliding on sweat soaked skin as he set a separate pace for himself, every breath harsh and heated as it spilled across his chest. Anders dug his nails into his back, shaking and shivering, so overstimulated he felt every snap of Amell’s hips like lightning in his veins, and then he just felt Amell, fucking him, filling him, clinging to him with the same intensity he’d wrought inside him when he finished.

Amell pulled from him and Anders held him, the occasional shiver playing through him as the air turned cold at the mix of sweat, saliva, and sex on his skin. Anders ran his fingers along Amell’s spine while Amell ran his fingers through his hair, not talking, not needing to talk. At some point he got up and took a bath, and Amell took one with him, and they ate dinner. Anders stripped the ruined sheets off the bed, but he was too lazy to replace them, and Amell loved him too much to care.

Anders lay on Amell’s shoulder, trying to ignore the itch of the coarse fabric beneath him and work up the nerve to say what he should have said five years ago in the courtyard of Vigil’s Keep. “Amell?”

“Hm?” Amell hummed.

“... Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

Anders couldn’t say it.

He had so many chances to say it and he never had. Amell had loved him for what seemed like his entire life, and Anders had waited too long to love him back. Amell deserved someone better, someone brighter, someone braver. Someone who wasn’t holding back from saying they loved him for fear of that love being taken away. Anders had already lost so much and he didn’t think he could survive losing any more.

So he didn’t say it, but he still felt it.

He felt it in the past, and he felt it in the present, and he knew he’d feel it in the future. He felt it every day they spent together and every day they spent apart. He felt it in the tireless pounding of his heart and the unbroken rhythm of his blood and the tangled joining of his soul. He felt it in his laugh and he felt it in his smile, sitting across from Amell at breakfast the next morning.

Lichen bread and stuffed mushroom caps didn’t do much to take his mind off Amell, so Anders tried to focus on his cause instead, “Do you think it’s crazy to trust Bhelen to start a Circle in Orzammar after everything?”

“Everything?” Amell chuckled, “Can you pass me the butter?”

“You know,” Anders shrugged, taking his hand and pressing the butter into it. “Enslaving his own people, turning a blind eye to raids against the surface, fratricide, patricide-”

“Lots of sides,” Amell noted.

Anders laughed, “I love you.”

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Fuck!

Anders hadn’t meant to say the words, but they seemed to speak themselves. They tore from his heart like the blood magic, meant for the maleficar who taught him. They'd always been meant for him, but Amell reacted like he never thought he’d hear them.

Amell froze; the tray fell from his trembling hand and shattered on the floor. “What?” Amell whispered.

“... I love you,” Anders whispered back.

Amell choked, eyes welling with tears, and a sob sent them cascading down his face, “What?

Anders pushed himself out of his chair, and stepped over the shattered porcelain to set an unsteady hand to Amell’s shoulder. Amell broke, great gasping sobs dropping him to his knees when he tried to stand. Anders sank down beside him and pulled him into his arms while Amell wept into his chest.

“I love you,” Anders vowed. “I love you. I love you.”

Notes:

Apples and Apostates
Someday: Amell's perspective on the events of this chapter.

Chapter 188: It's Your Funeral

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you get a few laughs out of the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 5 Cassus Mid-Day
Orzammar - Catacombs

The dwarves buried their dead. Deep beneath Orzammar were countless catacombs for the various castes and families filled with stone cairns, stacked sarcophagi, and elaborate tombs. It was an Andrastian’s nightmare or a necromancer’s wet dream, but Amell didn’t seem particularly enthused and Anders wasn’t particularly upset. The Grey Wardens joined the Mage’s Collective and what seemed like the entirety of the Warrior Caste for the mass funeral being held for those who'd died in the Siege of Bownammar.

Martine and Surana were due for their own funerals. In both cases, there weren’t any bodies to bury or burn, but there hadn’t been one for Sigrun either. The Grey Wardens had come to the collective conclusion that in Martine’s case, they would burn her things, and in Surana’s case, bury them and plant a tree over them. Planting a tree in Orzammar was more or less out of the question, and had to wait until they returned to the Vigil, but lighting a pyre wasn’t.

Anders wasn’t sure how, but Nathaniel had managed to find a Chantry Brother in Orzammar. Brother Burkel had agreed to oversee Martine’s funeral later that evening. It wasn’t strange that a Chantry Brother had agreed to oversee a funeral, but it was strange that that Chantry Brother was a dwarf. Especially considering that the Chantry and the dwarves agreed that the Maker hadn’t created dwarves, so Anders had no idea why a dwarf would want to worship Him.

But Brother Burkel did and so did a small congregation of dwarves, despite the fact that such worship was evidently restricted if not outright illegal in Orzammar. Brother Burkel hadn’t been terribly clear on the specifics, and Anders hadn’t been terribly clear on asking for them. He’d mostly just followed the poor bastard around badgering him about the Chantry’s corruption and making one too many snide comments about how Orzammar had enough already between enslaving their own people and losing them to the slow spread of the Taint.

… Someone probably should have stopped him from doing that. Amell certainly hadn’t. He’d just listened, smirking over a glass of wine while Nathaniel apologized for everything Anders said, and Anders said a lot. Anders had said so much he was surprised (and disappointed) that Brother Burkel had still agreed to perform the funeral and that Anders was still invited to it. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to pay his respects to Martine, it was just that he wasn’t a very respectful person.

Anders had been to more funerals than he could count, and he hadn’t been any good at any of them. First Sigrun, then Kristoff, then Darrian, then Kirkwall. Maker, Kirkwall. There were days his clinic’s hearth had seemed a pyre with how many bodies he’d burned for the refugees who couldn’t afford to pay the Chantry a silver to do the same. Anders could never think of anything to say, and it didn’t matter when he did. None of his prayers had turned the Maker’s gaze on him yet.

Anders nudged Amell, standing beside him in a sea of blue and silver at the dwarven funeral, “What do you say we get out of here?”

Amell nudged him back, “I’d love to, but I can’t.”

“Why not?” Anders asked.

“Solidarity,” Amell said.

Anders rolled his eyes, “Is solidarity going to convince Bhelen to support a Circle or free his golems?”

Confronting Branka certainly hadn’t. For all the King of Orzammar had agreed to free his golems, he stressed that that freedom was conditional to him having the ability to make more of them. With Branka locked away with the Anvil of the Void in Bownammar, the surviving members of the Legion of Stone and Steel were the only golems Bhelen had left, and as far as the Maker-forsaken bastard was concerned he couldn’t afford to let them go.

“It might,” Amell said.

“Liar,” Anders huffed. “Bhelen won’t even give the Mage’s Collective an audience until after First Day. You put him on the throne. What happened to preferential treatment?”

“A month for an audience with the King is preferential treatment, Anders,” Amell said patiently. “I can’t force him to see you any faster.”

Anders shrugged his shoulder against him, “I mean you could…”

Amell lowered his voice even further, but it wasn’t like anyone could hear them with all the chanting, and even if they could, they were surrounded by Grey Wardens. “I can’t risk him resisting.”

“Like anyone could resist you, love,” Anders said.

The word still felt a little stilted. Anders had only confessed to the feeling two days ago, but he wanted to keep confessing to it, especially seeing what that confession did to Amell. Amell forgot everything from their conversation to his own name whenever Anders affirmed his affection. Whatever they were talking about went out the nearest metaphorical window, and Amell fell to fidgeting with his cuffs, shuffling his feet, and turning a shade of red to match his eyes.

“Well?” Anders nudged him.

“What?” Amell asked.

“Getting out of here?” Anders prompted.

“Aha-I…” Amell cleared his throat and composed himself. “You don’t have to stay, but I have to make an appearance. You should come to Martine’s funeral this evening, though.”

“If you have to stay, I’ll stay,” Anders said. “Solidarity, right?”

“Solidarity,” Amell agreed, taking hold of Anders’ arm. Anders wove their fingers together, desperately trying to ignore the tireless chanting and pounding of dwarven funeral rites and the headache it was giving him. He’d rather focus on Amell. Amell was worth focusing on, especially for the way he whispered, “I love you,” under his breath, like on some level he was afraid Anders might hear him.

Amell didn’t have to whisper. Anders wanted to hear him, and he wanted Amell to hear him too. Anders pressed his forehead to the side of Amell’s face and brushed his lips against his ear, “I love you too.”

Amell leaned his head on his shoulder for the rest of the funeral. Anders leaned on him in turn, an arm around his waist, distantly aware that his thoughts should have been turned towards the dead, but he couldn’t turn them there. He couldn’t turn them anywhere but the scent of copper, soap, and the Fade that clung to Amell’s hair. The warmth of his body pressed up against him. The almost timid caress of Amell’s hand on his arm.

Amell was never timid, but he seemed timid now, whispering every so often of his love for him, like he wasn’t certain Anders still loved him back. Like his love was something he could lose in a day, but if one of them was going to fear losing the other, it should have been Anders. Anders had been in love, and Anders had felt unsafe in love, but he didn’t feel unsafe in Amell. If ever the word made his heart stutter for fear of the last man he’d spoken it to, the veilfire in his veins flared in an unspoken assurance that that man was gone, and this man was safe, and they were safe with him.

“I love you,” Anders said again, because he wanted to get used to saying it as much as he wanted Amell to get used to hearing it. He wanted them to get used to having things that mages weren’t supposed to have. Love. Life. Liberty. All the someones and somethings no one would lock away somewheres and somewhens. He wanted a haven - in Amell, in Orzammar, in anywhere there were no templars to take it away.

“I love you too,” Amell said back, still whispering.

“Say it louder,” Anders said into his hair.

“We’re at a funeral,” Amell said.

“Say it anyway,” Anders said.

“I love you,” Amell murmured, squeezing his arm, once when he said it and again when Anders pushed his hair back behind his ear. Anders’ fingers lingered over the scar of an old piercing, far fainter than the ones that mottled Amell’s face. No one minded them, as far as Anders could tell, and no one damn well better. It had taken him five years to finally call Amell handsome and he couldn’t stand the thought of Amell doubting it now.

“I could pierce this again for you, if you want, you know,” Anders offered, toying with the scar tissue.

“My ear?” Amell guessed.

“Or other things,” Anders joked.

“What other things?” Amell asked.

“We’re at a funeral,” Anders joked.

Amell turned a laugh into a cough, “If you like.”

Anders spent the rest of the funeral trying to convince Amell to pierce everything and anything there was to pierce, and came out of it with a yes for his ear, a solid maybe on his tongue, and a hard no on his dick. Anders talked himself into more piercings on his ears, and had almost talked himself into piercing his nipples or his belly button when the assassins attacked.

The assassins weren’t attacking him, and they weren’t attacking Amell, so it wasn’t too terrible that assassins attacked. They weren’t the best assassins, all things considered. There was a time and a place for assassins, and a funeral full of soldiers from the Warrior Caste wasn’t it, but assassins attacked anyway. Axes, swords, and blood founted from a far corner, and spread through the catacombs like a bar brawl.

“For glory!” Someone shouted. Warriors surged over each other in their haste to join in, and the funeral erupted into chaos. Dwarves, mages, and wardens pushed each other in every direction, and suddenly the assassins didn’t seem like such bad assassins. The Grey Wardens closed ranks and the Mage’s Collective existed in their general vicinity in a general state of panic.

“Kid!” Oghren shoved his way to their side, awkwardly clutching his battleaxe without any space to wield it. “Shit’s going down!”

“Look who decided to care,” Anders frowned, as if assassins setting off a mob wasn’t reason enough for him to feel defensive of Amell without adding in Oghren and his recent resentment of Amell’s attempt at redemption. “What happened to-”

“Sparkles, you got a solid two seconds before this-” Oghren pointed at the butt of his battleaxe and then pointed at him, “-goes up there.”

“Is he pointing at your ass?” Amell guessed.

“He’s pointing at my-”

“Shut the fuck up and let’s get the fuck out of here,” Oghren cut him off, shoving the two of them away from the chaos and towards one of the exits.

“I think it’s the Carta,” Nathaniel said, unveiling himself out of the shadows, and Anders squeaked, accidentally squeezing Amell’s arm harder than he meant as he led him through the river of evacuees fleeing out through the catacomb’s tunnels.

“Don’t you have a cane?” Anders demanded.

“I leave it behind when you’re around,” Nathaniel said. “Don’t tell Velanna.”

Anders felt a pulse of blood magic, and Amell stopped, forcing all of them to a halt. “Ailsa!” Amell amplified his voice over the crowd.

“We’re coming!” Ailsa’s voice rang back, and true to form, a blast of telekinetic magic cleared a path through the crowds for her and Amethyne.

“Fucking Fade, Ailsa,” Anders muttered as the dwarves went rolling.

“We have everyone,” Ailsa promised, pulling the younger Grey Warden along behind her. The two of them had cleaved to each other with the loss of their friends, Martine for Ailsa and Surana for Amethyne, and not for the first time Anders’ Grey Warden amulet hung heavy on his neck when he thought of how ‘everyone’ wasn’t ‘everyone’ anymore.

“Carta?” Nathaniel asked.

“Casteless,” Amethyne said with a wide-eyed glance over her shoulder. “I saw the tattoos.”

“Carta,” Oghren grunted.

“I hope it’s a revolution,” Amethyne said. “Dust Town deserves one.”

“I hope we get the fuck out of there,” Oghren muttered, bowling through the crowds with as much efficiency as Ailsa’s magic until they reached the commons, and the chaos that had spilled there. More dwarves lay dead, ambushed after they’d fled the catacombs. The bodies were a mix of victims and assailants, nobles, warriors, and casteless strewn about the street.

Warriors were on the scene, setting up a perimeter where the tunnels to the catacombs opened up into the commons and running between the bodies in search of anyone still breathing. The Grey Wardens moved off to the side of the street with the Mage’s Collective, stepping over the bodies, hastily slain. Crossbow bolts pierced eyes and hearts, daggers were embedded and abandoned in throats and armpits, and comedically bloody footprints fled from the scene.

Anders untangled himself from Amell and split from the group to follow a pair of them down to an alley with a quick, “I’ll be right back.” He found a dwarf, slouched against the wall behind a barrel, barely a dozen paces off. The poor bastard had been stabbed through the gut by a guard. Anders recognized him by his brand and motley patches of discolored skin as one of the casteless he’d given his coin to last month.

“Hey,” Anders knelt beside him, thinking of Cor, and dead dogs. The motley thug groaned and coughed up blood, and Anders set a hand to him, creationism flowing through the open wound that slashed through his cheap leather armor and opened his stomach. “I remember you. You mugged me last month.”

“Aye,” Motley coughed up blood, holding his armor and his skin together, “Remember you too, Warden. Weren’t no muggin’. Gave your shit away.”

“Well, listen, I’ve got my friends with me,” Anders gestured back towards the main street with his free hand. “So if they ask, tell them I put up a good fight.”

“Aye,” Motley chuckled. “Tell ‘em ya healed me at knife-point, while I’m at it.”

“What kind of gang leader would you be if you didn’t?” Anders joked.

“Karshol’s the gang leader,” Motley shook his head, and the few wispy strands of hair that clung to his discolored scalp. “Not me.”

“Carta, right?” Anders guessed by everyone else’s guess, restorative energies sealing the wound on the thug’s stomach. “Did Karshol do all of this?”

“King did all of this,” Motley corrected him, stumbling to his feet as Anders helped him up. “Paid the Carta to take out one of his rivals at the funeral and blame it on the brands.”

“What rival?” Anders asked.

“Harrowmont. Renvil Harrowmont - High General Pyral Harrowmont’s nephew and the last of his line. Some sods say the Harrowmonts are due the throne since the old King named ‘em on his deathbed, and the new King wants to send those sods to theirs.”

“I’m surprised you’re telling me.”

“Surprised you’re asking,” Motley countered. “Paid good coin for us brands to take the blame, but then we heard what was happening to brands at Bownammar… figured we’d take something of his while we were at it.”

“What’d you take?” Anders asked.

“Go and find out,” Motley jutted his chin towards the street, and took off in the opposite direction down the alley.

Anders wiped Motley’s blood off on his trousers, and rejoined the Grey Wardens in the main street in time to find Nathaniel in the middle of starting a prayer for the fallen, “O Maker, hear my-”

“Stop,” Velanna shoved her hand over his mouth.

“Everything alright?” Amell asked.

“I’ll tell you later,” Anders eyed the score or so of men and women littering the street. “We don’t have to go to their funeral too, do we?”

“Healer!” A familiar voice called. Vartag Gavorn, Bhelen’s right hand, knelt amidst the bodies holding Bhelen’s left. His metaphorical left. One of the victims was Frandlin Ivo, an unassuming fellow with sagging eyes, a sagging nose, and a sagging hold on life. It wasn’t the king, but it was vengeance all the same, and some part of Anders was glad the casteless had sought it.

The other part of him was still a healer, “Anders to the rescue,” Anders said, picking his way across the street.

Gleam ran after him, catching hold of his sleeve and pulling him back before he reached the two dwarves. The leader of the Mage’s Collective was the only other spirit healer that stepped forward, and Anders didn’t know what to make of the fact that it didn’t seem like she'd stepped forward to help.

“Wait,” Gleam said.

“I don’t think we have time to wait,” Anders pointed out. Frandlin was barely breathing. Daggers pincushioned him, buried in the kinks in his armor, and Gavorn didn’t have enough hands to put pressure on all of them.

“Don’t we?” Gleam asked, purposefully loud in a way Anders couldn’t be anymore. “Tell King Aeducan we’ll see his man when he see us.”

“His man is dying!” Gavorn hissed back, hands slipping in Frandlin’s blood as it stained the stone red.

“Mages die on the surface every day,” Gleam sniffed. “Make me care.”

“Enough of this!” Gavorn snapped, looking to Anders instead. “Warden - this man is the left hand of King Bhelen Aeducan and the third most important man in all of Orzammar!”

Gleam kept a firm hold on his arm, like she could hold his magic back with him, but she couldn’t. Templars could, but templars weren’t here. Anders was free of them, in a way that so many other mages weren’t. He was free of their smites, and free of their fists, and free of their bane, and free of their love. Every mage deserved that same freedom, and if he had the chance and the choice, Anders would die trying to give it to them.

He just hadn’t considered that it might not be him to die in the trying. Anders healed everyone - murderers, thugs, thieves - all without hesitation, but he hesitated now. He thought of Kieran and everything he’d taught him about being a healer, and how it was one thing not to lay blame if he couldn’t heal someone, but it was another if he wouldn’t.

… Anders guessed this was another, “It sounds like he could use a healer.”

Frandlin wheezed, and Gavorn caved. “He’ll see you sooner! A fortnight-!” Gleam folded her arms over her chest, and Gavorn hurriedly corrected himself. “Tomorrow!”

Gleam pushed on his shoulder to turn him around and away, “Then we’ll heal him tomorrow.”

“Today, damn you!” Gavorn shouted after them. “He’ll see you today! Just heal him!”

Gleam let go of his arm. Anders knelt to heal the dying dwarf, a lifeward and a panacea pulling him back from the brink of death. Gleam settled in beside him and added in her own auras. Levyn hadn’t been wrong about her magic. Spite fueled it. Anders could feel it radiating in the faint emerald glow on her hands as she channelled her demon.

“We’ve got him,” Anders pushed Gavorn’s hands away from Frandlin’s wounds, trying to ignore how his own shook.

“Now,” Gavorn muttered, shoving himself to his feet and storming off.

Anders watched Gavorn walk away, checking the pulse of other dead men as he went, and felt a little sick, “We didn’t just do that, did we?”

“Do what?” Gleam asked, pulling a dagger from Frandlin and sealing shut the wound. “Stand up to these cave dwellers?”

“Threaten to kill a man to move a meeting?” Anders corrected her, doing the same. “I’m not pretending to be a politician, but do you really think that’s the best way for us to convince the king to let us start a Circle here?”

“He should already be convinced,” Gleam muttered, removing another dagger. “Varence is dead. Alim is dead. His people killed our people. He owes us a new life for the ones he took from us.”

“You really trust him to see it that way?” Anders asked, pulling out the last.

“I trust him to respect strength, and I trust us to show him we have it,” Gleam squared her shoulders. “Mages like your commander might control the dead, but healers are the ones who decide who joins them.”

“You’re not afraid that’s going to backfire on us?” Anders asked.

“I never make decisions out of fear,” Gleam said, dismissing her demon when they finished healing Frandlin. “Only out of spite.”

Gleam left to rejoin the Mage’s Collective and Anders returned to the Grey Wardens, with the hope his split second decision to support Gleam wouldn’t fall back on Amell in some way. Anders didn’t have any choice but to support her. She might not have been a warden, but she was a mage, and Anders was a mage first and a warden second. He knew it was the opposite with Amell, but it hadn’t come between them yet and he hoped it wouldn’t come between them now. They’d still healed Frandlin, after all. Bhelen couldn’t be that angry with them.

Bhelen was very angry with them.

He received Gleam and a handful of other members of the Mage’s Collective at the palace a few short hours later. Anders came with them, and felt out of place among them. He wasn’t an apostate. He was a Grey Warden. He’d worked with the Mage’s Collective in Amaranthine, and he’d built the Mage’s Collective in Kirkwall, but he’d abandoned all of that when he’d abandoned Kirkwall even if he hadn’t abandoned his cause.

He still published revisions to his manifesto once a season, and gave lectures at the Circle when they let him inside, but that was it. He wasn’t networking with the nobility to get them to speak out against the Knight Commander. He wasn’t breaking mages out of the Circle. He wasn’t escorting them out of the city or hiding them inside of it. He was safe with the Grey Wardens, or as safe as he could be when red lyrium infused harvesters erupted out of the Deep Roads and devoured whole armies in front of him.

So not safe at all, actually, but safe as a mage. Freedom wasn’t life or death for him the way it was life or death for Gleam and the rest of the Mage’s Collective. They lived outside the allowance of the Chantry, simply because they’d had the audacity to free themselves before the King of Ferelden declared them free, and they’d lost their right to freedom for it. Anders didn’t need a free Circle the way they needed it, but knowing he didn’t need it made him need it even more.

Representatives of the Mage’s Collective gathered in the throne room before King Aeducan and his host of guards. Anders stood behind Gleam, with three other members of the Mage’s Collective. Levyn, obviously, and two older mages who must have been Senior Enchanters, escaped from Kinloch Hold. There was no other way they could have survived so long. They were both haggard and greying, with staves that substituted for walking sticks.

Anders knew it was a show of strength and Gleam’s leadership that she had any mages with her who’d lived long enough to grey, but he wasn’t sure Bhelen would see it that way, especially considering Bhelen looked straight past Gleam to address him instead.

“I’m surprised, Warden,” Bhelen said, stomping down the steps from his throne. “Holding my left hand hostage as a start to negotiations? I expected this kind of barbarism from surfacers, but Grey Wardens and the dwarven people have always considered each other kin.”

“I’m an only child,” Anders joked.

“... I envy you,” Bhelen said flatly, stopping a few feet from him with a hand on the hilt of his axe, ceremonial as it may have been. “What can I do for you?”

“You can grant us leave to establish a College of Magi in the city,” Gleam answered instead. “Free from the Chantry’s influence.”

“I think we both know that nowhere is free of your Chantry’s influence,” Bhelen said, still not looking at her. “I believe you’ve had the misfortune of meeting Brother Burkel?”

“I’ve met him,” Anders said. “I’ve met worse.”

“Have I wronged you in some way, Warden?” Bhelen asked.

“Me? No. Your own people?” Anders teetered a hand back and forth. “You swore you’d destroy your control rods.”

“And you swore to reclaim the Anvil of the Void,” Bhelen countered. “It seems we’re doomed to disappoint each other.”

“You owe us,” Gleam interjected. “We helped your armies at the Bownammar.”

“My armies lost the Battle of Bownammar,” Bhelen said, finally addressing her. “Your help left as much to be desired then as it did today.”

“If you didn’t need me to heal your man, I could always unheal him,” Gleam offered or threatened.

“Consider me convinced of the need for one mage,” Bhelen turned his back on her, pacing back towards his throne. “I fail to see how you’ve convinced me of the need for more.”

“You need more,” Anders followed him to argue. A few of Bhelen’s guards tensed, but Anders didn’t have any choice but to follow him when he couldn’t yell after him. Bhelen seemed surprised that he’d followed, beady eyes so wide Anders could almost guess a color under his massive crown. “You need a lot more - or you wouldn’t have used golems in the first place.

“Instead of talking about whatever you’re talking about, why don’t you talk about war and how you’re losing it? A College of Magi could help Orzammar against the darkspawn better than any golem ever could.”

“It’s a sensible solution, Warden, I won’t lie,” Bhelen admitted, a little too easily. “But the battle for progress is the bloodiest of them all. I’ve spent six years working to reform Orzammar and had twice as many attempts on my life over loosened caste restrictions and increased surface trade. Orzammar won’t take kindly to surfacers settling among us.”

Maker, Anders hated Bhelen. He’d known him for all of a month, and he hated every minute of knowing him. He hadn’t loosened caste restrictions - he’d just damned the lowest of the castes to slavery and called it salvation. He hadn’t increased trade with the surface - he’d just raided it letting his Paragon run rampant in West Hill. He was a bloody bastard, but Anders could be a bloody bastard too.

“How kindly would they take to their king sending assassins against his own people?” Anders demanded.

“I beg your pardon?” Bhelen asked.

“You should be begging our forgiveness,” Anders said. “Do you have any idea how mages died on the Anvil of the Void while you kept what was happening a secret?”

“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Warden,” Bhelen said.

“No, life had them at a disadvantage,” Gleam chimed in. “From the moment they came into their magic, they spent their lives hated, and hunted, and hidden, and you people took advantage of that. You knew if they went missing no one would question it and no one would come for them, but we did.”

“Paragon Branka’s actions against the surface, while reprehensible, were her own,” Bhelen said patiently. “I had no hand in them.”

“Your hands were busy with your own people,” Anders said. “You’re so angry with us for holding off on healing one of them, but you’re the reason he was attacked in the first place. You sent the Carta against your own people to take out your rival - you can’t be surprised there were casualties. Or is that not supposed to be common knowledge?”

It must not have been, because a few of the guards shuffled in place, and Bhelen’s squint swallowed up his eyes, “Alright, Warden, you have my attention.”

… In retrospect, Anders didn’t want Bhelen’s attention. Anders definitely didn’t want his attention while he was wearing Amell’s tabard, and now that he had it, he just wanted it gone. “Gleam?”

“Refuge from the Chantry. Leave to study the supply of lyrium vapors,” Gleam said. “You’ll have our healers and our battlemages in exchange.”

“I’ll consider your proposal if you can convince the Shaperate of the need for it,” Bhelen waved them out and into a mob.

Dwarves of almost every caste and clan had gathered outside the palace, protesting anything and everything there was to protest as more and more of Bhelen’s secrets got out and into the city. Warriors protested against the casteless being permitted to take up arms. The casteless protested against being made into them. Nobles protested Paragons, some of them decrying what Branka had done and others decrying Bhelen for trying to replace her for it.

They hurled slurs and they hurled shit and they hurled themselves - straight through the palace doors and into the entrance hall. The Legion of Stone and Steel - the Legion of Servants and Slaves - were summoned to hurl them back out and it must have been a day for split second decisions because Anders made another. He made a decision that he wasn’t going to let Kings, and Clerics, and Knight-Commanders keep making decisions for people that took their decisions away.

There were a lot of cats at the palace, and one more went unnoticed as it wandered through the halls, but not quite unnoticed enough. One of the dwarven servants stumbled across the orange tabby as it rounded a corner, and swooped it up before it could flee. “Little Paragon!” The servant tutted. “How did you get out of the menagerie?”

The servant carried a cat who was very much not Little Paragon through the halls, and deposited it into a room filled with dozens upon dozens of other cats, and cat furniture, and cat toys, and cat food, and cat paintings, and cat statues, and cat everything there was to cat about. The servant left after dropping the cat off, and the rest of the cats in the room jumped its ass.

Anders came apart in an explosion of fur and furious yowls as dozens of imported cats panicked at the presence of an abomination. Most of them scattered, but three wild little bastards shredded into his trousers and tunic. Anders fought to throw them off without hurting them, swearing and healing himself and peeling cat after cat off his legs.

Somehow, Anders came away from the battle with all of his fingers, and used them to open the door and set the menagerie of panicked cats loose in the palace before transforming back into one. Cats scattered, tearing down halls in every direction as the scent of an abomination chased them from the menagerie. Servants panicked, calling one ridiculous name after the next as they chased after them.

“Big Bronto! Paw-ragon! Fat Fluorspar! Little Legionaire! Battle Blighter! Mush-Mush! Wild Weevil! Stone Maker! Deep Road Delver! Silent Sister! Fur Golem! Deepstalker! Shaper of Meowmories! Stone Paws! Dirty Diamond! Pawserker! Nug Killer! Beetle Biter! Tiny Topaz! Mighty Morel!”

The cat that was not Little Paragon went back to wandering the halls in the safety the chaos afforded it. The orange tabby checked room after room in search of something that might have resembled a treasury, and while it never came upon one, it did come upon Mardy. The casteless mother of King Bhelen’s nephew had been cornered by his right-hand Gavorn, who was in the middle of blaming her for the chaos.

“You branded bitch,” Gavorn backhanded her, and Mardy went crashing back into the wall, her cheek sliced by his gauntlet. “How many times do we have to tell you to close the door to the menagerie!? I swear you’re lucky we don’t put your bastard in there.”

“Trian is noble-!” Mardy protested.

“Trian is a threat to Prince Endrin,” Gavorn corrected her. “And the second the King realizes it I’ll feed you both to the darkspawn.” Gavorn turned to storm away, and his storming quickly turned into a sprint when he noticed a hairless cat meandering around in circles at the end of the hall. “Nuglet! Here boy! Nuglet! Nuglet, you stupid fucking piece of-”

Gavorn’s swearing faded as he rounded the corner. Mardy slid down to the floor, sniffling and dabbing at the bleeding cut on her face, and Anders should have ignored it-

“Ancestors save me,” Mardy gasped, hand to her chest when Anders lost his hold on his form. “Warden?”

“You didn’t see me,” Anders cautioned, kneeling to wipe the blood off her face with his thumb and seal the cut in the same motion.

“... as you say, Warden,” Mardy rubbed her cheek with the slightest of smiles. “... but if I didn’t see you doing something the king wouldn’t want you to do, it would be nice to help you do it.”

No one should help Anders do what Anders was doing. No one should even know what Anders was doing. Anders shouldn’t even be doing what Anders was doing, but there would never be a better time to do it with the mob storming the palace and the cats running wild in it so no one would know that he’d been the one to do it.

No one but Mardy. She’d seen him, and Anders wasn’t sure he could trust her not to have seen him, but he didn’t see a choice. He’d helped her, and he was trying to help people like her, and if Amell was willing to face the consequences of doing the wrong thing then Anders should be willing to face the consequences of doing the right thing. “Where does the King keep his control rods?”

Notes:

Fanart
Nugglet by ArcaneFeathers.

Chapter 189: In The Moment

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kudos! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter and that you are still enjoying the story. Thank you for reading.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 5 Cassus Evening
Orzammar - Grey Warden Compound

Anders did not think this through.

A hundred protestors, half a hundred golems, and a quarter hundred cats were loose in the palace and causing absolute chaos. The Mages’ Collective had retreated to a corner of the entrance hall, and had hastily rearranged the furniture to separate themselves from the other groups. Couches and tables squared off a space for them, and were easy for a cat to slip between so Anders could rejoin them.

“I was here the whole time,” Anders announced, startling the older enchanters when he manifested.

“Where else would you have been?” Gleam agreed.

Amell wasn’t wrong. Solidarity was something. Solidarity saved his life when King Bhelen and his honor guard poured out of the throne room, and cleared a path through the mob straight to them. King Bhelen broke from his honor guard to climb over the makeshift barricade and grab Anders by his tabard, “You!”

Veilfire cracked across Anders’ veins, “Get your bloody hands-”

“You stole my Legion!” Bhelen snarled, drawing his handaxe and a trickle of blood with how hard he pressed it to Anders’ throat. “I’ll end your whole Order.”

The Grey Wardens hadn't done this. Anders had done this, and Anders wasn't about to watch Kieran’s prophecy manifest in the worst of all possible ways letting Amell take the fall for him. He also wasn't about to throw his life away when he had so many reasons to live it. The golems were free. Bhelen couldn't make any more. Martyring himself now didn't help anyone, especially when the Mages' Collective still needed his help.

“Are you mad?” Anders waved a hand at a rampaging golem. “Your Legion is right there!”

“Get off him!” Gleam advanced on Bhelen only for the dwarf to point his axe at her instead, still keeping a firm hold on Anders’ tabard.

“My Legion isn’t mine!” Bhelen hissed through grit teeth, barely visible beneath his beard. “Their rods are broken! You broke them!”

“So you are mad,” Anders lied. It was-... so easy to lie. He’d lived a lie for so long it was so easy to keep living one, but Anders wasn’t prepared for how easy it was to force other people to live it with him. He should have been prepared. Hawke had prepared him.

Amell had prepared him too. A pull on the blood Bhelen had drawn pushed persuasion into his words, “I’ve been right here since that bloody mob broke down the doors,” Anders continued. “How could I break your control rods?”

“It’s true,” Levyn added, and Anders felt his blood drain a little faster as Levyn pulled from it to amplify his spell. “We’re trapped here. How would any of us go anywhere or do anything?”

“You really think I’m the only person who didn’t want you to use control rods?” Anders scoffed. “You think the casteless wanted you to use them? You think Branka wanted you to use them?”

“Branka,” Something in Bhelen seized on the accusation, and Anders felt his spell sink in with almost no resistance. “That blighted bitch. She thinks if she takes my golems I’ll have no choice but to come crawling back to her for more. I’ll show her. The Legion of Stone and Steel is mine. I’ll make sure they know it one way or another.”

Bhelen let go of him, and whirled back around to rejoin his honor guard and their efforts to regain control of the palace. His soldiers cleared the doors, and the Mage’s Collective fled from them and out into the Diamond District. The marbled streets seemed peaceful by comparison, the only commotion the criers on the corners and the occasional scuffle of a noble berating a street sweeper for missing a spot. Anders fell in beside Levyn.

“Thanks for that,” Anders said.

“... Thanks for Melissa,” Levyn said with a smile and a sidelong glance through stringy black bangs.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Anders said.

“I think I found another,” Levyn said. “... that sounded really bad, actually. Varence wasn’t a pair of socks, he was a person, I just meant- well, I don’t have a lot of socks.”

“I hear they come in handy,” Anders joked.

“I don’t know how much more of the metaphor mumbo-jumbo I have in me, but yeah they do,” Levyn said.

Anders grinned, and kept grinning. The golems were free. Anders had freed them. Anders had gotten away with freeing them. He’d broken into the treasury and broken Bhelen’s control rods and no one but Mardy was the wiser for it. A month of posturing and politicking had gotten him nowhere, but one swift, decisive action had won half-a-hundred souls their freedom.

Anders flexed his hands, taking in the veilfire and the ecstasy that accompanied it. They’d done it. Just them. Just Anders and Justice and Mardy - a casteless woman Bhelen had taken into his home but left out of his heart, who couldn’t ignore what was happening to her people while everyone ignored what was happening to her. It was right that she had helped free them. It was good. It was just. It was everything they wanted.

Gleam took hold of his sleeve when their groups made to split - the Collective for the Commons and Anders for the Grey Warden Compound. “I need to talk to you.”

“Sure,” Anders said, letting Gleam lead him into an alley behind a wigmaker’s shop that smelled heavily of perfume and powder. The Senior Enchanters left, but Levyn lingered in the alley with them, picking at his nails.

“Back there, with those half-heights,” Gleam jutted a thumb towards the palace. “You put all of us at risk.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Anders lied.

“Gleam, maybe-” Levyn started.

“Wait in the street, Levie,” Gleam cut him off.

“Waiting in the street!” Levyn abandoned him.

“You broke the king’s control rods,” Gleam said, folding her arms over her chest. “If Levyn hadn’t amplified your compulsion, that nug-fucker could have broken it, and you could have ruined everything for us. Do you know how many mages there are in Ferelden who don’t fit within the confines of the king’s freedom, who need somewhere safe from the Chantry’s templars?

“Hundreds,” Gleam continued before he could answer. “Thousands. They can’t all join the Grey Wardens like you. They can’t all join the Mages’ Collective like me. Why do you think I brought my oldest mages with me? Because they need this more than anyone else. The old. The young. The infirm. They can’t fight the way that we fight. We have to give them somewhere they won’t have to.”

“I know that,” Anders knew that better than anyone. He’d written a whole manifesto about that. He’d spent years of his life fighting for that.

“You almost cost us that!” Gleam snapped. “After the king agreed to our proposal.”

“He agreed to hear our proposal,” Anders corrected her. “He agreed to free his golems too and look how that turned out. Some things you have to force.”

“You were forcing the wrong thing back there,” Gleam said.

“You really think it wasn’t worth freeing them?” Anders asked.

“I think you have to pick a cause,” Gleam said. “So which cause is it?”

It was mages. It was always mages. Anders didn’t regret what he’d done, but on some level he knew Gleam was right. Anders made it back to the Grey Warden compound in time for Martine’s funeral, and listened to his fellows share stories about the life they’d lived with her, and felt slightly detached from it all. He excused himself half-way through and went to bed early, and joined Morrigan and Kieran the next morning on their trip to the Shaperate to try to convince the dwarves of the benefits of a Circle of Magi free of the Chantry’s influence.

The Orzammar Shaperate was located in Orzammar’s Diamond Quarter, and was the headquarters of, shockingly, the Shaperate: an institution of historians, scholars, judges, genealogists, and philosophers. The building itself carved deep into the mountainside, stories upon stories of libraries, speaking halls, court rooms, and Memories. Tens of thousands of years of history, carved into the Stone from lyrium, that seemed to date back to the beginning of time. All along the walls, lyrium-memory crystals were set into sconces like torches, whispering of the voices of the dead.

Morrigan handed Kieran off to him and vanished into the stacks of tomes. Kieran was buttoned into the usual dwarven fashion, a silver ribbon braided into his hair to match what Amell was wearing that day. He had a small satchel filled with his sketchbook and chalks to keep him busy, assuming there wasn’t something else he did whenever Morrigan took him to the Shaperate. Morrigan hadn’t said and Anders hadn’t thought to ask.

Kieran held his hand, not offering any suggestions, red eyes wandering over the dwarven Memories while Anders hunted for someone who looked important enough to add to them. “So,” Anders glanced down at him. “Your spirit sees the future for you?”

“I am my spirit,” Kieran said.

“Yeah, me too,” Anders grinned. He spotted a dwarf sorting through stacks of tomes, and took all of a step towards him before the fellow vanished down another aisle. Anders gave chase, dragging Kieran along. “So can you see how this ends?”

“How what ends?” Kieran asked.

“What I’m trying to do,” Anders said.

“What are you trying to do?” Kieran asked.

Chase a ghost, apparently. Anders reached the aisle the dwarf had fled down and found it empty. Anders bit back a sigh, and went back to wandering aimlessly. “You know how I’m teaching you healing magic? Well, most mages don’t have anyone to teach them unless they go to the Circle.”

“I don’t want to go to the Circle,” Kieran mumbled, clutching his art satchel.

“No one does, Creepy,” Anders said. “I’m trying to open a university here, so mages have somewhere else to learn magic if they don’t have a tutor. Can you see if it works? You know, in the future?”

“Father says I shouldn’t let anyone use my sight,” Kieran parroted. “He says I should only see what I want to see. He says if I see too much I might see something sad.”

“Your father’s a smart man,” Anders said.

“Are you going to be my father too?” Kieran asked.

Anders tripped over his own feet and crashed into a bookshelf, knocking a few tomes onto the floor. Kieran jumped, but he couldn’t have been half as startled as Anders was by the question. “I… don’t know,” Anders admitted, crouching to pick up the scattered tomes and stack them on his knees. “Do you want me to be?”

Kieran shrugged, “Okay.”

Anders snorted and set the books back on the shelf. ‘Okay’ wasn’t as profound as he was expecting, but Kieran was six, and ‘okay’ was probably as profound as a six year old could get. Anders took his hand, and went back to wandering the Shaperate. The longer Anders thought about it the more profound it felt. It was okay. It was okay for him to have a family. It was okay for him to be-

“You can’t be Father,” Kieran warned him.

“I can’t?” Anders blinked.

“Father’s Father,” Kieran explained.

“What should I be, then?” Anders asked.

Kieran’s face scrunched up in thought for a long while, “Do I have to call you something different?”

“Only if you want to,” Anders said. “Anders is fine.”

“Okay,” Kieran said, but it felt a lot better than okay. It felt better than the country cottage, the pretty plump wife, the five kids underfoot - the imagined, impossible future Anders had conjured for himself when he couldn’t stand to live in the present because of how he’d suffered in the past. This was his. This was real. This was okay.

“Is that Kieran!?” A dwarven woman with pitch black hair pulled into a sharp ponytail and dressed in the runic robes of a Shaper shrieked.

Anders jumped, “Who the fu-uh-riend are you?”

Kieran let go of his hand and bolted towards her. “It’s me!”

“What a monumental visit!” The Shaper grabbed Kieran around the waist and spun him in a circle while Anders jogged to catch up. “We’ll have to record it in the Memories! Would you like to see?”

“Anders, can we see?” Kieran asked eagerly.

“Who is we, exactly?” Anders asked.

“My name is Valta,” Valta held out an ink-stained hand for Anders to shake. “I’m one of our Shapers here. Kieran has been helping me with our Memories this past month. It’s nice to meet you-...?”

“His name is Anders!” Kieran said for him. “He’s my other father.”

“Lucky him,” Valta said, and looked like she actually meant it, a bright smile on a bright face. “Dwarva could stand to share parentage. We see so few children as it is. Kieran’s visits are always appreciated.”

“Can we see the Memories?” Kieran pressed insistently.

“You know lyrium exposure is dangerous for mages,” Anders said.

“The lyrium we use is very refined,” Valta promised. “You’re welcome to watch as well, Warden.”

“I… guess I’ll watch, then,” Anders shrugged. Valta led them through the Shaperate, to an alcove at the end of an aisle of scrolls. The wall was carved with elaborate dwarven rune work, and looked half-finished. Etching tools, rune tracings, and vials of lyrium were arranged in neat rows on the floor beside the wall, the space sectioned off with rope Valta let them through. She found pillows for both them, and Anders sat at an appropriately safe distance.

Kieran pressed his face up against the wall, and Anders wondered how he was supposed to explain to Amell or Morrigan that their son had ended up addled because Anders let him play with a bunch of lyrium runes just because a strange dwarf in a dress knew his name. Definitely not the best start to his first day as ‘other father.’ “What are you carving?” Anders asked. “Or… recording, I guess?”

“The Carta’s recent attack on the funeral for the fallen at the Siege of Bownammar,” Valta said, dipping her chisel in lyrium every so often as she tapped it along the wall. “Most of my Memories focus on the crime syndicate. I’ve always been fascinated by the casteless, but we can’t record them in the Memories, and it’s always made me wonder how much of our history has been lost. The Carta is something of a grey area… a way for me to make sure we remember them.”

Maybe this was a good start to his first day as ‘other father’ after all. Someone who supported one disenfranchised group seemed like they might support another. “That’s pretty marvelous of you,” Anders said.

“I’m glad you think so, Warden,” Valta said, handing Kieran the rune tracings as she finished with them for him to copy into his sketchbook. “Maybe you’d be willing to share a first hand account of the funeral? I understand the Grey Wardens were in attendance?”

“I could do you one better,” Anders offered. “I could tell you about the Carta operations in Kirkwall, if you could help me get support to start a Circle of Magi in Orzammar. What do you say? A favor for a favor?”

“I think you have the bigger favor,” Valta grinned over her shoulder at him.

“You’re just saying that because you don’t know how much information I have,” Anders argued. “Cadash and Brosca and I were practically a threesome. I’m telling you, I know the ins and outs of their entire operation. They might not be in Orzammar, but that’s got to be worth remembering.”

“... Brosca?” Valta repeated, setting all of her tools aside and turning around on her pillow to face him. “There’s someone named Brosca working with the Carta in Kirkwall?”

Anders wasn’t sure why that mattered, but he was definitely glad it did. “Favor for a favor?”

“Favor for a favor,” Valta agreed.

Anders was having a great day. Anders was having a great week. He’d freed fifty people from slavery and was working to free countless more with a Circle of Magi free of the Chantry’s influence. He’d had and continued to have the most amazing sex of his life with the love of his life. He’d gained something like a son with how Kieran wanted him to be something like a father.

Morrigan came and retrieved him and Kieran for lunch after a few hours, a bundle of bound leaflets under her arm she’d borrowed or stolen from the Shaperate. Borrowed, probably, considering they were under her arm and not stuffed into her backpack, but it was hard to tell with Morrigan. They weren’t exactly close, but Anders felt like he should mention what Kieran had said to see what she thought.

They left the Shaperate in hunt of a cafe, and Anders nudged her as the three of them wandered the streets, “Kieran asked if I was one of his fathers today.”

“Did he?” Morrigan raised an eyebrow at him, lava flows glinting off her golden eyes, caught somewhere between cautious and cautionary. “And what did you say?”

“I said I could be if he wanted,” Anders shrugged, as casually as he could, considering Morrigan didn’t seem to share Amell’s enthusiasm at the prospect of Anders being part of Kieran’s life.

“Hm,” Morrigan hummed.

“That’s it?” Anders asked. “That’s all you have to say?”

“Are you waiting for my approval?” Morrigan guessed.

“You’re the one who said I can only be as involved in his life as you let me, remember?” Anders said.

“He is fond of you,” Morrigan noted.

“... Are you actually approving of me right now?” Anders didn’t think his luck could last this long.

“Do not get too excited,” Morrigan cautioned. “Kieran is fond of many things. The arts, the histories, magic and music… Oghren. Whatever entertains him in the moment.”

“I’m not a moment,” Anders frowned. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“We shall see,” Morrigan said.

Bitch. Well, whatever. Amell would be happy to hear Kieran was comfortable with Anders being family. The three of them had lunch in a small cafe overlooking the Proving Grounds while a few practice bouts were going on in the sands below that Kieran probably shouldn’t have been watching but Morrigan didn’t seem to take any issue with before Anders went back to the Grey Warden Compound on his own. Amell was playing chess with Nathaniel in the common room, using a textured chess set similar to the one Anders had to leave behind in Kirkwall.

Anders shook the memory away. He could always get another chess set. “Who’s winning?”

“I am,” Both men said simultaneously.

“Someone’s lying,” Anders laughed.

“I’ll forfeit,” Amell stood from the couch and felt his way around it. “Anders, can I talk to you?”

“I like talking,” Anders took Amell’s hand and set it in the crook of his arm, leading him back to their room. Anders shut the door behind them, grinning like he had been all day, “Is this a sexy talk?”

“Not exactly,” Amell untangled himself from his arm and sat on the arm of the couch instead. It was definitely a sexy place for him to be, but if this wasn’t a sexy talk Anders wasn’t sure what other kind of talk it could be.

“Is this about Kieran?” Anders guessed.

“What about Kieran?” Amell asked.

“He asked if I was going to be his other father,” Anders explained.

Amell had the kind of reaction Anders wanted him to have. His posture, his eyes, and his voice all softened, “He did?”

“He wanted to know if he had to call me something different. I told him he didn’t have to if he didn’t want to, but I think it would be nice if he wanted to, you know? Like… Vati or something... I haven’t spoken Ander in… Maker, two decades, but I keep thinking it would be nice to hear. I don’t think I even remember how to speak Ander, actually. That’s crazy, isn’t it?

“I spent twelve years there and it’s all just gone. Why try to hold onto it, right? It’s not like there’s any reason to go back to the Anderfels. My mother’s dead and my father - … well you know. I just keep thinking about what you said about doing better than your parents, and I know I can. It’s not like my father made it hard.

“It’s just-... I can only remember a few words, but I remember that one. Vati. Papa. It’s what I used to call him. We had the same name, so it’s not like I would ever call him by his name, so I called him Vati, even when I hated him. Whenever I think about wanting to be a father I think about what I’d want my kids to call me, and I think it would be nice if they called me that.

“I want to take it back from him, you know? I don’t want him to have it. I don’t want to think about him when I hear it. Not that you hear anyone say ‘vati’ in Ferelden, but… I want to let go of him. I want to forget about him. I want to be better than him. … Sorry, I didn’t mean to make this about me. What did you want to talk about?”

Amell looked like he forgot. He was smiling, and Anders loved that he was smiling, because Anders loved his smile. The way it curved a corner of his lips and touched the crimson in his eyes. Anders didn’t see the secrets in it anymore - he saw one better - he saw love. “I think Kieran would be happy to call you Vati if you taught him Ander.”

“I’d have to teach myself first,” Anders joked.

“You could practice with Woolsey,” Amell suggested. “She still speaks it.”

“I love that old girl,” Anders stuffed his thumbs into his belt to keep his hands off Amell, propped up against the arm of the couch, dressed so casually everything about him seemed an invitation. Just trousers and a tunic, unlaced at his chest with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows so Anders could see every incredible scar. Anders shook himself. “Seriously, though, what are we talking about?”

“We’re talking about you,” Amell said.

Fuck it. Amell could talk. Anders could listen and do other things with his mouth. Anders crossed the room with a concentrated effort to make his steps as loud as he could, “What about me?”

“What you did yesterday,” Amell said, unsexily.

Anders stopped. “I didn’t do anything yesterday.”

Amell didn’t seem to care that he lied. “Levyn told me what happened.”

So much for making new friends. Anders ran a hand through his hair, stuck at an annoying length he couldn’t tie behind his head or do anything other than suffer, which seemed a little too on the nose for this conversation. “Levyn hates me.”

“Levyn was my best friend for eleven years, Anders,” Amell said. “He doesn’t keep secrets from me even when he should.”

It sounded like there was a story there, but it didn’t seem like the right time to ask about it when Anders had to come up with his own. “Listen, I can explain.”

“Please,” Amell said.

Could he explain? What was there to explain? Anders had done what he’d done and he didn’t regret doing it. He felt proud of himself for doing it. For the first time in a long time, he felt proud, and there were no templars to take that pride away. Amell had to understand that. He wanted Amell to understand that.

“Bhelen was never going to free his people,” Seemed like a good start. Amell cared about freedom. Amell had killed a magister for him for want of nothing more than a ‘thank you.’ “You know he was never going to free them. I had to do something.”

“You doing something put the Mages’ Collective and the Grey Wardens in danger,” Amell said.

“They’re not in danger,” Anders argued. “No one even knows I did anything.”

“Levyn knows,” Amell corrected him. “I know. How many other people know?”

“Does it matter?” Anders demanded, but the veilfire that flooded his veins embraced him and not his anger. Anders didn’t need to be angry. Amell wasn’t trying to make him angry. Amell was just trying to talk. “I had to free them. You know I had to free them. You know who I am. You know what I am. I can’t ignore an injustice, Amell, not even if I wanted to.”

“Of course it matters, Anders,” Amell met his eyes and the veilfire that burned in them. “You’re not just Justice; you’re a Grey Warden, and the Grey Wardens are the ones who will suffer the consequences of your actions if you’re caught.”

“Well I wasn’t caught, and even if I was, Orzammar needs to know their king is enslaving his own people, so we can all stop pretending the Anvil of the Void is a solution when the Mages’ Collective is right here offering a better one.”

“You put the Mages’ Collective in as much danger as you did the Grey Wardens. You were there with them during their negotiations, Anders. Do you really think Bhelen would believe you acted alone if you’d gotten caught?”

“I wasn’t caught!” Anders tried to shout, but his voice broke, and it came out in a whisper.

“You could have been,” Amell whispered with him, and Anders couldn’t decide if he loved it or hated it. They both knew he couldn’t yell, but Amell didn’t have to be so damn accommodating about it.

“Well I wasn’t,” Anders muttered, rubbing his throat and flooding it with creationism. “Bhelen suspected me and I compelled him to suspect someone else. Standing up to tyrants is the reason I asked you to teach me blood magic in the first place, Amell. You can’t be mad at me for finally using it.”

“I’m not mad at you for using blood magic,” Amell promised.

“Well then why are you mad at me? For freeing fifty slaves?”

“Anders-”

“For not asking your permission first?”

“Anders-”

“We tried politics!” Anders rasped and hurt himself. “They didn’t work! Maker’s breath, Amell, you went to war for the man and he wouldn’t even cover the funeral costs. I had the means to do something so I did. I had to. It’s who I am.”

“Anders,” Amell said, and something in the way he said his name hurt if only because it wasn’t how he normally said it. It sounded too much like the Warden Commander and too little like Amell.

Anders inhaled shakily, cracking with veilfire, but he wasn’t going to run from this fight the way he ran from everything. “It’s who I am,” Anders whispered.

“I know,” Amell pushed himself off the couch, and held out a hand for him. Anders stared at it, half expecting it to turn into a fist, but it didn’t. Anders took it, and Amell pulled him into an embrace. “I know it is. Anders… please don’t put me in a position where I have to choose between you and the Wardens.”

“I didn’t,” Anders mumbled into his shoulder.

“You almost did,” Amell ran a hand through his hair, but they were still fighting, and Anders didn’t know what to make of it. The whole thing felt… strange. Stressed. Wrought with concern, and compassion, and an underlay of understanding.

Maybe it was how fights were supposed to feel.

“I won’t make you choose.” Anders promised, and hugged him back. “…I’m a deserter, remember? If anything ever came back on the Grey Wardens, I would just tell everyone the truth: that I acted alone and you didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“It’s not that simple,” Amell pulled back from him and felt along his neck, retrieving his Grey Warden amulet from beneath his tunic to set it atop his tabard. “You’re one of my Wardens, Anders. What you do reflects on me whether or not I help you do it. It reflects on all of us. If Bhelen had learned what you did, he could have banished the Grey Wardens from the city and refused to honor our treaties in the next Blight. I know you wanted to save those fifty people, but I need you to want to save the world more.”

It seemed like a worst case scenario for what Anders had done, but Anders had had enough of those in his life to know that Amell wasn’t entirely wrong, but he wasn’t entirely right, either.

“What happened to making a world worth saving?” Anders asked, squeezing Amell’s arms. “At some point the politics stop working and someone has to do something or nothing will change. Things have to change. I have to change them. I know I put a lot of people at risk but I can’t just do nothing when I can do something, and if I don’t do something, who will?”

Amell didn’t seem to have an answer to that. Silence stretched with Anders running his hands along Amell’s arms, and all of the scars that canvassed them. On some level, Amell must have felt the same way during the Blight, and had to understand how Anders felt now. “I had to do something,” Anders said again.

“I know,” Amell said.

“... I love you.”

“I know.”

“Do you still love me?” Anders asked.

“Of course,” Amell said fiercely. Amell’s hands sought and framed his face, and Anders held one, watching the flow of crimson in his voidblack eyes. “I love you still. I love you more. I love you more every day.”

“Even today?” Anders asked lightly.

“Especially today,” Amell promised. “You compelled a king.”

“And freed his slaves,” Anders added.

“And freed his slaves,” Amell grinned, and even if Amell had been afraid for him, Anders swore by that grin he was proud of him too, and he wanted to give him more reasons to feel that way.

“One of the Shapers agreed to help us establish a Circle in the city,” Anders told him.

“That’s excellent,” Amell’s grin didn’t seem to fit his face so Anders felt compelled to share it. “I’m surprised you didn’t tell me right away.”

“I wanted to tell you about Kieran,” It had seemed more important at the time. In the moment, it had seemed like the most important thing in his life. “...I want us to be a family.”

“We are a family. You’re my family.”

“You’re mine.”

Chapter 190: What You Wish For

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank for your reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 26 Cassus Early Afternoon
Ferelden - Vigil’s Keep

A new Circle of Magi was established within the dwarven empire of Orzammar.

A circle of conscripts.

King Bhelen Aeducan agreed to allow mages settle in the city on the condition that they conscript themselves to a caste. Entropy mages indenturing themselves to the army, primalists indenturing themselves to the forges, healers indenturing themselves to herbalists. It wasn't freedom. It wasn't even close, but Gleam agreed, and most of the Mage’s Collective agreed with her on the grounds that gaining freedom from the Chantry was worth giving up all others.

Anders didn't agree. Justice didn’t agree. It didn’t matter that Anders and Justice didn’t agree because that was what happened. Everything they’d worked towards in Orzammar had been for nothing. Two months, and all they’d managed to do was set up a new prison. The raids on the surface might have stopped, but Branka hadn’t been brought to justice. Nothing had changed. The freedom mages found in Ferelden was still far from absolute.

Amell seemed satisfied with Bhelen’s blockade on Bownammar, and with the Harvester dead, there was no reason for the Grey Wardens to stay, so they’d left. Anders didn’t want to leave. Anders wanted to see the mages to freedom, but that freedom didn’t seem like it was happening anytime soon. On some level, he knew he could stay, and try to work for it in Orzammar with Gleam and Levyn and the rest of the relocated West Hill Collective, but he didn’t just want freedom for mages in Orzammar, he wanted it everywhere.

Getting it everywhere seemed as impossible as getting it anywhere. Anders had spent too long focused on himself and not long enough focused on his cause, but on some level his cause was here. His cause was Kieran, half-asleep against his side, doodling a piss poor doodle of the royal cats as their caravan made its way back to Vigil’s Keep. For all Anders’ failures, Kieran had his freedom.

Anders had done that. Anders was still doing that. He’d forced Amell’s hand and Alistair’s hand, sending them mages seeking asylum and a manifesto to convince them to offer it. It wasn’t perfect, but it was asylum, and it was freedom within whatever confines the king allowed, and Alistair allowed a lot. Anders might not have liked him as a person, but he could like him well enough as a king. His mages weren’t conscripted to the crown, they were just beholden to it like any other freeman, and maybe it just took seeing an evil king to appreciate a good one.

If freedom had to come with paperwork and politics… Amell was good at politics, and he had scribes for the paperwork, and Anders had him. He had a family. He had a future. He had freedom, and he was happy with all three. Anders put Orzammar behind him, but when they arrived at Vigil’s Keep, Anders was confronted with the harsh reminder that the things he put behind him didn’t always stay there.

Refugees had flooded the arling in their absence. They took the North Road back to Vigil’s Keep, along the Imperial Highway, and while they hadn’t passed the City of Amaranthine, Anders was willing to bet it was even worse than what they encountered at the Vigil. Refugees were encamped in the snow all along the Pilgrim’s Path, right up to the gates of Vigil’s Keep, where a crowd quickly manifested to accost them on their arrival.

A big crowd. Anders pulled the caravan curtain aside to reveal refugees, soldiers, wardens, and all manner of folk clamoring for Amell’s attention before they even reached the stables.

Morrigan pinched Amell awake, “Your adoring public awaits.”

“Don’t look too adorin’ to me,” Oghren grunted. “Looks like his Royal Whineness decided not to wait for you to come to him. Got the whole King’s Guard out there, Boss.”

“Do you suppose it’s too late to turn around and head back to Orzammar?” Anders joked.

Amell sighed, “Who else is with him?”

“No Lel,” Oghren noted as the caravan rattled to a halt outside the stables. “Better brace yourself. Don’t see the old gal either, though, so there’s that.”

“Fantastic,” Amell said flatly.

The Silver Order cleared a path through the crowd, and the King’s Guard claimed it, trampling through the snow. The seneschal escorted them, but for the life of him Anders couldn’t remember his name, or anything about him other than the fact that Anders had hated him for supporting Leonie. Anders wasn’t sure if he still hated him, but he was fairly certain he still hated Alistair. Anders climbed out of the caravan and into the snow, and helped Amell and Kieran do the same.

“Chancellor,” Alistair wore a heavy leather jerkin lined in thick orange fox fur, sans any armor, ceremonial or otherwise, save for the sword at his hip. Anders couldn’t not notice it with how Alistair kept his hand on it, but it was hard to say if it was supposed to be threatening, considering Alistair’s posture was lost on the man he might have been threatening. “Or maybe I should just call you Your Grace, since everything gets done by it.”

“You want to do this now?” Amell hissed under his breath, stepping so close to Alistair the only thing that kept them from colliding was the hand Alistair set on his chest to ward him off. “In front of my son?”

“I want-” Alistair took one look at the scars on Amell’s face, and his entire demeanor changed. The anger fled from his expression, replaced with something between confusion and concern. His hand moved from Amell’s chest to his cheek to trace over the splash of acid, and the contact must have surprised Amell because he didn’t do anything to stop it. If anything, for a moment he seemed to appreciate it, until Alistair spoke. “What happened to your face?”

“Don’t pretend you care,” Amell broke the illusion, smacking his hand off. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m the King. I can be wherever I want,” Alistair huffed. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting for you?”

“The roads are snowed!” Amell hissed.

“You were expected back three days ago,” Alistair said

“The weather?” Amell scoffed. “Again, Alistair? You’re blaming me for the weather again?”

“I’m blaming you for-” Alistair started.

“Your father is dying,” Kieran interrupted.

“What did you say?” Alistair stopped mid-tirade to look at him.

Anders didn’t want Alistair looking anywhere near Kieran, and apparently neither did Morrigan. She set her hands on Kieran’s shoulders, her entire body hissing with magic while she glared over his shoulder. “He said your father is dying, which I can arrange for the two of you to have in common, if you wish.”

“... my father is dead,” Alistair corrected Kieran.

“Don’t talk to him,” Amell said. “Kieran, go with your mother.”

“Yes, Father,” Kieran said.

Anders ruffled his hair, “I’ll see you later, Creepy.”

Morrigan transformed into a giant spider, limbs breaking out all along her ribs as an arachnid the size of a horse took her place, hissing fury and dripping venom. The Silver Order had no reaction, but the King’s Guard faltered, and Alistair squeaked, stumbling back a pace as Kieran climbed up onto her back. Refugees and soldiers scattered out of the way, and the giant spider scuttled off into the Keep.

Alistair watched her go, muttering, “I hate it when she does that.”

“Good,” Amell said.

Alistair scowled, “You-”

“Commander,” The seneschal interrupted them with a low bow. “The Maker smiles on your safe return. Bann Howe has requested your immediate presence in the city.”

“Bann Howe can wait,” Alistair snapped.

“With all due respect, your majesty,” The seneschal said, in a way that seemed to imply Alistair was due none. “The arling is in crisis. Perhaps we could discuss it in the war room?”

Anders set Amell’s hand on his arm, “I’m coming with.”

“Who are you?” Alistair blinked.

“You know damn well who I am,” Anders snapped.

“I know Amell doesn’t need an escort,” Alistair said, insulting Amell’s disability and their relationship all in one fell swoop.

“I’m not his escort,” Anders snapped. “I’m his partner and his healer, and we both know he needs one with you around.”

“Anders,” Amell set a hand on his chest, like Alistair hadn’t just compared him to a whore and a dog and simultaneously claimed Amell had no need of either. Like he wasn’t blind just because he had a few accommodations for it.

“What?” Anders demanded.

“Let’s just go inside,” Amell urged him forward.

The Grey Wardens back from Orzammar dispersed through the Vigil, and servants and stablehands fought their way through the sea of onlookers to unload the carriage. Anders led Amell after Alistair and the seneschal to the war room, barring a brief stop for Dumat when Amell’s mabari fled the kennels to join them. Ser Cumference was probably around, but apparently His Royal Dick Ass couldn’t give them ten minutes to recover from ten days on the road.

The air in the war room felt cramped, even empty as it was. Seneschal Someone joined the three of them, and was the only one who took a seat of the dozens available. Amell found a chair and stood next to it, Dumat at his feet, so Anders stood with him. Alistair decided to pace like he always did. He circled the war table, running his hands through his hair, muttering under his breath, and generally setting Anders on edge.

“I asked you to do one thing, Amell,” Alistair started up almost immediately. “Stop the abductions in West Hill and blame them on the darkspawn. One thing. Not two, not three-”

“Alistair, if I have to listen to you count to ten I’ll kill myself,” Amell cut him off.

“What in the Maker’s name were you thinking starting a Circle of Magi in Orzammar?” Alistair demanded.

“I was thinking about how much I was looking forward to this conversation,” Amell said flatly.

“He didn’t start the Circle in Orzammar,” Anders said, taking a defensive spot in front of Amell when Alistair’s pacing brought him back around to their side of the table. “The Mages’ Collective and I did.” For all the good it had done.

“Thank you for that,” Alistair said sarcastically, pacing back in the opposite direction. “At least now when the Divine launches an Exalted March on Ferelden, she’ll stop in Orzammar first.”

“You’re welcome,” Anders joked.

“This isn’t a joke!” Alistair said.

“Orzammar’s Circle is a joke,” Anders said. Anders had said it so many times he was sick of saying it. Orzammar’s Circle was supposed to give Ferelden’s mages a chance at freedom and all it gave them a different kind of servitude. “They’re conscripts. Indentured servants. The Divine will be delighted.”

“That’s worse,” Alistair said. “You see how that’s worse, don’t you? I told you to stop the abductions, not excuse them. Ferelden’s mages are free - we can’t condone Orzammar conscripting them out from under our feet.”

“Why not?” Anders asked, frustrated. Ferelden’s mages weren’t free, and the freedoms they had would only last as long as Alistair didn’t have to risk anything to allow them those freedoms. He’d never stand up to the Divine for them. “You condone everything else. Tranquility, Harrowings, phylacteries-”

“If you’re going to list everything that goes on in a Circle, I’ll save you the time, I already know,” Alistair said.

“And you threatened to send Kieran to one anyway?” Anders demanded.

“What really happened at Bownammar, Amell?” Alistair ignored him.

“Bloody bastard,” Anders muttered under his breath.

Alistair either didn’t hear him or chose not to hear him. He continued, still pacing, “I got your missive. I don’t believe for a minute you stood against Branka. You always supported her and her research.”

“We were attacked by a Harvester,” Amell said, loosely following him with his eyes. “Which you would know if you read the missive.”

“And?” Alistair demanded. “You just agreed to Bhelen’s blockade? Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Amell frowned.

Alistair finally stopped pacing to frown back at him, but Alistair didn’t know him. Amell wasn’t the same man he’d been during the Blight. Amell was better than that man, because Anders had asked him to be better than that man. Amell didn’t explain any of that to Alistair, but the hand that held Anders’ arm squeezed lightly, in something almost like an apology or an assurance, because they both knew Amell’s change of heart hadn’t been ‘just like that.’

It was better than ‘just like that’ because ‘just like that’ only happened when someone forced it to happen, and they’d promised never to force each other to do anything. An uncomfortable silence settled over the room, like a blanket not quite big enough to share, broken by the occasional cleared throat or tapped foot. Eventually, the seneschal threw it off.

“With your leave, your Majesty, Commander,” The seneschal said, and received a wave from both men to continue. “As I was saying in the courtyard, the arling is in crisis because Kirkwall is in crisis. Refugees have been flooding in from across the Waking Sea for the past fortnight.”

“What are they fleeing?” Amell asked.

“Would that I could say, but I don’t know what’s to be believed. They’ve brought with them… stories,” The seneschal said, rapping his fingers on the table. “I’m not sure what to make of them. The Viscount has raised the harbor’s chains and all sea traffic is blocked-”

“Because of the sanctions?” Alistair guessed, and resumed pacing.

“We don’t believe so, your Majesty,” The seneschal shook his head. “They’re not charging any fees or allowing any ships to dock. They’ve just closed their ports.”

“Why?” Amell asked.

“We think it’s the plague,” The seneschal said gravely.

“Which plague?” Anders asked. “White? Black?”

“... Red, Warden,” The seneschal said.

“There is no red plague,” Anders said.

“Tell that to the ships in Amaranthine’s harbor,” The seneschal sighed, running a hand through his greying blonde hair. “Bann Howe has allowed them to dock, but refused to allow them to disembark. I called for her to burn them, and all the men upon them, but she will not without your order. She says she won’t be her father, but Rendon burned men for pleasure, not for purpose. I’ve tried to talk sense into her, but-”

“Sense!?” Anders cut him off. Andraste’s bloody pyre, what was wrong with the man? They couldn’t just burn a ship’s worth of people because they might spread the plague. It would be like burning a city because it might fall to darkspawn, but the Wardens had already done that, and Anders had been there for it, and he wasn’t going to be there for it again. “You think burning a ship full of innocent people is talking sense!?”

“People with the plague,” The seneschal stressed, like it mattered.

“They’re people!” Anders snapped. “People who came to you for help and you want to meet them with a match!”

“I don’t want to meet them at all,” The seneschal corrected him. “They’ve brought the plague with them and they should burn for it. Kirkwall quarantined itself for a reason. These refugees risk us all. It’s bad enough that Bann Howe allows them through if they show no symptoms, but she’s wasting resources allowing the plague ships to dock. Commander, I beg you burn them.”

“Now hang on-” Alistair leaned on the war table, and set a hand to the Frostback Mountains, but he must not have realized or remembered that the map carved into it was tactile, and quickly snatched his hand back to shake off the bite of the Frozen Teeth. “Kirkwall took in Fereldan refugees during the Blight, even with the risk of Blight Sickness they brought to the city. We can’t just burn them the second they show up on our doorstep.”

“With all due respect, your majesty, our people fled the darkspawn. Kirkwall sent them back to us. These-... plague victims are no weeping wastrels. They’re mad - and their madness spreads,” The seneschal said. “It starts with paranoia, possessiveness, and violence, and escalates quickly. By the time you can tell there’s something wrong it’s too late. They seem… bloated with blood. Their skin pales and their veins bulge, and a red glow takes them as they petrify in pieces. And that’s assuming they survive that long, and they haven’t gone mad and eaten themselves and each other. I say again: burn them.”

That wasn’t a plague. That was lyrium. That was red lyrium. That was the red lyrium Varric had warned him about that had driven Bartrand mad, and Anders had spent years trying and failing to cleanse. Red lyrium, Hawke’s lyrium, consumed men from the inside out until there was nothing left of them but madness and misery. Anders had seen it. Anders had suffered it. Anders had never saved anyone from it.

“Don’t you think that’s a little dramatic?” Alistair asked.

“I think the situation is rather dramatic, your majesty,” The seneschal said.

“It’s not a plague,” Anders pulled out a chair for himself and sat down. “It’s lyrium exposure.”

Alistair shot him a doubtful look, “I don’t know what kind of lyrium you’ve been exposed to, but as someone who’s taken it I can tell you: it doesn’t do that.”

“It’s not normal lyrium,” Anders explained, trying and failing not to twitch at the reminder that Alistair had been a templar once upon a time. “It’s red lyrium. There’s something wrong with it. It’s like it’s backwards somehow.”

“It’s Blighted,” Amell said.

“Blighted?” Alistair repeated. “You can’t Blight lyrium, Amell. Maker, I am so sick of your lies-”

“Why would I be lying?” Amell demanded.

“To cover up whatever you’re lying about!” Alistair said. “Your cousin, the Viscount of Kirkwall, attacks you in broad daylight in the middle of Denerim and now, three months later, he’s sending us plague ships full of refugees? Don’t pretend you don’t have something to do with this.”

“What, Alistair?” Amell asked. “What do I have to do with it?”

“I don’t know!” Alistair threw up his hands. “Something!”

“Aggressive. Paranoid,” Anders ticked off symptoms on his fingers. “That lyrium you took wasn’t red, was it?”

“You-!” Alistair sputtered, storming around the table, but he stopped when Anders threatened to stand up. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“... doesn’t he?” Amell asked.

“What?” Alistair asked.

“You’re taking it again, aren’t you?” Amell asked.

“Taking what?” Anders asked, glancing between the two of them. “... taking lyrium?”

“Even if I was, which I’m not, it’s none of your damn business,” Alistair snapped. “You don’t get to question me. I’m your king-”

“You’re an addict,” Amell cut him off.

“I guess it takes one to know one,” Alistair sneered.

“Really?” Amell asked. “We’re doing that?”

“Don’t talk to me about addiction,” Alistair said. “Don’t even get me started. If it exists, you’ve rolled it up and smoked it.”

“Prove it then,” Amell drew his dagger from his boot, and startled everyone but Alistair. Amell walked to him, and pressed the dagger hilt first into Alistair’s chest. “Bleed red and not blue.”

“I don’t have to prove anything to you,” Alistair took the dagger and tossed it on the war table.

“You are taking it,” Amell said.

“Don’t even-” Alistair started.

“You begged me to help you quit!” Amell cut him off.

“You compelled me to quit!” Alistair corrected him.

“You begged me to compel you!” Amell shouted.

“I didn’t need your help!” Alistair shouted back.

“You always needed my help!” Amell said. “Every day of your life you’ve needed my help-”

“You never helped me!” Alistair grabbed a handful of his tunic, and ignored Dumat growling beside him, and the fact that Anders stood up right along with him. “You used me and then you cast me aside-”

“I helped you through weeks of withdrawal-” Amell snarled.

“Because we ran out of lyrium!” Alistair said. “Not because you wanted to!”

“I wanted-” Amell pried Alistair’s hand off his tunic and twisted his wrist to pull him closer, hissing through grit teeth. “-you on the field. You quit the field. Branka quit the field.” Amell let him go with a hard shove that wasn’t quite hard enough to stagger him. “... She quit the field.”

Amell ran a hand through his hair, and Alistair set his on his shoulder. Amell shrugged like he was trying to shrug him off, but didn’t quite manage it. “... I’m sorry,” Alistair said.

“We’re not allies,” Amell shook his head. “I hope she rots.”

“... Is that what happened to your face?” Alistair guessed.

Amell scowled for the question, “Will you stop-”

“It’s a nice scar,” Alistair said quickly. “Reminds me of Riordan. You know, the scar on his face from when Howe tried to skin him? You said it was-... Well, I don’t remember what you said it was but I know you liked it.”

“...I think it’s probably a good thing you can’t remember what I said,” Amell said, grinning cautiously.

“You know what I’d like?” Anders asked, unable to help prickling over that grin when Alistair still had his hand on Amell’s shoulder. “If you could stop flirting with my lover in front of me.”

“I’m not-!” Alistair sputtered, backpedaling so quickly he might have sprained an ankle tripping over his own feet. “I wouldn’t-I don’t-you-”

“I’m sorry, Ali,” Amell said, grinning in full. “I couldn’t be more spoken for.”

“Great,” Alistair said flatly. “I’ll have Lel plan the wedding.”

“You do that,” Anders blurted thoughtlessly. “Don’t forget to uninvite yourself and our fathers while you’re at it, and make sure you find a cleric willing to marry three people, who won’t mind if we set the Chantry on fire afterwards.”

The words went everywhere, like red wine on a white rug, sinking in and staining the rest of the conversation. Alistair stared at him, mouth agape. Seneschal What’s-His-Name picked at his nails. Amell raised a single slow eyebrow. “... You want to get married?”

“I-... just-... want to save people instead of setting them on fire,” Anders said, wishing someone would save him while they were at it. Maker, why couldn’t he just keep his bloody mouth shut?

“... you said the lyrium’s Blighted?” Alistair came to his rescue, of all people. “Conscription should cure the plague then, shouldn’t it?”

“Anders?” Amell asked.

“We could try,” Anders said, relieved the topic went elsewhere. “It could also make it worse. I don’t know if the lyrium feeds off the Taint, or the Taint feeds off the lyrium, or both. We could just end up spreading the corruption.”

“Can you cleanse it?” Amell asked.

“The Blight?” That couldn’t have been a serious question.

“Merrill could,” Amell said.

“... I’m not Merrill,” And thank the Maker for that. “I tried to cleanse someone red lyrium drove to madness, but I could only give them their mind back in moments.”

“So we burn them,” The seneschal said like that settled it.

“I didn’t say that,” Anders hissed at the nameless bastard. “Maybe if I knew more about Merrill’s magic I could try again or try something else. We have to try something. We can’t just burn these people.”

“A flint would beg to differ,” The seneschal said.

“We’re not striking one,” Alistair actually agreed with him, but then he looked at Amell, and for one horrible moment Anders had no idea what he would say. “Not without the Commander’s say.”

“Commander?” The seneschal prompted when Amell hesitated. Anders hated that he hesitated.

“If Anders says he can heal it, then he can heal it,” Amell said eventually, justly, faithfully. “We’ll leave for Amaranthine in the morning.”

“As you say, Commander. Your Majesty,” The seneschal left.

“Anders, can you give us a moment?” Amell asked.

“Fine,” Anders relented, reliving his ridiculous rant and relieved for any excuse to flee from it. “But if he touches you again, on the Maker, I don’t care how-”

“Regicide?” Alistair guessed.

“I was going for tyrannicide, but close,” Anders flashed him a humorless grin.

“Morrigan spent a lot of time talking magic with Merrill,” Amell told him. “I’m sure she copied a few spells into her grimoire you can look over before we leave for Amaranthine in the morning.”

Morrigan may as well have copied Merrill’s entire life. Her room was a veritable library of ancient elven scrolls, tomes, and relics, decorated with tapestry after tapestry of the Korcari Wilds, one of which Anders finally realized covered her eluvian. One awkward conversation and several “Amell said”’s later, and Morrigan let him borrow the grimoire containing everything she’d copied from Merrill on her research into the Blight.

Anders went and found Ser Fenley, and by extension Ser Cumference, and dragged the fat bastard out of the barracks and into Amell’s room. A bribe of dried fish from the kitchens got the little blighter to stay in Amell’s room, where Anders did his best to read over the grimoire with Ser Cumference getting in the way begging for more fish when he ran out. Anders abandoned the grimoire after Ser Cumference’s third headbutt to pay attention to him instead.

It was hard to pay attention to the grimoire, knowing everything within was Merrill’s magic, and knowing what Merrill’s magic had done to him. Harder still knowing that Merrill had given him the very cat that was comforting him while he dealt with what he knew. Ser Cumference butted heads with him again, exhaling fish and death, and Anders wrinkled his nose, scratching his ear. “Hey, you little bastard.

“You didn’t do any of that to me. You were right there in that room with me. You didn’t want to be there, though, did you? You wanted to be here, where you have a whole Keep to explore, and all the freedom you could ever want. I wanted to be here too. Maker, I wanted to be here for so long, and I just-... I just got engaged instead. I don’t want to get engaged again. I don’t want to tell him I don’t want to get engaged again.

“... They ruined-... everything I ever wanted. … Fuck… It’s not like I don’t still want all of that. I still want to get married, and have children, and drink bloody water without-... thinking about-... Maker, I hate her. I fucking hate her. You know, you could have fought her. Anytime she came to make another dose, you could have taken her. You’re like twice her size, you fat little bastard.

“... I could have taken her. I could have broken one of her bloody vials and taken that bloody broken glass and broken her bloody mind. Damn me, I could have taken both of them.”

Unsurprisingly, Ser Cumference didn’t have anything to say to any of that. Anders wasn’t sure what Amell would have to say to any of it either, but he felt like he should tell him some of it. Anders spent the rest of the day working up the nerve to say something, and it took him well into the evening to find the words. It had taken him five years just to say three words, and he didn’t want Amell to doubt those three words because of any that came after them.

“Amell?” Anders asked, lying awake in their room and their bed and Amell’s arms.

“Hm?” Amell hummed.

“Love?” Anders prompted.

“I’m awake,” Amell promised, hugging him to him.

“I’m not ready to get married,” Anders forced the words out slowly, one after the other, trying to find his footing on unstable ground without ruining the foundation of their relationship.

“Okay,” Amell said just as slowly, just as softly, and it made it easier to keep going.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready,” Anders said.

“Okay,” Amell said.

“... is it?” Anders asked.

“Of course it is,” Amell said, but it had been so hard for Anders to ask and it didn’t seem like it should be so easy for Amell to answer.

“... do you not want to marry me?” Anders whispered.

“Marriage isn’t something I ever thought I’d have,” Amell explained. “Men don’t marry men and mages don’t marry mages so I never dreamed of getting married. … I dreamed of you. I love you. I don’t need the Chantry’s approval for that, and I don’t want it.”

Anders interlaced their fingers, and pulled Amell’s hand from his waist to hold against his heart. “... marriage is more than that to me.”

“... then tell me when you’re ready for more.”

They rode to Amaranthine in the morning. Anders knew it wasn’t a real plague, but he dressed for one anyway. Staff, gloves, boots, a mask that made him feel Orlesian. An apron of lyrium-resistant loden wool. There were more than a few lying around, considering Amell had his miners mining lyrium outside of the Chantry’s jurisdiction, which was both incredibly illegal and incredibly attractive, much unlike Anders’ outfit. A tarred leather overcoat covered all of it, just in case anyone decided to slit their wrists and start flinging blood at him like they had the last time Anders had encountered a group of lyrium-addled ghouls.

The Red Plague might not have been a real plague, but that didn’t make it any less dangerous. The ships were quarantined for a reason, and that reason could ruin the entire arling if they weren’t careful with how they handled it. Amell got him a room in the Fisherman’s Rest that opened up out onto the wharves so Anders wouldn’t have to cross paths with anyone but the refugees on the plague ships while he treated them, and Nathaniel’s sister Bann Delilah Howe ordered the guard to keep them clear just in case. Anders wasn’t sure how long it would take him to treat them, or if he even could, but he had to try.

“What happened to these people isn’t your fault,” Amell said, standing on the docks with him. “It’s not your fault if you can’t heal them.”

“Someone’s been listening to Kieran’s lessons,” Anders joked.

“He has a good teacher,” Amell said, and after a moment, added, “He has a good father.”

“I love you,” Anders said.

“I love you too,” Amell said.

The plague ship was moored to the pier like a hanged man to the noose, swaying gently in the sea without a single sign of life upon it. Anders climbed the gangway, the creak of wood like the cracking of bones, and found the deck deserted. Below deck, he found death. Worse, he found the absence of it.

Red eyes glowed in the dark, in the seconds between seconds before Anders summoned a sphere of magelight, and illuminated the heart of a horror. Red lyrium grew like veins along the curved walls of the ship, pulsing to some long forgotten rhythm and swallowing souls. It sprouted from the dead and the dying, growing over and through them, fusing their joints at terrible angles. What little flesh remained was ashen and drained of all blood as the lyrium crystalized and consumed them.

“Maker, have mercy,” Anders whispered. “... Hawke, what have you done?”

Chapter 191: Something in the Water

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments! They are incredibly motivating in keeping the story going. I promise I read them even though I may not respond. Thank you for all of your bookmarks, subscriptions and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:36 Dragon 27 Cassus Afternoon
City of Amaranthine - The Plague Docks

It was worse than a plague.

The people ceased to be people. They were just red. Lyrium and blood and rage. There were three plague ships in the harbor, and the only mercy was that the first was the worst of them. For whatever reason, it had spread faster than the other ships, a pulsing heart of red lyrium in the ship’s hold that might have been people once upon a time but was something else now.

Anders didn’t even know where to start. There were seven survivors, if you could call them that, which Anders didn’t, in the blighted mass. They followed him with glowing red eyes as he walked through the hold, embedded in the walls of the ship and each other. None of them spoke. None of them seemed capable of speech. They were only capable of sound.

Sounds not quite screams, or maybe just like them, but backwards. Agonized inhales of air - all rage and pain - and Maker save them, because Anders couldn’t, but it hurt to hear. Anders felt every scream like a physical ache deep in his chest. It brought him low and left him weeping into his knees for longer than he cared to admit, for more reasons than he could even understand. It was so bloody red. It was so bloody wrong.

The hold was hot and heavy with anger. Anders was sweltering under his overcoat, but everyone in the hold was worse off than him. They needed his help more than they needed his pity. Anders picked himself up, and dragged himself to the first survivor embedded in the wall of the hold. He couldn’t say if they were a man or a woman or a human or an elf. He could barely even say if they were alive. Glowing red eyes watched him from a sphere that might have been a skull, drained skin stretched over lyrium that was fused to the poor person’s bones.

There was a jaw in there, somewhere. A grate of lyrium on lyrium as the person snarled at him. Their nose was gone, a hole in its place that whistled with every raspy breath. A single spindly arm made mostly of veins swiped at him, too far away to be the same person, but it had to have been. No one else near them had any signs of life, or whatever passed for it in this voidscape. There was no way Anders could heal them. He’d have to mine them out of the bloody walls.

There was nothing he could do for them until then. Just being near them was agony; the heat of the lyrium felt like it was melting him down to ash and salt beneath all of his leather and loden. Anders spent as long as he could bare to spend in the hold, trying to find some sign of something that would have made the seven souls back into people. A wedding ring, a ribbon or a locket, anything at all, but there was nothing left. The lyrium had claimed all of it.

The docks had been quarantined, three piers worth of plague ships haphazardly sectioned off with a mix of crates, barrels, and other barricades - painted with yellow circles to warn of the plague. A few of the bann’s men guarded each entrance, and were promised to provide him whatever aid he asked for, but Anders was pretty sure they expected him to ask for blankets and poultices, and not pickaxes and chisels.

If nothing else, Anders had to see if it was possible to get whatever was left of them out. He wasn’t about to delude himself into thinking there were still bodies, somewhere in that mass, but he had to try anyway. He had to try for Franke and his girls, and the little burnt shoe shop buried beneath the rebuilt Amaranthine markets. Anders took a steadying breath of veilfire and went to the second plague ship.

There were still people on it. People people. They peered down at him with glowing red eyes, and shuffled back when he boarded like he was the danger between them. They were all thin, almost starved, their skin pale and pulsing with lyrium. The second ship was just as hot as the first; everyone was sweating, despite the snow that dusted the deck. Their hair damp, their skin glistening, their clothes stained at the pits and collars.

They seemed sane, or sane enough. It reminded Anders of the Chantry Sanitarium in Kirkwall for the addled and the mad where Varric had sent Bartrand, save that no Brothers and Sisters walked among them. Hardly anyone walking among them. The survivors sagged against the railing, confined themselves to corners, and shambled about like the risen dead.

One of them shambled over to him. A human woman, more red than the rest. The color wasn’t just in her eyes; it was in her hair, and her armor, emblazoned with the emblem of the Kirkwall City Guard. Anders might have mistaken her for Aveline, if she was a head taller and a few hands wider. The guardswoman took in his outfit, anxiously cracking her knuckles, and Anders pretended not to notice the flakes of lyrium that fell from them. “... Healin’ or burnin’?”

“Healing,” Anders promised. “How…” sane are you? “How bad is it?”

“‘S bad,” The guardswoman mumbled, scratching at her scalp, and several more red flakes fell like dandruff. “Hungry. Don’t give us enough to feed it.”

“To feed it?” Anders asked. “You mean the lyrium?”

The guardswoman nodded several times, “Gotta feed it or it feeds itself.”

Well that sounded bad. “What do you mean it feeds itself?”

“‘So hungry,” The guardswoman said unhelpfully. She swayed unsteadily, and if her arms were any gauge her legs didn’t have the strength to hold her up for long.

“Easy,” Anders set a guiding hand on her shoulder. “You don’t look like you should be standing. Why don’t we get you down into the hold-”

“No!” The guardswoman flailed away from him and into the railing. “Faran-... Faran’s the hold now.”

“Okay, we won’t go in the hold,” Anders eased her down to sit instead, channelling a panacea. When he was sure she was stable, he dragged over an empty water barrel and filled it with primal magic for her to drink. The guardswoman seemed like she couldn’t decide if she was dying of thirst or dying of heat, because she threw every other cup in her face. Anders sat on the safe side of her, and the rest of the survivors shuffled over at the sight of fresh water.

There were perhaps a dozen of them, and they all seemed to have a strange unspoken rule that kept them equidistance from each other. They settled in a loose circle around the water barrel, passing it politely, whispering the occasional, “Water, messere?” whenever they emptied it.

They didn’t seem anything like the mindless monsters the seneschal had accused them of being. They were just people. Tired, starving, thirsty people. “What happened to Faran?” Anders asked.

“He’s the hold now,” The guardswoman said.

“He fed it,” Someone else added.

“Fed … the lyrium?” Anders repeated slowly. “What did he feed it?”

“More lyrium,” The guardswoman said ominously.

“How?” Anders asked.

The guardswoman shook her head. Droplets of sweat or blood or lyrium splattered across his overcoat. None of the other ghouls offered any answers.

“What’s your name?” Anders pressed on. “Do you remember?”

“Marsa,” Marsa said.

“My name is Anders,” Anders tapped his chest. “Can you tell me what-”

“Anders?” A familiar voice repeated, but Anders didn’t recognize the face attached to it. His skin might have been bronze, once upon a time, but it was ashen now. His eyes, like all the others, were red. They hadn’t been red before. They’d been topaz. They’d been every topaz.

“Dalian?” It couldn’t be Dalian. Anders had freed Dalian from the Gallows through the tunnels beneath the Waking Sea, and found him a place in the Blooming Rose and the Mages’ Collective. Anders had saved him, so it couldn’t be him, because Anders didn’t know if he could save him again. “What are you doing here? What happened to you?”

“The red,” Dalian whispered. He felt wrong. Something in his aura that made his magic seem backwards and broken. He wasn’t Tranquil, but he wasn’t right either. “... it was in the water.”

“Told the Captain I could taste it,” Marsa agreed.

“Aveline?” Anders guessed. “What does Aveline have to do with any of this?”

“Bitch,” Marsa muttered. “Helpin’ it. Hidin’ it. She told us not to taste it. I told her I could taste it.”

“How did red lyrium get in the water?” Anders asked.

“The Viscount,” Marsa said, because of course she did. Anders was never going to escape him. “We should have taken the water. I told the Captain to take it. She didn’t take it. She was too scared of him to take it, but it’s too red. He made it too red. They all take the red. We couldn’t take the red so we ran but they wouldn’t let anyone run. The chains-... They raised the chains-... the other ships-....”

Marsa couldn’t finish. She hugged her knees to her chest and started crying, bright ruby red tears streaming down her ashen face while Anders tried to make sense of what she said. Kirkwall was infested with red lyrium, but Anders already knew that. Varric had told him Hawke was obsessed with red lyrium, and that he’d convinced the Carta to mine it for him, and Anders had seen the effects of that first hand. The Red Irons may as well be the Red Templars at this rate.

For some reason, Anders hadn’t thought Hawke’s obsession could get any worse, but it must have. The ghouls all seemed in agreement that the Viscount had tainted Kirkwall’s water supply, and the Guard Captain hadn’t stopped him, either because Aveline was afraid of him or because she supported him. Anders doubted they’d raised the chains to the harbor and locked down the city to quarantine the spread of the plague. If anything, it sounded like they’d done it to stop people from escaping it.

“Bones in the harbor,” Dalian said, but Anders wasn’t sure if he was continuing Marsa’s story or starting his own. Maybe both.

“That’s not going to happen to you,” Anders might have lied, but if it was a lie, then the poor bastards deserved the mercy of being lied to. “Why did the Viscount poison the water? Why didn’t anyone stop him?”

“His water,” Marsa sniffled. “His city. He owns the red. We need the red, we need him. He makes us need the red…”

“You’re telling me he poisoned the water just to hold the city hostage?” Anders demanded. “He’s already the bloody Viscount! What more does he want?”

“The Circle,” Dalian said. “Stannard has the red too… The Viscount wants her red. He says she has too much red, but they all have too much red. The templars, the guard, the Irons… they all have too much red. They fight over the red in the streets.”

“Meredith?” Anders asked. “You’re telling me Hawke’s fighting Meredith for… what? For control of the city and the Circle?”

Dalian nodded.

“Damnit, Hawke,” Anders muttered. Why couldn’t he just stop? Why couldn’t he ever just stop? What more could he possibly want? What more could he possibly take? “What happened to the Collective?”

“Hiding. Hurting. Hoping,” Dalian muttered, scratching at his arms. “Helping. We summon the water… the water without the red… It was too late for me. I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was red. I didn’t know how to make it not. It-... changes the magic.”

“Changes it how?” Anders asked.

“It burns too hot,” Dalian said unhelpfully. “It burns too fast. It hurts too much to help.”

“Is anyone else infected?” Anders wasn’t sure why he even asked. The whole bloody city was infected. Red Templars and Red Irons and Red Guardsman all fighting in the streets with innocent mages and men caught in the middle, and Hawke and Meredith were to blame for all of it just like they always were.

“No,” Dalian shook his head. “Bancroft warned us, but the Rose-... They gave us the red. The nobles came for the red. It spreads where it bleeds… The Coterie cut us pretty.” Dalian tugged his tunic down to reveal a ring of red lyrium along his collarbone, like a ruby red necklace, and then tugged it up, where the red lyrium dotted down his stomach to his navel like piercings.

“Fucking flames,” Anders muttered. Unbidden, he thought of Hawke, and the lightning that had scorched his face, and wondered if red lyrium had grown from the scars. If it had, it hadn’t spread nearly enough, or Hawke would be like the heart he’d found on the first plague ship. “... How is he doing this?” Anders asked.

“Who?” Dalian asked.

“Hawke. The Viscount,” Anders said. “How is he still alive? He’s been on red lyrium longer than any of you. It should have killed him by now.”

“It doesn’t kill,” Dalian said. “It consumes.”

Anders didn’t see a distinction. “Fine, then it should have consumed him by now.”

“It consumes some,” Dalian said. “Some consume it.”

“He keeps it fed,” Marsa said. “Hightown keeps it fed. They eat. They eat, and eat, and eat and it doesn’t eat them. Lowtown can’t eat… so it eats them.”

Of course it did. Red lyrium was Tainted. It worked like the Taint, sustaining someone when they starved at the cost of consuming them, but a normal ghoul was nothing next to a red one. Seranni wasn’t at risk of becoming a blighted behemoth and spreading a red lyrium plague. She couldn’t even spread Blight Sickness since she’d taken the Joining. She was harmless. At worst, she was a little creepy.

There had to be some way to turn the red ghouls back into normal ghouls, whether or not Anders could turn them back into normal people. “Well, then I’ll make sure you have something to eat so the red lyrium isn’t eating you. I’m here to heal you, and it seems like food and water would be a good start, so I’m going to go check the hold-”

“No!” Marsa scrambled to her feet, but didn’t reach to stop him, or even go anywhere near him. Everyone seemed to put a solid three feet between themselves and the nearest person, Anders included. “We don’t go in! We don’t go in the hold and the skin and the teeth and the blood and the red-”

“We don’t go in,” The entire group chorused.

“We don’t go in,” Marsa said firmly.

“I have to go in,” Anders explained as patiently as he could to the group of ghouls. “I’m here to heal everyone. You said someone was in there.”

“No,” Marsa said.

“You told me Faran was in the hold, remember?” Anders said.

“Faran is the hold,” Dalian said.

“Okay…” Anders said slowly. “Well, I need to see if I can heal him, so I need to go in. You don’t have to go in with me.”

The ghouls exchanged nervous glances, but ultimately seemed to come to the conclusion that just because they didn’t go into the hold didn’t mean he couldn’t. Anders opened the door and made the descent. Beyond the blackened stairwell, lyrium pulsed. A vibrant, angry red, like the heart of a dragon with all the heat of its flames. The infestation was everywhere, stretched across the walls, dripping from the ceiling, crawling up the stairs. Somewhere deep within, Faran howled.

Anders couldn’t make him out amidst the lyrium. It was so thick it looked less like veins and more like coral, branching out through the hold and making it all but impassable. The air was sour, and sickening, if not for his mask Anders was sure he would have passed out. The lyrium seemed to want him weak, pulsing at his presence. Pieces burst apart like overripe pustules, spewing crystals that peppered the stairs and ripped through his overcoat. A red mist rose from the infestation, crackling with electricity like a cloud, and Anders stumbled back up the stairs without waiting to find out what it would do next.

Dalian was waiting for him back on the deck. “We don’t go in,” He said.

“We don’t go in,” Anders agreed.

The third plague ship wasn’t anything like the other two. The caravel was crumbling into the harbor. Chunks of the railing were missing, like people had charged straight through it throwing themselves off the ship. The sails were burnt, one of the masts had fallen, and there were holes along the hull. There was no gangplank for Anders to board, a rope ladder hanging over the side in its stead, swaying slightly in the wind.

Anders climbed. Somewhere up above, people were muttering. People who still sounded like people, but might not have been, and Anders didn’t have any other choice but to find out when he climbed up over the edge. There was a half-score of people in sight, all in varying stages of red lyrium exposure, corruption, or bloody decay. Some seemed alarmingly normal, without the slightest hint of red in their eyes. Others had the pale sweat of the second boat.

Still more were… changed. They were crystalized, but mobile. Their flesh was misshapen, the lyrium warping around and over their clothes and their armor, like it was trying to remake them into one of the hearts in the holds. Red lyrium sprouted from their joints, consumed and replaced their libs, and grew from the back of one poor bastard in spines. The rest of them were clustered around him for some reason, and seemed to be arguing about something.

“Get back!” One of the normal-looking fellows ordered as soon as he climbed aboard, but he didn’t have the look of a Kirkwaller. He was dressed like a member of the Amaranthine City Guard, but that didn’t make any sense, because the plague ships were in from Kirkwall. “Get back, damn you! I won’t let you burn us!”

“I’m not here to burn you-” Anders held up a hand.

“You lie!” The guardsman drew his sword and leveled it shakily. “I know the Bann was waiting for the order! The Arl wants to sink us into the sea!”

“He doesn’t want that,” Anders said quickly. Behind the guardsman, the group seemed to come to a consensus, and the spined one knelt while a woman with hands of red lyrium approached him. “I promise. I’m a Grey Warden-”

“You tell him we can fix it,” The guardsman ordered, with a glance over his shoulder at the cluster of infected. “You tell him-”

“What do you mean you can fix it?” Anders asked, watching while the woman took hold of one of the man’s spines. “Just wait-”

“We can fix it,” The guardsman said stubbornly.

The woman braced her foot against the man’s back and wrenched, ripping the red lyrium from his shoulder. A sound somewhere between shattered glass and cracked bone cut through the air as the spine broke off, and pieces of drained and dried flesh broke off with it. The man screamed like he’d been flayed, buckling in on himself, his hands shooting over his shoulder to clutch at his open back.

There in the open wound, Anders could still see more of the lyrium. Ripping off the spine hadn’t done anything for the poor bastard. The red lyrium was fused to his bones. It coated his shoulder blade like a metal casing, and spread out through the muscle, lining his veins as it slowly drained him of blood. The woman who’d maimed him dropped the spine, and the group pointed at the spines that were left, like they were arguing over which one she should remove next.

“Stop!” Anders rushed forward, but the guardsman cut him off, swordpoint to his chest, and for one mad moment Anders considered letting the man run him through just to get them to stop killing each other. “You’re not fixing anything! You’re going to kill him! You can’t just rip it out!”

“We have to do something!” The guardsman argued. “They’re going to burn us!”

“No they’re not!” Anders hissed. Damn Hawke. If not for Hawke, he could yell for them to stop. If not for Hawke, there wouldn’t be anything to stop in the first place. “Tell them to stop! Look at me. Look at what I’m wearing. You’ve seen plague doctors. You know I’m one of them.”

“Here for our bodies after you burn us,” The guardsman insisted - in case Anders had any doubt the man was infected and the red lyrium was driving him mad. Behind him, the woman grabbed hold of another spine, and Anders grabbed hold of the blood she’d spilled, and forced it into the guardsman.

“Tell them to stop,” Anders ordered.

“Stop!” The guardsman repeated obediently, twitching slightly under the compulsion.

“I’m here to help you,” Anders said.

“He’s here to help us!” The guardsman echoed.

“I’m here to heal you,” Anders said.

“He’s here to heal us!” The guardsman echoed.

The woman let go of the spine and the group looked over at him, but Anders didn’t have enough blood for all of them. He barely had enough blood for the guardsman, with how the red lyrium drained all of it, and how little was left in the spined man to spill.

Anders used the last of it, “You can trust me.”

“We can trust him!” The guardsman echoed.

The guardsman ceased his twitching when the spell ended, and lowered his sword. Anders watched him cautiously, but he didn’t revert back to threatening him, so the compulsion must have held. Anders darted around him to the spined man. The poor bastard lay sobbing on the deck of the ship, lyrium and blood trickling down his back from his open wound. Anders knelt beside him, regenerative energies sinking into what skin he had left in an effort to mend it.

It didn’t mend easy. There wasn’t nearly enough skin left to scar when so much of him was infested with red lyrium, but Anders had to be able to manage it, because Gleam had managed it. Jacen had kept his arm. There’d been almost nothing left of it when Anders had given the old Dalish to Levyn to look after: just tendons and bone. Anders had fully expected them to amputate it, but Gleam had regrown it somehow.

She’d grown it like new. The old Dalish was missing vallaslin on the limb. The flesh and muscle seemed younger and healthier than the rest of him, free of any wrinkles or discoloration. There wasn’t even a single mole. Gleam had grown Jacen a brand new arm, and if she could do that with Spite, then Anders could do just as much if not more with Vengeance. Anders just had to focus on that side of himself, on that side of Justice, and he was sure he could heal him.

The refugees deserved vengeance as much as they deserved justice. Anders deserved vengeance as much as he deserved justice. Vengeance for everything that had happened to him in the Circle, vengeance for everything that had happened to him in Kirkwall, vengeance for everyone who had suffered as he had suffered.

“What in the Void were you thinking?” Anders asked while he channelled his spell. “Did you really think it would be that simple? That you could just rip the lyrium out of him? You could have killed him!”

“It has to come out,” The woman who’d ripped out the spine said, wringing and tugging at her hands, and Anders hoped she wasn’t mad enough to rip them off, but after what he’d just seen he wouldn’t have been surprised if she tried.

“We’re dead if it doesn’t,” The guardsman agreed.

“You’re not dead,” Anders said, and the spined man’s skin knit back together as if to prove it. The spell worked. The skin regrew enough to scar. It wasn’t a whole arm, but it was a whole something. A whole lot more than he’d ever managed before. “I’m here to heal you, but I can’t do that if you’re hurting yourselves. You have to promise me you won’t try anything like this again.”

“We have to try something,” One of the less infected women argued. She didn’t look or sound like a Kirkwaller either. In fact, the only people in the group who looked like Kirkwallers were the ones with the worst of the infection. “We can’t end up like them!”

“You’re from Amaranthine, aren’t you?” Anders guessed. “What are you doing on this ship? What happened here?”

“The red,” The woman with red-lyrium hands mumbled. “They couldn’t resist the red.”

“They attacked as soon as they docked,” The guardsman explained. “These… horrors… spilling over the deck of the ship, bursting out from the hold, laying siege to the city. A half dozen, maybe. We killed them all, but Bann Howe sentenced everyone they touched to their ship, where we found these others. They’re docile for now but they could go mad at any moment.”

“And start maiming each other like you just did?” Anders asked sarcastically.

“They’re going to burn us!” The guardsman protested.

“I told you they’re not,” Anders said firmly. “... There’s not anything wrong with the hold, is there?”

“Aside from the holes?” The guardsman asked.

Anders didn’t care about holes. He cared about a heart of red lyrium, and apparently there wasn’t one on the third ship. He had the infected carry the spined man below deck and get him as comfortable as they could, considering he had to lie on his stomach with the spines emerging from his back, and left the plague ship with the promise to return tomorrow.

Anders added more food, blankets, and poultices to his growing list of supplies for the Bann’s men to fetch for him. He went back to his room at the Fisherman’s Rest and changed out of his plague garb, and spent the better part of an hour washing it down with soap and lye, and spent the better part of another washing himself down with soap and lime water. It wasn’t a real plague, and anything else felt like overkill, especially considering Anders didn’t have any idea if anything else would work.

The only treatment he knew for lyrium exposure consisted of getting away from the lyrium, but that wasn’t exactly an option when it was buried under someone’s skin, so cleansing it seemed like his only option. The third ship seemed like the best place to start, considering half the crew had been infected recently, and might not have the red lyrium fused to their bones and threaded through their insides. Anders changed into his Grey Warden garb and sent a runner ahead of him to the Bann’s estate to let them know he was coming.

Delilah received him in the drawing room. It was strange to be received in a drawing room instead of a war room. Even stranger that it was… alarmingly pink. The floor, the walls, the ceiling. A collection of cushioned chairs ringed a fireplace, overwhich hung a massive mirror reflecting just how pink the room was. After years of dealing with leaders who ruled with an iron fist, it was almost surreal to be presented with one who used a velvet glove. Delilah wore a ruffled dress, also pink, and sat on the couch with Nathaniel and Amell, taking tea.

Nathaniel set aside his tea for his cane and stood, “Anders-”

“You probably shouldn’t touch me,” Anders warned him, backing up a pace. “Just in case. I’m not saying I’m infected, but we all know how easy it is to spread the taint. All it takes is contact, if something is blighted, and if it can spread to lyrium, it can spread to anything.”

Nathaniel sat back down with a nod, “All the more reason to burn the ships in the harbor.”

“I did not just hear you say that,” Anders scowled. "What happened to caring about people?"

"I do care about people," Nathaniel argued, reclaiming his tea. "I care about the people of this city."

“Peace, Nathan," Delilah frowned at him. "What would father say?"

"He'd say burn them," Nathaniel muttered into his tea.

"Precisely," Delilah waved Anders towards an empty chair. "Join us?"

Anders sat, propping his staff against his shoulder and waving away a servant who tried to pour him a cup of tea.

"How was it?" Amell asked.

Anders told them. Amell looked thoughtful. Nathaniel grim. Delilah so choked with emotion she dabbed at the corner of her hazel eyes with a kerchief. “And you’re sure you can heal them?” Delilah asked.

“The ones with blood left to cleanse,” Anders said. “I’m not sure about the rest.”

“We don’t know enough about the rest,” Nathaniel said.

“We know about lyrium,” Amell said. “We know about the Blight.”

“We don’t know about the two of them together,” Nathaniel said. “We’re not prepared to face a Red Blight.”

“We’re not there yet,” Amell assured him. “Three plague ships isn’t a Blight.”

“Three plague ships could be the start of one,” Nathaniel argued. “You told me yourself the Bownammar Harvester was the strongest you’d ever faced.”

“It was,” Amell ran his fingers through his hair. Almost. The pads of his fingers traced along his hairline, and Anders knew he was feeling over his scars for how they were healing. “Paragon Beirus said he’d be willing to research them for us, but he doesn’t have Branka’s level of expertise with golems and he’s never encountered red lyrium before. Neither have any of the other Warden Commanders.”

“Has anyone?” Nathaniel asked. “We’re walking into this blind… no offense.”

“Some taken,” Amell teased.

“Limping into this blind?” Nathaniel corrected himself. “Do we really think it’s a coincidence that a red lyrium plague is spreading from Kirkwall a month after we face a red lyrium harvester at Bownammar? Where does a Harvester even find a graveyard’s worth of dead darkspawn infested with red lyrium?”

“... I know where,” Anders said. Maker, but he wished he didn’t. He wished he didn’t know anything about red lyrium, and what it did, and where to find it, but he did. “It’s from a thaig in the Hinterlands.”

“Valammar?” Amell guessed.

“Below it,” Anders said.

“Then we need to go,” Nathaniel said. “We need to know what’s happening there, and we need to control what’s happening here. Anders, I hope you can heal them, I really do, but we may be left with no choice but to burn them.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Anders knew what it was to kill a man for mercy. He’d done it years ago in a Chantry basement, and he’d wear the reminder for the rest of his life. He was tired of killing men for mercy. He wanted to save them for it instead. “If you want me to light a pyre, I will, but don’t ask me to burn men at the stake. I’m a healer, and it will take a lot more than this to change that.”

Chapter 192: Plague Doctor

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 10 Verimensis Morning
City of Amaranthine - The Plague Docks

Anders was tired.

He’d spent the past two weeks doing everything he could to cleanse the poor souls on the plague ships, and he couldn’t say if he was making any progress. There’d been thirty-nine infected to start, including the hearts in the holds, and not including the infected who’d died before Anders had arrived. Anders didn’t have high hopes for more than a half-score of them. It took blood magic to cleanse the Blight, and it wasn’t something Merrill had ever managed on anything other than shards of glass or grass.

It took Maker-knew-what to cleanse lyrium exposure. Anders separated them into groups to start. The hearts, the horrors, the ghouls, and the exposed. He had the most hope for the latter, but he wasn’t willing to give up on the former. Amell was willing to consider recruitment, but the two who volunteered died in the Joining, and the third lost his nerve and died for it when Oghren killed him on his way out the door with apologetic, “Sorry kid.”

Anders burnt the bodies, and if nothing else, he was relieved to discover red lyrium could actually burn. It took for bloody ever, but it burned. Anders burned it, and kept burning it, and then burned it some more until he was sure the ashes were ash there was no red lyrium left in them. He couldn’t exactly do that to the plague ships, though. The wood would burn long before the lyrium, and it was bound to end up poisoning the water once it sank into the harbor.

Anders was willing to try with the seven souls in the first plague ship, but Faran was beyond him. The poor bastard was the hold. The ghouls hadn’t been wrong. Anders pieced the rest of the story together while he treated them. The cravings had driven Faran mad, and he’d eaten one of his friends alive and become the thing in the hold as a result. The rest of the ghouls had made a quick decision that they weren’t allowed near each other, in case the cravings became too much for them to bear.

Anders couldn’t get near Faran to even try mining him out. An electric mist overtook the hold whenever he stepped inside, and shards of lyrium launched through the air like arrows his warding runes did nothing to deflect. Anders didn’t see any other option but to burn him, but since he couldn’t do it in the harbor, he enlisted Isabela’s help when she docked in Amaranthine for First Day. The Siren’s Call II towed the plague ship to a dry dock in Alamar, and burnt it there.

She was due back in a few days, and Anders was looking forward to seeing her again. He was looking forward to seeing anyone who wasn’t a red lyrium ghoul. Anders lived at the Fisherman’s Rest, trying one cleansing spell after the next on anyone who still had blood left to cleanse and chipping away at red lyrium horrors with a chisel. Amell stayed at Vigil’s Keep with the rest of the Grey Wardens, visiting every few days with Kieran and the rest of his friends.

Nathaniel launched an expedition to the Valdasine Thaig below Valammar to investigate the source of red lyrium, which was apparently of interest to the First Warden as well. It should have been of interest to everyone, considering what it had done to the poor bastards who’d fled Kirkwall to escape it. Anders donned his plague doctor’s garb, and dragged himself out to the wharves to a chorus of incredibly uncomfortable cheers from the small crowd that gathered every morning.

If nothing else, the cheers were better than the protests. People pushing and shoving at the Bann’s men, screaming over the barricades for him to burn the ships and everyone on them. It was downright disgusting how bloodthirsty the crowds could get, flinging everything from rotten fruit to burning bottles at the plague ships and occasionally at him. Anders had taken a tomato once, and seriously considered answering back with a fireball.

But that was Justice, or Vengeance, or anything other than Anders. There were no tomatoes today, but there were a few flowers, limply tossed over the barricades and not quite lining his path to the plague ships. Anders picked them up with the supplies the Bann’s men left out for him, and gave most of them to Marsa to distribute. “Hey Dalian,” Anders joined the ghoul by the broken mast, where he sat rolling a pair of dice by himself. “Ready to try again?”

“Ready to bleed,” Dalian corrected him, rolling a seven. Lucky day, maybe.

“It’s good that you bleed, remember?” Anders reminded him, laying out his things. A scalpel, a chisel, poultices, bandanges, a bowl, the usual. “It means you still have blood.”

“It’s all red,” Dalian muttered, rolling again. A five.

Anders wasn’t sure what that meant. He set a bit of heather in front of Dalian. “This isn’t.”

“It’s pretty,” Dalian relented, picking up the flower instead of the dice, and maybe it was just Anders’ imagination, but he seemed a little more sane today.

“You ready?” Anders held out a hand for him.

“Ready,” Dalian gave him his hand.

Anders slit his wrist, and tried again. Every day, he tried again, cleansing the red lyrium from Dalian’s blood and the blood of the rest of the infected, and every day it felt like there was more. Anders filled the small wooden bowl with everything he cleansed, little red crystals like rubies and garnets, dredged from Dalian’s veins and dripping with his blood, and Anders knew it hurt. It couldn’t not. Dalian’s heart may as well have been pumping broken glass, and Anders had to channel a panacea while he worked to keep the cleansing from tearing him apart.

Anders didn’t want to think about why he knew that.

His patients took breaks throughout, when the pain got to be too much for whoever he was cleansing. A good rhythm was usually three people in rotation. Three out of the surviving thirty-one. Anders had lost eight people in not even as many days during the first week, before he’d found his rhythm in the second.

Faran, of course, burnt to death in an Alamari dry dock. Nera, one of the infected Anders had killed trying to cleanse. One of the hearts, who hadn’t survived being mined out of the wall. The three Grey Wardens. One of the horrors, when Anders had chiseled through a vein that wasn’t where it was supposed to be when the lyrium had cracked further than it was supposed to crack, and they’d bled out what little blood they had left faster than he could heal.

Anders was tired.

He finished with the first plague ship towards mid-afternoon, and met with the volunteers from Vigil’s Keep to help with the second. The Glavonaks were a clan of surface dwarves who’d worked for Amell at Vigil’s Keep for years as stonemasons and explosives experts, sealing off the Deep Roads beneath Ferelden from the darkspawn. They had experience mining lyrium. They did not have experience mining lyrium out of people or mining people out of lyrium.

Anders needed the help. He’d already lost a horror and a heart trying to save them on his own, and he wasn’t interested in losing anymore to his mistakes. The Glavonaks had the experience and the expertise to chip away at the lyrium safely, and Anders had the ability to keep the horrors and the hearts alive while they did it. It was agonizingly, meticulously slow, but everyone involved was just stubborn enough to do it if only to prove that they could.

Anders didn’t just need the help, he wanted it. He could handle the horrors, but the hearts were… harder. The hold was wretchedly hot and agonizingly angry. The decaying behemoths followed him with glowing red eyes, wailing and roaring, and they had to work in shifts and take so many breaks that by the time they came back it felt like the lyrium had completely regrown. Anders hated it, but he hated Hawke more.

He hated how much he thought about him, there in that pulsing red heart, surrounded by the screams of the damned. He hated the way the lyrium smelled, sweet and hot, like caramelized sugar on the verge of burning. Like Hawke, early in the morning, before he’d taken any baths or put on any of the sandalwood cologne Anders had bought for him once - sweet fucking Maker, just once - but the man kept bloody buying it over and over because he assumed - like he always assumed - that just because Anders had liked it once meant he’d like it forever.

Hawke had smelled like red lyrium for so long Anders could barely remember what he’d smelled like before. Dirt, maybe. Dirt and dog, like the rest of the Fereldan refugees, but Hawke wasn’t like the rest of the Fereldan refugees. He didn’t end up in a gang, he ran one. He didn’t work in the mines, he owned them. He didn’t suffer the city, the city suffered him. Anders saw first hand how the city suffered him, and it wasn’t just the red lyrium.

The Kirkwallers signed. The hearts and horrors beyond speech, who still had hands and could still use them, all signed amongst themselves. It took a few days for Anders to realize that one of the hearts he was trying to mine out of the wall wasn’t just swiping at him, it was signing at him. After eight months with no lessons, Anders couldn’t remember all of the words, but it came back to him easily enough, because he and the horrors all signed the same words. No. Help. Hurt. Stop.

Anders was tired.

It was good that they signed. It made it easier to help them and easier to know if they could. The hearts and the horrors were always in pain, but as long as they signed Anders and the Glavonaks could keep from causing any more, but it caused Anders plenty. Standing in front of a heart, signing through the same words Hawke had always signed to him, that it was for their own good, that it would be over soon, that he was just trying to help-...

Anders had never had so many nightmares before in his life. Every night he had a nightmare and every day he lived in one and after a few days he couldn’t take it anymore. Anders watched the Glavonaks chiseling away at one bloodless heart after the next that had stopped beating ages ago, channeling a panacea to keep them alive, while the heart begged for them to stop, and if Anders forgot every sign he’d ever learned in his life, he’d never forget that one.

“Hurt,” The spindly, veined hand twitched. “Hurt. Stop. No.”

“Slow down,” Anders whispered, but the dwarves must not have heard him over the wailing of hearts and the tapping of chisels, because they didn’t. “Slow down,” Anders said again and went unanswered again. “I said slow down!” Anders startled the dwarves shoving them away from the heart, but Anders had told them to stop and they hadn’t stopped, and the heart had told them to stop and they hadn’t stopped, and Maker, they just had to stop.

The heart - the person was in pain. Anders didn’t know if they were a man, or a woman, or a human, or an elf, but he knew they were in pain, so he knew enough.

“Pain,” The heart signed. Red lyrium consumed half their face, and the other half wasn’t much better, their thin grey skin stretched so taut Anders could almost see their cheekbones beneath it. One bright red eye flickered between Anders and the dwarven miners. “Pain. Hurt. Stop.”

“I’m trying to heal you,” Anders said and signed slowly, but he couldn’t say for certain if the heart could even understand him. If the hole in the red lyrium counted for an ear, or if that glowing eye retained any sight, or their mind could even comprehend what he was saying.

“Pain. Hurt. Stop,” The heart signed again.

“I’m trying to stop the pain, but it’s going to take a long time,” Anders said and signed.

“No,” The heart signed. Their entire arm was lyrium. Veins, muscle, maybe even the bone. “No. Pain. Stop.”

“... do you want me to stop the pain now?” Anders offered. “If you want me to kill you, I will, but I might be able to save you.”

“Stop. Pain,” The heart signed.

“Do you want me to kill you?” Anders asked again.

“Yes,” The heart signed. “Kill. Pain. Stop.”

“Okay,” Anders stared at the flickering red eye, and couldn’t help but wonder how he was supposed to kill them. He couldn’t burn the hold with six other hearts inside, and the first heart had only died because they’d pried it from the hold in pieces. The hearts were bloodless walls, and the only thing that came to him was breaking that wall.

Maker damn him, why couldn’t he ever think of any prayers? The only verse that ever came to him was Transfigurations 1:2, and there was nothing in it but damnation for mages and blood mages, denying them rest in this world and the next, and that was all this poor bastard wanted.

“... Find rest,” Anders summoned a stonefist, and shattered the heart’s skull. Bone and brain burst apart, splattering his overcoat and leaving an empty space in the wall of red lyrium. The spindly hand went limp against the lyrium, and the rest of the horrors howled in what Anders could only describe as envy. Anders went through the hearts, one after the next, making the same offer, casting the same spell, until only one of them was left.

The rest all wanted to die. The dwarven miners watched him kill the five hearts without comment. Anders didn’t want to guess their expression beneath their masks, but he did anyway. Horrified. Disappointed. Scared, maybe. Something in the way they shuffled while they watched him move from one heart to the next, but any one of them could have done it sooner. Any one of them could have taken a pickaxe or a hammer to the hearts’ skulls and put an end to them and their pain instead of letting him cause more of it.

Anyone could have saved them from him instead of letting him turn into the same man he’d spent an entire year pleading and praying to escape. But they just watched, and they were still just watching, and it was still so fucking hot, and it was making him so fucking angry, and it still smelled so fucking much like Hawke, and he was so fucking sick of him. “What!?” Anders snapped, startling the dwarves back a few paces. “What are you looking at? What do you want?”

“... With respect, Warden, weren’t we here to help them?” One of the dwarves asked.

“I did help them,” Anders hissed. “Get out. We’re done. We’re done for today.”

Anders was tired.

The dwarves gathered up all their mining equipment and scurried up the stairs and out of the hold. Anders sat on the floor, surrounded by red lyrium, staring up at the only heart that had wanted to live. They weren’t any better off than the rest. Two bright red eyes fused to the wall, one vascular arm, the vague memory of a ribcage and the outline of a leg. “Why?” Anders signed.

“Why?” The heart signed back.

“Why do you want to live?” Anders clarified.

“Help,” The heart signed unhelpfully.

“I’m trying,” Anders signed.

Anders went back to his room at the Fisherman’s Rest, stripped out of his plague garb and spent the next two hours washing it and himself down, and ate the dinner the innkeeper had left out for him. It was fish, and the room smelled like it, but anything was better than red lyrium. Anything was better than Hawke. Anders crawled into bed and stayed there, staring at the ceiling of the Fisherman’s Rest and the knots and water damage in the planks above him.

Anders was so bloody tired.

Anders opened the jar of ink he kept beside his bed, and painted a glyph of neutralization on his arm, cutting himself off from the Fade until he returned to it when he finally fell asleep.

Snow fell like ash, in the middle of Wintermarch, and it was hot. Every flake felt like fire, burning his skin, sinking into his veins, boiling his blood. It was hot. It was so bloody hot, and it kept getting hotter, the ash in the air drying out his lungs with every breath until he couldn’t take any more. He had to drink something, but he couldn’t drink anything. He couldn’t drink anything unless Hawke gave him something to drink.

“Please,” Anders signed. Anders could still sign around the red lyrium growing out of his heart and over his bare chest, twisting down his legs like the torrid caress of an unwanted lover. It grew over and into him, sinking into his skin and the surrounding stonework. He couldn’t move, bound to the floor beside the throne in the Viscount’s Keep.

The entire keep was overgrown, red lyrium spilling across the floor, the walls, spiraling up the pillars, dripping from the ceiling and pulsing like the taint. Hearts were sewn into the walls and wearing too familiar faces. Selby. Bancroft. Evon. Donal. Terrie. Thom. Abby. Franke. Lirene. Lissa. Bree. Beth. The whole of the Mages’ Collective and the whole of his cause consumed by red and rage, and Anders abandoned them to it.

He’d abandoned all of them - running away to Amaranthine - running away to Amell, but Amell was always out of reach. He was still out of reach, sewn into the ceiling while lyrium grew out of his empty eye sockets, because Hawke had taken them like Hawke took everything and there was nothing Anders could do to stop him. Anders never stopped him. Anders never even tried.

He just signed. “Please stop,” over and over, a bright red band of lyrium grown around his ring finger and he couldn’t ever take it off.

Hawke knelt in front of him, overgrown with lyrium. It burst from the lightning scars on the left side of his face, and completely claimed his heart, thrusting through his chest where Anders and Justice had scarred him years ago. Hawke raised a hand to him, and Anders flinched, but all Hawke did was reach out and smooth down Anders’ braids, grown long like Hawke liked them.

“Hawke, please,” Anders’ hands shook through the signs, fingers cracking with lyrium.

“Nothing can come between you and me,” Hawke signed back, gesturing to the mages sewn into the walls. “Not them,” Hawke gestured to Amell, hanging from the ceiling. “Not him. Not your demon,” Hawke took hold of his jaw, but the vial in his hand was wrong. It wasn’t pink, it was red, and Anders didn’t want it, he didn’t want it, he didn’t want it-

“He is his demons,” Vengeance tore through him, a fist of veilfire shattering the red lyrium around Hawke’s heart as it punched through his back. Hawke, or the demon that wore his face, burst apart into wisps that scattered to the far corners of demesne. The red lyrium and the horrors within it evaporated, a cool emerald mist settling over a field of reeds, swaying in the shadows of the Black City.

Anders stumbled to his feet, dragging his hands through his hair, feeling the bite of his nails against his scalp and the lack of resistance in the short gold strands. His hair wasn’t long. His hair wasn’t braided. His hair wasn’t what Hawke wanted it to be - and neither was he. He was free and not bound to a throne or the man who sat on it.

“Stand taller,” Vengeance - or Justice - or the part of Justice that was Vengeance ordered, because Justice was as much Vengeance as Anders was Justice. Anders knew him no matter his name or his purpose. Anders knew him better than he knew himself. Vengeance was the second half of his soul, and had saved him on every account that a man could be saved.

He looked like Anders. He always did. A better version of himself, with hair like spun gold, and eyes like warm honey, and freckles like constellations reflected off the Waking Sea in the pale light of the moons. He was beautiful, but it was his strength that made him that way. Vengeance stood with his shoulders back, his chin up and his chest out, and when he moved he didn’t look like Anders at all.

“Remind me why?” Anders sat on the edge of the cliff, overlooking the chasm in Kirkwall as demesne reformed. He was in his clinic, or maybe the Chantry, and all around him was everything he’d left behind. Every broken promise and every broken person. Karl, and his lyrium-blue eyes, and his lyrium-blue scar, branded to his brow. Anders had promised him vengeance, on his knees in the Chantry basement, and he’d never given it to him.

“I will not,” Vengeance stood beside him, but he didn’t look down when Anders looked up. “Remind yourself.”

Anders sighed, staring down at his hands instead, and the red lyrium he swore he could feel beneath his nails, “We killed five people today.”

“We have killed more than that,” Vengeance said. “We will kill more still.”

“Do you think that was justice?” Anders wondered. “Or vengeance? Or anything?”

“You know what I think,” Vengeance said.

“You could say it anyway,” Anders said.

“Some things are worse than death,” Vengeance said, memories of cold stone, cramped walls, and pressing dark encroaching on his clinic. “You have suffered enough to know.”

Anders banished them with others. Karl’s kindness, when Karl told him the truth of how he’d lost his mind during his first stint at solitary in the Circle. Amell’s arms, when he’d held him after Anders escaped his second in the Wending Woods. Fenris’ determination, freeing him from his third at Hawke’s hands. Vengeance watched them form and fade without comment, but they had to be a comfort to him, because they were a comfort to Anders, and Anders needed comfort, because Anders was tired.

Anders was asleep, and Anders was still tired.

“Do you mind me channeling this side of you?” Anders asked.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

Vengeance glanced down at him, “Are you?”

“Don’t start with that. I don’t need you and Amell answering all my questions with questions,” Anders gave his thigh a shove two parts weary and one part playful. “I don’t want to change you.”

“You have,” Vengeance said.

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Anders sighed.

“It should,” Vengeance said. “Change was needed.”

“Was it?” Anders asked. In the chasm, red lyrium foamed in the waters of the Waking Sea, and crawled up the cliff face, devouring the city and all its chains in the distance. “Look at what Hawke’s done without us there to stop him. Dalian says the Mages’ Collective is the only reason the city has any clean water at all, and they’re in hiding. The Red Templars are looking for them and the Red Irons are looking for anyone who isn’t infected. There are only pockets of people left, and Maker knows how long they’ll last, or how long the Circle of Magi will survive."

"There are three Circles here to which we have an obligation,” Vengeance - or maybe just Justice - countered. “We have made progress with the King and need not publish our manifesto in secret anymore. We have formed alliances with the Circles that could benefit the people we are working to save.”

“Alliances,” Anders repeated doubtfully.

“Other spirit healers,” Justice elaborated. “Who may yet be willing to do what we cannot for the victims of Hawke’s tyranny.”

“You think we can’t heal them?” Anders asked.

“I cannot say,” Justice admitted, finally taking a seat beside him. “We have not yet.”

“We’re trying,” Anders said.

“That is all that can be done,” Justice said.

Anders leaned against his shoulder, watching the red lyrium swallow Kirkwall in the far distance beneath the shadows of the Black City. “... I keep thinking about him.”

“As do I,” Justice admitted.

“I don’t want to think about him,” Anders said.

“We are safe from him here,” Justice said.

“I don’t want to be safe from him,” Anders said. “I don’t want anything to do with him. I don’t even want to know he exists. I want to let go of him. How am I supposed to be with Amell if I can’t let go of him?”

“You are with Amell.”

“Then why am I dreaming about Hawke?”

“It was a nightmare,” Justice corrected him. “I am here, and you are safe from it. Rest. You have need of it.”

“Haven’t you heard Transfigurations 1:2?”

“Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him. Foul and corrupt are they who have taken His gift and turned it against His children. They shall be named Maleficar, accursed ones. They shall find no rest in this world or beyond,” Justice said for him. “I have heard it. Rest anyway.”

Morning came, and Anders was still tired, but he met it anyway. He penned out letters for Jainen and Kinloch and Orzammar, asking the Fraternities to send their finest spirit healers to Amaranthine on behalf of its Arl, and actually remembered to ask its Arl for permission before he sent them out when Amell and Oghren joined him that day for lunch.

“It wouldn’t just be for the plague ships,” Anders explained over a bowl of what he assumed was clam chowder in one of the booths at the Fisherman’s Rest. “The College of Magi is convening in Cumberland this year, and if they call for another vote, a lot of these people will be there. This could be a good chance to convince them to call for secession from the Chantry for all of the Circles and not just for Ferelden.”

“You can’t line a shit in silver, Sparkles,” Oghren said through a slurp of his soup, cradling the bowl in both hands. “Ain’t nothing good about this mess.”

“Thanks for that,” Anders said sarcastically. “Good thing I wasn’t asking you.”

“Maybe you should,” Oghren set his bowl down, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand. “Warned ya about Orzammar, didn’t I? Told ya it wasn’t a good place for mages.”

“I told you so?” Anders set his spoon down, because he was a civilized person who actually used one. “That’s what we’re doing now?”

“Could be,” Oghren said.

“No fighting,” Amell said.

“Who you talking to?” Oghren snorted.

“Both of you,” Amell said.

“Love?” Anders prompted, trying to rub his foot against Amell’s ankle beneath the table, and nudging Dumat instead. The mabari huffed, and leaned into his foot, and at that point Anders really didn’t have any choice but to pet him. “What do you think?”

“You gonna call him that everytime you want something?” Oghren guessed.

“You should hear what I call him when I don’t want something,” Anders joked.

“Ugh,” Oghren grunted, shuffling his way out of the booth like a very slow, very overstuffed metronome. “I’m out. Be at the Banns. See ya this evening, Sparkles. Chisel a chest on one of ‘em for me, will ya?” Oghren finally escaped the booth and left the tavern.

“What do you call me when you don’t want something?” Amell wondered.

“Love,” Anders said. Anders had said, for an entire month, and Amell still blushed. Anders was beginning to think he’d never stop. Amell set his hand on the table, palm up for him, and Anders took it, rubbing his thumb over the veins on Amell’s wrist and the scars that laced them.

“I miss you,” Amell said.

“I’ve got Justice,” Anders joked. “I’m good.”

“What was it you wanted from me, again?” Amell countered teasingly.

“I miss you,” Anders assured him. “You have no idea how much I miss you.”

“Hm,” Amell made a show of looking doubtful, a grin clinging to the corners of his lips.

“It’s a good idea, isn’t it?” Anders asked. “A conclave of healers to handle this?”

“It’s a good idea,” Amell promised. “You can use my seal. How has this week been?”

“You know,” Anders said vaguely, but Amell wouldn’t unless Anders told him, and they’d gone long enough without telling each other things. Anders shared everything there was to share and felt a little less alone and a little less tired. He went back to the plague ships that afternoon, and took his usual spot beside Dalian on the deck. He was in the same spot, rolling the same dice, like it was all the same day.

“Hey Dalian,” Anders battled back a sigh, laying out his supplies. The scalpel, the chisel, the poultices, the bandages, the bowl for the blood. The usual. “Ready to try again?”

“Ready to bleed,” Dalian agreed, giving him his hand.

Anders slit his wrist, and cast his cleansing, and nothing happened. Blood dripped from Dalian’s arm to patter pointlessly in the bowl beneath it with all the logic of a leecher’s letting. There were no rubies, no garnets, no lyrium. It was just blood, bled from grey blue veins with no carmine glow.

“... Anders?” Dalian asked eventually.

Anders looked up from his wrist, and into his eyes, and they weren’t red.

They weren’t red at all.

“... Hey Dalian.”

Chapter 193: Red Anatomy

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter!

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 27 Verimensis
City of Amaranthine - The Plague Docks

“You’re insane,” Abernath said, but at least he was there to say it. Half of the spirit healers in from Kinloch, Jainen, and Orzammar had seen the yellow circles warning of the plague and turned around as soon as they’d reached the docks. The other half hadn’t even answered the summons.

In all, there were eight people who’d shown up to the plague docks and actually stayed there, two from each Circle and two from Vigil’s Keep. First Enchanter Jendrik and an old Lucrosian named Ardum from Jainen. Gleam (thank the Maker) and Levyn from Orzammar. Wynne (fuck the Maker) and Abernath from Kinloch. Finn (shouldn’t have blasphemed - the Maker’s revenge was swift and merciless) and a surgeon from Vigil’s Keep.

The one thing Anders did not consider about asking for help from other spirit healers was that that meant he would actually have to work with other spirit healers. Anders was not good at working with other spirit healers, especially when those spirit healers seemed to have their spirits shoved up their asses. If they had spirits at all, and weren’t just relying on demons of dumbassery.

The nine of them weren’t so much a conclave of healers as they were a collection of assholes who all had wildly different opinions on how to approach the last plague ship in the harbor. Those with light red lyrium exposure, Anders could cleanse, but the heart and the horrors were beyond him. The healers all had to be outfitted, so Anders had emptied his coin purse of all of Amell’s coin commissioning them overcoats, masks, and the usual mess that let them embark and then promptly disembark the plague ship.

“Absolutely mad,” Abernath continued, flinging his mask off and onto the table in the center of the makeshift infirmary in the middle of the docks, “There is nothing up there to heal.”

“There are a score of people up there to heal,” Anders snapped back, taking off his own mask and resisting the urge to toss the potpourri into Abernath’s face like a disgruntled noble with a glass of wine. “What kind of spirit healer are you?”

“The kind that heals people,” Abernath said. He also looked like the kind that abused elfroot to the fullest, and gave up on anything he couldn’t smoke out, including his shaggy brown hair that hadn’t seen a comb a day in his life. There was a red tint to the whites of his eyes tears definitely hadn’t put there, and even his robes were green. He pointed towards the ships and said, “Those are monsters.”

“You healed plenty of monsters in the Circle, sword polisher,” Gleam took off her mask just to turn up her nose. She was wearing what must have been the hastily commissioned attire of Thedas’ newest Circle. A tunic and trousers beneath a winter cloak, with some sort of rune embroidered on her breast Anders assumed meant something profound. It had been sloppily stitched to the point of unraveling, but it had been done by a mage and that mage didn’t answer to the Chantry and that was something.

“Don’t bring templars into this, Gleam,” Abernath warned her. “Your own mother shared her bed with one.”

“And died for it,” Gleam said.

“She’s not the only one,” Levyn mumbled at the same time with an unsubtle glance at Wynne.

Wynne’s head whipped around so fast a few strands of gray escaped her bun to frame her scowl, “Excuse me, young man!?”

Levyn scuttled behind Gleam with the air of a mabari that didn’t realize how big it was, and Gleam stepped in front of him with all the confidence of a little dog that didn’t realize how big it wasn’t. “Don’t act like it’s a secret,” Gleam said. “Everyone knows about you and the Knight Commander.”

“We are not here to discuss mages and templars,” Wynne sniffed, taking off her mask. Everyone else did the same. “We are here to discuss the Red Plague.”

“Yes, please, on topic, everyone,” Jendrik said wearily. Jainen’s First Enchanter couldn’t have been a day over forty, but the position must have aged him - the way the Circle aged every mage - because he was perpetually tired, and relied on a spirit of Perseverance to keep him going. “Warden, I’m not sure what you want from us. There is no cure for lyrium mutation.”

“No known cure,” Ardum corrected him; Jainen’s second spirit healer was far older than its First Enchanter, balding past a widow’s peak and into a widow’s pinnacle, but his spirit was one of Curiosity and his age didn’t show in any other way.

“Actually-” Finn started.

“Amputation,” The surgeon cut him off. Anders never caught her name, but she couldn’t have been more hacksaw happy. It was her solution to everything, including her hair, haphazardly sliced high on her brow. “Simple. Can’t heal it, cut it off. Not sure what we’re fighting about.”

“Not sure why you’re even here, mundane,” Gleam said disdainfully.

“Magic can’t cure everything,” The surgeon said with an awful lot of confidence for someone surrounded by mages. “And we shouldn’t rely on it. Science is the way of the future.”

“Science,” Wynne muttered, rolling her eyes. “Maker preserve us. Fausten spends seven years out of the Circle and forgets everything he learned in it. Tell me, child, what humors do you suspect are out of balance in those creatures? A little too much phlegm, perhaps?”

“There are no humors in those creatures,” The surgeon said.

“No, it seems all the humor is here, thinking it has something to contribute to a conclave of healers,” Wynne stared down her nose at the surgeon.

“Hey,” Anders frowned, stepping in front of the surgeon. “At least she’s trying to come up with a solution.”

“Burn them,” Abernath said. “There’s your solution.”

“That’s not a solution,” Anders said.

“It’s a better solution than letting this plague spread through the whole of Ferelden like the Wasting of 27,” Abernath said. “We’re already dealing with an outbreak of frost-cough in Edgehall-”

“-Of course there’s frost-cough in Edgehall,” Anders cut him off. “It’s Wintermarch. Sickness is seasonal. Do you tell the Arls to burn down their Arlings when the Shivers start up?”

“We don’t need another plague,” Abernath said stubbornly.

“And yet we have one,” Jendrik said. “So. Solutions?”

“Magical ones?” Wynne added quickly, with a disdainful glance at the surgeon.

“We can’t heal around the lyrium,” Ardum noted.

“So remove it,” The surgeon said.

“We can’t remove all of it,” Anders shook his head. “We’d have to take off whole limbs-”

“So take them off,” The surgeon shrugged.

“Will you stop suggesting we amputate everything?” Anders frowned at the little hacksaw healer.

“I can regrow them,” Gleam assured him.

“Regrow an amputation?” Wynne laughed at the suggestion. “Impossible.”

“For you,” Levyn mumbled from his place behind Gleam.

“Young man, I have had just about enough of your lip,” Wynne said.

“I’d be happy to give you a fat one,” Gleam offered, cracking her knuckles.

“Don’t you dare threaten me, young lady,” Wynne squared her bony shoulders. “I have been healing since before you were born and I know very well that regeneration is as impossible as revival.”

“You don’t know shit,” Gleam looked at Wynne like she’d stepped in it.

“You nasty little bitch,” Wynne lost her composure, shaking with rage, and slammed the butt of her staff against the wharves with a spark of lightning. “The Order ought to march on your sorry excuse for a Circle.”

“I hope they try!” Gleam shot back. “Any templar that sets foot in Orzammar will leave it in an urn.”

“You apostates ran and hid underground like a nest of rats, and sooner or later the Chantry will hunt you down and destroy you like one,” Wynne said.

Of all the boot licking bitchery Anders had ever heard from Chantry apologists, Wynne’s was the worst. He’d never met a more hypocritical spirit stuffed into a more hypocritical mage hiding behind one of the most hypocritical institutions of them all. He blurted, “Not if we destroy it first.”

“I would like to see you try,” Wynne sniffed.

“I’ll save you a seat,” Anders said snidely. “You think I can’t? Who do you think convinced King Alistair to free Ferelden’s Circles in the first place?”

“What happened to you, Anders?” Wynne looked so sad she must have been an even better liar than Amell. “You could have been a voice for the Libertarians in the Circle working towards real change and instead you’re out here enacting chaos.”

“I’m out here saving lives!” Anders gestured towards the last plague ship floating in the harbor, and Maker save him, that’s what they were here for and what he should have been focused on but once he started he couldn’t stop. “Which you could be doing if you gave a damn about any but your own. I can’t believe you aren’t fighting for a creche in Kinloch. You have the ear of the First Enchanter and the Knight Commander and you use it to sing their praises while they rip children from their mother’s arms.”

“The Circle cannot support a creche,” Wynne said stubbornly. “Kinloch is not Jainen and we will not make their mistakes.”

“I’m afraid I have to beg your pardon, Senior Enchanter,” First Enchanter Jendrik’s face contorted as he made a very obvious attempt to reign in his offense. “What mistakes?”

“You have no idea the future consequences of your current choices,” Wynne said. “Mages do not know the first thing about child rearing and the Tranquil are no better. Children deserve a loving home and mages cannot give one to them.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Anders said. “There are dozens of children in Jainen’s creche and even more outside of it who are happy to have mage parents who love them.”

“I do not believe you can name a single well adjusted child any mage has ever raised,” Wynne said.

“My step-son, you old hag!” Anders snapped.

Wynne made a face like a camel with a toothache. “If Kieran Amell is anything like any one of his evidently numerous parents, then he is anything but well adjusted.”

“You want to talk about terrible parents, look in the mirror, you bloody hypocrite,” Anders said. “You had a son, and you may as well have thanked the templars for taking him from you. You could be working to make sure that never happens to anyone else and instead you’re so vile you’re working to make sure it does. Mages deserve the right to raise their own children whether or not you wanted yours!”

“Don’t you dare bring my son into this, you evil little man,” Wynne said. “You have no idea what it is to be a father. You think because Fausten has named you a nursemaid you have any real claim to his son? He is an Arl. He has governesses, tutors, and caretaker in abundance, and you are no different. Fausten is not the rule, he is the exception, and if not for your profane infatuation with the man you would understand that.”

“I’m a better father to Kieran than you ever were a mother to your son,” Anders said. “Do you even know his name? Did you even bother to give him one?”

“His name is Rhys!” Wynne hissed. “He is a Senior Enchanter at the White Spire in Orlais, and he is twice the mage Kieran will ever be because he was raised in a monastery at Lydes by Chantry Brothers and Sisters, and not by a half-mad maleficar and his unholy coven!”

“Raised as an orphan, by people who taught him to hate his magic, because his mother was too afraid to use hers to fight to keep him,” Anders translated, but his throat hurt too much to keep going. He dug through his satchel for a restorative draft, and washed it down with water from his canteen while Wynne scowled at him and everyone else watched wide-eyed and waiting for the next retort from either one of them.

“Nor should she have had to,” First Enchanter Jendrik said in the awkward lull that followed. “Senior Enchanter, I think I can speak to the consequences of our creche quite well. Before it, half of all our new mothers took their own lives when they realized their children wouldn’t be part of it, and even more of our expecting mothers risked their lives trying to lose their pregnancies so they wouldn’t have to lose their children.

“I am-... relieved that the loss of your son did not aggrieve you so,” Jendrik said in a way that seemed to imply ‘relieved’ meant ‘confused’ if not outright ‘concerned.’ “But that is not the case for most. Since we started the creche, we’ve lost next to none, and the children suffer for no lack of love. If anything, the worst thing to come of the creche is we’ve several more pregnancies now that there is less fear of having them.”

“And when these children are grown, and those without magic are forced to leave the Circle, who will that aggrieve then?” Wynne demanded, and Abernath mumbled his agreement. “You are doing them no favors letting them know a family we all know they cannot have.”

“Like that’s any different from what happens to us now!” Gleam said, to far more rancorous approval from everyone else.

“What happens to us now is we find new families in each other,” Wynne said. “The outside world isn’t ready for us and we are not ready for it, and we achieve nothing pretending we can have the same place in it as everyone else. Mages will always-”

“We’re getting married,” Levyn interrupted her.

“I beg your pardon?” Wynne asked.

“We’re getting married,” Levyn repeated, taking Gleam’s hand. “A real marriage in a real Chantry between real mages. The world is changing, and you’re the only one who’s not ready for it.”

The mood of their small conclave changed on a bit. The rest of the mages came forward to offer their congratulations, Abernath and a bitterly reluctant Wynne included, until the surgeon coughed. “Not to derail but are we amputating or not?”

“You said you can regrow limbs,” Wynne said to Gleam. “Explain how.”

“Explain what?” Gleam said. “Haven’t you been healing since before I was born?”

“Not very well,” Levyn mumbled.

“Young man, wedding or no wedding, you are one word away from me informing the Chantry and the Crown of exactly who and where you are,” Wynne warned him. “Your friendship with Fausten will only get you so far in life.”

“Don’t threaten him,” Anders threatened her, now that he finally could after he’d had something to drink and time to heal. “Don’t you dare. You’re here to help heal the Red Plague, and if you’re not strong enough to do that then you can go back to healing whipping wounds and telling children they deserve them at the templars’ every beck and call.”

“On topic, please,” Jendrik begged.

“I will if she will,” Gleam muttered with more grace than Anders could manage, so he didn’t bother to try.

“You can’t regrow that many limbs,” Anders said to Gleam. “For some of the horrors, maybe, but the heart is all lyrium.”

“Are we really okay with calling them horrors?” Finn wondered.

“So we amputate some of them,” Gleam ignored him. Anders would have to ask her for pointers later.

“It’s not just limbs,” Anders said. “The lyrium grows through their organs and sustains them instead. They can’t survive without it. We removed one of the hearts from the wall and it died within minutes.”

“How do you know what becomes of their organs?” Abernath squinted at him from beneath his mess of brown hair.

“Take a guess,” Anders said.

“I am sure you do not want us to, considering medical dissection goes against Chantry law,” Wynne said, with such a thinly veiled threat it may as well have been naked.

“Well then it’s a good thing Grey Wardens don’t answer to Chantry law, isn’t it?” Anders sneered.

“Bloody brilliant, that is,” The surgeon hummed. “Like to see one, Commander permitting.”

“I hope you brought us here for something other than blasphemy,” Wynne said.

“I don’t know anything about organs,” Gleam admitted. “I’ve only done arms, and one foot.”

“As I said,” Jendrik said. “There is no cure for lyrium mutation. It’s why the Chantry controls the lyrium trade-”

“That is not why the Chantry controls lyrium,” Anders scoffed, unable to help himself at the slightest mention of the Chantry. “The Chantry controls lyrium because the Chantry loves control.”

“It’s a lucrative market,” Ardum agreed, rolling thoughtful fingers along his staff. “Mutated Tevinter Magisters are the doggle-boon behemoths of our Circle bedtime stories.”

“Ardum,” Jendrik pinched the bridge of his nose. “On topic, please-”

“I’m just saying,” Ardum said, in a way that seemed to imply he’d been ‘just saying’ for a while. “If we weren’t rationed, we-”

“Could end up just like the things on that ship,” Wynne cut him off. “The relaxation of Chantry oversight in our Circles-”

“Is the only reason we can even have this conversation,” Anders said.

“We shouldn’t be having this conversation at all,” Abernath said. “We should be lighting pyres and saying prayers.”

“While I don’t share the same eagerness for Abernath’s solution, I also don’t see an alternative,” Jendrik admitted.

“This plague is exactly why we need Chantry oversight back in our Circles,” Wynne argued. “The Mad Viscount should never have been allowed access to lyrium, red or blue. This is what happens when anyone - mage or non-mage - abuses power and freedoms they have not been made to earn and there is no one to oversee them.”

“The Viscount isn’t the only one who’s mad,” Anders snapped. “Can you name another time eight mages - eight spirit healers - were even allowed in the same room without a templar to watch them? We have some of the most valuable magic known to man and we are the least trusted of any mage because of the spirits we call on to cast it and the fear that they’ll make us into monsters.

“Well the Mad Viscount should make it perfectly clear it doesn’t take a mage to make a monster. And now mages have a chance to actually use our magic - freely and openly - to save people who are suffering from something that could have happened to any one of us - and you all want to burn them because they look like monsters? And you can’t see the bloody irony in that?”

“Anders is right,” Levyn said.

“Anders is right,” Gleam echoed.

“Anders-” Finn started.

“I don’t believe there’s a need for us to start a second Chant,” Jendrik cut him off. “We’ve all read Anders’ manifesto.”

“His heresy,” Wynne muttered.

Anders bristled, but he couldn’t manage more than a rasping retort. The speech wore him out. All of his speeches wore him out, ever since he’d taken an arrow through the throat, and Anders hated it almost as much as he hated Hawke. He dug through his satchel, but he only had the one restorative draft, so he refilled his canteen with primal magic and made due with water.

“So,” Jendrik continued while Anders healed himself. “Our options seem to be removing the lyrium, reversing the effects, or finding a way to render it inert. If a burning is out-”

“It’s out,” Anders whispered.

“-then I vote-”

“Why is it out?” Abernath asked. “Because one Grey Warden says so? Are we here at the behest of him or the behest of the Arl?”

“I speak for the Arl,” Anders cleared his throat.

“I want to hear the Arl speak for himself,” Abernath said, because Abernath was an asshole.

“So would I, Warden,” Jendrik admitted, because apparently he was an asshole too. “The Circles don’t send healers to treat the plague, they send primal mages. This request is… unusual.”

“This request has his seal on it,” Anders said. “You read the letter.”

“A letter the Arl is incapable of writing,” Abernath said, because Abernath was an ignorant asshole.

“... I agree,” Wynne said, because they were all assholes. “If there’s one thing I know about the Chancellor of Ferelden it’s that he is always happy to make a sacrifice. I doubt he’d be for saving these poor souls if he knew anything of the risks they presented to the people.”

Anders spent the better part of an hour arguing, and ended up having to send for Amell anyway. Amell wasn’t even in Amaranthine that day, and didn’t get there until the next. Amethyne came with him as his escort, as did Dumat, and Anders honestly couldn’t decide which of the three of them looked angrier to be there. The makeshift infirmary made up of tents wasn’t much of a war room, and the table covered in medical supplies wasn’t much of a war table, and the group of healers surrounding it weren’t much of a conclave.

“Well?” Amell asked.

Kinloch and Jainen’s mages shuffled and glanced amongst themselves until Abernath stepped forward. “Arl Amell-”

“Chancellor,” Amell corrected him, so quickly Anders was sure Abernath could have picked any title and Amell would have made sure it was wrong.

“Chancellor,” Abernath cleared his throat. “When you sent the summons to the Circle to provide aid to Amaranthine, we weren’t under the impression we would be healing the plague. As I’m sure you’re aware-”

“This isn’t a plague,” Amell cut him off.

“Excuse me?” Abernath said.

“No,” Amell said.

Abernath looked aghast, “I’m sorry?”

Amethyne smothered a giggle, shaking her head, “Shut up, shem.”

“This is a combination of lyrium exposure and blight sickness,” Amell said, without making any effort to look in Abernath’s direction. “Who are you?”

“I-” Abernath stuttered.

“Your name,” Amell prompted.

“Abernath,” Abernath finally managed.

“Abernath, what makes you think you can undermine one of my Wardens?” Amell asked, and Anders didn’t think it was possible he could be any more attractive, but Amell always seemed to find a way.

Abernath sputtered.

“With respect, Chancellor,” First Enchanter Jendrik took over for him. “Plague or no plague, healing the infected is a tall order.”

“Did my Warden give it?” Amell asked.

“Yes, but-”

“Then I expect you to follow it.” Maker, Anders loved him.

“The Circles are autonomous,” Wynne said. “As you well know, Chancellor, and they don’t have to follow your orders.”

“The Circles answer to the Crown,” Amell said. “Who does the chancellery speak for, Wynne?”

Wynne made what looked like a valiant attempt to transform into a dragon. Her face went red, and she huffed, puffing out her chest and rolling her shoulders like she was waiting for wings to sprout from them.

“It speaks for the Crown,” Amethyne said helpfully.

“Are we done?” Amell asked.

“You want to say yes,” Amethyne suggested when no one said anything.

“Yes, thank you, Chancellor,” Jendrik said.

Amell left the plague docks with Amethyne and Dumat for the Fisherman’s Rest, and Anders excused himself to follow them to the tavern. They found a booth, where Amethyne promptly started laughing.

“Nothing better than watching shems piss themselves whenever you get going, Commander,” Amethyne said.

“Anders?” Amell called for him.

“I’m right here, love,” Anders slid into the seat beside him, and if he thought he could get away with getting him off under the table, he’d have done it. Watching Amell lecture the conclave had been as ridiculously attractive as it was ridiculously romantic. Amell could have listened to them, instead of lecturing them, but he hadn’t. He’d just trusted him, without question and without hesitation, and Anders was dying to show him just how much that meant to him. “Thanks for that. I’m sorry you had to ride all the way out here. I’m sure you had chancellery things to do.”

“I do, in fact, have chancellery things to do,” Amell said with a slight smile when Anders sat so their thighs were pressed together. “That doesn’t mean I would ever let anyone use me to undermine you.”

“I don’t know that you always have a choice there, love,” Anders said for the blush it won him. “You’re my Commander, remember?”

“You’re your own man, and you can speak for yourself,” Amell returned, setting a hand to his thigh. “And if I say you can speak for me, then I expect the rest of the world to listen.”

“If anyone is going to be speaking for anyone it should probably be the other way around with my throat the way it is,” Anders said.

“They heard you just fine,” Amethyne said. “Shems just never want to listen.”

“You realize we’re both shems, right?” Anders asked.

“You want to be a shem, I’ll call you a shem,” Amethyne threatened with a tug of her mutilated ear. “But you’re a spirit, and the Commander has the soul of an ancient elf from the time of Arlathan, and I don’t think you’re shems.”

“Thanks for that,” Anders supposed.

“You were right about Wutherford,” Amethyne continued. “I think you’re right about this too.”

“He is right,” Amell squeezed his knee.

“People keep telling me that,” Anders said, forcing himself to keep his own hands above the table considering he knew exactly what they’d get up to if they were below it. “It’s really going to my head.”

“Now you sound like a shem,” Amethyne said. “Can I say something, Commander?”

“You don’t need my permission to speak, Amethyne,” Amell said.

“Can I say something about you two?” Amethyne clarified.

“You don’t need my permission to do that either,” Amell said.

“What about my permission?” Anders joked.

“I wasn’t asking for it,” Amethyne flashed him a grin and said, “I think you make us better. The Grey Wardens are heroes, but you make them human, and you make humans not that bad.”

“Stop, you’ll make me blush,” Anders waved her off.

“She’s right,” Amell said, and that actually did make him blush. “I would have burned them without you. They shouldn’t have questioned you. I don’t. If you say you can heal them, then I believe you. You’re the most talented healer I’ve ever met and I trust you to do the right thing no matter what it costs you. I know you’re tired and this hasn’t been easy, and I know you didn’t expect it to be. I hope you know just how much I respect you for that.”

“I have an idea,” Anders said, his voice a whisper and his pulse a roar. Amell was dressed like the king had called on him, a silver doublet with an iridescent black brocade that broadened his shoulders as if Anders needed the reminder that they’d once held the weight of the world, and still found the strength to support him too. He brushed Amell’s hair back, the pads of his fingers ghosting his beautiful bronze skin and eliciting shivers wherever he touched.

“Just say you want to fuck him and go,” Amethyne rolled her eyes and saw herself out of the booth and Anders saw Amell back to his room, but he couldn’t say he fucked him.

It didn’t feel like fucking him. It just felt like being with him - more intimately than Anders had ever been with anyone. Like holding him, and knowing him, and loving him, and being held by him, and being known by him, and being loved by him. Wholly and ardently, patiently and earnestly. The kind of love that was unconditional and uncompromising, and burned, with more fire than the sun.

The conclave came to a consensus when they finally resolved to work as mages in a collective instead of mages in a circle. Healing the horrors didn’t just take one magic, it took every magic and more. Surgical removal of the larger masses of pure crystal. Cauterization of the worst of the wounds. Purification of the blood. Blight-resistant herbs from the Korcari Wilds and lyrium leeching slimes from the Deep Roads. Panaceas, regeneration, and rejuvenation, like something out of Threnodies.

Seven mages answered his call, and worked magic upon magic born of mingled blood and lyrium, great demons and valiant spirits, and all their power and all their vanity, they turned against the red plague until at last, it gave way. Of the score of souls on the plague ship, over a dozen survived, and all that could be healed were.

Even the heart.

They were an elf. They were the remnants of an elf, carved from the beating heart of the hold, and wrought together with so much magic from so many souls of so much strength it seemed somewhere between revival and reanimation, and there was still only so much they could do.

The elf was skeletal and emaciated, with muscles that had long since atrophied, and bones that didn’t quite fit together in the ways that they should. Their skin was made from scars, and they didn't have the strength to keep their head up on their own. They couldn’t walk, and they struggled to chew or even speak, but they could sit, and with effort, they could sign.

They moved the elf from the hold, to the infirmary, to a surgery table, and finally to a wheeled chair where they were bound to spend the rest of their life. Wynne dressed the elf in an oversized tunic and trousers, and Ardum arranged a few pillows around their head to hold it up while they sat. Anders knelt in front of them.

"Hey," Anders signed.

"Hey," The elf signed back.

"We tried," Anders said and signed slowly, spelling what he couldn't remember how to fully sign. "You're free, but I'm afraid this is all we can do. There was too much lyrium. We don't think you'll ever be able to eat, or drink, or move around without help.

"There's a Chantry sanatorium in Highever where we can send you, unless you have any family you think might be willing to take care of you, but they'll have to do it forever. I'm sorry."

"No," The elf signed.

"No family?" Anders repeated.

"No," The elf signed.

"... Do you still want this?" Anders asked. "Do you still want to live like this?"

"Yes," The elf signed. "Free. Safe. Happy."

"Me too," Anders decided, taking hold of their hand, all but lame on the left side. A few of the elf's fingers wiggled when he squeezed.

"Free. Safe. Happy." The elf signed again.

"You deserve to be happy," Anders said. "You could have given up, but you fought and you survived, and you deserve to live a long and happy life. I'm so glad you're alive. We're all so happy you're alive."

"Free. Safe. Happy," The elf signed.

"Yes," Anders agreed. "You're free. You're safe."

"You," The elf signed. "Free. Safe. Happy."

"... Me?" Anders repeated.

"You," The elf signed.

"... Do you know who I am?" Anders asked.

"Yes."

"... do you know who you are?" Anders asked.

"Slave," The elf signed, but Anders didn't know any ex-slaves. He knew Fenris, but Fenris was fine, sailing the Waking Sea with Isabela and Zevran, freeing other slaves and visiting on occasion, and-...

"... Orana?"

Chapter 194: Works of Beauty

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter!

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 1 Pluitanis Early Morning
Vigil’s Keep

Depending on who you asked, Wintersend was meant to be a celebration of the Maker or the sending of winter. It was a day for trade, tourneys, and theaters, and the coming of spring and with spring, new life, or new lives. Most marriages were arranged on Wintersend, and while Anders knew no one was arranging his, he felt the weight of the one he’d escaped pressing down on him.

He couldn’t send Orana away, not even to Highever. Teyrn Fergus Cousland took the health of his people seriously, and had everything from a cloister for the blind to a sanatorium for the physically and mentally impaired, but Anders didn’t have it in him to abandon her a second time. He worked out yet another manifesto to convince Amell to allow her to stay at Vigil’s Keep, and didn’t get more than a few words in before Amell cut him off with a casual, “Of course.”

The Vigil didn’t have a sanatorium. It had an infirmary, in the main courtyard, and it had a chapel, on the first floor, and nothing similar to the combination of the two that was a Chantry sanatorium. Which wasn’t to say that Amell didn’t care for the infirm within his arling, but he had kennels and accommodations that kept them among the populous instead of hiding them away, so Anders (with Amell’s money, and Amell’s resources, and Amell’s permission) got Orana a dog.

She couldn’t wheel herself around, but she could sign. The dog understood sign language, and it helped, but didn’t help enough. In retrospect, Anders should have considered the logistics of life for someone bound to a chair in a castle several stories up and even a few stories down. Nathaniel probably would have laughed at him if he wasn't away on his expedition. Everything was everywhere. The kitchens were on the first floor, the sleeping quarters the third, the creche the second.

Orana seemed to like children, and children seemed to like her. More so than the handful of adults who saw Orana’s featureless face and lack of mobility and asked, subtly or unsubtly, why Anders had even bothered to save her, and then had the audacity to look aghast when Anders snapped back that he’d make sure not to bother to save them. Kieran and AK (which Little Amell had started going by at some point for some reason) didn’t ask anything like that.

“This is my friend, Orana, and this is Cinnamon,” Anders gestured to Orana, and the dog curled up beside her chair. “Cinnamon helps Orana like Dumat helps your father, so you have to make sure not to distract her while she’s helping, alright?”

“Alright,” Kieran said easily enough.

“Hello,” Orana signed.

“She says hello,” Anders said.

“No she didn’t!” AK frowned.

“Orana talks with her hands,” Anders explained. “It’s called sign language. That sign means hello.”

“Hello,” Kieran mimicked.

“Is there a sign for fart!?” AK asked.

“There’s a sign for everything,” Anders said.

“Is there a sign for ass!?” AK persisted.

“Okay,” Anders ruffled his bright orange hair. “Why don’t I show you a few signs you’ll actually use, and if you learn those, then I’ll show you how to fart.”

AK burst into a fit of giggles, but Anders had never seen him more invested in learning anything in his tiny life, so if it meant he ran around the Vigil signing ‘fart’ until he got tired of it, it was probably worth it. Kieran wasn’t as interested in learning sign language, and it wasn’t too hard to guess why.

“Father can’t talk like this,” Kieran pointed out after Anders showed them a few simple signs. Hello. Goodbye. Yes. No. Hungry. Happy. Sad. Fart.

“No, he can’t,” Anders allotted. “But if you ever want to sneak an extra dessert, I can show you how to ask.”

Deep down, Anders didn’t really want to show anyone how to sign anything. He was relieved Orana had a way to communicate, but Hawke had tainted that method of communication for him, and it didn’t feel like a taint he could cleanse. Even if he’d stopped having a breakdown every time someone wiggled their fingers, it still ate at him. Like a poison, or a plague, or all of the above with all that Hawke had done.

It ate, and kept eating, until Kieran stopped eating at breakfast to take Amell’s hand and hold it through the sign for “Father.”

“What are we doing?” Amell asked.

“Signing,” Kieran said.

“What are we signing?” Amell asked.

“It means father,” Kieran said.

“Does it?” Amell asked doubtfully.

“Yes!” Kieran said.

“Are you sure it doesn’t mean something else?” Amell asked.

“It really means ‘Father,’” Anders laughed.

“Hm,” Amell hummed suspiciously.

“Honestly, love, would I lie to you?” Anders asked.

“Would it be funny if you did?” Amell countered.

“To be fair, Kieran showed you the sign,” Anders argued.

“Like he showed me the trick with the copper?” Amell asked doubtfully.

“It’s not my fault you fell for that,” Anders protested. “That was like one of the oldest pranks in the Circle.”

“This means fart!” AK practically flew across the table to sign against the arms Amell kept bare.

Everyone laughed, and both children developed a newfound fascination with signing everything they’d learned to sign against Amell’s arms or into his hands, and studiously teaching him how to sign it all back into theirs. All at once they turned into flatulent little scholars, correcting even the slightest of variations to the point where Anders almost felt sorry for their sole student. Eventually the kids grew bored and ran off, but it felt like a beautiful moment to start the day.

The more Anders thought about how beautiful it was, the more he thought about the fact that Kieran’s spirit was one of beauty, and to this day no one at the table had ever told him. Not Oghren or Felsi, as the two of them left laughing. Not Morrigan, who signed a playful ‘fart’ into Amell’s face on her way out the door. Not even Amell, drinking his coffee and chuckling to himself when the two of them were alone.

“Feels like I’ve created monsters,” Anders said lightly, trying to think of how to ask about Kieran and make it clear that he still loved both son and father. He didn’t want it to be a fight, he just wanted it to be a question, but he wasn’t sure how to keep it one.

“You really have,” Amell grinned. “How many language lessons is that now? Ander? Orlesian? Sign?”

“I’m not teaching him Orlesian,” Anders said quickly. “That’s all Morrigan.”

“What’s love?” Amell asked.

“What’s what?” Anders asked.

“Love,” Amell repeated, setting aside his coffee to hold out his arm. “How do you sign it?”

He didn’t. He hadn’t for years. Anders pulled his chair to Amell’s side of the table and pressed the sign to Amell’s palm, letting him map it. It felt strange, fingers stretched and straining just to hold onto the word, like Anders had never signed it before. Anders dragged the word along Amell’s arm, up to his rolled up sleeve and back down to his scarred wrist, and slowly folded his fingers into the sign.

“Love,” Amell handed him the word, and for the first time in a long time it didn’t hurt to see. No matter how Hawke had forced his way back into his life, Amell wasn’t Hawke, and Anders didn’t have to have the same fear of him.

“I want to ask you something,” Anders said. “Actually, I want to tell you something.”

“You can tell me anything,” Amell said, picking his coffee back up.

“I know Kieran’s possessed,” Anders said. Amell froze, but his coffee cup stayed in his hand and didn’t go crashing to the floor, so he handled it a lot better than he’d handled Anders last confession. He didn’t say anything, so Anders pressed on. “He told me, and on some level I can sense it. I know it’s a spirit of beauty. He said it possessed him when he died.

“I know we talked about a life of letters once, but I missed you, spending Wintermarch in Amaranthine without you, and-... I worried about you. I’m sorry for getting weighty all of a sudden, but seeing the kids with you got me thinking about it, and I know kids say weird shit, and Creepy says some of the weirdest, but…

“I know you smoke, and I know you drink, and I know we don’t really talk about it, but love, if Kieran died at some point and this possession saved him and you’ve been holding onto that by yourself-”

“That’s not what happened,” Amell set aside his coffee. “Can we talk somewhere private?”

“Sure,” Anders led Amell out of the main hall and back to their room, dodging a very indecisive Ser Cumference on their way in who couldn’t seem to decide if he wanted to join them or not. By the time Anders finally shut Ser Cumference out in the hall, Amell had composed himself and was sitting in his armchair. Anders sat on the couch adjacent to him, trying to get a sense of the size of the jar of worms he’d opened.

It was either a very big jar or they were very big worms, because Amell looked perfect. He’d brushed back his hair, and smoothed down his collar, and unrolled his sleeves, and straightened his cuffs, and looking at his posture compelled Anders to fix his own. As much as Anders was relieved Kieran might have just been being Kieran when he said he’d been possessed since he died, that didn’t mean whatever actually happened wasn’t worse.

Anders didn’t have many close friends who were parents. There was Oghren and Felsi and Amell and Morrigan, obviously, but the differences in their parenting styles could not have been more glaring. AK could have fallen down a flight of stairs just for Oghren to push him down another, whereas Kieran got a papercut and Morrigan burned down the whole papermill. Kieran might have been a mage, and he might have been possessed, but the level of overprotectiveness Amell and Morrigan had over him seemed to go beyond that.

“Kieran is my son,” Amell said.

“That’s not much of a revelation, love,” Anders said lightly.

“Kieran is my son first,” Amell clarified. “Everything else comes second. Morrigan is the only other person who knows about him and we intend to keep it that way. There isn’t a soul in all the world I would ever trust enough to tell. Do you understand?”

“I want to,” Anders said. “If you want me to.”

Anders was surprised he didn’t mind when Amell didn’t say anything. Anders knew he’d been the first person Amell had ever told about Kieran, six impossibly long years ago, and whether or not Amell told him everything now, later, or never, Anders just wanted him to know that he could. He kept quiet, and eventually Amell stood up, walked half-way to his liquor cabinet, turned back around, and leaned on the arm of the chair instead.

“Do you know what today is?” Amell asked.

Please not an anniversary or birthday he’d forgotten. “Wintersend?”

“It was called Urthalis once,” Amell said. “A day dedicated to Urthemiel, archdemon of the Fifth Blight and the Old God of Beauty. They were the pinnacle of perfection, a man and a woman, and the fairest and most graceful of the gods. Their disciples designed every work and wonder of the Ancient Imperium, and their High Priest, the Architect of the Works of Beauty, was the most powerful of the Magisters Sidereal beside the High Priest of Dumat.

“The Old Gods aren’t born corrupted, no matter what the Chantry says of them and their influence. Even if there’s truth to the Chant, they promised the magisters power and they provided. The darkspawn and the taint they carry is what corrupts them. The Architect was the one who woke Urthemiel and transformed them into an Archdemon, unleashing the Fifth Blight on the world.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Anders asked.

“So you understand them,” Amell said. “Orzammar lost Bownammar. Ferelden lost Ostagar, half of South Reach, the Western Hills, Denerim... Urthemiel killed hundreds of thousands before I killed them. That’s all the world knows of them. That’s all the world wants to know of them. The world doesn’t want to understand the Old Gods, because understanding something leads to accepting it. Mages understand that better than most.”

“Why do you want me to understand an Old God?” Anders asked.

“The red plague victims didn’t feel like people to me, Anders,” Amell said instead of answering him. “They felt like ghouls at best and darkspawn at worst. All I had to go on that they were more than that was your word, and I took it, because I trust you.”

“I trust you too, but I still don’t know where you’re with this,” Anders said.

“Kieran isn’t possessed,” Amell said. “He was born with the soul of an Old God.”

“... An Old God of Beauty,” Anders felt like an idiot. “How?”

“I told you Morrigan gave me a ritual to defeat the Archdemon without dying to it,” Amell reminded him. “It was Kieran. She gave us Kieran.”

Anders’ exhale lasted until he ran out of air, and still wasn’t half as heavy as the conversation. Urthemiel. An Old God, and Kieran shared his soul, and Amell trusted him enough to tell him. It felt like a revelation on a scale Anders couldn’t comprehend, right alongside the revelation that the Darkspawn Architect might be the Architect of the Works of Beauty. Anders knew Kieran was more important in the moment, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the Architect.

The Magisters Sidereal were a myth, and if they weren’t, then the Chantry was bound to keep using them as an excuse to blame all mages for the actions of those seven. If they were still around walking the bloody earth, and the bloody earth knew about them, then Anders couldn’t begin to imagine the amount of backlash mages would face from the common people. They’d look at free mages and magisters as a rebirth of the Tevinter of old, and there’d be no hope of a revolution. Not without bloodshed to sunder the Veil and retake the Black City.

But the Grey Wardens knew about them, and the Grey Wardens hadn’t told the world about them, because the Grey Wardens understood the way the world worked. People would always find something to fear, and if it wasn’t darkspawn then it was mages and if it wasn’t mages then it would be something else, and that fear was a Blight unto itself. The less people knew about the Seven the better, and the less they knew about the Old Gods the better there too.

“Good thing she changed his name,” Anders joked.

“It’s my middle name,” Amell volunteered, like Anders didn’t already know, but he supposed he deserved the joke considering how long it had taken him to learn Amell’s first.

“I think I know my lover’s name, Amell Kieran Amell,” Anders joked. “... thanks for trusting me with Kieran’s too.”

Amell let out a breath he must have been holding since Kieran was born. His posture finally relaxed, and he mussed his hair running a hand through it. “... well?”

“Well what?” Anders asked.

“What do you think?” Amell asked.

“About Kieran?” Anders guessed, and Amell nodded. “I think he’s your son. I think he’s our son. You know I’m possessed, right? It would be pretty hypocritical of me to think anything else.”

“It’s not the same, but I’m glad you think it is,” Amell said.

“No one else knows?”

“No one else knows. No one else needs to know. The official story is that Riordan died to the Archdemon, but Alistair’s never believed it. He knows I used blood magic to survive the final blow, and he knows Morrigan and I have a spell that allows someone to conceive through the taint, but he’s never put the two together. If he ever did, I don’t know what he’d do to Kieran.

“He hounded me for days after the Battle of Denerim, telling me I should have died, calling me a coward for living, promising to get the First Warden to strip me of my rank and the Wardens… Anders, if he knew-... if the Grey Wardens knew that I never really killed Urthemiel… Morrigan and I aren’t afraid of Kieran ending up in a Circle. We’re afraid of him ending up dead. They’d hunt him to the ends of the earth.”

“I’d never let that happen to him,” Anders stood up, skirting the low table to take one of Amell’s hands and press it against his heart, and pull the whole of him into his chest. “If anyone ever found out about him, and the three of you had to run, I’d be right there with you. I don’t care if we’d always be hunted or hated or if we never had a normal life. We could be fugitives forever.”

“... I can’t run with them, Anders,” Amell’s smile wasn’t anything but sad. “I’m blind. I physically cannot run without an arcane field to clear the space around me, and I can’t navigate that space without Dumat or a staff… That’s why Morrigan is researching eluvians. They’re gateways, and their magic allowed the ancient elves to travel between them, and she’s spent years learning how to navigate them so they can run when they need to run.”

“If,” Anders corrected him. “If they need to run. There’s no reason to think anyone would ever find out about him.”

“There’s no reason to think that they wouldn’t,” Amell countered. “You should just know, if you want to be his father, it might not last forever.”

Anders felt like Amell wasn’t really talking to him, and the liquor cabinet in the corner with the box of blood lotus on top of it had never made quite as much sense as it did in that moment. “We will,” Anders said. “If it ever comes to something like that, I’ll be here for you. I don’t want you to turn to other things to help you get through it. You can just turn to me.”

Amell thudded his hand against his chest. He didn’t look at the liquor cabinet, but he didn’t need to. He quite literally could have found it blind. “... I know there are some things I do that we don’t talk about to deal with the things that I’ve done, but you don’t have to worry about me, Anders.”

Anders worried anyway. “... Oghren told me, you know? That you overdosed a few years ago.”

“I know he did,” Amell said quietly.

“... Was it on purpose?” Anders asked.

“I don’t know,” Amell admitted. “I don’t remember much of that month.”

“I tried too, you know,” Anders said. “After Karl.”

“I know,” Amell said. “You told me.”

“I love you,” Anders said.

“I know,” Amell felt for him, cradling his face in one hand and signing ‘love’ against his heart with the other. “You told me.”

Signing stopped hurting. Anders couldn’t take back everything Hawke had taken from him, but Amell helped him take back this, and Anders doubted he even realized he was doing it. Anders wanted so many other things back from Hawke - his ability to drink easy and breathe easy and speak easy - but it helped to have something, even when that something meant nothing to him.

Signing wasn’t special to Anders. It was just a language - one he could have gone the rest of his life without speaking, but Amell made it special again because Amell made everything special. Anders spent a little bit of time at the creche each day - between working in the infirmary, and tutoring Kieran, and writing manifestos and petitions, and doing everything else he was doing with his life - to teach the boys sign language.

They liked talking to Orana, and that was all well and good, but watching them use it to talk to Amell moved him past the point of tears and into a sense of calm. Like for just a moment the stars stood still, and the winds were quiet, and the world held its breath for him so all that existed was his lover’s smile and his spirit’s presence and the laughter of children, pressing one sign after the next into scarred arms and lying about what they meant.

It was even easier than whispering, whenever Anders’ throat was aching after a day that had gone on too long, to press two fingers to his palm and press that palm to Amell’s hand and know Amell knew he loved him without having to find the strength to say it. Even better were the little things that Amell asked him how to say so he could trace them on his skin. Beautiful. Strong. Brave. Just.

Amell kept his sleeves rolled up for him, and all the signs they shaped were soft and free of any fists, but Anders still remembered how they’d felt with Hawke forcing his way back into his life. Ferelden moved beyond sanctions against Kirkwall and the Free Marches followed suit. A blockade was set up around the City of Chains to quarantine the spread of the Red Plague, and almost all communication was lost as the city shut itself off from outside contact.

Word was sent to Kirkwall’s Circle of Magi, informing them of the possibility to treat red lyrium exposure in its early stages, but no word came back. Anders wouldn’t have been surprised if Meredith murdered the messenger. It took blood magic to cleanse red lyrium. It was a fact - one that hadn’t gone over well with his conclave of healers and probably wouldn’t have gone over at all if he hadn’t pointed out the hypocrisy of the protesters. Phylacteries were blood magic, and if the Circles were willing to condone blood magic to hurt and to hunt, then the least they could do was condone it to help.

Even Wynne had looked the other way because she understood the gravity of what they were facing and the need for them to face it. Nathaniel was expected back soon from his expedition to the Valdasine Thaig, researching red lyrium, and in the meantime they learned what they could from the red lyrium that survived on the plague ships and the people who survived it. Amell worked with the Glavonaks to better understand how the properties of red lyrium differed from blue, and Anders spoke to the survivors of Hawke’s madness.

Orana was a marvel. Red lyrium had addled Bartrand’s mind beyond repair, but Orana was still there. She struggled with full sentences, or maybe just struggled signing them, but she could understand and answer questions, so Anders pieced her story together one word at a time. Orana had helped Fenris rescue Ser Cumference - who loved her or her lap because the fat bastard wound up there often enough - and had fled from Hawke’s estate sometime after that.

She didn’t need a reason to run, as far as Anders was concerned, but he imagined there’d been one. It was just hard to put together. Hawke was ‘angry.’ Hawke ‘hurt.’ Servants, Anders assumed, or anyone he felt like hurting when Anders wasn’t there to fill that void for him. Hawke was ‘red,’ or rather on red lyrium, and as obvious as that was Orana stressed the word until Anders assured her he understood.

Hawke had always been obsessive. Anders had just never seen it, because Hawke had been obsessed with things Anders excused him for obsessing over. Coin, but he’d needed that for his expedition, and then he’d needed it for other reasons. The Chant, but he’d been raised that way, and most people were. Beth, but Beth was his sister, and he’d just tried to keep her safe. Anders, but Anders had been his lover, even long after he stopped wanting to be.

There was always ‘iron’ in the estate, and the ‘iron’ was ‘angry,’ but Anders knew that much already. The Red Irons had taken over half the Kirkwall Guard before Anders had even left the city, and they were tainted into templars by the time Hawke brought them down to Denerim. With them in control of Kirkwall, it wasn’t a wonder most of the nobles hadn’t spoken out against him. Hawke had stepped over the bodies of the ones who had and into the Viscount’s Keep.

Aside from the Red Irons, there were also always ‘dwarves’ in the estate. The Carta was another given. Anders knew Cadash well enough to know that coin came first for her and he knew Hawke had a lot of it. Varric had warned him, when he’d followed him to Ferelden, that Hawke was obsessed with red lyrium and had convinced the Carta to mine more of it, and he had seen the effects of that mining operation first hand at the gates of Bownammar.

Nathaniel’s expedition was bound to uncover what Anders could already guess. Darkspawn, following dwarven miners into the depths of the Valdasine Thaig. Eating those miners and infecting themselves with red lyrium, or worse, capturing women already infected with red lyrium and turning them into broodmothers. The Red Irons, fighting those darkspawn, and finally the Harvester, stumbling across all of their corpses and dragging them all the way to Bownammar.

It felt like there wasn’t a horror in his life Hawke hadn’t had a hand in. Anders talked about the Carta, but Orana kept signing ‘dwarf,’ so she must have meant Bodahn and Sandal, at a guess, or Varric, at another.

Least favorites first, he supposed, “Varric?”

“Ran,” Orana signed.

Anders couldn’t imagine Varric leaving Hawke for any reason, but apparently Hawke had finally given him one. Hawke had sent Varric out to look for Anders, and Anders had sent Varric back to Hawke, but Hawke hadn’t believed Varric hadn’t found him. Hawke had insisted - vehemently, violently - that Varric had been lying, and when he couldn’t find the truth he wanted, he’d done what Hawke always did and made his own.

It just so happened that for once Hawke’s truth had been the actual truth. Hawke guessed that Varric had been forced to forget he’d found him, and tried to force Varric to remember. It wasn’t a hard guess to make. Varric had been compelled to forget things once before, investigating possessed templars throughout Kirkwall, so if anything it was almost reasonable, or as reasonable as someone like Hawke could be.

Merrill had broken Varric’s compulsion then, but Hawke hadn’t gotten her to break it this time. He’d forced red lyrium down Varric’s throat instead, and damn him to Void and leave him there, but Anders laughed until he choked and hoped Varric had choked too.

Anders hoped he’d choked on vial after vial of the stuff. He hoped he’d drowned in it. He hoped Varric had grown himself two new hands with ten new fingers and he hoped they’d all turned to crystal and none of them could sign and he hoped Varric had begged for Hawke to stop and he hoped Hawke had never heard him. But for all he hoped, that wasn’t what happened.

Hawke forced all of one vial on him before Varric escaped, and Orana never saw him again, so he assumed Hawke didn’t either.

“Bodahn and Sandal?” Anders asked.

“Ran,” Orana signed again, and slowly spelled, “Orlais.”

So many people had run, as red lyrium swallowed the city from all sides. Orana had run to the alienage first, but she hadn’t run there fast enough. Merrill was the alienage hahren, and wasn’t half as mad as Hawke. She’d closed off the entire alienage from the rest of Kirkwall, shutting the gates, building up the walls, and in one last desperate scramble as the city fell to ruin, grew the vhenadahl around them.

The elven alienage was a city walled off within a city, endless interlacing vines and branches sealing off whoever still survived inside from the horrors that wandered the streets without as the red lyrium spread. Growing from the Viscount’s Keep and the Circle of Magi, tainting the water supply, grouting the blackrock like some brilliant black and crimson marble from Darktown to High.

It seemed to happen overnight, but they all knew it hadn’t, ships fleeing from the harbor and wrecking on the rock before they even left the bay. The one thing the rest of the refugees seemed to get wrong that Anders trusted Orana to get right was that Hawke hadn’t brought up the harbor chains or locked the gates. Hawke didn’t have a reason, but Meredith did, convinced the whole evacuation was just an excuse for apostates to escape the city.

Red Templars had swarmed the docks, on the dawn of that final day, and slaughtered anyone who tried to reach the ships brave enough to linger in the harbor. The captains and their crew had shouted through bullhorns for people to jump and swim and just push through the ranks, and people had tried, shoving sacrifices forward to die on the Red Templars’ swords just so they could crawl over the corpse and make it to the end of the piers.

Orana had been there on the docks, and swam to one of the last ships to leave the harbor when Meredith gave the order to raise the chains. The three plague ships that had made it to Amaranthine were three ships to survive, taking anyone and everyone they could, no matter how the red lyrium had taken them. Orana couldn’t have been a heart, when she’d boarded the ship, and the voyage from Kirkwall to Amaranthine was only three days, which meant that the lyrium had claimed her in that amount of time.

She had been ‘bad’ when she’d escaped, but the horrors had made it ‘worse.’ Some of those infected with red lyrium had the ability to accelerate the conversion process in others, and that was what had happened to the hearts in the hold until Anders had killed all of them, except for Orana. Orana had signed ‘help’ because Orana had wanted to help as much as she’d wanted Anders to help her.

“Do you think I should have stayed?” Anders asked.

“No,” Orana signed.

“Why not?” Anders asked.

“Danger. Die,” Orana signed. “You. Live. Safe. Happy.”

“I am,” Anders promised. “I hope you are too. Thank you, for saving my cat. For saving me. I know you lied to Hawke for me, when I tried to run at the Grand Tourney. I never thanked you. Thank you, for saving me, for telling me everything, for being here.”

“Happy,” Orana signed.

“Happy,” Anders signed back.

Chapter 195: Second Sons and Second Sins

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 5 Pluitanis Evening
Vigil’s Keep

“I was hoping she’d forget,” Amell sighed when a seven year old dwarf showed up at Vigil’s Keep missing two front teeth and one whole shoe, a brand on his face and a cheap leather cap on his head that covered dirty brown braids tied off with cheaper copper bands. His name was Amell, because apparently there weren’t enough Amells at Vigil’s Keep already, and he was incredibly insistent that he was going to be a knight in the service of the Warden Commander whether that Warden Commander liked it or not.

Two minutes into meeting him and Anders was already fond of the scrappy little bastard. The seneschal set the boy up in the barracks, and apparently he’d been incredibly stubborn about settling into his new quarters until he was assured - repeatedly and with candied treats - that they were quarters befitting a knight, or more accurately a page.

“So, I have a question,” Anders said, sitting in the solar with Amell, Oghren, and Morrigan and losing a game of Diamondback. “It’s about three feet tall and two feet wide.”

“I met his mother during the Blight,” Amell explained, thumbing the raised edge of his cards with what felt like his fifth sigh of the evening. “Her family disowned her for having a casteless son and I convinced them to take her back. She promised to send him to me once he was of age, but I didn’t think she was serious.”

“Did I not warn you your kindness would be rewarded?” Morrigan hummed, a glass of wine dangling from her hand that had Anders wondering which of the three survivors of the Fifth Blight had come out of it with the worst drinking problem. “The woman did not have the stomach to leave him to the Deep Roads so she leaves him to you instead.”

“Witch bitch is right, Kid,” Oghren said, and he would have been Anders' original bet, but Oghren was drinking water, and had been for years. “He’s as good as dead to them now that he’s on the surface. You’re stuck with him. May as well name him.”

“He has a name,” Amell said, with a drink of his own. Anders wished he was drinking wine, because there was only one bottle of it on the table, but Amell was drinking brandy, and there was a whole bottle of that too.

“Yeah, your name,” Oghren said. “Can’t call him that.”

“I have some bad news about your son,” Anders joked, drinking water along with him.

“You ever hear me call him Amell?” Oghren countered. “Nugget’s the nugget, or AJ or whatever the fuck kid’s calling himself these days.”

“AK,” Anders frowned at him.

“‘Swhat I said,” Oghren said.

“It’s really not,” Anders said.

“I can’t have a dwarven page right now,” Amell sighed like he could see the dwarves that decorated the cards in his hand. “Not after what happened in West Hill.”

“That’s kind of racist, love,” Anders said.

“Couldn’t reach his horse to saddle it anyway,” Oghren chuckled.

“Half the bannorn is calling for war with Orzammar now that word has gotten out they were kidnapping freeholders,” Amell elaborated, finishing off his glass and setting his cards aside to feel for the bottle. Some part of Anders - maybe the part that was Ser Cumference - considered knocking the bloody thing off the table and onto the floor. The other part saw his lover struggling with something he shouldn’t have to struggle with and pressed it into his wandering hand.

“Thank you,” Amell said, with no way of knowing who he was thanking, and refilled his glass. “If I took on a dwarven page, the bannorn would see it as condoning what happened, and it would be even more difficult to keep the peace than it is now. Parth and Kail are ready to march, and Alfstanna-”

“Now look what you did,” Oghren cut Amell off. “You got him going. We really want to hear about Arl Ass and Bann Cock all night?” Oghren picked a card from his hand, and set it face up on the table. “King. Flip ‘em.”

Anders set down a prince, from his abysmally bad hand of two princes, and said as much for Amell’s benefit. Morrigan set down a princess. Amell set down a paragon, the highest card in the whole bloody set, and Anders sighed. “Really, love?”

“You could still win,” Amell lied.

“Sparkles has about as much luck against that hand as us dwarves have against the surface,” Oghren tutted. “Shoulda blamed the darkspawn.”

“We did blame the darkspawn,” Amell said. “Gleam didn’t. If the Mages’ Collective had agreed to keep what happened a secret Bhelen might not have conscripted them.”

“You don’t believe that,” Anders just happened to nudge him when Amell just happened to reach for his drink, and while he might have stopped that one, Anders knew he wouldn't stop them all. “They couldn’t just let him get away with everything.”

“And why not?” Morrigan sipped her wine. “Is one man’s judgment worth other men's lives?”

“It depends on the man,” Anders said.

Morrigan looked him over like she was seeing him for the first time, and considering how little attention she usually paid him, that might have been the case, “You remind me of someone.”

“Very vague, thanks,” Anders rolled his eyes.

“‘Twas not a compliment,” Morrigan said. “You cannot hope to justify the mindless pursuit of one man at the expense of all others. Unless of course you hope to be King of Ferelden, in which case, carry on.”

“He made a choice,” Anders said. “He should suffer the consequences.”

“Perhaps there is merit to you yet,” Morrigan noted.

“I think so,” Amell finally took a drink, and then he took another, and by the end of the night he'd had so many Anders had to heave him from his chair and drag him back to their room. Oghren couldn’t be assed to help, and Morrigan wasn’t any better off than Amell. She moved from her chair to the couch, and promptly passed out. Amell seemed like he would have been fine to sleep on the table, but Anders wasn’t about to leave him there.

Maker, he was a mess. He shouldn’t have been a mess. He didn’t have any reason to drink so much - not when he’d been surrounded by his friends and his family and it was obvious he wasn’t drinking for fun. People drinking for fun stopped drinking before someone had to make them stop, and while Anders hadn’t made Amell stop, the empty bottle had, and that was even worse. The only thing Anders could say for him was that he was still conscious, or close enough.

Anders propped him up beside the door to their room to fumble for his key, and Amell slid down to the floor like a wet noodle. Dumat settled down beside him so easily it was a little worrying to think the mabari might be used to seeing him like this. "I can't keep doing this," Amell mumbled like he was talking through a mouthful of marbles.

“You’re telling me,” Anders joked, unlocking the door and fighting to get Amell back up on his feet while his limbs slipped out from underneath him. “Maybe we set a two drink limit from here on out.”

“No,” Amell groaned, feet not quite working in the way that feet should.

“Fine,” Anders hefted him onto one shoulder, and pushed the door closed behind them once all three of them made it inside in one piece. “Three drinks-”

"No, no," Amell dragged a hand down his face and added years to it. "I cant keep doing everything."

“... you don’t have to do everything, love,” Anders promised, dragging him towards the bed.

Dumat went to his own, otherwise occupied by Ser Cumference, and somehow managed to squeeze himself onto the edge of the bed between the cat and the wall. Ser Cumference made absolutely no effort to make it any easier for the poor bastard, much like Amell, slipping and sliding out of his arms towards the floor with every other step.

"Another war," Amell said, wheeling free of him somehow to collide with the back of the couch. "I'm so tired."

Anders recaptured him, locking an arm around his chest to keep him from slipping away as he half-dragged, half-carried him across the room. "Let's get you to bed."

"I'm so tired,” Amell whined.

"That's what the beds are for, love,” Anders dropped him onto the edge of theirs, and breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t go sliding off it and onto the floor. “Here we go."

"Can't have a page," Amell pitched forward. Anders caught him before he pitched all the way off the bed and reset him. "They'll think I need one."

"Who's they?" Anders asked

"Everyone,” Amell groaned into his hands, the heels of his palms pressed into his eyes, and for a minute all he was missing was the blood from that night.

"You know having a page doesn't have anything to do with having sight,” Anders pushed through it, and started working on unlacing Amell’s tunic. “Nathaniel was a squire-"

"He's been gone too long,” Amell said.

"He's a few days late,” Anders countered optimistically.

Amell felt for him and fisted a hand in his tunic, which made it increasingly difficult to get Amell’s off, "Have to send a rescue-... "

"Maybe in the morning,” Anders suggested.

"Can't let him die," Amell said.

"You're not, love,” Anders promised, rearranging his arms to get his tunic off and toss it over the arm of the couch to take the laundry later.

Amell went slack once his shirt came off, which, while worrying, made it a lot easier to lay him out of the mattress and start on his belt. "I let them die."

"Who?" Anders asked.

"Martine. Surana. Lyam. Sigrun,” Amell started listing so many names Anders was suddenly afraid he wouldn’t stop. “I let them all die-"

"Love, shhh,” Anders caressed a hand up Amell’s chest, following the dusting of dark hair that led up from his belt and skipping over scars on his way to his heart. “You’re just drunk.”

"Ugh,” Amell surged upright as soon as Anders got his belt off and scrambled for the edge of the bed.

"Hey, no - are you going to be sick? - no, stay,” Anders caught him and aimed him away from him, but the Maker had mercy for once and Amell didn’t throw up on him or the bed or the floor. He just clung to him, visibly queasy and even more visibly unhappy.

"I gave her the bombs-" Amell started.

"Hey, no, stop-" Anders smoothed his hair back and pressed a hard kiss to his temple.

"You were right-" Amell whined.

"No I wasn’t,” Anders said. “I never should have said that."

"So many bombs,” Amell said into his shoulder, and went slack there. Anders unraveled his braid and pocketed the ribbon he’d woven into it before laying him back on the bed.

"Okay, there we go,” Anders said gently, sitting on the bed with him and draping his legs over his lap. “Now boots."

"I can't have a page,” Amell slapped himself in the face, and it must have woken him up, because he started squirming so much it made it difficult to get his boots off. The bloody things were already difficult enough to get off, laced all the way up to his knees, and for the first time ever that was decidedly unsexy of them. “I have to… I don't know what I have to do."

"You have to hold still, for starters,” Anders suggested. “If I have to wrestle with your legs I’m leaving your boots on.”

“I can’t keep doing this,” Amell said, but held mercifully still.

“You have me, love,” Anders went back to the laces. “You don't have to do everything. Don't worry about the page. I'll take care of it."

"Five kids," Amell said for some reason.

"What?" Anders asked.

"You wanted five kids,” Amell reminded him, but he was probably more sleepy than serious.

Anders wasn’t exactly sure. Drunk Amell wasn’t an Amell he had a lot of experience dealing with. Drunk Amell usually dealt with himself, locked away somewhere in the Vigil until he reemerged with coffee in his hands and shadows under his eyes. They didn’t talk about that Amell, but after seeing him like this Anders couldn’t help thinking they probably should.

"Three to go," Anders said lightly, tossing one boot off and onto the floor. "We'll have to adopt a girl next, unless any more Amells are going to start showing up."

"I love you,” Amell sat up, and Anders pushed him back down.

"Don't make me tie you down,” Anders warned him. “It won't be as sexy as you think."

Amell stayed where he put him, lying on his back on the bed, running his hands through his hair, and if he’d been even half sober it would have been something, watching the motion play through the muscles in his chest. Maybe it was still something, but Amell was very, very drunk so unfortunately it couldn’t be much of anything but a terrible tease made all the more terrible when Amell started saying things Anders wasn’t used to him saying. "I love tying you down."

Anders’ hands faltered over the laces to his second boot, "You do?"

"Mhm,” Amell mumbled. “I love listening to you tell me what you want.”

"Maker, I wish you were sober,” Anders sighed.

"You can fuck me drunk,” Amell offered, but Anders didn’t much like him drunk when he kept getting drunk for all the wrong reasons.

"Why don't you tell me that again sober, and then we'll talk?" Anders offered.

"You can fuck me,” Amell repeated.

"Thanks," Anders chuckled. “I’ll fuck you later, okay?”

"Just you,” Amell said.

"Justice is good,” Anders joked.

"You think he likes me?" Amell mumbled.

"We love you,” Anders finally finished with his boot, tossing it to the floor with the other.

"I love you,” Amell insisted.

"I love you too,” Anders rearranged him under the covers, and Amell reached for him, but Anders swore there was so much brandy on him a kiss right now would have gotten him tipsy. He set his fingers against his lips and Amell didn’t seem to mind kissing them instead. “Go to sleep, handsome."

"’mnot handsome,” Amell said.

"You're gorgeous,” Anders corrected him.

Amell groped for his wrist, and shoved his hand against his cheek, "Scars."

"Sexy scars,” Anders thumbed the pale slash accenting his cheekbone from Hawke’s arrow. “Go to sleep. Don't make me cast a sleep spell."

"Don't-" Amell said quickly.

"Okay, but will you at least try to sleep for me?" Anders asked.

"Trying," Amell relented, and eventually wound up burying himself under his pillows in the most uncomfortable looking ball Anders had ever seen, but at least he slept. Anders gathered up his scattered clothes and tossed them in the laundry and not near it, and changed out of his own before he went to sleep with him.

Anders wasn't sure how Amell managed to wake up before him, but he must have, because he wasn’t in bed come morning. He was out in the yard, dealing with the aftermath of yet another emergency. Qunari had snuck into the Vigil in the middle of the night, and attempted to assassinate one of the Glavonaks. An explosives expert by the name of Dworkin the Mad who had been working on, as Amell had so aptly put it last night, ‘so many bombs.’

“These men were among the refugees from Kirkwall,” The seneschal was in the middle of explaining when Anders finally found Amell in the prisons below the cellars, apparently working with the seneschal to interrogate the only qunari they'd managed to capture alive. “Tal-Vashoth banditry. We’ve dealt with their ilk before hiding out along the Aralt Ridge. We captured this one, Commander-”

“You did not capture me,” The qunari corrected him from inside their cell. They looked the way all the horned bastards had looked back in Kirkwall. Corpse grey skin, shock white hair, grown to a length that caught on said horns like wisps of silk, bound up in ropes and leather and bigotry. “I came to you to offer information.”

“What information?” Amell asked, standing in front of the cell with Dumat at his feet.

“Those who attacked were Qunari, not Tal-Vashoth.” The qunari explained, looking a lot more comfortable than one of their kind had any right to look sitting on a rickety stool that was liable to buckle under their weight at any second. “They were of the Ben-Hassrath. The Heart of the Many.”

“That’s rich,” Anders took up a spot beside Amell and folded his arms over his chest. “Last I checked, qunari didn’t have a heart.”

“All men have them,” The qunari said. “Not all men use them.”

“Which are you?” Amell asked.

“I am neither,” The qunari said. “I am nothing. I am called Maraas because I am nothing.”

“You can’t just be neither,” Anders said. “Either you believe in the Qun or you don’t. Which is it?”

“The Qun is not a thing to be believed,” Maraas said. “It is a thing to be understood.”

“Asit tal-eb,” Amell said.

“Your accent is poor,” Maraas noted.

“Do you believe in the Qun or not?” Anders asked.

“Anders,” Amell felt for him and squeezed his shoulder.

“What?” Anders shrugged his hand off. “You know what they do to their mages, don’t you? They make them wear masks that blind them for their entire lives and sew their bloody lips shut the moment they come into their magic.”

“The first unwarranted for him and the second most welcome for you,” Maraas noted.

“I’m sorry, am I making you uncomfortable?” Anders asked. “I’ll try to look sufficiently meek and oppressed.”

“Anders, please, he said-” Amell started.

“I am no man,” Maraas corrected him.

Amell tipped his head like he meant it for an apology, “Forgive me, how should I refer to you?”

“Do not,” Maraas said.

“They said they’re here to offer information,” Amell continued.

“The only information a qunari has to offer is the best way to oppress someone,” Anders muttered, unfolding his arms only to refold them half a heartbeat later.

“Why are the Ben-Hassrath after Dworkin?” Amell asked.

“They believe he has learned the secrets of gaatlok,” Maraas said.

“How do you know this?” The seneschal asked.

“It was told to me,” Maraas said.

“Who told you?” The seneschal pressed.

“One who knows,” Maraas said unhelpfully.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Anders muttered.

“Thank you,” Amell said.

“Thank you? For what?” Anders waved a hand at the captured qunari. “They didn’t tell us anything!”

“You are welcome,” Maraas said.

“Is there anything else we should know?” Amell asked.

“Much,” Maraas said.

“I’m going to lose my mind,” Anders said. “I’m going to go feral. I might actually kill this person.”

“If it is to be then it is to be,” Maraas said.

“It’s not,” Amell said. “Why did you come to Amaranthine?”

“To find an answer,” Maraas said. Anders saw spots.

“To what question?” Amell asked.

“What comes after nothing,” Maraas said. “There is nothing in Kirkwall. The Viscount has ensured it. The Qunari and Tal-Vashoth in the city and the surrounding regions have been eliminated.”

“Why?” Amell asked.

“It was asked of him,” Maraas said simply. “He answers to your Chantry, or perhaps your Chantry answers to him. There is one among them who walks always at his side. They call her the Red Mother. She has killed many Qunari and many Tal-Vashoth and seeks to kill many more.”

“It’s no Chantry of mine,” Amell said. “And there is no war with the Qunari or the Tal-Vashoth here. If you answer to neither and you had no hand in this attack, you’re welcome to stay.”

“Excuse me, they’re welcome to what?” Anders asked.

“Garavel, have Dworkin confirm they weren’t among the assassins and then have them released,” Amell said.

“As you say, Commander,” Garavel - that was the seneschal's name - said with a fist to his chest.

“Dumat, find outside,” Amell said. “Garavel, on me.”

“Yes, Commander,” Garavel jogged after him, so Anders jogged after Garavel, with a dirty look over his shoulder at the qunari in their cage and the vain hope they’d stay there. Amell couldn’t possibly be serious about letting them stay. They were a qunari, and qunari couldn’t be trusted. Their kind butchered and brutalized mages worse than the bloody templars. Just because they said they weren’t a part of the Qun didn’t mean it was true.

“You’re not serious, are you?” Anders asked when he caught up. “Letting them stay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Amell asked.

“Because they’re a qunari,” Anders said.

“Weren’t you saying something about racism last evening?” Amell recalled.

“This isn’t that,” Anders said. “I’ve seen what the qunari do to their mages first hand.”

“They said they aren’t Qunari,” Amell said.

“Well put me in a skirt and call me a templar, it must be the truth,” Anders started sarcastically.

“Anders, I have to deal with this right now,” Amell said. “Garavel, how many of their men did we kill?”

“A few, Commander,” Garavel said.

“Why wasn’t I woken sooner?” Amell asked.

“I-... apologies, Commander,” Garavel bowed. “I’ll speak with the captains and have them remind the men of the expectations when the enemy dies within our walls.”

“Tell me you kept the bodies,” Amell said.

“Of course. This way, Commander,” Garavel led them out into the main courtyard, which housed the workshop where the attack had taken place, and out into the outer courtyard, where the bodies of the qunari assailants had been dragged off and laid out off to the side of the main road. There were three, wearing roped leather armor and painted in black vitaar, and none of them had any weapons. The surviving assassins had snatched them up as they fled.

“Why do you want to see the bodies?” Anders asked.

“To speak with them,” Amell said.

Anders assumed he meant it for a metaphor, but it wasn’t a metaphor that made any sense. “What do you mean speak with them?”

“I mean speak with them,” Amell repeated, sliding on the gloves that hung from his belt in early spring. He knelt beside the first body, and felt his way up through the vitaar from their shoulder to their neck. The Veil thinned as Amell pressed upon it, smoke and shadow gathering around the hand he locked around the dead man’s throat. “Speak your role.”

“Ben-Hassrath,” The corpse spoke, smoke flowing from its mouth, its eyes, its ears, and there was nothing metaphorical about it.

It was just magic - pure and purposeful - in what had to be the most powerful display of necromancy Anders had ever seen, and Amell cast it so casually. Anders knelt down next to him and held his fingers out into the smoke, sapphire flames rippling through the black, and felt struck with the strangest sort of longing.

Anders wasn’t even sure what he was longing for at first. Amell. Amell’s magic. The magic Anders had always found fascinating from the first corpse Amell had risen with wisps when he’d rescued him from his cell six years ago. Anders rarely ever had the chance to see it, because Amell rarely ever had the chance to use it, but he loved it.

There was so much strength in it, but Anders couldn’t decide whether or not he should smile for it, because he knew from last night Amell was tired of being strong.

“Did the Arishok send you?” Amell asked.

“No,” The corpse hissed, turning greyer and greyer as Amell drained it of blood to maintain the spell.

“Who did?” Amell asked.

“The Ariqun,” The corpse withered, smoke spilling out over its shriveling lips.

“Why?” Amell asked.

“Asit tal-eb,” The corpse wheezed, crumbling apart into bone and dust, completely drained of blood.

Amell sighed, dusting off his glove on his pants, and scattered flecks of dried skin in the dirt. “Anders, can you help me to the next one?”

Anders took the hand that wasn’t covered in dried skin, and led him around the pile of bone, leather, and rope that made up the remains of the dead assassin to the next, where Amell cast his spell again.

“Who among the Ariqun sent you?” Amell asked.

“Viddasala,” The corpse said.

“Did they send any others?” Amell asked.

“Yes,” The corpse said.

“Who?” Amell asked.

“Salit,” The corpse said.

“Where are they?” Amell asked.

“They varied… from their assigned path… They denied themselves… They are Tal-Vashoth… Deny and die…” The corpse shriveled up like it meant to follow its own command, dried skin blowing away on the spring breeze.

“... Last one,” Anders warned him. “Can you make the spell last any longer?”

Amell shook his head, “It has to be their blood.”

“Do you want to tell me what you’re thinking before you go again?” Anders offered.

“Garavel, can you give us a minute alone?” Amell asked.

“Of course, Commander. I’ll be in the main hall awaiting orders,” Garavel left the outer courtyard and headed back to Vigil’s Keep.

“Is there somewhere to sit?” Amell asked.

There wasn’t much of anything around, save for the kindling folks had gathered to start a pyre for the bodies. It seemed a little unnecessary now, considering Amell’s magic didn’t leave much to burn. It was a little alarming how much blood made a person. There were a few crates, stacked up beside the closest homestead, waiting to be taken out to the fields for the spring harvest. Anders led Amell to them, and they sat down.

“I was thinking I know the Arishok,” Amell said.

“How do you know the Arishok?” Anders asked. “Don’t tell me you were in Kirkwall before he laid siege to it. I don’t think I can take learning you were there before the siege and I never sensed you.”

“Not the Arishok you knew,” Amell said. “After the attack on Kirkwall, the other two members of their triumvirate, the Ariqun and the Arigena, traveled to Kont-aar, in Rivain, and publicly denounced and disavowed him for his attack on the city. They replaced him with… an old friend of mine. He used to be Sten. He promised me the Qunari would invade the rest of Thedas someday, but he never said when that would happen.”

“You think this had something to do with that?”

“I hope not. We can’t handle a war with the Qunari. No one can - not even the Divine - or she’d have marched on Tevinter ages ago. They’re the only ones holding them back. If the Arishok thinks I’m making gaatlok for the throne he might see it as a challenge and answer in kind.”

“Are you?” Anders asked.

“It’s not gaatlok, and it’s not for the throne,” Amell said. “Dworkin has been working for me for years making explosives for the Grey Wardens. His work’s cost him four apprentices and one of my smiths. I don’t know why the Ariqun would take an interest now.”

“Do you think this Salit person would?” Anders asked.

“Maybe,” Amell sighed, and rifled through his pockets until he found a roll of blood lotus to light. Anders hated how much he loved the smell. It smelled like Amell, standing under the eaves with him two miserable years ago, promising to love him even if Anders never loved him back. But Anders did love him, and Amell knew he loved him, but the fact that Anders loved him didn’t always seem to help him.

“They’re lyrium explosives,” Amell said, after a few hits. “The same that killed Sigrun. The Glavonaks wanted to try them from red lyrium and I said that they could.”

“You did what?” Anders couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Red lyrium? As in the red lyrium that destroyed an entire city and spawned an entire plague? Why would you do that?”

“I think we should study it,” Amell shrugged.

“With explosives!?” Anders demanded - fighting the urge to shout when he knew he couldn’t even with the simir feather Amell had gifted him that rested comfortably against his heart. “You can’t be serious. If you start using red lyrium bombs all you’re going to be doing is spreading red lyrium. Amell, it’s Blighted. We’re Wardens. We can’t spread the Blight. What are you even thinking?”

“I’m thinking it’s a weapon and I want to be the one to wield it,” Amell said, breathing smoke. “Avernus weaponized the taint in our blood. I don’t see why we shouldn’t weaponize it elsewhere. I’m not saying we spread the Blight, but if there’s a way to control and command it, then I need to know so I can know how to counter it.”

“Amell-... love, I can understand researching red lyrium, but are you really telling me if you knew how to make an explosive from red lyrium, you wouldn’t use it?” Anders asked.

“I might,” Amell said.

“You can’t,” Anders said firmly. “It spreads.”

“If it didn’t?” Amell countered. “Dworkin uses dust. Trace amounts of lyrium sand that enhance the properties of the other reagents. Sela petrae, drakestone, and charcoal. Gaatlok is safer but lyrium explosives are more powerful. We’ve used them on dozens of expeditions. One fist-sized explosive can clear an entire nest of darkspawn. If there’s a way to incorporate red lyrium dust that won’t spread the corruption, we could use it to take down darkspawn, or dreadnaughts, or whatever else we came across.”

“People,” Anders said for him. “Say people.”

“People,” Amell repeated obediently after another pull.

“You said you didn’t want another war,” Anders reminded him.

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Amell said. “It never has. The explosives are mine. They belong to the Grey Wardens for the Grey Wardens to use against the darkspawn. I don’t intend to give them to anyone else, but if the bannorn drags Ferelden into a war with Orzammar, or the Qunari land on the shores of Amaranthine, I can’t just ignore that no matter how much I may want to, and I promise I want to.

“Did I ever tell you why I spared Loghain? It’s because I never wanted to stand against him in the first place. I remember walking through the ashes of Lothering after the darkspawn ravaged it, and less than a league away, Eamon and Loghain were fighting a civil war in the bannorn over a chair.

“A chair. The worst thing about the Blight wasn’t the darkspawn; it was the people. I never wanted to fight people. I wanted to save them. I don’t want to go to war with anyone, anywhere, for any reason. I don’t want to be the Chancellor of Ferelden. I don’t want to be the Arl of Amaranthine. I don’t want to manage tensions between Orlais, and Orzammar, and the Free Marches, and the Circles and the Chantry.

“I don’t want to manage my cousin’s madness and the plague he started. I don’t want to hunt down a rogue Tal-Vashoth and find out why my old friend is sending assassins after my men. I don’t want to wonder if one of my best friends is dead because he’s three days late from his expedition. I don’t want to tell a child I can’t take care of him because the bannorn doesn’t like him.

“I don’t want to do any of this anymore. I never did,” Amell took a long hit of lotus that burnt the blunt down to his fingers, and scattered ashes at his feet. “I just want to be a Warden and I haven’t felt like one in years.”

Chapter 196: I Asked For You

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 8 Pluitanis Late Morning
Vigil’s Keep

Amell sent a second expedition to rescue Nathaniel. Anders wasn’t entirely sure if Nathaniel needed rescuing considering he was only a few days late. Velanna, Seranni, Ser Fenley, and some of the Glavonaks had gone with him, so it wasn’t like he was limping through the Deep Roads alone, but Amell seemed to think they were better off safe than sorry.

Apparently, the standard practice - or maybe just Amell’s practice - for a rescue mission was that double the number of Grey Wardens be sent after the group they were rescuing. Amell sent Nolan and the hounds to track them, in addition to a contingent of new Grey Wardens recruited out of Orzammar following the Battle of Bownammar Anders didn’t know outside a handful of names. The Vigil was noticeably emptier afterwards, with dozens upon dozens of Grey Wardens marching on what Anders could only assume was Hawke’s mining operation in the Valdasine Thaig.

Amell stayed at Vigil’s Keep, doing everything he didn’t want to do and smoking and drinking to cope with doing it. He sent scouts out after Salit, the Tal-Vashoth who’d defected from the Qun after being sent to assassinate Amell’s explosive expert, and was absorbed in yet another conflict in West Hill. The bannorn had been without a Bann for so long for so many reasons the freeholders were fleeing, claiming the lands were cursed, and the surrounding banns were making claims for those lands, marching troops all along Gherlen’s Pass.

The proximity of so many troops so close to Orzammar and Orlais set both King Bhelen and Empress Celene on edge. That edge was pressed to Ferelden’s throat, and if something wasn’t done to dull it soon, someone was bound to bleed.

“Alistair has to appoint a bann,” Amell explained while his tailor dressed him for the afternoon’s masquerade. A long jacket over a buckled jerkin - black brocade trimmed in silver - with leather pants and matching leather boots. Justice had been dressed to match, save that his trim was a shade of gold to match his hair, long enough to wax back but not long enough to tie.

The hair was a hassle. The clothes were a comfort. One more bit of belonging in Amell’s court and Amell’s life and Amell’s love. Amell couldn’t appreciate the effort, but he called for it all the same, and Justice imagined he meant it for some sort of statement. Something to show the world they met, and matched, and were meant for one another. They’d been courting openly for six months now and as familiar as Justice may have been with the passage of time, he had no way of knowing what was a traditional courtship and what wasn’t for a nobleman.

A noble man. Nobility wasn’t the first virtue that came to mind for Amell. Command, perhaps. Courage. Perseverance and Purpose. None of the virtues perfectly pure. Purpose perverted, and perseverance became pain and courage became carelessness, but for all his faults, command never once veered into control. Not for Anders and not for Justice, and, at his request, not for the nobility either.

Compulsion seemed the simplest solution for the plight Ferelden faced, but there was no reason for it to be the first, and so Amell hosted a masquerade instead. One they were due to attend once the tailor was finished. A day of dancing and discourse that was of little interest to Anders, and one Amell had specifically requested Justice’s presence for, which always proved pleasant of late.

Justice appreciated the steps Amell had taken towards redemption ever since his actions in Orzammar had been brought to light. The admittance of complicity. The Battle of Bownammar. The sacrifice of self and soul at its gates. The acceptance of Anders’ actions in the aftermath. More so, he appreciated Amell’s demons and all he did to stand against them, and his confession that he couldn’t stand against them alone. Justice had no intention of letting him.

Masks completed their outfits, though they weren’t matching. Justice had something of a plague doctor’s mask, decorative and inlaid with gold to match his garb, but styled in the manner of red lyrium, lest anyone forget the plague that he’d prevented. Amell had griffon wings, a mask no other could wear for it covered his eyes. There was no risk of anyone forgetting him for a Grey Warden, but after hearing of his fears and his frustrations, it seemed he meant the mask more for himself.

“So Alistair appoints a bann,” Justice said, sitting on the edge of their bed, a determined hand keeping Ser Cumference at bay, who was trying, repeatedly and with increasing desperation, to turn his woolen jacket into a fur one. “An entire Teynir lies between Amaranthine and West Hill. This should not fall to you.”

“Everything falls to me,” Amell countered when the tailor finished with his outfit and saw themself out. “With Anora and Leliana visiting the Divine and Celene in Orlais, Alistair has to handle this, which means I have to handle this, so I have to appoint a bann.”

“If he so fears your power why give you more of it?” Justice asked.

“This isn’t power,” Amell said, retrieving a ribbon from his armoir to weave into his braid. “This is punishment. It always is.”

“A punishment that provides you with the means to further your alliances among the nobility,” Justice countered, watching the way his fingers threaded the silver through the raven locks. There was something to be appreciated in the way he moved, something compelling in every talented twirl of his fingers and the way he relied on them to gauge the world around him, something special in the way Amell wove their arms together and let Justice lead him not just through the Vigil but lately through life.

“Or ruin them,” Amell said on their way to the throne room. “This is a political maelstrom and Alistair knows it. That’s why he wants it to fall on the chancellery instead of the crown.”

“The chancellery speaks for the crown,” Justice countered, volunteering, “Stairs,” when they reached them.

“When the crown wants it to,” Amell gauged the first step, and descended the rest with ease. A pulse of blood magic assessed and assured their solitude, and Amell added, “I want a smoke.”

“Abstain,” Justice said.

“I’m trying,” The fingers of Amell’s free hand flexed for clear want of a roll between them.

“Try harder,” Justice said. His lack of sympathy seemed to earn him Anders’ ire, tension rolling through his shoulders Justice rolled stubbornly back out. Sympathy would not stop him and thus it seemed clear it would not help him. “I would not see you come to harm by your own hand.”

“Maleficarum and masochism are sort of synonymous, Justice,” Amell nudged him, but his use of blood and blood lotus were two entirely different things.

There was none of the latter stowed away in his jacket, as far as Justice was aware, so there didn’t seem to be any harm in discussing the former instead. “Your magic makes you a martyr, not a masochist.”

“Is there a difference?” Amell asked.

“One has purpose,” Justice said.

“What’s mine?” Amell asked.

“I cannot define it for you,” Justice said.

They reached the base of the stairs, and conversation came to a lull. The commotion of the masquerade consumed much of the Vigil, spilling beyond the throne room and into others. Servants ran wild between the kitchens and the throne room carrying full and empty trays depending upon their direction, sprinting to the laundry and back as they laid out masks and outfits for guests in crates and tables in the hall.

The masquerade was something of a belated Wintersend Ball. The Grey Wardens and the Amaranthine nobles were all in attendance, but the true purpose was to measure the merit of the rest of the nobility who sought to lay claim to the West Hill Bannorn. While some banns sought to claim the entirety of West Hill and absorb it into their own bannorns, most sought to have Amell appoint someone from their family or their service to solidify an alliance with the existing bannorn.

The latter was the only thing that Amell would endorse, not that everyone in attendance cared whether or not they had his endorsement. The Vigil’s steward announced them when they entered the throne room, already brimming with masked nobles and masked attendants, and all heads turned. Even the minstrels paused. Justice supposed that was the point of his presence, sapphire flames cutting through his clothes and burning in his eyes at Amell’s side.

The lyres resumed, and Justice took them on a turn about the room at Amell’s request. “Why do you look for purpose in me?” Justice asked.

“Where else would I look when you’re the only thing I can see?” Amell glanced at him, but his mask covered his eyes, and Justice doubted he could see through it. There was some other symbolism there, surely.

Something in the way Amell wanted the world to see them. Amell on his arm and not the other way around; Amell sightless and Anders strong. A public display of Amell’s trust in him and his possession. An unsubtle commentary on how Justice was blind and Amell had every intention of enacting it with him here. It was a statement Justice was happy to help him make, and one he respected him for making.

“Within yourself,” Justice suggested.

“There’s nothing within me,” Amell said.

“Did you not say that we should find strength in absence?” While he may not always carry the staff Amell had gifted them, he’d never forgotten the words inscribed upon it. “Should you not do the same?”

“I’m tired of being strong,” Amell lowered his voice. “I’m exhausted by strength. I want softness. I don’t want to be praised for how many hits I take or how well I take them. I don’t want to take hits at all. I want to be held.”

“I am holding you,” Justice covered the hand Amell had rested in the crook of his arm and squeezed to remind him.

“I was speaking metaphorically,” Amell said, but his grip on his arm tightened, and it seemed like a lie.

“Were you?” Justice asked.

“... not entirely,” Amell admitted.

“Justice is not soft,” Justice pointed out.

“Justice doesn’t need to be,” Amell said. “Having your strength at my side during my judgments means a lot to me.”

“Do you expect to make any here?” Justice asked.

They finished their turn about the room, and Amell told him of those that filled it between introductions and pleasantries as one noble after the next came forward to speak with him, and subtly or unsubtly weave West Hill into the conversation in an effort to stake their claim. Amell listened to all of them and committed to none of them.

“Passing a judgment would hold less consequence than appointing a bann,” Amell said, drinking something made with cherry blossoms and not fermented from them. “West Hill is between Jainen and Kinloch, and any bann I appoint has to favor mages more than Franderel did to allow them to settle on their land, but if they favor them too much they risk offending the surrounding banns and the Chantry.”

“Why should the Chantry’s offense matter to you?” Justice asked.

“Because it matters to Alistair,” Amell explained. “He’ll support our people only insofar as he can without risking his own.”

“Our people are his people and as King he bears the same responsibility towards them,” Justice argued.

“Tell that to him,” Amell drank like he wished it was wine.

“I shall if it suits you,” Justice said.

Amell shrugged, “You convinced him once already.”

“We have convinced others as well,” Justice told him, thinking back on their efforts in Amaranthine and the plague they thwarted with the conclave they gathered. “Jainen’s First Enchanter Jendrik has promised to bring forth the motion to secede from the Chantry again in Cumberland this year.”

“You’re an inspiration,” Amell’s smile seemed all the more meaningful when Justice couldn’t see it touch his eyes. It was just there, on his lips, like a piece of him pulled from the Fade, and it felt almost like home.

“So you have said,” Justice said in a low voice.

“So I’ve meant,” Amell returned.

“And the banns?” Justice asked.

“Alfstanna controls the Waking Sea Bannorn and believes she controls Jainen as well,” Amell said of a woman he couldn’t point out to him who’d not yet come to greet them. “Free mages aren’t allowed to book passage out of the bannorn without her consent, and while she usually gives it, she’s a fair-weather friend to them. Her brother was a templar and she works closely with the Knight Commander to determine which mages should be allowed to settle which lands.”

“I had thought once a mage received dispensation to leave the Circle they were free to travel outside of it,” Justice said.

“They have to secure a means to travel first,” Amell said. “The Mage’s Collective helps where they can, but Alfstanna has a lot of oversight and if a neighboring bann was known to allow mages lands she refused them, it could start an uprising in Jainen with mages attempting to flee to West Hill - like what happened in Kirkwall when word of free mages in Ferelden reached their Circle.”

“Then perhaps there should be an uprising,” Justice said.

“I can’t be at its forefront,” Amell didn’t exactly disagree. “And any bann I appointed wouldn’t be strong enough to stand against Alfstanna’s archers.”

“Is there no other recourse for mages who seek to settle outside the Circle?” Justice asked.

Amell shook his head, “Free mages don’t know how to settle outside the Circle.”

“Then they must learn,” Justice said.

“How?” Amell asked. “The Circles keep us from the world - they don’t teach us how to survive it.”

“You did,” Justice noted.

“I’m a Grey Warden. I spent a fortnight traveling from Kinloch Hold to Ostagar when Duncan recruited me, and there was nothing I knew how to do on my own without the Tranquil there to do it for me. I didn’t know how to cook, how to swim, how to ride a horse, or how to do anything the Circle didn’t want me to do. I know it wasn’t like that for Anders, but Anders is-...”

Amell trailed off, like any word he might have used to define their love would be too small to contain him. “Do you remember how hard it was for you to adjust to the mortal world when the baroness bound you to Kristoff?”

“Vividly,” Justice said. He also remembered everything the Grey Wardens had done to make that adjustment easier. Sigrun, more so than most, teaching him everything there was to know about a world she herself had only recently discovered. It seemed like she’d taught him everything from how to laugh to how to lie to how to love, and Justice had loved her dearly, as his first and fiercest friend until her death.

He remembered Amell as well, though not as Anders remembered him. Justice had spent perhaps two months with Amell before Amell had gone to his Calling, and in that timeframe their friendship had been tenuous at best. Amell was a maleficar in the purest sense of the word. He’d bound demons with abandon, and Justice had never fully trusted him not to do the same to him, no matter his assurances, given late at night when the rest of the Vigil had gone to sleep, but Amell couldn’t find it, and Justice had no need of it.

Amell had given him other things as well. Books. Books upon books. Books about spirits, and books about demons, and books about magic, and books about mages, and Justice had read them all. By candlelight, alone in the library, with no company but the company Amell had given him in the leatherbound pages, until the rest of the Grey Wardens finally awoke and Justice could rejoin them, but Amell he never quite left, because Amell had always given him something to hold on to.

The library had still been there, long after Amell had left, but reading hadn’t felt the same, and Justice hadn’t done it as often.

“It’s like that for mages,” Amell said, a passing servant appearing to take away his empty drink. “The Chantry wants it that way so they set us up to fail. The First Enchanters and the Knight Commanders release free mages one at a time, with no coin and no connections, and most of them don’t make it long outside the Circles before they go back to them, or die without them.

“Bann Ceorlic is a craven and Bann Loren is a recluse, and the prejudice of the people keeps mages out of much of the Southern Bannorn and Oswin, but they both border Lake Calenhad. There’s nowhere else for mages to disembark, and those who try to make it through either bannorn to follow the Imperial Highway to Amaranthine are strung up and killed before they ever reach Highever.”

They should not have been. They were free men who, in Anders' own words, should have been free to ‘shoot lightning at fools’ and rain fire and vengeance on those who would threaten them. Justice could guess why they didn’t. There was no doubt in his mind that those the Circles saw fit to free would be those most ill equipped for freedom.

“And what of retribution?” Justice asked.

“There isn’t any,” Amell said simply. “The murder of a mage is investigated by the Templar Order if the local bann declines, but the murder of a blood mage isn’t. All their murderers have to do is slit their wrists and leave them up for someone else to find, and they walk free.”

“Where mages should,” Justice said.

“Where mages should,” Amell agreed.

The minstrels started up a song suited to a waltz, and Amell squeezed his arm. “Dance with me?”

“I assume I am leading?” Justice asked.

“Always,” Amell let him lead him to the dance floor, and the nobility scattered. Whether it was for the Warden Commander or the mage that set himself ablaze at his side, Justice couldn’t say and didn’t deign to ask. He’d quickly come to love dancing, and dancing with Amell especially. In the moment, focused so intently on their movements and the way their bodies broke and came together, it reminded him he had one, and almost made him feel mortal.

“And what of the crown?” Justice asked, holding Amell’s hand and the small of his back as they moved across the floor. “Does the King not care to investigate the murder of his own men?”

“Mages accused of being maleficarum,” Amell said, as if that somehow made them less than men. “The Chantry and the Bannorn would see any investigation as impious.”

“And what of their Commandments?” Justice asked, though he did not believe them. “Is it not a sin to slay a man?”

“It’s not,” Amell said. “It’s only a sin to bring harm without provocation.”

“This seems subjective,” Justice noted.

“It is,” Amell agreed; Anders had always loved that Amell was agreeable, and it wasn’t hard to see why.

Justice pulled him closer than might have been necessary, lips beside his ear to speak to him and him alone, “I revere your irreverence.”

“I revere you,” Amell whispered back.

Amell was his smirk, great griffon wings sweeping back from his eyes and blinding them both. Amell from him, and Justice from anything but. His lips seemed meant for him in that moment, but where Anders had had many, Justice had had none, and could say with certainty he wanted no more than a moment. Some simple way to express his affection for a soul that wasn’t tangled in his own.

Anders offered up a handful of excessive and exuberant suggestions on how to achieve such a thing, and Justice set them all aside. “Why are free mages not escorted from the Circles?”

“The Templar Order wants them in the Circle,” Amell said. “They have no motivation to see them safely from it.”

“And the king’s men?” Justice asked.

“Fear of favoritism?” Amell suggested.

“Mages should be favored,” Justice certainly favored two of them.

“I’m glad you think so,” Amell said.

“I think it often,” The dance came to a close, and while Justice was eager for another, a selection of banns pulled them apart to speak of the bannorn.

He missed Amell, in his brief absence, and the way he felt with him. The way that he could stand to feel with him. Sensation was almost tantamount to suffering, when it overwhelmed so easily, but Amell didn’t. He was warm, but not too warm. Firm, but not too firm. Soft, but not too soft. He was muted as much as he was magic, a reserved and gentle presence Justice could savor and not suffer. Justice exchanged a few words with his fellow Grey Wardens until the banns surrounding Amell parted.

“Have you given thought to who you might appoint?” Justice asked when he rejoined him.

“Outside?” Amell suggested, weaving them back together. At some point he’d acquired a drink, and Justice seriously considered relieving him of it, but he led him through Vigil’s Keep and into the southern courtyard instead. A handful of couples lingered in the yard, picnicking on blankets and enjoying one another’s company, and Justice almost saw himself reflected in them.

“None of the western banns,” Amell said. “Bryton, Lanya, Kail, and Parth are all too covetous and close to the border. They’ve been fighting amongst themselves for the past six years, and if I gave West Hill to one of their nieces or nephews they wouldn’t hesitate to march on each other, and things would be even more tense than they are now.”

“And the eastern ones?”

“Bann Loren, but he’s made no claims, and hasn’t been seen outside his castle in months. Almost no one is allowed into Caer Oswin, and he’s spent years in mourning since his wife and son died during the Fifth Blight. Alfstanna, but if the Waking Sea allied with West Hill mages would never make it past her men to settle any other bannorn.

“Mac Eanraig would be ideal, but his navy is too strong and they sunk too many Orlesian ships, and Celene would see it as a threat if I appointed his cousin. Bann Cerolic put forth one of his knights. He’s cruel and a craven, and might be the best choice.”

“To what end?” Justice asked. “If the man is as you say, how is he to stand for the Circles when he will not even stand for himself?”

“I’m told his knight isn’t his ally,” Amell said. “He’s just a man who wants the land, but I can’t say if he’d use it well, and it would anger Alistair.”

“Did you hope to?” Justice asked.

“Most days,” Amell chuckled. “But not with this. Cerolic was one of Loghain’s staunchest allies, and Alistair would take it as an insult if I showed him any favor.” Amell finished off his drink and twirled the empty wineglass between his fingers in a way that made it clear he wanted it refilled.

“Tell me what troubles you,” Justice suggested.

“It might be easier to tell you what doesn’t,” Amell warned him.

“I did not ask for easy,” Justice said. “I asked for you.”

If a masquerade was meant to hide one’s true intentions, then Amell’s mask served that purpose poorly. There was nothing else to see besides his lips, and the way they curved for his words, the slightest color rising to his cheeks beneath the winged silver. “You have me,” Amell said.

“And your troubles?” Justice pressed.

Amell took off his mask, and held it limply in his free hand. “... He keeps asking after Kieran.”

“Alistair?” Justice guessed.

Amell nodded.

“Has he threatened him?” Justice asked.

“Not in so many words,” Amell sighed. “... He’s obsessed with what Kieran said to him when we got back from Orzammar. He thinks it means his father, King Maric, is still alive and wasn’t actually lost at sea twelve years ago. His ship disappeared en route to Wycome, where he was going to try to unite the Free Marches, and it was never found.

“Loghain spent two years searching for him, chasing rumors and draining the royal treasury in the process. He almost bankrupted the kingdom until Anora finally forced him to stop. There were still rumors Orlais sank his ship and captured him, and that they’re holding him in an Orlesian prison somewhere, but they would have ransomed him years ago if that were true.

“... Alistair-...” Amell thumbed at the edge of his mask. “... ordered me to come to Denerim with Kieran and I refused. Even if his father is alive, I won’t let Alistair be a warden to my son.”

“As well you shouldn’t,” Justice said. “He has long since ceased to be one.”

“... I have no idea what he’s going to do,” Amell admitted. “We’ve-... argued before but I’ve never refused an order from him. It’s technically treason if he wanted to see it that way and I don’t know if he will. The last time the Grey Wardens stood against the throne, they were banished from Ferelden for two hundred years until King Maric allowed them back into the country.

“Maric was supposed to be a man of reason, and I wish he was alive and on the throne more than Alistair ever could, but I won’t let Alistair turn my son’s gift into a tool to put him there… Morrigan and I have been talking about what to do if Alistair decides to come for him. She’s going to take Kieran to Orlais to serve in the Empress’ court. That’s why she’s teaching him Orlesian.

“Loghain promised to help her, and Commander Clarel has connections. She was an Enchanter at the White Spire before she joined the Grey Wardens, and Celene used to visit often. She’s fond of the arcane, and not against occult advisors, and we think they’ll both be safe there… I’ve been trying to think of how to tell you, I just-... didn’t want to think about it.”

“... Is this why the dwarven child’s arrival aggrieved you so?” Justice guessed.

Amell nodded again and took a steadying breath before he put his mask back on, “I don’t need a second son. I just want my first… What did you do with him?”

“I did nothing,” Justice said. “The boy wished to be a page and so Anders kept him on as one. He wanted to squire under the Warden Commander, but he seemed to settle for a man more or less his husband once he was assured men could marry men on the surface.”

“... more or less,” Amell said with a slight smile.

“More so than less,” Justice said.

“Amell!” A nasally voice called from across the yard, and Finn hastened towards them with a handheld half-mask, dressed in a violet doublet with one too many polka dots and lace in all the wrong places. A windblown hat kept sliding off his narrow head, and he bounced it and his half-mask back and forth until he reached them and dropped both at their feet. “We have an emergency.”

“Is it you?” Anders snapped, unable to help himself. “Are you the emergency? Is getting away from you an emergency, because it definitely feels like one.”

“My parents are here!” Finn squealed, skipping over his discarded hat to grab Amell’s jacket. “You have to hide me!”

“Hide you,” Anders repeated. “From your parents.”

“Kingston can’t see me!” Finn insisted, glancing over his shoulder in case some older, pastier version of himself had followed him into the yard. “Florence definitely can’t see me! I haven’t written in months! They’ll never forgive me. I missed Wintersend and First Day, and I forgot to send back gifts for Satinalia. This is a disaster!”

“You think hiding from your parents because you forgot to write is an emergency?” Anders asked.

“Of course it’s an emergency,” Finn said.

“Do you have any idea how lucky you are to even have parents who care if you write or not?” Anders demanded. “And you’re out here hiding from them?”

“Why are your parents here, Finn?” Amell asked, peeling Finn’s hands off his jacket and pushing his empty wine glass into them in the process.

“... For the bannorn, obviously,” Finn said, straightening out his ridiculous outfit and staring awkwardly at the glass he’d been handed. “Magistrate Kingston Aldebrandt, of West Hill? A lot of the lesser nobles from West Hill came to make a claim they couldn’t make before now that they don’t need to sponsor a champion for a tourney. I knew I should have told them not to come, but I couldn’t just write to tell them to go away.”

“That’s the only reason I’d write you,” Anders said.

“... How well loved is your father, Finn?” Amell asked.

“I-... well I don’t know,” Finn said. “He’s a magistrate. Does anyone really love magistrates? They’re the kind of people you’re just bothered to be around.”

“I know what you mean,” Anders said.

“I’ll take care of it,” Amell said. “Make yourself scarce.”

“Please,” Anders added.

“Thank you!” Finn grabbed Amell’s hands, and Amell’s mouth crumpled up into a grimace. “Thank you so much. I knew I could count on you. I’ll go-... somewhere else. Thank you, thank you.” Finn snatched up his hat and his half-mask, and scampered out of the yard.

“Tell me you’re not going to do what I think you’re going to do,” Anders begged.

“They’re nobility-”

“Love-”

“They’re from West Hill-”

“Ugh.”

“Finn inherits,” Amell finished. “A mage inherits. This works, Anders.”

Anders groaned, “But does it have to be Flora?”

“See me back inside?” Amell asked.

Anders took his arm and led him back inside and into a nightmare. The minstrels were playing The Girl in Red Crossing, the same song that had been playing when Hawke had come to capture him, and almost killed them both. Anders gripped Amell’s arm hard enough to hurt, his heart racing at every masked face and splash of red, and his breath coming in sharp, staccato gasps through his nose. “Amell-...” Anders choked out.

“I’ll have them play something else,” Amell promised.

Justice led him to the stage when Anders couldn’t, and the minstrels switched songs with an ease that made the change all but unnoticed. It wasn’t until the song switched that Justice realized it must have been just as hard for Amell to hear. Amell let out a slow breath, and a bit of tension Justice hadn’t even noticed eased out of his shoulders.

“Another dance?” Justice suggested.

“Please,” Amell said, a little unsteadily.

Justice took his arm and led him into another dance that split them apart. Partners changed rapidly, one after the next, sending them to opposite ends of the throne room, and Justice couldn’t imagine a way for Amell to navigate it without him. The room was crowded with nobles and wardens alike, and their blood seemed like it would be too thick for Amell to sense him through, and with a mask over his eyes, he couldn’t see him either.

Justice shoved his way around the edge of the throne room when the dance ended, through doublets and jackets and dresses and wigs, until he found Amell standing perfectly still at the edge of the dance floor where his last partner must have abandoned him. “Amell,” Justice set a hand on his shoulder, though he doubted Amell could hear him over the music when he couldn’t raise his voice above a whisper.

Amell turned into his touch, his hand sweeping up his arm to his shoulder to his mask. His fingers felt along the decorative plague doctor’s mask, and pushed it up and off his face while simultaneously taking off his own. The void in Amell’s his eyes met the fire in his, and Amell let his fingers dance along his lips in an unspoken question Justice knew no other way to answer than with the assurance of his own.

Chapter 197: Letters From Other Lives

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter!

Chapter Text

A collection of letters, sent to Senior Warden Anders throughout the latter months of 9:36 Dragon and the early months of 9:37 Dragon, stored in a chest in the Warden Commander’s room at Vigil’s Keep.

A Life in Orzammar

Atrast vala, my friend,

I hope you have not fallen into the sky or gotten lost beneath the snow since you left. I am told that there is a great deal of it on the surface right now. Some of the primal mages conjured it for a First Day Festival - one of your human holidays - and we had a ‘snowball fight.’ I can’t say I would ever want to see the surface, but some of the things that exist up there are certainly fascinating. I can understand why you went back.

The Collective College is doing well. I’m sure if you had stayed they would be doing even better, but I don’t regret sponsoring them for you. Gleam has proven to be almost as shrewd a leader as Bhelen, and her betrothed looks pretty enough on her arm. I’ve never seen anything else like it before. The Memories speak of a few powerful women in our past, Paragons and Queens, but they’re fewer and further between than they should be.

Branka was supposed to be one of them. Instead the cryers are using her as an example of what happens when women are allowed to pursue power in place of children. There’s even talk of tearing down her statue in the Hall of Heroes and replacing it with one of Paragon Beirus, but he shares the same obsessions and I can’t see him learning from history so much as repeating it. Stone knows we don’t need that to happen.

The crimes committed against the Legion of Stone and Steel have been recorded in the Memories, as has their rescue, though not knowing who to credit for it vexes me. I can’t chisel rumors into the Stone, and there are too many of them. The popular theory is that Paragon Branka planted a spy in the palace in an attempt to steal the King’s soldiers, but I don’t know that I believe it. Everything I’ve heard about Paragon Branka leads me to believe she’d prefer a dead Legion to a free one.

Mercifully, King Bhelen doesn’t feel the same. The Legion of Stone and Steel are free members of the Warrior Caste now. They’re still in his service, but they’re no longer bound there. At least no more so than anyone is bound to the will of the King, and at the end of the day we all are. I’m beginning to think that freedom is just how we measure the length of our chains.

Which brings me back to the Collective College. I know you’re unhappy the King conscripted them, but they’re serving well. I don’t know if I ever told you, but I was originally from a smith caste family before I joined the Shaperate. My father owns several forges, and I convinced him to allow Gleam and a few of the other primal mages to serve in them, so you can rest assured they’re being well-treated.

Her betrothed is serving under Herbalist Widron, in the Royal Palace, and seems content there as well. At the risk of sounding smitten, he’s incredibly sweet. He’s devoted himself to seeing what he can do to help with the declining birth rate in the city, and while I don’t believe there’s anything to be done, it’s nice to see a surfacer care about our problems. Most of the mages are serving because they have to serve, but he genuinely seems to want to help whoever he can wherever he can. I can see why Gleam is happy with him.

I won’t pretend that everyone else is as well off, but I don’t believe that anyone is suffering. They may not be Servant Caste, but most of them are treated that way. Crimes committed against mages are crimes committed against their sponsoring family, and there have only been a few blood feuds since you left. If anything it’s encouraging that everyone adapted so easily. There’s even talk of establishing Magic Provings! For the mages who want to participate, of course.

I understand not all mages and magic work the same. I’ve learned a great deal about the different types of magic in the time that they’ve been here. I can almost understand why Janar’s daughter Dagna left for the surface to study it. There’s so much that can be done with it. The access to clean and limitless water alone is bound to make life easier for all of us, and we could stand for things to be easier.

There’s been a lot of unrest in the city of late and King Bhelen’s grip on it is tightening as a result. Renvil Harrowmont was his last outspoken rival, the late High General Pyral Harrowmont’s nephew and the last of his line, and he’s been forced to flee the city. Word is that he’s fled for Kal-Sharok, the only other great thaig left to our people outside Orzammar and Kal’Hirol. It lies beneath the Hunterhorn Mountains between Orlais and the Anderfels, if you hope to find it on your surface maps.

It was the capital of our empire, once upon a time, but it was isolated for almost a thousand years after it was thought lost to darkspawn during the First Blight. It was rediscovered twenty five years ago, but the dwarves that live there are different. I’ve only met one of their ambassadors, and they were pale and tainted in a way that’s hard to define. As unsettling as that is, it might be a better place to be in the near future.

Something happened. I promise the Collective College had no hand in it, but I can’t promise everyone on the surface will see it that way. I know you wanted to start your Circle here to escape your Chantry, but apparently it’s not an easy thing to escape. A man by the name of Brother Burkel established a small Chantry in the Commons, shortly before you established your Collective College, and it didn’t go over as well.

He won a handful of converts, but it attracted a great deal of anger from more conservative quarters, and the Assembly severely restricted their rights to preach and practice. Brother Burkel staged a protest in the Commons, and he was slain in the process of being arrested. I know there’s bad blood between the Circle and the Chantry, and I just wanted to warn you before news of the riots reaches the surface. I hope no one blames the mages for it, but I’m afraid I won’t be here to speak for them if they do.

I’m being exiled! I should have led with that, but I don’t want you to worry about me or blame yourself. I wasn’t entirely honest with you. I recorded what you shared about Malika Cadash and Natia Brosca in the Memories. House Cadash is one of the largest Carta crime families operating in the Free Marches and House Brosca is one of the newest Warrior Caste families in Orzammar. If they have a connection to the Carta, then it should be recorded in the Memories, especially considering Rica Brosca is married to the King.

My superiors disagreed. They ordered me to remove the record, and I refused, so I’ve been demoted and sentenced to field work in the Deep Roads for the foreseeable future. The abuse of the Memories for political gain may be a common occurrence, but I won’t be part of it. People deserve to know the truth. About everything.

I still have connections in the city, and I’ll do what I can for the Collective College from a distance, but I’m afraid they’re on their own now. I’m sure that sounds ominous, but I think they’ll be fine without me. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past few months it’s that mages are strong and their magic has nothing to do with it.

Everyone has a place in Orzammar. We may not like it, but we’re born into it. Mages have to make their own. I want to believe they can make one here, and that you can make one too, wherever life takes you. I hope it’s somewhere nice. Take care, Anders. I’m afraid this will be my last letter for a while.

Atrast tunsha
Valta


A Life at Sea

Mage,

It’s a relief to think I haven’t had to listen to your whining for almost a year now, though I’m not sure if being subjected to the manifestos you call letters is any better. I beg you - send me no more books. My reading and writing are just fine without five pages of practice from you every month. If I have to hear about one more West Hill Horror I will have Bela turn the ship around and burn the whole bannorn to the ground to spare us both. You from suffering it and me from suffering you.

I warn you now, it would be quite the voyage. We’re docked in Hercinia. You can send your next letter (or book) to Estwatch, as usual, though I suspect I’ll not receive it for a while. We’re finally close to Castillon. We killed his right hand man Velasco, shortly after I sent my last letter, and the coward gave Castillon up in his final moments. I think you would have liked to hear them. He promised us everything. Ships. Gold. Men. Women. Slaves.

The crew didn’t appreciate the irony as much as you would have. I think I told you some of them served with Bela before on the Siren’s Call. I learned something from them. You may wish to sit before you learn it from me. (I will assume you have done so. Or that you have not. It matters not to me. Be contrary if it suits you.) You will recall, no doubt, that Bela was tricked into transporting slaves for Castillon before we met her.

You will also recall, if your recollection has not yet failed you, that she freed those slaves at great personal risk. She was forced into stealing the Tome of Koslun for Castillon to repay him for the loss of life and the coin he might have earned from it, and I’m sure I need not remind you what happened next. Not what should have happened.

I should have stood against Hawke then. There in the Viscount’s Keep before the Arishok when he laid Bela at his feet like some sacrificial lamb. I should have challenged him. I should have challenged them both, and spared us all the pain of what was to come, but I didn’t. You did. You saved her and I cannot recall if I even bothered to thank you. Something Bela and I have in common, I’m sure. Why be cordial when we could be cruel?

I had thought that that was the first time Bela trafficked in flesh, but it was not. She trafficked slaves in her youth. A way to repay her debts to the Felicisima Armada, when she first started out as a raider, and was struggling to retain a crew and cover the costs of one. She only stopped when she was almost caught by the Orlesian navy in the Venefication Sea. She

She was
She did
It was

There is no way to write this.

She killed them. The slaves. She threw them overboard, still in chains, to drown, just to lose the weight. It worked I suppose. She lived.

I have been wondering often of late how much I weigh.

I don’t know what I expect you to do with this information. I don’t know what I expect to do with it myself. Castillon is still at large and I still intend to work with her to kill him, but beyond that? How can there be anything beyond that? How am I to live with myself if I am to live with her? Real questions, mage. Write me real answers.

Perhaps I am not even asking you. Perhaps I am asking Justice. Perhaps I am asking no one. Perhaps there is nothing to ask. One does not become a slaver by accident. Those men and women did not stumble into the hold of her ship anymore than you stumbled into the room Hawke locked you in. She professes regret and yet unlike you I love no necromancer and her regret will not raise those souls from the ocean’s depths.

There were hundreds in the hold.

I thought of staying in Estwatch to wait for your answer. I know you will have one. I have no doubt if you were here, I would have your opinion whether I wanted it or not. I can all but imagine you on the bow of the ship, subjecting the whole of the crew to more sermons than a Chantry Sister. Or perhaps simply slaying them all. I will not lie, the thought crossed my mind when I learned of their complicity.

Yet they traffic in slaves no longer. They have spent the past six months working to ensure no others can follow in their footsteps, bloody as they may be, and can I honestly say mine have been any better? You know what I did in Seheron. The Fog Warriors I killed at Danarius’ behest. Innocents, all. Not hundreds of them, but innocents nonetheless. Perhaps fifty. Perhaps more. I stopped counting once I reached a score.

I wish we had spoken on it. I wish we had had time to speak on it before Hawke sent me to the mines and you to that room. I know you claimed it no fault of mine, given my position at the time, but I can’t agree. I can’t forget or forgive the things my hands have done simply because they wore chains at the time that they did them. The choices I have made

Rest assured, they were choices, and I still had them, even then. The Qunari have a saying. Existence is a choice. A self of suffering, brings only suffering to the world. It is a choice, and we can refuse it. I chose to live. I chose to do the things that were asked of me that would allow me to live. How can I fault Bela for doing the same?

Perhaps it’s not the same, but it is in the very least similar. Had she any other choice at the time, I am sure she would have availed herself of it. Is that good enough? To know that she has done wrong and that she seeks to do better? If it is not good enough for her, what makes it good enough for me? What do I do here, mage? Spirit? Whichever of you has the answer.

I need it.

I suspect we shall be in Hercinia a while. Castillon is entrenched in this city and it may take us some time yet to uproot him. We will not leave until we have and this is over. I just cannot say what comes next. Write to me and I shall write back when I can.

Bela sends her love. She hopes she still has yours.

Fenris


A Life in Kirkwall

Hey Anders,

Supposin’ it’s safe to write you back seein’ as you been writing me since you left. Didn’t mean to scare you none, just weren’t sure where to start or what to say. Lot’s been going on for Franke these past few months and it seems like lot’s been going on for you as well. Might miss your nameday, yeah? You gonna be what? Thirty-two now, weren’t it? Franke’s still got a few years on you yet.

No presents this time. Appreciate you squeezing in a few silver for old Franke in your last letter though. Don’t repay me near enough for keeping that cat fed. Feel like old Ser Cum ate me out of house and home and then some. Don’t seem right something so small could eat so much. Must have fed that cat fifty pounds of mackerel a day and it still never stopped his yowling. Glad he’s alright, yeah? Give him something for Franke, will you?

Where we starting with this mess? Can’t afford the paper for all of it, that’s for sure. Might run out of ink while I’m at it, but here goes. Still alive. Still got the shop. Still make the shoes.

Your old boy owns the city, but I’m suspecting you already knew that. Garrett Florian Hawke. Champion. Viscount. Absolute Arsehole. Where’d we leave off? He owns the Bone Pits, right? The mines dig so deep into the Vimmark they say some of the tunnels reach the Deep Roads, and old Franke believes it. Digs up iron, onyx, drakesone, all kinds of stone. Enough work in there to employ the whole city, and some days seems like that’s what he’s trying to do.

Not in a good way. Got rid of all the gibbets and gallows, and put all the gangs in the chains instead. Got ‘em working the mines day and night. They’re all gone now. Sharps, Dog Lords, Redwaters, Friends, Sisters, Undercuts, Weavers, Followers, Reining Men. Threw ‘em all in the mines and made a killing off them. Richest man alive, some say. I believe it.

Everyone ends up there eventually. Anyone who speaks out against him goes in the mines sooner or later. Found guilty of something or other. Sedition, I suppose. Ain’t hard when he pays off all the magistrates. You get arrested for anything in Kirkwall, you may as well save yourself the time and slap on some chains yourself. Can’t remember the last time someone walked lest they were walking to the Pits.

The Red Irons help him with that. It’s a right coin toss with the guard. Half answer to the Viscount, half answer to the Guard Captain, and at the end of the day it doesn’t much matter. Guard Captain fights with him plenty (seems like she’s the only one left in the city who can get away with it) but no one’s ever seen her win. She’s not in the mines yet, though, so I suppose that’s something.

You won’t catch Franke making that much noise. Might have a big mouth, but I know when to keep it shut. You hear more that way. Nobles like to talk. Servants like to listen. Franke ain’t a servant, but servants come in for the shoes, and then they talk to Franke, so it all works out in the end. Nobles love him, if you can believe it. The Viscount. Not Franke.

Fitted three noblewomen for his Satinalia Ball the other day, and it was all they went on about, babbling like a brook ran right through the shop. ‘He’s so virile! You could bounce a coin off his abs. Oh, I swear, I feel quite simple of wit around the Viscount.’ Think he’s the Maker’s gift to Kirkwall, they do, getting rid of crime like he did, but with all the gangs gone, the only crimes left are the ones he commits.

He ain’t right, but we knew that already. On something, folks are saying. Call it the Red. He’s been getting other people on it too. Not Franke, though. Franke knows better. Red does something to you, it does. Changes you. I don’t mean like witherstalk or lotus or any of that mess changes someone. I mean it really changes you. Turns you into someone else. Turns you into something else.

Can see it in his eyes whenever Franke sees him out in the city. They glow, yeah? Shit’s weird. Like beams of red straight from Andraste’s pyre. It’s fucking terrifying, honestly. Just about shit myself the first I saw him out and about with his half-dozen bodyguards. There’s something wrong with his face, too. Red just sort of breaking through his skin, like someone set his soul on fire.

Franke’s glad you got away from that when you did. Franke’s gladder Franke got away from that when he did. Booked it right out of Hightown and hid back at Lirene’s place for a fortnight. Don’t think he saw Franke, though. Don’t think he remembered Franke if he did. Lived in the man’s house a whole month and he didn’t even recognize me. That’s nobles for you, I suppose.

Might be the Red too. There’s talk it messes with your head. Makes you miss things. Makes you mad. Must make you feel good, though, or it wouldn’t be spreading like it is. Malika Cadash sells it to the nobles. Everyone knows she’s Carta, but guess that don’t count none when you’re a friend to the Viscount. She’s one of the most powerful women in the city these days, not that that says much. There’s a lot of powerful women in Kirkwall.

I know you weren’t one for the Chantry after what happened to your boy, but did you ever meet Mother Petrice? You’d know if you had. Thinks she’s Andraste reborn, she does. Even does her hair the same. Not too fond of oxmen, she. Spent years trying to get ‘em out of the city when no one else would until you-know-what happened. There’s even rumors she had a hand in the death of the old Viscount’s son.

Folks say she murdered him and pinned it on the Qunari as a way to start the First Battle of Kirkwall. Apparently the Viscount’s son was fixing to convert to the Qun, and Mother Petrice was afraid more folks would follow in his footsteps, so she got right rid of him she did. I figure it must be true, because she isn’t a Mother anymore. The Grand Cleric stripped her of her title and Franke imagines she must have had a reason.

Next part is the wild one. She’s with your old boy now. Not with him, with him, mind you, least as far as Franke knows, but she’s always at his side. There’s talk they’re starting a schism in the Chantry, converting Brothers and Sisters over to the Red and using their hatred of the oxmen to do it. They’re arresting all of ‘em now. The oxmen, that is, and they ain’t ending up in the mines.

Ain’t even ending up on the gallows or the gibbets. Just the chopping block. Got their horns decorating the walls outside the city. Franke ain’t no friend to the oxmen after what they done did, but it ain’t right. What they’re doing. The hate they’re spreading. Makes Franke feel ashamed and he ain’t even done it. Strange, that.

Been trying to do some good to make up for it. It weren’t so bad, having you and your friend around. It'd been a while since Franke had had anyone around. It’d been a long while. Suppose Franke missed it. Went and found your old friends, I did, and told ‘em I’d help ‘em. You know, M.S. and the others. Told ‘em I’d do for them what I did for you. Got some kids upstairs right now, in fact.

Been trying to teach ‘em how to do things, you know? Cook things. Mend things. Have things. The sort of things they weren’t taught when they were you-know-where being raised by you-know-who. The sort of the things Franke supposes you weren’t taught either. Never did think about it. The kind of things you learn just living. Suppose you know how to do all that now, but I guess I never really realized why you wanted to get out of where you wanted to get out of and why you might have joined who you joined to get where you got.

Still don’t like it. Glad you did what you did setting up that infirmary in Wutherford, but that’s exactly what Franke’s talking about. They weren’t about to do that without you there. You know that, yeah? They need you, so I suppose it’s good they got you. Don’t you lose that, you hear? You gotta be better. You gotta stay better. No one else will.

Anyway, Franke’s doing what Franke’s doing. It’s nice having kids around again. Makes me miss my girls, most days, but that’s okay. I’d want someone doing this for them if they were still around and I wasn’t. Don’t you worry though. Franke’s being careful. You be careful too.

There’s talk the Viscount’s having a ship prepared to travel to Ferelden. I hear there’s some big tourney planned in Denerim to battle for a bannorn so I guess he’s heading out for that, but I’d keep well away if I were you. Hope this letter gets to you. Hope he doesn’t.

Franke’s gonna lay low, though. It’s hard getting word out. Gotta buy the paper. Gotta buy the postage. Gotta trust the postman. M.S. said she’d send this one for me, but I don’t know when I’ll send another. You take care of yourself, you hear? Don’t make this all for nothing.

Franke


Life in the Circle

A,

You don’t know me, but I know you.

I’ve read Darktown’s Deal, and I believe we want the same things, and that we would go to the same lengths to achieve them. I want to present you with an opportunity to further the cause you outlined for us in your manifesto. To tear down the power structures that have been in place for thousands of years by exploiting the cracks that have always existed in the very foundations on which they were established.

The Chantry has gone unchallenged for too long. Andraste tore down a tyrannical empire only for her followers to raise a second one in its stead - and for a thousand years nothing changed because no one sought to change it until you. Your words are no mere manifesto. They are a canticle worthy of the Chant of Light to be spread to the far corners of Thedas until they are heard by every man, woman, and child with ears to hear them.

I want your voice to be heard. I want your manifesto to be made manifest. I want what every mage wants and what you promise every mage: freedom. Freedoms further than can be found in Ferelden or anywhere else on earth because nowhere on earth has anyone gone far enough to achieve them. I want to send a message that forces the world to answer.

We cannot wait for change. Ferelden has gone far but you must see they will go no further or you would not still seek to publish and republish the same words that reach only blind eyes and deaf ears. The Chantry is an iron fist that hides behind a velvet glove and holds the throat of every man or woman who sits upon every throne in Thedas. The Templar Order’s grip will only ever tighten and we must not let them silence us.

They talk and talk of protection, but all they do is protect themselves. There’s a reason their symbol is a sword and not a shield. They may not seek to kill us all outright, but killing everything that makes us human is the same thing, and every day more of us are dying to the brand. The time for talking is past. We have to act. I have to believe you’ll help.

Duke Prosper De Montfort is hosting his annual wyvern hunt this summer at Chateau Haine. It’s an old Grey Warden stronghold from the Fourth Blight that was gifted to the de Montforts for their service during the Battle of Ayesleigh. It’s the perfect place to make a stand and make it known to the world that the Grey Wardens stand with us. Many players of the Grand Game will be there. Kirkwall Comtes. Orlesian Marquises. Ferelden Arls. Grand Clerics.

I’ve heard the Divine is sending one of her own agents to attend. There’s talk that she wants to investigate the state of the Circle of Magi, in Kirkwall and Ferelden. She fears the unrest in Kirkwall. Rumors of maleficarum run rampant under the Mad Viscount’s reign, escaping from the Circle of Magi, causing the citywide lockdown, crippling trade among the Free Cities. Rumors from Ferelden are even worse.

Orzammar will not be overlooked. A Chantry burned. A Free Circle risen from the ashes. The surface said to suffer for it. Demons in the bannorns. Apostates in the arlings. Terror through the teyrnirs. We cannot wait for the Divine to march. We must be the first to make a move. Make it with us. Be there. Let the world see you. Sign your name to what comes next. The mages know you. They’ll rise to defend you. Make it known you’ll defend them too.

Follow in Andraste’s footsteps, and remind her followers of the words that they’ve forgotten:

So Andraste said to her followers: "You who stand before the gates,
You who have followed me into the heart of evil,
The fear of death is in your eyes; its hand is upon your throat.
Raise your voices to the heavens! Remember:
Not alone do we stand on the field of battle.

"The Maker is with us! His Light shall be our banner,
And we shall bear it through the gates of that city and deliver it
To our brothers and sisters awaiting their freedom within those walls,
At last, the Light shall shine upon all of creation,
If we are only strong enough to carry it."

Adrian

Chapter 198: Stay Where You Are

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you like the chapter and I sincerely appreciate any feedback.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 1 Eluviesta Early Afternoon
Free Marches - Chateau Haine

Anders didn’t like Duke Prosper de Montfort.

Anders definitely didn’t like Duke Prosper’s son Cyril.

Anders didn’t like Cyril because Cyril really liked him. The Duke’s son hadn’t taken his eyes off him since the start of Feast Day. They’d arrived at Chateau Haine a few days in advance of the annum, but Anders wished they’d arrived a few days after it. They’d had breakfast, and Anders didn’t know how many more meals he had left in him. It was one thing to turn a meal into a feast; it was another to turn a day into one.

The nobles, and especially Cyril, took the annum a little too seriously for Anders’ liking. They fasted for an entire week beforehand to make room for three seven course meals and, when that wasn’t enough, had whole chambers dedicated to making more. It was downright disgusting watching all the lords and ladies eat themselves sick over and over again, and especially when one of them kept breathing down his neck, and that breath smelled like whiskey vomit.

There was nothing appealing about Cyril and even less appealing about Feast Day. Anders had met appealing men and been to appealing feasts, and this wasn’t that. The Duke’s feast consisted of plate after plate of hors d’oeuvres, appetizers, soups, salads, meats, desserts, and mignardises, forced in front of him by a line of servants a league long whether he wanted it or not. Amell’s feast hadn’t been anything like that.

His Gift of Flesh had been just that: a gift. It might have been for Anders, but Amell hadn’t expected him to eat the whole damn thing like the de Montforts seem to expect of their guests. That day had been so bloody miserable Amell probably hadn’t expected him to eat any of it, honestly, but Anders had loved it anyway. The unsubtle symbolism in that the real flesh Amell offered him that day was his own.

Amell’s flustered confession that the whole thing was considered an affront to the Maker - like their love and their lives had ever been anything else. There wasn’t a man or woman alive who could compare to that, and it was embarrassing that Cyril even tried. After a whole day of it, Cyril’s flirting wasn’t as embarrassing as it was irritating if not outright insulting, and it was incessant.

Anytime Amell wasn’t on his arm, Cyril seemed to take it as an invitation to try and take his place. It was even worse when Amell was on his arm, because Cyril didn’t stop and Amell didn’t make him. It was like Amell didn’t even care that Cyril kept ogling him, but Anders cared. Anders cared very much. He’d had it with the man since the moment they’d arrived at the mountainside villa.

Chateau Haine was on the western slopes of the Vimmark Mountains, between Kirkwall and Cumberland, on the edge of the Wildervale. A castle carved into the mountainside, the caverns beneath it ran so far and so deep they’d been used to house thousands of refugees from both cities during the Fourth Blight. They should have held just as many refugees now, with Marchers fleeing Kirkwall’s quarantine, but they didn’t.

The rest of the Free Marches had abandoned Kirkwall. A blockade had been set up around the city, over land and sea alike, and any of the poor souls who escaped the red-lyrium infested voidscape were sent back to it for fear of spreading the plague Hawke had started. The man had moved beyond mad and into murderous - actively trying to mine more red lyrium despite what became of anyone who came into contact with it.

They went mad or they died - like Ser Fenley had died. Ser Cumference had spent days roaming the Vigil searching for him when the rescue party returned without him. The poor sob had fallen in a skirmish with the Carta in the Valdasine Thaig, when Nathaniel’s expedition uncovered Hawke’s mining operation. To hear the old boy talk, they might have stumbled across a second Bone Pit in the Deep Roads.

The entire operation had been run by dwarves, resistant to red lyrium, and still driven mad by it. They chiseled away the stuff, down in the dark and the deep, reflective eyes run red with exposure. They’d fought like a horde of half-feral ghouls, and cost Ser Fenley his life, but everyone else had made it out alive. The Glavonaks had sealed the Free Marches’ entrance to the Valdasine Thaig with their explosives, which just left the entrance through Valammar, in the Hinterlands, better guarded by the Grey Wardens.

At least, until the Carta dug the Free Marches entrance back open. They were bound to try, because Hawke was bound to make them, because Hawke would never stop. Hawke had never known how. He was no better than Knight Commander Meredith, obsessed with controlling everyone and everything, and it was only a matter of time before two of them tore each other apart trying to wrest control of the city from one another as it went up in flames around them.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that Kirkwall was burning, the Gallows were burning with it. The Mages’ Collective was cut off from Kirkwall, the same way everyone was cut off from Kirkwall, and for all Anders knew the Circle of Magi had been annulled or its mages driven mad as red lyrium ran rampant within its walls. His thoughts turned to the mages often of late - and everything they must have been suffering in the absence of someone to save them from it.

The Free Marches weren’t Ferelden. Anders couldn’t grow complacent just because he’d won a single creche in a single Circle. Mages were still far from free and Orzammar was proof of that. Conscription wasn’t change and conversation wouldn’t bring it, cataclysms would, and he’d come to Chateau Haine to see one. Karl was still waiting for the pyre Anders had promised him five long years ago in a Chantry basement, surrounded by the bodies of the templars that had taken him from him.

Never again. That had been Anders’ promise then and it was still Anders’ promise now and Adrian had to have some way to help him keep it. Anders just didn’t know what it was. Amell seemed to suspect it was an assassination, but there were too many targets in attendance to assassinate. Two Grand Clerics. A handful of Revered Mothers. A Knight-Captain and several Knight-Lieutenants. Countless lords and ladies of varying titles who had varying levels of support for the Chantry. The Left Hand of the Divine herself.

The death of any one of them would have served to make a statement. Amell wasn’t sure if it would be the right statement or one the Grey Wardens could afford to support, but he didn’t mind being there to find out. Anders had no idea what he’d done to deserve him, but it had to have been something in a past life or the next one. Anders had hesitated even telling Amell about Adrian’s letter when he’d learned Amell was planning to attend Duke de Montfort’s Feast Day festivities anyway.

What was he supposed to say? Some Senior Enchanter from the White Spire was plotting some sort of something at one of the most extravagant events of the year and Anders had no idea what it was, save that it was going to be big and it was probably going to be brutal? That was a terrible thing to say, but that was what Anders had said, and Amell hadn’t cared.

"I hope it’s Grand Cleric Francesca," Amell had said, still on his first glass of wine for the evening, so Anders knew he'd meant to say it, standing by the fireplace with him in the parlor. "She has it coming."

"Love, the death of a Grand Cleric at the hands of a mage is the sort of thing that starts a war,” Anders had felt the need to point out.

“I thought you wanted one,” Amell had countered.

“I thought you didn’t,” Anders had said.

“I don’t, but I think there’s going to be a war anyway. With Orzammar, with Orlais, with Starkhaven, if we’re not careful. The world’s tearing at the seams. Word came today that Goran Vael is dead. His cousin Sebastian returned to Starkhaven to reclaim the throne, and the Harimanns don’t have any sway over it anymore. Sebastian’s demanded we revoke Johane’s sanctuary and send her to Starkhaven to be executed for treason.”

“Tell me you’re not going to.”

“It’s not my choice, Anders, I’m sorry,” Amell had taken a long drink in case Anders had any doubt just how sorry he was. “I know everything you risked to get her here.”

“Fuck,” Anders had muttered, pacing in front of the fire and dragging his hands through his hair. “Well can’t you just-... can’t you do something?”

“I can watch Starkhaven’s Grand Cleric burn with you, assuming she’s Adrian’s target,” Amell had offered, as readily as if he were offering to watch the sunset. “It could start an uprising in Starkhaven’s Circle, if we’re lucky.”

“Or an annulment if we’re not. What happened to Flora?”

“Exiled, with the rest of the Harimanns.”

“Except for Johane, who Sebastian wants to kill, because she’s a mage, and she took the blame for his family’s murder,” Anders had sighed, giving up on his pacing to lean against the mantleplace. “Fuck. When are you sending her to Starkhaven?”

“I’m not the one sending her there, Anders,” Amell had reminded him.

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” Anders had caught Amell’s hand to keep him from finishing his first drink and moving onto his second. “Maker, of all the people who could have escaped Kirkwall, why did it have to be Sebastian? The pious prick is going to undo everything the Harimanns have worked for since Starkhaven’s Circle was rebuilt.”

“I’m sorry, Anders.”

“It’s just like that, isn’t it? It’s that easy. One day the world is with us and the next day they’re against us and there’s nothing we can do about it. Do you think that’s what this is all about? Adrian’s message? Standing up for Starkhaven?”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t mind us being there to find out,” Amell had said.

“You’re not going to warn the Duke that someone might get assassinated?” Anders had asked.

“Why would I?”

“I mean, it seems like the sort of thing you include in your response to an invitation. You know, ‘I’ll be there, plus one and minus a few.’”

“I support your cause, Anders, and however much blood you need to spill for it,” Amell had promised, not for the first time. “I just can’t do it as openly as I wish I could.”

“So no sex on the Grand Cleric’s grave afterwards?” Anders had joked.

“I didn’t say that,” Amell had grinned. “I’m just saying we wait for the mourners to leave.”

“I love you, you know that right?”

“You could remind me.”

“Put down the drink and I will,” Anders had said, and Amell had, and it was something to know that at least every so often, Anders could make him.

Anders wanted to talk to him about the smoking and the drinking, but it was hard to find the words. He danced around Amell’s addictions when he should have been supporting him through them, but he didn’t know how. Justice’s approach of ‘don’t’ wasn’t exactly effective, and Anders' approach of ‘please don’t’ wasn’t much better. It seemed like addressing the reasons behind why Amell was smoking and drinking was the best way to get Amell to stop smoking and drinking, but Amell had too many reasons for smoking and drinking for Anders to address all of them.

He still had them, even now, leagues away from Vigil’s Keep and all of its obligations. Amell wasn’t just attending the de Monfort’s Feast Day festivities because he’d been invited to them, he was attending them because Alistair had ordered him to attend them. After the assassination attempt on Amell’s explosive expert by the Ben-Hassrath, Amell’s scouts had tracked down the Qunari turned Tal-Vashoth named Salit who’d deserted rather than carry out his mission.

In fleeing the Qun, Salit had fled Ferelden, and was probably the only qunari this side of Seheron who’d fled towards the Free Marches instead of away from them. With the Qunari trying to entrench themselves in Amaranthine, and Hawke hunting them in Kirkwall, Salit was attempting to secure his protection from the Qunari in Orlais. In exchange, he was offering Empress Celene a weapon to use against them.

As to what that weapon was, no one seemed to know. The guess was anything from the formula for black powder, to dreadnought plans, to a map of Qunandar, but whatever it was, Alistair was adamant that the Orlesians not be the ones to get it. Duke Prosper de Montfort was conducting the trade on behalf of Empress Celene, and Alistair had ordered Amell to find some way to stop it.

Alistair had ordered Amell to do a lot of things. He had a whole list of orders lined up for him, and Anders knew Amell was tired of taking them. Once Amell was done dealing with Duke Prosper, Alistair was sending him to Antiva City on some insane quest to find his long lost father Kieran claimed was dying and not dead. Alistair wanted Amell to infiltrate some ancient archive that would prove the Antivan Crows had a hand in King Maric’s disappearance, and as luck would have it, Amell happened to know an Antivan Crow willing to help him.

Anders was less than thrilled about the idea of Amell spending months at sea and over land with his ex-lover. Anders was less than less than thrilled about the idea of him spending months at sea and over land with an ex-templar. Anders was less than less than less than thrilled about the three of them being accompanied by a man famous for betraying men when they needed him most, but Loghain, Alistair, Zevran, and Amell were all due to sail for Antiva City upon Amell’s return to Ferelden.

Anders didn’t want Amell to go. Amell didn’t want Amell to go either. Everything felt endless for him, orders and obligations bleeding together while the world burned in the background. They couldn’t even enjoy Feast Day without worrying about when a renegade mage or a renegade Tal-Vashoth were going to start making their respective plays and who was going to be played by them.

If anything, it should have been a relaxing vacation. Nathaniel, Velanna, and Seranni were handling the wyvern hunt with Nolan and the hounds, and all Anders had to do was stand around on Amell’s arm and look pretty, neither of which were terribly difficult things for him to do. Add in the fact that Anders had a page to help do everything else, Anders was pretty sure he could survive a fortnight in the Free Marches.

It was a pleasant enough place. The grounds were rich, full of plentiful hunting in the surrounding woods and easy fishing in the streams and lakes, and sustained a small village outside the castle walls. The chateau itself was distinctly Orlesian, great golden lions framing the main gates that opened up into an expansive courtyard, full of fountains, and gardens, and topiaries, and tapestries draped over the surrounding walls.

The air was thick with potpourri, perfume, and music, minstrels playing songs in Orlesian and occasionally Common. Servants carrying trays of cheese and wine and ham kept all the fops fed between the annum’s endless courses, and it was just Anders’ luck they were seated so close to Cyril there was no escaping him, whether Anders was hiding behind the tables or the trellises.

“Tell me you’re going to say something to him,” Anders begged when some other pompous poinjay finally dragged the Duke’s son away, sometime between breakfast and lunch.

“What did you want me to say to him?” Amell asked, in that winsome way of his that always seemed to promise Anders anything he wanted, though if that were true, Cyril would have stopped bothering him hours ago.

“I don’t know, tell him I’m taken?” Anders suggested, and Maker Anders wished Amell could see the look Cyril shot him over his shoulder. The way Cyril’s eyes raked him over was so shameless it made him feel a little sick. “Tell him to fuck off?”

“I can’t exactly tell the Empress’s second cousin to fuck off, Anders,” Amell said patiently.

“I mean you could,” Anders mumbled petulantly. “Why don’t you try it out on me first? Say, ‘Cyril, fuck off.’”

Amell leaned closer to him to whisper in his ear, “Cyril, fuck off.”

“See?” Anders grinned, the pettiest part of him absolutely ecstatic he’d managed to make Amell curse anywhere outside of their bedroom. “Was that so hard? Now just do it again when Cyril comes back, only louder, and throw in a couple of gestures while you’re at it.”

“What kind of gestures?” Amell asked.

“Something bawdy,” Anders shrugged. “Surprise me.”

“Cyril might get the wrong idea,” Amell joked.

“Is he seriously not bothering you?” Anders asked. “How have you not said something already? Didn’t you hear that comment he made about being a man of refined taste? And calling me refined? And asking what my tastes were?”

“I heard,” Amell said.

“And?” Anders demanded.

“And Cyril doesn’t threaten me,” Amell said.

“I’m not saying you have to feel threatened,” Anders relented. “But are you really not jealous?”

“Do you want me to be jealous?” Amell asked.

“Well yeah… at least a little,” Anders liked Amell’s confidence more than any jealousy that would have been spurred by the lack of it, but a reaction still would have been nice.

Amell made a show of looking thoughtful. “Is Cyril attractive?”

“All nobles look the same to me,” Cyril wasn’t anything special; the Duke’s son was covered in so much pomp and powder it would snow in spring if Anders decided to slap his stupid smirk off his face, and he was seriously considering it. If a mage was going to start a diplomatic incident anyway, Anders didn’t see why it had to be Adrian.

“I thought you wanted me to be jealous,” Amell pointed out.

“You know he’s not attractive. You can hear him talking," Anders knew what attractive sounded like. Attractive sounded like Amell, whispering his name at night like it meant love and life and everything in-between. "He’s so-... Orlesian.”

“He is Orlesian,” Amell agreed with a chuckle.

Anders had plenty of other complaints lined up, but his throat was bothering him too much to voice them. He snatched two glasses of something he hoped didn’t have any alcohol in it off a passing servant’s tray, and handed one of them to Amell.

"Orange cider," Amell said after a sip, handing it back.

"Thanks," Anders took the one he'd tested, and tried not to feel like a fool for it. There was no reason to feel foolish. Amell had offered to drink magebane for him, and next to that orange cider was simple, but Anders felt a little foolish anyway. If anyone should have had a tester with them, it was the Chancellor of Ferelden and not his side piece, but Anders couldn’t bring himself to eat or drink anything outside the Vigil any other way. Anders had no idea how he was supposed to manage without Amell for months.

“So,” Amell cradled his actual drink against his chest. “You don’t find him attractive and you don’t want him around you, but you think I should be jealous?”

“He’s been flirting with me all day,” Anders reminded him between sips.

“I haven’t heard you flirting back,” Amell didn’t sound concerned.

“Well what if you had?” Anders asked.

Amell still didn’t sound concerned, “You flirt with a lot of people.”

“First of all, no I don’t,” Anders thrust a finger into his chest and won a bemused chuff. “Second of all, focus. You’re supposed to be jealous.”

“I’m jaundiced,” Amell lied.

“No you’re not,” Anders sighed. “You’re not even a little yellow.”

“Am I not supposed to trust you?” Amell asked.

“You’re supposed to make him go away,” Anders said, eyeing Cyril on the opposite end of the castle courtyard, literally throwing his coin away into a fountain for the amusement of the rest of his revoltingly rich guests. “You’re better at these sorts of things than I am.”

“What sorts of things?” Amell asked.

Anders whispered into his ear, “Can’t you just persuade him to stop flirting with me?”

“I don’t know that persuading the Duke’s son is the best solution to this problem, but it’s thrilling you want me to,” Amell whispered back.

“You’re no fun,” Anders said, pouting.

“Make it through this meal with me and we can have as much fun as you want this evening,” Amell promised.

"I want to have fun now," Anders said into his hair.

"We don't have a lot of time for fun," Amell didn't say no, because Amell never said no, leaning into him a little. "We're expected back for lunch soon."

"Not too soon though, right?" Anders pressed, determined to elicit some sort of reaction from him. Amell didn’t have to be jealous, but Anders wanted him to be something. Something that showed him Amell wanted him, and Amell would miss him, and Amell wasn’t going to forget about him. Anders couldn’t handle the thought of Amell forgetting about him, the way everyone had forgotten about him, for three hundred and sixty days in a Circle cell, until Anders had all but forgotten about himself too.

Whatever man he’d been before solitary had died in that cell, and whatever man had come out had died in Hawke’s room, and whatever man was left over was the man that Amell had, and Anders wanted that man to be enough. Enough to fight for, and enough to come back for, and enough to help him and heal him when Amell so clearly needed to be helped and healed. "You don't really want to send me back into the arms of another man, do you?"

“You’re not in his arms,” Amell frowned a little for his teasing, which seemed like a good indication it was working.

“I’m not in yours right now either,” Anders leaned against his shoulder. “Are you saying you don’t want me there?”

Amell wrapped an arm around his waist, “I’m not saying that.”

“What are you saying?” Anders whispered into his ear, dropping his voice as low as he could make it.

Amell exhaled hard through his nose, and his hand slipped from his waist to his ass. “Take me somewhere private.”

Fuck yes.

Anders shoved their drinks at a passing servant, and dragged Amell inside the castle to the first closet he could find. It was close to the laundry and filled with fresh linens and lye, light from the sconces creeping in through the cracks beneath the door not quite enough to illuminate anything more than their feet. Anders shut the door behind them and pulled Amell into a kiss made of teeth and tangled with old trauma no one else would ever understand.

Amell pinned him to the door, gripping his thigh to pull his leg flush against his hip and grind them together, “Where are we?”

Maker, Anders didn’t care. “Some kind of closet,” Anders said, barely breaking from Amell’s lips to answer, cradling his face in his hands to hold him through every increasingly urgent kiss. “Is that okay?”

“I trust you,” Amell whispered, rocking them together in such a practiced rhythm they might have been lovers all their lives.

“You better,” Anders pulled Amell down to his neck, where his kiss could leave a mark above his collar for the rest of the world to see. “Tell me you want me.”

“I want you,” Amell repeated obediently, following whatever path Anders set for him as he kissed his way across his jaw.

It was all he could do to keep from ruining Amell’s hair - burying his fingers in it, tugging at the raven strands, holding Amell to his neck until he felt the sharp sting of teeth against his skin. Anders arched against Amell instead - his neck, his hips - offering up anything he had to give, “Tell me you don’t want anyone else to have me.”

“I don’t want anyone else to have you,” Amell bit his neck as if to prove it, drawing his skin between his teeth with a hard suck Anders felt all the way down to his cock, stiffening the longer Amell worked to mark him. Amell’s hands traversed his body while his lips relaxed it, kneading his neck, caressing his chest, squeezing at his sides, practiced fingers wringing eager groans of anticipation from him.

Anders caught one of Amell’s hands and pressed it impatiently between his legs, mapping his length with him, “-anyone else’s hands on me?” Anders asked, skin flush for his touch, breathing harsh and hard beside his ear.

“Just mine,” Amell broke from his neck to promise, making short work of the laces to his trousers and working that same flush into a fever. Anders clutched at Amell’s clothes, swallowing back one wanton whine after the next as the laces came free. His trousers fell and Anders’ whole body trembled for want of his smalls to follow.

“Fuck me,” Anders begged breathlessly, pushing Amell’s jacket open and wrinkling his tunic for how he kept his hands fisted in it.

“I am,” Amell freed his cock from the constricting confines of his smalls, feeling slowly up and down his length like he hadn’t memorized every inch of him in all the time they’d been together. He had. Maker, Anders knew he had. Every time Amell touched him it was like he was aching to learn him all over again, matching him groan for groan with every measured movement.

Anders kissed him, relaxing into Amell’s lips and Amell’s hands, flooding him with warmth and sweeping him away from himself and anything other than Amell. His taste, his scent, his heat, pressed so close it felt as if he breathed in every time Amell breathed out. “Tell me you want me,” Anders pleaded.

“Of course I want you,” Amell rocked his erection against his thigh. Anders gripped his ass to keep him there, hips and hand finding the same exquisite rhythm.

“Make me feel it,” Anders said, like he couldn’t already, his toes curling in his socks with every slow stroke of Amell’s hand.

“Can’t you?” Amell practically purred, never quite breaking from his lips or his length, feeling over him in intimate insatiable inches, the slick sounds of sex burning up in Anders’ ears.

“I don’t know,” Anders’ voice broke beneath the weight of his lie. “Not yet.”

“Now?” Amell pulled for the Fade, and heat enveloped him with every pump of Amell’s fist around his cock.

The surge of unexpected ecstasy made it hard to hold onto their kiss, and Anders moaned into his mouth. Amell swallowed the sound, and every quickened breath spurred by his quickened strokes that followed it. Anders felt ablaze, sweat sliding down his trembling thighs to gather on the fabric caught about his knees while Amell fucked him. “Fuck, Amell, tell me-”

“Anything.”

“Tell me what you want-”

“You,” Amell said like there was nothing more amorous, more arousing, more ardent, but Maker there must have been something Anders could do besides burn for him.

“What about me?” Anders asked hoarsely. “Tell me - oh fuck wait, slow - go slower - tell me what you want. Amell, please, there has to be something - I’ll do anything for you - to you. Just tell me.”

“I just want you,” Amell promised, groaning into his ear like his hand was fisted around his own cock. “The way you feel. The way you taste… did you want me to show you?”

“I-...” Anders cleared his throat. “Okay.”

Amell dropped to his knees, pushing Anders’ tunic up to kiss his way down his trembling stomach. Amell kissed the base of his cock, sucking on his balls before dragging his tongue up his shaft to lick the taste of him off his tip. Anders clutched Amell’s shoulders to keep from ruining his hair, his hands clenching and unclenching at every leisured pass of Amell’s tongue along his length and the sensations it stirred in him. Pleasure and passion coiled tight in the pit of his stomach, like a fire waiting to catch.

Amell took him into his mouth with a moan, his lips stretched thin around the head of his cock and his hand fisted around the base of him. Ecstasy encased him. It sank into his veins and spread out across every inch of his heated skin, burning hotter and hotter with every pulse. Anders writhed for him, breathing in broken moans as Amell took to him like he was savoring him, humming between every other suck like he’d never tasted anyone or anything better.

Anders summoned a whisper of magelight and let it hover around his hands. They moved in mindless sweeps along whatever part of Amell he could reach, and ultimately settled on the scars on his face. Anders caressed his cheeks with his thumbs whenever they hollowed for him, watching the way Amell slid along his cock, staring sightlessly up at him for the sake of the light he’d summoned. Anders couldn’t last looking at him, at all the love that he saw in him, in all the love that he felt in him, and dissolved into desperate pleas as Amell brought him to the edge of ecstasy and beckoned him to fall.

“I love - oh fuck - I love you,” Anders choked out. “Oh-please, please, ah-ah-Amell-I-”

Anders fell for him. He fell apart, and he fell together, and he fell in love, every minute he spent with him in every way that he spent it, spilling his heart and his soul and his self in him. Amell took all of him, holding him in the aftermath of his orgasm. Anders shivered so hard he was shaking, sweat-soaked hands slipping on the hardwood behind him as he struggled to stay upright, only for Amell to pull him down to his knees.

Amell felt for his mouth, parting his lips with his thumb to press their lips together, and spill everything he’d taken back into him. It felt so soul-shockingly intimate Anders didn’t have words to describe it. Knowing himself the way Amell knew him, tasting himself the way Amell tasted him, Amell’s fingers sliding from lips soaked with sex down to his throat. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Anders swallowed and felt a shiver course up his spine.

“Tell me what you taste like,” Amell whispered in his ear.

“Sex,” Anders flushed, surprised Amell could still make him, when Amell knew everything there was to know about him, and had known him in every way a man could know him. “-and salt.”

“Swallow me,” Amell said.

Anders stayed on his knees when Amell stood, hastily unlacing his trousers to free his cock and take him into his mouth. The only taste on his tongue was his own, and Anders felt starved for him, for anything Amell wanted from him, for his low groan at the first touch of his tongue. Amell folded one arm against the door and rested his head against it, moaning under his breath while Anders took to him hungrily. “Hhnn, slower-... slower-...just go slow-”

Anders would have held him in his mouth if that was all Amell wanted. Anders forced himself to keep to the rhythm Amell wanted from him - measured and meaningful as opposed to fast and fervent. Closet or no closet, they’d both had enough of quick trysts, of hastily undone laces, of hitched robes and fast fucks. Anders would rather stay here forever, on his knees for him, worshipping at an altar of his own making until his jaw was sore and his legs were stiff.

“Anders,” Amell whispered his name, and Anders hummed in answer, sex and saliva soaking his lips with every slow suck. Amell found his hand and held it, every purposeful pass making his breath hitch and his hand clench until Anders could tell he was close.

Anders stared up at him, watching his face in the low light. The slow spread of pleasure and the way he sank into it. The way his skin flushed, and his brow creased, and his eyes closed. The way his breath turned to sharp, hissing inhales and slow, stuttering exhales. The way he relaxed, the way he unwound, the way he let go. Amell squeezed his hand hard through his finish and Anders swallowed everything he gave him.

Amell could have given him anything. Sex. Cider. Anders would have taken it and trusted it. No one else would ever come close. Anders cleaned them off with a kerchief and did the best he could with their rumpled clothes. Their escape from the closet met with a few giggles from passing servants, and may or may not have gotten Cyril to stop paying attention to Anders, but Anders definitely stopped paying attention to Cyril.

“Fuck me again tonight,” Anders whispered in Amell’s ear over lunch. “Some other way you’ve always wanted.”

Amell wanted to fuck his legs. Anders should have guessed Amell would want to fuck his legs, but they’d never been the focus before. Maker, they should have been. Anders hadn’t realized just how much Amell loved them. There was nothing like it because there was nothing like him, the sheer and shameless rapture in his eyes while he held his legs against his chest and thrust between his thighs, moaning Anders’ name into his ankles.

Amell lay with his head on his stomach after, one arm looped around his damp thigh while Anders dragged the pads of his fingers through the sweat on his chest.

“Why do you like my legs so much?” Anders asked.

“I don’t need a reason,” Amell kissed his thigh, fingers trailing through the sweat on the back of his knees, so tangled together they might have been three souls in place of two.

“Don’t go to Antiva,” Anders said.

Amell breathed a sigh against his skin, “Anders-”

“What does Alistair even expect you to do there?” Anders asked.

“Whatever he asks of me,” Amell said.

“What if you get separated from them?” Anders asked, choked at just the thought. “What if they leave you there? Dumat won’t be able to find his way back to Ferelden. I’m not an idiot. He knows how to go outside and inside and find you somewhere to sit. You’re not going to have a tactile map of Antiva, or anywhere else this mad quest takes you, and you said yourself you can’t run-”

“Anders,” Amell climbed over him, and settled in against his side. “You know I have to go; he ordered it. Either he takes me or he takes Kieran.”

“What am I supposed to do without you?” Anders asked.

“You’re never without me,” Amell set his hand over the scar on heart, and Anders traced along the ones on his arms. “I’ll come back. I promise. I always come back.”

Justice caught Amell’s hand to still his caress across his chest. The sheets were soaked with sweat, the two of them drenched in lust and love like they’d emptied oceans for each other, and the aftermath alone was far too much to feel. “We will hold you to it.”

Amell pulled his hand back, shifting to give him space and lie on his side beside him, veilfire reflected in his voidblack eyes as he took in his presence. “Too much?” Amell guessed.

“Immensely so,” Justice sat up so less of him touched the sheets, his arms draped over his bent knees.

“Are you alright?” Amell asked.

“I would not be here were I not,” Justice said.

“Where else would you be?” Amell asked.

“It is difficult to explain,” Justice said. “There are worlds within us.”

Amell smiled, “I love all of them.”

“I imagine that to be true,” Justice said.

“Lies aren’t always enough,” Amell said with the same fondness Justice had come to feel for him.

“I cannot promise not to kill your king if harm comes to you,” Justice warned him.

“Keep harm from Kieran instead,” Amell discouraged his need for vengeance without judging it. “Morrigan might need help seeing him safely to Orlais.”

“I will do this if I am able,” Justice promised.

“Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“What is it like for you?” Amell asked, his eyes following the flow of veilfire in his veins, and that in and of itself was infinitely more intimate than their nakedness. “When Anders and I are together? Does it bother you?”

“It does not bother me because it is not for me,” Justice said. “I have told you before I have no want of such things.”

“I don’t want to hurt you with them,” Amell argued.

“You are not,” Justice assured him; for all that they had been through, it seemed the three of them had need of such assurances. “Anders feared the same, but these moments are not meant for me and I prefer it as such. That does not mean I do not want the two of you to have them together.

“Kristoff saw sex as inseparable from love, and I had feared, once, many years ago, that I would never find it for myself as he found it with Aura. That this was a thing meant for mortals and perhaps I only saw the two as separate because I am not one. All things are separate within the Fade, and while I know there are spirits and demons who can combine them, I am not one of them.

“Anders can separate sex from love but I had not thought he could separate love from sex until he did for me. I breathe his love as easily as air and feel it in my lungs and not on my skin. It’s the same for him. He is like the sun and he makes me feel like its light and I had not thought to find anyone else I might trust with my heart when they would have to live separate from my soul.”

“Do you?”

“... ardently.”

Chapter 199: It Was Nice To Be Happy

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter and I sincerely appreciate any feedback.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 17 Eluviesta Evening
Free Marches - Chateau Haine

Hessarian save him, Anders didn’t want to have this fight.

Anders slammed open the door to their room with a bang that echoed through the castle corridor. Tears stung at the corners of his eyes as he stalked down the hall, his magic astorm. Every sconce he passed alit with emerald veilfire, the Fade at his fingertips threatening to tear the castle down around him, and Maker wouldn’t that have been a mercy?

“Anders, wait!” Amell called after him, and even if Anders hadn’t heard him, he could feel him. The Call within his blood beckoned him backwards, but there was no going back. The clock was ticking down and it would be midnight soon. “Dumat, follow.”

Damn this place to the Black City and back. What was wrong with Orlesians? Why build a castle with this many identical rooms? Anders thought he’d been heading for the courtyard, but every part of the castle looked exactly the same, and a left turn turned him right back to where he started. By the time he found the way out, a whole crowd was in the courtyard to witness Amell corner him.

“I said wait!” Amell hissed under his breath, grabbing blindly for him. His hands felt over Anders’ chest and arms, and Anders shoved them and all the memories within them away. He stumbled out of Amell’s grasp, wiping away unshed tears on his sleeve.

“I’m done waiting!” Anders snapped, and Maker, it hurt, even with the simir feather dangling from his neck and the panacea flowing through it. “The time has come to act.”

“Not like this!” Amell argued.

“What way would suit you?” Anders threw up his hands. “How many times do you have to be shown that politics are pointless!?”

“Politics are the only reason Ferelden’s Circles are free-”

“That’s not good enough. Ferelden isn’t good enough. The Circle is an injustice in many places beyond it. The world needs to see that.”

“The world isn’t here!” Amell stressed, but the world may as well have been. There were nobles gathered from all across Thedas. Ferelden, Orlais, the Free Marches. Knight Captains and Revered Mothers. Whatever happened here, happened everywhere. Adrian was right. She just hadn’t gone far enough, but Anders would. “This isn’t the statement you want to make. Anders, don’t do this-”

“You can’t talk me out of this, Amell,” Anders said. Amell had already tried. Anders had already tried. They’d tried for hours, but there was no other way. “Please don’t try.”

“Please don’t make me,” Amell countered, and everyone heard him when he said, “She’s my friend, Anders, I can’t let you kill her.”

“Leliana is the Left Hand of the Divine!” Anders shot back, as loud as he could, to anyone who would listen, in case anyone hadn’t been listening the first time. They had to listen. Anders had to make them. Leliana had had every chance to hear what the mages had suffered, and she still expected them to suffer more.

Knight Commander Meredith had called for the Right of Annulment. For the death of every mage in Kirkwall, and instead of stopping her, the Divine was encouraging her. If anything, the Divine thought she hadn’t gone far enough, and was calling for an Exalted March instead, and Leliana was for it. Anyone who didn’t act now was part of whatever came next, Anders and Amell included.

“She has the power to stop this and she’s the one letting it happen!” Anders couldn’t look at him. Amell looked pained. Maker, he looked so bloody pained. The tears stinging at the corners of his eyes reflected on the crimson in them, and he might have been crying blood with how pained he looked. Anders turned around, but looking at the nobles wasn’t any better.

They were all staring, covering their mouths with gloved hands, like any amount of velvet could hide the blood on them. Bastards. They were all bastards. Any one of them could have done something when Leliana told everyone at Chateau Haine what the Knight Commander had planned for the Circle. Any one of them could have spoken up or spoken out, but none of them had. None of them would. Franke was right. It had to be him.

Anders turned back around, “Leliana had the chance to listen to the mages, to listen to reason, and she refused!”

Amell ran a hand through his hair, and on any other day Anders would have loved the way it looked. Void black stands sliding through his fingers, feathering out his hair around the braid Anders had woven for him just that morning, and the ridiculous red ribbon Anders had gifted him for their anniversary, less than two months away, but Anders didn’t think they’d make it there.

“If the choice is between an annulment and Exalted March-” Amell started.

“It’s not a choice, Amell!” Anders screamed, and his voice broke. Anders amplified it with his magic, ignoring the pain that came from it, the pain that came from all of this. “You can’t keep pretending that picking the lesser of two evils isn’t evil! Meredith is going to murder them!”

“Then she murders them!” Amell shot back. “She’s the Knight-Commander-”

“Who are you?” Anders cut him off.

“I’m your Commander, and I’m ordering you to let this go,” Amell said.

Anders forced himself to take a deep breath, and the veilfire in it steadied him. “You may as well compel me now, because that’s the only way I’m ever going to follow that order.”

“I will if I have to,” Amell threatened him, to the shocked gasps of the crowd, and the nervous shuffling of the templars among them. “Anders, please don’t make me. We’re Wardens-”

“No, you’re a Warden,” Anders crossed the courtyard to thrust a finger into his chest, and immediately regretted it. The pull of him was so strong Anders swore he could feel his heart like his own, and it felt like they were both breaking. “I am the cause of mages. There is nothing else inside me. I will not stand by and watch the Divine and the Chantry treat all mages like criminals, while those who would lead us bow to their templar jailers!”

He shouldn’t have said that. Damn him. Damn him, damn him, damn him - he shouldn’t have said that, but the words just came out, and Amell just heard them, and that wasn’t what Anders should have said when he could have said so many other things, but Amell took it like Amell took everything. He didn’t even flinch, but Anders did, recoiling with the weight of his regret.

“If you do this, you turn everyone against us,” Amell said.

“Was anyone ever with us?” Anders scoffed.

“The Duke is already dead!” Amell shouted, and seemed to shout the nobles into action. Someone must have sent for the Duke’s guards, because Anders saw movement behind them, flashes of silver as swordsmen surrounded them. “You don’t need to do anymore! You don’t need to do anything to her. The mistress to the King of Ferelden? The Left Hand of the Divine? Think about this-”

“The mages must be heard,” Anders said. “If the Divine won’t listen to reason, then she’ll listen to blood.”

“I don’t care about the Divine,” Amell said. “The Grey Wardens can’t be part of this-”

“The world is part of this, Amell,” Anders said. “Kirkwall’s Circle is going to burn. The smoke is going to blacken the sky, and the sea will run red with the blood of mages. If you do nothing, that blood is on your hands. There can be no half-measures.”

“This isn’t a war we can win,” Amell said. “This just dooms us all.”

“We were already doomed,” Anders spat. “A quick death now or a slow one later. I’d rather die fighting.”

The swordsmen surrounding them pushed past the nobles and closed in at the invitation, and Amell must have noticed, because he lowered his voice, “Anders, let’s just go back inside, please.”

Amell didn’t have to say please. That please hurt. Maker, it hurt so much. Anders felt it like a sword through his heart, and it wasn’t one he could pull out. Amell drove it straight through his back and buried it to the hilt with how softly he said it, one tender hand set against his jaw like he wanted to feel the life ebbing from him because he knew Anders couldn’t live without him.

He’d have to find a way. Amell was the most important thing in his life, but some things mattered more than his life. Some things mattered more than either of them. An Exalted March was one of those things.

“It can’t be stopped now,” Anders said thickly. “You have to choose.”

Anders wasn’t used to seeing Amell cry. Amell had cried thrice, in all the years that Anders had ever known him. Once, when he’d lost his eyes, and once, when Anders had told him he loved him, and now, standing in the courtyard with him at Chateau Haine. “I asked you not to make me choose between you and the Wardens.”

“Choose anyway,” Anders whispered.

“I’m sorry, Anders,” Amell whispered back. “I’m a Warden first, and if you do this, you’re not one anymore.”

“Then I guess I’m not,” Anders said.

The courtyard was crowded. A flood of faceless nobles, knights, clerics, and all the tension between them. They were packed so close nothing could move among them. Not even the air. It stood still in the fading twilight and refused to find its way into Anders’ lungs, no matter how many times he tried to breathe.

“... Chancellor?” Duke Cyril de Montfort’s voice finally broke the stillness of the evening. “... Did we hear right? This man is aligned with the mage who murdered my father, and further seeks to murder the Left Hand of the Divine?”

“He-...” Amell cleared his throat, a hand clutching his jerkin, like he was trying to hold his heart inside it. “Duke de Montfort, do you have a cell made to hold mages?”

Anders wasn’t about to stay to hear his answer. He ran. He transformed into a crow in an explosion of feathers to the panicked screams of the crowd, and flew from Chateau Haine, from Amell, from all of it.


Ereyesterday

It was a nice day for a picnic.

Pavilions littered the lakeside of the pond outside Chateau Haine, and Anders sat with Amell and the rest of the Grey Wardens beneath a pavilion of blue and silver, shaded from the sun but not the wind. Pollen blew through, eliciting the occasional sneeze from Amal, and not Amell.

‘Amal’ was apparently how Anders’ page spelled his name, because ‘Amal’ couldn’t spell, but believed with an astounding level of confidence that he could. Nevermind that the tutors had only had a chance to teach him his letters a month ago, and that ‘Amal’ still didn’t know half of them, the little dwarven boy was adamant that ‘Amell’ was spelled ‘Amal’ and nothing Anders did could convince him otherwise, so ‘Amal’ it was.

He was a good kid, and Anders was getting pretty fond of him. It definitely helped that he was determined to do absolutely everything and anything for Anders, whether or not he was actually capable of doing it. The boy had carried out the blanket for their picnic, despite not being big enough to carry said blanket, and drug it through grass, gravel, and mud before they reached the pond, where Amal had proudly laid out his messterpiece.

“Remind me again why you want children?” Velanna asked after she’d cleaned off a spot for herself, while Amal got in the way of the servants setting up the pavilion, hindering wherever he meant to help.

“This might shock you, but some people like other people,” Anders said, resting comfortably in Amell’s lap with his back against his chest, Dumat pressed up against Amell’s leg.

“Children aren’t people,” Velanna huffed, undoing her braids for their day at the lakeside.

“That explains a lot about your childhood,” Anders said.

“They were unkind to her,” Seranni volunteered from her spot at her side.

“You were unkind to me,” Velanna flicked Seranni’s ear and won a toothy grin for it. “You put sap in my hair. And pushed me into an icy river. Twice.”

“You got out the first time,” Seranni said.

“Not all kids are like that,” Anders said.

“Aren’t they?” Nathaniel mused from behind whatever book he was reading. “When we were children, Delilah would put beetles in my blankets. She would laugh to hear me shriek.”

“I’m sure you did something to deserve it,” Velanna said.

“I might have,” Nathaniel grinned. “She had a favorite doll - Miss Maggie. We had a fight one day and I ripped off Maggie’s arms and hid them in places where Delilah would find them later.”

“Your siblings weren’t like that, were they?” Anders squeezed Amell’s leg to make it clear he was talking to him, and spared Dumat a scratch since his hand was next to him anyway.

“I can’t remember them,” Amell confessed. “My brothers were sent to the Circle when I was young, and I only knew I had a sister after I was sent to the Circle because my father told me.”

“Sister?” Anders said. “You never mentioned a sister before. What happened to her?”

“Dead,” Amell said.

“Have you any tales that do not end in tragedy?” Velanna demanded.

“Just one,” Amell squeezed Anders' hand.

“Ugh,” Velanna rolled her eyes. “Disgusting.”

“Now you’re just being dramatic,” Anders said to Amell.

“Is it working?” Amell asked.

“I don’t know,” Anders hummed. “How does our story end?”

“It doesn’t,” Amell kissed his fingers, and Velanna snorted.

“It ends with your Calling, as all our stories end,” Velanna said. “Fools, the both of you.”

“Romantic ones, I hope,” Amell said.

“Very,” Nathaniel said.

“Don’t encourage them,” Velanna said.

A messenger from the Duke’s pavilion jogged across the lakeside to their pavilion, once the servants finished setting it up, and was immediately intercepted by Amal.

“State your business, cloud gazer!” Amal thrust out one tiny hand, the other to the stick he’d stuck into his belt to serve as a sword.

“Um-...” The messenger glanced between the dwarf and the group of Grey Wardens he was defending.

“You heard him,” Anders laughed.

“Chancellor Amell-” The messenger started, looking over Amal’s head.

“Page Amal!” Amal drew his stick on him. “You’re on loose sand, cloud gazer! I'll decide if he gets your message!”

“... Page Amal,” The messenger relented while the rest of them chuckled. “Duke Prosper de Montfort would like to invite the Chancellor and his consort to join him at his pavilion.”

“I’ll bet he would,” Amal poked the messenger in the gut with his stick. “Stay here. I’m watching you!”

Amal sheathed his stick, and it slid clear through his belt and onto the ground. Amal scrambled after it, with a suspicious squint at the messenger, and stomped across the blanket to where Anders was still sitting with Amell. “Message, messere!”

“Go for it,” Anders grinned.

“Duke Proper-” Amal started.

“Prosper!” The messenger called.

Amal frowned fiercely, “The duke says you’re invited to his pavelon.”

“Pavilion!” The messenger corrected him.

“Sod off!” Amal screamed back at him.

“Well?” Anders nudged Amell.

“Tell the duke we’ll be there shortly,” Amell chuckled.

“Thanks, kiddo,” Anders added.

Amal stomped back over to the messenger, leaving a trail of muddy footprints in his wake. “They’ll get there when they get there,” Amal said. “Well? You got another message? Sod off! Time is rusting!”

The messenger’s face jumped over red and went straight to purple. The poor man puffed up worse than his sleeves, sputtering through protests he couldn’t quite bring himself to subject on a child, and ultimately gave up and went back to the duke’s pavilion without a word.

“This kid is going to get us killed,” Anders laughed. “I love him.”

“The Crows are absolutely on their way,” Nathaniel agreed.

“I’ll point them to your room when they get here,” Velanna added.

“He’s fine,” Amell said.

“He’s offended literally everyone here, love,” Anders said.

“It’s fine,” Amell said, “We shouldn’t keep the duke waiting though.”

The two of them left for the duke’s pavilion, and Dumat was more than enough of an escort, but Amal must have thought they needed another. He charged off to clear the way for them, occasionally charging in the wrong direction until Anders called after him to correct him, and Amell chuckled under his breath.

“You seem a little fond of him,” Anders whispered into Amell’s ear.

“... a little,” Amell relented.

“He’s not replacing Kieran,” Anders said.

“No, not at all,” Amell agreed.

“He’s a good kid,” Anders pressed.

“I know,” Amell said. “I just need time.”

Anders let it go. Amal didn’t seem to want for anything beyond his position. He still had a parent back in Orzammar, even if that parent had sent him off to the surface, and he seemed happy enough with Anders. Amal got them to the duke’s pavilion, somehow pushing through the cluster of lesser nobles crowded around it, and then found a spot for himself beside one of the knights guarding it, mimicking the way he stood down to the hand he set to the hilt of his stick-sword.

The duke was already seated with a handful of other high profile guests. A blanket covered the ground in the pavilion, a small table set at its center covered with drinks and appetizers people were leisurely picking at. The Arlessa of Redcliffe, the Bann of Rainesfere, the Knight Captain of the White Spire, the Court Enchanter of Orlais and the Duke of Ghislain. The Left Hand of the Divine, and the only person whose name Anders actually knew, Leliana, who stood from the picnic blanket with a warm smile that was wasted on Amell, and definitely wasted on Anders.

“My friend!” Leliana dodged the rest of the nobles, holding the skirts to a dress she’d somehow managed to keep white, and took Amell’s arm to steal him from him. “Come and sit, I have saved you a seat.”

“Hope you saved two, or I’m going in his lap,” Anders muttered, shouldering his way in after them. The nobles gave him and Dumat the same reception, wrinkling their noses or turning them up like they tracked in shit in place of mud, but Anders didn’t care. If they wanted one mage, they could bloody suffer two.

Anders sat at Amell’s side, and Dumat took up a place at his feet, to the utter horror of the Arlessa, who shuffled back on the blanket to hide behind the Bann, with a whispered, “Why is there a dog, Teagan!?”

“To help him see, Isolde,” The Bann sighed with a face that looked like it sighed a lot.

“Chancellor, we were just talking about you,” The Duke cooed, his beard curled all the way up to his cheeks like he meant it for a mask. “Thank you for joining us.”

“I’d rather be talked to than about,” Amell returned politely.

“Well said!” The Duke laughed nasally, like even his laugh was accented. “We were just talking about your choice of appointment for the-... the uh-... help me, my friend.”

“The West Hill Bannorn,” The Bann supplied wearily.

“Yes!” The Duke retrieved a glass of wine from the table of appetizers and offered it to Amell. Anders waved him off, and he had to admit the Duke took the refusal well, downing the drink back for himself instead. “Perhaps you could speak to it?”

“A mistake,” Orlais' Court Enchanter wore a horned hat that made her seem half-qunari, and her opinion made her seem a whole one.

“A magistrate,” The Duke of Ghislain disagreed. “Sensible.”

“With a mage for a son,” The First Enchanter said. “Let us not pretend we do not know what will come of it.”

“Only good things, my snowy heart,” The Duke of Ghislain said to her.

“If by ‘good things’ you mean an upset in the Bannorn and the benefits that brings to the Empress’ court, then of course, my love, only good things,” The First Enchanter said, rolling her head on her shoulders to look at Amell. “You do not really believe the freeholders will follow a mage, do you, Chancellor?”

“Amaranthine follows one,” Anders scowled at her.

“Fereldans value their freedom - and our mages are freemen," Amell added.

“Bold of you to break the Second Commandment,” The Knight Captain muttered, and maybe she was hoping Amell wouldn’t have heard her, but Amell heard everything, because Amell made every effort to hear him.

Amell grinned, “I’ve broken all of them.”

“Is that supposed to be a brag?” The Knight Captain guessed. Maker, Anders hated her, and everyone else at this table, but the templar especially. She had a massive brown braid roped behind her head Anders wouldn’t have minded roping around her neck instead.

“Are you supposed to have a brain?” Anders asked. “The second commandment is about using magic to rule over men, not about mages as rulers.”

“They are one in the same,” The Knight Captain said stubbornly.

“My dear Knight Captain, we cannot allow fear to cloud our reason,” Leliana said, speaking to the greater nobles gathered in the pavilion, and the lesser ones clustered outside it. “We must remember that it was a mage, this mage,” Leliana squeezed Amell’s shoulder. “Who defended us in a time of great evil. We owe him and all mages a debt, and yet it seems we have been shamefully forgetful of that fact, have we not?

“True, the Chant of Light says, ‘Magic exists to serve mankind, and not to rule over him,’ but mages have served us well, in many wars over many centuries, and how have we served them? The Chantry means them no harm, yet has it not harmed them even so?”

“You lie!” A stranger screamed. He looked like any other nobleman, dressed in a white velvet surcoat with a receding hairline, save that he was a mage, and he was a strong one. A wave of force magic blasted the lesser nobles and the guards back from the Duke’s pavilion, and left their small group within it scrambling to their feet to face him.

He held a hostage to his chest, a noblewoman with pretty brown eyes and a pretty pink and purple dress, with hair done up in pretty brown buns. A dagger was pressed to her throat, all for show, considering the fire that inflamed his hands could have killed her just as easily.

“You mean us every harm!” The stranger continued, while panicked guests ran away from him, and panicked guards ran towards him. “It’s the Chantry that teaches men to fear us! You keep us under your thumb, reminding us again and again how you let us live only because we’re useful! And when that use runs out?”

The Knight Captain’s hand glowed a vibrant white, as if in answer, and Anders knew she meant it for a smite. He broke from Amell to step in front of her and hiss, “Are you mad? You smite him and you kill that girl!”

“Out of my way, mage,” The Knight Captain hissed back, but there was no way Anders was moving out of her way. She was his way. This was his way. Whatever this was was whatever Adrian had planned, and Anders had to do whatever he could to support her and all the mages with her.

“Peace, please!” Duke Prosper yelled to be heard above the chaos. “Everyone! This man has come to speak, yes? A good host should listen.”

“You wish to listen!?” The stranger shouted, his face twisted with grief and rage. “Listen to her!” He kept an arm around his hostage, and thrust his dagger towards the pavilion, and the four different ‘hers’ inside it. “Tell them! Tell them what the Divine intends for us!”

“My friend-” Leliana picked up her skirts to step around the table and address the mage.

“We are not your friends!” The stranger screamed over her. “We are your slaves!”

“My good man-” Leliana said instead, stepping out of the pavilion, and winning a wail from the hostage when the stranger pressed his dagger into her neck and drew blood.

“I am not a good man,” The stranger warned her. “Tell them. Tell all of them, all of it, or what comes next is on your hands.”

Leliana hesitated. Duke Prosper stepped up, onto and over the table, knocking over trays of cheese and bowls of fruit to join her at the forefront of the pavilion, and call out to the woman in the stranger’s arm. “My dear Marquise de Serault, have no fear, we will have you home soon. Leliana-...?”

“Kirkwall’s Knight Commander has called for the Right of Annulment.” Leliana called out to the assembled lords and ladies. “The Divine fears the Circle and the city have fallen. Her Eminence hopes that there is hope, but she will not hesitate to March. On All Soul’s Day, all souls burn.”

“She fears us!” The stranger yelled, spinning in a circle to those assembled and dragging the whimpering Marquise along with him. “You all fear us! You fear we may become monsters and so you become them first - purging our people without reason or reservation! We have done nothing to you - and yet you have taken everything from us!

“For what crime!?” The stranger shrieked, with another sharp press of his dagger and another sharp sob from the Marquise. “The Chantry’s laws were made a thousand years ago, based on fear of an empire that has long since crumbled, and the templars intend to use that fear to slaughter us to the last man, woman, and child! If the Chantry cannot acknowledge that its templars are beyond its control, it must be torn down!”

“Peace, please-” Leliana started.

“There can be no peace,” The stranger cut her off, and cut the Marquise’s throat. “The world already fears us. Now let them have reason.”

Death.

The death of the Marquise, when the stranger slit her throat. The death of the Duke, when the stranger launched lightning at Leliana and hit him instead. The death of the stranger, when the Knight Captain ran him through.

The guests were confined to quarters for the day, in the aftermath of the attack. Cyril became the new Duke de Montfort, and the celebration became a solemn one. Anders could barely believe it. In under a year, Kirkwall had fallen, and in three months, it would burn. He paced through their rooms at the castle, distantly aware Nathaniel and Velanna were talking to him, but unable to understand any of the words.

Amell would be back soon. Amell had gone to talk to Leliana, and he would be back soon, and he would tell them it was all a mistake. The Knight Commander hadn’t sent for the Right of Annulment. The Divine hadn’t condoned it. No one was Marching, Anders was just pacing, unraveling the rug and not his reason.

The door opened, and Amell came back with Dumat. “Cyril’s agreed to open the parlor,” Amell said by way of greeting.

“Who cares about the parlor, Amell!?” Anders demanded, eating up the ground on his way to his side. “What did she say!?”

“There’s a minstrel playing,” Amell didn’t answer him. “I told them to keep from Red Crossing if we want to go.”

“... she said it’s true, didn’t she?” Anders guessed.

“Do you want to come dance?” Amell offered.

Anders didn’t want anything. Anders felt dead inside. Anders felt the death of every mage like it was his own. He felt them long before they happened and he felt them in every way they could. He felt the heat of the pyre. He felt the cut of the sword. He felt the tightening of the noose. He felt the kiss of the brand, as assuredly as if it came from Amell’s lips, pressed to his fingers when they reached the parlor.

The song the minstrels played was slow and somber and they didn’t dance so much as sway. Anders wasn’t sure how long it had been when Amell whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“I have to help them,” Anders said.

“I don’t know that we can,” Amell said.

“I have to do something,” Anders said.

“What do you want to do?” Amell asked.

“Whatever is necessary,” Anders said, voice low and full of echoes. “Whatever it takes to see them free. I have to stop this from happening and I can’t stop it here. I have to go back. I have to get them out.”

“Anders-...” Amell set his hand to his face, but whatever expression he hoped to find wasn’t there. Anders wasn’t making one. He wasn’t grieving or aggrieved. He wasn’t anything but resolute.

Anders kissed his hand and set it back on his shoulder, “Do you believe in me, love?”

“Always,” Amell said. “What do you need from me?”

“Nothing,” Anders said. This wasn’t something Amell could do for him. It was something he had to do for himself - and for every mage in Thedas. “You are the Warden Commander. You can better aid our cause in that role than by aligning yourself with me. I don’t know what I’m going to do…” Kill the Knight Commander. Tear down the Circle. Make the world watch. “...but I promise whatever happens it’s on my head. It will not come back on you.”

“It will if you’re a Warden,” Amell said.

“Then I can’t be one,” Anders said. “You have to make them all believe I’m not one anymore. We have to make it public.”

“I can do that for you,” Amell hugged him. Amell had been hugging him, swaying in a slow circle in an otherwise empty parlor while the minstrels played. “Get them all for me.” Anders wasn’t sure if he meant the mages or the templars or both, but he wouldn’t stop until he had.

“I knew you’d stand by me in this,” Anders pressed a hard kiss to his cheek. “You always have.”

“I love you,” Amell said.

“I love you too... It was nice to be happy, for a while....” There was more he wanted to say, but it was too hard to say it, so Justice said it for him. “We may never see you again.”

Amell wrapped his arms around his shoulders. Anders took it for a change in his embrace, but after a short while Amell found his hand, and splayed out all his fingers to slide his ring back onto one. Anders felt despair and devotion in equal measure as the spell sank beneath his skin.

“You can’t give me this,” Anders whispered shakily. He’d never take it off. “Even if I manage to free Kirkwall, it will take years of open warfare throughout Thedas before mages can be safe. You can’t keep waiting for me. You should find someone else-”

Amell covered his mouth with his fingers, and Anders wished he hadn’t, because it made it hard to hide his tears. “I would rather have hope with you than certainty with anyone else.”

For a long while, all Anders did was breathe. He took one breath, and then he took another, but they all came with copper, and breathing was the hardest thing he’d ever done.

“What do we do now?”

“I think we just keep dancing.”

Notes:

Fanfic
We Could Have Been (So Good Together) by biblioteknician - A scene between Anders and Amell immediately following this one.

Chapter 200: Welcome Home

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 17 Eluviesta Night
Free Marches - Vimmark Mountains Tunnels

The skies were red over Kirkwall.

Anders saw them on the horizon when he circled Chateau Haine before he landed in the tunnels beneath the Vimmark Mountains. The tunnels were called ‘The Retreat’ and cut through the mountains from Cumberland to Kirkwall to house refugees from both cities. It was around a three day walk to the other side, assuming one knew the way through them, not that Anders did. The Grey Wardens did, though, and Amell had left him a map… somewhere.

Anders followed the main passageway that led to the underground lake, where Amell had promised to leave it, and didn’t get much further than that. He slid to the ground at the edge of the water, and listened to nothing. He couldn’t hear anything, but he knew there were sounds. The steady drip of water from stalactite to stalagmite, the winging of bats, the whistle of the wind through the passageways. It was all there, somewhere, beneath the pounding of his heart or whatever pieces of it remained.

It was dark below the Vimmark, the sconces that hadn’t rotted off the white stone walls unlit and covered in cobwebs. Every so often, portcullises marked the tunnels, and could be dropped to stop the advance of darkspawn, but they were all in a general state of disrepair. No one would come looking for him here, not when his display in the courtyard would have every swordsman in the Free Marches guarding Leliana, and even if they did, they wouldn’t find him, because there wasn’t enough of him left to find.

Anders wept into his knees, wasting precious time feeling sorry for himself and hating himself for wasting it. He didn’t have the time to waste. All Soul’s Day was a hundred and three days away, and Anders already had to spend three of them traversing through the tunnels. Once he finally got to Kirkwall, he’d only have a hundred days to save it, or however much of it had survived the Red Plague.

Anders wasn’t sure what finally got him to his feet. Franke, and his girls. Beth, and her burns. Bancroft, and his brand. Selby, and her sister. Evon, and his heritage. Charade, and her compassion. Abby, and the others. The endless others Anders had left behind who hadn’t escaped with him, and couldn’t escape without him. Any one of those things could have gotten him up, but so could Justice, and his fire and Amell, and his ring.

Or maybe it was just the darkspawn.

Anders stood with a sigh at the tingling sensation that ran down his spine, lightning on his fingertips for whatever marauding hurlock came wandering down the tunnel, and dispelled the magic at the sight of a torch and the clack of a cane. The shadows shaped themselves into a man, and Nate joined him by the lakeside, planting his torch in the dirt. His back was bowed under the weight of everything he carried - a backpack, a bow case, a quiver, a too familiar staff.

His staff. Justice could feel the lyrium without even touching it. “What is this?”

“You didn’t really think we’d let you go alone, did you?” Nate shrugged off his staff and handed it to him.

Justice took it, veilfire cutting across his skin. “You cannot come with us, Nathan."

“I beg to differ, my friend,” Nate picked his torch back up, and started off down a tunnel that led towards Kirkwall.

Anders scrambled after him, “The city is plagued.”

“So I’ve been told,” Nate grinned over his shoulder at him.

Anders grabbed his wrist, “The Grey Wardens can’t be part of what I’m going to do there.”

“Do you see a tabard on me?” Nate gestured at his plain leather armor, boiled and black and free of any griffons.

“Nate, trust me, you don’t want to be part of what comes next,” Anders warned him. “I will do whatever it takes to stop the annulment, even if that means I have to tear down the Circle brick by brick. I’m going to make a statement that starts a war the world can’t ignore.”

“It sounds like quite an adventure,” Nate said blithely, like anyone had anything to be blithe about.

Meredith had called for an annulment. The Divine had called for an Exalted March. Anders had to do more than just free mages - he had to save them - whatever it cost him. His family. His friends. His life and the love of it. Kirkwall wasn’t safe, and Anders couldn’t sacrifice Nathaniel to it anymore than he could ask him to make the same sacrifices.

“It’s not. The Knight Commander will die - and I may die with her,” Anders said. “I’ve accepted that. One human life is a small price for freedom, but that life doesn’t have to be yours.”

“You’re remarkably cheerful today,” Nate noted.

“Stop,” Justice frowned. “We will not have your blood on our hands.”

“I don’t recall being bled,” Nate frowned back, but his frown was light. “My friends… Have you considered your cause might be mine?”

“You’re not a mage, Nate,” Anders said.

“And here I thought this was a staff,” Nate tipped his cane at him.

“This is past time for joking,” Justice said.

“I’ll let you know when I tell one,” Nate said.

“Velanna-” Anders started.

“-is a mage,” Nate cut him off.

“Sigurd-” Anders tried again.

“-may be someday.” Nate said, his expression suddenly serious. “It doesn’t take a mage to want magic in the world, my friends.”

“Just give me the map, Nate,” Anders said.

“I am the map,” Nate tapped a finger to his temple and continued down the tunnel.

Anders stayed where he left him, tangled up in his tongue. He couldn’t let Nate come with him, but he couldn’t find his way to Kirkwall without him. He’d end up lost in the tunnels below the Vimmark for days if not weeks, and he didn’t have time to waste. Turning around wasn’t an option. Not when Chateau Haine was crawling with templars thanks to all of his threats, and even if Anders made it through them, there was no other way into Kirkwall.

The roads were blocked. The gates were barred. The harbor was closed. All of it was under guard. The only way into the city was under it.

Anders fell into step beside Nate, channeling a panacea for his leg and trying to think of some way to get rid of him, “Does Amell know you’re here?”

“I’m his Constable,” Nathaniel gave him a look. “Of course he knows I’m here.”

“I mean did he send you?” Anders clarified.

“I sent myself,” Nate said.

“Does Velanna know?” Anders asked.

“Anders,” Nate cut him off with his cane and turned to face him, his expression an impossible blend of patience and impatience. “Of course she knows. If the others were here with us, they’d all know too. What do you think you mean to us?”

Anders didn’t want to answer that. Anders didn’t know how to answer that. Anders tried not to think about what he meant to other people for fear he wouldn’t mean anything. After everything that had happened to him, and everything it had taken to recover, Anders would have counted himself lucky to be a burden. Every day, his friends’ patience astounded him, and he marveled the Grey Wardens hadn’t thrown up their hands and kicked him out.

“You’re making a mistake,” Anders said instead of answering.

“I’ve made a lot of them,” Nate grinned and kept walking. “Six years ago, when I received word of my father’s death, I made the mistake of swearing revenge on the man who murdered him, and now that man is my best friend. I like my mistakes and what they’ve made of my life. I’m sure I'll like this one too.”

Anders gave up. It was three days to Kirkwall and Anders wasn’t going to spend them arguing with Nate when he could spend them worrying about him instead. There was no way of knowing what was waiting for them once they reached Kirkwall, or what had become of the city since it had been quarantined. The more Anders thought about it, the more it seemed like there might be nothing left to save, and he might have sacrificed his standing in the Grey Wardens for nothing.

Kirkwall could have been a graveyard for all he knew, overrun with red lyrium hearts and horrors, its people grown into the quarry walls and its mages swinging from the Gallows. If that was the case, Nate couldn’t exactly outrun them. He used a cane. It was a fact. Panacea or no panacea, Nate had his limits, and they reached them sooner than Anders would have reached them on his own. They stopped to make camp, and Anders waited until Nate fell asleep to go through his things.

Nothing. Foodstuffs. Daggers. Whetstones, oils, and other things to care for his weapons and armor. Daggers. An alarming amount of poison. More daggers. No map. It was all in Nate’s head, and Anders couldn’t exactly take it without him. There was no getting rid of him. The second day of their journey, when they made camp again, Anders learned there was also no getting rid of Amal.

“We’re being followed,” Nate noted, stringing up his bow and launching an arrow into the dark. It pinged off a rock, and the little dwarf came running out from behind it, flailing his cap in the air like a flag.

“Don’t shoot, you sod suckers!” Amal sprinted over, braids flying, jacket flapping. “You can’t shoot me!”

“Anyone could shoot you, wandering around in the dark like that,” Nate warned Amal when he reached them. “Your eyes give you away.”

“You got lucky!” Amal wheezed, hands on his knees. “Been following you for two days.”

Anders knelt down next to him, “What are you doing here?”

“I followed you,” Amal declared proudly, flattening his cap back onto his head.

Maker save him, Anders couldn’t deal with this right now, “You shouldn’t be here.”

“You’re here!” Amal said.

“That doesn’t mean you’re allowed to come with me,” Anders said.

“I’m your page!” Amal protested, standing as straight as he could.

“You’re a good page, but pages don’t go everywhere their patrons do,” Anders said, clinging to the last vestiges of his patience. “You need to go back to the chateau. Amell will take care of you.”

“No he won’t!” Amal stomped his foot, jingling a few of his braids and the copper bands on the ends of them. “He didn’t want me. You did! I want to stay with you.”

Well shit. “Amal, listen, where I’m going is dangerous and I can’t let you come with me.”

“I’m coming anyway, dust to dunkels!” Amal said.

“Dust to what?” Nate mumbled to himself.

“No you’re not,” Anders set his hands on Amal’s shoulders. They were tiny shoulders, because he was a tiny kid, and Anders wasn’t about to let him follow him to his tiny death. “You’re going back to the chateau, and I’m going to a place full of monsters. Very dangerous monsters that I’m going to fight, and I can’t fight them if I have to worry about protecting you.”

“You’re full of sod!” Amal scrambled out of his grasp and drew what looked like a letter opener on him. “I don’t need protecting! You didn’t even know I was here!”

“Amal-”

“I’m stealthy! I got Stone sense!”

“Is that really a thing?” Nate mused.

“This isn’t a joke,” Anders snapped. “You have to take him back.”

“I’m not going back!” Amal said.

“I don’t think he’s going back,” Nate noted.

“Fucking-” Anders stood up, dragging his hands through his hair. “Nate, just-... tell me how to get to Kirkwall and take him back to the chateau. You saw what happens to people who get exposed to red lyrium on your expedition. You know how dangerous it is. Kirkwall is going to be even worse.”

“All the more reason for me to accompany you,” Nate said. “I hate to say it, but I think he’s coming with us. No one says he has to follow us into the fighting. I’m sure we can find a holdout where we can all stay, if anything still lives inside the city.”

“No we can’t,” Anders argued. “He’s a kid. If he comes with us, he’ll die.”

“Ma says I have to die on the surface,” Amal said, still brandishing his letter opener lest either of them get any ideas about moving him anywhere. “She says the Stone doesn’t want me, and I have to die on the surface so your god will see.”

Anders reached for him and Amal swiped at him with his letter opener. Anders caught it and took it from him, and pulled him into a hug that startled the boy still. “You don’t have to die anywhere. Listen, this” -Anders pulled back to thumb the brand on Amal’s face- “doesn’t mean anything. You’re a good kid, and the Grey Wardens will take care of you. Amell will take care of you - don’t make that face - he will. This” -Anders pointed at the ring on his finger- “let’s me feel however he feels, and right now he’s worried sick about you, so you need to go back to the Chateau, alright?”

“Alright,” Amal said.

Amal might not have been Amell’s son, but he definitely took after him, because Amal was a little fucking liar. It took three whole hours before Nate realized Amal was still following them, and Anders realized he didn’t have much of a choice but to let him come. He hated it all the same, and clung to the hope that Nate was right, and there were holdouts somewhere in the city where the three of them could stay and both Nate and Amal would be safe.

The Vimmark tunnels spit them out into Darktown. Anders recognized the change as the stone shifted from white, to grey, to black, to red. Death and decay hung heavy in the air, deep mushrooms and red lyrium growing through one another as the Veil grew thin. Nate strung up his bow, and Anders waved Amal over to him. “Stay close to him.”

Amal followed obediently along behind Nate. Anders bound a wisp to his staff for light and took the lead through the tunnels. Nate didn’t know the way once they were through the Vimmark, and if he was being honest, neither did Anders. Darktown was and always had been a maze of mines, half of them natural half of them not. They intersected, and looped back on themselves, and dead-ended into nothing. Anders had lived in the city for four years, and still didn’t know the way through it.

They wandered. Things still lived. Rats. Bats. Roaches. Slimes, feeding off the lyrium and glowing a pinkish crimson. Anders kept one hand wreathed in fire for any of the slimes that sensed them, burning them back, and stepping over the skeletons of those who hadn’t the magic to do the same. There were no people. The caverns were quiet, flooded in places and thick with chokedamp in others, and Anders didn’t know whether they should follow the lyrium or avoid it as they tried to find their way up into the city.

After an hour of avoid got them nowhere, they backtracked, and opted for follow, following veins of red lyrium through one tunnel after the next until they heard the whispers of men echoing through them. Anders put out the fire on his hand and the magelight about his staff, and stepped out into a cavern filled with a handful of humans. They were still human, and not hearts or horrors, but there was no way they hadn’t been exposed when red lyrium was all around them.

If not for the veins of it lining the walls, Anders almost might have thought he’d gone back in time. Men and women dressed in poor and plain linens, huddled around a burning metal barrel, surrounded by a few hovels cobbled together from tarps, tapestries, and trash. They looked up at the tap of his staff against the stone, with varying amounts of red in their eyes, and next to no meat on their bones.

They were all emaciated. Sunken eyes and sunken cheeks, cheekbones like blades beneath their skin, their clothes doing little to hide what little they had. Anders didn’t recognize any of them when he came over to join them.

“Hi stranger,” one signed.

“Not for long,” Anders signed back. “Do you need water?”

“Need food,” signed another.

“You got any?” signed a third.

“Some,” Anders signed cautiously. “Can you tell me what’s going on in the city?”

“How’d you get in the city?” the first signed.

“You look fed,” the second added.

“Real fed,” the first signed.

“Where’s your food?” the third signed.

“I’ll get you some,” Anders promised, struggling with some of the signs and spelling what he couldn’t remember. “But I need to know what’s going on here first. How bad is the plague?”

“We’re starving,” the first signed.

“Haven’t eaten in days,” the second signed.

“No food on him,” the third decided.

“Anders!” Nate called from the entrance to the tunnel where Anders had left him and Amal. Anders turned around to see a half dozen emaciated refugees encircling him, wielding not much of anything. Skeletal fists. Splinters of wood. Broken pieces of metal. They rushed Nate and then they rushed him, jumping onto his back, wrapping themselves around his legs, wrenching on his arms, biting him.

Bloody eating him. Teeth sank into his neck, his hands, his thighs, chewing on whatever exposed bit of skin they could reach, and leather and cloth when they couldn’t. Anders erupted in an explosion of veilfire with a pained scream, quickly drowned out by the screams of everyone he burned. The sudden flash fire scoured the skin from their bones, a layer of char peeling off them as the cannibals leapt clear of him, losing teeth when their gums melted away.

Two of the six who’d rushed Nate were dead. One had taken an arrow through the eye, and another a dagger to the throat. The other four were fighting over him, trying to rip him out of his armor while one of them chewed on his cheek. Anders ripped the blood he’d spilled from one of his assailants, draining them dry, and used it to boil the blood of refugees fighting over Nate. The one chewing at his cheek exploded, skin bursting apart and leaving a meaty husk in their wake.

The two on his legs met the same fate, and Nate freed his arm to bury his dagger under the jaw of the last and scrambled free of the bodies. He’d lost his cane, somewhere beneath them all, and he was bleeding, a ring of red on his cheek left by the cannibal who’d try to tear it off. He was lucky it wasn’t a hole, and lucky it was the only injury that Anders could sense. Anders ran over to him, a wash of restorative energy smoothing out his skin.

Behind him, the three refugees who’d jumped him sounded like they were slowly dying, wailing for want of the flesh he’d burnt from them. Anders ignored them. “Where’s Amal?”

“He’s-...” Nate checked over both shoulders, and spun in a circle. “Amal!?”

“Amal!” Anders’ scream was all air, fighting through his throat, and he climbed over the bodies to run back into the tunnel. “Amal!”

“Amal!” Nate called again.

“Shut up, stupid!” Amal hissed, hunkered down behind one of the hovels. “You squeal like a nug you’ll get stuck like one!”

“Andraste’s ass,” Anders tripped over a dead man’s leg, running over to him. “Are you alright? Are you hurt?”

“Shh!” Amal scowled, peaking out into the cavern. “Might be more!”

Anders lowered his voice, crouched down beside the hovel, “Are you hurt?”

“I ain’t anything!” Amal vanished back into the shadows behind the dilapidated hovel.

Maker save him, Anders was going to die of a heart attack before he died of anything else coming back to this voidscape. Two steps into Kirkwall, and they’d been attacked by bloody cannibals and Amal had almost been eaten by them. There was no way Anders would be able to keep him safe if the whole city was overrun with horrors, red lyrium or otherwise. Anders had to find somewhere for them to stay so he could focus on freeing the Circle, but staying in Darktown didn’t seem to be an option anymore.

“I’ll admit, I’ve had warmer receptions,” Nate said, stepping over the bodies to join him by Amal’s hovel hideout.

“This is pretty standard for Darktown, honestly,” Anders said. “People just used to be more subtle about it.”

“The cannibalism,” Nate said helpfully.

“It was a don’t ask, don’t tell kind of thing,” Anders explained. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and the rest of the city won’t so bad.”

“My friend, when have we ever gotten lucky?” Nate asked.

“It’s not too late for you to go back to Chateau Haine, you know,” Anders said.

“Till the bitter end, I’m afraid,” Nate said. “What now?”

“Now I need to find somewhere we can stay for dinner without actually being the dinner,” Anders said. Lirene had always taken care of Kirkwall’s refugees, and might be an option. Selby had always taken care of Kirkwall’s mages, and might be another. Assuming either of them were even still alive. “I used to know some people who might be able to help. Stay close to me and keep an eye on Amal.”

The three of them made a cautious crawl through Darktown, or what had become of it. Red lyrium was everywhere - as hot and angry as always. It grew in the gutters with deep mushrooms, cut through the walls like veins of bloody gold, and formed itself into dozens of hearts, hidden away in the undercity. The screams were endless. It was like hearing the Chant of Light carry through the marble streets of Hightown, only this Chant was sung by the dying and the damned.

There were still people, surviving in whatever ways that they could. Clusters of cannibals, like the ones they’d encountered when they first arrived, living amidst the red lyrium. Clusters of probably-not-cannibals, struggling to live free from it, chasing rats and beatles and running whenever Anders crossed paths with them. Clusters of horrors, eating red lyrium raw straight out of the gutter.

Anders didn’t want anything to do with the last group, especially not when he had Amal and Nate to worry about. It helped that he could sense them, the way he sensed darkspawn, but it didn’t help that they seemed to be everywhere to sense. The three of them fell back whenever they saw the slightest glint of red, and it took hours for them to make the climb to Lowtown when Anders didn’t trust the lifts not to alert whatever waited for them on the surface.

There was still sky. Anders didn’t know why he thought there wouldn’t be sky, but it was there, blue and white with bits of gold blended with pink, being slowly swallowed by black. The foundries were still working, smoke taking to the air and giving it the distinctly ashen taste of Kirkwall skies. Red lyrium was still there too, rising up from the gutters like fingers poised to drag the whole of the city into the death and darkness below it.

Whole homes had been swallowed by it. The red broke through windows and doors, like the city was burning, and the qunari were invading all over again, but all the qunari were dead. Hawke had killed them. Hawke had killed everyone, letting it come to this. Anders, or Justice, or someone, could feel the countless souls swallowed by red lyrium crying out for justice, or mercy, or anything other than this.

Only the dead were crying. The living were silent. They moved through the streets like shadows, signing shapes too fast to follow, and whispering when they spoke at all. It was no wonder the cannibals had cornered them as soon as they arrived. Everyone looked starved. Their eyes were all shadows, their faces all gaunt, their clothes making up most of their weight. They skirted around the red lyrium with so little mind Anders couldn’t help wondering if they’d all lost theirs.

Anders pulled his hood up and Nate did the same, keeping to back alleys and shadowed awnings as they made their way towards Lirene’s old hex. It looked deserted. Not even wind wandered the streets, red lyrium growing through the piles of refuse moldering in the corners. Their alley emptied out into the markets on the first level, while Lirene’s shop was on the second. Sandstone stairs a few yards away led up to it, but reaching them meant crossing the empty hex and there was something ominous in that emptiness.

“Stay here,” Anders whispered to Nate and Amal. “I’m going to see if anyone’s inside. If I don’t come back, go back to the Retreat.”

“I ain’t retreating!” Amal whispered fiercely back, but he was huddled up against Nate’s legs, and holding his cap so tight against his scalp he looked like he was going to rip it.

“I’ll make sure he’s safe,” Nate promised.

A crow flew from the alley to land on an open window on the second story of Lirene’s shop, peering inside. Beds stacked atop beds lined the backroom, all of them empty. The crow flew inside and Anders landed in one of the aisles. It didn’t feel like coming back to Kirkwall. It felt like coming back to Kinloch - endless rows of beds that always turned up empty as one apprentice after the next failed their Harrowing or wasn’t even given the chance to take it, if they were suspected of being a blood mage.

Maker, how had Amell ever even made it out of there alive?

Anders made his way down the aisle towards the front of the shop, when a bit of movement under one of the bunks caught his attention. Anders took the flash of brown for a rat at first, but the rags took the shape of a girl when he knelt down to look under the bed. A normal girl, Anders hoped fervently, and not some feral infestation of red lyrium. She scampered away from him and not towards him, and that seemed like a good sign.

“Hey there,” Anders whispered. “What’s your name?”

“Anders?” The little girl said, peering out at him with eyes that were any color but red. She crawled her way out from under the bunk, and even if she was wearing rags, she had real shoes that weren’t just cheap leather wrapped in twine, embossed with ‘FF’ on the side, and someone had done her hair up into an Orlesian braid.

“Nika?” Anders recognized the Beshcals’ girl. “What are you doing here?”

“Playing with Messere Middletown,” Nika explained, sitting on the floor beside the bed instead of on top of it.

“Where are your parents?” Anders asked.

Nika shrugged.

“Where’s Bonwald?” Anders asked.

“Playing hide and seek,” Nika said. “Bonpa plays hide and seek a lot.”

“I’ll bet,” Anders said. The old mage was all but immobile, and the Beshcals had been harboring him for two years now. It was a miracle he was even still alive. It was a miracle any of them were. “Nika… do your parents still live at your old house?”

“We only have one house,” Nika said.

Maker make him patient. “Right, but is it the same house? Did you get a new house?”

“No…?” Nika said slowly.

Well that was something. If he couldn’t find Lirene or Selby, at least he could still count on the Beshcals. “Where is everyone?”

“I don’t know,” Nika shrugged.

“Okay, what about Lirene?” Anders asked. “Do you remember Lirene? Or Lissa? They used to work here? Your mother used to get bread from them sometimes?”

“No,” Nika said.

Great. Anders stood up and started for the front of the shop, and didn’t get more than a few feet before Nika scrambled after him and latched onto his legs.

“Where are you going!?” Nika hissed, anxiously eyeing the front of the shop.

“I’m going to go look for Lirene and Lissa,” Anders explained, untangling her from him.

“You can’t go out there,” Nika said. “You have to stay quiet. You have to stay in the dark. It’s like hide and seek.”

“What are we hiding from?” Anders asked.

“The doggle-boons,” Nika said solemnly.

“That’s just a story, Nika,” Anders promised. “Doggle-boons aren’t real.”

“Yes they are,” Nika scrambled back under one of the bunk beds, and stayed there, humming to herself and her imaginary friend. “Eaten, eaten eaten, bad children all get eaten, poached or basted, nothing wasted, eaten, eaten, eaten.”

Anders left her to it and made his way to the forefront of the shop. “Lirene?” Anders called. “Lissa?”

Empty. Just like the backrooms. The shop had been looted - all of the tables smashed or overturned. “Lirene?” Anders called. The metal gate that guarded Lirene and Lissa’s room had been down, at some point, and as far as he could tell no one was living there anymore or had been for months.

Well shit. Anders went back to the backroom. “Nika?”

No answer. Anders crouched to look under the beds, and didn’t see any rags or rats or anything that might have been her. The creak of a door opening brought him back to the shop and into a smite. It burned through his blood and brought him to his knees with how many followed - smite after smite after smite - ripping so much mana from him it felt like it cut his soul in half.

His veins alit with veilfire as Justice fought to keep hold of him, clawing up his arms, his legs, his back, sinking into his throat with a roar met with red silence. A half-dozen lyrium horrors wearing corroded Red Iron armor flooded into the shop, and Anders collapsed. He faded in and out of consciousness, to red eyes, and warped skin, and red lyrium, and when darkness failed to claim him, his nightmare did.

“Welcome home,” Hawke said.

Notes:

For King and Country: Amell and Alistair's quest to find King Maric while Anders is in Kirkwall.

Chapter 201: Let's Go Home

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

TW: I do not believe this chapter warrants any particular trigger warning, but please keep in mind the content is still dark.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 21 Eluviesta Morning - 99 Days Until All Soul’s Day
Kirkwall - Viscount’s Keep

Hawke.

He looked-... different.

Worse.

Red lyrium grew up the left side of his face, like shards of broken glass breaking through his skin, all along where Anders had scoured him with lightning, months ago. Every scar that Anders had left on him, Hawke had healed with lyrium. It grew from the burn on his heart and all but replaced it, making his chest look massive. Hawke had always been massive, but the red lyrium made him look enormous.

He looked even taller, somehow. The Viscount’s robes must have been retailored to fit him, and how much red lyrium had changed him. The color caught in the grey in his hair and his beard, and burned in his eyes when they swept over every inch of him. Anders was chained to the floor before the Viscount’s throne, shackles biting into his wrists and ankles, like he’d been brought there for judgment.

Hawke’s judgment. Hawke leaned back against a banquet table, watching him, waiting for him to wake, and he smiled when he did. Maker, Anders hated that smile. It was the same damn one. A quiet quirk of his lips, like he was still some simple mercenary too shy to even cross the threshold to his clinic without asking, but Hawke did everything without asking. He imprisoned him, he tortured him, he went mad and he took the whole city with him.

He was still wearing his rusted iron circlet, the proud Viscount of a plagued city rotting away from underneath him. His men were everywhere, and they weren’t men. They were all horrors, red lyrium eating through red iron, and they’d dragged Anders from Lowtown to High at what he could only assume had been Hawke’s year long behest. He was obsessed. He was deranged.

There was a void in him where his soul, and his heart, and all the other pieces of him had gone, and Hawke had filled it with red lyrium. There was nothing else left of him. He wasn’t even wearing armor, like whatever was beneath his robes was strong enough to withstand whatever anyone could throw at him, and over them... Anders’ things. Anders’ necklace. Anders’ rings. Anders’ spaulders, and all the black feathers they’d found together a lifetime ago.

Hawke picked at his nails with a knife, plucked from the banquet table behind him. Hawke wasn’t starving. The table was overflowing with an excess of food, most of it meat Anders didn’t want to identify, and beneath it, hounds made into horrors. Their eyes glowed, lyrium breaking through their backs like hackles. They snarled at him from underneath the table, but seemed too scared to leave it, snapping at each other instead when they couldn’t reach him.

Anders dragged himself up onto his knees. Everything ached. His muscles, his bones, his blood. Bane. Hawke had poisoned him. Of course Hawke had poisoned him. How had Hawke poisoned him? When had Hawke poisoned him? He felt burnt, his skin flush like Hawke had bathed him in magebane or red lyrium or both, but he couldn’t have. Anders was still wearing everything he’d been wearing before the Red Irons had captured him, and Hawke would have made him wear something else if he had the chance. Something soft, something silk, something that went on easy and came off easier.

Anders was still wearing his armor. He was still wearing his rings. He was still wearing the ring he wanted to wear and not the ring that Hawke had forced on him. The only thing missing was his staff, but Anders shouldn’t have had it with him in the first place. If anything, being seen with it was the reason he’d gotten caught. Anders didn’t need it. Anders just needed to get out of here.

“Knew you’d come back,” Hawke said, his voice so low Anders almost didn’t hear him. He didn’t want to hear him. He didn’t want to be anywhere near him. “Knew you couldn’t stay away.” Hawke stalked over to him, steps echoing across the stone, chains clinking on his robes, and knelt knife still in hand. “Knew you couldn’t resist.”

He was so damn hot. Just being near him was enough to make Anders sweat. The red lyrium in him radiated heat - like Hawke was made to make him burn. Anders scooted away from him, and Hawke grabbed his ankle. Even through a layer of leather Anders could feel him. The lyrium in him, the taint in him, the strength in him, locked around his leg like a vice Anders had never really escaped.

Hawke dragged him back across the stone, towards him, under him, and Hessarian save him, Anders would die before he was ever under Hawke again. Anders lashed out and kneed Hawke in the crotch. Whatever the red lyrium had done to his cock, Hawke still had the damn thing, because he fell backwards with a pained wheeze and a hand between his legs.

“No one touches the Viscount!” One of the Red Irons snarled. The horror rushed across the throne room, one red hand raised, and a smite ripped through him. Anders seized and screamed, but he didn’t have enough mana left in him for the smite to knock him out. It just hurt, like the scour of a templar’s lash across his back, and shredded his breath in place of his skin.

All at once, the horror rushing him froze. His pose was unnatural, both legs bent, one leg lifted, his hand still raised mid-smite. Hawke stumbled to his feet, one hand to his thigh, the other outstretched towards the frozen horror, but Hawke couldn’t have frozen him. Hawke wasn’t a mage. Red lyrium didn’t give people magic, but it gave Hawke something.

Something that must have let him control red lyrium and anyone infected with it. Something the other red lyrium horrors must not have had because they all just watched, shuffling nervously, abandoning their friend but not their posts.

“What did I say?” Hawke signed to the frozen horror. “Sign it.”

“Bring you mages,” The horror signed shakily, hands free of whatever force Hawke had used to freeze him.

“And?” Hawke signed.

“Don’t hurt them,” The horror signed.

“Does he look hurt?” Hawke signed.

The horror didn’t sign anything back. He looked at Anders, crumpled up on the floor, and then he looked at the rest of the Red Irons ringing the throne room. All of them looked away from him. The room noticeably darkened for it, dozens of glowing red eyes trained on the floor and not whatever was unfolding in front of them.

Hawke grabbed the horror-... the man… the scared man, by the back of his neck and dragged him over to Anders, forcing him down to his knees in front of him. “Does he look hurt!?” Hawke screamed.

“He touched you,” The man signed, kicking and clawing at the floor, trying to drag himself away from Anders, like a dog brought before the mess it had made on the rug. “The filthy fucking sewer rat touched you!”

“He’s allowed to touch me,” Hawke flung the man down on the floor. “You’re not allowed to touch him. You’re not allowed to touch anything.”

“I’m not hurt,” Anders signed. Anders couldn’t remember how to sign. What was hurt? Fuck, what was the sign for hurt? They’d both just signed it. Why couldn’t he remember it? He had to remember it.

He had to do something to help the poor bastard, frantically signing, “No, no-” until he couldn’t sign anymore. Red lyrium ripped through the man’s wrists, growing up over his hands, breaking through his fingers, turning them to blades. The man turned them over and over, screaming and sobbing, until there wasn’t anything left of them. “No, no, no!” The man slammed the blades on the ground, scattering shards of lyrium like broken glass, like he was trying to free his hands but couldn’t find them.

What the fuck?

Hawke knelt next to the man, and signed, “You going to touch him again?”

The man shook his head, bladed arms going slack.

“You going to touch anything again?” Hawke signed.

The man shook his head again.

“Fuck off,” Hawke signed.

The man stumbled to his feet and fled from the Keep. Hawke sighed wearily, scratching at his scalp in the same old habit, save for the shards of lyrium that broke through the left side of his head. “No one listens,” Hawke signed to him with a sheepish smile, like he’d just cleaned up some of Dog’s shit and hadn’t ruined some poor man’s life. Damn the man, he’d moved beyond madness and into something else. Something worse.

“Hawke-...” Anders’ chains clinked when he raised his hands to sign, but he didn’t know what else to say. He had to find some way to break his skin and cleanse the bane he could feel poisoning his blood, cutting him off from his magic, but the only nearby knife was the one in Hawke’s hand. The one that had been in Hawke’s hand. Hawke had dropped it, a short ways from him, after Anders had kicked him in the crotch.

“Told them to find mages,” Hawke signed an explanation of his capture. “Knew I’d find you. Knew you needed me.” Hawke stood swiftly, and Anders flinched back, but Hawke didn’t strike him. “Must be hungry,” Hawke said, the sudden sound startling when the recent horrors had happened in silence.

Hawke went back to the table and snatched a plate and a fork from a pile of cutlery. “Everyone’s hungry,” Hawke said, stabbing pieces of food seemingly at random and piling them onto the plate. “Everyone wants something to eat. Everyone wants somebody to eat. Everyone thinks I have everything.” Hawke finished with his plate, but then seemed to forget he was bringing it to him, wandering in circles around the banquet table instead.

Anders eyed the knife, abandoned on the floor and scooted towards it while Hawke ranted and paced. “The mines. The farms,” Hawke looked at the plate in his hand, and frowned like he was surprised to find it there, tossing it back onto the table. “Took them back. They’re mine. Can’t take them from me.”

Hawke rushed him without warning, and Anders slammed himself back against the throne, grasping for the Fade, for Justice, for some kind of shield for the sudden assault, but Hawke just stopped. He felt like a furnace, kneeling next to him, eagerly explaining, “Don’t need the farms or the food if everyone just takes the lyrium. Can’t starve us out if we can’t starve. You could never starve. I would never let you.”

Hawke ran his fingers down his cheek, like a caress of hot irons, and Anders flinched further back, shackles digging into his wrists when he reached the limits of his chains. Hawke didn’t care. Hawke didn’t even seem to notice. He smiled, with all the warmth of red lyrium, and said, “Must be hungry,” Hawke left to make him a second plate.

Fucking flames, this was a nightmare. This was his nightmare. Hawke was so stark raving mad he didn’t even seem to realize he was holding him hostage, along with Maker knew however many other mages Hawke had captured hunting him. “Not hungry,” Anders signed, but Hawke wasn’t looking at him. He’d gone back to stabbing away at the food on the table and piling it up on a new plate for him.

Anders crawled back over to the knife while Hawke rambled. “Sebastian turned Starkhaven against me. Starkhaven. Tantervale. Ostwick. They’re out there. Outside the walls. Outside my walls. Outside my city. Taking my things, but I took the farms back. Took the farms back for the ones who won’t take lyrium. Aveline won’t take it. She won’t fucking take it.” Hawke flung the plate he was holding in a fit. It shattered across the floor inches from Anders hands and collided with the knife, sending it skidding further away. “Doesn’t understand how much it costs to feed her. Thinks this is all free. Thinks anything is free. Nothing’s free.”

Hawke reappeared at his side - Maker he shouldn’t have been able to move that fast - and ran his hand through his hair. His touch burned, soaking him with sweat and making his hair slip from his tie. Hawke pulled the tie free, and fixed the damp strands to frame his face. “Just you. You have any idea how lucky you are that I found you? Knight-Commander could have found you first. She could have taken you from me. I’d never let anyone take you from me. You made me swear not to let anyone take you from me.”

Hawke cupped his cheek, and Anders flinched, and Hawke finally seemed to notice. His grip tightened, and his expression darkened. “Be grateful!” Hawke screamed in his face.

“Thank you,” Anders signed in a panic.

It must have been good enough. Hawke smiled, a playful roll of his red eyes and a slight shake of his head turning him into a whole other person. “You’re so hard to please. You’re like the Maker. Nothing’s ever good enough to turn your gaze.” Hawke patted his cheek and stood back up. “Must be hungry,” Hawke noted for the third time and went back to the table to fix him yet another plate.

What the fuck?

Maker save him, Anders was going to lose his mind. Keeping up with Hawke’s insanity was going to drive him insane. He had to escape. He had to cleanse his blood, and he needed access to his blood to cleanse it, but there was no chance of reaching the knife now. He had to find some other way to bleed. The shackles were sharp, but they weren’t that sharp, and pressing on them bruised more than it bit.

“All for you, you know,” Hawke said, working on his third plate. “You were always so worried my position wouldn’t be enough to keep me safe.” Hawke came back with his plate, free of any utensils Anders could have used to cut himself, and pressed it into his bound hands. “It is now.”

The plate was piled with slices of meat, mashed potatoes, and more meat. Pink. Maybe pork. Maybe not. Anders set it on the ground and signed, “Not hungry.”

“You eat what I tell you to eat,” Hawke signed forcefully. “You drink what I tell you to drink. You do what I tell you to do!” Hawke screamed the last, and a few of the Red Irons flinched. Hawke ran a hand through his hair, laughing. “I swear, Anders, you’re so fucking ungrateful. Do I have to force feed you? Do you think I have time to force feed you? Why can’t you just eat your fucking food and be grateful!?”

Hawke grabbed him by his hair, and dragged him to his feet, wrenching at his scalp until he screamed. “Thank you,” Anders signed frantically, fighting to get his feet underneath him, pulling on magic he didn’t have to heal pain that wouldn’t stop. “Thank you! Thank you-sorry-thank you-sorry!”

“Eat your food,” Hawke dropped him.

Anders grabbed the plate, and shoved a handful of potatoes into his mouth without looking away from Hawke. They were just potatoes. Anders couldn’t taste any bane in them, and it didn’t matter if he could, because he was already baned. Hawke had forced so much of it on him while he was unconscious he’d practically drowned him in the stuff. Anders was so exhausted he felt like his heart pumped bane in place of blood, but he ate.

He ate the way he’d eaten the year he’d spent in solitary, scooping food into his mouth with his fingers because the templars had taken everything from him. Even his dignity, but Anders had survived that and Anders could survive this if he could just find some way to bleed.

“You have any idea what I went through to get this for you?” Hawke signed, pacing back and forth while Anders ate as slowly as he could. Just potatoes. Maker, please just let him eat the potatoes. “You have any idea what I go through every day for you and your cause?”

Anders set his plate in his lap despite the scowl it won him from Hawke to free up his hands and sign, “My cause?”

“Mages,” Hawke signed unhelpfully.

“What about mages?” Anders signed, thinking back to the instructions Hawke had given the Red Irons to bring him whatever mages they could find. “What are you doing to mages?”

“You asked me to help them,” Hawke signed. “I help them.”

“Help them how?” Anders shook through the signs. He crawled over to Hawke, knocking his plate off his lap and onto the floor, signing hastily, “Help them how? What are you-”

Hawke backhanded him, and knocked him back into the throne. “Look at this!” Hawke grabbed the back of his neck and shoved him forward onto his hands and knees, his face inches from his overturned plate. “Do you have any idea how much this costs? Damnit, Anders, what the fuck is wrong with you? Why is it so hard for you to listen to someone other than your demon for once in your damn life!?

“Do I have to take him from you? Is that what it takes to get you to listen? You want me to burn him out with the brand? Is that what you want? Is that what you need? Is that what it takes for you to fucking listen?”

“I’m listening!” Anders signed, and slipped, with only one hand to hold him up and Hawke shoving him down. His face scraped against the plate, and whatever meat was on it. “Listening! Listening!”

“Now you’re listening?” Hawke hissed into his ear, his weight bearing down on him, the red lyrium on his chest like a sword pressed between his shoulder blades, digging into his spine as Hawke hunched over him, so fucking close and so fucking hot and so fucking heavy, pinning him to the floor like he had so many times before and Maker not again-

“Listening!” Anders signed over his shoulder. “Thank you!”

“For what?” Hawke snarled.

“Helping!” Anders signed. “Helping! Thank you!”

“Of course I’m helping you,” Hawke finally let go of him, and Anders scrambled out from underneath him and back as far as his chains would let him go, potatoes and sauce dripping off his face. Hawke pulled a kerchief from his pocket and gently cleaned him up. “I love you.”

“Thank you,” Anders signed shakily.

“Maker, you’re a mess,” Hawke mumbled, and all at once he was warm. His voice, his touch, his body, radiating with red lyrium. Hawke folded the kerchief over and wiped the sweat off his brow. “How do you get like this?”

Maker, he was mad. “I don’t know,” Anders lied.

“You need a bath,” Hawke said, but Hawke couldn’t give him one here. He’d have to unchain him, and the knife was right there, right on the floor, if Anders could just reach it. He just had to reach it. He just had to do whatever he had to do to reach it.

“A bath sounds nice,” Anders lied, rattling the shackles on his wrists where Hawke could see them. “Can we go home?”

“Soon,” Hawke held his hand, and it felt like holding a coal pulled fresh from the fire. Anders’ palm was sweating, and he felt sick just letting Hawke touch him, but Hawke didn’t touch for him long. He didn’t do anything for long, because he couldn’t seem to remember anything for long. “I have to tell Petrice, and then I’ll take you home.”

Anders grabbed one of the chains on his robe when Hawke moved to stand, “Why do you have to tell her?” Anders signed when Hawke scowled at him. “Tell me. Tell me how you’re helping me.”

“Helping you,” Hawke repeated.

“With mages,” Anders reminded him. “You’re helping mages.”

“You said they should be servants,” Hawke signed, back to being excited, like they were working on some new draft of his manifesto together, and Hawke wasn’t rewriting it behind his back. “The Maker said they should be servants. Magic is made to serve man, and never to rule over him. Sometimes I think you speak for Him.”

Hawke stared off into the distance, and Anders glanced over his shoulder half-expecting Petrice to be there, but Hawke wasn’t looking at anything.

What the fuck?

“Where are the servants?” Anders signed. Hawke wasn’t looking at him. Anders tugged on the chains dripping from Hawke’s robes, and Hawke looked startled to see him there. “Where are the servants?”

“Don’t worry about the servants,” Hawke caressed his face, and Anders fought so hard to keep from flinching he ended up shaking instead. “I have plenty of servants. I’ll take care of you.”

“Thank you,” Anders signed. “Hawke, the mages-”

“Stop talking about mages!” Hawke grabbed his face without warning, shoving his thumb into his mouth in the process and gagging him. “That’s all you fucking talk about! Look at everything I’ve done for you!” Hawke gripped his jaw, his thumb still shoved into his mouth, and wrenched him to his feet so fast Anders had to grab onto him to keep from losing any teeth. Hawke dragged him the length of his chains towards the banquet table. “Look, damn you! I gave you everything!

“My heart, my soul, my mind-” Hawke jerked him on the chains, still trying to drag him towards the table, but Anders couldn’t go any further. The shackles wrenched at his wrists and ankles, like Hawke was stretching him out on a rack, and Anders screamed. Hawke tugged once, twice, seemed to realize he wasn’t moving, and dropped him all at once. “Maker, I’m losing my mind. Peace of mind. Petrice… where the fuck is Petrice!?” Hawke whirled on the nearest Red Iron. “Go get Petrice!”

The Red Iron bolted from the throne room. Anders crawled away from Hawke on his hands and knees, bruised and battered and still not fucking bleeding when Hawke was on him again, sitting with him at the base of his throne, and it didn’t seem safe to scoot away. “Found her for you,” Hawke signed. “She’s going to replace the Grand Cleric. She’s going to replace all of it for you. The Chantry. The Circles. She hates it all. She hates the Qun-... Did you see the skulls!?”

Hawke shoved himself to his feet, and rushed over to one of the other Red Irons. “Get me a skull!”

The Red Iron ran from the throne room, and Hawke ran back to him, sliding on his knees when he reached him. “Killed them all for you. Know how much you hated them. Know how much you hated that statue down at the docks. I should have killed him for you. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?” Hawke caressed his face. “You just wanted me to kill them all. I’ll kill the templars next.”

What the fuck?

“Thank you,” Anders signed shakily, chains rattling, and Maker Hawke had told him to stop asking about the mages, but Hawke had been capturing them and making them into servants somewhere and it was all his fault and he had to find them so he could save them. “Hawke-...” Shit. How was he supposed to ask without setting him off again? He could barely remember how to sign half the things he needed to sign, let alone figure out the least threatening way to sign them. “That’s what I wanted.”

“I know,” Hawke leaned forward to press their foreheads together, still stroking his cheek, and even though he was melting Anders felt frozen, sweat drenching his sides, his neck, his face, soaking his hair when Hawke ran his fingers through it. “I know what you want.”

Hawke kissed him, like the press of coals against his lips, burning him until he writhed. Anders fought off the urge to fling himself away from Hawke for fear of what would happen if he did. Hawke didn’t seem to notice he wasn’t kissing back. Hawke never noticed. He kissed his lips, and then he kissed his jaw, the red lyrium around his heart pressing into Anders’ chest and making it hard to breathe.

The Red Irons that were left just watched while Hawke ran his fingers through his hair, caressed his cheek, kneaded up and down his arms. “Missed you so much,” Hawke murmured into his neck, his breath even hotter than his hands, like fire licking across his skin, and Maker none of them were going to stop him. They were all just going to watch whatever Hawke told them to watch even if it was rape.

Anders made himself move, his hands shaking on their way up Hawke’s robes, pulling the chains that decorated them to get his attention. “Hawke,” Anders whispered when Hawke kissed his throat, and had to have felt the vibration against his lips. “Hawke. Hawke, please, look at me.”

Hawke pulled back enough to see his lips and traced over them with his thumb, a tender expression on his face like for once he might actually care about what he had to say, but Hawke never cared. Anders said no, and Hawke never cared, so he couldn’t say no, but he had to say something.

“Help,” Anders said.

Hawke sat back, a crease of confusion on his brow. “Help?” Hawke signed.

Anders lifted his hands, chains rattling, and spelled what he couldn’t remember how to sign. “These hurt.”

Hawke took one hand and pushed the shackle down, pinching his skin but exposing the bruise beneath it. “Who hurt you?”

“Take them off?” Anders signed while Hawke caressed the bruise he’d put on his wrist. “Please? They hurt. Help me, love.”

“Don’t I always help you?” Hawke pressed a hard kiss to his brow Anders kept waiting to become a blow. Hawke dug through his pockets and finally turned up a key he was wearing around his neck, hastily unshackling his wrists but not his ankles. Hawke set the key down, and massaged one of his bruised wrists. “Don’t I always save you?”

“Thank you,” Anders signed, eyes flicking from the knife to the key.

“Better?” Hawke signed.

“Much better,” Anders signed, and felt a little less sick to his stomach that he didn’t have to say any of the things he was signing. “Thank you, love. You’re so good to me. You’re so good to mages.”

“Take care of them,” Hawke signed, latching onto the last thing Anders said like he couldn’t remember anything that came before it. “Take care of all of them for you.”

“Thank you for taking care of them,” Anders signed. “Can you take me to them? So I can see everything you did for me?”

“You’ll see when we go home,” Hawke signed.

“Let’s go home,” Anders signed. “Please? Let’s go home. I want to go home.”

“Petrice-” Hawke started, turning to look over his shoulder.

Anders grabbed Hawke’s jaw and turned his face back to him. “You don’t need her. You have me. I’m right here, love, let’s go home. Take me home?”

“You want to go home?” Hawke repeated, and for one horrifying moment Anders was afraid he didn’t believe him.

“I want to go home,” Anders signed as evenly as he could. “Don’t you want to take me home? Didn’t you miss me?”

“‘Course I missed you,” Whatever uncertainty Hawke had had vanished in favor of frustration. “You’ve been gone for-...” Hawke trailed off. Anders picked up the key, and Hawke’s eyes snapped back to him, so he pressed it shakily into Hawke’s hand.

“I’m here now,” Anders signed. “I missed you too, love, take me home so I can show you.”

It worked. Maker’s fucking mercy, it worked. Hawke unlocked the shackles on his ankles. Anders stayed on the floor, staring at the knife and wondering how he was supposed to reach it behind Hawke. It was right there, right behind him, and he just had to get it and then he could cleanse himself and shapeshift out of this nightmare. Hawke could reach it, if he just reached behind his back, but Anders didn’t think he could convince Hawke to give him a knife.

He could convince Hawke to give him a kiss.

Amell would forgive him.

“Thank you, love,” Anders cupped Hawke’s jaw, and felt the bite of lyrium against his palm beneath his beard, and resisted the urge to wince. Hawke closed his eyes and leaned into his touch, and if Anders had had the knife in his hand now he would have sheathed it beneath his jaw and gotten himself killed when all of Hawke’s Red Irons rushed him.

Anders crawled forward and kissed him instead, and hated every second of it. He hated the heat of the lyrium, and he hated the scratch of his beard, and he hated the warmth of his breath, and he hated the touch of his lips and the groan that spilled from them, and he hated the way Hawke’s arms encircled him and his hands swept up and down his back, pulling them closer together and closer to the knife, right there, right fucking there, so fucking close-

The hounds started barking, howling and slathering beneath the table, and Anders looked away from Hawke and the knife to see one of the Red Irons leading a Revered Mother into the throne room. Hawke looked with him, and rolled out from underneath him, striding quickly across the throne room to greet her and signing faster than Anders could follow, because Anders wasn’t following him, Anders was following the knife, snatching it up to slice his palm and cleanse his blood so fast it felt like he was ripping out his own veins to get the bane from them.

Hawke and Petrice were still signing about something that was quickly becoming an argument, the sound of their hands slapping together almost as loud as the hounds snarling under the table. The Red Irons were too busy following the fight to pay him any attention. Anders stepped back towards the throne, trying to decide on a way out as he drained his blood to fuel his mana and restore the second half of his soul.

Justice swept through him, a subtle ripple of veilfire that burnt out the last of the bane, and tangled up in him as they thought through their escape. The rafters, maybe, but a crow winging its way into them seemed like an easy target. A cat slipping into the shadows, less so, but there’d be no getting past the hounds. The servant’s entrance, then, through the same passageway that had gotten Anders into the throne room during the invasion, when Hawke had given Isabela to the Arishok, and Anders should have given up on him.

He hadn’t. He’d stayed. He’d tried. On the Maker, he’d tried. He’d tried to talk to him. He’d tried to listen to him. He’d tried to heal him. He’d tried to help him. He’d tried to find something of him left to heal and left to help. He’d tried to make Hawke into someone he could be with and he’d tried to make himself into someone who could be with Hawke. He’d tried. He’d tried so hard to love him, but he didn’t.

Anders escaped.

Chapter 202: Something Bad

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

TW: Cannibalism.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 22 Eluviesta Early Morning - 98 Days Until All Soul’s Day
Kirkwall - Darktown

Anders couldn't find Nate.

Anders couldn't sense Nate. The city was tainted. Everyone had been exposed to red lyrium to some extent, and it felt like searching through a sea of darkspawn. Anders searched. Maker save him, he searched, flying over the whole of the city any color other than red, but cane or no cane Nate put shadows to shame. After a few hours, Anders feared he might never find him.

Nate wasn't at Lirene's shop, and he might have been at the Retreat, but Anders didn’t know how to find his way back. He searched Darktown for the rest of the day and into the night, and even into most of the morning, and still couldn’t find Nate or Amal. He couldn’t find anything other than red lyrium and the poor unfortunate souls Hawke had exposed to it in his insane efforts to keep them from starving by forcing them to subsist off the taint within the lyrium.

They were starving anyway. The red lyrium devoured them from the inside out. Hawke had to see that. Hawke had to see something, but all he saw was red. He was so obsessed with the damn stuff he’d gotten the Red Irons addicted to it and started a plague that had gotten his city sanctioned and ultimately quarantined - and he was still fucking using it. He used it so much he could control other people who were using it.

The poor bastard. The man Hawke had mutilated was just a man. A mercenary who might have joined the Red Irons for the same reason Hawke had joined them. Because violence was the only thing he knew. Because it was the only thing he’d been taught. Because it was the only way he knew how to have a family and how to provide for them. That didn’t mean he deserved what Hawke had done to him. That didn’t mean Anders did either.

The damned bloody bastard. The mad fucking monster. Anders threw up in the gutters and hated himself for it. It was food. It was just food. Potatoes. He’d just eaten potatoes. Not the pork or not pork or whatever the fuck Hawke had tried to feed him. It was fine that he’d eaten potatoes, and if those potatoes had been baned, it didn’t matter because Anders could cleanse bane, because Amell had taught him to cleanse bane.

Amell had taught him so many things. Anders twisted the ring of rosewood around his finger with a prayer of thanks to the Maker he still had it. Damn him for every day he'd ever called Amell a liar and meant it with anything other than affection. Anders loved that he lied. Anders loved that he’d learned to trust his lies as much as he trusted his truths, and he loved that he didn’t care which was which anymore.

If Amell didn’t lie so damn much Anders had no idea how he ever would have managed to lie to Hawke, but he had. He’d lied, and he’d lived, and he’d endured, and he’d escaped. He’d done everything Amell had ever loved him for doing, and heaving his guts into the gutter, Anders loved himself for doing it too. Anders scrubbed his mouth off on his sleeve, and wondered how much of that Amell had felt.

All of it, if Anders had to guess, and he had to guess, because he still wasn’t sure how Amell’s side of the ring worked. Anders breathed what little mana he had into the enchantment, and tried to relax into the emotions that came from it. He felt stressed, but Amell always felt stressed, and that didn’t tell him anything.

Amell must have felt him through the ring, because concern followed. An anxious sort of warmth that didn’t soothe or settle nerves nearly as much as Anders wished it did when Amell felt nervous for him. Anders didn’t want Amell to feel nervous, he wanted Amell to feel calm, so Anders could feel calm, and his frustration must have bled through because calm followed.

It felt familiar. It felt like Anders’ every effort to understand what it was to have a second soul after Justice had given him one. It felt like Amell and his arms about them both in the aftermath of Hawke’s threat to tear them apart, but Hawke couldn’t. Hawke was nothing. Anders would find some way to make him nothing, like Amell had made all of his abusers nothing. He just had to find Nate first.

Anders leaned back against the cavern wall, the acrid taste of vomit and potatoes on his tongue. Anders gagged, fighting off the urge to be sick all over again. Famine plagued the city as much as the actual plague, and those damn potatoes were like to be the best if not the only meal he’d ever get while he was here. Especially when every other meal wasn’t a meal at all. Half the city was eating each other, and the other half was eating red lyrium.

No wonder the Divine wanted to launch an Exalted March. There were no men left in Kirkwall. Only monsters. Monsters and mages. Whatever mages Hawke had indentured or enslaved or eaten if the meat on his plate had been anything other than pork, and Anders knew it hadn’t been pork. It hadn’t been pork at all. Anders threw up again. His throat burned, and kept burning, through two canteens worth of water and an hour long panacea, until Anders wondered if it was even burning or he was just imagining it was.

He was so tired. He was so hungry. He was so weak, but if Nate and Amal were still in the city, then Anders still had to find them, so he still had to look. He couldn’t find them on the first day, or the second, and by the third night with no sleep Anders started hallucinating. He knew he was hallucinating, because he found Nate and Amal everywhere. He found them in the walls, and he found them in the floors, and he found them in the gutters, and he found them everywhere he looked and everywhere they weren’t.

The Veil was whisper thin in Darktown, and Anders swore he was walking along the outline of some great glyph. Patterns in the intersections of the city, back alleys, and boulevards. There were grooves, in the sewers, leading down, on a scale he couldn’t comprehend, and every so often Anders would swear they flowed with blood in place of piss. Demons pressed upon the Veil, promising him help, but he couldn’t concentrate enough to take it.

At some point he couldn’t keep looking. He had less than a hundred days before the Circle was annulled and the whole city was annulled with it. He had to focus on his cause, and if his cause cost him Nate, or his cause cost him Amal, then that just had to be what it cost him. Anders could cry when his cause was complete and the Circles were saved.

Until then he had to sleep. He had to find somewhere to sleep, but nowhere was safe to sleep, and Anders couldn’t sleep nowhere. Anders had to sleep somewhere. He’d pushed past exhaustion and into something else. Something in his bones, weighing them down, sinking him into the stone, stumbling him on every other step through the catacombs of red beneath the city.

Everyone was dead. Anders could see the bodies in the walls and feel them in the floor, wailing him awake whenever he slipped into sleep. He could taste them on his tongue, like caramel on the cusp of burning, like lyrium, like Hawke and his hands, in his hair, in his mouth, and he tasted like death, and Anders didn’t want to taste him. Anders didn’t want to taste anyone, but everyone kept eating everyone and Anders kept seeing it.

Down in the depths of Darktown. People huddled around people, cooking people, eating people. Every other fire smelled like pork but wasn’t. Anders wasn’t pork. Anders didn’t want to be pork. Anders couldn’t afford to be pork, when the Divine was going to March and he had to stop her from Marching but he was so tired and he just had to sleep, somewhere, for just a second…

Anders jerked awake and into darkness. A panicked surge of sapphire lit the room, his entire body wreathed in fire. Justice’s fire. Because he was Justice. Because he wasn’t baned or blocked or banished. He was Justice, and Justice was fine. He’d slept. He’d slept too much. Anders felt like he’d woken from some endless elven sleep, an ache in his bones and a scratch in his throat.

Anders soothed both with magic, dragging his hands down his face and his body out of bed. He wasn’t chained to it, so Hawke hadn’t found him. He wasn’t Tranquil in it, so Meredith hadn’t either. It was just a bed, in just a room, sparsely furnished, with sandstone walls and wooden floors. A window opened up over Lowtown, and told him nothing about where he was or how he’d gotten there.

Anders didn’t recognize the hex, but the scent of piss marked a nearby tannery, and the set of the sun marked the west side of the city. Anders doubted he’d found the bed on his own, which meant someone had found it for him. Anders had no idea who that someone was, but he supposed he should find out. He saw himself out of the room and into the hall of an apartment complex.

No one was waiting for him outside. There were no guards, and it wasn’t until he reached the bottom floor of the building that he even found anyone. People were gathered in the antechamber of the apartment complex, which had been rearranged into something of a soup kitchen. Mismatched tables were arranged to separate the servers from the served. Behind the serving tables, a few hearths had been set up on the floor to keep the pots warm, but most of the cooking seemed to be taking place in the apartments themselves, repurposed into kitchens.

No one felt tainted. Not the servers, ladling away from pots Anders imagined were mostly filled with water. Not the served, dragging in everything from bags to barrels to take it home. Their clothes were more stained than dyed, and everyone looked thin, but no one looked skeletal. They were all still people, surviving in whatever way that people could. One of the servers stood out to him, a woman with long blonde hair, braided and wrapped around her head to cover her ears, or the lack of them.

Anders ran down the last flight of stairs, and pushed his way through the lines to the serving tables, rasping when he tried to yell, “Lissa!”

“There he is!” Lissa beamed, dropping the ladle she was holding to wave him through the space between the tables. Anders squeezed through, and Lissa warded him off before he could hug her. “Careful now - you’ll catch the Red touching folks.”

“You don’t have it, do you?” Anders asked, following Lisa to the back of the antechamber, where a few mismatched chairs with missing cushions made up what must have been a break area. There was even a couch, tracks along the floor marking the room it had been dragged from.

“Might,” Lissa shrugged and sat, “Hard to see the symptoms.”

“I can cleanse it, if you catch it,” Anders promised, picking the wrong chair to join her. The legs were uneven, and it teetered, but it was probably better than the couch and whatever bugs had made a home of it.

“I knew you could,” Lissa flashed him a gap-toothed grin. “You shouldn’t set up shop in Darktown this time, though. It’s dangerous down there.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Anders snorted, looking over the makeshift soup kitchen. Outside of the lines, there were people huddled with their bowls in darkened corners, staring at the floor while they ate like they were afraid of making eye contact with anyone else in the kitchen. “What are you doing here? What happened to Lirene’s shop?”

“This is Lirene’s shop,” Lissa explained. “Ever since Ferelden freed her mages, the Knight Commander thinks every Fereldan is one. It’s safer to be subtle.”

“You and Lirene aren’t mages, though,” Anders argued.

“We support plenty,” Lissa said proudly - and Anders couldn’t help but smile that she’d managed to find pride in a place like this. It felt defiant. It was a good feeling. “Don’t know a Fereldan who doesn’t. Calenhad the Great and Aldenon the Wise. The King of Ferelden and Hero of Ferelden…” Lissa wrapped her hand up in her apron, and squeezed his knee with two layers of fabric between them to keep the plague at bay. “Magic made us. You made us. Did you come back to help us?”

Anders hadn’t. These people were desperate and downtrodden, but the mages were more so. They’d been desperate and downtrodden for a thousand years, and they would be for a thousand more until someone finally stood before the advancing armies and their endless Exalted Marches and said enough. “I came back to help the Circle,” Anders said, and Justice added, “The mages must be free.”

Lissa nodded solemnly, “We’ll feed them if you free them.”

“Thanks, Lissa,” Anders let his relief into his smile. It was always a relief to find someone outside the Circle who sympathized with the suffering inside it, but to find sympathy from someone who was suffering themselves was a special sort of solidarity Anders hadn’t found anywhere but here. In all his escape attempts, and all the places they’d taken him, the City of Chains seemed to be the one city that understood the need to break them. “How did I get here?”

“Your friend brought you here,” Lissa said.

“Which friend?” Anders asked.

“I didn’t get his name,” Lissa said. “He’s tall, though. Long black hair and a nice goatee. Strong Ferelden nose.”

“Nate?” Anders stood up, but he couldn’t see Nate among the handful of servers and the dozens of people they were serving. “He’s here? Where is he?”

“Helping with a supply run in the city,” Lissa looked away from him, scrubbing her hands on her apron. “... He didn’t want to help in the kitchens.”

“Did he have a little boy with him?” Anders asked anxiously, testing his weight on the chair to look over the crowds and changing his mind when it creaked. “A dwarf with a tattoo on his face? Around seven years or eight years old?”

“I didn’t get his age,” Lissa said. “He’s out on the supply run with your friend.”

Anders sat back down, wringing his hands on his thighs, “When are they getting back?”

“They should be back before nightfall,” Lissa assured him, scooting to the edge of the couch to be closer to him without touching him. “Anders, you’ve been asleep for almost two days.”

“Damn,” Anders whistled. “I’m surprised I woke up.”

“Lirene said to send you to her when you did,” Lissa stood up and motioned for him to do the same. “She’s in the kitchens.”

“Which are....?” Anders eyed the handful of doors on the first floor. None of them were kitchens the way Anders was accustomed to kitchens. It was an apartment complex, and they were all apartments, converted to whatever kind of room the refugees had need of in the moment.

“The one in the middle,” Lissa said. Anders started for it, and Lissa ran after and in front of him. “Anders-... we’re not bad people.”

“That sounds like the kind of thing someone says before they tell me they’ve done something bad,” Anders noted.

“It’s not bad,” Lissa said. “It’s just not… You’ve been gone a long time. You don’t know what it’s like. What we’ve had to do to survive. Just-... If you’re staying, don’t judge us until you’ve been us.”

“Why would I judge you?” Anders asked.

“I have to get back on the line,” Lissa left him.

Anders went to the room Lissa had dubbed the kitchens. It was one room, like most apartments, but part of a wall had been knocked down to combine it with another. A table against the wall that wasn’t ruined held a pile of bones that were being cracked open for marrow, and a second table stained a shade of russet was being used for carving meat. Buckets on both ends served to catch the blood, set aside to congeal into jelly. In the back, a hearth was airing out an open window, a grate hanging over it grilling meat.

Lirene was carving more at the butcher’s table, and the thigh she was carving didn’t look like it belonged to a pig.

“Fucking flames, Lirene,” Anders ran a hand through his hair. It fell right back in front of his face without his tie to hold it back, but even with it in the way of his eyes, the thigh was still a thigh.

“You’re awake,” Lirene set down her knife and wrung her hands off on her apron.

“Am I?” Anders asked, unable to take his eyes off the disembodied thigh. “This isn’t a nightmare?”

“This whole city’s a nightmare,” Lirene returned, the lines on her face settling into a familiar scowl. “How long you been back?”

“A few days,” Anders said. One to get captured, three to get lost and go mad in the aftermath of Hawke’s assault, and two to sleep it all off. Maker, he’d been back for almost a week and the mages were no closer to freedom. “Lirene, you can’t-”

“Eat!?” Lirene cut him off, making her way out from around the butcher’s block and all the people she’d butchered on it. “That what you’re about to say?”

“Lirene…” Anders looked back at the thigh. The light dusting of hair and a handful of moles. The selection of skin, and fat, and muscle visible on the carved flesh. His stomach turned over, but it was empty. “There are other famine foods.”

“Name them,” Lirene demanded.

“Silverweed-”

“Picked ‘em all.”

“Seaweed.”

“Ate it all.”

“Nettles-”

“Outside the walls.”

“Rats-”

“Red.”

“Pigeons-”

“Same,” Lirene set her hands on her hips. “You think we haven’t tried? You think we haven’t been eating the roaches? Baking cookies out of mud and bread out of dust? You can conjure all the water you want, but you can’t conjure food, and if you can, then you better damn well get to it, because folks are starving, and I’ll be damned if I don’t feed ‘em.”

“You’re going to give people the plague!” Anders hissed. “You can’t feed people other people. What if they’re Red?”

“Everything’s Red,” Lirene said. “Even the bloody fish. Guard Captain tried when it started. Put all the folks who were sick on the ships and burnt them in the harbor, and now whatever we catch in the waters ain’t right.”

“Flames,” Anders paced, trying and failing to tear his eyes off the leg.

“Piss on your flames,” Lirene spat. “Where’ve you been? You up and vanish one day and leave us to hear what happened from Franke? You think I got time to listen to that man’s mouth? What the shit were you thinking, letting them lock you up all over again? Why didn’t you come to me? Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t lose you to the bloody templars? You think I didn’t mean it? You think I wouldn’t be serving them if they weren’t all Red?”

“... it wasn’t that simple,” Anders said, and if the leg was hard to look away from, Lirene was almost as hard to look at. Anders had no idea how much or how little Franke had told her, but Anders didn’t want to tell her anymore. He’d lived through that nightmare once and he was tired of reliving it.

“Andraste’s ass it wasn’t,” Lirene said. “I could have cut his balls off for you and saved us all the trouble, Viscount or no Viscount.”

“... Thanks, Lirene,” Anders said.

“Tell me what I can’t do,” Lirene muttered, abandoning him to go back to breaking down the thigh on her butchering block. “Think I don’t know who’s Red and who isn’t. Think I’m feeding folks anything I haven’t already ate.”

Anders forced his feet to take him to the table, watching the thigh become less thigh and more meat. “The people out there-” Anders started.

“They know,” Lirene said.

“... the people in here?” Anders asked.

“I don’t ask,” Lirene said. “Whatever folks find.”

“Whoever,” Anders said.

“What about it?” Lirene pointed her carving knife at him. “They’re dead. They burn on a pyre or they burn in the hearth. At least this way folks get fed.”

“How long have you been doing this?” Anders asked.

“Stopped counting,” Lirene said. “The days. The people. It is what it is.”

Lirene broke down the thigh until it wasn’t a thigh anymore. Bones. Tendons. Muscle. Fat. Skin. Lirene separated it all out, saying nothing, slapping down slabs and spilling blood into her buckets. She made it all into meat. She wasn’t a Grey Warden. She wasn’t infected. She couldn’t survive off the taint, and she had to survive off something. They all did.

Maker, what the fuck was he supposed to feed Amal?

He couldn’t feed him people. No one should have had to feed anyone people. Anders set a hand on Lirene’s shoulder, and startled her into dropping her knife.

“I’m not infected,” Anders promised.

Lirene recoiled from him anyway, “How do you know I’m not?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Anders pulled her into a hug. “I can cleanse it.”

“You can what?” Lirene repeated.

Anders shouldn’t have told her. Anders shouldn’t have told Lissa. Anders shouldn’t have told any of them. He hadn’t come to Kirkwall to save the city. He’d come to Kirkwall to save the Circle - and this was all a distraction from that. He’d already lost six days to Hawke, to Nathaniel, to Amal, and he couldn’t afford to lose anymore taking on causes that weren’t his own.

“... I can cleanse it,” Anders let go of her. “Lirene, is the Mages’ Collective still in the city?”

“Yeah,” Lirene looked like she was in shock. “Yes. Someone comes by once a week to refill the water barrels.”

“When are you expecting them?” Anders asked.

“The day after tomorrow,” Lirene said.

Eight days. Eight days out of a hundred. That left ninety two for him to tear down the Circle, see all the mages free of it and from the city, and make sure the world knew he’d been the one to free them. Anders spent the rest of the day doing what he could for Lirene. He could spare her two days. Two days to treat the people she brought him to treat, and then that was it. If he couldn’t find the Mages’ Collective, then he’d save the Circle without them.

Nate and Amal came back from their supply run after Anders finished cleansing some poor blighter who’d made the mistake of eating at some other soup kitchen that wasn’t as careful as Lirene about what - or who - they served. They were joined by a handful of other refugees, and their supply run didn’t seem like it had gotten them any supplies. They brought back planks of wood, baskets of mud, a few handfuls of weeds. Things that weren’t food, but could pass for it, if someone was hungry enough, and everyone was.

They dropped off the supplies in the kitchens, and then got out of the way. Anders pulled Nate and Amal into one the antechamber’s corners, and spared them both a hug.

“Thank the Maker you’re alright,” Anders tried - and failed - to keep an arm around Amal, who ‘wasn’t a nuglet’ and ‘didn’t need to be swaddled.’ “How did you find me?”

“We’re Wardens,” Nate said, like that explained everything.

“In a Tainted city,” Anders countered.

“I think my abilities might be a little more refined than yours, my friend,” Nate grinned. “Why don’t we talk upstairs?”

Amal abandoned them in favor of helping Lirene make mud cookies in the kitchens, and Anders tried very hard to be normal about Amal being in the kitchens, but every other step up the stairs had him glancing back over his shoulder. “Tell me you don’t let him eat here,” Anders whispered.

“I have enough jerky and hardtack to last through the month,” Nate whispered back. “Beyond that… The city isn’t well.”

“The city is a shithole,” Anders corrected him.

“It is at that,” Nate grinned, waving him into the room Lirene had set aside for the three of them. He dropped his pack on the ground when he entered, and eased himself into a chair, massaging his bad leg.

“Come on, I’ll get it,” Anders knelt and took over for him, creationism flowing through the mangled muscle. “What did I miss?”

“Horrors swarmed the shop after you went inside,” Nate explained. “I tracked them to the Viscount’s Keep, but lost you from there, so I doubled back to the shop. There was a young girl there who brought us here, and Lirene gave us a room when we said we knew you. I spent the past few days tracking you until I found you in the sewers… you weren’t well.”

“When am I ever?” Anders countered.

“What happened?” Nate asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Anders locked the memory away with the rest of them. The chains. The bane. The red lyrium, eating men alive. Hawke, trying to force him to do the same. It was what it was. It happened. It was over, but the Circles were still happening. Imprisonment. Solitary confinement. Beatings. Rape. All the things that had happened to him were still happening to other people.

Anders wasn’t special. None of it was special. It just happened, not just to him but to every mage in Thedas, and he had to do something about it. “The Mages’ Collective is going to be here the day after tomorrow. I’m going to join up with them and tell them the Knight Commander’s sent for the Right of Annulment, and then I’m going to help them get everyone out.”

Nate, thank the Maker, let it go, because Nate was a good friend, and Anders didn’t deserve him. “I doubt it will be as simple as that.”

“Just the children,” Anders said.

“And the rest?” Nate asked.

“The rest are going to fight,” Anders said.

“Are you sure you can convince them?” Nate asked.

“It’s that or lay down and die,” Anders said.

Some would. Anders knew some would. The ones that were too beaten. The ones that were too broken. The ones that saw death as deliverance. The ones like Amell. The ones that had been through so much they couldn’t go through anymore, unless someone convinced them they could, and Anders had to believe he could be that someone for them, because he’d been that someone for Amell, and he’d never forget when Amell had told him.

I was tired. I was falling apart. Every day for six months I dragged myself out of nightmares and there was no relief in waking up. Then I found you in that cell. You came back when I let you go. You should have run, but you stayed because it was the right thing to do. You were tired. You were starving. You were scared, but you stayed and you fought.

Every time I gave you the chance to run, you stayed and you fought. You inspired me, Anders. You always have.

Amell had confessed, so many times, in so many ways, that the only reason he’d survived the Circle and everything that had come after it was because Anders had given him healing and Anders had given him hope, and as terrifying as it was to know that Amell might not be alive without him, it was also inspiring to know he could inspire someone so much. To know that his words had weight, and his manifesto had merit, and his cause was a righteous one.

“I believe in you, my friend, but I can’t help but think that you’re asking a lot of your people,” Nate said. “I won’t pretend to know what it is to be a mage in the Circle, but I know what you and Amell have told me. A life of torture and imprisonment, no privacy from your peers, no allowance for love among them, beholden to the whims of the templars and beaten when you deviate from them. Harrowings that you pit against Pride so only the subservient survive. The Rite of Tranquility used on any not trusted to take it-”

“I know what the Circle is like, Nate,” Anders said. “I spent fourteen years in one.”

“You spent fourteen years running from one,” Nate waved him off his leg. “Aren’t you concerned others may do the same?”

“No,” Anders cut off his spell and sat back. “No, I’m not.”

They’d fight because Anders had fought, once Amell had shown him that fighting was possible They’d fight because Amell had fought, once Anders had done the same for him.

“I believe in them,” Anders said. “Every man. Every woman. Every mage.”

Chapter 203: Still Alive

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter!

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 29 Eluviesta Early Morning - 91 Days Until All Soul’s Day
Kirkwall Docks - Collective Packaging House

They were alive.

The Mages’ Collective survived. The packaging house still stood - sans any packages. With the blockade in effect around Kirkwall, there was no getting parcels in or out of the city. Mistress Selby employed a grand total of three runners who delivered messages between Hightown and Lowtown, and as far as Anders could tell she paid them in water conjured by the mages in her care.

There weren’t many left. Bancroft, of course, with the brand that made him look Tranquil. Evon, despite the tattoos that marked him as a Chasind. Selby hadn’t heard from Sketch. Dalian had fled to Ferelden. Donal had died. The doorman had run afoul of a red templar patrol, and gotten himself killed trying to help an apostate escape. The apostate (Gerralt) had been killed, but his brother (also Gerralt, also an apostate) had lived and joined the Mages’ Collective in thanks or in grief.

Anders didn’t know much about him other than the fact that he was a mage, and in a city overrun with Red Templars and Red Irons, there was nothing else he needed to know. In the face of an annulment, alliances were forged in the furnace of pyres and stronger than steel. They were mages and that was all they needed to be.

Four mages. The rest had fallen to the plague or been hunted down by Meredith’s hounds. There were other apostates in the city, but none of them were organized. The Resolutionists were all dead. Hawke had killed them to a man for giving Anders shelter when he’d escaped a year ago, but he hadn’t killed the Collective. They were doing what they could to help the city, but they’d all but given up on the Circle.

The backroom had been abandoned, and all their plans for freedom with it. Unset letters of dead men decorated the old table they’d spent countless hours circled around, dreaming up one elaborate escape attempt after the next. Seeing mages through the sewers or out onto ships. Teaching them transformation magic or turning the templars to their side. It worked for one mage at a time. It didn’t work for all of them at once.

“She’s going to annul the Circle,” Anders told them over that old table and all those old plans. “We have to get them out before All Soul’s Day.”

“That’s three months from now, love,” Selby said from her wheeled chair, draped over the table and holding her head in her hands. Age and exhaustion shown in her every feature. Her face was wrinkled, and a sagging bun of grey-white hair spilled down her sagging shoulders. “There are thousands of mages in the Gallows. We’ll never get them all out in time.”

“We don’t need to get them all,” Anders swept piles of letters off the table to focus on the map of the Gallows beneath them. “We just need to get the children.”

“And leave the rest to die?” Evon demanded, as defiant as ever, because there was no other way for him to be when he was a Chasind and a mage and hated everywhere but here.

“Leave the rest to fight,” Anders corrected him.

“No, no,” Bancroft shook his hand and his head, and how he still had the strength to shake either was its own kind of magic with how much weight he’d lost while Anders had been gone. “We’re not doing this again. The last time you stood against the Knight Commander you lost. She sent you to solitary, and the only reason you got out is because the Viscount stood with you, but the Viscount’s gone mad. You can’t stand against her alone.”

“I won’t be if you’re with me,” Anders said.

“Like Bardel was with you?” Bancroft sneered. Anders took the barb like any other blade. It wasn’t something that could hurt him anymore. Better men than Bardel had died by his hand, and so long as he carried Karl’s death in his heart nothing could break it.

“Now’s not the time, love,” Selby sighed, rapping wrinkled fingers on the tabletop. “Anders is right. We have to do something.”

“So what are we doing?” Gerralt asked. The Collective’s newest member was skinny, like much of Kirkwall, with an ugly smile and an unpleasant voice, but he spoke when he needed to speak and he did what he needed to do, and there was more than enough to be done for that to be enough.

“Evacuate the children over the next three months,” Anders said. “Convince the mages to fight and convince the city to fight with them.”

“What city?” Bancroft waved towards the door in the absence of a window. “There is no city out there. Who’s going to fight with you? Those horrors?”

“Those people,” Anders corrected him.

“You’re as mad as the Viscount,” Bancroft scoffed.

Anders was an idiot. Barbs were still barbs, and if Bardel didn’t hurt anymore, Hawke still did. He had every intention of saying something scathing back, but Evon spoke before he could, and he took a drink from his canteen to soothe his throat instead.

“We can’t just do nothing, Bancroft,” The Chasind mage argued. “There won’t be any outrage over the annulment. No one will even notice with everything else that’s going on in the city.”

Bancroft looked back at Anders, “Why should we even believe you?”

“Why would I lie about this?” Anders demanded.

“To force our hand,” Bancroft said.

“What hand?” Anders laughed. The Collective was all but destroyed. All that was left was in this room, and what little support lingered in the city. “There are five of us. Do you think I would have come back to this nightmare if I had any other option? I had a life. I had a family. I was free. I gave up everything to come back here because that freedom means nothing if I’m the only one who has it. The Knight Commander means to annul the Circle, and she will die for it. The time has come to pick a side.

“I will not stand by while mages are murdered when I can do something to see them free of the templars’ grasp, and trust I will see them free. If I have to tear down the Circle to do it, I will.” Anders rolled up his sleeve so the swath of scars on his casting arm were visible. Bancroft rolled his eyes, and Selby looked sad, but Evon and Gerralt seemed moved. “We have the means to make a stand and we must make it, even if it means spilling our blood to spill theirs. You are either with me or you are against me. Which is it?”

“No, no. It won’t be that simple,” Bancroft said. “We’re not talking about soldiers fighting on a battlefield. We’re talking about prisoners fighting from their cells. You start a war, and you’ll lose one.”

“We’re already at war, and we’re already losing,” Anders said. “The time has come for us to stop hiding and fight to take our rightful place among free mages.”

“What about the Tranquil, love?” Selby asked.

Anders blinked, “What about the Tranquil?”

“We can’t leave them there,” Selby said.

“M.S.-” Bancroft started.

“No,” Selby cut him off, sitting up straight in her chair. “I won’t leave them there. I won’t leave Elsa there. I don’t trust the Knight Commander not to annul them with everyone else.”

“... She’s gone, M.S.,” Bancroft said softly. “There’s no coming back from that.”

“She’s just a show of the Knight Commander’s power, now, Selby,” Anders added. “She’s not your sister anymore. Trust me. Karl-... I gave him back his mind, for a moment-”

“You what?” Bancroft gawked at him.

“-and he begged me to kill him,” Anders said. “That’s no way to live.”

“I want them out,” Selby said stubbornly.

“We can’t put them before people,” Evon said.

“They are people!” Selby snapped.

“They were people,” Evon said.

“Does it matter?” Anders demanded. “If we do nothing, mages and Tranquil will die.”

“Fine. Fine,” Bancroft pulled them back on track, tapping at the map of the Gallows. “Be more specific. When the annulment comes, the Knight Commander will lock all of the mages in their rooms and go through them one by one. That’s not a battle. That’s a massacre. How do you intend to stop it?”

“By starting it,” Anders said. “We gather the mages together and make a stand.”

“When?” Bancroft asked.

“Before All Soul’s Day,” Anders said.

“I said be specific,” Bancroft said. “How are they supposed to know when it’s time to make a stand?”

“We send a message,” Anders said. “One that everyone can see.”

“What kind of message?” Bancroft asked.

“You would not thank me if I told you,” Anders said.

“Tell us anyway, love,” Selby said.

“It’s not just going to be an annulment,” Anders said, pacing on his side of the table, retelling everything he’d learned at Chateau Haine, after one of Adrian’s agents had tried to assassinate the Left Hand of the Divine for her complicity in the Chantry’s crimes. “If for some reason the Knight Commander fails to annul the Circle, and the plague continues to spread, the Divine is going to call for an Exalted March on the city.

“She already sent word for the Grand Cleric to abandon the city. The Divine gave her until All Soul’s Day to leave, and if she’s not gone by then, then the Divine is going to March on the city with her inside it. Thanks to the blockade, armies are already in place outside the walls. All the Divine has to do is order them to field their troops against the city and the Circle. We can’t wait for that to happen.

“My-” His what? His partner? His Commander? Anders twisted the ring of rosewood on his finger, trying and failing to find a word that could contain what Amell was to him. “-love has spent the past six years researching weapons and explosives that threaten even the Qun in their strength. If we use them, the world will have no choice but to see what happens here, and then we can all stop pretending the Circle is a solution.”

“Are you suggesting we blow up the Circle?” Bancroft asked.

“I’m not just suggesting it,” Anders said.

“...It could work,” Evon rubbed his chin and the tattoos decorating it. “We plant them throughout the Circle and set them off from the inside. We can take out the templars’ barracks there and on the docks and kill as many of them as we can before the fighting starts.”

“Would the armies see it?” Gerralt asked.

Anders thought of Sigrun, and the lyrium bombs she’d set off outside Amaranthine. “They’d see it.”

“It could work,” Evon said. “It sends a message that we won’t go down without a fight.”

Anders wasn’t sure if that was the message he wanted to send, but it was the first message that came to mind that aligned with what he aimed to achieve. The Circles destroyed. The mages free. The Knight Commander dead. The armies from Starkhaven, and Ostwick, and Tantervale would see the explosion and know that the annulment had failed, and then-...

And then they’d March because the Divine had ordered them to March. Because it didn’t matter if the Knight Commander was dead or alive, it mattered that the mages were, and the world didn’t want them to be. The Chantry didn’t want them to be, but Anders couldn’t just blow up the Chantry. There were Brothers, and Sisters, and orphans, and innocents inside. It wasn’t just the Grand Cleric, even if her incompetence and her inaction had led to Petrice’s schism within her own clergy, Hawke’s strangle-hold on the city, and the Knight-Commander’s strangle-hold on the Circle.

If it was just Elthina, she would have deserved it. Adrian had the right idea when she’d tried to move against Divine, whether or not Leliana was Amell’s friend. The death of the Left Hand of the Divine would have served as a statement that she was no mouthpiece for the Maker. The death of one of her Grand Cleric’s would have served the same, but she didn’t have to die in an explosion. She could die just as well by the spell or by the sword.

“Then we send it,” Selby said.

“M.S.-” Bancroft started.

“Donal is dead, Bancroft,” Selby interrupted angrily, eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “My Donal. Elissa. Teyrn. Mais. How many more people do you want us to lose? Because we’re going to lose them all.”

Bancroft sighed, scrubbing at the scar on his forehead, “I can’t get you into the Circle. No one sails in or out without Stannard’s leave. Not even the Tranquil.”

“I don’t need your help, remember?” Anders flicked his necklace out from under his tunic and held the simir feather aloft in lieu of the ones he could manifest with his magic. “Do we have anyone left inside?”

“The Little Bird,” Bancroft said.

“The Little Bird,” Evon rolled his eyes. “Just say the Viscount’s sister.”

“I won’t and you won’t if you want to keep her alive,” Bancroft shot Evon a frown. “The Little Bird may already be dead. We haven’t heard from her in over a month. The only people who move in and out of the Gallows now are Red Templars. Stannard sends out raiding parties every other day, and sinks any ships on the way to Cumberland or Val Chevin if they get too close to the chains to steal their supplies.”

“You’re really telling me Beth is our only contact?” Anders asked.

“What did I just say?” Bancroft frowned.

“Who else would it be, love?” Selby asked. “We had to get Jake out. Azure’s been in solitary for months-”

“Bardel is dead,” Bancroft interjected, still frowning.

“-The First Enchanter tries, bless his heart, but he can’t make the Knight Commander grow one. We’re alone in this. We always are,” Selby said, and every time Anders saw her she seemed so much older. Time was unkind to her, in the way that time was unkind to all mages and those who loved them. It moved too fast, and took too much, and left too little.

Anders hoped there was still something left of Beth, when a crow flew out to the fortress in the middle of the Waking Sea, locking the city in between its chains. She had the same room she’d had years ago, the privilege of privacy reserved for enchanters and above. Anders had never had them. Not for fourteen years. His quarters had only ever been shared, with anywhere from a handful to a hundred. Apprentices bunked together in dorms, and fully fledged mages shared quarters with a small group of peers, but that didn’t make it any less miserable.

Kinloch divided their dorms by age ten. Some mages came into their magic as young as three or four, but Anders had been twelve. They’d put him with the older children, and Anders had spent four years watching those older children vanish, one after the next, as they failed their Harrowings or didn’t get the chance to take them. It felt like only one in ten had ever made it out of those dorms alive.

No one asked about the ones that didn’t. You just woke up and they were gone. Just another empty bed, like they’d never even been, unless they left something behind. Carvings on the bed posts. Etchings on the walls. Sketches in the books. Little things that whispered ‘I was here. I existed. I was real.’ Growing up, Anders had left so many little things in so many little places because so many people hadn’t.

So many of his old friends were faceless. Nameless. They were just robes - little woolen things - the soft swish of fabric forgotten by the high halls that swallowed them whole. A girl here. A boy there. Mages who couldn’t quite make themselves into mages or even into memories. They were just gone, like all of Kirkwall’s mages would be gone if someone didn’t save them.

Bethany wasn’t in her room, but Anders knew it was hers and he knew she was alive. Her quarters were like Karl’s quarters. A bed, a desk, an armoire, a space to wash. A few personal effects that must have meant the world to her because they brought the world to her. A bottle of perfume that smelled like lilies. A collection of Varric’s books, and hidden away under her mattress, a collection of Isabela’s. A bowl of unburnt sage. A few letters neatly bound and bearing the Amell family crest in a drawer.

Anders didn’t have anything better to do than to look through it all while he waited for Beth to get back to her quarters. None of it meant anything to him. Not Varric’s stories - richly bound lies - of heroes and champions who’d fallen prior to the pages ever being written. Not Isabela’s fantasies - loose leaflet fictions - of men she might have made slaves had they met years before. Not Hawke’s letters - madness made manifest - of all the reasons she should thank him for her chains.

Anders wondered if she’d written back. He wondered if Hawke would even remember if she did. He wondered what she was doing, as an enchanter in a Circle in a city besieged by the plague and the armies sent by the Divine to stamp it out. Teaching, at a guess, if any apprentices still lived. If any children still lived. Children like Kieran. Children like Amal. Children like Ella.

The poor girl Anders had almost murdered four years ago. The poor girl Anders had saved almost four years ago. She hadn’t died. Anders hadn’t killed her. Justice hadn’t killed her. They’d found her, at the mercy of the templars, under threat of Tranquility and rape, and saving her life had cost Bardel his, but that was a price Anders was finally willing to pay. One life, any life, was a small price to pay for freedom.

The sound of footsteps in the hall turned Anders into a crow and sent that crow to the top of the armoire, where it stayed and cawed when Bethany saw herself inside. She hadn’t changed - not in the way that Hawke had changed. Her rich black hair and light brown skin were free of any red, and her amber eyes were much the same. She wore the robes all mages wore, and still seemed human beneath them.

Beth set down her books and turned to take him in, somehow stifling a scream when he shifted back into himself. Anders set a finger to his lips, and locked the door, and a pulse of blood magic assured him no templars stood guard outside it. The only heartbeats around were his, Beth’s, and a third, far fainter and far smaller and far more dangerous for a mage inside the Circle.

“Beth-” Anders started.

“Anders!” Beth flung herself at him.

Anders caught her and the scent of lilies with her, and all of it overwhelmed him. The memory of her mother, and everything that had happened to her. The knowledge that Beth might become one, and becoming one wasn’t an option in the Circle, so he had to help her find other options while he still could.

“What are you doing here?” Beth pulled back, but kept her hands on his shoulders. “What are you doing back? You shouldn’t have come back. Don’t you know how bad it is?”

“I came back because I know how bad it is,” Anders said, untangling her hands to hold them, trying - and failing - not to imagine those hands grabbing for a child the Circle would never let her keep. “Beth-... you’re pregnant.”

Beth let go of him, and took a few aimless steps around her room, “I know.”

“How?” Anders asked.

“You don’t really need me to explain that to you, do you?” Beth joked over her shoulder, running a hand through her hair.

“If someone forced you-” Anders started.

“It wasn’t like that,” Beth cut him off.

“Then what are you doing?” Anders demanded.

Beth whirled on him, “What am I doing!?”

“I can help you-”

“Help me?”

“I can get you some cohosh,” Anders offered, like he always had, to all the girls, to save them from the suffering he’d seen, and seen, and seen with every birth and every babe and every mother who could never ever be one. “How far along are you?”

“Far enough along to know that I don’t need that kind of help,” Beth folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not going to lose my child just to stop the Chantry from taking it from me.”

The Chantry wouldn’t get the chance. Anders knew they wouldn’t get the chance. He didn’t have to worry about Beth losing a child when she’d never get the chance to have, but he was so used to worrying over the women he’d treated he worried anyway. They were going to annul the Circle in three months, and whatever happened after, if the templars found out she was pregnant before she and the father would suffer for it.

“What about the father?” Anders asked.

“What about the father?” Beth asked.

“They’ll have him flogged when they find out,” Anders said. They’d flogged the fathers in Kinloch, at least. Greagoir had made the floggings public, and made the mages thank him for it afterwards. He’d always said that if it was up to him, he would have executed them. Father and mother both, for offending the Maker bringing more magic into the world.

They could always find the fathers. It was blood magic, because of course it was blood magic, because the Chantry always used blood magic when it was to their benefit. A proximity spell, set off whenever the father came within a few feet of the mother. They were flogged until they fainted, and sent to another Circle when they healed. If it wasn’t rape, Beth couldn’t want that for whoever the father was.

“You think I don’t know that?” Beth demanded. “You think I need you to tell me that? You haven’t changed at all, have you? You think you can just come in and carry everyone’s burdens? You think you can carry my child too?”

“I just want to help,” Anders said. “You have to know you take a grave risk in trying to carry any child to term in the Circle.”

“It’s my choice,” Beth hissed, pressing her fingers into her chest. “I’ve had enough of them taken from me. You of all people should know that.”

“Have you told the father?” Anders asked.

“I haven’t told anyone,” Beth said. “And you won’t either.”

“You can’t keep it a secret,” Anders said.

“What are you doing here, Anders?” Beth demanded.

Anders forced himself to let it go. The wheels were already in motion for an annulment and an Exalted March, and whether or not Beth kept her pregnancy wouldn’t change that. They had more important things to focus on, “The Knight Commander is going to annul the Circle.”

“She’s going to what?” Beth sat heavily on the edge of the bed.

“We only have three months to stop her,” Anders explained. “I don’t know what’s left of the Circle, but the city is in ruins. People are starving in the streets. There are cannibals on every corner. The plague is out of control and Hawke-... your brother’s gone mad. The rest of the Free Cities have set up a blockade around Kirkwall, and it’s only a matter of time before the Divine calls on them to March.

“You said you read my manifesto. You said you got the rest of the Circle to read it with you. Did you believe in it? Do you still?”

“I-...” Beth wasn’t looking at him. She stared at her hands, palms up on her knees, like she expected to be holding something someone had taken away. Hope. Her future. Her child. “I do.”

“Help me stop her,” Anders said.

“How?” Beth asked.

“By bringing down the Circle,” Anders said. “We have to strike, before she annuls it, so we can all make a stand together. I know how to make explosives I can set throughout the Circle and the templar’s barracks-”

“No!” Beth shot up. “You can’t. We can’t just kill them all. They’re not all monsters-”

“They’re nothing but monsters,” Anders said. “Beth, the only things left in this city are monsters and mages.”

“And men,” Beth argued stubbornly. “Good men. Some of them would side with us, against the Knight Commander. I know they would.”

“We tried that already,” Anders reminded her. “Don’t you remember Thrask? He found every templar in the Circle willing to make a stand against the Knight Commander and he died for it. They all did. There are no good templars left in Kirkwall.” Anders had gotten them all killed.

“There’s one,” Beth said.

Cullen Rutherford was not a good templar. Cullen Rutherford was not even a good man. Cullen Rutherford didn’t see mages as people. Cullen Rutherford didn’t treat mages as people. He treated them like nothing. He treated them like less than nothing. He tried to make them into nothing, tried to strip them down to nothing, tried to rape them, tried to break them, but Amell had broken him first. He’d broken his mind - and whatever man he was now was the man that Amell had made him - and Anders trusted Amell, so he tried to trust Cullen.

Beth brought him back to her quarters, with a promise that he would help them. Cullen looked like any other templar to Anders. Silverite cuirass. Blood red robes. The only unique thing about him was his hair, curled tight against his head, and the fact that no helmet ever covered it. Amell had liked that about him, when every templar that had ever hurt him had worn one, until Cullen had tried to hurt him without one.

“How are you not mad?” Anders frowned.

“I assume you mean the red in the lyrium?” Cullen guessed, eyes darting briefly to Beth. “... I’ve been trying to quit. Red and blue. The Knight Commander rations us well, but I can’t in good conscience do my solemn duty to protect mages while I hold such power over them.”

“Really?” Anders scoffed. “You just quit? Just like that?”

“It’s true,” Beth said. “I’ve been helping him. Not all templars are against us, Anders.”

“I have my own reasons to quit,” Cullen confessed. “More selfish ones. There’s a risk to red lyrium. It changes the men. And the women, of course,” Cullen cleared his throat. “I’ve seen the effects first hand. Blue is little better. Templars lose their minds to it.

“Some call it a gift - to forget the failed Harrowings, the demons… The atrocities here haunt me, but to lose what good I can recall…” Cullen’s eyes went to Beth again. “... I nearly lost my mind once, when Kinloch fell to Uldred’s own madness during the Blight, and it was no gift. For a time I thought all mages were like him, that Knight Commander Meredith’s methods were harsh but kept people safe-”

“Safe!?” Anders exploded, unable to help himself and his hatred for the man who’d had tried to assault the man he loved, no matter how Amell had changed him. “You honestly think any of this is about keeping people safe? Tranquility, solitary, torture-”

“I was wrong,” Cullen cut him off. Anders took an angry drink after his tirade hurt his throat, Justice’s panacea flowing through him. “I see now that mages aren’t treated well. I should have seen it sooner, but Meredith encouraged my anger towards mages. I’ve let go of it now, but she hasn’t let go of hers. She’s not as far gone as the Champion-...er, Viscount, but-...”

“You can trust him,” Beth promised.

“Shouldn’t you be telling me that?” Anders asked.

“Cullen is a good man, Anders,” Beth frowned, like Anders didn’t know Amell had made him one.

Anders gestured impatiently for Cullen to continue, still drinking, “The Knight Commander?”

“Is unstable,” Cullen confessed, double checking the door like he wanted to be sure it was locked. “She has not been for some time. The Viscount’s madness has overshadowed hers, and many believe she is serving the city in siding against him, but something needs to change. The Circles. The Order-”

“The annulment?” Anders suggested.

“Is it true?” Beth asked. “Did the Knight Commander send for the Right of Annulment?”

Cullen glanced between the two of them, and at least he had the decency to look ashamed when he said, “It’s true.”

“How could you not tell me!?” Beth demanded.

“I only just found out.” Cullen held up his hands like a shield, “The Knight Commander keeps her decisions from me now - those she knows I would question - but I didn’t think I would ever have to question this one. I didn’t think it would ever happen. I didn’t think the Chantry would allow it.”

“The Chantry is the only reason the Right of Annulment exists in the first place,” Anders said hotly. “They talk of tolerance, of keeping mages safe from themselves and safe from the outside world, of doing only what must be done.

“They should talk about people drained of their essence, lives trampled underfoot, families torn apart, magnificent expressions of magic locked away, extraordinary possibilities wiped out. Instead they throw risks like stones: mages falling prey to demons, abominations and blood magic.

“They should talk about thousands of mages sacrificed to the templar’s sword. They should talk about those who, as we speak, are abducted and tortured for a crime of birth. They should talk about millions of mages torn from their families, their land, their habits, their life - from life, from color, from music. They should talk about millions of mages in whom fear has been cunningly instilled, who have been taught to abandon Pride, to tremble, kneel, despair, and behave like flunkets.

“The Chantry talks of nothing. They dazzle the world with the Wonders of Thedas, with the enchantments of Tranquil, with the beauties they make with our bones. Don’t ever tell me what the Chantry would allow. Not while you serve it.”

“I don’t serve the Chantry,” Cullen said. “I serve the mages.”

“Then prove it,” Anders said. “Help us tear it down.”

Chapter 204: Summerday

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 1 Molioris Afternoon - 89 Days Until All Soul’s Day
Kirkwall - Lowtown

Anders' throat hurt.

He’d spent days making speech after speech, and he couldn’t afford to stop making them. Talking to anyone who would listen about the injustice of the Circle and the Chantry and the upcoming Right of Annulment and - failing that - the Exalted March. A religious crusade launched by the Chantry in a pale mockery of Andraste’s march against the Tevinter Imperium, enforcing the same slavery she’d fought against.

Beth and Cullen wanted to fight, but they didn’t want to fight the same way. They were against the use of explosives and the casualties that would come with them, because they didn’t understand the casualties would come anyway. They didn’t understand that this was their chance to pick which side the casualties would be on. They didn’t understand that sometimes, it was better to sacrifice the few to save the many.

Anders understood. He understood that war came with sacrifices - as many sacrifices as were needed - and that the unforgivable was often unavoidable. He understood that sometimes the cause called for the sacrifice of blood, of flesh, of friends, of family. He understood because he was a Warden, and when Wardens said “In Death, Sacrifice,” they were never talking about themselves. They were talking about the ones they sacrificed.

Amell had taught him that. Amell understood that what he was going to do in Kirkwall wasn’t about saving one Circle, it was about saving all of them. Beth and Cullen didn’t understand that, but Anders didn’t need them to. He just needed them work with the Mages’ Collective to ready the mages and the templars to stand against Meredith when she called on the Right of Annulment.

The mages, Anders trusted. The templars, Anders didn’t. The Red Templars weren’t as far gone as the Red Irons, but they were still templars. Men and women raised by the Chantry to hunt down and lock away the same mages they might have been the children of, stolen from their parents’ arms as infants and raised to take away life from the very people who had given it to them in the first place, and addicted to lyrium that let them do it.

It didn’t matter if it was red or blue. It only mattered that it was lyrium, and Anders would never trust anyone who took it. The only reason he trusted Cullen was because Amell had made him into someone Anders could trust. Cullen was Amell’s mind, coming from a templar’s mouth, and in a way it was almost comforting. Anders could almost feel Amell’s magic on him, buried deep within his veins, changing the rhythm of his heart, or helping him to grow one.

Anders thought of Amell, any time he looked at him. He thought of what Cullen had done to Amell, and what Amell had done to Cullen, and he thought of all the other templars like him, and he felt anger in abundance. There was nothing special about Cullen. He was just a man - molded into what the Chantry sought to make of men - and what they sought was swords.

Anders saw how they used them. He saw the mages they cut down with them. He saw the families torn apart with them. He saw the pyres, and he saw the graves, and he saw the chains, and he saw the cells, and he saw the bruises, and he saw the scars, and he saw enough.

Beth and Cullen introduced him to a trusted few inside the Circle. Trusted by Beth. Trusted by Cullen. Not trusted by Anders, so he did what Amell had done, and he made them into someone he could trust. He couldn’t remake them. He wasn’t capable of Amell’s level of control with blood magic, but he could compel them. He could persuade them. He could keep them from sharing his plans whether or not they agreed with them.

The mages, Anders trusted for their magic. The templars, he made to suffer his. A little bit of pressure every time he said “Tell no one” to ensure they wouldn’t have a choice. Cullen brought him more than he expected and less than he hoped. Anders forgot most of their names. Their names didn’t matter. The cause mattered, and if taking away a modicum of free will from a few templars helped ensure mages their freedom, then Anders didn’t mind taking it.

Only one of them stood out to him. Raleigh Samson was a greasy, weasley bastard addicted to lyrium and not picky about the color, but he’d worked with the Mages’ Collective in the past, and he was willing to work with them again. He still had the same contacts he’d had before, but Anders didn’t trust those contacts. The mages Samson had been sent to see free from the city had all too often ended up in chains.

Samson knew how to get them to ships, but it was a coin toss whether or not those ships belonged to slavers. Since Samson hadn’t cared about how that coin landed in the past, Anders didn’t see any other option but to compel him to care about it now. The magic took to his mind easily enough, once Cullen told him where to push, not that Cullen knew that he was helping when he spoke to him of Samson’s past.

Maddox. A mage. An ex-mage. Samson had come to love him like a brother. Maddox had a lover outside the Circle before he’d been taken to it, and Samson had helped him keep that love alive, delivering messages back and forth between them. Samson had been caught and kicked out of the Order. Maddox made Tranquil. His lover put to death. Cullen had found him on a corner and helped him rejoin the Templar Order, and Samson had been grateful ever since.

There was no other way for him to be. He was a lyrium addict, and the loss of his mind mattered more to him than the loss of his morals, but it hadn’t always. Anders pushed on Maddox, on mages, on everything that Samson had risked for them once and might be willing to risk for them again, and the spell sank in deep and settled in around his heart, and then and only then did Anders trust Samson to save them.

It backfired, just a little. Samson didn’t settle on mages, he settled on a mage, or the men who had once been them. Anders underestimated just how much Maddox had meant to him - and the magic spread out from there to encompass all the Tranquil along with him. Samson sat down with him, dripping with determination, and went over all their options on any ships to sail them from the city once they tore the Circle down.

The Redwaters had helped the Collective in the past, but their captain Leech had sailed away from Kirkwall when Meredith had started cracking down on mages. The maleficar and all his men were sailing the Nocen Sea around Tevinter, and would take too long to find. Kanky and his Undercuts might have been an option, but they were even further out, raiding from Qundalon to Tallo in the Anderfels.

Hawke had wiped out almost all the others. Evets Marauders had been murdered to a man. The Waking Sea had woken crimson when he’d finished with the Crimson Weavers. There was always Martin, an ex-member of the Felicisima Armada, who’d stood up to slavers, had his throat slit, and survived. He’d worked with them for months, but he and his ship had sailed from the city when Meredith had raised the chains to block the harbor.

They had to find a way to lower them, for this to work. Once they stopped the Right of Annulment, they’d have to run from the Exalted March. There was no other way that they’d survive. Not when the City of Chains was under siege from the Free Cities all around it. Hawke might have broken the blockade around the farms, but he hadn’t broken it around the city. He gained ground in gorey inches and lost it in leagues, and Anders wasn’t about to place his hopes in him.

Samson swore he’d lower the chains, when the time finally came to lower them, but they couldn’t just lower them for Martin. They needed more than just one man - and more than just one woman. Isabela wasn’t someone Anders trusted anymore, but Isabela had a ship, and if that ship could save even a soul then Anders would set her sins aside. They weren’t just any sins - Isabela was a slaver - and that made her everything he stood against.

Anders didn’t want to write her for her help. After everything he’d learned, Anders didn’t trust her to give it. In Isabela’s own words, her decision to free the last shipment of slaves she’d trafficked had been a “horrifying fit of decency, a bout of foul morality, a moment of temporary insanity.” If her decision to let Castillon go free was any indication, it was one that she’d recovered from. The only reason she’d even changed her mind to hunt him down was because Fenris had been the one to change it.

Fenris hadn’t needed blood magic to change it, and that had to count for something, but Anders wasn’t sure it counted for enough. His last letter haunted him. The thought of Fenris alone among her and her crew, wondering over his weight, and what it would take for them to try to trade it for gold. Anders had tried to keep his letter back as neutral as he could. If Fenris wanted to forgive her for her crimes, then that was Fenris’ choice, but Anders had urged him to keep pushing her for change and to be careful not to end up back in chains.

Anders wasn’t sure he could forgive her for the ones she’d left in them. She’d freed one ship and sank another. She’d served one slaving ring and severed a second. None of it seemed near enough atonement for the lives she’d taken, but saving a few thousand might have been, so Anders wrote her anyway. Getting the letter out to her and every other captain was up to Selby. Anders trusted the old girl to find a way if she had to wheel them to Estwatch herself, since Samson had sworn to save her sister.

Anders wasn’t surprised Hawke didn’t put in the same effort to save his own. Anders had flipped through some of his letters to his sister, and while it was evident that whatever was left of Hawke still loved her - as much as Hawke could love anyone - that love didn’t matter. If Anders had learned anything in all their years together, it was that the only thing worse than being hated by Hawke was being loved by him.

Hawke’s love for Beth was too similar to Hawke’s love for him. He wanted her safe. He wanted her in the Circle. He wanted her in a cell. Hawke’s desire to keep her there was the only weapon Meredith had left to use against him, and Cullen made it clear she was looking for more. The Circle was struggling because the city was struggling. Meredith couldn’t demand tithe to keep her men from starving when the men she demanded it from were starving too.

The mages did what they could to help, sustaining a small garden with what little nature magic they had among them, but it wasn’t nearly enough to support the Circle, especially with the fishing waters ruined by Aveline’s actions. Meredith sent her men on raiding parties to claim whatever they could, and was all but waging war on the Red Irons guarding the grain silos, and the fighting only ever escalated.

Any caravans that carted food into the city were set upon by everyone. The desperate and the destitute. The brutal and the brave. It wasn't even that much food - with so many of the farmers fled - but it was more than what they’d had before. Starving people fought over bits of beetroot and elderflowers, and beat each other to death for pieces of rhubarb and watercress. The Kirkwall Guard did what they could to beat them back before they could.

Maker, Anders hated them. The Knight Commander envied them. She wanted to force Aveline to vacate her position so Cullen could lay claim to it - not that there was much left for him to claim. Aveline had lost half the Kirkwall Guard to Hawke and his Red Irons, but if the men who remained reported to the Knight Commander, she’d have a better chance of wresting control of the city from Hawke.

Anders wasn’t about to trade a madman for a madwoman, especially when that madwoman wanted the Circle annulled and that madman didn’t. It didn’t matter that Cullen was for their cause - he was still the Knight Captain, and making him the Guard Captain would set a precedent the rest of the world would be fast to follow. Even worse, he was quickly falling out of favor, and there was no guarantee that Meredith wouldn’t stage a coup against him too, so Aveline had to stay.

Maker, Anders hated her. Varric used to call her Red. Unimaginative, Aveline had complained, but she wasn’t Red because of her hair; she was Red because of her hands. Aveline used the guards like a gang, and refused to investigate when they acted like one. She’d looked the other way while her men raped and pillaged like marauders, and only looked back when they were murdered for it. She’d all but provoked the qunari into attacking the city, trying to arrest elves who’d fled to them for protection from her and all her thugs.

The guard had never protected anyone, and Aveline hadn’t either, not even her friends, standing on the sidelines while a serial killer butchered them all under her watch. Lissa reminded him of it every day, trying to tuck her hair away behind ears Quentin had long since carved away. Lirene reminded him of it even more, carving up everyone who died to feed them to anyone still left alive.

Anders was starting not to blame her for it. It was revolting, but what other choice did the poor men and women have when the lords and ladies took them all away? The food from the farms was meant for Hightown - and the Kirkwall Guard damned anyone who lived below it. Anders didn’t want anything to do with them, but when the Circle finally went up in flames, he had to have the guardsmen on his side to ensure they didn’t try to throw the mages into them.

He had to convince Aveline to help, and when that failed, like Anders knew it would, he’d have to compel her to. He’d compelled so many people already, it was almost hard to stop. It was even harder to find a reason to. What did it matter, at the end of the day, whether or not the people who helped him helped him of their own volition, especially if their own volition was wrong? If the choice they made was a choice that Anders fought against, why should he let them choose it?

Amell hadn’t. Anders had heard all the stories. Anders had been there for some of them. When the choice was life or death, freedom or slavery, then it wasn’t a choice at all, and there was no reason Anders could find to give it to them. If he wanted to break the Chantry’s chains, to make a tolerant society, then he couldn’t tolerate the intolerant among it. He bled himself dry changing hearts and minds, and was well past letting his conscience change his.

Anders was exhausted, at the end of the day. His voice. His veins. He crawled back to the room Lirene had given him in the dead of night, and didn’t sleep so much as suffer. Nightmare after nightmare woke him, each worse than the last. The darkspawn hivemind delved into his psyche, and tore any chance of peace apart. All his nightmares of cannibalism and consumption were made even worse when he woke up to them.

Anders hadn’t eaten anyone, and Nate and Amal hadn’t either, but there was no way that could last forever. Nate’s rations wouldn’t. Lirene sent her men - Cor’s men - out to raid the caravans, but those raids only won them all so much. Men died for baskets of aubergine and a few heads of lettuce, and were eaten right along with them. It didn’t seem like they’d survive a day, let alone eighty-nine of them, especially when Anders wasted one.

He had to go see Aveline. He had to go save Aveline, but he couldn’t do anything today. Today was Summerday. Outside his window, a grand procession climbed the countless sandstone stairs to Kirkwall’s Chantry. Couples and children, wearing white tunics and gowns, celebrating coming of age or coming together.

Marriage.

Anders sat in his uneven chair, looking out his third story window, watching the procession as it passed through the hex, and tried not to think about how close he’d come to joining it. He wasn’t down there. He never would be. The rings on his fingers weren’t made from gold, but rosewood and silver, and there were no chains attached to them, no matter how many were attached to today.

Summerday had been called Andoralis, once upon a time, dedicated to the Archdemon Andoral. Old God of Unity. Old God of Chains. Old God of Slaves. Anders wished that didn’t seem so fitting. Marriage wasn’t meant to mean those things, but those things were all that marriage meant to him now. It was all he could see, in every couple, in every clasped hand, in every bit of white that seemed even worse than all the red.

The procession passed. Anders stayed at the window, twisting the band of rosewood around his finger, trying to make it all into something else. Something that wasn’t a holy day or a horrible one. Something that was just a day. If Amell were here, Amell would have made it one. He would have talked all about Andoral, and the Battle of Ayesleigh where the Archdemon had been slain, until it was just a day for Wardens, or maybe just a day for them.

Today would have marked a year together if fate hadn’t forced them both apart. Anders made his way downstairs, and found Nate among the refugees. His friend. His family. What little of either he still had left. A minstrel in the corner was trying to make the annum into something for someone, plucking at the strings to an old lute, and singing soft ballads of Ayesleigh that no one was dancing over. Anders and Nate sat to listen, Nate with his cane draped over his legs, and Anders with his arms draped over his.

The wind that stirs
Their shallow graves
Carries their song
Across the sands

Anders twisted his ring around his finger, watching the figures chase each other in it, and breathing mana into the enchantment. He felt lonely. He felt longing. He felt loved.

Heed our words
Hear our cry
The grey are sworn
In peace we lie

Nate nudged him, and nodded towards his ring. “Is that the tracking ring you mentioned Amell made for you?”

Anders nodded. His throat hurt too much to do anything else.

Heed our words
Hear our cry
Our names recalled
We cannot die

“Could he find you with it, when all this is over?” Nate asked.

Anders nodded again.

When darkness comes
And swallows light
Heed our words
And we shall rise.

“Could you find him?” Nate asked.

Anders shrugged. He assumed as much, but he didn’t have a good grasp on the magic, and it didn’t seem like it mattered. Amell would be at Vigil’s Keep. Amell would always be at Vigil’s Keep, and once Anders destroyed the Circle, Anders wouldn’t be able to be there with him. He’d be a fugitive, on the run from the Chantry, and Amell couldn’t run.

Justice settled in beneath his skin, steadying him, and Anders felt a sort of saudade through the ring as Amell did the same. If Anders didn’t end up on the run, he’d end up dead. A martyr to mages, assuming Adrian spoke the truth, and Anders’ manifesto meant enough to mages to make him one. Anders had to believe it did. He had to believe this would all matter. He had to believe that whether it took ten years, or a hundred years, someday someone like him would love someone like Amell, and there would be no templars to tear them apart.

“Velanna can’t find me,” Nate told him, fishing her phylactery out from underneath his collar. The compass within pointed south, towards Ferelden, where they’d left both their hearts. “She has to trust that I’ll find her, if ever we’re apart, and I will. Nothing could keep me from her. Trust that it’s the same for you and Amell. Love is like that.”

Anders signed his thanks and spent the rest of the annum in the kitchens with Amal, baking bread out of sawdust and cookies out of mud and checking on roach farms. Amal was a good kid. He wanted to be a good kid. He wanted to be Anders’ kid, and as much as Anders wanted to have kids, there wasn’t any more room in his future for Amal than there was for Amell, but at least for the moment he was part of his present. Anders fixed the boy’s braids before he left the next morning for the Viscount’s Keep.

Anders didn’t want to be anywhere near the Viscount’s Keep, but he had to talk to Aveline, and that was where she was, so that was where he had to go. A crow flew to the Viscount’s Keep, and settled on one of the banners in the courtyard, overlooking the horrors below. It was filled with statues. Statues made of red lyrium. Statues made of people. They were all dead, frozen into poses that made it clear they’d been running from the Viscount’s Keep when the lyrium had eaten them alive.

The crow fled from the sight, to the southern wing of the Viscount’s Keep, where the barracks housed the Kirkwall City Guard and their Guard Captain. Unlike the rest of the Viscount’s Keep, there was no red lyrium and there were no Red Irons. There were only people, men and women wearing the orange armor of the guard, talking in low tones and signing amongst themselves. The barracks itself looked unfamiliar, overfull with weapons and armaments, heavy wooden beams, and even a ballista. Like at any moment the guards were prepared to barricade themselves inside.

The crow flew to the Guard Captain’s office, and settled on the windowsill. Aveline was sitting at her desk, holding her head in her hand, flipping back and forth between a few pieces of parchment. She looked gaunt, the way all of Kirkwall looked gaunt, her massive armor doing little to hide the weight she’d lost when the crow could see it sunken in her cheeks. Her bright red hair had been shorn short, like she’d lost her patience with it, and all the other red inside the city.

The crow hopped down to the floor, and across it to the door, where Anders closed it shut. Aveline jumped up from her chair, grabbing her sword from off her desk, and Anders pressed a finger to his lips and a bone dagger to his wrist. Aveline slowly set her sword back down.

“Well,” Anders lowered both his hands, and slid the dagger back into his belt. “You’ve got a brain in there after all. I was convinced that headband was to keep it from falling out.”

“What are you doing here?” Aveline hissed, her eyes darting between him and the door, and the guardsmen outside of it.

“Do you really have to ask?” Anders asked.

“I’m not keeping any apostates locked up in my office, so yes, I do,” Aveline frowned. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you coming back here caused?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, is my freedom inconvenient for you?” Anders sneered.

“If Hawke finds out you’re here-” Aveline came out from behind her desk.

“You’re not going to tell him,” Anders warned her.

Aveline stopped, “Is that a threat?”

“Does it need to be?” Anders set his hand back to his dagger.

“What do you want, Anders?” Aveline folded her arms across her chest.

“You, in charge of the city guard,” Anders said.

“Well lucky you, I happen to be just that,” Aveline rolled her eyes. “Did you come all the way here just to tell me to keep my job?”

“I came here to tell you you’re about to lose it,” Anders said. “The Knight Commander is planning to have you removed. She wants to eliminate the position of Guard Captain entirely and give it to the Knight Captain to ‘consolidate authority’ during this ‘crisis of leadership.’ Your own men are in on it.”

“I don’t believe you,” Aveline said.

“I don’t care,” Anders said. “The Knight Commander’s mad. She’s turning your men against you and going behind your back to investigate guardsmen she suspects as secret mages.”

“I don’t know if you’re lying or crazy,” Aveline crossed the room to pull him away from the door, and anyone on the other side who might have heard them. “You and I both know exactly who it is who’s gone mad, and it’s not the Knight Commander. You should never have come back here. Hawke has lost his mind.

“He’s been hounding me for days while his Red Irons stalk around looking for you, and everything has gotten completely out of hand.”

“You think?” Anders shrugged her arm off. “Don’t tell me it took you this long to realize it.”

Aveline said, “I cannot protect men from making bad decisions-”

“Bad decisions?” Anders demanded. “Is that what you call it? Is that what you called it when he kept me locked up in our bedroom for months on end-”

“It wasn’t my business-”

“You’re the bloody Guard Captain! Of course it was your business! Do you hear yourself!? Are you honestly surprised your men are turning on you? Are you honestly surprised you’ve lost all their respect? Do you really think you still deserve it?”

“I won’t have you calling my men’s loyalty into question,” Aveline snapped. “You have no idea how hard I’ve worked to build a good thing here. I’ve spent years trying to undo the damage Guard Captain Jevon did to the guard, only for Hawke to sweep in and do even more with all his mercenaries,” Aveline pointed at the door. “They’re out there right now - a smear on all the guards - hulking through the city, spreading their red plague, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. You don’t get to come in here and tell me my own men are worse.”

“Your own men aren’t yours!” Anders hissed. “Do something about it! The Knight Commander is using the old Guard Captain to turn them against you, and she turns more every day. I’ve seen the leaflets. They’re planning a rally in Lowtown against the tyranny of the guard and the foreigners who infest Kirkwall and if you let this get any worse than it already has-”

“Aveline!” Hawke’s voice roared through the barracks.

“Shit,” Aveline hissed, shoving him towards the window and the multistory drop below it. “Get-go-get out of here! Hide! Hide, damn you!”

Anders transformed into a cat and scrambled under her desk instead, and Aveline grabbed her sword off her desk and belted it around her waist, fingers shaking in her haste.

“Aveline!” Hawke bellowed again, and the door to her office slammed open a few seconds later. Hawke stormed inside, flanked by two Red Irons he turned to shove back out. “Fuck off!”

“Sorry!” The Red Irons signed frantically, scampering back out of the room. “Yes, Viscount!”

Hawke slammed the door closed behind them. “Fucking idiots,” Hawke muttered, dragging his hands through his hair. “They’re all just fucking idiots. Why are they all such fucking idiots?”

“Hawke,” Aveline signed, grip knuckle white on the hilt of her sword.

“Why!?” Hawke signed back.

“You know why,” Aveline signed.

“Tell me why,” Hawke signed.

“You murdered their minds,” Aveline signed. “They’re not men anymore, Hawke, they’re monsters, and you made them.”

“Stop being so damn dramatic,” Hawke signed, pacing around her desk, and the cat that cowered under it. “They’re fine.”

“They’re not fine,” Aveline signed. “You’re not fine-”

“I said they’re fine!” Hawke screamed, sweeping a hand through the shelf behind him and knocking all of the books onto the floor.

“Okay,” Aveline took a step back. “They’re fine.”

“Idiots,” Hawke muttered, pacing back around her desk to lean on the edge of it. “I told them to find him,” Hawke signed. “It’s been days. They’re not even trying.”

“I can’t help you, Hawke,” Aveline signed. “My men are stretched thin enough as it is… There’s talk of a rally in Lowtown I have to put a stop to-”

“You don’t want to help me,” Hawke signed back. “You have your husband and you don’t care what happens to mine.”

“You were never married, Hawke,” Aveline signed.

“He’s mine!” Hawke threw something. It embedded itself in the wall beside Aveline, and looked like a shard of red lyrium, but that didn’t seem possible. It was one thing to accelerate the growth of red lyrium inside someone, it was another just to manifest it.

“He’s gone, Hawke,” Aveline signed, without even looking at the blade of lyrium beside her head. “You need to let him go.”

“No,” Hawke scratched at his scalp. “No, you’re wrong. He’s here. He’s here in the city. He couldn’t stay away. I know it. He knows it. This is just what he does. He runs away. He comes back. He runs away. He comes back. He’s like a fucking yo-yo, and I’m sick of playing with him. I’m going to find him, and I’m never going to let him get away again.”

Chapter 205: Pushing Daisies

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter!

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 8 Molioris Afternoon - 82 Days Until All Soul’s Day
Kirkwall - Guardsmen Barracks

It cost him a week he didn’t have, but Anders helped Aveline stop the coup against her, hunting down the traitors in the guard. Anders didn’t care that they were dead, but Aveline did. She set her sword down on her desk, and followed it up with her hands, leaning over the reports of abuse by dead guardsmen she hadn’t been reading anyway. “I couldn’t save them.”

“You believe me now?” Anders asked, folding his arms across his chest and leaning against the wall beside the windowsill.

“Son of a bitch,” Aveline muttered.

“Bastard,” Anders corrected her.

“Excuse me?” Aveline looked up at him.

“Son of a bastard,” Anders said. “My mother was a sweetheart.”

“Not you, you ass,” Aveline snatched up one of the reports and crumpled it into a ball to throw at him. “Jevon. All of them. That… corruption we had to cut away from the guard like a gangrenous limb in Lowtown. As if I didn’t have few enough men as it is.”

“Do you believe me now or not?” Anders asked.

“You say the Knight Commander was behind it,” Aveline recalled.

“I know the Knight Commander was behind it,” Anders said.

“How do you know?” Aveline asked.

“I just do,” Anders wasn’t about to tell any of his contacts about any of his other contacts. This whole mess was a house of cards just waiting to fall down, and he wasn’t going to risk one pillar knocking down another. They could trust him of their own volition or against it.

“Damn,” Aveline sighed and sat on the edge of her desk. She looked weary, but Anders was sure he looked worse. He’d all but made himself anemic with how much blood he’d let of late. Aveline took her bloody gloves off her bloody hands and asked, “Did you know I died?”

“Back there?” Anders guessed. “Don’t get my hopes up. I’d have noticed.”

“Seven years ago, at Ostagar,” Aveline corrected him. “It took them years to sort out the casualties. King Alistair offered to reinstate the commission of any surviving officers who wanted to return to Ferelden. I got the news just before the chains went up.

“I could have gone, but I made the choice to stay. You try to build something new, something good, and the past just claws at you. That last night at Ostagar, when the Hero of Ferelden lit the signal fire, and the flanking charge never came… it was the strangest feeling. Hope. Answered with nothing... Is that all this is? Is that all you’re doing?”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” Anders hoped, but he had no real way of knowing. Once one Circle went up in flames, it was up to the mages to make sure others followed.

“Prove it,” Aveline said.

“I think I already have,” Anders pointed out. He’d stopped the coup, after all, even if he wished he hadn’t. The old Guard Captain Jevon had made a pretty good speech, talking about how Hawke and Aveline had taken over the city, trading the blood of its citizens for another kind of red. Anders had agreed with him, and Anders had killed him anyway.

“Not to me,” Aveline said. “To the city. You say you want to set her free, but you have to feed her first.”

Anders had said that. Anders just hadn’t meant that. He’d told Aveline that he was planning on breaking the blockade around Kirkwall, and that he’d need the support of the guardsmen to do it. He hadn’t said why, and Aveline hadn’t asked, and somewhere in between the lines they’d come to an understanding that Aveline didn’t want to read between them anyway.

“That’s not why I'm here,” Anders said.

“I know why you’re here,” Aveline said. “You’re here to do something with the Circle, and you’re here so I’ll look the other way. You want to go out in a blaze, fine, but you won’t take the city with you. Help me get food into people’s mouths, and I’ll make sure to keep mine closed.”

“And how am I supposed to get food, exactly?” Anders demanded. “Do you think I’m magic?”

“You’re going to get it from Merrill,” Aveline said - and Anders wished he could eat his heart because it fell into his stomach.

“What?” Anders asked.

“She has food,” Aveline explained, taking off the rest of her armor, painted with all the colors of a sunset with the blood of her betrayers, and Maker, what Anders wouldn’t have given to add Merrill to the mess. “She wouldn’t have locked down the alienage if she didn’t. I don’t care if she stockpiled it before the lockdown or if she’s growing more with magic, I just care that she has it.”

“And you want me to steal it,” Anders couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Kirkwall’s elves were almost as bad off as Kirkwall’s mages, and Aveline wanted to see them even worse. “Your men can’t set foot inside the alienage without abusing some poor elf, and now you want to starve them too? How is your back not aching from bending to punch so low?”

“I don’t care how you get it,” Aveline said, laying out her armor with her cards across the table. “I just care that you do. You do that, and I’ll do whatever you need me to do when you do whatever you’re going to do.”

Anders should have just compelled her. Anders seriously considered giving her a no and forcing her to give him a yes. The dagger was right there on his hip to do it. A gift from Nate, to replace the one he’d lost when the alienage went up in flames and Anders had risked everything to save Merrill from them. He’d climbed up countless stories for her, and Merrill couldn’t be bothered to climb even one for him.

The bitch.

The fucking bitch.

The fucking backstabbing bitch.

Anders was glad Amell had burnt a hole in her hand to match the one in her heart. He hoped she hadn’t healed it. He hoped it hung dead at her side and there wasn’t a damn thing she could use it for. He hoped it got infected, and he hoped that infection spread, and he hoped she lost the whole damn arm. He hoped her blood was poisoned and he hoped she learned what poison felt like and he hoped it felt as horrible for her as it had for him and then he hoped it hurt even more.

“There has to be some other way to find food,” Anders complained to Thom and Abby that evening over dinner. It looked like a nice dinner. A loaf of bread. A plate of biscuits. A bowl of soup. It wasn’t. The bread was made from sawdust. The biscuits made from mud. The soup was all but water. The Beshcals ate everything and anything just shy of other people and still couldn’t eat enough.

“You find it, you let us know,” Abby said.

“When can we have pie again?” Nika asked, dipping her bread into her soup and turning the whole thing into a slush of soggy wood.

“Soon, sweetpea,” Thom said.

“Pie?” Anders asked.

“Thom found a c-a-t the other day,” Abby explained, and it felt as much for Nika’s sake as for his own she spelled the word. Anders knew everyone ate cats in Kirkwall. He’d learned that the hard way putting milk out for them outside his clinic, all but inviting the refugees to snatch them up.

Anders was willing to eat a lot of things, when it came down to it, but he didn’t want to eat a person, and he didn’t want to eat a cat. They meant too much to him. They always had. Princess. Mr. Wiggums. Ser Pounce a Lot. Ser Cumference. Every cat he’d ever had had changed his life or saved it. He’d rather let the taint sustain him.

“Sometimes Bonpa catches birds,” Thom added, with a nod to the ancient old mage slouched over his soup. He was alarmingly still, and Anders hoped he was just asleep. “Isn’t that right, Bonpa?”

Bonwald slouched a little more, a few wispy strands of grey slipping into his soup.

“I said, isn’t that right, Bonpa!?” Thom repeated loudly.

Bonwald jerked up in his chair, soggy hair dripping soup across his chest, “What? Who?”

“He said you catch birds, sometimes!” Abby shouted at him.

“Oh…” Bonwald blinked, tugging sleep from the corner of his eyes and stretching out his wrinkled face. “Yes. Yes. Very carefully. Nothing flashy. The little one needs to eat, yes?”

Bonwald pulled a wisp from across the veil and bound it to the shape of a bird that hopped across the table and made a show of trying to steal Nika’s food. Nika grabbed a handful of biscuits and stuffed them into her mouth, and then snatched up the whole tray and fled the table with it, shrieking with delight as the bird chased her through the house.

“Good to see her smiling,” Thom said quietly. “I can’t say when I did last. The wife, the girl, the gran… I can’t feed my family, Anders.”

“We want to help you, we do, but we can barely feed one mage, let alone more,” Abby said. “If you start breaking those poor darlings out of the Circle with the city the way it is right now, they’ll end up starving in the streets. I know you don’t want to steal from the elves, but if they have something to share, they should share it.”

The Beshcals were right. Anders knew they were right, he just didn’t want them to be, because he just didn’t want to see Merrill. He saw enough of her just passing by the alienage with how the vhenadahl had claimed it. The tree was an oak Merrill had turned into a willow, growing all its branches into a dome that stretched from the rooftops to the streets. Whatever lay within had to be better off than what lay without.

All of his contacts had promised him their help, but when all of them were starving they only had so much help to give. Once he freed the children from the Circle, he needed people to help free them from the city, and there were only three ways they could flee. Across the sea, over land, or under it. Nate searched Darktown for the entrance to the Retreat, and once he found it, he’d take who he could back to Chateau Haine and then Nevarra. Others, they’d send north into the Vimmark Mountains, towards the Free Marches, Antiva, and Rivain, but most would sail south, towards Ferelden, and the asylum they would find there.

Anders hadn’t told Amell to offer it, but he trusted that he would. He trusted that he’d find a way. He trusted he’d support him, and all the mages like him, because he always had before. He didn’t lock himself away inside his castle to hide from his mistakes the way Merrill hid from hers. Anders stared at the imposing wall of bark and leaves and tangled vines, and thought of burning it all down, but Merrill wasn’t the only elf inside.

There were innocent people inside, and not-so-innocent people outside. Anders was surveying the walls for weakness when he saw one of the least innocent of them all walk past. Varric rounded a corner, pulling an empty cart behind him, and locked eyes with him in the street. Anders took a step towards him, and Varric took a step away, and then he dropped his cart and ran. Anders bolted after him.

The streets were all but empty thanks to the red lyrium that stained them, and there was nothing and no one in his way when Anders hasted his steps down sandstone streets and Justice reached out with a spectral hand to grab Varric by the collar of his jacket and drag him back into the alley.

“Hessarian’s hairy ballsack!” Varric squeaked, hiding his face in his hands. “I didn’t see you! I swear I didn’t see you!”

“Do not lie to me,” Justice warned him.

“Okay, okay, I saw you,” Varric said from behind his missing fingers. “Bemot’s beard, Blondie, I swear I never meant to see you.”

You never wanted to see,” Justice snarled, dismissing Anders’ every urging to stay calm. “Endless atrocities paraded before your eyes while you looked the other way. You will not do so now!

“Shit,” Varric pressed his back against the wall. “Shit, okay, I’m looking. Fuck, Blue, don’t hurt me.”

“What are you doing here?” Anders forced his way back into his skin, feeling Justice’s veilfire coiled tightly through his throat in a tangled knot of rage and remorse over the damage his shouting had done. “What’s your business at the alienage?”

“I’m a businessman,” Varric swallowed. “I have business everywhere.”

“No one has business at the alienage,” Anders said. “It’s locked down tighter than the city.”

Varric cracked the knuckles on his good hand, and if they’d been playing Wicked Grace, for once Anders would have won.

“You know a way inside,” Anders said.

“No!” Varric lied, flinching back when Anders glared at him. “Okay, yes, but it’s not what you think.”

“Since when do you know what I think?” Anders demanded.

“Help me out here, Blondie, I don’t know what you want from me,” Varric said.

“How do you know a way into the alienage?” Anders asked.

“Daisy gives me food sometimes,” Varric explained. “Just some fruit and vegetables once a fortnight, but she doesn’t have enough for everyone, Blondie, you can’t let the word get out. They’ll burn the whole place down.”

“The whole place is already burning,” Anders hissed, grabbing Varric’s jacket and dragging him to the edge of the alley that gave abruptly to a cliff overlooking the hex below, and for one mad moment Anders thought of throwing Varric off it. Somehow, he refrained, and gestured towards the hex instead, “Look around!”

Varric looked. Anders looked with him. The hex was being eaten. Red lyrium crawled across the sandstone and sank into the drains, pulsing like a living, breathing thing as it swallowed rats and roaches. A horror walked the hex, thudding up against boarded doors and windows, searching for something or someone it could eat. Whatever citizens still lived knew better than to leave their homes until it passed.

“You don’t get to tell people on their pyres you’re afraid someone else might burn,” Anders said.

“It’s not that simple, Blondie,” Varric argued, cautiously retreating from the ledge. “I’ve got friends everywhere. Inside the alienage and out of it. I can’t just pick a side.”

“If you remain neutral in the face of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor, never the oppressed,” Justice said. “When lives are endangered, when dignity is in jeopardy, the inaction of those who could have acted is an action in itself.”

“Listen-” Varric started.

“No,” Justice cut him off, and Anders continued. “How do you get into the alienage?”

“Daisy lets me in,” Varric said. “Blondie, I don’t know what you’re planning on doing, but you can’t tell anyone about the alienage. If the rest of the city knew she had food-”

“They’d take it,” Anders said. “They’d deserve it. People are eating each other out there, Varric! Do you even know? Do you even care?”

“Of course I care!” Varric snapped.

“Just not enough to do anything about it,” Anders spat. “You’re a bloody coward.”

“I’m alive,” Varric said like they were synonyms. “I can’t be seen with you if I want to stay that way. Blondie, if Hawke finds out I was anywhere near you, he’ll-”

“He’ll what?” Anders cut him off. “Torture you?”

At least Varric had the decency to look away. He swallowed nervously, staring at Anders’ feet in place of his face, and took a nervous step back. “Blondie-”

“No, go on,” Anders rasped. “Tell me. Tell me what he’ll do to you. Would he beat you? Would he poison you? Would he imprison you? Would he rape you?” Anders grabbed a fist full of Varric’s tunic when he backed himself against the alley wall, and couldn’t keep retreating from him. “What would he do, Varric?”

“I’m sorry!” Varric finally looked at him, tears stinging at the corners of his eyes. “I’m sorry, alright!? Anders, I’m sorry. Shit. You think I wanted to see you like that? You think I wanted him to do all that to you? I was scared! Hawke loves you. Hawke did all that to you and he loves you! I don’t know what Hawke would do to me. I didn’t want to find out. I was scared, alright? Fuck me, Blondie, I was scared. I warned you he was dangerous-”

“Don’t you dare” -Anders shoved Varric back against the wall- “blame me for what happened. Don’t you fucking dare. You don’t get to tell me I should have known better. He should have been better. It was not my fault.”

“Okay,” Varric held up both his hands. “Okay. You’re right, okay? You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Anders let go of him, “You’re getting me into the alienage.”

Varric straightened out rumpled clothes, and Anders took a drink from his canteen, his throat so raw he felt like he’d swallowed bane and not just spoken of it. It would be a miracle if he could even speak to Merrill at this rate. With his luck, he’d have to sign.

“Alright,” Varric said. “Alright. Look, Blondie-”

“What?” Anders signed.

“I know all this shit was wrong, but I don’t know if Daisy does,” Varric said. “She gives me food, but we don’t really talk. Hawke sent me out to look for you, and when I couldn’t find you, he-... well, the point is, she stayed with him a lot longer than I did, and whatever you’re hoping for, I wouldn’t.”

“Just get me in,” Anders signed.

Varric relented, starting back towards where he’d ditched his cart, and Anders fell into step beside him. He pulled his hood up over his head, and a quick pulse of blood magic helped gauge how many men there were around them, but the Red Irons didn’t seem to be among them.

“So…” Varric glanced at him. “What happened to your voice?” Anders pointed to the scar on his throat, and Varric sighed. “Well shit. Hate to say I told you so.”

“Shut up,” Anders signed.

“It was just a joke,” Varric said quickly.

“No it wasn’t” Anders signed.

“It’s called gallows humor, Blondie,” Varric said.

“You weren’t on the gallows,” Anders signed. “You were in the crowd.”

Varric shut up. His toppled cart was untouched when they got back to it. Varric righted it and pulled it along behind him on their way to the alienage. Anders met his every glance with a glare, and Varric kept silent until they reached an alley that led straight into a wall of bark and vines. “Not to call your confidence into question, but are you really just going to walk right in?” Varric asked, stopping at the wall. “Daisy is the Hahren now, and she’s kept all the elves alive through this. I don’t think anyone in there is going to give you whatever it is you want.”

“Just get us inside,” Anders signed.

Varric checked over his shoulder, and set his signet ring to the wall. An enchantment in it flared to life, and branches and vines peeled back to give way to a darkened tunnel. Anders followed Varric through it and into the alienage. It felt like walking into the Wending Woods or the Planasene Forest. Roots from the vhenadahl tore through the sandstone, ripping through the very foundation of the alienage.

Trees, bushes, and vines grew everywhere and everything that grew in Bloomingtide. Peas and peppers, cabbages and chicory, samphire and sorrel. Sandstone had been torn away to make room for dormant pear and apple trees come winter, and planters hung from every window, growing gooseberries for Justinian and blackberries for Solace. Sunlight broke through the leaves in patches, and magelight made up the rest, wisps dancing across the canopy like constellations for the elves dancing below.

They were healthy. They were happy. None of them looked starved. They’d even stolen livestock, a handful of goats and chickens running wild through the streets. Somewhere in the distance, sheep were braying to the tune of minstrels playing drums, rebecs, and recorders. A handful of mages practiced nature magic openly in the streets, conjuring water or tending to the trees. It was peaceful. It was perfect. It was light inside the Void.

The tunnel sealed shut behind them, and Varric set down his cart to scrub his palms off on his thighs. “Daisy fills the cart for me to take back to the Hanged Man,” Varric explained. “It’s enough for me and a few friends.”

“Friends,” Anders repeated, watching children - healthy children who weren’t eating dirt and sawdust - running through the streets. “You mean to tell me this has been here the whole time, and you only cared about your friends?”

“Daisy only has so much to spare-” Varric signed.

“She doesn’t care!” Anders signed into Varric's face. “She could share, but she’d rather let the city starve. You fill a cart a fortnight for you and a few friends? There are people out there who could make it last over a month for more.”

“She’s just looking out for me,” Varric signed. “I’m looking out for who I can. We can’t all save the world, Blondie.”

“Don’t pretend you tried,” Anders signed.

Varric massaged the back of his neck, looking anywhere but him. “Daisy and I meet over here,” Varric waved him into a building that opened up into the alley. The door on it was missing, and if they’d been out in the city Anders would have guessed they’d chipped it down to dust and baked it into bread. The room itself was simple, sandstone, almost like a soup kitchen, save that it was magic. The vhenadahl had eaten through it. Roots broke up the floor, and bark painted the walls, and vines hung from the ceiling.

They’d been shaped into a hammock, swaying beside a fire that burned inside a place without any kindling to light it. Scattered all around it were a few burlap bags and baskets, and sitting in the hammock, Merrill. She’d abandoned all the trappings of nobility she’d worn in Denerim. The diadem. The cloak. The breastplate and high collar. She wore an emerald tabard, and nothing else. Her long black hair had been cut short, and her right hand had a hole in it.

It rested limp across her chest, and when she saw the two of them together, not a single finger flexed, and Anders couldn’t hide his smirk.

“Lethallin,” Merrill said slowly, shifting her legs so they hung off the edge of the hammock. “Is everything alright?”

“Don’t get up,” Anders warned her, hand to the dagger at his hip.

“Hear him out for me, will you, Daisy?” Varric said, setting down his cart.

“What are you doing here?” Merrill asked cautiously.

“No, that’s my question,” Anders said. “People are starving in the streets and you have a haven full of hammocks?”

“Of course you came here to pass judgment,” Merrill said. “There’s nothing else you can do with that spirit stuck inside you.”

“Don’t you say one word about him,” Anders burnt a path through the roots breaking from the floor while Merrill scrambled to get up from her hammock. A quick draw of his dagger sliced through his palm, and magic kept the blood from falling. “Sit down,” Anders hissed, his voice too raw to do anything but whisper.

Merrill sat. A net of blood fell across her skin and seemed to chain her to the hammock. Varric crept over to her side, and a glare was all it took for him to sit silently beside her.

“I am Justice,” Anders whispered, and the two of them held their breath to hear him. “There is no Anders left for you to save. You don’t know him. You never met him. He died the day he took a spirit into his soul and changed himself forever to win a war he couldn’t win alone. You threaten Justice and you threaten me, and if you threaten me again, you’ll lose more than just your hand.

“Say you understand, or I’ll make you say it anyway.”

Merrill nodded.

“I said say it,” Anders said. He didn’t make any sound, saying it, his voice completely shot, but Merrill heard him anyway.

“I understand,” Merrill said.

Anders relaxed his net of blood magic, and for a long while no one moved and no one spoke. The veilfire burning through his veins made it seem as if the Veil tore inside him, sapphire flames bleeding through the cracks in his skin, and he felt the way that he was meant to feel. He felt like mana. He felt like magic. He felt like the matrimony of the Maker’s first and second children and he’d never feel less again.

“... He needs our help, Daisy,” Varric broke the silence. “For real this time.”

“What kind of help?” Merrill asked.

“... I think we owe him whatever kind he wants,” Varric said.

“I need food,” Anders signed and sheathed his dagger.

“How much?” Merrill asked.

“Enough to feed the city,” Anders signed.

“I don’t have that much,” Merrill shook her head.

“Bullshit,” Anders signed. “You have more than enough. You’re growing it in every crack and crevice in the alienage.”

“To feed the alienage!” Merrill said fiercely, standing up from her hammock. Anders held his hand out, still dripping blood from his cut, and Merrill raised both of hers, one mangled hand hanging limply from her wrist. “I’m not going to fight you if you don’t fight me,” Merrill promised.

“You sound just like Hawke,” Anders signed.

“Hawke is a monster,” Merrill said. “He poisoned everyone.”

“I wonder where he got it from,” Anders signed with a sneer.

“I was trying-” Merrill started, and abruptly stopped when a loud snap of Anders’ fingers sent lightning crackling through the room.

“I don’t care what you were trying to do,” Anders signed. “I care what you did. You helped him torture me. You saw the bruises he left on me and you looked the other way. You know he kept me locked up in that room for months. You gave him the bane to do it.

“Do you know what it tastes like? Did you ever test it? Did you ever try it? Did you ever have it shoved down your throat?”

“... I didn’t know he was going to hurt you,” Merrill said.

“You hurt me!” Anders signed. “You were my friend! I saved your life and you helped him ruin mine!”

“I didn’t mean to!” Merrill insisted. “I was trying to help you. You’re possessed-”

“I’ve always been possessed,” Anders signed. “What gives you the right to try to change that?”

“I thought I was helping,” Merrill said.

“You weren’t,” Anders signed.

Merrill ran her good hand through her hair, “I can’t feed the city.”

“You can’t just close your eyes and pretend the city isn’t suffering,” Anders signed.

“Why not?” Merrill demanded. “It’s what the city did to us for years.”

“There are innocent people out there,” Anders signed.

“There are more innocent people in here,” Merrill said.

“Come on, Daisy, you could spare a little more,” Varric argued.

“No,” Merrill hissed at him. “These are my people. Shems have starved us all our lives, and we won’t starve to save them now.”

“People are dying,” Anders signed.

“Creators have mercy on them, then,” Merrill said. “I certainly won’t.”

“You’re a bloody monster,” Anders signed.

“I’m protecting my people from one!” Merrill snapped. “Hawke is the one who unleashed monsters on the city. After we came back from Denerim, red lyrium was all that he would talk about. He thought that if he took enough of it, it could make him immune to blood magic, but it never did. He kept pushing me to test it on him, and when we couldn’t make it work, he said we had to test it on the city.

“He put it in the water. He poisoned everyone, and we never knew until it was too late. I sealed off the alienage, but I didn’t save everyone. I have a whole apartment full of people with the plague and I can’t even help them, so why would I help you?”

“Because I’ll help them if you do,” Anders signed.

“Help them?” Merrill repeated as if to be sure she’d read the sign correctly, “You can’t help them.”

“You can’t help them,” Anders corrected her. “I can. Feed the city and I’ll cleanse the elves.”

“You’re lying,” Merrill said. “You think you can lie to me because I don’t catch on to things as quickly, but I’m not stupid. You can’t cleanse the plague. I know. I tried.”

“I don’t think he’s lying, Daisy,” Varric said. “My people who are still people still hear things, and lately they’ve been hearing about a miracle healer who can cleanse the plague. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know many others.”

“You can really cleanse them?” Merrill asked, wide emerald eyes darting between him and Varric and evidently not waiting for an answer. “By the Dread Wolf, it’s about time. I’ll take you to them-”

“No,” Anders signed and snapped to get Merrill’s attention when she darted for the door. “I’m not casting a single spell until you feed the city.”

“No, no, don’t you see? I can’t help the city, but you can heal the alienage,” Merrill said. “You’re a healer. You’re supposed to heal. You have to help them.”

“I can help them, but I won’t, unless you help me first,” Anders signed.

“So you’re just going to let them die?” Merrill asked.

“I’m willing to let them die for my cause,” Anders signed. “Are you going to make them die for yours?”

Chapter 206: Eyes Down, Don't Look

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

TW: Child death

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 2 Ferventis Evening - 58 Days Until All Soul’s Day
Kirkwall - Tunnels Beneath the Waking Sea

The tunnels beneath the Waking Sea were dark and damp. Ripples of sapphire flame flowed through his veins like lightning strikes in the dead of night, illuminating dripping stalactites and the shallow pools of water beneath them. The air was thick and musky with the scent of sewage, draining into the underground grotto from the Gallows above.

Anders, or Justice, or the matrimony of the two stood by the waterside, waiting. The Mages’ Collective had found a separate path through the ruined tunnels that didn’t require inhuman strength to manage an inhuman swim, but the tunnels were still flooded, waist high for a man and shoulder for a child.

“How many this time?” Anders signed.

“Seven,” Cullen signed, glancing over his shoulder at the tunnel behind him, but the light from his torch ate away their eyesight, and made it impossible to tell if anyone was coming. All they had was sound, so they didn’t waste it talking.

“That’s it?” Anders signed. “We have less than two months before the Annulment.”

“I know,” Cullen signed with the hand that wasn’t holding his torch, spelling whatever took two. “Things are more tense than ever before. The Knight Commander is ordering mages made Tranquil in droves. I think she fears the fight to come.”

“You think she knows?” Anders signed.

“She must,” Cullen signed. “Not even under Uldred were so many mages accused of blood magic. She has moved beyond the mages and into the apprentices.”

“Damnit,” Anders signed, a vicious swipe of his hand from his chin to his waist Cullen met with a sympathetic shake of his head.

“One of the boys was eight…” Cullen signed. “There were talks in Kinloch of making some Tranquil at that age, but to see it actually done…”

“Damnit,” Anders signed again. Children. Children being made Tranquil, and they hadn’t saved nearly enough of them. Over the course of a month, Anders had worked with the Mages’ Collective to set up the network they needed to free the young and the infirm, and so far they’d freed thirty-seven out of the three hundred and thirty-seven they had planned. They’d never get them all by All Soul’s Day. They’d have to pick and choose.

The age kept going down. Apprentices under eighteen became apprentices under sixteen, and then fourteen, and then twelve, until they’d pushed it down to ten, and on the Maker, Anders couldn’t make it any lower but they might not have a choice. There were mages who came into their magic as young as three or four, and if it was them or children eight or nine, then three or four it was.

Families in the Mages’ Underground harbored them inside the city once the Mages’ Collective saved them from the Circle and destroyed the phylacteries templars might have used to follow. The guards looked the other way, feeding false reports to the hounds Meredith sent after them, and Merrill kept the families fed while they worked on their way out. The blockade still wasn’t broken, but they couldn’t wait for it to be with the Annulment hanging over them.

“How is Beth?” Anders signed.

“She should be here shortly,” Cullen signed back.

“No, I mean how she is?” Anders signed.

“Tired,” Cullen signed, because Cullen didn’t know that Beth was pregnant, because Beth still hadn’t told him. Anders wasn’t even sure the child was his, but he couldn’t imagine who else it might have been, and Beth refused to tell him. “Strong. I have faith we’ll all survive this.”

“How?” Anders signed.

“The deep dark before dawn’s first light seems eternal, but know that the sun always rises,” Cullen signed piously.

Anders rolled his eyes, “Tell that to an eclipse.”

The echo of voices sounded through the tunnels, and Anders doused Cullen’s torch with a blast of frost magic, smothering the veilfire in his veins to press them both back against the wall. In the distance, a half-dozen balls of magelight winked in and out of focus, and whispers bounced along the walls.

“Everyone focus on your spells,” Beth’s voice carried through the tunnel, and several smaller voices carried after her.

“I can’t walk and cast,” a boy protested.

“My feet hurt,” complained a girl.

“Lady Amell, Lady Amell, look at mine! I did it!” boasted another boy.

“Mine’s brighter!” countered another girl.

Beth and all the children joined them at the grotto. Four girls. Three boys. They were dressed in robes and slippers that ensured their steps were silent. All of them were under ten, with one that looked as young as four being carried in Beth’s arms. Their tiny eyes went wide when they saw Cullen, and most of them shrank back, clinging to Beth’s robes. “It’s okay,” Beth promised quickly. “He’s not a real templar.”

It was the easiest explanation, especially for a child. Easier than explaining that Cullen had been mind controlled by a maleficar to make him into the sort of man who would support a mage, and that those kinds of men were so few and far between among the Chantry and the Order no mage child should ever trust them.

“He looks like a templar,” one of the boys said.

“It’s a disguise,” Cullen lied, kneeling down for them. “We’re going to get you out of the Circle.”

“Can we go home?” one of the girls asked.

“I miss my mom,” said another.

“I want to go home,” one of the boys agreed.

“I know,” Anders knelt with Cullen, letting Justice’s fire breathe through his veins, in a pure expression of magic that was met with a pure expression of wonder. The children abandoned their magelight to poke at the flames breaking through his skin, fascinated with his magic and not afraid of it. The Chantry hadn’t had a chance to instill that fear inside them yet.

It took years. Children loved magic. They saw it everywhere - and when it wasn’t there they made their own. They conjured imaginary friends, and dreamed up fairy tales, and didn’t fear their magic, they feared losing it. They’d do anything to keep it. It didn’t matter if they were four or five or six or seven or eight or nine or ten. It mattered that they were magic.

It mattered that they were mages - taken from their families - stolen from their homes - thrown into the Circle where they were taught to hate themselves, but they didn’t. Not yet. Not here. Not now. Not with other mages all around to show them the worth and wonder of themselves and fight for them to keep it.

“It’s not safe to go home,” Anders explained. Most of them didn’t even know where their homes were, and the ones that did most likely wouldn’t be welcome in them anyway. Their parents had sent them to the Circle once, and odds were they’d gladly make it twice. “The templars would come after you. We’ll get word to your parents if we can, but right now we need to keep you hidden. I’m going to take you to a family in the city, and they’ll take care of you and keep you safe.”

The children gave him solemn little nods. Anders stood, and Beth handed him the youngest of the group. “Remember what we said?” Beth asked the girl, who was mostly made of robes and weighed next to nothing on his arm.

“Shh,” the little girl pressed a tiny finger to her lips. “Suppose’ t’be quiet.”

“That’s right,” Beth smoothed back her curly hair. “Stay nice and quiet. This is Anders. He’ll take care of you, okay?”

“Okay,” the little girl agreed, watching them with wide blue eyes.

“Keep her out of the water,” Beth scrubbed away the tears threatening to form at the corners of her eyes with her sleeve. “She gets colds easily.”

“I will,” Anders promised.

“And make sure they don’t comb her hair, they brush it,” Beth added, following him to the edge of the water and fussing with the young girl’s robes. “And-”

“Beth,” Anders cut her off.

“Okay,” Beth took a shallow breath, pushing a mess of curly hair back from the girl’s brow to kiss her forehead. “You be good for Anders, okay?”

“Okay,” the little girl agreed. “Bye bye, Beth.”

“Bye bye, sweetie,” Beth untangled herself from him and stumbled away from the water’s edge.

“Let’s go, everyone,” Anders whispered, flaring with veilfire and trudging into the flooded tunnel. “Follow the light.”

“Hold hands!” Beth called after them. “Remember, no magic in the city!”

Anders held the youngest on one arm, and took the hand of the boy in the lead. The rest of the children followed suit, splashing into the water with mischievous giggles like the whole thing was a game, but they all knew it wasn’t. It couldn’t be, not with everything they’d already suffered. Stolen from their families, imprisoned in the Circle, threatened with the brand, and those threats weren’t idle ones.

Anders remembered fearing them. He remembered when he’d first arrived, too miserable to move and too terrified to talk. All the nights he’d spent crying into his mother’s pillow, haunted by demons of Despair and defended by a lone spirit of Compassion. He remembered every switch across his knuckles, and every slap across his face, and every bruise and every beating and every breath he’d suffered in those halls.

He remembered thinking, even then as just a child, that all of it was wrong, evil, and unjust. He’d escaped not six month after he’d arrived, and looking back on it all now, he couldn’t help but think he’d been meant to share his soul. To have Justice’s support, to share his righteous cause, to seek out his same purpose. There was nothing more important, and he’d gladly risk his freedom helping all of them find theirs.

Anders kept hold of the boy’s hand, checking back on occasion to count the heads that followed him, splashing through the tunnels and the veilfire that burned through them. The eight of them emerged on the other side in soggy robes and trousers, and Anders dried off each of them in turn with primal magic.

“You sound funny,” one of the girls said shamelessly.

Anders grinned, “A templar hurt my throat.”

“I’m a healer!” she said proudly. “Can I fix it?”

“Remember, no magic right now,” Anders held a finger to his lips. “No one can know that we’re mages.”

“But we look like mages,” one of the boys pointed out, tugging at his robes.

“That’s why we have to be quiet,” Anders explained, his voice a whispered rasp. “We’re going to keep to the shadows until we get to where we’re going.”

More solemn little nods from solemn little faces. Anders took the first boy’s hand, and they all set off through Darktown. Anders led them through mines and sewage lines, shushing gently on occasion when the children giggled or gagged over all the smells. There were a handful of safehouses in the city, but the Beshcals were the first. They were closest to the Circle, and the first stop to change the children’s clothes and split them up for safety.

Anders did the best he could to avoid the red lyrium growing in the gutters. Varric worked with him to clear a path, hiring miners and mercenaries to break apart the lyrium, but he couldn’t be too obvious. If he just cleared one path, it would have been too easy for the hounds to follow, so he had to clear them all, which just meant that he cleared none.

The children were sick and queasy by the time they reached the lift to Lowtown. One of the girls threw up on the rise, and scared a young boy into crying. Anders shifted his hold on the youngest on his arm, and knelt to heal the sick girl’s throat while one of the other boys hugged the one who’d started crying. “Almost there,” Anders promised. “Everyone stay brave.”

The Beshcals lived on the first floor of a stacked dwelling, in a hex no gang had ever held for long, but now no one even tried. Red lyrium had eaten through a complex in a corner, and scared all of the thugs away. It glowed through all the windows and the doors, pulsing with the heat of however many hearts had formed inside. Paint and rust sweat down the sides, like all the walls were bleeding.The stars were swallowed by the foundry smoke, and the shadows kept them safe as Anders hurried the kids across the street and to the Beshcals’ house.

Empty.

Worse than empty.

Dead.

The whole house smelled of it. The living room was a disaster, painted red with blood and lyrium. All the furniture was shattered, the tables snapped in half, the chairs in pieces on the floor. A bedframe and an armoire had been moved to block off the backroom, reduced to nothing more than slabs of wood and straw. Among the wreckage, what remained of Thom and Abby.

Thom was slouched beside the door, the necklace Hawke had given him still draped about his neck. The magic in it was meant to keep his heartbeat steady, and kept going long after it had stopped. His necklace pulsed, and blood poured out his cracked open skull, shattered on the sandstone wall behind him. A pool of blood had formed beneath him, his skin gone grey and ashen while the enchantment drained him dry.

Abby was in the kitchen, crumpled up beside the oven. Her hands were covered with sawdust and flour, her apron soaked with red, like she’d been baking cherry pie. A ring of red lyrium framed her collarbone, like a necklace made to match the one her husband wore. Her head was all but severed, strands of stretched and stringy flesh clinging between her neck and shoulders.

“Fuck,” Anders hissed, frozen in the threshold between the house and the hex, a half dozen wide-eyed children clustered all around him. One of the boys shrieked himself hoarse before Anders could reach him and cover his mouth. “Shh, stay quiet. Look at the floor. Look at the floor now!”

Some of them listened. Some of them didn’t. Some of them whined. Some of them sobbed. Some of them clung to each other, and one of them ran. Anders grabbed the girl’s sleeve before she made it more than a few steps. “Stop!” Anders whispered, resisting the impulse to force his blood into the command. “Get inside. Get in the corner. Everyone stay in the corner. Look at the floor.”

“Are they okay?” one of the girls asked.

“Templars are here,” one of the boys cried.

“I want to go home,” another boy added.

“I want Beth,” another sobbed.

“I’m scared,” one whined.

“Shh,” Anders set the youngest down, facing the wall, and pressed the runner’s hand onto her shoulder. “Stay quiet. Stay here. Don’t look. Keep her safe. Hey” -Anders squeezed the runner’s shoulder- “Keep her safe.”

“Okay,” The runner sniffled.

“Okay,” Anders kissed her forehead. “You’re okay. You’re all okay. Stay quiet. I’m not leaving.”

Anders cast a glyph of warding and repulsion beneath the cluster of kids, huddled in the corner, and stumbled over Thom to the backroom. “Bonwald?” Anders called out in a whisper. “Nika?”

Dead.

Bonwald had been butchered. His tunic pulled down around his waist to give the semblance of a skirt, the word ‘ROBE’ carved across his chest. He was so old. He was so thin. His wrinkled skin was almost as grey as his hair, his body so frail the carving had broken a few of his ribs. Evidence of his resistance was scorched into the walls, a pair of horrors charred into husks. There was so little left of them it was impossible to tell if they’d been wearing silverite or iron.

Dismembered.

Nika had been treated like a doll. Her arm had been pulled out from its socket at her shoulder. A trail of blood led from her discarded arm to where she lay curled up underneath her bed, like she’d dragged herself there to die. She hadn’t quite made it all the way, her feet still sticking out, wearing the tiny embossed shoes that Franke had cobbled for her.

“Fuck,” Anders swore beneath his breath, stumbling back into the living room and tripping over Abby’s feet, because Abby was dead, and Thom was dead, and Nika was dead, and Bonwald was dead. They were all dead. The templars had killed them. They weren’t just hunting the missing mages, they were hunting their friends and families, and they weren’t taking any prisoners.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Focus. He had to focus. He still had kids. He still had seven kids. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven kids. Seven mage kids. Seven mage kids who still looked like mage kids and couldn’t move through the city looking that way. Anders went back to the bedroom and dug through the wreckage of the armoire, snatching up all the clothes he could that seemed like they might fit the kids.

Clothes that Abby made for them, stitched together from burlap sacks, old sheets, and flour bags. Tiny tunics. Simple trousers. Little dresses Nika used to like to model for her mother. Anders pushed the memories from his mind and came back to the kids with the clothes. If the Beshcals were dead, then he still had other options. The Talwains. Franke. Lirene and Lissa. Nate, if no one else, to lead them through the Retreat if every other refuge was compromised.

“Let’s change,” Anders pushed the pile of clothes at the kids. “We have to hurry. Everyone put something on.”

Anders stood up and ran his hands through his hair, and spun in an uncertain circle while the kids rifled through the clothes. A pulse of blood magic gauged the area around him, and Anders felt too many heartbeats through it. Too many tainted ones. He couldn’t leave the kids in the living room. There was a window opposite the door, and anyone could have entered through it.

“Backroom,” Anders grabbed the first boy to finish changing and urged him towards it, pushing all the others along with him. “Eyes down. Don’t look. Let’s go.”

The kids stumbled obediently towards the backroom, shoving themselves into their new clothes as they went. Anders dragged a dress on over the youngest’s robe and picked her up to carry back. The first girl inside saw Bonwald, and the carving on his chest, and stumbled backwards squealing, knocking into the rest of the kids and setting all of them off.

“Is he dead?” one boy whimpered.

“Don’t look!” another answered.

“Robe. It says robe. Why does it say robe?” one girl babbled.

“Did templars kill him?”

“Take your robe off!”

“These pants don’t fit-”

“Is he dead?”

“Are we going to die?”

“I want Beth.”

“Stay quiet,” Anders ushered all of them around the charred horrors and into the far corner of the room. “Who can make a barrier?”

“I can,” one of the boys sniffed.

“You’re going to channel one, okay?” Anders smoothed back his hair, and recast his glyphs of warding and repulsion underneath them. “Who else?” None of the other kids said anything, sniffling and glancing at each other, and occasionally at Bonwald, or Nika beneath the bed. “Okay, everyone else is going to conjure light. Okay? Just like you did with Beth.”

“Why light?” one of the girls asked.

So you have something else to focus on. So you don’t focus on the bodies. So you don’t focus on the screams when I kill every last bastard that comes in through those doors. “You’re just going to,” Anders said. “Stay here. Stay quiet. Cast light. Don’t leave the glyph. Everyone understand?”

A few nods. Not a lot. Anders pushed the youngest girl back into the runner’s arms to give her someone else to focus on. “You’re in charge of her. Keep her safe.”

“I’m scared,” The runner sniffled.

“I know,” Anders squished her into a quick hug, and pushed her back into the pile. He hurried from the backroom to the living room, and another pulse of blood magic seemed to draw the horrors closer. Anders cast a glyph of paralysis in front of both the window and the door, stood in front of the backroom, trying to take his own advice and keep from looking at what was left of Thom and Abby, but there was nowhere else to look.

Maker keep her, she’d been baking. The fucking flour was strewn across the floor, congealing with her husband’s blood. A tin was waiting on the counter. A half-plucked pigeon at her feet. Bonwald’s fire was still going in the oven, even long after his death, with no kindling to crackle it. It was supposed to be a pie. Some silly little welcome for the seven children they’d be saving, but the bloody templars couldn’t wait two more months to kill them.

The first horror crawled in the window wearing silverite. The second broke down the door in iron. Justice flooded the room with fire. It poured out from his hands in endless waves that scorched everything to ash. The tables. The chairs. Abby. Thom. Everything burnt. Everything melted. The horrors charged themselves down to dust trying to reach him. Bits of metal - tin, copper, iron, silverite - all warped down to puddles. The fire choked the very air from out the room and cracked the sandstone before Anders forced himself to stop.

He’d bring down the whole building if he didn’t. Air rushing back inside the room sent a shockwave through it, scattering the ashes of the horrors that had faced him. Horrors in iron. Horrors in silverite. Red Irons. Red Templars. They were both in this together. Anders ran a hand through his sweat soaked hair, and knew the next wave wouldn’t go down as easy or at all unless he could get them somewhere they could burn.

“Let’s go,” Anders ran back to the kids, and picked up the youngest girl in her dress and robe. “Hold hands, we have to go.” Anders grabbed one of the boy’s hands, and ushered them out of the house and straight into Hawke.

He was there with Red Irons. He was there with Red Templars. He was there with Red Hounds. All their eyes were glowing, like bloody constellations in the dark, circled all around the Beshcals’ building. Anders pushed the kids back inside, but he couldn’t guard both the window and the door, and his inferno had cracked the sandstone even if he could. “Don’t look,” Anders reminded the young girl on his arm, and coiled lightning around the other.

“Apostate!” One of the templars called, not quite as red as all the rest. His armor, his hair, his eyes were all red, but whatever lyrium was in his veins hadn’t yet broken through his skin. One of the Red Irons signed what he was saying for Hawke’s sake while the templar strutted forward, drawing his sword, “Surrender with the escaped mages, and your deaths will be swift. Resist and-”

The templar screamed, red lyrium splitting out of his veins and tearing through his skin. It ate its way up his arms and legs, swallowing his armor as it clawed its way over and under his skirts. The red swept up his neck, and cut off his scream, pulsing in his throat and bursting out of his mouth like a blooming rose before he died, a statue on the street.

“Don’t look,” Anders warned the kids, while all the templars panicked, falling several paces back from Hawke and his Red Irons with their swords and shields drawn.

Only one among them stood her ground, a woman who almost looked like Bethany, with raven hair and amber eyes, save that she was pale, and red lyrium split her skull, swallowing one eye. “Lord Viscount,” the woman said and signed. “What are you doing?”

One of the Red Hounds nudged Hawke in her direction. Hawke tore his eyes off him to look at her, “What?”

“You swore to use your strength to aid our righteous cause,” the woman signed. “Ser Mettin was one of the faithful-... how are we to explain his death to the Knight Commander?”

“Explain hers is next if she threatens what’s mine,” Hawke signed, turning his gaze back to him. He looked the way he always looked of late. No weapons. No armor. No need for them. Red lyrium served well enough for both. Hawke strode across the hex, signing as he went, “Anders… I told you I didn’t want children.”

Anders set the youngest girl down and tried to push her behind him, but she clung so tightly to his leg there was no hope of moving her without paying more attention than Anders could afford. “You’re not coming anywhere near them,” Anders signed, and hoped that Hawke could see it through the lightning crackling up and down his arms.

“Not here for the kids,” Hawke signed. “Here for you.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” A crack of lightning snapped off Anders’ arm to scorch the ground at Hawke’s feet, and put a stop to his advance.

“Did you think I wouldn’t find you?” Hawke signed, raising an amused eyebrow at the blackened line Anders had drawn on the ground, and stepping deliberately over it. “Did you think I didn’t know where you were? Did you think I didn’t know all about your friends?”

“You killed my friends!” Anders signed.

“They were asking to be killed,” Hawke signed dismissively. “They were harboring a mage.”

“I’m a mage, you bloody hypocrite!” Anders signed, slapping his hands together. “You harbored me!”

“Not the same,” Hawke signed with a shrug. “I’m the Viscount. You’re a Warden-”

“No, I’m not!” Anders signed and said, but his voice was still a rasping whisper, and didn’t carry far enough for anyone to hear. It didn’t matter. The horrors might see. The horrors might survive. The horrors might tell the world he’d left the Wardens and make sure none of this fell back on them, and the man he loved among them. “I left the Wardens, just like I left you.”

“Good,” Hawke signed without a care. “They can’t protect you like I can.”

“You’re insane. You never protected me. You shot me!” Anders gestured to the scar on his throat.

“You know that arrow wasn’t meant for you,” Hawke signed. “If my cousin hadn’t pushed you in the way-”

“I took that arrow for him!” Anders signed. “I’d take a hundred more. I love him.”

“You left him,” Hawke countered, closing in on him, and all the children trapped behind him. “You came back to me. You always do. Admit it. You can’t stay away. You couldn’t even last a year. You didn’t even try. You’re not even hiding - getting right back with all your friends.”

“Shut up.”

“You wanted me to find you. You want to be right back in our room, right back in our bed-”

“Shut up.”

“-screaming loud enough for me to hear when I fuck you just the way you like it,” Hawke stopped in front of him, red lyrium radiating heat to rival his inferno, and Anders told himself to move, to fight, to flee, to do anything but freeze, but the kids were right behind him, and he had to come up with some way to keep them safe. “Don’t pretend that you don’t miss it. All those nights I held you down and fucked you raw-”

“I’m going to kill you,” Anders thrust the sign into Hawke’s chest.

“You’re going to kiss me,” Hawke leaned in to kiss him and Anders grabbed his jaw and shoved him back, lightning on his hand surging through his face and burning through the right side of his beard. Hawke stumbled back a pace, snarling in pain and clutching at his bleeding face, “Damnit, Anders-”

“Try and fuck me,” Anders dared him. “See what happens.”

“Fuck,” Hawke hissed, and when he peeled his hand back from his face, the wound was sealed shut with red lyrium. Hawke shook the blood off his hand, gritting his teeth. “What is wrong with you?”

“I hate you,” Anders signed, hating how his hands were shaking.

“You need me,” Hawke pointed to the templar he’d turned into a statue. “Look at him! Look at what I’ve done for you. I can control all of them. Anyone who takes the red - and all the templars take it. They can’t touch you if you’re with me.”

“I’ll never be with you!” Anders gestured towards the house he’d turned into a pyre, and all the bodies burnt to ash within. “You killed that poor girl!”

“I’ll kill the rest of them if you don’t come with me,” Hawke signed.

Maker’s breath, he meant it. The kids meant nothing to him. Hawke didn’t even look at them. Those red eyes never left him. They hadn’t since they’d met. Hawke didn’t care how many bodies he left in his wake or how small those bodies were if those bodies led to him, and Anders couldn’t let him add to them.

“... what happens if I come with you?” Anders signed.

Hawke reached out and clasped his face, clenching hard to hold him when he flinched. His thumb moved in a slow caress across his cheek, and felt like fire given form, “You know what happens.”

“To the kids,” Anders signed, sweating.

Hawke shrugged, releasing him, “The Circle can do what they want with them.”

“The Circle is going to be annulled,” Anders signed.

Hawke’s eyebrows knit together, and his eyes almost seemed to clear, the red in them receding. “What?”

“The Circle is going to be annulled,” Anders signed again, slower, firmer, surprised the words could reach him. “The Knight Commander sent to the Divine for the Right of Annulment, and the Divine agreed. She sent word for the Grand Cleric to flee the city. The Annulment is on All Soul’s Day. Hawke… everyone is going to die. Beth is going to die. Your sister is going to die.”

Hawke looked at the templars.

The templars looked at Hawke.

Hawke snapped.

Chapter 207: The Last Holdouts

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 2 Ferventis Midnight - 58 Days Until All Soul’s Day
Kirkwall - Lowtown

“Run!” Anders grabbed the youngest mage and urged the rest of the children back towards the lift as the street around them fell to ruin.

The Red Templars didn’t even try to fight. They scattered in all directions, red lyrium breaking through their veins and swallowing their skin, turning them to statues in the street. They bolted for alleys, for corners, for anything to break Hawke’s line of sight. Hawke tore through them without his bow and arrows, without his daggers, without anything but Hawke and whatever Hawke was now.

A few of the templars escaped, pursued by Red Irons and Red Hounds, when suddenly a Red Iron fell, an arrow piercing through his throat. Another followed, and all at once the hex was raining with them, arrow after arrow tearing through what little flesh was left on all the horrors. One clattered across the sandstone at Hawke’s feet, another bouncing off the wall beside his head, until the templar he’d turned into a statue grew into a shield, a wave of red lyrium bursting out from the dead man’s arm to block the sudden onslaught.

“This way!” an archer called from atop the stairs leading from the hex. Anders didn’t stop to think about it, and waved the children up the stairs. One of the boys slipped on his way up, and went sliding back down on his hands and knees. A surge of veilfire strengthened him, and Anders grabbed the boy around his waist, heaving him onto his hip on his way up the stairs. “Through here!” the archer waved them through an alley, into an abandoned building, across a hex, down another flight of stairs, before they finally ended up beneath a foundry.

Up above, the forges swallowed sound. The roar of bellows, the grind of chains, the beat of metal against metal was all that could be heard. Down below, dozens of people were gathered in what looked like a warehouse or a war room. Bunks were stacked in aisles along the walls, workstations were set up for people fletching arrows, making poultices, or repairing armor. Rows of tables contained maps of Kirkwall’s streets with people pouring over them, while others managed stalls managing supplies.

They were wearing armor made from scrap, and none of them felt tainted, but all of them were red. Little bits of it was everything. Red ribbons in their hair. Red sashes at their waist. Red bands about their wrists. Red Jennies, if Anders had to guess, helping the last of the children down the ladder from the foundry and back into his arms.

One, two, three, four, five, six... six… Anders counted heads, shoving aside the Red Jennies that came down the ladder after them. One, two, three, four, five, six. Six. Fucking six. There couldn’t just be six. There had to be seven. There were seven. Seven kids. Three boys. Three girls. There were four girls. He was missing one. He was missing the runner.

“Hey Healer,” the archer pulled off her hood, revealing long brown hair and deep green eyes set in a familiar face that still remembered how to smile. Charade. Hawke’s cousin. “Long time no see.”

“Where is she?” Anders asked.

“Where is who?” Charade asked.

“The girl,” Anders hissed, his voice too shot to yell. “There’s another girl!”

“What girl?” Charade asked.

“Damnit,” Anders whispered, shoving the youngest girl into Charade’s arms. “Take her. Take them. Do not lose them. Do not lose any of them. I’ll be right back.”

“But-” Charade started, saw his face and stopped. “-... alright. We have them. Hurry, Healer.”

A crow shot out from the foundry, taking to the skies above the streets, following them back up a flight of stairs, across a hex, into an abandoned building, and through an alley, searching for some sign of something. Light brown hair, light brown skin, light brown eyes, light brown clothes, like a child made of sandstone. Everyone the crow’s eyes settled there was red on brown - sandstone stained with lyrium and blood.

The crow flew frantically back and forth between the foundry and the hex, scanning the bodies spilled between them. Red statues. Dead irons. A lone Jenny. Finally, the crow spotted a flash of movement and veered off to follow it through an alley as it took shape into a child. Anders landed in front of the runner with a roll and an explosion of feathers that set off a scream. “Shh!” Anders covered her mouth with his hand, a pulse of blood magic counting the heartbeats around them. There were still Red Irons or Red Templars in the streets, and he still had to get her out of them. “You have to stay quiet. We have to get out of the street.”

“I’m sorry,” The girl whined, her magic manifesting in a haste. “I’m scared. I’m sorry-”

“You’re okay,” Anders took her hand to lead her back towards the foundry. “It’s okay. Stay with me.”

“I’m sorry,” The runner hiccuped, sobbing so loud someone was bound to hear or see him leading her along. “I’m sorry.”

Anders pulled her back into the alley and knelt in front of her, “It’s okay. Calm down.”

“I’m sorry I ran,” The girl sobbed into her hands.

“It’s okay,” Anders squeezed her shoulders. “Look at me. It’s okay. It’s okay to run. It’s okay if your instinct is to run. If you think you need to run, then run, but right now you’re safe. I’m going to take you somewhere safe-”

“You said the family was safe,” The girl argued. “They’re dead-they’re dead-”

“I know,” Anders pulled her into a hug. “I know they’re dead.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“I won’t let you die.”

“My friends are going to die-”

“No, they’re not. They’re safe. They’re waiting for you-”

“-My friends in the Circle,” The girl cut him off, and signed. “I know how to sign. I saw what you said. I know they’re all going to die.”

“No, they’re not,” Anders signed. “They’re going to get out, like how you got out.”

“No they won’t. They’re too old,” The girl signed. “Lady Amell lied for me. I’m not ten. I’m eleven. She said only the young kids can get out.”

Maker have mercy, she shouldn’t have known that. He shouldn’t have to explain that. None of this should have been happening. What was he even supposed to say? “It’s going to be okay. I’m not going to abandon anyone. When the Annulment comes - hey, look at me - when the Annulment comes I’m going to stop it. I’ll do everything I can to save everyone. Okay?”

“Okay,” The girl signed shakily.

“Okay,” Anders pulled up his sleeve and wiped her tears off her cheek. “Why do you know how to sign?”

“My brother is deaf,” The girl signed. “My mother said my magic cursed him.”

“That’s not true,” Anders signed. “That’s not true at all. Your magic saved your life. It helped you run. You cast a haste.”

“I didn’t mean to run,” The girl signed.

“That’s okay. You can mean it now,” Anders took her hand. “Come on.”

Anders led her back to the foundry, paranoia forcing him to circle back half-a-dozen times to ensure they weren’t being followed before they reached the Red Jennies’ hideout. Anders helped her down the ladder, and saw her off to join the other kids Charade had set up in a group of bunks along the wall. One, two, three, four, five, six-... six-...

“Healer,” Charade called and came to join him, the seventh in her arms. “We should talk.”

“Thank you,” Anders took the girl from her and handed her back over to the runner. “Everyone stay here for now. I’ll be right back.”

Charade led him over to the tables, out of earshot but not eyesight of the kids, and sat on the edge of one, crinkling a map of Lowtown’s streets. “You’ve been busy,” Charade nodded to the kids.

“I could say the same,” Anders waved a hand at the underground coalition of Red Jennies.

“I hear stories about you,” Charade grinned. “I can’t tell what’s true and what’s exaggerated. Can you really cleanse the plague? Are you actually feeding people to the poor? Did you really leave the Grey Wardens? Can you even do that? I thought joining the Grey Wardens was for life.”

“That’s only partly true,” Anders said, and only partly lied. “The ‘hopelessly tainted’ and ‘plagued by nightmares of the Archdemon’ parts don’t go away, but it turns out if you hide it well, you don’t have to wear the uniform or go to the parties.”

“You’re not hiding very well,” Charade noted.

“I know how Hawke found me,” Anders said. “I don’t know how you did.”

“We’ve been keeping an eye on my cousin,” Charade explained.

“You’d be better off keeping an arrow in him,” Anders muttered, his voice cracking. He took a drink from his waterskin. “Can you sign?”

“No,” Charade smiled apologetically. “My father can, though.” Charade set two fingers to her lips and whistled. “Dad, you old cockroach! Get over here!”

“Fuck off!” An ancient voice called back from a distance.

“Get off your ass, you old bastard!” Charade yelled back.

“Sound just like your fucking mother!” Gamlen hollered, and came stomping out of a cluster of Red Jennies a few moments later, still a-fucking-live somehow. The old bastard was still dressed in all his noble clothes, with not a hint of red anywhere but in his pocket, a kerchief signalling him out as a Red Jenny. He took up a spot at Charade’s side, and eyed him over.

“How are you alive?” Anders signed.

“Fuck you too,” Gamlen signed back.

“Jackass,” Anders signed.

“Cocksucker,” Gamlen signed.

“Dad,” Charade said. “Can you translate please?”

“Whatever,” Gamlen said.

“Seriously,” Anders signed. “How are you alive? How are you not infected?”

“What, by the Red?” Gamlen signed dismissively. “I’ve smoked way worse shit than that. Usually off a whore’s arse. Maker, I miss-”

“Stop,” Anders chopped Gamlen’s sign apart with his. “Answer the question.”

“Just did,” Gamlen signed.

“Dad?” Charade prompted. “Translating?”

“He says he missed me,” Gamlen lied.

Anders shook his head.

Charade sighed, “Dad, I swear-”

“What?” Gamlen snapped. “Learn to sign, then.”

“Anyway,” Charade muttered. “Like I said, we’ve been keeping an eye on my cousin. We’ve been trying to do what we can to limit the damage he does, but-”

“-that boy does a fucking lot,” Gamlen interrupted.

“Can you just translate and let me talk?” Charade demanded.

“Your mother raise you to talk to your parents like that?” Gamlen asked.

“She raised me to talk to you like that,” Charade stressed.

“Now there was a woman,” Gamlen sighed wistfully.

“Since you came back to the city” -Charade pressed on- “my cousin started working with the Knight Commander and her death squads. Zealots hand-picked by the Knight Commander to purge mage sympathizers in the city. Ser Mettin, that templar my cousin turned into a statue, was one of the Knight-Lieutenants in charge of purging them from Lowtown.”

“And you’ve just been watching this whole time?” Anders signed. “You didn’t try to stop him?”

“Like you did any better,” Gamlen signed.

“Fuck you,” Anders signed.

“I don’t bend over, bugger boy,” Gamlen signed.

“What exactly are you doing now?” Anders signed.

“Not fucking dying, that’s what,” Gamlen signed.

“Because we’d all be so sad you did,” Anders signed.

“What ‘we’?” Gamlen signed. “You ran off the way you mages always do and left us with your mess, so we went and made the best of it.”

“This is exactly what I'd expect you to call your best," Anders sneered.

"And what's yours?" Gamlen shot back. "Seven mage brats? You pop them all out your ass while you were gone?"

"They're children, you rat bastard, and you would have been happy to watch Hawke butcher them,” Anders glanced back at the kids huddled together on the bunks, counting heads and making sure none of them were watching them sign. “How many mages has he killed while you 'kept an eye' on him? How much damage did you limit?"

"Fuck you, boy,” Gamlen signed.

"Not if you paid me," Anders signed.

"On Maferath and the Maker, father, if you don't translate-" Charade pinched the bridge of her nose.

"He asked how many mages my nephew's killed," Gamlen said.

"That is not all that he said," Charade said.

"Just answer the man," Gamlen said. "If you can even call him that."

"My cousin didn't use to kill them," Charade said. "He just used to hunt them. Any apostates he found, he enslaved in his estate. He kept them as servants, but kept them from the Knight Commander."

"And now?" Anders signed and Gamlen said.

"Now he's working with the Knight Commander," Charade said. "You saw first hand the havoc her death squads have been wreaking havoc in the city."

"So did you!" Anders signed and Gamlen sort of said. "The Beshcals are dead. Why didn't you step in sooner?"

"We can't fight Red Irons and Red Templars," Charade said. "We didn't stand a chance until they turned against each other. I'm sorry your friends are dead, but they're not the only ones who got hit tonight. There are death squads all over the city-"

“How many?” Anders signed and Gamlen asked.

“More than we can fight,” Charade said, hopping off the table to shuffle through the maps, and pull a few before him. There were red marks on the map, every so often, but that didn’t tell him much when that was the only color in the city. Red Templars. Red Irons. Red Jennies. “This is the hex they just hit,” Charade said, tapping one of the red marks. “The one with your friends. These are the ones we think they’re going to hit tonight.”

Charade tapped a few other places on the map, throughout Lowtown and Hightown, and Anders recognized too many of them. Selby’s packaging house. Lirene’s soup kitchen. Franke’s shoe shop. The refuges they had set up to take in the mages they’d worked so hard to save. The last holdouts.

“How?” Anders signed. “How do you know this is happening?”

“Where do you think I live?” Gamlen snorted. “Who do you think I live with?”

“What are you doing here, then? You have to save them,” Anders said. Anders tried to say, but his voice was shot to whispers, and Charade had to lean in to hear him. “You have people. You can help.”

“We weren’t prepared to help tonight,” Charade said. “The plan was to warn who we could warn and save who we could save. The only reason we stepped in back there was because my cousin turned against the templars and helped even the odds.”

“The odds will never be even!” Anders signed furiously. “That doesn’t mean you just give up on them. We need your help.”

“Boy, ain’t you ever heard the phrase live to fight another day?” Gamlen signed.

“What day would work for you?” Anders signed. “How many people have to die around you before you decide to do something?”

“We saved your sorry ass, didn’t we?” Gamlen signed. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Do you tell families at a funeral to be grateful?” Anders signed. “You want my thanks, go earn it. Don’t just sit and wait for the world to end before you try to save it.”

“He wants us to go help the rest,” Gamlen translated with a roll of his eyes.

“If the Red Irons are turning on the Red Templars, we can try, but we can’t go everywhere at once,” Charade said. “We sent out runners to warn them, but they might be hit already, and you need to pick where we go first.”

Fuck.

Anders dragged his hands through his hair and pulled out his hair tie, staring at the map Charade had laid out. Selby. Lirene. Franke. The Mages’ Collective. The Fereldan refugees. His friends. His cause had to come first, but Selby wasn’t it.

The Collective had freed over thirty mages, when the Circle of Magi housed thousands. Anders had to tear it down, and he had to have a way to do it. Nate and Amal had spent the past month gathering reagents for explosives for him, and he couldn’t afford to lose the explosives and start all over again. He needed them to destroy the Circle, and save all the mages in it.

“Here,” Anders tapped Lirene’s kitchen, and tried not to see the others. “There are barrels here we have to save. Sela petrae, drakestone, charcoal, red lyrium dust. There are five. I need all of them.”

“After all that shit you gave us about saving people, you want us saving bombs?” Gamlen signed.

“What I want is to save the thousands of mages the Knight Commander is going to murder,” Anders signed. “The thousands more that die every day to a templar’s sword. Those explosives are the only way I can get everyone out at once when the Annulment comes.”

“We’ll get them,” Charade assured him when Gamlen reluctantly translated. “And anyone else we can. Are you with us?”

“I’ll be there,” Anders signed, tying his hair back. “Is it safe for the kids to stay here?”

“We have a safehouse in the caverns in Sundermount,” Charade said after Gamlen’s poor translation. “We can’t get beyond the blockade, but we have a way outside the walls. We’ll move everyone there when we get back.”

Charade and Gamlen left to gather the Red Jennies, and Anders went back to the kids, still huddled together on the bunks. A few of them had fallen asleep for the late hour, and the ones that were awake looked like they’d just gone through their Harrowings, pressed up against each other with haunted expressions, channeling simple spells for something simple to focus on. They looked up at his approach.

“Can we stay here?” one of the boys asked.

“Are we safe now?” asked another.

“I can’t sleep,” complained a girl.

“Are you leaving?” the runner asked.

“Yes, we’re staying here for now,” Anders whispered, a panacea flowing through his throat to keep him talking, and sat on the edge of the bunk.

“What?” one of the boys asked.

“Can you say what I sign?” Anders signed for the runner.

“Yes,” The runner signed, and said, “He says we’re staying here now.”

“These people are called Red Jennies,” Anders signed, and the runner said. “They’re going to look out for you, and take you out of the city in the morning, where there aren’t any templars. You should all get some sleep.”

Anders left them to their bunks, and didn’t make it to the ladder from the foundry before the runner ran after him and grabbed his sleeve. “Are you leaving?” The runner signed.

Anders glanced back at the rest of the kids, but they were all doing their best to sleep, sniffling in their bunks like they were still back in the Circle, but they weren’t. There were no Chantry Sisters and no Chantry sermons, condemning them for their magic and encouraging them to give it up with their emotions. There were no templars standing over them, threatening to put them to the sword for feeling them for fear of any demons they might summon. They were just kids, and as long as they weren’t in the Circle they could stay that way.

“Yes, I’m leaving,” Anders signed. “There are other people I have to help right now.”

“You can’t leave,” The runner signed, panicking. “You can’t leave us here! You said you were going to get us a family but they were dead. The templars killed them and they’re going to kill us and you’re going to leave us and you can’t leave us, you can’t leave us, you can’t leave us-”

“Hey,” Anders caught her flailing hands and squeezed them both. “I’ll come back,” Anders signed.

“No you won’t,” The runner signed through sobs. “You’re leaving. No one ever comes back when they leave and if they do they’re all broken from the brand.”

“No one is going to break me,” Veilfire split his skin and burned a vibrant sapphire all along his veins. “I’m going to come back. What’s your name?”

“Evelyn,” The runner spelled her name. “Evelyn Trevelyan.”

“Evelyn,” Anders modified the sign for ‘runner’ to include an ‘E.’ “My name is Justice. I promise I’ll come back.”

“No you won’t,” Evelyn signed, still sobbing. “No you won’t. I don’t believe you.”

Anders took off Sigrun’s earring on an impulse, and knelt to show it to her. “Look. Listen. This earring belonged to my best friend. It’s the only thing I have left of her. It means everything to me. If you promise to keep it safe for me, I promise I’ll come back for it, okay?”

“Okay,” Evelyn sniffed. “I promise.”

Anders fixed the small stud of silver to her ear, pierced from whatever noble life she’d lived before the templars took her from it. Anders squeezed her shoulders, and sent her back towards the others before flying from the foundry to Lirene’s soup kitchen. No Red Irons or Red Templars were anywhere the crow could see, and when it flew inside the open window to its roost Nate and Amal were still there sleeping in their cots.

Anders shook Nate awake, magic amplifying his voice when he couldn’t, “Nate, wake up, wake up, we have to go.”

“I’m up,” Nate shoved him off, grabbing his bad leg and dragging it off the cot. “I’m going. Where am I going?”

“Anywhere but here,” Anders said. “There are Red Templars coming. The Red Jennies are coming to help but I don’t know who’s going to get here first.”

“Where are we headed?” Nate dug his brace out from beneath his cot. “The packaging house?”

“No, it’s getting hit,” Anders said. “All the safe houses are getting hit.”

“The Retreat?” Nate asked.

“They don’t know about it,” Anders said. “But we can’t risk leading them there. There’s a foundry on the eastern side of the city, two hexes over from the Beshcals. We’re going there, but we have to get the explosives out.”

“I’ll get them on the carts,” Nate said.

Anders ran to shake Amal awake while Nate strapped on his armor. “Amal, wake up.”

“No, I’m sleeping!” Amal huffed, dragging his pillow over his head. Anders snatched it off and tossed it across the room. “What’re you-”

“This isn’t a game,” Anders dug his clothes out from under his cot and pushed them at him. “Get dressed right now. There are people coming to hurt us.”

“I’ll hurt ‘em first!” Amal threatened, digging through his things and popping up with his letter opener.

“No you won’t,” Anders grabbed his branded face in his hands. “You’re going to get dressed and you’re going to do exactly what I say exactly when I say it, do you understand?”

Amal stared at him wide-eyed and nodded, beaded braids clinking.

“Stay with Nate, take his cane when he needs you to take it, and help him with whatever he needs help with,” Anders said, letting go of him so Amal could dress. “Where is your go bag?”

“I have it,” Nate grabbed a backpack from under his own cot and slung it across the floor towards him. Anders shoved Amal into his jacket and threw the backpack over it. “Go. I’ve got him. Warn the others.”

Anders left them in their room and ran down the stairs of the complex to the bottom floor. The soup kitchen was closed for the night, a few displaced refugees sleeping along the walls of the antechamber who started awake at the sound of him sprinting down the steps. He reached the door to Lirene and Lissa’s room and banged a frantic fist against it until Lirene emerged, black hair bedraggled and brown eyes bloodshot.

“Whatever it is can wait,” Lirene frowned in her doorway, holding a quilt around her shoulders. “Some of us still sleep around here.”

“You have to get everyone up and out,” Anders pushed past her and into her room.

“Anders, what-” Lirene started.

“Meredith’s hounds are on their way,” Anders said, eyes darting around the cluttered room until he spotted Lissa and ran to shake her awake, knocking off the laundry she hadn’t finished folding on her bed. “They know you’ve been housing mages here.”

“How long do we have?” Lirene dropped the quilt and ran to her side of the room, digging through a trunk at the foot of her bed and fighting her way into the first pair of trousers she found without taking off her nightclothes.

“What am I?” Lissa groaned, batting at his hands. “Who? Anders-?”

“Minutes,” Anders guessed, pushing clothes at Lissa while she struggled to wake up. “The Beshcals are dead. Thom. Abby. Nika. The templars killed all of them for harboring Bonwald and then they killed him too. We have to get everyone out of here.”

“I know some old dogs in the city who can take us in,” Lirene said, snatching up more clothes and piling them on over the rest just to be able to take them with her. She didn’t have a go bag. She didn’t have a reason to have one. She’d never been an apostate. She wasn’t used to that life, but Anders was. Anders always would be.

After seven escape attempts and years spent living the undercity, constantly moving his clinic from one location to the next, Anders had it down to an art. A pulse of blood magic gauged the heartbeats in the complex around him. Half a hundred Fereldans and ex-Dog Lords were stuffed into the five story complex, with over a dozen mage children among them, and pressing in around them: tainted horrors.

Anders could feel the corruption in what little blood remained in them. It called out to the corruption in his own, making his skin crawl, pinpricks of sweat breaking out across his back and shoulders. “They’re here,” Anders warned them. “Let’s go. You don’t have time to get anything. You have to get everyone out.”

Anders shoved both of them out of the room. The antechamber was still empty, save for the sleeping refugees. It broke off into the kitchens, Lirene and Lissa’s room, and a storage room Anders had been using to hold the reagents for his explosives. The four stories above housed everyone they had to save, and there were only a handful of ways to get them out. Windows, and whatever drops the evacuees were willing to risk taking from them, and doors.

Doors about to be broken down by the Red Templars. The Red Jennies weren’t here, if they were even coming, and Anders had to figure out some way to face them on his own. The explosives would have to be carted out from the first floor, and so would most of the evacuees and the mage children among them. He’d have to kill them all, but he couldn’t use his mana to do it. Nate and Amal were hurrying down the stairs, and Anders grabbed Lirene’s wrist before she could hurry up.

“Lirene, wait,” Anders said, purging his mana in waves of restorative magic so their smites wouldn’t overwhelm him again. “I need people willing to bleed.”

“I’ll stay,” Lissa volunteered.

“Wake up!” Lirene yelled at the top of her lungs, startling the sleeping refugees scattered about the antechamber. “It’s a raid! If you want to survive it, the healer needs you to bleed for it. Get up! Get over here and do something with your lives before the bloody templars take them from you!”

Lirene ran up the stairs, passing Nate and Amal on their way down, and most of the refugees ran out the doors and straight into the Red Templars that were already there waiting for them. Their screams carried back inside, and the refugees that hadn’t fled ran up the stairs or over to him while he drew his dagger and started slitting wrists and weaving heartbeats.

“Anders, how long?” Nate called, pushing Amal towards the storage room.

“Now!” Anders called back, casting glyphs of paralysis beneath the windows and the doors.

Nate handed his cane to Amal to grab a panicking refugee, and turn them towards the tables. “Barricade the windows! Don’t just stand there, man!”

The refugees recovered enough to start grabbing furniture, knocking pots and pans off tables to turn them up against the windows and the doors. They added chairs, and raided Lirene and Lissa’s room to throw in armoires, trunks, and cots. On the floors above, Lirene was screaming, banging against doors, waking everyone she could. Their panicked cries echoed through the complex as everyone struggled to find out what was happening and why.

The sound of shattered glass came from somewhere high above, and someone started screaming, “Fire!”

Nate joined him, glancing towards the storage room, “We can’t evacuate like this. We cart explosives out while they’re setting things on fire and we'll all go up in flames.”

Amal shoved himself up against his leg, clutching Nate’s cane in both his hands like a club, “Can the Maker see me here?”

“He doesn’t need to see you,” Anders said. “You’re not going to die. Go hide in the storage room. Don’t come out until we say.”

Amal fled past the refugees who weren’t prepared to fight, crouched behind an upturned table in a corner, while Lissa prayed for all of them. Chains of blood ran between them all to Anders’ fist, where all their heartbeats pulsed together in interlocking bands of red no lyrium could smite away.

“What now, old friend?” Nate asked.

“Now we kill them all,” Anders said.

Chapter 208: Casualties

Summary:

Casualties

The hounds nabbed Franke the Cobbler tonight; no one knows where he is now. Thom Beshcal and his wife were killed three days back. They're no longer just hunting us: they're hunting our friends and family. To the Void with the consequences! We must strike back while we still can.

-"A"

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos. I sincerely appreciate any feedback and I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Thank you for 80K hits! I sincerely appreciate the support of the story.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 3 Ferventis Early Morning - 57 Days Until All Soul’s Day
Kirkwall - Lowtown

The door to the complex exploded inward. The first templar to rush through was more man than lyrium, a shield emblazoned with a silver sword of mercy taking the first wave of fire from Anders’ fingers. It flowed up and over him, catching on the doorframe as the templar barreled forward, only to fall to an arrow through his knee.

A horror charged in after him, his arms covered in red lyrium, breaking through his gauntlets and growing over them. He froze when he reached Anders’ glyph, no shield in his mangled hands to save him from the flames that burnt his skin from off his skull and sent it sliding down his cuirass like pale pink wax before he died. Another templar charged through him, a tower shield knocking the corpse of his fellow aside. The rune work on it flared to life as it met with Anders’ magic, flames splitting off to either side as he charged.

He thrust out with a spear that Justice caught, snapping it in half with a whip of lightning from his free hand. The templar shoved forward with his shield, and Justice caught it with his hand, lightning pulsing through the metal. The templar flared red with lyrium as he suffered through the magic, and Nate rolled off to the side, launching an arrow that struck the templar in the side. He dropped his shield, and a whip of lightning severed his head from off his shoulders.

It rolled across the floor, still stuck in his helm, his charred spine crunched beneath a horror’s foot as it burst in through the barricaded window, launching lyrium. The shards missed Nate, still on his knees, but Anders took two to the chest before he carved a glyph of warding underneath them and the rest of the projectiles veered off into walls. One must have struck a refugee, because Anders felt the flow of blood, and heard the screams that followed, mingled in amidst the cries of “Fire!” still raining from above.

Justice spun the broken spear and flung it back through the slit of the horror’s helm, piercing through their skull to pin them to the wall. Three more templars followed, burning bright with lyrium and casting smites that felt like fire in his veins, trying to rip him from the Fade. One took an arrow underneath his helmet, piercing straight up through his jaw, and charged forward gurgling, a red waterfall pouring down his cuirass as he swung a wild sword at Nate.

Nate rolled back from him, dodging a swipe that would have taken off his head and instead sliced across his side, cleaving leather and the flesh beneath it. Justice lashed out with lightning, coiling it around the templar’s chest and wrenching, crunching through his cuirass as his body seized and jerked through the stopping of his heart. One of the two survivors charged him, a downward slice Justice stepped into to dodge, wrapping his hand around the templar's throat and squeezing through flesh and muscle down to bone.

“They’re upstairs!” Someone screamed from up above, and then someone just screamed, a body falling down the stairwell as they jumped to escape the templars or the flames. They crashed into the railing of the floor above him with a crack that snapped their spine, and landed on a refugee below, knocking her unconscious.

The last templar rushed him, thrusting forward with his sword, and Justice spun, blocking it with the body of the templar he was holding. He shoved the body at him, and the templar wrenched his sword out, stumbling back before he could fall beneath the weight. A blast of frost encased his head, the cold so severe and sudden he fell backwards, dead. The ice shattered in the fall, shards of silverite, bone, and frozen brain scattering across the floor.

“I got you,” Anders set a hand to Nate, ripping the lyrium from his blood and sealing his wound shut, too quick to be anything but caustic. Nate spit through his teeth but grit them, and let him pull him to his feet.

“Go,” Nate pushed him towards the stairs when no other templars followed. “Refresh your glyphs; I’ll hold down here.”

Anders refreshed his glyphs of warding and paralysis and hasted himself up the stairs, ripping shards of lyrium from his chest. He cleansed his blood and sealed the wounds as he went, shoving through the refugees packed together in the landing on the second floor. Templars swarmed the third, and Anders pulled on the blood of the refugees below to reshape reality around the three templars up above, sandstone floors surging up to swallow them.

“Anders!” Lirene screamed from somewhere up above, the fourth floor lost to fire and the fifth floor lost to smoke.

Anders pushed through to the third floor with the templars that he’d petrified. He shattered each of them in turn, fists of stone turning them to dust and pebbles to rain down with all the ash. Refugees ran out of their rooms and down the stairs when Anders continued up, waves of frost on his fingertips stopping the spread of flames, while he prayed he didn’t freeze someone in the process.

The fourth floor froze, ice encased along the walls and sealing up the broken windows as Anders climbed on to the fifth. Lirene ran down to meet him, pushing coughing children down the stairs as they fled from clouds of black. A few of them slipped on the ice coating the sandstone, and crashed down to the landing, crying and choking on the smoke that they’d inhaled.

Anders pulled the soot from Lirene’s lungs when she reached him, a panacea washing away the burns the flames had left on all of them. “Is that everyone?” Anders amplified his voice so she could hear him.

“That I could find,” Lirene coughed, and coughed again, turning away from him to be sick across the landing, vomit black as coal and spilling over the edge to drip down to the floors below. “I saw a patrol coming down the street.”

“Let’s go,” Anders pulled the smoke from the mage children’s lungs and pushed them down the stairs, most of them vomiting over the railing as they went. The second story stairwell was still crowded, the first floor mostly free of refugees, too scared to press their luck outside. The sounds of battle carried: bellowed orders and the whistling of arrows sailing through the sky. Anders ran to Nate, kneeling with an arrow notched and his eyes fixed on the door.

“Sounds like your Friends are here,” Nate noted.

“We have to go,” Anders ran through the shattered door to check the alley. Three dead templars were lying face down in the street, and he heard a whistle from above.

“Let’s go, Healer!” Charade yelled from the rooftops. “Now’s your chance.”

“Move! We’re getting out!” Nate yelled for him when he came back inside and told him what to say. Refugees flooded down the stairwell, shoving through the doors and climbing out the windows, screaming as they went.

A few Red Jennies forced their way through the mob, and ran to meet him. “What are we grabbing, Healer?” one elf asked.

“In here,” Anders waved them to the storage room, but Lirene’s scream kept him from following them inside. Anders found her behind the upturned table, amidst the refugees who’d sacrificed their blood for him, and one who’d sacrificed their life. Shards of lyrium were embedded in a line from Lissa’s throat up to her face, buried deep inside her skull. They glowed a little brighter than her blood, flowing down her neck to soak into her blouse.

“No, no, no, Lissa! Lissa, wake up!” Lirene screamed at her, shaking her corpse, her head lulling limply back and forth on her neck. “Wake up! Anders, wake her up! Wake her up!”

“She’s gone,” Anders grabbed Lirene around her waist, and took an elbow in the stomach for it.

“She’s not gone!” Lirene cut her palm on a shard of lyrium in Lissa’s throat when she ripped it out, spraying blood across her face. “Just get these out of her!” Lirene pressed her palm against the wound, like she could heal it herself. “Get them out!” Lirene grabbed another shard on Lissa’s face and tugged, but it was embedded in the bone, and Lissa’s head flopped forward, blonde hair spilling about her face. “Get them out, get them out, get them out-”

“She’s dead!” Anders weathered another elbow to the stomach, dragging Lirene up to her feet while she held tight to Lissa’s hand. “Lirene, she’s dead. Let go, you have to let go.”

“No, she’s not dead," Lirene argued, sobbing in his arms. "She’s right there-she’s right there, I can see her, I can see her-”

“She’s not," Anders said. "She’s not there.”

Anders pushed Lirene into the flow of fleeing refugees, and ran into the storage room, where the Red Jennies were loading barrels onto carts. "Be careful," Anders amplified his voice. "I need all five; if any arrows hit them we'll all go up in flames. Amal!"

"I'm here," Amal popped up from behind a crate and came running over with Nate's cane. "I ain't dead."

“Bring Nate his cane, he’s right outside,” Anders ordered, and the little dwarf ran off, braids flying behind him. The Red Jennies loaded the barrels on the carts, and Nate and Amal joined him as Anders ran into the alley to carve a glyph of warding in the street for any stray arrows the templars launched their way. Arrows from the rooftops covered their escape as they fled through the city, and a crow flew up to the rooftops to join Charade.

“Healer,” Charade pulled Anders down when he landed, out of sight of the death squad patrolling the street.

“Tell me you have this,” Anders said. “I have to try to help the others.”

“We have it,” Charade promised. “Go. We’ll be at the foundry or the caverns in Sundermount if it’s compromised. They’re on the south face, around a thousand feet up. Follow the red cairns.”

“Thank you,” Anders said.

A crow flew from Lowtown to the docks, and knew the packaging house by the fires that raged in it. Red Templars swarmed the Mages’ Collective headquarters, well over a dozen fighting abominations of Pride and Rage on the docks while reinforcements rowed slowly towards them from the Gallows. Anders recognized both of them, and lost his hold on his form for it, crashing across the roof of the harbormaster’s office and through the aviary atop it.

Carrier pigeons panicked, winging free of the wreckage and out into the night while Anders lay groaning in a pile of sawdust and bedding, his body beaten by the fall and shredded with splinters. Veilfire split his skin, flickering in the starlight with how little mana he had left after purging most of it before he’d suffered smites. Justice grabbed a knife-sized splinter embedded in his thigh, and wrenched it free with a surge of creationism that sealed the wound.

The rest could wait. Anders dragged himself onto his hands and knees and stumbled out of the ruined aviary to the edge of the roof. Down below, Pride had claimed Evon. The Chasind was warped with it, spines bursting from his back and glowing eyes splitting his skull, chains of lightning wrapped around his scaled arms he lashed across the docks. Rage had swallowed Gerralt, his skin burnt off his muscles, bleeding fire in his defense of the burning packaging house.

They were still defending it. Even now. Even as they were. Even as it crumbled down to ash behind them. Pride lashed out with lightning, wrapping it around a templar’s ankle to drag him back across the docks to Rage, who grabbed him by his helmet and ripped his head from off his shoulders. Anders couldn’t see the others. Bancroft. Selby. The children they were sheltering. He could only see the flames.

Anders forced the transformation to a crow, and flew across the docks in through a window shattered by the heat. He landed at a roll, in an explosion of feathers and frost that put out the flames around him but did nothing for the smoke. Anders dragged his tunic up over his nose, his eyes watering so hard he could barely see. A pulse of blood magic helped him get his bearings, and he stumbled towards the backroom and the heartbeat he could sense in it.

A crossbow bolt took him in the stomach, and Anders doubled over cursing, “Fucking Maker’s mercy, Selby, why?”

“Oh, love, no!” Selby dropped her crossbow, and hastily wheeled across the room. “Are you alright?”

“You shot me,” Anders hissed, healing the hole she’d left in him.

“I thought you were a templar!” Selby said. “Oh, love, I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not even in a skirt!” Anders wheezed.

“I wasn’t looking!” Selby said.

“You should be looking!” Anders said.

“Well I wasn’t!” Selby pawed at him when he stumbled to his feet.

“Where are the kids?” Anders asked.

“Bancroft got them out, I think,” Selby said. “Sketch showed up to help us. Love, you have to leave-”

“I’m not leaving you,” Anders cut her off.

“I’ll never make it out, love,” Selby wheeled back a pace. “You can’t push me through the front door with templars in the streets.”

“Then we’ll go out the back,” Anders said. “The terrace-”

“I haven’t made it up the stairs in years,” Selby shook her head. “Love, you need to leave, I’ve lived a good life-”

“No you haven’t!” Anders said, amplifying his voice over the crackling of burning parchment. “You ran this packaging house your entire life and it’s going up in flames! You lost your sister to the Circle and then the Knight Commander made her Tranquil before you had a chance to save her! Your whole life has been one loss after the next, and this isn’t how it ends. You’re leaving with me. Get on my back.”

Anders knelt in front of her chair, and Selby pushed off it without protest to lock her arms around his neck. Anders locked his arms beneath her knees, and took two faltering steps forward, and almost collapsed. He was exhausted. He was starving. He was running out of everything from energy to blood. Justice took over for him, veilfire coiling with the call inside his veins, and carrying them up the stairs.

“You didn’t have to be an ass about it,” Selby mumbled.

The packaging house was still on fire. The parcels on the first floor were burning, flames licking up the walls and catching on framed maps of the city that outlined routes for runners that had delivered missives for the Mages’ Collective for over a decade. Everything they’d worked for to see mages free from the Circle, going up in smoke. It gathered on the ceiling and choked out the second floor, making it impossible to see or breathe.

They didn’t even make it there before one of the steps gave beneath his foot, and Justice fell, broken boards tearing up his leg as it slipped through it. He smacked his chin against the stairs, and bit his tongue, blood pooling in his mouth, and Selby stifled a scream against his shoulder when her knees banged against the stairs. Her arms tightened fiercely around his shoulders to keep from sliding down the stairs, suffocating him while he fought to regain his footing.

“Love, just leave me,” Selby sobbed, despite not letting go of him.

“No,” Anders snarled, fighting to free his leg from the broken step with one hand and holding onto Selby with the other. The building crumbled out from underneath him while abominations roared outside and Red Templars bellowed orders, and some part of him insisted he should face them, that between Selby and Vengeance, he should strike back while he still could.

The other part of him, the soot-stained and bloody hand that grabbed the stair above him, nails digging into charred and cracking wood, fingers clenched and ringed in rosewood and silver, insisted he was striking back already, just saving who he could. Anders dragged himself up the stairs with Selby on his back, and stumbled blindly down the hall towards the terrace, one hand against the wall to gauge where he was going.

The door out to the terrace had been locked for years, but shattered with a stonefist, smoke pluming out into the night as Anders fell through it, coughing. Selby was silent, and Anders rolled her off his back and dragged her clear of the door to cleanse the damage he could cleanse with a mix of blood and mana. Her lungs, her throat, her knees, a burn he hadn’t noticed all along her arm.

Selby coughed herself conscious in his arms, “You stupid, stubborn man.”

“Where did Bancroft move the kids?” Anders asked.

“I don’t know,” Selby coughed, sitting up with his help. “Sketch said he could get them somewhere safe. The Selbrechs have been working with him up in Hightown. You should ask them when this is over.”

“Let’s get you out of here,” Anders hefted Selby back onto his back, and carried her across the terrace to the building opposite the packaging house, down into the courtyard and out into the streets. He was exhausted just getting her that far. Every step was dragging, stumbling towards the foundry, and it felt like he was surviving solely off the taint.

“Where now, love?” Selby asked.

“Red Jennies,” Anders hissed through his teeth.

“They would be helping you,” Selby shifted her grip around his shoulders. “You’re like the Hood around here, love.”

“The what?” Anders choked.

“It’s a children’s story,” Selby said. “It’s called Message to the King… King Fyruss of Starkhaven tried to enslave the free cities, in the early Glory Age, and Hood stood against him. He was an archer, not a mage, with a bow of heartwood strung too tight and strained too far. It was a tension that couldn’t last, but didn’t have to, because the cause had to be won or lost while the passion for it still burned.”

“What was the message?” Anders asked.

“Whatever you want it to be, love,” Selby said. “A plea for liberty taken to a tyrant’s heart by the point of an arrow or carried in the clatter of sacrifice as weapons fall to a courtyard’s cobbles. Vengeful and violent or mild and merciful. You do whatever you need to do to make them hear you. You blow that bloody Circle to the skies and take the Chantry with it while you’re at it. I don’t want to see another Chantry soldier or Chantry sister ever walk these streets again.”

Anders stopped on the steps up to Lowtown and glanced back at the fires of the packaging house, and the smoke rising before sunrise. It was just gone. The whole of the Mages’ Collective, their cause and their connections. “I will,” Anders said.

Anders got Selby back to the foundry in time to join the Red Jennies evacuating it, moving as many refugees as they could move before sunrise. The children had already been sent off to Sundermount, Evelyn and Sigrun’s earring along with her, but those fit to fight had stayed. Selby wasn’t one of them, but there also wasn’t time for them to find her a wheeled chair to take her from the city. Anders got her to a bunk, and should have gotten himself to one while he was at it, but he couldn’t.

He still had to get to Franke. He still had to get to whatever was left of Franke, after waiting hours to get to him. He tried - and tried again - to make the transformation to a crow, but he didn’t have the mana, and took the sewers up to Hightown instead, sloshing through the sewage in the dim light of the red lyrium that grew like mushrooms in the gutters. He shouldn’t have been able to move. He felt like he wasn’t, his legs completely numb and barely lifting off the ground as they shuffled stubbornly onwards.

He just had to keep moving, keep going, keep fighting. He was fighting, dragging himself hand over hand up the slime-covered rungs of a ladder that led to an alley close to Franke’s shop. Anders pushed feebly at the drain cover, but the rusted metal might have weighed a thousand stones for all the progress he made. Anders looped his arm around the top rung of the ladder, and hung there, panting, too tired to breathe, but he had to keep breathing because he had to keep going.

A burst of strength from Justice heaved the drain cover up and off, and Anders made it up and into the alley, half-stumbling, half-crawling to the courtyard. Franke’s shop was still there, and Franke was still there, standing in the street and arguing with a group of templars while a group of civilians watched, but there was still something to watch because Franke was still there, still alive, still running his big mouth to the obvious annoyance of the templar in charge of the death squad that had been sent after him.

“-barely got the coin to feed hisself,” Franke was complaining loudly. “Where would Franke get the coin to feed anyone else? Big spenders, apostates? Buy a lot of shoes with all the runnin’ they do?”

“For the last time, submit to a search of your shop or by order of the Knight Commander you will be found guilty of aiding and abetting apostates and be sentenced to hang,” The lead templar said, and while he wasn’t visibly red, he was one of almost a dozen, and Anders didn’t have the mana, the blood, or the energy fight them all.

“You lot really love your gallows, don’t you?” Franke said. “This is ‘cause Franke’s from Ferelden, isn’t it? You searching all our shops or just signalling Franke out, cause he’s just as much a right to set up here in Hightown as any of you Marchers what with the Guard Captain and the Viscount being from where Franke’s from and they won’t like hearing how you folks-”

Franke kept going, because Franke always kept going. He kept talking, and talking, and talking and had probably been talking for the past few hours, drawing in a crowd to keep the templars from his shop and the mage children inside it. Children Franke had to know he couldn’t save, but could still keep alive as long as he kept talking, so he just never stopped.

Anders wondered if the Red Jennies’ warning had ever reached him. If he’d had a chance to save himself and chosen just to stay instead. If he’d rather lose his life than lose another shop of shoes and all the little souls inside it. Anders wished that he could ask him. He wished that Franke could answer. He wished that he could tell him he was sorry for what he was about to do. Anders slit his wrist, and turned what little blood that he could spare to mana so a crow could fly inside the shop and find four kids huddled together on his cot.

All of them were crying, holding their hands over their mouths, staring wide-eyed at the window and all the threats that carried through it. They smothered screams in those same hands when Anders manifested, a finger to his lips to keep them quiet. He pulled up the trap door, and threw a ball of flame into the shop below.

Don’t think about it.

Outside, civilians and templars started screaming, and Franke started screaming with them. The sound of their screams and the catching of flames covered the stone fist Anders sent crashing through the wall that connected Franke’s shop to another. "Hurry," Anders whispered, urging the children through the hole in the wall, and startling the family inside. He cast another, draining what was safe to drain of the children’s mana so he could do it, tearing through one shop after the next until they reached one beside the alley.

Don’t think about it.

Anders urged the kids downstairs, and down into the sewers with a last glance at the courtyard. Civilians ran back and forth from their homes for water to fling into the flames, while the templars fought to get Franke in shackles. He was screaming, sobbing, grappling for the door, trying to throw himself into the flames until the hilt of a templar’s sword struck him upside the head and he went still, and Anders climbed into the sewers.

Don’t think about it.

The children were all gathered there, hugging themselves and each other, crying in the dark. A few of them were gagging, throwing up into the sewage or sitting down in it to sob. Anders pulled the drain closed over them, and summoned a sphere of mage light when he dropped down to join them. They all looked lost - sick and scared and sobbing.

Don’t think about it.

“Let’s go,” Anders whispered. “We have to get you somewhere safe.”

"Where is Franke?" one boy sniffled, staring up at the sealed entrance to the sewers.

"Who are you?" asked another, sitting in the sewage.

“It’s gross down here,” complained a girl.

"Is Franke okay?" another asked.

Don’t think about it.

"He's staying to distract the templars,” Anders said, his throat burning with every word he forced from it. “I’m his friend. He sent me to get you somewhere safe. We have to go before more templars come.”

Anders urged the children through the flooded tunnels down to Lowtown. It was morning by the time they reached it, and Anders pulled the four mage children out of the sewers and led them dripping through the foundry. A few Red Jennies came to help him when he arrived, taking the children away to bathe and change, and Anders stumbled blindly through the bunks, stalls, and tables until he found Charade.

She’d changed out of her armor and into a tunic and trousers, a strip of cloth struggling to contain her thick brown hair behind her head, like she was getting ready for bed, but they couldn’t afford to sleep when they still had work to do and people to save. “Healer,” Charade abandoned the table she was eating at to run to his side, and set her hands against his chest and shoulder. “Thank goodness-”

“Who else?” Anders tried to push her off him, but his hands just seemed to slide across her arms.

“What?” Charade asked.

“Who else?” Anders asked, waving at the table where they kept their maps, and all the red marks still left on it. “Who’s next? We have to get back out there.”

“Healer-... Friend, it’s morning,” Charade said, catching him when he tripped turning towards the tables. “It’s morning. It’s over. The raids were all last night.”

“Not all of them,” Anders couldn’t argue. He couldn’t talk. His mouth moved soundlessly, and failing that, he signed, “Not all of them.”

“Dad!” Charade called.

Anders half-slipped, half-stumbled out of her arms, and staggered over to the maps. He must have fallen, because he caught himself on the table, and tried to blink the lines and blotches into something that made sense. Something that wasn’t every other holdout in the city. The Talwains. Smetty’s Fish Guttery. So many friends and families.

Don’t think about it.

“Hey,” Gamlen waved a hand in front of his face. It was hard to see him or his hands, everything just looked like a smear of tawny skin. “The fuck are you doing?” Gamlen signed.

“We have to get back out there,” Anders signed. “There are still people out there.”

“Dead people,” Gamlen signed. “Let it go.”

“Fuck you,” Anders signed. “Those are my people. The Knight Commander has her hounds out there hunting my people through the streets-”

“What part of ‘they’re dead’ don’t you understand?” Gamlen signed. “That cunt is out there making the streets as bloody as her monthlies. Prolly on them now. You think this was an accident? She hit everywhere at once so no none of you mages would run off and warn the rest. They’re dead, boy. You got who you got.”

“Fuck you,” Anders signed again. “Some of them might still be alive. Franke was still alive. He was still alive and I-”

Don’t think about it.

“Dead!” Gamlen signed, flopping his hands back and forth. “Passed away!” Gamlen let his hand fall through his fingers. “Gone!” Gamlen dragged a fist across his arm. “How many ways do I need to sign it before you get it through your skull?”

“Fuck you,” Anders signed, shoving off the table and trying to storm away from him, but he could barely stand and stumbled, sliding his arm along the table as he caught himself and scattering parchment in the process.

“Yeah, yeah, fuck me,” Gamlen said, grabbing Anders’ arm and slinging it over his shoulder.

“Get off,” Anders signed.

“Not likely,” Gamlen dragged him across the warehouse and threw him on an empty bunk. “You lost tonight, boy. Get used to it and then get over it. We still have shit to do.”

Gamlen left, and Anders lay where he left him, staring at the bottom of the bunk above him, and the nest of bedbugs that ran between the planks. He was so drained he couldn’t move, his eyes burning with the want to close, but he couldn’t seem to make them. It hurt every time he tried, his skin so cold and tears so hot he swore he might be crying blood. It hurt. It hurt so fucking much.

Don’t think about it.

Chapter 209: A Noble Agenda

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 9 Solis Sometime - 21 Days Until All Soul’s Day
Somewhere

“Hi Vati,” Kieran grinned, sitting on the branch of the willow tree beside the Hafter, a field of reeds in place of grass beneath him and the Black City in the distance. Kieran couldn’t have been further from it. He looked well fed. He looked well dressed. The only hint of red was in his eyes, with not a hint of shadow under them.

“Hi Creepy,” Anders climbed up to join him, and Kieran scooted over for him. Justice reshaped the Fade around them so he could sit with his back against the tree with Anders in his lap. “You could just climb, you know,” Anders pointed out.

“No,” Justice said.

“Ich vermisse dich,” Kieran said, kicking his legs.

“I miss you too,” Anders promised. “Are you still practicing with Woolsey?”

“Ja,” Kieran grinned.

“Well I’m not, so go easy on me,” Anders joked, taking in the Hafter, and the echoes of all the days they’d spent relaxing by the river. “Is your father back yet?”

“No,” Kieran said. “He won’t be back until it’s time to go.”

“Have you heard from him?” Anders asked.

“Mhm,” Kieran said. “He sends letters. He’s going to Ventus, in Tevinter. He said he’d bring me back a dragon.”

“A whole dragon?” Anders said.

“They make them out of gold,” Kieran explained. “I asked him for a fire lance! They have them in Seheron.”

“I thought you said he was going to Tevinter,” Anders said.

“He’s going to Seheron too,” Kieran said. “He just doesn’t know yet.”

“As long as he comes back to give it to you,” Anders supposed. “Do you think you could tell him we love him when you write to him again?”

“I did,” Kieran said.

“You’re a good kid, Creepy,” Anders said. “Are you still practicing creationism?”

Kieran wrinkled his nose, “I don’t like Finn.”

“No one does,” Anders laughed. “You should listen to him anyway, though.”

“I am,” Kieran muttered, standing up to walk along the branch while Justice reshaped it to wrap in endless circles around the tree. “I wish I knew Mother’s magic.”

“There is nothing wrong with yours,” Justice said.

“Mother’s a better teacher,” Kieran elaborated.

“How’s she doing?” Anders asked.

“She’s scared,” Kieran said.

“Of what?” Anders couldn’t imagine Morrigan afraid of anything.

“Grandmother,” Kieran said.

“All your grandmothers are dead, Creepy,” Anders said.

“No,” Kieran said.

Hm. Probably better not to think about that one. “I’m sure she’ll keep you safe,” Anders said.

“She does,” Kieran said.

“Listen, Creepy,” Anders caught Kieran around the waist as he circled past them, and set him back down on the branch beside them. “You’re going to hear some things about us soon” -Anders squeezed Justice’s hand- “and some of them are going to be true and some of them aren’t, but whatever you hear we want you to remember that we love you, and sometimes people have to do bad things for good reasons.”

“Okay,” Kieran said.

“I don’t have any more lyrium left, so I don’t know when I’ll be able to see you again, but I hope you know how important you are to us,” Anders said, pushing Kieran’s braid back behind his ear. “What we’re doing here is about making sure that every mage can be as safe as you are, with all their friends and a family who loves them, and no templars to take them away from it.”

“Okay,” Kieran hugged him. “Ich hab euch lieb, Vatis.”

Anders hugged him back, “Wach auf, Igitt.”

Anders woke up, and dug a bowl of stale water and a washcloth out from beneath his bunk to wash the glyph of neutralization off his arm. The Fade rushed back to him and Justice with it, and Anders sat on the edge of his bunk to wash off for the day.

The foundry warehouse had evolved, over the past month, and his cause had evolved with it. The Red Jennies had taken it on with him. The Mages’ Collective and their underground were gone. In a city of several hundred thousands, the only survivors of Meredith’s massacre were Anders, Selby, Bancroft, and Sketch, alongside the thirty some-odd children they’d freed from the Circle. They’d freed thirty some-odd more, in the month that had followed, with thousands left to go.

Amal came running over, his braids flying out from beneath his cap, and skidded to a halt before him. “Constable Howe wants to see you, messere!”

“You can call him Nate, kiddo,” Anders said, rinsing off the back of his neck. “And you can call me Anders.”

“I’m a page,” Amal huffed. “I gotta be proper.”

“What does Nate need?” Anders asked.

“I don’t know - he didn’t sodding say,” Amal said.

“Well that's sodding proper,” Anders snorted.

“Do I need to get more shit today?” Amal asked.

“Sela petrae,” Anders corrected him, putting his washcloth away to fish out his tunic and his trousers. “And no. We have enough now.”

“You said it’s shit!” Amal said.

“I said it’s formed from concentrated urine and manure,” Anders pulled on his boots and started lacing them. “Stop saying shit.”

“Manure’s shit!” Amal argued.

“I know it’s shit,” Anders said. “That doesn’t mean you say it. It’s not proper.”

“Why not?” Amal asked.

“Because you’re supposed to say manure,” Anders said.

“That’s stupid,” Amal said. “Shit’s shit.”

“You’re being a shit,” Anders said, buckling on his belt.

“You’re being a shit!” Amal shot back. “What am I doing, then?”

“Help Lirene in the kitchens,” Anders dug out his jacket and shrugged into it.

“That’s servant’s work!” Amal protested.

“Since when?” Anders frowned at him, and set off across the warehouse. “You love Lirene.”

“I love eating,” Amal said.

“Well then you better help her cook,” Anders said.

“I’m a page!” Amal said. “That’s like warrior caste. Warriors don’t cook.”

“There are no castes up on the surface. Everyone is equal here,” Anders lied. “I know you think you need to be better than everyone because they told you were worse than everyone, but you don’t, because you’re not. This doesn’t mean anything up here.” Anders stopped to pinch his branded cheek, and Amal scrubbed his hand away. “You’re a good kid. Don’t be a shit.”

“You don’t be a shit,” Amal huffed.

“You don’t be a shit,” Anders said.

“You don’t be a shit!” Amal said.

“What if none of us were shits?” Nate interjected when they reached the war table he was waiting at.

“Someone has to be a shit,” Anders said, turning Amal about and shooing him towards the kitchens. “Just not you. Go help Lirene.” Amal stomped off, and Anders sat on the edge of the table. “What am I doing here, Nate?”

“Sitting on my plans,” Nate said, pushing him back off the table with his cane. “We need to talk about the explosives.”

“What about them?” Anders asked.

“We can’t use them,” Nate said.

“If this is about Beth and Cullen-” Anders guessed.

“That’s not it,” Nate said. “We could work around them with Bancroft inside the Circle.”

“Then what is it?” Anders asked.

“Two things,” Nate tapped the blueprints of the Gallows. “We can’t localize the explosions. If we start blowing out support beams, we risk the whole fortress collapsing into the tunnels underneath. I’ve seen the strength of these explosions on our expeditions and we used them to seal off whole sections of the Deep Roads. It’s not an easy thing to mitigate.”

“What’s the other problem?” Anders asked.

“Igniting them,” Nate said. “I’ve been looking into the way the qunari used mirrors to use the sun to light their fuses during the invasion like you said, and I can’t find anyone familiar with it. We don’t have the Glavonaks or any qunari with us, and even if we did, with how many places we’d need to set up the explosives to take out the whole barracks, we’d be caught. We can’t set up mirrors through the halls and not be noticed.”

“So someone volunteers to stay and light them,” Anders said.

“Maybe,” Nate said. “Or maybe they get caught or a patrol puts the fuses out before they light them all. We need a remote way to denote them all at once. There must be some kind of magic.”

“Maybe,” Anders muttered, pressing his fingers into his face and glaring at the Gallows. “I’ll check down at the Black Emporium and see if I can find something, but I’ll need the coin to buy it.”

“I’m sure Amell’s uncle can get it for you,” Nate said.

“I’d rather light the fuse myself,” Anders said.

“Anders-”

“Fine.”

“I still think we shouldn’t use them on the Circle,” Nate said. “We’ll already need to use them to blow out the walls and portcullises when the mages make a run for it, and if we’re doing that after we’ve already taken out the barracks-”

“We can’t just blow up the training grounds on the docks and a few walls in the Circle,” Anders said. “We have to make a statement. The world needs to see.”

“I hear you, my friend, but maybe the world sees something else,” Nate said.

“Let me think about it,” Anders said. “I’ll find something at the Emporium to set them off remotely after the party.”

“I still don’t think that you should go,” Nate frowned.

“I’ll be fine,” Anders said.

“It’s in Hightown,” Nate said.

“I know it is,” Anders said.

“He’ll be invited,” Nate persisted.

“I know he will,” Anders said.

“Anders-” Nate started.

“Nate,” Anders cut him off. “We know each other’s names.”

“Don’t be a shit,” Nate said.

“It’s who I am,” Anders shrugged, and set off towards the corner of the warehouse Lirene had turned into a kitchen. The clack of Nate’s cane followed him, and evidently so did Nate.

“Someone else can go,” Nate said, falling into step beside him. “Anders, the Mad Viscount is called the Mad Viscount for a reason. He’s one of the strongest templars you and I have ever seen, and he’s obsessed with you.”

“I know he is,” Anders didn’t need Nate to tell him what he’d lived through. He took a seat at a crate that had been turned into a table, and smiled his thanks when Lirene brought them both a bowl of oats, and made sure to make his in front of him so he could see the water that went into it.

“The man wears your clothes,” Nate said, sitting down to eat with him. “He carries your staff around with him-”

“Can you blame him?” Anders joked. “It was a great staff. Honestly, it’s probably the only blue lyrium left in the whole city.”

“If he sees you at this party, you can’t guarantee you’ll get away,” Nate said.

“That’s why Selby dyed my hair,” Anders reminded him, tugging a few black strands that matched his two month beard.

Nate looked unconvinced, “Let Charade go in your stead, you can take her place and lead the riot at the docks.”

“I have to be there, Nate,” Anders set his spoon down, which wasn’t terribly hard to do considering oats ranked just above long pork for him. “This is our chance to overthrow the Knight Commander before she annuls the Circle. Marlein and I have worked too hard to win the nobles over to our cause. If we don’t go through with this coup now we won’t get another chance.”

“Why bother?” Nate asked. “All Soul’s Day is less than a month away. We have the explosives. We’re all prepared to fight.”

“We didn’t get the kids out, Nate,” Anders went back to eating. “If we can get rid of Meredith then Cullen can take over, and everyone can walk out peacefully. We can blow the Circle once they’re out, and it won’t matter if it sinks into the sea so long as the Divine’s armies witness it.”

“Even if that happens, the Mad Viscount might not fight them,” Nate said. “If he just lets the armies swarm the city-”

“Beth says that he won’t,” Anders said.

“My friend, I mean this with no offense, but I don’t know that I trust yours. She’s his sister. Her faith in him is suspect at best.”

“My friend, I mean this with full offense, if you make me defend the man who locked me in a cell-”

“That isn’t my intent. I know things have been easier for us since he’s started hunting down Red Templars in the city, but our enemies' enemies aren’t always our friends. For us, bloodshed has been a gruesome last resort. For him, it’s been as easy as drawing his next breath. When the Divine’s armies March, can anyone really guarantee he won’t March with them, especially with that Red Mother at his side?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Anders said. “Something has to come of this. The practice of magic would still be illegal if it hadn’t been the role of mages during the First Blight, and we’d all still be lamp-lighters for the Chantry if not for the Battle of the Braziers. If Hawke won’t fight the Divine, then he can fall with her. Those in power have never surrendered it peacefully.”

“All the more reason for you to stay away from this party,” Nate said. “Let the nobles unseat the Knight Commander, while you focus on finishing the explosives in case they don’t. I don’t feel comfortable watching you walk into a viper’s nest.”

“Then don’t watch,” Anders finished his oats and left the foundry. A crow flew from the Red Jennies’ hideout to the Selbrech estate, in the shadow of Kirkwall’s Chantry. The massive marble mansion was divided by a side street, its second story stretched across it, banners hanging from the overpass. Bright white suns on blood red banners, without any flaming swords or crowns, declaring allegiance to the Chantry but not the Templar Order.

The crow flew in through an open window to a third floor dressing room, where an elf was rifling through a selection of noble clothes, as if he didn’t have enough already. He looked like he was wearing everything there was to wear, a jacket atop a vest atop a tunic atop Maker knew what else, all in brown, with a white scarf wrapped around his head and two sharp ears emerging from beneath it. His eyes shifted between green and brown and gold, and went wide when Anders landed.

“You’re late,” Sketch grabbed a red high-collared tunic and pushed it at him.

“I’m on time,” Anders disagreed, taking off the clothes he’d enchanted to transform with him and draping them across a chair as Sketch handed him his disguise. A gold undershirt. A puffed sleeve emerald doublet. Gold trimmed boots with bright red ribbons, matching leather gloves and jacket, and a feather mask to hide his face.

“You should just kill her,” Sketch said while Anders dressed.

“The Grand Cleric?” Anders guessed, still in the process of lacing up his tunic.

“She’ll never force the Knight Commander to step down,” Sketch said, helping him with the undershirt.

“She won’t have a choice,” Anders said. “The nobles are going to demand the Knight Commander’s resignation.”

“They’ve been demanding it for years,” Sketch tugged Anders’ doublet on over his undershirt, and started tying up his sleeves. “She’ll never agree. You should kill her if you get the chance.”

“Do you have any idea what a monumentally bad idea that is?” Anders asked. “The Grand Cleric is the only reason the Divine hasn’t Marched already. If a mage murders her in front of everyone, word will get to the armies outside the city, and they’ll March before we’re ready to get everyone out of the Circle.”

“Maybe they should,” Sketch said. “We want to make a statement - why are we making theirs? At least this way, if we strike first, the world will see it as the Chantry punishing all mages for the crimes of one, instead of annuling a Circle full of maleficarum.”

“You want me to take the blame for the Annulment,” Anders translated, shrugging into his jacket.

“If we let the templars call for it, they’ll make up their own reasons, there will always be people who believe them,” Sketch argued. “They’ll blame maleficarum or they’ll blame the plague, and no one will blame them. Even if we resist, they’ll still be the victims. This has to be our story.”

“I’ll do it,” Anders said.

It was just one more body. Time was running out, and they were running out of options. The Knight Commander was almost as unstable as Hawke, and a representative of the Divine dead at the hands of a mage was guaranteed to provoke her into lashing out and enacting the Right of Annulment when she was already planning on it anyway. If he could do something to make the mages look more sympathetic to the people, then Anders would do it.

There was a reason Adrian had tried to assassinate Leliana, and it was because the Chantry was at the heart of it all. The world had to see that. The world had to understand that. The world had to know that the Chantry was responsible for the enslavement, the torture, the abuse, the mistreatment of mages, and they would use any excuse to enact their agenda. They were just waiting for someone to give them one - and Anders didn’t mind being that someone.

That someone wouldn’t survive it. No one could take the Grand Cleric’s life in broad daylight and walk away with theirs, but Anders didn’t mind. His manifesto was out there. He could kill the Grand Cleric, the Knight Commander could call for the Right of Annulment, the Red Jennies and the remnants of the Mages’ Collective could see the mages safely from the Circle, and the world could finally see the madness of it all when they saw him for a martyr.

Justice would be fine. He’d just go back to the Fade. Amell-...

Don’t think about it.

Anders laced up his boots, “But I’m not doing it here.”

“When are we going to get another chance?” Sketch asked, kneeling to help him. “We need to provoke the Knight Commander in calling for the Right of Annulment, and we need everyone to see her do it.”

“The Red Mother is giving an address to the city on All Soul’s Day for the people who died to the plague,” Anders said. “I’ll do it then. If the Grand Cleric forces the Knight Commander to step down today, I’ll make sure the Knight Captain still calls for the Right of Annulment.”

Sketched stuffed a red kerchief into his pocket. “You have to make sure everyone knows you did it. The Circle can’t just go up in flames. If it just looks like the mages are escaping, everyone will brand them as apostates. It can’t be their fault - it has to be yours. You have to provoke them, and you have to take the blame, so when they call for the Annulment, no one is on their side. The world has to know we don’t deserve to die.”

“I said I’ll do it,” Anders put his mask on and went down to the party. Summer garlands were ringed around the banisters and music carried from the parlor, most of the nobles only just arriving for the masquerade. Anders retrieved a glass of wine from the tray of a passing servant for something to hold, and set himself against a wall, mask hiding his face and his disgust. The city was still starving, even with Merrill’s magic and after Hawke had reclaimed the farms, and Hightown still hosted parties.

It had taken well over a year of plague and endless raids for the nobles to even notice the city decaying underneath them. Anders couldn’t trust them to understand the Circle’s suffering when they couldn’t even understand the city’s. He’d forced his manifesto on every noble house in Kirkwall, and it had barely been enough for them to give the Circle their support a month before it was due to burn. Sketch was right. He had to do more. He could kill the Grand Cleric, make it clear the Chantry was responsible for the Circle’s suffering, and die knowing the Knight Commander would prove him right.

Marlein found him by his kerchief, and tipped her handheld mask at him. She was bright if she was anything: her eyes, her hair, her mind. The noblewoman was one of the few who wasn’t infected. Red lyrium didn’t plague Hightown; it adorned it. The nobles wore it like jewelry, growing and shaping it out of their skin, and the heat of so much of it in one place was as oppressive as the people.

Marlein was sweating, but Anders doubted the heat was the only reason. She was putting herself at risk, using the masquerade to hide the coup, but then she always had. She’d spent years working with Sketch sheltering elven apostates among her servants, and while she wasn’t a mage, she believed in his manifesto, and was determined to do everything she could for them. She was a good friend. Anders had lost enough of them to know.

“Lady Selbrech,” Anders said.

“Lord ban Airdeall,” Marlein returned. “Ready to make history?”

“Ready to become it,” Anders said. “How long until the Grand Cleric arrives?”

“Soon,” Marlein promised, holding her mask back over her face. “The morning’s Chant should have ended a little while ago. Keep your guard and your mask up.”

Marlein left him to see to her guests as more of them arrived for the masquerade. Nobles who wanted to overthrow the Knight Commander ever since she’d started sending death squads into Hightown. The whole of the city had finally turned against her; there were riots at the docks and the Red Jennies were leading them, hurling shit and stones at any templars who tried to cross the channel.

They’d planned another riot for today to keep the Knight Commander at bay so the nobles could appeal to the Grand Cleric. She couldn’t ignore all of them, and she couldn’t ignore Hawke. The Mad Viscount arrived with the Red Mother on his arm. Petrice’s eyes glowed a vibrant red to match the crystals splitting from her skull, and from the look of her she might have been the Red Divine. The nobles seemed to fear her as much as they feared Hawke.

He’d made no secret of his slaughter. He’d left the death squads in the streets when he’d turned them all to statues, and the nobles must have feared that fate, because there was never any talk against him. Everything about him was a threat. Chains hung off his chest and lyrium broke through it, a sacrilegious amulet around his neck and a mage’s staff in his offhand. Nobles looked at him and looked away, but Anders just kept looking.

Anders felt like he should feel something when he saw him, but he didn’t.

He felt nothing.

Hawke was nothing.

Hawke was nothing to Anders, and Anders was nothing to Hawke. Hawke didn’t even recognize him. Three miserable years with the man, and all Anders had to do was change his hair and his clothes, and Hawke couldn’t pick him out of a crowd. Hawke was obsessed with a man who didn’t exist - who hadn’t for years - and had always been angry with Anders for not being that man. Hawke couldn't piece that man together with the parts that he stole from him.

Anders swirled the glass of wine he couldn’t drink, watching the masquerade of horrors and waiting for the worst of them. The Grand Cleric arrived with a retinue of templars, and was the same as he remembered. Elthina was old and grey and ashen, like incense given human form with just as much resolve. The only red was on her robes, and she seemed small if sane beside Petrice.

Petrice confronted Elthina almost as soon as she set foot in the estate. It would lessen the Grand Cleric’s power to remove the Knight Commander from it, when Meredith had been appointed by Elthina. As far as the Red Mother was concerned, if one could be replaced, so could the other, and Petrice had made no secret of her efforts to usurp the Chantry from Elthina with or without the Divine’s support.

“Grand Cleric,” Petrice said, and shushed the parlor in the process.

“Petrice,” Elthina said politely at the ambush.

“Mother Petrice,” Petrice corrected her.

“You have failed to maintain the solemn dignity of your position and are no longer a Mother in the Chantry,” Elthina reminded her, clear eyes sweeping over the red lyrium that grew from Petrice’s skin. “I will not refer to you as such.”

“Perhaps not in your Chantry,” Petrice said, signing while she spoke. “I think you will find there are many disappointed with it.”

“Let’s dispense with the pleasantries,” One of the noblemen, an Arenburg or maybe a Reinhardt, stepped out of the crowd that had gathered in the parlor. “Grand Cleric, we all feel-”

“What, exactly?” A voice full of contempt interjected from the doorway, where Meredith stood with a small contingent of templars and mages at her side, her eyes so red they were almost white. The rioters must have dispersed or died. There was no other way she’d gotten past them.

More casualties.

First Enchanter Orsino and Beth were among the mages with her. Orsino, he expected, always bowing to his templar jailors, but Beth must not have had a choice. She was around four months, and for the most part her robes still kept her secret for her, but they wouldn’t for much longer. She wasn’t safe. She never would be in the Circle. Anders had to tear it down.

“Knight Commander,” Marlein shoved her drink at a passing servant and rushed over. “We weren’t expecting you to attend.”

“No doubt because I was not invited,” Meredith said, pacing a circle for herself in the assembled nobles. Red lyrium had overgrown her armor and there was no taking it off. It crawled out from the left side of her chest and up over her shoulder, sweeping down her arm to make a gauntlet of both hands. She wore a circlet like Andraste, and red lyrium affixed it to her skull. “Do not think I do not know what you are doing here. This little masquerade of yours is a farce. Did you truly think I would allow it to continue?”

“Knight Commander, I’m not sure what you may have heard-” Marlein started.

“I have heard enough,” Meredith cut her off with a slice of her hand through the air between them. “This treasonous soiree of yours-”

“Treason is a matter of time,” Petrice said, and translated when Hawke signed: “The people are asking you to step down.”

“How dare you-” Meredith sputtered.

“You have to pick a side,” Hawke spoke, but not to Meredith. He looked at the Grand Cleric instead.

“It’s no secret you counted apostates among your friends and family, Lord Viscount,” Elthina sounded disinterested in all of it. “You have done much to fan the flames of rebellion, but we must give mages and templars time to work out their differences, and focus on the plague inside our walls and the armies outside of them.”

“That army is working for the Divine!” Hawke shouted when Petrice finished translating.

“And once the plague is cleansed, they will withdraw,” Elthina said patiently. “In the meantime, no good can come of supporting one side over the other.”

Petrice translated, and Hawke barked a laugh. “One side,” The nobles gave him a wide berth while he paced to avoid getting hit by his staff. “She’s sending death squads into my city!”

“Your city is harboring blood mages!” Meredith yelled, but Hawke must not have heard her, because Petrice still had to sign it. “I will root them out before their infection spreads.”

“Do you hear yourself?” Orsino interjected, a glow to his eyes and a flush to his skin that marked him as one of the infected. “You speak of blood magic when you should speak of red lyrium.”

“Do not trifle with me, mage,” Meredith warned him. “You are here at my leniency and my patience is at an end.”

“A wonder that I never saw it begin,” Orsino muttered but went silent.

“You complain of templars in the streets, but what of the alternatives?” Meredith demanded.

“The people know what you’ve done!” Yelled one of the braver nobles.

“What I have done is protect the people of this city, time and again. What I have done is protect these mages,” Meredith waved a hand at the few she’d brought with her. “From their curse and their stupidity, and I will not stop doing it. I will not lower our guard. I dare not.”

“Step. Down.” Hawke snarled, thrusting his staff into her chest. Meredith smacked it aside, and Hawke turned on Elthina. “Call for it! The mages need the Maker’s protection.”

“I feel for the mages, I do,” Elthina said. “I would not wish to be locked in a Circle, but I cannot take sides. We are all the Maker’s creations, but magic allows abuses beyond the scope of mortals. I must balance the needs of everyone, for if the armies attack, and it comes to war, it is the people who will suffer.”

“Do not pretend you care for the mages,” Meredith said to Hawke, waiting impatiently for Petrice to translate. “You care for your sister, and she is safe, as I have promised, because she is in the Circle.”

“A Circle you mean to Annul,” Hawke hissed.

“A lie,” Meredith said dismissively. “One no doubt told by a mage. Tell me, Viscount, that you have not seen with your own eyes what blood mages can do, heard the lies of those of them that seek power.”

“You would cast us all as villains, but it is not so!” Orsino said before Hawke could respond.

“I know,” Meredith set a hand to his shoulder, and looked almost sad when she said, “and it breaks my heart to do it, but not so much as this.”

Meredith drew her greatsword from off her back and sheathed it in Orsino’s stomach, cleaving up into his heart, to a chorus of horrified screams from the assembled nobles. The First Enchanter grabbed the edge of the blade, cutting through his palms as he struggled to pull it out, gasping hard, blood dying his robes red as lyrium. “Why…?” Orsino whispered, slipping from her arms and collapsing, dead on the floor.

Meredith swung her greatsword, flicking his blood off onto a dozen frightened faces, and looked to Hawke. A heavy silence settled over the room and time seemed to stop as she faced off against the Viscount. Meredith held up a single hand, and pulled a scrap of parchment from her belt.

“The First Enchanter conspired with the blood mage who murdered your mother. Here is the evidence we found in his quarters.” Meredith handed it to Hawke, and the nobles seemed to hold their breath as he read over it, and then crushed it in his hand. “Now you see why we must be vigilant.” Meredith turned her back on him, and spoke to everyone assembled.

“If you cannot tell me another way, do not brand me a tyrant.”

Chapter 210: It Comes To This

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, and most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 30 Solis Morning - 1 Day Until All Soul’s Day
Kirkwall Chantry

It had to be the Chantry.

There were ley lines beneath Kirkwall, echoes of the Imperium that amplified the magic in the city, formed from a time when civilizations of slaves were sacrificed and whole buildings were built on lakes of blood. Anders had spent the past month mapping them, walking along back alleys and boulevards, learning the ancient glyph and how to to utilize it to amplify the lyrium in the explosives.

A sacrifice in key locations would activate it. Templars, abducted from their homes or captured on patrol, by the same mages they’d tortured all their lives. Once their blood flowed through the grooves in the glyph, the Veil would thin, and the Fade would flow through the matching markings Anders carved into the explosives, waiting to be set beneath the Chantry.

The resulting blast would take out everything. Every stained glass window. Every blood red banner. Every marble stone. The opulence Elthina built with the blood of those beneath her, turning copper into gold begging alms from Kirkwall’s ailing. Statue after statue of Andraste, depicted every way Anders had ever known her.

Raising a sword against tyranny and oppression. Taking Hessarian’s sword as she died for what she believed in. Carrying a shield in defense of her people, or holding a bowl symbolic of the succor she gave them. Her hands raised in worship or folded in prayer. Her eyes filled with fire or overflowing with tears. Conqueror. Liberator. Savior.

Anders wondered if she’d hate him.

He wondered if he should hate himself.

There was no place for him or people like him in the Chantry, but Anders stayed to listen to the sermon anyway. He meant to pray, but his eyes kept wandering to the doors to the basement, where he’d held Karl in his arms and watched as light and life had left him. He kept thinking of his promise to get justice for him, and all the mages like him, listening to the chanters sing Apotheosis.

“So Andraste said to her followers: "You who stand before the gates,
You who have followed me into the heart of evil,
The fear of death is in your eyes; its hand is upon your throat.
Raise your voices to the heavens! Remember:
Not alone do we stand on the field of battle.

"The Maker is with us! His Light shall be our banner,
And we shall bear it through the gates of that city and deliver it
To our brothers and sisters awaiting their freedom within those walls,
At last, the Light shall shine upon all of creation,
If we are only strong enough to carry it."

And the armies of Andraste raised their voices,
Singing a hymn of praise to the Maker. And feared no more,
And Andraste went apart to seek the Maker's wisdom
For the battle to come.”

The Chant of Light kept going into Maferath’s betrayal, but Anders didn’t need to hear it. He’d met his Maferath and he’d met his Maker and there was no Hessarian to save him from his pyre but Anders was prepared to burn if the Chantry would burn with him. The explosives would be set that evening, and Karl would finally get the pyre he deserved when it all went up in flames.

Anders left the Chantry with a headache. He would have blamed the incense, but he knew he was anemic, and one way or another his cause was killing him. He’d spilled so much of his blood, compelling everyone he could to hold his plans together, and he worried when he didn’t. The clock was ticking down and too much could go wrong before everything was over.

Aveline had changed the patrols around the city so they could move the explosives through it. Sketch would help him get them through the Chantry doors and down into the basement. Bancroft would sacrifice the templars in the morning to activate the glyph beneath the city and attune it to the barrels. Anders would interrupt the Red Mother and her speech, and activate the spell.

The Knight Commander would be there to watch Elthina burn. The Red Mother was against Elthina, her preaching tantamount to heresy, and Meredith had been called on to put a stop to it, just not by Elthina. Gamlen had stolen the Grand Cleric’s seal, Charade had forged her script, and Selby sent the summons. Anders would be there to take the blame, and then all he had to do was die.

The Knight Commander wouldn’t rest with just his death. She’d try and take all the mages with him, but others would be there to stop her. All of Kirkwall stood with him - he just hadn’t told them all the truth. Everyone was in the dark in different ways. The guardsmen didn’t know about the coup, the nobles didn’t know about the Circle, and no one knew about the Chantry.

Just the handful that were part of it. Beth and Cullen were waiting for a signal, but they didn’t know what that signal was, and once they did it would be too late to stop it. They’d have to go through with the plan, blowing out the walls inside the Circle to see the mages free from it. Samson and his men inside would raise the chains for Isabela and her ships, and those that couldn’t fight would sail out on them.

Those that could would escape through the city, one way or another. The Red Jennies would see them to Sundermount. Nate would lead them down to the Retreat. Hawke, in his insanity, would hopefully break through the blockade, but if he didn’t Varric and his spies had found a way around it along the Wounded Coast. One way or another they’d be free and one way or another he’d be dead.

There was no way out that he could see. His victims deserved their justice too. If he just took the blame and ran, the hounds would hunt anyone who harbored him, and excuse every mage’s murder with rumors of his name. He had to be a martyr. He had to mean his manifesto. He had to tear it down.

Anders wasn’t suicidal. He didn’t want to die. He had a life he’d meant to live and a love he didn’t want to lose. He had Kieran and Amal and three other little kids he’d meant to meet someday, and a country cottage waiting for him somewhere he could raise them all with Amell. He felt it in the rosewood. All the things that he still had. All the ways he could still have them. He just couldn’t have them and his cause, and some things had to come before him.

They all understood that. Amell. Anders. Justice. Anders remembered coming out of solitary and feeling like two souls entwined together, but these past three months he’d only felt like one. One cause. One voice. One heart. His one regret was that it wouldn’t be one death. Justice would go on without him in the Fade, and while he knew it wasn’t fair to ask more of his mortal self, Anders believed firmly in his answer.

A crow with wings such a deep black they were almost blue flew over the City of Chains, over sandstone quarries overgrown with red lyrium, the shadows of tortured souls moving hastily from building to building, avoiding the twisted horrors that walked the streets, intent on purging them of all manner of magic, even when magic was the only thing left that could save them from themselves. The crow flew to the Hanged Man, three stories of sandstone and reforged metal, and in through an open window on the second.

Feathers scattered across the floor at Anders’ landing, and Varric slammed himself back against his chair, clutching at his chest. “Maker’s breath, Blondie, use the door.”

“We have to go,” Anders signed to save his voice for tomorrow morning, retrieving Varric’s jacket from where it lay draped over the arm of another chair and tossing it to him.

Varric caught it, and shrugged into it as he stood. “Do I get to know where we’re going?”

“The alienage,” Anders signed, waiting by the door. “Bring your signet ring.”

“Got it,” Varric held up his hand, and retrieved his crossbow from its place on the wall. Anders hadn’t asked after it. It looked similar if not exactly the same as Varric’s old crossbow, and whatever differences there were were differences that Anders didn’t care about. He left the Hanged Man with Varric on his heels, his one-time friend finally catching up to him when they were out in the street. “This a social call?” Varric guessed.

“I just need you to get me inside, Varric,” Anders signed.

“Sure thing,” Varric said. “Listen, Blondie-”

Anders meant to glance at him, but he must have glared, because Varric closed his mouth. “What?”

“... I wasn’t gonna tell you, and I don’t know if this means anything or makes up for anything, but Daisy fixed it,” Varric said.

“Fixed what?” Anders signed.

“Yours truly,” Varric waved a hand at himself. “I remember what happened. I came to find you at Vigil’s Keep and you really didn’t want to be found. I must be a bad liar when I think I’m telling the truth, because Daisy could tell that something wasn’t right. She fixed it almost as soon as I came back, but I told Hawke what you told me to tell him anyway.

“I shouldn’t have asked you to come back. I’m sorry, Blondie. I just thought maybe-... I know you probably don’t want to hear about him, but were you there the time Killer was on a Merchant Guild hit list? Uncle Greasy got into an investment scheme with a couple of merchant caste businessmen. They took a lot of people’s coin in order to arrange the import of Wandering Hills from the Anderfels. It’s a delicacy, right?”

“... it’s not,” Anders signed. “It’s just ham.”

“Well. It definitely didn’t look like it. Those things arrived alive, and one of them, true to its name, wandered off in the middle of the night. The guild traced the shipment to Uncle Greasy, but as usual, he was so far in debt he couldn’t see daylight. So they went after Killer instead. They sent guys from the Carta to the estate one night. Five big dusters, armed to the teeth. They kick in the door, and Killer’s just standing there, fully armed, with me and Red on either side.

“Nobody even said a word. The poor sods just looked at Killer, looked at Red, and dropped their weapons. They never came back. I just-... I miss that. I miss him. I miss my friend. I miss both of them. … Do you remember back when you were still working for the Coterie, and you played that bad, bad, bad hand against Gallard? You bet your right ear when you ran out of coin, and you must have spent a week-”

“We’re here, Varric,” Anders waved at the wall of branches that sealed the alienage off from the rest of Kirkwall.

“... yeah,” Varric set his signet ring to the wall, and branches peeled back into a tunnel. Varric trailed after him on the way to Merrill’s house and stepped forward to knock for him when they reached it.

Merrill opened the door in her tabard, her green eyes bloodshot and her raven hair bedraggled from sleep, wearing a tunic that looked like it had belonged to Isabela once upon a time. “Anders,” Merrill rubbed sleep from her eyes. “Elgar’nan, is the sun even up?”

“You’d know if you weren’t hiding in a bubble and ignoring everything going on outside the alienage,” Anders signed.

“I’m closing the door on you now,” Merrill announced, and proceeded to do so until Anders shoved his way inside. “Fen’Harel ar halam.”

“I need your grimoire,” Anders signed, considering he couldn’t see it. Books were stacked about seemingly at random, canvases of unfinished paintings and half-knitted scarves littered the living room.

Merrill squinted suspiciously, “Why?”

“Someone has to teach you how to clean up your mess,” Anders signed. “Do you want my help or not?”

“I don’t get visitors,” Merrill signed.

“I wonder why,” Anders signed.

“Guys-” Varric started.

“Stay out of it, Varric,” Merrill said, and signed. “I don’t need any spells from you.”

“Are you sure about that?” Anders signed. “Did you figure out how to cleanse the plague when I wasn’t looking?”

“... you said you’d never teach me,” Merrill signed.

“If you don’t give me your grimoire, I never will,” Anders signed. “Hurry up. I have no time to stay and argue with you.”

Merrill fled to her bedroom, and a series of crashes and thuds followed before she ran back out with her grimoire, an old leather bound tome engraved with markings to match Merrill’s vallaslin. Anders cleared a space for himself at her table, and Merrill handed him her grimoire and a quill, and took an inordinate amount of time to find a jar of ink to go with it. Anders flipped to a free page, and wrote down everything he knew of what it took to cleanse red lyrium.

“You won’t be able to cleanse it,” Anders signed when he finished, and left the book open to dry. “It takes advanced creationism, so you’ll have to find a spirit healer to help you.”

“Thank you-” Merrill started.

“I don’t want your thanks,” Anders signed. “I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it for anyone infected with red lyrium. So help me, if you take this and you only use it to help your own people-” Anders didn’t have a threat that he could follow through on after he was dead, so he let it go unspoken.

“I won’t,” Merrill signed. “... Why are you giving me this now?”

“So you’ll use it,” Anders signed.

“But why now?” Merrill signed. “You didn’t have to give it to me. You could just keep cleansing everyone, unless you can’t keep cleansing everyone, and that’s why you’re giving to me. Is that why you’re giving it to me?”

“That’s why I’m giving it to you,” Anders signed.

Merrill inhaled shakily and signed, “I don’t want it.”

“Merrill-” Anders signed.

“No, I don’t want it,” Merrill snatched the grimoire off the table and slammed it shut before the ink had fully dried, and pushed the tome into his chest. “Take it back, you have to take it back, just take it back, I take it back, I take it back-”

Anders closed his hand over the grimoire, and flipped it open to make sure he could still read what he’d written. The ink was smeared, but the spell was there. He set the book back on the table. “You can’t,” Anders signed and left.

A crow flew from the alienage and from Kirkwall, out over the harbor and into the Waking Sea. A fog had rolled in from Ferelden, or might have, if mages hadn’t conjured it to hide the ships waiting off the Wounded Coast. The Felicisima Armada, or as much of it Isabela could muster on short notice, paid from her own pocket with all the spoils she’d won taking down Castillon. His slaving ring had been destroyed, and with the Circle soon to follow, Anders wanted to forgive her when he landed on the deck.

Isabela was standing near the helm, and looked like she was waiting for a fight. Her armor was all buckles, covering her arms and legs and corseting her waist, and a blue dress underneath it spoke of simpler times. Her dark hair was bound back by a scarf that looked vaguely familiar, and a bandolier of knives was ready for tomorrow. She didn’t move to hug him when he landed, her thumbs buried in her belt and one foot rubbing on the other.

“Hey Sparky,” Isabela’s smile seemed uncertain.

Anders’ wasn’t any better, “Fenris?”

“Below deck,” Isabela said.

“No joke?” Anders asked.

“I don’t think I have one in me,” Isabela looked a little queasy.

“You can’t just set me up like this,” Anders whispered.

“I thought maybe you should tell one first,” Isabela said, toeing at the buckles on her boot. “I know Fenris told you. Let’s just get it over with. Tell me I’m a monster. Tell me I’m a snake. Tell me all the things I tell myself anyway.”

“I’m not going to tell you that,” Anders said.

“Why not?” Isabela asked.

Anders didn’t know.

Maybe he was just a hypocrite. Maybe he just wanted to forgive someone, and Isabela was the only one he could. Deep down, he knew that she’d done worse than Varric, worse than Merrill, but she hadn’t done it to him and it felt like the most selfish of distinctions. She’d killed countless slaves to save herself, but she was trying so hard to atone for it saving countless more, and somewhere in all of that justice for the living felt more important than vengeance for the dead.

“... because you’re more than your mistakes,” Anders said.

“... I hope so, sweet thing,” Isabela said softly. “You don’t need to check on me. I’ll be waiting for your signal when the chains go down. Why don’t you go see Fenris? Give him a good one for me.”

“A good one of what?” Anders asked.

“Whatever I’d be good at,” Isabela winked at him. Anders crossed the deck through the thick fog until he found the door that led below it and to the captain’s quarters. The room had been divided down the middle, with all of Isabela’s things on one side and Fenris’ on the other. A hammock strung up in the corner must have been for Isabela, because Fenris was sitting on the bed, sharpening his sword and tending to his leathers.

“Mage,” Fenris set his sword aside.

“Fenris,” Anders modified the sign for ‘dick’ to use an ‘f’ when he tapped it against his hand.

“Dick?” Fenris guessed.

“Yes,” Anders signed.

“This is my name now?” Fenris signed.

“Always has been,” Anders signed, and sat on the bed beside him.

“Asshole,” Fenris signed.

“We work so well together,” Anders signed.

Fenris chuckled, “I have almost missed you.”

“Almost,” Anders nudged his shoulder. Fenris nudged him back. Anders waved a hand around the divided room. “How is this working out for you?”

“Strangely,” Fenris confessed. “I thought perhaps she would prefer I join the crew, but she has asked I keep the bed as long as I keep her in my thoughts.”

“Do you?” Anders asked.

“Most days,” Fenris scooted back to lean against the wall. “I thought by now she would take another at some port along the way, but she has yet to do so.”

“What happened to Zevran?” Anders signed.

Fenris frowned at the sign, “Peacock?”

“Z-e-v-r-a-n,” Anders signed.

“Ah,” Fenris snorted. “He disembarked in Denerim, several months ago, to serve Ferelden’s King on some quest to Antiva.”

“Antiva.”

“Yes.”

“With the king.”

“Yes?”

Anders forced himself to breathe through the surge of jealousy that swept over him. It wasn’t something he should feel, and he didn’t want Amell feeling it, and then feeling nothing else. Amell was free to go anywhere with anyone, because there wasn’t anywhere that Anders could go with him. Anders twisted the ring of rosewood around his finger, and some part of him insisted he should take it off before he died.

He had no idea what would happen when he did. Amell could feel how he felt, but in a few short hours he’d stop feeling altogether, and Anders didn’t want to make him feel that, but he didn’t want to leave him without answers, either. They’d each gone long enough thinking the other was dead, and if Anders was going to die, then Amell deserved to know.

Fenris nudged him with his knee, and Anders twisted back to look at him. “What is it?” Fenris signed.

“I’m not going to survive tomorrow,” Anders confessed, to him and no one else.

“You know this for a fact?” Fenris asked.

“As close to one as I can get,” Anders signed.

“I see,” Fenris signed. Silence stretched, and Fenris pulled his knees up against his chest. “Is there something you wish me to say?”

“I don’t think so,” Anders signed.

“... to kill oneself is a sin in the eyes of the Maker,” Fenris signed.

“I think I’ve done worse things,” Anders signed.

“Perhaps,” Fenris signed.

“They won’t let me walk away from this,” Anders signed.

“Letting you walk away was never something Hawke was fond of,” Fenris agreed.

Anders chuckled, and scooted back to sit against the wall with him.

“You are not just going to destroy the Circle,” Fenris guessed.

“No,” Anders signed.

“Do I want to know?” Fenris signed.

“No,” Anders signed.

“I never thought to be here, defending mages in hopeless battle,” Fenris signed. “You lead me to strange places, mage.”

“It’s not that strange, really,” Anders signed. “What’s one more life-or-death battle?”

“There is a saying in Tevinter,” Fenris signed, and said, “Na via lerno victoria.”

“I don’t speak Tevene, Fenris,” Anders signed.

“It means ‘only the living know victory,’” Fenris signed. “... if you can, be the living, my friend.”

Anders went back to the Red Jennies’ foundry as afternoon moved into evening, and pulled Amal out of the kitchens to sit him down at one of the tables. “I have a new mission for you tomorrow.”

“I can do it,” Amal puffed up his chest.

“You don’t even know what it is,” Anders grinned.

“I’m good at missions!” Amal said.

“I know,” Anders took off his cap to fix the tangled braids beneath it. “Tomorrow, you’re going to meet a lot of mages. Humans and elves who’ve never been outside the Circle. It’s like growing up inside a prison. They don’t know what life is like out here. I need you to show them that anyone can start over somewhere new, even if it’s scary.”

“I was never scared o’ nothing!” Amal huffed.

“They will be,” Anders said. “Be brave for them, okay?”

“Do I have to show ‘em how to cook?” Amal frowned.

“You’re going to have to show them a lot of things,” Anders put his cap back on. “Do you know where Selby is?”

“I ain’t her keeper!” Amal sniffed hard at the air, and ran back to the kitchens. “My shit’s burning!”

“Stop saying shit!” Anders’ voice rasped, calling after him.

Anders went to search for Selby, and passed Nate in his bunk.

“... are you reading my manifesto?” Anders stopped to ask after the familiar looking leaflet.

“I thought perhaps once more,” Nate struggled with his leg, sitting up to make space for him. Anders sat down next to him. “You know, I’d never heard of Neriah’s sacrifice during the Second Blight? History seems quick to forget its mages.”

“And fast to punish them,” Anders said. “... Aren’t you going to tell me I don’t have to do this?”

“Don’t you?” Nate asked.

“Yes,” Anders said.

“Then I won’t tell you otherwise,” Nate said.

“I’m surprised you’re not praying,” Anders admitted.

Nate knew about the Chantry. He was one of the few people who did, and despite his devotion to it, when Anders had told him what he’d planned, Nate had nodded in agreement.

“Evil creeps into my prayers unbidden,” Nate sighed, thumbing the worn edge of his manifesto. “When I was a boy, I used to think the Maker heard every word. Now, I think perhaps we have to make Him listen. I believe in you, old friend. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

Anders found Selby a few hours before midnight, and begged her help to send a letter he never thought he'd have to write.


Love,

I hope this is not the last you hear from me, but if it is, I want you to know that I love you. For six years, you’ve stood by me when I gave you every reason to turn away. Just remember, whatever happens, I wanted you to know that. You are and always will be the most important thing in my life, but some things matter more than my life, more than either of us, and I cannot turn away from them.

When you hear about what happened here, please know I did it with the best intentions. I took a spirit into my soul and changed myself forever to achieve what I set out to do now. This was never about proving a point or taking a stand, it was about changing a world. This is the justice all mages have awaited. Justice and I cannot ignore the injustice of the Circle - and all that you and I and all the mages like us have suffered at the hands of templars.

The people fear what we can do, but to use that fear to bludgeon us into submission is wrong, and if it was always meant to be a quick death now or a slow one later, then I hope you know that I died fighting. I wish it could have been by your side. I wish I could have stayed with you. I wish I could come back to you, but if by some miracle I survive this, then we both know I’ll be a fugitive forever.

No one in Thedas will offer me mercy, and it will take years of open warfare before mages can be safe, and you and I and Kieran can be safe with them. I’m doing this for all of us and all the families out there like us, and I know that even if we cannot be one now or ever, that you will join me in this fight in whatever way you can. I wish it could be side-by-side, but I know that you and I will always fight for a world where our children can be mages and be free.

Please don’t hate me for what happens and please don’t blame yourself. All I want for you is to live a long and happy life, and if I die, and that long and happy life is with someone else, then go to it with my blessing. I swore I would never take your ring off and I meant it, and if that means you feel my death, then I pray that you’ll forgive me, and know that every day I felt yours until you came back to me.

I wish I could promise I’ll come back to you. I promise that I love you. I promise that I love our son. I promise that I always will. I promise that there is no time and no distance that could take that love away from you. I promise that you are always in my thoughts. I promise you are always in my heart for as long as it still beats.

Please don’t despair for me, my love. This is what I was born to do.

Yours always,
A

Chapter 211: All Souls Burn

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 1 Martinalis Early Morning - All Soul’s Day
Kirkwall Hightown

Anders tried to count them.

The Grand Cleric. The Mothers. The Sisters. The Lay Brothers. The Warriors of Conscience. The people. The Chantry towered above the Hightown estates, a dozen stories of gold and glittering marble, and housed over a hundred of the Maker’s faithful. The sunrise came in from the east, red overtaking white, like lyrium or blood, and the pious came with it to pray.

Anders hoped the Maker heard them.

He sat in the shadows, atop the bridgeway that stretched over the stairs leading up to the Viscount’s Keep, overlooking its courtyard and the red statues that filled it. Hawke was everywhere, and not just in the lyrium. The banners, the pennants, the decorations - all of them had been redesigned to replace the symbol of a dragon with the symbol of a hawk. Anders remembered it meaning something, once upon a time.

He remembered Hawke meaning something, once upon a time. He remembered Hawke meaning everything, once upon a time. He’d felt love for him and hate for him and nothing for him, now, at the end of it all, as Hawke and all his horrors descended the stairs of the Viscount’s Keep with the Red Mother he used to replace the one he’d lost.

Petrice was dressed like the Divine, chains weighing down her robes and dragging on the ground like a procession of slaves marching through the City of Chains. Nobles gathered in the courtyard and guardsmen along with them, waiting for his signal or her speech. A raised pulpit was set before them all, one Petrice ascended at Hawke’s side. A hush fell upon the crowd as she addressed them.

“A spectre is haunting this city,” Petrice called to everyone assembled, her voice carrying on the wind without a mage’s magic to amplify it far beyond her person. “The spectre of the Divine. She is in the armies just beyond these walls, waiting for the opportunity to come and take the power the Maker Himself has granted to the good people of Kirkwall.

“I know you expect me to speak to those lost to what the Divine would deem a plague, but I say to you that they are portents of the Maker’s return. As is in Exaltations, men of stone” -Petrice swept her hand over the lyrium breaking through Hawke’s face- “rose up from the earth like sleepers waking at the dawn, crossing the land, and in the hollows of their footprints, paradise was stamped, indelible.”

Petrice descended the pulpit to walk among the statues littering the courtyard, “Is this not paradise?”

“This is heresy,” A procession of red templars cleared a path through the nobles, and Meredith strode forward to meet Petrice in the middle of them. “Return to your homes and hear no more of it.”

“They will not!” Petrice said, and true to her words none of them did. Hawke took a place at her side, a Red Hound at his nudging him when Petrice signed and said. “They are here to see the Maker’s glory, where you exist to suppress it. Red lyrium is His gift, magic is His blessing-”

“Do not speak to me of magic,” Meredith cut her off. “I have brought it with me, as I always do,” Meredith raised a hand encrusted in red lyrium, and Beth stepped out of the group of templars to take a place at her side, wearing the robes of the First Enchanter and carrying Orsino’s staff. “I am its keeper.”

“Magic needs no keeper,” Petrice said. “It is a gift from the Maker, and you would keep His blessing from the people.”

“I am here to protect the people,” Meredith said. “Magic is a cancer in the heart of our land, just as it was in the time of Andraste, and like her we are left with no choice but to purify it with fire and blood. We templars must be judges, jailors, and even executioners-”

“You won’t be hers,” Hawke finally spoke when Petrice finished translating. Hawke signed, “Beth, come here.”

“No,” Beth signed.

“An executioner is exactly what you are,” Petrice said loudly, pacing the perimeter of nobles around them. “You are working with the Divine to take away the gifts granted to us by the Maker, calling for an Exalted March against the good people of Kirkwall, and now those good people must enter into a holy alliance to exorcise you from this city.”

“I see now why the Grand Cleric called me to deal with all of you,” Meredith drew her greatsword from off her back, and the assembled nobles retreated several yards to give her wide berth. “Blood magic runs deep in this city. You’re all weak! Allowing the mages to control your minds, to turn you against the Maker’s most humble servants and take up with this heresy.”

Anders took one last look at the Chantry, as the rising sun painted the marble red, and couldn’t help but think of all the time he’d spent in them. Not in Kirkwall, but in Kinloch, praying in the chapel for some sort of solace or assurance that the Maker meant for him to have his magic, that it was His blessing and not His curse, and finding what comfort he could in the Canticle of Trials when the Circle put him through so many, and didn’t think he’d ever be able to set foot in one again.

Anders flew from the bridgeway and landed in the center of the courtyard to a chorus of screams he knew he deserved. Anders amplified his voice to ensure everyone could hear him, “The Grand Cleric did not call you!”

“Explain yourself, mage,” Meredith leveled her sword at his chest, but it was only steel and couldn’t hurt him, for he was not of mortal men.

“I am a mage!” Anders felt the Veil thin with the first sacrifice beneath the city, and felt the Fade flow through him and into the glyph he cast as he spoke to everyone assembled. “I am one of many who spent their life imprisoned over an accident of birth, and I will not stand by and watch you treat all mages like criminals, forever persecuted for being what we are, the mere act of defending ourselves confirmation of our guilt!

“The Circle has failed us. It is an injustice - in many places beyond Kirkwall - and the Divine’s armies are outside the walls because the Chantry fears the world will finally see the truth. The time has come to act. There can be no more half-measures. There can be no turning back. There can be no peace.”

The city shuddered - and ran red. Intersections, back alleys, and boulevards glowed as the glyph alit, draining the entirety of his mana into the outlines and patterns that connected the glyph beneath Kirkwall to the glyphs carved into the explosives in the Chantry. The Fade swelled and the Veil thinned, like samite stretched across the whole of the city as it held its breath.

Composure in the courtyard crumbled. Everyone looked as if held hostage to the moment, tense and trembling for fear of some uncertain future as the Fade pressed in around them, the excited whispers of wisps echoing with the voices of generations, slave upon slave crying out for the justice the City of Chains had denied them, and the sky burned when he gave it to them.

The light of the explosion was so bright it darkened the skies. Lyrium burned through metal, through marble, magic upon magic carving great lines through the House of the Maker, and shattering it with the heat of the blast. The skies were a river of Light, and the force of it seemed to shake the very foundations of Heaven and earth.

Debris, death, and ash, still hot from the fire, swept across the city like a terrible hand in rage, and Kirkwall burned. The Veil tore. All around the courtyard echoed a vast Silence, and in it, Anders wept, exultant, and pressed a kiss to Karl’s ring.

“Anders,” Hawke stared at the empty space on the horizon where Kirkwall’s Chantry had once stood, casting its long shadow all the way down to the docks and the Gallows beyond, replaced with the emerald light of the Fade Tear in the aftermath of the explosion. “What have you done?”

Faces turned towards the sky, cheeks running with ash and tears as realization set in slowly for the crowd. They hugged each other, or crumpled to their knees, or ran screaming from the courtyard. They saw destruction, where he saw change, and none of them shared in his elation.

Not even Beth, who stumbled blindly over to him, “Why?” Beth choked out. “Why would you-... How could you-...”

“I removed the chance of compromise, because there is no compromise,” Anders spared her a smile she didn’t share with him.

Anders sat at the base of the pulpit, leaning back against the flames carved into the woodwork, and watched as real embers burned across the sky like falling stars, plunging from the height of heaven. In a way, it was almost beautiful, and it was nice to think it might be the last thing he ever saw.

“The Grand Cleric has been slain by magic. The Chantry destroyed,” Meredith recovered first, and there was no ecstasy humankind could feel to match what Anders felt when she did exactly what they’d planned, and blamed every mage except the one who took it, so eager to excuse the inexcusable. “As Knight Commander of Kirkwall, I hereby invoke the Right of Annulment. Every mage in the Circle is to be executed - immediately!”

“The Circle didn’t even do this!” Beth said for him, for everyone around them, for the Arenburgs, the Reinhardts, the de Carracs, the Cavins, the Harimanns, the de Launcets, noble house after noble house with ties across the whole of Thedas, who would hear about what happened here long after Anders was gone. “Knight Commander-”

“It does not matter,” Meredith said. “Even if I wished to, I could not stay my hand. The people will demand retribution and I will give it to them.”

“You can’t do this!” Beth banged Orsino’s staff against the ground, a three headed dragon that crackled with lightning that went sparking off into the sky and regained the crowd’s attention. “You can’t kill us all for an act we didn’t commit!”

“I refuse to believe that one man was capable of committing such an atrocity alone,” Meredith said without even looking at him. “You are all complicit. Either I annul the Circle or the citizens of Kirkwall will riot and murder the mages themselves. What I do now keeps casualties to a minimum.”

“The Viscount speaks for the people of Kirkwall,” Petrice said. “They will do as ordered.”

Everyone looked to Hawke, but Hawke was just looking at him. Hawke was always looking at him. Once upon a time, Anders had been the only person Hawke could stand to look at. “... why?” Hawke signed.

“It must be torn down,” Anders signed.

“Like this?” Hawke signed.

“Like this,” Anders signed.

“Garrett,” Beth grabbed Hawke’s face, and forced him to look at her and her hands, her staff propped up against her shoulder so she could sign freely. “Garrett, focus. Look at me. You can’t let her do this to us.”

“I will do nothing to you,” Meredith called. Hawke’s hound drew his focus to her, and then Petrice when she translated her words for him. “I will do nothing to you, or your sister, or even this murderer. You are the Viscount. Justice is yours to deliver as you see fit. All that I ask is you stay out of my way while I keep order. After what just occurred, you cannot deny what must be done.”

“Brother,” Beth signed in place of any variation of her signs for Hawke’s name. “Brother - look at me - stop her. I know you can stop her.” Beth waved a hand at the red statues littering the courtyard. “Stop her for me. Stop her for us. Please. Brother, I am begging you, if there is any part of you still in there, do something. You know the mages don’t deserve this. You know we didn’t do this.”

“I did,” Anders said. “Have him kill me. The sooner I die, the sooner my name lives on to inspire generations.”

Beth spared him a pained glance, and went back to signing to Hawke, “Please do something.”

“Enough of this,” Meredith circled a hand in the air for her soldiers. “Men, move out.”

Hawke pushed Beth aside to follow her, “You’re not going anywhere.”

Hawke raised a hand, the lyrium in his blood flaring a bright and vibrant red all along his arm, and was abruptly extinguished when Meredith turned. He hit his knees, and all the Red Irons hit theirs with him. “You do not command me,” Meredith hissed. “I am the Maker’s servant.” Meredith looked at Petrice. “Sign it for him.”

Petrice looked between the two of them, and shakily signed the words while the assembled nobles retreated even further, pressing themselves up against the walls of the courtyard in their efforts to escape the scene unfolding before them. Meredith forced Hawke and all his men to kneel, red lyrium pulsing through her veins and controlling the red lyrium in theirs, like blood magic.

“Idiot boy,” Meredith scoffed, the tip of her greatsword sparking as she dragged it along the cobblestone. “You think you are the only one with any command over red lyrium? It is the very substance of creation itself, from whence the Maker fashioned the world, and we templars are the only ones with the physical and mental fortitude to enact His will. You are no templar. You are nothing.

“Let me tell you what is about to happen. My templars and I have the unenviable task of entering the Gallows and eliminating every mage we find within. The magic within them is a plague that if left unchecked will spread and fester. We will do what we must, and the Maker can have mercy on their souls when we send them to his side.

“This is not the first time the Right of Annulment has ever been invoked, nor shall it be the last,” Meredith turned to one of her men. “Send word to the armies outside the city. Tell them it is time to March. We will cleanse this city of evil, and then we will do as others have done before us: start again. Kirkwall will be rebuilt, stronger than before, and the mages will know fear. This has been a long time coming, and I am eager to begin.”

Meredith turned on her heel, and left the courtyard with all her templars. Whatever command she had over the red lyrium lingered, and Hawke and all his men stayed kneeling long after she was gone. The guardsmen hastily started evacuating all the nobles, panicking over the sudden realization that they were all about to suffer an Exalted March.

“Just give them the mage,” One of the nobles called, fighting against the flow of evacuees. “Give them the mage who did this and stop the March!”

“We have to get out of here!”

“Give them the mage!”

“Oh, Maker, we’re all going to die!”

“Blessed be the souls of the faithful, that they ascend to your right hand-”

“Magic is a curse-!”

“What’s wrong with the sky? Maker, have mercy, what’s wrong with the sky?”

“Maker, our enemies are abundant-”

“Why is this happening?”

“Someone stop the Knight Commander! My son is in the Circle!”

“Elthina deserved to die!”

“Get out of my way-”

“Red Mother, help us!”

“Lord Viscount, do something!”

Petrice helped Hawke up to his feet as Meredith’s hold on him faded, and she signed, “They’re calling for the mage’s death.”

Most of the nobles fled the courtyard as the guardsmen urged them to evacuate, but several of them remained, surging against the line of Red Irons that moved to protectively encircle the pulpit. Hawke looked caught between livid and lost, taking in the crowd fighting to reach him, and signed, “Tell them to shut up.”

“By order of the Viscount, be silent!” Petrice yelled.

Hawke picked up Anders’ staff, discarded at his feet, and knelt beside him at the pulpit, his red hound hovering behind him. “Kept this for you,” Hawke signed, and handed it to him.

“... Thanks,” Anders signed. “Hawke, do you have any idea what’s happening right now?”

“Not an idiot,” Hawke signed.

“That’s not a yes,” Anders signed, and drew his knife off his belt. “Hawke, give me your arm.”

Hawke held out his arm without even questioning him. Anders rolled his sleeve up and slit his wrist, cleansing what he could of the lyrium in his blood until some of the red faded from his eyes. “What are you doing?” Hawke asked.

“What I can,” Anders signed. “Hawke, I need you to kill me, and I need everyone to see you do it.”

“I could never kill you, Anders,” Hawke reached out to twist a lock of hair around his finger, like he hadn’t seen him before this moment, and he’d only just realized Anders had dyed it. “Never.”

“You swore you would,” Anders signed. “You swore on Carver’s grave.”

“I swore if you were Tranquil,” Hawke remembered, because Hawke could remember, as long as the red lyrium was flowing out of him. “You’re not.”

“I will be if you don’t kill me,” Anders signed. “Hawke, I killed the Grand Cleric. The world has to make an example of me.”

“I don’t,” Hawke signed. “You said-... fuck, I can’t remember. The Annulment-... The Grand Cleric knew about it, didn’t she?”

“She did,” Anders signed. “You have to kill me anyway.”

“No,” Hawke signed.

“You owe me this,” Anders signed. “Hawke, you tortured me.”

“No, I-...” Hawke stopped. “... I did, didn’t I?” Hawke’s hand fell from his hair to squeeze his shoulder, his expression as ashen as the skies, a pained look on his face while he struggled to maintain eye contact with him. “I did.”

“Kill me,” Anders set his hand over the one on his shoulder, feeling his temperature drop down to something almost human, almost Hawke. “Kill me, and I’ll forgive you.”

Hawke looked almost apologetic, “I can’t.”

“Hawke, look at them,” Anders gestured towards the crowd outside the ring of Red Irons. “They aren’t just going to let me live.”

Hawke looked at him instead. His eyes were clear, but even if Hawke was Hawke again, all Anders saw in them was Amell, and the eyes Anders had taken from him before he’d wasted them on Hawke. “Will you forgive me if I don't kill you?”

“No,” Anders signed.

Hawke took in the crowd, and seemed to come to a conclusion. He stood, severing the cleansing spell between them. “You want to be Andraste, then go fight like her before you die like her," Hawke waved for him to go, unable to look him in the eyes. "I’m not Hessarian. I was never here to save you.” To the nobles, he said, “You want to stop the Exalted March, go stop it. Send your soldiers to the gates.”

“The mage-” One of the nobles protested.

“-is mine,” Hawke cut them off, a shard of red lyrium manifesting in his hand. “Leave. Now.”

The nobles fled, and a short order from Hawke to one of his Red Irons had them leaving with them. The courtyard emptied, and the only people who remained were Anders, Beth, Petrice, and Hawke and his hound. Anders shouldn't have remained at all. He was supposed to be dead. Hawke was supposed to kill him. The world was supposed to see it happen.

He was supposed to be a martyr, and now he was just a-

“Murderer!” Beth hissed at him, pacing in such short bursts she was almost spinning in circles. “I ask you not to destroy the Circle so you destroy the entire Chantry!? There were a hundred people in there, Anders! Their blood is on your hands!”

“I know,” Anders signed, watching the ashes of the Chantry rain down around him.

“How could you do this?” Beth asked.

“There’s nothing you can say that I haven’t already said to myself,” Anders signed.

“This isn’t what we planned,” Beth said. “We were just supposed to escape the Circle, destroy a few walls-”

“And then what?” Anders demanded, refusing to waiver in his resolve. “More templars will come with even larger armies. Every mage in Kirkwall is an apostate now. Their only hope lies in Circles elsewhere in Thedas, rising up with us to stand against injustice-”

“Injustice?” Beth laughed, dragging a hand through her hair, the static on her hands making the raven strands spark in all directions. “You want to talk about injustice now? I should have known you’d do something like this. You think you can just decide the fate of every mage in Thedas-”

“It was already decided,” Anders shouldn’t have to remind her if he didn’t have to remind her brother. “A quick death now or a slow one later. You wouldn’t rather die fighting?”

“I can’t even look at you right now. I have to get back to the Circle and help Cullen. Garrett-...” Beth turned back to Hawke, and for a moment she looked like she was mourning him and not the masses. “... are you here?”

“Think so,” Hawke signed.

“You have to stop the armies from invading,” Beth signed. “You have to give us time to get the mages out.”

“You shouldn’t be fighting-” Hawke started.

“Well I am,” Beth cut him off, leaning her staff on her shoulder to sign angrily with both hands. “You don’t decide anything for me any more, Garrett. I’m Kirkwall’s First Enchanter, and those mages are my responsibility now, and we have to get them somewhere safe, not that anywhere will be safe for us now thanks to you,” Beth shot Anders a glare.

“They can go to Ferelden,” Anders said. “Their Circles aren’t beholden to the Chantry. Amaranthine will offer them asylum.”

“This isn’t just one mage, Anders,” Beth signed. “This is thousands.”

“This is war,” Anders signed. “And we’re going to win it.”

For all Anders might have volunteered to be a sacrifice, he would have had to do it anyway, when no other mage had the strength to cast the spell. It took all of his mana to activate the glyph beneath the city, and there was none left for him to transform so he could hasten to the fight and use whatever blood was spilled in it. He had to run down to the docks, and Beth and Hawke and his hound ran down with him.

Anders hardly even noticed him, even with Hawke running at his side, the call from his tainted blood almost inconsequential when it was so much weaker than a warden’s. The whole city was overgrown with red lyrium and damaged with debris. People were running through the streets, putting out fires, boarding up homes, fleeing from the advancing armies or running to face them. The chains had been lowered by the time they reached the docks, the fog rolling in with the ships it blanketed.

Meredith had set fire to the ferries to keep anyone from following. They’d burned beyond repair by the time they arrived, save for the dinghy they’d hidden in the ruins of the packaging house. Hawke dragged it down to the harbor for them, and the four of them sailed silently across the channel, watching the Gallows grow. The fortress was burning, stone crumbling away into the sea as explosions went off, mages fighting to reach the two ships that had already docked for them.

“Anders,” Hawke broke the silence, and Anders glanced back at where he was managing the sail. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t look to me for absolution,” Anders signed. “I was never here to save you either.”

They disembarked at the Gallows’ docks, between the two ships from the Felicisima Armada, and found a wall of red lyrium blocking the entrance to the courtyard. Pirates were taking to it with swords and axes, and making next to no progress. There was even an apostate or two among them, throwing fireball after ineffectual fireball at the wall.

“Sparky!” Isabela waved her captain’s hat at him, fighting through her crew to reach him. “We have a problem.”

“Just one?” Anders climbed onto the docks and clasped her arm when she offered it to him.

“We were so concerned with getting out of a Circle we didn’t come up with a plan to get into one,” Isabela joked, glancing over his shoulder when Beth, Hawke and his hound all disembarked with him. Isabela drew her rapier, and shoved him behind her. “Hawke, you bloody bastard-”

“He’s here to help,” Beth said quickly, moving between them.

“The day Hawke helps anyone is the day Varric shaves his chest,” Isabela scoffed. “Let me guess, crushing the rebels, are we? How dare they wish for freedom?”

“He’s really here to help,” Anders pushed on Isabela’s arm to lower her sword, but she kept it stubbornly level.

“Help?” Isabela hissed. “I know exactly what happens when someone comes to Hawke for help. The last time I came to him for help, he shot me. He hunted me down like a dog in the street. He enslaved Fenris for trying to save you from him when he locked you up and tortured you-!”

“We have more important things to worry about than Hawke right now,” Anders said, and signed, “Hawke, can you do anything about the wall?”

“Try,” Hawke signed, and pushed through the pirates gathered around it with his hound on his heels.

“You’re explaining this to Fenris,” Isabela muttered, sheathing her rapier.

“Where is he?” Anders asked.

“In there somewhere,” Isabela waved at the fortress.

Hawke stood in front of the wall and set a single hand to it. The lyrium pulsed, great veins growing through the mass of red, and swelling larger and larger until they burst, scattering lyrium shards in all directions, and clearing the way to the courtyard, where so many mages had already died trying to make it past the templars to the docks.

Dozens of mages burned from the inside out by the strength of the red templars’ smites, or sliced open by their swords. Men, women, and children who must have been running for the ships when the walls came down until Meredith brought them back up. Their bodies spilled down the stairs, some of them facing forward to make it clear they’d been fighting, but so many more were facing away, to make it clear they’d been fleeing.

The templars had butchered them. Arrows sprouted like wings from the back of one mage. Daggers were buried in the spine of another. So many more were cut to pieces or buried beneath red lyrium. There was a joy in every kill. None of them were clean. None of them were merciful. All of them were bloody.

The stomach of one poor girl had been sliced open, blood and intestines waterfalling down her robes, her hands still buried in them like she’d died trying to push them back inside. She must have been a healer, because she’d almost managed. Her intestines were warped and fused to her skin around the gaping wound, like she’d been turned half inside-out.

Another man had been shoved face first onto the spiked railings, the point buried in his jaw and pinning him in place. Whatever kind of mage he was, he was still alive, gurgling on the blood that pooled and poured from his open mouth. His magic manifested in wild bursts around him, fire, lightning, ice, everything but what he needed to free himself from off the spike.

It would have been a mercy to kill him, but Anders couldn’t reach him. Scores of templars had gathered in the courtyard, and looked to be facing off against each other. Cullen stood at the forefront of one group and Meredith at the forefront of the other, and it was clear which of them was winning.

“Meredith!” Hawke roared.

“Viscount,” Meredith turned, and as the pirates rushed into the courtyard, the scattered shards of red lyrium swept up from the ground and swallowed them.

“Stay back!” Anders grabbed Isabela and wrenched her back as one of her crewmates stepped on a shard of red. It burst up through his foot, and consumed his entire leg before he even thought to dodge, his leg shattering in two when he threw himself backwards.

“How rude of me,” Meredith held up a hand, and the red lyrium stopped spreading. Hawke stepped through it, unconcerned, and a few of the red templars shuffled nervously away from him. “I’ve left you no one to translate.” Meredith looked past him to Beth, “First Enchanter, translate for the Viscount, if you could.”

Beth couldn’t translate. Beth could barely walk. Anders and Isabela ran to join Hawke in the courtyard, while Beth stumbled through the threshold, staring at the bodies. “You fucking bitch,” Beth snapped, a blast of force magic scattering dust and blood, hitting Meredith like the lightest breeze, barely blowing back her hair.

“Idiot girl,” Meredith said, red lyrium sweeping up her arm. “Just like all the others-”

“No!” Anders shoved Beth back in time to take the smite, and the courtyard fell to chaos.

Red lyrium burned through what little mana he’d managed to regenerate in the time it had taken them to reach the Gallows, burning him from the inside out, like his heart pumped glass in place of blood. Anders crumpled, and Beth caught him, creationism battling back the burns as best she could without a spirit to amplify her magic and him without the mana to call on his.

Hawke went feral, shards of red not manifesting but ripping from his veins. They grew into daggers between his fingers in the time it took him to make the motion to throw them across the courtyard, but rather than bury themselves in Meredith’s flesh they buried themselves in her armor, latching onto the lyrium already growing from her chest and strengthening it.

Meredith looked unimpressed, stalking across the courtyard and letting her sword tip drag across the ground, “Kneel,” she ordered, and Hawke hit the ground.

“Enough!” Cullen intercepted her, shield raised in defense of all three of them, his smaller group of templars clustered around them. “You go too far. This is not what the Order stands for! Knight Commander, step down, I relieve you of your command!”

Meredith staggered back like he’d actually wounded her, “My own Knight Captain falls prey to the influence of blood magic,” Meredith rightly guessed. “Why would you defend these mages? They are an infection upon all humanity!”

”If we harm these mages, we lose ours,” Cullen argued under the influence of Amell’s magic.

“I will not allow insubordination,” Meredith stretched a glowing hand towards him. “We must stay true to our path. Kneel.”

Cullen didn’t.

Meredith made the same gesture, once, twice, but whatever she was trying to do didn’t have any effect on the Knight Captain. “What is this witchcraft?” Meredith demanded.

“You don’t command me,” Cullen said, firmly planted in front of her. “I stopped taking lyrium months ago. Step down.”

“I will not!” Meredith raved. “I tried to have sympathy! Maker knows, I’ve tried! But how can we allow them their lives when so many would use them to commit atrocities? They control minds, they become abominations, they began the Blight itself! And now Elthina. Oh, poor Elthina. I will avenge her, and you will not stop me!”

“This is not vengeance,” Cullen said.

Meredith didn’t even seem to hear him, “You are no mage, but in supporting them, you have elected to share their fate. You may not be taking lyrium, but what of your men, I wonder?” Meredith glowed such a bright red it was almost white, and yelled, “Kneel! All of you!”

They all knelt. Every last soldier under Cullen’s command collapsed at her order, the red lyrium in their blood dragging them down to their knees. “Blessed are those who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter,” Meredith smirked. “Men, kill them all.”

The red templars advanced, swords drawn for more slaughter, for more death, for more injustice. Anders used his staff to drag himself up from his knees to his feet, and the blood of the dead swept across the courtyard like a great flood into a great maelstrom around him.

“Blood mage!” Meredith cried out, and the sky split as templar after templar called on the lyrium in their blood to burn through the magic in his. They were legion, but the flames felt almost cleansing, forging him anew in the absence of his mana, in the absence of weakness and of limitation, of caution and of mercy, the taste of blood filling his mouth as the spell formed, and was unleashed. “Maleficar!”

“Accursed one,” Anders finished for her.

Blood. Corroding the red templars from the inside out, freezing them in place, burning in their veins, pouring from their ears, their mouths, their eyes, melting them in their sockets and sending them cascading down their screaming faces as he boiled them alive. Meredith rushed him, screaming, bleeding, melting, red lyrium surging through her veins to save her from the corrosion eating through her blood and turning her to stone before she reached him.

They cleared the Gallows of the last of Meredith’s men, and got all the children onto ships that set out for Ferelden. The rest of the mages, they ferried across the channel to a city under siege. Fires dotted the horizon, smoke blackened the skies, and the Tear in the Veil cast an emerald light on the war raging through the streets.

The Exalted March had started. The armies were pouring through the gates and Hawke and all his horrors rushed to meet them. Anders, Beth, and Cullen stayed at the docks while all the mages crossed, and to his shock Kirkwall’s elves showed up to help them with Merrill among them.

“Anders,” Merrill grabbed his hand, and dragged him from the docks and through the city. “Thank the Creators I found you! We have to get you out of here. They’re saying you destroyed the Chantry - I don’t care if you did - but the armies are out there killing anyone who looks like you.”

Anders hadn’t meant to run, but he was too exhausted to fight back with Merrill pulling him along, and before he could process where he was, Merrill had dragged him to her house. She pushed him into her backroom, and left him staring at a stranger: he stood tall, if tired, shoulders back, chin up, defiance in his every feature. Like he could walk into the Black City and paint it gold. Like no man or mage could match him.

It was just him. His reflection. The man that he’d become, and as Merrill set her hand upon the mirror, that man faded, and a new path appeared. One through her eluvian, that led back home, back to Amell, and the life and love that he deserved.

“You’ve done enough. You don’t have to do it all. You can go home,” Merrill promised. “You can be free.”

Anders set his hand against the mirror, and watched the magic ripple at his touch, his eyes drifting to the rosewood on his finger. He thought of Amell. He thought of Anders. He thought of the two of them together. He took a step towards the mirror. Behind him, people were screaming, fighting, dying. Was he really that much of a bastard to just leave?

Yes, Anders thought, but for some reason he turned around, and decided to help.

Notes:

This marks the end of the DA2 arc of Accursed Ones. The story continues immediately, but if you are looking for more content, you can join the Accursed Ones discord here if you would like to come talk about the story, listen to the playlist with a song for every chapter if you feel like rereading here, look at the fanart on the fanblog here, or check out the side-content for Accursed Ones in the series if it interests you.

Your support and feedback has kept this story going for the past six years, and I sincerely hope you've enjoyed everything thus far and continue to to enjoy where we're going. As always, thank you so much for reading.

Chapter 212: From Kirkwall We Fled

Summary:

Those who had been slaves were now free.

- Shartan 10:1

Notes:

Hello everyone! Welcome back.

Thank you for your feedback on whether we should continue as one epic or a sequel. We are going with the winning vote, and thus the story continues. Thank you so much for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading.

This arc is called 'From Kirkwall We Fled.' It will span the Mage Templar War in the Free Marches from over the next three years.

As always, this story ends with Anders alive and well.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 1 Martinalis Late Afternoon - All Soul’s Day
Kirkwall Lowtown

Kirkwall burned.

The armies of Starkhaven, Ostwick, and Tantervale had launched an Exalted Marched on the City of Chains at the behest of Divine Justinia V, in response to reports of maleficarum in the city and the belief that the Free Marches were fast on their way to becoming another Tevinter Imperium. That, and the Red Plague that ravaged Kirkwall’s streets, turning its citizens into walking horrors.

Red lyrium, discovered in the Valdasine Thaig, had spread throughout Kirkwall thanks to House Cadash and the Carta, who mined it for everyone from the Knight Commander to Garrett Florian Hawke, the Mad Viscount of Kirkwall and the worst thing to ever happen to Anders outside the Circle. The Mad Viscount was addicted to red lyrium, and he’d gotten the city addicted to it along with him.

The death of Hawke’s mother at the hands of a blood mage had driven him to start taking lyrium years ago, and somewhere along the way that lyrium had gone from blue to red, and made Hawke paranoid, possessive, aggressive, abusive…

Things Hawke had always been, but the lyrium had made him worse, and Anders had been too blind to see it. He’d just seen Amell - Hawke’s cousin, the Hero, Chancellor, and Commander of Ferelden, and the love of his life. Anders had thought he’d lost him, when Amell had gone to an early Calling, after his father - the same man who later killed Hawke’s mother - had blinded him.

Quentin Amell had butchered his own family, carving them into pieces trying to resurrect his dead wife, and the horror of it all had driven Hawke to lyrium and Amell close to suicide. Amell had left for his Calling, and everything had fallen apart without him. Anders had deserted the Grey Wardens after joining with Justice at the Battle of Amaranthine and fled to Kirkwall, where he’d met Hawke.

Hawke had looked so much like him, but the two men couldn’t have been more different. Hawke was a templar. Amell was a maleficar. Hawke was deaf. Amell was blind. They didn’t even look the same anymore. Amell had made a deal with a Forbidden One to replace his eyes. Hawke had started growing red lyrium crystals out of every scar on his body.

Normal things.

Hawke finally looked the part of the monster he’d become. In the years he and Anders had spent together, Hawke had imprisoned him, beaten him, raped him, poisoned him with magebane in a desperate bid to separate him from Justice, and all of Anders’ supposed friends had either helped or looked the other way. Everyone except for Isabela, who Hawke had given to the Arishok, and Fenris, who’d risked his freedom to give Anders back his own.

Anders had fled back to Ferelden, to Amaranthine, to Amell and the Grey Wardens. His real friends and family and the people he’d planned to spend the rest of his life with, right up until he’d learned that Knight Commander Meredith had sent for the Right of Annulment. Anders had given up everything to save the Circle and destroy the Chantry, so the world would finally see it for what it was: an oppressive institution responsible for the systematic enslavement of an entire peoples, built on fear of an empire that had long since crumbled, whose templar jailors were beyond its control.

It had to be torn down.

The remnants of Kirkwall’s Chantry fell all around, like motes of dust, catching fire throughout Lowtown as the invading armies battled with the Red Irons, a mercenary company mutated by red lyrium, and the city’s last hope for survival. Anders had cleansed what he could of the red lyrium in Hawke’s blood, and without its hold on him, Hawke finally stopped trying to destroy the city and started trying to defend it.

It still seemed hopeless. The armies weren’t just invading; there was a tear in the Veil from when Anders had utilized the ancient glyphs beneath Kirkwall to destroy its Chantry. Flashes of emerald snapped across the sky like lightning, marking the crossing of demons in the city. Merrill had offered him an out from all of it: passage through her eluvian back to Vigil’s Keep, but Anders couldn’t take it, no matter how much he may have wanted. He had to do what he could to help the mages now that he’d finally freed them.

The Felicisima Armada had already set sail for Ferelden and the asylum the country offered through a combination of his and Amell’s efforts. Amell had asked for autonomy for Ferelden’s Circles in exchange for his efforts in stopping the Fifth Blight, and Anders’ manifesto had finally convinced King Alistair and Queen Anora to give it. Ferelden’s Circles were beholden to the Crown, and not the Chantry, and it was the closest thing to freedom for a mage outside Tevinter.

The ships carried as many children from the Gallows as they could, and the mages who remained only had so many ways to escape the city. Nathaniel planned to lead them through the Retreat to Chateau Haine, and from there they could escape into Nevarra. Charade and the Red Jennies planned to lead them into the Vimmark Mountain caves, and out into the Wildervale. Varric and his spy network planned to lead them around the invading armies and down the Wounded Coast.

Anders had just planned to die. His victims deserved justice too, but as the Exalted March swept through the city, it was clear they’d never get it. The armies weren’t there to kill one mage - they were there to kill them all. Anders hadn’t just torn the Veil, he’d pulled it back so all the world would finally see the truth. Anders watched the sky burn outside the alienage with Merrill, and felt the embers like a cleansing rain.

“What do we do now?” Merrill asked.

“I have to make sure the mages make it out,” Anders signed. “I don’t care what you do.”

“I want to help,” Vines and bark grew around Merrill’s arm, through the hole Amell had left in her palm protecting him from her, and shaped themselves into a staff. “Tell me how.”

“Now you want to listen to me?” Anders signed.

“Do you want to fight with me or do you want to help your people?” Merrill shot back.

“Fine,” Anders didn’t have time to deal with her. “I’m going back to the docks to make sure everyone made it out, and then I’m going to see which routes need help. Come with me or don’t, just don’t get in my way.”

Anders still didn’t have the mana to transform into a crow. He was surrounded by lyrium, and he couldn’t use any of it. Sandstone streets were cracked and pulsing with red lyrium, ash and embers floating more than falling from the sky, and all around them: people. Panicked, desperate, people who had no idea what was happening when so much happened all at once.

The docks were in a scramble. There were only so many ferries, and the mages were so desperate to escape the Right of Annulment they weren’t waiting for them to dock, diving off the ferries as soon as they were in sight of the docks and swimming to the piers. The fortress burned in the distance, so overwhelmed with red lyrium it was like a second sun on the horizon.

There were a handful of templars among them - Cullen’s men - who for the most part seemed to be waiting for his orders, watching with some discomfort as Red Jennies ran back and forth along the docks, gathering up small groups of mages and seeing them off to freedom. Beth and Cullen were still there, talking with a small group of mages and templars, and Anders made his way towards them when someone grabbed his wrist.

“There you are, you son of a bitch!” Varric whirled him around, and startled everyone around them into backing up. “What in the blazes have you done!?”

Anders shook him off his sleeve, “What I had to-”

“You had to do that!?” Varric thrust his crossbow towards the swath of emerald that tore the sky in two. “I thought you came back to save the city, not destroy it!”

“Look around, Varric!” The docks were a disaster. Hawke’s rule had done more damage than one explosion ever could. Red lyrium was in the water, people were starving in the streets, and every other home was a charred husk. “There’s nothing here to save.”

“You destroyed the Chantry!” Varric said.

“Why don’t you shout?” Anders suggested. “I don’t think everyone heard you.”

“You destroyed my home!” Varric shouted.

“At least you have one,” Anders said. “Do you have any idea what a luxury it is to be able to live somewhere - anywhere - and not live in fear that-”

“Ancestors, if you say something about templars right now-” Varric pressed his fingers to his forehead.

“Who do you think did all this?” Anders thrust his staff at a building in the process of being consumed by red lyrium.

“You weren’t supposed to make it worse!” Varric argued.

“It was too late to make it better,” Anders pushed past him to Beth and Cullen, and the small crowd around them parted for him, casting uncertain glances and whispering behind their hands, but as long as they were free they could be free to hate him. Beth led him away from the crowd, and the three of them stood by the charred husk of the packaging house to sign.

“Where are we at?” Anders signed.

“Samson and his men are sweeping the Circle to make sure we didn’t miss anyone,” Beth signed. “Some of the Loyalists are barricaded in the chapel and refusing to leave, and some of the Formari are hard to find.”

“Refusing?” Anders signed. “Do they know an Exalted March is coming for them?”

“They want to throw themselves on the mercy of the Maker,” Beth signed.

“They want to throw themselves on a sword,” Anders signed.

“I know,” Beth pushed her fingers into her forehead. “We don’t have time to convince them. We have to focus on saving who we can right now.”

“I think it might be best if we send a small contingent of templars alongside each group of mages-” Cullen started.

“Absolutely not,” Anders cut him off.

“-for their protection,” Cullen finished.

“Protection?” Anders scoffed. Amell’s magic must have been failing. “You think any of the men who served under Stannard care about protecting mages?”

“Anders, that’s not fair,” Beth set her hand on Cullen’s shoulder, and Anders felt like he had to physically swallow the urge to tell her that wasn’t even Cullen. He was a construct, a compulsion, a creation of Amell’s made in the spur of the moment when the real Cullen had tried to rape him at the Grand Tourney.

“We’re not sending templars with them,” Anders said.

“Even so,” Cullen relented, either because he agreed or because some part of Amell’s compulsion made him agreeable, “We have need of them. We can’t leave a Tear in the Veil unattended. The Order can close it while the mages escape.”

“What about the escape routes?” Anders asked. “How are they doing?”

“A runner came back from the Red Jennies,” Cullen said. “There are demons blocking the north gate. I’ve been sending the templars who cross to deal with them.”

“The others?” Anders asked.

Beth spent a minute scanning the docks, and loudly called, “Varric!?”

“It’s no good,” Varric said when he joined them, standing as far away from Anders as possible.

“What do you mean it’s no good?” Anders asked.

“I mean it’s no good,” Varric shot him a frown like he wished it was a bolt. “And thus, by extension, it’s bad. My exit was south of the east gate, and right now Choir Boy’s armies have that area overrun.”

“There is still the Retreat,” Cullen said. “Though there is another problem. There are several mages who won’t go anywhere without you.”

“What?” Anders asked.

“They don’t know how to be apostates,” Beth gestured to the crowds of mages lingering on the docks. “They’re scared. They know you killed the Knight Commander. They think you’ll protect them.”

Anders wasn’t a protector. Anders was a runner, a revolutionary, a real piece of work. There was no reason for anyone to think that he would keep them safe, when the ashes of his actions were raining down around them, but people seemed to think so anyway. Mage people. His people.

“... I will,” Anders signed.

“This” -Beth pointed at the broken sky- “doesn’t protect anyone.”

“I am not having this fight with you right now,” Anders signed. “We have more important things to worry about,” Anders looked at Cullen. “Can your men clear out the demons at the north gate?”

“I believe so,” Cullen said.

“Then I’ll clear the south east exit,” Anders signed.

“There are a good hundred soldiers there, you know,” Varric said. “I don’t think you’re just going to clear them out.”

“I don’t think I asked you,” Anders returned, setting out across the docks, where he was immediately set upon by Merrill.

“How can I help?” Merrill asked.

Anders inhaled for something scathing, and forced himself to let the breath die out. He needed help. Varric wasn’t wrong. Anders didn’t have the mana for a fight, and somehow he’d committed to murdering a hundred men on his own. He might have been able to manage with blood magic, but someone had to spill blood first. A hundred soldiers wouldn’t go down easy, when Anders had no idea how many templars were among them.

It would take an army to destroy an army, and the mages on the docks weren’t that, but they were all he had.

“... I need a platform,” Anders signed. “Something to stand on so everyone can see me.”

“I can do that,” Merrill tapped her staff on the ground, and a crate cobbled itself together from seaweed, weeds, and bark. It was far from glorious, but he wasn’t here for glory.

Anders pushed the Fade into his throat and called out to the assembled mages too nervous to try escaping on their own, “The Chantry fears us!” Anders’ voice rang out over the docks, and those assembled quieted to listen. “For a thousand years, they’ve used that fear to collar us, locking us up and keeping us as slaves, but I say we are freemen, and there is no room on our wrists for shackles,” Anders raised his staff over his head, and let his sleeve slide down his wrist to reveal the casting cuts that scarred it.

The mages in the crowd didn’t seem to know what to make of them. Half of them shirked back and the other half surged forward, whispering everything from ‘monster’ to ‘maleficar’ to ‘martyr’ but they may as well have just said ‘mage.’

“The Divine is not a mouthpiece for the Maker. The armies that stand between us and our freedom are not here at His word; they are men and they are mortal, and they mean to make their March a massacre because the Maker gave us magic. Our lives are not theirs! We do not defy Him when we use His magic against men who mean to take our lives from us.

“I know you want me to protect you, but I need you to protect yourselves. A hundred men stand between us and the gates to freedom, and I need you to help me fight them.”

“I’ll f-f-fight,” A familiar voice stuttered. Alain pushed to the front of the crowd - ill prepared for a fight. The ex-Resolutionist was wearing standard-issue Circle robes and slippers, and hadn’t even managed to grab a staff in his escape, but he was there, his voice shaking but his hands steady. Anders smiled, and Alain smiled back, and dozens more stepped forward, emboldened or ashamed.

Anders climbed off the box, his throat raw and aching, but Merrill claimed a place beside him, and he couldn’t bring himself to drink with her around.

“I’m coming with you,” Merrill said.

“Fine,” Anders signed. A few mages came forward to clasp his hand, and as soon as Anders untangled himself from his small army, Varric appeared to scoff at it.

“You’re going to get them all killed, you know,” Varric signed.

“Some things are worth dying for,” Anders signed back.

“Do they know that?” Varric gestured at his volunteers.

“Every mage knows that,” Anders signed. “You’d know it too if you cared about anything more than your own life.”

“I care about everyone’s lives!” Varric signed angrily. “Mages and templars.”

“There’s no ‘and,’” Anders signed. “It’s the hangman or the hanged man. You can’t be for both.”

“I agreed to help you get them out, didn’t I?” Varric signed.

“Before you knew what it would take,” Anders signed.

Anders left the docks with three dozen mages he prayed knew some kind of magic that would serve them against the soldiers gathered by the southeast exit. It was a secret passageway out of the city through one of the old Grey Warden Watchtowers, and the soldiers weren’t actively guarding it so much as they were accidentally in the way.

Merrill flew ahead for them, scouting a safe path through the streets that would give them the high ground for the first hex they had to take. There were three hexes between them and the watchtower, and once they cleared a path the rest of the mages who hadn’t gone with Nathaniel or Charade would only have a short window to make it out before the armies would realize they’d lost a company of men, and send more to replace them.

Anders was not a strategist. He’d been in battles, but he’d never led them. He supported them from the sidelines with glyphs and auras, infusions of magic the templars in the hex before them existed solely to counter. There were perhaps a dozen templars and two dozen warriors of conscience for his three dozen mages, who’d never been in any kind of battle.

He had a single battlemage, a dozen force mages, a handful of primal mages, two healers, and a dozen more mages with no practical magic at all. Their magic was made for entertainment, because the nobility paid well for mages who could juggle fire into ice, or perform dazzling light shows, or breathe a word into one hand and release a song from the other. They wouldn’t be of any use in a fight, but they were fighting anyway.

Their group of mages huddled together in an abandoned house, trying to decide on the best way for all of them to fight, but Anders needed real fighters. He couldn’t just throw bodies at the soldiers and hope something would come of it.

… Unless he did just that. “Is anyone a necromancer?”

His thirty some-odd mages glanced among themselves. A few people cleared their throats. Anders knew what he was asking. The dead were burned - their ashes meant to join Andraste - and profaning them was heresy outside Nevarra. No one could have been a necromancer and survived inside the Gallows.

“... I am,” Alain lied. Alain couldn’t even light a candle. In all the time he’d worked with the Resolutionists, his magic had been so weak he’d just watched the door.

“Since when?” Anders asked.

“S-s-s-since always,” Alain said. “I n-n-n-never told anyone. I d-d-didn’t want to be like Decimus, but when he d-d-d… when he d-d-d-.... When he sacrificed himself for us, I ch-ch-ch… I ch-ch-ch-... I stopped being scared.”

“Sure sound scared to me,” One of the force mages muttered.

“I have a st-st-st-stutter,” Alain frowned. “Ah-ah-asshole.”

“Okay, so we have a necromancer,” Anders said. “Alain, raise anyone who falls-”

“I don’t know how many I can raise at once,” Alain said. “I never practiced, and I don’t have any l-l-lyrium.”

“You can drain from anyone who doesn’t know combat magic,” Anders said.

“Can’t he just use blood?” One of the entertainers asked.

“I’m not a b-b-b-... maleficar,” Alain said.

“Necromancy is blood magic,” The entertainer said.

“No, it’s not,” Alain said.

“We have our plan,” Anders interrupted them. “May the Maker bring us victory, or everything else is meaningless.”

Everything went to shit in seconds.

The force mages were used to rearranging furniture, and only threw one soldier at a time, tossing them across the street and breaking legs if they were lucky. The primal mages were the first focus of the templars, and all of them went down at a single smite. The healers laid out glyphs of warding none of the other mages were calm enough to stay in when the arrows started flying, and scattered in all directions.

Half a dozen of them went down before a mage gave into Fear, a flash of emerald streaking out across the sky from the Tear and surging through the man like lightning. His ribcage burst out from his back in a shower of blood, bones growing like spider legs. More legs burst out from beneath his skirts, one after the other, and the abomination’s scream was deafening.

Weapons clattered to the ground as everyone covered up their ears, and sparks of emerald lightning flashed across the sky as more demons crossed the Veil. Fear brought Terror, impossibly long fingers on impossibly long hands dragging impossibly long arms into the mortal world, the demon so thin and stretched its body seemed unending. The templars turned on the demons, and chaos claimed the hex.

The first Terror lashed out before its legs had even finished crossing, its arms longer than any spear, and sliced straight through silverite. The templar’s armor seemed to burst as the demon tore five jagged trenches through his body. Time seemed to slow for him to fall apart, his hand sliding off his wrist, his stomach splitting open, his sternum shattering as if to prove he had a heart. His gauntlet hit the ground, and time started back up again when Fear turned around to face them.

The mages still behind him panicked, scattering to the winds, and Fear tensed to pursue them.

“Stop,” Justice commanded them.

“They are afraid,” Fear moaned in protest, dragging a desperate hand down their chest, kneading at their robes. “I can feel it.”

“There is more fear to be found,” Justice made a shield of his staff, placed between Fear and the mages. He gestured towards the army. “Feed on theirs.”

Fear looked longingly past him. The mages who hadn’t fled were all frozen in fear, and the demon ached to feel it, six skeletal feet tapping and twitching on the sandstone, occasionally pushing the demon up to float a few inches off the ground as it paced impatiently before them. The demon’s spines curled and tensed all down its back as if it meant to lunge, and Justice let his fire break his skin, a vibrant flare of sapphire that sent Fear scuttling back.

Fear hissed, whining with want, and threw themself on the advancing army. The tide turned almost instantly. Terror after Terror clawed its way across the Veil, flashes of emerald lightning striking through the hex, every panicked scream fueling Fear as the abomination drew more demons from the Fade. Fearlings followed, spiderlike shadows that manifested into whatever their victims feared the most.

It was never as simple as just seeing a demon. The soldiers started screaming about everything from fire, to water, to maggots, to mages, to dragons, to drowning, to, ironically, spiders. The surviving templars and warriors of conscience retreated to the second hex, and the demons swarmed down after them. They left a score of bodies in their wake: broken, mangled things, missing all manner of limbs Alain pieced slowly back together.

Anders sent the surviving mages to join Alain as they regrouped, picking up their peers, healing who they could, draining mana like draughts of lyrium. “We must be truly desperate,” One of the healers said as Alain’s magic dragged a disemboweled templar to his feet, his guts spilling out and dangling around his skirt.

“You have a better plan?” Anders demanded, healing someone who’d taken an arrow through their thigh.

“How did you control that demon?” One of the force mages asked.

“It’s just Fear,” Anders said. “You can fight it if you’re not afraid.”

“Sound advice, if I weren’t fucking terrified,” The force mage laughed.

“You’re the mage who murdered Meredith?” One of the primal mages asked.

“Guilty,” Anders said.

“They’re saying you wrote the Mage Rights’ Manifesto?” The primal mage continued.

“Still guilty,” Anders said.

“You’re not even from the Circle,” The primal mage said.

“I’m from one of them,” Anders said. No more questions. Knowing nods. Anders picked up the fellow he’d been healing and passed him over to a friend. “Alain, how much longer?”

“Just a minute,” Alain said, but he’d only risen ten out of the twenty. Most of the mages shied away from him, but Anders couldn’t help but see the artistry in his magic when it reminded him of Amell. Wisps sank into the scattered corpses, reaminating them in pieces, telekinetic energy holding severed arms and legs together as they shambled to their feet. They didn’t need an army if they could remake the Divine’s armies as their own.

The only problem was they only had so long to do it. Merrill was in charge of picking off the scouts the armies sent to warn of their assault, but there was no way she’d get all of them, and sooner or later reinforcements would arrive. If they didn’t reach the southeast exit before they did, they’d all have no choice but to head for the Retreat and hope for the best fleeing to Nevarra.

For all Nevarra was home to necromancers, they were still under the aegis of the Chantry, and whatever power the Mortalitasi mages there wielded was with the Chantry’s blessing. They wouldn’t offer them any sort of sanctuary. They were all apostates, no matter where they went, and their only hope was in the other Circles rising up with them to overthrow the Chantry.

This wasn’t a war - this was a revolution. Two Circles had fallen in the Free Marches - first Starkhaven, and now Kirkwall - and Ferelden’s were already free. The College of Magi was due to meet in Cumberland within the year, where the First Enchanter of Jainen had promised to put forth the vote to cede from the Chantry. All they had to do now was survive to see it happen.

They sent demons and the dead against the armies of the Divine, and the death, decay, and destruction that swept through the second hex summoned something far worse than a demon. Anders didn’t notice it at first, with Alain at his side, raising the dead as fast as he was able, until one of the dead warriors of conscience attacked the nearest mage instead of the nearest templar. That mage died and revived in the same breath, a wave of force magic throwing a dozen of mages back into the first hex.

Justice summoned a spellshield and held his ground. Alain went flying back, but the dead he commanded lingered, because he didn’t command them. They swarmed over a storm drain, and from it burst a Harvester. It seemed small without a flesh golem attached to it, no bigger than a man, or the mockery of one. Its body was mutated, its head sunken into its torso, gaping maw stretched open as if to swallow someone whole.

It grabbed a corpse instead, skittering across the battlefield, gathering up arms, legs, severed heads, and stuffing them into itself. It soaked up blood and guts, fat and flesh, growing rapidly, piecing itself together from the men who died around it, decaying alive when they turned to face it, weapons falling from their hands as their fingers rotted away. One brave bastard drove a spear up into the Harvester’s chest, and melted under the spray of acid that erupted from the wound.

One of the primal mages threw a ball of fire that struck the Harvester in the side, and Anders thanked the Maker the monster didn’t even seem to notice. “Fall back!” Anders grabbed the mage who’d flung it, voice cracking. “Tell everyone to fall back!”

“Fall back!” The primal mage yelled obediently. “Fall back!”

Anders shoved the mages back towards the first hex, hasting who he could, counting the survivors when Merrill landed next to him in an explosion of red feathers. “Anders!” Merrill gasped. “Creators, have mercy, what is that?”

“Darkspawn,” Anders signed to save them time.

“It’s eating everyone!” Merrill said. “What do we do?”

“Hope it eats the army,” Anders signed.

“Anders!” Alain joined them. “I c-c-can’t control the dead with that th-th-thing out there. How are we going to g-g-g-get past it?”

“We can’t,” Anders said. He wasn’t about to try - not when Amell had sold his soul to a Forbidden One just to stand a chance against a Harvester and it still almost hadn’t been enough when he’d faced one at the Gates of Bownammar with a whole army of Grey Wardens, mages, golems, and dwarves at his back. “We just run.”

“We can’t go to C-C-Cumberland,” Alain argued. “The Chantry will c-c-catch us before we reach Tevinter.”

“We can’t fight that!” Anders thrust his staff at the hex. The Harvester had already swept through half of the warriors of conscience, and a dozen templars were congealing into its ever-expanding skin. Even the demons had fled from it, vanishing to feed on other fears. “Everyone in this city is dead.”

“We can’t just let it kill everyone,” Merrill protested. “I’m going to get Hawke.”

“Merrill-” Anders didn’t have a chance to protest before Merrill transformed into a hawk and took to the skies. Anders pushed Alain and the rest of the mages back towards the docks, “We have to get out of here. Now.”

The Harvester was running out of bodies, and Anders wasn’t about to wait for it to look for more. He hasted the mages with the rest of the healers, and they fled back towards the docks and straight into a platoon of soldiers. Anders cast a wall of ice to try to seal off their escape, and the primal mages joined him when they realized what he was doing, but they hadn’t managed to seal off even half the hex when the Harvester came barreling into it.

It must have run out of bodies. The hundred men they’d been so desperate to defeat had joined the twisted mass of fat and flesh, arms and limbs folded into its stomach, stuffed under rolls of fat, hanging off one-too-many joints that made up the working pair of arms it swept through the soldiers and their wall of ice. The soldiers and the wall shattered on impact, a blanket of ice and sleet covering the hex as muscle, bones, and blood painted the walls.

One of his mages took a shard of silverite through their skull and died on impact. The corpse joined the Harvester as it swallowed up the armies, and Anders did everything he could to keep it from swallowing the mages. He stole as much blood as he could from the battlefield, hasting the mages so they could keep running, keep going, keep living for as long as they could manage.

The army distracted the Harvester long enough for them to reach the docks. A score of mages survived, down from three dozen, but none of them would if they didn’t get out of the city before the Harvester swallowed it. Anders lost his voice by the time they got there, but twenty screaming mages got the message across for the hundreds on the docks.

Beth and Cullen ran to meet him, shouting questions, but before Anders could sign an answer, Merrill seemed to manifest with Hawke and half a dozen hounds and horrors at his heels.

“What is it?” Beth signed.

“How many?” Cullen signed.

“Darkspawn,” Anders signed, struggling to catch his breath. “Run.”

“Seen you kill darkspawn before,” Hawke signed.

“Big,” Anders signed. “Monster. Strong. Run.”

“We can’t just wander aimlessly,” Beth signed. “We have to get out of the city. The north gate is still blocked by demons and we can’t all go to Cumberland. We have hundreds of mages here. We have to try-”

Anders clapped his hands to cut her off and signed, “No. Listen to me. This isn’t something we can fight. We have to run or die.”

“We have to run that way,” Beth pointed back the way he’d come.

“Run, then,” Hawke signed.

“You’re not listening-” Beth signed.

“Listening,” Hawke signed. “There’s something between you and what you need, and you can’t fight it, so I’ll fight it for you.”

“You can’t,” Anders signed. “You’ll die.”

“Surprised you care,” Hawke signed.

“I don’t,” Anders signed.

“I do,” Beth signed. “Garrett, if Anders says that you can’t fight it-”

A shard of lyrium ripped forth from Hawke’s veins, and fell into his hand. He flung it towards a nearby building, and the lyrium exploded, swallowing the sandstone in a sudden swath of red. “I can fight just fine. You need out that way, I’ll lead it somewhere else.”

“You’re just letting us go?” Anders signed.

“Took me long enough,” Hawke looked at him, and already Anders could see the lyrium reclaiming him. It was all still there, embedded in his skin, flowing through his veins, glowing in his eyes when his strained smile didn’t reach them. “Go. Don’t wait for me to change my mind.”

Hawke and all his horrors left to face the Harvester. The streets ran red with blood and lyrium, and all around the Harvesting of souls by monsters and the men who made them. They Marched in the Maker’s name and sent so many of His children, early, to His side. The sky burned emerald over them, weeping ash and embers, for an absent Maker and all His absent mages.

From Kirkwall they fled.

Chapter 213: From Kirkwall We Fled: On Broken Wings

Summary:

For twenty days and twenty nights the People ran,
With the footsteps of the legion ever at their backs.
No rest could they find, since their flight from Emerius.

- Shartan 9:1

Notes:

Thank you all for your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 21 Martinalis Early Morning
Free Marches - Wildervale

Their feet were falling apart.

After twenty days and twenty nights, Anders was the only one with shoes. His boots were made from hardened tusket tipped in wyvern bone and laced with loden wool. The sort that would have made Franke shiver. Amell spared no expense for him, on the lone outfit Anders brought with him, every piece enchanted to transform with him, and Anders transformed often.

He was the only one of them who could. He took to the skies almost every other hour to mark the Exalted March that hunted them through the Free Marches. There was no escaping them. There were well over a hundred mages with him, and there was no hiding their tracks as they fled east along the Wounded Coast, leaving bloody footprints in the sand.

Circle slippers were little more than cotton, and they lost all of them crossing north up through the Vimmark Wastelands. They couldn’t stay on the Wounded Coast, caught between Kirkwall and Ostwick, waiting for the armies to surround them. Ravens would have been sent out with the explosion, and all the free cities would have word by now. It wasn’t safe to run to one.

They spent six days on the coast, until they reached the wastelands, and spent a fortnight crossing them. The climb was agony for everyone, but the healers were exhausted. Their hastes kept them running until their feet bled them to a halt, and then they healed them all to run again. There were perhaps a dozen of them among the hundred some odd mages, a rarity in Kirkwall, when most mages specialized in force.

Anders had a theory about places and people and magic. It gave him something to think about, running down the Wounded Coast, climbing up the Vimmark Mountains, stumbling through the Wildervale, living off three hours of sleep and conjured water. He imagined talking to Amell about it, giving lectures for the Grey Wardens, training the next generation of mages, and not living on the run with this one.

He hadn’t exactly formulated it into a lecture just yet, but that didn’t stop him from thinking about it, whenever he had a moment to himself, twisting a band of rosewood around his finger and imagining handing Amell a freshly finished treatise, watching his fingers sweep over the embossment of his name and smirking before he told him that First Enchanter Such-And-Such from the Whatever Age had already written it better than Anders ever could.

The Fade was a reflection of the mortal world, but on some level it seemed as if the mortal world was a reflection of the Fade. People and their magics were influenced by the places they were from and the places they were raised. Ferelden seemed like one of the best examples, when the country had more spirit healers than any other in all of Thedas.

Anders guessed it was war. Ferelden’s history was plagued with it, since the time of Andraste and the Alamarri. The country had been made up of warring tribes for three thousand years, until King Calenhad had finally unified four hundred years ago, and the wars still hadn’t stopped. The Dryden Rebellion, the Orlesian Invasions, the Fifth Blight. It made sense that the mages who were raised there were inclined to heal.

It made just as much sense that mages from Kirkwall tended to specialize in force magic, when that was how the templars treated them. Kirkwall was a city of chains, built on slavery and rivers of blood, plagued by violence, lunancy, and human sacrifice. A greater percentage of the circle’s mages failed their Harrowings, and an even greater percentage turned to blood magic, and the survivors specialized in force or fell to it.

Nevarra had their necromancers. Orlais had knight enchanters. Rivain seers. There was something there. Something worth studying, something worth discussing, something that almost made him miss the musty scent of old books in Kinloch’s library, the subtle undercurrents of magic as books pulled themselves off cedar shelves, the quiet murmurs of mages discussing magic theory, but the almost was too big to ignore.

It was branded, bloody, on the brow of every mage who had their magic stolen from them. It was whipped, bloody, on the back of every mage who dared speak out of turn. It was sheathed, bloody, in the heart of every mage who failed a test they should never have to take. It was stamped, bloody, in the sand, the dirt, the rocks, the grass, as they fled from ‘almost’ with nothing but their magic to their name.

“You’re thinking I should have known better,” Beth broke him from his thoughts.

“What?” Anders looked up from her feet, resting in his lap while he healed them. It had been hard fought just to get the chance, Anders and a dozen primal mages casting earthquake after earthquake through the Vimmark Wastelands, causing rockslides, crumbling valleys, burning bridges, doing everything they could to block off their retreat.

“I spent eighteen years of my life on the run,” Beth twitched her toes, stiff and bloody. It was autumn, and rain had spread wetfoot through their ranks. “I should have worn shoes.”

“I wasn’t thinking that,” Anders said, cleansing the infection setting in beneath her shredded skin.

“I thought about it,” Beth said, wincing when he pulled what might have been a bit of bark out of her foot. “I had an old pair made out of bear hide, with a nice lambswool lining… they must have cost at least twenty silver. I think. Garrett never let me see the ledgers. He had them-”

“What if we don’t talk about Hawke?” Anders cut her off.

“... Do you think he’s dead?” Beth asked anyway.

“What do you want me to say, Beth?” Anders demanded, forcing his hands to stay gentle with her feet. “Do you want me to say ‘I hope so’? Because I do.”

“He’s still my brother,” Beth said.

“Your brother is a bastard,” Anders muttered, sealing a slice across her sole.

“That bastard sacrificed himself so we could escape,” Beth said.

“And?” Anders didn’t care. “You want me to thank him for pulling a knife out of my back when he put it there in the first place?”

“I just don’t want him dead,” Beth said.

“I do,” Anders said.

Beth stopped trying to convince him otherwise, leaning with her back against a tree and staring out at their encampment of mages in the woods, if anyone could call them that. There were no tents, just a few campfires, flames pulled from the Fade and free of any smoke that would alert the soldiers searching for them. Mages huddled around them, resting rotting feet on nearby rocks, struggling to stay dry and stay warm.

Soaked robes hung from every available branch, but they needed more than a few hours to dry and they didn’t have more than a few hours to rest. A few desperate primal mages had tried to dry their robes themselves, and only succeeded in setting them on fire. One force mage had tried to crush the water out, and obliterated his robes in the process. They weren’t equipped or accustomed to caring for themselves, when the Tranquil had always done it for them, and it didn’t help that unstable emotions led to unstable magic.

“... I was afraid she would notice,” Beth said.

“Who?” Anders asked.

“Meredith,” Beth elaborated. “I was afraid she would notice if I wore my shoes.”

“Kirkwall’s Knight Commander paying attention to its First Enchanter?” Anders forced a smile. “You would have been fine. It took her three years to even find out Orsino supported Quentin’s research.”

“... I think she knew,” Beth said. “This whole time, I think she knew, and she was just waiting for the right time to use it against him, but I never thought she’d kill him. There were rumors the two of them were together.”

“Maybe they were,” Anders shrugged, switching to her left foot. “Maybe she killed him anyway.”

“You really think someone could do that?” Beth asked. “Kill someone they used to love?”

Anders could.

“Why not?” Anders asked, and started signing when his throat gave out, “You can’t be surprised. The Knight Commander ruled Kirkwall for over sixteen years by making sure no one had the strength to stand against her, and she did it with the Chantry’s blessing. All the last Viscount had to do was raise tariffs and fees against Orlais, and since Orlais is the seat of the Divine’s power, the Divine sent the templars against him.

“The old Viscount killed the old Knight Commander, and tried to expel the templars from the city, but then Meredith marched on the Viscount’s Keep and the city guard surrendered. They imprisoned the old Viscount on the Grand Cleric’s orders, and poisoned him when they couldn’t be bothered to find anything to charge with him beyond standing up to templar tyranny. He died in a cell, and Elthina had Meredith promoted for it.

“Meredith was always Elthina’s monster. The Chantry controls everything with their lies and their lyrium, and what I did was far too long in coming. Someone had to stand against her-”

“What do you think I was doing?” Beth cut him off. “It took months for Orsino to replace First Enchanter Maceron, but I stepped up the day he died. You weren’t in the Circle with us. You have no idea what it was like, lying about being a Loyalist because even Aequitarians are too liberal. Holding this” -Beth picked up Orsino’s staff- “is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Holding it out here is harder,” Anders signed.

Beth laid the staff across her lap and sighed. “... I shouldn’t keep it, should I?”

“... I don’t know,” Anders admitted, glancing at his own staff. Amell had commissioned it for him to replace Vigilance, the dragonbone staff he’d had made for him to commemorate the dragon they’d killed together, that Anders had lost when he’d escaped Hawke. His new staff was made from nevarrite, wrapped in hardened gurgut leather, with a cage of silverite and lyrium. It had taken Anders a ridiculous amount of time to even come up with a name for it.

Isana’s Song was dwarven for lyrium. The staff didn’t have anything to do with dwarves, really, but being back at Vigil’s Keep kept making him think about one dwarf in particular. Anders wanted to pretend she would have thought it was cool. She’d liked magic, after all, and if he was being honest it scared him when he went too long without thinking about her. Like if he didn’t find some memory to hold on to, one day he’d wake up and they’d all be gone.

“You know this staff is eight hundred years old?” Beth asked, turning the three-headed dragon over in her lap. “It belonged to the first leader of Kirkwall’s Circle of Magi. Casimira. She was a blood mage who became possessed by a demon and was killed by the Knight Commander. Sometimes I think it’s cursed.”

“Sounds cursed,” Anders agreed.

“... it looks cool though,” Beth signed.

“It does look cool,” Anders chuckled, pushing her feet back at her, as whole and healthy as he could make them. “... Casimira is a nice name.”

Beth slid her arms around her waist. “... I think I like Leandra more.”

“What if it’s not a girl?” Anders asked.

“What if it’s not anything?” Beth exhaled shakily. “Anders, running like this-”

“Isn’t good for anyone,” Anders picked her foot back up and squeezed, trying not to think about it. Beth was almost six months pregnant, and she was always in pain even when her feet weren’t falling apart. Her back, her abdomen, her everything. There was nothing wrong with her running while she was pregnant, if they were just running for a few hours a day, but they’d been running for all of them. “Just tell me if you start bleeding, or your legs are swelling, or you have trouble with-”

“-anything,” Beth finished for him. “I know.”

“... Did you tell Cullen?” Anders asked.

Beth nodded.

“How did that go?” Anders asked.

“He wanted to come with us,” Beth rolled her eyes.

“Are you really rolling your eyes right now?” Anders asked.

“It’s just-”

“I don’t even like Cullen and that seems harsh-”

“Stop it!” Beth kicked him. “You know he can’t come with us. You made sure of that.”

“How is this my fault?” Anders asked.

“The hole in the sky?” Beth reminded him. “Someone had to stay to close it, and besides, he’s the Knight Commander now. He’d never leave his men, and we can’t run with the same templars we’re trying to escape.”

“It almost sounds like you agree with me,” Anders pointed out.

“Let’s just not talk about it,” Beth signed.

For once, he felt too tired to argue, “What about a boy?”

“Malcolm,” Beth signed.

For the life of him, Anders could not understand Beth’s obsession with her family. They had nothing in common beyond their blood. Her father had beaten them and her mother had encouraged it. Everything Anders had heard about Carver had led him to believe he was an asshole, and he could list Hawke’s flaws until the start of the next Age. She should have found a new family for herself the same way Anders had.

She had the chance right now, among the hundred or so mages who had stayed with them as they fled into the Wildervale. Kirkwall’s Circle had housed thousands, but hundreds had died in the Annulment before they’d managed to kill Meredith and her men. The survivors had split off into cells, fleeing to Ferelden, to Cumberland, to the Sundermount, to the Wounded Coast.

Their group had started larger, but half of them had given up when they’d run out of food, and half of them had scattered into the mountains when the armies started gaining, and half of them had split off to continue on towards Ostwick. Bancroft had been leading them, and the argument before they’d split had been ugly. Bancroft didn’t know what it was like to be an apostate. He’d forgotten, in the years he’d spent passing as a Tranquil, a sunburst branded into his forehead that let him go anywhere and everywhere.

People overlooked him, in ways people didn’t overlook other people. Bancroft could have walked into a field of templars carrying a staff in both hands, balancing a stack of tomes on his head, dressed in the most elaborate of robes and wearing a giant ‘I’m a mage!’ sign around his neck, and none of them would have even blinked. He didn’t live in the real world where innocent men and women were attacked in the streets for carrying so much as a broom.

He couldn’t seriously expect to lead a hundred apostates through Ostwick’s double walls and get away with it. He was going to get them all killed. Anders had told him as much, until his voice had given out on him, and he’d switched to signing instead, growing increasingly irritated when Beth hadn’t translated what he was saying verbatim and started up her own argument against Bancroft instead, leaving him to lose his mind on the sidelines.

Maybe, if they split off into smaller and smaller groups, they might be able to survive the cities, but they’d have better luck running to Tevinter, where mages were free to practice magic, or Rivain, where the Chantry held no sway, or Ferelden, where they might find asylum, but nowhere came with guarantees. They were all apostates and nowhere would be safe for them.

It was such a weighted term: to claim that they forsook the Chant because they dared to live the way the Maker made them. It wasn’t something they should have to hide. If this was meant to be a fight for freedom then they couldn’t have it in the shadows - the world had to see. The Chantry had kept them locked up long enough without them locking up themselves.

“I think we should keep the staves,” Anders signed.

“Why?” Beth asked.

“We’re all apostates now,” Anders signed. “We have to lean on our magic.”

“Literally?” Beth grinned.

“Did you see your feet?” Anders joked.

“I try not to look,” Beth confessed.

“It’s good for them to see us,” Anders gestured towards the mages. “It’s good for them to see our magic. We have to stop being ashamed of it.”

“Easy for you to say,” Beth sighed. “My whole life, I’ve been ashamed of it. It’s like that for a lot of mages here. I won’t pretend your manifesto didn’t help but you have to know they’re scared.”

“They’re alive,” Anders countered. “When the world wants you dead, that’s rebellion enough.”

“Can you stop with the idealism for just a minute?” Beth signed, stealing back her feet to rest them on the rocks beside their fire. “What are we really going to do? Wander the Wildervale until we starve to death?”

“I’m going to keep fighting,” Anders signed.

“Very vague,” Beth rolled her eyes. “You might be able to fight on an empty stomach, but they can’t. If we keep heading north, we could split up between Starkhaven and Tantervale.”

“Do you have any idea how bad Chantry law is in those cities?” Anders asked. “Do you really think Starkhaven’s gotten any better with Sebastian in charge? You of all people should know what to expect from him.”

“It’s still the largest city in the Free Marches,” Beth argued, rubbing at the arm Sebastian had burned while they were still together. “Someone could get lost in it.”

“Not this many someones,” Anders shook his head.

“Well what’s your bright idea?” Beth demanded.

Anders had a few bright ideas, but most of them relied on them having access to a port city and ships to sail them to freedom. Without that, he only had one.

“West,” Anders signed. “Through Nevarra, where it won’t be hard to get word of the vote in Cumberland. We could find an abandoned Grey Warden outpost around Hunter Fell or the Silent Plains, and start sending word to the Circles about the truth of what happened in Kirkwall.”

“Are you sure you want them to know the truth of what happened in Kirkwall?” Beth asked bitterly.

“Am I sure I want them to know the Knight Commander called for the Right of Annulment against every mage in Kirkwall because of the actions of just one mage?” Anders scoffed. “Am I sure I want them to know the Divine called for an Exalted March because she’d rather wipe out a city than risk mages ruling it? Yes, I’m sure.”

“You killed the Grand Cleric,” Beth hissed, like it was somehow a secret.

“I killed a doddering old biddy who watched the Knight Commander murder the First Enchanter in cold blood and then sent her back to the Circle like a parent sends a child to their room, and then turned around and told everyone they were overestimating her ability to control her,” Anders signed.

“... you were there?” Beth asked.

“No one even recognized me,” Anders twisted a strand of his dyed black hair before his face. “I spent months hobnobbing with the nobility as ‘Lord ban Airdeall’, trying to get them to overthrow Meredith, but when she killed Orsino, everyone backed out.”

“I didn’t know that,” Beth admitted.

“Did you think I set out to destroy the Chantry without trying to reason with it first?” Anders shifted to better face her. “You think I didn’t try everything? I organized riots, I pushed reform, I begged the Grand Cleric, I summoned the Seekers of Truth, I worked with the Mages’ Collective, I scratched my manifesto into the bloody walls of the cell Meredith threw me in. I had it printed and shipped off to every Circle in Thedas. I published pieces in the local quarterly. I stuffed it into every nook and cranny in that Voidscape, and the only day I made a difference to the Chantry was the day that I destroyed it.”

“I panicked when she killed him,” Beth signed. “I know the hand he had in my mother’s death, but he was still my mentor for five years, and when I watched him die I didn’t think of him at all. I just thought about the Circle, and what would happen to it without a First Enchanter. I made such a scene I thought for sure she’d kill me.

“I summoned the Fraternities the second we were back inside the Circle and made them all elect me on the spot. I even sent word through the sending stones to all the other Circles to make sure it was official, so she wouldn’t have a chance to say we didn’t need a First Enchanter. You have no idea how hard it was to work with her, even for a fortnight. The things she made me sign off on…”

Beth took a shaky breath, wringing her palms raw against Orsino’s staff. “I made three mages Tranquil. I brought her down from eight. I see them every time I go to sleep. It’s no wonder they didn’t want to run with me.”

“... You saved five,” Anders pointed out.

“Is that how you look at it?” Beth asked.

“That’s the only way I can,” Anders signed. There were perhaps a hundred in the Chantry, but there were thousands in the Circle, and it was almost easy math.

“We can’t run to Nevarra,” Beth signed. “It’s weeks of travel, and we don’t know if the Divine’s armies are guarding the border. What if we go all that way for nothing and we have to turn around?”

“Then we turn around,” Anders signed.

“We should vote,” Beth signed.

“Vote?” Anders signed.

“We vote in the Circle,” Beth explained.

“I know how the Circle works,” Anders signed.

“Well you asked-”

“It doesn’t.”

“The Fraternities are a good idea,” Beth argued. “We should elect new representatives so each of them can have a voice.”

“You want Chantry apologists to decide which way we should go?” Anders signed. “They’ll send us all right back to the Circle.”

“There are no Loyalists left, remember?” Beth reminded him. “They all locked themselves inside the chapel. What’s wrong with giving the rest of them a say?”

“You said they wanted me to come with them because they couldn’t make it on their own, and now you want them to decide which way to go?” Anders signed.

“I want them to be able to make their own choices,” Beth signed. “Isn’t that what this was all about?”

“We’re not going to Starkhaven or Tantervale,” Anders signed. “The whole Minanter River isn’t safe.”

“If we make it to the border and have to turn around, the armies chasing us will catch up,” Beth signed.

“They’ll have to find a new route through the Vimmark Mountains,” Anders signed. “The Wildervale is hundreds of miles in every direction. They’d be lucky to find us once we have some distance, and if they do, then we’ll have a better chance fighting them then we would fighting all the templars in Tantervale.”

“We’re voting,” Beth signed.

“Did Kirkwall’s Circle teach you to be stubborn?” Anders signed. “In addition to smug, I mean.”

“When appropriate,” Beth frowned. “Stop tearing your hair out. We’re not just going to keep wandering through the Wildervale. We’re voting in the morning.”

Anders slept, somehow, in the dirt and drying mud beneath an old wych elm, unable to reach into the Fade when half of his soul was bound to the mortal world. The only way Anders could still dream was in tainted nightmares, forced Harrowings, or through banishing Justice into the Fade with a glyph of neutralization that served to separate their souls. Anders didn’t like any of his options, and couldn’t bother with them anyway without any lyrium.

They’d left red lyrium behind in Kirkwall, but the one thing the plague had in its favor was that the taint served to sustain anyone afflicted with it. Anders could survive, but the mages were all starving. They couldn’t stay on topic when Beth called for them to vote. They didn’t care about elections, fraternities, or even where they were fleeing. They just wanted something to eat.

“We should go back,” Someone - a gaunt and balding man - suggested. “Beg for mercy.”

“We’re all going to starve out here,” Lamented a thin and haggard woman. “They have to spare us.”

“Who cares if they don’t?” Another mage chimed in. “Better to have died back there than be hunted like sport in the woods.”

“You can’t go back!” Anders climbed up onto a stump to shout, the Fade flowing through his throat. “The second you throw yourselves at their feet, they’ll have their foot on your neck. They’ll make you an example for the Circles of other cities, so none of them will find the courage to rise up. They’ll taunt you and humiliate you while they burn a brand into your brow. If you want to live, and live without fear, you have to fight.”

“We can’t fight without food!” Someone shouted back.

“Then go and find it!” Anders shouted back, swinging his staff out towards the forest. “Break off into groups of ten and scavenge what you can.”

“We don’t know how to hunt!” The balding man protested.

“You’re mages,” Anders snapped. “Use your bloody magic.”

The mages scattered into smaller groups, clutching compendiums and bestiaries identifying what was edible, leaving wisps in their wake that marked their paths out through the woods and back to their encampment. If nothing else, at least no one would get lost. Anders sat down on the stump and took a drink of water, thumbing the simir feather at his throat, and wishing it did more for him.

Beth frowned at him, “‘Use your bloody magic’?”

“Well what was I supposed to say?” Anders signed.

“You’re supposed to have some sympathy,” Beth signed. “Don’t you remember what life on the run was like without Grey Warden stamina?”

“Don’t call me that,” Anders signed quickly.

“It’s what you are,” Beth signed.

“I’m just a mage,” Anders signed. “That’s how they have to see me.”

“That’s not how they see you,” Beth signed. “They think you’re their savior. You killed the Knight Commander.”

“She killed herself,” Anders signed.

“She’s petrified,” Beth signed. “That’s a mage’s magic. She’s fused to the flagstones. They all know you’re the one who brought her to her knees. They think that you did it for them.”

“It was for them,” Anders signed.

“Then don’t terrorize them,” Beth signed. “They’ve been through enough.”

“I’m not terrorizing anyone,” Anders signed. “I’m trying to keep them all alive.”

“You know who else kept me alive?” Beth signed. “Garrett. Don’t be an ass.”

“Don’t you dare compare me to your brother,” Anders signed. “That bloody bastard never cared about a damn thing but himself.”

“That bloody bastard cared so much about me being safe he never cared if I was happy,” Beth signed. “They’re not Wardens-”

“I swam across Lake Calenhad to escape the Circle before I ever took the Joining,” Anders signed.

“They’re not as strong as you,” Beth signed. “Not everyone can save themselves.”

“I know that,” Anders signed.

“Then stop acting like they can,” Beth signed.

“All I did was tell them what they had to do,” Anders signed.

“You’ve been telling them since Kirkwall,” Beth signed. “We should be voting on it.”

“You do that,” Anders signed. “I’ll make sure you’re alive to vote.”

“Maker, have mercy,” Beth muttered.

“Wouldn’t that be nice?” Anders signed.

Mages were not good at hunting.

It turned out ‘use magic’ didn’t translate well into making them good at hunting. One of the force mages found a boar, and was so startled when it charged they cast a spell that flattened the boar into a pelt and scattered its entrails through the forest. A group of primal mages found a cluster of pheasants in the underbrush, set said underbrush on fire, froze said underbrush before it could start a wildfire, and then chizeled a grand total of three pheasants out of the ice. One of the healers hasted themself to chase after a deer, and lost three teeth when the deer kicked them in the face. A group of entertainers scavenged a field of mushrooms, misread the compendium, and ended up getting high off them.

“We’re all going to die,” Sketch sat down next to him. He was an elven apostate with short brown hair and dark green eyes who’d worked with the Mages’ Collective in Kirkwall for years, and that was more or less all Anders knew about him. At some point, he seemed to have started speaking for the elves among their group. Merrill had stayed in Kirkwall to help defend the alienage, and Anders had no idea what had become of her or anyone else.

The Mages’ Collective had scattered. The Red Jennies had taken countless mages up into the mountains, Nathaniel had taken Amal and countless more through The Retreat, and Isabela and the Armada had sailed the rest away to Ferelden. The only people he knew among the hundred odd mages with him were Beth, Sketch, and Alain, and he hadn’t seen the latter for a while. The rest of the mages came back from their relatively unsuccessful hunts, but Alain’s small group was missing.

“As long as we die free,” Anders picked up his staff and set out after the trail of wisps that marked where Alain’s small group had gone.

Anders was starving. Anders was exhausted. Anders was dead on his feet, but he was on them, stumbling through the Wildervale, calling for Alain, praying the wisps dancing overhead didn’t burst apart into Sloth and Hunger, when he stumbled into a trap. There were no snares, no trip wires, nothing that should have caught him unaware, but Anders was so tired he didn’t notice the arrow until it was pressed between his eyes.

“Not another step, shem.”

Chapter 214: From Kirkwall We Fled: Absent Friends

Summary:

“Let us not fall into the jaws of the wolf together.
I will go alone and see what army comes.”

- Shartan 9:17

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 22 Martinalis Afternoon
Free Marches - Wildervale

The arrowhead looked alarmingly sharp.

Onyx glinted in the sunlight that made it through the forest canopy, the arrow itself resting in the leatherbound hands of an elf, her bow drawn threateningly taut. She looked like death. Her hair was red as blood, receding sharply back from a face full of scars and ink. Her tattoos were reminiscent of bones covering her chin and cheeks, with what might have been a bow and arrow stamped down her nose and brow.

“Alright,” Anders said slowly.

“Back up,” the elf ordered.

Anders took a slow step back. He’d been so focused on the wisps he hadn’t been watching where they’d led him. He’d wandered into a clearing surrounded by at least a dozen Dalish, with a few dead deer laid out in the field, but at least Alain and his small group weren’t with them.

“A group of mages came through here-” Anders started.

“Shut up, shem,” the elf snarled. “How many of you are there?”

“I just want to find the mages who came through here,” Anders said. “There were around a dozen of them.”

“Those mages killed our halla,” the elf tipped her head back towards the deer.

“They were starving,” Anders explained. “We all are-”

“How many?” the elf demanded.

“More than you,” Anders kept a firm hold on his staff. “Are those mages still alive?”

“For the moment,” the elf said. “They surrendered - as should you.”

“Do you really want to taunt a mage?” Anders asked.

“Do you really want an arrow in your throat?” the elf threatened.

“Yours wouldn’t be the first,” Anders raised a slow hand to his throat, and the scar that cut across it. “I’m not looking for a fight-”

“Yet you found one all the same,” the elf said. “Do you even know what your friends did?”

“They killed your deer-” Anders started.

“Halla,” the elf hissed, pulling back her arrow. “They’re not deer. They’re the children of Ghilan’nain. They’re our brothers and sisters, and your friends slaughtered them for supper.”

"My friends haven't had a solid supper in a month,” Anders should have apologized, but he was hungry, and it was hard to hold onto more than that hunger. “We're a day away from eating each other."

“One halla can feed over two hundred people,” the elf flicked her hair out of her face. “Your friends killed three of them.”

“My friends just want to eat,” Anders said. “I’m sorry about your deer-”

“Halla!” the elf snarled.

“-halla,” Anders said. “But we have to eat something. Look at me,” Anders waved his free hand at his face. He might not have a mirror, but he knew what he’d become. He hadn’t had anything but water for two weeks straight. He was surviving off the taint, and it bled through his skin. His face was gaunt, his eyes were shadowed, his skin was pale, and his lips were turning purple. “If three halla can feed six hundred people, you can spare us one.”

“What do you know of what we can spare, shem?” the elf demanded. “Every halla is precious to us.”

“Nothing is sacred when you’re starving,” Anders said. “The halla are already dead. There’s no reason for them to die for nothing. Spare one of them and my friends and I’ll-” What? He didn’t have anything to offer besides gratitude, and Anders doubted that would mean much to the Dalish. “-find some way to repay you.”

“And if I killed three of your friends?” the elf threatened. “How would you have me repay that?”

“They’re fucking deer!” Anders snapped. “I swear, little girl, if you don’t give me back my friends-”

“Call me little one more time,” the elf said.

“Ellana,” one of the other elves stepped up and stepped in, his hair and skin as onyx as her arrow. “Maybe we should bring him to the Keeper?”

“You bother the old bat,” Ellana - Anders assumed the red-headed elf was named - said. “I’m here to avenge our dead.”

“We have enough dead already without adding more,” the other elf protested. He looked about as unwell as Anders - sheened in so much sweat his skin glistened even at a distance - and either he was too peaceful or too pained to pull back his bow.

“Why?” Anders asked.

“Shut up, shem,” Ellana snapped.

“Plague, my friend,” the peaceful elf said. “This year has been unkind to us-”

“He’s not our friend,” Ellana said. “He doesn’t need to know our troubles.”

“Our troubles have been ours too long,” The peaceful elf argued. “They’ve mages yet among them. We won’t make it to the next Arlathvhen-”

“Shut up, Nethras!” Ellana shot the other elf a scowl, but kept a firm hold of her bow and the arrow she had trained on him.

“Mahanon is the last one left-”

“I said shut up!”

“I’m a healer,” Anders said.

“I don’t care what you are,” Ellana said.

“Who will raise your brother if we die?” Nethras asked.

“I’m a healer,” Anders said again - when the elves said nothing else - too busy glaring at each other. “Whatever plague you have, I can help, but not for nothing. I need my friends, and I need food, and I know that you have both. You help me, I’ll help you.”

“You’re full of shit, shem,” Ellana said.

“We’re taking him to the Keeper,” Nethras said.

“No, we’re not,” Ellana said.

The Keeper was an old bat. Literally. The giant bat was easily the size of an elf, and hung from the branch of a sycamore tree. It was almost completely silver and alarmingly agile, flipping off the tree at their approach with a wingspan that made it look more like a dragon. An old woman landed in its place, with a staff that looked like it was made of bones.

“Keeper,” Nethras - the peaceful, plagued elf - said. “We found this shemlen in the woods, looking for the others. He claims that he can heal the plague.”

“He lies,” Ellana said. “Nethras told the shem that we were plagued. I doubt he can even heal. We should kill them all and move the clan before more shems come looking.”

“Well shem?” the Keeper wasn’t looking at him. She wasn’t looking at anyone. She was blind, bright violet eyes unfocused, with one pointed ear turned towards him. “Should we kill you?”

“I’m going to go with no,” Anders said.

“He goes with no,” The Keeper shrugged.

“Deshanna-” Ellana protested.

“He said no, da’len,” Keeper Deshanna shrugged again. “What am I to do?”

“Dread wolf take you, you old bat,” Ellana spat and stalked away.

“She’s a lovely girl,” Keeper Deshanna smiled. “You can heal, can you?”

“That’s the rumor,” Anders said.

“Well let’s see you prove it,” a vine lashed out from the tree, and sliced open the Keeper’s palm. Anders sealed the slash in the same breath, and Keeper ran her thumb across the would-be wound. “Well how about that. Not even a scar.”

“I’ve got the touch,” Anders said.

“Come and walk with me,” the Keeper held out a hand for him, and Anders let her find him.

“Where are we walking?” Anders asked when the Keeper wove their arms together.

“There was a camp here, last I checked,” the Keeper grinned. “Start around it.”

The Dalish camp was set up in a slanted valley, the Keeper’s sycamore at the base of it. Anders didn’t see Alain or the others anywhere, and the aravels all looked the same to him, ringed against the hillside, with life scattered in between them. Campfires and crafting circles for wood, metal, and leatherwork, spaces set aside for weaving wool and wicker, and so much food it made him sick.

Every campfire came with a cauldron, spit, or smoker. Elves were grinding wildflour, sorting leaves and stems, seeds and nuts, roots and tubers, gums and saps and honey. Free fowl ran among them, halla settled in their pens with a few hounds to keep them safe, and all the animals scattered or growled at his approach.

“Your people said you had the plague,” Anders said.

“My people like to talk,” the Keeper said.

“You don’t have many of them,” Anders noted. There were as many aravels as there’d been with Merrill’s clan, but half as many people.

“Perhaps not anymore,” the Keeper said.

“What kind of plague is it?” Anders asked.

“One I’ve never seen before,” the Keeper said.

“Was that a joke?” Anders asked.

“Aren’t you clever?” the Keeper said.

“I’m a keeper,” Anders joked.

The Keeper chuckled, “What do your people call you?”

“Lord ban Airdeall,” Anders sort of lied.

“How terribly formal,” the Keeper said. “I think we’ll call you something else.”

“... Anders,” Anders supposed. “Your name’s Deshanna?”

“Deshanna Istimaethoriel Lavellan,” the Keeper said.

“I can’t pronounce that,” Anders said.

“Keeper, is just fine,” the Keeper said. “Let’s see if we’ll keep you. There’s a healer’s aravel here somewhere. See if you can’t find it.”

The healer’s aravel was far from the others, set in the shadow of an outcropping overlooking the valley. A sizeable tent had been set up beside it to serve as an infirmary, open to the outside world. The dozen elves within were ashen, sweating straight through their cots, their eyes a bright reflective red.

A single elf was managing it - and Anders was willing to bet it was why he was infected. Nethras was not a mage, and the only help he had to offer them was henbane and leeches. The henbane was a hallucinogen, but the leeches weren’t a bad idea. They came off bright red and bloated, and Nethras burned them in the fire, but they couldn’t have gotten all the lyrium or the plague would have been over.

“It’s called the Red Plague,” Anders said, leading her to sit at a bench beside the fire.

“We call it Andruil’s Agony,” the Keeper said.

“I don’t know your gods that well,” Anders admitted.

“I dare say most shems don’t,” the Keeper said - but Amell did. Anders tried and failed not to think about him, and the thousand year old elven soul he shared. Maker save him, Anders missed him. Amell would have known what to say to win over the Keeper and her clan, when everything out of Anders’ mouth just made things worse. “Andruil hunted the Forgotten Ones in the abyss, and brought plagues upon her lands whose cures demanded sacrifice. We’ve not found the right one for this.”

“I can cleanse it for you,” Anders said.

“Can you, now?” the Keeper rolled her fingers on her staff of bones. “Nethras - are you about?”

“Yes, Keeper,” Nethras stepped out from the tent, and tossed a bowl of leeches into the fire. He took care not to sit too close to them, like he feared they might become infected.

Nethras wasn’t a horror, but his eyes still claimed a touch of red. A sheen of sweat was on his skin, soaking through his clothes despite the start of autumn. He would have been suffering from anything from paranoia to pain, to judge by the thick veins bulging at his hands, but he seemed to be handling it well, and would have been an easy cleanse.

If Anders cleansed him, “Not for nothing.”

“Do you hear that, Nethras?” the Keeper asked. “You’re nothing now.”

“I had long suspected, Keeper,” Nethras smiled.

“I need my people back,” Anders said. “And I need food to feed the rest.”

“Suppose your people are already dead,” the Keeper turned her ear towards him. “Would you let mine die too?”

“Are they?” Anders asked.

“I haven’t yet decided,” the Keeper said.

“Thirteen for ten seems fair to me,” Anders said.

“Are your people worth less than mine?” the Keeper asked.

“You’ll owe me three,” Anders said.

“I think I owe you nothing, when you count our halla,” the Keeper said.

“Fine, but you have to let us keep them,” Anders said. “We’re starving and we have to eat.”

“And when the halla are all eaten?” the Keeper asked. “What will you eat then?”

“That depends on if you help us,” Anders said.

“Are there elven mages among your people?” the Keeper asked.

“There are,” Anders said cautiously. “Does that mean you’ll help us?”

“How long will it take to cleanse the plague?” the Keeper asked.

“A few days,” Anders said.

“Then you’ll stay for them,” the Keeper said. “Your friends will stay as well, until we know you can be trusted.”

“I need to see them before I agree to anything,” Anders said.

“Nothing?” the Keeper called.

“Keeper,” Nethras said.

“Take us to the holding aravel, would you?” the Keeper stood, so Anders stood up with her and took back her arm. Nethras walked ahead of them, and the few surviving elves seemed to skirt him, reflective eyes watching from a distance as they went back into the valley, and found an aravel guarded by two spearmen.

Two spearmen, for ten mages. Alain and the others could have killed them all, if they’d only tried, but they must have been too scared, too weak, too tired, too accustomed to a cell even after they’d risked everything escaping one. Anders fought off a wave of righteous anger at the thought of them locked up in one, when they’d done nothing to deserve it.

The Wildervale was no king’s wood. They weren’t poachers - and no poacher should be a prisoner anyway. Jacen hadn’t deserved his cell. Eram had been right to save him from it. He’d been Dalish, and he’d understood a few dead deer could feed a family. Alain’s group had been imprisoned for their empty stomachs, and Anders couldn’t stand it when he’d watched people fill theirs with other people back in Kirkwall while he and all his mages never took a bite.

One of the spearmen opened the door, and Alain and the others didn’t even try to run. They just looked up, subdued, submissive, slavish. Everything they’d been taught to be the Dalish took advantage of. Anders climbed into the aravel, and Alain leapt up from his seat. He didn’t have much else. The aravel was set up like a carriage, thin windows ringing the ceiling to let in light and air, rows of seats on either side, with a half-full piss pot pushed beneath them.

“Anders,” Alain grabbed at his hands. “Are you here to s-s-s-rescue us?”

“Of course I am,” Anders caught his fumbling hands and squeezed, and everyone shuffled down so he could sit with them. “What happened? How did you get caught?”

“We found deer tracks,” one of the entropy mages said. “I cast a death cloud over them, and the knife ears came out of the trees.”

“Will you stop calling them knife ears?” a force mage hissed.

“Excuse me for not being polite to our new jailors,” the entropy mage said.

“They’re not your jailors,” Anders said. “I’m going to get you all out.”

“How?” Alain asked. “They said the deer were s-s-s-sacred.”

“They just pull their caravans,” Anders said. Halla did more than that. The Dalish used them for everything from milk to wool to meat, but transportation seemed like the most important part of them, and maybe if they hadn’t lost that they wouldn’t mind as much. Amell could have brought them back with just their bones if he’d only been here, assuming the Dalish would have wanted that. “You’re a necromancer; could you revive them?”

“What do you m-m-mean?” Alain asked.

“Can you make a construct?” Anders clarified, thinking of the mount he’d made with Amell and left behind with the rest of his life. “Bind wisps to their bones so the Dalish could still use them?”

“... I’ve n-n-never even heard of that,” Alain said.

Well so much for that. “I’m going to heal a few of their people, and then they’ll let you go,” Anders said. “It might take me a few days, but I promise you’ll get out.”

“We won’t survive a few more days,” the force mage said. “Healer, we’re so hungry-”

“I’ll make sure they feed you,” Anders said - and in that moment it was obvious the food meant more than their freedom. Anders squeezed each of their shoulders, and made to leave when Alain caught his hand.

“Anders, I’m s-s-s-sorry I let you down,” Alain said.

“Why would you say that?” Anders asked.

“I s-s-said we should surrender,” Alain said. “I didn’t want to k-k-kill them.”

“... that’s okay,” Anders squeezed his hand against his chest in something like a hug, and lowered his voice which was already a whisper. “If it comes to it, I’ll kill them for you. I won’t let anyone put you back inside a cell.”

Anders didn’t know what to make of their expressions. They looked up at him with something almost akin to awe and wide-eyed wonder, like he was something out of Exaltations. Some herald of the Maker’s wrath or mercy, like they weren’t sure if they should fear him or revere him. Anders didn’t care which one they picked, so long as they believed that he’d be back for them.

Anders left the holding aravel and rejoined the Keeper, “You have to at least promise that you’ll feed them.”

“I would never send a soul to Falon’Din on an empty stomach,” the Keeper promised. “We’ll have supper for them soon, but we can get it for you now.”

“I can’t eat while my people starve,” Anders’ stomach rumbled in protest, but he had the taint, and he didn’t need to eat so long as it sustained him. “We need somewhere to stay and it may as well be here if we’re going to work together.”

“How many of your people are there?” the Keeper asked.

“Around a hundred,” Anders said.

“Then that makes us even,” the Keeper said. “Go and bring your people here. We’ll let you share the halla - and see how long our arrangement lasts.”

Anders could have cried. The thought of eating something - anything - was enough to bring him near to tears, but this meant food for everyone. Everyone who’d followed him out of fire and into death, trusting him to lead them from the Void when all Anders had done for twenty days and twenty nights was lead them deeper into it. Thousands of mages made it out of Kirkwall and scattered to the winds or died to the Exalted March, but these hundred were his. These and any others that would join him in his fight for freedom, and now he could finally feed them, if only for a few days.

“... It sounds like you're still here,” the Keeper noted while Anders pulled himself together.

“I don’t know the way back,” Anders admitted.

“I’m sure Ellana would be happy to show you,” the Keeper said.

Ellana was not happy.

The woman had a face that couldn’t form a smile, the white tattoos beneath her lips tailored to a frown. Her eyes were gold and glaring, her every step a stomp as she led him from the valley. Anders followed along behind her, his staff carrying his weight when he had trouble managing.

“I don’t suppose we’re going to be friends?” Anders asked.

“Don’t speak to me,” Ellana said.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Anders said.

“You shems are all the same,” Ellana whirled on him, but her bow and arrows were bound up safely on her back. “You come and you slaughter and you steal, and then you expect our thanks.”

“It couldn’t hurt,” Anders shrugged. “You can’t just leech away the plague. You need a healer, and I happen to be one.”

“Our healer died,” Ellana snapped. “Our halla keeper died. Our hearthmistress died. Over half a hundred of the People died!”

“And?” Anders asked. “You think I had something to do with that? I’m trying to help you-”

“You’re trying to help yourself,” Ellana said.

“Maker forbid I want to save my friends,” Anders rolled his eyes.

“My friends are already dead,” Ellana said. “I don’t care what the old bat says - Andruil’s Agony is yours. You shems started it. We took in someone from your city, and they brought the plague with them, and now the old bat means to take in more of you.”

“So you’d rather leave us all out here to die?” Anders asked.

“Better your people than mine,” Ellana said.

Anders could have done with different company. Ellana led him back to the encampment, taking no small amount of pride and joy when he struggled to keep up, stumbling and starving from two weeks with no food and even longer without rest. The encampment came into focus, fires from the Fade dancing between the trees, wisps whispering of Sloth and Hunger overhead a hundred starving mages who’d somehow managed not to fall to the demons dogging their steps as they fled from endless Exalted armies.

A handful ran to greet him when he stepped into the clearing, Bethany among them.

“Thank the Maker,” Beth said, and signed, “Did you find Alain and the others?”

“One better,” Anders signed. “I found them and food for all of us.”

“Please say you’re not joking,” Beth signed with one hand on her stomach. “How?”

“There’s a clan of Dalish in the Wildervale,” Anders signed. “They agreed to feed us.”

“Maker have mercy,” Beth signed, and looked at Ellana. “Who is this?”

“This is a bitch,” Anders signed.

“You can’t just sign that,” Beth signed like she was trying to hide her hands. “What if she can sign?”

“I hope she can,” Anders signed, and looked at Ellana. “You’re a bitch.”

Ellana looked at him blankly. Shame.

“Ella,” Beth called for her apprentice - the same poor girl Anders had almost murdered four years ago when he’d murdered every templar after her when she’d fled from the Circle. Anders had scared her half to death, and she’d risked it returning to the Circle rather than risk going anywhere with him. Beth had kept her on as her apprentice, and Ella was more or less her second in command.

She was… doing well. She’d shaved her head than sooner worry about her hair out on the run, and torn and tied her robes up into trousers. She was probably one of the most competent mages among them, but Anders could tell she was still scared of him. She circled him whenever Beth called her over, and jumped back when he came too close, which he only did by accident.

Anders was too ashamed to be around her. He thought of Kirkwall’s Chantry going up in flames, raining veilfire on the city, and the hundreds that had died in it, and felt nothing but exultant, but when he looked at Ella he felt shame. Shame enough to sunder the soul to think they’d almost taken hers. There’d been no Justice in them then - and no Vengeance either. They hadn’t been the cause of mages, they’d just been a threat to one.

If Beth thought that he was being cruel to mages now, she should have seen him then.

“Tell everyone to pack up,” Beth told Ella. “We’re going to join up with a Dalish clan that’s offered food and shelter.”

“You don’t want to vote?” Anders signed.

“Don’t start,” Beth signed back.

Ella ran off to relay the message, and Beth held out a hand to Ellana. “I’m Bethany Amell, former First Enchanter from Kirkwall.”

Ellana frowned at her hand, and folded her arms across her chest. “Ellana Lavellan. Vir Banal’ras. Don’t keep the Keeper waiting.”

“You can see the past few hours have been fun for me,” Anders signed.

“What are you doing with your hands, shem?” Ellana asked.

“It’s sign language,” Beth explained. “It’s a dwarven language used by their Silent Sisters. I don’t know much about them, but they’re a sect of female warriors who fought for women's rights, and cut out their tongues when no one would listen to them.”

Ellana sniffed, and looked at him, “You should follow in their footsteps, shem.”

“Women only, I’m afraid,” Anders said. “I’ve a knife, if you want to borrow it.”

Ellana smiled, “Only if you want me to sheath it up your-”

“It’s very popular in Kirkwall,” Beth interrupted them. “The Viscount is deaf, and I’m sure you’ve noticed Anders is mostly mute, so we tend to use it quite a bit.”

“Mute?” Ellana looked doubtful.

“Did you think this is fake?” Anders gestured to the scar on his throat.

“I think it’s too far from the center,” Ellana said.

“What did you do to her?” Beth signed.

“Nothing!” Anders signed. “She’s just like this.”

“Thank you,” Beth said. “We appreciate your clan taking us in.”

“It’s the Keeper’s clan,” Ellana said. “Thank her.”

Ellana stalked away from them, and set up on the outskirts of the encampment, waiting for all of them to pack up what few things they had.

“... I’m sure she’s nice once you get to know her,” Beth signed.

“She’s a bitch,” Anders signed.

“She’s a massive bitch,” Beth signed. “What happened to Alain?”

“Alain killed a few of their deer, and sacred must mean more to them than starving,” Anders signed. “They’re holding him and his group hostage until I cleanse the clan of the plague. One of the elves from the alienage escaped the city to join the clan before the lockdown, and infected everyone with red lyrium. Almost a hundred people died. It looked like half the clan. A dozen are still sick, but they’re willing to keep us fed while I heal them.”

“Maker’s breath, does anything ever happen to us that my brother hasn’t had some hand in?” Beth ran a weary hand through her hair. “At least this gives us somewhere safe to rest and recover while we decide on where to go.”

“You can’t be serious about voting,” Anders signed.

“Why not?” Beth signed.

“Because we didn’t vote on this?” Anders signed.

“We’re starving,” Beth signed. “We don’t have a choice.”

“That’s my whole point,” Anders signed. “We don’t have a choice in any of this - we have to do what we have to do to survive, and the way to survive is to escape through Nevarra.”

“It’s one way,” Beth signed. “It doesn’t have to be our way.”

The only thing he and Beth seemed to agree on was that their way was together. They gathered up their ninety some odd mages, and made sure they were all accounted for before they set off for the valley with Ellana leading.

"No caravans?" Ellana noted, with a wave at all his mages. "No tents? No packs? No-"

"Congratulations!" Anders cut her off. "You can see. You’ve got one up on your Keeper."

Anders hurt himself more than he hurt Ellana, snapping the first snide thing he thought when it took a shot at someone’s sight. Anders spun his ring around his finger, guilty and glad Amell hadn’t heard him.

"What's wrong with your people?" Ellana didn’t care the way he did. "Don't all you shems wear shoes?"

"They were slaves," Anders said evenly, struggling to control his anger while his hunger went unchecked. "Are you really judging them for how little they have?"

"You said they were mages," Ellana said.

"Mages are slaves," Anders said. "I know the Dalish honor their mages, but the Chantry locks the rest of us away."

"So how did all these slaves escape?" Ellana asked.

"I freed them," Anders said.

"Then you're the reason we can't go to Nevarra," Ellana said.

"What?" Anders asked.

"There are shemlen soldiers amassed along the border," Ellana told him. "We were trying to escape the plague, and we had to turn around or face your templars. We turned around to keep our mages safe, but that doesn't matter now."

"What are you talking about?" Anders asked.

Ellana didn’t answer him, "You're no Shartan, shem.”

The Dalish came out in full wounded force to greet them, and while Anders wouldn't call them hospitable they weren't hostile either. The Keeper bid them welcome, and claimed that they were guests, not that they all had a choice. Alain and the others were still locked up in their aravel, and the rest of them were set up at the base of the valley. The Keeper had the clan drag over three empty aravels for them to use when word reached her they had nothing else, and while it wasn’t enough to house them all, it was more than what they’d had.

They’d spent twenty days too hungry to be tired and too tired to be hungry and now that they had the chance to be both Anders felt both in abundance. The clan made them all supper from the halla that they’d slaughtered, and gave them so much more than he expected. It couldn’t have been three halla. It felt like three dozen.

Broths made from bone marrow and turned into stews. Ribs cooked on the bone with some kind of berry sauce. Sausage from their shoulders and intestines. Brawn made from their brains and tongue. Cooked hooves, sweetbreads, blood puddings. Tenderloins and shanks they braised or roasted, served up with roots and tubers. More cuts of meat than he had names for and organs prepared half a dozen ways.

The Dalish said a prayer when they set out the food, but Anders never heard it. Every other mage was crying - but there was no risk of Despair when all their tears were born from Joy. He helped Beth and a few others pass out food, and wasn’t surprised to find there was still plenty left over. Their stomachs had all shrunk, from the two weeks they’d spent starving, and none of them could eat enough.

Anders couldn’t eat at all.

He was starving - and he couldn’t eat. He hadn’t seen it made. Everyone had eaten. He knew the food was fine. One by one the mages crawled into their gifted aravels to sleep, but Anders just stayed sitting, his mouth filling up with drool, his stomach eating him alive, staring at the food, until he went to bed without it.

Chapter 215: From Kirkwall We Fled: On Empty Stomachs

Summary:

“And the People came, all astonished
To stand among Andraste's followers,
And she gave them food and drink and bade them sit
While Shartan gave her the tale of their uprising
And flight from Emerius.”

- Shartan 9:25

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 23 Martinalis Morning
Free Marches - Wildervale - Clan Lavellan Encampment

Anders woke up hungry.

There wasn’t room in the aravels for all of them, so Anders slept in the shade of one, and Beth shook him awake that morning.

“We need to talk about what’s next,” Beth said.

Anders stumbled to his feet, “Breakfast?”

Beth stood up with him, “There’s still food left over from last night.”

The food had been brought to them on a serving tray the size of a small banquet table, and even now it still seemed generous, meats piled high the mages were all helping themselves to that morning. The Dalish had prepared it all, but Anders would have been happy if they just handed them the carcass. At least the carcass, he could trust.

“I need something else to eat,” Anders signed.

“Because of Kirkwall?” Beth guessed.

“What?” Anders asked.

“I know the city starved before the Circle,” Beth said. “Meredith started sending the templars out demanding tithe when Garrett said we’d have to ration, but we all knew that they were raids. She made sure to keep the mages fed, but it wasn’t out of mercy. She was afraid we’d riot or all give in to Hunger - and I think we almost did. We’re lucky we found the Dalish when he did.

“I heard how bad it was outside from Sketch,” Beth stood with him in the shade of the aravel, watching the rest of the mages pick apart the halla. “He said people started eating people. Is that why you can’t eat any meat?”

“I just need something else to eat,” Anders didn’t want to talk about it. There was no reason to give Beth every sordid detail of what her brother had done to him.

“We should probably negotiate for more food anyway,” Beth said. “This won’t last forever.”

“I doubt they’ll give us any more,” Anders signed. Just killing three halla had gotten Alain arrested - or confined to an aravel.

“I don’t even know how much food we need,” Beth admitted. “The Tranquil handled all of it. Ordering, preparing, cooking, plating, serving, cleaning… I can handle food for a family of five, but not a hundred.”

“Don’t we have one with us?” Anders asked, unable to recall their name. There were a hundred mages with them, and Anders couldn’t know them all, but the Tranquil made him uncomfortable. They were his worst fear come to life - for himself, for Amell, for Kieran, for every mage that he held dear.

The Tranquil were nothing more than empty husks - a mockery of the mages. All feeling, all emotion, gone. The walking dead in all but name, and so much more profane. The Chantry was far worse than the Grand Necropolis, parading their undead through Thedas’ cities, branding their symbols on their brows, believing once all lands under the sun raised their voices in the Chant of Light the Maker would turn back His gaze and honor all their sacrifices.

They may as well have slit their throats. At least then they’d be honest. Anders saw those bloody suns like lambs upon an altar. He saw Karl - his lyrium blue eyes and the way that light had left them long before life left them too. He heard his voice - rich and deep and desperate - casting off that wretched monotone if only for a moment. He felt him die - the way he shuddered in his arms then stilled, when Anders took his corpse back from the Chantry.

Anders wished he could have annulled it twice.

“Helena,” Beth gave the woman a name when Anders couldn’t even stand to see her face. “Jaken brought her with us. I think she used to be his lover.”

“Did she work in the kitchens?” Anders asked.

“I’m not sure,” Beth scanned the crowd of mages for some sign of a sunburst. “I was only First Enchanter a few weeks. I never worked much with the Formari. I’ll see if I can find her. We should know how much food we need before we ask for it. I just wish we had something to trade.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Anders signed.

“We didn’t think this through,” Beth signed. “I’m relieved Isabela saved all the apprentices, but we need asylum for all of the apostates. I doubt the Dalish will let us stay here very long.”

“We can’t go to Nevarra after all,” Anders signed, recalling what Ellana had told him yesterday. “You were right - the Divine’s armies are amassed along the border.”

“Here I wish I could be happy to say I told you so,” Beth signed.

“They won’t survive in the cities on their own,” Anders signed, watching the mages struggle just to dig latrines. “We’re lucky they know how to pick up a plate without the Tranquil putting it in front of them.”

“You know what they’ve been through,” Beth signed. “How can you not be sympathetic?”

“How can you not be angry?” Anders signed. “They should know all of these things already, but none of them know anything.”

“We’re on the run,” Beth countered. “I don’t know how to hunt. Garrett did it for us. Are you going to get mad at me for that?”

“I’m mad at the bloody templars!” Anders signed angrily.

“There are no bloody templars here,” Beth waved a hand out at the mages. “You’re just being a bastard.”

“Maybe, but at least I’m being honest,” Anders signed.

They couldn’t survive anywhere on their own. The woods and wilds had their own challenges, when none of them knew how to hunt or harvest, and they’d all lost their shoes, and they had no form of shelter, but the cities wouldn’t be any better. They all looked like apostates, wearing Circle robes, with no good sense of currency.

They didn’t know how to find a room and board or work, cook their food, mend their clothes, and do all the other things the Tranquil had done for them. The Circle never taught them. The Chantry never wanted them to know. They wanted them all meek, oppressed, and tractable, with no skills of their own.

Anders would never forget the time he’d spent in the Circle. The way the other mages pitied him for coming into magic late, but Anders pitied them for coming into magic early. Anders had grown up outside the Circle. He knew how to earn coin and how to spend it, how to cook to some extent, how to care for himself when he was free, even if he never stayed free long.

The templars always caught him. They had his phylactery - but they didn’t have it now. His phylactery was inert - and the rest of them had gone up in flames with the Chantry and the Circle. Anders had destroyed all of them.

… Anders had destroyed almost all of them.

Beth was signing something, but Anders didn’t catch the words forming on her fingers. He was too distracted by her veins, the blood and mana flowing through them, the magic that would lead the templars to her. Anders caught her hand and cut off her words.

“Your phylactery,” Anders whispered.

Realization set in slowly. Beth looked at him, and then the staff that she was holding, “Shit.”

“Tell me she didn’t get the chance to send it,” Anders said.

“I don’t know,” Beth sat so fast she seemed to fall. Anders caught her before she hit the ground, and Ella and half a dozen mages came running over.

“First Enchanter, are you alright?” one concerned mage asked.

“Is it the baby?” asked another.

“Shit,” Beth dropped her staff to drag both hands through her hair, her composure crumbling. “Shit, shit, shit-”

Ella settled in against Beth’s knees, “What’s happened?”

“Let’s go inside,” Anders suggested, helping Beth up to her feet and into the nearest aravel. The concerned mages cleared the way for them, emptying the aravel, rearranging the few cushions inside it, attacking Beth with blankets.

She was so much more than just their First Enchanter. Beth could say all she wanted about how the mages were in awe of him, but Beth had their devotion. It took courage to carry her child to term, and gave them hope there’d be no templars to take it or them away. She’d spread his mage rights manifesto through the Gallows despite the risk of swinging from them, and stood up for all of them when she took Orsino’s place - in the Circle and in Val Royeaux.

“What happened?” Ella stayed to hold Beth’s hand when all the other concerned mages left.

“I didn’t even think about it,” Beth confessed.

“I didn’t think about it either,” Anders signed.

“What?” Ella asked, glancing back and forth between them. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing yet,” Anders couldn’t bring himself to look at her, but Beth had nothing to do with that.

“We have to tell them,” Beth said.

“Tell us what?” Ella asked.

“I’m Kirkwall’s First Enchanter,” Beth said.

“You’re a good one,” Ella promised.

“My phylactery might not have been destroyed,” Beth stood up to stumble through the aravel. “The phylacteries of every First Enchanter are stored in the White Spire, in Val Royeaux, in Orlais.”

“What does that mean?” Ella asked.

“It means shit,” Beth stopped at the end of the aravel, and banged her fist against the wall. “Shit! Shit, shit, shit!”

Ella flinched. Anders half-expected to flinch with her. It felt almost familiar. Hawke had handled his anger the same way - ripping paintings off the walls, throwing vases, breaking everything around them until he’d run out of things to break, and then he’d just broken him. Shoves, at first. Slaps, from there. The beatings just kept getting worse, and Anders just encouraged them.

Throwing things, trading blows, mocking Hawke while he was on the floor, until Hawke learned to kick him silent. Anders had spent so long unlearning that. He’d started fights with Amell just because he was afraid of losing them, flinching every time Amell so much as sighed, as if his love would ever hurt him. It had taken months for Anders to feel safe with Amell’s anger, and he was still working on feeling safe with his own.

Ella was a testament to how dangerous Anders’ anger was. Compared to him, Beth’s outburst was next to nothing. “Ella,” somehow Anders found the strength to say her name. “Could you go get Beth’s staff?”

Ella fled the aravel, and Anders set a soft hand on Beth’s shoulder, “Beth.”

“I know it’s in Orlais,” Beth banged her fist again.

“You don’t know that,” Anders said.

“Of course it is,” Beth turned to face him, leaning back against the wall like she couldn’t stand alone. “She’d never overlook it.”

“Did you and Cullen talk about it?” Anders asked.

“Of course not,” Beth hugged herself. “I never even thought about it. I was so focused on the Circle. Maker, forgive me.”

“Forgive you for what?” Anders asked.

“The templars can find us here,” Beth said. “They can find us anywhere as long as I’m with everyone.”

“You don’t know they have it-”

“Of course they do-”

“You don’t know,” Anders signed to save his throat. “I have a contact in the White Spire. If I can get a letter to her, she can check to see if your phylactery made it there and destroy it if the templars haven’t sent for it already.”

Adrian had promised she’d go to any lengths to achieve the freedoms he’d spoken of in his manifesto. Anders had to believe that destroying phylacteries was one of them. If she could arrange the assassination of the Left Hand of the Divine, she could destroy the phylactery of Kirkwall’s First Enchanter. Anders just had to find some way to get word to her - a letter through the Mages’ Collective in whatever city they sought sanctuary in.

“Maker, the idiocy,” Beth thudded her head back against the wall. “This whole time, I’ve been leading them right to us.”

“They wouldn’t have brought your phylactery from Orlais for the Exalted March,” Anders signed. “The blockade was already in effect before you were the First Enchanter, and the armies were from the Free Marches. If the templars even sent for the First Enchanter’s phylactery, it would have been Orsino’s. Word of your appointment would have taken time to reach them, if it ever did.

“Your phylactery might not even be at the White Spire. The Knight Commander might not have sent it in the first place. She would have had to find a way to get a package out through the blockade, if she even bothered when she was planning for you and every other mage to die in the Annulment anyway.”

Beth shook her head, “We can’t risk it.”

“What are you saying?” Anders asked.

“I can’t risk it,” Beth said. “I can’t risk everyone for me.”

“You can’t run on your own,” Anders signed. “You’re six months pregnant.”

“I can’t run at all,” Beth slid back down to the floor as tears slid down her face. “I can’t run with a phylactery.”

“Yes, you can,” Anders knelt beside her. “I did. You can run with one. You just have to keep moving-”

“I have a baby,” Beth shook her head. “I’ll never have a baby-”

“Beth-” Anders squeezed her shoulder.

“They won’t let me keep my baby,” Beth choked down a sob, and Anders pulled her into a hug. They reeked of sweat and body odor, after three weeks on the run, but Anders didn’t care and Beth must not have either. She gripped him tight, sobs breaking on his shoulder. “I want to keep my baby. Maker, I just want to keep my baby. She just started kicking.”

Anders smoothed back her matted hair, “You’ll keep her,” Anders ran with the pronoun. “We’ll find some way for you to keep her.”

“My phylactery-” Beth hiccuped.

“Doesn’t matter,” Anders said.

“They caught you,” Beth peeled herself off his shoulder, scrubbing at her face with the fraying sleeve of her First Enchanter’s robes. “Anders, they caught you every time you escaped. It matters. I can’t stay. I put everyone at risk.”

Anders didn’t care if she put them at risk. They were at risk anyway. He couldn’t turn away a mage just because the templars might come after them. He had to fight for each and every one of them if he wanted to save all of them - and after seeing what Beth meant to everyone these past twenty days Anders was confident they’d all agree.

“What happened to voting?” Anders asked.

“I spent my whole life putting the people who matter most to me in danger,” Beth pretended she could fix her hair, the ropey strands of black more or less a helmet. “I can’t keep making everyone risk their lives for mine.”

“You said everyone deserves a choice,” Anders reminded her. “Protecting you is one of those.”

“First Enchanter?” Ella knocked at the entrance to the aravel with Beth’s staff. “I think Anders is right.”

“I’m getting sick of hearing that,” Beth frowned.

Ella climbed up into the aravel with them, and sat a safe distance away from him. Beth sat down beside her and took back her staff, and whatever strength she found in it.

“It seems cruel to make them vote for me to leave,” Beth sighed. “No one should have to live with that.”

“No one will have to,” Ella said.

“We haven’t even set up the fraternities,” Beth said. “We don’t have any representatives elected.”

“Then we’ll elect them,” Anders signed.

In truth, Anders had always hated the Fraternities. They were just another tool the templars used to trick mages into thinking they had a voice, but what they really did was weaken that voice by dividing it, pitting mages against mages so they argued instead of taking action, and for six hundred years since the formation of the College of Magi that was all that they had done.

Aequitarians. Libertarians. Loyalists. Isolationists. Mages pushing for this and pulling for that and arguing in endless circles instead of seeking to escape them. For so many hundred years made they’d made no progress, not since the Battle of the Braziers, when the mages of Val Royeaux had barricaded themselves in the cathedral in protest of the Chantry’s oversight of magic, and the formation of the Circle of Magi had been better than letting all magic save for lamp-lighting stay illegal.

And then nothing. Nothing for so many Ages. Divine. Glory. Towers. Black. Exalted. Steel. Storm. Blessed. Dragon. Mages won the right to be imprisoned and then they never lost it. Nothing ever came of peaceful protest, save for eighteen annulments. Eighteen Circles of Magi slaughtered, two every hundred years, more Circles of Magi destroyed than even existed under the Chantry outside of Tevinter.

Nothing would come of voting, of debating, of doing anything but acting, but if Beth needed to hear their mages say that she was worth the risk of keeping safe then she deserved to hear them say it.

“I have to go to the infirmary and cleanse the plague so they’ll release Alain and everyone else,” Anders signed, and squeezed her shoulder. “It’s the aravel with the tent, over to the east by the outcropping if you need me. I’ll come back at sunset, and then we can cast the vote.”

Beth nodded, “I’ll set up the fraternities, and see if I can find Helena to find out how much food we need.”

Anders guessed that they would need a lot, as he left the aravel to take in their hundred-some-odd mages. Almost all of them were resting, after twenty days of running. They lingered around the aravels or what halla was left over, talking in low tones, casting furtive glances over their shoulders like they feared they were still inside the Circle. A few were actually relaxing, tossing balls of ice and fire back and forth with magic, testing their free use of it without the templars there to take it.

Anders felt their eyes on him when he left for the infirmary, but he couldn’t say if they were in awe or abhorrence of him when they all knew what he’d done. It wasn’t as if he’d had the time to hear all their opinions while they were on the run, but they were part of the some-odd-hundreds that had wanted to go with him and hadn’t split for Ostwick, so Anders guessed they found him well enough.

Anders started up the valley, and was waylaid by Ellana. The Dalish looked no happier to see him than he did to see her, slender fingers twitching like she hoped to fit her bow and arrow inbetween them.

“Shem,” Ellana said.

“Is this where I just call you Dalish?” Anders rolled his eyes.

“Knife ear, suits your kind,” Ellana spat.

Anders stopped to glance at her, “... I’m not going to call you that.”

“And yet you call our halla deer,” Ellana sneered.

“Good chat,” Anders kept on for the infirmary, and groaned when Ellana fell into step with him.

“I don’t want to be here either,” Ellana promised.

“Then you can go away,” Anders suggested cheerily and shooed her.

“The old bat sent me to spy on you,” Ellana smacked away his flapping hand.

“And you didn’t think to keep that secret?” Anders asked.

“Why else would I be near you?” Ellana asked.

“I’m charming,” Anders said.

Ellana didn’t seem to think so. She shot him one glare after the next, bare feet stomping through the grass, but it wasn’t too hard to ignore her. Anders’ eyes kept wandering over every other aravel, and the elves outside them cooking a dozen different breakfasts. Eggs and bread from wildflour, fruits with halla cheeses, roasted nuts and berries. Anders had to swallow something, so he settled on his pride.

“... Can I ask you something?” Anders asked.

“Can I stop you?” Ellana countered.

“Is there some way I could get something to eat?” Anders asked.

“Our halla weren’t enough for you?” Ellana turned her nose up at him to look down it.

“I don’t expect you to understand, but I can’t eat anything unless I see it made in front of me,” Anders said, and when that didn’t move her, added, “And I have to eat something if you want me to heal your people.”

Ellana stopped and stared at him, squinting until her eyes were nearly shut, “Delltash,” Ellana relented with what he guessed must have been a curse, “Fine - this way.”

Ellana led him to an aravel. The caravan’s sails were black and furled, the landship decorated with raven, bear, and varterral carvings. The door was held open by a small statue of a man kneeling. Scattered in the grass outside the aravel were toys. Carved halla and aravels. A ball of leather. A ball of linen filled with beans. Stuffed dolls. Wooden swords. Wooden staves. A tiny sling.

Anders stepped over them as Ellana led him inside and into an even bigger mess. Clothes were strewn across the floor and over furniture, the blankets had been stripped off the bed and made into a tent, bowls and plates placed seemingly at random throughout the aravel. Anders watched Ellana riffle through a cabinet and said, “I take it you weren’t expecting company.”

“Shut up, shem,” Ellana said.

“Are you sure the rats haven’t eaten everything?” Anders joked.

“Do you want food or not?” Ellana whirled on him.

“Just making conversation,” Anders said.

“The old bat should have let me murder you,” Ellana grabbed a parsnip and threw it at him. It smacked his chest and hit the floor, and Anders set his staff aside and sat down to retrieve it. It was covered in dirt and dust, but the first bite might have been ambrosia. Anders all but moaned, cradling the root against his chest with his knees pulled up against him.

“Maker, thank you,” Anders groaned.

“I don’t want your Maker’s thanks,” Ellana sneered.

“Whatever god you like,” Anders revised, trying to work up to another bite when one felt like a banquet. Anders might have been eating three vegetables instead of one, a starchy taste like raw potatoes, a cut of sweetness much like carrots, a bitterness akin to turnips, all underneath the dirt.

“Don’t patronize me, shem,” Ellana warned him.

“I’m just trying to say thank you,” Anders said.

“You’re piss poor at it,” Ellana said.

“Thank you anyway,” Anders took another bite when he’d chewed through the first. “I mean it.”

“You mean to mock my home while you sit there eating dirt,” Ellana leaned back against the cabinet.

“I lived in the sewers for two years,” Anders said. “I wasn’t judging. I was joking.”

“Your jokes are shit,” Ellana said.

“Everyone’s a critic,” Anders said.

“You’re easy to criticize,” Ellana said.

“I’m going to save a dozen of your people’s lives and all I want in exchange is a bit of food and freedom,” Anders talked through his third bite. “Do you really hate me just because I’m human?”

“I don’t need another reason but every word out of your mouth is one,” Ellana said.

“I’m offering you an olive branch and you’re acting like it’s a switch,” Anders said.

“I don’t want peace with those in power,” Ellana scowled.

“At least that we agree on,” Anders gave up trying to talk to her and had finished half his parsnip when what looked like a tumbleweed blasted through the aravel. Leaves and dirt and twigs all scattered, and a tiny elf appeared from the explosion. He was covered in mud, twigs sticking out from his blood red hair, grass stains on his clothes obscuring whatever color they’d once been.

"Lana! Lana! Lana!" The little boy assaulted her. "Lookit! I found a frog!"

"That's-" Ellana grabbed for him, but the little elf bounced back and spun in a panicked circle.

"Oh no!" The boy gawked at all the leaves and dirt. "I lost him."

"Mahanon-" Ellana hissed.

Mahanon - Anders guessed was meant to be a name - jumped when he noticed him, flinging himself back behind Ellana's legs.

"I’m not magic!" Mahanon lied.

He was definitely a mage - haloed in a subtle green. Anders glanced up at Ellana - who for some reason shook her head. "That's a shame," Anders said cautiously. "I like magic."

"Do you like frogs?" Mahanon asked.

"Mahanon," Ellana hissed. "We don't talk to shemlen."

"But he’s in our house," Mahanon protested. "Sylaise says to be good hosts."

Ellana sounded like she lost her voice, squeaking in frustration while she struggled to find a way to explain away his presence. “Shemlen aren’t safe, remember?” Ellana knelt down to talk to the boy, casting sidelong glares his way, like Anders had somehow summoned him inside. “Remember the bad men who took our parents?”

“He took mama?” Mahanon whimpered.

“No-” Ellana was having so much trouble explaining Anders almost felt sorry for her.

“Why’s he bad?” Mahanon asked.

“He’s very mean,” Ellana managed.

“You’re not suppose’ to be mean,” Mahanon frowned at him.

“You’re right,” Anders said carefully, glancing at Ellana who glared daggers back at him. “I’m sorry.”

“Do you like frogs?” Mahanon asked again.

“Sure,” Anders decided.

“Mahanon, why don’t you go play outside?” Ellana urged him towards the door.

“People don’t talk to me,” Mahanon huffed. “They’re doing work.”

“What does that even-” Ellana pressed her fingers into her forehead. “Twig-”

“I don’t wanna go outside,” Mahanon sniffed.

“Maybe Mahanon can play in here and we can go do work?” Anders offered.

“I wanna come!” The little elf clung to Ellana’s leg.

“We’re going to see the healer, Twig,” Ellana peeled her brother off her leg. “You can’t go near the sick.”

“Are you sick?”

“No-”

“You said the sick get you sick!”

“I did but-”

“Don’t get sick!”

“The shemlen is a healer. I won’t get sick.”

“But he’s bad.”

“Mahanon!” Ellana snapped. “Go outside!”

Mahanon ran out crying.

“Fuck!” Ellana slammed a fist against the cupboards. The door bounced open and broke off of the bottom hinge, swinging and squeaking in the awkward silence.

“Do you-” Anders started.

Ellana glared, “Don’t.”

For once, Anders didn’t. He thanked the parsnip on his tongue for giving him the strength to hold it. He couldn’t finish all of it, after two weeks with no food, and broke the half down into quarters to keep in the pockets on his belt for the rest of the day. Ellana glared him back outside, Mahanon nowhere to be seen. She kicked her heels against the ground on their way to the infirmary, and Anders couldn’t help himself.

“I’m sorry,” Anders said. Ellana’s glare morphed into a scowl, pinching her whole face, and Anders supposed ‘sorry’ was too vague with everything that had happened. “About your parents.”

“What do you know of it?” Ellana snapped.

Anders blamed his full stomach for not snapping back, “Nothing.”

Ellana sniffed, apparently satisfied with that answer, and Anders guessed that was as civil as they’d get. Nethras was still working at the healer’s aravel, doling out bowls of soup for breakfast or brunch, and Anders supposed that he should start with him. Anders helped him finish rounds and then had him gather what he needed to get started. A scalpel, a chisel, potions, poultices, bandages, a bowl for blood and water and all the rest.

They set up in the grass beside a fire, and Anders took hold of his hand and hesitated before he cut his wrist. “This will hurt,” Anders warned him.

“Most things do,” Nethras said.

Anders slit his wrist, and set aside the scalpel. He channelled a panacea alongside his cleansing, the Dalish crying the entire time, despite the elfroot he was chewing on. It wasn’t the quick cleansing that he’d cast on Hawke to heal him for a moment. It was meant to last for life, and that meant dredging all the crystals of red lyrium from Nethras’ heart and veins. It hurt - because of course it did - but Anders had gotten better at it. What had once taken him a week of cleansing now only took him a few days.

“Tell me when the pain’s too much,” Anders said. “Don’t be brave about it.”

“Do I look brave, my friend?” Nethras asked through his tears.

“You risked your life to heal these people,” Anders gestured towards the tent set up outside his aravel. “That’s brave enough for me.”

“And yet I am no healer,” Nethras said. “We lost ours to the plague.”

“I’m sorry,” Anders said.

“What kind of magic is this?” Ellana asked, picking at her nails with a knife.

“Does it matter?” Anders asked.

“Doesn’t it?” Ellana countered.

“The kind that keeps your friend alive,” Anders frowned at what he could only imagine was meant to be a threat.

“A word we both use liberally,” Nethras said through a watery grin.

“Stop talking to him, Nethras,” Ellana said. “You’re too quick to trust.”

“You’re too quick not to,” Nethras countered. “Not all shemlen are the same.”

“How can you say that?” Ellana demanded.

“How can you not?” Nethras asked. “What comfort does it bring to believe the whole world against us?”

“Sometimes, the world is against you,” Anders said.

“Your kind and mine are not the same,” Ellana said.

“I didn’t say we were,” Anders said.

Nethras smiled for both of them, “Perhaps we’re close enough.”

Chapter 216: From Kirkwall We Fled: Without Skills

Summary:

"And Shartan saw that they counted men and women of all descriptions among them.
Many bore the scars of escaped slaves, and some had come west
From the coastlands, and they stood as equals beside the wild giant men of the South."

- Shartan 9:22

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 24 Martinalis Afternoon
Free Marches - Wildervale - Clan Lavellan Encampment

“I hear you’re a blood mage,” the Keeper invited him to lunch to say.

“Does it matter?” Anders didn’t see the point in denying it. “You must know it’s working.”

“Must I?” the Keeper raised a silver eyebrow, sipping what Anders assumed was tea from a small wooden cup. He hadn’t seen it steeped, so he stuck to water. “Our dear Nothing only spoke of pain.”

“I know his name now, you know,” Anders said, eating the few plums she’d set out for him. There was a forest nearby somewhere filled with them, and a group of elves had taken a group of mages out to pick them. They all came back alive, so Anders counted it a diplomatic victory.

“But can you pronounce it?” the Keeper teased.

“Nethras,” Anders said.

“You are not to share the nature of your magic with the clan,” the Keeper warned him, setting down her tea.

“I think it’s obvious what I’m doing,” Anders managed to stomach two plums in one sitting, and hoped it meant he was doing better. “You can’t cleanse blood without blood magic. Any mage who saw me using it would recognize it.”

“How fortunate I cannot see,” the Keeper grinned. “And that there are no other mages left.”

“There’s Mahanon,” Anders wondered if he was supposed to know .

“Our young First,” the Keeper hummed thoughtfully, tracing the rim of her cup with a gnarled finger.

The little boy couldn’t have been more than four or five, and everything Anders had heard from Merrill and Velanna led him to believe it was unusual he was the only other mage. The Dalish revered magic, and their clans always had multiple mages among them, “What happened to the last First?”

“Illassan,” the Keeper reflected fondly. “They had a true command of ice and just a little healing, but their real magic was their memory. They would have made for a fine Keeper… they died, with all the others.”

“The plague?” Anders guessed.

“You could call it that,” the Keeper said mysteriously.

“What else would you call it?” Anders chased his plums with a drink of water. “Andril’s Agony?”

“Andruil,” the Keeper corrected him.

“I was close,” Anders said.

“A hunter who misses his mark cannot tell his hungry family he was close,” the Keeper tutted.

Anders felt like he was being lectured by his mother, “Andruil.”

“Yes, but no,” the Keeper said. “When Andruil’s Agony fell on the clan, we weathered it as best we could, but we’d camped too close to Kirkwall. We’d heard the Sabrae clan was lost there and sought to offer aid to whatever elves survived, but Chantry soldiers chased them.

“Such is the case with shemlen. They saw a worse plague in our magic and sought to stamp it out. The People… changed. Andruil’s Agony had made them angry. Those of them afflicted threw themselves at the soldiers and the rest of us escaped. Our little Mahanon was the only mage among us spared.”

“I’m sorry,” Anders said sincerely. “It’s the bloody templars. They’ll stop at nothing to hunt us down. They treat us all like animals.”

“Things shemlen treat us like anyway,” the Keeper said.

Anders didn’t know what to make of that remark. “I worked with the Sabrae clan. I knew their Keeper Marethari. She used to take in elven mages I freed from Kirkwall’s Circle.”

“Did she, now?” the Keeper asked. “That doesn’t sound like the Marethari I remember.”

“How well did you know her?” Anders asked.

“Well enough,” the Keeper said. “She used to slaughter hillsmen in the Frostback Mountains with the help of sylvans. She was no friend to shemlen. She outcast any in her clan to so much as speak a kind word of them.”

Anders recalled Merrill’s friend Arianni - an elf who’d fallen for an Antivan merchant - and how Marethari had outcast her for carrying his son. “... that sounds like her.”

“And yet she helped you of her own free will?” the Keeper asked.

“What are you asking?” Anders corked his canteen. “Are you asking if I compelled her? You think just because I’m a blood mage I compel anyone who disagrees with me?”

“Such magic leads most men astray,” the Keeper said.

“Well my magic led me here, so you tell me what you make of that,” Anders said.

“I think your magic brought you where you were needed,” the Keeper surprised him saying. “You risked more than I expected offering your help knowing we’d learn what you are.”

“I just want my friends back,” Anders said.

“Here I thought you wanted food,” the Keeper felt across her table and found one of the biscuits she’d set out Anders couldn’t eat because he hadn’t seen them baked.

“I want that too,” Anders cut up another plum.

“I wonder if you’d earn it?” the Keeper asked.

“Do you really have to ask?” Anders asked.

“Magic made our clan,” the Keeper said. “Mages tended to our fires, our fowl, our halla. We can’t move our aravels without them. They grew our food and healed our sick. They’re the only reason we have water. Mahanon wasn’t meant to be my First, my Second, or my Third. We had planned to give him to another clan at the next Arlathvhen who needed magic more.”

… No wonder Ellana hated her. Anders did his best to school his expression, but he’d never had a face for Wicked Grace. Anders couldn’t imagine giving a child away. Not being able to say goodbye to Kieran, when Anders had come so close to feeling comfortable as his father, had been more miserable than he could imagine. He’d spent so much time teaching him to master his magic, listening to his wild prophecies, faking an appreciation for his terrible drawings.

Maker, he missed those stupid doodles. He didn’t even know where Kieran’s family portrait had gotten to, in all the chaos of Kirkwall. He couldn’t remember if he’d left it at Vigil’s Keep, or brought it with him to Chateau Haine, or if it had just crumbled to lint in a pocket somewhere. He’d just lost it, just like Kieran had said he would, but he didn’t feel like he’d done a good job treasuring it while he had it like he’d promised.

But Kieran was just one mage, and Anders had to be for all of them, “What do you need us to do?”

The Dalish needed them to do a lot. Their aravels had no insulation, when their mages kept them hot or cold, and with the coming autumn into winter they needed extra warmth. Enchantments carved into the woodwork could be used to heat or cool them, but took mana to manage, to say nothing of the lighting. The Dalish didn’t care for fires and torches, when wisps were far more subtle, and they conjured almost as much of them as they did water.

Drinking. Bathing. Washing. Working. They used water for everything and went through at least a dozen barrels daily. They grew food on and in their aravels - but the Circle mages couldn’t help with that. They didn’t know anything of nature magic, when the Chantry dubbed it hedge magic and heresy, or-

“Arcanist derangement,” an old enchanter huffed. “They mean to make us into madmen.”

“Rather be a madman than a hungry one,” a more practical mage said.

“I should rather lose my mind to the brand than my own magic,” the old enchanter sniffed.

“Here I couldn’t tell you had one, refusing help from the only people willing to give it,” the practical mage said.

“Savages,” the old enchanter muttered.

"Say that again," an elven mage warned him.

"And so I shall," the old enchanter straightened up to glare them down.

"Why shouldn't he?" another elven mage chimed in against the first. "The wildlings think they're better than us."

"They are better," the proud elf said. "They're the last of the elvhen."

"And they’re not starving," the practical mage added. "Which we will be without their help."

"I am a published enchanter from the Circle," the old enchanter insisted, but for the life of him Anders didn't even know his name. "I apprenticed under the late First Enchanter Remille. I will not take orders from a savage."

"From an elf, you mean," Sketch said snidely.

"Certainly not," the enchanter huffed, straightening his sleeves like there was any dignity left in his robes when they’d frayed up to his elbows. "The late First Enchanter Orsino was an elf and I had nothing against him."

“Maybe you’d rather take your orders from a templar,” the proud elf said.

“How dare you!” the old enchanter stood from the grass like he was standing from a chair, and half of the mages stood up with him. All at once, their conclave devolved into shouting, humans yelling at elves, elves yelling at humans, everyone yelling at everyone and getting nothing done. It felt exactly like every assembly of the Fraternities of Enchanters Anders had ever attended - a total waste of time.

“Maker’s breath,” Beth signed at him, sitting on the steps of an aravel with him in front of their makeshift conclave.

“I told you it would be like this,” Anders signed back. “The Fraternities of Enchanters only ever existed to divide us.”

“You said that we had to be united behind a single voice,” Beth signed. “Be that voice.”

“Your brother took my voice from me,” Anders signed and signalled at his throat.

“So take it back,” Beth signed. “I know you can heal through it.”

It didn’t mean it didn’t cause him pain. Anders wished that he could whisper, but he had to make sure he was heard, so he pushed the Fade into his throat and stood, “Enough! This isn’t what we’re voting on.”

"Don't see why we're voting anyway," the proud elf said as the mages settled down and sat. "The Dalish don't."

"The Circle did," Ella said from her place beside Beth.

“Thought we were trying to escape it,” the proud elf said.

“We don’t have to escape all of it,” Ella said.

“Just so,” the old enchanter huffed. “We should not be taking orders from outsiders.”

“So we should take them from you instead?” an indignant mage demanded.

“We should honor our hierarchy,” the old enchanter said. “Mages answering to junior enchanters answering to senior enchanters and so forth.”

“The Dalish saved all our asses and you’re out here worried about who's kissing yours?” the indignant mage said.

“What I am worried about is the complete collapse of society as we know it-”

“What do we know about society? Society doesn’t accept us! Society should collapse!”

“Anarchy is no alternative-”

“-anything is an alternative to an Annulment! I came with the Healer to help him fight for freedom-”

“-none of us are freemen. This isn’t Ferelden-”

“-well I mean to fight until we are!”

“-You cannot believe this life better than the Circle-”

The comment set the mages off again, everyone arguing over everyone, until Anders burned with veilfire and banged his staff against the ground. “The Circle of Magi failed us!” Anders silenced all of them, Justice echoing through his voice. “The Fraternities of Enchanters failed us! The Chantry failed us! Society failed us when it failed to accept us!

“This pettiness has to stop! We have to rise above it! We have to accept each other. If you came with me - you came with me to fight. We’re not here to debate our policies; we’re here to defend our principles. We’re here to fight for the freedom of every man, woman, and child with magic in Thedas. We’re here to claim our right to exist!

“We might be on the run today, but we will not hide tomorrow. We will rise up. We will build a better world for future generations of mages, free from persecution and prejudice, where our children can be approached with friendship instead of fear. The College of Magi convenes in Cumberland this year, and when the other Circles hear of what happened in Kirkwall, they will rise up with us.

“The vote for secession from the Chantry is happening and we must be ready for it. The Exalted March will not stop with Kirkwall. The fight will follow us and we must be prepared for it. You cannot go back to the Circle. You cannot walk backwards over your own bloody footprints. We must carve a place for yourselves in this world and you must carve it here and now, on the jagged edge of revolution.”

Beth stood and added, “We didn’t ask for this, but it’s here. We have to face the future together and each of you deserves your say in it. The fraternities were a good idea, but they divided our voices instead of enhancing them. We’re going to re-establish them, but this time everyone gets a vote - not just the enchanters.”

Chaos. Senior Enchanters squawked in protest. Junior Enchanters murmured amongst themselves. Mages clapped and cheered. Eventually, they all settled down, and came up with four fraternities. Isolationists, who wanted to steer clear of the cities and all the threats that came with them to set up remote cells throughout Thedas. Aequitarians, who wanted to find a way to gain the support of the people and reintegrate into society. Libertarians, who wanted to focus on freeing other mages, and Resolutionists, who were ready to use violence to do it.

Sketch - the elven apostate from the Mages’ Collective - was elected for the Isolationists. Enchanter Islau - the elitist old bastard - was elected for the Aequitarians. Ella - Beth’s apprentice - was elected for the Libertarians. The Resolutionists picked him. Anders wasn’t sure he should have been an option when he was already leading them with Beth, but the mages all agreed to keep her on as First Enchanter and give her the deciding vote.

Then they told them the templars might still have her phylactery. People panicked in all the ways that people could - shouting, sobbing, gnashing teeth - but when it came down to a vote only the Isolationists were against having her stay.

“You can’t want to abandon her,” Anders said when Sketch cast his vote.

“Abandon, he says,” Sketch rolled his eyes. “Apostates are always alone.”

Sketch would know. He’d been one for over a decade, and never once been captured. Even now, he looked like he’d outrun them all, dressed in sturdy stolen clothes with boots that hadn’t fallen off his feet. Anders wouldn’t have been surprised if one day Sketch just vanished. For all Beth had accused him of not sympathizing with the apostates, at least Anders hadn’t abandoned them.

“Anders, the vote is over,” Beth said to assuage him with a hand against his arm.

Anders shrugged her off, “No, I want to know.”

"I don't like knowing the templars will always have a way to find us," Sketch said. "It means nowhere will be safe for us."

“So we turn our backs on everyone with a phylactery?” Anders demanded. “What kind of message does that send to all the other mages? That we’ll only protect them so long as it's convenient?”

“I think the message is we won’t endanger them,” Sketch said.

“They’re already in danger,” Anders said. “They have to know that we’ll defend them.”

“Not all of us are here to fight,” Sketch said.

“All of us have to,” Anders said.

“Anders,” Beth frowned up at him. “Stop it. Sketch is right. They’re not soldiers and they can’t become them overnight. It’s okay if they’re scared.”

“Not if they turn against each other because they’re afraid,” Anders signed.

“No one is turning against anyone,” Beth signed.

“He turned against you,” Anders gestured to Sketch.

“It was a vote,” Beth signed. “We agreed that we should have one.” Aloud, Beth said, “We should adjourn for now - you all have your assignments.”

Their elected leaders went back to their fraternities to assign their mages whatever work the Dalish had for them. Heating, cooling, lightning, water, they could handle, but the rest of it took training. The Keeper came with several members of her clan to speak to those of them willing to learn the right application of force magic to manage the aravels, and see if any of them had any aptitude for nature magic to handle the food. She was speaking with Ella, for the moment, but she should have been speaking with Beth.

“They weren’t supposed to vote against you,” Anders signed.

“That’s not how voting works,” Beth signed.

“I bloody hate fraternities,” Anders muttered, dragging a frustrated hand through his hair.

“Then why are you leading one?” Beth asked.

“They elected me,” Anders shrugged.

“That’s it?” Beth asked.

“You wanted them,” Anders signed.

“So you’re just leading an entire fraternity for me?” Beth signed.

“I’m not going to let you throw your life away,” Anders signed.

“And what were you doing - throwing yourself at my brother’s mercy when you know he’s never had any?” Beth signed.

“What I had to do,” Anders signed.

“Well that’s what I’m doing now,” Beth signed. “And anyway, it doesn’t matter. They voted to keep me.”

Anders stared at her, and Beth stared back defiantly. She looked like chaos incarnate, long ebony hair tied into a collapsing bun, streaks of dirt across her face, black robes of the First Enchanter ill-fitted to her pregnancy and shredded at the hem. Anders thought of her alone, stumbling through the Wildervale with a child on the way, and felt just as defiant.

“I would have come with you,” Anders signed.

“You don’t mean that,” Beth signed.

“Yes, I do,” Anders squeezed her shoulder. “We can’t just support each other when it’s easy, and I wouldn’t leave you to deal with this on your own.”

“Okay, ‘Healer,’” Beth rolled her eyes, a reluctant smile on her face.

“I can’t believe they still call me that,” Anders admitted.

“I can,” Beth signed. “... Do you remember all the time we used to spend together in your infirmary? You trying to teach me how to heal when I couldn’t tell elfroot from weeds?”

“I remember almost getting you killed,” Anders signed.

“We were running from a handful of templars, and now we’re running from hundreds,” Beth signed. “To think just healing darktown seemed so daunting… we were young and stupid. Let’s hope we’re not just older.”

They had more than enough force mages to manage the aravels, but there was an artistry to the magic that Anders had only ever seen telekinetic mages like Beth and Amell master. Their force blasts had to be modified to something akin to a strong wind to hold the aravels at a steady, sustained height in the air, and the first attempt to do so had one of their force mages misjudging the intensity of their spell, and blowing one of the aravels to splinters after hurling it into the clouds.

The fallout had been catastrophic. It took months of work and magic to build a proper aravel. The Dalish put their heart and souls into them, with ancient carvings, and ancient runes, and ancient magics, and all that lost work brought out ancient grudges. The elves accused them of destroying the aravel on purpose, and the mages took offense and accused them of treating them like templars, and in the valley-wide screaming match that followed someone had run to get him from the infirmary.

Anders had no idea what they expected of him. Anders could start an argument, and with enough explosives, he could end one, but he had no idea how to diffuse one. He wasn’t Amell. He wasn’t good at politics - and as he got older he’d come to realize he wasn’t even good at people. He was good at fighting for his principles and pursuing his purpose, and right now that purpose meant working with the Dalish.

Amell would have gotten them to work together. Anders had just gotten them to riot, but he remembered watching Amell stop one. He’d been beaten and bloodied, but he’d limped up the stairs to the Vigil to stare the rioters down, and tell them to disperse or die. Blood magic had underlined the threat, but Anders wasn’t sure he’d needed it, when the command in his voice could quell the chaos on its own.

Anders didn’t have a voice like that. His voice, when he could use it, was interlaced with Justice and echoed with the Fade, and struck fear into the minds and hearts of men and mages when he raised his staff and said, “Enough!”

Lightning splintered out across the sky like the veilfire breaking through his veins, and everyone went silent. Men and women, humans and elves, mages and not. Anders opened himself to the Fade and felt its ethereal energy fill his throat, flowing through the conduit of his staff, the echo in his voice a mark of Justice in his soul.

“We have enough enemies in the world without inviting more inside this valley. The Chantry has taken enough from us without taking the only allies either of our people have a chance of making. If some injustice has been done then you bring it to me or the Keeper - you do not take it out against each other!”

Anders couldn’t believe it actually worked. The elves and the mages separated, albeit on far less friendly terms, but they separated. The group that had been working on the aravels and the magic to move them set about picking up the debris scattered throughout the valley, and Ellana came over to him. “You overstep, shem,” Ellana said.

“Let me guess, you think I should have told the humans to lay down and die,” Anders rolled his eyes.

“Your words,” Ellana said with a smile. “You shouldn’t have said anything. It wasn’t your place to speak. You’re a trespasser here. You should have waited for the old bat to step in.”

“And when was she planning on doing that, exactly?” Anders demanded. “They were at each other’s throats. And why are you defending her? You don’t even like her.”

“I like you less,” Ellana said.

“I’m not the one who tried to give your brother away,” Anders said.

Ellana glared at him, “What do you know of our ways?”

“I know what it’s like to say goodbye to someone before you’re ready,” Anders said.

Unsurprisingly, the Keeper agreed with Ellana, but only in so much as she didn’t think it was his place to speak, even if she agreed with what he’d said. She sat down with him and Beth to talk out the destruction of the aravel, and Anders did an admirable job keeping his mouth closed if only because it hurt to open it. He settled for signing, and if Beth elected not to translate all of it, it was probably for the best.

No one was at fault. The Keeper was blind, and she wasn’t a force mage, and the mages’ instructions for how to manage the aravels came from people who’d never had to master the magic themselves or even understood the depth of it. They agreed to scale back their instruction, but the longer they stayed in the valley the more at risk the mages and the clan.

They wanted to set east, away from the encroaching Exalted March, before the end of Kingsway. It gave them around a month to teach the mages to master the magic needed to move the aravels and cleanse the plagued elves, and enough time to find somewhere safe to settle through the winter if they elected to stay on with the elves through the changing of the seasons. Anders was starting to think they should, if only because Beth was due to give birth sometime towards the end of Firstfall or early Haring, and he didn’t like the thought of her traveling so close to term if they had to find somewhere else to shelter them.

The nearest major settlements if they set out east were Fort Elim, near Freylen’s Peak, and the city of Kaiten to which it answered. Anders didn’t care for either option. Fort Elim was too close to the Planasene Pass, a popular trade route to Kirkwall the templars were sure to be patrolling, and the Planasene Foothills, which were overrun by bandits Aveline had routinely ignored on the grounds that it was “out of her jurisdiction.”

Kaiten wasn’t any safer. The Viscount was an ex-Knight-Templar. Justice had learned the history from Amell. They had, in those later months, spent some long evenings in the library and the parlour, playing chess or reading poetry and speaking over politics. Viscount Ravi had inherited the city-state from his uncle Khedra after he put him to the sword.

Khedra had been the Viscount of Kaiten for years. He’d built a huge colosseum for which the city was famous, used for entertainment and as an instrument of justice where lesser nobles could resolve their differences by the sword. Instead of sending their soldiers on bloody campaigns through the city state and trampling over the local peasantry in the process, chosen champions fought in the sands of the colosseum, to the delight of the local population.

The city prospered, but the Chantry thought the colosseum was bloodthirsty and barbaric. They sent Ravi to investigate whatever corrupting influence had taken hold of Khedra, and whether it was true or not, Khedra was outed as an apostate and an abomination. Ravi had killed him on the sands of that same colosseum, almost twenty years ago, and the Chantry named Khedra the Curse of Kaiten and pointed to him and the Shame of Serault as examples of what happened whenever mages held power.

Amell referenced both often enough, a glass of something in one hand and a roll of something else in the other, whenever he had to deal with some kind of crisis at court. “They’re waiting for me to fall,” Amell had said once. “I’m sure they have a name picked out… the Abomination of Amaranthine.”

“We seem better suited for it,” Justice had countered.

Amell had shaken his head and snuffed out his roll to reach for him, “There’s nothing abominable in you.”

His hand had never been hard to hold, “There is anger.”

“It’s justified,” Amell had said.

“Not always,” Justice had countered.

Not now, at these elves who only sought to give them aid, and ask for reparations when the carelessness of their actions cost them their halla and their aravel. All were blameless, but there were still wrongs there to be righted, on that at least they all agreed. Alain and the others were at last released, though not all elves had been cleansed, on the curious condition they apologize to the herd.

The halla could only be managed by mages and not men. They seemed made from magic, but Justice dared not go near them when he knew how animals - magic or not - responded to abominations. Instead he watched from a safe distance when Alain and all the mages with him knelt down near where they were grazing, and repeated whatever prayers and thanks and apologies told to them by the Dalish. They were made to stay there for well over an hour, but it seemed a simple penance, and at some point one of the halla wandered over and no one seemed offended when all the mages pet it.

If anything, they all came back delighted, when none of them had ever had the chance to interact with animals. They rejoined the rest of the mages and made several of them jealous, talking about how soft and smooth their wool was and how intricate their horns were, when no one else was able to go near them. It left him missing all his old companions - Ser Cumference, Dumat, Dans Leur Sang and Son Cadeau, his own horse.

It had taken months to settle on a name, when Anders had so wanted it to match, and Dans Leur Sang was a gift from Warden Commander Clarel, and followed Orlesian tradition of naming horses after verses from the Chant of Light. Anders had finally settled on the Commandments, Transfigurations 1:2, when it had shaped so much of his life.

“Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him.
Foul and corrupt are they
Who have taken His gift
And turned it against His children.
They shall be named Maleficar, accursed ones.
They shall find no rest in this world
Or beyond.”

There were so many interpretations of it - and Anders must have gone through all of them at some point in his life. That mages had no rights to rule and were only meant to serve. That any form of magic used against one’s fellow man went against the Maker’s will. That any magic that gave mages power over men - be it compulsion or persuasion - was power they weren’t meant to have. That magic was meant to serve what was best in man and not what was most base in him, whatever that magic was.

Anders didn’t think any of that now. When Andraste freed her people, she feared men with magic, but what she should have feared was men with power. Mad Viscounts. Tyrannical Knight Commanders. Callous Grand Clerics. Entitled Kings. People with the power to make change without the courage or compassion to enact it. Magic was the Maker’s gift, and Anders would use it however he saw fit, no matter what the Keeper, clan, or world thought.

That ended up his horse's name. Son Cadeau. His Gift in Orlesian. For both Amell and the Maker, when both meant so much to him, but the mages mattered more, so Anders worked to help them find their place among one people and hoped someday they’d find their place among them all.

Notes:

Special thanks to Biblioteknician for use of their Lavellan Illassan in this chapter! If you have a Lavellan you'd like name-dropped please feel free to let me know in a comment with a few details about them, but I can't promise they'll survive the cameo!

Chapter 217: From Kirkwall We Fled: From Shemlen Soldiers

Summary:

As the legion followed, like bloodhounds,
The trail of the rebels.

- Shartan 9:9

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 2 Parvulis Afternoon
Free Marches - Wildervale - Clan Lavellan Encampment

The Exalted March reached them.

Two weeks into their stay with the clan, scouts came running from the forest, screaming of soldiers, of hounds, of silver swords of mercy sweeping through the Wildervale. Anders heard the chaos in the valley, and abandoned the infirmary to catch a panicked elf as they ran past, “What’s happening?”

“Soldiers!” the elf shrieked, a bundle of arrows in their arms, slipping out without a quiver to hold them and scattering at their feet. “Shemlen soldiers!”

The elf took off. Elves were gathering at the base of the valley, by the giant sycamore that marked the Keeper’s roost, bringing all manner of armaments and dropping them at the feet of a woman who might have been their warleader, like she could somehow turn bows and arrows and swords and shields into people who could wield them.

“I’ll be back,” Anders might have lied to Nethras.

Anders abandoned the infirmary to run for the base of the valley, those elves and mages who hadn’t yet gathered what was happening watching as he went. Anders felt hasted, or maybe just that the rest of the world moved far too slow, stuck in the past while the templars hurled them into the present.

They were all still working, soaking bark in boiling water, pounding it out with wooden mallets, baking it into cloth and making it into clothes to replace the robes they’d ruined when they’d fled from Kirkwall. The Dalish might have given them new homes and new clothes, but they couldn’t give them new lives. Their magic would always be with them and the templars would always be there to try to take it away.

Anders reached the base of the valley, where Beth and Sketch had joined the elven warleader, Ellana, and the Keeper. Ellana looked battered, her armor covered in dirt, her quiver a little lighter, her vambrace torn as if something had bit through it. It was stained a dark crimson, and she was clutching her arm against her chest.

“Here,” Anders reached for her. Ellana gave him her hand and a glare for good measure while he healed the rent skin and the muscle beneath it - a hound or wolf if he had to guess. A mabari would have done more damage.

“How many, da’len?” the Keeper was asking.

“At least two dozen hounds,” Ellana confirmed. “Twice as many shems.”

The Keeper’s gnarled hands gripped her bone staff tight, “And you lead them to the clan?”

“They’re already on us-!” Ellana started.

“How long?” the warleader cut them off, a fit woman with short-cropped blonde hair, and tattoos that framed her strong face like a helmet. She was carrying a greatsword on her back, and as far as Anders could see seemed to be the only fighter they had left.

“Minutes,” Ellana said, with what might have been a nod of thanks when Anders finished with her arm.

“Maker,” Beth exhaled heavily, a hand to her stomach and her staff. She was at the start of her third trimester, and Anders wasn’t about to watch her fight one templar, let alone four dozen. “Fifty templars?”

“We’ll flee to Belwain’s Dale - west of Kaiten,” the Keeper decided. “Ellana, tell the clan.”

Ellana grabbed the nearest elf dropping off pitch in the ever-growing pile of weapons, and sent them off with the message instead. The Dalish gathered plenty of bows, arrows, axes, spears, pitch and poison, but no warriors came to take them up. Anders was starting to suspect no warriors would, because after Andruil’s Agony there were no warriors left.

“That’s over a hundred miles from here,” Sketch protested. “We’d have to cross the Planasene Foothills, and they’re filled with bandits, not to mention it’s over a fortnight of running.”

“Not if we get our People to the aravels,” the Keeper said.

“We can’t move them all,” Beth said. “We can’t just leave people behind.”

“Why not?” Sketch asked, already tightening his laces. “We could scatter. They can’t catch us all.”

Sketch wasn’t wrong. People were already panicking, running in all directions through the valley as word of the Exalted March reached them. They could have split up and spread out for their survival, but they’d been alone for long enough. The Nevarran Accord. The Fall of the Dales. Their people had fought the Chantry for a thousand years, and apostate by apostate, clan by clan, they’d fallen.

For some reason, Anders thought of Velanna, and the first time he’d ever gone out of his way to save another mage and the first person who had helped him. She’d always been a bitch. Back then, she’d barely been his friend. Anders hadn’t begged her for her help. He hadn’t even asked. He’d just told her what to do and Velanna had done it without doubt or hesitation to rescue three apostates - none of whom had been Dalish.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Velanna had demanded when he’d thanked her. “There is no one your Chantry does not oppress - mages or elves. If you wish to strike out against them, I am with you.”

Anders watched the people running past him, every face terrified and tear-stained, marked with vallaslin or not, and in the moment didn’t see a difference. “I’ll give you time to flee,” Anders said.

“Anders-” Beth said.

“We’ve no time to argue this,” Anders cut her off. “There’s no putting this to a vote. The templars have come looking for a fight and I mean for them to find it. Take who you mean to take and go where you mean to go, but I refuse to let them hunt us down like prey. I’ll drown this valley in blood before I let them spill one drop of ours.”

“You can’t take them all,” Beth protested.

“You know I can,” Veilfire broke through his veins, sweeping up from his hands and feet to coil around his chest and burn blue in his eyes.

“Now is not the time for pride,” the Keeper chided. “How many can you really take?”

"Men?" Anders asked. "Hundreds. Templars?" It was hard to say. He’d killed a dozen in the caverns below Vigil’s Keep and the Waking Sea, but half as many had gotten the best of him in Hightown and Denerim, only for him to slay a score when he’d slain the Knight-Commander. He wanted to say all of them, but even Justice had limits. "A half score or more."

"The Dread Wolf lies less," Ellana said.

“We must hope he doesn’t,” the warleader said. “We lost most of our fighters.”

“Adahlenn-” the Keeper frowned.

“There’s no point in pretending now,” Adahlenn - the warleader - said, drawing her greatsword off her back. “I have eleven of the People I might call fighters, and most of them are hunters. We’ll do what we can to help the People get away.”

“Hounds!” someone screamed.

The Wildervale howled. The sounds of barking and clawed feet crashing through the underbrush carried through the trees. It sounded like a hunt through the Planasene Forest or the Wending Woods, complete with the thundering of hoofbeats and whistles as the Exalted March hounded them like animals, and Anders would be damned if he didn’t fight like one.

“Get as many of the People to the aravels as you can,” the Keeper raised her staff - and raised the sycamore.

The Veil thinned, and wisps flooded through with excited whispers. “The People, the People,” the wisps echoed the Keeper, sinking into the sycamore, its branches, its trunk, its roots. The sylvan tore itself from the ground, churning up grass and dirt and rumbling the valley like a great earthquake as the wisps settled into their new skin. Branches swung down from the bough like arms, splitting apart into fingers, roots twisting up into feet, and the great tree lurched forward.

“Get… them…” the sylvan groaned, its voice like the bowing and breaking of branches in the wind. It swept up the Keeper and set her amongst its branches, and slowly set out for the treeline, creaking with magic. The hounds that broke from the treeline and into the valley saw the massive construct towering over them and panicked, yelping, limbs slipping out from under them in their haste to turn and retreat back to their masters.

“It’s time to run!” Sketch fled, sprinting through the valley and calling for their retreat. Ellana ran with him, calling for combat. Elves and mages sprinted through the valley, kicking over pottery and running through campfires, knocking over barrels of water and tripping over statues. A few lined up behind them, eager to fight, but most of them were desperate to flee, packing themselves into overfull aravels, while others struggled to harness uneasy halla.

Free fowl ran underfoot, abandoned, but there was no time to wrangle them or the rest of their things. A flock of them scattered as Alain ran to join their small group of defenders, a dozen mages on his heels. “Anders! We’re here. We’ll f-f-fight.”

“Not until they’re in the valley,” the warleader Adahlenn cautioned, watching the sylvan ravage its way through the treeline, the panicked screams and bellowed orders of templars carrying on the wind. “We need all the time the Keeper can give us to evacuate the aravels, and we can’t afford to lose the high ground.”

“I’m staying,” Beth signed.

“You’re going,” Anders signed back.

“I’m not hiding any more,” Beth shook her head, a few strands of ink black hair falling free from her bun to frame her defiant face. Two weeks of food and rest had done her good. Her amber eyes bright and clear, and she looked healthy, if not handsome. Anders wasn’t about to see her hurt again like the last time he’d failed to protect her, leaving her to the mercy of the templars because he’d been so fixed on fighting them.

“You have to get them out,” Anders signed and gestured towards the aravels. Mages and elves alike were emptying them of everything to make room for more people, throwing out furniture and food, clothes and keepsakes, shoving their way inside, clinging to the sides, yelling for the mages to get them off the ground. “You know how to move the aravels.”

“Ella and a few others can move them too,” Beth signed.

One of those others tried. The force mage stood on the deck of the aravel, their sleeves tied back around their elbows, arms raised, waves of force magic forming from their fingertips. The magic formed into a cone, and flowed into the sails of the aravel to lift it from the ground before the elves even finished harnessing the halla. Too many others saw the aravel rising, and ran to throw themselves on it, grabbing onto the sides and weighing it down.

The mage raising the aravel stumbled under the weight, struggling to sustain the circling waves of endless force coursing through their spell, while the elves yelled for them to wait, trying to finish harnessing the anxious halla to keep the aravel tethered for them to tow. The aravel lifted one, two, three, four feet into the air when the arrows started flying.

They blackened the sky and then set it alight, oil- and resin-soaked tows tied below the arrowheads, some but not all extinguished in flight. Anders cast a glyph of warding, and the arrows scattered harmlessly around him and the elves and mages that made up their front and only line. The rest landed, imbedding themselves in the dirt, in the trees, in the aravels and the people trying to flee on them, in the great sycamore sylvan, setting it alight.

“Keeper!” one of the elven archers screamed, running for the forest.

Adahlenn grabbed their arm and held them back, “Wait!”

The soldiers launched volley after volley from the safety of the trees, while the sylvan charged out in search of them, knocking over birch and hazel and setting ash aflame in the process. The mage lifting the aravel lost their hold on the spell, in the chaos of the first volley, and sent the aravel crashing to the ground. Wheels shattered on impact, and went splintering across the valley. Harnessed halla panicked, rearing and bleating in protest.

“You have to help them,” Anders gestured to the aravels, signing, “They need their First Enchanter.”

“They need their Healer too,” Beth signed back.

“Beth-”

“No!” a child’s shriek cut through the chaos. “No, don’t give me up! You said you wouldn’t give me up!”

Ellana dragged Mahanon across the valley, the feral mage boy flailing to free himself from her arms, flinging puffs of dirt in place of stone fists. “Stop it, Twig!” Ellana dragged him towards an aravel. “You have to go!”

“No!” Mahanon wailed, vines as thin as thread manifesting to latch onto the ground, like feeble little tethers, “No, I won’t go!”

An explosion of dirt, leaves, and bark broke Mahanon out of Ellana’s grasp, and the boy bolted. “Mahanon!” Ellana screamed. Anders hasted after him, and snatched the little elf around the waist, heaving him up onto his hip in time to cast another glyph of warding when another volley fell.

Mahanon kicked and flailed against his side, lashing out with leaves and dirt and snarling, “Dread Wolf take you!” until Anders cast a hasty veil of sleep. Mahanon went slack against his side when Ellana and Beth caught up to him.

“What did you do, shem!?” Ellana demanded.

“He’s just asleep,” Beth said for him.

“Take him,” Anders pushed the boy at Beth to keep her from the fight when Ellana had to stay for it. “Get yourselves to safety, quickly, the sylvan won’t hold much longer.”

The great sycamore was burning, its bark blackening to charcoal, leaves turning to ash and dust, branches falling away as the fires felled them. A thick cloud of smoke rose from the forest, the sylvan setting other trees aflame as it lurched after the soldiers. The smoke carried on the autumn winds and swept back up into the valley, stinging at their eyes and adding tears to terror.

Beth hefted the little elf into her arms, glancing back at the aravels, where the first force mage was making a second attempt to lift their aravel from the ground. The aravel creaked alarmingly with whatever damage it had sustained in the fall as the mage’s magic pushed it back into the sky, five, ten, fifteen feet, when someone fell off the side. They screamed the whole way down, and hit the ground with a sickening crack. The elf’s leg broke, snapped at the knee, his bone spearing out through his skin with a fount of red.

The halla panicked. They took off through the forest, towing the aravel behind them before it had a chance to lift above the treetops. The aravel went crashing through the branches as the mage pushed it higher in a panic, and three more people fell before Anders lost sight of it. Two other aravels were struggling to follow, mages wavering with the complex magic and overtaxed with how many people were stuffed into the aravels. They’d never get everyone to safety in time without more help.

“Go,” Anders signed. “They need you.”

Beth glanced between the crumbling sylvan and the faltering aravels, looking torn, “Do you have this?”

“Believe in me,” Anders signed.

“We all do,” Beth ran for the aravels.

The sylvan fell. Its legs gave out, one after the other, as the advancing army threw pitch, oil, and resin onto the sycamore to fuel the flames. A massive bat took to the skies as the tree fell, winging off into the forest, and wisps scattered in all directions when the sylvan died, keening, “The People, the People,” as the templars banished them back to the Fade. Anders opened himself to it, and felt its ethereal energy fill him, flowing through the conduit of his staff.

Storm clouds gathered overhead and seemed to bruise the very sky, deep violets, uneasy blues, harsh pinks all overlaid with ash. Lightning lit up the clouds, like veins pulsing to the beat of some great and terrible heart, and as the armies charged those veins seemed to open and rain blood. A storm of ice and lightning tore through the warriors of conscience - men and women with no lyrium in their veins to shield them from the magic in his own.

The templars among them glowed a vibrant white or red, shields raised to suffer the magic, but the rest of the soldiers and all their horses fell to it. Bolts fell from the sky like arrows, chaining between man, horse, and hound. They seized under the onslaught, dropping swords, shields, spears, their screams inaudible over the storm. The cold claimed them when the lightning didn’t, ice swallowing their arms and legs, limbs breaking off in the unforgiving cold when they tried to charge.

Four dozen men, two dozen hounds, and a dozen horses became three dozen templars, and the dead. Alain raised them, one at a time, while the templars pushed through the storm and into the arrows of too few Dalish archers, most of them pinging off shields and silverite. The elves were hunters, and harmless, as were most of the mages behind him, save for the few dozen Alain had brought to fight. They didn’t deserve this. They never had.

“Burn out the apostates!” screamed a templar in the armor of a Knight-Lieutenant when he freed himself out from under his dead mount. “Don’t let them escape!”

Anders held his staff like an extension of his arm, the Fade a storm inside him, crackling on his fingers, burning in his eyes, breaking through his skin when the templars charged and met with Vengeance. Anders lost himself to the fight, the fire, the flow of battle. He lived and breathed and bled for nothing else, felling men far worse than monsters, the fire on his fingertips the only pyre they deserved.

The sky tore open over him and never seemed to close, like the baleful eye of the Maker following him across the battlefield as smite after smite sought to seal his soul off from the Fade, reinforcing the reality and immutability of the world, but he was apart from it, a matrimony of the Maker’s first and second children, and in his heart burned an unquenchable flame, all-consuming, never satisfied, until the last of the soldiers were slaughtered to a man.

Anders was on his knees, when he came back to himself, both hands clutching his staff, the butt of it buried in the blood-soaked soil beneath him, like he’d woken from a prayer. He was impaled on a spear, the point of it buried in the ground beside his staff, the shaft soaked in blood. Anders took a shallow breath and felt his skin slide along the wood buried in his chest, lungs crackling like they were filled with fire and not blood.

“Is anyone there?” Anders tried to call out, but he couldn’t bring his voice above a whisper. “I need a hand.”

Anders needed more than a hand. He was stuck, and he wasn’t looking forward to whatever it would take to get him unstuck. The forest was in front of him, the dead sycamore sylvan a smouldering pile of charcoal, the trees around it much the same, a wildfire slowly spreading northwest through the Wildervale. “Hello?” Anders whispered.

Someone had to be there, because someone was still screaming, the words all indistinct over the burning forest, but it didn’t sound like a battle. It sounded like the aftermath of one, men and women begging for help or offering it. Anders took another shallow breath, the shake in his lungs adding to the pain in his chest, and reinforcing the need to do something about it. Anders wrung his hands on his staff, mentally bracing himself, and pushed - up and back.

Agony. An agony so intense his heart must have burst. Anders fell back to his knees, screaming soundlessly, the sick sensation of the shaft sliding underneath his skin churning his stomach and sending the contents up into his mouth for him to swallow back down. The pain of it blinded him, tears stinging his eyes so he only saw spots, and eventually, tattooed feet, covered in mud and devoid of shoes.

A hand fisted in his hair and tilted his head back to stare into a swath of black, brown, and red with pinpricks of gold like two distant torches. “You alive, shem?” Ellana’s voice asked.

“Unless you kill me,” Anders whispered.

Ellana let go of his hair, and his head flopped back down to stare at her feet, “Think I could get away with it?”

“Probably,” Anders whispered.

A whistle cut the air, and Ellana yelled, “Healer’s alive!”

People ran to help him. Anders couldn’t keep track of them all. Hands gripped his shoulders, his back, his chest, holding him steady when a mage’s magic sliced through the spear to break it off from the point buried in the ground. Someone must have been a healer because Anders could feel the restoration flowing through him. Someone else pushed something into his mouth for him to bite down on, and yet another someone eased the spear out of him.

Anders snarled through screams while the mage healed him, creationism that had to have been fueled by a spirit knitting him back together. The hands holding him let him go, and Anders coughed up the blood that had been in his lungs, choking on a sob when it burned his nose and caught in his snot, suffocating him until he grabbed a thick and tacky strand and wrenched it out through his nose to clear his throat.

“Eugh,” Sketch grimaced, kneeling down in front of him. He was covered in blood, where Anders expected him to have run before any had been spilled. “Sorry about that.”

“You couldn’t cleanse my lungs?” Anders wheezed, his voice so hoarse he wasn’t sure Sketch heard him.

“I’m going to assume that’s a thank you,” Sketch said.

“Thanks,” Anders signed.

“I’m going to assume that’s also a thank you,” Sketch said. “You know I don’t speak sign language.”

“You don’t speak your leader’s language?” Ellana sounded offended, which was to say she sounded like she always did, so Anders elected not to make anything of it.

“I think calling him my leader is a little overzealous,” Sketch said.

“Didn’t he free you?” Ellana asked.

“He freed everyone else,” Sketch said. “I was already free.”

“I thought you ran,” Anders whispered.

“I considered it,” Sketch pulled him to his feet. “Come on, the fires give us away to every templar in a hundred miles of this valley, and I don’t like any of us hanging around this place. We’ll chat when we’re safe.”

The aftermath of the battle was like that of a hurricane. Fires raged, trees cracked and fell, smoke blackened the sky, the ground a mire of blood and bodies sinking into it. Warriors of conscience stood at the base of the valley, like ice sculptures at the end of winter, melting into the mud, what hounds and horses hadn’t fled from the sylvan among them. A few were displaced, risen by Alain’s magic and hacked to pieces by the templars Alain had set them against.

Those templars were everywhere, all of them alone in their deaths when they’d died in so many different ways. A few had fallen to the archers, others to the Dalish hounds who had no fear of sylvans, and most of them to magic. Primal, telekinetic, entropic, and something else. Something that could only have been Vengeance, ripping men to ruin, skulls crushed in their helms, hearts torn from their chests, whole bodies reduced to molten metal and curdled blood.

It came at a cost. Too many templars must have gotten past him. Anders could see other bodies sinking into the mire. Mages. Elves. Three aravels charred to husks, free fowl scattered to the winds, too many hounds and halla lost in one way or another. Eleven of the aravels had managed to escape, and one had broken against the trees, the survivors of the crash limping deeper into the Wildervale or - if they were brave - back into the valley.

The survivors huddled around the eight surviving aravels, their eyes on the smoke as it swallowed the horizon - a beacon to the rest of the Exalted March. There had to have been over a dozen injured they’d have to heal before they could try setting out again, if they even had enough force mages left who could manage the magic to get the aravels off the ground, and enough halla to tow them.

Anders leaned against his staff, and channeled a panacea for his throat to ask, “Do we have any force mages left who can move the rest of the aravels?”

“Islau stayed,” Sketch surprised him. “He thinks he can teach the rest of the force mages to get the last eight aravels into the air.”

“How long will that take?” Anders asked.

“As long as we can give him,” Sketch said. “I say we risk running. There are bandits in the foothills, but I’d rather risk them than the templars.”

“If we go on foot, they’ll just catch up, or follow our tracks all the way to Belwain’s Dale,” Ellana said. “We have to take the aravels.”

“We haven’t mastered the magic,” Sketch said. “That was one platoon of templars. They’ll have been with a company. That’s three to four more platoons under the command of a Knight Captain - all on their way here thanks to the beacon fire we lit for them.”

“What does your warleader think?” Anders asked.

“...She’s dead,” Ellana said. “I’m our warleader now and I say we take the aravels.”

“I’m sorry,” Anders said.

“She doesn’t need your pity,” Ellana snapped. “She did the People proud with how many shems she took with her. We’ll bury her in the Dale when we get there.”

“You want to take the bodies with us?” Sketch looked disgusted.

“Listen, flat-ear-” Ellana started.

“We’ll take them,” Anders stepped between them. Maker knew he didn’t care about corpses when half his soul had lived as one. “What about the Keeper?”

Ellana snorted, “The old bat risks sylvans, not her skin. She’ll be in Belwain’s Dale by now.”

“We don’t even know if we have time to master the magic,” Sketch argued. “We don’t know where the company is camped or how long it will take for them to get here.”

“Ask the templar,” Ellana suggested.

Anders must have misheard her, “The what?”

“One of them surrendered. Ask him - unless you want me to ask him for you,” Ellana explained, thumbing a dagger at her belt in a way that made it clear exactly how she’d do it.

“Get everyone on their feet,” Anders pointed Sketch towards the wounded. “I’ll let you know whether we have to run now if we can wait to move to aravels.”

“However we run, you won’t have to tell me twice,” Sketch left to see to the wounded.

Ellana took him to the charred husk of an aravel where they were holding the templar. Alain had him under guard, an undead templar holding their sword to the prisoner’s throat, its eyes as dispassionate in death as the living templar’s were in life. An elf was sitting with them, the spear lying over their lap no doubt an extra precaution in case the prisoner tried anything.

“I kn-kn-knew you’d be alright,” Alain clasped his arm in greeting.

“Has he said anything?” Anders asked.

“He’s f-f-full of shit,” Alain said.

The templar was dressed in the armor of a Knight-Lieutenant, which would have made him the leader of the platoon that had set upon the valley. Anders knelt in front of him, and the templar recoiled slightly when Anders forced his fingers beneath the straps to his helmet. A flare of primal magic burnt through them, and Anders took off his helmet and tossed it aside.

He was just a man. Thick eyebrows. Thick mustache. “Your name,” Anders asked if only to prove he had one.

“Pha,” The Knight-Lieutenant spat, in a thick Orlesian accent. “I do not answer to apostates.”

“You surrendered to one,” Anders reminded him.

“I surrendered to the will of the Maker - not the mage who mocks him,” the Knight-Lieutenant turned his nose up at him. “We know how this plays out. I am to be ransomed - as is the way of war. You will gain nothing from me but the coin it costs to see me free while I have gained everything from you. Your numbers, your tactics, here you even give me the face of your leader. You are he, aren’t you? The mage who murdered the Grand Cleric of Kirkwall.”

Anders wasn’t about to banter with him, “You don’t think I need to know who I’m ransoming?”

“You know I am a Knight-Lieutenant,” The templar said. “That is enough.”

“Anyone can wear armor,” Anders said.

“... Knight-Lieutenant duBois,” the Knight-Lieutenant relented.

“Who am I ransoming you to?” Anders asked.

“The Knight Captain of Tantervale,” duBois said.

“Tantervale is crawling with templars,” Anders said. “We’d never go anywhere near it.”

“Then make the exchange at Arvale’s Stand,” duBois suggested.

“It’s t-t-t-two days away,” Alain supplied.

Anders shook his head, “We’re going to Kaiten.”

“You cannot!” duBois surged forward and into the undead templar’s sword, cutting his own throat and flinching back. “I am a Tantervale templar.”

“Kaiten’s Viscount was a templar,” Anders pointed out. “Why wouldn’t he help you?”

“He was a templar,” duBois said. “I trust no man who leaves the Order.”

Leaving the Order meant leaving its lyrium, which meant Viscount Ravi must have been unstable. Anders wasn’t looking forward to what that meant for them when they made their new camp near the city. “There has to be someone in Kaiten who would ransom you,” Anders said. “You said so yourself: you’re a Knight-Lieutenant.”

“... Ser Ardal, perhaps,” duBois ventured, and Anders filed away the name. “He leads the Purifiers, but Kaiten is much further than Arvale’s Stand. Ransom me to Tantervale and you will be better paid.”

“Better ambushed, you mean,” Anders said. “We’d never make it there.” Two days. Arvale’s Stand was around forty to sixty miles to the west, and the wind was blowing away from it, which meant duBois’ Captain wouldn’t be able to see the wildfire now, but as the fire spread and night set in he’d see it and be on his way.

His men might be on their way already, if there were other Knight-Lieutenants combing the Wildervale with duBois, but they’d all be spread out. They had time. Not much, but maybe enough for Islau to teach the force mages who remained to move the aravels, if they could master the magic in a day, and they’d have to, because a day or two was all they had, so long as duBois wasn’t lying. “Your Knight Captain is waiting in the Wildervale, isn’t he?”

“How dare you impune my honor,” duBois straightened his shoulders. “I am no liar - it is you mages who have broken the Maker’s Commandments when you murdered the most beloved of His servants. The Free Marches mourn their Most Faithful, and Lord Chancellor Orrick and Prince Vael are united in the Exalted March against you. If you have any honor of your own, you will surrender to their judgment as I have to yours.”

“And you swear your Knight Captain’s men aren’t waiting in the Wildervale?” Anders asked.

“I swear on my life,” duBois said before he lost it.

“You shouldn’t have.”

Notes:

Special thanks to Legorandia for use of their Lavellan Adahlenn in this chapter! If you have a Lavellan you'd like name-dropped please feel free to let me know in a comment with a few details about them, but I can't promise they'll survive the cameo!

Chapter 218: From Kirkwall We Fled: To Belwain's Dale

Summary:

And when the hunters reached the foot
Of the solitary hill, they found nothing,
The trail of their quarry vanished, as if the People
Had taken wing.

- Shartan 9:10

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 5 Parvulis Late Morning
Free Marches - Belwain’s Dale

Their flight to Belwain’s Dale had been a desperate one, untrained and untalented mages struggling to work together to keep the eight remaining aravels off the ground so the halla could tow them through the Wildervale and across the Planasene Foothills, unsteady waves of force magic blown into the sails and rocking the aravels worse than a ship in a storm.

Everyone had gotten sick. One of the aravels had crashed, and a group of bandits had dubbed the survivors easy prey until Anders’ aravel had stopped to prove them wrong. He’d killed them all without a second thought, and they’d looted everything off the bodies with an ease that would have made Isabela proud. Weapons. Clothes. Coin. They gathered all of it and as many broken pieces of the aravel as they could carry and set out again for Belwain’s Dale.

The deep valley might have been an ocean, the thick canopy of trees level with the land above, casting the forest in a perpetual darkness. Local legend was that the land was haunted, remnants of the Curse of Kaiten, whose old nearby estate of Khenderlan was said to have been overrun with sylvans and other evil spirits. The truth was far tamer, when Belwain’s Dale had been home to another Dalish clan, some twenty odd years ago, and was filled with forest marionettes.

Bits of bone strung up in the trees that rattled with the wind, faces carved into the bark, simple little lies that preyed on superstitions and scared people away from the clan. The Keeper’s magic moved the trees so the aravels could settle safely, and shifted them all back once they had. The smallest of brooks ran through the center of the dale, and was almost peaceful, but Anders felt guilty appreciating it.

There was too much to be done. They’d looted everything they could from the soldiers the same way they had the bandits, and they had to come up with the best way to utilize everything from their equipment to their coin. Kaiten was a few short hours away, and there was bound to be news there they needed to hear. News from Kirkwall. News of the Red Plague. News of the Exalted March. News of College of Magi and their vote in Cumberland.

News of Amell. There had to be something. Some word that Anders could hear of him or get to him when he’d gone so long without him. Four months had passed since he’d last seen him, and on the Maker, Anders missed him. He missed waking in his bed and in his arms, and he missed the way they spent their mornings, breaking their fasts with meals he hadn’t needed to see made when they were all made at the Vigil.

He missed the cooks chasing him out of the kitchens, and he missed Ser Cumference getting beneath his feet, and he missed dodging servants in the halls on his way to bring Amell breakfast in the bed he’d come to see as theirs, and he missed telling Dumat to get off it, and Amell telling him to get back on, and he missed Kieran joining them to talk about some wild dream or prophecy they never bothered to decipher, and he missed braiding Amell’s hair and Kieran’s along with it with whatever color ribbon Kieran picked for them that day, and he missed begging Amell not to go to court until someone finally came to fetch him, and he missed knowing Amell was near him even when they weren’t together.

Amell wasn’t anywhere near him now. He could have been in Antiva, or Tevinter, or Seheron, or back in Ferelden or anywhere in Thedas for all Anders knew until he could get some word from him or about him. There had to be some way for Anders to find out about him in Kaiten. Ferelden’s King, Chancellor, and ex-Regent had all left the country and word was bound to be there if they were back. Word was bound to be there even if they weren’t, with the mage children Anders had sent to Amaranthine for asylum.

Queen Anora was sympathetic to the mage’s plight, and Anders trusted she’d find some way to use their arrival to her advantage, but he wished Amell were there. He wished Amell was here, when he woke alone on his name-day, the same way he’d woken alone on their anniversary, and the same way he was bound to wake alone again for Satinalia when it came, and First Day after that, and every annum ever after.

Anders was sitting by the brook, twisting the ring of rosewood on his finger, thinking of Amell when Beth came and found him. She picked her way across the brook - barefoot, as most of the mages were these days - a barkcloth apron on over her First Enchanter’s robes she kept folded up against her stomach.

“Happy name-day,” Beth sat next to him, unfolding her apron to reveal a bunch of bright red berries.

“What are these?” Anders picked one up and rolled it back and forth along his finger.

“Witch berries,” Beth grinned.

“Is that really what they’re called?” Anders asked.

“They’re from witch trees,” Beth explained. “Supposedly the same trees that were cut down for Andraste’s pyre. They’re supposed to ward off witches or welcome them, depending on who you ask.”

“I’m asking you,” Anders said.

“I like what the Dalish call them,” Beth said. “Wayfarer berries, from wayfarer trees. They’re supposed to prevent those on a journey from getting lost, and I think that we could use the help. There are a lot of them in the dale, so we should probably get used to them.”

Anders tried one, biting back a grimace at the unexpected bite.

“They’re a little bitter,” Beth said belatedly. “But I think that suits you.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Bitter didn’t begin to cut it, but there was a touch of sweetness underneath that still had him picking up another.

“You don’t like them,” Beth popped one of the berries into her mouth.

“I didn’t say that,” Anders said.

“You think I should be resting,” Beth said.

“I didn’t say that either,” Anders said.

“You thought it,” Beth said.

“I think a lot of things,” Anders waved her off.

“What are you thinking right now?” Beth asked.

Anders didn’t want to talk about it, “I’m thinking I can’t believe it’s already Kingsway.”

“Does it still feel like August?” Beth guessed.

“I don’t know what it feels like,” Anders admitted. It felt like missing Amell - whether they’d been apart for one day or a hundred. “It’s hard to keep track of time out here.”

“Did you know the Dalish have a different way of doing it?” Beth leaned back on her hands and left him to the rest of the berries in her lap. “It’s not the thirty-seventh year of the Dragon for them, it’s eighty-four thirty-six.”

“What?” Anders asked.

“That’s what I said,” Beth laughed. “Eight thousand, four hundred, and thirty six years since the founding of Arlathan.”

“... I guess that makes sense,” Anders admitted. “The Chantry names the Ages, so why would the Dalish honor them?”

“Why do we?” Beth countered.

“What else would we go by if not some doddering old biddy’s predictions based on superstitious signs and portents?” Anders snorted and snatched up another berry. “You know, now that I think about it, the Dragon Age? I know the bloody things are everywhere, but is that the best that they could do?”

“I read Divine Faustine II was almost going to name it the Sun Age, until the dragons returned.”

“The Sun Age? Seriously? Thank the Maker for the dragons.”

“She thought they were a sign it would be an age of violence and upheaval,” Beth shrugged. “I guess she wasn’t wrong.”

Anders shrugged back, “I think she was lazy.”

“Well what would you have called it?” Beth demanded.

“I don’t know,” Anders rapped his fingers on his knee. “The Dark Age?”

“And you think Faustine was lazy,” Beth laughed.

“Well if you’re going to put me on the spot,” Anders shoved her. “What about you?”

“Something hopeful,” Beth thought about it, and offered in Tevene: “Sui Juris.”

“I didn’t know we were using the Imperial Calendar," Anders teased. "Does that make me the Black Divine?"

"Better than the Red One," Beth said and Anders laughed. "Maker, when I think about Mother Petrice, it's no wonder the Divine launched an Exalted March. What was she thinking, starting a schism in the Chantry?"

"Can you blame her?" Anders asked. "Someone had to do something."

"She took advantage of my brother," Beth said bitterly. "... I'm sorry. I shouldn't talk about it."

“It’s alright,” Anders wasn’t sure if the berries or the topic left a bitter taste in his mouth, but he’d rather be bitter than blithe. He felt guilty laughing without Amell. Getting used to laughing without him felt like getting used to living without him, and Anders was afraid one day he’d wake up and he wouldn’t miss him.

Beth didn’t make it any better. She was too easy to be around. Anders caught himself smiling when she smiled and laughing when she laughed and when he stopped to think about it, it made him miss Amell even more. Anders scrubbed his hands off on his knees, and leaned back against the tree, “Thanks for the berries.”

“Nethras said they’re better after the first frost, but I had to get you something,” Beth said.

“I’m surprised you remembered,” Anders was lucky if he could remember how old he was without someone telling him. Thirty-three, unless he’d lost another year at some point.

“I think it helps to hold onto things,” Beth said.

“I know what you mean,” Anders sighed. Beth finished off the berries, and they sat in a silence that seemed companionable, broken by the quiet babble of the brook and the far off chatter of the clan and the mages among them as they settled into their new home, for however long they could keep it. There was no life that they could make here while they were on the run.

“Oh!” Beth exclaimed suddenly, snatching up his hand to set it to her stomach. “She’s kicking!”

A faint pressure pushed against his palm through the thick wool of Beth’s robes, and Anders scooted over so he was pressed against her side. “You know you could still have a boy,” Anders reminded her.

“I just want to have anything,” Beth squeezed his hand.

That same pressure came again and Beth moved his hand to follow it, and boy or girl it felt so full of life it gave him hope for theirs, “I shouldn’t have told you to get rid of it.”

“I’m almost glad you did,” Beth glanced at him and grinned. “I was so angry with you I think I would have kept her out of spite.”

Anders exhaled bemusedly, “I’m not sure that’s a good reason to have a baby.”

“It’s my baby,” Beth huffed. “I can have it for whatever reason I want.”

“You know I’ll be here when you do,” Anders promised, and won another squeeze.

“... It wasn’t easy, you know,” Beth shifted slightly so her back was pressed against his chest. “I knew if I had him there the Chantry would take him and raise him to be a templar… I kept looking at them all when I found out, wondering how many of them were our children…”

“Not your child,” Anders hugged her.

“Not my child,” Beth agreed, covering both of his hands and intertwining their fingers. The baby stopped kicking, at some point, but they stayed where they were, Beth holding his arms around her, and for the first time in months Anders felt comfortable enough to relax. Beth was warm, and her robes were soft, and her arms fit well over his own.

“I’m glad you’re here, you know,” Beth told him.

“Not still furious with me for everything?” Anders rested his head on hers.

“I can be both,” Beth said. “Do you ever regret it?”

“Never,” Anders said firmly.

“I would,” Beth said. “I lose sleep over it. I don’t understand how you don’t. When I think of all those people-”

“I did what I had to do,” Anders cut her off.

“Sketch told me about the Knight-Lieutenant,” Beth said.

“What about him?” Anders untangled them, bracing for a fight he didn’t want to have.

“He surrendered,” Beth didn’t scoot away from him, which had to count for something. “He was someone we could ransom, and we could have used the coin.”

“I’m not going to ransom them when they wouldn’t ransom us,” Anders said. “You know they’ll kill or brand us all the first chance that they get.”

Beth must have heard his voice crack because she started signing, “Shouldn’t we be better?”

“We already are,” Anders signed. “They’re at war with our right to exist. There’s no middle ground between our lives and our deaths that we can meet them on, no compromise in how many mages it’s okay for them to murder. If this had anything to do with justice, then I’d be the only one in danger, but they want all of us to die.”

“So we kill all of them instead?” Beth signed.

“Yes,” Anders signed.

Beth sat with what he signed, and shocked him when she didn’t outright disagree, “I don’t think we can. We were lucky to survive just one platoon of soldiers.”

“We didn’t all survive it,” Anders reminded her.

“... It was a nice funeral,” Beth leaned back against him without invitation, and Anders shifted to make room for her on his shoulder. “It feels strange to call a funeral nice, but it was. It was good to see everyone come together. I just wish we could have done it sooner.”

“I don’t think I helped with that,” Anders admitted.

“No, you really didn’t,” Beth swatted him. “I can’t believe you called their halla deer when you know how much they meant to Merrill.”

“What if we don’t talk about her?” Anders suggested.

“I’ve never seen anyone buried before,” Beth changed the topic for him. “I don’t know how the Dalish do it. If we’d buried Father, or Mother, or Carver I feel like I’d always be standing over their grave, afraid that they’d wake up.”

“... my best friend was buried,” Anders said. “But her first funeral was better.”

“Sometimes, I think that you just say things,” Beth said.

“She was in the Legion of the Dead,” Anders explained. “It’s a dwarven tradition. Anyone accused of a crime can clear their name if they die fighting darkspawn. They have a funeral before they join - so she had two. … her name was Sigrun.”

“I think you might have told me about her,” Beth said.

“Maybe,” Anders thought of her earring, and the little runner mage he’d given it to, and hoped Charade had gotten Evelyn out with the rest of the children he’d rescued from the Circle. Beth gathered up his hand and set it back against her stomach, but Anders didn’t feel any pressure on his palm. “I don’t feel any kicking.”

“She’s not,” Beth said, and maybe autumn was just getting cold, but she really did feel warm.

“I’m going into Kaiten tomorrow,” Anders went back to hugging her. “We need to make contact with the Mages’ Collective and find out as much as we can about the Exalted March.”

“... Do you think Sebastian’s really leading it?” Beth asked.

“I think you have bad taste in men,” Anders teased.

“You’re not one to talk,” Beth countered.

“Beth, he burned you,” Anders squeezed her arm.

“He was Andrastian,” Beth said softly.

“He was abusive,” Anders corrected her. “He could have burnt your sins away on paper instead of on your skin.”

Beth twisted to look back at him, “Promise me you’ll be safe in the city.”

“I don’t think any of us are safe anymore,” Anders said.

“I don’t think we ever were,” Beth countered.

Anders hoped she felt safe now, at ease within his arms and the blood that stained his hands. He hoped all the mages did, when he spilled it all for them.

Kaiten was under martial law. Templars joined the city guards at the gates, checking the papers of everyone to pass through them and paying no mind to the crows that flew overhead. Farmers coming in from the fields with the harvest had their carts not so much inspected as overturned, templars stabbing their swords into bundles of barley and sacks of beans, like they expected them to bleed.

A crow perched on the battlements, watching men of metal move among men of cloth, harassing anyone with walking sticks, firewood, or anything that might have passed for a staff. An old man had his cane kicked out from under him. A blind woman had her guide stick snapped in half. A little boy tossed a rock at the templars terrorizing them and was taken from his parents when they claimed it for a stonefist and dubbed the boy a mage.

It wasn’t quite a riot. There was no disturbance of the peace when there was no peace to be had. The parents screamed, shrieking like they’d been set aflame, while scared or sympathetic men and women held them back. The templars drew their swords on anyone who surged or stumbled towards them, and in the chaos a farmboy was thrown forward and impaled on a sword. His dirty brown cap fell off his head and into his hands, and he jerked, in the strangest, softest pose, like he’d only meant to bow.

The farmboy slid off the templar’s sword and was swallowed by the crowd. The boy the templars took was heaved up under a corporal’s arm, and carried back to the city. The would-be riot was quickly quelled with one dead boy and one stolen child, and no arrested apostates to show for any of it. The crowds dispersed back to their carts, and the farmer who’d come with the farmboy dragged him off to the side of the road.

He stayed there, huddled over his corpse, weeping into a mess of blonde hair, blood soaking into his clothes, oblivious to the templars confiscating his cart and reading off imagined charges of assault against the Maker’s chosen. One of the templars took him by his arm, and dragged him back towards the city and whatever fate they had in store for him. The farmboy, they left there to rot. Flies settled around his corpse to feast before the coming frost, and the line of farmers and freeholders begging entry to the city pretended not to see him as they passed.

The city itself seemed to spill out of the castle, surrounded by crumbling travertine walls stained with black like they were bleeding. The buildings were packed together, three stories high, cobbled from a mix of wood and stone, the streets not so much paved as they were packed down dirt, curving in on themselves in endless circles that were only slightly less confusing than Kirkwall. The colosseum occupied one end of the city, the elven alienage the other, and in the middle the castle: seat of Viscount Ravi, lifter of the Curse of Kaiten, the kinslayer.

His people seemed all too akin to those in Kirkwall, hurrying through the winding streets with their heads down and their hoods up, vanishing into the nearest building at the sight of passing patrols whether or not those buildings were residential. Criers on the corners encouraged them to report any suspected apostates to the local Chantry, and reminded them of curfew an hour before sunset.

Anders landed in an empty alley and pulled his hood up over his head. Kaiten didn’t have a Circle, their mages sent off to one of the six Circles in the Free Marches, be it Kirkwall, Starkhaven, Markham, Ostwick, Hasmal, or Ansburg, but they still must have had a Mages’ Collective. There’d been one in almost every city in Ferelden - Denerim, Redcliffe, West Hill, Amaranthine - a loose network of apostates with nothing but the symbol of a broken circle to unite them.

Amell had worked with them long before Anders ever had, helping the shadow guild of Circle and hedge mages get a firmer foothold in Ferelden throughout the Fifth Blight, intercepting reports of maleficarum, warning those he couldn’t reach in time, setting up safe houses, recruiting Knight Commanders to the cause. By the time Anders had gotten involved Amell had set up an entire network in Amaranthine and ousted the templars stationed there on his own.

Amell was the only reason Anders even had any standing with the Mages’ Collective to begin with. Anders had a feldspar signet ring that marked him as a member, though it had been far too dangerous to wear in Kirkwall, so he’d kept it with his things. He wore it now, opposite rosewood and silver, after Morrigan had worked with him on shapeshifting so he could enchant more than just the skins of animals to transform with him.

Anders made his way through the city of Kaiten, searching for any sign of a broken circle, mages, or magic. Ever since he’d come to share his soul with Justice, Anders could see mages, magic, and memories. They clung to everything like motes of dust, whispers from across the Veil, where wisps reenacted the emotions they witnessed, keeping people alive in places they’d long since abandoned. In Kirkwall, he’d been able to hear the cries of generations of slaves, calling out for justice. In Kaiten, he could hear the death of magic.

It was all around him, memories of templars patrolling the streets, dragging mages or those suspected of harboring them from their homes, turning them out into the streets to string up from the battlements or balconies. The Curse of Kaiten lingered, twenty long years past his death, in the people and the places who remembered him, a man with sharp red eyes and a sharp goatee, who looked so much like Amell they might have been related.

The resemblance was uncanny, even in his echoes. Anders followed them to the city square, the grand speeches Khedra must have given calling from across the Veil, when the Exalted March and Ravi’s support of it made the memory of his uncle stronger in the hearts and minds of his people. No more soldiers in our streets Khedra’s promise echoed, at what must have been the unveiling of his colosseum, until the templars broke it.

Anders’ feet took him to the colosseum, following echoes of old parades and avoiding new patrols, and found the site abandoned, covered in two decades of decay. All around was evidence of the battle where Ravi had slain his uncle Khedra, though nature tried to hide it. Heather and hawkweed covered the scorched earth, grape vines filled in the cracked stone, and any blood that stained the sands had long since blown away.

The colosseum might have been beautiful once. The seats were raised above the sands and circled them, sections broken up by statues of Havard the Aegis engaged in battle with Maferath the Betrayer engraved with the words, “The fallen are never forgotten.” A lattice ringed the sands and protected the seats from flying debris without obscuring the view of the combatants, though no one had used the colosseum for years.

Wisps shifted through the sands, following the footsteps of the mage who’d once ruled the city and the templar who had slain him, so slight and subtle they could have been mistaken for the wind. Khedra hadn’t begged for mercy, on the day of his death, facing off against his friend and nephew for the sole crime of his magic. He’d just fought, and he’d just died, and the world had gone on without him. Anders watched his death replay in the sands, and wondered if the world would go on without him too.

“He died here, you know,” a voice no wisp had conjured startled Anders out of his skin.

A woman had followed him into the colosseum, draped in black from head to toe. Her hair, her eyes, her dress. She was remarkably short, and remarkably slender, long draping sleeves hanging down to her waist when she folded her arms across her chest, a soft halo of entropy about her that marked her as a mage.

“I’m pretty sure a lot of people died here,” Anders said cautiously.

“But not a lot of mages,” the woman said.

“Am I supposed to know who you’re talking about?” Anders asked.

“Don’t you?” the woman asked. “Viscount Khedra, the Curse of Kaiten, mage, maleficar, apostate, abomination. You’re not the first mage to want to see his grave.”

“Who says I’m a mage?” Anders asked.

“That ring on your finger,” the woman waved a long sleeve at him. “I haven’t seen that symbol in some time. Certainly not in Kaiten.”

“Are you with the Collective?” Anders descended the steps towards her, and the woman took a step back into the shadows of the tunnel that led back out to the city.

“I haven’t heard that name in a long time either,” the woman said.

Anders summoned a sphere of magelight and sent it into the tunnel after her, illuminating the curved stone walls and the graffiti that covered them. Mixed messages were etched into the stone, cursing templars, damning mages, grouping them together like one side wasn’t any different from the other. Anders stopped reading before his anger got the best of him.

“I’m a friend,” Anders promised.

“I find allies are a great deal more effective,” the woman said.

“I’m that too,” Anders said.

“Your other ring says otherwise,” the woman said.

Anders glanced down at his hands, one wearing feldspar and the other wearing rosewood and silver, but he had no idea what she meant. “I’m sorry?”

“Your ring of study,” the woman said.

“My what?” Anders turned Karl’s ring over on his finger, the lyrium-infused silver band given to every mage who completed their Harrowing, and couldn’t imagine why it threatened her. “I’m an apostate.”

“Apostates take them off,” the woman countered. “Spies and traitors keep them on. Mage Killers. Knight Enchanters. Chantry loyalists-”

“I’m none of those things,” Anders let veilfire cut across his skin, waves of sapphire rolling through the tunnel, but the woman seemed unimpressed with him.

“Prove it,” the woman said.

“How?” Anders asked.

“There’s a templar in the city,” the woman said. “Ser Ardal. He and his purifiers have been purging suspected mages and their sympathizers from the city. He’s even earned the Viscount’s ear of late. Get rid of him and we can talk.”

“Aren’t we talking now?” Anders asked.

“No,” the woman said.

“Will you at least tell me your name?” Anders asked.

“Soliel,” Soliel said.

“Where can I find him?” Anders asked.

“He haunts the tavern just outside the castle,” Soliel took another step back into the tunnel. “I’ll find you when it’s done.” Soliel kept backing up, until she was several yards away, and transformed into a crow that winged away from the colosseum.

It was the second time Anders had heard Ser Ardal’s name, first in reverence, now in fear, and - once more soon - in mourning. There was nothing more to know about him. Mages weren’t meant to be purified when their Maker-given magic was no evil imperfection. So much damage had been done in Kaiten the mages there lived in fear of not just templars but each other, when the last out-mage among them had been betrayed by his own kin.

A crow flew from the colosseum to the castle, and Anders found the tavern by the telltale signs of drunken patrons stumbling out of it. It was filled with templars, and it wasn't hard to tell which one was Ser Ardal. He looked in his late forties, close cropped blonde hair bespeckled with grey, burns on his face hinting of the self-inflicted immolation of the faithful. He was a Knight-Captain, by his armor, but that wasn't what gave him away.

"Only the craven wait for conscription!" Ser Ardal was preaching, the floor in the center of the tavern cleared for him to pace. Anders maneuvered through the captivated crowd to the back of the tavern, and found a spot beside the bar to watch. "Fortune and the Maker favor the brave!”

“Brave?” one irate patron screamed. “What’s brave about you butchering that boy outside!? He weren’t no witch! He were too young!”

“A witch now, or a witch in a year’s time, what does it matter?” Ser Ardal shot back. “Know this! We are the Maker’s sword, and wherever our blades fall, His work is done - and there is much of it to do! We must burn out apostasy. Abominations. Maleficarum. Everything else - everything! - is empty words.

“A Grand Cleric is dead! An entire city decimated! Apostates roam the Wildervale from Hasmal to Ostwick! Ferelden” -Ser Ardal’s hoarse scream silenced anyone in the tavern still talking- “harbors them! Some of you harbor them! Make no mistake - mages are hated and accursed by the Maker!

“Violently were they cast down,
For no mortal may walk bodily
In the realm of dreams,
Bearing the mark of their Crime:
Bodies so maimed
And distorted that none should see them
And know them for men.

“Mages are not men! They are monsters! They are a threat to us all and to our way of life! If you fear the Maker, you will avenge His children! You will not wait for the death of the next Grand Cleric. You will not wait for the death of the Divine! You will take up your sword as a warrior of conscience and you will earn your place at the Maker’s side as one of the Exalted!”

No one volunteered. The patrons shuffled away from the purifiers and sought enlightenment in the bottom of their tankards instead, and after a too-long silence Ser Ardal slammed his fist down on the nearest table. “I am not leaving without volunteers!”

“You ain’t getting any!” the same irate patron from before screamed back. “You think you can come into Kaiten, kill our children, and conscript us? You ain’t the Maker’s men; you’re just monsters.”

“You wish to test the edge of my conviction?” Ser Ardal drew his sword and was on the patron in a second, the tip pressed against the patron’s throat, and the entire tavern gasped. “Do you fear the righteousness of our duty? Speak again, and I will cut this fear from you.”

“I don’t,” Anders broke the strained silence.

“Say again?” Ser Ardal glanced at him.

“I don’t fear it,” Anders said. “I’ll go with you.”

Chapter 219: From Kirkwall We Fled: With Vengeful Hearts

Summary:

Others began to fashion spears and bows
From the branches of trees, and girded themselves
With bark and scraps torn from their sandals

- Shartan 9:8

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 6 Parvulis Early Evening
Kaiten Castle Tavern

Anders was twenty-six, the first time that he killed someone. It had been summer, and he’d been sweating alcohol, walking from Vigil’s Keep down the North Road to the ruined the Chantry, and nothing had been more sobering than when Amell had told him to cast a firestorm over the ruins as casually as if he’d asked him for a drink of water.

Bandits. Blackmailers. Rapists. The kind of men no one would miss. There’d been maybe six of them, though Anders only knew the name of their leader - Mosley, a self-admitted snake. He’d never forget that night. Channelling the spell, feeling the flames building beneath his fingers and coiling through his staff, hotter and hotter until it hurt to hold, and staggered him with its release.

He’d spent the rest of the night in the chapel at Vigil’s Keep - waiting to feel something. Guilt. Remorse. Regret. Rage. Disgust. Despair. Something. Anything, but he’d felt nothing. He’d wanted to feel something. He’d wanted to pray over whatever he felt. He’d wanted to make it all mean something, but it hadn’t. It was just death and it just happened and Anders just got over it.

Anders had Amell to thank for that. He’d never killed someone until he’d met him. He'd never even thought it was an option. He’d had the chance. He’d had multiple chances. He could have killed more templars than he could count, with each and every escape attempt, when they’d come to capture him. He just never had.

He remembered hiding in the hayloft of some poor bloke who’d agreed to shelter him years ago, when the man walked in with two templars escorting him, the three of them talking about where on the farm he might have been hiding, the poor bloke still trying to help him, pretending he didn’t know he was just a few feet over them, one of the templars holding his phylactery in their hand, his blood pulsing a bright and vibrant red so they knew that he was near, and they’d walked right underneath a beam that would have been so easy for him to burn through.

He could have brought the whole down barn on them. It wouldn’t have been the first barn he’d destroyed, and he knew how easily they came down. He could have backed up to the edge of the loft, released the spell, and sent it all crashing down while he dove out of it. The farmer would have died, but the templars would have died with him, and - more importantly - it would have destroyed his phylactery.

Instead, he’d run. Instead, he’d gotten caught. Instead, he’d done what every other mage had done and done and done again until Amell showed him there was something else that they could do. He’d killed so many men since then he’d lost count, so Varric kept it for him - seven hundred and fifty-four souls he’d sent to the Maker unless Varric had been joking and honestly it didn’t matter when Anders would send them all again.

He felt nothing, reporting an apostate to Ser Ardal on their way out of the tavern. He felt nothing, asking for a sword so he could help them fight. He felt nothing, leading Ser Ardal and three of his men down a random side-street. He felt nothing, when he stopped and turned and gave himself to Vengeance and Kristoff’s memories of how to wield a sword. He felt nothing, when that sword slid beneath Ser Ardal’s helm and pierced straight through his throat. He felt nothing, at the first smite from a templar that drained through mana Vengeance didn’t use.

He felt nothing, freeing his sword from Ser Ardal’s throat and embedding it in the stomach of the next templar to come for him. He felt nothing, deflecting the blow of the second, catching their wrist, stepping into their arms, slamming his sword beneath their shoulder and into their lungs. He felt nothing, replacing his lost sword with theirs, and using it against the last. He felt nothing, when they moved too fast and drove their sword through his chest, and he grabbed the hilt to slow them down, pushing it deeper, pulling them in closer, sliding his sword in through the slot in their helmet and listening to them scream.

He felt nothing, but Vengeance felt something. Vengeance felt victorious, when he eased the sword out of his chest and dropped it, triumphant, on the cobblestone, the clatter of iron and the splatter of blood filling the space between each shallow breath as he recovered from the battle. They were dead. They hated mages, and they were dead. They feared mages, and they were dead. They hunted mages, and they were dead.

They would all die. Every templar, every holy sister who ever stood in the way of freedom would die in agony and their deaths would be their fuel. They would have justice. They would have vengeance. They would have whatever it took.

Soliel was waiting for him at the colosseum when he returned to it. She looked like a relic of a bygone age, standing amidst the crumbling ruins of Khedra’s colosseum, the wind playing through her ebony hair like it was trying to sweep her away with the sands. She sat at the base of a statue of Harvard the Aegis, and seemed all too akin to him, carrying on long after Khedra’s death, left with nothing but his ashes.

Vengeance stopped in front of her, a tear in his chest piece and tunic, the whole of him stained with blood, but Soliel didn’t seem shocked so much as suspicious. She said in greeting, “You’re possessed.”

“Yes,” Vengeance said.

“With what?” Soliel asked.

“With whatever is needed,” Vengeance said.

“I watched you fight,” Soliel told him.

“Then you know me for a friend,” Vengeance said.

“An ally,” Soliel corrected him.

“I believe you said that they were better,” Vengeance said.

“You’re him,” Soliel guessed. “The mage who destroyed the Chantry.”

“I am,” Vengeance agreed.

“There’s a bounty on your head,” Soliel let him know. “A thousand gold sovereigns, for a mage from the Anderfels, ten feet tall, with lightning in his eyes.”

“I’m hardly over six,” Anders joked.

“You’re whatever they want you to be now,” Soliel stood up, and Anders took a step back for her to walk to the edge of seats overlooking the sands of the colosseum. “Why did you do it?”

“To change the world,” seemed the simplest answer.

It must have been the right one. Soliel tangled pale fingers in the crumbling lattice, and the wind carried her words to him, “Khedra wanted to change the world too.”

Anders came to stand beside her, “Did you know him?”

“Everyone knew him. Everyone loved him. Everyone worshipped him. Men and women volunteered for the colosseum just to feel his gaze on them. He believed everyone should fight their own battles, but that the rich refused, sending their soldiers to fight for them, so he built the colosseum for them and their champions. When he tried to get the other free cities to follow suit, the Chantry stepped in to stop him.

“They worship war. The money they make when they march from the nobles who shell away their souls for more soldiers, conscripting mages to their cause and giving the common folk cause to fear them when they’re forced to fight. Khedra thought he could stop it. The land grabs, the power plays, the politics. Kaiten is surrounded by Starkhaven, Markham, and Ansburg, but while he ruled there were no wars."

"Why are you telling me this?" Anders asked.

"I thought I'd never see his like again," Soliel said. "Khedra was proud. Khedra was Pride."

"You mean he was possessed?" Anders was surprised it wasn't just a rumor.

"For as long as I knew him," Soliel nodded.

"It sounds like you loved him," Anders couldn't help but note.

"I believed in him," Soliel said, like somehow that was better.

“Are you going to turn me in?” Anders asked.

“The Chantry would have to mint the sovereigns with silverite from every templar in Thedas for me to turn against another mage,” Soliel said. “Why were you looking for the Mages’ Collective?”

“You say that like you’re not a member,” Anders pointed out.

“They’re all dead,” Soliel said. “Purified in the purge - a week after the soldiers showed up.”

Damnit. “So what are you? Who are you?”

“I was Khedra’s demonologist,” Soliel said. “A member of his Elevated Brotherhood. We were all apostates. Khedra hid us in plain sight. We managed everything from the colosseum to the community until he died, and everyone fled.”

“But not you,” Anders said.

“But not me,” Soliel agreed, with a sad look to the sands.

“So you’re it?” Anders asked. “The only free mage left in Kaiten?”

“There are two others, but it’s not safe for you to meet,” Soliel said.

There had to be more mages than that. Thousands of people lived in the city of Kaiten, and even if the Viscount was an ex-templar, it couldn’t have been worse than Kirkwall. They had to be around, somewhere, blending in with everyone else as best they could, hiding in plain sight, like Soliel had said, they just weren’t brave enough to come forward, and after hearing Ser Ardal’s speech inside the tavern, Anders couldn’t blame them.

“So what now?” Anders asked. “You know the templars won’t just go away with Ser Ardal.”

“At least they won’t hold the Viscount’s ear,” Soliel said. “This gives us room to breathe. What can we give you?”

The Brotherhood gave him news - and Anders took it back to Belwain’s Dale, where the mages all gathered to hear it. Anders stood atop the grassy knoll that served as their meeting ground, the Fade flowing through his staff and throat, amplifying his voice for everyone to hear.

“Word of what happened in Kirkwall is spreading - and by now ravens will have reached the Divine in Val Royeaux. Prince Sebastian Vael of Starkhaven has taken up arms in Her name and is leading the Exalted March with Lord Chancellor Joffrey Orrick of Tantervale. The free cities surrounding Kirkwall have been ordered to submit to marital law under their Knight Commanders.

“Brycen in Hasmal, Drader in Ostwick, Carsten in Starkhaven, Serain in Tantervale, with Viscount Ravi reinstated as a Knight Commander here in Kaiten. This is the least of their armies! They weren't expecting us to flee deeper into the Free Marches, and most of the Divine’s soldiers are stationed along the border of Nevarra. The Chantry isn’t conscripting warriors of conscience yet, but they are calling for them.

“There is no talk of the Rite of Annulment - only the death of the Grand Cleric and the destruction of the Chantry. We are done being silenced! We have to make our voices heard! We have to spread the word of what really happened in Kirkwall! I know you have all read my manifesto but now we must enact it. We must press upon every contact we have and find one that can amplify our voice.

“This is the epoch of magic - not the death of it! There's been no word yet of our fight in the valley outside Arvale's Stand, but there will be! The templars will hear that we fought and we fled and they will hunt us down again, and again, and again. I propose that we make as much use of Kaiten as we can, but that we move on. The Exalted March hasn’t spread east past Ostwick, and we have a better chance of finding haven and help in Ansburg, Hambleton, Hercinia, Markham, or Wycome.

“Talk to your fraternities. We vote after the equinox,” Anders let go of the magic amplifying his voice, and descended the hill under a barrage of questions his throat hurt too much to answer.

“What of those who fled to Ostwick?”

“Did the Loyalists in Kirkwall survive?”

“What about the Veil? Is it still torn?”

“Can we go into the city? Is it safe?”

“Is anyone on our side? Any of the free cities? Where is the resistance?”

“Why don’t we flee to Ferelden?”

“What of the Red Plague? How far has it spread?”

“Doesn’t the Divine care that we didn’t do this?”

“When do we fight?”

“Give your questions to your representatives!” Beth saved him, looping his hand into her arm and leading him away. “We’ll answer them overmorrow at the evening conclave!”

“Thanks,” Anders signed, taking a drink from his canteen.

“Let’s get you something to eat,” Beth signed back.

Dinner consisted of chanterelles and grouse. Ellana had saved him one, and waited until Beth brought him over to prepare it. Mahanon was, unsurprisingly, still upset with him for his betrayal, but seemed to have some unshakable code of hospitality that still had him helping with dinner. The little elf was infinitely better equipped to survive in the wild than Anders was when he cleaned the entire bird in under a minute, dropping it on the ground, stepping on its wings, and splitting it apart heaving it up by its feet.

“I can’t believe you want to see this,” Beth signed queasily.

“Don’t tell me you’re squeamish,” Anders signed back.

“How are you not?” Beth grimaced through a grin when Mahanon glanced at them.

“Pretty impressive, kiddo,” Anders whispered, with a thumb’s up in case Mahanon couldn’t hear.

“You don’t think he’s too young for this kind of thing?” Beth signed.

“What kind of thing?” Anders signed. “Cooking?”

“Killing,” Beth signed.

“I think it’s too late for that,” Anders signed. “You know what happened to his parents.”

“I want to talk to you about that, actually,” Beth signed.

She didn’t get the chance. Mahanon handed the grouse off to Ellana, who yelled, “Come and watch, shem! I’m not doing this again.”

Anders hadn’t asked her to do it once, but he knew he wouldn’t have managed a meal on his own. Anders joined her by the fire to watch her cook, trying to remember the few instructions Ellana deigned to share, like pressing on the breasts to see if the grouse was done, making sure all the sides were browned, adding things like halla milk and a pinch of wildflour before throwing in the chanterelles. Ellana thrust the pan into his chest, and Anders sat down beside the fire to eat.

“Wait!” Mahanon dove at him before he could take a bite. “You have to pray!”

“Mahanon-” Ellana started.

“It’s okay,” Anders whispered, and set the bowl back on his knees.

“I don’t think he means the Maker,” Beth signed when she sat on the log beside him.

“He never listened anyway,” Anders signed back, and to Mahanon said, “Why don’t you pray for me, kiddo?”

“But-” Mahanon protested.

“The gods don’t need the prayers of shemlen, Twig,” Ellana agreed. “You pray, and they’ll listen.”

“Okay… but you’re holding the bowl wrong! You have to hold it up,” Mahanon fought with his arms until Anders was holding the pan against his chest, and then said, “Sylaise, hearthkeeper, we thank you for the gift of flame, and food, and friends, and give gladly-... and give ourselves gladly to your service.”

“Is that it?” Anders guessed when he let go.

“That’s it!” Mahanon bounced back. “You can eat now.”

Anders didn’t need to be told twice. He dug into his dinner while Ellana cleaned up after cooking it, and Beth said, “I think we should stay with you.”

“What are you talking about, shem?” Ellana asked.

“Yes, what are you talking about?” Anders set down his fork to sign.

“I’m talking about us,” Beth said to both of them. “My people. Your people. I think we should stay together. The Exalted March won’t spare your clan once it reaches you. We can protect you from the soldiers, and you can protect us from the snow.”

“We don’t need your help,” Ellana snapped, handing Mahanon unused ingredients to put away in their aravel.

“I don’t think that’s true,” Beth was undeterred. “You can’t move your aravels without us, and if the templars march through the dale you won’t be able to escape them.”

“We won’t fight your wars again,” Ellana wiped her hands off on her tunic. “Shartan died to give us the Dales, and his sacrifice was repaid in blood at the Battle of Red Crossing.”

Anders would die a happy man if he never heard the words ‘Red Crossing’ again.

“This won’t be like that,” Beth said, and nudged him to sign, “Say something.”

“Don’t look at me,” Anders signed back. “This isn’t my idea.”

“I heard your speech,” Ellana shot him a scornful look anyway. “Those cities are hundreds of miles from here. We went on the Long Walk once. We won’t do it again.”

“I don’t even know what the Long Walk is,” Anders whispered.

“The long walk home!” Mahanon ran over to him when Ellana handed him a jar of flour instead of taking it back to their aravel. “Shartan freed the People and gave them all a home but it was far away and they had to walk forever and ever!”

“And ever?” Beth guessed with a grin.

“They don’t care, Twig,” Ellana said. “Put the flour away.”

Mahanon looked wounded, tiny shoulders slouching, “But Hahren Haleth says it's important.”

“Haleth’s dead,” Ellana said.

Mahanon kicked his barefeet in the dirt, sniffling, and Anders squeezed his shoulder. “I care,” Anders whispered. “What was your home like?”

“Not my home!” Mahanon abandoned the flour on the ground, and squeezed himself into the space between him and Beth. “I live in the aravel. The People’s home! They were all slaves but then Shartan freed them and he was a slave too but he was really special and he wanted all the People to be free so he fought the bad masters and won the Dales for the People but the Dales were far away so they had to walk forever and ever and ever until they got there but they did and it was really nice and pretty and full of halla and wolves and the People learned how to be People again but then the shemlen got mad because they wanted the People to be slaves again so they sent all their soldiers and took the Dales away.”

“That’s a very sad story,” Beth picked a leaf out of Mahanon’s hair and brushed down a few wild auburn strands.

“We’re going to get the Dales back someday!” Mahanon declared.

“You don’t know that, Twig,” Ellana picked up the jar of flour Mahanon had abandoned. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. You’ll make the All-Father mad.”

“But we will get them back,” Mahanon protested. “We’re going to be free - like the mages!”

Ellana stopped on her way back to the aravel and whirled around, “What did you say?”

“They’re running too-” Mahanon started.

“They are not like us!” Ellana hissed. “Go inside!”

“But-” Mahanon sniffled.

“I said go inside!” Ellana snapped.

Mahanon ran inside crying.

“What have you been saying to my brother?” Ellana demanded of him, glaring.

Anders glared back, gesturing angrily at his scarred throat.

“Nothing,” Beth climbed to her feet with a hand on his shoulder. “But children listen-”

“I don’t want him listening to you,” Ellana said.

“He’s going to listen anyway,” Beth stood her ground. “Pretending we’re not here won’t help him.”

“No one asked you to raise him,” Ellana said.

“No one asked you either,” Beth said, and Ellana reeled like she’d slapped her. “I’m sorry about what happened to your parents, but we’re not those people. We’re mages; we’re not missionaries. We’re not going to try to change what you believe.”

“I don’t trust you,” Ellana said.

“Try,” Beth shot back. “I’ve spent my whole life running from the same people you hate. I lost my father to darkspawn and my mother to a madman. We might not be the same, but we’re not as different as you think.”

Ellana glared at Beth, and for some reason she turned that glare on him, “Cook your own damn food from now on,” Ellana stormed into her aravel and slammed the door behind her.

“Well that went well,” Anders signed.

Beth sighed and sat back down beside him. “Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed her.”

“You really think that we should stay with them?” Anders signed between bites of his grouse.

“Don’t you?” Beth signed.

“I think we might overstay our welcome,” Anders signed.

“I don’t think so,” Beth signed. “We should work together. We can protect them in exchange for food and shelter. We’re already getting better at pulling our own weight.”

“Maybe,” Anders signed.

He had to admit it was good to see the mages making progress. Every day they looked a little better as they learned how to mend and sew and make new clothes, replacing or repurposing their tattered robes down into skirts and tunics, with jackets and aprons made from bark, their hair tied back with strips of leather, in a blend of old and new. They learned to cook, and they learned to forage, but after what he’d seen in Kaiten and what they’d borne back in the valley, it was time they learned to fight.

“Fight?” Sketch repeated at their fraternity meeting the next morning. “They barely survived ‘flee’ and now you want them to fight?”

“As well they should,” Islau, the fat old force mage, said. “Magic exists to serve man, and some men are best served with a knock upside the head.”

“I hate when he agrees with me,” Anders signed.

“Don’t make me laugh,” Beth signed back, schooling her face into a frown.

“We have a whole forest at our fingertips,” Anders said aloud, with the Fade flowing through his throat. “We should be making staves.”

“Staves, he says,” Sketch repeated. “When there are mobs out there with pitchforks and torches murdering anyone holding pitchforks and torches?”

“We wouldn’t take them into town,” Anders said. “Just because we can cast without a conduit doesn’t mean we should. We need a way to channel our magic if we’re going to have any hope of focusing it.”

“And where, pray tell, are you going to get the lyrium to infuse into these staves?” Sketch asked.

“I can find a supplier in Kaiten,” Anders said.

“Maker,” Sketch muttered.

“I’ll thank you not to take the Maker’s name in vain,” Islau huffed.

“I hope it’s not in vain!” Sketch knelt to retie his laces like he always did when he was nervous. “We need all the help we can get.”

“In favor of staves,” Anders called.

Islau raised his hand with him. Sketch and Ella kept theirs down. Anders looked at Beth.

“Tell me about your supplier,” Beth signed.

“I don’t have one yet,” Anders signed.

“I’ll vote when you do,” Beth signed, and aloud said, “I abstain. We’ll call again when and if we can get access to lyrium. Next item.”

“Questions,” Ella said quietly.

Anders fingered the simir feather at his neck, and took a long drink from his canteen.

“I’ll relay,” Beth signed.

“Thanks,” Anders signed.

“What happened to everyone else?” Ella asked. “The mages who went to Ferelden, Nevarra, and the rest of the Free Marches?”

“The only news we have is Chantry propaganda,” Anders signed. “They claim no apostates have made it past the Exalted March and into Nevarra, but we know that’s not true because hundreds were escorted through the Retreat to Chateau Haine. There’s been no word of any apostates around Ostwick, but we do know most of the fighting is in the northwest, near Hasmal and Tantervale. We don’t have any names, and they aren’t taking any prisoners.”

The three of them took the news as well as Anders had. Ella hugged herself and looked away. Islau shook his head and sat. Sketch hid his mouth behind his fist. Beth didn’t do anything. She signed, “Give me something to encourage them.”

“Ferelden offered asylum to the apprentices,” Anders signed.

“So the children are all safe?” Ella perked up.

“Grand,” Islau slapped his massive thighs and stood back up. “Just grand!”

“Aren’t you happy, Sketch?” Ella squeezed his arm, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“Appeased,” Sketch said with a small smile. “What about the plague?”

“It might be spreading,” Anders signed. “There’s talk of a sickness inside Ostwick.”

“Does that mean the mages made it there?” Ella asked after Beth translated for him.

“It does no good to speculate,” Sketch said. “What kind of sickness?”

“It wasn’t that specific,” Anders signed.

“Kirkwall?” Beth signed.

“The talk is that the templars there are restoring order under Knight Commander Rutherford,” Anders signed.

“So he’s alive?” Beth signed excitedly. “He closed the tear in the Veil?”

“Seems like it,” Anders signed.

“Thank you,” Beth signed with a relief Anders wished that he could share, but there’d been no word of Amell. Deep down, he’d known there wouldn’t be. The Chancellor of Ferelden’s itinerary wasn’t at the top of Kaiten’s priorities, no matter how much it meant to Anders. Anders could still feel him, out there, somewhere, through his ring. He felt lonesome. He felt tired. He felt the same.

“Is there any resistance?” Ella asked. “Any at all?”

“The Mages’ Collective will help us, if we can find them,” Anders signed. “So will the Red Jennies, but I haven’t seen any sign of either in Kaiten.”

There had to be other groups. Groups like the Elevated Brotherhood, that Anders didn’t know about, who would be willing to stand with free mages against the Templar Order if only he could get in contact with them. Anders just had no way to do it. The Chantry had banned the Randy Dowager, citing the erotica within it, but Anders knew it was because the quarterly had published his manifesto. Without Harimanns or the Selbrechs, he couldn’t think of any noble contacts who might be able to get him published in an underground quarterly or a newspaper.

Someone had to know someone. Varric was out of the question, after someone had reported Anders’ manifesto making it into Darktown’s Deal, and the Chantry had published an article claiming one of Varric’s publishing houses had been infiltrated by maleficarum. Varric hadn’t corrected them. His one-time friend had counted himself lucky that the Chantry hadn’t banned all his works, and vowed never to help him publish anything ever again.

Either they found someone else to get the word out for them, or they got the word out on their own, and Anders didn’t have access to a publishing house. The closest he’d ever come was Selby’s packaging house, and that had gone up in flames with the rest of Kirkwall. There had to be something. Something he was leaving out. Something right in front of his face.

Anders twisted the ring of rosewood on his finger, and stopped to stare at it.

”Where is Clarel stationed?” Amell had made sure he’d known, a whole bloody year ago, when they’d both thought that they might be in danger. Warden-Commander Clarel was stationed in Montsimmard, Orlais. She was a mage and a maleficar and far too far away to be of any help, but Warden-Commander Janeka wasn’t. She was stationed in Wycome, and she was one of Amell’s allies, and some part of Anders was sure that they could go to her.

To the Grey Wardens - except he’d sworn he wouldn’t go to them. He couldn’t let them take the blame for what he’d done. It was the whole reason he’d deserted them - the whole reason he’d deserted Amell - when he knew they couldn’t take a side. He couldn’t ask them to take one now. Now it was too late. Now it was war and the Grey Wardens couldn’t wage it for him. Anders had to wage it on his own, and if he didn’t have an army, then he’d have to find some way to make one.

It took him days to find Soliel when she wasn’t trying to find him. Anders scoured the streets of Kaiten for some sign of mages or magic, following carvings and graffiti and finding everything from thieves’ caches to gang hideouts, until a crow with magic in its eyes finally landed in an alley next to him and quawked. Anders followed it to the colosseum, where the crow landed at the base of a statue of Harvard the Aegis, and stood up into Soliel.

Anders was beginning to wonder if she only had one outfit - a long black dress with draping sleeves - but he supposed he wasn’t one to talk. He’d ruined his fingers stitching the tear in his tunic, and he hadn’t even stitched it well. He hadn’t even tried to fix his armor. He’d always given his leathers to the armorer when they were damaged, and never had to think about it.

He thought about it now. The need for arms and armaments for all his mages. The way Amell had always provided them. Gambesons. Brigandine. Boiled leather in emergencies. Anders had left Amell wearing all his armor and done his best to keep it all together: brigandine pauldrons, thick wool trousers, leather breastplate, gloves, and boots. He needed the same things for his mages, but they’d have to start with staves.

Soliel didn’t have one, her hands hidden in her sleeves, her expression not unkind.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Anders joked.

“Why are we meeting at all?” Soliel asked.

“I need your help,” Anders said. “Do you know anything about the lyrium trade in Kaiten?”

“The Chantry supplies the templars,” Soliel said.

Anders shook his head, “The Viscount must have had a supplier before the Chantry reinstated him. He would have been addicted to the stuff.”

“I can find out,” Soliel said. “Is that all you needed?”

“No,” Anders said. “You said you were Khedra’s demonologist.”

“I was,” Soliel said sadly, and while she might have looked at him, Anders swore her heart was in the sands.

“I want you to be mine.”

Notes:

Special thanks to Lesbiantogruta for use of their Lavellan Haleth in this chapter!

Chapter 220: From Kirkwall We Fled: For Want of Lyrium

Summary:

The People heard him, and girded themselves
In the armor of the dead

- Shartan 9:14

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 8 Parvulis Late at Night
Khenderlan - Outside Kaiten

Khenderlan was the abandoned estate of Viscount Khedra. A vineyard a carriage ride away from the city of Kaiten, it was overgrown with brambles growing blackberries. The forests of Belwain encroached on the hedgerows, and sylvans wandered among them, grumbling and creaking to themselves as their leaves rustled in the wind.

“They aren’t hostile?” Anders asked, landing in the holloway that led to the vineyard.

Soliel landed next to him, “Not to me.”

True to form, the sylvans paid them no mind, their footsteps rumbling the holloway and sending dirt running like rain down the sides of the sunken path. Creatures of blackthorn and whitehorn, and one colossal birch that stepped down into the holloway and blocked the way forward.

“Are you sure?” Anders whispered.

“I’m sure,” Soliel stepped forward, and the twisted birch’s roots sank down into the soil, lowering itself into the hollow where its bark split apart into something vaguely reminiscent of a face.

“Sol,” the Twisted Birch rumbled, with a voice like the breaking of boughs. “Sol. My beautiful soul.”

“I’m sorry I’ve been away,” Soliel said in greeting to the sylvan, setting a pale hand to pale bark. “I have a friend today. You’ll let him pass with me.”

“My beautiful soul,” the Twisted Birch mumbled, settling into the holloway.

“Come,” Soliel waved him forward, and the sylvan grew in the space behind them, a wall of birch, branches, and bark that sealed off the entrance to the vineyard. The rest of the sylvans followed suit, dragging themselves through the brambles and making themselves into battlements.

“Did Khedra make them?” Anders guessed.

“He did,” Soliel took a steadying breath, and led him on towards the estate - three stories of stone, surrounded by ash and oak, and overgrown with vines. Aside from the sylvans, there were no other defenses, a small stone wall encircling the estate and the accompanying stables that seemed more or less decorative. It was as if Khedra hadn’t anticipated his nephew’s betrayal, and hadn’t seen a need.

“Is this where you live?” Anders guessed.

“It’s where I used to,” Soliel led them through the courtyard, sowthistle growing up through the gravel, and set a hand to the double doors that led into the estate. Ancient magics flared to life, illuminating a glyph set into the woodwork, and the doors creaked open. The estate was in disrepair, after two decades of abandonment, a hole in the ceiling that had filled the foyer with rubble and detritus. “Let’s get what we came for.”

“Which is what, exactly?” Anders asked, taking in the estate as he followed Soliel through it. Opposite the entrance to the foyer stood a lifesize portrait, yellowed with age, of Khedra and Soliel, what must have been twenty some odd years ago. Khedra looked so much like Amell it almost hurt, shoulder length black hair, kept loose instead of braided, a clean goatee, warm red eyes the painter made sure were focused on Soliel at his side.

“The Awiergan Scrolls,” Soliel said, her eyes on the floor and not any of the portraits or statues they walked by.

“Which means?” Anders asked.

“‘Cursed’ in Alamarri,” Soliel said.

“Off to a good start,” Anders joked.

“They’re a collection of Chasind, Inghirsh, and Rivaini binding rituals,” Soliel explained. “If you want to learn to summon demons, this is how you start. There are other relics in the library you’re welcome to make use of if you like.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Anders asked.

“Khedra wouldn’t,” Soliel said.

“You can talk about him, if you want,” Anders offered.

“There’s too much to say,” Soliel pushed open the doors to Khedra’s library. The walls were lined with shelves, holding everything from books, to scrolls, to relics. No staves - Khedra hadn’t been that careless - but a weapon stand held half a dozen swords unweathered and unrusted. Soliel went to the shelves, but for some reason one of the sword’s caught Anders’ eye. Silverite, gold enlain into the hilt and up into the blade, with a lifestone set into the pommel.

“What blade is this?” Justice asked.

Soliel glanced over her shoulder at him, “Glandivalis.”

“It speaks to me,” In truth it did far more than speak. It sang - of arms raised against oppressors, of men felled like wheat before the scythe, of hard won freedom in ages past.

“It was Shartan’s sword,” Soliel said, as if it were as insignificant as any other. “He fought at Andraste’s side on the fields of Valerian against the Tevinter Imperium, and she gave him her mother’s sword as a reward for his service.”

“You’re telling me Khedra just… had an ancient relic of Andraste wasting away in his library for the past twenty years?” Anders couldn’t quite bring himself to touch it. “It’s not a replica?”

“Everything of Khedra’s is one of a kind,” Soliel went back to the shelves. “Take anything you want.”

If Justice had any doubt, it dissipated when he touched the sword, the echoes of Andraste in the whisper of wisps and motes of memory that clung to it, the words free our people forever singing from the Fade. “Thank you,” He’d have to get a scabbard for it. “I shall treasure this. How did Khedra come across it?”

“It was a gift,” Soliel said. “A marquis or a duke, I think. People were drawn to him. They believed in him. A thousand different souls would have died in his stead that day.”

“... what happened?” Anders asked.

“Ravi blamed the Elevated Brotherhood for corrupting Khedra,” Soliel leaned back against the shelves, eyes on another time. “He found proof of magic in our midst and claimed we had an unholy hold on Khedra. There were dozens of us at the time. Ravi meant to kill us all, but Khedra outed himself as Pride instead. He always believed in fighting his own battles… this last he lost.”

“I’m sorry,” Anders said sincerely.

“I knew one day his cause would claim him,” Soliel turned back around to pull down a selection of scrolls from the shelves. “I’ll find a satchel for these. We can’t fly back with them. Look through what you like.”

Soliel left him alone in the library. Anders was sure the mages and the clan could make use of the relics, but he hadn’t come prepared to take more than the scrolls. His feet carried him out of the library and back into the hall, where the memory of Khedra clung to his estate, and the memory of Soliel clung there with him. They chased each other through the halls in endless echoes reminiscent of the rosewood ring he wore, and for all that Khedra looked like Amell, Soliel almost seemed more like him - in love with an abomination who abandoned her to die.

"I miss you," Anders breathed mana into his ring, and felt that same affection back. "I love you. I'll come back to you someday."

Anders hoped it wasn’t a lie. He hoped this wouldn’t be Amell at the end of this war, blind steps carrying him through Vigil’s Keep, long fingers leaving lonely patterns in the dust, Anders dead and gone, Justice banished to the Fade, Kieran forced into the Circle Anders never managed to bring down.

Soliel was like a portent from the past, predicting his or Amell’s future. Khedra might not have fought for the same things, but he’d still fought, and he’d still fallen, as so many mages had before. The Curse of Kaiten. The Shame of Serault. Uldred the Mad. Aldenon the Wise. The list must have been endless - not even counting those mages lost to history - or written out of it completely.

Anders had to break the cycle as much as he had to break the Circle. They took what they could carry from Khenderlan back to Kaiten and the clan, but the Awiergan Scrolls were what they’d come for. Anders didn’t just want Soliel to be his demonologist; he wanted her to teach him demonology. Wisps and wraiths to start, and from there into demons.

Anders needed an army. He needed to make one. The Chantry didn’t just fear mages - they feared the matrimony of the Maker’s first and second children. They feared spirits. They feared demons. They feared abominations. They feared Justice. They feared Vengeance. They feared having to face them.

Rage would be willing. Rage, Justice, Vengeance, Valor, Courage, Purpose, Perseverance. If Soliel could teach him how to call on them at will, Anders was sure all of them would answer. He’d worked with them before. Compassion. Allure. Audacity. Even Love had formed and fought for him inside the Fade.

Anders didn’t have to fight like Amell, he just had to fight for him. He could call on spirits and demons without binding them. He could work with them, as he’d worked with Justice, and commit them to his cause. He practiced with Soliel in the colosseum - drawing wisps across the Veil and sinking them into the sands. They were far weaker than the ash wraiths he’d seen Amell summon, but they were wraiths and they worked.

“Freedom,” was all that they could whisper, struggling to hold onto their shape - sometimes human, sometimes not. They were made of smoke and shadow, will and wildfire, their eyes empty pits of black and their mouths endless rows of teeth. They had no legs to speak of, forming out of the sands from which they were summoned.

They might have worked well in a fight but they wouldn’t work well in a war. The wraiths dissipated into dust whenever he walked too far away, or summoned more than three, or tried complex commands. They weren’t anything like the sylvans Khedra had created. They had no memory, no minds, no motives of their own.

Anders let go of his latest summon and the wisps fled back to the Fade, “This is so not working.”

A week of work with nothing to show for it. Anders couldn’t hold onto hope when it kept slipping through his fingers with all the substance of the sands of the colosseum. The shades wouldn’t serve him. The mages couldn’t just survive the Exalted March, they had to make a stand against it, but they didn’t have the means.

“We’re still on the First Aspect,” Soliel sat on the raised arm of Harvard the Aegis, the old stone statue overlooking the sands and his struggle. “No one learns a new type of magic overnight.”

“I don’t have a choice,” Anders paced impatiently. “And it hasn’t been overnight. It’s been over several nights.”

“This magic takes years to master,” Soliel said.

Fade take him, Anders didn’t have years. Anders didn’t even have days. Not with every free city this side of the Minanter under martial law and the Exalted March pressing in from the Nevarran border. Sometimes Anders wondered what he was even doing here, protecting a few hundred mages, when he should have been fighting for thousands. He should have been out there on the front lines, wherever those lines were, facing off against armies of Starkhaven and Tantervale and every other free city the Divine set against them.

But then he listened to the criers on the corners of Kaiten, and he knew it wasn’t a war right now. Not really. It was just templars marching through the streets, dragging apostates and their alleged supporters from their homes, and stringing them up in gallows and gibbets. It was a slaughter, and he needed Soliel’s help to stop it.

Anders flew up to join her, surprised their combined weight didn’t break off Harvard’s arm, but then Soliel didn’t weigh much. She might have been a shade herself, when her shadow had more substance. She shifted over to make room for him, and summoned a swarm of shades from the sands. They wandered around the colosseum whispering to themselves, their words too faint and far away to understand.

“Show off,” Anders sighed. “Why did you learn demonology?”

“I love demons,” Soliel said simply. “I love vices. I love rage, and desire, and despair, and the depth of human emotion. I love that demons can’t resist it - that they make their whole selves around it. I love the lack of shame in their self-expression. I’ve never known despair to hide its tears, or rage to temper itself, or pride to make itself small. I love the uncontainable. The uncontrollable.”

“I probably shouldn’t say this, but for someone who loves emotion so much you don’t seem to show a lot of it,” Anders pointed out.

“Khedra showed them for me,” Soliel said.

“You have to have some of your own,” Anders argued. The man had been dead for almost twenty years, and Soliel had to move on with her life eventually.

“Maybe you could pick some out for me,” Soliel smiled the sort of smile of someone who didn’t smile often.

“I’ll be sure to grab some next time I’m at the market,” Anders joked for her sake. “Gay looks good on you, I’ll see if I can get some more of that.”

“Should I get you anything?” Soliel wondered.

“You could get me demons,” Anders sighed at the shades he couldn’t replicate.

“I said that I would fight with you,” Soliel reminded him. “You don’t need to know this magic.”

Anders shook his head. They couldn’t just have one demonologist, one spirit healer, one necromancer, one battlemage. They had to have an army if they hoped to stand against one. If mages could summon spirits and demons they might not have to give themselves to them just to gain the upper hand. Anders might have been an abomination, but he knew what that meant for most.

Anders was one of the lucky ones. Anders had always been one of the lucky ones, even in the Circle, where he’d suffered so much more than solitary. He’d survived not because he hoped tomorrow would be better, but because he knew today could have been worse. It could always have been worse, and for so many other mages, it had been.

Anders had been lucky it was Justice who possessed him, and not Rage, Despair, or Fear, when he’d seen so many mages fall to them. Mages who gave themselves to demons rather than let the templars take them, and lost themselves in the process. Anders was lucky there was anything left of him after he’d given himself to Justice. If he wanted anything to be left of his mages, he had to make sure they survived.

Staves would help with that, “Did you find anything out about the lyrium?”

“Not enough,” Soliel said. “There’s an ex-chevalier who used to come to court often enough to be Viscount Ravi’s supplier, but we don’t know where he gets his lyrium.”

“The Carta,” Anders guessed. House Cadash handled most of the lyrium smuggling in the Free Marches, getting it out of Orzammar and into Kirkwall and the rest of the Free Cities. Orzammar looked the other way when the queen-consort’s sister was married to the leader of the Carta, or they had until Anders’ friend Valta had outed them and gotten herself exiled from Orzammar in the process.

Anders had no idea who was in charge now. Malika Cadash was in Kirkwall, but this was Kaiten, and for all he knew House Cadash might have fallen. Thanks to Hawke, Malika started mining red lyrium instead of blue, and her men might have gone mad. Her entire operation might have crumbled. Anders had no way of knowing and no real way to ask.

“There aren’t that many dwarves in Kaiten,” Soliel shook her head.

“Are there any gangs?” Anders asked.

“I wish I could say,” Soliel shrugged apologetically.

“What’s the chevalier’s name?” Anders asked.

“Blaen,” Soliel said. “He’s from Orlais, but he comes to Kaiten every autumn to escape the winter. He has a small estate in the foreign quarter, but he spends most of his time in the Sweetsong Brandy Parlor.”

“Thanks,” Anders braced himself to hop down from the statue, or maybe for a fight. “Usually, this is where you tell me not to hurt him.”

Soliel smiled that rare smile again, and it almost made up for how he struggled with the shades, “This is where I tell you not to miss.”

The Sweetsong Brandy Parlor was a nice establishment. It was a very nice establishment. It was such a nice establishment the doorman wouldn’t let Anders inside. Not when Anders was wearing something as unseemly as leather armor, and - Maker forbid - a long leather jacket. Somehow, Anders managed to restrain himself from getting into fisticuffs with the doorman, probably because bouncers threw him into the street before he could.

A crow with very ruffled feathers found its way inside through an open window in the kitchens instead. The parlor didn’t have any windows. The lighting was more or less nonexistent, a few candles catching in the thick cloud of smoke that seemed like a crucible of everything from elfroot to opium, and no one gave two bits what Anders was wearing because no one could see him in the first place.

If nothing else, the parlor was decadently furnished, and the few pieces of furniture Anders stumbled into were as padded as the people. The Sweetsong Brandy Parlor seemed to cater to a very specific type of clientele: nobles and wouldbe nobles, all gossiping about how to advance their station or trying to garner information about their rivals, like the Exalted March hadn’t dressed well enough to be allowed inside with them and they weren’t all under martial law.

A handful of bouncers stood at the exits, but they seemed more of a token effort, when all the nobles brought their bodyguards to drink and smoke with them, or - more accurately - to watch them drink and smoke. Anders hated it. He had a headache the second he set foot inside the tavern, and he couldn’t find Blaen to save his life until someone made a scene.

“Sleep it off, Tavrik,” one of the bouncers followed a templar as he stumbled through the parlor while a second ran for the city guard.

“Blaen!” the templar Tavrik’s voice cut through the din if not the smoke of the parlor. Through the smoke, there was little Anders could make out about him beyond the fact that he was a Knight-Corporal. “Blaen, you bastard, where are you? I know you have the blue!”

Tavrik shoved the bouncer back, and must have spotted Blaen, because he surged towards a group of masked Orlesians seated around a small table drinking bandy and playing cards. The three of them glanced up, but it was anyone’s guess which one of them was Blaen. There were multiple bodyguards around them, but only one of them moved, blocking off Tavrik before he reached the table.

“Listen to the good man, Tavrik,” the Chasind woman suggested. She was dressed in engraved Orlesian armor, a half mask revealing the Chasind tattoos on her face, and reminded Anders of Evon, and the shared pride he’d had in showing them, no matter what it cost him in the end. “You’re tired.”

“I’m thirsty,” Tavrik sobbed, grabbing the straps to her cuirass. It was engraved with a blue owl, and matched the armor the rest of the rest of the bodyguards were wearing. It also matched a brooch on the man Anders guessed was Blaen. “I need the blue. I need it, Alizera!”

“Tell the Chantry,” Alizera suggested.

“Fuck the Chantry!” Tavrik said, to a chorus of shocked gasps from the crowd. He clung to Alizera, sobbing and snarling hysterically. “I need more. You know I need more. Captain Ardal always gave us more. The new Knight Captain won’t give us any more. I’ve been shorting my men for mine but it’s still not enough - and now they all need more. We need more. I can’t hear it, Alizera. I can’t hear the song. I have to hear the song.”

Behind Tavrik, the city guard was pushing their way through the crowd and into the parlor, pursued by one of the bouncers, pointing the way over to Tavrik and Alizera. Alizera spun her hand over her head, gesturing to Tavrik while he wept into her cuirass. “It’s how He speaks to us,” Tavrik insisted. “A song in the stillness. The echo of His voice. I have to hear it.”

“Okay, Tavrik,” one of the guardsmen stepped forward and set his hand on Tavrik’s shoulder. “Let’s take it outside.”

Tavrik whirled on him, hand to the sheath of sword, and slammed the hilt up into the guardsman’s stomach, doubling him over. The two guardsmen with him caught him, backpedaling hastily. “You are beneath me!” Tavrik screamed so loud his face went red. “You are nothing! You do not touch me! You do not speak to me! The Maker speaks to me - through the very substance of creation itself - from whence He fashioned the world!

“I am a Knight-Corporal! I am Exalted! You are not exempt! You are not excused! You are part of the Exalted March or you are prey to it! The Order is in charge here - and I am the Order!” Tavrik drew his sword, and the parlor panicked. Nobles hid behind their bodyguards, who shoved them towards the exits, while guardsmen and bouncers loosely encircled Tavrik, clearly undecided on how to handle him.

Tavrik wasn’t wrong. They answered to him under martial law, no matter how unstable he might have been, and they must have known it, because they did nothing when Tavrik leveled his sword at Alizera. “Give - me - the - blue!”

“Easy, Tavrik,” Alizera set an unthreatened hand against the flat of Tavrik’s blade, and slowly lowered it. “I’ll get you the blue.”

Tavrik was so unstable he just started sobbing, “You will?”

“Let’s go out back,” Alizera suggested.

The Chasind waved the guardsmen off, and everyone looked the other way when Alizera led him out the back. Everyone except for Anders, who followed her and two blue owl bodyguards when they led Tavrik past the willfully blind bouncers, through the kitchens, and into the back alley. They were so focused on Tavrik they paid Anders as much mind as if he’d transformed into a cat or a crow.

It took him stepping outside with them for one of the bodyguards to even notice him. “Doesn’t concern you, friend,” the Blue Owl said.

“Here I thought we were friends,” Anders said.

“Consider this me looking out for you, friend,” the Blue Owl said with an equal amount of sarcasm and a firm push on Anders’ chest that sent him back into the kitchens. Anders didn’t need to be in the alley with them to know what they planned to do in it. Tavrik might not have been a good templar before, but he was bound to become one now, when the only good templar was a dead one.

Anders would have liked to see it, but he would have liked the lyrium more. If Tavrik had been telling the truth, Blaen had supplied Ser Ardal, and Alizera seemed to have some say in that supply. Anders waited in the kitchens, ignoring the looks it got him from the cooks and the kitchen maids, until the Blue Owls came back inside a while later sans Ser Tavrik.

They didn’t even seem to notice him until he stepped in front of them and said, “I want to talk to Blaen.”

Alizera sized him up with a quick glance, “No one talks to Blaen.”

“Ser Ardal talked to Blaen,” Anders countered.

“Are you Ser Ardal?” Alizera patronized him.

“Ser Ardal’s dead,” Anders ignored it. “Blaen has to sell to someone.”

“You someone?” Alizera asked.

“Yes,” Anders said.

“You have coin, Someone?” Alizera asked.

“Yes,” Anders lied.

“No,” Alizera said.

“No?” Anders blinked.

“No,” Alizera made a spinning gesture with her hand, and the two Blue Owls with her stepped forward and grabbed him beneath his arms. Alizera stepped around him and went back to the parlor without a backwards glance.

“Hey wait-” Anders twisted in their grasp, but there was no breaking from them without magic, and Anders didn’t want to bring down the whole place. The Blue Owls dragged him out back and tossed him up against the nearest wall. The larger of the two slammed a gauntlet clad fist into his stomach, and Anders doubled over with a choked gasp.

“Nothing personal, friend,” the Blue Owl grabbed a handful of his half-dyed hair, and wrenched his head back up for the other man to punch. The force of the blow knocked him from the first man’s grasp, ripping out a few strands of hair and bloodying him when his gauntlet split his lip. Anders hit the ground, and went rolling across it when one of the Blue Owls kicked him. “Stay out of our hair and fix yours while you’re at it.”

“Bastards,” Anders groaned, dragging himself up onto his hands and knees in time for the parlor door to slam behind the Blue Owls. The lock clicked behind them, and Anders sat back against the wall with a hand to his stomach and the taste of copper in his mouth. Everything ached. His head, his jaw, his stomach, his lungs. There was no healing any of it so long as a few drunks loitered in the alley, staring at him, but it could have been worse.

It was barely a beating. Just a few bruises and a split lip. Anders had had worse. From Hawke. From the Circle. From the bloody templars he was trying to take down. He’d gotten lucky. He always got lucky. He’d get lucky again. Anders dragged himself to his feet, and banged a fist against the kitchen door until the kitchen maids let him back inside, but by the time he made it back inside the parlor the Orlesians had all gone.

Because of course they had. His one chance at securing lyrium for his mages, gone up in smoke. Anders sat at their table and ordered himself a brandy he couldn’t pay for that Justice wouldn’t let him drink, so weary and worn out he must have fallen asleep because a few seconds later he was starting back awake to the tinny chatter of templars. There might have been a half-dozen of them at the bar, the rest of the patrons in the parlor giving them a wide berth after Tavrik’s outburst and subsequent disappearance.

“Five silver, the Corporal is dead in a ditch somewhere,” one of the templars said, in a thick Orlesian accent.

“Ain’t taking it,” a second who might have been a Marcher said. “Everyone knows that’s the end of the Indigo Road.”

“If I dinnae get a blue harvest soon a’ll lose ma fucking shit,” a third who was obviously a Stark muttered.

“It is a Miracle of the Maker we have not lost our shit already with how he is shorting us,” the Orlesian said.

“Fuck Ardal,” the Marcher muttered.

“Fuck Ardal?” the Stark repeated. “Nae, fuck Tavrik.”

“Ardal’s the one what got him on it,” the Marcher argued. “Bastard gave us all a bad name. What was the Knight-Vigilant thinking, reinstating Viscount Ravi? He ain’t a real Knight Commander, and Captain Ardal needed one.”

“Do you believe it?” the Orlesian asked. “That it was maleficarum who ended him?”

“I saw the bodies,” the Marcher shook his head. “They died by the sword. When’s the last time you saw a maleficar use one?”

“Maleficar’d make ye use yer sword against sumwan,” the Stark pointed out.

“Don’t tell me you buy into that bullshit,” the Marcher snorted. “Ardal made a deal. It went south. Surprised it didn’t happen sooner with how much of the blue he was buying.”

“I suspect otherwise,” the Orlesian said.

“Well dinnae keep us in suspense,” the Stark scooted his chair closer.

“Someone is removing the Purifiers. First Captain Ardal, now Corporal Tavrik,” the Orlesian whispered. “I suspect Lowen.”

“Nae!” the Stark glanced nervously around the parlor. “Lieutenant Lowen?”

“Captain Lowen, now. He had the most to gain from Captain Ardal’s death, but I should not say such things aloud,” the Orlesian lowered his voice. “The Chantry has ears and that is not the story they want us to tell.”

“Fuck the Chantry,” the Marcher muttered. “They’re just afraid we’ll realize they ain’t the only ones what got the blue.”

“How many times are you going to say fuck?” the Orlesian frowned.

“Until I stop wanting to fuck someone,” the Marcher spat. “I feel so fucking empty.”

“We all feel empty,” the Orlesian said.

“I need to eat something.”

“We all need to eat something.”

“I need to drink something.”

“We all need to drink something.”

“I need to fuck something.”

“We all need to fuck something.”

“Fuck Ardal,” the Marcher scratched at his scalp so hard it had to hurt. “‘Purifiers.’ The fuck did he think he was purifying? Mages? The fuck are templars gonna do when there ain’t any left?”

“Hunt maleficarum,” the Orlesian shrugged.

The Marcher rolled his eyes, “When’s the last time you fought a maleficar?”

“Soon, I have no doubt, with how many people have been reporting them of late,” the Orlesian said.

“Cause the Revered Mother told ‘em too,” the Marcher said. “You hear her last sermon? She’s got folks so scared they’re snitching on their neighbors.”

“It’s no’ snitching if they’re witches,” the Stark countered.

“They’re bitches, not witches,” the Marcher said. “These fucking reports, I swear. Every cuckhold in Kaiten’s reporting his neighbor for something. Cheat you at cards? Maleficar. Fuck your wife? Maleficar. Owe you money? Maleficar. It’s a thrice-damned waste of time putting these gits up in gibbots. Apostates what fled Kirkwall aren’t pissing about in Kaiten, they’re over in Ostwick.”

“How d’ye ken?” the Stark asked.

“It’s the sick,” the Marcher said sagely. “They started it in Kirkwall and brought it with ‘em to Ostwick. I heard the Lieutenants talking. Mages started some kind of magic plague that made Meredith go mad.”

“Nae,” the Stark shook his head.

“Nae?” the Marcher repeated.

“She wis like Ardal,” the Stark said. “Seekers dinnae care.”

“Don’t fucking talk about Seekers,” the Marcher said. “Hector, Hessarian, and Havard, what’s wrong with you? You trying to bring ‘em down on us? You know they boil your blood?”

“I dinnae believe that,” the Stark said.

“You wanna fuckin’ test it?” the Marcher hissed. “You ever seen a Seeker?”

“There wis th’wan,” the Stark said.

“What one?” the Marcher said.

“Th’wan, ye ken,” the Stark snapped his fingers. “Th’Seeker lass fit came t’Kaiten a few years ago t’visit th’viscount.”

“Don’t fucking talk about seekers!” the Marcher snapped.

“Ye fucking asked!” the Stark snapped back.

“Are you two ever going to stop saying fuck?” the Orlesian sighed.

“No, I’m fucking not,” the Marcher said. “I fucking live here. These are my fucking neighbors, and the Chantry has me banging down their fucking doors. They don't care about Kirkwall. They’re using us to scare folks, tricking them into tithing more, while we got apostates running through the woods. Exalted March is supposed to be about mages and they’re making it about money.”

“It is supposed to be about the Maker.”

“He ain’t here.”

Chapter 221: From Kirkwall We Fled: In Need of Patrons

Summary:

And sharpened their blades and arrows
And prepared for war.

- Shartan 9:14

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 19 Parvulis Late at Night
Kaiten

Three days until the autumn equinox, and Anders still didn’t have a supply of lyrium so they could start making staves. He was sure he could get one if he could get Blaen to negotiate, but after the beating Anders had gotten from his Blue Owls, it seemed like they were taking their relationship slow. It probably didn’t help that Anders had killed Blaen’s best client when he’d killed Captain Ardal, not that Blaen knew that.

Captain Lowen was Captain Ardal’s replacement in Kaiten, and by all accounts he was an honorable man, or as honorable as a man who devoted himself to the apprehension of apostates and murder of mages could be. He didn’t have an interest in securing additional lyrium - red or blue - if it wasn’t supplied by the Chantry, which meant Blaen had to supply someone else.

Someone like Anders - and on the Maker Anders needed it. It had been his idea to move on from Kaiten, but he wanted to make use of it first. Soliel was a start, but there was so much more that they could do if they just had a supply of lyrium to do it. Staves, yes, but also enchantments, potions, salves, and all manner of magical armaments that would serve them in the war. The problem - and probably the reason the Blue Owls had beaten him - was that he had no way to pay for it.

With blood magic, Anders could make Blaen believe he’d already paid for any lyrium he supplied, and while that might work for one shipment, Anders wanted more. He wanted to own the Indigo Road, when every bit of lyrium he took from the templars was lyrium they couldn't use against them. A compulsion wouldn’t hold up when the Carta came calling, and Blaen had to cover the costs.

“You need a patron,” Soliel said, sitting in Khedra's old cubiculum at the colosseum with him.

“A what?” Anders looked up from where he’d been pouring over the Awiergan Scrolls.

“Someone who cares about the mage rebellion or someone you can compel to care about the mage rebellion so they’ll cover the cost of it,” Soliel elaborated. “Someone wealthy.”

Someone like Amell. Anders pushed the thought away. “Any suggestions?”

“Khedra was our patron,” Soliel said. “He thought he could do everything on his own. He was too Proud not to. He taxed the nobles to cover the cost of the colosseum.”

Anders couldn’t do that. The mages didn’t have any money he could use. “Did he leave you anything?”

Soliel shook her head, “Ravi took it all.”

Anders guessed that meant he’d had no heirs, “No children?”

“No children,” Soliel agreed, but Anders couldn't tell if she seemed sad about it when she seemed sad about everything. “What of you? Do you have any children?”

“... I think so,” Anders said.

“What a masculine thing to say,” Soliel almost laughed. Her shoulders shook, and she hid her face behind her hand, and Anders wanted to laugh with her but he didn’t have the strength. He felt like he was saving it. All of his energy. All of his emotion. Every day he walked through the streets of Kaiten and saw how its people suffered. Men and women accused of apostasy torn from their homes and thrown into gibbots.

They decorated the castle walls like garlands. So many people had been strung up in response to Captain Ardal’s death, confined to cages too narrow to lie down and too short to stand, where they were left to rot. Their cries deafened the Chant of Light, the Chantry bells, the preachers in the streets. They begged for water, food, or rest, dying of thirst, starvation, or the elements. The world went on underneath them, and Anders went on with it.

There was nothing he could do. There was no liberating Kaiten when their Viscount was their Knight Commander. The templars were too entrenched. Anders knew that there were rifts in their ranks - whispers of discontent that weren’t exactly whispers - but he had no way to exploit them. For every templar he removed, another took their place, and even getting rid of Captain Ardal felt like it hurt more than it helped when it started up this inquisition.

His mages were outnumbered, outarmored, outarmed, and there was no way to oust the templars until Anders found some way to change that, and there was no room in his life for children until he did.

Anders missed them anyway. He thought of Amal and of Kieran and said, “I had a page for around six months, and before that I had a boy I adopted for around a year. They’re not with me right now. I don’t know if I’ll ever see either of them again… Sorry, that’s not much of a joke.”

“Not everything has to be one,” Soliel assured him. "You can afford to be emotional."

Anders couldn't even afford lyrium. He pressed on, “Ravi couldn’t have gotten rid of everyone. I know the Mages’ Collective is gone, and the Elevated Brotherhood is just you and a few others, but there must be someone left who could be our sponsor.”

“Lady Sennova is hosting a gala tomorrow night,” Soliel suggested. “You could meet most of the nobles there, if you can find a way to get an invitation.”

Anders got an invitation. Lady Sennova’s manor was in an exclusive neighborhood, with well lit and well cobbled streets, the wealthier nobles arriving in carriages and the lesser nobles arriving on foot. Anders compelled one of them into handing over his invitation, and sent the nobleman back home with his entourage, the three of them under the impression they’d gotten drunk and gambled instead of going to the gala.

No one would notice the nobleman was gone. There were too many guests and the gala was too grand. Lady Sennova’s manor was an exercise in extravagance everywhere Anders looked. Hand carved baseboards, etched copper ceilings, hallways filled with paintings and servants attacking him with trays of cheese and flutes of wine. There must have been at least half a dozen parlors that buzzed with conversation, and Lady Sennova could have been in any one of them.

The banquet hall was even worse, with a tiled mosaic of the Golden City that may or may not have been sacrilege to step on. It had been converted into a dance floor, with a wooden stage on one end where a band played music in every known and unknown language. Archways opened up to the autumn air and inner courtyard, where a perfectly manicured lawn was surrounded by a garden path winding among magnificent topiaries. Lady Sennova had to have been the wealthiest woman in Kaiten, and Anders wasn’t leaving without her support, even if he had to use blood magic to get it.

Anders couldn't find Lady Sennova, even after an hour of searching, but he overheard the servants complaining about having to set up the study for when she retired. A cat snuck in with them while they prepared it, and stayed after they left. The room was rich enough to be warm, even in autumn, the crackle of the fireplace not quite loud enough to cover the din of the dying gala. A few couches were clustered around the fire, each with their own end tables, a low liquor cabinet behind the largest holding a selection of snacks and spirits.

There were a few bookshelves, and a desk beneath a stained-glass window overlooking the gardens, but the real wonders were the displays. Helmets, crushed. Cuirasses, caved in. Swords and spears and bows all snapped in half. Beneath each trophy was a plaque that listed the name of the vanquished champion, their sponsor, and the date of their vanquishing, back to the early Dragon Age.

Justice traced over the first of them, a shattered shield, cast in gold and memories. They echoed from across the Fade as wisps pulled on both what had happened and how it was remembered when Khedra handed Sennova the trophy not in triumph but in secret.

”You took a risk for me today,” the memory of Khedra said, but that memory kept changing, as if Sennova couldn’t quite recall him. His eyes were red, his hair was black, but beyond that little else was left. A goatee, maybe, round or square, low or high, mustache and beard connected or not. He’d been some kind of height, some kind of shape, some kind of something that was too hard to define after over twenty years without him.

“What risk?” the memory of Sennova looked as she looked now - dressed in the same elaborate gown with the same elaborate headdress, as if the wisps couldn’t quite pull her apart from her memories. “I knew my man would win.”

“You set the stage,” Khedra said. “The rest of the nobles will follow suit.”

“You mean they’ll follow you,” Sennova smiled. “You’re welcome, my Proud Viscount.”

Anders waited out the evening, and eventually Lady Sennova joined him in the study, and to her credit kept from screaming when he shut the door behind her. “You knew,” Anders said in greeting.

“I beg your pardon, serah?” Sennova was a rotund woman in body, voice, and self-expression. She held a flute of wine in one hand, and a dagger in the other with all the ease and elegance of holding a fan.

“Khedra,” Anders tossed the shattered shield onto the couch in front of her. “You knew he was possessed with Pride.”

“Aren’t all men?” Sennova circled her study, stepping away from him and towards the servant’s exit, but Anders was sure he could compel her before she made it there. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.”

“We’re having it now,” Anders said. “I need your help.”

“You have a strange way of asking for it,” Sennova said.

“You believed in Khedra,” the memory made that obvious. “This whole room is a mausoleum to his memory.”

“You’re mistaken, serah,” Sennova said cautiously, but she stopped backing up, tapping lacquered nails along her wine glass like it was suddenly of more interest than her dagger. “I believed in coin, as I told the Chantry. It’s not a crime to keep my champions’ trophies.”

“I’m not with the Chantry,” Anders conjured veilfire to prove it, sapphire flames devouring red in the fireplace. “I’m with the Elevated Brotherhood.”

“Should that mean something to me?” Sennova asked.

“You know it does,” Anders picked up the hilt of a broken sword - Another victory, my friend - and held it out to her. “You don’t care about your champions. You cared about Khedra. You cared about his cause. Why did you give up on it?”

Sennova sheathed her dagger in her sleeve and took the broken sword from him, thumbing the weathered engraving of a rival noble house on the pommel. “Khedra never had a cause. He had a colosseum, and it died with him. The Chantry closed the colosseum, and I can’t help you if you want to see it continue. An Exalted March isn’t something you can contain with champions. The days of spilling blood in the sands are over. Get used to seeing it in the streets.”

“I don’t want your help containing the war,” Anders said. “I want your help to win it.”

“If you knew Khedra, you’d know there are no winning sides in war,” Sennova set the broken sword back on its display. “That’s why he tried so hard to end them.”

“And you believed in him. You’re too important to put up on the wall. You had to know that you risked Aeonar, consorting with an abomination, and you must know what happens there. The Veil is so thin even those without magic can feel it. It’s designed to let in demons. Once the templars take you there, they torture you until the day you die.

“That wasn’t about coin or a colosseum; that was about a cause. You believed in one mage. Now I want you to believe in all of them. Everyone is suffering under this Exalted March. I know you can see outside your stained glass windows. Your neighbors don’t deserve to be in gibbots, and you don’t want to be on the side that put them there.”

“And what of your side’s sins?” Sennova asked, like this war was about land and not lives.

“Survival?” Anders coughed, and then kept coughing, struggling to clear his throat. Sennova stepped forward and poured him a hasty drink Anders waved away in favor of conjuring water for his canteen, but it was enough. Sennova wouldn’t have offered him a drink if he hadn’t won her over, unless it was poisoned, which was always possible and part of the reason he turned it down.

“I see yours has been a struggle,” Sennova tipped her glass of wine at the scar on his throat.

“I’m not special,” Anders hoped that he’d convinced her, but if he had to, he’d compel her. “I just need your support.”

Lady Sennova’s support came with caveats. She wasn’t willing to bankrupt herself or her estate for the mage rebellion, but she was willing to invest in it. Fifty sovereigns a month to keep them supplied with lyrium through the Indigo Road, Blaen, and his Blue Owls. It wasn’t enough for an army, but Lady Sennova was willing to reconsider the arrangement once Anders actually had an army to his name, and eventually she’d expect returns.

For the moment, they had the start of a steady supply of lyrium, and the Fraternities of Enchanters voted to stay in Kaiten to make use of it. The first shipment would be enough for ten staves, provided they knew how to make them. The Tranquil handled enchantments in the Circle, when lyrium exposure was a risk to any mage, but they only had Helena with them. She might have been Tranquil, but she wasn't an enchanter, which only left the Dalish.

They were capable of working with lyrium, but their methods were intricate and complicated. The Keeper had entrusted the magic to her sighted First, Second, and Third. With all of them dead and gone, there were no mages left in the clan who knew the magic, and teaching it would take time and tomes. They found a selection in Khedra's library, and the mages got to work while Anders did the same.

He made progress with Soliel after the equinox. Anders could only summon so many shades, and while he was willing to work on it, he was impatient to move onto demons. Soliel took him back to Khenderlan, and her old rooms at the estate to practice. They were rich rooms, covered in cobwebs, and opposite Khedra’s.

Anders watched Soliel setting up and blurted, "You slept apart?"

"I snore," Soliel said sheepishly, dusting off her old summoning font. "And Khedra slept light. Let's start with the Second Aspect."

Anders dug out the scrolls, and set up for the Second Aspect: summoning demons with a summoning font. The Third and Final Aspect was summoning demons without one, which Anders would have to master if he had any hope of making use of the magic. It was one thing to summon a small selection of shades, or a single demon in front of a summoning font, but Anders wanted armies.

“Start with what you know,” Soliel said as she set up the glyphs. “Whatever is in your nature.”

“So you’re saying I should summon a second spirit of Justice?” Anders joked.

“If it speaks to you,” Soliel shrugged, glancing over her shoulder at him. “Do you still dream?”

“No,” Anders didn’t think his tainted nightmares counted when they weren’t connected to the Fade.

“That might make this more difficult,” Soliel admitted. “It’s easier to call on the demons you know than the demons you don’t.”

“You’re telling me you talk to the demons you summon in your dreams?” Anders asked.

“Often,” Soliel finished with the summoning circle. There were no binding enchantments, so any spirit or demon she called could return to the Fade of its own volition. “Are you familiar with Brahm’s Scale?”

“Demon hierarchy,” thanks Karl.

“Don’t believe it,” sorry Karl. “There’s strength in every demon. A weak demon of desire might focus on a flight of fancy, while a strong one the desperate wishes of the dying. Weak rage, a simple grudge, and strong, the outrage of an oppressed peoples. Weak fear, a phobia, and strong, all the horrors born from war. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the demon, whatever its aspect.

“That Brahm believed that rage is weakest tells you only that he never felt it. That hunger follows, that he never starved. That desire and pride were ranked the strongest speaks to his repression and his vanity. Demons reflect the waking world. They’re only what we make them.”

Soliel raised her arms, brimming with magic, long sleeves sliding down to her shoulders and revealing countless casting scars. Shadows overtook the room, and her hands glowed a vibrant violet as she sunk her mana into the glyph, thinning the Veil. The air crackled with an amaranthine energy, and it felt like she pulled the Fade into the room with them, shadows taking the shape of Pride.

It felt like a special kind of Pride. There were no lavish lavenders or lilacs, no undercurrents of royalty or wealth. The Pride demon burned - an inferno underneath its charred and blackened skin, embers flaking off and floating up to smoke against the ceiling. Its scaled body was more reminiscent of a dragon than a demon, so tall it had to kneel to keep its horns from breaking through the ceiling.

“Sol,” the demon’s voice was soft and sonorous.

“Hybris,” Soliel said.

Soliel stepped into the summoning circle and set her hand against Hybris’ arm, if only because it seemed the only piece of the demon she could reach. Hybris tipped its head forward so they could rest their heads together, and for a long while they just stood there, like two remnants from a forgotten age.

“... You’re Khedra’s demon,” Anders realized.

“I am - was - Khedra,” Hybris said when Soliel stepped back.

Anders stumbled back until his heels came into contact with something, and he sat heavily on what might have been a chest. Khedra’s demon. Khedra’s Justice - forced to carry on without him and find new purpose in the Fade. Anders took a shallow breath, but he felt the sickest sort of heartache, seeing half a soul.

“What are you now?” Anders whispered.

“A fragment,” Hybris said.

“Hybris,” Soliel encouraged the demon. “Pride that disregards the divine and leads men to surpass the gods.”

Hybris waved the words aside, “I am a fragment. A fragment of everyone who ever held a throne here or in the black.”

“You command the whims and wyrds of the world,” Soliel insisted.

“I am here, Sol,” Hybris sounded tired. “Give me purpose or leave me to my pieces.”

“Here is your purpose,” Soliel introduced them.

Hybris stayed kneeling, horns scraping across the ceiling and showering the demon in dust when he turned his gigantic, dragonic head to take him in. Eleven burning eyes blinked out of sequence with each other as they swept over him. “Vengeance,” Hybris decided eventually.

“Yes,” Anders managed.

“He’s studying the Awiergan scrolls,” Soliel explained.

“Khedra could never call on other aspects,” Hybris said.

“I am an ideal,” Justice stood. “Not an emotion.”

“So you seek to summon us to serve your purpose,” Hybris said.

“I think we can serve each other,” Justice inclined his head politely.

“Perhaps there is some hybris there,” Hybris hummed, but as he himself had said, that wasn’t all he wished to be.

“Can you recall him?” Justice asked. “Khedra?”

“His pride,” Hybris said fondly. “... the rest is faint.”

“But you recalled him through your reformation,” Justice noted.

“No,” Hybris said. “He released me, in the end, so I would not return a wisp of what I was.”

“Would you rather have returned as one?” Justice asked.

“I am here for Eiton,” Hybris said.

“Who’s Eiton?” Anders asked.

“Secrets, Sol?” Hybris sounded amused, turning his head back towards her.

“Khedra’s grand-nephew,” Soliel confessed after some hesitation. “Ravi’s son.”

“You’re telling me the Viscount’s son is a mage?” Anders realized. “And you don’t think that’s something I should have known?”

“You know now,” Soliel said.

“I should have known sooner,” Anders paced, dragging his hands through his hair, trying to wrap his head around the information. The heir to the throne of Kaiten was a mage, and that mage had the protection of an ancient demon of Hybris, and he wasn’t doing anything with it. The Purifiers were burning mages and their supporters out of their homes, while Eiton hid away inside the castle and watched the city collapse outside it. “Maker, this whole time-... he’s here? He’s an apostate?”

“No one knows,” Soliel said. “Not even his father.”

“How can he not know?” Anders asked.

“We hid his magic,” Soliel said. “Those of us who stayed. His mother was a mage and we suspected he might share her magic.”

“A mage?” Anders’ anger turned to disgust and his stomach turned with it, knowing what that must have meant. “How was his mother a mage? Ravi was a Knight-Templar before he became the Viscount.”

“A Dalish clan used to live in the dales outside the city,” Soliel leaned against Hybris while she shared the story. “Ravi… tricked them. The templars had been sending raiding parties into the dales, and Ravi promised he could get them to stop, but he never told them he was a templar.

“He used them to distract the city guard so he could challenge Khedra. Afterwards, he went back on his word, and had them chased out so no one would suspect he was willing to work with apostates. Eiton’s mother was one of their mages. She died in childbirth, and her brother brought the baby to Ravi when the clan refused to keep him.”

“So… what?” Anders asked. “You’re just waiting for Ravi to die so Eiton can take his place? Why don’t you kill him now?”

“Ravi’s death can’t be suspicious,” Soliel shook her head. “If anyone investigates and learns Eiton is half elf, he can’t inherit. He’s the last hope Kaiten has.”

“Kaiten won’t have hope for years,” Anders waved a hand at the window, and the city collapsing in on itself in the far distance. “There has to be something. Some way we can make it look like an accident-”

“There’s not,” Soliel cut him off. “This is a war we wait to win. Whatever else you need, you have, but Eiton is off limits.”

Anders had about a dozen arguments otherwise, but the tone in Soliel’s voice brooked none of them. She stood in the shadow of Hybris with her arms folded across her chest, and Anders tried to let it go. Removing Ardal hadn’t changed anything. Removing Ravi wouldn’t either. The Free Cities answered to the templars now, and their leaders couldn’t just order them to leave. The mages would have to draw the templars out and take them down, and for that Anders needed an army and not a single apostate.

Anders kept trying to create one, studying the Awiergan scrolls with Soliel as Kingsway crept towards Harvestmere, and was almost surprised Allure finally answered his summons. It took him more attempts than he cared to admit, drawing and redrawing the glyphs around the summoning font, working mana through them in the right order, mumbling the mnemonics aloud when he wasn’t familiar enough with the incantation to cast it without any.

“Called forth from the Fade, find purchase on mortal ground.
Allure, desire, demon, called by your true name.
This realm welcomes you, unbound, uncaged, unbroken
This font a stepping stone through the Veil
Truth will call you, or it’s no longer true.”

“Isn’t that preferrable?” Allure manifested as an androgyous personification of desire: lean muscle, lilac skin, eyes like burning violets, with a touch of the demonic in their horns and claws and tail. “I recall you liked lies more.”

“You came!” Anders hugged them. It was a miracle Allure recalled him at all, when it was so hard for spirits and demons to hold onto any memories that weren’t part of their purpose. Anders tried not to think about it, but after six years, he was sure Compassion had forgotten him, the same way Hybris seemed to be forgetting Khedra. Anders pushed the thought away. The important thing was that Allure answered, and if they answered, so would others, and he could finally add them to his army.

“You called,” Allure returned his hug.

“I can’t believe you even remember me,” Anders said.

“There is an allure about you,” Allure ran clawed hands through his hair.

“Thanks, I think,” Anders stepped back from the embrace. “Soliel-”

“Well done,” Soliel scrubbed sleep from her eyes, half asleep on her couch, and pushed herself to her feet. “The Second Aspect isn’t simple.”

“You summoned me?” Allure asked.

“I did,” Anders said.

“They say the mortal world drives us mad,” Allure took a turn around the summoning font, trailing their claws across it in abject awe. “No one has ever summoned me here,” Allure glanced over their shoulder at him. “What is it you wanted from me?”

“Honestly?” Anders said. “I wanted to see if you would answer.”

“You want more than that,” Allure disagreed. “You want justice. You want vengeance. You want your family at your side while you fight for freedom.” Allure clasped his jaw, dragging their claws through his beard. “You want company, companionship, closeness. There are many who would offer it.”

Anders swore something in him snapped. He couldn’t take the unashamed intimacy in the way that Allure touched him when he’d gone six long months without. It felt like their claws carved cracks in him, opening him up to all the longing and loneliness that had built inside him like a reservoir begging for release. Anders ached for that simple, simple touch, but it was an ache he’d never act on without Amell.

“Thanks,” Anders swallowed, easing their hand off his face. “Let’s just focus on freedom for now. Would you be willing to fight for me?”

Allure smiled, “If that’s what you want.”

Anders hadn’t exactly mastered the first two aspects, but he’d managed them. The Third Aspect was the last and most advanced form of demonology, when it allowed the practitioner to pull demons through the Veil without Tearing it. Anders knew Allure, and while that was supposed to make the magic manageable, it didn’t make it easy. It was one thing to call someone through a summoning font, and another entirely to call on them at will.

Soliel could summon Hybris - and Despair. The demons answered with an alarming alacrity, and it wasn’t until Soliel summoned them that Anders finally realized she was dressed to match. Her long black dress went with their long black robes, as if she and her demons were always meant for mourning. “Did you always use them?” Anders asked when she dismissed them back to the sands.

“I used everything,” Soliel said as they left the colosseum. “Despair and Desire, Fear and Envy, Rage and Sloth… whatever I was feeling. I just don’t feel quite as much. I’m surprised you picked Desire.”

“It’s not like that,” Anders said.

“They seemed to think it was,” Soliel teased.

“Really?” Anders rolled his eyes. “I’m not out here summoning them to play the ‘secret desire demon and the upstanding knight.’”

“I wouldn’t say upstanding,” Soliel smiled.

“You keep this up and I’m going to start thinking we’re friends,” Anders warned her.

“You can think that,” Soliel stopped him with a hand on his shoulder before he turned to go. “The others want to meet you.”

“The others?” Anders asked.

“The Brotherhood,” Soliel said. “Eiton too.”

“I thought you said he was off limits,” Anders said.

“He is, but he still wants to meet you,” Soliel said. “Sunset at the colosseum tomorrow.”

It was a beautiful sunset. A mix of mauve and apricot cast through the clouds as the sun set fire to the horizon. The Exalted March was out there, westward, in all the Free Cities between Kaiten and Kirkwall. The Wildervale burned as the Divine’s armies swept through it, searching for anyone they could call apostates, and putting them to the sword.

Anders had to pull them back together. If he really wanted to wage a war, then he needed somewhere to wage it from where the mages could rally. Belwain’s Dale wasn’t it. It wasn’t defensible, when the Dalish had already been chased out of it by the templars once before. He needed a fortress, somewhere like Khenderlan, safe and surrounded by sylvans, but big enough to house hundreds.

Somewhere like Vigil’s Keep. Anders pushed the thought away. He flew down to the sands, where Soliel was waiting with the Elevated Brotherhood. They weren’t exactly much of one. There were five members in total: Soliel, Lukesh, Derandt, Nemmaya, and Eiton.

Soliel had been Khedra’s demonologist, Lukesh his advisor, Derandt a staunch noble supporter, and Nemmaya the leader of the Elevated Brotherhood. Soliel was in her late forties, Lukesh fifties, Derandt sixties, Nemmaya seventies. They all seemed tired, ageing, greying, hanging on for Eiton. He didn’t look like Khedra, with bright blonde hair and dark brown eyes, but there was no mistaking his magic.

He was a hedge mage. He couldn’t conjure fire, ice, or lightning. He couldn’t cause paralysis or plague. He couldn’t summon earthquakes or infernos. He knew nothing of entropy, creationism, force or primal magic. He’d had to hide his magic, and as a result it never manifested the way that normal magic did. It manifested as arcanist derangement instead - but not the kind most mages feared. Eiton couldn’t conjure curses, charms, or change his form, but he could talk to dragons.

Chapter 222: From Kirkwall We Fled: To Die In Kaiten

Summary:

The People cried out in despair

- Shartan 9:2

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter!

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 22 Frumentum Sunset
Kaiten Colosseum

“You can what?” Anders must have misheard him.

“Talk to dragons,” Eiton repeated casually. “Well, all animals. Everyone says I have a way with them. Hounds, horses, and the rest.”

“But dragons?” Anders had never heard of anyone’s magic manifesting so close to compulsion.

“Sometime ago, Ravi hired a member of the Pentaghast Family - famed Nevarran dragon hunters - to clear out a lair in the caverns around Kaiten,” the old advisor Lukesh explained. “He had them bring back a clutch and built a roost inside the castle. They must have eaten half a dozen handlers before they took to Eiton.”

“I think they would have eaten me as well if not for my magic,” Eiton admitted, thumping Lukesh on the shoulder. “I gave Lukesh here a heart attack when he found me with them.”

“A stroke,” Lukesh corrected him, anxiously adjusting his sleeves. “You know it’s my job to keep you safe.”

"You never let me forget it," Eiton rolled his eyes and turned to Anders. "I understand you're leading a revolution?"

"Yes," Anders said.

"I want to help," Eiton said.

Everyone spoke at once, all in protest. Anders suddenly understood Soliel’s reservations when it came to enlisting Eiton. He was for all intents and purposes a prince, with all the entitlement of one. His bright blonde hair was perfectly coiffed, his garb was grandiose if not gaudy, and he was blasé to the point of being belligerent.

“Everyone, everyone, let’s not act like we don’t know why we’re here,” Eiton raised a well-ringed hand with the air of a man who was used to simply silencing his audience. “We all knew someday we’d overthrow my father. He’s overplayed his hand and now we should play ours. He can’t be both Knight Commander and Viscount of Kaiten.”

“I think we all know that he can, your highness,” Derandt - an old arcane nobleman whose hair was fleeing his head in favor of his face - mumbled. “Kirkwall’s Commander set that precedent.”

“Meredith Stannard’s claim to fame lasted only as long as it took the Mad Viscount to supplant her,” Eiton waved him off. “Two years, total? My father shan’t last as long. We go to him now, we ask him to step down-”

“Ask him,” Anders repeated flatly.

“Eiton is very young,” Nemmaya - the old elven leader of the Elevated Brotherhood who’d shaved her head rather than let her hair fall out like Derandt’s - said.

“Do not speak of me as though I am not here!” Eiton’s tantrum proved her point. The boy - Anders wasn’t quite sure ‘man’ was warranted - stomped his foot. “I am not a child! I am next in line and I am tired of watching him cross it! You keep telling me to wait for the right time and I am telling you it is here! There must be a Kaiten left for me to claim. How many of my subjects do we sit back and watch him hang before we stop him?”

“Eiton-” Nemmaya said gently.

“Your highness!” Eiton snapped.

“-you do not ask a man like that to stop,” Nemmaya continued. “He stops when you stop him.”

“He’s my father. I will simply explain that if he does not step down he will be made to step down,” Eiton smoothed down imagined wrinkles in his clothes, but seemed to take offense at Lukesh doing the same, scowling when his advisor kept fidgeting. “Do you have somewhere to be, Lukesh?”

“No, your highness,” Lukesh cleared his throat and straightened, but he couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable, shuffling from foot to foot and glancing at every other entrance to the colosseum like he expected a dozen templars to burst out of them.

“Then have some decency and hold still,” Eiton muttered. “Honestly, you’re embarrassing me.”

“My apologies, your highness,” Lukesh stilled, stuffing his hands into his sleeves and wringing his arms beneath them.

“Is there somewhere you need to be, Lukesh?” Derandt asked. “You seem on edge.”

“Is it a crime to be cold?” Lukesh demanded.

“Eiton,” Nemmaya brought the conversation back around. “Have you ever known your father to hold love for mages?”

“He loved my mother,” Eiton argued.

Nemmaya looked at Soliel, who waved an allowance, and Nemmaya said, “No, he didn’t.”

“What are you saying?” Eiton asked.

“What you’re finally old enough to hear,” Nemmaya said.

Anders almost felt bad for him, watching the realization settle in, but it spoke to what a sheltered life Eiton must have had to think a templar could ever love a mage without an imbalance of power. “This is nonsense-” Eiton took a step back.

“Has he ever visited the alienage?” Nemmaya asked.

Eiton looked uncomfortable, “That’s-”

“Has he ever spoken well of elves or mages?” Nemmaya pressed. “You know what happened to your uncle and grand uncle. One man exiled and one man murdered. You know full well why we keep our order secret. Your father’s love for you has limits, Eiton, and you will find them faster if you press this.”

Eiton gave a stubborn shake of his head, “He has to step down.”

“He has to die,” Soliel corrected him.

Eiton straightened, “How dare you-”

“She doesn’t mean we kill him now-” Derandt held up his hands, when something in the distance howled, and an uneasy silence settled over them. “Wolves?” Derandt guessed.

“... Eiton?” Nemmaya asked.

Eiton shook his head, suddenly serious, “... hounds. They’re hunting something.”

“Who knows where you are tonight?” Nemmaya asked.

“No one!” Eiton said quickly. “Lukesh took care of it.”

“Did he?” Derandt frowned.

Lukesh took a step back, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You know damn well why!” Derandt tore through the sands to reach him, and Lukesh conjured a hasty repulsion field to keep him back. Derandt bounced off it and snarled, “Hunting hounds this late at night? Who else would they be searching for?”

“How dare you-!” Lukesh said.

“Confess!” Soliel drew a dagger from her sleeve and sliced her palm in the same motion.

A fast gesture flung the blood into Lukesh’s face, and he wheezed, grabbing at his throat, his confession pouring from his lips, “I had to keep him safe! You’ll all get Eiton killed!”

“Traitor!” Derandt bellowed through bursts of anti-magic as he beat his fists against Lukesh’s field.

“You’re the thrice-damned traitors!” Lukesh spat out blood and teeth, Soliel’s compulsion bleeding through his gums. “Khedra never wanted war! He’d be sick to see you now - dragging Kaiten into one! If we turn the rebels in, we put a stop to this Exalted March!”

“You bloody bastard, how could you?” It was all Anders could do to hold back from lashing out and ending him. “You want Eiton in the Circle?”

“I want him alive,” Lukesh hissed. “What does it matter where?”

“You know damn well it matters!” Derandt snapped. “Did you tell them he’s a mage!?”

The hounds howled again, closer, closing. Nemmaya grabbed Eiton by the arm and tried to drag him to an exit, but he seemed petrified in place. “Eiton, we have to go-”

“Lukesh-” Eiton whispered shakily. “Lukesh, you lied to me?”

“There’s a thousand sovereigns on his head!” Lukesh thrust an accusatory finger at Anders, like they weren’t all apostates, desperate to live free from the Circle. “This isn’t a story, Eiton, they’ll stop at nothing until he’s dead!”

“You fool, you’ve killed us all!” Derandt flung Lukesh across the colosseum with a blast of force magic, and the old mage went rolling through the sands.

“Lukesh!” Eiton ran after him.

“Eiton, leave him!” Nemmaya followed.

“Damn, damn, damn,” Derandt spun in a panicked circle, the howling of hounds echoing through the colosseum as the templars closed in around them.

Anders grabbed Soliel’s bloody hand, “We have to get out of here. Now.”

“No one else can shapeshift,” Soliel shook her head, glancing at each member of the broken brotherhood. “We have to save Eiton-”

“Sol, he told the templars!” Anders hissed. “Who knows how many men are coming?”

Too many. Templars poured in through the tunnels. Anders didn’t bother counting. He didn’t have the chance. Their hounds beat them to the sands, snarling and slathering like they were hunting pheasants in place of people. They entered from the city-side of the colosseum, and would reach Lukesh and Eiton before they reached anyone.

“Here!” Lukesh coughed around what might have been a broken rib, dragging himself across the sands and towards the templars. “Here are the apostates!”

“Void damn you, Lukesh!” Derandt summoned up an arcane shield.

The hounds didn’t care about Lukesh’s orders, because they were bloody hounds, and Lukesh was a bloody fool. They charged straight for him, and Eiton must have panicked.

“Stop!” Eiton yelled, and all at once every snarling hound came skidding to a halt and sat down in the sands. The templars racing after them all but did the same. They were led by three Knight-Corporals, and all three of them raised their hands to call a halt.

“Did he just cast a spell?” one asked.

“He compelled them all to stop,” a second said.

“That’s the Viscount’s son,” said the third Knight-Corporal with them. “He’s a damn blood mage!”

“It’s a trap!” the first decided. “Kill the mages! Warn the Knight-Commander!”

“We are as the Maker made us!” Nemmaya amplified her voice to scream across the colosseum. “You face Him when you face us!”

Nemmaya summoned a blizzard, raining ice on the army as it advanced, and froze the very sands. Two sections of templars fought through the storm, struggling to find their footing as the sands turned to slush, but the third section was full of archers. The first volley came before a Corporal even gave the order, but Nemmaya was too hard to hit, the ancient mage propelled by waves of frost magic that left hoarfrost in her wake as she dodged across the colosseum.

Anders didn’t know the spell and didn’t need it. He cast a glyph of warding for himself and for Soliel, and Derandt’s arcane shield saved him, but Eiton had no such defenses. He took an arrow to the thigh and crumpled. The hounds scattered without him, fleeing from the frost.

“Stop!” Lukesh threw himself in front of Eiton. “His highness is no blood mage!” Another arrow took Lukesh in the chest. He jerked once and stilled.

“Soliel, there’s too many,” they could have taken to the skies, but Soliel wasn’t shapeshifting, so Anders tugged her towards an exit, fighting to keep his grip through the blood and sweat that slicked her wrist. “We have to go.”

“No, no, no, we can’t lose him,” Soliel broke free from him and ran to Eiton. “Hybris, help us!”

Lightning struck the colosseum, and the impact turned the sands to glass. It splintered out across the whole of the colosseum like a cobweb, and shattered, glass rising up to meet the hail raining down. Shadows swept over the colosseum and took the shape of Pride, and the templars started screaming.

“Demon!” “Take it down!” “Cleanse the area! Keep more from crossing!” “Hold fast men, smite and cleanse!” “Send for reinforcements! Tell the Lieutenant!”

“At last!” Hybris cackled, and conjured up a whip of molten lava. “Blood on the sands!”

Hybris lashed out at them, every vicious sweep setting fire to the sands, sleet from the blizzard filling the colosseum with steam. The templars were just as vicious, cleansing, smiting, the whole host of them tearing into Hybris as they fought their way through the hail battering their armor.

Anders ran after Soliel, who was struggling to drag a wounded Eiton out from underneath Lukesh’s corpse. “Get him out of here!” Soliel shoved Eiton at him. “We can’t let them warn Ravi!”

“Soliel wait-” Anders fought to get Eiton’s arm over his shoulder, and didn’t have hands left to grab Soliel when she transformed into a crow and took to the skies, flying out after the section of templars that had fled for reinforcements.

Damnit. Eiton was in such a state of shock he may as well have been unconscious, a mix of blood loss and betrayal that left him hanging off of Anders’ shoulder. Anders channelled hastes and enhancements to give himself the strength to get him out, or at least get him away, so he could get back to Soliel.

One of the templars managed a smite that knocked Nemmaya off her feet, and the blizzard came to an abrupt end. A handful ran around Hybris to reach her, but Derandt summoned a gravitic sphere to slow their steps, sinking them into the sands. He grabbed the old elf by her collar and dragged her towards an exit. Anders pushed an enhancement through the both of them to help them find their footing.

Nemmaya pointed back to him, and Derandt left her in the tunnels to run back and take Eiton by the other arm. They dragged the boy out through the tunnel, and Derandt’s force magic collapsed it behind them, caving part of the colosseum in on itself.

“Soliel?” Derandt demanded.

Anders didn’t have time to explain her motivations, “Can you heal?”

“Soliel!?” Derandt pressed.

“Can you fucking heal!?” Anders snapped.

“We can’t,” Nemmaya said for him, as the four of them stumbled away from the colosseum and into the Belwain forest. “Here, this way, we brought horses. We’ll ride to Khenderlan-”

“The Twisted Bitch won’t let us through without Soliel!” Derandt glanced back at the colosseum, but they were too far to hear Hybris, if there was even anything left of him, and he hadn’t been banished back to the Fade to reform as a wisp of his former self just as Khedra had feared for him.

“We just need to be near it,” Nemmaya collapsed against a tree, swallowing hard to keep from being sick in the aftermath of a smite. “They won’t risk the sylvans.”

“I have to go back for her,” Anders shrugged out from underneath Eiton, and Derandt lowered the boy to the ground. There was still an arrow in Eiton’s thigh, and Anders couldn’t leave it there, but he didn’t have the tools or the time to treat it cleanly. Anders grabbed the edge of the tear in Eiton’s trousers and ripped, exposing the gushing wound, and braced himself against the boy’s thigh to wrench the arrow out.

Blood founted, skin and muscle tore, and Eiton woke up screaming. Nemmaya slapped a hand over his mouth to smother him through his sobs, and Derandt held him down while Anders forced creationism into him. Skin and muscle rent roughly back together while Eiton flailed underneath them, and left a jagged scar. “Get him out of here,” Anders said.

A crow took to the skies and soared out over the colosseum, where at least two dozens templars were struggling to wrangle up their hounds and set them back out on the search. Outside the colosseum, more templars were fighting more demons. Despair swept through the streets that led back to the city, waking Kaiten with their wailing. In the eye of the storm, lying in the dirt up against the wall of one of Kaiten’s three story buildings, was Soliel.

A templar’s sword lay discarded at her side, dripping blood into the dirt. Soliel held a hand against her stomach, tendrils of blood binding her to the demons she’d pulled forth from the Fade the only sign that she yet lived. The templar who’d try to end her had been melted down to nothing, entropic magic turning them to little more than blood and hair, oozing out from underneath a pile of sunbursts and silverite.

Anders landed inside the circle of demons defending her, creationism on his fingers counteracted by her blood magic, and washing over her like oil on water. Soliel just kept bleeding, the wound on her stomach flowing freely for as long as she and all her demons fought the templars.

“Stop!” Anders tangled his hands together with hers, pressing hard against her wound to do what he could to staunch the flow of blood without magic. “Sol, stop! Let go of the spell!”

Stubbornly, stupidly, Soliel refused. “Eiton,” Soliel gave the slightest shake of her head, black eyes on the battle behind him, pale skin growing paler by the second.

“It’s too late!” Anders caught Soliel’s face in his hands to tear her eyes away from the battle, “Soliel, it’s too late, they know!”

Soliel’s head didn’t shake so much as lull, her eyes struggling to stay open, “Get them… get them all…”

“Soliel, we can’t,” Anders pressed his thumbs into her cheeks, trying to will her to look at him, to look at anything, to stop channeling her fucking spell. “Sol, please, let me heal you!”

Soliel touched his face with her free hand, her blood warm and her fingers cold, “I miss him,” Soliel whispered.

“I know,” Maker damn him, he knew. He knew every time Soliel smiled a secretive sort of smile, or laughed an almost laugh, or helped him just to help. He knew how much she missed her lover when she clung to half his soul, and everything he felt around her felt so damn familiar he couldn’t stand to lose that feeling, not now, not like this, not like Amell, bleeding out in his arms along the North Road, when he’d saved him, and he could save her too.

“You remind me…” Soliel fingers slipped off his jaw and grazed his throat when he swallowed back a sob.

“Sol, please,” Anders begged. “Please-”

Damnit. Damn her. Damn him. He wanted to save her. He wanted to save her so fucking much. He wanted it more than he’d ever wanted anything throughout this miserable Exalted March. Damn him, he just wanted to save her, to save them, to save mages from the bloody fucking templars who never let them know a moment’s peace. It was all just sacrifice and suffering and he was so fucking sick of it he just wanted to save someone.

He wanted it so much he burned, veilfire breaking through his skin and surging through the streets like bright blue veins, and Anders at the heart. The air around him pulsed, and that want, that wish, that ache reached across the Veil and pulled Desire through it. Anders held Soliel against his chest, and reached out for Allure, “Please-”

There weren’t words for what he wanted, but he knew Allure could feel it. They tore through the Veil, ripping through the fabric of reality, dragging themselves out of the Fade and into the mortal world, clawed hands outstretched towards Soliel and dissolving into motes of emerald dust the second that they touched.

Soliel sat up with a violent gasp, amaranthine energy breaking through her veins and running like wine down her pale skin, sealing shut the wound in her stomach. “Sol? Sol, say something,” Anders pushed her hair out of her face, and purple eyes blinked back at him. She reached out to caress his face, mirroring the gesture when she pushed a few stray strands of half-dyed hair back behind his ear.

“I’m sorry,” Allure said softly. “I’m sorry - I wasn’t fast enough.”

“Sol-” Anders choked.

“No,” Allure shook their head.

“Fuck,” Anders stumbled to his feet, and Allure went with him. “Fuck, we have to-” Anders fought through a rickety breath, pushing the heel of his palm into his eyes and blurring his vision of the templars battling back Despair. “We have to get out of here.”

Anders grabbed Allure’s hand and ran.

It was morning by the time that they reached Khenderlan, and found Nemmaya, Derandt, and Eiton camped some short distance from it. The horses panicked, the way that horses always did around abomination and demons bound to empty bodies, until Eiton convinced them all to calm.

"Sol!" Derandt ran over to greet them, and pulled Allure into a hug before they could explain. “The Maker knows mercy.”

“No, He doesn’t,” Anders said.

“She knew you wanted her,” Allure peeled off Derandt’s hands to hold them. “She never wanted you. You made her uncomfortable but she was too polite to tell you.”

“I-... excuse me?” Derandt stuttered, taking a step back when he took in the changes in Allure’s violet eyes.

“Soliel didn’t survive,” Allure explained.

“But you-” Derandt bit his fist, battling back tears, looking Allure up and down like if he just looked the right way they’d be Soliel again.

“This is Allure,” Anders felt too broken to break the news any better. “We tried to save her… we just-... fuck. Uh-... I don’t know that the sylvans will react the same without Soliel. We should find somewhere else to go.”

“To the city, of course!” Eiton didn't even hesitate, and Anders wasn't sure he even understood. “Lukesh-”

“-is dead,” Nemmaya cut him off, with a sad glance at Allure that at least confirmed she knew Soliel was as well. “You’re known, Eiton. There’s no going back to Kaiten.”

“You don’t know that!” Eiton insisted. “Lukesh wouldn’t have outed me-”

“He outed all of us!” Derandt whirled on him, raging. “He betrayed us and for what!? For fear!? For that fool Khedra’s cause!?”

“Derandt-” Nemmaya hissed.

“Some wars are worth winning!” Derandt whirled on her instead. “Some things can’t be settled in the sands! Just because the Elevated Brotherhood kept us out of the Circles doesn’t mean they don’t exist! We can’t just close our eyes to them because they don’t impact us. This Exalted March was our chance to change things if we got Eiton on the throne to prove mages are meant to rule over man, and now we’ll never have a chance!”

“I have to go back,” Eiton hurried towards his horse like he didn't even hear them. “I have to talk to my father before the templars do-”

“Your father is a fucking templar!” Derandt grabbed Eiton by his shoulder and wrenched him back around. “He raped your poor mother and we all fucking knew it! The only reason he kept you is because we convinced him he had to have an heir and no noblewoman worth her salt would marry a fucking monster! You’d be dead in a ditch if he had his way, you stupid little prick!”

“Derandt!” Nemmaya shoved them apart. “That's enough - This isn't helping!”

“Who the fuck am I supposed to help!?” Derandt demanded. “Soliel!?” Derandt gestured at Allure. “She’s gone! She’s gone, and-” Derandt sank down to his knees and started sobbing. “She’s fucking gone.”

Anders envied him his breakdown when it wasn't one he could afford. Lukesh wasn't wrong. Anders had killed Kirkwall’s Grand Cleric and destroyed its Chantry, and the templars would never let him get away with it. They'd hunt him until the ends of the earth and chase him right off the edge. Now that they knew he was here, it was only a matter of time before they stopped searching for him inside the city and started searching out if it. Khenderlan wasn't safe, and Belwain’s Dale wasn't either.

“None of us are safe now,” Nemmaya might have read his mind, the old elf's eyes gleaming in the dark. “Even if Lukesh didn’t out us all, we were seen and won't be safe inside the city.”

"No," Eiton started pacing; he had a limp Anders hoped wasn't permanent. "No, no, no this is a mistake. Kaiten is my city. We can still fix this, we can make my father stand down. We can do something. I command you to do something!"

"There’s nothing to be done," Nemmaya shook her head.

“You can come with me for now,” Anders said. "We're encamped at Belwain’s Dale, but we can't stay there long. The templars will be out in force. We need somewhere else to go."

"The Grey Wardens are offering asylum to apostates fleeing Kirkwall,” Nemmaya volunteered.

“No,” Anders said quickly. “No, the Grey Wardens don’t have anything to do with that. Ferelden freed their mages two years ago, and only offered asylum to apprentices who had nothing to do with the Knight Commander’s call for the Right of Annulment.”

“I don’t know anything about Ferelden,” Nemmaya gave him a look of confusion. “The criers were condemning the Grey Wardens in the Free Marches for refusing to help with the Exalted March. They’re saying they’re ruled by maleficarum, and that they’ve turned from the Maker to worship the Old Gods, in the hopes they’ll bring about a Double Blight to destroy the world so they can rule what’s left of it like the Magisters Sidereal.”

“That’s not true,” Anders refused to even consider it. “They’re not harboring apostates, they just don’t get involved in politics.”

“That’s not what they’re saying,” Nemmaya said.

“I don’t care what they’re saying!” Anders shouted himself hoarse. “We’re not going to the Grey Wardens!”

Nemmaya raised both hands to ward him off, and Anders ran a frustrated hand through his hair. Derandt was still sobbing, and Eiton looked like he wasn’t far behind. Allure seemed like they were doing well enough, but Anders hadn’t had a chance to talk to them. “Are you alright?” Anders set his hand on their shoulder. “Can you handle this? Do you need me to send you back?”

“I don’t know how I am,” Allure admitted, flexing their hands with a look of fascination he remembered feeling when he’d first had a mortal body. “You need not send me back. She is not here to hold me, and I can return to the Fade whenever I wish, but I like feeling what she felt… wanting what she wanted…”

“What do you want?” Anders asked. “Do you want to come with me?”

“She did, so I do,” Allure said.

Anders wasn’t going to think about it. He was just going to get through it. The five of them returned to Belwain’s Dale and found it swarming not with templars but with Dalish. A second clan had shown up to settle in the dale, and looked nothing like clan Lavellan. Their vallaslin wasn’t done in ink but etchings, scars on all their faces so faint at first he missed them. All of them were armed, and two elves who must have been their leaders were arguing with the Keeper and Ellana in the center of the dale.

Someone must have told Beth he was back, because she emerged from the crowd of elves and mages to grab him by the arm and drag him towards the center of the chaos. The Elevated Brotherhood trailed after him, but all the elves and mages seemed too taken with the fight to care for introductions. “You’re here,” Beth sounded relieved. “You have to say something. We can’t let them kick us out.”

“What’s going on?” Anders signed to save his throat.

“It’s this horrible clan,” Beth signed back, eyeing the scarred Dalish. “They’re led by this horrible woman and all of them hate humans.”

“So what’s different?” Anders signed.

“They want to kick us out,” Beth signed. “They’re saying we can’t stay here with them. The Keeper is trying to reason with them, but they outnumber us, and they don’t seem to care if we’re dead or gone as long as we’re not here.”

“Beth, I can’t-...” Anders wasn’t sure what else he meant to sign. Anders wasn’t sure what else he needed to. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He felt like he was falling, like he’d run himself right off a cliff, and never hit the ground.

“Can’t?” Beth signed.

“We can’t stay here,” Anders managed, and checked to be sure Eiton was still with him before he signed, “This is the Viscount’s son-”

“Please don’t say you kidnapped him,” Beth signed.

“He’s a mage,” Anders signed.

“Shit,” Beth signed.

“Yeah,” Anders signed.

“They’re going to say we kidnapped him,” Beth signed.

“I know,” Anders signed.

Beth rethought her decision to bring him forward. The Keepers kept arguing, and if Anders didn’t feel so hollow, it would have been heartening to hear how their clan defended them. Both Ellana and her Keeper spoke at length about how they’d all become their healers, hearth, and halla keepers, and how they had no way or wish to live without them.

In the end, it didn’t make a difference. The new clan was the same one that had settled there over twenty years ago, and they had no tolerance for humans after Viscount Ravi and his templars had chased them out of Kaiten. They gave them a day to leave, and the Fraternities of Enchanters gathered to vote on where to go, and Anders could have damned Nemmaya to the Void and back when she told them all about the Wardens.

Anders voted against it, but Islau, Sketch, and Ella were all for it, and Beth had no tie to break. Anders didn’t have time to think about it when he had to fly back to Kaiten and tell Sennova, Blaen, and the rest of his contacts along the Indigo Road that they were all relocating and he’d reach out when he was ready to receive their next shipment.

Anders got back in the middle of the night to find his mages packing. The Keeper must have spoken the truth, because Clan Lavellan was packing with them. A day wasn’t nearly long enough for them to leave, when they’d never even finished excavating Khenderland, and now without Soliel they never could.

“Anders,” Beth’s voice brought him back to himself.

Anders hadn’t even realized he’d left the encampment, but he must have, because he was standing on an outcropping overlooking all of it. The aravels, the halla, the hounds, the home his mages had carved out for themselves inside the dale before fate forced them from it.

“Anders, I’ve been calling you for the past five minutes,” Beth caught up with him and set a too-soft hand against his shoulder. “What are you-”

Anders sobbed. A sick sound that seemed to swallow his soul, constricting his heart, choking out his lungs, tearing its way out of his throat and turning him violently about to throw him into Beth’s arms. Anders sobbed into her chest, his legs buckling beneath him, and dragging both of them down to their knees when Beth caught him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

“I can’t,” Anders wept.

“It’s all right-”

“I can’t-”

“You don’t have to,” Beth held him tight. “I’m here. We’re all here.”

Chapter 223: From Kirkwall We Fled: Towards Wycome and the Wardens

Summary:

"Alas, that we ever left Emerius!”

- Shartan 9:2

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 28 Frumentum Midday
The Green Dales

The aravels sailed across the Green Dales, towards Wycome and the Wardens.

It was a mistake, but Anders didn't have the strength to say as much. He didn't have the strength to say anything. He sat at the back of his aravel, his coat flaring out in front of him and the wind blowing his hair into his face, a ruddy blonde growing into ebony from when he’d dyed it back in Solace. The halla carried them through forests and fields, faster and farther than any caravan.

Scenery sped past like oil paintings in the far distance. None of it felt real. Anders felt like he was still back in Kaiten, holding Soliel in his arms, knowing there was nothing he could do to save her. She’d held on for Eiton and what he could have meant to Kaiten, but now all of that was lost. The Viscount of Kaiten had been named its Knight Commander, and the conquered city-state was just the start of how the templars would come to take control.

There was no way Anders' mages could stand against an Exalted March. There were anywhere from a hundred to a thousand templars stationed in every city-state in the Free Marches, not counting the hundreds or thousands of warriors of conscience that would answer the Divine’s call for conscription when it came. If a mage had a claim to Kaiten they might have managed to make inroads, but there was no chance of that now.

So they set out for Wycome, and the Wardens.

Anders twisted his ring of rosewood around his finger, trying not to think about it, but he felt guilty for more reasons than one.

Beth came to sit beside him. The wind was kinder to her, whisking her black hair neatly to one side of her handsome face, a shy smile on her lips she bit away when they lingered too long on his own.

“Hey,” Anders smiled wanly.

“Hi,” Beth agreed, wringing her hands on her robes before she switched to signing, “I wanted to apologize.”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Anders signed.

“I think we do,” Beth signed. “We have to work together, and I don’t want things between us to be awkward. We can’t just pretend that nothing happened.”

“That works for me actually,” Anders signed.

“It doesn’t work for me,” Beth signed. “I don’t want to be unfaithful to Cullen.”

“Are you even still with him right now?” Anders asked.

“Are you even still with Amell?” Beth signed back. Anders turned towards her, frowning, and Beth hastily added, “That wasn’t fair. I’m sorry. That was about me. I shouldn’t have tried to kiss you.”

“Honestly, who could blame you?” Anders didn’t want to think about it. It was bad enough he’d broken down in Beth’s arms without adding in the aftermath. Beth running her fingers through his hair, Anders letting her. Beth pressing a kiss to his tear-stained cheek, Anders letting her. Beth nudging their foreheads together and leaning in for his lips before he’d finally pulled away. “I look like a real catch when I’m crying.”

“I wasn’t thinking,” Beth signed. “Ever since we started leading the mages together, sometimes I feel like it would be easier if we were together. Don’t you ever get lonely?”

“I’m never alone,” Anders signed, veilfire lighting his fingers, if only so he didn’t have to think about it. He didn’t want to think about how warm, how soft, how soothing Beth had felt, because it just reminded him of how cold, how hard, how cruel the past month had been. Anders wasn’t even sure what he’d accomplished in Kaiten, beyond securing a supply of lyrium.

He’d almost had an army, and he’d lost it overnight. Anders knew they couldn’t wage a war with just one demonologist, but Soliel had been so much more than that, when she reminded him so much of Amell, and had come to mean so much to him in such a short amount of time. Anders knew they couldn’t wage a war from Belwain’s Dale, but Kaiten had Khenderlan and a castle, and in lieu of that it seemed like all they had left was Wycome, and the Wardens.

“Friends?” Beth signed.

“Friends,” Anders agreed, but it was harder to think of her that way, when Beth kept looking at his lips and reminding him of how long it had been since he’d had that kind of connection. Anders felt so lost and lonely he couldn’t help but crave it, when it was obvious Beth craved it too.

She was always sitting next to him, always had her hands on him, always looking at his lips, always smiling, always signing secrets, always acting like she always had but there were undertones to it all now. Anders hated that he didn’t hate them, whenever Beth pulled him over to feel Malcolm or Leandra kicking, and he felt like he was holding onto hope with her that wasn’t his to have.

Anders kept his distance for both their sakes as they made their way towards Wycome and the Wardens. Clan Lavellan was accustomed to travel in the Free Marches, skirting the territorial boundaries of the city-states, where patrols were few and far between. Local rulers feared provoking each other infringing on each others’ territory, and as such their borders were made up of bandits who knew better than to engage the Dalish.

“For now,” Sketch said when they stopped for the evening, their small group of leaders huddled inside Anders’ aravel. He shared it with more mages than he’d ever been packed in with at the Circle, but the fact that he had one to share at all was a testament to how much the Dalish had done for all of them.

“What is that to mean?” Islau asked, the fat old enchanter squished in between Beth and Ella.

“It means the city states will use the Exalted March as an excuse to push out their borders,” Sketch explained, sitting closest to the door, like even among mages he still thought he might need to run. “If a rival ruler protests, they’ll claim their troops are there for the Divine. This is going to be a bloodbath before long.”

“I doubt that very much,” Islau shifted in his seat, jostling Beth and Ella. “The templars will do a sweep through all of the cities, and that will be that.”

“You can’t be that naive,” Maker, Anders hated him. “This is going to be years of open warfare.”

“A lot of innocent people are going to die,” Ella added, and her presence made him hate himself.

“What cause do we have to care for anyone else?” Islau asked.

“Aren’t you an Aequitarian?” Anders asked, trying not to look at Ella sitting next to him. “Don’t you want us to rejoin society?”

“And so we shall, once we’re with the Grey Wardens,” Islau said. “I don’t believe this will last. When Starkhaven’s Circle burned down, the templars gave up their search for its missing mages after a few months. Who is to say this will be any different?”

“Did you forget the part where I murdered the Grand Cleric?” Anders reminded him.

“I try to,” Islau muttered. “The fact remains that it was not all mages-”

“They don’t care!” Anders stood up, his voice cracking with his veins. Beth caught his arm to guide him back into his seat, and Anders rubbed away the sensation of her fingers wrapped around his upper arm, trying not to think about her touch.

“We should be prepared,” Beth said. “I’ll make sure we tell the Keeper. What else do we need to discuss?”

“Soliel,” Islau said, with an unhappy glance at the door to the aravel. “Not that that’s their name.”

“I don’t think that they should be here,” Ella said.

Anders shouldn’t have been surprised by her opinion on abominations considering he’d shaped it, but for some reason he still asked, “Did you all forget that I’m possessed?”

“I try to,” Islau said.

“How can you?” Sketch chuckled.

“It isn’t something we should share,” Islau shifted uncomfortably in his seat, jostling Beth and Ella again.

Beth pushed Islau, and consequently Ella, over with a gust of force magic, “Anders or Soliel?”

“Both?” Islau suggested, smoothing out the sleeve she’d rumpled. “Though I will admit it is a wonder there is anyone left who doesn’t know after Arvale’s Stand.”

“You’re welcome,” Anders frowned.

“I did not say it was not well done,” Islau held up two hefty hands. “I said it was a wonder you’re still somewhat unknown. The fact of the matter remains that there is a spirit - or demon - inside both of you.”

“Soliel’s dead,” Anders said flatly. “Allure is alone.”

“I don’t think you should name it,” Islau huffed.

“They named themself,” Anders said.

“Demons don’t have names,” Islau said pompously. “They have pursuits. That creature is Desire, and it will take advantage of ours if we let it remain.”

“Any one in particular you’re worried about, Islau?” Sketch teased.

“I don’t like what you’re suggesting,” Islau said.

“I don’t like having to suggest it,” Sketch countered. “You’re not afraid of demons, are you?”

“I have a reasonable reservation to allowing them access to our mages,” Islau said.

“What do you think they’re going to do?” Anders asked. “They already possessed Soliel.”

“And if they tire of their host?” Islau asked.

“It’s dangerous,” Ella agreed, eyeing Anders warily from where she was squished up against the wall of his aravel. “Abominations are unstable. I think that they should leave.”

“I agree,” Islau said.

“We’re not voting for them to leave,” Anders said. “Soliel was Khedra’s demonologist and Allure has all her memories.”

“Memories of maleficarum,” Islau said. “What use are they?”

“What use?” Anders stood up again, and dodged Beth’s hand when she grabbed for him to sit. “Do you see any other armies around here? How else are we supposed to stand against the templars?”

“An army of demons,” Islau said. “You cannot be serious.”

“You’re talking to one,” Anders scowled.

“Let’s not be dramatic,” Sketch said. “We’re still a long way off from striking back, but it’s better to lose demons than mages if it comes to battle.”

“Are we sure about that?” Ella asked. “We still don’t know how much damage in Kirkwall came from demons or the blast. If we start unleashing them, we could do more harm than good.”

“Does it matter?” Anders demanded. “We need all the help that we can get, and we agreed we’d take in any mage who came to us regardless of the risk.”

“Yes, but Soliel was the mage, and she’s no longer here,” Islau noted. “I think we can still call a vote against Allure.”

“No,” Anders said.

“Against,” Sketch said.

“First Enchanter?” Islau looked to Beth. “I believe we have a tie.”

The time Beth took to weigh her options was time Amell never would have wasted. He helped him without hesitation when it came to his cause. On the Maker, Anders missed him. No one could compare to him and everything he meant to him.

Anders felt his absence like an ache. Not the soft ache of storybooks, but brutal ache of battle, like there wasn’t a hole in his chest so much as a gaping wound, his chest cracked open to the soft tissue beneath with the bloody rapine of his heart. Beth couldn’t bring it back because she’d never had it to begin with.

But she was here and Amell wasn’t so Anders signed, “Beth, please.”

“Are you sure we can trust them?” Beth signed.

“Of course I'm sure,” Anders signed. “I’ve known them for years.”

“Against,” Beth relented. “They haven’t given us a reason not to trust them.”

Islau grumbled, “And the Grey Wardens?”

“What about them?” Anders asked.

“You said you were outcast from the order,” Islau reminded him, like Anders could ever forget the fight he’d faked with Amell. They’d done everything they could to ensure this war wouldn’t fall back on them, and it had anyway. Anders felt sick to his stomach with every step they took towards Wycome and the Wardens, and almost hoped they wouldn’t let them stay.

“And?” Anders asked.

“And,” Islau drawled like what he had to say was obvious, “I doubt they’ll be inclined to take you back.”

“Is this the part where you vote to kick me out?” Anders guessed.

“Now hold on,” Islau held up his hefty hands again. “I’m just saying perhaps someone else should speak to them.”

“I’ll do it,” Sketch volunteered.

“Someone I trust to come back once they’re gone,” Islau elaborated.

“People like you are the reason Isolationists want isolation,” Sketch frowned.

“Sketch has been apostate for years,” Anders reminded him. “He knows what he’s doing.”

“Precisely my point,” Islau said.

“Just vote, will you?” Sketch rolled his eyes, but only Islau was against him.

“Any other items?” Beth asked.

“The prince,” Islau said. “If we must call him that.”

“What do you have against Eiton?” Ella asked.

“Let me count the ways,” Islau drawled sarcastically, and Anders snorted in spite of himself.

“He’ll be useful,” Sketch said.

“As a tinker’s dam,” Islau rolled his eyes.

“He’s a mage,” Ella said, and Anders was almost surprised she didn’t hold Eiton’s arcanist derangement - or worse, personality - against him. “It doesn’t matter if he’s useful.”

“Do you have a suggestion, Sketch?” Beth asked.

“Not yet,” Sketch said. “But someday soon, I’m sure.”

“We agreed we take in everyone,” Ella said. “We can’t vote to kick him out.”

“But do we really have to keep him?” Islau asked.

“Yes,” Beth said. “If we overlook possessions and phylacteries, we can overlook princes. I think we’re adjourned.”

Dismissed, they all left towards their respective aravels, and Anders jogged after Sketch. “Sketch!” Anders called, when the elven apostate threatened to fade in among either group. “Can we talk?”

“What do you want?” Sketch glanced anxiously around them, but that anxiety was what kept him alive as an apostate, and Anders didn’t hold it against him.

“I want to talk to you about the Grey Wardens,” Anders said, unscrewing his canteen.

“I’ll come back,” Sketch rolled his eyes.

“It’s not that,” Anders coughed through a quick drink. “I don’t want us taking advantage of them.”

“By accepting what they’re offering?” Sketch asked.

“They aren’t offering anything,” Anders said. “Grey Wardens are apolitical. Just because they’re not joining the Exalted March doesn’t mean they'll stand against it.”

“We won't tell them you're with us,” Sketch assured him, like that had anything to do with it.

"That's not what this is about," Anders argued. "This is about dragging innocent people into a war that has nothing to do with them. This isn’t their fight.”

"Weren't you the one who said that you're either with us or against us?" Sketch asked.

"The Grey Wardens are an exception," Anders said.

"There are no exceptions,” Sketch quoted his own words back at him.

"I’m telling you, we don’t need to risk them," Anders said.

"It’s about time other people shared our risk,” Sketch said. “I'm not going back. I don't care what it takes.”

“Just because I’m saying we don’t go to the Wardens doesn’t mean I’m saying we go back to the Circle,” Anders said.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Sketch said.

“I understand better than anyone,” Anders frowned at him. “I spent my whole life in the Circle.”

Sketch shook his head and walked away, and Allure came to join him, “He doesn’t want you to know,” Allure said once Sketch had gone.

“Know what?” Anders asked, heading back to his aravel. Allure fell into step with him, and joined him by the railing. His aravel was one of two dozen, all camped where they could in fields of frozen heather between the borders of Markham and Ansburg. The frosts had set in, and once the snows started it wouldn’t be safe to travel.

They had to reach Wycome and the Wardens before Firstfall. Once the weather forced the Exalted March to a halt, they’d need somewhere safe to settle until Wintersend, when it would be safe to travel again and the templars would come back out in force. The Grey Wardens wouldn’t stand a chance against them, when there might have been one Grey Warden for every one hundred or one thousand templars. Anders had enough blood on his hands without making sure to taint it.

If anything, Sketch wouldn’t understand that.

“He wasn’t talking about the Circle,” Allure said.

“What else is there?” Anders asked.

“Slavery,” Allure said.

“Sketch?” Anders tried to spot him in the crowd, but Sketch excelled at getting lost in them. “When? Where?”

“In Tevinter, many years ago,” Allure called on wisps to replicate the memory of an elven boy in chains, but Anders still just saw the Circle, when every mage in Thedas all scared the same fate. “He was forced to spy for his master in Orlais before he managed to escape.”

“Why are you telling me?” Anders asked when the wisps gave way to the encampment.

“You wanted to know,” Allure smiled. “I want to give you what you want.”

“Thanks,” Anders squeezed their hand. “You’re a doll.”

“I’m a demon,” Allure corrected him.

“That too,” Anders said. “How are you handling it all? It’s not too overwhelming for you?”

“I have strong wants to focus on,” Allure said.

“Freedom,” Anders guessed.

“Yes,” Allure said. “Though you all want more than that.”

Anders jutted his chin out towards Ellana, walking through the frozen heather making her way towards them. “What does she want?”

“She wants her brother to be safe,” Allure explained, a bit more big picture than he’d meant. “She sees him in your plight. As long as the Circles stand, she fears the templars can take him from her.”

“I’m guessing she doesn’t want me to know that?” Anders asked.

“She wants you to be better,” Allure said.

“Better than what?” Anders asked.

Allure gave him an unhelpful smile, Ellana a helpful frown. She reached his aravel and stared up at him, “You just going to starve, shem?”

“Would you miss me?” Anders asked, hopping down from his aravel where Allure floated.

“No,” Ellana turned back towards her aravel. Anders fell into step with her, knowing Ellana turning up at his aravel was the closest thing he’d ever get to an invitation to hers.

“Thanks for sticking up for us,” Anders said, a few too many days too late, his steps melting through the frost with primal magic to keep him warm. He expanded his aura to encase Ellana, in what he assumed she accepted as an apology, in that she accepted it at all.

“Tianne would have slaughtered you,” Ellana said of their rival clan’s Keeper who had kicked them out of Belwain’s Dale.

“That’s what the thanks is for,” Anders said, and ultimately had to slow to clasp hands with his mages. Anders couldn’t make it across the camp without someone calling after him, and at some point he’d come to realize he couldn’t have real conversations in public. People came to gravitate around him, and anything he said had to be a speech. Mages came to him with questions and Anders had to be encouraging in his answers. There was no safe conversation, when it all came back to the cause, especially the weather.

He’d gone through a second canteen, by the time they made it through, and Anders whispered, “I would have thought you would have wanted Tianne to take us out.”

“Ellana wanted her to understand,” Allure offered.

“Stay out of my head, spirit,” Ellana warned them.

“Tianne can’t see humans like you do,” Allure ignored the warning. “She just wants vengeance for Iselle.”

“If Eiton’s mother mattered so much, she should have taken Eiton in,” Ellana said.

“They don’t want him,” Allure said. “He’s not elvhen to them.”

“I don’t want him either,” Ellana said.

“You don’t want him in your aravel,” Allure clarified. “You want him with the clan.”

“I said stay out of my head, spirit,” Ellana frowned.

“I’m a demon,” Allure said helpfully.

“Does this mean you like Eiton?” Anders teased after another drink.

“No,” Ellana said firmly.

“You know he lost everything,” Anders said.

“Then he should act like it,” Ellana said when they reached her aravel.

Mahanon ran over to greet them, a tiny frown on his tiny face, “Eiton got sick again.”

“Did you skin something in front of him?” Anders guessed. Eiton was huddled over by the fire, dubiously eyeing whatever was cooking on it with a touch of green to his complexion.

“No!” Mahanon promised. “I just plucked a pheasant! I told him we can’t eat the feathers!”

“You’re a good kid, Twig,” Anders ruffled his blood red hair.

“Lord ban Airdeall!” Eiton scrambled to his feet, dodging cookware and tripping over rocks. “Thank the - ah! - pantheon!”

“Creators,” Mahanon said helpfully.

“Yes, well,” Eiton dodged the boy like he was dangerous, and latched onto Anders’ arm to waltz him away. “I must speak with you.”

“What is it, Eiton?” Anders sighed, shaking free of him a few feet from the fire.

“You must help me reclaim my throne!” Eiton hissed.

“You want us to retake Kaiten?” Anders asked. “Are you stupid?”

“Yes,” Eiton said quickly. “I mean, no! I mean, how dare you!”

“We can’t take Kaiten,” Anders said. “We couldn’t even take your mother’s clan.”

“The entire ordeal with that kingdom-” “-clan-” “-was absurd!” Eiton squeezed his hands together in the strangest, most stilted display of anger Anders had ever seen. “My mother was their princess-” “-First-” “-which should make me their king-” “-Keeper-” “-but none of them listened to a word I had to say!”

“That’s probably because ‘I command you’ isn’t a compelling argument unless you’re a Commander,” Anders said. “Look around, Eiton. I don’t know what the Chantry told you, but this is the extent of my army. When we have a safe place to settle, we can send for other apostates, but for now this is it. A little more than fifty soldiers. Do you really think we can take your father?”

“We must!” Eiton hissed, chasing after him when Anders walked away to help Ellana cook. “Don’t you see? You must think logistically! You cannot wage a war from the wilds! You have five Circles of Magi in the Free Marches, and if you mean to free them all, which I assume you do, you are talking upwards of twenty thousand mages-”

“I know we need somewhere fortified-” Anders sat down with the cutting board Ellana handed him to start preparing parsnips.

“You need somewhere fertile,” Eiton corrected him, dubiously eyeing Anders’ work as if he’d never seen someone prepare food before. “Twenty thousand men is not a number you can forage for. You’ll need as many acres of farmland just to feed them - and Kaiten sits at the center of the breadbasket of Thedas. I meant what I said when I claimed a want to help you.

“My father has been negligent in the use of our farmlands. If we made better use of crop rotations, livestock integration, intercropping-” Mahanon handed Eiton a bowl of unshelled broad beans, and Eiton wrinkled his nose and set them aside. “-he’s wasting land! There are new inventions from House Davri that we should be investing in. Threshers and seed drills powered by steam-

“Were I Viscount, I could get a loan from the Merchant’s Guild to finance my freeholders’ farming, levy the crops, supply your soldiers, and sell the excess.”

“To who, Eiton?” Anders demanded. “Who else do you think will be buying rations in the middle of a war? You’d be selling to the bloody templars.”

“Using their coin to pay for our cause,” Eiton said, accepting the same bowl when Mahanon handed it back to him and setting it on the other side of himself. “I don’t see the issue.”

“Then you’re not looking for one,” Anders said, watching Mahanon circle around to pick up and hand back the bowl yet again. “You’d be aiding the enemy.”

“Which, as Viscount, I would be called on to do anyway,” Eiton argued, finally handing the bowl off to Anders. “The Chantry believes that dwarven machinery is an affront to the Maker. House Davri’s inventions don’t make headway outside Nevarra, and they won’t know to account for the yield, but I’ve done the math. I can support you safely from the shadows."

“It’s an Exalted March, Eiton,” Anders reminded him, taking the bowl to shell the beans with a roll of his eyes and a long drink from his canteen before he kept going. “Even if you were the Viscount, the Templar Order isn’t going to sit down and count out coin, they’re just going to confiscate any excess crops you have, and then what are you going to do when the Carta comes to collect on your loan?”

“The Divine would not dare,” Eiton huffed. “The Chantry’s wealth comes from the faithful and in wartime the Chantry pays it back to them. It’s why it works.”

“Don’t you get it!?” Anders’ voice broke, and he rasped through his rage, “It doesn’t matter! I can’t help you! I don’t have five hundred soldiers to retake your blasted city! I have fifty! We aren’t going back to Kaiten! We’re going to Wycome and the bloody Wardens!”

Anders threw the bowl of beans at him, but he couldn’t afford to storm away. He had a hundred mages who answered to him who had to see him as someone worth answering to, and storming through the camp with veilfire breaking through his veins would only serve to scare them. Anders went to the opposite side of Ellana’s aravel instead and crouched down in the frozen heather, burying his head in his hands and just trying to breathe.

Two slender feet appeared in front of him, booted in black, and Allure knelt down next to him, “He wants to help.”

"He doesn't know what he's doing," Anders muttered, and wished it wasn’t obvious he was talking about himself.

"You want to help him," Allure said.

"I can't," Anders said.

"You don't want to go to Wycome," Allure said.

"You don't need to be able to read my mind to know that," Anders sighed and sat, frost soaking through his trousers.

"You want the Wardens," Allure said.

"I want a Warden," Anders corrected them.

"You want them all," Allure disagreed. "You want allies. Eiton is one."

"Eiton is an exile," Anders said. "He can’t help anyone.”

Allure squeezed his wrist, “Yes, he can.”

They reached Wycome a few days into Firstfall after a giftless Satinalia. The snows had started, but weren’t yet severe when Clan Lavellan settled in a small unclaimed valley along an arm of the Minanter River called the Fisherman’s Flight. They spent the first day setting up camp, clearing away the snow, carving out glyphs of warding to ensure upcoming snowfalls fell outside the encampment, and the days that followed hunting for supplies to survive the winter.

Anders had doubts they could. Wycome was situated along the mouth of the Minanter, on the coast of the Amaranthine Ocean and the southwest border of Antiva. It was the port of call for all trade in the Free Marches from Antiva, Rivain, and Par Vollen, and the city was always crowded with tourists, travelers, and traders. There was no way they would go unnoticed, when they were hunting in the Duke’s Wood, and someone was bound to make note of it.

Without help from the Grey Wardens, their fate was in the hands of Wycome’s ruler, a man not even Eiton knew enough about, save that he was rich. Wycome exported everything from fish, to salt, to kelp, to pearls, to whatever could be dredged up from the depths of the ocean, and it imported wine. Barrels and barrels of wine from Antiva, which flowed from its fountains in an orgy of never ending opulence that made Orlais look prudish.

Wycome was a free city in every sense of the word. Home to a few hundred thousand people, its templars were few and far between, and there was no Circle in sight. The closest was that of Ansburg, hundreds of miles away on the opposite side of the Minanter River. It might have been safe, save that mages discovered in Wycome were sent to whatever Circle paid highest to have them, and Anders doubted Duke Antione had come upon his wealth by giving it away.

They needed shelter and support and that was the whole reason they’d set out for Wycome and the Wardens. They couldn’t wage a war without somewhere to wage it from, but the Warden Compound at Wycome wasn’t it. It wasn’t meant to be a stronghold, four stories of white stone and black wood that housed more scrolls than soldiers. If not for the fact that it was flying griffon heraldry, Anders might have mistaken it for a university.

Weathered blue shingles, decorative taming turrets on every corner, stained glass windows that spanned two stories, and dangerously close to the center of the city, the compound looked like it struggled to stand up to the weather, let alone darkspawn or the Divine. The strongest piece was its foundation, stone and sturdy and doubling as the stables, lifting the rest of the compact compound into the sky.

The fourth floor was a roost, opening up into empty air to welcome in griffons that had died out in ages past. The relic had been repurposed for ravens, who all startled when a crow landed among them. Anders didn’t blame them. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He should have left everything to Sketch, but he didn’t trust him with the truth, and Commander Janeka deserved to know what she was getting into.

It was war, and Anders had brought it to Wycome.

And the Wardens.

Chapter 224: From Kirkwall We Fled: To Revas’ Rescue

Summary:

The creature spoke in a stern voice, saying:
"Why are you to come upon us alone?

- Shartan 9:20

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 8 Umbralis Morning
Wycome: Revas’ Rescue

Anders arrived at the Grey Warden Compound in Wycome unannounced and unwelcome. No sooner had he descended down from the rookery than a group of Grey Wardens appeared to drag him before the Commander of the Grey. Anders hated how much it felt like coming home. He felt like he'd been on the run from the Circle, armored men parading the runaway apostate past all his peers, and throwing him at the feet of the First Enchanter who shook his head in disappointment.

As if that small shake of his head counted an apology when the Knight Commander had him whipped with each escape attempt. It was a standard practice of the Chantry to make maleficarum of apostates. Anders knew they’d have branded him one eventually, but they gave him the chance to make it true, tempting him by spilling blood so he’d call on it to stop them spilling more of it, but if temptation had been enough to teach him, Anders would have been made Tranquil long ago.

Instead, he’d just been whipped, because their warnings never worked. Anders just kept running. He ran from the Circle. He ran from the Wardens. He ran when he wanted to stay, because solitude sickened him after years of solitary, and as a Grey Warden in exile Anders was in agony, the Call coursing through his veins begging answer from another. It should have been Amell, but in his absence, any Grey Warden helped.

The Grey Wardens of Wycome didn’t just feel like his Brothers and Sisters; they felt like his hive. The taint tied them together. It felt less corruption, more compulsion, with how they settled underneath his skin and soothed his troubled souls. Anders didn’t deserve them. He’d deserted for a reason - one they didn’t understand - because Anders could feel their anger for him, and he hoped that it would hold.

The Grey Wardens couldn’t get involved with the mages’ plight when their intervention would mean their exile or the end of all the world. The Grey Wardens had to survive to stop the Sixth and Seventh Blights, and an Exalted March would decimate them, when their numbers were even smaller than his own. Where mages measured in the hundred thousands, Grey Wardens were far fewer. Perhaps a thousand or so per country, and in Wycome, a few dozen.

Anders could feel them flowing through his veins and the compound all around him - a place named Revas’ Rescue. It was named in honor of a mage Anders had never heard of when history erased them all. Revas - or rather, their rider - was an elven mage from the Fourth Blight. Isseya went unsung in the storybooks, despite how she and her griffon had rescued all of Wycome. They left her off the Ballad of Ayesleigh in favor of her brother Garahel who’d slain the Archdemon Andoral.

“Why are you telling me all this?” Anders asked.

Warden Commander Janeka’s office was less office and more mezzanine, a few cushioned chairs overlooking the library that made up most of Revas' Rescue. Anders was sure everything they said would carry, and he was sure Janeka wanted everyone to hear, but so far she hadn’t shouted. She’d just talked and Anders felt compelled to listen as she shared the history of Revas’ Rescue like he was any other Grey Warden come to visit.

“Why don’t you already know?” Commander Janeka countered. Everything about her was sharp: her bright green eyes, her pulled-back brown hair, her brow and the deep crease to it, her clothes and how she wore them. The usual Grey Warden blues: studded brigandine armor to cover any casting cuts.

Amell had dubbed her a maleficar and Anders didn’t doubt it. She had the look of a woman who bathed in the blood of virgins for entertainment as opposed to eternal youth. Her own men had kept their distance from her, throwing him at her feet like a sacrificial lamb before fleeing to the far corners of the compound.

“I don’t need a lecture on how mages are erased from history,” Anders frowned up from the cushioned chair Janeka had pulled out for him. “I wrote a manifesto on it.”

“I read it,” Janeka spun a chair over for herself, and sat a few inches across from him. “It was the first time I’d seen Neriah’s name in print. How do you know about her and not Isseya?”

Because Neriah was connected to the Chantry. For all Amell was an atheist, he’d always found ways to make Anders feel better about his own beliefs whenever he had doubts. Neriah was a conversation they’d had six long years ago at Vigil’s Keep, when Anders could still stand to go into the chapel, before Hawke had raped him on its altar.

”It makes me sick sometimes,” Anders had said, sitting in the pews with Amell, staring up at all the Chantry banners, back when Amell could stare with him. “The sunburst. The way they brand it on our brows. I just feel like it reminds me it’s not meant for mages.”

“It is,” Amell had assured him, for some reason, when he could have shamed him for the faith they didn’t share. “It wasn’t always a sunburst. It used to be a flame. The Grey Wardens used to have their mages display their specializations on their robes, so soldiers would know what they could call on in combat.

“The Chantry stole the symbol from a Grey Warden named Neriah. She sacrificed herself to end the Second Blight. The darkspawn were legion and their emissaries commanded lightning, but Neriah stood against them alone so her lover Corin could make the final blow against the Archdemon at the Battle of Starkhaven. They died together, but most tales only mention Corin because Neriah was a mage.”

“You’re such a liar,” Anders had said.

“I might be,” Amell had smirked, but Anders knew he hadn’t been.

“I just do,” Anders said.

Janeka moved on, “Do you know how many Blights mages have been instrumental in stopping?”

“I’m not really-” Anders started.

“All of them,” Janeka cut him off. She stood up to lean against the railing and look out over the library, but Anders hadn’t come here for a lecture. “Mages-”

“Listen,” Anders stood. “I know I came here unannounced and you don’t know me-”

“Sit,” Janeka laced her voice with command, and Anders sat. The urge to sit was so intense Anders felt the chair creak underneath him when he threw himself in it at her command, at her compulsion, and all at once he realized when Amell called her a maleficar he meant it. “I know who you are, ‘Warden from the Anderfels,’” Janeka said scathingly. “Never interrupt me. Where was I?”

“Blood magic ring any bells?” Anders offered helpfully, trying to push through her compulsion. Anders had been compelled before, but this felt different. The magic was harsher, harder, and Anders didn’t have the strength to resist it. He was sweating with the strain of trying, his hands clenching and unclenching on the armrest, but he couldn’t bring himself to stand.

“Doesn’t it?” Janeka turned her back on him when Anders couldn’t break it. She stared out at the library, and the few Grey Wardens wandering it, and asked, “What else is the Joining? If not for maleficarum the First Blight never would have ended. Grey Wardens are made with blood and magic, and humanity does its best to forget that. We guard them and they hate us for it.”

“I think people hate you for other reasons,” Anders muttered.

“Because of magic,” Janeka said. “The magic that holds you is the magic that made you. Grey Wardens are inexorably tied to blood mages and blood magic. When the Chantry marches against mages, the Chantry marches against me, and I will not be marched over.”

“That’s what I came to talk to you about,” Anders stopped struggling against her compulsion when it became clear it wasn’t getting him anywhere, and resolved to spend the rest of his life scooting around in this blasted chair. “You shouldn’t get involved.”

“The Grey Wardens have never fielded men for an Exalted March,” Janeka sounded disinterested.

“That’s not what I mean,” Anders scooted his chair over to her. “There are mages out there who think you’re offering them asylum.”

Janeka glanced down at him, “I am.”

“What!?” Anders’ anger must have broken her compulsion, because somehow he stood through it.

“Sit,” Janeka stressed.

Anders sat, “You can’t be serious.”

“Never tell me what I can or cannot be,” Janeka warned him.

“If you think the world is against you now, what do you think is going to happen when you go against the Chantry?” Anders demanded. “You can’t do this. The world needs the Grey Wardens.”

“It was a mistake for you to leave,” Janeka reclaimed her seat across from him.

“I-... beg your pardon?” Anders managed.

“I know who you are, ‘Warden from the Anderfels.’” Janeka rolled her eyes at the moniker that plastered all his wanted posters. “I know you were raised in Kinloch, and I know the name you took there, and I know your family is from Talo, and I know the name they gave you - though I’ll spare you having to hear it because I know why you changed it. I know you’re your Commander’s consort and I know you never left him.”

She couldn’t know all that. No one knew all that. Not even Amell knew all that. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Anders swallowed through his lie. “I left the Grey Wardens because I’m a radical.”

“Radicals don’t offer warnings,” Janeka disagreed. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To warn me? You think I need your white-knight rescue? Do I look like I’m in danger?”

“You will be,” Anders argued. “Your compound can’t stand against a thousand soldiers-”

“A thousand one hundred and thirty-two,” Janeka said.

“I beg your pardon?” Anders asked.

“I know exactly how many templars are in my city,” Janeka said. “I don’t need you or any man explaining it to me.”

“Then you should know that you don’t have the strength-” Anders tried.

“Stop,” Janeka said - and Anders stopped. He stopped moving. He stopped speaking. For a moment, he swore he stopped breathing. The compulsion faded, and Anders fought through a few rickety breaths while Janeka watched him dispassionately, “What did it feel like when you destroyed the Chantry?”

“What kind of question is that?” Anders demanded.

“Speak,” Janeka compelled him.

“-exultant,” Anders gasped against his will - and for a moment felt it all again. The sheer ecstasy of the explosion. The scent of charred and burning wood, the sound of screams and falling stones, the smoke stinging his eyes to tears. The ash of every holy brother, sister, and templar in the Chantry a taste like offertory on his tongue. “It felt exultant - there is no ecstasy humankind can feel to match.”

Janeka raised an interested eyebrow at him, “Are you not human?”

“No,” Anders hissed through tight grit teeth, blood trickling from his nose when he tried not to talk.

Janeka leaned forward and set her elbow on his armrest, her fingers dancing across his lips and the drops of red that painted them. A pull of blood magic swirled his blood around her fingers, but Anders didn’t need the warning anymore than Janeka seemed to need the blood. “Why don’t you want help from the Wardens?”

“I want to leave my family out of this,” Anders snarled through his teeth, losing both blood and his battle with her when Janeka forced the words from him.

“So you admit leaving was a farce,” Janeka finally let go of her compulsion.

Anders pitched forward with a gasp, “Fuck you,” Anders swallowed to keep from being sick, a hasty surge of creationism cleansing his bloody nose.

“I don’t permit profanity,” Janeka said. “Adjust, or be adjusted.”

Anders had no idea if she meant it, “What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m not the one who destroyed a Chantry,” Janeka countered.

“You can’t get involved,” Anders insisted - relieved that he still could after Janeka compelled him. “How can you want to risk your wardens like this?”

“My wardens are always at risk,” Janeka went back to her balcony, and bade him follow without blood magic. Anders took a spot out of hand's reach, if not harm’s, and watched her warily while she continued, “When the Chantry comes for magic, they come for me, and my magic is what keeps my wardens safe. The First Blight would have been the last if not for the maleficarum who gave us the Joining. The Second Blight was only won once mages were enlisted and unleashed against the darkspawn, and the Chantry learned nothing from their sacrifice.

“Antiva annulled its own Circle just before the Third Blight, and when darkspawn surged up from the Minanter they had no way to stop them. The strength of mages fades too fast from memory. Isseya saved countless souls throughout the Fourth Blight, and her name’s been forgotten, and it won’t be long before the Hero of Ferelden follows. Where will we be when the next archdemon awakens and we have no magic to strike back?”

That would never happen. Mages would always be born, but Grey Wardens had to be made, “You don’t think we’d be worse off with no wardens?”

“We’re needed,” Janeka waved him off. “The worst we face is exile.”

“Tell that to Sophia Dryden,” Anders countered.

Janeka paused as if to reappraise him, and Anders resisted the urge to take a step back, “You know your history,” She decided.

Anders didn’t. Anders only knew about Sophia Dryden because Amell had told him. Sophia Dryden had been the Warden Commander of Ferelden during the Storm Age, who’d stood against King Arland Theirin when he’d turned into a tyrant, and had led a failed civil war against him. She’d died - after a fashion - surrendering her soul to a demon to save Soldier’s Peak when she couldn’t save her soldiers.

The fortress where she’d bound her demon-possessed body had been abandoned. The Grey Wardens who survived had been exiled. It was a miracle Ferelden hadn’t fallen to the Fifth Blight when they had no standing Grey Warden presence until just before the start of it, when King Maric Theirin let them back into the country, and gave them two decades of preparation for a war four hundred years in coming.

Anders had his own war, and he only cared about the last because he knew Amell was still waging it. Amell slept light, when he slept at all, waking up in cold sweats certain the Sixth Blight was starting, and had to be reassured his nightmares were just that. The world was always ending for Amell, and Anders couldn’t ask him or the Grey Wardens to fight two wars at once.

"I know what I need to know," Anders said.

“Do you know why most Warden Commanders are mages?” Janeka asked.

“Why would I need to know that?” Anders asked.

“We want it more," Janeka said, like she spoke for every Grey Warden Commander, Constable, Archivist and Acolyte. "We need it more, when without our positions we’d all be sent back to our Circles. Do you know how many mages the Grey Wardens are allowed to recruit without angering the Chantry?”

Anders knew. Cera had told him. In retrospect, she’d been right to resent him, when she had to compete for the same things he’d been given.

“One,” Janeka said without waiting for his answer. “One mage per Circle of Magi. That's how much the Chantry fears our freedom - that they’ll only allow sixteen Grey Warden mages outside those we recruit from Tevinter and the Dalish. Do you know who changed that?”

Anders had, but he’d been so self-absorbed he’d never given it much thought. Amell must have risked so much for him to break with that tradition, but Anders hadn’t had the capacity to care about another mage’s freedom while he was focused on his own until he joined with Justice.

“You did, the day your Commander invoked the Right of Conscription for you,” Janeka said. “The Chantry chooses who we can conscript, and it’s an unspoken rule that certain people aren’t recruited: the royals, the rich, the religious. The Circle of Magi was sacrosanct, until King Alistair let Commander Amell recruit you.

“You were a statement that the Grey Wardens stand against the Chantry long before you destroyed one, and that’s exactly how the Warden Commander intended it. We have no choice but to stand against them when we’re all maleficarum. The Chantry will never condone us.”

“It doesn’t matter!” Anders was so sick of explaining simple math. “We’re outnumbered. A hundred to one for mages, a thousand to one for Grey Wardens. This isn’t something you take a stand against, this is something you survive.”

“People said the same of Blights before we proved they could be stopped,” Janeka said. “You forget, the foundation of the Grey Wardens predates the foundation of the Chantry. We are the inevitability here - not them - and I will suffer no sunburst.”

“You will if you don’t stand down,” Anders said. “You can’t fight the Chantry, and you can’t put every mage who comes to you through the Joining when you know only a fourth of them will survive.”

“I have already written to Weisshaupt for the right,” Janeka sniffed.

“The right to get everyone killed,” Anders snapped. “You really think I’m going to keep the odds of surviving the Joining a secret? You’ll kill more mages than the bloody templars.”

“Do you think I’m unaware of the odds?” Janeka asked. “Your Commander defied the Chantry. My Commander dealt with them.”

“... Your Commander?” Anders asked.

“The late Warden Commander Larius,” Janeka recalled, reclaiming her seat and waving Anders back into his. “It took thirty years for the Call to finally claim him, and he took advantage of each and every one. He wasn’t satisfied with just six mages from the Free Circles, so he cut a deal with the Knight Commanders, and paid them for the weak to ‘keep them from being wasted.’

“The Knight Commanders would ship him batches of apprentices. Children. Fifteen to eighteen. Those they suspected wouldn’t survive their Harrowings but wouldn’t submit to the Rite of Tranquility. I was one. Seventeen - from Markham - when my First Enchanter sold me into slavery. Larius handed me the chalice and said that he was saving me - while five other apprentices lay dead at his feet.”

“... I don’t know what to say,” Anders admitted. “I’m sorry. One in six is-... There were four of us at my Joining, and only one of us died… but that’s why you can’t put other mages through that. You must know what he was doing was wrong. You said it yourself - it was slavery.”

“It was stupidity,” Janeka said. “Mages don’t need to undertake the Joining when we fight darkspawn from a distance. If we’re exposed to the taint, we can undergo it then, but until that day there’s no reason to risk it.”

“So your plan is to do what, exactly?” Anders asked. “You can’t seriously think the Chantry will stand aside and let you conscript every Circle of Magi in Thedas.”

“I am offering asylum,” Janeka stressed. “Liberation would come with losses my men can’t afford.”

“And when the Chantry comes calling?” Anders asked. “You think you won’t suffer losses sheltering mages?”

“They won’t come calling here,” Janeka said. “There’s a Warden Keep on the Antivan border just outside of Ansburg. It’s yours if you claim it.”

“I-... what?”

“It’s a solid stronghold, situated between the Green Dales and the Weyrs. It’s defensible, overlooking the Minanter River, but it fell into disrepair in the Blessed Age without enough tithe to sustain it. Ansburg will house any new Grey Warden acolytes.”

“... Acolytes,” Anders repeated.

“You’ll be serving as the Archivist,” Janeka continued. “My Warden Constable will accompany you and your acolytes to help you get settled. You will have met Ser Jean-Marc Stroud before.”

“He served under Amell six years ago,” Anders' mind was reeling trying to keep up with Janeka. He hadn’t thought about Stroud since he’d had the Dog Lords steal from him five years ago. “He was assigned to the southern Free Marches and Wycome was too far away-”

“Ansburg is not,” Janeka cut him off. “Anyone who asks will be told the truth: that the Grey Warden Keep in Ansburg houses Wardens, which I assume you and your mages wish to be.”

“Who says I have mages with me?” Anders asked.

“You, in warning me away,” Janeka said. “I won’t field men to free them, but they’ll have somewhere to stay.”

“... why are you doing this?” Anders asked. “I started this-”

“The destruction of one Chantry isn't what set this Exalted March in motion,” Janeka cut him off again. “This rebellion was built brick by bloody brick since the inception of the Circle. The Dragon Age is the epoch of magic - and your manifesto leaves off the full extent of how we reached it.

“It started in the Storm Age, when Emperor Etienne Valmont I remained childless for twenty-eight years. He set aside his first wife in favor of the Nevarran Princess Sotiria Pentaghast - but the Chantry feared the freedoms mages found in Nevarra spreading to Orlais, and pressured him to take another so he could sire a son. His third wife, Empress Yvette Valmont gave him twins, and the Divine declared the next Age Blessed, but the eldest son went mad.

“In truth the Mortalitasi cursed him. Reveille Valmont saw ghosts - which any mage would know are demons - but his advisors dismissed for superstition. Nevarran soothsayers found their way into his employ, and worked to undermine his rule, encouraging Reveille’s belief his demon was the ghost of his dead father.

“Etienne Valmont I had been a pious man, to annul two marriages at the behest of the Chantry, so the soothsayers claimed he had returned so Reveille would reclaim the birthplace of Andraste. Reveille launched the Second Orlesian Invasion of Ferelden on orders from his father, and with his army weakened, the Nevarrans launched their own.

“The war between Orlais and Nevarra was over within the year, but the occupation of Ferelden lasted seventy-six years. Towards the last of them, the Chantry had a stranglehold on Reveille’s grandson Florian. He was the Emperor of Orlais, but he sought the company of men, and the Chantry threatened excommunication unless he sent away his lover, Meghren Dufayel.

“Florian had Meghren banished from Orlais and named King of Ferelden, but it was a role he never wanted. Heartbroken, Meghren put out a call for an arcane advisor to rule in his stead, and countless mages clamored for the chance to live free from their Circles. The mage who won the bid had been born in Rivain, where mages live free lives as seers, before he’d been captured and imprisoned in Orlais.

“His name was Severan, and he secured as much power as he could to keep from being sent back to the Circle. Throughout his rule, he saw the Templar Order as a threat, and stopped all tithe to the Chantry, so when the Ferelden Rebellion started up in earnest the Chantry had no coin to call for Warriors of Conscience. When the rebels finally won their independence, the long time lack of funds forced the Seekers of Truth out alongside the Orlesian Army, and the Chantry lost its foothold in Ferelden.

“King Maric Theirin was called on to reinstate the tithe after the rebellion and refused. He was known to sympathize with dwarves, elves, and mages, and his defiance of the Chantry inspired others to do the same. Kirkwall’s Viscount, Perrin Threnhold, had increased tariffs on Orlais, only for the templars to take over trade when Divine Beatrix III saw the tariffs as an attack against the Chantry. Threnhold resolved to oust the templars from the city-state, and hired mercenaries to help him, and he nearly succeeded.

“He stormed the Circle and had Knight-Commander Guylian arrested and executed, but Knight-Captain Meredith retaliated by storming the Viscount’s Keep once his mercenaries left. She arrested the Viscount on orders from Grand Cleric Elthina - who Beatrix III had personally appointed - and then picked out his replacement to gain control of Kirkwall. Their coup let the Chantry control all the trade along the Waking Sea, and while the world might excuse mage slavery, they draw the line at sovereigns.

“Emperor Florian was assassinated, and Divine Beatrix III and her Seekers of Truth were supposed to follow. Her own people turned against her when she overstepped, Grand Cleric Callista and Knight Commander Martel conspiring with a cult of blood mages to have her killed. They managed to take out Lord Seeker Aldren, but in the two hundred years since Sotiria was set aside, the Pentaghast family had entrenched themselves in the Seekers of Truth to get closer to the Divine and gain more influence in the Chantry so they would never suffer such a slight again.

“Cassandra Pentaghast was there to save Divine Beatrix III’s life on the Day of Black Skies, but a few years later dementia took her mind. King Maric Theirin tried to take the opportunity to unite the Free Marches against Orlais and the Chantry, sensing weakness in their young Empress and old Divine, but he was lost at sea. The Free Marches stayed fractured, and Ferelden and its Circles floundered in his absence.

“The Seekers of Truth exercised no oversight over Ferelden’s Circles of Magi once they abandoned Therinfal Redoubt, and neither did the country’s Grand Cleric Elemena. She’s been deaf for thirty years and despised mages for all of them, so her concerns of mage rebellion were easy to discredit until a Senior Enchanter named Uldred finally took action. Ferelden fell to civil war at the onset of the Fifth Blight, and Teyrn Loghain Mac Tir promised freedom for the Circles, so Uldred convinced Kinloch Hold to side with him.

“Then Kinloch Hold was lost when Uldred fell to demons. Knight-Commander Greagoir sealed the doors behind his men, and gave up on the mages. He called for the Right of Annulment, and Elemena was glad to grant it. If Warden Commander Amell hadn’t come to Kinloch Hold, every mage inside it would have died to cover up the Knight-Commander’s cowardice, so he asked for mage autonomy to keep it from happening again.

“The Circles are beholden to the Chantry as opposed to the Crown, so the throne could only grant token autonomy, but the mages wanted more. The College of Magi convened in Cumberland to push Amell’s proposal to break free from the Chantry, but the Aequitarian Fraternity convinced the rest of them to stay. The Libertarians in Starkhaven burnt their Circle down in protest, and once the survivors were sent to Kirkwall, revolution was inevitable.

“There was nothing Divine Justinia V could have done to stop it. Decades of Divine Beatrix III’s dementia gave Grand Cleric Elthina all the time she needed to consolidate power among the College of Clerics, and there was never any hope of her stepping down. In controlling Kirkwall, Elthina controlled all trade along the Waking Sea, and with the death of Viscount Marlowe Dumar, her stranglehold grew stronger.

“Knight Commander Meredith might have been her sword and shield, but Elthina wielded her as she saw fit. Where some Chantries rely on tithe, Elthina's relied on Tranquil and her control of trade. Every enchantment in Orlais, Nevarra, Ferelden, and the Free Marches came out of the Gallows, and the wealth it won Kirkwall’s Chantry was second only to the Grand Cathedral.

"After Starkhaven burned down, the Gallows housed close to ten thousand mages, and Meredith made as many of them Tranquil as she could, to make up for the decline in tithe when the people of Kirkwall started protesting. Even with the Mad Viscount taking power, she was too entrenched for him to take it all, and the mages fared no better.

"The Seekers of Truth turned a blind eye to reports of Knight Commander Meredith's abuse of power, but they'd never let reports of maleficarum go unchecked. Cassandra Pentaghast was named the Right Hand of the Divine after the Day of Black Skies, and blamed mages for the attack on the Divine, so when the attack on the Divine's Left Hand followed, there wasn’t anyone against the Right of Annulment.

“Save the mages who’d survived the sword, when Knight-Commander Meredith had been in control of Kirkwall for almost twenty years, and unmade mages by the thousands. The Right of Annulment was once enacted twice every hundred years, and now it’s being enacted twice with every ten. This escalation was as inevitable as the Blights. The College of Magi is convening in Cumberland as we speak to vote once again for schism, as they did six years ago, but now they have no choice.

“You didn’t start this Exalted March - it was started by the Chantry - and you are not the only mage who has the strength to stand against it.”

“The fact that this has been a long time coming doesn’t change the fact that it’s been coming for mages,” Anders argued. “I’m trying to protect you-”

“The Grey Wardens do not need your protection. We are Grey. We stand between the beacons and the Blight. We are Wardens. We sacrifice everything to stem the rising tides of darkness and we always prevail. We are the protectors,” Janeka patted her chest proudly. “And mages require our protection.”

“What if I hadn’t come here?” Anders asked. “Would you have just given the Warden Keep in Ansburg to the first apostate to show up on your doorstep?”

“You’re a Grey Warden in the Free Marches,” Janeka said. “Where else would you go? Accept the gift I’m offering or I will offer it to someone else.”

“Who?” Anders asked.

“A mage brave enough to take it,” Janeka said. “How many do you have with you?”

“A hundred,” Anders answered before she could compel him to.

“Get ready for thousands.”

Chapter 225: From Kirkwall We Fled: Because We Failed

Summary:

In silence all around them, the People crept out
From holes clawed in the earth

- Shartan 9:12

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:37 Dragon 14 Cassus Morning
Ansburg: Warden’s Keep

Hawke was dead.

Word came with the apostates who trickled into Ansburg throughout Firstfall and into Haring. Warden’s Keep was a week’s journey from Wycome and a day’s journey from Ansburg, assuming you were sailing the Minanter, and not traveling along beside it. Anders couldn’t remember how they’d reached it, only that they had. The memory felt middling in the face of Hawke’s demise.

Anders should remember. It had taken them a week to reach and another day to clear, when Warden’s Keep was overrun with raiders. The roads weren’t well patrolled, and the raiders waylaid caravans trading between Ansburg and Antiva. A score of men shouldn’t have held up against mages, but they’d caught them in an ambush unaware, and Anders had lost three mages in the fight.

Three people. Three people whose names Anders should have known. Anders had been the one to say them last, when he’d preferred a speech to prayers, and thanked them for their sacrifice. Anders had been the one to light their pyres, and later stay out underneath the stars to watch the flames take them away. Anders had been the one to wear their ashes on his face and whisper to the wind that they’d died making the world a better place.

There’d been no one left outside to laugh. No one to say he was insipid. No one to tell him he’d been glowering for days. No one to make their deaths mean all the things he wanted them to mean. There was no rhyme or reason. No valor or vengeance. No purpose or pleasure. They were just dead.

Hawke was just dead.

Anders’ reward was a ruin crumbling away into the rock. Warden’s Keep was built into a cliff face, and overgrown with stone. Shades of white, grey, and black blended together against a background of dormant aspen and birch trees, and Anders hadn’t decided what to make of the mausoleum. It was still a fortress, with three corner towers and the fourth part of the cliff, and even though one wing had been lost to a quake and another had been eaten by the elements, it was still capable of housing a few thousand men.

The mages were already settling it, setting up shelter in the grand hall to stay close together, patchwork tents strung up between vast marble columns, the furniture that wasn’t rotting away dragged from other parts of the castle to set up staging areas for a war they had no hope of winning. It didn’t matter how much space they had when that space was unusable.

The cliff face had been hollowed out to accommodate the castle, three stories high but five stories deep. The ground floor was akin to a fortified harbor, the ships moored within rotten and rusted far beyond sailing, and encased in ice when the river Warden’s Keep was built beside had frozen over. Sheets of ice broke off, on occasion, flowing away from the Minanter and into the wastelands of the Antivan Weyrs.

There, the river dried up and died out long before it reached the ocean. The Fourth Blight had ravaged the vast landscape, and turned fields of poppies into blighted desert. Hints of red rock in the distance marked death to the northeast. If not to thirst, then to the roaming wyverns who lived among the cliffs and canyons. Anders was sure it would be safe from templars, but he assigned a watchman anyway.

He couldn’t afford to look away. The day that he let his guard down was the day someone broke through it. It wasn’t safe to turn his back or trust someone to have it when trust was how Hawke happened. Templars took advantage of trust - the trust that mages placed in them - when mages were at their mercy and trust was the last hope that they had.

When templars ripped mages from their parents’ arms, those same mages had to trust templars would take them somewhere safe. When templars dragged mages from their dorms at night, those same mages had to trust templars would take them to their Harrowings. When templars threw mages into solitary, those same mages had to trust templars would let them out again.

Anders had trusted Hawke every bloody day.

When Hawke locked him in his room, Anders trusted Hawke would let him out. When Hawke bruised and bloodied him, Anders trusted Hawke knew what he could take. When Hawke forced magebane down his throat, Anders trusted Hawke wouldn’t force too much. When Hawke held him down and fucked him, Anders trusted Hawke would finish. When Hawke said that they’d get married, Anders trusted that they would.

Anders trusted Hawke because he had no choice. He trusted Hawke because Hawke told the truth. He trusted Hawke because he couldn’t trust himself. He’d gone insane - at some point in solitary - and lost a whole year off his life. Anders was past the point of respite or revenge, and whatever he had left brought him no relief.

Hawke was dead.

He was just dead. The Mad Viscount of Kirkwall had died to darkspawn, or demons, or the Divine’s Exalted March. He’d gone missing - hours, days, or months after the destruction of Kirkwall’s Chantry, and the city alongside it, when rubble had rained with emerald fire, and the Veil had torn up to the sky, and the Red Templars had taken control of what remained. Hawke hadn’t been seen since, because there was nothing left to see.

Because Hawke had faced a Harvester, and there’d be no body left behind. There’d just be blood. Oceans and oceans of it, as endless as the Amaranthine, and finding Hawke would be akin to finding Amaranth. Men drove themselves insane trying to reach that imagined land, but Anders was already there. Anders knew that he’d gone mad - and that madness lingered long after Hawke was gone.

Hallucinations. Paranoia. Mania. Depression. Things Anders had had before but never had as bad as he had after Hawke. Things he couldn’t heal. Things that he just handled. He learned how to make sure shadows were just shadows by making sure others saw them too. He learned how to eat and drink by making sure someone ate and drank before him. He learned how to make use of his mania and how to push through his depression. He learned how to live again - resigned he’d never live the same.

Hawke didn’t have to live at all - because Hawke had died. He’d just died. He was just dead. He didn’t have to live with all the damage that he’d done. He didn’t have to answer for the plague that had spread all the way to Ostwick and was creeping into Wycome. He didn’t have to care about the people he’d pushed to cannibalism. He didn’t have to make amends to the mages that he’d hunted in his hunt for Anders. Hawke didn’t have to do anything because Hawke was dead.

Because Hawke was a bastard and a brute and a bully who beat Anders within an inch of his life and then had the audacity to lose his own instead of doing a damn thing to redeem it because he was just that much of a fucking man-child without his mother he’d rather make the whole damn world clean up his mess than lift a hand to help if he couldn’t form that hand into a fist.

Hawke had never brought anything into the world but pain. He was a monster. He was a madman. He was a murderer. He was a bastard. A fuck. An ass. A shit. Every bloody curse that Anders could conjure and every off-kilter word when he ran out. There was no sign of Hawke. No sign of Hawke for months. Someone else had been appointed seneschal in Hawke’s stead, because Hawke was dead. Because everyone was saying he was dead, and someone would have to say as much to Beth, and that someone should be him.

Anders had to find some way to say it, some way to soften it, but there wasn’t any softness left in him. Hawke had taken his softness. His softness had been beaten and bludgeoned and forged through fire until it turned to steel and Anders carried it in his spine. The sword Hawke had sheathed in him was one he’d learned to wield, and if Hawke was ever going to die then it should have been to him. Anders had no hope of sympathy when the closest he could come was to tell Beth he was sorry he hadn’t been there to see it all go down.

Hawke was dead. That was all he had to say. He’d tell Beth at the winter solstice, and then he’d just walk away. Hawke’s dead. Walk away. Hawke’s dead. Turn around. Walk away. Hawke’s dead. Turn around. Take a step. Walk away. Hawke’s dead. Turn around. Take a step. Take another. Walk away. Leave it. Let it go. Let him be dead. Let it be done. Let it be over.

It would never be over.

Anders would never wake up okay. Anders would never wake up to find the things that Hawke had done to him had been undone overnight. Hawke’s touchmark was there in the steel in his spine. Anders couldn’t dig out the discs and still find some way to stand. Hawke was etched into him - and the scars were so much deeper than his skin. They were in his blood and his bones, in his muscle and his marrow, and they’d be there in his ashes too.

He’d fear bane at every bitter taste. He’d wake up screaming in the night. He’d double - triple - check the windows and the doors to make sure they all opened once they closed. He’d flinch for fear of others' anger and have too much of his own. He’d mutter snide remarks he thought no one would hear. He’d feel uneasy in baths and uneasier in beds and jerk when someone touched his hair. He’d struggle with his memories and doubt the things he did and never trust someone like Hawke again.

Anders couldn’t say those things to Beth. He just had to say that Hawke was dead. The solstice came, and for it, the mages gathered in the forest west of Warden’s Keep. The Green Dales covered the Free Marches from Markham to the Minanter, and spread into Antiva with abandon. Warden’s Keep rested at the woodland edge, and if they ventured any deeper into the forest the Dalish would be there, but those Dalish weren’t theirs.

Clan Lavellan hadn’t come with them. After everything their groups had been through together, the elves were tired of travel, or so Keeper Deshanna said. She called for a halt, and so the clan halted with her, safe in Fisherman’s Flight - the unclaimed valley outside of Wycome where they’d settled for the winter. Leaving it - and their aravels - had been a hard choice to make, but if they were going to wage a war they needed somewhere to wage it from.

It was sobering, after Clan Lavellan defended them against another clan of Dalish, to finally find the limits of their allegiance. Winter, evidently, and war, but Ellana feared neither. She left her clan to come with them, and brought along her brother, on the grounds that she didn’t think they’d survive on their own, and she was probably right. Warden’s Keep was defensible, but they didn’t have the resources to defend it.

.Fortresses weren’t self-sustaining. Soldiers took support. Vigil’s Keep had been fed from the farmsteads of the Feravel Plains and the fisheries of the Blackmarsh, and of Amell’s half-hundred Grey Wardens and his half-thousand soldiers, it took thousands more civilians to support them. Anders didn't have near as many soldiers, but he might soon.

At the height of its occupancy, after Starkhaven’s Circle had burned down, the Gallows had housed upwards of ten thousand mages. Those numbers had dwindled to death and Tranquility under Knight Commander Meredith until there were only a few thousand left for Anders to free, a quarter of whom had died. In the fighting. In the fleeing.

The Felicisima Armada had been there to save the children, who made up most of the Circle, and sailed them off to Ferelden and to freedom. The rest had to fight for it. They fled in all directions, and perhaps five hundred chose the Wounded Coast, and of them half had scattered. The remaining half had halved again when Bancroft broke for Ostwick, and left Anders with the rest.

Those numbers were climbing, as apostates seeking asylum fled to Wycome in the dead of winter hoping for rescue from the Grey Wardens, and were redirected to Ansburg and to Anders. The ones who didn’t die on the Minanter dragged themselves, step by bloody step, hand over bloody hand, through the snow towards some slim hope of salvation, soaked with sleet and shaking when they stumbled through the gates and found he had none to give.

Warden’s Keep had been more or less abandoned, and the stolen goods left behind by squatting bandits weren’t anywhere near enough to support an army of apostates. They’d had supplies for a score of men to survive the winter, but Anders had eight times that number now. He needed aid and he had nowhere to get it.

Warden Commander Janeka had assigned her Warden Constable Jean-Marc Stroud to Ansburg with Anders, but that appointment seemed to be a punishment for them both. Jean-Marc Stroud was for the Chantry, and he detested Anders for destroying it. Anders had met the man six years ago - but the memory felt middling. Stroud had served Amaranthine in the aftermath of the Fifth Blight to help with the Thaw Hunt.

Anders had been such a wretched Grey Warden it had taken him six years to even learn that was what the time after a Blight was called. Once the archdemon died, the taint would start to thaw out, but darkspawn, Grey Wardens had to thin. Anders had done as much with Amell, and later Constable Eram Kader, until Constable Leonie Caron had replaced him.

Stroud had served beneath the bitch with him, and Anders should have known, when Leonie laid waste to Amaranthine, and Stroud stayed back to let her, that the man wouldn’t do the things that needed to be done. He just followed orders, no matter what they were. He didn’t harbor compassion. He didn’t serve justice. He didn’t even shave.

Stroud let his mustache grow out until it hung over his lips, and since there was nothing to eat in Ansburg, Stroud ate it instead. It was always in his mouth, and it made Anders so uncomfortable he was one casting cut away from compelling Stroud to stop chewing on it. Unless Anders wanted his mages eating their own hair right along with him, he had to find food.

Warden’s Keep should have been supported by tithe, but Stroud refused to enact it. Food shipped up from the Minanter from the farmsteads on its banks would have to flow through Ansburg, and Stroud didn’t want to risk discovery before they were ready, which meant that they were on their own when it came to resources, but there wasn’t enough to ration.

Supplies for one score stretched out over eight meant a few bites of food every other day. Outside of those supplies, the bandits also had their stolen goods, which consisted of seventeen bundles of silk (that the mages could sell) and eleven casks of wine (that the mages could drink.) Almost three thousand bottles to get them through two months gave them fifty bottles a day for a hundred and fifty people, or somewhere around a glass per person per day.

That was it. That was all Anders could offer them. A drink. One they may as well have poured out for their pyres. All the wine reminded him of the Hanged Man. Fenris had asked after the name once, and Varric had more than likely lied that it was literal: that men had been hung there, strung up by their feet to starve to death, while Isabela argued it was an analogy, and Fenris had decided it was both: just drunk men doomed to die.

Anders had to find some way to feed them. He needed food. He needed farmers. He needed farmland. He needed the arrangement Eiton offered him but there was no reclaiming Kaiten. Anders couldn’t do it. He didn’t have the men. He didn’t have the magic - and as far as Kaiten was concerned - neither did Eiton.

Word came with the apostates who passed through Kaiten in the aftermath of their flight from it. Eiton had died. Eiton had been killed. Eiton had been kidnapped. Eiton had been captured. But nowhere in all the things that Eiton had been did his father think he’d been a mage. It could have been true. It could have been a trap. The latter seemed likely, and the Elevated Brotherhood agreed, so Eiton stayed with them and starved.

The Winter Solstice set in and they celebrated with sap. Ellana showed them how to harvest it from trees, and serve it with snow, and if nothing else it was something to eat. Anders told Beth about the death of her brother and they both did the best that they could.

Anders said, “Hawke’s dead.”

Beth asked, “How do you know?”

Anders said, “That’s what they’re saying.”

Beth asked, “But how do you know?”

Anders said, “No one’s seen him. He’s gone.”

Beth said, “Gone doesn’t mean dead.”

Anders asked, “Does it matter?”

Beth said, “It matters to me.”

Anders said, “He was a monster.”

Beth said, “He was my brother.”

Anders said, “He was a bastard.”

Beth said, “I’m sorry he hurt you.”

Anders said, “Hurt me? Swords hurt me. Smites hurt me. Arrows hurt me. Hawke poisoned me. He poisoned me for months, for years, for life. Hawke took my trust from me. I can’t eat. I can’t drink. I can’t sleep. I can’t have sex with the man that I love without thinking about the man that I hate. Hawke didn’t hurt me. This doesn’t hurt. This is past hurting. Hurts heal.”

Beth said, “You’re healing.”

Anders said, “I’m not.”

Beth asked, “What else are they saying?”

Anders said, “Just that he’s gone.”

Beth asked, “Don’t you want to be sure?”

Anders said, “I’m just letting you know.”

Beth said, “Thank you. I’m glad I heard it from you.”

Anders said, “Yeah.”

Beth asked, “Do you want to talk?”

Anders said, “I shouldn’t to you.”

There was too much to say and he’d said too much already so they both said no more, and just sat in the snow with their sap for the solstice, and at some point out in the woods on a log by a fire Beth leaned on his shoulder and sobbed and he let her.

Beth had her baby.

Leandra Rutherford Amell was born on the twenty-third day of Haring, two days after the solstice, in the thirty-seventh year of the Dragon, in a keep outside Ansburg. The birth was long and arduous and Leandra was wrinkled and red, and the sheets and his hands were still bloody when Anders handed her to Beth, and Beth pulled him into bed and Anders sat with his back to the headboard and Beth in his arms and Leandra in hers.

Every last mage crowded into the room after Leandra was born to see her and touch her and kiss her with magic. Babies weren’t born in the Circles. They were taken away before their mothers could touch them. They were given to the Chantry, and raised to be templars, and those templars raped mages, and those mages had children, and those children were sent to the Chantry, and the cycle continued.

It was a circle. It had been a circle for a thousand years - until Leandra broke it. Mages crowded in close to coo and to cry over mother and daughter and Anders had to keep reminding himself he wasn’t the father. Beth was his friend, one of the last he had left, but that was hard to remember when he smeared her blood through the sweat on her brow as he brushed back her hair and let his auras wash over her when she fell asleep and her daughter slept with her.

Anders was stuck, but the mages left them to celebrate. He could hear them outside the room, singing and dancing and thinning the Veil making merry with magic. The birthing room was a ruin, the three-post bed the best the old keep had to offer, and it still creaked under the weight of the three of them. The window had shattered some time ago, stained glass glinting through the dust on the ground as the sun set over Starkhaven.

It was out there somewhere, countless leagues down the Minanter River, which lay to the far south and separated Ansburg from the rest of the Free Cities. It made Warden’s Keep a slightly safer staging area, when the river was so wide ships had to sail it. The Minanter never froze, but the rivers that split from it saw ice along their banks, and if they didn’t starve, they’d be safe through the winter.

Anders held Beth and Leandra, and thought of the thaw. Sebastian was out there, ‘avenging’ Elthina, or would be if not for the snow. They’d have to make a stand against him - and he knew facing Sebastian would be no easier for Beth than facing Hawke was for him. They’d have to face him all the same as long as he was leading the Exalted March against the mages.

A few of their new arrivals had come from the west, and in the early months of the Exalted March, the templars had been out in the western Free Cities in full force. Hasmal and Tantervale and Starkhaven had suffered far worse than Kaiten. The templars there didn’t just hunt down escaped apostates, they hunted down their friends and families, going through visitation records from the Gallows and stringing up the lot.

Anders wanted to be surprised, but he could feel the measure of Sebastian’s mercy in the burns he’d left on Beth’s arm the few years they’d been together. Anders ran the pads of his fingers along her scars while she slept, thinking of the day he’d healed all but the worst of them. The burn Anders had left unhealed at Beth’s behest snaked around her wrist, skirting her elbow and the bend of it, before cutting off at her shoulder.

Sebastian had to have held her arm over the brazier for it to be so bad. Anders tried and failed not to think about it. Beth, barely twenty and bound to the Circle. Sebastian, at least a dozen years her senior and in service of the Chantry. The faithful believed in fire - the immolation of sin - but men like Sebastian wouldn't be satisfied until mages like Beth were burned at the stake.

She'd been through enough - and she came out stronger for it. Higher and holier for her suffering. There was no sin in her to be burned away, just the pure birth of their salvation. Leandra slept against Beth’s chest, and woke less than an hour later when she needed to nurse. Anders helped Beth sit back up and Beth undid her robes to set her baby to her breast.

“Thank you for being here,” Beth said, leaning her head back against his shoulder, raven hair sleeving his right arm.

“Where else would I be?” Anders asked, veilfire alight in his veins to help with the strain of supporting her for the past hour, illuminating the room in a sapphire light so long as his sleeves were still rolled up to his elbows.

Beth ran a few weary fingers back and forth over the hair on his arms, and while he couldn’t see her expression, Anders could imagine her tired smile when she looked down at her daughter, “She looks like her."

"Your mother?" Anders guessed.

"I wish she was here," Beth agreed, the hand supporting Leandra open-palmed and peaceful, the one against his arm fisted and furious. "I hate that Quentin got away. I hate knowing he's still out there - puppeting some undead monster wearing my mother's face."

"Revka," Amell's mother.

"Why couldn't he just let her go?" Beth muttered.

"Are you surprised?" Anders asked. "The Circle drives mages mad."

"He murdered my mother," Beth craned her neck to frown back at him. “Don’t you dare defend him.”

“He made me cut out Amell’s eyes,” Anders countered. “Don’t you dare say that I am.”

“There’s still a place to proselytize, Anders,” Beth muttered, shifting to settle more comfortably against his chest. “It’s not a birthing bed.”

“Just thought I’d start early,” Anders joked.

Beth snorted, and traced a knuckle along Leandra’s face, “Do you think she’s a mage?”

“Sure,” Anders said. “Our first battlemage.”

“We have a battlemage,” Beth said.

“Laugh at my joke,” Anders said.

“I’m too tired to laugh,” Beth said. “Laugh at it for me.”

“Haha,” Anders said obediently.

“... how long is she going to do this?” Beth asked, dragging her knuckle down Leandra’s arm.

“The templars usually take them by now,” Anders joked.

“That’s not funny,” Beth slapped sleepily over her shoulder at him. “I know you’ve delivered babies outside the Circle.”

“Ten, fifteen minutes, then you switch her,” Anders said.

“I’m really glad you’re here,” Beth said.

“Not still mad at me?” Anders prodded.

“I’m always mad at you,” Beth said. “But I don’t think I could do this without you.”

“You’d have been fine,” Anders squeezed her shoulders in something akin to a hug. “I just caught her.”

“I don’t hate you,” Beth glanced back at him again, heavy shadows under her amber eyes belying an obvious need for more sleep once Leandra settled. “I’m sorry I said that. I was just saying things.”

“You know you kicked me, right?” Anders grinned.

“I meant to do that,” Beth joked. He hoped. It had hurt. “Do you mind being here for all of this?”

“I want to be here,” Anders promised, smoothing back her hair and resisting following it up with any sort of impulsive intimacy. Beth felt familiar. She felt familial. She felt like the future - like everything he was fighting for was bundled up at her breast. Like it was all right there - contained in two tiny fists that couldn’t fight back against the world but were fisted against it anyway because they had to be.

They had to be ready to fight the world because the world was ready to fight them. Sebastian was out there right now - waiting out the winter so he could fight them again. The mages that made it to Ansburg from Hasmal told tales of just how terrible the fighting was. The Free City lay on the edge of the Silent Plains, on the border of Tevinter, and saw a regular influx of Tevinter refugees as elven slaves sought their freedom in the Free Marches.

The influx of refugees had been supplanted by an influx of mages. Members of the Imperium had been coming down from Perivantium, promising freedom or a form of it to the southern mages fleeing the Exalted March. If the southern mages could make it to them, the Imperium was offering safety and eventual citizenship in the form of indentured servitude. Anders wasn’t for any form of servitude, but with Sebastian’s army in the way and the subsequent skirmishes along the border, it wasn’t an option the apostates could even consider.

So they ran east, into the rising sun, for the hope of a better tomorrow and Anders had to find one to offer them. Leandra helped - when the mages could see her as a symbol - and hold onto hope that she was the first of many babies that could be born to a mage with no templars there to take them away. The celebration went well into the evening and continued to some extent in the days that followed, and the apostates who arrived were able to take heart in her and in Beth and in him and the home and the hope they were trying to build as they held through the winter.

Then word came from Cumberland, where the College of Magi had convened to vote to secede from the Chantry, in the aftermath of Anders’ destruction of it. They spoke of everything. The babies torn from their mothers’ breasts. The untrained children forced duel demons or die trying. The abuses. The beatings. The rapes. The torture and the Tranquil. The lack of rights to land and to love and to liberty. The endless Annulments. The Exalted March.

The vote was brought forward for freedom.

The vote failed.

A month later, the Chantry disbanded the College of Magi.

A month after that, the Exalted March continued.

Chapter 226: From Kirkwall We Fled: And Lost Our Way

Summary:

“The officers began to curse their men
And blame one another for losing the trail,
And the soldiers fell to bickering among themselves.”

- Shartan 9:11

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 8 Pluitanis Morning
Ansburg: Warden’s Keep

Beth looked beautiful. Anders felt guilty for thinking it, but he was so lonely he thought it anyway. He spent the winter wrapped up in rosewood, with only his own hand for warmth. He missed Amell. He missed his face, and he missed his hands, and he missed his cock. He missed the way his body felt above and below him. Anders missed everything about him, and in the absence of him, he couldn't help thinking Beth looked beautiful.

They were just thoughts, and that was as far as they went, but Amell was out there somewhere with his ex-lover and Anders was afraid of him thinking those thoughts too. His friends all said Amell had a type, and Anders was afraid he’d changed too much to still be it. He'd lost his laugh, his laissez-faire, and he felt so lost and lonely. He missed being intimate and Beth's company was as close as he could get.

Her hair had been roped into a loose bun on the back of her head, and spilled down her back in a waterfall of black. There was a weight beneath her amber eyes that just seemed to add a weight to her words when she spoke, but her voice was hushed. Leandra slept in a barkcloth sling, bound up on her chest, and almost two months old. Much like the mages, Leandra's existence consisted of eating and sleeping, but unlike the mages, she always had somewhere to sleep and something to eat.

“We need food,” Beth stood at the head of their war table, in the rubble of their war room, addressing what passed for their war council.

If they were even still calling it a council, and not a conclave, or a college, or whatever they were calling it today to avoid the truth. That they were a poor assortment of apostates with a poor assortment of allies facing a not-so-poor assortment of armies the Divine had set against them with the continuation of the Exalted March. The Minanter had thawed, and the armies of Starkhaven and Tantervale would be sailing it soon, and instead of preparing to face them they were still fighting for food.

Anders couldn’t even get them that. Beth might have been their First Enchanter, but Anders was the one they followed. People came to him with problems and they expected him to have solutions. They looked to him when he walked past, but Anders didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to be a leader and the others didn’t either.

Their Fraternity Representatives: Islau, the fat old Aequatarian, Sketch, the nervous elven Isolationist, and Ella, the sweet Libertarian who never failed to instill Anders with a healthy dose of self-loathing. Aside from them, a worn-out and realistic Nemmaya stood for whatever it was she stood for when the Elevated Brotherhood was in ruins and their plans for Kaiten had collapsed, Chantry-Apologist Jean-Mustache Stroud represented the Wycome Wardens, and Ellana was there because she’d decided to be there and Anders wasn’t about to be the one to tell her to leave.

They needed all the help they could get. It was a miracle they’d weathered the winter. They were bound to be as bad off in the war as they were in the war room. It was on the third story of Warden’s Keep, in the southeastern corner tower overlooking the river. The balistrarias had been destroyed in some old siege, and a whole section of the wall had crumbled away and opened up into the early spring air. The sleet and snow of winter had soaked into the floorboards, and they’d rotted away to the floor below in a semi-circle around the ruined wall.

Every so often, a shingle would slip free and slide off as the roof fell apart, and Anders saw more and more of the open sky at each meeting over the past few months. At this rate, they wouldn’t even have a roof over their heads for the templars to bring down on them, but Anders couldn’t afford to worry about roofs when they had to worry about food.

“What about our contacts in Kaiten?” Sketch suggested, jutting his chin out at Anders from his spot by the door. For once, Anders didn’t blame the skittish elf for standing by it, when half of the room was crumbling out from underneath them.

“Sennova isn’t prepared to send food,” Anders shook his head, a few blonde stands falling free of his tie and getting in the way of his face. Anders pushed them back behind his ear, and they fell stubbornly forward again, because apparently not even his own hair was capable of cooperating with him anymore. “We just got our first shipment of lyrium.”

“The Indigo Road takes an age to reach Ansburg,” Ella complained from across him, and by the murmurs that echoed her, it was a sentiment a few of them shared.

“There’s nothing wrong with the road,” Anders frowned at the floor, when he couldn’t bring himself to frown at Ella, and redid his hair for an easy excuse not to look into her eyes and see his own shame reflected in them. Ella felt like a living embodiment of all of his failures, but the Indigo Road wasn’t one of them. They needed lyrium, and the road gave them that. It just couldn’t give them everything. They’d have to find food elsewhere. “Everything takes an age to reach Ansburg.”

“We need tithe, Stroud,” Beth looked to the Warden-Constable. Stroud kept himself apart from them, as if it somehow exonerated him from being with them. It didn't. He was the Grey Warden assigned to oversee Ansburg, and the one all of this would fall back on once the Chantry came knocking. Stroud may as well help them bar the door.

“To what end?” Stroud stopped eating his mustache to ask, folding his arms over his chest and turning the griffon on his tabard into a pair of wings, which seemed more appropriate if he was just going to sit there putting on airs. “This army of acolytes endangers the Grey Wardens.”

“We are Grey Wardens as far as the Warden-Commander is concerned,” Beth reminded him, and Maker, if she didn’t remind Anders of one - standing at the head of her own army with her shoulders squared and carrying the future in her arms.

“The Warden-Commander is not the First Warden,” Stroud grumbled, crossing his legs when his arms weren’t enough, like he had to tie himself down to keep from running all the way back to Wycome and abandoning his post. “I doubt the Warden-Commander shared that none of you have undertaken the Joining when she put forth her plans for Ansburg.”

It was a good thing Anders didn’t know force magic, or he might have thrown Stroud through the open wall all the way back to Wycome, “Are you threatening us?”

“My friends, I understand your frustrations,” Stroud raised his hands to shield himself from their scowls. “But your vote for schism has failed, and surely now we can seek some more sensible solution-”

“Sensible?” Anders slapped a hand down on the table to silence him, the sharp sound compensating for Anders’ soft voice and making Leandra stir slightly. “What’s sensible about disbanding the College of Magi? That was our voice,” Anders hissed. He knew how important it was to have one when his own voice went hoarse after just a few words. “That was the only voice we had. First Enchanters from every Circle gathered together in Cumberland who could force the Chantry to listen to our concerns - and now they can’t even meet?”

Anders’ voice broke - for the better, when he didn’t want to wake Leandra. He unhooked his canteen for a drink of stale water in the still air that followed.

Sketch picked up where he left off before Stroud could interject, “None of us can meet anymore,” Sketch said to Stroud with a snort and a sneer. “Haven’t you heard? The gathering of mages is expressly forbidden now.”

Stroud traced over a single thick eyebrow and shrugged, “The Canticle of Silence calls for caution.”

“Excuse you?” Anders said.

“I read the new canon. It cites Silence 2:3. A gathering of a hundred mages, and all but one fell prey to pride. Atrocities are born from the ambitions of mages, and this venture is nothing if not ambitious,” Stroud said - like it was even something worth discussing.

Like their right to exist wasn’t a right at all, but an argument mages had to make for themselves over and over. It shouldn’t have been debatable. It should have been deplorable. No one had the right to look upon another man and pick a feature that made that man less. If Stroud and the Chantry were so desperate for a verse to define their new canon, then they should have looked to Threnodies 5:9.

The Maker’s favor didn’t fall on the envious and the intolerable. It fell on their targets. On these lesser things.

“Why is this man still talking?” Islau’s huff more or less summarized Anders’ would-be sermon. The old Aequatarian was pompous and intolerable, but he was less pompous and more tolerable when he sat next to a man who was more pompous and less tolerable than him.

“So you understand Her Perfection enacted the new canon for prudence and not for punishment,” Stroud pulled a copy of the ordinance from his belt-pouch. Anders saw the sunburst stamp, but he didn’t see any of the words, because they’d been inked in black, and he was too busy seeing red. “If you would but read it-” Stroud started, and Anders stopped him, setting the parchment aflame between Stroud’s fingers.

The Warden-Constable yelped and dropped the parchment, the embers floating down to smolder into one of the knots in the floorboards while Stroud smacked his hand against his trousers, the pads of his fingers a bright and blistering pink. “I will refrain from asking which of you did that-”

“I did,” Anders admitted proudly before anyone else could take credit.

Stroud scowled at him, “It’s canon.”

“Fuck canon,” Anders said.

“This isn’t helping,” Beth’s hands waved off to his right, and Anders tore his eyes off Stroud to pay her attention to her signing. Anders was the only one she could have been talking to, considering no one else knew the language. “We need to convince him to enact the treaties.”

Fuck Stroud. He wasn’t the only Grey Warden in the Free Marches who could have reenacted the Grey Warden treaties and set up supply-lines to Ansburg. “Warden-Commander Janeka can enact them.”

“She’s not here,” Beth signed pointedly. “He is.”

“If you’re not for us, why are you with us?” Islau asked while Beth and Anders argued, steepling his hands over his stomach while he stared Stroud down like he was interrogating an apprentice and not the Warden-Constable of the Free Marches.

“I was assigned to Ansburg,” Stroud sniffed, turning his nose and his mustache up at him. “If there are honest acolytes among you, I will aid them, but honest acolytes undergo the Joining.”

“They’re not taking the Joining,” Anders abandoned his argument with Beth to interject. The apostates the Grey Wardens harbored at Warden’s Keep weren’t real acolytes, and they never would be so long as Anders had any say in it. They hadn’t escaped the Circle just to enslave themselves to the Call.

“Then they are not getting tithe,” Stroud said simply.

Anders was one spell away from burning off the man’s mustache, but Beth let it go. “What are our other options?” she asked.

“We pull off the shem's toenails until he agrees," Ellana suggested, sitting on the arm of Anders’ chair and toying with her skinning knife. She pressed the tip of her blade into the nail of her pointer finger, and smiled so sweetly it made her seem serious.

“Other options," Beth frowned.

“Fingernails," Ellana suggested instead. Anders snorted. Sketch and Islau chuckled, but everyone else looked unamused, and Stroud looked unthreatened.

Beth just looked impatient. “Ellana," she ground out.

“There are other ways of being persuasive," Sketch said meaningfully, with a slight raise of his eyebrows and a glance in Anders’ direction that wasn’t lost on anyone, least of all Stroud.

Stroud stood up, and the crack of his knuckles was almost comedic in a room full of mages without a drop of lyrium in his blood to defend him from them, “Say what you mean.”

“But saying what I don't is so much more fun," Sketch grinned. Spirit healer or not, he was still a mage, and infinitely more dangerous than Ellana, and Stroud knew it. He inhaled hard, like the puff of his chest was a substitute for a shield.

Anders wished it was that easy. He shook his head, and Stroud sat back down with a suspicious sniff. “Janeka would be able to tell."

“Only if she's better than you," Sketch countered.

“She is," Janeka could compel without casting cuts. She wasn’t just a maleficar, she was a master, and Anders had never felt like more of an apprentice than when she forced him to sit and listen to her lectures.

Sketch looked put out, “Well that presents a problem.”

“It prevents one," Stroud scowled at him, and then let his scowl sweep across the rest of them for good measure. "Return to the Chantry. Stop risking the Wardens. We cannot protect you if worst comes to worst.”

Anders had never wanted to involve the Grey Wardens in the first place, but they’d involved themselves, and it was too late to turn them away. The mages needed a base of operations, and it would take them too long to find another fortress in the Free Marches to support them when Anders wouldn’t even know where to start. They weren’t in Ferelden. Anders didn’t have Vigil’s Keep and Soldier’s Peak and an army and navy at his command like Amell did. He had whatever he could get, and what he got was Warden’s Keep.

"We're here whether you like it or not," Anders said. "You want to see worst come to worst? If I suspect for one second you'll turn us over to the templars, Janeka won't be able to tell what I did to you, because there won't be anything left of you for her to find."

"Anders, we're allies," Beth said with the soothing sort of tone she might have used on Leandra, but it didn’t work on him.

"Allies don’t threaten to turn their allies over to their enemies,” Anders pinned Stroud in place with a scowl.

“I was invited to this assembly to share my advice, and I have shared it,” Stroud stood up. “I will enlist as much aid as is needed for any Grey Warden acolytes, but I will not strip the Order of its integrity doing the same for apostates. I hope you see the Chantry’s reason before you see it’s retribution.”

Stroud saw himself out.

“Good riddance,” Islau grumbled.

“Do we need to worry about him?” Beth asked.

“No,” Anders said as much to reassure her as to reassure himself. “Janeka wouldn’t have assigned him here if she didn’t trust him with what we’re doing.”

“Are you sure about that?” Sketch asked.

“Why else would he be here?” Anders asked.

“Maybe she doesn’t trust him with whatever she’s doing,” Sketch suggested.

“If the Grey Wardens won’t protect us, then we should be discussing ways to protect ourselves,” the old elven apostate Nemmaya said before Anders could think too hard about that. "We need defenses.”

“I beg your pardon,” Islau gestured around the dilapidated ruin, like the walls weren’t caved in and the roof was crumbling and the floor hadn’t fallen out. “Did we move again? Are we somewhere else? Are we not standing in a fortress right now?

“We are standing in a glorified hole in the ground," Nemmaya corrected him as easily as she might a child, considering she had thirty years on him. “Castle Kaiten-"

“We don’t have the men,” Anders was sick of saying. Islau was regrettably right - they had a castle already, and even if that castle was crumbling, the more pressing issue was that they were eating the crumbs. “We have to focus on food. We barely survived the winter, and the supplies we had have run out.”

“The supplies we stole,” Ella looked at Anders like he’d been one of the bandits, but if she wanted him to feel bad, she should have picked a crime he’d actually committed. Anders didn’t feel guilty about repurposing the supplies left by the squatters, but he did feel something for having killed them, and something else for getting people killed by them.

“I don’t care for that word,” Islau grumbled and his chair grumbled with him as the hefty enchanter shifted uncomfortably in it. “Liberated?”

“They were stolen goods and we didn’t return them,” Ella folded her arms over her chest with a frown.

“Return them to who?” Sketch laughed with a wave of his hand like the only options for ownership were already in the room. “You know it’s not stealing if it’s already stolen, right?”

“Why do I suspect you speak from experience?” Islau mused.

“If the money’s good enough,” Sketch shrugged.

“We’re not talking about money, we’re talking about food,” Beth tried to pull them back on track.

“Money buys food,” Sketch shrugged.

“What exactly are you suggesting?” Islau shuffled his chair around to give Sketch the full weight of his attention, thick eyebrows drawn together over a face drooping with disapproval. “That we steal what we lack?”

“Again, not stealing, if it’s already stolen,” Sketch said.

“No,” Beth inhaled for an argument, but Leandra chose that moment to wake up crying, and kept crying until Beth settled her against her breast, and the forced pause gave them all a chance to calm down. “We can’t just start raiding raiders when we don’t know what the consequences will be,” Beth continued eventually.

“Beth is right,” Anders said, despite Justice’s insistence that it would serve a simple sort of justice to eliminate such threats along the border. “If people start reporting mages attacking caravans along the border we’ll bring the templars down on us.”

“No witnesses, no worries,” Sketch said with a shrug.

“Good gracious,” Islau mumbled.

“Maker, Sketch,” Ella added.

“How are we supposed to know which caravans belong to bandits?” Anders demanded. They couldn’t steal supplies from nebulous banditry along the border. They weren’t roaming the roads with giant ‘I’m a bandit’ signs around their necks. They were just people, posing as traders or travelers, concealing themselves at choke points on the road, and there was no telling they were bandits until they actually ambushed someone, at which point their obligation should have been to rescue whoever the bandits were ambushing, not to make a mad grab for their stolen supplies. “If we’re just going to wait and watch until they start attacking traders, we may as well rob traders ourselves.”

Sketch shrugged, “That works for me. All in favor?”

“We’re not voting on this,” Anders frowned. “We’re not attacking innocent people just because it’s easy.”

“... perhaps,” Islau said so slowly it felt like he was waging a war with every word. “If we could find the headquarters of these supposed bandits, we could circumvent the risks on the road. There’d be no innocent witnesses or need to eliminate them.”

“Bandit headquarters,” Anders said flatly. Islau kept talking. Anders stopped listening. He signed at Beth, “Are we really discussing this? Do you hear how stupid this sounds?”

“Why is it stupid?” Beth signed.

“Bandits don’t have headquarters,” Anders signed. “They have homes. They’re people.”

“Some people have headquarters,” Beth signed. “Bandits headquartered here.”

“Squatters squatted here,” Anders corrected her. “If they have a headquarters it’s because they’re homeless.”

“Those squatters killed three of our people,” Beth signed, a crease creeping into her brow.

“I know,” Anders matched her frown for frown. “I cremated them.”

“So why do you care if we kill more of them?” Beth asked.

“You told me to care about other people,” Anders reminded her. “This is what caring looks like.”

“I didn’t tell you to care about criminals,” Beth wrinkled her nose at him, and looked a little less beautiful. “I told you to care about the Dalish.”

“Criminals,” Anders rolled his eyes. “You don’t even know what that word means.”

“Don’t condescend to me,” Beth adjusted Leandra so she could sign easier. “I spent a year doing mercenary work-”

“-that is not the same thing-” Anders signed over her.

“-I know what it’s like to be an indentured servant-” Beth signed over him.

“-You had a roof over your head and food in your belly-”

“-I was poor-”

“-I’m not talking about being poor. I’m talking about being destitute-”

“-No one is born a bandit-”

“-You were born a noble-”

“-I was born a mage. Don’t act like my nobility-”

“-Got you special treatment in the Circle-”

“-Don’t. You haven’t been in a Circle in years-”

“-I spent fourteen years-”

“-Not a contest-”

“-Stop making it one-”

“-One to talk-”

“-I’m talking about what it’s like to be out of options,” Anders wrenched at every finger as he signed the word to drive home his point. “I’m talking about us, trying to justify what kind of people we’d be comfortable stealing from like we’re any different from the poor blighters you want to call bandits so you can pretend they don’t have names and families who are never going to see them again if we start killing them for taking a few casks of wines that were just going to turn into vinegar in some noble’s cellar anyway.”

“It’s not that complicated and you know it. It’s crime and punishment,” Beth let her arm swing down like a guillotine. “Everyday people make choices-”

“Choices,” Anders rolled his eyes.

“Yes, Anders, choices,” Beth frowned. “People make choices. Sometimes, people make bad choices, and those bad choices have bad consequences. Sometimes the consequences of those choices impact other people and sometimes other people have to make more choices that have more consequences and the person who made the bad choice that put the other people in a position where they had to make other choices should understand the consequences of their choices are on him.”

“No,” Anders snapped his fingers shut. “No, you want to talk about choice, you chose to come with me after I destroyed the Chantry, and you don’t get to point to my choice every time you want to excuse yours. I accepted the consequences when I destroyed the Chantry. I watched everyone walk inside knowing none of them would walk out again and I knew I would have to live with that but I didn’t try to make it easier on myself by pretending they weren’t people. They were people. I killed people. I killed hundreds of people. You want to kill bandits, call them bloody people.”

"I'll call bandits people when you call templars people," Beth signed stubbornly, like the two were even remotely similar when templars took from people with nothing, and thieves took from people with everything. Beth adjusted Leandra in her arms, the infant undisturbed by their argument, but the assembly was on edge. Everyone had gone silent at some point to watch them sign at each other, and Anders had lost track of wherever the conversation had left off.

“You two going to share with the rest of the clan?” Ellana asked.

“We’re not hunting bandits,” Anders said, and didn’t care what Beth thought. He was tired of watching people pay the ultimate price for petty crimes when they were all just trying to survive. Sigrun had been a thief on the streets of Dust Town, and she’d been condemned to metaphorical death for it. Cor had been a thug on the streets of Darktown, and he’d been condemned to a literal one. Fenris and the Friends of Red Jenny were all thieves - and none of them deserved to die.

Amell would have understood. He’d always said people were more than their mistakes - and went out of his way to recruit people who made the worst ones. People like Sigrun and Velanna and Nathaniel and Oghren and Anders - because he understood ideals like Justice, and the more Anders thought about Amell’s ideals the more unified he and his spirit felt in their own.

"I don't recall voting," Islau huffed.

“Magic leaves a mark,” Anders argued. "If we're not careful, we'll bring the templars down on us before we're ready."

"Since when do you care about caution?" Ella asked.

“Nevermind the templars,” Nemmaya saved him. “We were lucky the bandits here were squatters and not part of a larger operation out of Ansburg. We won’t be as lucky twice, and we can't afford to start a gang war when we don't know enough about the gangs in the area.”

"If not shemlen, then wyverns," Ellana tapped the flat of her blade against her palm. "Give me a dozen mages."

“We can't hunt wyverns," Beth shot her down.

"I've had enough poison for one lifetime," Anders muttered to himself.

Ellana must have heard him because she frowned, "They’re not poisonous if they’re prepared right."

"Does Mahanon know how to prepare them?" Anders asked sarcastically.

“There’s nothing else here." Ellana pointed to the hole in the wall, her skinning knife like the needle of a compass pointed not north but nowhere. Outside, the river was free of fish and full of ice, and beyond that, a sparse snow forest led all the way to Ansburg. "Not unless you want to head into the Green Dales and deal with Clan Ralaferin."

"And why don't we?" Sketch countered. "I still don't understand why we left Clan Lavellan."

"We can't wage a war from a forest," Anders couldn’t believe they were having this argument again. "We need a fortress."

"Hm," Sketch hummed doubtfully. "That depends on what type of war you want to wage."

“What are you talking about?” Anders demanded. “We all knew this would be years of open warfare.”

“There are other kinds of warfare,” Sketch said. “Kinds we might be more suited towards.”

“I don’t believe we’re suited for war at all,” Islau grumbled. “The mages need more training if they’re to have any hope of holding their own out there.”

“Out where?” Sketch scoffed. “Out in the open fields and farmlands along the Minanter so the templars can see us coming? Why do we even think open-war is a good idea? We should be fighting from the forests, ambushing their armies, and stealing their supplies.”

“Will you stop trying to steal things?” Ella shot Sketch a look.

“We’re not fighting from anywhere yet,” Beth said.

“We don’t need a fortress,” Sketch kept on. “Do we really think we can hold this place when the templars storm it?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Anders said. “We can’t just scatter and enact the Chantry’s canon for them. Mages need somewhere safe to gather and we’re going to give it to them.”

“This many mages in one place is a mistake,” Sketch said. “We’ll never find a way to feed them all.”

“I don't see why we can't just grow food,” Islau huffed, eyeing Ella from across the table. “You were so determined to become a deranged arcanist -"

“Cultivation mage,” Ella cut him off.

“Call it whatever you will,” Islau said contemptuously, like Ella hadn’t just told him exactly what she called it. “You’ve given up your mind and gained nothing. We’re still starving.”

“I don’t think you’ve starved a day in your life, Islau,” Sketch said.

“Cultivation magic only works on ironbark infused soil, when it's filled with the seeds of whatever you want to cultivate,” Ella explained, like Islau was the apprentice and Ella was the enchanter between them. “Do you see any ironbark around here, you old bastard?"

“Well I never,” Islau recoiled in his chair like he’d been slapped.

“Great,” Anders dragged his fingers through his hair, and unraveled it from his tie all over again. “So we have no one to tax, no one to raid, nothing to grow, nothing to hunt-”

“No supplies and nothing to do,” Sketch finished for him. “People are going stir crazy.”

“I don’t care if they’re bored,” Anders said. “I care if they’re hungry.”

“People do bad things when they’re bored,” Sketch warned him.

“People or you?” Anders asked.

“I consider myself to be people,” Sketch grinned.

“You’re not People,” Ellana said.

“Elf on elf violence,” Sketch sniffed. “No wonder Clan Ralaferin can’t stand you. I was referring to the lowercase ‘people,’ for the record. ”

“Clan Ralaferin soiled our culture sharing it with outsiders,” Ellana said instead of apologizing.

“We’re outsiders, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Sketch gestured around the room.

“Do you think the Ralaferin Clan would help us?” Anders asked Ellana before she and Sketch could keep arguing.

“Do you want to risk it?” Ellana shot back. “Clan Ralaferin might be fond of outsiders, but they don’t care for mages. They hardly have any of their own, and their own First left them because they have so little regard for magic… The Old Bat was going to trade them Mahanon in exchange for three of their halla.”

“I’m sorry,” Anders signed when it was one of the few Ellana knew.

“Just three. The same number you slaughtered when you stumbled across us five months ago,” Ellana went back to tapping her knife against her palm. “That’s all my brother was worth to them. There’s a thousand sovereigns on your head, and you want to trust them?”

“I trust you,” Anders said.

"You're an idiot," Ellana said.

Anders didn’t need Ellana to tell him that. There was nothing else he could have been, sitting in a soon-to-be mausoleum full of mages who’d come to him for freedom and he’d failed them at food. He didn’t know what he was doing, pretending he could give them a better life while the world just kept getting worse and the Chantry disbanded the College and locked down the Circles and Marched on the mages.

“Should we vote?” Islau asked.

“On what?” Anders asked. “None of us know what we’re doing.”

Anders pushed the heels of his palms into his eyes, but all he saw was spots and no solutions. Amell would have had an answer. Amell knew how to find armies, and feed them, and arm them, and house them, and horse them, and he knew how to do it in under a year with a horde of darkspawn behind him and an army of soldiers before him. Anders didn’t - and for all he’d sworn he’d leave Amell out of it he felt like he’d never needed him more than he did now - half a world away and an ocean apart.

Chapter 227: From Kirkwall We Fled: Unsure of Ourselves

Summary:

From afar, they heard the sound
Of ten thousand voices raised in song,
And the marching of a great host.

- Shartan 9:16

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 8 Pluitanis Late Morning
Ansburg: Warden’s Keep

Anders couldn’t do this.

Anders had never been able to do this. Amell had warned him he wouldn’t be able to do it. Amell had said he believed in him, but Anders had never forgotten their argument over the Anvil of the Void. Amell had told him that he’d been in battle but never in war, and that the two weren’t the same, and he was right. Anders could take out a hundred soldiers on his own, but he couldn’t feed a hundred in the aftermath.

“Can’t we trade with them?” Ella’s voice broke through his lamentations.

“Who?” Anders groaned into his hands.

“Clan Ralaferin,” Ella said. “Can’t we trade them for ironbark, so we can start growing food?”

“What are we supposed to trade them?” Anders demanded, finally frustrated enough to look her in the eyes when present failures outweighed past ones. “Look around. There’s nothing here. We have nothing to offer them.”

“We have magic,” Islau argued. “Clan Lavellan had need of it. Who is to say Clan Ralaferin will not?”

"I am," Ellana said. "They're not your friends."

“Is anyone?” Anders bemoaned into his canteen when he took another drink.

“What about Isabela?” Beth asked.

“What about Isabela?” Anders signed.

“She could help us,” Beth said.

“The Felicisima Armada isn’t going to ferry supplies up the Minanter,” Anders signed.

“Why not?” Beth asked.

"Because we can't pay them," Anders signed. "Because we used the coin we earned off the silks to get ourselves through the winter."

"She's our friend," Beth said. "We don't have to pay her."

"And her crew?" Anders signed. "Do we have to pay them?"

"At least I'm trying to come up with solutions," Beth signed back.

"There is no solution," Anders signed. "We need-" Amell. He needed Amell. "-the Wardens,” Anders said aloud. "I'll write to Janeka to enact the treaties, and if Stroud has a problem with it, he can take it up with her.”

"If the Grey Wardens start taking tithe into Ansburg we're going to attract attention." Nemmaya cautioned. “We should look for alternatives. If the Exalted March continues, the templars are going to need their own supply lines we could raid.”

“If?” Anders asked. “What do you mean ‘if’?”

“I mean ‘if,’” Nemmaya said. “The Chantry launched the Exalted March to quell the Kirkwall Rebellion, and it’s been quelled.”

“Has it?” Islau asked doubtfully.

“You lost,” Nemmaya said.

“The war hasn’t started,” Islau protested.

“Wars are won before they do,” Nemmaya said. “Khedra understood that. None of you are from Kaiten, or old enough to know it’s history, but there’s a reason Khedra created the colosseum and it was to give people like us a chance. We’ll never rival the Chantry’s resources.”

“They’ll never rival ours,” Anders said. “We have magic-”

“Impractical magic,” Nemmaya cut him off. “Your mages were taught to entertain, to be alchemists and artificers who bottle their magic up on shelves for the Tranquil to sell.”

“Which is why we are teaching them combat magic,” Islau said. “These things take time.”

“That’s time the templars don’t need,” Nemmaya said. “They’ve won. They’re hunting a few hundred apostates scattered throughout the Free Marches. The College of Magi has been disbanded and none of the other Circles rebelled with you.”

“Yet,” Anders frowned.

“We want this loss,” Nemmaya said. “If the Chantry declares victory and calls for an end to the Exalted March, then they won’t be able to keep maintaining martial law, and templar presence in the Free Cities will wane, and that’s when we’ll be able to reclaim them.”

“No,” Anders said. “No, we’re not going back to Mages’ Collectives, and Elevated Brotherhoods, and magic shadow guilds. We’re here because we’re going to war.”

“Maybe Nemmaya has a point,” Sketch said. “Maybe now’s not the right time.”

“Now is the only time!” Anders snapped hoarsely. “The world is watching and we have to show them we won’t be silenced.”

“We won’t be silenced or you won’t be silenced?” Sketch asked.

“Excuse you?” Anders demanded.

“Maybe this is as far as it goes,” Sketch shrugged. “Maybe this is where we run.”

“We’re done running,” Anders said.

“Maybe you are-” Sketch started.

“We all are!” Anders argued. “We’ve been through this. The First Enchanters were afraid or they would have voted for freedom. We have the attention of the Imperium, and we have other allies out there, we just have to show them we’re capable of standing up to the Chantry.”

“We are certainly capable of destroying one,” Islau chuckled.

“Don’t make me like you,” Anders muttered.

“We’re not even capable of supporting ourselves,” Sketch said.

“Once the Grey Wardens raise taxes-” Anders started.

“People will riot and resent them,” Nemmaya said. “I agree with Ellana - there are wyverns in the Weyrs and we can make use of them without attracting attention.”

“I don’t,” Sketch said. “It’s illegal to hunt wyverns in Antiva. If we get caught, we’ll bring the Antivan Crows down on us. If we’re going to keep this up, I motion we send scouts into the Green Dales to make contact with Clan Ralaferin.”

A knock on the door interrupted them before anyone could second the motion. Alain popped his head into the room, the stuttering necromancer from Starkhaven a trembling bundle of brown from his hair all the way down to his boots. “Ah-ah-Anders, we have a p-.. a p-... something happened.”

“Out with it, man,” Islau huffed.

“The Veil’s torn,” Alain explained. “Th-th-third floor.”

“We’re on the third floor,” Ella said.

“From the r-... from the bottom,” Alain elaborated.

“So the first basement,” Islau corrected him.

“Who cares what it’s called?” Sketch sighed. “I hate it here.”

“I’m coming,” Anders stood up before someone could suggest they vote on it, and they spent the whole bloody day debating while demons flooded up from the third floor or the first basement or whatever the fuck the floor was called.

“Anders, we still need to vote,” Beth called after him.

“Are you serious? You want to vote on whether or not I should close a Tear in the Veil?” Anders demanded. “Do you also want to vote on whether or not I should heal the sick?”

“The food, Anders,” Beth frowned.

“The Grey Wardens can get us all the food we need,” Anders said. “Ellana has my vote for the rest.”

“You can’t just-” Sketch started.

“You heard him, flat ear,” Ellana fell into Anders’ vacated chair, draping her legs over an arm, to Sketch’s obvious ire, but the rest of their argument faded when Anders closed the door behind them.

“We should h-h-h-... walk fast,” Alain waved him down the hall. The stone held, and that was about all that Anders could say for it. Wooden beams framed the hall, lined in the bright yellow tubes and tunnels of termites, with moth-eaten banners dissolving away between them. The windows held their glass throughout, but the light that streamed through was muted by a thick coat of dust.

The same dust soaked into the rugs that ran the length of the hall, and a fog followed their steps, as if he’d already fallen into the Fade. “How bad is it?” Anders asked.

Despite the decay, Warden’s Keep could support upwards of a thousand men or more, depending on how they handled housing, but they didn’t have anywhere near that number yet. The mages Anders did have were still clustered together in the grand hall, but their magic flooded the castle, and thinned the Veil through it.

“No demons yet,” Alain assured him, summoning a wisp to accompany them when they reached the circular stairwell in lieu of the torch they might have taken. A pale blue light cast across the stone, and the dirt that decorated the steps. “We were just s-s-summoning water.”

“Maker,” Anders muttered, hand to the wall when he didn’t trust the railing as they made their descent. It was wrought iron, and there might have been nothing wrong with it, but it felt as if every time he touched something in Warden’s Keep it turned to dust. “We can’t keep overcompensating with magic for everything.”

Alain glanced at the wisp hovering in the stairwell with them, the pale blue light illuminating his face and all its hidden features, his eyes lost in the narrow valley between a heavy brow and high cheekbones, full once but gone gaunt after months of rationing. “You want us to w-w-walk in the dark?”

Anders felt guilty looking at him. He felt guilty looking at all of them knowing they were looking to him, “That’s not what I'm saying,” he said.

"What are you s-s-s-... talking about then?" Alain asked.

"I'm talking about how the straw and the rush here were all rotten, and we had to use primal magic to stay warm through the winter," Anders said. They’d thinned the Veil at Ansburg down to gossamer strands, and every breath of magic played those strands like the strings of a lyre. It sounded like a symphony, with spirits and demons drawn to each refrain to tear the Veil at each crescendo. Anders had closed three Tears in as many months.

If nothing else, no one was possessed yet. No one except for Anders and Allure, but Anders imagined he’d have to prepare himself for the possibility. Their domain felt more demesne by the day and it wasn’t safe. Wisps wandered the halls on their own, felandaris had started growing in the cracks between the stone, and the rats and spiders that lived in the shadows seemed larger with every passing sunset.

The Veil weakened at night. A hundred sleeping mages drew the attention of demons, and those demons turned dreams to nightmares and symphony to screams. Harrowed or not, the mages were haunted, and nights were hard for those who had to spend them in the Fade. Blood mages didn’t, and the number of maleficarum among their ranks had risen in the absence of templar oversight, and perhaps in the appeal of escaping the Fade and its denizens assaulting Ansburg.

The use of blood magic sealed mages off from the Fade. Little by little, drop by drop, until it took lyrium to dream. There were theories - proposed and propagated by the Chantry - as to the why of it. That it was the Maker’s punishment for the Second Sin, when the Magisters Sidereal had used blood magic to enter the Fade and blacken the Golden City, and cutting blood mages off from the Fade was how the Maker ensured they’d never find their way to His side.

Anders didn’t believe it. On a personal level, there were any number of reasons he might have been unable to dream, and they were reasons Anders could circumvent so long as he had lyrium to force his soul into the Fade. He just didn’t have any right now. The lyrium Sennova sent was for staves, and things more important than his sleep. Anders still slept, he just didn’t dream, and if he did, he dreamed of darkspawn.

He wasn’t any better off than the rest of the mages, he just had other things haunting him. He was still part of the hivemind, and he still heard the Call of Razikale and Lusacan, and he still woke up sweating in the middle of the night. Unlike the rest of the mages, on those nights Anders would catch himself seeking out Stroud, and setting his hatred of him and his mustache aside so the two of them could sit in a silent show of solidarity no one else understood.

No one save for the man wrapped up in rosewood on his finger, who woke with him a thousand miles away, and helped him keep calm even when Warden’s Keep was crumbling down around him. Anders followed Alain down into the lower levels of Warden’s Keep. The first three levels of Warden’s Keep were built into the cliff face, with the first open to the river and serving as a dockyard, the second as storage, and the third as a bathhouse.

It was the size of a ballroom, floored with marble and rose gold, divans or doors between every other pillar, offering sitting areas or private bathrooms. Gold railings decorated with griffons divided the main bath into segments. It was deep enough the waters would have reached Anders' shoulders, but the mages hadn’t finished filling it before the Veil tore. The room was awash in the emerald light of the Veil Tear, like a swath of lightning arcing towards the crystalline waters.

Anders could see the Fade reflected in the water, replacing the dozen or so mages ringed around the marble bath with memories of the Grey Wardens who’d once made use of it. The wardens lounged around the room with an air of easy camaraderie in stark contrast to the air of anxiety in the mages, who knew they weren’t really wardens but wisps: precursors to demons and disaster. Somehow, Anders wasn’t surprised to see Eiton among the mages.

The exiled prince was absent any primal magic, but evidently that hadn’t stopped him making use of his advisor Derandt to conjure water for him. The old man was the only one of the mages not dressed for the bath, his finery fraying from the time spent on the road, but Derandt was in so much denial he refused to make use of barkcloth to mend it. Derandt was in denial about everything, even his hair, and no matter how long the grey strands got on the sides, none ever grew on his head.

Derandt didn’t look guilty about the Tear in the Veil singing in the center of the bath, but Eiton did, and ran over wringing his hands, “Healer-”

“Really?” Anders cut him off. "The river is right there."

"It isn't warm," Eiton whined, pale skin prickling in the open air while he wore nothing but braies. “There are worms and leeches and Maker knows what else - nevermind the mud! I can’t take a bath in the river like some sort of peasant.”

“And that’s when I killed him, Guard Captain,” Anders muttered to himself.

“What’s the point of having baths if we can’t use them?” Eiton asked.

“We can’t use them because the hypocaust collapsed and the aqueduct is clogged, and if we use magic to make up for it this happens!” Anders gestured at the Veil Tear, casting countless griffon mosaics in a pale emerald light.

“But we’re mages,” Eiton protested. “We should be able to use magic… I should be able to use magic.”

Maker, Anders did not have time to unpack Eiton’s insecurities about his hedge magic and clean up his mess. Sketch hadn't been wrong when he'd said bored people did bad things. "We can’t keep expending this much magic without reinforcing the Veil," Anders said, descending the stairs to wade through knee high water towards the Tear.

The mages who’d caused the Tear in the first place stayed out of the water to watch, mumbling embarrassed, ‘Thank you, Healer’s as he passed them. Alain stayed out with them, leaning against one of the gold railings, "I'll s-s-see if anyone knows how."

Anders didn’t know how to reinforce the Veil. Until he’d joined with Justice, he hadn’t even known how to mend it. It was a matter of might and magic, and Justice had both in abundance. He opened himself up to the ether, raw energy flowing through him and into the rift like flashes of lightning, while the mages watched and whispered.

The Tear could only take so much before it collapsed in on itself. Justice’s veins burned with veilfire, sapphire snapping through emerald as energy abounded and set every sconce on the wall ablaze. Beyond the Tear, the wisps of Wardens started shifting and shaping into demons of Torpor and Sloth. They watched him with too idle an interest to try crossing, but the risk remained until he closed the Tear in an explosion of energy that sent what water the mages had conjured cascading outward.

It crashed over and into them, surging up the walls, and rushing back into the bath in a wave that swept half of them off their feet. Anders braced himself with a barrier, and waded back out while water rained down from the ceiling and the mages coughed through more thanks. Anders didn’t want them to be grateful; he wanted them to be cautious. He wanted them to be vigilant. He wanted them to be wardens, but they weren’t, and they were wasting his time taking risks they didn’t need to take because they wanted-... what?

A warm bath?

Was Anders really supposed to say no to that?

“Th-th-thanks,” Alain said.

“Don’t thank me,” Anders said.

“You closed the t-t-tear,” Alain said.

“There shouldn’t have been a tear in the first place!” Anders snapped, startling the mages ringing out their robes, so he switched to signing, “These people spent their whole lives holding out for freedom, and now that freedom is finally here, and it’s awful!”

Alain couldn’t sign half as well as he could, and mouthed along to most of the words as he struggled followed along, “It’s not awful.”

“It’s awful!” Anders hissed under his breath. “You know it’s awful!”

“... it’s a l-l-little awful,” Alain relented.

“It’s a lot awful,” Anders muttered, dragging his hands through his hair, when he noticed Eiton standing next to him and started, “What?”

“I wanted to say-” Eiton said.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Anders didn't care what Eiton had to say. He'd done enough damage the day his carelessness had cost him Soliel, and if the spoiled prince kept tearing the Veil he was going to cost Anders everyone. “I don’t want to hear about how you can’t take a cold bath, or sleep on a cold floor, or eat a cold dinner, or whatever else it is you can’t do because the only thing you can do is complain!”

Eiton stumbled back like he'd been slapped, “I just-"

“You just tore the Veil," Anders cut him off. “Do you have any idea what could have happened? You could have gotten killed! You could have gotten possessed! Do you think it’s all in good fun because I fixed it?"

Eiton didn't look like he was thinking anything. He was just standing there in his braies, bottom lip quivering, dripping wet with water from the explosion. Bead after bead ran down his cheeks, and if Anders didn't know better he might have been crying. "I'm sorry," Eiton said.

"I don't care if you're sorry," Anders said. "Be better."

Derandt pulled Eiton away, but he should have done it sooner. The mages knew the bathhouse was off limits, and they shuffled shamefully out of it. Anders felt like he’d just lost a battle, but they didn’t need a bath. The river was right there. It was two floors down, out in the open, mosaiced in mud, and completely iced over, but it was there.

It was there, and it was awful.

Anders turned back to Alain, “What else?”

“There’s w-w-wind in the south wing,” Alain said.

“Wind,” Anders said flatly.

“It’s c-c-cold,” Alain elaborated. “We should f-f-fix the hypocausts. Most of the t-t-tapestries were t-t-taken down, and all the st-st-straw is rotten, so it’s c-c-cold.”

“I don’t know how to fix a hypocaust, Alain,” Anders frowned at the floor and the space beneath it that should have been full of warm air but wasn’t. Somewhere, in the tunnels that ran through the walls and under the floors, something had collapsed. The castle furnace backed up with smoke when they tried to work it, which meant they had to use primal magic to make it through winter, and apparently the spring.

“Maybe s-s-someone in Ansburg?” Alain suggested.

“Who?” Anders asked. "We can't find the Mages' Collective. Soliel came to us in Kaiten. No one has done that in Ansburg. I can’t just hire a stonemason’s guild to come out to a castle full of apostates, and even if I could, I can’t pay them."

Anders’ legs slid out from under him, and he sank down to the soaked floor with his back against a railing gilded in gold he would have given anything to be able to break off, mint down, and spend. Alain gathered up his skirts and knelt down next to him, trying to keep them out of the puddle Anders was sitting in. “... You c-c-c… you c-c-c-... you c-c-could do what Decimus would do.”

“No, I can’t,” Anders sighed, surprised Alain had even suggested it. “Compelling a whole guild to take on a contract for no coin and tell no one about it? Their families and their friends would ask questions they couldn’t answer and someone would find out. Even if they didn’t, holding a mass compulsion for … days? Weeks? Months? I can’t do that, Alain.”

No one could do that. Not even Amell could do that. Anders couldn’t even keep people clothed without stripping the bark and bast from so many trees they scared away the local wildlife and had to push what few inept hunting parties they had out so far into the snow forests it took them all day to come back with a single squirrel, when they should have been hunting wyverns.

Ellana was right. Wyvern scales meant armor and wyvern meat meant food. All they had to do was find someone skilled enough to prepare it without poisoning them, but there was no way he’d find a chef that skilled in a backwater like Ansburg. Wyvern venom caused numbness, paralysis, and death, and keeping it from spoiling the meat was masterwork. Anders would never find someone who could cook it.

Amell had.

Amell had a chef at Vigil’s Keep who’d prepared a Gift of Flesh for him three years ago when Anders had come home. A wyvern stuffed with a gurn, stuffed with a horse, stuffed with a halla, stuffed with a swan, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a quail, stuffed with a bunting, that had taken the chef Maker knew how many days to make, and Amell had done it for him to welcome him home.

Anders wanted to go home. Anders pushed the heels of his palms into his eyes and fought his way through one rickety breath after the next to keep them from turning into sobs. Maker, he wanted to go home. Everything was awful. Every problem he had was a dozen more in disguise, and Anders couldn’t do anything about any of them and Amell couldn’t either because Amell wasn’t here and Amell couldn’t help him. He was just a ring around his finger, and it didn’t matter if Amell could sense he was upset, because all the comfort he could offer from a distance couldn’t compare to his arms, and it had been so long since Anders had felt them he was afraid he was never going to feel them again.

“What if we f-f-fix it?" Alain asked.

“Fix what?" Anders scoured his sorrow off his face with the heel of his hand.

"The hypocaust," Alain said. "We could f-f-find a stonemason to teach us how to f-f-fix it instead of using a guild."

"Kidnap a stonemason," Anders corrected him.

"Maybe they'll want to h-h-help us," Alain said.

"No one wants to help us," Anders said.

"W-w-we want to help us," Alain said.

"It takes seven years to apprentice as a stonemason, Alain," Anders had heard as much time and again from Voldrik Glavonak, the Vigil’s stonemason, the handful of times he'd made the mistake of letting Sigrun convince him to help work on the walls.

It was just stacking stones, as far as Anders was concerned, except it wasn't, because the stone had to be mined, hauled, measured, cut, mortared, and then stacked - not to mention the mortar had to be made and Anders had always gotten the ratios wrong until Voldrik had decided Anders was more helpful not helping. Just repairing the walls at Vigil’s Keep had cost Amell almost a hundred sovereigns, and it would have cost more if he didn't own his own mine.

"Then we should get st-st-started," Alain said.

Maybe it was the way Alain said it, or maybe it was just that Anders felt so bloody hopeless Amell couldn't help but offer him his confidence, but he got up off the floor. Anders took Allure with him to Ansburg, and they waded through the wants of every stonemason in the only stonemason’s guild in all of Ansburg until they found someone with the want to help them.

Gatsi Sturhald looked like he’d been carved straight from the stone he’d spent his entire life working with. The dwarf was solid and sturdy but slightly unpolished, with a bad habit of saying “I’ll get back to that,” and then getting to anything else. Mortared with wrinkles, and squared off with tattoos, he was always covered in a persistent layer of dust or dirt and dandruff.

Gatsi wanted to finish something. Gatsi never finished anything - save for a statue of Paragon Branka - to his immense regret when it came out that she’d been enslaving the casteless. He’d been part of the protests that Anders had started when he’d exposed King Bhelen’s involvement, and gotten himself branded and exiled because of it. He believed in good things. He believed in good people. He believed in good mages, and had an obsession with dreams.

Allure gave him one. A dream. A dream of making something from nothing. A dream of seeing that something through to the end. A dream of a place permeated with magic and mages and men he would be proud to serve with his stonework. A dream of a fallen fortress on the border of two empires rebuilt into the envy of both.

It was such a good dream Anders almost believed in it until they made it back to Warden’s Keep in time for Ellana to tell him an army was on the way. They were coming from the west, from Kaiten and Starkhaven and Tantervale and Hasmal and all the Free Cities that had already fallen, and Anders wasn't ready. Anders wasn't ready at all. Anders didn’t have an army, and it was too early for an army to come for them.

It was still Guardian, and things were still thawing, and it wasn’t safe for a whole company of soldiers complete with cavalry to have marched up the north side of the Minanter, but they’d marched up it anyway. His mages hadn’t even seen them until they were a few miles out, because that was as far as anyone could see, and the same rolling hills that shielded Warden’s Keep from the world also shielded the army from sight.

They didn’t even know their numbers. They couldn’t scout them. They didn’t have scouts, or horses, or hounds, or watchtowers with watchmen along the river to warn them when they needed to be warned, and now it was too late. The mages knew it was too late, because they were panicking in the assembly hall, talking over each other so they couldn’t hear their leaders trying to address them from the mezzanine above.

Ellana dragged him through the crowds, mages grabbing for his attention when they noticed his arrival. They tugged at his cloak and his clothes, tripping him up until Ellana managed to get him to the stairs. The old woodwork curved up along the wall of the assembly hall, beneath egresses holding dilapidated statues of famous Grey Wardens that had long since fallen over, breaking off at the waist and taking out whole sections of the stairs Anders had to stumble over on his way up that kept the rest of the mages from trying to follow.

It didn’t stop them from calling after him, begging for guidance he didn’t know how to give. “How many?” Anders asked when he reached the group gathered in the mezzanine overlooking the assembly hall.

“Twice our number, we think,” Beth said, bouncing on the balls of her feet to soothe herself or her daughter or both. “Maybe a score of cavalry.”

“How many templars?” Anders asked.

“We can’t tell,” Beth admitted. “They might all be Warriors of Conscience.”

“Wishful thinking,” Islau muttered, the butt of his staff sparking with lightning when he thumped it on the floor. “We must assume they are all templars so we are prepared to face them.”

“We’re not,” Sketch didn’t need to whisper it, when the wailing below them made it obvious, and none of the mages could overhear anyway.

“Get everyone who can’t fight into the Green Dales,” Anders said. “Take the north wing and find Clan Ralaferin, and if they won’t help you find some way to make it back to Wycome. Where’s Stroud?”

“He took a group of volunteers to get into position on the battlements,” Beth said.

“Get more,” Anders said. “Keep everyone on the battlements and out of the battle. I’ll meet them outside the gates. Close them behind me.”

“Anders,” Beth caught his sleeve when he turned to leave and Anders glanced back at her. Beth didn’t say or sign anything else. She just stared, warring with whatever she wanted to say to him, and eventually Anders untangled her hand and left.

Anders wasn’t alone outside the south gates, but he should have been. A few overzealous mages came with him, either because they didn’t have the talent for ranged magic or because they trusted him more than they trusted the walls. Of all the people Anders would have chosen to die beside, Islau wasn’t one of them.

“You should be on the walls,” Anders muttered, wringing his hands on his staff while the army circled the bend in the river, and advanced on them, a mile out.

“There’s something so impersonal about ranged combat,” Islau mused, a few wispy strands of grey whisking in the wind while he looked down his nose at the army, like the battle was beneath him. “We should know our enemies. And our allies. I do not like you, Anders, and yet right now, I like you very much.”

Anders snorted, “What was the vote? For the food?”

“We elected to try everything,” Islau said. “Something has to work.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice?” Anders said.

The army stopped a half-mile out, in the valley at the base of Warden’s Keep. They were too far away to see clearly, but they were an army, around two hundred strong, and the best Anders could make out was that they weren’t wearing silverite, or much metal at all. Nothing glinted off them or their horses, or the lone rider who might have been their leader who spurred their horse out in front of the rest.

They had a bow in hand, and they waited until they were a quarter-mile away to draw it back and loose a single arrow. It sailed up and over the valley, and thudded harmlessly into the dirt some distance from the gate, a ribbon tied around the shaft fluttering in the wind. Anders held up a hand to warn off the rest of the mages, and broke from them to retrieve it, expecting to find a missive demanding their surrender, but there was only the ribbon.

The ribbon was red, and so was the woman who rode up to greet him.

“Hi Healer,” Charade dismounted and smiled. “We heard you could use some help.”

Chapter 228: From Kirkwall We Fled: And Ate a Horse

Summary:

The People paused to break bread

- Shartan 9:4

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 11 Pluitanis Afternoon
Ansburg: Warden’s Keep

They ate a horse.

They were not supposed to eat a horse.

The Red Jennies had brought twenty (nineteen, now) horses to Warden’s Keep and the mages had eaten one. There were a lot of factors at play, in the horse-eating.

In defense of the mages, Anders had not told them they couldn't eat the horses.

In defense of the Red Jennies, Anders should not have needed to tell them they couldn't eat the horses.

Anders understood why they'd eaten a horse. They were all hungry enough to eat a horse, but that was why they were rationing. The problem was that the arrival of the Red Jennies meant more people, which meant more rationing, which meant more unrest. The problem with that problem was that mages didn’t deal with unrest the way most people did. They didn't rage. They didn't riot. They snuck through the castle like they snuck through the Circle, meeting and plotting in secret to come up with solutions, and then they ate a horse.

On the bright side, that horse had ended up feeding everyone for the day. On the dark side, that horse was worth two to ten sovereigns, and if they were going to turn the horses into food, then they should have turned them into coin first, because that coin could purchase more food than that horse could provide. Anders had said as much, but he wasn't sure if shame served as sufficient punishment.

Anders wasn't sure if he should punish anyone in the first place. They were hungry. They needed something to eat. Horses were edible. If Kirkwall had taught him anything, it was that anything was edible if you were hungry enough. Nettles and mud. Silverweed and sawdust. Horses and humans. They hadn’t resorted to cannibalism yet, and Anders must have been truly desperate because he was counting that a win.

Better than Hawke. That was his bar. Anders could clear that bar. Anders could vault that bar. That bar was buried so deep it would never see the light of day, and as long as Anders wasn’t poisoning anyone or putting them in chains, he was doing better than Hawke, but he still had to come up with consequences before the mages realized there weren’t any and ate the rest of the horses.

(They had been told not to eat the rest of the horses.)

For all Anders was Justice, he wasn’t a judge or a jailor, and issuing it was complicated. He didn’t want to break people for breaking the rules. Rules could survive being broken. Rules didn’t bruise. Rules didn’t bleed. Rules didn’t beg. Rules wouldn’t care about bettering themselves and neither would people if they were unjustly punished.

The mages deserved food as much as they did freedom. The fact that there wasn’t enough to go around didn’t make them deserve it any less, so he could hardly fault them for finding it where they could. He could fault them for refusing to ration, when stealing now meant starving later, but if they were hungry enough to eat the horses they were already starving.

It was a mess, and Anders didn’t want to be the one to clean it up. It was the Red Jennies' horse, so it made sense they should decide what to do about it. Anders brought it to Charade, but as it turned out the horses were stolen, so she didn't really care if his mages ate them. Charade abdicated on the issue, more or less dropping the dead horse in his lap and beating it there.

The horse thieves (horse eaters?) had to be dealt with. Beth wanted them working. Islau wanted them whipped. Ella wanted them pardoned. Sketch wanted them exiled. Anders wanted to do what the Dalish had done. He wanted them to make amends for their mistake and then he wanted them to move on from it. He sided with Beth, and the horse-eater-thieves were voluntold to join their hunting parties, but hunting wyverns had to wait until they found a chef who could cook the things they caught.

The Red Jennies weren't cooks. The Red Jennies weren't even Red Jennies. Of the two hundred or so men and women who'd shown up in Ansburg, around two score were Friends of Red Jenny. The rest were a mix of apostates escaped from Kirkwall and ex-slaves escaped from Tevinter. The Red Jennies had tried to help the Kirkwall apostates reach Nevarra, but there'd been no way around the war.

Most of the mages had split off into cells to fight, and the ones who couldn't had stayed with the Red Jennies. They'd tried to find a place for them, but just ended up with more unplaceables, when trying to find a way into Tevinter saddled them with ex-slaves sneaking out. They weren't an army. They were the opposite. The old and the infirm and the infantile.

Children.

Anders made a choice, almost a year ago, when he learned about the Rite of Annulment. The Mages’ Collective was going to save the children. When he realized they couldn't save them all, Anders made another. The Mages’ Collective was going to save as many as they could. The children under eighteen, sixteen, fourteen, twelve, ten. The Mages’ Collective was going to save the children under ten.

Of the hundreds of children in the Gallows, they'd rescued thirty-seven. The rest had died in the fighting or fled from it. When the Circle fell, the Felicisima Armada took the children still in it to Ferelden, but those thirty-seven were already out. They’d been fresh into their magic with families who might be willing to reclaim them, and the Red Jennies were supposed to help them find them, but the war got in the way. They'd brought those thirty-seven-

"Twenty-five," Charade said.

"... what?" Anders asked.

"We have twenty-five kids," Charade corrected him - and there was too much sorrow in the correction for it to have anything to do with finding their families.

They all took a moment to do the math, and even Stroud looked sympathetic. The war room went silent, the only sound the rustle of the wind outside Warden’s Keep, rattling spring boughs and new leaves along the woodland’s edge, and howling up the cliff face through the open wall as if in mourning. The math took maybe twelve minutes.

"... No," Beth broke the silence. "No, you have thirty-seven. We saved thirty-seven. We gave you thirty-seven." Beth wiggled her fingers over an imagined abacus, like recounting might revive them. "You have thirty-seven."

"Beth, they don't-" Anders started signing.

"They do! They have thirty-seven," Beth shoved the number at him, signing frantically "Thirty-seven. Thirty-seven! Thirty-seven!"

Beth buried her face in her hands, still stuck on the number, one hand holding a three and the other a seven. The rest of the war room didn’t need him to translate.

"How?" Anders asked.

"The March," Charade explained, evenly, with the six or so months she’d had to process their losses, assuming the Red Jennies even counted them theirs, and the children meant more than their horses. "We traveled to Tantervale, trying to reach Tevinter, but we never made it to Hasmal. The explosion set the armies on alert, and the Lord Chancellor closed the gates.

"... the fighting happened fast. Farmers need to sell inside the city, craftsmen need to get their goods to market, travelers just need somewhere to stay. People started protesting, throwing rocks and rotten food at the gates. The Lord Chancellor answered with oil and arrows, then Prince Vael showed up with his armies.

"... we tried."

"You tried," Beth repeated flatly into her fingers.

"Beth-" Anders said.

"Don't you dare -” Beth shoved back from the war table and stood, wooden chair screaming across the stone, fury in her features. “Don't tell me to calm down, those were our children!” Beth whirled so fast her bun fell apart, spilling her hair down her shoulders and making her look wild. “We trusted you with our children!”

“No one would take them,” Charade jutted her chin out, thick brown ringlets framing the unapologetic look on her face as she squared off with her cousin. “No one gave us a castle.”

“You just had to get them away!” Beth said.

“Away where?” Charade asked; she looked somehow more war hardened than the rest of them after Maker knew how long on the road, leather armor cracked and crusted with dirt, so few arrows in her quiver each one seemed essential. “The armies of Starkhaven are everywhere, and the mages we took with us to Tantervale wouldn’t take the children with them when they split off into cells.”

“Why?” Beth paced away from her, too much like her brother when her force magic flung rubble out the open wall. “Why wouldn’t they take them!?”

“Children slow you down,” Sketch said.

“That’s a horrible thing to say,” Ella said, hugging Leandra to her chest, but she was more or less a child herself, nineteen years old and at the end of her apprenticeship when the Knight Commander had tried to annul the Circle.

“It’s the truth,” Sketch said.

“It’s your truth,” Beth snarled, turning her anger back on Anders. “Why aren’t you saying anything? Why aren’t you angry!?”

Because he understood.

Anders had never saved anyone from the Circle before he’d joined with Justice. Mages weren’t meant to save mages. It went against the way they were raised. Solitary wasn’t just a cell in the Circle, it was the way of it. Children taken away from their families and forced into dormitories full of strangers, told that if they were so much as suspected of using the wrong kind of magic they'd have it taken away along with all their emotions, their templar-jailors encouraging them to report any suspects or being suspected themselves.

It was isolating on purpose. Apprentices weren’t meant to form attachments, when anyone could be taken away at any moment, sent to another Circle on the other side of the world or a Harrowing they wouldn’t survive. The Chantry wanted it that way. It made mages easier to control when they had no allies, and if mages couldn’t find them in each other, they couldn’t find them anywhere.

Not when the very foundation of Andrastianism was based in blaming mages for bringing sin unto heaven. The Chantry had turned the whole world against them, instilling their hatred of mages and magic into the very words they used to define them when they tried to live free of it. Apostate. A person who forsakes their religion. As if forsaking the Circle, the cells, the solitary confinement was akin to forsaking the Maker and His message.

How many verses in the Chant of Light used the phrase ‘His children?’

Why didn’t mages count?

“There was a girl,” Anders said to Charade. “Eleven… maybe twelve now. She had brown hair, and brown eyes, and brown everything. She would have had an earring - a silver stud on her left ear. Is she still with you?”

“You’d have to check the creche,” Charade said.

“What of the sick?” Islau asked.

The Red Jennies had brought the Red Plague to Warden’s Keep. Not en masse, but still inside, men and women whose veins were too vibrant and whose eyes were too red. They sent the infected to the second basement floor to quarantine, but they still had to be dealt with, and since he was a spirit healer, Anders had to be the one who deal with them, the same way he’d had to deal with the horse, and the hypocaust, and the hunger, and every other horror that kept falling in his lap of late.

“What about them?” Anders asked.

“They shouldn’t have brought them here,” Islau said.

“Are we playing that game now?” Sketch sighed. “Should have, shouldn’t have? They’re here, Islau, who cares?”

“I care,” Islau huffed, adjusting his sleeves over his arms, skin sagging as the rationing forced him to lose weight. “We are not here to become a hospice.”

“Every day, I find new reasons to hate you,” Anders muttered, leaning back in his chair to sigh up at the ceiling.

“Well?” Islau raised an eyebrow at him. “Are we?”

“I’m a healer,” Anders signed without looking at him.

“I don’t sign,” Islau grumbled.

“He said he’s a healer,” Charade translated.

“A man can only wear so many hats,” Islau countered. “The Resolutionists want you for their representative. How are you to lead them from the infirmary?”

“There won’t be anyone left to lead if we let the plague spread,” Anders said.

“Are we the ones spreading it?” Islau asked. “I say again, they shouldn’t have brought the sick here. Meredith Stannard and Garrett Hawke went mad, and if we let the Red in, we’ll all go mad with them.”

“No one else can heal this,” Charade said. “The sick we took in will owe you their lives, and they’ll have friends and family who will want to repay you.”

“Or, the plague will spread faster than Anders can heal it, and we’ll turn Ansburg into another Kirkwall,” Islau said.

“I can teach other spirit healers,” Anders said.

“Pass,” Sketch said.

“Pass!?” Ella startled Leandra into crying, and Beth took her from Ella’s arms to bounce around the room. “You can’t pass on healing people.”

“I pass anyway,” Sketch said.

“You’re a spirit healer!” Ella said.

“I’ll wait for your point,” Sketch said.

“So it takes blood magic and spirit healing to cleanse the red plague, and you’re a blood mage and a spirit healer,” Ella frowned. “You’re the only person Anders could teach.”

“Oh he can teach me, but I’m not going to lock myself in a room full of lepers and wait for my legs to fall off,” Sketch said.

“They don’t have leprosy!” Ella slapped a horrified hand to her chest. “They were exposed to red lyrium.”

“Even worse,” Sketch said. “I don’t care if we become a hospice, but I’m not signing up to be a healer.”

“You are a healer!” Ella snapped.

“Anders is a healer,” Sketch corrected her. “I’m more of… a helper.”

“I’m teaching you,” Anders wasn’t going to argue it. “You’re our only other spirit healer. We can’t pretend these people aren’t plagued. I’m going to check the creche, and I’ll see you in the infirmary in an hour.”

Anders left for the creche, effectively ending the meeting. Charade left with him, war-worn leathers creaking when she jogged down the hall to catch up. The wind played at her curls, sneaking in through cracks in the mortar, and she smiled when she fell into step with him.

She seemed well enough. No worse for wear despite the war, having spent the first day directing the Red Jennies to help them set up infirmaries and creches inside the castle. They hadn’t really had a chance to talk, and Anders assumed she’d want to talk to her family first, but Charade left Beth and the baby behind to come with him.

“Not feeling family?” Anders nodded back towards the war room.

“I prefer my friends,” Charade grinned toothily. “Dad was already a bit of a disappointment.”

“Is he still alive?” Anders asked.

“Dad’s a cockroach,” Charade agreed. “He stayed back in Kirkwall.”

“... is Hawke alive?” Anders asked.

“No one knows,” Charade said. “The Mad Viscount’s been missing for months. The Red Irons are roaming the Free Marches looking for him. Kirkwall is back under quarantine. Bran Cavin is the acting Viscount, and Cullen Rutherford is the new Knight Commander.”

“What happened at Tantervale?” Anders asked when they reached the stairs, the veilfire in his veins casting the circular corridor in sapphire.

“Prince Vael happened,” Charade said while she followed him down, and towards the creche on the second floor of the northwing. “He’s using this Exalted March as his own personal inquisition. He hates you, Healer. There’s a thousand sovereigns and a lordship promised to whoever brings you to him alive so he can make a spectacle of your death. His soldiers are everywhere, using the death of Grand Cleric Elthina as a rallying cry for the faithful and amassing followers for Grand Cleric Francesca of Starkhaven.

“There’s talk she’s strengthening her standing in the College of Clerics so Divine Justinia can’t stop the Exalted March.”

“Why would she?” Anders asked.

“There’s talk she’s a mage-sympathizer,” Charade explained.

Anders barked a humorless laugh that echoed through the stairwell, “The Divine sympathizes with mages as much as I sympathize with templars.”

“If that were true, I think she’d have Annulled all of the Circles by now,” Charade said.

“She would if she could,” Anders said bitterly, but it was hard to hold onto his bitterness the closer they got to the creche.

Warden’s Keep could house a few thousand men, but it was meant - like most castles - to house a few hundred. With the east and west wings destroyed, and Gatsi focused on repairing the hypocaust and the walls, they set the children up in the living quarters on the second floor. Most of the mages made their homes in the grand halls, cramped close together by choice, unaccustomed to privacy after life inside the Circle.

The templars said it was for their own protection, but the truth was that it was to dehumanize and degrade them. It was easy for the templars to Tranquilize them when they didn’t see them as people in the first place, just robes and slippers in different sizes. There were only so many ways for a mage to stand out, and if Amell had understood why Anders never let him touch his hair, Anders had understood why Amell never changed his own.

The Circle fucked with you. It just fucked with you. It fucked with your hair. It fucked with your clothes. It fucked with how you ate and how you drank and how you slept and where you slept and if you slept when you were so bloody scared of demons you couldn’t sleep alone so you slept inside a dorm with scores of other boys who couldn’t sleep because they were scared of demons too and they didn’t want their kids inside a fucking Circle so they gave their kids some rooms.

The kids kept to the creche, but they had more rooms if they wanted, and for the moment they were laughing. Mahanon was there with them, the wild little Dalish among a score of children who spilled from the creche and into the hall. They were all playing, running, laughing, just like normal kids.

Someone had found chalk from somewhere and set up a game of queek, a few kids tossing pebbles with telekinesis and changing calls mid-air while other children called them cheaters. One group was playing hopscotch, and another didn’t seem to be playing anything so much as pelting each other with pebbles. Anders walked through with Charade, but he didn’t see the runner, and he couldn’t recall her name, just that she was eleven (or twelve), and she could sign, and she liked to run.

She would have been good at tag, but none of the children were playing it. Anders walked through the creche twice, half-expecting her to manifest, and she wasn’t among the children who ran over for a hug or begged him to join a round of whatever they were playing. Anders promised to watch instead, and stood out in the hall, leaning against the wall with Charade, wondering whether he wanted to tell himself she was somewhere else inside the castle or just accept that she was dead.

“You never told me what happened in Tantervale,” Anders pointed out while they watched an increasingly competitive game of queek.

“The armies came from the east,” Charade said. “They told us to disperse, but they didn’t give us the chance. The soldiers from Starkhaven pressed us up against the walls and the Lord Chancellor’s men rained oil and arrows… There were so many freeholders caught in the fighting, we couldn’t keep track of our people, and we lost a lot of them by the time we found a way in through the sewers.

“It was worse inside the city. Chantry Sisters were everywhere, interrogating everyone, and once we got in it took us months to get out. Lord Chancellor Orrick all but ceded the city to Prince Vael when his armies arrived. I think he might be seeing Red. He gives sermons with the sisters, and says he’s still sworn to the Chantry, but he’s sitting Starkhaven’s throne.”

“Kaiten’s Viscount is it’s Knight-Commander,” Anders told her. “The Chantry isn’t even pretending anymore. They’re just taking over.”

“Grand Cleric Francesca named Prince Vael Anointed,” Charade continued. “There are rumors the two of them are trying to get enough support to take over all of the Free Cities and unite the Free Marches. Someone in Tantervale is already calling themselves the Hood and trying to start up a resistance.”

“Why didn’t you stay and join it?” Anders asked.

“We did at first,” Charade said. “... and at second, and at third, and at fourth…”

Anders exhaled hard through his nose. “Couldn’t have left before twelve?”

“We tried,” Charade said again.

“No, I know,” Anders sighed, sliding slightly down the wall. “I’m sure you cut your losses when you could.”

“We cut them when we heard about you,” Charade sank down with him, which seemed to give him leave to sink down more, until they both slid down to the floor.

“How?” Anders asked.

“Kaiten,” Charade draped her arms over her knees and smiled. “You kidnapped a prince. One of my friends knew the Grey Wardens had an outpost in Ansburg, and I guessed.”

“You guessed,” Anders repeated. “You traveled a thousand miles on a guess?”

“Not a thousand miles,” Charade said, “A few hundred, maybe.”

“How could you-” Anders started, stopped, forced himself to take a breath before he destroyed his voice and their alliance along with it. Anders drank and dropped it to watch the children play, but he didn’t recognize the game. One of the boys had a blindfold around his eyes, and a handful of other children were giggling around him. “... What game is this?” Anders asked. “Blind man’s bluff?”

“They made it up on the road,” Charade said. “‘How many miles to home?’”

Anders watched for a while longer. The kids would ask, “How many miles to home?” and the blind boy would give directions. Two steps left. Four steps right. Three steps back and so on. Then he had to go find the kids he’d sent off into nowhere, and he had to do it blind.

“I don’t like this game,” Anders decided.

“The kids do,” Charade said.

Anders pushed himself to his feet, “I’ll be in the infirmary if you need me.”

“Some of the kids got sick,” Charade called after him, “Your girl might be there.”

The infirmary had served the Grey Wardens once, and while the rest of the castle was in a state of disrepair, the infirmary was well off. Termites hadn’t taken to the tables, the cots hadn’t crumbled, and it was large enough to serve a squad, or at least all of their sick. Anders expected more misery, but by some miracle of the Maker, the little runner girl was there.

She was still just as fast when she bolted off her cot and over to him, signing “Justice!” like she was begging for a hug, and, “Hey, Runner,” aligned well to give her one when it left his arms for her to jump into them.

She felt sick. Less sandstone, more coal, red lyrium exposure giving her such an intense temperature sweat had stained her robes and flattened her hair. There was a ruddiness to her complexion and a redness to her eyes, but it was something he could cleanse, something he could cure, something he could finally fix.

Anders peeled her off his shoulder, and set her back on her feet with a smile. He might not remember her name, but he’d never forget her face or the face of the six other children he'd saved the day the Beshcals died and Kirkwall’s Collective died with them, fifty-eight days before All Soul’s Day, in 9:37 Dragon. He’d been counting the days. He’d been counting the kids. He’d been counting the people, as they filed into the Chantry, and it was for this.

For freedom. Not Anders' freedom, when he was wanted throughout all of Thedas, and would be all his life, but the freedom of other mages. The kids were free here, and even if they couldn't help them in the war, they helped them remember what it was for.

"You're here," the runner signed. "You're not dead!"

"I'm not dead," Anders agreed.

"Everyone wants you dead," the runner signed.

"Everyone always wants us dead," Anders signed.

"Other mages want you dead," the runner shook her head and signed. "I heard them talking. They're saying you did something bad."

"I did do something bad," Anders signed. "What did you hear?"

"Everything," the runner signed. "People think I'm deaf, so they all talk around me."

"Why don't you tell them you can hear?" Anders signed.

"I don't want to talk to people," the runner signed.

"You're a smart kid," Anders signed.

"What did you do that was so bad?" the runner signed.

“I killed a lot of people,” Anders expected her to need time to process it, but she’d seen the Beshcals butchered, and wasn’t the stranger to death she should have been at her young age.

“Bad people?” she signed.

“Yes,” Anders signed. “Everyone in the Chantry.”

She sat with that, at least, giving more thought to it than most before she signed, “Because of the Annulment.”

“Yes,” Anders signed. “It was complicated. The Knight Commander had already called for the Right of Annulment, and no one cared, but when I did what I did, it made everyone think the Right of Annulment was because of me. It was supposed to show them the injustice of the Circles when all mages were punished for the actions of one. Like when your brother would do something wrong and your parents would punish both of you.”

“I don’t need an analogy to understand,” the runner signed, frowning in indignation. “I’m twelve.”

“Missed your name-day,” Anders noted.

“It was in Harvestmere,” the runner signed.

“Mine’s in Kingsway,” Anders signed, relieved that seemed to be the end of it, and the little runner girl wasn’t scared of him. “What are you doing getting sick?”

“I’m friends with the dwarves,” the runner signed, pointing to the other patients, in far more dire straits just light lyrium exposure. "They all know how to sign.”

Around a half-dozen dwarves were encrusted with red lyrium, and not handling it well. They were huddled in corners and under tables, rocking back and forth and muttering to themselves, while the rest of the sick were resting on their cots. Sketch hadn’t shown, and might not unless dragged, so Anders supposed he’d have to deal with it on his own, but the runner came first.

Evelyn. Her name was Evelyn, Anders recalled at some point, while he set up his work station beside her cot. Anders half expected her to run, seeing the blade and the bowl, but she found enough bravery to sit through the session, wincing when he slit her wrist and sniffling while he cleansed the shards.

“I kept your earring,” Evelyn pinched the small silver stud, but her fingers were slick with sweat and fumbled when she tried to take it off.

“Keep it,” Anders squeezed her hand. “That way I know I won’t lose you.”

“You said it was special,” Evelyn said.

“You’re special too,” Anders promised.

She was, for some reason. This little girl whose family hated her magic and who ran when she was stressed and who abandoned all her friends but still hoped that they were safe. Anders cleansed as much of her blood as he could for their first session, and spent the rest of the day working in the infirmary, getting through as many patients as possible until he passed out on an empty cot.

Anders woke up sometime in the middle of the night, ill-rested. There was no reason he shouldn’t have slept well, when he didn’t have any nightmares, and his patients didn’t so much as snore. Even their muttering had gone quiet, the dwarves all done with tapping at themselves and the chunks of bright red rock bursting through their skin. Anders felt uneasy anyway. He sat up, veilfire in his veins, casting sapphire over crimson and painting the infirmary in purple.

Anders checked on Evelyn, sweating in her sleep when the red lyrium kept her warm, but she was safe. Anders made the rounds on the rest of his patients. A few cots were empty. The dwarves were gone from them. They weren’t in the hall outside the infirmary either, and Anders tried not to panic when he wandered the halls of Warden’s Keep looking for them. They were just dwarves, and they’d arrived with the Red Jennies, and there was no reason he should panic, save that they felt wrong.

Red Lyrium made everything feel wrong. The dwarves felt tainted: twisted and cursed by some primeval corruption that was hollowing out their souls and rotting them from the inside out, filling them up with some older, bigger, long forgotten thing. Anders could feel them the way he felt all tainted things because he was tainted too, the dwarves’ Call carrying him to the grand hall the mages had made their homes.

It reminded him of the shanty town just outside of Orzammar. Tents and hammocks strung up between pillars and statues, makeshift mattresses pushed into piles, people huddled together for warmth in ways not quite reminiscent of the Circle when they didn’t have any bunks or barriers between them. Anders slept apart from them, when his tainted nightmares risked waking everyone, but Beth seemed to enjoy the company when her friends were there to help soothe and settle Leandra through the night.

Beth had a small set up in a corner she shared with Ella and two other mages, rugs and tapestries turned to bedding, where she slept curled around Leandra, and where all five dwarves had gone. One who might have been their leader stepped over Ella to shake Beth awake, but his hands were encased in red lyrium and he shouldn't have been touching anyone.

Anders broke into a jog, jumping over sleeping mages to stop the blighter spreading the plague. "Hey-" Anders called hoarsely.

"Wake up," the dwarf urged Beth, ignoring him. "You have to wake up."

Beth shoved the dwarf’s hands away, still half-asleep, but he caught her wrist and wrenched, dragging her up onto her knees, and at the sudden loss of her mother Leandra started crying.

“Hey!” Anders tried to scream.

“What-?” Beth jerked back.

“Corypheus needs your blood.”

Chapter 229: From Kirkwall We Fled: Corypheus

Summary:

And the ground trembled, and a hush fell over them,
As they knew a terrible omen had come.

- Shartan 9:15

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 11 Pluitanis Middle of the Night
Ansburg: Warden’s Keep

“Get away from her!” Anders drew his dagger from his hip and down his palm, the blood following his blade as the compulsion lanced across the grand hall. The viscous red latched onto the dwarf’s face and sent him stumbling back a pace, but it might have been water for all the effect it had. The dwarf shook his head, spraying droplets in all directions, and surged straight back at Beth.

Beth snatched up a shrieking Leandra, force magic erupting from her free hand, as ineffectual as Anders’ blood magic. It blasted blankets and bedding but not the dwarf, his braids and his beards blowing back as if he faced a strong breeze and not a strong mage. Shards of red lyrium showed through his swept back hair, and his veins glowed a vibrant red as the lyrium in them bolstered his innate dwarven defenses against magic.

Anders had killed countless Red Templars, and there was no reason Red Dwarves should be any different, but neither magic nor blood magic seemed to hurt him. The dwarf advanced, and Beth fell backwards over Ella, startling her awake.

Anders broke into a sprint at the same time Ella sat up, "What-?"

The Red Dwarf grabbed hold of Ella’s shoulder and shoved her out of his way without breaking his stride, his four fellows falling in with him as they closed in on Beth.

"Hey-!" Ella must have tried to cast something, because she looked shocked when all five men kept walking.

The commotion woke the rest of the mages, rippling through the grand hall like a rock tossed into a pond, but the rock was red and the pond was people and the ripples would ruin them. The dwarves had been exposed to red lyrium, and the longer they were exposed to the dwarves, the more they risked spreading the Red.

“You have to come with us now,” the dwarf declared.

“The Void I do,” Beth scrambled back up onto her feet and hiked a squalling Leandra higher on her hip, freeing up a hand that wouldn't do her any good in a fight.

“Beth!” Anders tossed aside his dagger and drew Glandivalis in its stead, veins alight with veilfire when Justice took his place. “Get behind me!”

“We must have the blood,” a spasm ran up the leader's left side, jerking his shoulder up into his jaw and rattling his teeth as his body contorted. "We don't have enough blood." The dwarf drew his sword, seemingly against his own will, and sobbed, "We were told to bring the blood.”

The rest of the dwarves drew swords with him, twitching, contorting, moving in broken clicks and whispering of their want for blood. They were bound by it - enslaved to someone stronger than him who must have sent them after Beth.

“I like my blood where it is, thank you!” Beth said over his shoulder.

“Give us the hawk’s blood or we will take it,” the leader twitched through his threat. “The master needs it. We can hear him in the music-...” the dwarf stumbled, one hand to his head and the other to his hilt. “Corypheus is Calling.”

“This is no Calling; it is a compulsion,” Kristoff had always fought with a shield, and Justice longed for one when he took a defensive stance between Beth and the dwarves, but he’d have to settle for a sword and however much of his magic could make it through their defenses. “Resist it.”

“You don’t understand!” the leader screamed into his fist and straightened, and all at once his face was slate. “We need blood for the blood. It’s the only thing that matters-”

“I think my life matters,” Beth said.

“He needs a sacrifice to see the sun,” the leader stumbled forward, sword slashing, and Justice’s parry staggered him several paces to the side. He regained his footing with a wild swing of his sword that whirled him back around.

The clatter of steel on steel sounded through the hall, and Ella and a few others snatched up their staves and rushed to join him. They encircled the dwarves, pushing them back with nervous lunges. Their staves were conduits, and the Circle didn't teach them how to use them for combat. Even though they had the dwarves outnumbered, there was no guarantee they’d all walk away uninjured, unless the dwarves laid down their arms.

“He needs a sacrifice to see the surface,” the leader persisted.

“Who?” Justice stepped between Beth and his blade, “What demon holds you?”

“Corypheus,” the dwarf said. “Corypheus commands-”

“Compels,” Justice corrected him. “You are compelled.”

“Can you break it?” Beth asked from behind him.

Justice tried to feel for the original rhythm of the dwarf’s blood, but it ran too red. He couldn’t break the compulsion any more than he could compel over it. The dwarf swung for him again, and Justice parried his sword from his hand. It went skidding across the floor and into the crowd, and the dwarf took stock of his empty hands and sobbed. “He won’t let us stop.”

“You need not let this man control you,” Justice said.

“He’s not a man,” the dwarf shook his head. “Monster. Master. Malcolm.”

“What?” Beth stepped forward, and Justice was ill prepared to push her back.

The battle was brief. The battle was bloody. The leader ran at Beth, and ran straight into his sword. Justice sheathed Glandivalis in his chest, and caught him by his shoulder to hold him through his final gasp. The rest of the dwarves rushed him, and Justice pushed their leader off his sword and pulsed with primal magic. The stone cracked and quaked beneath them, knocking the dwarves over or off balance.

One fell. Three didn’t. Glandivalis cut through flesh, muscle, and bone, but balked at red lyrium. Justice parried a blow meant for Beth, pressing in on the dwarf when he broke through his guard to bury his blade in his shoulder. He connected with the crystal breaking through the dwarf’s collarbone, and the shriek that sounded was one of metal meeting metal and not of metal meeting man.

Justice was hasted, but a heartbeat and a hairsbreadth were all it took to turn the tides of battle. Two dwarves made it past him after Beth. Ella swung for one. Her staff connected with the back of their head with a loud crack, and their skull split, blossoming bright red through strawberry blonde. The dwarf collapsed, dead, and Ella dropped her staff, stumbling back with a look of horror on her face.

Another mage blocked another dwarf’s blow, but he was too still and too stiff and his staff cracked when it caught the blade. The dwarf’s sword got stuck, he tugged to try and free it, dragging the mage off his feet. The mage kept a stubborn hold of his staff, and the dwarf cast a smite. The mage screamed, veins glowing a vicious red as the dwarf drained him of his mana, and he collapsed into convulsions.

Justice wasn't going to let the dwarf live to cast another. Spectral hands ripped forth from the Fade, latching onto the red dwarf’s wrists and wrenching hard. His body split, left arm ripping from its socket, collarbone cracking, skin tearing at his shoulder as Justice tore him in two.

The last no longer lay on the ground. He was grappling with one mage after driving his sword into the stomach of another. The injured mage looked ashen, mages gathered around him putting pressure on the wound and calling for a healer in the crowd. The woman grappling with the dwarf alternated between holding him off or holding him back whenever he went for Beth. Justice grabbed him by his hair, fisting his hand in the auburn stands and dragging the sharp edge of Glandivalis across his throat.

Blood sprayed across the mage, an unnatural shade of ruby red, and Justice dropped him on the ground and strode to the nearest pillar, vaulting up onto the base and holding on with one hand as he called out to all assembled, the Fade flowing through his throat.

"Who among you knows the name Corypheus?" Justice called.

Silence.

Unacceptable silence. Warden’s Keep was a sanctum of healing and salvation. Someone threatened it. Worse, they’d invited in that threat when they failed to account for it. They’d simply assumed those among them wouldn’t be against them, and that assumption cost them lives. The mages might yet live, but Corypheus’ compulsion sent the dwarves to their deaths.

Casteless, by their brands, born in Orzammar and banished from it. Carta, by the Red Lyrium breaking through their skin, when Hawke had paid Cadash to mine it. Kirkwallers, considering Evelyn said they signed.

… they’d owe her an apology.

"Speak!” Justice snapped.

A few mages shrank back, but none spoke up.

Beth tugged his trousers to get his attention, “They came with Charade.”

“Convene the Council,” Justice ordered.

Beth nodded, stepping over the dead dwarves to squeeze Ella by her shoulder. The young Libertarian was staring at the dwarf she’d slain, her bloody staff discarded by the body, swallowing down sobs and gagging with every other breath.

“That’s you,” Beth helped Ella to her feet.

“I killed him-” Ella stumbled into her.

“You saved me,” Beth corrected her, holding Ella on one arm and Leandra on the other. “There’s more trouble coming. You can’t cry right now, Sunshine. We have to clean this up before the infection spreads. Everyone, stay back! These men were sick! If they touched you, go to the infirmary! Someone help me burn the bodies!”

“Hold,” Justice said to Beth, and bellowed, “Alain!”

The necromancer emerged from the crowd of mages, missing most of his clothes but otherwise awake, blinking bleary brown eyes up at him. “I’m h-h-here.”

“Can you revive these men?” Justice gestured to the dwarves. “Give their corpses a capacity for speech?”

“I d-d-d-... I’ve never heard of that,” Alain said.

Justice felt the bleed of his frustration in his expression, knowing Amell had mastered such magic and that it could have been used now to learn more of their aggressors. Ella must have taken note, because she took Leandra from Beth and fled to fetch the rest of the Council.

“It’s too risky,” Beth said. “Let’s just burn them.”

“... dwarves are buried,” Justice knew full well from the many funerals he’d attended.

“These dwarves were sick,” Beth repeated. “If we bury them in the stone or the soil the sickness will spread. We have to get rid of the bodies.”

“... Bury the ashes,” Justice decided. If it sufficed for Sigrun, it should suffice for others.

“Anders-” Beth started.

“We’re doing it,” Anders jumped down from the base of the pillar, and dodged around the dwarves to check on the mage who’d taken a sword to the stomach. Another healer had seen to them in his absence. They’d lost blood and consciousness along with it, but they were alive. “Alain!” Anders’ voice cracked calling for him.

“Here!” Alain danced around the blood, barefoot.

“Gather a score of mages and establish a patrol,” Justice signed to spare their throat.

“A p-p-patrol?” Alain read the sign.

“From now on someone is awake at all times,” Justice conjured light and shaped it into a small recreation of Warden’s Keep at their feet, dust drifting through the halls with more purpose than their nonexistent patrols. “Assign them in groups of two and rotate them in two hour shifts through the night.”

“Okay,” Alain said.

Primal mages came forward to burn the bodies and wash away the blood at Beth’s instructions, those few who’d come into contact with the dwarves sent off to the infirmary. Justice set out, dwarven blood drying on Glandivalis, when the slap of Alain’s barefeet racing after him turned him back around.

“Anders,” Alain said. “Th-th-thanks.”

“... Why do I have your thanks?” Justice signed.

“Decimus always d-...oubted what I could d-...o, because I was sc-sc-scared and st-st-stuttered,” Alain forced out. “You d-d-don’t.”

“No,” Justice agreed. Alain had become something of his second in command where the Resolutionists were concerned, a far cry from when he’d once betrayed them, but the boy could bear no blame for that. He’d turned to the templars because he’d wanted to go home, and learned - as all mages someday do - the full measure of their mercy. “See to the patrols,” Justice signed. “We’ll speak later.”

There were too many things to be done in the dead of night. His sword had to be cleaned, the infirmary attended, the Council convened. Justice fetched a rag, whetstone, and oil from the kitchens, and assured himself no one was in dire need of him in the infirmary before taking the stairwell to the southeast tower, where he was immediately set upon by Eiton.

“Anders!” Eiton accosted him, squeezing into the stairwell at his side and swatting at the wisp lighting their way. “I heard you called a council meeting?”

“Not now, Eiton,” Anders rasped, juggling his sword and his canteen, trying to uncork one when he couldn’t sheath the other. Eiton rescued him, uncorking his canteen for him, and Anders frowned his thanks while he drank.

“I have a solution,” Eiton said.

“You know the name Corypheus?” Justice asked.

“What?” Eiton blinked. “No. I mean I have a solution for our supplies.”

“For the last time, Eiton, we’re not retaking Kaiten,” Anders whispered, starting back up the stairs. “This meeting is about Corypheus-”

“Ransom me,” Eiton cut him off.

“What?” Anders stopped short in the stairwell.

“Five thousand sovereigns,” Eiton continued, oblivious to his shock. “My father can afford it. It’s the standard price for a prince, but if he tries to haggle make sure you don’t take less than three. I had Derandt do the math, and it should be more than enough to support the mages for the next one to three years.”

“Eiton-...” Maker, as if he didn’t have enough problems without Eiton trying to sacrifice himself. “I’m not going to ransom you.”

“I’m worthless here,” Eiton said. “You said so yourself-”

“You’re a mage,” Anders cut him off.

“A hedge mage,” Eiton waved the wisp away again, “It’s not real magic-”

“I said no,” Anders said. “You think the templars care what spells you can cast? For all we know, your father found out about you, and he’ll have you killed if you go back.”

“He’s my father-” Eiton said.

“You think that matters?” Anders snapped, shoving his canteen under his arm with the rest of his supplies so he could roll up his sleeve and throw his arm in Eiton’s face. “What do these look like to you?”

“... scars?” Eiton ventured, glancing at his forearm when he should have been looking at the bend in his elbow. “Casting cuts?”

“The circles,” Anders corrected him.

“Freckles?” Eiton tried again. “Acne scars?”

“They’re from leeches,” Anders said flatly, rolling his sleeve back down. “My father bled me. Every day for a year - until he made me anemic, trying to bleed the magic from my blood, then he drowned me in a river. Fathers aren’t always family.”

“I-...” Eiton cleared his throat. “I don’t think-... I mean, I would imagine-... I’m a prince.”

“And?” Anders said. “Your uncle was a Viscount.”

“I can help,” Eiton protested.

“You want to help, go join Alain’s patrol,” Anders said. “We don’t give up our own.”

Justice went to the war room, and cleaned Glandivalis by the light of Luna and Satina while he waited. The others arrived after him, all of them exhausted and in varying states of undress when the dwarves had struck in the middle of the night. Stroud and Nemmaya were in their nightfrocks, while Beth and Ella slept in their robes, and Islau in his underwear. Charade slept in her shirt and smalls. Sketch, unsurprisingly, was dressed, as was Ellana, though she’d brought her brother with her. Mahanon took Leandra, and sat singing something in elvish to her in a corner.

“Are you sure you want him to hear this?” Anders nodded towards the boy.

“Twig!” Ellana called to her brother. “We’re here because men died tonight.”

“Well that answers that,” Anders mumbled.

Mahanon nodded solemnly, still singing, but Ella sobbed.

“I killed that poor man,” Ella buried her face in her hands while Beth rubbed her back.

“The dwarves were among the Friends of Red Jenny and must be known to them,” Justice said. “What can you share?”

“Nothing,” Charade yawned. “I don’t know anything about what happened tonight.”

“Well you should!” Ella looked up from her hands to snap, “You should because you brought those dwarves here and they attacked us and they tried to kill us and now they’re all dead and it’s all your fault!”

“Sunshine-” Beth said softly.

“I killed someone,” Ella sobbed, and kept sobbing. No one seemed to know what to say, but it seemed like someone should say something, considering they’d all killed before. Everyone except the children, and Ella was a child, not yet long enough into her life to have to bear the weight of taking one.

'It gets easier,' Amell had once said, but perhaps for some it shouldn't. Ella wasn't supposed to be a soldier. Her fight for freedom wasn't on some grand battlefield, it was in a garden. It was in the right to garden. It was in the right to exist. It was in the right to continue that existence in defiance of those who were against it.

It shouldn’t get easier. It shouldn’t get simpler. Ella had carved out a space for herself between the Chantry and the Circle and in that small space she didn’t claim life - she cultivated it. Yet of all those gathered, it didn’t seem like she’d appreciate their sympathies, so they kept silent.

“We took in all kinds of refugees,” Charade continued over Ella’s sobs. “The dwarves were from Kirkwall.”

“What do you know of them?” Justice asked.

“They were Carta,” Charade sounded like she was struggling to stay awake. “Their leader was a man named Edric.”

“Edric,” Anders repeated. “Edric Cadash?”

“I think so,” Charade said.

“Shit,” Anders set Glandivalis aside and ran a hand through his hair. “He was Malika’s cousin.”

“Well, not all cousins are close,” Charade joked, her face pressed into the heel of her palm to keep her head from falling onto the table.

“Garrett had something to do with this,” Beth abandoned Ella and started pacing, hands alternating crossing her chest and holding her hips. “The Carta was working for him. It can’t be a coincidence they’re here talking about our father.”

“Garrett’s dead,” Anders signed.

“Garrett’s gone,” Beth signed back. “The Carta came after me - what if he sent them?”

“They were not sent - they were compelled by someone named Corypheus,” Justice said. “Does no one know the name?”

“Why were they after you, my friend?” Stroud asked.

“Isn't it obvious?" Anders asked. "She's our First Enchanter."

"He said something about Hawke blood,” Beth shook her head. “And he mentioned my father Malcolm."

"Hawke blood?" Stroud repeated, sitting up a little straighter.

"It's my family name," Beth explained.

Stroud looked confused, "I have only heard you spoken of by the name Bethany Amell.”

"It's complicated," Beth sighed. "Garrett… Hawke, the Mad Viscount, he's my brother. I don't talk about him often because-... well, I just don't."

"So your name is Bethany Hawke?" Stroud said. "And Malcolm Hawke was your father?"

"Does it matter?" Anders demanded. "Do you know anything?"

"I am just trying to gather all the facts, my friend,” Stroud raised his hands. “It's very late.”

"More like very early," Sketch said. "I doubt any of us are going back to bed. Are there any more assassins we should know about?"

"I’ll talk to my friends,” Charade said.

“Talk to them, she says,” Sketch snorted. “You think assassins are just going to tell you they’re assassins?”

“I take it you don’t have many friends,” Charade said.

“I take it you haven’t dealt with many assassins,” Sketch countered. “You should be interrogating everyone the dwarves dealt with.”

“I told you, they signed, and they kept to themselves,” Charade frowned. “Odds are Corypheus is in Kirkwall, and they were compelled before they came with us.”

Beth pulled up a chair beside him and signed while Sketch and Charade kept arguing.

“Quentin,” Beth signed.

“What about Quentin?” Anders signed.

“He’s a blood mage,” Beth signed. “The dwarves wanted my blood. Maybe something went wrong with his wife.”

“They said Corypheus sent them,” Anders signed.

“Maybe he’s using a fake name,” Beth signed. “You said he went by Daylen in Kirkwall.”

“Daylen was his son,” Anders signed. Daylen. Solona. Fausten. Two other children whose names Anders shouldn’t have forgotten when they were Amell’s siblings, but he knew ‘Corypheus’ wasn’t one of them and he wasn’t counting on Quentin to be creative. “I don’t think he’s that creative, and he was after the Amells, not the Hawkes.”

“I still don’t feel safe knowing that he’s out there,” Beth signed. “What if he lives to be as old as Xenon, and keeps sending people after anyone who looks like Revka? What if Leandra looks like my mother?”

Anders had no idea what they’d do if that happened, but the patrols seemed like the first step to making sure they weren’t caught off guard again. Anders would have signed as much, when the snap of Sketch’s fingers and the electricity sparking on them drew his attention back to the on-going argument. “What?”

“Answer the question,” Sketch said.

“What question?” Anders asked.

“The dwarves were in the infirmary,” Sketch said. “Did anyone there hear anything?”

Evelyn might have. “I’ll ask,” Anders said.

“Is that it for this, then?” Ellana sat on the edge of the table in front of him. “Because we have to talk about your curriculum for the kids.”

“My curriculum,” Anders repeated flatly. “There’s a maleficar out there compelling people to kill us and you want to talk about my curriculum. We have more important things to worry about-”

“No, you don’t,” Ellana shoved him back down when he tried to stand. “You’re the leader. You don’t get one problem at a time - you get all of them at once. I’m not letting you teach Twig until you teach him right.”

“I made that curriculum for my son,” Anders hadn’t had any complaints when he’d put it forward for the Fraternities when Charade brought them their children. He’d pieced it together from compendiums and codexes until he had some semblance of a curriculum that didn’t have anything to do with the Chantry. There was no mention of magisters or maleficarum or that thrice damned canticle that called magic a curse.

There was just magic. Beyond the Veil: Spirits and Demons (in part). Patterns Within Form (in pieces). The Botanical Compendium (in full). Lectures from First Enchanter Wenselus and Josephus (because Amell had liked them). The Maker’s First Children, and Bader’s breakdown of the Brahm scale (because Karl had liked that). A few banned books from Tevinter to top all of it off.

“It’s leagues better than what we learned in the Circle,” Anders said. “Even Islau agrees with me.”

Islau stayed silent, and Anders glanced over at the old enchanter to see him slumped over the table. Anders kicked his chair, and Islau’s head lulled off to the side.

“He’s dead!” Ella panicked.

“Whua-who?” Islau jerked awake at Ella’s shriek, “Who’s dead?”

“Say you agree with me,” Anders said.

“Yes, yes of course,” Islau murmured, shifting so he was leaning on the opposite arm of his chair and eyeing Nemmaya with envy when she slept. “Did we find the culprit? Coriander?”

“Corypheus,” Beth corrected him.

“Yes, yes, right,” Islau yawned.

“I don’t care what your Circles taught,” Ellana continued. “You’re not teaching any history.”

“Who cares about history?” Anders wasn’t about to reinforce ages of oppression. If anything, he’d deliberately excluded it.

“People who’ve lost it,” Ellana frowned, folding her arms over her chest. “You should be teaching them about the Long Walk, the Founding, the Fall-”

“Ellana,” Beth cut her off. “Mahanon is the only Dalish.”

“Twelve of your twenty-five are elves,” Ellana said, like he should know the number. “They deserve to know their history and how the shemlen stole it from them.”

“Now hold on,” Islau huffed himself awake. “We already have language, reading, writing, scrying, botany, alchemy, not to mention arcane lore and all the schools of magic-”

“We should be teaching combat,” Sketch chimed in, with no comment on teaching the history of his kin. “Ella was lucky she landed a swing.”

“Sketch,” Beth hissed when Ella hiccuped.

“We are teaching combat,” Islau frowned.

“Not to children,” Sketch said.

“You want to teach children combat?” Islau sounded aghast.

“We should at least teach them how to run,” Sketch said. “Early morning jogs around the keep to make sure they memorize the exits.”

“Well I-... I suppose there’s some value there,” Islau admitted.

“Can we please just focus on Corypheus?” Anders asked.

“Once you agree to start teaching the Vir Tanadhal,” Ellana said.

“I don’t even know what that means,” Anders said.

“Twig!” Ellana yelled.

“Fly straight and do not waiver, bend but never break, together we are stronger than the one,” Mahanon said, with all the confidence of an apprentice reciting the cardinal rules of magic before their morning lecture. “We are the last of the elvhenan, and never again shall we submit.”

“Nonsense,” Islau muttered.

“Twig’s five, and he knows more than your children, and most of them are twice his age,” Ellana started ticking off her brother’s accomplishments. “Fishing, skinning, cooking, cleaning, mending-”

“Yes, yes-” Islau said.

“If it hadn’t been for my people, your people wouldn’t be here,” Ellana said. “Either you teach your children the Vir Tanadhal or you go find more Tranquil to take care of them.”

“Now hold on-” Islau started.

“Weren’t you the one against sharing your culture with outsiders?” Sketch asked.

“Sylaise says that we should be good guests!” Mahanon explained Ellana’s change of heart. “And Ellana says all the other kids are stupid.”

“Charming,” Islau said flatly.

“You can’t even cook,” Ellana folded her arms across her chest.

“Teaching children to cook is not the same as indoctrinating them with someone else’s culture,” Islau said.

“Big word,” Ellana noted. “Too bad you can’t eat it, fat boy.”

Islau stood up, “Now see here, you little knife-ear-!”

Mahanon gasped, covering Leandra’s ears, and Anders snapped, “For fuck’s sake, Islau, shut up!”

Mahanon gawked between him and Islau, as if he couldn’t decide who’d shocked him more, “You said fuck!”

“Shit-” Anders blurted.

“You said shit!” Mahanon repeated.

“Nice,” Ellana said flatly. “Any other new words you want to include in your lessons?”

“You brought him,” Anders signed, for some reason, when Ellana couldn’t. Anders took a deep breath and dragged his hands through his hair. “Listen, I hear you, but Corypheus has to come first. The curriculum-”

“Vote,” Ellana cut him off.

“Against,” Islau said quickly, settling back down in his chair, only to jump back out of it when he noticed Mahanon had crept up next to him. “What in the Maker’s-”

“You shouldn’t say that,” Mahanon said.

“I beg your pardon?” Islau asked.

“About our ears,” Mahanon said, bouncing Leandra. “You shouldn’t say that.”

“Lavellan, will you come retrieve this child?” Islau shuffled out of his chair and away from Mahanon, watching him like a wild animal.

“Why?” Ellana asked. “Are you gonna cut his ears off?”

“Don’t be indecent,” Islau said.

“That’s what knife-ear means,” Ellana said. “What? Did you think shems say that because our ears are long? They say it because they knife them short. Go on, then,” Ellana pulled her skinning knife from her belt, and slid it across the table to Islau. “Fix him, fat boy.”

Islau looked between the knife, Ellana, and Mahanon, and sputtered, “This is ridiculous.”

“Yes, it is,” Beth sheathed her hand in sapphire, and the knife flew across the table and into her palm. “We’ll teach the Vir-...”

“Tanadhal,” Ellana said.

“The Vir Tanadhal,” Beth said. “Our elves should know there are places for them outside an alienage. Sketch?”

“Don’t look at me,” Sketch huffed. “I’m not Dalish.”

“You just don’t have vallaslin,” Mahanon said.

“That’s-...” Sketch wrinkled his nose at the boy. “-not how that works.”

“Yes it is!” Mahanon said. “You get it when you grow up, but you can grow up whenever you want.”

“You hear that, Sketch?” Beth’s lip twitched with a smile. “You can grow up whenever you want.”

“Ugh,” Sketch rolled his eyes. “Fine. For.”

“Ella?” Beth asked.

“What?” Ella whimpered into the table.

“The curriculum?” Beth asked.

“Who cares?” Ella flung her head up. “Who cares! People died! Why are we talking about anything else!? What are we even still doing here!? We should be interrogating everyone who came with the Red Jennies like Sketch said! Corypheus could be out there right now compelling other people to come after us! Who knows how many more people are going to die because of him?”

“Sunshine, I know it’s hard, but we have children here now, and we have to make sure we’re taking care of them-” Beth started.

I’m a child!” Ella slapped a hand to her chest. “I’m still an apprentice! I haven’t even gone through my Harrowing-”

“And you never will,” Justice - or maybe Anders said. He dragged his chair over to Ella, and she eyed him uneasily but didn’t scoot away. “You will never be forced to face a demon or die trying. You will never be given a choice between Tranquility or torture. You will never have a Harrowing.”

Ella sniffled, pressing the heel of her palm into her eyes, and Beth squeezed her shoulder. “I know you don’t agree with what Anders did. I don’t agree with it either, but he did it so you could have a better life. What kind of life do you want the other kids to have?”

“I don’t know,” Ella bemoaned, burying her face back in her hands. “I don’t know. I abstain.”

Ellana kicked Anders’ chair.

“Alright,” Anders held up a hand to ward her off. “Alright, we’ll add it, but we’re not removing anything.”

“Any other items?” Beth asked, retrieving Leandra from Mahanon, and at their collective silence said: “Alright. So Charade will question the Friends of Red Jenny and Anders will question everyone in the infirmary, and we’ll reconvene tonight. Ellana, you should get with the tutors and-...” Beth trailed off.

“Someone wake up Nemmaya,” Anders said, gathering up his sword and his supplies. “Tell her Eiton’s trying to get himself killed and tell her not to let him.”

Anders made his way down to the infirmary, supplies under one arm and sword back in its sheath, trying to think of what he was supposed to say to Evelyn when he woke her up to explain that all of her friends were dead. He returned the supplies to the kitchens, and then returned to the infirmary, where three new patients had found cots for themselves thanks to the dwarves.

Anders looked at Evelyn and sighed, trying to come up with some excuse to let her sleep, if only for a moment more. The dwarves had been her friends, and Anders wasn’t looking forward to telling her they’d died, but more were bound to follow in their footsteps if they didn’t stop Corypheus. He was sure the dwarves had told Evelyn about him, but he went through Edric’s things instead, and found a scrap of parchment where he’d written out a speech.

Like many of you, I was once a thieving wretch. I was a servant to coin and my own base desires. And that is when I heard his call. Corypheus opened my eyes, just as he has opened yours, and showed me what was true.

What is the Carta beside Corypheus? Nothing but dust and ashes. Only Corypheus is eternal. We are his hands and his eyes on the surface. We are the ones he honoured with his trust, to dig him from his prison in the Deep Roads.

When Corypheus steps into the sunlight, we will be rewarded. Praise him! Praise Corypheus!

“The Deep Roads…” Anders mumbled to himself, thumbing the piece of paper.

Stroud.

Anders abandoned the infirmary, and ran from one wing of Warden’s Keep to the other to the room Stroud had claimed for himself when he refused to sleep among the mages. Anders threw open the old oak door without bothering to knock. Stroud had changed into his armor, and he looked startled at the intrusion but not nearly startled enough.

“My friend-” Stroud began.

“Don’t,” Anders cut him off, flicking the piece of paper into his chest. “Who is he?”

The weathered bit of brown fluttered to the floor. Stroud stared at him with a face full of so much unease he might have been about to face an Archdemon. “I cannot say.”

“Say something,” Anders suggested.

“It’s not safe here,” Stroud’s whisper seemed to say they weren’t alone. “We’re going back to Wycome.”

Anders watched Stroud shoulder his shield and belt his sword like he was about to head into battle, “What do you mean ‘we’?”

“Beth belongs to the Wardens now.”

Chapter 230: From Kirkwall We Fled: With Prejudice

Summary:

So Andraste sent him with three of her attendants
To invite the People to come to her side.

- Shartan 9:24

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 22 Pluitanis Mid-Day
Wycome: Revas’ Rescue

“We’ve been here for two days,” Anders paced through the library stacks at Revas’ Rescue. Countless shelves lined old stone walls and pillars, reaching up to vaulted ceilings that curved over the second and third stories, while the Grey Wardens held them hostage on the first.

Granted, they’d come of their own accord, but Stroud hadn’t given them much choice. He insisted on bringing Beth back to Wycome, and threatened to revoke the asylum the Grey Wardens offered the apostates unless she agreed. Anders wasn’t about to let her go alone, so he’d gone with her, but he wasn’t about to leave the mage rebellion in someone else’s hands for long.

He planned on resolving whatever this was with the Warden Commander as soon as Janeka was willing to speak with him, but nothing about Wycome had been welcoming. The Red had reached the city, yellow circles painted on every other door to warn of the plague. Whole districts were blocked off, people in makeshift masks avoiding each other as they hurried, heads down, through the streets.

Anders had only been in Kirkwall for the aftermath of the outbreak, but seeing the start was a special kind of horror. Wondering at the red in someone’s eyes or the sweat sheening a stranger’s skin, watching exchanges turn into altercations and trying to decide if a shouting match over a market stall was because people were infected or because people were afraid.

It was worse in the alienage, and Anders knew because Ellana had come with them. She hadn’t given him a reason, but Anders imagined she wanted to visit her clan despite claims to the contrary. She brought Mahanon with her and left him with her clan while she roamed the city and heard its sentiments, and none of them were heartening. The popular opinion was that the elves had brought the Red to Wycome, to the point they’d renamed the plague after them.

The ‘Knife-Eared Plague’ was all anyone talked about. People pelted elves as they walked past, so the elves holed up in the alienage or fled to join the Dalish. Anders didn’t know what to do about it, but he felt like he should do something. He was just stretched so thin already, he felt like he’d pushed himself to the point of transparency, like all the things he was trying to stop were just passing right through him.

“While we’re stuck here, the templars could be burning down Ansburg,” Anders said, rapping his knuckles over the spines of books. The library was filled with endless recounts of battles and Blights throughout the ages, and on some level Anders was sure he could stand to learn a thing or two about tactics, but the words were all a blur and he couldn’t sit still long enough to read them anyway.

“They’re not,” Beth promised, lounging on a divan and watching Leandra wiggle on a blanket beneath her, not half as concerned as she should have been. “Sebastian is focused on the border and our people are slipping past him. We’re in a good place right now. As long as we stay quiet, the templars won’t suspect Ansburg for a while. Will you stop pacing?”

“Excuse me for being anxious,” Anders tugged at the strap holding his staff to his back. “I don’t like the idea that these dwarves can get at you. It worries me.”

“And it’s sweet that you’re worried, but it would be sweeter if you sat down,” Beth said.

“They want your blood, Beth,” Anders signed. “I’ve heard of dwarves using blood magic, but not for any ritualistic sacrifices. I’m guessing Corypheus is some kind of demon.”

“Maybe you can ask him yourself once the Wardens tell us what’s going on,” Beth signed back.

“If they tell us what’s going on,” Anders muttered, checking his sword belt for the third time in as many minutes. “That’s the Wardens - always so secretive and sure of everything.”

“Why don’t you ask to talk to Janeka again?” Beth suggested.

“Fifth times the charm,” Anders rolled his eyes, but it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do.

Anders left the library in search of Janeka, and didn’t get far before he ran into Alec, the hook-nosed halfwit watching them. He was holding a croissant, which explained where he’d wandered off to while Anders was ranting.

“Anders,” Alec raised a greying eyebrow at him. “Going somewhere?”

“I want to talk to Janeka,” Anders said.

“Janeka’s busy,” Alec said.

“Too bad,” Anders said. “She’s been busy for two days.”

Alec chewed through their staring contest, which seemed like cheating, but he ultimately caved. The old Grey Warden leaned into the library and called out to a man with heavy bags beneath his eyes in dire need of a shave. “Dursten, watch the Hawke, we’ll be back.”

Dursten waved without looking up from his book, and Alec led him from the library to the small dining hall off the kitchens. It wasn’t anything like Vigil’s Keep. The tables were a mix of circles, squares, and polygons with mismatched chairs, shoved into the room seemingly at random. Janeka was eating lunch with a Chasind Grey Warden by the look of his tattoos and braids, but his name was anyone’s guess.

“Warden Commander,” Alec bowed low for the interruption. “Anders-”

“I can guess,” Janeka eyed him over the edge of a teacup that didn’t match its saucer. “You can go, Alec.”

Anders shrugged his staff off his shoulder and hooked it onto a chair he pulled over to Janeka’s table. The Chasind - Anders named him Chad - frowned his tattoos into new shapes. “What are we doing here?” Anders asked.

“Interrupting my lunch, by the look of it,” Janeka set her teacup aside.

“What are we doing in Wycome?” Anders clarified. “Why won’t you tell us what’s going on?”

“I’m waiting,” Janeka said.

“For what?” Anders asked. “Stop being so bloody cryptic and just tell us about Corypheus.”

“Roland,” Janeka looked at Chad, “Give us a moment.”

Chad-Roland got up and left. Janeka broke off a piece of bread, and used it to soak up some of her soup, driving a carrot slice up the wood and Anders up the wall the longer she went without saying anything.

"Would you believe me if I told you the fate of the world was at stake?" Janeka asked after her bite.

"The world is always at stake for the Wardens," Anders wasn't impressed.

"So no," Janeka deduced. “I’ve sent for someone you’ll believe before we begin. He should be here before long.”

She sent for Amell.

“I thought you wanted to see him,” Beth said when Anders got back to the library, and felt like the floor was falling out from underneath him.

“Not like this,” Anders dropped his sword and his staff by the divan, dragging one hand down his beard and burying the other in his hair. His fingers got caught in the loose braids on the sides of his head that pulled his hair back into a ponytail, and Anders yanked one out in his frustration. Maker save him, he was a disaster. Amell couldn’t put his hands on him and feel the mess he’d made of himself.

Amell wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near him. They’d made a show separating so the Grey Wardens would be safe from the consequences of Anders’ actions, but Anders had spat on that sacrifice when he’d gone to Wycome anyway. The apostates weren’t Grey Warden acolytes, and as soon as someone found out about them, the Grey Wardens’ reputation would be ruined. Anders wasn’t ready to face Amell when that happened. He wasn’t ready to face Amell before it happened.

“He asked me to keep the Wardens out of it,” Anders signed.

“The Wardens involved themselves,” Beth signed. “Janeka offered us asylum.”

“We didn’t have to accept it,” Anders signed.

“Yes we did,” Beth signed. “I don’t like it anymore than you do, but sometimes other people have to take risks to keep us safe. If the Grey Wardens hadn’t given us Warden’s Keep, we’d still be staying with the Dalish, and Corypheus would have come after me either way. Let’s just find out what they know about him.”

“What Amell knows about him, you mean,” Anders signed.

“You have to be happy to see him,” Beth signed.

Anders didn’t know if he was allowed to be happy to see him. They were supposed to be separated. He wasn’t supposed to care that he could hear Amell’s Call on the ship sailing into the harbor. He wasn’t supposed to run down the docks and throw himself into Amell’s arms the moment the gangway dropped. He was just supposed to stand there, pacing behind the Wycome Wardens, listening to them make a mockery of everyone he loved.

“Here come the cripples,” Alec nudged Dursten when Ailsa was the first to disembark, the old Tevinter mage’s long sleeves only doing so much to hide the lyrium mutation that swallowed her arms. She took the gangway slowly, holding the rope railing on her way down.

“Surprised they’re not wheeling them all down the gangway,” Dursten whispered back.

“Lucky you left when you did,” Alec said over his shoulder to Anders. “If you’d stayed much longer you would have lost an arm.”

“Shut up,” Anders hissed.

“Lighten up, it’s a joke,” Chad-Roland elbowed him when Nathaniel appeared on deck. The old boy set his cane atop the railing to look out at the docks, and Chad-Roland chuckled. “Look, I think his Constable has a new limp.”

“Same one from before,” Dursten laughed.

“Be silent,” Janeka hissed from the front.

“Be embarrassed,” Chad-Roland continued under his breath. “You know they say he doesn’t send anyone on their Callings? Keeps them on as ghouls.”

“‘Course he does,” Alec snorted. “Can’t get any new recruits when you don’t use the Right of Conscription, and no one’s signing up to join the Blind Brigade.”

Anders banged the butt of his staff down on Alec’s foot, and Alec yelped, leaping out of formation to grab his foot, cursing under his breath.

“Alec,” Janeka snapped. “Get back in line.”

Alec gestured angrily at him, “He just-”

“Shut up and show respect,” Janeka ordered.

Alec shuffled back into place, eyeing Anders uneasily, but Anders’ eyes were already back on the ship, and the Grey Wardens seeing themselves off it. The Pride of Amaranthine carried three. Cripples, the Wycome Wardens called them. Ferelden’s Commander of the Grey was the only man to survive slaying an Archdemon, and that was all they had to say about him and his Wardens.

Anders should have said something in defense of his friends, but he didn’t have the words. He lost them and all the air in his lungs when he saw Amell at the railing, the sea breeze Anders’ envy when it ran its fingers through his raven hair. Maker save him, he was beautiful. He’d always been beautiful, and he was still beautiful now, seven years into the life they shared, dressed in the embroidered blue and silvers of a Warden Commander, still too far away to make out most of his features, but Anders knew them by heart.

He knew the strength in his brow and his nose, and he knew the circles underneath his eyes that grew darker by the day as he tired of that strength, and he knew the shape of his goatee, and the style of his hair, and the curve of his ears, and every perfect part of him when Dumat led him down the gangplank and back into Anders’ life, and Amell must have heard his Call because he turned to take him in with those pitch-black eyes that swallowed the light, and his heart, and his soul.

“Faggot,” Dursten coughed into his hand.

Anders felt something inside him snap - like the breaking of a bone at his breast that splintered through his spine and out through his arms. Anders felt his whole body tense and twist, wringing his hands around his staff for one wretched heartbeat before he broke, swinging at Dursten’s ankles and knocking him off his feet. Dursten fell with a heavy thud as he hit the planks, followed by a shriek as he slipped off them and toppled into the harbor.

Chad-Roland burst out laughing, blocking the splash with one hand and slapping his thigh with the other. Janeka whirled around, fury in her features, and Alec fisted both hands in his tabard.

“What is wrong with you?” Alec shook him hard.

“Me?” Anders brought his staff down on his arms to break his hold, “What’s wrong with you, you bloody bastard?”

Alec danced back to keep his arms from breaking, “Take a joke!”

“Try me, I’d love to,” Anders shot back.

Alec set his hand to the hilt of his sword, “Are you saying I’m a joke?”

“A bad one,” Anders battled back the urge to slam his staff into Alec’s face and flatten out his nose.

“You want to go?” Alec thrust his chest out and threw his hands back. “Keep it up, I’ll be licking your blood off my knuckles.”

“Why don’t you lick my balls instead?” Anders sneered.

“Fuck you, faggot,” Alec spat in his face.

“That’s enough!” Janeka shoved herself between them, and Anders tore his eyes off Alec to take in how the scene had changed. The Wycome Wardens were gathered around a drenched Dursten, clapping him on the back and laughing while he coughed. Sailors and longshoremen steered clear of the chaos, while the rest of the Grey Wardens watched. Nathaniel. Ailsa.

Amell.

Amell was here, after almost a year apart, and the first thing Anders had said that Amell had heard was Anders telling some other bastard to lick his balls. Anders opened his mouth to say something else, and exhaled wind in place of words.

“Anders,” Nathaniel tipped his cane and chuckled. “Never a dull moment, I see.”

“Commander Amell,” Janeka pushed Alec behind her like she could sweep her Senior Wardens under a rug or into the harbor. “You must be tired from your journey. If you’ll accompany us to Revas’ Rescue, we’ve rooms for you and your men.”

“Do you have wheelchairs to get us there?” Ailsa wondered. “We cripples find it hard to walk.”

“Ailsa,” Amell said.

It was just a name - not even Anders’ own - but his heart still seized any sound from Amell’s lips. The way he spoke in a low murmur that seemed to silence everyone around him for want of his words, and on the Maker, Anders wanted them when they were bound to be so much better than his own.

“Commander,” Ailsa relented, and spared Anders a glance and a grin that didn’t seem like it could be meant for him. People didn’t greet Anders with grins. They greeted him with horror and hatred, and Ailsa had to have known what had happened. Anders had forced Ferelden to suffer the consequences of his actions when he sent a thousand apprentices to their shores for asylum they weren’t prepared to provide.

Ailsa should have been angry. Amell should have been angry. Anders breathed mana into the enchantment on his ring, and immediately regretted it when he felt a wave of anxiety and stress that cinched around his heart and squeezed, so tight for a second Anders thought he was having a panic attack before he let go of the spell.

Amell’s expression didn’t bely any anxiety when he said, “We appreciate the rooms.”

“My men will help you with your things,” Janeka said, with a pointed glare in Chad-Roland and Dursten’s direction that sent both men shuffling over to help.

“Our page is getting them,” Nathaniel gestured over his shoulder with his thumb at the bundle of bags that came toddling down the gangplank. Amal almost made it to the pier before pitching forward. The bags scattered, and one went into the harbor with a loud splash and a shriek of ‘sodding shit!’

“Tell me that was one of yours,” Amell sighed.

“Mmm… maybe mine?” Ailsa guessed. “I’ll go help him.”

Ailsa’s hands glowed with telekinetic energy, and the scattered bags stacked themselves up into a pile beside the tiny dwarven page throwing a tantrum on the pier. The bag that had been lost to the harbor lifted from it, soaking wet and splashing Amal when she dropped it next to him.

“What the shit!?” Amal stopped flailing and sat up. “You got me wet!”

“You got my things wet,” Ailsa pointed to her pack.

“You gave me too much to carry!” Amal shot back, wringing out his cap.

“You wanted to carry everything,” Ailsa said. “You said, ‘I’ll show you sodding surfacers I’m a bronto-boy,’ and ripped my bag off my back, you little demon.”

“You got magic!” Amal huffed, squishing his cap back onto his head. “You can dry it!”

Ailsa frowned down at him, “Do I look like a primal mage-”

“Are you two coming with the bags or without them?” Nathaniel called.

“Yeah, yeah, neuter your nugs, I’m gettin’ ‘em,” Amal huffed, gathering up the bags with Ailsa’s help.

“Do what?” Nathaniel whispered.

“Just-... don’t,” Amell whispered back.

“You can get our horses,” Nathaniel said to the Wycome Wardens. The men wandered off to the ship, and Janeka took Amell’s arm to lead him and the others back towards Revas’ Rescue.

Anders didn’t know where he was supposed to walk. Amell had exiled him from the Grey Wardens to spare them from the war, but there was no hope of that now. Anders had already ruined everything, so there was no reason not to walk next to him. Anders wanted to answer Amell’s Call and the way it echoed through him, singing in his veins and beckoning him to be with him, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. Not enough.

He moved in inches, in increments, in agony. He felt the weight of their time apart like a ball and chain about his ankles, something he had to shuffle through as he sought some sort of sign or signal from Amell saying he should walk with him, but nothing ever came, and eventually Amal and Ailsa joined up with him instead.

“Supposed to act like I don’t know you,” Amal said from underneath a bundle of bags. “So don’t go saying nothing to spoil it.”

“You can see he’s still the perfect page,” Ailsa said when Amal hurried on ahead, dropping bags and dragging them. “It’s good to see you again, my friends.”

“Are you sure about that?” Anders asked. His voice sounded strange to his ears, faint and far away, like he’d gone ahead with Amell and hadn’t hung back with Ailsa.

“Of course,” Ailsa leaned in close, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Tell no one, but I prefer the Imperial Divine. Shall we?”

Ailsa offered him her arm and Anders took it, falling into step with her as they followed the others through the streets, puzzling out a path through plague districts as they left the docks behind. The scent of the sick overtook the scent of salt and the sea, a pervasive sort of sweetness that seeped up through the wells like red lyrium was in the water. Yellow circles dripped down every other door, staining oak and elm, and people carrying pails on every other corner painted more.

The Red Plague was everywhere - and it was only getting worse - and it was just one more thing to worry about on the way to Revas’ Rescue. Anders didn’t need to worry about Tevinter on top of it.

“I didn’t do what I did so the Imperium could take over,” Anders said.

“I’m not talking about the Imperium,” Ailsa held him back until they fell out of ear shot from the others. “There’s a sect of northern mages who believe they should help save their southern brothers and sisters from the Exalted March. I came to help you get in touch with them.”

Anders tried to gauge her with a glance, but Ailsa’s eyes were forward, fixed on some uncertain future, “What are you talking about?”

“They’re calling themselves the Venatori,” Ailsa said. “They’re trying to remake the Tevinter Imperium.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing,” Anders said. “Are we talking about the same Imperium? You know, the one with the ritualistic sacrifices and slavery?”

“We’re talking about a better Imperium,” Ailsa squeezed his arm. “One that remembers the worth of its citizens and doesn’t enslave them.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I have your support, but I’ve heard about the fighting at the border,” Anders said. “The Tevinter Imperium is only offering citizenship in exchange for servitude.”

“Indentured servitude, not slavery,” Ailsa said. “The Archon is afraid of the White Divine turning her attention north, and there’s no other way to bring them into the Imperium, but the Venatori are still trying.”

“And I’m trying to free mages, not turn them into servants,” Anders argued.

“So don’t send them to Tevinter,” Ailsa said. “They don’t have to be Imperial Citizens. The Venatori can still help you in the south. One of their leaders is a man named Havian Sulara. He’s been buying slaves in bulk-”

“Slaves,” Anders repeated flatly. “Their leader is buying slaves-”

“-in bulk to set them free,” Ailsa tugged on his tabard to reign him back in from his tirade. “The Venatori don’t believe in slavery. Havian has been sending the slaves he frees to Val Colline, Val Chevin, Val-”

“All the Vals, I get it,” Anders waved her off. “What does Havian care about Orlais?”

“The Venatori want to help,” Ailsa said.

“If he wants to send support, he should send it to the Free Marches,” Anders said.

“Don’t you see what’s happening?” Ailsa asked. “The fighting is in the Free Marches for now, but it’s going to spread. The Chantry dissolved the College of Magi and there are going to be consequences. The rest of the Circles are going to rebel, and the Venatori are going to be ready.”

“So Havian is freeing slaves to fight on the front lines,” Anders deduced.

“Do you know how many slave rebellions occur each Age?” Ailsa asked. “One of them has to work. Why not this one? If the southern mages and the northern slaves ally, name a force that would be strong enough to stand against them.”

Nothing was ever that simple, “What’s the catch?”

“Why does there have to be one?” Ailsa asked. “Shouldn’t oppressed peoples support each others’ struggles?”

“That doesn’t mean we do,” Anders said, thinking of how disastrous things had first been with the Dalish, thanks in no small part to him.

“Your time away turned you into a cynic. At least let me give you the names I know.”

“Ailsa-”

“The Commander agrees with me,” Ailsa said.

“The Commander-” Anders swallowed down a sigh before it could turn into a snarl. He knew full well that mages could find their freedom in Tevinter, and once upon a time he might have run all the way to Minrathous, but he wasn’t that man anymore. The thought might have crossed his mind once or twice while they were on the run, but Anders couldn’t bring himself to act on it.

He thought of Fenris, and of Ellana, and of Mahanon, and he didn’t want free mages at the expense of enslaved elves, but that was all they’d find if they fled to the Imperium. Anders couldn’t turn a blind eye to that, and he hoped Amell couldn’t either, but he thought of all of Amell’s old dreams of being reassigned to Marnas Pell, and what he’d done with the Anvil of the Void, and Anders wasn’t sure what he’d say.

Anders wanted to ask him. He couldn’t take his eyes off Amell since he’d arrived. The griffon wing embroidery adorning his cape, the wind in his hair, the strength in his stride, just the way that he walked, like there was no need for his sight because the world would move out of his way. Anders felt like he’d fallen back into his shadow, and if Amell thought the Venatori could be trusted…

“Are you sure they’re against slavery?” Anders asked.

“Would I have them speak to a spirit of Justice if I wasn’t?” Ailsa countered.

“Fine,” Anders relented. “Give me the names.”

They reached Revas’ Rescue, four stories of mismatched stone and uneven wood, the shingles in varying shades of blue with how the weather wore them down, and Anders didn’t think it made him a cynic to say the compound was in bad shape. Revas’ Rescue and Warden’s Keep were one strong breeze from blowing over, or one pail of yellow paint from falling to the plague.

For all Janeka’s men had mocked Amell for keeping on cripples instead of sending them to their Calling, Anders knew it was because Amell took care of his men, and on the Maker Anders missed that. Amell taking care of him. Anders was so tired of being a pillar for his people, his knees buckling under the weight of the world he wanted to make for them, unable to seek any support for himself.

Anders was sure Amell would support him if Anders could just get a chance to talk to him, but as soon as they got back to Revas’ Rescue the visiting Grey Wardens were all whisked off to their rooms to unpack. They were due to reconvene at dinner to prepare for whatever world-ending cataclysm Corypheus’ attack on Beth foretold, but Anders couldn’t wait that long. He had to talk to Amell alone. He had to talk to Amell at all, and on the Maker he didn’t care if they were supposed to be a secret or separated when he couldn’t stand being away from him another second.

Anders didn’t know how he got into Amell’s room, he just got there, but the broken window, shattered glass, and scattered feathers made sense of his mania. Amell must have shared the room with Nathaniel, because the old boy was there, putting up his things in a room already cramped with shelves of scrolls and trunks of ancient artifacts and Dumat, on edge on one of the beds.

Nathaniel looked at him, and then at the window, and then at the shards of glass cracked beneath his boots and said, “I think I heard Ailsa asking for me,” and left.

Amell stopped in the middle of unclasping his cape, “Anders-”

He’d felt anxious, before, but he didn’t sound anxious now. He didn’t sound anything. He just said his name. It sounded from somewhere deep in Amell’s chest and settled into his own, humming around his heart like an affirmation that Amell still held him there. Anders threw himself across the room and into Amell’s arms, pouring his every emotion into the ring around his finger to drown out any and all of Amell’s anxieties.

Anders locked a hand around the back of Amell’s head, taking the impact on his knuckles when he slammed him into the chest of drawers behind him, showering them in scrolls and miscellany. Amell fell back with a grunt and a gasp that dissolved into a moan in Anders’ mouth when he pressed them together, meeting him with all the fire of a forgesmith welding two broken pieces of metal together.

Anders clasped his jaw to hold him through blow after blow from his lips, and the sounds he swallowed were like the quenching of hot metal in cold water. Anders kissed him again and again, heating and hardening them both until every gasp was sharp as steel. Amell clung to him, fisting and refisting his hands on his back, cleaving them so close Anders felt like they were one soul instead of three.

Anders bent his knees, breaking briefly from Amell’s lips to lift him, grabbing him by his thighs and heaving him up against the drawers. Amell locked his legs around his waist, grabbing blindly for the drawers behind him and staining the wood with the sweat on his palms until he came into contact with a handle. The drawer wasn’t prepared to support his weight, and came crashing out of the chest, scattering runestones when it hit the floor.

“Higher,” Anders groaned guidance into his mouth, and Amell found the top of the chest of drawers to hold while Anders ground him against it. “Say my name again.”

“Anders,” Amell breathed back at him, holding himself up with one arm and holding Anders with the other.

On the Maker, Anders missed him. The strength in him. The strain in him. Anders slid his hand up to Amell’s shoulder, feeling the tension in his arm and the arcane energy that eased it and let Amell support himself, support Anders, support everyone and everything.

“I love you,” Anders followed his forearm to the hand he had planted on the top of the drawers and interlaced their fingers. “Maker, Amell, I love you so much.”

“I love you,” Amell echoed him - in everything. In the way that he spoke, and the way that he moved, and the way that he breathed. It had been so long Anders had forgotten the taste of him. It was like fresh air and freedom, with a hint of smoke that soothed and settled and-...

Anders broke from Amell’s lips to stare into his eyes: black, with a thin ring of red, but for all of their passion Anders didn’t think they should have been so blown.

Anders set Amell down. “... are you high?”

“Anders-” Amell started.

“You are, aren’t you?” Anders turned his back on Amell so he could laugh at his luck instead. “You taste like lotus. I can’t believe I didn’t notice. Maker’s bursting blue balls, the first time we see each other in a year and you can’t even do it sober?”

“Of course I can,” Amell followed and found him with a hand to his back, and Anders hated how much that hand meant to him. He shouldn’t have said anything. He should have just had sex. So what if after a year of yearning, Amell would rather be absent than be with him? "Anders, I’m right here-”

“You’re not here, you’re high. Baked. Blown. Blasted. Burnt,” Anders dragged his hands through his hair to keep off Amell. “Why are you still smoking!? You were supposed to stop!”

Amell felt up to his shoulders and turned him back around to face him, “Anders, it was just one roll, it’s not anything-”

Anders inhaled for an argument, eyes on Amell’s lips when he couldn’t stand his blown-out eyes, when he finally noticed the scars on them. They were hard to see with his goatee, but they were there, a few discolored circles beneath his lower lip and underneath his mustache. Anders stopped short, and took hold of Amell’s jaw to thumb his scars. “... What happened?”

“Nothing,” Amell just seemed to enjoy the contact, running his hand over his arm, because he wasn’t sober enough to understand the question, let alone have sex.

“What happened to your lips?” Anders pressed the pad of his thumb to Amell’s bottom lip, swollen from the time Anders had spent on them, and hating himself for not seeing them sooner.

“They stitched them shut,” Amell said absently, like it was nothing, because nothing was anything and everything was nothing so long as he was high, but his lips - the scars - the fucking stitches -...

“Tell us,” Justice said.

“It’s nothing,” Amell stopped caressing him and started holding him, curling his fingers around his palm to hold his hand. “It’s nothing now. I’m fine-”

“No lies,” Justice burned a little brighter to force Amell’s blown eyes into focus. “You use when you’re in pain. Are you so aggrieved to see us again?”

“No,” Amell surged forward and sought his face, falling just short of his lips when he rested their foreheads together. “No, that’s not it, I love you more than life.”

“Then why?” Justice asked.

“... I keep hearing my Calling.”

Notes:

Fanworks
Calling: Amell's Calling as told by Hedge Warden

Chapter 231: From Kirkwall We Fled: Our Calling Upon Us

Summary:

Rest, and tell us of your battles.

- Shartan 9:24

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you're enjoying the story.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 24 Pluitanis Mid-Day
Wycome: Revas’ Rescue

Anders misheard him.

“You said ten to thirty years,” Anders tried to recall the conversation, but it was a seven year old memory of wine-stained teeth and Amell’s smirk in the kitchens of Vigil’s Keep. “You've only been a Grey Warden for-...”

Eight years. The Grey Wardens had recruited Amell at the end of the twenty-ninth year of the Dragon, just days after his Harrowing, but even so Amell should have had more time. He couldn’t have been that tainted. Anders dragged his thumb along Amell’s bottom lip and tried to search his eyes, but they were black, the only hint of red in their rings.

The Blight was in his blood. Beneath the acid burns and the casting cuts and the dragon fire, the corruption had altered his complexion with undertones of grey, long before the color had a chance to gather in his hair. It was still black, every gorgeous strand of it, braided back behind his ear to reveal the sliced skin where he’d lost an earring long ago.

… It couldn’t have been that long ago.

“... it hasn’t been ten years,” Anders said.

"It's been close," Amell interlaced his hands behind Anders’ neck to hold them together, but if will and want were all it took Anders never would have left him.

"I don't hear anything," Anders argued, and even if his throat hadn’t been shot he wouldn’t have been able to bring his voice above a whisper. "I've been a Grey Warden almost as long as you."

"The taint is accelerated for Grey Wardens who serve inside a Blight,” Amell said. “When an Archdemon awakens, it Calls to everything. During the Fourth Blight, Grey Wardens were lucky to make it five years.”

“We’re not in the Fourth Blight, love,” Anders traced his face and the faded acid burns, and damned himself for all the times he’d left when Amell always seemed to come back with more scars. “We’re not even in the Fifth Blight. It’s over.”

“It’s never over,” Amell caught his hand and held it to his face. “It left too much taint in me. Ailsa hears it too. We think we have a year left… maybe two.”

“What-” Anders pulled back from him to pace, kicking scattered runestones across the room. “How can you know that? You can’t know that.”

“I’m sorry,” Amell said.

“You’re sorry,” Anders repeated flatly. “You’re sorry you hear your Calling. Maker, Amell, do you even hear yourself or do you just apologize for existing on instinct?”

Amell didn’t say anything, but at least he didn’t say sorry. Anders was so sick of ‘sorry.’ He was so sick of life giving them things to be sorry about. He was so sick of Amell being apologetic and understanding and apathetic when he should have been angry. Amell should have been so angry.

“Anders?” Amell prompted him, taking a step and stopping at the crunch of glass beneath his boot. There was nowhere safe for him to step in the chaos Anders had caused. Between the shattered glass, the splintered drawer, and the scattered runes, the wreckage of Amell’s room was all too reminiscent of what Anders had done to his life, but that didn’t make it not worth living.

Amell couldn’t put him through his Calling twice. Amell had already gone on it once, and Anders would be damned before he let him go on it again. Anders shrugged his staff off his shoulder and threw it down beside Dumat, and then did the same with Amell.

“Avernus,” Anders sat beside him on the bed. “You get Avernus to fix it.”

Amell held a hand out for Dumat, and the mabari shuffled underneath it so Amell could scratch its ear, “I don't know that I should.”

“What do you mean you don't know?” Anders demanded. “Of course you know.”

“Avernus’ research wasn't ethical, Anders,” Amell said evenly, but Anders didn’t want him to be even. Anders didn’t want him lost underneath the lotus. He wanted his anxiety, and his anger, and his agony, and anything that was Amell, but Amell didn’t want those things.

Amell didn’t want Amell and Anders had never known what to do about it. Anders hadn’t known how to stop him when Amell had gone on his Calling, and Anders hadn’t known what to say to him when Amell had overdosed in his bath, and Anders had never known how to handle Amell’s heroism. It was one thing to watch Amell risk his life, and another to know he didn’t want it.

Maybe Anders should have said all that, but instead he asked, “Since when do you care about ethics?”

“Since he sacrificed Grey Wardens,” Amell said. “Extending my life might mean taking someone else's.”

“It might not,” Anders squeezed Amell’s thigh, and when that didn’t seem like enough, pulled him back into his arms.

Amell smelled like smoke, but he felt like fire. He was warm, and he was bright, and he could make anywhere feel like hearth and home, but that wasn’t why he felt like fire. He felt like fire because he needed air. He felt like fire because he was fading. He felt like fire because he was in the dark and Anders had to find some way to get him out of it.

“Ask Avernus,” Anders said. “You said we could have two hundred years together. Why are we even talking about ten to thirty?”

“Because ten years might be all I have,” Amell said. “Anders, we never really talked about our Callings, but I think it’s clear I’m going to mine first.”

“No,” Anders said.

“No?” Amell repeated.

“No,” Anders said. “You want me to settle for ten years, fine, I’ll settle for ten years, but we haven't even had one.”

Amell leaned back and looked confused, “We've had seven years.”

“You don’t honestly believe that,” Anders said. “We met in Justinian and you were gone by Satinalia. It took three years to start sending letters and five for us to be together, and we didn’t even last the year. Maker, love, do you realize we’ve never even shared a Summerday?”

Anders realized it. Anders realized it every day for a year when Hawke had shut him up in solitary and Anders had nothing to do except wait and wonder how he’d survive a Summerday without Amell to see him through it. Anders wasn’t sure if he’d ever want a wedding, but he wanted to share a Summerday. He wanted to wear white, and he wanted to look nice, and he wanted to spend time with the man who mattered most to him.

“I don’t mind. I refuse to regret you,” Amell clasped his face, and seemed all too sober when he eased him into a kiss. It felt so soft it made Anders want to sob, but he couldn’t summon up the strength. He spent it all on Amell, and he didn’t have any left to feel sorry for himself. “You can’t tell me this isn’t enough.”

Amell traced his brow back into his hair, his fingers finding and following the loose braids that drew the black-blonde strands into a high ponytail. Anders caught himself holding his breath while Amell re-learned the length, thinking about all his old jokes about how Amell couldn’t touch his hair, and all his reasons why.

He’d just wanted to be noticed. When he was around. When he wasn’t. When the templars took him away. When they didn’t bring him back. When someone asked ‘What happened to that Anders boy?’ and someone else said ‘Who?’ and that first someone said ‘You know, the one with the nice hair,’ and that second someone said, ‘Oh him. I remember. I don’t know,’ because no one ever did but at least they’d know that he’d been there before if the day came when he wouldn’t be there again.

And it had looked nice. Everyone had liked it long. Rylock, all the times she’d grabbed him by it and dragged him back to the Circle. Hawke, all the times he’d grabbed him by it and dragged him back to bed. It occurred to him, sitting there amidst the shattered glass on a borrowed bed on borrowed time, that Amell had never really felt it long. Anders had never really let him.

“... do you like it?” Anders asked.

“Your hair?” Amell guessed, running his fingers through the loose strands beneath his tie and grazing his nails on the back of his neck. “Do you?”

“I’m trying,” Anders said. “... are you? Trying?”

“I’m trying,” Amell agreed.

“... What does it feel like?” Anders asked. “Your Calling?”

Amell lay back against Dumat and pulled Anders onto his shoulder, running his fingers through his hair while he gave thought to the question. Somewhere, beneath the blood lotus and the mabari, the scent of copper still clung to him. Anders settled as comfortably as he could on Amell’s chest, listening to his heartbeat beneath him and reassuring himself that it still did.

“I keep thinking of Kieran,” Amell said instead of answering him. “We used to call him Emiel. Morrigan wanted him to keep his name, but she knew she couldn’t call him Urthemiel, so she shortened it. He was… around a year old when she let me meet him.

“She was overwhelmed, raising him on the run from her mother, activating eluvians so she’d have some way to escape if Flemeth ever found them… She has a network now, but at the time, she was stealing from the Dalish trying to decipher ancient elven artifacts, and had their hunters and the templars chasing her… I found her with the ring you’re wearing-” Amell gathered up his hand and thumbed the ring on his finger. “-and she handed him to me and then… she left.

“She had an eluvian and she walked through it. I remember standing there holding him thinking ‘What am I supposed to call him?’ He was already his own person. He could crawl, and he could cry, and he could walk and say a few words. I had no idea what to do with him. I was too scared to set him down knowing I couldn’t see him if he wandered off so I just stood there holding him for so long thinking, ‘What’s his name? What’s his name?’

“I don’t know if it was a few minutes or maybe a few hours but she came running back out of the eluvian crying. I thought she was saying my name because her voice was so hoarse but she was saying ‘Emiel,’ not ‘Amell.’ She ripped him right back out of my arms and I remember thinking, ‘Thank goodness.’

“I didn’t want him,” Amell choked down a hoarse laugh. “She didn’t want him. We didn’t want him. We were his parents, and we didn’t want him. Then I remember thinking, ‘Anders wanted kids,’ and for just a second, I was glad you were dead, so I wouldn’t have to worry about what you would think of me when you learned I didn’t want my own son.

“I said, ‘We have to name him,’ and Morrigan said his name was Urthemiel, and I said, ‘No, we have to name him. We have to want him,’ and she said I was right and she gave him my middle name and told me it was because he had a good father and I didn’t say anything. I just let her name him after a lie. I still feel sick sometimes - thinking we should have kept it Emiel.”

“You love Kieran,” Anders said. Amell wasn’t just a good father; he was a great father. His son was his whole life and Anders had seen first hand how it fell apart when Kieran wasn’t in it. If he didn’t know better, he might have guessed Kieran was gone again with how Amell was acting.

“I love him now,” Amell said. “I should have loved him from the start.”

“You didn’t plan for him to be a part of your life,” Anders said. “It’s okay if you weren’t prepared for it. Amell, love, listen to me, there’s no better name for your son. Kieran couldn’t have asked for a better man to be his father, and you don’t have to worry about what I think of you because there’s nothing to think. I love you and I want the longest of lives with you.”

“I don’t know if I have a long life left,” Amell said. “I keep thinking of Kieran because I keep hearing the Call of the Old Gods. ...it’s like a song someone stuck in my head,” Amell breathed a sigh into his hair. “It’s hard to sleep. It’s hard to think. I feel like I’m in Amaranth and all my memories are music…”

Anders thumbed his brow, wishing his eyes weren’t so blown and breathing reassurance into the rosewood until Amell continued, “The Grey Wardens know where all the Old Gods are. We keep watch with the Legion of the Dead until they rise again as Archdemons. Zazikel was imprisoned beneath the Heidrun Thaig and his Call still clings to the cavern. There are whole hordes ringed around it: dried out darkspawn who died with their heads pressed to the stone in prayer…

“I think it would be better to die in one of those old caverns, rather than risk unleashing Razikale or Lusacan if the Call carried me to them…”

“Come on, now you’re just trying to kill the mood,” Anders set his joke up like a shield to keep the thought from piercing through to his heart.

Amell let him have it, exhaling hard through his nose, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t going to tell you.”

“You know, you probably shouldn’t tell me that you weren’t going to tell me,” Anders said. “Were you really going to keep your Calling from me?”

“I don’t know,” Amell said. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Tell me you’ll talk to Avernus,” Anders said.

“I’ll talk to Avernus,” Amell repeated obediently.

“Are you just saying that?” Anders asked.

“I’ll talk to him if I can find the time,” Amell revised.

“What are you talking about?” Anders demanded. “Of course you can find it. Who cares about Corypheus? Get back on the ship and sail to Soldier’s Peak.”

“I had to talk to you about the Venatori,” Amell said.

“You could have sent a letter,” Anders argued. “You know what? It’s fine. I’m lowering the bar as we speak. As long as you don’t go on your Calling, I don’t care if you’re a ghoul.”

“Even with three teeth and no nose?” Amell recalled.

“It’s still there,” Anders thumbed the wide ridge down to Amell’s cheek. “What was so important you had to say it in person?”

“The Architect tainted Urthemiel when he tried to awaken them, and I don’t regret that their death gave Kieran life, but I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if it had worked,” Amell said. “An Awakened Old God could change the world.”

“I don’t know that I like the sound of that,” Anders said.

“Kieran is an Old God, Anders,” Amell said.

“But he was reborn, and you raised him,” Anders argued. “How do you know what he was like in his past life?”

“The Old Gods gave us blood magic,” Amell said. “The fact that they were powerful doesn’t mean they were evil, and whether they were spirits, or dragons, or spirits in the form of dragons, my son was one. I met his aunt in Antiva. She was a Witch of the Wilds, like Morrigan, and she wanted to awaken the last of the Great Dragons and remake the world.

“Alistair killed her for it, and he and everyone else in this world would react the same way to Kieran. I can’t let that happen, so I spent the past year finding people who still believe in the Old Gods. If anyone ever finds out about Kieran, he’ll have somewhere he can be safe. Morrigan took him to Orlais, but I had to make sure she had somewhere else to run in case they came for him.”

“In case who came for him, love?” Anders asked.

Amell made a confused face at him, “The Wardens.”

“You always told me I could go to Commander Clarel if anything ever happened to you,” Anders reminded him. “You don’t think she’d keep Kieran safe?”

Amell snorted, “I think she’d kill him on the spot.”

“You really don’t trust her?” Anders asked.

“I don’t trust any of them,” Amell said.

“You don’t mean that,” Anders said. “I know how much the Grey Wardens mean to you. Love, I left just so they’d be safe.”

Amell exhaled long and hard, running a weary hand through his hair, and Anders felt the full force of Amell’s regret through his ring. Amell didn’t have reason for regret. They’d done what they had to do, and even if Anders had gone to the Grey Wardens in the end anyway, at least this way he’d given them a chance to get ready. If they went to war now, they might have some hope of winning it.

Anders tried to send him that reassurance, but Amell didn’t seem to take any from words or rosewood. He said, “The Grey Wardens have to be there to battle back the Blights, but we’re doing it the wrong way.”

“What do you mean?” Anders asked. Amell didn’t say anything else, and Anders propped himself up on his elbow to stare down at him. His emotions felt muted beneath the blood lotus, but Anders could tell he felt anxious and overwhelmed, and wished he had some way to abate it. “Love?”

“Nothing,” Amell sighed.

Anders dragged the back of his knuckles over Amell’s cheek, and if nothing else the contact seemed to soothe him. Anders ran his knuckles down to Amell’s chin, pulling his thumb along his bottom lip and watching the way the plush skin yielded to the press of his fingers. “... you know, I was really looking forward to having sex.”

“We can have sex,” Amell said.

“‘I’m dying,’ kind of killed the mood a little, love,” Anders pointed out.

“Did it?” Amell smirked, his ill emotions fading fast. Amell splayed his fingers out over his thigh, and ran his hand up to his hips. “I’m still alive. I thought you liked defiance.”

“I really wish you weren’t using,” Anders said.

“I’m fine,” Amell lied.

“You’re not,” Anders caught Amell’s wrist, resisting the urge to move Amell’s hand to his ass and tangling their fingers together instead. “If you were fine, you’d have been the one flinging me into furniture. I had it all planned out. I’d sneak in and surprise you, but you’d already be waiting with rose petals on the bed and the heads of every Knight Commander in the Free Marches on the posts-”

“-I think there’s more than four Knight Commanders-”

“-Two per post. You go neck first and you push through the skull. Honestly, love, if you can’t impale a few people for our reunion-”

“-There’s at least dozen Knight Commanders in the Free Marches, so it would have to be three per post, and I don’t think they’d fit-”

“-Do you want us to have sex or not?”

“I want us to have sex, you just seem to want a lot of head.”

“You’re ruining this for me.”

“I’ll give you as much head as you want. Go on.”

“The Divine is dead-”

“-Obviously-”

“-There’s a new Divine - some friend of yours I’m sure - and she’s a mage-”

“-This seems like it’s getting away from sex-”

“-I’m getting there. The new Divine strikes every mention of maleficarum and magisters from the Chant of Light-”

“-So she strikes the whole Chant-”

“-and she dissolves the Circles. You show up with the cure for Tranquility, and we celebrate.”

“-With sex?”

“Obviously with sex.”

Amell chuckled, brushing back his hair to whisper into his ear, “Tell me about the sex.”

Maker, he was unfair. Anders had forgotten just how much he’d missed him. The warmth of his body beneath him and all the firm support it offered, the worshipful way his hands moved over every inch of him, sweeping up and down his thighs and kneading tension from his shoulders. Anders rolled his hips in response, chasing friction on Amell’s thigh, and sighing his frustration into his shoulder when he knew just because Amell was functioning didn’t mean he was fine, “The best you’ve ever had.”

“It always is,” Amell shouldn’t have seemed so sober, taking hold of Anders’ ass and squeezing in time with the rock of his hips.

“Then be here for it,” Anders forced himself to stop before he got carried away, and cradled Amell’s face in his hand. “I’m here now, love, and I don’t want you using. I know you’re looking for some way to escape all of this, but there isn’t one. If it helps, go ahead and take it out on me.”

Amell’s brow furrowed, “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I’m here for you,” Anders said. “Whatever you need.”

“Anders-...” Amell dragged himself out from underneath him and sat up, concern eroding his arousal, but Anders couldn’t imagine what he’d done to deserve it. “You don’t exist to be an outlet for my emotions.”

Anders didn't see the issue, “I know you’re overwhelmed right now. I can feel it. Look, I admit I was being selfish when you showed up. I was so focused on you being here to take care of me I wasn’t thinking about taking care of you. Well, I am now, so if you need me to share your scars until we find a cure for the Calling, I can.”

“Do you think I want to scar you?” Amell asked.

“I’m a healer,” Anders said. “It’s not like you’d leave any. I’m just saying I know you’re hurting and I don’t want you to hurt yourself, so if it helps-...”

“Anders…” Amell felt over him, massaging his way up his arms, to his shoulders, to cradle his face in his hands. “I’m not here to hurt you."

"You can," Anders’ voice fell down to a whisper when he realized what he’d been saying and why he’d been saying it. He felt flush with embarrassment, and hoped Amell couldn’t feel it on his face or in his voice or through his ring. Anders thought of taking it off, if only to spare himself from having to confront what they were confronting.

There was nothing to confront. Anders was just offering. Amell had been rough with him in the past and their conversations hadn’t consisted of much more than a safe word. Amell had bound him, and choked him, and spanked him before and there’d never been any need to talk about it then and Anders didn’t see why there had to be one now.

"No, I can’t," Amell said firmly. “I love you. If I’m ever going to cause you pain, it’s going to be for pleasure and not punishment, and it’s going to be because you asked me for it first. I have never once been rough with you for any other reason. Tell me you know that.”

"I do, I just-...” Anders swallowed unhappily. “What if I deserve it?"

"You don't," Amell said.

"You don't know that," Anders argued. "You can't say that."

"Why do you feel so guilty?" Amell asked, but Anders didn’t think he felt guilty. He thought he felt ashamed.

"Why wouldn’t I?” Anders choked. “Maker, Amell, if you knew half the things I’d done.”

Anders didn’t know where to start. Did he start with the destruction of the Chantry and the deaths of everyone inside it? Did he start with the Exalted March that followed after and all the Free Cities falling to martial law? Was he supposed to start bigger, with the fighting in the Free Marches and their unearned asylum in Ansburg? Or was he supposed to start smaller, with all the lives that he’d lost along the way? Was he supposed to make it about his people, or was he supposed to make it personal? Did he talk about Soliel and how he hadn’t saved her, or did he talk about Beth and how he felt like he’d betrayed him?

Anders hadn’t done anything, but for some reason that seemed worse, because at least if he had he’d know what to say. At least if he’d done something, Anders could say, ‘I kissed someone,’ or ‘I had sex with someone,’ and it wouldn’t have to mean anything. Anders didn’t want it to mean anything, because Amell already meant everything, and more than anything Anders wanted him to know that.

“You can tell me,” Amell promised, pulling his hand to his lips to kiss his knuckles. “You never judged me Denerim.”

“You did what you had to do,” Anders didn’t have to spend so much time with Beth that by the time he’d delivered her daughter everyone had assumed he’d delivered his own.

“You and Justice share a soul,” Amell said. “What could you have done that he wouldn’t condone?”

“Anders is concerned that he kept company with your cousin,” Justice said when Anders seemed too ashamed to say anything. His love withdrew to the far recess of his own mind in a separation of their soul to sit with his shame. The emotion was muddied with feelings of betrayal and abandonment tangled in old trauma, and Justice wasn’t sure which thread would unravel Anders' anxieties and which would just unravel Anders and so he tugged on none of them.

“Kept company?” Amell repeated, keeping hold of his hand, even when that hand was his, veilfire breaking through pale skin free of freckles this early in the spring. His nails were worn down to the tips of his fingers, flexing involuntarily at the sensation of Amell’s inbetween them.

“Bethany has been at his side for some time,” Justice explained. “Anders is concerned their companionship counts against his love for you.”

“Why?” Amell asked.

“I cannot say,” Justice knew full well the depth of Anders’ devotion to Amell far outweighed his affection for Bethany. What was more, Anders and Bethany had agreed what feelings fell beyond friendship were born from loneliness and longing for their lovers.

Whatever the reason, Justice felt as though love was not finite, but a feeling to be expressed as readily as joy or sorrow, though he knew Anders did not feel the same, and so he felt ashamed of his own feelings whenever they ranged too close to romance.

“Anders does not feel the same of us and our relationship,” Justice said.

“Do he and Bethany have our relationship?” Amell asked.

“... I cannot say,” Justice said. “I am not sure we have ever defined it.”

“Haven’t we?” Amell asked.

“I cannot say,” Justice said.

“Can’t you?” Amell pulled his knuckles back to his lips to kiss the veilfire burning through them. “Did you need me to define it for you?”

“I would prefer it,” Justice wasn’t sure he could define himself. He had no desire to be a demon, and yet he so desperately desired to be more. He had for so long feared that desire, that desperation, that day he'd taken Anders hand. Justice had taken Anders for himself the same way demons did, and for years he'd struggled within him, within himself, with the need to avenge his own actions.

Anders had deserved so much more than him and his perverted purpose, and so Justice had wallowed and warred and all the while wanted all that Anders had to offer. Sensation, a renewed sense of purpose, his first true sense of self. Justice loved him, Justice was him, and while he had long since come to redefine what made one a demon, his own old traumas lingered.

"I’ve made deals with more demons than I can count, and you’re the only spirit I’ve ever met who’s never judged me,” Amell said.

“I’ve asked much of you in our time together,” Justice disagreed. After all that had occurred in Orzammar, it was evident they didn’t always agree. Justice had attended all of Amell’s judgments at Vigil’s Keep, and argued in the aftermath, whenever Amell acted in favor of the many at the expense of the few.

Not always, but on occasion, over games of chess and readings of poetry, whether they read the words aloud or felt them on their fingers, entangled on raised ink that he might know something of how Amell interacted with the world. Through touch, and scent, and sound, and all the other senses but his sight, reserved only for him and the veilfire in his veins.

“You ask. You don't order. You don't give ultimatums. You're open to alternatives. You understand there are no easy answers." Amell said and squeezed his hand. "You mean a great deal to me."

"And yet you and Anders are exclusive,” Justice said.

“Are we?” Amell asked.

“Yes,” Justice didn’t consider Anders’ feelings any breach of fidelity when they were unacted upon and stemmed from loneliness and longing for Amell. “We wanted to wait for you.”

“We?” Amell asked.

Justice clasped his cheek, feeling the heat of him against his palm as though his body burned hotter than the veilfire in his veins, and marveling at the sensation. “We may not share a soul, but you make me feel seen.”

"You're the only thing I can see," Amell followed the veilfire in his veins with his fingers to where it burned bright at his heart. "Do you want me to kiss you?"

"I would rather you reserve such affections for Anders," Justice said.

"What kind of affection do you want from me?" Amell asked.

"... I want your commitment to our cause," Justice knew it was no easy ask, but it was the only one he had. "And an end to your Calling."

Somewhere downstairs, a bard began playing I’ll See You in Amaranth, signaling the advent of dinner. Justice gathered up the shards of glass from Amell’s broken window, and the splintered drawer, and the scattered runes while the music played.

"Let's not live forever
That sounds like such a sad affair
I think you and I should die together
I’ll meet you at Red Crossing, you wear daisies in your hair
Let's find a way to stay together. Let's find a way to Amaranth.
Let's find a way to stay together. Let's find a way to Amaranth.

"Let's not live forever
That sounds like such a sad affair
I think you and I should die together
I’ll be the Black Fox at Arlathan, just make sure I see you there
Let's find a way to stay together. Let's find a way to Amaranth.
Let's find a way to stay together. Let's find a way to Amaranth.

"Maybe no one goes mad and they all just stay there and we could stay there too,
Just promise if you go, that you'll take me with you
Let's find a way to stay together. Let's find a way to Amaranth.
Let's find a way to stay together. Let's find a way to Amaranth."

Justice finished collecting the broken pieces, and stored them all away to be reforged when they were ready. Dumat jumped down from the bed, and Justice thought to take his leave back through the broken window, when Amell took his arm, and they left the room together.

Chapter 232: From Kirkwall We Fled: Ignorant Our Past

Summary:

Minrathous, city of magisters

- Shartan 9:26

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter!

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 24 Pluitanis Evening
Wycome: Revas’ Rescue

Anders didn’t want to be here.

Between the two groups of Grey Wardens, the Free Marchers were nothing like the Fereldans. They all shared the same strength, the same stamina, the same skills, and they faced the same foe, so they should have been more similar. Both groups were led by maleficarum, but Amell and Janeka didn't lead them the same way.

There was no room in the Wycome Wardens for the injured, the impaired, the imperfect. Where Amell kept his Grey Wardens on, Janeka sent them to their Callings. The Grey Wardens in Wycome didn’t go grey. None of them were as old as Jacen, as tainted as Seranni, as hobbled as Nathaniel, as altered as Ailsa.

Janeka claimed she kept them fit for combat, but as far as Anders was concerned, none of them had seen it. No one came away from war unscathed, not even with a healer, and if Janeka threw her Wardens away the second they ceased to be of use then she wasn’t fit to use them. She’d made them into the worst of Grey Wardens when they set out to cause scars since they couldn’t compare them.

Of all the Wycome Wardens, Stroud was the friendliest face at dinner, but Anders couldn’t stand to look at him when every drink of wine doused his mustache with red Stroud couldn’t be bothered to wipe away. Anders glared at the table instead, holding his head in one hand and holding Amell with the other. The hand on his thigh was the only thing getting him through the evening.

Anders should have asked Amell why he’d changed his mind about keeping their relationship a secret, but he hadn’t had the chance. He hadn’t even had the chance to ask him about the scars around his lips and why they’d been stitched shut, but he could guess. There was only one group of people who went so far as to stitch shut the lips of the mages in their care, and that same group had come after Amell once before.

The Qunari had sent a group of assassins after Amell’s explosives expert for coming too close to competing with their gaatlok when he’d replaced the lyrium in the formula with red. Anders couldn’t help wondering if some part of whatever had happened to Amell was his fault, when Anders had used his formula to destroy the Chantry. If the explosion had attracted the Qunari’s attention, they might have traced it back to Amell.

Anders had no idea if that was what had happened. They’d gone to Chateau Haine to investigate the assassins the Qunari had sent after Amell’s explosives expert, but Anders hadn’t stayed long enough to find out how the investigation had gone. The Exalted March had gotten in the way, and a year had passed since then, and now Amell had scars that matched Qunari mages.

Anders didn’t know who to blame, and he had to blame someone. The new Arishok might have been Amell’s friend, but the Qunari were ruled by a Triumvirate, and the Ariqun had been the one to send assassins for some reason. One of them had allegedly turned Tal-Vashoth, which just seemed like a convenient way to convince Amell to spare them, but they hadn’t had much information.

Anders didn’t trust Maraas. He’d met them for all of a moment and as far as he was concerned it was a moment too many, but Amell was so bloody trusting he just let them join the Wardens. The Maker must have had a sense of humor, because somehow they’d survived the Joining, but that didn’t mean they weren’t a spy. If anything, there was nothing else they could have been.

For all Maraas had fled from Hawke’s cleansing in Kirkwall, they’d joined the Grey Wardens just because. No one did that. Amell hadn’t even done that, and even though Amell didn’t have any issues with Maraas, Anders did. Anders had issues with anyone who was comfortable mutilating mages. Maraas might have been Tal-Vashoth now, if the whole thing wasn’t a lie, but they hadn’t been before, and there was no telling how much of the Qun had come with them.

Maker help them if they were to blame for Amell’s stitches.

Anders was going to kill someone. Maybe not Maraas, but someone. Salit, maybe, if the Tal-Vashoth they’d chased to Chateau Haine had something to do with whatever had happened to Amell. Kieran had predicted Amell would end up in Seheron, but he hadn’t said anything about the Qunari sewing shut his lips, and Anders couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand the scars or the thought of the stitches, or the mask, or the chains, or anything else they’d done to him while Anders was away.

Amell was supposed to have been safe. He’d gone on a quest with the King, for fuck’s sake. If a mage wasn’t safe in the company of a monarch, then there was nowhere on Thedas they’d be able to be free until they’d done away with the abusive power structures and the mindsets they perpetuated in the peoples beholden to them be it the Qun or the Chantry or whatever else lay in wait to oppress them in the lands that lay beyond Thedas.

“Anders,” An aura encased Amell’s hand, and Anders finally realized how hard he’d been gripping it.

“Sorry,” Anders relaxed his grip and looked up. Beth was bouncing Leandra to his left, and looked just as disgruntled as he felt with the rest of the Grey Wardens, picking their way through dinner and making a pretense of polite conversation instead of telling them what they were even doing here when they had a world to remake so mages wouldn’t have to live their lives in fear of imprisonment, mutilation, and murder.

“You feel tense,” Amell ran his thumb over his ring, in such an obvious understatement Anders bit back a laugh, knowing he’d just crushed his hand.

“What are we doing here?” Anders asked.

“Eating?” Amell guessed.

“No, I mean, what are we doing here?” Anders pushed his plate away and thumped his free hand on the table, rattling mismatched cutlery. Conversation stopped and heads turned towards him. “Tell us about Corypheus.”

“Corypheus is not a casual conversation,” Janeka said over her soup.

“So let’s have a serious one,” Beth said, reigning in a wiggling Leandra, “We’ve been waiting for days.”

Janeka’s eyes narrowed, but Beth refused to break, even with Leandra trying to crawl over her shoulder, and Janeka relented. She set her utensils down and stood, raising her voice to be heard throughout the kitchen when she told the rest of her Wardens to clear out. The Wycome Wardens didn’t wait for her to turn the command into a compulsion, scattering in all directions and taking their dinners with them.

Only her Senior most Wardens remained, seated around the table with Amell and the few Fereldan Wardens with him. Anders wasn’t sure he should count himself among their number when his own allegiance lay with Ansburg, but if he was loyal to anyone, he was loyal to Amell.

Janeka leaned against her chair and looked at Beth, “How much do you know about your father?”

“What does my father have to do with anything?” Beth asked, untangling Leandra’s chubby fingers from her hair. “Why did the Carta know his name?”

“Why don’t you?” Janeka asked.

“Excuse you?” Beth asked.

“Malcolm Hawke,” Janeka said the name like there was something special about it, cracking her knuckles thoughtfully. “I noticed you don’t use the surname.”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” Beth handed him Leandra without warning. Anders let go of Amell’s hand to take her, rearranging Leandra so she could lie down in his lap. She was getting to the point where she could support her own head, but she’d been up all through dinner and Anders guessed by her fussiness that she could use a rest.

Beth looked like she could use a fight. She was a stark contrast to Janeka when she stood, the shadow underneath her eyes from lack of sleep and not from kohl, her long hair wild and not done up in a tight bun, her clothes rumpled and not freshly pressed, like complete chaos set against Janeka’s composure. “Answer my question,” Beth ordered.

Janeka didn’t, “Have you ever heard of the Hawkes?”

Beth folded her arms across her chest and frowned, “Does it always take this long to get a straight answer out of you?”

“Of course you haven’t,” Janeka continued without acknowledging her. “They don’t exist. Malcolm made them up. I’m sure you can guess where he got the name. He took it from the Amell family crest, which you would have known, if you had ever questioned the coincidence. I imagine the Mad Viscount must have enjoyed that he could save a silver when he realized he could keep the crest.”

Beth eyed Janeka suspiciously, “So he didn’t have a surname. What difference does that make? There are plenty of mages who are too young to remember their families when they’re taken to the Circle.”

“Is that what you were told?” Janeka laughed, once, a sharp and humorless sound that startled a few of the Senior Wardens watching the exchange. “That he didn’t remember? I suppose that would be simpler.”

“Simpler than what?” Beth asked. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the line of Senior Warden Sashamiri,” Janeka said. “She lived in the Ancient Age, and the blood of the Archdemon Dumat flowed through her veins. Malcolm ‘Hawke’ was one of her descendents.”

“If she was a Grey Warden, she wouldn’t have any descendants,” Anders argued. “Grey Wardens can’t have children.”

“Forgive me, my friend, but are you not holding your daughter as we speak?” Stroud asked with a nod at Leandra from across the table.

“No,” Anders snapped, furious Stroud would throw ‘my friend’ in front of that remark like it wasn't purposefully designed to wreck havoc on his relationship. Ailsa looked surprised, Nathaniel slightly less, but Amell just felt stressed. Anders rearranged Leandra so he could hold her on one arm against his chest, and squeezed Amell’s thigh. “She’s not my daughter.”

Amell spared him a wan smile, but before Anders could think of anything else to say Stroud continued, “Forgive me, I just assumed. The two of you seem so close-”

“I’m not her father,” Anders hissed.

“I don’t care,” Janeka interrupted. “The girl’s parentage is of no consequence outside her mother, and if you want proof of Grey Warden virility you can look to your own Commander. His son is no secret.”

Anders was looking to Amell, but Amell wasn’t exactly looking to him. He’d scooted back in his chair, and Anders didn’t know if it was to escape him or the baby in his arms. He could sense a general unease from Amell, and didn’t know how to make him believe Leandra wasn’t his daughter, especially considering Beth didn’t care enough to correct Stroud herself.

“So we have a Grey Warden in our family line,” Beth said. “What difference does it make?”

“It makes every difference,” Janeka said. “The Grey Wardens have followed the line of Senior Warden Sashamiri for over a thousand years. It’s her blood that binds Corypheus, and it’s the blood of the Archdemon Dumat that gave her the strength to bind him. Every hundred years, it falls on her descendants to bind him once more. Malcolm ‘Hawke’ was the last of her line to do so.”

“Bind him?” Beth repeated. “You’re saying my father was a blood mage?”

“All mages are blood mages,” Janeka waved a disinterested hand and started circling the table. “Whether or not they exercise the ability is irrelevant. Your father bound Corypheus in exchange for freedom from the Circle.”

“Now I know you’re lying,” Beth said. “Ser Maurevar Carver helped my father escape the Circle. The Grey Wardens had nothing to do with it. There are good templars out there who are willing to do good things for good mages who don’t resort to blood magic for everything.”

“To avert the Blights, forbidden magics are sometimes necessary,” Janeka said, and Anders imagined every other mage but Beth agreed with her. “Your father understood this, as did his grandfather, when he performed the binding ritual a hundred and thirty-three years ago.”

“My father never knew his family,” Beth said.

“I assure you, he very much did,” Janeka said. “Though I’m not surprised he didn’t tell you. It is far simpler to escape a Circle when you’re not the son of a Marquis.”

“What?” Beth said.

“The man you knew as Malcolm Hawke was Malcolm de Serault, grandson of the Shame of Serault,” Janeka said. “Senior Warden Sashamiri settled on the edge of Orlais, and it is because of her blood that the soil of Serault is loamed with sorcery. You must have heard of your great-grandfather.

“The Shame of Serault was an apostate. When the Grey Wardens of the Storm Age told him the truth of his bloodline and brought him to the Warden’s Prison, he became obsessed with the many demons bound within, and eventually became an abomination. He almost ended his entire line when he brought the Chantry down on Serault, but they spared his family and stripped their nobility instead. Is it such a surprise your father kept it all a secret?”

“He wouldn’t have kept this from us,” Beth shook her head. “My father was from Ferelden-”

“You are free to read his letters to the late Warden Commander Larius if you like,” Janeka said. “I do not care if you believe me. I care if you comply. The Warden’s Prison is breaking down. Even the best magic fades, which is why the Grey Wardens reinforce the seals every hundred years, but the magic containing Corypheus is fading too fast.

“When Senior Warden Sashamiri first set her trap to capture and study the creature called Corypheus, she did it with more than just a simple binding spell and the blood of Dumat. The Grey Wardens of old used wards within wards, locks within locks, and seals within seals to contain him, the most important of which was in Kirkwall.

“At the time, Kirkwall was known as Emerius, and it was one of the mightiest cities in the Tevinter Imperium. It was also one of the most magic. There are patterns in the intersections, the back alleys, the boulevards. The streets and the sewers contained grooves so the blood of sacrifices could flow into glyphs beneath the city, and the magisters of the time allowed the Grey Wardens to make use of them.

“Sashamiri turned the city itself into a seal, but that seal fell on All Soul’s Day,” Janeka gave Anders a pointed look before turning her attention back to Beth. “Without that seal, it’s become apparent we need to reinforce the ones that remain, and we need you to do it.”

“You’re asking me to use blood magic to bind a demon?” Beth deduced.

Janeka said, “Do not mistake me. I am not asking.”

“Well good, because I’m not doing it,” Beth said.

“I am not giving you a choice,” Janeka said. “Make no mistake, Corypheus will keep sending his soldiers after you. Your blood is the key to binding him, but it is also the key to unbinding him. He won’t stop until he’s freed, and that cannot be allowed to happen.

“He is no simple demon to be sent back to the Fade. He is an awakened darkspawn, who can talk, and think, and reason and that alone makes him dangerous. He wields magic with the skill of a Tevinter Magister, and can command the darkspawn horde in the absence of an Archdemon. The Grey Wardens of old feared him so greatly as to construct a whole prison to hold him.

“If you do not see the need by now to contain him, then I should remind you that the Fifth Blight that sent your family fleeing to Kirkwall was the least of them. The Fourth Blight lasted twelve years, the Third fifteen, the Second ninety, and the First two hundred. The Grey Wardens have become increasingly proficient at defeating the darkspawn, but they have never faced a creature such as Corypheus on the battlefield before.

“I’ve done extensive research on him, and he can control any tainted creature he comes across. Not even Grey Wardens are immune to his influence. The Grey Wardens of old spent a decade attempting to study him before they decided he was too dangerous to be around. He summoned darkspawn to him in droves, and convinced his guards to try to set him free, and stayed the hand of every executioner who came to kill him.

“His prison was sealed, and the Warden Commanders of the Free Marches have maintained the prison’s secret through the centuries, spreading rumors of banditry and beasts to prevent people from approaching. It matters little. Even asleep and in stasis, Corypheus has power and influence. He is kept contained below the Vimmarks, and it is no coincidence that the darkspawn besiege the mountains more fiercely than anywhere else on the surface of Thedas.

“It is also no coincidence that Kirkwall suffers from endless plagues of violence and lunacy. Corypheus has shaped the city since the days of the Tevinter Imperium, but so long as the seal remained in place, he was contained. That is no longer the case. You will accompany us to the Warden’s Prison, and reinforce the seals you are responsible for weakening.”

“I didn’t touch your seals,” Beth sneered.

“I do not believe in coincidence,” Janeka sniffed. “There’s no other explanation for the strength of the explosion that destroyed the Chantry, save for the seal. When you used it, you exhausted it. The seal is, and always will be, part of the cage that holds Corypheus, and when the power of one waxes, the other wanes.”

“So this is all my fault, is what you’re saying,” Anders said.

“Yes,” Janeka said.

“How are you so sure I had anything to do with the seals?” Anders asked. “It’s been seven months since All Soul’s Day. If he wants Beth’s blood so bad, why wait? What makes you so sure whatever weakened the seals wasn’t more recent?”

“Because ever since All Soul’s Day, my men and I can hear him Calling,” Janeka said.

“So, are you saying you’re all hearing your Calling?” Nate took a sudden interest in the conversation and leaned forward with his elbows on the table.

“No,” Janeka said, voice dripping with disdain. “My men don’t stay on past their Callings, but when they all hear it at once, something is wrong. I’ve been researching it these past few months, and I believe it’s not the Call of the Old Gods, but the Call of Corypheus.

“The Warden Commanders who watched over the Warden’s Prison kept detailed records, and one of them wrote of how his men would throw themselves off the top of the tower, thinking their Calling had come, despite not having served for long. It’s obvious Corypheus can echo the call of the Old Gods, and he is using it to lure us to his prison so we will set him free.”

“That’s excellent!” Nate thumped his cane on the floor, and threw himself up out of his chair to the complete confusion of the rest of the Senior Wardens. “Isn’t that excellent, Ailsa?”

“It’s excellent,” Ailsa agreed, with a far less exuberant grin. "But maybe we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves."

"Maybe we should," Nate squeezed Amell’s shoulder. Anders grabbed for Amell’s hand, and slammed it up against his lips, subtlety be damned. He’d never felt so relieved in all his life. Amell’s Calling wasn’t real. Anders wasn’t about to lose him. Anders sent his thanks up to the Maker, but Amell didn’t feel like he shared in their relief.

“You never said anything about a false Calling,” Amell said.

“I never had cause to look for one,” Janeka countered.

“It’s our saving grace that you did,” Nate said. “These past few months, I thought I was hearing my own Calling."

Amell caught Nate’s hand before he could retract it, “You did?”

“I know, I should have told you, but Velanna and I wanted to wait until we’d decided what to do,” Nate said. “Maker, what a relief. I had no idea how I was going to convince her not to keep me around as a ghoul without making it a fight about Seranni. I can’t tell you how many arguments I went through in my head trying to think of how to explain I don’t want the same things as her sister.

“There was no winning. She’s brutal even in my imagination. I tried to make her sympathetic but it just wasn’t believable. Delilah said I should just leave a note and leave in the middle of the night but I swear Velanna would drag me out of the Deep Roads," Nate laughed, and leaned on Amell’s shoulder with a sigh.

“If you’re finished celebrating,” Alec sneered from the opposite side of the table. “Maybe you’ll let the Commander get back to telling us what to expect when we go to the Warden’s Prison?”

“Oh, go soak your head,” Nate hardly acknowledged him. “It’s not my fault you don’t have anything to live for.”

“You have something to say to me?” Alec stood up; by the silver in his hair, the swordsman didn’t care about the False Calling because he was bound for his real one, but as far as Anders was concerned it couldn’t come soon enough.

“Several things, in fact,” Nate shot back.

“Nathan,” Amell said.

“These past three months, I thought I was dying,” Nate untangled himself from Amell. “I had every intention of acting honorably on what might have been my last mission, but if I’m not going to my grave then I’m not going to hold my tongue. My grandfather was a Grey Warden, and he would have wept at the dereliction of this Order. We hear what you say about us. Do you think I’m ashamed of this?”

Nate slammed his cane down on the table, rattling the closest pieces of cutlery. “What exactly do you think I should be ashamed of? That my bow and arrow did too well the work of the Wardens? That I gave what was asked of me when the world was at stake? While you sit there without scars, I see only men who falter when they see the face of war and reckon its true price.”

“Nathan,” Amell took his hand back from Anders and stood, feeling up Nate’s arm to squeeze his upper arm. “We’re all Brothers here.”

“You don’t believe that,” Nate said. “Not anymore. I think we’re done here. Tell me when it’s time to set out.”

Nate picked up his cane and left.

“You can set out without me when you go,” Beth added, taking Leandra from Anders’ arms. “I don’t believe a word you say. My father wasn’t a maleficar or a marquis, and if he had a single drop of Archdemon blood, he wouldn’t have died to darkspawn when I was sixteen.”

“Not even the Grey Wardens are immune to the taint,” Janeka said. “We just resist it for as long as we can.”

Beth stormed out after Nate.

Janeka watched her go, and then looked to the Senior Wardens who’d stayed. “Dismissed. Pack your bags. We leave for the Vimmark Mountains in the morning.”

The dining hall emptied of everyone save for Anders, Amell, Janeka, and Stroud. They lingered like carrion eaters at the corpse that had become of the conversation, picking at the remains with coughs. Amell reclaimed his seat, a pat on his thigh pulling Dumat into his lap from under the table to scratch his ears. Stroud started clearing away the plates. Janeka poured herself another glass of wine.

Anders stayed seated, still reeling from the revelation that he might have been responsible for unleashing another awakened darkspawn on the world. Corypheus was imprisoned hundreds and hundreds of miles away, and Amell and the others could still hear him Calling. Relieved as Anders was to learn that Amell’s Calling wasn’t real, Corypheus had to have been terrifyingly strong to convince him otherwise.

“I told you, you should have eased them into it,” Stroud broke the silence, stacking plates and utensils.

“I don’t care to coddle,” Janeka muttered into her wine. “One way or another, we will put an end to this false Calling before I lose my men to madness.”

Anders didn’t like the sound of that, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“There are other descendants,” Janeka said. “Your cousin would do well to remember that.”

“Meaning what?” Anders demanded. “If you can’t have Beth’s blood, you’ll bleed a baby?”

“No babies are being bled,” Stroud grumbled, glaring at Janeka.

“The sacrifices I make pale in comparison to those of the Magisters Sidereal,” Janeka scoffed, leaning back in her chair and letting Stroud clear away her plate but not her glass.

“What are you talking about?” Anders asked.

“Did you not wonder why Corypheus had to be bound by Dumat’s blood?” Janeka asked. “He was his High Priest. The Conductor of the Choir of Silence.”

“It’s true,” Amell volunteered.

“You don’t really believe that,” Anders said.

“Warden Commander Farele did,” Amell said the name like Anders should know it. “He was one of the first wardens to ever encounter Corypheus, and the only one to have a conversation before his capture. In his journals, Farele doubts Corypheus is a darkspawn, and suspects he might be a ghoul, so corrupted by the taint he became a new creature.”

“That doesn’t make him the Conductor,” Anders argued. “There are no magical boogeyman who trespassed in the Maker’s city. It’s a story. It’s Chantry propaganda.”

Stroud interjected as he took his plate away, “Then what are darkspawn?”

“Some creation of the Old Gods, no doubt,” Anders said.

“What would the Old Gods have to gain in their creation?” Amell asked.

“I don’t know,” Anders said. “Maybe they wanted to unleash them against their enemies and it went awry. My point is, the darkspawn aren’t just some conveniently explicit lesson on the dangers of magic.”

“Aren’t they?” Stroud asked.

“You don’t think that’s a little convenient?” Anders asked. “What does every sane man and woman in Thedas fear? The Blight. Why not pin that on mages too?”

“Whoever is responsible for the creation of darkspawn is irrelevant,” Janeka said. “The fact of the matter is that they are here, and the Conductor can control them. He must be contained at all costs, the Architect and the other five remaining Sidereal alongside him should they show themselves.”

“You’re a mage,” Anders said. “Why would you believe the Chantry’s lies?”

“The Magisters Sidereal are no myth. Your Commander has met one. The Architect is out there as we speak, awakening more darkspawn and creating more threats to humanity. We are left with three choices on how to handle the situation: control, contain, or kill. If the first two options fail, make no mistake, I will settle for the third,” Janeka stood up, and took the wine bottle with her on her way out. “You can tell that to your friend.”

“I would lead with something softer,” Stroud suggested when he finished balancing all of the dishes in his arms. “Perhaps that we’ve found a wet nurse to care for Leandra while we’re gone?”

Stroud left, and Amell stood to leave with him. "They're not wrong," Amell said, with a work whistle that brought Dumat to his side. "You should talk to her."

"I want to talk to you," Anders took his arm and helped him down a random step in the middle of the uneven dining hall. "You don't have to go to your Calling. Why don’t you feel excited?"

“The Call coming from Corypheus is just one explanation, Anders,” Amell said, an outstretched hand guiding him around mismatched tables. “Ailsa is right. We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves.”

“Are you sure that’s all it is?” Anders caught him before Dumat could lead him from the dining hall. “You’re just being cautious?”

“What else would it be?” Amell asked.

“Love… you don’t think Leandra is my daughter, do you?” Anders asked.

“I think that you can be whatever you want to be to Leandra, but right now you should talk to Beth, because we can’t bring Leandra with us,” Amell said, but he hit him with such an overwhelming wave of anxiety it knocked Anders onto his ass and into the nearest chair. “We can talk later this evening.”

Amell left the dining hall with Dumat. Anders didn’t. Anders stayed in an unstable chair at an unstable table, trying to figure out what to do with his unstable life. Damn him and all his decisions, he never should have given Amell a reason to doubt him, but that was all he’d ever done, making one reckless, thoughtless decision after the next until they’d all culminated in the explosion of the Chantry that Anders was sure Amell had taken the blame for despite his best intentions by the scars around his mouth.

Anders never would have guessed the Qunari would come after Amell, of all the groups in Thedas who wanted Anders dead, but that was because Anders didn’t stop to think long enough about the consequences of his actions the way that Amell did. Anders just did them. He turned thought to action before the thought was even fully formed and everyone suffered in the aftermath of all his good intentions.

Maker save him, a Magister Sidereal.

One of the bloody fucking seven, and Anders unleashed him. How many Grey Wardens had already gone on their Callings because they had no idea Corypheus was behind them? The Grey Wardens in the Free Marches had been hearing them since All Soul’s Day, and if Nathaniel’s False Calling aligned with Ailsa and Amell, the Grey Wardens in Ferelden had been hearing them since around late Haring or early Firstfall.

If Corypheus kept getting stronger, soon Grey Wardens would be hearing False Callings all the way to Orlais and Antiva. They had to do something to contain him, and Anders knew they needed Beth’s blood to do it, but he couldn’t stand the thought of going to her before he went to Amell and explained. Anders loved him and he wasn’t about to lose him to some miscommunication because he was too much of a coward to own up to everything he’d done or hadn’t done.

Anders felt Amell’s anxiety fade, and he wasn’t sure if the love he sent had anything to do with it, but he hoped it did. He didn’t want Amell feeling anxious, or overwhelmed, or anything other than relieved that he didn’t have to go to his Calling and they still had time to live their lives together. Anders got up from the table as the Wycome Wardens started sneaking back into the dining hall, and hurried through the halls to Amell’s room.

Anders just wanted to see him, and as he climbed the winding stairs of Revas’ Rescue he could feel Amell calm. It felt so good to feel him feeling better that by the time Anders reached the door to Amell’s room and opened it the first words out of his mouth were, “If you’re sober, we’re having sex.”

It wasn’t exactly the reassurance he’d been aiming for, but as long as he wore rosewood, there was no way he could miss his mark. He could feel Amell’s every feeling flowing through him, and Anders knew he could comfort him if he could just be close to him. He wanted to reclaim whatever intimacy they’d lost, and let Amell lead him with his every emotion once Anders had him in his arms, but Amell was otherwise occupied when Anders walked in.

Anders wished he’d been smoking.

Anders wished he’d been drinking.

Anders wished he’d been doing anything other than what he was doing.

Amell was kneeling on a small mat, and if Anders didn’t know any better he might have guessed he was praying. There was a book open in front of him, colorless ink raised off the parchment giving no indication of what was written within it. Then Amell closed it, and Anders saw the House of Tides symbol on the cover. Amell set the book off to the side. He didn’t even try to hide it, or any of the other ceremonial objects arranged around him, like a damned Qunari.

“What in Andraste’s name are you doing!?”

Chapter 233: From Kirkwall We Fled: To Find Faith

Summary:

Wearing the armor of our most hated foe

- Shartan 9:20

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter, and I sincerely appreciate any feedback.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 5 Nubulis Midday
Vimmark Wasteland

Amell prayed three times a bloody day.

He prayed in the morning, and he prayed in the evening, and he prayed at midday, and Anders hated every minute of it. They didn’t have time to waste on Amell’s insanity when they had to deal with Corypheus and get back to Wycome before the Spring Solstice. Clan Lavellan had been blamed for the ‘Knife-Eared Plague’ and being besieged by bandits, and even though Ellana had stayed behind to handle it, Anders didn't like the thought of leaving her alone after all she'd done for the mages.

He should have been back there, helping her and her clan, and not out here in the middle of nowhere, watching Amell waste their time. It would have been one thing if Amell could have kept the Qun to himself, but he had to make a ritual of everything. He couldn’t just… pray. He had to wash his face, and his hands, and his feet, and everything else, before unrolling a small mat he faced towards the sun.

After he finished with one ritual, he started up another, unhooking a copy of the Qun from his belt to lay out before him, and recite something in qunlat, or run his fingers over the raised ink, or just sit in silence for a solid ten minutes. Anders couldn’t make any sense of it. Whether or not Amell read or recited anything seemed random. For the most part it was just the silence and the sitting and if not for the prayer mat underneath him Anders almost would have thought he looked peaceful, staring up at the sun and feeling the warmth of it on his face.

“We don’t have time for this,” Anders muttered, drawing glyphs in the sand with the butt of his staff and trying to keep his eyes off Amell, at the edge of their encampment in the middle of one of his midday prayers.

“We have to stop to eat and water the horses anyway, Anders,” Nate pointed out, leaning on his cane beside him. “Amell isn’t holding us up.”

“Our mounts are undead; we don’t need to stop,” Anders spared Son Cadeau a pat for some reason, when the wisp-borne construct couldn’t feel it. “What is he even doing?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Nate suggested.

“I shouldn’t have to ask him,” Anders said. “He shouldn’t be doing it.”

Nate tucked his cane under his arm, and redid his bun to keep his hair off the back of his neck, “To be clear, you’re upset that Amell’s found faith?”

“That’s not faith,” Anders scoffed, wringing his hands on his staff. “That’s-... that’s-... That’s a ridiculous, senseless, disgusting bout of indoctrinated insanity. How are you alright with this? Aren’t you supposed to be an Andrastian?”

“When did I say I was alright with this?” Nate asked.

“You’re sure acting like it,” Anders said.

“I’m acting like Amell’s friend,” Nate said, finding a seat for himself on a nearby rock when he finished fixing his hair. “If he’s found something for himself in the Qun, I don’t think it’s for me to take it from him.”

“There’s nothing to find,” Anders hissed, daring another glance in Amell’s direction, but he was still just sitting there, on that stupid mat in the middle of the sands, staring sightlessly at the sun with such a serene expression it made Anders sick. “Don’t you know what they do to their mages?”

“I think Amell knows exactly what they do to their mages, Anders,” Nate said, and Anders guessed by his tone he was supposed to feel sorry or sympathetic but he was too busy being sane.

“Amell’s indoctrinated,” Anders said. “I’m asking you.”

“It’s not for me to have an opinion," Nate said. "I'm not an impacted party."

"But you have one," Anders pressed, sitting beside him on the rock, and hating everything about this blasted wasteland when there was no shade or sanity for leagues in any direction.

"I think everyone has an opinion about everything," Nate said. "That doesn't mean they're valuable."

Maker, Anders was so sick of everyone talking in circles instead of just saying whatever they had to say, "Nate, it's your bloody opinion, just tell me."

"My opinion won't change anyone else's," Nate said.

"So you admit you want his opinion to change,” Anders said.

"Did I say that?" Nate wondered.

Anders glared, "Andraste’s sword, Nate, if you don't admit the Qun is evil-"

"Amell isn't," Nate said, with a nod to the man in question. "Would it kill you to tolerate it?"

"Yes,” Anders snapped. “Yes, it actually would and it actually does. The qunari mutilate their mages. There can be no tolerance for the intolerant. I can't just agree to disagree when that disagreement means mages end up dead and qunari get away with it all in the name of tolerance. That's not tolerance. That's indoctrinated insanity."

"Anders…” Nate started, only to stop when Alec and Dursten walked past them. Nate glared the two of them down until they led their tired horses out of earshot, and then turned back to Anders. “I hear you, and I understand your anger, but this isn’t the Arishok, this is Amell. Be careful you don't leave more wounds than you heal.”

Anders unhooked his canteen and took a drink, and Nate left him to tend to his horse. The rest of the Wardens were all doing the same. Janeka had brought her three Senior Wardens along, but Stroud had stayed in Wycome. Amell had brought Nate and Ailsa, and Beth had to be there, but Anders didn’t. Anders hadn’t had to come, but he’d wanted to be with Amell and watch out for Beth.

Beth didn’t seem like she needed him there. She was too busy lamenting some imagined loss of her father ever since she found out he was a maleficar and a marquis. Anders would have thought the fact that the man was a monster was enough reason not to care about the rest, but apparently Beth didn’t feel the same.

Amell was still praying, and Son Cadeau didn’t need any attention, so Anders left his rock to talk to Beth. Their encampment was little more than a ring of rocks, worn down by the wind and the sand off to the side of the ruined road. The Vimmark Wasteland was a desolate section of the Vimmark Mountains, northwest of Kirkwall and southeast from Nevarra, and traveled so infrequently there was no one else along the road.

The Dwarven Merchants’ Guild had used the route on the rare occasion they dared to brave the rumors of beasts and banditry because they didn’t want to pay the tolls along the Planasene Pass, and while there were wheel ruts in the dirt, there were no caravans that any of them had seen. They were alone, and the closer they got to the Warden’s Prison, the worse the Grey Wardens were doing.

Almost all of them had taken to humming under their breath, and Anders was sure he should have heard his Calling by now, but for some reason he didn’t. There were no shapes in the shadows, no voice in his head, no music clouding his mind. Ever since he’d walked in on Amell reading the Qun, it was like there was no room in him for anything but anger.

If nothing else, at least it was an anger Beth understood. Anders stopped a safe distance from her horse, and Beth gave the Free Marches Ranger an affectionate pat before she parted from it and came to join him. “One more day,” Beth forced an uncomfortable smile, “I’m ready for this to be over.”

“You and me both,” Anders gestured over his shoulder with his thumb to where Amell was kneeling at the edge of the wasteland. “Can we talk about the ogre on the road?”

“Ugh, don’t get me started,” Beth tested the crumbling half-wall before she sat on it, muttering and massaging her chest. “You wouldn’t believe the excuses he made up so he wouldn’t have to hold his own niece. I asked if he wanted to hold her and he said ‘I’m blind.’ Can you believe that? Imagine if Garrett were here and I asked him to hold her and he said, ‘I’m deaf.’”

“That’s-... not what I was talking about,” Anders signed. “What do you think about the Qun?”

“I hate it,” Beth signed without hesitation. “I told you one of those beasts murdered my best friend back in Lothering, and Maker knows how many people died when they attacked Kirkwall. Qunari are awful. I don’t understand how anyone could want to join them.

“Look at what they do to their converts. I saw the scars around his mouth. It took me so long to learn to love my magic, and to watch a mage who means so much to so many people throw it all away… Why doesn’t he just volunteer to be Tranquil?”

Anders felt his anger flare at the analogy, “Don’t talk about him like that.”

“Maybe he shouldn’t be like that,” Beth said. “Mother had her moments, but she taught me to sew seams. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised Fausten’s father taught him to sew lips.”

“Where do you get off?” Anders snapped. “You know what, don’t answer that. In fact, don’t talk to me until we’re back at Ansburg.”

“You came to talk to me,” Beth reminded him.

“Yeah, well, clearly that was a mistake,” Anders hissed.

Anders shouldered his staff and stormed away from her, kicking rocks and churning up dust as he wandered out into the wasteland, away from everyone. He was so angry he could feel it manifesting in his magic, electricity crackling across his skin and veilfire coiling in his throat. He was angry with Beth, and he was angry with Amell, and he was angry with himself.

Anders didn’t want to argue with Amell; he wanted to take him back to Ansburg and lead the mage revolution with the man that he remembered. The man who demanded mage autonomy and knew better than to believe in the same thrice-damned things the templars did. It didn’t make any sense someone who believed in freedom would want to be a slave, but Amell’s newest scars said otherwise.

Anders didn’t think Amell wanted his lips sewn shut again, but he didn’t really know. Anders hadn’t asked outside of a few furious accusations, but you didn’t walk in on someone holding a sword over a body and ask them what happened, you took the sword away before they stabbed someone else with it. Admittedly, it wasn’t Anders’ most understanding analogy, but he’d been too angry to ask too many questions ever since he’d seen Amell with the Qun.

Anders hated that damn book and the symbol of the House of Tides, but he would have hated a Chantry sunburst more. Beth was being a bitch. Amell wasn’t Tranquil and Anders would drown the world in blood before he saw the brand on his brow. It was more like… he’d turned into a Loyalist and now Anders had to find some way to save him from himself. Anders forced himself to take a steadying breath, and went to join Amell at the edge of the encampment while the others set up for lunch.

Amell was still sitting on his knees on his small prayer mat, Dans Leur Sang lying down a short ways off, with Dumat curled up in the shade of the undead construct. Anders stood next to him, but Amell didn’t acknowledge him, so Anders coughed.

“It is to be,” Amell said.

“What does that mean?” Anders asked.

Amell exhaled in something almost like amusement when he sat back and tilted his head to listen to him, “It means I have to start over if you interrupt me.”

“Seriously?” As if Anders didn’t have enough reasons to hate all of Amell’s rituals, having to do them twice was a new one. “Can’t you just pick up where you left off?”

“Do you need something?” Amell asked instead of answering him.

“I need to talk,” Anders said.

“Can we talk when I’m finished?” Amell asked.

“Okay,” Anders started pacing, when he realized that wasn’t what Amell had asked. Amell hadn’t asked anything. Amell hadn’t even said what Anders had just assumed he’d said. Amell hadn’t said, ‘Can we talk when I’m finished?’ he’d said, ‘We’ll talk when I’m finished.’

Anders whirled back around, “No, not okay, actually, why do you have to start over?"

Amell stopped in the middle of pulling a wash rag from his pack, because apparently he couldn’t just start over on his prayers, he had to start over on the ritual that came before them, too. "Anders-”

“Why do you have to do any of this!?” Anders demanded.

“Do you want to know, or do you just want me to stop?” Anders didn’t like the way that Amell looked at him. It was an empty stare, in his general direction, like Amell wasn’t expecting anything from him. Like he knew better than to.

“I want you to stop,” Anders should have lied. He knew it was the wrong answer, but it was the honest one, and he didn’t want to lie to the man he loved. Anders dropped to his knees beside him, and Amell’s hand snapped out over the Qun, encasing it in a small force field that sent the sands Anders scattered to either side of it, and that damned defensiveness of that damned book made Anders so damned angry he felt like he was choking when he tried to swallow it. “I don’t want to see you in chains and stitches. Love, please, don’t do this to yourself.”

“I’m not chained,” Amell said.

“That’s what this is!” Anders gestured at the Qun, and just made himself angrier when he’d been apart from Amell for so long he was still gesturing at things around him. “You can’t honestly believe in something that says people like us belong in chains. We’re not even people according to qunari - they call us things! Saarebas. I know what the bloody word means. The qunari said it often enough in Kirkwall. If you think for one second I’m okay with you-”

“Stop,” Amell cut him off.

“... What?” Anders blinked at him.

“I’m going to wash off, and I’m going to meditate, and we can talk after,” Amell told him. “If you’re going to sit with me, do it silently.”

Amell must have been able to feel his shock through the ring, but he didn’t send him any reassurance back. Amell met shock with stress, and set about rinsing off his already clean feet, and his already clean hands, and his already clean face. By the time he finished, the stress had turned to calm, and he went back to sitting in silence.

Anders sat next to him, impatient for the opportunity to try to talk Amell out of his insanity. He pulled his legs up to his chest and draped his arms over his knees, glaring for glaring’s sake until his face got tired of the expression. Amell couldn’t see it anyway - and Anders doubted he would care if he could.

Since when had they gone back to Amell giving him orders?

Since when had Amell ever given him orders outside of combat?

Anders picked at the dirt underneath his nails, struggling to hold onto his frustration in the face of Amell’s calm coming back to him through the rosewood. He shouldn’t have been so serene. They’d stitched his lips shut, for Maker’s sake. There was no serenity in that. There was only suffering and Anders hadn’t been there to support him through it. Anders finished all ten fingers before Amell finished meditating, and started drawing glyphs in the dirt until Amell finally finished and closed the Qun.

“Have you had something to eat?” Amell asked.

“Whoa. He’s talking to me now,” Anders said petulantly. “You know that’s a thing you can do when your lips aren’t sewn shut?”

Amell ignored him, “Do you need me to test anything for you?”

“No, I don’t need you to test anything!” Anders snapped. “I need you to stop believing in the Qun!”

“I don’t believe in the Qun, Anders, I understand it,” Amell said, putting his socks and boots back on.

“You understand it,” Anders scoffed, standing up and destroying his glyphs. “You understand why they sewed your lips shut?”

“Yes,” Amell said.

Anders made a series of inarticulate sounds, suddenly unable to figure out what to do with his hands. He set them on his hips, in his hair, around his own bloody neck so he could wring some sense into someone. Amell didn’t have the same problem. He rolled up his mat and latched it back onto his pack, and shouldered it as he stood, dusting himself off.

“Is there somewhere you want to sit for lunch?” Amell asked.

“I don’t want to sit,” Anders said. “I want to save you.”

Amell found him with an outstretched hand, and Anders battled back the sudden urge to sob when his fingers came into contact with his chest. There had to be some way for him to fix whatever had happened to Amell in his absence, but Amell was so caught up in the Qun Anders wasn’t sure where to start. Maybe if he could get Amell to reread his manifesto, Amell would start acting like Amell again, but Anders hadn’t brought any copies with him to the Warden’s Prison to free Amell from the one he’d put himself in.

“Sit with me,” Amell said.

Anders didn’t trust himself to say anything back, so he led Amell to the half-wall along the road and sat him down. Amell still looked the same, dressed in light riding leathers with boots that went up to his knees and a sleeveless jacket that went down to them. The only difference was the Qun instead of a grimoire bound to his belt. Anders hated seeing it. There was such a symbolism to the exchange Anders couldn’t stand it.

Amell rooted through his pack for a piece of hardtack while Anders practiced breathing to battle back his sobs. Amell took a bite off the corner when he found the biscuit, and then felt for Anders’ shoulder, following it down to his hand to press the hardtack into his palm.

“Here,” Amell said.

Anders thumped the hardtack against his thigh, and when his shallow breath didn’t turn into a sob, said, “You don’t have to test things for me.”

“How are you eating?” Amell asked.

“You know, raw food,” Anders mumbled. “Fruit. Vegetables. Fish, sometimes.”

“Are you getting enough like that?” Amell asked.

“Still alive,” Anders said, and with a hesitant hiccup, added, “... don’t have to bring me back yet.”

“I like alive,” Amell joked.

“Yeah, me too…” Anders leaned into him, slumping so he could rest his head on Amell’s shoulder. “I like free more, though.”

“We’re free,” Amell promised.

“You’re not,” Anders said. “I’ve been thinking, and I think I know the day I fell in love with you.”

“Should I guess?” Amell asked.

“You’ll get it wrong,” Anders warned him.

“Orzammar?” Amell guessed anyway.

“You missed it by about five years, but close,” Anders said. “It was Rylock. I asked for your help destroying my phylactery, and you killed her when she ambushed us. I remember she stabbed you and you said you wouldn’t die to a templar’s sword, and I think that was it for me. There was no coming back from that.”

Anders felt Amell’s hard exhale against his forehead, and the soft kiss that followed it. “So you’re saying I should get stabbed more often.”

“You shouldn’t get stabbed at all, that just happened to be a sexy way to do it,” Anders said. “Maker, Amell, don’t you see how this is the same? You can’t let them make you a slave.”

Amell took hold of the hand not holding the hardtack, and wrung it around his wrist. “Do you feel any chains?”

Anders danced his fingers along Amell’s lips instead. “I can see them.”

“The stitches are symbolic,” Amell said.

“Yeah, it’s not subtle,” Anders felt his anger flare back up, and pulled away from him. “You realize that Qunari make the Circle of Magi look like a pleasant vacation? You’re lucky they didn’t cut out your tongue. How are you alright with that?”

“Anders… I don’t want to see mages enslaved,” Amell said.

“That’s what the Qun does!” Anders crushed the hardtack into crumbs. “You can’t separate it from how it enslaves mages. It’s just like the Chantry. If it can’t accept mages as part of its society, then it isn’t fit to be the basis of one, and it must be torn down.”

“I agree with you,” Amell said.

“You-... you do?” Anders blinked.

“Of course I do,” Amell said.

“Then what are you doing?” Anders asked. “You just woke up one day and decided, ‘What I really need right now is a big guy with horns telling me everything I should think?’”

Amell sifted through his pack for another piece of hardtack, “Do you remember Keenan?”

No. “... yes?”

Amell stopped to smile at him and steal his heart all over again in the process, “No.“

“Okay, fine, no,” Anders relented, picking at his crumbs while Amell ate his biscuit.

“I’m relieved you don’t remember,” Amell squeezed his thigh. “I don’t want you to carry that. When I was named Ferelden’s Commander of the Grey, Commander Fontaine reassigned some of her Grey Wardens to my command to get us started at the Vigil.

“Kristoff. Rhyn. Garvan. Jarlath. Keenan… I know the names of every Grey Warden she assigned to me. The rest died to darkspawn, but Keenan died to me. You were there when we found him being held hostage by the Architect. His legs were crushed, and you couldn’t heal him, so I killed him.

“... I killed him because he couldn’t walk. There was no other reason. Ever since he was injured, I keep thinking Keenan could have been Nathan. He could have been Orana. He could have been me. He could have been anyone. He couldn’t walk. He wasn’t useful.

“... I can’t tell you how much usefulness weighs on me. I don’t think we should be useful. I think we should just exist. I think existence is a choice. I think we should be free to choose it. We can’t be one with the world while we’re worrying about what we have to offer it or what we owe it. I know you don’t agree with it, and I don’t agree with all of it either, but the Qun grounds me.

“I smoke less. I drink less. I don’t feel as consumed by my simulacrum or the Call. I don’t agree with the way the Triumvirate interprets it, but the Cantos calm me down.”

“So what are you saying?” Anders asked. “Are you saying you just skip the parts about hating mages and magic?”

“The Cantos have passages about the loss of self, and the priesthood interprets them to be about possession, but I don’t think sharing a soul means losing one,” Amell said. “Maybe someday, when the war is over, you can show the world that.”

Damn him and his adoration. Anders clasped Amell’s jaw, tracing the scars left from his stitches with his thumb nail to hold onto his anger. “Love, they enslave mages.”

“Isn’t that what you’re changing?” Amell leaned into his touch. “I heard what happened with the Chantry.”

“Everyone heard what happened with the Chantry,” Anders let go of Amell to run his hand through his hair. “I’m trying to make a world where mages can be free and that isn’t under the Qun.”

“The Qun and the Triumvirate aren’t the same,” Amell said.

“That’s like saying the Chantry and the Circle aren’t the same,” Anders said. “They go hand in hand.”

“The Qun is to the Triumvirate what Andrastianism is to the Divine, Anders,” Amell said. “It’s an ideology, not the system that implements it.”

“Since when do you believe in anything?” Amell was an atheist. As far as Anders knew, he’d been one all his life, even when he’d gained the memories of an ancient elven soul that had once believed in the elven pantheon, and if a thousand years of devotion couldn’t change how Amell felt about divinity, Anders didn’t understand how one year apart could have made such a massive difference. “You’re telling me you don’t believe in the Maker or the Creators, but you believe in the Qunari gods?”

“The Qunari don’t have gods, Anders,” Amell said.

“Then what are you doing?” Anders demanded.

“Finding myself,” Amell said.

“You’re right here!” Anders hissed himself hoarse.

“I’m trying to be,” Amell said a little too ominously for Anders’ liking. “Anders… you don’t want me to drink. You don’t want me to smoke. I spend my days alone, absent my sight, absent my son… The Cantos talk of self-acceptance and embracing change-”

“Do they also talk about embracing chains?” Anders asked snidely. “I’m sure the Chantry could learn a thing or two from the Cantos when the mages who believe in them are so bloody tractable.”

“How would you know?” Amell asked.

“What?” Anders asked.

“Have you ever talked to one?” Amell asked. “Have you ever talked to any of them in all the time you spent in Kirkwall?”

“They can’t talk, Amell, they don’t have any fucking tongues!” Anders was going to lose his mind.

“When you left for Kirkwall, I went with Alistair to help him find King Maric, and the quest took us into qunari waters. One of their dreadnaughts captured us, and I didn’t have any other choice but to convert. I was part of a karataam at Akhaaz, and all of the other mages had just come into their magic. Most kossith come into it later, some of them well into their twenties or thirties, long after they’ve been living other lives.

“There was a woman there who’d been training as a tamassran. She was supposed to be a caretaker for other qunari, who were incapable of caring for themselves, for whatever reason. Physically. Mentally. They have a whole role devoted to it.

“... Do you know what the dwarves do to children who are impaired for any reason? They leave them in the Deep Roads to die. All the Dalish that I’ve met leave them in the forest to do the same. Chantry sanatoriums don’t save anyone - they just keep them out of sight.

“Her whole purpose in life was to provide for other people. The qunari believe that everyone is part of a greater whole. This-” Amell unhooked the Qun from his belt, and opened it to a random page to run his fingers over the raised ink. “-wasn’t made for me. I didn’t have to hire anyone to transcribe it so I could read a copy three months later. They just had it because all of their mages are blind.

“They don’t need to take their masks off because the arvaarads know how to take care of them. We meditated, and we listened to music, and we practiced being at peace with our emotions so we wouldn’t call on any demons. If you know what saarebas means, then you should know that I am a dangerous thing, and for the first time in a long time I found something that tells me I don’t have to be ashamed of that.”

Amell hooked the Qun back onto his belt, and felt up his chest to gather his face in his hands, and pull him into a soft kiss that tasted of rye and resolve. “Don’t ever call me tractable again.”

Amell whistled for Dumat, and left him sitting on the wall.

Anders watched him walk away and join up with the rest of the Grey Wardens. Anders stayed where he was, the wind blowing the dust of the wasteland around his feet while he kicked them back and forth in the dirt. Eventually, they all mounted back up, and continued their ride through the wasteland, and Anders finally heard Corypheus’ Call.

It started so subtle - the softest of arias in the air. The closer they got, the worse it became, until he felt like little more than a lyre. It was as if his veins had turned to chords, and the fingers of that damned Awakened Darkspawn pressed, and played, and pulled upon them, so by the time they stopped to make camp again that evening, all Anders could think about was how impatient he was to reach Corypheus’ prison.

Months. Amell and the others had gone months hearing Corypheus’ Call, and Anders felt like he wasn’t going to make it minutes. Everything was music. The beat of his heart and the breath in his lungs. The whisper of the wind and the shifting of the sand and the subtle winking of the stars. The set of the sun and the rise of the moons and the sounds of the desert. It was like a thousand melodies all melded together, and it was driving him mad.

Anders couldn’t even pitch his tent. He just paced, his hands in his hair and over his ears, but there was no silencing it. It was so loud. It was like standing beneath the Grand Cathedral in Val Royeaux where all anyone could hear was the Chant. Anders tried to focus on any other sound, but he couldn’t even breathe without adding to the song, and he felt like he was hyperventilating when he suddenly calmed down.

Amell’s tent was already pitched, and not for the first time since they'd set out Anders hated that they weren't sharing one. He could feel Amell inside of it, his calm reaching him through Corypheus' Call, and let himself inside. Amell was kneeling on his prayer… meditation mat, stripped down to his tunic and trousers. Anders set his sword and staff aside, and knelt down off to the side of him.

"Hey," Anders said.

"Asit tal-eb," Amell said.

"I know you have to start over if I interrupt you, but… well, I'm interrupting," Anders said.

"What is it, Anders?" Amell asked.

"I can hear him," Anders admitted. Amell held out a hand for him, and Anders took it. "... how are you so calm?"

"I was meditating," Amell said.

"...I can't even pray," Anders said.

"Have you tried?" Amell asked.

"I blew up a Chantry, love," Anders said. "I don't think the Maker and I are on speaking terms."

"Do you want to try praying with me?" Amell offered.

"You're not really praying though, are you?" Anders asked. "You're meditating. You don't believe in the Maker… Did you know I found Glandivalis in Kaiten? I wear a piece of the Chant of Light on my hip like it's any other sword… I just-... I don't deserve-..."

Anders couldn't finish. He shoved his face into his free hand, fighting through one breath after the next, because that was all he'd ever done since the day they'd dragged him to the Circle, but he'd always found some solace in the Maker. Anders was afraid he'd lost all that the day that he'd destroyed the Chantry, and he knew Amell hadn't exactly found faith, but it was close enough to make it hurt all the more that Anders was struggling to feel worthy of his.

"Do you want me to read to you?" Amell offered.

"From the Cantos?" Anders asked. "... is that allowed?"

"Of course," Amell squeezed his hand.

"... Alright," Anders said.

"Take off your shoes," Amell said.

Anders took off his boots, and his socks, and set them in the corner of Amell’s tent with the rest of his things. Amell retrieved a bowl and a washcloth, and washed their feet, and their hands, and their faces, and then set his fingers to the Qun.

"Tonight, in the desert, with emptiness all around,
The sky, endless, the earth, desolate,
Before my eyes the contradiction opened like a night-blooming flower.

Emptiness is an illusion. Beneath my feet,
Grains of sand beyond counting.
Above my head, a sea of stars.
Alone, they are small,
A faint and flickering light in the darkness,
A lost and fallen fragment of earth.

Alone, they make the emptiness real.
Together, they are the bones of the world.

Solitude is illusion. Alone in the darkness,
I was surrounded on all sides.
The starlight dripped from the petals
Of cactus flowers,
A chorus of insects sang across the dunes.

How much abundance the world carries
If every fistful of sand
Is an eternity of mountains."

Chapter 234: From Kirkwall We Fled: Doing The Best That We Could

Summary:

Among the People, some began to whisper of returning to the city

- Shartan 9:03

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 6 Nubulis Morning
Vimmark Wasteland

The Vimmark Wasteland was a desert that cut through the Vimmark Mountains between Kirkwall and Nevarra. In the middle of the desert was a fissure, and at the bottom of the fissure was a fortress, built to contain Corypheus. They’d have to make a long climb down into the chasm to reach the entrance, and the road they had to take was lined with ruins and ravaged caravans.

They’d been laid to waste, splintered panels, broken wheels, and torn up tarps scattered to either side of the sandstone half-walls. The desert devoured everything else - the winds throwing the remains of the caravans into the chasm or burying them beneath the sands. There was no evidence of whoever was behind the attacks, save for the blood red banners lining the way down to the Warden’s Prison.

They were too new to have been there for the past thousand years, and the symbol on them was almost reminiscent of the Chantry. It was a circle, white and gold, with a black sunburst in the center. Anders didn’t recognize it, and neither did any of the Grey Wardens, but Beth stopped to touch one of the banners and finger the frayed edges with a thoughtful expression.

Anders didn’t want to hear her thoughts. It was hard enough trying to hear his own over the Call, and the music echoing in everything. The banners fluttering in the wind, the sands crunching underfoot, the horses huffing as they led them down. The rustle of some unseen desert creature or just the beat of his own heart. Anders felt like he was losing his mind listening to everything all at once, and if not for Amell’s support he was sure he would have gone insane.

Anders might not have been able to pray, but he’d spent the night in Amell’s arms listening to him read from the Body Canto, and it had been calming. It was all about seeing society as a single creature: a living entity whose health and well-being was the responsibility of all, with each individual a tiny part of the whole, important not for itself, but for what it was to the whole creature.

It was a nice sentiment, and Anders understood why Amell agreed with it in theory, but in practice that sentiment had led to the loss of personal freedoms in Qunari society. It led to breeding programs designed to doll out assigned roles when Qunari came of age, and no allowance for romantic relationships when they got in the way, and forced reeducation for anyone who stepped out of line.

Amell hadn’t used those exact words when he’d broken down the basics of Qunari society, but words wouldn’t change the way it worked anymore than they would change the way it didn’t. Amell had talked in hopeful terms of a rift between the Arishok and the Ariqun, but Anders couldn’t afford to be too concerned with it when he had his own war to fight. They just had to take care of Corypheus so he could get back to it.

“I know this symbol,” Beth said, turning the banner towards them. “Petrice used to use it. Do you think that means she’s here? She was taking red lyrium; she might have heard Corypheus’ Call through the Taint.”

“We are not here for hypotheticals,” Janeka muttered, shaking her head like she could shake off the Call. “We are here to reinforce the wards. Keep moving.”

"I remember Petrice from our time in Kirkwall," Nate volunteered, walking on the side of Anders opposite Amell while Anders' auras made walking easier for him. "They say she's calling herself the Red Divine now, and that she’s leading a group called the Order of the Fiery Promise in opposition to the Chantry ever since we destroyed it.”

"She can't do that," Anders protested, gripping Amell’s arm. "You said Leliana was going to convince Justinia to call off the Exalted March, and give us time to convince the rest of the Circles to rise up so we can actually have a chance of winning this war. If the Divine thinks Petrice speaks for the mages, she'll never stop the Exalted March against us.

“I've heard Petrice's sermons. She's insane. She thinks everyone should have magic, and that red lyrium is a portent of the Maker’s return. She wants it spread throughout Thedas. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s to blame for the red lyrium outbreak in Wycome that everyone is blaming on the elves."

“I felt so bad leaving Ellana behind,” Beth agreed. “Do you think her clan is going to be okay?”

“I think they should have come with us to Ansburg,” Anders should have tried harder to convince them, but he’d been so focused on his mages he hadn’t fought hard enough for the elves. “We share the same plight.”

“I can speak to Duke Antione about the banditry when we get back,” Amell offered.

“Thank you, love,” Anders squeezed his arm. “People need to know the elves didn’t have anything to do with the plague.”

“Who says people care?” Chad-Roland interjected.

“Excuse you?” Anders frowned.

“People like to lay blame,” Chad-Roland said with a shrug. “My people were pushed back to the Sunless Lands after the Fifth Blight. Don’t recall the Hero of Ferelden speaking to anyone then.”

Anders whirled on him, “Hey, where do you get off-”

“-You’re right,” Amell cut him off, looking in Chad-Roland’s general direction. “Are you Chasind?”

“‘Am,” Chad-Roland grunted.

“What’s your name?” Amell asked.

“Roland,” Roland said.

“What brought you to the Free Marches?” Amell asked.

“Blight,” Roland said gruffly. “Darkspawn took the village. Fled to Wycome. Joined the Wardens.”

“I’m glad we’re brothers,” Amell said.

Roland’s face scrunched up in confusion, and eventually he said, “Commander,” and fell back to rejoin the rest of the Wycome Wardens.

“Why were you nice to him?” Anders asked.

“Why weren’t you?” Amell asked.

“He’s an ass,” Anders said. “You didn’t hear what they were saying about you on the docks.”

“Was it any worse than what you’ve been saying about me this past week?” Amell asked.

“Yes!” Anders lowered his voice so he could keep talking through the pain in his throat. “Yes, it was worse. I was worried about you. They were insulting you. I’m sorry my first instinct is to be angry, but anger is all that’s kept me going. I can’t stop being angry anymore than I can help that the world has given me so many things to be angry about.

“What was I supposed to do? Just ignore the injustice inherent in the Qun because you found peace in what other people find a prison?”

“Anders-”

“I’m sorry,” Anders hissed.

“I’m not asking you to be sorry,” Amell said.

“Well then what are you asking me to do?” Anders demanded.

“I’m not asking you to do anything,” Amell said gently. “You’re doing enough.”

“I-...” Anders choked. “What?”

“I appreciate you trying to understand where I’m coming from,” Amell said.

That wasn’t good enough. Anders knew it wasn’t good enough. He shouldn’t have been ‘trying to understand.’ He should have just ‘understood.’ “I love you,” Anders floundered.

“I love you too,” Amell said.

“Why?” Anders laughed at himself.

“You’re running a refuge for apostates in Ansburg,” Amell said, like that had anything to do with anything. “You’re worried about the elves in Wycome. You’re willing to learn about the Qun. You’re setting aside the things that matter most to you to work with the Grey Wardens when the world is at stake.”

“When isn’t it?” Anders mumbled, fighting the flush on his face before someone said something about it. “We’re in the middle of an Exalted March, and the Carta is working with Corypheus while Petrice is out here starting a plague.”

"So let’s stop her," Beth chimed in.

It was a little late for that. Red lyrium had already spread into the wasteland. It glittered in the rock like cinnabar, and seemed to set the desert on fire. The color caught on old clay and stone ruins, and ran down the face of the cliff, making it difficult to safely navigate the city. Red lyrium was everywhere, in everything and everyone.

There were dwarves in the ruins, and they'd all been ravaged by red lyrium. They emerged one at a time, until they were a multitude, a few with casteless tattoos on their hardened faces. They were Carta by their clothes, and crazy by their eyes, a reflective red that matched the crystals breaking through their skin.

"Stand aside," Janeka ordered the dozen or so dwarves who'd dragged themselves up out of the dirt.

Anders recognized most of them. He’d spent years working with House Cadash and the Carta, and he knew the fellow who stepped forward and marked himself their leader. Rhatigan was one of Malika’s leaders on the surface, in charge of smuggling lyrium out of the Free Marches and into Nevarra, and he was a mess.

Red lyrium had leached the color from his eyes, thick veins crystalizing in the corners and spreading back onto his brow. His eyes were fixed forward as a result, twitching against the veins of lyrium holding them in place. He glowed inside his armor, the metal weathered and worn like it hadn't been tended to for months on end while Rhatigan lost himself to madness.

"Welcome!” Rhatigan said excitedly, throwing his arms open wide and spinning to encompass the sands and the buildings crumbling into them. “We’ve been waiting for you!”

“I will not ask again,” Janeka thudded her staff on the ground, and it cracked, splintering out like a faultline to encircle the dozen dwarves. “If you want to live, leave now.”

“Wait,” Anders pushed his way through the ranks. “I know them. Rhat, what are you doing here?”

“Healer!” Rhatigan grinned, red lyrium growing between his stained teeth. “You were always good to us! You brought us the Hawke!”

“Her name is Beth, Rhat,” Anders took a few careful steps towards the dwarves. “She’s Hawke’s sister. You’ve met, remember? You and the rest of the Carta helped defend the Amell estate when the Qunari attacked Kirkwall? You got us into the Viscount’s Keep so we could save the city?”

“Hi Rhat,” Beth offered cautiously.

“Of course!” Rhatigan said. “Of course we remember the Hawkes. Cadash told us you’d give us trouble, but you came willingly! Now you can release Corypheus!”

“We’re not going to do that, Rhat,” Anders said. “Listen, you’re being compelled, but I can cleanse you-”

That was as far as Anders got before Rhatigan rushed him, roaring defiance and wrenching a battleaxe off his back that matched his size and looked like it weighed more than him. Rhatigan’s arms pulsed with red lyrium underneath his armor, and kept him from tipping over when he charged. Anders didn't get the chance to react. A stonefist flew past him, and blew a few strands of his hair in front of his face before it took off Rhatigan’s head.

Ruby red blood splattered across Anders’ face, and the weight of Rhattigan’s battleaxe dragged him backwards. His feet slipped out from underneath him, and he fell, a lifeless heap of glowing armor. The rest of the dwarves ducked, and the stonefist shattered against the wall of an abandoned building, splattering it with blood, hair, and crystals.

“Wait!” Anders recovered, casting a glyph of repulsion beneath Beth, but the battle was already joined. The rest of the dwarves drew their weapons, and the ground beneath them quaked, fissures ripping the stone apart. The dwarves ran through it, screaming for them to ‘surrender the Hawke,’ and the Grey Wardens refused.

Alec and Roland drew swords and stepped forward, catching the first of the axes on their shields, but Nate and Dursten had bows they hadn’t strung. Janeka and Ailsa more than compensated with their magic, tearing the ground out from underneath the dwarves in a mix of primal and telekinetic magic that buried them all alive.

“Stop!” Anders caught a shortsword on his staff when a dwarf dove for him. She had wild red hair beneath her helmet in long fraying braids, and a face full of freckles with dark blue tattoos. The emerald in her eyes was being eaten by crimson, but it didn’t mean she deserved to die. Anders cast a sleep spell that washed over her like oil on water with the red lyrium in her blood amplifying her innate dwarven resistances.

“He needs the Hawke!” the dwarf laughed, oblivious to the rest of her fellows dying around her. She danced back and dove forward, and Anders caught her sword again.

“Listen to me - this isn’t you - Corypheus is controlling you!” Anders insisted, when an arrow embedded itself in the dwarf’s thigh beneath her leather tasset. She crumpled to one knee, ruby red blood cascading down her leg. “Stop!” Anders yelled over his shoulder, reaching to help her when the dwarf screamed, slashing her sword at his outstretched hand.

Anders drew it back before she could take it off, and cast a glyph of warding beneath her to catch any other stray arrows while he cleansed what he could of the red lyrium in her blood. There was no time for a clean session. The shards tore through her veins, and Anders’ panacea sealed them shut in the aftermath, but the pain must have been too much for her because she passed out.

The battle was over by the time Anders finished. The Grey Wardens were fine. Amell let down the aura he’d thrown up over the horses, and Dursten and Nate lowered their bows. There was no one else to aim them at, with all the dwarves buried beneath the desert. Their bodies were crushed, the occasional arm, leg, or torso visible from underneath the rock by the red that bloomed around it, like a cactus flower from one of Amell’s Cantos.

Anders looked at Rhat, or what was left of him, lying with his fingers still clutched tight around his battleaxe, and tried to remember the last time he’d talked to him. It couldn’t have been anything special. Something as simple as a ‘Hello’ signed while they passed in the halls of Cadash’s estate back in Kirkwall while Anders was on the way to one of his signing lessons and Rhat was shipping out again for Nevarra.

They were just people.

Anders knelt next to the dwarf who’d attacked him, and swung his satchel into his lap so he could work on getting the arrow out of her leg. Anders snapped off the fletching before he looked too close at the feathers, and enlarged the cut with a scalpel so he could extract the arrow. It wasn’t stuck in the bone, but it hadn’t gone all the way through, and after he removed it a surge of regenerative energies closed the wound and woke the dwarf up.

“Woa-ahh!” the dwarf jerked upright, taking in the dead dwarves and the defensive Wardens with wild eyes, and scrambled back through the sands.

“Hold,” Janeka slammed her staff down, and the ground splintered, a faultline encircling the dwarf. “I will not have you alerting anyone to our presence here.”

“What?” the dwarf swallowed, and seemed infinitely more sane than she had seconds ago.

“Leave her alone,” Anders put himself between Janeka and the dwarf. “What’s wrong with you!? You can’t just go around killing everyone!”

“I disagree,” Janeka said. “These dwarves are a danger so long as they are under the Conductor’s control.”

“We’re all under the Conductor's control!” Anders snapped. His voice broke, but it was like it didn’t matter, the sound as sweet as the rest of the song he couldn’t get out of his head. Alec had already started humming it the second he’d sheathed his sword, staring out at the chasm and the fortress rising from it in the distance where the Conductor was waiting for them. “Are you going to kill your own men next?”

“If they get in the way of the mission,” Janeka said without hesitation.

“Well you’re not killing her,” Anders snapped. “Amell, say something.”

“Anders can cleanse the dwarves we encounter,” Amell volunteered.

“So they can go back to their cities and tell the world about the Conductor?” Janeka scoffed. “The Grey Wardens have kept the existence of the Magisters Sidereal secret for over a thousand years. They are confirmation of everything the Chantry says about mages, and everyone will suffer if their existence is brought to light.”

“So we tell them not to say anything,” Anders said.

“What’s going on?” the dwarf asked, dragging off her helmet and freeing her fiery hair. “I haven’t felt this awful in forever.”

“You were compelled,” Anders eyed Janeka, holding himself open to the Fade in case he needed to call on a spellshield to keep the dwarf safe from her magic. “I don’t think we’ve met - I’m Anders,” Anders said, and then signed, “Can you sign?”

“Yeah,” the dwarf signed, and said, “Luka.” She looked at the dead dwarves and swallowed. “... is that Rhat?”

“You and your companions have committed crimes against the Grey Wardens,” Janeka said.

“Well… you know…” Luka shuffled back and slipped, her hand dropping off the edge faultline. “Carta… crime… hand… hand…”

“Indeed,” Janeka sniffed. “How many more of you are there?”

“More of me?” Luka repeated, giggling nervously. “There’s no more of me. There's just me. Me and-... uh-... well, I guess they’re all dead. Funny story - I… don’t know how I got here.”

“How convenient,” Janeka noted.

“Truth-...can be that,” Luka forced a grin, eyes darting between him and Janeka. “She’s gonna kill me,” Luka signed.

“No one is going to kill you,” Anders signed, and asked, “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Luka said. “I wasn’t here. I was in Kirkwall. I think uh-... I think the Knight Commander had just left.”

“What?” Beth pushed her way to the front of the Grey Wardens. Ailsa caught her before she got too close to Luka. “What do you mean he left? The Knight-Commander? Cullen? Cullen Rutherford? Where did he go?”

“I guess?” Luka shrugged. “Curly hair. Shiny armor. Guy in charge of the city until some soldiers showed up. He took all the good templars and left with them. I think they were with the Chantry.”

“What are you talking about?” Beth demanded. “He wouldn’t just leave.”

“Okay, but he did,” Luka shrugged again.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Beth argued. “The last we heard, Kirkwall was quarantined and the Viscount had gone missing.”

“Yeah, it’s quarantined,” Luka said. “Soldiers made sure of that. They said everyone who wasn’t sick could leave, and locked up the rest. They didn’t bring any relief. The Red Templars stayed behind to try and clean up the mage’s mess, but the Gangue still got out.”

“The what?” Anders asked.

“You call it the Red,” Luka said. “We call it the Gangue. When dwarves die, we go back to the Stone, but the casteless corrupt it. We become rock wraiths and Gangue, and all those Deep Lords say we have to be cut away because we’re a waste that weakens the Stone, but it was already weak. The Gangue is so much stronger than the Stone.

“It thrives on the surface. Cadash said we were going to make sure it spread, so all dwarves can finally have an afterlife, but-... I don’t remember the rest.”

Janeka scoffed, “You expect me to believe-”

“Can you just shut up for a second?” Anders hissed. “Andraste’s-”

“You forget yourself,” Janeka silenced him, her compulsion settling in his throat and swallowing everything he tried to say. “You are not a Grey Warden - you are a guest - and I do not believe for one moment that this dwarf does not remember-”

Amell squeezed his shoulder, and the blood magic broke.

“-bitch!” Anders blurted.

Janeka’s fingers clenched on her staff, “What right do you have to break my compulsions?”

“What right do you have to cast them?” Amell pulled him back a few paces. “Anders is under my command.”

“When it’s convenient,” Janeka said. “You didn’t have the courage to commit to his cause when he took action against the Chantry. The Grey Wardens have always made it known they stand with mages until you faltered. With every new Blight, there has been an epoch of magic, as we prove to the world that we are all that stands between it and its end, and instead of embracing a new age you gave up for fear of an old one. You stood on the shoulders of giants, and grew nervous you couldn’t see the ground. If you think-”

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Anders cut her off when he couldn’t stand how deep everything she said seemed to cut Amell. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! You don’t get to champion my cause and silence me in the same sentence-”

“I don’t have to commend you to commend your cause,” Janeka said.

“Fuck you, you’re one to talk,” Anders said. “Warden’s Keep is a ruin you weren’t even using. As soon as someone finds out about us, you’re going to deny ever knowing we were there so you can stay out of the war. Amell asked for mage autonomy eight years ago, and he’s been working for it ever since. It isn’t some secret he’s offering apostates asylum in Amaranthine, it’s real, and it’s a risk, and you don’t get to call him a coward because he didn’t want the Grey Wardens to take the blame for blowing up a Chantry.”

“Dwarf’s running,” Roland noted.

“What?” Janeka whirled around.

“Dwarf’s running,” Roland repeated, pointing after Luka, her bright red braids flying out behind her as she fled into the ruins.

“Why are you letting her!?” Janeka slammed her staff on the ground, sealing the cracks left by her earthquake, and Roland and Dursten took off after Luka.

“Stay away from her!” Anders cast a haste to overtake them and chase Luka through the ruins. She glanced over her shoulder at the commotion, pure panic in her expression, and took a sudden turn, skidding through the dirt as she rounded a tight corner and fled between two mudbrick buildings.

Anders caught himself on the wall, saw a glint out of the corner of his eye, and threw up a barrier in the split second it took the flask to shatter at his feet. Ice, fire, and lightning blew out the wall beside him in an explosion of elemental energy, and sent him colliding into the opposite wall in a shower of clay and dust. His barrier rippled with the brunt of the impact, and Anders shoved himself off the wall and over the rubble, and almost straight into Luka.

She’d run into a dead end, because she didn’t know where she was going, or where she was, or how she’d gotten there.

“Stay away!” Luka shrieked, clutching another flask and pressed up against the corner. “I’ll getcha!”

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Anders signed. Roland and Dursten came skidding around the corner, and Anders put himself between them and Luka long enough for the rest of the Grey Wardens to catch up with them. “Stop,” Anders rasped, voice shot. “Just let me talk to her.”

Janeka raised her hand to signal a hold, and the Wycome Wardens stood down. Anders knelt a yard off from Luka.

“I know you want an afterlife, but Red Lyrium doesn’t have anything to do with the Stone,” Anders signed. “It’s tainted, like the darkspawn, and they can use it to control you. That’s how you got here. I cleansed you so the darkspawn would stop controlling you.”

Luka signed angrily, but slowly, when she kept hold her flask and only used one hand to do it, “Can’t just cut the Gangue out of me like some-”

“I don’t know what the Gangue is,” Anders signed quickly. “I just know Red Lyrium isn’t it. I’m sorry Cadash lied, but the darkspawn have been controlling her too. Is she here?”

“I don’t know,” Luka signed.

“I’m trying to help-”

“I don’t know!”

“I know you’ve heard of me,” Anders signed. “Cadash and I were friends.”

“I don’t know, okay!?” Luka dropped the flash back into her belt pouch to sign. “I don’t remember. Everything’s been hazy since the Gangue-... since we started taking Red Lyrium. I don’t remember much after Brosca left.”

“Brosca left?”

“She didn’t believe the Gangue was good. Said Cadash had lost her mind.”

“She wasn’t wrong,” Anders signed. “We have to stop the darkspawn that’s doing this, and I don’t want anyone else to die, but it’s not easy to convince people who are being compelled. These people know you. We could use your help.”

“... I guess I don’t want them to die,” Luka said.

People died anyway. There were only nine Grey Wardens, set against dozens upon dozens of dwarves, and restraining them wasn't an option. Corypheus had called most of the Carta from Kirkwall, and most of them were too far gone for Anders to cleanse as easily as he'd cleansed Luka. Most of the dwarves were half-mad horrors, and they killed them to the last man, even the brontos they’d brought with them.

Ancient ruins gave way to ancient mines on their way down into the chasm, the tunnels lined with rusted tracks, toppled minecarts, and unearthed pyrophite, as if the Grey Wardens who’d once lived in the wasteland had evacuated overnight. There were stables on the lower levels, where the dwarves had been housing the brontos they’d brought, and where Janeka wanted them to leave the horses.

Anders held the reins to Son Cadeau, wondering where he was supposed to find room for the wisp-born construct between the bodies of the brontos in the aftermath of their last battle. They’d been torn apart, between Beth and Ailsa’s force magic, and their remains were hard to look at. Their insides were almost completely crystal, red lyrium encasing every other organ. Anders felt sick to his stomach, knowing the dwarves all looked the same.

For what? For hope of an afterlife they should have already had? Their own people had abandoned them, and the Chantry provided no place for them. If the Maker made all things, then that included dwarves, but the Chantry taught the dwarves weren't His creation. Anders was never going to forget the day Amal asked if the Maker could see him, and how assured Anders had felt that the Chantry had failed every last man, woman, and child in Thedas.

Amell felt for him, running a comforting hand up and down his back, "What is it?"

"It had to be torn down," Anders said.

"I know," Amell said.

"I had to do it," Anders said.

"I know," Amell said.

"The Chantry failed us,” Anders tightened his grip on the reins, breaking with veilfire. “It failed all of us. Everyone it was supposed to protect-"

"I know," Amell squeezed his shoulder, and Anders forced himself to take a shallow breath and guide Son Cadeau into a stall with Dans Leur Sang. The undead constructs clung to the memories of the creatures they’d once been, wisps recreating the huff of horses, shuffling in their shared stall, nudging into one another like they were content in their shared afterlife.

"... I'm not going to His side, am I?" Anders asked.

"Why do you think that?" Amell asked.

Anders laughed humorlessly, "Why don't you?"

"I don't believe in the Maker, Anders," Amell reminded him.

Anders took his arm, and guided him away from the stalls and around the dead bodies of the brontos, "But if you did."

"I don't," Amell said firmly. "I believe in you."

"I think you should pick something else to believe in."

"No."

The stables let out into more stables the dwarves had converted into cells. They ran the length of the room, and opened back out into the desert, where what little sunlight reached the base of the chasm spilled inside the cellblock. It was unguarded, all the dwarves dead in the first room, but there were bound to be more waiting for them when they finally reached the Warden’s Prison.

It was out there in the desert, hidden away in the canyon, and crawling with darkspawn. Anders could feel them through Corypheus' Call - like a physical weight on his chest - so many they must have been walking right into a horde, and it was getting harder to believe they could handle it. Alec hadn’t stopped humming, and Ailsa kept trying to wander off, and Anders kept losing track of Luka.

The dwarf would be there and then she wouldn’t and Anders was terrified at some point he’d turn around and find her dead with how irritable Janeka had become. Anders swore he heard whispers every time he turned a corner, but when they turned into the cells he heard shouts.

“Hey! Let me out of here!” One of the cell doors rattled with the words. “Whoever’s out there, you’re my new best friend if you get me out of this!”

“Varric!?” Beth’s hands glowed a vibrant sapphire, and ripped the door from its hinges, flinging it to the far corners of the cellblock. Varric - or what was left of him - came stumbling out, his hair a tangled nest of brown that spilled down his chest and became his beard.

Beth knelt to catch him, and Varric gave her shoulder a grateful squeeze, his glove missing from his mangled fingers. “Sunshine. Thank the Maker, the ancestors, the Stone, the Creators, the Old Gods, the New Gods, and whatever gods I'm forgetting. I thought I was going to die in there.”

“What were you even doing in there!?” Beth gathered up his hand and squeezed it.

“I needed some new material for my book,” Varric joked, adjusting his jacket. “The main character gets kidnapped by a bunch of crazy dwarves and almost dies, and you know they say to write what you know.”

“This isn’t funny, Varric,” Beth said. “Maker, you look dreadful.”

“This? Dreadful?” Varric gestured at himself, like he wasn’t emaciated underneath his heavy leather jacket. “Please. Hey Blondie, Creepy… funny seeing you here…”

“You know, there’s plenty of other cells, we could just put him back in one,” Anders said.

“Anders!” Beth hissed over her shoulder. “That’s not funny.”

“Who said I was joking?” Anders asked.

“Still upset about the whole-...” Varric trailed off.

“Looking the other way while I was in solitary and telling me to go back to my abuser?” Anders filled in for him. “Yeah, we’re still upset about that.”

“... then what are you doing here?” Varric asked.

“What are you talking about?” Anders asked. “We’re here to stop Corypheus. What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to save Hawke.”

Chapter 235: From Kirkwall We Fled: Our Former Masters

Summary:

"Some among you wish to flee back to your masters."

- Shartan 9:04

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 6 Nubulis Late Afternoon
Vimmark Wasteland - The Stables Outside the Warden’s Prison

Anders felt like the ground was crumbling out from underneath him, one chunk at a time, until there was nothing left beneath his feet. It was all gone. The ground, the dirt, the desert, the canyon.

He couldn’t feel anything. He couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t gasp or scream or cry. He just stood there, letting all the air leave his lungs, until there was nothing left inside of him. Not even the taste of it on his tongue.

Anders’ hands moved when nothing else could, and signed out, “Hawke’s dead.”

“You ever known Hawke to be a man who dies?” Varric joked.

It was a joke. Like it was funny. Like he should laugh. Like he should smile. Like he should tip his tankard across the table and say ‘Good one,’ like they were still back at the Hanged Man and Hawke had just emptied a vial of bane into his drink and Varric had just watched him do it and Anders had just smiled and laughed and drank because that was what he was supposed to do unless he wanted it to get worse than it already was but Hawke had always found new ways to remind him that ‘worse’ was always right there waiting.

“Garrett's here?” Beth asked.

Anders wrung his hands on his staff, veilfire breaking through his veins and casting the cellblock in emerald. It cracked up his wrists like a river racing its way up his arms and forking out across his shoulders, making a mire of his chest, and buried there were all the dead men who shared his face. One was twenty-seven, and one was twenty-eight, and one was twenty-nine, and one was thirty, but forgot.

They’d all been too young to die, but they’d all died in their own ways, and no matter his love’s necromancy there was no way to raise them. Twenty-seven had killed himself with Karl, and twenty-eight had burned to death with Decimus, and twenty-nine had taken an arrow through his heart, and thirty must have died at some point, but Anders wasn’t sure that thirty was ever even something that he’d been.

He didn’t remember turning thirty. He lost a life inside that room. He had a new life now at thirty-three, and he could have it because Hawke was dead, but Varric said that Hawke was here, and Anders couldn’t handle it. “He’s supposed to be dead!”

“Hawke can’t die on me yet,” Varric said. “The Tale of the Champion still hasn’t gone to print.”

“The Tale of the Champion,” Anders thrust his staff into the closest Grey Warden’s hands for them to hold so he could sign. “You’re still calling it that?”

“Do you have a better name?” Varric asked.

“The Rise of the Mad Viscount?” Anders signed. “The Cannibal of Kirkwall? The Fall of the Free Marches? The Release of Red Lyrium? The Piece of Shit that Poisoned Me!?”

“Doesn’t sound like something that’ll sell,” Varric signed.

Lightning ricocheted from Anders’ feet to his fingers and snapped out over Varric’s head when he signed, "You think that bastard is worth saving!? You risked your life to come here and rescue him from the Carta when you never bothered to speak up for me?"

"Anders, calm down," Beth summoned a spell shield over Varric.

"I want to hear him say it," Anders signed, electricity forking out across the cellblock and dissolving against Beth’s shield. "I want to hear him say Hawke’s life is worth more than mine."

"Hawke didn't destroy Kirkwall," Varric signed.

Anders laughed, high-pitched and hysterical, startling the rest of the Grey Wardens who couldn’t understand what they were signing. "Are you insane?" Anders signed. “You were there! You know exactly what Hawke did to Kirkwall!”

"Damn right I was there,” Varric signed. “You tore a damn hole in the sky, and you think Hawke destroyed the city?"

"The city was beyond saving!” Anders signed. “People were eating each other in the streets! Hawke did that!"

"Red lyrium did that to Hawke!” Varric signed. “You could have cleansed him, and instead you left him there to fight that thing the mages unleashed on the city!”

“You think mages unleashed the Harvester?” Anders signed. “It’s a monster! It’s drawn to death! The mages didn’t have anything to do with it!”

“Please, Blondie, give me a little credit,” Varric signed. “A giant undead construct appears as soon as mages start breaking out of the Circle and you expect anyone to believe they didn’t have anything to do with it? If the First Enchanter was still alive, I’d blame him for it.”

“Orsino didn’t have anything to do with the Harvester!” Anders signed.

“Orsino was working with the blood mage who carved up Hawke’s mother,” Varric signed. “You think he couldn’t have made that thing?”

“Oh, right, I missed the part where the Harvester looked just like Leandra,” Anders signed sarcastically. “Which face were you looking at again? Or did you miss the part where it had fifty?”

“Do you have any idea how many innocent people are getting caught in the middle of this war that you started!?” Varric signed.

“Mages are innocent people!” Anders signed.

“Do you remember Kirkwall?” Varric signed. “We’ve both seen more than enough blood magic to know that’s not true.”

“You can’t use blood magic to justify the Circle!” Anders signed.

“You didn’t do this for the Circle,” Varric signed. “You did it for yourself. Thanks to you, there’s a whole Exalted March, with cities under martial law, and mages are hunted more than ever!”

“The Divine was going to March anyway!” Anders signed. “She told Grand Cleric Elthina to leave the city! There was an outbreak of red lyrium-!”

“You could have cleansed it!” Varric signed. “You could have cleansed Hawke!”

“I should have killed Hawke!” Anders signed.

“Enough,” Janeka slammed her staff down and a crack spiraled out through the cellblock floor to separate them. “I do not sign and I do not care what you are signing. The dwarf comes with us. No one leaves with knowledge of Corypheus.”

“I don’t know that I like the sound of that,” Varric signed, retrieving his things from a chest the Carta had outside his cell. There was a crossbow, but it couldn’t have been Bianca, because Anders had broken his old crossbow over his knee when Varric had shown up at Vigil’s Keep. It looked close enough, and it just made Anders hate him all the more to think that Varric hadn’t been hurt by everything that had happened to him.

“It’ll be fine, Varric,” Beth promised. “We all want the same things.”

They did not. Anders got his staff back from Nate, and kept it hooked to his back so he didn’t beat Varric to death with it. It didn’t help his anger, when he could still imagine his hands wringed around Varric’s neck, so he wrapped them around Amell’s arm instead. Amell let him have his anger. He didn’t try to force him to calm down with words or rosewood, and Anders pressed a fierce kiss to the back of his hand for it. His grip was a little too tight, but Amell didn’t say anything about it, and Janeka motioned for them to move out.

The canyon floor was covered in a thick fog, and in the far distance a fortress rose up out of it. Streaks of sunlight caught on the smooth sandstone walls of the canyon, like it was raining fire and sand as the winds blew the desert down on them. The fortress was covered in it, grains of sand raining off the eaves, the banners that once hung from them long since blown away. On the buttresses were weathered statues of griffons missing beaks and wings, soaring six stories back up into the sky to the top of the tower, like they were just as drawn to the awakened darkspawn within.

“Varric, are you sure Garrett's alive?” Beth asked as they made their way through the ancient ruins at the base of the canyon.

“I hope so,” Varric said, eyeing Anders uneasily instead of watching where he was going and stumbling every so often. “I’ve been in that cell a long time.”

“How long?” Beth asked.

“Set me up with a soft one, Sunshine,” Varric said. “Ask me how Swords and Shields is selling or when Hard in Hightown 2: Siege Harder is going to print.”

“Varric, we’re not out of danger yet, we need to know what to expect,” Beth said.

“What else but the worst?” Varric joked. “Shit, Sunshine, I don’t know. It was still snowing when I got tossed into that cell. I think I’ve been in there since Haring.”

“Varric, it’s Drakonis,” Beth said. “Has the Carta held Garrett captive for three months?”

“Stuck in a cell for months on end?” Anders interjected. “I can’t imagine what that’s like.”

“This one didn’t have room service,” Varric said.

Anders tensed, “So help me, Varric, if you keep making light of what Hawke did to me.”

“You’ll what?” Varric asked. “Blow up a dwarven embassy?”

“Just shut up,” Anders said.

“You can all keep silent,” Janeka hissed. “I can sense more ghouls ahead and I won’t have us caught unaware.”

“They’re not ghouls,” Anders said. “They’re infected with red lyrium.”

“Which makes them all the more dangerous,” Janeka said. “Be silent. I won’t say it again.”

Red lyrium glittered in the sands on their way to Warden’s Prison and grew through the courtyard. Sieging the fortress were hordes of darkspawn. They scaled the walls and crawled in through the windows, forcing their way in through rusted wrought iron, skinning themselves on broken bits of metal with no regard for their own well being, consumed by Corypheus’ Call and their endless efforts to reach him.

“So that looks bad,” Varric noted, anxiously wringing his hands on the stock of his crossbow.

“We have demons bound to every floor,” Janeka didn’t sound concerned. “They hold back the darkspawn Corypheus’ Calls in his sleep. He can speak through the corruption, but his pull has never been this strong.”

“Let’s hurry and renew the seals,” Beth said. “Templars, I can handle, but I hate knowing that this darkspawn is out there after my family. The Carta already captured my brother, and I’m not waiting until they come after my daughter.”

A series of archways made up the outer walls to the circular fortress, and the Carta was encamped in the small courtyard. A deep crimson barrier rippled at the massive double doors that made up the main entrance to the fortress. The dwarves looked like they were trying to break the barrier, a colossal orb set up at the top of the stairs like some sort of siege weapon. It was a brilliant blood red, chains running between it to the double doors, and it was pulsing with magic.

Anders could feel it even from a distance, radiating raw energy, like it held the strength of a thousand blood mages. The dwarves turned to take them in, positioning themselves defensively in front of the orb. Anders counted twelve, then twenty-four, then twelve again before he decided he couldn’t keep track of how many dwarves there were. They kept moving, pacing and spinning their axes behind their leader, who stepped forward to confront them.

“Healer,” Cadash’s armor was decorated with red lyrium. Everything was lined with it, like brilliant red rubies she’d gone so far as to braid into her beard. Anders could even see it breaking through her throat and growing up to her ears. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“You are interfering with official Grey Warden business and trespassing in Grey Warden territory,” Janeka said before Anders could say anything. “Stand down. I will not ask again.”

“Bless your heart,” Cadash said. “You think you have any say?"

"Boss!" Luka scrambled to the forefront of their group. "It's blood magic! You gotta resist it! We ain't even getting paid!"

"Gerav, you son of a bitch," Varric called to one of the dwarves. "You were supposed to help me get Hawke out, not turn me into the Carta!"

Anders couldn’t focus on the argument. It sounded too much like a song, the lyrics incomprehensible and ancient, urging him up to the top of the tower where he could hear Corypheus more clearly if he just took the gag out of his mouth.

Anders clutched at his head with one hand and clung to Amell with the other, trying to find some way to drive him out, but the words were still there, like whispers in the next room over, and Anders had to find some way to make them out or he’d go mad.

“Make him stop talking,” Anders begged.

“I’m here,” Amell assured him. “Hold onto that.”

“Can’t you hear him?” Anders pressed the heel of his palm into his ear, but there was no drowning out the darkspawn when the Call was coursing through his blood. “How are you so calm?”

“He’ll be silent soon,” Amell promised.

“She’s going to kill the dwarves,” Anders guessed by Janeka’s stance, and the Carta’s unwillingness to back down. “Can’t you do something? Make them see reason?”

“Anders, I’m not stronger than the Conductor,” Amell said through a sympathetic but strained smile that finally gave Anders some insight into how hard Amell was working to maintain his calm. “You’re the only one who can cleanse them.”

“They’re too far gone,” They weren’t like Luka. They weren’t suffering from light exposure. They must have been taking it for months with how much red lyrium was already breaking through their skin. “I can’t cleanse that many - it would take weeks.”

“So cleanse one,” Amell suggested.

One.

One out of twelve or twenty-four. There were two men who looked like they were brothers, two women who looked like they were sisters, two couples, a few groups of friends. Everyone was with someone, except for the two who weren’t. Gerav had soft brown hair and sorry eyes, but Cadash had connections, and Anders was a selfish bastard, because he knew which one he’d save.

“I know Corypheus is compelling her, but can you keep their leader out of the fight?” Anders asked.

“The one at the forefront?” Amell guessed, a pulse of blood magic gauging what was bound to become a battlefield.

“That’s her,” Anders said.

“I’ll try,” Amell drew a dagger, tugged his sleeve out of his glove, and slit his wrist. “Nathan?”

“Now?” Nate asked.

“Now,” Amell agreed.

An arrow flew from Nate’s fingers to Gerav’s throat, and the dwarf toppled over, dead. “Leave the leader!” Nate called out, and the Grey Wardens and the Carta fell on each other.

The stairs to the fortress crumpled out from underneath the dwarves as Janeka’s earthquake tore through the canyon. The dwarves caught in it fell into the rock and rubble, while the rest jumped back towards the doors. Flasks flew overhead, and a barrier flared to life around the Grey Wardens, arcane energy from Ailsa shattering them midair instead of at their feet. Caltrops, bits of glass, and knockout powder rained down on them, and the Grey Wardens spread out to assault the fortress.

The two groups of Grey Wardens didn't fight the same way at all. Alec and Roland raised their shields and charged with Janeka’s magic and Dursten’s arrows for support. Ailsa wrenched rocks and rubble from the ruins with telekinesis, and threw them together into cover for Nate and Amell.

Beth grabbed Varric, and the two of them took their own cover behind a crumbling sandstone griffon. The dwarves threw flasks, daggers, and caltrops, but Anders didn't take cover. He had to get to Cadash, stumbling blindly at the top of the stairs. She was foaming at the mouth, blackened blood draining from her nose, her ears, her eyes as Amell’s compulsion warred with the one Corypheus already had on her.

Amell wasn't trying to get her to do anything other than hold still, but Corypheus was so strong it looked like holding still was killing her. Anders hasted himself as he vaulted up over the ruined steps of the fortress, and had almost reached the top when he heard a scream. There were countless screams, as arrows flew and swords swung amidst wild magic, but this scream was different. It curdled blood, and cut through the Call, and was the kind of scream someone made not in the face of death, but in the face of darkspawn.

Luka must have fled, because she came running back, a host of darkspawn on her heels. She'd have been dead or taken if they were shrieks, but they were genlocks, and they were gaining, some of them chasing her on two legs and others on all fours. She'd almost reached the courtyard when one of the genlocks grabbed one of her wild braids and wrenched her back, and then all at once she was swallowed by the horde.

"No!" Someone - not Anders - screamed and ran to Luka's rescue.

Anders was already rescuing someone, there at the top of the staircase, pinning Cadash to the ground while he cleansed the red lyrium from her blood and carved it from her neck, fighting her flailing hands as she struggled through two compulsions and what pain wasn't suppressed by his panacea. He couldn't rescue Luka too. She was dead - or worse - and he made his peace with it in the moment because that was what Grey Wardens did.

Beth wasn't a Grey Warden. She didn't know better. She ran for Luka screaming, staff raised over her head and the Fade flowing through her when she dropped a gravitic sphere atop the darkspawn. The genlocks hit their knees, and then their faces, the force of her magic crushing them into the ground like they were being forced to bury themselves alive. The energy imploded, and the genlocks were thrown in all directions through the canyon.

Luka lay in the center of the explosion, beaten and bloodied, but evidently not dead because Beth heaved her to her feet and shoved her towards the courtyard. Luka half stumbled, half ran to where Varric was taking cover, losing pieces of torn armor in the process, when the darkspawn that weren't dead recovered to chase after her and caught Beth instead.

They were a multitude. They were always a multitude, and every Grey Warden to ever serve knew better than to put themselves in the center of the fray to save anyone who fell in it, because darkspawn swarmed in seconds, and when Varric screamed, “Sunshine!” there weren’t enough crossbow bolts in the world that could make a difference.

The only thing that made a difference was magic. Beth exploded, great waves of raw energy throwing off the genlocks that dove on her as she fought her way back to the cover of the courtyard. Darkspawn tore at her robes and clung to her ankles, dragging her down to fist their hands in her hair before she flung them again, heaving herself to her feet with her staff and burning through mana and blood just to get far enough away so the Grey Wardens could help.

An arrow cleaved through the throat of the next darkspawn to dive for her, and the genlock’s corpse went rolling through the sands. Varric emptied his quiver into the rest with help from the Grey Wardens, and Beth and Luka lived - at least for the moment. There was no telling if they were tainted, and without the lyrium to take to, Anders couldn’t cleanse them the way he could cleanse Cadash.

She passed out from the pain, and finally stopped fighting him as Anders dredged the ruby red shards from her veins and pried pieces of lyrium from her neck and shoulders. It didn’t feel like a cleansing, it felt like a carving, the crystal buried deep in her skin, her muscle, her bones. He should have done it over the course of days, but Anders didn’t think he had them so long as Corypheus was Calling them, and he couldn’t risk leaving any lyrium inside of her.

Eventually, the Grey Wardens must have won out against the darkspawn and the dwarves, because they came to join him, taking advantage of the excess of energy in his auras to heal the least of their wounds and set up something of a camp in a circle around him while he worked on Cadash. Someone squeezed his shoulder. Someone else handed him a flask of water he didn’t trust the unfamiliar hand enough to drink, so he used it to wash away the excess of blood in Cadash’s wounds instead.

Anders was so focused on trying to seal them and shut out Corypheus’ Call he didn’t look up from Cadash’s unconscious body until he heard Beth shriek, “Garrett!”

The Fade tore through Anders, veilfire in his veins splitting his skin and sealing Cadash’s in the same breath. Anders spun, lightning lancing out from his fingers and scorching across the sandstone walls of the fortress, blasting sand and char in all directions. Anders sucked in a panicked breath and scrambled to his feet, radiating energy and electricity. It coiled between his fingers and snapped out across the floor, turning grains of sand to glass with every violent flash of sapphire, but Hawke wasn’t there.

Anders spun in a frantic circle, and Beth ran past him, to the grand doors of the fortress and the crimson barrier sealing them shut. Set before the doors like a siege weapon was the blood red orb, in a wrought iron cage, chains running between the orb and the ceiling. Beth dropped her staff, and climbed atop the orb to scale the chains, trying to reach Hawke, suspended over the sphere.

He was hanging from the ceiling, glass tubes connecting him to the sphere below, slowly filling it with what was left of his blood. The glass was stained red from how long he’d been strung up, blood being leeched at the bend in his knees, elbows, and neck. He was unconscious and emaciated, red lyrium breaking through his bare chest and shaping it into a painful looking spike, what skin was left stretched between lyrium and warped bone, trying to hold his oversized torso together.

The left side of his face was three sharp shards of red lyrium, growing out at his jaw, cheek, and brow, with his skin stretched thin between them, and another shard devoured the lower right half of his face from where Anders had struck him with lightning years ago. There was no hiding the right shard beneath his beard, and left shards were so long they got in the way of his hair, grown out around his face.

He was just… hanging there. He wasn’t aiming an arrow straight for Anders’ throat. He wasn’t holding the brand to Amell’s brow. He wasn’t sitting a red lyrium throne at the host of a red lyrium army. He was just hanging there, naked and vulnerable, strung up by his arms and legs over the sphere, at other people’s mercy for months and unconscious for Maker knew how many of them. Anders felt like he was deaf and blind to everything outside of Hawke, hanging helplessly from the ceiling, and it wasn’t until Dumat led Amell over to him and Anders felt over his arm that he managed to exist outside of Hawke and everything that Hawke had done to him.

“Holy shit,” Varric circled the sphere, dragging his crossbow on the ground behind him. “Is he-... Ancestors, is he even alive?”

“Of course he’s alive,” Beth climbed up the chain, swiping for Hawke and falling short, the tips of her fingers brushing over a few loose strands of greying hair. “Garrett! Garrett, wake up! Get him down! Help me get him down! Maker, what did they do to you?”

“His blood's been drained," Janeka noted, dragging her fingers along the sphere and pulling the blood inside it up to the glass. "The Conductor must have hoped to use this… device to break the seals."

"Can you describe it?" Amell asked.

"A glass sphere the size of a man and draining the blood of one," Janeka said.

"It sounds like a magrallen," Amell said.

"Myth," Janeka scoffed.

"They're not," Amell said.

"Looks real enough to me," Varric said, hefting his crossbow up and pointing it at the magrallen. "Get down, Sunshine. Let's shatter this thing."

"You'll kill whoever is connected to it if you do," Amell warned him.

"You say that like it’s a bad thing," Anders finally found words.

"No!" Beth latched onto one of the chains, but she didn’t have any mana left to summon a barrier, and by her pallor, she couldn’t spare any blood. "You're not killing my brother."

"And why would we, when we could make use of him?" Janeka asked. "The seals should be reinforced with as much blood as possible."

"My brother is not a blood bag!" Beth said.

"I disagree," Janeka said, and Anders decided he liked her. "There are seals on every floor, and it falls to your bloodline to reinforce them."

"You never said anything about killing anyone," Beth said.

"I imagine it would not have made a compelling argument if I had," Janeka sniffed. "For a thousand years, the Grey Wardens have kept the Magisters Sidereal secret, and make no mistake, I will do whatever it takes to keep it that way. Commander, is there any cause for care when we take him down from this contraption?”

“None at all,” Amell said, taking hold of Anders’ arm. “Speak with me a moment?”

Anders didn’t know where to take them. The narrow courtyard encircled the fortress, and the stairs that lead up to it had been reduced to ruin by Janeka’s earthquake. The entire area was littered with the bodies of dwarves and darkspawn, and their camp consisted of little more than places to sit around Cadash’s unconscious body. He settled for walking Amell to the opposite side of the entrance, just out of earshot but not eyesight.

Amell squeezed his arm, “Anders.”

“Yeah?” Anders asked, unable to tear his eyes off the Janeka’s men climbing onto the magrallen to cut Hawke down from it.

“Do you want me to kill him?” Amell offered.

“What?” Anders asked.

“My cousin,” Amell elaborated. “When we’re done here, do you want me to kill him?”

“You can’t do it now?” Anders joked.

“Not if we want Beth to help us control Corypheus,” Amell said.

“You mean contain Corypheus?” Anders asked.

“Hm?” Amell hummed.

“Corypheus,” Anders repeated. “We’re here to contain him.”

“Yes?” Amell tilted his head, a confused expression on his face.

“Nothing,” Anders must have misheard him. “I can’t believe Hawke is here.”

“Do you want me to kill him?” Amell asked again.

“I don’t know,” Anders admitted, leaning on Amell until he got the hint and wrapped an arm around his waist. “Ask me after.”

The Wycome Wardens cut Hawke down from the ceiling, and Nate came to join them, slinging his bow over his shoulder and leaning on his cane while he watched. “Are you alright?”

“I’ll give you twenty guesses,” Anders said.

“Perhaps if we surrender him to the Divine, she’ll put an end to the Exalted March,” Nate suggested.

“You think she’d take him?” Anders snorted.

“The man responsible for the Red Plague and the rise of the Red Divine?” Nate raised an eyebrow. “I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who wanted him alive.”

“You’d think,” Anders said.

Alec and Dursten laid Hawke out beside Cadash in the courtyard. Hawke didn’t have any clothes, so Roland took off his cloak and tied it around Hawke’s waist for modesty. Anders knew the man meant well, but it just made him hate the Wycome Wardens all the more. Beth pushed her way through them to kneel and pull Hawke’s head into her lap, but she didn’t have the mana, the blood, or the spirit to try her hand at healing him. Considering the monster she meant to heal, there wasn’t a single spirit who would have answered her anyway.

“Wake them,” Janeka ordered, drawing Hawke’s blood from the magrallen and weaving it into a sleeve around her arm. “We have no time to waste.”

Janeka set her hand to the barrier and it dissolved. The doors to the fortress swung inward, revealing a weathered entryway with cracked floors and cobwebbed corners. Wind rushed in, and one of the cobwebs ripped free, falling about the face of an old griffon statue like a veil. Janeka summoned a sphere of magelight, and sent it in after the wind, illuminating tattered tapestries from the time of Tevinter for those of them who went inside.

Anders stayed in the courtyard, and woke Cadash first. She was weak, with how much red lyrium Anders had ripped out of her, but she knew more than Luka when she was the one in charge of the Carta. She’d been mining red lyrium out of Valammar and selling it to everyone from the Red Irons, to the Red Divine, to the Red Whatevers that seemed to be sprouting up all over the Free Marches. Anders didn’t doubt she’d sold some to someone in Wycome with the recent outbreak of the Red Plague, but Cadash was missing the last few months of her memories.

She didn’t remember sending anyone after the Hawkes, or getting the dwarves to believe Red Lyrium was the Gangue, or anything about Corypheus or the Conductor or whatever they were calling the damned darkspawn emissary driving them all mad. The last thing she remembered was that King Aeducan had started sending assassins after her lover Natia Brosca, once it had come out that she and his wife were sisters, to try to hide the shame of his connections to the Carta.

Cadash had needed all the coin that she could get to keep her safe, and red lyrium had been the fastest way to get it, for all the good that it had done. She’d gone insane, and Brosca had just gone, and in the end it had all just been for nothing, and she knew it, so she sat there in the courtyard crying with so much more remorse than Anders had ever seen from Hawke.

Anders didn’t have to wake him. He could just drive his sword straight down through his throat. There was too much red lyrium for him to cleanse without spending as much time on Hawke as he spent on the Hearts, and Hawke hadn’t had one of those for years. Whatever man Anders woke would be a monster, and stay that way for months.

Anders was sure there was some faith out there with some reason for him to spare Hawke after everything he’d done, but Anders wasn’t sure that his was it. Anders stared at him for a long while with a hand on his staff and the hilt of his sword, distantly aware that Beth was begging him, and Janeka was ordering him, and Corypheus was Calling him, but so long as he looked at Hawke, it was like none of them were there.

“Anders,” Nate said.

“Yeah?” Anders asked.

“What do you need right now?” Nate asked.

“He was always so pious,” Anders muttered. “So ready to believe that any harm he did was the will of the Maker… I used to wonder how he managed it. He would give confession and take offertory and then we would go home and it would start all over again.”

“You don’t have to wait for the legion to bring out the lamp oil,” Nate said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Anders asked.

“It means no one is asking you to be Andraste,” Nate said.

“... Do you really think turning him in would make a difference to the Divine?” Anders asked.

“It might,” Nate said. “Would it make a difference to the mages if you had more time to prepare to stand against the March?”

Anders imagined, for a moment, that he was mortal, and that his own vengeance could come first for once, but he was the cause of mages, and if there was a chance that Hawke could do more for them alive than dead, then alive was how he had to stay, so Anders woke him up.

Chapter 236: From Kirkwall We Fled: Maddened

Summary:

And throwing themselves
At the feet of their former masters

- Shartan 9:03

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter!

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 6 Nubulis Early Evening
Warden’s Prison

Anders was never supposed to see Hawke again.

He wasn’t supposed to survive the Harvester or three months attached to the magrallen. He was supposed to die, but it was like he didn’t have the decency. He was worse than a roach, and seeing him sit up and run a weary hand through his greying hair made Anders’ heart race, and his hands shake, and his skin crawl.

“This still a dream?” Hawke’s knuckles were red. It was lyrium, but Hawke had licked his blood off them so many times it was impossible to see them any other way. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t his blood, that it wasn’t that room, that it wasn’t that year. Hawke didn’t have to do anything to hurt him. He just had to exist.

Anders felt like there were bugs crawling all over him. He scratched at his arms, his shoulders, the back of his neck, but he could still feel them underneath his armor, his clothes, his skin. Beth knelt next to her brother, a hand on his shoulder holding him upright, but Hawke hardly looked at her. His eyes were on Anders. His eyes were always on Anders - and Anders hated that so long as he lived Hawke could always use a part of Amell to hurt him.

“Garrett!” Beth snapped her fingers in front of Hawke’s face to focus his attention and signed, “Garrett, are you alright?”

“Sister?” Hawke seemed to guess. “What are you doing here?”

“Saving you,” Varric shouldered his crossbow to sign, “Thank us for the rescue later.”

“Where am I?” Hawke took in the darkspawn and dwarven bodies littering the courtyard. “Deep Roads?”

“We’re at the bottom of a chasm in the Vimmark Mountains,” Beth signed an explanation. “A darkspawn emissary captured you.”

Hawke’s eyes swept over each of them, lingering on the griffon emblems adorning every other breast. “Grey Wardens did this to me,” Hawke decided, struggling to stand up and losing Roland’s cloak in the process. “Petrice!” Hawke slipped and fell onto his side, “Mother! Where are you!?”

“No, Garrett-” Beth grabbed at him, frantically trying to tie Roland’s cloak around his waist to cover his ass and cock and failing miserably. “She’s not here-”

“Petrice!” Hawke started wailing from the floor. “Petrice, you promised not to leave me!”

Varric sucked in an uncomfortable breath through his teeth, watching Beth trying to swaddle a full grown man through a child’s tantrum, “So, this could be going better. Somebody wanna give us a hand with this?”

“Are you really looking at me right now?” Anders demanded.

“You don’t have to do anything for them,” Amell promised, pulling him flush against his side. “You don’t have to sign or listen to anything they say.”

“Indeed,” Janeka eyed Hawke like he was worth less than shit on the bottom of a shoe. “The Wardens cannot waste time with someone so far gone. We must remain on our guard to handle whatever darkspawn Corypheus may have drawn to the tower. Control this creature or I will.”

“Garrett, please, you have to calm down,” Beth begged, signing awkwardly with one hand and clinging to Hawke with the other, Roland’s cloak tied into a skirt around his waist.

“Petrice!” Hawke shrieked, voice squeaking. “You promised! You promised me power!”

Beth wrapped her arms around Hawke’s shoulders and pressed her forehead to his back, choking back a sob. “Maker, please don’t make me lose another brother.”

Varric knelt in front of Hawke instead, setting his crossbow aside to sign, “Come on, Killer, Crazy Chantry Lady isn’t here. Don’t you want to go home?”

“Home?” Hawke repeated, wide eyed.

“Kirkwall?” Varric spelled out the word.

“The city!” Hawke heaved himself to the side and dragged Beth along with him, trying to scramble to his feet, but he’d lost so much blood he couldn’t make it past his knees. “It’s under siege!”

“It was under siege,” Varric signed, and eased Hawke back down to sit with Beth. “Remember? The Red Irons broke it, and Crazy Chantry Lady said it was a sign you were sent by the Maker? Most Holy got a little mad at all the sacrilege and sent Choir Boy back with soldiers?”

Hawke shook his head, “How long have I been here?”

“Three months, maybe?” Varric signed. “Choir Boy recruited Captain Curly to capture you, but the Carta got to you before they did.”

“Got me?” Hawke looked at the empty magrallen, and the chains dangling from the ceiling. “You saved me?”

“Now you’re getting it,” Varric signed. “You think you can get up? We got a ways to go before we can get out of here. I know, messing with you is suicidal, but apparently there’s some ancient darkspawn behind all this that hasn’t learned that lesson.”

“Anders,” Hawke looked at him. “You saved me?”

Anders’ hands shook, trying to come up with something to sign that could encapsulate his rage, his despair, his disgust. His eyes were dry, but it was still hard to see. His vision was a swath of sand and blood, of brown and red with streaks of green as his veins split with veilfire, and he clutched at Amell’s arm when he couldn’t sign with seizing fingers.

Amell pressed his lips to his ear in a way that seemed unashamedly intimate in front of so many people, and said, “You don’t owe him an answer.”

Anders took one breath, and then he took another, and then he took Amell’s arm to lead him into the Warden’s Prison, “Let’s just go.”

It was a cage, built to contain Corypheus, made up of crumbling sandstone walls, broken tiled floors, rusted wrought iron banisters, and tapestries so faded they’d gone from blue to grey. Cobwebs filled every corner and sand filled every crevice, but it had held together for over a thousand years. It was a labyrinth on the inside, lyrium worked into the walls, and filled with countless seals they used Beth’s blood to reinforce.

Anders found them a spot next to Janeka. He didn’t like having Hawke at his back, but nothing he did would make having Hawke here any better. Their group made their way through the tower, reinforcing the seals on the first floor of the prison, and Anders wasn’t sure if it was Corypheus’ Call, but he was so suspicious of the silence he couldn’t stop glancing over his shoulder.

Beth gave Hawke her staff so he had some way to walk, and she and Varric signed out what looked like a lengthier explanation of everything Hawke had missed while he’d been strung up from the magrallen. Hawke wasn’t signing anything. He was just staring, his eyes on Anders everytime he turned, and Anders was struck with the intrusive thought that if he kept it up it wouldn’t be the first time that he’d cut out Amell’s eyes.

“He just keeps watching me,” Anders muttered, squeezing Amell’s hand on his forearm for his support.

“Do you want me to make him stop?” Amell offered.

“You want your eyes back?” Anders joked.

“No, thank you, I know where they’ve been,” Amell joked.

Anders was too stressed to do much more than chuckle. They hadn’t even finished the first floor, and it was already so hard to stay focused. Anders felt like he wasn’t even there. He was somewhere else - in solitary, in a cell, in silk sheets under a canopy bed, the ceiling carved to resemble a dragon in flight that Anders had stared up at once upon a time and joked, “Ostentatious, much?”

And Hawke had said, “I can’t like dragons?”

And Anders had asked, “What was wrong with the last bed?”

And Hawke had shrugged, “Wasn’t good enough.”

And Anders had joked, “For who?”

And Hawke hadn’t, “For the man I’m keeping in it.”

And Anders had laughed, because he’d thought, at the time, that Hawke had been joking, and he’d thought, at the time, that he’d never look up at that dragon with dread, and he’d thought, at the time, that the bed would just stay a bed, and he’d thought, at the time, that he’d never lie in it and wish he was dead.

“Have I told you how strong you are?” Amell brought him back to himself.

Anders snorted, “I’m about five seconds from turning into a raging abomination, but thanks.”

“It’s an inspiring five seconds,” Amell said.

“I hate him,” Anders muttered.

“The Mad Viscount of the Blighted City?” Dursten interjected from the front with a glance over his shoulder. He had heavy bags beneath his brown eyes, and he was in dire need of a shave, but even unkempt as he was, the archer looked infinitely better than Hawke.

Dursten wasn’t exactly working with a full quiver, when they were all hearing the Call, but Hawke was working with an empty one. The man or monster in question was stumbling along behind them with help from Beth and Varric, his wild hair a hood that shadowed his gaunt face, and the lyrium growing out of it. When Hawke wasn’t staring at Anders, he was starting at everything else, from the shadows in the corner to the sand under his feet.

Dursten spun, walking backwards while he walked and somehow not tripping over himself in the process. “The Red Nightmare? The Exalted One? Big surprise you hate him.”

“The Exalted One?” Anders repeated. “Who calls him that?”

“Surprised you haven’t heard the Red Divine’s Sermons,” Dursten laughed, but then all at once his face flipped into a frown, and he shoved Alec across the hall. “Stop humming!”

“Fuck off!” Alec stumbled, swiping at Dursten with his shield.

“Separate!” Janeka banged her staff against the ground. The tile underneath her cracked, and the two men glared at each other before moving to opposite sides of the hall.

Alec went right back to humming the Call, and Dursten snarled, “I’ll put a fucking arrow in you, Alec.”

“You think I want to hear the Call?” Alec demanded.

“I think you want us all to hear it because you know yours is real,” Dursten said.

“Go to the Void!”

“I’ll meet you there.”

“Enough!” Janeka screamed, and the walls cracked, and everyone flinched. One of the cracks ran from the floor to the ceiling, and Ailsa encased them all in an arcane shield that rippled as bits of sand, dust, and dirt rained down on them. Amell set his hand on Ailsa’s shoulder, and the barrier flared brighter, casting everything in a dark violet light, but aside from the one crack, the ceiling stood.

“This is only the first floor,” Janeka broke the silence when everything settled. “If you are not strong enough to withstand the Call, then you will stay on it, and I will not forget which of you were weakest. Do I make myself clear?”

Dursten and Alec nodded like chastised children, and Ailsa dropped her barrier as they continued. Anders almost didn’t blame them for being at each other’s throats. He hadn’t stopped hearing the Call since they’d walked into the Warden’s Prison, but having Hawke around was worse. Anders felt like he’d gone back in time and he was losing it all over again.

He couldn’t keep track of the corridors, and every time they turned a corner, Anders couldn’t remember coming to it. He didn’t recognize his own footprints, and didn’t trust himself to follow them whenever they finally turned back. Anders caught himself stopping to watch his boot peel back from the sands just to be sure he was the one leaving them, but then he stopped recognizing his own legs, and around that time he must have lost his mind.

He kept hearing a voice inside his head, but it just sounded like Hawke, saying all the things he’d always said. Anders clung to Amell’s arm, sure he was cutting off his circulation, but he was so afraid he’d stop recognizing him or just lose him in the labyrinth he couldn’t bring himself to let go.

Come here.

“So,” Anders said loudly to what he guessed was still Dursten’s back. “Why does the Red Divine call Hawke the Exalted One?”

Don’t ignore me.

Dursten glanced back at him. Anders swore he saw a flash of red in his eyes, but when he blinked again they were brown. “You can’t guess?” Dursten asked, walking backwards to talk to him, but it was like only his torso turned. Anders blinked, hard, and the rest of the man’s body followed.

Pay attention.

"The air itself rent asunder,
Spilling light unearthly from the
Waters of the Fade,
Opening as an eye to look
Upon the Realm of Opposition
In dire judgment."

Anders wasn’t walking anymore and he didn’t know why. Dursten was singing the Chant of Light, but Anders suddenly wasn’t sure how long he’d been doing it. The Chant of Light took weeks to sing, and the thought that he’d lost them off his life made Anders hyperventilate. The rest of the Grey Wardens were just standing around, wasting time and wasting away, and it was worse than if they’d been gone because they were all turning into ghouls.

Turn around.

Anders twisted to look behind him, clutching Amell’s arm, but there was no one there but Hawke. He was supporting himself on Varric’s shoulder and Beth’s staff, and he was still staring at him. Beth had abandoned him, and joined Janeka to work on what must have been one of the seals. It was set into the wall, and looked like a smaller version of the magrallen.

A sphere of glass, filled with blood, and lined in lyrium. Beth and Janeka had their hands on it, and whatever spell they were casting filled it with more blood. Anders guessed it for a good thing, and felt some small relief at least knowing why they’d stopped, even with Hawke’s staring.

I can see you.

“Stop staring at me,” Anders snapped.

“What?” Dursten asked.

“Nothing,” Anders ran a hand through his hair. “What did you say?”

“Exaltations 1:2?” Dursten said. “Sound familiar?”

"Nothing sounds familiar right now," Anders muttered, wringing his hands on Amell’s arm. "All my memories are music. Just say what you mean."

I’m right here.

“You tore a hole in the sky,” Dursten explained. “It’s the first portent of the Maker’s return.”

Are you listening to me?

“I think that’s a bit subjective,” Nate said, but Anders couldn’t see him. It sounded like he was somewhere in the shadows, the clack of his cane like it was coming from the ceiling.

Are you looking at me?

“The Chant of Light isn’t subjective,” Dursten said.

Do I have to make you pay attention?

“Exaltations is,” Nate’s voice came from the far end of the hall, but there was no way he could have crossed it so quickly. “I’m not sure we should be so quick to believe the visions of the first Orlesian Emperor.”

Anders.

“Fucking Fereldans,” Dursten muttered.

Anders.

“I spent eight years in the Free Marches,” Nate said, suddenly somewhere behind him, but it wasn’t until after he spoke that Anders heard the clack of his cane, clicking faster than Varric’s crossbow, like he was sprinting with small steps across the ceiling. “I would question any man who claims to be a mouthpiece for the Maker.”

I know you can hear me.

“Or any woman?” Dursten asked, staring in a different direction than where Nate’s voice was coming from.

You think you can ignore me?

“Are you saying you believe in the Red Divine?” Nate demanded, and Anders jumped when he stepped out of the shadows to stand next to him.

You think I’m going to let you?

“Seven times seventy men of stone immense
Rose up from the earth like sleepers waking at the dawn,
Crossing the land with strides immeasurable,
And in the hollows of their footprints
Paradise was stamped, indelible.”

Dursten sang, and said, “That doesn’t sound like the rise of red lyrium to you?”

“It sounds like the ramblings of a madman,” Nate said.

“Are you saying I’m insane?” Dursten demanded.

Turn around.

“Stop it,” Anders whined.

Stop what?

“Stop talking to me,” Anders let go of Amell’s arm to cover his ears, but Hawke was in his head. Anders could feel every word like Hawke was signing them against the inside of his skull, his fingers pressing at the back of his eyes, like he was trying to push them out of his skull and pocket them.

Turn around.

“No!” Anders fled, sword rattling against his hip and his staff banging against the back of his knees as he stumbled down the hall, one hand to the wall and the other to his head, leaving someone else’s footprints in the sand. “Get out of my head!”

I’m always inside you.

“Fuck you!” Anders summoned a wall of ice in his wake, and rounded a random corner into a set of stairs. Anders scrambled up them, trying to put distance between him and Hawke.

Are you going to come?

“Leave me alone!” Anders’ voice broke. It was so hoarse and so soft there was no way anyone could hear him, but everyone was right there, right downstairs, right next to Hawke, and they weren’t making him stop. Anders kept running, and tripped over a broken tile. He tried to catch himself on a tapestry, only to tear it off the wall, and get tangled in it.

Anders’ veins split with veilfire, and he burnt his way free, swallowing the scent of scorched wool with every frantic gasp. The Grey Warden insignia fluttered to the floor, framed in faded blue and blackened char, and Anders snatched it up to press the griffon wings to his breast.

Warden.

He was a Warden.

It was a darkspawn.

It was just a darkspawn.

There were others, and Anders could sense them as he stumbled to his feet, clutching the faded bit of fabric in his hand to keep it steady. He followed the pull of them through the fortress, and found them pouring in through the windows of the outer corridor, spilling their own blackened blood in their desperation to reach the awakened darkspawn within. They broke through glass and wrought iron, gnawing at the lyrium in the walls, trying to find some way to break the seals keeping Corypheus in stasis.

Anders didn’t know the Canticle of Exaltations as well as Nate, but it looked like something out of the apocalypse. The darkspawn tore themselves apart, trying to tear apart the tower, shrieks breaking their teeth against enchanted glass, genlocks bludgeoning their hands to pulp against the stone, hurlocks flaying their skin squeezing in through shattered windows.

The ones that weren’t trying to tear the tower down were fighting the spirits and demons forced to defend it. There were so many of them. Spirit after spirit bound to seal after seal. Ethereal chains tethered them to spheres of glowing blood set equidistant in the walls, everything from Rage to Regret battling the darkspawn that scaled the walls to pour in through the windows and tried to press through the outer corridor to the interior of the tower.

Darkspawn and demons warred all the way down the hall until it curved out of sight. Torn flesh hung off wrought iron railings, blackened blood grouted broken tiles, and the bodies of darkspawn carpeted the whole of the corridor. The demons didn’t leave any behind. All that remained of them were motes of dust when the darkspawn rent them apart into wisps. The bones of them hung in the air, dancing in what light streamed in through the broken windows, thinning the Veil for the next spirit the seals summoned to replace them.

Blood drained from the seals with every summon, until all that was left was stained glass, the faintest shade of red. Warden’s Prison was six stories, and the Grey Wardens had bound spirits and demons to every floor but the first. If the dozens in the corridor were any indication, there must have been over a hundred holding Corypheus.

Spirits. Demons. His brothers. His sisters. The Grey Wardens shared his blood, but the Fade was in his soul. Emerald burned through his veins, like he was being torn apart at the seams, and Anders screamed, lightning erupting from his hands, his mouth, his eyes and surging through the corridor. It chained through the darkspawn, electrifying them down to ash and dust, and leaving blackened outlines in the sands.

The dozen darkspawn that survived turned to charge him, and Anders shrugged his staff off his shoulder and into his hand. A shriek reached him first, propelling itself off a wall, and Anders side-stepped and drove his staff down through its skull. Blackened nevarrite broke through bone, and the shriek's corpse crashed into the wall. Genlocks followed, and Anders drew Glandivalis, but arrows took them before he had the chance.

The rest of the Grey Wardens caught up with him, and fought their way into the corridor to clear out the darkspawn at his side. The spirits receded into the seals when the last of the tainted creatures fell. Their blood flooded the cracked tiles of the corridor, tainted waters risen to Anders' ankles when he stood in front of one of the seals, breathing hard in the aftermath of the battle. Anders held his sword in one hand and his staff in the other, and dropped both to set his hands to the seal.

It was drained, the blood of Dumat reduced to drops, but Anders could still feel the spirit that had been bound to it. The echo of Valor was still there, from all the years they'd spent engaged in endless combat, aligned with their purpose, but absent the choice in how they pursued it. "How could you do this?" Anders hissed to whoever was there to hear him. "You don't really think this is right, do you?"

"The demons were bound in another era," Janeka sniffed dismissively, sloshing through the hall to his side. "Before the Chantry’s laws."

“Typical Grey Warden disregard,” Anders turned on her, snatching up his sword and his staff from the floor, viscous ichor dripping from both and making their hilts hard to hold. “You think the voices are bad? I can hear them! A hundred souls inside this tower crying out for freedom.”

“Freedom,” Janeka repeated with a roll of her eyes. “You know the cost of the Blights. I would bind the Conductor himself if it put an end to them! A darkspawn who can talk, feel, reason. If we could harness his power to put a stop to the Blights-”

“Are you insane?” Anders interrupted her. “You can’t control Corypheus!”

"Do not trifle with me!" Janeka slammed her hand to the seal, and filled it with the blood that sleeved her arm. " You are here at my leniency and my patience is at an end.” It felt too familiar. Janeka’s hair was brown, but something in the way the sun set through the windows made it look gold, the lyrium in the walls making her eyes seem an icy blue. "You complain of our use of demons, and turn down the alternatives?”

“The alternatives aren’t possible!” Anders argued. Amell himself had said he couldn’t compete with Corypheus.

"Anything is possible,” Janeka said. “The Grey Wardens have always protected the people of Thedas from the darkspawn and their own stupidity, and we will not stop doing it. If you cannot tell me another way, do not brand me a tyrant."

Kill him.

“What?” Anders took a step back from Janeka and the rest of the Grey Wardens gathered in the corridor.

“Kill him,” Hawke’s voice came again, but this time it came from Hawke’s lips. It was hard to tell if he was leaning against Beth or Beth was leaning against him. Her skin had gone grey at some point, like she’d lost all of her blood in just a few seals, and she looked bruised and blotchy anywhere Anders could see skin. “Can’t control him. Can’t contain him. So kill him.”

Anders took another step back, signing shakily, “How did you hear us?”

“Can’t hear you,” Hawke’s face crinkled in confusion.

I can hear you.

“What?” Anders stumbled back another step.

“Can’t hear you,” Hawke signed.

I can hear you.

“Anders?” Death magic devoured the corpses piled high in the hall, entropic energy eating through flesh, muscle, and bone and clearing a path for Amell to reach him. Dumat led him through it, and Amell set a hand on his upper arm and squeezed. “Are you alright?”

What lies has he put in your head?

“No,” Anders needed his hands, but he was already holding his staff and his sword, and he didn’t have any hands left to hold Amell. “No, I’m not.”

“Three more floors,” Amell promised, but that didn’t make any sense, because they were on the second floor, and there were six floors in total, unless they were on the third floor, but Anders didn’t remember going up more than one flight of stairs. “Stay with me.”

I’ll save you.

Somehow, Anders shouldered his staff and wiped down his sword so he could sheath it. He clung to Amell’s arm, trying to keep all of his focus on him, but as they continued his eyes kept drifting towards the seals and the women working on them.

“There’s something wrong with Beth,” Anders said. “I think she lost too much blood.”

“She has to break the seals," Amell said.

"What?” Anders asked. “Why?”

“So we can control him,” Amell said.

“We’re trying to contain him,” Anders reminded him.

“Yes?” Amell tilted his head slightly.

“You said control him,” Anders said.

“Anders, are you sure you’re alright?” Amell ran his hand up his arm to cradle his jaw and run a concerned thumb across his cheek.

“No!” Anders snapped. “No, I said I wasn’t alright!”

“You said you were fine,” Amell lied. Anders would never say he was fine. Anders had never been fine. He was so far from fine he couldn’t think of an analogy for just how far from fine he was.

“Beth isn’t fine,” Anders said. “Amell, she’s sick, do something.”

“We have to finish here first,” Amell said.

“What’s wrong with my sister?” Hawke appeared at the opposite side of him to ask.

“Get away from me!” Anders launched a stonefist into the red lyrium breaking through Hawke’s chest and knocked him across the corridor and into the wall. Hawke hit it with a thud and a grunt, and slid to the ground with a cough as dust rained down on him.

“Holy mother of green cheeses, Blondie, stop!” Varric bolted across the corridor, skidding to his knees in the sands beside Hawke. “Hawke, how many fingers am I holding up?” Varric signed and held up his mangled hand.

“Not funny,” Hawke groaned.

“Oh good, you’re okay,” Varric slapped his shoulder. “Was afraid for a second Blondie knocked a sense of humor into you.”

“What’s wrong with my sister?” Hawke repeated, stumbling to his feet with help from Varric.

“Could we… slow down?” Beth asked as Janeka dragged her along to the next seal. “I’m not feeling very well.”

“Absolutely not,” Janeka said. “My men are going mad, and we have no time to waste. I will reach Corypheus and I will harness his power.”

“But I thought-...” Beth stumbled, and collapsed against Janeka’s shoulder.

“Ugh!” Janeka heaved Beth off and let her flop onto the floor. “Dursten! Alec! Carry her!”

Dursten and Alec started forward, Alec humming, Dursten hissing for him to stop, when three red shards launched from Hawke’s hand and imbedded themselves in the stone in front of both men. “Don’t touch my sister.”

“Stop!” Anders screamed at him. “Stop listening! You can’t hear!”

I can hear you.

“What’s wrong with you?” Hawke signed.

“Me!?” Anders laughed. “The Mad Viscount is asking what’s wrong with me!?”

You’re acting crazy.

“I’m not crazy!” Anders slammed Hawke back against the wall, the red lyrium breaking through Hawke’s chest burning his palms through his gloves. “Stop listening to me! Stop talking to me!”

Turn around.

Anders glanced over his shoulder. Everyone was staring at him like he’d gone insane. Even Beth, half-conscious and hanging off the Wycome Warden’s shoulders, her veins an ugly black and her eyes covered in a milky film like cataracts.

“It’s the blight,” Anders dropped Hawke. “I can sense it.”

“I’m going to end up just like Father,” Beth sounded resigned to it, but Hawke didn’t, shoving his way out from under Anders’ arm to rip Beth free from the Wycome Wardens.

“No, you’re not,” Hawke said.

“You can’t hear her!” Anders screamed at him.

“Look at me,” Hawke took hold of Beth’s hand and set it to one of the shards breaking from his face. “I’m immune to the taint. Petrice promised. Just take red lyrium with me.”

“Garrett,” Beth sighed and patted his cheek. “No.”

“Why are we talking about red lyrium?” Anders demanded. “The Grey Wardens are right here-”

“So what?” Beth braced herself against her staff when Hawke pushed it back into her hands. “So I just become one? Anders, I don’t want to be one of these people-”

Anders wasn’t about to just watch her die, “Look, I’m not saying it’s an easy life, but it’s the only way you might survive the blight.”

“You expect me to take this girl as a recruit?” Janeka scoffed, and shot a disdainful look at Amell. “I do not recruit my Grey Wardens out of pity.”

“So you’re just going to let her die from the blight!?” Anders demanded.

“Yes,” Janeka said, waving for Dursten to take Beth back from Hawke. “After she finishes the seals.”

“Do something!” Roland screamed at Anders, but that didn’t make any sense, because Anders was already screaming at Janeka, because Dursten was dragging Beth from seal to seal to fill them with her blood, but then all at once that wasn’t what was happening.

Dursten wasn’t dragging Beth at all. Dursten was dragging Alec, the swordsman bleeding out in his arms, riddled with arrows that looked suspiciously like the ones from Dursten’s quiver.

“What-” Anders spun in a circle, but the corridor didn’t look the same, and at some point the sun had set. “-where are the dwarves?”

“Help him!” Roland shoved Anders towards Alec.

Anders knelt next to Dursten, the Fade flowing through his fingers and washing over Alec like oil on water. The old swordsman was limp in his arms, a few grey hairs fallen free of his ponytail in front of his face. He looked a little like Nate, features sharp, nose hooked, eyes closed, but Anders thought they might have been green.

“He’s gone,” Anders said.

“You let him die!” Roland accused him. “For what? Because he called you a name? You think Chasind aren’t called names?”

“I didn’t-” Anders started.

“We’re Wardens!” Roland screamed, spittal flying from his lips. “We save everyone! It doesn’t matter if they deserve it!”

“Tell that to Beth!” Anders screamed back.

“Your Commander said he’d save her!” Roland pointed at Amell with the hilt of his sword. He was standing a short ways off, Beth’s arm around his shoulder, supporting her just like Roland had said. “You let Alec die!”

“Leave him,” Janeka said without so much as looking back, dragging her fingers along the lyrium lining the walls. “Better yet, bring the body. We may need the blood.”

“What-” Anders sat back.

The corridor chilled, and wisps crossed, and Alec stood. His eyes, when he opened them, weren’t green after all, but an empty ethereal blue.

“Alec!” Dursten scrubbed away the snot dripping from his nose. “You’re alright! I’m so sorry I shot you - you can keep humming. I don’t care.” Dursten bumped shoulders with Alec’s corpse, and skipped off after Janeka.

“Where’s Ailsa?” Anders asked.

“I have her,” Amell said, propping Beth up against his hip.

“Love, that’s Beth,” Anders said.

“Anders, are you sure you’re alright?” Amell looked concerned. “It’s just one more floor. It’s fine if you need to stay back with Bethany.”

“That’s Bethany!” Anders screamed.

“She’ll be fine,” Amell promised, still holding Beth - it was Beth - it was Beth - Anders swore it was Beth. “I’m sure she’s strong enough to survive the Joining.”

The corridor emptied of everyone, save for the shadows, and the quiet clack of Nate’s cane somewhere up on the ceiling. “Let me be the Vessel,” Nate’s voice echoed from somewhere behind him, no matter how many times Anders turned around.

“What?” Anders asked.

“Isn’t that absurd?” Nate chuckled, cane clicking rapidly across the ceiling. “The Vessel to the world expectant… we can’t rely on one man’s lunacy. We have to rapture ourselves.”

“This isn’t real,” Anders dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. “None of this is real. Leave me alone. Get out of my head.”

Turn around.

“Stop saying that!” Anders spun, kicking up sand, but the corridor stayed empty of everything save for the click of Nate’s cane and Hawke’s voice in his head.

Why are you always so difficult?

Anders ran after the rest of the Grey Wardens, stumbling his way up the steps to the final floor. They spilled him out onto a walkway framed in wrought iron railings and gold griffon statues. The sun had gone down at some point, Luna, Satina, and silvery starlight casting queer shadows inside the room at the end of the walkway. The architecture was open, four balconies framing the round room, with four final seals, arranged around a sarcophagus in the center.

Sitting on it was a man. He was wearing a long black robe with white trim and red stripes, a black cowl obscuring his face, a staff propped up against his shoulder, glowing with arcane energy. The Grey Wardens didn’t seem to be able to see him. Half of them were arguing with each other, and the other half were missing. The dwarves, Nate, and Ailsa were gone. Alec was dead, and Dursten was still yelling at him to stop humming, while Roland tried to keep him from killing a corpse.

Janeka was ordering Amell to hand over Beth, but Amell was adamant Beth was Ailsa, and wasn’t letting her go. The only person who seemed half-way sane was Varric, chasing Hawke in circles around the room, while Hawke ranted about his glorious return to Kirkwall and barked orders at nonexistent Red Irons.

“Hello brother,” the man sitting on the sarcophagus called to him.

“Corypheus?” Anders guessed, cautiously circling the room and the Grey Wardens raving in it as he made his way over.

“Not quite,” the man said.

Anders shrugged his staff off his shoulder, and braced the shaft against his arm. “What am I supposed to call you, then? The Conductor?”

“Most call me Malvernis,” the man sounded pleasant enough, but when he pushed back his cowl he had no face with which to smile. He was wearing a gold mask, and his eyes and mouth were empty voids. “But I have other names,” Malvernis patted the lid of the sarcophagus beneath him. “The Conductor of the Choir of Silence is the one that I contain.”

Anders relaxed his grip on his staff, “So you’re a demon?”

“I am… an entity,” Malvernis decided. “Pestilence. Poison. An accumulation of the gangue.”

“You sound fun at parties,” Anders said.

“I like an honest first impression,” Malvernis said; chains tethered him to the sarcophagus at his wrists and ankles, the faintest shade of crimson, like they were made from the memory of blood.

Anders asked, “Did the Grey Wardens do this to you?”

“The dwarves, with their blessing.”

“Why would dwarves bind you here?”

“I imagined they tired of me devouring their thaigs,” Malvernis chuckled.

“You’re not really making a compelling case for me to release you,” Anders pointed out.

“Release me and you release the Conductor,” Malvernis said.

“Even less compelling,” Anders said.

“Why lie?” Malvernis shrugged. “I am death and decay and disease. I am the things men wish upon their enemies. You are a mage. You have many.”

“Are you trying to make a deal with me?” Anders asked.

“Would you take it?” Malvernis asked.

“... What about Corypheus?” Anders asked.

“He can be killed,” Malvernis said.

Anders didn’t get the chance to consider it. Janeka finally seemed to realize Malvernis was there, and shoved everyone else aside to storm up to the sarcophagus. “Yes! Release him! I will bind him when he emerges!”

“Are you insane?” Anders shoved her back. “You can’t control him-”

“I am bound to this,” Malvernis splayed his hand over what looked all too akin to a sphere of red lyrium, set at the top of the sarcophagus like a skull. “The final seal. Break it as you broke the rest.”

“The rest-...?” Anders wheezed. “What are you-... we were reinforcing them!”

Amell looked concerned, still helping Beth stand, “Anders, are you alright?”

“Stop asking me that!” Anders snapped.

“We came here to control Corypheus,” Amell reminded him.

“No, we didn’t!” Anders said, setting his hand to Amell’s chest to feel his heart skipping beneath his palm. “He can’t be controlled! He’s controlling you! I would know! I’ve done it before.”

Beth made a feeble grab for him, her hand falling just short of his coat on her first swipe, before she caught him on the second. “Anders.”

“What is it?” Anders squeezed her hand.

“Garrett,” Beth said.

“What about him?” Anders asked.

“Stop him,” Beth whispered.

Turn around.

Anders turned around.

Hawke broke the seal.

Corypheus emerged.

Chapter 237: From Kirkwall We Fled: To Free Him

Summary:

Fell upon the unwary legion and slaughtered them to a man.

- Shartan 9:12

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 6 Nubulis Night
Warden’s Prison

The red lyrium skull shattered beneath Hawke’s palm.

The shackles dissolved from Malvernis’ wrists and ankles.

The lid of the sarcophagus shifted, stone groaning against stone, spilling sand into the coffin as it opened for the first time in a thousand years. Long, inhuman fingers reached out from the inside of the coffin and curled around the lid, nails like shards of obsidian buried in dried out and desiccated skin.

“Hawke…” Varric clutched his crossbow to his chest. “Tell me you didn’t do what I think you just did.”

“Couldn’t let them keep him in a cage,” Hawke said.

“He emerges!” Janeka all but bounced on the balls of her feet. “I will bind him!”

The last of Hawke’s blood surged from Janeka’s sleeve towards the coffin, but before it could reach Corypheus his wrist cracked, and his hand turned. Hawke’s blood coiled around Corypheus’ fingers, and he shook them dry, scattering droplets in the sand. From somewhere inside the coffin a voice whispered, “No.”

Janeka took a nervous step back, “Oh shit.”

“I told you he’s too strong,” Anders hissed at her.

“He must have been controlling me,” Janeka pressed the pads of her fingers to her temple. “Whispering in my mind…”

“You think?” Varric asked, backing all the way up into the wall. “I’ve been trying to tell you people that for the past four hours, but nobody ever listens to the dwarf.”

The lid to the sarcophagus cracked the tile when it fell to the floor, and the creature that must have been Corypheus sat up. He was wearing robes that looked like they’d dried into his skin, his cowl pulled down low to shadow his face, more mummy than man. He was covered in rot, spidery tendrils dripping from his cowl and the rest of his clothes. It waterfalled from him when he stood, and Anders could feel the darkness within him like something straight out of the Void.

Roland took one look at him, and threw himself off the closest balcony. He didn’t so much as scream on the way down. He was just gone, and no one save Anders even seemed to notice. Corypheus stepped out of his sarcophagus and then sat on the edge of it. When he spoke, his accent was ancient, “Be you some of Farele’s men?”

No one spoke. Anders looked at Malvernis, but the demon was caught up in its freedom, standing out on the northern balcony and staring up at the stars. Anders didn’t know what kind of deal he could make now that could get Malvernis to fight for them when the demon was already free. The Grey Wardens didn't seem like they were capable of fighting for themselves, frozen for fear of Corypheus now that he was finally awake.

All of them except for Amell, who eased Beth off his shoulder, and took a step forward when he was sure she could stand on her own, “... Warden Commander Farele?”

Corypheus’ neck cracked when he turned his head towards Amell, and Anders flinched. “You wear his armor,” Corypheus noted, rolling his fingers thoughtfully, claws clacking along the side of his coffin. “Though the changes to the design are foreign to me.”

No one did anything to aid him. No one else even moved. Not even Varric, the only one among them Corypheus couldn’t influence through the corruption, who was too craven to even try escaping. He was standing at Corypheus’ back, with Corypheus facing the walkway that led out of the room, and getting out meant getting past him, so Varric didn’t even try. He just cowered behind Hawke, who was kneeling over the shattered shards of the red lyrium skull, weeping about how he hadn’t meant to do this to himself.

Hawke should have been more concerned about what he’d done to the world. Anders forced himself to move, one step at a time until he was at Amell’s side, and whether it was an awakened darkspawn or an archdemon Anders was going to face it with him. Anders squeezed his shoulder, and Amell said, “Commander Farele served in 1004.”

“One thousand four…” Corypheus exhaled long and hard. “... Is it not the eight hundredth year of the Imperium?”

“It’s 2032,” Amell said.

“A lie,” Corypheus stood, shadows encasing his hands when he thrust them up towards the sky. “Dumat!” Dumat’s head cocked at the sound of his name, and Anders grabbed hold of the mabari’s collar in case it got any ideas about answering Corypheus’ call. “Lord! What waking dream is this!?”

Corypheus held the pose for a long while, radiating with arcane energy, until he finally dropped his arms back down to his sides. “... Silence,” Corypheus said. “Am I forsaken? You promised the golden light of the gods, but the city was black and corrupt… with nothing but an empty throne…”

“Dumat is dead,” Amell told him, and took a moment to do the math in his head. “Since 992.”

“The gods do not die,” Corypheus snarled. “They promised to share their power… but if the city was empty and the gods are gone… can they truly be dead?” Corypheus’ hands burned black again, and he called out. “Dumat!? … Such silence... It cannot be. We were called to the city… The others!” Corypheus surged across the room without warning and fisted a hand around Amell’s throat.

“Get off him-!” Anders reached for the Fade, but before he could cast anything an explosion of force magic threw back everyone in the room. Anders heard a crack as he collided with the eastern wall, and the impact dizzied him so much he saw double. Janeka and Beth hit the western wall, but Alec and Dursten missed it, and were blasted off the western balcony. Varric and Hawke hit the northern wall, and Dumat was thrown out of the room and onto the walkway.

“The Architect?” Corypheus raged, heaving Amell off his feet and holding him aloft. “The Watchman? The Forgewright? The Appraiser? The Augur? The Madman!?”

“You’re the bloody madman,” Anders flickered with veilfire as he fought to heal what felt like a concussion, his vision fading in and out, and every time Amell came back into focus he was still choking. Anders tried to stand, to find some way to reach him, but the vertigo doubled him over and he threw up on his boots.

“Tell me!” Corypheus demanded. “Tell me if they took what was meant to be mine! Did they not return from the Black City!?”

Amell clawed at Corypheus’ chest, choking, “They fell-”

“Explain clearly!” Corypheus shook him. “What befell them!?”

“They’re tainted-” Amell gasped, rotten robes crumbling to dust beneath his gloves and making it impossible to find purchase on the awakened darkspawn. “-cursed-”

“The darkness,” Corypheus dropped him, and Amell collapsed, catching himself on one hand and clutching his bruised throat with the other. “We discovered it… We claimed it as our own, let it permeate our being… I can feel it in you as I felt it in Farele.” Corypheus knelt next to Amell, while Anders half-crawled, half-stumbled across the room to reach him. “Tell me, who is your god?”

“There are no gods,” Amell coughed. Anders grabbed his arm, and flooded him with creationism, the bruises around his throat receding rapidly.

Corypheus didn’t seem to care that he was there. He patted Amell’s shoulder, and left blackened palm prints on his pauldrons. “No. No, I will be your answer. I will attain the apotheosis that was promised. I will not abandon you as my god abandoned me. If there is no light to be had, then I will control the dark. Kneel, all of you.”

Anders gathered Amell into his arms, while everyone else just-... knelt.

Janeka. Beth. Hawke. Even Varric, the cowardly son of a bitch, hunkered down behind Hawke, even though Anders knew Corypheus wasn’t controlling him. Somewhere out on the walkway, Anders didn’t doubt Dumat was doing the same when even the damn dog was tainted.

Anders was sitting on his knees, and Amell was doing the same, and even if it wasn’t exactly kneeling it was impossible to stand. Anders felt like his legs had turned to lead, and no matter how hard he tried to stand he felt stuck.

“The Wardens of old were right about you,” Janeka tried to push herself to standing on her staff, her grip so intense the leather strained against her knuckles, but she stayed on her knees, primal magic cracking the stone beneath her but still not lifting her from it. “You are too dangerous to let live.”

“Here’s an idea: maybe we don’t provoke the ancient darkspawn magister those Wardens of old were so sure could bring about the apocalypse?” Varric suggested from somewhere behind Hawke.

“You should listen to the dirt-worshiper,” Corypheus shoved himself up to his feet and turned back to his sarcophagus, dragging his nails along the rim as he circled it. “Darkspawn… is that what they call us? Is that what they call the creatures climbing this tower?” Corypheus walked to the archway of the eastern balcony, between Anders and Varric, and looked out over the Vimmark Chasm. “What tales are they telling…”

“You and your kind brought the Blight down on all of us,” Janeka hissed from her knees, and when she still couldn’t stand, she launched a stonefist across the room. Corypheus turned his shoulder without turning around, and the stonefist sailed past him and into the night. “When you violated the Maker’s sacred space, you unleashed monsters. For a thousand years, the darkspawn have plagued us, driving us to the edge of annihilation!”

“And no gods to save you,” Corypheus sounded almost sad. “How does this age stand such desolation? Tell me, why do I feel this darkness in you? Can you not use it to control these creatures?”

“No one can control them all,” Janeka said. “They’re unstoppable and relentless.”

“I can,” Corypheus rolled his shoulders, and set his hands to either side of the archway. At his touch, the blight began to spread, spidery tendrils of black rot spreading out over the sandstone to encase the eastern balcony. It spread over the floor and the railings and the eaves, gathering in great sacks of black rot, and then all at once it stopped spreading, and surged back into him in a rush. There was no evidence the taint had ever touched anything, silvery starlight illuminating smooth sandstone without a single drop of black.

“To think this world has been lost for so long,” Corypheus said. “I will save you.”

“Don’t know that I like the sound of that,” Varric signed close to his chest. “Come on, Blondie, you gotta get rid of this guy.”

“Are these your slaves, dwarf?” Corypheus’ neck cracked when he turned to look at Varric.

Varric swallowed, “No offense, but the whole slavery thing kind of went out of fashion, so-”

“I can hear their thoughts,” Corypheus strode towards him, and Varric scrambled to his feet and fled across the room to cower behind Beth instead of Hawke. Corypheus didn’t bother pursuing him. He paused next to Hawke to run his fingers through his hair, nails screeching across the lyrium shard that broke through the left side of his brow and swept back from his face. “So long as the darkness is inside them, I can hear through them, and see through them, and speak through them. Tell me, dirt worshiper, why is there no darkness inside you?”

“I’m just not a darkness kind of guy,” Varric laughed hysterically. “I try to see things in shades of grey.”

Corypheus toyed with the edge of the massive red shard breaking from Hawke’s brow. Hawke just… let him. He stayed down on one knee with his head bowed, and Anders guessed Corypheus must have been reading his mind because eventually he said, “You tell stories.”

“I guess?” Varric said.

“Tell mine,” Corypheus said. “We will begin by retaking the Imperium. You-... knowledgeable one,” Corypheus abandoned Hawke to circle his way back around to Amell. “Who is the Archon of this age?”

“Radonis,” Amell cleared his throat, still recovering from his crushed windpipe

“Love, stop telling him things,” Anders hissed under his breath.

“I can’t,” Amell said.

“Stand up,” Anders said. “Do something.”

“I can’t,” Amell said.

“And does the Archon have the support of the magisterium?” Corypheus asked.

“No,” Amell ground out. “The Imperium converted to Andrastianism, and abandoned worship of the Old Gods a thousand years ago, until Aurelian Titus found the ancient bloodline of Andoral, and used the strength of the Old Gods to take power in the magisterium. The Archon still believes in Andrastianism, and the magisterium is split between those who support him and those who support Aurelian.”

“And Aurelian?” Corypheus pressed.

“Dead,” Amell said.

“Why?” Corypheus asked.

“Stop,” Amell hissed.

“Speak,” Corypheus pressed.

Amell grit his teeth and grabbed for Anders, fingers digging into his upper arm and squeezing so hard it hurt, but Anders couldn’t make a Magister Sidereal stop. He couldn’t stand. He couldn’t speak. His every breath felt like it came with the Conductor’s allowance. Veilfire flickered across his skin, like a candle struggling to stay lit in a storm, his veins splitting and sealing when he couldn’t bring Vengeance to the forefront.

Blood ran from Amell’s nose, and he gasped, “Because Andoral’s blood runs in the veins of my friend.”

“Your friend… stole the blood of the gods?” Corypheus asked.

“His ancestor drank the blood of Andoral,” Amell said.

“Divinity was not his to take!” Corypheus screamed an earthquake into existence. The tower trembled, cracks splintering through sandstone like broken glass, and sand rained from the ceiling. The walkway split in two, and the western balcony fell from the tower. Anders finally managed to move, grabbing hold of Amell with the hope he’d summon a forcefield if the tower came down on top of them.

Corypheus pushed his palms out from his chest, like he was exhaling his anger, and the earthquake ended. “Continue.”

“He’s not a god,” Amell managed his own small movement, and took hold of Anders’ arm around his chest, “He’s a king.”

“So this is how men are made monarchs,” Corypheus hummed. “Drinking the blood of their betters…”

Corypheus turned his back on them, but in the aftermath of the earthquake, he must have been exhausted, because his first step staggered him. Corypheus caught himself on the edge of his sarcophagus, and Anders managed to drag one of his legs up underneath him. Amell felt him move, and squeezed his arm, a mixture of concern and encouragement radiating through the rosewood.

“You…” Corypheus rightened himself, and walked back over to Hawke. He set a blackened fingernail beneath his chin, and tilted his face up to cut his cheek. Ruby red blood ran down into Hawke’s beard, and with his face tilted up, Anders could finally see how furious he looked at being made to kneel. “You drank the blood of Dumat, didn’t you? Tell me the taste of my god.”

“No!” Beth fought off enough of Corypheus’ compulsion to cry out. “He didn’t do anything! Maker, leave him alone!”

“Maker? Is that how you know me? As the one who made the darkness within you?” Corypheus let Hawke’s blood well in the curve of his fingernail, looking thoughtful. “… No,” Corypheus decided with whatever he’d gleaned from Hawke’s head. “No, your ‘Maker’ is an absent god who answers no prayers. If the rest of the seven are lost, then I am alone in my glory.” Corypheus licked Hawke’s blood off his fingernail, and frowned. “This is not the taste of divinity.”

“You’re not divine,” Janeka said. “You’re a darkspawn.”

“I will ascend soon enough, once I return to the Black City to sit its throne,” Corypheus said.

“Return to the Black City?” Anders said. “You can’t do that! If you really are one of the Magisters Sidereal, then entering the Fade is what unleashed the darkspawn in the first place! Who knows what you’ll unleash if you go back there again.”

“I seek the light,” Corypheus said. “I need only the lyrium and lifeblood of the rattus to attain it.”

“What?” Anders asked.

“Are there no elves left in this age?” Corypheus wondered aloud. “Their kind were closest to the Fade… though if Emerius still stands there should be more than enough human slaves to suffice.”

No.

Anders wasn’t going to watch anyone turn Kirkwall into Emerius again. Elthina had already done that when she’d conspired with the Divine to put the Chantry in charge of the City of Chains. Anders had seen the slaves every time he’d gone to the Gallows: brand after brand on brow after brow. Kirkwall had sacrificed mages enmasse, and Emerius had done the same with its slaves, right over the seal that had been used to contain Corypheus, and he wanted to go back to that.

Anders set his hand on Amell’s shoulder, veilfire burning through his legs to get them up underneath him so he could stand. Corypheus’ neck cracked when his head whipped around, and he snarled, “Kneel.”

“No,” Anders said.

Kneel! Hawke’s voice echoed in his head.

“No!” Anders screamed at him.

Corypheus grabbed the edge of his sarcophagus and flung it into the nearest wall, raining sand and dust down from the ceiling, “You will obey me, demon, or I will plunge your essence into an abyss from which it will never return!”

Anders drew Glandivalis, and cut his palm against the blade. “I will not be controlled!”

Remnants of the spirits who’d died bound to the seals surged up through the tower, and sank into the sands, rising up as wraiths of ash and anger. They dove on Corypheus, draining away his strength. Corypheus’ scream was deafening; it engorged the cracks in the tower, and the southern balcony crumbled.

Corypheus spun, swiping through the wraiths with his bare hand, and dissolving them to dust. Red lyrium burst up from broken tiles to encase his legs, but the force of Corypheus' fury scattered shards of red lyrium across the floor, like the breaking of some stained glass window in the Grand Cathedral of the Red Divine.

“Filth!” Corypheus tore through the sands towards him, distracted enough that everyone else could recover.

Beth summoned a gravity well behind him. The maelstrom of energy dragged everything towards it, red crystal, broken tile, and sand swirling behind Corypheus and causing all the inconvenience of wading through water when it should have felt like the pull of the abyss.

Janeka conjured every kind of primal magic, but Corypheus broke through walls of fire, ice, and lightning as easily as the paper walls of Par Vollen. He emerged unshocked, unfrozen, unburnt. The steady thrum of Varric’s crossbow peppered Corypheus with bolt after bolt that broke through his skin only for the blight to seal it in the same breath.

“If you will not bend your knees then I will break them!” Corypheus snarled, clawed hands reaching for Anders through a wall of fire that didn’t even burn the wraps around his wrists.

“You are not his god,” Amell cut his hands on Glandivalis, pulling himself to his feet, and Corypheus froze.

Blackened blood oozed out from underneath Corypheus’ wraps, waterfalling from his open-mouth when he snarled, fingers twitching inches from Anders’ face. Droplets of blood, spit, and taint misted across Anders’ face, and he grabbed Amell’s arm to drag him to a safe distance while the compulsion held, but Amell broke with blackfire and burned him.

Anders sheathed himself in a barrier, and tried again, pulling Amell back against his chest and gritting his teeth through the pain of his simulacrum while the ash wraiths consumed Corypheus. They were like a swarm of locusts, and they still weren’t strong enough. Corypheus kept forcing his way forward, through force, primal, blood, and demon magic and countless cages of red lyrium.

“Malvernis!” Hawke called out to the entity who’d once contained Corypheus, watching with mild amusement from the northern archway. “You owe me!”

“Did we make a deal?” Malvernis mused, shaping the words out of sand in the air in front of Hawke. “I contained the Conductor for a thousand years. I’m done.”

“You can’t be done!” Anders said. “We released you - do something!”

“Make a deal,” Amell’s voice echoed with his simulacrum, and one leg buckled beneath him.

“For what?” Malvernis wondered. “I have my freedom.”

“For whatever we owe you!” Janeka said.

“And you all agree to the debt?” Malvernis asked.

“Yes!” Janeka said for them.

“Then make it binding,” A flourish of Malvernis fingers summoned a glyph in the air over Corypheus.

Janeka cut straight through her glove with the sharp end of her staff, and her blood launched across the room to fill a corner of the glyph. Quickly catching on, Varric stabbed himself with a crossbow bolt, and Hawke ripped a shard of lyrium from his wrist. Beth hesitated, and then looked away, slicing open her own shoulder with a surge of telekinesis.

Anders grabbed Amell’s hand and interlaced their fingers, and with the blood they'd already spilled, they agreed.

The glyph flared a bright and blinding red, devouring the dark, and the light, and everything inbetween. The stars stood still, the winds did quiet, and all animals of earth and air held their breath, and in total silence, the glyph imploded. Anders was thrown forward, his shoulder slamming into sandstone, and somewhere in that red silence he heard the clink of something hitting the stone beside him.

Anders picked up what felt like a necklace. He couldn't see, still blinded by the explosion when what felt like sand started raining on his head and shoulders. The tower felt like it was trembling, and then all at once it lurched, and Anders went rolling across the room, clawing at broken tiles for purchase, until he grabbed what felt like a leg.

"The tower is coming down!" Janeka grabbed his coat, and heaved him to his feet. "Get out!" Janeka shoved him, and Anders stumbled forward with his hands outstretched. Janeka kept hold of him, her hand between his shoulder blades. "Where is the exit?"

"I can't see!" Anders said, swallowing dust.

"You're flash blind!" Janeka yelled over the crack of sandstone. "Did no one close their eyes!?"

"Anders!" Amell’s hands came into contact with his chest, and he pulled him forward into the scent of copper.

"Amell, I can't see," Anders pawed at him.

"Come with me," Amell pressed his hand to his arm, and led him forward, Janeka clinging to his coat. Blood magic pulsed, and Amell called out, "Cousin!?"

"Leave him," Anders coughed.

"I'm calling for Bethany," Amell said.

"I'm here-!" Beth’s voice came from somewhere to their left, and she stumbled into their group.

Amell led them to the walkway, set their hands to the railing. "Keep to the railing in case the walkway collapsed. Go forward until you reach the stairs and follow the lyrium lines out."

Janeka let go of his jacket, and Anders heard her stumble down the walkway.

"What about you?" Anders asked when Beth broke from him to do the same.

"I have to find Dumat," Amell said.

"Where is he?" Anders asked.

"This way," Amell said. Anders set his hand between Amell’s shoulder blades, listening to Amell’s staff slide across the sandstone, with no idea how Amell knew when to turn or where to step, his vision coming back to him in spots but not nearly fast enough.

"Dumat!" Amell whistled, stopping for some reason. "Anders, can you see?"

"I-..." Anders blinked hard, but all he saw were blurs and shadows. "I think part of the walk away collapsed?"

"Follow the others back," Amell shrugged his hand off his shoulder.

"I'm not leaving you," Anders said.

"I'm not leaving my dog," Amell set down his staff, and got down on his hands and knees to crawl down onto the sunken section of the walkway. Anders guessed the vague bit of black against brown a ways off was a wounded mabari, because it wasn't responding to Amell’s whistles, and by the sounds and shadows the sunken section was slowly crumbling away into the chasm.

"Love, I don't think it can hold your weight!" Anders called. "He's maybe twelve paces in front of you!"

"Dumat, come!" Amell forced his blood into the order, and the mabari crawled towards him, hobbled and whining, until it was close enough for Amell to grab its collar, and heave it over his shoulder with a surge of physical magic.

Anders' vision came back in spots as Amell made his way back, but then the tower lurched. It threw all three of them across the walkway and into the opposite railing, the force of the impact winding Anders and sending Amell’s staff sailing into the chasm. Amell kept a firm hold of Dumat, and Anders could feel a broken leg on the mabari through his cleansing aura.

Anders grabbed hold of Amell’s sleeve, and ran them back to the stairwell. The tower collapsed in their wake, whole chunks of sandstone sloughing off and falling into the canyon below in a waterfall of rubble and rock. The ancient prison came apart, and the force of it flung Anders down the stairwell. The staircase split from the wall, and then slammed back into it. Anders fell down a level, and heard something crack when he landed.

Anders swallowed sand in place of air and coughed, his chest constricting painfully around what must have been a bruised or broken rib. Anders dragged himself up onto his knees with a hand to the cracked wall, fighting to see through the residual flash blindness and dust clogging the stairwell. “Amell!”

“I’m here!” Amell said from somewhere above him.

The landing between them had broken, both staircases hanging suspended in the stairwell. Anders stood up and set his hand to the one Amell was on, “Your left! Love, the landing’s out-”

Amell handed him Dumat instead. Anders stumbled under the weight, and fell back into the wall when the mabari weighed more than Amell. “Get Dumat out!” Amell said.

Anders wheezed around his rib and slipped down the stairs, dropping Dumat on the lower landing when he hit the wall. The mabari lay where Anders left him, whining between each breath. Dumat weighed too much for Anders to drag him over, and Anders was too battered to crawl to him, but he crawled anyway, hand over foot until he could grab hold of the dog, and channel a panacea for both of their bruises.

Dumat’s back leg was broken and he’d dislocated one of his shoulders. “Don’t you dare bite me,” Anders warned him, bracing his palm against Dumat’s chest and taking hold of his front leg with the other. Anders half-expected to lose his arm setting the mabari’s leg, but there was no way he could carry Dumat out, so he shoved. Dumat snarled, snapping teeth snagging on Anders’ sleeve.

“I said don’t bite me!” Anders ripped his hand free and tore his coat in the process. “I don’t have time to put you to sleep! Look!” Anders thrust his hand towards where Amell was still stuck on the stairwell, channeling a forcefield Anders doubted could take the weight of a whole fortress when it fell. Dumat whined, and tried to stand on his front legs, but his back leg was still broken.

Anders set his hand to the mabari’s back leg, a surge of restorative energy sealing the break when the tower shuddered again. Anders grabbed the mabari with one hand and the wall with the other and stumbled to his feet. “Find outside!” Anders forced his will into the command, and Dumat went scrambling down the stairs.

The sandstone swayed when Anders tried to go up them. Anders fingers erupted with ice, sealing the stairs to the wall, but the hoarfrost encasing the sandstone made it hard to find places to step. Anders kept his hands to the stairwell above him, working his way back up to Amell was still hanging on, one hand sheathed in sapphire and thrust straight through the stone, for all the good it would do him if the fortress fell down.

“Love, your left!” Anders yelled over the rumble of the fortress falling.

Amell stretched his leg out towards him, and Anders grabbed his ankle. Amell crawled across the swaying steps until he was in reach, and Anders grabbed hold of his belt to drag him off the upper staircase and down into his arms.

“Dumat-” Amell started.

“Downstairs,” Anders hasted them, but it didn’t help. The stairs were collapsing, chunks missing everywhere, and even if he’d had his staff there was no fast way for Amell to gauge where to step.

Amell stepped down into empty air and lost his footing. They fell to the next landing, and Anders dragged Amell back up to his feet and down the next staircase. Amell coughed, “Anders, I can’t run-”

“Yes, you can-”

“You know I can’t!” Amell snapped. “Go, I’ll get out.”

“You’ll get out with me,” Anders wasn’t about to let Amell fall for him. “Keep a hand on my back.”

Anders got them down the stairwell, catching Amell every time the tower shuddered, or Amell tripped over a step that wasn’t there. They made it to the fifth floor, then the fourth, then the third, then the second, then the first, and then they made it out.

Anders kept hold of Amell and kept running, the fortress collapsing in on itself in the center of the canyon. Ailsa was holding a barrier between the stables and the fortress, and called out to them when they fled from it. “Commander! Justice! This way!”

“Ailsa-” Anders said.

“You’re the last ones!” Ailsa said. “Hurry, we’re taking shelter in the stables!”

They sealed the stable doors behind them when they reached them, barrier on top of barrier shielding them from the blast when the lyrium-infused fortress exploded. They felt the force of it even at a distance, sand and rocks raining from the ceiling as the canyon weathered the explosion at its center. Anders clung to Amell with one arm, and a support beam with the other, praying for the tremors to stop, and whether or not the Maker heard him, eventually they did.

Anders breathed a sigh of relief into Amell’s hair, and pressed a firm kiss to his temple he was too scared to stop. They’d escaped by the skin of their teeth and it felt as though at any second Amell could still dissolve into dust in his arms.

“Anders, we’re out,” Amell said. “You can let go of me.”

“I’m never letting go of you again,” Anders said, but he relaxed his grip so Amell could kneel and hug Dumat’s head.

“I thought you’d be upset with me for saving him,” Amell said.

"I did the same thing with my cat," Anders squeezed his shoulder. “When Hawke was holding me captive, there were so many times I could have gotten away, but not without leaving Ser Cumference behind. I only survived Hawke because that damn cat was there, but you've needed Dumat for years.”

Amell squeezed his hand. “Ser Cumference is safe with Orana.”

Anders cleared his throat before he got caught up in memories of everyone else he missed, and looked up to ask, “Anybody need healing?”

Janeka and Ailsa were standing guard at the stable doors. Nate was sitting in an otherwise empty stall with an unconscious Beth, but Cadash and Luka were gone, and if Anders was going to hazard a guess he’d say that they’d fled the second their guards had gone crazy. Varric was sitting by himself, beside the doors to his old cell, and got up when the tremors stopped.

“Where’s Hawke?” Varric asked.

“What do you mean ‘Where’s Hawke?’” Anders asked.

“Where is he?” Varric gestured at the rest of the Grey Wardens. “Why isn’t he with you?”

“Us?” Anders scoffed, and then coughed, and switched to signing. “Why isn’t he with us? Where were you when the tower was coming down, you bastard? Are you really going to stand there and act like you weren’t the first one out?”

“Of course I was the first one out!” Varric signed. “That guy back there was five seconds away from pulling a dragon out of his ass! Her Ladyship Light over there tricked us all into dealing with a demon to stop him!”

“She tricked us? Are you serious!?” Anders signed. “It was Hawke’s bloody idea!”

“Then where is he!?” Varric signed.

“Does it matter?” Anders signed. “He’s a monster. I hope he died back there with the Conductor.”

Chapter 238: From Kirkwall We Fled: The Joining

Summary:

Darkness fell upon the Lonely One,
A night without moon or stars

- Shartan 9:9

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 6 Nubulis Night
Vimmark Wasteland

Amell put Beth through the Joining.

She wasn’t apprenticed to another Grey Warden, and tasked with collecting the darkspawn blood that would be used to put her through the Joining. She wasn’t taken to a throne room, and lined up alongside her new Brothers and Sisters as someone handed her a silver chalice. She didn’t get a ceremony. She hardly got a say.

Ailsa gathered the blood of dead darkspawn from the ruins around the fortress and Janeka had a lyrium potion left to spare. Anders handed over his canteen, and Amell cast the ritual to combine them while Nate helped Beth sit up.

“Beth,” Anders clasped her face in his hands, and Beth blinked white eyes at him. “Wake up. You have to drink this.”

“What is it?” Beth groaned.

“Your Joining,” Janeka said.

“I don’t want to be a Grey Warden,” Beth waved them away, and her head lulled on Nate’s shoulder.

“It doesn’t matter,” Anders shook her awake. “If you don’t do this you’ll die.”

“So I should just survive?” Beth whispered, but her voice was shot, so she signed, slowly and shakily. “All this hardship happened because survival is all Grey Wardens care about. One glorious day, we’ll learn to leave well enough alone.”

“What about your daughter?” Anders signed. “Are you going to leave her well enough alone?”

“My father hated the Grey Wardens,” Beth sucked in a shaky breath, like the taint and tears had taken hold of her lungs. “I read his letters to the late Commander. He’d hate what I’ve become.”

“What you’re about to become is dead,” Anders signed.

“Look at the horrors we just faced,” Beth frowned, struggling to sit up only to fall back against Nate’s chest. “And the Maker allows it,” Beth dragged a pale hand down a paler face. “Sometimes dead is preferable.”

“Am I supposed to tell your daughter that?” Anders demanded. “Are you just going to leave me with Leandra?”

“Don’t use her against me,” Beth signed. “This isn’t what I want.”

“So you want to die?” Anders signed.

“Always whatever the cost…” Beth shook her head. “I’m not like you. You endure because you can.”

“So can you,” Anders signed. “You’re stronger than you think. Beth, please, I’m asking you.”

Just blinking looked like a losing battle for Beth. Everytime her eyes closed, it took them longer and longer to open, a murky film covering up the amber and refusing to clear. She must have been going blind, because she stopped looking straight at him, and stared somewhere over his shoulder when she finally signed out, “Okay.”

“Okay,” Anders squeezed Amell’s arm before Beth changed her mind. “She said okay.”

Amell ran a hand down Beth’s arm and pressed Anders’ old canteen into her palm, “Join us, brothers and sisters-”

“-and cousins,” Beth joked weakly.

“-... and cousins,” Amell added with a sympathetic smile. “Join us in the shadows where we stand vigilant. Join us as we carry the duty that can not be forsworn, and should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten, and that one day we shall join you.”

Anders helped her lift the canteen to her lips, and Beth drank. She coughed half of it back up, blackened lyrium spilling over her lips and down her chin, and arched in Nate’s arms. The seizure lasted a few seconds before she went still, and Anders checked for her pulse with a hand on Beth’s throat and his heart in his own, but she was still there, still breathing, still Beth.

“Thank the Maker,” Anders sat back on his heels.

“It doesn’t seem like she will,” Nate noted.

“We’ll camp here tonight, and set out for Wycome in the morning,” Janeka decided for them. “Commander, speak with me a moment.”

“Of course,” Amell stood, so Anders stood with him. The stables were made up of two rows of stalls, and they’d banished Varric to a far corner of the room to conduct the Joining. Janeka checked to be sure he was still there, and then led them both to the stall opposite Beth.

“My men are dead,” Janeka said.

“They are,” Amell agreed.

“Your men are not,” Janeka noted, rolling her fingers over her staff. “You knew their limits and you let them stop at them. I thought I had to push my men past theirs.”

“No one here is questioning your command,” Amell said.

“My men might,” Janeka grinned ruefully, and leaned back against the stable wall. “I drove them to death pushing them to perfection. I thought you were settling for less, keeping your men on when they were due for their Callings-”

“Due for their Callings?” Anders repeated. “Are you serious? It’s a wonder there are any Grey Wardens left in Wycome when you think a sprained wrist warrants-”

“Anders,” Amell set his hand on his chest.

“I was wrong,” Janeka said. “Larius was never one for weakness. I told you of how he recruited mages en masse, and if we died, we died… it was a waste. This… this was a waste. The girl, the Hawke, you intend to keep her?”

“Of course,” Amell said.

“I wonder if you wouldn’t,” Janeka ran a hand through her hair, and dragged the tie from it, auburn strands spilling about her face and finally relaxing it. “I could use someone around to remind me to be merciful.”

“The Grey Wardens could use the reminder,” Amell said.

Janeka nodded her thanks. They set up camp in the stables; the straw in the stalls had long since turned to sand, and Anders found the cleanest one he could to lay their bedrolls out in, and then just stood there staring at the canvas thrown over the sands, wondering if he should have asked Amell if he wanted to sleep with him.

Anders had slept with him last night - on accident - after falling asleep listening to Amell read from the Cantos, but that was it. Amell had been in the Free Marches a fortnight, and Anders had been so busy being an ass he hadn’t slept with Amell for any of them. He could have just had a conversation, but he was always so angry it was like he only knew how to have an argument.

Anders didn’t want to argue. Anders was too exhausted to argue. Everything that had happened had happened in a day, and Anders was done with it, so he wasn’t going to argue, he was just going to ask, but then he heard the crunch of Amell’s boots on the ground, and the soft drag of Amell’s fingers on the wall, and the thought of listening to anyone else sounded so horrible Anders blurted, “Do you want me here?” the second Amell stepped into the stall.

“What?” Amell stopped short.

“Do you want me here?” Anders demanded, dodging Dumat when the mabari trudged to a corner and threw itself down in it, as if Anders wasn't angry enough without being envious of a dog. “Do you want me to sleep with you?”

Amell shut the stall door behind him, “Are we talking about sleep or are we talking about sex?”

“Does it matter?” Anders asked. “Just tell me if you still want me.”

Amell found him with a hand to his chest, leaving streaks of dust on Anders' jacket on his way up to his jaw. Anders held his breath while Amell held him. He felt like he’d forgotten how to be vulnerable in Amell’s absence, with Soliel’s death and the ruin of his relationship with Beth, and he didn’t know how to recover from either one.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Amell asked.

Anders swallowed, holding Amell’s hand to his face, “The only thing that’s kept me sane this past year is the thought of being with you again, but when you finally showed up, you couldn’t even stand to do it sober.”

“Anders…” Amell pressed their foreheads together, regret ringing through their ring. “That wasn’t about not wanting you, it was about me hearing my Calling.”

Anders wasn’t sure he could stand to know the answer, but he had to ask the question. “... are you still hearing it?”

“I’m not,” Amell thumbed his cheek like he expected tears.

Anders shed them, “Please don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not,” Amell said. “I don’t hear it.”

Salt and water carved their way through the sand on Anders’ face until they reached Amell’s fingers, and turned the dried blood on them tacky again, smearing red over the promise of freckles Anders hadn’t quite earned this early in the spring, “Please don’t lie-”

“I’m not lying,” Blood lifted from Amell’s palm and the fresh cut from Glandivalis to sink beneath Anders’ skin and settle his heart, evening out the rhythm before he had a chance to hyperventilate. “I don’t hear it.”

“Fuck,” Anders broke from him with a ragged breath to ran a hand through his hair, sand raining over his shoulders like dandruff. “I was so worried it was real. I thought I’d lost you again and I-”

“You haven’t lost me,” Amell promised.

“I won’t survive it,” Anders said. “It would kill me to lose you.”

“You haven’t,” Amell gathered his face in his hands, and Anders couldn’t stand the thought of him as a memory when he might have been a monument. His obsidian hair was tousled from their flight from the tower, his bronze skin streaked with sand and faded burns, his eyes like cinnabar that never failed to follow him even when Anders was headed for the Void.

“I’m worried I will,” Anders said. “We’ve been apart for so long, what if I’m not the man you remember? What if you want someone who believes in the Qun?”

“I want you,” Amell promised. “Do you want me to kiss you?”

“Maker, yes,” Anders breathed.

Amell felt for the wall behind him, and then pushed him back against it. His hand clasped his chin, holding him steady when he pressed their lips together with all the confidence time eroded away from Anders. He tasted like sand, and dirt, and earth, and it felt like he still had the strength of it. The earth - underneath his feet and on his shoulders and somehow he still hadn’t collapsed under the weight of it all.

Anders kissed him back - angry that that weight was even there, that the earth could be so inescapable, crumbling out from underneath their feet or crashing down on top of them, like the world wouldn’t be satisfied until they were buried side by side with everything they stood for. A fortress had almost fallen on them, and through it all Amell had acted as though he was ready to weather the weight.

“I love you,” Anders should have said every second of every day they were together when they spent so many apart.

“I love you too,” Amell kept him pinned against the wall, and Anders felt so much from him: the weight of his armor and the heat of him through it, the breath of his magic and the pull of his call, the press of his brow and the sweat on it when Amell didn’t quite part from him. “I love you endlessly.”

“Stay,” Anders blurted. “Can you stay? The Chantry can’t get away with disbanding the College of Enchanters and revoking our rights to free speech. The rest of the Circles are going to rise up.” It hadn’t happened yet - but it had to happen soon. They couldn’t survive another Kinloch, another Starkhaven, another Kirkwall, Circle after Circle rising up and falling down because they were doing it alone.

With the Right of Annulment hanging over them, the rest of the Circles were too afraid to fight, so Anders had to help them find the courage, but he wasn’t making any progress. For every problem he solved, three more appeared, and in the three months he’d spent trying to make Warden’s Keep a refuge for mages, he could count his victories on one hand and his failures on fifty.

“They’re going to rise up,” Anders argued, with himself, because he never knew how to stop. “We just have to show them it can be done. You have to stay. You’re the kind of leader we need to make Warden’s Keep into a refuge for mages, the way you did with Amaranthine. I know you have responsibilities at Vigil’s Keep, but the Free Marches need you to do for them what you did for Ferelden, and-”

“I can stay,” Amell cut him off.

Anders choked down a sob, “Don’t lie.”

Anders knew it was an impossible ask. Every time he’d asked Amell to stay with him, he’d known it wasn’t possible, but he’d always asked him anyway. He’d asked him to stay when Amell had left for his Calling, and he’d asked him to stay when Amell had left during the Invasion of Kirkwall, and he’d asked him to stay when Amell had left to fight a Harvester on Anders’ return to Vigil’s Keep, and everytime Amell had hugged him and told him he had to take care of himself.

Amell was the Warden Commander and Chancellor of Ferelden, there was no way he could abandon all that to be with Anders. There never had been. There never would be. Leagues and longing were all that could ever be between them, and Anders knew that, but he asked anyway, because he wanted more than just the memory of a few moments, and he was so tired of being hugged when he wanted to be held.

“I can stay for now,” Amell clarified, holding him tight like he knew he couldn’t hold him for long. “I have cause to visit Wycome and Ansburg and I’ll do whatever I can for Warden’s Keep while I’m there.”

“How long?” Anders hiccuped.

“A few months,” Amell said, but he may as well have said a few years for what it meant to him. “Long enough to establish a rookery. I know it’s just letters, but sending stones would cost thousands of sovereigns, and they’d only serve us. Once you have your own rookery, you can send word of the war to wherever you want.”

Something in the way Amell offered it made it obvious he was waiting for Anders to ask for the sending stones anyway. There was an ache underneath it all, and Anders felt it in the firm clasp of his hands and the soft tone of his voice. For all Amell had once told him not to ask him for anything, Anders knew he could ask him for this and Amell would do it. Amell would spend every last sovereign he had just so they could talk whenever they wanted, but a rookery was right.

“Alright,” Anders fought to keep his voice steady.

“Alright,” Amell said.

“I love you,” Anders choked.

“I love you too,” Amell said.

“I’m sorry. I know the sending stones-.. I know-”

“It’s alright.”

“Okay.”

“It’s alright,” Amell pulled him into an embrace, and Anders knew he wasn’t going anywhere, but it hurt anyway. “We’ll send letters.”

They left the Vimmark Wastelands in the morning. Varric returned to the City of Chains, and the red plague within it, to do whatever he could for the city while it remained under quarantine. The Red Divine was still there, building her Red Cathedral under a broken sky, but there wasn’t anything six Grey Wardens could do to stop her.

Divine Petrice had taken over the Blighted City in the absence of its Viscount. In the aftermath of the explosion, the free cities had stormed Kirkwall only to fall to the red horrors within it. The Exalted March had shifted focus to pursue the apostates fleeing through the Free Marches, until Sebastian Vael the Anointed regrouped and relaunched an attack on Kirkwall, trying to take the Exalted One into custody three months ago.

The Carta had captured Hawke first, and Sebastian had fallen back when he couldn’t find him, taking every templar that wasn’t on the red in the city with him. Knight Commander Cullen Rutherford and his surviving men had been called on by the Seekers of Truth to speak to the events of Kirkwall, rather than join the Exalted March, and had left for Val Royeaux in Orlais to report to the Lord Seeker and the Divine.

In his absence, only the Red Templars remained when Sebastian sealed up the city, but Varric didn’t seem to think they were a threat without anyone to lead them. He claimed most of them didn’t believe in the Red Divine, but Anders didn’t believe it. The Red Plague hadn’t just arrived in Wycome on its own, and if the Red Divine was trying to spread the Red Plague it made sense she’d use the Red Templars to do it.

What didn’t make sense was that the elves had taken the blame for it. Anders was eager to get back to Wycome, and do whatever needed to be done to stop the spread of red lyrium and save the elves from the people blaming them for it. Amell had promised to talk to the Duke, and as long as he was with him, Anders felt like they could do anything, except talk to each other.

Anders shared a cabin with Amell on the Pride of Amaranthine on their voyage back to Wycome. The room was small, the bed on a raised platform by the windows so Amell could wake with the warmth of the sun. Shelves lined the walls, filled with magical artifacts and tactile books, and the Waking Sea had been etched into a birch table on the lower level. The artist had added a bit of color to the oceans, and ever since he’d set foot in the cabin, Anders had been wondering if Amell knew the teal was there and whether it would have been unkind to tell him.

A smaller, more modest table occupied the room opposite the map. It could seat four, but held two, when everyone else was staying in their own cabins, so Anders didn’t have any excuse for his reticence, but it had been so long since he’d just been able to exist in Amell’s presence it was like he’d forgotten how.

Lunch was some kind of white fish with onion paired with water, and it was better than meat pulled from the salt barrels or the hardtack they’d taken out into the wastelands, and if not for the rosewood, Anders wouldn’t have had any idea that Amell didn’t like it.

“Don’t like the fish?” Anders asked.

“It’s fine,” Amell lied.

“It could be worse,” Anders tried not to let him. “I had a fish pie once. Ate nothing else for a week straight, actually. It was awful. Leandra was practicing for a dinner party. If you ask me, I think she was practicing to get out of being asked to throw them. The fish weren’t even the issue, if you can believe it, it was the dough. It was always so soggy it was like the fish were still swimming in it. I remember this one time-...”

“... Anders?” Amell prompted him when he trailed off.

“Just making sure you were listening,” Anders lied, but Amell was a better liar, and braver about calling them out.

“What is it?” Amell asked.

Anders tapped his fork against the edge of his plate, “It’s not easy, you know. Having this whole part of my life I can’t talk about.”

“You can talk to me about anything,” Amell promised.

“So you’re going to tell me why you don’t like the fish?” Anders’ chest felt tight, and that tension spread to his legs and took him up out of his chair to pace around the room. Anders stopped in front of the map, and dragged his thumb along the Storm Coast, the bumps and ridges there no more easier to navigate than a relationship they’d put on pause for twelve months.

Anders closed his eyes. It felt better, for some reason, not seeing that teal. Anders heard Amell’s chair scour the floor when he stood, and felt the hand he set to the small of his back. Amell’s touch seemed tentative, the tips of his fingers sending shivers down his spine as they traced up it. Anders took a shallow breath, and Amell took a step closer to him, running his fingers across his shoulder and down his arm to interlace their fingers on the map.

“Amell-” Anders swallowed.

“They served white fish, in the Circle,” Amell explained.

Anders ran Amell’s fingers along the Waking Sea, “This is teal, you know. I keep thinking it’s wrong to remind you of what I took from you, but it bothers me that you might not know. It bothers me that someone made this for you and they painted it. It bothers me that I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you it’s teal.”

“You can tell me it’s teal,” Amell promised.

“You can say you don’t like fish,” Anders said.

“I don’t like fish,” Amell said. “You can talk about Leandra.”

“I wish I could say I liked her, but she was just like the rest of the nobility. They spend their whole lives surrounded by real injustices, but instead of doing anything about it, they waste their time hosting dinner parties trying to impress the people who enact those injustices. Leandra got the recipe from Sebastian. Fish and egg pie is a Starkhaven staple. He never even had a bite.

“I ate that bloody pie for a week, and for what? Leandra’s dead, and Sebastian’s leading an Exalted March against the mages. I’m not even surprised. He used to burn Beth. I heard from the Friends of Red Jenny he’s been setting up pyres so he can send ‘maleficarum’ to the Maker absolved of their sins.

“I know the rest of the Circles haven’t risen up, but this war has to happen. The wheels are in motion. It’s been seven months since All Soul’s Day. The Free Cities won’t submit to martial law much longer. People have to see that this is an injustice. They have to take a stand. They have to choose a side.

“It doesn’t take an Exalted March to hunt maleficarum or the Divine would have called one when your father burned down Starkhaven’s Circle. People have to see that this is wrong. There are twenty thousand templars out there revenging the death of a Grand Cleric who allowed a Chantry Brother to burn a Circle Mage on her Holy Brazier at every sermon and say it was the will of the Maker.

“It wasn't. If anything is the will of the Maker, it's the existence of mages, but we scattered after Kirkwall. We don’t have anywhere near their numbers, and I know we’re not ready to strike back, but I’m worried if the Exalted March ends our momentum will end with it. What if the Divine declares victory, and instead of being enraged, the rest of the Circles are discouraged? What if nothing comes of what happened? Sebastian is out there putting our people on pyres, and I’m worried I’m the only one who’s angry.”

“I’m angry,” Amell promised.

“I know you’re not,” Anders didn’t feel any anger from him. All he felt was warmth, radiating through the rosewood and spreading out from his hand to his heart. Anders flexed his fingers against the sweat gathering on his palm, and Amell pressed down, pinning him to the table.

“I’m angry,” Amell said, one hand holding him to the Waking Sea, and the other working to drag him under. Amell squeezed his hip, pulling them together, so Anders could feel the heat of him against his back. Amell’s hand worked its way around his waist and slid up his stomach, the fabric of Anders’ tunic catching on his fingers on their way up his chest, lifting the linen little by little.

Anders sucked in a sharp breath when the cool air of the cabin kissed his skin, and exhaled it in an eager gasp when Amell did the same, pressing his lips to the nape of his neck.

“Amell-...” Anders swallowed, torn between wanting to touch him and wanting to be touched. Maker save him, Anders couldn’t believe he’d gone months without him. He’d been so far away for so long and to have him so close felt so intense, like Amell had taken their blood and tangled it, sinking beneath his skin with a single touch.

“You’re right to be angry,” Amell whispered, and Anders felt the warmth of his words against his skin. “I love your anger.”

Anger didn’t even begin to describe it, “There’s so much ugliness in me-”

“There’s none,” Amell squeezed his chest, fingers denting in around his heart. “I missed all of you. I want all of you.” Amell touched him through his tunic, slow circles and tentative tugs working his nipples into stiff peaks on his chest. Anders braced himself against the table, every flick of Amell’s fingers making his breath hitch and his cock twitch. “We won’t dock in Wycome for days and I don’t know why we’re still wearing clothes.”

“I don’t either,” Anders said thickly. “Maker, Amell, I missed you. I missed you so much.”

Amell’s hand fell from his chest to his hips, gripping him tight when Amell rocked into him. Anders’ breath caught and his fingers clenched over the waves of the Waking Sea, and all at once he felt like he’d fallen in them, listening to the steady thud of the table knocking against the hull of the cabin, feeling the push and pull of Amell’s hands around his hips, aching for the promise of his cock pressed flush against his ass.

“Do you want me to fuck you?” Amell asked, but Anders swore he already was, just rocking him against the table. Anders was already breathing hard for just the anticipation of him, those first few drops of sweat running in rivulets down his sides and the inside of his thighs, sending shivers up and down his spine Amell had to have felt when he was flush against him.

“Yes,” Anders begged, repeating the word until it stopped sounding like one. “Yes, love, please.”

“Stay like this,” Amell instructed him.

“Oh, fuck me,” Anders took a shallow breath, trying to steady himself, but he couldn’t stop shaking. Not with Amell’s arms around him, his fingers following his belt to his buckle, and unclasping it over the course of an eternity. Anders held his breath when Amell’s fingers eased the strap free of the loop, and then tightened around it, pulling it taut to slide his fingers through the metal and pull it free from the leather.

Amell let his belt hang from him once he had access to the laces of his trousers. Anders bit back whines watching Amell untie them, grazing him with his fingers as the cords slid between them, loosening the fabric strained around his cock.

“I spent so many nights aching for you,” Anders tugged once on his trousers when they were untied and let the weight of his belt carry them down to his knees.

“I felt them,” Amell splayed his fingers over his stomach, and ran them down, through his hair, to the base of his cock.

“Maker, Amell, don't stop," Anders covered Amell’s hand with his own, sliding his fingers into the emerald waters of the Fade and coating them in the wet warmth of creationism. Oil dripped from the tip of his fingers into Amell’s touch when Anders closed their hands around his cock.

"Never," Amell groaned against his back, drops of gold glistening like bands about their fingers. "I missed your cock."

"Ah-" Anders gasped, again and again as Amell felt over him, sliding his hand up and down his shaft. It felt like Amell held his heart in his hand, steady strokes beating it for him, pleasure pulsing through his veins in place of blood.

"I missed your moans," Amell ran his thumb over his beading tip. Anders let go of Amell to splay both of his hands over the map and hold himself up while Amell had him, moaning breathlessly as Amell worked his way back down to roll his balls between his fingers, massaging his ass with his free hand. "I missed your taste."

"Please," Anders begged around a bitten lip, so flush with want he felt like he was on fire. "Maker, Amell, I want your mouth on me."

Amell released him to kneel down behind him, his thumbs running in slow circles over his ass as he held him by his hips and kissed his way down from them. Anders' heart was in his throat when Amell spread him for his tongue, shaky gasps escaping out around it. Anders felt Amell's breath first, hot enough to mist, and then his tongue when he licked over him.

"Hahh-hahh-" Anders gasped, fingers seizing over the Waking Sea. Anders dropped his head, gasping hard, hair falling around his face while Amell fucked him. Amell’s breath was so warm, the tip of his tongue moving in endless, intimate circles. Anders had never felt so loved in all his life as when Amell matched his moans, like he got off on giving and giving and giving, adding in his fingers around his tongue.

His touch felt so attentive, taking to him with gentle tugs, until Anders whined for more. Amell fit his oiled fingers against his entrance, and then he pushed, easing steadily in and in. Anders choked on gasping moans as Amell opened him, oil easing the stretch, but it still felt like so much after so long. Amell buried his fingers to the knuckles, and Anders didn't have a chance to catch his breath before Amell started moving, working inside him in shallow, scissoring thrusts.

Amell kept his mouth on him. He took taste after taste of him, circling him as he stretched, more and more with every thrust, opening to take his cock. Anders trembled, feeling Amell dipping the tip of his tongue into him, slicking him with saliva, taking him in the most intimate way Anders could imagine.

Anders shuddered and slipped. Sweat had soaked the outline of his hands into the Waking Sea, and Anders dragged his hands through his hair in a desperate attempt to keep them dry. “Oh, fuck me, fuck me-”

“I am; I will,” Amell broke from him to groan, warm oil running down the inside of Anders’ trembling thighs as Amell worked it into him. “You feel so warm,” Amell squeezed his hip, pressing his forehead to the small of his back to talk, skilled fingers sliding in and out of him. “I can feel you shaking.”

“Fuck,” Anders felt like a furnace, his sweat almost steam, his breathing so harsh and hard it was making him hoarse. “I want you," Anders begged, "Please, love, it’s been so long.”

Amell pulled his fingers from him, and stood to unbuckle his belt. “You have me,” Amell parted him with a press of his palm, guiding the head of his cock to his opening. "You have me," Amell promised, and then he pushed, easing his cock into him.

It was so hard to stay standing. Anders couldn’t stop shaking, his cock stiff and throbbing knowing Amell was inside him. He felt stretched so tight around him, panting hard at the pressure pushing into him, and the length still left for him to take, even with the oil easing all of it.

“Anders,” Amell groaned, hands running up and down his sides before they settled on his hips.

“Hahh-” Anders gasped at the sweat-stained birch beneath him, nails digging into the carving as Amell had him on it. Anders gave into him as Amell started taking him, his cock sliding in and out, an endless ebb and flow of friction that left Anders moaning between each gasping breath. Amell kept a firm grip on his hips, holding him steady as he thrust rhythmically into him, the thud of the table knocking against the hull echoing Anders every gasp.

It was all he could do just to take it, the friction setting him on fire, sex and sweat doing nothing to douse him. The wet sounds of Amell fucking into him over and over made him burn all the more, moaning through waves of warmth as he took Amell’s cock again and again. Amell fit so well within him, the map meaningless when there was nowhere else they belonged.

“Fuck,” Amell cursed, and gasped, and groaned with him. "Anders, I missed fucking you."

"Fuck me," Anders begged between broken breaths. "Fuck me, Amell, fuck me."

"I am fucking you," Amell’s hands guided his tense and trembling body, his hips striking his ass as they joined together again and again.

It felt like the Joining, their calls tangled together, a current of raw ecstasy coursing through them, turning Anders’ gasps into cries as he climbed towards his climax. It rebounded through rosewood, and Anders wrapped a desperate hand around his cock, stroking in time to the sharp snap of Amell’s hips as he fucked him faster and faster, pulling their bodies together again and again until Anders cried out and came.

It felt like he’d been struck by lightning, his every nerve alight and overwhelmed. Anders felt his orgasm everywhere, throbbing through his cock, lighting up his veins, fisting around his heart and pulsing through his blood, his bones, the very core of his being. Ecstasy tangled together with electricity, and no one else could ever have him when Amell sent the excess of energy into the Fade.

Anders forgot how to breathe. His arm buckled beneath him, he sobbed, fingers seizing over the seas as Amell gave him oceans of pure and perfect pleasure. Anders stroked his cock until he was empty of everything, his legs trembling so hard Amell’s hands around his hips were the only things that kept him from collapsing.

Anders gasps gave way to groans gave way to whimpers as the waves died down, and he remembered how to breathe again, but he was so sensitive all he could do was whine. Amell moved him back and forth, sliding him along his cock, and sending shivers through his overstimulated body. Amell’s breathing was ragged, his hands clutching at his hips, clawing their way around to his stomach and up his chest to cling to him as his thrusts lost all their rhythm, and Amell groaned against his back.

"Oh-... oh-fuck-" Amell choked, fingers curling and clenching on his chest as he met his end in him. "Anders-"

"I love you," Anders reached blindly behind him and buried a hand in Amell’s hair, sweat soaked strands sliding between his shaking fingers. Amell pressed his face into his back, thrusts throwing the table against the hull, the birch soaked beneath him and staining the teal a shade closer to cerulean. The warmth of him spilled into him and out of him, sex and sweat running down the inside of Anders’ thighs when Amell eased out of him.

“I’m sorry-... I should have-... said something,” Amell said, breathing hard against his back. Amell slid a hand down his spine to his ass, the soft touch making Anders shiver and spilling Amell’s release over his fingers. Everything felt fantastic - the sex, the sweat, the ache in his throat and his ass and his every muscle when he’d spent so long tense and trembling.

“I love you,” Anders whispered and tried to send the rest through rosewood. He must have managed, because he didn’t feel any anxiety from Amell. Only love.

They stripped out of their sweat soaked clothes, and Amell got him a restorative draft for his throat while Anders used his wash table. Anders drank it in his bed, the sea breeze from the open window caressing his skin while Amell did the same, lying next to him and running his fingers along his ribs.

“I’m not leaving this bed until we get back to Wycome,” Anders warned him.

“I’m okay with that,” Amell smirked.

Anders set the empty bottle back on the nightstand, beside the amulet he’d found at Warden’s Prison. Anders picked it up, dragging his thumb over the pattern, trying and failing not to think too hard about it. “Can I ask you something? The Architect and the Conductor, do you really think they’re the Magisters Sidereal?”

“Why do you ask?” Amell asked.

“I always thought Black City was just a story. Chantry propaganda. Even when you told me about the Architect, I thought there must have been some other explanation, a demon drawing on the fears of mortals to manifest as an ancient magister, but this amulet the Conductor was wearing… no one’s used this pattern since before the First Blight.

“Here, feel it. It’s not the same symbol anyone uses for any of the Old Gods anymore. The Conductor really was one of the Magisters Sidereal. The Architect must be the same, but he’s still out there, and I’m worried about what that means for mages. It was one thing when it was just a story, but if the Chantry can prove that mages are responsible for the creation of darkspawn-”

Amell set the amulet aside, “They can’t.”

“There are six other Magisters Sidereal still out there,” Anders argued. “If word of even one of them gets out, the Chantry is going to use it against us.”

“They already are,” Amell said. “The Conductor said the city was already Black, and I believe him.”

“Just like that?” Anders asked.

“He was there. If the Old Gods were sealed inside the Golden City, and it was already tainted, why wouldn’t they call to the Magisters Sidereal to save them? That doesn’t mean they’re to blame for the Blights. They’re bound in prisons beneath the earth, and we kill them just because the darkspawn reach them first. We should be trying to save them.”

“... is that what you meant? When you said the Grey Wardens were going about the Blights the wrong way? You want them to save the Old Gods the way you saved Kieran?”

“I think we should. It doesn’t matter who’s responsible for the Blights.”

“Doesn’t it?” Anders asked. “If mages aren’t responsible for the Blackening, if we could get the Chantry to stop blaming us for the Second Sin, imagine what that would mean to every mage who believes in the Maker.”

Anders knew what it would mean to him, but he wasn’t sure how to talk about it when it wouldn’t mean anything to Amell. He still wanted to try, but he couldn’t come up with the words. Anders ran his fingers over Amell’s shoulder, dappled sunlight from many paned windows casting patterns of shadow on his skin and all his scars, and even in the silence he could still hear the sounds of the sea.

“... Don’t you have to meditate?” Anders asked.

“Is it midday?” Amell asked.

“I think so,” Anders said. “... do you mind if I stay in here?”

“I don’t mind at all,” Amell kissed his stomach. “Do you want me to read to you?”

“Actually, I was thinking I’d try to pray.”

Chapter 239: From Kirkwall We Fled: Things to Talk About

Summary:

"That they might not have the courage to rise up."

- Shartan 9:5

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, comments, subscriptions and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 12 Nubulis Afternoon
Pride of Amaranthine - Waking Sea Off the Shore of Ostwick

"Have you ever been to Ostwick?" Anders asked, leaning against the railing and listening to the sounds of the sea. The waves breaking against the hull, the pealing of bells in Ostwick’s harbor, the distant cries of gulls and dockworkers. Seaspray carried the scent of salt as the wind caressed his face, running its fingers through his hair, stealing in beneath his clothes, and for the first time in a long time Anders found himself enjoying being touched.

He enjoyed it a lot. He enjoyed it so much - in fact - that he was running out of ways to be touched. There were only so many ways someone could have sex, and they had to be running out of them, but Amell kept coming up with more, and Anders was honestly a little tired. Amell had fucked him in so many different ways and so many different directions it would have made the most seasoned sailor seasick. With how much energy Amell had a compass couldn’t keep up with him.

Anders felt like he’d had more sex in the past six days than he’d had in the past six years. They’d fucked on every surface in Amell’s cabin except the ceiling, and Anders was afraid that was going to be next. He never thought the day would come, but Anders was pretty sure he couldn’t. He was exhausted. There was nothing left in him. He stubbed his toe going up the stairs, and when he cried he was so empty dust came out.

Anders loved having sex. He loved having sex with Amell. He just couldn’t have it every second of every day, but instead of saying that, Anders made the mature, adult decision of hiding up on deck with Nate.

"It's my favorite of the Free Cities," Nate said, making Anders a little nervous dangling his cane out over the railing. "I visited when I squired under my uncle, whenever we could get away from Starkhaven. Ostwick is a lot like Ferelden.”

“Smells like dog shit?” Anders guessed.

“It should,” Nathaniel grinned. “They still consider themselves a teyrnir from the time of Alamarri rule, and they’ve been just as besieged by pirates and qunari as we’ve been by Orlais. You can almost see the double walls from here. They’re a defensive people. I think you’d like it there.”

“I resent that,” Anders elbowed him. “Have you ever seen its Circle?”

"Would you believe I’ve never been inside a Circle?” Nate asked.

"You?” Anders snorted. “Ser This-Reminds-Me-Of-The-Time? You’ve been everywhere.”

“I haven’t been everywhere,” Nate frowned.

“You’ve been everywhere,” Anders said.

“You know I’m not a fan of oversimplifications,” Nate said.

“It’s too late; I’m oversimplifying it,” Anders flapped a hand at him. “You’ve been to at least two countries, which is more or less everywhere.”

Nate sniffed, “Ah, so that’s how it’s going to be.”

“Admit you missed me.”

“I’d have to aim first, my friend.”

“Hang on, I’m trying to decide if I should be insulted,” Anders said.

“We can still make berth at Ostwick,” Nate said. “You’d fit in just fine.”

“You would know, since you’ve been everywhere,” Anders said.

“Why do you ask about its Circle?” Nate brought the topic back on course.

“Just asking,” Anders shrugged.

“You should leave the subterfuge to Amell, my friend.”

“Subterfuge? Just say he’s a liar.”

“That’s rather gauche.”

“You know you don’t always have to be proper.”

“I prefer to treat those due respect with it-”

“He’s not here. I’m not going to tattle.”

“Tattle?” Nate repeated. “That’s a rather juvenile mindset, wouldn’t you say?”

“Have you met me?” Anders asked.

“Repeatedly,” Nate said. “Were you hoping they’d rebel?”

“I was hoping they all would,” Anders said. “Everything I did-”

“-we did,” Nate cut him off. “You’re not alone in this, Anders, you have allies. What’s special about Ostwick?”

“Amell’s brother is there,” Anders said.

“I forget he has siblings,” Nate admitted.

“You’re allowed to do that,” Anders ran his hand through his hair. “You’re not his lover.”

“That you know,” Nate joked.

“Haha,” Anders said flatly. “You’re playing with fire right now, you know. I get jealous.”

“I seem to recall you frequently inviting everyone at the Vigil to ‘find out what’s under these robes,’” Nate pointed out.

“It’s different when I do it,” Anders waved him off. “Amell’s not insecure.”

“So long as you’re self-aware, I suppose,” Nate said. “You’re not really threatened by Amell having admirers, are you? The two of you are meant for each other.”

“Can you honestly say he couldn’t do better?” Anders asked. “He has two brothers, and they’re both Tranquil, so I just think of them like they’re dead, but I guess Amell doesn’t. He asked me about the one we left behind in Kirkwall. Daylen, I think? I didn’t even think about him. Why would I? There’s nothing left of the Tranquil to save.

“They’re like the walking dead, but worse. We have one Tranquil with us, and I can’t even look at her,” Anders’ hands clenched on the railing, his grip knuckle-white and veilfire-veined. “I don’t understand how anyone can stand it. You remember Samson? The Knight-Templar who lowered the chains to the harbor for the Felicisima Armada? He stayed behind to get all the Tranquil out of the tower, but I don’t know if Daylen was one of them.

“... I don’t even understand why Amell asked about him. It doesn’t matter. Daylen’s dead. I thought we both thought he was dead, but ever since he converted to the Qun, I worry we don’t think the same things anymore.”

“Do you have any way of getting in touch with Samson?” Nate asked.

“Kirkwall’s under quarantine. Cullen only took the templars that weren’t on red lyrium to Val Royeaux, so Samson is probably still there. I know he was taking it-...” Anders trailed off, staring at the shoreline, but Kirkwall was long gone, and the only Free City in sight was Ostwick.

Samson had been on red lyrium almost as long as the Knight Commander had been lacing it, and even though the man was an addict, he hadn’t seemed to suffer any side-effects. He was the greasiest, weaseliest bastard Anders had ever met, but the red lyrium hadn't made it any worse. It hadn't boiled his blood. It hadn't broken through his skin. It hadn't made him a horror the way it had Hawke.

Anders cracked his knuckles, staring at his hands, the worn down nails, the ripped cuticles, the pronounced tendons and joints, the veins and the taint flowing through them. His veins were more black than blue, and all through winter and its late end his skin was so pale he swore he saw leeches swimming underneath it. Even when his veins broke and burned with veilfire, the taint was still there, and even if he’d never learned to love it the way that Amell had, he accepted it.

He’d taken the taint into himself and let it turn him into something inhuman, but he’d never acted that way. Red lyrium might have been tainted, but Hawke didn’t have to be. Anders traced over a scar on the back of his palm with his thumb, thinking of the day he’d gotten it. Hawke had been trying to get him to drink a vial of magebane, and Anders had knocked it out of his hand. It had shattered, and in the ensuing fight Anders had dived for one of the larger shards to cut his wrist or Hawke’s throat, when Hawke had stepped on his hand.

Some of the glass must have gotten stuck on the bottom of Hawke’s boot, because it cut the back of Anders’ hand, and Anders hadn’t even thought to use his blood. He’d just stayed there, facedown on the floor, his free hand frantically signing for Hawke to spare his hand, blood and bane staining the hardwood black and red and pink like an oil painting of a fire in the dead of night - and the colors were the only claim to romance they’d had through that whole wretched year.

All that had happened, and then there was Samson, saving the Tranquil, when Anders hadn’t given them a second thought. Sometimes he thought he and Hawke deserved each other.

“-getting word to anyone in Kirkwall comes with a risk of red lyrium exposure,” Nate was saying. “Though I’m sure you already knew that. Is that why you were asking about Amell’s other brother?”

“I was asking about Ostwick,” Anders said. “I had this… friend. Karl. In the Circle, you do whatever you can to forget that you’re nothing but more than slaves. Most mages dream about escaping to Tevinter, but Karl used to talk about Ostwick. It’s the only Circle where the Lucrosians are the majority-”

“-You’re not talking to a mage, my friend,” Nate interrupted. “Who are the Lucrosians?”

“The Circle has these groups they call Fraternities,” Anders explained. “It’s all just play pretend politics to make the mages think they have a say and keep them complacent. The Lucrosians care about coin, and you can guess how much that means to me after five years running a free clinic. The Lucrosians sell themselves into servitude in exchange for a chance to see outside the Circle, and they do it a lot in Ostwick. Karl thought someone owning his contract would be the closest thing he’d ever get to freedom.

“He wasn’t even a Lucrosian - he just wanted to go outside - and they made him Tranquil for it. They sent him to Kirkwall instead of Ostwick, and the Knight Commander killed him. I killed him. I killed him so he wouldn’t have to live like that. I told Amell I killed him. I don’t understand why he’s asking about Daylen. He’s dead. Karl was dead. Karl was already dead.”

Nate squeezed his shoulder, “... I don’t think Amell wanting to know about his brother means that you did wrong by your friend. I just think it means that Amell’s not the sort of man to let things die.”

“They’re dead,” Anders cleared his throat. “There’s no bringing them back.”

“Be that as it may, the man is a necromancer,” Nate said. “Is it any surprise he’s obstinate? Would he have anywhere near the mastery of his magic if he didn’t truly believe he could defy death?”

“He can’t. No one can. I’ve seen what happens when someone tries,” Anders was never going to forget Quentin’s surgery. The marble floors. The shattered glass jars. The body parts. Hands. Feet. Selections of skin, dripping with oil, honey, and quicklime. Leandra, skinned, all red muscle and yellow fat in a pretty lavender dress and coral corset. “People die and you just have to accept it.”

“Something I imagine a healer comes to understand sooner than the rest of us, or they’ll blame themselves for everyone they couldn’t save,” Nate said. “Have you tried talking to Amell about all of this?”

“What am I supposed to say? ‘Listen, love, there’s no cure for Tranquility, so you shouldn’t care what happened to your brothers?’” Anders snorted. “Even I’m not that much of an ass.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant,” Nate said. “I was thinking more… setting healthy expectations on what he hopes to find. I heard what happened with his father and his mother and I would hate for him to become that someday.”

“I’ve been in love with the same man for seven years, and I spent half of them thinking he was dead,” Anders said. “I don’t think I set the best example for having healthy expectations.”

“Do you remember when Amell left for his Calling, and the Chantry was so enraged he recruited you, they put one of their Knight-Lieutenants through the Joining just to get to you?” Nate asked.

“Rings a deathknell or two,” Anders joked.

“Do you remember what got you caught?” Nate asked. “It wasn’t Justice. It was Compassion. You’d been with that spirit for years and you just wanted the chance to say goodbye. I think you handle grief a great deal better than you give yourself credit for.”

Anders wasn't sure if that was true, but it was nice to hear, “Did I ever apologize for getting you involved in that?”

“If you did, I wouldn’t accept it," Nate said with an easy smile. "I wanted to help.”

“Thanks," Anders grinned.

“What are you even doing up here?" Nate nudged him. "Shouldn’t you be below deck getting-... reacquainted?”

“I’ve never been more acquainted with anyone in my life," Anders said. "I need a break.”

“I wouldn't have thought of you exhaustible,” Nate teased.

"Exhaustible," Anders repeated, offended. "You want to talk exhausting? How many times have you had sex in one day?"

"Do we have this kind of friendship?" Nate wondered. "Is this the kind of friendship we have?"

"How many?" Anders pressed.

Nate frowned, and folded his arms over his chest. "... five," Nate lied.

"So four," Anders deduced. "I had sex twelve times yesterday - and I think that was him giving me a break. This is the first time I've put on clothes all week, and it's been so long I forgot how. Look at this - my tunic is inside out."

"Twelve," Nate repeated doubtfully. "What are you counting?"

"What do you mean what am I counting?" Anders asked. "I'm counting start to finish - and this morning I couldn't even do that. You know what he said? He said, `I just want to be close to you.’ What am I supposed to do about that?”

“Is there a reason you need to do anything?” Nate asked.

“Well… yes, unless I plan on dying of dehydration,” Anders said.

“There are worse fates, you know,” Nate said.

“Thanks for the sympathy,” Anders rolled his eyes.

“Forgive me if it’s not the first emotion that comes to mind when someone tells me they’re having too much sex,” Nate rolled his back. “Is there a reason you’re talking to me about this and not Amell?”

“Well it’s not like I never want to have sex,” Anders said. “I just don’t want to have it twelve times a day.”

“Again, a comment better directed towards the man you’re having it with,” Nate said. “Unless this is your way of telling me you’re an admirer?”

“I hate to break it to you, but you’re like a brother to me,” Anders said.

“So long as we draw the line at incest,” Nate snorted. “Go talk to Amell. You know he’ll understand.”

“I know out of all my problems this is a stupid one to complain about, and I’m being an idiot about all this, but-...” Anders wrung his hands over the railing. His fingers were ringed in silver and rosewood, but not two years ago Anders had tossed gold into the same waters they were sailing. Sunlight rippled over the waters, and with every golden glint, Anders imagined he could still see that damn ring trying to drag him down with it. “I'm not used to being allowed to say 'No.'”

“When I was a boy, I idolized my father. I grew up on stories of his heroic exploits throughout the Fereldan Rebellion. I remember I spent so much time in our trophy room, dreaming of the day I would be big enough to wear his armor and wield his swords. When I heard he’d been murdered by the Hero of Ferelden, that trophy room was all I could think about.

“I forgot why I used to go in there in the first place. My parents used to fight. Vicious fights, you could hear throughout the whole Vigil, and I would hide in that trophy room and make my father into two different men. The hero from the storybooks, and the one who was hitting my mother. I know what it’s like to bury memories, and I know how hard it is to revisit them with a clear head and broken heart.

“I’m sorry you had to see Hawke again, but you can tell Amell you don't want to have sex."

“That was inspired, Nate,” Anders elbowed him.

“Are you ever serious?” Nate sighed.

“About sex, sure,” Anders joked.

“I think we’re done here,” Nate walked away from him.

Anders called after him, “You know, Nate, you don’t always have to be the hero.”

“What?” Nate glanced back at him..

“You were a kid,” Anders said. “It’s not your fault you couldn’t save your mother.”

Nate wrung his hand on his cane, and spared him a strained smile before he walked away. Anders picked up a lunch of salted pork and cabbage from the galley, and brought it back to Amell’s cabin. Amell had put on trousers at some point, and was reading from the Qun. Anders set their lunch on the table, and then sat beside him on the floor, off to the side of his meditation mat.

Anders was not capable of meditating. On a good day, he was lucky to say a single prayer, and so far he’d only managed to get through Trials 1:8 without feeling like a hypocrite.

You have grieved as I have.
You, who made worlds out of nothing.
We are alike in sorrow, sculptor and clay,
Comforting each other in our art.

It was just a verse. Something to affirm the Maker made mages as intended and their magic wasn’t a mistake. The Canticle of Trials was a collection of hymns, more colloquially known as prayers for the despairing, and Anders didn’t know if he was that, but it felt safe to say them. They were from the only Canticle composed by Andraste, and not misinterpreted by one of her disciples or some Chantry cultist a hundred years after her death.

It was just one hymn out of hundreds, though, and it was only a few words. Anders could only think them so many times before his mind started wandering. “Do you think you could read out loud?” Anders asked, watching Amell’s fingers move over the raised ink, and trying not to feel guilty for interrupting him. Amell couldn’t have a conversation, or answer any real questions, but Anders knew he could read aloud while he was meditating, because he had for him before, and he did now.

“Existence is a choice.
There is no chaos in the world, only complexity.
Knowledge of the complex is wisdom.
From wisdom of the world comes wisdom of the self.
Mastery of the self is mastery of the world. Loss of the self is the source of suffering.
Suffering is a choice, and we can refuse it.
It is in our own power to create the world, or destroy it.”

“Do you really believe that?” Anders asked when Amell finished the Canto. “That you can just create or destroy the world?”

“Don’t you?” Amell closed and latched the Qun, and set it and the rest of his things up on one of the shelves in his cabin. “Isn’t that why you destroyed the Chantry?”

“Are we ever going to talk about that?” Anders stood to ask. “I know you’re not Andrastian, but you must have an opinion.”

“I thought my opinion was obvious,” Amell slid his hands beneath Anders’ jacket to push it off his shoulders, and then pushed Anders up against the shelves.

“You weren’t angry?” Anders swallowed, trying to work up the nerve to say he was tired, he was tense, he was terrified.

“No,” Amell kissed his neck, and Anders felt some of that tension leave his shoulders. He ran his fingers up and down Amell’s spine, dipping down to the dimples in the small of his back, absently aware he was encouraging him, but he still loved the warmth of his skin and the texture of his scars and the unwavering assurance of his words.

“All the apprentices I sent-” Anders started.

“Alistair agreed to give them asylum,” Amell’s teeth grazed his jaw while his fingers worked at the laces to his tunic. “He learned his mother was a mage on our quest to find his father, and he’s committed to your cause. Ferelden is going to be a refuge for free mages.” Amell’s teeth closed around his ear and tugged. “You can send me as many as you want.”

“You said to keep the Grey Wardens out of it,” Anders reminded him, relieved his tunic was still inside out and Amell wasn’t having an easy time untying it.

“I was wrong,” Amell said. “I’m with you.”

Amell gave up on his inside-out tunic, and set his hands to his trousers instead. Anders finally forced himself to catch his wrists, searching for words. Easy words. Little words. I’m tired. Let’s have lunch. Words he’d said before and words that he could say again.

Anders flexed his fingers on Amell’s wrists. The words wouldn’t come, and his grip went slack when he gave up, but instead of going for his trousers again Amell gathered his face in his hands. “Anders, I wasn’t angry,” Amell didn’t exactly stare at him, but Anders felt seen all the same. “Why do you feel so anxious?”

Anders traced his void-black eyes with the edge of his thumb, and waited for his breathing to even out before he tried again, “I don’t know that anxious is strictly accurate.”

“How do you feel, then?” Amell asked.

“A little worn out,” Anders admitted.

“Do you want to have lunch?” Amell asked.

Yes. Yes, that was all he wanted, and it was so simple and so stupid and there was no reason Anders shouldn’t have been able to say that, but it was like he’d taken an arrow to throat all over again and he couldn’t say anything since he’d seen Hawke. Anders hugged Amell hard, his fingers denting in at his side and his shoulder. “I love you,” Anders said instead.

“I love you too,” Amell’s voice was soft and soothing and Anders hated even when Amell was taking his breath away, Hawke was still making him hold it. Amell ran his fingers through his hair until he relaxed, and they had lunch.

"I don't know what happened to Daylen," Anders admitted as soon as Amell’s mouth was full. "We didn't take any of the Tranquil with us. A Knight-Templar in Kirkwall got them out of the Gallows. I don't know what happened after that."

Amell chewed on his food and what Anders had said, and Anders tried to untangle his emotions, but Amell felt too many all at once. Eventually, he swallowed, "Okay.”

It didn’t feel okay, "Why does it matter?"

"I don't know if it does," Amell said.

"Then why did you ask?" Anders pressed. "You know what Tranquility does."

"I know," Amell said.

"Then why?" Anders demanded. "You know I killed Karl. There was nothing left of him to save. Why would Daylen be different?"

"Anders-..." Amell started, stopped, and held out his hand. "Give me your hand."

Anders exhaled the air he’d inhaled for an argument, and gave Amell his hand instead. Amell held it in the space between them and splayed all of Anders' fingers, walking his own over them until he reached the one with Karl's ring. Amell felt over it, and then folded Anders' hand closed, pulling it up to his lips to kiss lyrium-infused silver. "Karl wasn't Keenan. I would never ask you to take this off."

"I know. I know you wouldn't," Anders wished he wasn't so on edge. He picked his utensils back up, and the knife in his hand sliced through his pork like warm butter, but it felt dull in comparison to the one the Exalted March had pressed to his throat. "I just haven't seen you in so long, and now that I finally have you back, I'm terrified something will go wrong.”

“Like what?” Amell asked.

“You mean aside from awakening an ancient magister and having an outstanding 'I owe you' to a demon? There’s always the dissolution of the College of Magi. The Exalted March…" Anders sighed. When the Knight-Commander condemned all mages for the actions of one, he'd thought the world would see the injustice of it, and instead they'd followed suit. The idea of an Exalted March against apostates was insane, because there was no way to win.

The Chantry could always say there were more apostates out there. Sebastian would never stop hunting him. Meanwhile, Grand Cleric Francesca and the Red Divine fought for power while the Knight-Commanders took over city after city in the Free Marches, and the Circles just sat back and watched it happen.

"I'm so tired of waiting for the rest of the Circles to rise up," Anders said. "The College of Magi was dissolved just for putting forward the vote for freedom. It didn't even pass. If all of this is meaningless-"

"It's the second vote for freedom in under a decade," Amell said. "Change is coming to the world. The College of Clerics wouldn't have dissolved the College of Magi if they didn't fear it."

"You sound like our son," Anders said without thinking - and felt the cinch of Amell’s heart through his ring. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I’m glad you still think of him,” Amell’s smile was even more strained than Nate’s.

“Of course I do,” Anders said. “I’m doing this for him.”

“I know,” Amell said. “He told me you would Fade Walk with him. I appreciate that you didn’t forget about him.”

“I love him,” Anders said earnestly. “I love you. I know this isn’t the life that either of us imagined, but-”

“Don’t apologize,” Amell said, so Anders didn’t. “He did have a vision. He said, ‘the next age is coming too soon.’”

“What does that mean?” Anders asked. “We have sixty-two years before the next Age. How is it coming too soon?”

“I was thinking something more along the lines of your manifesto - where you talked about an epoch of magic,” Amell said. “The Divine can’t cling to the threat of maleficarum to keep the Free Cities under martial law. Their leaders won’t allow it.”

“She’ll just find some other excuse to hide behind,” Anders said. "Especially with the Red Divine spreading the plague.”

"Kirkwall is already quarantined,” Amell said. “Short of burning it all down, I'm not sure what else the Divine intends to do."

“She’s done more than enough damage already,” Anders said. “I still can’t believe they dissolved the College of Magi. Do you at least know which Circles voted for freedom?”

"Ansburg,” Amell said.

"Really?” Anders sat up. He hadn’t been able to find any sign of the Mages’ Collective in Ansburg, so he hadn’t had any contact with their Circle, but talk in Kinloch and Kirkwall had always been that Ansburg may as well be an insane asylum. “But everyone says First Enchanter Luidweg is a lunatic. Do they just say that because he’s a Libertarian?"

"They say it because he’s obsessed with socks,” Amell said.

“Figures,” Anders sighed, and slouched. “I’ll bring him a basket when I ask him to join the rebellion.”

“Make sure they’re matching pairs,” Amell said. “He wrote an entire treatise on the interplay of spirits in the laundry room because he thought they were stealing his socks.”

“I don’t believe you,” Anders said.

“It’s on the shelf somewhere,” Amell gestured over his shoulder with his fork. “He hid in a sock basket for eight months to study them.”

“No he didn’t,” Anders wasn’t even going to look at the shelves. “You just say these things.”

Amell hummed, but Anders was not going to ask any more questions about Luidweg’s sock obsession, because Amell was full of shit.

“In Kinloch, they always talked about Ansburg like it was a sanatorium,” Anders said instead. “How far do you think they’d go for freedom?”

“Irving used to talk about Ansburg like it was an alternative to Aeonar,” Amell recalled. “Somewhere to send anyone he considered an embarrassment. I think the mages there are mostly elves.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Anders asked. “You’re telling me the Circles send all their elves to Ansburg and tell everyone they’re insane? Just because having them around is an embarrassment? To who?”

“The nobility?” Amell shrugged. “Elven mages are still elves, and it’s more prestigious to own humans.”

“So what?” Anders asked. “So that old bastard sent elves away so he could sell more humans into slavery?”

“Yes?” Amell said.

“That’s horrible!” Anders said. “Why didn’t I know about this?”

“You didn’t spend five years as the First Enchanter’s apprentice,” Amell said. “The Circle was never on anyone’s side.”

They finished lunch, and Anders took their empty plates and cups back to the galley, resolved to find some way to get in touch with First Enchanter Luidweg. Anders was sure the exiled elves in Ansburg would be willing to join the Mage Rebellion, as soon as he found some way to get them out of the Circle, or convinced them to rise up with his support.

Amell was searching the shelves when Anders got back. He was still in his trousers, and they weren’t doing much for him, loosely laced and hanging off his hips while he ran his fingers over the spines on one of the higher shelves. Anders spent a minute admiring him before he found a seat for himself on the edge of the map. “Tell me you’re not looking for that treatise.”

“He actually has some interesting commentary on the emanations of spirits-” Amell started.

Anders caught him by his hips and pulled him back against his chest. “I am not reading a treatise written by a man who shit in a sock.”

“I doubt he shit in any socks,” Amell said.

“You doubt,” Anders wrapped his arms around him. “You don’t know.”

“If he was angry enough about losing socks to write a treatise on it, I don’t think he’d shit in them,” Amell said.

“I love listening to you say shit,” Anders said.

“... Why?” Amell asked.

Anders pushed his hair back behind his ear - unbraided when Amell spent most days undressed. “Because you only swear when we’re having sex.”

“I think I swear more often than that,” Amell said.

“You really don’t, love,” Anders said.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Amell said, tilting his head so Anders could kiss his neck. “I thought you said you didn’t want to have sex right now?”

“Ask me again in an hour,” Anders leaned his head on Amell’s shoulder. “What were you planning on doing in Ansburg?”

“Whatever you need me to do,” Amell said.

“You said you had a reason to be there,” Anders reminded him.

“I’m the Chancellor of Ferelden. I have reason to be anywhere,” Amell said. “Percival Aurum is the Margrave of Ansburg. The Aurums adopted the Guerrins, and in a way it makes him Alistair’s uncle. Officially, I’m going to secure support for Ferelden’s standing offer of asylum to apostates.”

“Unofficially?” Anders asked.

“I’m meeting with a Venatori informant in the city.”

Chapter 240: From Kirkwall We Fled: Pain

Summary:

Better we had died there than to be hunted like sport on the plains.
- Shartan 9:2

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 19 Nubulis Early Morning
The Streets of Wycome

It got worse.

The plague hit Wycome hard, in the month that they were gone. The streets were deserted. The few wild dogs that wandered them eyed them with red, reflective eyes. Yellow circles marked every other door - some old, the paint cracked and flaking off like the flowers of golden trumpet trees, some new, the paint dripping down the grain like globs of bile.

Some of the circles seemed like they couldn’t have been more than a few minutes old, but there was no one around to have painted them, and the streets that weren’t deserted were closed off. Overturned carriages were pushed up beside abandoned carts, flies and vultures circling whatever lay beyond the makeshift barricade. All of it was drenched in paint, or what passed for it, the scent of piss on every corner.

The streets ran yellow, but it was only a matter of time before they ran red. Red lyrium gave off heat, and the temperature rose once they left the docks. The city should have been under quarantine, but Antivan ships were still sailing into the harbor, unloading casks of wine and loading crates of pearls and plague. Duke Antione shouldn’t have been letting anyone dock, but the city guard was still waving everyone along, like nothing was wrong.

Revas’ Rescue was in the center of the city, the weathered four story compound of white stone and black wood covered in blue banners, and one of the few things left in Wycome outside the noble district that wasn’t painted yellow. From the raised foundation, Anders could see a clear path to the markets, the docks, and the other districts, but there was no way to the alienage. All of the streets were blocked off, and Anders wasn’t even sure if it was still standing.

The whole way to Revas’ Rescue, every other guard had warned them to, “Watch out for rats,” and Anders knew they weren’t talking about rodents.

“This is bad,” Anders said, unable to turn his back on the city and head inside with the rest of the Grey Wardens. He stood under the eaves instead, in the half-cobbled courtyard, and held Amell back. “How soon can you get an audience with the Duke?”

“I’ll have him receive me today,” Amell said.

“I’m coming with you,” Anders said.

“There’s a bounty out on you,” Amell reminded him.

“I’ll go as a crow,” Anders wasn’t worried. The posters were far from perfect. “I have to know what the Duke intends to do about all this.”

“Are you sure you can hold the form?” Amell asked.

“Very funny,” Anders had almost forgotten how he’d embarrassed himself the first time he’d tried to show off his shapeshifting for Amell, and Amell’s touch had made him such a mess Anders hadn’t been able to hold any of his forms for more than a few seconds. “Yes, I’m sure. Let’s go.”

“Anders, we’ve been at sea for a fortnight,” Amell said. “If anyone is going to recognize me as the Chancellor of Ferelden I need a chance to change. I’ll go before midday so he has to lunch with me. Dumat, find inside.”

Amell followed the others inside. Anders stayed in the courtyard, winging his hands on his staff and staring out at the Free City and the Red Plague ravaging it. Red lyrium had time to spread since they’d discovered it in the Valdasine Thaig six years ago, especially with the Carta mining it for the last two. Anders knew Varric’s brother Bartrand bore the blame for most of that, but he still felt responsible. He’d been there at the start, and if he’d just been a better Warden, he might have been able to tell the idol was tainted, and stop all of them from ever taking it.

If nothing else, he was stopping it now. Anders went inside, and walked into a fight in the foyer.

“You’re a dead man,” Janeka was snarling at what looked like one.

The creature was a waif wearing armor. His face was rotten, whole chunks of flesh missing, patches of brown hair and beige skin all but overtaken by sores and boils. His eyes were white as bone and just as stiff, and a vicious scar caved in his nose and cheek, like something had tried and fall to split his skull, but for all the rust and dents on his armor he hadn’t been bested.

Anders had seen that armor before. Janeka wore it. Amell wore it. The stranger was a Commander of the Grey.

“We all are, thanks to what you’ve done,” the stranger said. “Do you have any idea what you’ve unleashed?”

“I will give you one chance to go back to your Calling,” Janeka warned him.

“My Calling,” the stranger’s laugh drew onlookers from the two dozen or so Grey Wardens stationed at Revas’ Rescue. “There’s no such thing. I heard that’s where you’ve sent all my men,” the stranger waved a rotten hand at the group of Grey Wardens gathering behind him. “Thirty years, I spent among the Wardens. Eight of them, on my so-called Calling. Do you know what I’ve discovered?”

“This is your last warning, Larius,” Janeka took up a battle stance.

“It is yours!” Larius screamed, his mouth a black abyss of dripping taint and missing teeth. “There is no Calling! No Long Walk! No Higher Purpose! It is only music… and the best of us… can block it out. Eight years I spent in the dark… in the deep… I think I died, once, and yet… In Peace, Vigilance, so I kept it. My Vigil. My Watch. I stayed… in the wastelands… watching Warden’s Prison… holding back the horde... The Conductor… was contained. What… have you done?”

“What you failed to do,” Janeka said. “The Conductor is dead.”

“Impossible,” Larius hissed.

“Believe it, and be gone,” Janeka ordered.

“Gone?” Larius repeated. “There is nowhere to go. The Calling cannot claim me. I am the Commander of the Grey. I cannot die.”

“The darkspawn may not be able to kill you, but I can,” Janeka threatened, sparks of electricity coiling around her staff and across her shoulders to gather in her off hand.

Larius thumbed his sword from its sheath, and threw his shoulders back when he drew it, thudding the hilt against his shield. The Grey Wardens gathered behind him scattered.

“Try,” Larius said.

“Wait a second-” Anders started.

Janeka didn’t. Lightning surged across the foyer, blinding in its intensity, and connected with Larius’s shield in a violent flash of red. Anders’ vision came back to him in spots. The foyer had been burnt, stray sparks charing black veins into the walls, bits of ash falling to the rug while smoke rose towards the rafters. At the end of the foyer, Larius was still standing.

Larius thrust his shield arm into the air, so they could all see the red lyrium lined the inside of it. “You see this?” Larius popped his jaw. “You feel this? This-... lyrium lines the wells. It bleeds into the water. It bridges the gap between this world and the next. It is the inbetween. It is… like us. It is… for us. It is tainted. Did you do this?”

“What?” Janeka lowered her arm.

“The water,” Larius twitched, but his hand was steady, spinning his sword in dangerous circles. “The wells. Did you taint them?”

The Grey Wardens came creeping back at the accusation. One of the Senior Wardens, Stoudenmire, stood in front of the others and looked to Janeka uncertainly, “Commander?”

“They would need us,” Larius continued, cracking his jaw again. “They would be us. Did you do this?”

“I won’t abide a ghoul’s accusations,” Janeka built her own pyre with every second she refused to answer. “I don’t answer to dead men.”

“What about us?” Stoudenmire asked from behind Larius. “Where are Roland and the others?”

“With whatever gods would take them,” Janeka said. “We are Wardens - death comes for us quicker. Leave, Larius. I will not be undermined.”

“The lyrium?” Larius pressed, tapping his sword to his lyrium-laced shield. “Did you do it? Did you taint them? Do you intend-... to conscript the city?”

“Do not speak to me of conscription,” Janeka snarled. “You conscripted children-”

“Mage children,” Larius interjected. “Doomed to die. You among them. I saved you… from their swords. Brought you… beneath my shield. And you… sent your brothers and sisters out into the dark… into the deep… into death.”

“My men died fighting darkspawn, as all Grey Wardens do,” Janeka said. “You became one. Go back to your Calling.”

“I am here to save my men from theirs,” Larius turned in a slow circle, meeting the eyes of every Grey Wardens gathered behind him, before he turned back to Janeka, “I relieve you of your command.”

“You relieve me of nothing more than my time,” Janeka scoffed.

“The shadows on the sundial stretch,” Larius paced in circles, addressing everyone assembled. “I can see them-... underneath your skin. The taint-... taking time. I have no time left to take. This-... is what comes of the Calling. This is what comes for us all. Men! You need not fear the music.

“Ten to twenty years, they tell us, but I served… in the shadows… thirty-eight. I can serve us-... many more,” You said the words. Vigilance. Victory. Sacrifice,” Larius looked at Janeka again. “Why-... then… was your sacrifice not of your own skin?”

“Enough!” Janeka blasted the door to Revas’ Rescue open. “Go back to the Deep Roads and die with some dignity.”

“You cannot send all of your brothers and sisters to die in the dark,” Larius said. “Men! If you follow me, I will not send you on your Callings, but teach you-... to survive it.”

"No one will follow you, creature," Janeka said. "You're half darkspawn yourself."

"We are all darkspawn," Larius said. "We drink them. We become them. We birth them. You… have not been recruiting women. You… have been sending your men to die. No more. No more. No more. Your men-...are with me now."

"Enough," Janeka said. "Men, kill this creature."

Stoudenmire looked between Janeka and Larius, but he didn’t look conflicted, "... He’s the Commander.”

"I am your Commander," Janeka said.

"You do not command," Larius said. "You compel. Who would follow you of their own free will?"

The silence was suffocating. Stroud was nowhere to be seen, and Stoudenmire had nothing to say. Larius stood with the Grey Wardens behind him, and Janeka stood with the door behind her. Anders stood off to the side with Amell and the Grey Wardens under his command, braced for a bloodbath.

The Grey Wardens in the Free Marches were as fractured as the Free Cities themselves. They were siloed off into small groups, and the lieutenants who led them weren’t around Janeka often enough to be loyal, but the few dozen Grey Wardens stationed at Revas’ Rescue weren’t that. They’d served under Janeka for eight years if Larius was telling the truth, and none of them said anything.

None of them even looked at her. They all just stood there, hiding behind Larius, like a single shield of red lyrium could actually do anything against a maleficar. Larius might have been able to resist lightning, but a word from Janeka could boil his blood and melt the mind of any Grey Warden who dared to go along with his mutiny. Anders knew that. Larius knew that. Janeka knew that.

It shouldn’t have even been a competition, and in the end, it wasn’t one.

"Depart," Larius said, lips twitching into a smile. "...with dignity."

Janeka left.

It was like the wind dragged her away. It swept in through the patchwork doors of Revas’ Rescue, swirling dust around her feet and turning them around. The scent of stale piss swallowed her perfume, and that was it. She was just gone. It was like she’d never even been there to begin with. Larius turned his back on where she’d been to give a speech to the men who’d once been hers.

An imperial staircase took up the opposite end of the foyer, and Larius gathered the Grey Wardens on the right, so Nate ushered them over to the left. He did it with gestures when he couldn’t seem to come up with any words for what they’d witnessed.

“Hm,” Nate managed eventually.

"Is this really happening?" Anders couldn’t believe Janeka had just walked away. Eight years, she’d been the Commander of the Grey, and it hadn’t taken more than a handful of words for her to lose everything to Larius. Warden’s Keep depended on the support of the Warden Commander of the Free Marches, and Anders had no idea if they still had it. “Are we really just letting this happen?”

“What would you suggest we do?” Nate asked.

“Do you have to ask?” Anders elbowed Amell.

“I can’t force the Free Marches to follow Janeka,” Amell said.

“Good,” Beth said. “Why would we do anything to help that horrible woman?"

“Better the demon you know than the ghoul you don’t?” Anders offered.

“A little quieter, perhaps,” Nate suggested.

“Like I can be loud anymore,” Anders muttered, taking a drink from his canteen and watching Larius speak with his stolen men. It had been years, but looking at Larius made Anders think of Leonie, and he decided he hated him.

Janeka should have dealt with Larius the way Amell had dealt with Leonie. Anders hadn’t been there when Amell had come back, but he’d heard the stories, and he knew it had been brutal. Leonie had lost her leg, and it didn’t seem right that Larius was still walking around on both of his while Janeka was walking out on everything she’d done to improve the lot of mages.

"I can't believe no one said anything," Anders said. "She's been their Commander for eight years."

"Larius was their Commander for over twenty," Amell said.

Ailsa lowered herself down to sit on the stairs, “Now he’s a ghoul.”

“He seems worse off than Seranni,” Nate noted, leaning on the banister.

“She was a ghoul for one year before her Joining,” Ailsa said. “This is eight…”

“Avernus staved off his for two hundred,” Amell said, and Anders was still holding out hope he would follow in his footsteps.

“Managed by magic,” Ailsa threw on the addendum. “Without it? No one should outlive their Calling.”

“And this is what it’s in store for me,” Beth shook her head. “Delightful. If we’re done, my daughter’s spent long enough with a wetnurse.”

“You know that’s not going to change anytime soon, right?” Anders tore his eyes off Larius to tell her. “You’re tainted now. You can’t breastfeed anymore.”

“We can keep the wetnurse on if Larius won’t,” Amell said.

“How generous of you to make sure my daughter doesn’t starve,” Beth said flatly. “Anything else you want to tell me about the slow death I’m dying?”

“At least it’s slow,” Nate said.

Beth stormed up the stairs to her quarters. She'd spent most of the voyage mourning the loss of her brother, but as far as Anders was concerned any prayers for Hawke were a waste of breath. Anders had made the mistake of thinking Hawke was dead once and he wasn't going to do it again. The man was a cockroach, and Anders was sure he was going to come crawling out of the rubble of the Warden’s Prison at some point with some new way to ruin his life while Beth blamed him for saving hers.

“I know being a Grey Warden isn’t easy, but we saved her,” Anders said. “Is she really going to hold it against us forever?”

“My daughter did,” Ailsa said.

“Someday, I’m sure she’ll write back," Nate squeezed her shoulder. "No one leaves their family forever."

Ailsa waved him off, "She's right to be angry."

“No, she's not," Anders wasn't sure if Ailsa was talking about her daughter or Beth, but it didn't matter. The Grey Wardens rescued both of them. “You were so far in debt your only other option was selling yourself into slavery.”

“I think my daughter would rather I had,” Ailsa said, massaging her joints and the lyrium mutations eating through them. “Larius is right about the lyrium. It is like the taint. It consumes your body and your mind, so you feel stretched thin between two worlds, until you’re not in either of them anymore. If there is lyrium lining the wells, the whole city is going to go into withdrawal when we remove it.”

"What other choice do we have?" Anders asked. "We can't just leave the city like this."

"I'll discuss it with the Duke," Amell said.

"I think we're agreed we leave the Grey Warden’s involvement out of it?" Nate asked.

"We are," Amell said.

"You don't really think Janeka is behind it, do you?" Anders asked. Janeka hated the Joining. She thought it was a waste of life, and that Grey Wardens should wait until they were exposed to the taint to take it, and even then she’d refused to put Beth through it. “She might have a chip on her shoulder, but she wouldn’t conscript an entire city.”

“Can we say that for certain?” Nate asked. “We’ve spent the past eight months under the Conductor’s influence. He could have been influencing Janeka to spread the taint against her will. A tainted city would have been completely under his control.”

“Why Wycome?” Anders asked. “The Red Divine is already doing that in Kirkwall.”

“Darkspawn don’t stop,” Ailsa said.

“Corypheus was a magister,” Anders argued. “He wanted to rule the world. You don’t think it would help for there to be a world left for him to rule?”

“If he had a hand in it, I’m sure it was an unconscious instinct to spread the taint while he was in stasis,” Nate said.

“Mass conscription, though?” Anders stressed. “You really think he could have convinced Janeka to do that?”

“If Janeka had a hand in spreading the taint, I doubt it was of her own mind, but if word gets out that the Grey Wardens are responsible for what’s happening in Wycome, we’ll never recover,” Nate said. “After the Witchford Harvester, a Landsmeet was called just to make sure a new type of darkspawn wasn’t cause for mass conscription.”

“Typical,” Anders said. “Nobles always have to make sure someone else is doing their fighting for them.”

“Anders, Nate and I are nobles,” Amell said.

“You know what I mean,” Anders swatted him. “Anyway, no one would believe the Grey Wardens are responsible for Wycome. The Taint Brigade is all about defeating darkspawn.”

“Taint Brigade,” Amell shook his head, and sounded torn between tired and reluctantly amused.

“Wouldn’t they?” Nate asked. “When my grandfather joined the Grey Wardens, everyone believed he abandoned his family to join a pointless cause. I grew up ashamed of him. We went four hundred years without a Blight, and if not the Fifth, people would still be doing their best to forget we exist.”

“We’re heroes now, no thanks to you,” Anders nudged Amell. “It’s not the same.”

“Nathan’s right,” Amell said. “The Grey Wardens are still recovering from the Qunari Wars. When the nations realized we wouldn’t field men for Exalted Marches, they cut tithe. It’s why so many of our fortresses are in disrepair when the Commanders have to rely on Weisshaupt for resources. It took until the Dragon Age just to end our exile in Ferelden after the Dryden Rebellion.” Amell looked like he had more to say, but for whatever reason he held back from saying it, and ended with, “We can’t afford to make mistakes.”

“You don’t think Larius is a mistake?” Anders asked. “The man’s a walking corpse. I would know. I was one. That poor bastard is worse off than Kristoff. I don’t know if any of you have ever walked around packing with potpourri, but it’s not as effective as you’d think. He can wear all the armor he wants. He’ll still smell like he’s rotting, and sooner or later someone is going to guess he’s a ghoul.”

“They won’t,” Ailsa said. “They’ll assume he’s a darkspawn.”

“That’s even worse,” Anders said. “We have to do something. I don’t know how much Janeka told you about Larius, but the man was a monster. He paid off the Knight Commanders in the Free Marches to send him mages they didn't think would survive their Harrowings. Bloody children - and he put them through the Joining. Janeka was seventeen. We might not be best friends anytime soon, but she won’t even see forty.

“I know you weren’t much older when you joined, but most of us had lives before the Wardens, and Larius took hers away. I think she wanted Warden’s Keep to be her legacy, and everything I’ve heard about Larius makes me worry we’re going to lose it.”

“He doesn’t have the men to move you,” Nate said.

“He doesn’t have to do anything but tell the templars where we are,” Anders said.

“The Venatori could help you find somewhere safe,” Ailsa said.

“So we can keep running?” Anders said. “We need somewhere to fortify so we can fight back.”

“You need more than one stronghold,” Amell said. “If we ever lost Vigil’s Keep, we could fall back to Soldier’s Peak.”

“We don’t even have one stronghold,” Anders said. “I just found a stonemason last month, and the Exalted March has been going on for eight. I don’t know how you did this in a year.”

“Let me talk to Larius and the Duke, and we’ll go from there,” Amell said.

Amell left to talk to Larius. Nate left to take a nap.

Ailsa climbed to her feet, “We should talk about the Venatori.”

Anders gave her a wave of allowance, and Ailsa led him to the library, where they found a place between the stacks to talk. A pile of pillows and books looked like they’d been left out for ages, and Ailsa startled an eclipse of moths when she sat in the center. Anders stayed standing, staring at the mezzanine on the third story, pitch black and abandoned. Janeka hadn’t even stayed to pack.

“We can’t keep losing allies,” Anders said.

“The Venatori can get you allies in Ansburg,” Ailsa said. “Magister Ahriman is one of the most powerful merchant taylors in Tevinter. He operates out of Ventus, but Ansburg makes most of his wool and grows most of his cotton. There’s a tailor in Ansburg willing to get you access to his armada so you can move mages along the Minanter River.”

“Let me guess, until Ahriman finds out a few months later and we lose the tailor too?” Anders asked over his shoulder.

“Ahriman is a Laetan, like I was,” Ailsa said. “We’re looked down on because our magic is seen as an accident of birth instead of a gift from the Old Gods, and the magisterium believes the best magic is cultivated through strong bloodlines. The first time a Laetan declared himself Archon, the civil war lasted seventy years.

“It’s been a thousand years, and it’s still a struggle to keep our seats in the magisterium. That’s what the Venatori are trying to change, and Ahriman is one of them. He believes everyone should be equal under the Imperium. His court and his company are made of Liberati - freed slaves the magisterium still treats as second class citizens. Ahriman is giving them a second chance.”

“The Mad Viscount did that,” Anders said. “You can’t just call slaves servants and pretend it makes a difference.”

“Talk to the tailor,” Ailsa said. “She’s a Liberati mage working at Lana Spes Nostra. Her name is Varania.”

It wasn’t that Anders didn’t trust Ailsa so much as he didn’t trust anyone, but he agreed to talk to Varania once they were back in Ansburg. It wouldn’t do them any good if Larius wouldn’t agree to let them stay on, but Anders reassured himself that if Amell couldn’t convince Larius with words, Anders could always do it with will.

Amell found him in the library after he'd had a chance to bathe and change. Amell hadn't gotten much out of his conversation with Larius, who was more concerned with going through Janeka’s things and finding out what he'd missed in the eight years he'd been absent than he was with Ansburg.

"I still don't understand why you won't just compel him," Anders said to Amell when they were alone in the stables, about to set out to see the Duke.

"Anders, there's a reason none of Janeka’s men would speak for her," Amell said. "She never gave them the chance."

"The chance to do what?" Anders asked. "When we met, Janeka forced me to sit down and shut up just so she could say that she agreed with me. She read my manifesto, she cares about the cause of mages-"

"-she lost the loyalty of her men," Amell said.

"So you can't help her get it back?" Anders asked. "Remember her whole speech about needing to be a better Commander? Don't you always say people deserve second chances?"

"Larius doesn't have to be our enemy," Amell said. "Don't make him one."

On some level, Amell was right. Anders had enough enemies without making more, but he didn't trust Larius. The man was a ghoul. His mind was gone. The taint had taken it the way it had taken the city when they set out.

Amell couldn't have drawn more attention if he tried, riding an undead construct through the cobbled streets with a veilfire-eyed crow perched on his shoulder. The noble district was closed off, and the guards eyed Amell’s approach uneasily. Whether it was the fact that he wore the armor of a Warden Commander or just looked too terrifying to challenge, they waved him through without bothering to ask for his seal.

That, or all the soldiers were sick, and they didn't have the strength for a fight. The district was deserted. No one walked the wide streets, shadowed by breezeways that bridged the estates, their fountains filled with leaves. The few people Amell passed kept their distance from each other for fear of a plague they already had by the red in their eyes.

There were no yellow circles dripping down the doors, but the windows were shuttered all the way to the Duke's estate, where the nobles were deep in denial. A stablehand took Dans Leur Sang to the stables, and a servant showed Amell to the great hall where Duke Antione was holding court. It was two stories, and nobles milled about on both of them, while servants coughed blood into kerchiefs with one hand and held trays of wine with the other.

The plague was on everyone's lips in one way or another, but talk was almost exclusively of how the elves were responsible. The aristocracy had crawled up its own ass and shit was coming out the other end. All of them were demanding to know what the Duke was going to do about the Knife-Eared Plague, and Duke Antione opened court with his answer.

There was a group of savage elves who'd settled in a valley outside of Wycome, and brought the Red Plague with them on their arrival. Duke Antione had dispatched mercenaries to remove them and he anticipated the plague would abate with their absence. The servants were sickened. The nobles applauded. Amell tipped his head to the crow on his shoulder, and the crow flew from the estate straight to Fisherman's Flight.

The valley was on fire.

The charcoal skeletons of elven aravels were everywhere, their sails turned to smoke. The sky had gone grey - like the valley had been swept away by a great flood - and the crow dove down through the sea of smoke. Anders rolled with his landing and drew his staff as he stood, but the crackle of burning wood and the crumbling aravels were the only signs left of the soldiers.

Their footprints had been crushed into the grass. Humans. Horses. The weight of their armor bearing down on the world the elves had learned to live with. In the center of the valley stood a smoldering magnolia, the dead sylvan split down the middle by innumerable axes, the early spring blooms sprinkled like blood at its base -- a little too pretty and a little too pink.

“Ellana!?” Anders’ voice broke when he tried to scream.

No one answered him.

Anders ran for the closest standing aravel and threw open the door. Air rushed in. Flame rushed out. Anders cast it into the Fade, veilfire bright against the orange blaze, and called out, “Ellana!?”

The aravel collapsed - whatever color it had been painted long since turned black - ash and dust exploding in all directions. Chips of wood like shrapnel cut across his face and sent Anders stumbling back, coughing up black.

“Ellana?” Anders choked, channeling a cleansing aura and scrubbing the soot from his eyes. “Nethras?”

No answer.

No bodies.

Just aravels. Burnt and burning.

Just halla. Riddled with arrows inside their enclosure, their horns hacked from their heads.

No elves.

Not until he reached the base of the valley and saw the bodies. The soldiers had stacked them into a pile. The soldiers had stacked them into a pyre. It took two to three hours to cremate someone, so Anders must have missed the soldiers by one, because the elves were still burning, but elves didn’t burn.

They were buried.

They were supposed to be buried.

Anders' hands erupted with hoarfrost. Steam swept through the smoke and the fires died down, little by little, until they finally went out, and the elves were encased in ice. Anders braced his staff against his shoulder, and slammed the butt of his staff against the ice to break it. The ice cracked, but didn’t shatter, so Anders adjusted his grip and slammed his staff down again, and again, and again, the crack cobwebbing through the ice and still refusing to break.

Anders snarled through his teeth - jaw tight, chest tighter - beating his staff against the ice, struggling to reach the elves frozen beneath it, until it finally broke, and one of the elves rolled down the pile and landed at his feet. There was almost nothing left of them. It had all been burnt away -- their skin black and crinkled past the point of knowing who they’d been when Anders knelt and rolled them onto their back.

Their ears had been cut off.

Anders dragged his thumb along the side of their head where their ear should have been, and their skin sloughed off onto his glove. Anders set his staff aside, and pulled another elf from the pile, heaving them out by their shoulders and laying them out on the ground.

They didn’t have any ears.

Anders pulled out another elf.

They didn’t have any either.

Anders pulled elf after elf from the pyre, and none of them had ears.

None of them had anything.

They were all burnt.

They were all dead.

Anders sat on his knees in a circle of burnt elves, trying to count them, but he couldn’t remember how many were in the clan. He wanted to say a hundred, but it couldn’t have been that exact. A hundred and three, maybe, unless Anders was confusing the elves with his mages, and there’d been ninety seven. Those numbers sounded right, but Anders wasn’t sure which had been which, and he kept losing count.

The bodies all looked the same, and no matter how many times Anders went through them, he was never going to be sure which one was Ellana. She had to be here. She had to be somewhere.

She had to have ears.

“Fuck,” Anders hissed, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes until he saw spots, but when he opened them he still didn’t see Ellana.

Anders had to get up. Anders had to bury them.

He should have gone to Lyna’s funeral. He knew elves were buried beneath trees, but he didn’t know what else needed to be done or what words needed to be said. Amell would have known. He had an elven soul. Anders could always ask him. He just had to get up.

A rock clattered across the ground a few feet away from him. A few seconds later one hit him in the leg. Anders rubbed his thigh and looked around, and another rock sailed out of the treeline and hit him in the chest. Anders picked up his staff and climbed to his feet, cautiously making his way through the bodies ringed around him and over to the treeline. A pebble pinged off his boot, and Anders knelt next to the bush it had come from.

Anders reached out and bent back the branches to reveal red hair, reflective eyes, and pointed ears.

“Hey Twig.”

Chapter 241: From Kirkwall We Fled: Grief

Summary:

And dug pits in the earth with their hands.

- Shartan 9:8

Notes:

Thank you all for your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 19 Nubulis Late Afternoon
Fisherman's Flight

Mahanon waved.

Anders couldn't tell if he was hurt. The tiny elf was drenched in dried blood, soot streaked like vallaslin across his face, grass staining his hands and knees like he'd crawled through it to escape the soldiers. His red hair was a shade closer to black, and his eyes weren't much better.

"Are you hurt?" Anders asked.

Mahanon blinked at him, huddled up against a tree under a bush, and didn't say anything.

"Mahanon, did they hurt you?" Anders asked again, channeling a cleansing aura when Mahanon didn't answer. A few bruises. Some mild smoke inhalation. A sprained ankle. "This is yes," Anders made a fist and rocked it forward. "This is no," Anders tapped two fingers to his thumb. "Do you think you can sign?"

"Yes," Mahanon signed.

"That's great," Anders said gently. "I'm going to clean off your face, okay?"

Mahanon nodded. Anders conjured a film of water over his fingers, and started thumbing the soot off his face. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"No," Mahanon signed.

"Did you see what happened?" Anders rephrased.

"Yes," Mahanon signed.

Damn.

Anders took a deep breath, "Where's Ellana?"

Mahanon pointed at the pile.

Which meant Ellana was in it. One of the hundred or so burnt elven bodies Anders couldn’t identify, but still had to bury. “Fuck,” Anders muttered under his breath. “I’m sorry. Your sister was a special person. I know she loved you very much. I’m sure she did everything she could to keep you safe. …did anyone survive?"

Mahanon nodded.

"They did?" Anders had to have dragged close to a hundred bodies out of the ice, and he couldn’t imagine more than a handful of elves had managed to escape the mercenaries. "That's excellent! Who? Did you see where they went?"

Mahanon nodded again, almost reluctantly, and crawled out from underneath the bush. The small elf stumbled to his feet, sniffling as he set off into the forest. Anders followed him through the underbrush and up a small incline, to where a tree was digging itself up out of the ground, roots ripping up in all directions, like it was trying to escape the hill it was growing on. The Keeper was lying in a nest of roots, weathered hands clutching the shaft of a spear one of the soldiers must have driven through her stomach.

She’d known better than to remove it, for all the good it had done her. The wound was a fatal one without help from a healer, and Clan Lavellan hadn’t had one. They’d just had Nethras, and something like this would take more than a poultice. The Keeper didn’t even have that. Clovers had been crushed into the wound, though Anders doubted she’d been the one to do it.

“Deshanna?” Anders let his boots break twigs to warn the blind Keeper of his approach.

“Our hero,” the Keeper whispered. “Have you come to guide the People into the Beyond?”

“You’re not going to die,” Anders promised, casting a lifeward beneath her. The emerald glyph flared to life, pulsing in time with her pulse, so much slower than it should have been. Anders set his staff down, and wrenched a handful of roots out of his way so he could kneel beside her. Anders pulled a clover free of crusted blood and looked at Mahanon, “Did you do this?”

“Yes,” Mahanon signed, but kept his distance from the Keeper. He crouched down a few feet off, huddled up against a tree and hugging his knees to his chest.

“Heart shaped leaves with veins of green: Elfroot, to ease the pain,” the Keeper recited the elven nursery rhyme, chuckling weakly. “I think our young First needs more lessons.”

“He’s five,” Anders said. Clover was closer to elfroot than weeds, and that was all Beth had found the first time she’d gathered reagents for him. “What happened?”

“What always happens,” the Keeper sucked in a pained breath when Anders eased the spear out of her stomach and went to work. “Shemlen soldiers. They came with tar bombs and bottled fire. Our scouts barely made it back, and Fiora died before she could tell us their numbers. Ellana and our hunters fell first. Ha’shal tried to get everyone to the halla, but the shemlen took them out. Lorenn led the retreat on foot, but they had horses. Del was defending Mahanon, and she bled out bringing him to me.

“I flew him here,” the Keeper waved a vague hand at the hill. “Somehow, I suspect I didn’t get far.”

“You got far enough,” Anders squeezed her shoulder.

“Some of the elves of Wycome fled their alienage to warn us…” the Keeper said, shivering while he washed out the wound. “They said the nobles blamed us and the elves in the alienage for the sickness that’s stricken them. It sounded like Andruil’s Rage… I knew the violence would come.”

“Why didn’t you leave?” Anders asked.

“We wanted a home,” the Keeper said with a rueful smile. “Surely you can understand. The People have nowhere to be. Your alienage is no alternative… the harsh treatment the elves suffer in the city…”

“You could have come to Ansburg,” Anders said.

The Keeper shook her head against the tree, strands of gray catching on the bark, “We are the last of the Elvhenan, and never again shall we submit-”

“No one was asking you to,” Anders said.

“We wouldn’t have been equals,” the Keeper said. “Ellana had too much faith in you.”

“She didn’t have any faith in me!” Anders said hotly, restorative energies flowing a little too fast. The Keeper winced at the rapid regrowth of rent muscle, and Anders forced himself to slow down. “She just knew things needed to change so she tried to change them. Did she even tell you we’re teaching elven history because of her?”

“A human teaching elven history isn’t teaching elven history,” the Keeper said. “They’re teaching human excuses.”

“We could have helped,” Anders argued.

The Keeper gave a slow shake of her head, and Anders forced himself to bottle his anger in front of Mahanon. The boy had been through enough without hearing him rage at the last family he had left, but she didn’t have to be so damn stubborn about going to a human for help. The mages weren’t the same as the mercenaries. She should have trusted they’d help the elves the same way the elves had helped them, but she hadn’t, and the whole clan had been wiped out.

There was no reason they had to die. They weren’t responsible for the plague. It didn’t have anything to do with them. The Grey Wardens were the only ones who knew the wells were laced with red lyrium, and the elves had no reason to lace them. Clan Lavellan had settled outside the city, and they had no reason to taint the water. Anders had cleansed all of them. The Conductor couldn’t influence any of them to spread the taint.

It had to have been someone who was already tainted. A Grey Warden. A discipline of the Red Divine. Some poor bastard who’d stumbled into a darkspawn and hadn’t died.

“I’m sorry,” Anders finished healing the wound on her stomach, and pressed his canteen into her palm.

The Keeper took a slow drink, “What have you done now, healer?”

“If I’d gotten here sooner-” Anders started.

The Keeper punched his canteen into his gut, “This isn’t your grief.”

“Andraste’s exposed ass it isn’t,” Anders hooked his canteen back onto his belt. “Ellana was a good person. Nethras was a good person-”

“They were all good People,” the Keeper set a hand to the tree and stumbled to her feet. “They weren’t your People.”

“They were my friends, you-” Anders swallowed down his anger. Old bitch or old bat, she didn’t deserve it. The Duke did. “-... I don’t know how to bury them.”

“We take them to Var Bellanaris, when we can,” the Keeper said.

“Where is that?” Anders asked.

“The Dales,” the Keeper said.

“That’s in Orlais,” They couldn’t move a hundred elven bodies half-way across the continent. Maybe, if the clan was in Orlais or Ferelden, they could bring their dead to their ancestral burial grounds, but the Free Marches were too far away.

“A grove, when we can’t,” the Keeper elaborated. “Somewhere the shemlen fear to tread.”

“Where do you want them buried?” Anders asked.

The Keeper laughed, a hollow, humorless sound that made Mahanon hug himself tighter, and took a few aimless steps forward without her staff to guide her before she stopped. “Somewhere I can see.”

Anders wished he had something supportive to say. He knelt in front of Mahanon, “Hey, Twig. I know you don’t want to talk, but I need to take you back to the valley so I can take care of your clan.”

Mahanon hid his face in his knees.

“You don’t have to go into the valley with me. You can stay by the treeline like before. Do you want to stand up?” Mahanon shook his head. “Do you want me to carry you?” Mahanon shrugged. Anders hefted him into one arm, and set the Keeper’s hand to the other, and walked them both back to the valley.

Flies had taken to the bodies. A murder of crows circled over head -- kept at bay by a pack of wild dogs sniffing at the edges of the circle and working to drag one of the elves into the woods.

“No!” Mahanon flailed out of his arms and landed face first on the ground. The little elf scrambled to his feet, and charged across the valley, roots ripping up out of the ground and lashing out in front of him. “No! Bad dogs! Get away!”

A root lashed one of the dogs across the nose, and it and the rest of the pack fled back into the woods with startled yips. Anders let go of the Keeper and jogged after him, afraid Mahanon was going to chase the wild dogs all the way into the woods, but eventually the little elf skidded to a halt, breathing hard while he clenched and unclenched his fists.

Anders stopped just short of the nest of roots lashing out around Mahanon, and called, “They’re gone, Twig. You can stop casting.”

Mahanon huffed, hard, and turned away from the treeline. He looked at Anders first, and the bodies behind him second, wide emerald eyes darting from one burnt body to the next, before he shrieked and took off at a scrambling sprint for the forest.

“Mahanon!” Anders’ voice cracked, and he ran after him, hasting himself to catch up and grab his arm before he got too far from the valley. Mahanon shrieked - veins, roots, and rocks lashing out in all directions. Anders knelt, locking Mahanon into a hug and weathering the unstable magic with a spellshield. “Stop - stop! Stop, you’re safe, you’re safe, shhh, you’re safe.”

Mahanon shrieked and sobbed and thrashed, slapping at his face, chewing on his arms, kicking his legs. Anders kept him crushed against his chest with one arm and smoothed back his hair with the other, trying to get him to calm down, but nothing he said was soothing enough, no matter how soft he said it, and the Keeper didn’t say anything at all when she finally found her way over, so Anders started singing.

Anders didn’t know any elven songs. He hardly knew any human songs, but he knew a dwarven one.

“Somewhere there's a mother,
Crying for her daughter.
She's a legionnaire,
They sent her out to slaughter.
But don't you cry for her,
She don't need your sympathy.
She's a legionnaire,
And that's the best that dust can be.

Somewhere there's a father,
Crying for his son.
His son's a legionnaire,
In a war that can't be won.
But don't you cry for him,
He don't need your sympathy.
He's a legionnaire,
And that's the best that dust can be.

Somewhere there's a husband,
Crying for his wife.
His wife's a legionnaire,
And she's fighting for her life.
But don't you cry for her,
She don't need your sympathy.
She's a legionnaire,
And that's the best that dust can be.

Somewhere there's a woman,
Crying all alone.
Her lover was a legionnaire,
And now he's lost to Stone.
But don't you cry for him,
He wouldn't want your sympathy.
He died a legionnaire,
And that's the best that dust can be."

Mahanon finally calmed down, somewhere around the third verse, and went slack by the fourth, his sobs subsiding to sniffles. “They’re not dust.”

“I know,” it was the first song that came to mind whenever he was grieving.

“They’re not dust,” Mahanon insisted.

“I know,” Anders hugged him. “We’re going to bury them. You don’t have to be there, but you can’t run away.”

“What if they wake up?” Mahanon asked.

“They won’t,” Anders said.

“Sometimes the elders wake up,” Mahanon said.

“They’re not going to wake up,” Anders promised, digging through his memories for everything he’d learned about what the Dalish believed from Velanna, and Merrill, and Ellana. “We're going to bury their bodies, so their souls can find their way through the Beyond.”

“They’ll get lost,” Mahanon sniffed.

“They won’t get lost,” Anders promised, and wished Deshanna would say something instead of just standing there, letting him fumble his way through this. “That’s why we’re burying them. We’re going to make sure they don’t get lost.”

“... I’ll get the sticks.” Mahanon stumbled to his feet, and started gathering up twigs, sniffling softly to himself.

Anders pushed himself to his feet with a sigh, and ran a weary hand through his hair watching him, but Mahanon didn’t run off. Anders took the Keeper’s arm and walked her out of earshot. “You have to talk to him about this,” Anders said. “He has questions and I don’t know how to answer them.”

“What am I to say, healer?” the Keeper asked. “That Fen’Harel will fall upon our clan long before they find their way through the drifting roads of the Beyond?”

“What are you talking about?” Anders asked.

“The old wolf is still out there, devouring our dead, and we haven’t the halla to lead them through the afterlife,” the Keeper said.

“So what?” Anders demanded. “If a Dalish dies without any halla around, they just get eaten by an old god in the afterlife?”

“We send them off with staves to find their own way through,” the Keeper said.

“And you don’t trust them to do it?” Anders asked. “Is that what this is about? They’re your people. You’re supposed to believe in them.”

“I have been the Keeper of Clan Lavellan for longer than you have been alive,” the Keeper walked into the forest with an outstretched hand until she came into contact with a tree, and lowered herself down to sit at its base. “I know what my people are capable of. Say a prayer to your god if you like. They won’t survive to see ours.”

“I can’t believe you,” No wonder Ellana had hated her. The souls of the dead passed through the Fade on their way to the Maker’s side, and if the Dalish believed they found their way to their own gods instead, then the Keeper was basically damning them all to wander the Void until the Dread Wolf devoured them.

Anders had been to the Fade. He’d seen the dead left to wander it and the demons that prayed upon them. It didn’t matter if he didn’t believe in the Dread Wolf. He’d seen the Baroness. He’d been to the Blackmarsh. He knew what was waiting for Clan Lavellan if they couldn’t find some kind of rest - even if it was just a peaceful path to walk until they returned to the ether from which they were formed.

“Believe what you like,” the Keeper said. “Shemlen always do.”

Anders found Mahanon in the forest, a small bundle of twigs in his arms that looked to be gaining on him in size. “Are those the staves you want to use?”

“These are the sticks,” Mahanon frowned up at him.

“That’s… those are some great sticks,” Anders fumbled. “What are we doing with the sticks?”

“They’re for the birds,” Mahanon said, like Anders was the child between them.

Damn Deshanna. Anders didn’t know anything about the elven afterlife or why they needed staves or sticks or whatever else she was leaving out because she’d given up on her clan when they died. Mahanon hadn’t, and Anders helped him gather sticks and staves for what turned out to be a hundred and eleven elves.

There were too many bodies for Anders to move them very far, so in the end he settled for dragging them into the treeline, so their graves looked out over the valley. The sun was setting by the time he had them all laid out, and Anders was exhausted. His clothes were dripping black, the ashes of elves soaked with his sweat, and he knew it wasn’t something Mahanon should have to see, but if they didn’t bury the bodies now scavengers or wild wisps would get to them.

“Shemlen!” Mahanon shrieked, running into the forest from the valley.

Deshanna scrambled to her feet, clutching the broken magnolia branch Anders had given her for a guide so she had some way to get around while he buried the elves. Mahanon hid behind his legs, and Anders pried him off and pushed him at Deshanna.

“Stay here,” Anders grabbed his staff, smearing the hardened gurgot in the black char of elven skin, and ran into the valley in time to see Amell ride into it.

He was dressed in the same chevalier shirt he’d worn to court, like he’d come straight from it despite how long it had taken him to leave. He’d ridden out alone with Dans Leur Sang and Dumat and called out when he dismounted. “Anders?”

Anders ran over and hugged him without thinking, crushing all his finery into the ash and dust of a hundred dead elves. “Thank the Maker you’re here; I don’t know what I’m doing,” Anders pulled back from him to pace, his hands alternating between his hips and his hair. “Those bastards killed them all. Every last elf except for the Keeper and a little boy. I still have to bury the bodies but I don’t know what to say to him and the Keeper won’t say anything.

“I’m sorry to come at you with all this but you have to tell me what to say to him. I know nothing I say will bring them back, but I have to say something. I should have asked you sooner about the elven soul you swallowed during the Blight, but I’m asking now. I need you. I don’t know anything about elven funerals. He’s out there picking up sticks and I still don’t know why.”

“They ward off demons,” Amell adjusted his shirt, but he was wearing riding gloves, and he had no way of knowing Anders had ruined it.

“Sticks,” Anders said flatly. “Sticks ward off demons? Nevermind. It doesn’t matter. The bastards that did this have to die. All of them have to die. Every last mercenary who ever set their swords against the innocent. Tell me you know the name of the band.”

“Anders, the Duke did this,” Amell said.

“They cut off their ears, Amell!” Anders shouted himself hoarse, and went fumbling for the canteen at his hip. His gloves were covered in ash and char, and smeared the dead across the lip of his canteen when he pulled out the cork, and he took a drink of death. Anders hacked it back up and flung his canteen across the valley. “I can’t even have a breakdown because someone has to be there for him.”

Anders took off his gloves and stuffed them into his belt, angry at himself for leaving them on in the first place. He was covered in death, and all he’d done was cover Amell in it along with him. Anders scrubbed at the ash Amell didn’t even know he’d left on his shirt, and won a raised eyebrow but no questions for the contact. “I’m sorry I couldn’t leave court sooner.”

“I wasn’t expecting you to do that,” Anders said. “Can you just tell me what you know about elven funerals?”

Amell knew everything about elven funerals. It took hours, primal magic rending the earth open for Anders to drag the elves into the graves that he dug for them. There was no one else who could help him, when Deshanna and Amell were blind, and Mahanon was five, so Anders did it on his own. Mahanon placed a stick and a staff in every grave, and they planted a tree over every elf, and a few hours after sunset they finally finished.

“Do we say a prayer or something?” Anders asked.

“You can,” Amell said.

“Falon’Din guide their feet,” Mahanon mumbled sleepily, slouched against his legs.

“That’s a great prayer, Twig,” Anders said.

“Speak the words right, da’len, or do not speak them at all,” the Keeper said.

“Falon’Din… lethallen-” Mahanon fumbled.

The Keeper sighed, “Clan Ralaferin should still be willing to take him in-”

“No!” Mahanon shrieked, and fled Anders to hide behind Amell of all people. Amell froze when the little elf locked himself around his leg, “No, don’t give me up! I know it! Falon’Din, lethallin-”

“No more dramatics, da’len,” the Keeper said.

“Falon’Din, lethallan-”

“-the clan is dead-”

“Falon’Din, lath-... lathlin-”

“-I cannot keep you-”

“Falon’Din, lathallen-”

“-there is no where else for you to go-”

“Falon’Din, lethallen-” Mahanon sobbed into Amell’s leg.

Amell couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable if he tried, and Anders knew he should have saved him, but he didn’t know what to say. Mahanon had been promised to Clan Ralaferin, and the only reason the boy hadn’t been sent to them already was because the rest of Clan Lavellan’s mages had died. Deshanna had never intended to keep him, and now that Ellana was dead, he was out of options.

Amell heaved a sigh, and peeled Mahanon off him. Amell knelt next to him with a hand on his shoulder keeping Mahanon from latching back onto his leg. “Lethanavir,” Amell said slowly.

Mahanon sniffed, scrubbing at his nose with the heel of his palm.

“Lethanavir,” Amell repeated. “Lethallin is friend. Lethanavir is friend of the dead. Try again.”

“Falon’Din, lethanavir - friend of the dead, guide their feet,” Mahanon said.

“Calm their souls, lead them to their rest,” Amell finished for him.

Mahanon sniffed, and flung himself forward to sob into Amell’s shirt. Amell wrapped an awkward arm around his shoulder, and gestured vaguely for Anders to rescue him with the other. Anders took Mahanon from him, and said, “Ellana would be really proud of you, Twig.”

It wasn’t safe for elves in Wycome, but it would be safe for them at Revas’ Rescue. The elves rode Dans Leur Sang, and Anders and Amell walked them back to Wycome. It was early morning by the time they arrived, the sun rising over the Amaranthine Ocean and setting it aflame, as red as the rest of Wycome’s water. The Dalish hadn’t had anything to do with it, but the soldiers in the city wouldn’t see it that way, so Amell compelled them all to forget they’d seen anything.

They still had their rooms at Revas’ Rescue, so they set the elves up in Amal’s room. The dwarven page was still asleep, and woke up whining.

“What the dust took you so long to see me!?” Amal demanded, flailing his way out of bed and onto the floor. He dug out his cap from under his bed and screwed it onto his head. “Did you just forget that I was here? I made sure that baby you left me to sit got six whole hours of sunlight so she’d grow, and her ma said she didn’t even need it! Why do you live on the surface if you don’t need the sun!?”

“Amal, Deshanna and Mahanon are going to share your room while we’re here,” Amell told him from the doorway.

“What!?” Amal huffed. “Why do I gotta share? I’m a page! I got a title! I shouldn’t have to share my shit!”

“You shouldn’t say that,” Mahanon mumbled, more or less asleep when Anders put him to bed, and led the Keeper to the couch. Both the elves were out as soon as they lied down, and after the day they’d had Anders didn’t blame them.

“Why ain’t they wearing shoes?” Amal sniffed.

“They have tougher feet,” Anders urged Amal out of the room and shut the door behind them. “I know you’re just thrilled to share your things, but those elves in there need your help.”

“I've been helping!” Amal stomped his foot in the cramped hall. “Where’ve you been?”

“Fighting darkspawn,” Anders said. “And while I was doing it, mercenaries murdered their family.”

“... did the Maker see them die?” Amal asked.

“Elves have their own gods,” Anders said.

“Did they see them die?” Amal asked.

“... yes, they saw them die,” Anders decided. “You need to show them sympathy and keep them safe, until I can take care of the people who did this to them.”

“Why can’t they be safe in your room?” Amal huffed.

“Don’t be a shit,” Anders said.

“How long they gonna be in the way?” Amal asked. “I got a schedule to keep!”

“This is your schedule,” Anders said.

“This is piss on a stick,” Amal folded his arms across his chest.

“Are you actually saying these things?” Anders asked. “Who have you been talking to?”

“That’s privileged information!” Amal stomped off down the hall. “I’m getting breakfast and I’m only getting it for me!”

“You have a way with him,” Amell joked when he’d gone.

“Remind me to come up with a comeback,” Anders led Amell over uneven floors to the room he shared with Nate. The old boy was already out, doing whatever he was doing this early in the morning, and Dumat helped himself to his bed. The window was still broken, and Anders hated that it gave him a view of the alienage, where the rest of Wycome’s elves were locked away.

“How many elves do you think are packed into that stinking place?” Anders asked over his shoulder.

“The alienage?” Amell guessed, sitting on the edge of his bed to undress.

“You know they didn’t have anything to do with it,” Anders said. “Nobles are all the same. They have no idea what’s brewing around them - they just go looking for places to lay blame when their parties aren’t perfect…”

Anders tugged absently at his beard, and stopped to stare at his fingers. The elves were still there - a hundred and eleven of them underneath his nails - a line of black pressed up against pink. Anders filled the bowl on the wash table with water, and dunked his hands underneath to watch the water go grey, a lump in his throat to think that was all that was left of Ellana.
.
“... I never thanked you for the funeral.”

“You don’t have to thank me for that,” Amell said over his shoulder, folding up the chevalier shirt Anders had stained. Anders had memorized so much of him. The scars that cut across his skin, the play of muscle when he stretched, the way that he shivered when Anders pressed a warm rag to the nape of his neck and climbed onto the bed to wash his back.

“Can we talk about it?” Anders asked. “The elven memories you have?”

“What about them?” Amell asked.

“What do you remember?” Anders asked.

“... my life,” Amell said.

“What do you mean?” Anders asked.

“.... Kinloch’s storage room flooded once. It was Justinian and it had rained for days, and there were a lot of portraits that got water stained. There was one antique I remember where all the colors bled together. It’s like that. All of my memories are indistinguishable from each other.

“I remember being an arcane warrior the same way I remember being an apprentice. I remember being an apprentice in the Circle and a guardian for the elders in uthenera. I remember growing up in my family’s estate as well as the forest. I remember taking Falon’Din’s vallaslin because I believed all the gods were gone and someone had to watch over the dead, and I remember learning necromancy for all the same reasons.

“I’m not an elf. I found the phylactery in ancient elven ruins, but I remember when they were real. I remember walking them. I remember the armillaries and astrariums and dioptrias we used to study the stars, and there are days I forget all of it is dust. I remember there was a war, and I remember we lost, and I remember locking myself in the Life Gem and feeling so sure that someone would come…”

Anders must have run the rag over the same spot on Amell’s back a hundred times by the time he finished, but Amell had never shared half as much about being an Arcane Warrior before. He’d told him his memories were muddled, but he said it so casually Anders had never given much thought to what that meant. “... who were you waiting for?” Anders asked.

“I’m not sure,” Amell said. “Someone I loved?”

Anders ran the cloth along Amell’s arm, and let the conversation lull while he washed away the death of the day. He should have known more about the elves. He should have known more about Amell. He should have wanted to know more, and do more, and be more, instead of being so focused on one injustice he disregarded all others. He could go back to Warden’s Keep tomorrow, but he had to do something about what had happened today.

“I love you,” Anders said when they were both in bed, and he had Amell on his shoulder.

Amell squeezed his shoulder, “I love you too.”

“If we die tomorrow, I don’t want it to be without knowing everything about you,” Anders said.

“You know me,” Amell promised.

“I want you to know everything about me too,” Anders said.

“I know you,” Amell said.

“Then you know I’m going to kill the duke.”

Notes:

Special thanks to everyone for the use of their Lavellans!

GlassLamp: Fiora and Ha’shal
Zairain: Del
Legorandia: Lorenn

Chapter 242: From Kirkwall We Fled: Revenging Our Dead

Summary:

Let us take up the blades of our enemies
And carve a place for ourselves in this world!
- Shartan 9:13

Notes:

Thank you for your patience with this one. It was difficult to get through and wraps up our venture in Wycome. I sincerely appreciate all of your subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 3 Eluviesta Morning
Duke Antoine’s Estate - Wycome

Death came for the duke.

Vengeance forced his fist through Duke Antoine's chest, sapphire flames burning through velvet, flesh, and muscle until he met resistance, and pushed. The duke's breastbone broke from his ribcage, and Vengeance forced it into his spine.

The duke’s gurgling scream was all but inaudible over the screams of his court, nobles trampling each other in their haste to escape the throne room. They threw open the great double doors into an army of elves, and the alienage opened fire.

Arrows fletched with the feathers of pigeons embedded themselves in rich velvets, fine silks, and beautiful brocades. Nobles scattered, screaming for soldiers they might have had if they hadn’t already sent them to burn down the alienage on Duke Antoine’s orders. The duke gurgled, unable to stop the onslaught.

“Afraid yet?” Vengeance snarled.

The duke’s eyes answered when he couldn’t, blown pupils flickering frantically. Anders held the duke aloft, looking him in the eyes as he seized through his death throes and his blood freckled his face. The duke’s amulet spun itself into a noose around his neck, and Anders dropped him when he died. He landed in a heap of velvet and blood, and Anders knelt to rip the chantry amulet off his neck.

The sunburst was black. The duke was a convert to the Order of the Fiery Promise, and Wycome’s Revered Mother was to blame. She’d condoned it all. She’d been the one to convince the duke to take action against the elves, after she and all her followers had laced the wells with red lyrium in their efforts to exalt the city.

Everywhere except the alienage.

They’d thought the elves were unworthy.

Anders stood, and Guinevere ran to join him on the dais. The noblewoman was one of the few who hadn’t fallen in with the Order of the Fiery Promise. She was part of the Cult of the Masked Andraste, and had never gone to Wycome’s Chantry. She wore a silk shawl that covered everything except her eyes, and they glanced nervously over her shoulder at the battle raging through the throne room.

“The templars are protecting the Revered Mother,” Guinevere said.

"Give them this,” Anders handed her the blood-stained amulet. “Tell the Knight Commander she’s a heretic and see how fast they turn on her.”

“I’ll get it to Jester,” Guinevere fled out the servant’s exit.

The rest of the nobles and their personal retinues were all on red lyrium, but the elves took them by surprise. The fighting was short but brutal, and most of the nobles fled. Their soldiers were still out in the city, setting fire to the alienage, unless the city guard had made good on their promise to stop them. Anders pulled down his hood and left the estate, but there was too much smoke to tell.

Fires marked the fighting as it spread through the districts, and Wycome rebelled against the ruling class. There’d been countless converts in the duke’s court -- members of the Order of the Fiery Promise who wanted the city plagued and the elves purged -- and the truth was all it took to turn the city against them. Anders had done it in days, because he’d only had days to spare. He had to get back to Warden’s Keep before it was too late, but he couldn’t leave without taking care of Larius.

The Glass Apple was the oldest tavern in all of Wycome and it showed. A survivor of the Fourth Blight, the roof had been replaced half a hundred times, and was made of mismatched clay titles. The walls were all wattle and daube, and despite the name, none of the windows were glazed. There was no sign, just the words ‘Glass Apple’ carved into the door frame.

The rushes on the floor were far from fresh, and stuck to the blood on Anders’ boots when he went inside. The lighting was low, a single chandelier dripping wax onto an unfortunately placed table, where the few patrons present knew better than to sit. They sat at shadowed tables, buried beneath casks of ale and bags of flour, hiding from the riots in the bottom of their tankards.

Anders scanned the tables until his eyes settled on a sharp-faced woman with chestnut hair, and took a seat across from Janeka. “Another white knight rescue?” Janeka snorted, fingers pressed to her forehead the only things keeping her from falling face-first into her tankard. “Leave me be.” Janeka gestured in his general direction, a sloppy compulsion sending some poor sot at the table behind them out into the streets.

“The Grey Wardens need you,” Anders said.

“The Grey Wardens-... need a reckoning,” Janeka slurred.

“Come back and give them one, then,” Anders snatched the tankard from her hand. “Or were you just planning on drinking yourself to death?”

"At least I have the decency to die," Janeka belch veered dangerously close to being more than one.

"The duke is dead," Anders said. "Make no mistake, Larius will die too."

"Now you want him dead?" Janeka looked like she was trying to squint herself sober.

"He betrayed us to the Margrave of Ansburg," Anders clenched his fists, veilfire cracking across the back of his palms, and scorching a path up his arms to echo in his throat before he swallowed his anger back down. "The templars could be burning down Warden’s Keep as we speak."

"Larius would never turn down a chance for more Grey Wardens acolytes,” Janeka scoffed doubtfully.

“We’re not acolytes, we’re apostates,” Anders repeated everything Stroud had said. “Once Larius learned we hadn’t taken the Joining, he turned on us. He sent word to the Margave apostates were sighted in the Green Dales. You can’t imagine the damage that’s going to do.”

"Why are you still here?" Janeka waved a hand at the door. "Why do you need me?"

"I need an ally," Anders had lost more than enough of them without adding Janeka’s name to the list. "I can't leave so long as Larius is in charge.”

"But he is in charge,” Janeka leaned back on the bench, and almost leaned all the way off. “My men chose him.”

“So make them choose you,” Anders said.

Anders had read a passage once in Amell’s journal that spoke of how he justified his use of blood magic. It read, the Chantry would speak about the sanctity of the mind, but the mind is no more sacred than the lungs, the liver, the heart. It’s an organ of reasoning, nothing more. True reasoning requires connection to the rhythm of blood. Interrupt that tireless pounding of life, and the mind is open to control.

There’s nothing unique to blood magic about it. The heart skips the same beats when it finds love or faces fear. It makes no difference if the push to change it comes from magic. The Chantry and their Templars use the same coercion without it. Their sword of mercy is the same one Hessarian used to kill their beloved Andraste. The symbol alone speaks volumes to what they truly hold sacred.

Control. Power. Fear. Martyrdom. They’d have every mage follow in Andraste’s footsteps. They don’t care about the sanctity of a man’s mind, only the malleability of it. The idea of anyone else with sway over the minds of the masses terrifies them. Let them brand me maleficar, foul, corrupt, accursed. Mien’harel na nadas.

The last words were written in elvish, and meant 'Revolution is inevitable.' Anders hadn't known how to read them at the time, let alone pronounce them, but when left with no alternatives, he believed in them. His time away from Warden’s Keep couldn't be a waste.

He needed Janeka secure in her position as Commander of the Grey, sending apostates north to Warden’s Keep. There was no Circle in Wycome. The duke had sent apostates to whatever Circle paid the most for them. With his death, Anders didn't trust that someone else wouldn't try to take his place. The Merchants' Guild was quick to seize control of the city, and form an alliance with the elves.

Human hatred had killed their hahren and left them leaderless, but they had walls and they had wells not laced with lyrium. They agreed to give the guild access to clean water and help alleviate the lasting effects of the plague, and in exchange, the Merchants' Guild recognized their sovereignty. The alienage wasn't exactly Arlathan, and the elves weren't exactly Dalish, but they'd suffered the same when the nobles sent their soldiers to do what they'd done to Clan Lavellan.

With the duke dead, the court of nobles became a council of elves and merchant princes, all of whom sympathized with mages when they were the only ones who could alleviate the plague, but Anders would sleep easier if Janeka was on it. He dragged her from the Glass Apple to the alienage, where the city guard had kept their word, and kept the soldiers sent by the nobles from burning it down.

Anders healed the wounded while Janeka slept herself sober, and word came that the Revered Mother had been burned at the stake. Wycome’s Chantry tore itself apart. Some didn’t believe the charges of heresy. Others were heretics. Templars fought templars through the streets while Wycome’s Knight Commander led a bloody inquisition to root out the Order of the Fiery Promise and anyone suspected of spreading the plague.

The inquisition eventually took the templars to Revas’ Rescue, where one look at Larius convinced them he was on the red. Anders and Janeka returned from the alienage in time to see the Knight Commander run him through. Grey Wardens stood opposite Templars in the courtyard, and their response was as swift as it was brutal. The Knight Commander fell, beheaded by Stoudenmire's sword, before he had a chance to unsheathe his from Larius’ stomach.

The two collapsed in each other's arms, and the cry went up that the Grey Wardens had turned against the Chantry. Half of the templars who'd accompanied the Knight Commander engaged the Grey Wardens, and half of them ran for reinforcements. They fled, orders flying to spread the word and warn the Knight Captain, but they could, they all dropped dead in the streets.

Their deaths were almost instant. They bled out from their eyes - whatever spell Janeka had cast waterfalling red from the slit in their helmets, so they seemed each of them a floodgate when they fell. The Templars still engaged in the courtyard were cut down by the Grey Wardens, and in the aftermath of it all Janeka stepped up to address them.

"This never happened," Janeka gestured at the Divine's soldiers littering their doorstep. “The templars were never here. Do you understand? If word gets out the Grey Wardens were responsible for the death of the Knight Commander, the Chantry will set its Exalted March against us.”

“They killed the Commander-” Stoudenmire protested, sword still dripping with the Knight Commander’s blood.

“I am your Commander,” Janeka said, “I always have been. I always will be.”

There was no need for blood to back her words while there were bodies lying in the streets. The Grey Wardens were bound to take the blame unless they found some way to get rid of them, but the city was bound to notice the smoke and the smell if they burned. Anders found Amell in the library and brought him outside, and he used his magic to devour the bodies and the blood.

Death magic from a death mage was all but indistinguishable from blood magic. It was all consuming, and awe inspiring, and everything Anders loved about him. That he could bring anything to Amell when it was broken and have it come back better, brighter, new. That their schools of magic could be so opposed and so intertwined that one couldn’t exist without the other.

Nothing lived without death. Time inevitably brought an end to all things, and in every ending was the seed of a new beginning. Floods brought new life to floodplains, fires brought new growth to forests, and in all the erosion, decay, and destruction that Anders caused he saw the world change and he saw the man who’d inspired him to change it. He saw Amell, in everything that he did and every word that he wrote to add to his manifesto.

Anders couldn’t go back to Ansburg without it. Larius had sent word apostates had been sighted outside the city, and Anders had to do something to ensure the people of Ansburg were on their side. Word of the rebellion in Wycome was bound to spread, and if most of the mages in Ansburg were elves, then Anders had to show them they could rise up alongside the alienage and win. He wrote late into the night, and was so impatient for Amell to read it in the morning he pushed the manifesto into Amell’s hands before he’d even gotten out of bed and urged him to read it aloud.

“In what relation do apostates stand to mages as a whole?” Amell made it real, just running his fingers over the raised ink, and even though they were Anders’ words when they came from Amell’s lips it was like they unlocked some hidden hope in his heart they could actually come to pass. “Apostates do not form a separate group opposed to other mages. They have no interests separate and apart from mages as a whole. They do not set up any fraternities of their own, by which to shape and mould the minds of mages.

“Ah-apostates-...” Amell groaned, and lost his place when Anders palmed him through his trousers, mapping the outline of his cock through the cotton. “I thought you wanted me to read."

“I do,” Anders wanted him in a world where all the words had been written already and read already and changed the hearts and minds of men already so mages were free to be together outside of stolen moments, but in lieu of that world, Anders planned to steal moment after moment in this one. “Keep reading.”

Amell swallowed and set his fingers back to the parchments, “Apostates are distinguished from other mages by this oh-only: the struggles of apostates point out and-... bring to-...” Amell bit down another groan, flexing his fingers as Anders felt over him. “You don’t seem like you want me to read.”

“When have I ever made anything easy for you, love?” Anders worked his way up his thighs to tug at his waistband until Amell lifted his hips, breath hitching in anticipation when Anders dragged his trousers off with his braies.

“I love you,” Amell sounded breathless before Anders even had him, clinging to his manifesto when it was clear he’d rather have his hands on him. Amell braced the parchments against a bent leg, but didn’t bother reading it, holding his breath while Anders ran his hands over the leg laying flat, kneading his way up his calf to his knee and smoothing his hand over his thigh to feel the warmth of his skin underneath him.

“That’s just a clever way to keep from answering,” Anders pointed out.

“You make it easy,” Amell found Anders' hand and followed it up his arm to clutch at the nape of his neck. “You make it like air. You’re in my every breath.”

Anders set Amell’s hand back on the pages, “Keep reading.”

Amell ran obedient fingers over the raised ink, searching for where he’d left off only to stop when Anders took hold of his cock. “You’re - hahh-ah-.. right; you're not making this easy,” Amell leaned his head back against the headboard, his every breath a sigh when Anders started stroking him. He felt so warm, the smooth glide of his skin beneath his fingers everything Anders had ever wanted. Anders was torn between watching Amell’s expression or the way he stiffened for his touch, his legs spreading a little wider to welcome Anders inbetween them.

“Keep reading,” Anders said, dragging his tongue along the underside of his shaft. Amell bit his lip, only to break when Anders took him into his mouth, and the moan that escaped him felt like it meant as much as his manifesto.

“Fuck, Anders, that feels-” Amell swallowed, the rise and fall of his chest growing more rapid as Anders softly sucked the taste of salt and sex from him. “-fantastic.”

“Read,” Anders set a slow pace that was bound to soak the sheets, saliva coating his fingers as he dragged his tongue along his shaft, sucking every so often for the sounds and the shudders he stole from him, and the way they all merged together with his manifesto.

“The struggles of apostates point out and bring to the fore - the fore-... fuck-... the forefront the common interest of all mages independent of race or nationality, and in these struggles apostates ah-always and-... everywhere represent the interest of mages as a hahh-whole.

“Apostates, are on the -... on the-... one hand, the most resolute section of mages of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the-... the other hand, they have over imprisoned mages the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the violence of the templar order, and the-... and the-....”

Anders loved listening to him; the moans that mingled with his manifesto and the sound of sex just sucking his cock. Saliva escaped around Anders' straining lips, spilling down his chin to soak his beard and the sheets beneath them. Amell abandoned his place again to clasp his face with his free hand, and Anders broke from him to press a kiss to his palm. “I know I wrote more than that.”

“Anders, this is four pages,” Amell protested, with a pleading tug of his jaw that pulled him back towards his cock, “I promise it’s good.”

“Read the rest for me,” Anders said.

“I’m reading it,” Amell lied so long as his fingers were still on his face. “I’ll read it," Amell adjusted when he didn't budge.

“I have felt exultant these past few days -" Anders kissed his thigh. "-enacting real change. It might not be for mages yet, but the wheels are in motion. Once the world hears of how Wycome’s Chantry tore itself apart, they'll stop trusting the rest of them, and start challenging what they do to us."

Amell exhaled long and low, and kept reading, “The immediate aim of apostates is the same-... as that of all other mages: freedom from persecution and prejudice, the-ah-... responsible and ethical practition of magic, and the-ah…the dissolution of those orders that would do them harm.

“The theoretical conclusions of apostates are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by any one revolution or - fuck me, Anders- reformer.

“They merely express, in general terms, ah-ah!-actual relations springing from an existing struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of the Circle of Magi and the Templar Order is not at all-... not at all a distinctive feature of apostasy.

“All orders in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent uh…-upon the change in historical conditions. The Inquisition, for-... uh, example, was dissolved in favor of forming the Seekers of Truth and the Templar Order.

“The distinguishing feature of apostasy is not the abolition of oversight generally, but the abolition of imprisonment - that's - oh, that's good -"

"What's good?" Anders paused to ask, sweeping his fingers up and down his shaft, soaked with saliva and twitching for his touch.

"Everything," Amell said unhelpfully. "The Circle of Magi is the final and most complete expression of imprisonment under the guise of ah-Andrastianism, that is based on ancient antagonisms and on the exploitations of mages and magic.

“In this sense… apostasy… may be summed up in a single sentence: abolition of imprisonment.

“We apostates ah-hahh-hahh-have been reproached with the desire of abolishing imprisonment as the abolition of oversight. Andraste said that all slaves are to be set free, and yet-... and yet the Circle of Magi as established allows for the existence of slaves. You are horrified at our intending to do away with oversight, but in your existing society, this oversight has become imprisonment."

Amell set the page aside, and fingered the ones that were left, breathing hard, "Oh, fuck, there's still two more pages."

"It's everything I should have been saying from the start," Anders cradled his cock in his hand, pressing soft kisses up his shaft and licking over his tip.

"Anders, I can't-" Amell tossed his head against the headboard.

Anders didn't need him to keep going. He'd gotten everything he wanted watching him unravel to the words he'd written and couldn't wait to work with him to bring them all to pass. Anders took hold of his hips, and dragged him down the bed so he was lying on his back. The pages scattered across the sex soaked sheets when Amell tangled his fingers in his hair and arched into his mouth.

Anders slid up and down his cock, longer and lower until Amell cried out and came, legs tensing up on his shoulders. Heat coated the back of Anders' throat and slid down it when he swallowed. Anders wiped his thumb over his lips, swollen from the time he'd spent on him and soaked down to his beard. Amell lay where he left him, an arm draped above his head, chest heaving while he caught his breath.

He looked beautiful laid out -- canvased in sweat and scars. Anders knew war had worn him out, but he'd still come to Wycome. He'd still stood with him against the duke. Anders had done most of the work, but Amell's had given him the advice of getting the right people in the right places for after it was done.

The city guard. The merchants' guild. The dock workers. The framework to follow the rebellion so the city didn't fall apart.

"It's good," Amell managed after a moment.

Anders grinned, "You didn't finish."

"I think I did," Amell joked.

"Read the rest," Anders rolled out of bed and let the momentum carry him to the wash table.

Amell rolled onto his stomach, and felt over the parchments until he found his place, "It has been objected that upon the abolition of the Circle of Magi, all mages will become maleficarum, and abominations will overtake us-" Amell stopped and chuckled. "That might be true."

"Well, yeah, but I can't say that," Anders said over his shoulder as he ran a wash cloth over his face, "Keep going."

“According to this, the Dalish ought long ago to have died out; for their people embrace apostasy. All objections urged against apostasy have, in the same way, been urged against the Dalish, who have not died out despite the fall of Arlathan and the Dales. The whole of these objections is that there can be no oversight if it is not Chantry oversight," Amell paused, and ran his fingers over the paragraph again. "Is this about your friend?"

"Her name was Ellana," Anders wrung the cloth out over the wash bowl. "It's about everyone. It's about you too, you know."

Amell turned his head towards him, “I'm not an elf."

"But you remember being one," Anders set the wash cloth aside, and sat back on the edge of the bed. "... I never really thought about what that must be like for you."

"...isolating," Amell admitted.

“... what about Ostagar?” Anders asked. “Have you ever gone?”

“I’m not an elf, Anders,” Amell said. “It’s not something anyone would ever understand.”

“Have you tried talking about it?” Anders asked.

“What is there to talk about?” Amell asked.

“Whatever you want to talk about,” Anders said. “I might not be an elf either, but I can relate to what it’s like to remember things that never happened to you.”

“Thank you,” Amell squeezed his thigh.

“Well?” Anders pressed.

“I’m not sure what to say,” Amell admitted. “It was two thousand years ago. Even if I were elven, I think I’d still feel the same, because none of the elves I know can relate to the things that I remember. I wasn’t Dalish. The Dales didn’t exist. My memories are from before the fall of Arlathan.”

Amell trailed off, thumbing the edge of the parchment with a faraway expression.

Anders squeezed his shoulder, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I want to read your manifesto,” Amell spared him a somber sort of smile over his shoulder, and set his fingers back to the parchment. “The whole of these objections is that there can be no oversight if it is not Chantry oversight.

“This misconception induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from the Chantry’s malicious misinterpretation of Andrastianism - a misinterpretation that has grown more malicious with every Age for the past thousand years.

“The Chantry sees mages as mere instruments of service. They hear that magic is meant to serve man, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than to make slaves and servants of mages, but apostates have existed from time immemorial. The Tevinter Imperium is not the end goal of apostasy, as, if, by means of a revolution, apostates swept away by force the old conditions of their imprisonment, then they would have swept away the conditions for the existence of the imprisonment of others.

“The war apostates fight, in the end, is not against oversight or order, but against all imprisonment,” Amell felt over the sentence a second time. “This is a nice sentiment.”

“It’s not a sentiment,” Anders said. “It’s what has to happen. I can’t save Ansburg’s elves from their Circle just to set them up in an alienage. This is why I wanted you to read it. You did this for all of us. For Nate, and Velanna, and for me. You could have imprisoned us, you could have conscripted us, but you’re the reason we’re free. You’ve always been my inspiration.”

“... Amaranthine still has an alienage, Anders,” Amell admitted.

“Maybe it shouldn’t,” Anders said. “What’s the point of saving mages from the Circles if we’re just going to send them to some other cell?”

“... Did I ever tell you about Shianni?” Amell asked.

“I'm not sure," Anders said.

"She was an elf - outspoken - like your friend. She stood up for the alienage, and Alistair worked with her to try to make up for the fact that so many elves had been sold into slavery during the Blight. He gave them the right to form their own militia, so it would never happen again, but the Arl of Denerim refused to allow armed elves inside the city. We couldn't take away the nobles say over their own territories, so Alistair responded by declaring the alienage its own bannorn.

"I thought it was a good idea. It worked with Ostagar... It didn't work in Denerim. There were riots. Shianni was killed…"

"What are you saying?" Anders asked.

"I'm saying… I miss my friend and I wish that I'd done more for her," Amell said. "I'm sorry about Ellana."

"Deshanna said she's going to stay here, and make sure the Merchants' Guild isn't turning over any mages to the Chantry,” Anders said. “She asked me to take Mahanon to Clan Ralaferin in the Green Dales…"

"That's not far from Warden’s Keep," Amell said.

"Ellana didn't want him with them," Anders said. "I was thinking it might be better for him at Ostagar - somewhere far away from the Exalted March. What do you think?"

"I think you should talk to Deshanna," Amell said.

"I was afraid you'd say that," Anders sighed. "I just can't stand the idea of giving him to a clan that won't raise him to love his magic. It's not what Ellana wanted."

"You're a good person," Amell said.

"Tell me you want to have more sex without telling me you want to have more sex," Anders joked.

Amell chuckled, and went back to reading the last page of his manifesto, "To save our people, we must sacrifice our people, and be willing to fight and die by the hundreds, by the thousands, because the shared struggle of apostates is not against the death of flesh, but against the death of freedom, and it is for this reason that this fight can never be abandoned.

“No group of people can be held imprisoned forever. There is no greater force in this world or the next than the need for freedom. Against that force, no army can stand. Andraste showed the world once. Apostates will show the world again.”

Chapter 243: From Kirkwall We Fled: And Left Others Behind

Summary:

You have left that path. It is already gone.
Your feet can never again tread the dust of Emerius

- Shartan 9:4

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful subscriptions, bookmarks, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 17 Eluviesta Morning
Wycome

Beth stayed behind.

Beth didn't have to stay behind.

It felt like a betrayal, and Anders signed his hands stiff arguing against it.

“You can't mean to stay here,” Anders signed.

“Can't I?” Beth signed back. “Is there another wetnurse waiting for us in Ansburg?”

“We’ll find someone,” Anders might have lied. The wetnurse’s contract was only for three months, and she wasn’t willing to go anywhere outside of Wycome if they wanted it renewed.

“Who are we going to find, Anders?” Beth’s arm swung out to encompass the empty library of Revas’ Rescue, and everything outside it. The red lyrium. The riots. The whole damn rotten world. "How many new mothers are willing to wetnurse through a war?”

“We found someone.” There was no guarantee they'd find someone else, but Beth didn't even want to try.

“The Wardens found someone,” Beth splayed her fingers like cell bars for the sign. “Don’t act like you had anything to do with it."

Anders formed his fists into a shield to fix it, "Wardens."

"The Wardens" -Beth thrust the same cell bar sign at him again- "are the whole reason this happened. I never should have listened to you.”

“You never should have lived?” Anders corrected her. “The Joining saved your life.”

Beth’s bitter laugh brought tears to her eyes. “You call this saved?”

“Of course I do.” Anders signed. “Beth, you’re alive.”

“This isn’t a life. This is a slow death. You walked away from the Wardens for a reason," Beth slapped her hands together, in the same damn sign for cell, before she added on a person. It was the same sign they used for templar.

“You know what I chose,” Anders’ hands split with veilfire as they formed the words, incensed at how Beth signed hers.

“How nice it must have been to have one,” Beth sneered.

“I gave you a choice-”

“-you gave me a chalice. You told me to live for Leandra. If there’s something good or beautiful in any of this-” Bethany stopped to flex her hands when they started to shake. “I’m staying with my daughter.”

“You can’t just abandon the mages. Did you just forget you’re the First Enchanter?” Orsino’s staff was still strapped to her back, for Maker’s sake. “Do you even care anymore?”

“Yes, you should talk about what caring looks like,” Beth pressed a sarcastic kiss to her fist rather than mirror the sign he made over his heart. “Because you care so much about so many people-”

“You can’t seriously hold this against me-”

“Are you going to make that choice for me too?"

“Beth-”

“Goodbye, Anders.”

It should have been harder to walk away from Wycome.

The city was still stricken by the plague, but its new leaders weren't doing enough to stop the spread. There were no calls for the gatesman to close the gates. There were no calls for the port authority to close the ports. There were no calls at all for quarantine to keep the plague contained until the city could be cleansed.

Not when the new City Council was comprised of mostly Merchant Princes. Their main concern was commerce, so if people were still plagued, as long as it didn't cost them coin, they didn't seem to care.

Refugees fled Wycome, in the aftermath of what people were calling the Elven Rebellion, all of them riddled with plague and prejudice. They walked hunched over, with their homes on their backs, coughing into their cowls on their way to Antiva or Ansburg or elsewhere. They were just going to make things worse for the rest of the world, and it took Nate reminding him he was a wanted man to keep him from chasing them all back into the city.

There was no reason to leave Wycome when Anders had left the elves with everything they’d need to treat light red lyrium exposure, which meant whoever was leaving was leaving to spread lies. Anders heard enough just riding out the gates -- the mutterings of men who refused to believe the Revered Mother had been a convert to the Order of the Fiery Promise, and thought the whole thing was an elven conspiracy.

There were others who latched onto Larius’ lies, and thought Janeka was behind it all. They blamed everything from mages, to maleficarum, to Grey Wardens -- and talked of how they’d seized control of the free city the same way they’d seized control of Ferelden. There were rumors all along the road of the Marchers discontent with their neighbors to the south -- people claiming that the plague was all a ploy to force the Free Marches to unite so Ferelden could force them into a war against their enemies.

Maric Theirin had tried, once before, to unite the Free Cities just before he’d been lost at sea, and some people seem to think the plague was Alistair Theirin’s way of following in his father’s footsteps. Anders didn’t quite catch how Alistair was supposed to be responsible, but the fact that he’d been a Grey Warden before he’d been a king was enough to make him suspect. The ‘bastard king’ let ‘rats and robes’ into his court, and listening to it all made Anders furious, but it wasn’t safe for him to say anything.

It wasn’t even safe for him to be seen. Knight Templars patrolled among the refugees, trying to find any apostates who might be fleeing among the people they should have been protecting. They needed protecting. With the surviving guard focused on restoring order in the city, the refugees were at the mercy of would-be raiders setting up tolls along the roads.

There was no shortage of disgruntled soldiers. With the death of the duke and desertion of his court, the soldiers who’d once served the nobility ransacked their estates rather than risk going unpaid. Meanwhile, the mercenaries who'd slaughtered Clan Lavellan were still out there, and instead of hunting them, countless guardsmen abandoned their posts in protest when they realized that the new City Council would have them answering to elves.

Between the bandits, the bloody templars, and the bounty on his head, the roads were too much of a risk. They were four mages between them, and their mounts were even worse, when Nate was the only one among them with the good sense to ride a horse. Dans Leur Sang and Son Cadeau could almost pass with saddle cloths and covers, but Ailsa rode… a thing.

The thing was not a thing Ailsa should have ridden. Dracolisks belonged in the Donarks. What should have been the first, last, and Maker-willing-only time Anders had ever seen a dracolisk was from a distance, when winter drove them from the jungles and down into the Wandering Hills to hunt wild or domestic hogs, and they ranged too close to Tallo.

Annums in the Anderfels weren't celebrated the same. In Ferelden, First Day was to commemorate the year that came before it, but in the Anderfels, it was to see who had survived it. Through the winter months, dust storms devoured the desert, and dracolisks devoured desert pigs, and sometimes, desert people. They were dangerous, breathing ice and fire and poison fumes, and if ever one wandered onto the farm, there was no driving it off until it ate its fill.

The sound of squealing pigs reminded Anders more of winter than the sight of falling snow. He remembered waking to that sound in the middle of the night when he was a boy, panic stricken and pleading with his father to do something to save the pigs, and being told to go back to bed. His mother, bless her heart, had tried to sing him back to sleep, and bonny Lynne had gone from nursery rhyme to nightmare overnight.

Anders caught himself humming it, staring at the damn thing, far cry though it may have been from a wild dracolisk. The ones that he remembered had blended into the desert, their scales shades of brown and orange and the occasional green, disrupted by spots that made them difficult if not impossible to see in the desert, the jungle, or anywhere in between.

Ailsa's dracolisk was, in the very least, visible. The desert had been bred out of it. Solid slate, and absent spots, it stood out against the tree line. Its crest was small. Its spikes were smaller. Its back was all but flat so it could fit a saddle. It wore a bridle and blinders, but its teeth alone should have made it obvious there was no domesticating dragons. 'Knees' had fangs the size of fingers, and every time she tugged its reigns, it was like Ailsa thought it wouldn't eat hers.

Admittedly, it hadn't yet, but then maybe the lyrium growing over Ailsa's limbs passed well enough for armor. The old girl worried him almost as much as her mount, as they followed the rivers in place of the roads on their way north to Ansburg. She spent most of the time singing or humming, and while Anders knew why Anders was humming, Anders didn't know why Ailsa was humming.

The Conductor's Call felt all too recent, and the last thing he wanted was to lose any of his friends and family to their real one. Wherever there were soldiers there were call songs, but it almost seemed like Grey Wardens should have a rule against singing. Ailsa's old Warden Commander had one, and Anders couldn't blame them.

The handful of elven songs she cycled through for Mahanon's sake were somber, but it must have mattered less that they were maudlin and more that they were music, because the boy seemed to enjoy them. Anders could hear him humming along to a song Ailsa claimed had been banned in Tevinter for its popularity among elven liberati, for fear it would incite rebellion.

"Green grows canavaris
From unmarked graves, felandaris
All throughout the valley strong,
Where she lives nine months along

At the foot of the hill, the Lonely One

A young siccari was passing by
And asked for a drink as he got dry
She said, 'I've no drink to offer you
The well is old and I might fall through'

At the foot of the hill, the Lonely One

He said, 'if your true love was passing by
You'd fill him a drink if he was dry'
And she swore by all of the Pantheon
Of elven lovers she'd had none

At the foot of the hill, the Lonely One

He said to her, 'You are forsworn
For nine fine children you have born
Three buried beneath the Nocen sea
Three buried beneath the blackthorn tree

At the foot of the hill, the Lonely One

One buried beneath your hearth and home,
One buried beneath the earth and stone,
The last of them laid at your feet just there
So your lack of lovers you must forswear'

At the foot of the hill, the Lonely One

She said, 'There is the shame of the siccari,
To think you could know what happened to me,
I swear by the whole of our pantheon
A true love and lover, I've never had one.'

At the foot of the hill, the Lonely One.

Green grows canavaris
From unmarked graves, felandaris
All throughout the valley strong,
Where she lives nine months along

At the foot of the hill, the Lonely One."

Anders doubted Ellana would have approved, but he couldn't say for certain. It was elven, but elven wasn't good enough, because Mahanon was Dalish.

Anders didn't know what to do with him. Deshanna didn't want him in Wycome, and she didn't agree with sending him to Ostagar. She didn't think the new settlement would last. Anders thought of what had happened to Clan Lavellan, and some sour part of him thought it wouldn't either. Ellana hadn't wanted to send him to Clan Ralaferin, but Anders didn't know what else to do.

Amal's mother had sent him to the surface, his dwarven heritage be damned. There were dwarves at Vigil's Keep, but there were no dwarves with them now. The boy rode behind Ailsa, and seemed like he was doing well, unless he fell off and Knees ate him.

"You know that thing is going to eat us all in our sleep, right?" Anders interrupted a song he didn't recognize.

"Knees would never," Ailsa patted the creature's neck, and the dracolisk shrieked a hiss, snapping at the space her hand had occupied.

Anders urged his own construct a little further away, "Bloody thing."

"Far be it for me to point out the irony of the accusation, my friend," Ailsa glanced over her shoulder. "Constable?"

"You realize you are the one riding a construct, Anders?" Nate chimed in obediently.

"It's a wisp borne reconstruction of an Anderfel Courser, thank you," Anders huffed. "And he has a name. What kind of name is Knees?"

"Not Orlesian," Ailsa teased.

"You know I didn't start that tradition, right?"

"Whatever you say, mon ami," Ailsa chuckled, but she finally stopped singing.

Anders felt a little better for it, but in the absence of any music, his thoughts kept turning back to Tallo, and soft refrains of bonny Lynne and squealing pigs and other memories of his parents. It had always been simpler to just say they were farmers, but for some reason, now, at thirty-three, he wished he'd told his friends about the pigs.

The Anderfels were arid, and all that grew was the barest of grass, but it was enough for the pigs. They lived off roots and rotting things, and were one of the few things to thrive in the steppes. Anders had been proud of those stupid pigs when he was a boy, but growing up in the Circle meant growing out of his pride, and a barrage of 'Anders' and 'Oink' and the occasional 'Pig Fucker' meant growing out of his pigs.

For some reason, it felt like it was too late to tell anyone. It wasn't important. They were just pigs, but they survived, despite the dracolisks, and the darkspawn, and everything else that came down from the Donarks. They were just pigs, but they survived, in a country plagued by darkspawn, and dust storms, and all kinds of disaster. They were just pigs and they survived.

"Pigs," Anders volunteered, apropos of nothing that night, as he and Amell settled into their tent.

"... pigs," Amell paused in the midst of unlacing his boots to repeat.

"We farmed pigs," probably wasn't much better.

"... you farmed pigs," Amell said.

"In Tallo," It finally occurred to him to clarify. "My family farmed pigs."

"... Do I do something with this information?" Amell managed after a moment.

"No," Anders dragged Amell’s foot into his lap to unlace his boots, considering the sudden non sequitur seemed to break him.

"... Do you want to tell me about the pigs?" Amell guessed.

"No," Anders opted to focus on his laces, as opposed to the concerned look on his face. "... Yes. It's not about the pigs. It's about how much of my life is like that. You must know what it's like -- holding back who you are, and I don't just mean our magic.

"You know how the Circle raised us. They take away everything you were and they teach you to be ashamed of everything you are and then they threaten to take away what little of you is left. They don't just isolate us from each other, they isolate us from ourselves.

"How can I trust myself to do any better? We're so far from the Circle, and I'm still keeping secrets."

"You don't owe me everything, Anders," Amell squeezed his wrist. "We don't owe anyone anything."

"You don't believe that," Anders set his boots aside. "I know you don't believe that. If the world knew how much blood you spilled to stop the Blight, maybe the world would treat us better, but the Chantry sets the world against us, and then they judge how we survive it."

Anders took hold of his wrist, and slid his free hand up Amell’s arm, pushing up his sleeve in the process to trace along his scars.

Amell must have spent so long feeling so alone in them. Anders had spent so long feeling so alone in his own. He didn't want that for them. He didn't want that for anyone. He wanted to know how to share, but it was like he'd never learned and he didn't know what to say or where to start.

They'd spent so much time apart and it felt like there were still so many things they'd left unspoken. They were on their way to a stronghold Anders had told Amell and the others almost nothing about because in some ways it felt as if there was nothing to tell. Hundreds of people were huddled together at Warden's Keep, waiting out a war they had no way to win.

They were still struggling with food and shelter, nevermind that Warden’s Keep was so remote there was no good way to reach it, and if it was ever overrun they'd need some way to escape it. They needed mounts, or ships, or aravels, or anything anyone could offer. Anders would take whatever he could get, but he got so little it didn't seem to matter.

"How did you do it?" Anders let go of Amell’s arm to start rolling off his socks.

Amell leaned back on his hands to let him. "Do what?"

"The Blight," Anders elaborated. "How did you do it?"

"Technically the Architect did it," Amell said.

Anders threw his sock at him. "How did you stop it?"

"Magic," Amell said.

Anders threw his other sock at him.

"I'm not sure it's something I can summarize," Amell relented, fishing his socks from his lap to toss them to a corner. "Sister Petrine's study is two volumes long and still leaves out most of it."

"Are you seriously telling me to look it up?" Anders demanded, starting on his own boots.

"Revas Rescue had a copy," Amell pointed out.

"You remember the part about how difficult it is for mages to be open with each other?" Anders asked as he tossed his own socks and boots aside. "All that emotional vulnerability a minute ago? Do you know how hard it is for me to be serious about something besides magic?"

Amell pursed his lips thoughtfully, "Technically this is still about magic."

"I'm all out of socks so now I'm going to hit you with a shoe," Anders threatened.

Amell raised an arm to block any stray articles of clothing, "Can you be more specific?"

Anders caught his hand to kiss his knuckles. "Probably in the face."

"About what you want me to share," Amell corrected him.

"Anything? Everything?" Anders shrugged out of his coat, and ran a weary hand through his hair. "The soldiers, the strongholds, the supply lines, the strategies? How did you do it?"

"I had help," Amell said unhelpfully.

"How did you ever get enough?" Anders fell back onto his bedroll with a groan, "Warden’s Keep is a ruin."

"So was Soldier's Peak," Amell felt for him, and rolled him onto his stomach. Anders let himself be rolled, and Amell settled in to massage his shoulders. "It had been abandoned for two hundred years, since the order was exiled at the end of the Dryden Rebellion.

"It was built seven hundred years ago, in the Glory Age, while the ruins of the world went to war in the aftermath of the Second Blight. King Caedmon was trying to unite Ferelden, three hundred years before King Calenhad, and the War of Crowns lasted generations, but the Grey Wardens were respected through all of them.

"There were no strongholds in the Alamarri lands throughout the Second Blight. There was no time to build them. The Grey Wardens would quarter in the castles of local lords, and it was only after Warden Commander Asturian was able to focus on the construction of a stronghold at Soldier's Peak.

"He built the approach up the Tarcaisne Ridge into a labyrinth to slow advancing armies, but he was never satisfied with it, and sometime into his sixtieth year they declared him mad and forced him on his Calling."

Amell paused for a long while, his thumbs working in absent circles along his back. Anders wanted to imagine that even without the rosewood band about his finger, he knew Amell well enough to know when he had more to say.

Anders hoped his silence was supportive. He knew it was hard for Amell to talk about himself. He also knew Amell’s magic had altered his memories, but it had never occurred to him until now that it might make it hard for Amell to remember what was real, or that a thousand year old soul might think more in terms of ages when considering the full context of what they said.

"... I have his sword," Amell managed after a moment.

"Asturian's?" Anders guessed.

"It's on a display somewhere at Soldier's Peak. The Grey Wardens under his command tired of the endless construction, and had it commissioned for him. They made a ceremony of awarding it for the 'completion' of Soldier's Peak, but Asturian was never going to stop. He secured an eluvian, telsetheneras, countless summoning fonts…

"Soldier's Peak is a fortress. It's built into the mountainside, over countless interconnected mines, and is all but impregnable, and it was never going to be enough. His men didn't understand that it was never going to be enough. None of them had served during the Second Blight. They only had the stories…"

Amell trailed off until Anders found his hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. "Love?"

"I'm sorry, what was the question?" Amell asked.

"Support?" Anders prompted. "For Soldier's Peak?"

"We never finished repairs," Amell continued. "Not during the Blight. We didn't have the time. Alistair and I didn't even know it existed at first. We found out about Soldier's Peak a few months into the Blight when the surviving members of House Dryden joined the refugees at Redcliffe.

"Duncan had reached out to secure their support reestablishing Soldier's Peak, before the Battle of Ostagar. He knew we would need it. Warden Commander Polara never reclaimed it. She didn't have enough men for it to matter, but we took on a lot of refugees as the darkspawn spread into the bannorn who needed somewhere safe to stay.

"Restoring it took tithe, treaties, threats… We pressed the southern lords first because we knew their lands would be the first to fall. House Dryden committed their caravans to help us move grain, livestock, bedclothes, along the western trade routes, trying to circumvent the civil war.

"The Blackstone Irregulars swore themselves on at Lothering, and we stationed them along the Imperial Highway to secure the roads and scout for ways to avoid the worst of the darkspawn, but the supply lines weren't for supporting soldiers.

"Most of them were militia, supplied by their own banns, and never went beyond their own borders. There is no front line in a Blight. The darkspawn spread below ground before they spread above it, and we couldn't afford to rally unless it was against the Archdemon. There were too many, and they were too mobile, and we didn't have the men.

"If anything, having soldiers to support was why Loghain lost the civil war. He fielded men from Denerim, Gwaren, and Highever while the Guerrins entrenched themselves and their allies in the bannorn. We hit his supply lines where we could, but the banns didn't stop backing him until we started targeting their estates…"

Amell trailed off again, and stopped massaging his shoulders to rest against them. Anders liked the weight of him as much as he liked the weight of the conversation. "I'm not surprised," Anders said. "Nobles are always blind to what's brewing around them. They don't see anything outside of their estates."

"... Anders, I don't know how much of this you want to hear," Amell said against his shoulder.

"I want to hear all of it," Anders promised.

"... We bloodied them," Amell rolled off him to say. "Their soldiers, their retainers, anyone they set against us. We found a few gangs willing to work with us, most of them elves who were angry over the abductions in the alienage, and we took everything from them. They called it a crime wave. We used everything from poison, to explosives, to blackmail, and lifted everything from gold to gems to gowns. Caravans of silver, the Tears of Andraste, Loghain's crown-"

"You lifted what now?" Anders interrupted.

"... Loghain's crown?" Amell repeated.

"The Tears of Andraste?" Anders must not have heard him correctly. "You stole the Tears of Andraste from someone?"

"Maybe?" Amell's shrug was far too nonchalant about one of the most holy relics in history. "It was a crystal vial engraved in old Alamarri and filled with water."

"You can't seriously-... water?" Anders sat up, still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Andraste’s Tears existed at all. Next thing he knew Amell would tell him Andraste’s Ashes were real too. "You mean the thirty tears Andraste shed for humanity before she heard the voice of the Maker?"

"Grand Cleric Elemena seemed to think so," Amell shrugged again. "The donation convinced her to speak out against Loghain at the Landsmeet."

Anders braced his elbow against his knee and propped his forehead against his palm when all his thoughts felt too heavy to hold. "... where would you start? If you were trying to do that here?"

"Where you are," Amell might have lied to make him feel better. "Ansburg and Markham are responsible for most of the agriculture in the Free Marches. Starkhaven controls most of the western Minanter River, but you could waylay shipments along the mouth of Markham and force them to use the Planasene Pass. Supplies would take longer to reach them over land, and you could look at enlisting the Felicisima Armada to help you secure the coast."

Anders didn't have those kinds of connections. "I know Isabela is calling herself an admiral, but I'm pretty sure it's just because she likes the hat."

"The First Enchanter of Rivain's father is one of their captains," Amell told him. "You have more support than you think."

Anders spent so long thinking it over Amell fell asleep. Anders settled down beside him and pulled him against his shoulder, and Amell folded up against him so easily it was almost like they hadn't spent a year apart. Anders pressed his forehead to him, breathing in the soothing scent of copper and listening to his Call, and felt as if he had all the support that he could need.

"Have you all heard anything about the Exalted March?" Anders asked once they were back on their mounts that morning.

"I've heard Lady Seeker Nicoline was made to step down for it," Nate volunteered.

"Seriously?" Anders asked.

"The Grand Clerics blamed the Seekers of Truth for their failure to anticipate the Mage Rebellion and rise of the Red Divine," Nate explained.

"The Mage Rebellion?" Anders asked. "Is that what they're calling it now? Last I heard it was the Blood Mage Threat."

"I imagine the new Lord Seeker still calls it that," Nate said. "He was the liaison to the Tevinter Imperium, and they say the experience left him jaded."

"He was more than the liason," Ailsa said. "He personally arrested the Imperial Divine and half of the Magisterium ten years ago in a coup that instated the new Imperial Divine. He is the monster of many a bedtime story in Minrathous."

"And our Divine appointed him Lord Seeker," Anders said. "Figures."

"Under pressure," Amell added, but it didn't make Anders feel any better.

"When we getting to this place?" Amal interrupted from behind Ailsa. "I'm rusting out here!"

"It's a tan, my tiny friend," Nate told him.

"We'll get there when we get there," Ailsa said.

"When's that?" Amal pressed. "My backside hurts worse than iron on an anvil!"

Mahanon giggled for the first time since his sister's death, and Anders took some heart in it. He was still having trouble talking, and was silent most days, but Anders wanted to believe it would get better.

"Soon," Ailsa lied.

"You said that a whole soon ago!"

"Do you want to sing us a song?"

"I'm sick a songs!"

"Why don't you sing us one anyway?"

Amal huffed, and opted to grumble into Ailsa's back instead.

"Mahanon, my friend?" Ailsa prompted the other boy, where he lay hugging Son Cadeau's neck. "Do you know any songs you want to share with us?"

Mahanon shook his head. Anders squeezed his shoulder, and then circled a fist over his palm in a sign reminiscent of a sundial he imagined the adults could all guess for 'time.'

It was well over a week's journey from Wycome to Warden's Keep, going as they were along the river. Anders tried to spend it focused on anything other than the fact that they were going back without Beth. The Free Mages needed more than the Fraternities, they needed a First Enchanter. Beth was meant to be that for them, and Anders wasn't sure what they were going to do without her.

The closer they got to Warden's Keep, the more it felt as if all his thoughts were trapped inside a tumbler, turning over and over each other, but there was never a clear answer. Warden’s Keep loomed large in the distance, six stories tall and built into the mountainside. It was a ruin, crumbling away into the cliff, or at least it had been when he left.

Scaffolds covered the cliff face, mages above and below shaping stone and shoring up the walls, while a few dwarves bellowed orders. The wreckage of the last age had been cleared from the castle dock, where a single skiff was moored, but it may as well have been a galleon. As they rode up along the river, someone on the battlements sounded a druffalo horn and sent a small group of armed mages out to greet them.

Nate smiled as he pulled up beside him, but Anders was too shocked to say anything.

"Not quite a lost cause, my friend."

Chapter 244: From Kirkwall We Fled: To Ransom Ourselves

Summary:

"She paused her song to look upon Shartan,
And said to him: "All souls who take up the sword
Against oppression are welcome here."

- Shartan 9:23

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading. I sincerely hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 25 Eluviesta Afternoon
Warden’s Keep

Warden’s Keep was doing… well.

Gatsi Sturhald had hired on five additional men and women to help with reconstruction, all of them sworn to secrecy, though Anders would have felt better if they were bound to it. They focused less on construction and more on instruction, directing primal mages on the right cut and compensation of stone, and telekinetic mages on the placement of it.

The Red Jennies had made themselves into scouts, and spent most of their time on the road or in the city, doing their best to gather word about the progression of the Exalted March in the western Free Marches. The mages had finally moved out of the great hall and into some semblance of quarters, and the hypocausts had been repaired. The Veil hadn't torn in his absence, and perhaps most importantly they had food.

They had, perhaps, too much food.

It was late into Cloudreach, and the weather was starting to warm, and food didn't keep in the absence of cold. The kitchens reeked of rot, a scent like a cat given birth to a new litter on an old blanket, as if the whole of the keep had been reborn, but then died in the birthing.

Heaps of molding vegetables filled the root cellar, rotten meats hung in the larder, rats and weevils roamed wild among the grains stacked in the pantry. The mages had come into coin, but not, it seemed, common sense. Unaccustomed to coin and how to manage it, they'd purchased an excess of perishable foods, and those foods had, predictably, perished.

No one thought to cure or salt the meats, to dry or pickle the fruits, to store the grain somewhere the bloody rats weren't like to get it. They'd been so starved they'd bought so much there was no way it wouldn't spoil. With the food all but inedible, Anders had run for the stables to recount the horses and been horrified to find them empty until someone told him the Red Jennies were on patrol.

Absent anything else to eat, the mages just kept eating what was there. Half of them were sick for it, but if nothing else none of them were starved.

"Please tell me why we have these poor fools eating spoiled food," Anders didn't know whether he needed to sit or stand for this conversation, and ended up leaning on the war table hanging his head.

"I should say it an improvement over air," Islau huffed, the old aequitarian finally resigned to barkcloth clothes, fashioned as close as he could to the robes of a senior enchanter, shawled over his shoulders and spilling down his stomach like a burl.

"What else are we supposed to do?" Ella asked, the young libertarian dressed more like a Dalish, with a simple skirt, vest, and gloves stained with dirt that spoke of cultivation magic. "We can't just let them starve."

"They're eating spoiled food because it's food," Sketch shrugged; the isolationist was still dressed in travel leathers, but after over four months at Warden’s Keep his boots seemed a little less tight laced. "... and because they don't know how to cook."

"We have almost two hundred refugees," Anders pinched the bridge of his nose, and swore he could still smell the unwholesome effluvia of decaying vegetable matter spreading through the keep. "Someone can cook."

"Not wyverns," Sketch said, stretching in place like he was preparing to run from the smell. "We decided we liked living so we left them in the larder."

"So we have poisoned meat rotting in the larder," Anders sighed. "Great. What happened to finding a cook?"

"There are only two cooks guilds in Ansburg, one for humans and one for elves, and preparing wyvern goes against both their charters," Ella said with a sad shrug.

"We haven't found anyone willing to risk it," Sketch added.

"Can you blame them?" Ella asked.

"Not with the smell," Anders muttered through a drink of water with an aftertaste of old lettuce.

Ella ignored him, "Someone could get sick if they prepare it wrong."

"They don't care if they kill anyone," Sketch scoffed. "They care if they get caught."

"Caught cooking?" Anders hooked his canteen back onto his belt. "They're preparing it, not poaching it. It's not like it's illegal."

"It is for elves," Nemmaya finally spoke up. Anders had assumed the old elven leader of the Elevated Brotherhood was asleep, with how she slumped over the table. "The law counts venom extract as a weapon."

"Are you serious?" Of course she was serious. Anders knew she was serious. He didn't need to kick at that door to keep it open but he couldn't help himself. "You know wyvern venom is its own antidote? It's not just a poison."

Nemmaya spread her hands and shrugged all the way up to her ears.

"We can't just leave poison meat rotting in the larder until some luckless fool eats it," Anders pressed on.

"I might have found someone willing to buy the venom, if we're willing to work with them," Nemmaya said.

"Why wouldn't we be?" Anders asked.

"We don't know why they want the venom," Ella said.

"Don't we?" Sketch raised a doubtful eyebrow.

"Does it matter?" Anders asked. "They're willing to work with mages; I doubt they're selling it back to templars."

"We can't just help people poison people," Ella protested.

"Depends on the people," Sketch said.

"Elves," Nemmaya elaborated.

"Are you seriously telling me they won't prepare food but they'll prepare poison?" Anders asked.

"These elves aren't with a guild, they're with a gang," Nemmaya explained.

"And therein lies the crux," Islau said with a small roll of his hand, as if any of them needed an allowance to argue. "We are split."

"And no Beth to break the tie," Sketch summoned a silence in saying.

Anders didn't trust himself to say anything. He wrung his rings around his fingers instead, fixating on the signet ring that marked him as a member of the Mage’s Collective. Polished feldspar enshrined in silver, like a storm cloud within a broken circle. It was heavier than the others, and few among them dared to wear it.

Anders didn't blame them, and blaming Beth wouldn't make it any better.

"... is she coming back?" Ella asked.

Anders shrugged.

"When the young one is weened, I'm sure," Islau lied for him.

"We need five votes," Anders would worry about Beth later. "The last should be Nemmaya."

"Not to protract our predicament" - Islau couldn't just use normal words - "but to what end? Has she some fifth fraternity we don't know about?"

"Don't let me prolong your process," Nemmaya said, with a tired and teasing smile at Islau.

Anders frowned, "The Elevated Brotherhood?"

"Perpetuate your procedure," Nemmaya continued to herself.

"And what remains of that?" Islau made a concentrated effort not to look at her. "Is our council to encompass every Band of Three that we encounter?"

"Pervade your proceedings," Nemmaya hummed.

"Are you quite finished?" Islau demanded.

"She's done more for us than you," Sketch shrugged.

Islau wasn't quite the right shape to square his shoulders, "I am a duly elected representative of-"

"-anything but elves?" Sketch guessed.

"Far be it for me to disrupt things reminding you of our representative democracy," Islau shook out his sleeves. "I should not be surprised you support her appointment. I imagine you are eager to clear your conscience."

"You are an alliterate one, aren't you?" Nemmaya noted.

"My conscience, he says," Sketch rolled his eyes.

"Just so," Islau agreed with one of them.

"Are we going to go through this again?" Sketch propped his foot against the table, anxiously relacing up his boots. "The money was good."

"It was blood money, Sketch," Ella whispered.

"Don't be childish," Sketch said to the literal child. "He sought me out."

"As a lamb seeks an altar," Islau shook his head.

"Really?" Sketch frowned from underneath his bangs.

"Is anyone going to tell me what we're talking about?" Anders interrupted.

"Eiton," Nemmaya said sadly.

"What about Eiton?" Anders asked.

"Eiton is how we came into coin," Nemmaya elaborated.

"Sketch sold him," Ella added.

Sketch went rigid -- wrenching his laces into a tourniquet.

Anders went rigid with him, veilfire breaking through his skin and burning where he gripped the table, "You did what?"

Sketch recovered quickly, rolling the truth and its tension from his shoulders. "I ransomed him," Sketch said without looking at any of them, "And for the record, he asked to be ransomed."

The rest of them kept talking. Anders stopped listening. He felt sick, like something he'd swallowed was trying to crawl its way back up his throat. Some living, breathing thing he hadn't meant to eat, dissolving inside him and desperate to escape, but the walls of his throat were too slick and it kept sliding back down into his stomach. It took so damn long to die, and even when it did, he could still feel it -- like someone else's skeleton inside him.

Some blonde-haired brown-eyed boy, young and brave and foolish, too trusting in his father. Some spoiled brat, some pompous prick, some poor stupid mage who thought they could make the world better.

Ransomed. Ransomed to his father, the Viscount and Knight Commander of Kaiten, the same man who'd killed his grand-uncle and raped his elven mother. A man who might have known him for a mage and set his ransom just to see him put to sword or sunburst so Eiton didn't shame him.

"- didn't want to wait to retake Kaiten," Nemmaya was saying, in case Anders had forgotten how desperate the boy had been to make a difference, and how little of one he'd made to Anders.

Anders hadn't even noticed he was gone.

"How could you let this happen?" Anders wished he knew who he was asking.

"Eiton… was an adult," Nemmaya struggled with the concession. "He made his own decisions."

"Eiton is a prince," Sketch corrected the tense and the title. "He isn't locked up in a tower, he's lounging in one."

"Derandt knew his father better," Nemmaya shook her head. "He's certain he is dead."

"Derandt is… a bit dower," Islau allotted. "The fact of the matter is the boy was in our charge and we failed to take care of him."

"He can take care of himself," Sketch said.

"I can't believe you sold him," Anders couldn't believe he just let it happen.

"Aren't you more surprised I came back with the coin?" Sketch joked.

"Sketch!" Ella hissed, horrified.

"How much?" Anders couldn't believe he just let it go.

"Four thousand royals," Sketch said. "For what it's worth."

"Four thousand sovereigns, by my count," Islau supplied helpfully.

"For as long as it lasts," Nemmaya said ominously. "There's unrest in Orlais. Their currency may crash."

"Ravi paid in gold, not Serault glass," Sketch said. "It doesn't matter how it's stamped."

"How long can that keep us supplied?" Anders asked.

Blank stares. Vacant expressions. Four thousand royals or sovereigns or even silver was more coin than any of them had ever had in all their lives combined. They had no idea how to spend it.

"What have we already spent?" Anders asked instead.

"Around a hundred on repairs," Nemmaya said.

"Far less for the food," Islau added.

"A few of us posed as servants placing orders for a galla," Ella explained.

"A few of us posed as servants," Sketch said meaningfully. "We can't do that every day."

"Which is why we store it," Anders ground out. "Pickled eggs are practically a delicacy in Ferelden."

"Thank the Maker for the Free Marches," Sketch chuckled.

"I am a connoisseur," Islau was as unhelpful as he was helpless. "Not a cook."

"We can prepare food just fine, we just don't know enough about preserving it," Ella corrected him, a touch of disgust in her tone.

"We spent four months with the Dalish," Anders said. "You're telling me no one learned?"

"We were focused on learning how to cook and make clothes," Ella thumbed the barkcloth vest she'd stripped off the tree, boiled, and beaten into shape herself. "We have foraging and hunting parties, new kinds of magic-"

"Nemmaya?" Anders interrupted.

"I can make nettle soup and sorrel salad," Nemmaya said as if she was offering to head down to the kitchens and rummage through the rot. "The alienage isn't a place of preservation. We never let wine sit long enough to sour."

"I remember wine," Islau's chair sighed alongside him as he leaned back. "What I wouldn't give for an Alyons black or Seraultine white these days. I'd even settle for an Amaranthine red at this rate."

"Sketch?" Anders prompted. "What's your excuse?"

"What's yours?" Sketch said.

"You were an apostate," Anders said.

"And you weren't?" Sketch asked. "How are your eggs pickled?"

… Vinegar. Maybe. Vinegar and water in some kind of ratio into some kind of brine. Vinegar… from fermented wine. Wine from fermented fruit. Fruit fermented by… time? Anders had no idea. The Tranquil had taken care of it. He was as like to make mold as he was a solid starter.

Foods weren't pickled in the Anderfels, they were dried. His mother had made confits from the pigs, cooking them in their own fats, but elsewhere foods were dried or salted, somehow, or just frozen with fucking magic because they were fucking mages.

…. Quentin had used honey.

Anders took a drink to clear his throat and his thoughts, but it stayed, as stubborn as the smell and the skeleton in his stomach and the overabounding evidence of their incompetence that lingered even when they were doing well. Anders had to get out of this room. He should have been in Ansburg by now, distributing his manifesto and making arrangements to move mages along the Minanter so they could make some progress with the rebellion, instead of standing around arguing about preservatives.

"Why aren't we keeping the grain in the granary?" Anders asked.

"The roof caved in," Sketch told him. "It's on Gatsi's list."

"We didn't think anything would get to it this fast," Ella added. "We need mousers."

Maker, have mercy. "So get a cat."

"With the rookery you mentioned?" Islau raised a doubtful eyebrow. "Mabari make better mousers."

"It doesn't bloody matter," Anders couldn't stay in this room arguing in any more circles. "We're starting a rookery, selling the venom to whoever well wants it, and we're getting a cook. We're going to find allies in Ansburg who will help with the rebellion, and Nemmaya gets a vote."

Anders threw open the door to the war room, and a giant rat ran in on his way out. Anders stumbled over it, snarling, "And we're getting a fucking cat!" If they had a problem with that, the damn rat could have the final vote for all he cared.

Air didn't come any easier in the halls. It wasn't the same without Beth. It wasn't the same without Ellana. There were too many unfamilial faces.

He felt apart from them, frustrated with the same people he was trying to free, or maybe detached, like he was stuck in the Fade, unable to care about the concerns of mortals, or maybe just unmoored, like a plague ship rotting from the inside out, only able to save the world by drifting away from it.

He'd only been back for a day and he was already overwhelmed. He needed air, and set off in search of it, taking the stairs for the battlements, and found Nate at the top, leaning against the half wall, looking out over the Green Dales.

"I imagine it's getting easier for you," the old boy said without looking back at him.

"Nothing is easy for me," Anders joined him, folding his arms over the wall. "What are we talking about?"

"Our abilities?" Nate glanced at him. "I imagine you sensed me up here?"

… had he? He felt better, standing next to Nate, but he couldn't say if that was because they were Wardens or if it was because they were friends.

"Sure," Anders decided. "What are you doing up here?"

"It’s a striking vista," Nate tipped his head towards the ocean of aspen and birch in the distance. "You certainly know how to choose a stronghold."

"It's a picturesque little place, isn't it?" Anders agreed. "Aside from being a ruin on the edge of the world."

"You don't think you're selling it a bit short?" Nate asked.

"No, you're right, we could be quite comfortable here, once we have Gatsi hang a few pictures," Anders turned away to lean his back against the wall.

He didn't want to look out at the Green Dales. They hadn't found the Dalish. They hadn't been seen around Ansburg or the surrounding area at all. It was probably for the best the clan kept their distance, when Larius had sent word of apostates seen outside the city, and it was only a matter of time before the templars started sending raiding parties, if they weren't already.

"What are you doing here, Nate?" Anders asked.

"Still looking for new answers to old questions?" Nate guessed.

"It'll never work," Anders elbowed him. "We're too different."

"If I recall correctly, you once said I was more or less a mage, with how the world hates my family," Nate grinned back.

"Amell can't know," Anders joked.

"Velanna would kill us both," Nate agreed with a chuckle.

"I'm surprised she hasn't already," Anders said. "Why isn't she here?"

"She's the Grey Warden envoy to Ostagar," Nate reminded him. "Tensions with southern lords are… high right now."

"And Velanna stayed to… make them higher?" Anders guessed.

"She stayed to make a difference," Nate looked back out at Green Dales, but if he was thinking of Velanna, he was looking in the wrong direction. "I think this war is going to swallow the world."

"... do you regret helping me?" Anders asked.

"When I first joined the Wardens, I thought I knew what it was to have nothing," Nate settled in for a story, folding his cane over his arms. "I had no money. I had no family. I thought I would wrest both from the villain that had slain my father with nothing but the bow on my back…

"Ever since Amell spared my life, I've tried to live it better, but I never understood the privilege that came with it until Sigrun showed me.

"She told me about Dust Town. She used to fight for scraps of food, for a place to sleep, for survival… There was a midden heap, beneath some tavern on one of the upper tiers, where the servant caste would throw out food scraps and empty chamberpots into the same pile… She said it was a good spot to scavenge, and she still had to fight for it. Gouged out a man's eyes with her thumbs."

Anders could picture the cheery way she would have said it and sighed, "Maker, I miss her."

Nate chuckled, "I'd never concede a competition, and I'm not saying suffering should be one, but I thought about what you said, on the way back to Wycome. I have to be the hero, Anders. We all do, when we have the chance. I'm staying. Besides, someone has to remind you to send letters."

Anders didn't feel like a hero, but he did feel better as he made his way back downstairs. He stopped at the creche to check on the kids, and found them listening to a lecture on the Four Schools of Magic. Amal was sitting by Mahanon, taking notes with such a studious expression the little dwarf might have expected to come into magic someday. The class of rambunctious little mages floating the furniture deserved a future, and Anders would have done anything to give them one.

There was nothing and no one he wouldn't sacrifice for it, and it was getting harder and harder to be ashamed of that. Whatever allies they could find would be worth the cost of the alliance, and Ailsa had promised them in Ansburg. She and Amell found him before he found them, drawn by his blood or maybe just by Dumat, leading them away from the grand hall and the countless mages who might have cornered them for news of the world within it.

"If I didn't know better, I might think us in Minrathous," Ailsa said by way of greeting.

"Alain didn't show you the west ring," Anders guessed, greeting Amell with a squeeze to his arm and Dunat with a scratch to his ear.

"We saw the bathhouse." Ailsa said, though by her tone may as well have meant the Boulevard of Sea. "The hypocausts are a marvel. I have been telling the Commander we must seek the same for Vigil's Keep."

"I'll tell Voldrik," Amell said easily, if not honestly.

"How Lyam ever put up with your lies," Ailsa sighed, folding her arms across her chest and stretching ligament and lyrium. "Are we setting out? Our contacts in the city are expecting us."

"Soon enough," Amell said. "Anders, do you have a private room here?"

"Yes…?" Anders drawled.

"Can you take me there?" Amell asked.

"Not that it's not still a thrill to turn and see you beside me, but you don't think we're better off focusing on the task at hand?" Anders asked.

"We'll only be a moment," Amell promised.

"I think I can manage more than a moment-" Anders protested.

Ailsa retreated from them and the conversation with a bemused shake of her head, "I'll meet you at the stables."

Anders set Amell’s hand to his arm, and set off for the closest thing he had to quarters. "I'm warning you now, when I left I wasn't expecting company, so you can't say anything about the mess."

"I promise not to notice," Amell joked.

Anders laughed, "So what are we doing in my room that can't wait until we're on the road?"

"It's midday."

"And midday means…?"

"It means it's midday."

… Amell meditated at midday. Anders knew that. It shouldn't have taken him that long to remember he knew that, but Amell hadn't needed anywhere private to meditate in the past.

… He'd been with Wardens in the past. Anders wondered if he didn't feel comfortable meditating in front of other mages. Anders wondered if that was his fault.

Anders let Amell into what passed for his room. It was off the infirmary, and wasn't so much his room as it was a room. It had been an apothecary once upon a time, floor to ceiling shelves full of empty earthenware jars, their one time contents scrawled across faded labels in the illegible script all healers seemed to share.

Anders cleared a place for Amell in the center of the room, and sat on the edge of an ancient workstation that creaked in warning at the weight. Dumat found the pile of bedclothes that passed for his bed, and made himself comfortable while Amell set out all of his ceremonial somethings.

A mat. A bowl. A cloth. A book. Incense, on occasion, though not this one. They weren't quite for prayer and weren't quite for meditation, and Anders realized he still didn't know quite what they were for.

Anders slid down to the floor to sit across from him. "... What are you doing?"

"Is this a trick question?" Amell asked in the middle of taking off his gloves.

"Is there a word for what you're doing?" Anders clarified.

"... not in common," Amell said cautiously.

Anders wished he hadn't given him a reason to be cautious, "What about uncommon?"

"Qunlat."

"That."

"... Ashissqun-hass," The word sounded like a sneeze, and the veilfire in his throat was probably the only thing that kept him quiet. "It roughly means to seek mastery over the self."

"... Why do you do it three times a day? Is three sacred…? Like Seven representing Sin…?"

"... I don't know that anything in the Qun is sacred, Anders, it just is."

"Is that your way of telling me you're not going to tell me?"

"It… signifies the three parts of the self, aligned with the three parts of the day," Amell relented, sitting on his knees on his mat with his gloves and boots set aside. "The body, the mind, and the soul. Morning, noon, and night."

"Why do you have to wash first?"

"For balance? Aqun-antaam, to balance the body… Aqun-asala, to balance the soul… Aqun-athlok, to balance the mind… It… signifies change, and acknowledging the world changes the self and the self changes with the world. If I wore a non-toxic vitaar, it would also be when I washed it off."

"Why don't you?" Anders asked.

"... the same reason I'm in your room," Amell spared him a sad smile, and focused on washing his hands.

Warden's Keep was a day's travel from Ansburg, sailing the Minanter, but the three of them took the roads. Amell and Ailsa had light riding leathers to suit the season, but Anders was sweating under a heavy cloak to keep his identity a secret. He could have accompanied them as a crow, but every second he spent with Amell seemed sacred, and he didn't want to waste them.

"Do you think the Margrave wilI support the mages?" Anders asked on the ride there.

"I'm not sure," Amell admitted. "I know the Guerrins grew up with the Aurums, but I don't know if they're alike as leaders.

"Teagan is closer to them, and Teagan is… not a good ruler. The people of Rainesfere may as well be ruled by his portrait. He spends most of his time in the Free Marches chasing tourneys. The only reason he isn't here now is because Eamon summoned him back. He's stepping down as the Arl Redcliffe, and won't leave it to his son."

"So he'd sooner no one was in charge of Redcliffe than leave it to a mage," Anders remembered what Amell had told him about Conner. "Figures. At least if Teagan is away, he won't be hunting down any apostates."

"Teagan doesn't even hunt in the tourneys," Amell said, with a surprising amount of disdain. "He was raised away from war, and spent most of the Blight hiding in the Chantry. Eamon had to drag him to Denerim."

"Here's hoping the Aurums aren't the same," Anders supposed.

Anders would have to wait to find out. Amell's audience with the Aurums was for Amell alone. Anders and Ailsa were in Ansburg for allies.

Lana Spes Nostra was in the alienage.

A lot of Ansburg was in the alienage.

Set in the shadow of the city, the alienage seemed to spill into the Minanter. It enclosed the elven district where the walls of the alienage ended like a moat, with no means to cross. Uphill, fulling mills, dyeworks, and laundries fed into the river like tributaries into the Minanter, and colored it in every shade but cerulean.

Even Ansburg's Circle was in its alienage. It was built into the northern wall like a watch tower, with entrances on either side, so humans and elves wouldn't have to cross paths with their comings and goings.

Lana Spes Nostra stood in its shadow, at the far end of the alienage nearer the river, and took time to reach. The elves kept out of their way, darting into alleys or abruptly changing direction, even with their otherworldly mounts long since stabled, and the griffin wings decorating Ailsa's tabard that might have made her less a threat.

The ball of the bell that hung above the door of Lana Spes Nostra had long since fallen out, and the rusted remains opted not to announce them, as if it hoped there was a chance that they might leave. Inside, mannequins held half-finished comissions, and cloth hung from the ceiling, forming itself into tunics and scarves before falling apart into scraps on the floor.

The woman within was an elf, blood red hair held back with one too many pins, her eyes lined in kohl and her lips painted a shade short of black. She was wearing her work, countless strips of fabric draped over her shoulders while she fought what looked like a losing battle with an unfinished dress. "I'll be with you in a moment."

"They will kneel," Ailsa announced them.

The tailor flinched and stabbed herself, "Kaffas!" She hissed, biting the blood off her thumb when she turned to face them. "Or we will make them."

"Varania?" Ailsa guessed.

"You know, I'm all for cloak and dagger phrases, but that one's a little less cloak and a little more dagger," Anders noted.

"Who are you?" Varania asked.

Ailsa folded back her sleeve to reveal the warped skin, bright blue veins, and crystals breaking through her arm, and there must have only been so many mages with lyrium mutation outside of Tevinter because Variana didn't need any more proof before she locked the door and shuttered the windows behind them.

"My name is Ailsa. This is Anders," Ailsa introduced them. "We're here to make a difference."

"Magister Ahriman said to expect you," Variana waved them towards what might have been a pair of stools somewhere underneath several piles of fabric.

They were so close to the ground Anders may as well have been sitting on it, one leg sprawled across the floor and the other bent, but he had to admit it didn't exactly scream slaver's den. "You know, I never cared for how close that word sounds to 'master.'"

"You'll have to excuse us, my friend has concerns about Tevinter," Ailsa apologized for him, supporting herself on his shoulder as she lowered herself to sit.

"The whole making people kneel part," Anders agreed.

"Magister Nimian picked the pass phrase," Variana explained. "There are no slaves among the Venatori."

"... Ailsa said you used to be one?" Anders wondered if he was allowed to ask.

"... Alongside my whole family," Absent a third stool, Variana sat on the floor, on her legs, back straight, hands on her knees, her toes bent.

… it was how Fenris used to sit.

"... how did you escape?" Anders asked.

"My brother freed us," Variana said. "He won a melee, and the winner was allowed to ask a boon. He used it to set us free, but freedom is no boon in Tevinter. If Magister Ahriman hadn't taken me on as his apprentice…

"You can trust them. Magister Nimian may not be the best of us, but Magister Sulara is freeing slaves, and Calpernia used to be one. They've been sending soldiers to fight along the southern border and clear a path for the mages seeking asylum, but we know not everyone can make it.

"As long as they can reach the Minanter, we can move them. They'll know our ships by the serpents. We just need to know where to send them when we can't get them to Tevinter. We haven't found anywhere safe."

".... You won't," Anders said. "I'll take them. Send them to me."

Chapter 245: From Kirkwall We Fled: The Venatori

Summary:

They will taunt you and humiliate you
While they hang you in the marketplace.
They will pelt you with offal while they call you
Broken, a coward, and a failure.

 

- Shartan 9:6

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading.

I sincerely appreciate the feedback on the last two chapters and hope you enjoy the story as it continues.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 28 Eluviesta Late Afternoon
Ansburg Alienage: Lana Spes Nostra

"Tell me about the Venatori," Anders said.

"The hunters," Varania translated. "That's what we're called -- in Tevene."

"So what are you hunting?" Anders asked.

"Whatever we need to survive," Varania said. "The same as everyone else."

"Some people hunt for sport," Anders countered.

"You have no idea what it's like in Tevinter," Varania said. "You have no idea what we have to do to survive. I am apprentice to a magister, but I will always be second class. The Venatori are the only ones giving us a chance. They believe all mages should be equal under the Imperium. Liberati and Laetans."

"An elven apprentice is all but unheard of among members of the magisterium," Ailsa squeezed his arm. "Liberati aren't full citizens. They have no rights to vote or serve in governance. Imagine how much better the Imperium could be if it recognized all mages."

"If the Venatori cared about all mages they wouldn't make them servants," Anders said.

"Indentured servants," Ailsa corrected him. "I know you don't agree, but every mage we bring north matters. We're barely holding against the qunari. We just lost our main stronghold on Seheron, and they'll never stop unless we stop them.

"You know they'll never honor the Llomerryn Accords. They've already violated them. In Kont-aar. In Kirkwall. It's only a matter of time before they attack the mainland. The Second Qunari War lasted longer than the last three Blights combined-"

"-You don't need to tell me that," Anders cut her off. "I was there when they tried to start the Third, remember? The Qunari make the Circle of Magi look like a pleasant vacation. I know what they're like. I know what they do to their mages-"

Anders forced himself to stop. He didn't want to think about the Qunari or the Qun or the Cantos or what was coming to the world and all the mages within it if Ailsa's predictions came true. Whatever tranquility Amell had found within the Cantos wasn't the same kind that was waiting for the rest of them.

Anders was trying. On the Maker, he was trying to focus on the words and not the scarred lips that spoke them -- the almost imperceptible indents he could almost ignore -- save for the two that he could see, paired on either side of his lower lip, and not covered by his goatee.

They could almost pass for piercings. Serpent's fangs, or angel's fangs, or demon's fangs, or whatever the style was called, except that they were stitches.

Anders knew full well what the Qunari did to their mages. Anders knew full well the measure of their mercy, and it wasn't measured in inches or increments or anything other than the breadth of a needle threaded through his lover's skin.

"I know," Anders said. "You can't justify enslaving mages just because you're doing it before someone else gets a chance."

"Indentured servitude, not slavery," Ailsa said again.

"Do you really think there's a distinction?" Anders demanded, and turned back to Varania. "You have to tell them all there are other options, not just the ones you can't get to Tevinter."

"What other options?" Varania made the question sound sincere. "War is everywhere. Why does it matter where they're fighting?"

"It matters if they're free," Anders said.

Varania sat with what he said, and finally shifted, letting her shoulders go slack. "... I thought it would be different here, but the imprint of the Imperium is everywhere. The Chantry says there's no slavery in the south, but I see it, in the Circles and the alienages they created…"

"That's why we're going to tear them down," Anders said.

"We're going to help," Varania sat up straight again. "We'll send you who we can."

"Is there anything else you can offer us?" Anders asked.

Varania waved at the fabric strewn across the shop, as if inviting him to search among the scraps, "We can make sure any mages that make it to us get a change of clothes."

"Lyrium?" Anders pressed. "Armaments? Anything else that could help us?"

"... We're not all iconoclasts," Varania stood, and it must have been their cue to do the same. "Most of us are just people doing what we can."

"... thanks," Anders said sincerely, and was sure he butchered the Tevene when he added, "Na via lerno victoria."

"Scis Tevene?" Varania sounded surprised.

"Nescit," Ailsa answered for him, "Vitae benefaria."

"... Wait," Varania chased after them when they turned to go, "If you need fighters, my brother is one of the best. He just needs something to fight for. His name is Leto."

Leto was a lush.

He frequented the public houses more often than their private one. There were three of them in the alienage, and the elves who stumbled out of them were sots, not soldiers. The Bed and Bucket offered a bed for a pittance and a bucket for pity, the Bottom of the Barrel might have been named for the drunks or the drinks, and the Bathtub brewed the only drinks they served in one.

The last was more bathtub than brewery, with how close it was to the river. An old and uneven foundation sagged towards the shoreline, and seemed to dump patrons out into the river. The few that remained clung to mismatched pieces of furniture to keep from sliding out, and somehow Anders doubted they'd find a warrior of legend among them.

The Bathtub was owned by an old Antivan elf named Alvarado, who looked (and smelled) like he'd never been in a real one in his life, but Anders could have hugged him all the same for finally ending their hours long search when he pointed them to a table, and the lone elf beneath it.

Save that it was the wrong elf. "Fenris?"

"Mage," Fenris' accusatory slur spilled from his lips alongside the rotgut he'd been drinking, and his feet slipped on it when he tried to stand.

Maker, the man was a mess. Sweat had stained his tunic from blue to black; half of the laces were undone, and the other half were done wrong. His hair had grown out, and hadn't been washed in so long it clumped into strands that stuck to his face, flush with drink and sagged with despair from whatever had happened to him in the year they'd been apart.

"Your friends abound," Ailsa noted, skirting whatever it was Fenris had spilled.

"In bathtubs and burial grounds," Anders sighed.

"She sent you," Fenris decided, clawing for a chair and knocking it over in the process.

Anders thought of righting it, but for all his ambitions Fenris didn't seem capable of climbing high enough to achieve them. His hand flopped uselessly around the legs of the chair, and gave up when they failed to right themselves.

"This is a really unflattering look for you," Anders knelt next to him, supporting himself with a hand on the table.

"Flattery does no one -... any favors," Fenris crawled his way up a leg of the table, and while he wasn't quite upright, he seemed slightly less at risk of aspirating on his own vomit when he belched.

"It's done me some favors," Anders reached out to steady him. "What are you doing here?"

Fenris' vague gesture was far from any kind of sign, and his groan was further from any kind of words, but his expression said, "Isn't it obvious?" well enough.

"What are you doing in the Free Marches?" Anders clarified. "You said you were going to find your sister, remember?"

"My sister," Fenris' slur put snakes to shame. "Do not speak to me of my sister."

Anders rolled his fingers on the table, and glanced up at Ailsa. She shrugged.

"Do you know anyone here named Leto?" Anders asked.

Fenris let out a queer laugh, and took a long drink from a dirty bottle, "What would I know of him?"

"Okay," Anders glanced around the tavern, but none of the other patrons seemed like soldiers. "Where are you staying?"

Fenris gestured at the tavern floor.

"Alright, come on, let's get you a room," Anders dragged Fenris out from underneath the table and into one of the three alarmingly small rooms the Bathtub offered on the loft that passed for its second story. Ailsa left them to ask the tavern keeper after Leto again, and returned by the time Anders had maneuvered Fenris onto a cot and into some semblance of a sitting position.

"It seems you are not the only one known by more than one name, my friends," Ailsa nodded at Fenris from the doorway.

"Ha!" Fenris made a valiant effort to drink from an empty bottle.

"Fenris, what is she talking about?" Anders asked.

"He goes by Leto here," Ailsa elaborated.

"Against his will," Fenris muttered into the bottle.

"Seriously?" Anders asked. "Leto?"

"Don't call me that!" Fenris snapped, flinging the empty bottle at the far wall, where it shattered, scattering shards of murky glass across the floor. "It's not my name!" Fenris buried his face in his hands. "I don't know my name."

"I think I'll see if I can't refill my ritewine with some of Alvarado's Bathtub Boot Screech," Ailsa excused herself.

"Fenris," Anders gave him a small shake. "Wake up. Why are people calling you Leto?"

"Leto," Fenris repeated disdainfully. "'Oblivion or the one who brings it'… What my mother must have thought of me… she is dead."

Anders squeezed his shoulder. "What happened?"

"My sister happened," Fenris muttered.

"Your sister… Varania?" Anders guessed.

Fenris' head bobbled in something akin to a nod.

"So you found her?" Anders prompted. "Shouldn't you be celebrating?"

"Celebrating," Fenris scoffed. "What is there to celebrate?"

"Your family?" Anders suggested. "Your freedom?"

"My freedom," Fenris slapped himself in the face, and groaned into his hand. "Look around, mage. None of us are free."

"You're free," Anders couldn't believe him. "You bloody ingrate. Danarius is dead-"

"I know he is dead!" Fenris snapped. "I do not need you to tell me he is dead! You know nothing of being a slave!"

Anders stood up so fast Fenris fell over without his support. Because he needed it. Because he was drunk. Because he needed it even if he wasn't.

"... forgive me," Fenris whined into the canvas.

Anders took a drink from his canteen to keep from saying something he'd regret, and waited for his rage to give way before he sat back down on the edge of the cot. "What happened?"

"Leto happened," Fenris groaned.

"So you know your old name," Anders said. "Why does that matter?"

"It matters," Fenris said. "I thought-... I thought discovering my past would bring a sense of belonging… but I was wrong.

"There is nothing for me to reclaim… these markings… I wanted them... I fought for them... I feel unclean. Like this magic is not only etched into my skin but has also stained my soul."

"You're still blaming magic?" Anders demanded. "After everything? You bloody hypocrite, your sister is a mage-"

"I know she is a mage! I do not need you to tell me she is a mage! It is not about mages! It is not about magic! It is about his magic!"

Fenris went green and gagged. Anders found the chamberpot under the cot and pushed it into his hands, and Fenris doubled over and wretched, catching vomit on a few strands of hair before Anders could hold it back.

"I wanted to serve him," Fenris fell back against the wall with a choked sob when he was done, cradling the chamberpot with the same desperation he had the bottle. "I wanted-"

"-to free your family," Anders cut him off. "You freed them. Fenris, you freed them."

"Then why doesn't it feel as it should?" Fenris demanded. "You don't understand. This-... this freedom tastes like ashes."

"That's probably the vomit."

"Yes, joke. That's your answer for everything isn't it?"

"Why are you arguing with me?"

"I don't know. I don't know. I am angry…. I am so angry. I thought if I didn't need to run and fight to stay alive, I would finally be able to live as a free man does, but how is that? How would I know? I have nothing now -- not even an enemy."

"You have your sister."

"My sister," Fenris muttered, adjusting his grip on the chamberpot like he was afraid he might be sick all over again. "The mage with aspirations of becoming a magister."

"... you know she's a member of the Venatori, don't you? Aren't they trying to improve Tevinter?"

"By sending slaves to fight their battles for them," Fenris' disdain seemed to sober him. "The Venatori are no saviors."

"What do you know of them?"

"Enough to know no magister would ever risk their standing to give a slave more," Fenris said, finally setting the acrid pot aside to gesture. "Think, mage, think. The more mages among their number, the more sway they have within the magisterium, and so they send slaves south to bring more mages north."

"So there are more mages and less slaves in Tevinter," Anders said. "Why is that a problem?"

"Because these mages worship the Old Gods. The very same that brought about blood magic and the Blights. Rest assured, no good will come of them."

"You know worshiping the Old Gods isn't inherently evil, right?"

"And you call yourself an Andrastian," Fenris snorted. "Have you forgotten the First Sin?"

Anders was on his fiftieth, at this rate. "If any of Threnodies is even true, the Old Gods are just old spirits, embodiments of virtues and vices, and anyone who worships them worships what they represent."

Fenris shook his head, "If you'd lived in Tevinter, then you'd know what they represent is nothing to worship."

"I don't need to live there," Anders said. "I'm a Grey Warden, remember? I know all about the Old Gods, and I'm telling you, it's not that simple. Don't you trust your sister?"

"... I don't know her," Fenris pulled his knees up to his chest. "I thought finding Varania would open up a new world… one that was lost forever… but it's gone and I can't get it back… I don't know how to move forward…

"I did not think I would ever have to… A slave does not dream of freedom or wonder at possibilities... You think only of your master's desires and what the next hour will bring… Have I ever told you the story of how I escaped?"

"You told me," Anders said.

"Not everything. Not the reason we were in Seheron in the first place. The Imperium and the Qunari have fought over the island for centuries now, and Danarius was… eager to demonstrate my abilities… to make a case for more of me.

"The cost of my markings was too much for one magister to afford alone," Fenris flexed his hands in front of him. "The sarcophagus in which I was infused with lyrium… The magic of countless mages forcing it into my flesh… The agony of the ritual is the first thing I can recall, and he wanted it repeated…

"There were at least a score in attendance for the demonstration… some of the highest members of magisterium, the upper house of the Imperial Senate, seated alongside the Imperial Divine, with the ear of the Archon and the authority to elect a new one if ever enough of them were united…

"To have so many members of the Imperial Senate gathered on the island all but invited the qunari attack. I managed to get them all to a ship, but there was no room left for a slave, even a valuable one, and so I was left behind while they escaped…

"... I must not have made enough of an impression, because Danarius was desperate to recover me, and in some ways I was-... relieved… for as long as he sent men after me, it meant I hadn't been replaced…

"You once told me I should want to help other slaves, and for so long the only way I could think to help was to stay alive… to ensure no other slave would suffer as I suffered… to know now that I asked for this-"

"Would you stop that?" Anders cut him off. "You asked to free your family."

Fenris ran a weary hand through his hair, "Why are you here, mage?"

"Well it's not for the drinks, that's for sure."

"... the butterbile is not so bad."

"Say that again, slower, so you actually hear what you're saying."

"It's a liquor washed with melted fat-"

"-and you actually drink it?"

"That's a generous description of the act."

Anders would rather not know where the rest of that conversation led. "I'm looking for allies," Anders changed the topic.

"More hopeless battles?" Fenris guessed.

"Your sister thought you could be one," Anders told him.

"One man will not turn the tide of this war," Fenris said.

"One man turns the tide of every war," Anders said. "You want to make a difference, make one with us."

"So I should endeavor to live as I did before?" Fenris asked. "Persecuted from town to town, forced to run from one to the next? You will not finish going through all the towns in Thedas before the end of this war."

"A war you helped me start," Anders reminded him.

"I need no reminder. I have seen the fruits of our labors first hand."

"You can't seriously regret it."

"I regret the glass," Fenris waved a hand at the floor. "The shards you see before you… not the breaking of the bottle… How much have you seen of the city?"

"Enough to know the Mage’s Collective has been chased from it," Anders said. "If it was ever here to begin with."

"Everyone has been chased from this city," Fenris said. "The alienage here was once host to a handful of clans. They traveled through and traded often, but they have not been seen in some time. I'm told they tried to attend the Arlathvhen in Halamshiral, and had to turn back because it is unsafe to travel.

"Martial law has made it so. I am sure you will have seen the signs. The checkpoints, the curfew, the way the elves must have scattered at your approach… I hear the Guard Captain has been calling for a purge, and I suspect he will see it through."

"Why would you suspect that?"

"The Chanter's Board has already put out a call for Warriors of Conscience to 'seek out and slay' those who have 'turned against the Maker’s truths,' within the walls of the alienage."

"You can just say apostates."

"In Ansburg, it is far simpler to say elves. You will have seen the Circle here, I am sure."

"So what are you doing about it?" Anders demanded.

Fenris shrugged, "I'm drinking."

"You could be out there making a difference."

"I'll not bargain with the Bleakwatch."

"The what watch?"

"An elven syndicate in the city."

"Just say gang."

"Call them what you will, their leader was just elected hahren. Handling the refugees from the war has made the guards more aggressive, and there are many who would see the alienage answer in kind. It Is happening here as it happened in Kirkwall. It is only a matter of time."

"How do you know all this?"

"Possibly because some people are still willing to talk to me."

"People talk to me."

"The guilty cry ere accusations."

"Excuse me?"

"A difficult endeavor."

"Can we go back to you being drunk?"

"Seeing you is sobering."

"Next time try a mirror."

"To think I missed you," Fenris snorted. "... you still believe you can win this war?"

"I believe I have to try," Anders said.

Fenris sat with what he said, nodding to himself, and eventually stumbled to his feet. "I surrendered my sword when I came into the city, but I am here. I will help."

"You'll be hated for it," Anders warned him.

"Better others should bear the burden for me," Fenris shrugged. "I am tired of hating myself."

"We're staying at the Wyvern's Head while we're in the city," Anders stood, mindful of the broken glass. "It's not much, but it's better than a bathtub. Can you walk?"

"That remains to be seen," Fenris decided.

Fenris traded obstinance for exhaustion, and let him lead him from the loft and down the stairs. Ailsa paid for the room, but she seemed suspicious of his decision not to leave Fenris in it. The man didn't make much case for himself, stumbling along beside them on their way back to their own inn for the evening.

"Your sister says you are a man of legend," Ailsa volunteered.

"Fitting, that she should think me more folklore than family," Fenris muttered.

"I recognize your markings," Ailsa tried again, after a long stretch of silence. "You must be the Blue Wraith."

"I take it you are from Tevinter," Fenris shot her a frown from beneath his bangs, and stumbled for it. Anders caught him before the cobblestone did. "And kept company with magisters."

"Warden Commanders," Ailsa corrected him.

Fenris steadied himself, "... what would the Wardens know of me?"

"The Wardens keep busy," Ailsa smiled a sympathetic smile. "The Warden Commander of Tevinter was interested in House Danarius' promise of 'material applications of lyrium absent mutations' … ten years ago now? They even tried to replicate it."

"I imagine that did not end well for them," Fenris snorted.

"It didn't," Ailsa agreed.

Fenris didn't seem to need her to elaborate, but Anders had to ask, "What happened?"

"They could never replicate the ritual," Ailsa explained. "Two recruits volunteered. They both died of lyrium poisoning a few hours into the attempt… it's why Lyam and I left."

"And now you ally with the Venatori," Fenris said disdainfully. "Men and women who would remake Tevinter and all such rituals within it."

"Men and women who would make it better," Ailsa promised.

"Believe what you like," Fenris stumbled on. "I have heard it all from my sister."

"Maybe you should try listening," Anders said.

"Maybe you should try looking," Fenris nodded, not so subtly, to the patrols that had begun to pour into the alienage as the sun set along the Minanter. "Enemies are everywhere."

Guardsmen, the same orange shade Anders had come to associate with oppression. Anders pulled him up his hood, and contemplated traveling back as a crow, but the elves around them didn't have the option.

A handful bolted to join a score that were leaving what looked like a service, save that there were no cloisters or cathedrals inside the alienage. Elves were too susceptible to the First Sin, when so many of them still worshiped the Creators, and weren't allowed to serve the Chantry anywhere but under its heel. The occasional Revered Mother might come to perform a wedding or funeral upon request, but for the most part the few members of the priesthood that wandered into the alienage were the same as the sparrows that got caught in the chantries rafters -- singing for the sake of it before flying back out.

Ansburg's alienage might not have had a Chantry, but it had something close. Two and a half stories of stone, wattle and daub, where a makeshift holy brazier must have burned within by the way all the windows glowed. One of them opened to an attic, in place of a bell tower, where a gong hung in place of a bell. The elves in the process of leaving saw the patrols, and quickly pushed back inside while a Chantry Mother pushed out.

"Warden," The guardsman at the forefront of the patrol called out at the sight of Ailsa's uniform, with a nod to the Chantry Mother. "Mother Renette."

"Sergeant Thornton," the Chantry Mother returned as she pulled up beside them.

There was no hiding behind either woman. Ailsa carried a staff, and the lyrium that broke through her skin bent her limbs and bowed her bank. Mother Renette was even worse, so short she might have been an elf, and seemed to have braided her hair back just to prove she wasn't.

A dozen guardsmen ringed themselves around the makeshift chantry, and Anders pulled Fenris a step back towards it.

"These seem tense introductions," Ailsa noted, standing as straight as she could, and rolling her fingers along her staff.

"I'm afraid so, Warden," Thornton, a man marked by so many scars he was either exceptional or atrocious with a sword, said. "What cause do you have to be in the alienage?"

"What cause do you have to question the Wardens?" Ailsa countered.

"I have my orders," Thornton shouldn't have had any orders. Even Meredith had hesitated to challenge the Grey Wardens, until red lyrium had eaten away what little had ever existed of her reason. "The Knight Commander has asked that all mages be accompanied by a representative of the Templar Order, even visiting dignitaries."

"I'm afraid we won't be honoring that ask," Ailsa said easily.

Thornton apparently didn't know what to do with that response. He opened his mouth as if waiting for words, and let out a sigh when none seemed to form. He turned to the Chantry Mother instead. "Your charges are out after curfew."

"My charges are at the Chantry," Mother Renette said, tight black curls bursting out behind her head to help with her height and halo her face as she glared up at the guardsman. "You cannot keep them from His word."

"I'm just a soldier," Thornton raised his hands. "It's not my place to comment. They'll need to come with us."

"They need to do nothing," Mother Renette squared her small shoulders. "They are the Maker’s children, and they will walk only where He would bid them, stand only in places where He has blessed, and sing only the words He has placed in their throats."

"You know they're not allowed out after dark," Thornton sighed. "Renette-"

"Mother Renette," Renette corrected the man, thrice her age and twice her size.

"-you can't keep giving evening sermons to protect elves violating curfew," Thornton pinched the bridge of his nose. "The Margrave won't stand for it."

"I do not answer to the Margrave," Renette said stubbornly.

"I do," Thornton said. "And I'm getting tired of the haughty Chantry act."

Mother Renette looked at the Sergeant, and then out over his men, and turned on her heel and went back inside her Chantry. By the air about her, Anders half expected her to slam the door behind her, but no sooner had she gone in than she came back out, wielding a candelabra like halberd and leaving a trail of candles in her wake.

"The righteous stood before the armies as a boulder stands before a tide," Renette planted herself in front of the door. "Unshaken, rooted there by the Maker’s hand."

"Renette-" Thornton groaned.

"Mother Renette," Renette cut him off, brandishing the candelabra and losing more candles. "To move me is a mark of Maferath."

The guardsmen that had gathered started ungathering, evidently not as eager as their Sergeant to put the Margrave before the Maker. Thornton glanced over his shoulder at his dwindling numbers and sighed, "I'm too old for this shit."

The guards left.

"... well that's not something you see every day," Anders said in the silence that followed.

"Are you here for the sermon, Wardens?" Mother Renette finally set down the candelabra.

"I think we just heard it," Anders said.

The elves inside the Chantry started filing out, once the guards had gone, reaching out to touch Renette's robes as they went with whispered "Thank you, Mother"'s.

"Walk in the Maker’s light," Mother Renette returned.

Anders wasn't sure it shined on mages, but starlight seemed to serve. The guards were getting bold. The templars were emboldening them. If even members of the Chantry could see how bad it had gotten, it couldn't be long before the rest of the Circles started to rise up and rebel.

They had to be ready when that happened. They had a stronghold and the means to support it and more allies every day. The mages just needed to make it to them, and they could move them with the Venatori.

Except for some insane reason Amell said, "I don't know that I can work with them," over dinner in their room at the inn that night.

"What do you mean you can't work with them?" Anders set down his fork. "You were the one who vouched for them. What happened?"

"I met with my contact, after meeting with the Margrave," Amell didn't explain, because Amell never explained, and it was easier to pry pearls from the mollusks they were eating than it was answers from the man.

"And?" Anders prompted. "They had the wrong star sign? Because I read Astrology for the Good Andrastian and unless they were born under Judex-"

"It's complicated," Amell cut him off.

"No it isn't," Anders said. "We're in the middle of an Exalted March, and there are still hundreds of apostates scattered throughout the Free Marches. We need all the allies we can get."

Amell tapped his fork against his plate, "I know."

"That's not an answer."

"I don't know that I have one for you."

"You don't know that you have an answer, or you don't know that you have one for me?" Anders asked.

Amell set his fork aside to run a hand through his hair, "... The Tranquil aren't important to them."

The Tranquil weren't important to anyone. They weren't important to Anders and they shouldn't have been important to Amell. They hadn't been important to Amell, as far as Anders had known, until he'd converted to the Qun, and decided that he cared about things mages should know better than to care about.

Anders tried. Maker save him, he tried, but it was so hard to be sympathetic, "Why does that matter?"

"It matters," Amell said, but it didn't.

"Mages matter more."

Chapter 246: From Kirkwall We Fled: Our Heritage

Summary:

"Across the empty plains Shartan crept
To where the great host camped, the light from countless fires
Guiding him through the darkness."

- Shartan 9:18

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

As always, I appreciate the feedback and I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 5 Molioris Afternoon
The Green Dales

Clan Ralaferin rode harts in place of halla. Massive creatures more reminiscent of moose than mounts, they moved through the Green Dales all but unseen. White coats blended them into aspen and birch, the soil swallowing the sound of their hooves, the only evidence of their passing the crack of branches above as their antlers broke through weaker boughs.

Their welcome was as warm as Anders expected. The Dalish encircled them, reflective eyes winking in and out between the trees, the rest of the elves keeping their distance while their leader dismounted.

"Wraith," The man inclined his head, long black hair spilling over his shoulder partly obscuring viscous looking vallaslin, the sharp-thorned vines inked across his face marking him as a follower of Elgar'nan. "Why have you come?"

"For the child," Fenris gestured to Mahanon, hiding behind Amell's leg. "...For all future children."

"The others?" The man nodded to the rest of them.

"Other kinds of children," Fenris said wryly.

The leader laughed, "This way, then."

The rest of the Dalish disappeared back into the trees, while their leader led the way to their encampment.

Anders fell into step beside Fenris as they followed, "You've been busy."

"I've been bitter," Fenris corrected him.

"You wanted family," Soliel, or Allure, said. "They weren't it."

It was getting more difficult to see the distinction between the demon and the body to which it was bound. Soliel spoke to them, as Kristoff once spoke to Justice, but for Allure it seemed so much more intense.

The demonologist resonated with the demon, from her memories, to her motives, to her manners. They weren't Soliel, but the longer they lingered, the more they settled into her skin and what remained of her soul. Allure took on everything, even her identity, to the point that 'Soliel' was how they preferred to be addressed.

'Soliel,' or maybe just Soliel, seemed almost like herself, and if Anders hadn't held her in his arms the day she died in Kaiten, he was sure he'd have his doubts. She took up teaching demonology, and rejoined the Elevated Brotherhood, and she was angry about Eiton.

The half-blood mage boy who'd been their best chance to reclaim Kaiten, who'd ransomed himself off rather than wait for them to have the forces to unseat his father. Anders swore he could see red in every one of the four thousand royals Knight-Commander Ravi had offered for the return of his son, and he was sure Soliel could see it too.

She'd spent hours in the treasury, tracing the engravings in the gold, like she could see Eiton's blood in every bar. The rest of the mages assumed she was in mourning, because they were mortal, and they didn't understand the way he did. Soliel sifted through the strands because she was searching for Ravi's memories in the mint.

"Does he know Eiton's a mage?" Anders had asked, when she'd finally emerged.

"He suspects," Soliel had said.

Anders decided to think of him as dead. It was better to see the blood on every coin they spent -- and take in its true cost.

"Stay out of my head, demon," Fenris snapped.

"You could try their name," Anders suggested.

"I doubt they know it," Fenris sniffed.

"Soliel suits me," Soliel said. "So does 'she' as much as 'they.'"

"She is dead," Fenris said. "You should let her die."

"She did," Soliel said.

Fenris grunted, and lengthened his stride to walk ahead with the elven leader leading them deeper into the Green Dales -- an ocean of aspen and birch between the Free Marches and Antiva both countries had abandoned.

There were things, in the Green Dales. Effigies of old bone and chimes of dead wood rattled warnings at the forest's edge, and deep within, things rattled them again. Things that were ancient. Things that were other. Varterrals. Varghests. Sylvans, and the shapes that moved between them.

Almost elven. Halfway human. Things, deep growling and long gaited. Things, unclothed with merle coats. Things, born of bark but breathing.

"Dryads," Amell volunteered at the last.

"Don't exist?" Anders pointed out.

"What else would you call them?" Amell asked.

"I wouldn't call them anything," Anders said. "I'd say I was seeing things."

"It sounds like you're seeing dryads," Amell said.

"They keep the forest's secrets," Mahanon chimed in, but whatever they were, they didn't seem to bother the boy, humming to himself as he followed after Amell and Dumat. "Green grows canavaris, from unmarked graves felandaris…"

Amell, Anders had come to realize, did not like kids, which was too bad for him, because kids liked Amell. Kieran, Amell adored, but his son was the exception. Other kids, Amell avoided, but Mahanon was impossible to escape. The little elf followed him everywhere, and Anders wasn't sure if it was because he could tell Amell had swallowed an elven soul, or if it was because Amell was more elven than most of their elves.

The elves among them couldn't have been further from the Dalish. The Chantry had taken them as children and raised them far away from their culture and their customs. They didn't have clans. They didn't worship the Creators. They had no hahrens and no halla and almost no ties to their heritage. Maybe it would have been different if they were from the city, but they were from the Circle.

They were mages, and it was hard for anything else to matter. If anything, most of their elves felt above the elves from the alienage before they felt envy for them, to say nothing of the Dalish. They were different. They were distant. To them, the Dalish were ancient. To them, the Dalish were other.

So it made sense to Anders that Mahanon had taken to Amell, because Amell was ancient, and Amell was other, and in some strange way, Amell was elven. Anders knew it was isolating, and Mahanon didn't deserve to be isolated, so they brought him to the Dalish like Deshanna had asked. It might not have been exactly what Ellana would have wanted, but she was dead, and Deshanna wasn't, and since she was the Keeper of Clan Lavellan, the least he could do was honor her wishes.

Campfires flickered between the trees in the far distance, and conversation began to carry beneath the chime of old bones and the creak of old bark. At some point, elven sentries nodded at their passing, but Clan Ralaferin didn't camp in a clearing. Their aravels were arranged among the trees, and they didn't approach the encampment so much as it appeared.

Mahanon should have been happy to be home, but for some reason he stopped, tiny heels tilling the soil as he tugged on Amell's sleeve until Amell stopped with him.

"... yes?" Amell managed.

"I don't like it here," Mahanon mumbled.

"You're among the People," Amell promised.

"They didn't do the greeting," Mahanon wrapped himself around Amell's leg. "Sylaise says you have to do the greeting."

Amell took such a deep breath he might have been bracing for a battle just engaging with the boy, "Not everyone will believe what you believe. You need to make space for them, the way Ghilan'nain made space for her creations."

"... Ellana doesn't like Ghilan'nain," Mahanon said into Amell's knee. "She says… She said she's the youngest, weakest of the gods."

Amell found his shoulder and squeezed it. "Do you think being young makes you weak?"

"Hahren Haleth says… said Ghilan'nain just does whatever Andruil says. She killed all her creations."

"She… made sacrifices, but she also made shrines with the blood of her creations, so she could remake them in secret, because it's important to respect things that are different."

Mahanon kicked at the dirt, sniffling, "... they didn't do the greeting."

"Hey," Anders squeezed Amell's shoulder to rescue the both of them, untangling Mahanon from Amell's leg, "What's the greeting?"

"Andaran atish'an," Mahanon kicked at a root with the heel of his foot.

"Why is it important?" Anders asked.

"Sylaise says," Mahanon sniffled unhelpfully.

"It signals the area is under an armistice, and offering amnesty," Amell explained.

Clan Lavellan must have been more peaceful. Anders took a shallow breath to shut out thoughts of shallow graves and squeezed Mahanon's shoulder. "Hey, do you want to go back and say it with me?"

Mahanon nodded.

"We'll catch up," Anders took Mahanon's hand and led him back to the sentries, four hulking elves more concerned with keeping score in their game of knucklebones than keeping watch. A few of them looked up, and Anders gave Mahanon a nudge.

"Andaran atish'an," Mahanon told his toes.

Two of the sentries exchanged such confused glances they must not have spoken elven, and the third took their intrusion as a good time to cheat and change his roll, but the fourth smiled. "Aneth ara, da'len. Welcome home."

Anders carried the boy back on his arm, and caught up to the others, relieved he hadn't lost them. The encampment seemed endless, aravels overtaking aspen in all directions, dirt paths trodden through the forest floor by the passing of hooves and heels as elves traveled between them. They numbered well into a thousand, their aravels and their attire so vast and so varied it shouldn't have taken Anders so long to consider there might have been more than one clan among them.

They arrived at a ring of aravels that had been converted into a pavilion, cloth canopies strung up between them, their heraldries all dyed in different colors. Seating had been arranged into interlocking circles Anders guessed signified the clans that had gathered, because even their chairs were distinct.

There were five circles, or five clans, or, if nothing else, five types of chairs. Folding stools with woven canvas, mats made from rush, two carved planks of interlocking wood, woven rattan pods, and fallen logs, dragged across the forest to form the last circle, where their escort led them.

The elves there seated wore long flowing robes, dyed deep shades of green and decorated with tufts and tassels. All of them had alarmingly long hair that the men wore loose and the women braided down their backs, their fingers adorned with alternating rings of metal and bone. One woman with greying hair and tired eyes waved at their approach.

"Shirallas," the woman looked to their escort. "Who have you brought us?"

"The Wraith" -Shirallas gestured at Fenris- "and those with him."

"Wraith," the woman inclined her head to Fenris. "Have you decided to join us for the Arlathvhen after all?"

"I have not," Fenris said stiffly. "I am here on behalf of Clan Lavellan."

The elves exchanged uncertain but not unsympathetic glances, and an older man with white hair and white vallaslin spoke up, "Falon'Din watch over them. We've had word of Wycome. Would you have us oversee their journey through the Beyond?"

"Not all have gone to it," Fenris waved to Mahanon.

Anders set him down, and Mahanon took up a spot behind his leg. "You want to say 'hello'?" Anders prompted.

"Andaran atish'an," Mahanon mumbled.

"... His name is Mahanon," Anders told them, when Mahanon didn't tell them anything else. "He was their First."

He was their Last, now, but Anders would rather not force the boy to relive all the sorrows of his short life retelling them.

"I see," the older woman looked to a younger woman across from her, her hair such a deep shade of red it was almost black, shaved at the sides and braided down her back. "Perhaps our First Neria could show him around the encampment and introduce him to the People?"

"Of course, Keeper," Neria came to kneel in front of Mahanon, still hiding behind his knees. "Hello, Mahanon. Would you walk with me?"

"You can go with her," Anders promised. "It's safe. We'll be here."

Neria held out a hand ringed in bone and black metal, and Mahanon must have been around Amell long enough to find it comforting, because he let her lead him away from the pavilion and into the encampment.

"Please," the older woman gestured for them to sit.

"My name is Cillian," the older man introduced himself, when they'd all found seats for themselves.

"And mine Elindra," the older woman said. "Keeper of Clan Ralaferin. You said you were here on behalf of Clan Lavellan?"

"What remains of it," Fenris said.

"The boy," Elindra nodded. "... we cannot take him."

"What do you mean you can't take him?" Anders demanded. "He's Dalish."

Elindra shook her head, rattling the bits of bone braided into her hair. "All the same, we cannot take him."

"What about one of the other clans here?" Anders pressed, hating their hesitation. "There are other clans here?"

"Four," Cillian allotted. "... you will find few comfortable with mages among them."

"Wise words," Fenris just had to say.

"So help me-" Anders grit his teeth.

Fenris raised his hands, "-I warned you."

"Why not?" Anders did his best to ignore Fenris in favor of the other elves. "The Dalish revere magic."

"Do we?" Cillian mused.

Elindra shook her head, "The shemlen no longer suffer us. They send their soldiers deeper into the Green Dales every day. Our sister clans from the Wildervale and Glendel's Hollow say the same.

"The Arlathvhen is not even here. Our People are in Halamshiral, but our clans could not make it there. Shemlen soldiers sweep the woods. It isn't safe for us to travel, and even less so with a mage.

"... We are not taking in new mages. We are sending them away."

"You can't do that!" Anders erupted.

"Anders-" Amell started.

"Mage-" Fenris started with him.

Anders ignored them both, "Where are you even sending them?"

Elindra looked too tired to say. She sighed, long and low, and stood with the help of her staff. "I'm sorry, but the boy can't stay."

Elindra saw herself from the circle. Amell's hand on his thigh kept him from chasing after her, and his sore throat kept him from screaming after her, so Anders settled for glaring after her instead.

"It depends upon the clan," Cillian seemed like the only one of the elves not shamed into silence. "Most Keepers have kept their First and Second, and sent the rest away. To other clans, if they can, or just away, if they can't."

"Just away," Anders repeated flatly. "Just away into the woods with the templars crawling in them?"

"They are scared," Cillian found some steel for his spine, and straightened shoulders bowed by time, "They are looking for some way to survive. They have all heard what the shemlen have done to Clan Lavellan, and some of them have seen it." Cillian inclined his head to Shirallas.

Their escort was picking at his nails with a knife and making every effort to ignore the conversation, but at Cillian's comment he pressed a little too hard for comfort.

"They have suffered," Cillian continued. "Shemlen have seen to it. Keeper Yvenne and his clan were killed five years ago for the crime of venturing too close to Kirkwall, and then, as now, too few of them survived."

"You speak as if you don't count yourself among them," Fenris pointed out.

"Cillian exiled himself," Shirallas spoke up. "To make space for Neria."

"Clan Ralaferin keeps only a First, and no Seconds," Cillian smiled, but it was an empty smile, absent emotion, that just seemed to fill his face. "Neria was nine, and no other clan would take her, and so leaving kept her safe."

Clan Ralaferin's First was at least a teenager. The Exalted March was no excuse. "You're telling me you've been exiling mages for years?"

"Clan Ralaferin is not well regarded, and there are few clans that would take any of our people in," Cillian smiled another empty smile. "We intermingle too often with shemlen and the elves in their cities. In the past, the other clans believed we betrayed the People sharing our secrets with shemlen scholars, and now they blame us for the shemlen soldiers, and having to send their own mages away."

"They shouldn't be sending them away in the first place," Anders argued. "It isn't going to keep them safe. There is no amount of free mages the Chantry will tolerate. So long as each clan has a Keeper, they'll keep coming. You need to make a stand."

"A shem who speaks some sense," Shirallas sounded impressed.

"A wise man knows when not to fight," Cillian didn't. "Our People are outnumbered."

"We'll always be outnumbered," Anders said. The Chantry wasn't just their soldiers and their Brothers and their Sisters, it was every faithful Andrastian with a sharp sword or a sharp stick who would answer their call for Warriors of Conscience. "If we don't fight, we won't exist."

Cillian didn't deny it, "Do you have a plan of attack?"

"We plan to survive their attacks," Anders said. "I don't know how much you've heard out here, but we're apostates. We've been on the run throughout most of this Exalted March. We traveled with Clan Lavellan, and we were both stronger for it. They'd still be alive if we'd stayed together.

"That's why we're here. It isn't just about making sure their First is safe, it's about making sure they all are. We can help each other. We can work together to keep our people safe. You can't just send them away because you're scared."

"You speak as if you are doing any different," Fenris interjected.

"Excuse me?"

"Did I not warn you they wouldn't want him?"

Anders gestured at the aravels and all the elves among them, "They're his people."

Fenris scoffed, "Because they are both elves born in the woods?"

"They have to want him."

"As you want him?

It wasn't about what he wanted, "I'm not an elf."

"You are a mage," Fenris' grandiose declaration made a mockery of the word. "Have you not spent the past decade insisting that should matter more?"

"He deserves to know about his heritage."

"And you are incapable of teaching it?"

They were already teaching it, but Ferelden: Folklore and History was a far cry from the actual oral traditions of his own people. "He'll be better off with the Dalish."

Fenris didn't seem to think so, "You know this? He has told you this?"

"He's five," Anders frowned so hard he hurt his face.

"Can five year olds not speak?" Fenris asked.

Anders wasn't having this argument, "We can't teach him."

Unfortunately, Fenris was, "You cannot teach him, or you cannot teach yourselves?"

"You can't honestly believe the Dalish wouldn't do it better."

"And so no one else should try? Should only mages read your manifesto?"

"That's not-" Anders flexed his fingers into the sign for 'Stop,' and turned back to Cillian. "We need allies."

"You have a strange way of seeking them," Cillian noted.

"What would it take to convince you?" Anders asked.

"I am the Keeper of no clan," Cillian said. "I am not one to convince."

"Isn't there anyone here who isn't exiling their mages?" Anders asked.

Cillian thought on it, "... you might speak with Tianne, be it at your own risk."

Soliel came alive, from wherever their mind had wandered in the midst of their argument, jolting forward on the log like they'd been summoned from the Fade. "Iselle's clan is here?"

Cillian looked at her askance. "... Few still remember the name of their last First. It has been some time since she passed through the veil."

"She was a friend," Soliel, or the memory of her, explained. "So was her brother."

"Sendis is still with them," Cillian said with some caution. "But they do not speak to shemlen."

"I am not one," Soliel said.

Cillian looked to Shirallas.

Shirallas shrugged and stood, "It makes no difference to me if shems die."

Anders caught Soliel's sleeve when she moved to do the same, "How did she know them?"

"Iselle was Eiton's mother," Soliel explained. "You met her clan in Belwain's Dale."

"Her clan kicked us out of Belwain's Dale," Anders corrected her. "Why would they want to help us now?"

"They will want to help elves," Soliel corrected him back. "And Sendis may want to help Eiton. Soliel would want to speak with them, though she would want to do it alone."

"The way you speak of her is disturbing," Fenris muttered.

"Leave off," Anders snapped, and let go of Soliel's sleeve with a nod to them, "See if they'll side with us. We need all the support we can get."

Soliel left with Shirallas, while Neria returned with Mahanon, and Clan Ralaferin invited them to stay for the remainder of Arlathvhen. They had an aravel set aside for any unexpected arrivals, adorned with symbols of Sylaise. Mahanon was as excited by the symbols as he was to learn he was staying with him at Warden's Keep, and ran himself ragged exploring and explaining every inch of the landship until the clan invited them to a dinner the boy was too tired to eat.

The clan had prepared roast fowl, rhubarb, and roots, with hearth cakes and cobblers, and passed around pitchers of dandelion wine, and rolls of jasmine Anders was sure they'd laced with something stronger. The smoke spread through the forest like a fog, choking out the stars, and if Amell didn't already have a roll between his fingers Anders was sure he would have found a way to get high off the fumes.

Anders should have stopped him, but he'd been distracted once the dinner started, turning his thoughts over in his head and his food over in his fingers. He could eat. He could always eat, when Amell was there to test everything for him, but the abundance around him just made him all the more aware of its absence for others.

Anders turned a hearth cake over in his fingers, staring into a crackling fire as smoke and song spread through the forest. Soliel was still speaking to Iselle's old clan, and Amell had abandoned him to listen to the clans' hahrens argue over the correct version of some ancient story. It left him alone with Fenris, who tipped his cup towards the five shouting storytellers.

"I am told this is why there is only one Arlathvhen every ten years," Fenris joked. "No two hahrens can stand each other."

"At least they have each other," Anders said. "There are apostates out there starving-"

"And you intend to offer them your seconds?" Fenris stopped eating his own just to cut him off.

"They're capable of supporting the mages among them," Anders argued, because he had to argue with someone, and Fenris was someone with whom he could argue without risk of ruining an alliance or wondering what would come of his ire.

"So a full stomach keeps them safe?" Fenris demanded. "You said it yourself, the templars will still come for them."

"They can't just send them out into the woods to die," Anders muttered.

"Did you suspect this war would be without consequence? You should count yourself fortunate the Knight-Commander did not consider the warning from that insane Warden Commander of yours about 'apostates in the wood' was in regards to his own Wardens."

"There's nothing fortunate about them hunting the Dalish instead."

"There will always be the hunter and the hunted. The only way to stop a predator is by making it your prey."

"So you agree with me? They should join the fight?"

"Am I not here? Have I not read every wretched word of your manifesto? How else do you imagine Hawke had me learn my letters?" Fenris took a drink of his dandelion wine as if to wash away the bitter taste of Hawke's name. "You cannot find fault with those who haven't the strength to fight. There are few who ever find it."

"How can it be this bad already?" Anders dredged his free hand through his hair. "This war shouldn't have anything to do with them. The worst of it is in the cities."

"You say that as if they stand apart from them."

Anders waved a hand at the forest around them, "Don't they?"

"You hold the answer there in your hands," Fenris gestured to his untouched hearth cake. "Do you suspect they forage for sugar and spice? That gridirons grow on trees and cauldrons can be caught?"

Anders stared at the sugar sticking to the tips of his fingers and sighed, "Nate was right."

"Context, if I am to care."

"He said this war was going to swallow the world."

Silence stretched between them, overtaken by the sound of elven singing and elven arguing and elven lives, out on the edge of the world, as the Chantry did everything it could to force everyone but the faithful from it. Fenris squeezed his shoulder, and shocked him out of his stupor. "So let it be swallowed."

Anders finished his hearth cake, and set off in search of Soliel. He remembered the clan that had ousted them from Belwain's Dale, their vallaslin etched and not inked into their skin, and the stories Soliel had told of them. Kaiten's Knight Commander had raped their First and chased them from the city, and their hatred for humans extended to any who were born with even a drop of human blood.

They'd abandoned Eiton, even knowing he was their First Iselle's son, and Anders doubted that was a grudge even a demon of desire could convince them to give up.

Of all the clans gathered, they set themselves apart, their aravels arranged into a wall their posted sentries wouldn't let him cross. They brought Soliel and Shirallas out to him instead, and saw them off with little more than a terse nod.

"Well?" Anders asked on the walk back to the guest aravel Clan Ralaferin had offered them.

"They said she is a demon?" Shirallas made it sound a question.

"She is," Soliel agreed before Anders had the chance to lie.

"It's complicated," Anders wedged himself between them, but Shirallas didn't have the look of a man who'd learned he was in the presence of an abomination or its equivalent. He didn't seem tense or terrified or on the verge of turning them into the templars. The look he gave Soliel was less afraid and more appraising, and if it was honest, then his upbringing was something to envy.

The Dalish might have revered or in the very least respected magic, but demons were different. In Anders' experience, most clans saw shared souls as something to separate or something to slay, and he'd assumed all the clans at the Arlathvhen would be the same.

"Tianne speaks to my kind," Soliel squeezed his hand, as if they'd read his mind and meant to send him reassurance through the rosewood. "Her clan lives among demons."

"They what?" Anders must have misheard them.

"Werewolves," Shirallas clarified. "You didn't see them on the way here?"

"They made a pact with a demon of rage," Soliel explained. "They swore themselves to Fen’Harel, when they were forced to flee Kaiten. They offered their dead to the wolves of the Wildervale, and the wolves were reborn from their rage. They were the answer to their anger, and now the clan keeps them close at hand.

"They will help. If any elves cross the river into Glendel's Hollow, they will keep them, and if any humans cross, they will kill them."

It wasn't exactly the assault on the Chantry's forces Anders was hoping for, but at least if worst came to worst, their elven mages would have somewhere to run. "What about Eiton?" Anders asked. "Have they heard anything?"

Soliel shook her head.

They rejoined the other clans, and Anders spent the rest of the evening appealing to Keeper after Keeper for support, but whatever mages meant to them, their people mattered more. They wished him well, and offered him prayers and nothing more.

As the evening went on the fog lifted and the fires died, and one by one the elves retired, but Anders couldn't sleep. Their aravel had space for all of them, with foldaway beds big enough to share, but the scent of alcohol was on Amell's breath and the scent of jasmine was in his hair, and it just made Anders angry about his conversion all over again when it hadn't even cured his addictions.

Anders left to sit on the steps with his anger, and stare up at the stars. He could make out the Chained Man and the Maiden among them, but the Watchful Eye was only watchful in the south. The lodestar stayed close to the horizon, this far north, as if even the Maker thought they didn't matter, or maybe just couldn't quite bring Himself to look upon where His Bride had ended Her long march.

Glandivalis felt heavy on his hip, but it didn't matter if he was worthy of it when he was the only one willing to wield it.

Anders sought Tianne's clan back out in the morning and thanked them for their support, and then went and found Shirallas to tell him they were ready to set out. There was no reason to stay, if they couldn't convince the Keepers, but they must have said something to convince their Firsts.

Shirallas came back with Cillian, and Neria, and half a dozen mages more.

"You would leave your clans to come with us?" Fenris asked, when Anders couldn't find the words.

"They don't understand," Shirallas said, to a chorus of nods. "The world is wrong. We need to make it right."

Anders swallowed his shock, and shook Cillian's hand, "Didn't you say wise men know when not to fight?"

"I did," Cillian said. "Though I never said that we were wise."

Chapter 247: From Kirkwall We Fled: For Our Children's Future

Summary:

"No longer are we hunted! We shall never again
Be prey, waiting to be struck down!"

- Shartan 9:13

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments, and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading!

I appreciate any feedback, and I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon The First Fortnight in Ferventis
Warden’s Keep

In the aftermath of the destruction of Kirkwall’s Chantry and the annulment of its Circle, armies marched across the Free Marches, hunting escaped apostates and maleficarum with the blessing of the Divine, who believed them the greatest threat to Thedas since the Qunari invaded. The Free Cities were placed under martial law, and the call was sent out for Warriors of Conscience.

Many answered, a group calling themselves 'The Purifiers' the most vicious among them. They formed in the Free City of Kaiten, and with the advent of summer, spread to the rest. They took up in local taverns, recruiting Warriors of Conscience for the cause, and when they couldn't find them, they forced them. Their members were merciless, executing anyone suspected of harboring apostates, and the people were too scared to protest.

Local leaders locked themselves away, shuttering their windows against the war, and leaving their freeholders to fend for themselves. Knight-Templars set their swords to the city-states, and carved the Mages' Collective from them. First in Kirkwall, and then in Kaiten, and then in all the rest. From Hasmal to Hercinia, the shadow guild was wiped out, and hadn't been heard from in months.

The Minanter ran red with the blood of mages as apostates fled in all directions, seeking asylum. Ferelden was the first to offer it. Weak and ravaged by war, Ferelden relied on the Frostback Mountains for safety should the Divine send soldiers seeking retribution. The Venatori followed, mages from the Tevinter Imperium, offering apostates citizenship in exchange for indentured servitude. Those that remained were sent to Ansburg, and to Anders.

The Grey Wardens claimed the apostates as acolytes, and offered them safe harbor at Warden's Keep. A ruin of the Fourth Blight, the would-be-acolytes worked to repair the walls, and brace for battle. They secured a supply of lyrium along the Indigo Road, and they found allies among those who believed in freedom and were willing to fight for it.

They established a rookery in the old griffon roost, and sent word via raven. They were alive. They were apostates, and they were alive. They were maleficarum, and they were alive. They were abominations, and they were alive. They were mages, and they were alive.

Refugees arrived from all over.

Most of them were children.

Children sent from their clans or saved from their Circles, escorted by hooded men and women who offered cabalistic tokens and spoke in cryptic phrases. Not members of the Mages' Collective, when they'd been the first casualties of the war -- but whoever else survived. The mages that remained weren't martyrs. They were the kind that stayed alive.

Men and women who must have been maleficarum, their arms lined with casting scars, who worked for the 'Man of Light.' Followers of someone or something called 'She,' who helped free apprentices who feared failing their Harrowings.

Almost-Andrastians, whose cowls covered their faces, and whose words were close but not quite the Chant of Light. They brought orphans: children taken from Circle mages, and raised in Chantry monasteries, where they were trained to be templars, and watched for signs of magic.

The Almost-Andrastians saved them if they saw it first. They might have been Chanters, save that their robes were a little too red, and the children they brought back arrived clutching strange idols of charred wood, to which they whispered unfamiliar prayers.

The Almost-Andrastians were Disciplines of the Masked Andraste, 'the shepherds shall see the lambs to sunlit pastures,' their most common call, 'and stone the wolves who threaten them,' the correct response.

Of all their allies, they were by far the most organized, but their arrivals were outnumbered by apostates on the run. They came by carriage. They came by boat. They came on horseback. They came on foot -- following symbols of serpents, stacked cairns, and broken circles, for want of rumors whispered in shadows or written in ciphers.

A young governess who ran off with her charge when they came into magic. Dalish parents who chose exile with their sons and daughters. An old senior enchanter, who'd received special dispensation to take her apprentices on a research expedition, and escaped during the night.

"I used a knife. One by one while they slept. I had to keep it quiet. The Lieutenant took a bite," the old enchanter laughed, and waved the mangled hand in question, chewed through the side in the shape of a crescent. "They're killing us," She laughed again, halfway to hysterical. "Those of us whose research they don't like. They killed Jessimerre. All twelve of her apprentices. I couldn't let that happen to mine."

They couldn't agree on how to handle the kids.

The Aequitarians wanted to reunite them with their families. The Libertarians were certain their families would turn any attempts to contact them into a trap, and turn them over to the templars. The Isolationists wanted to set up remote cells and safe houses, and send them away until the war was over.

Anders didn't know what the Resolutionists wanted. He hadn't asked. He didn't care.

"They can't stay here," Anders said.

"He agrees with me for once," Sketch said.

"No, no safe houses," Anders would never forget what happened to Nika. "We're not doing that again. We need to send them somewhere the war won't reach them, and Ferelden is the only country offering asylum."

"And how do you propose we send them there?" Islau asked.

"Ships?" Anders shouldn't have had to say.

"Whose?" Islau asked. "The Venatori? Their riverboats won't survive the open ocean."

"What about the king?" Anders pressed. "He's the one offering asylum, isn't he?"

"The Margrave isn't," Amell said. "The Aurums would suspect something if anyone other than Teagan started traveling to Ansburg. Even if they didn't report it, any ships we sent would have to declare with the local port authority and submit to inspection. We'd have to establish a new trade agreement to have any chance of passing it without arousing suspicion-"

"So set up a new trade agreement."

"Ansburg… doesn't have a lot to offer, Anders-"

"I don't care. We have kids here. It's only a matter of time before the war reaches us. If you can't set up a new trade agreement, why can't you use Teagan?"

"Teagan doesn't want anything to do with mages. He's already spoken out against granting the Aldebrandt's West Hill. Half the privy council is calling for another melee and claiming the laws of inheritance can't apply to a mage-"

"Does it matter? We're mages. We have magic."

"Anders-"

"You can't mean to compel the man," Islau argued, though the mention of blood magic had long since ceased to shock him when there were so many maleficarum among them.

"Why not?" Anders asked.

"Anders, can I talk to you in private?" Amell asked.

"Are we adjourned, then?" Nemmaya guessed.

"No, we're not adjourned," Anders snapped.

They couldn't keep the kids. They might have had a creche and a curriculum, but they couldn't keep the kids. It wasn't safe. It was never going to be safe, and Anders might have been resigned to that before, but Amell was here now, and he had resources they didn't. What happened to the kids in Kirkwall couldn't happen again. Anders wasn't going to watch another little boy be forced into a warzone, fearing for his life and asking if he mattered to the Maker.

"If you can't send ships to Ansburg, why not Wycome?" Anders asked. "The Venatori could bring the kids to Revas' Rescue."

"Wycome should be under quarantine," Amell reminded him. "We'd be risking red lyrium exposure."

"So you risk it! You know it can be cleansed-"

"-with enough resources. We had to requisition three Circles-"

"-so you know it can be done-"

"-at cost."

"-for kids!"

"... the Felicisima Armada helped us last time, didn't they?" Sketch said in the awkward silence that followed. "Have we had any luck contacting them?"

"We sent letters to Estwatch and Llomerryn to Captain Isabela, but we haven't heard back," Ella said. "She might not be there."

"If we're not sending them to Ferelden, we should start setting up other strongholds outside the cities. I know of a few places-" Sketch kept talking.

Anders hardly heard him over his heart, raging against the confines of his chest and making it hard to breathe. He couldn't believe Amell was arguing with him. It was one thing not to like children. It was another to let them be casualties. They had to do everything they could to keep that from happening.

Amell should have agreed. It took everything in Anders to keep from arguing as much, and seemed a miracle of the Maker he made it not just to the end of the meeting, but all the way back to his room, holding in his outburst until they were alone.

Somehow, he even managed not to slam the door. "Compel Teagan."

Amell didn't look particularly proud of his restraint, a hand to his hip and a disappointed frown to his face, "Anders, you can't out me as a maleficar around-"

"Other maleficarum?" Anders cut him off.

"Anyone," Amell didn't make any effort to look at him, and it made it hard to argue when Anders couldn't tell if he was even paying attention.

"You're the one who said you were done hiding who you are," Anders reminded him. "You're a Grey Warden, remember? What does it matter?"

"It matters to the mages here. Your own people aren't the ones you want to scare," Amell said, and may as well have slapped him when he added, "You're being careless."

"Compel Teagan," Anders snapped.

"Anders-"

"There is nothing you can say that will convince me you do not-"

"Teagan's already compelled."

"What?"

"He's already compelled," Amell found the edge of the old workstation and leaned back against it. "I'd have to remove the original compulsion if I was going to replace it-"

"So remove it," Anders started pacing. "Why are we even having this conversation? What could possibly be more important than this?"

"... kids," Amell said, rather ominously.

"Obviously, kids, Amell, are you even listening?"

"Teagan likes kids."

"So what?" Anders stopped pacing and spun back to face him. "So you can convince him to help them without compelling him?"

"No," Amell folded his arms over his chest.

Anders tried not to grind his teeth, "Amell, I swear-"

"Anders, he likes kids."

"Everyone likes kids! Why don't you like kids!?"

"Teagan likes them too much. There's a reason I compelled him, Anders," Amell said meaningfully, but Anders had no idea what he meant.

There was nothing he could mean. Everyone liked children. Even most templars liked children, enough that they held off on harrowing them until they turned sixteen. They might even spare them, if the war ever reached Warden’s Keep, and they had to worry about the castle falling to a siege, but that was no reason to risk it. They had to send them somewhere safe, and if Teagan liked children Anders didn't see why-

Gerod liked children.

"... he likes kids," Anders realized.

"Yes."

"You compelled him not to like kids."

"Yes."

"... how do you know he likes kids?"

"... I just do. We can offer asylum to any apostates that make it to us, but we can't send them ships."

Amell could have sent them armies. He had a score of ships at his command, and the Silver Order alongside them. He could have sent support, if he could look past the fact that they were working with the Venatori.

"You said you support me," Anders said. "Are you seriously so unwilling to work with the Venatori that you won't send any ships? And don't tell me it has anything to do with stopping the spread of red lyrium in Wycome, you could send ships to Bastion-"

"To Antiva?" Amell made it sound as if he was the unreasonable one. "Anders, I understand that Mahanon means something to you-"

'You'd send ships for Kieran,' the accusation crawled up his throat and battered at the back of his teeth. Anders found the strength to swallow it, and went back to pacing. "They can't stay here."

"There's a reason they're evacuating here, Anders. The Knight-Commanders are occupied with keeping the city-states under martial law, and right now the safest place is outside them. The squads they have searching the woods are nothing compared to the ones they have sweeping the streets.

"This is a Grey Warden stronghold, where you can claim asylum as acolytes, and it's somewhere you can fortify. Your best chance at keeping civilians out of the war is by keeping it from reaching them, and convincing more cities and Circles to rise up while maintaining focus on the skirmishes at the border."

"Skirmishes the Venatori are responsible for because they're the ones sending soldiers," Anders reminded him.

"If we start sending ships and soldiers, they'll see us as a threat, and we'll make ourselves a target," Amell said. "The only reason the Chantry is tolerating our offer of asylum is because we aren't involved. We already angered them establishing a Circle in Orzammar and allowing the rest autonomy."

He sounded so patient. Anders couldn't stand the way he made every argument so one sided. He never raised his hands, or his voice, or even his feet, leaning back against the workstation while Anders paced before it, on the verge of shouting or sobbing, with his hands alternating between his waist and his hair. Amell was always so put together in comparison, it was like he didn't care.

He never argued. He just explained, rephrasing or rewording the same excuses like he thought Anders just didn't understand, because he never allowed for the possibility that he might be wrong, and someone else might be right, and it might warrant changing his mind, but apparently unless it was written in the bloody Cantos he wouldn't bloody listen.

"Thanks for your support," Anders left before he said something he'd regret.

Anders wandered Warden’s Keep until he ended up at the creche. Mahanon and Amal were both there. At some point, Amal had started calling himself a squire, and declared the younger boy his page. Anders couldn't say how long it would last, but Mahanon had taken to following the older boy around, dutifully carrying out whatever tasks Amal invented for him.

Recently, those tasks had been 'helping Gatsi with the defenses,' which consisted of gathering sharp sticks to be stabbed in the dirt and covered with leaves to 'trick the templars.' It had seemed harmless enough, until Alain had actually stepped in one.

Anders might have blamed them, if they were just bored, and not trying to find ways to feel safe. Amal would always have a place with the Grey Wardens, but Mahanon was a mage. There was nowhere to send him. He had no clan and no caretaker outside the creche, and Anders couldn't help caring about him.

He couldn't help caring about Evelyn either. The girl he'd rescued from the Gallows over a year ago now, who knew how to heal, and wanted to help, but ran at the first opportunity. Anders taught the kids healing when he could, and she was always a good student. He'd let her keep Sigrun's earring, the first time he'd sent her away, and the promise that he'd come back for it seemed to help her feel safe.

He couldn't make the same promise if they sent her back to her parents, but their council voted to give the older kids a choice. They talked to each of the teenagers in turn, and told them they could try and contact their parents, so long as they understood the risk they might be sent back to the Circle.

For most of them, it didn't matter. They'd been too young when they were taken, and they didn’t remember anything about their families or where they were from. Without any records, they had no real way to find out. Most of them weren't from noble families. Their parents had no surnames, and they had no way to find them.

Evelyn was an exception.

"We can send word to your parents," Anders sat her down across from him in the infirmary to sign.

"They sent me away," Evelyn signed back.

"They might have changed their minds," Anders signed, not because he believed it, but because if there was a chance, then she deserved a choice.

"They said I was cursed," Evelyn signed. "They said the Maker cursed them for conceiving me in sin."

Anders didn't have an age appropriate response to that. "You could see your brother."

"He doesn't live with them anymore," Evelyn signed. "They sent him to a monastery to pray for a miracle. They used to say being deaf was worse than death, because he'd never hear the Chant of Light."

"Of all the idiotic-" Anders started, and forced himself to stop. "What about the rest of your family? The Trevelyans are one of the largest noble houses in Ostwick," Anders knew, because Amell had told him.

The little mage girl he'd rescued was the daughter of Lord and Lady Trevelyan. They were banns, and they were bastards. Pious and powerful, they gave their youngest children to the Chantry, and had ties to the Knight-Templars, the Seekers of Truth, and half the Grand Clerics in the Free Marches.

Anders had heard the name once before, in a half-forgotten life. House Trevelyan's summer balls were the envy of the season. Leandra had spent all of Cloudreach waiting for an invitation -- eagerly asking after the mail in the morning, angrily accusing everyone when it never arrived.

Bodahn must have misplaced it. Sandal must have destroyed it. Gamlen must have been too great a shame. Anders must have been too great a scandal. Hawke-...

Hawke must have just been.

"You're asking me to ride out to Ostwick to beg for an invitation to a ball?"

"I shouldn't have to ask. You're supposed to provide for this family."

"I do provide for this family-!"

"You ruined this family -- working for those wretched Red Irons --"

"Working for the Red Irons is what got us into the city-"

"We're the shame of this city. How could you do this to me? How could you do this to your mother, getting involved with those horrible people, after everything I've done for you? You've ruined me. You've ruined my name, and now you're ruining your father’s."

"What does father have to do with this?"

"The Amells would have gotten an invitation. Your father would have been ashamed of this fixation you have with his name. He never put his pride before his family."

"He's family! Father's family! You want to forget him, fine, but I'm not going to change my name just because he's dead-"

Leandra had slapped him then. She'd slapped Hawke a lot, and she'd never been ashamed to hide it. It was just something that she did, what seemed like every other time they spoke, and Anders had never said anything about it because for some reason it never occurred to him there might be something to say.

That it might matter. That it might not have been normal. That parents, real parents, and not just birth-mothers and blood-fathers, were supposed to be kind to their children, but how was he supposed to know, when his own father never had been?

"... Aunt Lucille was always nice to me," Evelyn stopped signing to whisper.

"Do you want to write to her?" Anders asked.

"Maybe," Evelyn toyed with Sigrun's earring. "Can I think about it?"

"You can think about it," Anders signed. "Are you ready for dinner?"

Evelyn nodded, which meant she was hungry, or meant she was brave.

Anders had concerns about the cook. Devon was from Highever - (Born and bread. Get it? Bread like baking?) - and he was a boy. He couldn't have been a day over twenty, round faced and wide eyed, carrying his house on his back and his kitchen on his hips when he'd shown up at Warden’s Keep.

Nate had sort of sent for him. Devon's 'Nan' (Mother? Aunt? Nanny? Some or none of the above?) had been a cook at Castle Cousland, but she'd died during the Fifth Blight, when Rendon Howe had massacred every man, woman, and child at Castle Cousland in a coup against the teyrn.

Devon had been even more of a boy back then, but somehow he'd survived. Hidden away in the larder, or under the floorboards, or the shadows of the root cellar for all of Rendon Howe's reign until Amell had killed him, and Fergus Cousland had come back.

Teyrn Fergus Cousland held Nate in such high regard all of Highever (and Devon, being from there) had been raised to see him as a hero. They told stories that turned into songs that turned back into stories until none of them were true.

Nate hadn't just joined the Grey Wardens for the Thaw Hunt, he'd served with them throughout the Fifth Blight. Nate hadn't come back from the Free Marches to avenge his father, he'd come back to kill him. In some stories he even struck the final blow. He'd saved Fergus Cousland's life - once, twice, three times from bandits, darkspawn, dragons-

"That's ridiculous," Nate cut off Anders' teasing retelling.

"Dragons are where you draw the line?" Anders laughed around his drink.

"I understand Devon can be a bit-"

"-childish? You know, it might have something to do with him being a child."

"He can cook," Nate gestured to their plates.

Anders had doubts. "He can cook wyvern?"

Nate didn't assuage them. "He studied at a cook's guild in Crestwood."

"You know, Nate, I really wish you'd just said yes," Anders sighed.

"He says he can cook wyvern," Nate clarified.

"We're all going to die."

It was a sentiment most of the mages seem to share. Stomachs rumbled and mouths watered, but only their eyes ate, raking over the wyverns their hunting parties had brought back from the Weyrs, carved and cooked into roasts and rounds and ribs, and served alongside an assortment of roots.

"Fuck it," Sketch rolled up his sleeves and stabbed one of the questionable slabs with a knife to brave his way through a bite. The rest of the mages did the same when Sketch didn't keel over and die, but Anders was sure someone else did somewhere.

They'd sold the wyvern's venom to Nemmaya's contact in the alienage. Shesella was the leader of the alienage and the Bleakwatch both, and she was brutal.

She had to be brutal, because if she wasn't brutal she'd be dead. The world was getting worse, and it took brutal people to stand up to Knight-Commanders and Guard-Captains and their bloodthirsty men. Anders didn't know why she wanted the poison, but the alienage deserved to be armed if it came down to a purge.

There'd been one in Denerim.

Amell didn't like to talk about it.

"You have to tell me," Anders said, when elven apostates started fleeing the city in the summer. "We have to know what to expect."

"... unrest," Amell conceded, between pulls of a jasmine-scented cigar Anders was sure Cillian had given him.

Anders still wasn't sure what the Dalish laced it with. Witherstalk, if he had to guess. The smoke sank, and settled over the waters of the bathhouse, warmed by the hypocausts Gatsi had repaired. It had a scent like sassafras, warm spice and sweet sap Anders could taste whenever Amell talked.

It took his anger, and it took his anxiety, and it took his insecurities away, and Anders almost didn't recognize himself without them. He felt all but empty, sitting with his legs in Amell's lap and breathing in his breath, fingers following the water beading down his chest.

"What happened?" Anders asked.

"People," Amell shrugged, the fingers of his free hand trailing over the nape of Anders' neck and making him miss the days when all Amell smoked was elfroot, and Anders could ask him to share. "Prejudice."

"Not an answer," Anders pointed out.

"... Everything is outside the Circle. We never really felt what happened to Ferelden… At the end of the occupation, the Orlesians had their lands and titles stripped from them, and were forced to swear fealty to King Maric.

"Most of them did, but few of them meant it. He compensated them to keep the peace, and they used their coin and their connections to form a society dedicated to the restoration of Orlesian rule."

"What does this have to do with elves?" Anders asked.

"What?" Amell lost his train of thought and his fingers in his hair.

"Love, focus. What do expat Orlesian have to do with elves?"

"What about elves?"

"You said the Orlesians had something to do with why the alienage was purged," Anders set his fingers to Amell's chin and turned him away from his cigar.

"Right, sorry," Amell shook his head. "They were bolder, after the Blight. They wanted to pressure Alistair into annulling his marriage with Anora, so he would wed Empress Celene, the same way they did with Cailan."

"I thought you said that was Eamon's idea," Anders recalled.

"It was his wife's," Amell exhaled like the idea amused him. "Her cousin was a Restorationist, and convinced Isolde to join."

"Why didn't you out her when you outed Eamon?"

"I like her more."

"Enough to overlook treason? You can't want Ferelden ruled by Orlais."

"She was willing to let the world burn to keep her son out of the Circle."

"... okay. So what did this society do?"

"They hired Orlesian mercenaries to help Gell Lendon secure control of Edgehall, after his half-brother died in the Blight. The local banns were able to drive them back across the border with help from a nearby clan, who asked for free passage through their lands in exchange.

"... Alistair had just declared Denerim's alienage an elven bannorn, and named our friend its bann. She'd been petitioning for elves to be able to own land inside the alienage and serve as blackhallers over their own cases…

"... She was so outspoken," Amell took a deep breath of witherstalk, and leaned his head back on the floor of the bathhouse. "Edgehall agreed to everything, and signed an accord with the elves, but the rest of the Bannorn resisted.

"House Baranti called it a 'crisis at the border,'" Amell almost laughed. "They accused the elves of conspiring with the Orlesians, and most of the nobles were still angry with Alistair for granting the elves Ostagar. They started calling him the Commoner King, and said he favored freemen…

"A purge can only be issued to quell a riot or with a royal charter, and since Alistair would never issue one, the Arl of Denerim tried to starve them. The alienage was its own bannorn, so Vaughan set the bond for elves to 'enter Denerim' at a sovereign…

"... the protests were peaceful. The elves just walked out…"

Amell trailed off, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, and seemed to forget the cigar between his fingers. He didn't need to finish. Anders could imagine the rest. They'd call the walk out a riot, and then do whatever they wanted. Anders couldn't remember why he'd asked about it.

"They kettled them with tower shields," Amell told the ceiling, but the words were so heavy they sank with his smoke. "... they just pressed them into a corner… forced them so close together they suffocated…"

"... that won't happen here," Anders wrapped an arm around Amell's waist to hold him.

"It happens everywhere."

It wouldn't anymore.

Wycome’s refugees had brought the red plague to Ansburg, and served as a distraction as the city struggled to keep the spread contained. The quarantine was met with resistance from the local populace, and the tainted teachings of the Red Divine.

The Order of the Fiery Promise converted whole Chantries overnight. The Red Divine preached Exaltations, portents of the Maker’s return, and believed red lyrium to be His blessing and His blood. They said the Song that had to be spread to the four corners of the world wasn't the Chant of Light at all, but rather the sound of red lyrium.

They were also one of the few offshoots of the Chantry that wasn't against mages and their magic. The fact that they were insane wasn't ideal, but Anders had lower standards every day. He wasn't about to count them allies, like the Disciplines of the Masked Andraste and whatever strange denomination Mother Renette had made up, but since he'd taught more of their healers to cleanse red lyrium they were less threatening than the templars.

With the knight-templars so distracted, guarding monasteries and herding the sick into infirmaries, more apostates passed through Ansburg every day. Warden’s Keep had new arrivals, and new resources, and they used them to set up safe houses, to secure their supply line, and, Maker willing, to retake Kaiten.

Derandt was a drunk. Eiton's old retainer had retained a great deal of drink, and busied himself brewing sack mead ever since they'd lost the boy. He was so deep in mourning he'd all but buried himself in the woods alongside his brew, and had to be dragged back to Warden’s Keep twice in two weeks, until word came that Eiton had survived.

Derandt was a whole day sober, and struggling to stay upright, but he was there, swaying in the council chamber when their latest shipment of lyrium from the Blue Owls arrived. They couldn't say where Ravi was keeping Eiton, but they assured them he was alive, and he had a surprising amount of support. If they could just send a few people to find him and free him-

"Of course," Amell said.

"I thought you said you couldn't send soldiers?" Anders asked.

"Shale isn't a soldier."

Shale was a golem, and evidently they were due to arrive any day.

"Not that I'm not grateful," Anders said. "But how did you know we would need them?"

"I didn't."

"Then why did you send for them?"

"I didn't send for them," Amell said. "I sent for Wynne."

Chapter 248: From Kirkwall We Fled: The Bones of Our Brothers

Summary:

To throw yourselves at their feet and ask forgiveness.

 

- Shartan 9:4

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 1 Solis Late Afternoon
Warden’s Keep: War Room

"They call it an ocularum," Wynne said of the skull she set before them.

Human. The skull was separated into segments, where a skilled phrenologist had written out the measurements of each module. The propensities, the lower and superior sentiments, the intellectual and reflecting faculties -- every intimate detail of the kind of person they'd once been.

Etched across the corners and the curves were a dozen different runes, with a soft and subtle glow, flowing with lyrium as if alive. Frozen lightning crystals had been set in the eye sockets, currents of electricity giving the appearance of irises that seemed to follow the movement in the room.

The skull wasn't the same as Son Cadeau or Dans Leur Sang. It wasn't that same polished white, perfectly clean and perfectly clinical. It hadn't been bleached, the shades of it like sand, ranging from white to gold to bronze to all the colors in between.

The arcane artifact was overflowing with energy, warping reality around the ocularum, and thinning the Veil until Anders could almost see through it. It might have been an amplifier or a conduit of some kind, like a mage's staff or grimoire, save that it whispered, like the compartmentalized runes of Amell's old grimoire.

The skull was a bit more morbid.

Wynne had refused to discuss it with anyone other than Amell. She'd shown up at Warden’s Keep with a stone golem unlike any Anders had ever seen -- covered in countless runes and enchanted crystals -- and immediately used it to commandeer the war room.

It wasn't an it, but Anders still wasn't sure what the right way to refer to Shale was. Amell used words like they and them, but Wynne used she and her, and when Anders had asked how Shale would prefer that he address them, all the golem said was, "Don't."

Shale had opted out of whatever conversation came with the ocularum, which left Anders alone in the war room with Amell, Wynne, and the whispers. Anders couldn't make out any words, and imagined whatever wisps were bound to the skull were so fragmented they were incapable of forming them.

Wynne slapped his hand away when he reached for it.

"Am I supposed to know what that is?" Anders frowned, rubbing his palm.

The old hag hadn't changed at all. She was still wearing the robes of a Senior Enchanter and the insignia of the Circle, like she was ready to fall in line with the rest of the Chantry rank and file as soon as they showed up. Knowing Wynne, she'd sent word to the Knight-Commanders as soon as she'd arrived.

Anders couldn't believe Amell had put them all at risk just to research some strange skull. Whatever an ocularum was wasn't worth the lives of all the mages they'd saved over the past six months.

Wynne made a show of shaking out her sleeves to fold her arms across her chest, "I think you can see exactly what it is."

"You know one of us is blind?" Anders reminded her.

Wynne shook her head through a scoff, "These days I don't know which of you that is."

"Wynne," Amell hadn't said more than a handful of words since she'd arrived. He'd been so bloody taciturn it was like he was learning how to talk, struggling through 'Please' and 'Thank You's Wynne couldn't possibly deserve. "Please."

"They are skulls." Wynne finally relented.

"... skulls," Amell repeated - in such a soft voice Anders struggled to hear it over the whispering ocularum. "Why are they skulls?"

"The Venatori use them to manipulate the Veil," Wynne wiped her hands off on her robe, as if trying to clean off some imagined filth, and started flicking her fingers when her robes failed to suffice. "To amplify or to dispel."

"So they're necromancers," Anders translated. "What difference does that make?"

"Necromancers," Wynne rolled her eyes and waved at Amell. "I know necromancers. These men -- these monsters -- are no Mortalitasi. These people were not dead."

"What are you saying?" Anders asked. "That they killed people to make these?"

"That is exactly what I am saying," Wynne said.

"So what? These were templars?" Anders guessed, eyeing the enchanted skull.

"They" -Wynne stressed the word- "were Tranquil."

"... and?" Anders asked.

"And then your allies murdered them," Wynne frowned.

"You mean they offered them mercy," Anders corrected her.

"You are a demon and you are damned," Wynne spat.

"Damn me, then, but don't act like the Tranquil aren't already dead. Who cares what happens to their bones? You want to talk about who really profanes the dead, why don't you talk about how the Chantry parades the bodies of dead mages before the world until the world stops seeing them?

"They sever us from our souls and there is nothing left to save. I would know. I've seen it. I've healed someone through it. I brought his soul back for just a second -- and he used it to beg for death, so if you think some skull means more than all the mages the Venatori have saved-"

"Stop," Amell cut him off, somehow, when his voice was so soft Anders could hardly hear it, but Amell said stop and for some reason he stopped. "Wynne, is this…?"

"... it is," Wynne said softly, sadly, sympathetically.

Anders didn't know why she bothered to be any of those things now, when she'd never been any of them before. She'd never cared about the cause of mages and she was a bloody hypocrite if she cared about a corpse.

"Leave," Amell said. "Please."

"Finally!" Anders threw up his hands and stood. "You shouldn't have sent for her in the first place-"

"Anders," Amell cut him off again. "Leave."

"What?" Anders finally turned to look at him, but Amell's head was bowed, his fingertips resting gingerly on the edge of the table, far from the skull Wynne had set before them, as if he couldn't bring himself to touch it. "No. Why? What does it matter if they're necromancers? You know this is a mercy-"

"Leave," Amell hissed, and Anders had to.

Anders had to turn around. Anders had to leave the room. Anders had to walk away. Anders had to leave the room. Anders had to open the door. Anders had to leave the room. Anders had to cross the threshold. Anders had to leave the room. Anders had to shut the door behind him. Anders had to leave the room. Anders had to leave the room. Anders had to leave the room.

"Fuck!" Anders doubled over in the hallway, stumbling blindly forward until his hand connected with the wall, and he retched through the splitting pain in his skull.

Maker save him, his head had never hurt more. He felt like Amell had taken to him with his bare hands and scalped him with nothing but his nails so he could carve the urge to leave the room across every module of his mind. The compulsion clung to him even out in the hall, keeping him from storming back into the room no matter how many times he turned back around and tried, and somewhere, in whatever as yet unknown recess his mind capable of rational thought, Anders knew if he just calmed down and concentrated he could cleanse the compulsion but he couldn't.

He was too angry, too outraged, too offended, too indignant, too insulted, too confused, too compelled to do anything but spin in furious circles until he made himself sick.

Anders laced his hands over his head, and fought through a handful of deep breaths, trying to force himself to calm down. When that failed, Anders tried for the door again and caught Wynne on the way out of it. For a moment, it was open behind her, and Anders would have pushed his way inside, if he'd cleansed Amell's compulsion, but he hadn't, so he couldn't.

"You harridan," Anders rounded on Wynne instead when his feet refused to go forward. "Where do you get off coming here and claiming-"

"I have nothing to say to you," Wynne pushed past him only to spin back around and thrust a gnarled finger into his chest, "It is wrong. They murdered those poor people. Nevermind that they were Tranquil-"

"Nevermind!? Of course you never mind! You don't care how many mages are made Tranquil, you just don't want them to be martyrs."

"Those men and women-"

"-walking dead!" Anders railed back. "Empty husks-!"

"-deserve the dignity-"

"-of death! Do you have any idea how many souls are sealed away behind a branded brow? Have you ever done the math? The percent of mages who don't make it? More than half-!"

"-were safe inside the Circle! The Tranquil can't survive outside them, and they show us exactly why we need them. Even with the best education, surrounded by instructors, so many of us struggle to control our power-"

"Of us? Don't act like you've been through what we've been through this past year-"

"And whose fault is that? We are all in the same boat, and it behooves everyone to paddle, but you would rather throw the Tranquil over for fear they'll weigh you down," Wynne shot back, silver hair unraveling from its bun alongside her composure. "For a man who claims to have the interests of all mages at heart, you seem remarkably willing to cast aside those who fail to meet your standards."

"My standards?" Anders laughed. "What about your standards? Don't think I've forgotten what you said in Kinloch, telling mages it's better to endure than to hope for better, convincing them surrender is their only option-"

"It is the only option, thanks to you! Do you think I don't know what you did? You are a madman -- to bring us to bloodshed -- remaking the same mistakes of the magisters that brought the world to the very brink of destruction--"

"Who do you think is destroying it? Do you even care that Kirkwall’s Knight-Commander had already sent for the Right of Annulment? She was just waiting for an excuse-"

"One you didn't have to give!"

"She would have found another! They always have, and they always will, until we rise up to stop them."

"Amell stopped them-!" Wynne seemed to shock herself in saying. An irritable glance over her shoulder confirmed Amell hadn't been there to hear before she continued. "Do you suspect I know nothing of annulments?"

"Then you know nothing excuses them. I'm one man. They could have made me a martyr, but this isn't about me anymore. This is about all mages."

"All mages," Wynne scoffed. "You care so little about all mages that you destroyed the one thing that gave them hope-"

"The Chantry never gave us hope! You can't be that naive to think-"

"I was naive to think you were ever a good man."

"There are no good mages left; the Chantry made them Tranquil."

"You know nothing of the Chantry, of the Tranquil, of the good men that are made them."

"Spare me," Anders rolled his eyes. "Do you have any idea how many mages we've saved with this alliance? Did you really come here to ruin it over the Tranquil?"

"I came here because it was asked of me," Wynne tucked a loose strand of hair away behind her ear, and seemed to make an effort to do the same with her anger. "Because a man I have known only to be a monster wrote to me begging for us to set aside our differences to see if we could save the innocent people forced to suffer the consequences of what you have done."

"Why do you care so much about the Tranquil?" Anders asked.

"They are people," Wynne said stubbornly.

"They were people," Anders corrected her.

Wynne shook her head and sighed, "That person was his brother."

Fuck.

Anders stumbled around, reeling, and caught himself with a hand on the wall when he thought he might collapse. His brother. A sound less a laugh and more the manic mockery of one escaped him, and Anders cleared his throat for fear of another. His fucking brother.

The hall seemed to stretch out before him, sconces set in like signposts in the stone, pointing the way back to the war room and the ramifications of what he'd said and done. Veilfire cast everything emerald, like some cursed corridor so deep in the Fade the Black City would have been a welcome sight. This was a nightmare. Worse, because at least then he could wake up.

Anders was never going to recover from this.

Anders dragged his hands through his hair, staring up at the ceiling, waiting for it to dissolve into the demesne of whatever demon was ruining his life. Maker's fucking mercy, it was his brother.

Wynne had brought him his bloody brother. His bloody brother's bloody skull because she couldn't just tell or even show Amell his brother was dead, because he couldn't bloody see, and he wouldn't bloody believe it until he held the awful, incontrovertible truth of it in his hands, if he could even bring himself to touch the bloody thing, knowing the only way he'd know his brother now was by his fucking bones.

Maker, and he'd called it a mercy.

His feet refused to go forward, but Anders couldn't tell if it was Amell's compulsion or his shame. He felt trapped in some drawn out twilight, as if the horror of what he'd said was continually dawning on him. 'They offered them mercy.' 'What difference does it make?' 'Who cares what happens to their bones?'

Some skull.

Maker, how could he unsay that? It was his brother.

… which brother?

Amell had two brothers. Two older brothers he'd been raised with until he was close to the age Kieran was now. A boy old enough to remember them. A boy old enough to know them. A boy old enough to love them, and look for them, and lose them all over again while Anders laughed in his face.

Fuck.

Which brother was it? Daylen or…

His other brother. His other brother whose name Anders didn't know. Why didn't he know? Had Amell never told him? Had Anders never asked? Did he just not remember? Why didn't he know?

What was his name? Daylen and…what? Daylen and something. Something. Something something something. Something with a 'Q' or a 'P' or some other letter, but Anders wasn't sure, because Amell might have never said, but Amell had two brothers and one or two sisters and at some point he must have told Anders their names so why didn't he know?

Maker, why didn't he know?

He knew the names of so many people who'd never had faces. He knew about Carver, and he knew about Malcolm, and he knew about Aristide, and he even knew about Bethann bloody Walker. Maker, why did he know so many names that didn't matter but not the name of Amell's brother?

Because they were Tranquil, and Amell didn't talk about them. They didn't need to talk about them, the same way they didn't need to talk about their families or their fathers or their first names, because they'd both understood there was nothing to say. There'd been nothing to say for so long it didn't make sense there was something to say now.

What was he supposed to say now?

Was it better or worse if it was Daylen?

At least if it was Daylen, Anders knew his name, but if it was Daylen, if Daylen was dead, if Anders had left him to die with the rest of the Tranquil-

Samson was supposed to save them. They'd mattered to Samson, and they'd mattered to Selby, but that had been it. No one else cared. Not Anders, or Beth, or Sketch, or Charade, or Alain, or Islau, or Evon, or anyone, not even Bardel, with his fake fucking brand, who'd spent years hiding among them, and not even Cullen, who Amell had compelled to care about mages, because he used to understand Tranquil didn't count until the Cantos changed his mind.

The Cantos changed so much about him Anders hardly recognized the man who'd compelled him from his company so he could mourn someone who might have been his long-dead brother as if there was any way for them to know when all Wynne had brought him was a skull.

A skull she said belonged to his brother, and was the only thing that could actually be unsaid.

Anders abandoned any hope of cleansing Amell's compulsion to chase after Wynne, and caught her making her way down the stairwell. "Wait-!" Anders caught her by her sleeve, and was immediately shook off, but she stopped, her arms folded across her chest and her face fixed with a scowl.

"What now?" Wynne asked.

"How do you know that's his brother?" Anders demanded, struggling to find some way to salvage this. "You show up with a skull - a skull that could belong to anyone - and you expect me -- him -- us to believe it's Amell's brother -- a brother he's never met -- Why? How would you even know? Is his name written on his skull?"

"It is, in fact," Wynne said, absent the same sarcasm that might have saved him. "Well? No riposte? I imagine you expected me to say something else. That he introduced himself to me before he died, and might not match your description? That I was there to witness what happened to him, and did nothing to stop it? Perhaps I arranged for all this to happen to inconvenience you personally -"

"Okay," Anders pressed his fingers into his eyes, but he couldn't unsee it.

Amell's evasive answers when asked why he'd sent for Wynne. The polite exchange and private audience when she arrived. The way he'd acted like he was seated for a sentencing he had no real say in, and Anders hadn't seen it.

"How do you know the Venatori are responsible?" Anders grabbed for the last straw he had left.

"What do you expect I have been doing, all these years since the Blight?"

"You mean aside from sabotaging our fight for freedom?"

"Freedom," Wynne rolled her eyes. "Do you think I do not know what it is to be consumed by an ideal? To pursue it to any end to the detriment of them all?"

"I think if you did, I'd be dead," Anders paused to let a mage squeeze past them on the stairwell with a handful of awkward 'Hello's.' "Faith, right? And you're still talking to me after what happened to the Chantry?"

"Is that all you think of when it comes to faith?" Wynne sounded like she pitied him. "Do you suspect I fall prostrate at the first sight of a sunburst?"

"Don't you?" Anders sneered.

"Good day, Anders," Wynne pushed past him down the stairwell.

"Wait-!" Anders tripped after her, and caught up when she reached the next floor. Anders dragged her out into a long corridor littered with planks of wood, sacks of sand, bundles of rope, and other supplies Anders imagined Gatsi and his men planned to use to repair the east wing, whenever it stopped being 'on his list' and started being done.

Anders harried Wynne away from the stairwell and over to the half-finished scaffolding where they'd be less likely to be overheard. "Wait. Will you just wait? How do you know? How do you know who's responsible for what happened to him? Did you just stumble across an ossuary full of ocularum somewhere?"

"Oculara, and no," Wynne spent a long while looking him over and sighed. "I don't know whether I should be more disappointed you didn't know what they were doing, or that you didn't care until you learned they were doing it to someone you love."

"Can you just tell me?" Anders wrangled in the urge to whine.

"If you must know, I have spent the last several years researching the Rite of Tranquility."

"Why?"

Wynne made a disgusted noise and shoved past him, but before Anders could think to stop her she whirled back around, "That you cannot even conceive of a reason-"

"Can you just answer the bloody question? You really haven't changed at all, have you? Should I go find a switch you can use on my knuckles before you'll even try to teach me? It's no wonder your first apprentice ran away-"

"Don't you dare bring Aneirin into this. He has nothing to do with this-"

"-He has everything to do with this. He was your apprentice, and as soon as he was old enough to understand the Rite of Tranquility he ran away, so what happened? Was he a bad student, were you a bad teacher, or was the Circle working exactly as the Chantry intended when the templars hunted him down like a dog-"

"Do you think I don't know I failed him!? When they came back without him-... they said he was a maleficar, but how could that be, when he wasn't even a man? They wouldn't even tell me if he suffered-" Wynne slapped a hand over her mouth and turned away from him, but the quake in her voice and the shake of her shoulders was enough to shock him into silence.

"... I'm sorry," Someone, maybe Anders, said.

"That little boy is my greatest regret." Wynne said when she collected herself. "You will never know how much he haunts me."

"... It wasn't your fault," Anders somehow said. "Don't you see that? You must see that. The Circle-"

"-needs to change," Wynne cut him off. "I know. I am trying to change it. Why else would I be researching the Rite? If there was an alternative, if there was some way to remove a mage's magic without removing their emotion-"

"We shouldn't need one."

"How easy it is for us to exist in ideals."

"... Have you found anything?"

Wynne shook her head.

"... how did you find Amell's brother?"

"With effort, and an angry golem," Wynne tested the scaffolding as if to sit, and evidently thought better of it. "Find a room for a weary old woman, would you?"

"You know you're only in your fifties, right?" Anders rolled his eyes, and led the way to the west wing, considering he wasn't about to dig a room up out of the rubble.

"Did you know any of them?" Wynne fell into step beside him. "The Tranquil you left behind?"

"You know I didn't just leave them, right?" Anders shot her a frown.

"You left them. Whatever arrangements you made, you left them behind. You made a choice, and this is the consequence. Whether or not you learn from it, the least you can do is own it."

"… Of course I knew them."

"One of them was a friend of mine," Wynne paused to smile and nod at a passing mage. It felt almost uncomfortably reminiscent of the Circle, walking alongside her so casually, like he was an apprentice again, begging for the pith of her latest lecture after arriving to it late. It was easy, when he was angry with her, to forget about those days. Anders wondered when he'd decided his anger was more important than his fellow mage.

"She was already Tranquil when we met, and a talented runecrafter," Wynne called him back to himself as she continued. "She stopped sending correspondence when that… woman was named Knight-Commander, but before that, she was researching ways to replicate the Rite."

"At least now I know who to thank," Anders said to himself.

"What?" Wynne blinked.

Anders rolled up his sleeve to show her his forearm, "One of the Knight Lieutenant's had a brand inscribed with a glyph of neutralization. He used it on mages to take away their magic, but it only lasted as long as it took the skin to scar. Her research?"

"... She would never have approved of using it to make another brand," Wynne looked crestfallen at the sight of the scar. "She was trying to find a way to soothe the mind without sealing away the soul… Her enhancements were gentle… She was still a child, when she volunteered to undergo the Rite… A little girl who didn't know what she was doing, who'd been having nightmares, and was just looking for something to help her sleep.

"… Irving would never have agreed, but Maceron answered to Meredith, and so they tranquilized a child. Do you know what that does to someone, to take away their dreams that young? I know you were unhappy at Kinloch, Anders, but at least you had a childhood.

"That is why I am researching the Rite. There is so much about it we don't understand. Are there alternatives? Is there a way to reverse it? Are we truly sure it even works, or are we just too busy to bother with singing our children to sleep?"

Anders let the conversation lull. They were old questions -- and it was past the time for answers. The Circle wasn't a solution, no matter how they changed it, but for once Anders didn't feel the need to say it. Wynne was a mage, and she meant well, and the rest didn't always need to matter. Anders found an empty room in the west wing to offer her through her stay, inglorious and absent anything but a moth-eaten divan by way of furniture, but Wynne didn't complain.

She set her pack on the floor, and looked as old as she acted when she stretched.

"... what happened to them?" Anders asked, stuck in the threshold. "The Tranquil?"

"The templars suffered some sort of schism, after the mages fled Kirkwall. The new Knight-Commander took those loyal to him and left for Val Royeaux. The rest of the templars left for somewhere else in Orlais, and took most of the Tranquil with them, but some of them set out on their own."

Anders shifted his weight from foot to foot, suddenly uncomfortable. "Why would they do that?"

"The Tranquil do nothing without reason," Wynne sighed her way down to the divan. "They may have sought to escape the plague as much as the famine, or decided it was too dangerous to remain with the rise of this 'Red Divine,' but I believed they set out to rejoin the Circles. We had no word of their arrival from Ostwick, so Shale and I started our search in Cumberland, and made our way north until we reached the border.

"That was where we found the Venatori. Their ships were promising safe passage for mages, and seeing as I was traveling in the company of a golem, they invited me to join them. Evil men are all too eager to see evil in others, and they never suspected Shale might not come with a control rod.

"... twelve days. That's how long it took them to believe a stranger might be like them, and abandon any sense of shame. They showed us-..." Wynne stopped, shaking her head like she couldn't decide where to direct her anger if not at Anders, and settled on her steepled fingers. "There were shelves of them. It was like they had them on display… We sent the rest of them to the White Spire to see if they could find their families, but I saw his brother's name."

"Are you sure it wasn't…" Anders spun his hand, spinning out on excuses. "... some strange way of trying to honor some kind of sacrifice?"

"I am," Wynne said. "And so are you."

Wynne's expression was as soft and sad and sympathetic as it had been with Amell, and Anders looked away from it. Sweat gathered on his palms, but it had nothing to do with the summer. Anders scrubbed them dry against his thighs, and cleared his throat to recover. A few short steps took him nowhere, and Anders stopped before he started pacing.

He couldn't stay here, hovering around Wynne and hoping he'd come up with a question that would fix this for him. The only person who had any chance of fixing things for Anders was Anders, and the only way to fix them was to face them.

Anders rolled up his sleeve and drew his dagger before he realized what he was doing. Anders glanced up from the blade he'd pressed to his palm to find Wynne watching him. "... do you mind if I uh-"

"Why not?" Wynne waved a weary allowance.

"-... thanks," Anders made the cut.

The compulsion hurt to cleanse.

Anders made the walk back to the war room alone.

His vomit was still there, hardening into a beige sort of paste on the floor.

Anders made a trip down to the kitchens for a mop and bucket, and came back to clean it. The vomit oozed back to life with the addition of water, the acrid stench of half-digested honey bread and smoked wyvern stinging his eyes to tears and leaving him gagging. The mop was a little too short, like it had been made for an elf, and he had to hunch to hold it, every awkward pass sloshing his sick across the floorboards and getting it stuck in the grooves.

It felt like he was making it worse, but Anders forced himself to keep going, because he had to make it better.

Chapter 249: From Kirkwall We Fled: Whatever The Cost

Summary:

"A dog might slink back to the hand it has bitten
And be forgiven, but a slave never."

- Shartan 9:7

Notes:

Thank you for all of your wonderful bookmarks, subscriptions, comments and kudos, but most of all thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy the chapter.

*This story ends with Anders alive and well, but may contain several character arcs on the way there.

Chapter Text

9:38 Dragon 1 Solis Early Evening
Warden’s Keep: Southeastern Tower

Amell wasn't in the war room.

Anders should have known he wasn't in the war room.

He was a Grey Warden, or in the very least, tainted, the blight in his blood ever present and eager for answer in another. It crawled through his veins like some living, breathing thing, gnawing with need and itching at the underside of his skin, where his nails couldn't reach.

It was insatiable - spreading, and seeping, and seeking some other soul, some other spawn, some other part of the swarm since the day he'd swallowed death and sworn to serve it, surrendering himself to the rot that was slowly eroding everything inside him until there was nothing left but his shadow and his unabsolved sins and the song, the song, the song-

"Easy," Someone squeezed his shoulder. "Is everything alright, Anders?"

"Sorry," Anders took a shallow breath, struggling to focus on anything other than the sensation of something writhing underneath his skin.

Nate. It was Nate. Anders focused on the firm pressure of his fingers, and followed it into other senses. The sound of his voice, and the sight of his face, and the scent of the outside -- where they were -- for whatever reason.

The southeast battlements. A stairwell away from the war room. The braziers were still unlit, this early in the evening. Three mages were playing dice beside them, casting the occasional glance at Ansburg in the far distance. A day's journey away, it was a smear on the horizon, and gave him something other than himself to focus on.

Anders was sick of himself, or with himself, or whatever adposition applied to everything that had happened. His ill thought out alliances, weak-won and rushed, and all the ways they'd ruined him. Had he decided not to hear it, when Varania called the Venatori hunters, or had he seen the armatures and decided then and there he didn't care who else joined the templars on their mounts?

Anders steadied himself on the parapet, "How did I get here, again?"

"It seems the Call carried you," Nate would have known, because Nate was a Warden, and not just the memory of one.

"Normal," Anders sighed. It shouldn't have been so easy to forget that side of himself, but most days it felt so far away.

"Did you know we can make our blood into a poison more painful than Adder's Kiss?" Nate volunteered as he settled in beside him.

"... also normal."

"We're Wardens, Anders. What is normal?"

Anders didn't have an answer to that, but it was a comforting sentiment in the aftermath of his episode. "I was looking for Amell."

"And got bodied by your blood, it seems," Nate chuckled.

Anders ran a weary hand through his hair, "Thanks for the sympathy."

"You know, old friend, if you made an effort to familiarize yourself with our abilities-" Nate started.

Anders didn't want to talk about their abilities. "Why are you always up here, Nate?"

"Fresh air?" Nate shrugged, and gestured to the feathers and wood shavings littering the space. "And fletching lessons. Since we've been shaping the staves into longbows, some of the mages wanted to learn how to shoot."

"You think a few months of archery lessons will matter?" Anders bit his tongue when one of the watchmen abandoned their game of dice to go back on patrol, though whether it was to save their coin or serve their cause Anders couldn't say.

The longbow-staff strapped to their back wasn't strung, and there was no reason to string it. The apostates weren't archers, and a few arrows wouldn't make a dent in the templars' armies or their armor. Whenever they started target practice, Anders doubted they'd make a dent in the straw. They were mages. They had magic. They were meaningless without it.

The watchmen moved on, but Anders had never known how, "Templar training starts at seven-"

Nate waved off his rant before it started, "Have a little faith, my friend."

Faith. Anders had enough Faith. Faith had ruined things for him, filling Amell with false hope his brother was alive, and could somehow be rescued or revived. Anders buried his face in his hands and sighed. "Did you know Amell sent Wynne to look for his brother?"

"Why do I suddenly feel under fire?" Nate glanced up at imagined arrows.

Anders frowned through his fingers at him, "So yes. I can't believe you kept it a secret."

"I keep several," Nate said with a smile far more chastising than Anders' frown.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Have you considered the better question is why didn't Amell?"

Anders didn't want to open that door. "You know he's in denial. He can't seriously believe there would have been anything left of his brother to save."

"Anders…" Nate began, bracing himself as if the only way forward was over a tripwire he couldn't disarm. "I won't pretend to understand any of this, but have you considered being supportive?"

"Supportive," Anders scoffed. "Would you be supportive if Seranni died and Velanna was so deep in denial she wanted the company of her corpse?"

"You realize in this false equivalence of yours that that is exactly how most people see Seranni?" Nate countered.

"That's not what-" Anders ground his teeth. "Forget that she's a ghoul, if she was a walking corpse-"

"A walking corpse was one of my closest friends."

"So help me, Nate-"

"There is no analogy here, Anders. You can't simplify the situation into something that suits you. It's complicated, and it deserves a careful conversation," Nate lectured him. "I've had one with Velanna, and if it comes to it, she would have me do as you did."

Anders shook his head, "No one should have to do what I did."

"I know, and I'm sorry. I've interacted with a handful of Tranquil in my life, and I admit they're unsettling," Nate rolled his fingers along his cane. "I know you say it can't be cured-"

"I don't say that, I know that," Anders said.

"I hear you," Nate raised a hand to ward him off. "Is it so bad for Amell to want a brother?"

"His brother is dead."

"Dead or…?"

"Dead. Gone. Unalive," Anders signed the words for good measure. "He's dead, Nate. Really dead. Wholly, honestly, literally dead. He's ash and bones and would you believe Wynne brought them?"

Nate staggered, and caught himself on his cane, "She brought his bones?"

"His skull," Anders waved away the semantics.

"I…" Nate floundered. "What?"

"He was already dead. Amell didn't lose anything he hadn't already lost. I just-" Anders buried his face in his hands. "Couldn't you talk to him for me?"

"She brought his bones?" Nate repeated.

"He never should have looked for him. There was nothing else he could have found," Anders dropped his hands over the railing and considered letting the rest of him follow, "He can't just bring his brother back like his father did his mother."

"Andraste's blood, Anders-"

"What other explanation is there? Why else would he be so bloody desperate-"

"-to know his brother? How do you-" Nate adjusted his grip on his cane like he wanted to hit him with it. "You know he said it didn't matter? That Tranquility was a separate state of being and the absence of emotion shouldn't be taken as the absence of the self?"

"A separate-" Anders choked through a laugh more bitter than bile, and spun away from the parapet. "It's a severance of the soul! Of all the senseless-... He doesn’t honestly believe that. He can't honestly believe that. It's the bloody cantos again, encouraging the oppressed to take comfort in their oppression-"

"You think that's the lesson-"

"There is no lesson. It's all trash about accepting things the way they are when we should fight for better."

"We're offering asylum," Nate swung his hand out as if to encompass all of Ferelden, however far away, adjusting and readjusting his grip on his cane, as if he couldn't decide if he wanted to use it to keep gesturing or walk away. "You think Amell isn't fighting for better? How do you explain the past three months he's spent securing access to Lady Ashwell's print shop, speaking to your manifesto before the Margrave, getting you that audience with the Cavins-"

"None of that matters so long as mages are made Tranquil. It is a fate worse than death and the one thing they have always held over us. The Rite of Tranquility is the whole reason the rest of the Circles still haven't risen up. You don't understand what a step backwards it is for him to believe there is anything to be salvaged or excused-"

"You know he had a lover who was made Tranquil in the Circle?" Nate interrupted him.

"He-... what?" Anders stopped short.

"No, then," Nate deduced. "I don't know all the details. It was someone he slept with for a week or so in his youth."

No. No, that hadn't happened. Amell would have told him if that had happened. Amell would have told him after Anders had told him he'd killed Karl, but Amell hadn't mentioned anything like that, ever, in all the years they'd been together and all the times they'd talked about their lives, and their lovers, and their losses, and if it had happened, Amell would have told him.

Anders could see all the words he wanted to say, bitter and bloody as a half-feral litter, hissing and biting as he tried to gather them up, and hurting so much he could only pick one. "...why?"

"Something about the other boy being susceptible to desire," Nate must have been able to see the scratches, because his anger subsided. "Again, I don't know all the details, but I got the impression he felt regret for avoiding him after it happened.

"I can't imagine what it must be like to see that happen to someone, and I don't know whether or not death is the right answer, but I don't believe you can blame someone for wanting another. The Circle assigned that other boy to the Grey Wardens as an envoy, during the Blight, and Amell had to see him every day.

"I imagine they meant it as an insult, but right now, I think the greater one is leaving him alone with the bones of his brother."

Nate must have left, because at some point Anders realized he was alone, standing on the ramparts of the southeast corner tower, overlooking the Free Marches, and thinking of the mages within it.

Andraste's blood, it was his brother.

Amell should have known there was no way to save him. It was too late for the Tranquil. There was no separate, secret, second self somewhere deep inside them. They were husks, and there was no way to make it less horrific. The cantos and the canticles and all the other senseless scriptures might sell their suffering as salvation, but Amell should have known better than to make excuses for the violation.

Anders dredged his hands through his hair, thinking of the Tranquil, and the death of them, and Amell and the parts of him he still didn't understand, even after all the months they'd spent together.

Months.

Maker, it had been months, and now it had been hours, and Anders still didn't know his brother's name.

Warden’s Keep had been built to house over a hundred Grey Wardens, across four wings and over six stories. It was host to over three times that number now, Grey Warden acolytes only in name. They'd converted the larger rooms and great halls into dormitories to accommodate everyone, and it felt almost reminiscent of the Circle with how crowded it became, save that there were no templars and no Tranquil among them.

Of the handful of semi-private quarters available, the Warden Commander's chambers had been set aside for real Wardens. Anders could sense three of three behind the door before him. Amell hadn't gone back to his room off the infirmary, and Anders hated that he couldn't say whose blood he'd followed to find him.

It was just blood -- red decaying into black -- until it soured, until it sang, until it sought out other soulless spawn -- like some sort of wet rot in his veins oozing to the surface, making its way through muscle, fat, and tendons, until it reached his skin and raised his fist to knock against the door that opened without his intervention.

"Anders," Nate eyed his raised fist, as if he couldn't conceive of the concept of knocking, when he was so attuned to their shared consciousness. "Now isn't the time-"

"Yes it is," Anders shouldered past him.

The room and everything within it had been well made enough to withstand a century of neglect, a decorative railing separating the sleeping and sitting areas, with Nate, Ailsa, and Amal's things strewn between the bed, the writing desk, and the tea table. The quarters came with a private washroom and private oratory, and looked lived in, but it wasn't somewhere Anders had been living.

He felt lost. He didn't know where to sit or where to stand, and worse, he didn't know what to say.

It wasn’t enough.

They needed escape routes, supply lines, and safe ways to travel, and the Venatori's riverboats moved mages en masse. They needed clothes, bedding, and recently jacks, and the Venatori supplied them. They needed to keep the armies occupied, as more and more mages fled their Circles and the Free Cities, and the Venatori sent soldiers.

They needed the alliance. They couldn't just end it. It wasn’t enough.

It was his brother, and it wasn't enough, and Anders didn't know what to say.

Nate shut the door behind him. Ailsa was sitting at the writing desk, and looked up at his entrance, but Anders couldn't say if her expression was one of shame or sympathy. Amell was nowhere to be seen, but Dumat had found a place for himself on the bed, so he must have been nearby.

"Where is he?" Anders asked.

"The oratory," Ailsa gestured over her shoulder with her quill.

Amell had to be dragged into chapels and chantries. As far as Anders knew, Amell would sooner meditate in a privy. "... why?"

"He asked to be alone," Ailsa set aside her quill to massage at the crystals breaking through her knuckles. "... I was writing to Magister Ahriman to see if it was true. I never considered-… There are so many in the south, but they scarce exist in the Imperium … It's-... they-.... it doesn't happen. The Senate would have to pass the sentence. I'm sorry. I think-... I think they aren't real to us. It doesn't happen to us. The perrepatae - mage-killers? - Silence us instead."

Ailsa took a shallow breath and crumpled up the letter she'd been working on. The waded up parchment joined two other failed letters on the floor, and Ailsa opted to leave rather than start a fourth.

Anders picked up the crumpled parchment and unfolded it, but the ink hadn't had a chance to dry. The words bled over and blacked out, almost like a children's game, where he could improvise whatever horrors filled the blanks.

Concerning the creation of maybe not oculara but cake

We ask that you explain the actions undertaken by your maybe not phrenologists but bakers

For what purpose could you possibly have need of maybe not skulls but sugar

Anders balled the letter back up and threw it. Nate watched it roll across the floor, and took up a cautious position between him and the oratory door. "Anders, perhaps you should respect-"

"Nate, I love you, but fuck off," Anders said.

"Fucking off," Nate fucked off.

"Amell?" Anders called through the door. "Love? Can we talk?" Anders knocked, and opened the door when he didn't get an answer.

The oratory was small. A private room for worship, it welcomed light through a stained glass depiction of Andraste, holding up a sword. A wooden altar was pressed against the window sill, absent a votive rack or Chant of Light. Amell had set the ocularum atop the altar, and the small space echoed with its whispers.

Amell almost sounded like he was talking to it, muttering under his breath as he felt over the skull with one hand, and copied the symbols on it with the other. The walls were covered in them, the stone indented from some kind of caustic chalk, flecked with fire crystals his glove must have been enchanted against.

He only wore the one, bare fingers tracing and retracing the etchings in his brother's bones, in what may as well have been a perfect mirror of his father.

The sight turned Anders' stomach. It felt like swallowing teeth or choking on hair -- sick and sharp and so much worse than he'd imagined.

Anders forced himself to take a slow breath, and set it aside. "Love, can we talk?"

"Not now, Anders," Amell waved a hand, and the door to the oratory slammed shut in his face.

"Don't you dare," Anders slammed it back open. "You can't just ignore me."

"I said not now," Amell paused long enough to frown.

"I heard you, that doesn't mean I have to listen to you," Anders said, struggling to make sense of the symbols. "Love, what are you doing?"

"What am I doing?" Amell repeated. "That's what you want to ask me? That's the first thing you want to ask me?"

"Of course that's what I want to ask you," Anders took a step forward, and Amell took a step back. His hip connected with the altar, the rattle of his brother's skull made Anders wince. "I'm worried about you."

"Why?"

"Why - what is all this?"

"What does it look like?" Amell asked derisively.

"It looks like I should be worried about the literal writing on the walls," Anders hated that he snapped. "Amell, will you just come out of there so we can talk?"

"We're talking," Amell allotted. "Against my will, we're talking."

"Don't you dare talk about will right now," Anders warned him.

"What am I allowed to talk about, Anders?" Amell scoffed.

"Don't do that," Anders said. "Don't turn everything around on me like that. You mind controlled me to avoid a conversation. Do you realize how wrong that is?"

"A conversation," Amell repeated. "Anders, this isn't a conversation. You don't care what I have to say."

"Because there is nothing you could say to excuse it! You can't compel me!" Anders shouldn't have had to say. "It doesn't matter if I don't agree. I would never take away your choice like that-"

"You take away my choice when you won't leave!" Amell snapped, and the chalk snapped with him. Amell threw the broken pieces at the floor, and they clattered away into the corner to smolder into the stone. "I can't walk away from you! I can't find somewhere else to be! I can only navigate so much of this keep, and these crowds, and if I want to be alone you have to leave!"

"Don't act like you don't have a choice," Anders said. "You can have a conversation. You tell me what you need. You can bloody talk to me!"

"I need you to leave!" Amell said.

"Why? So you can go back to writing on the walls?" Anders demanded. "You can't bring him back-"

"-you have no idea what I'm doing-"

"-so talk to me-"

"Leave!" Amell forced him from the oratory with what felt like a wall, a wave of telekinetic force shoving him from the room and sending him into hysterics in the next. Anders laced his hands over his head, torn between laughing and losing his mind.

This was insane. They'd been fine. There was no reason for Amell to act this way, now, when he’d been through so much worse. He'd lost his sight, and his son, and so many other things so much more important than a brother he'd barely known, but he was acting like his father, obsessing over the dead, copying and recopying the symbols on the skull, following the etchings with his fingers and carving them into the stone, like he was trying to memorize or mirror whatever magic had been worked into the bone.

Anders couldn't imagine any other reason than Amell attempting to revive him. The walls were covered with symbols he didn't recognize, and Anders couldn't say if it was because the runework was advanced or illegible when Amell had done it absent the stencils he usually used to accommodate his lack of sight, and it just made the whole thing seem all the more unstable.

Amell found the broken chalk he'd thrown and stuffed it into a pouch on his belt, and Anders counted it a small mercy Amell followed him out of the oratory to finish their fight rather than locking himself in it.

"This is insane," Anders laughed. "Do you see that now? You would sooner throw me from your company than just tell me what's the matter-"

"You should know!" Amell shouted, so loud Anders took a step back and Dumat startled awake, flailing off the bed and scrambling to Amell's side. "You should know! You shouldn't need me to say! You can see! You know! I don't have to explain!"

"Why do you insist on-" Anders forced himself to stop, when his own raised voice won a growl from the dog, and tried again, "You can't treat me like this-" Amell cut him off with a wild cackle, and Anders forced himself to continue, "Just because you're a commander doesn't mean you get to command me."

"Command you," Amell chuckled, and kept chuckling, dragging his hand over his face like he was trying to stop. "That's your concern right now. Anders, my brother is dead, and you have yet to ask me how I am."

"Nothing I say will change what happened!" Anders snapped before he could stop himself. He was trying. Amell should have been able to tell he was trying. He was here, and he was talking, and he was trying, over a bloody tranquil. Anders took a deep breath and did his best to bury the thought. Over his brother. He was here, and he was talking, and he was trying, over his brother. "I just-... I'm sorry, I'm here for you-"

"How are you here for me?" Amell asked like he didn't believe him.

"However you need," Anders didn't know what he needed. "Andraste's grace, love, why didn't you tell me about your brother?"

"What should I have told you, Anders?" Amell demanded. "What is it you think I haven't said?

"Amell-" Anders started.

Amell cut him off, "No, should I have told you he was Tranquil? I did. Should I have told you to find him? I did. Should I have told you he matters?!"

"Love-" Anders tried again.

"Why do I have to tell you he matters, Anders?" Amell stressed. "Why do I have to tell you they matter?"

"Because they don't!" Anders broke, when all of his thoughts refused to stay buried, as ugly and vicious as a horde of undead. "They don't! They're dead. Love, he's dead, and I'm sorry, but he was always going to be dead-"

"But you're here for me," Amell laughed into his hand. "Anders, I think I'd rather you weren’t here for me."

"Well I am!" Anders' voice cracked, and if nothing else, Amell finally stopped laughing in the time it took him to take a drink from his flask. "I'm sorry about your brother, but you can't just lock yourself away and turn into your father, Amell, you have-"

"What do I have, Anders?"

"You have me. I care about you-"

"You haven't cared since you lost Compassion," Amell said, and he said it so flat. Like he wasn't even trying to be cruel, and was just stating a fact.

Anders choked on a pained laugh, and started pacing, "Because I don't care about the Tranquil? Amell, no one cares about the Tranquil! That's the point! There's nothing left in them, and you used to know that until you woke up one day and decided the Qun should tell you what to think!"

"The Qun," Amell repeated. "You want to have this conversation? You want to make this about that?"

"What else about you has changed?" Anders demanded. "You have never been more distant. You pray three times a bloody day, and don't say it helps with your addictions. For all your talk of peace of mind we both know you're still using. If it doesn't even keep you clean, what's the point of your conversion?"

"How would you know? You don't make any effort to know," Amell scoffed. "I have been with you for months and you still call seeking balance prayer. I gave you time and you used it to tolerate me."

Amell knelt to scratch Dumat's ear to calm him when the mabari started growling. It must have felt his anger, and Anders' compounding it through his ring couldn't have been helping.

Anders took a deep breath and took off his ring to put into his pocket, and felt slightly better. "Amell-"

"I'm not finished," Amell hissed him silent. "I'm not going to turn into my father, Anders. My mother loved him. She loved him-…" Amell went off in search of the right word, with such a faraway expression he might have been sifting through storybooks. "-unreservedly. His virtues. His vices. It didn't matter what he did, she only ever wanted more of him.

"You don't want more of me, Anders, you want less," Amell stood up and brushed his hands off on his trousers. "And I want you to leave."

"That's not true-" Anders reached for his hand, but Amell must not have been expecting him to touch him, because he flinched back at the contact.

"Leave," Amell said, so Anders left.

Anders shouldn't have left. He didn't want to leave. He didn't want to go back to his room if Amell wasn't in it, and spent the rest of the evening wandering the crowded corridors, feeling trapped in some strange recreation of the Circle, and fighting the sudden urge to run away.

This was what he'd wanted. No templars. No tranquil. Just mages, free and fighting to stay that way.

Except he wasn't fighting. Not in the way he'd always imagined, out on the frontlines, leading armies in opposition to an Exalted March, throwing open the doors of Circle after Circle and seeing mages from them.

He spent most of his time in the war room, arguing over the logistics of supply lines, and how best to purchase and transport food in bulk without arousing suspicion, on where to set up safe houses, and who to send to them, and what cyphers they should use or if they should even use them, on whether staves were best disguised as longbows, or halberds, or hayforks, and how much lyrium to keep in reserve for potions or to undo a possession.

Maker, there were so many choices he didn't want to be the one to make. He wasn't supposed to be a leader. He was supposed to be out fighting in the war. Beth was supposed to be here, but he kept losing all of his support.

Anders couldn't sleep, and went to find Amell in the morning, only for Nate to redirect him to the stables.

"Amell," Anders shoved his way through the crowds, out of breath from his sprint to the stables, and the skeletal constructs that stood out among the horses. Amell wasn't just dressed for riding, he was dressed for leaving, his saddle bags on Dans Leur Sang and his brother's skull strapped to his hip, "Amell, stop. Where are you going?"

"Ansburg, and then Amaranthine," Amell said dispassionately, testing the straps to his saddle while Dumat bounded about his feet.

"You're leaving?" Amell couldn't be leaving. "Amell, wait, I know we may not agree on a few things-"

Amell hardly seemed like he was listening, leading the construct from the stable, "I'll still support you, but I won't stay here when you won't do the same."

"What does that mean?" Anders stumbled after him. "Are you breaking up with me? I know you're angry, but-"

"You know they carved his name into his skull?" Amell cut him off. He found his stirrup on his own, and swung himself up onto the saddle. "And all I could think was 'At least they cared enough to know it.'"

Anders felt that same, sickened sensation of hair stuck in his throat, in his teeth, in his stomach, balled up like a bezoar, and he gagged when he tried to swallow, "Amell, wait," Anders grabbed for him. "Please, I'm sorry, you said you would stay as long as you could-"

"I have."